Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Full Episode - Blue Mirage, Blue Wave, Or Blue Tsunami? + Debt, AI, & An Economy That Isn't Working for Everyone

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Full Episode - Blue Mirage, Blue Wave, Or Blue Tsunami? + Debt, AI, & An Economy That Isn't Working for Everyone · 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. Okay, 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 980-734-4255. Three, nine, eight, five.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: Hello there and welcome to the fall season of the
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: Chuck Todd cast. No, I'm not going to like make
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: up just random days of the month where we claim
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: to start a new season like my favorite cooking show, Chopped,
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: which has been on like 25 years, but claims to
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: have like 70,000 seasons, which I never quite get. So
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: it's in that spirit that you're here for the new season,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: the fall season, Labor Day. We're kicking it all off.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: But there is actually a tiny bit of a schedule
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: change instead of three updates a week that we've been
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: doing through the summer. And I'm counting Super Tuesday, which,
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: of course, is expansion. So now every day, Monday through Thursday,
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: Friday is now our only day we don't have an
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: intentional episode that we are dropping right here on the
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Chuck Toddcast feed. So on Mondays, you're getting what we're
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: getting right now. Welcome to Monday, right? Labor Day Monday.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: On Tuesdays will be Chris, Eliza, and I breaking things down.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: Super Tuesday, very midterm-focused podcast. I will now bring the
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: Wednesday podcast back for the fall season. And a lot
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: of those interviews will be, in some ways, interviews that
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: are sometimes a little off the news cycle. Intentionally so,
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: because I think– frankly, it's just I've got a range
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: of interests and hey, I've got a podcast with my
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: name on it. So I'm going to share my range
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: of interests where I think you two might learn something
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: out of it. And our normal Thursday top five list
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: will go back to being on Wednesday. My college football
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: preview will be every Thursday. And yes, I am bringing
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: back my college football recap on Monday. So here we are.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: It is Labor Day. And in the spirit of Labor
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: Day weekend, Oh, I forgot to tell you who the
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: guest is today. My guest is one of my favorite
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: quarterly guests that I have here on the Chuck Todd cast,
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: Ken Bruce Melman. I do this every once in a while.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: His brother is Ken Melman, but Bruce Melman, sort of
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: a fixture in D.C., understands the lobbying world, runs a
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: extraordinarily bipartisan firm. But most importantly, what I obsess over
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: is Sunday, six chart Sundays. So hopefully you follow him
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: on Substack. But we basically talked the political landscape. Is
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: Washington prepared for the bluification of Congress is among the
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: conversations we have. We dig deep on this tech phobia
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: that is growing in America as well. He's on both
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: sides of that issue. So I definitely think in the
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: spirit of trying to understand where this election is and
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: where it's going, my conversation with Bruce Mellman will fit
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: that conversation. fit that description quite well. But let me
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: get to my focus for the day. In the spirit
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: of Labor Day weekend, I'm going to talk about the
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: two things that are probably occupying my mind the most
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: right now, at least outside what's happening in my own
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: family and my own house. The sprint to the midterms
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: and the start of college football. And frankly, I could
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: spend a lot of time on both. And I will
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: spend a little bit of time on college football here
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: later in this podcast. But of course, I know why
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: you're here. I know why I have subscribers. It is
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: politics and it is the midterms. But look, I'm going
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: to start with the midterms because we know the cliche.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: Labor Day has always been the traditional beginning of the
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: fall campaign, of which it's because we change seasons that
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: we can say that. But this campaign is not like
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: it needs any amping up. It's been going pretty much nonstop.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: It's a little bit quaint to say we're really kicking
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: off the fall campaign when campaign season, of course, is.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: never ends. But Labor Day still means something. The primaries
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: are essentially over. We've got New Hampshire and Delaware on Tuesday,
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: Rhode Island, for whatever reason, decided Wednesday was the day
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: they wanted to vote. And then we're done, done. But
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: for what it's worth in those three primaries, I'm actually
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: pretty interested to see what is going to happen out
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: of New Hampshire in particular. I've seen a lot of
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: polling out of New Hampshire this summer, and I'll be honest,
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: I'm skeptical of just about all of it. Polling New
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: Hampshire is always difficult. You don't know how many independents
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: are coming in your primary versus the others. You can
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: do really good polling and just be totally off on
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: the number of non-Democrats or non-Republicans that choose to jump
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: in your primary. So it can really throw things off.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: So that's why I'm curious. I want to see the
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: raw turnout. I want to see, do Democrats continue what
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: we've been doing? We talked on this podcast about the
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: massive Democratic primary turnout advantage we've seen around the country.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: And I think, of course, it's one of the most
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: important pieces of evidence we've gotten about the political environment.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: So New Hampshire is going to give us one last
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: data point. Remember, New Hampshire is a swingish state that
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump can't seem to carry, right? There's a few
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: swing states, Colorado, in my mind, that are still swingy states,
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: but they are just not swing states in the Trump era. Colorado, Virginia,
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: New Hampshire fit that quite a bit. I expect one
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: or maybe all three of them, when or if the
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: Republican Party pulls back from its nationalist direction that Trump
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: has taken it, then I could expect those three states
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: perhaps to become a tad more competitive again. But I'm
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: still just curious, right? And I'm interested in those Democratic
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: primaries that will tell us just how intense is this
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: fight from the left? Is there another sign of this
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: progressive socialist adjacent energy that we've seen in some places?
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: Does it show up in New Hampshire? Obviously, that matters
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: not just in these set of primaries, but it matters
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: for 2028 because New Hampshire is always one of the
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: more important settings for presidential primary politics. And just how
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: bad is this establishment hangover? I don't expect Chris Pappas,
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: the sitting member of Congress, who's essentially the agreed upon
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: heir apparent there to Gene Shaheen, who's decided to retire.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: I don't expect Pappas to lose the primary, but what's
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  Speaker 1: the margin? Who turns out, right? That's interesting. So let's
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: see some votes and then we're going to be done.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: We'll have the nominees and the rest of the fall campaign, uh, begins.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: We have now less than 60 days till election day.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: So simple question that I get asked now every day
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: by somebody in my life. Sometimes it's family. Sometimes it's friends.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: Sometimes it's people I haven't heard from in about, uh, oh,
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: two years since the last election season. And it's the
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: simple question of where do things stand? Where's this headed?
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: Is there going to be a blue wave? So I
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: think it's pretty simple. My answer is Democrats are ahead.
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  Speaker 1: We've spent enough time going through the primary turnout numbers
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: on my last episode of the podcast that I don't
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: need to spend another 20 minutes on that today. The
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: question I have on Labor Day isn't whether this is
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: going to be a Democratic-leaning environment going into November. I
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: think we've established that. The question is how big of
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: a democratic advantage is this environment going to have? And
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: as I look at the map right now, I think
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: there are three plausible outcomes that we should be preparing for.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: And I'm going to put them in the most pithy
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: way I can. You've heard me say this before, I
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: think in a few other places that I've either hosted,
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: like over on Newsphere, or just participated in, like a
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: over on CNN, which is blue mirage, blue wave, blue tsunami. Essentially,
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: small Democratic advantage, medium Democratic advantage, large Democratic advantage. These
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: aren't simply different guesses at how many House seats Democrats win.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: They're different electorates. And that's what I want to go
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: through today. The different turnout models, their different answers to
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: the question of what happens to the Trump coalition when
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump isn't on the ballot. And look, these three
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: potential outcomes, which I think are really the only outcomes
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: we're dealing with here, could produce three very different Congresses.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: So let me start with the smallest one. the blue mirage.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: And I think blue mirage, I put it about a 15%
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: chance of this being a blue mirage. So let me
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: define what I mean by blue mirage. A blue mirage
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: means we spent the entire year correctly identifying a democratic
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: leaning political environment and then watched it produce surprisingly small
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: democratic advantages, right? A blue mirage may still show that
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: the democratic enthusiasm advantage was real, that the primary turnout
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: advantage was real, that the unhappiness with Trump was real.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: But Democrats, in a blue mirage scenario, it would mean
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: that they couldn't convert enough of that into actual seat gains.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: And remember the House math here. Democrats need just a
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: net gain of three seats to get to 218.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: Three. That's it.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: So in a blue mirage, they're probably going to win
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: the House. Right? Just like in the Republicans' red mirage
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: of 22. Maybe they get four or five. Maybe it's
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: seven or eight. But it's probably under 10. Right? So
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: it's not a 2018 style House result like we saw
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: in the Trump first term. It's much closer to what
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: Republicans did in 2022. Just enough movement to take control, right?
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: But nowhere close to what you would have expected if
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: you'd simply looked at the national political environment. And the
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: Senate is where you will really see if this is
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: a mirage, right? Maybe North Carolina still comes in, but
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: Ohio doesn't. Alaska doesn't. Texas doesn't. And maybe Maine is
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: a coin flip. And then maybe Democrats, they could win
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: or lose Michigan in this scenario, but it probably is
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: keeping them up at night. And it's probably been a
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: race that they've been on defense of the whole time.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: So you could end up with a scenario where Democrats
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: essentially pick up a net of two Senate seats at best.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: Maybe they win three Republican seats and lose Michigan, but
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: the net is two. So the question would be, if
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: we end up in a blue mirage scenario, what's the explanation?
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: How would it have happened? Well, there are a few
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: ways we could get a blue mirage. The first is
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: simply the map. We spent the last year watching this
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: extraordinary mid-decade redistricting arms race. Republicans went into it understanding
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: that they might be facing a difficult, national environment for
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: the midterms. They tried to build themselves a higher flood wall,
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: if you will. In fact, we just got another court
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: case last week that actually muddied things up. We have
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: a new asterisk on the map. It's Missouri. Missouri Supreme
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: Court ruled unanimously over late last week that the Republican-drawn
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: congressional map cannot be used this November because a referendum
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: petition suspended it. So now the old map from the
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: 2022 that was used in 2024 but drawn in 2022
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: remains in effect unless something changes. The state is now
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: asking the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene. It's kind of
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: complicated here, actually, in Missouri because If they're going to
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: throw out these lines, they held primaries based on the
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: new lines. They didn't hold primaries based on the old lines.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: So you're really just assigning these nominees who won in
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: the new lines. I mean, this is a total and
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: complete mess, but it's a mess because the state elected
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: officials who just wanted a partisan outcome here didn't, you know,
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: went out of their way not to follow the law
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: in this referendum. And they seemed to they were hoping
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: essentially to run out the clock. And they would just
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: sort of jam this through and hope that even if
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: the courts ruled that it was unconstitutional, then they would
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: be forced to have a special election, which I still
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: think is going to end up happening in some form. Look,
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: I'm very curious what the U.S. Supreme Court does in
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: this one, because normally they stay out of– if the
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: state Supreme Court rules unanimously and they're the ones interpreting
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: the state constitution– The U.S. Supreme Court's not going to
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: get involved here. So I don't think they're going to.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: But I think there's all sorts of, you know, voters
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: could bring a lot. Anyway, Missouri is now a total
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: and complete mess. But if they use the old lines,
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: it adds a Democratic seat in Kansas City and probably
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: puts a Republican seat in the suburbs of St. Louis
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: in much more jeopardy, the Ann Wagner seat there. which
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: actually used to be Dick Kephart's old seat, if you're
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: keeping score at home. So we shall see, but here
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: we are on Labor Day weekend, and remarkably, there's still
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: at least one piece of the congressional map that has
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: a fricking asterisk to it. Heck of a job, Republican Party,
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: for starting this mess. And I know the Republicans say, oh,
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: the Democrats started it in New York a cycle before.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: I am not gonna sit here and litigate who started
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: the redistricting wars, okay? But I can tell you these
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: map wars have all, this all goes back to Tom DeLay.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: So if you really want to keep coming back and
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: you want an honest referee, not a Big Ten official,
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: but an honest referee, hint, hint, where I'm going later
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: in college football. If you want honest refereeing about this topic,
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: in the 21st century, this has been a Republican phenomenon.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: In the 20th century, it was a Democratic Party phenomenon.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: So every party has dirty hands on this. But this
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: most recent effort has been a focal point of Republicans.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: So let's see what happens. But it's a big structural piece.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: And here we are less than 60 days. And we
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: don't know. Voters in Missouri don't know what congressional lines
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: they're going to be voting. But there's another one that
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: I think is much more important. Look, the maps have
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: mattered to sort of strengthen that Republicans were trying to
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: essentially build their flood, their sort of flood wall higher, right,
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: to see if they could, you know, overcome the surge
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: that comes with a potential dominant blue wave. So, but
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: the bigger, more important point on this, if there is
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: a blue mirage, the explanation is going to be money,
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: because this is a very different financial environment from the
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: last couple of midterms. Democrats became accustomed in the early,
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: and particularly in Trump one, 2018, and again in 2022,
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: of having a significant financial advantage, particularly at the candidate level,
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: candidate to candidate fundraising. Democrats much better at raising what
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: are so-called hard dollars, meaning direct contributions from people into
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: the campaign itself, not super PAC money, not those dark
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: money or anything like that. And what a lot of
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: people don't know, that money You know, the more hard
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: dollars you have, the greater the discount the advertising is.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: So it really has allowed that even though Republicans continue
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: to have bigger donors contribute to their various campaign committees,
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: having that advantage on a candidate level has allowed them
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: to mitigate that and in some places have actually a
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: TV advertising advantage, even if they were technically outspent. just
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: because their dollars essentially went further based on the law. Now,
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: of course, there's that Supreme Court ruling that's going to
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: allow somehow political parties that are coordinating with their candidates
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: get those same low rates. So it may allow some
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: of this dark money to seep into this. And it's
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: a reason why I think Republicans are dealing in a
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: different environment this time that gives them a bit of
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: an advantage. So So look, it's not the financial environment
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: that Democrats had that was essentially advantageous to them in
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: 18 and 22. It's not here this time. And it's
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: not because the Republicans have somehow suddenly built a Democratic-style
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: small donor machine. The Democratic small donor machine is still there.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: But what the Republicans have done is make up for
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: it with some just absolutely enormous checks, particularly from two worlds,
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: tech and crypto. When you look at the money that's
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: sitting out there, MAGA, Inc., right, has more than $ 400 million,
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: primarily from tech and crypto. Senate Leadership Fund, $ 240 million.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: Congressional Leadership Fund, which is the House super PAC. The
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: Senate Leadership Fund should be obvious what that is. But
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: the Congressional Leadership Fund is the House super PAC. They
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: have roughly $ 140 million. And then you start going through
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: the dark money groups. You go through the individual donors,
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: the tech billionaires, the crypto money. The checks are enormous. Literally,
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: the Democrats have George Soros. The Republicans have like 17
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: people giving the same amount of Soros. So and it's
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: it's kind of why I think the Republican Soros arguments
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: kind of land flat, super flat these days outside of
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: the super right wing base, because, frankly, it's Republicans that
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: are the party of these big billionaires now. And it's
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: something that I think a lot of Republican candidates are
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: nervous about. So this is becoming one of the great
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: counterfactuals of the 26th election. Can Republicans spend their way
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: around a bad political environment? Notice what I said there,
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: not change the environment. Essentially, you can't buy a new
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: national move, but you can save a candidate in Ohio,
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: and maybe you can save one in Alaska. Maybe you
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: keep Texas from totally getting away from the GOP. Maybe
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: there are four to six House members who otherwise would
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: have gotten swept out that you can save. That's all
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: you need to go from wave to mirage here. And
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: what are they going to spend all that money on saying?
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: I think there's going to be two basic messages that
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: they're going to have. One is they're going to try
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: to do whatever they can to get the MAGA vote
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: to turn out. And we'll see. And two, they're going
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: to try to make independent voters nervous about Democrats. And
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: that's where we get to the third ingredient in the
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: blue mirage, the Democratic brand. This is still an unpopular
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: political party. And that's important to remember here, because sometimes
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: I think people look at Trump's numbers and assume that
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: every voter who is unhappy with Trump has therefore become
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: enthusiastic about getting the Democrats as the counter. Those aren't
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: the same thing. Pew found this spring that 59% of
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: Americans had an unfavorable view of the Democratic Party.
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: 59.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: The Republican Party was basically in the same place. 58%.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: So somehow Donald Trump's enormously unpopular, but the Republicans and
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: the Democrats are viewed almost identically unfavorably. There's no advantage
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: that the Democrats have. That's not the way things were, right?
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: It's quite different from 2018. The Democratic brand was considerably
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: healthier heading into that election cycle. And that's the openings
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: Republicans have for this one. Take all this money, spend
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: September and October saying, OK, you're angry at us. We
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: get it. But do you really want them, the socialists, DSA?
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: Do you want a rising crime again, immigration chaos at
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: the border? You know, throw in the whatever cultural issue
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: that they believe will simultaneously scare an independent and motivate
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: a MAGA voter. Maybe it's trans women in sports. I
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: don't know. And if that works just enough, doesn't have
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: to work a lot, but just enough, suddenly a Democratic
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: year produces a small Democratic result. The blue mirage. Maybe
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: one or two Senate seat gains, maybe five to 10
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: House seat gains. Yes, they get the speakership, but it
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: ain't governable. And they probably have a Democratic House that
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: starts behaving like the Republican House we've seen now. Hey,
• 21:26
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  Speaker 1: rating was as of August of 2026. Now let's get
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: to the second possibility. The blue wave. This is the
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: easiest one to define. Basically, the political environment we're seeing
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: right now is real and it translates. The turnout advantage
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: that we've talked about is real, and it translates. Independents
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: really are moving away from Republicans. And a meaningful chunk
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: of the Trump electorate doesn't show up when Trump isn't
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: actually on the ballot. This is where I think 2006
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: is probably a useful comparison here. People remember 2006 as
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: this giant Democratic wave, and it was in races that
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: were won. Democrats won the House by winning elections. 40 seats.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: They won the Senate by winning six seats. But here's
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: the thing about waves. They don't always necessarily mean that
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: everybody wins by double digits in each individual race. A
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: wave can be a whole bunch of close races that
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: all break in the same direction. Karl Rove, almost sounding
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: like Kevin Bacon in the end of Animal House, you know,
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: remain calm all as well. I remember Karl Rove making
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: this argument right after the 2006 results. essentially pointing out
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: how relatively few votes distributed differently across a collection of
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: about six Senate races and about 15 House races could
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: have changed the outcome. Now, Roe's point at the time
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: was extraordinarily defensive. He was trying to prove this wasn't
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: a full rebuke. I think given what happened in 2008,
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: it was a full rebuke, Carl. And I think he
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: knows that now. But at the time, that was what
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: he was arguing, and the numbers backed him up a
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: little bit.
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: He was just desperate to get people, don't overread the election.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: This doesn't mean that we're in the middle of some realignment.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: We were in the middle of some realignment, but I digress.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: But I do think that Nugget actually tells us something
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: important about what a wave can look like. The close
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: races stop behaving like individual races. That's what happens in
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: wave environments, right? They start behaving like a national election.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: Just all, it's almost like a school of fish. Everybody's
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: swimming together. There's no, it's really hard to sort of
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: get away from the school of fish swimming around. That's
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: a wave. So what would that mean? What would a
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: blue wave mean? Translated into this election cycle, North Carolina
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: comes in, Ohio comes in for the Democrats, Maine comes in,
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: they hold Michigan, and they probably win both Alaska and Texas,
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: or at least one of the two. In the House,
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: you look at places where Democrats have been competitive before,
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: places that they were very competitive in in 12, 14,
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: and 16. Whether Democrats won them or lost them, right?
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: But they were competitive. Well, those places start to come back.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: You'll get an early test in Virginia, not just in
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: the Virginia Beach swing district that always seems to go
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: with whichever direction the wind's blowing, but also the first
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: congressional district, which is suddenly getting more, or even the
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: fifth congressional district, which have pieces of Charlottesville in it.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: So in a wave, isn't Democrats splitting the genuinely competitive
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: seats out there? A wave means they win most of them, right?
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: Like take Iowa.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: You're not just taking one of the three targets. You're
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: probably winning two of the three, and maybe you win
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: all three. Those Texas House seats that were drawn because
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: Republicans thought they'd win over the Latino vote, those all
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: probably stay blue or go blue. California and their remap
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: ends up benefiting the Democrats, right? This is the Max
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: Millers of the world don't survive in a blue wave environment.
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: It's not Democrats winning in places where Democrats have no
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: business winning, though. That's going to be in my next category,
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: and I'm going to get to that. But a wave
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: is Democrats winning virtually everything that was reasonably available to
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: them to win. That's why I'm pretty fascinated by the
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: Republican midterm convention in Dallas later this week, because I
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: think we're about to see the Republican answer to what
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: they think, at least what they think the answer is
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: to what is going to be a turnout problem. They
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: have one, right? We've seen it in the primaries. Republican
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: voters are not showing up. So we know what the
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: focus of this convention is going to be about. This
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: is the first ever Republican midterm convention. Trump is speaking
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: twice on two nights. J.D. Vance is speaking. You have
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: most of the sort of Republican leadership that's not in
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: too much of a swing area showing up. Doesn't appear
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: Thune is showing up, but I'm curious. I don't want
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: to assume who's going and not going for sure. Let's
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: get the actual attendance. Yeah. But I'm not surprised that
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: Ken Paxton is scheduled to speak. I am a little
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: surprised that a Mike Rogers out of Michigan wants to go.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: I'm a little surprised that John Husted out of Ohio
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: is going. Again, let's see what they say when they speak,
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: because I think the intention of this convention is pretty obvious.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: Let's fire up the base. I promise you, this convention
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: is not going to be geared towards swing voters, which
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: is why I question why some of the swing state
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: Senate Republican nominees are showing up there or because Who
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: are you talking to? I know you do need both
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: swing voters and the base to turn up, which is
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: probably the trap that's, I think, impossible for many Republicans
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: to navigate. If you need Trump's base to turn out,
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: what it takes to get them to turn out is
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: going to turn off those swing voters that you need.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: And so in some ways, you need to let Trump
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: deal with your turnout problem, and you should only deal
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: with the swing voter problem. But some of these– Guys
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: feel as if that Trump is, we know the way
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: Trump behaves. He doesn't give anybody a pass unless they're
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: Susan Collins. And he's going to feel if you don't
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: come kiss the ring, he's not going to come help you.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: But I do question who's the persuadable independent sitting at
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: home on a Wednesday and a Thursday night thinking, you
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: know what I really want to watch tonight? A political convention.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: Not when there are two NFL games on. So look,
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: they're not going to be speaking, even if they wanted
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: to speak to independents, They couldn't have scheduled this on
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: two worse nights to talk to independent voters. They're not.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: This is all about one of two things, making Trump
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: feel better that he's relevant and important, but two, seeing
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: if they can do anything to get this MAGA base
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: to show up. So this is a base event. And
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: I suspect we're going to get a lot of culture
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: war stuff, a lot of fear of the left, a
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: lot of socialism and communism talking points, a lot of
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: whatever they think reminds the Trump voter, why he or
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: she needs to show up even though Trump isn't on
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: the ballot. So it's going to be interesting. I'm quite
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: curious to see if any Republicans attempt to counter program, right?
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: Some of them, I mean, we know, look, Susan Collins
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: knows she can't go. I mean, it would be a
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: death sentence for her politically if she showed up there.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: But everybody that is in these sort of marginal Harris
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: districts or districts that Biden carried that maybe Trump won back,
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: but or Harris came awfully close. None of them are going.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: Zach Nunn from Des Moines District. He says he's staying
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: in his district. Juan Siscamani. who's already got a tough
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: fight in Arizona. He says he has a debate and
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: he's going to miss it. So Politico surveyed 70 Republican
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: candidates and found 45 either weren't planning to attend or
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: hadn't decided. So I am very curious what kind, is
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: Trump going to punish anybody that doesn't come? So I
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: am very curious who shows up and it'll be interesting
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: and we'll hopefully have a roll call of stuff later
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: in the week. But There are really two different questions
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: for Republican candidates this fall. Do you want Donald Trump
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: and do you want Donald Trump's voters, right? Those aren't
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: necessarily the same answer. And the whole Republican midterm strategy
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: may depend on figuring out how to get the second
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: without creating problems for some candidates with the first, right?
