Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Full Episode - Could Democrats Actually Win 270+ House Seats? + Wargaming An American Coup

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Full Episode - Could Democrats Actually Win 270+ House Seats? + Wargaming An American Coup · The Chuck ToddCast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: This episode of the Chuck Todd cast is brought to
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: you by Chapter. Now, almost everything you hear about Medicare
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: is somebody quietly trying to steer you somewhere. And you're
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: skeptical of that, as you should be. I get it.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: I mean, there's a federal lawsuit going on right now
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: over exactly this. Companies that branded themselves as unbiased while
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: allegedly pointing people toward whatever would pay them the most
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: as some sort of broker. So if your default is
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: to distrust everyone in this space, honestly, I get it.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: I'm a bit distrustful these days myself. That's the whole
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: reason I want to tell you about Chapter. They're independent
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Medicare advisors whose entire model is that their advisors are
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: not paid to push any one plan. They're just trying
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: to help. Yes, there's compensation that goes with it. but
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: it's across the board is what they're trying to do.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: At the end of the day, they're advocating for you.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: They're not the insurance companies themselves. They're an actual person
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: who actually goes through your doctors, your prescriptions, your needs,
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: and then compares them to every single plan available to
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: find the best one that will work for you and
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: hopefully save you a couple dollars too. And here's the
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: part that sets chapter apart. They don't disappear once you've
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: been in They will keep advocating for you. They're kind
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: of like almost like a concierge service. You're just there.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: I need help. You're like customer service. You know, the plan,
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: you know, help me navigate this again. So you ever
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: get hit with a wrongful medical bill, they'll help you
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: fight it. They want to stay an advocate for you
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: even after you've done this. So look, I get it.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: I think there's all sorts of space. You see a
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: lot of people are throwing themselves in this healthcare space.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: What I like about these chapter folks, I've spent time
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: with them. This is a very transparent organization. It is
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: Medicare and all of its affiliated stuff can be very confusing.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: The whole point of this is to make this easier
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: and less confusing. OK, so look, take the skepticism you
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: already have in all of this, point it at your
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: own plan for 20 minutes. It's free. There's no pressure.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: And then call chapter today at 980-734-4200. Hello there, I'm
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: Chuck Todd. Welcome to the Thursday episode of the Chuck Toddcast.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: I got a loaded up one for you today, including
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  Speaker 1: a guest that is going to focus on an issue
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  Speaker 1: that many of you email me about quite a bit
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: or send in notes or comments. And that is how,
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: you know, if current president, if the current majority party
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  Speaker 1: wants to essentially nullify or mess with the elections, what
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: does that look like? How could that look like? Well,
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  Speaker 1: my guest today is Dimitri Melhorn, and he's been running
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  Speaker 1: these simulations of sort of stress tests on the US
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: electoral system. I participated in one of them a few
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: months back. In fact, if you go back to an
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  Speaker 1: episode in mid-April. You'll hear my experience about it. And
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: it's Chatham House rules, so you don't get into exactly
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: who is participating where. But it was a pretty interesting
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  Speaker 1: group of people I was involved with. And it was
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  Speaker 1: this simulation of sort of, you know, the scenario is
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  Speaker 1: the president is trying to stay in power longer than
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: the terms that exist. And the midterm elections and how
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: the midterm elections could play into that if that is
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  Speaker 1: what happens in January of 2029. The point is he
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  Speaker 1: has done hundreds of these simulations now over the last
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  Speaker 1: couple of years. He has certainly learned quite a bit.
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  Speaker 1: He's studied this around the world, other stress tests of
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  Speaker 1: other democracies. And so, look, for those of you concerned
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  Speaker 1: about this, as you know, I'm in that in-between stage.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: I am not an alarmist. but I believe in staying
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: vigilant on this stuff. Um, I, I do think, uh,
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  Speaker 1: it's a conversation that I don't know if it'll be reassuring,
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  Speaker 1: but it should reassure you that plenty of people are
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: thinking about this. Plenty of entities are war gaming this.
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  Speaker 1: And let's just say I have high confidence that there's
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  Speaker 1: enough of us around here that there's just not going
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: to let this democracy fail one way or another. Um,
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: But I think there's a lot to learn from Dimitri.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: And so I think you'll enjoy that interview. I also,
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: of course, it's Thursday, which means we've got a huge
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: weekend of college football for me to preview. I want
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: to get into that. I have to say, I'm almost
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: overdosed right now on both my two great passions, which
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: is politics and sports. This is October is just you know,
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: the greatest month of the year for sports, baseball playoffs,
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: which are, God, these five game series have just been tremendous.
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  Speaker 1: I love the five game series. I really hope baseball
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  Speaker 1: never gets rid of it. I think the five game
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  Speaker 1: series is just long enough to create drama and for
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  Speaker 1: momentum to go back and forth, right? A three game
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: series is almost too short for that, but it's short
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  Speaker 1: enough where upsets can happen, right? It is very hard
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: to beat the Dodgers in a seven game. But you
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  Speaker 1: might be able to beat them in a five game.
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  Speaker 1: Probably very hard to beat the Brewers in a five game.
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  Speaker 1: In a seven game. But a little bit easier in
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  Speaker 1: a five game. Anyway, I mean, every single one of
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: these division series have been terrific. As you know, I
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: am on the White Sox bandwagon. I got enough family
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  Speaker 1: ties with it. And they are the ultimate underdog. You
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: want to talk about maybe... the most popular international World
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  Speaker 1: Series matchup you could have, which would be Murakami's Chicago
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: White Sox versus Otani's Los Angeles Dodgers. That would be
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  Speaker 1: something else. But White Sox-Dodgers, a rematch of the 1959
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  Speaker 1: World Series. Let's just say that would be among the
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  Speaker 1: outcomes that would please me. But so would the Brewers
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  Speaker 1: making it in here. I'd love to see the Brewers, frankly,
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: if we could get the Brewers in the Rays, we guarantee,
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: guarantee that we will have Somebody who has never won
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  Speaker 1: a World Series before. And it's always good to get
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: the monkey off the back of a team. But needless
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  Speaker 1: to say, I'm ODing on sports. I'm ODing on politics.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: So guess what? I feel like I'm a little bit
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: behind my sports. I can tell because I'm just getting
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: killed in all my fantasy teams. I'm just not as
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: focused as I normally am because there is so much
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: incoming in the political space. So much to focus on there.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: And I know that that's why you come here. You
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: may enjoy the football talk. You may enjoy my baseball rants.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: But I know why you're here. You're here for the politics.
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  Speaker 1: And I got a good one for you today. So
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  Speaker 1: I've got a few things I want to get to
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  Speaker 1: before I'm going to dive into the main topic I
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: want to talk about, which is something I've been wrestling
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: with for the last few days. Frankly, I'm not sure
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  Speaker 1: I've come to a big time conclusion just yet, but
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: we're going to go on this journey together. Everybody in
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: the political handicapping business, and I include myself here, is
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: getting increasingly bullish about Democratic chances of winning the Senate
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  Speaker 1: and not just narrowly winning the Senate, but maybe winning six, seven,
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  Speaker 1: eight seats. We're looking at polls in Kansas and Iowa, Texas, Nebraska,
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  Speaker 1: even places like South Carolina and Mississippi are receiving some
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: national money. And suddenly races that we wouldn't have spent
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: much time talking about a year ago are getting some
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: serious attention. So there are some good reasons for that.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: The political environment for Republicans seems to be deteriorating by
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: the hour. The president is there's unpopular and there's really unpopular.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: We're getting to really, really unpopular points for him. Voters
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  Speaker 1: are clearly frustrated with this economy, with the war in Iran,
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: which is impacting the economy. And there are Republican candidates
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: who are now a little late in the process, if
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: you ask me, but who are starting to realize that
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: they need its survival of the fittest and they may
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: need to cut their ties to Trump. But An old
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: friend of mine from my hotline days sent me an
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  Speaker 1: interesting exercise that has forced me to reconsider just how
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  Speaker 1: far this Democratic wave can actually reach. Because if the
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: Senate polls are right, then I think one of three
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: things is happening. Either we're getting a little carried away
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  Speaker 1: about the Senate and some of these polls are giving
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  Speaker 1: us a misleading picture, or we're underestimating just how big
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  Speaker 1: the Democratic wave is going to be in the House.
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  Speaker 1: That's something I'm as concerned about as overestimating the Senate
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: is underestimating the House. Or this is the possibility I
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: find most intriguing. Something unusual is happening in red states
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  Speaker 1: that isn't necessarily showing up in the national numbers. And
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  Speaker 1: we're watching just a total collapse of the Trump Republican coalition.
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  Speaker 1: Maybe we're seeing the beginnings of a massive political realignment
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: in the red states. Maybe we're seeing candidates outperform their
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  Speaker 1: party in ways that don't fit our usual assumptions. Or
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: maybe we're just looking at an election where a lot
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  Speaker 1: of the conventional rules are going to get tested in
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  Speaker 1: ways we haven't seen before. So I'm going to spend
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: some time today trying to talk myself out of my
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  Speaker 1: own increasingly bullish assessments of the Democratic Party's chances in
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  Speaker 1: both the House and the Senate. These are healthy exercises, right?
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: You want to sort of, you always want to check yourself.
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  Speaker 1: And that's something I want to do. So I'm going
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  Speaker 1: to do it by looking at some history, looking at
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  Speaker 1: the math, and at what previous wave elections actually produced.
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  Speaker 1: How often do you get outlier results even in wave? elections?
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  Speaker 1: Let me give you a little hint here. Fewer times
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  Speaker 1: than you think. But first, let's get through a few
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: items in the news that I want to get to
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: and give you my medium warm to hot take on that,
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: because they do help explain why we're even having this
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  Speaker 1: conversation in the first place. So I'm going to start
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: with a piece that I've been meaning to sort of
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: share with you for a few days, and that is
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: a profile of the Treasury Secretary Scott Besson in the
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal. And remember, the Wall Street Journal, this
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: is a Rupert Murdoch-owned paper. This is not somebody that
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: you can accuse of having a liberal agenda to just
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: go after the Trump administration. This is Rupert Murdoch's paper, okay?
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: It wasn't a very flattering portrait of Besson. And it
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: really sort of focused on Besson and his management style
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: at Treasury. And it was, you know, sounds like he's
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: sounds like he's a crappy boss. OK, but as I
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: was reading it, I kept thinking you could have written
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: the same version of this story about Pete Hegseth and
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: the Pentagon. You probably could have written a similar story.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: about what's happening with Todd Blanche and the Justice Department.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: And you certainly could write this story about Bobby Kennedy Jr.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: and HHS, right? These are all different departments, certainly different individuals,
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: but there's a familiar pattern here, right? And the journal
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: describes the Treasury Department with its extraordinary turnover, right? Scott
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: Besson just chases people out. A secretary who has developed
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: a reputation for losing his temper at the drop of
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: a hat. a growing reliance on a relatively small circle
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: of trusted advisors and some pretty significant vacancies in positions
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: that you would think are essential to running perhaps one
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: of the most important departments in all of the federal government.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: So how significant is this turnover? Well, according to the
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: folks at the Partnership for Public Service, seven Senate-confirmed Treasury
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: officials have left by the end of August. They haven't
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: even served two years. In the previous four administrations, okay,
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: including Trump's first, the comparable number was somewhere between zero
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: and two. So this is an outlier and it's a
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: Besant effect. Clearly the guy drives people away. He drives
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: people out and people feel like they wanna walk away. Seven,
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: all right, versus the norm of zero to two if
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: you go back 20 years. And only one of those
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: vacancies has been filled by another Senate-confirmed official at the
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: time of the journal's reporting. Treasury does not have a
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: Senate-confirmed general counsel, which is probably just the way the
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: Trump administration wants it. They would rather get their legal
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: advice from somebody that doesn't have to be subpoenaed by
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: the House or the Senate, doesn't have a Senate-confirmed leadership
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: overseeing domestic finance or tax policy. And the IRS has
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: been cycling through acting commissioners because he manufactured a CEO
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: policy leadership structure that is designed to get around congressional oversight.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: Kind of troubling that the IRS is getting sort of
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: unilaterally taking control over. The journal has some rather colorful
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: anecdotes about Besson's management style, including an alleged confrontation with
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: one of his senior officials and another incident involving a
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: briefing binder he supposedly threw against the wall. But we've
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: heard these stories before. He's threatened to kick people's ass
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: and he's supposedly, he's got this A manufactured tough guy image.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, I have to say, I just think the
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: guy comes across like a clown. I don't know him
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: very well. I'm sorry that he feels like he's got
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: to have this weird image that he's got to convey
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: because everything, he's a pretty bright guy. He seems to
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: know what he's doing. So why bother with all this
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: silly machismo garbage? Well, I think we know the reason. Um,
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: and I'm really not that look, is Scott Besson a
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: pleasant boss? Hey, look, we've all had asshole bosses. Um,
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: there's probably people that have worked for me who thought
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: I was an a-hole boss at times or two when
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: I was younger. Um, yeah, I probably did have, uh, uh,
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: you know, might be quicker with a temper here or
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: there and you're quicker to lose things and you feel
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: the pressure over time. You mature. Apparently Scott Besson, who's
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: I think older than I am has yet to mature,
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: but that's on him. But forget that. Fact is, that's
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: not unique, that he has a temper. Washington has had
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: plenty of demanding cabinet secretaries. Bill Clinton had a temper.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: Plenty of people, left and right, have had tempers. Some
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: of them are effective, some aren't, whatever. But of course,
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: there's a difference between being demanding and creating an environment
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: where people with institutional knowledge just simply don't want to
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: work there. And that's what's troubling here, is that when
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: you lose a bunch of senior officers, when you're unable
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: to fill important positions, And when the decision-making gets concentrated
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: among a relatively small group of people whose personal relationships
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: may matter more than what they care, than their devotion
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: to the taxpayer, eventually you are going to have to
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: wonder whether you're making the institution stronger or simply making
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: it more dependent on the people currently running it. And
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: of course, the economic results make this even more interesting.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: Besson has talked about his 3-3-3 plan that he got
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: Trump to buy into. 3% economic growth, a budget deficit
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: down to 3% of GDP, and 3 million additional barrels
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: of oil production a day. Well, according to the Journal,
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: growth has been closer to 2%. The deficit remains above 6%
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: of GDP, and oil production hasn't come close to the
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: promised increase. So Besson's economic goals have not been met
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: at all. Meanwhile, the national debt has crossed $ 40 trillion.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: Borrowing costs have become an enormous problem, and Americans are
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: still struggling with affordability. And what has Trump done? He's
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: given Besant more responsibility. He's now deeply involved in trying
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: to use economic sanctions to end the Iran war. He's
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: involved in China policy, artificial intelligence policy, and he's been
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: advising the president on how to interact with the Federal Reserve.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: And it's sort of a strange decision by Trump, right? Apparently,
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: when you're struggling to achieve your original goals, the answer
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: is to give you several more enormous problems to solve,
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: even though you haven't fulfilled the part of the job
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: you promised to do. Now, Besson's defenders will argue he's demanding,
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: he's results-oriented, and that he's helped stabilize some difficult situations.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: Perhaps that's true, right? Navigating Trump's Washington and the international
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: order that Trump has created is not easy. That's an
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: argument worth hearing. But this is what interests me. This
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: is supposed to be a government of institutions, right? The
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: Treasury Department is not Scott Besson's hedge fund, but he's
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: treating it that way. The Pentagon is not Pete Hegs'
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: personal Christian nationalist organization that he wants to play with.
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: The Justice Department is not supposed to be the president's
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: private law firm. And public health is not supposed to
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: be decided on the whims of a guy who has
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: told us he's not He's a bit unstable, right? If
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: you claim to have a worm eating your brain, you're
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: not a stable individual. But you look at all this,
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: this is not these individual guys. This is Trump's presidency, right?
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: Trump has done these things. So really, this is monkey see,
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: monkey do. How Trump has organized the presidency, how Trump
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: has tried to essentially get rid of congressional oversight and
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: doesn't care whether people are Senate confirmed, would prefer to have,
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: remember he talks about, I love the actings, right? So
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: is it a shock that every cabinet secretary is essentially
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: copying the leadership style of their leader? It's not saying
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: these are good things to do. And I think in
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: all of these cases, they've done serious damage, right? There's
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: real credibility issues at Treasury with the bond market and
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: with the IRS. There's real credibility with the rule of
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: law at the Justice Department. Can't really trust what comes
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: out of the FBI. Pentagon. We have no idea. Do
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: we even have enough munitions? Nothing is clear. And of course,
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: public health is a complete and utter disaster as we
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: have one of the worst measles outbreaks we've had. And again,
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: causation or correlation, thank you, Bobby Kennedy Jr. But it
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: is just another reminder of the totality of the damage
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: being done to these institutions by this administration. And it
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: is Trump's leadership. We can sit here and say, Oh,
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: Scott Besson. So they wouldn't be there and they wouldn't
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: be doing what they're doing if this isn't the way
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: Trump wanted things to be done. And I think that
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: as much as, you know, the journalist trying to expose
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: Scott Besson a little bit, maybe it helps curtail him
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: a little bit. But what's interesting is that many of
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: these cabinet secretaries have basically just emulated Trump and they
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: become little mini Trumps.
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: And they have their own little mini minions and they
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: try to operate in the same way. But what's the lesson, right?
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: There's only one Trump. And I think we're pretty exhausted
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: from dealing with the one Trump. Copycats. Nobody likes a copycat.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: And the copycats, you know, don't get, you know, Trump
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: is getting respect because at least he gets voters to
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: vote him into office. The copycat cabinet secretaries are just
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: coming across as buffoons whose reputations are going to be
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: in tatters when they leave. Yes, that includes you, Mr.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: Scott Besson. I think you kind of know it, which
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: probably is why you keep losing your temper. Hey, this
• 19:52
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• 21:20
  Speaker 1: rating was as of August of 2026. Let's go to Texas.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: Because I don't know who recorded Ken Paxton at his D.C. fundraiser,
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: but whoever it is apparently has decided to do a
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: little drip, drip, drip, death by a thousand cuts and
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: is just wanting to, frankly, just knife Paxton's candidacy. I mean,
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: we've now had multiple leaked recordings of this one Senate candidate,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: this one fundraiser, and it's been selectively released at a
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: variety of different news organizations. And every time another one drops,
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: we learn a little bit more about Republicans are saying,
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: or at least about what Ken Paxton is saying, about
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: what they think, you know, when they think Donald Trump
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: isn't listening, right? So in this latest recording, it has
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: Paxton complaining about the Iran war, gas prices, and affordability. Look,
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: I've said this before. Donald Trump is an absolute anchor
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: on every Republican in the country, Ken Paxton included. But
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: Ken Paxton is vulnerable because of Ken Paxton. And you
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: want to talk about a dude living in denial, blaming
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump for Ken Paxton's problems is a dude living
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: in denial. Still, to hear him complain about things is
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: a recitation of all the damage that Trump's policies have
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: done politically to his party.
