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Speaker 1: Hello there, welcome to Thursday edition of the Chuck Toodcast.
Speaker 1: We have a fantastic episode for you. My big guest
Speaker 1: today is Fiona Hill. You may remember Fiona Hill from
Speaker 1: the very first Trump administration. She was on the National
Speaker 1: Security Staff with the portfolio of Russia. She is not
Speaker 1: somebody you would call trumpy. I think she was arguably
Speaker 1: brought in by the hr Holdeman team and she was
Speaker 1: sort of part of that part of that group of
Speaker 1: Trump staffers. In term one that was there to restrain Trump,
Speaker 1: if you will, I don't know if she would put
Speaker 1: it as starkly as I put it, but whether it's
Speaker 1: hr McMaster or you had John Kelly or even a
Speaker 1: Wright's prebus, and you know that there was a lot,
Speaker 1: particularly in the national security space, of making sure all
Speaker 1: the guardrails were there, and it was about keeping him
Speaker 1: from going too much off the reservation. Obviously, folks like
Speaker 1: Fienna Hill were not welcome back into a second Trump term.
Speaker 1: But Fiona Hill's expertise on Russia in particular is no
Speaker 1: less important these days, and so we have a great
Speaker 1: conversation about how Russia may view Iran at the moment,
Speaker 1: how they view this war, where's this headed, but most importantly,
Speaker 1: where are we headed post Trump? What's the world going
Speaker 1: to look like? What is geopolitical politics going to look like.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty healthy exchange. And if you've ever spent
Speaker 1: time reading or hearing from Fiona Hill, I think you
Speaker 1: will enjoy this conversation. We spend a lot of time
Speaker 1: in the war, it so in Iran and sort of
Speaker 1: the whether Trump fully appreciates what he has gotten himself into.
Speaker 1: And in fact, if you just look at the headlines
Speaker 1: in the last twenty four hours. You know, what is
Speaker 1: happening is exactly what people like Fiona Hill and others
Speaker 1: would have warned him about and probably did warn him
Speaker 1: about in the first term, and did warn him when
Speaker 1: he made the decision to go after Solomoni, and did
Speaker 1: warn him when he made the decision to bomb Iran
Speaker 1: the first time, of what could happen. The fact that
Speaker 1: you may get an asymmetrical response. Well, we're in that
Speaker 1: awkward phase of this war where militarily it's a huge success.
Speaker 1: There's no doubt the targets that we have chosen to bomb,
Speaker 1: we've been successful with it. So as a military operation,
Speaker 1: everything is going fairly well. But the problem is that
Speaker 1: the definition of victory for the Iranians now is simply surviving. Right,
Speaker 1: just like in some ways in Fiona Hill, well she
Speaker 1: makes this direct comparison. It's sort of similar to how
Speaker 1: Russia viewed Ukraine. They thought it would be quick and dirty,
Speaker 1: they thought it would be easy, and then it wasn't.
Speaker 1: And then suddenly, even though maybe tactically Russia can make
Speaker 1: more advances into Ukraine and they're acquiring territory here, the
Speaker 1: fact that the Ukrainians haven't folded is in itself a
Speaker 1: loss for the Russians. And when you make regime change
Speaker 1: the focal point, which the President did when he first
Speaker 1: began this effort, when he said the goal he hoped
Speaker 1: that Iranians would stand up and take their government back,
Speaker 1: wasn't as direct as what the Israelis want. The Israelis
Speaker 1: have made no secret about their goals in this war,
Speaker 1: and they actually have very clear goals in this war.
Speaker 1: It is to eradicate the threat of this Iranian regime
Speaker 1: that includes regime chains, and this is why they're trying
Speaker 1: to eradicate as blood and right. So whatever, you may
Speaker 1: disagree with some of Israel's tactics, but unlike the United States,
Speaker 1: they have a clear mission. They have a clear set
Speaker 1: of goals, and they're trying to execute a strategy in
Speaker 1: order to achieve those goals. Obviously, we do not have
Speaker 1: those same set of goals. What does that look like?
Speaker 1: And he is he has boxed himself in because the
Speaker 1: military success is not leading to a policy victory, right,
Speaker 1: and suddenly just the regime surviving is in and of
Speaker 1: itself a victory for the Iranian reas because they weren't
Speaker 1: knocked out. They weren't taken out by the big bad
Speaker 1: Satan of the United States. Right, So he's got an
Speaker 1: energy crisis on his hands. And then if he wants
Speaker 1: to leave and I spend some time with her, it's
Speaker 1: like okay, Fiona Hill. He's going to want to get out.
Speaker 1: He knows this thing is on. How does he do it?
Speaker 2: And it's not.
Speaker 1: Clear how easily he can get out. He can stop
Speaker 1: the bombing, he can stop participating, but it doesn't mean
Speaker 1: the straits of horn Moves are going to be open
Speaker 1: for business for shipping, whether that's for oil or for goods.
Speaker 1: And they're still going to be a tactical need by
Speaker 1: the US military to protect our allies and to protect
Speaker 1: and to keep the waters open there. So he is
Speaker 1: going to get dragged in. So the question is does
Speaker 1: he get tucked into ground troops. One would assume he wouldn't,
Speaker 1: but if he wants to achieve the goal of regime change,
Speaker 1: he would have no other choice. Does he just keep
Speaker 1: this up and hope that over time they just wear
Speaker 1: them down? That awfully costly, it's softly expensive. And then
Speaker 1: you get accidents like the US military targeting a girls'
Speaker 1: school rather than it was it was the wrong target.
Speaker 1: We are now admitting this. We'll see if the President
Speaker 1: puts his own face behind this. It's unlikely he tried
Speaker 1: to say it might have been the Iranians that did it,
Speaker 1: using us stolen US weapons to somehow blame America for this.
Speaker 1: It is pretty clear that we either had old information
Speaker 1: targeting the wrong thing, but we are accepting the blame
Speaker 1: for this. The question is what you know, how how
Speaker 1: do we behave? How does the president behave and actually
Speaker 1: put this information out or is it a typical Trump
Speaker 1: and he refuses to do it and makes egg Seth
Speaker 1: do it or makes General Kine do it, which is
Speaker 1: also a possibility. Few other headlines that you shouldn't miss
Speaker 1: in the war itself. ABC News is reporting that the
Speaker 1: FBI let California sheriffs and other law enforcement officials know
Speaker 1: of a potential threat of Iranian drone strikes from the
Speaker 1: Pacific Ocean targeting California towns that would be and this
Speaker 1: is the fear of this war is that it essentially
Speaker 1: goes asymmetrical or horizontal, where they try to make the
Speaker 1: cost of this very expensive bombing ports, putting minds in
Speaker 1: the straight of horn moves. There are sleepers, perhaps sleeper
Speaker 1: cells in western cities all over the world that get
Speaker 1: targeted with Iranian supported terrorist attacks. These are the concerns,
Speaker 1: and this is the metastasizing that's always been something that
Speaker 1: many a policy advisor to many a president who who
Speaker 1: is asked, Okay, what should we do here? Should we
Speaker 1: try to take out this regime has always been sort
Speaker 1: of pulled back by all of the potential fallout and
Speaker 1: how complicated.
Speaker 2: The fallout is.
Speaker 1: Unlike unlike Liberation Day, he can't just turn it off.
Speaker 1: And so it is we're we're He is in this.
Speaker 1: That's why I called it quicksand the other day. He's
Speaker 1: in quicksand now and it is hard to imagine how
Speaker 1: he's fully going to extricate himself from this without still
Speaker 1: doing a lot of damage to our alliances, leaving the
Speaker 1: Middle East in total shambles and screwing up the economy.
Speaker 1: Other than that, this is going really well. And again
Speaker 1: militarily it is, and it's and you know, I think
Speaker 1: there's a noble goal here. Getting rid of the scourge
Speaker 1: that is this Iranian regime would be good for the region,
Speaker 1: would be good for the Iranian people. But is this
Speaker 1: the best way to do it? And are we blowing
Speaker 1: our credibility to a point where this stuff's going to
Speaker 1: get harder down the road, not easier. So, and we
Speaker 1: also learned that the initial drone attack that killed those
Speaker 1: first service members that died, it's a pretty vicious attack.
Speaker 1: We've got seriously injured soldiers. This was a CBS News
Speaker 1: report that indicated this serious, seriously injured soldiers in that
Speaker 1: attack on an American installation in Kuwait. So the costs
Speaker 1: of this war are escalating and the actual cost of
Speaker 1: this war is going to be expensive, and it's going
Speaker 1: to be an extraordinarily tough vote in Congress that I
Speaker 1: can promise you. And Republicans already know this because they're
Speaker 1: thinking about doing a reconciliation bill, believe it or not. Right,
Speaker 1: they can't figure out an electioneer agenda. They can't agree
Speaker 1: on anything. They just had their House retreat where half
Speaker 1: the members didn't even show up. Right, this is a
Speaker 1: House republ look and majority that kind of knows it's
Speaker 1: over right. The rank and file look like they've already
Speaker 1: pulled ripcord. Half of them didn't show up. Now some
Speaker 1: of them are probably among that one hundred plus that
Speaker 1: didn't show up. A bunch of them are retiring, and
Speaker 1: a bunch of others are running for higher office and
Speaker 1: don't want to be associated with the House Republican brand
Speaker 1: at this point. But this is a demoralized majority. They
Speaker 1: don't know what to run on, and the war in
Speaker 1: Iran has now complicated this, and they're going to have
Speaker 1: to figure out how to fund this war, and it's
Speaker 1: possible the only way they could avoid a potential sixty
Speaker 1: vote threshold to fund this war in the Senate is
Speaker 1: to do this under the rules of reconciliation, which means
Speaker 1: no filibustering.
Speaker 2: Which means fifty votes.
Speaker 1: And the fact that they're already talking about that as
Speaker 1: a way to fund this war, in some ways, it's
Speaker 1: pretty self defeating. And they realize what a political loser
Speaker 1: this is, that the only choice they have is to
Speaker 1: make this a loyalty test for the President and that
Speaker 1: they're going to need him whipping the vote for this,
Speaker 1: and I think we know where that's going to come from.
Speaker 1: The other one other sort of extraneous war nugget that
Speaker 1: I wanted to get to is the boy this Pete
Speaker 1: hegseth Man.
Speaker 2: He is, he is.
Speaker 1: I'd say he's so thin skinned he has no skin left.
