Speaker 1: Hello, They're happy Thursday. Welcome to another episode of the
Speaker 1: Chuck Podcast. So my guest later in this podcast, yesterday
Speaker 1: we uploaded. I say yesterday. I know, in the world
Speaker 1: of podcasting, perhaps you just you're listening to this the
Speaker 1: day of my previous episode. How do I how about
Speaker 1: we say that my previous episode, I had a former
Speaker 1: Democratic governor of Washington, Stayed Jay ins Leon, who himself
Speaker 1: ran for president in twenty twenty. Well, for this episode,
Speaker 1: I have a former Republican governor of the Great State
Speaker 1: of Ohio who ran for president in twenty sixteen. It's
Speaker 1: John Kasik. He's got a new book about how faith
Speaker 1: communities can essentially do good in America in different ways.
Speaker 1: And frankly, I think Kasik is somebody who is desperate to,
Speaker 1: I think, revive a sense of local community again. He's
Speaker 1: always kind of been that kind of politician, you know,
Speaker 1: he's you know, he made a name for himself at
Speaker 1: first in Washington for being the budget guy, so it
Speaker 1: was always cut cut cut. But you know, when I
Speaker 1: think of the phrase compassionate conservative, which was made famous
Speaker 1: by George W. Bush, to me, the avatar to that
Speaker 1: is John Kasick, and before him, would have been a
Speaker 1: guy named Jack Kemp. In the eighties, Jack Kemp was
Speaker 1: considered a conservative with a heart and the point being. Look,
Speaker 1: he was an advocate for smaller government, an advocate frankly
Speaker 1: for more international engagement, an advocate for business, but also
Speaker 1: an advocate for lifting people up. And being a former athlete,
Speaker 1: he sort of was able to cut through the race issue.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: He's one of those folks that I've always wanted to
Speaker 1: write a book featuring the I can't believe they never
Speaker 1: became president. Jack Kemp and Bill Bradley are my sort
Speaker 1: of one A and one B, and I think it's
Speaker 1: Jack Camp, Bill Bradley, and John Glenn. You know, I
Speaker 1: look at those four guys and you might throw Bob
Speaker 1: Dole in there. You know, they they all ran. Don't
Speaker 1: get me wrong, they all wanted to become president. They
Speaker 1: all just ran in the wrong year in various ways
Speaker 1: or in you know, they got on national tickets in
Speaker 1: the wrong time, and you know, but for a different
Speaker 1: political circumstance, they would have become president. Certainly had the
Speaker 1: resume or the unique American background astronaut, athlete, you know,
Speaker 1: et cetera. I think case it is one of these
Speaker 1: people that this sort of has a little bit of
Speaker 1: of of all of that sort of Oh what would
Speaker 1: my friends in France call it genes sequa, meaning meaning
Speaker 1: it's just this and he he just he feeds off
Speaker 1: of community. And I mean that as a compliment on
Speaker 1: that front. So I think you're going to enjoy this
Speaker 1: conversation that we have really about figuring out how we
Speaker 1: restore civics and a America in a way that's a
Speaker 1: little less partisan and a little more productive. So I
Speaker 1: hope you enjoy that conversation with him. And he's got
Speaker 1: plenty to say about the current situation in politics. But
Speaker 1: I do think you'll enjoy this conversation. But before we
Speaker 1: get to it, I want to pop in on a
Speaker 1: couple of other issues. And to me, there's one giant
Speaker 1: issue that is getting a little bit of attention but
Speaker 1: probably deserves a lot more, and it's the current security
Speaker 1: crisis in the Southeast Asia between India and Pakistan. And
Speaker 1: it to me is this current situation is a troubling
Speaker 1: reminder of what happens when American leadership retreats from the world.
Speaker 1: Now I'm not going to sit here and say America
Speaker 1: is the cause of the situation. It is not okay.
Speaker 1: This is a long standing regional rivalry between India and Pakistan.
Speaker 1: It goes back. You know, we talk about a current
Speaker 1: partition having to do with Israel and the Palestinians. You know,
Speaker 1: there's another partition that has also been the cause of
Speaker 1: strife around in that region, and it's in India and Pakistan.
Speaker 1: It was obviously the most just a quick refresher here,
Speaker 1: not sure how much you're following the story, but in
Speaker 1: late April, April twenty second, it was a terrorist attack
Speaker 1: in the Indian administered part of Kashmir. Twenty six civilians,
Speaker 1: mostly Hindu tourists, so there's a religious element here. The
Speaker 1: Hindus and the Muslims were killed. A Pakistani based terrorist
Speaker 1: organization called the Resistance Front claim responsibility, and India decided
Speaker 1: to point the finger at Pakistan, the country saying they
Speaker 1: were housing, essentially protecting these terrorist organizations. It's frankly a
Speaker 1: similar thing that the US government had accused Pakistan up
Speaker 1: back during the al Qaeda days. And of course where
Speaker 1: did we find bin Laden in Pakistan? So this is
Speaker 1: certainly not an unusual unusual situation and sort of how
Speaker 1: things are managed in Pakistan. Pakistan's govern it has been
Speaker 1: a mess from a while. You have a very you
Speaker 1: have an sort of an independent intelligence agency that sometimes
Speaker 1: feels like it operates on its own. The military literally
Speaker 1: a military industrial complex and in many ways is the
Speaker 1: stabilizer of the country. Civilian leadership that is either in
Speaker 1: the pocket of the military or finds themselves in the
Speaker 1: crosshairs of the military. But it is not a stable
Speaker 1: There's an uneven check and balance that goes on there.
Speaker 1: So it is it is. It has always been a
Speaker 1: source of concern because both India and Pakistan have nukes,
Speaker 1: but because of the unsteadiness of the governance of Pakistan,
Speaker 1: and frankly, there's plenty of evidence that the that that
Speaker 1: the notch of the nuclear intelligence that Iran in North
Speaker 1: Korea has acquired has come through essentially leaks out of
Speaker 1: Pakistan and a Pakistani scientist and things like this. So
Speaker 1: it's always been an area of concern for a variety
Speaker 1: of reasons, but loose nukes being the biggest one. But
Speaker 1: obviously there is a when you're when you have your
Speaker 1: own citizens attack and killed, most countries are going to
Speaker 1: feel the need to respond. So on May sixth. India responded.
Speaker 1: It called it Operation Sindoor. They made air strikes. They
Speaker 1: claimed they never actually crossed into the airspace of Pakistan,
Speaker 1: but they hit nine targets that they believe were areas
Speaker 1: in Pakistan where many of these terrorist organizations were either
Speaker 1: being protected or lived. Pakistan claims it shot down some
Speaker 1: Indian jets. Look, I think it's possible we are close
Speaker 1: to a crisis averted here, because India's sort of made
Speaker 1: it clear that they did not want to escalate, that
Speaker 1: their response was targeted and was designed to only go
Speaker 1: after the terrorists themselves. The Pakistani response was, hey, we
Speaker 1: shot down some Indian fighter jets, which is something that
Speaker 1: is certainly not certainly pretty embarrassing for India. India has
Speaker 1: a very much a conventional military advantage over Pakistan, but
Speaker 1: the fact that Pakistan also has nukes that is what's
Speaker 1: kept this sort of uneasy balance between the two countries.
Speaker 1: And so I think it looks like they're both going
Speaker 1: to take their off ramps. Obviously, if India escalates anymore
Speaker 1: than Pakistan is probably going to feel the need to respond,
Speaker 1: but they really don't have the resources to deal with
Speaker 1: India in a conventional military front, and there's no doubt
Speaker 1: that they can't escalate. But this is a reminder of
Speaker 1: what happens. I don't think it's an accident that when
Speaker 1: the US is in retreat that suddenly we see situations
Speaker 1: like this. So we're in the middle of a philosophical
Speaker 1: shift here in Washington, and the Trump administration's made it
Speaker 1: clear both through words and action that its foreign policy
Speaker 1: is going to prioritize disengagement, less NATO, less Ukraine, less
Speaker 1: commitment to traditional alliances. This says to two both economic
Speaker 1: right we're seeing this with the retreat on trade, but
Speaker 1: also just more skepticism in general of multi lateral agreements,
Speaker 1: even when they come with security. So here's the problem
Speaker 1: with this approach and why it may have helped escalate
Speaker 1: the situation in India and Pakistan, is that when America
Speaker 1: sort of retreats like this, it sends a signal. And
Speaker 1: the signal is this that we're no longer going to
Speaker 1: play the world's beat cup, We're no longer going to
Speaker 1: be the world's first responder when there's a crisis, that
Speaker 1: we're not even sure we want to be leader of
Speaker 1: the free world anymore. I think the President wants to
Speaker 1: be the strongest country in the world, but he doesn't
Speaker 1: want to take that strength and accept the responsibility. That
Speaker 1: means that we're sort of the you know, we're the
Speaker 1: first ones to respond to a crisis, whether it's a
Speaker 1: natural disaster, a famine, a civil war, an outbreak between
Speaker 1: two countries. Look, I get it's actuallyally pretty popular to say,
Speaker 1: you know, these aren't our fights. America can't be the
Speaker 1: world's cop. But here's always my response to that. If
Speaker 1: America doesn't play the role of the world's cop, who's
Speaker 1: going to And here would be my reminder the way
Speaker 1: I would answer that question, It doesn't matter who does it,
Speaker 1: We're not going to like it if it's anybody else
Speaker 1: other than us, Okay, other than us. We trust ourselves,
Speaker 1: our values. If we're not there to fill in the gap,
Speaker 1: you know who will be China, perhaps in some parts
Speaker 1: of the world of Russia. Just look at the entire
Speaker 1: continent of Africa. Both Russia and China are making so
Speaker 1: many in roads, military to military inroads that Russia's been
Speaker 1: making in various places, and they're not interested in helping
Speaker 1: the African people. They're interested in helping themselves. China has
Speaker 1: engaged in a different way. They engage financially. They have
Speaker 1: actually been a big part of of economic expansion in Africa.
Speaker 1: The United States has been way behind. And if anything,
Speaker 1: with the essentially the shuddering of aid, we've actually disengaged
Speaker 1: even more from Africa, which is throwing many countries into
Speaker 1: the arms of China or any other entity that is
Speaker 1: willing to invest. So look, it looks like cooler heads
Speaker 1: are going to prevail in Indian Pakistan. But it was
Speaker 1: a bit disconcerting. And I know we're doing some stuff
Speaker 1: behind the scenes, but we weren't at the forefront of this.
Speaker 1: We weren't quickly trying to de escalate in a hurry.
Speaker 1: We weren't quickly trying to frankly, figure out if the
Speaker 1: Indians were right about who was behind this terrorist attack.
Speaker 1: We weren't trying to figure out how much the Pakistani
Speaker 1: government was involved. That's a more engaged United States perhaps
Speaker 1: could have broken an uncomfortable piece before. Maybe this doesn't happen.
Speaker 1: The point is my concern now is that what we're
Speaker 1: going to see is not less of this, but more
Speaker 1: of this, where countries are going countries and frankly, terrorist
Speaker 1: organizations are going to sort of test, Oh, there's no
Speaker 1: more American beat cop on here, Let's see what happens. Right,
Speaker 1: It's almost like testing the fence. And if you're in India,
Speaker 1: you're sitting there going, oh, we're going to have to
Speaker 1: respond on our own. There isn't going to be a
Speaker 1: global partner like the United States. And you know, think
Speaker 1: about the neighborhood India's in, right, They've got China to
Speaker 1: the north, they got Pakistan to the west. They certainly
Speaker 1: don't trust the Pakistanis and they don't trust the Chinese.
