Speaker 1: Hello there, Welcome to another episode of the Chuck Podcast.
Speaker 1: We have a fascinating set of guests for you today.
Speaker 1: It's the two New York Times reporters behind the uncovering
Speaker 1: of these I guess you might call them a sleeper
Speaker 1: Russian agents and how the country of Brazil essentially became
Speaker 1: an incubator for the You know, if you were a
Speaker 1: fan of the show of the Americans and this idea
Speaker 1: of the illegals and the actual program where you had
Speaker 1: these deep undercover spies that Russia will infiltrate various Western societies, well,
Speaker 1: way do you understand? And you're going to hear and
Speaker 1: they do a terrific job of telling you the story.
Speaker 1: But how Brazil and it sort of has unique ways
Speaker 1: of proving of being able to get a birth certificate,
Speaker 1: that it became basically ground zero for the Russians and
Speaker 1: for Putin's factctory to potentially and what's interesting is that
Speaker 1: it's possible this has been going on since before the
Speaker 1: end of the Cold War and in fact may have
Speaker 1: been sort of never It wasn't some a program that
Speaker 1: was quote unquote revived when Putin came into power that
Speaker 1: actually never ended, even as the Cold War ended. Anyway,
Speaker 1: It's a fascinating conversation. I hope you make time for it.
Speaker 1: It's a terrific It's why I'm releasing it on Thursday,
Speaker 1: because I think it's a terrific longer listen if you will.
Speaker 1: But before we get to that, I want to do
Speaker 1: a little bit of I've got my hands on polling
Speaker 1: in a couple of important states, Texas and Michigan, as
Speaker 1: well as some polling that I'm going to be dismissive
Speaker 1: of in South Carolina. I'll tell you that in a minute.
Speaker 1: And while both Texas and Michigan are very twenty twenty
Speaker 1: six oriented, there is I want to sort of sort
Speaker 1: of do a little big picture here and just say,
Speaker 1: you know, as we're sort of the leader of the
Speaker 1: Republican Party has put the Republican Party right now, and
Speaker 1: how Donald Trump is actually putting them and starting to
Speaker 1: make some of the same mistakes that leaders of previous
Speaker 1: you know, previous presidents have helped to create similar mistakes
Speaker 1: that have only led their party to losses, particularly in
Speaker 1: midterm years. Just think about what he's been talking about
Speaker 1: more over the last oh say, seventy two ninety six hours,
Speaker 1: right he spent Memorial Day weekend attacking Harvard. He compared
Speaker 1: himself to al Capone. He hyped his crypto business. His
Speaker 1: kids are out in Vegas doing more crypto business this week.
Speaker 1: His vice president was raising money from crypto guys. Didn't
Speaker 1: really mention fallen soldiers, particularly at West Point, used the
Speaker 1: West Point commencement address to rehash his personal legal grievances.
Speaker 1: The point is he was making it all about himself.
Speaker 1: And the thing with midterm elections is that presidents, you know,
Speaker 1: are even when they're not on the ballot, they composed
Speaker 1: the mood music of it, and they can have an
Speaker 1: impact on that. And this is sort of doubly a
Speaker 1: problem for the Republican Party because Donald Trump, you know,
Speaker 1: when his name's on the ballot, there are a group
Speaker 1: of voters that show up. But when his name's not
Speaker 1: on a ballot, these voters don't show up, and the
Speaker 1: voters that do show up are more are listening to
Speaker 1: the mood music that's being composed by Trump, and right
Speaker 1: now that is not in a good place for the midterms.
Speaker 1: And in fact, even if he gets his big agenda bill,
Speaker 1: the problem he's got is that there's no new deliverable. Right,
Speaker 1: there's not an extra tax cut, it's just keeping the
Speaker 1: tax bill the same. And it's hard to convince somebody, oh,
Speaker 1: it could have been worse if I didn't do it.
Speaker 1: And yet that's you know, he doesn't have a lot
Speaker 1: of wins. The one place where he has some wins
Speaker 1: is on the border, and it's not an insignificant thing.
Speaker 1: And I think that it's the one place that I
Speaker 1: think voters are pretty happy with how things are going.
Speaker 1: But look at the central issue of how he won
Speaker 1: this election. He won this election on prices in the economy.
Speaker 1: I think the border was second, but I think it
Speaker 1: was and I think when you think about these swing voters,
Speaker 1: they didn't swing on the border. Those swing voters swung
Speaker 1: on prices in the economy and the belief that Trump
Speaker 1: knew how to manage a better economy and a disbelief
Speaker 1: that Biden and Harris knew what they were doing on
Speaker 1: the economy. So he hasn't really focused on lowering prices
Speaker 1: because prices haven't been lowered. If anything, it feels as
Speaker 1: if prices are going to go back up right thanks
Speaker 1: to what's happening in what's happening with his with his
Speaker 1: unsteady tariff policy, So he's not looking forward, he's not
Speaker 1: addressing sort of the near term needs of the electorate
Speaker 1: or it economically, and he's not going to have to
Speaker 1: campaign on this. Other Republicans are going to be having
Speaker 1: to campaign on this, and they have to campaign defending this.
Speaker 1: They can't run as change candidates. And one thing I
Speaker 1: think we've learned is that we're perpetually in a change
Speaker 1: change cycle. It was a change election in six it
Speaker 1: was a change election in o eight, It's a change
Speaker 1: election in ten, and was not a change election in
Speaker 1: twelve as a term out or Mitt Romney would have won.
Speaker 1: But it was a change election in fourteen. It was
Speaker 1: a change election in sixteen. It was a change election
Speaker 1: in eighteen, so change election in twenty, so a change
Speaker 1: election in twenty two, and it was a change election
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty in twenty four. Do you see a
Speaker 1: pattern here?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: We know what we don't want, and we're certainly not
Speaker 1: happy with incumbency in general, especially when it appears you've
Speaker 1: taken your eye off the ball. Right, George W. Bush
Speaker 1: and the Republicans got pummeled in six because in five
Speaker 1: and six after winning reelection in four on safety and
Speaker 1: security issues. He started focusing on social security, don't touch it.
Speaker 1: Then we got into these sort of weird, nuanced issues
Speaker 1: where government was getting involved in an end of life
Speaker 1: care the Terry Schivo If you want to know more
Speaker 1: about that, if you ahead and do your own Google
Speaker 1: and deep dive on Terry Schivo. But it really was
Speaker 1: sort of government, you know, getting too involved in your life,
Speaker 1: and it was the Republicans right doing that, and they
Speaker 1: and it and handed the Democrats the hey, get government
Speaker 1: out out of your life message. Do you see something
Speaker 1: similar happening here? Go read the most recent column of
Speaker 1: George Will, and he makes the case that the current
Speaker 1: version of the Republican Party has become as pro government
Speaker 1: and in some way as dictatorial of what government that
Speaker 1: government should tell you how to live your life, in
Speaker 1: the same way that he would criticize progressives for wanting
Speaker 1: to do similar things. In fact, he called it a
Speaker 1: progress said it's the most progressive administration we've ever had
Speaker 1: in the American presidency. Obviously, George Will, who's more of
Speaker 1: a limited government conservative, doesn't see his version of conservatism
Speaker 1: at all being represented by this wing of the Republican Party.
Speaker 1: And the problem is Trump is the party right for
Speaker 1: better or for worse. So he defines the party and
Speaker 1: we already know this. It is his version is not popular.
Speaker 1: He only succeeds when something is more unpopular standing next
Speaker 1: to him, and he won't be on the ballot. And yes,
Speaker 1: he'll try to revive Joe Biden, and they'll try to
Speaker 1: make that a issue. You already see some Republicans are
Speaker 1: trying to revise that the issue of the trans women
Speaker 1: in sports. That's the first ad and the Georgia Senate
Speaker 1: race that a Republican is running. So they certainly want
Speaker 1: to try to keep running on the culture wars of
Speaker 1: some sort. But it's going to be tough if Democrats
Speaker 1: actually focus on near term issues. Look, Democrats have you know,
Speaker 1: Barack Obama focusing on healthcare even though he was arguing
Speaker 1: that healthcare would help long term economic prospects, that did
Speaker 1: not answer the near term need that voters had when
Speaker 1: it came to the financial crisis, And why wasn't there
Speaker 1: more of a focus on that, and why wasn't there
Speaker 1: more you know, essentially old Testament justice when it came
Speaker 1: to the financial crisis, and so and I think that
Speaker 1: was among the explanations of why why Obama got Obama's
Speaker 1: party got their head handed to them in the twenty
Speaker 1: ten midterms and then, arguably to a lesser extent in
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen. So I don't think right now and this
Speaker 1: is a critical time. This isn't a random time to
Speaker 1: be bringing this up. This is a critical time for
Speaker 1: Republicans to be recruiting candidates for office, for Republicans to
Speaker 1: be convincing incumbents to run for reelection again. And when
Speaker 1: they look at the mood music that Donald Trump is composing,
Speaker 1: and they look at the at this big, beautiful bill
Speaker 1: that is not going to have a lot of things
Speaker 1: that are easy to sell to the public that feel
Speaker 1: responsive to their current needs. You know, maybe he figures
Speaker 1: out a way to write a check signed by Donald
Speaker 1: Trump to people. Maybe it'll be twenty bucks, whatever it is.
Speaker 1: He's going to try some gimmick like that, because they're
Speaker 1: going to have to try something like that. But these,
Speaker 1: you know, any changes to Medicaid are going to be unpopular.
Speaker 1: I think one thing we're going to learn is that
Speaker 1: Medicaid is as an untouchable. As I pointed out yesterday
Speaker 1: in the previous podcast is as untouchable as Social Security
Speaker 1: and Medicare. And I think that back of part of
Speaker 1: this is that Republicans have never been defenders of Medicaid before.
Speaker 1: They've been critics of the program for decades, and now
Speaker 1: that it's essentially universally popular, and because it is a
Speaker 1: safety net, not just if you if you're out of
Speaker 1: a job, but it's a safety net if you're stuck
Speaker 1: doing a job that doesn't offer benefits. It's also a
Speaker 1: safety net if you run out of money before before
Speaker 1: the end of your life. It is a safety net
Speaker 1: for a lot of Americans, not just Americans unquote unquote welfare.
