Speaker 1: Happy Wednesday, Happy Day, one of the second one hundred
Speaker 1: days of the Trump administration. I got a fascinating interview
Speaker 1: coming up today with a woman by the name of
Speaker 1: Jody Vittori. She's a military veteran. She's a professor in
Speaker 1: practice for global politics with a concentration on national security
Speaker 1: issues at Georgetown University. But she spent a lion's share
Speaker 1: of her career in the military, educated at the Air
Speaker 1: Force Academy, and she's a specialist in kleptocracies, and actually,
Speaker 1: you know how democracies get corrupted, and she wrote a
Speaker 1: pretty provocative piece for Foreign Affairs about that issue. Is
Speaker 1: America creeping into a kleptocracy? You've probably heard me use
Speaker 1: that word. I said that in twenty twenty four, at
Speaker 1: a minimum, that Donald Trump had turned the Republican Party
Speaker 1: in some ways into a kleptocracy. I don't think we're
Speaker 1: there yet as a country, but when you have things
Speaker 1: like this inaugural fund that law firms have to pay
Speaker 1: into in order to keep the government off their back,
Speaker 1: that would pretty much put you into that in that
Speaker 1: category where you might be arguing that we are creeping
Speaker 1: into that. So, look, it's a long conversation. I want
Speaker 1: to get into that, but before I get into that,
Speaker 1: I want to talk a little bit about the second
Speaker 1: hundred days because I think in fairness to him, you know, look,
Speaker 1: I've been highly critical because I think this has been
Speaker 1: a disastrous start. This is not because whether I support
Speaker 1: them or oppose them. This is just political incompetence how
Speaker 1: they've gone about this. Yes, I think it's economic incompetence too.
Speaker 1: But if this was the plan, they've executed the plan
Speaker 1: extraordinarily poorly. Right, there was a way to do government
Speaker 1: reform better and more secure. There was a way to
Speaker 1: do Tariff's better. There was probably a way to order
Speaker 1: reorder his agenda, but he chose not to do it.
Speaker 1: And there's a fundamental part of his presidency that strikes
Speaker 1: me as a bit lazy, that he is kind of
Speaker 1: ailing it in. And you know, one way you can
Speaker 1: see this that Donald Trump is now mailing in the presidency.
Speaker 1: It's his travel schedule for the first hundred days. He
Speaker 1: marked the one hundred day with a trip to Michigan.
Speaker 1: What's shocking about his trip to Michigan is that that's
Speaker 1: the first essaidually, it's the first battleground state he's bothered
Speaker 1: to visit since the beginning of his term. He had
Speaker 1: one day where he traveled to North Carolina, Nevada, in California.
Speaker 1: He was checking out flood damage in North Carolina. This
Speaker 1: was right there. He was trying to It was something
Speaker 1: he had been scoring points on due to the what
Speaker 1: was a poor recovery effort led by FEMA in western
Speaker 1: North Carolina during the remnants of a hurricane that devastated
Speaker 1: them with floods in western North Carolina. So he made
Speaker 1: a political stop there, made a political stop in Nevada,
Speaker 1: and then made a tour of the wildfire damage in LA.
Speaker 1: But you take that day away, and that's three less. Basically,
Speaker 1: the only trips he would have made are to the
Speaker 1: super Bowl, to the Daytona five hundred and to Bedminster
Speaker 1: or mar A Lago over and over and over again.
Speaker 1: And what's interesting is that it's quite the contrast from
Speaker 1: his first term and his first term. In the first
Speaker 1: under days, he traveled quite a bit. In fact, he
Speaker 1: was a very you know, yes, he's still golfed quite
Speaker 1: a bit. Now he seems to be only golfing on weekends.
Speaker 1: He's spent at one point six days in a row
Speaker 1: mar Alago, going to my friends over at NBC News
Speaker 1: where some federal workers were wondering if he was qualifying
Speaker 1: for work for home benefits there. He was there so long.
Speaker 1: But there is a sense that he is just either
Speaker 1: not interested in traveling the country, not wanting to hold
Speaker 1: his rallies, which he used to love to do in
Speaker 1: his first term. And I think it's it's I actually
Speaker 1: think this is another bad political mistake, right, And this
Speaker 1: is what happens when you surround yourself with people that
Speaker 1: just tell you what you want to hear. He doesn't
Speaker 1: want to travel, he doesn't want to work very hard,
Speaker 1: so he gets to go back to Marlago so he
Speaker 1: can go golf, or he gets to go back to
Speaker 1: Bedminster and so he could go golf. He was in
Speaker 1: the first term surrounded people that said, you know, especially
Speaker 1: if you want to win reelection, you need to be
Speaker 1: communicating with the public what you're trying to do. The
Speaker 1: tariff policies are extraordinarily unpopular. His inability to even communicate
Speaker 1: what they're supposed to do has made it even worse
Speaker 1: for him. So the fact that he waited literally to
Speaker 1: his hundredth day to have his first public event outside
Speaker 1: of Washington to explain his tariff policy. I think that
Speaker 1: just strikes me as lazy, and it is kind of
Speaker 1: the hallmark of how this White House has been run.
Speaker 1: You know. In some ways they make it look like
Speaker 1: there's a lot of motion going on, but in some
Speaker 1: ways they're not. You know, take he signs executive orders,
Speaker 1: but he doesn't try to pass legislation. They're trying to
Speaker 1: take a lot of political shortcuts they're not doing If
Speaker 1: you wanted to cut government, you wouldn't do it the
Speaker 1: way they're doing it with those because most of the
Speaker 1: cuts that they make are going to get restored. Most
Speaker 1: of the executive order he's signing are going to get
Speaker 1: thrown out by the courts. If he wanted to make
Speaker 1: real change. He has a Republican Congress. It's pretty compliant,
Speaker 1: but guess what legislation is hard. Trying to get lawmakers
Speaker 1: to do. It's going to take time and effort, and
Speaker 1: I think, you know, we sit here and wonder, Oh,
Speaker 1: he's an authoritarian. In some ways, he's an authoritarian by laziness,
Speaker 1: meaning he'd prefer to just sign edicts because he doesn't
Speaker 1: want to have to put in the work that it
Speaker 1: takes to host members of Congress and cajole them to
Speaker 1: do X, or host members of Congress and condrole them
Speaker 1: to do why, or travel the country and put public
Speaker 1: political pressure. He doesn't know. For a guy who prides
Speaker 1: himself at being mister salesman and mister art of the deal,
Speaker 1: he's done a terrible job of selling his policies and
Speaker 1: selling them to the country. He has spent a lot
Speaker 1: more time on true social that he has talking with
Speaker 1: people outside of his bubble. It is notable to me
Speaker 1: that this week he's at least doing interviews with media
Speaker 1: entities that are not just espousing the MAGA line of thinking.
Speaker 1: He interviewed with ABC News, interview with The Atlantic, and
Speaker 1: that is a huge difference from Trump one point oh,
Speaker 1: Trump one point oh talk to everybody. Trump one point
Speaker 1: oh was tweeting. Trump one point oh was trying to
Speaker 1: communicate with the entire country. I mean, even if let's
Speaker 1: just take the example, let's say he was just so
Speaker 1: lazy he only wanted a golf on weekends. Well, then
Speaker 1: travel the country to different golf courses in golf on weekends,
Speaker 1: actually connect with the rest of the American people. Right now,
Speaker 1: He's conducting a presidency that is essentially sitting on Air
Speaker 1: Force one or one of his two clubs. He's a
Speaker 1: creature of habit. He's creature comfort, and when you get older,
Speaker 1: that's what happens. Joe Biden spent just about every weekend
Speaker 1: in Delaware. Well, you know, Donald Trump wants to spend
Speaker 1: every weekend at mar Lago or Bedminster. And so it
Speaker 1: just struck me that to see this event, which was right.
Speaker 1: He gets a lot of energy from these things. So
Speaker 1: the question is perhaps he maybe he's just getting older,
Speaker 1: getting more tired, doesn't want to you know, needs to
Speaker 1: work three and a half four days a week, doesn't
Speaker 1: want to have the full five day weeks. It wants
Speaker 1: to have extra recovery time. Whatever it is, I actually
Speaker 1: think it's harming his presidency just from a communications standpoint.
Speaker 1: Whether you love him or hate him, he's the best
Speaker 1: communicator they have, and he doesn't seem to actually want
Speaker 1: to go out there and communicate with the public. Right now.
Speaker 1: He went to Michigan. It's almost like they said, okay,
Speaker 1: we got to have a hundred days event, but he's
Speaker 1: right back here. So anyway, it's just fascinating to me
Speaker 1: how I think that as tumultuous as the first one
Speaker 1: hundred days, there's an underlying aspect of this that there's
Speaker 1: actually kind of a laziness to the president in his
Speaker 1: lack of salesmanship, lack of doing these things. One other thing,
Speaker 1: because I think it's a fair question, so what would
Speaker 1: a you know, I've been pretty doom and gloom. I
Speaker 1: think it's gonna be pretty hard for Donald Trump to recover.
Speaker 1: I think he's probably if you told me if I
Speaker 1: went into a coma today and didn't wake up until
Speaker 1: January twentieth, twenty twenty nine, and you said to me,
Speaker 1: you know, Donald Trump's approval rating never got over forty
Speaker 1: five percent for the rest of the term while you
Speaker 1: were in a coma, wouldn't surprise me. And I've gone
Speaker 1: through the reasonings before of why I did this. I think,
Speaker 1: particularly in a second term, that's part of the you know,
Speaker 1: that's part of the why there's probably a shorter lease
Speaker 1: with the public, public like sort of oh, he's going
Speaker 1: to be that all right, forget it right, And there
Speaker 1: may be they may give up on him quicker, especially
Speaker 1: since he's messing up on supposedly the issue that was
Speaker 1: his core competency. But let me let me do the
Speaker 1: other side. So let's say I wake up and from
Speaker 1: my from my mythical coma, and it turns out he's popular.
Speaker 1: What would have happened, Well, I think in this next
Speaker 1: hundred days he must for that to happen, for him
Speaker 1: to sort of write this ship, he needs some points
Speaker 1: on the points on the board. Maybe he cuts in
Speaker 1: a Ran deal. Maybe he gets both Russian and Ukraine
Speaker 1: to agree to a cease fire. Maybe he's able to
Speaker 1: get Israel and the Palestinians to at least cease violent interactions.
Speaker 1: Perhaps he's able to get some trade deals with India, Australia, Japan,
Speaker 1: the UK. I'm skeptical of all those things, but it's
Speaker 1: not out of the question, right, It's not as if
Speaker 1: those aren't active things he's engaged in at the moment.