Speaker 1: Apparently they have now barred press photographers from the press
Speaker 1: briefing because they thought the photos that were circulating in
Speaker 1: the various syndication sites where people get photographs were unflattering
Speaker 1: to mister hag seth.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 1: This guy's got a lot of issues. I don't know
Speaker 1: if they're Freudian these issues, if there's something else, but
Speaker 1: you know, his he definitely that guy. You could put
Speaker 1: him on the couch and go a lot of different directions,
Speaker 1: but he clearly that the fact that he's the guy
Speaker 1: in charge of this war at the moment. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be honest, it's not very reassuring. You have somebody who's
Speaker 1: this thin skin, somebody who can't take any negative criticism
Speaker 1: at all, is supposed to be out there, you know,
Speaker 1: making the tough calls that are necessary when running a war.
Speaker 1: I mean talk about talk about not giving reassurance to
Speaker 1: the American people. This guy cannot give any real and
Speaker 1: his his overt his religiosity or I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's even real. It may be, it may be real, Right,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to question his faith, but to to
Speaker 1: insert it into the public square. The way he's doing
Speaker 1: it is it's not a unifying thing to do, and
Speaker 1: it certainly makes those that serve who are who don't
Speaker 1: share his faith and don't share his belief system really
Speaker 1: isolates them. And uh and and I think makes it
Speaker 1: that much harder to have a cohesive unit. So this is,
Speaker 1: you know, with a very serious war we're engaged in,
Speaker 1: and we have an completely unseerious and unprepared leader at
Speaker 1: the Defense Department. You know, look, he never should have
Speaker 1: been confirmed. A handful of Republican senators knew it, and
Speaker 1: they got They got extorted, basically. And when I say
Speaker 1: they got extorted, they got threatened, right, I think it's
Speaker 1: pretty clear Tilla Scott and Jonny Ernst were both threatened
Speaker 1: to points. And I think there's a reason neither one
Speaker 1: of them are running for reelection. And I think it
Speaker 1: has a lot to do with the confirmation fight over
Speaker 1: Haigsith because it was clear he was unqualified for this job.
Speaker 1: It was clear Jenny Earnst thought he was unqualified. It
Speaker 1: was clear Tom Tillis thought he was unqualified. They both
Speaker 1: ended up having to support this and they both decided
Speaker 1: not to seek reelection. That wasn't a coincidence, but we
Speaker 1: are now seeing why. And I'm sorry that they didn't
Speaker 1: have the guts then to stand up to what they
Speaker 1: knew it was wrong. They knew he was unqualified, and
Speaker 1: now we are paying the price for what happens. We
Speaker 1: have a very serious event here. Look, President made the decision.
Speaker 1: How we conduct ourselves, how we unwind from this. You
Speaker 1: need serious leadership with the Pentagon, and we do not
Speaker 1: have it at the moment. It's very disconcerting, and I
Speaker 1: think we this is one of those things where there's
Speaker 1: kind of a bipartisan consensus that that knows this. Yet
Speaker 1: we know you have to stay silent apparently if you're
Speaker 1: on the Republican side of aisle, and that that is
Speaker 1: a considering that life and death. These are somebody in
Speaker 1: charge of life and death decisions at the moment.
Speaker 2: I know if I was the parent of.
Speaker 1: A servant, an active duty service member right now, I'd
Speaker 1: be very very concerned about who is calling the shots here.
Speaker 1: All right, I want to move. I want to spend
Speaker 1: a little bit of time. This is a this is
Speaker 1: a request actually from from a few folks close to me,
Speaker 1: who I think there hasn't been a good explanation for
Speaker 1: what's this, This fight over the so called the Save Act,
Speaker 1: which is the Republican version of trying to deal with
Speaker 1: election integrity, and we had a Democratic version of this
Speaker 1: that was known as HR one back in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: and I thought it would be important to explain the
Speaker 1: actual details and explain the philosophical debate that is actually
Speaker 1: taking place between the two parties, and then the sort
Speaker 1: of demagoguery aspect of this that Trump is inserted in
Speaker 1: that is blowing this whole thing up. And of course
Speaker 1: the irony is that the fight over this, the polarization
Speaker 1: and the partisan weaponization of this bill, could lead Republicans
Speaker 1: in the Senate to get rid of the filibuster. Now
Speaker 1: I'm skeptical, but now, John Cornyn, I mean, here's a reminder.
Speaker 1: When you're desperate to win reelection, your principles are the
Speaker 1: first thing that go out the door. Apparently he is
Speaker 1: somebody that has been a fierce defender of the filibuster
Speaker 1: until it was got in the way of his need
Speaker 1: to get Donald Trump to endorse his runoff candidacy in Texas.
Speaker 1: And now he's flipped and he is willing to get
Speaker 1: rid of the filibuster if it is used to pass
Speaker 1: the so called Save Act. So maybe this is real.
Speaker 1: Maybe this is on the table. I'm skeptical the Republicans
Speaker 1: have the votes to kill the filibuster. I don't think
Speaker 1: they do. I think, you know, we know the least
Speaker 1: trumpy constituency left in the Republican Party are Senate Republicans.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't believe Mike Grounds will do this. Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't believe Tom Tillis is going to do this.
Speaker 1: I don't believe Bill Cassidy is going to do this,
Speaker 1: of course, but I would have said two days ago,
Speaker 1: I didn't believe John Cornyn was going to do this.
Speaker 1: But you know, everything is for sale in this version,
Speaker 1: in Donald Trump's version of the Republican Party, including integrity
Speaker 1: and principles. So thought I thought I would instead, let's
Speaker 1: lay out sort of the larger debate here over elect
Speaker 1: integrity and what are the true north stars of both parties.
Speaker 1: So the primary goal, right, I think this is an
Speaker 1: easy way to explain it. The primary goal of HR
Speaker 1: one Right for the People back in twenty twenty one
Speaker 1: was expansion and access. Essentially, they wanted to federalize standards
Speaker 1: to make voting easier. The primary goal of the Save
Speaker 1: America Act is security and verification. They want to federalized
Speaker 1: standards to make voter registration stricter. The Democrats and HR
Speaker 1: one wanted automatic voter registration right, they wanted to move
Speaker 1: the burden to the government to register you via the DMV.
Speaker 1: With the Republicans, they go the opposite way, and they
Speaker 1: wanted proof of citizenship and they are moving the burden
Speaker 1: to the voter to provide physical proof of citizenship in
Speaker 1: order to get to vote. When it comes to the
Speaker 1: voter rolls. HR one wanted to protect purging to prevent
Speaker 1: voters from being removed, whilst the Save Act wants to
Speaker 1: mandate frequent purges using DHS citizenship databases.
Speaker 2: To do this.
Speaker 1: Then, of course there's the issue of mail voting. Mandatory
Speaker 1: access required. The HR one was going to require states
Speaker 1: to offer that you had to offer no excuse mail
Speaker 1: in ballot options. They didn't say how many dates or
Speaker 1: whatever it was, but you know, whether it's a week,
Speaker 1: two weeks, etc. What the Save Act would do in
Speaker 1: its current form, it would seek to end universal mail
Speaker 1: in voting, and of course Trump wants to even put
Speaker 1: more curbs on that, which that version of it would
Speaker 1: have to pass one more time in the House because
Speaker 1: that wasn't in this version. So let's dig in deeper
Speaker 1: in here into the Save Act. There's a significant gap
Speaker 1: between the bill that cleared the House and the version
Speaker 1: that President Trump has been championing on the bully pulpit
Speaker 1: over the last couple of days. Here's what the actually
Speaker 1: passed the House. The core of it is the documentary
Speaker 1: proof of citizenship. So to register to vote in this
Speaker 1: bill that passed the House, you need a passport, a
Speaker 1: birth certificate, or a so called real ID that specifically
Speaker 1: denotes citizenship on the ID. And it also requires states
Speaker 1: to submit voter rolls to the Department of Homeland Security
Speaker 1: for quote unquote scrubbing. Now, what Trump is advocating, he
Speaker 1: actually is up the Annie. He said he's not going
Speaker 1: to sign any major spending bills unless this Save Act
Speaker 1: is gold plate it. So he wants the following additions
Speaker 1: that were not in the original House text. He wants
Speaker 1: a total ban on mail in ballots except for military
Speaker 1: and disability. He wants a one day, one vote manday.
Speaker 1: He wants all voting on one day, and then he's
Speaker 1: got some unrelated culture war writers that he throws in
Speaker 1: their bands on transgender participation in sports.
Speaker 2: Things like that.
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Speaker 1: let's talk about the reality of the Senate. The bill
Speaker 1: is currently stalled in the Senate, and this is the
Speaker 1: bill without those extra gold plated editions that Trump wants advocated.
Speaker 1: It needs sixty votes to overcome a filibuster, and Republicans
Speaker 1: have a narrow majority. They don't have the sixty votes,
Speaker 1: and they're obviously this is the moment we're in. They're
Speaker 1: having this quote debate about whether they should nuke the filibuster,
Speaker 1: and like I said, I don't think they have the
Speaker 1: votes to do it, and if they do, and I
Speaker 1: specially think they don't have the votes to do it.
Speaker 1: Now when the reality of Democrats winning control of the
Speaker 1: Senate is not a fantasy anymore, it is a pretty
Speaker 1: realistic outcome of the twenty twenty six elections. Is it
Speaker 1: the most likely outcome? No, but it is not an
Speaker 1: unlikely outcome.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: We are sitting in the forty percent range, forty to
Speaker 1: forty five percent range when it comes to Democrats' chances
Speaker 1: of taking the Senate, and I promise you, if the
Speaker 1: Republicans are the one to get rid of the Philipbuster,
Speaker 1: Democrats aren't going to be the ones to put it back. Now,
Speaker 1: let's talk about the core argument and what I think
Speaker 1: is a trap of this partisan power graph.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: You see the framing of this, particularly with partisan influencers
Speaker 1: and partisan members of the press, that this is voter
Speaker 1: integrity versus voter suppression. But what this really is is
Speaker 1: I don't think election laws have any moral authority the
Speaker 1: public when they are passed on a fifty one to
Speaker 1: forty nine basis, And if you do this on a
Speaker 1: partisan basis, you literally delegitimize the democracy. And maybe that's
Speaker 1: the feature not the bug of what Donald Trump is
Speaker 1: up to. But let me set that aside. Here's what's
Speaker 1: interesting is how similar the oppositional rhetoric is to both bills. Right,
Speaker 1: when Democrats try to pass HR one, right, the same
Speaker 1: thing that happened here. Right, they passed it in the House.
Speaker 1: I couldn't get it done in the Senate. When Democrats
Speaker 1: passed HR one, Republicans called it a federal takeover and
Speaker 1: a power graph because it was written by one party
Speaker 1: to to benefit a their perceived base of younger urban voters. Well,
Speaker 1: we're sort of got a mirror image in the Save Act.