Speaker 1: So with that, I just wanted to put that out
Speaker 1: there because I do think Donald Trump's not helping his
Speaker 1: party at all, and we have some initial polling to show,
Speaker 1: you know, his job. There's a new Texas poll that
Speaker 1: I think is a quite good poll, although I think
Speaker 1: it did a real poor job asking one question and
Speaker 1: I'll get to it, but Texas Southern University, the Barbara
Speaker 1: Jordan School, they put out a very uh and there. Look,
Speaker 1: there's not a lot of great polling in the state
Speaker 1: of Texas, but this is a pretty good one and
Speaker 1: has had a pretty good track record, and it measures
Speaker 1: the big stuff, including presidential job rating. In Texas. Okay,
Speaker 1: there's a red state. He's sitting at fifty three percent
Speaker 1: and they did her. If you could do a revote,
Speaker 1: Trump's fourteen point win over Harris would be down to eight. Now,
Speaker 1: part of that is we know that the midterm electorate
Speaker 1: is going to be less trumpy, right, Yet another reason
Speaker 1: for why Trump's inability to give to sort of deliver
Speaker 1: items that the voters are going to care about come
Speaker 1: the midterms is going to be a real challenge for
Speaker 1: them because it's electorate. As we know, the more focused
Speaker 1: you are on voting in a midterm, the less pro
Speaker 1: Trump you are. But just to give you a sense
Speaker 1: of because this is I think a pretty good standing.
Speaker 1: He's got a fifty three percent job approval, which again
Speaker 1: this is Texas, that's not the greatest. Forty seven percent
Speaker 1: in Texas are disapproving of the job he's doing. Now,
Speaker 1: his approval rating is higher on immigration than any other
Speaker 1: issue at fifty six percent, and this is the one
Speaker 1: issue that he has been pulling universally across the board.
Speaker 1: Has been given credit for that. Ironically, he was assisted
Speaker 1: by finally in the last year of his presidency, after
Speaker 1: a new chief of staff came in, Jeff Science, that
Speaker 1: allowed the Department of Homeland Security in Ali Mayorcus to
Speaker 1: actually do the job that they were trying to do
Speaker 1: in the first two years of the Biden administration, and
Speaker 1: for some reason the West wing or the president wasn't
Speaker 1: allowing them to do their job. But in many ways,
Speaker 1: the Biden administration gave Trump a head start at getting
Speaker 1: I mean, the cynic in me thinks that one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why Stephen Miller is pushing for rescinding some
Speaker 1: of these temporary protected status citations for different for different
Speaker 1: immigrants from different countries is so they can then drum
Speaker 1: up their deportation numbers, because once you pull away the
Speaker 1: protected status, then suddenly they're eligible for deportation. And clearly
Speaker 1: they care more about the metrics than than wanting to
Speaker 1: admit that Biden did seventy percent of the job for
Speaker 1: them before they got to it, because that's an uncomfortable
Speaker 1: truth that they would not want to admit. Here's what's
Speaker 1: also interesting in here is that Texas voters he's got
Speaker 1: a higher approval rating than his overall approval rating on
Speaker 1: the issue of reduction of the size of government. I
Speaker 1: think this is a reminder and Democrats need to be
Speaker 1: very careful here at how they go after Elon Musk.
Speaker 1: I think Elon Musk is unpopular. What Elon Musk was
Speaker 1: doing was not unpopular. Right. This gets at to what
Speaker 1: I've argued is a competency issue for this administration. Their
Speaker 1: goals are aligned with the voters, their ability to implement
Speaker 1: their goals are not, you know, is sort of incompetent. Right.
Speaker 1: They've done a terrible job on tariffs. They've done a
Speaker 1: terrible job on how you would actually cut government. There
Speaker 1: were ways to do this that they could have had
Speaker 1: congressional buy in a lot sooner, and they didn't do it.
Speaker 1: But the fact is the voters have noticed he got
Speaker 1: caught trying, and they're giving them credit for getting caught trying.
Speaker 1: But this is where you see the trouble spots where
Speaker 1: he's below that fifty three percent job eRating on specific
Speaker 1: issues in Texas, Trump is at fifty one on foreign policy,
Speaker 1: at forty nine on the economy, at forty five percent
Speaker 1: on tariffs. Okay, at and he's got a fifty one
Speaker 1: percent personal favorable rating, So I think it shows you
Speaker 1: what the warning signs are, right, And already voters, even
Speaker 1: in red Texas have decided he doesn't. He's not handling
Speaker 1: the economy well, and he's not handling tariffs well well.
Speaker 1: Tariffs and the economy to me are almost going to
Speaker 1: be conflated as one issue. This is a giant flashing
Speaker 1: red flag, red light, if you will, for Republicans, which
Speaker 1: probably does explain why the president keeps backing off these tariffs, right.
Speaker 1: And it's not just that he's shown the volatility in
Speaker 1: the bond markets bad for the economy, raises, mortgage rates,
Speaker 1: all those things. But then it's like, hey, buddy, people
Speaker 1: don't think you know what you're doing on the economy anymore.
Speaker 1: That was the singular reason voters chose the voters who
Speaker 1: were who were who weren't fans of him, but reluctantly
Speaker 1: voted for him. It was almost universally on the issue
Speaker 1: of the economy. One other note on the Texas poll
Speaker 1: in here on the Senate race, and by the way,
Speaker 1: a little request to my friends at Texas Southern University,
Speaker 1: which is they didn't do a three way matchup because
Speaker 1: what I really want to see is what is the
Speaker 1: strength of the corn voter when when Cornyn would be
Speaker 1: there and is an independent. I know he's not threatened
Speaker 1: as an independent, but if you really want to see
Speaker 1: the strength of the Republican brand in Paxton, the Democratic
Speaker 1: brand and Colin all read and where the middle is right,
Speaker 1: who were the persuadable voters? If you asked a three
Speaker 1: way general election race for for for social science purposes
Speaker 1: to my professor friends of Texas State, Texas Southern, you
Speaker 1: would get a better understanding of who the who the
Speaker 1: group of voters that are the most movable right, the
Speaker 1: group of voters that picked corn And when given the
Speaker 1: other two choices, I think will tell you who the
Speaker 1: who the swing voters are. So I think it's a
Speaker 1: it's a missed opportunity to truly identify an easier way
Speaker 1: to entify. But what's interesting here John Cornyan has the
Speaker 1: lowest favorable rating among Republicans than any of the other
Speaker 1: Republican candidates tested. He is the highest unfavorable rating among
Speaker 1: Republicans than any the only one that's over thirty percent unfavorable.
Speaker 1: Now Trump's endorsement, it would matter to seventy plus percent
Speaker 1: of primary voters. That's a big deal. I have a
Speaker 1: feeling Trump's going to endorse both Conan Impacston, and he's
Speaker 1: going to pull an air. You know. One of the
Speaker 1: things Trump does is that he is that is that
Speaker 1: if he if he is afraid of letting somebody down,
Speaker 1: he will then just endorse both candidates. He's done that
Speaker 1: in a handful of races. I suspect he will do
Speaker 1: that here. For what it's worth, I think it's fascinating
Speaker 1: that Congressman Wesley Hunt, when he's included in the race,
Speaker 1: he immediately is able to get fifteen percent. The fact is,
Speaker 1: I think Cornan and the question I have is, and
Speaker 1: it's going to get me to another poll here in
Speaker 1: a minute. Incumbency may be as big of a problem
Speaker 1: for Cornin as not being maga enough is. And I
Speaker 1: think that, you know, I think being an incumbent, whether
Speaker 1: you're a D or an R, is going to be
Speaker 1: a negative to most voters in twenty twenty six. I
Speaker 1: think there's a real disillusionment with the with the political
Speaker 1: power in both parties. I mean, at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, you have a lot of voters who didn't
Speaker 1: like the fact that their choices were going to be
Speaker 1: Biden and Trump, and that was due to the lack
Speaker 1: of leadership in either party to do something about it.
Speaker 1: And I think there's going to be you know, there's
Speaker 1: going to be a lot of openness to alternative candidates
Speaker 1: to incumbents, whether that's in third party candidacies. And I'm
Speaker 1: going to tell you about a minute in Michigan or
Speaker 1: it's about it's about primaries. But the fact is John
Speaker 1: Cornyn's in deep trouble. If he can figure out how
Speaker 1: to win this primary, he's going to win reelection. But
Speaker 1: I don't know if he can win this primary. When
Speaker 1: you start to look at his fundaments, because he's not
Speaker 1: it's not going to be an even you know, even
Speaker 1: if he has it at best, he can hope for
Speaker 1: an even financial playing field. Now I will say this,
Speaker 1: It is worth noting that John corn hired Chris Losovita,
Speaker 1: who is one of the architects of Donald Trump's successful
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four reelection. And las Avita knows how to
Speaker 1: I've pointed this out before. He knows how to play ball,
Speaker 1: and he knows how to play ball in a primary
Speaker 1: when necessary, and he's a tough He's one of your
Speaker 1: tougher players on the playing field there, but Cornyn has
Speaker 1: an uphill battle. And you know, all of them in
Speaker 1: matchups with various Democrats, whether veter or a Roora, Colin Allred,
Speaker 1: or Joaquim Castro, those are the three Democrats they tested.
Speaker 1: None of them lead any of the Republican nominees, but
Speaker 1: all of them are within single digits. Even if Cornin's
Speaker 1: a nominee. Clearly Paxton is the weakest candidate. He tests
Speaker 1: the weakest. He only has a two point lead over all.
Speaker 1: Read So there's no doubt that the premier Republican primary
Speaker 1: in the country right now is going to be this
Speaker 1: Texas Senate primary. And let's just say, just as a
Speaker 1: political junk, I'm here for it. It's going to be
Speaker 1: a fabulous race. I can't wait. I'm going to be
Speaker 1: going down there in the fall to get my own
Speaker 1: flavor of that. But it's going to be great. Another
Speaker 1: poll that came out over the last twenty four hours
Speaker 1: is one in Michigan. My friends at the Detroit at
Speaker 1: the Chamber of Commerce put out their big pole going
Speaker 1: into mckinaw Island, which is their big political policy conference.
