Speaker 1: Hey, Brian, Hi Katie, Brian, that song is for you
Speaker 1: because it's a wonderful day here at the pod because
Speaker 1: the mid term elections are right around the corner on Tuesday,
Speaker 1: November six and it's all about the mid terms today
Speaker 1: on our podcast. Brian and I couldn't be more excited.
Speaker 1: I'm like a kidna candy store, Katie. Most polls, as
Speaker 1: you know, are favoring Democrats to take control of the
Speaker 1: House and the Republicans will likely keep control of the Senate.
Speaker 1: But then again, after two thousand sixteen, who really knows,
Speaker 1: right nobody, Well, if that does happen, Katie, if the
Speaker 1: projections are right, it would really change the balance of
Speaker 1: power in this country. And on the off chance that
Speaker 1: the Democrats take the House and the Senate, well things
Speaker 1: will look a lot different for President Trump and for
Speaker 1: American politics. We've been hearing so much about the mid
Speaker 1: terms in the news the days, it's sometimes hard to
Speaker 1: cut through the opinions and memes and downright vitriol to
Speaker 1: actually understand what's happening in all these races. So today
Speaker 1: we've invited Claire Malone, a senior political writer at five
Speaker 1: thirty eight, to give us a picture of where all
Speaker 1: these races stand and which ones we should pay attention
Speaker 1: to on Tuesday, and also to give us her view
Speaker 1: on the big picture, Brian kind of what are the
Speaker 1: stakes of this election? And then we're going to talk
Speaker 1: to a wonderful author, Michael Lewis. He has a new
Speaker 1: book out called The Fifth Risk, which is actually very
Speaker 1: relevant to the election next week. Michael Lewis, of course
Speaker 1: wrote The Big Short, he wrote Moneyball, and now for
Speaker 1: The Fifth Risk, he spent months talking to former and
Speaker 1: current employees of the federal government and he believes that
Speaker 1: the Trump administration is wreaking havoc from within. In his view,
Speaker 1: either political hacks are in charge or appointees more concerned
Speaker 1: about self interests than the public interests. We've got a
Speaker 1: lot to cover today. So oh wait a second, Brian,
Speaker 1: are you hearing that or is it just in my head?
Speaker 1: It's just in your head. No, I'm actually hearing that.
Speaker 1: That's right, it's our new theme music. We've given our
Speaker 1: show sound a bit of a facelift. No funny remarks here,
Speaker 1: by the way, you should say to the tabloid reporters,
Speaker 1: that's the only facelift that's happened around here. But I'm
Speaker 1: pumpch and we want to say a big thank you
Speaker 1: to Jared Arnold, who composed the new music for us. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I really like it. It's it's sounding, it's sounding kind
Speaker 1: of groovy. What do you think? Well, I try to
Speaker 1: avoid using the word groovy. I haven't used that since,
Speaker 1: but I would give it a ninety eight for dancing. Anyway,
Speaker 1: enough about our new music, Let's get to our conversation
Speaker 1: with Claire Malone from five thirty eight. We began by
Speaker 1: asking her what's really at stake in next week selections
Speaker 1: for people who aren't like us, who haven't been glued
Speaker 1: to their seats paying attention to every healthy people, Yeah,
Speaker 1: normal people. In other words, what is its stake for
Speaker 1: these elections? Well, uh, midterm elections are pretty much always
Speaker 1: a reaction to the party who's in power, and the
Speaker 1: Republicans have a lot of control over the government. So
Speaker 1: they have the White House, they have the House of Representatives,
Speaker 1: and they have the Senate. And I think is is
Speaker 1: probably no surprise to anyone in America. Um, we're in
Speaker 1: a highly polarized partisan period of American life, and we
Speaker 1: have a president who has played into that quite a bit.
Speaker 1: And so, UM, I think when we talk about the
Speaker 1: stakes of this election, we are talking about, for getting
Speaker 1: nitty gritty, you know, the possibility that, you know, if
Speaker 1: Democrats theoretically retained control of both houses of Congress, they
Speaker 1: could potentially impeach the president or you know, try to
Speaker 1: remove him from office. So that's I think the if
Speaker 1: you're going for the thirty thousand foot up view of things,
Speaker 1: that's what's at stake. We're talking about all House seats,
Speaker 1: thirty three Senate seats, thirty six governorships, state legislatures, basically
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of bots. Yes, I'm glad
Speaker 1: you brought up state legislatures, and there's also attorney general's racist.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of state level seats that are at
Speaker 1: play here that we don't talk as much about. Um.
Speaker 1: But right now, it's looking like the Democrats have a
Speaker 1: pretty good chance of taking back back the House of Representatives.
Speaker 1: So we have a forecasting model and we give them about,
Speaker 1: let's say, an eight percent shot of taking back the
Speaker 1: House of Representatives. The Senate is kind of flipped where
Speaker 1: the Democrats have about only chance of taking the Senate.
Speaker 1: And I think you can kind of if you want
Speaker 1: to look back two years to the split that we
Speaker 1: saw in the popular vote and the electoral college, they're
Speaker 1: sort of mirror in the patterns that we're seeing in
Speaker 1: the House of Representatives in the Senate. So the House
Speaker 1: of Representatives that's parallel is the popular vote, which the
Speaker 1: Democrat Hillary Clinton one by three million, and then you've
Speaker 1: got the Senate, which we can compare to the electoral college.
Speaker 1: And and it's interesting because the Senate sort of plays
Speaker 1: to Republicans advantages in these rural states where votes are
Speaker 1: I guess more effectively economically distributed. We talk a about
Speaker 1: that where people aren't clustering in certain places. Yeah, we will.
Speaker 1: You just explain that a little bit for people. Give
Speaker 1: us a quick civics lesson if you could clear on
Speaker 1: on Gerrymanderin and sort of why the Senate is so
Speaker 1: different than House races. Yeah, well, I think we always
Speaker 1: want to start and talk about the way that Americans
Speaker 1: have self sorted. Um, so Democrats have tended to in
Speaker 1: the past few election cycles, past couple of decades, be
Speaker 1: in big cities or in suburban areas surrounding big cities.
Speaker 1: And the reason why that why Republicans have um an
Speaker 1: advantage in the electoral College and in the Senate map
Speaker 1: is that their votes are in there all over, even
Speaker 1: in small states. So, uh, they might win a bunch
Speaker 1: of small counties in North Dakota and that counts for
Speaker 1: a lot. A Senate seat in North Dakota is worth
Speaker 1: just as much as a Senate seat in California. And
Speaker 1: the appeal right now of Republicans seems to be being
Speaker 1: received better by people in these x urban or you know,
Speaker 1: rural rural places, and that's a problem obviously the Democrats
Speaker 1: are trying to kind of claw their way back on.
Speaker 1: So if you want to think about it in terms
Speaker 1: of waves, people have talked about this election potentially being
Speaker 1: a wave election for the Democrats. There are a couple
Speaker 1: of sea walls that the Republicans have built up to
Speaker 1: protect themselves from these waves. One is just because of
Speaker 1: the way the House seats are drawn and in some
Speaker 1: cases jerrymander to benefit one party. The Democrats have to
Speaker 1: win the House popular vote by about six points, which
Speaker 1: is like a near landslide margin in order to win
Speaker 1: control of the House. And in the Senate, it's not
Speaker 1: jerrymandered because the state borders are what they've always been,
Speaker 1: But North Dakota has two Senate seats, Wyoming has two
Speaker 1: Senate seats, etcetera. And California has two Senate seats, and
Speaker 1: so there's a there's a bit of a bias there
Speaker 1: as well. But didn't things start to change a bit
Speaker 1: even just a couple of weeks ago for the Democrats?