Speaker 1: The Save Act is seen by the left as a
Speaker 1: power grab designed to disenfranchise voters who lack easy access
Speaker 1: to birth certificates or who rely on mail in voting,
Speaker 1: like seniors and roll of voters. Now here's the problem.
Speaker 1: When the rules of the game change every four years
Speaker 1: based on who holds the power, the public will lose
Speaker 1: faith in the results of the game. Right, It's like
Speaker 1: allowing allowing the University of Miami or Indiana University. If
Speaker 1: the University of Miami's a home team, they get to
Speaker 1: pick the officials, and if Indiana University's they get to
Speaker 1: pick the officials, right, they get to hire the officials.
Speaker 2: We wouldn't.
Speaker 1: We're already a little skeptical when in these interconference matchups,
Speaker 1: when say it's Miami versus Florida and you have to
Speaker 1: deal with SEC officials or ACC officials, Right, one side
Speaker 1: doesn't trust that the other conference doesn't have you know,
Speaker 1: you want a neutral third party conference, right. I believe
Speaker 1: we had either big I think we had big ten
Speaker 1: officials doing the Miami Indiana National title game. He's not
Speaker 1: big ten officers, big twelve officials, I believe, or yes,
Speaker 1: it was big twelve officials. Then we had SEC officials
Speaker 1: I think for a game when we played Ohio State.
Speaker 1: But the point was you had neutral arbiters because there
Speaker 1: would have been questions of legitimacy and concerns that there
Speaker 1: wasn't going to be fairness there, particularly since there's a
Speaker 1: financial incentive for conferences to do well.
Speaker 2: In these in these in these deals.
Speaker 1: So this is you know, we're going to change the
Speaker 1: rules fifty one to forty nine. Right, Eventually the loser
Speaker 1: is never going to accept the outcome. And so this
Speaker 1: is why the Save Act isn't just about citizenship. It's
Speaker 1: a fundamental shift in the contract of American voting.
Speaker 2: It moves from.
Speaker 1: A system of self attestation, meaning I sign a legal
Speaker 1: oath under penalty of perjury if I'm lying about my
Speaker 1: citizenship or lying that I'm dual registered somewhere, to a
Speaker 1: permission based system where you have to have government has
Speaker 1: to verify whether you're allowed to vote. That's what the
Speaker 1: you know, Iranians decide who gets to vote, the Iranian
Speaker 1: government does. That's not the way the United States system
Speaker 1: was meant to work, all right. Now, let's dive into
Speaker 1: this election integrity war. It's a term, depending on who
Speaker 1: you ask, is either a shield for democracy or sel
Speaker 1: sledgehammer against it. So right now we are seeing a
Speaker 1: collision of two very different, very partisan visions of how
Speaker 1: you and I actually get a ballot. On one side,
Speaker 1: you have the ghost of HR one. On the other side,
Speaker 1: you of the current battle over the Save America Act. Now,
Speaker 1: if you're getting your news from social media, you probably
Speaker 1: think the Save Act is just common sense or total suppression, right,
Speaker 1: depending on which algorithm you're fed. But let's be honest,
Speaker 1: the policy reality is a lot more complicated, and the
Speaker 1: political strategy is even more cynical than itutlooks. So let's
Speaker 1: go back to twenty twenty one. Democrats wanted to federalize
Speaker 1: elections by mandating automatic voter registration. The idea the government
Speaker 1: should find you if you're at the DMV, you're on
Speaker 1: the rules. Well, fast forward to twenty twenty six. House
Speaker 1: Republicans pass the Save America Act, and it is the
Speaker 1: exact inverse. It doesn't just reject automatic registration. It makes
Speaker 1: registration eight show your papers event. It mandates documentary proof
Speaker 1: of citizenship. We're talking birth certificates, passports, and specific real
Speaker 1: IDs that denote citizenship. So this is what actually passed
Speaker 1: the House last month. A requirement for documentary proof of
Speaker 1: citizenship to register. So you'd have to go and get
Speaker 1: a birth certificate, which could take days or weeks depending
Speaker 1: on the jurisdiction you were born in. You need a
Speaker 1: mandate for states to purge voter roles using DHS databases
Speaker 1: controlled by people like Corey Lewandowski or once were you
Speaker 1: tell me whether you trust that a man who's bragging
Speaker 1: by the way that he thought he was bulletproof because
Speaker 1: no matter what he did, he'd get a pardon from Trump.
Speaker 1: That should make you feel good about DHS systems. And
Speaker 1: then there were strict voter idea requirements for both in
Speaker 1: person and mail in voting. But there's a massive gap
Speaker 1: between the bill of the House actually sent to the
Speaker 1: Senate and what Donald Trump is actually demanding. Untrue social right.
Speaker 1: The President wants even more this bill, which means they'd
Speaker 1: have to go back to the House and pass this again.
Speaker 1: Good luck doing that. But he you know, he told
Speaker 1: Senate Republicans not signing anything, effectively threatening a shutdown unless
Speaker 1: they add what he calls his non negotiables, total ban
Speaker 1: on mail in ballots except for the military. And get this,
Speaker 1: he wants to attach writers banning transgender women from sports
Speaker 1: and ending gender affirming care for minors, all in.
Speaker 2: This Save Act.
Speaker 1: So he took a focused, albeit controversial election bill and
Speaker 1: turned it into a Christmas tree of culture war grievances.
Speaker 1: He's not asking for just a change of the rules.
Speaker 1: He's asking for total transformation of the American voting experience,
Speaker 1: and he's doing it through ex executive pressure that even
Speaker 1: some of his own party in the Senate, namely John Thune,
Speaker 1: the Senate Republican leader, are looking with the hey, buddy,
Speaker 1: do you have a plan to get to sixty votes,
Speaker 1: whether it's HR one or the Save Act. We are
Speaker 1: stuck in this cycle of partisan electioneering. And here's the
Speaker 1: Here's important because we've had this game gamesmanship on elections
Speaker 1: before that were used to deny black people the opportunity
Speaker 1: to vote in the late nineteenth century, in most of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century, and there was and we know, when
Speaker 1: one party changes the rules, it is not there to
Speaker 1: benefit everybody. It is there benefit only that one party.
Speaker 1: And there had been kind of an unspoken rule in
Speaker 1: the American democracy that you didn't change the rules of
Speaker 1: the game unless you had members of both teams agreeing
Speaker 1: to the rules changes. Democrats didn't bother to find Republicans
Speaker 1: or find a way to find broader appealing parts of
Speaker 1: their parts of the bill are very popular, just like
Speaker 1: parts of the Save bill for Republicans are very popular.
Speaker 1: But they're parts. And here's the reality that the Republicans
Speaker 1: jammed this through. It's a political nightmare for them and
Speaker 1: actually I think will only serve as a get out
Speaker 1: the vote mechanism for the left and the less actually
Speaker 1: going to do everything they're going to have, you know,
Speaker 1: you'll see people on tic tac.
Speaker 2: I'm showing my age.
Speaker 1: You'll see people on TikTok, you know, doing little songs
Speaker 1: and dances and how do you find your birth certificate?
Speaker 1: How do you request a copy of it? And this
Speaker 1: is what you do, and YadA, YadA YadA. Trust me,
Speaker 1: they'll figure it out pretty quickly and it will serve
Speaker 1: as an automatic motivator. I mean, the likelihood that this
Speaker 1: blows up in their face if they actually do this
Speaker 1: is just I mean, I mean, my God, to get
Speaker 1: rid of the filibuster to do this, and it would
Speaker 1: you know, it's like it's like, it's like Trump and
Speaker 1: his absurd demand for partisan redistricting. Careful what you ask for.
Speaker 1: You might get it and it may end up blowing
Speaker 1: up in your face. Take the state of Virginia they're
Speaker 1: now going to who had them having a ten to
Speaker 1: one delegation on their bingo card a year ago? The
Speaker 1: answer is no one. Welcome to karma it So you
Speaker 1: know what, So now we ought to get to the
Speaker 1: uncomfortable part. And there are parts of both people's agendas
Speaker 1: that are both popular, in parts that are not at
Speaker 1: all okay. There is a pretty big disconnect between Washington
Speaker 1: and the rest of the country on some of these bills.
Speaker 1: Because if you listen to the debate on the House floor,
Speaker 1: you'd think the Save America Act was the most polarizing
Speaker 1: piece of legislation since.
Speaker 2: The Affordable Care Act.
Speaker 1: But if you actually look at the polling from this
Speaker 1: year Pew Gallop, even Maris, you're going to see something different.
Speaker 1: The voter ID concept is not controversial now. Most people
Speaker 1: are assuming it means the same, you know, same thing
Speaker 1: you do at the airport. You know, you just show
Speaker 1: your driver's license, that you should show your driver's license,
Speaker 1: your government issued photo ID right before you go vote.
Speaker 1: That has eighty three to eighty four percent support. That's
Speaker 1: not a Republican number, that's a consensus number. And there's
Speaker 1: even support for proof of citizenship for first time registrants
Speaker 1: that clocks in it over eighty percent support. All right,
Speaker 1: eighty percent. That's a big deal. Now again, first time registrants,
Speaker 1: that is not what this is. So this is where
Speaker 1: you see a lot of partisan commentators claim this is
Speaker 1: enormously popular. The Save Act is enormously The Save Act
Speaker 1: is not enormously popular. One piece of the Save Act
Speaker 1: is enormously popular. Right, this is friction versus the function functionality. So,
Speaker 1: and this is where we are having a debate over
Speaker 1: how much friction there should there be in the issue
Speaker 1: of voting. And right now, Republicans believe it should be
Speaker 1: harder to vote, and Democrats believe it should be easier
Speaker 1: to vote. Right and the Save Act moves friction to
Speaker 1: the front end, and it says you don't get in
Speaker 1: the door to vote until you prove who you are
Speaker 1: with a birth certificate.
Speaker 2: Or a passport.
Speaker 1: And guess what, roughly twenty one million Americans, most of
Speaker 1: them elderly, are the rural poor. Don't have those papers
Speaker 1: in our drawer ready to go. Then the Democrats with
Speaker 1: HR one wanted to get rid of all friction. It
Speaker 1: wanted automatic voter registration, basically saying the government should do
Speaker 1: the work for you. So the Democrats want to make
Speaker 1: the funnel as wide as possible to ensure no one
Speaker 1: is left out. The Republicans want to filter as fine
Speaker 1: as possible to ensure no one is in who shouldn't be. Now,
Speaker 1: both sides claiming they are protecting the sanctity of the
Speaker 1: vote and the spirit of democracy, but both sides are
Speaker 1: actually trying to engineer the electorate.
Speaker 2: To their own advantage.