Speaker 1: But that's what the next Oh no, by the way,
Speaker 1: how about putting some shovels in the ground for some
Speaker 1: new factories. Right, there's a lot of pledges out there,
Speaker 1: you know, he doesn't doesn't He doesn't even have a
Speaker 1: fox con that he's been able to. Which was that
Speaker 1: company that announced this big I remember Trump and Paul
Speaker 1: Ryan together they announced this big investment into Wisconsin, this
Speaker 1: company called Fox Cohn and and the investment never really happened.
Speaker 1: But he needs some shovels in the ground somewhere, some
Speaker 1: ribbon cuttings to do that. So you know what would
Speaker 1: if day one on one to two hundred, If on
Speaker 1: day two oh one his numbers are ten points better
Speaker 1: than they are today. These are the things that need
Speaker 1: to happen. Peace steel in Ukraine, pea steel in the
Speaker 1: Middle East. Maybe he gets Saudi Arabia to formally go
Speaker 1: public in their recognition of Israel. Trade, the individual trade
Speaker 1: deals with a Japan, in India and Australia. Perhaps maybe
Speaker 1: some some pullback on the tariffs in China, and positive
Speaker 1: market reaction. Now again, all of those things are certainly
Speaker 1: things he's trying to do, and I think all of
Speaker 1: them are quite tough because here's the other problem that
Speaker 1: he has, and I think I mentioned this during the
Speaker 1: last one. He's I think he's given up a lot
Speaker 1: of leverage because guess what, everybody knows he needs a
Speaker 1: deal and now the UK is teaming up with the EU.
Speaker 1: So I guess not only has Donald Trump impacted the
Speaker 1: politics of Canada. But did he just unbreaks it. I
Speaker 1: guess we call it Brentrance at this point, with the
Speaker 1: UK and the EU essentially doing their own trade deal
Speaker 1: to start working together to deal with America, perhaps that
Speaker 1: he can call that an international victory he brought. He's
Speaker 1: helping reunite Europe economically. But these are the things that
Speaker 1: I think he needs to get to happen, and I
Speaker 1: think he's going to have a hard time doing it.
Speaker 1: And he's going to have an even a harder time
Speaker 1: doing it if he is going to go about this
Speaker 1: presidency sort of working three and a half four days
Speaker 1: a week and not traveling the country and not communicating
Speaker 1: with all of America. Right now, he just rants to
Speaker 1: his supporters. Makes him happy. Untruth social What he doesn't
Speaker 1: fully appreciate is no one sees this stuff outside of
Speaker 1: his filter. Bubb guess what that forty of the countries
Speaker 1: with him, there's another sixty percent that's not with him,
Speaker 1: And he doesn't seem to be that interested in communicating
Speaker 1: with that sixty percent anymore. Trump one point oh was
Speaker 1: Trump one point oh traveled the country? Trump one point oh,
Speaker 1: see seem to want to connect to the public. Perhaps
Speaker 1: This is the best evidence we have yet that Trump
Speaker 1: has no interest in a third term, because if he did,
Speaker 1: he'd be behaving like somebody who wanted to run for reelection.
Speaker 1: He's behaving like somebody who's worn out already at the
Speaker 1: start of a second term. And look, he's not a
Speaker 1: spring chicken. And it could very well be that the
Speaker 1: job itself has become physically taxing. All right, So with that,
Speaker 1: I want to pause here. We're going to sneak in
Speaker 1: a quick break and when we come back. This is
Speaker 1: a fascinating conversation with Jody Vittori, and again we talk
Speaker 1: about a lot of countries and sort of the various
Speaker 1: phases when is something a kleptocracy, when is in it?
Speaker 1: And you know, can can you have sort of pieces
Speaker 1: of a democracy become a kleptocracy, but the democracy itself
Speaker 1: is still healthy enough to push back on authoritarianism. What
Speaker 1: I like about doctor Vittorre is that she is this
Speaker 1: is she is not an academic first, she is a
Speaker 1: practitioner that is now in academia teaching her real life experiences.
Speaker 1: So with that, enjoy the interview. So what is the
Speaker 1: state of the American democracy? This is a question I
Speaker 1: get frequently from friends, neighbors, viewers, listeners. Are we in
Speaker 1: a constitutional crisis? How clear things are? And my answer
Speaker 1: for the last six months is like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: the thing that I'm nervous about is that, you know,
Speaker 1: stage one of an authoritarian regime is when a democracy
Speaker 1: becomes a kleptocracy. And I had been kind of saying
Speaker 1: it without a lot of academic rigor, and then I
Speaker 1: read a terrific piece in Foreign Uh in Foreign Policy
Speaker 1: by Georgetown professor doctor Jody Vittori, who is my guest today,
Speaker 1: who wrote about this very issue, that making the case
Speaker 1: that we are now in an early stage, early stages
Speaker 1: of what if this were happening in any other country,
Speaker 1: we would identify as hey, there, this appears to be
Speaker 1: forming a kleptocracy. So doctor Vittori, it's appreciate you coming on.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me here today. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: So look, let's start with what we mean. You know,
Speaker 1: you hear the word kliptocracy, and I'll be honest, it's like,
Speaker 1: is this some sort of superman word or does it
Speaker 1: have to do with the Kremlin? Right, Like, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people kleptocracy. You know, define it and tell
Speaker 1: me give me a couple of an examples around the
Speaker 1: world that are that you might file under kleptocracy right now.
Speaker 2: Sure, So, kleptocracy literally means rule by thieves, like kleptomania,
Speaker 2: someone who can't stop, you know, stealing, ocracy at the
Speaker 2: end like democracy, government by the people, theocracy government by religion.
Speaker 2: So kleptocracy is just putting those two together. So government by.
Speaker 1: Thieves and government by thieves. Let's take a step back.
Speaker 1: That's pretty that's it. There you go. It's not a pirate. No,
Speaker 1: it's not charming at all. There's no upside. There's never
Speaker 1: a positive case for a kleptocracy, is there.
Speaker 2: No, there is, There is not. Although people will come
Speaker 2: up try to come up with some crazy reasons to
Speaker 2: justify why they should be a kleptocracy, or what they're
Speaker 2: really doing is reforming things, or that's how their culture
Speaker 2: is set up or whatever, but at the end of
Speaker 2: the day, they're very predatory on their citizens and often
Speaker 2: very predatory on the world. So there's not one definition
Speaker 2: of what kinds of things make rule by thieves or
Speaker 2: what's thiefy enough, what's thievery enough to make it a kleptocracy.
Speaker 2: But there's a couple of things that we look at
Speaker 2: that when we're thinking about a place that is a kleptocracy.
Speaker 2: One is that just the amount of money and stuff
Speaker 2: that is being basically stolen by these thieves, and what
Speaker 2: happens to the institutions of a government. And so we
Speaker 2: have different terms that have like if you like ven diagrams,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of overlap. Sleptocracy, grand corruption, and state
Speaker 2: capture often get used interchangeably. There's some slight differences between them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, nationalizing an economy is that automatically a kleptocracy.
Speaker 2: It doesn't have to be. And I will push back
Speaker 2: on one of your first senates is just a little bit.
Speaker 2: There are cases where you have incredibly authoritarian regimes, even
Speaker 2: totalitarian regimes, that don't engage in large scale grand corruption. Okay,
Speaker 2: so there's still hideous lot in Cambodia, lots of petty corruption,
Speaker 2: you know, people paying bribes to just survive. But Poulpot
Speaker 2: was not buying mansions in the south of France or
Speaker 2: anything during this or NII in Tanzania. You know, the
Speaker 2: entire population was impoverished under his regime, but you know
Speaker 2: he wasn't buying fancy mansion somewhere in the States or
Speaker 2: something like that. So they are rare. But you can't
Speaker 2: have authoritarian and even fatality and regimes that are not leptocracies. Okay,
Speaker 2: but most pleptocracies will be at least competitive authoritarianism have
Speaker 2: significant backsliding if they've been democracies ever, because you can't
Speaker 2: have rule by thieves in a functioning government democracy and
Speaker 2: have people not protesting and voting the bumps out and
Speaker 2: so forth. So you need to make sure you stay
Speaker 2: and power run your cryptocracy. So they'll at least be
Speaker 2: very shaky on the democracy side all the way up
Speaker 2: to full fledge totalitarian dictatorships like Kim Jong un or
Speaker 2: you know, North Korea or something like that.
Speaker 1: So we would look at a So what you're describing
Speaker 1: to me, the immediate country that jumps out as Putin
Speaker 1: in Russia, because here's a guy who does have big mansions,
Speaker 1: Here's a people with a bunch of oligarchs who've made
Speaker 1: money off the state. It seems that this is how
Speaker 1: he kind of controls the wealthy diaspora is through some
Speaker 1: sort of investments. I mean, is that the clearest example
Speaker 1: we have probably the world right now in a semi
Speaker 1: large country.
Speaker 2: Well, hiptocracies can come in a lot of different forms,
Speaker 2: so you asked me a couple of different types, and
Speaker 2: they work different ways. The one we most think of
Speaker 2: is probably Russia, and it's you know, think of their oligarchs.
Speaker 2: They're not quite oligarchs nowadays, but the types of oligarchs
Speaker 2: is very very tiny inner grouping that controls the Russian
Speaker 2: economy can decide to send it to war in devastating ways,
Speaker 2: and you know, devastate their next door neighbor in Ukraine.
Speaker 2: The lack of democracy in there. They have kind of
Speaker 2: fake votes, but it's not obviously it's not a functioning
Speaker 2: real democracy, but just the huge amount of money what
Speaker 2: we call assets shripping and so forth that occurs there.
Speaker 2: That's one kind. You have other kleptocracies, like in Afghanistan
Speaker 2: under the Talla Bond Part one and the United States
Speaker 2: where it's just a free for all. In Russia's case,
Speaker 2: you know exactly who's the We have.
Speaker 1: The warlords, right, each warlord had their own it's sort
Speaker 1: of they kind of wanted to control their economic weather
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan.
Speaker 2: So Sudan right now, would be a great example of that,
Speaker 2: just total chaos sort ofcery. And then you have sort
Speaker 2: of the more refined sort of tech kleptocracies. Think of
Speaker 2: Hungary or the UAE. That can be nice places to
Speaker 2: go visit. They seem to have some level of rule
Speaker 2: of law. When you're there, you're not getting you know,
Speaker 2: this is not Afghanistan or Sudan, clearly, you know, there's
Speaker 2: kind of shiny, the nice downtown areas and so forth,
Speaker 2: and they're a much more subtle sort of form of kleptocracy.
