Speaker 1: Hello, They're happy Thursday, and welcome to another episode of
Speaker 1: the Chuck Podcast. In a few minutes kind of an
Speaker 1: I have an interesting conversation with Ben Smith. Some of
Speaker 1: you may remember Ben Smith from the BuzzFeed days, some
Speaker 1: of you may remember Ben Smith from Politico, but he's
Speaker 1: also co founder of a fascinating still new, it's a
Speaker 1: couple of years old now, but still fairly new publication
Speaker 1: called Semaphore. Their goal being to market to the two
Speaker 1: hundred million what is it? It's the excuse me more
Speaker 1: than that, the I think seven hundred million English speaking
Speaker 1: world is the goal. Two hundred million in the in
Speaker 1: the in a certain demographic group of English speakers around
Speaker 1: the world. But we talk a little bit of state
Speaker 1: of the media, a little bit of this state of
Speaker 1: international media, a little bit. I find Semaphore extraordinarily helped
Speaker 1: full in They have newsletters about every continent, the politics,
Speaker 1: the business of different continents, and I think their daily
Speaker 1: newsletter on Africa and the Gulf States has made me
Speaker 1: a heck of a lot more informed than just reading
Speaker 1: just trying to, you know, read the Economist or Financial
Speaker 1: Times or New York Times to try to keep track
Speaker 1: of that stuff. So I find it to be an
Speaker 1: exceptional publication. I find Ben to be a fascinating He's
Speaker 1: got a fascinating view of media in general. But he's
Speaker 1: a New York City guy, and so we spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time talking about Mom Donnie and the future
Speaker 1: of that race, what does it mean for New York.
Speaker 1: He is a New Yorker through and through, loves his city,
Speaker 1: loves the history of the city. If you love New York,
Speaker 1: you're going to love this conversation with him. Before I
Speaker 1: get to it, I got a few other things I
Speaker 1: want to get to including I want to tell you
Speaker 1: about an event that I would just participated in yesterday.
Speaker 1: It was about the local news crisis. That was an
Speaker 1: event in the state of Michigan. This one is about
Speaker 1: the future of independence and whether there is a viable path.
Speaker 1: And I moderated an interesting panel with the chair of
Speaker 1: the Forward Party as well as sort of the chief
Speaker 1: political analyst of the Independent Center, with the goal being
Speaker 1: to try to build an infrastructure. And that's what's interesting there.
Speaker 1: It's an infrastructure. The goal is to try to build
Speaker 1: an infrastructure to help independent candidates when they get swamped
Speaker 1: at the end by big money, either from Republican super
Speaker 1: PACs or Democratic superpacks. So they're trying to create an ecosystem,
Speaker 1: and you know the challenges of that, and I want
Speaker 1: to speak to that in a minute. But it is,
Speaker 1: it is, it is. It is the story that won't
Speaker 1: go away. It is the piece of toilet paper that
Speaker 1: is stuck on the bottom of Donald Trump's loafers, if
Speaker 1: you will, or I guess is a Floorsheim's shoes or
Speaker 1: whatever it is that he wears. I'm sure he doesn't
Speaker 1: do Floorsheim And for those of you who know that brand,
Speaker 1: enjoy the throwback to that. But he can't shake Epstein anywhere.
Speaker 1: And what's interesting is in fact that this independent event
Speaker 1: there's a few former members of Congress there. I was
Speaker 1: talking with Red Ribbel, a former Republican Member of Congress
Speaker 1: from Wisconsin who has basically left the Republican Party, and
Speaker 1: he was speaking to some current members and he wasn't
Speaker 1: naming names, but he was telling me about how important
Speaker 1: this Epstein issue is to constituents in the very conservative districts.
Speaker 1: So what this really is so in sort of like
Speaker 1: reality based land, Epstein is a curiosity of a story.
Speaker 1: But in some of the deep red districts and in
Speaker 1: the deep and I've told you this, there's a piece
Speaker 1: of the Republican base that has been he sent I
Speaker 1: call it's a form of grooming of sorts. I know
Speaker 1: that word is going to trigger some people, but they
Speaker 1: have been conditioned is probably the better term to use.
Speaker 1: Some of you are not going to like that I
Speaker 1: use that, and so conditioned is a better word. But this,
Speaker 1: these group of voters have been conditioned on the Epstein
Speaker 1: story that it was sort of the tip of the spear.
Speaker 1: It was sort of the way to prove that there
Speaker 1: was there has been a deep state, that there is
Speaker 1: this cupal of elites where the rules only apply to
Speaker 1: them and not to anybody else. And I've told you
Speaker 1: this before. The importance to these folks that believe in
Speaker 1: this conspiracy, this conspiracy the elites, that there is a
Speaker 1: there there to Epstein, and the idea that even Donald
Speaker 1: Trump can't tell these people that there's a there there
Speaker 1: because with this group of voters he did, they're not
Speaker 1: his base. This is the piece of the base that
Speaker 1: belongs more to the movement than it does Donald Trumps.
Speaker 1: We've learned there's sort of two parts of MAGA. Half
Speaker 1: of it is Trump's and they'll do whatever they say.
Speaker 1: And most of the elected Republicans, not all, but most
Speaker 1: of the elected Republicans believe there is more to fear
Speaker 1: from the Trump wing of MAGA than there is to
Speaker 1: say from the q Andon wing of MEGA. And that's
Speaker 1: really what this is. This is the q and On wing.
Speaker 1: This is you know why Mike Flynn is pushing back.
Speaker 1: You know, he's sort of the unofficial pope of the
Speaker 1: remainder of q Andon since there is no que anymore.
Speaker 1: Maybe there never was a que or maybe it is
Speaker 1: Mike Flynn, right, I its or do I dun dun dunk.
Speaker 1: But what Epstein sort of represents for these voters is
Speaker 1: sort of you know, truth are you are these lawmakers
Speaker 1: going to keep their word? You know, it's like anything
Speaker 1: right any elected official if you get caught breaking sort
Speaker 1: of a core promise. You know, voters are used to
Speaker 1: politicians lying all the time, and there's sort of an
Speaker 1: there's almost like an accepted an acceptability of certain lies.
Speaker 1: You know, going to balance the budget and they're full
Speaker 1: of shit, They're not going to balance the budget. But well,
Speaker 1: but as a voter, you'll weirdly accept that. But when
Speaker 1: you do things like I'll give you an example of
Speaker 1: a famous pledge, read my lips, no new taxes, right,
Speaker 1: And there were some people that really took that to
Speaker 1: the bank. And why did they take that to the bank. Well,
Speaker 1: at that time, it's because there were conservatives that were
Speaker 1: skeptical of George H. W. Bush and they thought, oh,
Speaker 1: he's he's gonna you know, he's not a real small
Speaker 1: government conservative. And so, by the way, those conservatives are right.
Speaker 1: And you know, George H. W. Bush was a compromiser,
Speaker 1: and he had a Democratic Congress, and he compromised, and yes,
Speaker 1: they raised taxes. By the way, it set the country
Speaker 1: up for an extraordinarily great run on the economy in
Speaker 1: the nineties. Built Bill Clinton built upon it. It's not
Speaker 1: like he undid what George HW. Bush did. He built
Speaker 1: upon it. Another famous sort of pledge that really sort
Speaker 1: of hurt that person was when Barack Obama said during
Speaker 1: the debate about healthcare, if you like your plane, you
Speaker 1: get to keep it. It got turned into the lie
Speaker 1: of the year. Now, it never harmed Obama's politics personally, right,
Speaker 1: it didn't cost him reelection. In twenty twelve, Part of
Speaker 1: it is he never fully faced reelection when it was
Speaker 1: fully clear that not everybody was going to be able
Speaker 1: to keep their plan if they liked it. But it
Speaker 1: did harm some Democrats. It was a huge It was
Speaker 1: sort of one of those sort of and this is
Speaker 1: where I think the Epstein promise falls for this core
Speaker 1: group of voters. You promised you were going to release this.
Speaker 1: We knew we couldn't trust the Democrats to release this,
Speaker 1: but you could release this. And you guys promised to
Speaker 1: release this. And you know, if you've spent any time
Speaker 1: on X and you follow the Lincoln Project or the
Speaker 1: podsave they have some or the Bulwark people, they have
Speaker 1: found pretty much every single tweet that Donald Trump Junior
Speaker 1: has said about release the Epstein files, every single tweet
Speaker 1: that that Jade Vance has said to release the Epstein files.
Speaker 1: And so for these voters, this was the equivalent of
Speaker 1: read my lips, no new taxes, or if you like
Speaker 1: your plane, you get to keep it and it is possible.
Speaker 1: And I think this is this is this is what
Speaker 1: Trump has to fear, is that it's reached that level.
Speaker 1: And how do we know it's reached that level? Because
Speaker 1: there are a handful of Republican members of Congress that
Speaker 1: are so scared of this issue that they are willing
Speaker 1: to break with Trump on it. Okay, And maybe some
Speaker 1: of them are doing it out of principle. I think
Speaker 1: most of them are breaking here out of they believe
Speaker 1: their constituents that there there is a big enough constituency
Speaker 1: in their district that this could cost them reelection, that
Speaker 1: this could be into a primary problem. And so you're
Speaker 1: seeing there is somewhere between twenty and forty Republicans who
Speaker 1: are absolutely not going to walk the plank here with Trump.
Speaker 1: They don't want to look like they're covering something up
Speaker 1: with Trump. And you saw the movement and that subcommittee
Speaker 1: in the House Oversight Committee, the fact that Mike Johnson
Speaker 1: just sent him home. Part of this group I was
Speaker 1: telling you about that. I was the panel panel before
Speaker 1: the one I moderated, featured three former Republican members of Congress.
Speaker 1: They did Joe Manchin did something as sort of a
Speaker 1: Democrat who's moved to the independence, and then they had
Speaker 1: sort of three Republican members of Congress. Was red Ribble.
Speaker 1: It was Ken Buck from a Republican from a former
Speaker 1: Republican from Colorado, and Mark Sandford, former Republican member of
Speaker 1: Congress from South Carolina. And it was Mark Sandford that
Speaker 1: said that he can't believe that. It just he was
Speaker 1: remarking at how broken Congress is and how broken the
Speaker 1: House is, the fact that Speaker Johnson had to shut
Speaker 1: the place down for fear of members of Congress wanting
Speaker 1: to work their will, like he was appalled at simply, hey,
Speaker 1: you don't like it that there's two hundred and eighteen votes,
Speaker 1: and the fact that because it is not on partisan
Speaker 1: lines and it's on bipartisan lines, you're just shutting the
Speaker 1: House down. And in some ways, you know, sort of
Speaker 1: the point he was making is that actually is bringing
Speaker 1: more attention to the issue, and what he thought was
Speaker 1: an attempt to quell things actually probably made it worse
Speaker 1: with those twenty to thirty Republican House members who really
Speaker 1: believe this is an issue that moves their constituents. Look,
Speaker 1: I'm not changing my opinion on whether I think this
Speaker 1: is a shiny metal It is a shiny metal object
Speaker 1: that has been sort of force fed upon the media ecosystem.
Speaker 1: Thank you algorithms, Thank you hackers of the algorithms. Thank
Speaker 1: you to those and the right, who broke the information ecosystem,
Speaker 1: and who trafficked in conspiracy theories and who allowed this
Speaker 1: thing to get traction. This is why the phrases hoisted
Speaker 1: on your own petard and you reap what you're sew
Speaker 1: are sayings, because this is the world that many of
Speaker 1: these folks helped create is now biting them in the
Speaker 1: you know what. And here's the other problem with conspiracy theory.
Speaker 1: There's no amount of information that gets released is going
Speaker 1: to be believed. No amount maybe at this point and now,
Speaker 1: of course, and this is you know, of course, the
Speaker 1: more Trump denies sort of any sort of or tries
Speaker 1: to detach himself, the more it becomes a newsworthy story
Speaker 1: to go find out, well, what's he hiding? And the
Speaker 1: more that he acts that he's hiding something, the more,
Speaker 1: you know. I use this with my friend Chris Saliza,
Speaker 1: and I'll share it with you guys. If you didn't
Speaker 1: hear the podcast I did with Solissa earlier this week,
Speaker 1: one of my favorite, there's a Harrison Ford gave what
Speaker 1: I think is the best political advice I've ever heard
Speaker 1: in a fictional movie. It's from Clear and Present Danger.
Speaker 1: Harrison Ford plays Jack Ryan, and I forgive me if
Speaker 1: some of you have heard me say this one before.
Speaker 1: But there's this moment, and it's sort of a sidebar.
Speaker 1: It has really nothing to do with the main part
Speaker 1: of a plot in that movie. But you know, suddenly
Speaker 1: Harrison Ford is in with the fictional president and the
Speaker 1: president has some sort of his biggest donor has become
Speaker 1: a political problem, and he's got an aid in the
Speaker 1: Oval office telling the fictional president, Hey, you know what,
Speaker 1: You've got to distance yourself from your pal here. You
Speaker 1: know this is becoming a problem. And Harrison Ford, the
Speaker 1: CIA guy, overhears and he goes, Oh, you shouldn't do that.
Speaker 1: If they ask you if he's a friend, you say no,
Speaker 1: he's a close friend. And if they ask you if
Speaker 1: he's a close friend, you say no, he's your best friend.
Speaker 1: The point is he's like, don't give him something they
Speaker 1: can disprove. Don't make your real life relationship the news story.
Speaker 1: And Trump has made the relationship itself now a story.
Speaker 1: Oh well, here's more wedding photos, and here's a birthday card,
Speaker 1: and here's a poem, and here's a drawing. When all
Speaker 1: Trump had this is one of those moments where if
Speaker 1: he says I was close friends with the guy I
Speaker 1: knew he was, I knew he liked him young, I
Speaker 1: didn't know he liked him that young. We broke off
Speaker 1: when he did this. He had a built in story.
Speaker 1: But for whatever reason, he is afraid to admit he's
Speaker 1: a member of the elite right. And we know at
Speaker 1: the heart, at the core of the MAGA movement and
Speaker 1: the populist movement in general, it's been to burn the
Speaker 1: elites to own the Libs has really own the elites
Speaker 1: right to those cultural whether it's the Ivy League institutions,
Speaker 1: the mainstream media, etc. And Epstein is seen as sort
Speaker 1: of one of the players of the elite now, you
Speaker 1: know it is there's so Trump feels as if he
Speaker 1: can't even admit that the relationship that we all know
Speaker 1: he had with Epstein is something he just wants to
Speaker 1: pretend didn't happen. I mean, one of the craziest things
Speaker 1: that jad Vance has said in defense of Trump is
Speaker 1: following the Wall Street Journal story about the infamous birthday
Speaker 1: card or birthday poem, is Donald Trump doesn't speak that way,
Speaker 1: And you're like, oh, son, you know this is every
Speaker 1: once in a while you got to remind yourself. Jady
Speaker 1: Vance is sort of a man child rights he's for
Speaker 1: there's always this sort of weird immaturity that still sort
Speaker 1: of hovers over him. And by the way, anybody in
Speaker 1: their late thirties early forties, you know, when I was
Speaker 1: in my late thirties or early forties, I still every
Speaker 1: once in a while I enjoyed being an immature. You know,
Speaker 1: you sort of you want to revert back to your twenties.
Speaker 1: You want to be a snarky. You want to be
Speaker 1: a snark, you want to be a smart ass. But
Speaker 1: you're also a little bit uninformed. And sometimes either he
Speaker 1: thinks that if he just plays the Jedi mind trick
Speaker 1: with the base. Donald Trump never speaks this way. What
Speaker 1: are you talking about? This is the lane. Donald Trump
Speaker 1: is a guy from Queens. Trust me. He has spoken
Speaker 1: that way and then some. So it is this, you know,
Speaker 1: this is a this is a feeding frenzy that Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: You know, he is both the arsonist and he has
Speaker 1: poured gas on the fire. Right he lit the fire
Speaker 1: in the first place. With the conspiratorial you know, there's
Speaker 1: some deep state dark it's all these dark forces, and
Speaker 1: he basically glombed on. You know, these this weird movement
Speaker 1: existed before Trump was there, and he scooped him up.
Speaker 1: And he loved how loyal they were to him online
Speaker 1: and they became his online warriors. He loved that they
Speaker 1: saw him as a messiah. They love and he he
Speaker 1: didn't fully appreciate suddenly what some of the expectations would be.
Speaker 1: And a big one is He's supposed to be the
Speaker 1: one to prove this crazy conspiracy theory is true. And
Speaker 1: now what is he doing. He is behaving like the
Speaker 1: deep state. So look, it's interesting that John Thune is saying,
Speaker 1: now this is a Mike Johnson problem. Look, eventually this
Speaker 1: is maybe it won't be a problem in the Senate
Speaker 1: because whatever the House votes to do, the Senate would
Speaker 1: probably do ninety ten on this front because none of
Speaker 1: them want to get caught up in this story. And
Speaker 1: being in favor of transparency is always a better political
Speaker 1: place to be, whether you're on the left or the right.
