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Speaker 1: Happy hangover Monday, the day after the super Bowl, and
Speaker 1: don't worry. The NFL is working on the idea of
Speaker 1: another week to the season so that they officially take
Speaker 1: over President's Day weekend for the super Bowl. And you
Speaker 1: can see where it goes. Super Bowl Sunday we get
Speaker 1: President's Day off, because what's more American than that. The
Speaker 1: super Bowl itself, well, it kind of, it kind of went.
Speaker 1: It kind of went. The conventional wisdom I mean, when
Speaker 1: a sort of amateur like me is out there on
Speaker 1: the record saying I think this game's going to be
Speaker 1: like twenty to six. Well, you know, I missed a
Speaker 1: few points here or there, but it kind of went
Speaker 1: exactly how we thought that Seattle would. Just so what
Speaker 1: they've done all year. They kind of grind teams down
Speaker 1: and you're like, oh my god, we can't catch up
Speaker 1: when you're playing them, They're just there is a relentlessness there.
Speaker 1: I'll say this, I got to give credit to the
Speaker 1: Pats defense. They Seattle could have blown this game open
Speaker 1: in the first half, and they made it. You know,
Speaker 1: Darnald missed a couple of throws by that much, a
Speaker 1: couple of great plays by the defensive backfield at Christian Gonzales.
Speaker 1: That was impressive. But at the end of the day, man,
Speaker 1: you cannot The Patriots tried to do something that no
Speaker 1: team had ever done in a Super Bowl. They try
Speaker 1: to win a Super Bowl without a left side of
Speaker 1: their offensive line. I know they were actual physical human beings.
Speaker 1: Perhaps I think they were. I wasn't live at the game,
Speaker 1: but if you told me that was just a green
Speaker 1: screen for their left tackle, because my god, poor Drake
Speaker 1: May I mean running for his life. It is what
Speaker 1: it is. That was the fear going into this game.
Speaker 1: Is that's what we'd expect, but that's what it was.
Speaker 1: But come on, for us football fans are not Patriots fans.
Speaker 1: Did we really want to see them just make it
Speaker 1: this easy to get back and win and winning super bowls?
Speaker 1: That it couldn't be this easy. They should be happy
Speaker 1: they're going to be contenders again when they get an
Speaker 1: offensive line. That's a great defense. It's a well coached team.
Speaker 1: But you got to give your hats off to the
Speaker 1: Seattle defense. Unbelievable. Kenneth Walker was unbelievable. Before those last
Speaker 1: couple of touchdown passes, Kenneth Walker was looking like the
Speaker 1: MVP in that front. But look, Sam Donald, he made
Speaker 1: a few throws that you're like, you know, when you're
Speaker 1: a Sam Donald fan, I didn't. I imagine there's a
Speaker 1: lot of no, no, no, no, no yes when it comes
Speaker 1: to Donald, but there it is. Kudos to the Seahawks,
Speaker 1: it was. This is one of those years where it
Speaker 1: felt like the NFC was just that much better and
Speaker 1: the Super Bowl produced kind of exactly how the season went.
Speaker 1: The AFC was weaker and a bit of a jumbled mess.
Speaker 1: The NFC was stronger with Seattle constantly on top, and
Speaker 1: we got the scroll. They got a few things on
Speaker 1: the non football playing side. First of all, look love
Speaker 1: Mike Turrico, consider him a friend. He had one of
Speaker 1: my favorite calls of the night when he talked about
Speaker 1: the rocket scientist jumping onto the field. I just thought
Speaker 1: that was a I love that. That's what he That's
Speaker 1: how he referred to the guy that whatever happened on
Speaker 1: the field. Obviously, those of us not there live don't
Speaker 1: know what the interruption was, but I liked the shout
Speaker 1: out to rocket scientists, bad bunny. The Super Bowl party,
Speaker 1: I was at everybody's like, well, that was interesting, and
Speaker 1: as somebody who grew up in Miami, it was very
Speaker 1: familiar to me. I enjoyed sort of the tour of
Speaker 1: Latin culture and the Puerto Rican culture, you know, going
Speaker 1: through the dominoes and the weddings and the cantinnaras and
Speaker 1: all that stuff. I thought that was a nice little touch.
Speaker 1: But I have no doubt that there'll be a lot
Speaker 1: of dumb social media takes on this. But if you're
Speaker 1: the NFL, you were there to expand your fan base,
Speaker 1: to continue this outreach to Latin America, and Bad Bunny
Speaker 1: did the job. I think that the NFL was hoping
Speaker 1: that he would do on that front. I'm sure if
Speaker 1: you're trying to find out how popular it was, my
Speaker 1: guess is, if you like Trump, you didn't like Bad Money,
Speaker 1: And if you didn't like Trump, you said, wow, that
Speaker 1: was terrific. You know, not everybody's a Bad Bunny fan,
Speaker 1: but I get what he was trying to do. I
Speaker 1: thought it was interesting, I thought it was unique, and
Speaker 1: I thought it was worth watching. On that the commercials,
Speaker 1: I'm just creeped out by the d aging. I'm sorry
Speaker 1: that weird Eccinity ad with Jurassic Park and all. I'd
Speaker 1: rather see all those actors as they are now, give
Speaker 1: them to me with all their gray hair. It might
Speaker 1: even be funnier if they did that. But all of
Speaker 1: the d aging, and it was in a few ads.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just that one. It was oh, the Goodwill Hunt,
Speaker 1: the dunkin Donuts ad with everybody looking d aged except
Speaker 1: for Brady, which I guess was the Brady was always
Speaker 1: sort of Benjamin Button. Anyway, Again, I know all these guys,
Speaker 1: have these all these great new tools to mess with
Speaker 1: thanks to AI, thanks to d aging, but eh, a
Speaker 1: little overused. I'm a little creeped out about it. I'm intrigued.
Speaker 1: I didn't know there was going to be a Once
Speaker 1: upon a Time in Hollywood sequel, so call me intrigued
Speaker 1: on that. So thank you super Bowl commercial for that.
Speaker 1: And finally, I guess this was I said it would
Speaker 1: be the year of the AI ad. There were certainly
Speaker 1: AI companies and teases and and different AI agents being advertised.
Speaker 1: It felt like, my guess is just like what we
Speaker 1: saw during the Crypto super Bowl a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: and we had our Internet super Bowl way back when
Speaker 1: half of those AI agents that advertised in this super
Speaker 1: Bowl will not be in existence in what three years?
Speaker 1: What should we make the over under that two and
Speaker 1: a half years that some of these companies will no
Speaker 1: longer be be relevant or be ever heard of, or
Speaker 1: some of these things the only time we'll ever hear
Speaker 1: from them might actually be the Super Bowl ad you
Speaker 1: watched last night. But all in all, I'm sad that
Speaker 1: football season's over. I am a huge football fan. I
Speaker 1: love it, but hey, let's turn to basketball. We got
Speaker 1: the All Star weekend. Next weekend, we got the best
Speaker 1: part of college basketball coming up, so I know how
Speaker 1: I'm going to be spending a lot of my evenings
Speaker 1: over the next over the next few weeks. And as
Speaker 1: I told you before, I love the Olympics. So there.
Speaker 1: So look, we got through the Super Bowl without two
Speaker 1: without any political disruption, which is kind of nice. And
Speaker 1: I barely made it through the Super Bowl without one
Speaker 1: Cali disruption from my dog. All right, so let's get
Speaker 1: focused on the show ahead. Let me give you a
Speaker 1: quick little table of contents. I've got a few things
Speaker 1: to say about the about the weekend that was with
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, both the European essentially the Europeans at the
Speaker 1: Olympics expressing their expressing their opinion about Team USA and
Speaker 1: how humiliating that was for US Americans watching on TV
Speaker 1: and live. We'll get to that. We've got the Donald
Speaker 1: Trump racist meme. And what's interesting about that story is,
Speaker 1: like with a lot of things with Donald Trump, I
Speaker 1: don't know how we're surprised or shocked that he does
Speaker 1: something that's racist, that he either shares a post that's
Speaker 1: racist or implies something that is racist. And you know,
Speaker 1: there's always this question, is he you know, he always
Speaker 1: wants to say I'm the least racist person. But as
Speaker 1: there was a great debate line back in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: I think it's Andrew Gillham to Ronda Santis, I don't
Speaker 1: know if you're racist, but a lot of racist people
Speaker 1: think you're racist. The point is this consistency of Donald
Speaker 1: Trump that whenever sort of there's a line, he's willing
Speaker 1: to cross it and be on the side of those
Speaker 1: that would be accused of being racist. But we're going
Speaker 1: to get to that in a minute. I also have
Speaker 1: the most underreported story last week that is is a
Speaker 1: huge consequence to campaign twenty twenty six and why perhaps
Speaker 1: we can call the election right now. We can, at
Speaker 1: least on the House side, that we can call it
Speaker 1: right now. I will explain statistically why that is later
Speaker 1: in this episode, but let's get started with the fallout
Speaker 1: from Donald Trump and the racist meme attacking the Obamas,
Speaker 1: because you know, whenever we have these incidents with him,
Speaker 1: because these are very frequent, right, you can go down
Speaker 1: the litany of lists. We can go back all the
Speaker 1: way to twenty fifteen. Frankly, with Donald Trump, you can
Speaker 1: go all the way back to the eighties in the
Speaker 1: Central Park five. Actually, if you want, you can go.
Speaker 1: When it comes to race and the questions of racism,
Speaker 1: you go all the way back to the early seventies
Speaker 1: when he had to go hire a lawyer named Roy
Speaker 1: Cone because the Nixon government, the Nixon led Justice Department,
Speaker 1: was investigating his father's firm, essentially for bias in how
Speaker 1: they rented and sold houses and apartments in suburban New
Speaker 1: York City. So the point is the accusation of racism.
Speaker 1: The question about whether he was racially tolerant or not,
Speaker 1: or racially accepting or not, has been hovering over Donald
Speaker 1: Trump for his entire adult life. He leans sometimes, it
Speaker 1: seems as if he leans into racist tropes almost as
Speaker 1: a way to quote. Maybe he thinks he's owning the
Speaker 1: Libs or he's somehow giving fuel to his base. I
Speaker 1: think sometimes he insults his own base. I think he
Speaker 1: thinks that deep down that the MAGA base is all racists.
Speaker 1: So that's why he plays to it, which if you
Speaker 1: believe it is in his agenda, but you're not racist,
Speaker 1: should offend you. And I think that that was so.