Speaker 2: You know, Hungary is is the classic example. Orbond calls
Speaker 2: his country an illiberal democracy. That's his goal, of course,
Speaker 2: is an oxymoron liberal with a small obviously not a
Speaker 2: big l. It's an oxymoron. You can't be democratic and
Speaker 2: and not be liberal with the rule of law and
Speaker 2: in the rule of law institute. But he has made
Speaker 2: it so that his cronies control the media. He makes
Speaker 2: sure his friends get contracts. These are very expensive contracts,
Speaker 2: and so forth. The United States, if it does slip
Speaker 2: into club totocracy, will be unique because we've never had
Speaker 2: a situation where a consolidated democracy with strong governing institutions
Speaker 2: has gone to a full fledged cleptocracy before. It was
Speaker 2: always theoretically possible, but it hasn't happened. There's been grand
Speaker 2: corruption scandals in places, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, I look at Teapot Dome was probably
Speaker 1: the closest we came to looking like a kleptocracy. That
Speaker 1: the taft essentially filled his cabinet with a bunch of
Speaker 1: guys that were just trying to make money off the taxpayers.
Speaker 2: But the United States wouldn't be considered a consolidated democracy
Speaker 2: at that point. We don't really truly become a fully
Speaker 2: fledged consolidated democracy until after the passing the Civil Rights
Speaker 2: Acted in the nineteen six So again, that's not going
Speaker 2: to qualify plus plus is the country in the international system.
Speaker 2: It's it's the reserve currency, it's the largest military.
Speaker 1: Set the rules essentially the rules.
Speaker 2: What happens when the state power in the global system
Speaker 2: them if it becomes a kleptocracy. We don't have a
Speaker 2: historic model for them.
Speaker 1: So I started using the word sort of in this,
Speaker 1: you know, and I was trying to I have the
Speaker 1: episodes to prove it. I'm trying to explain why Donald
Speaker 1: Trump was so obsessed with tariffs, and yes, he cared
Speaker 1: about these trade deficits, and I think misunderstood them, but
Speaker 1: we can. I'm going to set that aside the real
Speaker 1: benefit that he enjoyed in the first term with tariffs,
Speaker 1: that he learned about. And this is how I always
Speaker 1: say Trump is very much as a rote learner, and
Speaker 1: he you know, you can't fool them twice. And so
Speaker 1: what the tariffs allow him to do is encourage people
Speaker 1: to have to come to him for exemptions, and that
Speaker 1: the exemption process is what how we can end up
Speaker 1: in a kleptocracy where he has full control of different
Speaker 1: aspects of the economy because he can decide winners and losers.
Speaker 1: He can decide you get a tariff, you don't get
Speaker 1: a tariff, you get this, you don't get this, and
Speaker 1: that this is what was so dangerous about his tariff policy,
Speaker 1: because it wasn't about the tariffs themselves. It was about
Speaker 1: that he was going to have singular control of the economy.
Speaker 1: But what you just described, I'm actually questioning whether that's
Speaker 1: you know that maybe we don't we have enough checks
Speaker 1: and balances that that he can create an administration that's
Speaker 1: a leptocracy, but he can't really change the system into
Speaker 1: that per se am I being naive, I think.
Speaker 2: A little bit. I mean, our founding fathers did an
Speaker 2: amazing job on taking government and setting up in ways
Speaker 2: with checks and balances.
Speaker 1: I'm it's more remarkable all the time with the stuff
Speaker 1: they thought of. When I think about the emoluments clause,
Speaker 1: I think about you know, the only thing I can't
Speaker 1: figure out is why the heck they thought presidents should
Speaker 1: have pardon power? Like what was the point of getting
Speaker 1: away from the king? But anyway, I could set that
Speaker 1: one little thing aside, the idea that presidents couldn't be
Speaker 1: put on trial very easily and that you might actually
Speaker 1: have to do it in a different way like the
Speaker 1: I mean, it is remarkable to me how they understood
Speaker 1: what could what the public would be able to take,
Speaker 1: and what they couldn't and well.
Speaker 2: And they were in many ways. Some scholars make the
Speaker 2: argument that a lot of what went into the Constitution
Speaker 2: is actually anti corruption methods and institutions as they understood
Speaker 2: them at the time. Things like the emolument's clause. They
Speaker 2: had seen king's bribe with you know, chests of gold,
Speaker 2: they didn't That's why they put it in there. It
Speaker 2: was in the Articles of Confederation. There's not even really debate,
Speaker 2: and putting it in the constitution is just like, well.
Speaker 1: A given, Yeah, of course we're doing that, right.
Speaker 2: Why you have to live in your districts so you
Speaker 2: can't just you know, have these rotten boroughs where you
Speaker 2: know somebody's patron or whatever, just you know, you declare
Speaker 2: them you're MP in parliament. So a lot of the
Speaker 2: constitutions actually corruption as they know it. But it of
Speaker 2: course assumes famously if men were angels, we wouldn't need government.
Speaker 2: They in many ways it's set up to use one
Speaker 2: person's greed against the other. It's one of the things
Speaker 2: I've always loved most about our founding fathers is someone
Speaker 2: who reads a lot of political theory, Marxism and a
Speaker 2: lot of the Islamism under side could have been others
Speaker 2: assume that you could make a perfect society, and our
Speaker 2: founding fathers took people as they were, And so you know,
Speaker 2: it's this idea that Congress should be a check on
Speaker 2: the present actually supposed to be the most important power,
Speaker 2: which you've brought up before in other episodes, in the
Speaker 2: role of the Supreme Court evolves over time, but right
Speaker 2: now there's big concerns because of course Congress isn't acting
Speaker 2: as a check. Indeed, Trump is not unlike in his first.
Speaker 1: Right now, Yeah, that leadership of Congress has been captured
Speaker 1: right now.
Speaker 2: I mean they approved takes that.
Speaker 1: I mean, come on, approved Bobby Kennedy Junior.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, who in a million years would have
Speaker 2: thought that these people are qualified to be in government.
Speaker 2: You know, we have a Supreme Court that basically gave
Speaker 2: a tremendous amount of impunity to Trump himself in the
Speaker 2: United States versus Trump, which is extremely concerning, and a
Speaker 2: Supreme Court that, especially since twenty ten, has really shrump
Speaker 2: what the definition of corruption in any.
Speaker 1: They seem to be really afraid of the voters for
Speaker 1: a group of people that don't have to face the
Speaker 1: voters the Supreme Court, like I do think I think
Speaker 1: Robert's motives are are Pure's the wrong word to use here,
Speaker 1: are noble, even if he's producing outcomes that I understand
Speaker 1: what he's trying to avoid. And I think what we
Speaker 1: all know is that these are lessons. You can't put
Speaker 1: off these lessons, and the longer you put it off,
Speaker 1: the worse it's going to get. But I understand what
Speaker 1: he thinks he's trying to avoid how's that? But they
Speaker 1: look way too captured, They look way too afraid of
Speaker 1: the of the people on this one and of a
Speaker 1: small group of people.
Speaker 2: Well, and the concerns about you know, half million dollars
Speaker 2: win of egos and so forth aren't exactly helping their
Speaker 2: credibility with the people in.
Speaker 1: The fact at all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, that's that's a big part of what
Speaker 2: you deal with in any sort of society, but particularly
Speaker 2: if society really is becoming much more kleptocratic. Is the
Speaker 2: sort of every day it's another how is this okay?
Speaker 2: That degradation of society, its values, its norms, as its
Speaker 2: institutions are allowed to degrade themselves, the society at large
Speaker 2: in any ways degrades itself.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's one of the This feels like
Speaker 1: one of those things, you know, like trying to figure
Speaker 1: out when a recession begins. Well we sort of know
Speaker 1: after we leave it, right, Like it's it's always easier
Speaker 1: to find out when a recession started after we're done
Speaker 1: with the recession than when we're in the middle of it.
Speaker 1: Is that how you would describe trying to you know,
Speaker 1: how do you know when we're in a kleptocracy, perhaps
Speaker 1: we're already in it. We don't feel it right, the
Speaker 1: bog we've been we're of the boiled frog and we
Speaker 1: just don't fully realize it yet or are there more
Speaker 1: signs we should looking for.
Speaker 2: It's I mean, different scholars will some will argue that
Speaker 2: we're already at least in an oligarchy. And this came
Speaker 2: up quite a bit since two thousand and eight, and
Speaker 2: you actually brought up one of your other shows, the
Speaker 2: fact that nobody was actually went to jail for gross
Speaker 2: col jail that led to two thousand and eight that
Speaker 2: at least, if not a kleptocracy, these increasing concerns about
Speaker 2: the United States already being an oligarchy rule by the few,
Speaker 2: were those few. It's an Aristotelian term literally from three
Speaker 2: fifty BC, that you know, these are individuals that are
Speaker 2: in charge for their benefit, not for the benefits society overall.
Speaker 1: And you know what they would argue at the time,
Speaker 1: because this was the argument at the time, right, the
Speaker 1: economy is too big to fail, and even though we
Speaker 1: have these horrible, bad actors, we don't have time to
Speaker 1: decide who was who was nefarious and who was accidental.
Speaker 1: We have to just use we have to bail out
Speaker 1: the economy so that it doesn't destroy the rest of
Speaker 1: the global order. Right like it was, it felt as
Speaker 1: if it was like people exempted the people from punishment
Speaker 1: because you don't understand we're in the middle of it.
Speaker 1: You know, we don't have time to arrest people in
Speaker 1: the middle of a hurricane.
Speaker 2: And I understand the argument, and at the time it
Speaker 2: actually makes a lot of sense. And many of those
Speaker 2: who were in charge had been students of the Great Depression,
Speaker 2: but after the fact, they still didn't go to jail.
Speaker 2: And it wasn't just that. We've seen the role that
Speaker 2: money is playing increasingly in politics. How different. As you know,
Speaker 2: we focus a lot on the Supreme Court and Citizens United,
Speaker 2: but a lot of campaign finance laws and rules have
Speaker 2: actually been degraded under the courts, in particularly the Supreme
Speaker 2: Court over the years to a shell of what they
Speaker 2: were in the past. The amount of what constituted corruption
Speaker 2: has shrunk, the ability of politicians to accept money. You know,
Speaker 2: one of the interesting things about the definition of a
Speaker 2: conflict of interest overall is we know it's very it
Speaker 2: degrades a democracy, but conflict of interest doesn't actually have
Speaker 2: to be illegal, unlike Briberry or something where there's illegality.
Speaker 2: The concept is of a rational person and could have
Speaker 2: questions about that civil servant or that politician and where
Speaker 2: their interests lies. That's where the conflict of interest is.
Speaker 1: It doesn't make it a cry, doesn't make it illegal,
Speaker 1: but it makes it unethical.
Speaker 2: It makes it highly unethical. But it also just degredes
Speaker 2: your overall democracy and your overall governing system. And that's
Speaker 2: the kind of things that we see with the Supreme
Speaker 2: Court and the expensive fishing trips and the expense of winnebagos.
Speaker 2: Clearly I need better friends because I'm not getting free Winnebago's.
Speaker 2: The ability for large amounts of money to be bundled
Speaker 2: and so forth and given to politicians, the weakening of
Speaker 2: the rules of what they can use for personal use
Speaker 2: versus non personal use, in the role of private loans,
Speaker 2: even book sales, stuff like that.