Speaker 1: It takes place up there on Mcina Island, which, by
Speaker 1: the way, is a fabulous the one of the probably
Speaker 1: one of the best best islands that isn't surrounded by
Speaker 1: saltwater that you can find anywhere in this hemisphere. It
Speaker 1: is a fascinating place. But the whole Michigan political world
Speaker 1: is going to be there, and what they found is
Speaker 1: shocking strength, I think for Mike Duggan as an independent
Speaker 1: candidate in all of the matchups. So in the gubernatorial
Speaker 1: race there the mayor of Detroit is running. He's got
Speaker 1: high name ID in Metro Detroit, low name ID everywhere else,
Speaker 1: but as a baseline, in every matchup, he starts in
Speaker 1: the low twenties. And it doesn't matter whether he's matched
Speaker 1: up against Jocelyn Benson, who's the runaway front runner on
Speaker 1: the Democratic side, who's the current Secretary of State, or
Speaker 1: John James, who's a congressman who's the runaway frontrunner on
Speaker 1: the Republican side, whoever is matched up there, Dougan is
Speaker 1: sitting at twenty to twenty one percent. What's interesting, he's
Speaker 1: also the only candidate tested in this poll that had
Speaker 1: positive ratings among Democrats, positive ratings among independents and positive
Speaker 1: ratings among Republicans. Right, Jocelyn Benson had positive ratings among
Speaker 1: Democrats but not Republicans. James among Republicans but not Democrats.
Speaker 1: So I will just say this, Duggan starts out in
Speaker 1: a shockingly strong position. And again, in this idea of
Speaker 1: an anti incumbency place, you're going to have a sitting
Speaker 1: member of Congress who's running for governor on the Republican
Speaker 1: side and a sitting statewide officeholder on the other side.
Speaker 1: Him being able to sort of run again the establishments
Speaker 1: of both parties is sitting there, and already voters view
Speaker 1: him in a sort of less partisan way. They don't
Speaker 1: see him he's a former Democrat, yet he's not somehow
Speaker 1: viewed more as a Democrat by Republicans. Everybody sees him
Speaker 1: more as an independent figure. The point is this dug
Speaker 1: and race is real, This three way race is real.
Speaker 1: Be paying attention to that, that's for sure. And then finally,
Speaker 1: another poll that I want to make note of in
Speaker 1: order to be dismissive of, and that is you may
Speaker 1: have seen some numbers about Lindsay Graham potentially in a
Speaker 1: closer than expected race. It was sort of a poll
Speaker 1: that was just released via press release only to sort
Speaker 1: of right wing media that wrote it up as if
Speaker 1: it was a serious poll. But it looked like there
Speaker 1: was some push language in there, in meaning like, you know,
Speaker 1: do you want to vote for Lindsay Graham, who's been
Speaker 1: an entrenched incumbent for twenty five years? Do you want
Speaker 1: to vote for this fresh businessman named Lynch over here?
Speaker 1: And even you know, sort of having where they clearly
Speaker 1: it appears that they sort of pushed the electorate a
Speaker 1: little bit or sort of created the as good of
Speaker 1: conditions as you can. Graham still leads in a primary. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's under fifty percent, but he already already has Trump's endorsement.
Speaker 1: So I don't buy that South Carolina poll number. I
Speaker 1: certainly want to see a more legitimate polling organization to
Speaker 1: come out with another set of numbers before I will
Speaker 1: buy into the idea that Lindsey Graham, who is you
Speaker 1: know in theory, has supposedly been vulnerable to a primary
Speaker 1: for the last twenty years, including I'm old enough to
Speaker 1: remember when a young woman named Nancy Mace planned to
Speaker 1: primary him just fresh out of the citadel. So I
Speaker 1: am I'll believe that when I see some more polling
Speaker 1: to see it. So with that, I want to take
Speaker 1: a break and when you come back, this fascinating conversation
Speaker 1: how Brazil became the incubator for the Russian illegal the
Speaker 1: next Americans may have been born in Brazil. It's a
Speaker 1: weird way of putting it. Huh. Just listen to the
Speaker 1: interview and you'll get it. Well. Joining me now our
Speaker 1: two reporters from the New York Times. It's Michael Schwartz
Speaker 1: and Jane Bradley. And if you're like me and we're
Speaker 1: a fan of the TV show, back when we watched
Speaker 1: things on channels, I know we don't do that anymore,
Speaker 1: but we used to watch things on channels. It was
Speaker 1: on Fax. It was called The Americans, and it was
Speaker 1: about this fictitious spy program where Russian said Soviet Union
Speaker 1: had infiltrated and had these sort of home grown spies
Speaker 1: and they so assimilated into American culture that no one
Speaker 1: saw what they were actually up to. It's made a
Speaker 1: lot of us that have watched that program very suspicious.
Speaker 1: For instance, of travel agencies, are they all just fronts?
Speaker 1: Since the Big Front organization, there was a travel agency well.
Speaker 1: In the New York Times earlier this month, there was
Speaker 1: a fascinating story by these two reporters, Michael and Jane,
Speaker 1: about a real life version of this, where it is
Speaker 1: Brazil that is still apparently an incubator, if you will,
Speaker 1: for this now Russian program of essentially growing spies, getting
Speaker 1: them alternative identifications, Brazil being in a tremendous place to
Speaker 1: do it, and it makes a lot of sense to
Speaker 1: me if you've ever spent any time in Rio. But
Speaker 1: the story reads like a real life like it's now,
Speaker 1: you know, the Americans twenty first century. Addition, So Michael
Speaker 1: and Jane, welcome to the podcast, and thanks for humoring
Speaker 1: me on.
Speaker 3: This, thanks for having us, Thanks tov.
Speaker 1: So look and you tell me which one who's who
Speaker 1: originally had this story. I know you've worked together. One
Speaker 1: of you worked one angle, one of you worked the other.
Speaker 1: But give me, give me the sort of origin story
Speaker 1: of your tip, the reporting, and what sort of got
Speaker 1: you to the point where you started unraveling this larger story,
Speaker 1: obviously with the help of some sources in the Brazilian
Speaker 1: with Brazilian federal investigators.
Speaker 2: Sure you want to tell them the story?
Speaker 3: It's your tip you tell us story.
Speaker 2: This story basically starts with the invasion of Ukraine by
Speaker 2: Russia and twenty two. I was covering that war, but
Speaker 2: at the same time I started noticing these reports of
Speaker 2: various arrests and discoveries of deep cover Russian spies all
Speaker 2: over the world, in Greece and Italy, some in Latin America.
Speaker 1: And so let me pause you there. So right after
Speaker 1: the invasion, countries all over the world world, we're double checking, Hey,
Speaker 1: do we have any Russian spies in our midst is
Speaker 1: that was? It?
Speaker 2: Was?
Speaker 1: It like almost like a global APB went out.
Speaker 2: Well, that's what That's what I wanted to know. We
Speaker 2: were you know, as often happens, we sort of get
Speaker 2: the information side of things and then want to dig
Speaker 2: deeper and find out what was going on here. So yeah,
Speaker 2: I said, you know, as as overtly states were banding together,
Speaker 2: banding together and imposing sanctions and cutting off a Russian
Speaker 2: access to their countries, mostly in the West, I wondered
Speaker 2: if there was sort of a covert spy war going on,
Speaker 2: where where spy services around the world We're going and
Speaker 2: trying to get uh, these Russian deep cover operatives that
Speaker 2: had stationed all over the world, and I started asking
Speaker 2: around about this and at some point, just the long
Speaker 2: story short on this and where the tip came from,
Speaker 2: one of my sources at one point came to me
Speaker 2: and said, oh, by the way, did you know that
Speaker 2: the Brazilians have uncovered a bunch I was operating there,
Speaker 2: and they're about to do this crazy thing. They're about
Speaker 2: to out them to the Interpol Service, which is this
Speaker 2: global policing network, and basically destroyed their career. And I said,
Speaker 2: I haven't heard about that, but I know somebody who
Speaker 2: knows a lot of people at Interpol, and so I
Speaker 2: turned to Jane, who helped me start digging into this problem.
Speaker 4: And there was an extraordinary moment at the start of
Speaker 4: this investigation. So it started off with four names we
Speaker 4: had that Mike had got from his source and as
Speaker 4: well as some interpolse sources. It did have some connections
Speaker 4: to the Brazilian police, so we asked around there as well,
Speaker 4: and we had this first meeting with a key Brazilian
Speaker 4: source on this and we came away from that meeting
Speaker 4: knowing there were nine names. And that was quite extraordinary
Speaker 4: because at the beginning we thought, okay, you know this
Speaker 4: is a pattern.
Speaker 3: Here's the name of four.
Speaker 4: But with nine, we decided this is a much bigger
Speaker 4: story than we first thought.
Speaker 1: So you're sitting there it's nine. First of all, well,
Speaker 1: color me a little bit surprised that the Brazilians decided
Speaker 1: to be so aggressive against the Russians. Brazilians in some
Speaker 1: ways are almost pride themselves of being unaligned, right. They
Speaker 1: love being able to say, hey, we've got good relations
Speaker 1: with the United States, with China, with Russia. They're part
Speaker 1: of the brick countries, right, the alternative economic engine, right,
Speaker 1: brick standing for Brazil, Russia, Indian and China. Were you surprised, Jane,
Speaker 1: at how aggressive the Brazilian FEDS were being on this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was completely surprised.
Speaker 4: So for context, like my Brazilian police sources or the
Speaker 4: introductions came from my interpoal reporting and reported on this election,
Speaker 4: and who.
Speaker 3: Would be the new leader of Interpol, And you.
Speaker 4: Had the Brits running in one corner and you had
Speaker 4: a Brazilian candidate Aldesuu Kuifa running in.
Speaker 3: And the corner.
Speaker 4: Though, like the whole center point of the Brazilians campaign
Speaker 4: was that, hey, we put politics aside, We're politically neutral, unbiased,
Speaker 4: like we will represent all countries as part of Interpol.
Speaker 3: So then, you know, when I went to the Brazilians.
Speaker 4: On after getting this tip about these spies, I didn't
Speaker 4: know whether they would talk to us honestly about it,
Speaker 4: because of the political sensitivities around speaking out about this
Speaker 4: kind of thing against Russia, and the police of sources.
Speaker 4: Intelligence sources we spoke to were just incredibly open from
Speaker 4: the beginning, and.
Speaker 3: I think it shocked me.
Speaker 4: But I think that speaks to just how honestly annoyed
Speaker 4: and pissed off they were, how Russia had exploited you know, Brazilians,
Speaker 4: Brazil's kind of political neutrality and the fact they tried
Speaker 4: not to take sides and have been relatively friendly, and
Speaker 4: yet here they were kind of exploiting Brazilian territory to
Speaker 4: train up build these curve identities for the spies before
Speaker 4: they went off elsewhere. And what was also interesting is
Speaker 4: when as we were chatting to the police officers, the
Speaker 4: Brazilian police officers, they all kind of explained, look, there
Speaker 4: is a split between the government in Brazil and the
Speaker 4: politics of Brazil and the police. We're here to do
Speaker 4: the police work, but others will be more concerned politics.