Speaker 1: The what I took away from this story was not
Speaker 1: that Donald Trump did this. Of course Donald Trump did this, right,
Speaker 1: That is not the news. What was new and important
Speaker 1: to chronicle in this story was the immediate reactions of
Speaker 1: people like Tim Scott, who said, this is the most
Speaker 1: racist thing that's come out of this White House. By
Speaker 1: the way, that phrasing was fascinating, right, talk about a
Speaker 1: guy you'd like to put under a polygraph and say, huh,
Speaker 1: you're implying you've seen other racist things come out of
Speaker 1: this White House. Right by saying this is the most racist.
Speaker 1: He didn't say this was the only racist thing that
Speaker 1: came out of this White House. So that's of note.
Speaker 1: Let's just say I listened to words very carefully, and
Speaker 1: yes I part sentences too much. So assuming the other
Speaker 1: aspect of this was watching how many other Republicans decided
Speaker 1: to go in on that, and there was the weasel words.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine he did this. It must have been
Speaker 1: a staffer, right, these staffers that apparently are up as
Speaker 1: late as he is. To the President's credit, he essentially
Speaker 1: while he didn't he's essentially admitted he did it. He's now,
Speaker 1: I think, claiming he didn't see it all the way through.
Speaker 1: So we didn't see how it was ending. It's how
Speaker 1: he wants to go. But it's it's interesting that he
Speaker 1: kind of, you know, reversed the bus that that the
Speaker 1: that ran over the staffer that everybody decided, whoever this
Speaker 1: imaginary staffer was that did it. One would assume it's
Speaker 1: the caddy Dan Scavino, who supposedly runs all the social
Speaker 1: media accounts from time to time, but they never did
Speaker 1: say his name. It was sort of implied, but it
Speaker 1: was Donald Trump's way of bringing back the PUS. But
Speaker 1: the point was, and this goes back to something I
Speaker 1: wrote on Substack last fall, which was the cracks are
Speaker 1: beginning to show in the Trump coalition. Well, I don't
Speaker 1: know if a week's gone by where the cracks haven't
Speaker 1: gotten deeper, where you haven't had another Republican either decide
Speaker 1: not to seek reelection or decide to back away in
Speaker 1: some way. The comfort that more Republicans have in criticizing
Speaker 1: him publicly, in questioning him publicly. Look, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to sit here and say it's an avalanche of criticism
Speaker 1: coming from Republicans, but you are starting to see that
Speaker 1: more of them realize they're the ones that are going
Speaker 1: to be on the ballot. The future of the party
Speaker 1: is in their hands because Donald Trump doesn't care about
Speaker 1: the future of the party. And you throw in the
Speaker 1: fact that I know to say Donald Trump had ever
Speaker 1: had a filter, it might be might be an understatement.
Speaker 1: But here's what we do know. As people age, whatever
Speaker 1: filter they have goes away. So he didn't have much
Speaker 1: of a filter before. But it's but it's possible Donald
Speaker 1: Trump five years ago might have might have had some
Speaker 1: little voice in his head to say, don't retweet that
Speaker 1: Obama Obama racist meme. And this time there's no right
Speaker 1: He's that he's living in his He's living in a
Speaker 1: cocoon that seems to be even more self serving than
Speaker 1: ever before. He does not seem to appear like when
Speaker 1: he was asked about Jadie Vance getting booed at the
Speaker 1: Olympics during the opening ceremonies, he seemed to feign surprised
Speaker 1: by that. Maybe that's his way of spinning, or maybe
Speaker 1: he really is in this cocoon that he doesn't realize
Speaker 1: how unpopular his administration is, how unpopular he is, and
Speaker 1: how unpopular jd Vance is growing, but particularly in Europe.
Speaker 1: If he doesn't understand Teddy Vance has gone to Europe
Speaker 1: and attacked Europe every different way. He has attacked the
Speaker 1: culture of Western Europe. He is he essentially said, you're
Speaker 1: bringing all this on yourself, and and he has gone
Speaker 1: there to to to give aid and comfort to all
Speaker 1: of these right wing movements that are very offensive to
Speaker 1: a lot of Western Europeans, particularly the ones that go
Speaker 1: to the Olympics that can afford to travel. Let's just
Speaker 1: say this ain't a jade Van's crowd, and it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's I would caution the president to be careful attacking
Speaker 1: Americans who American athletes who speak out. This is the
Speaker 1: age we live in. And I have to say I've
Speaker 1: been impressed. The athletes are all trying to walk a line.
Speaker 1: You can see it. But it's uncomfortable. It's no fun
Speaker 1: to be an American overseas. And no, I have no
Speaker 1: doubt there are other athletes in the in the village
Speaker 1: giving American athletes grief that there is a cold shoulder.
Speaker 1: You talk to any Americans to travel overseas right now,
Speaker 1: it is uncomfortable. It's much worse than it was during
Speaker 1: the Iraq War. So it is. It wouldn't surprise me
Speaker 1: that when you sort of look at why Trump doesn't
Speaker 1: see how bad things are going for him, that because
Speaker 1: they've created this safe space in the Oval Office for
Speaker 1: him and they sort of block out any negative news,
Speaker 1: only show him like pieces of polls that give him
Speaker 1: aid and comfort, but they don't show him the big pictures.
Speaker 1: So he really doesn't know how bad things are. It
Speaker 1: only is going to lead for him to do more mistakes.
Speaker 1: I mean you want to if you want evidence by
Speaker 1: the way of the filter being totally and completely gone,
Speaker 1: just look go back and look at that performance at
Speaker 1: the National Prayer Breakfast where he was just awful and attacking,
Speaker 1: just attacking Democrats, saying democrats aren't can't be religious people.
Speaker 1: It was just it couldn't have been more American and
Speaker 1: certainly more anti First Amendment than what he did. But
Speaker 1: I do think it's important to note how much he
Speaker 1: has put his party in jeopardy just in these first
Speaker 1: six weeks of this calendar year. Right, the year began
Speaker 1: with the Madua extradition, which looked like it was going
Speaker 1: to be a good news story for him. Right, it
Speaker 1: was an impressive military operation. They extracted Madureau out and
Speaker 1: it seemed as if they made it seem relatively easy,
Speaker 1: and as a military operation, it was relatively easy. Now
Speaker 1: he is now botching the aftermath, right, he is not
Speaker 1: interested in standing up democracy. He has rejected the democratic
Speaker 1: elected leaders in Venezuela and not endorsed them. He went
Speaker 1: ahead and accepted that peace prize from MS Machado, which
Speaker 1: is still one of the most It's not surprising, but
Speaker 1: still seems so brazen and I can't believe he did it.
Speaker 1: But I say this because beginning with then, and if
Speaker 1: you think about it, there hasn't been a week that
Speaker 1: hasn't gone by, if not more, where he has said
Speaker 1: or done something that has put Republicans on the defensive.
Speaker 1: It's one thing to see, right the left get upset
Speaker 1: and the media and you can say, okay, this is
Speaker 1: partisan back and forth. But the distinction I want to
Speaker 1: make here is, like what we saw with the Obama
Speaker 1: racist me the Obviously there was plenty of outrage from
Speaker 1: people on the left and in the center, but to
Speaker 1: see elected Republicans express public outrage and the type of
Speaker 1: Republicans that did these weren't the liberal Republicans that always
Speaker 1: criticized Trump, right, like you're Lisa Murkowski's perhaps you're Don
Speaker 1: Bacons and folks like that. It was no or Tom
Speaker 1: Tillis who has become more comfortable criticizing Trump of late.
Speaker 1: It was Tim Scott, right, it was Roger Wicker. It
Speaker 1: was Pete Ricketts, who, by the way, in an increasingly
Speaker 1: more competitive US Senate race, Tim Scott, head of the NRSC,
Speaker 1: who just delivered some dire warnings to his Senate Republican
Speaker 1: conference that hey, Trump's approval ratings are a huge problem,
Speaker 1: and the Senate is really in play. And oh, by
Speaker 1: the way, it may not matter who they nominate in Texas,
Speaker 1: it's going to be a competitive race and a money suck.
Speaker 1: So look in each individual case. And by the way,
Speaker 1: Roger Wicker, I think is just speaking out because he's
Speaker 1: got an extraordinarily large African American constituency in Mississippi. But
Speaker 1: if you wanted to put it in pure political terms,
Speaker 1: there's also a potentially competitive US Senate seat there. It's
Speaker 1: not his seat, it's Sydney hind Smith, the other Senate
Speaker 1: seat there. So you could say the three of them
Speaker 1: all have their own political motivations to speak out and
Speaker 1: not wanting to be seen as silent co conspirators to
Speaker 1: Trump's racism. But that's just the latest. Right, last week,
Speaker 1: did I lead my what did I lead the show
Speaker 1: with the corruption from the corruption story from the Wall
Speaker 1: Street Journal that had a the UAE essentially as a
Speaker 1: government invest in the National Security Advisor, the UAE invest
Speaker 1: in Trump's company for Trump's kids, company's crypto company four
Speaker 1: days before the inauguration, and of course it leads to
Speaker 1: a foreign policy change. It is at least half a
Speaker 1: billion dollars in investment, one hundred and thirty million dollars
Speaker 1: in direct cash to the Trump's literally just cash. And
Speaker 1: as Andrew McCarthy, this conservative legal analyst that writes for
Speaker 1: The National Review, said, you know who was extraordinarily critical
Speaker 1: of sort of the mixing the bidens did of the professional,
Speaker 1: the personal, the political, and the family with Hunter Biden
Speaker 1: and Joe Biden. He said this, this is literally exponentially worse,
Speaker 1: uh and at a at another level of corrupt. So
Speaker 1: if you were outraged by the corruption of of of
Speaker 1: Joe Biden and thought that it may have reached in
Speaker 1: the level of impeachment, what Andrew McCarthy is arguing, and
Speaker 1: again conservatively right, This is the conservative National review legal
Speaker 1: ailis this he said, is literally he said, add a
Speaker 1: couple of zeros of worse to this. Okay, not one zero,
Speaker 1: a couple of zeros when it comes to this, because
Speaker 1: the actual financial corruption is unbelievable, and the direct policy
Speaker 1: changes that came from you know, following the actual transactions,
Speaker 1: you know, you didn't quite see it as crystal clear
Speaker 1: with the purchase of the Hunter Biden paintings and all
Speaker 1: of that. It was a little less directly related to
Speaker 1: actual policy changes with Trump. Right, there's no there's no subtlety.
