Speaker 1: Happy Monday, and welcome to another episode of the Chuck Todcast.
Speaker 1: Obviously a pretty momentous weekend as far as America's national
Speaker 1: security is concerned. I'm going to get to that in
Speaker 1: a second. I just want to give you a quick
Speaker 1: rundown of what to expect on this episode. So I've
Speaker 1: got a couple things to say about the current situation
Speaker 1: in the Middle East, a little preview on New York
Speaker 1: City mayor, which I think this primary could be the
Speaker 1: most consequential Democratic primary until twenty twenty eight, believe it
Speaker 1: or not as far as the Democratic Party's brand is concerned.
Speaker 1: Then I have an interesting interview with a longtime pal
Speaker 1: and co author of the book Original Sin. It's Jake Tapper.
Speaker 1: And then after that we'll do a few questions, and
Speaker 1: I got a little family update I want to share
Speaker 1: with you at the very end, But let me begin
Speaker 1: with what happened on Saturday. So let's start with the obvious.
Speaker 1: This is one of those moments that's still hard to
Speaker 1: process in real time. I think most people, regardless of ideology,
Speaker 1: are going to wish this operation against Iran turns out
Speaker 1: to be a success. I count myself among those who
Speaker 1: do but I'm also among those who are deeply uneasy
Speaker 1: with this decision, because what if we just opened a
Speaker 1: door we can't close. Let me back up for a
Speaker 1: moment and remind folks how we got here. For all
Speaker 1: its failures, nuclear deterrence has actually worked more often than not.
Speaker 1: The number of countries with nuclear weapons is fairly limited,
Speaker 1: and in some cases we've actually seen nations abandon their
Speaker 1: ambitions entirely. Brazil did South Africa, did Libya, And while
Speaker 1: each case was different, the idea of preventing a nuclear
Speaker 1: arms race in the Middle East has always been a
Speaker 1: core tenet of global security strategy, not just the United
Speaker 1: States that fear a nuclear Iran has haunted multiple US
Speaker 1: presidents because if Iran go's nuclear, then so to Saudi Arabia,
Speaker 1: and so to the Amritis. Egypt will want one, and
Speaker 1: suddenly we're living in a new Cold War, but in
Speaker 1: the hottest region on Earth. So yes, preventing Iran from
Speaker 1: acquiring a nuclear weapon is a broadly supported objective, But
Speaker 1: that's not the same thing as saying bombing is the
Speaker 1: only or best way to achieve that goal. Let's not
Speaker 1: kid ourselves. This was a choice. There's a famous question.
Speaker 1: One of my predecessors that meet the Press once put
Speaker 1: to George W. Bush about the Iraq War a war
Speaker 1: of necessity or a war of choice. It was a
Speaker 1: question that he never fully answered, but in hindsight, it
Speaker 1: certainly looks like it was a war of choice. This
Speaker 1: decision was a choice. There were other ways to go.
Speaker 1: President Trump, though, now owns this choice. It is perhaps
Speaker 1: the single most consequential decision he has made and may
Speaker 1: make for either one of his terms as president. There
Speaker 1: was no inminent threat. There wasn't even a preemptive strike.
Speaker 1: This was at best a preventative strike, and it's a
Speaker 1: very risky one at that. Now, look, if there's one
Speaker 1: constant in Trump's foreign policy instincts, it is this. He
Speaker 1: believes in maximum pressure and minimal consultation. He thinks he
Speaker 1: can air strike his way out of problems, and sometimes
Speaker 1: I use the word airstrike metaphorically, like tariffs are kind
Speaker 1: of his version of this. He thinks he can do
Speaker 1: this economically, militarily, diplomatically, and maybe he can in an
Speaker 1: instance or two. Many of us should hope he's right
Speaker 1: about this one. I do, because the alternative could be
Speaker 1: a hell of a lot worse. But this just isn't
Speaker 1: a regional skirmish. This reverberates across the globe. Think about
Speaker 1: the signal that sends to Ukraine. America is slow walking
Speaker 1: its commitment there while fast tracking a bombing campaign in Iran.
Speaker 1: If your president Zelenski, you're just shaking your head. Now,
Speaker 1: if you're Vladimir Putin watching this unfold, you're thinking good.
Speaker 1: The Americans are distracted, and we get to keep testing
Speaker 1: the limits. America is going to be more focused on
Speaker 1: that than us. And of course there's the supposed alliance
Speaker 1: between Russia and Iran. But let's be honest. We've seen
Speaker 1: some early rhetoric from Medvedev and some others. Russia is
Speaker 1: not going to stick its neck out for Iran. Putin
Speaker 1: is transactional, not fully ideological, and he knows he's got
Speaker 1: the best US president he'll ever have when it comes
Speaker 1: to his ambition in Ukraine. Why mess that up by
Speaker 1: irritating him in Iran? Trust me, he does. He will
Speaker 1: trade Iran for Ukraine in a heartbeat. And I don't
Speaker 1: know if Tehran knows that yet. Iran may get some
Speaker 1: rhetorical support that they got, but when it comes to
Speaker 1: real resources. I have a feeling that going to be
Speaker 1: on their own. We'll see. But if you're him, and
Speaker 1: you know you're dealing with a bit of an erratic guy,
Speaker 1: and Donald Trump, do you want to test the limits?
Speaker 1: And suddenly he's decided, Oh, I'll fully arm Ukraine, let's go. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: what kind of message is being sent to other countries
Speaker 1: teetering on the nuclear threshold? North Korea built its arsenal,
Speaker 1: and like it or not, they secured kind of leverage.
Speaker 1: They have their own nuclear umbrella that protects them. Libya
Speaker 1: gave up its program back in the early two thousands,
Speaker 1: and how long did Kadafi get to stay in power?
Speaker 1: That history is not going to be lost on Iranian hardliners.
Speaker 1: What if, in the under the guise of trying to
Speaker 1: prevent Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon, we just sped
Speaker 1: up their ambition. Just something to ponder here for a minute. Now, Look,
Speaker 1: it's impossible to talk about this without acknowledging Israel's role.
Speaker 1: And I know there's some folks out here who are
Speaker 1: angry at Israel over how they've managed Gaza and how
Speaker 1: they've dealt with the humanitarian crisis that's unfolding there.
Speaker 2: But two things can be true at the.
Speaker 1: Same time, that how they've handled Gaza and how they've
Speaker 1: done the humanitarian aspect of this has been atrocious, and
Speaker 1: at the same time it's a righteous cause to go
Speaker 1: after Iran. Iran is not a good regime. These are
Speaker 1: bad people, committed to doing bad things, committed to the eradication.
Speaker 1: The people do not share our values. They don't share
Speaker 1: a lot of values with anybody who's high character.
Speaker 2: So look, that's just a fact.
Speaker 1: But still Israel played a major role in cornering the
Speaker 1: United States into this air strike. Israel's government has been
Speaker 1: increasingly skeptical, if not hostile, to diplomacy with Iran. They
Speaker 1: didn't like the first Iran agreement and they were petrified
Speaker 1: Trump would do a similar agreement. And then you can't
Speaker 1: ignore themestic political contests in Israel. The bombing occurred just
Speaker 1: hours before Prime Minister in Natya, who was set to
Speaker 1: face a no confidence vote where two of his furthest
Speaker 1: right hardline parties were thinking about essentially bolting the coalition
Speaker 1: and forcing an election. A coincidence perhaps, but the political
Speaker 1: incentives for escalation are undeniable there for him. Look net Now,
Speaker 1: whose views on Iran as an. He does view Iran
Speaker 1: as an existential threat, and he sees this moment as
Speaker 1: a rare opportunity. Iran is very weak internally divided, They've
Speaker 1: lost key regional footholds in Syria and Lebanon. Israel, of course,
Speaker 1: couldn't get rid of the nukes on their own because
Speaker 1: they didn't have that kind of weaponry. They needed US
Speaker 1: muscle and they got it. And here's something that is
Speaker 1: probably going to be an unpopular take with many of you.
Speaker 1: I believe it wouldn't have mattered who was US president.
Speaker 1: I think this bombing campaign would have happened under Kamala
Speaker 1: Harris presidency as well. Why do I think that The
Speaker 1: only difference is and I talked with a few experts
Speaker 1: on this, the only difference is, I don't think bb
Speaker 1: waited sixty days. He gave Trump sixty days. I don't
Speaker 1: think Bib was going to wait sixty days. But either way,
Speaker 1: he was going to corner the next American president regardless
Speaker 1: to sort of force. Because once Israel attacked Iran, there
Speaker 1: was no pulling back, there was no amount they were
Speaker 1: there was no diplomacy left to have. It wouldn't have
Speaker 1: mattered if it was a President Harris or a President Trump,
Speaker 1: and then the moment of truth would have come. And again,
Speaker 1: this was a strategic you know, there's no doubt he was.
Speaker 1: He was persuaded that this was a strategic opportunity that
Speaker 1: any president that the previous presidents never had a chance
Speaker 1: at having to attack Iran with no Hesbala to worry about,
Speaker 1: to attack Iran with no none of theirs with with
Speaker 1: with a sod already out of power. So these were
Speaker 1: things that a Bush didn't have, an Obama didn't have,
Speaker 1: even a Biden didn't have. So I'm not saying it's
Speaker 1: a guarantee that this happens under either presidency, but I
Speaker 1: think it's more likely than many of you may realize
Speaker 1: because of the circumstances, because Israel was going to force
Speaker 1: the hand of the next American president regardless. They did
Speaker 1: not view any sort of deal, sanctioned relief as anything
Speaker 1: that was going to be helpful to them in the region,
Speaker 1: and they've been on the front line of these attacks
Speaker 1: from Iran for a generation. Make no mistake, Okay, it
Speaker 1: is two different things. Now, Look, what was in America's
Speaker 1: best interest was not necessarily an Israel's best interest. But still,
Speaker 1: even if this mission was tactically successful, let's not pretend
Speaker 1: we've solved this problem. We didn't bomb knowledge out of existence.
Speaker 1: We didn't erase blueprints or erase ambition. At best, we
Speaker 1: delayed a program. At worst, we may have provoked something
Speaker 1: we fully don't understand. On this and again the idea
Speaker 1: that they could speed up now and in desperation try
Speaker 1: to get something again with North Korea as the model.
Speaker 2: There.
Speaker 1: What was most striking though about Trump's remarks to the nation,
Speaker 1: and this is where I think he deserves a big
Speaker 1: fat f for presidenting if you want a great amoun
Speaker 1: being president. Those remarks after the strike were just vapid.
Speaker 1: They told us nothing. It was some sort of I
Speaker 1: guess spiking of the football, but he didn't explain why
Speaker 1: he did it. There was no rationale given. There was
Speaker 1: no effort to explain the stakes, There was no attempt
Speaker 1: to reassure allies. There was no vision for what comes next.
Speaker 1: There was a few vague lines about security, deterrence, strength, thanking,
Speaker 1: the Israelis talking about teamwork, but make the case. Look,
Speaker 1: this is not an easy call. A majority of this
Speaker 1: country did not think this was a good idea, so
Speaker 1: you should at least make the case. And the fact
Speaker 1: that he didn't do that, I mean this is Look,
Speaker 1: this is sort of par for the course for him,
Speaker 1: and the lack of making a case, he's actually created
Speaker 1: a vacuum here because the absence of a narrative and
Speaker 1: the absence of a clear rationale for doing this will
Speaker 1: create confusion it already is, and that leads to fear,
Speaker 1: and that could create markets for misinformation and propaganda. But
Speaker 1: of course this is a pattern. Trump often pursues goals
Speaker 1: that might have a majority supporting him. For those goals,
Speaker 1: arrange and have a nuclear weapon, we should bring more
Speaker 1: manufacturing back to America, we should reform government. But it's
Speaker 1: the way he goes about this. They're reckless, they're opeg
Speaker 1: and they're frankly destabilizing, whether it's Tariff's deportations, this military operation.
Speaker 1: He does it with the assumption that the spectacle is
Speaker 1: enough to justify the action, but the way he goes
Speaker 1: about it makes it more unpopular than the initial goal was.
Speaker 1: So now what let's talk about the fallout. We'll thought
Speaker 1: global and domestic first. The geopolitical risk asymmetric retaliation. Aroan
Speaker 1: doesn't have the military strength for a conventional war, but
Speaker 1: it can cause chaos throughout proxies, through proxies, cyber attacks,
Speaker 1: and terrorism, and we could experience that in American cities. Washington,
Speaker 1: d C, New York, LA. All three cities should be
Speaker 1: on high alert again something the President of the United
Speaker 1: States should have at least acknowledged the risk here, because
Speaker 1: he alone made this decision, and he has now put
Speaker 1: American lives, more American lives at risk today than we're
Speaker 1: at risk yesterday. Second, there's a political risk, the silence
Speaker 1: of Congress once again. Congress has been sidelined. The War
Speaker 1: Powers Act is being tested again, if not outright ignored. Okay,
Speaker 1: And while some Democrats are criticizing the Moon, many Republicans
Speaker 1: are staying quiet. They're caught between what feels like their
Speaker 1: traditional hawkish roots and of course their loyalty to Trump.
Speaker 1: But this is now Trump's war to manage, his chaos,
Speaker 1: to contain, and his blowback to absorb. You know, it's funny.
Speaker 1: In two hundred days he has done what normally presidents
Speaker 1: don't want to do in their first two hundred days.
Speaker 1: He has made it impossible to have to worry about
Speaker 1: blaming a predecessor for anything. He has turned the economy
Speaker 1: upside down with his tariffs. It is now the Trump economy,
Speaker 1: for better or for worse. And now he has turned
Speaker 1: essentially the war the world upside down. And he did it.
Speaker 1: It was a choice. And ironically for a man who
Speaker 1: professes America first and seems to tip his hat to
Speaker 1: the isolationist history of the Republican Party that goes back
Speaker 1: one hundred years, this is the action of somebody that
Speaker 1: believes America should be the world's beat cop. Because that's
Speaker 1: essentially that's about the only rationale you could give to
Speaker 1: me that might persuade me why America had to do this?
Speaker 1: Who else could do it but America? And who else
Speaker 1: is looking out for the world but America. But every
Speaker 1: time you ask the country whether they want America to
Speaker 1: be the world's beat cop, the answer is usually a
Speaker 1: resounding no. Now, I'm always one of those people that
Speaker 1: actually is for it, some of you've heard me say before,
Speaker 1: because I always say, if we're not the world's beat cop,
Speaker 1: somebody else is going to be and we're not going.
Speaker 2: To like it.
Speaker 1: But let's I do think the single most important question
Speaker 1: he's got to answer to the American people is the following,
Speaker 1: Did this action make the world safer?
Speaker 2: Did it make America safer?
Speaker 1: Maybe in the long run we'll look back and say, yes,
Speaker 1: maybe this is a needed course correction, and this will
Speaker 1: create new momentum to halt nuclear proliferation. But right now,
Speaker 1: in the near term, it doesn't feel that way. What
Speaker 1: it feels like is more instability, more uncertainty, and perhaps
Speaker 1: more isolation for the United States. If you thought we
Speaker 1: were unpopular before with the tariffs, where we threatened the
Speaker 1: economic lives of not just Americans but everybody around the world, wait,
Speaker 1: do you see how we're received on this one.
Speaker 2: And here's one final thought.
Speaker 1: If this really was the only option left, if diplomacy
Speaker 1: had truly failed, if every other path had been exhausted,
Speaker 1: then make that case to the American people. That's what
Speaker 1: you use your remarks to the American people to do.
Speaker 1: Don't treat this like a tweet, which it did. Don't
Speaker 1: make it look like a reaction to Israel or a
Speaker 1: political ploy to distract from domestic failures. Own it, justify it.
Speaker 1: He's owned it. I don't think he's given us a
Speaker 1: good justification yet, And certainly he's not explained it to us,
Speaker 1: because if you can't do that, you're not leading at
Speaker 1: this point, you're simply gambling. So look, it's a you know,
Speaker 1: I do think I in my Newsphere show, which is
Speaker 1: live right now on the Newsphere app. If you have subscribed,
Speaker 1: I hope you have taken a trial and taken a look.
Speaker 1: I had three guests this week. One was Stephen Cook,
Speaker 1: who's a member of the Council on fordin Relations, written
Speaker 1: a terrific book about sort of the Middle East and Iran,
Speaker 1: and we discussed what regime change could look like on there.
