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Speaker 1: Happy Thursday, Happy super Bowl Thursday. Right are We are

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Speaker 1: now in the ninety six hour window of Super Bowl,

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Speaker 1: of the sort of the Super Bowl extravaganza. And I'm

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Speaker 1: tempted to say that the Super Bowl hype feels lessish.

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Speaker 1: And I don't know if I'm saying that because I'm

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Speaker 1: buying into the premise that they're you know, we don't

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Speaker 1: have the traditional stars in the Super Bowl right now.

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Speaker 1: There's no Patrick Mahomes and there's no Tom Brady, and

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Speaker 1: there's no Josh Allen. There's no Lamar Jackson, no Aaron Rodgers.

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Speaker 1: So I hate to like pile on on that, but

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Speaker 1: there does feel this feels less hyped or am I

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Speaker 1: just accepting you know, am I putting my own bias

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Speaker 1: on it?

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Speaker 2: I will.

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Speaker 1: I will accept the premise that I might be because

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Speaker 1: the Super Bowl doesn't overly excite me, and I think

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Speaker 1: out of you know, my great fears that it won't be competitive,

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Speaker 1: But I certainly hope we will have a competitive more

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Speaker 1: to say about the super Bowl, as I always promise,

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Speaker 1: I want to keep the sports to the end. I've

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Speaker 1: made a few references and had a few rants about

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Speaker 1: the Washington Post, but we now know what happened, and

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Speaker 1: I guess you could say, I'm this is my official

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Speaker 1: obituary for the Washington Post because my frustration on this.

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Speaker 1: This is not and I think different people go about

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Speaker 1: this a different way. I do not believe Jeff Bezos's

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Speaker 1: job was to be a to treat the Washington Post

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Speaker 1: as a charity case. So I'm not you know, I'm

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Speaker 1: not asking him to lose money to keep the Washington

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Speaker 1: Post up and running. I'm asking him to be honest

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Speaker 1: about what he's up to. I'm asking him to be

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Speaker 1: more straightforward about his motivation, and I'm asking him to

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Speaker 1: acknowledge that he The question is did he hire the

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Speaker 1: wrong people or did he actually make a business decision

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Speaker 1: that has nothing to do with the business of media

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Speaker 1: and everything to do.

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Speaker 2: With the business of space.

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Speaker 1: Before I get to it, but I want to start

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Speaker 1: off with associating myself with something Jeff Bezos said in

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Speaker 1: twenty thirteen. Thanks to my friend Don van Ada, one

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Speaker 1: of the great sports reporters out there, does a lot

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Speaker 1: of great work over at ESPN, and it's been everywhere

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Speaker 1: times you name it, he re upped this. It's an

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Speaker 1: important quote, and I want to quote.

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Speaker 2: From Jeff Bezos.

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Speaker 1: So, when Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post two hundred

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Speaker 1: and fifty million dollars in twenty thirteen, he did a

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Speaker 1: Q and A in the newsroom with legendary Washington Post

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Speaker 1: reporter Bob Woodward. And Woodward asked Bezos in front of

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Speaker 1: all of his Jeff Bezos new employees at the Washington Post,

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Speaker 1: a simple question, Why'd you do it?

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Speaker 2: Let me read you Jeff Bezos's answer.

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Speaker 1: In twenty thirteen, I finally concluded that I could provide

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Speaker 1: runway financial runway because I don't think you can keep

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Speaker 1: shrinking the business. You could be profitable and shrinking, and

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Speaker 1: that's a survival strategy, but it ultimately leads to irrelevance

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Speaker 1: at best, and at worst, it leads to extinction. In

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Speaker 1: some ways, I almost want to drop the mic and

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Speaker 1: leave right like, there you go, what's about to happen

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Speaker 1: to the Washington Post? Exactly what Jeff Bezos said he

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Speaker 1: wasn't going to do. So I wanted to start off

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Speaker 1: with the Jeff Bezos quote so that as I read you,

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Speaker 1: Matt Murray, and I want to say this about Matt

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Speaker 1: Murray's the executive editor of the Washington Post. Matt Murray's

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Speaker 1: had to be the face of all of this. It

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Speaker 1: sucks that anybody has to be the face of this.

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Speaker 1: But what really sucks is he didn't make these decisions.