Speaker 1: H And that was another point that McCarthy made. That's
Speaker 1: just that was last week, right in the week before
Speaker 1: we had this second killing of an American citizen by
Speaker 1: ICE agents in Minneapolis, right two different weekends, essentially due
Speaker 1: to that, where again Republicans were criticizing the policy and
Speaker 1: feeling uncomfortable on this Abu Dhabi investment. Many Republicans aren't
Speaker 1: saying a word, but you now have Republican legal analysts
Speaker 1: who can't look away and have to realize that, hey, this,
Speaker 1: if you thought Biden, what the Bidens did between Hunter
Speaker 1: Biden Joe Biden was corrupt, then what the Trumps are
Speaker 1: doing is historic in its level of corruption. There's the
Speaker 1: bizarre raid of Fulton County and the votes. There's the
Speaker 1: talk about federalizing elections, which the most anti small sea
Speaker 1: conservative thing you could come up with. The thing is
Speaker 1: all of this. If I brought up Greenland and the
Speaker 1: controversy that sort of Royal Davos, and essentially it's arguably
Speaker 1: it is Greenland that has helped you unite Europe against
Speaker 1: the United States, which of course triggered Canada to go
Speaker 1: do a trade deal with China that we had been
Speaker 1: hoping that they wouldn't do when it came to our
Speaker 1: concerns about sovereignty and security when it involves China. So again,
Speaker 1: everything I've just discussed has all taken place since January third.
Speaker 1: We are at this is February ninth, folks, and I
Speaker 1: say a week hasn't gone by. It seems like every
Speaker 1: there's at least two major incidents a week where Trump
Speaker 1: either says something or does something that's putting Republicans on
Speaker 1: the defensive, that is urging Republicans to have to speak out.
Speaker 1: This is a growing electoral disaster, and I don't think
Speaker 1: folks fully appreciate what's coming. This episode of the Chuck
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Speaker 1: So that brings me to what I think is the
Speaker 1: most underreported story from last week. Obviously the Obama racist beme.
Speaker 1: We have the Abu Dhabi story. You have the fear
Speaker 1: of federalizing elections. Those arguably those three stories all got
Speaker 1: more attention last week than the milestone that was reached
Speaker 1: week when we got our fiftieth and fifty first incumbent
Speaker 1: member of Congress deciding not to run for reelection in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty six. This marks now we are inching ever
Speaker 1: closer to the highest ever open seat total in a
Speaker 1: midterm year basically since World War Two. Okay, in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: there were fifty five members of Congress who chose not
Speaker 1: to return. Either they didn't seek reelection or they decided
Speaker 1: to go seek higher office, but they did not seek reelection.
Speaker 1: We are sitting now at fifty one. There's still most
Speaker 1: of the filing deadlines have not yet passed. We haven't
Speaker 1: had the California filing deadline pass, and we know there's
Speaker 1: going to be a handful of Republicans likely that walk
Speaker 1: away because of the remap. We have the Virginia remap
Speaker 1: that's likely to happen, that's going to lead to some retirements.
Speaker 1: We've got the Florida remap that's likely to lead to
Speaker 1: some retirement. So we are well on our way. The
Speaker 1: all time record, by the way, is sixty five open
Speaker 1: seats going into an election year, and that was back
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety two. That was a confluence of circumstances.
Speaker 1: It was a reapportionment year, so you had your typical
Speaker 1: you had that, but it was the first time that
Speaker 1: the Justice Department insisted on majority minority districts in certain
Speaker 1: Southern states, which even led to a more upheaval in
Speaker 1: how the maps were drawn all over the country, but
Speaker 1: particularly in the South. And you also that was the
Speaker 1: if you did not if you chose to retire that year.
Speaker 1: There was one other loophole which encouraged a lot of
Speaker 1: incumbents to leave office at nineteen ninety two and not
Speaker 1: seek reelection. If you left in nineteen ninety two, you
Speaker 1: got to keep whatever leftover campaign money you had, and
Speaker 1: you got to keep it and make it your money.
Speaker 1: You could turn it into an ioa or investment fund literally.
Speaker 1: But if you chose to stay, you no longer it
Speaker 1: was no longer legal for you to make campaign money
Speaker 1: your own money. That's right, folks. It used to be
Speaker 1: members of Congress could take their campaign treasury and when
Speaker 1: they were done running, they could pocket whatever was left.
Speaker 1: That was perfectly legal. Now if you pocket it, at
Speaker 1: least you have to come up with dummy corporations and
Speaker 1: charge your campaign account invented items for reimbursement in order
Speaker 1: to try to get that money, but before you could
Speaker 1: just pocket it. So that's why ninety two is sort
Speaker 1: of an outlier. But the real important story is for
Speaker 1: a mid term cycle. And I've gone back and studied
Speaker 1: this since nineteen fifty four at fifty one open seats.
Speaker 1: Right now, we are only four away from the modern
Speaker 1: record of fifty five, which was twenty eighteen, which led
Speaker 1: to a forty seat pickup for the out party. We're
Speaker 1: going to pass that. The question is how close to
Speaker 1: sixty five will we get? So how did we get there? All? Right?
Speaker 1: The latest two names, right, it didn't make what didn't
Speaker 1: make huge news? You didn't see it on any cable news.
Speaker 1: Chiron was Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, Mark Emmedi of Nevada.
Speaker 1: Both Republicans and Republican solid Republican seats. They're unlikely to
Speaker 1: see de You know, they were going to likely win
Speaker 1: reelection had they chosen to run. But what's interesting about
Speaker 1: both of them, and it's part of a larger trend
Speaker 1: I want to get into. Both were elected before Donald
Speaker 1: Trump took office, and both fit a growing category of
Speaker 1: Republican retirees that I call the exhaustion caucus. These are
Speaker 1: members who are no longer looking for a promotion in politics,
Speaker 1: right running for governor, running for Senate, running for some
Speaker 1: over the office. They're just looking for an exit, right.
Speaker 1: Ludermoak was elected in twenty fourteen and started serving in
Speaker 1: January twenty fifteen. In fact, in his statement announcing his retirement,
Speaker 1: he leaned into the citizen legislator idea. Representing people in Congress,
Speaker 1: he said is a service, not a career, and he
Speaker 1: talked about focusing on family, being a husband and a grandfather.
Speaker 1: He didn't come up and just try to light the
Speaker 1: place on fire. Amedi has represented that second district in Nevada.
Speaker 1: He won a twenty eleven special election. He's the lone
Speaker 1: Republican in the Nevada delegation. And he framed his decision
Speaker 1: as passing the torch after roughly fifteen years in Washington,
Speaker 1: and he said it's time he announced early because they
Speaker 1: have a later filing deadline. Want to give others time
Speaker 1: to step up. And again, this is the one congressional
Speaker 1: seat that represents basically everything in Nevada that is in
Speaker 1: the Las Vegas media market. Essentially. Now, look, they don't
Speaker 1: seem like guys that are plotting a comeback. They're just done.
Speaker 1: And I think that distinction matters, because the most revealing
Speaker 1: thing to think about in these retirements is that there's
Speaker 1: clearly two different forces operating here at once, particularly when
Speaker 1: it comes to motivating what certain Republicans try to degree do.
Speaker 1: Because you have now we're up to I believe, twenty
Speaker 1: nine Republicans who have announced that they're not seeking reelection,
Speaker 1: About half are running for another office, and about half
Speaker 1: are just walking away. Right that group that's walking away,
Speaker 1: they're tired, tired of the grind, tired of the incentives.
Speaker 1: A lot of them don't like the performative, the way
Speaker 1: political theater now is the dominant force of American politics
Speaker 1: that you don't get any credit for doing legislating. Of course,
Speaker 1: the other group is leaving because you know, they just
Speaker 1: always had viewed the House as a stepping stone, and
Speaker 1: this is going to be a bad year to be
Speaker 1: an incumbent Republican, so you might as well go up
Speaker 1: and out because maybe you can set yourself up for
Speaker 1: another office two or four years down the road. Now,
Speaker 1: it's going to create a massive experience gap at some point,
Speaker 1: right we are seeing a massive churn, and so there's
Speaker 1: going to be a lot of institutional memories that go
Speaker 1: away because the longtime members are the committee chairs that
Speaker 1: are leaving the institutional memory types when they walk out
Speaker 1: the door. You don't just lose votes, you lose people
Speaker 1: who know how to legislate, how to negotiate, frankly, how
Speaker 1: to work across the aisle, even in this dysfunctional atmosphere.
Speaker 1: And what it will mean is we're going to have
Speaker 1: a House it's likely to be more political, more partisan,
Speaker 1: more junior, more ambitious, more online, which means less functional.
Speaker 1: So it's you know, we'll wait to see what this
Speaker 1: Congress looks like in twenty twenty seven, but that's a
Speaker 1: likely problem. So fifty one, Why does fifty one open
Speaker 1: seats matter beyond being just a big number? And why
Speaker 1: am I now essentially saying, hey, you can call it now.
Speaker 1: The Democrats have one, They're gonna win the House. It
Speaker 1: would take an historical set of events that we have
Speaker 1: no idea what they would look like for this not
Speaker 1: to be the case. Because open seats always behave like
Speaker 1: a political accelerant. Right when a seat is open, the
Speaker 1: incumbent advantage disappears. National environment matters, more, money matters more,
Speaker 1: Candidate quality matters more. Historically, when open seats pile up early,
Speaker 1: it tends to mean one of two things. Either the
Speaker 1: majority party is bracing for impact or the members closest
Speaker 1: to the ground are seeing something coming that everyone else
Speaker 1: is still denying. And the other tell, of course, is
Speaker 1: that it's February. February. Retirements are the early warning system.
Speaker 1: If you're already at fifty one now, it suggests there's
Speaker 1: a lot of quiet quitting still sitting on people's desks.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about records, because this is where people
Speaker 1: can get sloppy. As I said, the modern mid mid
Speaker 1: term era benchmark, and then there's the all time benchmark.
Speaker 1: The modern benchmarks midterms since nineteen fifty four, the cycles
Speaker 1: with the huge retirement waves in the television era nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety four, twenty ten, twenty eighteen. Those are my modern
Speaker 1: reference points. And when retirement numbers start approaching that neighborhood
Speaker 1: forty plus, history usually points in one direction, trouble for
Speaker 1: the party in power, right, And if you extend the
Speaker 1: lens beyond the midterms, you have to use nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 1: Is that modern is that modern high of retirement, sixty
Speaker 1: five House members choosing not to run again. And as
Speaker 1: I told you, there was a variety of reasons why
Speaker 1: that created such a massive shake up. It was still
Speaker 1: to this day over there, I think, where there was
Speaker 1: one hundred and ten new members of Congress, and it
Speaker 1: also led to then seventy three more new members of
Speaker 1: Congress the following cycle in a four year cycle really
Speaker 1: basically cycled out. Anybody that was left from the fifties
Speaker 1: and sixties in Congress was sort of really totally cycled
Speaker 1: out by nineteen ninety four. So now I want to
Speaker 1: be mindful of the fact that nothing is statistically sound
Speaker 1: here that I'm gonna say, right, when you only have
Speaker 1: when you only have like fifteen incidentss to use, right,
Speaker 1: you can't say this is statistically sound. But I do
Speaker 1: think the patterns matter here a lot. So in the
Speaker 1: spirit of that argument, I'm gonna frame it this way.