Speaker 1: So look, the conclusion you come from this is that
Speaker 1: Brazil is the main incubator, because that was what was
Speaker 1: amazing out of here. It wasn't this wasn't just about
Speaker 1: infiltrating Brazil. It was just Brazil was an easy place
Speaker 1: to create cover identities to then launch these folks everywhere.
Speaker 1: And you know when you said Brazil, I grew up
Speaker 1: in Miami, and I remember the first time I went
Speaker 1: to Rio, because you have this this phenomenon in Miami,
Speaker 1: which is you can't assume based on how somebody looks
Speaker 1: where they're from in Miami more so than in really
Speaker 1: until I went to Rio, right, which was another one
Speaker 1: of these, And you know when geographic locations matter, right,
Speaker 1: And this is a very international city. It is truly
Speaker 1: a melting pot city. Brazil's a melting pot country, just
Speaker 1: like South Florida is a melting pot area. And so
Speaker 1: then when you started, when I started putting together my
Speaker 1: own picture of this, you're like, actually, Brazil's a brilliant
Speaker 1: place to do this because you can take any Russian
Speaker 1: and sort of make a claim. Ah, they're sort of
Speaker 1: half this half half half. I mean in Brazil, you're
Speaker 1: a little bit of everything when it comes there, so
Speaker 1: just sort of culturally in the history of the of
Speaker 1: the of sort of civilization, civilized development of Brazil, it
Speaker 1: ended up being brilliant.
Speaker 2: And I think this is something you have to understand
Speaker 2: about the Russians, and in particular as regards this spy program,
Speaker 2: their legal spy program. They're planning for these things is meticulous. Sometimes,
Speaker 2: you know, the the operations themselves can be botched, and
Speaker 2: sometimes spectacularly. We all remember the poisoning of Sergei Scripall,
Speaker 2: where they had sort of left this highly toxic residue
Speaker 2: all over the place and killed somebody and really caused
Speaker 2: an incredible international incident, which, by the way, is probably
Speaker 2: one reason so many countries were able to so quickly
Speaker 2: spring into action after the invasion is because the groundwork
Speaker 2: was laid following the Scriptball poisoning in twenty eighteen. But
Speaker 2: we tend to focus on their spectacular failures, but the
Speaker 2: planning that these intelligence operatives put into this, and it's
Speaker 2: not just the operatives themselves, it's the whole embassy apparatus
Speaker 2: that goes into laying the groundwork for these people to
Speaker 2: operate it's incredibly meticulous and incredibly well thought out.
Speaker 1: Well, and that's the thing like this, you imply that
Speaker 1: this was decades in the making, not years, but decades.
Speaker 4: Explain well, that's one of the things that the Brazilian
Speaker 4: police are looking at.
Speaker 3: So they don't know.
Speaker 4: They don't as yet, but at the end, towards the
Speaker 4: end of our investigation, we checked in with our Brazilian
Speaker 4: sources and in April, they had this forensic analysis come
Speaker 4: back on the birth certificates of all nine Russian spies
Speaker 4: who'd been using Brazilian cover identities. They all had these
Speaker 4: Brazilian birth certificates, and they were shocked because they expected
Speaker 4: the results to show that these bersertificates had been adopted,
Speaker 4: they've been tampered with, that someone had come in in
Speaker 4: recent years and created these fake identities. But actually what
Speaker 4: the forensic analysis suggests was that there was no evidence
Speaker 4: of any tampering, Like the ink was normal, the paper
Speaker 4: was normal, like, there was none of the tampering the
Speaker 4: Brazilians expected to find because until that point they'd assumed
Speaker 4: they'd been working on the hypothesis that the Russians had
Speaker 4: managed to obtain these birth certificates through corrupt officials, like
Speaker 4: Brazil is decentralized, it's open, it's vulnerable to corruption, So
Speaker 4: that is what they'd expected to find. So now the
Speaker 4: focus of their investigation is how did the Russians do
Speaker 4: it and did they really plant these in the wake
Speaker 4: of the Cold War.
Speaker 1: Well, the other thing you imply in your piece was
Speaker 1: that you know it in your piece is how easy
Speaker 1: it is to actually get a birth certificate in Brazil.
Speaker 1: Explain that. I mean, when you the minute I read that,
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, how many other countries are like this?
Speaker 1: And is Brazil unique in this situation? Explain the birth
Speaker 1: certificate process.
Speaker 4: Well, I don't know if it's completely unique Brazil, but
Speaker 4: it's definitely unusual in that. So most countries, like the US,
Speaker 4: like the UK, to get a birth certificate, you need
Speaker 4: a signature, a witness there who's a doctor or a
Speaker 4: hospital to sign off someone from a hospital and off
Speaker 4: to say yes, this child was born here on this
Speaker 4: day under this name. In Brazil, mostsive certificates are done
Speaker 4: that way. But there is this kind of n niche exemption,
Speaker 4: kind of a loophole of you like that allows anyone
Speaker 4: to just present two witnesses they don't have to be
Speaker 4: a doctor or anything like that and just say, yeah,
Speaker 4: I saw this baby.
Speaker 1: Two random people. You could just bring a couple of people,
Speaker 1: throw them some rubles. Hey, you just need to swear
Speaker 1: in front of this official that you witnessed this birth.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and they probably don't even know what they're doing.
Speaker 4: That's what the Brazilian said. And the reason that exemption
Speaker 4: exists was to accommodate these rural parts of Brazil whether
Speaker 4: or no doctors, are no hospitals, and babies are routinely
Speaker 4: born without without any kind of medical support.
Speaker 3: But yeah, that's.
Speaker 4: One of the areas the I'm investigating is to try
Speaker 4: and find out was that why Brazil was targeted or
Speaker 4: was that one of the reasons why it made it
Speaker 4: a weak target.
Speaker 1: So your story, I assume, has probably triggered a lot
Speaker 1: of other countries to do some double takes, to do
Speaker 1: some deeper dives. What are you hearing? What kind of
Speaker 1: you know? Have you gotten any new tips since the
Speaker 1: peace ran?
Speaker 2: What are we allowed to talk about all of it?
Speaker 2: Come on, yes, yes, we have ex and we're looking
Speaker 2: into it.
Speaker 1: Status multiple countries, I would assume.
Speaker 2: A few, in particular in Latin America. It seemed that
Speaker 2: it seems that Latin America has been a target of
Speaker 2: of this type of program for the Russians for quite
Speaker 2: some time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I got a tip for them. It's been going
Speaker 1: on for decades. It's been going on since the fifties.
Speaker 1: Like we've been fighting a cold We fought a cold
Speaker 1: war over this stuff in Latin America for quite some time.
Speaker 1: I mean, how when you were working on this story,
Speaker 1: did you work with any of the investigators that broke
Speaker 1: up the Ring of Americans? I want to say, was
Speaker 1: that about twenty ten, twenty eleven, if memory serves, And
Speaker 1: how similar was that program to this and were do
Speaker 1: we know were those folks incubated in America or were
Speaker 1: they actually incubated in other countries and then sent to America.
Speaker 2: So that program was a little bit different, and we
Speaker 2: didn't we hadn't talked to the investigators from that for
Speaker 2: this story, but it did serve as a reference for
Speaker 2: us doing our research, and it was a bit different.
Speaker 2: And you know those aside aside from a few of them, Uh,
Speaker 2: there there were a key Uh, there were a key
Speaker 2: couple who were based in Boston who indeed were incubated
Speaker 2: in fact in Canada and presented as Canadian citizens who
Speaker 2: then moved to Boston and really well were really well
Speaker 2: integrated into into the society in Boston. Uh. But for
Speaker 2: most of them are a significant number of those individuals
Speaker 2: from the twenty ten case in the United States, they
Speaker 2: were not posing as anybody. They were posing as Russians.
Speaker 2: They were they were. There was a there was one
Speaker 2: Russian student the most of Chapman was UH, and she
Speaker 2: didn't hide the fact that she was Russian, but she
Speaker 2: claimed that she was in the United States doing business.
Speaker 2: And they were hiding the fact that they were spies,
Speaker 2: of course, but they weren't hiding the fact that they
Speaker 2: were Russians. And that's why this case in Brazil was
Speaker 2: so different, because every one of the individuals that we
Speaker 2: tracked down, their goal would come Brazilian. They wanted to
Speaker 2: shed their Russian identities and create an entire Brazilian backstory.
Speaker 1: And the whole goal was not to infiltrate Brazil per se.
Speaker 1: It was then they were going to get. The assumption
Speaker 1: was they'd be transferred to a more useful country, correct, And.
Speaker 2: Several of them were transferred to countries. You know, one
Speaker 2: of them was posing as a researcher, a Brazilian researcher
Speaker 2: in the Norwegian Arctic. Another one went to the Middle East,
Speaker 2: some others went to Portugal, and so yeah, their goal
Speaker 2: was to then move on to the rest of the
Speaker 2: world and pose as Brazilians while conducting espionage for Russia.
Speaker 2: And one made it to the United States, as we
Speaker 2: pointed out in the article, and even gone to Johns
Speaker 2: Hopkins University and was preparing to This is probably the
Speaker 2: more successful case that of City Chef and was on
Speaker 2: the verge of starting an internship at the Hague at
Speaker 2: the International Criminal Court, which had been incredible because it
Speaker 2: was around the time that the court was starting to
Speaker 2: open human rights war crimes cases against Russia for the
Speaker 2: war in Ukraine.
Speaker 1: Did the Brazilian officials get any of these folks? They
Speaker 1: were they successful in arresting any of these folks or
Speaker 1: did they all flee the country?
Speaker 4: One of them they got, so gay check us off.
Speaker 4: He is the only one they managed to get. And
Speaker 4: he was the most successful at the spies probably when
Speaker 4: they arrested him.
Speaker 1: What makes it? What what do you when you say
Speaker 1: the most successful of the spies just because he was
Speaker 1: about to be launched to America, to the Hague.
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly.
Speaker 2: So any got a master's degree from John Hobbins University posing.