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: Paxton's talking about diesel costing more than six dollars a gallon,
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: food prices, everything else. And he's essentially acknowledging that these
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: are the biggest problems facing his campaign, not his personal
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: ethics issues. OK, still. There's no doubt he might be
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: able to overcome the ethics issue if people felt better
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: about the economy. It's pretty clear the guy's gotten elected
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: before by Republicans. He probably didn't like him. He's always
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: he's kind of underperformed the ticket the last couple of times.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: I mean, yeah. George P. Bush challenged him in a
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: primary as mainstream Republicans were looking for different ways to
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: get rid of him. He's been impeached, right? The Texas
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: Republican Party knows he's a problem, and they've been trying
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: to get rid of him in a variety of ways
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: and have failed. And instead, Donald Trump elevated him. And
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: now Ken Paxton may take down the entire Texas Republican Party.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: Although I think that it's more than just Ken Paxton,
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: but in some ways, Paxton is the straw. right? This
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: nomination is the straw that may break the Texas Republican back.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: I mean, the anecdotes coming out of state Senate races
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: in Texas, yes, the knives are out for Paxton, but
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: I think it, look, I put on my tinfoil hat
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: the other day. If I were trying to create the
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: predicate of pulling out of the Texas Senate race and
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: moving all that money, if I were running a Republican
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: super PAC, and I was looking to create the conditions
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: to walk away without feeling guilty about it or getting
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: pressure from some Republicans that I was walking away, I
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: might drip, drip, drip these recordings and say, see, this
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: guy is unsalvageable. He's ungrateful. Let's walk away and go
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: save the Kansas Senate seat, go save Nebraska, go save Iowa.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: It certainly looks to me that it's that way. And
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: I have to tell you, just on another quick aside, the,
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: And I'm going to get to something bigger here in
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: a minute that focuses a little bit more on Kansas
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: and a little less on Texas. But Texas, something's happening here.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: I think it's clear Texas is on its way to
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: becoming a purple state this cycle and that this isn't
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: going to be a one off.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: You know, Paxton losing is a one off. Paxton and
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: Abbott losing probably means a lot more Republican statewide candidates
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: are going to lose than we think in Texas. What
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: we're seeing in Texas is sort of emblematic. There's this
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: great quote that attributed to the journalist Eric Hoffer. And
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: the quote is this. Every great cause begins as a movement,
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket. And
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: the Texas Republican Party in particular, right, the Ken Paxton's,
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: the Dan Patrick's, and a lot of the donors and
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: consultants in and around Greg Abbott and perhaps Abbott himself
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: They kind of feel like they've turned into an aging
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: political machine that has forgotten why they got power in
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: the first place. You know, it was a movement. They
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: were able to overtake the establishment Bush wing of the
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: Republican Party. They thought, you know, and they enacted some
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: of their goals like vouchers and a few other things.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: But now it's just been a get rich quick scheme
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: for all these guys. whether you're Dan Patrick, whether you're
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: Ken Paxton, whether you're Greg Abbott, whether you're the consultants
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: in and around that, and you kind of can feel
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: the rot, right, inside that party. And I think that's
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: what we're seeing. I think that's what we're seeing there.
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: What is interesting is I think Republicans are ready to walk, right?
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: One Republican involved in the effort to save Paxton told
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: Politico that Paxton was welcome to raise his own money
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: and say whatever he wanted and suggested if Paxton actually
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: did those things, Republicans wouldn't have to spend so much
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: money trying to help him. You know, because Paxton's complaining
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: about Washington and complaining about this. And there's only one
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: reason all these people are trying to rescue his campaign
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: is because he's a terrible candidate and he's a lazy
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: candidate and he's an unpopular candidate. Other than that, he's
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: doing terrific. So I think it tells you just how
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: frustrated Republicans have become with this candidacy. And look, like
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: I said, these leaked recordings has the whiff of of
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: a disgruntled Republican who's just trying to like just pull
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: the plug on this guy. It's not worth having the
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: Senate majority of Ken Paxton's in the Senate. And I
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: bet you if you did a secret ballot of Republican senators,
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: probably 80 to 90 percent would agree with that statement.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: So we'll see. Meanwhile, Trump's coming to Texas to campaign
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: for him because Trump, I think, realizes that a Paxton
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: has been loyal to him. And I think Trump knows
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: that if Paxton loses, it's a stain on Trump. And
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: that it could become a permission slip for a lot
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: of Republicans to say, you know what, Trump has screwed
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: up the party. And that Paxton will become the symbol
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: of that. It may explain why Trump is showing up
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: there now. He'll keep showing up there. But what's interesting
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: is nobody in Texas wants Trump to come, right? Paxton's
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: kind of made it clear. Greg Abbott already said he
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: wasn't going to attend Trump's most recent rally. And what's
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: interesting is Abbott is no longer the only Republican, right,
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: who seems to have discovered that he has something else
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: to do when President Trump comes to town. We're seeing
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: an increase in Republicans starting to do that. I wrote
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: my column about how I still think it's strange how
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: few Republicans have publicly broken with Trump. I'm surprised more haven't.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: But Look, Abbott's in a real race. And speaking of that,
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: his opponent finally got some outside national help to chip in.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: But it's right now only pennies on the dollar because
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: we're talking Texas. If you recall, a couple of weeks ago,
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: I talked about how it was surprising to me that
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: Andy Beshear's Democratic Governors Association, Andy Beshear's the chair of
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: the DGA this year. He wants to run for president.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: His premise is, hey, there's a, you know, there's a
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: you can, a Democrat can win in a red state. Well,
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: here's a Democrat trying to win in a red state.
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: And Bashir had been, um, hadn't yet come in with
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: extra money for Gina, you know, so no matter how
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: many polls showed her either even narrowly behind, or even
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: now more polls show her narrowly ahead. Well, a lot
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: of Latino groups have been putting pressure on Bashir, reminding
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: him that it would be remembered during the presidential primary season. And, uh,
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: the GGA finally kicked in. Now it's a million bucks,
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: not a ton. And it came on the same day
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: that another governor who wants to run for president, J.B. Pritzker,
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: wrote his own million dollar check to Hinojosa. So Andy
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: Beshear's DGA gave a million.
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: J.B.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: Pritzker on his own gave a million. I can't help
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: but wonder, did the DGA cough up a million after
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: they found out Pritzker was writing his own check? Is
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: that what happened here? And it was like, oh, no,
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: we got to do this. And why just a million?
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: If Pritzker himself was willing to write a million, how
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: are you not kicking in, say, a 5X match there, Mr. Beshear?
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: So the point is, is that I do think the
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: political message has been received that Latino voters are going
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: to remember who helped Hinojosa and who didn't. But this
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: money right now is not enough to truly help. Doesn't hurt.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: It's more than chump change. But this is Texas and
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: a million dollars. That's a day or two worth of
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: paid advertising. Let me emphasize, a day or two. So
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure Bashir's going to get the credit that
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: he could have gotten as DGA chair if he had
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: sort of been early with a little bit of money
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: for her. But hey, there's still time. And maybe he's
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: going to shake the money tree and find more of
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: his donors who are willing to put their money where
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: their mouth is to help out. But I think it's
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: a hugely missed opportunity if he doesn't. And Pritzker, I
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: tell you, I think he's an underrated presidential candidate. If
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: AOC doesn't run, he could very well be the progressive
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: alternative and he could lead that progressive wing. He's got
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: He seems to be tipping in that direction. So interesting
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: ally that Mr. Pritzker could be could be building there.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: So score one for him. For those of you keep
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: track of 2028. Now, another Republican candidate who is discovering
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: the political consequences of the president's policies is Mike Rogers
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: in Michigan. Rogers here debuted a new ad on on Wednesday.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: in which he breaks with Trump over trade with Canada.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: He's holding a Labatt beer, Canadian beer, and making the
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: point that Canada isn't Michigan's enemy, that Michigan's economy depends
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: on that trade relationship and that the tariff war needs
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: to end. I have to admit, my first reaction is,
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: what took you so long? Shouldn't you have done this
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: instead of going to Trump's midterm convention in Dallas, Mr. Rogers? Look,
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: I don't... shocked that this didn't happen sooner. And I
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: it might be too little too late. But if you're
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: asking me, what's the path for Rogers to win the
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: Senate race? It was breaking with Trump and figuring out
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: a way to appeal to Democrats who are a little
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: nervous about Abdul El-Sayed. For whatever reason, this Rogers campaign
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: has not been nimble. They've been very slow. I think
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: they this is, you know, they're they're where they should
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: be if you're trying to do this. But I think
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: this is a little late, and it may come across
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: as desperate when it comes as, oh, now you're opposing
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: Trump when everybody else is already opposing Trump, right? If
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: he was running, the whole idea of him is that
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: he was going to be more like a Susan Collins-like Republican,
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: somebody that was supposedly going to be a different type
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: of Republican, not a Trump Republican. But Rogers waited a
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: very long time before he ever broke, and I don't
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: know if it's going to have the impact he hopes
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: it has. But it's just another reminder. Trump's toxic. Wherever
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: you go, this trade war, I mean, he has on
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: his own made his party's candidates more vulnerable than they
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: need to be. And this trade war with Canada and
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: what he's done to both Susan Collins and Mike Rogers, frankly,
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: any Republican running in a state that has important trade
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: relationships with Canada, Trump's put them in a tough spot.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: So I maybe the ad works. Maybe voters appreciate hearing
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: a Republican willing to say publicly that Trump's gotten something wrong.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: But I keep coming back to I think he waited
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: too long.
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: If you're a voter who's been frustrated with the trade
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: war for months and you've been waiting from somebody in
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: your own party to acknowledge this happening and you literally
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: wait till October to say so. Where were you when
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: this all started? Right. So. Now, this is the second.
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: It is interesting. He broke with Trump on the war
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: a few weeks ago, but that's another one. He seemed
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: to wait until Chuck Grassley and Ashley Hinson complained about
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: diesel fuels, and then he jumped on that bag. I mean,
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: he has just never looked like a leader on this issue.
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: So clearly there's a political calculation here. And that's the
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: question I have. Are voters going to see this as
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: a genuine move or simply a candidate trying to find
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: some daylight? from an unpopular president at the last possible moment.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: And it brings me to some interesting polling from Politico.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: Among Democratic midterm voters, 46% say they're voting primarily to
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: oppose Trump, compared with 37% who say they're voting primarily
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: to support the candidate in their own region. Half of
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: Democratic midterm voters believe that if Democrats win Congress, Trump's
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: actions will be the principal reason, right? Once again, red undertow,
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: not blue wave. But what I found more interesting was
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: the divide among Republican voters. Among Trump voters who do
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: not identify with MAGA, there's a greater willingness to blame
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: Trump himself if Republicans lose Congress. Among MAGA voters, the
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: Trump base, the instinct is much more to blame the
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: Republican candidates and their campaigns. They weren't Trumpy enough, right?
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: They didn't embrace the president enough. They didn't pass the
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: SAVE Act, right? You can picture the MAGA rationalizations coming
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: if things go as bad as the polls indicate that
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: they're going. So I think we are getting a preview
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: of the argument Republicans are going to have after this
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: election if things go as badly as the polls indicate.
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: Magawin will say that candidates weren't loyal enough, the whole
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: SAVE Act business, right? Other Republicans are going to look
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: at the Iran war, the tariffs, cost of living, and
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: ask how they were supposed to win in an environment
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: like that, right? And of course, the Paxton recordings and
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: the Rogers ad are all interesting because they're two different
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: versions of the same political reality. Paxton is saying it privately,
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: or at least he thought he was saying it privately.
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: Rogers is now saying it publicly. And Trump is still
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: insisting that the solution is more Trump, right? More rallies,
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: more appearances, more reminders to voters of the president. Here's
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: the thing. It's driving Trump crazy that people like me
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: and others are saying he's the problem. These rallies aren't working.
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: Nobody wants to hear the greatest hits anymore. He's less relevant. Now,
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: he might be more relevant to people that don't like him,
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: but he's becoming less relevant to the people that used
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: to like him. And we know that bothers him. We
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: know he can't handle this. They don't. What is it?
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: What is the great? What's the Sally Field line from
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: the movies? They like me. They really, really like me.
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: They don't like you. They really, really don't like you, Mr. President.
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: I don't know why you don't fully appreciate this, but
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: this is who you are. And if you weren't this person,
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: maybe you never would have gotten there twice to begin with.
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: But the only person that wants to see more Trump
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: cowbell is Trump. There aren't many Republicans who want to
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: see that. Hey, this episode of the Chuck Todd cast
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: is brought to you by Kalshi. It's an exchange where
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: you can trade on what you actually think is going
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: to happen and Sports, politics, culture, whatever's on your mind,
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: whatever you believe you're an expert at. So I'm taking
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: a look at the Democratic presidential nominee for 2028, where
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: we have John Ossoff as the favorite at 17. It's
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: basically 17 cents on the dollar. Gavin Newsom sits at 14,
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: AOC at 13. It's actually been a remarkable run for
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: Ossoff as he wasn't even on the board in April
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: and was only at 1% at the end of May.
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: Others on the board include Kamala Harris at about $ 0. 08
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: a share, Andy Beshear at about a nickel, Pete Buttigieg
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: at a nickel. I'll just tell you right off the bat,
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: I think that folks are way over their skis on
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: Ossoff and Gavin. I do. I've said it before. Look,
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: if you believe they're going to be the nominees, then
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: go ahead and get in. But I actually think you
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: can wait to get into those markets, right? I think Ossoff,
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: after he wins reelection— When others start to jump in,
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: you'll see that number go down. So if you're interested
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: in Ossoff or you're interested in Gavin, I think both
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: are likely to go down before they go up again.
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: Of everybody on this board right now, I think it's
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: Buttigieg who is the underpriced and might be the current
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: bargain on the board. All right. Here's what you need
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: to know about Cal Sheet. You're going up against other
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: traders directly. There's no house that sets the odds here.
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: It's just people putting their own opinions on the line.
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: Trade $ 25 with the code Chuck Todd and they'll throw
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: in another $ 25 instantly. Now, please trade responsibly.
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: Now I want to get to my big Senate exploration here,
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: because everything we've just been talking about helps explain why
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: Republicans are in deep trouble. The Paxton recordings. We now
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: see Rogers trying to break with Trump. The polling. President's
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: apparent frustration that Republican candidates don't want to be campaigning
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: with him. All of these are signs of a party
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: struggling with the political consequences of this administration. But there's
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: a difference between Republicans having a bad election night and
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: Democrats winning Senate seats in states that Trump carried by
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: double digits. And that's what I want to spend a
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: few minutes exploring here. So I'm going to start with
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: a confession. I've been getting increasingly bullish about Democratic chances
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: of winning the Senate.
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: I think arguably, you know, I was among the first
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: people who said, you know what, I think Kansas is
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: going to end up becoming a better option for Democrats
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: than even I. But I'm hardly alone now. You talk
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: to people who handicap elections for a living and people
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: who follow the polling, people who talk to campaigns. And
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: there's a growing sense left and right that Democrats have
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: a real opportunity to do something that would have seemed
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: almost impossible a year ago. Look at this map. Kansas, Iowa, Texas, Nebraska.
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: We're even now talking about South Carolina and Mississippi. Right.
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: We're not we we thought that this was going to
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: be a battleground to see. Can Ohio get competitive again?
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: Is this going to be about Ohio, Michigan, Maine, North Carolina, Georgia?
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: We're not talking about those states anymore.
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: We're talking about Kansas, Iowa, Texas, Nebraska and South Carolina, Mississippi.
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: This is like the battleground because it's almost like everything
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: else is settled. It's not shared bronze. No, not a
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: done deal. Susan Collins and Troy Jackson. I think both
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: candidates ought to be happy. There's you know, I know
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: the Jackson people think that they owned Collins with the
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: road salt comment. I think the Collins people think that
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: Jackson came across a little out of his league, if
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: you will, a little bit. I think both things can
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: be true. And I don't know if three more debates
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: are going to help either one of these campaigns, but
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: either way. Still, let's talk about these six very red states.
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: These are states Donald Trump carried comfortably in twenty twenty four.
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: in most cases by double digits. And yet we've got
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: polling suggesting that Democrats, or in Nebraska's case, an independent,
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: are competitive in places where Republicans normally don't have to
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: spend time worrying about Senate elections. Now, do I believe
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: these polls are wrong? Not at all. I think the
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: political environment's lousy for Republicans. And I've been arguing for
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: months that we may be underestimating just how frustrated voters
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: are with Trump. I think it's just as possible we
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: are underestimating the size of this wave as we are overestimating.
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: But there's something about the Senate map that doesn't quite
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: fit the larger math, if you will. An old friend
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: of mine from my hotline days sent me an interesting
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: exercise that he did that I wanted to share with you.
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: He doesn't want his name used. He's doing other work
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: and I want to protect him there. But his math
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: is worth examining because it forces us to all ask
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: a question that I don't think enough of us are asking.
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: If Democrats really are competitive in Kansas, Iowa, and Texas. Well,
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: what does that tell us about the rest of the country?
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: So here's what my old friend did. He took all
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: 435 congressional districts and he lined them up based on
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: their presidential vote in 2024, from the most Democratic to
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: the most Republican. Then he looked for the congressional district
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: whose presidential vote most closely matched the state of Kansas.
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: Kansas voted for Trump by about 16 points. And the
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: congressional district that most closely matches Kansas is actually a
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: district represented by Republican Beth Van Dyne outside of Dallas,
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: a Texas Republican, right? So here's where this exercise gets interesting.
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: If Democrats were to win every House district that voted
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: as Democratic as Kansas, right, if you assume they win
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: the D plus 16 and they win the Kansas Senate race,
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: And they win every House seat that is D plus
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: 16 or less, then the math would say the Democrats
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: would end up with 276 House seats. Let me repeat, 276.
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: That would be an enormous majority. Now, nobody in this
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: business right now is forecasting that kind of House elections.
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: Even some of the most optimistic Democratic scenarios have generally
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: been in the 240s. OK, right. 218 is your majority.
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: We've all been looking at somewhere like 230 to 235
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: is the sort of really good night, even wavish. 240
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: is a really good night with these maps. But if
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: it's D plus 16, that'd be 276. So we'll see. Now,
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: before everybody starts the amendment, yes, I know a Senate
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: race is not a House race. I know candidates matter.
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: Scandals can matter. Voters don't necessarily vote the same way
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: for Senator as they may do for their member of
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: Congress in their district. But that's not the point. The
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: point is to just look at the history here a minute.
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: And I'm not predicting that if a Democrat wins Kansas,
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: it means we've underestimated the House by some 40 pickups. Okay.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: But it is a way of measuring just how far
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: outside the normal national political environment a Democratic victory in
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: Kansas would be. And that number is pretty striking. Now,
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: let's do the same exercise for the state of Texas.
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: Trump carried Texas by about 14 points in 2024. The
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: congressional district that most closely resembles Texas is represented by
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: Vern Buchanan in Florida. Now, Buchanan's retiring. He's down there
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: in southwest Florida. So if Democrats won every district that
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: was as least as Democratic as a victory in Texas
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: would be for them, D plus 14, they'd end up
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: with roughly 257 House seats. Still a pretty big Democratic election,
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: not quite as unimaginable as 276. And you could argue
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: 257 is in the outer edges of the range that
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: the most bullish forecasters are saying. So that's a pretty
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: big number. Now, we're looking at Senate polls in these
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: states and treating them as though they're just another sign
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: of a Democratic wave. But if the national political environment
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: is strong enough to make Kansas a Democratic state for
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: at least one election, shouldn't we be seeing evidence of
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: that in a whole lot of other places? And are we? Well,
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: that's the question. Here's another way to think about it.
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: Let's say Democrats have a seven-point advantage in the generic
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: congressional ballot. It's about where we're sitting at right now.
