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Speaker 1: Hello, They're happy Wednesday, and welcome to another episode of

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Speaker 1: the Check Podcast. It is October first, and apparently what

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Speaker 1: that means. It's October first, twenty twenty five. Do you

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Speaker 1: know if your government's open? Well, the answer is there

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Speaker 1: are portions of the government not open today. What does

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Speaker 1: it mean? Well, you heard, if you heard my last

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Speaker 1: monologue about this, you know this is a manufactured moment.

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Speaker 1: This is a created political a manufactured political drama based

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Speaker 1: on legal interpretations of two Justice departments that go back

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Speaker 1: to the Carter and Reagan era, and a whole bunch

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Speaker 1: of members of Congress who claim they don't like these

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Speaker 1: shutdowns but have refused to pass legislation that actually would

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Speaker 1: make these showdowns moot. So I'm not going to bother

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Speaker 1: to rehash that, but it really bothers me how that

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Speaker 1: New York Times did a story about sort of, oh,

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Speaker 1: we've had fifty years of this polarizing and sort of

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Speaker 1: didn't sort of glossed over the fact that this is

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Speaker 1: simply an interpretation. There's no law in the Constitution that

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Speaker 1: says the government is open or closed on October first,

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Speaker 1: depending on when you pass appropriations bills. This is essentially

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Speaker 1: a decision that people in power made in order to

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Speaker 1: create a point of drama or leverage, apparently for no

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Speaker 1: particular good that's come from it. Right, this has just

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Speaker 1: been a disaster. And I think this is the challenge

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Speaker 1: that Democrats have being the instigators of this, which is

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Speaker 1: for my entire adult lifetime, it has been the Republicans

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Speaker 1: that have been the instigators of the shutdown we've had these.

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Speaker 1: It was when there was a Democratic president that we

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Speaker 1: had it in the nineties, democratic president, when we had

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Speaker 1: it during Obama. It is with Trump. That's the first

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Speaker 1: time we've had this with a Republican Now, the first

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Speaker 1: time it was Republican. This is now the second time

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Speaker 1: we've had a shutdown with Trump as president and Republicans

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Speaker 1: in charge of both the House in the Senate now

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Speaker 1: because of the filibuster. And I'm going to get to

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Speaker 1: that in a minute, because you got to ask yourself,

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Speaker 1: what if this is what ends the filibuster. I'm fascinated

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Speaker 1: to see what the reaction would be among some of

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Speaker 1: the left who've been agitating for getting rid of the

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Speaker 1: philibuster for some time. Imagine if this is the trigger

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Speaker 1: for it, just something to put a pin in that right,

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Speaker 1: let's just file this away for a second. But we're here,

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Speaker 1: and I think the issue and it's reflective. I've got

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Speaker 1: some pull numbers I want to go through that are

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Speaker 1: actually well timed, sort of end of September polls. They're

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Speaker 1: well timed. But they we get at this question of shutdowns.

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Speaker 1: And you know, the Democrats have messaged for twenty years

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Speaker 1: the shutdowns are bad, and now here they are on

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Speaker 1: the other side saying passing up the opportunity for a

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Speaker 1: clean of temporary six week extension to keep the government

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Speaker 1: open because you know they want their And this is

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Speaker 1: I said this before. I think tactically they made a

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Speaker 1: mistake not accepting this continuing resolution to November. I think

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Speaker 1: they would be better off having this showdown over the

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Speaker 1: exact same issue healthcare subsidies, the Obamacare subsidies. They'd have

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Speaker 1: been better off, I think starting that fight in November

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Speaker 1: after the twenty twenty five elections in Virginia, New Jersey,

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Speaker 1: New York, et cetera. But here's you know, here's what's interesting.

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Speaker 1: So the time says this new pulling out and let

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Speaker 1: me read you one of a couple of the questions

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Speaker 1: that had to do with the with a shutdown, who

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Speaker 1: would you blame if there is a shutdown? The Democrats

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Speaker 1: in Congress, Donald Trump, and the Republicans in Congress, both

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Speaker 1: or both parties equally or all entities equally. Now they

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Speaker 1: combined Republicans and Donald Trump into one column. There's other

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Speaker 1: polling out there that has put Democrats in Congress, Republicans

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Speaker 1: in Congress, and Donald Trump as separate three you know,

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Speaker 1: three categories. So essentially, when you start to see it

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Speaker 1: that way, if you separate it out, more people blame

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Speaker 1: Democrats in Congress than Trump. But if you combined Republicans

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Speaker 1: in Congress and Trump, you see where I'm going. But

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Speaker 1: there's essentially a third, a third and a third right.

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Speaker 1: A third are saying it's one party's fault, a third

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Speaker 1: are saying it's the other party's fault, and a third

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Speaker 1: just blame everybody type of mindset. But I thought this

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Speaker 1: was interesting. They just asked a straight up question, which

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Speaker 1: statement comes closer to you view your view, even if

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Speaker 1: neither is exactly right. The Democrats should shut down the

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Speaker 1: government if their demands are not met. Twenty seven percent

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Speaker 1: agreed with that statement. The Democrats should not shut down

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Speaker 1: the government even if their demands are not met. Sixty

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Speaker 1: five percent agreed with that statement. That's the uphill battle

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Speaker 1: here that I think Democrats are dealing with because you've

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Speaker 1: got you've got a sort of a you've got a

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Speaker 1: confluence of things that have happened over the last twenty

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Speaker 1: years that frankly, have conditioned the public about shutdowns. One

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Speaker 1: is they're not that serious. I explained this to you

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Speaker 1: in the last episode. They exempt social Security, they exempt

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Speaker 1: military pay, they exempt TSA, They're not going to disrupt

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Speaker 1: the flights, They exempt food inspectors, they exempt so many

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Speaker 1: things that it's sort of like, all right, it's it's

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Speaker 1: sort of the operational part of government that matters, matters

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Speaker 1: a lot. People will notice over time when those parts

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Speaker 1: of government are shuttered, but they don't notice in the

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Speaker 1: immediate right. So anything that the public might notice immediately,

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Speaker 1: politicians over the years have tried to sort of, you know,

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Speaker 1: shield that right. So that's how you've had these military

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Speaker 1: gets paid. Back pay for federal government workers is now guaranteed.

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Speaker 1: You know, you have all these little things in there

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Speaker 1: that are done to sort of mitigate the consequences of

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Speaker 1: a shutdown in the moment. But as I've said, what

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Speaker 1: it's done is lowered the consequences for a shutdown, if

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Speaker 1: the consequences were much higher, as in Social Security checks

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Speaker 1: don't go out tomorrow morning, heart stop, Military doesn't get

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Speaker 1: paid next Friday, heart stop. I promise you there'd be

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Speaker 1: more urgency to this. But they took all of that out,

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Speaker 1: which is again and so the public has gotten used

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Speaker 1: to it that these shutdowns are annoying, their distractions. You know,

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Speaker 1: they over time impact the economy negatively. They're not good.

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Speaker 1: They slow down. I told you all the wasted government money,

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Speaker 1: wasted time for people, particularly in your fear in a

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Speaker 1: public private defense contractors have time wasted. They still get

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Speaker 1: paid but and the government will eventually remburse him, but

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Speaker 1: they don't do the actual work. And this could be

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Speaker 1: this could be, could be a few weeks, could be longer.

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Speaker 1: So I don't know what the exit ramp is here

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Speaker 1: for anybody. It does seem as if the Trump administration

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Speaker 1: would love to try this out. And the threats that

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Speaker 1: Trump has made actually showcase an issue that I wish

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Speaker 1: more voters cared about, which is Donald Trump does not

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Speaker 1: believe he should govern for people that didn't vote for him,

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Speaker 1: and if anything, he wants to punish anybody by getting

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Speaker 1: rid of any program that the government funds that doesn't

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Speaker 1: benefit him somehow politically. And he's essentially telegraphed this. He goes,

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Speaker 1: I'm going to be able to reverse some things that

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Speaker 1: they're never going to be able to get back. He

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Speaker 1: is almost excited about the opportunity to govern with a

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Speaker 1: political lens and a harsh one at that. Next week,

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Speaker 1: I'm going to have an interview with the mayor of

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Speaker 1: Oklahoma City. But I want to give you a little

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Speaker 1: preview of something he said, which is, this is the

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Speaker 1: consequences of these partisan primaries and the way we nominate people.

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Speaker 1: If you're if you have to answer to everybody all

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Speaker 1: the time in your voters, if you're a member of

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Speaker 1: Congress and you're facing all voters in a primary rather

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Speaker 1: than just this small slice of obsessed partisans, you're going

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Speaker 1: to have a different incentive of who If you have

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Speaker 1: to win over a middle of the road voter to

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Speaker 1: get a nomination to get to the second uh, to

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Speaker 1: get to actual general election, well you're going to comport

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Speaker 1: yourself a hell of a lot differently than if all

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Speaker 1: you have to do is deal with a partisan set

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Speaker 1: of voters. And you know, for him, it was his

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Speaker 1: explanation of my mayor's or the least polarized executive that

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Speaker 1: you have in the country, that all across the country

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Speaker 1: where where the Republican mayors or Democratic mayors, almost all

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Speaker 1: of them treat a pothole as a pothole. They don't

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Speaker 1: look to see what the precinct, how which way the

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Speaker 1: precinct voted before deciding to fill the pothole. Now I

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Speaker 1: know that they're back in the days of the machine

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Speaker 1: political machines of Chicago and New York, there was always

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Speaker 1: rumors that, you know, the daily wards got their potholes filled,

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Speaker 1: and if you weren't a daily guy, you didn't get

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Speaker 1: your pothole filled. But you can't get away with that

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Speaker 1: being a mayor of a city these days, and you

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Speaker 1: don't do that. But it is remarkable to me how

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Speaker 1: often we're seeing some partisans governed this way as governors

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Speaker 1: and as president. And it's particularly a hallmark of magga

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Speaker 1: driven politicians because the whole owned the Libs like it's ok,

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Speaker 1: you know, we're if if we're suffer, if we all suffer,

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Speaker 1: and it makes the Libs cry, then it's a worthy

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Speaker 1: cause to do anyway. That's sort of this mindset at

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Speaker 1: times on the own the libs mentality, and so it's

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Speaker 1: a it is this is the fact that Trump's going

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Speaker 1: to do this. But the point is this gets to

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Speaker 1: sort of all the times you have confrontations with Trump.

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Speaker 1: And don't get me wrong, I do think that that

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Speaker 1: Trump respects a fight er more than he respects a capitulator.

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Speaker 1: So I do think that in some ways, if if

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Speaker 1: the more resistance they put up in certain areas, that

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Speaker 1: in a weird way, Trump will will will respect that

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Speaker 1: because he's a he likes to be resistant, but he's

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Speaker 1: also got a higher tolerance for this pain.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 1: He doesn't care how the mainstream media coverage goes. In

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Speaker 1: his mind, if if a major you know, if the

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Speaker 1: New York Times polling is showing it somehow it's Republican's fault.

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Speaker 1: He sees that as a political asset, not a political liability.

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Speaker 1: And you know, as long as his base is happy,

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Speaker 1: he believes his politics are doing well. And you sort

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Speaker 1: of see that his base is happy, but the rest

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Speaker 1: of the country is pretty sour in his leadership. This

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Speaker 1: latest New York Times Santa Pol shows he is basically

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Speaker 1: at his presidential average. He's sitting at forty three percent

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Speaker 1: job approval in this bowl. It's about what he was

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Speaker 1: the last time. It's about what he was for just

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Speaker 1: about the entire first term that he had from seventeen

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Speaker 1: to twenty. You know, he's never he's never really sniffed

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Speaker 1: fifty percent. And in order to do that, you'd have

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Speaker 1: to have at least fifty percent of independence happy. And

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Speaker 1: that's the problem he's having. Is that independence or more

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Speaker 1: sour about his presidency? Then you know they look they don't.

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Speaker 1: They're not as they're not as sour at his presidency

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Speaker 1: as Democrats, but they're closer to looking like Democrats than

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Speaker 1: they do Republicans when it comes to this. So I'll

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Speaker 1: fully confess here, I have no idea when this ends,

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Speaker 1: or how this sends, whether in what kind of stomach

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Speaker 1: senate Democrats are going to have for how long are

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Speaker 1: they going to go on this? When I think about

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Speaker 1: who the seven votes would be, we know Fetterman's one,

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Speaker 1: Jean Shaheen could be two, she's retiring. Would Tina Smith

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Speaker 1: be three as a retiring senator? I don't know uh

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Speaker 1: as as a third one, Gary Peters. He could be right,

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Speaker 1: you see where I'm going here that some of them

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Speaker 1: who are not going to be in ballots could could

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Speaker 1: do this, uh, if they so chose to. But I

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Speaker 1: don't know if there's seven that are that are ready

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Speaker 1: to break completely. But ask me again in a week,

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Speaker 1: ask me again in two weeks. How aggressive does Russell Voight,

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Speaker 1: the O and B director get and trying to potentially

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Speaker 1: fire furloughed government employees? Is it? Is it aggressive? So

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Speaker 1: I think some of the reaction and some of the

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Speaker 1: stiffness of the spine. How stiff will the democratic spine

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Speaker 1: be depends I think on how aggressive omb is in

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Speaker 1: using the shutdown to maybe reorient government permanently in some

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Speaker 1: form or another. So we're, you know, like with many

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Speaker 1: things with Trump urban uncharted territory. Unlike the previous shutdown.

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Speaker 1: With Trump, he's got a he's got two aids who

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Speaker 1: know their way around the bureaucracy. Russell Void's been thinking

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Speaker 1: about this for years as the author of Project twenty

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Speaker 1: twenty five, and Stephen Miller understands how to manipulate the

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Speaker 1: bureaucracy in ways that are pretty much second to none

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Speaker 1: of any presidential aid I've ever covered. Regardless of what

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Speaker 1: you think of his politics, he's extraordinarily knowledgeable on how

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Speaker 1: to on the co essentially the legal code, and on

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Speaker 1: the ability to sort of tinker with the federal government.

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Speaker 1: We saw it during the pandemic, how he used it

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Speaker 1: to shut down the border, came up with sort of

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Speaker 1: some interesting unique ways in rationales to do it. And

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Speaker 1: so you know, that's that to me, is the uncharted

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Speaker 1: territory that we're entering and that we don't know a

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Speaker 1: lot about, and we don't know how aggressive and where

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Speaker 1: this has headed. But I think if there's a big

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Speaker 1: danger for the Democrats besides what I just outlined with

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Speaker 1: the aggressiveness of Trump, the other one is whether the

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Speaker 1: public is just paying attention, whether even the activists, whether

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Speaker 1: this is turning into action, whether it does fire up folks,

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Speaker 1: or if there's sort of an exhaustion that comes with this,

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Speaker 1: because again, the Democrats have never been on this side

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Speaker 1: of a government shutdown, and we're going to see a

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Speaker 1: lot of conservative media sites re treading all these quotes

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Speaker 1: from the Chuck Schumers over the years of Nancy Pelosi's

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Speaker 1: talking about clean CRS. Government shutdowns are bad, they should

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Speaker 1: never happen, etc.

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Speaker 2: Etc. Etc.

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Speaker 1: And that could take a toll as well, and how

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Speaker 1: much of all of that gets traction. But this gets

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Speaker 1: into a larger issue, which is actually what I tackle.

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Speaker 1: By the way, it's worth noting the Pew Center came

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Speaker 1: out with some new poll polling that happened to hit today,

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Speaker 1: and what they had is they had some favorable unfavorable

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Speaker 1: ratings on the congressional leaders. And what's interesting is just

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Speaker 1: how unpopular Chuck Schumer. Chuck Schumer is the new Mitch McConnell.

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Speaker 1: Mitch McConnell was always the most unpopular of the four

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Speaker 1: political leaders. When it was McConnell, Schumer, Pelosi, and McCarthy.

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Speaker 1: McConnell was always far and away the most unpopular because

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Speaker 1: McConnell was the only one that had negative ratings among

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Speaker 1: Democrats and negative ratings among Republicans. Well, Chuck Schumer, welcome

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Speaker 1: to Mitch McConnell country. He not only has negative ratings

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Speaker 1: among Republicans, but he has a negative ratings just narrowly

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Speaker 1: thirty nine unfavorable, thirty five favorable among Democrats. By the way,

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Speaker 1: Jeffrey's numbers are not bad overall, he's got good numbers

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Speaker 1: among Democrats two to one on that favorable rating overall.

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Speaker 1: That allows him to have a thirty to twenty four,

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Speaker 1: so he's he's got some he's got some room here.

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Speaker 1: He's sort of got a net positive view, which is

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Speaker 1: rare for a gouvernile. John Thune, the least known of

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Speaker 1: the of the of the current set of four, also

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Speaker 1: has a net positive. He's narrowly net negative. Je excuse me,

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Speaker 1: I read this wrong. Jeffreys is narrowly net negative. But

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Speaker 1: his positive rating with Republicans is with Democrats, is better

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Speaker 1: than for instance, Thunes p a a rating is among Republicans.

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Speaker 1: Sorry for confusing that there a little bit, but the

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Speaker 1: real headline of this is Chuck Schumer is unpopped more

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Speaker 1: unpopular among Democrats than he is popular among Democrats. And

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Speaker 1: that also means he's going to be really resistant to

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Speaker 1: caving because he's really afraid of the base. It's the

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Speaker 1: base that's the most angry with Schumer. He sort of

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Speaker 1: mismanaged the communication of the first one. I think he

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Speaker 1: made the right call, but he spent a day talking

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Speaker 1: up a shutdown and then completely reversed course, which is

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Speaker 1: what really I think angered the left. He sort of

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Speaker 1: he led him on and then he yanked the carpet

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Speaker 1: from underneath them. I think on this one, he's going

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Speaker 1: to want to stick it out longer. Well put it

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Speaker 1: this way, If he's interested in running again and he's

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Speaker 1: up in twenty twenty eight, he's going to probably care

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Speaker 1: more about what the base thinks of this shutdown than

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Speaker 1: what swing voters think of this. Show them. But this

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Speaker 1: gets to the sort of larger dilemma that I think

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Speaker 1: democrats face, and it's the subject of my substack column.

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Speaker 1: I encourage you to go subscribe. I don't charge any

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Speaker 1: it's all free. I don't charge for this podcast. It's

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Speaker 1: all free. I do not want to be captive to

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Speaker 1: an audience. I don't want to be captive to a paywall.

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Speaker 1: I think that has been that is that becomes self fulfilling.

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Speaker 1: I am trying to swerve away from that way of

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Speaker 1: building an independent media operation. So it is free and

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Speaker 1: I'm not going to triculator and charge it. Okay. The

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Speaker 1: one place where you do have to pay to go

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Speaker 1: helping a whole bunch of independent journalists. There's a reason

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Speaker 1: results matter more than promises, just like there's a reason

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Speaker 1: Morgan and Morgan is America's largest injury law firm. For

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Speaker 1: insurance company originally offered. That original offer six hundred and

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Speaker 1: fifty thousand dollars twenty six million, six hundred and fifty

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Speaker 1: thousand dollars. So with more than one thousand lawyers across

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Speaker 1: Slash podcast or Dow Pound Law Pound five to two

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Speaker 1: firms are not the same. So check out Morgan and Morgan.

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Speaker 1: Their fee is free unless they win. But in the

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Speaker 1: substec I talk about this democratic dilemma, and that is

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Speaker 1: if Democrats want if a Democrat wants to win the

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Speaker 1: White House in twenty twenty eight, just saying Donald Trump

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Speaker 1: is an existential threat and a dictator and a fascist

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Speaker 1: isn't going to cut it, because in order to win

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Speaker 1: the presidency, you're going to have to win over some

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Speaker 1: Trump voters. So and in order to have a conversation

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Speaker 1: with us Trump voters, you're going to have to admit

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Speaker 1: that Trump was right about some things. And you can

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Speaker 1: do it in a way. You know that Trump has

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Speaker 1: identified problems, He's just been terrible at solving them. In fact,

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Speaker 1: his solutions make things worse in some cases. Right, he's

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Speaker 1: trying to return manufacturing back to America. His transactional tariff policy,

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Speaker 1: which is turning us into a kleptocracy, is a horrendous

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Speaker 1: way to do this, Terrible for the economy, terrible for

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Speaker 1: the consumer, and doing nothing to bring manufacturing back. But

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Speaker 1: what the voters. You got to sort of understand what

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Speaker 1: the voters were voting for when they voted for Trump

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Speaker 1: in sixteen, and then they did it again in twenty four.

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Speaker 1: It's almost like the old Verizon commercial. Can you hear me? Now?

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Speaker 1: You know, Democrats misinterpreted the twenty twenty election. They thought

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Speaker 1: the voters were like, Yep, Donald Trump was a mistake.

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Speaker 1: This is an accident of history, and he needs to

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Speaker 1: be Trump and Trump is that needs to be excommunicated

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Speaker 1: essentially from mainstream American political debate. That's not what the

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Speaker 1: voters were saying. By the way, if Joe Biden had

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Speaker 1: had four hundred electoral votes, you could have made the

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Speaker 1: case that that's what the voters were saying. If he

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Speaker 1: did have, but Joe Biden, while he won every swing

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Speaker 1: stay but North Carolina, it only would have taken a couple,

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Speaker 1: you know, a couple of hundred thousand, basic, about one

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Speaker 1: hundred thousand plus votes for Trump to win the electoral college. Right,

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Speaker 1: It wasn't a landslide. It wasn't some sort of massive

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Speaker 1: repudiation of trump Ism. What it was was a bunch

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Speaker 1: of swing voters exhausted from COVID and wanting off the

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Speaker 1: roller coaster. But it wasn't a repudiation of the reason

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Speaker 1: why Trump got elected in the first place. You know,

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Speaker 1: and I think when you now, I think we have

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Speaker 1: to view Trump's election and this and this is sort

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Speaker 1: of the blueprint that I think any successful Democrat in

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Speaker 1: twenty twenty eight has to follow. And that is, you know,

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Speaker 1: in fifteen, when Donald Trump essentially launched his candidacy by

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Speaker 1: going after John McCain and the Bush family, many of

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Speaker 1: us stuck in some conventional thinking, myself included, thought, well,

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Speaker 1: that's a mistake. Republicans are not going to tolerate that.

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Speaker 1: They're going to punish him for that. It turns out,

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Speaker 1: and I don't think Trump knew this is what he

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Speaker 1: was doing by doing it. He just did it because

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Speaker 1: it was his instinct. He just got angry at people

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Speaker 1: who didn't take him seriously. This was no strategy. But

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Speaker 1: you know, and I think the biggest sometimes we all

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Speaker 1: try to look for a strategy, and with Trump, Trump

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Speaker 1: just sort of stumbles into these things. But the voters

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Speaker 1: have a strategy, okay, And that's where I think Democrats

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Speaker 1: in general have to respect voter decision here a lot

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Speaker 1: better than they go about doing it right now, by

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Speaker 1: signaling that he was willing to take on McCain and Bush.

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Speaker 1: He signaled he was a different type of Republican, that

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Speaker 1: he wasn't going to be the same type of Republican

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Speaker 1: that they were used to that was doing essentially nothing

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Speaker 1: but losing elections for them, Going back to George H. W. Bush,

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Speaker 1: Bob Dole, George W. Bush winning only the popular vote

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Speaker 1: once right, John McCain met Ronniey. It singles that he's different,

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Speaker 1: he's willing a bucket. Party made him, gave him an

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Speaker 1: independent credential. So suddenly you had non Republicans going, huh,

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Speaker 1: I'm curious what that guy's up to. I want to

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Speaker 1: check that out. And so, yes, the sixteen election was

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Speaker 1: more of a vote against Clinton than it was a

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Speaker 1: vote for Trump. But Trump was a vehicle to say, no,

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Speaker 1: we don't want establishment status quote politics.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 1: Biden essentially won promising status quot politics because the pandemic

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Speaker 1: had so exhausted everybody from Trump's roller coaster that, yeah,

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Speaker 1: that is what the public wanted. Now, Biden didn't bring that, right,

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Speaker 1: Biden didn't do that. Biden instead governed very aggressively farther

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Speaker 1: to the left than he had a mandate for, and

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Speaker 1: they attempted repudiation in their form of Essentially, the movement

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Speaker 1: wanted to excommunicate Trump and trump Ism. And I think

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Speaker 1: the reason the voter ended up rallying around Trump was

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Speaker 1: not because they liked Trump, but they didn't want all

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Speaker 1: of us to forget the initial message in the first place,

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Speaker 1: the same power, the same message that was sent by

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Speaker 1: electing Barack Obama, the same message that was sent by

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Speaker 1: electing Donald Trump, which is, we don't want the same old,

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Speaker 1: same old. We want something entirely different. We want not

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Speaker 1: restoration preservation, We want annihilation, if you will, of the

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Speaker 1: way things work, and a rebuilding and a renewal of

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Speaker 1: some sort. And in order to talk to that voter

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Speaker 1: that didn't like the way things have been going, who's

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Speaker 1: been a Literally they voted Obama, they voted Trump, they

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Speaker 1: voted Biden, they went back to Trump. Right, who are

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Speaker 1: these unsatisfied people?

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Speaker 2: Right?

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Speaker 1: They feel they don't love their ability to move up

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Speaker 1: the economic ladder. It feels like there's a whole bunch

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Speaker 1: of rungs missing between them and the upper middle class,

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Speaker 1: Like they'd love to reach for it, but they can't

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Speaker 1: even get there. Income inequality has gotten worse, So there's

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Speaker 1: I think it's that disconnect that a future. So I

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Speaker 1: say this and that in order to have a conversation

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Speaker 1: with the very voters that reluctantly voted for Trump. These

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Speaker 1: people don't like them. This is great. I was telling

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Speaker 1: you about a focus group last week that I observed

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Speaker 1: out of Michigan of Biden Trump voters. And there's one

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Speaker 1: voter going on and on not liking all the power

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Speaker 1: that he's accumulating. I worry he wants to be a dictator,

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00:26:56,160 --> 00:26:58,560
Speaker 1: this voter said. And then like, well, do you approve

431
00:26:58,560 --> 00:27:00,480
Speaker 1: of the job he's doing? Yeah, i'd say it. Do

432
00:27:00,480 --> 00:27:03,879
Speaker 1: you regret your vote? No? I don't regret my vote.

433
00:27:04,600 --> 00:27:07,040
Speaker 1: So they, you know, they kind of already know that

434
00:27:07,119 --> 00:27:09,879
Speaker 1: he doesn't really have the temperament for the job and

435
00:27:10,280 --> 00:27:13,800
Speaker 1: isn't really and is going too far in what they

436
00:27:13,800 --> 00:27:17,640
Speaker 1: want him to do the latter, but they wanted something.

437
00:27:17,680 --> 00:27:21,159
Speaker 1: They wanted somebody to attempt something. Their biggest fear on

438
00:27:21,280 --> 00:27:24,000
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris was that she wasn't going to change things.

439
00:27:24,040 --> 00:27:27,400
Speaker 1: She was gonna be status quo. And you know, look

440
00:27:27,400 --> 00:27:29,359
Speaker 1: it was revealing in her own memoir when she said

441
00:27:30,040 --> 00:27:33,320
Speaker 1: she underestimated the need that people wanted to know she

442
00:27:33,440 --> 00:27:35,359
Speaker 1: was going to be a lot different from Joe Biden.