Speaker 1: So around you know, it used to be worse, though, Jodie,
Speaker 1: I have to tell you, like I always love to
Speaker 1: tell this story to my students when I'm teaching about
Speaker 1: Like as bad as it seems now, it used to
Speaker 1: be worse. So did you know that in nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 1: So in nineteen ninety two, it was my first year
Speaker 1: covering campaign politic, and that year we had this astronomical
Speaker 1: amount of members of Congress decided to not seek re election.
Speaker 1: And there was a variety of reasons for that. Number one,
Speaker 1: you had a check bouncing scandal where they got to
Speaker 1: write checks without any money to cover it, and the
Speaker 1: government just covered it. That was a weird and even
Speaker 1: when you go back to this day, you're like, I
Speaker 1: can't believe members of Congress just had this sort of
Speaker 1: create a checkbook without money in it and it always
Speaker 1: cash year less, Like that's crazy. There was also a
Speaker 1: reapportionment year, and so people don't like to run a
Speaker 1: new lines. But there was one other thing. They had
Speaker 1: just changed the law. Prior to nineteen ninety two, a
Speaker 1: member of Congress could retire and keep their campaign money
Speaker 1: as their own personal just like an IRA, Like here
Speaker 1: you go, I mean, I'm after nineteen ninety two. In theory,
Speaker 1: members of Congress are not allowed to personally pocket campaign
Speaker 1: money once they're done running for office. But prior to
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety two, so Congress could do that like so
Speaker 1: I do. I take your point here, but we've actually
Speaker 1: had the looser laws in the past that allowed for
Speaker 1: some shocking things like what I just described.
Speaker 2: In some ways yes, in some ways no, And the
Speaker 2: laws are always changing, and when you make a law,
Speaker 2: someone finds a loophole, you know, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: That's why I always say money finds, like, it's really
Speaker 1: hard to legislate campaign finance because money finds a way, right,
Speaker 1: life finds a way. Money finds a way, like you
Speaker 1: know five oh one C fours, five oh one C three's.
Speaker 1: You know, we came up with the all of these
Speaker 1: weird tax code things that people have found where you're like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: as long as it's not advocacy, you can use it.
Speaker 1: Registering people to vote is not advocacy, so you can
Speaker 1: use this dark money to do that, right, Like, we
Speaker 1: keep changing, but there's definitely, there's definitely been. I think
Speaker 1: it's really hard to legislate money out of politics.
Speaker 2: It will be, But when we look at the United
Speaker 2: States compared to other countries, the ability to give un
Speaker 2: a little bit amounts of dark money under many circumstances
Speaker 2: is unique. That's their point, you're and Martial Fund did
Speaker 2: a really interesting study and looked at a lot of
Speaker 2: countries in their campaign finance loss and everybody's got a
Speaker 2: loophole somewhere that everybody thinks is crazy. But you know,
Speaker 2: this whole Citizens United and dark money capability, that one
Speaker 2: really stands out in the world that you don't have
Speaker 2: another that you really don't see in other places. When
Speaker 2: you get a big corruption scandal with campaign finance in
Speaker 2: Britain or something, you're talking about a few million dollars,
Speaker 2: not tens and tens and millions of dollars now.
Speaker 1: Be a million dollars these days is just a state
Speaker 1: legislative race.
Speaker 2: And we just kind of look at it like, oh,
Speaker 2: isn't that cute? You know, when you're complaining about their
Speaker 2: coruption scandal, they're like, oh, let me, let's let's talk here.
Speaker 1: So so, so what's the next step for us on
Speaker 1: this dark road to cliptocracy?
Speaker 2: So the kinds of things, the rules that keep coming
Speaker 2: out are are more and more concerning. We talked about
Speaker 2: campaign financing, the issues with that, but given my teaching
Speaker 2: and my career, I started working on these issues. Actually
Speaker 2: when I was back in the military on an anti
Speaker 2: corruption task force. What really stands out for me is
Speaker 2: the fact that as the Trump administration has come in
Speaker 2: this time, they have undermined so many of the anti
Speaker 2: corruption rules and the Department of Justice institutions that are
Speaker 2: meant to minimize the levels of corruption coming in. So
Speaker 2: we already had lots of issues and lots of loopholes
Speaker 2: and questions about enforcement, like with two thousand and eight
Speaker 2: and nobody going to jail, but things like we're just
Speaker 2: not the fact that this ties with their constitutional crisis concerns,
Speaker 2: the fact that the government said, we're just not going
Speaker 2: to enforce the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for the next
Speaker 2: six months. Yeah, and we're not going to enforce the law,
Speaker 2: ironical ly, which passed in Trump won that most anonymous
Speaker 2: shell companies. Not only are we not going to enforce it,
Speaker 2: we're going to make an interim final rule that is
Speaker 2: the exact opposite of what Congress legislated. And and you know, Congress,
Speaker 2: good luck with that, and the court's good luck with that.
Speaker 2: These are very frightening issues. And then you add crypto
Speaker 2: to it, not only the Trump family and their business
Speaker 2: interests with crypto, but just putting crypto friendly individuals in there.
Speaker 2: Lots of people have different opinions on what is the
Speaker 2: value of crypto or does it have a value outside
Speaker 2: of money laundering and corruption.
Speaker 1: People have I'm pretty cynical about it. It feels like the
Speaker 1: entire crypto industry decided to get on board Trump in
Speaker 1: the last six months of the campaign because they saw
Speaker 1: that as the fastest way to make their bitcoin investments
Speaker 1: worth more than they actually are.
Speaker 2: So our prior Secretary of the Treasury, Janet Yellen, had
Speaker 2: had noted and lots of people noted it before, that
Speaker 2: the United States was already the easiest place in the
Speaker 2: world to launder your money now with not enforcing the face.
Speaker 1: I watched Ozark. We saw that, like you know, right,
Speaker 1: Ozark really taught everybody how to do Oh okay, you
Speaker 1: treat that in the Americans. I look at every travel
Speaker 1: agency now with skepticism thanks to the Americans. And you're
Speaker 1: just sitting there going, yeah, casinos makes sense to me.
Speaker 2: Let's throw some crypto in there. What could go wrong?
Speaker 2: And let's let it go and more and more, and yeah,
Speaker 2: let's let normal people get involved. What could go wrong?
Speaker 2: So you've already got as a place where we have
Speaker 2: lots of dirty money flowing around. We don't actually know
Speaker 2: how much because we have we have more secrecy rules
Speaker 2: than about ninety different countries in the world. The standard
Speaker 2: is not anonymous shell companies. For example, the United States
Speaker 2: on January one, twenty twenty one, past the Transparency Act
Speaker 2: as part of the National Defense Authorisation Act. They did
Speaker 2: have to override Trump's feto for it, not because of
Speaker 2: the act that ended this anonymous disability to anonymous shell companies.
Speaker 2: So if you have anonymous shell companies, we have anonymous trust.
Speaker 2: We have all sorts of anonymity that we treat as
Speaker 2: basically the getaway car for all sorts of illicit money
Speaker 2: coming by with the United States. But if you think
Speaker 2: of a society with so much dirty money coming in
Speaker 2: into its politics, into its economics, sectors, into we've often
Speaker 2: focused in the federal government, but state and local governments
Speaker 2: are particularly susceptible to corruption and what that does to
Speaker 2: your larger country, what it does to your democracy. So
Speaker 2: we were already the easiest place to launder money, and
Speaker 2: we basically put out a giant welcome sign that says,
Speaker 2: bring it here, bring it on, and here's if you
Speaker 2: have five million dollars, you can buy some citizenship too.
Speaker 1: Well, that's the Yeah, that's right, and we're not asking
Speaker 1: I guess there's no character test with that. That's whether
Speaker 1: your check claars, yes, are there. It's interesting you brought
Speaker 1: up state legislatures. I mean, I just you know it is.
Speaker 1: I always say that the least corrupt legislature in America's
Speaker 1: Congress because we have more eyeballs on it. The fewer
Speaker 1: eyeballs you have on the state level and the local level,
Speaker 1: that's where you're usually you know, shoot city councils. To
Speaker 1: me of the most corrupt corrupt a ball. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying they're all corrupt corruptible, because you know, developers, we
Speaker 1: all know. You know that that stories as old as time.
Speaker 1: But since you brought up states, are there certain states
Speaker 1: that are worse than others that stand out to you?
Speaker 2: So states don't get evaluated the same way as countries do.
Speaker 2: This is one of the issues for the United States.
Speaker 2: Were such a big country and we kind of have
Speaker 2: fifty plus you know, we had DC and Puerto Rico
Speaker 2: and all that, different qualities, different local governments, different civil societies.
Speaker 2: So you know, when we think of what place is
Speaker 2: the most corrupt in the world or whatever. There's there's
Speaker 2: the corruption Barometer that Transparencion National does. There's the Corruption
Speaker 2: Perceptions Index, there's the World Bank Governance Index. There's all
Speaker 2: these indexes, but none of the states. There's only been
Speaker 2: a couple attempts to even look at how corrupt states are,
Speaker 2: and there's a lot of issues in even trying to
Speaker 2: measure a couple of different ones. One of them looked
Speaker 2: at what were some of the worst states when it
Speaker 2: came to their actual laws. For those who live in Rjimia,
Speaker 2: it actually comes out as one of the worst ones
Speaker 2: because they have some of the worst laws and you know, well.
Speaker 1: Their campaign finance laws are garbage. I mean, just anybody
Speaker 1: can write a check.
Speaker 2: Yeah you can, you can have you can have business
Speaker 2: in front of the state legislature and write a check
Speaker 2: and no problem.
Speaker 1: Right, which is that means no investigation, nothing right, No,
Speaker 1: And there's huge loopholes in it. South Dakota, I know,
Speaker 1: has a crazy trust law that allows people to hide
Speaker 1: money they've they've I know they were They changed their
Speaker 1: law on purpose in order to attract people to do this.
Speaker 2: Jorida recently did that as well. Florida made it easier
Speaker 2: to hide money. It was interesting too, because they were
Speaker 2: as far as you could tell, it was actually changed
Speaker 2: to the Walmart family, or at least that was the
Speaker 2: main lobbyist behind it, but it was, you know, as
Speaker 2: far as local media reports. You know, hey, if Wyoming
Speaker 2: can do that, why can't we make it easier to
Speaker 2: do anonymous trust which are.
Speaker 1: Made it a competition thing. Don't you want this big
Speaker 1: money in this state? It's be good for the state,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: But it's Wyoming. It's been good for a tiny number
Speaker 2: of you know, five or six key individuals. Actually it's
Speaker 2: not helped the typical population at all. And it's become
Speaker 2: the scam one of the scam capitals of the world.