Speaker 1: In many ways. They have by necessity decided to come
Speaker 1: closer to the United States. You know, during the Cold War,
Speaker 1: India was sort of in the was on the Soviet
Speaker 1: side of things, and Pakistan by necessity was on the
Speaker 1: American side of things. Ever since, and it really started
Speaker 1: with George W. Bush after nine to eleven, and then
Speaker 1: more so with Barack Obama, and that was actually continued
Speaker 1: by Donald Trump. There's been a through line here of
Speaker 1: getting closer to India. Economically, India is likely to be
Speaker 1: the biggest beneficiary in the trade war with China, so
Speaker 1: we certainly have a lot of interest in a stable
Speaker 1: and secure Southeast Asia. Now the question is whether we're
Speaker 1: willing to use our sort of our larger sort of
Speaker 1: global capital to do that, and I think the fact
Speaker 1: that it looks like we won't. It's just the likelihood
Speaker 1: of more of these small regional conflicts breaking out into
Speaker 1: hot wars, and of course one between two nuclear powers
Speaker 1: is always of a huge concern. But I'll be honest,
Speaker 1: this is something that I think American disengagement indirectly is
Speaker 1: encouraging the possible of more of this. This is why
Speaker 1: so many of us are pro international engagement, because if
Speaker 1: you look at the last eighty years since World War Two,
Speaker 1: an American led free world has been safer and more
Speaker 1: secure for the entire planet than in any of the
Speaker 1: years previous to World War Two. Or frankly, already as
Speaker 1: we see as we begin this disengagement, how violent things
Speaker 1: are already getting on multiple continents. So, like I said,
Speaker 1: hopefully things continue to de escalate. One other little note
Speaker 1: that I want to make before we get to the
Speaker 1: interview with John Kaiseik. Joe Biden is back. He did
Speaker 1: a sit down with the BBC. In some ways he
Speaker 1: didn't really share anything new in the conversation, he expressed
Speaker 1: his speaking of international alliances. He called it he called
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's decision to pressure Ukraine into accepting sort of
Speaker 1: Russia seating territory to Russia. He called that modern day appeasement.
Speaker 1: And he drew plenty of parallels to the failed policies
Speaker 1: of the nineteen thirties. And he also believed that these
Speaker 1: concessions are only going to embolden Vladimir Putin further. And
Speaker 1: of course, the greatest test of the NATO alliance that
Speaker 1: we all fear is what happens when he decides to
Speaker 1: go into Latvia, or Lithuania or Estonia all three or
Speaker 1: NATO countries all three on the border of Russia. I'm
Speaker 1: old enough to remember when at Tucker Carlson flippantly said,
Speaker 1: what Americans are going to be willing to go to
Speaker 1: war on behalf of Estonia? Well, that's what Article five
Speaker 1: in NATO seems to say. And there is no doubt
Speaker 1: in my mind that Putin is going to want to
Speaker 1: test this premise. If he can get Europe to believe
Speaker 1: that the United States won't be there for a NATO
Speaker 1: member country, read, it would destroy NATO and probably allow
Speaker 1: him to just march on through eastern Europe if we're
Speaker 1: not careful on that front. More of Biden, he seemed
Speaker 1: to He was asked about the withdrawal, should he have
Speaker 1: gotten out sooner? Does he regret getting out at all?
Speaker 1: And he just simply said it was a difficult decision.
Speaker 1: He didn't He believes an earlier exit wouldn't have benefited,
Speaker 1: wouldn't have changed the outcome. It's an interesting, interesting take.
Speaker 1: Now we know he's going to be sitting down with
Speaker 1: the folks at the view. He's looking for some friendly territory.
Speaker 1: He knows some books are about to come out that
Speaker 1: are really going to expose what I would call was
Speaker 1: sort of well but nine neglect of the situation with
Speaker 1: Joe Biden. You know, I continue in my own reporting,
Speaker 1: None of these folks thought Joe Biden was the best
Speaker 1: candidate Democrats could put up president, but they would, but
Speaker 1: many of them looked at Joe Biden's age and thought, well,
Speaker 1: against a younger candidate, this would be a problem. But
Speaker 1: against the crazy of Donald Trump, it's somewhat neutralized. And
Speaker 1: so it was certainly a comparative analysis that I think
Speaker 1: many of these folks made, and I think none of
Speaker 1: the other part was you had a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: skepticism about whether Kamala Harris could be a good candidate,
Speaker 1: and he had a whole bunch of skepticism that if
Speaker 1: you didn't believe she could be a good candidate, did
Speaker 1: you have a plan on defeating her in a primary
Speaker 1: without creating a massive intra party fight inside the Democratic
Speaker 1: Party that could actually set the party back even further.
Speaker 1: And so it is, Look, it's one of those situations
Speaker 1: we're never going to know the answer to. You know,
Speaker 1: my take, I think, ultimately, I go back, this was
Speaker 1: a defeat that was ten years in the making. When
Speaker 1: Barack Obama put his arm around Hillary Clinton to be
Speaker 1: the nominee in twenty sixteen, he essentially cleaned you know,
Speaker 1: essentially benched the entire an entire generation of potential Democratic leaders,
Speaker 1: the Gen X generation of Democratic leaders, including people like
Speaker 1: Kamala Harrison and Klobe Sharcorey Booker, Michael Bennett. I could
Speaker 1: go on and on essentially everybody that eventually ran for
Speaker 1: president in twenty twenty, but many of whom would have
Speaker 1: run in twenty sixteen had Obama not done that. And
Speaker 1: so when you go back, sort of the you know,
Speaker 1: that's the fork. That's a fork. To me, that was
Speaker 1: the real fork in the road moment right where we
Speaker 1: never would have had Clinton nor Biden. But when you know,
Speaker 1: and I think this goes back to something that I've
Speaker 1: all often wondered if now Barack Obama understands this. But
Speaker 1: you know, he won in two thousand and eight because
Speaker 1: Democrats didn't want more of the same. They didn't want
Speaker 1: the establishment wing of the party in charge, i e.
Speaker 1: The Clintons. They wanted something new and that was Barack Obama.
Speaker 1: And for the most part they were satisfied. This wing
Speaker 1: of the party was very satisfied. And I would argue
Speaker 1: that you saw a Democratic party start to grow in
Speaker 1: a different way. You started had different kind of leaders,
Speaker 1: and they were sort of following the north star of
Speaker 1: Barack Obama. And then twenty sixteen comes along and he
Speaker 1: essentially doesn't listen to those Democratic primary voters who already
Speaker 1: rejected her once and he went with her, and it
Speaker 1: sort of put and I think whether it's a slice
Speaker 1: of independent voters, whether it's those Sanders voters like Joe
Speaker 1: Rogan who liked Sanders, probably liked Obama and also like
Speaker 1: Trump right, We're looking for people that were willing to
Speaker 1: break the elites, break the establishment. Obama was trying to
Speaker 1: break the establishment in a kinder, gentler way. Donald Trump
Speaker 1: came with a sledgehammer for the establishment. Hillary Clinton is
Speaker 1: the establishment was the something. Joe Biden is the establishment
Speaker 1: was the establishment, and so you know, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: any sort of tinkering around the edges come twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four was going to change any of that. That ultimately,
Speaker 1: neither By nor Clinton should have been at the top
Speaker 1: of any ticket twenty sixteen, twenty twenty or twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: that it really should have been the next generation all ready.
Speaker 1: But Joe Biden's not going to be making that argument.
Speaker 1: Joe Biden's got to defend his presidency and he's going
Speaker 1: to probably continue to defend his presidency. It is intriguing
Speaker 1: to me that he chose to go to the BBC first,
Speaker 1: because I think and my own reporting confirms this. Once
Speaker 1: Russia invaded Ukraine, basically the one issue that Joe Biden
Speaker 1: was focused on more than any other was NATO and
Speaker 1: was containing Russia. Everything else was secondary for him in
Speaker 1: this presidency, whether it's his domestic agenda, whether it was
Speaker 1: the border that every day, what he was really working on,
Speaker 1: what really animated him in the morning, what really kept
Speaker 1: him up at night, was the situation between Russia and Ukraine.
Speaker 1: And I think he believes his job was to save NATO,
Speaker 1: expand NATO, which he did, and I think he believes
Speaker 1: it's the best part of his legacy. Well, I tend
Speaker 1: to agree unless unless Donald Trump destroys NATO, and then
Speaker 1: ultimately he's going to share in that responsibility, right because
Speaker 1: his failed political leadership, you know, is I've put it.
Speaker 1: I put it this way, if Joe Biden had been
Speaker 1: a better leader, I don't know if the American voters
Speaker 1: were to turn back to Donald Trump. And maybe that's
Speaker 1: an unfair way of putting it, but ultimately, you know,
Speaker 1: he made the case that America had to move on
Speaker 1: from Donald Trump, and America decided to turn back to
Speaker 1: Donald Trump because they didn't like the governance of Joe Biden.
Speaker 1: That's ultimately on him, and we're never going to know
Speaker 1: about the various alternatives. But again, I go back, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure nitpicking when Joe Biden gets out of the
Speaker 1: race really matters. At the end of the day. I
Speaker 1: think what mattered is the fact that Joe Biden was
Speaker 1: still in the thick of all of this is probably
Speaker 1: the bigger situation there all right. I think I've I've
Speaker 1: done enough here, done enough damage with this open on
Speaker 1: what happens. American disengagement indirectly leads to uncomfortable and potentially
Speaker 1: hostile situations that could end up fantastasizing and making things
Speaker 1: a heck of a lot worse. That's how I'm watching
Speaker 1: the current Indian Pakistan situation. And I am sure we're
Speaker 1: gonna be hearing more from Joe Biden as he does
Speaker 1: his little defend his legacy tour over the next week
Speaker 1: or two. And I'll be curious if he has new
Speaker 1: arguments or better arguments as his tour continues. So let
Speaker 1: me sneak in a quick break and when we come back,
Speaker 1: John Cason.
Speaker 2: Well joining me.
Speaker 1: Now, if you've been listening to my podcast over a
Speaker 1: few years, you know with somebody who I always enjoyed
Speaker 1: having a conversation with, and we are in the mutual
Speaker 1: admiration each other's mutual admiration societies. It's the former governor
Speaker 1: of Ohio, former congressman, former presidential candidate, and forever friend
Speaker 1: here John Kasik, John, good to see you.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Chuck. It's going to be with you again.
Speaker 1: Look, you're ostensibly on here because you've written a new
Speaker 1: book and it's very and for me, I think what's interesting,
Speaker 1: and I think you it's kind of a bookend in
Speaker 1: some ways because you've I remember your first the first
Speaker 1: book I remember that you wrote. I know you. It
Speaker 1: may not be. The first book you wrote was Doing
Speaker 1: the Probe is sort of the ordinary people doing extraordinary
Speaker 1: thing right, And that was generally in the in this
Speaker 1: sense you're focused on faith communities. Am I shorthanding it right? Now?
Speaker 2: You're doing it right? I mean it was the first
Speaker 2: one is called Courage is Contagious, and it was about
Speaker 2: individuals doing remarkable things. And then I kind of concluded
Speaker 2: that if individuals had some fellow travelers with them, they
Speaker 2: could do a hect of law more and the faith
Speaker 2: institutions were a great way to be able to accomplish
Speaker 2: more things.
Speaker 1: And look, I always say, people, are you know when
Speaker 1: you're writing a book like this? To me, it's reflecting
Speaker 1: how you want politics to work, right, And it that
Speaker 1: sens is to me, this is always how you wanted
Speaker 1: to work. Why do you think it We've had a
Speaker 1: struggle at getting everybody to sort of view politics. You know,
Speaker 1: I always joke that, hey, civilization invented politics in order
Speaker 1: to resolve disputes without violence. Right, That's why at some
Speaker 1: point we humans decided we can't keep fighting to decide
Speaker 1: who lives here and who lives there and where we
Speaker 1: draw our border. Maybe we should negotiate, And suddenly politics
Speaker 1: was born. Why do you think we don't know how
Speaker 1: to do this as well as we used to.
Speaker 2: Wow, you know me, given an answer like that is
Speaker 2: so silly, because you could write your couple volumes about.
Speaker 1: It, of course, but you've been a practitioner. I'm the observer,
Speaker 1: you're the practitioner.
Speaker 2: I think that you know, it's so interesting because, as
Speaker 2: you know, political parties have lost their influence, right, I
Speaker 2: mean this is going to sound counterintuitive. Parties no longer
Speaker 2: screen candidates, they no longer fund them. They're all funded
Speaker 2: by special interest groups. So these people go to Washington
Speaker 2: elected by you know, this group and that group and
Speaker 2: the other group. And you would think that there'd be
Speaker 2: less loyalty to sort of a Republican or a Democrat brand.
Speaker 2: But yes, it seems as though that brand kind of
Speaker 2: defines a person.
Speaker 1: Oh it's my favorite conundrum. Yeah, we're we're we were
Speaker 1: more tribal than ever, and yet the parties have less
Speaker 1: influence than ever.
Speaker 2: Exactly. I don't know if they have much of any influence,
Speaker 2: to be honest with you, Chuck. And maybe that's something
Speaker 2: I want to write about. Maybe you and I can
Speaker 2: write something together about that, about how that's an interesting
Speaker 2: thing because people don't realize that. You know, when I
Speaker 2: was first starting out, I had to go, you know,
Speaker 2: visit the screening Committee, the Central Committee, the committee, members
Speaker 2: of this that, that, all that stuff.
