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Speaker 1: Hello there, Happy Monday morning. I'm Chuck Todd. Welcome to

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Speaker 1: another episode of the Chuck Podcast. I have a terrific

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Speaker 1: guest today because he's a good friend of mine, and

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Speaker 1: I think one of the things, if you know, when

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Speaker 1: I have known one of my guests for a very

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Speaker 1: long time, I just think as great as I think

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Speaker 1: the conversations I'd like to think we deliver to you

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Speaker 1: with a variety of people, it's always even I think

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Speaker 1: when you know the two people know each other well,

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Speaker 1: you just get that much more from the conversation. It's

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Speaker 1: my friend James Bennett. He's currently the senior editor over

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Speaker 1: at The Economist. He's the former editor in chief of

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Speaker 1: The Atlantic. That's where he and I got to know

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Speaker 1: each other work very closely together back when I was

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Speaker 1: the editor in chief of the Hotline. This is before

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Speaker 1: my NBC days. Tells you how long I go back

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Speaker 1: with James. James might be best known if you're a

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Speaker 1: media junkie. He was the editorial page editor, among other titles,

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Speaker 1: at the New York Times, and I think under a

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Speaker 1: different lifeline, or a branch or timeline, he would have

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Speaker 1: been the editor in chief of the New York Times someday.

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Speaker 1: He was sort of certainly working his way up the

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Speaker 1: mast head. He was a puer chief in Tel Aviv

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Speaker 1: in Israel. That was that's always one of the stepping stones,

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Speaker 1: major player in Washington. He left to go be the

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Speaker 1: editor in chief of The Atlantic, came back to be

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Speaker 1: the editor of the opinion page, and he sort of

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Speaker 1: got shoved out simply because he advocated for an op

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Speaker 1: ed that from an elected official Tom Cotton that many

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Speaker 1: subscribers at the Times objected to. They didn't seem to

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Speaker 1: object to the substance as much of just the decision

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Speaker 1: to platform. And it was really sort of at the

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Speaker 1: peak period of when I would argue too many people

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Speaker 1: in mainstream media allowed themselves to be influenced by sort

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Speaker 1: of this progressive purge that took place. Okay, I mean,

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Speaker 1: let's not pretend that it didn't where there was this

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Speaker 1: idea if you platformed. I mean it was the same

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Speaker 1: energy that pushed him out. It's the same energy that

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Speaker 1: made it so that Donald Trump couldn't get on Twitter

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Speaker 1: and Facebook. And I think that everybody now sees that

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Speaker 1: was a bad idea and certainly not very pro First Amendment,

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Speaker 1: that's for sure. And I think a lot of people

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Speaker 1: now on the left are getting a little bit of

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Speaker 1: First Amendment religion, and suddenly maybe you're a little more

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Speaker 1: empathetic to the phrase cancel culture. It's sad to see

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Speaker 1: some folks on the right not being serious about their

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Speaker 1: principles when it comes to the First Amendment and simply

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Speaker 1: now want to behave the way that they objected to

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Speaker 1: when they thought others on the other side of the

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Speaker 1: hour behaving. But my point is James is certainly landed

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Speaker 1: on his feet. Wrote a pretty interesting manifesto that I

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Speaker 1: think is worth reading at some point about sort of

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Speaker 1: what happened and what the culture of the Times had happened.

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Speaker 1: I think The Times is doing a better job of

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Speaker 1: trying to change that. I think the op ed page

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Speaker 1: has gotten more open and free again. So I just

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Speaker 1: think a lot of this. You know, there was a

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Speaker 1: there was a period where I think there was definitely

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Speaker 1: way too many editorial way too many newsrooms allowed their

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Speaker 1: audience to be their managing editor rather than common sense

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Speaker 1: and their own brains and their own intellect, and their

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Speaker 1: own journalists and their own newsrooms. It was a virus

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Speaker 1: I was fighting at times. Sometimes I want and sometimes

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Speaker 1: I lost. I'm not going to get into the nitty

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Speaker 1: gritty of the various things I went through because I

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Speaker 1: want to actually respect the points of view of people

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Speaker 1: I worked with at the Times. But obviously what James

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Speaker 1: went through was pretty high profile. We don't spend a

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Speaker 1: lot of time on that situation. For what it's worth.

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Speaker 1: We talk about what he's doing now at The Economist,

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Speaker 1: and I think The Economist covers American politics in a

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Speaker 1: very detached way, which is very healthy. Sometimes we will

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Speaker 1: understand ourselves better when you can look at us from

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Speaker 1: an outsider's perspective. But what's interesting about James is the

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Speaker 1: first American that they've had right there Lexington column, which

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Speaker 1: if you're a news junkie you know is a must

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Speaker 1: read every week that it comes out. So bottom line,

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Speaker 1: I think you'll enjoy this conversation James and I had

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Speaker 1: where we in some ways just use it as time

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Speaker 1: to catch up and just hit record and let you

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Speaker 1: eavesdrop in that conversation. But before I get to it,

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Speaker 1: it's a few things I want to get to. I

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Speaker 1: also have my history today. We have given this segment

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Speaker 1: a name, the Toodcast time Machine. Well, the toodcast time

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Speaker 1: machine keeps going back to the seventies. I won't say

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Speaker 1: what the issue is yet, but it is. It is

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Speaker 1: connected with some of the challenges we dealt with last

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Speaker 1: week and we're dealing with going forward, especially if you're

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Speaker 1: a journalist trying to cover the Trump administration. So it's

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Speaker 1: a very timely you know, as I try to do

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Speaker 1: every week, I go into the time as time machine

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Speaker 1: for the seven day period that this that the this

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Speaker 1: week's podcast will be uploaded to, so that it becomes

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Speaker 1: a I look for relevant historical moments that I think

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Speaker 1: are worth relearning about if you don't know them, because

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Speaker 1: they're connected with a challenge that we're all dealing with today.

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Speaker 1: So that's coming up. But I want to begin with

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Speaker 1: a poll that got overlooked a bit too much last week.

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Speaker 1: And I want to touch on the shut on the

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Speaker 1: potential shutdown that's coming, because that is likely to dominate

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Speaker 1: Washington politics at least for the next seven to ten

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Speaker 1: to twenty. Who knows how long it lasts or who

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Speaker 1: knows if they do the punt right, the last second

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Speaker 1: punt continuing resolution that buys another month, you know, week, month, year,

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Speaker 1: et cetera. So, but it came as Quinnipiac and it

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Speaker 1: was sort of the it's the first decent, lengthy whole

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Speaker 1: following the Charlie Kirk assassination, that is asking relevant questions

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Speaker 1: that I think we need to have more pollsters be

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Speaker 1: asking about, and that is whether or not you know

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Speaker 1: what kind of serious problem political violence is. So this

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Speaker 1: pole was conducted, like I said, after the Charlie Kirk assassination,

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Speaker 1: seventy one percent. So that's you get anything in the seventies.

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Speaker 1: You're getting Democrats, Republicans, and independents to agree on somebody.

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Speaker 1: Seventy one percent said political motivated violence in the United

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Speaker 1: States is a very serious problem. Twenty two percent called

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Speaker 1: it a somewhat serious problem. So put that together, right,

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Speaker 1: you basically have ninety three percent of the country think

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Speaker 1: political violence is either a very serious or somewhat serious problem.

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Speaker 1: Just three percent said it was not so serious, in

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Speaker 1: one percent said it was not a problem at all.

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Speaker 1: More than half fifty three percent said they were pessimistic

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Speaker 1: about the protection of free speech, while only forty three

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Speaker 1: percent said they were optimistic. That broke a cross, that

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Speaker 1: broke on party very partisan lines. Republicans not in the

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Speaker 1: majority on that one. But here's here's a number that

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Speaker 1: ought to be disturbing. Fifty three percent said this system

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Speaker 1: of democracy is simply not working. That's that's pretty uh,

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Speaker 1: that's pretty demoralizing. Let me go through more of this poll.

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Speaker 1: They also asked, would you say the United States is

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Speaker 1: in a political crisis? Right? So sevent nine percent said yes.

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Speaker 1: Sixty percent of Republicans said we're in a political crisis,

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Speaker 1: ninety three percent of Democrats said we're in a political crisis.

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Speaker 1: Eighty four percent of independence said we were in a

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Speaker 1: political crisis. Now, here's some other interesting questions that are

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Speaker 1: about sort of this topic to see can we start

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Speaker 1: talking to each other about this if we don't have

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Speaker 1: leaders that are going to de escalate, can the public deescalate? Well, here,

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Speaker 1: I'll let you decide whether these are demoralizing themmers or not.

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Speaker 1: Let me read you the full question. And thinking about

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Speaker 1: people you know who hold political views different than your own,

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Speaker 1: would you say you are mostly able to talk with

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Speaker 1: them about your differences or would you say you mostly

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Speaker 1: avoid talking with them about your differences? Well, forty nine

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Speaker 1: percent say they try to talk to folks about their

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Speaker 1: differences and forty seven percent said they like to avoid.

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Speaker 1: Now here's what's interesting. Republicans. A majority say they like

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Speaker 1: to talk about their differences fifty four percent, while forty

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Speaker 1: four percent of Republicans say they try to avoid the

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Speaker 1: top politics as a topic of conversation. Democrats, well, they're avoids.

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Speaker 1: Just thirty seven percent say they try to talk with

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Speaker 1: somebody with political differences. Sixty percent simply want to avoid

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Speaker 1: the conversation altogether. Independence they look more like Republicans in

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Speaker 1: this question. Fifty two percent said they favor talking, forty

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Speaker 1: four percent say they favor avoiding. And there's an interesting

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Speaker 1: gender gap in this one. A majority of men say

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Speaker 1: they prefer to talk, a majority of women say they

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Speaker 1: prefer to avoid, which shouldn't be surprising. There are more

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Speaker 1: women who are Democrats more men that are Republicans. So

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Speaker 1: in some ways, if the genders are splitting that way,

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Speaker 1: if the two parties are splitting as starkly as I

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Speaker 1: just presented to you, Look, there's a lot of ways

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Speaker 1: to read that, right, But the fact that you have,

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Speaker 1: you know, I would call I would really want to

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Speaker 1: tell my Democratic friends here who find themselves as a voiters,

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Speaker 1: and I say this look, I pick and choose. I'm

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Speaker 1: in this weird situation as somebody who gets recognized. People

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Speaker 1: want to talk politics with me. People want to have

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Speaker 1: this conversation with me. Whatever their point of view is,

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Speaker 1: they want to tell me. They also assume that they

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Speaker 1: think they know my politics. So if they're on the

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Speaker 1: right side of the spectrum, they'll say, like, you know,

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Speaker 1: I really like you, but I don't agree with your politics.

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Speaker 1: I said, what are my politics? We aren't you on

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Speaker 1: the left? I'm like, you know no. And you know,

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Speaker 1: one of the problems we have today is hard partisans

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Speaker 1: in the left and right think that if you don't

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Speaker 1: agree with them, then you must be on the other

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Speaker 1: side rather than there's some of us that are just

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Speaker 1: skeptical of the extremes of both parties. In fact, it's

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Speaker 1: a pretty large segment of us that live in this space.

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Speaker 1: It's part of the what I'm trying to do in

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Speaker 1: prioritizing having a podcast and a space where that's where

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Speaker 1: a majority of Americans live. You're progressive, you're maga, you know,

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Speaker 1: go go, go go to your corners and talk to

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Speaker 1: your subs over there. This is not the place to

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Speaker 1: have to have mono conversations. I want to have conversations

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Speaker 1: in stereo. I'm trying to have conversations with the left

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Speaker 1: and the right. It's a little harder to sometimes book

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Speaker 1: harder partisans. They don't want to have a sometimes talk

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Speaker 1: to the middle of the road. I think a lot

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Speaker 1: of elected officials would prefer the safety of talking to

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Speaker 1: their base. But the fact that it's sixty percent of

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Speaker 1: Democrats say they avoid here's what I could tell you.

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Speaker 1: You're never going to get the majority to support your

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Speaker 1: to persuade them that you're willing to govern if you

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Speaker 1: don't talk to people that you disagree with. And you know,

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Speaker 1: it's interesting, I wish we were tracking this question because

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Speaker 1: just anecdotally, this feels like ten years ago the numbers

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Speaker 1: would have been reversed where it would have been a

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Speaker 1: majority of Democrats were on the talking side of things.

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Speaker 1: And I think you're when you feel like the cultures

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Speaker 1: on your side, you're probably more willing to talk to

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Speaker 1: the other side. When you think you're going against the

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Speaker 1: grain and culture, you may feel fearful. And I will

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Speaker 1: say this, you know, I do think if you avoid

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Speaker 1: political conversations, it means you feel like a minority wherever

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Speaker 1: you're living. That's my you know, I'd love to a

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Speaker 1: more layered understanding of where these folks are, but that

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Speaker 1: would be that would be my hypothesis on this one,

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Speaker 1: that if you're a void, that if you're more likely

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Speaker 1: to talk, it's because maybe you live in a community

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Speaker 1: where you think you're in the majority and if you

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Speaker 1: feel secure in having that political debate. We got to

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Speaker 1: feel like we can have a political debate when we're insecure,

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Speaker 1: meaning when we're the minority in our community on a

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Speaker 1: side of the aisle. So that's that's something that I

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Speaker 1: think worth thinking about in this poll. So I told

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Speaker 1: you that earlier question. The headline question, do you think

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Speaker 1: the system of democracy in the United States is working or not?

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Speaker 1: Forty one percent said it was working, Fifty three percent

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Speaker 1: set it was not working. Let me give you the

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Speaker 1: party line trends. This is where there's dramatic divide, which

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Speaker 1: shouldn't surprise. Republicans are currently in power, so guess what.

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Speaker 1: Seventy four percent of Republicans think the democracy is working

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Speaker 1: pretty well. Democrats are not in power anywhere, right, so

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Speaker 1: guess what. Seventy four percent of Democrats don't think the

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Speaker 1: democracy is working. But here's the tie breaker. Always goes

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Speaker 1: in in a pen and it's always on these questions.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes independence look more like Republicans, and sometimes they look

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Speaker 1: more in Democrats, and on this question they look like democrats.

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Speaker 1: Sixty one percent of independence say the democracy is not working.

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Speaker 1: You know. Look, speaking of somebody who feels more like

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Speaker 1: an independent than anybody else. You have less rights in

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Speaker 1: this democracy than if you're a registered deer or registered R.

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Speaker 1: You have fewer primaries, you get to participate in fewer

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Speaker 1: choices on the ballot. There is no bigger disenfranchised group

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Speaker 1: in partisan politics than those that choose not to register

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Speaker 1: as a deer or an R. Look, I think there's plenty.

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Speaker 1: I think there's a bunch of Fourteenth Amendment issues when

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Speaker 1: it comes to ballot access, when it comes to the

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Speaker 1: way independents are treated during primaries. So that's a number.

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Speaker 1: To me, that's very explainable that independents feel that this

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Speaker 1: democracy is a working because if you're not a member

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Speaker 1: of the two parties, you have no access to power.

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Speaker 1: You don't feel like you have access to power or

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Speaker 1: even the access to contribute. And if you're this now

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Speaker 1: this should be motivation for democrats actually work with you know,

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Speaker 1: realized that hey they're not alone in this feeling. But

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Speaker 1: it's all about you know, channeling, you know, if you

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Speaker 1: if you want to win over this big group of independence.

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Speaker 1: Most of them don't necessarily want to go in one

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Speaker 1: ideological direction. They're looking for a little more openness, a

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Speaker 1: little more transparency. But a worthwhile number by the way,

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Speaker 1: to tell you how sort of partisan the no side

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Speaker 1: is in this. So those that said the democracy isn't working,

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Speaker 1: the fifty three percent quidnepe I created a follow up

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Speaker 1: question for those fifty three percent, so we already know

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Speaker 1: now it's basically half of this group is Democrats, about

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Speaker 1: half of this group is independent. Who do you blame

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Speaker 1: more for the system of democracy now working in the

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Speaker 1: United States? Now, I don't like what they did here

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Speaker 1: because they only offered the two parties. They said, is

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Speaker 1: it the Republicans or the Democrats? And not surprising a

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Speaker 1: majority pick the Republicans in this place. But is it that?

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Speaker 1: Is is it? The constitution? Is it? Is it? The media?

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Speaker 1: Is it? I think there are other entities here to

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Speaker 1: put out is money? What is it? An individual? What

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Speaker 1: would you put on there? So I think that this

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Speaker 1: is to my polster friends who listen to my podcast here,

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Speaker 1: I think these issues are worth exploring. Quinnipiac got us started,

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Speaker 1: but maybe there's some better questions that we can ask

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Speaker 1: on this. But it gets me to what we're going

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Speaker 1: to be dealing with, the absurd story that we're going

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Speaker 1: to be dealing with over the next and over the

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Speaker 1: next potentially month, week, or year. And the reason I

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Speaker 1: call it an absurd story is the only before nineteen

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Speaker 1: eighty we had no government shutdowns. And there's a reason

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Speaker 1: we never had a government shutdown. Nobody had bothered to

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Speaker 1: interpret the law as saying that when the fiscal year ended,

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Speaker 1: if Congress hadn't agreed to the new spending levels for

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Speaker 1: the next year, that somehow the government was going to

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Speaker 1: cease to operate. There was an assumption before nineteen eighty,

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Speaker 1: and I'll get to the point here, there was an

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Speaker 1: assumption that, hey, no matter what, there's going to be

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Speaker 1: some and Congress will catch up and it'll be figured out.

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Speaker 1: But an institution as large as the US government, it

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Speaker 1: was just assumed it was always going to operate, and

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Speaker 1: it was kind of absurd that you would shut it down. Well,

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Speaker 1: guess what in nineteen eighty and then again in nineteen

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Speaker 1: eighty one, the first the Carter Justice Department, then the

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Speaker 1: Reagan Justice Department, got an Office of Legal Counsel opinion

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Speaker 1: that essentially created the idea that yes, indeed we could

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Speaker 1: have a government and shutdown. And how did it do that.

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Speaker 1: It ruled that when the appropriations expire that specific entities

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Speaker 1: that were funded on an annual basis not permanent funding.

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Speaker 1: And I'll get to that an amendment because that this

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Speaker 1: is why there's an exemption for Social Security that if

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Speaker 1: you if it's annual spending, well then and you don't

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Speaker 1: have a new congressional law passed, well, then you cannot

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Speaker 1: that that agency cannot function until there is money that

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Speaker 1: was passed by the US Congress. Till though essentially there

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Speaker 1: is a law that says this agency has the funding

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Speaker 1: to operate. And so thanks to these legal counsel, first

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Speaker 1: a Democratic Justice Department Carter, then a Republican Justice to

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Speaker 1: Compartment right after then we had the birth of the

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Speaker 1: exac distance that indeed, if there was a fiscal showdown

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Speaker 1: on September thirtieth at midnight, bleeding in October first, and

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Speaker 1: there was no agreed upon budget passed by Congress. Agencies

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Speaker 1: funded on a yearly basis would have to cease in operation.

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Speaker 1: So we got our first real set of lengthy shutdowns

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Speaker 1: in the nineties. Right it was neuke Ingridge and versus

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Speaker 1: Bill Clinton twenty seven days. I remember I had a roommate.

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Speaker 1: I was working at the hotline at the time. I

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Speaker 1: had two roommates that worked for the federal government. Between

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Speaker 1: those shutdowns and this massive couple of snowstorms we happened

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Speaker 1: to get that year in the winter of ninety five

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Speaker 1: ninety six, I'm pretty sure my roommates didn't work for

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Speaker 1: three months. Okay, they basically were it, and they eventually

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Speaker 1: got their pay. I mean, look, it was not fun.

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Speaker 1: Let's not pretend it was a vacation. They couldn't go anywhere.

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Speaker 1: You were sort of sort of like COVID. They were

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Speaker 1: sort of trapped. I was going back and forth to work,

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Speaker 1: and you know, I never had any privacy for those

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Speaker 1: for those three months. Love my former roommates. I know

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Speaker 1: a couple of you still listen, but I remember those

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Speaker 1: days fondly. But that's when we sort of became extraordinarily

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Speaker 1: partisan with these government shutdowns and they began almost became

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Speaker 1: an annual affair. Right the nineties happened, took a pause,

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Speaker 1: and then pretty much right particularly with the election of

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Speaker 1: Barack Obama, we're now where a government shutdown threat, at

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Speaker 1: a minimum, is now an annual thing, and about every

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Speaker 1: looks like about every three or four years, we actually

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Speaker 1: do shut the government down, sometimes for a weekend, sometimes

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Speaker 1: for a week. Donald Trump did the what I thought

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Speaker 1: was the near impossible. He was the first president to

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Speaker 1: preside over a shutdown caused by his own party, as

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Speaker 1: the Republicans were handing over power to the Democrats in

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Speaker 1: twenty eighteen to twenty nineteen. After the twenty eighteen midterms,

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Speaker 1: Congress still hadn't agreed upon a budget, so we actually

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Speaker 1: ended up having among the longest shutdowns. Democrats took control

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Speaker 1: of the House during a government shutdown, just an extraordinary

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Speaker 1: aspect of things. But again we manufactured two legal opinions,

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Speaker 1: manufactured the idea that we could even have a government

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Speaker 1: shutdown now. After the lengthy shutdowns of the mid nineties,

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Speaker 1: lawmakers decided to pass a couple of laws that were

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Speaker 1: intended to make sure more people weren't harmed by government shutdowns,

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Speaker 1: but the unintended consequences that actually made it easier to

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Speaker 1: then play politics with the budget and force a shutdown.

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Speaker 1: We had two laws that were passed that was a

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Speaker 1: way to sort of shield harsh political consequences of a

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Speaker 1: government shutdown. The first one was passed in twenty thirteen

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Speaker 1: and it was called the Pay Our Military Act, and

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Speaker 1: essentially now it exempts military pay from any government shutdown.

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Speaker 1: Military is automatically paid. If you're wondering about Social Security,

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Speaker 1: it was deemed always exempted because it is not an

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Speaker 1: annual appropriation. It is funded by a trust fund. And

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Speaker 1: in some ways Medicare and Medicaid also fall into this loosely,

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Speaker 1: which is why the benefits also are keep moving out.

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Speaker 1: So now you could argue that if the Social Security

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Speaker 1: administration can't function and there's nobody there to be paid,

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Speaker 1: then checks can't go out. Obviously, in this day and

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Speaker 1: age of automation, you don't need that, but I could

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Speaker 1: make that argument, and you could if you wanted to.

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Speaker 1: There's a part of me that wants to make it

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Speaker 1: much harder to shut the government down, and if the

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Speaker 1: consequences were delayed, social Security checks for potentially poor elderly

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Speaker 1: people and no military pay for military families around the

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Speaker 1: world with kids, etc. I promise you these lawmakers would

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Speaker 1: be deathly afraid of playing politics with the federal government

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Speaker 1: like this. But we've essentially exempted the two most you know,

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Speaker 1: the two third rails if you will, that could could

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Speaker 1: make this quite difficult. One is paying the military and

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Speaker 1: the other is paying out Social Security benefits. Now, if

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Speaker 1: you're wondering, has there ever been efforts to essentially get

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Speaker 1: rid of government shutdowns? Well, they're have. I'm glad I

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Speaker 1: asked myself that question, and I'm glad you're thinking it.

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Speaker 1: I hope you are right. Bob Packwood tried one in

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Speaker 1: the eighties, Kent Conrad tried one of the nineties. Rob

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Speaker 1: Portman pushed pushed it during his time, basically a way

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Speaker 1: to create what was called an automatic continuing resolution that

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Speaker 1: would keep agencies. Different bills have been produced, and leadership

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Speaker 1: of both parties have killed these bills. But what these

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Speaker 1: rank and file lawmakers have attempted to do is basically

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Speaker 1: saying you can't shut the government down, that if you

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Speaker 1: don't agree on appropriations by September thirtieth, then there would

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Speaker 1: be an automatic quote unquote stopcap continuing resolution, and each

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Speaker 1: one of these has been fairly similar in how they've

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Speaker 1: been put together. But the idea would simply be government

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Speaker 1: is funded at the previous year's levels and for the next, say,

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Speaker 1: thirty days, and if no agreement is made, then then

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Speaker 1: there's a one person maybe and some of them have well,

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Speaker 1: then we'll have a one percent across the board budget

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Speaker 1: cut for every agency for every thirty days that a

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Speaker 1: budget doesn't come. Maybe you want to speed that up.

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Speaker 1: Maybe you make it for seven day periods where one

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Speaker 1: percent across the board, where you create some sort of

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Speaker 1: you got to have a forcing mechanism to get the

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Speaker 1: budget done right so that you don't just automatically do this.

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Speaker 1: But at the same time, government operations don't cease anywhere.

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Speaker 1: And I think without the spectacle of putting barricades in

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Speaker 1: front of National park operations and silly things like that,

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Speaker 1: oh sorry, the you know, Wally World has closed, kids,

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Speaker 1: you know Donnie World is closed, kids, you can't go in.

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Speaker 1: If you created these these these real incentives to force

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Speaker 1: these appropriators to get their act together, we wouldn't have shutdowns.

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Speaker 1: So the point is, when you think about when you're

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Speaker 1: watching this week the spectacle of the government shutdowns. By

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Speaker 1: the way, it's the most recent attempt to sort of

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Speaker 1: eliminate the ability to have these stupid government shutdown fights.

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Speaker 1: A bipartisan bill James Langford out of Missouri, Maggie Hassen

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Speaker 1: out of New Hampshire, THEIRS would restrict congressional travel and

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Speaker 1: then and also potentially so putting some pain on them,

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Speaker 1: and then restrict their pay a little bit as well.

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Speaker 1: There's all sorts of mechanisms you could put in here

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Speaker 1: that I promise you would be politically popular with the public,

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Speaker 1: because this is ridiculous. I have a friend who works

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Speaker 1: who were was a nuclear engineer. I'm not going to

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Speaker 1: get into the details of what he's done. He's gone

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Speaker 1: in and out of government. He's a private contractor, gone

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Speaker 1: in and out of government, and he is telling me

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Speaker 1: the rules of the government budget so that even when

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Speaker 1: the government's open under a continuing resolution, you may not

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Speaker 1: be allowed to work on your research project because it's

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Speaker 1: under a continuing resolution and under last year's authority, not

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Speaker 1: the next year's authority. As he has complained to me.

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Speaker 1: He's one of these a political guys, good friend of mine,

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Speaker 1: and he just says, he goes. I wish you could

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Speaker 1: explain how much wasted money there is, he goes. I

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Speaker 1: sometimes have to sit on my hand. I am not

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Speaker 1: allowed to work on a government funded project during the

431
00:26:05,560 --> 00:26:08,440
Speaker 1: midst of one of these stupid budget standoffs, not even

432
00:26:08,440 --> 00:26:11,120
Speaker 1: a full government shut down, even when they're under these

433
00:26:11,400 --> 00:26:14,879
Speaker 1: you know, six week continuing resolutions where it will be

434
00:26:15,040 --> 00:26:19,200
Speaker 1: illegal for him to work on a government research project that, oh,

435
00:26:19,520 --> 00:26:24,280
Speaker 1: may or may not have to do with nuclear safety. Okay,

436
00:26:25,720 --> 00:26:30,080
Speaker 1: so it is one of these. You know, I can't

437
00:26:30,119 --> 00:26:35,920
Speaker 1: stand this manufactured political crime. We have enough fricking problems

438
00:26:35,920 --> 00:26:40,879
Speaker 1: in America that we have literally the politicians in charge

439
00:26:40,880 --> 00:26:45,520
Speaker 1: since nineteen eighty have created the conditions to make this easier,

440
00:26:46,480 --> 00:26:50,400
Speaker 1: not harder. Your elected officials have gone out of their

441
00:26:50,440 --> 00:26:55,880
Speaker 1: way to create this political theater. It started with two

442
00:26:56,040 --> 00:27:00,159
Speaker 1: legal opinions back in nineteen eighty and eighty one one,

443
00:27:01,560 --> 00:27:05,320
Speaker 1: and then to make it less politically painful to have

444
00:27:05,359 --> 00:27:09,000
Speaker 1: these ridiculous theaters of the absurd of shutting down the government,

445
00:27:09,400 --> 00:27:16,000
Speaker 1: they exempted the couple of entities that would be completely

446
00:27:16,480 --> 00:27:20,200
Speaker 1: empathetic to the public at large and make it politically

447
00:27:20,840 --> 00:27:24,600
Speaker 1: really uncomfortable for any party to want to instigate a

448
00:27:24,640 --> 00:27:29,119
Speaker 1: government shutdown. But at this point, look, nobody wins. You know,

449
00:27:29,480 --> 00:27:31,240
Speaker 1: I'm going to go through all the cliches. Nobody wins

450
00:27:31,240 --> 00:27:35,480
Speaker 1: a government shutdown, YadA, YadA, YadA. It's true, and the

451
00:27:36,200 --> 00:27:39,680
Speaker 1: pain is only immediate at this point, right, It's terrible

452
00:27:39,720 --> 00:27:43,639
Speaker 1: politics for the moment, and literally the public moves on

453
00:27:43,800 --> 00:27:48,200
Speaker 1: within about a month up from the shutdown happening itself.