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: And Trump has another problem. He's better politically when he's
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: the counterpuncher, when he's got somebody or something to run against,
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: when he gets to be the outsider. When voters want
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: change and he's the available vehicle for change. That's how
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: he's won his elections. That's how he's been most effective.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: But when he's been the incumbent, he's been terrible at this.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: See 2018? See 2020, right? Now he's having to defend
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: the status quo. And that means Republican candidates have to
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: defend what's happening. Take a wrong. J.D. Vance's messaging on
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: Friday was just horrendous, right? For anybody who has to
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: campaign on this. He's debating whether we should call it
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: a war. Donald Trump throws in that the troops that
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: have been killed in this war, because it's less than 50,
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: it's somehow small potatoes. Who the hell says that about
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: somebody who served in uniform? Imagine the outrage on the
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: right had a Democrat said anything remotely close to this.
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: I know Trump is graded on a curve with his
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: own voters sometimes, and the lack of outrage and the
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: hypocrisy of it might start to have start to wear
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: down on independent voters who are just exhausted from just
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: this constant BSing that comes from that side of the aisle.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: But we're going to debate calling it a war. He's
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: talking about that there being no active shooting while the
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: United States actually engaged militarily with Iran within the same
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: news cycle that Vance said that head-scratching thing. So forget
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: the semantics debate here about whether is this a war
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: or not. Imagine you're a Republican candidate at a state
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: fair this weekend. And somebody asks you, are we at war?
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: When does it end? Why did gas prices go up?
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: What's the answer? It's an incumbent problem, right? And somehow J.D.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: Vance is trying to claim, well, it's not as bad
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: as it could be. It's not really a war. I'm
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: not sure if it's going to be an end, but
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: it's not fair to call it. Okay, brother. Good luck
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: with that. All I know is that when you were
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: on the other side, anybody, Any Democratic president that launched
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: any sort of military excursion, even for 10 minutes, was
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: contributing to the forever war. So what is this, Mr.
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: Vice President? Then there's the economy and affordability. And then,
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: of course, there's the issue that listeners to this podcast
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: know I've spent a lot of time talking about data centers.
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: I feel like that I've been an early warning system
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: for some of you on this issue. And now you're
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: seeing it everywhere, right? This is no longer a sleeper issue.
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: It is a real political problem because AI sounds abstract,
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: but a data center in your community raising your electric bill,
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: that's not abstract, right? Water isn't abstract. Some gigantic facility
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: appearing down the road isn't an abstract idea. What's particularly
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: interesting to me now is how you're beginning to see
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: Republicans responding to the same anger. And that's when you
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: know an issue has crossed over And why I think
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: Republicans have a harder time on this issue, even though
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: they think if they just flip on it, they can
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: mitigate the damage with independent voters. I'm not so sure.
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: But you do know it's a lethal issue when politicians
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: from the other party start feeling like they have to
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: get on your side of an argument because their own
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: voters are telling them the same thing. Look at Ohio
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: and Texas in particular. This isn't simply a Democratic talking
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: point anymore. This gives Democrats another way to make this
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: election about affordability, right? Groceries, housing, gas, electricity, right? Groceries
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: and housing all directly with Trump's terrible tariff policy. Gasoline,
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: this war of choice with Iran, electricity, his decision to
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: essentially look the other way and let the tech companies
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: do whatever the hell they want, right? It is not
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: hard to connect all those things very quickly. It's a
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: pretty potent basket. Now, Democrats have their own problem in
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: a wave scenario too. And it's a question that I've
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: been wondering about, which is what are they offering? I
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: understand why Democratic leaders have been reluctant to put out
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: some grand agenda, a contract with America, a six for six,
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: which is what they put out in 2006. Part of
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: it might be strategic, right? Why give Republicans something to
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: campaign against or to shoot at when the election is
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: currently a referendum on the party in power, right? Don't
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: get in the way of that messaging. Perfectly reasonable strategy.
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: But I also think there's another reason they won't put
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: anything out on paper. An agenda could divide Democrats themselves, right?
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: Put 10 things on a piece of paper and suddenly
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: the fight isn't Democrats versus Republicans anymore. It's Democrats arguing
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: over which five things belong on the paper and which
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: should be discarded, right? So I get the hesitation. My God,
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: look what happened to Jeffries for just having a conversation
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: with Kushner, right? He is, and look at the ridiculous
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: response to Jared Golden and Marie Glusenkamp-Perez because they wanted
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: to get a bill that Jared Golden cared about to
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: the floor for a vote. It just shows you, right,
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: Jeffries is no Pelosi here. He doesn't have Pelosi. Now,
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: Pelosi had 20 years to sort of earn the right
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: to essentially put members in their place if necessary, cut
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: deals with them, whatever it is. Jeffries does not have
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: that kind of pull or hold over the caucus. And
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: I don't know if anybody could. in his defense. But
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: you're seeing, right, if he offered up something, it might
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: make his challenge even greater. I'm half convinced he's going
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: to be calling Kevin McCarthy for therapy tips if he
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: ends up speaker at our blue mirage scenario, but I digress.
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: But there's a risk by not putting on an agenda
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: and Democrats, and here's the risk. Eventually, you're asking independents
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: not merely to fire somebody, You're asking them to hire
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: somebody else. And don't you need to give them something
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: to make them feel comfortable? Maybe I'm wrong here. And
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: maybe they don't. And sometimes wave elections, right, work that well.
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: It's 74 Democrats. They just simply said, not Nixon, right?
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: And that was enough. Now let's talk blue tsunami. I'm
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: guessing it's the headline that got some of you here.
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: That's the third possibility. And it's not remote. If I've
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: got Blue Mirage and a– I really– of my three scenarios,
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: Blue Mirage, Blue Wave, Blue Tsunami, Blue Tsunami is not
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: the least likely. Blue Mirage is the least likely. I
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: think Blue Wave is the most likely. So if I'm
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: going to put them in sort of percentages, right, of
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: my pie, I think 15% chance it's Blue Mirage. About
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: a 50% chance it's Blue Wave where they win both houses.
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: And I don't think you can call it a wave
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: if they don't win both the House and the Senate.
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: And then Blue Tsunami. So let's get to the blue tsunami.
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: I think it's in the one in three range, so
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: 30 to 35%. So how do I define tsunami? Easy.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: We're suddenly talking about races we weren't supposed to be
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: talking about. It's as simple as that. A wave means
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: Democrats win almost everything that was reasonably available. Tsunami means
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: the definition of reasonably available changed. Now we're talking about Kansas.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's a sweep of both governor and Senate there.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: Now we're talking about Nebraska, maybe the independent candidates in Nebraska,
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: South Dakota, Montana, one of One or two of them
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: come in. Maybe we're talking about South Carolina or Mississippi
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: because a supercharged black vote combined with a tepid MAGA
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: turnout is a recipe for an upset in one of
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: those two, if not both of those southern states. And
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: we're not talking about Texas Senate anymore. That's table stakes.
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: In a tsunami, Texas Senate is no longer the interesting question.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: The interesting question becomes Texas governor. Is that a coin
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: flip on election night? That means we're in tsunami territory.
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: Is Florida governor uncalled at 10 p.m. because it's that close,
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: a la 2018? That's tsunami territory. Do Democrats win all
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: of the races in Iowa, the three House seats, Senate
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: and governor? That's tsunami. Are there places that right now
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: during Labor Day weekend, everybody looked at and said, come on,
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: that's not happening. I'm looking at you, South Dakota Senate,
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: looking at you, Kansas Senate. And on election night, we're
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: sitting there waiting for the returns and going, Jesus, we
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: haven't gotten everything in from Wichita. We need to wait
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: for Wichita before we could call Kansas, right? If we're
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: having that conversation, we're in a tsunami. And the turnout
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: recipe is pretty simple. Supercharged Democratic turnout. independents breaking heavily
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: for the Democrats, and MAGA staying home. All three of
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: those have to hit. You get all three at extraordinary levels.
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: And that's how the map expands beyond the places that
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: we're currently spending most of our time on, like Ohio
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: and Texas. and Michigan, and Alaska. That's the competitive landscape.
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: That's the 35 to 35 yard landscape. Blue tsunami means
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: we're talking Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, Mississippi, South Carolina, something
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: like that. Kansas Gov, Iowa Gov. Total sweeps in Texas
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: and Ohio for the Democrats in Senate and Gov. So,
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: if If this scenario is happening, what else has to happen? Well,
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: I think something else does have to happen to get
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: a tsunami beyond those three things I sketched out. The
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: corruption issue has to break through. You know, it's interesting here.
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: We've been waiting. I think corruption is sort of underneath
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: all of this, right? Trump's almost daily corruption, right? The
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: paying for, you know, pardons are for sale. It's just
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: sort of matter of fact, right? Everybody kind of knows
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: the government's for sale and this is what he does.
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: And there's really no pushback on it. And for Trump,
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: it's a feature, right? The reason he likes tariffs is
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: not because he's a protectionist. The reason he likes tariffs
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: is because he can use it to either coerce people
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: to do his bidding for different reasons, or he makes
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: money off of giving them relief. Pure and simple. It's
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: no different than Tony Soprano. But- for the tsunami to happen,
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: I do think corruption has to become closer to being
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: a top three issue. Now, weirdly enough, data centers may
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: be the most tangible way into the corruption argument, right?
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: How have the Republicans become the sort of the party
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: of data centers? Because tech decided to buy off the
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: Republicans all over the country. They wanted to buy regulatory
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: certainty or regulatory capture, uh, By the way, some Republicans
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: have been uncomfortable with this. I want to shout out
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, one of the few
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: people to push back on this White House. No, no, no, no.
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: States shouldn't be involved in all of this. We've got
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: to have light regulation on these guys. There have been
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: some Republicans who realize that's not going to fly with
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: most of the public. But there's a lot of money
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: to be raised if you do it that way. And
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: tech decided, and this is, I think, the strategic mistake
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: big tech made is, They thought capturing politicians were going
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: to get them what they wanted. I don't think they've,
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: you know, they just completely ignored the electorate backlash here, right?
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know what sucks about this is that
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: basically the tech industry, I'm looking at you, Elon Musk
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: and Mark Andreessen and Peter Thiel in particular, you've already
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: come to the conclusion that the voters are meaningless in
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: this project of yours. I can't tell you how freaking
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: insulting that is. You went to the politicians to buy
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: them off rather than going to the public to make
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: your case. And the public is telling you, fuck off
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: right now. They're that pissed off about this. And it's
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: all because of how you went about it. Politicians, yeah,
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: they're easy marks. They're always, you just wave around $ 100, 000
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: and yeah, you're going to get a whole bunch of
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: politicians and you're going to be able to capture a
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: whole bunch of politicians. But if you looked at how
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: unpopular politicians are, did you really think capturing politicians and
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: capturing the regulatory was somehow going to appease the public? Oh, boy.
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: And maybe you think, well, we're getting what we want
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: regardless of how unpopular we are. I'm not sure. Let
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: me know what you think of those subpoenas when they
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: start coming in, Mr. Thiel, Mr. Andreessen, all of these folks.
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: All of these folks. But I digress. It's been an
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: enormous amount of tech money coming into politics, right? Crypto money,
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: the same thing, right? The Genius Act was for sale.
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: pure and simple. So this is why I think the
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: data center issue gets, potentially gets the corruption issue closer
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: to the top of voters' minds. Because you can, you know,
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: corruption hits a lot harder if you can connect it
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: to your problems at the moment. And those guys are
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: doing that. And I'm paying more in electricity. Well, the
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: That MF-er just raised pocketed a million dollars and his
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: son or daughter suddenly gets to run their own crypto exchange.
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: Are you shitting me? That's what happens, right? And so
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: this is, I think, the ingredient that's been missing so far.
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: I have not seen a coherent corruption message yet that
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: I think is broken through. Now, part of it may
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: be you're just never gonna break through as well as
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: the pocketbook issues are breaking through. And I think that's
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: a fair point. But the ability to connect all these
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: dots is sitting right there. Right? And I think that's
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: something that's just waiting to be... It's a fuse. That's
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: your prairie populist wildfire there. And it's how a corruption
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: narrative develops. It makes the abstract more tangible. Tangible. This
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  Speaker 1: you can also call 1-877-770-7867 if you're in Louisiana. And
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  Speaker 1: then once voters start viewing an administration through that lens,
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: then all the other ridiculous stuff begins looking really bad too, right?
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: Naming everything after yourself, the arch, right? He's more worried
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: about monuments to himself than lowering the cost of ground
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: beef in your grocery bill, right? All the self-serving stuff.
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: All of these things that individually can look silly or
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: narcissistic suddenly become part of a larger story that voters
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: tell themselves. These people are in it for themselves. That's
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: when that issue becomes more politically dangerous. And it's one
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: of the things I'm going to be watching. If we're
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: trying to distinguish wave from tsunami, I think it's corruption.
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: It's about whether corruption actually becomes a voting issue, not
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: just something that pops when you ask it in a poll,
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: but something that is volunteered from a voter before you
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: even have to ask them. Because if it does, now
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: you've got affordability dissatisfaction with the president, the war, democratic enthusiasm,
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: independent movement, and a corruption narrative all reinforcing each other.
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: That's how you would get beyond a normal wave, right?
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: That's Watergate 74 shit. But there are a lot of
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: reasons to be cautious about this outcome as well. The
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: Democratic brand problem doesn't magically disappear. The ideological fights don't disappear.
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: And Republicans are going to spend enormous amount of money
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: making sure voters know about every Democrat they can associate
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: with socialism, DSA, or whatever else tests best. So the
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: question is whether independent voters are as frightened by that
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: argument as Republicans hope. And I'm not sure that they're
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: going to be easy to convince on this issue. Remember
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: why Donald Trump became possible in the first place? A
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: lot of voters were willing to experiment because they were
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: so fed up with those that were in charge. They
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: were so fed up with the current trajectory of things.
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: They wanted something different, even if it was risky. They
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: didn't particularly care that the establishment told them this was risky.
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump's risky. So perhaps an independent voter looks at
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: Democrats fighting over their future and says, oh my God, socialism.
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: But perhaps some look at it and say, huh, At
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: least they're arguing about something different. That is one of
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: the big unknowns of the next 60 days, right, is
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: whether the attacks on the Democrats for having these different views,
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: what if it's not the negative that Republicans think?
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: It is?
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: In the same way that all the arguments that Democrats
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: made in 16 and 24 about Trump, he's all these risks. Well,
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: to the voter that wants change, change is risky. And
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: the risk may, and change may be so worth it,
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: you're willing to take a risk. Republicans have won this way.
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: They could very well lose this way. So what am
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: I watching? That's the board as I see it on
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: Labor Day. Blue Mirage, 15%. Blue Wave, 50%. Blue Tsunami, 35%.
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: And what's useful about setting it up this way is
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: that now we have something to watch against for the
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: next two months. We'll start this week. New Hampshire, forget
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: the polls for a second. Show me turnout. Then we
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: have that midterm convention. Watch the convention. Who shows up?
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: Which candidates do? Who intentionally doesn't show up and makes
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: a big deal that they didn't go, right? Because they
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: want voters to know they didn't go. Who gets the
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: microphone and what do they say? Which Senate candidates do
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: want to get caught standing next to Donald Trump? It
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: tells you they have more of a base problem than
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: a swing voter problem, right? And which ones want to
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: be 1,500 miles away? And most importantly, what is the
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: message coming out of there? How culture-worry is it? Is
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: this essentially two nights of trying to scare the bejesus
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: out of the Trump coalition into voting in a midterm?
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: If it is, that's telling us something about Republicans themselves
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: think their problem is. Then you get to watch the money.
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: Republicans have a lot of it. We're going to find
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: out what they can actually do with it. Does that
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: money change the shape of the electorate? Can it turn
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: out MAGA voters who don't normally vote in midterms? Can
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: it make independents who are unhappy with Republicans just nervous
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: enough about Democrats that some of them don't make the leap?
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: Does it save two Senate seats? Does it save six
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: House seats? Because remember, that's all it may take to
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: turn what feels like a wave into a mirage. Then
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: watch the affordability issue, not simply the economic numbers that
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: Washington likes to talk about. But what are voters actually
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: talking about? Groceries, housing, gas, electricity. And then watch the
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: data center issue. How much more does it become part
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: of the conversation? Does it get connected to corruption? Because
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: if I'm right about this issue, it's not only not
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: going away over the next 60 days, it's likely to
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: continue to get bigger, right? because we're still nervous about
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: this whole AI transformation we're in. And then we'll watch independents.
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: This is ultimately where I think we're going to find
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: the answer. An independent voter whose voters, are they just
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: simply unhappy with Trump? Or have they decided, and they're
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: so unhappy, they've decided to vote Democratic? Those are two
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: different things. If they're unhappy with Trump, but skeptical enough
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: of Democrats that they split their tickets, stay home, or
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: come back to Republicans after $ 500 million worth of advertising
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: that scares them, about socialists, that's how you get a
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: blue mirage. If they break towards Democrats in the places
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: where Democrats are already competitive, they help accelerate the wave.
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: And if they break decisively enough that we're suddenly talking
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: about races we weren't talking about on Labor Day, there's
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: your tsunami. And then we have to watch MAGA. Because
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: I keep coming back to this. Donald Trump has demonstrated
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: an extraordinary ability to turn out people for Donald Trump.
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: What he's never demonstrated as consistently as an ability to
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: turn those people out when he's not on the ballot.
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: And that's the experiment Republicans are running one more time.
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: They have the money. They have the messenger to talk
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: to those voters and Trump, right? They don't listen to
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: anybody else. They're trying this convention. So we'll see. If
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: they succeed, this election could look a lot smaller than
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: the underlying political environment suggests. And if they don't, it
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: means no amount of money could have stopped this wave.
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: That's how unpopular Trump has become. And in a second
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: term sometimes, That's a bigger deal. No amount of money
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: can save you. So that's why I think these are
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: the three easiest categories to understand. Blue Mirage, Blue Wave,
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: Blue Tsunami. I'm not trying to tell you on Labor
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: Day exactly how many House seats Democrats are going to win.
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: And I'm not trying to tell you exactly what I
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: think the Senate number is going to be. In fact,
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: the war could change in the next 60 days, right?
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: We know that. What could happen in 60 days? Perhaps
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: the Strait is actually truly open before Election Day. Maybe
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: the price of diesel meaningfully drops in the last two
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: weeks of October. Maybe. Can the economy itself change that much?
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: Maybe the price of gas. I don't know about the
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: price of ground reef. The tariffs are still everywhere, right?
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: Candidates can make mistakes, too. There'll be some debates, not
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: as many as we're used to. And there'll be scandals
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: we haven't heard of yet. And then who knows? Like
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: we found out in Missouri, we could have one more
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: court case that we hadn't thought about that screws up
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: a map one more time. But I do think we
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: know what the three likely outcomes are. It's small, medium,
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: or large. That's where I think we are in Labor Day.
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: And beginning Tuesday, we get one final little bit of
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: evidence out of New Hampshire. I think I want to
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: learn something there. And I think there's something to learn,
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: as I've said. But the sprint is on. And we're
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: going to spend the next 60 days figuring out which
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: of these three elections we're actually living through. And we'll
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: get deeper into some of these races. I'll give you
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: specific house races to watch that are Mirage candidates, Wave candidates,
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: and Tsunami candidates. It's going to be a fun 60
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: days if you're a political junkie. But if you care
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: about the direction of the country, it's going to be
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: an anxiety-filled 60 days, no matter which side of the
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: aisle that you're on.
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: Before I get into my quick college football stuff, And
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: before I leave the Senate board entirely, I do have
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: one more question. Call it my coda to this. And
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: it's about a Senate seat that isn't even on the ballot. Pennsylvania.
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: I'm sure many of you have already at least read excerpts,
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: if not the entire Wall Street Journal reporting on John
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: Fetterman this weekend. And boy, is it a story. Frankly,
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: it's a story of a senator whose staff has decided
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: he doesn't even want to do the job anymore. That
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: for whatever reason, maybe it's health issues, maybe it's laziness.
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: We don't know the answer. He's just not doing the job.
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: And this entire Wall Street Journal story is a reminder.
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: It's his staff that every one of those anecdotes had
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: to come from inside. The call came from inside the house, right?
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: They talked to more than a dozen former staffers. They
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: reviewed internal messages and the text messages were just terrible.
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: You know, funeral was too long to stand through, things
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: like that. And obviously, Fetterman's angry. And he said, you know,
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: these are, you know, different staffers. So I'm reading this
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: thing and I'm reading his response to it. And, you know,
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: here we are. I spent an entire hour here giving
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: you these different scenarios. And I've been messing around with
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: the Senate math a lot. How do the Democrats get
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: to 50 or 51 seats? You know, what's the firewall seat?
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: You know, Michigan, et cetera. What's the pickup? And then
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: I'm now asking myself a question that isn't actually on
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: anybody's Senate map. Is John Fetterman going to be a
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: Democrat on January 3rd, 2027, the day the new Congress
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: is set to be sworn in?
• 56:37
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: And by the way, he could leave the Democratic Party,
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: stay an independent and still caucus with the Democrats. Or
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: he could leave the Democratic Party, become an independent and
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: decide to caucus with the Republicans. Or maybe he doesn't
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: caucus with either party. But he denied, you know, and
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: who knows, does it still give the, you know, we
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: don't know what the math is. But Fetterman has become
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: now one of the Democratic Party's most persistent internal critics.
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: The base of the party hates him. Hell, moderate Democrats,
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: every Pennsylvania Democrat seems to be angry with him. He's
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: repeatedly now broken with the party on major issues. And
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: this new reporting paints a picture of somebody increasingly detached
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: from the institution and increasingly alienated from his own Senate colleagues.
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: So you got to put the question out there. Is Fetterman...
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: the ultimate insurance policy for Republicans to hang on to
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: control the Senate. Of course, if that happens, I'm very
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: curious about what Lisa Murkowski would do in a situation
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: like that. But either way, it's pretty clear that even
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: after Election Day, we may have two Senate seats. We're
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: not quite sure which side of the aisle they'll end
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: up wanting to sit on. One is the senior senator
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: from Pennsylvania, Mr. John Fetterman. And one is the senior
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: senator from Alaska, Ms. Lisa Murkowski. All right. Now, before
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: I get to my conversation with Bruce Melman, I thought
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: I would do my a few of my college football
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: thoughts here. Well, obviously, I was relieved to watch my
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: University of Miami Hurricanes on Friday, but let's be honest.
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: What is the big story of the weekend? Turned out
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: not to be pro players playing at LSU or Clemson
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: boycotting having to play LSU, although now I think Dabo
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: Sweeney wishes he would have came up with a principle
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: to not have to play that game because Clemson football's
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: got humiliated and they're in deep, deep trouble. But that
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: is not the biggest story of the college football weekend.
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: You know what? Here's to the actual games overcoming all
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: the bullshit off the field stuff. Western Michigan, who did
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: not score. It was all like, it was just field
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: goal after field goal. It was a miserable game. I
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: had it on my four box and you're just going,
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: what is going on here with this Michigan-Western-Michigan game? And
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: it was just sort of like, just was watching at it.
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: And then at some point, because you had some of
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: these other games, that Boise State-Oregon game was fantastic. Even Auburn-Baylor,
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: while horribly played, it seems like every time you turn around,
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: another quarterback was throwing an interception. It was competitive and interesting,
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: and it was sort of kind of what you had expected.
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: I feel like Baylor and Auburn are in about the
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: same place, although Baylor feels like they have a down
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: arrow and Auburn feels like they have an up arrow,
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: but they're kind of like, it's like they're meeting each
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: other on the way, you know? And so you knew
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: it was going to be super close and super competitive.
