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Speaker 1: to another episode of the Chuck Podcast. Needless to say,
Speaker 1: what what I thought I was going to be focusing
Speaker 1: on with this episode has changed quite a bit, But
Speaker 1: let me give you a quick rundown. Look. I'm going
Speaker 1: to give you my first hand account of what happened
Speaker 1: at the White House. Correspondence dinner from my point of view, Yes,
Speaker 1: I attended as a guest of National journal I will
Speaker 1: literally share all the details on that and then take
Speaker 1: a step back and just sort of talk about this
Speaker 1: moment that we're living in politically basically through my through
Speaker 1: my political anthropologist glasses here, because I think, you know,
Speaker 1: there's no doubt that we don't have the political leaders
Speaker 1: to deal with the moment that we need to be
Speaker 1: dealing with at the moment. So and I will get
Speaker 1: into all of that, but we just this is a
Speaker 1: this is this is the worst set of political leaders
Speaker 1: that we could have to meet the moment that we need,
Speaker 1: which is why we need clearly, we need new leadership
Speaker 1: in this country collectively. And this is across the board, left, right, center,
Speaker 1: et cetera. We will get I will get into that. Course.
Speaker 1: This is Monday, which means I have a new time
Speaker 1: Machine segment, and we are we are going back to
Speaker 1: a story that would eventually help create the name for
Speaker 1: one of the most popular bands of my generation. So
Speaker 1: there's your clue. There's your clue to what historical event
Speaker 1: I will be taking a deep dive in with the
Speaker 1: time machine this week, and of course we will do
Speaker 1: questions from you, and yes, despite the events of the weekend,
Speaker 1: I do have a few thoughts in my compartmentalized brain
Speaker 1: on sports, the draft and all things from there. But look,
Speaker 1: let me start with I figure the best thing I
Speaker 1: can do is just sort of take you through, take
Speaker 1: you through what I did with the dinner, and it
Speaker 1: really my evening begins at six pm Eastern time. I'm
Speaker 1: walking out of the house, and just to give you
Speaker 1: a full picture, I had planned to go to the
Speaker 1: after party. My friends at ms NOW had invited My
Speaker 1: wife and I did the after party there after party,
Speaker 1: and we were planning to attend. I was attending the
Speaker 1: dinner itself as a guest of National Journal. I've been
Speaker 1: doing a lot of work with them lately. National Journal,
Speaker 1: for many of you know as my former as a
Speaker 1: former employer of mine, I've been we've been doing doing
Speaker 1: some brainstorming together and we're we're in this collective world.
Speaker 1: And so that's that's why I was attending. That's the
Speaker 1: that's who whose guest I was. My wife was going
Speaker 1: to meet. She did this was one ticket, so she
Speaker 1: was gonna we were gonna meet essentially at the at
Speaker 1: the after party about eleven pm. And as I'm leaving
Speaker 1: the house in the uber at six pm, I turned
Speaker 1: to my wife and I said, how ab I'm not
Speaker 1: making a mistake? And what did I mean by that?
Speaker 1: All Right? I just said it out loud, and I
Speaker 1: had a lot of sort of tr nation about going.
Speaker 1: I hadn't been to the dinner in probably four or
Speaker 1: five years. I used to frankly when I had a
Speaker 1: job on Sunday morning. Some of you might might know,
Speaker 1: so I had stopped doing these Saturday night dinners. Sometimes
Speaker 1: I would go for basically like the first hour and
Speaker 1: leave early, frankly, just to get a tiny bit of
Speaker 1: rest before the next morning. Sometimes I didn't go at all.
Speaker 1: It just, you know, it just it's just a it
Speaker 1: can be. It's a It's a I used to joke
Speaker 1: with when I was in my twenties the dinner was fun,
Speaker 1: when by my forties it became work. But I was going, look,
Speaker 1: I'm doing a lot more in the media entrepreneur space,
Speaker 1: and this is a so there's certainly a lot of
Speaker 1: interesting people that I am working with I'd like to
Speaker 1: be working with, and I thought this would be as
Speaker 1: good of a time as any to connect with some people,
Speaker 1: But I knew that there was going to be a
Speaker 1: lot of protests. I knew there was going to be
Speaker 1: a lot of tension. And so when I said that
Speaker 1: to my wife, she was like, why did you know?
Speaker 1: She sort of haunted her as I laughed. And then
Speaker 1: of course we all thought about it a lot after
Speaker 1: the incident itself. And I'm not going to sit here
Speaker 1: and say I thought violence was going to happen. You know,
Speaker 1: I didn't know if it was going to be just
Speaker 1: you know, was I walking into something that I didn't
Speaker 1: really want to be a part of. It is probably
Speaker 1: a better way to describe it, right, I think I
Speaker 1: told you. I think I expressed earlier. I thought all
Speaker 1: the look, this is one thing people need to understand.
Speaker 1: This is not the president's event. This is the This
Speaker 1: is the White House Press Association's event. He is an
Speaker 1: invited guest. It is tradition to invite the president. Hardstop.
Speaker 1: He chose to come for the first time. This is
Speaker 1: not his event. And this is an important point because
Speaker 1: this is not an event to be held at the
Speaker 1: White House. If he doesn't feel comfortable coming, then he
Speaker 1: doesn't come. Right. This is a trade associatiation event for
Speaker 1: White House Press, for members of the White House Press Corps.
Speaker 1: At the end of the day, so I sort of
Speaker 1: I've found the sort of hand ringing about, you know,
Speaker 1: whether press should attend or not. This is not the
Speaker 1: president's dinner. Look, everybody made their individual decisions about who
Speaker 1: they invite, right and that's a different decision. And you
Speaker 1: can hold individual organizations accountable for who they choose to
Speaker 1: invite or not. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: we're journalists and I just wanted a story. You have
Speaker 1: to have good sources in order to report, period, And
Speaker 1: so I understood the criticism of those that say, oh,
Speaker 1: don't give them a platform, don't do this, don't do that.
Speaker 1: At the end of the day, it was his choice
Speaker 1: to come, and you know, the press can. To me,
Speaker 1: a good journalist should be able to handle handle that
Speaker 1: situation and should be comfortable going in. You don't, you know,
Speaker 1: nobody's asking you to become a maggot cheerleader or a
Speaker 1: left wing activist. If you're going there to be an activist,
Speaker 1: don't go right that. You know, if if you're if
Speaker 1: you're more interested in and being an activist, and then
Speaker 1: you shouldn't have gone but look, I'm not. I you know,
Speaker 1: I thought all of that was overrated on that front.
Speaker 1: So but I you know, I wasn't. I knew the
Speaker 1: protests were going to be large, and I've certainly been
Speaker 1: to that hotel so many times. I knew that there
Speaker 1: were alternative ways to get into the hotel. So I
Speaker 1: was very careful where I had the Uber drop off.
Speaker 1: In fact, I knew I was going to decided I
Speaker 1: was going to basically, for those of you familiar with
Speaker 1: the Hilton, go in the back way, go in the
Speaker 1: other you know, don't come in on Connecticut Avenue. I
Speaker 1: basically came in behind sort of between. Essentially, it was
Speaker 1: dropped off not quite at the corner of Florida Avenue
Speaker 1: and in Columbia excuse me, in eighteenth but close ish,
Speaker 1: it's basically like nineteenth in Florida. Because I knew I
Speaker 1: could walk now with those terrible tuck shoes, I even
Speaker 1: double socked, knowing I was probably going to be walking
Speaker 1: more than usual in order to Little did I know
Speaker 1: how much I was going to end up walking after
Speaker 1: the event, says it was so look, I was pretty
Speaker 1: you know, I get dropped off by the Uber walk
Speaker 1: in get in the essentially the back way without without
Speaker 1: going through any of that protest or stuff that was
Speaker 1: taking place, which was on the other side of the hotel,
Speaker 1: which is basically it where Florida and Connecticut come together,
Speaker 1: which is essentially where the Hilton Washington Hilton is. And
Speaker 1: if you're wondering and getting into the Hilton, you know
Speaker 1: there is no magnetometer to get into the hotel itself.
Speaker 1: This is look, it's there's a reason why this dinner
Speaker 1: is always held at this hotel. They have a unique
Speaker 1: situation where you really can take the ballroom sections and
Speaker 1: essentially secure it away from everything else, which is what
Speaker 1: they have done. In my experience, I've been going to
Speaker 1: these dinners. I think the first one I went to
Speaker 1: was probably in nineteen ninety five, nineteenninety six, something like that,
Speaker 1: and it is you know, this is why there's been
Speaker 1: chatter about moving it to the convention Center or moving
Speaker 1: it to some other places. But this really is sort
Speaker 1: of a unique ballroom. You know, every comedian has come in.
Speaker 1: I can't believe this is at a Hilton, like sort
Speaker 1: of mocking the idea that it's at a Hilton. No
Speaker 1: offense to my friends at Hilton, but it's always been
Speaker 1: kind of a bud of jokes at this fancy black
Speaker 1: tie dinner is at a Hilton. But this ballroom setup
Speaker 1: is an incredibly unique setup. After the Reagan assassination attempt,
Speaker 1: they even created more secure areas. They basically they they
Speaker 1: have some of the easiest ways for a highly secure
Speaker 1: individual to be brought in and out of the hotel,
Speaker 1: more so than really any other hotel in the city,
Speaker 1: especially with a ballroom like that of that size that
Speaker 1: they can do. So it is why it's there, and
Speaker 1: they've always the hotel itself has always sort of been
Speaker 1: divided like that when when this dinner is here, so
Speaker 1: you can just like walk into the lobby, which is
Speaker 1: where I went. You just go into the lobby, and
Speaker 1: I was going to the pre cocktail parties National Journal's
Speaker 1: cocktail party to go most a lot of times, if
Speaker 1: you're an invited guests, that's how you pick up your ticket,
Speaker 1: is you go to your sponsoring organizations pre pre dinner event.
Speaker 1: It's sort of been what a lot of news organizations do.
Speaker 1: So so you ignore all that, and it was you know,
Speaker 1: you could tell, I mean, it was pretty heavy. The protesters,
Speaker 1: the rain probably made it. It was did I bring
Speaker 1: up it was raining at that point in time. So
Speaker 1: everybody is sort of you know, there with your hairdoes
Speaker 1: and stuff like that on that front. So we get
Speaker 1: into the dinner and it's the usual. Everybody is mag
Speaker 1: that you before you can get to even the ballroom area,
Speaker 1: there is a set of magnetometers that everybody goes through
Speaker 1: and essentially just about everybody not you'll not only go
Speaker 1: through a magnetometer, but if they're there's anything that pops
Speaker 1: up in the magnetometer, you get one, you get the
Speaker 1: wand and it's pretty If you've ever been to any
Speaker 1: presidential events, it's very similar to that. It's if you've
Speaker 1: ever been to even a sporting event where the president
Speaker 1: was going to be there, you'll notice it. Sometimes there's
Speaker 1: a little bit more extra security. You go through magnanometers
Speaker 1: and there's a person wanding. This was the same setup.