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's eight. Maybe it's not. It's a big advantage.
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: It's the kind of national environment that ordinarily produces significant
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: Democratic gains in the House and probably brings North Carolina, Ohio,
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: certainly Georgia, Michigan, Maine. You know, Alaska is kind of weird.
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: We'll get to that. But, you know, D plus seven,
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: eight or nine probably gets the Democrats the Senate, definitely
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: gets them the House. But it's a close call in
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: the Senate. But Kansas voted for Trump by 16 points.
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: So even if you assume a uniform seven-point movement towards
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: Democrats in all 50 states, Kansas Democrats would still come
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: up short in Kansas by about roughly nine points, say
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: like a 54.5 to a 45.5. Now, that's before we
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: get into the difference between the national popular vote, the
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: generic congressional ballot. None of that is precisely the same thing.
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: There's a third party candidate on the ballot, right? We
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: know there's a lot of variables here. that could take
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: a D plus nine environment and translate it into a
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: victory in one state, okay? So, but it does tell
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: us that for a Democrat to win in Kansas, something
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: else has to be happening. And there's a few different
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: things that could be happening. And maybe some of these
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: things are happening all at once, right? Either the national
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: environment is considerably more Democratic than we think, or the
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: Democratic Senate candidate is dramatically over-performing the national party, Or
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: maybe the political assumptions we're making about Kansas are simply outdated.
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: And that's all of the different possibilities I'd like to
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: explore here, because I have multiple explanations for what we're
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: seeing here. The first is that it's possible we're overestimating
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: Democratic chances in the Senate. Some of these polls are
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: simply too optimistic and the election eventually settles into a
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: more familiar pattern. Maybe a whole bunch of Republicans just
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: aren't responding to pollsters and they'll show up at the end.
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: And all of these and sort of everything will revert
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: to a norm, you know, with an enthusiastic Democratic turnout,
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: less enthusiastic Republican turnout, and we'll be in this D
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: plus A environment. And Democrats come up short in Kansas,
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: in Texas, in Iowa. But maybe they win Texas because
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: of the scandal penalty I've told you about before. There's
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: a second scenario we may be. And that is we're
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: underestimating the size of the House Democratic wave. Maybe the
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: national environment isn't seven points Democratic. Maybe it is closer
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: to 10, 12, or even more. Well, if that's true,
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: the House results are going to be considerably bigger than
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: most people are expecting. And it's possible that the House guys,
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: because of the limited resources, the aggressive redistricting that happened,
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: there's like a failure of imagination here, both in the
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: defensive side for Republicans and the offensive side for Democrats.
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: It's possible. And I think it's equally possible. That's my
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: point here. I do wonder if we're underestimating the House
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: number here, because we sit there and like, there's no
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: way it can get to the 40s. No way? There's
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: a third explanation, and it's something unusual is happening specifically
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: in these red states. I think this is also very plausible.
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: Something that's allowing Democratic Senate candidates to overperform the National
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: Democratic Party by extraordinary margins. That third possibility is the
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: one that could have the most interesting implications for the future.
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: Before we get there, let me walk you through a
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: little bit of history. Because one of the things I've
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: learned covering elections for more than three decades is is
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: that whenever everybody starts convincing themselves that something extraordinary is
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: about to happen, it's often worth asking how often that
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: extraordinary thing has actually happened before. So I want to
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: start with Senate outliers. I went back and looked at
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: the big Senate wave elections of the modern era, okay? Basically,
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: you can go 2006, 2014 are pretty good ones, but
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: even arguably... some of the early ones of 2008 was
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: its own version of a wave year, right? So I
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: went back and looked at the big Senate wave elections.
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: You had 06, you had 8, you had 10, and
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: you had 14. Some of them actually flipped the Senate.
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: 06 and 14 did. 08 and 10 had a lot
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: of movements, and they matter here. Those are four elections
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: in which one party gained at least six Senate seats.
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: So I wanted to know how often a party managed
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: to win a Senate race in a state that was
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: substantially more favorable to the other party than the actual
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: national political environment for that election would suggest. In other words,
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: how often did somebody win a race that the wave
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: itself shouldn't have been able to reach? But here's what
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: struck me when I went back and looked at those
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: four wave years. There weren't very many. Now, it depends
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: on how often and how you want to define outlier.
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: There isn't an official political science definition that gives you
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: a universally accepted definition of this. But when you look
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: at the clearest examples of candidates winning well beyond the
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: normal reach of the national environment, there's a pattern here.
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: And it's a pretty interesting one. No six. Democrats had
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: a very good year. They took control of both the
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: House and the Senate. Bush was deeply unpopular. Iraq war
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: was going badly. Republicans also had a series of scandals.
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: There was the Page scandal, for instance. And Democrats won
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: a Senate race in Montana. That was the biggest outlier one.
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: Tester defeated Republican Conrad Burns. Now, Montana had voted for
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: Bush in 2004 by 20 points. So it was not
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: a state you would ordinarily expect Democrats to win in
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: a federal election. But Burns was caught up in the
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal. He had become a damaged incumbent.
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: Tester was a candidate who just fit Montana considerably better
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: than the national brand. Adam Hamilton, Kansas, see where I'm
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: going here. Roger Marshall.
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: Tester won, but he barely won by about a point. 2008,
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: after an enormous Democratic year, Barack Obama wins the presidency.
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: Democrats expand the House majority and they made some major
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: gains in the Senate. In Alaska, Democrat Mark Begich defeated
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: a Republican incumbent, Ted Stevens. Now, at the time, there
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: was something rather unusual happening in that race. Stevens had
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: been convicted on federal corruption charges just eight days before
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: the election.
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: OK.
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: OK. And even with that extraordinary development, baggage won by
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: less than two points. Now, those convictions were subsequently set
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: aside because of prosecutorial misconduct. That's an important part of
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: the historical record, by the way. But politically, the damage
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: had already been done by Election Day. Then there's 2010.
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: Huge Republican wave. Tea Party election. Republicans win 63 House seats,
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: take control of the House, make significant gains in the Senate.
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: And in Illinois, Barack Obama's home state, a Republican, Mark Kirk,
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: wins Obama's old Senate seat. Illinois, heavily Democratic. But the
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: seat had become entangled in the Rob Blagojevich scandal. The
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: Democratic nominee, Alexei Janoulias, had his own political vulnerabilities. So
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: Kirk won very narrowly. Now, Illinois in 2010 isn't quite
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: the same kind of outlier as Montana in 2006 or
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: Alaska in 2008 because Republicans were having an extraordinarily strong
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: national election. But it's a useful example of a candidate
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: winning in a state that ordinarily leaned strongly toward the
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: other party. And what connects these races? Candidate-specific problems on
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: the other side. Scandal, controversy, damaged opponent. The national wave
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: created the opportunity, but something particular to the race helped
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: push the candidate over the finish line. And even then,
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: they were really close elections. Because sometimes when we talk
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: about a wave, we imagine this enormous force sweeping across
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: the country, carrying candidates to victory in places where their
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: party normally has no business winning. That's not how usually
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: it works. Waves have limits. And the further you get
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: from the national political center of the wave, the eye
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: of the storm, the more a candidate needs something beyond
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: the wave itself.
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: And I think races that didn't work out are just
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: as instructive. So take 2006. There was a few races.
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: Democrats came up short. Harold Ford Jr. ran a very
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: competitive Senate race against Tennessee Republican Bob Corker. There was
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: a period in October when people genuinely thought Ford could win.
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: Tennessee was still a state where Democrats had some residual
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: strength from the Al Gore days. Ford was a pretty
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: strong candidate. National environment was very favorable to Democrats, but
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: he still lost. Arizona that same year, a Democrat named
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: Jim Peterson ran a very competitive race against the recently
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: deceased Republican Senator John Kyle. Again, strong Democratic year, well-funded candidate,
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: a race that got attention, but Kyle hung on. 2008.
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: Jim Martin in Georgia is running against Saxby Chambliss. Bruce
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: Lunsford in Kentucky is running against Mitch McConnell. Both races
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: became pretty interesting in a year where Democrats were winning
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: almost everywhere they needed to win. But they came up
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: short in those two races. In 2010, Dino Rossi challenged
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: Patty Murray in Washington Senate. It was a very competitive race.
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: Republicans had enormous advantages nationally that year. Murray was running
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: in a state that was more Democratic than the country
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: as a whole. But Rossi had come very close to
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: winning a governor's race a few cycles earlier. He was
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: a very credible Republican candidate, but Murray survived. Now, I
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: don't want to suggest that these five races constitute some
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: comprehensive statistical study, okay? I know that. But they're reminders
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: of something that tends to get lost when we start
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: talking about waves. A favorable national environment can make a
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: race competitive without necessarily making it winnable. And there's a
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: big difference. And that's a distinction we need to keep
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: in mind when we look at Kansas and Iowa in particular,
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: because it's one thing to see a poll showing a
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: Democrat tied in a state that Trump won by double digits.
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: It's another thing to actually win that state. And as
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: we know, history suggests that last step is awfully difficult. Now,
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: there's one more historical pattern that I think is even
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: more relevant to this year's Senate map. And it has
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: to do with something that makes Senate elections different from
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: House elections, right? The six-year terms. which means that every
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: Senate election is in some ways a referendum on the
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: political environment that existed six years earlier. Let me walk
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: you through it. If one party had an enormous election
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: and wins a bunch of Senate seats, it wouldn't normally win.
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: Six years later, those senators have to defend those seats.
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: And the political environment is usually very different. And you
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: end up with sort of target races that I will
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: classify as low-hanging fruit. Senators who are elected in a
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: favorable environment for their party and then have to face
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: voters in a much less favorable one. 1986 is a
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: great example. Reagan won an enormous victory in 1980. Republicans
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: rode the wave, won 12 Senate seats in 1980. Six
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: years later, Democrats came back and picked off a bunch
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: of those Republican, one-term Republican senators. They were one-term winners.
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: My state, it was a woman named Paula Hawkins, right?
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: 2008 was another one. Democrats were able to defeat Republicans
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: who had won. in the political environment following September 11th,
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: when George W. Bush and the Republican Party were benefiting
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: from a very different national mood, right? So Democrats picked
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: up even more seats in 08, just like they did
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: in 06. But then six years after 08 came the
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: 2014 Republican wave. Republicans defeated a number of Democrats who
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: had been elected during Obama's first presidential victory. Those senators
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: had originally won with the benefit of a favorable Democratic environment.
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: Six years later, the political environment had changed dramatically, and
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: Republicans took advantage. You can even see this pattern in
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: elections that weren't necessarily enormous waves. You look at the
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: Republican class of 94 in the 94 wave, the Gingrich Revolution. Well,
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: they elected a number of senators in states where Democrats
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: had traditionally been competitive. Well, six years later in 2000,
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: Democrats started picking off members of that class. In 2000,
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: they defeated Spencer Abraham, Rod Grams, John Ashcroft, the one-term wonders, right?
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: Ashcroft Story is one of the more weirder ones. That
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: was the Mel Carnahan.
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: Death.
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: He died in a plane crash. Voters knew Carnahan had died.
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: They knew his name was still on the ballot and
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: they voted. Enough of them voted for him anyway. Ashcroft loses.
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: Governor appoints Mel Carnahan's widow, etc. But that's how strong
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: the reaction against that Republican Senate class had become. Even
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: a dead Democrat could win. Then six years after that,
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: in 2006, Democrats picked off more Republicans who originally won
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: in that 94 wave. Santorum in Pennsylvania, DeWine in Ohio. Now,
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: here's why all of that matters in 2026. Most of
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: the Republican senators up for reelection. This year, last face
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: voters in 2020. And 2020 was not an enormous Republican wave.
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump lost the presidency. Republicans had some success down ballot,
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: particularly in the House. But this wasn't a year when
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: Republicans were sweeping into Senate seats. They had no business winning.
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: So we're not looking at a Senate map that's loaded
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: with Republicans who arrived in Washington on the strength of
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: some enormous wave six years earlier. It's a different kind
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: of map. Some of these senators have been around a
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: long time. Some were elected in 2020. Some have already
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: demonstrated an ability to win in difficult environments. And that
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: means Democrats don't have the same kind of obvious low-hanging
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: fruit that parties have enjoyed in some previous wave elections. Again,
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: does not mean Democrats won't win six or more Senate seats,
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: and it does not mean Republicans can lose even more
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: than that. But it does mean that if Democrats start
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: winning multiple Senate seats, in states that Trump carried by
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: double digits, we're going to be looking at something that
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: doesn't fit neatly into any historical pattern that I've lived through.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: So when you look at the individual races that we're
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: talking about here, these six, let's go through them really quickly. Texas,
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: it fits this historical pattern, right? Texas is one that
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: most closely resembles some of those historical outliers. And the
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: reason is Ken Paxton. We've talked about this a number
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: of times. Ken Paxton is kind of like the Ted
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: Stevens example in Alaska, the Conrad Burns example in Montana. Now,
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: Texas is not Montana in 2006. Paxton's controversies are not identical,
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: but you see the larger point. If Democrats are going
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: to win a Senate race in a state that voted
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: for Trump by 14 points, they probably need more than
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: just a favorable national environment. And in Texas, they have it.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: They need a Republican candidate who's having difficulty keeping his
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: coalition together. They need a state party that is suddenly
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: on the defensive. as we have here with Abbott and
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: vouchers and things like that. This is why I'm a
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: believer that the Republican frustration with Paxton is going to
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: lead to them pulling out of this, right? It's just,
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: there's a million ways this thing is going in the
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: wrong direction. So Texas is one place where I can
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: construct an historical argument for a Democratic victory that does
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: not require 276 House seats, right? It's all about the candidate.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: Now let's look at Nebraska. Nebraska is interesting for an
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: entirely different reason. Dan Osborne is running as an independent.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: And that's important because when we're talking about how far
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: a Democratic wave can reach, Osborne doesn't fit neatly into
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: that discussion. He's not running as the Democratic nominee. He's
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: trying to build a coalition that includes Democrats, independents, and
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: a few Republicans. And we've already seen evidence that he
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: can run well ahead of the normal Democratic performance in Nebraska.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: He just did it in 2024. Now, he didn't win
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: that election, but he demonstrated that there's an electorate in
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: Nebraska willing to consider him as an independent, even in
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: a presidential year when the state voted overwhelmingly Republican. So Nebraska,
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: I don't think, is necessarily a test of how far
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: the Democratic wave has to reach for Osborne to win.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: In this case, this is a test whether an independent
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: candidate can construct the coalition that behaves differently from a
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: normal partisan electorate. Osborne may be building his own brand,
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: a la Tester in Montana, a la Susan Collins in Montana.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: And so explaining his win in a D plus nine
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: environment is actually quite logical. Now, how about South Carolina?
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: It's interesting for another reason. The death of Lindsey Graham
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: created an unusual political situation. We have an appointed senator
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: in Darlene Grant who's trying to hold the seat. And
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: appointed senators have historically faced challenges when they first have
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: to stand before voters. The numbers are not, you know, best.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: According to my friends at the Crystal Ball, 62 of
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: 117 appointed senators who ran to keep their seats won.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: That's only a 53% winning percentage. Compare that with a
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: much higher reelection rate for elected incumbents. So again, if
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: she loses, there's a plausible explanation that isn't, hey, Democrats
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: had to win, had to be in a D plus 10,
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: D plus 12 environment. By the way, Republicans are starting
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: to dump some money there. Something's afoot. We'll see. It's
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: still South Carolina. And I think Lucy and the football
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: have been in that state before. The real test, though,
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: to this is Iowa and Kansas. These are the two
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: races that I think present the biggest challenge to the
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: conventional wave theory, right? These are two races that frankly
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: got me thinking about this entire exercise. So we'll start
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: with Iowa. Used to be a generally competitive state. Obama
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: won it twice, right? Harkin and Grassley sort of split
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: that state for decades. But we know Iowa's changed in
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: the last decade. It's become considerably more Republican. particularly in
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: smaller towns, rural counties that used to be a source
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: of sort of union Democratic strength. But Trump carried the
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: state by 13 points in 2024. And yet here we
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: are looking at Senate polling that suggests Democrats might be
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: able to pull this off. Now you've got the governor's
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: race that the Democrats seems to be winning by a
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: fairly substantial margin. Rob Sand has put together a coalition
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: that's basically he's portrayed himself as a reluctant Democrat who
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: wants to instead be an independent Democrat, you know, is
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: trying to be a unifier. And he's running substantially ahead
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: of the Democratic nominee for Senate. So it's possible to
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: sand create a broader Democratic turnout operation that allows Turk
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: to overperform, maybe. But we also know voters are perfectly
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: capable of splitting their tickets. And we kind of think
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: that that might happen. In fact, there's a state that
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: it happens in quite a bit that we're about to
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: talk about, Kansas. Laura Kelly has been elected governor twice
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: as a Democrat, but Kansas hasn't elected a Democrat to
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: the United States Senate since 1932. So when you look
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: at Kansas Senate polling, I have to remind myself there's
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: a difference between a state being willing to elect a
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: Democrat as governor and being willing to send somebody wearing
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: a blue jersey to Washington. Now, I don't think Roger
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: Marshall is the best candidate, but he's also not scandal plagued.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: And so I don't know what kind of penalty that
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: brings down. And in a year when voters are frustrated
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: with Republicans nationally, maybe he just sinks due to that.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: So what exactly gets a Democrat over the finish line
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: in Kansas? If the national Democratic advantage is seven points
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: and Kansas is roughly 15 or 16 points more Republican
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: than the country. then the Democratic candidate has to outperform
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: the national environment by a considerable margin. Is it impossible? No,
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: but it's a big ask and it doesn't happen very often, right?
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: So if we're talking about Kansas and Iowa, both electing
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: Democratic senators in the same election while Texas is also
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: electing a Democratic senator, then we really have to ask
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: ourselves whether we're looking at something that's much bigger than
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: a conventional blue wave because those states aren't politically identical, okay?
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: And Kansas has been moving gradually towards the Democrats. Iowa
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: has been moving in the other direction. And yet the
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: polling is suggesting that Democrats have about the same chance
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: at winning both races. That's what makes all of this
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: not easy to interpret, right? Are we looking at a
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: national way that's strong enough to overwhelm those differences? Are
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: we looking at individual candidates creating their own opportunities? Adam Hamilton,
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: just a different type of Democrat. It could be. Are
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: the polls simply giving us a rosier picture? that won't
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: survive on election day when Republicans show up to vote,
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: even if they don't show up in the polls. So
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: this is what made this exercise, I think, very compelling
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: to me. Because I think, ultimately, I think you can
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: make an... I think there's... Here are the plausible explanations.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: There's one possibility here that I think we need to
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: spend some time on. The National Democratic Band, as we know,
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: is not very popular. We've seen polling showing voters who
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: think the Democratic Party is too far to the left,
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: but they don't think some of these Democratic candidates in
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: these red states are like a conventional national Democrat. That's
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: good news for Democrats running in those states. It suggests
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: that some of these Democratic candidates have succeeded in separating themselves.
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: And that may be the answer as to why a
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: Democrat can win in Kansas and in Iowa, Texas, and
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: an independent in Nebraska. It's possible. But a voter might
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: not want Democrats controlling Washington. They might not particularly like
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: the National Democratic Party, and they may have voted for
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: Trump in 2024, but they may be simply just super
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: frustrated with how Washington works right now. And maybe they
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: see a Democratic Senate candidate who's convinced them, huh, okay, fine.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: It's not impossible. We've seen this plenty of times in
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: gubernatorial elections. Susan Collins is somebody who's pulled this off
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: as a Republican for decades. Jon Tester managed to win
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: three Senate elections in Montana before finally losing in 2024.
