Speaker 1: Hello, They're Happy Monday. It is September fifteenth, with another
Speaker 1: episode of the Chuck Podcast. I'll be honest, the last
Speaker 1: five days have been quite difficult when just thinking about
Speaker 1: American politics, thinking about the country, thinking about whether we're
Speaker 1: going to bring ourselves together. Each day when I was
Speaker 1: looking for a glimmer of hope, I rarely found one.
Speaker 1: I mean there's even in the one person who seems
Speaker 1: to be meeting the moment, the governor of Utah, Spencer Cox.
Speaker 1: Even his comments today were sort of demoralizing. Understandably so,
Speaker 1: because I don't disagree with anything he has said at
Speaker 1: this point, and in fact believe he is the leader
Speaker 1: at the moment. But when trying to figure out in
Speaker 1: some ways, it's easy to understand how we got here,
Speaker 1: there's so many forces against unity in this country. Right,
Speaker 1: there's so many forces for division. Right, there's there's you know,
Speaker 1: it's almost like the system is rigged towards division. Right.
Speaker 1: Our system is not rigged for unity. It is right now,
Speaker 1: rigged towards division in how it works. And I think
Speaker 1: that's why it feels as if boy, there's I mean,
Speaker 1: it's clear that we don't have the president we need
Speaker 1: in the moment to meet this moment. I've been trying to.
Speaker 1: I've been hopeful, right, I think you give as much
Speaker 1: grace as you can. Maybe more people will get to him,
Speaker 1: maybe he will see that this is something that he
Speaker 1: cannot just use to exploit politically. But let's be honest.
Speaker 1: That hope is fading. And you can call me naive,
Speaker 1: but I would have done it and said it the
Speaker 1: same way before, because only we only have one president
Speaker 1: at a time, and you know, hope springs eternal that
Speaker 1: that he'll see the light, but he is. He is
Speaker 1: clearly blind on this one. Let me give you a
Speaker 1: quick little rundown of how I'm going to attack the
Speaker 1: episode today. We're going to talk a little bit more
Speaker 1: about where I think this is going short term versus
Speaker 1: long term, how and what to watch for in the
Speaker 1: two political parties here and how they handle this moment.
Speaker 1: I've got my It's Monday. We do every week. I'm
Speaker 1: going to give you sort of a history lesson based
Speaker 1: on something that happened in history. This week. It is
Speaker 1: between September fifteenth and September twenty first, So I'll give
Speaker 1: you just a clue. It'll be I will tell you
Speaker 1: what our moment in history, and then the dive we're
Speaker 1: going to do. But as I said, are this day,
Speaker 1: this week in history moment? I'll just give you a
Speaker 1: small clue. We're going to go back to September nineteenth,
Speaker 1: seventeen ninety six. The real history junkies in my feed
Speaker 1: here probably have an idea of what event I will
Speaker 1: be doing a deep dive on, but I want to
Speaker 1: keep a little bit of suspense until we'll do it
Speaker 1: after the interview. For those of you that listen to
Speaker 1: the entire the entire episode in one download, of course,
Speaker 1: we do split it up into a couple of downloads
Speaker 1: if you want to have the interview on its own
Speaker 1: and all of my work separately on its own. I'll
Speaker 1: also do a little bit of what I learned this
Speaker 1: week in my obsession of college football. In short, I'm
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how is it that both my
Speaker 1: football teams seem to be playing so well, so methodically
Speaker 1: well that it is, and just out physically, just physically
Speaker 1: better than every team that they play right now. It is.
Speaker 1: It is both exciting me and scaring me. I'm waiting
Speaker 1: for the other shoe to drop on one of my
Speaker 1: teams if not both. But let me just say I
Speaker 1: am enjoying this moment. It's great to be a Miami
Speaker 1: Hurricane and it's great to be a Green Bay Packer
Speaker 1: fan in this current in this current time. But as
Speaker 1: much as I would love to continue compartmentalizing as I
Speaker 1: did yesterday and Saturday with football to try to not
Speaker 1: think about our current state of politics, I can't help
Speaker 1: but keep coming back to that and when thinking about
Speaker 1: where to begin, you know, I had my new Sphere
Speaker 1: show last night, and for that episode and I talked
Speaker 1: to an expert on political violence and an expert on
Speaker 1: sort of how do you you know is there such
Speaker 1: thing as is prevention in the political violence space? You know,
Speaker 1: can interventions work? And the professor from American University is
Speaker 1: someone that believes it. Believes that it can, and that
Speaker 1: there's data to back it up, that there is ways
Speaker 1: to mitigate the risk of violence down the road. But
Speaker 1: it does take It takes will, right, and that's ultimately
Speaker 1: I think the question I have is do we have
Speaker 1: the will? Do we have the guts to do what
Speaker 1: it takes to bring ourselves together when we're attacked by
Speaker 1: outsiders like we were in nine to eleven. But we
Speaker 1: unified pretty quickly, and we stayed fairly united for good
Speaker 1: twelve to eighteen months. And even when we started dividing,
Speaker 1: we didn't divide about the attack. We divided about the response, right.
Speaker 1: We thought about the wars. But we did it politically, right,
Speaker 1: We did it the way you're supposed to do it.
Speaker 1: But every time we had a chance to remember nine
Speaker 1: to eleven, even in the harshest presidential election years, the
Speaker 1: two candidates at least in sixteen attended the same event, right,
Speaker 1: So we have we have tempted to sort of grasp
Speaker 1: at that unifying moment. And the fact is, anytime we've
Speaker 1: been attacked from the outside, it has unified us as
Speaker 1: a country. Our most you know, unifying period of American
Speaker 1: history was during the Cold War because we had an
Speaker 1: existential threat. And I think you've heard some of you
Speaker 1: have heard my thesis quite a bit that I am
Speaker 1: somewhat concerned that actually the only thing that unites us
Speaker 1: are existential threats from the outside. We have threats from
Speaker 1: the inside, and they only divide us. And that's what
Speaker 1: it feels like today that all these threats that we're
Speaker 1: dealing with right now are dividing us. Look, there is
Speaker 1: some data here to back this up. In just the
Speaker 1: first six months of this year, Okay, according to the
Speaker 1: there's some folks at the University of Maryland who tracked
Speaker 1: this very well, very methodically, in a healthy academic setting.
Speaker 1: America has endured nearly a one hundred and fifty politically
Speaker 1: motivated attacks in the first six months of this year.
Speaker 1: It's almost double. So it doesn't count the Charlie Cook
Speaker 1: Charlie Kirk murder. It's almost double the number in the
Speaker 1: same period last year. We've had twenty one people killed. Okay,
Speaker 1: since January. That included what happened in New Year's Eve
Speaker 1: in New Orleans when you had that radical radical extremists
Speaker 1: attack Bourbon Street. We had a pro Palestinian activists killed
Speaker 1: two Israeli embassy employees in Washington. We had eleven armed
Speaker 1: militant storm Texas immigration ice facility. Earlier this year, we
Speaker 1: had a gunman obsessed with COVID conspiracies spring gunfire at
Speaker 1: CDC's headquarters in Atlanta, killed a police officer. Minnesota. Christian
Speaker 1: nationalists went door to door trying to murder Democratic lawmakers
Speaker 1: and successfully did one and her husband wounding another. And
Speaker 1: of course now we've had the killing of Charlie Kirk
Speaker 1: in broad daylight on a college campus and a place
Speaker 1: that as a parent of two college kids that you know,
Speaker 1: we want college to be in a place. I know
Speaker 1: what I to not put words in other people's mouths.
Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you what I want college to
Speaker 1: be and what college has been for me. It's about
Speaker 1: exposing yourself to different people, different ideas, different ideologies, different experiences,
Speaker 1: different everything. And it's about learning, right. But the only
Speaker 1: way to learn is you need to be exposed to
Speaker 1: good ideas and bad ideas. But the exposure is important.
Speaker 1: Trying to hide from ideas, even ones that you don't
Speaker 1: agree with, doesn't do anything to help a situation. Hiding
Speaker 1: ideas only can make things worse. But the fact is
Speaker 1: where we are living in a tinder box right now.
Speaker 1: So we're at a fork in the row. And I
Speaker 1: said that the other day, and you know, the hope
Speaker 1: is that is, you know, when are we going to
Speaker 1: have enough is enough? Moment? We've been We've had ten
Speaker 1: years of this intense political division where it is where
Speaker 1: awful rhetoric has turned into physical violence. I want to
Speaker 1: quote Spencer Cox, who said on an appearance at NBC
Speaker 1: on Sunday, he said, and I think he's right. Social
Speaker 1: media has played a direct role in every single assassination
Speaker 1: and assassination attempt that we have seen over the last
Speaker 1: five or six years. I don't think I disagree with that.
Speaker 1: And that's been you know, another thing that's been a
Speaker 1: bit frustrating in what we've watched so far in the
Speaker 1: reaction is that, again, outside of the govern or of Utah,
Speaker 1: outside of Governor Cox, nobody's tried to meet this moment.