Speaker 1: And then the dinner itself, you go down a set
Speaker 1: of staircases yet another sent it's sort of almost like
Speaker 1: a sunken You come in at one level and the
Speaker 1: ballroom itself is like further down, and you walk down
Speaker 1: it's two sets two flights of stairs This is important
Speaker 1: because I don't the attacker. The gunman did not get
Speaker 1: even down one flight of those stairs. It's two flights
Speaker 1: of stairs to get into the ballroom area itself. So
Speaker 1: we're in the ballroom, they serve. They're serving the salad first,
Speaker 1: and everybody was done with a salad. And the timing
Speaker 1: I was fascinating because it's so the shots ring out
Speaker 1: right about one minute after the There was probably two
Speaker 1: hundredweight staff that all came out at the exact same time.
Speaker 1: This was sort of a bit of an orchestration, and
Speaker 1: it's almost it's the server ballet, if you will, that
Speaker 1: we've we've it's always it's very impressive how it's done,
Speaker 1: where essentially every table is cleared and every table is
Speaker 1: served pretty much simultaneously. Right, it's an incredibly quick turnover.
Speaker 1: So you have this rush of people come out, so
Speaker 1: my initial thought. And then so this rush of people's
Speaker 1: coming out and you see and you know, the tables
Speaker 1: are all close together, and it's pretty crowded anyway, because
Speaker 1: people are it's still early in the dinner, so there's
Speaker 1: still a little socializing. People are doing a little table
Speaker 1: hopping to see to catch up with people you know,
Speaker 1: you might get a text. I'd gotten a text from
Speaker 1: a friend of mine. It was two tables over that
Speaker 1: I didn't see until after the incident itself. So so
Speaker 1: we're sitting at the dinner, everybody's finishing the salad, and
Speaker 1: you know, they just they had just finished the head
Speaker 1: table introductions. President of White House correspond Association basically said, Okay,
Speaker 1: now we're gonna now we're going to serve dinner, so everybody.
Speaker 1: So it was actually gonna be a quick pause in
Speaker 1: the program. I think, as far as timing events is
Speaker 1: the minute dinner was served that it was going to
Speaker 1: be pretty soon after that that we were going to
Speaker 1: hear from the President. So the rush of white staff
Speaker 1: floods the ballroom and it's about a minute later in
Speaker 1: my recollection that I hear. You hear the pop, pop pop,
Speaker 1: And that's what I heard, pop pop pop, some of
Speaker 1: you saw. I did a preliminary Instagram last night that
Speaker 1: went on a few of my socials just to give
Speaker 1: you a quick sense of what I saw. So you
Speaker 1: hear this pop pop pop, And I'll just be honest.
Speaker 1: At first, you know you're not You don't expect to
Speaker 1: hear gunshots and so you don't automatically assume that's what
Speaker 1: you heard. And I didn't within you know, it's sort
Speaker 1: of like within two seconds do you sort of realize Jesus,
Speaker 1: I think that was gunshots. But that like the first
Speaker 1: thing in my mind was, oh, what just happened? What
Speaker 1: accident just happened? I mean, as the President himself said,
Speaker 1: did somebody drop our tray? It just just felt like
Speaker 1: an accident. Because again, this is the case where your
Speaker 1: visuals in your audio can sometimes be in conflict. What
Speaker 1: were we all seeing. We were seeing this rush of
Speaker 1: people of weight staff coming to essentially do this, do
Speaker 1: the appetizer plates clearing, and the entree survey, and so
Speaker 1: that's in your head. So any noise you hear, I
Speaker 1: think automatically you're just associating with what you see, and
Speaker 1: then you realize pop pop pop, And then somebody heard shots,
Speaker 1: and then you saw a whole bunch of people just
Speaker 1: drop to the ground, including all the white staff. I
Speaker 1: will confess I was a little slow getting to the ground.
Speaker 1: I was like continuing to just try, and even even
Speaker 1: when I knelt on the ground, my table mates were
Speaker 1: like get down, and then I like poke my head
Speaker 1: up to try to get a sense because I was
Speaker 1: trying to I generally heard where I you know, where
Speaker 1: I heard. Where I thought I heard the shots from
Speaker 1: turned out to be exactly where the shots came from,
Speaker 1: which is it felt like it was coming from behind
Speaker 1: the entrance to the ballroom. And the question was with
Speaker 1: these shots had fired in the ballroom. And it's now
Speaker 1: pretty obvious to me because of the why they weren't
Speaker 1: loud loud. They were loud enough to hear the pop,
Speaker 1: pop pop, But then you realize it was not in
Speaker 1: the ballroom, right, So everybody's just we're first looking around here,
Speaker 1: do we hear anybody screaming to you? Do you see
Speaker 1: any paramedics? And then you realize, Okay, nobody was shot
Speaker 1: in the ballroom. It was clearly coming from the quest
Speaker 1: At this point in time, I don't know whether it
Speaker 1: is right outside the doors where they come in down
Speaker 1: those two flights of stairs I was talking about, or
Speaker 1: if it was further up the two flights of stairs,
Speaker 1: sort of where the magnetometers are before you go walk
Speaker 1: down after you've been cleared of security. And again, I'm
Speaker 1: just trying to put you in my shoes at this time,
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Speaker 1: And yes, I too, am a customer. Now. One of
Speaker 1: my witnessing is we're on the floor. There's a few things.
Speaker 1: One is, obviously you see you start to see a
Speaker 1: parade of security detail. First of all, there was security everywhere,
Speaker 1: and in fact, it probably pretty clear that there were
Speaker 1: a handful of tables where they were undercover security. Right.
Speaker 1: There was just too many people in that room not
Speaker 1: to have something like that. You immediately see probably one
Speaker 1: hundred law enforcement throughout the ball room, essentially just trying
Speaker 1: to clear everything. Right, everybody had guns drawn. They're trying
Speaker 1: to clear everything. And then you say, you have these
Speaker 1: security details, and I think most of these people were
Speaker 1: associated with a security detail I don't know this yet
Speaker 1: for a fact, but it seems that way because you'd
Speaker 1: start to see this parade first. You know, I think
Speaker 1: I saw hag Seth get escorted out. I saw Scott
Speaker 1: Bessett get escorted out. I saw Mike Johnson get escorted out.
Speaker 1: I saw Steve Scalise get escorted out. And so you
Speaker 1: started to see those folks getting escorted out. Then there's
Speaker 1: a lockdown in the room right as you might expect,
Speaker 1: as they're now in hindsight, it's because the main entrance
Speaker 1: to the ballroom was a crime scene. So you know,
Speaker 1: I think they were trying to make a quick determination
Speaker 1: to see if this was some sort of conspiracy. I
Speaker 1: could tell you what I first thought is, oh, did
Speaker 1: this person come in with the weight staff? And then
Speaker 1: use that moment, you know, I probably watched too many movies, right,
Speaker 1: you know, you have too many movies in your head
Speaker 1: and you start thinking about different things. Although there's a
Speaker 1: there is a weird movie life imitates art aspect to
Speaker 1: the uh the alleged assassin who apparently got a room
Speaker 1: in the hotel, which, by the way, is a security loophole,
Speaker 1: which I'm going to get to in a minute. So
Speaker 1: at this point, everybody and it looks like we're sealed
Speaker 1: in and then you're then the question is and you know,
Speaker 1: everybody's comfortably you know, starts popping their head up, and
Speaker 1: we're all trying We're all trying to work, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, everybody you know is just trying to We're
Speaker 1: all trying to find out what happened. You have a
Speaker 1: room full of of reporters plus uh self important people
Speaker 1: plus actually important people, and everybody wants everybody wants to
Speaker 1: know what the hell is going on, and everybody's trying
Speaker 1: to figure out what's going on. And you know, at
Speaker 1: first it's just simply everybody trading. Did you hear gunshots?
Speaker 1: What did you see? Did you see anything? Did anybody
Speaker 1: get hit? And that was just sort of the determination,
Speaker 1: was there any in anything, anybody hurt within the ballroom?
Speaker 1: You know, trying to figure out if anybody had gotten in,
Speaker 1: you know, it was it somebody who took a shot?
Speaker 1: You know, did the shots come into the ballroom? Right?
Speaker 1: And that is you know, now it's like I said,
Speaker 1: the sound was not loud enough to have been in
Speaker 1: the ballroom, which is why it wasn't one hundred percent
Speaker 1: convinced it was gunshots right away. Now I know exactly
Speaker 1: what I heard. I heard the gunshots based on behind
Speaker 1: closed doors two flights up but within earshot of where
Speaker 1: we were right So now I understand. Now I couldn't
Speaker 1: process why they were, you know, sort of heard, but
Speaker 1: not just dominant as far as the audio in that
Speaker 1: the audible nature of the South. So then they about
Speaker 1: it's pretty fast that they make the determination that they
Speaker 1: can open the doors. And then the minute they opened
Speaker 1: the doors, they decide it's let's evacuate, but they don't.
Speaker 1: They just basically encourage everybody to leave. I will be
Speaker 1: honest with you. When I saw that there was a
Speaker 1: door open and people were starting to trickle out before
Speaker 1: they made the announcement, I was like, first of all,
Speaker 1: you know, the table I was at, we sort of
Speaker 1: just in our own little like well, we all looked
Speaker 1: at each other, we toasted, and we were like, well,
Speaker 1: we're never going to forget this dinner, and so it
Speaker 1: was just one of those things we all realized we
Speaker 1: sat there together and that we will never forget. I
Speaker 1: was sitting next to a woman named Nicole, who I
Speaker 1: knew a little bit through an old friend of mine
Speaker 1: back in the day of sitting next to another gentleman
Speaker 1: named of Duarto, who had not met before. But we're
Speaker 1: all we're all connected now. Jeff to four of National Journal,
Speaker 1: the editor in chief, was at the table. He did
Speaker 1: a fine update by the way, on newsphere last night.
Speaker 1: I hope you caught that, so you have that sort
Speaker 1: of We did have that little bonding moment as a table,
Speaker 1: and I think other of my guesses other tables did
Speaker 1: the same thing. It's this is such a real thing
Speaker 1: that you're with. And then it was sort of like,
Speaker 1: all right, good luck everybody. And at that point I'm
Speaker 1: ready to evacuate, and it looks like everybody's going in
Speaker 1: one direction, and I'm like, if they really want us
Speaker 1: out of this building, you know. And finally one of
Speaker 1: the security folks says, look, go follow exit signs, and
Speaker 1: it was like, you don't have to tell me twice.
Speaker 1: So I ended up going through the kitchen. At some point,
Speaker 1: I was like just following around the hotel staff. Somebody
Speaker 1: recognized me, was really nice and basically help help me
Speaker 1: navigate through the kitchen. At that point I think I
Speaker 1: was there was just all sorts of security personnel back
Speaker 1: there just sort of huddling, and I was kind of
Speaker 1: the first one through the doors, and there was clearly
Speaker 1: going to be a whole slew of people on me.
Speaker 1: And I end up coming out of an exit of
Speaker 1: course that I've never been out before at the Hilton.
Speaker 1: So the hotel backs up against why I believe it's Wyoming.
Speaker 1: I think it's Wyoming Avenue, sort of where T Street
Speaker 1: and Wyoming Avenue go behind it. And I end up
Speaker 1: there and I just decide, all right, I'm going to
Speaker 1: walk as far away from the hotel as I can
Speaker 1: and go find an uber. So that's my plan. I
Speaker 1: walk up about a half a block and all you
Speaker 1: do is you start running into groups of people in tuxedos.