Speaker 1: But you had to prove your bona fides. Now I
Speaker 1: wanted to be a good member of the party.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I didn't really. I saw the play. Saw
Speaker 2: the party as my vehicle, never my master, but it
Speaker 2: was my vehicle for being able to do things in life. So,
Speaker 2: to make a long story short, I think people now
Speaker 2: they're afraid, first of all, to associate themselves with their quote,
Speaker 2: their brand, or their group because they're afraid they will
Speaker 2: be punished politically or they won't be liked. You know,
Speaker 2: they got to go if they're going to go to
Speaker 2: a party. They got to be in the right place,
Speaker 2: because if you're not in the right space, then you
Speaker 2: get shunned. And you know, some people care about that.
Speaker 2: You know, it's not anything I've ever cared much about.
Speaker 2: And then there's the threat of the primaries, of course,
Speaker 2: and so if I go my own way and I
Speaker 2: start remember, remember what was really crazy? You remember when
Speaker 2: Chris Christy hugged Obama because Obama brought all that money
Speaker 2: to New Jersey.
Speaker 1: After that, it was just it was it was sort
Speaker 1: of your typical broug. It was a handshake, Hug, I
Speaker 1: might have done that with you. Hey, good to see
Speaker 1: it's been a while, exactly exactly.
Speaker 2: And yet nothing more than respect. Yeah, well it didn't
Speaker 2: work out that well for him because people went crazy.
Speaker 2: And now you see, well whatever Charlie christ first of all,
Speaker 2: Christie's not even the first governor named christ then went
Speaker 2: through this Charlie Chris got kicked out of the Republican Party,
Speaker 2: arguably for hug at Obama and oh nine, you know, Chuck,
Speaker 2: I think what it gets down to is people would
Speaker 2: rather have the We all would rather have an easy
Speaker 2: road than a hard road, and it's just easier to
Speaker 2: be part of that group. It's easier to win reelection
Speaker 2: without a primary. It's just it's just easier. And I
Speaker 2: just don't think easier is good in life, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean, we'd all want easier, but we know that
Speaker 2: difficult has made us better.
Speaker 1: So I want to go, let's unpack the party thing
Speaker 1: a minute.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I remember one of the arguments that a few politicians,
Speaker 1: including Mitch McConnell, made against McCain Fine Gold in the
Speaker 1: time that it happened, and I was I sort of
Speaker 1: I actually thought it was a genuine critique of McCain
Speaker 1: fine Gold and not just a partisan critique. And McConnell
Speaker 1: worried that McCain fine Gold, while it had all its
Speaker 1: attempt was to take big money out of the political parties.
Speaker 1: He argued it was going to weaken the political parties.
Speaker 1: And it turned out he was right, because you don't
Speaker 1: get rid of money. Money just finds the way money
Speaker 1: always moves. And every time government has tried to legislate
Speaker 1: campaign money, it has never made it less. It has
Speaker 1: just made it harder to track, right, easier to abuse,
Speaker 1: and harder to track. And yet if I said we
Speaker 1: should repeal McCain fine gold it would you know, it's
Speaker 1: sound like, oh, you just want more money in politics,
Speaker 1: but it's no.
Speaker 2: I think they should because it was.
Speaker 1: At least it was transparent. At least we saw where
Speaker 1: it went and the parties had to keep track of
Speaker 1: how it was used.
Speaker 2: Now. I don't know how much it would change with
Speaker 2: where the political parties are today because most of the
Speaker 2: people running the political parties are kind of have this
Speaker 2: mindset as well. But it gives you a greater chance,
Speaker 2: I think, to bring about reforms. And this is everybody
Speaker 2: talks about redistricting and all that. I think this is
Speaker 2: a really significant thing because there's no screening process anymore.
Speaker 2: There's not, and people would say, well, that's not open,
Speaker 2: you know, the party bosses, you know, when you have
Speaker 2: adults who are you know, trying to decide who's fit
Speaker 2: to represent people and who's not. I think that's probably
Speaker 2: necessary today. We certainly need to need to reflect on
Speaker 2: it for sure.
Speaker 1: No, that that's true. I want you to dig into
Speaker 1: something that you said one other.
Speaker 2: Thing, Chuck. I know this is the way it always
Speaker 2: is with you and me. Keep interrupting, I keep interrupting you.
Speaker 2: But but you know the book Heaven help us. Is
Speaker 2: about courage, and it's about faith in something greater than ourselves.
Speaker 2: And all you care about is what's in it for myself?
Speaker 2: Then you fall short. But if all of a sudden
Speaker 2: you show courage and you go your own way, you know,
Speaker 2: it's fantastic. And life is so short and your ability
Speaker 2: to make an impact is so short, that don't blow it.
Speaker 2: And we're that faith in a higher power that looks
Speaker 2: after us. That's a contributor to why people can have
Speaker 2: more courage.
Speaker 1: In my opinion, let me throw something at you. Will
Speaker 1: you accept the premise that you know I would say,
Speaker 1: where I show the greatest faith. I have a lot
Speaker 1: of faith in the idea of democracy, and therefore I'm
Speaker 1: weird it is it is what I would die to
Speaker 1: fight for. And I've wondered that, like, would you what
Speaker 1: do you? What are you willing to do? You accept
Speaker 1: the idea that the idea of democracy is a form
Speaker 1: of belief and faith?
Speaker 2: Yeah, one sort, but not the kind of faith I'm
Speaker 2: talking about.
Speaker 1: I know you're talking about a different faith, and you
Speaker 1: know I'm I go.
Speaker 2: I faith in democracy would mean that you believe that,
Speaker 2: despite any turbulence, that we might see from time to
Speaker 2: time that there's enough checks and balance is in the
Speaker 2: system that democracy will be preserved.
Speaker 1: I always say this, Have I trust the voters eventually? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I just think if everybody has all the
Speaker 1: right information, they're going to make the right decision. Sometimes
Speaker 1: they just don't have enough information.
Speaker 2: I would say most times that would be right, But
Speaker 2: there have been times when people's minds have been and
Speaker 2: we don't need to get into the ravages of you know,
Speaker 2: the ability of human beings to be incredibly cruel to others.
Speaker 2: But by and large I agree with you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to dig into something you said, and that.
Speaker 2: Can be protected too, by the way, by this bigger
Speaker 2: issue of faith. I know. See, You're always been a
Speaker 2: skeptic that somebody that's been in politics could write a
Speaker 2: book like this, But I don't think so. I think
Speaker 2: now more than ever it's.
Speaker 1: Well, I'll tell you this, if you wrote this book
Speaker 1: twenty years ago, somebody would the assumption would be, and
Speaker 1: you're doing it for political purposes. I would argue, you're
Speaker 1: writing this book now, nobody's going to assume that you're
Speaker 1: you're doing this for some sort of political gain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, that's not why I did it exactly right.
Speaker 1: But but you accept that that that's the way someone
Speaker 1: might look at this if you had written it.
Speaker 2: Here's what surprised me, Chuck. If I'd have written a
Speaker 2: real ripper here and it just attacked a whole bunch
Speaker 2: of people, the book would do better because I thought
Speaker 2: that people would be ready at this point in time
Speaker 2: for a little bit of going to your corners, chilling out, relaxing. No,
Speaker 2: it's Duke's up, man, We're still We're still in Canada.
Speaker 1: Elbows up, elbows up, els up elo. Yeah, it's funny.
Speaker 2: Point it's going to settle down, though it has to.
Speaker 2: We're gonna even fighters get that's why they only have
Speaker 2: fifteen rounds. You can't go sixteen because it can't keep fighting.
Speaker 1: Well, it's it's funny when I think about what's going
Speaker 1: to come next after Trump, and you know, it's a
Speaker 1: question I get. I'm sure it's a question you get.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that I lean on and
Speaker 1: I never try to you know, I said, well, you know,
Speaker 1: i'll throwt some names, but instead of names, I try
Speaker 1: to get people to focus on the following. You know,
Speaker 1: we have an uncanny ability in America to gravitate. When
Speaker 1: we pick a new president, we usually pick a president
Speaker 1: that has a character trait that the previous president lacked
Speaker 1: and that it bothered us. Right, I go back George H. W.
Speaker 1: Bush to Bill Clinton. Well. HW Bush had a hard
Speaker 1: time connecting with the average person. Feel your pain, right,
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton was all that, Right, George W. Bush, I'm
Speaker 1: going to restore honor and integrity. Right, that was the
Speaker 1: whole character thing, personal integrity. Bush to Obama was sort
Speaker 1: of black and white versus Nuance. Right, And you know
Speaker 1: he was mister gray. You know, Obama was the gray,
Speaker 1: you know, and all this stuff, even Obama to Trump, right,
Speaker 1: can you get more opposite of Obama of a skinny
Speaker 1: the skinny black guy than the than the big large
Speaker 1: band from New York City, right, the blowhard. But but
Speaker 1: we wanted a salesman. And in some ways, you know,
Speaker 1: I always thought, you know, Obama's best asset was also
Speaker 1: his worst asset as a politician, which was he he
Speaker 1: he didn't always he didn't always need the He wasn't
Speaker 1: as needy as the average politician, and I think sometimes
Speaker 1: that made him a bit dismissive of those on Capitol Hill.
Speaker 1: Who were maybe a little needier and you needed to, hey,
Speaker 1: go bring them, invite him to the Oval office and
Speaker 1: things like that. But you know Trump was almost all showman.
Speaker 1: Biden obviously was the opposite. So so then I sit
Speaker 1: there and think, what will that mean in twenty eight
Speaker 1: are we going to be looking for an opposite personality?
Speaker 1: An opposite We are looking for somebody with a lot
Speaker 1: more empathy, you know, And that's what I don't know,
Speaker 1: but I know it will be something Trump is missing.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's empathy, Maybe it's on temperament, maybe it's on you.
Speaker 2: Know, it's if you were looking it would be a
Speaker 2: uniter rather than a divider. That's that's what I would think.
Speaker 1: And do you think any member of a of a
Speaker 1: one of the two major parties can is going to
Speaker 1: be able to credibly campaign as a uniter.
Speaker 2: Can't predict? I mean just just say that. People are
Speaker 2: pretty smart. So we have to see we're just early,
Speaker 2: you know, we're one hundred days in.
Speaker 1: You were advising somebody like that was thinking about it
Speaker 1: in twenty eight, you'd be telling them, look, think about
Speaker 1: where this puck's going to be. Don't think about where
Speaker 1: the puck is at the moment.
Speaker 2: Well, if I were advising somebody who is going to run,
Speaker 2: I would say, you need to make sure that you
Speaker 2: are capable of raising money, because Chuck Todd in the
Speaker 2: old world would pay attention to nobody who wouldn't pay
Speaker 2: attention to somebody that didn't raise any money and didn't
Speaker 2: have a good finance report. So that's one thing I
Speaker 2: tell them. Oh and secondly, I would also tell them
Speaker 2: that they need to have an agenda and they should start.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't know who. I'm thinking more of
Speaker 2: the Democrats than the Republicans because I don't know what
Speaker 2: the Republicans are going to do.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I think it's somebody that has had a record that can,
Speaker 2: you know, be like you say, a little bit more empathetic.
Speaker 2: I mean, look, one of the guys I think has
Speaker 2: got a lot of potential, Chuck, and you might dismiss
Speaker 2: it. It is And I've said this before. I don't know
Speaker 2: them well, but I've watched him. I was first first
Speaker 2: caught my attention in a shooting in Kentucky and how
Speaker 2: he talked about it and combined compassion his faith. I
Speaker 2: think Andy Basheer is a very interesting guy. I know
Speaker 2: that if the Democrats want to win and they go
Speaker 2: left again, they're going to lose, right, But I don't
Speaker 2: know who the brothers Leons will pay.
Speaker 1: I don't know, Yeah, I you know, that's it's funny.
Speaker 1: It's like I'm because we don't you know, we don't
Speaker 1: know in a year from now with whether being maga
Speaker 1: is good or bad in a Republican primary.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right, even.
Speaker 1: Though the assumption I'm obsessed with the three there's three
Speaker 1: senators who are getting primaried that are all Republican. Tillis
Speaker 1: in North Carolina, Cornan in Texas, and Cassidy in Louisiana.
Speaker 1: None of them you would say or maga. All three
Speaker 1: were sort of very much sort of what you would
Speaker 1: have said pre Donald Trump as conventional conservative Republicans. And
Speaker 1: I don't mean that as anything, just sort of like,
Speaker 1: you know, and will it be an asset not to
Speaker 1: be maga? Well maybe the time from now, right.
Speaker 2: If they win. You know what you and I love
Speaker 2: about politics, and you just never know what's going to
Speaker 2: happen tomorrow. I just never know.