Speaker 1: Nobody's tried to look at this as an American first.
Speaker 1: There are way too many people responding as a partisan first,
Speaker 1: doing some yah butts. What do I mean by a yabbot? Well,
Speaker 1: there was an example of one, and it was by
Speaker 1: a reporter and it was Charlie Gasparino, and I want
Speaker 1: to quote him, and he said, because he's proud of
Speaker 1: his point, he retweeted his point. He said, what he
Speaker 1: said on Fox is what he believes that there are
Speaker 1: violent loons on the right and the left, but a
Speaker 1: certain type of violent rhetoric is totally accepted as morally
Speaker 1: righteous on the left and the cultural institution that dominates.
Speaker 1: So this is where I want to and that would
Speaker 1: include the university as well as most of the mainstream Meredia,
Speaker 1: and that's where I want to stop right there. I
Speaker 1: believe he believes this. I don't believe he's making up
Speaker 1: this mindset. I can tell you. I don't believe what
Speaker 1: he says is true. That's not from my observation and
Speaker 1: this idea, and I've seen it, you know where no, no, no, Yes,
Speaker 1: we have some loans on our side, but they're they
Speaker 1: don't They're not representative of us, but your loon, the
Speaker 1: loons on the other side are representative of everybody out there.
Speaker 1: And this is the problem. You know. I would say,
Speaker 1: give yourself a test on this, because I've been doing
Speaker 1: it with myself all weekend. Like you know, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: pretty convinced. I know how we got here, and I
Speaker 1: know that my definitive belief is not going to be
Speaker 1: shared by everybody, but I'm sure that so a piece
Speaker 1: of what I believe would be shared by a lot
Speaker 1: of people. And that's sort of how you become I mean,
Speaker 1: this is what politics is about. Politics isn't about I'm
Speaker 1: right and you're wrong. Politics is about here are my ideas,
Speaker 1: here's your ideas. Are they compatible? And if they're at
Speaker 1: all compatible, is there a middle ground? And elections decide, Hey,
Speaker 1: does the middle ground? Fifty to fifty is the middle ground?
Speaker 1: Sixty forty is the middle ground? Seventy thirty right? Right?
Speaker 1: Elections are a tug of war in some ways about
Speaker 1: where the middle is. But it's still supposed to be
Speaker 1: somewhere in the middle on this stuff. And so I
Speaker 1: think that is the the problem that we have is
Speaker 1: that we're stuck. When you believe you're you're when you
Speaker 1: when your beliefs are righteous in your head, then no
Speaker 1: counter factual is going to convince you of you can't
Speaker 1: compromise on sort of righteous beliefs, right, And so it
Speaker 1: becomes where there's just almost no You can't even put
Speaker 1: yourself in the shoes of somebody who disagrees with you.
Speaker 1: I imagine today that there are some on the left
Speaker 1: who now understand a little bit better what folks on
Speaker 1: the right have called said about cancel culture. That expressing
Speaker 1: one's opinion, as vile as it may be to you,
Speaker 1: is simply that person's opinion. And is it enough if
Speaker 1: it's nothing that is illegal and it hasn't incited anybody
Speaker 1: to do anything violent or illegal, should it cost them
Speaker 1: their livelihoods. And so, you know, we so badly want
Speaker 1: a virtue signal during any given moment, right whatever the
Speaker 1: moment is. Whether it was virtue signaling right after George
Speaker 1: Floyd and what happened to him, you saw a lot
Speaker 1: of it virtue signaling right after we've seen with Charlie Kirk,
Speaker 1: rather than sort of figuring out, how do I take
Speaker 1: my idea in solving this problem? And I broaden the
Speaker 1: appeal of that argument that I can persuade somebody who
Speaker 1: mostly disagrees with my point of view to at least
Speaker 1: not just acknowledge that my point of view's fair, rational,
Speaker 1: but maybe there's something to it, rather than being so
Speaker 1: convinced that you're right and your political opponent is wrong
Speaker 1: that there's nothing to be learned from them on this
Speaker 1: one iota. And I know that anybody here can practice
Speaker 1: what about is that the minute somebody? I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: we're going through it now, right and and I've got
Speaker 1: to catch myself. I mean, I see so many one
Speaker 1: sided conversations about violence right right now on the right
Speaker 1: not acknowledging what happened at the CDC, or what happened
Speaker 1: to those Minnesota lawmakers, or or somehow marginalizing those events
Speaker 1: that they have nothing to do with this, when frankly,
Speaker 1: they all have to do with this. It's all we have.
Speaker 1: We have we have we have created this information ecosystem. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to quote Mike Johnson on this, who
Speaker 1: I thought said something that was worth quoting here. Uh
Speaker 1: when he said this, people have to stop framing simple
Speaker 1: policy disagreements in terms of existential threats to our democracy.
Speaker 1: You can't call the other side fascists or enemies of
Speaker 1: the state and not understand that there are some deranged
Speaker 1: people in our society who will take that as cues
Speaker 1: to act. I know some of you are going to
Speaker 1: be like Mike Johnson practices both ciderisms by using fascists
Speaker 1: and enemies of the state, right, the language that each
Speaker 1: side is using these days to try to dehumanize and
Speaker 1: de americanize somebody who has an opposing political view. But
Speaker 1: good for him, because he's exactly right. We have gotten it.
Speaker 1: And the thing is is that when we're in person,
Speaker 1: we don't speak or behave this way. It's why so
Speaker 1: many of the elected officials I talk to will say, oh, no,
Speaker 1: it's not that bad up here, when you know, there
Speaker 1: are a couple of people who are bad actors who
Speaker 1: go out there to just be grifters. Right, they're just
Speaker 1: playing to the algorithms, playing to the to the to
Speaker 1: the influenced peddlers. Who are you know, these these folks
Speaker 1: that that obsess with how much traffic that they get,
Speaker 1: and all of this play to the algorithms. For the
Speaker 1: most part, when these elected ds and elected ours get together,
Speaker 1: they they don't speak in vile language to each other,
Speaker 1: with the very rare exception of a couple. For the
Speaker 1: most part, they interact with each other the way you
Speaker 1: enact with average people at the grocery store, at the
Speaker 1: post office. Right, you don't behave like an asshole. Well
Speaker 1: ninety five percent of us don't want to behave like
Speaker 1: an asshole in public. So I don't know why we
Speaker 1: do this online. And then of course we have the
Speaker 1: entire I mean, what's of all the frustrating aspects of
Speaker 1: the political response to the last five days, the lack
Speaker 1: of focus and accountability on the on, on the UH, on,
Speaker 1: the information warpers of our time, the big tech companies
Speaker 1: and their algorithms who systematically surface information that gets you
Speaker 1: angry so that you stand on a platform and you keep,
Speaker 1: you know, giving them the ability to sell ads based
Speaker 1: on your rage. They're the problem. They're destroying the information ecosystem.
Speaker 1: They're the issue. I mean, what Elon Musk has done
Speaker 1: to ask, Mark Zuckerberg's done to Facebook, with the Chinese
Speaker 1: Communist Party has done with TikTok or who the hell
Speaker 1: else runs it. It's amazing on certain days what it
Speaker 1: emphasizes and what it doesn't. So we know, I don't
Speaker 1: know if we do know. Actually I sit there. We
Speaker 1: know that we're better in person than we are online,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's hard to I think we all know.
Speaker 1: When we're not online, we're a little bit better, and
Speaker 1: when we're too much online, we're a little bit worse.
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Speaker 1: Their fee is free unless they win. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: things will get super better in the short term. I
Speaker 1: think you have you have too many folks invested. We've
Speaker 1: already seen some. I mean it looks to me like
Speaker 1: President Trump and Stephen Miller in particular, view this as
Speaker 1: a moment to exploit for political gain. That is dangerous
Speaker 1: and that risks. You know, each side justifies their radicalization
Speaker 1: based on the other side. I mean Donald Trump did
Speaker 1: it the other day when he was asked directly on
Speaker 1: Fox and Friends. Hey, we got there's some fringe people,
Speaker 1: extremists on the right, and he said yeah. But he yeah,
Speaker 1: butted it right, He said, but our extremists care about
Speaker 1: law and or they're upset because of crime issues. He
Speaker 1: just sort of manufactured some rationale. But again, he was
Speaker 1: looking for a reason not to accept any piece of
Speaker 1: this that somehow he has any responsibility here whatsoever or
Speaker 1: has been a contributor to the violent climate that we
Speaker 1: all live right now in America. And when you don't
Speaker 1: have a leader who even if he doesn't believe he's
Speaker 1: as big of a contributor as others believe he is,
Speaker 1: but if he doesn't have the ability to sort of
Speaker 1: I don't know. He claims to be a Christian, so
Speaker 1: at least admitgift send because he has on this issue
Speaker 1: he's not tried to bring people together, and he doesn't
Speaker 1: and he's never pretended he was planning on doing it.