Speaker 1: Right and formal were all trying to debate what to do. Right,
Speaker 1: they're going to reopen the dinner. As far as I
Speaker 1: was concerned, I was done with the dinner. You know,
Speaker 1: this was not I was not going to be in
Speaker 1: that closed end event. I've been through enough of this.
Speaker 1: I've had enough death threats. You know. My feeling is
Speaker 1: I'm not getting very close anymore to to to that
Speaker 1: world until we sort of get to a better place
Speaker 1: as a country, but I'll get to that in a
Speaker 1: few minutes. And so I'm like, well, it may be
Speaker 1: hard to get a ride out of here if I
Speaker 1: stay too close to that area. So I'm walking. I
Speaker 1: end up running into the Fetterments on the corner. I
Speaker 1: think it was at the time. I think we were
Speaker 1: on the corner of Columbia and Wyoming. As you know,
Speaker 1: John Fetterman is not hard to miss, and it was
Speaker 1: just him and his wife. They were on a corner,
Speaker 1: and so I went up. You know, he recognized me,
Speaker 1: and he waved over, and he was they were looking.
Speaker 1: They had they had a driver, which was not surprising.
Speaker 1: Many US senators do have somebody that they're you know,
Speaker 1: they get a driver for the night, or maybe it's
Speaker 1: a driver all the time. But that's so he was looking.
Speaker 1: They were looking for their ride. He, by the way,
Speaker 1: couldn't have been nicer. He was trying to he was
Speaker 1: trying to convince me, don't know, we can give you
Speaker 1: a ride. I'm like, I'm good, I'm gonna I'll walk up,
Speaker 1: walk up a couple more blocks, and I'm just going
Speaker 1: to get home. I had suddenly I had my kids
Speaker 1: wondering what the hell was going on? And my wife
Speaker 1: was so at that point, I'm trying to keep them
Speaker 1: up to date. Everything's okay, I'm fine, you know, this
Speaker 1: is not about me. We're all good. And then it
Speaker 1: was in and in fact, where I did I filmed
Speaker 1: my video as I was waiting for my uber there
Speaker 1: at the corner of Columbia and Adams Mill is sort
Speaker 1: of as you're walking towards Woodley Park and that Woodley
Speaker 1: Park area. What's interesting is the uber driver picks me
Speaker 1: up and he goes, hey, were you at the dinner?
Speaker 1: What happened? And so he goes, I just listen to
Speaker 1: this eerie thing. He goes, I just dropped off an
Speaker 1: elderly woman who was going to the dinner who was
Speaker 1: telling me this whole story about being there when Reagan
Speaker 1: was shot. And it's just like and so he was
Speaker 1: just sort of processing his own that own sort of weirdness,
Speaker 1: if you will. So that was my that was my experience.
Speaker 1: I ended up getting home about ten o'clock. Nine ten o'clock.
Speaker 1: We decided that, you know, I didn't care whether the
Speaker 1: after parties were on or not. It was like, you know,
Speaker 1: I think we're good, right, I'm not interested. The best
Speaker 1: now was going to be in the Dupat circle underground.
Speaker 1: It's like, don't know if I want to be underground right,
Speaker 1: in sort of a a guarded space like that a
Speaker 1: little bit, because we are I think we are living
Speaker 1: in a we're we're living in a tinder box. And
Speaker 1: that's and that's the thing. So, look, this is what
Speaker 1: it felt like being in that room, right, That's what
Speaker 1: it sounded like, and that's how fast it all happened,
Speaker 1: and so you know, that's that's the instinct I had
Speaker 1: last night, was simply to describe it and then perhaps
Speaker 1: start to move on, right, you know. Unfortunately we've become
Speaker 1: used to this. This is weirdly normal now, and if
Speaker 1: it were just an isolated event, I think it'd be
Speaker 1: easier to move on. But the truth is this doesn't
Speaker 1: feel isolated anymore. And the fact of the matter is
Speaker 1: we know we are living through something different. It's not
Speaker 1: just more political anger. We've had angry periods before, and
Speaker 1: it's not just more division. We've had that too. What
Speaker 1: feels different now is a growing comfort with the idea
Speaker 1: of violence. We're normalizing it, not just the act itself,
Speaker 1: but the idea that it just sort of, Hey, it's
Speaker 1: a part of it. It's a part of politics. You
Speaker 1: just have to accept it. I'm not there, but we do.
Speaker 1: We have the willingness to imagine it now, we have
Speaker 1: the willingness to justify it, to talk about it as
Speaker 1: something that exists just one step away. That's what feels new.
Speaker 1: That's why before I walked out of the door, I
Speaker 1: wondered if I was making a mistake, not because of
Speaker 1: what the dinner could or should be. But we know
Speaker 1: we're living in We're not living in normal times. So
Speaker 1: I can tell you this from experience. I've covered politics
Speaker 1: for decades now, going back to the nineties, early nineties campaigns, presidencies,
Speaker 1: moments of real national tension. After nine to eleven, I
Speaker 1: worked in an office right across the street from the
Speaker 1: Saudi Embassy at the Watergate, and yet I've never dealt
Speaker 1: with anything like this, not in terms of threats, not
Speaker 1: in terms of the volume, and not in terms of
Speaker 1: the tone. That is, until about ten years ago. Sometime
Speaker 1: in twenty fifteen, things started to change the start of
Speaker 1: the Trump era. And once it started, and it didn't
Speaker 1: stay contained at first, it felt targeted in one direction,
Speaker 1: right when my face was on the back of the
Speaker 1: pipe bombers van that they found in Miami, when I
Speaker 1: had FBI agents visiting me to let me know I
Speaker 1: was a target of this. Nobody in the administration, by
Speaker 1: the way, cared called any of these reporters at the
Speaker 1: time that I digressed. So then it felt targeted one direction.
Speaker 1: Then it spread, and now, let's be honest, it feels ambient.
Speaker 1: It's everywhere, like it's just a part of the environment,
Speaker 1: violence and politics going hand in hand. Not in America.
Speaker 1: That wasn't the way it was supposed to be in America.
Speaker 1: Now many people are asking did Donald Trump caused this?
Speaker 1: And I understand the instinct. There's no doubt I'm making
Speaker 1: the case that he's responsible for the era. But it
Speaker 1: is the wrong question because we can argue it forever.
Speaker 1: Supporters will say it's the rhetoric against him. We're already
Speaker 1: seeing that, right. There's this determination by his most devoted
Speaker 1: supporters to just say, hey, the assassination's a leftist, this
Speaker 1: is the left, it's all the Democrats. Fault right critics
Speaker 1: of Trump will say it's his rhetoric. This is the
Speaker 1: guy that introduced political violence and mainstreamed it. The point is,
Speaker 1: we're going to spin in this loop all day and
Speaker 1: we're not going to get anywhere. All we're going to
Speaker 1: do is foment more violence. It's not going to solve
Speaker 1: the problem. But that doesn't mean we can't identify it.
Speaker 1: How this got normalized. So that's the better question. We
Speaker 1: need to be asking what has been normalized and how
Speaker 1: are we going to get out of this? Because presidents
Speaker 1: don't just govern, they set the tone. They set the
Speaker 1: tone for the country. They define the boundaries of acceptable behavior.
Speaker 1: It is a choice to pardon violent extremists that attacked
Speaker 1: the capital. That's a choice, and over the last decade
Speaker 1: these boundaries have shifted quite a bit. You can hear
Speaker 1: it in the rhetoric. Let's go back to the beginning.
Speaker 1: Donald Trump at rallies in twenty sixteen talking about wanting
Speaker 1: to punch protesters, suggesting they should be carried out on stretchers,
Speaker 1: offering to pay the legal fees of anybody prosecuted for
Speaker 1: violent political violence on his behalf. At the time, it
Speaker 1: sounded like wwe inspired bullshit performance right crowd work if
Speaker 1: you will, But the language matters, right, most people may
Speaker 1: hear it just as idle rhetoric, innocent rhetoric, but not everybody,
Speaker 1: because over time what starts his performance becomes a permission slip.
Speaker 1: And then fast forward to just the last few months,
Speaker 1: after the death of Robert Muller, the President of the
Speaker 1: United States actually posts the following quote, Robert Muller just
Speaker 1: died good. I'm glad he's dead. That's not ambiguous. That's
Speaker 1: the President of the United States celebrating the death of
Speaker 1: somebody he believed was a political adversary. I say he
Speaker 1: believed because all Robert Muller wanted to do is to
Speaker 1: get to the frickin truth of what the Russians did
Speaker 1: and whether any Americans helped. Or how about earlier this
Speaker 1: year when he just posted a whole civilization will die tonight,
Speaker 1: never to be brought back again. It's not normal American
Speaker 1: political rhetoric, not normal political rhetoric period, but certainly not
Speaker 1: the behavior that we should expect from an American president.
Speaker 1: It's existential language, and even in moments of tragedy, mocking
Speaker 1: the death of someone like rober Reiner, suggesting his death
Speaker 1: was somehow tied to his political views. Again, this is
Speaker 1: the president. This is the tone being set by the
Speaker 1: President of the United States. And there's another shift that's
Speaker 1: happened at the same time, and it's just as important,
Speaker 1: and it's this idea that politics is responsible for everything.
Speaker 1: If you're struggling, it's not your choices or circumstance, it's
Speaker 1: someone else's fault. It's a political grievance. Blame a politician,
Speaker 1: Blame a party, Blame the press. Because you can't look
Speaker 1: yourself in the mirror and realize you made bad decisions,
Speaker 1: you need someone else to blame. Donald Trump never does
Speaker 1: self reflex, always has to blame someone else. And once
Speaker 1: you start to believe that, once you internalize this idea
Speaker 1: that your problems are caused by all these other people,
Speaker 1: you're not that far from believing they should pay for it.
Speaker 1: And then you hear something just bizarre, like we heard
Speaker 1: last night after this incident, when the president that chose
Speaker 1: to have a press conference and the president was asked
Speaker 1: whether he was the intended target. And part of the
Speaker 1: answer is this idea that he basically said, well, only
Speaker 1: the great presidents, the great ones, as he said it,
Speaker 1: have to deal with this. Lincoln Kennedy, he viewed being
Speaker 1: targeted as kind of a validation, a badge of honor, huh,
Speaker 1: implying that if you didn't get if you're a president
Speaker 1: that wasn't targeted for assassination like he's been, then you're
Speaker 1: not a successful president. You're not trying to do big things.
Speaker 1: Think about all this for a second. Is that the
Speaker 1: escalation that's reframing something dangerous and Unamerican as somehow proof
Speaker 1: of greatness, turning risk into mythology. This is something we
Speaker 1: should all be concerned about because if he's basically resigned
Speaker 1: himself to be martyred, well, then no wonder he took
Speaker 1: a risk like he has with Iran and essentially is
Speaker 1: putting all of us in an economically precarious position. And
Speaker 1: this is but this is where the presidency matters, because,
Speaker 1: whether intentional or not, the president creates the political weather.
Speaker 1: Not every storm, but it's the climate. He's very divisive.
Speaker 1: He thrives on divisiveness. His supporters want the divisiveness. They
Speaker 1: feed off the divisiveness, and he knows it, and he
Speaker 1: does it, and it's more and it's more, and you
Speaker 1: know what happens. People think there's only one way to respond.
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Speaker 1: use that code. And the climate is shift. Behaviorshifts with it.