Speaker 1: And why well, things have sort of as the as
Speaker 1: the last month of a campaign kind of comes in,
Speaker 1: you start to see basically partisanship kick in um so
Speaker 1: on the House side of things that that got kind
Speaker 1: of a little bit better for for Democrats, and it
Speaker 1: got a little bit worse for them in the Senate,
Speaker 1: where you saw states like Nevada, states like Tennessee where
Speaker 1: you have a pretty centrist Democrat, Phil Brettison, who's the
Speaker 1: former governor of Tennessee, running for a Senate seat, and
Speaker 1: he was a pretty popular guy and that race was
Speaker 1: pretty close. But you're starting to see voters sort of
Speaker 1: kick in and say, well, I kind of like the
Speaker 1: guy from the opposite party, but I'm gonna put on
Speaker 1: my team jersey and wear it and vote for that
Speaker 1: person in election day. And that's sort of what's showing
Speaker 1: up in polls. So you are seeing a little bit
Speaker 1: of a return to what we generally expect. If it's
Speaker 1: a red state, you're probably going to think that, Well,
Speaker 1: a lot of those undecided voters that were getting pulled
Speaker 1: in late September, they might be returning home and saying, well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna vote for my party, even if I'm not
Speaker 1: loving what the president is doing. And I wanted to
Speaker 1: ask you about early voting because someone told me over
Speaker 1: the weekend that early voting wasn't looking great in terms
Speaker 1: of turnout for Latino voters and millennials. Is somebody just
Speaker 1: saying that to me without any any real knowledge helped
Speaker 1: me out here. So we have kind of a five
Speaker 1: thirty eight line where we say early voting there isn't
Speaker 1: actually any real proof that it gives us a lot
Speaker 1: of information about, you know, who's going to win an election, Democratic, Republican,
Speaker 1: because it doesn't. You know, all you know is the
Speaker 1: early voters. You can tell what their party registration is,
Speaker 1: we don't know who they voted for, and a lot
Speaker 1: of times, as we saw in where a lot of
Speaker 1: Democrats voted for Trump, people cross party lines. But I
Speaker 1: do think that we are probably going to see. I mean, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: certain demographics in this country haven't been reached by the
Speaker 1: political community. The outreach community. Latinos, I think, are one
Speaker 1: that Democrats had hoped in to really turn out and
Speaker 1: say the Southwest, and even with Trump's inflammatory rhetoric, they
Speaker 1: really didn't turn out. And I think that's sort of
Speaker 1: what people are thinking might happen this year. Although I
Speaker 1: will say in general it is predicted to be a
Speaker 1: high turnout election on both sides, Democrat and Republican. What
Speaker 1: about millennials. It seems to me that young people are
Speaker 1: so energized, at least from everything I see in my
Speaker 1: social media feed, which maybe I'm not getting a completely
Speaker 1: clear perspective. But what about those numbers. I don't think
Speaker 1: we really know um and I think we kind of
Speaker 1: have to rely this is the five eight thing. We
Speaker 1: kind of have to rely on historical trends, and generally
Speaker 1: younger voters aren't a constituency that you can necessarily count
Speaker 1: on to turn out in elections. I will say, going
Speaker 1: back again, I'm not going to make any predictions because
Speaker 1: it is going to be a high turnout election. That's
Speaker 1: what's being sort of forecasted from these polls where they
Speaker 1: you sort of posters ask about your enthusiasm to vote,
Speaker 1: and the enthusiasm to vote is extremely high, so perhaps
Speaker 1: we will see higher numbers of millennials voting. Are you
Speaker 1: a little gunshy because of two thousand sixteen over there
Speaker 1: at eight? No, I think, I mean, I think, I
Speaker 1: will say I think. The one thing that is annoying
Speaker 1: to interview people from the site is that we always
Speaker 1: kind of do this thing well where we'll say, well,
Speaker 1: we can't predict it, because but I will say that
Speaker 1: we did rethink some of the ways that we present
Speaker 1: our probabilities for people. Is kind of a big with Claire.
Speaker 1: Well we are we will say that we were the
Speaker 1: least wrong of anyone congratulation. We should fact check that,
Speaker 1: and we should actually also explain to our listeners what
Speaker 1: these forecasts really means. So two years ago, five thirty
Speaker 1: eight said Hillary Clinton had a seventy one percent chance
Speaker 1: to win the presidency. Now that was notably lower than
Speaker 1: some of the others. The New York Times said, Huffington
Speaker 1: Post really went out there and said, but how do
Speaker 1: these models work and how do they differ? Yeah? Sure, so, um,
Speaker 1: the way that the five thirty model works is that
Speaker 1: we take all of the public polling that's available and
Speaker 1: we put it together, and we waited based on how
Speaker 1: good we think the polster is, so better posters get
Speaker 1: a heavier weight in the model. So we take polls
Speaker 1: and so that's that's the poll component. Well, also add
Speaker 1: in whether or not their incumbent. That helps a person
Speaker 1: if they're an incumbent and they're running. We take into
Speaker 1: account how partisan a state is. We take into account fundraising,
Speaker 1: how much a candidate has raised. We smush all those
Speaker 1: things together in a model. And Um, what I always
Speaker 1: like to point out is was a really interesting election. Yes,
Speaker 1: we were, and all of the other models were off.
Speaker 1: And what was the reason why polls were so off
Speaker 1: in the election is that, if you'll remember, Donald Trump
Speaker 1: had huge media reach, he had name recognition, and he
Speaker 1: motivated a lot of people who had fallen off the
Speaker 1: voter rolls to come out and vote, and so polls
Speaker 1: missed a lot of those people. And so we did
Speaker 1: have a polling problem in And um, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: there's a lot of you know, a lot of us
Speaker 1: ineen who are trying to make people basically more I
Speaker 1: guess literate readers of polls and to know we're not
Speaker 1: pulling us out of nowhere. And we also want you
Speaker 1: to know that there is a possibility that this is wrong.
Speaker 1: This is how probabilities work. So but it is I
Speaker 1: think it's a learning process for for all of us
Speaker 1: to make people better news consumers more. Literally, what you
Speaker 1: meant two years ago was if you were to run
Speaker 1: this election with all the information and data we have
Speaker 1: ten times, seven out of ten times Hillary Clinton would
Speaker 1: win and three out of ten times Donald Trump would win.
Speaker 1: And so it's not like your quote wrong when you
Speaker 1: say seventy one percent chance to win and she loses.
Speaker 1: It's that this was one of those events where it
Speaker 1: was more likely than not that she would win, but
Speaker 1: she actually didn't. Yeah, And that's and so this year
Speaker 1: in our model, we've tried to switch it from making
Speaker 1: the big bold number instead of it having b oh,
Speaker 1: it's an eight percent chance, you know, we'll try to say, oh,
Speaker 1: it's a two and six chance, or it's a three
Speaker 1: and ten chance that this person will win, just to
Speaker 1: give people because I think that when we talk about
Speaker 1: gambling odds, that's kind of the vernacular that we use
Speaker 1: and so we want to try to make it clearer
Speaker 1: to people what we're saying. When we do that, Let's
Speaker 1: talk about recent events layer, because it has been a
Speaker 1: insane news cycle. As you know, we had the Brett
Speaker 1: Kavanaugh hearings. We have the pipe bombs that were sent
Speaker 1: to a number of Democratic officials, philanthropist George Soros CNN,
Speaker 1: and now most recently, the massacre at that synagogue in Pittsburgh.
Speaker 1: How do you measure the impact those events have on voters? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess I'll start with Kavanaugh, since it's a bit
Speaker 1: easier to parse the Kavanaugh hearing. Certainly senators who are
Speaker 1: voting on the Kavanaugh hearing, some of them in red states.
Speaker 1: Those red state Democrats had to make tough choices that
Speaker 1: I think probably for some of them, let's say Heidi
Speaker 1: hide Camp in North Dakota, probably endangered their their chances
Speaker 1: on the on the Senate map um and she's someone
Speaker 1: who's a pretty moderate Democrat. You know, she's from a
Speaker 1: state that really likes Trump, and she's one of those
Speaker 1: people that's really been trying to sort of say, run
Speaker 1: a campaign that says, listen, I'm first and foremost in
Speaker 1: North Dakotin. I'm not here for Pelosian schumers, a da
Speaker 1: right as a kind of a response to a lot
Speaker 1: of Republican tack ads that try to tie red state
Speaker 1: Democrats to unpopular figures um. And so Heidi hide Camp
Speaker 1: was sort of chugging along in a re election effort
Speaker 1: that was, you know, it's a hard state to win.
Speaker 1: And when the Kavanaugh vote came up, I think she
Speaker 1: would be open and saying it was a sort of
Speaker 1: a wrenching decision for her to have to make, because
Speaker 1: on the one hand, I think she's a woman who
Speaker 1: was not in favor of this guy who had been
Speaker 1: accused of um of sexual assault. And on the other hand,
Speaker 1: I think she knew it was a little bit of
Speaker 1: a you know, it was gonna it was gonna really
Speaker 1: diminished the chances that she would be able to win
Speaker 1: her race in that state, and she made the choice.
Speaker 1: She voted against Kavanaugh, and it has unleashed, you know,
Speaker 1: a string of basically attacks against her that says, listen,
Speaker 1: this this person is not who you are North Dakota.
Speaker 1: So do you all measure For example, you know, I
Speaker 1: I spent the weekend in Virginia with my daughter and
Speaker 1: we spent the night with a friend of mine from
Speaker 1: high school and we were talking about the Kavanaugh hearings
Speaker 1: and she was troubled by the way he was treated
Speaker 1: and felt, you know, sympathetic to his outrage when he testified.