Speaker 4: As a Brazilian and he had completed like on as
Speaker 4: these the covers spent about like seven to eight years
Speaker 4: building their cover identities before you know, being dispatched as
Speaker 4: by use where and Sagay had completed he'd been there
Speaker 4: about eight years right where some of the other spies
Speaker 4: seemed to have been interrupted when they were still in
Speaker 4: the process of building their identities, like a couple in Portugal,
Speaker 4: like they had Brazilian birth certificates but hadn't yet got
Speaker 4: passports or they were trying to get citizenship elsewhere, when suddenly,
Speaker 4: you know, these global intelligence agencies and the Brazilians kind
Speaker 4: of jumped on them.
Speaker 1: You may think there's a weird question, but there's a
Speaker 1: part of me like did he do his own homework
Speaker 1: at Johns Hopkins? Was there a team of FSB operatives
Speaker 1: that like did his thesis for him? Or was he
Speaker 1: the did he do his own academic work? I mean,
Speaker 1: I know that seems like a silly question, but you're
Speaker 1: just curious as to how how much did they sell it?
Speaker 1: You know, did they get help with the work or
Speaker 1: do they actually do the academics themselves.
Speaker 2: I mean, I you know, we didn't. We didn't spend
Speaker 2: a lot of time on this case in the story,
Speaker 2: but because because some of the details are pretty well known.
Speaker 2: But he did use his position as a student to
Speaker 2: get close to academics who who were close to you know,
Speaker 2: the Johns Hopkins University is very uh, the professors that
Speaker 2: are very tight with the Washington establishment. So he did
Speaker 2: use his contacts. I can't remember off the top of
Speaker 2: my head all of the people he was uh accused
Speaker 2: of buddying up to, But he did use his positions
Speaker 2: as a student to get close to people in the
Speaker 2: government and government adjacent academics. Whether or not he did.
Speaker 1: The thing, that's somewhat str.
Speaker 2: And No, I know, that's it.
Speaker 1: Like these are the questions. I hope we get one
Speaker 1: that like will confess one day, you know, tell us
Speaker 1: all about the program. I mean, have serving I know
Speaker 1: there has there been Has any investigative agency actually gotten
Speaker 1: any of these folks to talk or are they almost
Speaker 1: always like I believe we've traded some of these folks
Speaker 1: back to the Russians as they've kidnapped Americans, so we
Speaker 1: you know, I'm guessing we haven't broke these people.
Speaker 2: I don't think think that they would expect a very
Speaker 2: warm welcome back in Moscow should they eventually be traded.
Speaker 2: If they were to spill a bunch of information because.
Speaker 1: They got caught, well there's that right, if they were
Speaker 1: spelling information. But did they automatically Are they automatically in
Speaker 1: trouble just for getting caught.
Speaker 2: We don't know of any example of anyone being punished
Speaker 2: upon going back, I mean publicly anyway, we know that
Speaker 2: you know, Putin, if you if we're talking about the
Speaker 2: trade that occurred last August, that Evan Gershkovich, the Wall
Speaker 2: Street General border two deep cover legals that we're posing
Speaker 2: as Argentinians who are rested in Slovenia. We're part of
Speaker 2: that swap. And you know, Putin greeted them on the
Speaker 2: tarmac and gave one of the bouquet of flowers, and
Speaker 2: they've been the sort of subject of glowing coverage in
Speaker 2: the Russian media. So you know what happens behind closed doors,
Speaker 2: got you know, got only knows. But publicly anyway, these
Speaker 2: people are really praised and sort of you know, presented
Speaker 2: as heroes when they get back to Russia.
Speaker 4: One of the most interestant things for me on this
Speaker 4: investigation is like, like Michael said, like these spies are
Speaker 4: Putin's elite spies as premiere, like the pride and joy
Speaker 4: of Russia, and he has this kind of romantic idea
Speaker 4: around about them. They are held up as like, you know,
Speaker 4: these kind of heroes, if you like, and they're promised
Speaker 4: they when they sign up this thing that's kind of
Speaker 4: exciting life where you're going to be working abroad, serving
Speaker 4: Mother Russia. But as part of our investigation, we kind
Speaker 4: of got hold of some texts between a couple of
Speaker 4: the spies, some messages from between certainly check us off
Speaker 4: and a handler, and in particular these texts between two spies,
Speaker 4: a guy called Schmirov and his Russian wife also had
Speaker 4: a Brazilian girlfriend who didn't know about the Russian wife.
Speaker 1: That was an amazing part. So here they were both
Speaker 1: married couples doing their own thing, right, like you know,
Speaker 1: very much right. I felt like a plot line out
Speaker 1: of the Americans.
Speaker 4: It did, It did, And what these tech show I
Speaker 4: think is so interesting because you've gotten this, you know,
Speaker 4: on the outside there's this idea of this glamorous life
Speaker 4: of a spy that's you know, held up higher regard
Speaker 4: and actually the tech show that's really personal and often
Speaker 4: frustrating side not only but also maintaining a long distance relationship.
Speaker 4: These texts basically show like Artiam complaining about his lot,
Speaker 4: really about not being where he wanted to be in
Speaker 4: life by his middle thirtieth year.
Speaker 3: You know, no, no, no relationship, not where he wants
Speaker 3: to be.
Speaker 1: And millennials are millennial, right, no matter where what they're doing.
Speaker 3: No, I'm just but his wife, you know, his wife.
Speaker 3: I'm with his wife.
Speaker 4: She basically tells him to get a grip and says, look,
Speaker 4: this is a life life we've chosen. If you wanted
Speaker 4: a normal family life, this is the life for you.
Speaker 4: She does kind of say, like, yes, this life is
Speaker 4: not as we were told. They're basically tricking people into it,
Speaker 4: and it's bad. But we found that a really interesting
Speaker 4: kind of contrasting image to what's kind of publicly out
Speaker 4: there about the life of these deepcovers.
Speaker 2: Wild to hear to at least see a bunch of
Speaker 2: spies bitching about their employder.
Speaker 1: Right, No, it's kind of actually it's actually reassuring. Right,
Speaker 1: You're just like, okay, it's it's a job, right, like
Speaker 1: you know, it's a job just like any other. You know,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have you have a We all have a boss, right,
Speaker 1: that's always the joke. Well, we are to report to somebody.
Speaker 4: We all have expenses. We can't get approved. These messages
Speaker 4: checkers off to his handler. He's asking for money for
Speaker 4: to buy an apartment, and he's complaining about basically having
Speaker 4: to stay with a friend of his whose wife isn't happy.
Speaker 1: Is he paid attention to how much this war with
Speaker 1: ukrate's costing. I mean, the Russian coffer is not doing
Speaker 1: so well, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well that's why that's why they wanted to give
Speaker 4: him only the cheapest apartment.
Speaker 1: Right. You got to be careful you treat your right.
Speaker 1: So look, one of the things that I think is
Speaker 1: one of the odder ways that we cover espionage, and
Speaker 1: I say we the collective we is we're always very
Speaker 1: like shocked in g whiz about what other countries do.
Speaker 1: And then there's like no mention of what we do.
Speaker 1: I you know, there's you know, do we do this?
Speaker 1: Do we incubate in other countries?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: In some ways America the melting pot. We're there's no
Speaker 1: better place to recruit potential spies for infiltration into other
Speaker 1: countries than right here in the good old US of
Speaker 1: us of A. You know, I I think we'd be
Speaker 1: naive to assume we don't do this. But are we
Speaker 1: as sophisticated about it or as obsessed with it as
Speaker 1: the Russians?
Speaker 2: I think I think, you know, one way to think
Speaker 2: about this as sort of an HR issue.
Speaker 1: I just love that you just said that sentence. You
Speaker 1: one way to look at this is like an HR issue.
Speaker 1: I also wait to see where this is going, because
Speaker 1: that's where I was going an HR issue. But anyway,
Speaker 1: go tell us about healthcare benefit.
Speaker 2: It kind of comes down to who gets to be
Speaker 2: called what? Right in Russia, you know the it's the
Speaker 2: officers who are the ones that are infiltrating these countries
Speaker 2: and shedding their identities and trying to lend in with
Speaker 2: the local population. Perhaps you know the CIA, I six,
Speaker 2: they do some of this, but it's really hard to
Speaker 2: become a nationality that you didn't grow up in. And
Speaker 2: rather than spend the time, energy and resources doing that
Speaker 2: and using their trained officers to do that they go
Speaker 2: out and find what are called agents in the intelligence parlance.
Speaker 2: And these are going to be locals who know the customs,
Speaker 2: who speak the language.
Speaker 1: You're saying, we're more likely to use a double agent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they would be. There's some there's confusion about the
Speaker 2: term double agent, a double a hr again about this
Speaker 2: working both sides. The agent is just this, just the
Speaker 2: guy a CIA officer uses to get intelligence. They do
Speaker 2: the ground.
Speaker 1: You and I might call them sources. Yeah, you might
Speaker 1: as journalists, right, you just say just a source guy
Speaker 1: I talked to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's he's our guy in the Foreign Ministry who
Speaker 2: sits in on a meeting that I want to know about,
Speaker 2: and you know, we meet afterwards and he tells me
Speaker 2: about it. And I may be posing as like an
Speaker 2: American businessman in Angola, you know, you know, you know,
Speaker 2: doing whatever I'm doing, But really I'm a CIA officer
Speaker 2: meeting with you know, some some you know, uh and
Speaker 2: goal and official in the Foreign Ministry to get information
Speaker 2: about what you know about the Russians they're meeting with,
Speaker 2: for instance. Uh, it's it's uh, you know my my,
Speaker 2: My Western intelligence sources assure me they don't have budgets
Speaker 2: to devote to the kind of intensive training and time
Speaker 2: and resources that are required to actually do the things
Speaker 2: that the Russian illegals do, and they would say that
Speaker 2: a lot of that is just counterproductive.
Speaker 1: Do we think this Russian illegal program is only still
Speaker 1: alive because it's because Putin's in charge of that country
Speaker 1: And there's sort of a romantics He's romanticizes it because
Speaker 1: in this day and age of communication, of technology, of frankly,
Speaker 1: it's impossible to hide all right, right, you know, every
Speaker 1: place is frankly under surveillance, whether your country is free
Speaker 1: or less free. However you want to look at it,
Speaker 1: that this really is just sort of almost like Putin
Speaker 1: just loves this and he keeps it going.
Speaker 2: I think that's part of it. I think I really
Speaker 2: do think that that Putin really and he's spoken openly
Speaker 2: about this. You know, Putin loves these spies. They are
Speaker 2: to him kind of the patriot he is.