Speaker 1: And there's always think yeah, and the and the and
Speaker 1: the human element. Yea, your your state's going to be
Speaker 1: hosting a fascinating couple of of exercises. I I I
Speaker 1: think Ramaswami is not going to walk into this governor's mansion.
Speaker 1: He's gonna have to earn it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's probably right, I mean right now. But again
Speaker 2: it's right now. He you know, he looks. I don't.
Speaker 2: I really don't invest a lot of time looking at Ohio.
Speaker 2: I'm like Chuck, I'm like George W. Bush. I was there,
Speaker 2: so now I've moved on, So I don't. I don't
Speaker 2: do those people try to drag you into it. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: but I do it out of it. Yeah, well, how
Speaker 2: they're going to drag each ock? I mean, nobody ever.
Speaker 2: I can't think of anybody that ever dragged me in
Speaker 2: politics anywhere. So I'm just I'm just not going to
Speaker 2: be engaging in it. I mean, I love what Bush
Speaker 2: did about that. You know, he just doesn't engage a
Speaker 2: very rarely does he say anything. And I think that's
Speaker 2: appropriate when you're a former governor. Just you know, let
Speaker 2: somebody else be governor and let him pick the next governor.
Speaker 2: And I'm not even sure I'm going to show up
Speaker 2: at meetings with former governors I decided, but I can
Speaker 2: give you a handicap. I choose not to do it.
Speaker 2: But I, of course, being still in the media, I
Speaker 2: have an obligation to kind of analyze things, but I
Speaker 2: really shy away from Ohio. I will say one thing
Speaker 2: I don't think Ohio is ruby read. Remember when I
Speaker 2: got elected governor, every office in the state was held
Speaker 2: by a Democrat except for one. The Democrats had a
Speaker 2: horrible bench, they had terrible party leadership, and they disintegrated,
Speaker 2: and so you know, things change, and I think, you
Speaker 2: tell me, do you think people in Youngstown are going
Speaker 2: to keep voting Republican?
Speaker 1: Well, right now they're voting Trump. I don't know if
Speaker 1: they're voting Republican. Okay, Well, but you know what I
Speaker 1: mean by that, And that's the I think that's the
Speaker 1: real question. Right, Yes, I agree with that, and that's
Speaker 1: you know, you're right on twenty eight. I sit there
Speaker 1: and it's like, if you make me pick names, I say, well,
Speaker 1: obviously there's bands. I think there's Donald Trump Junior. I mean,
Speaker 1: if he wants to run, he's got the brand name,
Speaker 1: and then you're going to have I think a guy
Speaker 1: like Glenn Youngkin is going to be the great Normy
Speaker 1: Hope is my guest, right, it could be Chris. You're
Speaker 1: going to have some that are who can be MAGA
Speaker 1: adjacent without MAGA, right, and young Kid probably is slightly
Speaker 1: more personality than Brian Kemp, but it's sort of those
Speaker 1: guys are both sort of feel like they're maybe there.
Speaker 1: I don't know, right, I don't know if MAGA adjacent.
Speaker 1: If you can't get that vote out, maybe it's it.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter, right.
Speaker 2: Maybe sometimes you do it because you just think you
Speaker 2: want to do it.
Speaker 1: Well, that ought to be the reason to do it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So if you were running in twenty eight, what do
Speaker 1: you think think the biggest problem? No, and I'm not no,
Speaker 1: I don't mean it. Well, what's the biggest problem that
Speaker 1: you think somebody should use a presidential Put it this way.
Speaker 1: I just interviewed Jay Insley, and this you and Insley
Speaker 1: are going to And I admired Insley's candidacy because he
Speaker 1: decided I don't know whether he thought he was going
Speaker 1: to win the nomination or not. And I'm not going
Speaker 1: to put but he said, you know what, I'm going
Speaker 1: to use my candidacy to focus on one issue. And
Speaker 1: he decided to make a climate and we could we
Speaker 1: could just you know, we can debate whether, but I
Speaker 1: admire somebody who says, look, I'm going to use my
Speaker 1: candidacy to try to bring attention to an issue that
Speaker 1: I really think people ought to focus on. So if
Speaker 1: you could use a candidacy like that, you thought it
Speaker 1: could do that you were you were a budget guy.
Speaker 1: It's hard to get people excited about the budget, right.
Speaker 1: You found this out the hard way at times? Well
Speaker 1: what do you how would you galvanize.
Speaker 2: What I found out? It was real simple. People did
Speaker 2: not care about these issues. They cared about personal contact
Speaker 2: and do you get them in you care about him?
Speaker 2: And look, remember this, I go to New Hampshire, very
Speaker 2: low name, I D and I finished second. I beat Bush, Cruise, Rubio,
Speaker 2: all of them except Trump. I beat everybody else. And
Speaker 2: I found there that they didn't really care about balancing
Speaker 2: budget and cutting taxes and all that they it mattered.
Speaker 2: But what they really cared about was I think he
Speaker 2: gets me. He's willing to listen to you, he's willing
Speaker 2: to understand my problems. And then I could get into
Speaker 2: the ditch with him and give him a come on,
Speaker 2: We can get out of this ditch. We can do well.
Speaker 2: I'll be here with you. It's why I was re
Speaker 2: elected so overwhelmingly in Ohio after balancing budgets but expanding medicaid, right.
Speaker 2: I mean, it was a combination of leave no one
Speaker 2: behind and try to lift everybody up. I think unity,
Speaker 2: unifying this country again is really important. It's going to
Speaker 2: take a special voice and a special person to do it.
Speaker 2: And we're better when we're united and not as good
Speaker 2: as when we're divided. So and then, I think there
Speaker 2: are a couple issues out there that really matter. People
Speaker 2: are worked up about the stock market, the bond market,
Speaker 2: and everything else. If we don't figure out a way
Speaker 2: to tame this national debt, and I know nobody's interested
Speaker 2: in it, but I'm trying to figure out how we
Speaker 2: can get them interested in it, We're going to melt
Speaker 2: down like you've never seen when we start printing money. Okay,
Speaker 2: just that's number one, and I'm I'm going to actually
Speaker 2: work on that, I think in the next couple of years,
Speaker 2: if I can figure a way to get anybody motivated
Speaker 2: around it. But I think there's a couple other things.
Speaker 2: I think the healthcare system in this country is very
Speaker 2: seriously broken and it is so hard to fix. If
Speaker 2: I were a leader and I had the power, I
Speaker 2: would convene hospitals, doctors, pharmacies, nurses, all the people that
Speaker 2: are connected to the healthcare system to sit down and say,
Speaker 2: how do we fundamentally change this in such a way
Speaker 2: that we are now treating people to keep them healthy
Speaker 2: rather than being rewarded for treating them when they're sick.
Speaker 2: And how do we open the whole system up to
Speaker 2: look at quality, to look at costs, to look at
Speaker 2: at you know that I think is really big, And
Speaker 2: I think the other one that is really big is
Speaker 2: I think just outside is I think retraining. There has
Speaker 2: to be a lifetime retraining program in the era of
Speaker 2: AI and everything else, so people don't think that they're stuck.
Speaker 2: And because they're stuck now they're in a job, they
Speaker 2: don't know what's going to happen. I think those are
Speaker 2: two really big issues. How do you give people the
Speaker 2: sense that I can be okay tomorrow? And secondly, how
Speaker 2: do we control the healthcare system because programs like Medicare
Speaker 2: are on a fast train to bankruptcy. Those two things
Speaker 2: really matter, But at the end it was Bill Clinton
Speaker 2: who you brought up saying I feel your pain. That
Speaker 2: is what that's isn't that when you think about him.
Speaker 2: That's to me what connects. I feel your pain, and
Speaker 2: then everything is that's the patina. Then everything else is
Speaker 2: underneath it to to demonstrate who you are. You know,
Speaker 2: another serious problem we have in this country is behavioral
Speaker 2: health and insurance form and that should be done in
Speaker 2: terms of health care because the insurance people are starting
Speaker 2: to hate insurance. Well, we know that people are very
Speaker 2: angry about insurance. It's always great until you need it.
Speaker 2: I mean, all those things where people feel as though
Speaker 2: it's out of control are things that and I think
Speaker 2: it includes health care, It includes insurance, it includes a
Speaker 2: loss of job. I think nothing we can see right now,
Speaker 2: but it's it's the avalanche that could come our way
Speaker 2: if we don't control our debt. And it's finally, I
Speaker 2: feel your pain and we're in it together. That's what
Speaker 2: I would do. It's pretty good campaign message.
Speaker 1: Right, I mean, I think you're spot on about both
Speaker 1: AI and healthcare. And let let me do medicaid here
Speaker 1: a minute, because you did. I feel like we have
Speaker 1: stumbled into medicaid is universal catastrophic health care, meaning if
Speaker 1: worst case scenario happens in your life, there's always Medicaid.
Speaker 1: But that is not and and maybe it wasn't initial
Speaker 1: and I do think, look, it is a God said
Speaker 1: to have medicaid if you've got an aging parent and
Speaker 1: they run out of money, and you know, to know
Speaker 1: that there's a system out there that will help you
Speaker 1: take care of your parent. You don't have to figure
Speaker 1: out how to do it in your house. You can
Speaker 1: go find a Medicaid bed right in a nursing facility
Speaker 1: or recovering facility, things like that. But it you know,
Speaker 1: it's funny. I remember Lamar Alexander when he was governor
Speaker 1: Tennessee said once he said, boy, I would gladly trade
Speaker 1: Medicaid back to the federal government for all the education dollars.
Speaker 1: You guys can run healthcare. I don't want to run
Speaker 1: healthcare anymore because it is it's just hard to do
Speaker 1: it by the states. Do you agree with that assessment?
Speaker 2: Now, if you gave the education establishment a trillion dollars,
Speaker 2: it would never be enough.
Speaker 1: We have.
Speaker 2: Our education system is so broken. And that gets back
Speaker 2: to this ongoing training through a life time education Chuck,
Speaker 2: come on R K through twelve schools, not all of them,
Speaker 2: many of them. Let me just put it many of them.
Speaker 2: So nobody going.
Speaker 1: I know, I didn't mean to get at but I
Speaker 1: agree with that.
Speaker 2: And he was saying, oh, let me spend all this
Speaker 2: money on education. No, we need a different kind of education,
Speaker 2: an education system with technology coming where where we can
Speaker 2: have individual instruction to every kid to figure out how
Speaker 2: they learn best. That's another story. But when it comes
Speaker 2: to medicaid, the problem that Chuck, this is amazing. When
Speaker 2: I became governor, I think medicaid was grown in like
Speaker 2: nine percent rough numbers here. When I was governor and
Speaker 2: expanding it by six hundred thousand, it was growing at
Speaker 2: three and a half percent. Now the guy who's the
Speaker 2: governor is growing it at nine percent. You know why,
Speaker 2: pay off, pay everybody off, all the providers, get what
Speaker 2: they want. You make them all happy, Chuck. We're down
Speaker 2: in this country to I have to give you what
Speaker 2: you want because if I don't, you're going to be
Speaker 2: mad at me.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: That's where we that's how we exist today. And that
Speaker 2: doesn't work. You've got to call people to a higher
Speaker 2: purpose and explain to them why.
Speaker 1: But I mean saying, I'll tell you what. I'll tell
Speaker 1: you what's perverse about the health care industry.
Speaker 2: And before we're done, we are going to talk about
Speaker 2: my book, because that's why we are here.
Speaker 1: No, in fact, I think we've been intertwining it. But
Speaker 1: let's talk about the health care industry a second. Let
Speaker 1: me give you this conundrum. Since you're a free you're
Speaker 1: a free market tier. For profit hospitals are less profitable
Speaker 1: than nonprofit hospitals.
Speaker 2: Discuss Wait, say that again.
Speaker 1: Let's say for profit, the for profit hospital systems are
Speaker 1: less profitable than the nonprofit. That's probably true, it is true.
Speaker 2: Just you know what, I would never have known that
Speaker 2: if I hadn't been watching things, because I'm aware of
Speaker 2: a for profit operation involving primary care, and I keep
Speaker 2: telling them you should go and become a not for profit.
Speaker 1: But they're rare for profit because your Medicare right, your
Speaker 1: Medicare reimbursement rates higher. But talk about how perverse the
Speaker 1: system is when that is a fact and you're sitting here.
Speaker 1: The reason I'm more aware of this, perhaps than than
Speaker 1: than the other non healthcare reporters is one of the
Speaker 1: reasons why universities right now. Are some of them are
Speaker 1: so flush with cash? Is if they run their own
Speaker 1: hospital system, they're all nonprofit. University of Miami takes their
Speaker 1: you Miami Health money and uses it for the football program.