Speaker 1: But by the way, I told you, the whole grand
Speaker 1: jury shenanigans that Trump tried to create with Pam BONDI
Speaker 1: was a sleight of hand because Trump knew darn well
Speaker 1: that none of this stuff was ever going to get
Speaker 1: released by a judge, And sure enough, a judge just
Speaker 1: said that none of this grand jury testimony can be released.
Speaker 1: So it is you and you want to talk about
Speaker 1: a spectacle in September or October of Galleine Maxwell, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is like right out of a movie.
Speaker 1: You know, they're going to bring them in for a
Speaker 1: congress bring her in for a congressional hearing. And there's
Speaker 1: there's a good group of people there that seem pretty insistent.
Speaker 1: This is what Comer wants, this is what timber Chit wants,
Speaker 1: this is what Massey wants. I don't know if Trump's
Speaker 1: going to be able to stop this now. The only
Speaker 1: thing he now should wish is that he just sort
Speaker 1: of ripped the band aid off a lot sooner, because
Speaker 1: this becomes a lot more painful for him politically. If
Speaker 1: this becomes the dominant issue when the calendar turns to September,
Speaker 1: this can be a sort of summer silly season story
Speaker 1: that he sort of struggles with but gets over, or
Speaker 1: this could linger and stick with him. You know, I
Speaker 1: can't help but notice there is a little bit of
Speaker 1: a parallel. Remember things went Things looked like They were
Speaker 1: going pretty well for Joe Biden in the first five
Speaker 1: months of his presidency, and he got the checks out
Speaker 1: the door, and he got the vaccines out the door.
Speaker 1: In July fourth he declared independence from the virus. And
Speaker 1: then at the end of that month the withdrawal from Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: and it was a disaster. And then they were trying
Speaker 1: really hard to make it seem as if it wasn't
Speaker 1: their fault and they weren't owning the problem. And then
Speaker 1: infestered and it festered, and I would argue it was
Speaker 1: the beginning of the end of that presidency. Other things
Speaker 1: became problematic, but he never politically recovered from this moment.
Speaker 1: Trump's already in a hole politically, He's already in a
Speaker 1: lower place than Joe Biden was right before the Afghanistan
Speaker 1: withdrawal problem. And so Trump already has a substance problem
Speaker 1: with the voters. They don't like how he's implemented the
Speaker 1: deportation policy, The Big Beautiful Bill is unpopular. This economy
Speaker 1: is not popular right now because housing's expensive, the cost
Speaker 1: of living is still up, et cetera. And now there's
Speaker 1: this Epstein issue, and so this is he is going
Speaker 1: to wish he just dealt with it in July and August,
Speaker 1: and that he let the house work its will, and
Speaker 1: that he just kept following disclosures, because then it looks
Speaker 1: like he's not afraid of any of this. But now
Speaker 1: he seems to be afraid of disclosures. So now we
Speaker 1: have the leaked we have leaked stories that say he
Speaker 1: found out his name was in these files multiple times.
Speaker 1: And you know, this is what happens when you have
Speaker 1: this sort of He's got a bit of a god
Speaker 1: complex that he's developed, particularly after going You know, in
Speaker 1: his mind he's here, he's defeated two impeachments, he's been
Speaker 1: indicted multiple times and somehow has not had to pay
Speaker 1: any price. He survived one actual assassination attempt and a
Speaker 1: second potential assassination attempt. So perhaps he, perhaps any of
Speaker 1: us would have a god comp after going through everything
Speaker 1: he went through. But he's got the god complex and
Speaker 1: thinks he can just will anything away, wish anything away,
Speaker 1: do the Jedi mind trick, and his base is going
Speaker 1: to follow, and it hasn't worked. And now he's so
Speaker 1: hanging out there and they don't know what to do, right.
Speaker 1: They seem to be tied up because their most loyal
Speaker 1: media audience, half of them want more information from him
Speaker 1: and think Trump's hiding stuff from him, and they're not happy.
Speaker 1: So he doesn't. He doesn't. He can't even use his
Speaker 1: attack the mainstream media. They're out to get me, uh political,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of uh uh whatever you want to
Speaker 1: call it. You know that that version of his excuse
Speaker 1: of trying a distraction trick is a little Jedi mind trick.
Speaker 1: It's not and that one's not working. So he's if
Speaker 1: he goes into September and this is an unresolved issue
Speaker 1: and we have votes in the House, and I you know,
Speaker 1: I don't think this economy is going to hold up
Speaker 1: by the fall all of his tariff That the weight
Speaker 1: of the tariffs are going to start to hit and
Speaker 1: hit harder and harder as each month goes on, and
Speaker 1: we'll have this spectacle of Epstein. I'd be shocked if
Speaker 1: we get Gallainne Maxwell going. But at this point, if
Speaker 1: you're Trump, you might be it's better off doing that
Speaker 1: because if they look like they're afraid of her, they
Speaker 1: look like they they don't want to hear from her.
Speaker 1: At this point, it only may make the you know
Speaker 1: the wounded fester even more so. Look, you know my
Speaker 1: opinion about this story. It's a it's sort of a
Speaker 1: story being forced upon us by the big tech companies.
Speaker 1: And there's abserd algorithms that got abused by these right
Speaker 1: wing conspiracy theorists. But here we are so enjoy being
Speaker 1: hoisted on that petard on this front. But I can
Speaker 1: tell you this, They've got to find a way to
Speaker 1: rip the band aid off. They cannot. He waits till September.
Speaker 1: He may splinter his party, and there is nothing that
Speaker 1: accelerates lame duck status for a president. Then when the
Speaker 1: party begins to realize there's always going to be a point,
Speaker 1: and even Donald Trump is going to face this. And
Speaker 1: I brought this up in my substack this week. The
Speaker 1: question is when there's always a point in a second
Speaker 1: term of a presidency where the party realizes that guy's
Speaker 1: not going to be in charge anymore and you start
Speaker 1: to see people peel away. Epstein is now allowing Republicans
Speaker 1: to start peeling away and distancing themselves from Trump faster
Speaker 1: than I think this White House was prepared for. And
Speaker 1: this isn't something you get back once it starts a
Speaker 1: drip becomes a leak, becomes a gusher. Don't believe me,
Speaker 1: Go take a look at how the first nine month
Speaker 1: of George W. Bush's second term win. It started off
Speaker 1: like it was going to go really well after his
Speaker 1: impressive reelection, and when it started leaking, it suddenly became
Speaker 1: a gusher. And then politically he was in the It
Speaker 1: was a disaster, and the Republican Party abandoned ship as
Speaker 1: fast as they could. That's what Donald Trump now has
Speaker 1: to fear. If he's smart, believe it or not, he
Speaker 1: should call up his buddy Mike Johnson since he's also
Speaker 1: the you know, basically, Mike Johnson is whatever. His only speaker,
Speaker 1: only executes his his speakership, when when Donald Trump asked
Speaker 1: him to, he should be telling Speaker Johnson to get back,
Speaker 1: go deal with this, release the files. Deal with it now,
Speaker 1: deal with it in the August recess. You let this
Speaker 1: come come in September. It's only going to make it worse.
Speaker 1: A few other notes I want to make before we
Speaker 1: get to my Ben Smith conversation. First of all, thank
Speaker 1: you Google. I made a big deal out of the
Speaker 1: fact that Google's AI was incorrectly diagnosing me with Parkinson's disease.
Speaker 1: I had an entire sort of obviously bringing it up.
Speaker 1: Somebody's listening over there. And now if you search Chuck
Speaker 1: Todd illness, it says there is no evidence of this,
Speaker 1: and none of this is true, there's no confirmation, etc.
Speaker 1: But this is a reminder of AI is only as
Speaker 1: strong as the information that gets put into it, and
Speaker 1: how these large language models are built. What these large
Speaker 1: language models train on matters a great deal, not a
Speaker 1: little bit. And the thing that I learned about Gemini
Speaker 1: versus chat GPT is interesting here. Chat GPT doesn't sort
Speaker 1: of scour, you know, unless you ask it to sort
Speaker 1: of scrape the internet over the last seventy two hours.
Speaker 1: It doesn't automatically do that when searching for information. Google's
Speaker 1: AI does it, and so frequency of something becomes factual
Speaker 1: rather than actually discerning to find out if something is
Speaker 1: true or not. So I hope this is a little
Speaker 1: bit of a reminder of folks that AI has got a
Speaker 1: long way to go, and that remember what AI is.
Speaker 1: It's just a really smart search engine. If you think
Speaker 1: it's there to help you to it's there to help
Speaker 1: you solve problems, It's not there to solve problems for you.
Speaker 1: And I wish, I wish the you know, I understand
Speaker 1: why the people that lead AI want want, you know,
Speaker 1: want to be aspirational and oh no, this is you know,
Speaker 1: this is going to be like science fiction and you
Speaker 1: know these these computer models are going to reason even
Speaker 1: their reasoning is a computer program based on probability. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it is. I do think that the leaders in
Speaker 1: the AI community need to remind people what the large
Speaker 1: language models are not versus what they are. One other
Speaker 1: note from a previous episode that I wanted to bring
Speaker 1: up in my conversation with Lena Khan, we were talking
Speaker 1: about what are some of the things about AI, what
Speaker 1: are some of the regulatory concerns about AI? And she
Speaker 1: brought up something called surveillance pricing, which is this idea
Speaker 1: that you know, each of us are individually only going
Speaker 1: to see prices that that retailer thinks, using AI researching
Speaker 1: us figures out what we can pay. And Lena brought
Speaker 1: up an interesting scenario. Let's say you have a death
Speaker 1: in your family and you've got to fly to Denver, Colorado,
Speaker 1: and the program knows knows enough about you and is
Speaker 1: able to do enough research to know you have to go.
Speaker 1: They know that you have this relative who died, and
Speaker 1: so they know you have to pay, have to get
Speaker 1: this ticket that you're going to see. They know that
Speaker 1: you might pay not quite any price, but close to
Speaker 1: any price. Well, lo and behold. What did Delta Airlines
Speaker 1: announced earlier this week? Delta Airlines? And I give them
Speaker 1: credit for being forthcoming about this, but they said in
Speaker 1: their earnings call that going forward, twenty percent of their
Speaker 1: fares may be set by basically AI, which means it's
Speaker 1: trying to figure out what is it how much I
Speaker 1: will pay versus how much someone else will pay. I
Speaker 1: don't see how that is anything other than predatory and discriminatory.
Speaker 1: I assume that's why we have consumer protections as something
Speaker 1: that we expect our government to do. But the fact
Speaker 1: that we are not yet, we don't yet realize that
Speaker 1: this is probably something that needs to be regulated and controlled.
Speaker 1: That's a bit scary. But keep that in mind. Keep
Speaker 1: that in mind. I said, I give Delta. I think
Speaker 1: Delta by the way of the three big airlines. I
Speaker 1: wish they flew to more cities that I fly to.
Speaker 1: That's all I'm going to say. The fact that every
Speaker 1: Delta experience I have is so much better than the
Speaker 1: other two major airlines that I end up flying more frequently,
Speaker 1: so I give kudos. It's a In fact, I was
Speaker 1: on a Delta flight today and the pilot came out
Speaker 1: to thank to thank those I happen to be sitting
Speaker 1: in a frequent flyer section, if you will. I'll just
Speaker 1: leave it at that and think, you know, appreciated the business.
Speaker 1: And da da da dah went through this stuff. I've
Speaker 1: never had that an American. I've never had that in
Speaker 1: United It was you know, plus you throw in the
Speaker 1: fact that it's free Wi Fi and Delta. It's not
Speaker 1: free Wi Fi and the other two they do a
Speaker 1: lot of things that is there's a reason why it is.
Speaker 1: I think it is right now the more popular airline,
Speaker 1: but Delta. I will not say nice things about you
Speaker 1: if you go down this AI surveillance pricing bs because
Speaker 1: it's extraordinarily discriminatory and I think predatory. So I just
Speaker 1: wanted to bring that up because literally had the conversation
Speaker 1: with Lena con and I think was two days later
Speaker 1: that the news about Delta Airlines was there a couple
Speaker 1: of political notes in North Carolina. Roy Cooper has decided
Speaker 1: to jump in. We kind of knew. I think i'd
Speaker 1: let you know that it would have been a shock
Speaker 1: to Democrats had the former governor not gotten into the
Speaker 1: Senate race. But what's interesting I told you before Laura
Speaker 1: Trump has frozen the Republican field, saying she isn't going
Speaker 1: to make a decision until Thanksgiving. However, according to my
Speaker 1: friends at the Hotline, she actually has to make her
Speaker 1: decision sooner than that, even though she wents to state
Speaker 1: law North Carolina requires her to move back to North
Speaker 1: Carolina by late September in order to meet a ninety
Speaker 1: day party affiliation requirement before the December candidate filing deadline.
Speaker 1: So while Laura Trump wanted to buy time until Thanksgiving,
Speaker 1: according to my friends in Hotline, that is something she
Speaker 1: can't do anymore. So with Roy Cooper in, I actually
Speaker 1: do think because he's going to get a huge financial
Speaker 1: head start on that, I do think there'll be a lot,
Speaker 1: you know, a she's got an actual deadline in order
Speaker 1: to meet residency requirements. And frankly, I think it's something
Speaker 1: that national Republicans are going to want her. It's going
Speaker 1: to I think this is a double edged sword in
Speaker 1: a midterm year sharing the last name with the sitting president.
Speaker 1: I don't care which party you are. In any midterm year,
Speaker 1: that's usually not a good place to be. So while
Speaker 1: being a Trump will clear the field for her, means
Speaker 1: there'll be no serious primary challenge, She'll have all the
Speaker 1: money in the world, et cetera, et cetera. She may
Speaker 1: acquire all of Donald Trump's political baggage. And is that
Speaker 1: something that is going to make that seed harder to
Speaker 1: hold or easier to hold? All right, let me tell
Speaker 1: you quick two minutes about this independent there was. There
Speaker 1: was two interesting pieces of information that I learned from
Speaker 1: it that I wanted to share. One is sort of
Speaker 1: the demographic makeup of self describe independence. I think many
Speaker 1: of us have been telling you for quite some time
Speaker 1: that you know, the fastest growing party in America is
Speaker 1: no party you go around any There's about thirty five
Speaker 1: states that keep track of that force you to register
Speaker 1: by party. There's another fifteen where you don't have to
Speaker 1: register by party. I live in one of those, Virginia.
Speaker 1: It's that you don't have to declare party to registered vote.
Speaker 1: But among those states that do the fastest growing party
Speaker 1: has been either no party affiliation independent however, and I
Speaker 1: think they call it NPA in Florida. Different states call
Speaker 1: it different things. Nearly seventy five percent of all those
Speaker 1: that have been registering as independence are under the age
Speaker 1: of forty five. This is primarily a phenomenon of millennials
Speaker 1: and gen Z. And what's also interesting is that the
Speaker 1: gentleman that was on my panel believed that by twenty
Speaker 1: twenty eight, millennials and gen Z combined, so basically, all
Speaker 1: voters under the age of fifty will outnumber all voters
Speaker 1: over the age of fifty in the electorate. So this
Speaker 1: is the growing part of the electorate as the older
Speaker 1: part is shrinking. And what's interesting older voters because once
Speaker 1: you get into the habit of either voting read or
Speaker 1: voting blue, the older you get, the more likely you
Speaker 1: keep that habit. You view third party candidates or independent
Speaker 1: candidates more as spoilers that end up benefiting one party
Speaker 1: or the other party. That is not where millennials see
Speaker 1: independent candidates, and that is not where gen Z sees
Speaker 1: independent candidates. It's fascinating statistic and the question really is
Speaker 1: is this something is the something to build on and
Speaker 1: I do think it means that if you're going to
Speaker 1: run as an independent, you really you know that your
Speaker 1: best potential constituency is going to probably be voters under
Speaker 1: forty five, which some argue is a is a harder
Speaker 1: group of voters to get focused early in a campaign,
Speaker 1: which an independent candidate sometimes needs. You can get to
Speaker 1: those voters late, right when you're under the age of fifty.
Speaker 1: You've got a lot of other things going on, raising kids,
Speaker 1: do da da, you know, mixing all sorts of things,
Speaker 1: and sometimes you don't tune in until late. Older voters
Speaker 1: today know how they're voting in twenty twenty six, younger
Speaker 1: voters don't yet know how they're going to vote because
Speaker 1: they have busier, busier lives and they're still forming their opinions.
Speaker 1: But I thought that was a fascinating point on that.