Speaker 2: And strangely enough, like North Korean's, North Korean government was
Speaker 2: using those the ability to form these anonymous companies and
Speaker 2: trusts and so forth in Wyoming, particularly to undermine US
Speaker 2: national security, to be able to get into companies and
Speaker 2: so forth and make these fake LinkedIn profiles and so forth,
Speaker 2: and get their people embedded in companies, secrets and so forth,
Speaker 2: and money. So it's undermining US national security with no
Speaker 2: real benefit to the state of Wyoming itself. And so
Speaker 2: other ways we measure states is just an attempt to
Speaker 2: look at do their laws actually meet the needs of
Speaker 2: their citizens and stuff. Not surprisingly, Southern states do particularly
Speaker 2: poorly by that. A recent book that literally just came
Speaker 2: out in the last month by Michael Johnston and Osgan
Speaker 2: Dincer tries to tries to do different assessments of states
Speaker 2: and try to figure out looking at things like police
Speaker 2: violence and its links to racial politics and the environment
Speaker 2: within those states.
Speaker 1: So one of the ways that I try to make
Speaker 1: myself feel better about this current era is is how
Speaker 1: similar to me it looks to the early twentieth century.
Speaker 1: And you know, I look at the early twentieth century
Speaker 1: and we can sit here and we can talk about
Speaker 1: the Robert Barons, and there was a lot of those issues,
Speaker 1: but it also was a massive period of reform, political reform,
Speaker 1: economic reform. Clearly, the public wasn't happy, and you saw movements.
Speaker 1: We had direct election of senators, we got women the
Speaker 1: right to vote, We've got the trustbusters, and you know
Speaker 1: this idea that you know, maybe the government ought to
Speaker 1: be involved in regulating business. What let's assume we are
Speaker 1: we are going to enter a period of reform, and
Speaker 1: I think that the fact to the matter is the
Speaker 1: most likely scenario. If we don't like how things turn
Speaker 1: out in this administration as a public, we're probably going
Speaker 1: to correct in that direction, Like we're going to be
Speaker 1: looking for, you know, ways to make sure we don't
Speaker 1: have this happen again, right that whatever we decide that is, So,
Speaker 1: what is some reform legislation that, you know, assuming we
Speaker 1: do head in that direction, what makes sense? What would
Speaker 1: you like to see or is this stuff that's already
Speaker 1: on the books and we just need better enforcement of
Speaker 1: the laws on the books and a Justice department focused
Speaker 1: on it.
Speaker 2: So a couple of things are going to have to happen.
Speaker 2: And a lot of these have been put out by
Speaker 2: Lewitzky ways Eyeblatt. I mean, there's lots of these out.
Speaker 2: Some of these are going to be a surprise. A
Speaker 2: lot of it is just making politics so that people
Speaker 2: have a greater input into the politics themselves. And so
Speaker 2: that's going to include anti Jerry Mandarin, so that people
Speaker 2: choose their politicians more thanians choosing their ob.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to double the side of Congress. I
Speaker 1: think that that would be a huge way of trying
Speaker 1: to get Congress closer to the people, and you would
Speaker 1: minimize jerry mannering anyway, go ahead.
Speaker 2: And the size of Congress, but you're still going to
Speaker 2: have to make it anti jerry mandering rules. Both parties
Speaker 2: have played with jerry mandering. The Republicans took it to
Speaker 2: a new level, but both sides have played with it.
Speaker 2: So jerrymandering, you're going to have to do some sort
Speaker 2: of anti citizens united. You're going to have to do
Speaker 2: an amendment to.
Speaker 1: Over the going to need to be a constitualment, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So there are probably some constitutional amendments or some
Speaker 2: creative ways to get around them. Popular elections would help
Speaker 2: a great deal so that you no longer have that
Speaker 2: imbalance between rural and less populated areas versus Well.
Speaker 1: If you double the side, I will I will make this.
Speaker 1: I'm making this argument. If you double the sides of
Speaker 1: the House and there's no constitutional mement needed, then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, the electoral college isn't a problem anymore,
Speaker 1: by the way, because you change the math. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: do change the math, you know. I But and the
Speaker 1: reason I'm like obsessed with that is anything that it's
Speaker 1: a constitutional amendment, I'm always looking for because we know
Speaker 1: how difficult it is, Yeah, but they're non possible.
Speaker 2: I mean think at the sixteenth Amendment was the income
Speaker 2: tax Amendment, and that was all about corruption and the
Speaker 2: fact that you had Robert parents and they weren't paying
Speaker 2: their taxes. Wow, that sounds really familiar lately. Obviously they
Speaker 2: immediately found loopholes, et cetera. But this was supposed to
Speaker 2: be one of the means that you limited corruption, you
Speaker 2: limited oligarchy in whatever year past nineteen twenty whatever this was.
Speaker 2: This was one of the major reforms and it was
Speaker 2: it was amendment that passed incredibly rapidly. So it's hard,
Speaker 2: it's not impossible. But with some of the Supreme Court
Speaker 2: decisions that have come down, Trump versus the United States
Speaker 2: is probably the most frightening one. And then you know
Speaker 2: movements to reform the Supreme Court itself. You know who
Speaker 2: gets to pick the judges, maybe having a certain term
Speaker 2: limits on the court. You know, people so many years
Speaker 2: and then go back to their old courts, for example,
Speaker 2: so you have a concerant rotation or giving every present
Speaker 2: two you know, two justices that come in so that
Speaker 2: you're not always having this makes your fight. So these
Speaker 2: are some of the standard things that really stand out,
Speaker 2: and a lot of the just the campaign finance reforms
Speaker 2: sort of things that were there in the past, sort
Speaker 2: of getting back to the original founders limiting lobbying. The
Speaker 2: you know, lobbying was not an enforceable contract in the
Speaker 2: United States and the eighteen seventies, per the Supreme Court,
Speaker 2: it wasn't criminal, but if you got double crossed by
Speaker 2: you know, if you paid a lobbyist and then the
Speaker 2: lobbyists felt like they didn't get paid enough, they couldn't
Speaker 2: take you to court because it wasn't considered a enforceable
Speaker 2: contract because you were monifiing your citizenship.
Speaker 1: So when did that change?
Speaker 2: It starts to change it. It's it's part it's affirmed
Speaker 2: by the Supreme Court up to the eighteen seventies, and
Speaker 2: then starting in the nineteen thirties is really where this starts,
Speaker 2: sort of like bit by bit sort of getting taken apart,
Speaker 2: and then it really hits gangbusters after twenty ten.
Speaker 1: It's a you know, it's amazing. My friend Brodie Mellins
Speaker 1: and his brother a terrific book on the lobbying that's
Speaker 1: out right now called The Wolves of k Street, and
Speaker 1: the basic point is sort of like the world of
Speaker 1: lobbying has gotten so perverted now. It used to be
Speaker 1: it was corporate interests versus the public interest. Right There'd
Speaker 1: be some advocacy group making one case and corporations would
Speaker 1: make their own case, and ultimately the politician attitudes between
Speaker 1: the citizens group or the corporate group. Now you have
Speaker 1: two companies in the say, the same sector, who are
Speaker 1: essentially trying to put the other company out of business,
Speaker 1: and they each use a lobbyist, and it's sort of like,
Speaker 1: we're not involved as citizens. It's just two companies arguing
Speaker 1: who can weaponize government regulation in their favor, And like,
Speaker 1: we've really perverted lobbying really down to that, and it
Speaker 1: is it is. The concept of lobbying makes a lot
Speaker 1: of sense to me, as by the way, the federalist
Speaker 1: papers point out they expected some form of this citizens
Speaker 1: groups things like that to various factions, But how it
Speaker 1: works right now in Washington, I don't know where citizens
Speaker 1: go to lobby.
Speaker 2: Put it that way, and that's where we really start
Speaker 2: getting back to our original discussion of the concerns about cleptocracy.
Speaker 2: We're in a kleptocracy. The institution of the state are
Speaker 2: morphed in a way that the national interests the interests
Speaker 2: of the citizens at best or secondary. They're definitely not
Speaker 2: the primary. And that goes for domestic politics, foreign politics.
Speaker 2: They're definitely not secondary, maybe tertiary. In some states like
Speaker 2: Democratic Republic of Congo or something, they don't even show up.
Speaker 2: They're not you know, they're not even there. And so
Speaker 2: your discussion about different lobbyists for different industry arguing with
Speaker 2: each other, where does this where does the citizen go
Speaker 2: to have their interests brought forward? There are some controversial
Speaker 2: studies that say citizens actually have very little influence on government.
Speaker 2: Those are controversial there, and there's a lot of legitimate
Speaker 2: arguments that the methodology was flawed in those particular studies.
Speaker 2: But certainly we've seen the realm where money seems to
Speaker 2: at least buy more influence work for civil society. We
Speaker 2: would often go work with the staffers for various members
Speaker 2: of Congress. They were wonderful staffers, they were great to
Speaker 2: work with. But I live in or outside of Washington,
Speaker 2: d C. My lobbyist friends would meet with the senator,
Speaker 2: not the staffers, just that access. I mean the advocacy groups,
Speaker 2: and these included religious groups and so forth.
Speaker 1: Everybody rationalizes it. Now. I mean, I love how you
Speaker 1: know all these groups that Trump's trying to target, they're
Speaker 1: hiring Trump's favorite lobbyist, Pride Palace. You know, basically, you're right.
Speaker 1: You know it's sort of and again to me, that's
Speaker 1: how you know you're in a kleptocracy when when somebody
Speaker 1: who wants to play by the rules decides, well, that's
Speaker 1: what the rules are, so I got to play by
Speaker 1: those rules. I'm not going to play by the rules.
Speaker 1: I'm playing by his rules.
Speaker 2: But one of the things you also see in a
Speaker 2: kleptocracy is where the institutions it make it easier to
Speaker 2: engage in kleptocracy, and you start getting on a vicious cycle.
Speaker 2: So when you say things like you're not in forcing
Speaker 2: the Foreign for a Practices Act, you're not enforcing anti
Speaker 2: anonymous shell company things, you're going to gut the I
Speaker 2: R S's ability to go after major taxpayers. Doesn't mean
Speaker 2: you're in one, but it's a very concerning set of
Speaker 2: red flags that you're making it easier to engage in
Speaker 2: significant corruption.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm going to be a bit cynical here,
Speaker 1: but we've essentially put out a welcome that for anybody
Speaker 1: that wants to hide money in the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1: And forget forgetting us, forget Switzerland anymore, forget the Caymans.
Speaker 1: Are we as good as anybody.
Speaker 2: As I mentioned before, former Secretary the Treasury Yellen's were
Speaker 2: the easiest place to lounder money and to Tax Justice
Speaker 2: Network and plenty of other groups that have agreed with her,
Speaker 2: and it's gotten muchy.
Speaker 1: This is over and above the Caymans, right, who is
Speaker 1: notorious back in the day.
Speaker 2: Right, The Tax Justice Network tries to assess these and
Speaker 2: the top ones are always the Cayman Islands, usually Switzerland,
Speaker 2: British Virgin Islands, and US somewhere in the top ones.