Speaker 1: It's a really good interview. I hope you take a
Speaker 1: chance to listen to it. But he was the person
Speaker 1: and we were talking quite a bit after our interview
Speaker 1: about this, you know, how inevitable was this? And he
Speaker 1: sort of concurs with me that this was what nothing
Speaker 1: that that the it was certainly inevitable that the Israelis
Speaker 1: were never going to stop at Iran and they weren't
Speaker 1: going to take no from an American president on that.
Speaker 2: On that front, my second of view was with Eric Swawa.
Speaker 1: He's a Democratic congressman represents the East Bay of the
Speaker 1: Bay Area in California. H he has been, he has
Speaker 1: served on the House Intelligence Committee, he himself ran for president,
Speaker 1: and he is somebody who is caught, I think, in.
Speaker 2: The middle here.
Speaker 1: He does not like how the President went about doing this,
Speaker 1: and certainly also wants to see Iran stop from developing
Speaker 1: a nuclear weapon.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: One of the things he talked with me about is
Speaker 1: the challenge Democrats are going to have. He thinks there's
Speaker 1: going to be bipartisan agreement that how how the White
Speaker 1: House informed Congress was just awful, you know, And and
Speaker 1: it certainly appears as if the President refused us to
Speaker 1: work with Democrats, even when the law states that they
Speaker 1: have to inform the entire Gang of Eight what they're doing,
Speaker 1: including the Democratic ranking members of Intel Armed Services, that
Speaker 1: Senate Democratic Leader in the House Democratic Leader. It appears
Speaker 1: that they only told the Senate Democratic Leader because they
Speaker 1: knew he'd be the most supportive Chuck Schumer of the
Speaker 1: action against Iran, and didn't bother telling King Jeffreyes doesn't appear.
Speaker 1: Mark Warner was told, who is the vice chair of
Speaker 1: the Senate Intel Committee.
Speaker 2: Doesn't appear.
Speaker 1: Jim Hins was told. You know, it's not just about protocol.
Speaker 1: It's about that. And I know this is a quaint notion,
Speaker 1: but you know, there was a time we all, at
Speaker 1: least during the Cold War, that there was a belief
Speaker 1: that politics you should try to at least stop politics
Speaker 1: at the water's edge. But the irresponsibility of this administration
Speaker 1: in their.
Speaker 2: In their.
Speaker 1: Constant whether I guess it's a grievance, but they pull
Speaker 1: let a size everything and think that things that they're
Speaker 1: supposed to do to keep Democrats informed of things, or
Speaker 1: even work with a Democrat that has nothing to do
Speaker 1: with a political election or anything, they just view it
Speaker 1: as some sort of They view it with such animus.
Speaker 2: It's not.
Speaker 1: You know, again, the man didn't win fifty percent.
Speaker 2: Of the vote.
Speaker 1: The inability to work with the other party, You're going
Speaker 1: to pay a price at the next ballot box if
Speaker 1: you continue to do this. So I think it's a
Speaker 1: it's a terrible thing on there. We close our interview
Speaker 1: talking about the future.
Speaker 2: It was interesting.
Speaker 1: Eric Swawell did have one what I would call alarmist
Speaker 1: statement to me. He believes if Democrats don't win the
Speaker 1: House and don't get any sort of foothold of power
Speaker 1: in Washington after the twenty twenty six midterms that he
Speaker 1: doesn't believe twenty twenty eight will be a free and
Speaker 1: fair election. Like I said, it's a bit of an
Speaker 1: alarming statement. I'm not I'm certainly I'm I'm not going
Speaker 1: to sit here and say he's being alarmist considering what
Speaker 1: we've seen. You know, when anybody that's been a party
Speaker 1: or had to deal with January sixth, on that day,
Speaker 1: and I was anchoring live down there on Capitol Hill,
Speaker 1: it is, you know, you can't ever rule anything out.
Speaker 1: But I'd like to think that it's going to be
Speaker 1: extraordinarily hard to somehow not have a free and fair
Speaker 1: election in this country. But I found that to be
Speaker 1: a statement that I think is worth digesting and worth
Speaker 1: hearing him in context for.
Speaker 2: What it's worth.
Speaker 1: And my final conversation was with my friend Jonathan Martin
Speaker 1: over at Politico, and he and I dove into the
Speaker 1: New York City Democratic primary because that happens Tuesday of
Speaker 1: this week. In fact, this will probably be the last
Speaker 1: time you hear me until after we find out who
Speaker 1: wins that primary. And because the bottom line is this,
Speaker 1: you know, here you have two I think if the
Speaker 1: progressive movement could have picked who they wanted to be
Speaker 1: their face in this mayor's rath would not have picked
Speaker 1: Johan mam Donni.
Speaker 2: And certainly if the.
Speaker 1: Center left or the pro business or the establishment wing
Speaker 1: of the Democratic Party, we're looking for an avatar in
Speaker 1: a primary, the last person they would have chosen is
Speaker 1: Andrew Cuomo. But here they have Cuomo and mom Donnie.
Speaker 1: I will tell you this the panic among the establishment
Speaker 1: crowd if mom Donnie wins this primary, because he will
Speaker 1: be the Democratic Party nominee. Now look, Andy Quomo's still
Speaker 1: going to be on the ballot. Eric Adams, who's the
Speaker 1: current mayor, is going to be on the ballot. There's
Speaker 1: all sorts of different ballot lines. By the way, Mam
Speaker 1: Donnie loses the primary, he's also I think I think
Speaker 1: it's Working Families Party that he'll be on, But he's
Speaker 1: going to have another ballot line that he's on. So
Speaker 1: it's possible we have a four or five way general election.
Speaker 1: You know, if you've ever dreamed of that, you know
Speaker 1: I have. I think we're kind of a four party
Speaker 1: system in reality, Well, we could have quite the chaos
Speaker 1: on our hands. Andrew Cuomo, Eric Adams, Carlo Sliwa, who's
Speaker 1: the founder of the Guardian Angels. And Curtis Leewah. Sorry
Speaker 1: I was blanking on his name. I wanted to call
Speaker 1: him Carlos Sleewa. Sorry about that. Curtis Sleewah, founder of
Speaker 1: the Guardian Angels, is the Republican nominee. So it could
Speaker 1: be a wild general election. But this primary what New
Speaker 1: York City Democrats do? Who finishes first, who finishes second. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's a ranked choice voting, and so we may not
Speaker 1: have the final tally until Thursday or Friday this week.
Speaker 1: Maybe who knows if it's something else, but just who's
Speaker 1: the leading vote getter, who wins the most first choice votes?
Speaker 1: It will tell us something about where the energy is
Speaker 1: inside the Democratic Party. So look, there's a lot. It's
Speaker 1: why you think what the heck is Jim cliber and
Speaker 1: a South Carolina Democratic congressmen weighing in on the New
Speaker 1: York City mayor's race. Well, he's part of the establishment, right.
Speaker 1: He weighed in with Cuomo. Like I said, Michael Bloomberg
Speaker 1: was no Cuomo fan, but he's writing millions of dollars
Speaker 1: of checks. Mom Donnie's candidacy scares the living daylights out
Speaker 1: of Democrats who think the party's brand is already seen
Speaker 1: as too liberal.
Speaker 2: We'll see who's right.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm old enough to remember when a lot
Speaker 1: of establishment Republicans thought MAGA and the far right of
Speaker 1: the Republican Party was a losing strategy for them to
Speaker 1: win elections. Ten years later, I'm writing essays that say
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's the most influential president since FDR. So I'm
Speaker 1: not going to sit here and assume either side is
Speaker 1: correct in this one. I'm certainly one that believes that
Speaker 1: the brand the party does have a brand problem, and
Speaker 1: that I do think they ideologically if you're seen too
Speaker 1: far to the left, that that's a bigger problem these
Speaker 1: days then if you're seen as too far to the right.
Speaker 1: So in general, it's pretty clear there's a brand problem
Speaker 1: at least with the middle of the elector when you're
Speaker 1: asking the middle to hold their nose. This most recently,
Speaker 1: they chose far right over what they perceived to be
Speaker 1: as a party.
Speaker 2: That was too liberal.
Speaker 1: So something to keep in mind and a reason to
Speaker 1: watch that race. And with that, let's sneak in a
Speaker 1: quick break and when we come back, my friend Jake.
Speaker 2: Tapper joining me now somebody I have known forever.
Speaker 1: We've basically professionally grew up together and watching and I think,
Speaker 1: Jake Tapper, you're of course kind is just I tell
Speaker 1: everybody we're sort of here simply because you're hawking a
Speaker 1: book through. I'm not sure if people know this book
Speaker 1: hasn't gotten a lot of attention, so we'll have to
Speaker 1: spend some time trying to tell people about the book.
Speaker 3: Can I tell you what podcast? So we show your
Speaker 3: fan of Yes, my first memory of you, my first memory.
Speaker 2: Of you, and I'll tell you my memory of you
Speaker 2: is the Iowa State Fair.
Speaker 3: Yeah, in nineteen ninety nine, nineteen ninety nine, you were
Speaker 3: there with Hotline, I believe. Yeah, I'm there with Salon
Speaker 3: dot Com. Yep, you're there with like a little group.
Speaker 3: It's like Dominic and Vaughn. It's just like a whole
Speaker 3: bunch of hot like Vaughn.
Speaker 1: I don't remember a Dominic, but that's all right, all right,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe I maybe I had a Domaco at NBC.
Speaker 2: But that's maybe maybe Domenico.
Speaker 3: All right, Anyway, you were more You and Vaughn were
Speaker 3: more memorable than whoever the third person was. And uh
Speaker 3: so Hotline for people who don't know, and you probably
Speaker 3: have some people here who know you only from NBC
Speaker 3: and don't know about Hotline. But Hotline was the first
Speaker 3: aggregator pre Internet of all the media. And it was
Speaker 3: a newsletter that you would sign up for and somebody
Speaker 3: would get up at the kracka dawn or even like
Speaker 3: all night.
Speaker 2: I don't know how you guys, Dido don Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we had twelve ships. It was like I don't even know,
Speaker 2: thirty pages by the end, and like.
Speaker 1: Yeah I didn't, I didn't. I I was more inclusive.
Speaker 1: I said, we're online. It could do as long as
Speaker 1: it once. I never thought we should have a cut off.
Speaker 3: It was just like all the press summarized for politics,
Speaker 3: all of it, and we.
Speaker 2: Did this crazy thing.
Speaker 1: You know, back then, we had these weird you know,
Speaker 1: people may not realize this, but there were these things
Speaker 1: called local newspapers, and they had these things called political
Speaker 1: reporters that were based not in Washington, but actually based
Speaker 1: in communities all.
Speaker 2: Over the country, all over the country.
Speaker 1: And guess what, when you have people all over the country,
Speaker 1: you get a more diversified look at what the hell
Speaker 1: is going on in America.
Speaker 2: Anyway, everybody wanted to be mentioned by the Hotline.
Speaker 1: And one thing, we boulded the names, right, We bolded
Speaker 1: all of your names, and that's what mattered.
Speaker 3: I just remember, just because I was at Salon dot
Speaker 3: com and you know, we were trying to get established
Speaker 3: and trying to recognize that being mentioned and having my
Speaker 3: reporter mentioned alongside of the David Broders of the world.
Speaker 2: Was really important. And I think I remember that there.
Speaker 3: I have to go back and find it, but there
Speaker 3: was a profile of Hotline by the Washington Post Style section.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we had like for a long time.
Speaker 3: In nineteen ninety nine or two thousand, in which I
Speaker 3: admitted that I whined to you if I did not
Speaker 3: get mentioned, which is true, and I own up to that.
Speaker 3: And you still always just want to be mentioned. You
Speaker 3: still always just want to have your work we recognize.
Speaker 1: So by the way, it's this is true. I mean,
Speaker 1: like we write social media's proof of this, you know,
Speaker 1: this is this is sort of the the dirty little secret, right,
Speaker 1: Like that's all we just want to be seen, right,
Speaker 1: reports want to be seen.
Speaker 3: I don't think it's a secret, but yes, no, so
Speaker 3: I've known you forever and then you are our kids
Speaker 3: now are kids with the school together. The first one
Speaker 3: that's leaving, my second one is leaving. How are you
Speaker 3: handling this? You're going to be a kid in college.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna have a kid's gonna I'm good. No, I'm
Speaker 2: not ready. And I'm going to be a mess. I'm
Speaker 2: going to be a mess.
Speaker 3: And we have the same breakdown, older old, younger boy,
Speaker 3: and I'm.
Speaker 2: Going to be a mess. But yeah, we go back.
Speaker 3: Obviously you were white esk correspondent for NBC when I
Speaker 3: was white es correspondent for ABC during the first Obama term.
Speaker 3: And it's been a long, lovely, fruitful fruit deal friendship.
Speaker 3: Our wives are friends, our kids are friends. And just
Speaker 3: to just to illustrate how far back this isn't actually
Speaker 3: how far back it goes. But I got a photo
Speaker 3: like apple, you know, reminds you of on this day
Speaker 3: five years ago. I sent you and your wife five
Speaker 3: years ago this week your son's co virtual bot metzah. Yeah,
Speaker 3: the covid metzvah. Was it a botments for a bar
Speaker 3: metzvah barments of course? Harrison, ye, Harrison, Harrison. We're in
Speaker 3: our basement. I set up a.
Speaker 1: Little it looked, you know, I made him put a
Speaker 1: suit on. You know, we did it as if we
Speaker 1: had our own little bema. It was we had to
Speaker 1: do that for aliss too, and it's uh yeah, so
Speaker 1: you know, he never got his party and he was
Speaker 1: always kind of disappointed in that. But in exchange for
Speaker 1: the party, we went to lambeau Field like a couple
Speaker 1: years later.
Speaker 2: That's nice.
Speaker 3: So we just held off Alice's party until I forget
Speaker 3: if we did it for her sixteenth birthday or for gradu.
Speaker 1: I think our friends in the Latino commit I like
Speaker 1: King Sanaras I grown up at Miami, those were I
Speaker 1: think fifteen feels like a bet, Like, you know, it's
Speaker 1: so funny of these these the botmtz but we threw
Speaker 1: the big bot Metzva party for our honor and you
Speaker 1: did it for check And it's just so I mean,
Speaker 1: every cliche is true when you try to like who
Speaker 1: do you invite at? Like what kind of I feel
Speaker 1: like at fifteen the kids are ready to at least
Speaker 1: mingle between boys and girls.
Speaker 3: Well, thirteen they're still not ready. No, that's totally true.
Speaker 3: And I also kind of think that COVID set back
Speaker 3: this generation of kids a couple of years when it
Speaker 3: comes to emotional development obviously.
Speaker 2: Oh, I completely agree. I see it. I see it
Speaker 2: with my both.
Speaker 1: Uh more so with my daughter in the age because
Speaker 1: you know, in terms.
Speaker 2: Of your angling and learning how to date. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1: I don't know about you, but it wasn't High school
Speaker 1: was sort of when you when you made your mistakes.
Speaker 1: I don't know holse to put it right when you
Speaker 1: made your miss you know, maybe it ghosted somebody the
Speaker 1: wrong way, whatever it is, but in a weird way,
Speaker 1: you need that in order to sort of prepare for
Speaker 1: young adulthood when you start dating, and when you don't
Speaker 1: get it in high school, you know there is something
Speaker 1: that's missing there.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I will not say that I made all my mistakes
Speaker 3: in high school because if so, we would be subjected
Speaker 3: to all sorts.
Speaker 2: Of comments to your posts. I know there's I just
Speaker 2: from people with whom I made mistakes well into my thirties.
Speaker 1: So uh fair, No, I hear you on that. How
Speaker 1: do you handle I I I can't tell you when
Speaker 1: the switch flip, but it flipped for me right around
Speaker 1: about a month or so after the lockdown, where it's
Speaker 1: just like, remember it doesn't matter. Journalists are not meant
Speaker 1: to be popular. Who cares? You know, we're all human beings.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: There's always moments where you probably feel defensive and you
Speaker 1: want to say something, but you've learned not to do it.
Speaker 2: I've learned not to do it. Whenbody goes.
Speaker 1: Nobody should and nobody should, I don't want them to.
Speaker 1: I'm not interested in it, which is why I'm not
Speaker 1: going to do there. I'll call you up and bitch
Speaker 1: and moan. Right, we can exchange texts and go blah
Speaker 1: blah blah, right, all that stuff. But for a long time,
Speaker 1: you and I were both really active on social media
Speaker 1: in a different way.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: We would engage. We'd engage positively and negatively. When did
Speaker 1: you feel like, eh, it's not worth it anymore? When
Speaker 1: did you flip that switch?