Speaker 1: You know, he says unity would be nice, by right,
Speaker 1: He doesn't know any other way. The politics of division
Speaker 1: have been extraordinarily successful. And this is what is very
Speaker 1: frustrating is that those that have power right now may
Speaker 1: believe they've got political power because of the politics of division,
Speaker 1: that the politics of division has been good politics for them,
Speaker 1: even if it's been unhealthy for the country. And that's
Speaker 1: where we have to get. We have to change the
Speaker 1: incentive structures. It's been fun to look up all sorts
Speaker 1: of new quotes that people have been throwing out there,
Speaker 1: and there's a Milton Friedman quote that I wanted to
Speaker 1: share that sort of fits. I think that fits this
Speaker 1: moment right now, and that is this issue of incentives. Right,
Speaker 1: do you know our elected officials? Does it matter whether
Speaker 1: they're good or bad? Or does it matter more if
Speaker 1: the incentives are good or bad. Here's how Milton Friedman argued.
Speaker 1: He says, what is important is not the particular person
Speaker 1: who is elected president or the party he belongs to.
Speaker 1: I have often said we shall not correct the state
Speaker 1: of affairs by electing the right people. We've tried that
Speaker 1: the right people before they're elected become the wrong people
Speaker 1: after they're elected. We've all seen that. Right, the important
Speaker 1: thing is to make it politically profitable for the wrong
Speaker 1: people to do the right thing. If it is not
Speaker 1: politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing,
Speaker 1: the right people will not do the right thing ever
Speaker 1: or either excuse me. Look, I think our own experiences
Speaker 1: prove this our incentive structure. If there was a reward
Speaker 1: structure in our politics that punished dividers and rewarded uniters,
Speaker 1: we would have two parties fighting to say, no, we
Speaker 1: represent we are the better unifying vision for America. We
Speaker 1: do not have two parties competing for a unifying vision
Speaker 1: of America. We have two parties competing that says their
Speaker 1: vision is wrong, their vision is wrong, any part of
Speaker 1: it is un American. Sort of, we do two things
Speaker 1: to each other. We dehumanize and we de americanize, and
Speaker 1: they're kind of the same thing. But in our political debate,
Speaker 1: if you can make somebody seem on American, it gives
Speaker 1: you makes you look. I have used the phrase, hey,
Speaker 1: that's you know, and I will say that's on American,
Speaker 1: and I mean it from a defense of the constitution
Speaker 1: of what I believe the American way is. But I
Speaker 1: acknowledge that maybe the person I'm criticizing believes what they're
Speaker 1: doing is in the what they think is in the
Speaker 1: best interests of America. But the fact is we do
Speaker 1: have a we do have this issue of a messed
Speaker 1: up incentive system, and in fact, we don't have you know,
Speaker 1: we we have sort of a couple of problems. One
Speaker 1: is we have two parties who are not comfortable policing
Speaker 1: their own sides. And the thing is is that we are.
Speaker 1: We never want the other side policing our side. Who
Speaker 1: the hell do you think you are? You don't get
Speaker 1: you know, it's like you don't get to criticize a
Speaker 1: family member if you're not a member of my family.
Speaker 1: I get to criticize a family member that is a
Speaker 1: member of my family, right you know, we know that.
Speaker 1: You know, Hey, that's you don't do that. We're a
Speaker 1: united front as a family. If we've got disagreements, we're
Speaker 1: going to express them ourselves. But that also means policing
Speaker 1: your side, and we don't police right now. There is
Speaker 1: a fear of policing your own side because it quote
Speaker 1: gives the other side of victory. Don't do that, then
Speaker 1: you're acknowledging that the criticism was correct. So you've got
Speaker 1: a lot of muted Democrats and muted Republicans about the
Speaker 1: excesses of their political basis. Because there's fear right, the
Speaker 1: information ecosystem rewards the extremes. The extremes are controlling the
Speaker 1: political narratives of both parties more so than ever, because
Speaker 1: if you at all try to strike a moderate tone,
Speaker 1: you know, you're enabling the other side, you're enabling corporate interests,
Speaker 1: or you're enabling the other side in some form or another.
Speaker 1: And it has led a lot of what I think
Speaker 1: it goes to the Milton Friedman quote. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of good people who are not doing the right thing
Speaker 1: in this moment because there is no incentive to do
Speaker 1: the right thing. And if the right thing is to
Speaker 1: speak out, the right thing is to vote against a
Speaker 1: certain cabinet official here or there. The right thing is
Speaker 1: to say, you know, not endorse somebody, not vote for somebody,
Speaker 1: make it clear why. But there's this fear right, the
Speaker 1: incentive is not there, and so we have to change.
Speaker 1: We have to change these incentive structures. And it probably
Speaker 1: doesn't happen without new leadership. So what I would say here,
Speaker 1: and before I get to them going to I'm going
Speaker 1: to do something here that's really a Hopefully we'll chap chap,
Speaker 1: the ass of hard left and hard right equally, and
Speaker 1: that is going to be a defense of both siderisms.
Speaker 1: I'll get to that in a minute on this front.
Speaker 1: But look, I do think that you're gonna I do
Speaker 1: think you're gonna see both parties divide loosely between the
Speaker 1: peacemakers and the agitators on the right. I think the
Speaker 1: agitators are in charge, right, that's President Trump and Stephen Miller.
Speaker 1: I think many there are many in his orbit that
Speaker 1: want revenge retribution in some form, and do view this
Speaker 1: as some sort of ideological movement to be destroyed or eliminated,
Speaker 1: which is not American right, and which is only going
Speaker 1: to serve to radicalize radically. You know, each side keeps
Speaker 1: using something the other side does to radical to defend
Speaker 1: their radicalism. I promise you, behaving that way is not
Speaker 1: going to bring peace. If anything, it is going to
Speaker 1: bring more division, and it's going to only divide and
Speaker 1: and and I think frankly, there are political actors who
Speaker 1: are going to see this as a feature, not a bug.
Speaker 1: It's going to divide the left and divide the middle
Speaker 1: in ways that should just allow the right to keep
Speaker 1: power because I think the Democrats are also going to
Speaker 1: be split between what I would call essentially your peacemakers
Speaker 1: and your agitators, and it is I don't see, you know,
Speaker 1: the correct end of this story is Spencer Cox becomes
Speaker 1: president in the moment that we need in this moment,
Speaker 1: But I I don't know if where we are in
Speaker 1: three years. I certainly don't think the party that he
Speaker 1: belongs to wouldver nominate him, and I'm not sure the
Speaker 1: part of the Democratic Party whatever nominate him. He's quite
Speaker 1: he's pretty conservative ideologically, but he's moderate in temperament, right,
Speaker 1: and that's something that we've been missing, his moderate temperament
Speaker 1: in our political leadership. I think Joe Biden was elected
Speaker 1: because many people thought he was going to be moderate
Speaker 1: and temperament and he was. We don't know what he
Speaker 1: was because he never really was an active president, right.
Speaker 1: That was the problem. He wasn't really out there and
Speaker 1: he governed. He didn't governed. He didn't govern as if
Speaker 1: the country was a divided nation that needed to heal,
Speaker 1: which is what he said he was going to govern.
Speaker 1: He instead governed pretty pretty progressively. He governed basically, he
Speaker 1: governed for his base, just like Donald Trump is doing
Speaker 1: governing for his base, making the middle uncomfortable, making the
Speaker 1: moderates in his party uncomfortable. But there's you know, that's
Speaker 1: our politics is controlled right now by the two political bases,
Speaker 1: and they have a lion's share of the media mouthpieces,
Speaker 1: and they will use use the algorithms to punish anybody
Speaker 1: that's daring to preach some form of moderation of any form,
Speaker 1: whether temperamental moderation or policy moderation. So I do expect that,
Speaker 1: and it's likely that you'll see I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm not sure this is the correct, the perfect
Speaker 1: this is not the perfect analogy, but I do think,
Speaker 1: you know, after the death of George Floyd, there was
Speaker 1: a bit of a sort of collective breath we all
Speaker 1: took together, and then it quickly quickly polarized. Right, things
Speaker 1: quickly divided. This the division we didn't even really have
Speaker 1: a moment of coming together on this. After Kirk, we've
Speaker 1: sort of divided pretty fast. I don't think it should
Speaker 1: matter what more we learn about the gunman, right, I
Speaker 1: think we know enough. We know enough that it's pretty
Speaker 1: clear to me that anybody that chooses to shoot somebody
Speaker 1: has been radicalized, and it's pretty clear where all the
Speaker 1: radicalization comes from. It comes from our online discourse, does
Speaker 1: not come from our face to face discourse, but it
Speaker 1: comes from us. It comes from our political discourse. So
Speaker 1: our political discourse radicalized this person, and that's what happened.
Speaker 1: I know others are going to be looking, you know,
Speaker 1: to scapegoat the trans community here. That's only going to
Speaker 1: make things worse to try to go down that road.