Speaker 1: Once you see the number of open seats get over twenty,
Speaker 1: just twenty, it becomes extremely difficult for the majority party
Speaker 1: to hold the line because open seats are the proxy
Speaker 1: for vulnerability and opportunity. Well, guess what we're now over
Speaker 1: fifty with essentially too with essentially about sixty percent of
Speaker 1: them being Republican, it's about two one. Here is where
Speaker 1: we're sitting at now. Open seats aren't a cause for
Speaker 1: the wave, but they're the early warning sign that the
Speaker 1: ground is shifting and that you have some longtime incumbents
Speaker 1: reading tea leaves deciding they'd rather leave on their own
Speaker 1: terms than get swept out and humiliated. And then there's
Speaker 1: always one other piece to the puzzle. Presidential approval. Open
Speaker 1: seats are the engine. Presidential approval rating is the fuel.
Speaker 1: The president is popular, the party can sometimes blunt losses
Speaker 1: the president is unpopular, especially if they're just sitting below
Speaker 1: fifty percent approval, and Donald Trump hasn't seen forty five.
Speaker 1: It seems like in four months, let alone fifty. Midterms
Speaker 1: usually then become nationalized and become a national referendum. So
Speaker 1: you have a president's approval ratings sitting in the low forties,
Speaker 1: which look a lot like Bush going into six, Obama
Speaker 1: going into fourteen and ten, frankly, and Bill Clinton going
Speaker 1: in to nineteen ninety four. So, putting all this together,
Speaker 1: here's why this story is in face. It's accelerating we've
Speaker 1: entered the most volatile period for retirements, late winter to
Speaker 1: spring wind decision window. Members are looking at fundraising, the map,
Speaker 1: the mood, their own lives, and of course all these
Speaker 1: redistricting threats as well, and they're all deciding whether it's
Speaker 1: worth it. Do they want to get to know a
Speaker 1: new constituency for a cycle that may not go very well.
Speaker 1: I think we know the answer to that. And if
Speaker 1: you want to know where the next tranch of names
Speaker 1: is likely to come from on the retirement watch list,
Speaker 1: there's a couple of states where maps are in motion,
Speaker 1: Florida and Virginia. Right DeSantis has a special session in
Speaker 1: April where he wants to focus on redrawing the map,
Speaker 1: try to pick up four or five seats of more
Speaker 1: seats that are more Republican, seeing if he can somehow
Speaker 1: squeeze more Republican districts out of that map. I'm skeptical,
Speaker 1: but they think they can get a couple, especially if
Speaker 1: the Voting Rights Act essentially gets swept away by the
Speaker 1: Supreme Courts. But when you're shaking up that map, it's
Speaker 1: likely to lead to retirements. We hadn't thought about even
Speaker 1: some incumbents. If it creates an incumbent incumbent fight stuff
Speaker 1: like that. Then, of course Virginia where Democrats are pushing
Speaker 1: for a mechanism to enable new maps, right, there's going
Speaker 1: to be a special constitutional amendment election in order to
Speaker 1: get permission. And if they do that, they may eliminate
Speaker 1: four Republican incumbents and most of them likely won't try
Speaker 1: to seek re elections. So we're sitting at fifty one
Speaker 1: right now. The likelihood that this grows to over fifty five,
Speaker 1: which was the number that was hit in eighteen when
Speaker 1: Democrats then the out party, won over forty seats, then
Speaker 1: you see where this is going, right, We already see
Speaker 1: the Houses already showing signs of high volatility. Majority party
Speaker 1: is bleeding its incumbency advantage. And oh, by the way,
Speaker 1: what happened over the weekend? Two more special elections we're
Speaker 1: in very red And yes they're state legislative elections. Yes
Speaker 1: they're special elections happening on a weekend, And yes, the
Speaker 1: Democrats have more voters who pay more attention to these
Speaker 1: special elections and Republicans do. Okay, Well, that means Democrats
Speaker 1: are pay attention. It means Democrats are more fired up
Speaker 1: and you know, we're seeing another weekend of over performance
Speaker 1: by Democrats in legislative districts that Trump carried by double digits.
Speaker 1: And it seems like another you know, this is like
Speaker 1: you know, another plane land safely at national right. It's
Speaker 1: happening with such frequency it's hard to call it news.
Speaker 1: It's almost like that continuation. So you all, this is happening.
Speaker 1: You've got open seats hitting critical territory. And like I said,
Speaker 1: we've got I looked it up. There's another and this
Speaker 1: is this is intriguing here, there's another one, two, three, four, five, six,
Speaker 1: seventy eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen,
Speaker 1: seventy eighteen, nineteen, twenty twenty one to two, twenty three,
Speaker 1: twenty four to twenty five, twenty six, twight seven. Okay,
Speaker 1: there's another twenty seven Republican incumbents sitting in districts where
Speaker 1: Donald Trump received fifty nine percent or less into twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four presidential vote. And I've put the market fifty
Speaker 1: nine percent I think now given the over performance, given
Speaker 1: Trump's approval ratings, and frankly is just terrible leadership right
Speaker 1: now of the party on messaging anybody sitting in a
Speaker 1: fifty nine percent Trump district or less should be scared nestless. Okay,
Speaker 1: they should be feeling it a lot. Well, there's these
Speaker 1: Republicans I was just telling you about. There's a big
Speaker 1: chunk of California Republicans. That filing deadline is March six.
Speaker 1: Some Georgia Republicans sit in there. Do any more throat
Speaker 1: decide to do that. Wisconsin's filing deadline, Michigan's filing deadline,
Speaker 1: there's a New York filing deadline in May, which you
Speaker 1: could see it change a little bit. So this is
Speaker 1: a list that's likely to grow. And again I go
Speaker 1: back every single here. You could just look at this.
Speaker 1: I put together these different midterm charts. So twenty eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty five open seats the out party, the Democrats, gained
Speaker 1: forty seats, flip control. Right. In twenty twenty two, there
Speaker 1: were forty nine open seats, Republicans nine seats, and they
Speaker 1: flipped control. Nineteen ninety four, there were forty eight open seats,
Speaker 1: Republicans netted fifty two overall and flipped control. Twenty ten,
Speaker 1: thirty eight open seats, Republicans gained sixty three flipped control.
Speaker 1: Two thousand and six, thirty one open seats, Democrats gained
Speaker 1: thirty one seats and flipped control. Nineteen fifty eight, there
Speaker 1: were twenty eight open seats, Democrats gained forty eight. They
Speaker 1: already held control, they were already in charge, but they
Speaker 1: netted another forty eight. Nineteen eighty two, a similar situation.
Speaker 1: There were twenty four open seats, So I just gave
Speaker 1: you in the midterms in order there right, every single one,
Speaker 1: twenty four and above, going back to nineteen fifty four
Speaker 1: to midterms, and the out party always gained seats, and
Speaker 1: many times it flipped. Most of the time it flipped
Speaker 1: control of the House. So the point is, at this
Speaker 1: point in time, it is hard to come up with
Speaker 1: a scenario where Republicans are going to hold the House.
Speaker 1: Every historical marker says otherwise. The only two times where
Speaker 1: the party in power was able to do well is
Speaker 1: when the two when presidential approval was over sixty percent
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton in nineteen ninety eight and George W. Bush
Speaker 1: in two thousand and two. That was post nine to eleven.
Speaker 1: Nineteen ninety eight was the Monica backlash, where Clinton's personal
Speaker 1: rating was in the toilet, but his professional rating was
Speaker 1: sky high. It was this weird. The voter was almost
Speaker 1: like stubborn about it. No, we don't like Clinton, and
Speaker 1: yes we love the job he's doing. It was like
Speaker 1: we were It was this fascinating split in the way
Speaker 1: polling was registering. No, people were looking for a way
Speaker 1: to express personal disgust at what Trump, at what Clinton did,
Speaker 1: but they didn't. But they wanted to make it clear
Speaker 1: they didn't want him thrown out of office over it. Right,
Speaker 1: And so you would see this dichotomy in the where
Speaker 1: his favorable rating, his personal favorable rating was upside down,
Speaker 1: but his professional rating was through the roof. The point
Speaker 1: is those are the two exceptions. Now ask yourself, what's
Speaker 1: Donald Trump going to do between now and November to
Speaker 1: somehow get a sixty percent joberating? Is it improbable? Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm never gonna say anything's impossible in the Trump earrow,
Speaker 1: that's for sure. But the point is massive unexpected outside
Speaker 1: events like you know, aliens landing, you know in the Arctic,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, whatever it is, like, it is
Speaker 1: stuff you cannot you cannot say is a feasible likely
Speaker 1: event to happen? Right? So, and of course what's really
Speaker 1: happening right now with Donald Trump, is he is epitomizing
Speaker 1: the saying that I love to quote from Haley Barber,
Speaker 1: the long time Republican operative and governor of Mississippi, who'd
Speaker 1: love to and I think it's somebody else's expression first.
Speaker 1: But good gets better and bad gets worse. And as
Speaker 1: we're seeing with Donald Trump, that is getting worse every week. Right.
Speaker 1: It feels like every week he throws another log on
Speaker 1: the let me piss off more than half the country bonfire.
Speaker 1: And that's why you're seeing more and more Republicans figure
Speaker 1: out a way to push back. Some say it publicly,
Speaker 1: some choose not to file for reelection, and others may
Speaker 1: be contemplating doing either of those things. Because if they
Speaker 1: want to speak out but they think it'll backfire, then
Speaker 1: my guess is they walk away if they assess their
Speaker 1: political situation and decide maybe they can survive by going
Speaker 1: after Trump. Maybe he's becoming more unpopular. Maybe the Epstein
Speaker 1: files have left to Mark by the way, I didn't
Speaker 1: even get to the Epstein files. Right, That's like the
Speaker 1: other none of that has gotten any better for him either.
Speaker 1: It may be sullying the Clintons Bill Clinton a little bit.
Speaker 1: By the way, I still don't I don't under you know,
Speaker 1: other than Republicans wanting to attach Hillary Clinton to anything
Speaker 1: that they can attach her to. I do not understand
Speaker 1: why she's being asked to testify on anything Epstein. Right.
Speaker 1: There's nothing in the files in any case she was
Speaker 1: ever on the planes, ever did anything, et cetera. I
Speaker 1: guess they'll say, well, she must have had some played
Speaker 1: some part in the Clinton Foundation and the relationship with
Speaker 1: Gallaine Maxwell, even that seems beyond tenuous at best. She
Speaker 1: was a sitting senator at the time, So I don't
Speaker 1: get that one. I don't see Melinda Gates being called
Speaker 1: up to find out what she knew about about Bill
Speaker 1: Gates's relationships with Jeffrey Epstein, Right, We don't see any
Speaker 1: of that. So that seems to be a head scratcher
Speaker 1: on that one. And we'll see if that that's one
Speaker 1: of those that I would say to mister comer, be
Speaker 1: careful what you ask for, Be careful of what you're
Speaker 1: doing there. You want to talk about something that's more
Speaker 1: likely to blow up in your face than somehow create
Speaker 1: political deflection for Trump. It's playing games like this with
Speaker 1: trying to We're trying to target Hillary Clinton in particular.