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: But look, I was watching it live and I thought
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: what everybody else thought. I watched the NBC broadcast and
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: it was pretty clear to me that there were zeros
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: on the clock I was watching. And I thought, game over. Okay. Shockingly,
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: Big Ten officials who were in charge of Michigan's home
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: game against Western Michigan, just found one second on the clock. Now,
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: they apparently have shown enough evidence of this that even
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: the commissioner of the Mid-American Conference, the MAC, where Western Michigan,
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: they're satisfied with the answer. Western Michigan is satisfied with
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: the answer. We're not going to get some state judge
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: in Kalamazoo asking to overturn the result, although I'm sure
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: that's coming if some fan wants to do it. But
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: it's certainly in an era where we don't trust our institutions.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: Wait a minute. I know what I saw. And then
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: there's something about a sinking clock. So for all of
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: this to be correct, it may mean that there's tenths
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: of a second. And so as my producer, Lauren Gardner,
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: said to me before we started taping, he goes, maybe
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: the college football and the NFL needs to do what
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: the NBA does in the last minute of a game,
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: which is show the tenths of a second, right? We
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: now know 00.3, right? Three tenths of a second. is
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: long enough to get a shot off, right? So that's
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: something we've learned over time with the NBA clock stuff. Well,
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: perhaps both the NFL and college football have to now
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: during the last minute and all the broadcasts have to
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: do that because we need sort of an honest accounting.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: But there's one other issue here. Look, we're in an
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: era of distrust of all institutions generally. And now that sports,
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: even college sports, there's so much embracing of gambling. So
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: much embracing of the prediction markets. If any of this
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: stuff is thought to be bought off or rigged, the
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: entire system collapses. Which gets me to among the 7,000
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: problems college football has, I do think there's a massive
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: credibility problem on officiating. I'm sure plenty of good officials.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: But right now, all of the officiating is handled on
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: a conference level. And so for instance, if you basically
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: pay a team to play you, which is what Michigan did,
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: they paid Western Michigan to play them. There's no home
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: and home, right? When you do Michigan, Oklahoma, Michigan's not
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: paying Oklahoma to play Oklahoma next week. And Oklahoma didn't
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: play Michigan to play Michigan last year, right? The home
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: and home is the exchange of goods, if you will, right?
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: Each school will profit and benefit From the game because
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: of the Visiting Association. And there are some practices in these. Supposedly,
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: when you have Big Ten playing SEC, then you're going
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: to have either Big 12 or ACC officials. And if
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: you had Big 12 playing the ACC in Ireland, you're
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: supposed to have Big Ten or SEC officials. Because they're
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: worried about the idea that there might be bias or
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: the perception of bias. If they didn't think there was bias,
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: would they bother with doing that, right? The answer is no.
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: There used to be– sometimes there used to be an
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: accepted practice, I believe, where the visiting teams conference would
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: be the officials, which is another way of trying to
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: balance things out, right? You have a home field advantage, right?
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: The officials, if they're from the same conference, might be–
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: unconsciously biased towards the home crowd, right? There's certainly plenty
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: of evidence that that is true in college basketball at times.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: But we got to have a better officiating system. The
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: conferences shouldn't be in charge of officiating because no one's
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: going to trust these conferences. These conferences are financially... They
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: can't afford a Michigan to lose to a MAAC team.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: That could cost them a slot in the college football playoff,
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: which costs them bottom line revenue. So you could make
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: a case that the Big Ten officials were sort of
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: incentivized to find a second if they could. So come on, guys.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: Of all the things to clean up, let's create– and
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: this is where the– if you want to– generate more
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: fairness in the way games are officiated. We need to
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: have a college football, NCAA, college football, FBS, whatever, maybe
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: it's FBS, all right, or you want to put the
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: power four and they create their own, maybe the college
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: football playoff runs the officiating association and they do all
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: the hiring. Maybe you have two associations, the power four,
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: the rest of FBS, maybe you have one but you
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: need to come up with a better system that's more
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: transparent that isn't run by the conferences. I'm sorry. You
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: cannot trust the conferences. And I know you think each
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: conference will say, well, we're not, you know, it's not
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: in our, well, you know what? We've already seen conferences
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: behave with their self-interest first, more times than not, not
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: all the time, but more times than not. So it's
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: pretty clear to me, you know, the reason why I'm,
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: Every explanation is going to be just, it's not going
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: to land with me a hundred percent with this Michigan business,
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: because I know the big 10, there's a lot of
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: entities that were incentivized to find any which way to
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: give Michigan one more shot at winning that game. So
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: it's a bad look. I'm sorry I feel this way.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry I'm sounding conspiratorial, but They themselves, these institutions
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: have been so poorly run, so financially incentivized, so filled
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: with making decisions based on who gives them the best
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: financial advantage versus what is fair and proper. I'm sorry,
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: you don't have the benefit of the doubt from me.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: And this is only going to lead to more concerns.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: So this is why, take this away from the conferences.
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: These officials should work Can you imagine if the AFC
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: East had their own officials, the NFC West had their
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: own officials? Of course not. It's silly. It's ridiculous. Well,
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: it's silly and ridiculous on the college level. And in
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: some ways, having a very controversial decision like this one.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: So the easiest reform is to go to the tenths
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: of a second clock system where everybody sees it. So
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: at least there's some transparency there. But the bigger issue,
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: is the conferences should not be in charge of officiating. Sorry,
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: you know, for the same reasons why the conferences have
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: screwed up. Remember, they have screwed up college football. We
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: all watch Nick Saban all weekend saying that Congress needs
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: to do this. And by the way, Pat McAfee, your
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: faux outrage, you know, about Congress going home. I promise you,
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: if Congress were more worried about The college, you know,
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: dealing with college athletics instead of lowering the cost of
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: ground beef, they get their asses handed to them by
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: voters for all another reason. So, no, you know, you
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: get to sound like you're Mr. Man of the People, Mr. McAfee.
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: And look, there are times I enjoy you. I think
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: we're all a little over-served on our McAfee these days.
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: I think a little Pat McAfee goes a long way.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: I don't need all Pat McAfee all the time. God
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: bless you, brother. Although, I'll do the kick if you
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: want to ask. But I'm sorry if you're, I get
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: it's easy to bash Congress and it can make sports
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: fans feel good. But if they actually prioritize dealing with
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: college sports instead of everything else, like the war in
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: Iran and the high cost, please, please. By the way,
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: I don't know about you guys. My favorite part of
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: college game day is every once in a while they
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: cover college football. I'm teasing guys, sort of. My goodness.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: I feel like there's fewer and fewer segments devoted to
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: the game itself and a lot more segments devoted to
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: the culture, the fun, and it's fun. And there's nothing
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: like game day on these campuses. My daughter's been involved.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: My son, they love it. I get it. It is
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: a ton of fun. But for those of us watching
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: on TV, we do want a little more preview of
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: the games themselves. I'm not saying, I'm just saying. But hey,
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: I get it. All right. A few other reactions from
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: the weekend. So let me make my case why Miami
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: had the most impressive, you know, Miami and most arguably
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: the most impressive win of the weekend of the top 10.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: They won on the road in a conference game across
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: the country. Now, I'm not going to tell you that
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: Stanford is a really tough environment to play in. It
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: is not. Their fan base is such a strange fan base.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: They rarely show up. It is a quirky, you know,
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: there are Stanford football fans that are obsessed, but not
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: enough to fill that stadium, no matter who comes to town.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: I guess Cal might be the one that they fully
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: sell out for. But if you look at everybody else,
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: And I will confess, I'm doing this before, I'm taping
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: before the Notre Dame-Wisconsin game, but I don't even consider
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: that a road game. I promise you, these neutral side,
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: I've been involved with neutral side Notre Dame games. They're
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: Notre Dame home games with a few more tickets allocated
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: to the other team. And yes, they may be playing
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: in Lambeau Field, but it'll be at worst a 50-50.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: But I promise you, it'll be a Notre Dame crowd.
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: But look, if Notre Dame-Wisconsin wins by the margin that
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: Miami won, then I'd say that both Miami and Notre
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: Dame had the equal wins of the first weekend. And
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: I think both Miami and Notre Dame, you could make
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: a case they're two of the three best teams in
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: the country. I think I get why both Miami and
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: Indiana were not in the top five, right? Every team
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: in the preseason top five, Ohio State, Oregon, Georgia, Notre Dame,
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: and Texas all had one thing that neither Miami or
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: Indiana had, a returning quarterback. Miami and Indiana had the
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: new quarterback. So you had to wait and see. Well,
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: I think we wait and saw. And both Miami and
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: Indiana may have quarterbacks that are better than the quarterbacks
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: they had last year. There were times that Hoover looked
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: better than Mendoza. Mendoza's leadership is something that's an intangible,
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: it's hard to measure. There's no doubt that Mensah, this
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: is the most potent Miami offense I've seen since 2000
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: and 2001. Those teams were incredibly potent offensively, meaning you
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: just knew every time they had the ball, they were
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: scoring a touchdown. And if they didn't, it was because
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: of some holding penalty and forcing him to kick a
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: field goal. But that would be about it, right? It
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: was Malachi Toney. If I think it's pretty clear, there
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: is only one, you know, the Heisman Trophy is going
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: to be won either by a quarterback or Malachi Toney. Sorry,
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: Jeremiah Smith. I don't think you're going to have near
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: the amount of attention that Toney gets. Look at the
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: way the already Toney's getting the coverage that Travis Hunter
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: got at the very beginning of his Heisman season. which
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: is every game preview. I would argue Darian Mensah of
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: the two, one guy has more touchdown passes and incompletions,
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: 27 for 30, four touchdown passes, three incompletions, threw for
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: over 400 yards. So there's a reason why he's generically
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: right now the Heisman front runner. But Tony had one
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: of the greatest days in Miami Hurricane history for a receiver,
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: and he only played, what, two-thirds of the game? So
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: it is... I'm not saying Tony's going to win the Heisman.
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: You're still more likely. A quarterback has still got a 70%
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: chance of winning the Heisman. But I think if it's
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: not a quarterback, I think at this point, Tony is
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: your most likely candidate, non-quarterback candidate there. But I'm going
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: to be honest. I'm a little nervous at Miami's inability
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: to get the quarterback. I'm a little nervous that we
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: couldn't generate the pass rush we could. I'm a little
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: nervous that our running game wasn't as punishing as it
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: was towards the end of the last season and all
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: throughout the college football playoff. I'm going to chalk it
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: up to a young offensive line that has a veteran
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: quarterback that can essentially take mistakes on pass protection, which
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: we have great running backs who know how to pass protect.
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: And Stanford clearly stacked the box. They had had seven
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: or eight guys in the box almost every play, and
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: you're going to do one-on-one with Miami's receiving corps? You
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: saw what happens if you do one-on-one with Miami's receiving corps.
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: So I think there's– I'm okay on the running side.
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: I think it has more to do with how Stanford
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: just made a decision to try to keep us from
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: running the ball. Okay. I think they were curious how
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: much we'd throw the ball. We'll throw the ball quite
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: a bit. The big weak point, supposedly, is Miami at linebacker.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: That kind of showed itself a little bit. My friend
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: Mark Caputo said, you know, if you judge Miami just
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: by this one game, The recipe for defeating Miami is
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: a team that can control the ball. It's a team
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: that can grind out a long five to eight minute drive.
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: You're right. Those five to seven minute drives. Probably the
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: only team on our schedule that can do a strategy
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: like that is Notre Dame. So we'll see. It's setting up.
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: I'm already looking forward to November 7th. Other things. Look,
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: Oregon has two new coordinators. I'm not going to sit
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: there and say they're no longer national title contenders. Boise State,
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: their biggest game of the year. They care about the
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: game a lot more than Oregon did. So I think it's,
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm still never, till Oregon breaks through, you're
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: not going to be a believer in Oregon, right? It
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: was like Indiana. Till they actually broke through, you weren't
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: going to be a believer. Oregon, to me, still sits
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: in that same spot, right? Until they actually win a title, right?
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: They've just never gotten there. They always seem, there's always
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: a part of it, always a little bit, are they
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: just too soft? I don't know. Ohio State looked great.
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: Georgia looked dominant. Texas looked great, but we'll find out
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: about Texas and Ohio state next week. That's for sure.
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: And I'll have more to say about that as well. Look,
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: games that I watched very closely besides the Michigan game,
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: besides Boise and Oregon was the Alabama game. And I
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: was impressed with the quarterback. They do seem to have
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: a real running game. I thought East Carolina, you know,
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: was going to keep it say within 20 and a
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: half points. And I was wrong. Yeah. So this is
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: a good reminder, by the way, current issue of current episode,
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: set of episodes of Dynastic. I got none other than
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: Paul Feinbaum with J.A. Donde and I. And you should
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: take a listen to the conversation in general, but do
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: stick around for his comparison where he asked the question,
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: could Alabama become the next Nebraska? He did not say
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: that because he was offering a compliment to Alabama. So
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: it's definitely weird. But I will say this. Alabama was
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: not on the road to being in Nebraska on Saturday.
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: Not at all. Look, the team that I'm most, I
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: think the team, the best team in the SEC is
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: not in the state of Texas or in the state
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: of Alabama or in the state of Georgia. I think
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: it's in the state of Oklahoma. In fact, if I
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: was going to make a way too early prediction, I
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: think if Miami makes the playoff, they're going to have
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: to get through Oklahoma to win the national title. I
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: think Oklahoma is going to be that good. And I
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: think when they blow out Michigan next week, we're going
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: to start to have a lot of conversations about what's
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: wrong with Michigan and whether did Harbaugh only win by
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: just breaking every rule in the book and then suddenly
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: they can't win any other way. That's an uncomfortable question
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: that my fans of the Wolverines are whispering to themselves
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: at the moment, but they're not quite ready to say
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: it out loud because they got the reprieve with the
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: extra tenth of a second that the Big Ten officials found.
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: But boy, But who knows? Hey, the biggest leap teams
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: make are from week one to week two, right? So
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: we shall see. So with that, now we'll sneak in
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: a break. When we come back, my conversation with Bruce Melman.
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: And please stick around at the end. I got the
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: time machine. We're going back to a fantastic era for politics,
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: that's for sure. And then I'll take some questions. Well,
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: joining me now for one of my I guess we're
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: doing this about quarterly. It's my longtime pal, Bruce Melman. Hopefully,
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: you know him from what is always a terrific Sunday
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: morning read the six chart Sundays that he puts out.
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: It's a free sub stack. Age of disruption is what
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: it's called. He's got a day job. He works on
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: the part of politics that I think every American would
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: claim they hate, government relations. But it's actually one of
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: the things that, frankly, our founders knew would exist and
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: should exist. It's a government relations firm, and we all
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: need to relate with the government every now and then.
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: So we will talk a little bit about that. But mostly,
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: what Bruce and I usually like to talk about is
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: trying to help explain, I think what we... And Bruce,
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: correct me if I'm wrong, I feel like this is
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: ultimately your motive too, which is just simply trying to
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: explain Washington to America. And sometimes, as I used to
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: say in my other job, explain America to Washington.
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's pretty much what I do for a living.
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 3: I've been mostly in the technology space, so I always
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 3: say it is explain Silicon Valley to Washington and Washington
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 3: to Silicon Valley.
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 2: But we speak different languages, but we need each other.
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 3: And so you need the translators, the middleware, whether they're
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 3: in journalism or government relations.
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: Look, obviously, we're going to talk about all things data centers,
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: big tech here. You've done a lot of charts on it.
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: I've written a lot about it. But I actually want
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: to kick things off on a topic that I dealt
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: with on my last podcast and you dealt with in
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: your last Six Shirts Sunday, which is this sort of
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: bifurcation of this economy. It is literally a tale of
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: two cities. You can use that metaphor. You can grind
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: it into the ground. It's the best of times. It's
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: the worst of times. If you are in a certain sector,
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: if you're a certain level of investor, things are going great.
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: You do see these investments kicking in. But what's not
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: happening is it's not getting to the masses, right? And
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: we see things are flat if not falling behind. If
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: you look at what inflation has done, So what is
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: your assessment of this economy? Is this a good economy?
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: Is this a bad economy? Or does it really depend
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: on where you sit?
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 3: Well, everything depends on where you sit. Although I start,
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 3: I don't say it's the best of times, worst of times.
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 3: It's the best of times and most stressed of times.
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 3: And there is the biggest dichotomy between lots of hopeful
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 3: economic indicators and the vibe and how people feel.
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 2: And the fact that, you know, even.
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 3: If your 401k is at record levels, millennials at this point,
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 3: at this age, on average, are wealthier adjusted for inflation
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 3: than than my Gen X or than the boomers were,
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 3: but they feel so much more stressed, so much more
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 3: worried about the future, so much less confident about economic opportunity.
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 3: I tend to think many Americans own 401ks. It's true
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 3: there's a much greater wealth concentration at the top, but
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 3: the extraordinary AI-driven tailwind is benefiting anybody who has S &
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 3: P 500, who's in the 401k. House prices are at
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 3: record highs. Now, that's bad news if you're trying to
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 3: buy your first home, for sure. But for so many Americans,
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 3: so much of their familial wealth is tied up in
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 3: their homes. I wish we built enough so that some
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 3: of the price here wasn't inflated by the lack of
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 3: supply to meet the need and meet the demand. I
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 3: tend to think there are a whole lot of positive opportunities.
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 3: What I worry about, what I know we're going to
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 3: talk about, When I did my last Substack, it was
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 3: called Tailwinds.
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 2: Tailwinds are real. Will they continue? I had a picture
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 2: of Wile E. Coyote.
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 3: To me, Wile E. would usually have a rocket strapped
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 3: to his back, and he would go tearing off, and
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 3: then it would often explode. What I don't know, and
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 3: what I think the race is, is will we see
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 3: the AI investments pay off through economy-wide productivity? Pay off
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 3: in job enablement, payoff and entrepreneurship opportunities before the music
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 3: stops and the debt obligations and the off balance sheet
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 3: obligations exceed their ability, their cashflow to pay it back.
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 3: And we have to kind of go through the sort
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 3: of bust we saw with the railroads.
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: Well, and that's the question I have, right? You know,
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: so we have sort of a couple of different examples
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: during technological transformations where we've seen The investments paid off
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: and there was a bust. You just brought up one
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: of them, the railroads. You could argue that, you know,
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: the great pets.com recession, right? I don't know how else
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: to call it, but that's in some ways, right? When
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: you just say the pets.com bubble, right? Everybody knows what
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: you're referring to of a certain age. You know, that
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: was one of those moments where it almost was simultaneous.
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: We saw the productivity gains and the bubble burst at
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: the same time, which is why it had minimal impact.
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: It had impact, but it was not, you know, that
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: also happened literally within months of 9-11. And there was just,
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: there was a lot of stuff in the air that
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: sort of, I don't want to say it mitigated the
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: bubble burst. And so maybe our pain thresholds, we forget,
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: but it's certainly, I think it is, um, We don't
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: remember how potentially fearful people were about the dot-com bubble
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: in that moment. The railroads is a bigger one, right?
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: Because the bust happened before any of the upside was experienced.
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: And in fact, a whole bunch of people lost their shirts.
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: But then we got it back about 15 years later.
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: So where are we in AI right now? Is this
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: the railroads or is this dot-com?
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 3: Well, it's not just the railroads, which were boom and bust,
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 3: but that was true of electricity and electrification and the
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 3: utilities back in the day. Pets.com, another way to say
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 3: it would be the fiber build-out and global crossing. If anything,
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 3: I think the lack of a bust might be the exception.
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 3: The rule seems to be irrational exuberance, a ton of investment,
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 3: things that get built and deployed, ultimately getting a little
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 3: over their skis and ahead of their ability to get
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 3: paid out, but it's always been in the interest of
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 3: the United States. The phrase you use, Chuck, that I
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 3: love the most, and I know you write about this
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 3: a ton, this more than any other theme animates what
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 3: I write, is, recency bias and the need to read history,
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 3: because it doesn't feel like the dot-com bubble was such
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 3: a big deal now to you and to me.
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 2: I worked at.
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 3: Cisco Systems when the dot-com bubble happened. It felt like
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 3: a really big deal. And for a lot of folks
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 3: who had ridden the NASDAQ up, it took like 15
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 3: years for the NASDAQ to reach its top again. The
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 3: reason it doesn't feel... Nobody on this call remembers the railroad,
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 3: so it feels like, eh, boom and bust. These things
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 3: feel real and really stressful when you're living through them.
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 3: And one of the great lessons of life and of
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 3: history is we make it through and we get on
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 3: with our business and all of their lives. And the
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 3: future at least always has been meaningfully better than the past.
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: It is true. Now, look, I think the added concern
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: is this debt situation that we have. And it's not
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: just our debt, right? This is And the question is,
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: if the timing of the AI bust happens at the
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: wrong time, and we just don't have the levers. I mean,
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: you look at interest rates right now. He's got to
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: raise them. He's likely to raise them. It will be
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: fascinating to see, when I refer to Kevin Warsh, how
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: Trump's going to handle that. But he has to raise them.
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: And yet, my God, we're going to increase the cost
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: of our debt?
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: Like it's not good for the fiscal bottom line of
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: the country, but if we don't do it, we're never
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: going to tame inflation. And yet at the same time,
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: I had somebody make an argument to me that says, well, actually,
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: if this is the situation we're in, then we should
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: be dropping interest rates. We need to get back near
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: to zero. And I'm like, we're going to be paying
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: $ 30 for hamburgers if we do that. So I do
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: feel like while I'm with you, I think we're, you know,
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: I'm I used to say I quote Churchill when Churchill says,
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: you know, Americans always do the right thing after they've
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: exhausted every other path. Turns out he never said that.
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: But it was somebody that none of us have ever
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: heard of that said it. But it sounds better if
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: we could claim Churchill said it. And I do feel
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: this way. But I worry here that we don't have–
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: We don't have a lot of room here. We don't
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: have a lot of room to maneuver. And the bust
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: could come at a time where the government really doesn't
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: have the capacity to bail some people out that probably
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: think they're going to get bailed out.
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 3: So while I both feel the way you do, I
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 3: also take some comfort, Chuck, in the fact that people
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 3: felt like America's debt was raising to historically high levels.
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 3: We were running large annual deficits and then the GFC happened.
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 3: And prior to the GFC, people said, we don't have
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 3: any room. They went bonkers with the debt, of course.
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 3: And there was also QE and expansion of the money supply- When.
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: You do GFC, you're referring to the financial crisis.
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 2: Correct. In 2007, 2008, 2009.
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 3: Well, that binge of debt followed by ZERP, zero interest
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 3: rate policy, as it turned out, didn't create inflation. People
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 3: didn't realize the effect of globalization, especially China, and it
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 3: was disinflationary. So while debt kept going up, we didn't
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 3: have the inflation that everybody knew would happen if we
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 3: tried to do things like we did then.
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 2: Then what happens? Then you have COVID.
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 3: And COVID, they go completely insane in dropping interest rates
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 3: to zero and ladling on debt. In 10 years, we've
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 3: more than doubled from $ 20 to $ 40 trillion, which is
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 3: not for me to suggest debt or even deficits don't matter.
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 2: They do.
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 3: It's only that people like you and I who say
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 3: we can no longer handle it, the next one is
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 3: going to break us have been consistently wrong for 40 years.
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: Right, but we now have a treasury secretary manipulating the
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: bond market. Well, a treasury secretary– Maybe because he has to.
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to sit here– I wish– Besson is–
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: I wish he would follow the advice of just do
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: and don't speak. I don't think– when he speaks, he
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: doesn't add the value that sometimes a treasury secretary could,
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: but I'll just set that aside a second. The fact
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: that he's feeling the need to do that is a
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: little bit scary. And look, I don't– this is– I'm
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: getting really past my skis when it comes to my
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: expertise on bond market. You probably understand this better than
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: I do, but we should be quite concerned about this, no? No.
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 3: I think there are a lot of reasons to be concerned,
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 3: although you could look back and you could say bonds
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 3: have been suffering since at least 2022, which was a
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 3: worse year for long bonds than this year has been.
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 3: I still don't quite understand the Besant maneuver because he
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 3: didn't manipulate the markets.
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 2: He briefly attempted to intervene. He tried to.
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 3: And the markets, but it's not like it was even secret.
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 3: And the market just said, yeah, we're going to let
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 3: market forces drive these things. I have been and remain
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 3: really concerned. As you know, politicians know that if they
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 3: raise taxes or cut spending, they'll get fired. And if
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 3: they cut taxes or raise spending, they'll keep getting hired.
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 3: But leadership is sometimes doing the hard and the difficult
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 3: thing before the crisis comes. There is seemingly no political
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 3: willingness or courage to put their necks out on either
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 3: party and to say, we need to take the punch
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 3: bowl away.
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 2: We need to solve these things.
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 3: I do note, and one of my sub stacks coming up, Chuck,
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 3: is going to be called the next president. And hopefully
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 3: you'll have me on next quarter to talk about it.
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 3: But the next president is going to find the Social
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 3: Security Trust Fund runs out in 2032. The Medicare Trust
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 3: Fund runs out roughly about the same time. Reagan found
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 3: a way to extend the life of Social Security. But
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 3: the politics in the next administration is going to require
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 3: a grand bipartisan bargain. And the current environment is nothing
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 3: grand and no bargains. That has me more concerned in
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 3: that medium term.