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: Mansions survived for years in red-leaning West Virginia. So it's
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: possible candidates can create their own brand. That may be
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: what Dan Osborne's doing. It may be what Adam Hamilton
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: is doing. Now, what if Democrats win Senate races in Kansas, Texas,
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: while the Democratic House candidates in those same states perform
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: much more like Democrats normally do? Is it possible the
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: Senate Democrats are just running better? Well, that would be
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: an extraordinary result. And it would tell us something about
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: the national environment that we've never seen before. Because it
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: would suggest voters are making distinctions between candidates and offices
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: in ways that are increasingly nationalized politics. have actually made
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: less common. I mean, it's something I would love to see, right?
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: We would love to see a more scrambled electorate that
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: voters are looking at candidates before they're looking at party.
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: I just, it's not something that normally happens. Now, look,
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: it's also possible that we're seeing a red state toe, undertow, right?
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: That the anger and frustration in the red states is
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: so great that there is a total collapse in the
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: Trump Republican coalition that doesn't quite hit other parts of
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: the country. So it doesn't really hit the House, but
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: it has a magnifying effect because of knocking off incumbents
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: for Senate races in Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, and Texas. That's
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: also possible. But the whole point of this exercise is
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: was to make it clear that we're seeing something unusual. Look,
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: there's also another simpler explanation in Kansas. It isn't a
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: D plus 16 state. It is now really a D
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: plus eight or nine state. And Kansas is just moving.
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: One of the things I keep reminding people is when political,
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: we always look at political realignments from election to election,
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: and we somehow pretend nothing happens in between them, right?
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: It's not as if the election happens and a political
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: realignment suddenly halts. The realignment can continue. The shift can continue.
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: You're just waiting for the next election that's worthy to
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: show you how much things have shifted, right? In 2006,
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: there was an assumption that Jim Webb was an unusual candidate.
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: George Allen was a really bad candidate, and they took
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: a lean red state and pulled an upset in Virginia Senate. Actually,
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: as it turned out, Jim Webb was the beneficiary of
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: a shifting electorate in the state of Virginia. And within
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: a couple of years, it was going to become a
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: blue state. I think that is what's happening in Kansas.
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: I don't think that's what's happening in Iowa. I think
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: Iowa and Texas are uniquely states where there is a
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: specific issue bothering the Republican electorate or specific issues in
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: both Iowa and Texas. Vouchers are an issue in the
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: gubernatorial races and education funding. And in both states, the
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: tariffs and the war in Iran is doing real damage
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: in the rural economies of both states. So it's possible
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: those are all the explanations. But the point was, my
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: old colleague, I thought, did a good job of helping me,
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: which I hope is helping you, look at the counterfactual here.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: Perhaps this is candidate-driven. Perhaps this is state-driven. But if
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: this is environment-driven, then we're doing one of two things.
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: We're overestimating Democratic chances in the Senate, or we're underestimating
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: Democratic chances in the House. For what it's worth, I
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: think either outcome is a possibility. And I'm not saying
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: like an 80% possibility in one place, 20. I think
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: there's a fairly equal chance we are underestimating this wave
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: as much as there is a chance that many Republicans
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: think we are overestimating this wave. All right. I've rambled
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: on enough. I'm giving you a lot to chew on.
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: I can't wait for the questions that come with this
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: set of scenarios that I've laid out here. Let's sneak
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: in a break. When we come back, we will talk
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: simulating attacks on the American democracy with my friend, Dimitri Melmar.
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: So about six months ago, I think I shared with
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: you guys on this podcast, and I will make you
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: remember this if I can, participating in a simulation. I
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: didn't get into a full amount of the details of
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: other people that participated in the simulation, but about how,
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: if you thought about sort of how the Trump administration,
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: if the motivation was there, might try to hijack the system.
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: And I guess the best way to describe this simulation
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: was it was three groups. Essentially, the Trump team was
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: represented by something called the nationalists, and then there was
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: the institutionalists, which were not necessarily the blue team. That
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: was more of the sort of, think of it as
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: if Bush and Obama, those forces got together, or the
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: Romney Obama forces as sort of one entity. And then
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: there was the money people, essentially. And it was, I
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: think I've said I was in a situation where the
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: nationalists just sort of dominated the situation. Well, this simulation
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: was put on by my guest that I have joining
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: us today, Dimitri Malhorn. He has got a book out
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: talking about everything he's been learning about this. It's part
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: of something called the Atoll Society. And what this has
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: been about is trying to help elected officials and other
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: institutions figure out what happens if we have another January 6th.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: What happens if somebody attempts and what are the vulnerabilities
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: baked into the system, baked into the Constitution? And it's
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: an eye-opening event. I did, like I said, I did
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: it about six months ago. There was a part of
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: me that said, well, maybe we're exaggerating things. And then
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: there was a part of me that realized, yeah, but
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: you can see how vulnerable these institutions are. So without
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: further ado, let me bring in my friend, Dimitri. Dimitri,
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: it's nice to see you.
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 2: It's great to see you again.
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: So let me... give you a second here to fill
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: in the blanks of how, you know, I have, and
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: I said this before, trying to explain what this was
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: and the simulation and all of this. It's, you know,
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: no different than when you hear about the military having
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: a tabletop exercise about what would happen if the Iranians
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: shut the Strait of Hormuz or what would happen if
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: the Chinese created a an embargo on Taiwan or a
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: blockade on Taiwan, what would happen next? And so in
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: some ways, it's just that, a tabletop exercise on that front.
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: But put it in your words. How do you tell people?
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: How do you describe it to folks?
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: Actually, the way you describe it is pretty spot on.
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 2: It may be that we're taking the dark view. But
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 2: just in case those dark assumptions prove true, it's useful
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 2: to sort of game it out. So my group was
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 2: one of the groups that supported some of the tabletop
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 2: exercises in 2020 that tried to game out how the
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 2: Trump administration might try to keep power.
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: And this was before January 6th.
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: And it never happened.
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 2: Clearly our work was not sufficient because, you know, January
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 2: 6th did happen. But yeah, before January 6th, we sponsored
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 2: a bunch of exercises designed to figure out how we
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 2: would respond if a regime tried to stay in office
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 2: after losing an election. And so this simulation is a
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 2: similar kind of a simulation. Imagine that there's a group,
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 2: much like MAGA is today, that is sour on democracy
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 2: and does not particularly seem to respect the rule of
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 2: law as it's been understood. How might they try to
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 2: keep power and enrich themselves, even if they lose a
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 2: presidential election? And how might the institutionalists and the capitalists respond?
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 2: And as you said, when we play this game a
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 2: bunch of times, the nationalists win a lot of the time.
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 2: Not all the time, but about a third of the time,
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 2: you have the nationalists keep office and consolidate their power,
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 2: even having lost a presidential election.
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: The scenario I participated in last– I think it was–
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: I want to say it was April at the space-time
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: continuum these days with me. But it was– what was
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: interesting about it is we were in real time, meaning
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: here we are. So you're laying out, how do you
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: use the midterms? The ultimate goal is staying in, is
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: making sure your side wins, whatever winning was. For the capitalists,
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: it was about increasing their wealth. For the institutionalists, it
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: was about making sure they won a free and fair election.
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: And for the nationalists, it was about staying in power regardless,
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: whether it was free and fair or not free and fair,
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: we can have all that. how the midterms would be
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: used to get to January 6th. And I will tell you,
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: there were two things, and again, we're in Chatham House rules,
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: there were two things in the simulation that I participated
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: in that ended up being used three or four months later.
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: One was the nationalist trying to pump up progressives, trying
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: to help the furthest left candidates in primaries. And we
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: saw exactly that within two months of what we were
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: working on. And then the other was using federal lands
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: to help the capitalists with data centers. And sure enough,
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump has floated the idea of using some federal
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: lands on this front. Look, I'm sure we're not outliers here.
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: This has been throughout this. I mean, walk me through
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: how many times you've seen something in a simulation only
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: to see it actually used in the campaign playbook a
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: few months or weeks later.
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 2: It happens, I mean, all the time, honestly. Before the
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 2: Venezuelan decapitation, someone in the game proposed that. Before the
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 2: murders in Minnesota, someone in the game proposed something similar.
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 2: So unfortunately, the dark assumptions about what nationalists might do
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 2: and the people who play the nationalists doing that has
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 2: frequently happened. It is very commonly the case that the
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 2: nationalists are just more capable of offering specific carrots and
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 2: sticks to companies, whereas the institutionalists tend to just offer
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 2: kind of a general problem. And so if you're an
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 2: individual capitalist, well, I've got the nationalists who promise to
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 2: give me a bunch of money or particular things that
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 2: I need. And I also, if I'm a company, I
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 2: also know that the nationalists, if I anger them, they're
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 2: going to come after me directly with the Department of
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 2: Justice or with the FTC. They're going to make my
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 2: life harder personally as the head of a company. Whereas
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 2: the institutionalists, they're probably just going to regulate me and
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 2: tax me more. And so it is a common theme
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 2: that the nationalists are very good at picking off individual capitalists.
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 2: And you absolutely see that happening here in the US
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 2: with a lot of people who are business leaders who
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 2: originally were very much in favor of the Constitution and
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 2: kind of horrified by Trump. A lot of them have
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 2: come on side.
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: Have you ever done this simulation with folks who are
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: truly sympathetic to the nationalist cause? No.
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 2: We've done it with some people who were Trump voters
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 2: and some people who were sort of Trump, even Trump
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 2: supporters for narrow issues like deregulation in healthcare or support
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 2: for Israel or whatever. But we've not had any sort
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 2: of MAGA true believers play.
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: Is that been intentional or is it just sort of
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: where there's interest in this? Or would you be curious
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: to see how that would work?
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 2: I mean, maybe I should be. Unfortunately, I think I
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 2: know how it would work. I've spent a lot of
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 2: last 10 years really understanding how MAGA works. It's actually
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 2: very predictable because it's the same playbook that Vladimir Putin
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 2: had in Russia, that Viktor Orban had in Hungary, that
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 2: Hugo Chavez had in Venezuela. There's a fairly predictable set
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 2: of actions that they take And part of our theory
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 2: in hosting these games is that the MAGA people already
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 2: know how to play this game. It's everybody else who
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 2: needs a little bit of a wake-up call. But I guess,
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 2: you know, if there was some good reason to include
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 2: some MAGA people, I guess we could.
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: I only ask, it's sort of one of those where,
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: here would be my one concern about the simulation exercise.
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 2: That.
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: that those that play the role of the nationalists assume
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: the most aggressive stance, right? In some ways, you've seen it.
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: You know, the one I participated in, there certainly was
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: a desire to watch that. Do you worry that it is,
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: or do you think that's actually healthy that you usually
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: have a very aggressive set of players on the nationalist
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: behalf because it's the worst case scenario?
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 2: Well, I got to be honest, usually it's the reverse.
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: Oh, interesting.
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 2: The institutionalists win a lot more often than I predicted.
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 2: We've run this game probably for about 400 people now.
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 2: And usually the nationalists are very, very soft. Interesting.
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: And so the because they're made up of folks that
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: just can't. Well, I can't do that or nobody. They
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: wouldn't do that. And it's like, look, I come from
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: we have the person that one of the people that helped,
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: I think, bring you along to the group I participated in.
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: He is the one that planted a line in my
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: head forever. And he said, you know, the biggest the
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: biggest issue we have is failure of imagination.
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 2: One hundred percent.
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: And certainly, you know, that was the attitude I know
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: I went in with. It was sort of like clear
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: your mind of what everything you think, you know, and just,
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: you know. But I think the fatal flaw, and this
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: is why it surprises me when you say the institutionalists
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: win more often, is that institutionalists don't like to break
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: norms or laws. And in order to win this game,
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: you've got to break norms and laws.
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, one of the things about the norm
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 2: thing is particularly important. And one of the ways that
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 2: we try to think about this game is to, you know,
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 2: everybody who's playing these games has lived in America our
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 2: whole lives. So our whole lives, we've been in a
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 2: specific framework where the rule of law was supported. That
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 2: is very unusual historically, and it's very unusual around the world.
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 2: And so what we try to do is we try
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 2: to help people live in a world that is more
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 2: like other authoritarian nations, where an authoritarian or authoritarian-leaning leader
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 2: tries to stay in power after an election. And in
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 2: order to basically to prevent the authoritarian from prevailing, The
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 2: rest of civil society has to credibly deter them from
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 2: keeping office. I think this is a very realistic scenario.
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 2: I think it's a realistic scenario that on November 15th
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 2: of 2028, both halves of America will think that they won.
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 2: And if that happens, this is not like the year 2000,
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 2: where there was an agreed upon legitimate path To.
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: Decide, to figure it out, right?
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 2: There's no, if the Democrat prevails according to everything we
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 2: used to believe, like the news organizations and civil society
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 2: and institutional international monitors, and the Republican president is seen
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 2: as prevailing by the right-wing media ecosystem that talks about
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 2: urban fraud and Chinese manipulation or whatever, those two points
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 2: of view cannot be reconciled. And so in that situation,
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 2: you have a situation where civil society has to really
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 2: demand that the winner be seated. And that demand has
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 2: to be associated with things that are norm breaking, you know,
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 2: like a willingness to engage in a civil strike or,
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 2: you know, economic pressure or, you know, counter mobilization in
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 2: ways that the Democrats have not really done in the
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 2: United States.
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: Well, and it's interesting, just in the experience I had,
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: shock and awe mattered. And I guess the question, do
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: you think January 6th was the right amount of shock
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: to get institutionalists in a headspace where they may have
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: to violate a norm or two? And I have to say,
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: I sit there and I utter this, and I worry
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 1: about crossing that line.
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 2: Oh, for sure. For sure. Well, let me actually go
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 2: back to something you'd said before about the MAGA people
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 2: elevating progressives. It's not so much that they're elevating progressives.
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 2: Someone's a little bit more liberal or a little bit
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 2: more interventionist on antitrust or whatever. It's not that they're
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 2: elevating the Elizabeth Warrens of the world. They're elevating Chevalier
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 2: in New York. They're elevating particular... kinds of Democrats and
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 2: saying that that is what the Democratic Party is. So
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 2: that's what sets up this conflict is that if you
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 2: think about the true believers of January 6th and why
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 2: they were there, they genuinely believed that their country was
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 2: being taken from them illegitimately by people that they thought
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 2: would destroy America. So The question in terms of norms
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 2: and values, there are tools in the United States, in
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 2: the Constitution even, and in the United States history that
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 2: can be sufficient to demand that the winner of the
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 2: election wins. But I don't think that the institutionalists learned
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 2: what they needed to learn but from January 6, 2021.
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 2: In general, people think that was a strange one-off and
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 2: couldn't happen again. And ultimately, it failed. But the nationalists
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 2: have had eight years to prepare to do it better.
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 2: So will there be devices that prevent people from being
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 2: armed when they come into the Capitol? Will there be
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 2: more people? And the only way to address that is
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 2: to have a mass civil society movement which has to
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 2: be broadly based. It has to include capitalists. It has
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 2: to include people who believe in the Second Amendment. It
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 2: has to include young people at scale. And those are
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 2: the kinds of movements internationally, if you look at examples
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 2: like Serbia, or Czechoslovakia, or Chile, or the Philippines, where
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 2: actually civil society was able to successfully demand that the
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 2: winner be seated. All of those examples are cross-sectional civil movements.
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 2: And by the way, if you cross the next set
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 2: of boundaries and it becomes violent, that's a failure. That's
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 2: Syria 2011. That doesn't work. So the game is designed
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 2: to encourage people to understand ways that actually work in
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 2: saving the country that you want to save without going
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 2: too far in either direction, without being too soft to
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 2: the nationalists, and also without ripping the country apart.
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: You know, when I look at when I when I
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 1: I always say I walk a line between alarmism and vigilance,
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: I don't want to be an alarmist, but I'm not
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 1: going to be naive and stick my head in the sand.
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: I am convinced that any movement from the nationalists or
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: from Trump will not be done in a way that
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: looks blatantly against the Constitution, but instead will be handing
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: people what they believe is a legal path, that they don't,
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: that there is a, I mean, and you could see
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: it actually at January 6th, right? They wanted, they didn't,
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: they weren't saying overturn the election, they were saying challenge
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: the results, right? They wanted, they were gonna use the
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: system within. I think that's one of the things among
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: those that worry about this, that they don't fully appreciate
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: I'm going to name a name here, Stephen Miller. Stephen
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: Miller believes he can use existing law in the Constitution
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: to get what he wants here, and that that will
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: be the path because they're going to want to hand
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: a judge some big leaf of legitimacy.
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 2: I agree with you, and it's not just Stephen Miller.
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 2: It's the entire– infrastructure of tech overlords and Steve Bannon
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 2: and Peter Thiel and J.B. Vance, all these people believe
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 2: that democracy is bad. They really do. They don't want democracy.
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 2: They prefer, you know, kind of a.
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: Illiberal. They really like the hungry model, really. I mean,
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: sort of like a little bit of democracy, you know,
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: on the local level, but not for the big stuff.
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and so the way that they'll move the Overton
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 2: window on the law is very aggressive. So the White
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 2: House Counsel's Office is an assistant attorney general that basically
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 2: describes what they think the Constitution means. And they have
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 2: been incredibly aggressive under Trump in taking interpretations of the
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 2: Constitution that had previously been unheard of. And so, for example, one.
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: Thing- Well, they're doing one now with executive privilege for
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: private citizens. They created an OLC memo, which is one
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: of these weird loopholes in basically delaying a judicial ruling.
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the Office of Legal Counsel, the OLC, they have been–
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 2: super aggressive on this stuff. And by the way, the
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 2: Trump versus United States decision in 2024 essentially held that
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 2: the president cannot be held criminally responsible for anything he
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 2: does in the scope of his office. That was never
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 2: the understanding before. That would have been considered absurd. And
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 2: yet that is now the law of the land. So
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 2: you're right that they will want the veneer of legality.
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 2: Let's just not be too hopeful about that veneer of legality.
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 2: They can push and stretch it in a number of ways.
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 2: And I'll give you one example if you're interested. We,
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 2: you know, the institutionalists, Susan Collins and Joe Manchin, passed
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 2: a law called the Electoral Count Reform Act, which was
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 2: designed to tie up the glitches in the law that
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 2: made January 6th possible by saying, you know, what it
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 2: says is only the governors can hand a slate to
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 2: Congress and the vice president has no authority to reject
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 2: a slate. There is a fringe legal movement And by fringe,
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 2: I mean MAGA, so who knows how soon it becomes mainstream,
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 2: which is that the Electoral Count Reform Act is unconstitutional
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 2: because the 12th Amendment has a different way of saying
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 2: the role of the vice president. And so if you're
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 2: really aggressive about that interpretation of the 12th Amendment, then
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 2: you could say, well, maybe J.D. Vance does have the
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 2: ability to throw out electors, at which point Maybe you
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 2: can say legitimately that there weren't enough votes. You didn't
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 2: get the 270, at which point the election gets thrown
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 2: to the House of Representatives. And the House of Representatives,
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 2: as you know, in that situation, they don't vote as
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 2: a Congress. They get one vote per state. And the
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 2: total number of states that support MAGA is higher than
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 2: the total number of states that don't. So that gives
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 2: you that set of steps is one example, and there
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 2: are others. of ways that they can stretch the meaning
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 2: of the law to give themselves the fig leaf while
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 2: still keeping power, having lost the election.