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Speaker 1: He has to execute a strategy and execute decisions that

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Speaker 1: were made by two people who did not face the

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Speaker 1: public or their employees. So you know, look, I do

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Speaker 1: not I feel poor Matt Murray's been hung out to dry.

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Speaker 1: And you could say, well, he could have resigned well,

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Speaker 1: and look, everybody's got pay bills, so be very careful.

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Speaker 1: It's always easy to say when you don't have that job,

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Speaker 1: to say you could quit, you could do this well,

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Speaker 1: you know your circumstance is your circumstance. If you have

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Speaker 1: the luxury to do it, great, and you think you

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Speaker 1: can make a statement, kudos, But not everybody does.

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Speaker 2: Matt Murray is a.

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Speaker 1: Great, capable editor, managing editor, editor of a newsroom, runs

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Speaker 1: a newsroom. He is not in charge of the business strategy.

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Speaker 1: He executes the strategy. So I say this because I

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Speaker 1: don't I don't want to see Matt Murray demonized. You

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Speaker 1: want to be angry, be angry at Jeff Bezos for

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Speaker 1: hiring Will Lewis, and you don't even have to be

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Speaker 1: angry at him hiring Will Lewis. What you should be

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Speaker 1: angry at is that Will Lewis isn't being shoved out

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Speaker 1: the door along with all these employees. Because Will Lewis's

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Speaker 1: strategy has been a disaster. Every move he's made has

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Speaker 1: cost the Post money, cost the Post readers, cost the

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Speaker 1: Post relevance. So the idea that Lewis's job is safe,

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Speaker 1: but three hundred Washington Post staffers are being shown the

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Speaker 1: door because hey, this is you know, oh you know,

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Speaker 1: we just no. The media business is hard. But this

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Speaker 1: was a choice. But anyway, Jeff Bezos in twenty thirteen said,

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Speaker 1: you do this, and you know you may go to

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Speaker 1: extinct irrelevance. So let me read you today's memo that

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Speaker 1: I'm sure was approved by Will Lewis and Jeff Bezos.

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Speaker 1: And I'm not going to read the whole thing, but

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Speaker 1: I'm going to read a few paragraphs, so this one.

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Speaker 1: These moves include substantial newsroom reductions, impacting nearly all news departments.

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Speaker 1: For the immediate future, we will concentrate on areas that

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Speaker 1: demonstrate authority, distinctiveness, and impact and that resonate with readers. Politics,

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Speaker 1: national affairs, people power and trends, national security in DC

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Speaker 1: and abroad. Forces shaping the future, including science, health, medicine, technology,

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Speaker 1: climate in business, journalism that empowers people to take action,

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Speaker 1: from advice to wellness, revelatory investigations, and what's capturing attention

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Speaker 1: in culture, online and daily life. So that's the that's

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Speaker 1: the mission. Apparently let me continue, but we take these

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Speaker 1: actions with clarity of purpose. The need has never been

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Speaker 1: more urgent to reposition the post. A more flexible, sustainable

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Speaker 1: model will help us better navigate unprecedented volatility, competition, technological change,

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Speaker 1: news consumption habits, and cost pressure. As you know, we

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Speaker 1: have grappled with financial challenges for some time. They have

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Speaker 1: affected us multiple in multiple rounds of cost cuts and buyouts,

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Speaker 1: along with peer periotic constraints on other kinds of spending.

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Speaker 1: We have concluded that the company structure is to root

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Speaker 1: it in a different era when we were a dominant

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Speaker 1: local print product. This restructure will help to secure our

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Speaker 1: future in service of our journalistic mission and provide us

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Speaker 1: stability moving forward. Then he keeps going we are far

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Speaker 1: from alone and reevaluate our model and rethinking how we operate.

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Speaker 1: The ecosystem of news and information on and off platform

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Speaker 1: is changing radically. News consumers enjoy more variety, voices, of

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Speaker 1: platforms and options than ever before. In just the last

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Speaker 1: five years, multiple startups, even individuals have created meaningful products

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Speaker 1: that draw at tension and generate impact at low cost.

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Speaker 1: And it goes on to blame search and blame all

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Speaker 1: these other structural issues that were issues in twenty thirteen,

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Speaker 1: that were issues when Marty Barron took over. So the

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Speaker 1: point being there, of course there have been issues. These

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Speaker 1: are issues that the New York Times confronted, and as

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Speaker 1: Nate Silver, you should check out his substance he did.