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't believe we have the politics to handle
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: this moment.
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: And, you know, the two parties, this is look, I'm
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: not going to go off on my tangent about four parties,
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: but this is the problem. Right. We've we've so nationalized
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: our politics. that there is, I mean, just look at
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: what happened to Jared Golden and Marie Glusenkamp-Perez. They just
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: simply wanted to put a bill on the floor, but
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: it happened to help out putting some other bill that
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: the Republicans wanted and the Democrats lost their, you know what?
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: And you're like, you know, the House isn't supposed to
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: be a competition to who can screw the other side
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: the most. At some point, it is about who's passing
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: legislation or who's trying to do it. And if you
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: don't allow your Jared Goldens or your Don Bacons to
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: cross the aisle every once in a while, but you
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: want to punish them if they do it, we're never
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: going to get anything done.
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 2: No, you're right.
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 3: We've seen that for a while now with the Freedom
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 3: Caucus and on the Republican side. I think we're going to.
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: Get a Freedom Caucus of the left. The Herbal Tea
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: Party is already the DSA. Yeah, I think Jeffries is
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: going to suddenly feel for Kevin McCarthy. in like calling
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: him up for therapy sessions the first couple of months
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: that he's Speaker.
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 3: Maybe, although the challenge for the Republican Freedom Caucus is
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 3: they want nothing. So blocking is a winning strategy for them.
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 3: At least historically, the left wing of the left wing
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 3: was unhappy because you only would spend a billion and
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 3: not seven billion.
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 2: They want something. Yeah, they'll want something.
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: They still want a billion more.
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 2: Than zero, even if they don't get everything that they want.
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: That's fair. That's fair. But let's go back to this.
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: You know, it's funny you say this about the debt.
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: You know, there's no secret plan that nobody's come up
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: with to how to do this, right? I look at it,
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: it's like our immigration issue. We've got like 16 different
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: solutions on a shelf. Just pick one. You know, the
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: simplest one is sort of the 3%, 3%, 3% tax hike, 3%
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 1: spending cut, right? Like, you know, there are some very
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: sort of rational ways to do this. And by the way,
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: the public will support it because if you tell them, well,
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: if they don't do this, then we're going to cut
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: because you and I are going to be the first
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: Social Security recipients that's likely to get the first mandatory
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: haircut where we're going to get 80% of what we're doing.
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: And I'm going to guess a lot of voters aren't
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: going to like that.
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 3: Well, you're right, although the idea that the either easy
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 3: or rational thing is just 3% tax cut– 3% tax hike, 3%
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 3: spending cut. Nobody would run their business saying all spending
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 3: is the same and all prices are the same. So
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 3: it's a little bit like what we saw with the
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 3: sequestration across the board. You know, dieting by amputation loses
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 3: the weight, but it's not the way you want to
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 3: get these things done. There are a lot of solutions.
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 3: People like the Committee for a Responsible Budget spend their lives.
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 3: Maya McGinnis, you know, just goes from dinner to dinner
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 3: saying the debt, the debt, the debt. She's going to
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 3: be right at some point. Maybe she's right already. And
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 3: you're right. We kind of lack the political courage, the
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 3: AI angle, what Besson said today, the hope.
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 2: And this is hope.
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: We're talking on September 2nd here. Anyway, you did it today.
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: And I just always want to say.
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 2: Good point.
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 3: There's a non-zero chance that AI could increase in a
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 3: structural way the productivity, the productive capability of our economy.
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 3: And were that to happen, that might allow growth to
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 3: grow faster than debt. If your growth is growing faster
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 3: than your debt, you are, in fact, growing your way
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 3: out of it, even with annual deficits. The problem we've
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 3: got right now is that the debt is growing faster
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 3: than the economy and that interest payments are now more
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 3: the biggest spend, larger, in fact, than the national defense.
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 3: That is not a formula for a competitive nation and
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 3: a secure nation.
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: Let's pivot a little bit to a little bit on
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 1: your day job and which is how's the business community
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: preparing for a Democratic Congress, particularly a house that will
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: have subpoena power?
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 3: Well, to say business community is probably overbroad, but overwhelmingly,
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 3: the presumption is that the house flips. I know that
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 3: your prediction predicted and the Kalshi markets, the predicted markets
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 3: are at 85%.
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 2: History suggests that would be likely.
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: And they don't need, I mean, what we don't know
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: is the size, but it's like they only need What,
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: four technically or something like that? I mean, you know,
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: it's hard to imagine they're not going to pick up
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: four or five. The question is, can they get a
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: governing majority? That's a whole different story. But I think
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: that's what we're trying to figure out.
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 3: Look, I built a bipartisan firm starting 24 years ago.
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 3: And part of the recognition is the pendulum always swings back.
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 3: So when I launched my firm, George W. Bush gets reelected.
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 3: The Republicans have 55 senators. Karl Rove calls it a durable,
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 3: not permanent, durable majority. He'll correct you if you say
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 3: the otherwise. And they had a big margin in the House.
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 3: Two years later, the Senate and the House flip. Two
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 3: years after that, Obama's there and he's got 60 senators.
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 3: Two years after that, the House flips back to the Republicans.
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 3: Four years after that, the Senate flips. And in 2016,
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 3: you get Trump with a full red board. The business
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 3: community understands the pendulum always swings back. So number one,
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 3: they're bipartisan. Number two, business community recognizes that the 120th
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 3: Congress coming up, just like every Congress preceding it, they
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 3: need to go tell their story. We're in a trust recession.
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 3: Nobody is trusted unless and until they show up in
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 3: real life, in person, and explain why what they're doing
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 3: is good for the state, is good for the district,
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 3: is good for the communities and the stakeholders that the
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 3: member of Congress ran saying they would help. And all
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 3: trust is local. So if you can't explain why helping
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 3: you helps the stakeholders and that you are a stakeholder
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 3: of the elected officials, you're screwed. Number three, there is
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 3: a recognition that there's going to be an epic amount
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 3: of oversight And that unlike in 2019, when the oversight
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 3: tried to get documents and tried to get information through
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 3: the executive branch and generally got blocked, this time they're
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 3: going to follow the money from the outside in, and
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 3: they're going to subpoena business.
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 2: Did you make donations to the ballroom?
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: Great.
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 3: Let's look at the documents. Did you hire people who
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 3: call themselves top fixers in the Wall Street Journal and
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 3: then get a merger through that experts think was difficult?
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: Great.
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 3: Let's see if we can find as much information in
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 3: the background. through subpoenas, through oversight, through document requests. In
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 3: the private sector, you can't claim executive privilege. Did you
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 3: read this crazy OLC memo?
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: Are you aware of this?
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 3: That the White House thinks they can claim executive privilege
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 3: on things they don't possess.
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 1: So the OLC has put out a memo. So it
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 1: was clearly one that the White House Counsel's Office urged
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: them to write and examine. that claims that executive privilege
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: extends to people who speak to the president privately in
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 1: the Oval Office or who have any of their communications
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: with the president, even as private citizens are somehow covered
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: by executive privilege. Now, I think I know what the
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: White House is up to here, which is, look, one,
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: maybe they'll actually get a court to agree. I don't
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: think the courts will agree to that. I'm going to
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: be very careful to try to predict anymore. This judiciary
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 1: is what it is. But at a minimum, it will
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: delay the subpoenas, right? It'll delay the appearances before Congress.
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: Subpoena comes. First thing they'll do is test out this
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 1: LLC memo, see if their communications qualify for executive privilege.
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: That will take, you know, work its way through the court.
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: So I think at a minimum, what the administration has
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 1: done is gum up the potential subpoenas here for a while. Now,
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: you know, we'll see, I think Jamie Raskin's a pretty
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: smart dude. So he'll be, he'll be pretty tenacious on this,
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 1: but I, you know, I, I didn't know how, I mean,
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: that's one of those stories, you know, how the way
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: our ether works, right. It, it, it sort of, it
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 1: got a little bit of attention for about three hours.
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 1: And then of course something else happened. I don't know,
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: Trump renamed a lake or something. I don't quite know
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 1: what it was, but, um, That could slow things down.
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: I'll be curious to see how many companies try to
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 1: take advantage of it, because I would argue it might
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: be a bad look to take advantage of it.
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 3: Well, look, there's a company taking advantage of it seemingly opportunistically,
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 3: and then what we don't yet know is what will
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 3: the Department of Justice or the FBI say to companies
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 3: about potential risk they'd face if they don't honor an
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 3: asserted executive privilege. As we're in the environment, we've been
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 3: in the environment, it was certainly true in the Biden
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 3: administration with things like student debt relief, where everything now
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 3: gets litigated and it goes up in the Supreme Court.
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 3: I still don't believe companies will be willing to be
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 3: held in contempt of Congress. And so that could become
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 3: a very interesting if the House can hold ranks and
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 3: to say, you know, if you don't turn over these
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 3: documents to us, we're going to hold you in contempt,
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 3: fill in the blank company. I don't know any general
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 3: counsel that is willing or wants to be held in contempt.
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 3: The question is whether they get threatened from both directions legally.
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 3: But you asked what businesses are doing to prepare. And
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 3: my comment is they've tried to have friends on both sides.
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 3: They are continuing to try to make sure that they
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 3: are seen and heard and understood and aligned with both
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 3: the administration's priorities, the Republicans priorities and Democrats priorities. And
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 3: at this point now, a lot of they've already gotten
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 3: pretty careful about what do we put in writing? How
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 3: do we what do we decide to fund or not fund?
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 3: How do we want to phrase it? The Democrats, my firm,
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 3: half Democrats, half Republicans. In 2025, our Dem colleagues were
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 3: kind of the Maytag repairman.
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 2: They just not have their phone. ringing so much.
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 1: Nobody was calling, right?
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 3: Everybody is calling them. They are unbelievably busy being asked
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 3: for advice. How do you think we present to these folks?
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 3: How can we tell our story? How can we make
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 3: sure we're cooperative and understood without being right there under
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 3: the Klieg lights in the middle of a, you know,
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 3: Malachi crunch between two sides coming at us with lawyers?
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: Do you... What... It seems as if Trump put the
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 1: business community in a weird spot. And I say this,
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: and it's easy to bash these guys for writing these checks.
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 1: But at the same time, they've got a fiduciary. Some
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: of them have a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders. And if
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 1: you have an opportunity, it's sort of like, look, plenty
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: of people may say, well, they should have the moral
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: check on themselves, an ethics check, and all this stuff.
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: welcome to the world of business. I'm just going to
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: set that aside. Had they not played by the Trump rules,
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: could they have been punished? So was this a feeling
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 1: that if you don't donate to the ballroom, if you
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: don't donate to the asks that are made, and we
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: all read that story, that amazing Wall Street Journal story
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: about how the chief fundraiser sort of hangs a you know,
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: is in the room when these meetings happen and then
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: literally follows up with, so how much are you thinking?
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: You know, maybe a million, maybe 5 million. It was
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: just sort of, what was amazing is how out in
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: the open it was. And then I realized, oh, that
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: was a feature. Trump wants it out in the open.
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: He wants people to know this is how it works.
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: How did you advise clients on this?
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, look, so happily, I've not been in the room
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 3: when when any direct ask has been made. I've generally
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 3: suggested the clients the safest thing to do is if
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 3: you gave money to the Obama or to the Biden inauguration,
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 3: giving money to the Trump inauguration is consistent with past practices.
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: That's an easy call. Yeah, right.
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 2: Other things, say a ballroom, then, you know, well, I wouldn't.
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 2: Number one, rule number one.
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 3: Is don't do anything that is illegal and don't do
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 3: anything that if disclosed in the cover, in the front
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 3: page of The Washington Post, we would be ashamed of,
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 3: embarrassed by or would hurt our business. That's our fiduciary obligation.
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 3: Then trying to find what can we support, what can
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 3: we align with? Each administration has the things that they
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 3: care about. Businesses across all have consistently tried to, how
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 3: do we support? Maybe it's a climate initiative or maybe
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 3: it's a DEI initiative.
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 2: Or maybe, you know, in the case of George W.
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 3: Bush, the administration I work for, it's rebuilding Iraq. Certainly,
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 3: this administration seems to have more opportunities, more asks, more
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 3: projects that are that are more often either personal or
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 3: less traditional projects. than prior administrations but as a rule
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 3: don't do anything that you wouldn't want the whole world
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 3: to know about and if you know if you're if
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 3: thinking about it boy the whole world's going to find
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 3: out about this don't do it um there are also
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 3: other things you can do so if they ask you
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 3: to do x you might say you know what there's
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 3: something let's do y let's you know things like those
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 3: you know the the new uh trump accounts they call
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 3: them but the accounts for children um to help them
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 3: save for the future Yeah, it's named after Trump. So
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 3: that creates some fight. But that's a pretty positive. All
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 3: Americans ought to be able to rally behind. It doesn't
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 3: only go to children in red states. It doesn't only
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 3: go to Republican children. It's to American kids. If you're
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 3: being asked about doing something you don't want to do,
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 3: there may be something that you can do that you
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 3: are proud of, that you'll stand behind. Maybe it's supporting veterans.
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 3: There's usually been under all presidents, Democrat and Republican candidates.
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 3: Paths to demonstrate an alignment with the priorities of the
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 3: administration without selling your soul or without breaking the law.
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 1: Have you picked up on something that I've had in
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 1: sort of my community of sort of bipartisan sounding board folks,
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 1: which is I've detected quite a few Republican elected officials
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 1: and former elected officials who think, you know, maybe we
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 1: do need some campaign finance reform. That, you know, it's
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: become what used to be sort of more on the
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: left than it was on the right. I'm starting to hear,
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 1: you know, especially from those that worry about being primaried, right,
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: from their right. That's where I hear it the most of,
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: you know, when I hear somebody like, this club for growth.
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, why can't I do something? I
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 1: sort of smirk about it because I'm like, you know–
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: A lot of your friends on the Democratic side have
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 1: been complaining about this for some time. Maybe you guys
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 1: ought to team up. But I've always wondered, why isn't
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 1: the business community in favor of campaign finance reform? Because
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 1: I say this because it would save them money. I
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: think they would– wouldn't they love to not feel like
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 1: they had to give?
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 3: Well– In part, the way the campaign finance system works
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 3: right now, you might argue for many in the business community,
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 3: especially not the treasury of a Fortune 500 company, but
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 3: a very wealthy individual, they can punch with greater punching power.
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 3: If anything, post Citizens United, it benefits those who have
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 3: a whole lot of money that they are willing and
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 3: able to spend. I don't know that I would say
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 3: that's the business community writ large. But it certainly are.
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 3: There are numbers of people with enough money who want
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 3: to make a big investment. But, Chuck, you know, I've
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 3: written about for now a decade. I think we're in
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 3: a new Gilded Age. And as with the last Gilded Age,
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 3: we're going to need a series of reforms, economic reforms,
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 3: political reforms, social reforms to get through where we are.
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 3: We have a political system that was designed and operates
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 3: for a world before the Internet existed. Right. We're going
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 3: to need to change how we draw districts, how we
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 3: run primaries, and I think how campaigns are financed, how
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 3: spending happens. If it's an eerie parallel to what you
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 3: were seeing at the end of the 1800s and the
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 3: early 1900s, that led to a lot of corporate contributions
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 3: were banned, union contributions were banned. A lot of reforms
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 3: happened then. I think it's not a question of if,
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 3: it's a question of when. We're going to start seeing
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 3: a recognition that the system we've got does not empower
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 3: the small D democracy to solve problems like we were
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 3: talking about, like the debt.
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: This is how I leave people with optimism. It's like, look,
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 1: and I don't think the two parties are going to
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: do this voluntarily. I think it's going to have to come,
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: which by the way, when you actually look at the
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: history of whether it's direct election of senators, women to
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 1: write the vote, the tax, the income tax, which were
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: All part of those– the constitutional amendments that we were
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 1: responsive of to that era, all of those constitutional amendments
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 1: emanated from outside the two parties, outside the system, sort
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 1: of thrusted upon the system a little bit. And I
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 1: think that's the– that's where I'm always thinking, yeah, I
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 1: think we're a cycle or two away from this. Like
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: we're getting closer. But I think it's 1896.
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you're right.
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 3: And the history lesson is that these things sometimes take decades.
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 3: So it feels like they were easy reforms, but they
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 3: were actually very complicated.
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 1: The story of the 19th Amendment, right? 72 years from
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 1: Seneca Falls. And one woman who was at the first
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 1: meeting made it to 1920 and the right to vote.
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 1: All right, let's talk about, there's a bunch of companies
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 1: that have all the money in the world, Bruce. And
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 1: I have a feeling if they spent all the money
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 1: in the world trying to convince people that data centers
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 1: are a good thing, it would be money. They might
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 1: as well just light it on fire at this point.
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure the public's ready to hear anything from
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 1: tech on this data center issue. And yet we're going
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 1: to need these data centers. So what should big tech
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 1: be doing right now?
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, you're right.
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 3: I think this was somewhat avoidable and somewhat unavoidable, but
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 3: tech is behind the eight ball.
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 2: I mean, first....
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 3: Obviously, we're talking about this because the scale of investment
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 3: is larger than the Manhattan Project, larger than highways. It's
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 3: an epic scale of investment. And you know and I know,
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 3: look at the history of investments. Look at the railroads.
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 3: Look at highways. Look at electrification. There have always been opposition,
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 3: including local opposition. We're actually not seeing nearly the kind
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 3: of backlash yet that the highways saw, but given how
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 3: much land they gobbled up.
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 2: So first, it's already- And we love the interstates now.
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 1: Well, most of the interstates. We don't love what they
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 1: did to some cities, but that's.
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 2: We're glad they're there now.
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 3: We're glad, we wish we had cheaper electricity, but we
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 3: don't wanna have any wires in our backyard. So first,
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 3: all of us need to take the deep breath of
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 3: perspective of- Of course, there is a backlash. This isn't
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 3: because big tech's bad. It's because it's an epic scale
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 3: of investment, number one. Number two, the costs are typically
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 3: concentrated locally and the benefits feel kind of diffuse. So
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 3: golf courses... We'll use seven to 10 times more land
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 3: than the projected massive number of data centers and 20
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 3: times more water than the projected data centers.
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 1: Local communities take golf courses. But anyway, I digress.
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 3: I think I mean, maybe I'm maybe I speak for
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 3: the minority, but plenty of people like having golf courses
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 3: in the.
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 1: Oh, I know that.
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 3: Right. But they.
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 1: They do, there's always people fighting them for that very reason.
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 3: I don't want it in my backyard, but, you know,
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 3: so when the benefits are more visible, great. When I'm
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 3: worried about it, that's not great. But most, to me,
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 3: the political interesting lesson here is nobody really made the case.
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 3: A lot of the data centers are companies that I
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 3: bet you 400 to 435 members of the House can't
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 3: name companies that build and operate data centers. Nobody's ever
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 3: heard of them. They lease to a lot of the
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 3: tech companies.
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 2: So that's one.
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 3: They're being used for AI. And what do we hear
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 3: from the LLM lords? We hear that AI is too
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 3: dangerous for them to release. We hear that we might
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 3: all lose our jobs. So hard to believe they don't
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 3: have a social license to put something.
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 2: In their backyard. You're saying the public doesn't like AI?
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because the AI inventors are the ones saying, oh,
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 1: my God, this is a terrible idea. Yeah.
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 3: What's interesting to me, the Echelon Insight guys have done
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 3: some wonderful polling. And what they find is the average
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 3: person asked about a data center anywhere near them says,
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 3: I don't like it. And then they say, how about
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 3: if they agree that basically they won't screw with the
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 3: water table? that it'll be self-contained or otherwise it'll not
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 3: have an impact, local water support, opposition diminishes. Then how
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 3: about if they're going to make sure that your electricity
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 3: bills don't go up as a result of their activity?
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 3: For many of the voters, it moves to modestly positive.
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 3: If you ask about a data center for streaming, people
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 3: are generally okay. So to me- Nobody has made the
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 3: case locally, but locally is where the action happens. And
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 3: you see some areas like Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Amish country. And
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 3: in Amish country, there was what's called a CBA, a
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 3: community benefit agreement. where the data center developers sat down
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 3: with local community and they agreed on a bunch of
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 3: thou shalt nots and thou shalls. I think you're going
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 3: to see in the future, fewer of these operators nobody's
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 3: ever heard of just buying a bunch of land and boom,
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 3: there's a data center and, you know, suck it neighbors.
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 2: And we're going to see procedural hurdles put in place
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 2: that makes local people feel like they have a voice,
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 2: but we're going to continue to build them.
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 1: This gets into a larger issue that I think the
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 1: tech companies have and the industry has, which is, you know,
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 1: I think in this case, they thought capturing, frankly, capturing
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 1: the politicians was enough. And, you know, I think right
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 1: before we started recording, I caught another headline of somebody
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 1: that got recalled twice, beat back a recall, then got
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 1: recalled again over voting for a data center, like the
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 1: voters were just decided to punish some county commissioner, whatever
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 1: it was. I can't even remember the area of the country,
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 1: but frankly, it doesn't matter if I'm talking about, I've
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 1: seen this opposition in Pensacola Beach during blues weekend, where
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 1: sometimes they're flying airplane banners that say, we've got sex
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 1: on the beach drinks for $ 5. And then the next
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 1: airplane is telling you about the danger of data centers
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 1: and the horrible noise. You think the blue angels make noise?
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 1: You don't know anything yet, you know? And it is
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 1: shocking how local and fired up the opposition is. And
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 1: it just this is not about data centers to me.
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 1: And this is not about AI. This is a this
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 1: is a generation, I think. And this is where I
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 1: think the tech industry just frankly doesn't get it. Although
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 1: I'll give some credit to Mark Zuckerberg, who I think
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 1: it started in that manifesto he wrote, at least was
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 1: using the correct words, I think. And that is. I
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 1: think the public doesn't think tech has been great for society.
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 1: Maybe they like what they like about tech, right? I
• 1:53:05
  Speaker 1: like my phone or I like this or I like that,
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 1: but they look at the overall picture and think, huh,
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 1: was social media a good thing or a bad thing?
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 1: And we're jumping into this AI business and we're not
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 1: quite sure what it is. And then it's this, like,
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 1: I think the tech industry needs a whole come to,
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 1: you know what here and needs to figure out, uh,
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 1: how to become Americans again. They really have come across
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 1: like they're these Bond villains. And some of them actually
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 1: have looked like Bond villains and even have names that
• 1:53:36
  Speaker 1: you'd be like, you wouldn't even bother changing the name
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 1: to make a good Bond villain. They don't feel like
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 1: they're a part of our society. And I wonder how
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 1: much that is playing a role here.
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so I wrote a piece in July called Bonfire
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 3: of the Data Centers, and I tried to go deep
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 3: into a lot of these issues.
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 1: For example- By the way, for those of a certain age,
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 1: they're not going to know the Bonfire reference. This is
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 1: you channeling old Tom Wolfe. And to anybody under the
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 1: age of 40, if you've never gotten into a Tom
• 1:54:05
  Speaker 1: Wolfe phase, please do. You'll be glad you did. Bonfire
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 1: of the Vanity is being argued. Tom Wolfe, people will
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 1: say it's not his best, but it is certainly his
• 1:54:15
  Speaker 1: most famous.
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and don't watch the movie.
• 1:54:18
  Speaker 3: As much as I love Tom Hanks, the book is
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 3: way better.
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 2: You're right.
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 3: Bonfire of the Data Centers is a ripoff of Tom
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 3: Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities.
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 2: Two thoughts about that.
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 3: First, one chart I included in that was a favorable,
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 3: unfavorable poll. And social media, big time underwater. AI, big
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 3: time underwater. Data centers, big time underwater. The most favorable,
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 3: net favorable sector, technology. So what's interesting to me is
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 3: that people have a huge, when they hear tech, we
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 3: love American tech. We love the tech sector. We don't love,
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 3: as it turns out, they're kind of, uh, marquee products and,
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 3: and the things that they're doing.
• 1:55:00
  Speaker 2: That's interesting to me.