443
00:27:35,760 --> 00:27:38,640
Speaker 1: She thought her mere presence was enough to indicate she'd

444
00:27:38,680 --> 00:27:42,080
Speaker 1: be different from Joe Biden. I think we've learned in

445
00:27:42,119 --> 00:27:44,680
Speaker 1: politics you got to say something over and over again,

446
00:27:44,720 --> 00:27:49,040
Speaker 1: and you sometimes have to make a symbolic sacrifice at

447
00:27:49,080 --> 00:27:52,000
Speaker 1: the altar of sorts in order to prove to this

448
00:27:52,080 --> 00:27:54,600
Speaker 1: group of voters no, no, no, no, you're going to be

449
00:27:54,640 --> 00:28:00,479
Speaker 1: different in one form or another. And I say all

450
00:28:00,520 --> 00:28:03,920
Speaker 1: that in that I know that some on the left

451
00:28:03,920 --> 00:28:06,119
Speaker 1: don't want to hear that. That you can't acknowledge that

452
00:28:06,160 --> 00:28:15,159
Speaker 1: Trump's gotten has identified some issues that the Democrats have

453
00:28:15,160 --> 00:28:21,280
Speaker 1: failed to address, and that the threat to democracy that

454
00:28:21,320 --> 00:28:25,280
Speaker 1: he presents is such a front and center threat that

455
00:28:25,280 --> 00:28:28,320
Speaker 1: that needs to be the focal point. The problem is,

456
00:28:28,560 --> 00:28:32,320
Speaker 1: I don't think the voters you need to win are

457
00:28:32,320 --> 00:28:37,679
Speaker 1: interested in that conversation, and they still want to know

458
00:28:37,720 --> 00:28:40,640
Speaker 1: what are you going to do for them? They understand

459
00:28:41,400 --> 00:28:44,600
Speaker 1: what he's doing, it's still going to come back of

460
00:28:44,720 --> 00:28:46,880
Speaker 1: what are you going to do for me? And what

461
00:28:46,920 --> 00:28:49,120
Speaker 1: are you going to do about these problems he's identified?

462
00:28:51,200 --> 00:28:56,680
Speaker 1: Are you going to do something about it? So you know,

463
00:28:56,720 --> 00:29:01,960
Speaker 1: I think about it going back to Bill Clinton in

464
00:29:02,040 --> 00:29:05,560
Speaker 1: the eighties. The Democrats spent the eighties trying to repudiate

465
00:29:05,600 --> 00:29:10,000
Speaker 1: Reagan and Reaganism. Even in eighty eight, the campaign wasn't

466
00:29:10,040 --> 00:29:14,000
Speaker 1: trying to sort of accept the premise that Reagan was

467
00:29:14,000 --> 00:29:19,320
Speaker 1: a successful two term president. There was still the DNA

468
00:29:19,400 --> 00:29:23,560
Speaker 1: of the Democrats in eighty eight was no, the Republicans

469
00:29:23,560 --> 00:29:28,320
Speaker 1: were wrong about everything. By ninety two, after another shellacking

470
00:29:28,360 --> 00:29:33,240
Speaker 1: in eighty eight, Bill Clinton's was not sitting here repudiating

471
00:29:33,280 --> 00:29:37,280
Speaker 1: everything Reagan did. In fact, I always say that you know,

472
00:29:38,320 --> 00:29:42,360
Speaker 1: you knew Reagan won the argument when in nineteen ninety

473
00:29:42,360 --> 00:29:44,040
Speaker 1: five Bill Clinton said the air of big government is

474
00:29:44,080 --> 00:29:47,640
Speaker 1: over right when a Democrat said that, just like I

475
00:29:47,640 --> 00:29:49,880
Speaker 1: believe in some ways. Barack Obama won the argument on

476
00:29:50,000 --> 00:29:54,600
Speaker 1: entitlements when Donald Trump is out there campaigning saying Social

477
00:29:54,600 --> 00:29:58,360
Speaker 1: Security and Medicare cannot be touched, right, that is you know,

478
00:29:58,440 --> 00:30:00,840
Speaker 1: that was the central argument he said of the twenty

479
00:30:00,880 --> 00:30:06,240
Speaker 1: twelve campaign between Obama and Romney. Ryan and Donald Trump said,

480
00:30:06,280 --> 00:30:08,760
Speaker 1: you know, Obama was right. He doesn't say it that way,

481
00:30:09,080 --> 00:30:12,520
Speaker 1: but he's essentially saying it, which opened the door for

482
00:30:12,640 --> 00:30:14,440
Speaker 1: him to have a conversation with a whole bunch of

483
00:30:14,440 --> 00:30:18,440
Speaker 1: other voters who basically, while they may have agreed with

484
00:30:18,680 --> 00:30:21,040
Speaker 1: Republicans and a lot of the cultural issues, just didn't

485
00:30:21,080 --> 00:30:25,840
Speaker 1: trust them on issues like social security and healthcare. And

486
00:30:25,880 --> 00:30:28,040
Speaker 1: then Donald Trump found a way to have that conversation

487
00:30:28,080 --> 00:30:29,720
Speaker 1: by saying no, no, no, I hear you on that.

488
00:30:31,400 --> 00:30:36,360
Speaker 1: It's a similar vibe. You got to get somewhere where,

489
00:30:36,720 --> 00:30:40,880
Speaker 1: whether it's crime in the cities, security at the border,

490
00:30:43,080 --> 00:30:47,640
Speaker 1: skepticism of big tech, getting other countries to share the

491
00:30:47,680 --> 00:30:51,480
Speaker 1: burden of global security. You do it in a way.

492
00:30:51,680 --> 00:30:56,240
Speaker 1: You could say, hey, look, he's identified these problems, but

493
00:30:56,360 --> 00:30:59,719
Speaker 1: he's chosen ways that actually make it worse, doesn't make

494
00:30:59,720 --> 00:31:03,880
Speaker 1: it better, or he you know, Essentially, Democrats would be

495
00:31:03,880 --> 00:31:08,760
Speaker 1: better served by running Trump against Trump, saying, hey, you know,

496
00:31:08,800 --> 00:31:10,520
Speaker 1: Trump said he was going to do this. I was

497
00:31:10,560 --> 00:31:12,680
Speaker 1: hoping that he actually might follow through on something. The

498
00:31:12,680 --> 00:31:15,360
Speaker 1: guy never follows through in everything. But it's too bad,

499
00:31:15,400 --> 00:31:21,360
Speaker 1: and here's something but I And then you have days

500
00:31:21,480 --> 00:31:25,560
Speaker 1: like what happened Tuesday, where Trump behaves in such an

501
00:31:25,640 --> 00:31:29,080
Speaker 1: Unamerican way, behaves in pretty much the worst way a

502
00:31:29,120 --> 00:31:31,840
Speaker 1: commander in chief could ever behave in front of America's

503
00:31:31,920 --> 00:31:36,440
Speaker 1: uniformed military leaders. And I understand why there are some

504
00:31:36,520 --> 00:31:38,480
Speaker 1: on the left that just can't stomach the idea that

505
00:31:38,600 --> 00:31:42,800
Speaker 1: gift accept the premise that there are some things his

506
00:31:42,920 --> 00:31:49,040
Speaker 1: presidency has identified that voters like. All Right, I get it.

507
00:31:50,160 --> 00:31:52,520
Speaker 1: I mean what he did in front of the uniform

508
00:31:52,560 --> 00:31:59,320
Speaker 1: military was outrageous, the essentially declaring war on American citizens.

509
00:32:02,200 --> 00:32:04,480
Speaker 1: You know, he's really put these military leaders in an

510
00:32:04,520 --> 00:32:08,760
Speaker 1: impossible situation. None of them have been given an illegal

511
00:32:08,840 --> 00:32:13,480
Speaker 1: order yet, and I think the moment, you know, if

512
00:32:13,520 --> 00:32:16,360
Speaker 1: you're wondering, why aren't there should there be mass resignations.

513
00:32:17,960 --> 00:32:21,600
Speaker 1: I've talked to plenty of my friends that have served,

514
00:32:21,720 --> 00:32:25,200
Speaker 1: and I've asked them about this, whether they're they're disappointed

515
00:32:25,240 --> 00:32:27,560
Speaker 1: that there hasn't been resignations in the upper echelons and

516
00:32:27,600 --> 00:32:30,680
Speaker 1: military rank to this just clown show that is Pete

517
00:32:30,680 --> 00:32:34,840
Speaker 1: hag Saith and what Trump has been doing by essentially

518
00:32:35,040 --> 00:32:39,480
Speaker 1: desperately trying to politicize the military, pit the military, you know,

519
00:32:39,560 --> 00:32:44,920
Speaker 1: essentially say the military has to be pro MAGA and

520
00:32:45,000 --> 00:32:47,680
Speaker 1: they say, you know, until he until he issues an

521
00:32:47,800 --> 00:32:54,360
Speaker 1: un constitutional order, unlawful order. You know, if you're gonna

522
00:32:55,000 --> 00:32:57,320
Speaker 1: if the whole goal of the military is to stay

523
00:32:57,360 --> 00:33:01,200
Speaker 1: above politics, a political you salute whoever the people of

524
00:33:01,240 --> 00:33:04,800
Speaker 1: the country decide to elect to that office. Then the

525
00:33:04,800 --> 00:33:07,920
Speaker 1: way they behave today is exactly correct, or excuse me,

526
00:33:07,960 --> 00:33:12,160
Speaker 1: behaved on Tuesday is exactly correct. Yes, I'm doing this

527
00:33:12,200 --> 00:33:14,600
Speaker 1: on a Tuesday evening going into tomorrow.

528
00:33:17,120 --> 00:33:17,520
Speaker 2: And.

529
00:33:20,280 --> 00:33:26,120
Speaker 1: It's it's frankly, I think we should be proud of

530
00:33:26,360 --> 00:33:29,920
Speaker 1: the fact that they stood there silently. They made it

531
00:33:29,960 --> 00:33:32,640
Speaker 1: as awkward as possible for hag Seth and Trump up there.

532
00:33:33,560 --> 00:33:36,120
Speaker 1: They put the country first. They put their rank and

533
00:33:36,160 --> 00:33:40,240
Speaker 1: file first. They put the military ahead of politics, ahead

534
00:33:40,240 --> 00:33:42,760
Speaker 1: of ahead of whatever they thought they had to do.

535
00:33:42,800 --> 00:33:46,240
Speaker 1: They showed up because they were ordered to. Now, it's

536
00:33:46,320 --> 00:33:49,560
Speaker 1: kind of pathetic that that hag Seth is trying to

537
00:33:50,080 --> 00:33:52,840
Speaker 1: lecture a whole bunch of people that have gotten a

538
00:33:52,840 --> 00:33:54,880
Speaker 1: whole lot of more promotions than he ever got went

539
00:33:54,960 --> 00:33:57,520
Speaker 1: in the military, and he's trying to lecture these guys

540
00:33:57,560 --> 00:34:02,920
Speaker 1: about what a warrior ethosays, Oh to be a oh

541
00:34:02,960 --> 00:34:04,960
Speaker 1: to be a fly in their brains as they were

542
00:34:05,000 --> 00:34:12,280
Speaker 1: thinking about about about this, but just think about where

543
00:34:12,760 --> 00:34:15,520
Speaker 1: you don't you don't really you didn't earn the respect,

544
00:34:15,560 --> 00:34:17,520
Speaker 1: but you have to beg for it. You have to

545
00:34:17,560 --> 00:34:23,480
Speaker 1: demand it. Man whoever wants to be in a position

546
00:34:23,520 --> 00:34:27,239
Speaker 1: where they have to beg for respect. If you are

547
00:34:27,280 --> 00:34:30,120
Speaker 1: in a position of leadership and you have not earned

548
00:34:30,160 --> 00:34:34,600
Speaker 1: the respect of the people you're leading, it's on you.

549
00:34:34,600 --> 00:34:39,480
Speaker 1: You've done something wrong here. So today's spectacle is and

550
00:34:39,719 --> 00:34:44,000
Speaker 1: it is it is alarming. It is everything that folks

551
00:34:44,040 --> 00:34:47,040
Speaker 1: that plenty of folks are saying, and it is going

552
00:34:47,120 --> 00:34:49,120
Speaker 1: to be the counter that many have to what I'm

553
00:34:49,160 --> 00:34:53,480
Speaker 1: saying about. If you're gonna if you're gonna sort of

554
00:34:53,680 --> 00:34:58,120
Speaker 1: win back voters who left the Democratic Party, you're gonna

555
00:34:58,120 --> 00:35:02,399
Speaker 1: have to acknowledge the reason why they left, and you're

556
00:35:02,440 --> 00:35:04,440
Speaker 1: going to have to acknowledge that there were some things

557
00:35:04,440 --> 00:35:11,680
Speaker 1: that Trump tapped into that the Democrats failed on. So

558
00:35:12,520 --> 00:35:17,400
Speaker 1: it's I get it instinctively, you're alarmed and want to

559
00:35:17,400 --> 00:35:21,719
Speaker 1: fight over here. But in some ways he's the one

560
00:35:21,760 --> 00:35:25,720
Speaker 1: trying to bait everybody. He wants those debates on his terms.

561
00:35:25,719 --> 00:35:28,759
Speaker 1: He would love for people to spend all this time

562
00:35:28,800 --> 00:35:31,799
Speaker 1: criticizing him about military and how he's trying to use

563
00:35:31,840 --> 00:35:36,799
Speaker 1: it to deal with crime in the streets. What he

564
00:35:36,840 --> 00:35:41,080
Speaker 1: would be have a harder time dealing with is when

565
00:35:41,120 --> 00:35:43,960
Speaker 1: you're like, boy, you know, well, he's right about getting manufacturing.

566
00:35:43,960 --> 00:35:46,920
Speaker 1: He's too bad. He's taking too many bribes from companies

567
00:35:48,719 --> 00:35:52,239
Speaker 1: in different ways that he's been that he's had his

568
00:35:52,280 --> 00:35:56,160
Speaker 1: own personal wealth enhands in lieu of actually doing what

569
00:35:56,200 --> 00:36:02,520
Speaker 1: he promised to do. So you're better off, particularly in

570
00:36:02,600 --> 00:36:06,600
Speaker 1: a democracy that I still think is functioning here. Okay,

571
00:36:07,040 --> 00:36:09,760
Speaker 1: I know it's we are not in a great place.

572
00:36:10,400 --> 00:36:13,200
Speaker 1: By the way, the number two most important issue to

573
00:36:13,360 --> 00:36:17,000
Speaker 1: voters who volunteered, the New York Times did not give

574
00:36:17,040 --> 00:36:19,920
Speaker 1: them a list. Number one was the economy and number

575
00:36:19,920 --> 00:36:22,880
Speaker 1: two was political division. It was the only two issues

576
00:36:22,880 --> 00:36:25,319
Speaker 1: that got double digits. And again I liked the way

577
00:36:25,360 --> 00:36:27,600
Speaker 1: the Times did it. They did not offer a list

578
00:36:27,600 --> 00:36:30,640
Speaker 1: of issues and asked the respondents to pick. They said,

579
00:36:30,640 --> 00:36:34,160
Speaker 1: what's the most important issue, and they just waited for

580
00:36:34,239 --> 00:36:37,000
Speaker 1: them to say. It is the better way to figure

581
00:36:37,000 --> 00:36:40,160
Speaker 1: out what are the issues that voters care about most?

582
00:36:41,520 --> 00:36:44,040
Speaker 1: You ask them and you let them. You don't prod them,

583
00:36:44,120 --> 00:36:47,160
Speaker 1: you don't push them, You let them tell you. The

584
00:36:47,200 --> 00:36:49,640
Speaker 1: fact that political division was two. The fact that we

585
00:36:49,680 --> 00:36:52,240
Speaker 1: are now this poll and another one over sixty percent

586
00:36:52,280 --> 00:36:55,040
Speaker 1: think we have a problem with political division in this country.

587
00:36:55,239 --> 00:36:58,279
Speaker 1: Another poll identified it as a political crisis. There's no

588
00:36:58,400 --> 00:37:02,000
Speaker 1: doubt that that that that the country is going to

589
00:37:02,000 --> 00:37:03,680
Speaker 1: be looking for a leader that's going to figure out

590
00:37:03,719 --> 00:37:06,160
Speaker 1: how to bring us together. But part of being able

591
00:37:06,160 --> 00:37:12,160
Speaker 1: to bring us together is acknowledging you know what it

592
00:37:12,280 --> 00:37:19,680
Speaker 1: is that that Trump tapped into that the Democratic Party

593
00:37:19,719 --> 00:37:27,960
Speaker 1: needs to lean into more. So we'll see, UH coming up,

594
00:37:28,040 --> 00:37:33,000
Speaker 1: I have a terrific interview with a journalist, Leland Vittert.

595
00:37:33,160 --> 00:37:36,239
Speaker 1: He is an anchor and reporter for News Nation, used

596
00:37:36,239 --> 00:37:39,200
Speaker 1: to be with Fox News UH, and he wrote a

597
00:37:39,239 --> 00:37:43,240
Speaker 1: personal story he dedicated to his UH. It's called Born Lucky,

598
00:37:43,880 --> 00:37:48,160
Speaker 1: A dedicated father, grateful son, and my journey with autism. Obviously,

599
00:37:48,239 --> 00:37:50,839
Speaker 1: autism has been in the news a lot with with

600
00:37:51,600 --> 00:37:57,680
Speaker 1: Kennedy and Trump out there trying to UH claim that

601
00:37:57,680 --> 00:38:02,399
Speaker 1: that maybe they have found the cause of autism. And

602
00:38:02,760 --> 00:38:05,440
Speaker 1: I think what Leland's story is, and I really I

603
00:38:05,440 --> 00:38:09,080
Speaker 1: think you'll find it inspiring, is you know, it's sort

604
00:38:09,080 --> 00:38:12,640
Speaker 1: of as the saying goes in the in the in

605
00:38:12,680 --> 00:38:16,719
Speaker 1: the world of autism, when you've met one person with autism,

606
00:38:16,719 --> 00:38:20,080
Speaker 1: you've met one person with autism, that every journey is different,

607
00:38:21,160 --> 00:38:29,320
Speaker 1: every ability sort of ceiling is different, and in many ways,

608
00:38:29,480 --> 00:38:32,399
Speaker 1: I think what what Leland and his father are trying

609
00:38:32,440 --> 00:38:37,360
Speaker 1: to say is, look, the regular programming codes to raising

610
00:38:37,480 --> 00:38:42,799
Speaker 1: a kid without autism didn't work with a kid with autism.

611
00:38:42,880 --> 00:38:47,680
Speaker 1: But Leland's dad essentially figured out another code and another

612
00:38:47,719 --> 00:38:52,680
Speaker 1: way to do this. And Leland's a very successful journalist,

613
00:38:54,239 --> 00:38:58,120
Speaker 1: is married, is going to have is. So it is

614
00:38:58,160 --> 00:39:01,839
Speaker 1: a remarkable story, particularly if you've got somebody in your

615
00:39:01,880 --> 00:39:05,400
Speaker 1: family or you've dealt with this. I think the book

616
00:39:05,480 --> 00:39:10,239
Speaker 1: is worthwhile because it's Look, it's not a book that

617
00:39:10,320 --> 00:39:12,840
Speaker 1: tells you this is how you do it. It's simply

618
00:39:12,840 --> 00:39:15,560
Speaker 1: a book that shares their story. So anyway, for those

619
00:39:15,600 --> 00:39:17,920
Speaker 1: of you listening for the full thing, this is definitely

620
00:39:19,200 --> 00:39:21,120
Speaker 1: that's what's coming up next. We'll sneak in a break

621
00:39:21,800 --> 00:39:38,160
Speaker 1: and after the break my conversation with Leland and Vitter. Well,

622
00:39:38,200 --> 00:39:41,359
Speaker 1: joining me now is a familiar face to many of you.

623
00:39:41,440 --> 00:39:44,919
Speaker 1: It's Leland Vitter. He is a anchor at News Nation,

624
00:39:45,120 --> 00:39:48,879
Speaker 1: long time before that, longtime correspondent and journalist for Fox News,

625
00:39:50,280 --> 00:39:53,760
Speaker 1: and he's out with a new personal memoir of sorts.

626
00:39:54,000 --> 00:39:58,000
Speaker 1: It's called Born Lucky. A dedicated father, a grateful son,

627
00:39:58,320 --> 00:40:02,919
Speaker 1: and my Journey with autom It's a very moving book.

628
00:40:02,920 --> 00:40:07,080
Speaker 1: And if you're somebody, if you're a parent, if you

629
00:40:07,640 --> 00:40:13,160
Speaker 1: have a child struggling with some of these issues, I

630
00:40:13,200 --> 00:40:15,319
Speaker 1: think you're going to find this story in this book

631
00:40:15,360 --> 00:40:19,000
Speaker 1: quite inspiring. And with this issue in the news, it

632
00:40:19,120 --> 00:40:23,520
Speaker 1: is worth looking at how families deal with this, not

633
00:40:23,600 --> 00:40:25,239
Speaker 1: how governed. We're going to look at this from a

634
00:40:25,280 --> 00:40:31,560
Speaker 1: family perspective, not necessarily a government perspective. Leland, Welcome to

635
00:40:31,600 --> 00:40:32,080
Speaker 1: the podcast.

636
00:40:32,160 --> 00:40:34,279
Speaker 2: Nice to see you, Dot, Great to be with you.

637
00:40:35,560 --> 00:40:37,279
Speaker 2: I think we would say, as I've watched you for

638
00:40:37,400 --> 00:40:40,320
Speaker 2: many many years on radio, they would say, right, you know,

639
00:40:40,440 --> 00:40:43,640
Speaker 2: longtime listener, first time call. So it's great, great to

640
00:40:43,680 --> 00:40:46,839
Speaker 2: be with So, you.

641
00:40:46,800 --> 00:40:50,120
Speaker 1: Know, I had a I found your book very compelling

642
00:40:50,200 --> 00:40:52,600
Speaker 1: and it reminded me of my friend and I'm sure

643
00:40:52,640 --> 00:40:56,120
Speaker 1: you know this story because you're probably familiar with them,

644
00:40:56,120 --> 00:41:00,200
Speaker 1: with my friend Ron Fournier, longtime political journals that the

645
00:41:00,200 --> 00:41:03,880
Speaker 1: Associated Press, who wrote a book about his journey with

646
00:41:03,920 --> 00:41:08,080
Speaker 1: his son and the battle that they had and how

647
00:41:08,160 --> 00:41:12,680
Speaker 1: and just your stories about how Principles were treating you

648
00:41:12,960 --> 00:41:16,360
Speaker 1: and your parents and there and it's just it's just

649
00:41:16,400 --> 00:41:20,920
Speaker 1: such a reminder how little the public does understand autism,

650
00:41:21,120 --> 00:41:26,000
Speaker 1: understand childhood development issues, and how little we understand is

651
00:41:26,040 --> 00:41:27,400
Speaker 1: how you can overcome.

652
00:41:27,000 --> 00:41:29,320
Speaker 2: Them, right, And I think yeah.

653
00:41:29,080 --> 00:41:31,880
Speaker 1: And I think that to me feels like the purpose

654
00:41:31,920 --> 00:41:32,399
Speaker 1: of this book.

655
00:41:32,520 --> 00:41:35,560
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, Look you said it right, and I think

656
00:41:35,600 --> 00:41:38,120
Speaker 2: you've picked up on it. Chuck when you said, for

657
00:41:38,360 --> 00:41:43,799
Speaker 2: any parent, grandparent, aunt uncle, who has a kid who

658
00:41:43,840 --> 00:41:48,879
Speaker 2: is struggling, because it goes way beyond autism to ADHD, anxiety,

659
00:41:49,280 --> 00:41:53,399
Speaker 2: physical disabilities, just the general bullying that goes on now

660
00:41:53,440 --> 00:41:55,560
Speaker 2: and is so aggressive, and there's so many kids who

661
00:41:55,600 --> 00:41:57,480
Speaker 2: are struggling having such a hard time. And when I

662
00:41:57,600 --> 00:42:00,839
Speaker 2: was diagnosed, you know, when my parents I write this

663
00:42:00,880 --> 00:42:03,400
Speaker 2: in the book, right, they know there's something wrong with me.

664
00:42:04,440 --> 00:42:06,319
Speaker 2: If a kid would touch me, I'd turn around and

665
00:42:06,360 --> 00:42:09,680
Speaker 2: slug them. I was really repellent to kids. And they

666
00:42:09,760 --> 00:42:12,640
Speaker 2: go into one of those little psychology testing centers, you know,

667
00:42:12,760 --> 00:42:17,360
Speaker 2: linoleum floors, crummy chairs, we've all been there, stale coffee,

668
00:42:17,360 --> 00:42:20,440
Speaker 2: old magazines. And they bring me back and take one

669
00:42:20,480 --> 00:42:23,520
Speaker 2: to take me over to, you know, play with blocks

670
00:42:23,560 --> 00:42:25,839
Speaker 2: or whatever. They talk to my parents and they look

671
00:42:25,840 --> 00:42:29,279
Speaker 2: at my parents, they said, we really can't imagine what's

672
00:42:29,280 --> 00:42:31,800
Speaker 2: going on inside his head, and my dad goes, is

673
00:42:31,840 --> 00:42:35,280
Speaker 2: there anything we can do? Anything? You know, he's desperate,

674
00:42:35,280 --> 00:42:38,360
Speaker 2: and she goes, generally, not, what year is this? This

675
00:42:38,480 --> 00:42:41,480
Speaker 2: is the mid eighties, right, nism wasn't understood what it was.

676
00:42:41,560 --> 00:42:43,319
Speaker 1: I was just going to say, like, you know, it's

677
00:42:43,680 --> 00:42:46,920
Speaker 1: I was my under I felt like this is a

678
00:42:46,960 --> 00:42:49,920
Speaker 1: classic story of the eighties. I don't think that's the

679
00:42:50,000 --> 00:42:53,480
Speaker 1: response the school gives you. If this is two thousand

680
00:42:53,080 --> 00:42:56,879
Speaker 1: and seven or two thousand and eight, what do you think?

681
00:42:57,320 --> 00:43:00,439
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's I think that's fair. I think

682
00:43:00,480 --> 00:43:03,520
Speaker 2: those still to this point there are so many parents

683
00:43:03,560 --> 00:43:08,520
Speaker 2: who feel helpless because there is this idea, right in

684
00:43:08,560 --> 00:43:10,759
Speaker 2: my days, is there anything we can do? And she

685
00:43:10,840 --> 00:43:13,400
Speaker 2: said generally not, But you know, if the kids smart

686
00:43:13,480 --> 00:43:16,359
Speaker 2: me once it there are a few things. But there

687
00:43:16,400 --> 00:43:20,200
Speaker 2: is now even more in our society, this desire to

688
00:43:20,239 --> 00:43:23,239
Speaker 2: put kids who have any type of special need in

689
00:43:23,280 --> 00:43:27,600
Speaker 2: bubble wrap, right, to give them medicine, and to say

690
00:43:27,640 --> 00:43:29,840
Speaker 2: meet them where they're at, and you have to accept

691
00:43:29,840 --> 00:43:31,960
Speaker 2: them as who you are they are, and you have

692
00:43:32,040 --> 00:43:34,839
Speaker 2: to tell them that this is their superpower. And all

693
00:43:34,880 --> 00:43:37,920
Speaker 2: of these things that if my dad had done to me,

694
00:43:38,320 --> 00:43:41,719
Speaker 2: I would have had no chance to operate in the

695
00:43:41,760 --> 00:43:46,200
Speaker 2: world that I operate in now, because his method was

696
00:43:46,239 --> 00:43:48,640
Speaker 2: not about adapting the world to me. It was about

697
00:43:48,680 --> 00:43:51,440
Speaker 2: adapting me to the world. And he was brutally honest

698
00:43:51,480 --> 00:43:54,200
Speaker 2: about it, right, Chuck, And that's not something parents are

699
00:43:54,200 --> 00:43:56,319
Speaker 2: told to do. You know, when I was in seventh grade,

700
00:43:56,400 --> 00:43:59,040
Speaker 2: I wanted to play tennis. My dad was a phenomenally

701
00:43:59,080 --> 00:44:03,400
Speaker 2: gifted athlete still and I writing born lucky. How he

702
00:44:03,440 --> 00:44:05,239
Speaker 2: took me to a couple of tennis lessons and after

703
00:44:05,280 --> 00:44:07,400
Speaker 2: the third or fourth one, he looked at me and

704
00:44:07,440 --> 00:44:09,520
Speaker 2: he said, I'm your father. I love you. I will

705
00:44:09,520 --> 00:44:11,600
Speaker 2: come to every tennis lesson. I will drive you, I

706
00:44:11,640 --> 00:44:14,759
Speaker 2: will cheer you on. You will never be able to

707
00:44:14,800 --> 00:44:17,000
Speaker 2: play tennis. You just can't do it. You don't have

708
00:44:17,000 --> 00:44:19,160
Speaker 2: the coordination, you don't have the hand eye coordination, you

709
00:44:19,200 --> 00:44:21,960
Speaker 2: don't have the depth perception, you don't have the motor skills.