Speaker 3: I don't know when it was exactly, but it just
Speaker 3: became clear at one point. I do remember. I do
Speaker 3: remember one of the first experiences I had with social
Speaker 3: media where I'm like, oh, you'll get criticized no matter
Speaker 3: what you do on this was when you and I
Speaker 3: did the go t gamble, which.
Speaker 1: Right with the Philadelphia so the Phillies Dodgers on Phillies.
Speaker 2: Ahi fan, He's a Dodgers fan, and I'm.
Speaker 1: More of a Nats fan now, but at the time
Speaker 1: I was, you know, very much more of a Dodger fan.
Speaker 2: And we did we did bet, yeah.
Speaker 3: They were, and the bet was that Chuck would shase
Speaker 3: he at the time yeah well he now, Yeah, at
Speaker 3: the time it was a good just to go tea
Speaker 3: and and the bet was and he you were he
Speaker 3: was never going to do this. But it was like
Speaker 3: either like I said, I think I never really accepted
Speaker 3: the bet, but that's okay.
Speaker 2: I remember you you sort of proposed it. And it
Speaker 2: was either if the if the Dodgers won, I would
Speaker 2: grow a go tea and if the Phillies won, Chuck
Speaker 2: would shave his go tea.
Speaker 1: But it's not clear you can grow facial hair, right,
Speaker 1: You're still not sure, right, you're still trying.
Speaker 3: That's fair, and so I mean, who knows? Who knows
Speaker 3: is the answer to that. So and then there was
Speaker 3: a charity, a charitable giving opt out and I think
Speaker 3: that's what we did. We did really well. And I
Speaker 3: think we both and we but my the chair I
Speaker 3: picked was Nick Christoff of the New York Times had
Speaker 3: just written something about Pakistani girls having this horror.
Speaker 2: Do you remember that?
Speaker 3: That's right during a pregnancy called called like fistula or
Speaker 3: something like that the girls would die of.
Speaker 2: And like I was like, oh, I just read this.
Speaker 3: This is before I got involved with homes for our
Speaker 3: troops and like I had the designated charity I always
Speaker 3: worked for. I was like, oh, this is this is
Speaker 3: like a really worthy cause. I'll do it for a
Speaker 3: fistula And like immediately the response on Twitter was how
Speaker 3: dare you?
Speaker 2: Why aren't you giving to an American charity?
Speaker 3: And it was just like and that was the light
Speaker 3: bulb moment that I was like, Oh, it really doesn't
Speaker 3: matter what you're doing.
Speaker 2: No matter what you do, people are going to criticize it.
Speaker 1: But let me ask you this, how often in person
Speaker 1: do you get negative feedback?
Speaker 2: How rare? Is that very seldom?
Speaker 1: And that says to me is the point I'd say,
Speaker 1: I literally can count on one hand the number of
Speaker 1: negative experiences.
Speaker 2: I've had in person, and it's proof.
Speaker 1: You know, it's about the same amount of negative interactions
Speaker 1: you have with just anybody, like on traffic jams or
Speaker 1: you know people that don't you know that don't think
Speaker 1: that think they ought to use the ten items or
Speaker 1: less line, you know, things like that. It's proof that
Speaker 1: if we all spend more time face to face, we're
Speaker 1: not going to be assholes to each other.
Speaker 2: No, I agree, I agree. And the social media has
Speaker 2: definitely made us as a and.
Speaker 3: I don't think it's in real life. I think it's
Speaker 3: only on social media, but it's made the world seem
Speaker 3: harsher well.
Speaker 1: And I sit here and I try to say this
Speaker 1: all the time. There's an online world and there's the
Speaker 1: real world. Mike Lee is a great example of this.
Speaker 1: And I used to say this about Marco Rubia when
Speaker 1: he was the Senate, the online senators versus who they
Speaker 1: were sometimes in person, and they were like different people.
Speaker 1: Do you think Mike Lee is not who he I
Speaker 1: don't know who Mike Lee is, right, I'm not.
Speaker 2: And I sit there.
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to say this is some sort of
Speaker 1: provocative statement. I don't know, yeah, right, like you think
Speaker 1: you know. And one of the things that I think
Speaker 1: the longer you do this job, the more politicians you meet,
Speaker 1: is I don't presume I know any of these people anymore,
Speaker 1: like who they really are, right, Because I think the
Speaker 1: mistake we could make sometimes when we assume if you
Speaker 1: get elected, there must be something good about you, you
Speaker 1: must have some good character, and it's like no, sometimes
Speaker 1: there are bad character people that just con their way
Speaker 1: into office.
Speaker 3: One of the other things that I always wonder about
Speaker 3: is how much because we are journalists, and therefore I
Speaker 3: think in the back of the mind of everybody who
Speaker 3: is in the public eye at all, I think that
Speaker 3: they are all wondering, am I ever going to betray
Speaker 3: them for a story? I do wonder I do like
Speaker 3: for the politicians, and I'm friendly, Well.
Speaker 2: Think about it. Look.
Speaker 1: My favorite line to quote about that I say to
Speaker 1: young journalists you know, is you know there's that line
Speaker 1: in almost famous by Philip Seymour Hoffman early on when
Speaker 1: he says, don't be friends with the rock stars. Rock
Speaker 1: stars aren't your friends, right, And I think about that
Speaker 1: all the time on the political front, right, because the
Speaker 1: politicians want to be our friends at first, really badly, right.
Speaker 1: Whether Donald Trump and Joe Biden in some way are
Speaker 1: wired the same exact way, and they're obsession with being
Speaker 1: friends with the media at first. They always wanted to
Speaker 1: have these personal relationships, and I think it takes real
Speaker 1: discipline to not get caught up in that, and it's hard,
Speaker 1: you know, human beings, because you want to you know,
Speaker 1: there's always a part of me that wants to believe
Speaker 1: these are all good people, just disagreeing on a philosophy.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: I used to say, ninety five percent of the people
Speaker 1: got elected to Washington, you know, got there for the
Speaker 1: right reasons. They had a real reason why they wanted
Speaker 1: to run, like a genuine You may not agree with
Speaker 1: what they were running on, but they felt passionately on it.
Speaker 1: And then to me, the town corrupts them.
Speaker 2: I'm less, I less believe that. Now I don't know
Speaker 2: what I believe. I think that my default is.
Speaker 3: So there is this concept in Judaism that Michael Medved
Speaker 3: taught me once during an interview, which is it's called
Speaker 3: don lekof zihud, which basically means give people the benefit
Speaker 3: of the doubt, don't just always assume the worst.
Speaker 2: And it's something that really stuck with me almost as
Speaker 2: much as the goate gamble.
Speaker 3: Which is this idea that like, don't all automatically assume
Speaker 3: that people are in this for the wrong reasons. And
Speaker 3: so I do try to do that, which is not
Speaker 3: to say, don't be skeptical. But don't just like go
Speaker 3: into an interview thinking this is just a power hungry psycho.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, like try to.
Speaker 1: I understand where they're coming from, right, And there's no
Speaker 1: doubt this this era where it does feel like a
Speaker 1: lot of people have decided politics is a good way,
Speaker 1: is a shortcut to becoming famously Yeah, and wealthy and wealthy.
Speaker 2: That's the part of this that I it is a
Speaker 2: good shortcut.
Speaker 3: You get a lot of insider information and you can
Speaker 3: invest accordingly. And it's still and this is how you
Speaker 3: know that the town is truly corrupt. Is that Like
Speaker 3: the Stock Act still hasn't passed Congress. This idea of
Speaker 3: banning members of Congress, like just saying if you have
Speaker 3: a portfolio, you have to put it in a blind trust.
Speaker 1: And like me, that's the idea that that's controversial, Like
Speaker 1: it's the public trust.
Speaker 3: They get lots of insider information, they do. They're in
Speaker 3: closed door hearings all the time.
Speaker 1: By the way, So do you and I what do
Speaker 1: we ow? I've thought about this? You know, I don't, look,
Speaker 1: I never in that time.
Speaker 2: I never was based on that. Neither do I.
Speaker 1: But the point is we we could, and I'm sure
Speaker 1: there are some of our brethren that do.
Speaker 2: I'm sure, but I don't. And so, by the way,
Speaker 2: I don't trust myself as a financial providing financial guidance.
Speaker 2: That's why I have these much smarter guys paying attention
Speaker 2: to Sall right.
Speaker 1: Let's do the book a little bit. Original sin? What
Speaker 1: is your original What is the original sin? I have
Speaker 1: my own original sin, That's why I'm asking it. So
Speaker 1: what is your original sin?
Speaker 2: The original sin?
Speaker 3: According to all the Democrats we talked about talk two
Speaker 3: for this book, and Alex Thompson, my co author, and
Speaker 3: I interviewed more than two hundred people. And I'd love
Speaker 3: to find out about your book experience when you wrote
Speaker 3: your Obama Hillary book, Chuck, because I found people much
Speaker 3: more willing to talk to me for a book than
Speaker 3: for anything else in my life than a print story
Speaker 3: of TV interview.
Speaker 2: We're just general reporting whatever.
Speaker 1: I got to know people better doing the book that
Speaker 1: I did as a regular old reporter.
Speaker 3: And now there's I don't know if it's because it's
Speaker 3: just it's there forever or whatever, but in any case,
Speaker 3: the original sin is Joe Biden's decision to run for
Speaker 3: reelection when he had implus not explicitly, but implicitly suggested
Speaker 3: that he would be a one term president, and then
Speaker 3: from that decision when he was because he had like
Speaker 3: a reasonably not horrible mid terms, even though he was
Speaker 3: not popular and most of the country thought he was
Speaker 3: on the wrong track and most of the country was
Speaker 3: concerned he.
Speaker 2: Was too old to do the job.
Speaker 3: From that decision came a much shadier set of decisions,
Speaker 3: which had to do with hiding the degree to which
Speaker 3: he deteriorated cognitively, which really started getting really bad in
Speaker 3: the summer of twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: So for me, the original sin was running in the
Speaker 1: first place.
Speaker 2: Oh well, yes, I've heard you talk about this because
Speaker 2: because his family was in crisis, right, because his daughter
Speaker 2: and his son were.
Speaker 1: When I read, I read, I followed that Hunter Biden trial.
Speaker 2: Soup to nuts.
Speaker 1: I read every single transcript, I read all of the testimony.
Speaker 1: I cannot believe to this stage that Hunter Biden, that
Speaker 1: Joe Biden did this to his kids.
Speaker 2: So somebody close to the family, I can't believe that
Speaker 2: he did it.
Speaker 3: Somebody close to the family told us and said, this
Speaker 3: is in the book that everybody knows. You know, some
Speaker 3: of the family aphorisms like you know my words a
Speaker 3: Biden or you know et cetera, et cetera. A lesser
Speaker 3: known Biden family saying is don't call a fat person fat.
Speaker 3: And by that they mean it's not about being, it's
Speaker 3: not about politeness. It's about hiding truths, not acknowledging truths.
Speaker 3: And this person close to the family suggested that there
Speaker 3: are lots of truths that the family did not want
Speaker 3: to face up to. One bo is dying. Two Hunter
Speaker 3: is addicted to drugs. Three Joe Biden cares about his
Speaker 3: family more than he cares about anything else, and those
Speaker 3: three are not true this family. This person close to
Speaker 3: the family said, and and and that's when you talked
Speaker 3: about his running in twenty twenty. I think that that
Speaker 3: comes to bear because obviously he was putting his ambition
Speaker 3: and if you want to be charitable, his hopes to
Speaker 3: save the country from trump Ism or whatever. Obviously was
Speaker 3: putting that above what was going on with his family
Speaker 3: and his two children and their struggles.
Speaker 1: Look, I mean, you know you and I covered you
Speaker 1: know for most of our professional lives. The story of
Speaker 1: Joe Biden was this guy cared about his family so
Speaker 1: much he commuted home every night from Washington.
Speaker 2: Now here's by the way, here's the by the way.
Speaker 1: You know what else you could say is this man
Speaker 1: was so ambitious right after his family went through that tragedy,
Speaker 1: he commuted every day to work, right right, Like it's
Speaker 1: the same story to his narrative.
Speaker 2: Had his sister help read.
Speaker 1: I sit here, I look at this and the and
Speaker 1: and I think were we sold to forty year bill
Speaker 1: of goods?
Speaker 2: Well, there is this and this is in the book.
Speaker 3: There is this legend of Joe Biden, and some of
Speaker 3: it is based in reality and some of it is
Speaker 3: based in myth.
Speaker 2: And the legend.
Speaker 1: Isybody is not the first president. Whether it's no myth,
Speaker 1: I mean my got In fact, the most presidential resumes
Speaker 1: are are are have some myth in them, all of them.
Speaker 1: You know, we could sit here and do it, but anyway,
Speaker 1: go ahead.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean you could talk about the Obama's marriage
Speaker 3: because I mean, like she never wanted him to run
Speaker 3: for president, period, And oh, I mean she's been pretty
Speaker 3: honest and open about that.
Speaker 2: Right And no, that memoir, I mean, yeah, I mean
Speaker 2: it's yeah.
Speaker 3: The legend and this is some of that one of
Speaker 3: the things that that people love about Joe Biden is
Speaker 3: this idea that no matter what life throws at him,
Speaker 3: he gets up off the floor and gets back to work.
Speaker 2: Get up, he says his dad. Get up.
Speaker 1: And he always seemed to be optimist. Find a way
Speaker 1: to be optimistic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, debilitating stutter, horrible car crash that killed his wife
Speaker 3: and daughter, two.
Speaker 2: Brain aneurysms, and on and on and on.
Speaker 3: That same quality, however, is what paved the way to
Speaker 3: this bad decision.
Speaker 2: This idea that I'm Joe Biden and I cannot be
Speaker 2: defeated by age.
Speaker 3: I cannot be defeated by whatever is going on with
Speaker 3: my mind in my body right now.
Speaker 2: I will persevere. And it's not just a mythology. For
Speaker 2: some people in the family and close to the family,
Speaker 2: it's a theology. And like any religion, skepticism is not permitted.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I've I've been a bit
Speaker 1: more defensive of the overall media coverage than clearly others
Speaker 1: would like to be, right, meaning, you know, I think
Speaker 1: the blaming the media is an excuse not to blame
Speaker 1: the actual people that did this, Okay, I like the
Speaker 1: media is a look for better or for worse, where
Speaker 1: a reflection were reflection of the best version of events
Speaker 1: that we can come up with.
Speaker 2: We are only as good as our sources.
Speaker 1: I you know, and I've brought this up and I
Speaker 1: heard you bring this up to which is the single
Speaker 1: most difficult thing to report out on a politicians health?
Speaker 2: So sensitive? Yeah, exactly there is.
Speaker 1: It is easy to frankly get shamed out of doing it, right,
Speaker 1: tell you to hear you it's a private thing.
Speaker 2: Well, think about how it's private.
Speaker 3: Think about how insanely sensitive people are about getting somebody's
Speaker 3: college transcript right, I mean, people are crazy about that
Speaker 3: like that that should honestly just be like automatic, you're
Speaker 3: running for president, Okay, here are my grades in college?
Speaker 3: Who even cares? But you can't even get that head
Speaker 3: because they're so crazy. But yeah, the health stuff, and
Speaker 3: we saw it. It's not an insignificant thing.
Speaker 1: And I do think what I want to like sort
Speaker 1: of focus our conversation is that how should this change
Speaker 1: sort of our unofficial vetting process of sidential candidates, because
Speaker 1: I think it should. Frankly, we got to be more
Speaker 1: unpopular in what we do. You know, Wes Moore wants
Speaker 1: to tell us about this bronze star. Well, all right,
Speaker 1: we're going to like find out every little thing, how
Speaker 1: earned was it, how much did this happen? And I say, look,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm singling him out because he may be running
Speaker 1: for president right.
Speaker 2: Right, he's very sensitive about us there.
Speaker 1: And it will And you and I both know the
Speaker 1: way political operatives work. Anytime you can identify a topic,
Speaker 1: if you're an opponent on somebody that you know is
Speaker 1: going to get under their skin, you're going to go
Speaker 1: ten You know, you're going to go ten x at it.