Speaker 1: And I said, hey, you're one of those white suburban
Speaker 1: women growing up, you know, in Arlington, Virginia, and that's
Speaker 1: where we were. Who is you know, supporting perhaps Republican
Speaker 1: candidates because of what happened to Brett Kavanaugh? Do you
Speaker 1: are you able to to get that specific in terms
Speaker 1: of how you're looking at at segments of the electorate,
Speaker 1: so that doesn't go into the model per se, but
Speaker 1: you you've hit that nail on the head when you
Speaker 1: when you bring up demographics that we watch as ones
Speaker 1: that are shifting post So if we take I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make a wild guest that your your friend
Speaker 1: might be college educated, she might be white, and those people,
Speaker 1: white college educated women are kind of the new swing voters.
Speaker 1: They used to vote Republican pretty steadily, and now I
Speaker 1: think post Trump, there maybe in the middle like true
Speaker 1: into Pennant voters or their trending Democratic. So we I
Speaker 1: think we'll be watching for women in general and how
Speaker 1: they vote on election day, but college educated white women
Speaker 1: in particular, because their constituency that was traditional Republican that
Speaker 1: more and more seemed to moving over to the Democratic
Speaker 1: side of things. Well, this was a reality check for me, though,
Speaker 1: because I think that there are a lot of women
Speaker 1: who sympathized with him and Brian. I'm curious in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: you know that hotbed of conservativism, if you've run against
Speaker 1: run up against um women who share my friend's point
Speaker 1: of view. I actually had a conversation with one woman
Speaker 1: I know who wouldn't tell me what her personal views are,
Speaker 1: but said that she was convinced that other women would
Speaker 1: sympathize with Kavanaugh because we've all seen women who make
Speaker 1: false allegations to get something, and it was hard for
Speaker 1: me to imagine what Dr Ford would get in this situation.
Speaker 1: And I mean, last time I checked, she wasn't even
Speaker 1: allowed to or able to go back to her own home.
Speaker 1: But I think we've seen in the data that the
Speaker 1: Kavanaugh hearings energized a lot of Republican voters who might
Speaker 1: not have voted or and motivated some right leaning independent
Speaker 1: voters to stick with the Republicans. Yeah, I think that's
Speaker 1: fair because women, these these you know, college educated white
Speaker 1: women were probably already a more activated constituency to begin with.
Speaker 1: So the perceived mistreatment of Kavanaugh, I think, yeah, that
Speaker 1: certainly has played a factor. Now we kind of have
Speaker 1: the X factor of these really terrible events of the
Speaker 1: past week basically, and I we're not quite sure how
Speaker 1: these are going to affect things. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: potentially they could have an effect on Trump's approval rating,
Speaker 1: and that is often a sign of how people might
Speaker 1: vote in their congressional races. But it's just you know,
Speaker 1: I don't mean this is sound flip, but model does
Speaker 1: not take into account I hate crimes. You know how
Speaker 1: that factors into American elections, And unfortunately that's something that's
Speaker 1: happening right now. And doesn't that also, Claire, take a
Speaker 1: while to seep into the public consciousness and to be
Speaker 1: reflected in polling data. It does take a little while
Speaker 1: to seep in. So we're recording this the week before
Speaker 1: the election. I'm guessing that pollsters will be putting out
Speaker 1: polls into the field. They probably started last week after
Speaker 1: the bombings, and so we might see some some data
Speaker 1: on how people are perceiving those events visa VI the election.
Speaker 1: Trump's comments in the wake of the synagogue shooting were
Speaker 1: I found them totally odd, um, And I'm not sure
Speaker 1: how how people will react to that. But you're right,
Speaker 1: it does take a little bit of time for these
Speaker 1: things to seep in, and um, you know, the election
Speaker 1: is a week away, so we might end up seeing
Speaker 1: some of those results. Frankly, the day of aren't politics local?
Speaker 1: I mean, do they really? Is it really a direct
Speaker 1: reaction to the presidency? In other words, if I live
Speaker 1: in a state, couldn't I say, I don't really like
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, but I do like that, you know, my senator.
Speaker 1: That happens less and less. We call it ticket splitting, um,
Speaker 1: And because Americans are so much more partisan, we see
Speaker 1: a lot more people just voting straight down the ticket,
Speaker 1: Republican or Democratic. There is the old truism, right that
Speaker 1: all politics is local, but I think more and more
Speaker 1: it's become nationalized, in part because this was happening pre Trump.
Speaker 1: But I do think Trump is a He has a
Speaker 1: talent for driving new cycles, and I think that that
Speaker 1: is something that that propelled him into office and continues
Speaker 1: to dominate our politics new cycle. Overwhelmingly, we've become much
Speaker 1: more like a parliamentary system where people aren't paying attention
Speaker 1: as they used to a generation ago, to local factors,
Speaker 1: local candidates. They're really just voting for what team they
Speaker 1: want and charge in Washington, particularly in these House and
Speaker 1: Senate races, I want to ask you about one candidate
Speaker 1: in particular who's been perhaps the star of this cycle,
Speaker 1: better or Rourke. In Texas, he has just a one
Speaker 1: in five chance to win. I haven't seen a single
Speaker 1: poll with him in the lead. He's usually mid to
Speaker 1: high single digits behind. Have journalists given voters a false
Speaker 1: sense of his chances, and especially donors who poured more
Speaker 1: than seventy million dollars into his campaign. Yeah, So I
Speaker 1: wrote a piece about Beatto about a month ago that
Speaker 1: was a little bit premised off this Brian and in
Speaker 1: my lead was basically the number of times he's been
Speaker 1: compared to a Kennedy And I think it was a
Speaker 1: hilarious piece. Everybody should read it, by the way, But
Speaker 1: I think that there's something real there, which is the
Speaker 1: midterm elections are I guess, distinctly unsexy as far as
Speaker 1: there's tons of races, there's not one, one or two
Speaker 1: candidates that you could follow along with. And O'Rourke is young,
Speaker 1: He's a Democrat making a play in Texas, so there's
Speaker 1: sort of a substantive political story there. But I do
Speaker 1: think he is a telegenic person running against Ted Cruz,
Speaker 1: the Republican incumbent, who is not a particularly beloved figure
Speaker 1: even by Republicans. Lindsay Graham had a great line that
Speaker 1: you know, you could you could shoot him on the
Speaker 1: floor of the Senate and none of his colleagues would
Speaker 1: would convict the person who shot him. So he's it's
Speaker 1: it's a he's not a popular guy, let's say. But
Speaker 1: I think that the media has a little bit hyped
Speaker 1: up his chances, perhaps to the to the regular reader
Speaker 1: or media consumer, because of these attractive telligen he's kind
Speaker 1: of the it guy of the campaign. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think what I do think is really real and something
Speaker 1: to be taken seriously about Beata o rourke. Listen, I
Speaker 1: think that he probably won't win the Senate election, but
Speaker 1: he's raised huge, huge amounts of money Barack Obama two
Speaker 1: thousand seven financial quarter kind of money, and the comparison
Speaker 1: to a former president is on purpose because I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people say, listen, Donald Trump is a celebrity.
Speaker 1: He was a celebrity before he was the president. Maybe
Speaker 1: you need someone who has that kind of ineffable our
Speaker 1: power if you want to beat Trump. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: as much as people want to say that voters care
Speaker 1: more about policy than they do about politics and the
Speaker 1: things that seem superficial, it's not true. I think people
Speaker 1: I think politics is a lot more fairmonic, and more
Speaker 1: like like dating or tribalism than it is referring to
Speaker 1: pair mony. I am, I am Katie. But but what
Speaker 1: I mean by that is people vote for the person
Speaker 1: that they like, the person that they think is kind
Speaker 1: of like, you know, the person they have a beer with, right, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And I think that the person I think they want
Speaker 1: to watch on on a screen, or the person or
Speaker 1: the person for Democrats who they find inspiring. And I
Speaker 1: think that the one thing about a Rourks campaign is
Speaker 1: it has been a positive campaign. You know, he's a
Speaker 1: demographically a person who could perhaps be more appealing to
Speaker 1: people outside of Texas. He's a young white man with
Speaker 1: progressive values, which which might be more palatable to you
Speaker 1: know Obama Trump voters, which is what we refer to,
Speaker 1: you know, voters who voted for President Obama but then
Speaker 1: switched voted for Trump. So there's a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of things to think through with bouto Rourke, and
Speaker 1: I think he represents more than just his Senate campaign
Speaker 1: in Texas. Let's just run through a few more campaigns.