710
00:44:22,040 --> 00:44:25,839
Speaker 2: It's never going to work. Which, considering I really hope

711
00:44:25,880 --> 00:44:28,359
Speaker 2: that tennis was my way into asking this girl out.

712
00:44:29,080 --> 00:44:32,080
Speaker 2: I was heartbroken, but I knew then my dad would

713
00:44:32,080 --> 00:44:34,640
Speaker 2: always tell me the truth. And then when he said

714
00:44:34,680 --> 00:44:38,320
Speaker 2: you can do something, boy, that meant something.

715
00:44:38,320 --> 00:44:41,680
Speaker 1: All of a sudden, it's interesting what you just said

716
00:44:41,719 --> 00:44:45,799
Speaker 1: about you felt. You said your dad wanted you to

717
00:44:46,400 --> 00:44:48,719
Speaker 1: adapt to the world that you live in, not make

718
00:44:48,760 --> 00:44:51,680
Speaker 1: the world adapt to you. Right, boy, if this is

719
00:44:51,719 --> 00:44:55,040
Speaker 1: not sort of what I would argue. You know, we

720
00:44:55,080 --> 00:44:58,359
Speaker 1: sit here and we have these these fights sometimes through

721
00:44:58,440 --> 00:45:00,799
Speaker 1: left right prisms, but I don't I think we're having

722
00:45:00,880 --> 00:45:05,120
Speaker 1: left these are because that's how in many ways, that's

723
00:45:05,120 --> 00:45:08,400
Speaker 1: how I was raised where and now, you know, especially

724
00:45:08,480 --> 00:45:10,600
Speaker 1: if you're from a if you're if you're seen as

725
00:45:10,640 --> 00:45:13,400
Speaker 1: from a group that isn't part of the majority, whether

726
00:45:13,719 --> 00:45:18,080
Speaker 1: it's a religious minority, whether it's a gender minority, whether

727
00:45:18,120 --> 00:45:23,520
Speaker 1: it's you know, something else. Those that succeed are the

728
00:45:23,520 --> 00:45:25,879
Speaker 1: ones that learn how to adapt to the world as

729
00:45:25,880 --> 00:45:29,399
Speaker 1: it is and then slowly but surely fight for acceptance

730
00:45:30,200 --> 00:45:35,640
Speaker 1: versus trying to turn you know, three hundred and forty

731
00:45:35,719 --> 00:45:38,480
Speaker 1: nine million people to your way right right, which is

732
00:45:38,680 --> 00:45:42,120
Speaker 1: which is something that you know, if everybody behaved that way,

733
00:45:42,160 --> 00:45:44,400
Speaker 1: we'd never get anything done as a country.

734
00:45:44,840 --> 00:45:47,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's a perfect point. And I think

735
00:45:47,480 --> 00:45:49,080
Speaker 2: it's one of those things, right, You've got to meet

736
00:45:49,080 --> 00:45:51,680
Speaker 2: people where they're at, and the world is where it's at,

737
00:45:51,800 --> 00:45:54,719
Speaker 2: especially you know, when I was a little kid, and

738
00:45:55,239 --> 00:45:57,320
Speaker 2: I think about this story for fifth grade about my

739
00:45:57,400 --> 00:46:01,080
Speaker 2: dad really realizing there's a problem fifth grade going to

740
00:46:01,080 --> 00:46:04,440
Speaker 2: a small private school. He comes over to check on me.

741
00:46:04,520 --> 00:46:07,160
Speaker 2: I'm getting bullied every day. I'm coming home crying every

742
00:46:07,239 --> 00:46:08,000
Speaker 2: day my sister.

743
00:46:08,080 --> 00:46:10,719
Speaker 1: And this is that private school. Yeah, your parents are

744
00:46:10,800 --> 00:46:17,400
Speaker 1: paying Yeah, in theory extra right, well, you know, you know,

745
00:46:17,560 --> 00:46:20,719
Speaker 1: or at least more personalized more. I mean, why did

746
00:46:20,760 --> 00:46:22,919
Speaker 1: we move from public to private? It was for that

747
00:46:23,080 --> 00:46:24,120
Speaker 1: right too, to be.

748
00:46:24,120 --> 00:46:27,480
Speaker 2: Fair, though, you know, my parents didn't tell anybody. They

749
00:46:27,480 --> 00:46:31,320
Speaker 2: didn't tell anybody that I was diagnosed with anything because

750
00:46:31,440 --> 00:46:33,080
Speaker 2: my dad said, I didn't want you to be defined

751
00:46:33,080 --> 00:46:35,799
Speaker 2: by it, and I didn't want you to all have that.

752
00:46:36,320 --> 00:46:38,759
Speaker 2: And I think people can say, you know, good things

753
00:46:38,800 --> 00:46:41,400
Speaker 2: are bad things about that, but it certainly was a

754
00:46:41,400 --> 00:46:44,319
Speaker 2: different way, and it now forced me to know that

755
00:46:44,360 --> 00:46:50,680
Speaker 2: I could work through anything. But fifth grade private school.

756
00:46:51,200 --> 00:46:53,560
Speaker 2: He comes into c the pe teacher. I'm in Pe,

757
00:46:54,560 --> 00:46:57,279
Speaker 2: and my dad goes, hey, how's he doing in this

758
00:46:57,320 --> 00:46:59,920
Speaker 2: guy who he knew, big, big former football player, knew

759
00:46:59,920 --> 00:47:03,319
Speaker 2: my dad from football. He said, I think he's doing

760
00:47:03,360 --> 00:47:05,239
Speaker 2: better today, you know, better this week. But he goes great,

761
00:47:05,280 --> 00:47:07,040
Speaker 2: let's go, let's go see him in pee. And the

762
00:47:07,080 --> 00:47:08,480
Speaker 2: guy goes, I don't think that's a good idea, and

763
00:47:08,480 --> 00:47:11,640
Speaker 2: they're looking down on all the fields and dad goes

764
00:47:11,640 --> 00:47:13,600
Speaker 2: wise as well. He says, I've had to put him

765
00:47:13,600 --> 00:47:16,680
Speaker 2: with the girls because I had to protect him from

766
00:47:16,680 --> 00:47:18,680
Speaker 2: all the boys. So you think about that from a

767
00:47:18,680 --> 00:47:21,200
Speaker 2: father's perspective, a fifth grade father hearing that the only

768
00:47:21,239 --> 00:47:23,759
Speaker 2: way for the pe teacher to protect his kid is

769
00:47:23,800 --> 00:47:25,680
Speaker 2: to put him with the girls. My dad said okay,

770
00:47:25,680 --> 00:47:30,239
Speaker 2: thanks and walked off. But I think that sort of

771
00:47:30,239 --> 00:47:33,880
Speaker 2: shows you where I was at in my social ability

772
00:47:34,800 --> 00:47:36,920
Speaker 2: to interact with Some people were sort of magnetic in

773
00:47:36,960 --> 00:47:40,480
Speaker 2: their attraction of friends and kids. I was repellent.

774
00:47:41,880 --> 00:47:47,560
Speaker 1: So I remember my friend Ron describing the issue with

775
00:47:47,640 --> 00:47:51,000
Speaker 1: his son, which was you know that you had to

776
00:47:51,120 --> 00:47:53,960
Speaker 1: learn social cues, right, It sounds like that's what you

777
00:47:54,719 --> 00:47:57,399
Speaker 1: that's what you your father really helped you with, which

778
00:47:57,400 --> 00:47:59,759
Speaker 1: is sure how to how to read other In some

779
00:47:59,840 --> 00:48:03,839
Speaker 1: way ways we don't realize that we're we quickly learn

780
00:48:03,920 --> 00:48:06,520
Speaker 1: how to read people, but not everybody can. And sometimes

781
00:48:06,560 --> 00:48:08,319
Speaker 1: you just like you might need extra help to learn

782
00:48:08,360 --> 00:48:11,160
Speaker 1: actually read words. Some people need extra help to read

783
00:48:11,200 --> 00:48:14,320
Speaker 1: social cues. Right, is that a fair description?

784
00:48:14,719 --> 00:48:19,240
Speaker 2: Very fair? And I needed both, you know, two halves

785
00:48:19,239 --> 00:48:23,600
Speaker 2: to an IQ test, twenty points spread between the two

786
00:48:23,680 --> 00:48:29,480
Speaker 2: halves represents a learning disability. I was between genius and

787
00:48:29,760 --> 00:48:32,440
Speaker 2: mentally retarded, so half the test I was genius. Half

788
00:48:32,480 --> 00:48:34,720
Speaker 2: the tests test I was mentally retarded, so seventy plus

789
00:48:34,719 --> 00:48:37,000
Speaker 2: points spread. So I needed a lot of help learning

790
00:48:37,040 --> 00:48:40,600
Speaker 2: how to read words and forcing through that. And then

791
00:48:40,640 --> 00:48:42,640
Speaker 2: also you pointed out social skills. So one of the

792
00:48:42,680 --> 00:48:46,160
Speaker 2: things my dad did was he would take me to

793
00:48:46,760 --> 00:48:50,680
Speaker 2: lunch with mister Todd, right. And it was easy because

794
00:48:50,719 --> 00:48:52,279
Speaker 2: I didn't have any friends. I didn't have anything else

795
00:48:52,280 --> 00:48:54,120
Speaker 2: to do with my life. My dad was my only friend.

796
00:48:54,480 --> 00:48:56,560
Speaker 2: And I loved interacting with adults because I could talk

797
00:48:56,560 --> 00:48:58,160
Speaker 2: to them about things that I talked to my dad

798
00:48:58,200 --> 00:49:01,320
Speaker 2: about about politics, about sports out I think that's much sports,

799
00:49:01,320 --> 00:49:04,359
Speaker 2: but politics, business, all that kind of stuff. And we'd

800
00:49:04,360 --> 00:49:05,719
Speaker 2: go to munch with mister Todd. And this is a

801
00:49:05,719 --> 00:49:08,440
Speaker 2: perfect example because I would just be badgering the hell

802
00:49:08,480 --> 00:49:11,360
Speaker 2: out of you with questions, how do you book your guests,

803
00:49:11,400 --> 00:49:13,440
Speaker 2: how do you decide what politician's telling the truth? How

804
00:49:13,440 --> 00:49:14,920
Speaker 2: do you come up with your questions on and on

805
00:49:14,960 --> 00:49:18,560
Speaker 2: and on, and my dad rather than sort of saying

806
00:49:18,600 --> 00:49:22,479
Speaker 2: you know, okay, lucky, stop or enough, he would tap

807
00:49:22,520 --> 00:49:27,680
Speaker 2: his watch, and that was my moment to be.

808
00:49:28,280 --> 00:49:30,200
Speaker 1: That was a social cue. He was teaching you.

809
00:49:30,440 --> 00:49:33,080
Speaker 2: That was a social que. So to tap his watch,

810
00:49:33,560 --> 00:49:37,719
Speaker 2: that's my method message to stop talking, but also to bookmarket, right,

811
00:49:38,320 --> 00:49:40,400
Speaker 2: because then we would go back and he'd say, okay,

812
00:49:40,880 --> 00:49:44,440
Speaker 2: mister Todd was talking about going on vacation with his

813
00:49:44,520 --> 00:49:47,600
Speaker 2: kids or taking his wife out to dinner on Saturday night,

814
00:49:47,800 --> 00:49:49,319
Speaker 2: Why do you think that was the right time to

815
00:49:49,360 --> 00:49:55,520
Speaker 2: ask him about his show or politics or whatever it was.

816
00:49:56,320 --> 00:49:59,479
Speaker 2: And it was teaching me how to understand and see

817
00:49:59,520 --> 00:50:02,880
Speaker 2: the world through, as you point out, the natural social

818
00:50:02,920 --> 00:50:07,040
Speaker 2: skills that so many other people have. It's a small example,

819
00:50:07,040 --> 00:50:09,920
Speaker 2: but it was a way to actually teach me in

820
00:50:10,000 --> 00:50:13,160
Speaker 2: real time what was happening, rather than just say, look,

821
00:50:13,200 --> 00:50:16,640
Speaker 2: you know, he can't he can't come out with anybody,

822
00:50:16,680 --> 00:50:18,319
Speaker 2: which at the time I really couldn't. But at the

823
00:50:18,320 --> 00:50:22,840
Speaker 2: same time, if you say to a kid okay, stop, okay,

824
00:50:22,880 --> 00:50:25,400
Speaker 2: not now, okay, whatever, it embarrasses the kid. And so

825
00:50:25,480 --> 00:50:27,640
Speaker 2: that was the line he had to tell.

826
00:50:28,680 --> 00:50:31,400
Speaker 1: Was there a moment for you where it was like

827
00:50:33,280 --> 00:50:36,200
Speaker 1: I get it, you read got it? Yeah? Or is

828
00:50:36,239 --> 00:50:39,279
Speaker 1: this a gradual thing where all of a sudden your

829
00:50:39,360 --> 00:50:43,319
Speaker 1: dad said, do you realize that, you know, you're no

830
00:50:43,440 --> 00:50:45,359
Speaker 1: different than anybody else out there in the world.

831
00:50:47,200 --> 00:50:49,560
Speaker 2: Look, he always made it clear to me that I

832
00:50:49,760 --> 00:50:52,839
Speaker 2: was different and what he would tell me, you know,

833
00:50:53,440 --> 00:50:56,719
Speaker 2: through the bullying and isolation of high school. I have

834
00:50:56,960 --> 00:50:59,680
Speaker 2: had a teacher in eighth grade who said to me

835
00:51:00,520 --> 00:51:03,080
Speaker 2: in an art class, you know, tables and art around,

836
00:51:03,280 --> 00:51:04,960
Speaker 2: you know, in front of the whole class. He said,

837
00:51:04,960 --> 00:51:06,880
Speaker 2: you know, if my dog was as ugly as you,

838
00:51:06,920 --> 00:51:09,920
Speaker 2: I'd shave its ass and make it walk backwards. And

839
00:51:09,960 --> 00:51:13,080
Speaker 2: I came home that night and just, yeah, yeah, try

840
00:51:13,080 --> 00:51:13,960
Speaker 2: that one on for size.

841
00:51:14,160 --> 00:51:17,680
Speaker 1: Gosh, that's something you don't forget.

842
00:51:17,719 --> 00:51:20,719
Speaker 2: I guess, no, no, you don't. And I don't forget

843
00:51:20,760 --> 00:51:22,359
Speaker 2: his name either, but we didn't put it in the book.

844
00:51:23,920 --> 00:51:27,160
Speaker 2: I walked across the street back home that afternoon. My

845
00:51:27,239 --> 00:51:31,080
Speaker 2: dad was waiting for me, as he was every every

846
00:51:31,160 --> 00:51:33,520
Speaker 2: time that I came home from school, every day for

847
00:51:33,680 --> 00:51:35,480
Speaker 2: twenty and I was just crying. I said, I was

848
00:51:35,480 --> 00:51:38,719
Speaker 2: just humiliated today and told them what had happened, and

849
00:51:39,040 --> 00:51:41,080
Speaker 2: he talked me through it and worked through it. And

850
00:51:41,160 --> 00:51:44,160
Speaker 2: what was interesting at the end of the conversation every

851
00:51:44,239 --> 00:51:47,120
Speaker 2: night he'd say to me, look, the qualities that make

852
00:51:47,200 --> 00:51:50,360
Speaker 2: you unpopular now and that you are picked on now

853
00:51:50,480 --> 00:51:54,200
Speaker 2: and that make you humiliated now, is what's going to

854
00:51:54,200 --> 00:51:57,400
Speaker 2: be your strength later on. And it wasn't ever about academics.

855
00:51:57,440 --> 00:51:59,560
Speaker 2: It wasn't ever about being smart or successful. It was

856
00:51:59,560 --> 00:52:03,759
Speaker 2: about turn hard work and self esteem was earned, not

857
00:52:03,840 --> 00:52:06,160
Speaker 2: given right. You know, I started as a kid doing

858
00:52:06,160 --> 00:52:09,000
Speaker 2: two hundred push ups a day at six or seven

859
00:52:09,080 --> 00:52:11,839
Speaker 2: years old, because Dad was like, I can teach you

860
00:52:12,040 --> 00:52:16,920
Speaker 2: that hard work is rewarded and that goals matter. So

861
00:52:18,239 --> 00:52:20,560
Speaker 2: that was where he would He was very clear to

862
00:52:20,600 --> 00:52:23,239
Speaker 2: me that I was different. I think you'll appreciate this, Chuck.

863
00:52:23,520 --> 00:52:25,960
Speaker 2: Living where you and I both live now. I used

864
00:52:25,960 --> 00:52:28,080
Speaker 2: to say I never liked anyone who liked high school

865
00:52:28,560 --> 00:52:30,920
Speaker 2: because the values of high school are so screwed up

866
00:52:30,920 --> 00:52:32,759
Speaker 2: that if you like high school, there's something wrong with you.

867
00:52:33,080 --> 00:52:34,719
Speaker 2: And there's a little bit to be said about that

868
00:52:34,800 --> 00:52:37,480
Speaker 2: about Washington too, But if you really.

869
00:52:37,320 --> 00:52:40,000
Speaker 1: Like one student council, I know. I have a friend

870
00:52:40,000 --> 00:52:43,040
Speaker 1: of mine who grew up in Arlington, Leland, you'll appreciate this.

871
00:52:43,160 --> 00:52:45,239
Speaker 1: I didn't mean to interrupt your train of thought there,

872
00:52:45,560 --> 00:52:49,000
Speaker 1: but she loves to remind like she's a native Arlingtonian,

873
00:52:49,320 --> 00:52:52,080
Speaker 1: which means she's grown up in Washington, much different than

874
00:52:52,200 --> 00:52:54,280
Speaker 1: ninety percent of the people that live in this community

875
00:52:54,280 --> 00:52:58,439
Speaker 1: of the DMB. And she said, just remember, everybody who

876
00:52:58,440 --> 00:53:02,200
Speaker 1: comes to Washington wanted to be student council president. Doesn't

877
00:53:02,239 --> 00:53:05,600
Speaker 1: mean they ever became student council president, but they all wanted.

878
00:53:05,760 --> 00:53:08,640
Speaker 1: So you have. The point is it's a town of busybodies,

879
00:53:09,080 --> 00:53:11,920
Speaker 1: right like it is. It is, it is, it is.

880
00:53:12,200 --> 00:53:15,040
Speaker 1: It is that very part of high school on steroids.

881
00:53:15,280 --> 00:53:18,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, look, you know the best training for a Washington

882
00:53:18,600 --> 00:53:19,920
Speaker 2: newsroom may have been middle school.

883
00:53:23,560 --> 00:53:27,360
Speaker 1: I think some people in Congress would say that as well.

884
00:53:28,200 --> 00:53:29,680
Speaker 2: I think Congress is the only one who has a

885
00:53:29,680 --> 00:53:31,399
Speaker 2: lower approval rating in the media right now.

886
00:53:31,800 --> 00:53:35,200
Speaker 1: But it's interesting you say this about about high school

887
00:53:35,360 --> 00:53:39,560
Speaker 1: and about Let me ask this, though, why did you

888
00:53:39,560 --> 00:53:42,640
Speaker 1: go public with the story? You know, I didn't I

889
00:53:42,680 --> 00:53:45,719
Speaker 1: didn't know this, and I wouldn't have I would have

890
00:53:45,800 --> 00:53:49,040
Speaker 1: never picked up You know, sometimes I'd like to think,

891
00:53:49,040 --> 00:53:51,000
Speaker 1: oh so and so you know, you hear this phrase

892
00:53:51,040 --> 00:53:54,480
Speaker 1: on the spectrum. And at this point I don't love

893
00:53:54,480 --> 00:53:56,759
Speaker 1: the phrase because aren't we all on the spectrum? It

894
00:53:56,880 --> 00:54:01,080
Speaker 1: just depends, right, I mean, yeah, all on the spectrum.

895
00:54:01,200 --> 00:54:04,560
Speaker 1: So it's this weird shorthand that we've given to Hey,

896
00:54:04,560 --> 00:54:08,640
Speaker 1: they're a little bit off center from whatever the spectrum

897
00:54:08,760 --> 00:54:13,440
Speaker 1: is and all this stuff. But why'd you choose to

898
00:54:13,480 --> 00:54:15,880
Speaker 1: share your story? Because in some ways it sounds like

899
00:54:15,960 --> 00:54:20,520
Speaker 1: your dad's goal was to help you adapt so that

900
00:54:20,600 --> 00:54:24,080
Speaker 1: you didn't have to constantly say I'm different, treat me different.

901
00:54:24,480 --> 00:54:26,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, look, I mean you think about where my

902
00:54:26,400 --> 00:54:28,520
Speaker 2: dad was. I think you have to sort of baseline

903
00:54:28,560 --> 00:54:31,839
Speaker 2: this seventh grade start a new school. My parents are

904
00:54:31,880 --> 00:54:35,000
Speaker 2: hoping for this change, sitting in the they get called

905
00:54:35,040 --> 00:54:37,480
Speaker 2: in two or three weeks into school, thinking like, hey,

906
00:54:37,480 --> 00:54:39,319
Speaker 2: this is just a normal check in, right, you have kids,

907
00:54:39,360 --> 00:54:41,240
Speaker 2: you know what you know this is like? And everybody

908
00:54:41,280 --> 00:54:44,320
Speaker 2: sat in the principal's office and the principal looks, starts

909
00:54:44,320 --> 00:54:47,880
Speaker 2: the meeting off cold of my parents, you know, most

910
00:54:48,160 --> 00:54:51,560
Speaker 2: of the school here. In fact, everybody here really thinks

911
00:54:51,640 --> 00:54:55,319
Speaker 2: Lucky is quite weird. That's a seventh grade prince Walchetize.

912
00:54:55,400 --> 00:54:57,319
Speaker 1: You know, I saw that line, you know, and you're

913
00:54:57,320 --> 00:55:00,640
Speaker 1: just sitting there going, yeah, how do you become a

914
00:55:00,680 --> 00:55:03,080
Speaker 1: principal writing about a kid that way? Yeah? Like it

915
00:55:03,200 --> 00:55:05,560
Speaker 1: really well, I'm not trying to like, you know, sound

916
00:55:05,600 --> 00:55:08,720
Speaker 1: like you fire all these people, but my god, right.

917
00:55:09,600 --> 00:55:11,600
Speaker 2: And then right? And then you know, so arrow number

918
00:55:11,640 --> 00:55:15,160
Speaker 2: one through my parents' heart and and look, they know

919
00:55:15,320 --> 00:55:18,600
Speaker 2: that in some ways it's true that I was really

920
00:55:18,600 --> 00:55:20,880
Speaker 2: different and really odd. And then she follows up with

921
00:55:21,600 --> 00:55:24,720
Speaker 2: and I think he and frankly, I think he's pretty

922
00:55:24,760 --> 00:55:27,480
Speaker 2: weird too. So what told you is that people were

923
00:55:27,480 --> 00:55:30,920
Speaker 2: supposed to protect me weren't going to and thought it

924
00:55:31,040 --> 00:55:34,200
Speaker 2: was my fault. Again, great training for a newsroom. But

925
00:55:35,880 --> 00:55:38,839
Speaker 2: the reason I went public with it is because I

926
00:55:38,880 --> 00:55:43,240
Speaker 2: think we are in a reckoning about parenting in America,

927
00:55:43,920 --> 00:55:48,120
Speaker 2: and I think parents need to know there is real hope.

928
00:55:48,560 --> 00:55:50,759
Speaker 2: George Will wrote the forward to this, and he said,

929
00:55:50,800 --> 00:55:53,160
Speaker 2: this is the proof of the mountain moving power of

930
00:55:53,200 --> 00:55:55,920
Speaker 2: parntal love. And I think parents have been told for

931
00:55:55,960 --> 00:55:58,960
Speaker 2: so long, you know, let the village raise your kid,

932
00:55:59,440 --> 00:56:03,520
Speaker 2: you know, but let your kid be them and and

933
00:56:03,560 --> 00:56:05,759
Speaker 2: sort of the experts know better, and there's this new

934
00:56:05,800 --> 00:56:08,160
Speaker 2: methodology and on and on and on and told parents

935
00:56:08,560 --> 00:56:10,840
Speaker 2: basically not to take control, and mine did. And I

936
00:56:10,840 --> 00:56:14,200
Speaker 2: thought it was a really important story for people to hear.

937
00:56:14,880 --> 00:56:18,319
Speaker 1: I well, that is a that is a great way

938
00:56:18,360 --> 00:56:23,360
Speaker 1: to frame it, because you know, the fact is this

939
00:56:23,560 --> 00:56:28,600
Speaker 1: is true not just when it comes to parenting, which

940
00:56:28,640 --> 00:56:32,440
Speaker 1: is the parents need to take more control, right, And

941
00:56:32,480 --> 00:56:35,600
Speaker 1: there's there is this perception that somehow you don't have

942
00:56:35,680 --> 00:56:37,839
Speaker 1: the ability to change things. It's also true with the

943
00:56:37,840 --> 00:56:41,160
Speaker 1: healthcare system, right if you if you don't take control

944
00:56:41,200 --> 00:56:44,440
Speaker 1: of your own medical care. And and by the way,

945
00:56:44,560 --> 00:56:47,600
Speaker 1: remember that the doctors work for you. You don't work

946
00:56:47,600 --> 00:56:50,439
Speaker 1: for the doctors. These people work for you. You don't

947
00:56:50,480 --> 00:56:53,200
Speaker 1: work for them type of mindset. But you, the parent

948
00:56:53,320 --> 00:56:56,200
Speaker 1: have a lot more station here and that you also

949
00:56:56,200 --> 00:56:59,360
Speaker 1: have a lot more responsibility when it comes to your kids.

950
00:56:59,360 --> 00:57:03,080
Speaker 1: I mean, I love it when you when you it

951
00:57:03,120 --> 00:57:07,080
Speaker 1: feels like we have a a lot of broken young

952
00:57:07,120 --> 00:57:12,440
Speaker 1: men out there right who are susceptible to all sorts

953
00:57:12,440 --> 00:57:20,520
Speaker 1: of violent ideologies or violent actions. Perhaps some of this

954
00:57:20,640 --> 00:57:23,680
Speaker 1: is social media or you know, whatever we're doing here,

955
00:57:25,200 --> 00:57:27,880
Speaker 1: but you know, there is a through line that I

956
00:57:28,080 --> 00:57:30,600
Speaker 1: notice in some of these people, whether it's a school

957
00:57:30,600 --> 00:57:33,200
Speaker 1: shoot or all that is, there is some sort of

958
00:57:34,160 --> 00:57:38,600
Speaker 1: lack of parenting, or a parent not in the picture,

959
00:57:38,800 --> 00:57:42,280
Speaker 1: or a parent sort of not seeing things. What I

960
00:57:42,480 --> 00:57:45,600
Speaker 1: find your story to be inspiring, it's it's a reminder

961
00:57:46,280 --> 00:57:51,440
Speaker 1: that the parent needs to take control here, because nobody

962
00:57:51,440 --> 00:57:54,200
Speaker 1: else is going to love this kid enough to do

963
00:57:54,360 --> 00:57:57,240
Speaker 1: the kid right. Only the parent.