Speaker 1: But I do wonder if the Trump era and the
Speaker 1: Biden cover up, right, these the combination of these two,
Speaker 1: in theory, it should create the single most skeptical press
Speaker 1: score for the next decade that we've we've had in
Speaker 1: our lifetime. Let's see, maybe not since.
Speaker 3: I agree, Let's say you I agree, And you know
Speaker 3: it's funny you say that, though, because the moment you
Speaker 3: say this is a lesson we have learned from Biden.
Speaker 3: Whatever the lesson is, it should now be applied to
Speaker 3: every president. The right wing goes, oh, so that's the
Speaker 3: reason he wrote the book on Biden just to get
Speaker 3: at Trump. Like, now, what I'm just saying like that's
Speaker 3: the insanity of this convers.
Speaker 1: It's always a bizarre Trump like there's always a bozar
Speaker 1: Trump angle.
Speaker 2: So forget Trump. So forget Trump for a second. Let's
Speaker 2: talk about post Trump. Let's talk about post Trump.
Speaker 3: Just to remove that nonsense from this doctor Jonathan Ryner,
Speaker 3: who you know, who is a cardiologist at GW, very respected.
Speaker 3: He's been a consultant or an advisor to the White
Speaker 3: House medical team for a long long time. He told
Speaker 3: us for our book that what he thinks needs to
Speaker 3: happen is that the White House physician needs to provide
Speaker 3: their health report, which is a voluntary thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and completely they shouldn't be voluntary, no, exactly.
Speaker 3: And also they decided they're going to release on what
Speaker 3: they're not going to release the White House does, but
Speaker 3: that voluntary thing, that that should be test, that that
Speaker 3: should be submitted under penalty of perjury. And I would
Speaker 3: go even farther into say that that medical report should
Speaker 3: list though I doubt Reiner would disagree with me on this,
Speaker 3: every medication that the person is on, and every test
Speaker 3: and the results of every test, and one of the
Speaker 3: reasons every test I think should be like delineated is
Speaker 3: because Biden never got a cognitive test. Now, when his doctor,
Speaker 3: Doc O'Connor was asked why not, he would say, he
Speaker 3: doesn't need one cognitive test. Or when you only see
Speaker 3: somebody once a year, once every two years, I see
Speaker 3: him every day.
Speaker 2: I see what he's doing. His job is a cognitive test.
Speaker 3: But there's another explanation that some people posit, which is
Speaker 3: the only reason you don't give a cognitive test is
Speaker 3: if you don't want to know the results in this situation.
Speaker 1: Constitutional amendment to do this, though, I really unfortunately you
Speaker 1: don't think it could just be a law no separation
Speaker 1: of powers. The legislative branch can't necessarily so it's just
Speaker 1: like all of the uh you know the issue of
Speaker 1: trying to uh force a blind trust. You know that
Speaker 1: you can do it for every cabinet secretary, but you
Speaker 1: can't do it for the president and vice president.
Speaker 3: Well, there should probably there should probably be some constitutional amendment.
Speaker 2: Oh, I think there should be.
Speaker 3: We got that that has this has like everything, like
Speaker 3: the Stock Act that like it has everything in.
Speaker 1: It absolutely and now that probably we got to redo
Speaker 1: the age stuff. I think the aid you know, you
Speaker 1: should be a cap well, the only by the way,
Speaker 1: because there are age minimums in the Constitution, it means
Speaker 1: the only way you can put in a cap, the
Speaker 1: only way you can put it in age sort of.
Speaker 2: Uh, you know where you where you.
Speaker 1: Age out of being able to hold office, You're going
Speaker 1: to have to make it a constitutional amendment otherwise it's
Speaker 1: going to be unconstitutional.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, did you did you catch the subtext of the
Speaker 2: fact that they're so the senators Cornyn and Schmidt of
Speaker 2: Texas and is or had a that's the first time
Speaker 2: I ever said Missouri. By the way, I don't know
Speaker 2: why I said that of Missouri.
Speaker 1: Well, well depends the asuri is Saint Louis and Kansas City,
Speaker 1: the rest of the state.
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, I don't know why I said that anyway,
Speaker 3: So of Missouri and Texas. They had a hearing this
Speaker 3: week on by autopen hearing. Yeah, and the and and
Speaker 3: the and the acuity, which, by the way, we didn't
Speaker 3: find any evidence and that's not in the book of
Speaker 3: the that the auto pen is a thing.
Speaker 2: That's not to say it isn't.
Speaker 1: But we know this is just literally a right wing
Speaker 1: meme that it got so much attention that these Republican
Speaker 1: senators have to respond to it.
Speaker 3: I do think that there is I do think it's
Speaker 3: worth exploring because I don't know how much he knew
Speaker 3: everything that he was signing. But by the same token,
Speaker 3: I don't know how much any president knows everything they're signing.
Speaker 2: But in any case, moving on, old.
Speaker 1: Enough to remember when Gary Cone just pulled papers off
Speaker 1: of Trump's desk to defend him from signing stuff. You know,
Speaker 1: So what's the you know, I mean, like, you know,
Speaker 1: be careful opening this can of worms, you know, Eric Schmidt, right.
Speaker 3: So, but in any case, the thing that was interesting
Speaker 3: was they had this hearing, Democrats boycotted it, and so
Speaker 3: it basically became known for the Democrats refusing to participate.
Speaker 3: But what's interesting about it is who's the chairman of
Speaker 3: the Senate Judiciary.
Speaker 2: Committee, isn't it Grassler? Right? Ninety year old Chuck Grassler
Speaker 2: is in ninety one.
Speaker 3: I don't think I don't think he presided over it.
Speaker 3: I don't think he presided over this hearing about Biden's acuity. So,
Speaker 3: I mean, there is this, and we have a chapter
Speaker 3: in the book about this. There is a culture of
Speaker 3: this in Washington. When you and I were coming up,
Speaker 3: Strom Thurmond, who was almost one hundred years old, was
Speaker 3: walking around the halls of Congress, completely adult, completely senile.
Speaker 3: He grabbed Senator Patty Murray in an elevator, groped or
Speaker 3: think that she was.
Speaker 2: Miss Stafford's staffer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because in the Therman office it was apparently known
Speaker 1: that you had to accept that if you work for him.
Speaker 3: But also, by the way, Senator Murray to this day
Speaker 3: hasn't talked about it because she was talked out of
Speaker 3: complaining about it back then.
Speaker 2: And I guess it was like.
Speaker 1: This is like ninety three, ninety four, yeah, pretty early.
Speaker 1: It was her first term.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she by the way she has she is now
Speaker 3: she was recently Senate pro temn I mean she was,
Speaker 3: she is.
Speaker 1: I know she went from like mom and tennis shoes
Speaker 1: to grandma tesshoes.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So but be that as it may. The only
Speaker 2: point is like this this culture of coddling members of
Speaker 2: Congress and Supreme Court job.
Speaker 1: But this is the seniority issue, right, like in a
Speaker 1: weird way. You know, I always talk about this is
Speaker 1: a reminder that in Washington, do you know why seniority?
Speaker 1: You know, there was a time the idea of seniority
Speaker 1: was actually a political reform because at the turn of
Speaker 1: the nineteenth and twentieth century, there was a Speaker of
Speaker 1: the House that would was basically forcing him, was was
Speaker 1: essentially doing, you know, didn't want well, no, I'm going
Speaker 1: to put my people in these committees, and and so
Speaker 1: it was. It created this. It was a very narrowly
Speaker 1: divided house then. So one of the reforms they created
Speaker 1: was the seniority system.
Speaker 3: Well, because it does because voters take.
Speaker 2: Power away from the speaker.
Speaker 1: At the time, the speaker could say no, you're the
Speaker 1: committee chairman, not you, you know, literally could take it newly.
Speaker 2: Now they still do that, not as much, it's hard
Speaker 2: not not not like they did.
Speaker 3: And well there's a reason McCall and Turner are not
Speaker 3: at Foreign Affairs and.
Speaker 2: Inteler, but they also ate.
Speaker 1: But they also turned out right, the Republicans put in committee.
Speaker 3: I don't think. I don't think Turner aged out. I
Speaker 3: think that they turned out.
Speaker 1: I think he I think he technically was turned out.
Speaker 2: Was he or wasn't he? I don't think so. No,
Speaker 2: I think he pissed off Trump.
Speaker 1: Well, but Intel is different, by the way, Intel is
Speaker 1: a joint committee, and I don't think the seniority doesn't apply.
Speaker 1: I think that's it.
Speaker 2: And in any case, we've taken a deviation. Let's go back.
Speaker 3: So, yes, that reform now means that we have a
Speaker 3: system that rewards people who are elected over and over
Speaker 3: and over. And that system doesn't necessarily reward accomplishment or ability.
Speaker 2: It's just longevity.
Speaker 3: And those people are surrounded by staffers and lobbyists and
Speaker 3: family members whose job it is is to give the
Speaker 3: principle as much power and cover as possible, so that
Speaker 3: we now have more people over the age of seventy
Speaker 3: in Congress than ever before that ever before period. And
Speaker 3: one of the reasons why Republicans control the House right
Speaker 3: now is because since April of last year, six House
Speaker 3: Democrats have died in office, and of those six, five
Speaker 3: were either in their seventies or eighties period. So this
Speaker 3: is one of the reasons why Republicans control the House
Speaker 3: right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Look, and then of course you keep going.
Speaker 1: You could keep going down this road, which is you know,
Speaker 1: the way the system works. If you're of working age,
Speaker 1: you don't really have the resources to run for office.
Speaker 1: Only older, wealthier people do, right like, And that's the
Speaker 1: other that's the other part of this.
Speaker 3: So we just did a story on this on my
Speaker 3: show like a week and a half ago. I had
Speaker 3: some one of these great young reporters from Notice, and
Speaker 3: then I had Paul Kine like you and me an
Speaker 3: old grizzled veteran walking stayed Rich.
Speaker 2: And.
Speaker 3: It was basically about this phenomenon. And also we were
Speaker 3: specifically talking about Dwight Evans, the congressman from Philadelphia who
Speaker 3: have a stroke last year, missed a lot of votes
Speaker 3: and is now back. But the same question being asked
Speaker 3: about him is the same question being asked about Eleanor
Speaker 3: Holmes Norton, the.
Speaker 2: Delegate from Washington, d C.
Speaker 3: Which is Philadelphia and DC need fighters. Are these two
Speaker 3: politicians Eleanor Holmes Norton, I think just turned eighty eight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, are they up to.
Speaker 3: The task owing our Holmes Norton cannot drive anymore because
Speaker 3: of her acuity about.
Speaker 1: Kay Granger, the Granger story down in Fort Worth, where
Speaker 1: it was apparently in a in a in a in
Speaker 1: an assisted living she.
Speaker 3: Was in a dimension centeral paycheck.
Speaker 1: Yes, while her staff was clearly covering up so they
Speaker 1: wouldn't lose their infut.
Speaker 2: Not just staff, by the way, right, not family and staff.
Speaker 2: That's right, Oh, there are.
Speaker 3: The entire House Republican leadership knew about this because Kay
Speaker 3: Granger stepped down as chair of what was your chair
Speaker 3: of Appropriation.
Speaker 1: Propriations, Like, so she shifted like the single most powerful
Speaker 1: committee slot you can have, okay, by the trailer committee
Speaker 1: that hands money out, yes.
Speaker 2: And steps down. Uh. And then like at some point
Speaker 2: in there, this is like the may.
Speaker 1: Or June summer yeah it was early summer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, goes into a dementia center and then nobody knows
Speaker 2: about that.
Speaker 3: Nobody knows it's a It took a reporter in Texas
Speaker 3: to track it down figure it out right, And all
Speaker 3: that time that district had not did not have a congression.
Speaker 1: And this is not like a rural district, this is
Speaker 1: Fort Worth. And and this gets it too, the larger
Speaker 1: issue that I'm obsessed with, which is like, and you
Speaker 1: started off by paying a very nice compliment to the
Speaker 1: to the to the hotline days.
Speaker 2: But but it's like we.
Speaker 1: Don't have enough local political reporters and there were there
Speaker 1: was more local accountability.
Speaker 3: Let's I want to get Let's give this guy shadow
Speaker 3: because I should know his name by now. K Granger
Speaker 3: story because.
Speaker 2: I think it was.
Speaker 1: It was like an independent journalist, right, it was, I
Speaker 1: think a North Texas startup. I think I can't remember now,
Speaker 1: it wasn't like that. I'm trying to remember what it
Speaker 1: was myself. This is obviously, uh, really fun for folks
Speaker 1: when they can hear us googling.
Speaker 2: So that's that's that's always good. That's good stuff.
Speaker 3: My ajor stepped down is the top of this is
Speaker 3: the time, so the top of Republican appropriations coming in March,
Speaker 3: said she would not seek re elections.
Speaker 2: She should continue to serve out the rest of her term. Unbelievable.
Speaker 2: It might have been the Dallas Morning News.
Speaker 1: But the point was is that it just there's this
Speaker 1: there's less local urgency on political coverage and I don't
Speaker 1: know how because there's just fewer people doing it. And
Speaker 1: this is what happens is I don't think constituents are
Speaker 1: fully aware of, frankly, how invalid some of their representation is.
Speaker 2: At times. Oh it's crazy, and look, I should also
Speaker 2: we should also note that age is not necessarily determinative
Speaker 2: of ability, although it's there is a correlation, but it's
Speaker 2: not necessarily determined.
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm going to get grief my mother has noted
Speaker 1: the few times that I note you know about you know,
Speaker 1: and my mother works, and she's you know, I've.
Speaker 3: Learned that to mention my parents in these situations.
Speaker 2: So I'm not mentioned my mother. Exception.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there are exceptions to this, but we cannot pretend
Speaker 3: that in your seventies and eighties people don't slow down
Speaker 3: a little and sometimes, you know, it is actually a
Speaker 3: good time to go in the porch and drink some
Speaker 3: lemonade and read some books and look at it.
Speaker 1: But I'm going to be more crass about it, which
Speaker 1: is you're further away from how many Americans live their lives.
Speaker 2: So how are you? How are you? How do you know.
Speaker 1: Even how to represent people with small kids, people with
Speaker 1: kids in college?
Speaker 2: You know what I mean?
Speaker 3: You know, also not invested in the future because you're
Speaker 3: not going to be around for So this is why.
Speaker 3: By the way, so I got and I guess it's
Speaker 3: because of the movie Conclave. I got really into this Conclave.
Speaker 3: It was the first Conclave I got into.
Speaker 2: As a dry love.
Speaker 1: It's a single, that's my it's the election. I want
Speaker 1: to observe. The most Conclave of the movie was really
Speaker 1: good until the last ten minutes.
Speaker 3: Yea, I didn't like the twist, but beyond beyond the twist,
Speaker 3: that movie got me really into the idea of the conclave,
Speaker 3: and I learned and I guess some people, a lot
Speaker 3: of people probably knew this, or at least our Catholic
Speaker 3: friends knew this. But like, cardinals over the age of
Speaker 3: eighty have not been permitted to participate in the conclave
Speaker 3: since the seventies. Since the nineteen seventies, Yes, the Catholic
Speaker 3: Church has been well ahead of the rest of the world.
Speaker 2: The Catholic Church is rarely ahead of society on anything. Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, but they were like, are on this The Pope said, well,
Speaker 3: they tried, they try to get cardinals to step.
Speaker 2: Down at seventy five and they won't, right.
Speaker 3: And so but what they said is okay, but you
Speaker 3: can stay on and emeritus or whatever, but you can't
Speaker 3: participate in the conclave. You can offer advice on the
Speaker 3: sidelines whatever. But like you're not voting because you're not
Speaker 3: And I guess the thinking is because you're not going
Speaker 3: to be around for the future of the church, and
Speaker 3: like it should be younger people.
Speaker 2: And by younger they could mean seventy nine. But like still.
Speaker 3: So there is this age thing that is part of
Speaker 3: the Biden's story, and beyond that is this culture of
Speaker 3: hiding this stuff, people not being willing to bring it up.
Speaker 3: And again, none of this excuses what Biden and his
Speaker 3: family and his top aides did, but it is a
Speaker 3: context to this town, this wacky town. This is the
Speaker 3: only place that this could have happened. It couldn't even
Speaker 3: happen at the Catholic church. But it couldn't happen in athletics.