454
00:27:48,680 --> 00:27:52,199
Speaker 1: So this is what's really frustrating about this. We have

455
00:27:52,240 --> 00:27:56,000
Speaker 1: so many broken aspects of our politics. But in some way,

456
00:27:56,560 --> 00:28:01,920
Speaker 1: this is a really good example of of just how

457
00:28:01,960 --> 00:28:06,040
Speaker 1: poor the leadership has been in Washington. Now, arguably you

458
00:28:06,080 --> 00:28:09,040
Speaker 1: could say this is a collection of forty five years

459
00:28:09,080 --> 00:28:13,920
Speaker 1: of just regular members of Congress have wanted to stop

460
00:28:13,960 --> 00:28:20,000
Speaker 1: this nonsense, and the elected leaders, speakers, majority leaders, minority leaders,

461
00:28:20,160 --> 00:28:22,760
Speaker 1: they have gone out of their way to collectively quash

462
00:28:22,840 --> 00:28:29,159
Speaker 1: this bills because they enjoy having manufactured political leverage. Oh

463
00:28:29,359 --> 00:28:35,119
Speaker 1: isn't that nice. So when you watch the charade that

464
00:28:35,280 --> 00:28:37,520
Speaker 1: is going to be this debate over of when to

465
00:28:37,560 --> 00:28:44,520
Speaker 1: reopen the government, realize they created this entire nonsense themselves.

466
00:28:45,280 --> 00:28:48,120
Speaker 1: The only reason the government is shutting down is they

467
00:28:48,160 --> 00:28:52,440
Speaker 1: wanted to create an opportunity to have to sort of

468
00:28:52,480 --> 00:28:55,800
Speaker 1: create a leverage point. It's like it's like it's like

469
00:28:56,200 --> 00:28:58,520
Speaker 1: doing you know, it's like adding an extra round of

470
00:28:58,520 --> 00:29:01,360
Speaker 1: the playoffs. That's a good thing to do. In this case, Hey,

471
00:29:01,480 --> 00:29:04,320
Speaker 1: let's add more political drama to Washington because we don't

472
00:29:04,360 --> 00:29:09,760
Speaker 1: have enough. But this was just manufacture. This is and

473
00:29:10,160 --> 00:29:15,240
Speaker 1: this does not have to be. We absolutely manufacture this,

474
00:29:15,720 --> 00:29:20,320
Speaker 1: and then we made it easier to do. I've gone

475
00:29:20,320 --> 00:29:23,640
Speaker 1: through this before. And an interesting theme that I think

476
00:29:23,840 --> 00:29:27,320
Speaker 1: I'm stumbling upon here, which is our politics are broken

477
00:29:27,360 --> 00:29:31,600
Speaker 1: because our incentive structures are insane. We have an incentive

478
00:29:31,640 --> 00:29:36,640
Speaker 1: structure that actually incentivizes government shutdowns and showdowns. It does

479
00:29:36,680 --> 00:29:41,560
Speaker 1: not incentivize cooperation anymore. But if you want to incentivize cooperation,

480
00:29:41,720 --> 00:29:47,520
Speaker 1: you could. And you know who has stopped it. Elected

481
00:29:47,880 --> 00:29:53,640
Speaker 1: leaders in the US Congress. Okay, they have stopped it.

482
00:29:54,440 --> 00:29:59,800
Speaker 1: If you are tired of government shutdowns, literally, there are

483
00:30:00,200 --> 00:30:05,560
Speaker 1: bills on the shelf you pull down, and there are

484
00:30:05,600 --> 00:30:09,280
Speaker 1: all sorts of ways to avoid this theater of the absurd.

485
00:30:10,000 --> 00:30:13,000
Speaker 1: But they don't want to do it. They don't want

486
00:30:13,000 --> 00:30:15,840
Speaker 1: to do it because they want to. They actually want

487
00:30:15,840 --> 00:30:18,960
Speaker 1: the opportunity to have this theater. They're not pushing any

488
00:30:19,040 --> 00:30:24,400
Speaker 1: new ideas. This is just manufactured theater. This is where

489
00:30:24,880 --> 00:30:27,640
Speaker 1: I would argue the two when you sit there, why

490
00:30:27,640 --> 00:30:29,880
Speaker 1: I'm so empathetic with my friends who are trying to

491
00:30:29,920 --> 00:30:32,840
Speaker 1: start up a third party or an independent movement, because

492
00:30:33,600 --> 00:30:35,560
Speaker 1: this is where you say to yourself, boy, the two

493
00:30:35,600 --> 00:30:38,160
Speaker 1: parties have sort of run out of gas, haven't they.

494
00:30:38,240 --> 00:30:40,560
Speaker 1: Where they have no new ideas, so they need new events.

495
00:30:40,640 --> 00:30:43,920
Speaker 1: Let's have new spectacles, government shutdowns, Let's have midterm conventions.

496
00:30:44,480 --> 00:30:47,240
Speaker 1: Nobody wants to solve problems. Nobody wants to figure out

497
00:30:47,240 --> 00:30:50,400
Speaker 1: how to make Congress more functional. We've actually gone out

498
00:30:50,400 --> 00:30:54,200
Speaker 1: of our way to pass laws to make it easier

499
00:30:54,240 --> 00:31:00,320
Speaker 1: to make Congress more dysfunctional. When I think about where's

500
00:31:00,320 --> 00:31:02,800
Speaker 1: the outrage? You know one of my favorite old Bob

501
00:31:02,840 --> 00:31:07,120
Speaker 1: doleisms to borrow from and from my younger listeners out there.

502
00:31:07,160 --> 00:31:09,520
Speaker 1: I'm sorry for making a nineties reference, but I hear

503
00:31:09,520 --> 00:31:14,840
Speaker 1: the nineties are back. If you're looking to be outraged

504
00:31:14,880 --> 00:31:18,680
Speaker 1: about something, I wish you channel some outrage here and

505
00:31:19,120 --> 00:31:24,920
Speaker 1: realize this is a bipartisan absurdity over the last few

506
00:31:24,920 --> 00:31:27,880
Speaker 1: decades that has happened here and we're going to have

507
00:31:27,920 --> 00:31:30,920
Speaker 1: in there. Oh it should be healthcare. Look, we're in

508
00:31:30,920 --> 00:31:33,040
Speaker 1: this moment. I wrote an article that, look, it's inevitable

509
00:31:33,040 --> 00:31:36,200
Speaker 1: we're going to get here. Democrats have probably politically some

510
00:31:36,320 --> 00:31:40,600
Speaker 1: good leverage with healthcare. Republicans look like they may you know,

511
00:31:40,640 --> 00:31:43,680
Speaker 1: the Trump administration may you know, go over their skis

512
00:31:43,760 --> 00:31:48,400
Speaker 1: and their threats to essentially only only govern for Republicans

513
00:31:48,400 --> 00:31:53,480
Speaker 1: and not governed for Democrats, essentially, you know, picking and

514
00:31:53,560 --> 00:31:56,920
Speaker 1: choosing what they fund. But we're only here in this

515
00:31:56,960 --> 00:32:03,360
Speaker 1: situation because once again Congress seated authority that it you know,

516
00:32:03,400 --> 00:32:08,800
Speaker 1: So when everybody's complaining in that Congress about Russ's vod doing,

517
00:32:08,840 --> 00:32:11,200
Speaker 1: what he's doing is the budget director during the shutdown,

518
00:32:12,080 --> 00:32:15,080
Speaker 1: Congress had the power to deal with this multiple times,

519
00:32:15,680 --> 00:32:19,760
Speaker 1: and they didn't. And now you're staring into an abyss.

520
00:32:20,440 --> 00:32:27,960
Speaker 1: An extraordinarily irresponsible budget director may eviscerate appropriations and congressional

521
00:32:28,040 --> 00:32:30,800
Speaker 1: spending in this country. But Congress only has itself to

522
00:32:30,800 --> 00:32:34,560
Speaker 1: blame for this mess. That's it, all right. Bet you

523
00:32:34,600 --> 00:32:37,080
Speaker 1: didn't think I could get I could get you worked up,

524
00:32:37,600 --> 00:32:40,120
Speaker 1: let alone me worked up over the mechanics of a

525
00:32:40,200 --> 00:32:43,120
Speaker 1: government shutdown. But this is what's wrong with so much

526
00:32:43,120 --> 00:32:45,280
Speaker 1: of our politics. This is what's wrong with so much

527
00:32:45,280 --> 00:32:47,720
Speaker 1: of our media. And this is why I love this format.

528
00:32:48,600 --> 00:32:51,560
Speaker 1: It was really hard to convey sort of how this

529
00:32:51,680 --> 00:32:54,120
Speaker 1: I would say it in passing, like you realize this

530
00:32:54,200 --> 00:32:58,000
Speaker 1: is a manufactured crisis and all of this, but I

531
00:32:58,040 --> 00:33:02,320
Speaker 1: am glad to have the space to explain, No, this

532
00:33:02,480 --> 00:33:06,920
Speaker 1: is systematically a manufactured crisis, one that just we literally

533
00:33:07,240 --> 00:33:09,960
Speaker 1: had politicians decide, hey, we should be able to create

534
00:33:10,280 --> 00:33:13,200
Speaker 1: more of these, you know, more of a showdown moment,

535
00:33:14,000 --> 00:33:17,680
Speaker 1: not less, because the goal is to make government less functional,

536
00:33:17,760 --> 00:33:25,880
Speaker 1: not more unbelievable. We are our you know, this American

537
00:33:25,880 --> 00:33:28,800
Speaker 1: experiment turning out, you know, turn storting in fifty next year.

538
00:33:30,240 --> 00:33:32,240
Speaker 1: If we don't make it to two fifty one, it's

539
00:33:32,280 --> 00:33:34,920
Speaker 1: things like this, we only would have ourselves to play,

540
00:33:35,320 --> 00:33:37,440
Speaker 1: all right, on that uplifting note, Let me sneak in

541
00:33:37,640 --> 00:33:40,400
Speaker 1: a break here when we come back, for those of

542
00:33:40,440 --> 00:33:43,600
Speaker 1: you listening continuously, my good friend James Bennett, and then

543
00:33:43,640 --> 00:33:46,760
Speaker 1: after that a history lesson for the week, little Q

544
00:33:46,880 --> 00:33:58,080
Speaker 1: and A, and we'll get out of here. There's a

545
00:33:58,120 --> 00:34:01,160
Speaker 1: reason results matter more than promises, just like there's a

546
00:34:01,200 --> 00:34:04,560
Speaker 1: reason Morgan and Morgan is America's largest injury law firm.

547
00:34:04,840 --> 00:34:07,600
Speaker 1: For the last thirty five years, they've recovered twenty five

548
00:34:07,720 --> 00:34:10,759
Speaker 1: billion dollars for more than half a million clients. It

549
00:34:10,800 --> 00:34:14,600
Speaker 1: includes cases where insurance companies offered next to nothing, just

550
00:34:14,719 --> 00:34:17,320
Speaker 1: hoping to get away with paying as little as possible.

551
00:34:17,360 --> 00:34:20,399
Speaker 1: Morgan and Morgan fought back ended up winning millions. In fact,

552
00:34:20,520 --> 00:34:23,640
Speaker 1: in Pennsylvania, one client was awarded twenty six million dollars,

553
00:34:24,120 --> 00:34:27,160
Speaker 1: which was a staggering forty times the amount that the

554
00:34:27,200 --> 00:34:30,440
Speaker 1: insurance company originally offered. That original offer six hundred and

555
00:34:30,520 --> 00:34:34,040
Speaker 1: fifty thousand dollars twenty six million, six hundred fifty thousand dollars.

556
00:34:34,120 --> 00:34:36,240
Speaker 1: So with more than one thousand lawyers across the country,

557
00:34:36,400 --> 00:34:39,040
Speaker 1: they know how to deliver for everyday people. If you're injured,

558
00:34:39,160 --> 00:34:41,720
Speaker 1: you need a lawyer, You need somebody to get your back.

559
00:34:42,120 --> 00:34:44,880
Speaker 1: Check out for the People dot Com, Slash podcast, or

560
00:34:45,320 --> 00:34:50,480
Speaker 1: dial pound Law Pound five to nine law on your

561
00:34:50,520 --> 00:34:53,120
Speaker 1: cell phone. And remember all law firms are not the same,

562
00:34:53,160 --> 00:34:55,320
Speaker 1: So check out Morgan and Morgan. Their fee is free

563
00:34:55,600 --> 00:34:56,440
Speaker 1: unless they win.

564
00:34:59,280 --> 00:34:59,440
Speaker 2: Well.

565
00:34:59,480 --> 00:35:03,839
Speaker 1: Joining me is somebody I've known personally and professionally a

566
00:35:03,840 --> 00:35:08,520
Speaker 1: long time. A couple deck together in and around the Atlantic.

567
00:35:08,600 --> 00:35:13,640
Speaker 1: It's James Bennett. He is currently the Lexington, a senior

568
00:35:13,719 --> 00:35:17,240
Speaker 1: editor at the Economist. He writes the Lexington Column basically

569
00:35:17,280 --> 00:35:20,480
Speaker 1: what the Hell, the column that tells the rest of

570
00:35:20,480 --> 00:35:22,279
Speaker 1: the English speaking world what the hell is going on

571
00:35:22,320 --> 00:35:26,560
Speaker 1: in America? Perhaps, or at least that's the north star.

572
00:35:26,719 --> 00:35:27,319
Speaker 1: That's the job.

573
00:35:27,400 --> 00:35:30,840
Speaker 2: Is that fair, that's the aspiration. Yeah, it's great to

574
00:35:30,840 --> 00:35:32,839
Speaker 2: see you, Chuck, and really nice to be with you.

575
00:35:33,120 --> 00:35:35,399
Speaker 1: It's good to see you. I want to talk more

576
00:35:35,440 --> 00:35:38,719
Speaker 1: about what's happening, but and then in sort of the

577
00:35:40,200 --> 00:35:43,440
Speaker 1: role of America and what's happening around the world. But

578
00:35:43,480 --> 00:35:46,239
Speaker 1: at some point I want to talk about how we

579
00:35:46,280 --> 00:35:49,280
Speaker 1: all consume information, since you've been in so many parts

580
00:35:49,280 --> 00:35:52,200
Speaker 1: of that debate as well at the New York Times,

581
00:35:52,239 --> 00:35:55,399
Speaker 1: at The Atlantic, and yeah, and then some But look,

582
00:35:55,480 --> 00:35:59,080
Speaker 1: this is a week where we saw we're taping here,

583
00:35:59,120 --> 00:36:01,480
Speaker 1: this is going to hit on Monday. We're taking on

584
00:36:01,520 --> 00:36:04,719
Speaker 1: a Thursday. We've had the big you know, essentially the

585
00:36:05,080 --> 00:36:08,879
Speaker 1: Global the meeting of global leaders that happens every September.

586
00:36:09,719 --> 00:36:12,080
Speaker 1: And I guess the most striking thing is just how

587
00:36:12,160 --> 00:36:14,239
Speaker 1: much of a while the meeting took place in the

588
00:36:14,320 --> 00:36:17,640
Speaker 1: United States. The President of the United States was the

589
00:36:17,680 --> 00:36:20,840
Speaker 1: guy on the outside looking in, was he not? Yeah?

590
00:36:21,000 --> 00:36:24,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, he and very much presenting himself that way, right,

591
00:36:24,680 --> 00:36:27,279
Speaker 2: lecturing all the rest of the world on everything that

592
00:36:27,280 --> 00:36:32,560
Speaker 2: they're doing wrong, and you know, attacking United Nations itself

593
00:36:32,600 --> 00:36:36,319
Speaker 2: as a failing institution, which is the approach he's taken

594
00:36:36,360 --> 00:36:39,160
Speaker 2: to a lot of institutions in the US. And as usual,

595
00:36:39,440 --> 00:36:44,000
Speaker 2: he's not wrong in his critique in every respect, and

596
00:36:44,080 --> 00:36:46,359
Speaker 2: it's hard to make the case that the UN has

597
00:36:46,400 --> 00:36:49,279
Speaker 2: covered itself in glory in recent years in terms of

598
00:36:49,320 --> 00:36:54,160
Speaker 2: solving global conflicts. As always, he pushed it pretty far

599
00:36:54,680 --> 00:37:00,000
Speaker 2: and didn't necessarily offer a very clear alternative that seemed construed.

600
00:37:00,800 --> 00:37:03,360
Speaker 1: He came across in ways we've seen other sort of

601
00:37:04,440 --> 00:37:06,680
Speaker 1: leaders who are trying to be outsiders, who are trying

602
00:37:06,719 --> 00:37:11,120
Speaker 1: to go against the establishment. And yet as anti establishment

603
00:37:11,120 --> 00:37:13,919
Speaker 1: as he sounded, I mean, the UN can't function without

604
00:37:13,960 --> 00:37:17,040
Speaker 1: the United States. Most of these countries sort of are

605
00:37:17,160 --> 00:37:19,719
Speaker 1: tied in to the United States in one way or

606
00:37:19,719 --> 00:37:23,080
Speaker 1: the other. So while you know, I think back to

607
00:37:23,280 --> 00:37:26,960
Speaker 1: like Hugo Chavez giving a crazy speech or the president

608
00:37:26,960 --> 00:37:29,560
Speaker 1: of Iran, right, and I'm not trying to say that

609
00:37:29,600 --> 00:37:35,319
Speaker 1: Trump is like Hugo Chavez, but he's behaving the way

610
00:37:35,480 --> 00:37:40,120
Speaker 1: a Hugo Chavez did, like seeing conspiracy and just attacking

611
00:37:40,160 --> 00:37:44,880
Speaker 1: everybody around him and not believing there's anybody worth working

612
00:37:44,920 --> 00:37:50,439
Speaker 1: with and all of that. But you know, I got

613
00:37:50,440 --> 00:37:54,160
Speaker 1: these messages. Europe is still going, what the hell is

614
00:37:54,200 --> 00:37:56,800
Speaker 1: going on here? And they still can't seem to figure

615
00:37:56,800 --> 00:38:00,600
Speaker 1: it out? And my answer is, and we're still trying

616
00:38:00,600 --> 00:38:03,640
Speaker 1: to figure it out too. So those years, what do

617
00:38:03,680 --> 00:38:04,279
Speaker 1: you say to that?

618
00:38:04,680 --> 00:38:06,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, and there's a lot of muscle memory

619
00:38:06,840 --> 00:38:09,640
Speaker 2: in that institution and in a lot of the states

620
00:38:09,640 --> 00:38:12,640
Speaker 2: in that institution to look to the US for leadership.

621
00:38:12,680 --> 00:38:14,799
Speaker 2: As you said, you know, we were instrumental in the

622
00:38:14,840 --> 00:38:19,120
Speaker 2: creation of the United Nations and have been this central,

623
00:38:19,320 --> 00:38:23,920
Speaker 2: the indispensable state in terms of maintaining what was understood

624
00:38:23,960 --> 00:38:28,239
Speaker 2: to be the post war order. And Donald Trump doesn't

625
00:38:28,280 --> 00:38:30,160
Speaker 2: have a lot of patience for any of that stuff.

626
00:38:30,360 --> 00:38:36,279
Speaker 2: He's he's a bilateralist, not a multilateralist, and he's very concerned,

627
00:38:36,440 --> 00:38:39,839
Speaker 2: you know, obviously with national interest as he perceives it.

628
00:38:41,680 --> 00:38:45,480
Speaker 2: You know, he confuses everybody because people think he's an isolationist.

629
00:38:45,560 --> 00:38:48,320
Speaker 2: He's not an isolationist. He's I think, I don't know

630
00:38:48,360 --> 00:38:52,120
Speaker 2: if you feel he's the most interventionist president of my lifetime.

631
00:38:53,000 --> 00:38:56,600
Speaker 1: He has no ideology other than transactional. Right, everything is

632
00:38:56,840 --> 00:39:01,360
Speaker 1: it's just I look at it. He's an what's another

633
00:39:01,560 --> 00:39:05,319
Speaker 1: it's not isolationists and it's not internationalists. It really is

634
00:39:05,360 --> 00:39:07,440
Speaker 1: sort of a Trump list. I don't know. I mean,

635
00:39:07,920 --> 00:39:11,240
Speaker 1: it's always about him, right, if he can get enriched

636
00:39:11,360 --> 00:39:14,000
Speaker 1: or why is he intervening in Argentina because he's a

637
00:39:14,000 --> 00:39:17,680
Speaker 1: political ally? Why does he care about free speech in

638
00:39:17,719 --> 00:39:20,799
Speaker 1: Europe in one moment but doesn't care about a country's

639
00:39:20,960 --> 00:39:24,440
Speaker 1: acting unilaterally in Brazil? Right, It's all through the prism

640
00:39:24,480 --> 00:39:25,080
Speaker 1: of him.

641
00:39:25,719 --> 00:39:28,279
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean a slightly more generous way to put

642
00:39:28,280 --> 00:39:30,200
Speaker 2: that would be it's through what he perceives to be

643
00:39:30,239 --> 00:39:33,840
Speaker 2: the national interest. But for him, there's no separation between

644
00:39:33,880 --> 00:39:37,399
Speaker 2: the Trump interest and the national interest. So he if

645
00:39:37,400 --> 00:39:39,960
Speaker 2: you're a friend of Donald Trump's, if you're Javier Malay

646
00:39:40,000 --> 00:39:43,279
Speaker 2: in Argentina, he will rush to your rescue. You know,

647
00:39:43,600 --> 00:39:46,799
Speaker 2: if you if you're if you're if you're Jay or

648
00:39:46,840 --> 00:39:52,600
Speaker 2: Bosonaro in Brazil, He'll turn around and say, I respect sovereignty,

649
00:39:52,640 --> 00:39:55,839
Speaker 2: I'm against intervention, blah blah blah. But you braziling and

650
00:39:55,920 --> 00:39:58,520
Speaker 2: proposed tariffs on you because I don't like what your

651
00:39:58,640 --> 00:40:01,279
Speaker 2: justice system is doing to my buddy. So is that

652
00:40:01,400 --> 00:40:05,040
Speaker 2: in the American national interest? I don't really understand how

653
00:40:05,080 --> 00:40:07,319
Speaker 2: that is, but I think that's the story he tells

654
00:40:07,400 --> 00:40:11,040
Speaker 2: himself and that his followers accept.

655
00:40:11,320 --> 00:40:13,480
Speaker 1: One of the things that I find when I think

656
00:40:13,520 --> 00:40:17,879
Speaker 1: about sort of where both you and I have lived professionally,

657
00:40:18,840 --> 00:40:24,200
Speaker 1: a lot of those institutions, The Atlantic, The Times, NBC economists,

658
00:40:24,920 --> 00:40:30,120
Speaker 1: there's this you know, what are we seeing? Are we

659
00:40:31,400 --> 00:40:36,160
Speaker 1: should we be sounding an alarm about the law losing

660
00:40:36,239 --> 00:40:44,160
Speaker 1: the democracy or should we be less alarmist and more

661
00:40:44,239 --> 00:40:48,239
Speaker 1: focused on the fact that the public doesn't like what's

662
00:40:48,280 --> 00:40:50,920
Speaker 1: being sold right now by the leader right like you

663
00:40:51,080 --> 00:40:53,680
Speaker 1: sort of see, Like I think sometimes we underestimate the

664
00:40:53,760 --> 00:40:57,799
Speaker 1: voter in all of our handwringing about what Trump is

665
00:40:57,840 --> 00:41:00,239
Speaker 1: doing in the moment. Like I think there's a you know,

666
00:41:00,280 --> 00:41:02,560
Speaker 1: I can't tell you how many people say to me, well,

667
00:41:02,600 --> 00:41:05,640
Speaker 1: you keep saying that the voter will eventually get it right,

668
00:41:05,640 --> 00:41:07,680
Speaker 1: but he's going to cancel elections and so we're not

669
00:41:07,680 --> 00:41:10,160
Speaker 1: going to be able to do this. Where are you

670
00:41:10,239 --> 00:41:15,720
Speaker 1: on that scale of totally alarmed being ten, totally blase,

671
00:41:15,920 --> 00:41:16,480
Speaker 1: being zero.

672
00:41:18,440 --> 00:41:21,480
Speaker 2: I think it's the hardest thing for us as journalists, right,

673
00:41:21,520 --> 00:41:26,400
Speaker 2: and the Trump era is calibrating that because you don't

674
00:41:26,440 --> 00:41:28,839
Speaker 2: want to be hysterical. It said, well, you don't want

675
00:41:28,880 --> 00:41:31,520
Speaker 2: to be hysterical, period. It's just not terribly constructive.

676
00:41:32,160 --> 00:41:34,279
Speaker 1: Well, there's some news organizations out there that have been

677
00:41:34,320 --> 00:41:35,839
Speaker 1: at a you know, to do the spinal tap thing,

678
00:41:36,000 --> 00:41:38,520
Speaker 1: that are at eleven all the time. Yeah, my friends

679
00:41:38,520 --> 00:41:41,960
Speaker 1: at the Bulwark, Oh bless them, man, every single day.

680
00:41:42,239 --> 00:41:46,320
Speaker 1: This is the end, right, And you're like, is anybody listening?

681
00:41:46,600 --> 00:41:48,879
Speaker 2: Yeah, And they look they do a lot of good work.

682
00:41:49,320 --> 00:41:51,479
Speaker 2: And there's also been a very good business and being

683
00:41:51,520 --> 00:41:54,680
Speaker 2: either a total alarmist about Donald Trump, we're being totally

684
00:41:55,239 --> 00:41:59,440
Speaker 2: against Donald Trump. And the number of journalism organizations that

685
00:41:59,480 --> 00:42:02,040
Speaker 2: have managed keep their poise and not be led down

686
00:42:02,080 --> 00:42:05,560
Speaker 2: one path or the other is diminishing by the day.

687
00:42:06,360 --> 00:42:09,520
Speaker 2: But some of that reflects reality in that, like the

688
00:42:09,560 --> 00:42:12,840
Speaker 2: last couple of weeks, Chuck have worried me a lot,

689
00:42:13,000 --> 00:42:18,560
Speaker 2: you know, like things got pretty dark again, like with

690
00:42:18,640 --> 00:42:22,880
Speaker 2: Donald Trump. It's so hard to tell what I actually

691
00:42:22,920 --> 00:42:25,960
Speaker 2: wrote about this this week you know, I'm really worried

692
00:42:26,000 --> 00:42:31,520
Speaker 2: about the way Trump is changing the incentives of our

693
00:42:31,600 --> 00:42:36,279
Speaker 2: politics right now, the prosecutions. You know, the more we

694
00:42:36,440 --> 00:42:40,760
Speaker 2: see this turning political opponents into enemies and they'll claim

695
00:42:40,800 --> 00:42:44,440
Speaker 2: the Democrats struck first. Whatever what he's doing is without precedent.

696
00:42:44,520 --> 00:42:46,880
Speaker 2: Now for an American president in the nix An era,

697
00:42:48,920 --> 00:42:54,240
Speaker 2: the stakes become existential for holding onto power. For everybody

698
00:42:54,239 --> 00:42:56,680
Speaker 2: in Donald Trump's government, right They're going to be now

699
00:42:56,719 --> 00:42:59,480
Speaker 2: at risk of prosecution if a Democrat comes in. There's

700
00:42:59,520 --> 00:43:01,799
Speaker 2: no way not to think that's a possibility. And so

701
00:43:02,440 --> 00:43:05,279
Speaker 2: these stakes that have been rising for years now for

702
00:43:05,400 --> 00:43:08,560
Speaker 2: hyperpartisans on both sides feel to me like they're reaching

703
00:43:08,600 --> 00:43:12,480
Speaker 2: a level that is really dangerous to the democracy. And

704
00:43:12,520 --> 00:43:14,640
Speaker 2: so it just concerns me a lot. There's a long

705
00:43:14,680 --> 00:43:18,120
Speaker 2: winded answer your question that you know, I think there's

706
00:43:18,160 --> 00:43:21,399
Speaker 2: a non hysterical way to try to take people by

707
00:43:21,400 --> 00:43:25,279
Speaker 2: the lapels and say this is a really really bad idea.

708
00:43:25,360 --> 00:43:28,800
Speaker 1: Well, like, I get I throw myself into into reform,

709
00:43:29,160 --> 00:43:32,680
Speaker 1: right Like, it's clear that if Trump got elected president,

710
00:43:32,840 --> 00:43:36,520
Speaker 1: our system was breaking anyway, right Like, if the system

711
00:43:36,520 --> 00:43:39,719
Speaker 1: had been functional, Donald Trump doesn't become president. So I

712
00:43:39,760 --> 00:43:43,480
Speaker 1: do think, like, you know, the rational way to address

713
00:43:43,520 --> 00:43:45,839
Speaker 1: this is saying, okay, what is wrong with our institutions.