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: Describe the guts of the game. It's an, I know
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: you use AI to help with the, you know, creating
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: the scenario and feeding, okay, if this, then that type of,
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: but walk people through the guts of this. How did
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 1: you build this simulation?
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very important for people who kind of wonk
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 2: out a little bit on how artificial intelligence works. It
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 2: is very important that you just don't set artificial intelligence
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 2: loose because it's very sloppy. It's very messy. It hallucinates
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 2: a lot of things. It may be the smartest thing ever,
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 2: but it's not infinitely smart and it makes mistakes. So
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 2: the game itself is what programmers say sometimes it's on rails.
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 2: So there's a set of outcomes, and there's a set
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 2: of specific things that are evaluated, measures for the legitimacy
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 2: of the regime, the cohesion of the regime, the state
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 2: of the stock market, the state of inflation. There's a
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 2: set of several hundred variables that are tracked. And then
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 2: the decisions that the teams make are then routed into
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 2: that set of variables, and that creates a new game state.
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 2: And then AI uses that new game state to say
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 2: what the news would sound like. So as a team,
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 2: you make a series, you come together and it's 2026,
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 2: and you make a series of moves. The game engine
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 2: then calculates that in a highly constrained reasoning engine. And
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 2: the reasoning engine is built around these international models that
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 2: I mentioned. So there are models where civil society is
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 2: effective at enforcing an election. I've already gone through some
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 2: of those. But there are plenty of examples where the
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 2: autocratic regime just stays in power. Venezuela, Belarus, many, many
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 2: other examples. And there are examples where there's a fracture
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 2: in the Civil War as well. And so those historical
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 2: examples go into the game engine. And so as a player,
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 2: what happens is You and your team make some moves.
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 2: You submit your moves with how much money you spent
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 2: or what you did. That goes into the game engine,
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 2: and then it rolls forward the calendar about 13 months.
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 2: So you make a bunch of moves in September of 2026,
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 2: and then suddenly you're getting a news drop that describes
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 2: the state of the world in October of 2027, and
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 2: then November in 2028, just after a contested election. And
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 2: then December of 2029 when the dust has settled. So
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 2: that's kind of how the game works, if that makes sense.
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: And what I look, I had somebody on about a
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: month ago where we who wrote in Lawfare about the
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: vulnerabilities of the midterms. And just to reinforce here, you
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 1: are this is simply a 2020 exercise with the midterms
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 1: as a vehicle.
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 2: Right. Yes, although the midterms can be an important vehicle.
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 2: If you're on the MAGA team, you want to use
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 2: the midterms to build muscles, to build the narrative of
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 2: urban fraud, to get people used to the idea of
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 2: challenging election. Mostly, I think it's unlikely that.
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 2: That they will use all their guns on the midterm
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 2: because Mr. Trump does not really care about Republicans. He
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 2: and his care about themselves. So I think they want
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 2: to use the midterms to practice so that they will
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 2: be more effective at keeping power in 2028, 2029. What
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 2: does practice look like?
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: What do you think that looks like?
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 2: It looks like experimenting with messing up the mails with
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 2: the United States Postal Service. It looks like experimenting and
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 2: driving the narrative of urban fraud and Chinese manipulation so
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 2: that their base is worked up about Democrats cheating and
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 2: stealing the election. It looks like practicing things like setting
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 2: a norm that it's okay to have federal agents near
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 2: polling places. So that combination of getting the bureaucracy in place,
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 2: getting federal agents used to the idea of being in
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 2: polling places and getting citizens used to that idea, getting
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 2: citizens used to the idea that even an overwhelming democratic win,
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 2: which might happen this time, still can't be trusted because
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 2: they believe in the narrative of urban fraud and Chinese manipulation.
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 2: And it also means making sure that the electorate understands
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 2: Democrats as being represented by people like the extreme democratic
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 2: socialists like DAC. So those are the things that could
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 2: be good practice so that they can try to keep
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 2: power in.
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: 2028, 2029. The two vulnerabilities that the lawfare reporter sort
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: of pointed out, one was delaying certifications and delayed certifications
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 1: and You know, look, I think there's a landmine sitting
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: out there right now. It's Missouri. And if there is a–
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: if the margin in the House is close, I don't–
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: a big margin, it's harder for– to use one state
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: for manipulation. If the margin is close, like we're just
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: staring at now, then one state can matter here a lot.
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 1: Missouri is putting themselves in a situation where I think
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: that you can't seat that delegation, especially if they go
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: forward with elections featuring nominees– that the courts said was
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: an invalid map. And yet they're gonna try to use
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 1: these nominees anyway, which I just, I'm at my wit's
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: end that that looks like the path we're gonna head
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 1: down because it seems to me an easy way to
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: invalidate these elections. And I hate to see if we
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 1: go down the path of an invalidated election, even for
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: legitimate reasons, just feels like that opens the door to something.
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: What other midterm manipulations do you think people ought to
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: look out for that might be test runs in your head?
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 2: Well, I think you're absolutely right that if it's a
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 2: close election, the speaker, the Republican speaker has a lot
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 2: of leeway. to just refuse to seat delegations. I think
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 2: you're also right that Missouri is a classic example. But
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 2: there are some examples in California because they count late.
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's really enormous discretion. I think if it's
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 2: a big election where civil society understands that Democrats won
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 2: by 20 seats, it's going to be very hard for
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 2: them to do that. But if it's close, I agree
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 2: with you. That's one of the big things. The second
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 2: thing in the midterms that people are really worried about
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 2: is ballot intimidation and federal agents deterring people from voting.
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 2: I'm less concerned about that in the short term because
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 2: the first time you do something like that, there's actually
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 2: a little bit of a backlash effect. So you might
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 2: actually get more people to vote against you than otherwise
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 2: might have. Cause you know, there's a push.
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: Oh, I think he's, I think what he's done with
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 1: the postal service already is going to change some voting
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: patterns on the democratic side, but it isn't going to
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 1: limit the turnout on the democratic side. Like, you know,
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: I joke, I mean, you could change your polling location
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: the day before and Democrats are going to find it.
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 1: Everything he's doing probably harms his own people more than
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: it will harm the other side.
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 2: Oh, completely. Yeah. I mean, part of this is why
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 2: I think that the midterms are not the ballgame for
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 2: these kinds of electoral shenanigans. I think the midterms are
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 2: the setup for the real ballgame. And the reason I
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 2: think it's the real ballgame, the executive branch is extremely powerful.
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 2: And it's only become much more powerful over the last
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 2: few decades. And under Trump, it's become insanely powerful. They
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 2: issue pardons all the time. That means Congress cannot subpoena
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 2: and cannot investigate. They put in acting officials so that
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 2: deprives the Senate of its power over appointments. And they
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 2: move budget items around, limiting the Democrats' power of the
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 2: purse if they were to take the House. So this
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 2: executive branch is extremely, extremely powerful. And everything that they're doing,
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 2: like they've decapitated, like they've taken out a bunch of
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 2: four-star generals from the Department of Defense, They've completely replaced
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 2: the senior leadership of the Departments of Justice and State.
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 2: All of that makes sense in a context where the
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 2: ballgame is to keep power in 2029, because then things
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 2: can keep going. So that's why I think that that's
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 2: the key ballgame. Obviously, if you don't want that to happen,
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 2: you have to win in November of 2028. The bigger
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 2: the margin of victory, the better. But you also have
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 2: to be prepared for making sure that in the next
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 2: 75 days, civil society is firmly united around the idea
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 2: that the winner should be seated.
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 1: The premise of your book Is it lessons from this?
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 1: How would you describe it?
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 2: The premise of the book is to try to think
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 2: through how the Enlightenment era survives in some of these
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 2: darker cases. So in the book itself, the specific scenario,
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 2: and I'm not predicting this, I'm just taking it as
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 2: a for instance, is that in 2029, America fractures. And
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 2: so red America becomes focused on the extractive industries. and
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 2: even more theocratic, and even more tightly aligned with Venezuela
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 2: and Russia. And so it becomes kind of an extractive bloc,
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 2: maybe including Alberta and Canada. And then the rule of
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 2: law states, the blue states, they form an alliance with Canada,
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 2: and perhaps with Costa Rica. And that coalition becomes a
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 2: constitutional alliance. And then you now have a global struggle
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 2: between the extractive authoritarian states and the rule of law states.
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 2: In this struggle, the rule of law states have real advantages.
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 2: They're more innovative, they have a better, more reliable base
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 2: of knowledge, but the authoritarian states also have an advantage,
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 2: which is they can move very fast. In the scenario
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 2: that I just outlined, if the United States executive branch
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 2: is no longer subject to the peaceful transfer of power,
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 2: then you're talking about the United States, Russia, and China
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 2: that are now functionally authoritarian. So the authoritarians control something
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 2: like 85% of the world's military power. And so my book,
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 2: Archipelago of Light, coming out October 6th, my book is
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 2: about if that happens, how does the rule of law survive?
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 2: How do diverse communities use artificial intelligence to actually find
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 2: new ways of organizing society? And it's really about authoritarianism
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 2: and artificial intelligence together, what's the way through that the
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 2: enlightenment survives?
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 1: So it's not dystopian, is what you're trying to say.
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 2: It is not dystopian. It is not a summer read,
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 2: but it ends hopefully.
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 1: You know, in listening to that scenario, the election of
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 1: a Democratic governor in Texas really is quite the shot
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 1: in the organizational arm of the nationalists is it not
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: 100 a big big you are counting on texas being
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: a part of that coalition in your fracture and the
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 1: fact that it looks to me like texas is at
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 1: least at a minimum is more interested in being a
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: battleground state and look gonna start looking a little bit
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 1: more like ohio and a little bit less like uh oklahoma.
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah If Texas flips blue, that makes it much, much
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 2: harder for the MAGA movement to keep power if they
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 2: lose the election.
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 1: Having Texas in a Democratic governor's hands is a bigger
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 1: deal for 2028 than you think any other governor in
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 1: the country?
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 2: Than any other governor that's plausibly up for grabs. And
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 2: let me give you a specific example of why. States
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 2: have state militias by law. This is not the National Guard.
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 2: They have state militias. So in states like New York
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 2: and California, these militias are used to fight cybercrime. In
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 2: states like Texas and Florida, they are combining forces to
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 2: do live fire exercises in the field to police the border.
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 2: So the red states are very much gearing up for
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 2: kinetic warfare internally. Doesn't mean they're going to do it,
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 2: but they're definitely preparing. And Texas is, in many ways,
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 2: one of the richest and most powerful red states. And
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 2: if all of those gun owners and all of that
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 2: military power is suddenly on the side of the rule
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 2: of law, that changes the dynamics greatly.
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, what an added sort of... stake to
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 1: throw on the, to really screw up my metaphors here,
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 1: to throw on the Barbie there when it comes to
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: that Texas governor's race, which is, you know, I think
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 1: it's already a fascinating race for where, you know, when
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 1: the Democratic nominee is using a January 6th rally goer
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 1: as an endorseee, you know that the dynamics of this
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: race are unique.
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 2: Oh, for sure. Although you had a guest on not
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 2: that long ago, Scaramucci, who kind of mentioned the institutional
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 2: power of the Republican Party. The Democrats are going to
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 2: have to win by a lot to get Greg Abbott
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 2: out of there, but it's possible.
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 1: That's interesting. You think a half a percentage point win
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 1: by the Democrat won't be enough to get Greg Abbott
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 1: out of there?
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I think a half a percentage point win would
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 2: be enough. The question is more on the other side
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 2: of the equation. Is there a half a point win?
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 2: Just the lines in the urban areas are so long
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 2: in Texas because of what they've done to consolidate voting centers.
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 2: There's all kinds of bad stuff that they can do.
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 2: And look, even if you're a really committed midterm Democrat, eventually,
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 2: if the lines are long enough, you've got other things
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 2: to do.
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 1: That's interesting. You just see that just the way they've
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 1: made it harder for Houston, Dallas, San Antonio to vote.
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 1: versus the rural parts is potentially a big advantage. Although
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 1: I think part of the Republican Party's problems in Texas
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 1: right now is how voters feel in rural areas about
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 1: schools and about what's been happening. It is.
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's possible that we're watching democracy save itself.
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 1: I know.
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 1: Like, I mean, meaning like this is this is why
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 1: I still have faith. Like eventually voters, they don't figure
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 1: it out on your timeline or my timeline, but they
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 1: figure it out. The question is, do they have enough
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 1: room and enough space? And is our system going to
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 1: let them?
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. I mean, there is a global conflict
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 2: between two different aspects of human society. Like it's us.
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 2: We're the ones who choose authoritarianism. We're the ones who
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 2: choose the rule of law. And that fight is very,
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 2: very close. And when the fight's close, that's more reason
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 2: to be involved, right?
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 1: What'd you learn from Hungary? And what should the, um, institutionalists, right?
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 1: Which is, you know, that's what I said. When I
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 1: say institutional, you're very careful not to assume party in this.
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 1: You know, what should the, you know, the sort of
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 1: the Romney wing, right, of the Republican Party, Romney-Cheney wing
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 1: of the Republican Party, and the institutionalists on the Democratic side.
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 1: And I do think there are some who are not
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 1: such institutionalists on the Democratic side. Like, people need to
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 1: understand the horseshoe is real here. And they could, you know,
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 1: they could be touching. What did you learn from Hungary
• 1:49:59
  Speaker 1: and what do you hope the institutionalists have learned from Hungary?
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 2: Well, Hungary is a very important lesson for how to
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 2: win in 2028. So Magyar is, I mean, my view,
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 2: I think similar to yours is that the Democrats need
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 2: a unity figure and there's a single issue. The issue
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 2: is take power away from those people That's the issue
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 2: that Magyar won on, is that team is corrupt and bad,
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 2: and we have to take power. Magyar was not talking
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 2: about defund the police. He was not talking about wealth taxes.
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 2: He was not talking about any of that other stuff.
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 2: It was one issue, which is to take power away
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 2: from those guys. That's important for winning the election. Unfortunately,
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 2: I don't think Hungary gives you very good lessons at
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 2: all about how to enforce the victory, because Hungary is
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 2: a part of the European Union. So I also think
• 1:50:57
  Speaker 2: the same is true of Giorgio Maloney in Italy. Victor
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 2: Orban and Giorgio Maloney absolutely were authoritarians, but they were
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 2: in a system where there was so much money, the
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 2: European Union subsidies and everything else, so much money at
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 2: stake that the coalition around them would not have stood
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 2: for them to try to keep power after having lost
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 2: because it would have been just too expensive. That is
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 2: also indirectly a lesson for the United States. People have
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 2: to understand that supporting the regime and staying in power,
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 2: even if they've lost, that would be expensive because there
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 2: will be a general strike or tax withholding or a
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 2: tax strike or tax extrusion. If one thing that we've
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 2: talked about is if every citizen who believes in the
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 2: rule of law makes a public declaration that if the
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 2: Constitution has been violated, then that means the 16th Amendment
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 2: is no longer valid, which is the one that authorizes
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 2: income taxes. That creates a credible deterrent. Things like that
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 2: need to happen where if the winner is not seated,
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 2: is not inaugurated on January 20th, then there are real
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 2: consequences for the people around the regime.
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 1: How much of damage, let's say, let's assume Team Trump
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 1: wants to find a way to stay in power in 28, right?
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 1: This is the presumption of the simulation. They're overseeing a
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 1: very unpopular economy. And, you know, I was just talking
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 1: with my producer earlier, and I said, you know, there's
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 1: not a revolution that's happened that doesn't happen, that basically
• 1:52:39
  Speaker 1: it's usually because people are frustrated by the cost of things.
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 1: That ultimately, and that in an odd way, the worse
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 1: the economy, the better we should feel about the inability
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 1: of Trump to stay in power. Am I being naive?
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 2: No, I think, well, when I was a consultant in
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 2: the business world, we used to refer to something as
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 2: directionally correct. So directionally correct. The question is, is it
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 2: far enough? And it is definitely the case that economic,
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 2: dissatisfaction can swell the ranks of the movement that is
• 1:53:19
  Speaker 2: trying to house the incumbent. The problem is, there are
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 2: a couple of problems though. One problem is that people
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 2: tend to really anchor on direction. So if you remember,
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 2: Ronald Reagan was very unpopular in 1982. But by the
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 2: time things felt like they were getting better, he rolled
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 2: to a reelection victory. So it's the direction of change
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 2: that will matter. And a lot of the cost of
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 2: living issues are self-inflicted. There are specific reasons why the
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 2: Trump team is using tariffs very heavily, and there are
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 2: specific reasons why they're continuing to engage in Iran, those
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 2: could change. And you could have an economy that is
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 2: starting to recover. So that's one thing. The second thing
• 1:54:04
  Speaker 2: is that The Democrats, if I'm right, that the Democrats
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 2: have lost most of their power, meaning they can't, you know,
• 1:54:12
  Speaker 2: their power of subpoena, their power of budget, their power
• 1:54:15
  Speaker 2: of appointments, that these are all now limited because of
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 2: the way in which Trump is managing the executive branch.
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 2: Then all the Democrats have left is their power to
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 2: set the agenda. with their committee chairs and with their investigations.
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 2: If the Democrats mess that up, then they provide a
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 2: really good foil for Trump and MAGA to say that
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 2: the problems are with the Democratic Party. The reason you're
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 2: feeling this pain is because the Democrats are getting in
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 2: the way of the things that will help you. That
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 2: is definitely something the Democrats are capable of, is messing
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 2: that up. Those are the two things that I worry
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 2: about a little bit in terms of the economy.
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 1: One of the other things that I always push back
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 1: on in this idea that we could fracture as states
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 1: is how we're geographically divided, but not along state lines,
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 1: along urban, suburban, rural lines. And Milwaukee and the suburbs
• 1:55:23
  Speaker 1: and Madison, you know, would be on perhaps team institution
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 1: and the rest of Wisconsin might be on team nationalists.
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 1: You'd see these divides all over. We just described Texas, right?
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 1: Dallas County, Harris County, Bexar County, Travis County. Those counties
• 1:55:41
  Speaker 1: are all blue. A lot of the rural counties would
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 1: be red. There isn't, you know, and because we're not
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 1: as regional as we once were, right? We're in this.
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 1: Is that security? Should I take that as some comfort
• 1:56:00
  Speaker 1: that it's actually harder for us to fracture physically because
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 1: we're kind of, even though we've self-sorted, but we are
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 1: sort of convoluted and every rural area is red, but
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 1: it's in all 50 states. Every urban area is blue,
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 1: but it's in all 50 states.
• 1:56:21
  Speaker 2: So a couple of things that you said, one thing
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 2: I just want to underscore, the relationship between population density
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 2: and two-way voting is the most important relationship in American politics.
• 1:56:33
  Speaker 2: It is more important than race, than gender, than education.
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 2: If you do a X-Y grid where along one axis
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 2: you have population density and along the other axis you
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 2: have two-way voting, it is a line. It is a
• 1:56:47
  Speaker 2: line that varies very little from 2008 to 12. So
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 2: it's very important. And you're right, that does make it
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 2: harder to fracture. The other thing that makes it harder
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 2: to fracture is that it is really difficult to separate
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 2: these kinds of close-knit economic arrangements. So both of those
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 2: are good points.