Speaker 1: And then the other is this question of whether is
Speaker 1: there a I don't want to call it a legal loophole,
Speaker 1: but is there a better way for the Green Party,
Speaker 1: Libertarian Party, Working Families, Party, Forward Party, all of them
Speaker 1: working together and filing essentially class action suits against all
Speaker 1: these state parties that put up higher barriers. I don't
Speaker 1: understand how you don't have an equal protection argument that basically, voters,
Speaker 1: if you're not a registered D or R and you
Speaker 1: want to either run for office or you either want
Speaker 1: to participate in a primary in some of these states,
Speaker 1: you're being disenfranchised and register have it being forced to
Speaker 1: have to register with one of the two major parties
Speaker 1: in order to either get ballot access or to participate
Speaker 1: in a primary. It's a form of coercion. Right is
Speaker 1: that legal? How is that constitutional? So anyway, it's the
Speaker 1: question is whether all these entities could work together, could
Speaker 1: do this, because ultimately we're not going to know if
Speaker 1: independent candidates or a third party movement can really take
Speaker 1: off unless they get an equal shot at getting on
Speaker 1: the ballot. And right now, ballot access is usually the
Speaker 1: biggest hurdle for many of these candidates. All right, let's
Speaker 1: sneak in a quick break and when we come back
Speaker 1: my conversation with Ben Smith, like I said, the quintessential
Speaker 1: New Yorker, and I say that with nothing but respect
Speaker 1: and compliment on that front, coming up, Ben Smith, well
Speaker 1: joining me now is the editor in Cheap of Semaphore.
Speaker 1: It is Ben Smith. I've known him in so many
Speaker 1: of your iterations. I have multiple, many of yours exactly.
Speaker 1: This is the world, the world that we occupy in
Speaker 1: media and journalism. But looks semaphore is what do you
Speaker 1: celebrating your third birthday? Pretty close?
Speaker 2: I will be yeah, yeah, what is it today that
Speaker 2: you didn't expect.
Speaker 1: It to be nearly three years ago? Because I find
Speaker 1: it interesting The goal was smart information for the English
Speaker 1: speaking world pretty much? Right? Is that? My am? I?
Speaker 1: You know? Is that? Is that? The is that one
Speaker 1: line explainer? So where are we in your journey three
Speaker 1: years later with Justin Smith who he and I have
Speaker 1: sons who just graduated high school together, so we the
Speaker 1: insular nature of the media in Washington and New York
Speaker 1: is uh is going to come through in this conversation.
Speaker 1: But I am where do you? Where are you today?
Speaker 1: And where did you think you would be three years ago? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Well, congratulations on that check and also you know, on
Speaker 2: your assent from being the editor of the Hotline, which
Speaker 2: is what I heard, and it is yeah, we both
Speaker 2: sort of lived through that unbelievably crazy period of history
Speaker 2: in this in our profession, or like probably both of
Speaker 2: us would have been had we met, you know, we
Speaker 2: been in thirty years earlier and met thirty years ago,
Speaker 2: we would have basically inside gied organizations rising in the ranks.
Speaker 2: One hopes for that, and instead we've just done a
Speaker 2: series of been saying different things.
Speaker 1: And sort of written the wave of Well, as I
Speaker 1: say about the story of media over the last one
Speaker 1: hundred years, is new technology fragmentation consolidation. New technology fragmentation consolidation.
Speaker 1: And you and I have lived through now two arguably
Speaker 1: we're now are in our second fragmentation period. Right, Internet
Speaker 1: one point oh was fragmentation number one. That was sort
Speaker 1: of what the hotline was. That was in some ways
Speaker 1: the end of one point zero is what Politico came
Speaker 1: in and did that. And now streaming and where we
Speaker 1: are now is sort of fragmentation. Independent journalism, whatever you
Speaker 1: want to call it, is fragmentation two point zero. And
Speaker 1: in some ways that's what semaphore right. You guys are
Speaker 1: trying to challenge traditional media. I'm trying to do it
Speaker 1: in my own way. And here we are, and as
Speaker 1: I joke, and I think you guys probably feel the
Speaker 1: same way. The goal is to be consolidator, not to
Speaker 1: get consolidated. But if you get consolidated, it might not
Speaker 1: be so bad either.
Speaker 2: That's that's a very very good summary, right, and you
Speaker 2: sort of yeah, I mean I think you may you
Speaker 2: sort of left the old thing at the last possible
Speaker 2: moment to get off the ship and are now, like
Speaker 2: I think, here just in time to blow up and
Speaker 2: get consolidated. So congratulations on it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, it's funny you say that. I do feel
Speaker 1: as if I grabbed the last lifeboat. There are times
Speaker 1: I feel that way.
Speaker 2: The uh but yeah, but so no, I mean, I
Speaker 2: think you know somepore. You know, we launched, We launched,
Speaker 2: I think as people were saying, hey, the web as
Speaker 2: we knew it, in social media as we knew it
Speaker 2: don't seem to be working quite so well as we thought.
Speaker 2: And with a kind of with a thesis that we're
Speaker 2: going to have to reach people one to one and
Speaker 2: also that convening at events are going to be a
Speaker 2: big part of this business and a big and sort
Speaker 2: of the core of how you reach pop one to one.
Speaker 2: That second thing has just been truer than we could
Speaker 2: have imagined. Like we built these really in the short
Speaker 2: period time, pretty huge. We have a Davos competitor in
Speaker 2: Washington called the World Economy summit which you actually gatherather
Speaker 2: maybe I think it was the biggest gathering of CEOs
Speaker 2: in America this year, and we did it in April.
Speaker 2: It'sn be a lot bigger next year. And so I
Speaker 2: think the notion that you could sort of build a
Speaker 2: news organization whose core was convening it was a little
Speaker 2: exotic and has really been truer than we expect it
Speaker 2: in a way, like we said it, but now we
Speaker 2: have really like that's really what we're doing. And then
Speaker 2: the notion that in a world with like where social
Speaker 2: media is really untrustworthy and polarized, where the web is
Speaker 2: really untrustworthy and polarized, you know that we could build
Speaker 2: something and I think maybe more than we expected that. Like,
Speaker 2: there's a group of people, and it's particularly like people
Speaker 2: who make decisions in business and government elsewhere, who just
Speaker 2: like can't afford to be lied to because for them
Speaker 2: news is a tool they used to make decisions. And
Speaker 2: most of the rest of news consumers. I think the
Speaker 2: thesis of a lot of media companies is, oh, like,
Speaker 2: this is entertainment for people. It doesn't have to be true,
Speaker 2: it has to be emotionally engaging, and so like I
Speaker 2: think there's a real split there, and we definitely have
Speaker 2: taken that former path of like, we're news for people
Speaker 2: who really probably know what their philosophy of the world is,
Speaker 2: and we're probably not going to change that, but we
Speaker 2: can inform them. We can open that, we can provide
Speaker 2: different perspectives in different legitimate points of view and tell
Speaker 2: them even what people who they despise think about this,
Speaker 2: and that that's a really valuable service. We can tell them,
Speaker 2: we can separate news from opinion. They're not out shopping
Speaker 2: for new points of view on the world or for
Speaker 2: new opinions for themselves. They're trying to understand what's going on.
Speaker 1: You know, what I find refreshing in what you're doing
Speaker 1: is that it's all free. There's no subscription, right, and
Speaker 1: I mean this. You know there's no subscription at all.
Speaker 1: And I know you've said, well, maybe in the future
Speaker 1: I'll be a subscription model, but I am a huge
Speaker 1: believer that paywalls are not going to solve the information
Speaker 1: ecosystem problem. So explain why you decided to be free
Speaker 1: for all and that you've not I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people assume, well, you're going to be free for
Speaker 1: now and then you're going to put up the paywall
Speaker 1: and that's not happened. Explain that philosophy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I would say that I do. I
Speaker 2: don't view business models as philosophical, like I think in
Speaker 2: news people tend to like talk their book and so
Speaker 2: when I was at BuzzFeed, there was an impulse to
Speaker 2: be like, look like, you know, free is democratizing. And
Speaker 2: when I was at The New York Times, is an
Speaker 2: impulse to say, look like, you're you are getting great
Speaker 2: value out of this journalism, you should pay for it.
Speaker 2: And you hear people in particularly there's a way of
Speaker 2: people saying like, subscription is the only like pure way
Speaker 2: to do journalism because you're not corrupted by advertisers, can
Speaker 2: be you can really say what you think, you can
Speaker 2: be honest.
Speaker 1: Ask the New York Times about their captured base of
Speaker 1: subscribers when James Bennett dared to green light and op
Speaker 1: ed by Tom Cotton when it was a revolt of
Speaker 1: their paid subscribers, and they panicked, And you're just sitting
Speaker 1: there going, well, that's no different than advertiser capture. That's
Speaker 1: audience capture.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's right. And I think all basically
Speaker 2: all these models in which you are paid to do
Speaker 2: your work like have carry with them real risks that
Speaker 2: it screws up the journalism and the best way to
Speaker 2: maybe the best way to get away from is to
Speaker 2: diversify and have a bunch and to be having a
Speaker 2: bunch of different models to be. And I think my
Speaker 2: view is I'm pretty agnostic about how you pay for
Speaker 2: the journalism. I do think that we grew up in
Speaker 2: this like utopian moment of just open information and free
Speaker 2: information that was new that I mean, and you know,
Speaker 2: I guess made a way that probably started with television
Speaker 2: broadcast right broadcast was free as a matter of like
Speaker 2: you can figure out how to make people pay for it.
Speaker 2: I'm sure they would have if they could have. I'm
Speaker 2: sure you know, the founders of CBS News, if they'd
Speaker 2: figure out a way to make people pay, like the
Speaker 2: BBC does. They come and they like raid your apartment
Speaker 2: and they see if you have a television, and if
Speaker 2: you do, they make you pay the license fee and
Speaker 2: you can be in trouble if you don't. Like that's
Speaker 2: literally how they do.
Speaker 1: That's literally how it works there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Like the inspector will cut like literally bang
Speaker 2: on your door. I knew people I lived there briefly
Speaker 2: who would cover their televisions with like a with like
Speaker 2: a blanket just in case, because they were trying to
Speaker 2: get out of paying.
Speaker 1: Wow. I had no idea. Wow, it's just a.
Speaker 2: Few pounds a year. I mean's you know anyway, But
Speaker 2: it's hard to make people pay for broadcasts. It's sort
Speaker 2: of a technological matter. It used to be hard to
Speaker 2: make people pay for the web. Netflix and Spotify trained
Speaker 2: us all to pay. Yeah, I don't think. I mean,
Speaker 2: I guess my own view is that figuring out ways
Speaker 2: to employ people to gather trustworthy information is maybe even
Speaker 2: is a big crisis. The availability of trust with information
Speaker 2: is another big crisis. But I don't want to like
Speaker 2: make it harder to pay journalists because I am ideological
Speaker 2: of that thing too, I guess is my and and
Speaker 2: for our for ourselves, like we're you know, we think
Speaker 2: the advert we were having a great run in the
Speaker 2: advertising business and the sponsorship business. And I don't have
Speaker 2: any plans to charge subscriptions. But if I thought that
Speaker 2: it would help me hire more journalists, so would do it.
Speaker 1: No, And I, you know, I think there's a role
Speaker 1: for that, Like when I think about the whole variety
Speaker 1: of things, right when you you can't just be in
Speaker 1: one category. Yeah, exactly, you know. To me, you know,
Speaker 1: there's got to be a baseline that's available to everybody.
Speaker 1: And then you know, look specialty things, you know, specialty newsletters,
Speaker 1: why wouldn't you want to have also?
Speaker 2: And also there's more complicated things you can do, like
Speaker 2: in your business. Like I just think that like you're
Speaker 2: putting out, you're producing a good show that is streaming
Speaker 2: rather than television, although the production values are just as
Speaker 2: high as lots of what is on television. And in
Speaker 2: five minutes, like Substack TV is going to come to
Speaker 2: you and say, hey, we are television now and we'd
Speaker 2: like to window your show, like we'll pay you to
Speaker 2: get it two hours earlier, right or something.
Speaker 1: No, I do think that that's where we're headed. You know,
Speaker 1: the Pat McAfee model, that's going to be the model.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I assume in a year the
Speaker 1: pod Save America Boys will be on MSNBC. But they
Speaker 1: won't work. But they won't work for MSNBC. They will
Speaker 1: license them, right, they will let everybody's And this is
Speaker 1: a question, and I'm curious if you believe this if
Speaker 1: we are in a temporary period where journalists and content creators,
Speaker 1: because it's you know, they're they're related, but they're not
Speaker 1: always one and the same. But let's put it in
Speaker 1: one that they're all going to own their own work.
Speaker 1: You know, I look at the you know, I'm doing
Speaker 1: some work with Newsphere, which is which is another type
Speaker 1: of model, which is and people it's a it's a
Speaker 1: it's I'm really enjoying sort of just that learning about
Speaker 1: that business model. And it's a different business model than substack.
Speaker 1: But I do think there's going to be these different
Speaker 1: because everybody that's on Newsphere owns their own material. They're
Speaker 1: just used, they're just licensing to that platform. Do you
Speaker 1: think that I think I think this is a generational
Speaker 1: shift and this will be the way it works for
Speaker 1: another decade or so. Are you convinced of this?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I guess I'm not sure what the
Speaker 2: stakes are of whether you own or you know, whether
Speaker 2: do you own this hour of us talking about we're
Speaker 2: talking about, you know, eternal truth. So this will have
Speaker 2: value for a long time. But much of what you
Speaker 2: talk about is stuff that isn't that interesting. Tomorrow because
Speaker 2: it's going to be overtaken by events. And so I think,
Speaker 2: particularly in the news business, what it is to own
Speaker 2: is a little overstated. And I think people are going
Speaker 2: to make financial decisions that are pretty boring about which
Speaker 2: pays you more. And I think there's also like is
Speaker 2: it ai training data? That's another form of ownership and
Speaker 2: licensing that might make yesterday's show have a little more
Speaker 2: value or not. But I think it's interesting. I mean,
Speaker 2: I surprises me, actually, But Fox Corp. The parent company
Speaker 2: of Fox News, is way ahead on this, like.
Speaker 1: They have been what they do with Fox Nation, back
Speaker 1: with Tucker three years ago.
Speaker 2: They did this, Yeah, but they did like a lot
Speaker 2: of out Let's CN end of this too did like,
Speaker 2: we have an app and it's gonna be like the
Speaker 2: It's gonna be like the more boring stuff from Jake
Speaker 2: Tapper's book club, God bless him. It's gonna be the
Speaker 2: stuff you don't want from our star talent the oh,
Speaker 2: but the new version of it is going to be
Speaker 2: this is our best stuff in an app. And what
Speaker 2: Fox did? They acquire this podcast, right wing podcast called Ruthless. Yesterday,
Speaker 2: they acquired a company called Red Seat Ventures, that is
Speaker 2: the production company for Here's Morgan Tucker, Carlson, Megan, Kelly,
Speaker 2: Bill O'Reilly like they're starting to basically take what they have,
Speaker 2: which is capital, Like they can pay you a bunch
Speaker 2: of money and a real advertising sales operation and to
Speaker 2: and basically between the and a bunch of distribution. I'm
Speaker 2: like to be and I'm Fox, and you're going to
Speaker 2: see these big media companies. Versut which used to be
Speaker 2: MSNBC is going to figure is going to get around
Speaker 2: to this soon. I gotta figure and we'll get around
Speaker 2: to this, say like, oh, what we are is a
Speaker 2: collection of shows and talent. That's what we've always been.
Speaker 1: There's a new or you know what you're describing. You
Speaker 1: know what you're describing Clear Channel from the nineties, huh
Speaker 1: you know? And and it's where I mean, no, it didn't.
Speaker 1: And the point is that iHeartRadio. I heard yeah they
Speaker 1: ended up training. The point is is that this is
Speaker 1: the way I've described where so there's sort of two
Speaker 1: there's late stage cable TV right, which is essentially Fox
Speaker 1: versut whatever the spin off from Warner Brothers is going
Speaker 1: to look like, which I assume and and I guess
Speaker 1: paramount's going to. I assume they don't spin off, they
Speaker 1: just sell to either the Warner brothers, uh can spin
Speaker 1: off or versant. But it feels it's very similar. I've
Speaker 1: described it. So I'll give you an example. You'll appreciate this.