Speaker 3: It couldn't happen in the business world. It couldn't happen
Speaker 3: in acting. It couldn't happen in any other sphere because
Speaker 3: there would be a board of directors or a producer
Speaker 3: or This couldn't happen in the UK because the person
Speaker 3: the number two behind the Prime Minister would come in
Speaker 3: and say this is crap.
Speaker 2: The parties are much stronger there, etc.
Speaker 3: Couldn't happen in Canada, couldn't happen in New Zealand, couldn't
Speaker 3: happen in Australia.
Speaker 2: But in the United.
Speaker 3: States, in Washington, DC, it was inevitable And in fact,
Speaker 3: this has happened before to lesser extents, with Reagan and
Speaker 3: his Alzheimer's JFK and his Addison's Wilson and his stroke,
Speaker 3: and on and on.
Speaker 1: FDR player in nineteen forty four, No way ever run
Speaker 1: for president, never should have run for president.
Speaker 3: But you know what's interesting about that is that the
Speaker 3: party steps in, yeah, now, knowing that he's going to die, right,
Speaker 3: and at least forced him to pick a different price
Speaker 3: and has and say, okay, well, get rid of Henry Wallace,
Speaker 3: the Soviet sympathizer. Put in somebody else who could actually
Speaker 3: be president. They put in Harry Truman. So the party
Speaker 3: is hint to what's going on, but not to like.
Speaker 2: What you can run. So let me get to some one.
Speaker 1: One more on the book, the motivation to protect Biden,
Speaker 1: how much of it was about Kamala Harris and a
Speaker 1: lack of belief she could win.
Speaker 2: That was an excuse? You?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was wondering is it an excuse or was
Speaker 1: it real? What do you think?
Speaker 2: Like? What's your I think it was no.
Speaker 3: I think that they thought this, And by they I
Speaker 3: mean Joe Biden, Jill Biden, Hunter Biden, and then what.
Speaker 2: Was called the folks, I would say, Mike Donlan Rochetti,
Speaker 2: that's the pro That's what I was coming to.
Speaker 1: Next.
Speaker 2: The Pola Buro is the is the tight circle of topics. Okay.
Speaker 2: So it's Mike Donald and Steve Roshetty and others. Okay.
Speaker 3: And they they thought the following one, Joe Biden is
Speaker 3: the only one who's ever beaten Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: Two.
Speaker 3: Therefore, Joe Biden is the only one who can beat
Speaker 3: Donald Trump in twenty twenty four. Three, Donald Trump postes
Speaker 3: an existential threat to the nation. If you believe those
Speaker 3: three things, you can justify anything.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: And they used Kamala as an excuse. Oh so Joe
Speaker 3: shouldn't run. So who's going to be the nominie?
Speaker 2: Kamala? She's even less popular than him, which was true
Speaker 2: at the time. Well, well then why did he pick her?
Speaker 2: Why why did he pick her in the first place.
Speaker 2: That's a great question, and that and that's David.
Speaker 1: Plus, she wasn't right to me, if she wasn't prepared,
Speaker 1: you didn't have confidence in her and being president, then
Speaker 1: clearly this first what are we told the most? You know,
Speaker 1: the first decision a president makes is who they want
Speaker 1: as their number two. Well, if that's a failure, then
Speaker 1: their first decision was a failure.
Speaker 3: Well, I think it's fair to say that he made
Speaker 3: the He made the pick for political reasons, not for
Speaker 3: governing reasons.
Speaker 1: I guess, But I don't even understand the political reasons.
Speaker 1: I've never understood that pick. I've never understood what he look.
Speaker 1: I get what they I get what they thought it
Speaker 1: might bring to the ticket, but it didn't.
Speaker 2: But anyway, go ahead.
Speaker 3: Well, they thought that, especially after George Floyd and the protests,
Speaker 3: that black women are the beating heart of the Democratic Party,
Speaker 3: the most reliable and most needed voters, and the Kamala
Speaker 3: Harris had been vetted on a national stage because she'd
Speaker 3: run for president, done successfully and dropped out in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2: She had an impressive resume.
Speaker 3: She was on paper an attractive candidate senator, former attorney general,
Speaker 3: former district attorney, et cetera. And they thought that it
Speaker 3: was a no brainer.
Speaker 2: It was between.
Speaker 1: If that is what you thought, then it wasn't even
Speaker 1: a close call. Val Demings was the pick. It was
Speaker 1: the same, I mean, why pick.
Speaker 2: She was never really?
Speaker 1: Why you don't pick the cop is the single look.
Speaker 1: I understand why they didn't pick her because they didn'.
Speaker 2: Know her well enough. But it wasn't between baron An
Speaker 2: I know it wasn't, and it was between her, and
Speaker 2: it was between her and Whitmer.
Speaker 3: Dennings and Val Deming's a congresswoman and former police chief
Speaker 3: from Florida, and Karen Bass, the current mayor of Los
Speaker 3: Angeles then a congresswoman from California, were publicly it was
Speaker 3: supposed to be down to those three according to people,
Speaker 3: and then Whitmer was also right, but it wasn't. It
Speaker 3: was just between Whitmer and Harris. It was only between
Speaker 3: Whitmer and Harris, and Biden's gut was with Whitmer, but
Speaker 3: he went with Harris because his top aids thought he
Speaker 3: needed to, and he was proud of that pick for
Speaker 3: you know, the superficial trailblazing civil rights reasons, and those
Speaker 3: are three separate categories. I'm not saying that civil rights
Speaker 3: reasons are too superficial. I'm saying they're different ones.
Speaker 2: And that's what he went with. But but yes, that
Speaker 2: would drive Pluff crazy.
Speaker 3: David Pluff, Obama's campaign manager in OH eight, his chief
Speaker 3: of staff, I know, you know, I'm telling them, and
Speaker 3: uh and who was brought on to bring to help
Speaker 3: run the Kamala Harris campaign in those last time one
Speaker 3: hundred and seven days. It would driving him crazy because
Speaker 3: he'd be like, if you don't think she's up for
Speaker 3: the job, why did you pick her to be vice president?
Speaker 2: Because they picked Remember Pluff and ex Rod helped pick.
Speaker 1: But don't forget no no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no Biden. Excuse me. Axelrod was a Biden guy. Pluff
Speaker 1: did not want to pick Biden. Pluff argued against Biden
Speaker 1: all the way. Bluff hated all of them. Pluff, well,
Speaker 1: I really hated Biden. He never bought the Biden thing.
Speaker 1: He never was a Biden guy. There was a weird
Speaker 1: relationship there because you know, uh, Pluff's a Delaware It's
Speaker 1: from Delaware. Yeah, you know right, it's a Delaware kid.
Speaker 1: And he never worked for Biden. It bugged Biden that
Speaker 1: Pluff was not somehow part of the you know, enough
Speaker 1: of a you know that got into politics and never
Speaker 1: worked for the Bidens, right, Like it was like some
Speaker 1: sort of you know, how dare you you know, a
Speaker 1: rejection or whatever it was.
Speaker 2: But Pluff was never he was.
Speaker 1: My understanding was he was the guy arguing against He
Speaker 1: wanted the generational pick.
Speaker 2: You pick Kane. Look, that's it.
Speaker 1: You know, we could play this game of original sin, right. Obviously,
Speaker 1: I think the original sin was running I go back
Speaker 1: even further. I think, in hindsight, the other the super
Speaker 1: original sin was Barack Obama endorsing Hillary Clinton and not
Speaker 1: not steering the party to a new generation. Nope, it's
Speaker 1: not personal against Hillary Clinton. But it was that the
Speaker 1: fact that he endorsed an older Democrat, the fact that
Speaker 1: he endorsed somebody technically a little bit a genera half
Speaker 1: generation older than him rather than and then what happened.
Speaker 1: It knocked out an entire generation of the Democratic Party
Speaker 1: that might have been in the leadership class at this point.
Speaker 1: All the people that ran in twenty should have run
Speaker 1: in sixteen, right, that all those all those that impressive
Speaker 1: class of senators from six that Democrats got, right, Tester
Speaker 1: mccaskell web case he shared Brown.
Speaker 2: You know there's a whole bunch of them.
Speaker 1: And then you throw in Booker in thirteen, and Michael
Speaker 1: Bennett and ten. You know there was a whole generation
Speaker 1: of them that all would have been Klobashar is another one.
Speaker 1: All would have been primed to run in sixteen, but
Speaker 1: for Obama putting his finger on the scale for Clinton.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he didn't. He didn't explicit least, that's my pre
Speaker 2: original sin on this.
Speaker 1: If you really wanted to keep going back, because you
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been in the situation where you had Biden
Speaker 1: and Clinton as the sort of the only two people.
Speaker 2: That could. We will probably never know thepromise candidate. We'll
Speaker 2: probably never know. Well, we can't wargame it.
Speaker 3: But no, But I wonder if that was an explicit,
Speaker 3: behind the scenes deal when they had that meeting, you know,
Speaker 3: when she endorsed him finally after that had fought primary,
Speaker 3: and also when she came on board to be Secretary
Speaker 3: of State.
Speaker 2: I wonder if just the two of them and nobody
Speaker 2: would even know. We'll never know.
Speaker 1: Well, and Bill Clinton was a huge asset to Barack
Speaker 1: Obama in the reelect in twenty twelve. I look, I
Speaker 1: always I respected Obama. If Obama endorsed her basically out
Speaker 1: of loyalty, hey she you know, she she took one
Speaker 1: for me. You know, she brought the party together. You know,
Speaker 1: I owed her. That's politics, Like, I respect that mindset.
Speaker 1: Don't get me, but I agree it probably was the
Speaker 1: end of a deal. And I also think he did
Speaker 1: respect her and said, hey, this woman has the ability
Speaker 1: to do the job, which also is true. But to me,
Speaker 1: what we all have to remember is it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: if you have the ability to do the job, do
Speaker 1: the voters want you? Well, that's the fact of the
Speaker 1: matter is the voters had already rejected her once in
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party, and that was to me, the misfire
Speaker 1: of Obama's.
Speaker 3: I mean, the voters have rejected Ronald Reagan two times
Speaker 3: before they went for him.
Speaker 2: You can't go by that. But I will say this
Speaker 2: not real. We got We get into this a little
Speaker 2: bit in the book because Biden has this chip on
Speaker 2: his shoulder based on this revisionist history that Obama picked
Speaker 2: her over him, when the truth of the matter is
Speaker 2: bo had just died in twenty fifteen, and Obama right,
Speaker 2: it was even no shape to run. It was in
Speaker 2: no shape to run.
Speaker 3: And and just the political reality was that by the
Speaker 3: fall of twenty fifteen, Bernie and Hillary were both so
Speaker 3: popular it didn't even matter if that whole class that
Speaker 3: you're talking about had run. Hillary and Bernie were just
Speaker 3: so popular with the populists and with the base and
Speaker 3: with women.
Speaker 1: You know, Bernie doesn't run if Hillary, if there's a
Speaker 1: you know, there were so many other folks. Elizabeth Warren
Speaker 1: probably runs in sixteen. If Hillary doesn't run and Bernie
Speaker 1: doesn't run. You know, Bernie only ended up running when
Speaker 1: nobody else would.
Speaker 3: Hillary running is not dependent on Obama backing her. That's
Speaker 3: my point. Hillary was going, oh, you're not right there. No,
Speaker 3: but but let me tell you something else about fifteen
Speaker 3: twenty sixteen that you'll find interesting, which is so Our
Speaker 3: reporting in the book found that Biden's adlemant could be
Speaker 3: traced as far back as Bo's death in May twenty fifteen, and.
Speaker 2: A top a might have been a trigger.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And the top aide told us that watching his
Speaker 3: psyche Biden psyche then Vice President Biden psyche in twenty fifteen,
Speaker 3: when Bodon was like watching somebody pour water on the sand.
Speaker 3: And that was when he first started deteriorating with whatever
Speaker 3: he had, whatever generation.
Speaker 1: And this is the part where I have tons of empathy. Okay,
Speaker 1: I you know, when my dad died, my grandfather outlived
Speaker 1: my father, and I remember he was catatonic. The lex
Speaker 1: he lived six years after my dad died, and he
Speaker 1: was a hollowed out person. Yeah, he was totally as
Speaker 1: you or I would be correct you. So I fully
Speaker 1: understand all that. But it does get at the point
Speaker 1: where he never should have put the country. Well, here's
Speaker 1: the thing that's put that he put his ambition. He
Speaker 1: wasn't he couldn't do this. It's okay that he couldn't
Speaker 1: do this, Like we all like tragedies happen and it
Speaker 1: impacts you, and you know, I sit there, it's like
Speaker 1: it's it's not a sign of weakness. But but the
Speaker 1: fact is, you know, they call it blind ambition for
Speaker 1: a reason.
Speaker 2: So it was blind ambition.
Speaker 3: In I mean some of the other some of the
Speaker 3: other evidence that shows that he was declining significantly before
Speaker 3: he ran in twenty twenty is in the her Report
Speaker 3: where Robert Hurr. When Robert hur is investigating Joe Biden's
Speaker 3: mishandling of classified information, he finds these tapes or he
Speaker 3: gets these tapes of Biden taught the officer right, yeah, his.
Speaker 2: Ghost his ghost writer.
Speaker 3: And you know when he's sitting there in the skiff
Speaker 3: and he hears Biden say, I just found the classified
Speaker 3: documents downstairs, and you know, eyes light up, Oh my god,
Speaker 3: he just confessed. But on these tapes, Biden sounds old,
Speaker 3: and he can't remember dates and he can't remember facts,
Speaker 3: and that's in the her report, and that's twenty seventeen,
Speaker 3: twenty eighteen. But what I find interesting about all this
Speaker 3: and I'd love to be able to talk to Barack
Speaker 3: Obama about this.
Speaker 2: But he'll never give you or eyeen interview.
Speaker 4: Ever.
Speaker 1: Maybe he does the Gerald Ford and does a you know,
Speaker 1: there's a there's an interview that we don't know about
Speaker 1: that gets released after death, right, like that's a probably
Speaker 1: only shot we got.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I let to know Obama's head.
Speaker 3: So he so our reporting suggests that Biden, that Obama
Speaker 3: did not support Biden running for president of twenty sixteen
Speaker 3: because he didn't because he needed Biden was not in
Speaker 3: any condition because he was grieving his son so much.
Speaker 3: And I wonder if Obama, and I don't know if
Speaker 3: he's read the book or not, but I wonder if
Speaker 3: Obama looks back at that and thinks, oh, that wasn't
Speaker 3: just grief, that was something else.
Speaker 1: I think it could have been grief that I think
Speaker 1: it's I don't know. I think it's hard to disaggregate
Speaker 1: it for what it's worth.
Speaker 2: I just wonder what he thinks. And you know, I agree.
Speaker 2: He was never super accessible.
Speaker 3: Much more accessible than Biden was, but he was never
Speaker 3: super accessible. When we were White House Correspondence, he started off,
Speaker 3: remember when he would like to have a lunch, have
Speaker 3: a lunch with the NBC team, have a lunch with
Speaker 3: the ABC team.
Speaker 1: And then it was all good for about nine months
Speaker 1: and then the beer you know what it all? You
Speaker 1: know when it changed. It was I think it's the beer,
Speaker 1: the Beer Summit. Everything changed after the Beer Summit, our
Speaker 1: access to them change, everything.
Speaker 2: Changed, you know. That was that was that was a
Speaker 2: that's my thesis.
Speaker 1: You know, I felt like that that's when they that's
Speaker 1: when they got a little more.
Speaker 2: You know, one of more pretorian.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you have an interest, you know.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about all the books you've written, and
Speaker 1: you've done fiction. Yeah, you've done war, a war book.
Speaker 1: You've done the sort of the the quick thing that
Speaker 1: Jesse Ventura book, Like I don't know how what you
Speaker 1: would describe that quick book, the sort of like what
Speaker 1: the hell just happened? You know, give me some quick context.
Speaker 1: You know, those are the books that I always say
Speaker 1: are the big magazine stories that you make into a book, right,
Speaker 1: because because there is like, Hey, who the hell is
Speaker 1: this guy?
Speaker 2: How the hell did this happen? This is it? That
Speaker 2: was that was a right instant paperback in Saint Martin's price.
Speaker 2: Get it.
Speaker 3: I think I was paid like ten thousand dollars. It
Speaker 3: was very early in my career.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Right, And you've done these various different and you what
Speaker 1: I think is interesting is most people who have authored
Speaker 1: as many books as you have, there's a pattern and
Speaker 1: other than generally politics being the subject matter, you've actually
Speaker 1: dabbled in different styles of writing, different styles.