Speaker 1: University of Texas, you're in favor of that, Chuck md Anderson,
Speaker 1: But University of Texas md Anderson helps provide there. And
Speaker 1: in fact, the universities that don't own their own hospitals
Speaker 1: now wish they did because of how that the system works.
Speaker 1: So the question is this is a case where you
Speaker 1: just see there was a time the for profit hospitals
Speaker 1: made more money and the non profits were struggling. And
Speaker 1: then you government sort of just reversed how they did this,
Speaker 1: and then everybody realized they could they could make money
Speaker 1: out of the tax code.
Speaker 2: Well, and then you know, they did the tax system
Speaker 2: for the you know, you know about that.
Speaker 1: We're probably making everybody. But this is to me, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: at the heart of the problem.
Speaker 2: No no no. But you see, you're you're trying to
Speaker 2: go at it and on an individual basis, and I
Speaker 2: get get all that. Okay, how you have to take
Speaker 2: this piece and that piece and the other piece I'm
Speaker 2: going to give you. I'm going to give you three
Speaker 2: quick examples. Penny Casic, take a penny out of every dollar.
Speaker 2: We got an equal group of Republicans and Democrats together
Speaker 2: in a room and we were able to save a
Speaker 2: penny out of every dollar. And it doesn't sound like
Speaker 2: a lot, but you had it all up. It's pretty good.
Speaker 2: And both parties fought it and we came very close
Speaker 2: to winning. If anybody on this in these groups, Republican
Speaker 2: or Democrat, objected the savings were taken out, we had
Speaker 2: very few taken out. Let's go back to the budget
Speaker 2: itself when I was chairman and we were trying to
Speaker 2: get things done.
Speaker 1: This is basically this is Doze the right way.
Speaker 2: Susan Molinari gave up transit subsidies as long as the
Speaker 2: guy in Iowa gave up farm subsidies, and we got
Speaker 2: it done. What I'm trying to tell you is, Chuck.
Speaker 2: You need a convener who can get people. We need
Speaker 2: Chuck Todd in the room. Okay, you walk in there.
Speaker 2: You're gonna be intellectually honest about how we fix it.
Speaker 2: So the hospitals are honest, the pharmacies, pharmaceuticals, right, we
Speaker 2: get everybody in the room and sink, how are we
Speaker 2: going to fix this system? Because it's costing more and more.
Speaker 2: There are more people who are not getting to kind
Speaker 2: of care they want. The quality is not what we want.
Speaker 2: And everybody would agree with that. If you just go
Speaker 2: at it one piece at a time, you'll never get there.
Speaker 2: It has to be done, and you can't do it.
Speaker 2: It's not I've done it two or three times.
Speaker 1: You know. This is why I've always gravitated towards you
Speaker 1: in general, which is I'm not looking for somebody with
Speaker 1: the right plans right as my elected official. I'm looking
Speaker 1: for somebody who knows how to bring the right people
Speaker 1: in the room to solve the problem exact period. And
Speaker 1: too many presidential candidates I think they have to have
Speaker 1: the solution. This is my you know, climate solution, this
Speaker 1: is my healthcare solution. And it's like, I don't want plans.
Speaker 1: I want to know you're going to I want a
Speaker 1: plan of action. How am I going to do it?
Speaker 1: I always thought Bill McRaven, you know, I had this
Speaker 1: fantasy about Bill McRaven coming in to be the pastor
Speaker 1: for patriotism for America right, but to come in and
Speaker 1: as a thirty year as a thirty year military guy,
Speaker 1: him saying, look, I don't I haven't been in public
Speaker 1: policy for thirty years. I've been serving the country. But
Speaker 1: I can tell you what I know. Immigration is a problem,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to get everybody in the room and
Speaker 1: we're not leaving until we have a reasonable asylum system,
Speaker 1: a reasonable eight you know, eahbo et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1: I'd like more candidates to there's one process. There's one
Speaker 1: thing to make the process part of the pitch, and
Speaker 1: I can't remember which candidate. But the danger in that
Speaker 1: is if you don't have some experience in government. Okay,
Speaker 1: I agree with that.
Speaker 2: If you don't have some, you're going to get lost
Speaker 2: the same way.
Speaker 1: Jesse Ventura is my favorite example. He all the right instincts.
Speaker 1: He got eaten alive by that legislature he did.
Speaker 2: But you have to have as an experience if you're
Speaker 2: going to run for president, you have to have people
Speaker 2: around you that can tell you no, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: not that, but look at this, and then let them
Speaker 2: do what they want to do. And when you're in office.
Speaker 2: I had more meetings where I'd stuffed twenty twenty five
Speaker 2: people in a room. Everybody got to participate. I made
Speaker 2: a decision. I empowered people. They reported to me. Look
Speaker 2: the proofs in the pudding. You know we I hate
Speaker 2: to even go on it sounds I had a great
Speaker 2: team of people. They all work together. We created jobs
Speaker 2: Ohio the most important and dynamic economic development operation in America. Today.
Speaker 2: We've gone from forty ninth to like seventh. I mean,
Speaker 2: we're just kicking tail because we all work together. We
Speaker 2: work together, and that's how you get things done. And
Speaker 2: you need a leader, and they've got to have a
Speaker 2: sense of where they want to go. But you've got
Speaker 2: to have a little bit of political experience.
Speaker 1: Well look, it's funny you brought up a Shaer earlier. Basher,
Speaker 1: somebody I'm very intrigued by, because here's a guy who's
Speaker 1: had to govern with a Republican legislature and he could
Speaker 1: run it. He could just be angry at them all
Speaker 1: the time, or he tries to figure out how they
Speaker 1: can get stuff done. And ultimately, I think I do
Speaker 1: think whatever the middle I think I always describe the
Speaker 1: middle of the country is more like the thirty yard lines.
Speaker 1: I think the middle is a lot larger than we
Speaker 1: treat it. That doesn't mean they don't vote the same way.
Speaker 1: But I think when I think middle of the road,
Speaker 1: meaning you're you're not dogma right, you're not willing, You're
Speaker 1: you're willing to move all right, I'll accept that, you know,
Speaker 1: type of type of mindset versus the extremes. Let's go
Speaker 1: back to your book, because i'd hear you. I know
Speaker 1: you want to you want to talk about the book.
Speaker 1: Where are you? You know there's this where where how
Speaker 1: do you integrate faith institutions into government response without making
Speaker 1: the separation of church and state.
Speaker 2: People leave examples in the book. So look, one guy
Speaker 2: goes up to this place in Portland. He gets a
Speaker 2: group of his buddies from church and a couple other churches.
Speaker 2: They go up and clean up the playground. They fix
Speaker 2: the whole school. He then turns it into a literacy program.
Speaker 2: The schools worked with him. Uh, there's a lady who's
Speaker 2: used the portal of the schools to be able to
Speaker 2: inform parents about all the things that might be available
Speaker 2: to them if their kids have trouble. There are the
Speaker 2: people who have worked in the foster care area. There's
Speaker 2: now a program going nationwide where the faith communities working
Speaker 2: with the government of foster Care, and the government has
Speaker 2: praised these people. You can't go in and proselytize your
Speaker 2: greatest The greatest way to spread faith is not by
Speaker 2: what you say, but what you do. And these people
Speaker 2: are in there, yes, And I think that to not
Speaker 2: have these solutions come from well meaning people. Now you
Speaker 2: go in there and you start preaching your stuff, I
Speaker 2: don't think that works. Okay, But the most important thing
Speaker 2: to me is if you look at this book or
Speaker 2: anything else about faith, it's because you feel so strongly
Speaker 2: about the call of a higher power that you're willing
Speaker 2: to take. You're really willing to have courage and believe
Speaker 2: even if you start at skipware one, that you can
Speaker 2: be successful in the end. And it also forces us
Speaker 2: to think, if you have a liberal and a concert. Okay, Chuck,
Speaker 2: you and I are driving in we're in Vermont, the
Speaker 2: middle of the winner, and we see this car in
Speaker 2: the snow bank, and you and I hop out, and
Speaker 2: these other two guys hop out, and we pushed the dark.
Speaker 2: We can't get it out. We're pushing it, pushing it.
Speaker 2: We're laughing, our halts are falling off, and we push
Speaker 2: it out, we go have a beer, we find out
Speaker 2: that you know that they're of a complete different philosophy
Speaker 2: and political It doesn't matter right the body. It's like
Speaker 2: sitting in a University of Miami football game getting their
Speaker 2: brains beat off by Ohio State and you just have
Speaker 2: a great time with your.
Speaker 1: Fucking funny I mean, I will tell you I still
Speaker 1: have vision of the Ohio State fan I was sitting
Speaker 1: next to when you guys told that national title from
Speaker 1: US who when we when it appeared that Miami had won,
Speaker 1: the guy literally turned to me and he goes, man,
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed watching the game with you, I said, say,
Speaker 1: this is great. Then of course, oh look there's a flag,
Speaker 1: and then you know and then lo and behold Terry Porter.
Speaker 1: By the way, I still know the guy's day. His
Speaker 1: name was Terry Porter. He was a Big twelve official,
Speaker 1: and I'm still ticked off the guy for throwing the flag.
Speaker 2: Somebody told me that there was guy in Columbus that
Speaker 2: saw the incompletion or whatever the heck it was. I
Speaker 2: don't remember it, turned off the television and went to work,
Speaker 2: and the next day he shows I.
Speaker 1: Didn't find out.
Speaker 2: That's so funny. Yeah. But anyway, Uh, well, to go
Speaker 2: back to your example and the other thing you I've
Speaker 2: told you this before we get to fixing things locally.
Speaker 2: And I want to bring up that Huntman book called
Speaker 2: The Upswing. Yeah no, not.
Speaker 1: All of his work. Yeah, all of his work is fascinating,
Speaker 1: it really is.
Speaker 2: But the Upswing says that the Social Gospel movement changed
Speaker 2: the country from an eye culture to WE culture, coming
Speaker 2: from the Gilded Age to the Great twentieth century. In
Speaker 2: our country, where we went from I to wei, we
Speaker 2: were in an eye environment, not a we. And secondly,
Speaker 2: the other thing is all changed comes from the bottom up.
Speaker 2: The biggest I say, and you're in my lifetime. The
Speaker 2: single biggest change in our society is civil rights and
Speaker 2: it all came bottom up. So you know who you
Speaker 2: going to miss more if they go on vacation. You're
Speaker 2: the Secretary of State or your trash man. I mean,
Speaker 2: So we need to dig in. And if we're at
Speaker 2: a rally, that's fine, We're to rally on Saturday, Well,
Speaker 2: what are we going to do on Monday? So we
Speaker 2: can know.
Speaker 1: There's part of me that thinks are obsession with national
Speaker 1: politics is because we've untethered people locally.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, you and what you're thinking about in terms
Speaker 2: of local news, you're.
Speaker 1: Right now, we've got to bring the community back where
Speaker 1: and frankly, it can't be about you know, this isn't
Speaker 1: about making journalism for journalists. It's more of journalism and
Speaker 1: service to your community, which is you're just helping people
Speaker 1: live their lives. You're helping people, you know, whether maybe
Speaker 1: it's reporting on the public school system, but like, how
Speaker 1: do you navigate the public school system if you have
Speaker 1: an autistic kid and every system slightly different, and what
Speaker 1: are the services? Like? You know there local journalism, when
Speaker 1: it was really good, did that really well? Right? It
Speaker 1: was served journalism. National journalism is civic journalism. It is
Speaker 1: slightly different. And I think when you get rid of one,
Speaker 1: then everybody looks at journalism and thinks, oh, you guys,
Speaker 1: just you know, you have no idea about my life.
Speaker 1: You're not reporting on the things that matter to me.
Speaker 1: And they're right, because that isn't what that wasn't the
Speaker 1: national deal. Locals should be this service oriented oriented journalism.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's simply telling you what's happening at the high
Speaker 1: school games that night, and sometimes it's telling you where
Speaker 1: where you could take your kids to get it, to
Speaker 1: go out to eat for less than fifty bucks. Right,
Speaker 1: that's also a service that you could provide somebody. And
Speaker 1: I think that's the you know, I have a Richard Gingris. Gingris.
Speaker 1: He's a guy who's been been doing a lot of
Speaker 1: the news initiatives outside of Google and stuff. And he's
Speaker 1: a guy I been talking to a lot. He actually
Speaker 1: thinks the worst thing to happen to journalism was the
Speaker 1: Woodward and he calls it the Woodward and Bernstein effect,
Speaker 1: where you had a whole generation a journalists who just
Speaker 1: wanted to go find the big stories, go for go
Speaker 1: find and and and get fame and fortune that way,
Speaker 1: when actually ninety percent of journalism really is community service journalism,
Speaker 1: and that that actually is what people that's why they
Speaker 1: relied on it locally, and that Chuck.