Speaker 1: When I was at National Journal in about two years
Speaker 1: before you guys showed up when I mean you guys
Speaker 1: Politico or what was it called for a brief period
Speaker 1: before it was politically the Capitol leader of the capital Leader, right,
Speaker 1: And there was a bunch of us that went to
Speaker 1: David Bradley and went to John Fox Sullivan at the time,
Speaker 1: and said, hey, we should shut the magazine down and
Speaker 1: put all of the efforts into Congress Daily, which was
Speaker 1: a growing digital product and hotline. You know, we had
Speaker 1: all we were we were, we were, and and it
Speaker 1: was we had a huge debate about it, and it
Speaker 1: was sort of the digital side was going, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: and but there was a but there was a bunch
Speaker 1: of revenue still available, and it was sort of like
Speaker 1: you didn't want to just throw away that big chunk
Speaker 1: of money. Every think we were talking eight figures in revenue,
Speaker 1: and you didn't want to You couldn't and yet everybody
Speaker 1: agreed it was a diminishing asset. That it was that
Speaker 1: eventually the trade association guys that bought all this full
Speaker 1: page advertising in the magazine were going to retire and
Speaker 1: be replaced by people who realized, no, no, no, no, you
Speaker 1: don't want to advertise in a magazine. You want to
Speaker 1: be in the digital product. But you never know when
Speaker 1: to when to say no to that cash. And that's
Speaker 1: what I think is happening with there's a certain amount
Speaker 1: of money to be made in owning some of these
Speaker 1: cable channels, probably for another just like there was with
Speaker 1: FM radio in the nineties. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the classic sort of innovator's dilemma. And that's why
Speaker 2: you can see the Harvard Business School graduates who run WarnerMedia.
Speaker 2: Oh maybe not in that case, but the basically, like
Speaker 2: the business school guys are and women are looking at
Speaker 2: these companies and saying, great, you've got a declining asset
Speaker 2: here with a lot that's throwing off a lot of cash. Like,
Speaker 2: get it off our books as quick, you sell it
Speaker 2: for a lot of money as fast as you can,
Speaker 2: because it's going to destroy the rest of the business.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, And that's and that's exactly what Comcast and
Speaker 1: wbd's figured out. Holy shit we need in sky dances,
Speaker 1: like no, no, no, these things. We all want to have
Speaker 1: those legacy products, right, and.
Speaker 2: They're poison actually, and we have to get they're incredibly lucrative,
Speaker 2: but they're going to ultimately destroy the whole company. And
Speaker 2: so the essence, so you're just seeing people like Jettison
Speaker 2: these incredibly lucrative cable networks as fascinating likely you know,
Speaker 2: like they have no value. It's actually kind of fascinating.
Speaker 1: And yet I don her that. Look, not everybody's going
Speaker 1: to go away like what I always describe. And I'm
Speaker 1: curious if you agree with this, which is, look, mainstream,
Speaker 1: there's always a publication, there's always a version of mainstream
Speaker 1: media that's dying. Right. Life Magazine was a major deal
Speaker 1: until it wasn't right And at some point having a
Speaker 1: magazine with the best photos around the country no longer
Speaker 1: meant anything anymore, right because moving pictures was better and
Speaker 1: we had color TV, and Life just sort of it stopped,
Speaker 1: and you know, we didn't have this big pearl clutching
Speaker 1: moment where we said, oh my god, mainstream media is dying.
Speaker 1: Life Magazine is dead right. Like, the point is that
Speaker 1: we just evolved, and I think we're having the same thing.
Speaker 1: Cable news is probably going to evolve out of this.
Speaker 1: But and maybe not all three major networks survive in
Speaker 1: the next decade, but some of them will, right, and
Speaker 1: they'll and and then there'll be new main you know,
Speaker 1: and something on YouTube may become the thing. Maybe the
Speaker 1: midast much becomes the next CBS News, right, you know that.
Speaker 1: You know there was a time when CBS was a startup.
Speaker 2: Yeah, with our competitors around it, and you didn't know
Speaker 2: which one was going to win.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, you know I joke about Meet the Press
Speaker 1: started as an advertisement for a magazine called American Mercury.
Speaker 2: Is that right?
Speaker 1: Yes, the radio show began. They just bought time. It was,
Speaker 1: they bought that time on radio. It was like buying
Speaker 1: an hour of time at that time and a half hour.
Speaker 1: And it was brought to you by an American Mercury magazine. Huh,
Speaker 1: which was owned right, which was owned owned by the
Speaker 1: first by the then second host, if you will, fors
Speaker 1: and wells of Meet the Press. No no, no, this said
Speaker 1: the show yeah, yeah, anyway, and he owned and that
Speaker 1: was something you know, he owned Meet the Press for
Speaker 1: a long time until the NBC finally. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: an interesting arrangement.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this stuff that we grew up feeling, we
Speaker 2: sort of we sort of came up into a moment
Speaker 2: when it all seems so stable, and that was itself
Speaker 2: kind of an illusion.
Speaker 1: That's the thing that I keep trying to you know,
Speaker 1: I joke about this all the time in our politics.
Speaker 1: I think if you grew up at the time we
Speaker 1: grew up, we grew up during the Cold War, and
Speaker 1: America was winning, and we won the Cold War. That
Speaker 1: was a big deal. But the Cold War also stabilized
Speaker 1: us as a country. It stabilized our politics. The two
Speaker 1: parties agreed that we had to fight the Cold War.
Speaker 1: They may disagree on how to do it, but everybody
Speaker 1: agreed on what to do, and both parties kept their fringes.
Speaker 1: And now, if you look at our politics today, it's
Speaker 1: actually very similar to the politics pre World War Two,
Speaker 1: and it's very similar to the politics of the entire
Speaker 1: nineteenth century and the media and media partisan media, and
Speaker 1: so in some ways, you and I I've always wondered,
Speaker 1: did we grow up in an outlier period of the American.
Speaker 2: Story totally, and I feel like it at times has
Speaker 2: really like affected my news judgment back poorly, Like it
Speaker 2: leaves you with a sort of constricted sense of imagination
Speaker 2: about what could happen.
Speaker 1: No, it absolutely well. Let me it's funny you talk
Speaker 1: about who you write for with some of for so
Speaker 1: take the Epstein story. Yeah, I've noticed you have a
Speaker 1: lot of the content creators are having are manufacturing Epstein
Speaker 1: leads because that's how the distribution works, right, In order
Speaker 1: to get tracked on any given day, you have to
Speaker 1: ride what people are on the algorithm. That's not how
Speaker 1: I think, and that's not how you think. And yet
Speaker 1: that's a business model for media, and it feels like
Speaker 1: a messy one, not a great one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, in this case, the model is just
Speaker 2: like spreading absolute lies to sell to get people's attention, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, the Epstein one is to me, like I mean,
Speaker 2: and I do think there's value to be had by
Speaker 2: trying to explain what's actually going on here, which is,
Speaker 2: you know, this is the most investigated story of the
Speaker 2: last twenty years by every law enforcement agency, every night,
Speaker 2: every everybody who's listening to our phones, every journalist, every
Speaker 2: great journalist and the and there's an enormous amount that's
Speaker 2: been reported, and specifically Gawker posted the quote unquote Epstein
Speaker 2: and whatever list. It's his address book. It's been on
Speaker 2: the internet for like what twelve years. It was like
Speaker 2: a medium sized scoop in the year twenty sixteen. And
Speaker 2: you know, and the Washington Post and others have documented
Speaker 2: in great detail his long and warm friendship with Donald J. Trump,
Speaker 2: Like again like not only not a news story of
Speaker 2: like the nineteen nineties, like you could ask to anybody
Speaker 2: in New York like, oh, yeah, they're friends, like not
Speaker 2: not secret in any way. And then all this other
Speaker 2: stuff is basically made up, Like it's to me, like
Speaker 2: this is pizza gate for people with college educations like
Speaker 2: Jeffrey Epstein obviously horrific abuser of young women in Florida
Speaker 2: in the early aughts. I think that's about blackmail. The
Speaker 2: stuff abit. I mean, this is supported well.
Speaker 1: And this gets it to something that I think it's
Speaker 1: been very hard to explain to the average person, which
Speaker 1: is the importance of pedophilia in every single scandal that
Speaker 1: the right wing has tried to create about the left
Speaker 1: right in that Epstein like it's a weird thing. There's
Speaker 1: this weird Mike Flynn was gave voice to it on X.
Speaker 1: But I think that's what made the Epstein story such
Speaker 1: a such a magnet for that same craft.
Speaker 2: It's a dehumanizing right and the left, because to me,
Speaker 2: it's like this is like mephilia is it's like a
Speaker 2: lizard brain like it just feels almost like because it's
Speaker 2: not just the right the left. It's the blood Lebels
Speaker 2: against the Jews. It's all the laft whers who think
Speaker 2: that Donald Trump is secretly trafficking in young women, right Like,
Speaker 2: it's to me like it's a conspiracy theory.
Speaker 1: Well, it's the ultimate de human Like, what's the what's
Speaker 1: the the minute you work somebody correct, right, and it
Speaker 1: becomes like the minute you throw it at somebody, it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter if it's true or not. Right, deny the denial.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden, that's like this horrible thing is
Speaker 1: stuck to you. And I think that's what's made it
Speaker 1: a popular sort of word to use to attack an
Speaker 1: opponent because it's immediately dehumanizing, right.
Speaker 2: Because it does happen into almost like a mythological level
Speaker 2: of like like I just think if you look back
Speaker 2: through like human history, people have conspiracy theories about children
Speaker 2: being kidnapped. I mean, what's the pied piper?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Like like I just think this stuff is like really
Speaker 2: deep in our psychees and people are sort of programmed
Speaker 2: to believe it, like we all are, and to pay
Speaker 2: attention to it, and it's hard to ignore and it
Speaker 2: like hooks into something really deep in how people think
Speaker 2: about that elites, like what are the elites?
Speaker 1: What are the powerful people up to? And that's yes,
Speaker 1: it's funny, it's like and that's the And I guess
Speaker 1: the question when does this end? Because I would argue
Speaker 1: it's always been there. It's just yeah, the Internet mainstreamed it.
Speaker 2: The Internet mainstreamed it musks like musks sort of like
Speaker 2: gloves off, we're not censoring anything. X sort of really
Speaker 2: super charged it on the right And I don't really
Speaker 2: think I think that if you look back at what
Speaker 2: Aaron Burr was being accused of by Hamilton and why
Speaker 2: they dueled, Like I think, like really dark sexual smears
Speaker 2: are like very very deeply connected to global politics always
Speaker 2: and probably not and.
Speaker 1: They always happen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just we grew up in a rare era when
Speaker 2: they were being pushed back into the fringes.
Speaker 1: No, and this is where I come back where the
Speaker 1: Cold War. It turns out the only time we will
Speaker 1: act with some sensibility as a society is when there's
Speaker 1: an existential threat.
Speaker 2: And then honestly, like only sometimes.
Speaker 1: Well, not a pandemic. That's different. I do think pandemics
Speaker 1: are different. In history has shown that that pandemics are
Speaker 1: actually always divisive. You know this idea that it's only
Speaker 1: newly divisive, please go read about nineteen seventeen. Hugely divisive,
Speaker 1: Like pandemics have always been divisive between those that individual
Speaker 1: it's that it's human, but it's human basically. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: it's always been a human you know, individual rights versus
Speaker 1: collective action. Right, there's always been this this push and pull.
Speaker 1: Nobody has the finger on the pulse of New York
Speaker 1: City in the reporting world. I think like you do.
Speaker 1: You're a believer in New York being the center of everything.
Speaker 1: And I say this, and it's.
Speaker 2: Not so much a believer, it's just I mean, like
Speaker 2: it's like I believe that the way I believe I
Speaker 2: should breathe air.
Speaker 1: I understand that, and I get it. You know, I
Speaker 1: used to. I remember one time having a fight with Brenton.
Speaker 2: Say, I'm not making that claim, it's just.
Speaker 1: But you'll you'll appreciate this. I remember one time that
Speaker 1: they were showing the some local parade on the nightly
Speaker 1: news in New York and I said, why are you
Speaker 1: doing that? Are you going to show the parade in
Speaker 1: Chicago and in Saint Louis And he goes, and Brian goes, well,
Speaker 1: one in nine Americans have a connection to New York City.
Speaker 1: And I said, so that means eight and nine Americans don't.
Speaker 1: It feels great? And it was right, right right. So
Speaker 1: there was this this whole back and forth. But I
Speaker 1: set this up because this is one time where I
Speaker 1: am going to agree with you. What happens in New
Speaker 1: York City is going to reverberate around the world. In
Speaker 1: this election, I think this is as big of a
Speaker 1: of a of an election as we had that's not
Speaker 1: a presidential in a long time. I mean the Mamdani election.
Speaker 1: I think is this is potentially this significant for the
Speaker 1: future of New York City. But I'm curious if you
Speaker 1: share that view.
Speaker 2: You know, it's interesting. I think it will really reverberate
Speaker 2: all those sort of for the wrong reasons, like as
Speaker 2: is often true, sure, like what's happening in New York
Speaker 2: is very weird at local Like the path through which
Speaker 2: this guy shot up to the Democratic nomination and now
Speaker 2: can't be stopped because you know, because he's facing the
Speaker 2: worst candidates in the world is like very specific and
Speaker 2: I think not necessarily emblematic of what's happening. If you
Speaker 2: look at the Senate primary in New Jersey across the
Speaker 2: river where Mike No, it's not really it's really representative
Speaker 2: anything except that you really do see and you just
Speaker 2: feel it here that the only people who have any
Speaker 2: energy are is the real left, is the hard left.
Speaker 2: In the same way I think that you could feel
Speaker 2: in Republican politics that the only people who who had
Speaker 2: any energy was the Trump movement. Like that, and there's
Speaker 2: really there's passion, and there's energy, and it's young people
Speaker 2: and they're not going to adore and they have figure
Speaker 2: and they and the thing that mcdanie really has, which
Speaker 2: I think the kind of previous iterations of the young
Speaker 2: Left really didn't, is how to communicate with working people,
Speaker 2: with people who don't share their ideology, with people who
Speaker 2: aren't interested in ideology with people who don't want to
Speaker 2: learn some new language to talk about the world and
Speaker 2: talk about politics. Mamdani doesn't come, is not trying to
Speaker 2: persuade you of anything in particular about gender. He's not
Speaker 2: really interested in talking about the control of the means
Speaker 2: of production. He's not like, you know, I mean, if
Speaker 2: you read that, if you're like, if you are someone
Speaker 2: who like thinks maybe capitalism is good, you should like
Speaker 2: and you read the DSA manifesto like your hair will
Speaker 2: stand on end. But Mamdani's not out there reading from
Speaker 2: the DSA manifesto. He you know, he's in some ways
Speaker 2: of a very normal politician. I think in a way,
Speaker 2: I think the tradition that he's in in New York
Speaker 2: is actually the other the last socialist mayor we had,
Speaker 2: who was Firella LaGuardia, Like I don't know if he
Speaker 2: will pull that off, but LaGuardia was divisive and similar
Speaker 2: ways actually was of the left in a pretty deep way.
Speaker 2: But also it was like relentlessly focused on like building
Speaker 2: stuff and moving stuff around and cleaning up the garbage,
Speaker 2: which is what these meanest blopses actually are.
Speaker 1: I think I've always said I think the most the
Speaker 1: most impressive thing to me in government is how much
Speaker 1: garbage New York City deals with every day.
Speaker 2: I probably badly. You know, we just put it in
Speaker 2: the fucking street, Like we just literally like we just
Speaker 2: dump it in the street. No one else in the
Speaker 2: world does this. We just piles the garbage in the
Speaker 2: streets and then the rats did it, and it smells.
Speaker 2: It's terrible.
Speaker 1: But for the most part, it gets cleaned up every day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for the most part, it's gone. Like I'm like, it's
Speaker 1: one of those you're like, holy you know, I don't
Speaker 1: know another community. You know, we sit here and we
Speaker 1: you know, I always say, the sit here in you know,
Speaker 1: we love to beat the crap out of government. Government
Speaker 1: doesn't do this. Government doesn't do that. And then I'll say,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give you a piece of paper and a
Speaker 1: dollar bill. Can you take it across country in three days?
Speaker 1: You know, our government actually pulls that off for less
Speaker 1: than a dollar And it's quite remarkable. And I sort
Speaker 1: of feel that, you know, we take for granted sometimes
Speaker 1: these mundane things that government does almost without us noticing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the New York government, I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess I mean there's a shocking amount
Speaker 2: to me of optimism about Mom Donnie in town among people.