Speaker 1: The barrier moves. What once felt unthinkable becomes thinkable, then sayable,
Speaker 1: and eventually, for a very small number of people, doable.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't stay on one side. Escalation invites escalation.
Speaker 1: That's how being a divisive leader works. One side raises
Speaker 1: the temperature, the other response, and before long you're not
Speaker 1: looking at two sides anymore. You're looking at reflections sort
Speaker 1: of out of a funhouse mirror. Same intensity, same language,
Speaker 1: same sense, of urgency, existential threats just pointed in different directions.
Speaker 1: And this is where the language matters again and again
Speaker 1: and again, because everything now is framed as some existential
Speaker 1: challenge that we're all dealing with. Every election, every issue,
Speaker 1: a battle for civilization itself. Have you seen that? It's
Speaker 1: the battle for the West? Violence being know sometimes you're
Speaker 1: going to have if you want to save Western civilization.
Speaker 1: How many people have you seen use ridiculous rhetoric like that.
Speaker 1: They're part of the problem too, because if everything is existential,
Speaker 1: then anything becomes justifiable, any rhetoric, any tactic, any escalation.
Speaker 1: The reality is we are a country of three hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty million people who agree on some things and
Speaker 1: disagree on a lot. And for a long time we
Speaker 1: manage that because we had leaders who didn't lean into
Speaker 1: being divisive, who backed off when they realized the temperature
Speaker 1: had been too hot. This president never knows how to
Speaker 1: turn the temperature down, never even last night in his
Speaker 1: attempt to do it. He glorifies the violence as some
Speaker 1: sort of reflection of his greatness. This is that, like
Speaker 1: I said, he needs that's a separate issue, and maybe
Speaker 1: this is Look, he's a human being, and he's been
Speaker 1: targeted multiple times for death, so it might be a
Speaker 1: coping mechanism, and we should have empathy for that. I
Speaker 1: have empathy for that. But he chose to be the
Speaker 1: leader of all Americans and he's pitting Americans against each
Speaker 1: other on purpose. He has to turn it down. We
Speaker 1: have one president at a time. No other political leaders
Speaker 1: have the power that he has to do this. He
Speaker 1: can't do it. He is incapable of doing this. That's
Speaker 1: the unfortunate part. But people around him need to restrain
Speaker 1: him better. Because here's the part that should worry everybody.
Speaker 1: It only takes one person, one unstable, angry, perhaps isolated
Speaker 1: person who has absorbed all of this over the last decade,
Speaker 1: and they decide, boy, they have no choice but to act.
Speaker 1: And that's it. So when the broader culture is reinforcing grievance,
Speaker 1: reinforcing blame, reinforcing confrontation, that person doesn't feel like an outlier.
Speaker 1: They feel, in some distorted way, like they're acting within
Speaker 1: the logic of this moment. If we were a healthy
Speaker 1: political culture, those impulses would be rare, they'd be contained marginal.
Speaker 1: Right now, they're not not, because most people believe in violence.
Speaker 1: I think it's pretty clear most of us don't. But
Speaker 1: because the environment is no longer clearly rejecting it. And
Speaker 1: this is where leadership matters the most, because in moments
Speaker 1: like this, someone has to step in and lower the temperature.
Speaker 1: It isn't going to come from the Speaker of the House.
Speaker 1: It isn't going to come from the Senate Democratic leader,
Speaker 1: the House Minority leader, the Senate Majority leader, the governor
Speaker 1: of Colorado or Pennsylvania or California and New York or Florida,
Speaker 1: whatever it has to be. The president. Someone has to
Speaker 1: say this is not who we are. But he's building
Speaker 1: an entire brand claiming this is who we actually are.
Speaker 1: Someone's got to step in here and say this stops now.
Speaker 1: We got to turn the temperature down. We got to
Speaker 1: not govern in the most divisive ways possible. We don't
Speaker 1: have enough of that. We don't have. Like I said,
Speaker 1: I don't know if we have the leaders to meet
Speaker 1: the moment we need. We're going to see. It's what
Speaker 1: presidential primary is about. I don't know if the two
Speaker 1: political parties are capable of producing a leader that can
Speaker 1: meet the moment. I think the leaders exist. I fear
Speaker 1: the party bases won't allow those leaders to emerge. That
Speaker 1: is why you've seen me so lean so hard into
Speaker 1: an independent or third or fourth parties here, because we
Speaker 1: kind of we need to force a reconciliation in these
Speaker 1: two parties to just change their ways, starting with the
Speaker 1: President and the Republican Party. But instead we keep moving
Speaker 1: forward in this cycle. It's a little more escalation, it's
Speaker 1: a little more normalization. It's a slightly lower barrier each time.
Speaker 1: And the question is and whether this will happen again,
Speaker 1: It's whether we're doing anything to make it less likely,
Speaker 1: and right now it doesn't feel like we are. And
Speaker 1: that's the comfortable truth about all of this. Our political
Speaker 1: culture was certainly had heated rhetoric, but it wasn't this
Speaker 1: actively violent. Now it's actively violent. It's a regular basis, reporters,
Speaker 1: members of Congress, and I see that literally, we have
Speaker 1: Congress right now is half filled with people that have
Speaker 1: been produced by this culture, so they don't even know
Speaker 1: how to engage in rhetoric to turn the temperature down. Instead,
Speaker 1: it's escalation, escalation, escalation, And I can hear the what aboutism.
Speaker 1: I've seen it on the right and I'm seeing it
Speaker 1: pop up on the left now. But the fact is,
Speaker 1: looking at this through the lens of being a political anthropologist,
Speaker 1: this is what happens. You stoke violence, you celebrate violence,
Speaker 1: You pardon violent actors and violent criminals. You consistently pardon
Speaker 1: white collar criminals all the time just because they're your friends.
Speaker 1: And you create a You create a world where people
Speaker 1: don't respect the rule of law, people don't respect the
Speaker 1: normal barriers of America, of civilization. So I saw one thing.
Speaker 1: We need some bipartisan commission on political violence. Give me
Speaker 1: a frickin' break. We don't need a committee or a
Speaker 1: commission to figure out how this happened. We know how
Speaker 1: it happened. This era that we live in is being
Speaker 1: led by somebody who celebrates political violent rhetoric, and it
Speaker 1: has increased and increased and increased, and you're going to
Speaker 1: get reactionary politics in response. I set it before. My
Speaker 1: greatest fear was that the election of Trump a second
Speaker 1: time was going to have people decide that the normal
Speaker 1: rules don't apply, and it's time to quote fight fire
Speaker 1: with fire, as you've heard, And there is no worse
Speaker 1: outcome for our near term politics than a response to
Speaker 1: this as fight fire with fire, and yet that's the
Speaker 1: situation that feels like we're in. I would suggest to
Speaker 1: some of my legacy media colleagues, let's not sanitize this.
Speaker 1: I'm already sniffing a lot of sanitization here. This is
Speaker 1: not an isolated incident. This it continues to be a
Speaker 1: culmination of a normalization of violent rhetoric and violent events,
Speaker 1: pure and simple. A few things about the future of
Speaker 1: this dinner. Security wise, there were two loopholes this attacker exploited.
Speaker 1: If we are to believe everything we're hearing from government,
Speaker 1: and unfortunately, because of the track record of this Justice Department,
Speaker 1: needless to say, I kind of it is hard to
Speaker 1: It is hard to find second and third sources when
Speaker 1: you're dealing when the government's in charge of all the information.
Speaker 1: So let's just say, I, you know, eighty percent confident
Speaker 1: in what we're getting, not one hundred, certainly not ninety.
Speaker 1: But if you if we take to understand that this
Speaker 1: attacker took trains to get to DC, well, what's the
Speaker 1: loophole by taking trains? There's you don't put your bags
Speaker 1: through any X ray machines on on Amtrak. Right, if
Speaker 1: you went from LA to Chicago sid you just sort of,
Speaker 1: you know, so he could bring everything he wanted to bring.
Speaker 1: No one was inspecting anything, right that, we don't have
Speaker 1: any of that via on the train system. There's never
Speaker 1: been a magnetometer that I've ever gone through getting on Amtrak.
Speaker 1: You can bring anything you want on that Amtrak train.
Speaker 1: No one's looking at your backs. Yes there is, Yes,
Speaker 1: there is dogs that you know, sort of sniff around
Speaker 1: and perhaps they're bomb sniffing dogs and things like that,
Speaker 1: but they're not there to sniff whatever weapons you might
Speaker 1: be deciding to pack with you. So there's loophole one,
Speaker 1: and then loophole two was booking a room at the HILP. Now,
Speaker 1: when I've traveled overseas and stayed in the same hotel
Speaker 1: as a president, and I would say about half the
Speaker 1: time that I traveled with the president when I was
Speaker 1: a White House correspondent, not even less than half time
Speaker 1: did I actually stay at the same hotel as the president.
Speaker 1: Most of the press court stays at a separate hotel,
Speaker 1: frankly because of security issues. But the press pool, if
Speaker 1: you're going to be traveling in the presidential motorcade and
Speaker 1: on Air Force one in and out, the press pool.
Speaker 1: Will does stay at the same hotel, And when you
Speaker 1: stay at the same hotel as a president overseas, everybody
Speaker 1: goes through security magnets right at the lobby of the hotel.
Speaker 1: That has happened to me every time I've traveled overseas,
Speaker 1: or if I've stayed domestically in the same hotel that
Speaker 1: the president is overnighting. But we don't do that for
Speaker 1: hotels where the president's just going to be there for
Speaker 1: an hour delivering a speech. But this is you know,
Speaker 1: so those are the two security loopholes. But I do
Speaker 1: want to say from the get go, because there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people trying this was a security failure. Actually
Speaker 1: it wasn't. Security worked. Security, the security preters worked as intended.
Speaker 1: He didn't get through the he got nabbed in the
Speaker 1: first line. Now you may argue that the first perimeter
Speaker 1: should be further and there's you know, okay, well that
Speaker 1: probably you know. But how this was secured, it worked.
Speaker 1: Nobody got hurt, nobody was killed. Yes, we have one
Speaker 1: secret serviceation that got that got hurt. Thankfully he's he's
Speaker 1: survived the because he was wearing a bulletproof vest. But
Speaker 1: the security perimeter worked. There was not a failure on
Speaker 1: that front. And I think that's an important fact that
Speaker 1: we have to just you know, because there's this is everything,
Speaker 1: there's almost a knee jerk overreaction, right, well, we got
Speaker 1: to do this, you gotta do this. Got to be
Speaker 1: somebody to blame here, you know this. They're not getting
Speaker 1: paid and all this stuff, and people want to spend it.
Speaker 1: We've got to have the presidential ballroom. What are you
Speaker 1: talking about? That has nothing to do with building the
Speaker 1: presidential ballroom. And the presidential ballroom is not about security.
Speaker 1: The white House is a secure space. The building of
Speaker 1: the presidential ballroom is because he just wants to have
Speaker 1: giant events. He wants to have much bigger events. He
Speaker 1: wants to put his stamp in the White House. There's
Speaker 1: the Truman balcony. He wants the Trump Ballroom. All right,
Speaker 1: it's a vanity project. We all know it's a vanity project.
Speaker 1: It is kind of gross that there's this attempt to
Speaker 1: use this incident as a rationale to somehow have the
Speaker 1: government speed up the building of this vanity renovation project.