964
00:57:57,840 --> 00:58:00,000
Speaker 2: One thousand percent. I mean, there's so many different ways

965
00:58:00,160 --> 00:58:02,480
Speaker 2: to go with that. Right when I was diagnosed with autism,

966
00:58:02,560 --> 00:58:04,760
Speaker 2: I said this, you know, in the book, they didn't

967
00:58:04,760 --> 00:58:06,440
Speaker 2: really know what it was. It wasn't a spectrum. Was

968
00:58:06,480 --> 00:58:11,400
Speaker 2: either you're profoundly autistic, or you're nothing and a pervasive

969
00:58:11,400 --> 00:58:15,080
Speaker 2: elemental dislay. Whatever. Now it's one in thirty one kids, boys,

970
00:58:15,080 --> 00:58:15,840
Speaker 2: one in twelve.

971
00:58:15,880 --> 00:58:18,120
Speaker 1: Do you think, by the way, communities, what is what

972
00:58:18,240 --> 00:58:21,240
Speaker 1: is your understanding of it? Are we learning to diagnose

973
00:58:21,240 --> 00:58:23,640
Speaker 1: it better? Or is it increasing in the society.

974
00:58:24,360 --> 00:58:27,200
Speaker 2: I think the answer to that is both. And what

975
00:58:27,600 --> 00:58:32,680
Speaker 2: I find interesting is is that there's there's lots of

976
00:58:33,640 --> 00:58:36,720
Speaker 2: theories about what autism. What it's not. You know, Oh no,

977
00:58:36,760 --> 00:58:39,360
Speaker 2: it's not rising, it's just we're diagnosing more. Oh no,

978
00:58:39,400 --> 00:58:41,600
Speaker 2: it can't be vaccines don't know this. There's nobody who

979
00:58:41,680 --> 00:58:43,680
Speaker 2: will tell you definitively, this is what it is. This

980
00:58:43,760 --> 00:58:46,400
Speaker 2: is why we're seeing this. And by the way, you Leland,

981
00:58:46,440 --> 00:58:49,960
Speaker 2: who clearly was diagnosed with what we now know to

982
00:58:49,960 --> 00:58:52,560
Speaker 2: be autism, just got married to this wonderful woman who

983
00:58:52,560 --> 00:58:56,560
Speaker 2: you want to have kids with. Here's we know that

984
00:58:56,600 --> 00:58:59,200
Speaker 2: it's a higher chance that I will have an autistic child,

985
00:58:59,640 --> 00:59:02,920
Speaker 2: but we don't know why, and we don't know if

986
00:59:02,920 --> 00:59:04,600
Speaker 2: there's anything that can be done either during.

987
00:59:04,400 --> 00:59:06,960
Speaker 1: Pregnancy or I mean that implies it's genetic.

988
00:59:07,440 --> 00:59:10,240
Speaker 2: There's some genetic component, right, But at.

989
00:59:10,080 --> 00:59:12,480
Speaker 1: The same time we are having this debate about is

990
00:59:12,480 --> 00:59:14,520
Speaker 1: it outside chemicals or something?

991
00:59:14,720 --> 00:59:17,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I mean I think the answer is we

992
00:59:17,560 --> 00:59:21,800
Speaker 2: don't know, and I think, you know, I think that

993
00:59:22,760 --> 00:59:25,920
Speaker 2: intel science can tell us the answer to that. We

994
00:59:25,960 --> 00:59:27,800
Speaker 2: need to keep looking. It should be you know, we've

995
00:59:27,880 --> 00:59:30,800
Speaker 2: cured a not cured. You can live now with AIDS.

996
00:59:30,840 --> 00:59:33,400
Speaker 2: Is no longer descence dozens of cancers you can live

997
00:59:33,440 --> 00:59:35,400
Speaker 2: with over the past forty years that we're descence. Is

998
00:59:35,600 --> 00:59:37,480
Speaker 2: we can replace your joints and have you become a

999
00:59:37,480 --> 00:59:40,840
Speaker 2: bionic man. Diabetes, all this stuff and autism.

1000
00:59:40,880 --> 00:59:45,040
Speaker 3: They're like, you know it, it's not vaccines, but it

1001
00:59:45,080 --> 01:00:00,960
Speaker 3: could be like come on guys.

1002
01:00:01,240 --> 01:00:06,480
Speaker 1: Well, I just interviewed Michael Osterholme. It was an expert

1003
01:00:06,520 --> 01:00:08,680
Speaker 1: on pandemics and all this stuff, and he has a

1004
01:00:08,800 --> 01:00:11,320
Speaker 1: very good way that he described science. He says, science

1005
01:00:11,400 --> 01:00:15,240
Speaker 1: isn't truth. Science is the pursuit of truth. And we

1006
01:00:15,360 --> 01:00:19,600
Speaker 1: also have to be humble about science, meaning it does

1007
01:00:19,720 --> 01:00:23,240
Speaker 1: change as we learn more, right, And that's it. And

1008
01:00:23,960 --> 01:00:27,200
Speaker 1: the fact is, like we thought AIDS was a death sentence,

1009
01:00:27,240 --> 01:00:29,280
Speaker 1: as you point out, we thought cancer itself was a

1010
01:00:29,280 --> 01:00:32,520
Speaker 1: death Now now all cancers aren't. You know, we're getting that.

1011
01:00:32,640 --> 01:00:35,640
Speaker 1: It's from my father died of hepatitis C in nineteen

1012
01:00:35,640 --> 01:00:39,440
Speaker 1: eighty eight. If he gets diagnosed with hepatitis C. Today

1013
01:00:39,480 --> 01:00:42,280
Speaker 1: you take a pill and you're fine. But in nineteen

1014
01:00:42,320 --> 01:00:46,440
Speaker 1: eighty eight, by the way modern medicine we sort of

1015
01:00:46,520 --> 01:00:49,040
Speaker 1: you know, in the eighty eight you know, you know,

1016
01:00:49,120 --> 01:00:51,479
Speaker 1: I would have said, oh, the eighties are And yet

1017
01:00:51,520 --> 01:00:55,600
Speaker 1: in hindsight, right, that's like, you know, it feels like

1018
01:00:55,680 --> 01:00:59,760
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century. And it compares point what I.

1019
01:00:59,760 --> 01:01:02,000
Speaker 2: Think, you know, I had, I had doctor Jah and

1020
01:01:02,360 --> 01:01:07,120
Speaker 2: not doctor Jay Boticharia. I have doctor John tonight. It's

1021
01:01:07,120 --> 01:01:09,520
Speaker 2: amazing how TV works that way. But about a Charia

1022
01:01:09,520 --> 01:01:12,400
Speaker 2: ahead of the nih That was his message. He goes,

1023
01:01:13,240 --> 01:01:15,040
Speaker 2: we have to be humble enough to say we don't know,

1024
01:01:15,960 --> 01:01:19,680
Speaker 2: and he said very few scientists are. But to pick

1025
01:01:19,760 --> 01:01:21,880
Speaker 2: up on what you were saying about fatherhood and everything else.

1026
01:01:22,560 --> 01:01:26,960
Speaker 2: This tells fathers, you can make this enormous difference, and

1027
01:01:27,000 --> 01:01:29,960
Speaker 2: you should. And I again, over the past ten or

1028
01:01:29,960 --> 01:01:32,200
Speaker 2: fifteen years, fathers have been really sort of told to

1029
01:01:32,200 --> 01:01:34,760
Speaker 2: take a back seat and that, you know, not to

1030
01:01:34,840 --> 01:01:37,840
Speaker 2: sort of demand more of their sons and demand that

1031
01:01:37,880 --> 01:01:41,200
Speaker 2: their sons stand up and take responsibility. And I don't,

1032
01:01:41,240 --> 01:01:42,680
Speaker 2: you know, do it two hundred push ups to day

1033
01:01:42,680 --> 01:01:44,480
Speaker 2: when you were five or six years old is not

1034
01:01:44,560 --> 01:01:48,160
Speaker 2: you know. I'm sure now he would be counseled against

1035
01:01:48,200 --> 01:01:50,880
Speaker 2: that because you're, you know, doing whatever. And it was

1036
01:01:50,920 --> 01:01:53,840
Speaker 2: a very different way. And I write in the book

1037
01:01:54,800 --> 01:01:57,200
Speaker 2: you know and born lucky that how lucky I am

1038
01:01:57,240 --> 01:02:00,600
Speaker 2: also that I had two parents eighty you know, and

1039
01:02:00,920 --> 01:02:03,360
Speaker 2: a family say together, my parents have married for fifty

1040
01:02:03,360 --> 01:02:07,040
Speaker 2: plus years. Tell the story about how they got engaged

1041
01:02:07,040 --> 01:02:13,160
Speaker 2: in your rip joint after three dates, but they you know,

1042
01:02:13,760 --> 01:02:16,880
Speaker 2: that's not discussed at all. Eighty percent of kids who

1043
01:02:16,960 --> 01:02:21,640
Speaker 2: have a disability of some type, right especially autism in

1044
01:02:21,680 --> 01:02:24,920
Speaker 2: these other issues, eighty percent of them their parents get divorced.

1045
01:02:25,880 --> 01:02:26,320
Speaker 1: It's hard.

1046
01:02:26,360 --> 01:02:29,200
Speaker 2: Look, you see nobody talks to Nobody talks about how

1047
01:02:29,280 --> 01:02:30,120
Speaker 2: important that is.

1048
01:02:30,440 --> 01:02:33,440
Speaker 1: And you do a parent some parent, and look, I

1049
01:02:33,480 --> 01:02:39,080
Speaker 1: don't I'm very hesitant to judge those decisions one hundred percent, right,

1050
01:02:39,120 --> 01:02:44,000
Speaker 1: because none of us are in that bedroom. But you do.

1051
01:02:44,120 --> 01:02:47,480
Speaker 1: We see instances of this where one parent is willing

1052
01:02:47,520 --> 01:02:51,560
Speaker 1: to devote themselves and the other parent maybe isn't right,

1053
01:02:51,680 --> 01:02:54,320
Speaker 1: or the other parent feels overwhelmed or whatever it is,

1054
01:02:55,280 --> 01:03:01,280
Speaker 1: and when they walk away, they think are helping and

1055
01:03:01,360 --> 01:03:03,640
Speaker 1: they're making it worse. Yeah, I mean it sounds like

1056
01:03:03,680 --> 01:03:05,800
Speaker 1: that's the message. I mean, I don't want to get

1057
01:03:05,840 --> 01:03:09,800
Speaker 1: into specific examples out of privacy concerns, but there's some

1058
01:03:10,000 --> 01:03:12,840
Speaker 1: there's a lot of examples that way where I think

1059
01:03:12,880 --> 01:03:15,120
Speaker 1: when you have a single parent where the other parent

1060
01:03:15,200 --> 01:03:19,440
Speaker 1: walks away because it's just too hard right in their heads, right,

1061
01:03:19,760 --> 01:03:22,800
Speaker 1: it is too disruptive, you know. The sad fact is

1062
01:03:22,840 --> 01:03:25,680
Speaker 1: this is the reminder that we don't give out drivers,

1063
01:03:25,680 --> 01:03:28,080
Speaker 1: We don't give out the equivalent of a driver's license

1064
01:03:28,120 --> 01:03:31,840
Speaker 1: to be a parent, right, And if we did, that

1065
01:03:31,880 --> 01:03:34,360
Speaker 1: person probably wouldn't have qualified to be a parent if

1066
01:03:34,360 --> 01:03:38,200
Speaker 1: they're willing to walk at the first sign of struggle.

1067
01:03:40,360 --> 01:03:44,000
Speaker 1: But that is it is. It's funny you say it

1068
01:03:44,040 --> 01:03:46,680
Speaker 1: that you were lucky to be born with two parents

1069
01:03:46,720 --> 01:03:50,920
Speaker 1: willing to throw themselves into you, and if you didn't,

1070
01:03:51,120 --> 01:03:53,160
Speaker 1: you might not be where you are today.

1071
01:03:53,680 --> 01:03:55,680
Speaker 2: One thousand percent. And look, you know, it's important to

1072
01:03:55,760 --> 01:03:57,959
Speaker 2: keep in mind. This isn't a prescription, it's not a cure,

1073
01:03:58,000 --> 01:04:00,320
Speaker 2: it's not anything else, but it is it is a.

1074
01:04:00,200 --> 01:04:02,440
Speaker 1: Sure story, my story for you.

1075
01:04:02,800 --> 01:04:04,240
Speaker 2: It's my story. It worked for me, it worked for

1076
01:04:04,240 --> 01:04:06,400
Speaker 2: my Dad's a story of hope. And look, you know

1077
01:04:06,560 --> 01:04:09,960
Speaker 2: my dad wrote the afterword, which I think is.

1078
01:04:10,120 --> 01:04:13,320
Speaker 1: That was the first thing I thought of when I

1079
01:04:13,320 --> 01:04:15,640
Speaker 1: started reading, is I wonder how your dad feels about

1080
01:04:15,760 --> 01:04:18,680
Speaker 1: all this being public? And then of course you reward

1081
01:04:18,720 --> 01:04:19,600
Speaker 1: the reader with that.

1082
01:04:20,160 --> 01:04:22,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, the afterward from my dad and the forward from

1083
01:04:22,360 --> 01:04:23,960
Speaker 2: George will and I had to fill two hundred and

1084
01:04:23,960 --> 01:04:28,080
Speaker 2: forty pages in the middle. But he noted in the

1085
01:04:28,120 --> 01:04:30,640
Speaker 2: afterward that the real hero in this is my mother, right,

1086
01:04:31,000 --> 01:04:34,920
Speaker 2: and because she held not only me but him together.

1087
01:04:35,000 --> 01:04:36,959
Speaker 2: And you know, I didn't know this until I wrote

1088
01:04:37,000 --> 01:04:39,720
Speaker 2: the book. Okay, so I decided to write the book

1089
01:04:40,280 --> 01:04:44,400
Speaker 2: and tell this story, and I think, you know, try

1090
01:04:44,400 --> 01:04:46,920
Speaker 2: to inspire and give people a lot of hope. And

1091
01:04:47,160 --> 01:04:48,920
Speaker 2: I told you about all the times that you know,

1092
01:04:48,920 --> 01:04:55,200
Speaker 2: I would come home humiliated, bullied, pushed around, isolated at school,

1093
01:04:55,600 --> 01:04:57,200
Speaker 2: and I would take it out on my dad. You know,

1094
01:04:57,200 --> 01:05:00,000
Speaker 2: we go to my bedroom and he'd sit there and

1095
01:05:00,040 --> 01:05:02,880
Speaker 2: listen to me, just hammer away about how angry I

1096
01:05:03,000 --> 01:05:05,000
Speaker 2: was and how upset I was and how hard this

1097
01:05:05,240 --> 01:05:06,760
Speaker 2: was and why am I having to do this and

1098
01:05:06,760 --> 01:05:09,720
Speaker 2: why am I having to go through it? And he'd

1099
01:05:09,720 --> 01:05:12,280
Speaker 2: put me to bed or leave and I'd read or whatever.

1100
01:05:12,440 --> 01:05:16,480
Speaker 2: And I found this out now twenty five thirty years later.

1101
01:05:17,040 --> 01:05:19,880
Speaker 2: He'd go downstairs by ten eleven at night. My mom

1102
01:05:19,960 --> 01:05:23,240
Speaker 2: would have been asleep or watching TV, whatever goes to sleep,

1103
01:05:23,440 --> 01:05:25,040
Speaker 2: and she'd come out and find him in the living

1104
01:05:25,120 --> 01:05:28,480
Speaker 2: room all dark, just sitting on the couch, crying himself,

1105
01:05:29,240 --> 01:05:32,959
Speaker 2: having internalized everything that I had been through.

1106
01:05:33,640 --> 01:05:36,400
Speaker 1: She was his counselor sound yeah, And then you know.

1107
01:05:36,440 --> 01:05:38,480
Speaker 2: He would then talk to her. I mean, it really

1108
01:05:38,560 --> 01:05:42,120
Speaker 2: is it. I think, you know, the the amount of

1109
01:05:42,160 --> 01:05:44,040
Speaker 2: the role that my mother played and what we talked

1110
01:05:44,040 --> 01:05:46,120
Speaker 2: about that I had two parents and that they had.

1111
01:05:46,360 --> 01:05:50,400
Speaker 1: Changed your Has this changed your relationship with your mom

1112
01:05:51,240 --> 01:05:52,680
Speaker 1: today the more you learned.

1113
01:05:53,720 --> 01:05:56,840
Speaker 2: You know, it's a great question. I never went to therapy.

1114
01:05:56,960 --> 01:05:59,600
Speaker 2: Right now now every kid has a therapist, and on

1115
01:05:59,480 --> 01:06:01,120
Speaker 2: and on and on, Nora.

1116
01:06:01,080 --> 01:06:04,840
Speaker 1: Look, I that's you know, and to me, if you

1117
01:06:04,880 --> 01:06:06,600
Speaker 1: have somebody to talk to, you have a therapist.

1118
01:06:06,840 --> 01:06:07,080
Speaker 2: Yep.

1119
01:06:07,200 --> 01:06:10,320
Speaker 1: Well, and that's what therapy need is for us for

1120
01:06:10,360 --> 01:06:11,760
Speaker 1: those that don't have somebody to talk.

1121
01:06:13,920 --> 01:06:16,440
Speaker 2: No, I don't don't either. But it was just it

1122
01:06:16,480 --> 01:06:19,320
Speaker 2: was just funny, you know, the typically in these situations,

1123
01:06:19,600 --> 01:06:21,920
Speaker 2: and even I think kids who have great parents they

1124
01:06:22,240 --> 01:06:25,040
Speaker 2: have a therapist. And but anyway, I never ad anything.

1125
01:06:25,120 --> 01:06:27,440
Speaker 2: So this has been like going to therapy on national television. Right.

1126
01:06:29,800 --> 01:06:33,840
Speaker 2: But my dad and I still talk three or four

1127
01:06:33,840 --> 01:06:35,800
Speaker 2: times a day. I still call him every night to

1128
01:06:35,800 --> 01:06:40,000
Speaker 2: say good night. He is still my best friend. And

1129
01:06:40,880 --> 01:06:43,320
Speaker 2: that's just him and I. I don't know how else

1130
01:06:43,360 --> 01:06:45,880
Speaker 2: to say it. His our relationship changed because of it. No,

1131
01:06:46,080 --> 01:06:50,200
Speaker 2: I think certainly in the in the course of writing

1132
01:06:50,240 --> 01:06:53,680
Speaker 2: this book, and I talk about and tell the story

1133
01:06:53,680 --> 01:06:56,560
Speaker 2: of Rachel and I meeting and her sort of realizing

1134
01:06:58,200 --> 01:07:00,960
Speaker 2: that as we got to know each other, better that

1135
01:07:00,960 --> 01:07:04,600
Speaker 2: there were clearly moments that I revert back and there

1136
01:07:04,680 --> 01:07:07,640
Speaker 2: still are right to sort of my old tendencies when

1137
01:07:07,680 --> 01:07:11,800
Speaker 2: I'm less disciplined than I should be, and her learning

1138
01:07:11,840 --> 01:07:14,200
Speaker 2: to accept that. So yeah, I mean, I think I've

1139
01:07:14,240 --> 01:07:18,800
Speaker 2: gained through hearing the stories and experiencing the emotion, not

1140
01:07:18,880 --> 01:07:21,320
Speaker 2: as a kid living in it, but reliving it as

1141
01:07:21,360 --> 01:07:25,480
Speaker 2: an adult. I've gained an enormous more amount of respect

1142
01:07:25,720 --> 01:07:31,040
Speaker 2: and gratitude for my parents than I already had, which

1143
01:07:31,120 --> 01:07:31,800
Speaker 2: was significant.

1144
01:07:32,840 --> 01:07:36,840
Speaker 1: So you offer it up, so I would love for

1145
01:07:36,880 --> 01:07:41,680
Speaker 1: you to share how did how did you decide how

1146
01:07:41,720 --> 01:07:48,000
Speaker 1: to share your autism with your now wife?

1147
01:07:49,680 --> 01:07:53,600
Speaker 2: I think it just sort of came up, right. My

1148
01:07:53,680 --> 01:07:55,680
Speaker 2: parents didn't tell me until I was like twenty four,

1149
01:07:55,840 --> 01:07:58,200
Speaker 2: twenty five that I had been diagnosed with what we

1150
01:07:58,280 --> 01:08:03,040
Speaker 2: now know to be autism. Right, and Rachel and I

1151
01:08:03,120 --> 01:08:05,439
Speaker 2: met and we got set up on a blind date.

1152
01:08:06,600 --> 01:08:08,720
Speaker 2: Somebody said I'm gonna find you your wife. The next

1153
01:08:08,760 --> 01:08:10,360
Speaker 2: day that person sent me a picture of Rachel and

1154
01:08:10,360 --> 01:08:14,040
Speaker 2: said I found your wife, And there you go. I

1155
01:08:14,080 --> 01:08:17,000
Speaker 2: don't remember, like a Okay, we need to talk, you know,

1156
01:08:17,840 --> 01:08:20,360
Speaker 2: turns out that I have whatever it was, I think

1157
01:08:20,400 --> 01:08:24,240
Speaker 2: probably just came up in conversation, but she has an

1158
01:08:24,280 --> 01:08:29,559
Speaker 2: e Q that's off the charts. Mine was near freezing.

1159
01:08:29,680 --> 01:08:32,120
Speaker 1: Probably did she pick up on it.

1160
01:08:32,400 --> 01:08:35,519
Speaker 2: I think she picked up on that. There was, you know,

1161
01:08:35,640 --> 01:08:37,200
Speaker 2: sort of a peculiar you know, So there were there

1162
01:08:37,200 --> 01:08:41,640
Speaker 2: were different tendencies, and I've gotten pretty good at hiding them.

1163
01:08:41,920 --> 01:08:45,639
Speaker 2: It still comes out sometimes, and there's times that she'll say, Okay,

1164
01:08:45,720 --> 01:08:49,360
Speaker 2: like you know, you're not seeing this rite or hey,

1165
01:08:50,000 --> 01:08:53,080
Speaker 2: you need to be more thoughtful about whatever, that kind

1166
01:08:53,120 --> 01:08:56,280
Speaker 2: of stuff. And you know, I tell for people who

1167
01:08:56,560 --> 01:08:58,400
Speaker 2: watch this and are interesting. I tell the story in

1168
01:08:58,439 --> 01:09:02,160
Speaker 2: the Book of the Faithful interview on Fox News after

1169
01:09:02,160 --> 01:09:05,519
Speaker 2: the twenty twenty election when I went at it with

1170
01:09:05,600 --> 01:09:09,920
Speaker 2: Aaron Prainey, who was a Trump spokesperson over the Trump

1171
01:09:09,960 --> 01:09:14,000
Speaker 2: claims that he had won and was just going after her.

1172
01:09:14,240 --> 01:09:17,280
Speaker 2: And look, I think probably in the moment, did I

1173
01:09:17,479 --> 01:09:21,200
Speaker 2: know that that wasn't really what Fox wanted me to do. Probably,

1174
01:09:22,760 --> 01:09:27,200
Speaker 2: But I think there's part of condition personality, whatever you

1175
01:09:27,200 --> 01:09:29,960
Speaker 2: want to call it, that I kind of didn't care.

1176
01:09:30,040 --> 01:09:31,800
Speaker 2: You know, I'd always been taught to do the right thing.

1177
01:09:31,840 --> 01:09:34,840
Speaker 2: My dad always said, do the right thing, no matter

1178
01:09:34,880 --> 01:09:39,040
Speaker 2: the consequences, and I you know, it's sort of all

1179
01:09:39,200 --> 01:09:44,560
Speaker 2: social graces and social stop points in your brain were lost.

1180
01:09:44,800 --> 01:09:47,559
Speaker 2: Can I blame that on autism? I don't know, but

1181
01:09:47,840 --> 01:09:50,680
Speaker 2: it certainly goes to there's times that sort of there

1182
01:09:51,040 --> 01:09:52,040
Speaker 2: are miss social cues.

1183
01:09:52,120 --> 01:09:54,639
Speaker 1: So you thought you missed a social cue in that moment.

1184
01:09:55,080 --> 01:09:56,559
Speaker 2: I think if you go back and watch the tape,

1185
01:09:56,600 --> 01:10:00,640
Speaker 2: it's pretty clear that all of a sudden the guardrails

1186
01:10:00,680 --> 01:10:01,200
Speaker 2: came off.

1187
01:10:02,640 --> 01:10:06,240
Speaker 1: What and so you do you attribute it to your autism?

1188
01:10:06,240 --> 01:10:08,160
Speaker 1: What do you attribute it to? Here's a piece of

1189
01:10:08,160 --> 01:10:10,200
Speaker 1: information you know to be true and you can't believe

1190
01:10:10,200 --> 01:10:11,120
Speaker 1: someone is denying it.

1191
01:10:11,320 --> 01:10:13,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that. I think that there's a there's

1192
01:10:13,080 --> 01:10:16,240
Speaker 2: an indignity to that that comes over me and sort

1193
01:10:16,240 --> 01:10:19,479
Speaker 2: of and I find it. And maybe it was because

1194
01:10:19,520 --> 01:10:22,280
Speaker 2: my dad taught me for so long how important telling

1195
01:10:22,320 --> 01:10:23,599
Speaker 2: the truth was and standing up.

1196
01:10:24,240 --> 01:10:26,760
Speaker 1: About blunt truth that you got from your father, right,

1197
01:10:26,840 --> 01:10:28,680
Speaker 1: and so in some ways that's going to get passed on.

1198
01:10:28,960 --> 01:10:31,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I found it sort of offensive that she

1199
01:10:31,720 --> 01:10:35,840
Speaker 2: kept saying something that was just objectively untrue. And there

1200
01:10:35,880 --> 01:10:38,680
Speaker 2: you go. I don't ever like to blame you know,

1201
01:10:38,720 --> 01:10:41,120
Speaker 2: I blame my autism, but I mean I'll give you

1202
01:10:41,120 --> 01:10:43,280
Speaker 2: another example that you know, people say, you know, well

1203
01:10:43,320 --> 01:10:45,400
Speaker 2: are you you know, how did you get over autism? Well,

1204
01:10:45,400 --> 01:10:47,400
Speaker 2: you never over it. You know. Two or three weeks ago,

1205
01:10:47,479 --> 01:10:49,719
Speaker 2: I was with my father in law at his golf

1206
01:10:49,720 --> 01:10:53,040
Speaker 2: club and I was putting my golf clubs in my

1207
01:10:53,120 --> 01:10:56,240
Speaker 2: travel bag and I was late, and I was focused

1208
01:10:56,240 --> 01:10:58,080
Speaker 2: on something else, and this older gentleman come over and

1209
01:10:58,120 --> 01:11:03,040
Speaker 2: wanted to talk. And one of the very you know,

1210
01:11:03,320 --> 01:11:05,200
Speaker 2: classic tendencies of autism is that you just sort of

1211
01:11:05,200 --> 01:11:07,479
Speaker 2: focus on a task and you just everything else gets

1212
01:11:07,479 --> 01:11:11,200
Speaker 2: blocked out and you kind of become obsessive. And I

1213
01:11:11,240 --> 01:11:13,800
Speaker 2: was obsessive by getting my golf backpacked, and I was

1214
01:11:14,240 --> 01:11:15,599
Speaker 2: horrifically rude to him.