714
00:43:45,840 --> 00:43:49,280
Speaker 1: They're not working. Let's take the justice system. The fact

715
00:43:49,400 --> 00:43:53,400
Speaker 1: is in this, in the current way we conduct politics,

716
00:43:53,880 --> 00:43:57,279
Speaker 1: you can't have the attorney general be a political a

717
00:43:57,320 --> 00:44:00,239
Speaker 1: direct political appointment of the president. I think that's is

718
00:44:00,320 --> 00:44:02,120
Speaker 1: we've got it. I actually think we need to figure

719
00:44:02,120 --> 00:44:04,720
Speaker 1: out a different way. Maybe it's like the Federal Reserve,

720
00:44:05,120 --> 00:44:07,719
Speaker 1: but a different way that there is a little distance

721
00:44:08,560 --> 00:44:14,120
Speaker 1: between where the president certainly nominates, but that doesn't necessarily

722
00:44:14,160 --> 00:44:16,040
Speaker 1: fire at any one time. And we've got to create

723
00:44:16,600 --> 00:44:20,440
Speaker 1: a system that maybe staggers when different terms of the

724
00:44:20,480 --> 00:44:24,480
Speaker 1: FBI deputy ags. Because what we're doing if we already

725
00:44:24,480 --> 00:44:26,760
Speaker 1: had half the country, right, Donald Trump spent five years

726
00:44:26,800 --> 00:44:30,240
Speaker 1: convincing half the country that justice system was rigged. Now

727
00:44:30,320 --> 00:44:34,359
Speaker 1: he's rigging the justice system. That will in turn tell

728
00:44:34,360 --> 00:44:38,120
Speaker 1: the other half, well, now it's rigged. Okay, doesn't matter

729
00:44:38,200 --> 00:44:41,080
Speaker 1: when you believed it got rigged. Now we've got one

730
00:44:41,160 --> 00:44:43,320
Speaker 1: hundred percent of people thinking the whole thing is rigged.

731
00:44:43,600 --> 00:44:45,160
Speaker 1: And if you lose the rule of law, you lose

732
00:44:45,200 --> 00:44:45,680
Speaker 1: your country.

733
00:44:46,520 --> 00:44:49,319
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, and you cite the Federal Reserve as

734
00:44:49,360 --> 00:44:52,120
Speaker 2: the example. But of course that no institution that's now

735
00:44:52,160 --> 00:44:55,800
Speaker 2: in the process before our eyes of being polusive.

736
00:44:56,000 --> 00:44:58,040
Speaker 1: This is such an important moment. I think this is

737
00:44:58,480 --> 00:45:01,400
Speaker 1: this is the single most hourtant moment for the Supreme

738
00:45:01,400 --> 00:45:03,600
Speaker 1: Court yet. Right, We've had quite a few of them.

739
00:45:04,320 --> 00:45:07,400
Speaker 1: But if if they let this Lisa Cook thing go through,

740
00:45:09,760 --> 00:45:13,080
Speaker 1: that's a change in the in the in the unitary executive.

741
00:45:13,160 --> 00:45:17,839
Speaker 1: I mean that that's there's no going back under this

742
00:45:18,000 --> 00:45:20,600
Speaker 1: without constitutional amendments to fix this.

743
00:45:21,120 --> 00:45:23,719
Speaker 2: Yeah, and what we've seen over and over again is

744
00:45:23,760 --> 00:45:26,840
Speaker 2: there's a pretty strong majority on this court for the

745
00:45:27,000 --> 00:45:31,160
Speaker 2: idea that the executive has a lot more power than

746
00:45:31,960 --> 00:45:36,839
Speaker 2: the norms of American politics have allowed a president up

747
00:45:36,880 --> 00:45:37,400
Speaker 2: till now.

748
00:45:37,719 --> 00:45:40,200
Speaker 1: I am very I think Roberts, Kavanaugh and Barrett are

749
00:45:40,200 --> 00:45:42,960
Speaker 1: going to be fascinating on this. I think they're going

750
00:45:43,040 --> 00:45:48,799
Speaker 1: to you know, they've Roberts fairly or unfairly. He's so

751
00:45:49,360 --> 00:45:51,680
Speaker 1: it strikes me he's so determined not to have a

752
00:45:51,680 --> 00:45:54,960
Speaker 1: constitutional crisis with with Trump that he's always looking for

753
00:45:55,000 --> 00:45:59,000
Speaker 1: a way out. Right. He always postpones the confrontation, you know,

754
00:45:59,360 --> 00:46:01,520
Speaker 1: like when you you put a warning in there. He

755
00:46:01,640 --> 00:46:04,239
Speaker 1: tried to tell Trump, don't do the fed thing. We're

756
00:46:04,239 --> 00:46:06,680
Speaker 1: going to treat that differently. Well, he did it anyway,

757
00:46:07,200 --> 00:46:08,880
Speaker 1: We're going to see if they treat it differently. I

758
00:46:08,880 --> 00:46:11,640
Speaker 1: think we know where Roberts is going, But does can

759
00:46:11,640 --> 00:46:13,880
Speaker 1: he bring Barrett or Kavanaugh with him? That's what we're

760
00:46:13,880 --> 00:46:14,880
Speaker 1: going to find out. Yeah.

761
00:46:15,000 --> 00:46:17,759
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like his idol Marshall, who managed to manage his

762
00:46:18,200 --> 00:46:20,880
Speaker 2: politics in a way that assured the independence of the

763
00:46:20,880 --> 00:46:23,240
Speaker 2: Court but at the same time didn't piss the President

764
00:46:23,280 --> 00:46:25,720
Speaker 2: off too much. I think he thinks he can navigate

765
00:46:25,760 --> 00:46:29,160
Speaker 2: through this and I hope and preserve the legitimacy in

766
00:46:29,200 --> 00:46:32,160
Speaker 2: the Medics Court, I hope. So whether we're going to

767
00:46:32,200 --> 00:46:34,640
Speaker 2: wind up with a radically, I think we already are

768
00:46:35,200 --> 00:46:37,960
Speaker 2: seeing a radical revision of what we've understood up till

769
00:46:38,000 --> 00:46:40,680
Speaker 2: now to be the balance of powers, and of course,

770
00:46:40,680 --> 00:46:44,680
Speaker 2: with the soup hine Congress not choosing to exercise any

771
00:46:44,719 --> 00:46:47,000
Speaker 2: of its authority, I think the view from the Supreme

772
00:46:47,040 --> 00:46:49,400
Speaker 2: Court is like, Congress is supposed to be a coequal

773
00:46:49,440 --> 00:46:52,160
Speaker 2: branch of government, not a bunch of White House interns.

774
00:46:52,640 --> 00:46:54,880
Speaker 2: But what they're getting right now is white House interns.

775
00:46:55,120 --> 00:46:58,520
Speaker 2: Back on what you said about reform, like that is

776
00:46:58,560 --> 00:47:02,359
Speaker 2: the hopeful way imagine kind of the constructive outcome here,

777
00:47:02,400 --> 00:47:05,399
Speaker 2: which is what happened after the Watergate era, you know.

778
00:47:05,560 --> 00:47:08,600
Speaker 1: And it also what happened after the Gilded Age, you know.

779
00:47:08,719 --> 00:47:10,799
Speaker 1: R two. If you actually look at the two I've

780
00:47:10,800 --> 00:47:13,279
Speaker 1: been I've been obsessed with looking think about when a

781
00:47:13,320 --> 00:47:16,320
Speaker 1: lion's share of new constitutional amendments have happened in this country.

782
00:47:16,440 --> 00:47:19,680
Speaker 1: They've really only like we basically had three chunks right

783
00:47:19,719 --> 00:47:23,480
Speaker 1: right after the Civil War, right when we had another

784
00:47:23,600 --> 00:47:28,880
Speaker 1: chunk basically between you know, nineteen ten and nineteen you know, forty,

785
00:47:29,400 --> 00:47:32,400
Speaker 1: you know, and then we really haven't had any sense arguably,

786
00:47:32,440 --> 00:47:35,400
Speaker 1: you know, we've yessed the eighteen year olds to vote.

787
00:47:35,760 --> 00:47:37,680
Speaker 1: I think the twenty eighth amendment is something to do

788
00:47:37,680 --> 00:47:40,120
Speaker 1: with pay raises, which is a very like art gain

789
00:47:40,480 --> 00:47:41,440
Speaker 1: one that's sitting there.

790
00:47:42,120 --> 00:47:45,360
Speaker 2: So civil rights, I mean, all the environmental reforms and

791
00:47:45,520 --> 00:47:49,080
Speaker 2: the right, but they're not constitucial amendments. Oh I'm sorry, constudio.

792
00:47:49,120 --> 00:47:50,920
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, yeah, no, no, no, no, that's what I mean.

793
00:47:51,120 --> 00:47:54,439
Speaker 1: So if you look right like, if you believe we're

794
00:47:54,480 --> 00:47:56,719
Speaker 1: sort of in a simil like I look at this

795
00:47:56,760 --> 00:47:59,279
Speaker 1: period and it's sometimes I think it's the eighteen eighty

796
00:47:59,400 --> 00:48:02,160
Speaker 1: Sometimes I think it's the nineteen twenties, but actually that

797
00:48:02,239 --> 00:48:04,759
Speaker 1: whole era is very similar, right from about eighteen eighty

798
00:48:04,800 --> 00:48:08,000
Speaker 1: to FDR. You know, we had a pandemic in the

799
00:48:08,000 --> 00:48:09,759
Speaker 1: middle of it that made us go crazy. We did

800
00:48:09,840 --> 00:48:14,640
Speaker 1: prohibition right after the pandemic. I now understand how that happened. Right,

801
00:48:14,719 --> 00:48:18,120
Speaker 1: Look at how crazy we've gone after our You're like, oh, right,

802
00:48:18,200 --> 00:48:20,279
Speaker 1: Like you know, prohibition has always been one of those things.

803
00:48:20,280 --> 00:48:23,040
Speaker 1: You're like, yeah, people bring up the pandemic, but until

804
00:48:23,080 --> 00:48:26,399
Speaker 1: you experience a pandemic and watch the crazy, You're like, oh,

805
00:48:26,560 --> 00:48:30,360
Speaker 1: that's how prohibition happened. Okay, I get it now. So

806
00:48:31,560 --> 00:48:33,759
Speaker 1: that's where I do have some hope, right, is that

807
00:48:34,440 --> 00:48:37,920
Speaker 1: we did right. The first reform of the media happened

808
00:48:38,080 --> 00:48:40,880
Speaker 1: with the muckrakers, arguably in the early part of the

809
00:48:40,880 --> 00:48:44,280
Speaker 1: twentieth century, and in some ways, I think what's happening

810
00:48:44,320 --> 00:48:47,799
Speaker 1: now with our current media ecosystem is we're in the

811
00:48:47,840 --> 00:48:52,319
Speaker 1: middle of a resorting of it, and the muckrakers now

812
00:48:52,320 --> 00:48:53,120
Speaker 1: are on YouTube.

813
00:48:53,719 --> 00:48:57,279
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting, you're right. I mean, the society of

814
00:48:57,320 --> 00:49:00,239
Speaker 2: new newspaper editors was created, and I think, like nineteen

815
00:49:00,239 --> 00:49:03,040
Speaker 2: twenty two, and that was the first effort to really

816
00:49:03,440 --> 00:49:06,400
Speaker 2: professionalize the industry. It was partly coming out of this

817
00:49:06,520 --> 00:49:08,919
Speaker 2: experience of World War One and feeling like we're being

818
00:49:08,920 --> 00:49:12,080
Speaker 2: manipulated day by day by the government. We're confusing our readers,

819
00:49:12,400 --> 00:49:14,560
Speaker 2: and that's you know, one of their first principles was

820
00:49:14,640 --> 00:49:17,799
Speaker 2: you need to separate news and opinion, and that sort

821
00:49:17,800 --> 00:49:20,680
Speaker 2: of led to what then was this kind of golden

822
00:49:20,719 --> 00:49:24,920
Speaker 2: age which may turn out, chuck, just to be an aberration,

823
00:49:25,480 --> 00:49:28,840
Speaker 2: you know, that periodic idea of journalism in America, because

824
00:49:28,880 --> 00:49:31,080
Speaker 2: before that it looked much more like what we're living

825
00:49:31,080 --> 00:49:33,560
Speaker 2: with now, which is fragmentation and partisanship.

826
00:49:33,880 --> 00:49:37,280
Speaker 1: Well, you know, one of my one of the questions

827
00:49:37,320 --> 00:49:39,000
Speaker 1: I keep asking, right, you and I grew up in

828
00:49:39,680 --> 00:49:42,239
Speaker 1: we might have grown up in an outlier era. Yeah, right.

829
00:49:42,360 --> 00:49:45,359
Speaker 1: I think about the fall of the Berlin Wall, and

830
00:49:46,000 --> 00:49:47,839
Speaker 1: I think about the Cold War, And now I look

831
00:49:47,880 --> 00:49:50,040
Speaker 1: back on the Cold War and realize what a stabilizing

832
00:49:50,120 --> 00:49:52,800
Speaker 1: force it was for our two parties. It kept the

833
00:49:53,600 --> 00:49:58,560
Speaker 1: isolationist extremists and the right, the socialists on the left.

834
00:49:58,200 --> 00:50:04,759
Speaker 1: We're kept from power by sort of the the you know,

835
00:50:04,840 --> 00:50:07,040
Speaker 1: I think sort of the focus on the Soviet Union,

836
00:50:07,120 --> 00:50:10,600
Speaker 1: the focus on the fight for you know, essentially for

837
00:50:10,680 --> 00:50:15,640
Speaker 1: protecting democracy. And I do wonder if you you know,

838
00:50:15,840 --> 00:50:18,560
Speaker 1: I go, I express it this way. Six of our

839
00:50:18,600 --> 00:50:21,200
Speaker 1: seven presidential elections this century have been decided by five

840
00:50:21,239 --> 00:50:24,120
Speaker 1: points or less. We only had five in the entire

841
00:50:24,160 --> 00:50:27,080
Speaker 1: twentieth century decided by five points or less. But in

842
00:50:27,120 --> 00:50:33,279
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century it's something like ten of we had

843
00:50:33,280 --> 00:50:35,239
Speaker 1: two periods of like five or six in a row

844
00:50:35,480 --> 00:50:37,719
Speaker 1: that were decided by five points or less. So in

845
00:50:37,719 --> 00:50:41,919
Speaker 1: some ways our is our natural state in this country, polarization.

846
00:50:43,239 --> 00:50:48,680
Speaker 1: And the period basically from Truman to i'd say nine

847
00:50:48,719 --> 00:50:50,839
Speaker 1: to eleven, right, you sort of like a ten year

848
00:50:50,960 --> 00:50:53,240
Speaker 1: from Truman to Clinton, right, Truman to the two thousand

849
00:50:53,239 --> 00:50:57,520
Speaker 1: election where we only had two elections decided by five

850
00:50:57,520 --> 00:50:59,520
Speaker 1: points or less in that in that period of time,

851
00:50:59,600 --> 00:51:03,360
Speaker 1: sixty eight sixties have three Sidney, sixty eight, sixty and

852
00:51:03,400 --> 00:51:08,680
Speaker 1: seventy six. Is that the outlier period of American history?

853
00:51:09,160 --> 00:51:11,200
Speaker 2: Yeah? And you know what's strange about it, Chuck, It's

854
00:51:11,200 --> 00:51:12,960
Speaker 2: going to sound so stupid when I say this, but

855
00:51:13,000 --> 00:51:15,719
Speaker 2: I've actually gone to political sciences to try to explain this,

856
00:51:15,800 --> 00:51:18,640
Speaker 2: and I can't get a good explanation. Why is it,

857
00:51:19,719 --> 00:51:24,400
Speaker 2: why why is it that there's this kind of homeostatic quality,

858
00:51:24,600 --> 00:51:28,600
Speaker 2: thermostatic quality that we do remain so evenly divided. You know,

859
00:51:28,640 --> 00:51:31,160
Speaker 2: why wouldn't it go to sixty forty at some point

860
00:51:31,280 --> 00:51:34,960
Speaker 2: or seventy we come back to it. Just it's split

861
00:51:35,000 --> 00:51:37,279
Speaker 2: down the middle with knife's heads, and some of it

862
00:51:37,360 --> 00:51:41,239
Speaker 2: is now jerrymandering and redistricting and so forth, but kind

863
00:51:41,280 --> 00:51:46,200
Speaker 2: of knife's edge margins in the House, and for the

864
00:51:46,239 --> 00:51:49,040
Speaker 2: presidency being traded back and forth, you'd think at one

865
00:51:49,080 --> 00:51:50,719
Speaker 2: point it would tip one way or the other.

866
00:51:50,960 --> 00:51:52,920
Speaker 1: Well, because it did tip. That is the way it

867
00:51:52,960 --> 00:51:55,759
Speaker 1: worked during the Cold War argument. Yeah, right, we would

868
00:51:55,800 --> 00:52:01,080
Speaker 1: have these periods where nope, Democrats wave, nope, Republican Reagan Revolution, right,

869
00:52:01,160 --> 00:52:04,239
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. One theory I've had is that

870
00:52:04,280 --> 00:52:07,480
Speaker 1: our two parties are too big, but we have stuffed

871
00:52:07,520 --> 00:52:10,120
Speaker 1: We're really a four party country stuffed into a two

872
00:52:10,160 --> 00:52:14,480
Speaker 1: party system because of the duopoly. And so where there's

873
00:52:14,520 --> 00:52:18,040
Speaker 1: really been a ton of change is within the two parties. Right,

874
00:52:18,160 --> 00:52:23,160
Speaker 1: the two parties vacillate between pragmatism and their base. Right,

875
00:52:23,200 --> 00:52:25,920
Speaker 1: they go back and forth between who's in charge of

876
00:52:25,960 --> 00:52:30,239
Speaker 1: their party, and then that in turn sort of has

877
00:52:30,280 --> 00:52:33,520
Speaker 1: sort of driven the other part. The other party almost

878
00:52:33,520 --> 00:52:35,960
Speaker 1: reacts in the same way. The more pragmatic Republicans are,

879
00:52:35,960 --> 00:52:38,879
Speaker 1: the more pragmatic Democrats are vice versa. Right, And now

880
00:52:38,920 --> 00:52:41,919
Speaker 1: I do think you're seeing. I had a progressive friend

881
00:52:41,960 --> 00:52:43,439
Speaker 1: of mine say to me the other day, I'm looking

882
00:52:43,440 --> 00:52:46,359
Speaker 1: for my own Trump. Now I'm done trying to win

883
00:52:46,440 --> 00:52:49,719
Speaker 1: from the ground up. And I went just a big sigh.

884
00:52:49,760 --> 00:52:53,000
Speaker 1: You're like, oh boy, this is exactly my fear. Is

885
00:52:53,040 --> 00:52:57,440
Speaker 1: that every political physics, essentially right, every action, you're going

886
00:52:57,480 --> 00:52:59,000
Speaker 1: to get an equal an office of reaction.

887
00:52:59,280 --> 00:53:01,479
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's what I mean about the prosecutions. Now,

888
00:53:01,560 --> 00:53:04,400
Speaker 2: it's like redistricting. It's it's just such an appetite in

889
00:53:04,400 --> 00:53:07,960
Speaker 2: the Democratic Party. It's like if you talk about bipartisanship,

890
00:53:08,000 --> 00:53:10,640
Speaker 2: if you talk about not if you talk about not

891
00:53:11,080 --> 00:53:16,520
Speaker 2: responding in kind, that's considered like a weak and pathetic.

892
00:53:16,760 --> 00:53:19,880
Speaker 2: And there's a huge appetite for, as you say, you know,

893
00:53:20,600 --> 00:53:23,040
Speaker 2: among Democrats, for their own version of Trump. I think

894
00:53:23,080 --> 00:53:25,160
Speaker 2: you're so right about the you know, the fall of

895
00:53:25,239 --> 00:53:28,279
Speaker 2: Berlin Wall. It's like the Great crack Up. And I

896
00:53:28,320 --> 00:53:30,640
Speaker 2: don't think I certainly didn't appreciate it at the time

897
00:53:31,000 --> 00:53:33,839
Speaker 2: that the nineties were this sort of wonderful time away,

898
00:53:34,040 --> 00:53:34,640
Speaker 2: since that was.

899
00:53:34,760 --> 00:53:37,520
Speaker 1: Literally there's our houseyon days where the nineties who knew.

900
00:53:37,760 --> 00:53:40,359
Speaker 1: But you think in the way it's underwear, right like

901
00:53:40,400 --> 00:53:41,600
Speaker 1: that you get.

902
00:53:41,400 --> 00:53:43,640
Speaker 2: In that election in ninety two, you get Ross Perrot

903
00:53:44,400 --> 00:53:47,759
Speaker 2: and you get Buchanon, right, and there are these two

904
00:53:47,960 --> 00:53:51,560
Speaker 2: strains that have become dominant, you know, in our politics.

905
00:53:52,280 --> 00:53:56,280
Speaker 2: And it took some time, and then I think Donald

906
00:53:56,280 --> 00:53:59,879
Speaker 2: Trump's recognition in some ways that all these institutions were

907
00:54:01,040 --> 00:54:04,800
Speaker 2: a lot more fragile than they seemed, and you know,

908
00:54:04,920 --> 00:54:08,120
Speaker 2: the tremendous dissatisfaction in the country, like we've had wrong

909
00:54:08,239 --> 00:54:11,960
Speaker 2: track numbers for basically this whole century right so far. Yeah,

910
00:54:11,960 --> 00:54:14,760
Speaker 2: people have felt the governments on the wrong American.

911
00:54:14,640 --> 00:54:17,759
Speaker 1: Well, and it's created And this is where I've been,

912
00:54:18,120 --> 00:54:21,320
Speaker 1: you know, obsessively studying the nineteenth century election patterns because

913
00:54:22,320 --> 00:54:25,239
Speaker 1: we've been voting against we have not voted you know,

914
00:54:25,280 --> 00:54:28,160
Speaker 1: I think in O eight we voted for Obama right.

915
00:54:28,800 --> 00:54:31,600
Speaker 1: Every other election has been a bit more or it

916
00:54:31,640 --> 00:54:34,320
Speaker 1: felt like the last voters voted against right, they voted

917
00:54:34,640 --> 00:54:37,000
Speaker 1: they were they were clear what they didn't want. They

918
00:54:37,040 --> 00:54:38,759
Speaker 1: weren't necessarily clear what they wanted, but they knew what

919
00:54:38,800 --> 00:54:41,480
Speaker 1: they didn't want. And that really is the hallmark of

920
00:54:41,480 --> 00:54:44,799
Speaker 1: those nineteenth century elections, every one of them, I mean

921
00:54:45,080 --> 00:54:48,680
Speaker 1: between you know, we had we had seven presidents in

922
00:54:48,719 --> 00:54:52,040
Speaker 1: twenty eight years, between Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln. In

923
00:54:52,200 --> 00:54:55,520
Speaker 1: each one of them in their own way, one by promising, well,

924
00:54:55,560 --> 00:54:57,319
Speaker 1: they were going to try to this is how they

925
00:54:57,320 --> 00:54:58,920
Speaker 1: were going to bring unity, and this is how they

926
00:54:58,960 --> 00:55:01,120
Speaker 1: were going to do this. You know, they were all

927
00:55:01,239 --> 00:55:03,920
Speaker 1: and it's very similar to what we're seeing today, just

928
00:55:04,000 --> 00:55:08,040
Speaker 1: over a different issue, where each president is promising, you know,

929
00:55:08,120 --> 00:55:10,520
Speaker 1: that they're going to be able to break this gridlock

930
00:55:10,600 --> 00:55:13,080
Speaker 1: or they're going to be able to break this polarization,

931
00:55:13,440 --> 00:55:19,279
Speaker 1: and you know, unfortunately, you know, the question really is

932
00:55:19,320 --> 00:55:21,120
Speaker 1: are we going to get through this period? One of

933
00:55:21,160 --> 00:55:24,400
Speaker 1: my favorite expressions is I'm short term pessimistic, long term optimistic.

934
00:55:24,920 --> 00:55:26,759
Speaker 1: I'd just said the same thing in nineteen thirty nine,

935
00:55:27,120 --> 00:55:29,400
Speaker 1: and I'd have been right, but the short term was

936
00:55:29,440 --> 00:55:33,400
Speaker 1: really messy, right, But by nineteen forty six that was

937
00:55:33,560 --> 00:55:36,719
Speaker 1: you could be really optimistic. And the question is do

938
00:55:36,800 --> 00:55:40,080
Speaker 1: we get through this without violence, without mass violence and

939
00:55:40,280 --> 00:55:43,520
Speaker 1: only with isolated violence. And I think that's the you know,

940
00:55:43,640 --> 00:55:45,160
Speaker 1: that's my sort of blunt way of putting it.

941
00:55:45,520 --> 00:55:47,920
Speaker 2: So when you look back at the say, the progressive era,

942
00:55:48,520 --> 00:55:51,560
Speaker 2: what do you see as creating the conditions for reform.

943
00:56:02,760 --> 00:56:05,920
Speaker 1: Well, back then you had you know, you had a

944
00:56:05,960 --> 00:56:08,440
Speaker 1: lot of movements that were sort of in place for

945
00:56:08,520 --> 00:56:10,600
Speaker 1: a while. Right, you had the movement to get women

946
00:56:10,680 --> 00:56:13,320
Speaker 1: the right to vote that had been sort of percolating

947
00:56:13,320 --> 00:56:15,960
Speaker 1: for a while. Also the temperance movement right that was

948
00:56:16,040 --> 00:56:20,279
Speaker 1: percolating for some time. So you had some So you

949
00:56:20,400 --> 00:56:23,680
Speaker 1: had the muck rakers. That's the problem of what we're missing.

950
00:56:23,800 --> 00:56:30,560
Speaker 1: There isn't really a big movement for reform. I'm surprised

951
00:56:30,760 --> 00:56:33,640
Speaker 1: there hasn't been a bigger call for a constitutional convention,

952
00:56:33,960 --> 00:56:36,680
Speaker 1: for instance, like where we arguably are due for one.

953
00:56:38,239 --> 00:56:40,520
Speaker 1: But there's always there's this weird fear on the left

954
00:56:40,560 --> 00:56:43,359
Speaker 1: of one. You have more interest on it from those,

955
00:56:43,719 --> 00:56:45,520
Speaker 1: you know, from people on the right than you do

956
00:56:45,600 --> 00:56:48,680
Speaker 1: on the left, when arguably, if you look at the

957
00:56:48,680 --> 00:56:51,880
Speaker 1: biggest grievances of the left, almost all of their grievances

958
00:56:51,920 --> 00:56:54,160
Speaker 1: are only going to be solved with constitutional amendments. There

959
00:56:54,200 --> 00:56:56,400
Speaker 1: are no laws that are going to solve this, you

960
00:56:56,440 --> 00:56:58,759
Speaker 1: know when it comes to campaign money or some of

961
00:56:58,760 --> 00:57:02,400
Speaker 1: the existential things that they can care about. And so

962
00:57:02,520 --> 00:57:05,839
Speaker 1: you're right, other than the conditions being similar, right where

963
00:57:05,920 --> 00:57:08,359
Speaker 1: you have a new economy, we were going from an

964
00:57:08,360 --> 00:57:11,040
Speaker 1: agrarian to an industrial. Now we're going from industrial to

965
00:57:11,160 --> 00:57:14,239
Speaker 1: this to this new economy. They are these five or

966
00:57:14,360 --> 00:57:19,600
Speaker 1: six lords, right, you know, sort of you know, the

967
00:57:19,720 --> 00:57:23,120
Speaker 1: robber barons of today. So in that sense, I think,

968
00:57:23,320 --> 00:57:26,800
Speaker 1: and you you know, we don't have our Teddy Roosevelt yet,

969
00:57:27,280 --> 00:57:29,040
Speaker 1: but I do think people but I do think people

970
00:57:29,080 --> 00:57:30,440
Speaker 1: are looking for him or her.

971
00:57:31,360 --> 00:57:36,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know. The idea of it, honestly,

972
00:57:36,480 --> 00:57:41,960
Speaker 2: it's the it's so hard to imagine a productive constitutional

973
00:57:42,080 --> 00:57:47,000
Speaker 2: convention and that's the pass legislation anymore. Like it's all

974
00:57:47,120 --> 00:57:49,440
Speaker 2: one big, beautiful mail because it's the only way to

975
00:57:49,520 --> 00:57:51,840
Speaker 2: do it. Stuff everything into you know.