Speaker 1: Right and the other parts of the Save Act are
Speaker 1: not popular. By demanding a total ban on mail in
Speaker 1: balance and attaching culture war writers to the bill, Trump
Speaker 1: is taking a simple policy like voter idea at the polls,
Speaker 1: that most Americans actually agree with, and wrapping in in
Speaker 1: a package that half the country finds tocks. And he's
Speaker 1: doing exactly what the Democrats did with HR One. They
Speaker 1: took some popular ideas like ethics reform and ending jerrymandering,
Speaker 1: and they stuffed him in a seven hundred page bill
Speaker 1: that included federal funding for campaigns. Total non starter for
Speaker 1: the right. But this is a classic Washington playbook. You
Speaker 1: take one popular idea, you poison it with partisan must haves,
Speaker 1: and then you blame the other side when it fails.
Speaker 1: It's a win win for the consultant community, it's a
Speaker 1: win win for your social media fundraising, but it's a
Speaker 1: lose lose for voter trust. And it brings us back
Speaker 1: to the larger point. You cannot save an election system
Speaker 1: by yourself. If the Save Act passes the Senate, by
Speaker 1: nuking the filibuster and getting fifty one Republican votes, half
Speaker 1: the country will view the twenty twenty six midterms is
Speaker 1: rigged before single ballot is cast, just as Republicans viewed
Speaker 1: HR one as a democratic coup in twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: Stability in a democracy does not come from a fifty
Speaker 1: one percent majority. And I know right now everybody's assumption is, well,
Speaker 1: Trump is proving you can take a forty six percent
Speaker 1: majority and jamm through if you know how to use
Speaker 1: power or abuse power. But this stuff is not going
Speaker 1: to stick. There's a reason he can't couldn't get reelected
Speaker 1: once and he's yet to have a successful midterm. Okay,
Speaker 1: Stability in a democracy comes from consent, And when you
Speaker 1: change the rules of the game on a partisan basis,
Speaker 1: you aren't fixing the pipes. You're poisoning the well. And
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty six, the well is already running pretty dry.
Speaker 1: So let's get out of the theoretical and into the
Speaker 1: real world. Proponents of the Save Act say this is
Speaker 1: about one thing, ensuring that only citizens vote, and they
Speaker 1: point to the eighty percent of Americans who say, yeah,
Speaker 1: that sounds reasonable. Only citizens should vote, By the way,
Speaker 1: it's already the law of the lay it. But if
Speaker 1: we look at the states that have already tried a
Speaker 1: version of this bill, we're going to see a very
Speaker 1: different picture.
Speaker 2: Let me tell you the story of Arizona.
Speaker 1: For years, Arizona was the only state in the Union
Speaker 1: that required documentary proof of citizenship to register for state elections.
Speaker 1: And what did we find out? By the end of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four there were nearly thirty four thousand federal
Speaker 1: only voters in Arizona. These are people who could not
Speaker 1: produce a birth certificate or a passport, so they were
Speaker 1: legally barred from voting for governor or state house. But
Speaker 1: thanks to the Supreme Court carve out, they could still
Speaker 1: vote for president and Congress. Thirty four thousand people. That's
Speaker 1: more than the average margin of victory in swing state
Speaker 1: Arizona these days. Right, These weren't illegals, by the way,
Speaker 1: They were citizens who just didn't have their papers in
Speaker 1: a shoe box. And here's the kicker. Georgia, another swing state,
Speaker 1: conducted its own Remember this is a Republican controlled state,
Speaker 1: Georgia that its own massive citizenship audit in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: cross referencing their roles with every database they can find.
Speaker 1: How many non citizens did they find? On a voter
Speaker 1: roll of millions of people in the state of Georgia,
Speaker 1: not in a small state, mind you, they found twenty
Speaker 1: two zero, not twenty thousand. Twenty out of those nine
Speaker 1: had actually voted over the span of seven years nine
Speaker 1: So eleven of the people they found never even voted.
Speaker 1: So the question for the Save Act isn't this bogus
Speaker 1: non citizen voting business that Trump claims. By the way,
Speaker 1: it's already a felony to vote if you're not a citizen.
Speaker 1: The question is is it worth adding a paperwork wall
Speaker 1: for twenty one million eligible Americans to catch nine people
Speaker 1: in the state of Georgia. In the policy world, that
Speaker 1: would be called a disproportionate response. In politics, we call
Speaker 1: it a barrier to entry. But the Save America Act
Speaker 1: that passed the House goes even further than what the
Speaker 1: state of Arizona did. It isn't just one and done
Speaker 1: check if you move or if you change your name,
Speaker 1: say because you got married. The Save Act treats you
Speaker 1: like a brand new applicant to vote, so you have
Speaker 1: to produce a whole round of new documentation all over again,
Speaker 1: not just a birth certificate but a marriage license.
Speaker 2: Think about that.
Speaker 1: There are seventy million married people in this country who
Speaker 1: have a different last name than the one on their
Speaker 1: birth certificate. Under the strictest reading of this House bill,
Speaker 1: if you don't have a passport, you might need to
Speaker 1: produce a birth certificate plus a marriage license just to
Speaker 1: update your address. Now, I don't want to go and
Speaker 1: do a huge amount of deep tales on my personal life,
Speaker 1: but my wife went through this where her passport didn't
Speaker 1: match your driver's license after we got married, and they
Speaker 1: wouldn't let her on a plane. This is after nine
Speaker 1: to eleven. We got married first, we got married just
Speaker 1: after nine eleven, less than a year after nine eleven,
Speaker 1: so there was you.
Speaker 2: Know, we were.
Speaker 1: And they said yet to produce a marriage certificate, which
Speaker 1: needed to know the exact date. Well, the marriage certificate
Speaker 1: that Nevada gave us did not have the exact date
Speaker 1: of when we got married, just the month in the year.
Speaker 1: And they said, no, no, no, you need a date. So
Speaker 1: we put we just wrote the date in. We're look,
Speaker 1: we don't know what else to do. It was a
Speaker 1: complicated mess. We missed a couple of flights because of it.
Speaker 1: We eventually got it worked out. This is a this
Speaker 1: is this you know, we've already you know, we already
Speaker 1: make it harder for women in this country and a
Speaker 1: lot of things due to you know, catching up on
Speaker 1: rules where we had sort of gender imbalance, whether it's
Speaker 1: for finances and all sorts of things. You know, wasn't
Speaker 1: that long ago then a married woman couldn't get a
Speaker 1: credit card without her husband's permission. So seventy million married
Speaker 1: people with a different last name. So in order to vote,
Speaker 1: if you just happen to move because your job transferred,
Speaker 1: you would have to produce a perth certificate plus the
Speaker 1: marriage license just to update your address. So we've moved
Speaker 1: from voter ID. Okay, which is what all of these
Speaker 1: misleading right wing commentators shoved down your throat and their feet.
Speaker 1: They are knowingly lying to you. And there's some really
Speaker 1: people that I used to respect who are just bullshitting
Speaker 1: all the way on this stuff. This is not about
Speaker 1: voter ID anymore. It's a long way away from voter ID.
Speaker 1: This is an entire elaborate piece of legislation just to
Speaker 1: make suthe Donald Trump's ego because he didn't win the
Speaker 1: popular vote in twenty sixteen, which he claimed is because
Speaker 1: undocumented immigrants voted in mass numbers against him, and he
Speaker 1: claims that mail in balloting is the reason why he
Speaker 1: lost in twenty twenty, not the fact that maybe he
Speaker 1: just wasn't popular enough to win the popular vote in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, and maybe it's because people thought he was
Speaker 1: sucked was president during COVID and they wanted to change
Speaker 1: in leadership. And they've just they literally are writing a
Speaker 1: bill in order to make his bullshit seem like it's
Speaker 1: a real grievance that should be fixed. So we've moved
Speaker 1: from voter ID which most people support, to voter paperwork,
Speaker 1: which most people will find exhausting. Do we really want
Speaker 1: to have the dmv afication of the most sacred right
Speaker 1: we have? I'll tell you though, Donald Trump terrible poker player, right.
Speaker 1: His recent pivot here is very revealing. By adding his
Speaker 1: demand for a ban on universal mail in voting and
Speaker 1: cultural world writers to the bill, he signaled that he
Speaker 1: actually doesn't want to see this bill pass. He simply
Speaker 1: wants to fight, just like HR one was never designed
Speaker 1: to pass. They just wanted to fight to say, Hey,
Speaker 1: those guys don't believe in democracy. They don't believe in
Speaker 1: election integrity, and what Trump wants to be able to
Speaker 1: say to his base is I tried to secure the elections,
Speaker 1: but the Democrats and the Senate Rhinos blocked me. So
Speaker 1: using a legitimate policy debate about citizenship verification as a
Speaker 1: trojan horse for a total overhaul of the voting calendar
Speaker 1: just to make his bullshit about what happened in twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen and twenty twenty seem like it was legitimate. So
Speaker 1: when you take a common sense idea like citizen should
Speaker 1: vote and you turn it into a twenty one million
Speaker 1: person hurdle, you're not protecting the system. You're testing the
Speaker 1: breaking point. You don't want the democracy to succeed, You
Speaker 1: don't want more voters to the polls. If you do
Speaker 1: it without a single vote from the other side, you're
Speaker 1: telling half the country the only way to win is
Speaker 1: to change the rules so the other side can play.
Speaker 1: And Donald Trump actually said the quiet power out loud.
Speaker 1: He said, if we get this save bill pass the
Speaker 1: way I want it, Democrats won't win an election for
Speaker 1: fifty years. I don't happen to think that's true. But
Speaker 1: the fact that he said it only poisoned the well
Speaker 1: even more and made it an even to me, an
Speaker 1: easier decision not to support that bill. But here are
Speaker 1: some fun facts here about the access gap. This is
Speaker 1: just projections. In twenty twenty six, among total registered voters,
Speaker 1: fifty two percent do not have an unexpired passport. Among
Speaker 1: voters under the age of thirty, fifteen percent lacked easy
Speaker 1: access to a birth certificate. Among married women, thirty five
Speaker 1: percent have name match issues between their birth certificates and
Speaker 1: their ideas. And among low income voters, a disproportionate lack
Speaker 1: the one hundred dollars for a new passport and certified records.
Speaker 1: But let me conclude with the most uncomfortable truth of all,
Speaker 1: one that usually makes some of my poly sized students,
Speaker 1: if they haven't realized this yet, it can make their
Speaker 1: head spin. If you scour the US Constitution from the
Speaker 1: preamble to the last Amendment, you will not find the
Speaker 1: phrase that says, quote every citizen has an affirmative right
Speaker 1: to vote, because it's not there. What we have is
Speaker 1: a list of things you cannot do to stop someone
Speaker 1: from voting. You can't stop them because of their race.