1215
01:11:16,000 --> 01:11:18,680
Speaker 1: To the point that even he disrupted your routine in

1216
01:11:18,680 --> 01:11:20,840
Speaker 1: that moment, you were like, I can't be disrupted, and

1217
01:11:20,880 --> 01:11:21,200
Speaker 1: I just.

1218
01:11:21,280 --> 01:11:23,519
Speaker 2: Was focused on I have to get the backpacked. And

1219
01:11:24,520 --> 01:11:28,120
Speaker 2: I was really rude, and I afterwards thought, you almost

1220
01:11:28,120 --> 01:11:29,799
Speaker 2: in the moment, I knew I should have just stopped

1221
01:11:29,800 --> 01:11:31,719
Speaker 2: what I was doing and if I was five minutes late, fine,

1222
01:11:31,760 --> 01:11:34,760
Speaker 2: and I just didn't. And it was just and I

1223
01:11:34,760 --> 01:11:36,920
Speaker 2: thought to my you know, boy, you're better than this.

1224
01:11:37,080 --> 01:11:39,400
Speaker 2: You know, your dad really taught you and it so

1225
01:11:39,439 --> 01:11:41,600
Speaker 2: it's still there very much so.

1226
01:11:42,080 --> 01:11:45,000
Speaker 1: But you knew yeah in the moment.

1227
01:11:44,840 --> 01:11:45,960
Speaker 2: And almost couldn't help myself.

1228
01:11:46,080 --> 01:11:49,680
Speaker 1: But not not, but not all folks that have autism

1229
01:11:49,800 --> 01:11:51,559
Speaker 1: know that this is happening to them.

1230
01:11:52,000 --> 01:11:55,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, look, I think I think it's very true. And

1231
01:11:55,840 --> 01:11:58,760
Speaker 2: again born unlucky, not a cure, not a prescription. In

1232
01:11:58,880 --> 01:12:02,759
Speaker 2: my story, I can't remember IF's autism Society Autism speaks

1233
01:12:02,800 --> 01:12:04,799
Speaker 2: but says, you know, if you've met a kid with autism,

1234
01:12:04,840 --> 01:12:09,080
Speaker 2: you've met one kid with autism. Yeah, so that you

1235
01:12:09,360 --> 01:12:13,200
Speaker 2: have to meet. You have to understand where people are.

1236
01:12:13,840 --> 01:12:18,920
Speaker 1: So when you are where is it? What do you

1237
01:12:18,960 --> 01:12:23,200
Speaker 1: feel like you? Where is it showcased itself as this

1238
01:12:23,520 --> 01:12:24,439
Speaker 1: superpower for you?

1239
01:12:25,360 --> 01:12:27,080
Speaker 2: I don't know, because I don't know what it's like

1240
01:12:27,120 --> 01:12:29,880
Speaker 2: to live without it. I'm always me.

1241
01:12:30,400 --> 01:12:32,759
Speaker 1: I give that. I give that same answer when somebody says,

1242
01:12:33,280 --> 01:12:35,040
Speaker 1: when I tell people that my dad died when I

1243
01:12:35,040 --> 01:12:37,360
Speaker 1: was sixteen, oh, what was that like? I'm like, I

1244
01:12:37,400 --> 01:12:39,639
Speaker 1: don't know, because I don't know any other way.

1245
01:12:40,240 --> 01:12:41,800
Speaker 2: Well, you right, you.

1246
01:12:41,880 --> 01:12:44,479
Speaker 1: Just don't know, right, you don't know the other way.

1247
01:12:44,680 --> 01:12:47,519
Speaker 1: You just go right, And that's what you're saying is yea.

1248
01:12:47,560 --> 01:12:49,479
Speaker 1: And in fact, the second I answer the question, you

1249
01:12:49,479 --> 01:12:52,160
Speaker 1: answered that way, I almost That's why I just knocked

1250
01:12:52,200 --> 01:12:55,120
Speaker 1: myself for it, because I know exactly you don't know

1251
01:12:55,280 --> 01:12:58,320
Speaker 1: any different because you're living your life.

1252
01:12:58,680 --> 01:13:01,439
Speaker 2: Yeah, and look, you know you you write you just

1253
01:13:01,520 --> 01:13:04,719
Speaker 2: talked about your dad dying when sixteen that was really

1254
01:13:04,760 --> 01:13:06,840
Speaker 2: the defining moment in my dad's life.

1255
01:13:07,760 --> 01:13:10,280
Speaker 1: It's the fork in the road for me. Everything goes

1256
01:13:10,320 --> 01:13:13,000
Speaker 1: back to that moment. For me. It's now I'm fifty three,

1257
01:13:13,160 --> 01:13:17,280
Speaker 1: and I still like that. It's a yesterday moment I have.

1258
01:13:17,600 --> 01:13:19,920
Speaker 1: You know, the weirdest thing that I'm going through now

1259
01:13:20,040 --> 01:13:23,840
Speaker 1: is my son is now older than I was, and

1260
01:13:23,880 --> 01:13:27,160
Speaker 1: so now I'm having experienced father son experiences with my

1261
01:13:27,240 --> 01:13:30,120
Speaker 1: son as a freshman in college that I have nothing

1262
01:13:30,120 --> 01:13:33,080
Speaker 1: to compare it to with my relationship with my father

1263
01:13:33,600 --> 01:13:36,640
Speaker 1: because he wasn't there, So now they're all new to me.

1264
01:13:37,560 --> 01:13:39,040
Speaker 2: Well dad, Yeah.

1265
01:13:38,880 --> 01:13:40,759
Speaker 1: I think about this all the time because I wonder,

1266
01:13:40,760 --> 01:13:43,320
Speaker 1: am I screwing something up? What about what if I

1267
01:13:43,360 --> 01:13:46,280
Speaker 1: do it? You know, I don't have any role model anymore, right, I,

1268
01:13:46,800 --> 01:13:48,920
Speaker 1: in my head always had a role model up to

1269
01:13:49,000 --> 01:13:49,760
Speaker 1: a point.

1270
01:13:50,720 --> 01:13:52,280
Speaker 2: I hear you, I'm not a father I think this

1271
01:13:52,360 --> 01:13:54,280
Speaker 2: is the first parenting book ever written not by a

1272
01:13:54,320 --> 01:13:56,719
Speaker 2: father but by the kid, and.

1273
01:13:58,120 --> 01:14:00,479
Speaker 1: Which I think is makes it more compelling because we

1274
01:14:00,560 --> 01:14:03,639
Speaker 1: do a lot of these parenting books are written from

1275
01:14:03,680 --> 01:14:07,320
Speaker 1: the parent's perspective and you don't know whether it really

1276
01:14:07,360 --> 01:14:10,720
Speaker 1: worked or not for the child. And I think this

1277
01:14:10,760 --> 01:14:13,320
Speaker 1: book is in some ways more powerful because it's written

1278
01:14:13,360 --> 01:14:17,760
Speaker 1: from your perspective rather than And you know, it's one

1279
01:14:17,760 --> 01:14:20,040
Speaker 1: of those things I'd love to someday ask your father

1280
01:14:20,800 --> 01:14:23,040
Speaker 1: how he would have you know, now that he saw

1281
01:14:23,160 --> 01:14:26,200
Speaker 1: your version of this, does it change how he may

1282
01:14:26,320 --> 01:14:28,599
Speaker 1: describe what he did, if that makes sense?

1283
01:14:29,560 --> 01:14:32,720
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it does. Good luck getting to talk

1284
01:14:32,760 --> 01:14:33,160
Speaker 2: about it.

1285
01:14:34,320 --> 01:14:36,439
Speaker 1: I imagine if you were willing to talk, the two

1286
01:14:36,439 --> 01:14:38,800
Speaker 1: of you would be here together. But yeah, this is

1287
01:14:38,840 --> 01:14:39,639
Speaker 1: your story to tell.

1288
01:14:39,800 --> 01:14:43,519
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what he said. And he really objects to

1289
01:14:43,680 --> 01:14:48,400
Speaker 2: me calling him a hero, which I think is interesting.

1290
01:14:48,439 --> 01:14:51,640
Speaker 2: You know, he lost his dad at sixteen. Yeah, so

1291
01:14:52,240 --> 01:14:54,360
Speaker 2: I think it speaks exactly what you're saying.

1292
01:14:55,120 --> 01:14:57,680
Speaker 1: We got about five or so minutes here. Let's talk

1293
01:14:57,680 --> 01:15:02,479
Speaker 1: about our industry, the media industry. I'm really rooting hard

1294
01:15:02,479 --> 01:15:08,920
Speaker 1: for News Nation, thank you. And it's because what you

1295
01:15:08,960 --> 01:15:13,639
Speaker 1: know there is no one answer to our media problem. Right,

1296
01:15:13,680 --> 01:15:16,840
Speaker 1: we need more voice, Yes and right. It's a yes

1297
01:15:16,920 --> 01:15:24,160
Speaker 1: and situation. And yet what you guys are trying to do,

1298
01:15:25,200 --> 01:15:27,599
Speaker 1: what I'd like to think I'm trying to do, and

1299
01:15:27,640 --> 01:15:30,599
Speaker 1: what I tried to do before, and the media industry

1300
01:15:30,640 --> 01:15:33,640
Speaker 1: fights against us, which is, Hey, you know, I'm a

1301
01:15:33,640 --> 01:15:38,800
Speaker 1: person who looks at politics through the prism of incrementalism,

1302
01:15:39,160 --> 01:15:41,599
Speaker 1: Meaning when you're trying to govern three hundred and fifty

1303
01:15:41,640 --> 01:15:45,640
Speaker 1: million people who are pretty evenly divided, you can't do

1304
01:15:45,760 --> 01:15:51,040
Speaker 1: anything rashly. Right, if you want to turn an aircraft carrier,

1305
01:15:51,080 --> 01:15:52,840
Speaker 1: you do it slowly, and you do it sort of

1306
01:15:52,880 --> 01:15:54,640
Speaker 1: a little bit at a time, because you want to

1307
01:15:54,640 --> 01:15:57,120
Speaker 1: bring everybody along. If you do it too fast, you

1308
01:15:57,200 --> 01:16:01,280
Speaker 1: will do one step forward, two steps back. And yet

1309
01:16:01,560 --> 01:16:05,320
Speaker 1: we know in news or and information is I always

1310
01:16:05,320 --> 01:16:09,320
Speaker 1: say the people most interested have strong opinions. The people

1311
01:16:09,479 --> 01:16:14,000
Speaker 1: least interested are watching sports or are watching something else. Right,

1312
01:16:14,600 --> 01:16:17,559
Speaker 1: And yet I get the sense you're trying to appeal

1313
01:16:17,640 --> 01:16:20,920
Speaker 1: to that person somewhere between the thirty five yard lines.

1314
01:16:21,479 --> 01:16:24,080
Speaker 1: It's center left, center right. I'd like to say I'm

1315
01:16:24,120 --> 01:16:26,919
Speaker 1: doing the same thing. And yet we know the business

1316
01:16:27,000 --> 01:16:29,280
Speaker 1: is driven by those between the goal line and the

1317
01:16:29,320 --> 01:16:30,639
Speaker 1: thirty yard lines. Right.

1318
01:16:31,680 --> 01:16:34,960
Speaker 2: I think it's an excellent analysis.

1319
01:16:33,720 --> 01:16:36,760
Speaker 1: What do you think works and what do you think

1320
01:16:36,800 --> 01:16:39,800
Speaker 1: has been a struggle in this idea of trying to

1321
01:16:39,800 --> 01:16:43,200
Speaker 1: create something that's a bit more I don't know if

1322
01:16:43,240 --> 01:16:46,200
Speaker 1: you want to call it centrist, moderate, everybody's got their

1323
01:16:46,200 --> 01:16:50,400
Speaker 1: own description of it, but sort of somewhere broader than

1324
01:16:50,400 --> 01:16:52,439
Speaker 1: what we've seen on traditional cable.

1325
01:16:52,920 --> 01:16:56,360
Speaker 2: Well, I would say a few things. Number one, I

1326
01:16:56,360 --> 01:16:59,439
Speaker 2: think your analysis is right, yes, And I will add

1327
01:16:59,479 --> 01:17:06,439
Speaker 2: to it that the economic incentives have changed in media, right,

1328
01:17:06,479 --> 01:17:11,240
Speaker 2: because when there were three television networks, broadcasters and broadsheet

1329
01:17:11,280 --> 01:17:14,360
Speaker 2: newspapers one per town. In order to make money, they

1330
01:17:14,400 --> 01:17:16,200
Speaker 2: had to appeal to everybody.

1331
01:17:16,040 --> 01:17:17,719
Speaker 1: You wanted to pick up audience as possible.

1332
01:17:18,280 --> 01:17:22,400
Speaker 2: Then, as technology has changed, we've gone from broadcasting to cable,

1333
01:17:22,400 --> 01:17:25,960
Speaker 2: to narrow casting to YouTube everything else. So now nobody

1334
01:17:26,040 --> 01:17:28,920
Speaker 2: has to watch anything that questions their worldview or makes

1335
01:17:28,960 --> 01:17:31,160
Speaker 2: them uncomfortable or whatever it is, because of social media

1336
01:17:31,160 --> 01:17:35,680
Speaker 2: algorithms is actually sort of tailored to you personally. So

1337
01:17:36,760 --> 01:17:42,040
Speaker 2: what has been underserved is the Center because people mistook

1338
01:17:42,120 --> 01:17:46,120
Speaker 2: the Center for being bored and uninvolved and uncaring and

1339
01:17:46,160 --> 01:17:49,280
Speaker 2: watching sports and just sort of uninterested. And I think

1340
01:17:49,320 --> 01:17:52,080
Speaker 2: what we've found is that there is a radical center.

1341
01:17:52,600 --> 01:17:56,040
Speaker 2: There are people who are upset with both sides and

1342
01:17:56,080 --> 01:18:00,000
Speaker 2: that sleeping giant of the of most of America that's

1343
01:18:00,040 --> 01:18:02,320
Speaker 2: between the thirty five yard lines, as you point out,

1344
01:18:03,479 --> 01:18:06,000
Speaker 2: that's in a bell shaped curve. That's where most people live.

1345
01:18:06,320 --> 01:18:09,759
Speaker 2: They've been awoken and they don't they do care about sports,

1346
01:18:10,200 --> 01:18:13,040
Speaker 2: but now they're scared. They're scared of the extreme left

1347
01:18:13,080 --> 01:18:16,360
Speaker 2: and they're scared of the extreme right. So we're at NewsNation.

1348
01:18:16,479 --> 01:18:20,320
Speaker 2: We try to be is in the middle, calling out

1349
01:18:20,360 --> 01:18:23,559
Speaker 2: both sides. Both sides get a hard get a hard time,

1350
01:18:24,040 --> 01:18:26,120
Speaker 2: And I think, what's different about my show? And you

1351
01:18:26,120 --> 01:18:29,360
Speaker 2: know I say this, I got asked or invited not

1352
01:18:29,400 --> 01:18:33,320
Speaker 2: to return to Fox News because I've went after Donald

1353
01:18:33,360 --> 01:18:37,960
Speaker 2: Trump and I have had Trump send down the White House,

1354
01:18:38,000 --> 01:18:40,240
Speaker 2: send out stories and commentaries I've done and said, look,

1355
01:18:40,240 --> 01:18:41,720
Speaker 2: see how great of a job we're doing. Leland says,

1356
01:18:41,720 --> 01:18:43,240
Speaker 2: we're doing a great job. So to me, that's what

1357
01:18:43,280 --> 01:18:47,639
Speaker 2: a journalist should be. And I think people are yearning

1358
01:18:47,760 --> 01:18:53,519
Speaker 2: for and that radical center, for somebody to call balls

1359
01:18:53,560 --> 01:18:56,960
Speaker 2: and strikes in a sense on both sides so that's

1360
01:18:57,000 --> 01:19:01,759
Speaker 2: what we're trying to do. Book. So far, it's working

1361
01:19:01,840 --> 01:19:05,480
Speaker 2: two ways. One, ratings are up significantly. We beat MSNBC

1362
01:19:05,640 --> 01:19:14,800
Speaker 2: and CNN across the board last weekend. And two, I

1363
01:19:14,840 --> 01:19:18,360
Speaker 2: think when I meet people and see them. It used

1364
01:19:18,360 --> 01:19:20,439
Speaker 2: to be when I left Fox, like what happened to you? Oh,

1365
01:19:20,479 --> 01:19:25,240
Speaker 2: I went to News Nation News, And now I have

1366
01:19:25,280 --> 01:19:28,040
Speaker 2: people coming up to me saying, I see you on

1367
01:19:28,120 --> 01:19:30,320
Speaker 2: News Nation, and I love that you give both sides

1368
01:19:30,360 --> 01:19:33,000
Speaker 2: a hard time, and I love that I don't agree

1369
01:19:33,040 --> 01:19:34,960
Speaker 2: with you all the time. And it's like, oh, okay,

1370
01:19:35,000 --> 01:19:35,880
Speaker 2: so it must be working.

1371
01:19:48,000 --> 01:19:50,639
Speaker 1: That's a that's A. That second part. I mean, you're right,

1372
01:19:50,680 --> 01:19:54,759
Speaker 1: it's sort of like, frankly, I experienced a brief period

1373
01:19:54,800 --> 01:19:57,280
Speaker 1: of that, like you know, for a while too, where

1374
01:19:57,280 --> 01:19:57,760
Speaker 1: have you gone?

1375
01:19:58,360 --> 01:19:58,479
Speaker 2: Right?

1376
01:19:58,520 --> 01:20:01,280
Speaker 1: And then now just suddenly people saying, boy, you're in

1377
01:20:01,280 --> 01:20:03,320
Speaker 1: my feeds all the time. I now see you. I'm like, okay,

1378
01:20:03,360 --> 01:20:07,519
Speaker 1: I'm this This thing is is working. Breaking, it is,

1379
01:20:07,600 --> 01:20:10,640
Speaker 1: but it is a It does feel like one of

1380
01:20:10,640 --> 01:20:12,599
Speaker 1: my favorite expressions is peeing and a hurricane.

1381
01:20:13,000 --> 01:20:13,160
Speaker 2: Right.

1382
01:20:13,439 --> 01:20:18,000
Speaker 1: Sometimes it feels I'm a look, I grew up so

1383
01:20:18,120 --> 01:20:20,840
Speaker 1: far south. It's north, you know, Miami is the sixth

1384
01:20:20,840 --> 01:20:24,040
Speaker 1: Borough of New York, right and Florida. You know, I joke,

1385
01:20:24,280 --> 01:20:26,200
Speaker 1: we're so backwards in Florida to go you have to

1386
01:20:26,200 --> 01:20:30,120
Speaker 1: go north, to go south, because culturally, the farther north

1387
01:20:30,160 --> 01:20:34,240
Speaker 1: you go the But I love me a good Southern

1388
01:20:34,280 --> 01:20:38,040
Speaker 1: expression like that, and I cleaned it up a little bit,

1389
01:20:38,400 --> 01:20:41,320
Speaker 1: But that is the sense sometimes, right, you you sit

1390
01:20:41,360 --> 01:20:46,000
Speaker 1: here and I'll watch I'll watch a story go Haywire

1391
01:20:46,920 --> 01:20:50,200
Speaker 1: on cable, and I'll sit there and say, you know,

1392
01:20:50,280 --> 01:20:53,120
Speaker 1: there's a lot of other bigger stories happening that are

1393
01:20:53,240 --> 01:20:57,759
Speaker 1: much more consequent, and yet we're obsessing over a vote.

1394
01:20:58,479 --> 01:21:01,040
Speaker 1: And I don't want to be dismissive of the Epstein story.

1395
01:21:01,080 --> 01:21:03,360
Speaker 1: I'm not dismissive of it. I'm not dismissive of what

1396
01:21:03,439 --> 01:21:06,679
Speaker 1: happened to the victims. I think they deserve their say.

1397
01:21:07,680 --> 01:21:11,400
Speaker 1: But because of the way the incentive structure works in media,

1398
01:21:11,439 --> 01:21:14,120
Speaker 1: there was this obsession over covering it, and it was

1399
01:21:14,160 --> 01:21:16,000
Speaker 1: across the board. It didn't matter whether it was on

1400
01:21:16,080 --> 01:21:19,080
Speaker 1: sort of the legacy cable channels or on this And

1401
01:21:19,120 --> 01:21:21,280
Speaker 1: You're sitting there going, you know, these tariffs are a

1402
01:21:21,320 --> 01:21:24,680
Speaker 1: much bigger story. What's happening with the Venezuela, whether or

1403
01:21:24,760 --> 01:21:27,960
Speaker 1: not the president has authority to bomb a boat in Venezuela,

1404
01:21:28,200 --> 01:21:32,000
Speaker 1: whether or not. You know, there are much more consequential stories,

1405
01:21:32,479 --> 01:21:35,479
Speaker 1: but they're not as entertaining as Epstein, like, how do

1406
01:21:35,560 --> 01:21:38,280
Speaker 1: you how do you fight that? I've got the luxury

1407
01:21:38,280 --> 01:21:40,880
Speaker 1: where I don't have to have a boss these days,

1408
01:21:41,360 --> 01:21:44,000
Speaker 1: But I if I look, I remember those days where

1409
01:21:44,680 --> 01:21:46,600
Speaker 1: all right, I want to do this and if I

1410
01:21:46,600 --> 01:21:48,880
Speaker 1: want to do this story, I got to sort of

1411
01:21:49,320 --> 01:21:51,559
Speaker 1: do this story so that I can do this story.

1412
01:21:52,400 --> 01:21:56,240
Speaker 2: Look, I totally hear you. And that's the challenge in

1413
01:21:56,240 --> 01:21:59,360
Speaker 2: a newsroom every day. And and I think to a

1414
01:21:59,400 --> 01:22:02,760
Speaker 2: certain extent, you know, it's the challenge for all of

1415
01:22:02,840 --> 01:22:05,479
Speaker 2: us of what is important, right, because there.

1416
01:22:05,360 --> 01:22:07,920
Speaker 1: Is we're all curators. I look at it this way.

1417
01:22:07,960 --> 01:22:09,920
Speaker 1: In some ways, we're all the same, and that we're

1418
01:22:09,960 --> 01:22:13,760
Speaker 1: all trying to curate what we think people should be

1419
01:22:13,800 --> 01:22:16,840
Speaker 1: focusing on. Yeah, and you know, and and now there's

1420
01:22:16,880 --> 01:22:18,479
Speaker 1: a lot of curators out there. We used to have three.

1421
01:22:18,479 --> 01:22:22,360
Speaker 1: As you point out, it was Walter, it was mister Brinkley, right,

1422
01:22:22,479 --> 01:22:26,240
Speaker 1: and it was whatever combination of of unknown people. ABC

1423
01:22:26,360 --> 01:22:32,760
Speaker 1: would come up with, well said, right, yeah, un till

1424
01:22:32,800 --> 01:22:35,840
Speaker 1: Jennings really right, NBC and ABC had had some NBC

1425
01:22:35,880 --> 01:22:38,680
Speaker 1: and CBS had real stability, ABC less so because they

1426
01:22:38,680 --> 01:22:40,559
Speaker 1: were always the number three, right, they were always trying

1427
01:22:40,600 --> 01:22:44,360
Speaker 1: to catch Walter or mister Brinkley. I always call him

1428
01:22:44,360 --> 01:22:46,439
Speaker 1: mister Brinkley. I used his desk at NBC, so I

1429
01:22:46,439 --> 01:22:50,679
Speaker 1: have a very fond I I Brinkley at Russer type

1430
01:22:50,680 --> 01:22:57,840
Speaker 1: of mindset there. But but it is a Now there's

1431
01:22:57,840 --> 01:22:59,640
Speaker 1: a thousand of US curators.

1432
01:22:59,600 --> 01:23:02,600
Speaker 2: Yeah or more. Look, I think it goes back to

1433
01:23:03,400 --> 01:23:05,879
Speaker 2: all news is biased, right, because it's done by humans,

1434
01:23:06,120 --> 01:23:07,280
Speaker 2: and it's also you.

1435
01:23:07,240 --> 01:23:08,839
Speaker 1: Know what I like to do. I checked my pulse

1436
01:23:09,600 --> 01:23:11,400
Speaker 1: and people ask me about bias, and I'm like, you know,

1437
01:23:11,400 --> 01:23:14,200
Speaker 1: we're all born with original bias, right, No, you just

1438
01:23:14,280 --> 01:23:17,160
Speaker 1: talked about you had two parents. Not everybody's born to

1439
01:23:17,240 --> 01:23:20,360
Speaker 1: two parents. Not everybody's born right, like you know, not

1440
01:23:20,439 --> 01:23:25,320
Speaker 1: everybody's born in a situation that can survive a challenge

1441
01:23:25,720 --> 01:23:31,679
Speaker 1: that's in health or whatever, and it shapes you. I

1442
01:23:31,720 --> 01:23:34,040
Speaker 1: would call that a bias, right the fact.

1443
01:23:34,479 --> 01:23:36,960
Speaker 2: Look, I was always told bias isn't having an opinion,

1444
01:23:36,960 --> 01:23:42,040
Speaker 2: it's excluding opinions. That's how That's how I was taught,

1445
01:23:42,360 --> 01:23:46,599
Speaker 2: and I keep that in mind actually sort of as

1446
01:23:46,600 --> 01:23:49,720
Speaker 2: a north Star. And look, bias isn't so much how

1447
01:23:49,760 --> 01:23:51,840
Speaker 2: you cover the news, it's what you cover. Is you

1448
01:23:51,920 --> 01:23:54,400
Speaker 2: just pointed out because of all your cover is Epstein,

1449
01:23:54,840 --> 01:23:58,360
Speaker 2: there's a lot of other stories out there that have different.

1450
01:23:58,280 --> 01:24:00,720
Speaker 1: You've made a decision not to right right.

1451
01:24:03,400 --> 01:24:10,719
Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean, I think it is. It's huge

1452
01:24:11,520 --> 01:24:15,160
Speaker 2: in terms of what is decided to be covered. What

1453
01:24:15,360 --> 01:24:18,240
Speaker 2: I think I try to think about, and you know,

1454
01:24:18,280 --> 01:24:22,080
Speaker 2: I grew up in Missouri. I come from you know,

1455
01:24:22,760 --> 01:24:25,040
Speaker 2: middle class, upper middle class family.

1456
01:24:25,160 --> 01:24:26,720
Speaker 1: In the city or Saint Louis.

1457
01:24:26,479 --> 01:24:29,080
Speaker 2: Saint Louis, but I spent a lot of time outside

1458
01:24:29,080 --> 01:24:31,479
Speaker 2: of Saint Louis and I and I kind of try

1459
01:24:31,520 --> 01:24:33,040
Speaker 2: to go back and I spent a lot of time

1460
01:24:33,080 --> 01:24:35,680
Speaker 2: in local news and small markets, and I spent a

1461
01:24:35,680 --> 01:24:38,160
Speaker 2: lot of time, you know, in Colorado in small markets.

1462
01:24:38,200 --> 01:24:40,719
Speaker 2: So I I think that I tend to go back

1463
01:24:40,760 --> 01:24:46,639
Speaker 2: to when people are drinking with their buddies on Saturday afternoon,

1464
01:24:46,680 --> 01:24:50,040
Speaker 2: wh they're watching college football, when they're playing golf, what

1465
01:24:50,120 --> 01:24:52,759
Speaker 2: are people talking about, how is it how are their

1466
01:24:52,800 --> 01:24:57,400
Speaker 2: lives being changed and affected? And in trying to cover

1467
01:24:57,520 --> 01:25:01,439
Speaker 2: it through that prism. You know why why this matters.