Speaker 2: There's this young man I know. His mother is a
Speaker 2: dear friend of mine, and his name is Jackson Rorr,
Speaker 2: and he's writing for the local newspaper and you know,
Speaker 2: in New York, and he covers sports. The kid's like
Speaker 2: a big he's like everybody wants to know him because
Speaker 2: he's writing about the football team. The baseball team, and uh,
Speaker 2: it's it's really cool. And he's really he's he now
Speaker 2: he wants to be a journalist, But I don't know
Speaker 2: if he wants a journalist to be an investigator. I
Speaker 2: think he maybe, I don't know, we'll see, but.
Speaker 1: I think he enjoyed hemply curious. Say, the best journalists
Speaker 1: are those that I always say the best. The reason
Speaker 1: why I love it is I'm a I'm curious and
Speaker 1: I enjoy knowing something before somebody else does. And I
Speaker 1: know that seems like a that's that's you know, that's
Speaker 1: and and and the best journalists sort of are just
Speaker 1: obsessed with getting information. They're curious, they want to know more.
Speaker 1: And if that's your motivation, you're usually going to get
Speaker 1: some pretty good journalism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly right. Well you and what you're doing now
Speaker 2: is very interesting. So yeah, well I get local news.
Speaker 2: It really does matter. It really does. Local matters. It
Speaker 2: does it's.
Speaker 1: Well and it gets back to the it gets back
Speaker 1: to the community. It's sort of you know, I do worry.
Speaker 1: You know, if you look at and it's interesting you
Speaker 1: brought up the Gilded Age because there's a part of
Speaker 1: me that believes were kind of right, not quite repeating,
Speaker 1: but it rhymes right, the the Robert Barons and the Broligarchs. Right.
Speaker 1: The transactional nature of politics back then was super transactional.
Speaker 1: It's becoming super transactional now. Frankly, I worry that we're
Speaker 1: worshiping essentially everything is about getting yours. Everybody's got to
Speaker 1: get there.
Speaker 2: It's the eye culture. It's the eye culture again.
Speaker 1: And it did. I don't know if it's you hate
Speaker 1: to say it. Is it going to take an existential
Speaker 1: threat or a great depression for people to sort.
Speaker 2: Of look, I mean, I've told you this before, and
Speaker 2: so I think you're there's something in you that says no.
Speaker 2: It was a it was a faith movement that changed it,
Speaker 2: the social gospel movement change.
Speaker 1: It was all over and they went all around it, right,
Speaker 1: But it just started.
Speaker 2: But it started in one little place and its spread
Speaker 2: and then we had the reform for child labor, the
Speaker 2: reforms around women. It doesn't take that, it takes. It
Speaker 2: takes a spark that comes where we are. And the
Speaker 2: other thing you'll never know.
Speaker 1: What can come.
Speaker 2: And you know this whole thing that if we just
Speaker 2: had a catastrophe, everybody would be united I'm not. I
Speaker 2: don't buy that. I used to think that, but I mean,
Speaker 2: we'll come together momentarily and then we go back to
Speaker 2: our corners. There has to be a different perspective, a
Speaker 2: different sense in everybody's soul. And part of it is this.
Speaker 2: When I look at a person, I need to see
Speaker 2: the image of God of which I will be held
Speaker 2: accountable for. If I cease the image of God, I'm
Speaker 2: going to be really careful about the way I treat them.
Speaker 2: And if I see nothing but another guy honking his
Speaker 2: horn at me on the road, or you know, road
Speaker 2: rage or any of that other stuff, then it's just
Speaker 2: like Katie bar the door. It's going to take that
Speaker 2: kind of of some sort of a spirit renewal. And
Speaker 2: you saw it a little bit of it, by the way,
Speaker 2: I think with the Pope a little bit.
Speaker 1: I was just going to ask you about Pope Francis.
Speaker 1: I mean, he really is sort of the he was.
Speaker 1: He's been fighting this, you could see it. He sees
Speaker 1: whatever the culture is going, and he was trying in
Speaker 1: his own way to both modernize the church on empathy
Speaker 1: issues in some ways go back to basics on being
Speaker 1: in service of your community.
Speaker 2: You know, he was nobody. Nobody liked him. The left
Speaker 2: didn't like him, the right didn't like him. How many
Speaker 2: people like the people the people liked him.
Speaker 1: I think he's going to be. I think he's going
Speaker 1: to be. I don't know. We'll see right, recency biases everything,
Speaker 1: and I'm always trying to be careful of this, but
Speaker 1: I feel like a one hundred years from now he
Speaker 1: might be the pope, the one pope people remember could
Speaker 1: be twenty first.
Speaker 2: B And when I say they didn't like him, you know,
Speaker 2: the right didn't like him because they thought he was
Speaker 2: too loose with the theology. The left didn't like him
Speaker 2: because they didn't think he went far enough. You know
Speaker 2: what you and I say when when you when people
Speaker 2: in the right and the left don't like you, you
Speaker 2: must be doing something right.
Speaker 1: He was doing what you and I talk about all
Speaker 1: the time, which look, he had a north star, yea.
Speaker 1: He was going to bring everybody as closer to it.
Speaker 1: But he knew that you have to actually go slowly
Speaker 1: if you want to bring more people along. If you
Speaker 1: go too fast, you only bring certain people with you. Right,
Speaker 1: This is the problem what Trump is facing. You know,
Speaker 1: just I always say tactically. I am, I am. I'm
Speaker 1: not a fan of the tariffs for a variety of reasons.
Speaker 1: I'm guessing you're not either. But there was if you
Speaker 1: really believed in this, there was a way to do this.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely yes. And this was not the way to
Speaker 2: do it.
Speaker 1: You could have you know, or or you could have
Speaker 1: done this with six months advance notice, put it out there,
Speaker 1: given business time to prepare, given countries time to potentially
Speaker 1: do deals, and instead you go too fast and you
Speaker 1: don't bring everybody with you. And this is just a classic.
Speaker 1: But this shows you. You know, Donald Trump here, he
Speaker 1: is a two term president. Now, he's shockingly inexperienced at governing. Still,
Speaker 1: he just doesn't know how to bring people together and
Speaker 1: he never has.
Speaker 2: I think it might be chucked that he has too
Speaker 2: many people around him that don't tell him him with
Speaker 2: what's going on. And when you don't have people to
Speaker 2: tell you you're wrong and you need to think or
Speaker 2: change or modify, I.
Speaker 1: Won't allow those people around you know, he doesn't allow
Speaker 1: you have to be a person comfortable hearing negative information,
Speaker 1: and I don't know if he is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's you know, you think back to
Speaker 2: JFK And I don't know. He's probably been lionized about
Speaker 2: the Cuban missile crisis, but it just sounds to me
Speaker 2: like he had such an open discussion that instead of
Speaker 2: dropping the bombs, he you know, he sent his brother
Speaker 2: to see Doll Brannon and they ended up getting past
Speaker 2: it because they they just didn't listen to to the military.
Speaker 2: They listened to lots of different people, and they obviously
Speaker 2: they came to the right conclusion. And uh And faced
Speaker 2: on Khrushchev at a time when Khrushchoff thought he had
Speaker 2: us on the run.
Speaker 1: Open.
Speaker 2: Open is the way it is. But you have to
Speaker 2: you have to be comfortable with yourself, secure in the
Speaker 2: knowledge that however smart you are, it's okay to have
Speaker 2: people smarter than you around, that you can make good judgment,
Speaker 2: that you have good instincts and a good gut. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's how it works.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: If you go too fast, it's not only going too
Speaker 2: fast to implement one thing, it's also having too many
Speaker 2: things you're trying to do at once, which was a
Speaker 2: mistake I made because I had so many things I
Speaker 2: was doing when I was first elected as governor that
Speaker 2: I think a lot of people didn't know what they
Speaker 2: were and I slowed it down a little bit and
Speaker 2: let people see it. It would have been more effective.
Speaker 1: Well, it's funny, you're right, and yet how many times
Speaker 1: have people thought that? You know that the mistake some
Speaker 1: presidents do is by the time you get to your
Speaker 1: second initiative, you're not popular enough to get it past. Right.
Speaker 1: That's the tyranny, Right, That's why you get the advice
Speaker 1: that says, hey, try to do everything at once to
Speaker 1: see how much you can get done, you know, because
Speaker 1: everything is a time. I want to go to something
Speaker 1: you hinted at and I'm gonna I'm gonna go ahead.
Speaker 1: And Gina Ramundo said something. I was at a dinner
Speaker 1: with her about six months ago, maybe it was a
Speaker 1: year ago, and she said something that triggered and it
Speaker 1: was like one of those oh my god, how come
Speaker 1: we're not having this conversation And she goes, you know,
Speaker 1: our public the whole we haven't rethought the public school
Speaker 1: public education paradigm since we started it. Here was this
Speaker 1: amazing idea that when we first implemented, everybody around the
Speaker 1: world was like, man, we got to do what they're
Speaker 1: doing right, And other countries adopted our boy, they're making education.
Speaker 1: They're going to educate that, they're going to institute this
Speaker 1: by the government, and they're really onto something. And yet
Speaker 1: the design of our public school system is the exact
Speaker 1: same as it was when we first did it, and
Speaker 1: yet we're four times the population. I think we have
Speaker 1: more states since we last rethought this. That we haven't
Speaker 1: rethought what the public education system should look like, forget
Speaker 1: in the twenty first century, in the last half of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century, and instead we're doing what we've done
Speaker 1: with healthcare, which is, well, let's try a charter school system,
Speaker 1: let's try magnet schools, let's try this. But we haven't
Speaker 1: rethought the fundamental aspect of you know, how it should
Speaker 1: be run, how it should be funded. What you said,
Speaker 1: do we even rethink grades? This isn't an age thing
Speaker 1: that should be done by by You know, if somebody
Speaker 1: becomes an expert at something, so what if it takes
Speaker 1: them till they're forty to become that expert versus twenty
Speaker 1: five to become that expert? Right, why do you think
Speaker 1: this has been so difficult to say? You know what, Look,
Speaker 1: it's an amazing idea. We need to update it, and
Speaker 1: let's have let's have this big conversation.
Speaker 2: Well, because you think the Pentagon has an ability to
Speaker 2: resist reform, it pales in comparison to the education educational
Speaker 2: industrial complex.
Speaker 1: I'm going to call and it's all over, right, you
Speaker 1: can't just this one. It's not just teachers union.
Speaker 2: No, it's has to say my kids school. You know,
Speaker 2: education is not great, but my kids school is good,
Speaker 2: and and they think that, you know, if we just
Speaker 2: pour more money in, it will all be better. And
Speaker 2: it doesn't work. And so this is a case where
Speaker 2: I think you need to go with a group of
Speaker 2: the willing, a coalition of the willing. What schools do
Speaker 2: you want to join to do things differently and then
Speaker 2: show that those things can work. This is one maybe
Speaker 2: where you cannot do it comprehensively. Unlike what I said
Speaker 2: about healthcare.
Speaker 1: You think this is something that is community and a
Speaker 1: coalition of the willing.
Speaker 2: I mean, I look, you can get to the point
Speaker 2: where a teacher is a helper, not really a teacher,
Speaker 2: that the kids can learn through technology in a different way.
Speaker 2: Jimmy learns different than Sally. Let them learn on the
Speaker 2: basis of how.
Speaker 1: Look, but the teacher. You could almost be an expert
Speaker 1: coach more like a coach. Interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's one way. And I do think
Speaker 2: that it's pretty darn clear that the KIP schools do
Speaker 2: a great job, but there's such resistance.
Speaker 1: But is that self selecting? I mean, I'm with you
Speaker 1: on the cane.
Speaker 2: I mean, I have about you here.
Speaker 1: How do you know it's not self selecting in that?
Speaker 2: Because because if you take Abigail Wexner, who runs a
Speaker 2: KIP school out here, she takes the kids that come
Speaker 2: from the toughest places that I mean, and they're all
Speaker 2: going to college. I mean, I believe, I've seen it.
Speaker 2: Believe I've seen it, and I.
Speaker 1: Believes there because they're Any parent that wants their kid
Speaker 1: to get a good education figures out how to navigate
Speaker 1: a system, whether they have money or not.