976
00:57:53,200 --> 00:57:55,400
Speaker 1: But you know, it's it's funny, it's like, I also, look,

977
00:57:55,440 --> 00:57:57,400
Speaker 1: I think one of the ways to solve this is

978
00:57:57,480 --> 00:58:00,840
Speaker 1: to double the size of the house. Uncapped the house,

979
00:58:01,200 --> 00:58:05,600
Speaker 1: which ironically was shut down in the nineteen twenties. It

980
00:58:05,760 --> 00:58:08,000
Speaker 1: was a dispute over by the way you want to

981
00:58:08,000 --> 00:58:11,200
Speaker 1: talk about our polarization. The reason we stopped expanding the

982
00:58:11,280 --> 00:58:15,040
Speaker 1: House is because they disagreed on which states should get

983
00:58:15,240 --> 00:58:18,400
Speaker 1: the extra members of Congress back in nineteen twenty. They

984
00:58:18,440 --> 00:58:20,640
Speaker 1: couldn't resolve it for an entire decade, so they just

985
00:58:21,440 --> 00:58:24,600
Speaker 1: capped it and said we're going to wash our hands

986
00:58:24,640 --> 00:58:28,800
Speaker 1: of this in nineteen thirty. And you know, now, I mean,

987
00:58:29,400 --> 00:58:32,560
Speaker 1: now we're stuck with this system where the irony is

988
00:58:33,680 --> 00:58:37,720
Speaker 1: the Senate is now more apt, you know, is the

989
00:58:38,200 --> 00:58:41,919
Speaker 1: state legislatures will decide control of the House of Representatives

990
00:58:41,960 --> 00:58:44,640
Speaker 1: while the people decide the Senate, when the founders actually

991
00:58:44,680 --> 00:58:52,760
Speaker 1: had it the other way around. Yeah, yeah, let me

992
00:58:52,840 --> 00:58:55,480
Speaker 1: ask you this on because you have to you look

993
00:58:55,520 --> 00:58:59,120
Speaker 1: at sort of America through the you know, the economist

994
00:58:59,160 --> 00:59:00,480
Speaker 1: has to look at it through a little bit more

995
00:59:00,480 --> 00:59:05,200
Speaker 1: of an international prism. The last time we had sort

996
00:59:05,200 --> 00:59:09,800
Speaker 1: of a protect a race, a protectionist race, if you will,

997
00:59:10,240 --> 00:59:14,720
Speaker 1: it did end up in a World war. Why why

998
00:59:14,760 --> 00:59:18,960
Speaker 1: aren't there more people worried about this rise of Because

999
00:59:19,080 --> 00:59:22,320
Speaker 1: nationalism and protectionism is contagious and we're already seeing it.

1000
00:59:22,640 --> 00:59:25,240
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we are seeing it. And no, I mean,

1001
00:59:25,480 --> 00:59:28,280
Speaker 2: you know, the economists has been terribly worried about this

1002
00:59:28,440 --> 00:59:31,760
Speaker 2: for quite a while, and there's been and you know

1003
00:59:31,880 --> 00:59:33,880
Speaker 2: that the Economists was founded in the middle of the

1004
00:59:33,920 --> 00:59:36,680
Speaker 2: nineteenth century to oppose tariffs in the UK. So this

1005
00:59:36,840 --> 00:59:41,520
Speaker 2: is particularly, you know, something subject it's obsessed with and

1006
00:59:41,800 --> 00:59:43,040
Speaker 2: you know, as a bunch of helf.

1007
00:59:42,800 --> 00:59:44,760
Speaker 1: If it wasn't for tariffs, the UK would still be

1008
00:59:44,800 --> 00:59:45,560
Speaker 1: an empire, right.

1009
00:59:46,840 --> 00:59:48,320
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know. I think it might have caught

1010
00:59:48,400 --> 00:59:50,800
Speaker 2: up with them other issues might have crapped with them eventually, but.

1011
00:59:50,960 --> 00:59:53,640
Speaker 1: Perhaps, but look at we wouldn't have a country without

1012
00:59:53,800 --> 00:59:55,560
Speaker 1: UK tariffs. So God bless about.

1013
00:59:55,600 --> 01:00:01,520
Speaker 2: It's true, It's true, and the truth there is as

1014
01:00:01,560 --> 01:00:03,840
Speaker 2: you know, I mean, there have tariffs are you know,

1015
01:00:04,360 --> 01:00:09,400
Speaker 2: we've had tariffs imposed by for one reason or another.

1016
01:00:09,480 --> 01:00:12,560
Speaker 2: It's not nothing new under the sun in that sense.

1017
01:00:12,920 --> 01:00:14,640
Speaker 2: But what is It goes back to what we were

1018
01:00:14,680 --> 01:00:17,360
Speaker 2: talking about at the outset, is this idea that we're

1019
01:00:17,440 --> 01:00:21,120
Speaker 2: no longer living in what we understood to be the

1020
01:00:21,200 --> 01:00:24,919
Speaker 2: rules based international order after that war, you know, after

1021
01:00:25,040 --> 01:00:28,880
Speaker 2: World War Two, and each country is we're back to

1022
01:00:29,600 --> 01:00:32,640
Speaker 2: a kind of nineteenth century idea of great power struggle

1023
01:00:33,240 --> 01:00:37,560
Speaker 2: and that's tremendously destabilizing, you know, and That's where it's

1024
01:00:37,560 --> 01:00:40,480
Speaker 2: a little harder to be a long term optimist because

1025
01:00:40,520 --> 01:00:42,919
Speaker 2: of what history has taught us about what happens when

1026
01:00:43,600 --> 01:00:46,520
Speaker 2: you no longer have systems that are capable of kind

1027
01:00:46,560 --> 01:00:51,160
Speaker 2: of because you know, people recognize that this sort of

1028
01:00:51,320 --> 01:00:55,720
Speaker 2: order served everybody better, and a trading environment in which

1029
01:00:55,800 --> 01:00:59,320
Speaker 2: you know, all boats had a chance to rise, we've

1030
01:00:59,440 --> 01:01:01,920
Speaker 2: just abandoned and we're in the process. I think of

1031
01:01:02,040 --> 01:01:04,520
Speaker 2: really backing away from those ideas well.

1032
01:01:04,560 --> 01:01:07,960
Speaker 1: I think when you combine that with the ease with

1033
01:01:08,120 --> 01:01:11,760
Speaker 1: which a medium sized power or even a small country

1034
01:01:12,440 --> 01:01:16,200
Speaker 1: can inflict major damage, right, the fact that you can

1035
01:01:16,880 --> 01:01:19,760
Speaker 1: essentially fight with robots, I mean the Clone war. You know,

1036
01:01:20,160 --> 01:01:22,360
Speaker 1: the Clone Wars, right, if you're a Star Wars fan,

1037
01:01:22,760 --> 01:01:25,320
Speaker 1: the Clone Wars are here. I mean I had Dexter

1038
01:01:25,400 --> 01:01:28,560
Speaker 1: folcns on and a couple a couple of weeks ago,

1039
01:01:29,600 --> 01:01:32,320
Speaker 1: and he was sounding the alarm about this change in

1040
01:01:32,400 --> 01:01:35,320
Speaker 1: warfare and just how And of course I've noticed over

1041
01:01:35,360 --> 01:01:37,800
Speaker 1: the last week where so more people are noticing, Hey,

1042
01:01:37,880 --> 01:01:40,640
Speaker 1: that the Russia Ukraine war is a drone war now

1043
01:01:41,440 --> 01:01:45,000
Speaker 1: and this is the future of warfare. And you know,

1044
01:01:45,200 --> 01:01:50,400
Speaker 1: Ukraine and Russia are able to what normally would be

1045
01:01:50,680 --> 01:01:53,240
Speaker 1: a reason to come to the negotiating table. You're running

1046
01:01:53,240 --> 01:01:58,120
Speaker 1: out of troops, you're running out of physical resources, human resources.

1047
01:01:58,880 --> 01:02:02,880
Speaker 1: If you don't need human resources to fight wars, you're

1048
01:02:02,960 --> 01:02:07,320
Speaker 1: more likely to fight wars. Yeah, yeah, yeah no.

1049
01:02:07,520 --> 01:02:11,320
Speaker 2: And again in an environment where the US is asserting

1050
01:02:11,360 --> 01:02:15,520
Speaker 2: its ability to kill these suspected drug runners at sea

1051
01:02:16,400 --> 01:02:21,000
Speaker 2: with no due process whatsoever. It's tough political proposition. The

1052
01:02:21,080 --> 01:02:25,080
Speaker 2: politics are probably good for him. The long term consequences

1053
01:02:25,160 --> 01:02:27,880
Speaker 2: of that for any idea that there are rules that

1054
01:02:28,160 --> 01:02:32,000
Speaker 2: govern our behavior, they weren't created for naive reasons. You know,

1055
01:02:32,120 --> 01:02:35,720
Speaker 2: they weren't created because we all believe people were angels.

1056
01:02:35,840 --> 01:02:38,720
Speaker 2: Quite the opposite, right, No, it's because we knew they weren't,

1057
01:02:39,200 --> 01:02:42,080
Speaker 2: and you know they had their better angels that maybe

1058
01:02:42,120 --> 01:02:46,320
Speaker 2: coaxed out I chuck, you know this week that's part

1059
01:02:46,360 --> 01:02:49,120
Speaker 2: of this tragedy in some ways of Donald Trump watching

1060
01:02:49,160 --> 01:02:52,240
Speaker 2: him at the UN ranting I'll use that word about

1061
01:02:52,320 --> 01:02:57,160
Speaker 2: immigration and excoriating all these nations for immigration. Is like,

1062
01:02:57,880 --> 01:03:00,920
Speaker 2: refugee flows are a deep problem the world right now,

1063
01:03:01,040 --> 01:03:04,040
Speaker 2: and it's not happening because people invited them in. It's

1064
01:03:04,120 --> 01:03:08,920
Speaker 2: happening because of war instability, smartphones that help people navigate

1065
01:03:09,000 --> 01:03:12,160
Speaker 2: in ways they couldn't communication we didn't have. They're all

1066
01:03:12,320 --> 01:03:15,520
Speaker 2: sorts of forces driving this. And the Refugee Convention, which

1067
01:03:15,600 --> 01:03:17,840
Speaker 2: dates to nineteen fifty one, is totally out of date.

1068
01:03:18,640 --> 01:03:21,040
Speaker 2: Here is something the US could lead on, you know,

1069
01:03:21,440 --> 01:03:24,200
Speaker 2: like this is, this is and Donald Trump is actually,

1070
01:03:24,920 --> 01:03:27,920
Speaker 2: by virtue of his politics, is particularly well equipped to

1071
01:03:28,080 --> 01:03:30,680
Speaker 2: provide that leadership. But it's not going to happen.

1072
01:03:31,120 --> 01:03:33,760
Speaker 1: So that for us this problem, right, No, I mean,

1073
01:03:33,800 --> 01:03:35,640
Speaker 1: this is the problem. Like we kind of all know

1074
01:03:35,800 --> 01:03:39,320
Speaker 1: what our problems are, what American leader, the role American

1075
01:03:39,400 --> 01:03:42,400
Speaker 1: leadership can play. But if the leader of America doesn't

1076
01:03:42,440 --> 01:03:43,840
Speaker 1: want to lead, what are you supposed to do?

1077
01:03:44,320 --> 01:03:44,440
Speaker 2: Right?

1078
01:03:45,080 --> 01:03:48,320
Speaker 1: Right? And that's you know that, for the life of me,

1079
01:03:48,960 --> 01:03:53,840
Speaker 1: he's always campaigning, he's never thinking about leading. He doesn't

1080
01:03:53,960 --> 01:03:56,560
Speaker 1: care if he's got a fifty percent job, right, let

1081
01:03:56,600 --> 01:03:59,480
Speaker 1: alone a sixty percent. I used to say, what made

1082
01:03:59,520 --> 01:04:04,760
Speaker 1: our twenty century politics work is that we the incentive.

1083
01:04:05,880 --> 01:04:10,040
Speaker 1: Presidential incentives were to succeed. You had to be at

1084
01:04:10,040 --> 01:04:13,960
Speaker 1: a sixty percent approval, So you governed to get to

1085
01:04:14,080 --> 01:04:17,560
Speaker 1: sixty even if it meant you only won fifty. But

1086
01:04:17,640 --> 01:04:21,960
Speaker 1: you always tried to govern a little bit above your party,

1087
01:04:22,800 --> 01:04:25,160
Speaker 1: you know, and win over some people on the other side,

1088
01:04:26,760 --> 01:04:31,720
Speaker 1: and and you were rewarded for it. Politically, we have

1089
01:04:32,280 --> 01:04:35,480
Speaker 1: you know, I've sort of I've been quoting a lot

1090
01:04:35,520 --> 01:04:39,520
Speaker 1: of Milton Friedman lately, where he famously said, you know,

1091
01:04:39,640 --> 01:04:42,160
Speaker 1: it's not about electing the right people, it's about having

1092
01:04:42,240 --> 01:04:45,320
Speaker 1: the right and bad people will do good things if

1093
01:04:45,360 --> 01:04:48,920
Speaker 1: the incentives are aligned correctly. And this gets it to

1094
01:04:49,080 --> 01:04:52,000
Speaker 1: what we really need are better incentives, not better people.

1095
01:04:52,960 --> 01:04:55,600
Speaker 2: But so to around that what you're saying about Trump,

1096
01:04:55,960 --> 01:04:58,720
Speaker 2: when you're saying he's always campaigning, and he's campaigning for

1097
01:04:58,920 --> 01:05:03,720
Speaker 2: his base because he has hacked our politics like he's

1098
01:05:03,840 --> 01:05:05,439
Speaker 2: understood good.

1099
01:05:05,560 --> 01:05:07,920
Speaker 1: That's what keeps him alive. Right, That's what keeps him

1100
01:05:07,960 --> 01:05:11,280
Speaker 1: politically alive and politically powerful. Right, How is it that

1101
01:05:11,400 --> 01:05:15,120
Speaker 1: he has tamed the Republicans in Congress because he's convinced

1102
01:05:15,240 --> 01:05:18,240
Speaker 1: m I'll go back to a quote, I quote Tom Cole.

1103
01:05:18,600 --> 01:05:20,440
Speaker 1: I've had this. I had a conversation with Tom Cole

1104
01:05:20,480 --> 01:05:24,760
Speaker 1: about this right after January six because he he had

1105
01:05:24,800 --> 01:05:28,040
Speaker 1: the most January Tom Coles January sixth statement is the

1106
01:05:28,120 --> 01:05:34,640
Speaker 1: most incredible statement because it was a fascinating attempt at

1107
01:05:34,680 --> 01:05:37,560
Speaker 1: walking a tightrope. He said, I'm not going to vote

1108
01:05:37,560 --> 01:05:40,400
Speaker 1: to certify the election because my constituents don't want me to,

1109
01:05:41,960 --> 01:05:44,640
Speaker 1: and I'm in a representative democracy. He did not say

1110
01:05:45,440 --> 01:05:48,080
Speaker 1: it was right or wrong. He just simply said, I'm

1111
01:05:48,120 --> 01:05:50,880
Speaker 1: doing this because my constituents have asked me. And I said,

1112
01:05:51,480 --> 01:05:52,720
Speaker 1: and I went to him and I said, you know,

1113
01:05:53,320 --> 01:05:56,800
Speaker 1: you have you got I think it was in his

1114
01:05:56,920 --> 01:05:59,400
Speaker 1: district he got sixty four percent and Trump got sixty two.

1115
01:06:00,880 --> 01:06:03,560
Speaker 1: And Cole says to me, he goes, and if I

1116
01:06:03,600 --> 01:06:06,600
Speaker 1: oppost Trump, He's going to take his sixty two and

1117
01:06:06,680 --> 01:06:14,800
Speaker 1: I'll keep mine too. And you know, now, I love

1118
01:06:14,920 --> 01:06:18,960
Speaker 1: Tom is a just one of He's just I've known

1119
01:06:19,040 --> 01:06:21,200
Speaker 1: him thirty years. You know what he was before he

1120
01:06:21,320 --> 01:06:23,080
Speaker 1: was a member of Congress or an elected of Fisher

1121
01:06:23,080 --> 01:06:25,560
Speaker 1: who is a Polster. So the guy is a very

1122
01:06:25,840 --> 01:06:30,200
Speaker 1: very much you're the kind of guy. Yeah, but he

1123
01:06:30,520 --> 01:06:33,400
Speaker 1: but unfortunately I think he's thought, you know, he he

1124
01:06:34,000 --> 01:06:36,680
Speaker 1: he didn't want to take the risks, right, That's essentially

1125
01:06:36,720 --> 01:06:38,680
Speaker 1: what he was telling me. Hey, it's too risky and

1126
01:06:38,840 --> 01:06:41,480
Speaker 1: he's got control of the base. And that's what's broken

1127
01:06:41,520 --> 01:06:43,680
Speaker 1: about our politics. Right, if you control the base of

1128
01:06:43,760 --> 01:06:46,960
Speaker 1: the party, you can control your party even if a

1129
01:06:47,040 --> 01:06:50,120
Speaker 1: majority of the country doesn't want you. Like, think about this.

1130
01:06:50,240 --> 01:06:52,560
Speaker 1: You are the Beerau chief in Jerusalem, so let me

1131
01:06:52,960 --> 01:06:55,520
Speaker 1: let me throw a question at you that I enjoy

1132
01:06:55,680 --> 01:06:59,720
Speaker 1: it more of a riddle. But did we export our

1133
01:06:59,720 --> 01:07:02,920
Speaker 1: politics to Israel? Or did Israel export its politics to us?

1134
01:07:03,080 --> 01:07:06,320
Speaker 1: And here's how I frame it. Israel and the United

1135
01:07:06,360 --> 01:07:09,959
Speaker 1: States had the same issue. They've got a controversial leader

1136
01:07:10,920 --> 01:07:14,479
Speaker 1: that a majority of the public doesn't want as leader,

1137
01:07:15,040 --> 01:07:17,720
Speaker 1: but it's the only thing that majority agrees upon.

1138
01:07:21,960 --> 01:07:25,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's a parliamentary system versus a republic,

1139
01:07:25,720 --> 01:07:30,240
Speaker 2: right that we the democracy that we have. It feels

1140
01:07:30,320 --> 01:07:33,600
Speaker 2: like now we have the weaknesses of a parliamentary system

1141
01:07:33,720 --> 01:07:36,440
Speaker 2: without its strengths. But you look at Israel and you

1142
01:07:36,520 --> 01:07:39,440
Speaker 2: can see a politician who's hacked the parliamentary system too,

1143
01:07:39,560 --> 01:07:44,120
Speaker 2: which is vulnerable in exactly the same way. I mean,

1144
01:07:44,200 --> 01:07:46,320
Speaker 2: I think, you know, we've learned from each I guess

1145
01:07:46,400 --> 01:07:49,640
Speaker 2: that who's who's who's learned from who. I think they've

1146
01:07:49,680 --> 01:07:55,120
Speaker 2: reciprocal reciprocally, you know, influenced one another. Uh.

1147
01:07:56,720 --> 01:07:59,920
Speaker 1: I just find that Bibe is able to get strong

1148
01:08:00,720 --> 01:08:04,280
Speaker 1: in his position, getting further away from the mainstream.

1149
01:08:06,880 --> 01:08:10,160
Speaker 2: Yeah. Again, he's had to do that, arguably to hold

1150
01:08:10,280 --> 01:08:13,520
Speaker 2: his coalition together. And it's reflected something that's happened in

1151
01:08:14,120 --> 01:08:17,400
Speaker 2: Israeli politics, which is that it has moved right as

1152
01:08:17,560 --> 01:08:22,320
Speaker 2: the coalition, you know, for some resolution, a peaceful resolutionist

1153
01:08:22,360 --> 01:08:25,360
Speaker 2: conflict has basically collapsed over the course of the last

1154
01:08:25,400 --> 01:08:29,920
Speaker 2: twenty five years. But it's true. Yeah, I mean it's not.

1155
01:08:30,360 --> 01:08:35,160
Speaker 2: It's interesting. It does, you know, it's similar, and that

1156
01:08:35,280 --> 01:08:40,000
Speaker 2: you wind up within a system that's supposed to theoretically

1157
01:08:40,240 --> 01:08:44,439
Speaker 2: drive you towards majority resolution of problems, you wind up

1158
01:08:44,479 --> 01:08:48,320
Speaker 2: with kind of a minoritarian government, right, which is well.

1159
01:08:48,240 --> 01:08:50,080
Speaker 1: I think that's what we have right now. Yeah, we

1160
01:08:50,439 --> 01:08:53,880
Speaker 1: haven't had I mean, we've only had one president this

1161
01:08:55,439 --> 01:08:58,840
Speaker 1: century who's gotten over fifty percent of about it was

1162
01:08:58,880 --> 01:08:59,559
Speaker 1: Obama twice.

1163
01:08:59,640 --> 01:09:03,439
Speaker 2: Right, A shocking fact, isn't it. It's just yeah, Trump

1164
01:09:03,520 --> 01:09:05,240
Speaker 2: got close this time, but he didn't make it.

1165
01:09:07,080 --> 01:09:07,280
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1166
01:09:07,960 --> 01:09:10,479
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really remarkable. And you're right, there's no longer

1167
01:09:10,560 --> 01:09:13,480
Speaker 2: the same incentive to aim for sixty percent.

1168
01:09:14,560 --> 01:09:16,599
Speaker 1: And I don't know how to change. You know, It's funny.

1169
01:09:16,600 --> 01:09:18,880
Speaker 1: The answer is we got to change our incentive structures. Okay,

1170
01:09:18,920 --> 01:09:21,639
Speaker 1: how do we do this? Right? It's easy to say,

1171
01:09:22,040 --> 01:09:24,120
Speaker 1: how do you do it? I mean, I think partisan

1172
01:09:24,160 --> 01:09:27,040
Speaker 1: primaries probably are you getting rid of those? Are probably

1173
01:09:27,080 --> 01:09:31,600
Speaker 1: an answer. But you know, just saying you want to

1174
01:09:31,600 --> 01:09:34,200
Speaker 1: get rid of partisan primaries doesn't mean it's going to

1175
01:09:34,240 --> 01:09:40,479
Speaker 1: happen overnight. And you basically change the rules in fifty

1176
01:09:40,520 --> 01:09:41,720
Speaker 1: different states to pull that on.

1177
01:09:42,600 --> 01:09:46,760
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, governors still have to campaign that way, right,

1178
01:09:46,960 --> 01:09:49,120
Speaker 2: I'm trying to think who within our system.

1179
01:09:50,360 --> 01:09:53,000
Speaker 1: It's also the one place where voters still vote person

1180
01:09:53,080 --> 01:09:58,080
Speaker 1: over party, right, How else do you explain a Larry

1181
01:09:58,120 --> 01:10:01,920
Speaker 1: Hogan in Maryland and a Laura in Kansas? Right, But

1182
01:10:02,800 --> 01:10:05,240
Speaker 1: nobody expected Larry Hogan to win a Senate seat, And

1183
01:10:05,360 --> 01:10:07,559
Speaker 1: I promise you Laura Kelly's probably not winning a Senate

1184
01:10:07,600 --> 01:10:12,240
Speaker 1: seat in Kansas, right, right, right, So we do see

1185
01:10:12,280 --> 01:10:15,479
Speaker 1: it there as voters, and that you know, That's why

1186
01:10:15,960 --> 01:10:22,000
Speaker 1: I do think. Now here's something Remember maybe I'm rambling here,

1187
01:10:22,040 --> 01:10:26,320
Speaker 1: but we had two of the most effective late twentieth

1188
01:10:26,360 --> 01:10:30,479
Speaker 1: century presidents were both former governors, Reagan and Clinton, who

1189
01:10:30,560 --> 01:10:34,479
Speaker 1: both did strive for sixty percent ism. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

1190
01:10:34,600 --> 01:10:37,720
Speaker 1: no accident, right right now, and then the other. And

1191
01:10:37,760 --> 01:10:39,840
Speaker 1: then I always say the other president that had some

1192
01:10:40,000 --> 01:10:43,439
Speaker 1: success at being bipartisan was Eisenhower, who was from the

1193
01:10:43,479 --> 01:10:47,000
Speaker 1: military and kind of a political You know, that's not

1194
01:10:47,120 --> 01:10:50,439
Speaker 1: an accident either, right, Our more partisan or polarizing presidents

1195
01:10:50,439 --> 01:10:52,800
Speaker 1: have been senators or Donald Trump. Yeah.

1196
01:10:53,520 --> 01:10:56,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, George H. W. Bush looks better and better in retrospect.

1197
01:10:58,360 --> 01:10:59,519
Speaker 2: Didn't win a second term.

1198
01:11:00,120 --> 01:11:05,120
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, and because it turns out he wasn't a Reaganize, right,

1199
01:11:05,160 --> 01:11:08,040
Speaker 1: because the Conservatives, as they suspected all along, right, they

1200
01:11:08,080 --> 01:11:11,200
Speaker 1: were right. Now, they were always right. You know, he

1201
01:11:11,439 --> 01:11:14,519
Speaker 1: was not he was he was you know, he was

1202
01:11:15,160 --> 01:11:17,880
Speaker 1: a little close. You know, he was in the the

1203
01:11:17,960 --> 01:11:20,080
Speaker 1: Dewey wing of the party. I guess if he wanted

1204
01:11:20,120 --> 01:11:22,439
Speaker 1: to go backwards like that, yeah, or now we would

1205
01:11:22,439 --> 01:11:23,880
Speaker 1: call it the Bush wing of the party. There was

1206
01:11:23,920 --> 01:11:26,439
Speaker 1: a Bush wing in a Reagan wing, and they were and.

1207
01:11:26,479 --> 01:11:29,360
Speaker 2: A true internationalist, you know, at that moment when the

1208
01:11:29,439 --> 01:11:34,920
Speaker 2: wall was coming down, very concerned with you know, strengthening

1209
01:11:35,520 --> 01:11:35,840
Speaker 2: you know, you.

1210
01:11:35,840 --> 01:11:38,240
Speaker 1: Know, it's it's funny about H. W. Bush's presidency. I

1211
01:11:38,280 --> 01:11:41,479
Speaker 1: always thought that if Biden had modeled himself off of H. W. Bush,

1212
01:11:41,840 --> 01:11:44,120
Speaker 1: that that was the presidency. You know that you can

1213
01:11:44,240 --> 01:11:48,200
Speaker 1: have a successful one term a if you kind of

1214
01:11:48,320 --> 01:11:53,200
Speaker 1: behave that way, and obviously Biden never did. But he

1215
01:11:53,240 --> 01:11:55,439
Speaker 1: had an opportunity to be the Democrats version of that.

1216
01:11:55,800 --> 01:11:58,320
Speaker 1: He just you know, perhaps it was just he was

1217
01:11:58,360 --> 01:11:59,720
Speaker 1: too late in his life to figure out how to

1218
01:11:59,760 --> 01:12:03,160
Speaker 1: do it. And that's so that mistake was what going

1219
01:12:03,280 --> 01:12:08,240
Speaker 1: too far left or totally I'm misunderstanding the twenty twenty mandate,

1220
01:12:08,680 --> 01:12:11,519
Speaker 1: twenty twenty election Now, I think, I really think it's

1221
01:12:11,560 --> 01:12:15,599
Speaker 1: pretty obvious that the twenty twenty election was voters saying,

1222
01:12:15,640 --> 01:12:17,639
Speaker 1: I want off the roller the Trump roll the coast.

1223
01:12:17,800 --> 01:12:20,320
Speaker 2: We knew that at the time. Of course, we didn't

1224
01:12:20,560 --> 01:12:21,479
Speaker 2: clean things down.

1225
01:12:22,040 --> 01:12:24,360
Speaker 1: Please, I'm tired. I feel like I'm throwing up all

1226
01:12:24,400 --> 01:12:27,479
Speaker 1: the time. I just right, get me off the roller coaster.

1227
01:12:28,200 --> 01:12:33,200
Speaker 1: And and instead, you know, somebody whispered in his ear

1228
01:12:33,240 --> 01:12:35,360
Speaker 1: that he could be FDR and he and he did.

1229
01:12:35,520 --> 01:12:37,200
Speaker 1: I mean, this is that the first two years of

1230
01:12:37,240 --> 01:12:41,920
Speaker 1: his presidency or just a just a colossal mistake, you know,

1231
01:12:42,520 --> 01:12:44,880
Speaker 1: just when you look back on it, just it is

1232
01:12:45,520 --> 01:12:48,639
Speaker 1: just opportunity that he had to bring the country together

1233
01:12:48,720 --> 01:12:50,800
Speaker 1: and he blew it. Yeah, really did.

1234
01:12:51,240 --> 01:12:54,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, he started inviting all those historians to the White House.

1235
01:12:54,040 --> 01:12:56,519
Speaker 2: You know Clinton did that too, and you want god

1236
01:12:56,680 --> 01:12:59,080
Speaker 2: knows we want to learn from history. But if the

1237
01:12:59,240 --> 01:13:02,120
Speaker 2: point is to figureigure out how do I like compete

1238
01:13:02,200 --> 01:13:05,840
Speaker 2: with FDR and establish myself to be it feels like

1239
01:13:06,320 --> 01:13:09,160
Speaker 2: again you start creating some troubling incentives there.