Speaker 2: I haven't looked at this year's, but we're always in
Speaker 2: like the top three, which is not a top three
Speaker 2: you want to be in, but that was those Those
Speaker 2: are even before we get into the changes since January twentieth,
Speaker 2: with you know, enabling further enabling crypto, saying you're not
Speaker 2: going to enforce anti coruption laws, gutting various asset finance,
Speaker 2: asset forfeiture, and other task forces that have have now
Speaker 2: been dissolved by the Attorney General. The Golden passport thing
Speaker 2: is not really helping the situation in that regard because
Speaker 2: you're saying, hey, pay me off and you can have
Speaker 2: US citizenship and all the rights and protections that are
Speaker 2: actually that go with it. But even before that, there
Speaker 2: were concerns. The reasons the United States was already at
Speaker 2: the top. It was the easiest place to form anonymous
Speaker 2: shell companies, anonymous trusts, et cetera. It was the loopholes
Speaker 2: for being able to evade tax and stuff are already
Speaker 2: incredibly high those shell companies and through other means, but
Speaker 2: also things like tax sharing information share. So when you
Speaker 2: filed your taxes, assuming you did it since we just
Speaker 2: passed tax day, yep, you had to file whether you
Speaker 2: had any overseas bank accounts. Right, United States with Switzerland
Speaker 2: in particlar was something called Swiss Leaks in twenty sixteen
Speaker 2: where they found out all these Americans are hiding their
Speaker 2: money in Switzerland. They require countries, they've had a lot
Speaker 2: of pressure and companies to send their the information on
Speaker 2: bank accounts of American citizens to the US, but the
Speaker 2: United States doesn't share that information with other countries in return.
Speaker 2: So what that did is become well, open all your
Speaker 2: bank accounts in the States and get an anonymous shell company,
Speaker 2: get an anonymous druss. You can't just directly open anonymous
Speaker 2: shell company into a US banks, It's not quite that
Speaker 2: easy because banks have rules under the bank secrecy on
Speaker 2: and so forth. But you can use that as an
Speaker 2: ability to put money hedge funds or other areas to
Speaker 2: laander your money. And so if you're a Swiss citizen,
Speaker 2: you know that information isn't going to be shared back
Speaker 2: to Switzerland. If you're American citizen with a bank account
Speaker 2: in Switzerland, that information is going to come to the
Speaker 2: US government. If you're a Swiss citizen hiding your money
Speaker 2: in the United States, that's not going to go to
Speaker 2: this was government. So that started bringing in that made
Speaker 2: the United States an even better place to launder their money.
Speaker 1: So to close the loop, then, is it the Trump
Speaker 1: administration that is brought upon a kleptocracy or we already
Speaker 1: had all of the elements of it and whoever's president
Speaker 1: could essentially lean in or lean out, depending on what
Speaker 1: they choose.
Speaker 2: I would put it if the United States is going
Speaker 2: into a kleptocracy, and the obviously the warning signs were there.
Speaker 2: The old sun also rises quote from Hemingway that everybody uses.
Speaker 2: You know, how did you go bankrupt slowly and then
Speaker 2: quickly or something like that. I would say the same
Speaker 2: thing with with kleptocracy, and that is how did the
Speaker 2: United States become a cleptocracy? Well, you know, there's this
Speaker 2: chiseling away of laws, campaign finance, United.
Speaker 1: Sentensen United blah blah blah, thirty years of this reality to.
Speaker 2: Avoider taxes, the fact that IRS was already underfunded and
Speaker 2: unable to go after tax avoidance, tax avoidance and money laundering,
Speaker 2: even though they're not taxing the same use the exact
Speaker 2: same processes. So whether you're hiding or fentanyl, you're hiding
Speaker 2: money from your wife, you're about to divorce, you don't
Speaker 2: pay ali money, they're the same processes, not from the
Speaker 2: same organizations in the same places. So that sort of
Speaker 2: stuff was already there. But then you know, whatever duct
Speaker 2: tape was kind of holding the system together and things
Speaker 2: were actually starting to improve a little bit in the
Speaker 2: United States with these new laws, with the new regulations
Speaker 2: that were going in, Like that's just sort of that's
Speaker 2: rapidly marg as we speak.
Speaker 1: Let me get you out of here on this. How
Speaker 1: did you become an expert in this? What brought you
Speaker 1: to You know, when you're in college, You're like, I'm
Speaker 1: going to be a specialist on understanding clip you know
Speaker 1: what happens when a government becomes corrupt and how corrupt
Speaker 1: government's happened. But I'm guessing that is in how you
Speaker 1: got into this. How'd you end up give me your
Speaker 1: a little bit of your origin story here before we got.
Speaker 2: Yeah, anti eruption of specials was definitely not on my
Speaker 2: BINGO card. Actually, I didn't go to university. I went
Speaker 2: to military academy, okay, and I studied engineering and.
Speaker 1: Which which academy?
Speaker 2: Of course academy, and so I was you know, I
Speaker 2: went into the intelligence career field. I ended up working
Speaker 2: on issues with terrorism, finance, the.
Speaker 1: Tax payer, so you saw how money was moved very corruptly.
Speaker 2: I got very interested when I was on peacekeeping in
Speaker 2: the Balkans, I worked on some terrorism finance related issues.
Speaker 2: Ended up getting pulled into NATO's only anti corruption task
Speaker 2: force ever, which was in Afghanistan, which you know you
Speaker 2: really start to under at the time, Afghanistan was the
Speaker 2: second most corrupt country in the world or new the
Speaker 2: Transparency International. When I left, it was the most corrupt.
Speaker 2: So there we go those who can't do teach. Yeah,
Speaker 2: But and it kept working on it, and I come
Speaker 2: from corruption from a different perspective than a lot of others.
Speaker 2: Most come into it from law enforcement or human rights perspective.
Speaker 2: I come from it from a hard military perspective because I.
Speaker 1: Feel like a national security perspective, really.
Speaker 2: Very national security, very hard power. What does it do
Speaker 2: you know? I served in a Rock, I served in Afghanistan.
Speaker 2: Both were mission failures in many ways because of corruption.
Speaker 1: Corruption, right, Yeah, Well, when.
Speaker 2: You talk about why did Afghanistan fall to the Taliban,
Speaker 2: ultimately it's either Pakistan or corruption. Always one of those.
Speaker 1: I was just going to say. And some might argue
Speaker 1: Pakistan and corruption go hand in hand.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, Yeah, and they're they're definitely overlapping, overlapping circles there.
Speaker 2: So I kept working on it and realized that not
Speaker 2: many people from a military background were writing on it
Speaker 2: and had had that academic background to like, what is corruption?
Speaker 2: What is cliptocers? You define it? Why do we get mission?
Speaker 2: Phillyre out of these things? And just kept working on it.
Speaker 1: Well, your students are pretty lucky. That's a good back.
Speaker 1: That's a different background. You're not somebody who's just been
Speaker 1: in the world of hypotheticals, the world of you know,
Speaker 1: London School of Economics, No disrespect to them, but sort
Speaker 1: of a different you know, more of a real world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a very combat boot sort of on the
Speaker 2: ground and you know, babble and Iraq in the Balkans
Speaker 2: sort of.
Speaker 1: You saw political theory get implemented rather than just read it.
Speaker 1: We're not we're not implemented, but either way, you.
Speaker 2: Know, I had my PhD and I landed on the
Speaker 2: ground and I'm like, you know, some some things that
Speaker 2: the theory worked, and some were like boy, that was prep.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it was the school. I'm sure it's like that.
Speaker 1: That's where the Mike Tyson quotes comes in, right, quote
Speaker 1: comes in. Everybody's got a plan until they get punched
Speaker 1: in the face. Absolutely sounds similar. Hey, uh, doctor Jody Vittori.
Speaker 1: I learned a lot. It was a very provocative piece,
Speaker 1: but I thought a necessary one. And it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: this isn't just about throwing around names, right, throwing around
Speaker 1: this is this These are this is late stage democracy.
Speaker 1: When you start to lose it, and I think we
Speaker 1: need to be a little more aware of it.
Speaker 2: So thank you now, I thank you for having me
Speaker 2: here today. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: You got it. So i'd love your comments about this
Speaker 1: interview with Jody Battori here, what you think of whether
Speaker 1: we are at a kleptocracy and what we can do
Speaker 1: about it. You know, I do think that the issue
Speaker 1: of money in politics, which is I've kind of been
Speaker 1: hitting on that theme a little bit with with with
Speaker 1: the variety of my guests here. You know, the ease
Speaker 1: with which money circulates in the political system does make
Speaker 1: this the opportunity to pay to play, pay to survive,
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call it, it is it is.
Speaker 1: It is just it is more likely to happen, and
Speaker 1: it is a problem. And we're going to need more
Speaker 1: politicians willing to essentially not be tempted by the opportunity
Speaker 1: that is out there for pay to play and instead
Speaker 1: try to find some laws that perhaps protect the democracy
Speaker 1: from that. But voters are going to have to care
Speaker 1: about it enough to scare these politicians into doing it.
Speaker 1: All right, let's take a few questions. Let's dig in
Speaker 1: to the file what we call around here, they ask
Speaker 1: Chuck File, ask Chuck, there it is. You got the music?
Speaker 1: So that helps get me in the mood. All right,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to plow forward here with four questions
Speaker 1: and I'm going to kind of keep my answers tight
Speaker 1: and we'll go from there. In a society this one
Speaker 1: comes from Dave in Alexandria, Virginia, in a society that
Speaker 1: is granted personhood to corporations, I assume he's kind of
Speaker 1: referring to citizens United. Has it come time to grant
Speaker 1: the same protection to the state and it's populous in
Speaker 1: preventing them from reckless and false statements? Is it time
Speaker 1: to make false, active and malicious statements by the government
Speaker 1: or actively filed political candidates illegal. So I think what
Speaker 1: you have to get at is intent, right. It is
Speaker 1: somebody making a false statement because they believe in that falsehood,
Speaker 1: or they're making the false statement because they know it's false, right,
Speaker 1: And that's you know, motive when it comes to speech,
Speaker 1: is a very difficult thing to prove. And I'll be
Speaker 1: honest with you, I read this question about three or
Speaker 1: four different times, and I was thinking about not bothering
Speaker 1: with it and not answering it. Because I was worried
Speaker 1: it would come across the wrong way to folks and stuff.
Speaker 1: But I wanted to address it because I understand where
Speaker 1: you're coming from, right, which is like when you know,
Speaker 1: should and I think I'd go deeper than that. You know,
Speaker 1: could a could it almost like voters file a class
Speaker 1: class action suit against a Maybe it's a sitting governor,
Speaker 1: maybe it's a sitting president, Maybe it's the HHS. Right,
Speaker 1: you know, does a group of Texans decide to file
Speaker 1: a class action suit against HHS and Secretary Kennedy for
Speaker 1: misleading people on the measles vaccine? Now, look, there's obviously
Speaker 1: indemnity and government government officials are supposed to be indemnified,
Speaker 1: and it's very hard to sue them on a personal basis.