Speaker 2: The lady told me once when I went to Philadelphia
Speaker 2: to the poorest schools back when I was writing my
Speaker 2: first book. He said, you know, every parent loves their kid,
Speaker 2: but sometimes you have to go down very deep to
Speaker 2: find that love. And I think it's there's another place
Speaker 2: where I think the churches could be critically important to
Speaker 2: helping to change this system. We've been spending our time
Speaker 2: talking about how, by the way, how Trump doesn't want
Speaker 2: to listen. Biden didn't let anybody they Biden's people wouldn't
Speaker 2: let anybody near him, no, because they might tell him
Speaker 2: something to get his attention. And the cover up by
Speaker 2: the media is a disgrace.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't know. I get my back up about
Speaker 1: blaming the media for this, because I blame the Democratic Party.
Speaker 1: The media only can report what they can report.
Speaker 2: Well, they didn't report what they saw.
Speaker 1: Well, I think some did, but there were others did
Speaker 1: there were others. Well, the problem is you have too
Speaker 1: many pundits pretending they're journalists.
Speaker 2: Well, any other thing is they all want access. So
Speaker 2: you know, if you want to get access to Tiger Woods,
Speaker 2: you better not write anything negative.
Speaker 1: Something to that. But but it goes back to I mean,
Speaker 1: you're right about Bob.
Speaker 2: But look, I just I didn't want to just trash
Speaker 2: Trump without no in fact, they're trashing of Biden and
Speaker 2: to hear other things.
Speaker 1: Oh, I think Biden was a failed president and he.
Speaker 2: Thinks that he could he would have won.
Speaker 1: No, are you kidding me?
Speaker 2: I know, telling him, Matt.
Speaker 1: You know, my wife says this all the time, she goes, look,
Speaker 1: a better leader would have made the country not want
Speaker 1: to return to Trump. And it's a tough thing to say,
Speaker 1: but she's not wrong. And I you know, she's always
Speaker 1: put it that way. She goes, you know, look, and
Speaker 1: she didn't want to she doesn't like being a Biden critic,
Speaker 1: but she said that, and I thought, you know, that's
Speaker 1: a very fair point. A better leader would have made
Speaker 1: the country not want to go back. Fuck.
Speaker 2: I endorsed the guy.
Speaker 1: I know you did.
Speaker 2: I mean, I was the first Republican you know. Now,
Speaker 2: they were all endorsing Kamala Harris and all that stuff,
Speaker 2: and I was the first one out there doing it.
Speaker 2: Ranks and I thought he was going to be a
Speaker 2: healer and he was anything but that.
Speaker 1: You know what.
Speaker 2: The same thing I talked to him the night that
Speaker 2: I endorsed him at their convention, he called me. Do
Speaker 2: you know that? I never spoke to him for the
Speaker 2: next four years, not a single word.
Speaker 1: I that's that's so telling. I mean, it's so telling.
Speaker 2: You're right, that's not political malpractice. I don't My feelings
Speaker 2: aren't hurt.
Speaker 1: It's just but I'll be honest, that wasn't the presidency.
Speaker 1: I thought we were voting for and I actually thought
Speaker 1: we were voting for a guy who was going to
Speaker 1: restore the idea that hey, this is how, this is
Speaker 1: how governance should work. Everybody's got a seat at the table.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it didn't.
Speaker 1: It didn't work that way. And you're right, I don't
Speaker 1: know how I go. There's a part of me that wonders,
Speaker 1: had he been fifteen years younger, maybe he's maybe it's
Speaker 1: a different guy. Maybe I don't know, or maybe there's
Speaker 1: a part of another part of me that goes, boy,
Speaker 1: the guy tried to either ran or tried to run
Speaker 1: for president every four years. He could you know, you know.
Speaker 2: Kind of heresy, But I've got to tell you this story.
Speaker 2: So Biden invited me up to the University of Delaware,
Speaker 2: and I went up to do an event with him.
Speaker 2: And let's say the event was I was probably an
Speaker 2: hour and a half, but let's just assume it was
Speaker 2: an hour. So he spoke for fifteen minutes and I
Speaker 2: spoke for ten. Okay, I get home.
Speaker 1: And by the way, it's not as if you're a
Speaker 1: shrinking violet.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, but I it's just the way it was.
Speaker 1: And the way it worked out.
Speaker 2: So I got home, I called McCain because he was
Speaker 2: at the time he was very sick, and I said,
Speaker 2: checking on him, john how you doing and how do
Speaker 2: you feel about your faith? And he goes, you don't
Speaker 2: have to worry about me, Johnny, And so it was
Speaker 2: very nice, and I said, well, I just went to
Speaker 2: this event for Biden, and you know, he spoke fifty
Speaker 2: and I spoke ten. He goes, yeah, he says, that's
Speaker 2: that's Biden, is it? He said, he said, it's why
Speaker 2: we love him. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he said. You know,
Speaker 2: I went to a funeral once and I was sitting
Speaker 2: next to Dan in a way, and Biden was doing
Speaker 2: one of the eulogies, and when he finished in a
Speaker 2: way poked me in the side and said, McCain, if
Speaker 2: you ever do one of those eulogies, don't forget to
Speaker 2: mention the corpse.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I'll tell you. It is so funny. There's
Speaker 1: quite a few people who who make eulogy. It always
Speaker 1: bothers me when I go to any memorial service and
Speaker 1: the eulogy about the about the person, about the person
Speaker 1: giving the eulogy, and not about the person exactly.
Speaker 2: I still laugh at that. I'll tell you, we miss McCain.
Speaker 2: That was that was one really great man. We miss him.
Speaker 1: He well, I mean, you know, look, I think you
Speaker 1: hate to say life experience is probably what shapes you.
Speaker 1: But his life experience shaped them right and it and
Speaker 1: it made them. It made them where the political party
Speaker 1: was just that. Okay, that's a club I chose to join,
Speaker 1: but it's not the only club I'm going to hang
Speaker 1: out in.
Speaker 2: Heaven Help Us is the name of the book.
Speaker 1: Sell Sell Sell. We've done it pretty well. I think
Speaker 1: we're selling you, Jack, We're selling you.
Speaker 2: Hey. It's always great, it's always great to be with you.
Speaker 2: You're just you know, I think if people watch this,
Speaker 2: they see they see you know, my friends, when they
Speaker 2: see us, they just see the kind of the connection,
Speaker 2: the magic that whatever it is, the sparks, and it's
Speaker 2: a lot of fun. So we're gonna do more.
Speaker 1: Either that or they think, wow, these two, these two
Speaker 1: old guys. Yeah, I gets very obsessed with with their
Speaker 1: own sound of their own voices.
Speaker 2: Right, probably right, Probably a little truth in that too.
Speaker 1: Now it's all right, are you are you so sour?
Speaker 1: You've been pretty sour about college football because you haven't
Speaker 1: liked how this how what gets rewarded? Are you? Are
Speaker 1: you still kind of sour on how the system's working. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think the system's terrible. And this is transfer portal
Speaker 1: and all that stuff. We've just turned it into the
Speaker 1: minor leagues. I mean, if you want a minor league,
Speaker 1: you know, I remember talking to a football head football
Speaker 1: coach of one of the NFL teams, and he was
Speaker 1: at a golf course with me. He's if I've known
Speaker 1: him for a long time. He campaigned for me once.
Speaker 1: He said, you know, John, the thing that we're missing,
Speaker 1: the baseball has a minor leagues.
Speaker 2: We don't, Well we now do. We now have a
Speaker 2: minor league.
Speaker 1: And they don't even have to pay for it. You know.
Speaker 1: Baseball used to complain that they used to be jealous
Speaker 1: that the NFL had college football, that they had a
Speaker 1: minor league with having to actually spend money on their
Speaker 1: minor league versus what. And I actually think that might
Speaker 1: at this point, that might be where we're going, and
Speaker 1: that the Cleveland Browns will someday spend all this money
Speaker 1: on helping Ohio State's NIL to help do player development
Speaker 1: for Ohio State. I know that sounds crazy, but that
Speaker 1: may be where the system is headed. Well.
Speaker 2: The one thing that's fun is it is fun to
Speaker 2: talk about sports because it's pretty neutral and when you
Speaker 2: have an argument there, you know you can. It's okay, It's.
Speaker 1: Well, and it's still the other reason that sports I
Speaker 1: think is a unifier, is it. It really is the
Speaker 1: one place where the meritocracy still works. Yes there's nepotism,
Speaker 1: Yes there's a lot, but ultimately, if you've got it,
Speaker 1: you're going to make it, and if you don't got it,
Speaker 1: you're not going to make it. It's the meritocracy.
Speaker 2: Shock is a crazy time because I'm one of a
Speaker 2: handful of people I happen to really like the NBA playoffs.
Speaker 2: And and by the way, Cleveland just destroyed Miami. I
Speaker 2: mean that was I thought that Miami would win. I
Speaker 2: thought Miami would win a game. I mean, I knew
Speaker 2: they didn't match up.
Speaker 1: I love Evan Mobley, I think, and you know, it's interesting,
Speaker 1: I'm skeptical you guys can beat Boston.
Speaker 2: I'm right. I mean, it's going to be very tough,
Speaker 2: but but.
Speaker 1: If you do, it'll be because Evan Mobley took that
Speaker 1: next level for that.
Speaker 2: Or that guy Hunter that came from Atlanta, who's really
Speaker 2: been terrific, And can anybody beat Oklahoma City?
Speaker 1: And I'm wondering, there's a part of me that thinks
Speaker 1: that this is really We're all just these are just
Speaker 1: the pre We're just sort of watching the Saturday pre
Speaker 1: lns for Oklahoma City and Boston to face off. You know,
Speaker 1: I mean, you hate to say it, but until Cleveland
Speaker 1: beats Boston, they have to be you have to you know.
Speaker 2: One other subject we have to cover, as you heard
Speaker 2: when I was talking before we came on the air.
Speaker 2: So next Friday night, Yeah, me, my buddy's Metallicalica.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 2: Heard Columbus right in Clumbus and uh uh Miley Cyrus
Speaker 2: saying with Metallica, okad, I absolutely incredible. That was What
Speaker 2: the heck is the name of that song? Uh? Nothing
Speaker 2: really matters. Yeah, if you can hear it, and it
Speaker 2: was really great and only to be exceeded by Heart
Speaker 2: singing Stairway to Heaven with with the boys sitting up
Speaker 2: in the stands at Kennedy Center Honors. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 2: check it out. Those are some really cool things to see.
Speaker 1: I love it. Concert recommendations, This will air before you're
Speaker 1: at the Metallica concert.
Speaker 2: Oh well, and I will have enjoyed myself air before.
Speaker 1: This will air before. No, this will air before. So
Speaker 1: this is good. Yeah, okay, if they catch the Metallica
Speaker 1: concert on Friday.
Speaker 2: Yes, I'll be thinking of them.
Speaker 1: All went on there absolutely, Uh, mister Case, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: The book is hea and help us there you go, Evan,
Speaker 1: help us. It's a good read. And it's an easy
Speaker 1: it's a yes, it is. It's a it's a nourishing read,
Speaker 1: meaning it is a good news read. And I do
Speaker 1: wish good news sold as well as bad news. But
Speaker 1: you know another another plane lands safely at National News.
Speaker 2: All right, thanks Chuck, thank you as soon.
Speaker 1: Well as you can see. Fasik and I have spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time together and so it's uh and
Speaker 1: and we both like to hear the other person talk.
Speaker 1: So I hope you in all seriousness, I hope you
Speaker 1: enjoyed that and and sort of see. You know, it's
Speaker 1: interesting I've got and I go back and forth on
Speaker 1: where where the future of faith is going in America
Speaker 1: and and how and how much where we were our
Speaker 1: moral compass seems to be messed up, and you know,
Speaker 1: it seems to have coincided with with with a retreat
Speaker 1: from organized religion, which I myself am somebody who is
Speaker 1: a retreater. And yet I think you can have a
Speaker 1: moral code and a moral compass without it. But I
Speaker 1: understand those that look at what's happened in this current
Speaker 1: environment that we're living in, and that we seem to
Speaker 1: be so transactional financially that that's the only thing that matters.
Speaker 1: We'll overlook character, will overlook immorality as long as we
Speaker 1: get ours. That is something that certainly people would have
Speaker 1: been other than that quote unquote prosperity gospel business. But
Speaker 1: the most people of faith that sort of see that
Speaker 1: sort of the hey we've got to have, you know,
Speaker 1: preached that kind of of of morality. Anyway, it's I
Speaker 1: think more of a provocative conversation to have amongst yourselves
Speaker 1: a little bit. All right, before we go, let's do
Speaker 1: a little last Chuck ask Chuck. All right, first question,
Speaker 1: you know anything that praises me. I'm gonna end up
Speaker 1: asking your question here. This comes from James, and he says,
Speaker 1: I like your suggestion for expanding the house. If you
Speaker 1: follow up questions well, this diminished the impact of jerry mandarin.