Speaker 2: So what do you like?
Speaker 1: Is it one of those things you like at all
Speaker 1: and you like dabbling in the different styles, doing a
Speaker 1: little novel, or is there one? Is there one that
Speaker 1: you're like, you know what, in the next twenty five years,
Speaker 1: I hope to do five more like this.
Speaker 3: No, it's it's entirely what interests me at any given moment, entirely,
Speaker 3: and there's really other than politics or at large, there's
Speaker 3: there's really no theme I have.
Speaker 2: I'm working on two more books right now.
Speaker 3: One of them comes out in October and it's about
Speaker 3: the prosecution of a terrorist and it's just I was
Speaker 3: at a paintball with my son for his birthday party,
Speaker 3: and because it's an hour outside of DC, you know,
Speaker 3: I have pizza and refreshments for the adults so they
Speaker 3: don't have to drive an hour and then drive an
Speaker 3: hour back, then drive an hour, you know whatever, just
Speaker 3: hang out for a couple hours while the kids beat each.
Speaker 2: Other up in the woods.
Speaker 3: And one of the dads comes up to me and says, Oh,
Speaker 3: I know Dave Roller from The Outpost And I'm like, Oh,
Speaker 3: that's so cool. Dave Roller is one of the heroes
Speaker 3: of The Outpost in my Afghanistan book.
Speaker 2: And I said, yeah, that book's really tough.
Speaker 3: The Pentagon, the military really doesn't keep very good records
Speaker 3: and they're very reluctant to share.
Speaker 2: And he says, oh, tell me about it, and.
Speaker 3: Then he proceeds to tell me this incredible case that
Speaker 3: he was an assistant US attorney for in which they
Speaker 3: had to build a case against a terrorist and it
Speaker 3: was just this unbelievable yarn and it was just so
Speaker 3: that's my next book, just because I was just like, Oh,
Speaker 3: my god, that's fascinating, what.
Speaker 2: A great story.
Speaker 1: So you're just a story follower and I mean this
Speaker 1: in a good like, Yeah, it's a good story. I
Speaker 1: want to tell you the store.
Speaker 2: The one after that is illustrated. It's a great it's
Speaker 2: not enovel.
Speaker 1: That's what I wanted to ask you, Like you've always like,
Speaker 1: if you could be a full time political cartoonist, would
Speaker 1: you be?
Speaker 2: I don't think.
Speaker 3: I don't think I'm good at it, honestly, Like no,
Speaker 3: I mean yes, if I had like a whole new
Speaker 3: set of talents, that's fun. Although that's a dying field, unfortunately,
Speaker 3: I don't. Just like I look at the political cartoonists
Speaker 3: that I admire. And I was just at the LBJ
Speaker 3: Library for this book tour and they showed me some
Speaker 3: pat Oliphant cartoons that they have in storage. At first
Speaker 3: of all, why are they in storage? Please put them
Speaker 3: up on the wall. But anyway, and they showed me, and.
Speaker 2: Why are they at the LBJ library and not like LBJ.
Speaker 3: Because pat Oliphant in the sixties LBJ would read the
Speaker 3: political cartoons, look at the ones he liked and has
Speaker 3: for that tell people to go get them, and then
Speaker 3: pat Oliphant would sign them respectfully pat Ollifant, and hand
Speaker 3: them to the president.
Speaker 2: Yeah no, and it was like dozens of them, and
Speaker 2: it's just like, oh my.
Speaker 1: I guess good for him for saving it. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, he could have just given it to family.
Speaker 2: No, it's so cool.
Speaker 3: Anyway, I look at him and I'm like, that guy
Speaker 3: was just the best political cartoonist.
Speaker 2: He just took no prisoners. He was such a beautiful draftsman.
Speaker 3: I can't do that, but I will say the next
Speaker 3: book is about So. I was in France with my
Speaker 3: family and my son and I went to the Museum
Speaker 3: of the Resistance and we learned about Jean Mulan, the
Speaker 3: hero of the Resistance, and he was tortured by tortured
Speaker 3: and killed by the Nazi Klaus Barbie. And I'm like, oh,
Speaker 3: I've heard of Klaus Barbie. And then I just want
Speaker 3: to kind of went down this rabbit hole of Klaus Barbie,
Speaker 3: this Nazi who escaped justice after World War Two and
Speaker 3: was in Bolivia and blah blah blah. And then I
Speaker 3: just and I learned so much that just like completely
Speaker 3: opened my eyes. And then I pitched a graphic novel
Speaker 3: except it's nonfiction about Klaus Barbie. And that's my next
Speaker 3: book after So it's really honestly, And that's just a
Speaker 3: clear Now you're.
Speaker 2: Doing a graphic novel, which you've never done before, So no, exactly.
Speaker 2: So I think it's all just what interests me and
Speaker 2: what is a challenge that I want to see if
Speaker 2: I can meet it, That's that's what I think.
Speaker 1: Let's get out on political satire. Okay, your favorite satire
Speaker 1: out there these days? Who's doing? Because I think it's
Speaker 1: never been harder to be a satirist of our current
Speaker 1: political world because sometimes, you know, or if you try
Speaker 1: to fictionalize what we're going through, you can't come up
Speaker 1: with the scenarios that we're actually dealing with, right, Like some.
Speaker 2: Of it is.
Speaker 1: You know, if I would have told you ten years
Speaker 1: ago that, yeah, a president's family is going to start
Speaker 1: a mobile phone company, wow my god. I mean, like
Speaker 1: you know, like just the little thing like this one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you sit here and now it's just sort of normalized.
Speaker 1: I think it's never been harder to be a satirist
Speaker 1: or or or humorist where you need to you almost
Speaker 1: need to exaggerate in order to make a point, right R.
Speaker 1: How do you exaggerate? How do you sound this exaggerated?
Speaker 1: The world is satire. We live in a satire well,
Speaker 1: I mean I do. What do you think doing it well?
Speaker 2: Like these days?
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, I do think the late night
Speaker 3: guys from Kimmel to Fallon, to Seth Meyers to Colbert
Speaker 3: to Bill Maher at.
Speaker 1: You you're saying good things about all of them, all
Speaker 1: of them will help.
Speaker 3: But I mean that they but I do see their
Speaker 3: clips and they do make that I do. The test
Speaker 3: for me is always just like, am I watching the clip?
Speaker 3: Am I watching the clip? And my watching it all
Speaker 3: the way through?
Speaker 2: I do?
Speaker 3: And Bill Maher you know, who is obviously not predictable
Speaker 3: in terms of the stuff he's ranting on. I appreciate
Speaker 3: to me it makes them slightly more interesting because it's
Speaker 3: not predictable, right, Yeah, yeah, I do, I do.
Speaker 2: I do. I wish it was.
Speaker 3: More thriving though, the political satire world, because it just
Speaker 3: does seem like it should be so ripe and yet
Speaker 3: at the same time there is.
Speaker 1: Well there's like I take a guy like Greg Guttfeldt.
Speaker 1: I knew gut You probably knew him too. Twenty years ago.
Speaker 1: He was the editor of UK Maxim. He's the editor
Speaker 1: of UK Maxim and he was sort of an iconoclastic
Speaker 1: kind of guy, sort of loud, but also like would
Speaker 1: satirize anybody, right, And you know the version that we
Speaker 1: see of him now is not the guy that you
Speaker 1: know he could be. I think of more interesting satirists
Speaker 1: if he didn't feel trapped by I think or maybe
Speaker 1: he's doing it by choice. I'm not going to say
Speaker 1: he's trapped, but if he didn't feel like the ad
Speaker 1: state you have to stay within the silo of your
Speaker 1: information ecosystem.
Speaker 2: I mean, look, I don't I don't know Greg particularly well.
Speaker 2: I will say that you know he's probably delivering what
Speaker 2: the audience at ten o'clock on.
Speaker 1: Fox points that's exactly right, meaning like he's let he's
Speaker 1: been audience captured.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And to me, the best satirists are the ones that
Speaker 1: aren't afraid of pissing off the audience.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you, Like, when you asked about political satire,
Speaker 3: my mind immediately ran to Tom Larr, who from the sixties,
Speaker 3: who I still.
Speaker 2: A showing our age even though was us.
Speaker 3: He's still alive out there. And Tom, if you're hearing this,
Speaker 3: you're a You're a god. But I have to say
Speaker 3: and Ben Smith interviewed him once, like ten years ago,
Speaker 3: and I was like so jealous. He was a satirist
Speaker 3: who was just there to make the jokes and just
Speaker 3: vicious no matter who he was making fun of, the Democrats,
Speaker 3: the Republicans, it didn't matter, and he was so clever.
Speaker 3: And that's still I listen. I still listen to him.
Speaker 3: I don't know, I mean, is there is there any
Speaker 3: satirists that you listen to?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: I look, I know, I mean, you know, I will
Speaker 1: say this, I've I look at the animators. I think
Speaker 1: the South Park guys still have captured Oh they're great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think they they have captured this moment better than others.
Speaker 1: I think they really do well on the culture stuff.
Speaker 1: Like I really feel like the South Park guys really
Speaker 1: know how to sort of expose the cultural so great.
Speaker 3: Do you know one of the reasons why they're so great.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you because I did a piece about.
Speaker 2: Them for Nightline, like literally like twenty years ago for Nightlines.
Speaker 1: If you have to say Nightline, it's automatically twenty Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well they're still around, but yes, but is it? Sorry
Speaker 2: I didn't I have to be that one.
Speaker 1: I had to be reminded of it's like you're telling me,
Speaker 1: like twenty twenty, is that still around?
Speaker 2: I know, yeah, so they did. They crash it in
Speaker 2: a week. I mean, that's how they do it.
Speaker 3: That's why they're so I mean they're also very very funny,
Speaker 3: and they're very very gifted storytellers, and they have no
Speaker 3: allegiance to any party, and they are making.
Speaker 1: They're true libertarians. I mean, they really are. You know,
Speaker 1: they're Colorado Libertarians. I say this that you know, there's
Speaker 1: a distinction. You know, you and I've done this long
Speaker 1: enough where we know you got your your East Coast
Speaker 1: Libertarians or one thing you're but Colorado is a different cat, right, Like,
Speaker 1: it's just a different walk of libertarian and they capture
Speaker 1: it so well.
Speaker 3: So they and they crash in a week. They do
Speaker 3: it in a week. It's also one of the reasons
Speaker 3: why the animation so whatever. But uh, but you know,
Speaker 3: and but they're brilliant and you know, they're the kind
Speaker 3: of thing that I remember trying to introduce my son
Speaker 3: to The Simpsons, and I got ahead of myself.
Speaker 2: He wasn't ready for it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my son likes Family Guy okay and South Park okay,
Speaker 1: But you know, my son's a Shane Gillis guy. He
Speaker 1: loves tires.
Speaker 3: Oh is that right, Shane gill Well, a lot of
Speaker 3: the I mean talk about political satire, so so Shane Gillis,
Speaker 3: Ricky Gervais, Dave Chappelle, like a lot of the guys
Speaker 3: who if you said that you like them five years ago,
Speaker 3: you'd get canceled like they you're right, they really and
Speaker 3: again everybody should live and be well and pro love
Speaker 3: and all that.
Speaker 2: But like.
Speaker 3: They're I guess, I guess what about snl We didn't
Speaker 3: even we haven't even mentioned snl uh in terms of
Speaker 3: political satire. I think weekend updates funny, but you know
Speaker 3: the funny two.
Speaker 1: But you know the weekend that they exhausted. I'm exhausted
Speaker 1: from the Trump stuff. And it's not their fault, like
Speaker 1: you know, this is a formula and somewhat, Hey, you
Speaker 1: got to do the president. You got to do that,
Speaker 1: and they've been doing it for fifty years. You got
Speaker 1: to keep doing it.
Speaker 2: Right. You should read the Lorn's biography, by the way,
Speaker 2: it's really good. But I've done a lot.
Speaker 1: I heard a long interview with her, and yes it is.
Speaker 2: It's a great it's a great book.
Speaker 3: But let me just say, what I think is the
Speaker 3: funniest thing that SNL does is when Chay and Jost
Speaker 3: swamp jokes and Chay makes Jost say like the most
Speaker 3: racist jokes and.
Speaker 1: The uncomfortable, Right, that's what you like. You and I
Speaker 1: both like a comedy that it's a little uncomfortable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And to me, maybe that satire is supposed to make
Speaker 1: you a little long. You're not supposed to just be
Speaker 1: comfortable and laugh. You're supposed to be like, Oh, that's
Speaker 1: how you know it's effective satire, right, right?
Speaker 3: And so I mean I do think that that is effective.
Speaker 3: And I think we are in an era right now
Speaker 3: of people who are very very sensitive and try to
Speaker 3: impose their sensitivities on everybody else, and people who have
Speaker 3: zero sensitivities and are.
Speaker 2: Also try to put that on everybody. Right, And.
Speaker 3: So what I guess whatever makes me laugh? You know,
Speaker 3: I'm constantly seeking. But I don't go home and watch
Speaker 3: the news. I don't know about you. I go home
Speaker 3: and watch Oh.
Speaker 2: I don't either. I don't Slow Horse.
Speaker 1: I watch a lot of sports. Oh, I like slow Horses.
Speaker 1: You know, I didn't realize it was based on a
Speaker 1: series of books. I may, I may, that may be
Speaker 1: a summer may be a little summer fiction reading for me?
Speaker 1: Is that those slow horses. It's a whole series of books.
Speaker 2: Did you know that I did?
Speaker 1: And apparently the Gary Oldman character and by Gary Oldman
Speaker 1: easily top five actor of our lifetime. Right, it's unbelievable
Speaker 1: how he can just he's It's never like you always
Speaker 1: have to oh, that's Gary Oldman. You know an actor
Speaker 1: is good when you have to be told who it
Speaker 1: is and you don't know it right away.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's great horses. George Clooney is always George Clooney,
Speaker 2: Department Q. But you know what don't don't know? You
Speaker 2: shouldn't say that about George. Let me tell you why
Speaker 2: I watched.
Speaker 1: No, I'm not saying he's not a good actor, but
Speaker 1: there's a difference. There's two types of actors. I read
Speaker 1: this and I thought may have been behind the kinds
Speaker 1: who there's aliens and there's humans. Right, there's those that
Speaker 1: become the character Gary Oldman does this, Meryl Streep because this,
Speaker 1: And then there's Harrison Ford or or even Julie Louis
Speaker 1: dreyfuss or, who are great, great actors kind of themselves stars.
Speaker 2: There are versions of them. Go back and watch Clooney, Go.
Speaker 3: Back and watch Clooney and Burn after reading, which is, yes,
Speaker 3: perhaps the most relevant film to today's Washington d C.
Speaker 2: After reading.
Speaker 1: But he's he's really good in that. I don't want
Speaker 1: you to think. I don't think he's not good. There's
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, it's just a different style of acting.
Speaker 1: Like it's the method acting. It's it's the I've got
Speaker 1: to become this person acting like the guy from Succession, Right,
Speaker 1: who's Jeremy Strong, right? Who other actors don't love his method? Right,
Speaker 1: there's all these there was all these Vanity Fair stories
Speaker 1: about oh he was hard to work with because he
Speaker 1: was always in character. Right, He's one of those people
Speaker 1: that wants to be in character versus others that don't.
Speaker 1: But I look, everybody does it differently, and I'm always
Speaker 1: fascinated with that. But Gary Oldman is just That's why.
Speaker 1: I just I just it's amazing how often I'll watch
Speaker 1: something and you're like, oh my god, that was Gary Oldman.
Speaker 2: God, he's amazing. Yeah. Well, just to think that the
Speaker 2: guy in Slow Horses is also the guy from Dracula
Speaker 2: from one hundred years ago.
Speaker 1: My point is, is apparently the reason I want to talk
Speaker 1: Apparently the books, the character Gary Oldman plays in Slow Horses, right,
Speaker 1: with all the farting and how disgusting he is is awful.
Speaker 1: He's really appearly. It's like appairly. He's like even more
Speaker 1: disgusting in the books. Oh even worse, Yes, it's even worse.
Speaker 1: How could he be worse? I know That's what I'm like.
Speaker 1: I'm a little afraid of reading one of the books,
Speaker 1: like really, so is? He literally started watching the other
Speaker 1: one self.
Speaker 2: In the middle of a of a of an interrogation.