1240
01:13:09,200 --> 01:13:11,960
Speaker 1: I don't know. The minute you're trying to be more

1241
01:13:12,040 --> 01:13:14,439
Speaker 1: than one page in a history book as president is

1242
01:13:14,479 --> 01:13:16,559
Speaker 1: when you're going to blow it, then you because then

1243
01:13:16,760 --> 01:13:18,280
Speaker 1: you know you're going to be more than one page.

1244
01:13:18,320 --> 01:13:19,679
Speaker 1: But for all the wrong reasons.

1245
01:13:20,200 --> 01:13:22,839
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, overreach in Hubrews.

1246
01:13:23,800 --> 01:13:26,600
Speaker 1: Who's the I'm curious, let's do a little bit of

1247
01:13:26,840 --> 01:13:29,960
Speaker 1: media landscape here in the last last ten minutes here.

1248
01:13:31,040 --> 01:13:33,120
Speaker 1: Who do you believe you're talking to when you write

1249
01:13:33,120 --> 01:13:35,880
Speaker 1: for the Lexington at the Economist? Who's your who's your reader?

1250
01:13:40,160 --> 01:13:43,200
Speaker 2: Who is our reader? I mean we have a global readership,

1251
01:13:43,720 --> 01:13:45,080
Speaker 2: you know, in.

1252
01:13:45,160 --> 01:13:48,520
Speaker 1: The English language they are English, the l English language.

1253
01:13:49,000 --> 01:13:52,760
Speaker 2: Mostly English language, And yeah, I think that's fair to say.

1254
01:13:52,840 --> 01:13:57,680
Speaker 2: Increasingly we're translating the stuff into other languages. Is one

1255
01:13:57,680 --> 01:13:59,439
Speaker 2: of the things that AI is going to allow us

1256
01:13:59,479 --> 01:14:03,800
Speaker 2: to do greater scale, which is excited, exciting, things right, right,

1257
01:14:06,240 --> 01:14:09,280
Speaker 2: And by the way, yeah, not just text but podcast video,

1258
01:14:09,400 --> 01:14:13,640
Speaker 2: all that stuff. All of a sudden, there's a real opportunity.

1259
01:14:13,040 --> 01:14:13,559
Speaker 1: To get.

1260
01:14:15,240 --> 01:14:18,519
Speaker 2: My view is really high quality, you know, reporting in

1261
01:14:18,600 --> 01:14:21,040
Speaker 2: front of a lot more people. So that's that's good.

1262
01:14:21,240 --> 01:14:23,200
Speaker 2: But I don't, you know, it's a mix. It's a

1263
01:14:23,840 --> 01:14:26,760
Speaker 2: we do a podcast checks and balance and do a

1264
01:14:27,680 --> 01:14:33,000
Speaker 2: reader questions periodically or listener questions periodically. And it's always

1265
01:14:33,040 --> 01:14:36,280
Speaker 2: thrilling to me to here, Like there's a guy, you know,

1266
01:14:36,680 --> 01:14:39,320
Speaker 2: he listens to the podcast when he's driving his tractor

1267
01:14:39,400 --> 01:14:42,000
Speaker 2: on his farm in Australia, Like it's how he keeps

1268
01:14:42,040 --> 01:14:44,439
Speaker 2: in touch with his combine, you know, in his cabin.

1269
01:14:44,840 --> 01:14:47,080
Speaker 2: It's how he keeps in touch with American politics a

1270
01:14:47,160 --> 01:14:49,680
Speaker 2: little bit. So for what I do, I guess I'm

1271
01:14:49,760 --> 01:14:52,800
Speaker 2: thinking about how, as you said, how do you We

1272
01:14:52,920 --> 01:14:55,439
Speaker 2: have a very big readership in North America too, so

1273
01:14:55,560 --> 01:14:57,760
Speaker 2: it's a tricky thing, like, you know, how do you

1274
01:14:57,880 --> 01:15:02,479
Speaker 2: sound you know, relevant enough to readers who are pretty

1275
01:15:02,520 --> 01:15:07,160
Speaker 2: steeped in our politics, but still you know, accessible to

1276
01:15:07,280 --> 01:15:08,240
Speaker 2: people who aren't.

1277
01:15:19,840 --> 01:15:23,559
Speaker 1: Are you the first American that has done the Lexington?

1278
01:15:23,640 --> 01:15:25,559
Speaker 1: Or is the Lexington always been written by somebody.

1279
01:15:26,439 --> 01:15:29,080
Speaker 2: You know, Yeah, I am the first American. I don't

1280
01:15:29,080 --> 01:15:31,679
Speaker 2: think that's a good thing. Actually, I mean it's something

1281
01:15:31,760 --> 01:15:34,639
Speaker 2: they made an announcement about when I got the when

1282
01:15:34,680 --> 01:15:36,360
Speaker 2: I you know, I was grateful to get the gig.

1283
01:15:36,640 --> 01:15:38,640
Speaker 2: I think one of the strengths of the column has

1284
01:15:38,720 --> 01:15:41,160
Speaker 2: always been that it is written by an outsider.

1285
01:15:41,479 --> 01:15:43,719
Speaker 1: Well, the Duke call understood is better than any American.

1286
01:15:44,320 --> 01:15:45,320
Speaker 1: I completely agree.

1287
01:15:45,760 --> 01:15:50,040
Speaker 2: For me, it's been a great opportunity to get some detachment.

1288
01:15:50,240 --> 01:15:53,160
Speaker 2: And my editors are fabulous and they have you know,

1289
01:15:53,920 --> 01:15:56,439
Speaker 2: they've kept their poise through this nutty period, and so

1290
01:15:57,120 --> 01:16:02,000
Speaker 2: it's you know, our internal editorial conversations are outside of

1291
01:16:02,080 --> 01:16:06,880
Speaker 2: the mosh pit, you know. Uh. But I do think

1292
01:16:06,880 --> 01:16:09,200
Speaker 2: it's always been, you know, a strength of the of

1293
01:16:09,360 --> 01:16:12,280
Speaker 2: the column. And there's we're not byline. The column is

1294
01:16:12,360 --> 01:16:15,799
Speaker 2: up byline. My joke is, I'm like the dread Pyate Roberts.

1295
01:16:15,840 --> 01:16:19,000
Speaker 2: You know, every there's different one of us every but I,

1296
01:16:19,280 --> 01:16:22,080
Speaker 2: as an American, I've had I've tried to work hard

1297
01:16:22,240 --> 01:16:26,920
Speaker 2: to honor that bad spirit, which is not just about

1298
01:16:26,960 --> 01:16:28,959
Speaker 2: funny spellings, you know, which is also.

1299
01:16:28,880 --> 01:16:32,000
Speaker 1: Part of it, all those OUs and so that that

1300
01:16:32,200 --> 01:16:34,120
Speaker 1: you can just let the that's something that a I

1301
01:16:34,200 --> 01:16:36,840
Speaker 1: can fix. Hey like this, put this in the form

1302
01:16:36,880 --> 01:16:40,360
Speaker 1: of the economists. Fine, oh you're all every oh, we'll

1303
01:16:40,360 --> 01:16:41,280
Speaker 1: have a U after it now.

1304
01:16:41,600 --> 01:16:46,360
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but it is it is it is. I

1305
01:16:46,479 --> 01:16:50,000
Speaker 2: do try to try to think about that about a

1306
01:16:50,040 --> 01:16:51,479
Speaker 2: global audience when I'm writing.

1307
01:16:52,080 --> 01:16:54,320
Speaker 1: That's what I was curious, is like, is it is it?

1308
01:16:54,400 --> 01:16:56,719
Speaker 1: You're trying to explain America to the world or explain

1309
01:16:56,760 --> 01:16:57,639
Speaker 1: the world to America.

1310
01:16:58,360 --> 01:17:01,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, well this at this time, Chuck. Honestly, I'm out

1311
01:17:01,640 --> 01:17:04,000
Speaker 2: there trying to explain it to myself most of the time,

1312
01:17:04,200 --> 01:17:04,360
Speaker 2: you know.

1313
01:17:05,000 --> 01:17:08,120
Speaker 1: I mean, now, by the way, I've been calling myself

1314
01:17:08,160 --> 01:17:11,559
Speaker 1: a political anthropologist, because that's I kind of feel more

1315
01:17:11,640 --> 01:17:13,879
Speaker 1: that way now than anything else. I'm trying to understand

1316
01:17:13,960 --> 01:17:17,599
Speaker 1: how these various American tribes interact with each other, which.

1317
01:17:17,520 --> 01:17:19,680
Speaker 2: Is why this should be a great time to be

1318
01:17:19,720 --> 01:17:21,000
Speaker 2: a journalist, right.

1319
01:17:21,000 --> 01:17:22,519
Speaker 1: Oh, I completely in that sense.

1320
01:17:22,680 --> 01:17:25,519
Speaker 2: Yes, I agree that this is why we got into

1321
01:17:25,560 --> 01:17:28,599
Speaker 2: the business. And if you're curious and you understand, want

1322
01:17:28,600 --> 01:17:31,599
Speaker 2: to understand what's going on. There's been a lot going

1323
01:17:31,680 --> 01:17:37,760
Speaker 2: on that I don't understand, and so I'm you know,

1324
01:17:37,920 --> 01:17:41,240
Speaker 2: I'm trying to use the column for that purpose.

1325
01:17:41,640 --> 01:17:44,479
Speaker 1: But if you had more resources to cover America, what

1326
01:17:44,560 --> 01:17:46,479
Speaker 1: would where would you be focused and what would you

1327
01:17:46,560 --> 01:17:47,120
Speaker 1: be focused on?

1328
01:17:48,040 --> 01:17:49,880
Speaker 2: I would be spending a lot more time out in

1329
01:17:49,960 --> 01:17:52,280
Speaker 2: the country than I am. I'm trying to travel a

1330
01:17:52,320 --> 01:17:54,679
Speaker 2: fair amount. I haven't been able to the last couple

1331
01:17:54,720 --> 01:17:58,200
Speaker 2: of months. I've been in, you know, in DC and

1332
01:17:58,280 --> 01:18:01,760
Speaker 2: New York too much. But I would. And it's it's

1333
01:18:01,760 --> 01:18:04,040
Speaker 2: a little hard when you're writing on a very regular

1334
01:18:04,120 --> 01:18:06,120
Speaker 2: pace to get out spend the time you want to

1335
01:18:06,160 --> 01:18:10,639
Speaker 2: spend reporting. But this is this is where I've found

1336
01:18:10,720 --> 01:18:13,519
Speaker 2: my you know, the most value kind of you know,

1337
01:18:13,960 --> 01:18:15,200
Speaker 2: in my own work is just.

1338
01:18:16,680 --> 01:18:16,840
Speaker 3: You know.

1339
01:18:17,280 --> 01:18:20,240
Speaker 2: I mean, it's such an obvious thing to say, but

1340
01:18:20,800 --> 01:18:24,760
Speaker 2: it's spending time in Texas and Florida and Ohio and

1341
01:18:25,560 --> 01:18:27,280
Speaker 2: I want to get I haven't gotten to Alaska. I

1342
01:18:27,360 --> 01:18:34,000
Speaker 2: want to get to Alaska. It's and getting a better

1343
01:18:34,120 --> 01:18:37,680
Speaker 2: sense of how people are processing the national politics in

1344
01:18:37,760 --> 01:18:39,800
Speaker 2: their own lives. I don't know, how do you answer

1345
01:18:39,880 --> 01:18:40,559
Speaker 2: that question.

1346
01:18:41,720 --> 01:18:44,400
Speaker 1: Well, I definitely think it's it's just more of everything

1347
01:18:44,439 --> 01:18:47,120
Speaker 1: outside of Washington and New York, right Like I think

1348
01:18:47,200 --> 01:18:53,120
Speaker 1: this is And unfortunately, legacy media is stuck shrinking and

1349
01:18:53,280 --> 01:18:56,400
Speaker 1: so therefore they have fewer resources, so they're gonna you know,

1350
01:18:56,800 --> 01:19:00,240
Speaker 1: I feel like they're retreating from this. The upside of

1351
01:19:00,320 --> 01:19:04,120
Speaker 1: the sub stacification of journalism is that in theory, you've

1352
01:19:04,160 --> 01:19:08,320
Speaker 1: got people living in Kansas City or Lansing that are

1353
01:19:08,439 --> 01:19:11,560
Speaker 1: going to then try to start their own reporting outlets

1354
01:19:11,720 --> 01:19:15,360
Speaker 1: or their contributions. And I think there's I mean, I

1355
01:19:15,479 --> 01:19:21,560
Speaker 1: do because I do view journalism's problem as I do it.

1356
01:19:21,800 --> 01:19:24,680
Speaker 1: I view it through the prism of Craiglist, which was,

1357
01:19:24,760 --> 01:19:26,960
Speaker 1: you know, as soon as we made classifieds free, we

1358
01:19:27,160 --> 01:19:30,559
Speaker 1: just we ended up gutting the foundation of journalism in America,

1359
01:19:30,600 --> 01:19:33,280
Speaker 1: which was local journalism. If you actually read to tokefol

1360
01:19:34,160 --> 01:19:37,839
Speaker 1: he was fascinated by how fascinated we were by local politics.

1361
01:19:37,880 --> 01:19:41,400
Speaker 1: Well why did that exist? Because every community had not

1362
01:19:41,520 --> 01:19:44,160
Speaker 1: one paper, every community had three papers, two papers, you know,

1363
01:19:44,240 --> 01:19:47,640
Speaker 1: depending on some places for papers, you know, you might

1364
01:19:47,760 --> 01:19:50,960
Speaker 1: have a black newspaper, a democratic newspaper, Republican newspaper, and

1365
01:19:51,000 --> 01:19:53,840
Speaker 1: a wig paper, or you know something else. Right, And

1366
01:19:55,479 --> 01:20:00,240
Speaker 1: when we lost that local politics, it it really it

1367
01:20:00,640 --> 01:20:02,880
Speaker 1: gutted the foundation of journal So it's clear we have

1368
01:20:03,040 --> 01:20:07,120
Speaker 1: to go local. Now I'm trying to see if there's

1369
01:20:07,120 --> 01:20:08,560
Speaker 1: a way to scale it, you know, is there a

1370
01:20:08,600 --> 01:20:13,240
Speaker 1: way to both incubate it and scale it and and

1371
01:20:13,960 --> 01:20:16,200
Speaker 1: share some of the resources in order to get some

1372
01:20:16,320 --> 01:20:20,280
Speaker 1: of these locals to thrive. But ultimately, you know, we've

1373
01:20:20,439 --> 01:20:22,840
Speaker 1: we you know when we talk about our lost communities,

1374
01:20:23,080 --> 01:20:26,519
Speaker 1: right that we've we've lost community. Well, the thing one

1375
01:20:26,560 --> 01:20:28,840
Speaker 1: of the community glues used to be the local paper.

1376
01:20:29,320 --> 01:20:32,280
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying we can bring newspapers back, but

1377
01:20:32,439 --> 01:20:34,960
Speaker 1: if if you unbundle the newspaper and think about all

1378
01:20:35,000 --> 01:20:37,479
Speaker 1: the different things the paper did for different aspects of

1379
01:20:37,520 --> 01:20:40,639
Speaker 1: the community, then you, as a publisher of a local

1380
01:20:40,680 --> 01:20:44,000
Speaker 1: information ecosystem, ought to be thinking about how do I

1381
01:20:44,120 --> 01:20:47,479
Speaker 1: give something to every segment of my community so that

1382
01:20:47,600 --> 01:20:51,120
Speaker 1: they all come back to this one entity called the

1383
01:20:51,200 --> 01:20:55,040
Speaker 1: local paper. Whether it's high school box scores or places

1384
01:20:55,120 --> 01:20:59,200
Speaker 1: to save money on groceries, or you know where the

1385
01:20:59,280 --> 01:21:02,760
Speaker 1: concerts are to night, or micro forecasting. Because you have

1386
01:21:02,880 --> 01:21:04,519
Speaker 1: the tools to do this, we know it's going to

1387
01:21:05,200 --> 01:21:07,000
Speaker 1: you know, rain harder in this zip code than it

1388
01:21:07,080 --> 01:21:09,479
Speaker 1: is in this zip code. And oh, by the way,

1389
01:21:09,520 --> 01:21:12,000
Speaker 1: your city's here's who's corrupt on your city council.

1390
01:21:12,840 --> 01:21:15,639
Speaker 2: I just I could not agree more. I just think,

1391
01:21:15,720 --> 01:21:18,200
Speaker 2: and it's a hard story to tell because it's it's

1392
01:21:18,280 --> 01:21:21,280
Speaker 2: a story, as we'd say, about a dog that's not barking, right,

1393
01:21:21,360 --> 01:21:25,479
Speaker 2: It's about something that's gone away. But when you think

1394
01:21:25,560 --> 01:21:28,720
Speaker 2: about the devastation at the local level to wipe out

1395
01:21:28,880 --> 01:21:31,320
Speaker 2: and many of them are ghost newspaper ones that are

1396
01:21:31,400 --> 01:21:34,320
Speaker 2: left are barely staffed. People aren't able to go out

1397
01:21:34,320 --> 01:21:38,120
Speaker 2: into the streets and interview anybody. There's no the stories

1398
01:21:38,160 --> 01:21:41,360
Speaker 2: of corruption, the potholes that aren't getting filled, the stories

1399
01:21:41,400 --> 01:21:43,600
Speaker 2: that just make you empathize with your neighbor because of

1400
01:21:43,680 --> 01:21:45,679
Speaker 2: what they're going through. Oh that's gone. There's some really

1401
01:21:45,720 --> 01:21:47,200
Speaker 2: good experiments out there.

1402
01:21:47,360 --> 01:21:50,240
Speaker 1: But chuck, you know one thing, but it's journalism for journalists.

1403
01:21:50,479 --> 01:21:53,840
Speaker 1: That's my biggest complaint, which is most of the local

1404
01:21:53,880 --> 01:21:56,560
Speaker 1: experiments are journalism, but posts. Yeah you know what I

1405
01:21:56,640 --> 01:21:57,000
Speaker 1: mean by that?

1406
01:21:57,720 --> 01:21:59,400
Speaker 2: Do you mean that there's too much media.

1407
01:21:59,200 --> 01:22:02,200
Speaker 1: Coverage or no, it's more of you know, they're they're

1408
01:22:02,680 --> 01:22:05,679
Speaker 1: they're you know, they're covering stories of marginalized communities.

1409
01:22:05,680 --> 01:22:08,680
Speaker 2: But oh yeah they're not tough riven. Yeah, yeah, they're

1410
01:22:08,920 --> 01:22:10,000
Speaker 2: justice stuff or whatever.

1411
01:22:10,120 --> 01:22:12,920
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, they're all as this as a friend of

1412
01:22:12,960 --> 01:22:15,439
Speaker 1: mine says, you know, they you know, they all got

1413
01:22:15,520 --> 01:22:17,519
Speaker 1: drunk watching Woodward and Bernstein, you know, and all the

1414
01:22:17,560 --> 01:22:18,160
Speaker 1: president's men.

1415
01:22:18,360 --> 01:22:20,920
Speaker 2: You know, Well, that's a curse of our business generally

1416
01:22:21,080 --> 01:22:23,400
Speaker 2: right now. I think it has been for many years. Yeah,

1417
01:22:23,439 --> 01:22:26,200
Speaker 2: you're totally right. Sorry, I misunderstood what you were saying. Yeah,

1418
01:22:26,280 --> 01:22:28,479
Speaker 2: And the other thing, you know, it drives me crazy, Chuck,

1419
01:22:28,560 --> 01:22:30,080
Speaker 2: and you and I spent a lot of time covering

1420
01:22:30,120 --> 01:22:33,000
Speaker 2: white houses. And I'm not faulting anybody for doing that,

1421
01:22:33,680 --> 01:22:36,160
Speaker 2: but you look at the white images from the White

1422
01:22:36,200 --> 01:22:40,560
Speaker 2: House briefing room. You would not imagine this was an

1423
01:22:40,640 --> 01:22:43,560
Speaker 2: industry and existential crisis. You know, with any kind of

1424
01:22:43,680 --> 01:22:47,720
Speaker 2: resource constraints. That room is more packed than it has

1425
01:22:47,960 --> 01:22:48,599
Speaker 2: ever been.

1426
01:22:49,080 --> 01:22:49,960
Speaker 1: Right, And.

1427
01:22:51,560 --> 01:22:56,439
Speaker 2: I even when I you know that is not you're

1428
01:22:56,479 --> 01:22:58,200
Speaker 2: not learning a lot in the way. I mean, again,

1429
01:22:58,240 --> 01:22:59,320
Speaker 2: I'm not faulting anybody.

1430
01:22:59,320 --> 01:23:02,040
Speaker 1: I've done that, but this goes to this. I always say,

1431
01:23:02,120 --> 01:23:04,000
Speaker 1: you know the problem with journalism in America, there's too

1432
01:23:04,000 --> 01:23:10,280
Speaker 1: many journalists in Washington and not enough in America. Right. Yeah, Look,

1433
01:23:10,479 --> 01:23:12,640
Speaker 1: and I benefited from that, I always joke. I mean

1434
01:23:12,720 --> 01:23:15,000
Speaker 1: I didn't start local. I started at the hotline. You know,

1435
01:23:15,080 --> 01:23:17,400
Speaker 1: I was able to shortcut my way. I didn't have

1436
01:23:17,479 --> 01:23:20,640
Speaker 1: to go to the city the city hall beat to

1437
01:23:20,720 --> 01:23:24,720
Speaker 1: the state house beat, and you know, that's there are

1438
01:23:24,800 --> 01:23:28,160
Speaker 1: times that I think that I regret I didn't have

1439
01:23:28,320 --> 01:23:30,439
Speaker 1: that route. Then again, I got to where I got

1440
01:23:30,560 --> 01:23:34,720
Speaker 1: without that route. But maybe it's because I was benefiting

1441
01:23:34,760 --> 01:23:36,840
Speaker 1: from a system that was atrophying at the time, which

1442
01:23:36,880 --> 01:23:40,599
Speaker 1: it was right. Newspapers were consolidating in the nineties. Local

1443
01:23:40,760 --> 01:23:43,160
Speaker 1: political reporters are getting laid off left and right, and

1444
01:23:43,360 --> 01:23:46,400
Speaker 1: so the people doing politics were all in Washington.

1445
01:23:46,840 --> 01:23:50,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, yeah, you could still have a good business

1446
01:23:50,080 --> 01:23:52,120
Speaker 2: at the local level, and there were still a lot

1447
01:23:52,160 --> 01:23:56,639
Speaker 2: of good local newspapers, many family owned. Still there wasn't

1448
01:23:57,120 --> 01:23:59,680
Speaker 2: but the content consolidation was underway. The hard part of

1449
01:23:59,720 --> 01:24:04,440
Speaker 2: it is it's not bad faith. It's business and technology,

1450
01:24:04,640 --> 01:24:07,960
Speaker 2: the incentives of our business and that period we were

1451
01:24:08,040 --> 01:24:10,439
Speaker 2: talking about earlier, which now to me looks like a

1452
01:24:10,520 --> 01:24:14,240
Speaker 2: golden age. People might disagree, but the rise of objectivity

1453
01:24:14,280 --> 01:24:17,640
Speaker 2: and all of that was driven by I cited propaganda

1454
01:24:17,720 --> 01:24:20,599
Speaker 2: and journalists coming together to try to do better, which

1455
01:24:20,680 --> 01:24:24,200
Speaker 2: is true, but it was really about business and technology.

1456
01:24:24,320 --> 01:24:28,720
Speaker 2: You know, you're able to reach a mass audience for

1457
01:24:28,840 --> 01:24:31,040
Speaker 2: the first time in the late nineteenth century with the

1458
01:24:31,120 --> 01:24:34,160
Speaker 2: invention of the rotary press and radio and television. All

1459
01:24:34,160 --> 01:24:36,400
Speaker 2: of a sudden, what had been a subscriber business became

1460
01:24:36,439 --> 01:24:40,280
Speaker 2: an advertising based business. When you're running a big advertising

1461
01:24:40,320 --> 01:24:43,000
Speaker 2: business at scale, you don't want to alienate by your readers.

1462
01:24:43,200 --> 01:24:45,799
Speaker 1: Want to be broad You want to be broad right.

1463
01:24:46,080 --> 01:24:49,160
Speaker 2: So that meant just the facts, you know, it meant

1464
01:24:49,240 --> 01:24:51,400
Speaker 2: a wide range of opinion. If you're going to do opinion,

1465
01:24:51,479 --> 01:24:54,439
Speaker 2: it meant separating news and opinions so you could be trusted.

1466
01:24:55,439 --> 01:24:58,840
Speaker 2: All of that was collapsed by the Internet. And now

1467
01:24:58,880 --> 01:25:02,160
Speaker 2: you can build a really sccessful business serving a niche

1468
01:25:02,200 --> 01:25:04,240
Speaker 2: what it wants to hear. And if you're going to

1469
01:25:04,280 --> 01:25:06,960
Speaker 2: build a subscriber business, by the way, best way to

1470
01:25:07,000 --> 01:25:09,679
Speaker 2: hold onto your scribers reassure them you see the world

1471
01:25:09,720 --> 01:25:10,280
Speaker 2: the way they do.

1472
01:25:10,439 --> 01:25:12,960
Speaker 1: And I mean, you know you were a victim of that.

1473
01:25:13,240 --> 01:25:16,560
Speaker 1: I felt, frankly, I had I had a show on

1474
01:25:17,200 --> 01:25:19,880
Speaker 1: a cable channel that that we had to move because

1475
01:25:20,040 --> 01:25:23,879
Speaker 1: the audience was just we weren't ideal, we weren't ideologically aligned.

1476
01:25:24,120 --> 01:25:26,280
Speaker 2: You know, how did you hear that from the audience?

1477
01:25:26,320 --> 01:25:28,679
Speaker 1: Can I ask you that, like, what was that feedback loop,

1478
01:25:28,880 --> 01:25:32,360
Speaker 1: like it was all negativity and just like just just

1479
01:25:32,600 --> 01:25:34,360
Speaker 1: like it was just hate. You know, how dare you

1480
01:25:34,439 --> 01:25:38,559
Speaker 1: put a Republican on? Yeah, you know that sort of thing. Now, Look,

1481
01:25:38,600 --> 01:25:40,599
Speaker 1: I don't I didn't want to spend our time talking

1482
01:25:40,640 --> 01:25:46,000
Speaker 1: about your manifesto, But your manifesto I could have changed

1483
01:25:46,080 --> 01:25:49,920
Speaker 1: out the name of your organization and put the name

1484
01:25:49,960 --> 01:25:52,920
Speaker 1: of my organization and it would have read it very similarly.

1485
01:25:53,439 --> 01:25:54,799
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sorry, Chuck.

1486
01:25:54,840 --> 01:25:56,519
Speaker 1: You know, and it just was like, you know, you

1487
01:25:56,680 --> 01:25:59,960
Speaker 1: sort of knew and and you and now everybody see,

1488
01:26:00,600 --> 01:26:04,240
Speaker 1: by the way, yeah right, like everybody now has this

1489
01:26:04,640 --> 01:26:06,880
Speaker 1: much clearer picture of what you were going through at

1490
01:26:06,920 --> 01:26:09,200
Speaker 1: the time. I think what I went through in different

1491
01:26:09,240 --> 01:26:11,640
Speaker 1: ways what some of us were going through. I mean

1492
01:26:11,720 --> 01:26:13,400
Speaker 1: I do I think the you know, we got to

1493
01:26:13,520 --> 01:26:15,519
Speaker 1: this moment this week. I always say there were two

1494
01:26:16,360 --> 01:26:18,800
Speaker 1: when you think about the Jimmy Kimmel situation, there's sort

1495
01:26:18,840 --> 01:26:23,479
Speaker 1: of two original sins here. Original sin one was bullying

1496
01:26:23,600 --> 01:26:27,439
Speaker 1: the social media companies to deep platform Trump. It is

1497
01:26:27,760 --> 01:26:31,599
Speaker 1: it is literally the Biff gets the gambling book back

1498
01:26:31,640 --> 01:26:34,760
Speaker 1: to the future too moment. I mean, if I could

1499
01:26:34,800 --> 01:26:37,400
Speaker 1: go back and change that moment and he and he

1500
01:26:38,000 --> 01:26:40,960
Speaker 1: stays on Twitter. I think he punches himself. I think

1501
01:26:41,040 --> 01:26:43,280
Speaker 1: what Mitch McConnell was betting on, right, we all know

1502
01:26:43,400 --> 01:26:45,519
Speaker 1: Mitch McConnell was betting on Trump was going to punch

1503
01:26:45,600 --> 01:26:48,439
Speaker 1: himself out and people were going to tire of it

1504
01:26:48,479 --> 01:26:52,240
Speaker 1: and move on. Except we kicked him out of the

1505
01:26:52,360 --> 01:26:57,000
Speaker 1: main stream, so nobody if people saw those truth social

1506
01:26:57,080 --> 01:27:00,680
Speaker 1: posts and a consistent basis in twenty twenty one through

1507
01:27:00,760 --> 01:27:03,920
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, I don't think he's the nominated the

1508
01:27:03,960 --> 01:27:08,800
Speaker 1: Republican Party. Yeah. Yeah, But the second original sin was

1509
01:27:09,120 --> 01:27:14,640
Speaker 1: was Iger paying off the George stephanopoloslaws like that? Just

1510
01:27:15,080 --> 01:27:18,600
Speaker 1: that triggered everything that we've been dealing with over the

1511
01:27:18,680 --> 01:27:19,360
Speaker 1: last nine months.