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Speaker 1: He noted that both you know, essentially this gets it

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Speaker 1: to the real business decision that Jeff Bezos made. But

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Speaker 1: he did a terrific sort of showing of that. There

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Speaker 1: was this study of sort of like impact, sort of

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Speaker 1: judging how much how much impact your news stories had,

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Speaker 1: and the Times in the Post were essentially neck and neck,

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Speaker 1: neck and neck. It's sort of you know, whether it

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Speaker 1: was attention impact, how often their articles were however you

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Speaker 1: wanted to measure. But there was a pretty good measurement

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Speaker 1: that he was using to do this, and I wasn't

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Speaker 1: familiar with the specific metric he was using, but it

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Speaker 1: made the larger point that both the Times in the

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Speaker 1: Post were sort of essentially in the same place late

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Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, even into twenty twenty, twenty twenty one,

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Speaker 1: you know, the Times like the Post experienced you know,

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Speaker 1: this this sort of softening of interest in Washington news

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Speaker 1: with the incoming Biden administration, right, and Joe Biden being

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Speaker 1: sort of catatonic for most of his term. Obviously meant

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Speaker 1: that the attention economy when it came to Washington politics

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Speaker 1: was less interested. The Times diversified, right, the Times has

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Speaker 1: all had, you know, decided to use the opportunity when

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Speaker 1: there was attention, and they they went big, right. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: they cut their sports department, but only after they bought

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Speaker 1: the Athletic Okay, the leading national sports news organization in

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Speaker 1: the country. So they actually went bigger on sports, not smaller, right.

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Speaker 1: And they went with a brand, and they took a brand,

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Speaker 1: and they doubled down on a brand, you know. And

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Speaker 1: they've done this with Wirecutter, and they've done this with

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Speaker 1: their recipes, and they've done this with games. The Washington

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Speaker 1: Post was perfectly positioned to potentially do something similar on

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Speaker 1: a variety of fronts. This is among the wealthiest metropolitan

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Speaker 1: areas in the country. You have some of the most

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Speaker 1: well read people. People pay for news. Not every community

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Speaker 1: is got to, is my god. They charge you for

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Speaker 1: everything around here, right, people are buying newsletters from punch

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Speaker 1: Bowl and buying pro political pro subscriptions and national journal

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Speaker 1: and hotline passes and all sorts of things. So this

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Speaker 1: is a market that is very comfortable paying for information.

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Speaker 1: But Jeff Bezos had a problem. His number one competitor

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Speaker 1: for space contracts is Elon Musk. Elon Musk had had

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Speaker 1: all sorts of ties to the two front runners for

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Speaker 1: president in twenty twenty three and twenty twenty four, Ron

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Speaker 1: DeSantis and Donald Trump, and Elon Musk was leveraging those

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Speaker 1: relationships in any way possible. And when he realized Disantas

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Speaker 1: was going nowhere, right, He's eventually.

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Speaker 2: Sidled right up to Trump.

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Speaker 1: If there is a competitor in the private space race,

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Speaker 1: to Elon Musk, it's Jeff Bezos with Blue Origin. The

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Speaker 1: only way to build a private space company is to

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Speaker 1: have access to the government's resources NASA and all sorts

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Speaker 1: of infrastructure. All right, we may be in the privatizing

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Speaker 1: era of space, but the structure is still sort of government.

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Speaker 1: You're very dependent upon government, and you need access to government.

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Speaker 1: And if Donald Trump just shut the door on Jeff Bezos,

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Speaker 1: Blue Origin would be just sort of stuck here, maybe

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Speaker 1: have to work with another country if they wanted to

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Speaker 1: get up and stuff like that. So he looked at

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Speaker 1: the look I think his initial decision to purchase. Now,

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Speaker 1: when you sort of everything looks obvious now in hindsight.

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Speaker 1: So why did twenty thirteen Jeff Basos.

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Speaker 2: By the Washington Post.

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Speaker 1: We know what he said. I told you up top

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Speaker 1: what he said, but he still like, why did he

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Speaker 1: think it was a good idea? Well, if you recall

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Speaker 1: at the time, right, I believe Amazon had just made

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Speaker 1: the decision to create a basically open a second headquarters,

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Speaker 1: and they made the decision to open it in Crystal

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Speaker 1: City of Virginia.