Speaker 1: O'Brien is going to be so excited. I'm excited about
Speaker 1: the first one. And this is the Senate race in
Speaker 1: in Tennessee, and Marcia Blackburn may have to shake it off.
Speaker 1: Do you like that? You guys? That was very clever.
Speaker 1: I just pulled that out him. Well. Taylor Swift made
Speaker 1: a big difference when she finally came out of her
Speaker 1: a political cocoon and spoke very candidly about her feelings
Speaker 1: on Instagram, my favorite social media platform. Tennessee. Yes she
Speaker 1: lives in Tennessee. And then all these people yes, and
Speaker 1: all these people came out and registered to vote. So
Speaker 1: what's happening there? Claire. I mentioned Phil Brettison, the Democratic
Speaker 1: candidate running against Marcia Blackburn a little earlier. That's a
Speaker 1: really interesting race because Tennessee is a super red state.
Speaker 1: It's very Republican. Marcia Blackburn has been a longtime congresswoman
Speaker 1: and she really well she actually goes by Congressman Marsha Blackburn.
Speaker 1: That's her official title. UM, and she sort of took
Speaker 1: on the Tea Party mantle. So she's a very sort
Speaker 1: of popular, super conservative candidate. UM. And Phil Bretta is
Speaker 1: in is you know, he used to be the mayor
Speaker 1: of Nashville. He brought the Tennessee Titans in into the state.
Speaker 1: He was governor, and he was a sort of popular
Speaker 1: moderate governor Bill Clinton we're running in the mid terms,
Speaker 1: he'd probably be something like Phil Breda is in, like
Speaker 1: a southern moderate Democrat. You know, we've we've got it
Speaker 1: as a pretty close race for a red state and
Speaker 1: part because of Bret is is basically an incumbent. He's
Speaker 1: really well known to the state. UM and he's a
Speaker 1: popular guy. And so we're basically it's almost like the
Speaker 1: forces of partisanship, super red, super Republican versus the forces
Speaker 1: of I guess personality and all politics is local? Can
Speaker 1: bretas in win on all politics is local platform in
Speaker 1: a state that is very very partisan. Well, and another
Speaker 1: interesting little wrinkle in Tennessee. As red as the state is,
Speaker 1: it is never elected before a right wing Republican to
Speaker 1: statewide office, to the Senate, or for good. I think
Speaker 1: it's a good point. Yeah, let's talk about Missouri Claire
Speaker 1: McCaskill versus Josh Holly. Claire McCaskill is the incumbent Democrat
Speaker 1: and Josh Holly is the the attorney general in that state.
Speaker 1: It's an interesting one. I mean, Claire McCaskill has had
Speaker 1: some luck that's come her way. Uh. The last time
Speaker 1: she ran, she ran against Todd Aiken And if you
Speaker 1: remember Todd Aikin's name, it's because you remember he talked
Speaker 1: about legitimate rape, which did not play well. Uh. And
Speaker 1: she won that election against the ultimate oxy moron, Yes exactly. Um.
Speaker 1: And then she had a little bit of quote unquote
Speaker 1: luck this year because Missouri had a governor scandal. Eric
Speaker 1: Grayten's who was the governor, had to resign because of
Speaker 1: a potential sexual assault that he was accused of. So
Speaker 1: Missouri has had a weird political year. Um. And so
Speaker 1: I think Claire McCaskill was doing pretty well because the
Speaker 1: Republicans in the state, frankly weren't looking good. They weren't
Speaker 1: a good light, but it has. It's a red state.
Speaker 1: Trump won that state and Josh Holly and Clara McCaskill
Speaker 1: have basically been battling it out over healthcare. We did
Speaker 1: a podcast in five last week where we talked about,
Speaker 1: you know, the number one campaign ad topic is healthcare,
Speaker 1: and that's what Claire McCaskill is running on in that state.
Speaker 1: And Josh Holly is one of the attorneys general who
Speaker 1: is signed on to this make Obamacare illegal, and so
Speaker 1: he is in a bit of a tight spot in
Speaker 1: a state where where healthcare is a big issue. But
Speaker 1: a lot of Republicans O'Brien, right, I mean, I've been
Speaker 1: reading increasingly that Republicans have co opted the healthcare conversation
Speaker 1: are basically, uh, presenting themselves as the candidates who are
Speaker 1: going to preserve and save healthcare and pre existing coverage
Speaker 1: for pre existing conditions, etcetera. And on the other hand,
Speaker 1: they want to dismantle Obamacare. So frankly, I'm confused, Well,
Speaker 1: they're attempting to do that because healthcare has turned from
Speaker 1: a good issue for them in all ast mid term
Speaker 1: four years ago to a really bad issue for them
Speaker 1: this time. Under the category of you don't know what
Speaker 1: you've got until it's gone. A lot of voters are
Speaker 1: Mitchell just pandering the always seemed to go Brian UM.
Speaker 1: So a lot of voters are concerned about the protections
Speaker 1: that they've come to enjoy under the Affordable Care Act
Speaker 1: going away, and so the Republicans are making a big
Speaker 1: effort to say no, no, no no, we're for preserving UH
Speaker 1: protections for people with pre existing conditions. If Claire mccaskell
Speaker 1: can't win in Missouri, probably no Democrat can win for
Speaker 1: federal office, at least in this environment in Missouri. Because
Speaker 1: she's run a really effective campaign. Um. She's a very
Speaker 1: good senator, and I think if she were to lose,
Speaker 1: it would be basically just that they want a supporter
Speaker 1: of Donald Trump's in the Senate. Claire. Let's talk about
Speaker 1: the governor's race in Florida between Andrew Gillam and ron
Speaker 1: De Santis. Andrew Gillam is doing pretty well, so so
Speaker 1: the background. Andrew Gillam is the is the Democrat, he
Speaker 1: is the black mayor of Tallahassee. UM, and Rhonda Santis
Speaker 1: is a pretty right wing Republican and they are locked
Speaker 1: in a race that is looking increasingly bad for De Santists,
Speaker 1: I think in part because of his his pretty far
Speaker 1: right policies. Florida is a purple state. Gil Him and
Speaker 1: De Santis were both kind of surprises in their primaries.
Speaker 1: Then the Democratic side there were a lot, you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of centrists that people thought would win. And
Speaker 1: gil Him is kind of trying to run as an outsider.
Speaker 1: So I think that's appealing to a lot of people.
Speaker 1: And actually the governor's race might have cascading effects on
Speaker 1: the Senate race because Bill Nelson is the Democratic and
Speaker 1: coming in the Senate and he's running against Republican Governor
Speaker 1: Rick Scott for the seat. And some people are saying
Speaker 1: these are both older white men. Some people are saying
Speaker 1: that gill Him might actually turn out certain constituencies that
Speaker 1: wouldn't that Bill Nelson, the white older man, wouldn't necessarily
Speaker 1: be able to get on his own. What's interesting, immediately
Speaker 1: out of the gate, as the general election began, De
Speaker 1: Santis mixed up um in racial politics um and arguably
Speaker 1: it was his own fault because he used the phrase,
Speaker 1: let's not monkey up the progress that we've made in
Speaker 1: Florida with a liberal governor and a lot of people
Speaker 1: took that to be a racial attack on Andrew Gilham,
Speaker 1: and it's basically not gone very smoothly for de Santis
Speaker 1: since then. Well, Andrew Gillham was so effective I think
Speaker 1: in the debate and that sound bite got played over
Speaker 1: and over again where he said, I'm not saying you're
Speaker 1: a racist, I'm saying racist, think you're a racist. Good line.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about Georgia, the race between Stacy Abrahams, who
Speaker 1: would be the first black female governor in history, and
Speaker 1: Brian Kemp. There's been so much debate. I saw that
Speaker 1: President Carter spoke out about this and said that Brian Kemp,
Speaker 1: who is the Secretary of State for the State of Georgia,
Speaker 1: should step down from that role during the campaign because
Speaker 1: he controls a lot of the vote. Dean and how
Speaker 1: it's carried out. Um, so help us understand that, Claire. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that the controversy in Georgia is that it has
Speaker 1: a pretty restrictive voting law and a lot of African
Speaker 1: American voters that their registrations now have problems and they
Speaker 1: might not be able to vote in the election. And
Speaker 1: what President Carter was saying is basically that Brian Kemp
Speaker 1: is not an impartial administrator of this election and that
Speaker 1: he shouldn't be able to administer it. Now, what's interesting
Speaker 1: about Georgia is one it's got these racial dynamics, both
Speaker 1: in the voting stuff but also in the in the
Speaker 1: candidates themselves, with Stacy being black and Brian Kemp being
Speaker 1: a pretty far right Republican. He's also white, white guy.