Speaker 1: How about going and solving the war of choice you
Speaker 1: made in Iran? First of all number one, but number two,
Speaker 1: this is not and again this is not a White
Speaker 1: House dinner. White House state dinners that's on the White
Speaker 1: House grounds. You know, are we going to never have
Speaker 1: presidents leave the bunker of the White House anymore? Look,
Speaker 1: we're a democracy. We have chosen this freedom, which means,
Speaker 1: and the President himself noted this, you cannot have security
Speaker 1: if there is no such thing as one hundred percent
Speaker 1: security from somebody that is determined to do something like this.
Speaker 1: There's just attempts to minimize the damage that can be
Speaker 1: done by a lone wolf who snaps. And that's what
Speaker 1: our that's what the Secret Service does quite well. But
Speaker 1: it's kind of I just please, this is as dumb
Speaker 1: and silly of a of a a spin attempt to
Speaker 1: try to use this as a way to rationalize the
Speaker 1: building of the ballroom for for this for a mythical
Speaker 1: for this mythical security issue. And it please, the White
Speaker 1: House is a very secure space. The size of the
Speaker 1: ballroom is not about security. Just really that As for look,
Speaker 1: the White House press dinner, you know this, I wish
Speaker 1: there were no cameras at it. If there were no
Speaker 1: cameras out, you wouldn't draw the attention. If it doesn't
Speaker 1: draw the attention, it's less likely to be a magnet
Speaker 1: for violence and for protest and for all of these things.
Speaker 1: We don't the Grit Iron dinner wasn't put on camera.
Speaker 1: I wish the grid iindeer and stayed off the record,
Speaker 1: but it's not been put on camera. I guess they
Speaker 1: invited cameras finally one year, which is just a terrible idea.
Speaker 1: But you know, it's just a trade association dinner. The
Speaker 1: US Chamber of Commerce throws them Center for American Progress,
Speaker 1: the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congrescionalspanic Caucus, everybody throws their
Speaker 1: sort of organizational annual dinner. You know, it is not
Speaker 1: a crime. It is not some sort of violation of
Speaker 1: journalistic principles for journalists to get together and have dinner
Speaker 1: and celebrate their their their industry. The lebrification of the
Speaker 1: event was the miss was the gariant, disgusting mistake. And
Speaker 1: by the way, that's on us as a press cort
Speaker 1: right we allowed it to become this because it became, frankly,
Speaker 1: a great way to appease advertisers that news organizations were
Speaker 1: desperate to appease so that we could keep our newsrooms
Speaker 1: afloat this week in history avoided. We have a lot
Speaker 1: to choose from. I mean, you know, we've the White
Speaker 1: House Correspondence weekend, and there was another infamous White House
Speaker 1: Corspondent dinner that I also attended, that Donald Trump also attended,
Speaker 1: that had a huge news event, but we didn't know
Speaker 1: it was happening at the time it was happening. And
Speaker 1: of course it was the famous bin laden raid. That
Speaker 1: is actually something that happened this week, but it's not
Speaker 1: the moment I am choosing to focus on and do
Speaker 1: as our history lesson of the week. Instead, we're going
Speaker 1: to go back to the Cold War, to nineteen sixty.
Speaker 1: Did you figure out the clue by the way that
Speaker 1: the incident was the inspiration for one of the most
Speaker 1: for the names for one of the most famous rock
Speaker 1: bands of my generation. Have you figured it out? You
Speaker 1: still haven't found what you're looking for. But let me
Speaker 1: begin just months before this week, in nineteen sixty, the
Speaker 1: Cold War looked like something that could be managed. In Moscow,
Speaker 1: Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev stood
Speaker 1: in a model American kitchen arguing about appliances, about prosperity,
Speaker 1: and about which system worked better. It was a tense confrontation,
Speaker 1: but it was contained. It made the rivalry between the
Speaker 1: two superpowers look like something you could stage frankly, But
Speaker 1: within a year version of the Cold War would start
Speaker 1: to fall apart, not because of one crisis, but because
Speaker 1: peace by piece the story stopped holding. So it's May one,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty. President Dwight Eisenhower's preparing for a summit with Khrushchev.
Speaker 1: There's costless optimism, but beneath that diplomacy, the real Cold
Speaker 1: War is still being fought in secret. U two spy
Speaker 1: planes flying deep over Soviet territory, high enough to be
Speaker 1: considered untouchable. One of those planes is being flown by
Speaker 1: a pilot named Francis Gary. Powers fly across the Soviet Union,
Speaker 1: photograph military sites. Return. That was the mission. The assumption
Speaker 1: is simple, Even if detected, they can't stop you. You're
Speaker 1: just too high in the sky. That was until May
Speaker 1: first turns out a Soviet missile reaches that altitude, the
Speaker 1: plane is hit, Powers ejects, He survives, descending by parachute
Speaker 1: to Soviet territory, and like many pilots on missions like this,
Speaker 1: He's actually carrying something else, a coin with a concealed
Speaker 1: poison needle inside a last resort. He doesn't use it.
Speaker 1: Back in the United States, officials lose contact with the plane.
Speaker 1: They assumed the pilot did not survive. So the United States,
Speaker 1: through the CIA, decides to tell a story. It wasn't
Speaker 1: a spy mission. It was a weather plane that drifted
Speaker 1: off course. Plausible, deniable, the kind of story governments tell
Speaker 1: themselves and tell the public all the time. But this
Speaker 1: time the other side knows exactly what happened. Khrushchev has
Speaker 1: the wreckage, and he has the pilot alive, but he waits.
Speaker 1: He lets the United States tell the world its story,
Speaker 1: repeat it, stand by it, and then he reveals the truth.
Speaker 1: The pilot is alive. He confesses it was not a
Speaker 1: weather plane, it was espionage. Well, the Eisenhower kruse Chef
Speaker 1: summit collapses, But the real damage isn't diplomatic. It's credibility.
Speaker 1: Because the issue wasn't the spine. Everyone assumed that each
Speaker 1: side was spying on the other. The issue was the story,
Speaker 1: more so for the public. The United States told one,
Speaker 1: and it didn't hold We're supposed to be the good guys,
Speaker 1: the truth. Well, once that happens, a different question starts
Speaker 1: to creep in. That wasn't true. What else is it?
Speaker 1: And here's what's striking. Remember this doesn't stop there. Within
Speaker 1: a year, the United States backs an invasion of Cuba.
Speaker 1: A force of Cuban exiles lands at the Bay of Pigs,
Speaker 1: expecting support, expecting momentum, and instead it falls apart in
Speaker 1: less than four days, captured, defeated, exposed, and for the
Speaker 1: world watching, including Americans watching at home, there's no ambiguity
Speaker 1: about what it was. Was not a spontaneous uprising, was
Speaker 1: an American backed operation that failed quickly and publicly. President
Speaker 1: John Kennedy goes on television and takes responsibility, but by
Speaker 1: then the image is already set. At the same time,
Speaker 1: the United States is deepening its involvement in Vietnam, not
Speaker 1: all at once, but step by step. Advisors become deployments,
Speaker 1: support becomes commitment. Always described as limited, temporary. Tell it isn't.
Speaker 1: And let's not forget this false story lands in a
Speaker 1: country that had just come out of the era of
Speaker 1: Joseph McCarthy, where Americans had already seen claims made with certainty,
Speaker 1: and trust stretched too thin to hold. So one incident
Speaker 1: can be dismissed two starts to raise doubts. By the third,
Speaker 1: people aren't just questioning the event, they're questioning the explanation.
Speaker 1: Sound familiar. The early Cold War wasn't just a contest
Speaker 1: of power. It was also a test of credibility. And
Speaker 1: in just a few years a spyplane shot down, a
Speaker 1: failed invasion for a coup, perhaps a war explained one way,
Speaker 1: but experienced another. The United States didn't just face pressure
Speaker 1: from abroad. It began to lose something at home. Trust.
Speaker 1: By the way, this was all before Watergate. Sometimes a
Speaker 1: turning point in history isn't something that happens. Isn't something
Speaker 1: isn't when something happens. It's when people stop beliezing the
Speaker 1: version of it that they're being told. The trust deficit
Speaker 1: that we're all experiencing right now with government, with institutions
Speaker 1: in general. Sometimes we forget this began even further than
Speaker 1: we realize. So there you go. Now, do you know
Speaker 1: what you're looking for? Now? Do you get the clue
Speaker 1: I was given you out there? Ask Chuck? All right,
Speaker 1: let's take some questions first. One I love this. Steve Frank,
Speaker 1: Newport Beach, calif a fellow member of the two First
Speaker 1: Names Club. Yes you are, but I bet you don't
Speaker 1: get called Frank Steve right because Steve's not the last night.
Speaker 1: It's like with me, it's like I understand getting my
Speaker 1: last name confused for a first name, just like with you, Steve.
Speaker 1: But where I struggle is like, oh, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: do you really think my last name is Chuck. It's
Speaker 1: just like you really think your last name is Steve? Right?
Speaker 1: Like that's the It's always funny to me why when
Speaker 1: people say, well, I'm not sure which name it is, Well,
Speaker 1: which one's least likely to be a last name. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I'm guessing you have the same frustrations at times that
Speaker 1: I do. But hey, I turned my head for Chuck
Speaker 1: Ortodd at this point. I'm guessing you turned your head
Speaker 1: at Steve or Frank at this point. All Right, here's
Speaker 1: a question. A huge fan going back to the hotline days,
Speaker 1: and now I'm hearing there are Chuck Todd trading cards.
Speaker 1: I remember you mentioning losing your quote new music pipeline
Speaker 1: after your kids left for college, and I'm in a
Speaker 1: similar spot. My daughter and I are even thinking about
Speaker 1: starting a podcast to bridge the gap across generations. I
Speaker 1: love that idea. What advice would you give amateur podcasters
Speaker 1: trying to turn an idea into something real, even if
Speaker 1: it's just for a small audience, Steve Frank, The number
Speaker 1: one thing is consistency. You know, the biggest you know,
Speaker 1: the reason why most podcasts fail is people get tired
Speaker 1: of doing it after two episodes, four episodes, eight episodes,
Speaker 1: stick to a schedule, stick to it. It is one
Speaker 1: of those if you've ever heard of hockey, you know
Speaker 1: the whole quote unquote hockey stick moment. Right. Well, the
Speaker 1: reason it's called a hockey stick moment because, like in
Speaker 1: any sort of anything you're building, sometimes it's a business,
Speaker 1: sometimes it's an audience, whatever it is, it's like, you
Speaker 1: you know, a little, a little, a little, and then boom, right,
Speaker 1: it feels like it all happens at once. Look, I'll
Speaker 1: be honest. As I've been building this audience, it was
Speaker 1: sort of like we were grinding. We were grinding, and
Speaker 1: we were grinding, and then suddenly we about six months in,
Speaker 1: we had our first bike, right, and you know, the
Speaker 1: key is consistency it is posting. Look, you've got to
Speaker 1: be platform agnostic. You got to go everywhere. You've got
Speaker 1: to you know, when it comes to music, you've got
Speaker 1: to be in You've got to sort of be on
Speaker 1: top of the big moments in the that are happening
Speaker 1: so that you can because unfortunately, the way the algorithms work, right,
Speaker 1: you don't get you you don't get you could have
Speaker 1: a great podcast, but if you if you don't make
Speaker 1: it into the algorithm, people aren't going to see it, right,
Speaker 1: It isn't going to get shared. So you've got to
Speaker 1: sort of ride trends when they exist and try to
Speaker 1: be relevant around them. Right, Like a simple thing might be,
Speaker 1: you know everybody's talking about us. You know, maybe there's
Speaker 1: a certain new Tailor Swift album, so you know, ride
Speaker 1: the Taylor Swift wave without doing Taylor Swift, and you know,
Speaker 1: you know, just do like you know, it's like something
Speaker 1: adjacent so that you can sort of make it into
Speaker 1: the algorithm and get some attention for what you're doing.