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Speaker 2: Why did they do that?

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Speaker 1: Because the most important government contracts to AWS right, the

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Speaker 1: arguably the more profitable arm of Amazon, rather than the

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Speaker 1: product most of us interact with on a daily or

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Speaker 1: some of you on an hourly basis, are Pentagon contracts.

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Speaker 1: So Amazon made the decision it needed to be close

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Speaker 1: to Washington. Look, I'll be honest, as a political anthropologists,

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Speaker 1: the way I looked at it, I was I was rooting.

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Speaker 1: I remember remember there was this whole campaign who was

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Speaker 1: going to get the second headquarters in? Amazon did a

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Speaker 1: very public, almost American Idol style RFPs right request for

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Speaker 1: proposals from various cities, and they had certain things they needed.

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Speaker 1: They needed easy access to public transportation, among you, affordable housing,

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Speaker 1: all sorts of it, but it was public transporation was

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Speaker 1: a big thing, There's no doubt. I remember I was

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Speaker 1: hoping he'd picked Saint Louis. And you've probably heard me

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Speaker 1: a few times. I'm obsessed with Saint Louis for a

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Speaker 1: variety of reasons.

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Speaker 2: You know, Saint Louis was I ate.

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Speaker 1: The America all sort of chipped in to figure out, hey,

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Speaker 1: we can't let Detroit spiral, and we got investment in Detroit,

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Speaker 1: and we got Wall Street interested in Detroit, and Detroit

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Speaker 1: is in better shape today than it's been in a while.

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Speaker 1: We've not had that same you know, there was a time,

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Speaker 1: right Saint Louis hosted an Olympics nineteen oh four. I

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Speaker 1: believe it was because it was the gateway to the West, Right,

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Speaker 1: Saint Louis was the most important, Say, before there was

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Speaker 1: LA in San Francisco, there were Saint Louis. Right, it

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Speaker 1: was the western frontier and it was an extraordinarily important city.

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Speaker 1: And even when I was growing up, right, you know,

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Speaker 1: it was a hub and had lots of corporate headquarters there, right,

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Speaker 1: and isaer Bush being the most iconic, but TWA Transworld

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Speaker 1: Airlines that was a huge airline that was not a

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Speaker 1: small airline, it was a big airline. And it is withered,

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Speaker 1: and there's a we can There's a variety of reasons.

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Speaker 1: Saint Louis is one of those. When you if you

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Speaker 1: ever wanted to understand how the interstate highway system really

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Speaker 1: did segregate communities and destroy urban communities, go traveling downtown

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Speaker 1: Saint Louis when you go, and I believe it's fifty five.

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Speaker 1: If I have it wrong, I hope my friends and

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Speaker 1: Saint Louis will will correct me.

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Speaker 2: I've got some.

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Speaker 1: I've got off and on ties to Saint Louis, and

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Speaker 1: I'll leave it at that.

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Speaker 2: Some of you will know what I'm referring to.

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Speaker 1: But it's one of those that it's just ugly. It's terrible,

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Speaker 1: like you know that. You know, there was a lot

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Speaker 1: of urban planners in the twenties, thirties, forties, and fifties

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Speaker 1: who essentially used African American communities, you know, just almost

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Speaker 1: either bulldozed them, divided them in half. But it was

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Speaker 1: you know, if you were in a if you were

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Speaker 1: fighting a not in my backyard mindset, you know, the

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Speaker 1: black communities lost every one of them. And this was

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Speaker 1: all over. You can read the Powerbroker about Robert Moses

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Speaker 1: and what he did New York and how this was done.

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Speaker 1: You can just see how the interstate system was built

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Speaker 1: in Saint Louis. You can see remnants of this in

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Speaker 1: New Orleans and some other of these cities that this

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Speaker 1: has been done. Do you hate hangovers, We'll say goodbye

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Speaker 1: there was a lot of reasons. So Saint Louis, I

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Speaker 1: think needed a shot in the arm. But I also

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Speaker 1: thought it was a Hey, this is a it still

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Speaker 1: has some wealth to it. It still is a highly

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Speaker 1: educated community, and more importantly, it's it's a more politically

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Speaker 1: diverse community. And I would thought the tech industry needed

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Speaker 1: more buy in from Red America. So, hey, don't you

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Speaker 1: know you're going from Seattle? All right, why don't you

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Speaker 1: you know, I thought Saint Louis so for a variety

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Speaker 1: of reasons, right, I thought Saint Louis was gonna be

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Speaker 1: a good spot. So but the point was they picked

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Speaker 1: I remember the last thing I expected was DC. So

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Speaker 1: Bezos made a business and so what did he do?