Speaker 1: What I think is interesting about this campaign is she
Speaker 1: is trying to win a southern state as a black
Speaker 1: woman with a kind of new proposition, which is she's saying,
Speaker 1: I am going to register and turn out a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of minorities in addition to winning the moderate swing voters.
Speaker 1: Those white college educated women said my friend like your friend, um,
Speaker 1: And that's that's kind of a new proposition for the
Speaker 1: South a little bit. I mean, you saw a little
Speaker 1: bit with Doug Jones in in Alabama and that special election,
Speaker 1: and I went and hung out with him in the
Speaker 1: spring and for a profile I did, and Jones is,
Speaker 1: you know, he's really trying to maintain ties to the
Speaker 1: black community because they turned out in huge Obama level
Speaker 1: numbers for him. Black women, Yes, exactly, And in order
Speaker 1: for him to, you know, when he's when he's up
Speaker 1: for re election again in he's going to need to
Speaker 1: have that huge turnout of those black voters. So the
Speaker 1: South we're seeing, you know, potentially with Abram's a bit
Speaker 1: of a new dynamic of the kind of candidate that
Speaker 1: Democrats see as winnable. Because I think that's what's different
Speaker 1: with Southern Democrats in those Deep South states is often
Speaker 1: I think black populations have felt like they don't have
Speaker 1: a viable candidate on a state level that they want
Speaker 1: to turn out for and vote for um And so
Speaker 1: I think that's what those are the that's the different
Speaker 1: dynamic that you're seeing with Stacy Abrams. When you say
Speaker 1: problems with their registration or with something associated with their
Speaker 1: ability to vote, what do you mean by that? So
Speaker 1: Georgia's law has it that if anything on your registration
Speaker 1: card doesn't match your I D. So it could be
Speaker 1: a typo in your name or a number is off
Speaker 1: on your address, then it invalidates the voter registration. So
Speaker 1: if you're thinking that that has echoes to old Southern
Speaker 1: poll laws, you are you are right. It's an incredibly
Speaker 1: restrictive law, and I believe Kemp was, you know, basically
Speaker 1: caught on tape at a fundraiser saying I'm gonna lose
Speaker 1: if if all these people vote, which I think is
Speaker 1: probably where President Carter's comments come from. A bit that's
Speaker 1: quite a quite a skewed thing for a Secretary of
Speaker 1: State to say. So. So, Georgia certainly has a long
Speaker 1: history of restrictive voting laws and it continues in well,
Speaker 1: and restrictive voting laws could be to go back to
Speaker 1: my metaphor from the beginning, that the kind of the
Speaker 1: third Sea wall against a democratic wave that Republicans have
Speaker 1: put up that particularly in states that they've controlled for
Speaker 1: some period of time, they can shape the electorate based
Speaker 1: on who's allowed to vote and who isn't um. But
Speaker 1: you know, those two governors races are really interesting because
Speaker 1: they go to a larger debate that's happening within the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party about where the party should go. Particularly in
Speaker 1: advance of Gilham and Abrams are both considered sort of
Speaker 1: mobilization candidates. That is, they're more about exciting the base,
Speaker 1: getting large numbers of millennials African Americans to turn out,
Speaker 1: with a more explicitly progressive agenda and that's been kind
Speaker 1: of the way they've been covered by the media. But
Speaker 1: I would say I think there's a piece that's missing,
Speaker 1: which is that Gilham and Abrams have both also spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time and effort trying to win over white,
Speaker 1: moderate swing voters because they both have to do that
Speaker 1: because the Democratic base alone is not big enough to
Speaker 1: win in either of these states. And so I think
Speaker 1: it's a little bit of a kind of a misperception
Speaker 1: that they're just doing one and not the other. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I'll get off my soapbox now. Finally, Claire, if Amocrats
Speaker 1: win the House, which it looks fairly likely, is that
Speaker 1: a yes, How will it change Washington? I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: Washington has had basically one party rule during the Trump administration,
Speaker 1: which means Republicans have controlled the House, the Senate, in
Speaker 1: the White House. So I think if Democrats win the House,
Speaker 1: they will be going gung ho on oversight, so you know,
Speaker 1: looking into Trump's taxes, looking into abuse at certain agencies.
Speaker 1: The e p A jumps to mind with Scott Pruitt's
Speaker 1: uh sort of financial mismanagement. I think there's going to
Speaker 1: be a lot more vocal oversight of what the Trump
Speaker 1: administration is doing, and perhaps you know, investigations will be open.
Speaker 1: So I think that's one thing. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: that Nancy Pelosi, if she were sitting here at this table,
Speaker 1: would say, we do not want to impeach the president.
Speaker 1: And this goes to, you know, Brian's point about alienating voters.
Speaker 1: I think people remember or how divisive the impeachment proceedings
Speaker 1: against Bill Clinton were. I think people feel impeachment would
Speaker 1: almost be a bridge too far. There will certainly be
Speaker 1: Democrats who will be calling to bring articles impeachment against
Speaker 1: President Trump, but I'm not sure that the Democratic leadership
Speaker 1: wants to go that far and alienate a bunch of
Speaker 1: people that they need to win over in twice. So
Speaker 1: the Senate has to convict, right, convict. I mean, so
Speaker 1: isn't it sort of just um kind of a pr stunt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a base it's a base rally. I think it's
Speaker 1: a base rallying effort. Pre that would be the argument
Speaker 1: for for bringing up impeachment, and I think the counter argument,
Speaker 1: which again Pelosi vouches for, is listen, we can't do
Speaker 1: this right now. We need to win. Yes, we need
Speaker 1: to win the base, but we also need to win
Speaker 1: Obama Trump voters in the Midwest. Claire Malone from Claire,
Speaker 1: thanks so much. This was so much fun. I haven't
Speaker 1: seen Brian this happy in months, honestly, Oh my god,
Speaker 1: it was. This was very big for me. Thank you
Speaker 1: very much. Thank you so much for having me. It
Speaker 1: was very fun. From my into. Before we take a break,
Speaker 1: a quick announcement. This week is our pre mid terms show,
Speaker 1: so naturally next week will be our post mid term show. Gosh, Brian,
Speaker 1: I don't know what you're gonna do with yourself as
Speaker 1: part of that show. By the way, we want you,
Speaker 1: our listeners, to call in and tell us what you think.
Speaker 1: We really want to know what's on your mind, what
Speaker 1: questions you have about what it all means. So if
Speaker 1: you'd like to talk with Katie or me, which is
Speaker 1: hard to believe, but mostly if you'd like to talk
Speaker 1: to Katie, call nine to nine to two four four
Speaker 1: six three seven, leave a voicemail anytime between now and
Speaker 1: Wednesday morning, and we'll select a few of you to
Speaker 1: be on next week's show. In your voicemail, make sure
Speaker 1: to tell us where you're from, why you're hauling, and
Speaker 1: your phone number. So that we can call you back.
Speaker 1: We can't wait to hear from you again. That number
Speaker 1: is nine to nine, two to four, four, six, three seven,
Speaker 1: and we'll be back with Michael Lewis to talk about
Speaker 1: the decay of the federal government. Yep, b that's right
Speaker 1: after this. Now, before we talk with Michael Lewis, we
Speaker 1: have an important message for you, and that message is
Speaker 1: it's fun when everybody v O T S. That's my
Speaker 1: new voting song. Brian, Yeah, Katie, I think what you're
Speaker 1: saying is it's really important that everybody votes and that
Speaker 1: they sing along with me. Research shows that the majority
Speaker 1: of young people still are not sure whether they'll vote.
Speaker 1: Can you believe that? What is wrong with you people? Brian?
Speaker 1: Does that mean you're not sure yet? Well, I don't
Speaker 1: think I'm still considered a young person anymore. Sadly, anyway,
Speaker 1: if I am, I'm in the minority because I am
Speaker 1: already a positive that I'm going to vote, and I
Speaker 1: even have a plan to do so. And how self
Speaker 1: confident do I sound? You sound very confident and I
Speaker 1: am as well. I plan to vote. But I get
Speaker 1: it some of you young people don't know where to vote.
Speaker 1: You're not sure what's on the ballot. You don't want
Speaker 1: to vote the wrong way, or maybe you just think
Speaker 1: your vote doesn't matter. Well, surprise, surprise, We're here to
Speaker 1: tell you it does matter. Look at two thousand, look
Speaker 1: at one vote per precinct can make all the difference.
Speaker 1: And lucky for all of us, our friends at Crooked
Speaker 1: Media have launched votes save America, a step by step
Speaker 1: guide to answer all of your questions. On votes save
Speaker 1: America dot com, you can check if you're registered and
Speaker 1: register if you're not. You can see what the rules
Speaker 1: are in your state about registration deadlines and voter i D.