Speaker 3: Sorry, here's another one you'll like. Is I just started
Speaker 3: watching Department Q where that is?
Speaker 2: Oh? Is that the That's an Amazon thing? Right?
Speaker 1: This is a James Bond thing, like a spinoff.
Speaker 2: I don't you know what? I have every streamer and
Speaker 2: I don't even know. I just talked into the thing
Speaker 2: and but oh I know what you made Department First problem,
Speaker 2: it's Scott frank Is, this writer director who's just absolutely brilliant.
Speaker 2: The first two isn't that? Is it a little James Is?
Speaker 2: It's basically no, no, no, no, no, no, no, not
Speaker 2: at all.
Speaker 3: It's because it's it's basically Cold Case. It's basically Cold Case,
Speaker 3: not the TV show, but the concept is Britain or
Speaker 3: America UK. Yeah, Okay, it's really good. It's it's really good.
Speaker 3: And it's Matthew Good.
Speaker 2: Do you know. I think it's pronounced good.
Speaker 3: He's this incredibly good looking guy who he's like one
Speaker 3: of these guys. It's like like William Hurt, like a
Speaker 3: character actor, born into a leading man's body, and and
Speaker 3: he's he's in it and he's he's shaggy, and it's
Speaker 3: just it's good anyway, just recommended, just recommending. I still
Speaker 3: need to be get caught up on films. I haven't
Speaker 3: seen Sinners, I haven't seen Friendship. There's a ton I
Speaker 3: need to say.
Speaker 2: So let me ask you this.
Speaker 1: This is always something that people ask me about and
Speaker 1: I don't have a good answer than I just constantly read.
Speaker 2: That's just what I do.
Speaker 1: But you're also very culturally literate, and there's always and
Speaker 1: I'm sure people wonder where where do you find the time?
Speaker 2: You know, I get used? How do you say that? Yeah? Right?
Speaker 3: How do I get asked you? Because of the books?
Speaker 3: I mean, first of all, I'm very driven and obviously
Speaker 3: a little nuts.
Speaker 2: Do you not sleep a lot? You probably don't sleep
Speaker 2: a lot, right, I.
Speaker 3: Try to No, I need no, no, no, I need.
Speaker 3: I need more than that. I try to sleep a lot.
Speaker 3: I try to go and I go through different periods
Speaker 3: where I'm like, I'm sleeping well, and then I'll go
Speaker 3: through a pier where I'm not sleeping well. I just
Speaker 3: I work a lot. I'm just constantly working. I'm not
Speaker 3: veg I don't do a lot of vegging.
Speaker 2: And in the.
Speaker 1: Morning at work, if you're doing that, that means it's
Speaker 1: not really work.
Speaker 2: Well, that's the other thing. I really mean, if it
Speaker 2: were work, you wouldn't do it. These a different are
Speaker 2: These books are a joy. But I'll tell you, I'll
Speaker 2: I'll tell you that. I'll tell you the way I
Speaker 2: do it.
Speaker 3: I constantly have this laptop or my iPad that I'm
Speaker 3: drawing on with me at all times.
Speaker 2: And if I put down my.
Speaker 3: Stupid phone and stop reading Twitter or Instagram and go
Speaker 3: online and start working on Google Docs.
Speaker 1: Or all I'll say is, ever since you slowed down
Speaker 1: on social media, you've written more books. And I'm not
Speaker 1: saying there's a correlation.
Speaker 2: There is a correlation. I stopped. Oh no, I were
Speaker 2: a heavy tweeter. You were heavy. It was a big tweeter.
Speaker 2: And I'm twenty fourteen to about twenty eighteen, right when
Speaker 2: you say.
Speaker 3: I don't know when I I don't know when I stopped,
Speaker 3: but I definitely stopped. And it's funny when people like
Speaker 3: attack you for things that you haven't done in five
Speaker 3: or ten years later.
Speaker 1: I feel the same way at which look, if there
Speaker 1: are times I go back, I regret how much I
Speaker 1: was on Twitter in twel oh yeah, twenty twelve, totally, totally.
Speaker 3: Do I remember, like in that early experience of like
Speaker 3: twenty two thousand and nine twenty ten.
Speaker 2: People would tweet.
Speaker 3: People would tweet, and I'm including myself in this, like
Speaker 3: anything they were experiencing or thinking they would share, and
Speaker 3: it was almost my.
Speaker 2: Remotes not working here, you know, like tweet him, you know,
Speaker 2: it was like, what are we doing?
Speaker 3: And I remember Mike Allen now currently of Axios, and
Speaker 3: I don't know who he was with at the time,
Speaker 3: maybe Politico or whatever.
Speaker 2: I don't remember who he's with at the time, but.
Speaker 3: I remember him writing something about it, and I was like,
Speaker 3: and I had tweeted something about Alice, my daughter when
Speaker 3: she was maybe like one, and it's something like, uh,
Speaker 3: you know, whatever I was experiencing with Alice at that moment,
Speaker 3: I tweeted it, which is insane, and Mike had written
Speaker 3: something like love Jake, love Alice, But why why is
Speaker 3: he sharing this kind of thing?
Speaker 2: And I just I remember thinking first I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: you know, fuck you, but then I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: he's right, yeah, no, it goes back to where and
Speaker 2: this is going to sound I love my calens.
Speaker 1: This is going to sound like phony phoniness to some people,
Speaker 1: and you can we shouldn't be celebrities, of course, but
Speaker 1: I always say it, I didn't choose, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't think you know, but somehow we became personalized to
Speaker 1: people when it came to write how they got their
Speaker 1: political information. So rather than viewing us simply as a
Speaker 1: vehicle for information, right, they you know, were the where
Speaker 1: the you know. And it's just look, it's been very
Speaker 1: good to us. I'm not going to sit here and
Speaker 1: saying it hasn't been good to us, but I think
Speaker 1: it's I think it has set unrealistic expectations to younger journalists,
Speaker 1: and I think there's too many people getting into our
Speaker 1: business wanting to be a celebrity or wanting to be famous,
Speaker 1: and yeah, that's their motivation for it, and it's.
Speaker 2: I will I will just say where we are.
Speaker 3: I will just say that I think the most important
Speaker 3: thing that journalists can do is report. And I don't
Speaker 3: consider like my tweets about the Eagles to be anything
Speaker 3: other than like me having fun.
Speaker 1: Like that's all right, let me get you out of
Speaker 1: here on this. You're a Philly guy. You love all
Speaker 1: the Philly teams, and when they're winning, you're going to
Speaker 1: love all the Philly teams.
Speaker 3: But when when they're currently which of they.
Speaker 2: Are most for the most part?
Speaker 1: Right, Phillies and Eagles in particular, we can you know,
Speaker 1: But of those four teams, who will you follow even
Speaker 1: when they suck? Which one of the four do you like?
Speaker 1: You'll torture yourself to keep following them, even if it's
Speaker 1: just a horrendous situation, Like what's the what's the true
Speaker 1: first love of those four of those four films?
Speaker 3: I mean, it's a time between the Eagles and the Phillies,
Speaker 3: depending on what the season is, I just have to say.
Speaker 3: And then probably Eagles have a leg up right now
Speaker 3: because they've won two Super Bowls since twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: I think about it, you were like, you were of amazing,
Speaker 1: You were of that. I mean Wilbert Montgomery, Harold Carlmichael,
Speaker 1: Mike Schmidt. I mean that that period of seventy nine
Speaker 1: to eighty one, right where you where Philly got baseball
Speaker 1: and Pete Rose your baseball and football we.
Speaker 2: Were in the super Bowl.
Speaker 1: Your age, your age, that's pretty That leads an impression.
Speaker 1: It's like why my son is obsessed with Yes, well, exactly.
Speaker 3: I remember when Pete Rose came to the Phillies in
Speaker 3: seventy eight, seventy nine from the Reds. And then I
Speaker 3: remember when Tug mcgrawth through that final pitch in nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty I was eleven, and the very next year or
Speaker 3: like January February of eighty one, the Eagles were in
Speaker 3: the Super Bowl. And then the eighty two eighty three
Speaker 3: season the Sixers won the championship. So that period, I
Speaker 3: mean imagine being ten, eleven, twelve during that period, like
Speaker 3: it was an incredible gift to young sports fans.
Speaker 1: But then no, and that's that's how fandom, that's how
Speaker 1: it sticks. So Flyers is probably the weakest of the four.
Speaker 3: I'm just not a hockey fan, and it's probably just
Speaker 3: because I can't follow them.
Speaker 2: They not good. Do you think they know?
Speaker 3: No, no, the broad state, but Bullys were great in
Speaker 3: the seventies when I was growing up. I just, you know,
Speaker 3: probably also a lot of this is just shape by
Speaker 3: who your parents are rooting for and who your friends
Speaker 3: are rooting for. Although I will say my best friend
Speaker 3: when I was in grade school, a guy named Jason Lerner,
Speaker 3: was a huge.
Speaker 2: Bobby Clark and Flyers fan.
Speaker 3: And maybe if, just like life, maybe if he had
Speaker 3: taken me to a game, I would have become a
Speaker 3: Flyers fan.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but I just I've been sitting on
Speaker 1: a Manila envelope of for some reason, have a World
Speaker 1: Series Champion Phillies color photo from top somehow, oh my god,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty and I've literally it's been for Jake.
Speaker 2: It's been sitting on my desk. So what of these times?
Speaker 2: I will remember it.
Speaker 1: When we we see each other for dinner. But I
Speaker 1: do I think of you all. I like that, the
Speaker 1: the eighty Philly stuff. I'm you know, way into sports collectibles.
Speaker 2: These days.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and I know you are too. You're sort
Speaker 1: of a sneaky eBay guy. Comic books, what is it?
Speaker 2: Comic book, comic books, political cartoons, historical stuff. And then
Speaker 2: I do have I do have a bunch of baseball cards,
Speaker 2: and I think I have almost every Mike Schmidt card
Speaker 2: ever except for this one very obscure sticker card from
Speaker 2: when he was with the Puerto Rican League in like
Speaker 2: seventy one seventy two. That's how you won't find that,
Speaker 2: I know, I know, I just got by the way,
Speaker 2: I just got Jackie Robinson's rookie card that was a
Speaker 2: which one.
Speaker 1: Forty eight leaf for forty eight nine leaf forty okay,
Speaker 1: because the forty nine leaf is also.
Speaker 2: Marketed as a rookie card. It's not though right now,
Speaker 2: I know, I know it's actually.
Speaker 1: The same exact photo, it's the same exact everything, just
Speaker 1: they just reprinted it in forty nine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and there's a lot of fakes out there also,
Speaker 3: yes there is, yeah, so but yeah, and Jackie Robinson memorabilia.
Speaker 3: Just because I've just become a huge Jackie Robinson fan,
Speaker 3: it's for like thirty years, just because of who you are.
Speaker 2: No, I've I've got it.
Speaker 1: Campanella was my dad's favorite player, So I do Campanella
Speaker 1: and Jackie, but more I've been Campingella because it's it's
Speaker 1: a little more affordable.
Speaker 2: Did you do.
Speaker 3: Anything when the when so the Dolphins didn't get their
Speaker 3: their white house visit during nick time.
Speaker 2: I was never a Dolphins fan. My dad always right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my dad had a grudge against the Dolphins for
Speaker 1: ripping off the university, the Dolphins and the Hurricanes in Miami.
Speaker 1: You know, my first love is college football. Is university
Speaker 1: like that. I will fall if they're owen, if they're
Speaker 1: o and twelve, I will watch every game matter like
Speaker 1: I'm gonna you know, I will torture myself.
Speaker 2: I love everything about them.
Speaker 1: And my part of that is again, I was of
Speaker 1: age when they dominated college foot like, so when that happens,
Speaker 1: when you're that age, you never lose it. But no,
Speaker 1: my father was not a Joe Robbie.
Speaker 2: Do you hate University of Florida with a fashion no other? Ye?
Speaker 2: And you consider do you still consider them cheaters? Cheater?
Speaker 1: I mean, any any member of the SEC automatically is
Speaker 1: a cheater.
Speaker 2: But did they get did they get a championship? Did
Speaker 2: they get a championship strip from them in the eighties
Speaker 2: or something.
Speaker 1: Are on probation a couple of times. But no, they
Speaker 1: didn't lose a title. Okay, I don't remember them getting
Speaker 1: a title yanked. Okay, I think I think that happened
Speaker 1: to Kentucky basketball.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't say. I wouldn't wherever John CALLI, wherever John
Speaker 2: Colin goes.
Speaker 3: I just remember this T shirt who says we're not
Speaker 3: champs and it was a Florida Gator.
Speaker 1: Anyway, Yeah, there was a year where they were considered
Speaker 1: the best team, but they were ineligible to go to Do.
Speaker 2: You edit these at all? Do you edit these podcasts?
Speaker 2: I don't like, not know, I like them up? Why
Speaker 2: are you will have to? No, I don't care. I'm
Speaker 2: just want you know, I let it go. I let
Speaker 2: it go. We went too long. This is too long.
Speaker 2: But I don't care. I'm just wondering if people care
Speaker 2: about like my phillies, they'll stop.
Speaker 1: We'll find out only the hardcore people. I mean, you
Speaker 1: learn this, you learn that this is the beauty of
Speaker 1: this medium. I'm surprised you haven't jumped into a podcast world.
Speaker 2: But you know what, I'm not allowed to do yet,
Speaker 2: and in fact.
Speaker 1: In some ways if you if you have you know,
Speaker 1: I always said my first name up until January of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty eight was meat right, and so until your
Speaker 1: your your first name is still going to be c Right.
Speaker 1: For seeing Jake Tapper, and still you could be Jake Tapper.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I would love to do it. I think
Speaker 2: it looks like you guys are all having so much
Speaker 2: fun and like what people have been able to.
Speaker 1: Let's the fact you can have the longer conversation. I mean,
Speaker 1: my biggest frustration with television interviews is that I think
Speaker 1: that unfortunately the I've to a ten minute interview has
Speaker 1: been what I call perfect. It everybody knows how to
Speaker 1: evade it if necessary. Everybody you know it's performative. And
Speaker 1: I don't mean it in a pejorative way. It just
Speaker 1: it just is. Everybody understands the time limits. Everybody understands
Speaker 1: how you can run out the clock. You know, there's
Speaker 1: it's just much harder now. You can't be an asshole
Speaker 1: on a podcast because you're in people's ear. You want
Speaker 1: to make people uncomfortable with your conversation. But you can
Speaker 1: ask probing questions without being no, you do need time.
Speaker 3: It looks like you guys are all having so much fun, honestly,
Speaker 3: you I mean, and you're all. Everybody's building different things.
Speaker 3: But whether it's you or Crystaliza, or it's Atality or whatever,
Speaker 3: like everybody building different stuff.
Speaker 1: Well, we're in the middle of you know, the history
Speaker 1: of media is new technology fragmentation, consolidation, new technology fragmentation, consolidation.
Speaker 1: You and I both benefited from the initial fragmentation of
Speaker 1: the Internet, right, maybe we got our breaks. I always
Speaker 1: say because of the Internet. Well, guys didn't want to
Speaker 1: do it. And I think streaming is this next thing.
Speaker 1: I don't know what this is going to look like
Speaker 1: in ten years. It's going to get consolidated, but I'm
Speaker 1: hoping to be a consolidator and not to be consolidated.
Speaker 1: But other than that, that's I know, that's what. We're
Speaker 1: in the middle of a disruption. We just don't know
Speaker 1: where the chips plate tectonics. Man, Yeah, everything's moving, Jake Tapper, congrats,
Speaker 1: that's pretty This is bestseller list four weeks in.
Speaker 2: A row, four weeks in a row.
Speaker 3: I know, crazy, right, hang on, man, we were number one,
Speaker 3: number one for two of those weeks, or as Fox
Speaker 3: News says, not selling very well.
Speaker 1: So well there you go. Well I'm sorry you didn't
Speaker 1: have a billionaire just purchase boxes of them.
Speaker 2: No, we sold, we do the web kitting. We're selling
Speaker 2: really really well.
Speaker 1: But it's always like a yeah, this isn't like a
Speaker 1: Donald Trump JUNIORR bestseller right where you just sort of I.