Speaker 1: That's the fifteenth Amendment, their sex, that's the nineteenth amendment.
Speaker 1: Their failure to pay a poll tax, that's the twenty
Speaker 1: fourth Amendment, or because they're over eighteen, that's the twenty
Speaker 1: sixth Amendment. But as the Supreme Court famously reminded us
Speaker 1: in Bush v. Gore, the individual citizen has no federal
Speaker 1: constitutional right to vote for electors for the president of
Speaker 1: the United States. Maybe that is something we ought to
Speaker 1: change because the federal document, the US Constitution, is silent
Speaker 1: on this issue. There are state constitutions actually aren't. Nearly
Speaker 1: every single state constitution Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona explicitly guarantees that
Speaker 1: quote election shall be free and equal, or that every
Speaker 1: citizen shall be entitled to vote. And this is where
Speaker 1: the Save America Act hits a massive legal wall. If
Speaker 1: it's somehow magically passed. By mandating federal show us your
Speaker 1: paper requirements, Congress is essentially trying to override state level
Speaker 1: constitutional guarantees. Remember, the Constitution says it is up to
Speaker 1: the states to implement voting processes. So if a state
Speaker 1: constitution says a resident is entitled to vote and the
Speaker 1: federal government says not without a passport, you're not. We're
Speaker 1: looking at a pretty interesting tenth Amendment showdown that would
Speaker 1: make the nineteen sixties look like a warm up act.
Speaker 1: We actually already got a preview this when Kansas tried
Speaker 1: to version the Save Act. The courts eventually struck it down,
Speaker 1: partly because it created a dual class system of citizens,
Speaker 1: just like we have in Arizona. Right you have state
Speaker 1: voters and federal voters. You can't have federal voters and
Speaker 1: state voters living in the same house but using different rules.
Speaker 1: It's a recipe for administration. So here's the bottom line.
Speaker 1: When Democrats try to pass HR one, they were trying
Speaker 1: to use federal power to force states to make voting easier,
Speaker 1: and now with the Save Act, Republicans are trying to
Speaker 1: use federal power to force states to make voter registration harder.
Speaker 1: Both sides trying to build a national election system on
Speaker 1: a constitutional foundation that is frankly too thinner than it
Speaker 1: should be. So if you want to fundamentally change how
Speaker 1: Americans vote, you can't do it through a fifty one
Speaker 1: vote yatcha bill or a last minute writer on a
Speaker 1: spending package. You need a consensus that transcends the next
Speaker 1: election cycle. Because right now we're not saving the vote.
Speaker 1: We're just turning the rules of democracy to a partisan weapon.
Speaker 1: And when the rules become the weapon, the only thing
Speaker 1: that ends up dead is the public's trust in the outcome.
Speaker 1: So look, I hope I created a little bit of
Speaker 1: clarity of what this bill actually is, what the impact
Speaker 1: would be. I know I've been pretty dismissive. I am
Speaker 1: a hugely cynical about both of these bills because they
Speaker 1: were not designed to pass right. This is not about
Speaker 1: being a moderate a centrist. It is about me being
Speaker 1: an incrementalist, which means if you were trying to change
Speaker 1: the rules for three hundred and fifty million Americans, you
Speaker 1: better do it with massive consensus, not partisan demagogri Having
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Speaker 1: one comes from Julie from Portland. Hey, Chuck, it used
Speaker 1: to be that we had a long time in between
Speaker 1: a major crisis, and now we seem to beginning several
Speaker 1: every week since the beginning of the year. I can
Speaker 1: recall we've had Venezuela, Greenland, Minnesota, and now we're with Iron.
Speaker 2: And I feel that.
Speaker 1: There have been several more crises in between these things,
Speaker 1: but they come and go so rapidly that I can
Speaker 1: keep up. How's the psyche of the American people supposed
Speaker 1: to endure? With all these major changes and threats coming
Speaker 1: coming at us so quickly, the midterms seemed very far away.
Speaker 1: Not to mention twenty twenty eight, appreciate your thoughts. Things Well,
Speaker 1: this is when you hear the word chaos, right, And
Speaker 1: this became a popular buzzword on the campaign trail in
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen and twenty twenty because it grew out of
Speaker 1: a lot of good old fashioned voter focus groups. Right,
Speaker 1: And say what you will about focus grouping everything and
Speaker 1: things like this, I find voter focus groups pretty helpful
Speaker 1: because you do you know, you hear the words of
Speaker 1: actual voters, not you know, some posters interpretation, and what
Speaker 1: you're describing this is that it's you know, why you
Speaker 1: hear a lot of politicians, Hey, can we just stop
Speaker 1: the chaos? You know, can we just can we just
Speaker 1: you know, put a halt to this. Look, Joe Biden
Speaker 1: won because he was the anti chaos candidate, and then
Speaker 1: I think the mistake he made is he brought his
Speaker 1: own set of chaos to governing right when really.
Speaker 2: People just wanted to take a breath, you know.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, a little bit of Trump disruption
Speaker 1: was good. A lot of bit of Trump disruption is exhausting.
Speaker 2: I'm going to choose.
Speaker 1: I do think that in the long term we will
Speaker 1: look at Trump's presidencies as an important MRI for the country,
Speaker 1: for our soul, and hopefully we now see some things
Speaker 1: that we don't like and we want to do something
Speaker 1: about them. But I actually think this, this feeling that
Speaker 1: we don't have control of events right, that everything is
Speaker 1: moving so quickly we can't wrap our arms around it,
Speaker 1: is actually one of the It's one of those it's
Speaker 1: a it's a tough question to pull, you know, when
Speaker 1: you say, what are the most important issues? You know,
Speaker 1: if I ask you that as a polster, you're going
Speaker 1: to give me issues. But it sounds like for you
Speaker 1: one of the most important issues to Can we just
Speaker 1: slow down?
Speaker 2: Can we stop the chaos?
Speaker 1: Can we stop the you know, just sort of like
Speaker 1: you know, I think this is a feature of Trump, right,
Speaker 1: this is you know, he's got short attention span, he's
Speaker 1: got his version of add so he's making us all
Speaker 1: sort of conform to his way of doing things. He
Speaker 1: loves this, He doesn't he can't folk. Anybody that has
Speaker 1: ever tried to brief Donald Trump on a serious topic
Speaker 1: knows you've got about ten minutes. And you better bring
Speaker 1: pictures because if you go thirty minutes, forty five minutes
Speaker 1: and you know you're going to lose him. He's going
Speaker 1: to fall asleep. He's going to be distracted. He's going
Speaker 1: to take a call, he's going to ask for six
Speaker 1: die cokes. He is just not going to stay focused.
Speaker 1: He's going to order you in Floorsheim shoes if you're
Speaker 1: a guy, by guessing your shoe size. But he's he's
Speaker 1: he's not gonna and don't leave him something to read.
Speaker 1: He's not going to read it. This is going to
Speaker 1: sound snarky and cynical. I don't believe he has read
Speaker 1: a book from beginning to end in thirty years, specifically,
Speaker 1: and certainly not his own books. That that has been proven, actually,
Speaker 1: but I would love to be proven wrong that he
Speaker 1: has read a book from front to back, just one
Speaker 1: this century one.
Speaker 2: I don't buy it.
Speaker 1: That's how short his attention span is. And so this
Speaker 1: is why this is kind of a feature of this administration.
Speaker 1: He just gets bored. He can't singularly focus on one thing.
Speaker 2: At a time.
Speaker 1: So, but I think this is this is what exhausts
Speaker 1: the what I call them the silent majority, right. I
Speaker 1: think I gave that anecdote of sort of an acquaintance
Speaker 1: of mind that I ran into the day after the
Speaker 1: Texas primaries and he didn't realize the Texas primaries were happening,
Speaker 1: and he said, oh, what happened? And I told him
Speaker 1: what happened. He's like, oh, I just didn't want any
Speaker 1: more bomb throwers. Like there's an exhaustion out there. There's
Speaker 1: an exhaustion from the partisan warfare, there's an exhaustion from
Speaker 1: the crisis to crisis governance that that Trump is comfortable in.
Speaker 1: You know, here's the thing. We're all on the same
Speaker 1: roller coaster. He's just not thrown up and the rest
Speaker 1: of us are so I you know, this is why
Speaker 1: I spent a long time deciding to go deep on
Speaker 1: one issue, because I think I've glossed over some things
Speaker 1: because I moved from you know, I get a little
Speaker 1: too reactionary in the moment, and I think the thing
Speaker 1: that we can do best here in the independent space,
Speaker 1: in the podcast space, is to take the unlimited amount
Speaker 1: of time that I do have, unlimited amount of bandwidth
Speaker 1: in theory that is here, and the meticulously explain something
Speaker 1: all the way.
Speaker 2: From beginning to end.
Speaker 1: But you know, you're the feeling you have, you're not alone,
Speaker 1: and in fact, I think it is. It is among
Speaker 1: the most important issues that I think are going to
Speaker 1: drive independence towards candidates that are running against any Republican incumbent,
Speaker 1: whether it's an independent.
Speaker 2: Or a Democrat.
Speaker 1: Next question comes from Gaale Woodinville, Washington. Gail Rights, Hey, Chuck,
Speaker 1: thank you for the podcast that always calls it like
Speaker 1: it is. I appreciate you saying that, I know the
Speaker 1: war of the Ron and the Epstein files are taking
Speaker 1: up all of the attention lately.
Speaker 2: But I feel like it's.
Speaker 1: Just a distraction, just distracting us from the real issue
Speaker 1: at hand, which is winning the House in the Senate November.
Speaker 1: Shouldn't we be focus on the GOP enablers or allowing
Speaker 1: the destruction of our country and getting these pedophile protectors
Speaker 1: out of office.
Speaker 2: Thanks for all you do. You know, it's interesting.
Speaker 1: To sort of put these two questions together, right, they
Speaker 1: of go together. And you're both from the Northwest, right,
Speaker 1: Washington and Oregon. Julie from Portland, Gale from Wooden Bill, Washington.