Speaker 1: Who there's no choice but to have optimism because he's
Speaker 1: gonna win. Yeah, not the problem. I mean Cuomo and Adams,
Speaker 1: I mean you sit there, You're like, you know, I
Speaker 1: cannot believe that New York's political elite just sat on
Speaker 1: the sidelines while Cuomo came in and ran. What was
Speaker 1: anybody thinking if two of the leaders of the Democratic
Speaker 1: Party are both from Brooklyn and they just what did
Speaker 1: they put like ear muffs on? They wanted to pay
Speaker 1: no attention to what was happening. It was it is
Speaker 1: the biggest sort of leadership failure of a political party
Speaker 1: that was happening right in their backyard, and they paid
Speaker 1: no attention to it until it was too late.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's true. And Schumer jeffres could have said, hey,
Speaker 2: can't the guy is this other person and almost anyone else,
Speaker 2: and Cuomo took Coo became the establishment candidate. And now
Speaker 2: we're in this situation where the people who everybody in
Speaker 2: New York hates most, which are billionaires who spat off
Speaker 2: on Twitter all the time, and they're going to basically
Speaker 2: saying I'm gonna we are going to take not actually
Speaker 2: enough money to make it work, which is, by the way,
Speaker 2: a billion dollars that's what Bloomberg spent, but a totally
Speaker 2: trivile all amount of money, which isn't even enough because
Speaker 2: New York is so expensive, so big, Like you want
Speaker 2: to buy TV ads in New York, they're going to
Speaker 2: put like fifteen million dollars in. That's what like T
Speaker 2: mobile spends in like fifteen minutes. You know, Like it's
Speaker 2: just not it's not It might get you a couple
Speaker 2: of taxicab to try to bribe you to take some
Speaker 2: disgraced elderly gentleman, whether it's Adams or Cuomo. They're deciding
Speaker 2: which one to try to force down the throats of
Speaker 2: the kind of you know of New York voters who
Speaker 2: are kind of cynical about that exact move. Like I
Speaker 2: actually think when people saw flyers and saw TV ads
Speaker 2: from these super pecs supporting Cuomo, I think regular voters thought, oh,
Speaker 2: this is who the billionaires are. Sorry, this is the
Speaker 2: corrupt old guy the billionaires want us to vote for it. Like,
Speaker 2: I think that's a real dynamic and problem. And Mam
Speaker 2: Donnie like Trump, who was a very underfunded candidate in
Speaker 2: certain ways, pointed to the big money supporting his opponent
Speaker 2: and said, look at this, and people kind of got it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I never, I mean it was like,
Speaker 1: look at the choices. Never, And I don't know, is
Speaker 1: it is it just New York City is New York
Speaker 1: City government just not sexy enough for well intentioned people
Speaker 1: to run for. I mean, what happened to the woman
Speaker 1: who finished second? She seemed to me like, I go back.
Speaker 1: I'm I think the sanitation Department's the most impressive department
Speaker 1: in New York City. So you know, you're like, you
Speaker 1: know what, you get that done? All right? I'm just
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, you know it done well.
Speaker 2: She was a solid civil servant, widely viewed as either
Speaker 2: the second or third best sanitation commissioner of the last
Speaker 2: ten years. Like okay, we're not talking about like the
Speaker 2: and actually there were decent candidates. Brad Lander the controller,
Speaker 2: good candidate. There was like a young yimbie candidate the
Speaker 2: energy is on the left and Mamdani like captured. There
Speaker 2: was something. Really, this wasn't like an accident. He would
Speaker 2: have been I think in a different constellation with a
Speaker 2: stronger establishment contender than Ry Party. My Bay might still
Speaker 2: have one, like there was something, there was something really
Speaker 2: real happening there.
Speaker 1: If I Keem Jeffries weren't basically the next potential Democratic speaker,
Speaker 1: I think he is the candidate that people want to
Speaker 1: run for mayor now. I mean, although I think he's
Speaker 1: five years ago I thought, yeah, I thought he was
Speaker 1: going to that would be his next move.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he could have been. He is sort of an
Speaker 2: unknown figure in New York. It's interesting because he's a
Speaker 2: very important national figure, but he's not. He's he's always
Speaker 2: been a kind of behind the scenes player, not a
Speaker 2: public figure. But he's a classic legislative leader in that way.
Speaker 2: But I think he could probably walk down the read
Speaker 2: in many parts of New York and I own to
Speaker 2: know who.
Speaker 1: He was interesting, and that's just because he's just not
Speaker 1: forced himself to be a New York presence. Way even
Speaker 1: a Schumer did right, Schumer.
Speaker 2: Wanted Schumer is unmissible. Yeah, my favorite, my favorite line
Speaker 2: about Schumer, which is a John is a roast. John Corzin,
Speaker 2: then the Senator for for from New Jersey, said that
Speaker 2: the that that sharing a media market with Chuck Schumer
Speaker 2: was like sharing a banana with a monkey. First he
Speaker 2: eats the banana, then he flings his speces at you.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, that Schubert did not appreciate it.
Speaker 1: I'm sure he didn't. I'm sure he didn't. What is
Speaker 1: are you surprised he still wants to be the Senate leader?
Speaker 1: Like it does feel like he's staying past his cell
Speaker 1: by date. And when you stay past your cell by date,
Speaker 1: you risk, as Joe Biden is finding out, you risk
Speaker 1: really harming your own legacy unnecessarily.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think he probably feels like a
Speaker 2: lot of these got a lot of legislive leaders, in
Speaker 2: particular the Biden thing. Executives are different, but legislative leaders
Speaker 2: you do build this kind of very specialized skill set,
Speaker 2: which is these relationships with you know, fifty forty eight
Speaker 2: or fifty two very powerful, very eccentric people, and you
Speaker 2: think no one else could do this job. And like
Speaker 2: you see why he thinks that, right, Like, sure, that's
Speaker 2: a really strange, hard job.
Speaker 1: Like, no, it is because you are well you just
Speaker 1: described it well. Most of its time is talking people
Speaker 1: off cliffs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like and right, and like, how do you get
Speaker 2: Chris Murphy ish shut up about Palestine today like I
Speaker 2: don't know, right, like like, but you do it because
Speaker 2: like there's this other thing in Connecticut, like who knows,
Speaker 2: but it's knowing that's kind of stuff about these specific
Speaker 2: people and then being able to raise tons of money.
Speaker 2: And so I think he probably thinks nobody else could
Speaker 2: do this job.
Speaker 1: If AOC runs for president, what you you sort of
Speaker 1: you know, are the very checked out of ten years
Speaker 1: ago would have said, nobody from New York City is
Speaker 1: going to be elected president the United States?
Speaker 2: Well, obviously much less a backbench socialists congresswoman.
Speaker 1: Right exactly, I'm not ruling anything out for all the
Speaker 1: reasons you just subscribed about, mom, Donnie, which is Trump.
Speaker 1: Trump did everything the exact opposite of what Republicans thought
Speaker 1: they should do in order to win in sixteen, and
Speaker 1: he won, and more importantly, he's reanimated a party. The
Speaker 1: Republican Party is now larger than the Democratic Party. And
Speaker 1: they did it by going harder right, not a softer right,
Speaker 1: which was of course what was Mitt Romney. The post
Speaker 1: Mitt Romney recommendation was no, no, no, no, you got to
Speaker 1: get softer. No. He went harder, and he diversified the
Speaker 1: party and he made it different. You know, for whatever
Speaker 1: you think, it's a different Republican party, but he changed it.
Speaker 1: He changed the electorate more than he's changed the elected officials.
Speaker 1: So I'm not going to sit here and say that. So,
Speaker 1: you know, what do you expect? What kind of national
Speaker 1: candidate do you expect her to be? And do you assume,
Speaker 1: by the way, how I assume she's running, do you
Speaker 1: you know?
Speaker 2: I guess I think that she's obviously she'd be crazy
Speaker 2: not to think hard about it. And I think part
Speaker 2: of it is, you know, she initially had a really
Speaker 2: I think hard time dealing with the spotlight. Like there
Speaker 2: was like you know, there were a lot of threats
Speaker 2: against her, A lot of that I think really rattled
Speaker 2: her personally and and and you saw her kind of
Speaker 2: step back. And I do think like running for president is,
Speaker 2: you know, you really changes your life forever. And I
Speaker 2: don't know where and I don't know where she is
Speaker 2: on that. I think that's a real consideration for anybody.
Speaker 2: And she may want family and this is like she
Speaker 2: had people family mode. People underestimate the extent to which
Speaker 2: like real personal decisions are a factor in it. I
Speaker 2: do think she shares with Trump at this point in fact,
Speaker 2: she's a real celebrity and that she's actually like better,
Speaker 2: She's better with this than people realize.
Speaker 1: Like people, I think she's want to I call her
Speaker 1: a politically I like to use the phrase political athlete.
Speaker 2: I think she's the real thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she's one of the best in a big.
Speaker 2: Room, in a small room. She also shares with Mom Donnie.
Speaker 2: And you know, people don't realize this because, like with Trump,
Speaker 2: she's out there talking all the time. Whatever the most
Speaker 2: divisive she says, it is get as with Trump, gets clipped.
Speaker 2: And so with Trump, what his enemy's missed was how
Speaker 2: funny he was. He's all you would see was some
Speaker 2: clip of him saying something like totally bananas. Half the time,
Speaker 2: it was in the context of a joke that the
Speaker 2: and part of the joke was that the media is
Speaker 2: going to clip this and take it out of context.
Speaker 2: But you, my true follower, are in on the joke
Speaker 2: with me, right, And so, like, I think people missed
Speaker 2: a lot of his appeal because they processed him through
Speaker 2: short clips and similarly theyoc you can find clips of
Speaker 2: her saying very very strident stuff. She's very she actually
Speaker 2: shares with Mom Donnie, like her style of communications is
Speaker 2: not hyper polarizing. It is about like try, it's not
Speaker 2: about finding the sort of buzziest buzzword. It's the most
Speaker 2: alienating way to speak to people. She's very, very talented,
Speaker 2: and I do think that the question is which I
Speaker 2: think with Mom Donnie, there was also a sense and
Speaker 2: I just like hear this from people who I have
Speaker 2: a very specific conversation with somebody we both know who's
Speaker 2: voting for Mom Donnie, that I was like legitimately shocked
Speaker 2: that she has voted for Mom Donnie last night. Yeah,
Speaker 2: like not a person of the left like at all,
Speaker 2: like a person of the you know, active person of
Speaker 2: the Democratic center. And I do think, you know, there's
Speaker 2: this sense of just like like this this is like
Speaker 2: the particularly after the sort of Biden train wreck, we
Speaker 2: got to sweep everything aside. We've got to the whole
Speaker 2: system is broken. We got to blow it up. We
Speaker 2: need new people. This guy is an instrument for that.
Speaker 2: And I think, you know, the question is how many
Speaker 2: Democratic voters.
Speaker 1: I remember a lot of Republicians, by the way, I
Speaker 1: heard a lot of Republican voters six and going, I
Speaker 1: don't I know who Trump is. I know he's full
Speaker 1: of shit, but you know what, Yeah, we need to
Speaker 1: blow this up, and he's he's going to blow it up, right,
Speaker 1: and they want it Like I.
Speaker 2: Don't like him, but he's a hand grenade and we're
Speaker 2: going to throw this into Washington, and Mom Donnie might
Speaker 2: be the hand grenade. Yeah, AOC or AOC is president
Speaker 2: presidential candidate. Like like I think that if you just
Speaker 2: hate everything, and you know that like all the like
Speaker 2: the sort of establishment hates her, that just like even
Speaker 2: if you think all our policies are dumb, you might
Speaker 2: you could imagine people thinking like, wow, she's really going
Speaker 2: to make those people on TV mad.
Speaker 1: Well, which is you know, I've I spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time in northwest Florida and which is a very
Speaker 1: conservative part of the conservative part of a conservative state.
Speaker 1: And you know, I've had people say, you know, Trump
Speaker 1: was my middle finger, you know, to all you guys,
Speaker 1: you know, and so in a form, you know, in
Speaker 1: a way, Mom Donnie could be that.
Speaker 2: I mean to put a point on it, though, I
Speaker 2: think the Democratic Party of your primer is going to
Speaker 2: start in South Carolina.
Speaker 1: You and I don't believe that. I don't believe that.
Speaker 2: I believe you go back to New Hampshire.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, I think it may stop Iowa.
Speaker 1: The likelihood Iowa a lexa democratic governors in the thirty
Speaker 1: to forty percent range. They have a legit guy, and
Speaker 1: it's kind of a mess on the right and it's
Speaker 1: the same sort of setup as what happened in Kansas.
Speaker 1: Everybody's pissed off about school funding. It's one of those
Speaker 1: hyper local school funding has. You know, all, here's the
Speaker 1: problem in these conservative states that are that are have
Speaker 1: a lot of rural areas. School choice in theory sounds good,
Speaker 1: but then if you live in certain areas, your choice
Speaker 1: is homeschool or the school right there isn't really a choice.
Speaker 1: And Iowa was always very proud of its public school system.
Speaker 1: I always always had a very strong one. When you
Speaker 1: look at those national rankings, it was like Massachusetts its one,
Speaker 1: Iowa was always in the top five. So yeah, and
Speaker 1: he's a pretty conservative d right, he knows his state,
Speaker 1: he was elected statewide. If he wins, I think the
Speaker 1: DNC goes back and sucks it up and realizes, you
Speaker 1: know what, it's better for the party to start in
Speaker 1: Iowa because you got to learn to talk to rural
Speaker 1: America and it's the right.
Speaker 2: Sure, and you're gonna have you know, you're you're going
Speaker 2: to have a bunch of like Josh Shapiro is out
Speaker 2: there like developing like kind of like Cornpone accents talking
Speaker 2: to world.
Speaker 1: Guess what figured it out and win the caucuses.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when the caucuses just like dominate to moins, it's
Speaker 2: like Obama emphasis, Yeah. And so I guess I think
Speaker 2: whether it starts there, I just think wherever it starts,
Speaker 2: you can kind of take because I think people always
Speaker 2: I mean, it's just the preaternal truth that people imagine
Speaker 2: in the national primary and the and it's really a narrative.
Speaker 2: And you can certainly tell yourself a story where AMC
Speaker 2: comes in, she wins Iowa, jses New Hampshire and then
Speaker 2: goes to South Carolina. And I think people like one
Speaker 2: of the really interesting things in the mom Donnie races
Speaker 2: that younger black voters are not voting like older black voters, And.
Speaker 1: Well, are we going to see that? We've never seen
Speaker 1: it yet in South Carolina? Will we see it?
Speaker 2: I don't know, right, but I think there is you
Speaker 2: could tell yourself a story where like you're starting to
Speaker 2: where there's this I think seasoned political hack reporters like
Speaker 2: us think like, you know what, like South Carolina is
Speaker 2: like mostly older, church going, more women, Black voters, and
Speaker 2: that's the only people who vote, and it pulls the
Speaker 2: party back towards the center.
Speaker 1: That's where Bernie Sanders went to die, right right.
Speaker 2: The progressives like just like fundamentally failed to connect with
Speaker 2: that group of kind of working people. They're more likely
Speaker 2: to have for Donald Trump than Bernie Sanders at some level.
Speaker 2: I don't know if that's an eternal truth. I think
Speaker 2: one of your seat mom, Donnie didn't beat Cuomo in
Speaker 2: black districts like Cuomo, but.
Speaker 1: He almost the mayor of Harlem.
Speaker 2: But he did went on to well, it's confusing because
Speaker 2: harlemsless black than he used to be about like it's
Speaker 2: the but but Mamdani picked up a lot of like
Speaker 2: younger and working votes, picked up a lot of South
Speaker 2: Asian votes, and then picked up and just he cut
Speaker 2: he he brought CMO's margins down in the places that
Speaker 2: Cuomo really needed to win with working black vote, with
Speaker 2: younger Black voters. And I think like maybe our sort
Speaker 2: of some of our assumptions about the way democratic politics
Speaker 2: work might be a little off and in a way
Speaker 2: that could favor the left.
Speaker 1: No, I'm i am. In some ways it's refreshing. I've
Speaker 1: never been more sort of like I'm I am operating
Speaker 1: on a you know, don't you know. Don't make any
Speaker 1: assumptions about previous history. Anything. Yeah, anything is possible. And
Speaker 1: here's the reality. The last three of the last four
Speaker 1: times the Democrats have elected a president, the person who
Speaker 1: won was not being talked about at this point in time.
Speaker 1: In the conversation in nineteen seventy three, nobody was talking
Speaker 1: about Jimmy Carter. In nineteen eighty nine, nobody was talking
Speaker 1: about Bill Clinton. And in two thousand and five, the
Speaker 1: Barack Obama conversation was a point, maybe he'll be Hillary
Speaker 1: Clinton's running me, you know, maybe he'll be or maybe
Speaker 1: he'll run for governor of Illinois and then run for
Speaker 1: president in twenty twelve, but they weren't. Fully it was
Speaker 1: really all about her, right, And so the point is
Speaker 1: is that, you know, and Pete Boodagic. Did anybody talk
Speaker 1: about Pete Bootaget after his failed DNC race other than
Speaker 1: he was really good on television interviews? Maybe you ought
Speaker 1: to do something more right, and all of a sudden
Speaker 1: he runs for president and look without COVID, I still
Speaker 1: think that thing comes down to Buddhajid and Sanders, not by.