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 3: It means, I think Tim Cook remains one of the
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 3: most admired people in the country. Michael Dell is a,
• 1:55:07
  Speaker 3: is a national hero and treasure. He's extraordinarily admired. Um,
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 3: So thought number one is there is this interesting– I
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 3: work with the tech industry, even though a lot of
• 1:55:16
  Speaker 3: their products, say social media, don't have a lot of
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 3: social approval. It hasn't dented– 20 years of social media
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 3: making people more worried about things hasn't dented the overall
• 1:55:31
  Speaker 3: favorability of the tech industry broadly is number one. But
• 1:55:34
  Speaker 3: number two, I included one of my charts– which I
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 3: use chat GPT to help me draw, the anti-data center
• 1:55:41
  Speaker 3: backlash is where Bannon meets Bernie. It's a populist thing.
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 3: And I think this is what you were getting at.
• 1:55:48
  Speaker 3: The broad dynamic driving people to keep voting for change
• 1:55:53
  Speaker 3: and to throw in the bums out whether it's voting
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 3: Mamdani in New York City or voting Donald Trump in
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 3: in Washington, is the idea that the establishment, the institution,
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 3: the system is rigged against people like me. And I
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 3: need somebody to stand up against the big global elite.
• 1:56:10
  Speaker 3: Tech has always been at high risk because they are big,
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 3: they are global, they are elite. To date, people have
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 3: generally felt like tech broadly brings more benefit, even if
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 3: some of the products narrowly are products that people get
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 3: worried about. Even data centers, Apple's not a data center
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 3: company per se, but if you don't have data centers,
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 3: good luck getting what.
• 1:56:33
  Speaker 2: You want to get on your iPhone.
• 1:56:35
  Speaker 3: One of the things Besant just this week took a
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 3: lot of the tech sector to task for is you
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 3: guys need to be much more vocal about And defending
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 3: these things and owning these things and helping people understand
• 1:56:47
  Speaker 3: the benefits of these things. Because right now, people are
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 3: worried about the water bill. People are worried about the
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 3: electric bill. And AI generally just seems to benefit billionaires
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 3: or people who hold a couple of chip stocks.
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 1: You know what they really need? They need a Lee Iacocca.
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 1: And this segues into the last topic I wanted to
• 1:57:12
  Speaker 1: talk with you about. We sort of previewed it. Lee
• 1:57:16
  Speaker 1: Iacocca was an incredible communicator for an auto executive. And
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 1: for those that don't know, he's basically the guy that
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 1: invented the Mustang. That was his claim to fame at Ford.
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 1: And then he's eventually hired over at Chrysler. And he's
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 1: the man that's Chrysler's had to be saved a few times.
• 1:57:31
  Speaker 1: The first time they were saved, they were saved by
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 1: Iacocca going to Ronald Reagan. But they obviously had to
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 1: be saved a second time some 30 years later. But
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 1: Lee Iacocca was a terrific spokesperson for the industry as
• 1:57:47
  Speaker 1: a whole, right? He was.
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 1: And it was at a moment that the auto industry
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 1: needed somebody to, you know, buck it up a little bit.
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 1: They were under siege by foreign competitors. The Germans and
• 1:58:00
  Speaker 1: the Japanese were just, you know, running laps around that.
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 1: And I look at the tech industry, and it's interesting
• 1:58:07
  Speaker 1: the names you brought up and the names you didn't
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 1: bring up. I agree with you about Tim Cook. Tim
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 1: Cook's now former CEO of Apple. I agree with you
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 1: about Michael Dell, and Michael Dell is not necessarily the forefront.
• 1:58:17
  Speaker 1: But when you look at the current crop, whether it's
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 1: the CEO of Google, the CEO of Meadow, Mr. Zuckerberg,
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 1: You put him on a fave-unfave and you're going to
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 1: be underwater. Elon Musk, you're probably going to see him underwater.
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 1: They could use a better communicator. I think it's now
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 1: the most important skill a CEO has to have these days,
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 1: when back in the day, it didn't matter if you
• 1:58:48
  Speaker 1: were a good communicator, you could find one. Am I
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 1: missing something? Is there somebody out there I don't know
• 1:58:56
  Speaker 1: that could be this generation's Lee Iacocca for Silicon Valley
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 1: that could sort of put this stuff in English and
• 1:59:04
  Speaker 1: essentially make the case?
• 1:59:07
  Speaker 3: So first, when Iacocca was the spokesperson, remember, it was
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 3: the big three.
• 1:59:14
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 1:59:14
  Speaker 3: Tech is not a monolith. Tech is an unbelievably broad
• 1:59:18
  Speaker 3: and diverse.
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 2: Set of companies.
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 1: Well, we have the magnificent seven. I mean, you do
• 1:59:23
  Speaker 1: have six or seven companies that are sort of the
• 1:59:27
  Speaker 1: tip of the spear.
• 1:59:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and the Google CEO is actually a terrific communicator,
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 3: albeit not an everyday regular guy. You invent the Mustang,
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 3: you're speaking to every American. You CEO of Google, he's brilliant.
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 3: He's thoughtful. Same with Microsoft. But it has less of
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 3: a feel of must may have been there.
• 1:59:48
  Speaker 1: You know what they come across to me as technocrats, which,
• 1:59:51
  Speaker 1: of course, I love and so do you. I mean,
• 1:59:53
  Speaker 1: I think the country would be better off if we
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 1: had 435 technocrats, but it would be boring.
• 1:59:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the other thing that's interesting about Iacocca is he
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 3: wasn't the richest guy in the world. In fact, part
• 2:00:05
  Speaker 3: of his visibility in Washington, he came hat in hand.
• 2:00:07
  Speaker 3: He needed a bailout. Obviously, tech is not there right now.
• 2:00:13
  Speaker 3: I don't disagree with the fundamental premise of, given the internet,
• 2:00:19
  Speaker 3: Communication and communication skills have never been more critical. The
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 3: ability to have a narrative that people can embrace and
• 2:00:26
  Speaker 3: understand has never been more critical as maybe the number
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 3: one prerequisite for an effective leader. I don't know that
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 3: I would say to be an effective, you know, Jensen Huang,
• 2:00:38
  Speaker 3: to be the effective leader of NVIDIA. You've got to
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 3: be so smooth on national television that everybody embraces you.
• 2:00:46
  Speaker 2: That's I don't know.
• 2:00:47
  Speaker 1: No, I'm not saying that, but I don't think Alex
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 1: Karp's a very good spokesperson. I'm not going to fight
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 1: you on carp. He's awkward.
• 2:00:56
  Speaker 3: But AMD CEO Lisa Su is brilliant. She's been incredibly effective.
• 2:01:02
  Speaker 3: She communicates like a brilliant engineer.
• 2:01:04
  Speaker 2: She's not running for anything. She's running a.
• 2:01:07
  Speaker 3: Great company competing against NVIDIA and a bunch of other folks.
• 2:01:11
  Speaker 3: She's doing exactly what she's supposed to be doing. The
• 2:01:15
  Speaker 3: interesting question to me, Chuck, is maybe it's they need
• 2:01:18
  Speaker 3: a Jack Valenti. Maybe they need a spokesperson who represents
• 2:01:22
  Speaker 3: the industry, but who is- Jack.
• 2:01:24
  Speaker 1: Mulaney, Bruce and I are going old guy here. Jack Mulaney,
• 2:01:28
  Speaker 1: he was actually an old LBJ staffer, if I'm not mistaken,
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 1: became the head of the motion, basically the people that
• 2:01:37
  Speaker 1: rate movies for you, the Motion Picture Association of America, MPAA.
• 2:01:40
  Speaker 1: I think that they technically changed what those initials mean
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 1: these days. I'm not going to get into it, but
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 1: there was a time where where he was probably the
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 1: most famous lobbyist in Washington, right?
• 2:01:51
  Speaker 3: He was, and he was broader than lobbyist. But at
• 2:01:54
  Speaker 3: the time, the Hollywood moguls were under attack. A lot
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 3: of folks in Washington were shocked, shocked to find what
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 3: they would think of as smut or violence. And so
• 2:02:03
  Speaker 3: Washington was gonna need to step in and gonna need
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 3: to regulate. And Valenti, who was a charismatic, unbelievably effective communicator,
• 2:02:12
  Speaker 3: got the proxy from all the Hollywood moguls and negotiated
• 2:02:15
  Speaker 3: very much in public the self-regulatory RX PG-13 rating system
• 2:02:22
  Speaker 3: and got the major players to agree that they would
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 3: adhere to it and they would follow it. It feels
• 2:02:27
  Speaker 3: to me in the same way your average Hollywood mogul who,
• 2:02:31
  Speaker 3: they're brilliant in Hollywood, but they may not be the
• 2:02:34
  Speaker 3: face and the voice in Washington, but they found somebody
• 2:02:37
  Speaker 3: who knew how to be effective in this environment and
• 2:02:41
  Speaker 3: My instincts are that tech would benefit more from that
• 2:02:44
  Speaker 3: than from having one CEO who would attempt to speak
• 2:02:48
  Speaker 3: for all of the tech sector, which is just never
• 2:02:50
  Speaker 3: going to happen, not least because a software sector guy
• 2:02:53
  Speaker 3: has a whole bunch of different equities than a hardware
• 2:02:56
  Speaker 3: sector guy.
• 2:02:56
  Speaker 2: And hardware can be.
• 2:03:00
  Speaker 3: Business to business, a chip that goes into a system,
• 2:03:02
  Speaker 3: and it can be what you and I have on
• 2:03:04
  Speaker 3: our desktop. So I just don't see a single voice
• 2:03:08
  Speaker 3: as the voice of tech.
• 2:03:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I hear you on that. It is interesting to me,
• 2:03:11
  Speaker 1: and I'm curious how much you've tracked this. The fastest
• 2:03:16
  Speaker 1: growing C-suite, the addition to the C-suite over the last
• 2:03:20
  Speaker 1: 15 years has been a chief comms officer. In 2005,
• 2:03:26
  Speaker 1: no Fortune 500 company had somebody with a communications title
• 2:03:31
  Speaker 1: in the C-suite. It usually was under, in a lot
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 1: of places, it would be under the general counsel. You know,
• 2:03:37
  Speaker 1: they would that they were they were the supervisor of
• 2:03:40
  Speaker 1: the communications shop. And now it's become such a bigger
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 1: every company has decided I can't even trust a trade
• 2:03:48
  Speaker 1: press anymore. We've got to tell our own story. Have
• 2:03:53
  Speaker 1: you seen this phenomenon sort of bleed into speaking to Washington?
• 2:03:59
  Speaker 1: Are we in one of those moments? Are associations in
• 2:04:01
  Speaker 1: or out? Do more of these companies want to take
• 2:04:05
  Speaker 1: control of their storytelling and narratives in Washington now in
• 2:04:08
  Speaker 1: the same way they appear to be when it comes
• 2:04:10
  Speaker 1: to the C-suites?
• 2:04:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I certainly run into a lot more CMOs. I've
• 2:04:15
  Speaker 3: spoken to groups of CMOs at conferences. To me, first
• 2:04:19
  Speaker 3: and foremost, the recognition is what you say to Wall Street,
• 2:04:23
  Speaker 3: what you say to stakeholders, what you say to customers
• 2:04:26
  Speaker 3: and to the market is what you're saying to Washington.
• 2:04:29
  Speaker 3: There are no divisions and there are no separations anymore.
• 2:04:32
  Speaker 3: So if you get your messaging outside of Washington wrong,
• 2:04:35
  Speaker 3: you have a Washington problem. In the same way that
• 2:04:38
  Speaker 3: if you get your messaging to Washington in a way
• 2:04:40
  Speaker 3: that you think kisses, the the butt of the people
• 2:04:44
  Speaker 3: you're talking to you may have a consumer problem or
• 2:04:47
  Speaker 3: a market problem and uh it's the the narrative the
• 2:04:52
  Speaker 3: message is so critical for your ability to attract and
• 2:04:55
  Speaker 3: retain uh employees for your ability to have customers embrace
• 2:05:01
  Speaker 3: you and not boycott you or not protest you for
• 2:05:03
  Speaker 3: your ability to be heard by stakeholders in government and
• 2:05:06
  Speaker 3: beyond and You need to have somebody who is really
• 2:05:10
  Speaker 3: good at it and who thinks about it all the time.
• 2:05:12
  Speaker 3: The best companies, the Walmarts of the world, the chief
• 2:05:16
  Speaker 3: marketing officer is working with the chief legal officer who's
• 2:05:20
  Speaker 3: working with him.
• 2:05:20
  Speaker 1: And they've got Dan Bartlett, who kind of is the
• 2:05:22
  Speaker 1: one ring to rule them all. Well, I was just
• 2:05:24
  Speaker 1: going to say, Dan Bartlett, and you're so right about Walmart. Walmart,
• 2:05:27
  Speaker 1: there's a handful of companies that are just better at
• 2:05:29
  Speaker 1: this than most. Walmart's one, Marriott's another. And a lot
• 2:05:33
  Speaker 1: of times you find out, oh, yeah, they hired a
• 2:05:36
  Speaker 1: bunch of people who used to work on the– used
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 1: to work on the politics side of things and Dan
• 2:05:39
  Speaker 1: Bartlett being a perfect one being.
• 2:05:41
  Speaker 2: And Walmart didn't used to be better at this, Chuck.
• 2:05:44
  Speaker 1: No, they were terrible at it, right? Right. They were
• 2:05:47
  Speaker 1: getting kicked– They were meta, right? Meta is getting kicked
• 2:05:51
  Speaker 1: around all the time.
• 2:05:52
  Speaker 3: They've been a client for 20 years, and there's almost
• 2:05:54
  Speaker 3: no engagement I'm prouder of, both because we've lasted as
• 2:05:56
  Speaker 3: long as we have. But I feel like working with them,
• 2:06:00
  Speaker 3: we've helped them do a far better job of telling
• 2:06:03
  Speaker 3: their story.
• 2:06:04
  Speaker 2: They weren't just saying, hey, we're not regulated. We're retail.
• 2:06:07
  Speaker 2: leave us alone.
• 2:06:07
  Speaker 3: They leaned into, we want friends on both sides. We
• 2:06:11
  Speaker 3: need to tell our own story. We need to emphasize
• 2:06:14
  Speaker 3: all of the great things we're doing for local communities.
• 2:06:16
  Speaker 3: And they benefited not least from the rise of Amazon
• 2:06:19
  Speaker 3: where all of a sudden.
• 2:06:20
  Speaker 2: You know, there was a new, a new Darth Vader
• 2:06:22
  Speaker 2: out there.
• 2:06:23
  Speaker 1: Right. Look, I just, I'm such a fan of what's
• 2:06:27
  Speaker 1: happened in Northwest Arkansas, and that's due to Walmart and Tyson's.
• 2:06:32
  Speaker 1: It is unbelievable. Let me get you out of here
• 2:06:34
  Speaker 1: on this. You gave us a little bit of a
• 2:06:36
  Speaker 1: tease here when you said your Democratic partners are suddenly getting–
• 2:06:40
  Speaker 1: their phones are ringing off the hook, which tells you
• 2:06:43
  Speaker 1: where corporate America thinks things are moving. You probably, more
• 2:06:50
  Speaker 1: than anybody else– made the phrase, always bet on change
• 2:06:54
  Speaker 1: at this point, sort of the mantra of politics in
• 2:06:58
  Speaker 1: the Trump era. So look, as I say, we know
• 2:07:01
  Speaker 1: Democrats are going to gain seats. You think we're underestimating
• 2:07:05
  Speaker 1: or overestimating where things stand right now?
• 2:07:07
  Speaker 3: Well, I tend to think the House will flip and
• 2:07:11
  Speaker 3: I think the Dems will have a high single, low
• 2:07:14
  Speaker 3: double digit margin. Although the Republicans have been doing everything
• 2:07:17
  Speaker 3: that one can do in terms of raising as much
• 2:07:20
  Speaker 3: money as they can in the mid-decade redistricting wars. But
• 2:07:24
  Speaker 3: the president's approval rating is the best single predictive factor.
• 2:07:28
  Speaker 3: And so that suggests to me the House flips. I
• 2:07:31
  Speaker 3: think the Senate ends 50-50. Um, it's a whole, you have.
• 2:07:35
  Speaker 2: To have me back.
• 2:07:35
  Speaker 3: You and I can go. I love the piece you wrote,
• 2:07:37
  Speaker 3: but I don't necessarily agree. I think, I think Alaska
• 2:07:40
  Speaker 3: is going to hold, and I don't think you can
• 2:07:41
  Speaker 3: beat Susan Collins. Um, even though I know all of
• 2:07:45
  Speaker 3: the numbers and you've explained eloquently.
• 2:07:47
  Speaker 1: No, I, I hear you. I mean, I, I, I
• 2:07:49
  Speaker 1: went out there a little bit on a limb with,
• 2:07:51
  Speaker 1: with Collins. I, you know, a friend of mine put
• 2:07:54
  Speaker 1: together a fun little chart about, this was the conversation
• 2:07:58
  Speaker 1: many people were having at this time in 06. Democrats
• 2:08:01
  Speaker 1: are going to win the House. Boy, the Senate, I
• 2:08:03
  Speaker 1: don't know, right? And then, oh, a Chafee actually lost.
• 2:08:08
  Speaker 1: You know, it was sort of because there were things
• 2:08:11
  Speaker 1: we had never seen before. Hadn't seen Democrats win a
• 2:08:13
  Speaker 1: Senate seat in Virginia in a long time. Hadn't seen
• 2:08:16
  Speaker 1: the Democrats be able to defeat the Chafee seat, right?
• 2:08:22
  Speaker 1: It was father and son that kept holding that seat.
• 2:08:25
  Speaker 1: And he noted, Susan Collins, are we seeing this? But
• 2:08:29
  Speaker 1: I take your point there. Alaska, I'll tell you what
• 2:08:31
  Speaker 1: sold me why I'm bullish on Peltola and down on
• 2:08:36
  Speaker 1: Dan Sullivan, although- I just think he's a good Senator.
• 2:08:39
  Speaker 1: I feel like it'll, I'm sorry. This is all happening
• 2:08:43
  Speaker 1: the way it is. Um, as far as Dan Sullivan's concerned,
• 2:08:46
  Speaker 1: but boy, when you look at that primary number, I mean, she, Boy,
• 2:08:50
  Speaker 1: the Democratic enthusiasm is way up. She did really well
• 2:08:53
  Speaker 1: in that first round of voting, better than I expected.
• 2:08:55
  Speaker 3: She did, although at some point with rank choice, the
• 2:08:59
  Speaker 3: imposter Dan Sullivan goes away and maybe people voting will
• 2:09:04
  Speaker 3: make their second choice. The other Dan Sullivan, just not
• 2:09:06
  Speaker 3: sure which is which. But look, it's a toss up.
• 2:09:10
  Speaker 3: But to your point, Sullivan is a good senator. He's
• 2:09:13
  Speaker 3: made no mistakes. He's been effective for the state.
• 2:09:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:09:16
  Speaker 3: It's a Trump double-digit margin state. So I tend to
• 2:09:21
  Speaker 3: think House flips, Senate holds a 50-50.
• 2:09:25
  Speaker 2: You're right.
• 2:09:26
  Speaker 3: It could be a blue tsunami. But things have gotten
• 2:09:28
  Speaker 3: a lot more sorted and a lot more sorted, maybe
• 2:09:32
  Speaker 3: sorted also, and a lot more partisan since 06.
• 2:09:35
  Speaker 1: The 50-50 result is fascinating to me. And I think
• 2:09:42
  Speaker 1: Alaska is everything. And here's why. Let me throw a
• 2:09:45
  Speaker 1: scenario at you. It hits 50-50 and Alaska is one
• 2:09:49
  Speaker 1: of the flips. What do you think Lisa Murkowski does?
• 2:09:58
  Speaker 1: If her state decided to elect Paltola, What do you
• 2:10:02
  Speaker 1: think she does?
• 2:10:04
  Speaker 2: Nothing different.
• 2:10:05
  Speaker 3: I think Lisa is a far greater chance of a
• 2:10:07
  Speaker 3: Fetterman flip in Pennsylvania than a Murkowski flip. Murkowski's dad
• 2:10:13
  Speaker 3: was the governor and the congressman.
• 2:10:14
  Speaker 1: Oh, I know.
• 2:10:14
  Speaker 3: I know. He's been through it. She was here before
• 2:10:18
  Speaker 3: the president. She's going to be here after the president.
• 2:10:20
  Speaker 3: I don't see any change. in Lisa Murkowski would be
• 2:10:24
  Speaker 3: my best guess. She'll continue to represent the kind of
• 2:10:27
  Speaker 3: the more moderate, old school George H.W. Bush era wing
• 2:10:32
  Speaker 3: of the Republican Party that I also tend to come from.
• 2:10:35
  Speaker 3: But I don't I don't see her deciding that she's
• 2:10:38
  Speaker 3: going to go free agent and put things in play,
• 2:10:41
  Speaker 3: not least, Chuck, because so say she did. OK, what's
• 2:10:45
  Speaker 3: that really change? It's not like if she were a
• 2:10:48
  Speaker 3: decided vote for a conviction.
• 2:10:51
  Speaker 1: She gets the energy. She might want the energy committee.
• 2:10:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't.
• 2:10:55
  Speaker 3: I just it feels off brand for her.
• 2:10:58
  Speaker 2: You follow everyone super close.
• 2:10:59
  Speaker 1: I don't know. She's look, she's I think she's the
• 2:11:03
  Speaker 1: hardest person to read sometimes. So, you know, she does
• 2:11:06
  Speaker 1: keep some of these things.
• 2:11:08
  Speaker 3: Look, I think let me get your take, though, Chuck,
• 2:11:11
  Speaker 3: because I think the most critical race, the most interesting
• 2:11:15
  Speaker 3: race is Michigan.
• 2:11:17
  Speaker 1: And I think Michigan and Texas are the Senate. I
• 2:11:19
  Speaker 1: think they decide the Senate.
• 2:11:21
  Speaker 3: Texas has its own issue going on. For me, though,
• 2:11:24
  Speaker 3: Michigan has two factors that make it super interesting. One,
• 2:11:28
  Speaker 3: if the Dems can't hold Michigan, they don't they can't
• 2:11:30
  Speaker 3: win the Senate no matter what. But two, if they
• 2:11:33
  Speaker 3: lose Michigan with El-Sayed, that means the 28 nominee is
• 2:11:37
  Speaker 3: far more likely to be the Bill Clinton, Andy Beshear
• 2:11:40
  Speaker 3: wing and less likely to come from the left. But
• 2:11:42
  Speaker 3: if they hold Michigan and the DSA energy doesn't seem
• 2:11:45
  Speaker 3: to hurt them anywhere. DSA is going to be saying
• 2:11:48
  Speaker 3: we should choose the nominee and AOC goes frontrunner.
• 2:11:51
  Speaker 1: You're stealing analysis that I'll be doing in about two months.
• 2:11:54
  Speaker 1: I completely agree with that. I think that Michigan is
• 2:11:57
  Speaker 1: such a weird trap for the Dem establishment. I was
• 2:12:00
  Speaker 1: joking with somebody recently. I said, I wonder if Schumer
• 2:12:06
  Speaker 1: and Thune would come to an agreement and Thune would say,
• 2:12:09
  Speaker 1: we'll walk from Paxton if you walk from Abdul El-Sayed.
• 2:12:13
  Speaker 1: We'll just trade. You don't want him to win. We
• 2:12:16
  Speaker 1: don't want Paxton in this caucus. We'll do the one
• 2:12:20
  Speaker 1: for one there and get out of it. If that
• 2:12:23
  Speaker 1: was a deal that could be had, why do I
• 2:12:26
  Speaker 1: think both Thune and Schumer would take it?
• 2:12:29
  Speaker 3: Uh, well, I can't speak for either of them. I
• 2:12:31
  Speaker 3: don't think Schumer would take the deal though, but, uh, it's,
• 2:12:34
  Speaker 3: it's El Sayed is left of center and it'll be
• 2:12:37
  Speaker 3: a bit of a pain in their ass, but the
• 2:12:39
  Speaker 3: Texas is a whole different kettle of fish.
• 2:12:42
  Speaker 1: I have to say I'm, I am, um, and it's, I, I,
• 2:12:46
  Speaker 1: I was a skeptic of Tallarico being able to win
• 2:12:49
  Speaker 1: that thing. Um, I think the, the, uh, I hadn't
• 2:12:57
  Speaker 1: properly dove into watching the Texas erosion. If Abbott can't
• 2:13:03
  Speaker 1: get over 52, I don't know how Paxton wins. And
• 2:13:07
  Speaker 1: I was not there. And Abbott's going to win re-election.