Speaker 1: But that's really and there's almost there's different Frankly, it's
Speaker 1: just different ways each one of them work. I Mean,
Speaker 1: my guess is your your daughter might be better at
Speaker 1: it at figuring out which algorithms work best for which audiences,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Look, the other challenge you're going to have
Speaker 1: is music rights, right, so be sure to know you
Speaker 1: know the limitations. You know, YouTube will just not include
Speaker 1: you know, you may post something, but if the music,
Speaker 1: if they don't think you have the rights to the music,
Speaker 1: you know, all of a sudden you could get so
Speaker 1: it could cost you traffic. So you do have a
Speaker 1: little bit of an extra challenge on the licensing issue.
Speaker 1: So know your fair use rules very well. You know,
Speaker 1: you could do what my friend Tony Krnheiser does, which
Speaker 1: is he only plays music people send in and get
Speaker 1: permission from the owner of the license to air it.
Speaker 1: And they're very you know they're they're very They make
Speaker 1: sure they have permission in writing, you know, they're still
Speaker 1: waiting for Paul McCartney to give them permission, right, is
Speaker 1: the joke. So you're you, you are going to need
Speaker 1: to know some of those rules. I mean, it is
Speaker 1: what makes music podcasts I think quite difficult because of
Speaker 1: the of the licensing issues, right, Because in order to
Speaker 1: showcase music and to share music, you want to play
Speaker 1: a clip, right, So you know, be learning what your
Speaker 1: clips are or you know, things like that. But the
Speaker 1: but again, I go back to the single most important
Speaker 1: thing is consistency of production. You know, if you're going
Speaker 1: to be twice a week, always be twice a week,
Speaker 1: Always be at the same time, and be consistent. Right
Speaker 1: the minute you start being in an inconsistent updater of
Speaker 1: your podcast, you will not build an audience. People will forget,
Speaker 1: you'll stop being in their feeds, et cetera. So it
Speaker 1: is the number one. It doesn't matter what topic you're doing.
Speaker 1: Consistency in a schedule, and frankly, once a week is
Speaker 1: probably not enough if you want to grow audience long
Speaker 1: long term. But if you're going to do it once
Speaker 1: a week, realize it may take upwards of a year
Speaker 1: for you to feel you know, so be sure you
Speaker 1: enjoy doing it for yourself regardless, and just be consistent.
Speaker 1: That's the consistent about updating that matters more than anything.
Speaker 1: Good luck, let me know when you get it up
Speaker 1: and running, we'll promote it all right. Next question comes
Speaker 1: from Patrick in La and he says, hey, Chuck, let's
Speaker 1: say quote asking for a friend on this one, How
Speaker 1: does a nation apologize to the world. Well, what you
Speaker 1: do is you don't go about just I would. I
Speaker 1: think this is going to be a really tougher for
Speaker 1: the next president. Then you realize what I think you
Speaker 1: have to do is just other countries are not going
Speaker 1: to just take our word. It doesn't matter how much
Speaker 1: they like the next president. So it isn't going to
Speaker 1: be a matter of apologizing. It is making agreements and
Speaker 1: making America's word verified, not just trusted, but verified. Right
Speaker 1: means putting pen to paper. It means getting congressional authority
Speaker 1: when you need congressional authority. It means sort of following
Speaker 1: the rule of law as you're going about. I don't
Speaker 1: if we just go around saying sorry for the behavior
Speaker 1: of our last president. Frankly, I think that all that
Speaker 1: does is divide us more right, we need our next
Speaker 1: president to not divide us. And you know you may disagree. Look,
Speaker 1: there were some tactics that I disagreed with my predecessor
Speaker 1: and how he went about it, but he had the
Speaker 1: best he had the best interests of the United States
Speaker 1: in mind. I just disagree with how he went about
Speaker 1: doing it, and I think he inadvertently alienated allies. Right,
Speaker 1: that is how I would sort of dispassionately say it,
Speaker 1: and I know you're going to have a hard time
Speaker 1: trusting us. So here's what I pledged to you when
Speaker 1: we sign this agreement on tariffs. It's putting here, I'm
Speaker 1: taking it to Congress. Essentially, I'm it's like I'm getting
Speaker 1: it notarized. I'm getting it. It's a version of that, right,
Speaker 1: we don't know notarize. But you get my point, right,
Speaker 1: is it is not just I don't think it's just
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. It's behavioral changes, and it is verifying the
Speaker 1: trust that we're asking for. Right, We've you know the
Speaker 1: famous phrase trust, but verify. We're gonna we're going to
Speaker 1: We're not just taking the word of the Soviets. We're
Speaker 1: going to create a system where we can verify that
Speaker 1: they're keeping their word. And I think, unfore fortunately, America's
Speaker 1: next president is going to have to create a verification
Speaker 1: process for our allies to know that we're going to
Speaker 1: keep our word, because that's the thing that we've got
Speaker 1: to fix. Yes, apologizing might might be politically feel good
Speaker 1: for your political base, but I actually think going about
Speaker 1: it as as a straight up apology tours probably Nick
Speaker 1: from Michigan Rights. Hey, I've been reading that Republicans are
Speaker 1: openly hoping that Alito will retire from the Superian Court
Speaker 1: and hopes it will just turn out from Republican voters
Speaker 1: in the midterms. What do you think go a Supreme
Speaker 1: Court vacancy meaningfully increase positive outcomes for the GOP the cycle. Well,
Speaker 1: the answer to that is it could. But this is
Speaker 1: why you have some Republicans wanting this now. Because twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: which was overall a pretty big Democratic year, particularly in
Speaker 1: the House, Democrats actually lost two Senate seas and it
Speaker 1: was Missouri and Indiana. Now they were two tough senence
Speaker 1: heats to hold two incumbents who were sort of kind
Speaker 1: of accidental winners the previous time, right Claire McCaskill won
Speaker 1: thanks to Todd aiken legitimate rape comments, and Joe don
Speaker 1: Lay won because Dick Lueger lost the primary to a
Speaker 1: guy named Murdoch and was just considered too offside of
Speaker 1: the mainstream. For Indiana, the next reelection was always going
Speaker 1: to be hard, right, they sort of were accidental winners
Speaker 1: in twenty twelve a little bit, and it was no
Speaker 1: doubt they were uphill battles and then the Kavanaugh confirmation
Speaker 1: turned raw personal, partisan polarizing in Indiana and Missouri are
Speaker 1: redder states, and it fired up a base, Claire mccaskell believes,
Speaker 1: but for the Kavanaugh hearings, if there's no Supreme Court vacancy,
Speaker 1: there's just no debate about a Supreme Court, the Republican
Speaker 1: base stays demoralized, and she might have been able to
Speaker 1: eke it out. That's what she believes. It certainly made
Speaker 1: it harder for Democrats in red leaning areas where the
Speaker 1: base was fired up about Kavanaugh. So that's what this
Speaker 1: is about. And so it means you know, now I
Speaker 1: might argue, if you know, is it this is where
Speaker 1: what's good might not be good politics? Right? So take
Speaker 1: you know, the left is going to want to oppose
Speaker 1: whatever nominee Trump makes to the Court on ideological grounds,
Speaker 1: and there may be a good case to make it
Speaker 1: if you're on the left, the question is are you
Speaker 1: getting anywhere with it? This is a conservative every place
Speaker 1: conservative right. Alito has not exactly been a mainstream justice.
Speaker 1: He's sort of been on the he is I think
Speaker 1: in the majority. He's not in the majority. Is often
Speaker 1: as your Barratts Roberts as your Kavanaughs is your Kegans,
Speaker 1: as you'll learn from a terrific conversation and book from
Speaker 1: Sarah Esker, And so I probably so I understand. So
Speaker 1: what you're seeing is Republican hoping to replicate what happened
Speaker 1: and thinking that all they they just want to save
Speaker 1: this Senate. And when you look at what would be
Speaker 1: seat three or four or five for the Democrats and
Speaker 1: their pickups, you're looking at red leaning Ohi, red leaning, Iowa,
Speaker 1: red leaning Alaska. Right. This worked in the red leaning states.
Speaker 1: It didn't work in swing areas or blue leaning areas
Speaker 1: the Kavanaugh outrage, but it did work in the red
Speaker 1: leaning battlegrounds. And when you look at the battle for
Speaker 1: the Senate in particular for Democrats, they have to basically
Speaker 1: win in red leaning areas Ohio, Iowa, Alaska, Nebraska, right,
Speaker 1: those four, Montana, those five all red leaning. And so
Speaker 1: what the average Republican strategies is, Hey, if we can
Speaker 1: have recreate the political environment in October of eighteen, in
Speaker 1: October of twenty six where the right fields marginalized and
Speaker 1: outraged by whoever the Supreme Court nominee, is that that
Speaker 1: could save the Senate. So I'm skeptical this can work
Speaker 1: a second time, but I understand. But I'm trying to
Speaker 1: explain why they think this, and that's what they're pointing to.
Speaker 1: And it did work for it did work for Republicans
Speaker 1: in eighteen. Next question comes from Jeremy. He goes, Hey,
Speaker 1: love the podcast and appreciate the space you create for
Speaker 1: political deep dies. I'm currently living in Japan, but spends
Speaker 1: much of my adult life in Florida and grew up
Speaker 1: in Missouri. I'm curious that Democrats can regain a foothold
Speaker 1: in Missouri, which has shifted from a swing state to
Speaker 1: reliably read even as voter support progressive politics like marijuana legalization,
Speaker 1: higher wages, and abortion rights. Where's the disconnect? Is it branding,
Speaker 1: messaging or something deeper? And is the Missouri Democratic Party
Speaker 1: even trying to make the state competitive again? Thanks Jeremy,
Speaker 1: So I would answer the last question first. I don't
Speaker 1: think the Missouri Democratic Party is even trying anymore. And
Speaker 1: I say that I'm being a little probably snarky about it,
Speaker 1: but it does feel like a bit of a give
Speaker 1: up now. Part of it is the suburban swing voter
Speaker 1: in Kansas City now lives in the camp across the
Speaker 1: state lines in Kansas, and I have a feeling that
Speaker 1: if you're blue leaning, suburban knighted in Saint Louis, you
Speaker 1: might be on the Illinois side of it things now
Speaker 1: rather than in the Missouri side of things. Right. So,
Speaker 1: whether it's on abortion rights, right, if that's something you
Speaker 1: know you're going to live across the river, whether it's
Speaker 1: whether you're in Kansas, whether you're right both of both
Speaker 1: states that have codified. So there's a small part of
Speaker 1: me that wonders if it's become self selecting over time. Right.