Speaker 1: Right, you are? I mean, look, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I love me a good political reporter that started covering
Speaker 1: house races. Why well that's what I started to do,
Speaker 1: right in many ways, you you know, why does Donald
Speaker 1: Trump love other fellow real estate developers, right, he hires
Speaker 1: them as envoys. Right. It's actually not a it's actually
Speaker 1: a normal in some ways, a normal behavior that he
Speaker 1: wants to lionize what he believed he did.
Speaker 2: Even more than that, these are the people he wanted
Speaker 2: to become and and didn't. He didn't quite measure up.
Speaker 2: Was it good enough as an intelligence officer, And it's
Speaker 2: sort of the people he idea. It's I think he
Speaker 2: got into intelligence, if you read his biographies, he got
Speaker 2: into intelligence work kind of wanting to become one of
Speaker 2: these people, and he just sort of never measured up.
Speaker 2: But he he lionizes them, and I think that's one
Speaker 2: reason it keeps going though those some sources of mine
Speaker 2: have pushed back now, particularly since the Ukraine War started,
Speaker 2: and the origins of the legals program go back to
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union, the very start of the Soviet Union.
Speaker 1: Well, in fact, in this piece you imply it's possible
Speaker 1: that the seeds of this Brazilian program goes back to
Speaker 1: the Cold.
Speaker 2: War, right, right, I mean the entire the entire legals
Speaker 2: program goes back to this time when the Soviet Union
Speaker 2: didn't have many representations, They didn't countries, didn't recognize the
Speaker 2: Soviet Union in the years right it was founded, and.
Speaker 1: They didn't have embassies and councilates to just sort of
Speaker 1: house people, right, yeah, in infiltry countries, right, And you're right.
Speaker 2: One of the extraordinary things that we haven't quite established yet,
Speaker 2: but that we're looking into in the Brazilian government is
Speaker 2: looking into, is that these birth certificates that are the
Speaker 2: lynchpin of the identities that these buys have adopted in
Speaker 2: Brazil were in fact planted in the waning days of
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union. And this is because the forensic analysis
Speaker 2: shows that the ink and the paper used in these
Speaker 2: birth certificates way back right matches matches the birth certificates
Speaker 2: that were put into these files in the eighties. And
Speaker 2: when you talk to experts on Soviet espionage, very few
Speaker 2: of them should I should say I have heard of
Speaker 2: anything like this happening, but they do say that it
Speaker 2: really fits with the modus operendi, particularly of the Soviet
Speaker 2: KGB during the Cold War. They would do this type
Speaker 2: of long term planning as a way essentially think of
Speaker 2: what was going on in the late nineteen eighties. Their
Speaker 2: entire world was crumpled, an entire edifice upon which the
Speaker 2: KGB was built. This confrontation with the West was coming
Speaker 2: to an end, and it's not hard to imagine an
Speaker 2: enterprising KGB officer to saying, look, I'm going to plant
Speaker 2: the seeds for future conflict. This is not going to last.
Speaker 2: This experiment with democracy that we're doing. I'm going to
Speaker 2: have the seeds so that just in case my colleagues
Speaker 2: thirty forty years in the future can come back and have.
Speaker 1: It's extraordinary if it was done right, the chances you
Speaker 1: think you can prove.
Speaker 4: That that's what the PASILI is right now, that's what
Speaker 4: they're trying to do. But yeah, it's extraordinary, and it
Speaker 4: would make it one of the most most extraordinary long
Speaker 4: forward planning esperonage operations and in modern history.
Speaker 1: I think I am curious of the Brazilian governments. You
Speaker 1: said that there was sort of a sort of Brazilian police,
Speaker 1: right who sort of you know, strike me. It's no
Speaker 1: different than running into an FBI guy who goes, God
Speaker 1: damn it. It's right and wrong. I don't care who's
Speaker 1: in charge of me. Politically, this is wrong. I'm pursuing
Speaker 1: it versus But I also look at this and if
Speaker 1: you're you know, if you're a Brazilian high up in
Speaker 1: Brazilian government, you have to realize that the world does
Speaker 1: think that it's easy to do shady things in Brazil.
Speaker 1: And you know that isn't a reputation as it tries
Speaker 1: to move from third world to first world it wants
Speaker 1: to have. So I wonder if they're actually extra motivated
Speaker 1: to get to the bottom of this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a good question.
Speaker 4: And look, the police officers investigators who dug into this
Speaker 4: the same as the same unit account intelligence unit the
Speaker 4: federal police who investigated Bolscenaro over.
Speaker 3: The alleged coups.
Speaker 4: So they've got history of putting aside politics and focusing on.
Speaker 1: And they also went after Lula too, Right, isn't this
Speaker 1: the same? I mean, look, the rule of law. I've
Speaker 1: had some political science colleagues of mine say, you know, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, Brazil's rule of law is sturdier than we
Speaker 1: give it credit for.
Speaker 2: I think that I think that is born out in
Speaker 2: this case. I mean it's telling we went around to
Speaker 2: sort of the political leadership in the country before this
Speaker 2: article came out, seeking comment, and this is just the
Speaker 2: time when the president Lula is in Moscow for the
Speaker 2: eightieth anniversary of the of the end of World War Two, for.
Speaker 1: Putin's sending Trump a message at hey, I'm not afraid
Speaker 1: of hanging out with him exactly.
Speaker 2: And and I don't think it's any surprise that nobody
Speaker 2: sort of on the political side got back to us
Speaker 2: all told by visuals and nobody's gonna nobody's gonna touch
Speaker 2: this right now while the president is in Moscow. But nobody,
Speaker 2: as far as we're told, interfered in this investigation either.
Speaker 4: No, And that's one point I wanted to make as well, like, yes,
Speaker 4: you know, the fact that investigation you know, did, did
Speaker 4: go ahead and was so successful.
Speaker 3: And I think the Brazilians know that. Okay, they have
Speaker 3: this reputation as being a.
Speaker 4: Corrupt country, and here you've got this pretty extraordinary team
Speaker 4: of cops investigating pretty you know, pretty fearlessly a case
Speaker 4: of you know, basically Russia into exploiting Brazil. And you
Speaker 4: have to have some level of buy in or cooperation
Speaker 4: or at least not obstruction, I think, from a political
Speaker 4: level to be able to.
Speaker 3: Do what they've done.
Speaker 1: Look, I don't know if you guys want to delve
Speaker 1: into this or go make David Sayger, come on and
Speaker 1: answer this question. But I'm half kidding, but I look
Speaker 1: at this program in Brazil and to me, I just say,
Speaker 1: once again an American failure in Latin America, that our
Speaker 1: inability to be full partners with Latin American countries and
Speaker 1: full trading partners and sort of you know, having better
Speaker 1: relations that in some ways we open ourselves up to
Speaker 1: not so friendly actors to take advantage of our sort
Speaker 1: of when I say, are the United States the United States?
Speaker 1: Sort of? I don't want to say we were dismissive
Speaker 1: of Latin America, but we're just never as engaged in
Speaker 1: Latin America as you think we should be. And and
Speaker 1: you do you sense any of that? And again I'm
Speaker 1: not asking you guys to be, you know, foreign policy
Speaker 1: experts here, but you're you're both covering international stories like this.
Speaker 1: Is this far fetched to me? Linking this or you know,
Speaker 1: if we had better relationship with Brazil, would we have
Speaker 1: seen this kind of behavior?
Speaker 2: I mean, I think that could be. But we'll remind
Speaker 2: you that this whole investigation was launched by a tip
Speaker 2: from the CIA.
Speaker 1: So interesting, Okay, so this was this was in some
Speaker 1: ways Americans that this was going on. Okay, well, we've
Speaker 1: always known this stuff was going on, right, It's it's
Speaker 1: choosing when they think they can act, right exactly.
Speaker 3: That's the interesting option.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, and and and and and we were
Speaker 2: aware of a lot of intelligence help that the Brazilians
Speaker 2: got when they were looking into this case. But but uh,
Speaker 2: you know, with with these intelligence stories, it's really difficult
Speaker 2: because we don't know. Oftentimes it is more advantageous for
Speaker 2: an intelligent service to discover the operations of an enemy
Speaker 2: intelligence service and just let them do.
Speaker 1: With don't want to expose it, right, I mean, that
Speaker 1: is the surprise, because you actually want to see, let's
Speaker 1: see what they do with this. Let's keep following these people.
Speaker 1: Maybe it leads to something bigger.
Speaker 2: And so yeah, it's always a difficult decision to expose
Speaker 2: one of these things because I think the tendency is
Speaker 2: to want to you know, the uh, the the spies
Speaker 2: that were arrested in the United States in twenty ten,
Speaker 2: the FBI had been watching them for a decade, and
Speaker 2: you know, you can imagine the sort of crushing psychological
Speaker 2: effect that had on these spies who thought that they
Speaker 2: were sort of operating for the Motherland for so long
Speaker 2: to find out that the FBI had been watching them
Speaker 2: for a decade of their careers. And so we don't
Speaker 2: really know how long the CIA and others might have
Speaker 2: been watching this go on, and what in fact triggered
Speaker 2: triggered them to act at this at this juncture. Maybe
Speaker 2: was the Ukraine War and in order sort of from
Speaker 2: politically to go after these people, like show us some
Speaker 2: results that you're wrapping up some of these spies. Maybe
Speaker 2: something else happened that caused them to move.
Speaker 1: But I assume you guys are pulling a lot of threads.
Speaker 1: What are the various threads you're trying to get at
Speaker 1: here to see because that, you know, it would be
Speaker 1: nice to know what triggered why did the CIA make
Speaker 1: this call? Why?
Speaker 2: Now, that's what the threads we're pulling. I mean, we
Speaker 2: you know, would desperately love to if any are listening,
Speaker 2: talk to any of these people. I've sent some messages
Speaker 2: out to numbers I think belonged to them in Russia.
Speaker 2: They've left me on red. Uh.
Speaker 1: That's a tough interview, right, because how do you know
Speaker 1: if they're telling you the truth or if you're being used.
Speaker 1: I've always found that that's a right.
Speaker 3: So we can figure it out.
Speaker 2: But I'm with you, that's a lot of our interviews.