Speaker 1: You can learn more about candidates and close races, and
Speaker 1: you can look at a ballot guide that explains what
Speaker 1: is on your specific ballot in plain English. So visit
Speaker 1: votes save America dot com and remember to vote. On
Speaker 1: November six, we turned out to Michael Lewis. He's written
Speaker 1: bestsellers like The Blindside, The Big Short, and Moneyball, all
Speaker 1: of which were adapted for the big screen. By the way,
Speaker 1: Michael has a knack for taking a topic that seems
Speaker 1: boring or complicated, like statistics in baseball, for example, and
Speaker 1: making it very exciting and relevant and that's exactly what
Speaker 1: he's done in his latest book, which is called The
Speaker 1: Fifth Risk. The new book tackles the decay of the
Speaker 1: federal government under the Trump administration. So we'll talk with
Speaker 1: Michael about why this could be really, really dangerous for
Speaker 1: the world, for our country, and how it could be stopped.
Speaker 1: Michael Lewis, Welcome to the podcast. We're thrilled to have
Speaker 1: you here. Pleasure to be here. I know that your
Speaker 1: book tries to pull back the curtain and really show
Speaker 1: people with the impact of two years of the Trump
Speaker 1: administration has had on the federal government. And you really
Speaker 1: talk about the importance of the transition from the very
Speaker 1: beginning as there's a transition from one administration to another.
Speaker 1: So tell us why the this period of time is
Speaker 1: so critical. Well, the United States government, unlike most governments
Speaker 1: in the world, has a layer of leadership. It's politically
Speaker 1: import appointed four thousand or so people who are actually
Speaker 1: run the place are appointed by the president. And what
Speaker 1: you have after a presidential election, assuming that the incumbent
Speaker 1: doesn't win, is someone's leaving with their four thousand people
Speaker 1: who have been running the place for a while, and
Speaker 1: someone's coming in with their four thousand people, many of
Speaker 1: whom have never been there before. There's this transfer of
Speaker 1: knowledge that is absolutely critical, and it is has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with political ideology. It's so sort of how
Speaker 1: to So you go into the Department of Energy and
Speaker 1: they say, we managed the nuclear arsenal. Here's how you
Speaker 1: test stomic weapons without actually blowing one up. Important. In fact,
Speaker 1: you can think of the federal government as like this
Speaker 1: huge portfolio of risks that are being managed, and many
Speaker 1: of which we don't even think about. And the idea
Speaker 1: is that you know, before the election, well before the election,
Speaker 1: the candidates of both major parties have hundreds of people
Speaker 1: waiting to rush in the day after the election, because
Speaker 1: you really only have from from that day until the inauguration.
Speaker 1: And then by a law, the people who have left
Speaker 1: are not allowed to get in touch with the people
Speaker 1: who are there. They can be solicited. And the thing
Speaker 1: that interested me in the story in the first place,
Speaker 1: because I did not have a native interest in the
Speaker 1: Department of Agriculture, you know, I mean, they didn't occur
Speaker 1: to me that would be material, was that the Obama administration,
Speaker 1: partly because there was a law requiring them to do it,
Speaker 1: but partly because Bush at handed the government off so
Speaker 1: well to Obama had to go on to great links
Speaker 1: to create essentially the best course ever created in how
Speaker 1: the government works. Thousand people across the government for the
Speaker 1: better part of the year putting together briefings. So if
Speaker 1: you got made secretary of the Interior, you would be
Speaker 1: briefed by people who really understood how the Interior Department worked,
Speaker 1: and you would be hit the ground running. They were
Speaker 1: expecting the day after the election for hundreds of people
Speaker 1: to come in. So let's let's back up one day
Speaker 1: before that, those meetings uh to election night, and you
Speaker 1: tell this really incredible story about Mike Pence and his wife,
Speaker 1: which is really indicative of how the Trump people felt
Speaker 1: about their chances of winning and may explain the chaos
Speaker 1: of the transition. So this is actually right. The key
Speaker 1: to the whole thing is that they weren't running to win.
Speaker 1: They didn't think they were going to win. Bannon would
Speaker 1: take exception to this. Bannon may have actually, in his
Speaker 1: heart of hearts, believed it, but most everybody involved with
Speaker 1: it thought, including Trump, was not prepared to win. So
Speaker 1: they had not written an acceptance speech. They had written
Speaker 1: a concession speech. That explains why a lot of people
Speaker 1: are willing to go along for the ride, and how
Speaker 1: they go along for the ride because they aren't thinking
Speaker 1: this man is going to actually run the federal government.
Speaker 1: They're thinking he's building a brand. I think it's what
Speaker 1: they were thinking. And I'm I'm building my brand being
Speaker 1: associated with it for some period of time. I'm not
Speaker 1: actually preparing to govern in the country. The Mike Pence
Speaker 1: story was I mean Karen Pence, Mike's wife. Mike apparently
Speaker 1: leaned over to kiss her when Pennsylvania was called for
Speaker 1: Trump and it was clear Trump's could be president, and
Speaker 1: and and she says, pushed him away and says, you
Speaker 1: got what you wanted, Mike, leave me alone. And yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I don't. She was the people in the room. It's
Speaker 1: something that really makes feelings about winning. And Trump himself
Speaker 1: had been playing the game. It's like he really is
Speaker 1: a guy whose bluff is called. He had not taken
Speaker 1: seriously the idea he had to take over this operation.
Speaker 1: But Chris Christie had been appointed head of the transition,
Speaker 1: and what happened right after election night to him. So
Speaker 1: we really need to know is what happened before because
Speaker 1: Christie had seen in the newspaper that they were required
Speaker 1: to prepare for the transition and that there were federal
Speaker 1: resources of ail able to do it. And he called
Speaker 1: Trump and said, let me do it, because he said,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna be president, but the next of us
Speaker 1: thing that's kind of planned to be president. And this
Speaker 1: isn't my view, this is a view of just independent
Speaker 1: referees like that. Christie did a superb job. He got
Speaker 1: lots of really qualified people ready to go into the agencies,
Speaker 1: and had also vetted a lot of the people who
Speaker 1: might have be plausible candidates for the top jobs in
Speaker 1: the government. So they vetted out Mike Flynn, for example.
Speaker 1: And it's all ready to go in spite of Donald
Speaker 1: Trump's actual hostility to the whole operation because they were
Speaker 1: he thought they were spending his money and then and
Speaker 1: that he wasn't gonna win, and he wasn't gonna win, right,
Speaker 1: so why bother right? And Bannon said to Trump, well,
Speaker 1: if you fire the transition, how's that gonna look on
Speaker 1: Morning Joe. It's gonna look like you're given up already.
Speaker 1: And so he said, all right, I just don't spend
Speaker 1: very much money. But ultimately he did fire Chris Christmas,
Speaker 1: So the day after the election they fired him. So
Speaker 1: it was only for show. They built this great operation.
Speaker 1: It turns out only for show that the minute they said, oh,
Speaker 1: we're gonna do this, Trump got rid of him. And
Speaker 1: the natural next question is why, uh and Christie would
Speaker 1: tell you that it's because he put Jared Kushner's father
Speaker 1: in jail back when he was a prosecutor for I
Speaker 1: think that didn't help. Jared clearly wanted Christy gone, but
Speaker 1: you had to have Trump's approval of that. And why
Speaker 1: would Trump? If I were Donald Trump, I would have
Speaker 1: somewhere deep in my soul a sense that I don't
Speaker 1: really know how this thing works, that I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: taking over and it would be nice to have all
Speaker 1: these people who kind of know the thing, and they
Speaker 1: can I don't have to pay attention to it then right,
Speaker 1: and it'll all just kind of run. I think he
Speaker 1: had positive reasons for one in chaos. I think that
Speaker 1: they were friends of his people who were and people
Speaker 1: have connections to Russia, like Mike Flynn, who he wanted
Speaker 1: to be able to put in important positions. I think
Speaker 1: he functions better. I think he thinks he functioned better
Speaker 1: if it's not things are not orderly. So I think
Speaker 1: he was just kind of attracted to, like, let let
Speaker 1: the chips fall or they may. I'll take care of
Speaker 1: all this. I'll decide who's going to be in the
Speaker 1: cabinet mainly by casting them by appearance. And it wasn't
Speaker 1: sufficient that Jared Kushner wanted Christie out. Trump also had
Speaker 1: to say, I'm I want this whole thing gone. You're
Speaker 1: saying that he wanted Mike Flynn in there because of
Speaker 1: his connections with Russia. I can't imagine why else? Like
Speaker 1: why else? Go to that trouble? Christie's operation had said
Speaker 1: Mike Flinch did not be national security advisor. He's got
Speaker 1: shadowy problems you don't want to know about, but just
Speaker 1: don't put him in any important position. The Trump's are
Speaker 1: insistent that Mike Flynn be in, and to the point
Speaker 1: where they want to get rid of the entire transition operation,
Speaker 1: which would prevent it from happening. Why else, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's hard to it just it seems I don't
Speaker 1: know this for a fact, but it seems a plausible explanation.