Speaker 1: I take you know, I've been saying that Missouri and
Speaker 1: Kansas are essentially switching places. Right. Missouri was a swing
Speaker 1: state that kind of had some some rural conservative vote. Right.
Speaker 1: Kansas was the you know, hom a Bob Dole, right,
Speaker 1: mister Republican. And what you've seen in the twenty first
Speaker 1: century is that Missouri has become more like a southern
Speaker 1: you know, it has. It is arguably it looks more
Speaker 1: like a Arkansas or in Alabama in its rural areas
Speaker 1: than it does like a Kansas in Iowa or in Illinois.
Speaker 1: And I just think that what you've seen is sort
Speaker 1: of Missouri was a Midwestern state in the twentieth with
Speaker 1: culturally Midwestern in the twentieth century. It is now culturally Southern,
Speaker 1: I think, in the twenty first century. And then you've seen,
Speaker 1: like I said, the biggest thing is the shrinkage of
Speaker 1: Saint Louis in general. Right, And this is what I
Speaker 1: think if you're really wanting to understand how you know,
Speaker 1: essentially Saint Louis being gutted as a major city. When
Speaker 1: I say gutted, right, They've had a lot of industries
Speaker 1: that just sort of disappeared. You go to downtown Saint
Speaker 1: Louis and it just feels like a shell of its
Speaker 1: former self. You know, this was a place that was
Speaker 1: a hub. It was a headquarters for a major airline
Speaker 1: twa aneaer Bush is really only symbolically headquartered in Saint
Speaker 1: Louis anymore, right as IMBEV this huge international poration, I
Speaker 1: think the CEO is actually in New York these days,
Speaker 1: not in Saint Louis. Again, they have the symbolic headquarters
Speaker 1: of Anheuser Bush and Saint Louis. But it is, it is,
Speaker 1: it is, it is. It is literally a shell of
Speaker 1: its former self. So you know, it was a time
Speaker 1: Saint Louis as a city was you know, closer to
Speaker 1: being Chicago and Dallas than it was being Wichita or
Speaker 1: in Omaha. And I don't say that as Knox. It
Speaker 1: just it's just shrunk. It shrunk in relevance. And then
Speaker 1: of course you know it's it's it had some international
Speaker 1: it had magnets that attracted new people into it. It
Speaker 1: attracted so as that disappeared, you almost had almost like
Speaker 1: a contraction certainly of Saint Louis and the Saint Louis
Speaker 1: metro area. So that that's kind of what I chalk
Speaker 1: it up to, like a long term that this has
Speaker 1: just been a long term, that the the sort of
Speaker 1: d major fying of Saint Louis as a major city.
Speaker 1: And I kind of think Saint Louis needs a revival
Speaker 1: plan the way Detroit got one right. And you know,
Speaker 1: I remember, when I think I've said this before, I remember
Speaker 1: when the Amazon ad was was doing a country wide
Speaker 1: search for a new place for headquarters. I was really
Speaker 1: pulling for Saint Louis. I have family there, I'm very
Speaker 1: familiar with it from a previous previous iteration in my life,
Speaker 1: and it's a it's it. I actually think it's a
Speaker 1: it's a terrific place to put a headquarters in the
Speaker 1: central part of the country that has an easy to
Speaker 1: get to airport, Like you know, it should be easier
Speaker 1: to get around than a Chicago or even a Dallas.
Speaker 1: But both Chicago and Dallas have just sort of they're
Speaker 1: they're the central they're the central tent poles, uh in
Speaker 1: the middle of the country now for regional stuff or
Speaker 1: gatherings and things like this, and Saint Louis is just
Speaker 1: sort of given up that. And I just think that that,
Speaker 1: you know, there's sort of the downsizing of Saint Louis
Speaker 1: in general for a variety of reasons why it has
Speaker 1: has been probably as big of a contributor to moving
Speaker 1: Missouri out of the battle as anything else. So if
Speaker 1: I were in charge of the national Party for the Democrats,
Speaker 1: I'd actually be you know you certainly I think you
Speaker 1: know it would be go solve your Saint Lewis problem first,
Speaker 1: then start worrying about the rest of the state. And instead,
Speaker 1: I think Kansas is ready to be a swing state.
Speaker 1: That's where I be invested. Next question comes from Adam B.
Speaker 1: And Charlestown, West Virginia. He says, hey, big fan here.
Speaker 1: Seeing a recent interview with former presidents made me reflect
Speaker 1: on how, despite political differences, many still feel a level
Speaker 1: of respect for past leaders. Do you think Donald Trump
Speaker 1: will continue to provoke strong, polarized reactions long after his
Speaker 1: presidency or will time soften those divisions? And if not,
Speaker 1: is that more about his leadership style or the modern
Speaker 1: media environment. Thanks for everything you do, Adam b. Look,
Speaker 1: I'm inclined to believe it's his leaderships, you know, like
Speaker 1: anything you get out of something that you put into it. Right,
Speaker 1: If you if you lead with division, you're going to
Speaker 1: get division as a response. If you try to lead
Speaker 1: with a sense of unity, you mean, if people don't
Speaker 1: agree with your definition of what unity looks like, you're
Speaker 1: going to be received, at least not positively as someone
Speaker 1: who wanted to bring people together. Right. You know, I
Speaker 1: was thinking about this when I was putting together that
Speaker 1: opening monologue about sort of how Donald Trump has handled
Speaker 1: divisive times versus say, how George W. Bush did. George W.
Speaker 1: Bush made sure right after nine to eleven to make
Speaker 1: it clear to the Muslim world we were not at
Speaker 1: war with them. And that people shouldn't be taking out
Speaker 1: their anger on members of that faith. Went out of
Speaker 1: his way to do that after nine to eleven? Do
Speaker 1: you think this president would have done that? So my
Speaker 1: point is is that I think that what you're experiencing
Speaker 1: is you know, and I think you could feel it
Speaker 1: in the genuine affection that many Americans have for George W. Bush,
Speaker 1: who probably didn't vote for him the second time perhaps
Speaker 1: or don't want to, or didn't vote for him the
Speaker 1: first time, or maybe didn't vote for him at all,
Speaker 1: because he cared you know, you know, you cannot say
Speaker 1: he didn't care about the country and he didn't care
Speaker 1: about people. You may have disagreed with his tactics, you
Speaker 1: may have disagreed with his policies, but you you got
Speaker 1: a sense that he genuinely cared about the country and
Speaker 1: he genuinely cared about everybody, even people that he disagreed with.
Speaker 1: You know, Donald Trump wants to deport people that disagree
Speaker 1: with him. He's openly talked about it. So you know,
Speaker 1: if you you get back what you put into it.
Speaker 1: And to answer your question, will Donald Trump continue to
Speaker 1: provoke strong polarized reactions long after his presidency or will
Speaker 1: time soften those divisions. It's up to him to soften
Speaker 1: the divis. It's not up to the rest of us.
Speaker 1: It's up to him. Steven, Orange County, long time, first
Speaker 1: time as a recovering Polly seinerd. Your commentaries bring back
Speaker 1: fond memories of lectures from my favorite political science professors
Speaker 1: in college decades ago. That can I just stop right there, Steve,
Speaker 1: that is the single best compliment you can's that's I
Speaker 1: am tinily hoping. I just want to be I want
Speaker 1: to make it fun and interesting. So thank you. During
Speaker 1: one of your recent podcasts, you said the writing is
Speaker 1: on the wall that Trump is in lame Duk territory.
Speaker 1: Since Trump almost certainly will not go quietly into the
Speaker 1: night like most of his predecessors, how likely is it
Speaker 1: that there will be a bigger faction of Republicans willing
Speaker 1: to push back against him without going the way of
Speaker 1: Jeff Flake, Bensas or Tom Tillis Someone's besides from Paul
Speaker 1: at least. Thanks well. I think you know as you see,
Speaker 1: it's sort of it starts incrementally. If Thomas Massey survives
Speaker 1: as primary. I think that's another step and you'll see
Speaker 1: more one of these things is nobody wants to be first.
Speaker 1: But as as more Republicans survive the wrath of Trump,
Speaker 1: then you know, so Tom Tillis's protests worked. It got
Speaker 1: Trump and the Justice Department to back down on their
Speaker 1: trump up charges against Powell. Right, as more Republicans see
Speaker 1: certain things work and the pushback works, then more will
Speaker 1: get comfortable doing it. So I think it's one of
Speaker 1: those things. This is why, just politically, if you're Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: you care so much about this Thomas Massey primary more really,
Speaker 1: more than anything else, because he has put this guy
Speaker 1: on blast for almost a year now, and if he
Speaker 1: can't take him out in as Republican of an area
Speaker 1: as you can find in Kentucky, in theory a mega area,
Speaker 1: that will stiffen the spine of a lot of Republicans
Speaker 1: who maybe you're quiet right now, but would like to
Speaker 1: push back. So it's one of those things that every
Speaker 1: every little incremental pushback of the president, every stumble, every
Speaker 1: special election loss, only increases the courage of those who
Speaker 1: realize they're the ones left holding the bag and the bill,
Speaker 1: and then they'll start to get a little and little
Speaker 1: a little more each time. I don't ever expect this
Speaker 1: to look like a rush and a flip and a
Speaker 1: sea change. It will be one of those things, more
Speaker 1: like the hockey stick where all of a sudden, you're like,
Speaker 1: holy cow, third of the party is now voting against
Speaker 1: him regularly. Now, that might not happen until the summer
Speaker 1: of twenty eight, but you're starting. I do believe that
Speaker 1: it's sort of we're in the stages, and it's one
Speaker 1: of those things that it's like, you know, we never
Speaker 1: we always know when recessions begin, but not until left
Speaker 1: the fact, it's kind of with lame duck status, you know,
Speaker 1: is it right now? Has it already begun? Did it?
Speaker 1: You know, did it begin with the you know, you
Speaker 1: know with the twenty five elections. You know, we'll we'll
Speaker 1: we'll post date this at some point. But we're in
Speaker 1: the uh, we're definitely in the in the landing zone
Speaker 1: of lame duck, of lame duckness. Take one more question,
Speaker 1: so number seven here, uh, Lisa, Then we will save
Speaker 1: eight and nine for the next episode. Andy, why from
Speaker 1: a Milliewauk rights You mentioned recently that Trump maybe setting
Speaker 1: vance up to fail, and it made me wonder if
Speaker 1: vancies that too. Could he be positioning himself to benefit
Speaker 1: it from it? Long term? Is there a scenario where
Speaker 1: he distanced himself at the right moment to capture voters
Speaker 1: who are aligned with Trump's agenda but fatigued by him personally?
Speaker 1: Are the risks of staying tied to Trump too high
Speaker 1: for that to be a viable strategy? Best Andy, Why Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Well,
Speaker 1: we actually the question would be have has Trump had
Speaker 1: a vice president who tried to do this? The answer
Speaker 1: is yes, right, I was thinking about Pence the whole
Speaker 1: time that you were asking this question. And I know
Speaker 1: what Pence thought to himself starting in January of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, and frankly thought all the way through when
Speaker 1: he started running for president in January of twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: that there was a scenario where he would distance himself
Speaker 1: at the right moment January six, that he could capture
Speaker 1: voters who were aligned with Trump's agenda, that you know
Speaker 1: that he agreed with what Trump was trying to do,
Speaker 1: He just didn't like what he was doing and they
Speaker 1: were tired of him personally. That was Pence's theory of
Speaker 1: the case. It is still Pence's theory of the case.