1512
01:27:20,320 --> 01:27:22,160
Speaker 2: And other people start folding too.

1513
01:27:22,520 --> 01:27:26,280
Speaker 1: And because folded, right, it took one to cave, and

1514
01:27:26,360 --> 01:27:29,360
Speaker 1: the minute they got one to cave, and then all

1515
01:27:29,400 --> 01:27:32,200
Speaker 1: of a sudden, everybody lot whatever whatever was remaining in

1516
01:27:32,280 --> 01:27:34,439
Speaker 1: people's spines collapsed. Yeah.

1517
01:27:34,720 --> 01:27:36,679
Speaker 2: I was thinking about this when you were talking about

1518
01:27:36,800 --> 01:27:39,680
Speaker 2: the Tom Cole example. You know what you need is

1519
01:27:39,720 --> 01:27:41,720
Speaker 2: people who are willing to say And by the way,

1520
01:27:42,080 --> 01:27:46,000
Speaker 2: I was okay with losing because it mattered, you know,

1521
01:27:46,160 --> 01:27:49,040
Speaker 2: that's right, And I cared about public service. I cared

1522
01:27:49,080 --> 01:27:51,519
Speaker 2: about it. Then, Mike, I disagreed my constituents. So I

1523
01:27:51,640 --> 01:27:54,680
Speaker 2: led my constituents, you know, rather than I just did

1524
01:27:54,760 --> 01:27:56,800
Speaker 2: what they wanted me to do, which is, you know,

1525
01:27:56,920 --> 01:28:04,320
Speaker 2: a way to try to make the compromise. Yeah. Yeah,

1526
01:28:05,000 --> 01:28:06,920
Speaker 2: And and that's how you wind up with very few

1527
01:28:07,000 --> 01:28:09,720
Speaker 2: Liz Cheney's and they wind up where she is, and

1528
01:28:10,360 --> 01:28:13,200
Speaker 2: it just that's how you get this cascade of kind

1529
01:28:13,240 --> 01:28:16,440
Speaker 2: of of of of cowardice.

1530
01:28:16,640 --> 01:28:17,320
Speaker 1: Really, and.

1531
01:28:19,280 --> 01:28:22,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, the media thing, Chuck, the thing about it, Like

1532
01:28:22,240 --> 01:28:24,439
Speaker 2: I think you and I both were. We were acting

1533
01:28:24,800 --> 01:28:27,360
Speaker 2: in accordance to what we saw as our journalistic principles

1534
01:28:27,400 --> 01:28:28,840
Speaker 2: and what was good journalism.

1535
01:28:29,400 --> 01:28:31,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we were products of the eighties and nineties.

1536
01:28:31,240 --> 01:28:31,880
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna lie.

1537
01:28:32,040 --> 01:28:32,200
Speaker 2: I know.

1538
01:28:32,960 --> 01:28:35,160
Speaker 1: I still I believe in it. I believe in it too.

1539
01:28:35,200 --> 01:28:35,920
Speaker 1: I think we're right.

1540
01:28:36,240 --> 01:28:38,920
Speaker 2: But the thing is, even for the activists coming after us,

1541
01:28:39,479 --> 01:28:41,560
Speaker 2: not this is not my problem to think about. But

1542
01:28:41,600 --> 01:28:44,959
Speaker 2: it was stupid politics too, you know. It's bad journalism

1543
01:28:45,080 --> 01:28:49,200
Speaker 2: and stupid politics, and it empowered Donald. It empowered exactly

1544
01:28:49,280 --> 01:28:52,120
Speaker 2: the phenomenon they said they were so freaked out about.

1545
01:28:52,600 --> 01:28:56,200
Speaker 1: Right, you don't get an extremist unless you keep the

1546
01:28:56,320 --> 01:28:59,680
Speaker 1: extremists from having a say, you know.

1547
01:29:00,120 --> 01:29:02,400
Speaker 2: Treat everybody on the other side as an extremist, Like

1548
01:29:02,479 --> 01:29:04,960
Speaker 2: you said, you can't have a Republican on Like really,

1549
01:29:05,080 --> 01:29:07,160
Speaker 2: we're living in a country where you can't hear from

1550
01:29:07,160 --> 01:29:08,800
Speaker 2: a member of the other you.

1551
01:29:08,880 --> 01:29:11,559
Speaker 1: Know, how dare you platform this person? And you're just like, yeah,

1552
01:29:11,600 --> 01:29:13,920
Speaker 1: I mean, and that was the craziness about January sixth.

1553
01:29:14,280 --> 01:29:17,400
Speaker 1: Nobody told me I shouldn't interview the president of Iran,

1554
01:29:18,720 --> 01:29:21,240
Speaker 1: but I was told I shouldn't put on Kevin McCarthy

1555
01:29:21,240 --> 01:29:22,880
Speaker 1: because he didn't certify January sixth.

1556
01:29:22,960 --> 01:29:26,479
Speaker 2: Seriously, Yeah, yeah, yeah, well that's I mean at the

1557
01:29:26,479 --> 01:29:29,400
Speaker 2: New York Times, I could publish Vladimir Putin, you know,

1558
01:29:29,760 --> 01:29:34,240
Speaker 2: I could publish, but I could publish I did. This

1559
01:29:34,400 --> 01:29:37,000
Speaker 2: is what I feel. I mean, a talent ban leader.

1560
01:29:37,400 --> 01:29:41,920
Speaker 2: But Tom Cotton was beyond the pale, you know now

1561
01:29:43,400 --> 01:29:46,439
Speaker 2: and again I mean at Febreell moments and people are.

1562
01:29:49,040 --> 01:29:52,639
Speaker 2: But you know, we as journalists, it's in those times

1563
01:29:52,680 --> 01:29:54,960
Speaker 2: that we particularly like we owe it to people to

1564
01:29:55,080 --> 01:29:55,799
Speaker 2: keep our heads.

1565
01:29:56,600 --> 01:29:58,880
Speaker 1: Are you jealous of some people may not know that

1566
01:29:58,920 --> 01:30:01,519
Speaker 1: your brother is Michael Bennett, the senator who wants to

1567
01:30:01,600 --> 01:30:04,080
Speaker 1: run for governor. Are you jealous that he's leaving the

1568
01:30:04,320 --> 01:30:10,439
Speaker 1: SLA Corridor. I am envious that he gets to spend

1569
01:30:10,479 --> 01:30:14,439
Speaker 1: all that time in Colorado. I had a senator, I

1570
01:30:14,520 --> 01:30:16,040
Speaker 1: had a senator. I'm going to leave the name out

1571
01:30:16,040 --> 01:30:19,000
Speaker 1: of it. Who's just crestfallen that he's running for governor.

1572
01:30:19,080 --> 01:30:22,160
Speaker 1: Always wanted him to replace Schumer, and now they don't

1573
01:30:22,240 --> 01:30:24,160
Speaker 1: know who the best person is to replace Schumer. There's

1574
01:30:24,200 --> 01:30:26,519
Speaker 1: a real movement to try. Schumer would be gone if

1575
01:30:26,560 --> 01:30:30,080
Speaker 1: there was an obvious answer, and there's plenty of Democratic

1576
01:30:30,120 --> 01:30:32,960
Speaker 1: senators that just know that he's sort of he sort

1577
01:30:32,960 --> 01:30:36,280
Speaker 1: of he's punched out right, we can You know, it

1578
01:30:36,320 --> 01:30:38,639
Speaker 1: doesn't matter what you think whether Schumer was was once

1579
01:30:38,720 --> 01:30:41,880
Speaker 1: good at this whatever. You know, when somebody you know,

1580
01:30:42,000 --> 01:30:45,240
Speaker 1: you know, when Joe Flacco shouldn't be your starting quarterback anymore,

1581
01:30:45,720 --> 01:30:47,599
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean he didn't win you a super Bowl once.

1582
01:30:50,439 --> 01:30:52,960
Speaker 1: But your brother was the consensus candidate, and now there's

1583
01:30:52,960 --> 01:30:54,639
Speaker 1: no consensus candidate. Huh.

1584
01:30:57,760 --> 01:30:59,479
Speaker 2: I don't know how to respond that. It's nice to

1585
01:30:59,479 --> 01:31:01,240
Speaker 2: your nice said about ones brother.

1586
01:31:03,280 --> 01:31:04,720
Speaker 1: I know, I hear you. Look, I don't want to

1587
01:31:04,800 --> 01:31:07,360
Speaker 1: I put you on the spot and I know I

1588
01:31:07,680 --> 01:31:08,599
Speaker 1: don't write about.

1589
01:31:08,400 --> 01:31:10,559
Speaker 2: Colorado or about him. I have a real I mean

1590
01:31:10,600 --> 01:31:12,080
Speaker 2: I have He is a conflict for me.

1591
01:31:12,160 --> 01:31:15,680
Speaker 1: He is my brother, and uh, you know I I

1592
01:31:15,920 --> 01:31:18,120
Speaker 1: I think sometimes we make two. You know. It's like

1593
01:31:18,880 --> 01:31:21,200
Speaker 1: I feel like you two have always handled that very professionally,

1594
01:31:21,960 --> 01:31:25,080
Speaker 1: and I don't know why that's so difficult for some

1595
01:31:25,240 --> 01:31:28,679
Speaker 1: other entities in our business. You know what it's worth

1596
01:31:30,880 --> 01:31:33,600
Speaker 1: on that front. Let me close. But the Senate like

1597
01:31:33,720 --> 01:31:35,800
Speaker 1: these you know, sorry, yeah, no, go ahead, No, we

1598
01:31:35,880 --> 01:31:36,800
Speaker 1: were gonna say about the Senate.

1599
01:31:38,840 --> 01:31:41,559
Speaker 2: I mean again, not speaking about him or his No, right,

1600
01:31:42,160 --> 01:31:49,000
Speaker 2: that is just like these these these uh, there are

1601
01:31:49,000 --> 01:31:51,160
Speaker 2: a lot of people leave in the Senate right now.

1602
01:31:51,400 --> 01:31:54,040
Speaker 1: You know, I don't blame. I don't blame. And Lisa

1603
01:31:54,120 --> 01:31:56,559
Speaker 1: Murkowski is apparently thinking about running for governor. I don't

1604
01:31:56,560 --> 01:32:00,439
Speaker 1: blame her. Yeah. Right, You've already got uh at least

1605
01:32:00,520 --> 01:32:06,439
Speaker 1: three Senators, Marshall Blackburn, your brother, Tommy Tupperville, so you

1606
01:32:06,600 --> 01:32:11,519
Speaker 1: might add Lisa Murkowski to that. You can't get anything

1607
01:32:11,640 --> 01:32:14,760
Speaker 1: done in the Senate. And even if you're a committee chair,

1608
01:32:16,280 --> 01:32:19,720
Speaker 1: only two people matter in the Senate, John Puhne and

1609
01:32:19,800 --> 01:32:22,479
Speaker 1: Chuck Schumer. And that's the problem. They control the floor,

1610
01:32:22,600 --> 01:32:25,640
Speaker 1: they control amendments, they control, and it is you know,

1611
01:32:26,200 --> 01:32:30,000
Speaker 1: this goes back to the dysfunctional Congress where you know,

1612
01:32:30,120 --> 01:32:32,519
Speaker 1: we grew up in an era where committee chairs mattered.

1613
01:32:33,280 --> 01:32:36,720
Speaker 1: You know, Chuck Grassley and Max Bacchus would never have

1614
01:32:36,840 --> 01:32:40,559
Speaker 1: allowed any tariff policy that looks like today get through

1615
01:32:40,640 --> 01:32:43,040
Speaker 1: the Senate back in the eighties and nineties just wouldn't

1616
01:32:43,040 --> 01:32:46,000
Speaker 1: have happened. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

1617
01:32:46,240 --> 01:32:48,800
Speaker 2: In the House too, I mean there were giants, you know,

1618
01:32:48,920 --> 01:32:51,760
Speaker 2: it's committee chairs like the Dan rustin Kowskis of.

1619
01:32:51,800 --> 01:32:54,840
Speaker 1: The committee chairs were taken seriously, well, if the bill

1620
01:32:54,880 --> 01:32:56,519
Speaker 1: can get through committee, then it's got to be brought

1621
01:32:56,520 --> 01:32:58,800
Speaker 1: to the floor. Yeah. Yeah.

1622
01:32:59,200 --> 01:33:01,599
Speaker 2: So it's a different model of leadership that we've really

1623
01:33:01,720 --> 01:33:04,400
Speaker 2: moved away from, you know, a more distributed model in

1624
01:33:04,520 --> 01:33:09,479
Speaker 2: both chambers, and it hasn't made our politics more efficient.

1625
01:33:09,280 --> 01:33:11,639
Speaker 1: No, And this is why I mean, I sort of joke,

1626
01:33:11,680 --> 01:33:13,519
Speaker 1: out of the five hundred and thirty five elected members

1627
01:33:13,560 --> 01:33:16,000
Speaker 1: of Congress, we only have four that do anything, and

1628
01:33:16,040 --> 01:33:18,080
Speaker 1: the other five hundred and thirty one are elected pundits

1629
01:33:18,160 --> 01:33:21,040
Speaker 1: if they choose to be. I mean, look at Ted Cruz,

1630
01:33:21,080 --> 01:33:24,000
Speaker 1: he has a weekly podcast. Yeah, should he have that

1631
01:33:24,120 --> 01:33:28,240
Speaker 1: much time? Yeah, yeah, I mean he does. That's the thing,

1632
01:33:28,439 --> 01:33:30,960
Speaker 1: Like he has that much This is not this is like,

1633
01:33:31,120 --> 01:33:33,519
Speaker 1: it's not like he's not doing his job, right, what

1634
01:33:33,680 --> 01:33:34,080
Speaker 1: is there to do?

1635
01:33:35,439 --> 01:33:37,560
Speaker 2: Although he used it for good last week when he

1636
01:33:37,640 --> 01:33:42,880
Speaker 2: came out and criticized the rare Republicans saying, I thought

1637
01:33:42,920 --> 01:33:45,960
Speaker 2: when he criticized the administration over the Jimmy Kimmel situation,

1638
01:33:46,120 --> 01:33:48,440
Speaker 2: he showed refreshing consistency.

1639
01:33:48,600 --> 01:33:51,000
Speaker 1: I thought, well, this is where I think that Trump

1640
01:33:51,120 --> 01:33:53,679
Speaker 1: is actually acquiring a lot of I don't think people

1641
01:33:53,800 --> 01:33:57,920
Speaker 1: realize that. You know, with tariffs, he's quietly got Republicans

1642
01:33:58,000 --> 01:34:00,559
Speaker 1: upset with him in the Midwest. Right, you're asked Lee's

1643
01:34:00,600 --> 01:34:05,120
Speaker 1: you're Jerry Moran's you know, the Farm States on free speech. Now,

1644
01:34:05,200 --> 01:34:10,519
Speaker 1: it's got Ted Cruz and David McCormick sided with him

1645
01:34:10,920 --> 01:34:14,200
Speaker 1: on the extra judicial killings of the boats in Venezuela

1646
01:34:14,320 --> 01:34:19,320
Speaker 1: Ran Paul right, Like, you know, that's how coalitions break apart,

1647
01:34:20,040 --> 01:34:22,680
Speaker 1: and he's thrown so many different things out. You know,

1648
01:34:23,040 --> 01:34:26,840
Speaker 1: his coalition is not they're basically united on culture and

1649
01:34:27,000 --> 01:34:32,320
Speaker 1: that's it. But he's cracking it himself by his sort

1650
01:34:32,360 --> 01:34:37,040
Speaker 1: of sloppy sort of sloppy implementation of these various ideas.

1651
01:34:37,360 --> 01:34:39,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, and which is one of the big questions as

1652
01:34:39,680 --> 01:34:42,080
Speaker 2: we start looking at the twenty twenty and god knows

1653
01:34:42,160 --> 01:34:43,840
Speaker 2: what kind of state the country is going to be

1654
01:34:43,880 --> 01:34:46,040
Speaker 2: in and all the rest of it. But if you know,

1655
01:34:46,320 --> 01:34:49,920
Speaker 2: is there another figure that can hold this really pretty

1656
01:34:50,000 --> 01:34:55,040
Speaker 2: and coherent, you know, set of policies and impulses and

1657
01:34:55,400 --> 01:34:59,960
Speaker 2: emotions and grievances together. The way he has.

1658
01:35:01,080 --> 01:35:03,160
Speaker 1: History shows no. I mean, you know, we just talked

1659
01:35:03,200 --> 01:35:05,960
Speaker 1: about Bush forty one, right, he couldn't hold together Reagan's

1660
01:35:06,000 --> 01:35:09,920
Speaker 1: coalition for arguably more than two years. Al Gore couldn't

1661
01:35:09,920 --> 01:35:15,120
Speaker 1: even do it for one election. Yeah, Joe Biden basically

1662
01:35:15,240 --> 01:35:19,360
Speaker 1: got to the presidency on the fumes of the Obama coalition, right,

1663
01:35:20,080 --> 01:35:23,960
Speaker 1: that didn't hold together. It's I would argue that in

1664
01:35:24,040 --> 01:35:28,759
Speaker 1: the TV era, the successful presidents have all been cults

1665
01:35:28,800 --> 01:35:34,400
Speaker 1: of personality in some form, right, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton,

1666
01:35:34,760 --> 01:35:38,640
Speaker 1: even w Obama Trump, and the failures have been the

1667
01:35:38,680 --> 01:35:46,960
Speaker 1: ones that couldn't be cults of personalities. Carter, Bush forty one, Biden, Johnson, right, like,

1668
01:35:47,080 --> 01:35:49,240
Speaker 1: you know, the ones that didn't know how to it

1669
01:35:49,520 --> 01:35:50,880
Speaker 1: you know, for one reason or the other.

1670
01:35:51,320 --> 01:35:54,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's becoming a cultural figure as much as

1671
01:35:54,160 --> 01:35:57,120
Speaker 2: a political one in a sense, you know. And that's

1672
01:35:57,120 --> 01:35:59,439
Speaker 2: where I feel. And again, one of the great failures

1673
01:35:59,479 --> 01:36:03,120
Speaker 2: of that seems crazy in retrospect, how little he communicated

1674
01:36:03,200 --> 01:36:06,560
Speaker 2: with the American people as opposed to this always on

1675
01:36:06,800 --> 01:36:09,679
Speaker 2: presidency that we now have. And I feel like that's

1676
01:36:09,800 --> 01:36:11,519
Speaker 2: just the world we're going to be living in. You

1677
01:36:11,600 --> 01:36:15,280
Speaker 2: know that to succeed politically, you have to dominate attention

1678
01:36:15,400 --> 01:36:16,559
Speaker 2: the way Donald Trump does.

1679
01:36:16,840 --> 01:36:19,720
Speaker 1: It's what Gavin Newsom is banking on now, right. Yeah,

1680
01:36:20,040 --> 01:36:22,560
Speaker 1: Like I'm I'm a skeptic, but I you know, I

1681
01:36:22,600 --> 01:36:24,960
Speaker 1: always say I'm a skeptic, but I have an open

1682
01:36:25,040 --> 01:36:28,360
Speaker 1: mind on these things. Like you know, you never know

1683
01:36:28,479 --> 01:36:32,080
Speaker 1: what works in America until you see it happen. But

1684
01:36:33,720 --> 01:36:36,680
Speaker 1: it is interesting to watch Newsom try to basically do

1685
01:36:37,680 --> 01:36:40,479
Speaker 1: do the Trump thing and have more success. He's having

1686
01:36:40,520 --> 01:36:41,920
Speaker 1: more success at it than I expected.

1687
01:36:42,160 --> 01:36:43,719
Speaker 2: Yeah, me too too.

1688
01:36:45,439 --> 01:36:47,080
Speaker 1: Well, all right, do you guys publish every week or

1689
01:36:47,120 --> 01:36:47,760
Speaker 1: is it every other week?

1690
01:36:47,800 --> 01:36:50,320
Speaker 2: It feels like every week where every day, Chuck, it's

1691
01:36:50,439 --> 01:36:53,000
Speaker 2: like everybody else but but the but they call it

1692
01:36:53,080 --> 01:36:55,519
Speaker 2: a paper by the way, not a magazine. I got

1693
01:36:55,560 --> 01:36:56,639
Speaker 2: a different word for everything.

1694
01:36:57,000 --> 01:37:00,679
Speaker 1: Well it is uh yeah, it's thinner than magazine paper.

1695
01:37:01,400 --> 01:37:04,920
Speaker 2: But we published weekly. Yeah, my column comes out weekly.

1696
01:37:05,400 --> 01:37:07,920
Speaker 1: Hey, is David Bradley's dream of the Atlantic becoming a

1697
01:37:07,960 --> 01:37:09,920
Speaker 1: competitor the Economists actually come true?

1698
01:37:11,160 --> 01:37:11,320
Speaker 2: Uh?

1699
01:37:12,040 --> 01:37:14,120
Speaker 1: You know them as a direct competitor. Now.

1700
01:37:14,560 --> 01:37:17,400
Speaker 2: I don't think you'd have to ask my boss that question.

1701
01:37:17,520 --> 01:37:20,240
Speaker 2: I think she would say, or a semaphore, Yeah, I

1702
01:37:20,280 --> 01:37:23,200
Speaker 2: mean everybody, everybody competes with the semaphore definitely.

1703
01:37:23,560 --> 01:37:23,720
Speaker 1: Right.

1704
01:37:23,880 --> 01:37:27,200
Speaker 2: Wants to be kind of a global digital publication reaching

1705
01:37:27,240 --> 01:37:30,320
Speaker 2: an audience, much like we do, and everybody's in. We

1706
01:37:30,439 --> 01:37:35,200
Speaker 2: are in a competition of all against all for attention. Yeah,

1707
01:37:35,240 --> 01:37:36,880
Speaker 2: there's a lot of I think there is a lot

1708
01:37:36,920 --> 01:37:40,200
Speaker 2: of overlap. I mean, you know, having been you know,

1709
01:37:40,400 --> 01:37:42,760
Speaker 2: working with you at the Atlantic back in the day,

1710
01:37:43,600 --> 01:37:48,000
Speaker 2: it's DNA is so fundamentally American, you know, and it

1711
01:37:48,160 --> 01:37:49,679
Speaker 2: remains that way today.

1712
01:37:49,840 --> 01:37:52,479
Speaker 1: But you remember, I mean at North's Star for David

1713
01:37:52,600 --> 01:37:54,599
Speaker 1: was always the Economist. Yeah, that was his north Star,

1714
01:37:54,760 --> 01:37:56,720
Speaker 1: not the New Yorker. That's what people don't realize that.

1715
01:37:56,840 --> 01:37:59,839
Speaker 2: But The Economist was founded by that collective of writers

1716
01:38:00,000 --> 01:38:03,120
Speaker 2: back in the eighteen fifties to promote the American idea.

1717
01:38:03,439 --> 01:38:05,920
Speaker 2: That was the whole concept, and I think you're doing

1718
01:38:05,960 --> 01:38:09,720
Speaker 2: an awesome job of that actually to this day. But

1719
01:38:09,840 --> 01:38:12,800
Speaker 2: that's a different role than the than the economist has,

1720
01:38:12,960 --> 01:38:16,840
Speaker 2: so I think that creates some you know, meaningful differentiation.

1721
01:38:18,680 --> 01:38:21,800
Speaker 2: I uh, I miss you, my friend. I miss I

1722
01:38:21,880 --> 01:38:23,960
Speaker 2: miss you in a newsroom, missed collaborating with you. But

1723
01:38:24,800 --> 01:38:27,920
Speaker 2: I am thankful you're writing that column every week. Thanks, Chuck.

1724
01:38:28,160 --> 01:38:31,960
Speaker 2: I'm glad you're doing You're just doing the flight the

1725
01:38:32,040 --> 01:38:32,599
Speaker 2: way you are.

1726
01:38:33,600 --> 01:38:38,040
Speaker 1: With you it's you know, there's you know, it's no

1727
01:38:38,200 --> 01:38:39,960
Speaker 1: fun to just sit back and watch right.

1728
01:38:40,479 --> 01:38:45,599
Speaker 2: No, no, no, and it's it's far from over. Yeah,

1729
01:38:45,680 --> 01:38:46,240
Speaker 2: that's for sure.

1730
01:38:46,640 --> 01:39:02,479
Speaker 1: All right, brother, Well, thank you to see Well for

1731
01:39:02,600 --> 01:39:04,880
Speaker 1: those listening on the entire download, hope you enjoyed that

1732
01:39:04,920 --> 01:39:10,879
Speaker 1: conversation with mister Bennett. And now the toodcast time machine,

1733
01:39:18,600 --> 01:39:22,040
Speaker 1: where are we going? We are going to October fifth,

1734
01:39:22,160 --> 01:39:26,599
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four, So let's see here. Let me get

1735
01:39:26,640 --> 01:39:29,880
Speaker 1: my calendar straight. This coming Sunday, so it fit in

1736
01:39:30,040 --> 01:39:34,519
Speaker 1: it made my window. October fifth, nineteen seventy four. It's

1737
01:39:34,600 --> 01:39:38,600
Speaker 1: the day that Congress finally puts some teeth into the

1738
01:39:39,200 --> 01:39:42,559
Speaker 1: Freedom of Information Act. Let me tell you the story.

1739
01:39:43,920 --> 01:39:46,240
Speaker 1: So here we were. It's October fifth, nineteen seventy four.

1740
01:39:46,680 --> 01:39:49,160
Speaker 1: Here I go again, back to the Nixon era. Right,

1741
01:39:49,360 --> 01:39:53,040
Speaker 1: it's two months after Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace. Congress

1742
01:39:53,200 --> 01:39:56,160
Speaker 1: ended up doing something it is rarely done. It overrode

1743
01:39:56,360 --> 01:40:01,800
Speaker 1: a presidential veto under the umbrella of to strengthen transparency.

1744
01:40:02,560 --> 01:40:05,400
Speaker 1: Here was the situation. President Gerald Ford was new to

1745
01:40:05,479 --> 01:40:08,640
Speaker 1: office and he obviously was trying to re establish some stability.

1746
01:40:09,120 --> 01:40:12,160
Speaker 1: He decided to veto. As you might imagine, there was

1747
01:40:12,240 --> 01:40:17,679
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of reform ideas that members of Congress

1748
01:40:17,760 --> 01:40:22,080
Speaker 1: were thrown through and trying to pass before the November

1749
01:40:22,160 --> 01:40:25,400
Speaker 1: elections of infamous Watergate elections that was just a bloodbath

1750
01:40:25,439 --> 01:40:30,400
Speaker 1: for Republicans. But before then, a whole bunch of transparency laws,

1751
01:40:30,520 --> 01:40:34,680
Speaker 1: all sorts of things were being thrown out there, and

1752
01:40:34,960 --> 01:40:40,120
Speaker 1: including a sweeping set of amendments to strengthen what already existed,

1753
01:40:40,160 --> 01:40:42,559
Speaker 1: which was the Freedom of Information Act. But it had

1754
01:40:42,600 --> 01:40:45,679
Speaker 1: no teeth. It was almost impossible to get any information

1755
01:40:46,120 --> 01:40:49,840
Speaker 1: out of the government. And at the time, and you're

1756
01:40:49,840 --> 01:40:53,840
Speaker 1: going to love this flashback. Ford's chief of staff man

1757
01:40:53,960 --> 01:40:56,720
Speaker 1: by the name of Donald Rumsfeld, Yes that Donald Rumsfeldt,

1758
01:40:56,840 --> 01:41:00,519
Speaker 1: former Defense secretary, and the deputy chief of staff Dick Chang, Yes,

1759
01:41:00,640 --> 01:41:03,599
Speaker 1: that Dick Cheney. They argued that these reforms were going

1760
01:41:03,640 --> 01:41:08,160
Speaker 1: to jeopardize national security, it could embolden America's adversaries and

1761
01:41:08,240 --> 01:41:13,200
Speaker 1: weaken the presidency itself these new transparency laws. That was

1762
01:41:13,280 --> 01:41:16,200
Speaker 1: the case that Janey and Rumsfeld made to Ford. Ford agreed.