Speaker 1: You could get to defamation and things like that, but
Speaker 1: I guess I would, You know, I was trying to
Speaker 1: think of what would be an example of a suit
Speaker 1: that might get standing. Right, did did did a government
Speaker 1: official provide essentially mislead the public and it led to deaths? Right?
Speaker 1: This would be the measles Right? Is there is there
Speaker 1: some standing there? So I guess my answer to this
Speaker 1: question is I think this would be difficult to make happen.
Speaker 1: I think there's a you know, elected officials have, particularly
Speaker 1: in Congress, have protection the Speech and Debate Clause the
Speaker 1: First Amendment does does sort of protect. You know, you
Speaker 1: have a right to lie. You know you have a
Speaker 1: right to mislead. The question is maliciously intent. There's defamation.
Speaker 1: Did your you know, did you do your misstatements to
Speaker 1: purposely cause harm? Right, there's there's sort of you do
Speaker 1: have to can acted the motive there. But in coming
Speaker 1: up with an example, the one that would perhaps could
Speaker 1: have standing, and I'd be fascinated to see if there
Speaker 1: was a federal court that would take this, and what
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court would say is if a group of
Speaker 1: citizens in Texas sued the sued Kennedy and HHS essentially
Speaker 1: by saying that they they helped they helped enhance the
Speaker 1: measles outbreak which have then caused this damaged loss of life,
Speaker 1: et cetera. So it would be on I think health
Speaker 1: statements that I think perhaps the government would be the
Speaker 1: most vulnerable on in something like that, especially if you
Speaker 1: can scientifically prove that they were just wrong on the facts.
Speaker 1: I mean, we have a there's the Surgeon General of
Speaker 1: Florida is a massive misinformer on so many things on health.
Speaker 1: He's the one that's been trying to convince people to
Speaker 1: take floride out of water, misleading people about the damaged
Speaker 1: floride could do like anything, if you just injected fluoride
Speaker 1: into your body at you know, a whole tube of
Speaker 1: toothpaste of it immediately or whatever it is, yeah, it
Speaker 1: could poison you. But that is not the amount of
Speaker 1: fluoride in water that is taking place. So I would
Speaker 1: love to see a class action suit about health advisories
Speaker 1: from the government that that possibly, possibly could be something
Speaker 1: that would put them at risk. Certainly would be an
Speaker 1: interesting and interesting thing to watch unfold in the courts.
Speaker 1: All right. Next question here comes from James E. Are
Speaker 1: there any realistic possibilities to stop jerrymandering? It gets tricky
Speaker 1: because this comes down to a state and county law
Speaker 1: thing correct. For example, if Congress makes a law banning it,
Speaker 1: the states don't have to adhere to that. I feel
Speaker 1: that this problem could fix a lot of Washington by
Speaker 1: promoting more moderate candidates and more competitive races. Curious about
Speaker 1: your thoughts of what it would take to ban jerrymandering.
Speaker 1: So here's the problem. If you start banning. You know,
Speaker 1: one person's jerry mander is another person's attempt at creating
Speaker 1: a competitive district. You know, one of the one of
Speaker 1: the hallmarks of our society over the last twenty years.
Speaker 1: You know, jerry mandering was a gigantic problem in the nineties,
Speaker 1: in the first decade of the odds, and then we
Speaker 1: started self sorting. Meaning you know, when I was growing up,
Speaker 1: I had no idea. Nobody had any idea whether you
Speaker 1: lived in a Republican neighborhood or a Democratic neighborhood, and
Speaker 1: especially if you lived in sort of a mixed neighborhood
Speaker 1: like I did. It was sort of a middle class
Speaker 1: neighborhood in what I call East Kendall. There's no East Kendall,
Speaker 1: but it was east of the Turnpike for those of
Speaker 1: you keeping track of Miami geography. And you know, I
Speaker 1: think our block. You know, I have no idea. You know,
Speaker 1: my father was a bumper sticker guy, so he had
Speaker 1: a bob Old bumper sticker for the eighty eight race.
Speaker 1: So I'm sure that sort of I marked our house,
Speaker 1: but I don't, you know, I don't really have a
Speaker 1: strong memory of anybody on either side, and people weren't
Speaker 1: sure what people's politics were on different things. Now there's
Speaker 1: this bit of cultural self sorting where people want to live,
Speaker 1: whether it's in a similar ethnic group or with similar
Speaker 1: cultural ties. And so if you're trying to create, you know,
Speaker 1: congressional districts that are competitive, you actually might need to
Speaker 1: gerrymander in order to create the competitive nature. So I'm
Speaker 1: not sure gerry mandering itself is something you want to ban. Now.
Speaker 1: I do think you could create guard rails on gerrymandering, right,
Speaker 1: And I think I've brought this up before, where you know,
Speaker 1: there's always been this idea that the courts could come
Speaker 1: up with a formula. So, for instance, let me give
Speaker 1: you a formula that I've wanted to test out, which
Speaker 1: is you take, you know, in any decade, at the
Speaker 1: end of the decade, when you're trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how you're starting your apportionment, you take the last two
Speaker 1: gubernatorial elections and the last two presidential elections, and you
Speaker 1: basically you put all four of those votes together and
Speaker 1: you split the dn R and whatever it is, whatever
Speaker 1: that spacing is. If the party that has an advantage
Speaker 1: is at fifty two percent, then no district can be
Speaker 1: ten points greater than fifty two, you know, for for
Speaker 1: said party. You know that you can't make a district
Speaker 1: bigger than sixty two percent advantage for Party X. And
Speaker 1: if it's fifty five, then that number would expand to
Speaker 1: sixty five. Right. You sort of create some sort of
Speaker 1: you know, no more than ten points in one direction
Speaker 1: or the other based on the statewide partisan split over
Speaker 1: the last four statewide elections for the two executive offices
Speaker 1: in the state, governor and the presidency. That's a way
Speaker 1: to create a formula. I'm a data guy. I would
Speaker 1: love to just have rules that you would follow. It's
Speaker 1: math and you go from there. The other idea, of course,
Speaker 1: is what I floated in my ted talk, which is
Speaker 1: you want to if you want to limit the damage
Speaker 1: that jerrymandering can do and the fact that political leaders
Speaker 1: in a state can essentially, you know, put the finger
Speaker 1: on the scale for one party or the other. I mean,
Speaker 1: the fact of the matters Republicans have an advantage, you know,
Speaker 1: have the majority in Congress, not because of the voters
Speaker 1: that voted, but because of congressional districts that were redrawn
Speaker 1: in North Carolina and Florida. That's the margin for the Republicans.
Speaker 1: If they don't get those corridorder redraws that go their way,
Speaker 1: Democrats probably control the House and we have a much
Speaker 1: different situation here with Trump and his attempt to govern.
Speaker 1: So I do think that that gerry mandering as it
Speaker 1: stands now, and I think we have two we don't have.
Speaker 1: We have too many people in per congressional district, eight
Speaker 1: hundred thousand per congressional districts too many. There are only
Speaker 1: thirteen cities that have a population of greater than eight
Speaker 1: hundred thousand, Okay, so that means we have four hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty five congressional districts that are the that would
Speaker 1: be individually, you know, bigger or as big as just
Speaker 1: about every major city in America. But for the top thirteen, Austin,
Speaker 1: Texas has just under eight hundred thousand. So that is
Speaker 1: not a community of interest and that and when you
Speaker 1: have districts that big, it actually becomes easier to jerrymander.
Speaker 1: And I know nobody wants to put more members of
Speaker 1: Congress and more politicians in Washington, but I believe it
Speaker 1: or not, more democracy is better for the democracy, not
Speaker 1: less democracy. And if you want to get rid of
Speaker 1: jerrymandering or limit the damage jerry mandering is do, then
Speaker 1: we should expand the House. You don't need a constitutional
Speaker 1: amendment for this. This is just an Act of Congress.
Speaker 1: Expand the House. We're at one per four hundred thousand.
Speaker 1: You're going to have more communities of interest. By the way,
Speaker 1: four hundred thousand, it's a population of America's fiftieth largest city,
Speaker 1: which is Arlington, Texas. That's a suburb of Dallas. That
Speaker 1: is a community of interests. I expect there to be
Speaker 1: a member of Congress for Arlington, Texas. You know that
Speaker 1: makes sense to me. In the likelihood, if you have
Speaker 1: eight hundred and eighty one districts rather than four hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty five, it's just harder to slice and dice them.
Speaker 1: You're actually going to have more of everything. And it
Speaker 1: should create more diversity, a bit more small d democracy
Speaker 1: in the House. And yes, you're going to have a
Speaker 1: different class of people finally have an opportunity to run
Speaker 1: for Congress. It isn't going to be somebody you know
Speaker 1: or some ideology that you share with. Just enough people
Speaker 1: in order to break through with an interest group to
Speaker 1: get the nomination in a congressional district that only the
Speaker 1: primary would decide things. So, if you're looking to get
Speaker 1: rid of jerrymandering, I don't think it is by doing
Speaker 1: a law as you're describing, because people move around and
Speaker 1: you never know when you're going to need to create
Speaker 1: jerrymander in order to create competition, Right, So I do
Speaker 1: think the better answer is double the size of the house.
Speaker 1: All right, let me move on to the next question here,
Speaker 1: and this one comes from it's unsigned, long time listener,
Speaker 1: first time caller. I love that you always like to
Speaker 1: talk about finding people in the middle, and I've always
Speaker 1: liked your description that most Americans live between the thirty
Speaker 1: yard lines referring to a football field. But my question
Speaker 1: for you is, could you explain what you're measuring with
Speaker 1: that metaphorical football field when you're talking about moderates. Is
Speaker 1: it a question about tone, not being a bomb thrower,
Speaker 1: deference to process, policy, incrementalism, people who try to triangulate
Speaker 1: some position that seems to appeal to some imaginary swing voter,
Speaker 1: or is it really just about being pragmatic as opposed
Speaker 1: to seeming like a doctrinaire partisan dialog. Yes, okay. The
Speaker 1: answer is that he goes on which version are the
Speaker 1: people you think politicians need to speak to when you're
Speaker 1: talking about moderates, and which of these voices should the
Speaker 1: media try to find. Look, I am a one of
Speaker 1: those who believes that I always say that I, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't share my I have Depending on the issue,
Speaker 1: some people might say my views are radically left or
Speaker 1: they're radically right or whatever. Right they don't. But what
Speaker 1: I always say is you can't sort of make progress
Speaker 1: without incrementally in the middle. It doesn't mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I think there's there's two types of moderates. I think
Speaker 1: there's moderate in temperament and then there's sort of moderate
Speaker 1: in and that they have a mixed constituency and they're
Speaker 1: trying to represent maybe a business community on one part
Speaker 1: of their district, and maybe they're trying to represent a
Speaker 1: religious community and another part of their district. And maybe
Speaker 1: there's sometimes some things go together. But I'm mostly in
Speaker 1: for tone or tenor. I mean, I think that you know,
Speaker 1: there there used to be Republicans try to get the
Speaker 1: most electable conservative. I've heard someone the left describes themselves
Speaker 1: as a pragmatic progressive, meaning they're always looking to make progress,
Speaker 1: but they're not trying to you know, they're not trying
Speaker 1: to solve the problem. And one fell sloop swoop. You
Speaker 1: know that in a country of three hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: million people with a lot of diverse opinions, you got
Speaker 1: to bring them along one step at a time. So
Speaker 1: when I speak about the thirties, it's not that people
Speaker 1: don't have some things that they may be further to
Speaker 1: the left than somebody and further to the right. It's
Speaker 1: just that they accept the fact that, hey, their point
Speaker 1: of view is out of that mainstream and isn't going
Speaker 1: to get a dress. But maybe there's something in between.