Speaker 1: But I think we all know that's where that's where
Speaker 1: many might be headed on the right, and that's likely
Speaker 1: to be met with its own set of resistance and
Speaker 1: its own in a in a way that that is,
Speaker 1: you know, likely that we will spiral downward further. Rather
Speaker 1: than trying to figure out how we how we can
Speaker 1: stitch this back together. I think the place to start
Speaker 1: is obvious. It's big tech. It's the algorithms. It's how
Speaker 1: we share information. It's not just how politicians talk, it's
Speaker 1: how the language is shared, it's how it's what's surfaced,
Speaker 1: it's what's it's it's the whole thing, and it's pretty
Speaker 1: it's pretty hard to fix. I've been thinking about this
Speaker 1: all weekend, and it's much as I feel pretty convinced
Speaker 1: that I know this is the core problem that this
Speaker 1: really is. It's this good luck fixing it, especially when
Speaker 1: there are people who have gotten political power based on it.
Speaker 1: And that's why I think this is a you know,
Speaker 1: until the voters. Ultimately, it's us that have to decide
Speaker 1: we want a different path. We have to decide that
Speaker 1: we want that we're going to take the politics of
Speaker 1: unity over that we're we're going to We're going to
Speaker 1: take a breath from our own ideology for a two
Speaker 1: year or four year period simply to bring peace and
Speaker 1: to try to to try to you know, I've said
Speaker 1: we America needs a pastor for patriotism twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: I thought that person might be Bill mcgraven. Twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: It looks like the pastor for patriotism might be Spencer Cox.
Speaker 1: But he can only succeed if we want to listen.
Speaker 1: One of the ways to solve our information ecosystem issue
Speaker 1: is that we've got to we've actually got a We
Speaker 1: do need to have a media that finds a way
Speaker 1: two makes room for multiple ideologies and multiple sides of
Speaker 1: a conversation. You know, we we've we've gotten this shorthand
Speaker 1: that the left and the right likes to use both siderisms. Right,
Speaker 1: it's a little bit more of a criticism from the
Speaker 1: left than it is from the right. But what it
Speaker 1: really is it's when when you know, nobody from the
Speaker 1: middle ever uses both siderisms, it's usually an ideologue and
Speaker 1: a and a hard partisan on the left or right
Speaker 1: that does because they want to disavow an argument. No,
Speaker 1: that's right, that's wrong, And they've accused people in mainstream
Speaker 1: journalism or in what some of us call it independent journalism,
Speaker 1: however you want to describe it, that somehow it you're
Speaker 1: equating it, and it's like, no, what you're trying to
Speaker 1: do is bring everybody into the same room so that
Speaker 1: everybody faces similar accountability tests. And I happen to be
Speaker 1: somebody who believes that if you present here's what one
Speaker 1: side is saying, here's what the other side is saying,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to treat you like an idiot. I'm
Speaker 1: going to do my best to test both theories of
Speaker 1: the case and let you come to your conclusion of
Speaker 1: which path might be better. And so if you don't
Speaker 1: take a competing perspective seriously in your news coverage. If
Speaker 1: you claim that you were doing journalism, you're not going
Speaker 1: to be seen as an independent referee number one, and
Speaker 1: you're going to be missing out on interesting arguments and
Speaker 1: better ways perhaps to defend your beliefs. Journalism's credibility, doesn't,
Speaker 1: you know, come from pleasing one side. It comes from
Speaker 1: proving fairness, proving that you will give every actor every
Speaker 1: chance to be heard, even when their arguments are weak,
Speaker 1: because in some ways that's the best way to expose
Speaker 1: a weak argument. How often you, oh, they have nothing
Speaker 1: to say. But if you don't give them a chance,
Speaker 1: then people retreat to their corners and retreat to their corners,
Speaker 1: and everybody retreats to their corners. And when they think
Speaker 1: they're not getting a fair shot in either way, then
Speaker 1: everybody says, forget it, And I'm just going to to
Speaker 1: preach to the my choir, and I don't even want
Speaker 1: to tune in to listen to your other choir. But
Speaker 1: here's why presenting, if you can be a place that
Speaker 1: can get people from all sides to participate, it actually
Speaker 1: forces more accountability, and it forces more collective accountability. If
Speaker 1: you have politicians, corporations, activists, and institutions all having to
Speaker 1: go to the same places to talk and to make
Speaker 1: their case. Then we'll have shared reality, we'll have shared debate.
Speaker 1: This lack of a shared reality, this lack of shared debate,
Speaker 1: and you know what, a both sides framing actually ensures
Speaker 1: that no one escapes scrutiny, even those aligned with what
Speaker 1: you may personally believe. True accountability means discomfort, and that
Speaker 1: means you should be a little uncomfortable having to defend yourself.
Speaker 1: But if your ideas are sound, then you'll get more
Speaker 1: comfortable doing And in a pluralistic democracy, which is what
Speaker 1: we claim to be, multiple perspectives have to be able
Speaker 1: to coexist. And if we try to create a situation
Speaker 1: where we're going to get rid of an ideology because
Speaker 1: we don't like it, you this radical ideology over here,
Speaker 1: radical ideology over there. Do you think you can just
Speaker 1: get rid of it, You'll end up perhaps giving more
Speaker 1: attention to it and having it untested at the same time.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's no better way to showcase America than
Speaker 1: when you have people who disagree with each other appearing together.
Speaker 1: That's something we don't see as often as we used to.
Speaker 1: It was a staple of political talk shows of the
Speaker 1: eighties and nineties, and for about eighteen months after nine
Speaker 1: eleven that has completely and utterly disappeared. And do realize
Speaker 1: that if you hate our information ecosystem, it's because we
Speaker 1: don't have any both sides vehicles anymore in the mainstream.
Speaker 1: We have outrage media, and outrage media thrives on one
Speaker 1: sided coverage because it deepens audience loyalty, pure and simple, right,
Speaker 1: Megan Kelly podsave America. They have a loyal audience. They
Speaker 1: cannot ever veer from that too often. Every once in
Speaker 1: a while they can tell their audience what an uncomfortable truth,
Speaker 1: But if they do it too often, they'd lose their audience.
Speaker 1: If you're an activist and you're you're and you're organizing
Speaker 1: for a policeitical party, maybe you can rationalize that, but
Speaker 1: it's not journalism. And if you're doing both ciderisms right,
Speaker 1: it means you're listening to all sides and then you
Speaker 1: test the claims against actual evidence. Now, look, there's lazy
Speaker 1: both sides isms right when reporters just lazily equate facts
Speaker 1: with opinion. Sciences say climate change is real, critics disagree.
Speaker 1: That's that's stupid. Both ciderisms. What you do is you
Speaker 1: lay out the arguments. Here's what climate scientists are saying.
Speaker 1: Here's are those who think that this is they're making
Speaker 1: an argument that says that climate science is overreacting. And
Speaker 1: here's why. The question is what are we going to
Speaker 1: do about it? But I'll tell you this, it's and
Speaker 1: moments of this huge political division that I missed the
Speaker 1: times when we had where both were people that regardless
Speaker 1: of the side of the aye you're on, you felt
Speaker 1: like you were welcome pretty much in any political talk show,
Speaker 1: in any political green room. And I don't think anybody
Speaker 1: thinks that right now. I promise you this. I'd like
Speaker 1: to think. I am we are trying here to make
Speaker 1: this a home for that. I'm not going to sit
Speaker 1: here and round the edges for you. You know, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: speak truth to power in my own head, meaning what
Speaker 1: I believe. But I also I'm a I'm a stubborn incrementalist,
Speaker 1: and I'm fully aware that we're three hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: million people with three hundred and fifty million different opinions,
Speaker 1: and you've got or if you want everybody rowing in
Speaker 1: the same direction, you've got to do baby, steps, and
Speaker 1: you've got to be talking to each other, not past
Speaker 1: each other. All right, I lecture over. I know I
Speaker 1: went long. I didn't think I had more to say,
Speaker 1: but yes, I just defended what some of you call
Speaker 1: both siders journalism, and what I call is is creating
Speaker 1: a vehicle so that everybody is in the same room
Speaker 1: trying to make their case, and a good journalist is
Speaker 1: there simply to test the premise of the cases that
Speaker 1: they are making. And when we come back my history
Speaker 1: lesson from seventeen ninety six, well, I hope you enjoyed
Speaker 1: that conversation with my friend Frank lavin See and I
Speaker 1: even threw in a question about last week's history lesson
Speaker 1: about Ford's pardon, and it actually, you know, his answer
Speaker 1: about that about now Jimmy Carter was a cleansing that
Speaker 1: country wanted, regardless of whether Ford had shown less contrition
Speaker 1: towards nexton, which I thought was interesting because it did
Speaker 1: make me think about the moment we're in, right and
Speaker 1: if we're looking to cleanse ourselves right from this toxic
Speaker 1: political debate that is just dragging our country down from
Speaker 1: its pedestal. Is sort of you know, if there were
Speaker 1: ap college football rankings about countries. I think we'd still
Speaker 1: be the number one country in the world, but my goodness,
Speaker 1: we wouldn't have as many first place votes as we
Speaker 1: used to have. And it's because of our internal strife.