1763
01:41:16,320 --> 01:41:21,680
Speaker 1: Ford vetoed the bill. But obviously Congress was this was

1764
01:41:21,760 --> 01:41:25,800
Speaker 1: a very popular idea, and Congress was very much more

1765
01:41:26,240 --> 01:41:31,800
Speaker 1: worried about the public than the presidency. So in under

1766
01:41:31,920 --> 01:41:37,400
Speaker 1: the you know, still reeling from Watergate Vietnam deception, lawmakers

1767
01:41:37,720 --> 01:41:41,360
Speaker 1: over rode a presidential veto right. This doesn't happen often ever,

1768
01:41:43,040 --> 01:41:45,760
Speaker 1: but they voted overwhelmingly to do it, and it's sent

1769
01:41:45,800 --> 01:41:48,839
Speaker 1: a pretty powerful message that the secrecy of the government

1770
01:41:49,040 --> 01:41:51,880
Speaker 1: was no longer going to be that kept then a

1771
01:41:51,960 --> 01:41:55,559
Speaker 1: vault and kept secret. The law itself was first signed

1772
01:41:55,920 --> 01:42:00,240
Speaker 1: reluctantly by Lyndon Johnson in nineteen sixty six. The idea

1773
01:42:00,360 --> 01:42:02,799
Speaker 1: was to give citizens and journalists a right to government records.

1774
01:42:02,840 --> 01:42:05,400
Speaker 1: There had been no right to this before nineteen sixty six,

1775
01:42:06,120 --> 01:42:09,559
Speaker 1: but at the time there was enough loopholes that essentially

1776
01:42:09,640 --> 01:42:17,120
Speaker 1: every agency could avoid any disclosure. What the nineteen seventy

1777
01:42:17,160 --> 01:42:21,120
Speaker 1: four amendments did was it forced some deadlines, It created

1778
01:42:21,200 --> 01:42:24,280
Speaker 1: judicial review, and it created real teeth for these Freedom

1779
01:42:24,320 --> 01:42:27,960
Speaker 1: of Information Act requests, which sort of forced action. It

1780
01:42:28,080 --> 01:42:32,599
Speaker 1: either forced you'd know within a matter of days if

1781
01:42:33,080 --> 01:42:37,760
Speaker 1: your request was going to get processed or not. And

1782
01:42:37,880 --> 01:42:40,800
Speaker 1: it sort of flipped the script right. It made it

1783
01:42:40,960 --> 01:42:43,320
Speaker 1: so that the public was seen to have a legal

1784
01:42:43,479 --> 01:42:50,320
Speaker 1: right to request these records and fight for them in court.

1785
01:42:55,120 --> 01:42:59,599
Speaker 1: It also triggered a whole bunch of state open sunshine laws.

1786
01:43:00,000 --> 01:43:04,599
Speaker 1: And it's worth noting that while a lot of states

1787
01:43:04,680 --> 01:43:08,519
Speaker 1: did have some public records statutes right maybe after fifty years,

1788
01:43:08,560 --> 01:43:10,560
Speaker 1: after sixty years, but they had a whole bunch of

1789
01:43:10,640 --> 01:43:13,840
Speaker 1: carve outs. After the federal government passed their version of

1790
01:43:13,920 --> 01:43:17,120
Speaker 1: Freedom of Information Act, and particularly after seventy four, you

1791
01:43:17,240 --> 01:43:20,839
Speaker 1: started to see more states do stuff more seriously. Started

1792
01:43:20,920 --> 01:43:23,960
Speaker 1: in sixty seven, Colorado, New York, and Virginia created and

1793
01:43:24,040 --> 01:43:28,040
Speaker 1: updated their records laws citing the new Freedom of Information Act.

1794
01:43:28,400 --> 01:43:31,720
Speaker 1: In seventy two, Florida passed what is still today one

1795
01:43:31,760 --> 01:43:36,000
Speaker 1: of the best open records laws that exist among the

1796
01:43:36,080 --> 01:43:39,080
Speaker 1: fifty states. They called it the Sunshine Law, and it

1797
01:43:39,240 --> 01:43:42,720
Speaker 1: required government meetings and records to be opened by default.

1798
01:43:43,600 --> 01:43:45,360
Speaker 1: It's one of those things where you get to find

1799
01:43:45,400 --> 01:43:48,280
Speaker 1: this stuff easily. Trust me. To this day, Ron de

1800
01:43:48,400 --> 01:43:51,759
Speaker 1: Santa every governor and Desanta's the latest. I'm not singling

1801
01:43:51,840 --> 01:43:56,920
Speaker 1: him out just just because of Disantas. Every governor hates

1802
01:43:57,000 --> 01:44:00,439
Speaker 1: the law open and looks for ways to go round it.

1803
01:44:01,120 --> 01:44:03,920
Speaker 1: These days, that's private email and all this stuff, et cetera.

1804
01:44:05,520 --> 01:44:10,120
Speaker 1: From seventy five to seventy seven, in the wake of Watergate, California, Illinois,

1805
01:44:10,120 --> 01:44:13,320
Speaker 1: and Texas rewrote their statutes that also expanded access to

1806
01:44:13,320 --> 01:44:16,360
Speaker 1: Texas's open records law also is one that's pretty good

1807
01:44:16,760 --> 01:44:19,360
Speaker 1: in particular. And then by the eighties, nearly every state

1808
01:44:19,439 --> 01:44:22,880
Speaker 1: had enacted a comprehensive open records or open Meetings Act.

1809
01:44:22,920 --> 01:44:27,120
Speaker 1: Georgia and Ohio were particularly influential. They modeled it modeling

1810
01:44:27,200 --> 01:44:30,880
Speaker 1: and any person can request standard right. You don't have

1811
01:44:31,000 --> 01:44:35,519
Speaker 1: to be have any specific standing on that issue. And then,

1812
01:44:35,600 --> 01:44:39,479
Speaker 1: of course the nineties created more updating of the laws

1813
01:44:39,560 --> 01:44:42,680
Speaker 1: for digital purposes and everything I'm not going to sit

1814
01:44:42,720 --> 01:44:46,320
Speaker 1: here and say this is there's a lot of flaws

1815
01:44:46,400 --> 01:44:48,400
Speaker 1: to this day and how the Freedom of Information Act

1816
01:44:48,479 --> 01:44:52,160
Speaker 1: requests work. I have certainly you put in foyer requests

1817
01:44:52,200 --> 01:44:55,920
Speaker 1: that can take sometimes months, sometimes a year for them

1818
01:44:55,960 --> 01:45:01,200
Speaker 1: to fulfill them. But it it is about one of

1819
01:45:01,280 --> 01:45:03,880
Speaker 1: the few tools we have left, especially when you're dealing

1820
01:45:03,880 --> 01:45:07,560
Speaker 1: with an administration that is actively trying to keep the

1821
01:45:07,680 --> 01:45:10,280
Speaker 1: press at bay. You know, to me, this what made

1822
01:45:10,360 --> 01:45:13,160
Speaker 1: this a timely this week in History and the Toddcast

1823
01:45:13,240 --> 01:45:17,000
Speaker 1: time machine. Is this nonsense that the Pentagon is doing

1824
01:45:17,160 --> 01:45:20,200
Speaker 1: at the moment right We're going to find out. September

1825
01:45:20,240 --> 01:45:26,120
Speaker 1: thirty is the deadline that the communications apparachic there at

1826
01:45:26,160 --> 01:45:30,400
Speaker 1: the Pentagon put a deadline and said that if reporters

1827
01:45:30,479 --> 01:45:38,960
Speaker 1: don't sign this pledge essentially to not report on items

1828
01:45:39,000 --> 01:45:42,920
Speaker 1: that weren't pre approved right not report on classified information

1829
01:45:43,000 --> 01:45:46,479
Speaker 1: that was not pre approved or given to access, that

1830
01:45:46,600 --> 01:45:49,240
Speaker 1: they essentially would be restricted from doing any reporting on

1831
01:45:49,320 --> 01:45:55,600
Speaker 1: the Pentagon. So far, the good news is, according to

1832
01:45:56,240 --> 01:45:59,519
Speaker 1: my friend Oliver Darcy, who does a terrific media newsletter

1833
01:45:59,600 --> 01:46:05,519
Speaker 1: you should subscribe to it, that not a single serious

1834
01:46:05,560 --> 01:46:08,320
Speaker 1: outlet has agreed to sign this pledge. The Washington Post

1835
01:46:08,360 --> 01:46:11,280
Speaker 1: and The Times have already issued public statements. Fox News,

1836
01:46:11,600 --> 01:46:15,519
Speaker 1: where Pete Hegseth used to work, has privately signaled they

1837
01:46:15,560 --> 01:46:18,040
Speaker 1: will not agree to the terms that the Pentagon is

1838
01:46:18,080 --> 01:46:22,320
Speaker 1: putting out there. So we'll see what happens on September thirtieth.

1839
01:46:23,680 --> 01:46:30,200
Speaker 1: But there's a whole movement to restrict access to government decisions.

1840
01:46:30,720 --> 01:46:33,519
Speaker 1: You know, I was disappointed to see Justice Amy Cony

1841
01:46:33,560 --> 01:46:37,280
Speaker 1: Barrett last week in an interview that she gave where

1842
01:46:37,400 --> 01:46:41,040
Speaker 1: she said she gave an explanation for why she won't

1843
01:46:43,320 --> 01:46:45,200
Speaker 1: put in writing why she.

1844
01:46:45,400 --> 01:46:48,680
Speaker 3: Chooses to recuse on specific issues, because she's recused a

1845
01:46:48,760 --> 01:46:51,680
Speaker 3: few times, and she said one reason she chooses not

1846
01:46:51,760 --> 01:46:54,479
Speaker 3: to explain why she recuses herself from certain Supreme Court

1847
01:46:54,560 --> 01:46:57,360
Speaker 3: cases for ethics reasons is because she doesn't want her

1848
01:46:57,360 --> 01:46:59,920
Speaker 3: friends or family to face unwanted public attention.

1849
01:47:00,560 --> 01:47:04,439
Speaker 1: Threats are worse. It's I will say this, that's not

1850
01:47:04,520 --> 01:47:07,920
Speaker 1: an unwarranted problem, right, And this is this gets at

1851
01:47:08,000 --> 01:47:11,840
Speaker 1: to our societal our sort of societal problem of wanting

1852
01:47:12,280 --> 01:47:15,240
Speaker 1: to dox anybody we disagree with and think that we

1853
01:47:15,320 --> 01:47:19,679
Speaker 1: can create shame, shame, shame. These you know, these public

1854
01:47:19,760 --> 01:47:23,280
Speaker 1: displays of theater that the left and the right will

1855
01:47:23,360 --> 01:47:25,320
Speaker 1: do it at different times when they like to dox

1856
01:47:25,560 --> 01:47:33,040
Speaker 1: people online. You know, I think that that. So while

1857
01:47:33,080 --> 01:47:36,080
Speaker 1: I have empathy for Justice Barrett in her rationale for

1858
01:47:36,200 --> 01:47:41,559
Speaker 1: not explaining herself, we cannot have a democracy if are

1859
01:47:42,640 --> 01:47:47,400
Speaker 1: if the folks executing different aspects of the democracy refuse

1860
01:47:47,520 --> 01:47:51,040
Speaker 1: to explain themselves or refuse to allow the press access

1861
01:47:51,160 --> 01:47:55,080
Speaker 1: to explain themselves, right, whether it's the Pentagon trying, you know,

1862
01:47:55,200 --> 01:47:58,639
Speaker 1: because Pete Hegseth is afraid of bad press, he doesn't

1863
01:47:58,680 --> 01:48:00,880
Speaker 1: get any good press. Know, maybe out a look in

1864
01:48:00,960 --> 01:48:03,320
Speaker 1: the mirror and not just always blame somebody else and

1865
01:48:03,320 --> 01:48:07,960
Speaker 1: always blame a leaker in all this business, or that

1866
01:48:08,320 --> 01:48:11,960
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court somehow thinks they shouldn't have to explain themselves,

1867
01:48:12,920 --> 01:48:15,360
Speaker 1: and you know, you use safety and it's not an

1868
01:48:15,479 --> 01:48:16,960
Speaker 1: in I'm not going to sit here and say this

1869
01:48:17,080 --> 01:48:21,759
Speaker 1: isn't look we live in this toxic social media society

1870
01:48:21,880 --> 01:48:26,320
Speaker 1: right now that is certainly allowed for the quick spread

1871
01:48:26,360 --> 01:48:30,960
Speaker 1: of defamatory material against people. Right. The ability to character

1872
01:48:31,000 --> 01:48:34,479
Speaker 1: assassinate somebody these days in public has never been easier,

1873
01:48:34,560 --> 01:48:38,280
Speaker 1: never been greater. So I empathize with that as somebody

1874
01:48:38,320 --> 01:48:41,840
Speaker 1: who's been character assassinated, you know from Tucker Carlson's done it,

1875
01:48:41,960 --> 01:48:44,360
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's done it. You know, I haven't filed any

1876
01:48:44,439 --> 01:48:49,280
Speaker 1: defamation lawsuits. Perhaps I should, but that's not that's not

1877
01:48:49,439 --> 01:48:53,639
Speaker 1: how I I sort of I still have this crazy

1878
01:48:53,760 --> 01:48:56,800
Speaker 1: naive belief that I sort of trust the public to

1879
01:48:56,880 --> 01:49:00,960
Speaker 1: figure out, you know, if somebody's squealing, if they're spending

1880
01:49:01,080 --> 01:49:04,640
Speaker 1: time attacking my character as a reporter, they really are.

1881
01:49:04,840 --> 01:49:07,599
Speaker 1: What are they afraid of? Right? What are they spooked by?

1882
01:49:07,680 --> 01:49:09,960
Speaker 1: Why is it that they're so intent on trying to

1883
01:49:10,160 --> 01:49:14,280
Speaker 1: smear somebody like me who's not an elected official, And

1884
01:49:14,439 --> 01:49:18,600
Speaker 1: it's because they're afraid that of the truth or the

1885
01:49:18,680 --> 01:49:22,320
Speaker 1: facts that that people like me are the job that

1886
01:49:22,400 --> 01:49:26,200
Speaker 1: they're doing. I still trust the public to sort of

1887
01:49:26,200 --> 01:49:27,240
Speaker 1: figure that out over time.

1888
01:49:28,360 --> 01:49:28,760
Speaker 2: I know it.

1889
01:49:29,040 --> 01:49:33,640
Speaker 1: There's a lot of a lot of I'm not going

1890
01:49:33,680 --> 01:49:36,000
Speaker 1: to call it partisan washing, I'll call it brainwashing. I'll

1891
01:49:36,000 --> 01:49:39,960
Speaker 1: call it partisan washing where you're just more inclined. Right.

1892
01:49:40,040 --> 01:49:42,880
Speaker 1: We see it when this terrible debate we're having over

1893
01:49:43,439 --> 01:49:46,639
Speaker 1: who's to blame for the rise of political violence, it's

1894
01:49:46,720 --> 01:49:50,000
Speaker 1: called all of us are to blame, Right, And if

1895
01:49:50,040 --> 01:49:52,559
Speaker 1: we sit here and trying to say yeah, but yeah,

1896
01:49:52,600 --> 01:49:56,320
Speaker 1: but yeah, but we're going to get nowhere, We're not

1897
01:49:56,360 --> 01:49:59,400
Speaker 1: going to solve the problem, and we're likely radicalizing more people,

1898
01:49:59,520 --> 01:50:03,679
Speaker 1: not less. And that's where that sort of partisan sort

1899
01:50:03,720 --> 01:50:08,000
Speaker 1: of tone washing of the brain that we've seen quite

1900
01:50:08,000 --> 01:50:11,519
Speaker 1: a few people find themselves in. And it turns out

1901
01:50:11,560 --> 01:50:14,840
Speaker 1: it's a bipartisan virus. Right when your sid's out of power,

1902
01:50:14,880 --> 01:50:19,559
Speaker 1: you're more likely to believe nonsense, conspiratorial nonsense, or all

1903
01:50:19,600 --> 01:50:23,840
Speaker 1: sorts of defammatory nonsense than when your party's in power.

1904
01:50:23,960 --> 01:50:29,799
Speaker 1: But anyway, October fifth, I just ranted about how Congress

1905
01:50:30,040 --> 01:50:32,640
Speaker 1: is feckless and went out of its way to be

1906
01:50:33,120 --> 01:50:38,479
Speaker 1: more dysfunctional with this madness of essentially creating the conditions

1907
01:50:38,520 --> 01:50:43,160
Speaker 1: that allow for government shutdowns. This was a case where

1908
01:50:43,200 --> 01:50:45,800
Speaker 1: Congress for this brief period of time where they were

1909
01:50:46,080 --> 01:50:50,400
Speaker 1: scared shitless of you, the voter right. Notice when they

1910
01:50:50,479 --> 01:50:53,960
Speaker 1: did this veto override one month before election day nineteen

1911
01:50:54,040 --> 01:50:58,160
Speaker 1: seventy four. But they put the public's interest ahead of

1912
01:50:58,200 --> 01:51:02,320
Speaker 1: the politicians interest in that period of time. It doesn't

1913
01:51:02,360 --> 01:51:05,560
Speaker 1: happen very often. It took one of the worst scandals

1914
01:51:06,280 --> 01:51:14,960
Speaker 1: and sending thousands to die under unusual circumstances of the

1915
01:51:15,040 --> 01:51:17,960
Speaker 1: Vietnam Wars. We had back to back sort of massive

1916
01:51:18,000 --> 01:51:22,240
Speaker 1: trust issues, right, and it got Congress to actually look

1917
01:51:22,320 --> 01:51:25,479
Speaker 1: out for the public's access to records and all of

1918
01:51:25,560 --> 01:51:28,040
Speaker 1: those things. We're only going to be healthier the more

1919
01:51:28,080 --> 01:51:31,400
Speaker 1: we know, not the less we know on this front.

1920
01:51:32,160 --> 01:51:36,200
Speaker 1: All right, So let's get back out of my time

1921
01:51:36,280 --> 01:51:43,240
Speaker 1: machine and let's take a few questions ask Chuck. We

1922
01:51:43,360 --> 01:51:46,960
Speaker 1: are going to start with Charles W who says I'm

1923
01:51:47,000 --> 01:51:50,439
Speaker 1: part of the Utah diaspora in Chicago, land Go Utes

1924
01:51:51,080 --> 01:51:54,200
Speaker 1: the other you. I won't get into that too much. Hey, Chuck,

1925
01:51:54,320 --> 01:51:56,360
Speaker 1: just listen to your interview about Black Moses and Oklahoma.

1926
01:51:56,439 --> 01:51:58,679
Speaker 1: Regarding your question about what would have happened if Oklahoma

1927
01:51:59,000 --> 01:52:01,400
Speaker 1: had succeeded as black I couldn't help think about the

1928
01:52:01,479 --> 01:52:04,479
Speaker 1: Mormon pioneers in Utah. Had African Americans who moved to

1929
01:52:04,520 --> 01:52:07,800
Speaker 1: Oklahoma been allowed to govern without interference, they may have

1930
01:52:07,920 --> 01:52:10,840
Speaker 1: been able to eventually, like the LDS, Americans did better

1931
01:52:10,920 --> 01:52:13,760
Speaker 1: integrate into the rest of society. A big difference, though,

1932
01:52:14,160 --> 01:52:16,000
Speaker 1: is that the pioneers were for the most part white.

1933
01:52:16,680 --> 01:52:19,880
Speaker 1: Referring to the LDS Pioneers thus once the main body

1934
01:52:19,920 --> 01:52:22,720
Speaker 1: of the church abandoned polygamy, they were more able to

1935
01:52:22,760 --> 01:52:24,360
Speaker 1: blend in with the rest of the country in ways

1936
01:52:24,400 --> 01:52:27,040
Speaker 1: that Black Americans weren't unable to do. Love the podcast,

1937
01:52:27,120 --> 01:52:33,120
Speaker 1: thanks for always having hosting interesting discussions. Look, I A,

1938
01:52:33,800 --> 01:52:38,720
Speaker 1: it's a it's an interesting thought that I wouldn't have

1939
01:52:38,760 --> 01:52:40,479
Speaker 1: come up but not a member of the LDS church.

1940
01:52:40,560 --> 01:52:44,320
Speaker 1: But it's a. It's a it's an interesting thesis. And

1941
01:52:44,800 --> 01:52:51,080
Speaker 1: you know, just watching Utah politicians today, right, and which

1942
01:52:51,160 --> 01:52:54,000
Speaker 1: ones are more principal than not, it is fascinating to

1943
01:52:54,080 --> 01:52:57,439
Speaker 1: watch how much character still counts in the LDS community,

1944
01:52:59,160 --> 01:53:05,120
Speaker 1: more so than really any other religious community doesn't seem

1945
01:53:05,280 --> 01:53:10,760
Speaker 1: to prioritize character the way, at least as far as

1946
01:53:10,880 --> 01:53:13,200
Speaker 1: voting has been concerned, and that during the Trump ras,

1947
01:53:13,320 --> 01:53:15,920
Speaker 1: it's the Mormon community appears to be doing. It's been

1948
01:53:16,080 --> 01:53:18,400
Speaker 1: It's been fascinating on that front. I think a lot

1949
01:53:18,479 --> 01:53:23,240
Speaker 1: of us should want to learn and understand how that is.

1950
01:53:23,960 --> 01:53:27,439
Speaker 1: I've always gotten a sense, both with the Mormon Church

1951
01:53:27,880 --> 01:53:32,519
Speaker 1: and my experience in Judaism, is that there's there's always

1952
01:53:32,600 --> 01:53:37,960
Speaker 1: been an aspect of both faiths that that push being

1953
01:53:38,040 --> 01:53:42,360
Speaker 1: involved in civil uh civil society and getting involved politically

1954
01:53:42,439 --> 01:53:49,479
Speaker 1: and getting involved, you know, as part of the larger community. Now,

1955
01:53:49,560 --> 01:53:51,400
Speaker 1: part of it is that when you know you're a minority,

1956
01:53:52,000 --> 01:53:56,360
Speaker 1: you're you're almost trying to fit in, versus maybe when

1957
01:53:56,400 --> 01:53:59,519
Speaker 1: you're trying to govern, when you think you're the majority,

1958
01:54:00,040 --> 01:54:01,760
Speaker 1: you don't care about those that are trying to fit

1959
01:54:01,840 --> 01:54:05,880
Speaker 1: in as much. So I've also wondered about that aspect

1960
01:54:05,880 --> 01:54:08,240
Speaker 1: as well. But anyway, that's just I appreciate the comment.

1961
01:54:08,280 --> 01:54:13,439
Speaker 1: It was more comment than question there, but it's worth

1962
01:54:14,200 --> 01:54:17,160
Speaker 1: more thought, that's for sure. Next question comes from Kim

1963
01:54:17,240 --> 01:54:20,360
Speaker 1: t Hey Chuck, longtime listener and fan of the brilliantly

1964
01:54:20,520 --> 01:54:23,120
Speaker 1: named todcast. Who came up with that by the way,

1965
01:54:23,120 --> 01:54:26,719
Speaker 1: as my friend John Reese, my old producer me the press.

1966
01:54:27,000 --> 01:54:29,519
Speaker 1: It was his idea, and boy was he's smart about

1967
01:54:29,520 --> 01:54:32,160
Speaker 1: it because guess who got to keep his podcast from

1968
01:54:32,320 --> 01:54:36,480
Speaker 1: when I left NBC, the guy whose name was the Toodcast. Anyway,

1969
01:54:36,960 --> 01:54:39,480
Speaker 1: after forty years in TV marketing, I follow analy closely

1970
01:54:39,520 --> 01:54:41,920
Speaker 1: and wonder about the rights scrambled to re Jerrymander Already

1971
01:54:42,000 --> 01:54:45,160
Speaker 1: Jerrymander District. Are the basic new maps on Trump's higher

1972
01:54:45,280 --> 01:54:49,120
Speaker 1: black and Hispanic vote share? In twenty twenty four narrator

1973
01:54:49,200 --> 01:54:52,920
Speaker 1: insertion here. Yes, they are assuming those gains are permanent.

1974
01:54:53,160 --> 01:54:55,600
Speaker 1: If so, isn't there a risk that those voters disappointed

1975
01:54:55,640 --> 01:54:58,200
Speaker 1: by his record could swing back and make those maps

1976
01:54:58,240 --> 01:55:03,200
Speaker 1: misfire Kim, This is the political experiment they're doing in Texas.

1977
01:55:03,400 --> 01:55:07,200
Speaker 1: This is exactly what look. They believe that this move,

1978
01:55:07,640 --> 01:55:10,560
Speaker 1: this shift to the right by Latinos in South Texas

1979
01:55:10,720 --> 01:55:15,320
Speaker 1: is permanent after basically one and a half election cycles.

1980
01:55:15,360 --> 01:55:17,840
Speaker 1: I say, what, you know, it's been a slow drift,

1981
01:55:17,960 --> 01:55:20,640
Speaker 1: but then obviously we saw a big, huge shift over

1982
01:55:21,160 --> 01:55:22,960
Speaker 1: basically about a two and a half year period.

1983
01:55:26,480 --> 01:55:26,960
Speaker 2: Good luck.

1984
01:55:28,400 --> 01:55:30,760
Speaker 1: You know, we're going to find out. There's been a

1985
01:55:30,920 --> 01:55:38,920
Speaker 1: lot of interesting qualitative research, meaning focus groups, not the

1986
01:55:39,040 --> 01:55:45,160
Speaker 1: quantitative like polls, that suggests that Trump's new Latino supporters

1987
01:55:45,200 --> 01:55:49,120
Speaker 1: are not happy with Trump's economy. And ultimately, you know,

1988
01:55:49,440 --> 01:55:52,120
Speaker 1: what was the mistake that the Democrats made with Latino

1989
01:55:52,200 --> 01:55:57,600
Speaker 1: voters not focusing on the economy first, but focusing on

1990
01:55:58,000 --> 01:55:59,960
Speaker 1: issues that didn't weren't always at the top of them

1991
01:56:00,080 --> 01:56:03,560
Speaker 1: as for many Latino Americans or Americans of Latino descent,

1992
01:56:03,680 --> 01:56:08,880
Speaker 1: that was immigration, but the dual issues of this poor

1993
01:56:09,000 --> 01:56:15,280
Speaker 1: economy and the unfair targeting of Latino Americans, meaning quite

1994
01:56:15,320 --> 01:56:17,880
Speaker 1: a few Latino American citizens have been scooped up by

1995
01:56:17,920 --> 01:56:22,680
Speaker 1: ice accidentally, and those stories are all over the place.

1996
01:56:23,800 --> 01:56:27,840
Speaker 1: Anybody that has Latino relatives probably already has a story

1997
01:56:28,080 --> 01:56:36,200
Speaker 1: I do. And now once they proved their citizenship, they

1998
01:56:36,280 --> 01:56:40,360
Speaker 1: were let go. But since when did we have a

1999
01:56:40,480 --> 01:56:43,560
Speaker 1: society of show us your papers just based on where

2000
01:56:43,600 --> 01:56:45,800
Speaker 1: you're traveling, or who you look or who you might

2001
01:56:45,880 --> 01:56:50,560
Speaker 1: look like. So that's not playing well with some Latino voters.

2002
01:56:50,960 --> 01:56:54,520
Speaker 1: But this economy is really hard for working class people.

2003
01:56:55,160 --> 01:56:57,320
Speaker 1: This is a you know, this is one of those

2004
01:56:58,800 --> 01:57:03,200
Speaker 1: it's an quality economy right now, if you're well off,

2005
01:57:03,360 --> 01:57:07,440
Speaker 1: you're more well off. If you've got some PAD, you

2006
01:57:07,560 --> 01:57:12,040
Speaker 1: might have more pad now. But prices are still super high.

2007
01:57:12,600 --> 01:57:15,640
Speaker 1: Prices are going up, not down, almost across the board.

2008
01:57:16,160 --> 01:57:20,440
Speaker 1: New tariffs just kicked in October first. We're going to

2009
01:57:20,520 --> 01:57:22,800
Speaker 1: have even more teriffs. How about that. You're going to

2010
01:57:22,840 --> 01:57:25,720
Speaker 1: deliver us a government shutdown and raise prices on baby

2011
01:57:25,760 --> 01:57:32,240
Speaker 1: furniture on October first? Good luck Trump, Republicans thinking you're

2012
01:57:32,280 --> 01:57:34,920
Speaker 1: going to continue to win this same group of working

2013
01:57:35,000 --> 01:57:38,760
Speaker 1: class voters who voted for you, because they liked that

2014
01:57:39,200 --> 01:57:42,960
Speaker 1: economy they had in the first Trump term, the inherited

2015
01:57:43,040 --> 01:57:48,200
Speaker 1: economy that Trump inherited from Mobaba and then COVID. You know,

2016
01:57:49,520 --> 01:57:52,520
Speaker 1: we know COVID supply chains who knows how long, but

2017
01:57:53,760 --> 01:57:56,040
Speaker 1: we haven't really had a Trump economy until now. This

2018
01:57:56,240 --> 01:58:00,760
Speaker 1: is Trump's economy, his designed economy, I mean he presided

2019
01:58:00,800 --> 01:58:04,080
Speaker 1: over in his first term was in an inherited economy. Right.