Speaker 2: So who who aren't we talking about right now?
Speaker 1: Well, if we were talking about him, then they wouldn't
Speaker 1: be there right like in someone. But that's my point.
Speaker 1: I think I think it's possible somebody who comes close
Speaker 1: to winning but doesn't in twenty six you know, like
Speaker 1: betto O'Rourke in twenty eighteen, like you could picture, there's
Speaker 1: going to be different new candidates that can capture that
Speaker 1: all Rourke lost and had a enough juice to.
Speaker 2: The general.
Speaker 1: All right, here's the does he run for governor?
Speaker 2: How Eric Adams pulls it off and he runs for
Speaker 2: governor and just keeps running Yeah, yeah, and then runs
Speaker 2: for president? Right yeah, And I mean it's the point
Speaker 2: is that that's not a crazy notion that that you
Speaker 2: could see, you could see that happen.
Speaker 1: Final topic I want to hit with you and then
Speaker 1: I'll let you go, and that is I think the
Speaker 1: most fascinating issue in the in the next Democratic primary
Speaker 1: is going to be Israel and the divide and that
Speaker 1: that's going to be. That's going to be the divide
Speaker 1: that probably gets overcovered by people like you and I.
Speaker 1: Right the grid we're you know, we're we're probably going
Speaker 1: to over index on it, fairly or unfairly, but in
Speaker 1: some ways it will be when you.
Speaker 2: Say a lot like you and I, do you mean
Speaker 2: Jewish Jewish reporters?
Speaker 1: Well, I don't know, Right, that's the point, like, no
Speaker 1: matter what you know, suddenly our religion matters when we're
Speaker 1: covering that issue, but not others. But anyway, but I digress.
Speaker 1: But look, it's look, it's always been tough for Jewish
Speaker 1: Americans that like, hey, we think you know, you can
Speaker 1: not like BB and B pro Israel, right, the idea
Speaker 1: that there is a middle ground. But I don't know
Speaker 1: if if the Democratic primary electorate is willing to have
Speaker 1: that nuanced debate. And I think it just I just
Speaker 1: think it's going to be an unpredictable litmus test. And
Speaker 1: I don't know what what's the right answer as far
Speaker 1: as the politics of this going forward in the next
Speaker 1: couple of years.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think people who worked with Done end
Speaker 2: up thinking that the Israel stuff was a netlux the
Speaker 2: more net plus there's an anti Israel, that there is
Speaker 2: an anti Israel plurality or majority in that primary electorate.
Speaker 2: By the way, lots of Republicans say it is real
Speaker 2: too good news. So, like, I think it's a I
Speaker 2: think you'll see.
Speaker 1: You se populism. Every time there's a right of populism,
Speaker 1: the first people targeted are the Jews left or right.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, that's yep for sure. No mean sort of
Speaker 2: tied up with this idea around it. Yeah, anyway, But
Speaker 2: and mom Donnie, on one hand, I think was really
Speaker 2: unfair like the like was in some ways unfairly accused
Speaker 2: of over at andty semitism, of having said globalized the
Speaker 2: antie fodo and in fact he gave like a very
Speaker 2: Bill Clintonian nonsense defense I've never said it whatever, Like
Speaker 2: it's not what he ran on. But on the other hand,
Speaker 2: he is a very like convict committed pro Palestine activist
Speaker 2: right like if for all his lean and can talk
Speaker 2: about these issues very surefootedly and fluently because he's been
Speaker 2: doing it for fifteen years. And and I think it's
Speaker 2: so I think, I mean, one question is how salient
Speaker 2: will be right, But I think right now it's a
Speaker 2: hugely salient issue and Democrats are increasingly andy Israel, and
Speaker 2: I think there's you're gonna have You're gonna think what
Speaker 2: I bet. I think you'll have a sort of normal
Speaker 2: democratic platform that when elected, I'm not going to cut
Speaker 2: you know, I'm not saying I'll cut funding the Israel,
Speaker 2: but I want to pause funding and do a review
Speaker 2: the way Trump just did with ukrit right, like we
Speaker 2: want to do We're gonna want to review how our
Speaker 2: age Israel is being used. I bet it's a formula
Speaker 2: like that, and you're going to see like that because like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I think you know, do you want to Are you
Speaker 2: going to keep funding the Netnia?
Speaker 1: Who wore? What does rama? Manually? Like this question that's
Speaker 1: been the you know, and when it comes.
Speaker 2: Close, he tries, he tries to threw the needle and
Speaker 2: it doesn't work.
Speaker 1: No, I agree, I don't know.
Speaker 2: But when I watched that news New York results came in,
Speaker 2: my first reaction was like by like, like, forget Rum's
Speaker 2: presidential campaign and AOC is gonna go, Wow, there's almost
Speaker 2: future cycles.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it's I it's one of, to me, the
Speaker 1: hardest hurdle for him to overcome, and there's nothing he
Speaker 1: can do about it.
Speaker 2: Right, And it reminds me a little of Trump in
Speaker 2: the Iraq War, right, like when he just said, like
Speaker 2: that war, you know, you're an idiot, that your brother
Speaker 2: was an idiot, that war was a terrible mistake or
Speaker 2: whatever he said, and it was sort of this unsayable
Speaker 2: thingying that turned out to be quite obviously popular inside
Speaker 2: that party. I think is real. I think just the
Speaker 2: partly it's just the nature of our incredibly polarized system
Speaker 2: that the more closer Trump hugs and Yahoo, the more
Speaker 2: idiou is Wrael the Democrats are going to become. And
Speaker 2: yet but also but also I think it's but I
Speaker 2: also think it's a feature of a sort of political
Speaker 2: media campaign to silence pro Bellstadian voices. Like obviously that
Speaker 2: is a real thing, and what you see, like if
Speaker 2: there's any lesson of like how does it work when
Speaker 2: the when powerful forces try to silence the speech like
Speaker 2: are we like we're like you know, how did how
Speaker 2: did that work? With vaccines? Like we're now like incredibly
Speaker 2: like an insanely anti vaccine country. Well, so I look
Speaker 2: at the deep platform, it's going to.
Speaker 1: Work, right, I've always said the biggest mistake trying to
Speaker 1: deplatform Trump. What did he do? He built his own ecosystem,
Speaker 1: and now everybody's panicked that there's an alternative US.
Speaker 2: I know, and I do think it's strange to me
Speaker 2: that the people who actually really won that fight, the
Speaker 2: people on the far right, the anti vaccine people, are
Speaker 2: now in many cases, like you, like, you know, are
Speaker 2: pushing very hard to silence voices they disagree with, not
Speaker 2: really understanding where this is going to go.
Speaker 1: No, I mean they're very very I think.
Speaker 2: It's gonna be a very I think it's going to
Speaker 2: lead to a huge Eddie Israel backlash they see.
Speaker 1: By the way you see it a little bit like
Speaker 1: you were, right, Like there's a lot of people on
Speaker 1: the right upset at Israel about the Syria bombing, right
Speaker 1: like that it was gratuitous and it was over the top.
Speaker 1: And you're starting to see and even Trump, WHOA, what's
Speaker 1: going on here? Right? Like?
Speaker 2: There is a you know, I mean MATC is a
Speaker 2: coalition that includes very very Provisrael people and like and
Speaker 2: real Eddie Summits, right, it's like a tough coalition to
Speaker 2: hold together, and people all across the spectrum.
Speaker 1: Right, at some point, I think this pressure is going
Speaker 1: to break BB in Israel, But we keep waiting for
Speaker 1: that over and over. I mean, I do find it.
Speaker 2: I guess there's a question of it is a non
Speaker 2: BB Israel. Can Democrats like find a way back to
Speaker 2: a non BB Israel?
Speaker 1: Kit? I don't know, Oh, I think so, But I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, I always find Israel. Let me I'll throw
Speaker 1: one more question at you. Do you think that Israel's
Speaker 1: politics is our future or did we export our politics
Speaker 1: to them? Meaning? You know, I find it interesting that
Speaker 1: bb IS has gotten more and more power while also
Speaker 1: becoming less and less popular. Donald Trump's got more and
Speaker 1: more popular powerful, but he's arguably just as unpopular as
Speaker 1: he was when he began right. In fact, we're starting
Speaker 1: to see. And yet the left in Israel tried all
Speaker 1: sorts of ways to stop BB. Right, they tried, and
Speaker 1: it's like same and you're watching the left here in
Speaker 1: this country try all sorts of ways to stop Trump
Speaker 1: and they've all failed. They tried in the lawsuit, they
Speaker 1: tried creating a centrist party that didn't work, right, Like,
Speaker 1: they've tried all these things. I look at Israel and
Speaker 1: BB and think, hey, the left, the anti Trump forces
Speaker 1: ought to spend more time studying the mistakes of the
Speaker 1: ANTIBB forces in Israel.
Speaker 2: What do you think that's fascinating? What do you think
Speaker 2: those mistakes were, Like, well, what was the alternative?
Speaker 1: Well, I think the I think the miss Well, first
Speaker 1: of all, the Israeli Labor Party just sort of collapsed
Speaker 1: after the after the Raben assassination, right, they never arguably
Speaker 1: never recovered from that. They had their own their own scandal.
Speaker 1: But I think the I think the assumption there was
Speaker 1: this assumption that somehow, the further the right that BB went,
Speaker 1: that it was going to alienate And the fact is
Speaker 1: it was, you know, BB being sort of always being tough,
Speaker 1: uh to those forces trying to sort of get rid
Speaker 1: of Israel was always going to be better politics than
Speaker 1: whatever problems were domestically. And I think, you know, for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, the two state solution just never resonated as
Speaker 1: much as I think the left thought it would.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I guess, I guess the the whatever,
Speaker 2: however serious you think the problems are with the imigration
Speaker 2: or the border, can't really talk yourself into a world
Speaker 2: where you're about to be pushed into the sea, right,
Speaker 2: which a lot of Israelis fear like the politics of
Speaker 2: fear in Israel are for like obvious reasons.
Speaker 1: It's real much more compelling.
Speaker 2: There's a lot more to be afraid of.
Speaker 1: No, And I think it's a it's been a very
Speaker 1: effective way for baby to keep just keep.
Speaker 2: And I wonder and I wonder if the I mean
Speaker 2: the sort of were to me like where this analogy
Speaker 2: breaks down as you see the numbers immrogration like flopping
Speaker 2: all over the place right now, like people were able
Speaker 2: to like, doesn't seem like people are so just sustaining
Speaker 2: their fear around immigration at all. I mean that I
Speaker 2: find that fascinating. I don't really know it.
Speaker 1: Uh what what's happening here on immigration? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, right now? I think like Trump's doing what he
Speaker 2: promised and it seems not popular. Wow, popular when he
Speaker 2: promised it, and he's seen it on the border.
Speaker 1: And but I think that was the mistake. The question
Speaker 1: was what were people upset about the border or or immigration?
Speaker 1: They were upset about the border, and I think I
Speaker 1: think that the you know, Stephen Miller or actually wants
Speaker 1: to you know, he had a different agenda, right He
Speaker 1: wanted to put he believed immigrants were taking jobs from Americans.
Speaker 2: I think fewer taco restaurants and more hands.
Speaker 1: That's right. He wants a more American culture, europe eurocentric
Speaker 1: American culture, and and so that is I think that's
Speaker 1: what's unpopular. I think the border security was popular. I
Speaker 1: think what was what was unpiped? You know, there's a
Speaker 1: there's I was reading something the other day about you know,
Speaker 1: sort of in some ways immigration, the politics of immigration
Speaker 1: have been exactly the same, which is, Americans love the
Speaker 1: immigrants that they know, and they and they don't. They
Speaker 1: don't like the immigrants they don't know. And that's always
Speaker 1: and which is ultimately why we don't why Americans are
Speaker 1: recoiling it. Why are you getting rid of these people
Speaker 1: that are are making chicken affordable? Why are you getting
Speaker 1: rid of these people that are making produce affordable? What
Speaker 1: are you doing? Hey, that person that cleans my house,
Speaker 1: she's really she's terrific, She's not a criminal. Why are
Speaker 1: you attacking her? Why are you scaring her? Right? I think,
Speaker 1: and ultimately we're still there. It's right. Look at how
Speaker 1: many times you can write the story of well, I
Speaker 1: voted for Trump, but I didn't want that immigrant to
Speaker 1: get deported. I like it, you know, one hundred percent,
Speaker 1: because he's a hotel person. He gets it. Every time
Speaker 1: he's been that argument's been made to him, he gets it.
Speaker 1: And I at some point, because the polls are showing
Speaker 1: this is not popular, The question I have is does
Speaker 1: he turn on Stephen Miller on this or does Stephen
Speaker 1: Miller realize is he smart enough to realize what's coming?
Speaker 1: And he sort of and he you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they just I mean, they just tasked all that
Speaker 2: money for Ice, right like, but I don't think more
Speaker 2: guys in mass chasing people around the interior is going
Speaker 2: to be a popular thing to do with it.
Speaker 1: It hasn't been the numbers to play.
Speaker 2: It's chasing journalists around.
Speaker 1: I mean John Alice's subsect, tod hat a terrific lead,
Speaker 1: which was Trump's never had gotten more of what he's
Speaker 1: wanted in six months, right, No president has gotten this
Speaker 1: much of what they've wanted in six months than him.
Speaker 1: By the way, have you noticed is how unpopular he
Speaker 1: is right now?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: And it's across the board, right. None of his policies
Speaker 1: are seen as a net positive right now, not tariffs,
Speaker 1: not immigration, And you're just sitting there going.
Speaker 2: Weird weird country where we elect a guy who promises
Speaker 2: all these things and then it just immediately despised him
Speaker 2: when he does them.
Speaker 1: But isn't it proof we weren't voting for anything, We've
Speaker 1: just been voting against and this was like, now Biden
Speaker 1: and Harris didn't know what they were doing. Get them out?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, all right.
Speaker 1: Well Semaphore for it? Who is? Let me close with this?
Speaker 1: Who is? I think every news organization you need to
Speaker 1: know who. You need to have somebody you compete with,
Speaker 1: even if you're not really a competitor. Who do you
Speaker 1: view as Semaphore's competitor? Is it? Is it The New
Speaker 1: York Times? Is it Axios? Is it BBC? Who is it?
Speaker 2: I mean, I think a lot of it the FT.
Speaker 2: I think that's a great publication, but also like a
Speaker 2: lot of gosh. I think they were found in the
Speaker 2: nineteenth century, so it was possible it was like the
Speaker 2: sixteenth being Britain. But I think there's an opportunity to
Speaker 2: build a kind of modern, caffeinated version of The Financial Times.
Speaker 2: And the other thing that I think we really see
Speaker 2: ourselves competing with is the World Economic Forum MEDABAS like
Speaker 2: that is a interesting fascinating institution that is, you know
Speaker 2: of also very root in the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: Are you worried at all about being too associated with
Speaker 1: the wealthiest of of folks? Do you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like when we're having this sort of weird, sort of
Speaker 1: populous moment frankly around the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean I think that would be a
Speaker 2: problem to have.
Speaker 1: That's a good problem.
Speaker 2: I mean, like like like if the if the peasants
Speaker 2: with pitchforks are gathering around Semaphore's headquarters, like that would
Speaker 2: be that means you've succeeded a great brand recognition for us. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think we're not quite there yet.
Speaker 1: Do you think the wealthy realized the pitchforks are coming
Speaker 1: for them or not?
Speaker 2: You know, it's a the well, like the right now,
Speaker 2: Like I mean, somebody said this to me, like the
Speaker 2: thing you know, uh, the millionaires voted for mom Donny
Speaker 2: and the billionaires are the ones freaking out, Like I mean,
Speaker 2: it's a funny moment where that you also have these
Speaker 2: kind of billionaire populists like like, well, I don't know,
Speaker 2: it's it's a very I mean, I think obviously inequality
Speaker 2: is this huge threat in politics but the way in
Speaker 2: which the billionaires are now themselves these sort of aggrieved
Speaker 2: political actors is a really strange twist. Like I don't
Speaker 2: think that, Like I think Elon Musk and Bill Ackman
Speaker 2: earnestly consider themselves the voices of the people.
Speaker 1: Bill Ackman really thinks he's a victim.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's it's incredible to watch, But it's also
Speaker 2: these guys, they're sort of the fact that they now
Speaker 2: are sort of publicly intervening on behalf of these political candidates.
Speaker 2: I mean it's just poison politically.
Speaker 1: No, it really is.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, right, if we saw those like no
Speaker 2: one was the richest man in the world to bry
Speaker 2: to tell them how to vote. If people hate these people.