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Speaker 2: Then?

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Speaker 1: He buys the Washington Post. And I think he saw

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Speaker 1: the Washington Post as an investment in being able to

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Speaker 1: curry favor in Washington for Amazon. And it made a

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Speaker 1: ton of sense. Right, you're the owner of the Washington Post.

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Speaker 1: You're going to get more meetings with the lawmakers that

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Speaker 1: you need to have meetings with. And you know, you

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Speaker 1: could say, okay, Jeff Bezos, well we'll give him that too,

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Speaker 1: But it only adds. It's only additive, right, It gives

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Speaker 1: you outsized potential influence and all of it, you know,

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Speaker 1: and so but but in order in order for that

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Speaker 1: to stay, the Post had to be.

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Speaker 2: Robust.

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Speaker 1: So he did endorse a robust version of the Washington Post.

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Speaker 1: I think he saw it as a trophy. He did

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Speaker 1: not see it as a business in and of itself, which.

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Speaker 2: Has always been my frustration. He saw it.

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Speaker 1: As a trophy that could help him with his other businesses.

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Speaker 1: So initially that's because he had all these government contracts

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Speaker 1: with AWS moves, the second Amazon headquarters, which is all

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Speaker 1: about those Pentagon contracts, and then of course there's his

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Speaker 1: hobby with space all of it. Having, you know, having

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Speaker 1: that kind of influence in Washington was going to be

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Speaker 1: helpful all of those businesses. Well, in comes Donald Trump

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Speaker 1: and the polarization of media in general and the weaponization

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Speaker 1: by the right to attack any journalists, any journalistic organization

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Speaker 1: that dared try to report accountability stories about anybody left

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Speaker 1: or right. But you know, everything got and Donald Trump

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Speaker 1: personalized everything in that first turn, and the question was

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Speaker 1: how was it going to impact Bezos? And look, the

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Speaker 1: conventional with the rest of official Washington was just as

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Speaker 1: alarmed about Donald Trump as the Washington Post was, So

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Speaker 1: in some ways, I think Bezos felt comforted that he

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Speaker 1: was still on the side. Yes, he was did lose

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Speaker 1: a government contract because Donald Trump essentially punished Amazon, punished

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Speaker 1: Bezos because he didn't like the coverage he was getting

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Speaker 1: out of the Washington Post. Passed forward to twenty twenty three.

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Speaker 2: Right when.

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Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos decides to radically remodel the Washington Post. Yes,

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Speaker 1: there was a moment that the Post was having.

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Speaker 2: They couldn't.

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Speaker 1: They were losing some traffic, losing and it had to

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Speaker 1: have less to do with it, you know. They just

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Speaker 1: they didn't do anything right with the upside that they

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Speaker 1: were experiencing in twenty eighteen and twenty nineteen and investing

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Speaker 1: in sort of cementing some of the growth that they have. Right,

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Speaker 1: you get growth, you should want to cement it.

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Speaker 2: They didn't.

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Speaker 1: The New York Times did right, just the Salzburger's just

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Speaker 1: but there they own the Times. For the Times to

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Speaker 1: be a successful business, Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post

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Speaker 1: for the success of his other businesses. He never was

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Speaker 1: that interested in the success of the business of news

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Speaker 1: and information itself, because if he had been, he would

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Speaker 1: have made a lot more different decisions. You don't hire

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Speaker 1: somebody who's just a tabloid editor from the UK who

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Speaker 1: just is a clickbait, attention economy type of journalists. It's

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Speaker 1: a great way to make money if you're an individual.

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Speaker 1: It's not a long term sustaining business. Just go see

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Speaker 1: the UK news market if you need more proof of that.

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Speaker 1: And never mind that like will Lewis's journalistic credentials were

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Speaker 1: pretty much shit for his connection with the with the

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Speaker 1: Murdock scandals that did cost him a bit of his

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Speaker 1: reputation in the UK.