Speaker 1: I think long term, Like, I think he really is
Speaker 1: playing a long game. He's trying to start an alternative
Speaker 1: heritage that he wants to be the guy if there,
Speaker 1: if this version of the concert servative movement collapses, and
Speaker 1: there's a lot of evidence that Trump's movement will collapse
Speaker 1: at some point, Pence wants to be the guy organizing
Speaker 1: the next conservative movement or sort of a revitalized version
Speaker 1: of it. So, but I ask you, I'll flip it
Speaker 1: to you, is that, you know, if that's a long game?
Speaker 1: You know, is can both these guys be playing the
Speaker 1: long game like this, right? Or I am more inclined
Speaker 1: to believe that the stain of Trump is too hard
Speaker 1: to get rid of and then it is too difficult
Speaker 1: to try to be to try to be a half
Speaker 1: measure version of it. We're going to find out, right,
Speaker 1: I think you're going to have a variety of candidates
Speaker 1: who say that they're you know, they're they're the real
Speaker 1: Maga movement, and you know, I think I think that's
Speaker 1: how Ran Paul might position himself. And I think Pennce
Speaker 1: is going to position himself as more of a traditional
Speaker 1: conservative who's who's also moral upstanding, you know, I think
Speaker 1: it's Vance that is. You know, Vance has never really
Speaker 1: been a part of any of any any politic you know,
Speaker 1: He's never really had success being his own, having his
Speaker 1: own political identity, right, His entire political identity was rescued
Speaker 1: by Donald Trump with that endorsement in the Senate primary
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two. So Pence had a political identity
Speaker 1: before Donald Trump, right. In fact, Donald Trump needed a
Speaker 1: Mike Pence. Donald Trump didn't need a Jadvance, just the opposite, right,
Speaker 1: Vance needed Trump. So that's why I'm skeptical that there's
Speaker 1: any any sort of you know, Rubio is more likely
Speaker 1: to have the ability, because again, he had a political
Speaker 1: identity pre Trump Vance and didn't really have a sustainable
Speaker 1: put right, you know, once he started running for office,
Speaker 1: he tried, he tried to do it with his own
Speaker 1: political identity and couldn't and instead just sort of my
Speaker 1: most cynical version of it, Peter Teal bought the Trump
Speaker 1: endorsement for Bants hard stop right in some form or another,
Speaker 1: and here we are. And that's why I'm I'm pretty
Speaker 1: skeptical on that front. All Right, a few draft reactions.
Speaker 1: Number One, I'm really happy for Carson Beck pretty cool
Speaker 1: that he's QB three. Look, he understood he has been
Speaker 1: in two different offenses, and I think that that just
Speaker 1: helps you transition better. So I do think he'll transition well.
Speaker 1: He does well in the scripted portion. You know, he
Speaker 1: struggles a little bit when when offensive line protection falls behind,
Speaker 1: and we'll see I mean, he was behind arguably one
Speaker 1: of the best offensive lines in the history of the
Speaker 1: University of Miami. He's not going to have that right
Speaker 1: away at Arizona, but he's going to get a chance.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm guessing he'll be the starter by somewhere
Speaker 1: in the you know, barring injury or something like that,
Speaker 1: or just a total inability to get the playbook, which
Speaker 1: I just find unlikely. You know, he's going to get
Speaker 1: a real chance, and you just you don't know if
Speaker 1: you're going to get a situation where you get it.
Speaker 1: So I'm just happy he's going to get a chance.
Speaker 1: It's Arizona, we know it's Uphill. You know, that's a
Speaker 1: franchise that just never seems to get out of its
Speaker 1: own way, right, But now get to have Trey McBride
Speaker 1: to throw four that three. That's pretty good. He's got
Speaker 1: Marvin Harrison there, he's got Jeremiah Love. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: some interesting tools there. I mean, he's so I'm happy
Speaker 1: for him. That's exciting. I'm trying to remember the last
Speaker 1: time in the nursery of Mimmy had two starting quarterbacks
Speaker 1: simultaneously in the NFL. I think we have to go
Speaker 1: back to the Vidie Bernie era for that. So that's
Speaker 1: that would be That would be fun. Look, the you
Speaker 1: got to say, got to got to give the Packers credit.
Speaker 1: What they told the press before the draft is what
Speaker 1: they did. They said they need to work on cornerback.
Speaker 1: First pick was a quarterback with a C by the
Speaker 1: way corner and that quarter a little bit of a
Speaker 1: project out of South Carolina, but huge athletic upside. But frankly,
Speaker 1: this is what the Packers do, right. They loved draft
Speaker 1: guys like that are just you know, I have all
Speaker 1: this athletic ability, but you know, need a refinement here,
Speaker 1: a refinement there. Their believers in their system, and frankly,
Speaker 1: it usually works out pretty well. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I would put the Packers up against anybody in their
Speaker 1: record of particularly I just feel like they kill it
Speaker 1: frequently kill it in the second round. First round, they
Speaker 1: can be all over the map. So needless to say,
Speaker 1: I liked our first round pick this year because it
Speaker 1: was Michael Parsons. We traded it away as part of
Speaker 1: that trade. So I like that. One other note that
Speaker 1: I think is interesting about the draft that you know,
Speaker 1: so there's been all this stuff about nil and how
Speaker 1: the last three rounds of the draft there was just,
Speaker 1: you know, the talent fell off a cliff because those
Speaker 1: tweener players, those players that had some upside now stay
Speaker 1: in college an extra year, they get refined, and then
Speaker 1: they end up being drafted in one of the first
Speaker 1: three rounds. Right, So you have this what you have
Speaker 1: right now, is you have is you have the first
Speaker 1: you know, I think the first seventy players off the
Speaker 1: board all now, if you know, they've all played quite
Speaker 1: a few snaps. There's a few exceptions. Ty Simpson's an exception,
Speaker 1: but they've all played a lot of college ball, right
Speaker 1: where there's fewer that are coming out early for the
Speaker 1: money because you're actually better off staying getting the money, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, David Bailey is as good of an example
Speaker 1: as anybody, right, He's a guy that contemplated going to Harvard,
Speaker 1: decides to go to Stanford, gets his degree early, then
Speaker 1: ends up playing one year in Texas Tech, and Nne
Speaker 1: becomes the number two overall pick. Right. Cam Ward is
Speaker 1: another one right from last year for Nanna. Mendoz is
Speaker 1: another one he could have after graduating Cal left early
Speaker 1: and then would have been a third or fourth round pick.
Speaker 1: So you've done all this. Here's something else that I
Speaker 1: noticed right the top ten picks. First pick was in
Speaker 1: the playoff, Second pick was in the playoff, Third pick
Speaker 1: was Notre Dame should have been in the playoff. Fourth
Speaker 1: pick was in the playoff. Fifth pick was in the playoff.
Speaker 1: Sixth pifth with LSU not in the playoff. Seventh pick
Speaker 1: was in the playoff. Eighth pick was not in the playoff,
Speaker 1: neither was the ninth pick, but the tenth pick was. Right.
Speaker 1: You start to go through here, and the first round
Speaker 1: is just essentially the entire top ten Indiana, Texas Tech,
Speaker 1: Notre Dame, Ohio State, Miami, Alabama, Oregon, Georgia, Texas, A
Speaker 1: and M. And then you look at the schools that
Speaker 1: weren't in the top ten, that had players LSU projected
Speaker 1: to be there. Arizona State a playoff team the year before,
Speaker 1: Utah projected to be a contender for there. Penn State
Speaker 1: was supposed to be there, Clemson was supposed to be there,
Speaker 1: Florida was supposed to be better than they were, usc
Speaker 1: was supposed to be there, you know, So it is
Speaker 1: I think what you're seeing is just what NIL is doing,
Speaker 1: which is it You're going to have more prepared for
Speaker 1: More first rounders are going to be starters in the
Speaker 1: NFL than ever before, more second rounders, and more third rounders.
Speaker 1: Then you're going to have this just sort of a
Speaker 1: lot more experimental picks. So this is where I think
Speaker 1: over the next couple of years, you'll start to see
Speaker 1: more of the foreign academies get into the fourth, fifth,
Speaker 1: and sixth round where instead of drafting somebody who didn't
Speaker 1: get noticed by the POWERFO conferences and paid NIL money
Speaker 1: to come join them, you know, taking a flyer and
Speaker 1: somebody at North Dakota State, they you'd rather take a
Speaker 1: flyer and somebody that went through the Australia Academy or
Speaker 1: went through the Canada Academy, went through Canadian high school.
Speaker 1: I just think you're going to see more of more
Speaker 1: that more diverse, because ultimately you know they want they
Speaker 1: want these picks to matter, and you may see also
Speaker 1: more teams trade away these fifth, sixth, and seventh round
Speaker 1: picks and they start to seem less valuable, more experimental.
Speaker 1: But look, everything is, We're still only two or three
Speaker 1: years into Like this feels like the first draft of
Speaker 1: the more mature in IL era. And it's why I
Speaker 1: think the last part of the draft really is filled
Speaker 1: with guys that are probably not going to make the team.
Speaker 1: Where before you still thought you were drafting special teams
Speaker 1: guys in the sixth and seventh round, and I think
Speaker 1: it's just less likely, less likely you're going to have that.
Speaker 1: All Right, the next time I see you, how many
Speaker 1: NBA First round matchups will be over? Will it be done?
Speaker 1: Will it be done in Houston? That's the big question
Speaker 1: I have. Right you will next hear from me, We
Speaker 1: will tape. I will tape on Tuesday. You will next
Speaker 1: hear from the air. How many series will be officially
Speaker 1: over by the time I drop on Wednesday morning? One,
Speaker 1: two or three? I'm gonna guess just I'm gonna guess two.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go with two, But we shall see. All
Speaker 1: right with that, I've gone quite a bit. Obviously, I
Speaker 1: had a lot to say about the weekends incidents. I
Speaker 1: heard from a lot of you appreciate it. Don't worry
Speaker 1: about me. We know I do know. I'd like to
Speaker 1: think I know how to keep my head on a
Speaker 1: swivel and I sort of look at all of these
Speaker 1: events with eyes wide open. But we all need to
Speaker 1: be vigilant out there a little bit. Number one and
Speaker 1: number two, we all need to do our part to
Speaker 1: de escalate, depolarize. Our institutions are geared towards polarizations, the
Speaker 1: algorithms are geared towards polarizations. We as voters have to
Speaker 1: find less polarizing people and be putting them in leadership positions.
Speaker 1: You know, we need to fix some of the systems, right.
Speaker 1: We got to get rid of parson primaries, no doubt
Speaker 1: about it. That's a massive contributor to this. But the
Speaker 1: partisan leadership, right, partisanal primaries give us more partisan leadership.
Speaker 1: And of course we have a president who is intentionally
Speaker 1: divisive and all of that trickles down. So we all
Speaker 1: have some work to do, but it starts with demanding better,
Speaker 1: more moderate and temperament. Moderate does not mean some sort
Speaker 1: of uncomfortable compromise between the left and right. Moderate means
Speaker 1: for me, temperament matters more. Temperament and character matter more
Speaker 1: in making a president than ideology or policy position. And
Speaker 1: with that a sail for eight hours.