Speaker 1: Ask that poor conservative judge that Randon Wisconsin, please me
Speaker 1: your endorsement. Elsk, Yeah, literally made things worse.
Speaker 2: No, And I think right now this sort of the
Speaker 2: like whatever small hope, the very troubled but maybe possible
Speaker 2: Andrew Cuomo and Eric Adams campaigns had has basically been
Speaker 2: snuffed out by the panic of elite the like the
Speaker 2: whole narrative being like the elite billionaire, not even business owners,
Speaker 2: not people who operate, not New York employers. We're not
Speaker 2: talking about like I mean, I'm sure the CEO of
Speaker 2: Pfizer is freaking out too, But we're talking about money.
Speaker 2: You know, hedge fund managers and short sellers who spend
Speaker 2: who often spend like one hundred and seventy nine days
Speaker 2: in the cities that are to pay local taxes are
Speaker 2: having these huge public freakouts. These are not beloved specific leaders.
Speaker 1: You know, Jessica Tish were on the ballot, would she
Speaker 1: be the would she be the next mayor?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think she probably would have been had I
Speaker 2: think had she I think it's late now, but I
Speaker 2: think had she gotten in initially, she'd be a very
Speaker 2: strong candidate.
Speaker 1: I mean, she's Yeah, you're surprised she didn't get pushed
Speaker 1: into this by like a Bloomberg who could have probably
Speaker 1: talked her into it.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't know, She's not somebody else who
Speaker 2: can be talked to to anything, because she she need
Speaker 2: to be. Yeah, she has her own money too, she said.
Speaker 2: You know, it's funny because there is a great tradition
Speaker 2: in New York of the city being and this isn't
Speaker 2: a very small de democratic tradition. But if you think
Speaker 2: about there was a period where New York was kind
Speaker 2: of run by the science of these great New York
Speaker 2: mostly kind of our crowd Jewish families, the Morgan Thaws,
Speaker 2: Robert Moses, like, who felt to some degree like they
Speaker 2: owned the place because they did and operated with a
Speaker 2: level of kind of no bless Obliege actually, and she's
Speaker 2: certainly the inheritor. And I think that's actually a great tradition,
Speaker 2: Like it's some problems with it, but like there's something
Speaker 2: nice about that tradition of people who really feel a
Speaker 2: commitment to the civic life of the city and feel
Speaker 2: grateful and feel a level of gratitude about what they
Speaker 2: were given and are incredible, intense, hard working public servants.
Speaker 2: And she was showing up at four am for Sanateasian
Speaker 2: roll calls when she was a great sanitation commissioner, Like
Speaker 2: she sort of embodies that. I think, like he's a tough, driven,
Speaker 2: driving manager that's not always the personality type of a politician.
Speaker 2: And I think there's a question of does she want
Speaker 2: the political job, but she I think, you know, people
Speaker 2: think she's doing a pretty good job running government agencies
Speaker 2: she runs, so I assume she wants to be mare
Speaker 2: at some point she can.
Speaker 1: Be I was just going to say, two of the
Speaker 1: most difficult ones can be police commissioner, sanitation, and the
Speaker 1: only other tough one I would argue before Mayor would
Speaker 1: be the education ahead because that has had its moments
Speaker 1: as well. So the fact that she's.
Speaker 2: Thing it with Dora and Mamdane, like yeah, and that's
Speaker 2: the things where I'm done. He's going to like or
Speaker 2: whoever is married. It's one hundred and twenty billion dollar budget,
Speaker 2: and you just like the schools either to get better,
Speaker 2: they're going to get worse, and the cities in the
Speaker 2: subways can get more or less dangerous. Like it's an immediate,
Speaker 2: constant crisis of a job. It's not an ideological sort
Speaker 2: of like the gard person get picked up or it's
Speaker 2: not and one one snowstorm goes wrong like that's the end.
Speaker 1: So yeah, well, Ben, this was I so glad. I
Speaker 1: feel like you're a you're a real New York City
Speaker 1: sort of savant. I don't know what else to call it.
Speaker 1: Like take that.
Speaker 2: It's like that's genuinely the nicest thing you could possibly
Speaker 2: have said about me, So I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: That's like, oh, you love it's been fishing for it
Speaker 1: because you do you love the city, right, I mean
Speaker 1: you do. You feel like you're of the city and
Speaker 1: you're never gonna leave it, are you?
Speaker 2: No? I think I'm not. I'm stuck here.
Speaker 1: Now I get it. I get it. It's not you know.
Speaker 1: I grew up in the six Borough of New York.
Speaker 1: It's called Miami.
Speaker 2: It's always so fun to talk to you, Jeh. Thank
Speaker 2: you for thanks for my friend.
Speaker 1: Well, I love Sanmophart. By the way, I subscribe. My
Speaker 1: favorite two newsletters to read actually this was are the
Speaker 1: Africa Newsletter and the Gulf States Newsletter, because.
Speaker 2: Lad, I think we're doing. I think those are very hard.
Speaker 1: To match because they're yeah, exactly, I get that information
Speaker 1: nowhere else, nowhere else, a little like you're right about
Speaker 1: the ft every once in a while ft, you know,
Speaker 1: but not like what you guys are doing. And just
Speaker 1: I always feel uninformed about Africa. This newsletter has made
Speaker 1: me feel much more informed about a continent that we're
Speaker 1: the most news organizations ignore. So kudos and like I said,
Speaker 1: keep it up and keep it free for us independent people.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you, Jef.
Speaker 1: Hope you enjoyed that conversation. With Ben Smith. I always
Speaker 1: I always learn something from him, and I enjoy debating
Speaker 1: him about all sorts of intricate ways to deal with
Speaker 1: the press and media, et cetera. But let's do a
Speaker 1: little last Chuck. Ask Chuck. We got a lot of them.
Speaker 1: I'm going to try to get through four or five
Speaker 1: questions instead of just doing two or three. But a
Speaker 1: lot of it depends on how much I ramble on.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: This one comes from Matt j South Windsor, Connecticut, and
Speaker 1: he says, Hey, I found the Chuck podcast after hearing
Speaker 1: your convo with Chris Salissa really enjoyed it. All right,
Speaker 1: look at that selizza. You got me another. You got
Speaker 1: me a podcast listener. I appreciate it. He goes, I'm
Speaker 1: a lapsed Red Sox fan, but you're talking about the
Speaker 1: Nationals got me thinking about baseball again. With two MLB
Speaker 1: teams still playing in minor league parks? Is this a
Speaker 1: Rob Manfred problem? Has he lost the will or ability
Speaker 1: to hold owners to basic league standards? If teams like
Speaker 1: Tampa and Oakland can operate like this, is the sport
Speaker 1: really sustainable long term best? Matt Jay, I plead you
Speaker 1: asked this question. I go hot and cold on Manfred.
Speaker 1: I do think you've got to give Manfred credit for
Speaker 1: the rules changes, right, So you know, we sit here,
Speaker 1: I think we if you're a baseball fan, your program
Speaker 1: to hate the commissioner. Right, we all hated Bud Ceiling.
Speaker 1: And then like the longer you go, you're like, well,
Speaker 1: well he really messed up ninety four. But you know, jeez,
Speaker 1: the wild card was turned out to be a pretty
Speaker 1: good idea, and this turned out to be a pretty
Speaker 1: good idea. And you know, he got baseball back to
Speaker 1: DC and he got baseball into Miami. You know, these
Speaker 1: are two things I didn't think was going to happen.
Speaker 1: And with Manfred, I there's a part of me that says, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think the you know, I put it this way. Look,
Speaker 1: Manfred was also chief legal counsel even before he became commissioner.
Speaker 1: When I look at the state at baseball, where I
Speaker 1: get angry as a baseball fan is that is the
Speaker 1: fact that the owners canceled the World Series and still
Speaker 1: didn't get a salary cap. I mean, if you're going
Speaker 1: to basically do the worst thing you could do to
Speaker 1: your sport, you better get a financial struck. Sure, that
Speaker 1: is sustainable for a generation and they didn't do it. Look,
Speaker 1: Baseball it is, you know, the Baseball Union is is
Speaker 1: easily the most powerful players union. And by the way,
Speaker 1: as we're finding out, if you're if you're following my
Speaker 1: friend Pablo torre Uh and Pablo Tory finds out, the
Speaker 1: NFL p A is probably the worst of the players unions.
Speaker 1: And part of that has to do with baseball players
Speaker 1: are more likely to have longer careers than football players,
Speaker 1: and I think the football players the players don't get
Speaker 1: as active in the union until until they have more
Speaker 1: than a cup of coffee in the NFL, and so
Speaker 1: that's it's a lot of players that don't end up,
Speaker 1: you know. So I think it's it's unfortunately the the
Speaker 1: owners have had a way to sort of take advantage
Speaker 1: of that a little bit, and they it is the
Speaker 1: nfl PA, you know. I think when Damar Smith was there,
Speaker 1: he tried to be a bit tougher with the owners.
Speaker 1: You know, the owners always sort of had control of
Speaker 1: the NFLPA when Gene Upshaw, and he was always considered
Speaker 1: sort of you know, secretly always in the in the
Speaker 1: always a bit too easy to deal with with the owners,
Speaker 1: right not as not as not as pro player as
Speaker 1: he could be on that front. And that's sort of
Speaker 1: been the reputation of the NFL P a versus the MLBPA.
Speaker 1: But when I look at the fact that baseball is
Speaker 1: about to go through another tough situation, and they do
Speaker 1: have a mess on their hands. Okay, the TV deals,
Speaker 1: you know, and this, and the question is is this
Speaker 1: on Manfred right? The two minor league stadiums. You know,
Speaker 1: I do think the owners need to get control, you know,
Speaker 1: but this is because they don't share revenue equally. They
Speaker 1: don't seem to be as concerned when they have crappy owners.
Speaker 1: Right in the NFL, they got tired of crappy owner
Speaker 1: Dan Schneider, And eventually, essentially it was driven by the
Speaker 1: late Jim Mersey, right. He he he gave voice to
Speaker 1: what was a growing majority opinion of those owners. But
Speaker 1: because the NFL owners are essentially equal shareholders, when one
Speaker 1: is not when one is dropping the ball, right, And
Speaker 1: you know what really irritated the owners about Dan Schneiders
Speaker 1: he was they found out he was withholding ticket revenue,
Speaker 1: the visitor team ticket revenue, that he was keeping more
Speaker 1: of it than he should it's money out of the
Speaker 1: owner's pockets. So with baseball, because of the disparity, right,
Speaker 1: the Yankees and the Dodgers don't care if the Rays
Speaker 1: and the A's are mismanaged, right, or have bad ownership groups,
Speaker 1: or have bad relationships with their But if they were
Speaker 1: all equal partners and there was a little bit more,
Speaker 1: you know, and then then there would be I think,
Speaker 1: a better policing by the owners and therefore the commissioner.
Speaker 1: When you have weak owners and the fact is the
Speaker 1: a the ownership of the A's is a mess. Should
Speaker 1: have been forced to say sooner, should have should have
Speaker 1: inserted itself into that situation and did it with Tampa Bay.
Speaker 1: And look, I see the mismanaged the ownership structure of
Speaker 1: Florida multiple times, right, First it was the garbage man.
Speaker 1: Then it was the diamond dealer from Marlins fans, they'll
Speaker 1: know who I'm referring to say it that, but you know, literally,
Speaker 1: they gave a free franchise. They gave an owner handed
Speaker 1: the he was the owner of the exposed They didn't
Speaker 1: want him owning the team, you know, moving the team
Speaker 1: to DC and staying the owner. But they couldn't take
Speaker 1: a team so they traded teams right, and then the
Speaker 1: league took over the Expos franchise and sold it to
Speaker 1: the Learners, and then they gave the Diamond broker the
Speaker 1: Marlins franchise. So I do think that that if you
Speaker 1: believe Manfred has this power, they're there. They've done a
Speaker 1: bad job of policing bad owners and now they have
Speaker 1: new ownership. They did finally force to sail in Tampa,
Speaker 1: so you know, so they are working to try to
Speaker 1: fix that situation. But they didn't in Oakland. And I
Speaker 1: have to tell you I feel this way about on
Speaker 1: the Oakland front as I do about what happened to
Speaker 1: the Chargers. I think the leagues should be better partners
Speaker 1: when it comes to stadium financing. It was pretty clear
Speaker 1: that Oakland had a fan base for baseball, but the
Speaker 1: city of Oakland and the County of Alameda wasn't interested
Speaker 1: in chipping in money. Just like in San Diego, the
Speaker 1: owner of the Chargers couldn't get the community to vote
Speaker 1: for essentially giving taxpayer subsidies to the NFL owner. So
Speaker 1: the NFL decides to take a franchise away from San
Speaker 1: Diego rather than they could have financed the stadium. They
Speaker 1: could have turned it into an incredible stadium that was
Speaker 1: a showcase and a host of a Super Bowl. Over time,
Speaker 1: the owner essentially pay back right. They could have essentially
Speaker 1: been the banker for the owner, if you will, or
Speaker 1: the partner with the owner, and they'd have a franchise
Speaker 1: that wasn't a zombie franchise. The Chargers have zero, Uh,
Speaker 1: they have no fan base in LA. Both the Raiders
Speaker 1: in Las Vegas and the Rams have more fans in LA. Frankly,
Speaker 1: you know than than than this. You know, the Steelers
Speaker 1: probably have more fans in LA than the Chargers. The
Speaker 1: Packers probably have more fans in LA than the Charge
Speaker 1: than the Chargers, and the Cowboys probably have more fans
Speaker 1: in LA than the Chargers. But San Diego is a
Speaker 1: great football town, and I think the same with Oakland
Speaker 1: and major League Baseball. Had the revenue, they could have
Speaker 1: stepped up. And you know, let's see how you know,
Speaker 1: the the the management of the regional media and all
Speaker 1: of that, and the fact that that's not as shared
Speaker 1: as it is in the NFL. It has created sort
Speaker 1: of haves and have nots in baseball. I'm a believer
Speaker 1: that baseball can support thirty two franchises, but not with
Speaker 1: this current financial structure, not where the Dodgers can do
Speaker 1: one thing, but the Twins are limited in what they
Speaker 1: can do. And so if you've got a situation like that,
Speaker 1: you have to blame the ownership, and you had to,
Speaker 1: you know, and who works for the owners? Manford works
Speaker 1: for the owners. But you know, I, like I said,
Speaker 1: I do, I am glad Manford made the rules changes
Speaker 1: because it's really helped baseball. But I do think you
Speaker 1: really do have to hold both of both Manfred and
Speaker 1: Sealing responsible for not dealing with a situation that we
Speaker 1: all saw coming that the baseball finances and the lack
Speaker 1: of a salary cap was going to create more and
Speaker 1: more problems, and it has, and so but I don't
Speaker 1: know if a different commissioner would have made things any differently,
Speaker 1: because ultimately this is an owner issue, and until the
Speaker 1: owners of the Yankees and Dodgers care about whether the
Speaker 1: Oakland A's or whatever we're going to call him right now,
Speaker 1: the Sacramento A's and the Tampa Bay Rays are well
Speaker 1: won France. Until they're incentivized to care how well run
Speaker 1: other franchises are, I don't know if baseball is going
Speaker 1: to be able to fix itself without having another catastrophic
Speaker 1: work stoppage, which I do think is coming soon. I
Speaker 1: bet you you didn't think I was going to have
Speaker 1: that strong and long of an opinion on that one.
Speaker 1: But there you go. You teed me up on that one,
Speaker 1: all right. Next question, this comes from Dylan R. From Lebanon, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: and he asked this, do you think we will ever
Speaker 1: see a US sitting president ever get primaried and lose?
Speaker 1: I know we were close with Ford and seventy six
Speaker 1: Carter in eighty. Well never say never. You know. One
Speaker 1: of the one thing we'd never seen until we finally
Speaker 1: saw it was a sitting governor losing a primary. That
Speaker 1: happened to Frank Murkowski, Lisa Murkowski's father, and it actually
Speaker 1: happened due to Frank Murkowski's decision to appoint his daughter
Speaker 1: to the Senate. I know, for many Lisa Murkowski is
Speaker 1: considered a maverick and in some ways a hero to
Speaker 1: many independent minded voters. But I guess you could call
Speaker 1: her a NEPO baby. But that became an issue, and
Speaker 1: a woman named Sarah Palin beat Frank Murkowski in a primary,
Speaker 1: and it looked defeating any executive in a primary extraordinarily hard.
Speaker 1: You know, you could argue that LBJ was going to
Speaker 1: get defeated in the primaries, which is why he ended
Speaker 1: up not running, right even though he won. People forget
Speaker 1: that LBJ win or lose the sixty eight New Hampshire primary.