Speaker 1: You know, everything is a distraction in the moment from
Speaker 1: something else that we should be focused on. And this
Speaker 1: is sort of the Trump era in a nutshell, right,
Speaker 1: he has started eight fires. We've got to put all
Speaker 1: eight fires out. Which fire do you put out first?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: And it's the prioritization issue as always, look in theory,
Speaker 1: I'm with You're right. Everybody's got to you know, should
Speaker 1: stay in their lane and you know, make the main
Speaker 1: thing the main thing. But it is only March, and
Speaker 1: I would argue, if you're in elective office, you have
Speaker 1: some duty to try to deal with the situation that is,
Speaker 1: before you go to the voters hoping for a different
Speaker 1: set of people to work with to then deal with
Speaker 1: the situation that will be. But you're you know, look,
Speaker 1: I one could argue that the the the more Trump
Speaker 1: handles Iran and Epstein, the more the easier for Democrats
Speaker 1: to focus on the House and Senate because you know what,
Speaker 1: Trump's not focused on affordability. What Trump's not focused on
Speaker 1: is what there's domestic issues, the issue of rising health
Speaker 1: care costs, the issues rising electric bills, the issue of
Speaker 1: fear of AI job displacement. By the way, the most
Speaker 1: underreported number in the new NBC News poll is how
Speaker 1: unpopular AI is right now with the American people. What's
Speaker 1: interesting is how how cautious Democrats and elected office are
Speaker 1: at pushing back on AI. What they're really saying is
Speaker 1: they don't trust these Silicon Valley people to implement AI
Speaker 1: in a fair and equitable way. That's what this is
Speaker 1: telling me, right, the same people that brought you the
Speaker 1: success that is social media and what that's done. Do
Speaker 1: you think social media has been a success or a
Speaker 1: failure for American society? My guess is, if you asked
Speaker 1: it that way, and I would like some of my
Speaker 1: poster friends to ask this question and as neutral of
Speaker 1: the way as you can, I have a feeling that
Speaker 1: the yes no would look a lot like the favorable
Speaker 1: unfavorable view when it came to artificial intelligencers. Right now
Speaker 1: is upside down in underwater. So I take your point
Speaker 1: that everything looks like it's a distraction from a just
Speaker 1: from something else that ought to be the focus. But
Speaker 1: in some ways, it is that chaos that may actually
Speaker 1: serve as a voting motivator for some people who just
Speaker 1: want off the Trump roller coaster. All right, next question,
Speaker 1: I think it comes from somebody from Kansas, but I
Speaker 1: don't have a name, but let me.
Speaker 2: Read the question.
Speaker 1: He says, you've spoken a few times about the amount
Speaker 1: of money necessary for the Republicans to defend their Senate
Speaker 1: seat in Texas. Would argue that money is becoming less
Speaker 1: of an issue for two reasons. First, it seems to
Speaker 1: be available in unlimited quantities, well, if you're willing to
Speaker 1: wore yourself out for crypto or for AI. Yes, the
Speaker 1: amount of money spent in every election seems to increase
Speaker 1: since the last by wider and wider margins. Fact Check true,
Speaker 1: coupled with the law of diminishing returns, which says every
Speaker 1: additional dollar spent is less effective than the last.
Speaker 2: Also true.
Speaker 1: I think think there will always be enough money in
Speaker 1: every state that state it's needed in.
Speaker 2: What do you think? Thank you?
Speaker 1: I really enjoy your show and continue to wonder if
Speaker 1: Kansas will ever and then it trails off. So I
Speaker 1: think we missed one part of your secondary part of
Speaker 1: that question. I agree with you that you know, it's
Speaker 1: been interesting. You know, Trump was out spent in sixteen
Speaker 1: but won the presidential election. Trump was outspent in twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: but run the presidential election. Republicans are likely to outspend
Speaker 1: the Demo Crats in the midterms in twenty twenty six,
Speaker 1: and yet Democrats are likely to have a better.
Speaker 2: Midterm result than the Republicans.
Speaker 1: So you're not wrong that there is sort of a
Speaker 1: diminishing return with this big money. Part of it is
Speaker 1: the fragmentation issue, right, It is so much harder. You know,
Speaker 1: it used to be cheaper and efficient to reach ten
Speaker 1: million people with you know, just a just a you know,
Speaker 1: not a very diverse ad campaign. Now, of course you've
Speaker 1: got to you've got to maybe you know, and most
Speaker 1: political campaigns might produce six or seven unique television ads period.
Speaker 1: Now you need to do whatever your television message for
Speaker 1: the week is, you need to do six or seven
Speaker 1: different versions of it so that one makes sense on TikTok,
Speaker 1: and one makes sense on YouTube, and one makes sense
Speaker 1: on YouTube TV, and one makes sense on cable television
Speaker 1: and one makes sense on broadcasts.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: So you know, part of it is that the cost
Speaker 1: of running these campaigns is exponentially grown as well. I
Speaker 1: understand the feeling that money is sort of like there's
Speaker 1: a there's always money, right, There's always money in the
Speaker 1: banana san right, So yes, I tend to agree with you,
Speaker 1: but we are getting you know, these large giant forces.
Speaker 1: Crypto AI are the two biggest ones, right. I mean,
Speaker 1: you look at what's happening in the Illinois Senate race,
Speaker 1: and it's just like there's a super pack for each
Speaker 1: candidate that is funded by some interest group that is
Speaker 1: not actually debate having an issue debated in this primary,
Speaker 1: but they're trying to buy an ally.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: The Democratic primary for US Senate in Illinois is attracting
Speaker 1: huge money.
Speaker 2: People.
Speaker 1: Why because whoever wins a Democratic primary is going to
Speaker 1: be the US Senator in Illinois. So whether you're a
Speaker 1: crypto advocate, whether you're an AI no regulation advocate or
Speaker 1: an AI pro regulation advocate, you're trying to find your
Speaker 1: ally in this Democratic primary. So I don't disagree with
Speaker 1: you about your theory and money, but I do think
Speaker 1: we've sort of we've been overserved. It's time to step
Speaker 1: away from the bar. It's time to put some restrictions here.
Speaker 1: We're not asking for super restrictions, but we've got to
Speaker 1: have some because what you know, the fact that crypto
Speaker 1: and Silicon Valley and AI have essentially hijacked Washington financially
Speaker 1: right now, and they have is it's unprecedented what we've seen.
Speaker 1: And the dirty little secret is every elected officials kind
Speaker 1: of grossed out by this, but nobody wants to offend
Speaker 1: the money people that support them. So that's why this
Speaker 1: system isn't getting fixed. I mean, I go back to
Speaker 1: Chuck Schumer telling a closed door meeting of Senate Democrats
Speaker 1: to suck it up and get on board crypto because
Speaker 1: the fair Shake people had too much money to go
Speaker 1: up against. The Senate Democrats have been extorted by the
Speaker 1: crypto folks is that the system we had in mind?
Speaker 1: Is that the system the founders had in mind?
Speaker 2: I don't think so.
Speaker 1: Next question comes from Jay in New York. Jay initial,
Speaker 1: not Jay, and Jay asked at what point does a
Speaker 1: fundraising discrepancy between an incumbent and a challenger outweigh the
Speaker 1: partisan lean of a race. For example, Lauren Bobert's Colorado
Speaker 1: four district is R plus nine. Trump got fifty seven
Speaker 1: percent of the vote, just beneath the fifty nine percent
Speaker 1: threshold you set. But in Q four, one democrat running
Speaker 1: against Bobert raised a staggering two million dollars compared to
Speaker 1: Boberts one hundred and seventy four thousand, and that democrat
Speaker 1: has two and a half million cash on hand compared
Speaker 1: to Bobert's two in a nineteen thousand cash on hand.
Speaker 1: Should Bobert be concerned about that much money? Or is
Speaker 1: her district truly too Republican? Look, I don't think it's greally.
Speaker 1: This is the sort of I think the old it's
Speaker 1: the old Wayne Allard's seat, That's what I remember it as.
Speaker 1: But it's like the fourth Congresion. The old fourth Congressional
Speaker 1: district up in Colorado was always sort of the conservative
Speaker 1: district that wasn't Colorado Springs, it was Greeley. It was
Speaker 1: always the center of it. I want to say Weld County,
Speaker 1: I think was the was one of the heart of that.
Speaker 1: Fort Collins used to be a part of it. They've
Speaker 1: now moved Fort Collins out of it because I think
Speaker 1: Fort Collins became too liberal and it was diluting that district,
Speaker 1: making it more competitive.
Speaker 2: I think we've learned, right, you can have.
Speaker 1: There. It really depends on the challenge of themselves, right,
Speaker 1: which is you have all the money in the world.
Speaker 1: We saw this in Jamie Harrison had more money than
Speaker 1: Lindsay Graham and South Carolina, but that wasn't going to
Speaker 1: be enough, and that that's about arguably about the same.
Speaker 1: Maybe South Carolina is slightly more Republican than the district
Speaker 1: you're describing here, So you know, this is kind of
Speaker 1: a you're you're pointing to about a ten to one
Speaker 1: cash advantage here. I think when you get to the
Speaker 1: twenty five to one with an incumbent member of Congress,
Speaker 1: because you're going to have outside groups that are going
Speaker 1: to come in for her. And that's the other part
Speaker 1: of this, right, A challenger might raise a bunch of
Speaker 1: money in a red leaning district, or a challenger might
Speaker 1: raise a bunch of money a Blue Republican in a
Speaker 1: blue leaning district. But are the third party groups, the
Speaker 1: independent expenditure group's going to come in behind them and
Speaker 1: to spend money there or are they going to consider
Speaker 1: it a waste of money versus those that know that
Speaker 1: that seat is winnable on their side and they come
Speaker 1: in there. So where what happens is I'm sure Bobert
Speaker 1: just knows because she's had this before. Outside groups are
Speaker 1: going to come in and save her if necessary, and
Speaker 1: outside democratic groups are likely not to spend their money there.
Speaker 1: There instead, and that it's specific in Colorado, they're probably
Speaker 1: going to spend money. I think they think they can
Speaker 1: flip the third district on the other side of the Rockies.
Speaker 1: They think maybe they can flip the Colorado Springs district,
Speaker 1: So I think they're more likely to concentrate their resources elsewhere.
Speaker 1: So it is it is about whether is is your
Speaker 1: race competitive enough that the outside groups will engage, And
Speaker 1: in this case, I think that's why that isn't the case.
Speaker 1: But is there a rule of thumb? Like I said,
Speaker 1: that's a ten to one, and I wouldn't still view
Speaker 1: that as you know, look, in a bad year for Republicans,
Speaker 1: they're going to lose some seats that that are plus
Speaker 1: nine plus ten Trump maybe even lose a seat or
Speaker 1: two that is. But usually there's some other reason, right,
Speaker 1: a scandal, lazy candidate, bad candidate, something like that. Now
Speaker 1: Bobert is not the best candidate, right, she doesn't always
Speaker 1: you know, runing come across as a conventional member of Congress,
Speaker 1: and she's already kind of a carpetbager. Right, it's not
Speaker 1: really from that area. She shopped that district. So I
Speaker 1: think she's being a little lazy here because I don't know.
Speaker 2: If she's as.