• 2:13:12
  Speaker 1: But Abbott's going to have to spend a lot of
• 2:13:13
  Speaker 1: money to help Abbott. And there was a time six
• 2:13:15
  Speaker 1: months ago I thought, oh, Abbott is going to be
• 2:13:18
  Speaker 1: the get-out-of-jail-free card for Paxton. And I don't believe that anymore.
• 2:13:22
  Speaker 2: I think the bull case for Tallarico is Roy Moore.
• 2:13:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, and Paxton's been turned, and it looks, look,
• 2:13:29
  Speaker 1: Thune wants out. Now, I think he's having a staring
• 2:13:31
  Speaker 1: contest with Trump, and we'll see if the MAGA money
• 2:13:35
  Speaker 1: comes in, but- But Thune made it clear. And by
• 2:13:39
  Speaker 1: the way, I think Thune's making the right strategic choice.
• 2:13:42
  Speaker 1: If you try to save Texas, you don't have the
• 2:13:44
  Speaker 1: money for Michigan, Ohio, at least those two. To me,
• 2:13:49
  Speaker 1: those are the most expensive left on the board that
• 2:13:51
  Speaker 1: are winnable that you would be taking– that Texas would
• 2:13:55
  Speaker 1: be taking money from.
• 2:13:56
  Speaker 3: And the president's got $ 400 million. He can bring– he
• 2:14:00
  Speaker 3: can do this. If spending can save Paxton, the president
• 2:14:03
  Speaker 3: can afford it.
• 2:14:04
  Speaker 1: That's true. You're right. It's interesting the way you just
• 2:14:06
  Speaker 1: put it. If spending can save Paxton, I'm not sure.
• 2:14:13
  Speaker 1: Paxton doesn't seem to want to win. He doesn't seem
• 2:14:20
  Speaker 1: like a candidate that's working as hard as he should,
• 2:14:22
  Speaker 1: but that's a whole other story.
• 2:14:24
  Speaker 3: What's coming next? You know, it's going to be a
• 2:14:28
  Speaker 3: real busy fall. Like you, I go around doing a
• 2:14:32
  Speaker 3: whole lot of speaking. In fact, I think this October,
• 2:14:34
  Speaker 3: I now have 30 on the books.
• 2:14:36
  Speaker 2: It's going to be a.
• 2:14:38
  Speaker 3: Whirlwind.
• 2:14:39
  Speaker 2: But it's interesting. It's fascinating. I love getting out on
• 2:14:42
  Speaker 2: the hustings.
• 2:14:43
  Speaker 3: I learn a lot from people who aren't inside the beltway.
• 2:14:46
  Speaker 2: I hear real normal perspectives.
• 2:14:48
  Speaker 3: It was in 2016 when I first started realizing that
• 2:14:50
  Speaker 3: President Trump could win because none of us in the beltway,
• 2:14:53
  Speaker 3: we all knew there was no chance this guy was
• 2:14:55
  Speaker 3: going to win. I kept talking to normal people and
• 2:14:57
  Speaker 3: business leaders and others, and I'm like, wow, I am
• 2:15:01
  Speaker 3: snarkily making assumptions, and I can learn a lot when
• 2:15:04
  Speaker 3: I talk to people who are outside the beltway. So
• 2:15:08
  Speaker 3: I actually look forward to doing a lot of that,
• 2:15:10
  Speaker 3: even though the travel is a bit of a grind.
• 2:15:12
  Speaker 3: And the other thing that's fun about all the speaking
• 2:15:14
  Speaker 3: is I've got my free sub stack. I love putting
• 2:15:17
  Speaker 3: it out, but I now include the QR code for
• 2:15:20
  Speaker 3: every audience. Now, again, it's free, so it's worth every penny,
• 2:15:23
  Speaker 3: but But getting in front of several thousand people will
• 2:15:26
  Speaker 3: hopefully gain a couple more readers who will find it interesting.
• 2:15:30
  Speaker 1: It's funny. I made a QR code. My team made
• 2:15:34
  Speaker 1: me one to try to do the same thing. This
• 2:15:37
  Speaker 1: is the world we live in, Bruce. We're all building
• 2:15:40
  Speaker 1: a follower.
• 2:15:41
  Speaker 3: Sadly, Chuck, that's kind of low tech at this point.
• 2:15:43
  Speaker 3: But yes, you and I are impressed.
• 2:15:45
  Speaker 1: Well, this has been lit for a couple of– Middle-aged guys,
• 2:15:50
  Speaker 1: at least we can impress ourselves. Bruce, I always learn
• 2:15:52
  Speaker 1: something from you, man. It's great to see it. Check, please.
• 2:15:56
  Speaker 1: My guess is a lot of my folks do subscribe
• 2:15:58
  Speaker 1: to you already. Six Charts Sunday, always something smart, always
• 2:16:02
  Speaker 1: makes you think, which is terrific.
• 2:16:04
  Speaker 2: Thanks for having me on, Chuck.
• 2:16:10
  Speaker 1: It's the time. All right, it is time machine time.
• 2:16:17
  Speaker 1: Let's press our buttons and see where it takes us.
• 2:16:20
  Speaker 1: This week, we're going back to September 8th, 1974. No, Matt,
• 2:16:27
  Speaker 1: I'm not celebrating the birth of you. That's my cousin, Matt.
• 2:16:31
  Speaker 1: He was born that day. No, we are looking at
• 2:16:33
  Speaker 1: September 8th, 1974 for another reason. Some of you may
• 2:16:37
  Speaker 1: know exactly what I'm referring to. We're looking back more
• 2:16:40
  Speaker 1: than half a century later, what may have been one
• 2:16:42
  Speaker 1: of the biggest problems mistakes in the legal history of
• 2:16:45
  Speaker 1: the American presidency. Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon. Now,
• 2:16:50
  Speaker 1: that is not how history has taught us to think
• 2:16:53
  Speaker 1: about this decision. In fact, almost the opposite. For most
• 2:16:57
  Speaker 1: of my adult life, the conventional wisdom surrounding the Nixon
• 2:17:01
  Speaker 1: pardon has become remarkably subtle. Gerald Ford did something courageous,
• 2:17:06
  Speaker 1: so the story goes, something selfless, So the narrative has
• 2:17:10
  Speaker 1: been written. He knew it might destroy him politically, but
• 2:17:13
  Speaker 1: America had been through enough. Watergate had consumed the country
• 2:17:16
  Speaker 1: for two years. Vietnam had consumed us even longer. And
• 2:17:19
  Speaker 1: this decent man from Grand Rapids, Michigan, decided somebody had
• 2:17:23
  Speaker 1: to end the national nightmare. Eventually, we gave him an
• 2:17:26
  Speaker 1: award for it. In 2001, the John F. Kennedy Library
• 2:17:30
  Speaker 1: gave Gerald Ford its Profile in Courage Award for pardoning
• 2:17:33
  Speaker 1: Richard Nixon. And Ted Kennedy presented it to him. That
• 2:17:37
  Speaker 1: was significant because Kennedy who was a senator in 1974,
• 2:17:41
  Speaker 1: had been one of the pardon's fiercest critics. 27 years later,
• 2:17:47
  Speaker 1: at the ceremony, Kennedy says, now we see that President
• 2:17:50
  Speaker 1: Ford was right. Well, I'm here to argue maybe he wasn't.
• 2:17:55
  Speaker 1: Maybe we rendered that verdict too soon. Maybe the Americans
• 2:17:59
  Speaker 1: who were furious about the pardon in 1974 understood something
• 2:18:03
  Speaker 1: that two generations of political and historical groupthink eventually talked
• 2:18:07
  Speaker 1: us out of. From the voters are always wise. And
• 2:18:12
  Speaker 1: in this one, they were wise. Because more than 50
• 2:18:14
  Speaker 1: years later, I think we ought to ask a very
• 2:18:16
  Speaker 1: different question. What if Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon
• 2:18:20
  Speaker 1: didn't reinforce the idea that nobody is above the law?
• 2:18:23
  Speaker 1: What if it undermined it? And what if the decision
• 2:18:27
  Speaker 1: that looked like healing in the short term helped create
• 2:18:29
  Speaker 1: a much bigger problem in the long term? That's the
• 2:18:32
  Speaker 1: question I put into the Time Machine segment this week.
• 2:18:35
  Speaker 1: So we're going back. August 1974. Richard Nixon's presidency is collapsing.
• 2:18:40
  Speaker 1: The evidence is devastating. The tapes have exposed Nixon's participation
• 2:18:44
  Speaker 1: in the Watergate cover-up. The House Judiciary Committee has approved
• 2:18:47
  Speaker 1: articles of impeachment already. Supreme Court unanimously ordered Nixon to
• 2:18:51
  Speaker 1: surrender the tapes. But ultimately, Nixon is resigning for the
• 2:18:55
  Speaker 1: most fundamental reason that politicians usually leave office. He has
• 2:19:00
  Speaker 1: lost his political support. He didn't leave because he had
• 2:19:04
  Speaker 1: broken the law. He left because he had lost support.
• 2:19:08
  Speaker 1: Public opinion had collapsed. Republicans are staring at the 74
• 2:19:12
  Speaker 1: midterms that are less than 100 days away in August,
• 2:19:14
  Speaker 1: mind you. And they can see what Nixon is doing
• 2:19:17
  Speaker 1: to them. And congressional Republicans start abandoning him. Barry Goldwater,
• 2:19:22
  Speaker 1: Senate Republican Leader Hugh Scott, House Republican Leader John Rhodes
• 2:19:26
  Speaker 1: famously go to the White House. They tell Nixon what
• 2:19:28
  Speaker 1: he already knows. Nixon, one thing he understood was politics.
• 2:19:32
  Speaker 1: The votes aren't there anymore. He's going to be impeached,
• 2:19:34
  Speaker 1: and the Senate has the votes to remove him. His
• 2:19:37
  Speaker 1: own party will not save him was essentially the message.
• 2:19:40
  Speaker 1: And so on August 9th, Richard Nixon chooses resignation as
• 2:19:46
  Speaker 1: opposed to a trial in the United States Senate. Gerald
• 2:19:49
  Speaker 1: Ford takes the oath of office and Ford is in
• 2:19:52
  Speaker 1: an extraordinary position. He's the first president in American history
• 2:19:56
  Speaker 1: who was elected neither president nor vice president. He was
• 2:19:59
  Speaker 1: never elected. Remember how he got to the vice presidency?
• 2:20:04
  Speaker 1: Spiro Agnew, who was elected twice as vice president, 68
• 2:20:08
  Speaker 1: and 72, had resigned the vice presidency less than a
• 2:20:11
  Speaker 1: year earlier in a completely separate corruption scandal that my
• 2:20:14
  Speaker 1: old friend Rachel Maddow did a terrific podcast on. Nixon
• 2:20:18
  Speaker 1: appointed Ford to replace him because at the time, everybody
• 2:20:22
  Speaker 1: kind of knew, hey, you need somebody squeaky clean. Gerald
• 2:20:24
  Speaker 1: Ford was squeaky clean. Then Nixon resigns because of Watergate.
• 2:20:28
  Speaker 1: So Gerald Ford becomes president because scandal and corruption have
• 2:20:31
  Speaker 1: removed both members from of the ticket that Americans elected
• 2:20:35
  Speaker 1: in 1972. And in his first remark as president, Ford
• 2:20:41
  Speaker 1: gives us one of the more memorable lines in presidential
• 2:20:44
  Speaker 1: rhetorical history. Our long national nightmare is over. It's a
• 2:20:49
  Speaker 1: great line. But in retrospect, it tells us something important
• 2:20:54
  Speaker 1: about Gerald Ford's mindset. Because Ford has already reached a conclusion.
• 2:20:59
  Speaker 1: America needs to move on. And 30 days later, he
• 2:21:02
  Speaker 1: decides that he's going to make sure America moves on.
• 2:21:06
  Speaker 1: Sunday morning, September 8th, 1974, Ford goes on television from
• 2:21:10
  Speaker 1: the Oval Office, and he announces that Richard Nixon will
• 2:21:13
  Speaker 1: receive a, quote, full, free, and absolute pardon for every
• 2:21:17
  Speaker 1: federal offense Nixon committed or may have committed during his presidency.
• 2:21:22
  Speaker 1: Think about what that means. Richard Nixon has not been indicted.
• 2:21:27
  Speaker 1: He has not been tried. There has been no presentation
• 2:21:31
  Speaker 1: of evidence before any kind of jury. There's been no verdict.
• 2:21:37
  Speaker 1: There has been no sentence. Investigators have not even finished
• 2:21:40
  Speaker 1: determining the full universe of potential criminal conduct. We don't
• 2:21:44
  Speaker 1: know if a crime was committed. And Ford pardons all
• 2:21:48
  Speaker 1: of it. Ford explains that the Nixon tragedy could, quote,
• 2:21:52
  Speaker 1: go on and on and on. And then he says
• 2:21:55
  Speaker 1: something that more than 50 years later deserves, I think,
• 2:21:58
  Speaker 1: a lot more scrutiny than we've given it. He writes,
• 2:22:02
  Speaker 1: he says this, someone must write the end to it.
• 2:22:05
  Speaker 1: And I have concluded that only I can do that. Why?
• 2:22:11
  Speaker 1: Why Gerald Ford? Who appointed Gerald Ford to decide when
• 2:22:15
  Speaker 1: America had had enough accountability? Because there was another way
• 2:22:19
  Speaker 1: to write the ending. It's called the criminal justice system. Investigators, prosecutors,
• 2:22:25
  Speaker 1: a grand jury, defense lawyers, a judge, evidence, a jury.
• 2:22:32
  Speaker 1: and then eventually a verdict. For just about every other American,
• 2:22:37
  Speaker 1: that's how we decide whether somebody committed a crime. And
• 2:22:40
  Speaker 1: Richard Nixon was now a private citizen. The Constitution actually
• 2:22:44
  Speaker 1: anticipated this. Impeachment doesn't substitute for criminal accountability. An official
• 2:22:49
  Speaker 1: removed through impeachment remained subject to, quote, indictment, trial, judgment,
• 2:22:54
  Speaker 1: and punishment according to law. Nixon avoided removal by resigning.
• 2:23:00
  Speaker 1: But resignation didn't erase potential criminal liability. And this wasn't theoretical.
• 2:23:05
  Speaker 1: The Watergate special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, was already considering criminal
• 2:23:09
  Speaker 1: proceedings against Nixon. The Watergate grand jury had already named
• 2:23:13
  Speaker 1: Nixon an unindicted co-conspirator. And Ford himself would later acknowledge
• 2:23:17
  Speaker 1: that there was, quote, a distinct possibility that Nixon could
• 2:23:20
  Speaker 1: be indicted for obstruction of justice. So whatever uncertainty existed
• 2:23:25
  Speaker 1: about other possible offenses, Ford knew this wasn't an empty exercise.
• 2:23:31
  Speaker 1: There was a serious potential criminal case sitting in front
• 2:23:34
  Speaker 1: of the Justice Department. The legal machinery was moving. And
• 2:23:39
  Speaker 1: the pardon stopped it dead in its tracks. But before
• 2:23:43
  Speaker 1: we judge Ford from the comfort of 2026, I'm going
• 2:23:47
  Speaker 1: to give him the strongest possible version of his argument.
• 2:23:50
  Speaker 1: Because it was a pretty good argument. So it's easy
• 2:23:54
  Speaker 1: for me to backseat drive this from here, given everything
• 2:23:58
  Speaker 1: we've learned. But I do want to take a minute
• 2:24:01
  Speaker 1: to point out what America was like in September 1974.
• 2:24:03
  Speaker 1: The president, a month early, had resigned in disgrace. The
• 2:24:07
  Speaker 1: vice president before Ford had resigned in a corruption scandal.
• 2:24:10
  Speaker 1: Vietnam had been a national trauma and we were trying
• 2:24:14
  Speaker 1: to wind that sucker down. The United States is approaching
• 2:24:16
  Speaker 1: what will become the humiliating final withdrawal from Vietnam. Saigon
• 2:24:21
  Speaker 1: would fall eight months later. The Soviet Union is still
• 2:24:24
  Speaker 1: a superpower with nuclear warheads pointed right at us. Cold
• 2:24:28
  Speaker 1: War is very much alive, and we're not certain we're
• 2:24:31
  Speaker 1: winning it at that moment in time. There's an Arab
• 2:24:34
  Speaker 1: oil embargo that has shaken our economy, right? Outside forces
• 2:24:39
  Speaker 1: making our economic downturn even worse. Inflation is just brutal.
• 2:24:45
  Speaker 1: Americans have lost faith in their government thanks to Vietnam
• 2:24:48
  Speaker 1: and Watergate. And the rest of the world is watching
• 2:24:50
  Speaker 1: what looks like an extraordinarily weakened United States of America.
• 2:24:55
  Speaker 1: And now imagine another year, maybe two, of Richard Nixon's investigation,
• 2:24:59
  Speaker 1: an indictment, a trial, former aides testifying, more tapes, more evidence.
• 2:25:05
  Speaker 1: The former president of the United States sitting in a
• 2:25:08
  Speaker 1: criminal courtroom while the Soviet Union and the rest of
• 2:25:11
  Speaker 1: the world watch America prosecute the man who had been
• 2:25:13
  Speaker 1: its commander in chief just weeks earlier. And so Ford
• 2:25:18
  Speaker 1: wasn't inventing the possibility that this could drag on. Four
• 2:25:21
  Speaker 1: days before the pardon, Jaworski told Ford's own counsel, Philip Buchan,
• 2:25:27
  Speaker 1: that simply selecting an impartial jury could require nine months
• 2:25:31
  Speaker 1: to a year, perhaps even longer. Jaworski would later publicly
• 2:25:36
  Speaker 1: describe the pardon as legal and timely. So I'm not
• 2:25:41
  Speaker 1: going to sit here and say it was an easy call.
• 2:25:44
  Speaker 1: Ford looks... at all of this and says, enough. We
• 2:25:47
  Speaker 1: have to govern. We have to demonstrate stability. We have
• 2:25:50
  Speaker 1: to get the country moving again. And it's a strong
• 2:25:53
  Speaker 1: short-term argument. It really is. The question is what America
• 2:25:57
  Speaker 1: gave up to get that stability. And here's where the story,
• 2:26:00
  Speaker 1: I think, becomes a little more complicated. Because the argument
• 2:26:03
  Speaker 1: that Ford should have allowed the process to continue before
• 2:26:07
  Speaker 1: deciding whether mercy was appropriate is not something we invented
• 2:26:10
  Speaker 1: 50 years later. Congress put that choice directly in front
• 2:26:13
  Speaker 1: of him. And Ford considered it and he rejected it
• 2:26:16
  Speaker 1: on the record on October 17th, 1974. And this was
• 2:26:20
  Speaker 1: extraordinary that Ford did this. And it only adds to
• 2:26:24
  Speaker 1: the list of things that you're like put on the
• 2:26:27
  Speaker 1: list of, boy, that is a commendable thing to do,
• 2:26:31
  Speaker 1: which is Gerald Ford went to Capitol Hill. A sitting
• 2:26:34
  Speaker 1: president appeared before the House Judiciary Subcommittee to explain why
• 2:26:37
  Speaker 1: he pardoned his predecessor. He allowed himself to be questioned
• 2:26:41
  Speaker 1: by members of Congress over this decision. Good for him.
• 2:26:44
  Speaker 1: I wish more presidents had the guts and the balls
• 2:26:46
  Speaker 1: to do what Ford did. It was an extraordinary year.
• 2:26:50
  Speaker 1: And if you want to understand why the historical verdict
• 2:26:52
  Speaker 1: on the Nixon pardon deserves another look, listen to what
• 2:26:55
  Speaker 1: Congress asked Ford that morning. Because, you know, all the
• 2:26:59
  Speaker 1: stuff that I'm now looking back on going, what the
• 2:27:01
  Speaker 1: frick were we thinking? Members of Congress asked these questions then,
• 2:27:06
  Speaker 1: and Ford was forced to answer some of them. So
• 2:27:09
  Speaker 1: I'm going to go through it. Congressman Wiley Mayne of
• 2:27:11
  Speaker 1: Iowa walks him through the roads he could have taken.
• 2:27:13
  Speaker 1: Why not wait until Nixon was indicted? Why not wait
• 2:27:16
  Speaker 1: until he was tried and convicted and then pardoned him?
• 2:27:19
  Speaker 1: Why not wait until he was convicted and actually sentenced
• 2:27:21
  Speaker 1: to prison and then decide whether to commute the sentence?
• 2:27:24
  Speaker 1: Ford says he thought about exactly those alternatives, and then
• 2:27:27
  Speaker 1: he explains why he rejected them. Time. He says waiting
• 2:27:31
  Speaker 1: for indictment, possible conviction, a conviction plus a jail sentence
• 2:27:35
  Speaker 1: would have taken at least a year and probably much longer.
• 2:27:37
  Speaker 1: It's from the transcript. And during that time, he says
• 2:27:40
  Speaker 1: the president and Congress would be prevented from getting to
• 2:27:43
  Speaker 1: the other problems facing the country. And so there it is.
• 2:27:46
  Speaker 1: Ford knew there was a, he thought there was a
• 2:27:48
  Speaker 1: process first option. He consciously rejected it because the process
• 2:27:52
  Speaker 1: would take too long. And that distinguished matters because Ford
• 2:27:55
  Speaker 1: wasn't saying the process was illegitimate. He wasn't saying prosecution
• 2:28:00
  Speaker 1: would be unconstitutional, and he wasn't saying it was going
• 2:28:03
  Speaker 1: to clear Nixon. He just said the accountability would be
• 2:28:07
  Speaker 1: too disruptive. Congressman James Mann of South Carolina asked Ford
• 2:28:12
  Speaker 1: about the 10 possible areas of investigation identified in the
• 2:28:15
  Speaker 1: special prosecutor's material. Did the pardon terminate those investigations of Nixon,
• 2:28:20
  Speaker 1: he asked, and Ford answers, I think the net result
• 2:28:23
  Speaker 1: of the pardon was, in fact, just that, yes, sir. Right?
• 2:28:29
  Speaker 1: Mann's question is very specific. All of these Nixon investigations
• 2:28:33
  Speaker 1: come to a sudden stop because of the pardon. Now,
• 2:28:38
  Speaker 1: Ford separately tells Maine that he had no intention whatsoever
• 2:28:42
  Speaker 1: of stopping investigations into any other defendants or potential defendants.
• 2:28:46
  Speaker 1: He said the exception is Nixon, that the justice system
• 2:28:50
  Speaker 1: continues for everyone else, but for Richard Nixon, it stops.
• 2:28:54
  Speaker 1: But there's another exchange in this congressional testimony. that makes
• 2:28:58
  Speaker 1: this even more striking. In Ford's prepared statement that morning,
• 2:29:01
  Speaker 1: he explains how he intends to handle pardon requests from
• 2:29:04
  Speaker 1: other people connected to Watergate. He said they should go
• 2:29:07
  Speaker 1: through the Justice Department. They should submit their request through
• 2:29:10
  Speaker 1: the pardon attorney. The request would be evaluated on its
• 2:29:13
  Speaker 1: own facts. And Ford says he will not decide those
• 2:29:16
  Speaker 1: cases based on what he calls the unique circumstances, unquote,
• 2:29:20
  Speaker 1: of Richard Nixon. So Ford himself is essentially making the
• 2:29:26
  Speaker 1: case that presidents should be treated differently. which, as we know,
• 2:29:31
  Speaker 1: is a road that a bunch of us wish we
• 2:29:33
  Speaker 1: never went down. Ford is laying down a process for
• 2:29:36
  Speaker 1: everybody else involved in Watergate. But then it's a different
• 2:29:43
  Speaker 1: story for our president. Later in the hearing, the chairman
• 2:29:45
  Speaker 1: of the committee, William Hungate, asked Ford, did you or
• 2:29:48
  Speaker 1: anyone representing you contact the federal pardon attorney about the
• 2:29:51
  Speaker 1: customary procedures for issuing a pardon to Richard Nixon? And
• 2:29:54
  Speaker 1: Ford admits that he didn't. So in the same statement
• 2:29:59
  Speaker 1: on the morning, Ford tells America, here is the process
• 2:30:01
  Speaker 1: everyone else should follow. Richard Nixon did not follow it.