Speaker 1: Just you know, I know you think she's so unpopular,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter what you do. I'd watch it. I
Speaker 1: think there's that's something I would be extraordinarily careful with.
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Speaker 1: the things that I wouldn't mind hearing from you the viewers.
Speaker 1: We love suggest booking suggestions. We get plenty of booking
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Speaker 1: candidates or individuals or historians you'd like to hear on
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Speaker 1: But please use that address if you've got any other
Speaker 1: folks you'd like to see as My goal is to
Speaker 1: try to between now and the filing deadline for the
Speaker 1: Iowa Caucuses if they are indeed first in the nation
Speaker 1: come January of twenty twenty seven, I hope everybody of
Speaker 1: consequence that's running for president that I get to spend
Speaker 1: thirty to forty five minutes here with us. So with that,
Speaker 1: one quick addendum before I get to the Toddcast time
Speaker 1: Machine event for this week, and that is it's like
Speaker 1: a little we had a little coda to the Washington
Speaker 1: post event. Will Lewis the publisher in name only, I
Speaker 1: guess because he was nowhere to be found at the
Speaker 1: announcement of the layoffs. He was nowhere to be found
Speaker 1: in frankly the last nine months of the newsroom itself.
Speaker 1: A photo showed up of him at the Super Bowl
Speaker 1: at one of the pre parties on the red carpet
Speaker 1: for NFL honors. And let's say that suddenly an email
Speaker 1: resignation statement showed up and a lot of inboxes come Saturday.
Speaker 1: I believe it was Saturday morning that a very abrupt
Speaker 1: he thanked Jeff Bezos and walked away, had nothing to
Speaker 1: say about the journalists that he oversaw for a couple
Speaker 1: of years. So will lewis cementing his place as the
Speaker 1: single worst publisher in the history of the Washington Post.
Speaker 1: So congratulations mister Lewis on that. And probably you know,
Speaker 1: unhire should be seen in journalism circles. It's completely unhirable,
Speaker 1: just completely unhirable to run. To run an enterprise. He might,
Speaker 1: he might have some smart things to say about trend
Speaker 1: lines and what's happening, but a manager of people and
Speaker 1: a leader of people, he is not. Uh, And I
Speaker 1: think that that is obvious. Look, it's it's it is.
Speaker 1: It's really weird to be sort of, you know, our
Speaker 1: fourth day five without essentially without the Washington Post, because
Speaker 1: I know, yes, there's national reporter still doing good work,
Speaker 1: there's a congressional team that's still doing good work, and
Speaker 1: I don't want to I don't want to shit on them, Okay,
Speaker 1: but you know, the Washington Post is going to slowly,
Speaker 1: essentially fade into more is relevant in Washington as Politico,
Speaker 1: which is there's nothing wrong professional professionally, political punch bowl
Speaker 1: relevant professionally, the Washington Post will be relatant as a
Speaker 1: member and a leader of the of the DMV in
Speaker 1: this community, it's over. That's what's dead, and the idea
Speaker 1: that they don't care about local sports, which is just
Speaker 1: such an important part of the community. So it's in
Speaker 1: that vein that I have a you know, sometimes sometimes
Speaker 1: I have interesting business ideas that I don't share with
Speaker 1: you because I'm working on them myself. And then sometimes
Speaker 1: there are things that are above my pay grade, you know,
Speaker 1: and instead feel like something a challenge that should be
Speaker 1: issued publicly. So here's my public challenge to the three
Speaker 1: major sports owners of the Washington, DC market, Mark Lerner,
Speaker 1: who runs the Nationals, Ted Leons's owner of both the
Speaker 1: Caps and the Wizards, and Josh Harris, owner of the
Speaker 1: Washington Commanders. You three have an enormous interest in having
Speaker 1: a local and regional news organization that is trusted, that
Speaker 1: is frankly a bit of a cheerleader to the local
Speaker 1: sports teams, even if they are will every once in
Speaker 1: a while attack all of you for doing crappy things
Speaker 1: as owners every once in a while because we fans
Speaker 1: might get upset at you because we want to spend
Speaker 1: your money in ways that you don't want to spend
Speaker 1: your money. My tongue is I'm going hard in cheek
Speaker 1: here a little bit, but you get my point. But
Speaker 1: you you know, if your teams don't get attention and
Speaker 1: people don't know what you're up to, then maybe you
Speaker 1: have a harder time selling season tickets and maybe have
Speaker 1: a harder time selling single game tickets, maybe have a
Speaker 1: harder time letting people know that Taylor Swift's coming to
Speaker 1: the new RFK or Bad Bunny's coming to the Capitol
Speaker 1: One Arena. And I say this because both Josh Harris
Speaker 1: and Ted Leones is in particular. I don't know the
Speaker 1: history of Mark Learner's investments, but both have invested in
Speaker 1: media organizations in the past. Josh Harris has been a
Speaker 1: funder and has made money off of investments on new
Speaker 1: startups and the By the way, I want to throw
Speaker 1: my uh Mark iin into this conversation. He's another sort
Speaker 1: of major player in the Washington sports market. He's one
Speaker 1: of the I think minority owners and investors and the
Speaker 1: commanders owns. I think he's very involved in the in
Speaker 1: the professional tennis league that's here, and I believe in
Speaker 1: some of the soccer franchise as well. So and he's
Speaker 1: also very much a what I'd say is a member
Speaker 1: of the Washington community and in some ways of more
Speaker 1: vocal than some of his other fellow sports investors there.
Speaker 1: So I should have included Mark iin into this, but
Speaker 1: I'm saying it publicly. You guys know how to get
Speaker 1: a hold of me, So I'm happy to help out
Speaker 1: in any way possible. But I think it's your your
Speaker 1: best interests to come help fund. Whether it's d MV today,
Speaker 1: maybe it's a sports vertical at first, sports local culture.
Speaker 1: The point is, you guys have the resources to do this.
Speaker 1: Don't hire Will Lewis to do it. That would be
Speaker 1: my number one piece of advice. But beyond that, I
Speaker 1: hope you have an open door for whether it's myself,
Speaker 1: whether it's my friend Kara Swisher. And speaking of Kara Swisher,
Speaker 1: she's my guest this week on my Newsphere program Sunday
Speaker 1: Night with Chuck Todd. And I'll just put it this way.
Speaker 1: If you enjoy hearing sentences that include Jeff Bezos in
Speaker 1: the F word, you're gonna love this Kara Swisher interview.
Speaker 1: She doesn't hold anything back. She's got a lot of
Speaker 1: strong opinions, and she knows these people better than any
Speaker 1: other person. And by the way, if you want to
Speaker 1: know for care, if it's personal, Yes, it is her
Speaker 1: first job, mailroom inside the Washington Post, so it's personal
Speaker 1: for her. But she has a lot of smart ideas here.
Speaker 1: And I think we and it's not just about the
Speaker 1: Washington Post that we spent We talk about the tech
Speaker 1: titans in general and whether there are any good guys
Speaker 1: in Silicon Valley. Here's the good news. She thinks there's
Speaker 1: at least one good guy there. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: tell you is here. Go check it out on newsphere.
Speaker 1: So just wanted to do that little coda on the
Speaker 1: Washington Post. Given how much time I spent on it
Speaker 1: last week, it's still pretty painful to realize that what
Speaker 1: just happened to the Washington Post, and then to see
Speaker 1: the will Lewis thing. I mean, it was deserved, right.
Speaker 1: Whether Bezos fired him out of just a pr pr necessity,
Speaker 1: it was necessary. It gives Matt Murray a chance at
Speaker 1: maybe rallying the remaining troops there. And look, I'll say
Speaker 1: what I said last week, I feel for him on this,
Speaker 1: and you know, some of you look, he made his
Speaker 1: own bed, so you know, yes, but he's there to
Speaker 1: execute strategy. And the fact that the owner and the
Speaker 1: publisher didn't have the guts to be the face of
Speaker 1: this tells you who they are, tells you a lot
Speaker 1: about their character. And that's what I think has been
Speaker 1: the most damning thing about all of this. All Right,
Speaker 1: let's go back into time. It's time machine time. So
Speaker 1: where are we going in history? I kind of want
Speaker 1: sound effects, right, we'll get there. So where are we going?
Speaker 1: We're going to go to February eleventh, nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: It's the day the Iranian monarchy collapsed. The Shaw's government fell,
Speaker 1: military declared neutrality in Iran, and a revolution that had
Speaker 1: been building for more than a century finally broke through.
Speaker 1: What followed was the creation of the Islamic Republic and
Speaker 1: authoritarian theocracy, one of the most consequential ruptures in US
Speaker 1: foreign policy, still shaping the Middle East today, global energy markets,
Speaker 1: and American politics. And as questions once again swirl about
Speaker 1: the future of Iran's regime, it's worth remembering something clearly
Speaker 1: at the outset as we go into this time machine.
Speaker 1: The Iranian Revolution did not come out of nowhere, and
Speaker 1: America was not a bystander in it all right. So
Speaker 1: to understand how we got to February nineteen seventy nine
Speaker 1: and the Ayatola Khamane becoming essentially a dictator of Iran,
Speaker 1: we have to go back a lot further. Iran didn't
Speaker 1: suddenly appear in the twentieth century. For thousands of years,
Speaker 1: of course, it was known to the outside world as Persian,
Speaker 1: one of the oldest continuous state traditions on Earth, and
Speaker 1: the monarchy in Persia was not some modern invention either.
Speaker 1: By the time of World War one. Iran had been
Speaker 1: ruled by kings for centuries, most recently under the Kajar dynasty,
Speaker 1: which took power in seventeen ninety four. In fact, even
Speaker 1: the title Sha itself matters here. It's not Islamic. It's
Speaker 1: a Persian word, ancient Persian, and it dates back more
Speaker 1: than twenty five hundred years. The fuller imperior title is Shahanshah,
Speaker 1: which literally means king of kings. So when Iranians overthrew
Speaker 1: the Shaw eighteen seventy nine, they weren't just rejecting a
Speaker 1: modern autocrat, and by the way, that last Shaw was
Speaker 1: an autocrat, I'll get to that. They were rejecting a
Speaker 1: pre Islamic royal tradition that stretched back to the antiquity era.