Speaker 1: As entrenched in this district as she was, you know,
Speaker 1: and you know, she moved district so she feared she
Speaker 1: was going to lose on that front. So I think that,
Speaker 1: you know, she probably has a false, a little false
Speaker 1: sense of security, but there's a reason she has that
Speaker 1: she feels that security. Next question comes from Andrew d goes,
Speaker 1: this is a little dark, a byproduct of reading too
Speaker 1: many Grisham novels. Okay, you're right, Grisham has gotten a
Speaker 1: little dark. In some of his more recent books. Anyway,
Speaker 1: he goes what a right wing magazella or even more nefarious,
Speaker 1: someone in Trump's inner circle set off a catastrophic public
Speaker 1: bomb and claim it was an Iranian terror cell towards
Speaker 1: the end of summer, thus resulting in the government having
Speaker 1: an excuse to shut down the midterm elections. Putin got
Speaker 1: where he is today doing the same thing, same type
Speaker 1: of thing in Chechia. I feel getting this out ahead
Speaker 1: of time could ruin the surprise intent of the people.
Speaker 1: Thank you PS Sunday's For eight years before my son
Speaker 1: went to college, was getting our breakfast cooked and ready
Speaker 1: so we could sit and watch me the press. Thanks
Speaker 1: for that routine, Andrew d Andrew, thanks for sharing that.
Speaker 1: Uh love love those father son stories. Uh those are
Speaker 1: neat When I go to college campuses and people say
Speaker 1: they grew up watching me, and of course I know
Speaker 1: they mean it as a compliment.
Speaker 2: It only makes me feel old. But that's neither here
Speaker 2: or there.
Speaker 1: Look, I did a whole thing on the Reichstag fire
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks ago, which was an important moment
Speaker 1: for Hitler too. Essentially, uh use use the government against
Speaker 1: the people and to use government to.
Speaker 2: Acquire authoritarian legitimacy.
Speaker 1: So I have to say, I, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: the end of succession. I'm starting the fire at the
Speaker 1: big central counting location in Milwaukee. Right, we've seen that
Speaker 1: one that would totally have been something you're like that
Speaker 1: scared the be Jesus out of a lot of people, going, Hey,
Speaker 1: that's seemed super realistic. Welcome to distrust in America, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know what you're describing, You're right, is
Speaker 1: something that most Russians just believe is fact, that that's
Speaker 1: just how the world works. I just I here's why
Speaker 1: I don't believe it's possible.
Speaker 2: I just think that.
Speaker 1: Those conspiracies never hold. They just don't. People break people.
Speaker 1: People you know, you know, do not let that go.
Speaker 1: And I just don't think it's you know, it's it is.
Speaker 1: I don't think that stuff gets suppressed. I think if
Speaker 1: you're waiting for some bombshell that you think has never
Speaker 1: been reported, it's never been reported because there's no bombshell
Speaker 1: there and a lot of these conspiracies that can get
Speaker 1: us all sent down certain rabbit holes. But hey, look
Speaker 1: you're not you're not putting out I wish I wish
Speaker 1: I would say, you're being crazy, Andrew. All Right, I
Speaker 1: don't believe it'll be and I don't believe that even
Speaker 1: Trump has enough support to pull something like this off
Speaker 1: without it, you know, without it sort of somebody whistleblowing.
Speaker 1: But that's life in a democracy that ultimately I count
Speaker 1: on somebody being a whistleblower, that at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, somebody's conscience gets the best of them.
Speaker 2: And you know, I would you.
Speaker 1: Know, it's interesting I saw the other day somebody dunking on.
Speaker 1: Somebody tweeted out a sort of regret on voting for Trump,
Speaker 1: and it was a long list. You know, I thought
Speaker 1: I was voting for this, this, and this, and I
Speaker 1: feel taken and you know, I regret my vote. And
Speaker 1: somebody tweeted above it and all the responses were, well,
Speaker 1: you're the more and I can't believe you.
Speaker 2: Fell for it. And I just was wanting to send
Speaker 2: There was somebody else.
Speaker 1: Who was quote tweeting it and just saying, you know,
Speaker 1: you need to ask yourself why you were so ignorant.
Speaker 1: And when I want to say to those folks, and
Speaker 1: I don't know if they listen to this podcast, because
Speaker 1: I'm not somebody who is a who just tells you
Speaker 1: what you want to hear. I just would never be
Speaker 1: able to do that. It's just not that's not who
Speaker 1: I am.
Speaker 2: So I'm not so.
Speaker 1: And I know that this may be saved for those
Speaker 1: partisan you know, those that you know are trying to
Speaker 1: save America, that claim they're saving America with their podcasts,
Speaker 1: which is, everybody's got a line that Trump crosses, but
Speaker 1: everybody's line is in a different place. I said something
Speaker 1: to a family member early on in the Trump years,
Speaker 1: and I said, it be careful being overly critical.
Speaker 2: Of some of these folks.
Speaker 1: I said, somebody you don't like today is going to
Speaker 1: be the hero of this story. And the punchline is,
Speaker 1: you know, at that moment, little did anybody know that
Speaker 1: Liz Cheney would be a hero for protecting democracy to
Speaker 1: many on the left some three years later, and yet.
Speaker 2: She was turned out.
Speaker 1: It was January sixth, was the line for her. Everybody
Speaker 1: has our line. It is not in the same place
Speaker 1: we live. If you want to live in a thriving democracy,
Speaker 1: you need to accept the premise that we all don't agree.
Speaker 1: That we all may have ethics and morals, but they're
Speaker 1: not in alignment with each other's ethics and morals, and
Speaker 1: that we all have our we all have our no
Speaker 1: go zones, right, we all have the line. If they
Speaker 1: crosses this line, I'm out. Welcome them, Welcome them to
Speaker 1: the bunker, don't lecture them for taking too long to
Speaker 1: get there. Next question comes from Amanda, and she writes,
Speaker 1: I had to stop what I was doing during your
Speaker 1: March second podcast because once again I found myself shouting,
Speaker 1: why don't you run for president?
Speaker 2: Mister Todd.
Speaker 1: The way you break down something as complex as the
Speaker 1: Iran assault with legal, historical, in fact driven clarity is
Speaker 1: exactly what.
Speaker 2: This country needs.
Speaker 1: You are truly one of the last honest, fair and
Speaker 1: balanced voices in the media, and I often have to
Speaker 1: listen twice just to absorb it all.
Speaker 2: Thank you for doing what you do. Gives me hope
Speaker 2: in a.
Speaker 1: Time when I often feel like we're living through the
Speaker 1: fall of Rome. Well, Amanda, I wonder what people in
Speaker 1: Rome at the time. Did they know what was all
Speaker 1: coming to an end? Or do they all think, oh, no,
Speaker 1: we can fix this right, whether they're naive like me, No, no, no,
Speaker 1: we'll figure it out. Well, I think you just described
Speaker 1: the reason why someone like me will never get elected, right,
Speaker 1: because you said, fact driven clarity is exactly what this
Speaker 1: country needs. What president has successfully used fact driven clarity
Speaker 1: to to get a majority on their side. A sort
Speaker 1: of half kid. And the candidates that that scratch my
Speaker 1: itch are usually the ones that are at one or
Speaker 1: two percent.
Speaker 2: I remember, you know, I was.
Speaker 1: One of the candidates that intrigued me the most on
Speaker 1: the Democratic side in twenty twenty. It was Michael Bennett,
Speaker 1: and I remember him at one debate he said the
Speaker 1: issue that I cared the most about. He says, if
Speaker 1: you elect me president, you might, I might, you might
Speaker 1: go three weeks without hearing from me. And I thought, yes,
Speaker 1: give me more of that. That resonated like a wet noodle. Right,
Speaker 1: But it's I appreciate you saying that. It's very kind
Speaker 1: of you, and I just I'll tell you why I've
Speaker 1: never even contemplated entering politics, because I think it would undermine.
Speaker 2: Elected office. I'll say this way.
Speaker 1: I always feared to underline my credibility on the media side,
Speaker 1: and not just mine, but other members of the media.
Speaker 1: You know, you play into the type that you know,
Speaker 1: you're an activist and all this stuff, and yet you
Speaker 1: know I'm a citizen too, and you're right, you know,
Speaker 1: so I you know, but I've decided to throw my efforts,
Speaker 1: my political efforts into restructuring the democracy, reforming, updating the
Speaker 1: infrastructure for the democracy. We need a couple of new
Speaker 1: constitutional amendments. It's pretty clear we need one on campaign money.
Speaker 1: It's pretty clear we need one on on some on
Speaker 1: some jerrymandering, and perhaps we need one and just a simple.
Speaker 2: Right to vote aspect in the constitution itself.
Speaker 1: And you know, if I feel like that's the place
Speaker 1: I can contribute best is sadly, running for president is
Speaker 1: just simply it's like agreeing to like the cast of Survivor,
Speaker 1: and that's just not something I've ever wanted to be
Speaker 1: a part of, if you get my drift. But clarity
Speaker 1: is my goal here. So the fact that you're getting clarity,
Speaker 1: I feel as if a mission as a president might
Speaker 1: say mission accomplished.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: Last question comes from Jim in Pennsylvania, and he goes, hey,
Speaker 1: I've heard it said that the next president, regardless of
Speaker 1: whether they're Republican or Democrat, may have difficulty doing a
Speaker 1: one eighty on tariff. Says this may be the new
Speaker 1: norm as a revenue stream. If that is the case,
Speaker 1: how does the country go about removing tariffs? How did
Speaker 1: we change course from the Willie McKinley days when he
Speaker 1: was pro tariff to the free trade that we've had
Speaker 1: most recently. Is it something that can be done like
Speaker 1: a band aid that's ripped off, or does it take
Speaker 1: multiple presidencies and the building of goodwill to develop free trade? Well,
Speaker 1: I think it's going to be you know, I think
Speaker 1: goodwill is going to be one issue, right and we
Speaker 1: may have so many reciprocal tariffs that are impacting US.