Speaker 1: Not just I was just going to say that's sometimes
Speaker 1: domestic reporters are having this problem. But I digress. But anyway, Well,
Speaker 1: is this, uh, how much is this story taking up
Speaker 1: your bandwidth versus other stuff? And is this more of
Speaker 1: this is now in the rear view mirror or is
Speaker 1: this still this is still on your front burners?
Speaker 3: No, I think it's still definitely interested in this.
Speaker 4: Like you said, there's a lot of mysteries and unanswered
Speaker 4: questions around the investigation. It's funny when I'm when I
Speaker 4: came onto the story with with Michael, initially, he was like,
Speaker 4: I don't know how interest sing it is.
Speaker 3: He does so many spy stories that you.
Speaker 4: Kind of became defensitized to just how extraordinary story.
Speaker 1: You come in and go, oh my god, this is
Speaker 1: a TV show's back Who owns the rights? Right? Have
Speaker 1: you guys made money on that yet? No, I'm kidding.
Speaker 2: Allows now the New York Times, Yeah, well, well, isn't it.
Speaker 1: By the way they the way they parlay this stuff,
Speaker 1: I assume a Hulu streaming episodic show is coming soon, right,
Speaker 1: you know, Well, if it.
Speaker 4: Gets out to more any of the spies to reach
Speaker 4: out to us, great, But no, it is.
Speaker 3: It's one of them.
Speaker 4: It's probably the most interesting, fascinating story that I've worked on.
Speaker 4: And I think there's definitely, you know, like you said,
Speaker 4: answers to chase down.
Speaker 3: So we're still on it.
Speaker 1: So, Michael, you were in Ukraine cover in the war.
Speaker 1: When was the last time you were in country there?
Speaker 2: I was there about a year a little less a
Speaker 2: little less than a year ago, so so my my
Speaker 2: information is not as fresh.
Speaker 1: Right, No, And and do you expect to go back
Speaker 1: or how did that a few weeks I'll go back,
Speaker 1: I think, you know, I'd love for you to share
Speaker 1: sort of how does the times rotate so that you know,
Speaker 1: so that you know, no one person is frankly getting
Speaker 1: you know, getting desensitized to war at any given time,
Speaker 1: So how do you how do you prevent that?
Speaker 2: I mean, at the beginning of the war, we had
Speaker 2: a pretty we had a pretty regular rotation. I was
Speaker 2: in for about six seven weeks and then would come
Speaker 2: out for about three four weeks and then go back
Speaker 2: in again. They like you to get a break our
Speaker 2: bureau chief has been there since the very beginning. I
Speaker 2: mean he comes out as well on a rotation, but
Speaker 2: he's been overseeing the story since the beginning. But since then,
Speaker 2: I think among the original team who was reporting when
Speaker 2: the war started, I think only our bureau chief, Andrew
Speaker 2: cran is still on the story, along with our very
Speaker 2: many dedicated Ukrainian colleagues who live there.
Speaker 1: And are you guys in Russia or not? These days
Speaker 1: we just had.
Speaker 2: A couple of reporters in the country. It's it's, uh,
Speaker 2: it's very dicey. We normally like to go in when
Speaker 2: there's sort of a specific event, uh to cover, particularly
Speaker 2: if it's as if it's a holiday. So we had
Speaker 2: we had reporters in there, uh covering the May ninth,
Speaker 2: the victory day, uh celebration.
Speaker 1: In some ways, if there's a lot of eyeballs and
Speaker 1: it'd be it would be pretty that's pretty good form
Speaker 1: to Yanka reporter. You know, is that the idea that
Speaker 1: you would assume that I was.
Speaker 2: I was having these conversations, you know, in the first
Speaker 2: year of the war, before Evan was arrested, with our
Speaker 2: colleagues and with Evan as well, about sort of what
Speaker 2: what is possible? And what what what is impossible? And
Speaker 2: I think, you know, uh, we all thought, you know,
Speaker 2: the arrest of an American reporter is probably probably, you know,
Speaker 2: pretty unlikely, and so keep going in as it was
Speaker 2: probably uh uh probably an okay risk to take. But
Speaker 2: as as as evans arrest showed, you know, we were
Speaker 2: we were all wrong.
Speaker 1: Well, let me ask this, you know, get based on
Speaker 1: the experience, would you recommend any American to travel to
Speaker 1: Russia these days if you have an American.
Speaker 2: No, uh, and that and that's that's a different answer
Speaker 2: than maybe I would have given, uh, even a year
Speaker 2: or two ago. I think I think Evan's arrest really
Speaker 2: affected me. And I also think the Russian government has changed, uh,
Speaker 2: it has become I mean, you know, the Russian government
Speaker 2: is always sort of notoriously callous. They have become much
Speaker 2: more vicious and and and and uh difficult to barter with. Plus,
Speaker 2: I think at the moment we have I don't think
Speaker 2: I'm saying anything to sort of politically incorrect or opinion it,
Speaker 2: but we have at the moment an administration that I
Speaker 2: didn't fight very hard in the in the United States
Speaker 2: to get an American uh, certainly not an American reporter
Speaker 2: out maybe depending on the American and they might put
Speaker 2: some export into it. They have negotiated the release of Sudden.
Speaker 1: No. I mean you're You're not wrong, You're like, is
Speaker 1: is you know, well, this administration decide, you know, whether
Speaker 1: someone's friendly enough to them to help right that they
Speaker 1: that they make they make a decision based on that,
Speaker 1: not just simply based on an American citizen was was
Speaker 1: illegally detained. Well, look, it's a it's a great story.
Speaker 1: And if you, like I said it was, you you
Speaker 1: sit back where you did, both of you watch the Americans.
Speaker 3: Yes, I loved it, obsessed, loved it, all right.
Speaker 1: You've never seen it. Well, that's well, you know, it's funny.
Speaker 1: I feel that way about West Wing. I think West
Speaker 1: Wing's crap. I hate it. And it's because it's too
Speaker 1: like it it's too It isn't real. It's not reality based.
Speaker 1: It's sort of you know, Aaron Sork and Fantasyland, God
Speaker 1: bless them. And there's nothing wrong with fantasy. But people
Speaker 1: that got into politics thinking life is the West Wing,
Speaker 1: It's like, nope, go watch Veep. That's a little more realistic,
Speaker 1: you know, right, than than than West Wing. So I so, so, Michael,
Speaker 1: do you not watch are you? Because you do so
Speaker 1: much of this espionage beat. Has it made movies and
Speaker 1: programs about espionage less interesting to you?
Speaker 2: I think so? Yeah. I read a lot of books
Speaker 2: about espionage, like historic.
Speaker 1: The real stuff, right, yeah, but the yeah, I I
Speaker 1: need to, you know, draw.
Speaker 2: Some line where I'm thinking about other things.
Speaker 1: So you needed Jane on this, You needed this partnership
Speaker 1: to say, dude, this is an amazing story, not to sensitized.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 1: I'm yeah, And it sounds like you brought in that
Speaker 1: that sort of you brought in the plotline joy to
Speaker 1: this story.
Speaker 3: The American since why I was living the American story. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's what.
Speaker 4: That's the fantastic energy we've brought to it.
Speaker 1: Well, this is why whoever your editor is very smart
Speaker 1: bringing you two together. Because I couldn't put the story.
Speaker 1: It was one of those days You're like, I can't
Speaker 1: put this story down, and I think it was a
Speaker 1: pretty long read, and I say this, you know for
Speaker 1: these days for newspapers, right, and You're like, I can't
Speaker 1: put this down. And then I just wanted more and
Speaker 1: more and more. So I appreciate you guys coming on
Speaker 1: and humoring me on this.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having us.
Speaker 4: Thanks Jock.
Speaker 1: Well, I hope you enjoyed Season nine of The Americans. No,
Speaker 1: I'm half kidding, but you now, don't you want the
Speaker 1: show back? I mean, I know I've been on a
Speaker 1: Kerrie Russell unofficial showcase. Here, right, we had Debora khn
Speaker 1: talking about the diplomat. Now we're rehashing the America thanks
Speaker 1: to the news of the week when it comes to
Speaker 1: Russian illegal spies and the Brazilian government. Anyway, just a
Speaker 1: fascinating I can't get enough of the story. I hope
Speaker 1: you enjoyed it as much as I did conducting the interview. Well,
Speaker 1: let's do a little last Chuck, answer a few questions,
Speaker 1: ask Chuck. All right, Oh let's see. Oh this is great.
Speaker 1: This comes from Charlie L from Berlin, Germany via Montreal, Canada.
Speaker 1: Got it. When it comes to primaries, why is America
Speaker 1: stuck with a single first in the nation state? We
Speaker 1: see things like Super Tuesday in March, where a bunch
Speaker 1: of states run their primaries or caucuses in parallel. Referring
Speaker 1: to presidential politics here, obviously, I understand the state pride
Speaker 1: of going first. If I were Iowa, wouldn't want to
Speaker 1: give that up. But the question is whether does having
Speaker 1: all eyes on a single state for the first race
Speaker 1: ultimately help the presidential electoral process. My two cents, why
Speaker 1: not have Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina had all run
Speaker 1: on the same day. Strikes me that it would be
Speaker 1: a mini Super Tuesday electorally. These states are pretty comparable
Speaker 1: in size. They seem to represent a lot of America's facets.
Speaker 1: A candidate could try to aim and win just one
Speaker 1: or two of these aids, but anyone worth their salt
Speaker 1: should opt for a four state campaign. Love the new
Speaker 1: show look. I think it's a great thought about how
Speaker 1: to do that, which is those first. I completely agree
Speaker 1: about the first four states. If we all accept Iowa,
Speaker 1: New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada, they all showcase different
Speaker 1: parts of the American electorate. Rural America, Independence are a
Speaker 1: huge chunk of New Hampshire voters, African Americans and Evangelical voters.
Speaker 1: In South Carolina, you have Latino voters and transient voters.
Speaker 1: Really as people migrate to Nevada all the time in there,
Speaker 1: and they're all small states. Look, Charlie, the most important
Speaker 1: thing about going first is making sure the whole theory
Speaker 1: of the case is of why a small state is
Speaker 1: to make it accessible so that a guy like Howard Dean,
Speaker 1: who was governor of Vermont, who didn't have the financial
Speaker 1: who didn't have the donor base that the governor of
Speaker 1: Illinois would have, you know, or the or the governor
Speaker 1: of California would have to actually be able to, you know,
Speaker 1: give have a fair shot of having voters give them
Speaker 1: a look. Right. This is what allowed Jimmy Carter to
Speaker 1: go from zero to hero. It's what allowed We've seen
Speaker 1: quite a few people take campaigns in Iowa and become
Speaker 1: national figures. Pat Robertson successfully pulled that off back in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty eight. He didn't win Iowa, but he overperformed.