Speaker 1: How do we have to do How do we have
Speaker 1: to go about implementing something like this? Will it require
Speaker 1: a new constitutional amendment or simply for Congress to pass
Speaker 1: this as a new law. So, James, the beauty of this,
Speaker 1: and why I'm such an advocate of it, is that
Speaker 1: you don't need a constitutional amendment. It is up to
Speaker 1: the House. It is just an act of Congress. And
Speaker 1: this was the norm up until nineteen twenty, which is
Speaker 1: as our population expanded with every census, we didn't just
Speaker 1: reapportion the congressional districts. We also made a decision to decide, okay,
Speaker 1: what size should the districts be. How much should we
Speaker 1: expand the House by? Maybe we add ten new districts, fifteen,
Speaker 1: whatever it is. So no, that's the beauty of this gerrymandering,
Speaker 1: and it's it is. Look, you're never going to get
Speaker 1: rid of gerrymandering. As long as the Constitution says state
Speaker 1: legislatures are essentially in charge of deciding these lines, there's
Speaker 1: always going to be And I always would would caution
Speaker 1: people to get I don't think you can quote unquote
Speaker 1: get rid of the practice and The reason I say
Speaker 1: this is it because you never know when you need
Speaker 1: to use jerry mandering in order to create more competitive districts.
Speaker 1: If say, a your state passes a referendum that says
Speaker 1: districts should have some form of competitiveness to them as
Speaker 1: one of the things. Not everybody believes that congressional district
Speaker 1: should be based that way, and not all congressional districts
Speaker 1: are drawn that way. But look, I think the reason
Speaker 1: I'm such an advocate of this is that A it
Speaker 1: does not take a constitutional amendment. B. I think it
Speaker 1: just minimizes the need to jerrymander. Right, if you have
Speaker 1: these smaller four hundred thousand member communities of interest, Where Arlington,
Speaker 1: Texas at four hundred thousand people is a community of interest,
Speaker 1: I think we can agree they get a member of Congress,
Speaker 1: But you wouldn't want to have the entire DFW represented
Speaker 1: by one person, right, or even half the DFW area.
Speaker 1: Are they really going to represent the interest of Arlington
Speaker 1: and Fort Worth or Arlington or Fort Worth? Will they
Speaker 1: pick one? You see where I'm going here. So I
Speaker 1: think it definitely limits the need and limits the motivation
Speaker 1: of gerrymandering on that front. And then, of course, the
Speaker 1: other thing that fixes is the electoral college. Right, you
Speaker 1: double the amount of votes in the electoral college, and
Speaker 1: you make it to where the popular vote in the
Speaker 1: electoral college are less likely to be in conflict when
Speaker 1: all the numbers are set in. So, James, I hope
Speaker 1: I've made you now not just a supporter of the idea,
Speaker 1: but now an advocate. Go out there and evangelize about this.
Speaker 1: Uncap the house. Uncap the House, and we start solving
Speaker 1: some of our polarization problems in this country. Okay, next
Speaker 1: question comes from Eric C. Does it How does an
Speaker 1: individual or an entity get the label get to label
Speaker 1: itself as non partisan? I'm thinking of advocacy groups or
Speaker 1: think tanks, even government entities, etc. I saw an individual
Speaker 1: sitting for an interview on what we'll call an unnamed
Speaker 1: news in a program, and the individual was from an
Speaker 1: advocacy group, which the news program label is non partisan,
Speaker 1: and it struck me as a potentially subjective label as
Speaker 1: Another example is in the Congressional Budget Office considered non partisan.
Speaker 1: What makes it so? Is it simply because its staff
Speaker 1: is not hired by anyone acting on behalf of either
Speaker 1: of the major political parties. Appreciate your thoughts. Thanks for
Speaker 1: the work on the podcast. An interesting guest, ps, how
Speaker 1: about some love for the Capitals. Go Caps? Yes, I
Speaker 1: am taping on Wednesday evening May seventh, bummed that the
Speaker 1: Caps are down one oh to Normally a team that
Speaker 1: I would be rooting for any team who's the Hurricanes,
Speaker 1: but not the Carolina Hurricanes. I don't root for any
Speaker 1: Carolina Hurricanes. All my Hurricanes are in Miami, not even
Speaker 1: my friends in Tulsa and the Golden Hurricane. No, we
Speaker 1: only root for the Miami Hurricanes. So we shall see,
Speaker 1: let's go. I just I have a lot of confidence
Speaker 1: that this Caps team is going to somehow. It just
Speaker 1: feels like there's a there's a narrative here with Ovechkin.
Speaker 1: He breaks the record sort of one last hurrah, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of like Brady and his Tampa Super Bowl that
Speaker 1: maybe we get that in one more Stanley Cup from Ovechkin.
Speaker 1: But you know, you bring up a good point about nonpartisan,
Speaker 1: bipartisan and all that stuff. I don't know if the
Speaker 1: word nonpartisan I you know, I guess the one place
Speaker 1: that I've been comfortable having somebody label themselves as nonpartisan
Speaker 1: is active members of the military because they have to
Speaker 1: be nonpartisan, right, they have to follow the commander, the
Speaker 1: orders the commander in chief, no matter who the commander
Speaker 1: in chief is. So I think there's do you behave
Speaker 1: in a nonpartisan way. But everybody is born with I
Speaker 1: always say, inherent bias. I always checked my pulse. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm a human being. Humans are born with original bias,
Speaker 1: is what I like to call it, and meaning, you
Speaker 1: know you everybody has an ideology and a partisanship that's
Speaker 1: has formed as much by where you're born, who you're
Speaker 1: born too, when you were born, the circumstances of your childhood.
Speaker 1: All of that is shaping so it's it shapes you.
Speaker 1: And so there's bias. And where there's bias, there's going
Speaker 1: to be some form of partisanship. So I don't think
Speaker 1: I think there's I think I think these government entities
Speaker 1: Congressional Budget Office, I would label as bipartisan because essentially
Speaker 1: they are. It's a staff that has been that has
Speaker 1: been hired by people appointed by both parties, right, So
Speaker 1: that to me is by privacy. The Federal Reserve, to me,
Speaker 1: is bipartisan. So I think bipartisan is a better version
Speaker 1: of that, I think nonpartisan. I think you're not wrong.
Speaker 1: It's not just subjective. I just think that you know,
Speaker 1: if you know, if your nonpartisan, a partisan on the
Speaker 1: left or right might view you as a as a
Speaker 1: as an opponent anyway, because you're not for their side
Speaker 1: of things. You might if you're using you're not you're
Speaker 1: if you're using the descriptor of nonpartisan as a way
Speaker 1: to avoid taking a stand on something. Are are you
Speaker 1: actually being nonpartisan? Or are you are you being sort
Speaker 1: of a silent partisan if you will by not by
Speaker 1: not taking a stance on something. So I think it's
Speaker 1: a fair point, and I think that I don't think
Speaker 1: anybody is if the only entities that I think in
Speaker 1: American institutions that are probably best to be described as
Speaker 1: nonpartisan or is the military. Look I've always said in
Speaker 1: you know, there's that ridiculous phrase that that Rodger Ales
Speaker 1: and Fox came up with fair and balanced. Well, I
Speaker 1: don't believe that the two. I actually think that phrase
Speaker 1: is in conflict. Right, you can't balance fairness. You're either
Speaker 1: fair or you're balanced. And balance is also a very
Speaker 1: subjective word. So I think the best you know, the
Speaker 1: term I've always trived for journalistically is fairness. I'm going
Speaker 1: to be fair but fair. If I could be described
Speaker 1: that way any interview that way, tough but fair, I would.
Speaker 1: And I think fairness doesn't always mean you're going to
Speaker 1: like all the questions, but they're fair questions to be asked.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: Last question comes from Dell. I'm desperate for someone to
Speaker 1: answer a question for me. It might sound basic, but
Speaker 1: I feel like it is basic. It's the very foundation
Speaker 1: of much of the political talk around the country. So
Speaker 1: when is this looming crisis of debt going to destroy us?
Speaker 1: Is there a number that triggers this? I just don't
Speaker 1: understand how on a macro level the debt of a
Speaker 1: country is detrimental, especially that of the US. Also, how
Speaker 1: will a potential catastrophe caused by the debt affect the
Speaker 1: average person? I mean higher prices. We already see that now,
Speaker 1: from the pandemic to tariffs. So I was that any different?
Speaker 1: I'm just really confused about the boogeyman I've heard about
Speaker 1: for forty eight years. It feels like the boy who
Speaker 1: cried Wolf. Look, I tend to agree with you, right,
Speaker 1: and the whole what we thought was debt to GDP
Speaker 1: ratio that we could withstand. Turns out it was much higher,
Speaker 1: which many economists had said. As long as we're the
Speaker 1: reserve currency of the world, as long as the dollar
Speaker 1: is a safe haven, ooh, whoops, is it a safe
Speaker 1: haven anymore? Our debt won't matter until it does. So
Speaker 1: the problem is if you do policies, I think, if
Speaker 1: we continue to pursue the policies, these tariff policies, which
Speaker 1: then sort of send a message to the world that
Speaker 1: maybe we're not the free trade haven of the world,
Speaker 1: that we're not the safe haven of financial markets. If
Speaker 1: people start to question, you know, what gives us the
Speaker 1: safe haven status is that we have a rule of
Speaker 1: law that is pretty pretty good that if we're suddenly
Speaker 1: not the reserve currency, then are debt holders. Then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, then you'd have interest rate hikes and
Speaker 1: then this could this would just it would have catastrophic effects, right,
Speaker 1: And this is what happened in Europe when there was
Speaker 1: a debt crisis with the Greeks, and there's been other
Speaker 1: countries where they've had that. But the other countries that
Speaker 1: have had these debt crises weren't reserve currencies and didn't
Speaker 1: sort of have our our our economic standing that we
Speaker 1: do here. So look, I tend to think that we
Speaker 1: do overdo the debt issue, and it is sort of
Speaker 1: a convenient way to try to to because the number
Speaker 1: sounds so fantastical, right, and that debt clock is everything,
Speaker 1: But you know not some of that debt is bad debt.
Speaker 1: But some of that debt is you know, debt that
Speaker 1: just about every fortune five hundred company would call good debt. Right,
Speaker 1: it's debt. You're borrowing money today to finance something for
Speaker 1: economic empowerment tomorrow. Right, You're borrowing money today to build
Speaker 1: housing which will only create new tax payers tomorrow. Right.
Speaker 1: So I think we we in the media do a
Speaker 1: poor job of explaining the debt and what it really means,
Speaker 1: and which which debt is good debt, in which debt
Speaker 1: is bad debt. But this becomes more of an acute
Speaker 1: issue if our standing is the reserve car, if we
Speaker 1: suddenly have sovereign funds all over the world, the side
Speaker 1: that the US dollar is not a safe haven, that
Speaker 1: US treasuries are not a safe haven, and once they
Speaker 1: don't become a safe haven, well then you sort of
Speaker 1: have runaway interest rates and then that that that creates
Speaker 1: a catastrophe. But guess what if the if the debt
Speaker 1: ever becomes a problem for America, the whole globes in trouble. Right,
Speaker 1: you want to talk about a contagion issue, right, it would?
Speaker 1: It would. And in some ways, because you want to
Speaker 1: talk about too big to fail, the United States is
Speaker 1: too big to fail. So in some ways it's probably
Speaker 1: why our debt's never going to be ultimately as as
Speaker 1: catastrophic a problem as some as some might argue. But
Speaker 1: you know what, my answer to that question is likely
Speaker 1: to trigger some fun responses, and I would love to
Speaker 1: hear from you. Tell me why I'm wrong on this one.
Speaker 1: Explain to me how our debt as it currently stands
Speaker 1: could be as catastrophic as some of you think. I
Speaker 1: would love to hear from you that. And remember any
Speaker 1: question you have here, ask Chuck at the Chuck podcast
Speaker 1: dot com, drop comment and the YouTube, or drop comment
Speaker 1: in any of the podcast feeds or Instagram feed, TikTok,
Speaker 1: all of those places. We comb all of them for
Speaker 1: potential questions, and we're only going to ask the relevant questions,
Speaker 1: the good questions. But I would love to hear from
Speaker 1: you on some contrarian answers on the debt, but Dell,
Speaker 1: I appreciate that question, and I appreciate all of you
Speaker 1: for sticking around, for listening and until I upload again