2020
01:58:04,120 --> 01:58:06,839
Speaker 1: He didn't get his tax cut didn't kick in until essentially,

2021
01:58:07,440 --> 01:58:10,480
Speaker 1: you know, six months before COVID, you know, raked Havoc.

2022
01:58:11,000 --> 01:58:12,840
Speaker 1: We still don't know whether his tax cuts would have

2023
01:58:12,880 --> 01:58:14,920
Speaker 1: been good or bad for the economy because they didn't

2024
01:58:14,920 --> 01:58:22,080
Speaker 1: have a chance to do that. So you're raising prices

2025
01:58:22,120 --> 01:58:24,840
Speaker 1: on a lot of goods and services. Kim, I am.

2026
01:58:26,720 --> 01:58:30,880
Speaker 1: I'm fascinated to see whether the jerrymander in Texas becomes

2027
01:58:30,920 --> 01:58:36,560
Speaker 1: a dummy mander because of their false hope that these

2028
01:58:36,920 --> 01:58:42,480
Speaker 1: swing voters are not swinging anymore. I think these voters

2029
01:58:42,560 --> 01:58:46,240
Speaker 1: or swing voters, and I think for quite a few cycles,

2030
01:58:46,840 --> 01:58:49,320
Speaker 1: you're going to have to be making the case to

2031
01:58:49,400 --> 01:58:54,760
Speaker 1: Latino voters or voters of Latino descent election by election,

2032
01:58:55,040 --> 01:58:58,320
Speaker 1: and not hope that you somehow they become permanent members

2033
01:58:58,360 --> 01:59:02,160
Speaker 1: of your coalition. Next question comes from Connor M. A

2034
01:59:02,960 --> 01:59:05,320
Speaker 1: big fan of the show. I used to manage restaurants

2035
01:59:05,320 --> 01:59:06,800
Speaker 1: and now I'm lucky enough to be a stay at

2036
01:59:06,840 --> 01:59:10,000
Speaker 1: home husband and soon dad congrats, which gives me more

2037
01:59:10,040 --> 01:59:13,120
Speaker 1: time to cook, read and listen. Your podcast is a

2038
01:59:13,200 --> 01:59:16,880
Speaker 1: favorite in the kitchen. All right, man, after my own heart.

2039
01:59:17,240 --> 01:59:20,680
Speaker 1: I like to cook and claim with a podcast in

2040
01:59:20,760 --> 01:59:22,120
Speaker 1: my ear as well. My wife and I are currently

2041
01:59:22,160 --> 01:59:24,880
Speaker 1: living in Morocco and vote absentee, but I wonder house

2042
01:59:24,880 --> 01:59:28,520
Speaker 1: Americans abroad can stay civically engaged or help shape change

2043
01:59:28,560 --> 01:59:31,280
Speaker 1: back home. I also can't resist asking about my Sooners.

2044
01:59:31,320 --> 01:59:33,520
Speaker 1: What your take on Oklahoma's top ten Sooners and their

2045
01:59:33,560 --> 01:59:36,640
Speaker 1: defense this year? Well, I appreciate that Connor and I

2046
01:59:36,720 --> 01:59:39,040
Speaker 1: do have a strong opinion about OU. I have less

2047
01:59:39,080 --> 01:59:44,640
Speaker 1: strong opinion. But look, voters abroad both I know the

2048
01:59:44,720 --> 01:59:48,680
Speaker 1: Democrats and the Republicans do try to outdo if you're

2049
01:59:48,720 --> 01:59:52,760
Speaker 1: registered with either of the two major parties. They do

2050
01:59:52,960 --> 01:59:56,800
Speaker 1: try to activate Americans abroad, but frankly they just try

2051
01:59:56,840 --> 02:00:01,720
Speaker 1: to activate them for financial reasons. It's it's I think

2052
02:00:01,720 --> 02:00:04,600
Speaker 1: a little bit harder to be activated in other ways,

2053
02:00:06,640 --> 02:00:08,920
Speaker 1: But I guess I would encourage you know you you know,

2054
02:00:09,240 --> 02:00:13,440
Speaker 1: I it depends on where you're what you're looking to do.

2055
02:00:13,720 --> 02:00:17,280
Speaker 1: Is it the structural small D democratic reform? Is it,

2056
02:00:17,840 --> 02:00:20,600
Speaker 1: you know, to break up the duopoly? Is it to

2057
02:00:20,680 --> 02:00:24,120
Speaker 1: get independent? You know, to open primaries up, rank choice voting.

2058
02:00:24,600 --> 02:00:26,800
Speaker 1: You know, to me, there's sort of a different types

2059
02:00:26,840 --> 02:00:29,840
Speaker 1: of activism. You may believe that, hey, it's time for

2060
02:00:29,920 --> 02:00:33,000
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party get its act together and make them

2061
02:00:33,200 --> 02:00:36,720
Speaker 1: a more viable alternative. That's a place to go. Maybe

2062
02:00:36,760 --> 02:00:38,520
Speaker 1: you want to try to work from the inside and

2063
02:00:38,600 --> 02:00:41,640
Speaker 1: make the Republican Party a small sea conservative party again.

2064
02:00:42,160 --> 02:00:44,600
Speaker 1: You know, if you're a small sea Conservative, you're there's

2065
02:00:44,640 --> 02:00:47,160
Speaker 1: no home for you in the Republicans these days. Maybe

2066
02:00:47,240 --> 02:00:49,960
Speaker 1: you want to do work for trying to help with

2067
02:00:50,000 --> 02:00:54,160
Speaker 1: a third party like the Forward Party, which has intrigued

2068
02:00:54,200 --> 02:00:57,800
Speaker 1: me the most formerly who started by Andrew Yang. Christy

2069
02:00:57,840 --> 02:01:00,800
Speaker 1: Todd Whitman, former Republican governor New Jerseys heavily involved with

2070
02:01:00,840 --> 02:01:04,920
Speaker 1: that as well. So I think it really just depends

2071
02:01:04,960 --> 02:01:07,040
Speaker 1: on where what you know, what I would say is

2072
02:01:07,440 --> 02:01:10,120
Speaker 1: where's your head? Is it? Is it in trying to

2073
02:01:10,360 --> 02:01:14,760
Speaker 1: get involved in party politics? For the next election or two,

2074
02:01:15,640 --> 02:01:16,920
Speaker 1: or do you want to get involved in the sort

2075
02:01:16,960 --> 02:01:21,440
Speaker 1: of the structural reforms you know aspect, because there really

2076
02:01:21,520 --> 02:01:25,839
Speaker 1: are active places to be active in both of those entities.

2077
02:01:25,960 --> 02:01:28,560
Speaker 1: You know, there's if you're into the sort of the

2078
02:01:28,720 --> 02:01:32,240
Speaker 1: what I call the infrastructure reform of our democracy. There's

2079
02:01:32,240 --> 02:01:34,280
Speaker 1: a good group called Unite America that I'm a big

2080
02:01:34,360 --> 02:01:37,040
Speaker 1: fan of. They're the ones that have that have funding

2081
02:01:37,120 --> 02:01:40,240
Speaker 1: referendum to trying to to They got ranked choice voting

2082
02:01:40,360 --> 02:01:46,600
Speaker 1: to be to be accepted in places like Alaska. They're

2083
02:01:46,680 --> 02:01:48,839
Speaker 1: working on other ways to try to you know, expand

2084
02:01:48,880 --> 02:01:51,000
Speaker 1: the ballot if you will, go to a top four system.

2085
02:01:51,040 --> 02:01:54,280
Speaker 1: They've been working and collecting petition signatures in different states

2086
02:01:54,720 --> 02:01:57,800
Speaker 1: because you know, if I think we we've decided it's

2087
02:01:57,840 --> 02:01:59,840
Speaker 1: not whether you elect good people or bad people, it's

2088
02:02:00,160 --> 02:02:03,720
Speaker 1: what system do you have in place that encourages more

2089
02:02:03,840 --> 02:02:05,960
Speaker 1: voters to have a say and who wins or loses,

2090
02:02:06,000 --> 02:02:07,720
Speaker 1: so that we can get rid of this sort of

2091
02:02:07,840 --> 02:02:14,760
Speaker 1: partisan exploitation of Congress that has come to dominate our lives.

2092
02:02:14,840 --> 02:02:19,160
Speaker 1: So as for your oh, you sooners man, you know,

2093
02:02:19,440 --> 02:02:22,000
Speaker 1: maybe you sent this in before the news about matears injury.

2094
02:02:22,520 --> 02:02:25,240
Speaker 1: I hope. You guys only you know can can stay

2095
02:02:25,320 --> 02:02:29,680
Speaker 1: playoff eligible. It's the type of surgery that in theory

2096
02:02:29,840 --> 02:02:33,120
Speaker 1: he can come back from. But you guys got to

2097
02:02:33,120 --> 02:02:36,720
Speaker 1: get through the Red River rivalry without Matier. I was

2098
02:02:36,880 --> 02:02:39,960
Speaker 1: really impressed with that Oklahoma d line and what they

2099
02:02:40,000 --> 02:02:43,360
Speaker 1: did to Jackson Arnold and in fact, one of my

2100
02:02:43,480 --> 02:02:46,240
Speaker 1: favorite I didn't have the bad beat because I was

2101
02:02:46,320 --> 02:02:51,280
Speaker 1: on the I was on ou side there, but that

2102
02:02:51,480 --> 02:02:55,480
Speaker 1: extra safety if you had Auburn plus five and a

2103
02:02:55,520 --> 02:02:59,200
Speaker 1: half and that a late game safety that oh you

2104
02:02:59,280 --> 02:03:01,920
Speaker 1: had in that Auburn game that gave you the two

2105
02:03:02,000 --> 02:03:05,000
Speaker 1: points that went from five to seven and gave the

2106
02:03:05,080 --> 02:03:07,560
Speaker 1: cover to Oklahoma. If you have that now, some of

2107
02:03:07,680 --> 02:03:09,680
Speaker 1: us may have put a bet early on Oklahoma to

2108
02:03:09,720 --> 02:03:11,680
Speaker 1: cover a four and a half point spread, which was

2109
02:03:11,760 --> 02:03:14,360
Speaker 1: the opening line that I got, but it went up

2110
02:03:14,400 --> 02:03:16,520
Speaker 1: to five and a half and at that five point margin,

2111
02:03:17,000 --> 02:03:20,880
Speaker 1: you know, before the ridiculous blocked field goal for the

2112
02:03:21,040 --> 02:03:27,640
Speaker 1: touchdown rams bad beat of the century with the Eagle

2113
02:03:27,680 --> 02:03:31,920
Speaker 1: that that big two then, man, I still don't know

2114
02:03:32,000 --> 02:03:33,880
Speaker 1: how he got that big old body to go eighteen

2115
02:03:33,920 --> 02:03:36,480
Speaker 1: miles an hour. God bless him, but that was the

2116
02:03:37,080 --> 02:03:40,760
Speaker 1: worst gambling beat I've ever been involved with personally with

2117
02:03:41,520 --> 02:03:45,920
Speaker 1: my money. But before that entity that weekend, I would

2118
02:03:45,960 --> 02:03:48,760
Speaker 1: have brought up this Oklahoma Auburn game on that one.

2119
02:03:49,280 --> 02:03:51,760
Speaker 1: But I was impressed. Man, the OHU defense is real.

2120
02:03:52,000 --> 02:03:54,520
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what to make of Materir just yet,

2121
02:03:54,600 --> 02:03:56,560
Speaker 1: but your defense may be good enough that you can

2122
02:03:56,960 --> 02:03:59,200
Speaker 1: survive this material injury for a couple of weeks. And

2123
02:03:59,640 --> 02:04:01,760
Speaker 1: if he's back by November, you guys say only have

2124
02:04:01,880 --> 02:04:05,320
Speaker 1: one loss, you know, and you can get stay eleven

2125
02:04:05,360 --> 02:04:08,240
Speaker 1: and one, ten and two with Matier having been injured.

2126
02:04:08,840 --> 02:04:10,360
Speaker 1: I think you're at playoff spot. I'll tell you this.

2127
02:04:11,280 --> 02:04:14,040
Speaker 1: I don't want Carson beckdaff to face your defensive line,

2128
02:04:14,240 --> 02:04:17,000
Speaker 1: so we shall see, all right, last question, then I

2129
02:04:17,080 --> 02:04:20,680
Speaker 1: will take a break for forty eight hours. And this

2130
02:04:20,800 --> 02:04:25,080
Speaker 1: comes from Maryland K from blue Bell, Pennsylvania. She writes,

2131
02:04:25,240 --> 02:04:27,560
Speaker 1: I'm a devoted fan. Watched you on NBC and MSNBC

2132
02:04:27,640 --> 02:04:29,960
Speaker 1: all the time and followed you quickly to your podcast.

2133
02:04:30,040 --> 02:04:32,000
Speaker 1: I appreciate that it sounds like you're doing well, and

2134
02:04:32,080 --> 02:04:34,480
Speaker 1: I hope that's true. I was listening to today's referring

2135
02:04:34,480 --> 02:04:38,120
Speaker 1: to the September twenty fifth episode, so our Thursday upload podcast,

2136
02:04:39,080 --> 02:04:40,920
Speaker 1: and you were certain that people are going to get

2137
02:04:41,000 --> 02:04:43,800
Speaker 1: fired tired of Trump. But we still have a lot

2138
02:04:43,840 --> 02:04:46,760
Speaker 1: of work to do pull our institutions back into the sunlight. Chuck,

2139
02:04:46,800 --> 02:04:49,040
Speaker 1: where do you get this optimism from? Nobody I know

2140
02:04:49,200 --> 02:04:51,600
Speaker 1: has it. I would love to hear from you why

2141
02:04:51,680 --> 02:04:55,200
Speaker 1: you feel confident about this, because it'll help me a lot. Well, Maryland.

2142
02:04:55,360 --> 02:04:57,400
Speaker 1: First of all, just look at the polling right, it's

2143
02:04:58,000 --> 02:05:01,480
Speaker 1: you know, the thing with Trump and what people. We

2144
02:05:01,640 --> 02:05:07,680
Speaker 1: went through this once and the public spoke right when

2145
02:05:07,720 --> 02:05:10,480
Speaker 1: they got a chance to express their views on the

2146
02:05:10,560 --> 02:05:13,560
Speaker 1: Trump era. They voted out Republicans in the House and

2147
02:05:13,720 --> 02:05:17,760
Speaker 1: voted Democrats into the House at eighteen and they voted

2148
02:05:17,800 --> 02:05:20,160
Speaker 1: Trump out in one of the largest turnouts we had

2149
02:05:20,240 --> 02:05:25,960
Speaker 1: in American history. Now, the question was that I think

2150
02:05:26,080 --> 02:05:30,600
Speaker 1: Democrats answered incorrectly, which was why did they throw Trump out?

2151
02:05:31,920 --> 02:05:34,560
Speaker 1: Democrats acted as if they had a mandate. They didn't

2152
02:05:34,560 --> 02:05:37,960
Speaker 1: have a mandate to do what they did. They had

2153
02:05:38,000 --> 02:05:41,640
Speaker 1: a mandate to settle the country down, turn the temperature down,

2154
02:05:42,480 --> 02:05:49,080
Speaker 1: and stabilize things right, stop the roller coaster. When you look,

2155
02:05:49,800 --> 02:05:55,480
Speaker 1: none of his even the issue where he's most popular, immigration,

2156
02:05:58,720 --> 02:06:02,240
Speaker 1: he's got He's left popular that he was on that

2157
02:06:02,440 --> 02:06:07,120
Speaker 1: issue because of how he's executing the policies. Look, uh,

2158
02:06:07,840 --> 02:06:09,520
Speaker 1: let me go through other parts of the of the

2159
02:06:10,640 --> 02:06:13,720
Speaker 1: quitepiac poll for you. That will, I think give you

2160
02:06:13,800 --> 02:06:18,520
Speaker 1: a sense that that the country doesn't like what Trump

2161
02:06:18,640 --> 02:06:21,840
Speaker 1: is doing and they're not gonna want on this roller coaster.

2162
02:06:22,320 --> 02:06:25,400
Speaker 1: His job rating sitting at thirty eight percent. Now Quitepiac,

2163
02:06:26,560 --> 02:06:30,000
Speaker 1: I think always says a slightly dem heavy sample. When

2164
02:06:30,040 --> 02:06:34,160
Speaker 1: I say slightly two or three points. So if he's

2165
02:06:34,200 --> 02:06:37,320
Speaker 1: thirty eight and quit apiac, I think if this were

2166
02:06:37,320 --> 02:06:39,480
Speaker 1: an election day voter poll, he'd still be in the

2167
02:06:39,560 --> 02:06:44,200
Speaker 1: low forties. Forty one, forty two. That's horrendous. That's unelectable

2168
02:06:44,480 --> 02:06:47,840
Speaker 1: numbers for anybody in the Republican Party hoping to win

2169
02:06:47,920 --> 02:06:51,640
Speaker 1: in a swing district. He's got a disapproval rating of

2170
02:06:51,760 --> 02:06:54,320
Speaker 1: ten percent, double digits in his own party. At ten percent,

2171
02:06:54,440 --> 02:06:59,440
Speaker 1: that's not insignificant. Sixty one percent of independence disapproved. When

2172
02:06:59,520 --> 02:07:04,600
Speaker 1: independents are closer to being Democrats on anything when it

2173
02:07:04,680 --> 02:07:09,000
Speaker 1: comes to judging Trump, that tells you that this isn't

2174
02:07:09,000 --> 02:07:11,120
Speaker 1: going to go well the next time voters have a say,

2175
02:07:11,720 --> 02:07:14,640
Speaker 1: I think what you're experiencing is the fact that we're

2176
02:07:14,640 --> 02:07:18,120
Speaker 1: a long way away from our next election in Pennsylvania. Right,

2177
02:07:18,160 --> 02:07:24,080
Speaker 1: you don't really get to express your anger at this

2178
02:07:24,240 --> 02:07:29,400
Speaker 1: administration until arguably November of twenty twenty six. I get that.

2179
02:07:29,840 --> 02:07:35,919
Speaker 1: And so between now and then, what do you do locally?

2180
02:07:37,160 --> 02:07:41,080
Speaker 1: You organize, You talk to people, You sort of make

2181
02:07:41,160 --> 02:07:42,960
Speaker 1: your case. I mean, there's all sorts of things you

2182
02:07:43,080 --> 02:07:47,240
Speaker 1: can be doing that might make you feel better that

2183
02:07:47,360 --> 02:07:50,680
Speaker 1: you're contributing to something. I get it, you're sort of frustrated.

2184
02:07:51,000 --> 02:07:53,800
Speaker 1: I get that feeling sometimes myself. Where am I just

2185
02:07:54,000 --> 02:07:55,560
Speaker 1: you know, old man yelling at cloud?

2186
02:07:55,720 --> 02:07:55,840
Speaker 2: Right?

2187
02:07:55,960 --> 02:07:57,920
Speaker 1: Am I peeing in a hurricane? You know? I love

2188
02:07:58,080 --> 02:08:02,000
Speaker 1: It's one of my other favorite expressions to use. But

2189
02:08:02,280 --> 02:08:05,600
Speaker 1: there's all the evidence in the world is that this

2190
02:08:05,840 --> 02:08:11,440
Speaker 1: is this is a presidency that is exhausting, and it's

2191
02:08:11,520 --> 02:08:14,320
Speaker 1: exhausting in all the wrong ways. Now, look, the Democratic

2192
02:08:14,400 --> 02:08:17,400
Speaker 1: Party brand is not great, right. The Republican brand is terrible.

2193
02:08:17,440 --> 02:08:19,120
Speaker 1: In this poll, it's thirty eight to fifty one. The

2194
02:08:19,200 --> 02:08:22,120
Speaker 1: Democratic brand is worse. It's thirty fifty four favorable to

2195
02:08:22,280 --> 02:08:26,480
Speaker 1: unfavorable rating. Okay, And you know what's interesting is it's

2196
02:08:27,120 --> 02:08:30,360
Speaker 1: it's and this is where this is why this is

2197
02:08:30,600 --> 02:08:34,520
Speaker 1: likely still a bit. The Republicans still have a bigger

2198
02:08:34,560 --> 02:08:38,680
Speaker 1: problem here on their brand because among independents, independents have

2199
02:08:38,760 --> 02:08:41,720
Speaker 1: a more unfavorable rating of Republicans and they do Democrats,

2200
02:08:41,960 --> 02:08:45,280
Speaker 1: even though overall the number is that the Democrats have

2201
02:08:45,360 --> 02:08:49,160
Speaker 1: the higher unfavorable rating than the Republicans do among independents,

2202
02:08:49,320 --> 02:08:55,640
Speaker 1: that's reversed. Look where where self described independence are politically

2203
02:08:56,000 --> 02:08:58,880
Speaker 1: is where this country is headed. And what I would

2204
02:08:58,880 --> 02:09:03,200
Speaker 1: say is, not only are democrats upset with this presidency,

2205
02:09:03,680 --> 02:09:07,800
Speaker 1: independence are upset with this presidency. It is just not

2206
02:09:07,960 --> 02:09:11,960
Speaker 1: being viewed very well at all. Let me give you

2207
02:09:12,120 --> 02:09:16,520
Speaker 1: a about this one in general. How satisfied are you

2208
02:09:16,600 --> 02:09:18,280
Speaker 1: with the way things are going in the nation today?

2209
02:09:18,760 --> 02:09:22,760
Speaker 1: Very satisfied, someone satisfied, somewhat dissatisfied, very dissatisfied. The very

2210
02:09:22,800 --> 02:09:26,720
Speaker 1: dissatisfied numbers fifty one percent. Okay, majority of this country

2211
02:09:26,840 --> 02:09:30,360
Speaker 1: very dissatisfied. Only thirteen percent are very satisfied. If you

2212
02:09:30,440 --> 02:09:33,280
Speaker 1: added the somewhat satisfied to that thirteen percent, you still

2213
02:09:33,320 --> 02:09:36,600
Speaker 1: only have thirty four percent who are very satisfied or

2214
02:09:36,680 --> 02:09:39,880
Speaker 1: somewhat satisfied with the direction of this country. That's almost

2215
02:09:39,880 --> 02:09:43,840
Speaker 1: all Republicans. Eighty three percent of Democrats are very dissatisfied.

2216
02:09:43,880 --> 02:09:47,440
Speaker 1: That doesn't surprise me. But fifty seven percent of Independence

2217
02:09:47,480 --> 02:09:51,400
Speaker 1: are very dissatisfied. All right, Remember what I said, majority

2218
02:09:51,440 --> 02:09:54,520
Speaker 1: of Independences don't like the Democratic Party, but they're more

2219
02:09:54,600 --> 02:09:59,360
Speaker 1: dissatisfied about the direction of the country than they are

2220
02:09:59,400 --> 02:10:02,400
Speaker 1: the direction of either of the two parties on this front.

2221
02:10:02,800 --> 02:10:06,160
Speaker 1: Here's another number that if you're wondering, where's the proof

2222
02:10:06,240 --> 02:10:09,440
Speaker 1: that Trump's wearing out as welcome? Do you approve it?

2223
02:10:09,480 --> 02:10:12,520
Speaker 1: Disapprove the way Donald Trump is handing the economy fifty

2224
02:10:12,640 --> 02:10:18,160
Speaker 1: six percent disapprove to me, is not surprising. Price of coffee, shrinkflation,

2225
02:10:18,480 --> 02:10:23,960
Speaker 1: you name it right. Sixty four percent of Independence disapproved.

2226
02:10:24,280 --> 02:10:27,480
Speaker 1: More Independence disapprove of his handling of the economy than

2227
02:10:27,520 --> 02:10:31,440
Speaker 1: the number overall. That's a huge deal. He's propped up

2228
02:10:31,480 --> 02:10:34,480
Speaker 1: only by Republicans who are saying what they believe is

2229
02:10:34,520 --> 02:10:38,800
Speaker 1: the politically correct answer. How about how Donald Trump's handling trade?

2230
02:10:39,440 --> 02:10:42,800
Speaker 1: Fifty four percent disapprove of that. Sixty percent of Independence

2231
02:10:42,840 --> 02:10:47,160
Speaker 1: disapprove of how he's handling trade. Foreign policy fifty three

2232
02:10:47,200 --> 02:10:51,920
Speaker 1: percent disapprove overall. Sixty one percent of Independence disapprove of

2233
02:10:52,040 --> 02:10:56,000
Speaker 1: how he's handling foreign policy, how's he handling immigration? Fifty

2234
02:10:56,080 --> 02:10:59,920
Speaker 1: five percent disapprove of that. Sixty three percent of Independence

2235
02:11:00,120 --> 02:11:03,560
Speaker 1: are on the disapproved side of this. You see the

2236
02:11:03,680 --> 02:11:06,920
Speaker 1: pattern here. It is repeated over and over. And this

2237
02:11:07,080 --> 02:11:09,840
Speaker 1: isn't the only poll. Okay, we can argue is it

2238
02:11:09,920 --> 02:11:12,800
Speaker 1: two points higher or lower depending on is your sample

2239
02:11:12,920 --> 02:11:15,680
Speaker 1: slightly you know, should it be a point less democratic

2240
02:11:15,840 --> 02:11:18,560
Speaker 1: or whatever? And I could one thing about quinnybe because

2241
02:11:18,560 --> 02:11:21,200
Speaker 1: they're consistent. So the trend line helps you. But the

2242
02:11:21,280 --> 02:11:25,480
Speaker 1: point is there is there is not a single thing

2243
02:11:25,760 --> 02:11:28,360
Speaker 1: that is polling well for him right now, not a

2244
02:11:28,520 --> 02:11:31,240
Speaker 1: single thing. Oh let me throw in this. Do you

2245
02:11:31,280 --> 02:11:34,720
Speaker 1: support an opposed having vaccine requirements for children attending public schools?

2246
02:11:35,200 --> 02:11:38,840
Speaker 1: Sixty seven percent believe we should have that. Seventy percent

2247
02:11:38,880 --> 02:11:42,240
Speaker 1: of Independence believe we should have that, but a plurality

2248
02:11:42,280 --> 02:11:46,320
Speaker 1: of Republicans don't. I mean, nearly seventy percent of Americans

2249
02:11:46,360 --> 02:11:48,600
Speaker 1: think we should, but forty six percent of Republicans think

2250
02:11:48,640 --> 02:11:51,600
Speaker 1: we shouldn't. You see where I'm going here. I understand

2251
02:11:51,640 --> 02:11:56,040
Speaker 1: why you're pessimist. I get it right. This is there is,

2252
02:11:56,400 --> 02:12:00,520
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, the elected Republicans of today refuse to

2253
02:12:00,600 --> 02:12:04,600
Speaker 1: push back on their own on this party. And you

2254
02:12:04,640 --> 02:12:06,320
Speaker 1: know this is this the world of the way the

2255
02:12:06,360 --> 02:12:08,920
Speaker 1: two parties are. It's why I think we've the two

2256
02:12:08,960 --> 02:12:12,520
Speaker 1: parties are a bit lost because they're they're they're both reacting,

2257
02:12:12,720 --> 02:12:16,800
Speaker 1: They're they're both behaving as reactionary parties, which means they

2258
02:12:17,400 --> 02:12:20,680
Speaker 1: simply stand up for anybody on their side, no matter

2259
02:12:20,760 --> 02:12:25,520
Speaker 1: how flawed or crooked they are, and just point then

2260
02:12:25,600 --> 02:12:28,120
Speaker 1: say all the problems are the fault of the other side.

2261
02:12:29,240 --> 02:12:31,600
Speaker 1: We're never going to get anywhere if we keep doing that,

2262
02:12:32,040 --> 02:12:34,800
Speaker 1: and independence essentially are the ones going. Well, you guys

2263
02:12:34,840 --> 02:12:36,920
Speaker 1: shouldn't be in power. I'll put you guys in. Oh

2264
02:12:37,040 --> 02:12:39,440
Speaker 1: you sucked, I'm gonna put you guys in. But the

2265
02:12:39,560 --> 02:12:43,400
Speaker 1: point is this is an unhappy electorate. Okay, I know

2266
02:12:43,560 --> 02:12:46,360
Speaker 1: you don't feel it, but I hope giving you that

2267
02:12:46,760 --> 02:12:50,120
Speaker 1: data that is sitting out there, there is no data

2268
02:12:50,200 --> 02:12:54,160
Speaker 1: out there that's credible that says Donald Trump's presidency is

2269
02:12:54,280 --> 02:12:57,440
Speaker 1: going well. This is not a presidency that is going

2270
02:12:57,600 --> 02:13:01,160
Speaker 1: very well right now, all right, So with that, I

2271
02:13:01,280 --> 02:13:06,400
Speaker 1: will take a forty eight hour break and until then

2272
02:13:06,640 --> 02:13:12,280
Speaker 1: until we upload again. Thanks as always for listening. M.