Speaker 3: Didn't mention him by name, but but I will say
Speaker 3: that it was just very funny. Part of the book
Speaker 3: tour that was interesting was and we can talk about
Speaker 3: this over drinks when I'm going to be really candid,
Speaker 3: is just the information the misinformation silos that people are in,
Speaker 3: because people were rooting against this book from the far
Speaker 3: left and the far right, the world of normies and Strage,
Speaker 3: the world of normies in between were very interested in
Speaker 3: embrace the book and bought it, and the reviews were
Speaker 3: great and all that stuff. But it was weird watching
Speaker 3: the misinformation silos and also watching and becoming content for
Speaker 3: a bit, not the book which I want to become content,
Speaker 3: that me becoming content.
Speaker 2: You were content, and I know, which was weird.
Speaker 3: It was just very weird because it's like, who is
Speaker 3: this person they're talking about and I'm not talking about anybody.
Speaker 1: The only other author that that happens, you know that
Speaker 1: happened is that happens to Woodward now these days, and
Speaker 1: it happened. It happens to Michael Wolf all the time
Speaker 1: right these days. Part of that is the way he
Speaker 1: drips out information, But Michael Wolf becomes the story with
Speaker 1: his book sometimes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I didn't.
Speaker 3: It was just very You didn't choose this yet, No, no,
Speaker 3: I wanted the scoops to be the news, and for
Speaker 3: the most part they were, but it was it was
Speaker 3: just interesting. It was very interesting because I don't pay
Speaker 3: a ton of attention to the far left and the
Speaker 3: far right when it comes to their misinformation silos, Like
Speaker 3: I just don't like, it's not worth my time for
Speaker 3: people who are You.
Speaker 1: Feel though, that you need to be informed of rabbit holes.
Speaker 1: You need to know what rabbit holes they go down,
Speaker 1: Like I feel like I need to know the rabbit
Speaker 1: holes that I feel like I follow up Carlson or
Speaker 1: Rotar going down.
Speaker 3: Well, but yes, but I feel like I am I
Speaker 3: follow enough people who are rabbit hole adjacent that that
Speaker 3: I'm aware of some self awareness. Yeah, yeah, No, like
Speaker 3: I'm fully aware of Tucker Carlson's interview with Ted Cruz, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, and without having to like.
Speaker 2: But also that's not even a rap.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's that's that's relevant because that's the mag
Speaker 3: of fight and Tucker and Tucker and crews are not
Speaker 3: fringe characters.
Speaker 2: They are they're mainstream characters, but they're they're they're part
Speaker 2: of the act.
Speaker 3: But that said, the misinformation silos were really interesting to watch,
Speaker 3: and also the horseshoe theory of the misinformation silos, but
Speaker 3: we'll talk about that some other time over cocktails.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's amazing that this whole time where there's a
Speaker 1: news story that's hanging over our head, that we're all
Speaker 1: waiting for it to.
Speaker 2: Be an act. I don't think he's gonna Yeah, well,
Speaker 2: who knows, But you're right, you can't predict I can't.
Speaker 1: And by the time, this is very unpredictable. This is
Speaker 1: going to drop next week. We're taping on a Thursday.
Speaker 1: In this so one would assume that there might be
Speaker 1: breaking news you and I have to cover at some point.
Speaker 2: Well, i'll tell you, let me tell you something about
Speaker 2: it anymore, But who knows.
Speaker 3: Yoav Gallant, the former Defense Secretary for Israel told me
Speaker 3: that just and this will be the last thing to say,
Speaker 3: but he told me on Wednesday on air that Israel
Speaker 3: had degraded Iran's nuclear capability several years and so I thought, oh, well,
Speaker 3: then President Trump doesn't need to bomb the facility at
Speaker 3: four to oh where the nuclear Richmond's going on, because
Speaker 3: now you have a couple extra years before they can
Speaker 3: create a nuclear weapon. Take that opportunity to do the
Speaker 3: diplomatic solution, which is I think what.
Speaker 2: Trump wants to do.
Speaker 3: But I think he's also he's really you know, he's
Speaker 3: really into this concept.
Speaker 1: Look as much, look as much as I I think
Speaker 1: he's you know, temperamentally, you know, you there's probably three
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty nine million other people that temporarily might
Speaker 1: be better prepared for dealing with some of these situations.
Speaker 2: He's been jammed. And it's not an easy decision.
Speaker 1: No resident would be sitting here because I know, one
Speaker 1: one one, you have some staffers that are going, look,
Speaker 1: they've never been this degraded. You've never You'll never have
Speaker 1: a better chance to wipe this out than right right now,
Speaker 1: And if you don't take it, you may not have
Speaker 1: another chance, so yes, And on the other hand, what
Speaker 1: if it doesn't work right?
Speaker 2: On the other hand, rock right on the other hand, Afghania,
Speaker 2: rock right exactly. In the other hand, Syria. On the
Speaker 2: other hand, Benghazi, yeahah, no, it is there's I'm not
Speaker 2: you know, we all give. It's easy to give.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can't believe he like, lets us all
Speaker 1: watch this, you know, the sort of indecisiveness and real time.
Speaker 1: But he isn't it. He's been put into a corner.
Speaker 1: It's not easy.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't know if sympathy is the right word, but.
Speaker 1: I look, this is the job you wanted to be president.
Speaker 2: You know there was that.
Speaker 1: You know, Obama used to talk about it, right, mare,
Speaker 1: He used to say this all the time. One the
Speaker 1: decisions that gets to my desk are the ones nobody
Speaker 1: else wanted to make.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: This is the this is the definition of that. Yes,
Speaker 3: are you do you want to write? It's all out there,
Speaker 3: But yeah, perfect Tapper.
Speaker 1: We we did our little We let people in on something.
Speaker 2: Maybe we'll say, all right, please, buddy, I'll talk to
Speaker 2: you soon. Well, I hope you enjoyed that conversation. Appreciated.
Speaker 1: Like I said, Jake, and I we grew up professionally together,
Speaker 1: so and we will fight like brothers, and we will
Speaker 1: compete like brothers, and we will protect each other like brothers.
Speaker 1: Let me move to a couple questions, and then I
Speaker 1: want to share with share with you a family family
Speaker 1: thing that I just I feel like sharing because it's
Speaker 1: been it's been a tough day. But I'll get to
Speaker 1: that in a minute.
Speaker 2: Ask Chuck.
Speaker 1: First couple questions is when it comes from Joe D
Speaker 1: from Santa Maria, California. Howdy, Chuck, have been a follower
Speaker 1: of yours since you joined NBC in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1: Appreciate all you do. Who would you put on the
Speaker 1: Mount Rushmore of Washington DC media figures from the last
Speaker 1: fifty years in nineteen seventy five? Where would Tim Russer
Speaker 1: fit into that?
Speaker 2: Thank you?
Speaker 1: Well, look, I think since nineteen seventy five. Well, that
Speaker 1: just talk about your recency bias, right, you know? For me,
Speaker 1: I just I guess I look at it at the
Speaker 1: people I trust, So you'd have to put cronkite on there.
Speaker 1: David Brinkley, you know, one of the proudest things for
Speaker 1: me at NBC I my desk in my office was
Speaker 1: David Brinkley's desk. It was actually one half of David
Speaker 1: Brinkley's desk.
Speaker 2: He had this monster desk that had one of those
Speaker 2: like old school like it was.
Speaker 1: It was, you know, it had had two sides to it.
Speaker 1: It was like L shaped. Well you know, the L
Speaker 1: had been long gone, but I had the one part
Speaker 1: of it. And you know, I always thought it was
Speaker 1: a nice homage that I was sitting in Tim Russell's chair,
Speaker 1: working in David Brinkley's David Brinkley's desk. So I put
Speaker 1: Brinkley Cronkite, and I'm yeah, I'm going to be a
Speaker 1: homer here, and I do Brokaw and Russard, but that's
Speaker 1: your TV, because if you'd make me do reporters, I'd
Speaker 1: want to throw David Broder on there, particularly for political reporters.
Speaker 1: So I don't know, I don't know if i'd have
Speaker 1: enough room for four slots on that front. But I
Speaker 1: look at sort of the people that helped explain politics.
Speaker 1: I think in a way that was understandable. David Brinkley
Speaker 1: I think did it as well as anybody.
Speaker 2: First.
Speaker 1: I mean, I remember Tom Broke telling me, you know
Speaker 1: when I sort of got handed the baton. He said, Man,
Speaker 1: NBC has always been you know, he says, CBS kind
Speaker 1: of ate our lunch in the coverage of Vietnam. That's
Speaker 1: what he once told me, he said, But nobody topped
Speaker 1: NBC for politics David Brinkley. Then from Brinkley, I went
Speaker 1: to Brokon Russert, and yes, I took the baton from there.
Speaker 1: So that's always mine. It was one of the challenges
Speaker 1: I gave to Kristen Welker's. I reminded her of that
Speaker 1: conversation that that broke all once had with me on
Speaker 1: that front. So you know, we took pride at NBC
Speaker 1: that we were sort of we had the best poll
Speaker 1: in the NBC News poll. It is the gold standard,
Speaker 1: has been the gold standard. And I encouraged my friends
Speaker 1: over there.
Speaker 2: Do you know that.
Speaker 1: I know there's a lot of cheaper polling out there,
Speaker 1: but remember, you get what you pay for. That's all
Speaker 1: I will say, you get what you pay for on
Speaker 1: that front. So i'd have again TV side, I gave
Speaker 1: it to you, Cronkite, Brinkley, Brokeaw Russer. I'd put those
Speaker 1: four up there for now.
Speaker 2: But that's.
Speaker 1: Either's so many other places. I would want Chip to
Speaker 1: sort of put up put up others on there as well.
Speaker 1: Second question here comes from Andy g Andy from LA
Speaker 1: home of the Dodgers. What should happen if the Nats
Speaker 1: get swept by the worst team in baseball history? The
Speaker 1: Nats gets swept by, Well, we did, thanks a lot.
Speaker 1: It's the Colorado Rockies. Here's a chance for some therapy,
Speaker 1: like Fraser Crane, I'm listening. Well, it's funny you bring
Speaker 1: this up. I think the Knats at least got one
Speaker 1: from the Dodgers. It was my son sort of called it.
Speaker 1: He says, we'll win the middle game and get blown
Speaker 1: out in Game three. Well, sure enough, we got blown
Speaker 1: out in Game three. On that front, I was glad
Speaker 1: to see James Wood, though, hit one of the fartherish
Speaker 1: home runs I've seen in Dodger Stadium that I can remember.
Speaker 2: I know it.
Speaker 1: Think it's Willie Stargel that has the longest home run
Speaker 1: in history out of Dodger Stadium, if I'm not mistaken Andy,
Speaker 1: But I was happy to see James Woods show up
Speaker 1: and uh and and make sure people saw that. Look,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be frank here. I think the fact that
Speaker 1: there's been no firing of the manager, and I'm I'm
Speaker 1: kind of a Davy guy, although I didn't like that
Speaker 1: attack the players, So it may be that it's time
Speaker 1: for Sometimes managers need need a need, a new need,
Speaker 1: a just you know, players need a new voice in
Speaker 1: their ears, and managers need a new set of players
Speaker 1: for their old stories type of type of thing. But
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what distresses me. I fear that the
Speaker 1: reason to keep Davy was not to keep Davy. I
Speaker 1: fear that this was a franchise that doesn't want to
Speaker 1: pay two managers right because if you fire one early,
Speaker 1: you still got to pay the person. And I continue
Speaker 1: to believe that the biggest problem that has is that
Speaker 1: it's not clear if the owners are committed to owning
Speaker 1: the team, And right now they are behaving like a
Speaker 1: set of owners that are not fully committed to the team,
Speaker 1: that are they going to sell or not, etc. And
Speaker 1: if you don't think that trickles down to employees, go
Speaker 1: talk to folks at CNN right now who are about
Speaker 1: to get spun off. Go talk to folks at CBS
Speaker 1: who are wondering what Paramount's going to do. Trust me,
Speaker 1: employees pay attention to this stuff when owners are messing
Speaker 1: around and it impacts morale. Don't think it doesn't. All right,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna pause my questions there. I got
Speaker 1: a bunch of other great questions, but I got a
Speaker 1: bunch of episodes later this week answering. Look, I want
Speaker 1: to share something with you. We had to put our
Speaker 1: dog down today, and I just want to tell you
Speaker 1: about Ruby. She's fourteen, and it's been really hard for
Speaker 1: my two kids. It's been hard for me. It's been
Speaker 1: hard for my wife. It's been hard for my two kids.
Speaker 1: They're eighteen and twenty one, and Ruby's fourteen. So think
Speaker 1: about it, right, My son was four when we got her.
Speaker 1: My daughter was seven when we got her. Right, this
Speaker 1: is not the first dog we've lost as a family,
Speaker 1: but this is the first dog that we've lost. They
Speaker 1: my kids grew up with Ruby. In fact, I mean,
Speaker 1: you guys will laugh. We get she got the name
Speaker 1: because I remember we go pick them up and we're
Speaker 1: trying to figure out and we got the runt of
Speaker 1: the litter with standard shoe, standard poodle, and we didn't
Speaker 1: want too big of a dog. So I was always okay,
Speaker 1: I was like, no, no, no, let's get the smaller. We
Speaker 1: already had a we had a we had a mini
Speaker 1: mini poodle, miniature poodle. So we were like, all right,
Speaker 1: let's get small. We don't want to We don't want
Speaker 1: our little guy Mikey to get overwhelmed by a huge
Speaker 1: standard poodle. So you know, and so we're trying to
Speaker 1: come up with the name. Well, at the time, and
Speaker 1: anybody whose parents have kids of that age will remember
Speaker 1: my son's favorite show at four Boys. He's going to
Speaker 1: be mad at me for bringing this up, but he's
Speaker 1: not going to be mad for the reason I did
Speaker 1: was Max and Ruby. And if you plot the show
Speaker 1: was the plot of that show was basically somehow these
Speaker 1: two kids never had adult supervision. They went on all
Speaker 1: these tracks and the big sister Ruby let around. Max
Speaker 1: was always keeping little Max.
Speaker 2: Out of trouble. So uh and that damn song Max
Speaker 2: and Ruby, Ruby and Max, Well somehow it you know,
Speaker 2: you're coming up with a name, and it had to
Speaker 2: be Ruby.
Speaker 1: So she was a good dog. She had a hard
Speaker 1: last couple of years, hard last couple of years at
Speaker 1: kidney failure, liver failure, all those things, and she was
Speaker 1: spent a Trooper. It's one of those couple of years
Speaker 1: ago we were told was never going to get better,
Speaker 1: but we just wanted to make sure that she was,
Speaker 1: that she could live a comfortable life. And then when
Speaker 1: she couldn't, we wanted to know, and we figured she'd
Speaker 1: let us know, and unfortunately she did. But man, you know,
Speaker 1: I know we're not the only family that's ever lost
Speaker 1: a pet. We're not the only family that treats pets
Speaker 1: like family.
Speaker 2: We all do.
Speaker 1: But it's uh, it's it.
Speaker 2: Well, you're reminded, and it's so true.
Speaker 1: No matter how bad my day was, my dog Ruby
Speaker 1: was always happy to see me, especially if I give
Speaker 1: her a treat. She was always happy to see me,
Speaker 1: especially when I was cooking and would accidentally, well not
Speaker 1: so accidentally, drop stuff on the floor for her. So,
Speaker 1: you know, in a vicious town, right, Harry Truman said
Speaker 1: it best right, If you want a friend in Washington,
Speaker 1: get a dog. It's more true every day, as toxic
Speaker 1: as things get. And I think it says something my neighborhood.
Speaker 1: I'm sure so many neighborhoods, particularly after COVID, I think
Speaker 1: there are now more houses with dogs, more families with
Speaker 1: dogs than families without dogs, and this, and and cats too.
Speaker 1: I don't want to leave out my my, my, my
Speaker 1: friends with cat cats out there. Cats are very much
Speaker 1: I grew up with a cat, and I know that
Speaker 1: there's that. They're also sometimes not sometimes not as lovable.
Speaker 1: Cats are so clever, right, They make you earn you know,
Speaker 1: they want you to earn their love if you will.
Speaker 1: Dogs have that loyalty to them that that sometimes can't
Speaker 1: be can't be can't be imitated. But anyway, I I'm
Speaker 1: just sharing because it's it's one of those things you
Speaker 1: kind of just just I just want you to love
Speaker 1: my dog, love your dog as much as I love mine.
Speaker 2: All right with that? You know?
Speaker 1: C the Sarah McLoughlin, uh and I will see you
Speaker 1: the next time we unload