Speaker 1: This wasn't just political upheaval. It was a civilization break.
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty five, Iran's ruler asked foreign governments to
Speaker 1: stop using Persia and adopt the name Iran instead. It
Speaker 1: was a nationalist gesture meant to assert sovereignty and create
Speaker 1: a modern identity. It wasn't the creation of a new country,
Speaker 1: but it was a demand to be seen on its
Speaker 1: own terms. So we all need that little history lesson
Speaker 1: every now and then, So now we place a rain
Speaker 1: into its regional context and just sort of a little
Speaker 1: bit of the backstory here on Iran. In the early
Speaker 1: twentieth century, during World War One, Persia was officially neutral,
Speaker 1: but neutrality never did protect it as a country. Its
Speaker 1: territory was repeatedly violated by the Russians, the British, and
Speaker 1: at times even the Ottoman forces. Persia was never part
Speaker 1: of the Ottoman Empire. That's an important note. Historically it
Speaker 1: was often the chief rival to the Ottomans, particularly along
Speaker 1: sectarian lines. We had the Sunni Ottoman rule versus the
Speaker 1: Shia Persian identity right Sunni Shia, something that's been there
Speaker 1: from nearly the beginning of Islam. The lesson Iranians absorbed
Speaker 1: from World War One, though, was a harsh one. Neutrality
Speaker 1: does not stop great powers from using your country as
Speaker 1: a chessboard. So at the same time, the Ottoman Empire
Speaker 1: collapsed at the end of the war, and it gave
Speaker 1: birth largely through a European mandate system new states like Iraq, Syria,
Speaker 1: and Lebanon. Right. Iraq, for example, emerged as a British
Speaker 1: backed monarchy in the early nineteen twenties, and it gained
Speaker 1: full independence in nineteen thirty two. So Iran is sitting
Speaker 1: there watching its neighbors be invented by outside powers while
Speaker 1: struggling to preserve its own independence in a world dominated
Speaker 1: by empires. What's interesting is this Iran did not passively
Speaker 1: accept monarchy as destiny. In fact, just the opposite. In
Speaker 1: nineteen oh six, Persia experienced a constitutional revolution. It produced
Speaker 1: a written constitution, a parliament. The majills, I hope I
Speaker 1: get that jealous and I have no doubt, and I
Speaker 1: will mess up some of these pronunciations of some of
Speaker 1: these Persian words. My apologies, but essentially it was a
Speaker 1: parliament and limits on royal authority. This was one of
Speaker 1: the earliest constitutional movements in the Middle East. There's a
Speaker 1: real small d democratic tradition inside of Iran. Iran had
Speaker 1: a They did this decades before many of its neighbors,
Speaker 1: but it was fragile. Iranian politics became defined by a
Speaker 1: persistent tension monarchy, secular reformers, religious authorities, and foreign powers,
Speaker 1: and they were all always pulling around in different direction.
Speaker 1: Tension has never disappeared. It simply evolves in different ways
Speaker 1: over times. And we're seeing it play out at the moment.
Speaker 1: So in the nineteen twenties you had Resa Shah pa Lavi.
Speaker 1: He sees power and eventually crowned himself. Shaw His project
Speaker 1: was modernization, centralizing the state, building infrastructure, weakening the religious authority,
Speaker 1: clerical authority, and enforcing secularism. But it was modernization from above,
Speaker 1: enforced by coercion. Parliamentary democracy was weakened, political pluralism shrank,
Speaker 1: the monarchy reasserted itself as the center of gravity. So
Speaker 1: we can look at it and say, well, great, they
Speaker 1: were modernized, they were westernizing, but they were essentially beating
Speaker 1: people into modernizing. Right. It was not a democratic move
Speaker 1: to modernization, and it meant that Resia sh Shaw's project
Speaker 1: also came across as nationalists. He was attempting to reduce
Speaker 1: British and Russian influence. Of course, that independence would not last.
Speaker 1: The most important Hinge point before in nineteen seventy nine
Speaker 1: comes in the early fifties. By then Iran had another Shaw,
Speaker 1: Riza Shaw's son, Mohammed Riza Pahlavi, and a democratic chosen
Speaker 1: prime minister by the name of Mohammed Mozadek. Well, Mozadek
Speaker 1: the prime minister moved to nationalize Iran's oil industry. At
Speaker 1: the time, it was an attempt to challenge the British
Speaker 1: dominance and over their oil economy and asserting their own sovereignty. Well,
Speaker 1: guess what the Brits panicked called Warfares intensified and in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty three, the United States and the UK back
Speaker 1: the coup that removed the prime minister. So here's what
Speaker 1: happened next. The coup didn't just restore the Shaw, it
Speaker 1: also transformed him from a constitutional monarch into the central
Speaker 1: pillar of the state. And so yes, the United States
Speaker 1: effectively helped rip up a fragile parliamentary democracy in favor
Speaker 1: of a more centralized, more authoritarian and at the time,
Speaker 1: because this was the Cold War, a more pro Western monarchy.
Speaker 1: It was what was in America's national interests that mattered
Speaker 1: more than what was in the small d democracy interests.
Speaker 1: This is an important point to understand. This is why
Speaker 1: a lot of things we did in the fifties and
Speaker 1: sixties in the name of the Cold War and dealing
Speaker 1: with the Soviets created a lot of anti americanism around
Speaker 1: the world. This is one of them. So from Washington's
Speaker 1: perspective at the time, right, Hey, this was all about
Speaker 1: stability and anti communism, pure and symbol From Tehran's perspective
Speaker 1: and the perspective of quite a few individuals, it was
Speaker 1: about lost sovereignty. So from that moment on, the Shah
Speaker 1: in the United States became politically intertwined in the Iranian imagination.
Speaker 1: Opposition to the Shah increasingly meant opposition to America. And
Speaker 1: this is where the long fuze toward nineteen seventy nine
Speaker 1: is let the Shaw modernized rapidly, expanding education, advancing women's rights,
Speaker 1: pouring oil wealth into development. All that's good stuff. But
Speaker 1: the modernization was paired with repression. There was censorship, a
Speaker 1: powerful secret police. They crushed descent, and they were really
Speaker 1: tough on those that were overly religious. And it all
Speaker 1: came with visible American back in Regionally, Orion stood apart
Speaker 1: because while you had Arab states experiencing cups and military
Speaker 1: rule and pan Arab nationalism all over the place, Egypt
Speaker 1: under Nassar Syrian, Iraq under the Baptist regimes, Iran was
Speaker 1: actually the pillar of America's Middle East strategy in the
Speaker 1: Gulf region. That alignment bought power, and it also planted
Speaker 1: some rage. And this is the environment in which a
Speaker 1: man named Ayatola rulej Hala Komene. Yes that Komenee emerges
Speaker 1: as a symbol of the resistance. Here's an important clarification
Speaker 1: in history. Komene did not flee Iran. Comeni was arrested, released,
Speaker 1: and then banished from the country. In the early sixties,
Speaker 1: Comene openly denounced the Shaw's reforms and crucially attacked Iran's
Speaker 1: relationship with the United States, particularly laws that granted US
Speaker 1: personnel legal immunity inside of Iran. Remember this came up
Speaker 1: again during our in the attempt to build a democracy
Speaker 1: in Iraq that giving immunity to outside forces is never
Speaker 1: popular domestically wherever you are. Well. The Shaw had options
Speaker 1: and what to do with Komene. He could imprison him.
Speaker 1: He could have executed him, or he could have silenced
Speaker 1: him another way. Executing him risk turning him into a martyr.
Speaker 1: So the Shaw decided to expel. First it was to Turkey,
Speaker 1: then it was to Iraq, and eventually he'd end up
Speaker 1: in France. Well, exile was a mistake because while exile
Speaker 1: was meant as an attempt to neutralize komene Instead, he
Speaker 1: kind of professionalized his movement and gave him gave him
Speaker 1: more rhetorical power from Paris. In exile, Komeney gained something
Speaker 1: no opposition figure inside Iran could safely have had at
Speaker 1: the time, global media access without fear of arrest. So
Speaker 1: he unifies the opposition, and there was a by the
Speaker 1: way the opposition in Iran was dispersed. Here wasn't just
Speaker 1: the theocrats that were against him, right, So Coomane unifies
Speaker 1: the opposition and he frames it as a resistance not
Speaker 1: just on religious terms, but also moral terms, and he
Speaker 1: positioned clerical rule as authentic national liberation. So on February first,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine, Comeni returns to Tehran to thousands of
Speaker 1: cheering crowds. Ten days later his February eleventh, and the
Speaker 1: monarchy officially collapses. The revolution that toppled the SHAW at
Speaker 1: the moment was broad based. There were secular liberals, there
Speaker 1: were leftists, students, merchants, clerics. But the revolution didn't end
Speaker 1: when the regimes fall. They end when power consolidates, and
Speaker 1: the most organized faction was the clerical one, and they won.
Speaker 1: So what followed was not just a change of rulers,
Speaker 1: but a new governing model. They called it an Islamic republic,
Speaker 1: a theocracy fused with state power, something the region and
Speaker 1: the world actually had never seen before. Now you may
Speaker 1: be wondering when did the hostage crisis begin. So, the
Speaker 1: US embassy hostage crisis actually didn't happen immediately with the
Speaker 1: start of the revolution in February of seventy nine. It
Speaker 1: came nine months later, in November of seventy nine. But
Speaker 1: it flowed directly from everything that came before, memories of
Speaker 1: fifty three, fear of American interference and the revolutionary need
Speaker 1: to define itself against an external enemy, and the United
Speaker 1: States was an easy target because of our history with
Speaker 1: the country, and from that moment on US Iran relations
Speaker 1: froze into hostility. So what lessons should we take away
Speaker 1: from this, Well, we're in the middle of something here
Speaker 1: that we may help foment another revolution in Iran. We
Speaker 1: may be more active on this one, as active as
Speaker 1: we were in nineteen fifty three. Now this time we
Speaker 1: may be on the side of the people. We were
Speaker 1: not on the side of the people in fifty three.