• 2:30:04
  Speaker 1: He gets a separate process. And then Congresswoman Liz Holtzman
• 2:30:07
  Speaker 1: of New York presses another institutional point. During Ford's vice
• 2:30:11
  Speaker 1: presidential confirmation process the year before, she notes that Ford
• 2:30:14
  Speaker 1: had discussed the importance of the attorney general's judgment in
• 2:30:18
  Speaker 1: connection with a possible pardon. But Ford's own prepared statement
• 2:30:21
  Speaker 1: that morning had already conceded. I did not consult at
• 2:30:24
  Speaker 1: all with the attorney general on the subject of a
• 2:30:26
  Speaker 1: pardon for Mr. Nixon. It doesn't prove corruption, and it
• 2:30:32
  Speaker 1: doesn't prove a secret bargain. But it does tell us
• 2:30:35
  Speaker 1: how extraordinary this Nixon exception was. The ordinary pardon process
• 2:30:41
  Speaker 1: wasn't followed. The pardon attorney wasn't consultant. Gerald Ford made
• 2:30:45
  Speaker 1: the lone judgment here because he believed Nixon's circumstances were unique.
• 2:30:51
  Speaker 1: Then Holtzman presses him on the Constitution itself. She points
• 2:30:54
  Speaker 1: to the language saying that even an impeached official remains
• 2:30:57
  Speaker 1: liable to criminal punishment under the law. Ford says he
• 2:31:00
  Speaker 1: is fully cognizant that a resigned president remains accountable for
• 2:31:03
  Speaker 1: criminal charges. Fully cognizant doesn't mean you buy the rationale, right?
• 2:31:10
  Speaker 1: He said, look, the country has other problems. The president
• 2:31:12
  Speaker 1: has other problems. Congress has other problems. Continuing the Nixon
• 2:31:15
  Speaker 1: matter will distract America from them. So Ford understood the
• 2:31:18
  Speaker 1: competing principle. Congress put it directly in front of him,
• 2:31:21
  Speaker 1: and he decided something else mattered more. Then Congressman Don
• 2:31:24
  Speaker 1: Edwards of California asked, what may be the most important
• 2:31:27
  Speaker 1: question of the entire year? Because Edwards takes all of
• 2:31:30
  Speaker 1: this constitutional theory and turns it into something anybody can understand.
• 2:31:35
  Speaker 1: Listen to the entire exchange. I'm going to read it verbatim. Edwards, Mr. President,
• 2:31:39
  Speaker 1: put yourself in the position of the high school teacher,
• 2:31:41
  Speaker 1: shall we say, in Watts or the barrios of San
• 2:31:43
  Speaker 1: Jose or Harlem. And if you were such a teacher,
• 2:31:46
  Speaker 1: how would you explain to the young people of America
• 2:31:48
  Speaker 1: that American concept of equal justice under law? And Ford answers, Mr. Edwards, Mr.
• 2:31:56
  Speaker 1: Nixon was the 37th president of the United States. He
• 2:31:59
  Speaker 1: had been preceded by 36 others. He is the only
• 2:32:02
  Speaker 1: president in the history of this country who has resigned
• 2:32:04
  Speaker 1: under shame and disgrace. I think that in and of
• 2:32:08
  Speaker 1: itself can be understood, can be explained to students and
• 2:32:11
  Speaker 1: to others. That was a major, major step and a
• 2:32:14
  Speaker 1: matter of, I am sure, grave, grave deliberations by the
• 2:32:19
  Speaker 1: former president. And it certainly, as I have said several times,
• 2:32:23
  Speaker 1: constituted shame and disgrace. But Edwards isn't finished. Mr. President,
• 2:32:29
  Speaker 1: do you think that it is wise to pardon a
• 2:32:31
  Speaker 1: man before indictment or trial for offenses that are completely
• 2:32:35
  Speaker 1: unknown to you and which might possibly be terribly serious? Four. Well,
• 2:32:43
  Speaker 1: as I indicated, Mr. Edwards, I did to the best
• 2:32:45
  Speaker 1: of my ability check with probably the best authority in
• 2:32:49
  Speaker 1: the country on what, if any, charges would be made
• 2:32:52
  Speaker 1: against Mr. Nixon. Those were or potentially were serious charges.
• 2:32:56
  Speaker 1: I think that in taking the action I did concerning
• 2:32:58
  Speaker 1: those charges, I was exercising in a proper way the
• 2:33:02
  Speaker 1: pardon authority given a president under the Constitution. That's the
• 2:33:07
  Speaker 1: entire exchange. Edwards asked about equal justice under law, and
• 2:33:11
  Speaker 1: Ford's first answer is shame and disgrace. Think about that.
• 2:33:14
  Speaker 1: Shame isn't a criminal sentence. Disgrace isn't a verdict. Losing
• 2:33:19
  Speaker 1: your job isn't the criminal justice system. And what happens
• 2:33:22
  Speaker 1: when somebody could care less about shame. No way we
• 2:33:27
  Speaker 1: would elect a president who was shameless, would we? So
• 2:33:31
  Speaker 1: for virtually everybody else in America, resigning because evidence emerges
• 2:33:34
  Speaker 1: that you may have committed a crime doesn't settle your
• 2:33:37
  Speaker 1: criminal liability. Imagine a bank president saying, yes, I've been
• 2:33:41
  Speaker 1: accused of embezzling the money, but I've resigned in shame.
• 2:33:45
  Speaker 1: Haven't I suffered enough? That's not how this works. Then
• 2:33:51
  Speaker 1: Congressman David Dennis, hardly a Nixon antagonist, helps Ford make
• 2:33:55
  Speaker 1: the point even more explicitly. He asked whether Ford believes
• 2:33:58
  Speaker 1: Nixon's resignation itself constituted, quote, sufficient strong punishment to answer
• 2:34:03
  Speaker 1: concerns about equal justice under law. And Ford answers, that
• 2:34:06
  Speaker 1: is correct, sir. There it is. That satisfying? Political punishment
• 2:34:18
  Speaker 1: substituted for legal accountability? Ford also argued that accepting the
• 2:34:23
  Speaker 1: pardon carried an implication of guilt. There was legal precedent
• 2:34:26
  Speaker 1: behind that argument, but an implication attached to accepting clemency
• 2:34:30
  Speaker 1: isn't a trial. It isn't evidence tested by the defense.
• 2:34:33
  Speaker 1: There's no findings by a jury. There's no judgment of conviction.
• 2:34:38
  Speaker 1: And those distinctions matter if what you are trying to
• 2:34:40
  Speaker 1: establish is that the president is subject to the same
• 2:34:44
  Speaker 1: legal process as everybody else. Nobody is above the law
• 2:34:47
  Speaker 1: in this country unless you're President Richard Nixon and Donald Trump. Seriously, folks?
• 2:34:51
  Speaker 1: So did the country really want Ford to stop this?
• 2:34:54
  Speaker 1: This is another thing that I've always been uncomfortable with
• 2:34:57
  Speaker 1: about this decision. Gallup was polling Americans from September 6th
• 2:35:02
  Speaker 1: through September 9th. Ford announced the pardon on September 8th.
• 2:35:05
  Speaker 1: Most of Gallup's interviewing occurred before Ford acted. So it
• 2:35:09
  Speaker 1: wasn't simply backlash to the pardon. Gallup's own summary of
• 2:35:12
  Speaker 1: the survey says 58% favored prosecuting Nixon for possible crimes
• 2:35:17
  Speaker 1: compared with 38% who favored letting him off with a pardon.
• 2:35:21
  Speaker 1: Gallup separately asked another question. If Nixon were tried and
• 2:35:24
  Speaker 1: found guilty, should Ford pardon him? 38% said yes, 53%
• 2:35:29
  Speaker 1: said no. So even after a conviction, you still have
• 2:35:32
  Speaker 1: a majority not wanting to see him pardoned, wanting him
• 2:35:35
  Speaker 1: to go to jail if he was convicted. So both
• 2:35:39
  Speaker 1: questions basically had the same result. They were different questions.
• 2:35:43
  Speaker 1: Should there be a trial? And if the trial produces
• 2:35:45
  Speaker 1: a conviction, should there be mercy? Most Americans wanted the
• 2:35:48
  Speaker 1: process to continue. And most weren't yet convinced that mercy
• 2:35:51
  Speaker 1: should follow under either circumstance. So who exactly was exhausted?
• 2:35:57
  Speaker 1: Was it Washington? Yeah. Was it Gerald Ford? Of course.
• 2:36:01
  Speaker 1: He needed to establish his presidency. How about the Republican Party?
• 2:36:05
  Speaker 1: Republicans were heading into the 74 midterms with Richard Nixon
• 2:36:08
  Speaker 1: hanging around their necks. They had just been forced to
• 2:36:10
  Speaker 1: abandon their own president. They desperately needed to turn the page.
• 2:36:15
  Speaker 1: Those are pretty powerful incentives. But Ford wasn't elected by
• 2:36:18
  Speaker 1: the country to make this judgment. He wasn't even elected
• 2:36:21
  Speaker 1: vice president to make any judgment. He inherited the presidency
• 2:36:24
  Speaker 1: because the two men who had been elected president and
• 2:36:26
  Speaker 1: vice president were both gone amid separate corruption scandals. And
• 2:36:31
  Speaker 1: now this unelected president had decided that the country had
• 2:36:33
  Speaker 1: experienced enough of the Nixon process. The public reaction was brutal.
• 2:36:38
  Speaker 1: Ford's approval rating had been 71% in mid-August because he
• 2:36:41
  Speaker 1: was not Nixon. It was 66% in that Gallup survey.
• 2:36:45
  Speaker 1: It drops to 50 by the end of September. By January,
• 2:36:48
  Speaker 1: he's sitting at 37%. Ford's own press secretary resigned over
• 2:36:52
  Speaker 1: the decision to pardon, because suspicions exploded that somehow Ford
• 2:36:56
  Speaker 1: and Nixon had made a deal. Ford denied it. Eventually, Ford,
• 2:36:59
  Speaker 1: of course, loses in 76, narrowly to Jimmy Carter, arguably
• 2:37:03
  Speaker 1: over the Nixon pardon. But then something else happened. Time.
• 2:37:09
  Speaker 1: The anger cooled. Watergate receded. Slowly, the historical verdict changed.
• 2:37:13
  Speaker 1: And in 76, 55% of Americans still told Gallup that
• 2:37:16
  Speaker 1: Ford had done the wrong thing. But by 82, the
• 2:37:19
  Speaker 1: country was evenly divided. And by 86, a slight majority, 54%,
• 2:37:23
  Speaker 1: decided that Ford had done the right thing. And eventually,
• 2:37:25
  Speaker 1: the political establishment essentially closed the case. Ford had sacrificed himself.
• 2:37:30
  Speaker 1: to heal America. That's the story. It was statesmanship. It
• 2:37:34
  Speaker 1: was courage. And in 2001, the Kennedy Library gives Ford
• 2:37:38
  Speaker 1: the Profile in Courage Award. And Ted Kennedy says, now
• 2:37:41
  Speaker 1: we see that President Ford was right. But what exactly
• 2:37:44
  Speaker 1: had we seen? That America survived? Sure. That Watergate eventually
• 2:37:48
  Speaker 1: disappeared from the front page? That Gerald Ford was a
• 2:37:51
  Speaker 1: decent man who believed he was acting in the national interest?
• 2:37:54
  Speaker 1: I don't have, I think he was. I think he
• 2:37:56
  Speaker 1: thought he was. I don't doubt that. But he did,
• 2:38:00
  Speaker 1: you know, the best thing for him to unite a
• 2:38:03
  Speaker 1: Republican party behind him was to do the pardon. And
• 2:38:05
  Speaker 1: I think that's an inconvenient truth, as another vice president
• 2:38:10
  Speaker 1: might have said. But none of those things proves the
• 2:38:12
  Speaker 1: pardon was the right decision. And maybe 2001 was simply
• 2:38:17
  Speaker 1: too soon to render this verdict. History didn't stop. For
• 2:38:21
  Speaker 1: two generations, we repeated that Watergate proved nobody was above
• 2:38:24
  Speaker 1: the law. A lot of the system worked, right? The
• 2:38:30
  Speaker 1: press worked, Congress worked, the courts worked, the Supreme Court.
• 2:38:33
  Speaker 1: Republicans ultimately stopped protecting a corrupt president. The evidence came out.
• 2:38:39
  Speaker 1: Nixon lost support, he resigned, right? Everything seemed to work.
• 2:38:42
  Speaker 1: But the criminal justice system never got a chance to
• 2:38:45
  Speaker 1: finish the job. At the precise moment that America had
• 2:38:49
  Speaker 1: the opportunity, To establish that a former president could become
• 2:38:52
  Speaker 1: a private citizen and answer for possible crimes committed while
• 2:38:56
  Speaker 1: in office, Gerald Ford stopped the experiment. Then we spent
• 2:39:00
  Speaker 1: 50 years telling ourselves the experiment succeeded. Think about the
• 2:39:07
  Speaker 1: other Watergate defendants. The cover-up trial began less than a
• 2:39:09
  Speaker 1: month after Nixon received his pardon. John Mitchell went on trial.
• 2:39:14
  Speaker 2: H.R.
• 2:39:14
  Speaker 1: Haldeman went on trial. Ehrlichman. Martian. Kenneth Parkinson. Four were convicted.
• 2:39:21
  Speaker 1: One conviction was later overturned. People who worked for the
• 2:39:23
  Speaker 1: president went through the criminal justice system. The president they
• 2:39:26
  Speaker 1: worked for did not. That's the precedent that Gerald Ford set.
• 2:39:32
  Speaker 1: And of course, America was going to have to confront
• 2:39:34
  Speaker 1: this question again someday. And it took almost 50 years
• 2:39:36
  Speaker 1: and Donald Trump. And I'm not asking you to assume
• 2:39:40
  Speaker 1: that Donald Trump committed crime simply because prosecutors charged him
• 2:39:43
  Speaker 1: with crimes. But see, this is the point. We don't
• 2:39:48
  Speaker 1: have federal trial verdicts. We never got them. Trump was
• 2:39:53
  Speaker 1: federally indicted after leaving office, and immediately America discovered how
• 2:39:56
  Speaker 1: many basic questions about presidential criminal accountability we had never answered.
• 2:40:02
  Speaker 1: Can a former president be prosecuted for things he did
• 2:40:05
  Speaker 1: while president? Which presidential actions are immune? Which are not?
• 2:40:09
  Speaker 1: What evidence can prosecutors use? What happens when the former
• 2:40:12
  Speaker 1: president is also running for president again? And what happens
• 2:40:15
  Speaker 1: if he wins? Trump argued that the prosecutions were politically motivated.
• 2:40:19
  Speaker 1: He asserted immunity. The immunity case eventually reached the Supreme Court,
• 2:40:23
  Speaker 1: and in 2024, the court held that a former president
• 2:40:25
  Speaker 1: has absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for exercises of his
• 2:40:29
  Speaker 1: core constitutional authority, at least presumptive immunity for other official acts,
• 2:40:35
  Speaker 1: and no immunity for unofficial conduct. No wonder J.D. Vance,
• 2:40:43
  Speaker 1: who himself needs a history lesson about Watergate, somehow thinks
• 2:40:46
  Speaker 1: that Nixon and Watergate were small potatoes. This was not
• 2:40:51
  Speaker 1: some obscure academic debate. But we turned it into one.
• 2:40:58
  Speaker 1: America is trying to determine in real time the rules
• 2:41:00
  Speaker 1: governing criminal accountability for a former president. And of course,
• 2:41:04
  Speaker 1: him running for president again created another complication. But remember,
• 2:41:10
  Speaker 1: he announced his candidacy for office to create that conflict. Right?
• 2:41:16
  Speaker 1: So they could use, right, by him announcing it suddenly
• 2:41:19
  Speaker 1: became political. But all of this stuff was happening before
• 2:41:22
  Speaker 1: he was ever running. But here we are. His opponents
• 2:41:26
  Speaker 1: argued that allowing a candidate to escape prosecution because he
• 2:41:28
  Speaker 1: was running for office would itself create a different kind
• 2:41:31
  Speaker 1: of immunity. And then Trump won. And then everything got dismissed.
• 2:41:38
  Speaker 1: We have no federal case. We have no idea. Again,
• 2:41:42
  Speaker 1: I'm not saying for sure that Trump was guilty. We
• 2:41:44
  Speaker 1: don't know because the process never played out. By the way,
• 2:41:50
  Speaker 1: we also don't know if Trump was innocent because this
• 2:41:52
  Speaker 1: process has not played out. So look at the dilemma
• 2:41:56
  Speaker 1: we've created. You don't federally prosecute a sitting president. Prosecuting
• 2:42:00
  Speaker 1: a former president inevitably raises concerns about political retaliation. If
• 2:42:04
  Speaker 1: that former president runs again, prosecution becomes intertwined with an election.
• 2:42:07
  Speaker 1: And if he wins, he becomes president again, and the
• 2:42:09
  Speaker 1: federal prosecution cannot continue while he is sitting in office.
• 2:42:12
  Speaker 1: So when exactly does this process happen? When is no
• 2:42:16
  Speaker 1: one above the law? This is where Nixon matters. Not
• 2:42:21
  Speaker 1: because America needed to see Nixon behind bars. Actually, I
• 2:42:25
  Speaker 1: don't think he did. I think Ford, I think the
• 2:42:27
  Speaker 1: right thing would have been to see Nixon go through
• 2:42:30
  Speaker 1: the trial. If he's convicted, sentence, and then commute it.
• 2:42:36
  Speaker 1: I think Ford was ultimately right that sending a former
• 2:42:39
  Speaker 1: American president to prison while the country was still struggling
• 2:42:42
  Speaker 1: through the Cold War in Vietnam probably wouldn't have helped
• 2:42:44
  Speaker 1: the national purpose. but it would have established a process.
• 2:42:52
  Speaker 1: And Ford was offered that option. Why not wait for
• 2:42:55
  Speaker 1: the indictment, wait for the conviction, wait for sentencing, then
• 2:42:58
  Speaker 1: decide about the mercy question. But Ford said no, because
• 2:43:02
  Speaker 1: he thought it would take too long. We were in
• 2:43:04
  Speaker 1: a hurry. How many things in life, how many mistakes
• 2:43:09
  Speaker 1: are made in life, in business, in politics, in sports,
• 2:43:15
  Speaker 1: you name it. When you do something to deal with
• 2:43:19
  Speaker 1: the short term at the expense of the long term.
• 2:43:22
  Speaker 1: Unintended consequences. So I might be indicting this decision by
• 2:43:28
  Speaker 1: Ford late in this process. But it's the unintended consequences. Right?
• 2:43:35
  Speaker 1: The unintended consequences this created. You know, God bless Ford.
• 2:43:42
  Speaker 1: He thought shame mattered. But what happens when you have
• 2:43:48
  Speaker 1: a shameless actor in the White House? And now we
• 2:43:53
  Speaker 1: have a situation where we now have– the Supreme Court
• 2:43:55
  Speaker 1: has given this blind immunity to presidents in perpetuity going forward.
• 2:44:04
  Speaker 1: So again, all the reasons Ford did this, understandable in
• 2:44:10
  Speaker 1: the moment. I do think we've underrated the political inconvenience.
• 2:44:16
  Speaker 1: This would have he would have been facing had there
• 2:44:18
  Speaker 1: would have been a trial because you had like the,
• 2:44:20
  Speaker 1: you know, the Nixon truthers like the Roger Stones and
• 2:44:23
  Speaker 1: his ilk of the world. Roger Ailes, this whole group
• 2:44:27
  Speaker 1: of people who thought Nixon was railroaded because he was
• 2:44:30
  Speaker 1: just in there. You're just practicing hardball politics. Essentially, Ford
• 2:44:38
  Speaker 1: gave them. Gave them. Agency. So look, I think this
• 2:44:46
  Speaker 1: is now one of the worst decisions a president has made.
• 2:44:50
  Speaker 1: The long-term consequences we are paying the price for right now.
• 2:44:53
  Speaker 1: We have the most corrupt presidency in the history of
• 2:44:55
  Speaker 1: this nation because we decided to punt on holding the
• 2:45:02
  Speaker 1: previous most corrupt presidency in our nation's history to a
• 2:45:05
  Speaker 1: true account. That's your Time Machine Lesson for the week.
• 2:45:15
  Speaker 2: Ask Chuck.
• 2:45:19
  Speaker 1: All right. Let's see. Longtime fan from Arkansas's 2nd District.
• 2:45:22
  Speaker 1: First time Ask Chuck hopeful. Very nice. Well, you're coming
• 2:45:26
  Speaker 1: from the 2nd District, and I was about to say, oh,
• 2:45:28
  Speaker 1: that's potentially one of the most competitive races in Arkansas.
• 2:45:31
  Speaker 1: Maybe the most competitive race in Arkansas. And you write,
• 2:45:35
  Speaker 1: French Hill is already running gauzy feel-good ads in his
• 2:45:40
  Speaker 1: race against Chris Jones. Does that suggest his internal polling
• 2:45:43
  Speaker 1: may be showing a more competitive race than expected? And
• 2:45:46
  Speaker 1: just how favorable would the environment need to be for
• 2:45:48
  Speaker 1: Democrats to seriously compete for the seat? And if Democrats
• 2:45:51
  Speaker 1: win both chambers of Congress, do you think Hegseth can
• 2:45:54
  Speaker 1: face impeachment? You're my go-to political podcast. Love the election
• 2:45:57
  Speaker 1: coverage with you, Saliza and DDHQ. Well, thank you for
• 2:45:59
  Speaker 1: saying that. So the short answer is, look, yes. Look,
• 2:46:03
  Speaker 1: if there's– to put it in terms of blue wave
• 2:46:07
  Speaker 1: versus blue tsunami– French Hill is in the blue wave
• 2:46:11
  Speaker 1: category of seats, right? It is the most purple of
• 2:46:17
  Speaker 1: the four congressional districts in Arkansas. One of my go-to
• 2:46:24
  Speaker 1: numbers on deciding whether a seat could be vulnerable in
• 2:46:27
  Speaker 1: a wave year is 55%. Well, guess what the presidential
• 2:46:32
  Speaker 1: number has been in Arkansas' second district? In 2016, Trump
• 2:46:36
  Speaker 1: got about 55%. In 2020, Trump got about 55%. And
• 2:46:41
  Speaker 1: in 2024, he got 55.5%, right? It was a little
• 2:46:45
  Speaker 1: slightly better, his best performance yet. So those are, you know, it's,
• 2:46:51
  Speaker 1: you know, what's the recipe for French Hill to lose
• 2:46:57
  Speaker 1: in this scenario, right? You have super enthusiastic Democratic vote, right?
• 2:47:02
  Speaker 1: So if Biden gets 42%, Harris actually got 40%. 42.5%.
• 2:47:09
  Speaker 1: So assume, do a three-point bump, right, for Democratic enthusiasm advantage.
• 2:47:15
  Speaker 1: You're sitting at 46. So now you're in a 50-
• 2:47:20
  Speaker 1: scenario here, a 53-46 scenario. And you have a third-party
• 2:47:27
  Speaker 1: candidate potentially peeling some votes away. Then you throw in
• 2:47:33
  Speaker 1: MAGA turnout being down. Maybe the suburbs are up. Maybe
• 2:47:36
  Speaker 1: a huge chunk of African-American voters overperform in the midterm year.
• 2:47:40
  Speaker 1: That's the recipe for that. And so I think French
• 2:47:44
  Speaker 1: Hill is on the line of blue wave to blue tsunami. Right. Um,
• 2:47:49
  Speaker 1: I fully suspect he's a single did that, you know,
• 2:47:51
  Speaker 1: if he wins, he wins with single digits. I think
• 2:47:55
  Speaker 1: at our blue wave scenario, he either wins by somewhere
• 2:47:58
  Speaker 1: under five points or loses by like a, uh, a
• 2:48:02
  Speaker 1: point or two. Um, But look, he's also somebody that
• 2:48:07
  Speaker 1: has been very self-aware about his district. He doesn't pretend
• 2:48:10
  Speaker 1: he's in a 65% performing district, right? This is the
• 2:48:17
  Speaker 1: most competitive of the four congressional districts. This is Little Rock.