Speaker 1: Right that is our biggest impediment in this country from
Speaker 1: us doing better things, greater things, helping us advance this
Speaker 1: planet is literally our division is our political division on
Speaker 1: this front. So September nineteenth, seventeen ninety six, the Philadelphia
Speaker 1: Daily American Advertisers printed George Washington's farewell address. So, yes,
Speaker 1: that is the history lesson today. It's the George Washington
Speaker 1: farewell address, arguably one of are technically our only non
Speaker 1: partisan president. Right, He was not a member of any
Speaker 1: political party. In fact, he used this farewell address to
Speaker 1: warn against political parties. I guess I would argue that
Speaker 1: if the closest thing we had to an independent president,
Speaker 1: since George Washington is probably Dwight Eisenhower, and they both
Speaker 1: shared a title before they became an't didn't they essentially
Speaker 1: general of our armed forces? Right? So perhaps perhaps there's
Speaker 1: a pattern here, right' It's you know, these are two
Speaker 1: men who ultimately only had to see everybody as Americans first,
Speaker 1: not as Democrats or Republicans than Americans. Right, Democratic Americans,
Speaker 1: Republican Americans, no Americans. So a few things about his
Speaker 1: farewell address, a few little history nuggets. By the way,
Speaker 1: the US Senate on Washington's birthday, it still has a
Speaker 1: senator read Washington's farewell address, and it's written in some
Speaker 1: older English, meaning doesn't necessarily translate as easily today. So
Speaker 1: while I will give you a few quotes, I will
Speaker 1: give you a more modern interpretation of said quote. So
Speaker 1: there's a few themes you should know about his farewell address. Right.
Speaker 1: One of the number one thing he was preaching was
Speaker 1: unity above all else. In fact, it was the central
Speaker 1: warning that Washington made in his address is that America's
Speaker 1: strength depends on national unity. He feared factions, especially factions
Speaker 1: built on geography. At the time, it was North versus South,
Speaker 1: or identity. We were having new Americans come over with
Speaker 1: part of Europe where you from, etc. He feared that
Speaker 1: was going to tear the Republic apart. This is in
Speaker 1: seventeen ninety six, today's culture war politics. Our red blue
Speaker 1: state divides right, our regional polarization, the kind of echo
Speaker 1: that concern and then some right. His prescription was, Americans
Speaker 1: must see themselves as Americans first, not America first, but
Speaker 1: as Americans first, not as members of warring camps. So
Speaker 1: he wrote, the unity of government, which constitutes you one people,
Speaker 1: is also now dear to you. It is a main
Speaker 1: pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support
Speaker 1: of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad, of your safety,
Speaker 1: of your prosperity, of that very liberty which you so
Speaker 1: highly prize. Indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every
Speaker 1: attempt to alienate any portion of our country, from the
Speaker 1: rest or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link
Speaker 1: together the various parts. Please don't fragment the country. Please
Speaker 1: don't factionalize us. You see where he was going. He
Speaker 1: also gave a warning he had issued on the dangers
Speaker 1: of partisanship. He called the spirit of party democracy's worst enemy,
Speaker 1: predicting that it would lead to cycles of revenge, government paralysis,
Speaker 1: foreign manipulation, and eventually despotism. Is this familiar the dysfunction
Speaker 1: of modern US politics, The weaponization of investigations, tit for tat, impeachments,
Speaker 1: shut down brinksmanship. Once again, our founding father pretty prescient
Speaker 1: on this one. His advice was to discourage and restrain partisanship.
Speaker 1: Talk about a warning that was unheeded. Let me read
Speaker 1: you a quote here. I have already intimated to you
Speaker 1: the danger of parties in the state, with particular reference
Speaker 1: to the founding of them on geographical discriminations, i e.
Speaker 1: North versus South. Let me now warn you, in the
Speaker 1: most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit
Speaker 1: of party. Generally, the alternate domination of one faction over another,
Speaker 1: sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension,
Speaker 1: is itself a frightful despotism, And essentially the end state
Speaker 1: of partisanship gets you further, much closer to authoritarianism than
Speaker 1: your realize it. I mean, he continues, It serves always
Speaker 1: to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration.
Speaker 1: It agitates the community with ill founded jealousies and false alarms,
Speaker 1: kindles the animosity of one part against another, and opens
Speaker 1: the door to foreign influence and corruption. He didn't even
Speaker 1: know about the algorithms yet in seventeen ninety six, and
Speaker 1: he knew that foreign actors would be using bots or
Speaker 1: TikTok or something else to stir a vision in this
Speaker 1: country to weaken us. Washington knew then. He also called
Speaker 1: for respecting our institutions. Washington insisted that respect for the constitution, laws,
Speaker 1: and the separation of powers was the bedrock of liberty.
Speaker 1: Here's what he wrote. Respect for its authority, compliance with
Speaker 1: its laws, acquiescence in its measures are duties enjoined by
Speaker 1: the fundamental maxims of true liberty. The basis of our
Speaker 1: political systems is the right of the people to make
Speaker 1: and to alter their constitutions of government. But the Constitution,
Speaker 1: which at any time exists, is sacredly obligatory upon all
Speaker 1: follow the Constitution. And when you're doing something unconstitutional, that
Speaker 1: is un American, and it is against the rest of us.
Speaker 1: By the way, he also called for fiscal responsibility. He
Speaker 1: stressed that public credit was a national treasure, urging Americans
Speaker 1: to avoid excessive debt, to accept the taxes are necessary,
Speaker 1: and to think of posterity in an era of ballooning
Speaker 1: deficits of polarized tax debates. Wow, Washington's sober call for
Speaker 1: balancing prudence with preparation is a reminder of the stakes.
Speaker 1: Here's what he wrote as a very important source of
Speaker 1: strength and security. Chairish public credit. One method of preserving
Speaker 1: it is to use it as sparingly as possible, avoiding,
Speaker 1: likewise the accumulation of debt, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity
Speaker 1: the burthen with which ourselves ought to bear. Don't pass
Speaker 1: the debt down to me or to my kids or
Speaker 1: to their group kids. Is also some hat tips to
Speaker 1: morality and knowledge. He said, of all the dispositions and
Speaker 1: habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are
Speaker 1: indispensable supports. The mere politician, equally with the pious man,
Speaker 1: ought to respect and to cherish them. Virtue or morality
Speaker 1: is a necessary spring of popular government. Now, some people
Speaker 1: will say this that this means it has to be
Speaker 1: a specific religious or a specific set of morals. We
Speaker 1: are a country that was founded on a freedom of religion,
Speaker 1: which also means a freedom not to be religious. But
Speaker 1: it didn't mean we didn't want to have moral men
Speaker 1: and women serving in this country, and that morality and
Speaker 1: I do fear that we have lost some way. I mean,
Speaker 1: we have got to figure out how to how to
Speaker 1: And again this gets it to my quote from Milton
Speaker 1: Friedman in the first part of my monologue today, which
Speaker 1: is we need better incentives if you want people to
Speaker 1: behave with some sense of good morality when they're in office.
Speaker 1: On foreign policy, many of you know this one. He
Speaker 1: warned against entangling alliances. This is probably the biggest takeaway
Speaker 1: he said. Washington's most famous foreign policy warning was to
Speaker 1: avoid permanent alliances. Here's what he wrote. Observe good faith
Speaker 1: and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all.
Speaker 1: Nothing is more essential than that permanent inveterate antipathies against
Speaker 1: particular nations and passionate attachments for others should be excluded.
Speaker 1: Don't get fall in love with one nation, Don't let
Speaker 1: hatred of another lead you down a stupid policy path.
Speaker 1: The great rule of conduct for us in regard to
Speaker 1: foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have
Speaker 1: with them as little political connection as possible. It is
Speaker 1: our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with
Speaker 1: any portion of the foreign world. Well, we've gone back
Speaker 1: and forth right on this one. I think that there's
Speaker 1: we had a pretty good eighty year run when we
Speaker 1: had a like minded view with other democracy loving nations.
Speaker 1: Forming NATO. So I wonder what Washington would think of
Speaker 1: NATO and whether he would still disagree with it. So
Speaker 1: that's an interesting I think that's a that's an interesting
Speaker 1: thing that we would love to find out. What would
Speaker 1: Washington have thought of NATO? Now he would have to
Speaker 1: then know that washing that America was the most powerful
Speaker 1: country on earth, and of course when he died, it
Speaker 1: was still the country. The most powerful country was not
Speaker 1: US at that time. It was the country that we
Speaker 1: revolted against. But anyway, there's your history lesson today. I
Speaker 1: think the Washington Farewell address, his warning about parties, his
Speaker 1: concern about factionalism, his concern about what happens when unity
Speaker 1: is lost. Boy, I found it to be an elixir
Speaker 1: when I was doing it again. This is you know,
Speaker 1: in case you're wondering, I look up, I go through
Speaker 1: all sorts of different there's all these different history websites
Speaker 1: that have put together this day in history, this week
Speaker 1: in history, and all this stuff. So I do it
Speaker 1: for this specific window. And let's just say. You know,
Speaker 1: when you see it, you're like, aha, the timing is perfect.