Speaker 1: So maybe you believe that all abortions should be banned,
Speaker 1: but you know that's a that's not a seventy percent
Speaker 1: issue that in fact, there's a seventy percent issue against
Speaker 1: your point of view. So instead you may be for
Speaker 1: parental notification, or you may be for you know, trying
Speaker 1: to limit the number of weeks somebody has access to abortion,
Speaker 1: because then you find yourself sharing the views of people
Speaker 1: somewhere in the in the in this larger middle. So
Speaker 1: when I refer to that I do refer to. I
Speaker 1: think of it as that way because I don't think anybody.
Speaker 1: I don't think anybody per se. I think people define
Speaker 1: themselves as centrist based on the caricatures of the two
Speaker 1: parties that are out there. But I actually think that
Speaker 1: isn't the issue. It really is more I see it
Speaker 1: as more temperament. Right. You know, you have people that
Speaker 1: are going to take a sledgehammer to government, right. I mean,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's no moderate here, even though he actually has
Speaker 1: positions that might not you know, that might not put
Speaker 1: him as an ideologue traditional conservative on X or Y
Speaker 1: or Z right. He's actually a protectionist, which in the
Speaker 1: eighties was considered a left wing position. But it you know,
Speaker 1: he is not conservative at all in his in his
Speaker 1: in his mindset of trying to hurry up and change things, right,
Speaker 1: that is not you know, the first part of conservative
Speaker 1: is conserve right, which means you you you don't do
Speaker 1: anything too rashly, if anything, you don't you know you incrementalism,
Speaker 1: but even even smaller right on that front. So look,
Speaker 1: you you outlined it well. But that is usually what
Speaker 1: I'm referring to. It's not necessarily an ideological It's more
Speaker 1: about temperament and whether and whether you believe that, hey,
Speaker 1: the goals should be to give something, you know, get
Speaker 1: a little something for everybody. A seventy thirty win if
Speaker 1: you're the party in majority, that's a win versus this
Speaker 1: idea that the other side doesn't get any say at all.
Speaker 1: It's either ninety five to five. You know, you know,
Speaker 1: it's either my way or the highway. You know that
Speaker 1: to me is not a moderate position, even if you
Speaker 1: you know, if you have no interest in engaging with
Speaker 1: the other side. All Right, The final question I'll take
Speaker 1: today is this comes from a guy named Rocky. Gotta
Speaker 1: love that. I always appreciate when you insert some sports
Speaker 1: knowledge into a political conversation. Based on your experiences, what
Speaker 1: elected official was is the most knowledgeable sports and you've
Speaker 1: interacted with disclaimer former athletes or coaches like Jim Bunny,
Speaker 1: Steve Large, and Tom Osborne. They don't count extra points
Speaker 1: if you want to break it down. Baseball, college football, NFL,
Speaker 1: college hoops, NBA, NHLPGA. Enjoying the podcast Rocky, So, I look,
Speaker 1: I got a couple of quick answers on this. I'll
Speaker 1: tell you the person that Tom Davis. He's a former
Speaker 1: Republican member of Congress from Northern Virginia. He basically came
Speaker 1: to Congress when I got to the hotline. I think
Speaker 1: he won in ninety two and then ninety four. Anyway,
Speaker 1: this is a guy who didn't just know every presidential
Speaker 1: result going back to the forty eight presidential election by county.
Speaker 1: I think he could name every World Series lineup that
Speaker 1: goes back to nineteen forty eight. Davis was a baseball savant,
Speaker 1: is a baseball savant. I've enjoyed going to Nats games
Speaker 1: with him in the past. If he's listening now, he
Speaker 1: might be. He's an old friend, easily the most knowledgeable
Speaker 1: baseball fan of any elected official I've met. But you
Speaker 1: have these sort of specialists like Shared Brown. He's got this.
Speaker 1: I don't want to give away his email address, but
Speaker 1: his email address is a tribute to the tribe. To
Speaker 1: the Guardians now, I guess we refer to them. Massive
Speaker 1: Cleveland baseball fan and knows can go deep on Cleveland baseball.
Speaker 1: Not sure about the other sports. Steve Israel, a former
Speaker 1: Long Island congressman, goes deep on the Mets just his
Speaker 1: mats can go super deep. Then there's a lot of
Speaker 1: I've always had some pretty good Haley Barber. Boy does
Speaker 1: he love Old Miss football, And that is somebody you
Speaker 1: can have a deep and long conversation on Old Miss football.
Speaker 1: So you know, Marco Rubio can go He's a guy
Speaker 1: that will go deep on the backup cornerbacks of the Dolphins.
Speaker 1: You know, he's a super fan of the Dolphins in
Speaker 1: a way. And I you know, I'm not sure where
Speaker 1: I think his son's a Gator so and he went
Speaker 1: to so I'm not quite sure of his college football
Speaker 1: how obsessed with college football he is. But I know
Speaker 1: he's a he's a massive Dolphins fan and can go
Speaker 1: deep on the Dolphins on that front. So you know,
Speaker 1: there's quite look, there's This has been one of the
Speaker 1: more helpful ways as a reporter. I've always said, you know,
Speaker 1: being a sports fan, there's always a way to connect.
Speaker 1: And I'm an eclectic sports fan. I like, you know,
Speaker 1: baseball and college football are probably my two first loves.
Speaker 1: But boy, the NFL's right there. I love the NBA.
Speaker 1: My son loves it more, so I've gotten into it
Speaker 1: a little bit more. By the way, Barack Obama, he
Speaker 1: goes that guy watches a ton of basketball. I remember
Speaker 1: I busted him. He wasn't a huge baseball guy claimed
Speaker 1: to be a White Sox fan. And I remember one
Speaker 1: day there's some big trade the White Sox have. I
Speaker 1: was doing small talk. He wasn't paying attention to a
Speaker 1: Jake PV trade at the Chicago White Sox. But like,
Speaker 1: he's the guy that was going. Did you see the
Speaker 1: backup guard that played the other night in the Bulls game?
Speaker 1: That guy, you know, he played it. I watched him
Speaker 1: at Marquette. Like he goes deep both on college basketball
Speaker 1: and the NFL. You know, ironically, Donald Trump's not, as
Speaker 1: you know, where he goes deep as golf. He weirdly
Speaker 1: doesn't go that deep on some of these other sports.
Speaker 1: He knows culturally he needs to connect. But as he
Speaker 1: will say, he's friendly with a lot of sports owners.
Speaker 1: But you know, I know he loves boxing, he loves wrestling.
Speaker 1: Wrestling's been a good, good thing for his businesses in
Speaker 1: Atlantic City. He was the one guy that was willing
Speaker 1: to host the WWE back in the days, and that
Speaker 1: was an important you know, the snobs of Madison Square
Speaker 1: Garden weren't so into it back in the day, and
Speaker 1: it gave him a tenant when he needed a tenant.
Speaker 1: But he doesn't go as deep on the players on
Speaker 1: some of this stuff unless he is a personal relationship.
Speaker 1: But on golf, and I tell you there's a reason
Speaker 1: golfers are so loyal to him. They will tell you.
Speaker 1: And I've had this conversation with golfers, even those that
Speaker 1: don't like his politics. They say, you don't understand he
Speaker 1: really cares about making great golf courses. They've always felt very,
Speaker 1: very well treated by any Trump course. So you know,
Speaker 1: the golfing community isn't just formed of before him. He
Speaker 1: has treated the golfing community quite well over the years
Speaker 1: because he wants more of these tournaments, right he does.
Speaker 1: The guy loves his golf and he does and he
Speaker 1: does go deep on that. So I will say this,
Speaker 1: it is whether you're whether you're into sports or not.
Speaker 1: If you're going to get into politics as an elected official,
Speaker 1: as a reporter, or as a staffer, you're going to
Speaker 1: have to learn how to speak that language. It is
Speaker 1: the It is the best way to connect with communities.
Speaker 1: It is a frankly, it is a way to bring
Speaker 1: communities together without you know, and especially you know, I
Speaker 1: wish Donald Trump didn't make this so difficult for people politically,
Speaker 1: sort of almost being negative if somebody doesn't come. Really
Speaker 1: would love to separate out the politics of the presidency
Speaker 1: so that plenty of teams can just feel good about
Speaker 1: showing up at the White House. You know, I'm sorry
Speaker 1: that that it is treated so politically these days. You know,
Speaker 1: there were plenty of players at boycotted showing up at
Speaker 1: at showing up for the events when Obama was president,
Speaker 1: but it didn't get you know, it's not like Obama
Speaker 1: got angry about it and said something and tweeted or whatever. Right,
Speaker 1: And I think it's why it never seemed like it
Speaker 1: was as big of a deal as it comes across
Speaker 1: now because the president himself, it personalizes everything and to assume,
Speaker 1: you know, he whether it's about him or not, as
Speaker 1: we know, in some ways he loves it if he
Speaker 1: can make something about him on that. But look, that's
Speaker 1: my rundown of sports fans. You know, my friend Chris E.
Speaker 1: Lizza wrote a whole book about presidents and sports. It's
Speaker 1: really good. I highly recommend it. It's a good way
Speaker 1: to sort of get you get you acclimated with which
Speaker 1: politicians truly like sports, and which politicians simply use sports
Speaker 1: as a way to try to connect to the everyday voter.
Speaker 1: All right, well that does it for that group of
Speaker 1: We've got four questions in for Ask Chuck again a lot.
Speaker 1: Be sure you can send me an email at ask
Speaker 1: Chuck at the Chuck com. You can put a comment
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Speaker 1: algorithm can get better. So anyway, I would love to
Speaker 1: get your questions from that. And with that I will
Speaker 1: take a break for at least twenty four hours until
Speaker 1: we upload again.