1468
01:25:02,080 --> 01:25:04,879
Speaker 1: You came up through the business, through local markets.

1469
01:25:05,000 --> 01:25:05,280
Speaker 2: I did.

1470
01:25:06,080 --> 01:25:09,599
Speaker 1: Most people younger than you have not. I know, it's terrible,

1471
01:25:09,920 --> 01:25:12,920
Speaker 1: I and I didn't. I came in a different way.

1472
01:25:13,120 --> 01:25:15,720
Speaker 1: I was a I worked on a trade publication about

1473
01:25:15,800 --> 01:25:18,760
Speaker 1: campaign politics. I remember there was a moment.

1474
01:25:19,080 --> 01:25:20,760
Speaker 2: In the house, well I'm going to give you one

1475
01:25:21,120 --> 01:25:24,360
Speaker 2: quick thing, But you were out in the field. Sure

1476
01:25:24,479 --> 01:25:28,280
Speaker 2: know what it's like to hustle the stories, not in Washington, not.

1477
01:25:28,640 --> 01:25:29,880
Speaker 2: You know what it's like to be on the trail.

1478
01:25:30,240 --> 01:25:32,120
Speaker 1: But the reason I bring up local is that I

1479
01:25:32,160 --> 01:25:35,080
Speaker 1: really believe the loss of local is why they don't

1480
01:25:35,120 --> 01:25:38,120
Speaker 1: trust us as much as they used to do, because

1481
01:25:38,200 --> 01:25:42,320
Speaker 1: local was our character reference to the national. Right, your

1482
01:25:42,400 --> 01:25:46,320
Speaker 1: local people knew who the local journalists were. People's families knew,

1483
01:25:46,320 --> 01:25:49,479
Speaker 1: oh yeah, my son goes to school with his daughter

1484
01:25:49,560 --> 01:25:51,840
Speaker 1: or whatever it is, right, they knew they were members

1485
01:25:51,880 --> 01:25:56,080
Speaker 1: of the community, and that created a level of trust

1486
01:25:56,360 --> 01:26:00,679
Speaker 1: locally that could never be matched nationally because the national

1487
01:26:00,720 --> 01:26:04,479
Speaker 1: didn't live there, right, the local lived there. And I

1488
01:26:04,520 --> 01:26:07,240
Speaker 1: also view that local journalism is different from national journalism

1489
01:26:07,280 --> 01:26:09,320
Speaker 1: in that on the local level, you're there to help

1490
01:26:09,360 --> 01:26:12,200
Speaker 1: people live their lives. Ninety percent of the stories local

1491
01:26:12,240 --> 01:26:15,240
Speaker 1: news does is to help people live navigate their life

1492
01:26:16,439 --> 01:26:20,960
Speaker 1: in that community. National news is different, right, It's about

1493
01:26:21,240 --> 01:26:23,360
Speaker 1: telling you what you need to know in civics, like

1494
01:26:23,400 --> 01:26:25,920
Speaker 1: what you need to know about the country as a whole, which,

1495
01:26:25,920 --> 01:26:27,880
Speaker 1: of course in and out of itself, is more divisive.

1496
01:26:28,280 --> 01:26:31,759
Speaker 1: Local news much less divisive. But I think the loss

1497
01:26:31,800 --> 01:26:33,960
Speaker 1: of local news, as I joke, a man named Craig

1498
01:26:34,000 --> 01:26:37,080
Speaker 1: came along and said, you know, classified ads ought to

1499
01:26:37,120 --> 01:26:39,599
Speaker 1: be free. YadA, YadA, YadA. We destroyed the entire local

1500
01:26:39,600 --> 01:26:43,920
Speaker 1: news ecosystem, right. We didn't fully appreciate how much that

1501
01:26:44,080 --> 01:26:49,559
Speaker 1: revenue stream kept so many local publications together. And yet

1502
01:26:49,640 --> 01:26:51,840
Speaker 1: I look at our media problem today and I think

1503
01:26:51,880 --> 01:26:55,120
Speaker 1: the loss of local is what is the biggest. It's

1504
01:26:55,120 --> 01:26:58,000
Speaker 1: sort of like a house can stand up, but there's

1505
01:26:58,040 --> 01:27:01,439
Speaker 1: always one pillar that is keeping the whole thing up together.

1506
01:27:01,800 --> 01:27:04,000
Speaker 1: And it turned out local news was that pillar. And

1507
01:27:04,040 --> 01:27:07,320
Speaker 1: when we wiped it out, it collapsed the entire information

1508
01:27:07,400 --> 01:27:12,040
Speaker 1: ecosystem as far as I'm concerned, which given your experience

1509
01:27:12,080 --> 01:27:15,519
Speaker 1: coming through local, how would you revitalize it? O.

1510
01:27:15,520 --> 01:27:18,559
Speaker 2: Look, I got taught in one of the best parts

1511
01:27:18,600 --> 01:27:22,400
Speaker 2: of writing born lucky is having been able to say

1512
01:27:23,120 --> 01:27:26,000
Speaker 2: really nice things about people who helped me, who understood

1513
01:27:26,040 --> 01:27:30,360
Speaker 2: that I was a weird kid and socially awkward and

1514
01:27:30,760 --> 01:27:32,840
Speaker 2: therefore was a target and protected me or took a

1515
01:27:32,920 --> 01:27:34,360
Speaker 2: chance on me in one way or another. So we

1516
01:27:34,479 --> 01:27:37,320
Speaker 2: used the names of all the really nice people, and

1517
01:27:37,560 --> 01:27:39,519
Speaker 2: I didn't use the names of anybody who was mean

1518
01:27:39,560 --> 01:27:42,519
Speaker 2: to me, because it wasn't about settling scores, and I

1519
01:27:42,520 --> 01:27:43,479
Speaker 2: thought that was important.

1520
01:27:43,760 --> 01:27:46,360
Speaker 1: Some people would have done it the exact opposite way.

1521
01:27:46,560 --> 01:27:51,040
Speaker 2: Well, I am my father's son, but a guy named

1522
01:27:51,040 --> 01:27:53,639
Speaker 2: Brad Remington who was my first news director in Saint Louis, Missouri,

1523
01:27:53,720 --> 01:27:55,679
Speaker 2: when I was an intern at KTBI, and then hired

1524
01:27:55,680 --> 01:27:59,920
Speaker 2: me as an anchor at KTVR and Denver. Content drives viewers.

1525
01:28:00,479 --> 01:28:04,120
Speaker 2: If you put out good content, they will come because

1526
01:28:04,160 --> 01:28:09,439
Speaker 2: people are the viewer, and people are smart. They are

1527
01:28:09,479 --> 01:28:17,880
Speaker 2: extraordinarily interested in their own city, town, state, country, and

1528
01:28:18,040 --> 01:28:22,360
Speaker 2: that you if you fill that void with good, meaningful

1529
01:28:22,439 --> 01:28:27,000
Speaker 2: news and information, people will respond to it. And I

1530
01:28:27,040 --> 01:28:30,200
Speaker 2: think that that is the lesson that good journalism is

1531
01:28:30,240 --> 01:28:33,800
Speaker 2: rewarded because it's something that people crave and always have.

1532
01:28:34,200 --> 01:28:38,439
Speaker 2: People always want to know what the news is, and

1533
01:28:39,040 --> 01:28:43,400
Speaker 2: I so, yes, it's become commoditized. The flip side of

1534
01:28:43,400 --> 01:28:45,360
Speaker 2: that is, I think that if you if you offer

1535
01:28:45,479 --> 01:28:52,120
Speaker 2: something special, if you if you really offer people compelling,

1536
01:28:52,280 --> 01:28:54,880
Speaker 2: must read, must know information. I remember there was research

1537
01:28:54,920 --> 01:28:57,519
Speaker 2: done in the nineteen nineties about why people watch local news.

1538
01:28:57,640 --> 01:28:59,840
Speaker 2: The number one reason was the weather the number two

1539
01:29:00,160 --> 01:29:02,280
Speaker 2: and so they didn't sound stupid at the water cooler.

1540
01:29:03,560 --> 01:29:07,800
Speaker 2: So if you can provide them that information in that context, well,

1541
01:29:07,840 --> 01:29:08,720
Speaker 2: that's always a thing.

1542
01:29:09,120 --> 01:29:12,960
Speaker 1: That's always a reminder that what we really are as educators,

1543
01:29:13,479 --> 01:29:17,280
Speaker 1: we just never call ourselves that. I like that because

1544
01:29:17,640 --> 01:29:22,559
Speaker 1: ultimately we're helping. We're giving people information they didn't know. Hopefully,

1545
01:29:22,600 --> 01:29:24,720
Speaker 1: if we're a good teacher, we're putting it in context.

1546
01:29:24,760 --> 01:29:27,920
Speaker 1: If we're a great teacher, we're explaining, you know, the

1547
01:29:27,920 --> 01:29:30,120
Speaker 1: origin of it and all those things. But ultimately we're

1548
01:29:30,200 --> 01:29:32,920
Speaker 1: educators and are you are we good at Are you

1549
01:29:32,960 --> 01:29:35,000
Speaker 1: a good educator? Are you a bad educator? But you're

1550
01:29:35,120 --> 01:29:37,519
Speaker 1: educating no matter what you're doing when you're in the

1551
01:29:37,680 --> 01:29:40,240
Speaker 1: news and information business. Hey, Leland, I have to tell you,

1552
01:29:40,240 --> 01:29:42,120
Speaker 1: it's it's good to get to know you because reading

1553
01:29:42,120 --> 01:29:46,719
Speaker 1: the book, I find it, I find it weirdly unfair

1554
01:29:47,200 --> 01:29:49,800
Speaker 1: in a situation like this, Suddenly I feel like I

1555
01:29:49,880 --> 01:29:53,640
Speaker 1: know a lot about you right in this situation, and

1556
01:29:53,680 --> 01:29:57,799
Speaker 1: it almost feels upside down. I mean, you've put yourself

1557
01:29:57,800 --> 01:30:01,960
Speaker 1: out here well and so people and I admire it,

1558
01:30:02,000 --> 01:30:05,200
Speaker 1: but it's you gave up a little privacy.

1559
01:30:06,120 --> 01:30:10,839
Speaker 2: Well, if it helps people, and if it helps parents

1560
01:30:11,080 --> 01:30:14,200
Speaker 2: and family members of kids who are struggling, whatever it was,

1561
01:30:15,000 --> 01:30:17,479
Speaker 2: to be more supportive, to show up more for those

1562
01:30:17,560 --> 01:30:20,880
Speaker 2: kids to know that they're really making a difference, it's

1563
01:30:20,880 --> 01:30:21,320
Speaker 2: worth it.

1564
01:30:21,840 --> 01:30:25,040
Speaker 1: Look the number, you know. The simplest way I've described

1565
01:30:25,080 --> 01:30:27,240
Speaker 1: it is that this is a reminder that parenting is.

1566
01:30:27,160 --> 01:30:33,440
Speaker 2: Everything well, and I hope that there's enough parents who

1567
01:30:33,520 --> 01:30:35,920
Speaker 2: gain something from it that it makes it so that

1568
01:30:36,000 --> 01:30:39,840
Speaker 2: there's some lives that have been changed, and that then

1569
01:30:39,880 --> 01:30:42,519
Speaker 2: it'll be worth it. So, I mean, Born Lucky is

1570
01:30:42,560 --> 01:30:45,559
Speaker 2: my story. I always say, you know, it is my book.

1571
01:30:46,520 --> 01:30:49,080
Speaker 2: It's about me, but it's not for me. It's for

1572
01:30:50,040 --> 01:30:53,840
Speaker 2: parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles who have a kid.

1573
01:30:53,840 --> 01:30:56,599
Speaker 2: And what parent doesn't want to help their kid.

1574
01:30:56,280 --> 01:30:59,160
Speaker 1: One hundred percent. That's a reminder what we all have

1575
01:30:59,200 --> 01:31:17,200
Speaker 1: in common. He Leland, congratulations, Thanks Chew. Like I said, uh,

1576
01:31:18,000 --> 01:31:20,720
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed the conversation with Leland and if

1577
01:31:20,720 --> 01:31:22,559
Speaker 1: you want to check him out and check out his reporting,

1578
01:31:22,600 --> 01:31:27,760
Speaker 1: he's on News Nation in prime time. Formally, it's on

1579
01:31:27,840 --> 01:31:31,200
Speaker 1: the what used to be WGN, and Hey, as a

1580
01:31:31,240 --> 01:31:33,800
Speaker 1: baseball fan when I hear WGN, I think of the

1581
01:31:33,800 --> 01:31:35,639
Speaker 1: Cubs and Hey, we're in the middle of baseball season.

1582
01:31:35,720 --> 01:31:35,920
Speaker 2: Right.

1583
01:31:37,120 --> 01:31:39,920
Speaker 1: It is Wednesday, which also means I've got a new

1584
01:31:39,920 --> 01:31:40,919
Speaker 1: top five list.

1585
01:31:40,840 --> 01:31:46,240
Speaker 2: The top Jest, Top five, Top top Jest.

1586
01:31:46,160 --> 01:31:51,640
Speaker 1: Top And here's something that I am pledging to do

1587
01:31:51,800 --> 01:31:55,040
Speaker 1: is that the first the first Wednesday of every month

1588
01:31:55,120 --> 01:31:58,559
Speaker 1: when I have in which is October first, I will

1589
01:31:58,560 --> 01:32:01,800
Speaker 1: do Senate races up until November of twenty twenty six,

1590
01:32:02,040 --> 01:32:04,400
Speaker 1: and the second Wednesday of every month, I'll do a

1591
01:32:04,439 --> 01:32:07,000
Speaker 1: top five involving governor's races. So my top five involving

1592
01:32:07,040 --> 01:32:10,080
Speaker 1: center races today are simply this the top five center

1593
01:32:10,160 --> 01:32:14,360
Speaker 1: races that are most likely to switch parties. I'm not

1594
01:32:14,400 --> 01:32:16,719
Speaker 1: saying any of these five are going to switch parties,

1595
01:32:17,320 --> 01:32:21,280
Speaker 1: but they're the in order of most likely to switch

1596
01:32:22,240 --> 01:32:27,600
Speaker 1: to Essentially, in this case, it's the five most competitive

1597
01:32:27,680 --> 01:32:30,880
Speaker 1: races in the country, but in the order of most

1598
01:32:31,000 --> 01:32:35,880
Speaker 1: likely to flint. So number one on that list is

1599
01:32:35,920 --> 01:32:39,360
Speaker 1: North Carolina, the open seat. There. We've had a little

1600
01:32:39,360 --> 01:32:43,040
Speaker 1: bit of early polling. You've got somebody who's held state

1601
01:32:43,040 --> 01:32:46,200
Speaker 1: wide office versus somebody who hasn't. Right, Michael Wattley has

1602
01:32:46,200 --> 01:32:49,760
Speaker 1: it as essentially the Republican nominee to be and the

1603
01:32:49,760 --> 01:32:53,439
Speaker 1: Democratic nominee to be. Roy Cooper has one state wide

1604
01:32:53,439 --> 01:32:57,559
Speaker 1: office multiple times. But you already see it's I think

1605
01:32:57,600 --> 01:33:00,400
Speaker 1: I've seen two different polls and they both basically have

1606
01:33:00,520 --> 01:33:03,599
Speaker 1: shown the same thing. Cooper's got a lead, but it's

1607
01:33:03,600 --> 01:33:05,680
Speaker 1: all within the margin of era forty six, forty two,

1608
01:33:05,920 --> 01:33:09,560
Speaker 1: forty seven, forty four. And guess what, that's what the

1609
01:33:09,640 --> 01:33:12,800
Speaker 1: numbers are going to be between now and November. This

1610
01:33:12,880 --> 01:33:16,559
Speaker 1: will be, as the cliche goes, all about turnout. But

1611
01:33:16,640 --> 01:33:19,040
Speaker 1: I do think since this is a Republican held seat,

1612
01:33:19,800 --> 01:33:22,680
Speaker 1: the Democrats a slight favorite, right, I would probably make

1613
01:33:22,720 --> 01:33:24,439
Speaker 1: if you want to do it as point spreads here,

1614
01:33:24,800 --> 01:33:27,559
Speaker 1: I'd probably make Cooper a one and a half point

1615
01:33:27,640 --> 01:33:32,880
Speaker 1: favorite here a little bit, but you know that's when

1616
01:33:32,880 --> 01:33:35,280
Speaker 1: you're talking about margins that small. It doesn't take much

1617
01:33:35,280 --> 01:33:37,439
Speaker 1: to lose this race. But when you look at it

1618
01:33:37,479 --> 01:33:40,280
Speaker 1: for the rest of the map, and I think it

1619
01:33:40,400 --> 01:33:43,280
Speaker 1: shows you how tough the path is for Democrats to

1620
01:33:43,280 --> 01:33:45,200
Speaker 1: pick up the four seats they need to win the

1621
01:33:45,240 --> 01:33:48,240
Speaker 1: Senate when the best shot at flipping a seat that

1622
01:33:48,280 --> 01:33:52,200
Speaker 1: they have is essentially a coin flip on its own, right,

1623
01:33:52,439 --> 01:33:54,360
Speaker 1: you need your third or fourth seat to be the

1624
01:33:54,400 --> 01:33:57,559
Speaker 1: coin flip. And the fact is they're not anywhere near that.

1625
01:33:57,640 --> 01:34:00,000
Speaker 1: They might get there. We'll see with recruiting. So right now,

1626
01:34:00,120 --> 01:34:03,120
Speaker 1: this one year and one month out from election day

1627
01:34:03,160 --> 01:34:07,000
Speaker 1: twenty twenty six, number one most likely Senate seat to

1628
01:34:07,000 --> 01:34:11,280
Speaker 1: flip North Carolina number two. I didn't put an open

1629
01:34:11,320 --> 01:34:13,280
Speaker 1: seat there. I think the last time I did this,

1630
01:34:13,400 --> 01:34:18,320
Speaker 1: I said, I usually prioritize open seats, but I have

1631
01:34:18,360 --> 01:34:21,120
Speaker 1: as off there. I think the John Assoft seat Georgia's

1632
01:34:21,160 --> 01:34:24,559
Speaker 1: Senate seat is all the polling have indicated. He's got

1633
01:34:24,560 --> 01:34:30,639
Speaker 1: a narrow lead, just like Cooper, right, nothing's big I am.

1634
01:34:31,200 --> 01:34:33,920
Speaker 1: I am not as convinced as others that George's a

1635
01:34:34,000 --> 01:34:38,040
Speaker 1: pure swing state. I think Georgia is a organizing state

1636
01:34:38,080 --> 01:34:41,200
Speaker 1: that Democrats, you know, sort of have to a lot

1637
01:34:41,200 --> 01:34:42,840
Speaker 1: of things have to go right for them to win

1638
01:34:42,880 --> 01:34:47,679
Speaker 1: statewide races. The last time John Osoft was on the ballot,

1639
01:34:49,720 --> 01:34:52,439
Speaker 1: Rafael Warnock was also on the ballot with them when

1640
01:34:52,479 --> 01:34:54,240
Speaker 1: we had the two Senate seats at the same time.

1641
01:34:55,479 --> 01:35:00,000
Speaker 1: How much did that matter with mobilizing African American vote.

1642
01:35:01,240 --> 01:35:06,479
Speaker 1: I think it's worth something can Assoff generate the same

1643
01:35:06,600 --> 01:35:12,439
Speaker 1: enthusiasm as Reverend Warnock. That's an open question. When you

1644
01:35:12,479 --> 01:35:16,519
Speaker 1: look at other statewide races in Georgia, right, it is, Yes,

1645
01:35:16,760 --> 01:35:20,680
Speaker 1: Biden carried it in twenty twenty, Harris got close but

1646
01:35:20,800 --> 01:35:25,040
Speaker 1: lost it. One governor's race there has been fairly close,

1647
01:35:25,080 --> 01:35:27,040
Speaker 1: but the second but the one in twenty twenty two

1648
01:35:27,080 --> 01:35:32,600
Speaker 1: wasn't that close. It's still an uphill battle for Democrats

1649
01:35:32,640 --> 01:35:34,439
Speaker 1: to win. State wide race is sort of in a

1650
01:35:34,479 --> 01:35:36,880
Speaker 1: generic environment. I'm not saying this is going to be

1651
01:35:36,920 --> 01:35:39,599
Speaker 1: a generic environment, and a lot of this may depend

1652
01:35:39,640 --> 01:35:41,559
Speaker 1: on who the primary is. But when you just look

1653
01:35:41,600 --> 01:35:44,920
Speaker 1: at the demographics of the state and sort of just

1654
01:35:45,000 --> 01:35:49,679
Speaker 1: by the pure numbers, I put Georgia as the second

1655
01:35:49,720 --> 01:35:53,559
Speaker 1: most likely to flip. And again the fact that Georgia

1656
01:35:53,640 --> 01:35:58,040
Speaker 1: is above other Republican held seats. You know, this is

1657
01:35:58,080 --> 01:36:01,479
Speaker 1: why the Democratic path to winning four seats to get

1658
01:36:01,479 --> 01:36:04,439
Speaker 1: control of the Senate. The path is so narrow that

1659
01:36:04,520 --> 01:36:07,400
Speaker 1: right now it's not visible. I'm not saying it might

1660
01:36:07,439 --> 01:36:09,920
Speaker 1: not become visible, but right now it is not visible.

1661
01:36:10,200 --> 01:36:12,639
Speaker 1: Number Three, I'm the most likely to flip. I put

1662
01:36:12,640 --> 01:36:15,680
Speaker 1: the open seat in Michigan. Mike Rogers is not going

1663
01:36:15,720 --> 01:36:18,680
Speaker 1: to have a primary. That's a big advantage. The Democratic

1664
01:36:18,720 --> 01:36:22,600
Speaker 1: primary is gonna be messy, it's going to be fascinating,

1665
01:36:22,720 --> 01:36:26,080
Speaker 1: it's going to be telling in many ways. I think

1666
01:36:26,080 --> 01:36:28,360
Speaker 1: it's a preview of what to expect in a twenty

1667
01:36:28,400 --> 01:36:32,799
Speaker 1: twenty eight Democratic presidential primary. You have sort of different flavors.

1668
01:36:32,840 --> 01:36:35,679
Speaker 1: You have sort of an establishment favored in Hailey Stevens.

1669
01:36:35,720 --> 01:36:38,280
Speaker 1: You're going to have sort of an outsider but sort

1670
01:36:38,280 --> 01:36:41,000
Speaker 1: of in the mainstream wing of the party in Molly McMorrow.

1671
01:36:41,360 --> 01:36:43,679
Speaker 1: And then you have a more progressive candidate Abdul Sayed.

1672
01:36:44,840 --> 01:36:50,000
Speaker 1: And so I'll do ALLOL sayat sorry, And I think

1673
01:36:50,040 --> 01:36:52,640
Speaker 1: that's very representative of what you're going to see. Some

1674
01:36:52,680 --> 01:36:55,680
Speaker 1: outsiders that are mainstream. You're going to see some progressives

1675
01:36:55,720 --> 01:37:01,120
Speaker 1: that are exciting the base and could create a very

1676
01:37:01,160 --> 01:37:04,840
Speaker 1: messy primary. It could be very hard to unify. But

1677
01:37:04,920 --> 01:37:09,240
Speaker 1: we don't know yet. And I still think there's a

1678
01:37:09,320 --> 01:37:13,280
Speaker 1: slight blue lean to Michigan generically, which is why I

1679
01:37:13,320 --> 01:37:17,479
Speaker 1: have it further down on the list than Georgia on there.

1680
01:37:17,880 --> 01:37:21,320
Speaker 1: As remember, right now Michigan is a Democratic held seat,

1681
01:37:21,800 --> 01:37:23,800
Speaker 1: but it is you know, if you look at the

1682
01:37:23,840 --> 01:37:29,480
Speaker 1: open seats, the Democratic open seats Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Illinois,

1683
01:37:30,760 --> 01:37:34,120
Speaker 1: Michigan is the best shot that Republicans have of winning

1684
01:37:34,120 --> 01:37:36,280
Speaker 1: one of those open seats. But I still actually think

1685
01:37:36,439 --> 01:37:40,080
Speaker 1: Georgia right now is still a better shot for them

1686
01:37:40,280 --> 01:37:44,240
Speaker 1: than any of the open Democratic seats. I'll be doing

1687
01:37:44,240 --> 01:37:47,080
Speaker 1: these monthly, so this list could change. Number four on

1688
01:37:47,120 --> 01:37:51,000
Speaker 1: the list. I tell you I vacillated on this. I

1689
01:37:51,040 --> 01:37:54,000
Speaker 1: went back and forth. I had three different seats in

1690
01:37:54,040 --> 01:37:57,960
Speaker 1: this slot over the last few hours as I was

1691
01:37:58,640 --> 01:38:01,640
Speaker 1: having these debates. I ended up settling on Maine at

1692
01:38:01,680 --> 01:38:05,120
Speaker 1: number four. I do think Susan Collins is very difficult

1693
01:38:05,120 --> 01:38:07,559
Speaker 1: to beat, but I also think this is Susan Collins

1694
01:38:07,600 --> 01:38:10,920
Speaker 1: has never attempted to run for reelection this unpopular before.

1695
01:38:11,240 --> 01:38:13,519
Speaker 1: Her favorable ratings are as low as they've ever been.

1696
01:38:14,000 --> 01:38:16,120
Speaker 1: Her unfavorable rating in Maine is as high as it's

1697
01:38:16,160 --> 01:38:21,839
Speaker 1: ever been. I am not going to underestimate her ability

1698
01:38:21,880 --> 01:38:25,559
Speaker 1: to win elections, and this is not a presidential year.

1699
01:38:26,080 --> 01:38:28,680
Speaker 1: I always thought she'd be more vulnerable in a presidential year.

1700
01:38:30,200 --> 01:38:35,920
Speaker 1: So we'll see. We could have an intense primary here

1701
01:38:35,960 --> 01:38:37,920
Speaker 1: if the governor Janet Mills does get in and it

1702
01:38:37,960 --> 01:38:41,840
Speaker 1: becomes sort of establishment versus progressive primary with the oyster farmer.

1703
01:38:44,640 --> 01:38:48,080
Speaker 1: Let's see what happens. I will say this, I think

1704
01:38:50,320 --> 01:38:53,720
Speaker 1: if Janet Mills runs, she'd better come across more enthusiastic

1705
01:38:53,760 --> 01:38:56,080
Speaker 1: about wanting to be a Senator than she has so far.

1706
01:38:57,000 --> 01:38:59,879
Speaker 1: The way that she sort of kept her likely candidacy

1707
01:39:00,120 --> 01:39:04,879
Speaker 1: live has been this sort of if it's the mindset

1708
01:39:04,880 --> 01:39:09,160
Speaker 1: I have to if you twist my arm. You know

1709
01:39:09,240 --> 01:39:11,519
Speaker 1: one thing about Susan Collins, she loves being in the Senate.

1710
01:39:14,240 --> 01:39:16,240
Speaker 1: I don't know if it always plays well with voters.

1711
01:39:16,479 --> 01:39:19,559
Speaker 1: I get that you may be a reluctant partisan and

1712
01:39:19,640 --> 01:39:21,439
Speaker 1: maybe you don't want to do that, but are you

1713
01:39:21,560 --> 01:39:24,400
Speaker 1: reluctant to actually do the job. I don't want to

1714
01:39:24,439 --> 01:39:27,599
Speaker 1: be in Washington, Okay, then don't run for the office.

1715
01:39:27,840 --> 01:39:34,719
Speaker 1: Right So I'm a little I'm gonna be if she runs.