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'll be honest, Dimitri, I think that watching
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 1: the fact that China cares more about Europe and North
• 1:57:19
  Speaker 1: America as a consumer market, they chose not to help
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 1: create an energy recession from the Iran war, right? Because
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 1: they didn't buy the oil they normally buy. They went
• 1:57:31
  Speaker 1: ahead and used their strategic reserve. And it was, for
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 1: those that argue that an interconnected world on our economy
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 1: actually minimizes the chances of war, the less free trade
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 1: you have, the more chances for war. I mean, is
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 1: that what we're in the middle of witnessing at the moment?
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 2: It certainly could be. It's very hard to draw lines
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 2: through these kinds of examples because they're all so specific.
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 2: What I would just say is that the international order
• 1:58:06
  Speaker 2: today is very similar to the international order as it
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 2: was prior to World War I.
• 1:58:12
  Speaker 1: No, I'm with you there. It's very scary when you
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 1: see the similarities.
• 1:58:17
  Speaker 2: And there was a lot of free trade. prior to
• 1:58:20
  Speaker 2: World War I. So, you know, and people said- Well.
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 1: We were pretty tariff. We were pretty tariff.
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 2: We were, yeah, well, yeah, Smoot-Hawley and so forth triggered it.
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 2: But look at what the United States is doing now.
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 2: It's a modern Smoot-Hawley and you're forming these blocks. And
• 1:58:40
  Speaker 2: the other thing that is a source of some concern is,
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 2: you know, Brexit happened. You know, there are examples that
• 1:58:48
  Speaker 2: were previously considered, Russia invaded Ukraine. physically. There's these examples
• 1:58:56
  Speaker 2: that maybe a decade or two ago would have seemed
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 2: fantastical that are happening now. So I think you're right
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 2: that the scattering of human beings, rural and urban across states,
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 2: and the interconnection of the global world through trade, both
• 1:59:11
  Speaker 2: of those, I think, are good and potentially help us
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 2: against the threats that we face. But I don't think
• 1:59:18
  Speaker 2: they're rock solid reliable. History suggests otherwise.
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 1: As long as human beings are involved, right? Nothing's worse.
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 1: fully reliable. Let me land the plane this way. I
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 1: know some lessons I took away from the exercise and what, frankly,
• 1:59:35
  Speaker 1: constitutional reforms are needed. I think, frankly, more than anything else,
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 1: there's certainly plenty of rules changes I'd love to see
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 1: in how the House operates, how the Senate operates. And ultimately,
• 1:59:47
  Speaker 1: no constitutional change is going to matter if Congress doesn't
• 1:59:50
  Speaker 1: understand that it's Article I in our Constitution. But given
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 1: everything you've watched and witnessed, are there three or four
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 1: constitutional reforms that you think are necessary to limit the
• 2:00:05
  Speaker 1: ability of your simulation to be so successful by the nationalists?
• 2:00:12
  Speaker 2: So– I actually believe that the prior era of, you know,
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 2: there are people like Bruce Ackerman on the left and
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 2: Mike Ludig on the right who say that the prior
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 2: constitutional order is now gone. And we're in this interregnum
• 2:00:28
  Speaker 2: period because the way that the right understands the constitution
• 2:00:33
  Speaker 2: is so radically different from the way that the Constitution
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 2: used to be understood by institutionalists that we kind of
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 2: have to go one of two directions. Some of the
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 2: reforms that I used to be opposed to, I actually
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 2: think are now critical. That includes expanding the number of
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 2: Supreme Court justices to have one for every circuit. It
• 2:00:52
  Speaker 2: is only with that sort of a thing that you
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 2: can potentially overturn Trump versus the United States, which I
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 2: think is just a foundational issue Trump versus the United States,
• 2:01:00
  Speaker 2: I think, is a foundational rewriting of American constitutional law.
• 2:01:04
  Speaker 2: And you've got to get back to a system where
• 2:01:07
  Speaker 2: the chief executive is subject to the law. You can't
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 2: have otherwise. There are other reforms that I think would
• 2:01:12
  Speaker 2: be really good. I mean, you know, the classic mix,
• 2:01:15
  Speaker 2: ranked choice voting, nonpartisan redistricting. You can even have mandatory
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 2: voting as a way of giving everybody a stake. I
• 2:01:23
  Speaker 2: think those are all realistic reforms. But at the very top,
• 2:01:27
  Speaker 2: I think that the, yeah, there's got to be much
• 2:01:30
  Speaker 2: more power in the hands of Congress. And if I may,
• 2:01:35
  Speaker 2: if I may say one other thing, People on the left,
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 2: for as long as we've been alive, have been hostile
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 2: to certain parts of the Constitution. They've been hostile to
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 2: the free assembly cause of the First Amendment because it
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 2: was used to justify segregation. They have been hostile to
• 2:01:51
  Speaker 2: the Second Amendment for guns. They've been hostile to the
• 2:01:55
  Speaker 2: Ninth and Tenth for federalism. And it is going to
• 2:01:58
  Speaker 2: be very, very important for those on the left to
• 2:02:01
  Speaker 2: understand that those constitutional tools were designed to limit central power.
• 2:02:06
  Speaker 2: And they're going to be very, very important in a
• 2:02:07
  Speaker 2: world where central power is occasionally held by, you know,
• 2:02:12
  Speaker 2: essentially these authoritarians.
• 2:02:14
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's the irony is to watch the right
• 2:02:16
  Speaker 1: wing of our country be so enamored with centralized power,
• 2:02:21
  Speaker 1: when for all of my adult life until this moment,
• 2:02:26
  Speaker 1: the right was the biggest advocate against centralization, right? They
• 2:02:31
  Speaker 1: were the biggest, you know, for And you could say
• 2:02:34
  Speaker 1: the motivation goes back to segregation and it goes back
• 2:02:37
  Speaker 1: to states' rights. But the basic principle, I thought it
• 2:02:42
  Speaker 1: was a principle. That's all. I think a lot of
• 2:02:46
  Speaker 1: us thought that has to be a principle, right?
• 2:02:50
  Speaker 2: The biggest mistake that I made in 10 years of
• 2:02:53
  Speaker 2: trying to fight against Trump's reelection was I assumed a
• 2:02:57
  Speaker 2: larger percentage of Republicans meant what they said. By the way,
• 2:03:02
  Speaker 2: the Republicans who didn't mean what they said are heroes.
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry, who did mean what they said have become heroes.
• 2:03:08
  Speaker 2: They have stood up. My book launch is on October 6th.
• 2:03:14
  Speaker 2: And it'll be in conversation with my friend Sarah Longwell,
• 2:03:16
  Speaker 2: who is, I think, a leader in this movement, and
• 2:03:20
  Speaker 2: my friend Rick Wilson. These people who had been Republicans
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 2: who say, like, actually, what I really cared about is
• 2:03:26
  Speaker 2: the things I said I cared about. And therefore, when
• 2:03:29
  Speaker 2: the Republican Party is no longer those things, I'm no
• 2:03:31
  Speaker 2: longer Republican. That's going to be a critical constituency to
• 2:03:35
  Speaker 2: win in 28 and to actually have a peaceful transfer
• 2:03:37
  Speaker 2: of power in 29.
• 2:03:39
  Speaker 1: If there is a flaw in your concerns, it sounds
• 2:03:42
  Speaker 1: like it is the fact that there could be infighting
• 2:03:46
  Speaker 1: among sort of the institutionalists over what to focus on.
• 2:03:51
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think we know if the stakes were truly,
• 2:03:56
  Speaker 1: people saw what the stakes were, I actually don't think
• 2:03:59
  Speaker 1: this would be as big of a problem. The concern
• 2:04:02
  Speaker 1: I have is, and I count myself as somebody that
• 2:04:06
  Speaker 1: vacillates between these two sides of, Is this really about
• 2:04:12
  Speaker 1: to happen or do you need to meet people where
• 2:04:16
  Speaker 1: they are first? And that's the other thing. How do
• 2:04:20
  Speaker 1: you go about doing it? Do you go about focused
• 2:04:22
  Speaker 1: on the concern about this or do you instead, hey,
• 2:04:27
  Speaker 1: help people make ends meet? And if you help people
• 2:04:29
  Speaker 1: make ends meet, they're going to trust the institution again.
• 2:04:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, look, I have a strong point of
• 2:04:36
  Speaker 2: view about this, which is that it has to be
• 2:04:38
  Speaker 2: a single issue. It has to, you know, so, you know,
• 2:04:43
  Speaker 2: people on the left will sometimes say, everybody's got to
• 2:04:45
  Speaker 2: be involved. We've got to bring everybody in. And I
• 2:04:48
  Speaker 2: think that math is fundamentally unrealistic. If you bring in
• 2:04:53
  Speaker 2: Chevalier and platform her, you're going to be losing people
• 2:04:57
  Speaker 2: on the other side. It has to be the bottom
• 2:05:00
  Speaker 2: part of the horseshoe. That's what the example of Hungary proves.
• 2:05:05
  Speaker 2: It has to be a coalition of people who say,
• 2:05:07
  Speaker 2: we can disagree about everything else, but the winner of
• 2:05:10
  Speaker 2: the election needs to be seated. That's the kind of
• 2:05:13
  Speaker 2: movement that can actually ensure the peaceful transfer of power.
• 2:05:17
  Speaker 2: And then there becomes a debate, like, you know, how
• 2:05:21
  Speaker 2: do you get enough of the former Republicans and the
• 2:05:24
  Speaker 2: capitalists and the gun owners while also keeping enough of
• 2:05:28
  Speaker 2: the kind of white-hot activism of the progressive left? You know,
• 2:05:33
  Speaker 2: you gotta find that balance.
• 2:05:35
  Speaker 1: I have to say that I'm not convinced that this
• 2:05:39
  Speaker 1: current Democratic Party I don't think the two major parties
• 2:05:44
  Speaker 1: are ever vehicles for reform. And if you look at
• 2:05:48
  Speaker 1: our history, it's taken an outside effort, right? Either a
• 2:05:51
  Speaker 1: brand new political party, the Republicans, a Teddy Roosevelt who
• 2:05:55
  Speaker 1: left a party, right? Who got us the constitutional reforms,
• 2:05:58
  Speaker 1: arguably that were necessary in that moment to, to sort of, to,
• 2:06:02
  Speaker 1: to rebalance labor and corporations. Ross Perot in his own way, right?
• 2:06:08
  Speaker 1: Had success. You know, the, the, The problem with ever
• 2:06:12
  Speaker 1: getting a political party to do reform is they don't
• 2:06:15
  Speaker 1: wanna give up power. When they have the power to
• 2:06:17
  Speaker 1: do it, they're more concerned about keeping power than they
• 2:06:21
  Speaker 1: are saving the Republic, I'll just be frank.
• 2:06:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I actually agree with you. I'm not sure that
• 2:06:30
  Speaker 2: the Democrats can't do it, but if I look at
• 2:06:33
  Speaker 2: the list of things that need to be done, the
• 2:06:35
  Speaker 2: electoral coalition that you need to build, the will to
• 2:06:38
  Speaker 2: do things like give up, I don't know if it's
• 2:06:42
  Speaker 2: the right answer, but it could be a part of
• 2:06:44
  Speaker 2: the package. If I think through the list of things
• 2:06:47
  Speaker 2: that need to be done to win the election in 2028,
• 2:06:49
  Speaker 2: to make sure that the election is enforced in 2029,
• 2:06:51
  Speaker 2: and then to reform the institutions to establish a new
• 2:06:55
  Speaker 2: American republic that works, very hard for me to see
• 2:06:59
  Speaker 2: those things emerging out of the Democratic Party as it
• 2:07:02
  Speaker 2: is right now.
• 2:07:03
  Speaker 1: Now, one thing I'll say as a.
• 2:07:08
  Speaker 2: just a flag of potential hope, is that the presidential
• 2:07:12
  Speaker 2: nominee has a lot of power to reshape the party.
• 2:07:16
  Speaker 2: We saw that on the Republican side with Trump. And
• 2:07:19
  Speaker 2: so it's not impossible to imagine a Democratic nominee emerging
• 2:07:24
  Speaker 2: who could rise above and champion those sort of things. But,
• 2:07:29
  Speaker 2: you know, who knows at this point?
• 2:07:32
  Speaker 1: You're still going to, that nominee is still going to
• 2:07:35
  Speaker 1: answer to the voters they think got them there.
• 2:07:38
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 2:07:39
  Speaker 1: It depends a lot on what the makeup of that
• 2:07:42
  Speaker 1: coalition looks like.
• 2:07:42
  Speaker 2: 100 percent. The Democratic Party is still the Democratic Party
• 2:07:46
  Speaker 2: and they are still the ones who are going to
• 2:07:47
  Speaker 2: choose the nominee. So. Yeah.
• 2:07:51
  Speaker 1: What's what's your level of alarmism versus vigilance? Where do
• 2:07:58
  Speaker 1: you put yourself?
• 2:08:00
  Speaker 2: I have historically been very alarmist. And the reason is
• 2:08:05
  Speaker 2: that when- You.
• 2:08:06
  Speaker 1: Feel better at all because of what happened in Hungary?
• 2:08:09
  Speaker 1: Did that help change your mindset at all?
• 2:08:12
  Speaker 2: No, because that was just an electoral victory. And that's
• 2:08:14
  Speaker 2: not the thing that I'm most worried about. when I
• 2:08:18
  Speaker 2: started working against Trump in 2017, I had a bunch
• 2:08:23
  Speaker 2: of very dark assumptions that I put down in writing
• 2:08:27
  Speaker 2: about how bad things could go. And mostly I was
• 2:08:31
  Speaker 2: on the most alarmist side of the rooms that I
• 2:08:33
  Speaker 2: was in. And mostly those things came to pass, including
• 2:08:38
  Speaker 2: some version of January 6th. So on the other hand,
• 2:08:42
  Speaker 2: I thought that America today would be much darker. I
• 2:08:47
  Speaker 2: thought somebody like Jim Comey would be dead by now.
• 2:08:50
  Speaker 2: And so the courts have resisted in ways that I
• 2:08:53
  Speaker 2: didn't predict. And, you know, we're still in the game.
• 2:08:57
  Speaker 1: Do you have a theory as to how that happened?
• 2:09:00
  Speaker 1: Is it that, I mean, what's your theory as to
• 2:09:03
  Speaker 1: why the worst impulses haven't happened there? Because when it
• 2:09:08
  Speaker 1: comes to a Brennan or a Comey or something.
• 2:09:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I had thought that MAGA was going to
• 2:09:15
  Speaker 2: follow the direction of Vladimir Putin, because I had thought
• 2:09:19
  Speaker 2: that the Trump regime was essentially taking their playbook from Putin.
• 2:09:25
  Speaker 2: And Putin was very, very thuggish. He would kill people,
• 2:09:28
  Speaker 2: he would arrest people, etc. What has happened is that
• 2:09:31
  Speaker 2: the Trump regime has been less thuggish than I thought,
• 2:09:35
  Speaker 2: but more rapacious than And I think they're just making
• 2:09:38
  Speaker 2: too much money. So the amount of money that they're
• 2:09:41
  Speaker 2: making is so vast that they decided, what the heck?
• 2:09:45
  Speaker 2: Why don't we stand down away from the protests in
• 2:09:48
  Speaker 2: Minnesota and make sure that our ICE agents, masked federal agents,
• 2:09:54
  Speaker 2: only kill civilians on American soil when there are no
• 2:09:58
  Speaker 2: cameras around? It's a worthwhile trade-off. I can move ICE around.
• 2:10:02
  Speaker 2: I can still build up ICE's capacities. But I don't
• 2:10:05
  Speaker 2: need to have the direct confrontation. And so taking out
• 2:10:08
  Speaker 2: a Jim Comey, that just makes it hard to rake
• 2:10:11
  Speaker 2: in my billions. But if that theory is right, if
• 2:10:15
  Speaker 2: it is just a matter of thuggishness versus rapaciousness, the
• 2:10:19
  Speaker 2: key date is January 2029. Because on that day, if
• 2:10:25
  Speaker 2: the institutionalists take power, then suddenly all that criming becomes
• 2:10:30
  Speaker 2: illegal and they can't keep crime. Even if they pardon everybody,
• 2:10:35
  Speaker 2: they can't pardon people from future crimes. And that whole
• 2:10:38
  Speaker 2: regime has gotten used to making money by doing things
• 2:10:41
  Speaker 2: that have been previously considered illegal. So things have been
• 2:10:46
  Speaker 2: better than I feared.
• 2:10:47
  Speaker 1: I comfort myself by always saying Trump's too lazy to
• 2:10:50
  Speaker 1: be an authoritarian.
• 2:10:52
  Speaker 2: Could be. Could be.
• 2:10:54
  Speaker 1: But you've got to be willing to. I mean, I
• 2:10:57
  Speaker 1: just look at January 6th. I look at that day
• 2:11:00
  Speaker 1: and he didn't have the guts to fire the acting
• 2:11:03
  Speaker 1: attorney general. He didn't have the guts to fire the defense,
• 2:11:06
  Speaker 1: the acting defense secretary, which and it was all within
• 2:11:11
  Speaker 1: his power. He could have pushed this envelope and he
• 2:11:14
  Speaker 1: chose not to. Because one of the things that's the
• 2:11:18
  Speaker 1: hallmark of him is that he always wants somebody else
• 2:11:21
  Speaker 1: to do the dirty work. He doesn't like to actually write.
• 2:11:24
  Speaker 1: He's the irony to the guy who fired people on
• 2:11:27
  Speaker 1: TV is he doesn't like to fire anybody.
• 2:11:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you may be right. The reason why I'm less
• 2:11:35
  Speaker 2: hopeful about that is if you look historically at Mussolini
• 2:11:40
  Speaker 2: or Hitler or even the later years of Robert Mugabe,
• 2:11:44
  Speaker 2: everybody who interacted with them thought they were clowns. Right.
• 2:11:47
  Speaker 1: You're right.
• 2:11:48
  Speaker 2: And yet, as Charlie Sykes sometimes says, a clown with
• 2:11:52
  Speaker 2: a flamethrower still has a flamethrower. And Donald Trump will
• 2:11:56
  Speaker 2: be eight years further into his malignant narcissism, into his aging,
• 2:12:00
  Speaker 2: his senescence, eight years further into having this regime around
• 2:12:05
  Speaker 2: him that is preparing. Remember, for January 6th, he cobbled
• 2:12:08
  Speaker 2: together some losers in a couple of months. Now he's
• 2:12:12
  Speaker 2: got eight years of bringing together a full team. Maybe.
• 2:12:16
  Speaker 2: It's just hard to know.
• 2:12:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, as Peter Thiel observed, he goes, they're quite loyal.
• 2:12:21
  Speaker 1: They're not competent, but they're quite loyal. I don't know
• 2:12:24
  Speaker 1: if you caught those comments.
• 2:12:26
  Speaker 2: I did. Peter Thiel and I happened to be in
• 2:12:29
  Speaker 2: school together in college, and he's kind of always been
• 2:12:31
  Speaker 2: like this.
• 2:12:34
  Speaker 1: He's not as liberal Democrat as he's small, meaning small L,
• 2:12:38
  Speaker 1: small D, not ideological.
• 2:12:41
  Speaker 2: No, I think he genuinely believes that women's suffrage is wrong.