• 2:48:21
  Speaker 1: This does have the seat of government in it. You
• 2:48:24
  Speaker 1: go to any of these congressional districts, even in red states,
• 2:48:27
  Speaker 1: where the government, where the state capital is, and it's
• 2:48:30
  Speaker 1: just going to be a little less Republican. So- Ultimately,
• 2:48:35
  Speaker 1: I think it's black turnout that will decide this. And
• 2:48:38
  Speaker 1: I think if if I one reason why I expect
• 2:48:41
  Speaker 1: Hill to survive in this environment is that the statewide
• 2:48:44
  Speaker 1: ticket isn't very strong and there isn't a lot of
• 2:48:47
  Speaker 1: investment in trying to get the African-American vote to come
• 2:48:49
  Speaker 1: out for a statewide race. I know I've seen the
• 2:48:52
  Speaker 1: one there's that one poll that that popped in the
• 2:48:55
  Speaker 1: Senate race that showed the Democrat somehow leading Tom Cotton
• 2:48:58
  Speaker 1: by a couple of points. But but that's the scenario
• 2:49:03
  Speaker 1: is wrong. just what is African-American turnout. And I, in my,
• 2:49:06
  Speaker 1: in my blue wave, blue tsunami scenarios, I'm assuming a
• 2:49:09
  Speaker 1: supercharged African-American turnout. And that could put, I mean, I
• 2:49:13
  Speaker 1: do think it, I think it's in the, it's in
• 2:49:17
  Speaker 1: the larger playing field, like I said, and it's right
• 2:49:20
  Speaker 1: on the cusp of, of a seat that, that in
• 2:49:23
  Speaker 1: a blue wave year is a, they probably don't win,
• 2:49:27
  Speaker 1: but it wouldn't be a shock if they did. And
• 2:49:30
  Speaker 1: definitely is one of those seats that goes in a
• 2:49:32
  Speaker 1: blue tsunami. But I do think, I would probably say
• 2:49:35
  Speaker 1: French Hill is like the pickup number 26 or 27
• 2:49:40
  Speaker 1: for Democrats if somehow the House pickup number gets that high.
• 2:49:44
  Speaker 1: Appreciate the question. Next one comes from Max W. in
• 2:49:48
  Speaker 1: Virginia's 8th District. That's our district, Max. You're right here.
• 2:49:54
  Speaker 1: So this is somebody in my own congressional district. Help me,
• 2:49:58
  Speaker 1: OB Chuck Kenobi. Oh, I appreciate that. You're my only hope.
• 2:50:01
  Speaker 1: You've talked a lot about rural voters who supported Trump
• 2:50:04
  Speaker 1: despite some of his policies potentially hurting farmers, ranchers, and
• 2:50:07
  Speaker 1: lower income communities. So beyond explanations like race and gender,
• 2:50:10
  Speaker 1: why do so many of these voters appear to support
• 2:50:12
  Speaker 1: candidates whose policies may conflict with their economic interests? And
• 2:50:15
  Speaker 1: is this actually a modern phenomenon or has it always
• 2:50:17
  Speaker 1: been a part of American politics? I'll hang up and listen. Well, look,
• 2:50:20
  Speaker 1: the rural-urban divide has always been there. It's actually used
• 2:50:22
  Speaker 1: to be in reverse, right? You particularly in these Southern states,
• 2:50:26
  Speaker 1: the cities were more Republican-leaning and it was the rural
• 2:50:31
  Speaker 1: areas that were more Democratic-leaning. I mean, Oklahoma was one
• 2:50:34
  Speaker 1: of my favorite examples of this, where you would see Democrats,
• 2:50:38
  Speaker 1: the first members of Congress were from Tulsa and Oklahoma
• 2:50:43
  Speaker 1: City were on the Republican side, the closer you were
• 2:50:46
  Speaker 1: to there. And then the rural areas were all Democratic.
• 2:50:49
  Speaker 1: And that was the South in general, but it developed
• 2:50:53
  Speaker 1: this way in Florida. The first Republicans to get statewide
• 2:50:57
  Speaker 1: traction starting in the late 80s, early 90s were– was
• 2:51:02
  Speaker 1: a guy named Bob Martinez from Tampa, right? Basically the
• 2:51:05
  Speaker 1: second biggest metro area in the state at the time.
• 2:51:07
  Speaker 1: And Jeb Bush from Miami. So this was– it was–
• 2:51:14
  Speaker 1: this was when the Republican Party's strength was the suburbs.
• 2:51:20
  Speaker 1: Now that's switched out. Now the question on– I think
• 2:51:23
  Speaker 1: you left out one big topic. and it's religion. I
• 2:51:27
  Speaker 1: think that is what has made the cultural disconnect so
• 2:51:32
  Speaker 1: much harder for Democrats to overcome, as they've become a
• 2:51:34
  Speaker 1: more secular party. Even though they're in line with where
• 2:51:39
  Speaker 1: rural America is on economic interests, literally, you talk to
• 2:51:47
  Speaker 1: those independent candidates that I've had on here that are
• 2:51:49
  Speaker 1: running as independents instead of Democrats in places like Idaho
• 2:51:52
  Speaker 1: and South Dakota. And remember the similar message both of
• 2:51:55
  Speaker 1: them gave, Todd Achilles and Brian Banks, which was people
• 2:51:58
  Speaker 1: wouldn't even, they won't have the conversation if you have
• 2:52:01
  Speaker 1: a D next to your name. But if you have
• 2:52:03
  Speaker 1: an I next to your name, then they'll have a conversation.
• 2:52:06
  Speaker 1: I think, look, the rural communities are more religious than
• 2:52:10
  Speaker 1: the suburban and urban communities. Do I think the trend
• 2:52:13
  Speaker 1: line over time is we're going to become a more
• 2:52:15
  Speaker 1: secular nation over time?
• 2:52:16
  Speaker 3: I do.
• 2:52:17
  Speaker 1: I think that continues. But in the meantime, I think
• 2:52:20
  Speaker 1: the biggest impediment When we say culture, you'll hear a
• 2:52:25
  Speaker 1: lot of the non-argumentative word is just cultural misfit and
• 2:52:30
  Speaker 1: stuff like this. But there is something to it. But
• 2:52:34
  Speaker 1: I think it really is on religious grounds. Because in
• 2:52:37
  Speaker 1: rural America, it's not that people are overly religious. It's
• 2:52:41
  Speaker 1: not quite what Obama said, that in rural America, they
• 2:52:44
  Speaker 1: cling to their guns in the Bible. They're not clinging
• 2:52:47
  Speaker 1: to the Bible. But the church in rural America... Churches
• 2:52:52
  Speaker 1: are just the center of the community. And it's where
• 2:52:56
  Speaker 1: you interact with everybody. It's where you get to know everybody.
• 2:53:00
  Speaker 1: And so people that spend twice a week at church
• 2:53:04
  Speaker 1: in rural America, Wednesdays and Sundays, it doesn't mean that
• 2:53:07
  Speaker 1: they're somehow more Bible thumpery than someone else is. But there's,
• 2:53:13
  Speaker 1: you know, there's not a whole bunch of other stuff
• 2:53:16
  Speaker 1: to do. And Wednesday is one of the, you know,
• 2:53:18
  Speaker 1: this is a community gathering time. You know, church night
• 2:53:21
  Speaker 1: in the South is on Wednesdays. It's not a, you know, yes,
• 2:53:25
  Speaker 1: in some places it can be very serious Bible study,
• 2:53:28
  Speaker 1: but in other places it's really sort of a potluck
• 2:53:30
  Speaker 1: dinner or it's just another chance to get together with
• 2:53:33
  Speaker 1: your neighbors. So, and, you know, this is why I
• 2:53:37
  Speaker 1: think 50% of the Democrats' problems in rural America is
• 2:53:41
  Speaker 1: just they stop showing up. And I think part of
• 2:53:43
  Speaker 1: it is they're messaging, they were more comfortable messaging voters
• 2:53:49
  Speaker 1: in suburban America and urban America, and they just got
• 2:53:52
  Speaker 1: more and more uncomfortable, right? Bill Clinton came from rural Arkansas,
• 2:53:56
  Speaker 1: so he was comfortable talking to rural Arkansas. Al Gore
• 2:54:00
  Speaker 1: at least grew up in the summers in rural Tennessee.
• 2:54:03
  Speaker 1: He could have that conversation. But then you look at,
• 2:54:06
  Speaker 1: let's look at our last five Democratic nominees for president.
• 2:54:13
  Speaker 1: Obama grew up on an island in Hawaii or Chicago.
• 2:54:18
  Speaker 1: You have John Kerry, right? He kind of grew up
• 2:54:21
  Speaker 1: in boarding schools and then, you know, he's in Massachusetts,
• 2:54:24
  Speaker 1: in Boston, not exactly rural. Hillary Clinton, suburbs of Chicago,
• 2:54:29
  Speaker 1: more of a suburban kid and in parts of Pennsylvania
• 2:54:33
  Speaker 1: as well. Joe Biden, you know, Kamala Harris' Bay Area,
• 2:54:38
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden, sort of the the Philly exurbs, if you will.
• 2:54:41
  Speaker 1: And yes, you know, Scranton, and he certainly had some
• 2:54:44
  Speaker 1: working class roots, just like Hillary Clinton grew up in
• 2:54:47
  Speaker 1: parts of sort of working class suburban communities, but not
• 2:54:49
  Speaker 1: in rural. And it's been, you know, look back now,
• 2:54:53
  Speaker 1: the last time a Democrat was the national nominee for
• 2:54:58
  Speaker 1: rural America was Bill Clinton. So I do think it
• 2:55:05
  Speaker 1: is a lack of familiarity, right? And I, you know,
• 2:55:09
  Speaker 1: the The number one thing he could do is show up.
• 2:55:12
  Speaker 1: And that's I'll be curious to see if if Democrats
• 2:55:15
  Speaker 1: really learn the lesson by showing up in in rural
• 2:55:19
  Speaker 1: South Carolina during that during the prize for first in
• 2:55:22
  Speaker 1: the nation.
• 2:55:28
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 2:55:28
  Speaker 1: Next question comes from Carrie in St. Louis, but she
• 2:55:35
  Speaker 1: adds North Dakota native. And highly recommend the new Teddy
• 2:55:38
  Speaker 1: Roosevelt Presidential Library in Medora. I cannot wait to go
• 2:55:41
  Speaker 1: check that out, to be honest with you. Anyway, let's
• 2:55:46
  Speaker 1: get to your question, Terry. And it is, I know
• 2:55:48
  Speaker 1: you enjoy alternative history. So here's one. You've described yourself
• 2:55:52
  Speaker 1: as an incrementalist. But what if a president moved just
• 2:55:55
  Speaker 1: as aggressively as Trump has, only towards broadly popular goals
• 2:55:58
  Speaker 1: like reducing homelessness, addressing addiction, expanding affordable health care, and
• 2:56:03
  Speaker 1: investing in science and medicine? Those efforts produced tangible benefits
• 2:56:06
  Speaker 1: within two years, and the president's party also controlled Congress.
• 2:56:10
  Speaker 1: What would your case for incrementalism be then? It's a
• 2:56:14
  Speaker 1: great question. I guess the question is, you're assuming that
• 2:56:17
  Speaker 1: a president could get all that done. And I guess
• 2:56:19
  Speaker 1: what I'm saying is, I don't know. I don't think
• 2:56:21
  Speaker 1: you can. And even the stuff that Trump has aggressively done,
• 2:56:26
  Speaker 1: what is he? He hasn't really done. He's just, you know,
• 2:56:31
  Speaker 1: he's just basically screwed with the tax code. And he's
• 2:56:34
  Speaker 1: messed with regulation from an executive side of things. So,
• 2:56:38
  Speaker 1: you know, he hasn't really done what you're talking about
• 2:56:42
  Speaker 1: would require a lot of federal money investment. You would
• 2:56:47
  Speaker 1: need a bunch of votes in Congress for it, and
• 2:56:50
  Speaker 1: you would have a hard time getting those things. So, yes,
• 2:56:53
  Speaker 1: I agree if they somehow you got this. Then yes,
• 2:56:59
  Speaker 1: then I would lay down my sword and say, hey,
• 2:57:03
  Speaker 1: if you've got the right leader, it must– for your
• 2:57:05
  Speaker 1: scenario to work, it's somebody with the charisma of Obama
• 2:57:11
  Speaker 1: plus FDR plus Bill Clinton. Of that level of charisma
• 2:57:17
  Speaker 1: and majorities the size of FDRs. Bill Clinton and Obama
• 2:57:24
  Speaker 1: had brief majorities that got close, but even those majorities
• 2:57:28
  Speaker 1: were a little divided. He had these enormous majorities and
• 2:57:31
  Speaker 1: he only really could make economic progress, right? That was
• 2:57:35
  Speaker 1: the big thing that FDR got. So I guess the
• 2:57:39
  Speaker 1: problem I have with your what if is I do
• 2:57:45
  Speaker 1: think it means like winning the argument with 60 plus
• 2:57:50
  Speaker 1: type of super majority type of election. And maybe that's possible.
• 2:57:54
  Speaker 1: Maybe somebody runs on a plan like that and people
• 2:57:56
  Speaker 1: are all in on something like that. And if they were,
• 2:57:59
  Speaker 1: like I said, I'd lay down my arms about incrementalism.
• 2:58:03
  Speaker 1: I just don't think we're that– that's the– the reason
• 2:58:06
  Speaker 1: I argue for incrementalism is not because I think it's
• 2:58:09
  Speaker 1: the best way. I think it's the only way you
• 2:58:10
  Speaker 1: can govern this country. I think our factions are– you
• 2:58:15
  Speaker 1: can have larger goals and I can make an argument.
• 2:58:19
  Speaker 1: What if I made progress on all of those things
• 2:58:21
  Speaker 1: one little step at a time? You could do– seven
• 2:58:26
  Speaker 1: incremental things in seven different areas, and it looks like
• 2:58:28
  Speaker 1: you're making massive change. So when I call myself an incrementalist,
• 2:58:32
  Speaker 1: it means launching social security, but one step at a time.
• 2:58:37
  Speaker 1: It doesn't mean not doing social security. So that'd be
• 2:58:40
  Speaker 1: the other defense of when I, when I think sometimes my, my,
• 2:58:44
  Speaker 1: when I, my, yes, I am an incrementalist, meaning when
• 2:58:47
  Speaker 1: you're trying to make huge change, do it one step
• 2:58:50
  Speaker 1: at a time. If you try to do six steps
• 2:58:52
  Speaker 1: at once, you might actually set yourself eight steps back.
• 2:58:57
  Speaker 1: And that's why that is my, it is not because
• 2:59:00
  Speaker 1: I want to be an incrementalist. It is more of
• 2:59:02
  Speaker 1: this is our system and you are only going to
• 2:59:07
  Speaker 1: make change one step at a time. That's my argument
• 2:59:11
  Speaker 1: on it. But I accept your what if scenario, but
• 2:59:14
  Speaker 1: I don't buy it unless somebody wins with some 60%
• 2:59:16
  Speaker 1: of presidency and brings in super majorities in the House
• 2:59:21
  Speaker 1: and the Senate. Then yeah, They get to write the ticket.
• 2:59:27
  Speaker 1: Two more questions here. As a former House staffer, staff
• 2:59:29
  Speaker 1: counsel from 1985 to 2010, I share your frustration with
• 2:59:33
  Speaker 1: how the House functions today. From my experience, the major
• 2:59:36
  Speaker 1: turning point came under Newt Gingrich when the House shifted
• 2:59:39
  Speaker 1: from a committee-driven member-up system to a leadership-driven model, a
• 2:59:43
  Speaker 1: structure Democrats later maintained under Speaker Pelosi. I'm so glad
• 2:59:47
  Speaker 1: you bring this up. The biggest mistake, it turns out,
• 2:59:51
  Speaker 1: she made. was not changing the Newt Gingrich structure that
• 2:59:55
  Speaker 1: he brought in in 95. She kept it. All right.
• 2:59:59
  Speaker 1: Let me get back to your question here. Do you
• 3:00:01
  Speaker 1: think expanding the House could help restore some power to
• 3:00:04
  Speaker 1: individual members and committees, bringing decision-making closer to the people?
• 3:00:07
  Speaker 1: I wholeheartedly agree with expanding the House, more members, more
• 3:00:10
  Speaker 1: input from the people. Look, the specific critique of this
• 3:00:18
  Speaker 1: form of Congress is just what you wrote here. It
• 3:00:21
  Speaker 1: is when Gingrich decided to take power away from the
• 3:00:24
  Speaker 1: committee chairs, put term limits in for committee chairs, and
• 3:00:27
  Speaker 1: essentially centralized authority to the leadership. Democrats accepted that premise
• 3:00:33
  Speaker 1: when Democrats won back Congress in 06. It is, if
• 3:00:37
  Speaker 1: you're going to ask me if it was a mistake,
• 3:00:42
  Speaker 1: the answer is an obvious yes. Did it work short? Again,
• 3:00:47
  Speaker 1: The theme of my Time Machine episode this week is
• 3:00:50
  Speaker 1: short-term versus the long-term. Short-term, it helped Pelosi consolidate her power.
• 3:00:56
  Speaker 1: And you don't get Obamacare perhaps without it. But I
• 3:01:01
  Speaker 1: think weakening the committee structure, weakening individual members in general
• 3:01:05
  Speaker 1: and what they can and can't do has just eroded
• 3:01:09
  Speaker 1: the country's belief that the system is representative of them, right?
• 3:01:13
  Speaker 1: And that's what I want to restore. You know, I
• 3:01:16
  Speaker 1: would accept... If you just made the committee chairs and
• 3:01:22
  Speaker 1: ranking members more authority and more power to decide which
• 3:01:26
  Speaker 1: bills get through committee, you might not need to expand
• 3:01:31
  Speaker 1: the House as much as I like to expand the House.
• 3:01:34
  Speaker 1: But look, ultimately, you've got to get back. The public
• 3:01:38
  Speaker 1: does not believe the House of Representatives is representative of
• 3:01:41
  Speaker 1: the people. That's your problem. So how do you solve that?
• 3:01:45
  Speaker 1: One is the way Gingrich restructured how the House works
• 3:01:50
  Speaker 1: should be thrown out. And Pelosi didn't throw it out.
• 3:01:54
  Speaker 1: She reaffirmed it in January of 07. Looking back, a
• 3:01:59
  Speaker 1: huge mistake. At the time, understandable why she kept it.
• 3:02:04
  Speaker 1: Not going to sit here and say, you know, because
• 3:02:06
  Speaker 1: you also have the point where it was almost by
• 3:02:08
  Speaker 1: the time she got, she was in charge and the
• 3:02:11
  Speaker 1: Democrats got, you know, We were 12 years removed. That's
• 3:02:14
  Speaker 1: half a generation. It's a lot of forgotten institutional memory.
• 3:02:21
  Speaker 1: And we'd been through 9-11. There's so many things happened
• 3:02:24
  Speaker 1: between 95 when Gingrich changes the rules and 07 when
• 3:02:28
  Speaker 1: Pelosi chooses not to change the rules. But I'm so
• 3:02:32
  Speaker 1: glad you brought that up because, yes, Newt started this,
• 3:02:37
  Speaker 1: but Democrats twice had a chance to roll that back
• 3:02:40
  Speaker 1: and chose not to. Final question for this episode comes
• 3:02:46
  Speaker 1: from Dan, and he writes, Republicans have become very effective
• 3:02:50
  Speaker 1: at reaching less educated white voters on cultural issues, and
• 3:02:53
  Speaker 1: those voters deserve representation like anyone else. What would your
• 3:02:56
  Speaker 1: advice be to Democrats for breaking through the media bubbles
• 3:02:59
  Speaker 1: many of these voters occupy, whether Fox, Podcast, or X,
• 3:03:02
  Speaker 1: and actually speaking to them persuasively? Love all your content.
• 3:03:06
  Speaker 1: I tolerate the sports because I like you. Shana Tava, Dan,
• 3:03:10
  Speaker 1: happy New Year to you as well. And I appreciate
• 3:03:14
  Speaker 1: you tolerating my sports rants. Look, in some ways, it's
• 3:03:19
  Speaker 1: similar to the conversation. I do think, you know, it's
• 3:03:25
  Speaker 1: a cliche. You got to meet people where they are.
• 3:03:28
  Speaker 1: Somehow Democrats aren't, you know, they've seeded sports, the entire
• 3:03:33
  Speaker 1: sports culture to the right. I think that's been a mistake.
• 3:03:36
  Speaker 1: They've seeded religious culture to the right. Right. That's a mistake.
• 3:03:40
  Speaker 1: Democrats have had entertainment mostly on their side, but we've
• 3:03:42
  Speaker 1: seen Republicans have come up with their own sort of
• 3:03:44
  Speaker 1: entertainment structure. So I think of the two big areas culturally,
• 3:03:48
  Speaker 1: religion and sports, that these are two important, you know,
• 3:03:51
  Speaker 1: especially religion in rural communities in particular, sports in general.
• 3:03:56
  Speaker 1: I think it's seeding those two pieces of territory. And,
• 3:04:00
  Speaker 1: you know, I understand how the sports thing happened, right?
• 3:04:02
  Speaker 1: You know, well, our issues are more serious. We don't,
• 3:04:05
  Speaker 1: you know, we don't need to be talking about sports
• 3:04:07
  Speaker 1: right now. So it came up. It is in its
• 3:04:11
  Speaker 1: own way, like some, you know, it goes back to
• 3:04:14
  Speaker 1: somehow Democrats became the party of school marms, right? And
• 3:04:18
  Speaker 1: when I was growing up, it was the Republicans were
• 3:04:20
  Speaker 1: the party of school marms and the Democrats were the
• 3:04:23
  Speaker 1: hippies and the pot smokers, right? Now the party of tattoo, tattoo,
• 3:04:27
  Speaker 1: vape smoking guys are not the left, but it's the right.
• 3:04:30
  Speaker 1: And I'm not saying, but it's just the entire mindset
• 3:04:35
  Speaker 1: where it feels as if the Republican party come to
• 3:04:38
  Speaker 1: the average sort of person, non-college educated, if you want
• 3:04:43
  Speaker 1: to go down that road. But basically, the average working
• 3:04:46
  Speaker 1: person looks at it and thinks, huh, Democrats judging the
• 3:04:51
  Speaker 1: way I live, Republicans don't. That's all. And I know
• 3:04:55
  Speaker 1: that seems like a simple thing, a simple analysis, but
• 3:05:00
  Speaker 1: that's at its core. The Democrats are the judgment party,
• 3:05:07
  Speaker 1: and the Republicans have become the live and let live party.
• 3:05:09
  Speaker 1: Part of that is Donald Trump. They weren't the live
• 3:05:11
  Speaker 1: and let live party, right? Now, they still have some
• 3:05:14
  Speaker 1: things that run counter to that. And I know some
• 3:05:17
  Speaker 1: of you are listening going, well, but that's, narratives are
• 3:05:20
  Speaker 1: not always fair, guys. Perception becomes reality even if it's
• 3:05:25
  Speaker 1: not real. So ultimately, it becomes just, just, just, it's
• 3:05:37
  Speaker 1: okay to have your own sort of interests and, and
• 3:05:42
  Speaker 1: sort of, you know and I'm not telling somebody who's
• 3:05:46
  Speaker 1: not religious to suddenly become religious, but you know, well
• 3:05:51
  Speaker 1: then go connect in another way in rural America. But
• 3:05:55
  Speaker 1: I think that's, you know, and, and maybe stop judging
• 3:06:00
  Speaker 1: and start listening. And again, easy to say. And I
• 3:06:04
  Speaker 1: certainly think that that's the, that's the, the sort of
• 3:06:07
  Speaker 1: intellectual conversation that takes place, right? The left comes across
• 3:06:10
  Speaker 1: a little judgier. There's plenty of judgment on the right,
• 3:06:14
  Speaker 1: don't get me wrong. But this to me, I think,
• 3:06:18
  Speaker 1: is the perception problem that whoever wants to be the
• 3:06:23
  Speaker 1: face of the Democratic Party in 2028 needs to deal with.
• 3:06:27
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 3:06:29
  Speaker 1: I am excited about increasing our frequency here, so we
• 3:06:32
  Speaker 1: will do that. I will try to make the episode
• 3:06:36
  Speaker 1: slightly Slightly smaller since I will have more opportunities to
• 3:06:41
  Speaker 1: catch more stories. With that, I'll see you in 24 hours.