Speaker 1: We were not on the side of the people in
Speaker 1: seventy nine. This time we might be on the side
Speaker 1: of the people. That's the one thing that's different here,
Speaker 1: and maybe that means a different outcome, But it is
Speaker 1: a warning about foreign intervention, right, and modernization without legitimacy,
Speaker 1: and what happens when democracy is sacrificed for stability. And
Speaker 1: in fact, when you hear the story of the Shah
Speaker 1: and the fifties and sixties, I can't help but think
Speaker 1: of NBS in Saudi Arabia. Right, Oh, hey, there's good news,
Speaker 1: he's modernizing, he's given women rights. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: there's still censorship. Right, there's still very little, you know,
Speaker 1: there's still terrible human rights violations, particularly when anybody violates
Speaker 1: the law. So it is there's a lot of lessons
Speaker 1: to take away from this So America. We can't say
Speaker 1: it created the Iranian revolution alone, but it did help
Speaker 1: destroy the alternative that might have prevented it. And that's
Speaker 1: the hardest left in them all. When you weaken a
Speaker 1: democracy to protect your own interests. We actively weakened a
Speaker 1: democracy in nineteen fifty three. You don't eliminate the instability,
Speaker 1: you simply delay it. So as we decide how involved,
Speaker 1: we're going to get and what's happening in Iran. And
Speaker 1: you know, look, I look at you. I think that
Speaker 1: whenever we're on the side a small d democracy, that
Speaker 1: usually ends up at a better place than when we're
Speaker 1: just on the side of helping somebody who's just simply
Speaker 1: on our side in a larger fight against some other
Speaker 1: foreign power. And the Cold War created those types of relationships.
Speaker 1: The fear of China is creating those type transactional relationships.
Speaker 1: But these transactional relationships, and this is right. Donald Trump
Speaker 1: wants to make America. You know, when he talks about
Speaker 1: making America great again, he wants to go back to
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty style kind of imperialistic like foreign policy approach, right,
Speaker 1: and all of that bitness in the ass in Latin America,
Speaker 1: all of this is bitness in the ass in the
Speaker 1: Middle East. Transactional politics without some sort of small the
Speaker 1: democratic moral code is never going to create long term
Speaker 1: stability or security for us here in the United States.
Speaker 1: So with that, there's your time machine. All right, let's
Speaker 1: get to some questions. Ask Chuck, if Trump continues to
Speaker 1: claim you when the twenty twenty election, wouldn't that make
Speaker 1: the potential twenty twenty four run unconstitutional two determinants. I
Speaker 1: love how you're thinking. If you somehow approved he was
Speaker 1: the rightful winner in twenty twenty, wouldn't that undermine the
Speaker 1: legality of a future term and even weaken his legal
Speaker 1: protections side to the presidency just seems like a self
Speaker 1: defeating argument. You know, this reminds me of a of
Speaker 1: a of a rule I used to have I meet
Speaker 1: the press meetings with my staff, when we have these
Speaker 1: daily meetings about the editorial day, I'd say we've banned
Speaker 1: logic in the Trump era. And because what you're making,
Speaker 1: you're taking a news story and applying logic to it,
Speaker 1: and say, well, doesn't this mean this Donald Trump has
Speaker 1: never allowed logic to get in the way of a
Speaker 1: good narrative, right of a good owned the libs mean
Speaker 1: of a good attempt at not having to admit defeat right.
Speaker 1: And so everything you're saying is correct. But that isn't
Speaker 1: what he's up to here, right, We know what he's
Speaker 1: really up to here. This is just continuing to try
Speaker 1: to continuing to try to sort of undermine more legitimacy
Speaker 1: of more institutions, and the more institutions I mean, if
Speaker 1: he is able to fully undermine the entire election system,
Speaker 1: which is what he's attempting to do here with twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: then everything he would do to question the midterms and
Speaker 1: anything like that becomes then natural or normalized because of
Speaker 1: what he's done with twenty twenty. So this is what
Speaker 1: makes what he's doing so dangerous. Here. He's trying to
Speaker 1: sort of legitimize interfering with future elections, right, and he's
Speaker 1: desperate to try to find even you know, even the
Speaker 1: illusion of evidence to reinforce his beliefs about what happened
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. And they look, it's clear they're manufacturing pretext here.
Speaker 1: They have not legitimized a single fact. I mean, you
Speaker 1: go to this about twenty twenty. He's only gone after Georgia.
Speaker 1: By the way, let's I've gone in another place. Let's
Speaker 1: say he magically somehow figures out that he won Georgia,
Speaker 1: he still doesn't have enough electoral votes to prove that
Speaker 1: he won in twenty twenty. There's still other states. He
Speaker 1: hasn't been able to find the votes in Arizona, he
Speaker 1: hasn't been able to find the votes in Nevada. He
Speaker 1: hasn't be able to find the votes in Wisconsin, he
Speaker 1: hasn't been able to find the votes in Michigan, he
Speaker 1: hasn't made to find the votes in Pennsylvania. So but
Speaker 1: again that's logic. This is not about logic, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: he thinks if he can somehow find anything that becomes
Speaker 1: believable behind his delusional followers on this, it allows him
Speaker 1: not to declare any victory about twenty twenty, but then
Speaker 1: he will use that as a way to legitimize likely
Speaker 1: using the government to interfere in the actual elections themselves
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty six, twenty twenty eight. Now I say
Speaker 1: that in that I still don't believe he can effectively
Speaker 1: do that. I think there's enough checks and balances in
Speaker 1: the states. I think it's not going to happen. And
Speaker 1: I think that, you know, I vacillate between being worried
Speaker 1: and laughing at these attempts that he's doing. I think
Speaker 1: he's making just an absolute fool of himself. And more importantly,
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean literally the laughing stock of the
Speaker 1: intelligence community is Tulsa Gabbert, Right, but she has been
Speaker 1: I will say that she must be beyond humiliation which
Speaker 1: means she has her own sort of delusions about all
Speaker 1: of this. But it's it's whenever you apply logic to
Speaker 1: anyone of Trump's arguments, they fall apart completely, which means
Speaker 1: it's never been about logic all right. Next question comes
Speaker 1: from Luke Hey. Thanks for tackling the issue of sports betting.
Speaker 1: I've seen it devastate families, and I refuse to work
Speaker 1: for gambling platforms because of the ethical concerns. My question
Speaker 1: is about professional ethics. It people with integrity keep quitting
Speaker 1: problematic institutions. Do those spaces just get worse? Is it
Speaker 1: better to stay and try to limit the damage from within?
Speaker 1: I'm torn between sticking to my moral line or trying
Speaker 1: to be sand in the gears from the inside. Loops, Well,
Speaker 1: welcome to what a lot of prosecutors, career prosecutors are
Speaker 1: contemplating at the Justice Department, What a lot of career
Speaker 1: form policy folks are thinking about at the State Department.
Speaker 1: What many career military particularly for one, two and three
Speaker 1: star generals, high ranking admirals. You know that this is
Speaker 1: this is this is a huge dilemma, you know, I don't.
Speaker 1: I think everybody's got their own line, So I'm not
Speaker 1: going to tell you what your line should be. I'll
Speaker 1: just tell you what my line is. If I feel
Speaker 1: like I can be effective, not just being sand in
Speaker 1: the gears right and doing you know, feeling like I
Speaker 1: have to sneakily upend things, but I feel like I
Speaker 1: can turn the tide, I can report what needs to
Speaker 1: be reported or whatever it is, then it is worth
Speaker 1: sticking around. If you feel like your position can prevent
Speaker 1: the worst things to happen, and you say to yourself, well, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, I just have to do it for nine
Speaker 1: months until we get new leadership. Right, That's why it
Speaker 1: to me. I would advise somebody at the Justice Department,
Speaker 1: in somebody the state department to stick it out right,
Speaker 1: believe in the democracy. You don't have to believe in
Speaker 1: the administration. You can believe in the democracy that there
Speaker 1: will be you know that bad There are good stewards
Speaker 1: and bad stewards, but there'll be another steward. Because I
Speaker 1: do think on the political side and in the public
Speaker 1: service sector, the more good actors that leave, they will
Speaker 1: only be filled with bad actors and it will only
Speaker 1: get worse than it might be irreparable. Right, So on
Speaker 1: the private sector side. I think it's a harder call, right.
Speaker 1: It's one thing to be stand in the gears to
Speaker 1: another thing. If you're literally working against the business interests
Speaker 1: of the company, and if they're not committing illegal acts,
Speaker 1: then I think it is better to quit on moral
Speaker 1: and ethical grounds, but do so publicly say why you're
Speaker 1: doing it. To do it silently, then it's ineffective. You know,
Speaker 1: speak out, become a whistleblower, right, become the person that
Speaker 1: worked for the tobacco companies to talk about all that
Speaker 1: you know, or the person that worked at Meta and
Speaker 1: saw everything that Facebook was doing to sort of weaponize
Speaker 1: the likes and the algorithms and stuff. You know. But
Speaker 1: I guess that's where I would go. I think it's
Speaker 1: I think if you're in the if you work for government,
Speaker 1: I think you're obligated to stick it out. I think
Speaker 1: if you work in the private sector and you have
Speaker 1: ethical and moral quandary, is I think then it's you know,
Speaker 1: I probably would be on the side of make it.
Speaker 1: It would be easier for me to support you walking
Speaker 1: than not walking, But I wouldn't do it quietly. If
Speaker 1: you want to, if you want to try to effect change,
Speaker 1: you know now if there can if you think you
Speaker 1: know there is a reason to stay is if you
Speaker 1: think they're doing something illegal and you need to gather
Speaker 1: evidence and and and become a whistleblower. That's that's yet
Speaker 1: another motivation to potentially stay if you truly believe something
Speaker 1: illegal is taking place. All right, appreciate the question, Luke,
Speaker 1: and you know there's no easy answers on those things.
Speaker 1: Next question comes from Tyler. Hey, I saw your video
Speaker 1: on the state's Democrats might put in play by twenty
Speaker 1: thirty two. I'm curious why Mississippi wasn't on your list.
Speaker 1: It's clearly it's nearly for percent African American and often
Speaker 1: shows more Blue counties than other Southern states. Couldn't increasing
Speaker 1: registration and turn out among African American voters make it competitive.
Speaker 1: Would love to hear your thoughts. I think I did
Speaker 1: mention that Mississippi's on my next round of lists. I
Speaker 1: think I believe it's in that and as you know,
Speaker 1: I keep talking about the Mississippi as Democrats search for
Speaker 1: more Senate seats to put in play in the twenty
Speaker 1: six cycle that I think Mississippi should be one of
Speaker 1: those states for all it's exactly the reason you lay
Speaker 1: out right. I think Mississippi, into a lesser extent, South
Speaker 1: Carolina is the other state in the South where there's
Speaker 1: clearly an un activated African American vote, either underregistrated in
Speaker 1: the rural counties in Mississippi and South Carolina or just
Speaker 1: under campaigned. Right, I've I've spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: a couple of cycles ago, we were doing some some
Speaker 1: of our counties to watch and before the twenty sixteen
Speaker 1: cycle or for the twenty twenty cycle, one of the
Speaker 1: counties I wanted to focus on was one of the
Speaker 1: African rural African American majority African American counties on the
Speaker 1: border of North and South Carolina. And how that the
Speaker 1: one time Barack Obama that Democrats carried North Carolina in
Speaker 1: the twenty first century. Barack Obama was on the ballot
Speaker 1: the first time, and he did a great job of
Speaker 1: activating the rural African American vote. North Carolina in twenty
Speaker 1: oh eight did not do as good of a job
Speaker 1: in twenty twelve, and they didn't carry the state, but
Speaker 1: they did in twenty oh eight. The point is, I
Speaker 1: do think that one of the reasons why Democrats have
Speaker 1: been slow at seeing the opportunity in Mississippi is that
Speaker 1: they're blind on rural on rural America, right. You know,
Speaker 1: their inability to get support from rural whites isn't due
Speaker 1: to just rural whites, it's all over. It explains why
Speaker 1: rural Hispanics lean right in Texas, rural blacks are. While
Speaker 1: they don't necessarily lean right in the South, they're less
Speaker 1: supportive of Democrats than urban African Americans. So yes, I
Speaker 1: do believe Mississippi should be in that if you expanded
Speaker 1: it out to the top ten states they should be
Speaker 1: focused on. I think it's six or seven on that list,
Speaker 1: and they need to. But it's a multi year project
Speaker 1: in Mississippi because there's a lot particularly in rural America,
Speaker 1: rural Black America, rural Wide America, and rural Hispanic America.