Speaker 1: Most people if you think he actually lost, But he
Speaker 1: actually he won the primary. He just didn't win it
Speaker 1: by a big enough margin. It was just amazing that
Speaker 1: the sitting president barely could beat clean for Jean McCarthy
Speaker 1: by less than ten points. So I think if a
Speaker 1: sitting president is vulnerable to losing in a primary, they're
Speaker 1: more likely to step down right as we saw with LBJ,
Speaker 1: than not. But I don't know. I think our politics
Speaker 1: are so disruptive right now, and I you know, one
Speaker 1: of the things that I'm looking for I think I
Speaker 1: think this is going to be one of those years
Speaker 1: where we see a surprising number of incumbents lose primaries.
Speaker 1: So I know it doesn't really answer your question, but
Speaker 1: I think we're in a period. If we're ever going
Speaker 1: to see a sitting president somehow losing a primary, it's
Speaker 1: going to be in this era if you will. But boy,
Speaker 1: you know, it is hard to make happen because presidents,
Speaker 1: once they become president, they become the establishment and they
Speaker 1: sort of control the infrastructure and can make it extraordinarily
Speaker 1: difficult to to you know, get the delegates you need
Speaker 1: and things like that. But I think if you're so
Speaker 1: vulnerable you could lose a primary with voters, you're going
Speaker 1: to see. Uh, these guys quit before they would actually
Speaker 1: go through with it. All right. This one comes from
Speaker 1: Greg parts On known. Hey, Chuck, where does all the
Speaker 1: tariff money go? There must be billions coming in, but
Speaker 1: who collects in and who controls it? It seems like
Speaker 1: the dollar stream that's just begging for Shenanigans love the cast. Greig. No,
Speaker 1: it's like tax revenue. It comes into the treasury and
Speaker 1: so and in fact, they they want to use it
Speaker 1: to sort of and they've been talking, you know, Trump's
Speaker 1: been talking up how much revenue is coming in. It's
Speaker 1: it's like tax revenue. It comes into the treasury. It's
Speaker 1: it's a tax. It's a tax on on other you know,
Speaker 1: other entities. It's no different, goes into the treasury just
Speaker 1: like your income tax does. The question is where did
Speaker 1: that money actually come from did it come from the
Speaker 1: exporter or did they or did they mark it up?
Speaker 1: And you and I pay for it with an increased price, right,
Speaker 1: So it is, but the money all goes to the
Speaker 1: same place. And this has been one of Trump's arguments.
Speaker 1: I mean, in some ways, I think what Trump wants
Speaker 1: to go through is essentially ava tax. They don't call
Speaker 1: it that, but essentially getting rid of the income tax
Speaker 1: and essentially going to a form of a consumption tax.
Speaker 1: Now they're not, you know, which is consumption tax attacks
Speaker 1: on everything. But you know what, when you raise tariffs
Speaker 1: ten percent across the board, what have you just done?
Speaker 1: You've just taxed pretty much everything. But no, it just
Speaker 1: goes straight into the treasury. Next question comes from Dan A. Carlsbad, California. Hey, Chuck,
Speaker 1: I've been listening since the original NBC version and I'm
Speaker 1: really enjoying the new format. Well, thank you. The long
Speaker 1: form interviews and sharp inside on current events are great.
Speaker 1: Keep up the great work. Thank you. I'm blushing. I
Speaker 1: had a question about candidate recruitment. Given how hard it
Speaker 1: is to win in states that heavily favor the opposite party,
Speaker 1: why don't parties try to draft non politician celebrities with
Speaker 1: name recognition and brought appeal to shake up races. Even
Speaker 1: if they don't win, it could force the other party
Speaker 1: to spend resources, Like why haven't Tennessee Democrats approach someone
Speaker 1: like Dolly Parton, Eddie George or Taylor Swift or do
Speaker 1: these conversations happen and it really goes far due to
Speaker 1: a lack of interest from the potential candidate. It's more
Speaker 1: of the latter, right, is that is usually lack of
Speaker 1: interest in said celebrity, especially these days. What celebrity wants
Speaker 1: to do that to themselves. But there is a specific
Speaker 1: type of candidate that parties do try to recruit in
Speaker 1: these one party states where they think if they could
Speaker 1: find the right candidate, and it's not quite a celebrity,
Speaker 1: but it's sort of. It's like public service celebrity, meaning
Speaker 1: a military hero, an astronaut. That's that's usually, or you
Speaker 1: know somebody who's famous with their business if you will,
Speaker 1: So you do get attempts like that. Dave Thomas, some
Speaker 1: people wanted him to run for governor of Ohio. He
Speaker 1: got into it. My old mentor Doug Bailey tells a
Speaker 1: great story about it. Dave Thomas, you know, was basically
Speaker 1: like he founded Wendy's and he was feeling pretty good
Speaker 1: and he was in his ads, and you know, there
Speaker 1: was this idea that he could and at the time,
Speaker 1: Democrats were dominating governor's races in Ohio, and you know,
Speaker 1: part of the problem is desire and Doug. Doug always
Speaker 1: had a very specific question to anybody he worked for,
Speaker 1: and if they couldn't answer the question, he didn't want
Speaker 1: to work for him, no matter how much money they
Speaker 1: had to spend. And Doug's question was, why do you
Speaker 1: want to be whatever office you're running for? So in
Speaker 1: this case, well why do you want to be governor?
Speaker 1: What do you want to do? And the way he
Speaker 1: tells the story is that Dave Thomas sat there and
Speaker 1: said and he had all these big time consultants. He
Speaker 1: brought in all the best, you know, because everybody knew
Speaker 1: rich guy, Dave Thomas, founder of Wendy And he said,
Speaker 1: all right, I have to think about that. And the
Speaker 1: next day he calls him up and says, I'm not running.
Speaker 1: He goes, because I don't know why I wanted to run.
Speaker 1: He basically just wanted to run to run and I
Speaker 1: think that happens sometimes with you know, you and I
Speaker 1: might think, boy, they would make a great candidate, but
Speaker 1: if they don't have any interest in it, they'll actually
Speaker 1: make a terrible candidate. Right, they're a non paper candidate.
Speaker 1: You know, they might pull well, or they're likable or people,
Speaker 1: et cetera. But look when they happens, it happens. You know,
Speaker 1: Arnold Schwarzenegger. I don't think Arnold Swarzenegger ever would run
Speaker 1: for governor if it had been a conventional campaign for governor.
Speaker 1: But he was able to get the celebrity. You know,
Speaker 1: you can talk a celebrity into doing it if there's
Speaker 1: like an easy way to do it. And the recall suddenly,
Speaker 1: the fact that it got on the ballot and Davis
Speaker 1: was going to get recalled, suddenly it was a much
Speaker 1: lighter left. He didn't have to go through a primary. Right,
Speaker 1: and this was before they even had a top two
Speaker 1: in California, but the recall ballot ended up being all party,
Speaker 1: all candidates on the same party. Back then, Arnold was
Speaker 1: a modern Republican, and he might have struggled to win
Speaker 1: a conventional Republican primary, which is was among the reasons
Speaker 1: why he was staying out of electoral politics. And it
Speaker 1: wasn't until the basically a loophole showed up, which in
Speaker 1: this case was the recall that got him in to
Speaker 1: do it. So, look, candidates, party leaders constantly are searching
Speaker 1: for what you're just saying. I mean, I think you
Speaker 1: know that you want to. I was just talking with
Speaker 1: a gentleman who came to this event featuring you know,
Speaker 1: independence and trying to figure out how you can create
Speaker 1: more of a movement so that independents, you know, don't
Speaker 1: get drowned by money from team Red or team blue.
Speaker 1: When when when they actually get competitive? And I met
Speaker 1: this I met this one gentleman and he was and
Speaker 1: he was saying, you know, do I have the right
Speaker 1: profile to run for office? And he goes and he
Speaker 1: was telling me his profile and he started his own
Speaker 1: business and he turned it into a multimillion dollar bet.
Speaker 1: I said, I'm gonna stop you right there. I said,
Speaker 1: the greatest halo effect for a candidate description when you
Speaker 1: go to voters is not celebrity and somebody you know,
Speaker 1: it's self made business person. Immediately voters want to hear more.
Speaker 1: Now they may you know, if especially if they've like
Speaker 1: a brick and mortar business, like building their own business,
Speaker 1: that sort of business. Not Wall Street, not that kind
Speaker 1: of of business person. But really somebody who you know,
Speaker 1: meets a payroll, you know, makes a product or does
Speaker 1: a service that helps everyday people. That's actually some of
Speaker 1: the bed. There are two great halo effects for first
Speaker 1: time candidates. One is what I just described in business,
Speaker 1: and the other's military veteran, especially if military veteran comes
Speaker 1: with Medal of Honor, purple heart, things like that. So
Speaker 1: the celebt everything. It's kind of interesting for you and
Speaker 1: I to talk about. But in some ways, the ideal
Speaker 1: candidate profile for the voter is self made business person
Speaker 1: who wants to give back to the government, or somebody
Speaker 1: who's who you know, who offered up their blood for
Speaker 1: the country by serving in the military, is and is
Speaker 1: willing to continue in public service. Those are probably the
Speaker 1: two best Profilesta all right, I'm going to do one
Speaker 1: more question. This comes from Barbara B. I really enjoyed
Speaker 1: the Lena Khan interview. It was very enlightening. Your comments
Speaker 1: about the faulty AI info you found on a search
Speaker 1: of your name made me wonder what might have happened.
Speaker 1: If the mistaken information said that you had died, how
Speaker 1: do you think that might reverberate across the internet. Can
Speaker 1: you imagine how hard it might be for someone who's
Speaker 1: not a public figure to disprove something like that. To
Speaker 1: keep up the good work, Barbara, this is exactly why
Speaker 1: I brought up this situation, you know, because my son
Speaker 1: asked me the same question. By the way, it turned out,
Speaker 1: he never said this to me when I when I
Speaker 1: went public with this with this situation. He goes, Dad,
Speaker 1: my friends have been telling me about you with asking
Speaker 1: me about you with Parkinson's for months. And he goes,
Speaker 1: and I kept telling him there's nothing too, that it's
Speaker 1: just a bad rumor. And he goes, I didn't bother
Speaker 1: telling you about it at home, And I said, you know,
Speaker 1: I said okay. But then he asked me a very
Speaker 1: similar question. He goes, I see that once you said something,
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, they got to fix it. He says,
Speaker 1: what if you weren't Chuck Todd? And I said, well, I,
Speaker 1: first of all, I don't know how much Chuck, how
Speaker 1: much influence Chuck Todd has anymore. Sorry, I'm channeling my
Speaker 1: old Bob Dole. But that is I think that's a
Speaker 1: very fair concern. And you know, you've you've you've I've
Speaker 1: read stories what you just described where somebody is accidentally
Speaker 1: declared dead because maybe somebody you know, had the wrong
Speaker 1: middle initial on a death certificate and it ended up
Speaker 1: you know, getting ready, you know, you you know this
Speaker 1: is something that has happened before, but you're right on
Speaker 1: the internet it is. And I think this is the
Speaker 1: This gets it to what. I brought this up in
Speaker 1: a previous podcast, but I can't remember which one, so
Speaker 1: I'll repeat myself. I think I've told you about a
Speaker 1: project that Frank McCourt, the former owner of the Dodgers,
Speaker 1: had put together called Project Liberty, and one of his
Speaker 1: motivations he wrote this book about about sort of trying
Speaker 1: to reclaim our data from big tech. And one of
Speaker 1: the points he was making is he describes in the
Speaker 1: book you know, look, Frank McCourt's ownership of the Dodgers
Speaker 1: is most infamous for the high profile divorce which forced
Speaker 1: them to sell. It became a storyline on Curb Your Enthusiasm, right,
Speaker 1: that was a rip from the headlines. And so because
Speaker 1: of the settlement, you know, they didn't neither Frank or
Speaker 1: Jamie McCourt had enough money to buy the other one out,
Speaker 1: so they had to sell the team in order to
Speaker 1: settle their divorce. It has been some fifteen years since
Speaker 1: their divorce, and to this day, if you google Frank McCord,
Speaker 1: it's among the first things that comes up. And this
Speaker 1: was sort of this was something he's like, at what
Speaker 1: point is that? You know, he goes my ex wife
Speaker 1: and I they both remarried. They both have a pretty
Speaker 1: good relationship because they had kids, their adult children now
Speaker 1: they all get along at family gatherings, et cetera. But
Speaker 1: his identity on the internet, if you google them immediately
Speaker 1: sort of goes back to that moment. It's like, when
Speaker 1: when do you get to control your own biography, your
Speaker 1: own persona, who you are? And the fact is we
Speaker 1: have no, we don't have any control of that, right
Speaker 1: they do. And this was his he you know, his
Speaker 1: whole thing, and it's a little pie in the sky,
Speaker 1: but he basically wants to sort of reorient the internet
Speaker 1: right now. If you think about it, when you agree
Speaker 1: to terms and services, you agree to terms and services
Speaker 1: on Google or Apple or Amazon's terms, they don't agree
Speaker 1: to terms and services on the user's terms, we don't
Speaker 1: get to tell them you know, yes, you're you know.
Speaker 1: Thanks to the EU privacy laws, there's you can control
Speaker 1: some cookies now, right. Not every website allows it, but
Speaker 1: in some website you can control some cookies, especially those
Speaker 1: that cater to your European users. But that is a
Speaker 1: I think, a fundamental issue where we don't control our
Speaker 1: own persona. But you know, one of the more interesting
Speaker 1: generational divides on the issue of privacy. For whatever reason,
Speaker 1: millennials and Gen Z don't view privacy with the same
Speaker 1: sort of concern that older that Gen X or baby
Speaker 1: boomers do. And I think part of it is that
Speaker 1: they've they've been sort of Internet native, right, and there
Speaker 1: their whole lives. They in some ways they voluntarily have
Speaker 1: put their personas on the Internet, right, and and they've
Speaker 1: sort of just they've they've been on the whole time,
Speaker 1: their whole lives. And I think until I guess I
Speaker 1: would make a plea with my millennial friends here, will
Speaker 1: you please get angry about privacy and data? I understand
Speaker 1: why you assume it's too late, Genie's already out of
Speaker 1: the bottle, But there are things like this, like, you know,
Speaker 1: how do we know if we can? Hey, you say
Speaker 1: I'm dead, I'm alive. What do I have to do
Speaker 1: to tell you this? Right? Things like that getting I
Speaker 1: think this is an issue that if when you when
Speaker 1: you start to talk to people about you're like, hey,
Speaker 1: you're right, I should have more control of this. But
Speaker 1: we have sort of almost surrendered this idea that we
Speaker 1: can somehow wrestle our You know, who owns the data? Right?
Speaker 1: Do we own our own data? Or does the does
Speaker 1: the tech company who gathered all of our data individually
Speaker 1: and put it into one larger file and made a
Speaker 1: unique product. Do they own that unique product? One of
Speaker 1: us are shareholders of our own data within that unique product?
Speaker 1: I don't know. This is why I always joke why
Speaker 1: God invented trial lawyers? Some trial lawyers going to figure
Speaker 1: out a class action suit on this, uh, and then
Speaker 1: some and and at some point I'd like to think
Speaker 1: that that there'll be some a political sort of a
Speaker 1: rise from the electorate, if you will, about this issue.
Speaker 1: But look, this is this what you just asked about.
Speaker 1: You know, what do you do if you're not you know,
Speaker 1: if you if you don't have a platform like the
Speaker 1: one I have in order to say, hey, Google, you
Speaker 1: messed up. If you don't have that kind of platform,
Speaker 1: how do you how do you wrestle control of your
Speaker 1: own persona. I think this is I think this should
Speaker 1: be a bigger concern, and I think government should be
Speaker 1: a bit more on the side of the consumer on
Speaker 1: this one. All right, I am I gonna did five questions,
Speaker 1: all right. I will try to get better because we're
Speaker 1: getting more questions from you guys. I appreciate it. You
Speaker 1: can send it to ask Chuck at chucktodcast dot com.
Speaker 1: You can leave a question the Instagram feed, TikTok feed,
Speaker 1: YouTube feed, send me a DM on X. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to really look at replies on X. That's toxic
Speaker 1: bot stuff, but dms I will. I keep my dms open,
Speaker 1: so you're welcome to come in on that front. However
Speaker 1: you want to get a question to us, we do
Speaker 1: our best to scoop it up and put it in
Speaker 1: the queue to get to it at some point. All right.
Speaker 1: With that, I hope you enjoy your weekend. Barring massive
Speaker 1: breaking news or Congress returning to deal with Epstein, I
Speaker 1: will upload again, probably in the next ninety six hours,
Speaker 1: and with that until I upload again.