Speaker 1: He did better than expected, and it sort of put
Speaker 1: his name on the map and in some ways beat
Speaker 1: Boodagic right is the mayor of South Bend him, you know,
Speaker 1: essentially coming in a tie for first. I guess we
Speaker 1: still don't know who quite won him or Bernie, but
Speaker 1: the fact that he was tied for first sort of
Speaker 1: helped put him on the map and gave the mayor
Speaker 1: of South Bend Access. So the theory behind the small states,
Speaker 1: but you know, putting all four in the same day,
Speaker 1: you know that is one way to solve that problem.
Speaker 1: There's some constitutional state constitutional stuff in New Hampshire and
Speaker 1: in Iowa where they both embedded the whole first first
Speaker 1: in the Nation thing into their state constitutions. But you know,
Speaker 1: as Donald Trump has taught us, these constitutions are just
Speaker 1: suggestions anyway, right, I kid, I kid, Second question here
Speaker 1: from Beaverdale, Pennsylvania. It's Lindsay, as she notes, just outside Johnstown.
Speaker 1: I'm enjoining a new podcast and the freedom it clearly
Speaker 1: gives you to be more open about your opinions on
Speaker 1: various topics. Your take on faith in politics is something
Speaker 1: that I would love to hear you dive into further,
Speaker 1: particularly if we will ever get to a point where
Speaker 1: being religious is not required of a politician. Are there
Speaker 1: examples of politicians that keep their faith private or even
Speaker 1: or are even atheist or agnostic and still succeed in
Speaker 1: getting elected. Do you think America could ever elect one
Speaker 1: as president? I know that some argue that Donald Trump
Speaker 1: may not be a very religious person, but he still
Speaker 1: pretends to be so I don't think he should count. Look,
Speaker 1: I agree, I think the question is I remember, I
Speaker 1: think we had a poll question that indicated this that
Speaker 1: the we would do a round of polling. Where are you?
Speaker 1: Are you comfortable with this attribute? Mute or uncomfortable with
Speaker 1: this attribute? You know, a woman president, a gay president,
Speaker 1: a divorced president, a president that doesn't believe in God.
Speaker 1: I believe that the worst performing what if in that
Speaker 1: scenario was a president that doesn't believe in God? Right
Speaker 1: when we when we're still standing up at seventh innings
Speaker 1: of baseball games to God bless America and it's seen
Speaker 1: as a patriotic song and not necessarily as a song
Speaker 1: of faith. I think that tells you that you're probably
Speaker 1: not decided. You know, I'm I. You know, I certainly
Speaker 1: wouldn't be recommending to a politician. They attempt to be
Speaker 1: the first politician to prove that an atheist can win.
Speaker 1: So I think it's now, you know, I, You've You've
Speaker 1: probably caught I. I sort of feel like I'm not
Speaker 1: a very religious person, but i'm culturally you know, I
Speaker 1: was culturally raised Jewish, as I sort of mixed religion,
Speaker 1: so I was related with all the religions, which you
Speaker 1: could argue then was I relized with any right? But
Speaker 1: if I but I did my deepest eye in Judaism,
Speaker 1: and I raised both my kids Jewish because I wanted
Speaker 1: them to have a religious education. And I think the
Speaker 1: Old Testament is as good as any of a baseline education.
Speaker 1: And look, I do think religious education matters even if
Speaker 1: you're not a person of faith, because it's so foundational
Speaker 1: in music, in the arts, in literature. And yes, it
Speaker 1: impacts our politics. So you know, not understanding faith in
Speaker 1: the world will just make you understand how the world
Speaker 1: works less so, right, you'll be less willing to do that.
Speaker 1: So but no, I don't think we're there yet. I mean,
Speaker 1: do I think we will be by the end of
Speaker 1: this century? I do? You know, I think that you
Speaker 1: can see the trend lines. I've always said if you
Speaker 1: look at the number of people who call themselves religious
Speaker 1: in nineteen hundred versus the number of people that call
Speaker 1: themselves religion in two thousand, Right, And we had this
Speaker 1: sort of you know, if you look at it from
Speaker 1: over one hundred year period, it's on its way to collapse.
Speaker 1: Now we've seen a many religious sort of plateauing. Right,
Speaker 1: there had been a steady decrease in sort of people
Speaker 1: following organized religion, and now there seems to be a
Speaker 1: bit of a plateau and even some incremental upswing in
Speaker 1: certain groups. And I do think that our need for community,
Speaker 1: that faith becomes a place potentially to go. There. My
Speaker 1: friend John Kasik would be and argue that this is
Speaker 1: a good thing, that this could bring people together. And
Speaker 1: you know, I think we all wish if people actually
Speaker 1: followed the tenants of their religion, then we would be
Speaker 1: in a better place in this world. But you know,
Speaker 1: what people do in the name of religion isn't always
Speaker 1: following the tenants of said religion. But yeah, I don't think.
Speaker 1: I think you still have to have politicians pay some
Speaker 1: lip service, and I think, look, it's gonna Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: here's a trend line that I'm curious about over the
Speaker 1: next twenty years. Well, we start to see Africa Americans
Speaker 1: divide on religion. So, for instance, in among Jewish voters,
Speaker 1: if you go to synagogue once a week or more,
Speaker 1: you're more likely to vote Republican. That's true of any faith.
Speaker 1: If you go months a week or more, you're more
Speaker 1: likely to vote on the right side of the isle
Speaker 1: than on the left side of The less you go
Speaker 1: to church, the more likely you vote on the left.
Speaker 1: Will we the one exception has always been religious African Americans.
Speaker 1: That is turning into a generational divide right where you're
Speaker 1: seeing younger African Americans not as not as not as
Speaker 1: as full intendance in the Black Church as you saw
Speaker 1: with previous generations. And the Black Church is sort of
Speaker 1: a is an very important political organizing force as well.
Speaker 1: So that's you know, that's something I want to watch
Speaker 1: for in over the next twenty or thirty years. Will
Speaker 1: there be a divide among African Americans on religious grounds,
Speaker 1: because we've seen it in every other demographic. You know,
Speaker 1: there's you know, the Catholic vote, you divide based on
Speaker 1: if you attend Mass or don't attend Mass. It's not
Speaker 1: whether the Catholic vote leans one way or the other right.
Speaker 1: It depends on how religious you really are. But we
Speaker 1: hadn't seen that yet impact the African American vote just yet,
Speaker 1: and I'm curious to see if that happens. Last question,
Speaker 1: this one comes from Darren in San Francisco. All the
Speaker 1: new revelations about Biden's decline and related shortcomings that selling
Speaker 1: his agenda have reminded me that after the ACA had
Speaker 1: barely passed and then took years to become popular, I
Speaker 1: was convinced that the Democrats would have learned the necessity
Speaker 1: of strong and sustained messaging. But during Biden's term and
Speaker 1: continuing into the tobacco we're in now, it's as if
Speaker 1: this still completely fails to register on a party wide scale.
Speaker 1: What do you think accounts for this pervasive cluelessness. Is
Speaker 1: it resigning to the fact that complicated positions and policies
Speaker 1: aren't easy to communicate effectively something these very smart people
Speaker 1: are paid to figure out how to do and or
Speaker 1: my theory, do they have an inexplicable content evidence in
Speaker 1: the average voter to reason and pay attention on their own.
Speaker 1: Republicans seem to have the opposite view and take full
Speaker 1: advantage of it. Yes, I'll simplify it even more, Darren.
Speaker 1: You know as a as a friend of mine likes
Speaker 1: to put it, Republicans try to agree with the voter.
Speaker 1: Democrats try to tell the voter what to believe and
Speaker 1: so and then in campaigns you want to be on
Speaker 1: the side of the voters. Versus trying to make the
Speaker 1: voters be on your side.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And I think ultimately, if I were to pinpoint the
Speaker 1: philosophical problem with the Democratic strategic machinery, it is just
Speaker 1: that it's not that they believe people. It's just that
Speaker 1: they believe they can always convince people that they're right
Speaker 1: and that they're versus Republicans go, oh, you don't like
Speaker 1: illegal immigration, neither do we. You don't like the cost
Speaker 1: of in neither do way we agree with you. Right.
Speaker 1: It's more of a they find a way to agree
Speaker 1: with the voter, and they'll do it on some you know,
Speaker 1: Trump jumped on the opioid issue because voters in New
Speaker 1: Hampshire were concerned about it. This is one of those cases.
Speaker 1: Democratic candidates for president in twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen
Speaker 1: weren't listening to the voters. Republican candidates in twenty fifteen
Speaker 1: and twenty sixteen New Hampshire were, and they all jumped
Speaker 1: on the opioid thing a lot quicker, and I think
Speaker 1: more effectively as far as the electorate was concerned than
Speaker 1: Democrats did. And it was simply just hearing, listening to
Speaker 1: the voters and agreeing with the voter that yes, this
Speaker 1: is a problem. So I think it's it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's sort of an even bigger anyway, I totally get
Speaker 1: your question. I know I'm not answering it directly, but
Speaker 1: I hope my view on this in essence does answer
Speaker 1: your question. I think it only reinforces, perhaps what you
Speaker 1: already believe in the messaging mess that is the Democratic
Speaker 1: Party these days. All right, I'm going to leave it there.
Speaker 1: The next time I talk to you, we will flip
Speaker 1: the calendar to June. I've had an incredible first sixty
Speaker 1: days on this run. I really appreciate everybody that is
Speaker 1: like subscribed all of those things. Don't forget we have
Speaker 1: a substack. Now we've got all these things. You can
Speaker 1: hear us anywhere you want. YouTube, we'd love for you
Speaker 1: to subscribe to the channel, everything else, Spotify, Apple, you
Speaker 1: name it. And if Apple isn't uploading right away, automatically
Speaker 1: help us inform Apple that they're messed up. This has
Speaker 1: been an issue. Luckily apparently we're not the only podcast
Speaker 1: with this issue. But please feel free to let the
Speaker 1: engineering team know themselves. Hey Apple, you've got a problem.
Speaker 1: We've done it. Maybe they'll be responsive to you, a
Speaker 1: little more responsive to you. So with that, I'll take
Speaker 1: a little respite until we upload again.