Speaker 1: All right. Let me squeeze in a few questions here,
Speaker 1: because I know I've gone long today and then right
Speaker 1: at the end, I'll give you my few quick thoughts
Speaker 1: on college football. But here we go, ask Chuck. This
Speaker 1: one comes from j R. Khondur It Kundert from South Carolina.
Speaker 1: He says, he's originally from Iowa. Go Hawks. We don't
Speaker 1: need to talk about it. Oh interesting, he says. Hi, Chuck,
Speaker 1: big fan of the podcast, and I appreciate how you
Speaker 1: continue to champion thoughtful, fact based journalism. I'd love to
Speaker 1: hear your take on a potential James tollerik Jeff Jackson
Speaker 1: ticket for president in twenty twenty eight. I know where
Speaker 1: you're going there. James tallerco's Jeff Jackson's the ag now
Speaker 1: in North Carolina. James Tyler Rico is running for the
Speaker 1: US Senate. I'll get to that in a minute. And Jr.
Speaker 1: Continues to me, both of these guys are explainers in
Speaker 1: the vein of Clinton and Obama, Smart, clear communicators who
Speaker 1: connect with people. You often mentioned how Democrats have largely
Speaker 1: abandoned Texas, but wouldn't this be a unique opportunity to
Speaker 1: rebuild grassroots momentum there? And with Jackson coming from North Carolina,
Speaker 1: a state you've identified as critical to reaching two seventy.
Speaker 1: It seems like a strategically interesting pairing. Thanks for all
Speaker 1: you do. Look, it's an interesting thought there. I know
Speaker 1: that Jeff Jackson built quite the following on TikTok when
Speaker 1: he was a member of Congress. I think he's cut
Speaker 1: that back a little bit now that he's a law
Speaker 1: enforcement officer, the chief law enforcement officer in North Carolina. Look, Tall,
Speaker 1: Rico's fascinating to me in particular, And I don't disagree
Speaker 1: with you on Jeff Jackson. And in fact, I I
Speaker 1: admire that he's I admire that Jeff Jackson isn't in
Speaker 1: a hurry that you know, he he definitely seems to
Speaker 1: be a pretty gifted communicator, and he is, you know,
Speaker 1: one step at a time. There was he didn't want
Speaker 1: to get into a big primary fight with Roy Cooper
Speaker 1: or you know, okay, you run for the Senate, I'll
Speaker 1: run for a G. He didn't want to get in
Speaker 1: a big primary fight for governor. The ag ran for governor.
Speaker 1: He ran for a G. So I admire that he
Speaker 1: is sort of like you know, sees it as a
Speaker 1: I'm not just going to race to try to you know,
Speaker 1: everybody's got ambition In politics, ambition is a good thing mostly,
Speaker 1: not a bad thing. You have too much ambition to
Speaker 1: the point of where you don't do your job right,
Speaker 1: that's when ambition becomes a bad thing. So I definitely
Speaker 1: think that that Jeff Jackson is is definitely in the
Speaker 1: in the a star pitch if this were baseball, a
Speaker 1: star pitcher in double and triple that you're very interested
Speaker 1: to see what happens when they come up to majors.
Speaker 1: Question is what do you view as the majors running
Speaker 1: for president, running for governor, etc. Ezra tell Errico, I
Speaker 1: would be a bit more intrigued with his candidacy in
Speaker 1: Texas if you were running for governor in that Senate.
Speaker 1: And I'm of a couple of minds here on this look.
Speaker 1: I do think it goes to what I said earlier, right,
Speaker 1: I think we need a pastor for patriotism. In fact,
Speaker 1: I think if we had, you know, i'd like I
Speaker 1: can tell you that you know, the meet the Press
Speaker 1: I would have done the day would have been James
Speaker 1: Langford and Ralphael Warnock, two pastors in the Senate, a
Speaker 1: Republican pastor and a Democratic pastor. But we kind of
Speaker 1: sort of need that mindset, right, who doesn't Immediately A
Speaker 1: pastor's instinct is to look for good in anybody that
Speaker 1: disagrees with them, right, is to look for good there.
Speaker 1: You know, it is sort of at least did good
Speaker 1: pastors do this? Right? You know, no pastor wants to
Speaker 1: shrink their flock. They want to expand their flock. And
Speaker 1: how do you expand your flock? You have an open mind,
Speaker 1: you have opened arms, et cetera. So I do think
Speaker 1: the mindset of a pastor in particular is something that
Speaker 1: are unhealthy. Culture could use a little bit of. I'm
Speaker 1: just don't know if he can win a center race
Speaker 1: in a red state, and I think it's easier to
Speaker 1: win a governor's race in a red state. One two.
Speaker 1: I think if you're looking to build a larger movement,
Speaker 1: you have more success. And if you're trying to speak
Speaker 1: to people in the middle, speak to independence and speak
Speaker 1: to moderates on the other side, you know, it is
Speaker 1: easier to talk to those moderates as a governor candidate
Speaker 1: than as a Senate candidate. We have so the Senate
Speaker 1: is so broken. It is as much as I wish
Speaker 1: senators could go there and all behave like Lisa Murkowski,
Speaker 1: you know, who's kind of a free agent, but she
Speaker 1: sort of has the political luxury of doing that because
Speaker 1: the right tried to get rid of her and they couldn't.
Speaker 1: So she's she's got this, She's she has her incentive structure,
Speaker 1: which is the center and center right of Alaska politics.
Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, the Senate is
Speaker 1: turned into the House. I mean, in fact, I've been
Speaker 1: think about the following right as we're doing these redistricting wars. Now,
Speaker 1: originally the House was elected by the people, and the Senate,
Speaker 1: the US Senate was senators were elected by state legislators.
Speaker 1: Well what if I told you that now our state
Speaker 1: legislatures are essentially electing the House, and it's the people
Speaker 1: that are left electing the Senate. It is sort of
Speaker 1: bass ackwards right from what the founders wanted on this front.
Speaker 1: But I do think because the Senate has become such
Speaker 1: a partisan body, and because they've the filibuster has been
Speaker 1: neutered already, right, sixty votes only now matters in a
Speaker 1: handful of cases, but the votes to confirm people and
Speaker 1: fifty votes to you know, you can sort of get
Speaker 1: out of the sixty vote trap by doing a budget reconciliation.
Speaker 1: You can now do that a couple times a year.
Speaker 1: And so the Senate itself doesn't lend itself to a
Speaker 1: to be persuasive anymore, doesn't lend itself to be a
Speaker 1: convener of to try to sort of be the cooling
Speaker 1: saucer of American politics. If anything, it is now the
Speaker 1: opposite of that. So I and I fear for Tallarico's
Speaker 1: sake if his goal is to become more viable as
Speaker 1: a national candidate, that the partisan nature of the Senate,
Speaker 1: partisan nature of Senate races, now partisan nature of Senate campaigns,
Speaker 1: will make that extraordinarily difficult, and that his he might
Speaker 1: have a hard time keeping the brand that he is
Speaker 1: so well established, we're running for governor might seem harder.
Speaker 1: Greg Abbott's got a boatload of money, but he's been
Speaker 1: there a long time, and he he just got what's
Speaker 1: Tallerico became national for fighting the governor, for going so partisan.
Speaker 1: So anyway, you gave me a chance to sort of
Speaker 1: I do I think he is. You know, when I
Speaker 1: look around, I put him in my top five of
Speaker 1: potential presidential candidates right now because he has that Jimmy
Speaker 1: Carter Pete Bootage's quality too, that both of him had
Speaker 1: Carter in the moment back then in seventy five and
Speaker 1: seventy six. Hey, I've not heard of this guy, but man,
Speaker 1: I just feel better listening to him than any of
Speaker 1: the other usual suspects that were running back then. That's
Speaker 1: how Pete Botage felt to many a Democratic voter in
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, You're like, Oh, that's
Speaker 1: refreshing younger, not sort of stuck in Washington speak and
Speaker 1: all this stuff. I think he's now got a harder time.