• 2:12:47
  Speaker 2: and that democracy is wrong. He has this statement that
• 2:12:50
  Speaker 2: democracy and freedom are not compatible. And he doesn't mean
• 2:12:54
  Speaker 2: your freedom when he says that.
• 2:12:56
  Speaker 1: It's his freedom. No, let me put anybody very close
• 2:13:05
  Speaker 1: to him. Do you find them, are you more concerned
• 2:13:07
  Speaker 1: about them? I mean, I'll just state it. Vice President
• 2:13:11
  Speaker 1: Vance is very close with Peter Thiel. Do you think
• 2:13:12
  Speaker 1: that's a relationship that scares you more than Donald Trump?
• 2:13:18
  Speaker 2: I don't know. Yes, maybe. I mean, the relationships that
• 2:13:22
  Speaker 2: scare me the most, probably in order, are Vladimir Putin
• 2:13:26
  Speaker 2: and then the Peter Thiel crowd. But they're both very scary.
• 2:13:33
  Speaker 1: How do you sleep? How do you make yourself feel better?
• 2:13:36
  Speaker 1: I will tell you this. My wife always says, hey,
• 2:13:41
  Speaker 1: you got to give people a little bit of hope.
• 2:13:43
  Speaker 1: What's the hope that you give people?
• 2:13:45
  Speaker 2: Well, first of all, everything that you've said, like the
• 2:13:47
  Speaker 2: bits of hope that you've said, I've pushed back on
• 2:13:50
  Speaker 2: all of them, but all of them are directionally correct.
• 2:13:53
  Speaker 2: This is a close thing. I could imagine a unifying figure,
• 2:13:58
  Speaker 2: and I don't, you know, just to make one up,
• 2:14:00
  Speaker 2: imagine a John Ossoff.
• 2:14:03
  Speaker 1: I'm for Captain America, General Donahue. If your nickname is
• 2:14:07
  Speaker 1: Captain America. Yeah. No, I'd like to, I'd like, I
• 2:14:11
  Speaker 1: have no idea whether he is ready to be president
• 2:14:13
  Speaker 1: of the United States. But a forced out four-star general
• 2:14:17
  Speaker 1: whose nickname was Captain America, I'd at least like to try.
• 2:14:20
  Speaker 2: 100%, or I'm forgetting the name of the admiral right now, McRaven.
• 2:14:27
  Speaker 1: Bill McRaven, yeah.
• 2:14:29
  Speaker 2: For sure. I'm just throwing a name out there. Someone
• 2:14:31
  Speaker 2: who's unifying and centrist and a good speaker and kind
• 2:14:37
  Speaker 2: of invokes, like imagine that Joe Biden was 30 years
• 2:14:41
  Speaker 2: younger and he ran the Soul.
• 2:14:42
  Speaker 1: Of America campaign.
• 2:14:45
  Speaker 2: That kind of a campaign, if you win by... four
• 2:14:49
  Speaker 2: or five points, you get a slingshot effect where it's
• 2:14:53
  Speaker 2: very hard for the regime to keep power. And there's
• 2:14:55
  Speaker 2: an enormous amount of motivation to fix the problems and
• 2:14:58
  Speaker 2: create what I would consider a new American republic. that
• 2:15:02
  Speaker 2: is more robust. And I think that's the problem is
• 2:15:06
  Speaker 2: that the official future that we all had is wide open.
• 2:15:09
  Speaker 2: Things that we thought were impossible are now possible. And
• 2:15:12
  Speaker 2: that's very scary.
• 2:15:13
  Speaker 1: On one side.
• 2:15:14
  Speaker 2: But on the other side, if hope prevails, that could
• 2:15:17
  Speaker 2: be very exciting. And I also take great comfort in
• 2:15:21
  Speaker 2: the way Canada is positioning themselves in the way, you know,
• 2:15:24
  Speaker 2: there are parts of the global alliance for freedom that
• 2:15:29
  Speaker 2: are beginning to realize they need to stand up. And
• 2:15:31
  Speaker 2: that's a good sign.
• 2:15:34
  Speaker 1: Dimitri, I did not know what to expect when I participated.
• 2:15:39
  Speaker 1: And it's one of the things, one of the most
• 2:15:41
  Speaker 1: important things I've participated in in the last year, the
• 2:15:45
  Speaker 1: work you're doing. How can people, is there a way
• 2:15:48
  Speaker 1: for people to participate or how... Because I know I'm
• 2:15:54
  Speaker 1: going to have some listeners going, I'd like to try this.
• 2:15:58
  Speaker 1: How does it work? Is there an online portion? I
• 2:16:01
  Speaker 1: know in some ways it works better, frankly, as a
• 2:16:05
  Speaker 1: role-playing game.
• 2:16:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we have done some Zoom versions, some online versions.
• 2:16:11
  Speaker 2: We haven't yet scaled to the place where it's easy.
• 2:16:16
  Speaker 2: But for example, we've had students and high school teachers,
• 2:16:21
  Speaker 2: law school students play the game virtually.
• 2:16:23
  Speaker 1: And where can they find you if they wanted to
• 2:16:25
  Speaker 1: do that? Some high school civics teacher who I've got
• 2:16:29
  Speaker 1: a few that I'm sort of pen pals with over
• 2:16:30
  Speaker 1: the years. They want to contact, how do they do it?
• 2:16:33
  Speaker 1: How would they come find, get your help?
• 2:16:37
  Speaker 2: So my book page, and if you go to www.truthsurvives.com,
• 2:16:45
  Speaker 2: you can get to my book page and you can
• 2:16:47
  Speaker 2: contact me through that. The organization, the philanthropy that I
• 2:16:52
  Speaker 2: run that sponsors these games is called the Atoll Society,
• 2:16:56
  Speaker 2: and there's a contact form there. So I'm not that
• 2:16:59
  Speaker 2: hard to reach if you want to learn more. um
• 2:17:02
  Speaker 2: how to how to play this game or you want
• 2:17:04
  Speaker 2: to run it yourself.
• 2:17:06
  Speaker 1: Look i think it's what i would love to see
• 2:17:08
  Speaker 1: a lot of high school civics teachers um and intro
• 2:17:13
  Speaker 1: political science uh professors um think about this because it's
• 2:17:19
  Speaker 1: just a terrific way to get folks to get frankly
• 2:17:23
  Speaker 1: smarter about the constitution the rules that do exist and
• 2:17:27
  Speaker 1: how it works and you know even even simply as
• 2:17:30
  Speaker 1: a way to educate the less knowledgeable about our system.
• 2:17:35
  Speaker 1: It can be a terrific teaching.
• 2:17:38
  Speaker 2: Well, I'm very grateful for your feedback. And just to
• 2:17:41
  Speaker 2: build on it, it's very hard to get out of
• 2:17:44
  Speaker 2: this day, this week, this month, this life that I've
• 2:17:48
  Speaker 2: lived to date. And these simulations allow you to at
• 2:17:51
  Speaker 2: least briefly inhabit a different set of assumptions that are
• 2:17:55
  Speaker 2: maybe more historically grounded and less narrow just in case they're.
• 2:17:59
  Speaker 1: True dimitri uh congrats on the book october 6th we'll
• 2:18:04
  Speaker 1: be uh we'll be looking for it and i have
• 2:18:06
  Speaker 1: a feeling i'll have uh You'll get quite a few
• 2:18:09
  Speaker 1: podcast listeners checking in. So thank you.
• 2:18:12
  Speaker 2: I appreciate it.
• 2:18:13
  Speaker 1: Good to see you.
• 2:18:14
  Speaker 2: Good to see.
• 2:18:20
  Speaker 1: You. All right, let's do a few questions. Mario writes in.
• 2:18:26
  Speaker 1: Hola from Mexico City, Chuck. Mario here, longtime listener and
• 2:18:29
  Speaker 1: Ask Chuck second timer. What are your top three no guts,
• 2:18:33
  Speaker 1: no glory surprise outcomes for this election cycle? Races that
• 2:18:36
  Speaker 1: aren't on most people's radar but could defy conventional wisdom.
• 2:18:39
  Speaker 1: Thanks for all you do. Well, I guess Kansas Senate
• 2:18:42
  Speaker 1: doesn't count anymore. If Kansas Senate is now in toss
• 2:18:45
  Speaker 1: up with basically a month to go before Election Day,
• 2:18:48
  Speaker 1: I don't think you can call it a surprise anymore.
• 2:18:52
  Speaker 1: I think I would go with Mississippi Senate and South
• 2:18:55
  Speaker 1: Carolina Senate would be two. And I'm going to go ahead.
• 2:19:00
  Speaker 1: and say Texas governor. Now, of my three sort of
• 2:19:07
  Speaker 1: surprise outcomes, I still think Democrats winning Texas governor is
• 2:19:13
  Speaker 1: a bigger deal than Democrats winning control of the Senate.
• 2:19:16
  Speaker 1: So I think it's an enormous victory if Democrats pull
• 2:19:22
  Speaker 1: that off. More important than Tallarico beating Paxton. That's easy.
• 2:19:27
  Speaker 1: Gina Inosa beating Abbott is a game changer. It means
• 2:19:32
  Speaker 1: Texas is in play. It is transformational to the political map.
• 2:19:36
  Speaker 1: So I think it is the biggest sort of enchilada
• 2:19:41
  Speaker 1: on the board here. Although I guess, right, California is
• 2:19:44
  Speaker 1: the big enchilada. I guess Texas is the big pile
• 2:19:48
  Speaker 1: of mole. I don't know how we would do that.
• 2:19:50
  Speaker 1: I don't want to say something stupid here and get
• 2:19:54
  Speaker 1: myself in trouble. But it is, I think, So I
• 2:19:59
  Speaker 1: would do, you asked for three, those would be my three.
• 2:20:04
  Speaker 1: But I think we, you know, it's funny, we're all
• 2:20:07
  Speaker 1: now used to Texas governor being in play, but I
• 2:20:08
  Speaker 1: don't think anybody can actually envision Abbott losing. But if
• 2:20:13
  Speaker 1: he lost, Gina Hinojosa, the first Latina governor in the country,
• 2:20:19
  Speaker 1: on the Democratic side, we've had a Latina governor on
• 2:20:22
  Speaker 1: the Republican side, Susana Martinez, in New Mexico, but it
• 2:20:26
  Speaker 1: would be a big deal. And she becomes a huge,
• 2:20:30
  Speaker 1: huge future force in the Democratic Party. All right. Next
• 2:20:37
  Speaker 1: question comes from Cynthia H. in Louisville, Kentucky. Hey, Chuck.
• 2:20:40
  Speaker 1: Thank you for having Marcia Chatelain on the show. It
• 2:20:42
  Speaker 1: was obvious how much you enjoyed her intelligence and perspective,
• 2:20:45
  Speaker 1: and I hope you'll have her back on again and again.
• 2:20:47
  Speaker 1: I'd listen to her read a shopping list. Yeah, no,
• 2:20:49
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, Cynthia, I'm glad that was your
• 2:20:51
  Speaker 1: reaction too. It's just, you know, sometimes it's like, you know,
• 2:20:54
  Speaker 1: you're just having a great meal and that just felt
• 2:20:57
  Speaker 1: like a great brain meal, right? And I will have
• 2:21:01
  Speaker 1: her on again and I can't wait to find different
• 2:21:03
  Speaker 1: reasons to have her on again because, you know, when
• 2:21:08
  Speaker 1: you have a meal that feeds your brain that well,
• 2:21:12
  Speaker 1: you're like, I want to try that again. I got
• 2:21:14
  Speaker 1: to go back. So yes, you will hear from Marsha again,
• 2:21:17
  Speaker 1: I promise. Tyler H., Michigan's 5th District, writes in, he goes,
• 2:21:21
  Speaker 1: hey there, you recently mentioned that some members of Congress
• 2:21:23
  Speaker 1: might vote differently on certain issues if they were voting blind.
• 2:21:26
  Speaker 1: Is there any precedent for anonymous or secret votes in Congress?
• 2:21:29
  Speaker 1: And would that even be legal? If it is possible,
• 2:21:32
  Speaker 1: would allowing blind votes ever be a good idea or
• 2:21:34
  Speaker 1: would it create more problems than it solves? Thanks so
• 2:21:36
  Speaker 1: much for all the content, Tyler H. So I think
• 2:21:39
  Speaker 1: it would on legislation, right? I mean, there's just the
• 2:21:44
  Speaker 1: transparency matters here. Where you do see a few secret
• 2:21:51
  Speaker 1: ballots is for leadership elections. And I think that that
• 2:21:55
  Speaker 1: is a, you know, I think leadership elections, secret ballot
• 2:21:59
  Speaker 1: are appropriate. And I, and, you know, trust me, the
• 2:22:03
  Speaker 1: only people that don't want leadership elections to, you know,
• 2:22:07
  Speaker 1: the people that want it public, right, the speaker election
• 2:22:09
  Speaker 1: is public, but The other elections are not per se.
• 2:22:13
  Speaker 1: And I think that that is healthy. I think if
• 2:22:15
  Speaker 1: you made those votes public, you'd have a lot more
• 2:22:21
  Speaker 1: machine politics than you even have right now in how
• 2:22:24
  Speaker 1: congressional elections are run. So no, I don't think it's
• 2:22:28
  Speaker 1: a good idea. I really don't. But it is a reminder,
• 2:22:33
  Speaker 1: I think what that tells you, right? I mean, what
• 2:22:35
  Speaker 1: Tom Tillis has been saying that there are 30 senators
• 2:22:38
  Speaker 1: who quietly, you know, don't like this or don't like that. Yeah,
• 2:22:41
  Speaker 1: that's nice. You know, it's too bad that you view
• 2:22:49
  Speaker 1: your Senate seat as belonging more to the president than
• 2:22:51
  Speaker 1: to yourself or your party. But I digress. All right.
• 2:22:57
  Speaker 1: Max W. in Virginia's eighth congressional district comes in. Obi
• 2:23:00
  Speaker 1: Chuck Kenobi, he writes, you've been adamant that Trump eventually
• 2:23:03
  Speaker 1: turns on everyone close to him at once they reach
• 2:23:05
  Speaker 1: a line he's reach a line he's willing to cross,
• 2:23:08
  Speaker 1: do you think that's true for Stephen Miller too? And
• 2:23:10
  Speaker 1: if so, what on earth would that line be? What
• 2:23:13
  Speaker 1: could Trump actually do that you'd consider turning on Miller?
• 2:23:17
  Speaker 1: I'll hang up and listen. I don't know. It would
• 2:23:21
  Speaker 1: probably be disrupting his personal life. You're asking what would
• 2:23:25
  Speaker 1: the line be for either Stephen Miller to walk or
• 2:23:28
  Speaker 1: for Trump to walk away from Miller? I do think
• 2:23:32
  Speaker 1: Trump would more likely walk away from Miller than Miller
• 2:23:35
  Speaker 1: would walk away from Trump. How's that? I think there
• 2:23:38
  Speaker 1: would be things that Trump would want to, if he
• 2:23:42
  Speaker 1: felt were so, that he might blame Miller for and
• 2:23:47
  Speaker 1: push Miller out for it. But I think Stephen Miller
• 2:23:52
  Speaker 1: is self-aware enough to know that he would essentially have
• 2:23:58
  Speaker 1: none of the perceived power, none of the opportunity that
• 2:24:01
  Speaker 1: he's gotten without Donald Trump and not a single other
• 2:24:07
  Speaker 1: president of any party would have ever given him the opportunity.
• 2:24:12
  Speaker 1: So I can't imagine a single circumstance where Miller would
• 2:24:16
  Speaker 1: turn on Trump unless it involved his personal life. That
• 2:24:19
  Speaker 1: would be my only assumption. I would like to think
• 2:24:22
  Speaker 1: that he would put a line there, but I think
• 2:24:27
  Speaker 1: it's more likely that Trump would conveniently blame Miller for
• 2:24:33
  Speaker 1: a policy debacle or a policy failure and throw Miller
• 2:24:36
  Speaker 1: under the bus. The fact that he hasn't for as
• 2:24:40
  Speaker 1: long as this gone tells you how much Trump values
• 2:24:43
  Speaker 1: Miller or is Miller one of the few people that
• 2:24:47
  Speaker 1: Trump is afraid of? Something I've thought about at times myself.
• 2:24:53
  Speaker 1: All right. Last question before we get into my big
• 2:24:55
  Speaker 1: college football preview of the weekend. It's a good one, right?
• 2:24:58
  Speaker 1: You know, you got the Red River rivalry because I'm
• 2:25:01
  Speaker 1: not allowed to call it the Red River shootout. And, uh,
• 2:25:06
  Speaker 1: the border war of Georgia and Alabama. Anyway, Stephen Ayer
• 2:25:09
  Speaker 1: from South Carolina's second, the infamous you lie guys district.
• 2:25:13
  Speaker 1: I like that. Hey, you lie son is about to
• 2:25:15
  Speaker 1: become the next governor of South Carolina. Anyway, what's your
• 2:25:18
  Speaker 1: read on Henry McMaster's decision to appoint Darlene Graham to
• 2:25:21
  Speaker 1: her brother Lindsey Graham's seat and her subsequent decision to
• 2:25:24
  Speaker 1: run for it? Was he following Trump's wishes? Did Republicans
• 2:25:28
  Speaker 1: assume they could nominate anyone in a reliably red state?
• 2:25:30
  Speaker 1: Or is there something else I'm missing also? I'll take
• 2:25:33
  Speaker 1: any good streaming recommendations you have because as a lifelong
• 2:25:36
  Speaker 1: Gamecock and Dolphins fan, I suddenly have more free time
• 2:25:39
  Speaker 1: on my fall weekends than I expected Stephen in South
• 2:25:43
  Speaker 1: Carolina's second. So look, McMaster did not want to appoint,
• 2:25:49
  Speaker 1: did not want her to run for a full term.
• 2:25:52
  Speaker 1: This was all Trump's doing. This was all Trump's idea.
• 2:25:57
  Speaker 1: But you got to remember, Henry McMaster is not governor
• 2:25:59
  Speaker 1: without Donald Trump. If Donald Trump doesn't give Nikki Haley-
• 2:26:04
  Speaker 1: an ambassadorship to the UN. Henry McMaster doesn't get elevated
• 2:26:08
  Speaker 1: to the governorship. Now, why does this matter? I've always
• 2:26:11
  Speaker 1: believed that Trump appointed Haley, not because he liked Haley,
• 2:26:16
  Speaker 1: but because he wanted to reward McMaster. Because Nikki Haley
• 2:26:21
  Speaker 1: left for the ambassadorship to the UN. You left the
• 2:26:24
  Speaker 1: governor's office for that? I've always thought that was a
• 2:26:27
  Speaker 1: weird decision. Now, maybe she thought it would be a
• 2:26:29
  Speaker 1: good stepping stone for her, I don't know to this day,
• 2:26:32
  Speaker 1: you know, getting a little foreign policy credential never hurts
• 2:26:35
  Speaker 1: if you really want to run for president. I've never
• 2:26:38
  Speaker 1: understood that move by her because she was, remember, she
• 2:26:40
  Speaker 1: was a Rubio person. She endorsed Rubio in the 2016 primaries,
• 2:26:43
  Speaker 1: not Trump. McMaster was with Trump. So Trump appointed Nikki
• 2:26:48
  Speaker 1: Haley not to reward Haley, but it was to reward McMaster.