Speaker 1: Democrats have stopped showing up over the last twenty years
Speaker 1: and they have to reverse that trend. Next question comes
Speaker 1: from Charles Davis. Great name, Charles, Love to know, Charles, Charlie, Chuck, Chaz,
Speaker 1: Chad you what's your favorite of all of our The
Speaker 1: insane amount of nicknames that can come out of the
Speaker 1: name Charles. But I digress. It says, thanks for your
Speaker 1: recent podcast of the Kenny Center. It really resonated. I
Speaker 1: believe Trump and his allies are following authoritariing playbook, but
Speaker 1: they underestimated the resolve of cities like Minneapolis and the
Speaker 1: power of grassroots resistance. The militarization of police and the
Speaker 1: behavior of ICE agents are deeply concerning in tragedies like
Speaker 1: the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Preddie show this
Speaker 1: takes serve my country in many ways, and I've never
Speaker 1: been more worried or more hopeful that Americans are waking up.
Speaker 1: I voted our most of my life. Trump ended that
Speaker 1: no more, and I enjoy your podcast. Keep the good work. Look,
Speaker 1: I appreciate you writing this note, And obviously it's not
Speaker 1: really a question, but it's a statement that I'll want
Speaker 1: to refer have a lot of people refer to when
Speaker 1: they start to feel bleak. You know, what he's doing
Speaker 1: is not popular. That's sort of the point of the
Speaker 1: opening of this podcast. Republicans don't like what he's doing.
Speaker 1: In the words of John dan Forth, aren't we better
Speaker 1: than this? Right? Jack dan Forth thought the Republican Party
Speaker 1: had had more morals than than it does under Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: and had any sort of ethical lines that they would draw,
Speaker 1: and they don't. But nobody likes this, you know, and
Speaker 1: it goes back to, you know, the whole, the whole.
Speaker 1: I do think there are a lot of people who
Speaker 1: supported Trump who don't like being seen as racist like Trump.
Speaker 1: And it's you know, I always say this about Trump.
Speaker 1: Everybody has their own line, and Trump crosses it at
Speaker 1: different times. It sounds like Charles for you, he crossed
Speaker 1: the line a while ago, as I always say for
Speaker 1: Liz jad he didn't cross the line until January sixth, right,
Speaker 1: But when he crossed that line, man, she was out,
Speaker 1: and she was out loudly. John Bolton was out, probably
Speaker 1: sooner than most people thought he'd be out. Mike Pence, Right,
Speaker 1: you see where I'm going here. Everybody has their line
Speaker 1: at different moments. Looks like Rand Paul has a line,
Speaker 1: looks like Thomas Massey has a line, looks like Marjorie
Speaker 1: Taylor Green has a line. And three years ago, if
Speaker 1: I said every republic has a line, some of you
Speaker 1: might have said, well, Marjorie, there's no line for Marjorie
Speaker 1: Taylor Green. Yes, there is. Everybody has a line, and
Speaker 1: I think and this is what I think you're right about,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, not all of these stories impact
Speaker 1: everybody the same way, but a lot of people are
Speaker 1: impacted by at least one of these stories in the
Speaker 1: same way. And that's why he's got approval ratings that
Speaker 1: at best are in the low forties. That's why we're
Speaker 1: on the verge of having a record number of lawmakers
Speaker 1: say I'm out of Trump's Washington, get me out of here.
Speaker 1: By the way, you know, it's interesting about these retirees,
Speaker 1: right those that there's about thirty retirements Republican retirees so
Speaker 1: far this cycle, Essentially half of them are retiring to
Speaker 1: run for higher office, and the other half of them
Speaker 1: are just walking away from politics. Well, the lion's share
Speaker 1: of those that are just walking away from politics all
Speaker 1: Republicans elected before twenty sixteen. Those that are doing the
Speaker 1: upper out are just about all Republicans elected twenty sixteen
Speaker 1: or later. The old Republican Party that accommodated Trump. More
Speaker 1: and more of them are having trouble accommodating him. And
Speaker 1: like I said, every week somebody he crosses the line
Speaker 1: for somebody else. He is not gaining any new support.
Speaker 1: Every week Donald Trump loses more support. Next question comes
Speaker 1: from Rico from Sequoia National Forest. All right, well, here
Speaker 1: we are two big baseball fans gearing up for another
Speaker 1: on hundred and sixty two game season. But I still
Speaker 1: can't get over what I think is the dumbest rule
Speaker 1: in sports, the intentional walk of teams want to pitch
Speaker 1: around guys like Otanni. Fine, but make it cost two
Speaker 1: bases instead of one. I like where you're going there.
Speaker 1: MLBE keeps talking about speeding up the game. So why
Speaker 1: not fix this? What say you keep the cowardice or
Speaker 1: change the rule? Wow? Two bases for intentional walks? You
Speaker 1: know I could see I could buy into that. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe it's something like you get it. You can't you
Speaker 1: can only intentionally walk a player once again, and and
Speaker 1: you know you can so because I think what's first
Speaker 1: of all, it's bad for the fans, right, we want
Speaker 1: to see Otani hit. So let's just you know, I
Speaker 1: remember this with Bonds too, but let's just say it
Speaker 1: with Otani. You know, you know, Tani is like, you know,
Speaker 1: a version of the NBA on the road, right, you know,
Speaker 1: NBA in the regular season and Lakers come to town.
Speaker 1: All right, I want to see Lebron. Oh, Lebron's resting tonight,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, with the with the with the
Speaker 1: with the minute. So it's not very fan friendly. And
Speaker 1: you spend all this money, you think take your kid
Speaker 1: to see Lebron the one time a year that Lebron
Speaker 1: shows up, particularly if you're in the Eastern Conference. Right,
Speaker 1: So nobody wants to go to a game all excited
Speaker 1: to see Otani play for the first time, only to
Speaker 1: see him intentionally walk three times. So I think an
Speaker 1: addendum I would make to your rule is I think
Speaker 1: it's one that you can't intentionally walk any player more
Speaker 1: than once a game. And if you do I want
Speaker 1: to intentionally walk, it's it's it's two. It's two bases,
Speaker 1: I think. I guess I look at it this way.
Speaker 1: Rico and my dog here has a very strong opinion
Speaker 1: about this too. Speaking of intentional walks, she would like
Speaker 1: to be intentionally walked. Right after I finished taping this episode.
Speaker 1: But I think I don't think you will get support
Speaker 1: for just doing all intentional walks two bases. But I
Speaker 1: do think if you make it one per game per player,
Speaker 1: that might be a better way to do things, all right,
Speaker 1: last question, Like I said, I gotta intentionally walk Cali
Speaker 1: just wanted to toss out a new name that scandal
Speaker 1: headlines Okay, here it is, the Abu Dhabi crypto affair,
Speaker 1: all right, the Maga coin con okay, the shake Steak
Speaker 1: scandal kind of sizzling, right if the words sizzle in there, right,
Speaker 1: hope one of these sticks best. Chase from Little Rock, Arkansas.
Speaker 1: He claims it's he keeps saying the five Timers Club, Chase.
Speaker 1: I think we're up to six or seven Timers Club
Speaker 1: on this. So well, there it is. That's a good
Speaker 1: way to end this, end this episode. Let's see what
Speaker 1: you guys come up with. He's trying Abu Dhabi crypto affair,
Speaker 1: the Maga coin con, and the Shakesteak scandal and Chase.
Speaker 1: I would probably say, let's go back to the drawing boarder.
Speaker 1: Let's get some more nominees out there. That's all I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Let's get some Let's get some more nominees out there.
Speaker 1: So with that, hey, listen, I I'm going to be
Speaker 1: a cheerleader for one thing, and that's Team USA. I
Speaker 1: love you know, I give my old, my old, my
Speaker 1: old workplace, a lot of grief on what they've done
Speaker 1: to the new side of things. I'm not gonna walk,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna relitigate what's happened on that front. I
Speaker 1: just want to give a lot of kudos and credit
Speaker 1: to the coverage of the Olympics by my old employer.
Speaker 1: I think IBC Sports do a terrific job. They have finally,
Speaker 1: I think, and you saw it with the last you
Speaker 1: really saw it in twenty twenty four, with the gold
Speaker 1: Zone and everything they've done. But they have really figured
Speaker 1: out I mean the Olympics and this streaming moment, right like,
Speaker 1: if you talk about a sporting event that was built
Speaker 1: for this moment that we live in where you can
Speaker 1: just go find your sport, find your stream, the gold Zone.
Speaker 1: If you actually want to watch the Olympics for competition,
Speaker 1: you can just watch a stream that does that. You know.
Speaker 1: If you do want the stories and sort of the
Speaker 1: soap opera part of the Olympics that the network always
Speaker 1: gives you, you can do that too. But I just
Speaker 1: will say that I am there's no qualification here, guys.
Speaker 1: It's fantastic. I love what's being done. I love the coverage.
Speaker 1: It breaks my heart that Team USA and Team Israel
Speaker 1: gets booed as hard as they are right now in Europe.
Speaker 1: That that hurts, right, I wish I but I also
Speaker 1: understand it. And the only word of warning I'd give
Speaker 1: to my friends at NBC Sports is, you know, I
Speaker 1: get you want to try to make the games about
Speaker 1: the games. There's there's there's avoiding politics, but then they're
Speaker 1: censoring it. Be careful of walking that line. I'm all
Speaker 1: for avoiding it. You want to showcase the games, but
Speaker 1: be careful censoring. I think it's important for the audience
Speaker 1: to know how unpopular an American official is. If there
Speaker 1: is a moment that that happens, all right with that,
Speaker 1: I'll see in forty eight nine,