1716
01:39:34,760 --> 01:39:37,000
Speaker 1: I'm very curious to see what her rollout is because

1717
01:39:37,000 --> 01:39:39,240
Speaker 1: she needs to show a lot more enthusiasm for this race,

1718
01:39:39,920 --> 01:39:42,599
Speaker 1: I think to win it. Then she's shown so far

1719
01:39:43,840 --> 01:39:47,479
Speaker 1: and in the number five slot. If I vacillated a

1720
01:39:47,479 --> 01:39:49,840
Speaker 1: bunch with Maine, I always was gonna have Maine in

1721
01:39:49,880 --> 01:39:54,519
Speaker 1: my top five. For this fifth slot, I contemplated three

1722
01:39:54,520 --> 01:39:59,960
Speaker 1: different races. New Hampshire right, it's an open seat. Johnny Soon,

1723
01:40:00,040 --> 01:40:02,080
Speaker 1: who news being recruited heavily. It looks like he's more

1724
01:40:02,160 --> 01:40:06,160
Speaker 1: likely than not. Big baseball card collector, by the way,

1725
01:40:07,200 --> 01:40:10,120
Speaker 1: really great collection. His is all pre war. He's real

1726
01:40:10,240 --> 01:40:14,120
Speaker 1: super old school in that. Scott Brown has not been

1727
01:40:14,120 --> 01:40:17,599
Speaker 1: polling as well. I understand why Republicans think he's he's

1728
01:40:17,640 --> 01:40:20,280
Speaker 1: he's not electable there. I still think that he would

1729
01:40:20,360 --> 01:40:24,920
Speaker 1: run a competitive race against Chris Pappus, but there's no

1730
01:40:24,960 --> 01:40:26,800
Speaker 1: doubt all the polling has shown that, you know, the

1731
01:40:26,880 --> 01:40:29,599
Speaker 1: Chris sonun who hangover effect I think has really helped Johnson,

1732
01:40:29,680 --> 01:40:34,400
Speaker 1: who's name idea. What's funny is is well Johnson Who's

1733
01:40:34,439 --> 01:40:39,320
Speaker 1: no trumpy trumper. He was much more of a conservative

1734
01:40:39,439 --> 01:40:43,360
Speaker 1: ideologically than his brother. But his brother's governorship I've seen

1735
01:40:43,479 --> 01:40:46,760
Speaker 1: very much through a moderate lens, and I think that

1736
01:40:46,960 --> 01:40:50,960
Speaker 1: spillover has really helped because and I think John would

1737
01:40:51,000 --> 01:40:53,240
Speaker 1: agree with me, his poll numbers look better today than

1738
01:40:53,280 --> 01:40:56,240
Speaker 1: they did when he when he ended up losing reelection

1739
01:40:57,439 --> 01:41:00,600
Speaker 1: the last time he ran for the Senate. So I

1740
01:41:00,600 --> 01:41:03,320
Speaker 1: don't know if he wants to admit that his younger

1741
01:41:03,360 --> 01:41:06,479
Speaker 1: brother might have helped his political political brand a little bit.

1742
01:41:08,880 --> 01:41:09,360
Speaker 2: Ohio.

1743
01:41:09,479 --> 01:41:11,519
Speaker 1: With Shared Brown in the race, I cond of played

1744
01:41:11,600 --> 01:41:15,519
Speaker 1: putting that in five and then Iowa. I ultimately decided

1745
01:41:15,520 --> 01:41:17,599
Speaker 1: to go with New Hampshire because Sonunu looks like he's

1746
01:41:17,640 --> 01:41:20,160
Speaker 1: more likely to be in And I do think Sonunu

1747
01:41:20,400 --> 01:41:24,000
Speaker 1: that's a different ballgame, especially you're going to have real

1748
01:41:24,040 --> 01:41:26,439
Speaker 1: investment of a whole bunch of money that comes with it,

1749
01:41:26,600 --> 01:41:29,559
Speaker 1: so it'll become self fulfilling and we'll be staring at

1750
01:41:29,600 --> 01:41:32,760
Speaker 1: one of these one two three point races in New Hampshire.

1751
01:41:34,040 --> 01:41:36,679
Speaker 1: I'll tell you my thinking on Ohio. I just don't

1752
01:41:36,720 --> 01:41:42,439
Speaker 1: know how Shared Brown gets to fifty, right, I'm not

1753
01:41:42,560 --> 01:41:45,480
Speaker 1: ruling it out. I also think Brown has a complicated

1754
01:41:45,840 --> 01:41:48,719
Speaker 1: messaging challenge, which I've shared with you before. On tariffs.

1755
01:41:49,320 --> 01:41:52,559
Speaker 1: On one hand, the tariffs are are causing a lot

1756
01:41:52,600 --> 01:41:55,839
Speaker 1: of sort of consumer pain. On the other hand, tariffs

1757
01:41:55,840 --> 01:41:58,440
Speaker 1: are not a bad word to working people in Ohio.

1758
01:41:58,680 --> 01:42:04,519
Speaker 1: When it comes to goods, perhaps you'll see a shared

1759
01:42:04,560 --> 01:42:09,960
Speaker 1: brown say, the food tariffs are bad, the tariffs on

1760
01:42:10,720 --> 01:42:13,760
Speaker 1: autoparts are good, the tariffs on cars are good. They're

1761
01:42:13,800 --> 01:42:17,080
Speaker 1: bad on food. And I'm kind of wondering if we're

1762
01:42:17,120 --> 01:42:20,639
Speaker 1: going to start to see that split because I've had

1763
01:42:20,640 --> 01:42:23,120
Speaker 1: a lot of conversations with labor leaders where you know,

1764
01:42:23,160 --> 01:42:26,639
Speaker 1: they like that Trump is willing to use tariffs. They

1765
01:42:26,800 --> 01:42:30,360
Speaker 1: liked that Biden was willing to use tariffs, particularly when

1766
01:42:30,360 --> 01:42:33,080
Speaker 1: it came to some of the to steal into some

1767
01:42:33,120 --> 01:42:37,479
Speaker 1: of those some of the sort of the non food tariffs, right,

1768
01:42:37,640 --> 01:42:40,680
Speaker 1: but the tariffs on ag are really causing pain. The

1769
01:42:40,720 --> 01:42:44,559
Speaker 1: tariffs on coffee are causing all of us pain. So

1770
01:42:44,800 --> 01:42:47,120
Speaker 1: I wonder if you're going to start to see an

1771
01:42:47,160 --> 01:42:50,639
Speaker 1: attempt by Democrats who are still trying to win labor

1772
01:42:50,720 --> 01:42:53,960
Speaker 1: back and labor union members back, finding a way to

1773
01:42:54,080 --> 01:42:58,760
Speaker 1: split at the attack on tariffs and essentially go after

1774
01:42:59,160 --> 01:43:02,400
Speaker 1: the food tax, to griffs on agg and what's hurting

1775
01:43:02,439 --> 01:43:05,839
Speaker 1: farmers and try to sort of create a create a

1776
01:43:05,920 --> 01:43:09,439
Speaker 1: sort of a separate distinction with the steel tariffs and

1777
01:43:10,000 --> 01:43:14,439
Speaker 1: the auto tariffs, and then I contemplated Iowa because of

1778
01:43:14,479 --> 01:43:18,360
Speaker 1: the open seat. But I will tell you, h look,

1779
01:43:18,360 --> 01:43:21,120
Speaker 1: I've been impressed without quickly Republicans have rallied around at

1780
01:43:21,160 --> 01:43:23,320
Speaker 1: Ashley Hinson's campaign. I still think this is going to

1781
01:43:23,320 --> 01:43:27,240
Speaker 1: be a competitive race. But another reason I kept it

1782
01:43:27,280 --> 01:43:29,360
Speaker 1: out of the five slot is I've been following a

1783
01:43:29,400 --> 01:43:30,840
Speaker 1: story and I don't know how many of you have,

1784
01:43:30,960 --> 01:43:33,720
Speaker 1: but I keep an eye the story about the the

1785
01:43:33,720 --> 01:43:36,519
Speaker 1: Moines superintendent who turned out to be not an American

1786
01:43:36,560 --> 01:43:39,320
Speaker 1: citizen that came to as a shock to a lot

1787
01:43:39,320 --> 01:43:41,760
Speaker 1: of people in des Moines. He was apparently well regarded

1788
01:43:42,040 --> 01:43:46,080
Speaker 1: in his job, but somehow he was in this country

1789
01:43:46,120 --> 01:43:50,559
Speaker 1: illegally and had a de port deportation notice for over

1790
01:43:50,600 --> 01:43:53,080
Speaker 1: a year, and there was sort of an awkward you know,

1791
01:43:53,160 --> 01:43:57,400
Speaker 1: as usual. How Ice has been conducting itself has been horrendous,

1792
01:43:57,960 --> 01:44:02,559
Speaker 1: you know, sort of unnecessarily confrontational. But it doesn't mask

1793
01:44:02,680 --> 01:44:06,840
Speaker 1: the issue that apparently this the now former des Moines superintendent,

1794
01:44:06,880 --> 01:44:11,479
Speaker 1: I believe he's resigned at this point, essentially lied to

1795
01:44:11,520 --> 01:44:13,479
Speaker 1: the school board of des Moines. Well guess what one

1796
01:44:13,479 --> 01:44:16,000
Speaker 1: of the people running for the US, Nate Jackie Norris,

1797
01:44:17,720 --> 01:44:22,679
Speaker 1: is on the Des Moines school Board. This story hasn't

1798
01:44:22,720 --> 01:44:30,639
Speaker 1: finished playing out, but I wonder how much this sets

1799
01:44:30,680 --> 01:44:37,760
Speaker 1: back Democrats in the state. Generically, may not. It may

1800
01:44:37,880 --> 01:44:40,400
Speaker 1: end up being a non issue a year from now,

1801
01:44:41,560 --> 01:44:45,600
Speaker 1: but it isn't a net positive for the Democratic brand,

1802
01:44:46,720 --> 01:44:52,160
Speaker 1: and I think that's fair to say. Again, let's see

1803
01:44:52,200 --> 01:44:54,320
Speaker 1: this whole story play out, make sure we have all

1804
01:44:54,360 --> 01:44:58,360
Speaker 1: the facts on this, But it was I've been following

1805
01:44:58,360 --> 01:45:01,719
Speaker 1: the story pretty closely. It's like, you're just like, wait,

1806
01:45:01,720 --> 01:45:06,400
Speaker 1: what when I saw that Ice had detained the superintendent

1807
01:45:06,439 --> 01:45:09,080
Speaker 1: of schools? Wait? And he was not an American citizen?

1808
01:45:10,120 --> 01:45:13,439
Speaker 1: How did this happen? Right? There's a lot that needs

1809
01:45:13,479 --> 01:45:17,000
Speaker 1: to be unpacked with this story. But to say that

1810
01:45:17,120 --> 01:45:22,120
Speaker 1: it's it's super high profile in the largest media market

1811
01:45:22,160 --> 01:45:24,559
Speaker 1: in the state, so it's going to get its share

1812
01:45:24,600 --> 01:45:27,799
Speaker 1: of attentions. In what I would call my others receiving

1813
01:45:27,880 --> 01:45:31,800
Speaker 1: votes category, they're not near the top five yet, but

1814
01:45:32,320 --> 01:45:37,000
Speaker 1: who's to say they won't get there. Nebraska, Texas, Minnesota

1815
01:45:37,560 --> 01:45:41,879
Speaker 1: Republicans have had a surprisingly hard time finding a credible

1816
01:45:42,040 --> 01:45:47,000
Speaker 1: candidate in the Minnesota open seat. Alaska and Louisiana still

1817
01:45:47,040 --> 01:45:49,599
Speaker 1: waiting for some candidate things to develop there. But anyway,

1818
01:45:49,640 --> 01:45:51,760
Speaker 1: the five right now most likely to flip my top

1819
01:45:51,800 --> 01:45:55,760
Speaker 1: five right now thirteen months from election day North Carolina one,

1820
01:45:55,800 --> 01:46:01,760
Speaker 1: Georgia two, Michigan, three, Main four New Hampshire. So with that,

1821
01:46:01,920 --> 01:46:03,000
Speaker 1: let's do a few questions.

1822
01:46:03,280 --> 01:46:08,000
Speaker 2: Ask Chuck all right.

1823
01:46:08,000 --> 01:46:14,200
Speaker 1: First question comes from Luke anyways, Hey, Chuck, technical clarification question.

1824
01:46:15,160 --> 01:46:17,360
Speaker 1: I keep hearing Republicans saying that the Democrats are going

1825
01:46:17,360 --> 01:46:20,000
Speaker 1: to shut down the government for quote, illegal immigrants to

1826
01:46:20,000 --> 01:46:22,320
Speaker 1: get healthcare? Is this true? Are the subsidies in question

1827
01:46:22,400 --> 01:46:25,400
Speaker 1: really just for undocumented immigrants? If not, and I suspect not,

1828
01:46:25,800 --> 01:46:28,160
Speaker 1: then why is this lie so pervasive and unquestioned? I

1829
01:46:28,160 --> 01:46:30,559
Speaker 1: haven't heard left leaning outlets discuss this point, and it

1830
01:46:30,600 --> 01:46:32,360
Speaker 1: makes me wonder how much of a kernel of truth

1831
01:46:32,400 --> 01:46:34,719
Speaker 1: is in the claim that Dems are unwilling to admit.

1832
01:46:34,760 --> 01:46:37,879
Speaker 1: Are Democrats able to handle this talking point without fracturing

1833
01:46:37,920 --> 01:46:40,760
Speaker 1: what's left of their coalition? Thanks in advance, love the show, Luke.

1834
01:46:41,120 --> 01:46:45,160
Speaker 1: So Luke, look, no, the answer is no, it's not true. Now.

1835
01:46:45,200 --> 01:46:47,799
Speaker 1: What happened before is that they discovered that some people

1836
01:46:47,800 --> 01:46:52,040
Speaker 1: who were here, undocumented people were somehow accessing some benefits

1837
01:46:52,080 --> 01:46:55,599
Speaker 1: because perhaps they were with somebody or had a child

1838
01:46:56,240 --> 01:46:59,519
Speaker 1: who is an American citizen who was getting benefits. Right,

1839
01:47:00,200 --> 01:47:03,400
Speaker 1: if you're looking for the kernel of truth, it's not

1840
01:47:04,120 --> 01:47:07,400
Speaker 1: the parents may be here illegally, but their kid is

1841
01:47:07,439 --> 01:47:11,920
Speaker 1: here legally. They do have access to the medicaid, to

1842
01:47:12,000 --> 01:47:18,840
Speaker 1: these various things, but the parent doesn't. So I'll let

1843
01:47:18,880 --> 01:47:21,840
Speaker 1: you decide. Can you say, are the parents that are

1844
01:47:21,840 --> 01:47:25,840
Speaker 1: not of legal status in this country benefiting because their

1845
01:47:25,920 --> 01:47:29,360
Speaker 1: child who does have legal status is getting a benefit?

1846
01:47:29,400 --> 01:47:31,639
Speaker 1: You see where I'm going here. So, if you're looking

1847
01:47:31,680 --> 01:47:34,720
Speaker 1: for the kernel of truth, which many on the right

1848
01:47:34,760 --> 01:47:39,400
Speaker 1: would say, you know democrats are claiming it's not true,

1849
01:47:39,439 --> 01:47:42,479
Speaker 1: but you know they're benefiting from this, et cetera. So

1850
01:47:44,640 --> 01:47:49,360
Speaker 1: that's the semantic you'd be debating over. But no, nobody

1851
01:47:49,439 --> 01:47:52,599
Speaker 1: who's here illegally is supposed to be eligible for this.

1852
01:47:53,680 --> 01:47:57,080
Speaker 1: But if you are an American citizen, and then you are.

1853
01:47:57,760 --> 01:48:02,600
Speaker 1: And so where the gray area is is is the

1854
01:48:02,720 --> 01:48:06,320
Speaker 1: children who are here who were born here to folks

1855
01:48:06,880 --> 01:48:09,920
Speaker 1: who are not of legal status. I hope that helps

1856
01:48:09,960 --> 01:48:13,599
Speaker 1: a little bit in the clarification. Next question comes from

1857
01:48:13,640 --> 01:48:17,280
Speaker 1: will E says, Hey, Chuck, your commentary was spot on.

1858
01:48:17,600 --> 01:48:22,240
Speaker 1: I just don't know which commentary I'll keep going because

1859
01:48:22,560 --> 01:48:25,120
Speaker 1: aren't they all sorry? I think that's what you have

1860
01:48:25,160 --> 01:48:26,760
Speaker 1: to do as a podcast host now, right, is I

1861
01:48:26,800 --> 01:48:30,040
Speaker 1: have to overinflate my ego and how say how smart

1862
01:48:30,080 --> 01:48:30,360
Speaker 1: and great?

1863
01:48:30,360 --> 01:48:30,760
Speaker 2: I am? Right?

1864
01:48:30,800 --> 01:48:33,160
Speaker 1: Isn't that what I'm supposed to say? Anyway? I digress,

1865
01:48:33,920 --> 01:48:37,080
Speaker 1: But anyway, I went to my first Wisconsin game in

1866
01:48:37,120 --> 01:48:39,880
Speaker 1: over fifteen years and it was ugly student section channing

1867
01:48:39,960 --> 01:48:43,599
Speaker 1: fi or fickle friends texting me f fickle don't see

1868
01:48:43,640 --> 01:48:45,000
Speaker 1: how he makes it for the rest of the season.

1869
01:48:45,000 --> 01:48:46,559
Speaker 1: The bye this weekend is going to be our best

1870
01:48:46,600 --> 01:48:48,599
Speaker 1: weekend for the rest of the season. Enjoy the show.

1871
01:48:48,840 --> 01:48:51,520
Speaker 1: So obviously, what he's saying is my commentary on football

1872
01:48:51,640 --> 01:48:54,519
Speaker 1: was spot on. I appreciate, thank you, and I By

1873
01:48:54,560 --> 01:48:56,639
Speaker 1: the way, some of you are probably asking me, weren't

1874
01:48:56,640 --> 01:48:58,240
Speaker 1: you at a football game this weekend? How come you

1875
01:48:58,280 --> 01:48:59,680
Speaker 1: didn't talk about in the last show. I'll tell you

1876
01:48:59,720 --> 01:49:00,960
Speaker 1: the second here, but I want to get through a

1877
01:49:00,960 --> 01:49:04,920
Speaker 1: couple more questions. This next one comes from Deborah You. Hey,

1878
01:49:05,000 --> 01:49:07,280
Speaker 1: Chuck love the podcast. Your recent discussion on polls showing

1879
01:49:07,320 --> 01:49:10,680
Speaker 1: democrats less interested in talking with Republicans really resonated with me.

1880
01:49:10,760 --> 01:49:13,240
Speaker 1: Many of us have tried to have rational, civil conversations

1881
01:49:13,280 --> 01:49:16,240
Speaker 1: with Trump supporters, presenting facts, listening, seeking common ground, but

1882
01:49:16,320 --> 01:49:19,400
Speaker 1: it feels futile. I consider myself moderate and open to compromise,

1883
01:49:19,439 --> 01:49:22,120
Speaker 1: yet too often the loudest up voices drown out dialogue

1884
01:49:22,120 --> 01:49:27,200
Speaker 1: with outrage and hypocrisy, leaving me exhausted and disheartened. Well, Deborah,

1885
01:49:27,200 --> 01:49:29,559
Speaker 1: I would just say start with people in your family

1886
01:49:29,720 --> 01:49:33,400
Speaker 1: that that you know, Start with people you work with,

1887
01:49:33,520 --> 01:49:36,320
Speaker 1: or people in your neighborhood that that you that you

1888
01:49:36,400 --> 01:49:38,519
Speaker 1: know are on the other side, and try it that way.

1889
01:49:39,200 --> 01:49:42,120
Speaker 1: I think if you have some sort of previous relationship

1890
01:49:42,200 --> 01:49:45,840
Speaker 1: that isn't political with somebody, that's where you can start

1891
01:49:45,880 --> 01:49:48,400
Speaker 1: to break, to sort of break the ice and thaw

1892
01:49:48,479 --> 01:49:57,559
Speaker 1: things out a little bit. I try humor, you know. Look,

1893
01:49:57,600 --> 01:50:01,880
Speaker 1: I I have over I have my own ways that

1894
01:50:02,040 --> 01:50:06,240
Speaker 1: I you know, I consider myself pretty good at reading people.

1895
01:50:06,280 --> 01:50:08,920
Speaker 1: I kind of know where I think people will go. So,

1896
01:50:09,040 --> 01:50:13,000
Speaker 1: you know, if I don't know somebody very well, I

1897
01:50:13,080 --> 01:50:16,760
Speaker 1: usually try to connect on another subject first, sports or

1898
01:50:17,320 --> 01:50:21,320
Speaker 1: weather or you know, if you're on an airplane, you

1899
01:50:21,360 --> 01:50:25,240
Speaker 1: know the frustrations of flying or something, you know, sort

1900
01:50:25,240 --> 01:50:31,519
Speaker 1: of non controversial like that. But I think it feels

1901
01:50:31,600 --> 01:50:34,200
Speaker 1: like what you're describing is having a conversation with somebody

1902
01:50:34,240 --> 01:50:38,519
Speaker 1: that's super online. And I will say, there's no I've

1903
01:50:38,640 --> 01:50:43,080
Speaker 1: tried to have civil conversations with pen pals. I have

1904
01:50:43,320 --> 01:50:47,360
Speaker 1: quite a few pen and piles I've I've I've accumulated

1905
01:50:47,400 --> 01:50:49,160
Speaker 1: over the years. Some of you may be listening now

1906
01:50:49,160 --> 01:50:52,000
Speaker 1: that are regular pen piles with me. Where Frankly, if

1907
01:50:52,000 --> 01:50:55,320
Speaker 1: you if you email me, I usually will respond if

1908
01:50:55,320 --> 01:50:58,680
Speaker 1: you're fairly civil, even if you're tough and discree. You know,

1909
01:50:58,840 --> 01:51:00,960
Speaker 1: I don't think you you know, I really you're always

1910
01:51:01,000 --> 01:51:03,479
Speaker 1: you know, giving a pass to this side or give

1911
01:51:03,520 --> 01:51:05,680
Speaker 1: it a pass to that side. You know, as long

1912
01:51:05,720 --> 01:51:08,479
Speaker 1: as you're not like filled with venom, I'm usually going

1913
01:51:08,560 --> 01:51:11,120
Speaker 1: to respond and try to have a civil back and

1914
01:51:11,160 --> 01:51:14,920
Speaker 1: forth because frankly, I'm always trying to learn. I'm trying

1915
01:51:14,960 --> 01:51:17,800
Speaker 1: to understand the you know, what is it that has

1916
01:51:17,840 --> 01:51:20,880
Speaker 1: you exercised? Maybe it's something I'm missing, So I always

1917
01:51:20,880 --> 01:51:23,880
Speaker 1: think there's something to learn. But when the person's super

1918
01:51:23,920 --> 01:51:27,040
Speaker 1: online and they're just sort of you know, you know,

1919
01:51:27,479 --> 01:51:31,680
Speaker 1: they spend more time reading cat Turd fifty two or

1920
01:51:31,720 --> 01:51:37,200
Speaker 1: whatever that right wing meme, Twitter feed is or TikTok feed.

1921
01:51:37,520 --> 01:51:40,720
Speaker 1: I just call them all cat turns, but I think

1922
01:51:40,760 --> 01:51:42,559
Speaker 1: one of them is called cat turd fifty two.

1923
01:51:42,680 --> 01:51:42,880
Speaker 2: Is it?

1924
01:51:42,960 --> 01:51:47,240
Speaker 1: Maybe it's cat turn ninety six. I don't know, you know,

1925
01:51:47,400 --> 01:51:49,920
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like they're all Mike Lee, right, I

1926
01:51:49,960 --> 01:51:52,160
Speaker 1: don't know. Senator Mike Lee is like somebody who can't

1927
01:51:52,160 --> 01:51:55,400
Speaker 1: have a conversation with anymore because he's just gotten. He

1928
01:51:55,479 --> 01:51:58,920
Speaker 1: calls himself based Mike Lee, right, like in weird ways,

1929
01:51:58,960 --> 01:52:02,559
Speaker 1: at least admitting that he's, hey, I am drunk on this,

1930
01:52:03,320 --> 01:52:06,599
Speaker 1: and he is sort of drunk on online maga, right.

1931
01:52:07,120 --> 01:52:10,080
Speaker 1: And I guess he's sort of like the reverse reform smoker, right.

1932
01:52:10,120 --> 01:52:12,960
Speaker 1: He was. He was anti he was an anti trumper

1933
01:52:13,000 --> 01:52:15,559
Speaker 1: from the beginning, and then when he flipped a maga,

1934
01:52:15,600 --> 01:52:21,960
Speaker 1: he decided, I'm gonna smoke four packs a day. You're

1935
01:52:21,960 --> 01:52:25,360
Speaker 1: not going to have a rational debate with with somebody

1936
01:52:25,400 --> 01:52:30,080
Speaker 1: who's who's that online? So I guess, you know it.

1937
01:52:30,080 --> 01:52:32,479
Speaker 1: It's certainly a better conversation to be had in person

1938
01:52:32,520 --> 01:52:36,240
Speaker 1: then it will be, uh, you know, digitally anyway. But

1939
01:52:36,320 --> 01:52:38,479
Speaker 1: it probably is best to start off with somebody you

1940
01:52:38,560 --> 01:52:40,760
Speaker 1: might have a pre existing relationship with even if it's

1941
01:52:40,760 --> 01:52:44,680
Speaker 1: something as innocuous as you're dry cleaner, or you know

1942
01:52:45,000 --> 01:52:47,280
Speaker 1: somebody you just happen to see while you're walking your

1943
01:52:47,280 --> 01:52:54,080
Speaker 1: neighborhood all the time. Next question comes from Gail in Woodinville, Washington. Hey, Chuck,

1944
01:52:54,120 --> 01:52:58,280
Speaker 1: so glad I discovered the toodcast me too. Tell your friends, Uh,

1945
01:52:58,960 --> 01:53:01,960
Speaker 1: our numbers are growing a lot, that's for sure. You

1946
01:53:02,000 --> 01:53:04,240
Speaker 1: know again, I think of Sister paud in my chest.

1947
01:53:04,240 --> 01:53:09,200
Speaker 1: We're the fastest growing podcast in you know this section three,

1948
01:53:09,240 --> 01:53:13,920
Speaker 1: two four five. So anyway, I'm sort of kidding. I

1949
01:53:13,960 --> 01:53:15,720
Speaker 1: know hindsight is twenty twenty, but do you think the

1950
01:53:15,760 --> 01:53:17,439
Speaker 1: country would be better off now if Trump had been

1951
01:53:17,479 --> 01:53:20,559
Speaker 1: re elected in twenty twenty. I've heard this argument. For

1952
01:53:20,600 --> 01:53:22,400
Speaker 1: the sake of argument. Let's forget that many of us

1953
01:53:22,439 --> 01:53:25,280
Speaker 1: probably would have died from COVID under his leadership. But

1954
01:53:25,320 --> 01:53:27,240
Speaker 1: had he been reelected, Mike Pence would have been VP,

1955
01:53:27,479 --> 01:53:30,559
Speaker 1: and we might never have known of J. D. Varans.

1956
01:53:30,640 --> 01:53:33,760
Speaker 1: Trump and his clown posse might have been bumbled through

1957
01:53:33,760 --> 01:53:36,160
Speaker 1: the second term. With more guardrails. There would have been

1958
01:53:36,240 --> 01:53:38,880
Speaker 1: no indictments or prosecutions to trigger his revenge to her.