• 2:26:52
  Speaker 1: I point out that history because McMaster did owe his
• 2:26:55
  Speaker 1: political success, right? He had tried to become governor before
• 2:27:00
  Speaker 1: and failed a million times. Donald Trump's the only reason
• 2:27:02
  Speaker 1: he got there. So I think– look, I credit the
• 2:27:07
  Speaker 1: governor for realizing that, hey, for better– and I'm getting–
• 2:27:12
  Speaker 1: here's the thing. I'm sure Trump reminded Governor McMaster of
• 2:27:15
  Speaker 1: this all the time. So he was going to have
• 2:27:17
  Speaker 1: to acquiesce. But every source I have in South Carolina
• 2:27:20
  Speaker 1: says nobody wanted her to run for the full term.
• 2:27:24
  Speaker 1: Nobody quite knew what they were getting. And I think that,
• 2:27:27
  Speaker 1: you know, they're in this situation. This is another one, right?
• 2:27:29
  Speaker 1: There's a handful of races that if they go south
• 2:27:31
  Speaker 1: on the Republicans, there is only one person to blame
• 2:27:34
  Speaker 1: and it's Donald Trump. Ken Paxton is Donald Trump's creation
• 2:27:38
  Speaker 1: and Donald Trump's fault. if he doesn't win. Darlene Graham
• 2:27:42
  Speaker 1: is Donald Trump's creation. Therefore, it's Donald Trump's fault if
• 2:27:46
  Speaker 1: he doesn't win. Pure and simple. You can't really say
• 2:27:51
  Speaker 1: that about, and oh, by the way, Donald Trump's candidates
• 2:27:55
  Speaker 1: already He forced the Republicans into a bad situation in Georgia.
• 2:28:00
  Speaker 1: He forced the party into a bad situation in North Carolina.
• 2:28:03
  Speaker 1: The first two races the national party had to pull
• 2:28:05
  Speaker 1: out of. So Trump is really, I mean, he's already
• 2:28:09
  Speaker 1: cost Republicans two Senate seats, North Carolina and Georgia. He's
• 2:28:15
  Speaker 1: likely to cost them a third in Texas, as you
• 2:28:18
  Speaker 1: know from my Senate ratings. And Darlene Graham is on Trump.
• 2:28:22
  Speaker 1: because there is nobody else in the state of South
• 2:28:24
  Speaker 1: Carolina in the Republican Party that thought this was a
• 2:28:27
  Speaker 1: good idea. And judging by how it's playing out, look,
• 2:28:31
  Speaker 1: I don't know her. I knew Lindsey Graham pretty well.
• 2:28:35
  Speaker 1: He's hard not to like. I'm sure she's a very
• 2:28:38
  Speaker 1: nice person as well. But you can just sort of
• 2:28:40
  Speaker 1: tell people that aren't ready. You're just like, oh, my God,
• 2:28:44
  Speaker 1: what are you doing? Don't put her out there. She
• 2:28:46
  Speaker 1: can't handle NFL defenses, right, type of thing, right? This
• 2:28:49
  Speaker 1: is it's like watching that poor Jalen Daniels quarterback, the Buccaneers.
• 2:28:54
  Speaker 1: I hope, you know, we'll see what that looks like
• 2:28:57
  Speaker 1: later tonight against the Cowboys. But I think Jalen Daniels
• 2:29:02
  Speaker 1: might be the Darlene Graham of backup quarterbacks in the NFL.
• 2:29:07
  Speaker 1: But hey, Jalen Daniels wins and I'll eat some crow
• 2:29:10
  Speaker 1: and maybe we will have a full term Senator Darlene Graham. But,
• 2:29:15
  Speaker 1: you know, it's funny. This is my first week that
• 2:29:18
  Speaker 1: I've included her into my full-fledged competitive list. All the
• 2:29:25
  Speaker 1: ingredients for a Graham loss are there. You know, it
• 2:29:31
  Speaker 1: is history. Everything is there for a Graham loss. The
• 2:29:35
  Speaker 1: only doubt I have in my head is I don't
• 2:29:38
  Speaker 1: know if Annie Andrews is well-funded enough to do this.
• 2:29:42
  Speaker 1: I think there's definitely doubt the minds of the national party,
• 2:29:46
  Speaker 1: given what happened to Jamie Harrison when they, you know,
• 2:29:49
  Speaker 1: they thought a bunch of money would help. But, you know,
• 2:29:53
  Speaker 1: I think I've, you know, appointed senators usually, you know, she's,
• 2:29:56
  Speaker 1: she's going to, she's going to run a couple points
• 2:29:59
  Speaker 1: worse than her brother ran and her brother wasn't getting 55. So,
• 2:30:05
  Speaker 1: you know, she's going to, I think her, the, the
• 2:30:08
  Speaker 1: appointed senator penalty puts her ceiling at 51 or 52.
• 2:30:10
  Speaker 1: That's a ceiling. So, It goes back to the first
• 2:30:16
  Speaker 1: question that was asked, what are some under-the-radar races that
• 2:30:20
  Speaker 1: we're not paying enough attention to? Now that the world's
• 2:30:25
  Speaker 1: focused on Kansas, I think I'm going to spend the
• 2:30:27
  Speaker 1: next couple of weeks getting the world focused on South
• 2:30:29
  Speaker 1: Carolina Senate. Because I think something's afoot there for all
• 2:30:34
  Speaker 1: of the reasons we just discussed. All right. Let's get
• 2:30:39
  Speaker 1: to my college football preview. And it is... This is
• 2:30:43
  Speaker 1: the most relaxing weekend I'm going to have. And by
• 2:30:45
  Speaker 1: the way, I had planned to go to the Florida
• 2:30:52
  Speaker 1: State-Louisville game in Louisville on Friday night. And unfortunately, we
• 2:30:57
  Speaker 1: have that hurricane that's coming up and that it's likely
• 2:31:01
  Speaker 1: to hit. I've got some family in the direct cone
• 2:31:06
  Speaker 1: there that were going to meet us there. And then
• 2:31:10
  Speaker 1: it looks like the remnants of it are going to
• 2:31:11
  Speaker 1: be in Louisville by Saturday morning. I don't know if
• 2:31:13
  Speaker 1: we were going to get caught. So unfortunately, we had
• 2:31:15
  Speaker 1: to postpone that idea. My late father-in-law was a quarterback
• 2:31:19
  Speaker 1: at Louisville. Obviously, my wife went to Florida State. So
• 2:31:22
  Speaker 1: we were going to have a fun little sort of
• 2:31:27
  Speaker 1: dual reason to go and enjoy. None of us had
• 2:31:31
  Speaker 1: been to a football game at that stadium, the so-called
• 2:31:35
  Speaker 1: Papa John's Stadium. But I really wanted to enjoy that. environment,
• 2:31:39
  Speaker 1: but we're going to get back there. So to my
• 2:31:43
  Speaker 1: friends in the Louisville athletic department, we're coming back. We
• 2:31:47
  Speaker 1: can't wait. We can't wait to honor one of your
• 2:31:51
  Speaker 1: great quarterbacks in Louisville history, the late, great Benny Russell.
• 2:31:56
  Speaker 1: So that was going to be my college football weekend,
• 2:31:59
  Speaker 1: but Hey, I get a relaxation weekend. Miami's on a bi-week,
• 2:32:03
  Speaker 1: which means I, you know, I get, it doesn't mean
• 2:32:05
  Speaker 1: I got, I'm going to have, you know, three football
• 2:32:08
  Speaker 1: games and a baseball game. That's, I love this YouTube
• 2:32:11
  Speaker 1: TV box. In case you guys are wondering how I
• 2:32:13
  Speaker 1: do this. I usually have, I have the four box
• 2:32:16
  Speaker 1: on the TV with YouTube TV. And then there's always
• 2:32:18
  Speaker 1: like one game that YouTube TV doesn't have that I
• 2:32:20
  Speaker 1: got to find. And I'll put that on an iPad,
• 2:32:23
  Speaker 1: you know, to get my, get my multiple screens here.
• 2:32:28
  Speaker 1: So look, there's a, the two big games obviously are Texas, Oklahoma, Georgia, Alabama. Uh,
• 2:32:37
  Speaker 1: let's start with Texas, Oklahoma, because if Oklahoma gets blown out,
• 2:32:42
  Speaker 1: if it's something like a 38 to three, which is,
• 2:32:46
  Speaker 1: I think that's more likely than any result. Maybe I'm,
• 2:32:48
  Speaker 1: I know this is a rivalry game. Anything can happen.
• 2:32:51
  Speaker 1: But one thing that, you know, the Texas defense has
• 2:32:54
  Speaker 1: shown up every game and John Mateer has struggled against
• 2:32:59
  Speaker 1: good defenses. What's he going to do against what I
• 2:33:02
  Speaker 1: think is a great defense. Um, I think they're going
• 2:33:06
  Speaker 1: to try a bunch of things. This is a kitchen
• 2:33:08
  Speaker 1: sink game for Oklahoma. This is one of those, because
• 2:33:12
  Speaker 1: a blowout loss and you start to have people questioning Venables,
• 2:33:17
  Speaker 1: you have people questioning the AD's decision to extend Venables.
• 2:33:21
  Speaker 1: You're going to have, you might have players start talking
• 2:33:24
  Speaker 1: to agents, thinking about the portal, right? This is that
• 2:33:28
  Speaker 1: weekend where you have teams that had playoff expectations, signed
• 2:33:33
  Speaker 1: players with playoff expectations. And if suddenly that's not there,
• 2:33:37
  Speaker 1: and if suddenly they think, oh, my path to the
• 2:33:39
  Speaker 1: NFL draft is no good here anymore, they start talking
• 2:33:44
  Speaker 1: to their agent. So very curious there. And look, every game,
• 2:33:52
  Speaker 1: poor Arch Manning. I think that a million people have
• 2:33:58
  Speaker 1: said this. This is not new information, but I think
• 2:34:02
  Speaker 1: if he were Arch Smith, we wouldn't be talking about
• 2:34:05
  Speaker 1: him as much, right? You know, he's sort of been
• 2:34:07
  Speaker 1: forced into the spotlight. I hope he stays in college
• 2:34:11
  Speaker 1: another year. He's an incredible athlete. He's got a lot
• 2:34:14
  Speaker 1: of gifts. He needs to put it all together. And
• 2:34:17
  Speaker 1: I'll say what I said. I'm not sure Sark's the
• 2:34:19
  Speaker 1: best coach for Arch Manning. I can tell you, I'd
• 2:34:23
  Speaker 1: love to see what my man Shannon Dawson could do
• 2:34:25
  Speaker 1: with Arch Manning next year. I'm not saying, I'm just saying.
• 2:34:28
  Speaker 1: Peyton Cooper, have you met my man Shannon Dawson? I
• 2:34:32
  Speaker 1: know what some of you are thinking. Man, when did
• 2:34:34
  Speaker 1: you become so bullish on your Miami coaching staff? I'll
• 2:34:39
  Speaker 1: take a run to the national title with Carson Beck
• 2:34:41
  Speaker 1: as quarterback for a thousand, Alex. So yeah, I'm pretty
• 2:34:44
  Speaker 1: bullish on there. Obviously, the massive game in some ways
• 2:34:49
  Speaker 1: is Georgia-Alabama, but is it? The loser's going to still
• 2:34:54
  Speaker 1: make the college football playoff unless there's some sort of
• 2:34:56
  Speaker 1: debacle we don't expect. This really is a game to
• 2:35:01
  Speaker 1: decide who, which one, Georgia, Alabama, you know, there's four
• 2:35:05
  Speaker 1: teams that get up essentially that don't have to play
• 2:35:08
  Speaker 1: in the first round of the college football playoff in
• 2:35:10
  Speaker 1: the 12-team format. Feels like winner gets the buy, loser's
• 2:35:15
  Speaker 1: going to have to host a game at home, and
• 2:35:17
  Speaker 1: I think that that's what we're seeing there. I don't
• 2:35:22
  Speaker 1: trust that Alabama defense, and I trust the Georgia defense.
• 2:35:26
  Speaker 1: I know that if I were, if you made me
• 2:35:28
  Speaker 1: bet on this game, and I don't know if I will,
• 2:35:30
  Speaker 1: I know some, you know, I certainly enjoy a little
• 2:35:34
  Speaker 1: wagering here or there. It would be Georgia and nothing
• 2:35:38
  Speaker 1: for me. I just don't trust the Alabama defense. They've
• 2:35:42
  Speaker 1: given up a lot of points to a lot of teams.
• 2:35:44
  Speaker 1: And Georgia's, I think, got a good enough offense to
• 2:35:47
  Speaker 1: keep up, but a much better defense to slow down Alabama.
• 2:35:53
  Speaker 1: So those are the two big ones. Other games that,
• 2:35:56
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm going to be intrigued by. Iowa State
• 2:36:03
  Speaker 1: at BYU. BYU has Notre Dame coming to Provo, I think,
• 2:36:08
  Speaker 1: next week. I believe that's their next game. Are they
• 2:36:12
  Speaker 1: going to be looking ahead? Is Iowa State capable of
• 2:36:14
  Speaker 1: pulling an upset there? You know, Iowa State has sort
• 2:36:18
  Speaker 1: of played up to it. I feel like they play
• 2:36:20
  Speaker 1: up to competition and play down to competition. Provo's not
• 2:36:25
  Speaker 1: an easy place to play, and this game's late on
• 2:36:28
  Speaker 1: a Friday night. But Friday night games are weird. Friday
• 2:36:31
  Speaker 1: night games are super weird. So if you're looking for
• 2:36:33
  Speaker 1: a top 10 upset alert, that's one I'm intrigued about.
• 2:36:38
  Speaker 1: Another underrated game, 5-0 Indiana travels to 5-0 Nebraska. Who's
• 2:36:43
  Speaker 1: the real big red? Big red Indiana, big red Nebraska.
• 2:36:52
  Speaker 1: This is a big opportunity for Matt Rule, you know.
• 2:36:56
  Speaker 1: It's funny about Nebraska. Rule doesn't have a signature win yet.
• 2:37:01
  Speaker 1: This is easily his best start. 5-0 there. They haven't
• 2:37:07
  Speaker 1: really beaten anybody yet. This is a test for both teams. Indiana,
• 2:37:13
  Speaker 1: the first Big Ten opponent they had was Northwestern, and
• 2:37:17
  Speaker 1: they got a fight. This one is going to be
• 2:37:19
  Speaker 1: a fight. I think if I'm Indiana, I'm glad this
• 2:37:23
  Speaker 1: is a noon game and not a night game. South
• 2:37:29
  Speaker 1: Carolina at Florida. Is Shane Beamer playing for his job?
• 2:37:32
  Speaker 1: Will Florida bounce back? I think that Florida, pretender or contender,
• 2:37:37
  Speaker 1: we'll find out in this game. Do they get right
• 2:37:41
  Speaker 1: against South Carolina, get the offense rolling again, or was
• 2:37:44
  Speaker 1: the Ole Miss victory, the outlier, and the Missouri game
• 2:37:48
  Speaker 1: a little bit more representative of who Florida is? That's
• 2:37:53
  Speaker 1: a question I have. Another under-the-radar game that I'm going
• 2:37:56
  Speaker 1: to spend a lot of time watching is UCLA traveling
• 2:37:59
  Speaker 1: up to Oregon. First of all, I'm in a college
• 2:38:03
  Speaker 1: fantasy football league, and I have both Nico and Wayne
• 2:38:06
  Speaker 1: Knight as starters on my team. So I got crushed
• 2:38:09
  Speaker 1: last week when they were on a bye. I need
• 2:38:13
  Speaker 1: some performance here by Nico and Wayne Knight to get
• 2:38:16
  Speaker 1: back on the good side of things. So I have
• 2:38:18
  Speaker 1: my own reasons to be rooting for UCLA against Oregon.
• 2:38:22
  Speaker 1: But this is a big game for both teams. Is
• 2:38:24
  Speaker 1: UCLA for real? Winning in Oregon would say they're for real.
• 2:38:29
  Speaker 1: This would be a good win for Oregon just to
• 2:38:31
  Speaker 1: survive this game. I mean, look, here's the intriguing part
• 2:38:35
  Speaker 1: of this. The coach at UCLA, Bob Chesney, he was
• 2:38:40
  Speaker 1: the coach of JMU who traveled to Oregon for that
• 2:38:43
  Speaker 1: playoff game. So he has prepared for this Oregon team right?
• 2:38:49
  Speaker 1: He pretty much has already scouted it. Now he's got
• 2:38:52
  Speaker 1: arguably better players. Some of the players he brought with
• 2:38:55
  Speaker 1: him from JMU to UCLA. So there's not going to be,
• 2:38:58
  Speaker 1: they're not going to feel overwhelmed traveling, uh, up to
• 2:39:02
  Speaker 1: Autzen stadium there. So I, I, I will, uh, and,
• 2:39:08
  Speaker 1: and don't forget Chesney, the Chesney coach, James Madison team,
• 2:39:12
  Speaker 1: I believe covered that spread. It was late, but they
• 2:39:15
  Speaker 1: covered at the end and that playoff game. Um, That's
• 2:39:19
  Speaker 1: a good one. That's a fun one. And it's a,
• 2:39:23
  Speaker 1: it's a, this might very well, this certainly is a
• 2:39:26
  Speaker 1: playoff game for Oregon. Lose, they're out. Other than that,
• 2:39:36
  Speaker 1: the only other, I don't know, there's a loserly, is
• 2:39:40
  Speaker 1: USC Penn State a loserly town game? You could argue
• 2:39:43
  Speaker 1: it might be. LSU, Kentucky.
• 2:39:47
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 2:39:48
  Speaker 1: Is this an elimination game for Kentucky? Kentucky's at home.
• 2:39:53
  Speaker 1: I assume Lane Kiffin goes up there. They're prepared and
• 2:39:56
  Speaker 1: they win. But if they don't, then we've all underestimated
• 2:40:00
  Speaker 1: Kentucky and we've all overrated LSU. So I do think
• 2:40:04
  Speaker 1: LSU at Kentucky's an elimination game on the playoff. So that's...
• 2:40:12
  Speaker 1: That's the short version of that. And like I said,
• 2:40:14
  Speaker 1: Miami being on a bye week means I get to
• 2:40:16
  Speaker 1: relax a little bit. I get to watch these other teams.
• 2:40:20
  Speaker 1: And I'm just looking forward to a great day of
• 2:40:22
  Speaker 1: college football. Bummed that I don't get to watch that
• 2:40:25
  Speaker 1: Florida State-Louisville game in person, but I look forward to
• 2:40:28
  Speaker 1: getting back to Louisville to see a Cardinals game. I
• 2:40:32
  Speaker 1: don't know if I want to watch my Miami team
• 2:40:34
  Speaker 1: go up to Louisville the next time we go up there.
• 2:40:37
  Speaker 1: It's a scary environment for traveling teams. They have a
• 2:40:40
  Speaker 1: pretty good home field up there. But I look forward
• 2:40:42
  Speaker 1: to that. Anyway, enjoy the weekend. Enjoy the playoff baseball.
• 2:40:46
  Speaker 1: Enjoy the slew of polling that I promise will be
• 2:40:50
  Speaker 1: coming over the weekend. And I will have ready to
• 2:40:52
  Speaker 1: deliver to you on Monday morning. And with that, I'll
• 2:40:55
  Speaker 1: see you on Monday. Thanks for watching, listening, and of course,
• 2:40:59
  Speaker 1: liking and subscribing.