Speaker 1: And to what end, you know? I wonder about this
Speaker 1: that I think that we will find out eventually when
Speaker 1: we untangled Donald Trump's finances and his relationships to the Russians.
Speaker 1: What he's thinking in the back of his lizard brain
Speaker 1: is if this proceeds normally, and the State Department is
Speaker 1: run normally, for example, it could be harder to cloud
Speaker 1: my relations with these people. People are gonna know things,
Speaker 1: find out things people who aren't allies. Um, I want allies.
Speaker 1: I want loyalists around this issue, because loyalists will keep
Speaker 1: the trap shut that if I had to bet, But again,
Speaker 1: I don't know that. But never mind the motive for
Speaker 1: a second. Just the fact of it is astonishing. You know,
Speaker 1: in a normal society that understood the value of its
Speaker 1: government that had been a revolt, we're not going to
Speaker 1: show up for the briefings. It's crazy. I mean three
Speaker 1: months ago when I was finishing, I was still getting
Speaker 1: briefings from very important people in the government that had
Speaker 1: never been given because no one had ever showed up
Speaker 1: to hear it. And it's just a loss of knowledge.
Speaker 1: Who run anything that way? It's just there's no decent
Speaker 1: argument for not learning about the thing you need to run,
Speaker 1: which leads perfectly to the title of the book, the
Speaker 1: fifth risk. Can you go through the first four risks
Speaker 1: and then we'll talk about the fifth one. Well, there's
Speaker 1: something that's not in the book that informed the title.
Speaker 1: When I first started, I was talking to people in
Speaker 1: the White House and they had planned a exercise which
Speaker 1: was going to happen between the outgoing Obama cabinet and
Speaker 1: the incoming Trump cabinet. They would scheme out what happens
Speaker 1: is several terrible things happened. One was a pandemic, another
Speaker 1: was a terrorist attack inside the United States with a
Speaker 1: nuclear weapon. Another was a hurricane that surprised some part
Speaker 1: of the country. The fourth was an earthquake in the
Speaker 1: Pacific Northwest. And I said, what's the fifth and said,
Speaker 1: we hadn't thought about the fifth. And I realized that
Speaker 1: what I was writing about at that moment was the
Speaker 1: stuff that nobody's thinking about because there's so much of
Speaker 1: it within the federal government. It's sort of like the
Speaker 1: risk we're not attending to sufficiently. This then happens again
Speaker 1: when I go into the Energy Department and I'm sitting
Speaker 1: down with a guy who had never given his briefing,
Speaker 1: the chief risk officer, and he worked in the Obama ministry.
Speaker 1: He worked in the Obama administration. He was brought in
Speaker 1: by Ernie Monies, m I T physicist who had run
Speaker 1: the Energy Department. His name is John McWilliams, and John said,
Speaker 1: he said, actually, I came up with a list of
Speaker 1: hundred and forty two basically existential risks. I said, I
Speaker 1: don't have time pretend I'm like a Trump guy who's bored.
Speaker 1: Give me five. And he says, I think in no
Speaker 1: particular order, but he says one, Uh, that a nuclear
Speaker 1: weapon will go off when it's not supposed to think.
Speaker 1: He said then the Iran, that the Iran deal would
Speaker 1: come unraveled, that the next administration would not appreciate how
Speaker 1: important it was and how good a deal it was,
Speaker 1: because they wouldn't bother to listen to the physicists who
Speaker 1: would explain to them that now Iran cannot build a
Speaker 1: nuclear bomb. And that's exactly what happened. Uh. North Korea
Speaker 1: was I think the third. The failure of the nation
Speaker 1: is in the electrical grid, which is a monitor. And
Speaker 1: you think, oh, well, that's just the lights go out,
Speaker 1: that's a disaster. People die, And then we get the
Speaker 1: fifth and actually he said, let me think a little bit,
Speaker 1: and I thought, well, we have a pattern. When we
Speaker 1: get to five, we've got to think a little bit.
Speaker 1: And then he finally said, very kind of innocuously program management.
Speaker 1: And when he meant by that, which sounds incredibly tedious,
Speaker 1: and in some ways it is incredibly tedious, but what
Speaker 1: he means by that is that the government is managing
Speaker 1: really dangerous situations that are very long term situations. And
Speaker 1: the example I plucked out of the Department Energy to
Speaker 1: use to illustrate the point in the book was, Uh,
Speaker 1: the nuclear waste clean up in hand for Washington. Eastern
Speaker 1: Washington is where the plutonium was created for the Adam
Speaker 1: bombs that were dropped on Japan. In the course of
Speaker 1: creating it, they were in such a rush they didn't
Speaker 1: pay attention what they were doing. The waste materials hundreds
Speaker 1: of millions of gallons filled with with stuff you don't
Speaker 1: want to touch. Uh. Beer anywhere near I mean anybody.
Speaker 1: A lot of people who have worked at this side
Speaker 1: of die of cancer. Uh. But just poured into the
Speaker 1: into the soil, and there's this plume of it moving
Speaker 1: through the earth to the wards the Columbia River and
Speaker 1: it's being managed by the Department of Energy. They're spending
Speaker 1: three billion dollars a year to clean this up. If
Speaker 1: we just don't do that right and the stuff gets
Speaker 1: to the Columbia River, it's catastrophic for the Pacific Northwest.
Speaker 1: He said that was just one example. That's professional technical management.
Speaker 1: That's got to be there. People who know about things,
Speaker 1: and that's what the Trump people didn't bring in. They
Speaker 1: didn't bring anybody who knew about anything. It sounds like
Speaker 1: you really outline a lot of disasters waiting to happen,
Speaker 1: and not just at the Department of Energy, but in
Speaker 1: other very frankly unsexy agencies like the Department of Agriculture
Speaker 1: and the Department of Commerce. The whole point was to
Speaker 1: take things that nobody's paying attention to, which is kind
Speaker 1: of your area of expertise. I feel like you always
Speaker 1: take these sort of arcane, dry subjects and you kind
Speaker 1: of make them fun and entertaining. You have to hear
Speaker 1: three or four times that you should read the book
Speaker 1: before you actually think I better read the book, because
Speaker 1: it really do I want to read a book about
Speaker 1: the Department Agriculture, but talk about the Department of agriculture
Speaker 1: and Commerce, and I think a lot of listeners Michael
Speaker 1: will be surprised to hear what they have per view
Speaker 1: over and how important they are. They're all misnamed, these departments.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've gotten so detached from our government. That's
Speaker 1: so the reason I picked the ones I picked was
Speaker 1: I just wanted to dramatize how little we all know
Speaker 1: about what our government does. But the Department Agriculture, it
Speaker 1: does subsidize farming. It was created by Lincoln during the
Speaker 1: middle of the Civil War UH with the explicit mission
Speaker 1: to turn agriculture into a science so farming could be
Speaker 1: very more efficient, so we need fewer farmers, so those
Speaker 1: people could go then go do other things, and the
Speaker 1: economy would grow. The enterprise has been spectacularly successful. Farmers
Speaker 1: used to feed a few people, and now they feed
Speaker 1: each heeds a few hundred people who we need many
Speaker 1: fewer farmers. It is now expanded into a science project
Speaker 1: that UH that just distributes about three billion dollars a
Speaker 1: year in grants to researchers, almost all of them one
Speaker 1: way or another related to how we secure the food
Speaker 1: supply UH in the face of climate change, UM and
Speaker 1: food safety by the way, I just want to interject food. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, how do we make sure that our chicken
Speaker 1: doesn't poison us? Among other things, the Department of Agriculture
Speaker 1: inspects the nine billion birds a year that are killed
Speaker 1: in America so we can eat them, not to mention
Speaker 1: cows and all kinds of others, all kinds of other things. Now,
Speaker 1: if you're hiring someone to pass out three billion dollars
Speaker 1: a year in grants, too, you would want to probably
Speaker 1: want to hire someone who knew about agricultural research. And
Speaker 1: that's usually who occupies the job of scientists, someone who's
Speaker 1: done their own research, is respected in the field. Uh.