Speaker 1: It's it's tough to do that twice, right, you can't
Speaker 1: do it a second time when you've served four years
Speaker 1: in Washington as a cabinet secretary. But that's why I'm
Speaker 1: I'm constantly looking at these new voices. And the point
Speaker 1: is is that I think you picked two really interesting ones,
Speaker 1: and if either one of them ever became the standard
Speaker 1: better for the party, it would tell me that the
Speaker 1: peacemakers were winning the not the dividers. Next question comes
Speaker 1: from Bryaness. Hey, I'm an avid listener and have a
Speaker 1: question about your time hosting meet the press. I get
Speaker 1: frustrated when gets dodged tough questions and hosts let them
Speaker 1: pivots talking points. Both parties are skilled at avoiding direct answers,
Speaker 1: leaving viewers without the clarity they need. How can interviewers
Speaker 1: keep the focus on critical questions like deploying US troops
Speaker 1: and cities or accepting foreign gifts without losing control of
Speaker 1: the segment. So I think there's a simple way to
Speaker 1: do it, which is one guest for the hour or
Speaker 1: one guest for twenty minutes. I think when you, I
Speaker 1: think the flaw in all of the shows right now,
Speaker 1: and this was a look. This was something I went
Speaker 1: back and forth with. I wanted I want guests for
Speaker 1: thirty minutes and forty minutes. Most guests won't do it. Okay,
Speaker 1: you know you can get the president and the vice
Speaker 1: president to stick for twenty to thirty. You can get
Speaker 1: them to sit for thirty to forty. They accept that,
Speaker 1: especially if you have traveled to do the interview. But
Speaker 1: outside of them, you start to talk yourself, Well, does
Speaker 1: anybody really want to hear thirty minutes with Chris van
Speaker 1: Holland or does anybody want to hear thirty minutes with
Speaker 1: James Langford. Well, the problem is is that when you
Speaker 1: go down this road and everybody knows it's eight to
Speaker 1: ten minutes. What you just described is why I prefer
Speaker 1: this medium right now then than had what has developed
Speaker 1: these days as for interview segments on what's left of
Speaker 1: traditional media, because everybody's figured it out. I've equated it
Speaker 1: to baseball analytics. Everybody's got the same data. You know,
Speaker 1: the interviewer knows that they only have eight to ten minutes,
Speaker 1: so and they and you know, and maybe you want
Speaker 1: to get that guest back. So then you did where
Speaker 1: am I going to ask the tough question? Do I
Speaker 1: do the beginning? Do I do at the end? And
Speaker 1: then I got to ask these three questions. Maybe you
Speaker 1: promised in order to book them that you would ask
Speaker 1: about this one issue that they care about, and you're like, okay,
Speaker 1: I want to do that. Well, if you agree to
Speaker 1: thirty minutes, then then everybody's happy. So I just think
Speaker 1: the short interview it's advantage interview e, not interviewer. And
Speaker 1: if you want to get control of interviews back, you
Speaker 1: got to limit the number of guests you have during
Speaker 1: your hour and and do as you know, give each
Speaker 1: interview segment as long as you possibly can, because the
Speaker 1: longer you have somebody it is easy to bullshit you
Speaker 1: for five minutes, it gets harder and harder every minute
Speaker 1: after that. And so ultimately I think that the house
Speaker 1: the glory days of the Sunday shows, they all had
Speaker 1: one guest for twenty to thirty minutes, or you might
Speaker 1: have two guests on at the same time for thirty minutes,
Speaker 1: one D and one R. That was sort of kind
Speaker 1: of standard in the nineties, you know, and you can
Speaker 1: say attention span. And by the way, I'd have producers
Speaker 1: tell me, hey, look that interview went too long. Viewers
Speaker 1: started to get tired and leave, right, So I have
Speaker 1: met the problem, and it is us, but it is
Speaker 1: if that's that's the ultimately the issue. Everybody's figured out
Speaker 1: that they can fill either they're not going to be
Speaker 1: up there more than eight to ten minutes, so you
Speaker 1: can kind of fill a buster and kind of avoid it.
Speaker 1: And you know, the few times you know, when I
Speaker 1: have when i'd have you know, i'd go down the
Speaker 1: rabbit hole. I'd blow up a panel segment and it would,
Speaker 1: you know, and it would screw up the timing of
Speaker 1: the show, and you know, a lot of producers work
Speaker 1: really hard on these other segments, you know, So it
Speaker 1: is it is the tyranny of time. But you know,
Speaker 1: and you're trying to to put on a show that
Speaker 1: you're getting as many people as you as you can
Speaker 1: to watch it. But in this day and age where
Speaker 1: you can you know, I think I kind of I
Speaker 1: kind of think now I would do if I in
Speaker 1: a perfect world, you do four long interviews and then
Speaker 1: you may present the best ten minutes in a summary
Speaker 1: episode on that Sunday. But say, guess what, there are
Speaker 1: longer versions of these interviews available for everybody. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that that's a viable way to do it, but
Speaker 1: that would be the ideal way to do it, all right,
Speaker 1: Last question, because it gets me into college football. This
Speaker 1: comes from Chase c from Little Rock, Arkansas. Chuck is
Speaker 1: a lifelong arc Kans and Croud razorback fan here in
Speaker 1: Little Rock. I've always felt our state punches above its
Speaker 1: weight politically. From Bill Clinton and Mikakabi to our current
Speaker 1: governor Sarah Sanders, Arkansas keeps producing leaders who shaped national conversations. Yes,
Speaker 1: that is true, whether it's on education, agricultural cultural issues.
Speaker 1: From your perspective, what is it about Arkansas political culture
Speaker 1: that gives it such outsized influence and how do you
Speaker 1: see that playing out nationally in the years ahead? And
Speaker 1: for your sports page, with all the changes in college
Speaker 1: football from nil deals to conference realignment, is a time
Speaker 1: for Congress to step in and help reform the sport.
Speaker 1: Go Hogs love the show best regards. Well, look, I
Speaker 1: think that I think the the both Mike Huckabee and
Speaker 1: Sarah Huckaby Sanders in some ways. Oh Bill Clinton right there,
Speaker 1: thanks for making them national figures. Right he put Bill
Speaker 1: Clinton put Arkansas on the national map, and I think
Speaker 1: it didn't allow But but the fact is, even you know,
Speaker 1: before Bill Clinton, you did have it win Rockefeller. You
Speaker 1: know Rockefeller who was an elected official, Winthrop Rockefeller, I
Speaker 1: believe from from Arkansas, David Pryor and Mark Pryor. David
Speaker 1: Pryor was considered one of those Southern lions of the
Speaker 1: Senate sort of in that post Civil Rights era after
Speaker 1: the Civil Rights Actors passed on that. And then of
Speaker 1: course there's the Fulbright Program for J. William Fulbright and
Speaker 1: Arkansas senator who created the legislation that was about an
Speaker 1: international exchange program. So the fact is Arkansas has elected
Speaker 1: some pretty impressive senators over the years. But there's no
Speaker 1: doubt I think the Huckabee family has Bill Clinton to
Speaker 1: thank for making it a little more of a national state.
Speaker 1: As for the look, Congress is going to have to
Speaker 1: come in in some form or another, even if it's
Speaker 1: just to create an anti trust exemption, because I do
Speaker 1: think you're going to get collective bargaining. I do think
Speaker 1: that you're going to have the athletes in each conference,
Speaker 1: especially if the conferences can continue to cut their own
Speaker 1: media deals on their own, Well, how are the quote
Speaker 1: players going to get a piece of that media deal. Well,
Speaker 1: they're going to do it with collective bargaining. So then
Speaker 1: we're also going to have like the SEC Athletic Union,
Speaker 1: the ACC Athletic Union, right Player or Players Association, the
Speaker 1: Big Ten Players Association. You see where this is going.
Speaker 1: It's I still think this would all be better if
Speaker 1: it were done more collectively. Maybe you know there's a
Speaker 1: the big booster for Texas Tech Athletics has actually been
Speaker 1: paying for his own advertising. It's been popping up on
Speaker 1: some college football games. I've noticed where he wants to
Speaker 1: essentially update the nineteen sixty one Broadcasting Act, which is
Speaker 1: right now, is what prevents, for instance, the NFL from
Speaker 1: ever airing an AD after September, airing football games on
Speaker 1: Friday nights after September tenth. I think it is because
Speaker 1: from a period of time they cannot compete against high
Speaker 1: school football, and there's a bunch of windows where they
Speaker 1: cannot hold games on Saturdays until a certain date in December,
Speaker 1: and there's some other ways, and maybe updating that gives
Speaker 1: some creates a way, you know, I personally think that
Speaker 1: they ought to be negotiating their TV contracted collectively the
Speaker 1: entire FBS as one. I think everybody would make more money. Right,
Speaker 1: you could certainly stagger it and you know, get more
Speaker 1: money based on you know, size of budget or something
Speaker 1: like that. But I definitely think Congress is going to
Speaker 1: come in because where there's where I where I think
Speaker 1: you're going to see the most, you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: when the football programs in your Dakota's right that don't
Speaker 1: have any football teams in one of the two or
Speaker 1: three big conferences, those politicians are going to be, hey,
Speaker 1: we've got to save ours program. We've got to save
Speaker 1: our our our football around here, and I think that
Speaker 1: that's they end up being the trigger to sort of
Speaker 1: getting getting something happened. It can't really be done on
Speaker 1: the presidential level. There's not much. There's not much he
Speaker 1: can do. But for your hogs, you've got in the
Speaker 1: world of nil between Tyson's Chicken and Walmart. If your
Speaker 1: friends in Fayetteville can't find the cash to build some
Speaker 1: big time college athletics over there, it's on them, because
Speaker 1: I've seen all that Tyson and Walton money that floats
Speaker 1: around the northwest Arkansas these days. It is created and
Speaker 1: developed a wonderful, huge new metro area. So it's a
Speaker 1: pretty my guess, it's a pretty easy source of cash
Speaker 1: for Arkansas athletics. I think that's why our friend mister
Speaker 1: Calipari decided to go to Arkansas before he was kicked
Speaker 1: to the curb by our friends in Kentucky. All Right,
Speaker 1: what we learned this week in college football, Well, I
Speaker 1: was glad to see Miami as focused. I think Miami.