1959
01:53:39,120 --> 01:53:41,519
Speaker 1: There wouldn't have been the four years from twenty twenty

1960
01:53:41,560 --> 01:53:43,639
Speaker 1: one to twenty twenty five to develop Project twenty twenty

1961
01:53:43,680 --> 01:53:46,559
Speaker 1: five and give Stephen Miller the opportunity to consolidate power,

1962
01:53:46,800 --> 01:53:49,439
Speaker 1: and best of all, Trump would be out of office

1963
01:53:49,520 --> 01:53:54,920
Speaker 1: right now. What do you think? Keep up the great work, Gale.

1964
01:53:55,120 --> 01:54:01,960
Speaker 1: I have had this conversation. I have humored this conversation

1965
01:54:02,120 --> 01:54:05,760
Speaker 1: with various friends of mine on this front. It's a

1966
01:54:07,000 --> 01:54:09,320
Speaker 1: it's as as you know, I'm going to have a

1967
01:54:09,360 --> 01:54:13,880
Speaker 1: what if series coming up, and what I do is

1968
01:54:13,880 --> 01:54:16,280
Speaker 1: sort of forks in the road. You know, what if

1969
01:54:16,479 --> 01:54:19,559
Speaker 1: this would have happened instead of this? In the past,

1970
01:54:19,600 --> 01:54:21,400
Speaker 1: I've done what if Hillary Clinton had run for president

1971
01:54:21,439 --> 01:54:23,320
Speaker 1: in two thousand and four instead of two thousand and eight,

1972
01:54:23,360 --> 01:54:25,479
Speaker 1: which you've actually won the presidency in two thousand and four.

1973
01:54:26,439 --> 01:54:29,400
Speaker 1: I certainly make the argument that her best chance was

1974
01:54:29,400 --> 01:54:32,200
Speaker 1: two thousand and four, more so than eight or sixteen

1975
01:54:32,840 --> 01:54:36,080
Speaker 1: for a variety of reasons. What if Bill Clinton had

1976
01:54:36,120 --> 01:54:39,360
Speaker 1: resigned in nineteen ninety eight, as many Democrats wanted him

1977
01:54:39,400 --> 01:54:43,960
Speaker 1: do in the peak of Monica Lewinsky, then you would

1978
01:54:43,960 --> 01:54:46,240
Speaker 1: have had a President Gore running for a full term

1979
01:54:46,280 --> 01:54:49,160
Speaker 1: in two thousand what is that election like nine eleven

1980
01:54:49,200 --> 01:54:51,800
Speaker 1: still happens, but this time it's ten straight years of

1981
01:54:51,800 --> 01:54:55,000
Speaker 1: democratic So you see how you know, you start to

1982
01:54:55,000 --> 01:55:00,240
Speaker 1: go down these roads. And so anyway you have I'll

1983
01:55:00,240 --> 01:55:04,240
Speaker 1: tell you this, you have potentially helped preview one of

1984
01:55:04,280 --> 01:55:06,600
Speaker 1: the what ifs that I want to go down because

1985
01:55:06,640 --> 01:55:10,600
Speaker 1: I think this is it is true. This is a

1986
01:55:10,720 --> 01:55:14,800
Speaker 1: more damaging presidency to the sort of guard rails of

1987
01:55:14,880 --> 01:55:21,720
Speaker 1: American democracy than if he had served two consecutive terms.

1988
01:55:21,760 --> 01:55:26,280
Speaker 1: There's no doubt about it. It's an interesting question though,

1989
01:55:26,320 --> 01:55:32,280
Speaker 1: whether I think it's weirdly, I think we need another

1990
01:55:32,320 --> 01:55:36,920
Speaker 1: twenty years to figure out whether it was better or not.

1991
01:55:40,640 --> 01:55:44,160
Speaker 1: You know, do any of the Biden policies work, And

1992
01:55:44,240 --> 01:55:46,440
Speaker 1: if they do, you know you're going to have to

1993
01:55:46,480 --> 01:55:51,200
Speaker 1: consider those as well. So I think it's I understand

1994
01:55:51,240 --> 01:55:54,600
Speaker 1: where you're coming from. I think there's there's certainly when

1995
01:55:54,600 --> 01:55:58,320
Speaker 1: you look at the when you look at this the

1996
01:56:00,560 --> 01:56:02,880
Speaker 1: what he's done so far and we're not even through

1997
01:56:02,960 --> 01:56:08,400
Speaker 1: year one, and what I've said earlier about Steven Miller

1998
01:56:08,440 --> 01:56:14,400
Speaker 1: and we'll see how the shutdown goes. I think it's

1999
01:56:15,040 --> 01:56:17,800
Speaker 1: put it this way, Donald Trump is a much weaker

2000
01:56:17,840 --> 01:56:21,400
Speaker 1: figure inside the Republican Party if he had won reelection,

2001
01:56:21,480 --> 01:56:24,680
Speaker 1: and he'd have been a much weaker figure sooner inside

2002
01:56:24,680 --> 01:56:29,480
Speaker 1: the party. And maybe Democrats control the Senate after twenty

2003
01:56:29,520 --> 01:56:33,760
Speaker 1: twenty two in a bigger way, not a smaller way.

2004
01:56:33,800 --> 01:56:37,320
Speaker 1: Maybe their map is more navigable, right Like, I could

2005
01:56:37,360 --> 01:56:40,640
Speaker 1: certainly paint a very rosy picture for Democrats right now,

2006
01:56:45,880 --> 01:56:51,680
Speaker 1: but it's a anyway. The point is is I think

2007
01:56:51,720 --> 01:56:55,160
Speaker 1: this is a discussion that you should look forward to

2008
01:56:55,320 --> 01:56:58,360
Speaker 1: on the Chuck Podcast towards the end of the holiday season,

2009
01:56:59,160 --> 01:57:01,240
Speaker 1: when I will do my annual what if series that

2010
01:57:01,280 --> 01:57:04,240
Speaker 1: I've done in my previous iterations of the Chuck Podcast.

2011
01:57:04,440 --> 01:57:08,240
Speaker 1: If you search them, some of these episodes NBC's taken

2012
01:57:08,320 --> 01:57:10,480
Speaker 1: off the website, but some of them you can find.

2013
01:57:10,720 --> 01:57:13,160
Speaker 1: But it's I call it my what if series, so

2014
01:57:13,160 --> 01:57:14,960
Speaker 1: you can check it off from there. Do one more question,

2015
01:57:15,000 --> 01:57:17,680
Speaker 1: and then I'll give you a quick little update about

2016
01:57:18,120 --> 01:57:25,440
Speaker 1: my football travels. This next question comes from Cold Tea. Oh.

2017
01:57:25,520 --> 01:57:28,160
Speaker 1: The question is, Hey, Chuck, hopefully you've seen this crazy story.

2018
01:57:28,400 --> 01:57:30,880
Speaker 1: The Des Moines superintendent was arrested by ice, which is

2019
01:57:30,880 --> 01:57:32,520
Speaker 1: crazy enough, but it could also take down a leading

2020
01:57:32,560 --> 01:57:34,720
Speaker 1: Democratic Senate candidate, Jackie Norris, who was chair of the

2021
01:57:34,720 --> 01:57:36,720
Speaker 1: school board. Wild stuff in Iowa. No one seems to

2022
01:57:36,760 --> 01:57:41,480
Speaker 1: know what is true or not. You just summarized everything

2023
01:57:41,520 --> 01:57:43,960
Speaker 1: I was saying earlier with my top five list and

2024
01:57:43,960 --> 01:57:46,680
Speaker 1: why I didn't put Iowa in that fifth spot because

2025
01:57:46,720 --> 01:57:49,920
Speaker 1: I want to see this story finished playing out. It

2026
01:57:49,960 --> 01:57:54,120
Speaker 1: is wild. If you don't know the story, it does

2027
01:57:54,200 --> 01:57:59,320
Speaker 1: feel it's amazing people that love Look, the superintendent was

2028
01:57:59,320 --> 01:58:02,200
Speaker 1: beloved by any people, and they don't want to believe

2029
01:58:02,240 --> 01:58:06,400
Speaker 1: the facts that apparently are in this case. And that's

2030
01:58:06,440 --> 01:58:10,560
Speaker 1: why I think the the fallout from this could be

2031
01:58:10,600 --> 01:58:14,760
Speaker 1: more damaging to the Democratic brand. I again, I'm I

2032
01:58:14,800 --> 01:58:18,880
Speaker 1: want to wait. I'm not gonna lie. I want to

2033
01:58:18,920 --> 01:58:21,400
Speaker 1: wait a little bit to just let's get all the

2034
01:58:21,440 --> 01:58:23,760
Speaker 1: facts out. Let's see what everything looks like. Is he

2035
01:58:24,600 --> 01:58:27,520
Speaker 1: is everything that's been said true that he you know

2036
01:58:27,680 --> 01:58:31,760
Speaker 1: about a weapon in his car, cash, et cetera. He

2037
01:58:31,920 --> 01:58:34,640
Speaker 1: was the second superintendent job. I mean, it's sort of

2038
01:58:34,640 --> 01:58:36,920
Speaker 1: like does anybody do any vetting anywhere in this country

2039
01:58:37,680 --> 01:58:42,120
Speaker 1: on this front? So there's a there's a more information

2040
01:58:42,200 --> 01:58:45,480
Speaker 1: I want to know. But I thought Cole you summarized

2041
01:58:45,480 --> 01:58:49,200
Speaker 1: it well. Have you seen this crazy story? You couldn't

2042
01:58:49,200 --> 01:58:52,080
Speaker 1: have made up a story like this right as a

2043
01:58:52,080 --> 01:58:56,120
Speaker 1: plot line. And this is always a reminder when you're

2044
01:58:56,160 --> 01:59:00,720
Speaker 1: whenever I'm trying to write fictional political storyline, for the

2045
01:59:00,800 --> 01:59:05,720
Speaker 1: various attempts I've done for political fiction, story like this happens,

2046
01:59:05,720 --> 01:59:09,120
Speaker 1: and you're like, how do you manufacture fiction when the

2047
01:59:09,240 --> 01:59:13,280
Speaker 1: truth is so much crazier? All right, I will tell

2048
01:59:13,280 --> 01:59:15,560
Speaker 1: you I was at that crazy Dallas Green Bay game.

2049
01:59:15,600 --> 01:59:17,320
Speaker 1: I think I sort of hinted that I was going

2050
01:59:17,360 --> 01:59:22,520
Speaker 1: to that, which in full sort of toodcast behind the

2051
01:59:22,600 --> 01:59:26,879
Speaker 1: curtain plotting. You know what that meant is that Monday

2052
01:59:27,000 --> 01:59:30,400
Speaker 1: podcast I taped before I left for Dallas on Sunday morning.

2053
01:59:30,680 --> 01:59:33,920
Speaker 1: I went down Sunday, came back Monday, so it was

2054
01:59:33,960 --> 01:59:38,680
Speaker 1: a quick trip. My son's doing great. Thanks for asking.

2055
01:59:38,720 --> 01:59:40,800
Speaker 1: I know some of you are at least thinking that,

2056
01:59:40,880 --> 01:59:45,240
Speaker 1: so I thought I would pre answer that question. But

2057
01:59:45,280 --> 01:59:48,360
Speaker 1: I'll tell you this. I'll we get to the game

2058
01:59:48,560 --> 01:59:53,800
Speaker 1: and it feels it felt like sixty forty cowboys to

2059
01:59:53,800 --> 01:59:57,720
Speaker 1: Packers fans. There were Packers fans everywhere, and I know

2060
01:59:57,840 --> 02:00:00,280
Speaker 1: some of it is like, oh, you know, we're packers,

2061
02:00:00,280 --> 02:00:02,320
Speaker 1: so all we're seeing are the other Packers. Fans, But

2062
02:00:02,400 --> 02:00:05,400
Speaker 1: when the teams came out, you felt the cheers and

2063
02:00:05,520 --> 02:00:07,960
Speaker 1: early on, and of course the Packers got a quick

2064
02:00:08,000 --> 02:00:12,120
Speaker 1: start thirteen to nothing, and here they're about to kick

2065
02:00:12,160 --> 02:00:14,760
Speaker 1: the extra point, and you could just feel the Dallas

2066
02:00:14,760 --> 02:00:17,280
Speaker 1: fans were like, oh, this is going exactly as I feared.

2067
02:00:18,680 --> 02:00:21,720
Speaker 1: US Packer fans were as cocky as ever. And then

2068
02:00:21,760 --> 02:00:24,640
Speaker 1: they blocked that extra point and run back for two

2069
02:00:24,680 --> 02:00:27,240
Speaker 1: points and it's instead of fourteen to nothing, it's thirteen

2070
02:00:27,280 --> 02:00:30,160
Speaker 1: to two. And I just sit there and look at

2071
02:00:30,200 --> 02:00:32,720
Speaker 1: my son. I'm like, what the second week in a

2072
02:00:32,800 --> 02:00:35,880
Speaker 1: row we're getting We get that field goal block with

2073
02:00:35,920 --> 02:00:38,880
Speaker 1: the Browns and then this extra point block, so we

2074
02:00:39,160 --> 02:00:41,760
Speaker 1: just are stewing from here on out. We stopped and

2075
02:00:41,840 --> 02:00:45,720
Speaker 1: joined the game. We're angry at Rich Bisaccia, who's the

2076
02:00:45,720 --> 02:00:48,480
Speaker 1: special teams coach, who a bunch of US Packer fans

2077
02:00:48,560 --> 02:00:51,200
Speaker 1: have been like, get rid of this guy. The special

2078
02:00:51,200 --> 02:00:54,840
Speaker 1: teams is atrocious. It's been atrocious for two years now.

2079
02:00:55,200 --> 02:00:58,960
Speaker 1: And then every single time on the kickoff, the Packers

2080
02:00:58,960 --> 02:01:02,400
Speaker 1: didn't know the rules. They kept the ball would bounce

2081
02:01:02,400 --> 02:01:04,000
Speaker 1: in the landing zone and they'd take it in the

2082
02:01:04,120 --> 02:01:06,040
Speaker 1: end zone thinking they were getting it at the thirty five,

2083
02:01:06,280 --> 02:01:08,560
Speaker 1: and they did it multiple times, and it comes out

2084
02:01:08,560 --> 02:01:12,120
Speaker 1: to the twenty. All these little hidden yardages, and then

2085
02:01:12,160 --> 02:01:14,800
Speaker 1: there was the bizarre play calling of Lafleur at the

2086
02:01:14,920 --> 02:01:17,600
Speaker 1: end of the first half, end of the regulation, and

2087
02:01:17,640 --> 02:01:21,240
Speaker 1: at the end of the overtime. This was one of

2088
02:01:21,280 --> 02:01:26,200
Speaker 1: those where so the game ends in a tie and

2089
02:01:26,240 --> 02:01:29,040
Speaker 1: the Dallas fans felt like they won something and all

2090
02:01:29,120 --> 02:01:31,960
Speaker 1: of us Packer fans felt like we lost. This was

2091
02:01:32,040 --> 02:01:34,600
Speaker 1: not one of those where everybody, yeah, and you did.

2092
02:01:34,920 --> 02:01:36,680
Speaker 1: I'm sorry I didn't leave gone. Boy, that was a

2093
02:01:36,680 --> 02:01:39,520
Speaker 1: great game. It was not a great game. The Packers

2094
02:01:39,560 --> 02:01:45,440
Speaker 1: played terribly. The Cowboys. It was really interesting. They were

2095
02:01:45,480 --> 02:01:48,600
Speaker 1: playing afraid for the first quarter and a half. It

2096
02:01:48,640 --> 02:01:51,000
Speaker 1: was like they did not want Michael Parsons to even

2097
02:01:51,000 --> 02:01:53,200
Speaker 1: get a chance to sack doacks. They didn't even bother

2098
02:01:53,280 --> 02:01:54,880
Speaker 1: to pass the ball, or if they did, it would

2099
02:01:54,880 --> 02:01:57,280
Speaker 1: be like a quick strop and a little dump off.

2100
02:01:58,360 --> 02:02:01,640
Speaker 1: Then they get this two point conversion. Like Schottenheimer, the

2101
02:02:01,720 --> 02:02:04,960
Speaker 1: Dallas coach decided, you know what, there are other plays

2102
02:02:05,000 --> 02:02:07,880
Speaker 1: in the playbook, why not? And you know the way

2103
02:02:07,880 --> 02:02:11,320
Speaker 1: football is, right, it's like a this this game felt

2104
02:02:11,320 --> 02:02:16,080
Speaker 1: like one of those college games where a highly ranked

2105
02:02:16,120 --> 02:02:19,200
Speaker 1: team is visiting an unranked team and they let the

2106
02:02:19,320 --> 02:02:22,120
Speaker 1: unranked team hang around, and then all of a sudden,

2107
02:02:22,160 --> 02:02:24,120
Speaker 1: the unranked team realize they have a chance to win

2108
02:02:24,440 --> 02:02:26,600
Speaker 1: and they start playing the best game of their lives.

2109
02:02:27,000 --> 02:02:31,360
Speaker 1: George Pickens, who's never consistent when he's on a football field,

2110
02:02:31,560 --> 02:02:35,480
Speaker 1: paid attention and seem to actually participate in the offense

2111
02:02:36,000 --> 02:02:39,080
Speaker 1: almost one hundred percent of the plays. And guess what,

2112
02:02:39,840 --> 02:02:45,200
Speaker 1: when he's fully paying attention, he's a dangerous threat. The

2113
02:02:45,240 --> 02:02:49,000
Speaker 1: Packers couldn't get a pass rush. They were only you know,

2114
02:02:49,040 --> 02:02:51,080
Speaker 1: the whole key to the Packers is just that doing

2115
02:02:51,080 --> 02:02:53,760
Speaker 1: that four man pass rush, the assumption was they were

2116
02:02:53,760 --> 02:02:56,720
Speaker 1: going to get to Dak and they couldn't get to him.

2117
02:02:57,400 --> 02:03:00,000
Speaker 1: Really until the overtime did they finally seem to fit

2118
02:03:00,000 --> 02:03:03,480
Speaker 1: figure that out. But Schottenheimer out coached Halfley, and we

2119
02:03:03,520 --> 02:03:07,320
Speaker 1: hadn't seen Halfley out coach. So the Packers are are

2120
02:03:07,440 --> 02:03:10,280
Speaker 1: what are we now? Two to one and one? And

2121
02:03:10,360 --> 02:03:14,480
Speaker 1: it just feels off right, And now you got to

2122
02:03:14,480 --> 02:03:19,000
Speaker 1: ask yourself, was was the Lions game sort of an

2123
02:03:19,000 --> 02:03:22,720
Speaker 1: anomaly where the Packers simply a little bit more ready

2124
02:03:22,760 --> 02:03:25,240
Speaker 1: and the Lions weren't they were still in preseason mode,

2125
02:03:26,520 --> 02:03:28,480
Speaker 1: because all of a sudden, they look like the best

2126
02:03:28,520 --> 02:03:31,240
Speaker 1: team in that division, and the Packers are not playing

2127
02:03:31,280 --> 02:03:34,880
Speaker 1: like the best team in that division. So what I

2128
02:03:34,880 --> 02:03:37,520
Speaker 1: have to say, I think it's a full indictment on

2129
02:03:37,560 --> 02:03:42,640
Speaker 1: the coaching staff, from Halflee to Lafleor to Bisachia Basacia.

2130
02:03:42,720 --> 02:03:46,840
Speaker 1: This is I don't I admire that Lafleur is very

2131
02:03:46,880 --> 02:03:49,840
Speaker 1: loyal to his coaches, but he kept the defensive coordinator

2132
02:03:49,840 --> 02:03:53,320
Speaker 1: a season too long. And I think it's painfully obvious

2133
02:03:53,320 --> 02:03:56,160
Speaker 1: with these new special teams rules that nobody on the

2134
02:03:56,200 --> 02:03:59,600
Speaker 1: team seems to know that they probably kept the special

2135
02:03:59,600 --> 02:04:03,600
Speaker 1: teams coach a season too long on this front, And

2136
02:04:03,680 --> 02:04:05,760
Speaker 1: if you follow Packer, you know, for those of you

2137
02:04:05,800 --> 02:04:08,760
Speaker 1: that follow the Packer stuff closely, you know that most

2138
02:04:08,800 --> 02:04:11,640
Speaker 1: Packer fans are raging right now about that more than

2139
02:04:11,640 --> 02:04:17,920
Speaker 1: ever on the college front. Look, it was just a

2140
02:04:17,920 --> 02:04:20,400
Speaker 1: great game, great weekend of games, and it was great

2141
02:04:20,440 --> 02:04:22,760
Speaker 1: to not have to worry about the Hurricanes to be

2142
02:04:22,880 --> 02:04:26,040
Speaker 1: in that. I will say this, I'm a little bummed

2143
02:04:26,160 --> 02:04:29,240
Speaker 1: that Florida State lost that Uva game on Friday night

2144
02:04:29,680 --> 02:04:32,280
Speaker 1: because what that sets up is a more desperate Florida

2145
02:04:32,320 --> 02:04:37,520
Speaker 1: State team against Miami this Saturday. This is another big

2146
02:04:37,560 --> 02:04:40,720
Speaker 1: test for crystabal rights. There was a couple of coaches

2147
02:04:40,760 --> 02:04:43,520
Speaker 1: that have high ranked teams that have not been able

2148
02:04:43,560 --> 02:04:46,200
Speaker 1: to win the big game. James Franklin at Penn State,

2149
02:04:46,880 --> 02:04:50,080
Speaker 1: Mario Cristobal, whether it was at Oregon or at Miami.

2150
02:04:50,520 --> 02:04:51,960
Speaker 1: You know, are you going to be able to win?

2151
02:04:52,480 --> 02:04:55,160
Speaker 1: Be able to you know, not lose a dumb game.

2152
02:04:56,120 --> 02:04:59,400
Speaker 1: I think Christa Ball passed one test against Florida when

2153
02:04:59,440 --> 02:05:03,000
Speaker 1: they played not their best game. That's a game they

2154
02:05:03,000 --> 02:05:05,280
Speaker 1: would have lost last year, and they figured out how

2155
02:05:05,280 --> 02:05:07,520
Speaker 1: to win it this year. This is the first road

2156
02:05:07,560 --> 02:05:11,720
Speaker 1: test against a team that's more desperate to win than Miamias.

2157
02:05:12,440 --> 02:05:16,240
Speaker 1: You know, can we do? We do? We treat it

2158
02:05:16,280 --> 02:05:18,120
Speaker 1: as a business trip and we go up there and

2159
02:05:18,200 --> 02:05:22,800
Speaker 1: just out physical them. There's no reason why they shouldn't.

2160
02:05:24,040 --> 02:05:26,560
Speaker 1: But Florida State's now a bit more desperate. I would

2161
02:05:26,600 --> 02:05:29,240
Speaker 1: have preferred a more hyped up Florida State team thinking

2162
02:05:30,680 --> 02:05:33,200
Speaker 1: that they're going to go nose for nose and would

2163
02:05:33,320 --> 02:05:35,800
Speaker 1: would have had a little bit more attention on that.

2164
02:05:35,920 --> 02:05:44,320
Speaker 1: But it's uh. I'm looking forward to Saturday night in Tallahassee.

2165
02:05:44,960 --> 02:05:47,960
Speaker 1: But I'm not gonna lie. I wish they had won

2166
02:05:48,160 --> 02:05:51,400
Speaker 1: that Friday game because I think in some ways they're

2167
02:05:51,440 --> 02:05:53,800
Speaker 1: going to be a bit more desperate, which means they're

2168
02:05:53,800 --> 02:05:58,120
Speaker 1: going to be playing whatever that means, right, just slightly

2169
02:05:58,600 --> 02:06:01,560
Speaker 1: slightly with more urgent and see more in time, because

2170
02:06:01,840 --> 02:06:04,840
Speaker 1: Florid State has to win if they want to get there.

2171
02:06:04,840 --> 02:06:09,240
Speaker 1: Because I think one thing we know is true, ten

2172
02:06:09,280 --> 02:06:11,720
Speaker 1: and two ACC teams are not getting into the playoff.

2173
02:06:12,560 --> 02:06:14,280
Speaker 1: We already found that out. Might be found out the

2174
02:06:14,280 --> 02:06:16,120
Speaker 1: hard way. You're going to have to be eleven and

2175
02:06:16,200 --> 02:06:18,080
Speaker 1: one in the regular season. You can have two losses,

2176
02:06:18,080 --> 02:06:20,120
Speaker 1: but your second loss has to come in in that

2177
02:06:20,280 --> 02:06:26,760
Speaker 1: conference title game. So Florida State has to. If they

2178
02:06:26,800 --> 02:06:30,400
Speaker 1: accumulate their second loss, I think they go down where

2179
02:06:30,440 --> 02:06:32,080
Speaker 1: the only shot they have would be to win the

2180
02:06:32,120 --> 02:06:35,680
Speaker 1: conference a la Clemson last year. So we shall see

2181
02:06:35,760 --> 02:06:39,080
Speaker 1: that's coming up. By the way, I want to share

2182
02:06:39,120 --> 02:06:42,560
Speaker 1: one more totally inane fact and for five of you

2183
02:06:42,560 --> 02:06:46,440
Speaker 1: you'll find this funny or weird, or maybe you think,

2184
02:06:46,480 --> 02:06:48,960
Speaker 1: why the hell is he sharing this? But I did

2185
02:06:49,000 --> 02:06:51,400
Speaker 1: something that I have never done. I swear in my

2186
02:06:51,520 --> 02:06:55,080
Speaker 1: entire life. I got to the end of a chapstick too.

2187
02:06:56,800 --> 02:06:59,000
Speaker 1: I am one of those people. I never have chapstick

2188
02:06:59,040 --> 02:07:00,480
Speaker 1: when I need it. So you go and you're always

2189
02:07:00,480 --> 02:07:02,000
Speaker 1: buying new ones, always buying new ones, and then you

2190
02:07:02,040 --> 02:07:04,200
Speaker 1: find your old stuff and all this stuff, right, and

2191
02:07:04,840 --> 02:07:07,800
Speaker 1: over time I end up with my little sticks of chapstick.

2192
02:07:07,880 --> 02:07:08,080
Speaker 2: You know.

2193
02:07:08,160 --> 02:07:10,360
Speaker 1: I got one near my my keys are, and one

2194
02:07:10,440 --> 02:07:12,960
Speaker 1: in my car, and one near my bed and all

2195
02:07:12,960 --> 02:07:16,600
Speaker 1: these different things. Right, Well, I finally worked. I think

2196
02:07:16,640 --> 02:07:19,840
Speaker 1: I had this stick of chapstick for three years. I

2197
02:07:19,880 --> 02:07:21,880
Speaker 1: didn't know you could ever get to an end of

2198
02:07:21,880 --> 02:07:26,000
Speaker 1: a chapstick tube. But I finally, for the first time

2199
02:07:26,000 --> 02:07:27,240
Speaker 1: in my life, made it to the end of the

2200
02:07:27,280 --> 02:07:30,400
Speaker 1: chapstick tube. I feel like I've finally not wasted money

2201
02:07:30,600 --> 02:07:33,960
Speaker 1: for once on all the unused chapstick that I have

2202
02:07:34,080 --> 02:07:36,800
Speaker 1: lost over the years. I'm sure it's all with all

2203
02:07:36,800 --> 02:07:40,360
Speaker 1: of my missing pairs of sunglasses as well. So with

2204
02:07:40,480 --> 02:07:44,320
Speaker 1: that piece of inane trivia that I hear that podcasters

2205
02:07:44,360 --> 02:07:46,960
Speaker 1: are supposed to share with their with their listeners and viewers,

2206
02:07:47,840 --> 02:07:50,080
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call it for twenty four hours and we'll

2207
02:07:50,080 --> 02:07:51,520
Speaker 1: see it when we upload again.