Speaker 1: I don't think getting rid of the tariffs are going
Speaker 1: to be that difficult. I think what some people claim
Speaker 1: that will be difficult is giving how do you replace
Speaker 1: the revenue if it is bringing in so much revenue
Speaker 1: that it that if you get rid of it, then
Speaker 1: you have to find a way to replace the revenue. Now,
Speaker 1: I've always believed what Donald Trump was and what proponents
Speaker 1: of his tariff strategy were really hoping. Trump has said this,
Speaker 1: he wanted to get rid of the income tax. He
Speaker 1: wants to repeal the sixteenth Amendment. He wants to get
Speaker 1: rid of the income tax. Most rich people do. Rich
Speaker 1: people hated the income tax. The reason they put in
Speaker 1: we put in the income tax is because these industrialists
Speaker 1: were not paying their fair share, and the tariff system
Speaker 1: of taxation, which was the primary way the government raised money,
Speaker 1: made it so that essentially the working class and the
Speaker 1: working poor were actually paying more in tax than the
Speaker 1: wealthy work and so that's why we ended up with
Speaker 1: the income tax in the first place, and the property
Speaker 1: tax structure that we see some governors wanting to get
Speaker 1: rid of today, which if you get rid of that,
Speaker 1: all you're going to do is get rid of government
Speaker 1: services that a lot of people like and find yourself
Speaker 1: on the wrong end of a pitchfork that I promise you.
Speaker 1: So it's the revenue, the potential for the lost revenue
Speaker 1: that I think has made some people think they'll be
Speaker 1: harder to get rid of, which is obviously what Trump
Speaker 1: is hoping to do. But terror's not going to be
Speaker 1: hard to get rid of, not if you really want
Speaker 1: to do it. And it's but the problem, and I
Speaker 1: think now it's pretty clear they're not very effective, and
Speaker 1: they only seem to punish the American consumer, not the
Speaker 1: country we're intending to impact all right, Well, that does
Speaker 1: it for questions. It is It is perhaps the single
Speaker 1: greatest four day period for college basketball that there is.
Speaker 1: I know we're supposed to say the NCAA Tournament. It
Speaker 1: is amazing. I love the nca Tournament. And next weekend,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it's going to be very difficult
Speaker 1: for me to be doing tapings and paying attention. I
Speaker 1: have a TV within eyesight, within my eyeline here, I
Speaker 1: don't have it on. I am taping because right now,
Speaker 1: what I love about this week and this weekend is
Speaker 1: there is basketball that starts at ten am Eastern time.
Speaker 1: And there's basketball that I was watching last night Wednesday
Speaker 1: night that is Eastern Washington and I was watching that
Speaker 1: game and and uh and that was well past midnight
Speaker 1: one o'clock. And every game means something, right, everybody's got
Speaker 1: their own little uh march madness potential, right it is.
Speaker 1: This is it's it's funny, and it's like every other sport.
Speaker 1: You know, college basketball has a regular season problem, although
Speaker 1: I think this year was one of the better regular seasons.
Speaker 1: And please more more interconference scheduling in February that is fabulous.
Speaker 1: We had a lot of I mean that seeing Michigan
Speaker 1: and Duke play, you know, in a non conference game
Speaker 1: in the middle of so called conference season. In fact,
Speaker 1: I'd love to see a flip right start the conference
Speaker 1: schedules earlier in November and December, go ahead and the
Speaker 1: first matchups then and you know those are on campus
Speaker 1: games and all that stuff, and then like have some
Speaker 1: bigger games to start showcasing. Because one of the things
Speaker 1: we're learning about college basketball, I think in the NIL
Speaker 1: era is basically, if you're under six', five you now
Speaker 1: are more likely to, play and no matter how great you,
Speaker 1: are you're more likely to play for all four. Years
Speaker 1: and college one is it's just not a lot of
Speaker 1: appetite in THE nba for anybody under six.
Speaker 2: Five.
Speaker 1: And then if you're obviously if you're a center that's
Speaker 1: six 's nine, or shorter Unless you're bam Out of,
Speaker 1: bio right the shortest center. THERE is i mean talking
Speaker 1: about a guy who plays almost half a foot taller
Speaker 1: than he. Actually is i'm still just shocked by his
Speaker 1: eighty three, point, Game Right, kobe Bryan Not, luca RIGHT
Speaker 1: not i Mean. Not lebron like when you think who's
Speaker 1: number Two to, will right it's going to be such
Speaker 1: a such a great question in thirty, years right and
Speaker 1: people are going, To, guess.
Speaker 2: Wow maybe Was It? Magic johnson did he? Do It Did?
Speaker 1: Larry Bird And?
Speaker 2: Michael Jordan Did?
Speaker 1: Turk Nowitzki tim duncan you start? GO through, i MEAN
Speaker 1: if i put together thirty names top names in THE,
Speaker 1: CURRENT nba i don't KNOW when i would GET. TO
Speaker 1: bam i don't know if i'd GET to bam as
Speaker 1: potential for having an eighty three. Point game but when
Speaker 1: you start the first quarter with thirty, one points, you
Speaker 1: know you gotta love it that they, just fed, you
Speaker 1: know found ways to keep feeding them and keep.
Speaker 2: Doing THAT but i digressed a.
Speaker 1: Little bit the point being IS that i think that
Speaker 1: we are this the top twenty five teams in. College
Speaker 1: basketball so this will be when it comes to the
Speaker 1: seeding when we see the Brackets, on sunday the ONE
Speaker 1: through i would put here the one through, five SEEDS
Speaker 1: and i might expand it to the. SIX seeds i
Speaker 1: do think this is such a top heavy year that
Speaker 1: there is nobody outside the top six seeds will be
Speaker 1: In a.
Speaker 2: FINAL four.
Speaker 1: I do not think you'll see a seven or. HIGHER
Speaker 1: seat i think there is a. Huge gap, the gap
Speaker 1: THERE'S a i think there's there's sort of like there's
Speaker 1: the there's eight teams that seem super elite and seem
Speaker 1: like and obviously four of them aren't going to at
Speaker 1: least four of aret going to Make the final four and.
Speaker 2: All that then you.
Speaker 1: Have sort of the next twelve who can beat those
Speaker 1: top eight teams on any. Given night the question is
Speaker 1: can they beat two of them in a row right
Speaker 1: to make it to the to an eight or a
Speaker 1: sixty or.
Speaker 2: Final four.
Speaker 1: But enjoy these games because we are getting its high
Speaker 1: quality of college basketball matchups then we've gotten since. THE eighties,
Speaker 1: i mean, YOU know i think back at those golden
Speaker 1: years Of The, big east when you had When The
Speaker 1: big east was the. Deepest conference one year they came
Speaker 1: really close to getting. All four, in Fact At, boston
Speaker 1: college who was In The. Big east Then At, BOSTON
Speaker 1: college i think not lost In the elite Eight. To
Speaker 1: memphis the final four that Featured, For Villanova saint John's
Speaker 1: and georgetown would have been An All Big east. Final Four,
Speaker 1: BUT memphis i think is the BACK then i think
Speaker 1: they were Known As. MEMPHIS state i think it Was
Speaker 1: The keith lee team broke through and it was three of.
Speaker 1: The four but the quality of college basketball in the
Speaker 1: mid eighties when everybody had to stay, three years three,
Speaker 1: or fourth so you'd have these incredibly sort of. Mature
Speaker 1: teams that was one version. Of it now IN the, Nil,
Speaker 1: era no you're not going to get maybe players growing
Speaker 1: up with, each other solidifying over. Multiple seasons but you
Speaker 1: do see a big difference between the beginning of the
Speaker 1: season and the end of. The Season right i'm watching it.
Speaker 1: Very closely IN. The acc the hottest team IN the
Speaker 1: aec is not going to make.
Speaker 2: The Tournament It's.
Speaker 1: Florida State florida State since, february first has been fantastic
Speaker 1: and classic, new coach young team finally. Coming together they're
Speaker 1: the team no one wants to face in THE a.
Speaker 1: Sec Tournament RIGHT if i don't think they're going to
Speaker 1: win THE A, sec tournament but if they make the
Speaker 1: semis or, the finals not going to. Be shocked they've just,
Speaker 1: been playing, you know they've they've quote figured. It out
Speaker 1: and that's what's kind of, Fun. About right you can
Speaker 1: get hot in a tournament and suddenly you can find
Speaker 1: yourself in in the biggest of the biggest, of dances
Speaker 1: but enjoy. THESE matchups, I mean i just think we're
Speaker 1: we're going To have we're going to have as good
Speaker 1: Of an elite Eight and, sweet sixteen and these are
Speaker 1: going to be high. LEVEL matchups, i mean we are
Speaker 1: the depth of this year's. COLLEGE basketball I, Mean, Florida, Yukon, Houston,
Speaker 1: Arizona Duke. Saint john's, YOU know, i look i'd love
Speaker 1: to SAY my I think. Miami is i'm Really hoping
Speaker 1: miami gets a. Sixth SEED My, gw colonials, You Know
Speaker 1: i'm i'd like to see them make. A splash i
Speaker 1: think they're kind of running out of, gas unfortunately but
Speaker 1: uh My Buddy chris capudo's had a. Great season we are,
Speaker 1: you know we're not gonna get, twenty wins, but.
Speaker 2: Boy there there.
Speaker 1: Are three there are three or four wins sitting in
Speaker 1: that lost column THAT that, i think, you know a,
Speaker 1: bounce here a, bounce there and maybe we're a twenty
Speaker 1: one win team and maybe we're on the bubble on.
Speaker 1: That front and we came within three points of beating
Speaker 1: the one team of the eight ten that could make
Speaker 1: noise in the, nca tournament and That's The Saint. LOUIS
Speaker 1: billigans i bet you didn't know That the atlantic ten
Speaker 1: stretched all the Way To, saint louis.
Speaker 2: But, it.
Speaker 1: Does Right The atlantic ocean eventually finds its way Into,
Speaker 1: the mississippi which is close Enough To Saint.
Speaker 2: Louis university.
Speaker 1: But. ENJOY this I know. I am this is an.
Speaker 1: Amazing weekend throw IN the WBC and nfl, free AGENCY
Speaker 1: and i am getting a little concerned about what my
Speaker 1: packers are. Up to a lot of offensive linemen leaving
Speaker 1: the building waiting for the replenishment. Of, supplies, here guys
Speaker 1: totally Understand The romeo, dobbs thing Understand the gary trade
Speaker 1: less less sort of bought in on what's happening on the.
Speaker 1: Offensive line getting very nervous here. About that what was,
Speaker 1: you know that's been, a strength so we. Shall see
Speaker 1: we've got a pretty deep, receiver room but we have
Speaker 1: no first round draft pick. This Year That's michael parsons
Speaker 1: that's sitting on.
Speaker 2: The il so a little.
Speaker 1: Bit concerned but the, point is if you're looking to
Speaker 1: get distracted, by sports this is an amazing weekend to
Speaker 1: distract yourself from the horrors of what we're dealing with at.
Speaker 1: The moment to what is the euphoria had a lot
Speaker 1: of fun, to watch, and look these guys may, get
Speaker 1: paid they, deserve it and they still seem pretty excited.
Speaker 1: About it so enjoy, the weekend enjoy. The games i'll
Speaker 1: see in seventy.
Speaker 2: Two hours