Speaker 1: And that's who was there when Trump came in and
Speaker 1: Trump nominated to replace her, uh, a right wing talk
Speaker 1: show radio host from Iowa who supported him, who has
Speaker 1: no science background whatsoever. I mean, just this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: It's like like I don't know about agricultural science, but
Speaker 1: I stayed it in a holiday in express. It is
Speaker 1: like happened across the government. Uh So that's three billion
Speaker 1: dollars a year. I think the Agriculture Department budget is
Speaker 1: close to two hundred billion, and much of that if
Speaker 1: you follow just the money, it's feeding people. It's feeding
Speaker 1: poor kids, it's feeding old people. It's food stamps, and
Speaker 1: it's school nutrition programs. That's where the bulk of the
Speaker 1: money goes. And those programs, when you actually dig into
Speaker 1: them and talk to the people who administer them, the
Speaker 1: Trump people would love to cut them. But you're what
Speaker 1: you're doing is you're you're leaving kids hungry and old
Speaker 1: people hungry. I describe how ignorance is actually a tool
Speaker 1: for Trump that if you do remain ignorant of the
Speaker 1: of the thing, you can you can do all sorts
Speaker 1: of brutal stuff and positiblemility you can put if as
Speaker 1: long as you don't meet a kid who's going hungry
Speaker 1: and as a result can't concentrate at school as a result,
Speaker 1: one thing leads to another and the life ends and tragedy.
Speaker 1: You can say, oh yea Alice has cut the school
Speaker 1: lunch program. In fact, when you get into it, you
Speaker 1: find these dedicated public servants who really understand the programs
Speaker 1: and understand that, like the problem with the programs isn't fraud,
Speaker 1: which is what some people have you believe, they're very
Speaker 1: little fraud and and they work very hard to eliminate it.
Speaker 1: The problem is if they're not as heavily used as
Speaker 1: they should be, that the people who need them don't
Speaker 1: have too much trouble getting access to them, and the
Speaker 1: people who really care about them solve those problems so
Speaker 1: on a state by state basis, When you don't we
Speaker 1: don't acknowledge any of that. When you say, oh, just
Speaker 1: get rid of the government is too big, what you're
Speaker 1: doing is just ignoring the problem altogether. And when you
Speaker 1: say that government workers are these incompetent bureaucrats who don't
Speaker 1: know what they're doing, you sort of support the idea
Speaker 1: of just cutting off all these programs, no matter how
Speaker 1: valuable they are. I think that's absolutely right. And what
Speaker 1: I found in talking to these people, bureaucrats, civil servants,
Speaker 1: public servants, was that they were, as a rule, extraordinarily dedicated,
Speaker 1: hard working, mission driven people operating in a hugely dysfunctional system.
Speaker 1: And the fact that system is dysfunctional is our fault,
Speaker 1: not theirs. It's because we've resisted any kind of decent
Speaker 1: reforms of government. If you want to make the argument
Speaker 1: that our society is disintegrating and in decay, you might
Speaker 1: start by looking at what we've done with the government
Speaker 1: five times as many people in the federal workforce over
Speaker 1: the age of sixty then under the age of thirty,
Speaker 1: ninety billion dollars spent on i T in the federal government.
Speaker 1: Seventy billion is spent just on these ancients just maintaining
Speaker 1: these ancient, decrepit systems from the sixties. It's it's a
Speaker 1: system that's almost built at this point to fail. And
Speaker 1: in spite of that, people want to come in and
Speaker 1: do stuff and sometimes do. Did President Obama when he
Speaker 1: was in charge, do anything to try to fix these
Speaker 1: problems you've identified? Not enough. The Bush administration had been
Speaker 1: beginning to engage with how you reform the government, and
Speaker 1: the Obama administration has kind of started over. The world's
Speaker 1: authority on this is Max Styre, who runs something called
Speaker 1: a Partnership for Public Service, which is this extraordinary nonprofit
Speaker 1: started by one guy who basically said, I'm going to
Speaker 1: try to fix the government. I'm gonna start by trying
Speaker 1: to get young, talented people into the government. The only
Speaker 1: way I can do that is if I fixed this thing.
Speaker 1: He's managed to get the laws passed that require people
Speaker 1: to prepare for the transition, and he's got a lot
Speaker 1: of ideas about ways you might reform the place so
Speaker 1: it is more agile, responsible, responsive, and and just works better. Uh.
Speaker 1: And he would tell you that Obama was disappointing to
Speaker 1: him this way, but nothing like Trump, I mean really
Speaker 1: responsible and the kind of people he put into the
Speaker 1: government for example, that that he said, you never seen
Speaker 1: anything like Trump. We're two years into the Trump administration.
Speaker 1: Do you see it getting any better? At if the
Speaker 1: Democrats Michael take the House, will they have any control
Speaker 1: over the current state of disarray? So the answer is no,
Speaker 1: and no. Trump is symptom, not just cause here we
Speaker 1: don't elect someone who is so ignorant and negligent unless
Speaker 1: we have got to the point where were so misvalue
Speaker 1: and misunderstand the thing he's running. If the society understood
Speaker 1: the government, we all had a good civics lesson, we'd
Speaker 1: all say that person shouldn't be running that because that's
Speaker 1: going to be a catastrophe, because that that enterprise the
Speaker 1: government is really important. The narrative needs to change first.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's why I wrote the book. I mean,
Speaker 1: if they just try to start to change the narrative
Speaker 1: so people stop seeing the government as the problem and
Speaker 1: start seeing it as a tool as a solution. But
Speaker 1: you know, it's if this society is gonna survive, that's
Speaker 1: got to happen. So it's a big deal. I think
Speaker 1: it actually could happen. But you can change narratives. You
Speaker 1: know this, You've told stories. But yeah, we have to
Speaker 1: stop undermining this institution and starts trying to be constructive
Speaker 1: about it and understanding it. And meanwhile, if the Democrats
Speaker 1: take the House, they don't really have any power to
Speaker 1: do this, do they. If Trump is removed, that would help,
Speaker 1: but uh, it wouldn't solve the core problems. What's really
Speaker 1: needed is a political leader, probably will come out of
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party, but could easily come out of the
Speaker 1: Republican Party who can make the positive case for government,
Speaker 1: which is with caveats, which we need to change this thing.
Speaker 1: We have a nineteen forties automobile on a twenty one
Speaker 1: century highway. Someone who can sell that case. I think
Speaker 1: you can get elected selling that case. They just have
Speaker 1: to be good at it. And this is something that Obama.
Speaker 1: President Obama may try to sell because he's optioned the
Speaker 1: book to come up with the series for Netflix to
Speaker 1: help people better understand the government. Yes, it's just as
Speaker 1: a civics lesson, that's right. And I did three departments
Speaker 1: because it would be the work of many lifetimes to
Speaker 1: do the whole government. But you could do this in
Speaker 1: a fun way across the entire government. Well, Michael Lewis.
Speaker 1: The book is called The Fifth Risk. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for coming into and talking to us about It's
Speaker 1: always great to see you. Thanks for having me. So
Speaker 1: that's all for today, and a reminder one more time,
Speaker 1: please vote on Tuesday, November six in the midterm elections.
Speaker 1: It is really important and on next week's show we'll
Speaker 1: be taking your calls and making sense of all the
Speaker 1: election results, or at least trying to. Emma Morgan Stern
Speaker 1: is our producer, Nora Richie is the associate producer, and
Speaker 1: Jared O'Connell is our audio engineer who makes every show
Speaker 1: sound like a dream. Ryan Connor is our audio engineer
Speaker 1: here in l A. I'd also like to shout from
Speaker 1: the rooftops about my team at Katie Kirk Media, my
Speaker 1: assistant Beth Dems and Julia Lewis my social media mix
Speaker 1: and a saucy one at that. Jared Arnold wrote our
Speaker 1: new theme music you can find me on Twitter I'm
Speaker 1: at Goldsmith b and you can follow Katie on Twitter, Facebook,
Speaker 1: at especially Instagram under Katie Kurk. Those Instagram stories are
Speaker 1: really something to follow. I notice you do, Brian, because
Speaker 1: I see your name all the time, so don't mock
Speaker 1: me too much. One more reminder. If you want to
Speaker 1: call in to ask us a question or share your
Speaker 1: thoughts about the mid terms, you can reach us at
Speaker 1: four four six three seven. Just leave a voicemail with
Speaker 1: your name, where you're calling from, and what you'd like
Speaker 1: to tell us, or leave us a message about something
Speaker 1: other than the mid terms, or you can always email
Speaker 1: us at comments at current podcast dot com. Thank you,
Speaker 1: as always for listening. We really appreciate your support and
Speaker 1: we'll talk to you next week.