Speaker 1: Here's what I don't I don't know if South you know,
Speaker 1: this is always one of these tyranny. Here's a rhetorical
Speaker 1: question because I don't have the answer. If you beat
Speaker 1: a ranked team but that team isn't ranked at the
Speaker 1: end of the year, did you beat a ranked team?
Speaker 1: The point I'm making is, so South Florida beat Boise
Speaker 1: when they were ranked, and they beat Florida when they
Speaker 1: were ranked. Neither team is ranked now. Well, Florida may
Speaker 1: not ever be ranked unless they beat Miami next week.
Speaker 1: I'm going to that game. I sure as he hope
Speaker 1: they don't beat Miami next week, but they may not
Speaker 1: be ranked again. So did South Florida beat two ranked
Speaker 1: teams in a row or not? Right? And so this
Speaker 1: is I know it's a small thing, but we think
Speaker 1: we know who the good teams are, but we usually
Speaker 1: don't know until the end of the year. Is you
Speaker 1: know it's South Carolina a good football team or not?
Speaker 1: They were ranked in the top ten. They just got
Speaker 1: wiped out by Vanderbilt. And you could say, well, they
Speaker 1: lost their quarterback. They were losing that game with their quarterback.
Speaker 1: And what Vanderbilt did the Virginia Tech versus what South
Speaker 1: Carolina did to Virginia Tech on it's nine and day
Speaker 1: and Vanderbilt was unranked. Now that I don't ranked anymore. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I am mindful that we still don't know.
Speaker 1: You know, we think we know who's good. I'm impressed
Speaker 1: with the ap pole that they kept Notre Dame ranked. Now,
Speaker 1: if it were any other school, the Notre Dame bias
Speaker 1: may have kicked in, which allowed them to be the
Speaker 1: first zero to two team in like thirty years to
Speaker 1: be ranked still in the top twenty five. But if
Speaker 1: you believe the polls, the two games they've lost, they've
Speaker 1: lost two games by total of four points to one
Speaker 1: team ranked fourth and another team ranked ninth. I believe
Speaker 1: is where Texas A and M ended up, So, you know,
Speaker 1: or maybe it's ten but either way, but are we
Speaker 1: sure right now? It looks like Miami's legit. It looks
Speaker 1: like Notre Dame in Texas A and M are certainly
Speaker 1: not bad teams. They're pretty good teams. I don't know
Speaker 1: if Georgia and Tennessee are good or if those are
Speaker 1: two terrible defenses, because I also saw ten See give
Speaker 1: up a boatload of points up against a Syracuse team
Speaker 1: that I don't think is that good this year. So
Speaker 1: is it possible that both Tennessee and Georgia have great
Speaker 1: offenses and not so good defenses. By the way, it
Speaker 1: is striking to me that Kirby Smart doesn't have a
Speaker 1: great defense. I guess we're going to get another test
Speaker 1: in two weeks when he plays Alabama. So look, there
Speaker 1: wasn't other than exposing. I think what we learned this
Speaker 1: week is who's not who doesn't belong right. I think
Speaker 1: we know Clemson doesn't belong in the top tier this year.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of Clemson doubters that are that are
Speaker 1: feeling their oats right now. Those of us that enjoy
Speaker 1: Dabbo are enjoying this moment a little bit. Maybe I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna lie, but Dabo's on a warm seat, not
Speaker 1: a hot seat, but he's on a warm seat because
Speaker 1: he continues to sort of try to He believes his
Speaker 1: way is going to still be able to win, and
Speaker 1: this is a big bad start for him. As for
Speaker 1: Georgia Tech, we know they're good. The question is are
Speaker 1: they are top ten good? That we don't know yet.
Speaker 1: Let's just say, considering the Miami's had problems with Georgia Tech,
Speaker 1: I'm glad george Tech is not on our schedule this year.
Speaker 1: Although I have this vision Miami's twelve and zero going
Speaker 1: into the ACC title game and has to play Georgia Tech.
Speaker 1: Of course, if that's the case, maybe they rest their
Speaker 1: starters and claim they aren't really trying that hard. But
Speaker 1: we know Clemson's not there, we know South Carolina doesn't belong.
Speaker 1: I don't know where I'm at on Michigan yet. Oklahoma
Speaker 1: I expected to play a bit of a letdown game
Speaker 1: against Temple in Philadelphia, had a weird time start time,
Speaker 1: and they didn't show any letdown that impressed me. Let
Speaker 1: me see what they do against all But I'm starting
Speaker 1: to think that Oklahoma Texas is going to be is
Speaker 1: going to be extraordinarily meaningful, Like not since both teams
Speaker 1: were in the Big twelve has this game been that important?
Speaker 1: Perhaps onto where things go? I mean, put it this way,
Speaker 1: I don't think Texas could afford a second loss at
Speaker 1: this point. And let me just do a little bias
Speaker 1: commentary here. What's with the lack of interest in Carson
Speaker 1: beck is a Heisman candidate. It's interesting to me that
Speaker 1: people are still insisting Arch Manning is just look at
Speaker 1: the just do a blind taste test on that one.
Speaker 1: Do your blind test, and Carson Beck, arch Manning, do
Speaker 1: your blind test on Frankly, Carson Beck and anybody you
Speaker 1: want to put in there. He's not being talked about.
Speaker 1: He's sort of like in the he gets written up
Speaker 1: as others receiving votes, you know, like you know, we're
Speaker 1: not ignoring him. But anyway, I think the guy deserves
Speaker 1: a little more. But hey, in some ways, I don't
Speaker 1: want Miami's heads to get too big. I can't believe
Speaker 1: Game Day is going to Miami. It shows you how
Speaker 1: kind of weak the college football slate is. Next week,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to remember the last time Game Day went
Speaker 1: to a game where one of the two teams had
Speaker 1: a losing record. Because Florida's one and two playing Miami,
Speaker 1: but they're coming down to the U. Let's just say
Speaker 1: that there's a certain senior at the University of Miami
Speaker 1: that's related to me that is ecstatic. She's been hoping
Speaker 1: Game Day would come and out of for four years.
Speaker 1: She was bummed last year when they decided to go to.
Speaker 1: The only Miami game Day there was was the one
Speaker 1: in Berkeley when they went there for cal I was
Speaker 1: starting to think it was going to be Tallahassee, though,
Speaker 1: I think because of the way ESPN treated Florida State,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure they would be very welcome they went
Speaker 1: to Tallahassee, considering how ESPN was arguably the reason why
Speaker 1: Florida State got left out of the College Football Playoff
Speaker 1: despite being undefeated at the time of the selection process,
Speaker 1: So maybe they wouldn't be quite welcome for the Florida
Speaker 1: State Miami game, which is going to be in the
Speaker 1: first week of October, a natural potential place for game
Speaker 1: day to go if both teams are unfeeded. The only
Speaker 1: other game that would have competed with Miami in Florida
Speaker 1: is probably Indiana and Illinois, which just as a derivative
Speaker 1: of family from the Midwest. I love that Illinois and
Speaker 1: Indiana is a meaningful game. I've googled it. I'm sticking
Speaker 1: with signetti anyway. So there's my two or three cents
Speaker 1: in college football this week. I'm just relieved Miami has
Speaker 1: survived and advanced, because that's the beauty of college football.
Speaker 1: Every week. You don't get eliminated after one loss anymore,
Speaker 1: but every week there are some teams that are eliminated.
Speaker 1: And I do want to be careful saying Clemson's been eliminated.
Speaker 1: They can always backdoor their way in because they always
Speaker 1: figure out how to back door. They weigh in. But
Speaker 1: this doesn't look like uh, it just looks like a
Speaker 1: team that feels like they're going to continue to come
Speaker 1: up short. All right, with that, I will take a
Speaker 1: forty eight hour break. We will upload on Wednesday. With that,
Speaker 1: just remember you don't have to be angry. Being angry
Speaker 1: is a choice. Choose grace. See you in a couple
Speaker 1: days