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Speaker 2: But Bezos makes this hire anyway.

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Speaker 1: You don't hire will Lewis because you think there is

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Speaker 1: more money to be made in a transformational business to

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Speaker 1: be created that somehow others Fred Ryan and Marty Beron

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Speaker 1: didn't figure out. You hire will Lewis because you want

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Speaker 1: to change the tenor and reputation of the Washington Post itself.

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Speaker 1: So again, it's twenty twenty three, Donald Trump's front runner

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Speaker 1: for President Donald Trump. Jeff Bezos is watching the entire

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Speaker 1: tech community just side and the crypto community are sort

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Speaker 1: of both one and the same as decided they've given

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Speaker 1: up on Biden, Harris and the Democrats and they're going

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Speaker 1: all in with Trump. They know that any policy proposal,

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Speaker 1: if you give enough money, is a policy they can

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Speaker 1: get enacted. One of those pokes is Elon Musk, who's

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Speaker 1: got SpaceX. So Bezos had a choice to make. Now

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Speaker 1: he could have sold the Washington Post. But why wouldn't

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Speaker 1: he sell the Washington Post Because whoever he sold the

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Speaker 1: Washington Post to would likely have kept it a robust

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Speaker 1: journalistic organization more like Marty Baron's Washington Post than the

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Speaker 1: one whatever version we're going to see over the next

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Speaker 1: six months. And it probably would have been heavy on

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Speaker 1: accountability of this administration. Some crazy shit's happening every hour

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Speaker 1: of every day, and the Washington Post this is who

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Speaker 1: they are. In my entire lifetime, right, the Washington Post's

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Speaker 1: been a major news look. Essentially, Watergate took the Washington

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Speaker 1: Post from being one of two major papers in Washington.

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Speaker 1: You had the Washington Star in the Washington Post to

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Speaker 1: suddenly being, oh well, there's the New York Times in

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Speaker 1: the Washington Post. They went from really good local paper

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Speaker 1: to very important national paper. So just about anybody running

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Speaker 1: the Post is going to have that as the North Star.

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Speaker 1: But if he had sold it, Trump would have blamed

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Speaker 1: Bezos still probably still punished him. Made it a little

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Speaker 1: bit harder to get those space access to the space

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Speaker 1: resources that the government controls lose out in just about

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Speaker 1: every competitive bid with SpaceX.

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Speaker 2: But if he keeps it, and he makes a few.

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Speaker 1: Performative changes, again, it doesn't matter to him whether the

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Speaker 1: Post succeeds or fails. We have all established, right Peter

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Speaker 1: Baker did a terrific tweet. He's a former Washington poster,

434
00:27:46,359 --> 00:27:49,280
Speaker 1: works at the New York Times, where he noted, And actually,

435
00:27:49,359 --> 00:27:52,760
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos' wealth has been increasing right this, you know,

436
00:27:52,880 --> 00:27:55,359
Speaker 1: the one hundred million dollars is literally a rounding error

437
00:27:56,440 --> 00:27:59,520
Speaker 1: for Jeff Bezos' network worth. And remember it's networth. This

438
00:27:59,600 --> 00:28:01,280
Speaker 1: is he had to give half of his work to

439
00:28:01,359 --> 00:28:03,360
Speaker 1: his first wife and he still.

440
00:28:03,119 --> 00:28:04,119
Speaker 2: Has this kind of network.

441
00:28:05,080 --> 00:28:08,280
Speaker 1: So it doesn't matter if the Post succeeds or fails.

442
00:28:08,359 --> 00:28:14,080
Speaker 1: What matters is does Blue Origin have access to the

443
00:28:14,240 --> 00:28:17,240
Speaker 1: government space resources? Is ABS going to get all of

444
00:28:17,240 --> 00:28:24,880
Speaker 1: its government contractsnewed by the Pentagon? So yes, Jeff Bezos

445
00:28:24,880 --> 00:28:28,439
Speaker 1: made a business decision, but it was not about the

446
00:28:28,480 --> 00:28:32,639
Speaker 1: business of The Washington Post. The Washington Post is a

447
00:28:32,720 --> 00:28:41,640
Speaker 1: pawn in his gallery that is used to make sure

448
00:28:41,680 --> 00:28:47,440
Speaker 1: the other businesses aren't punished by a very pugilistic president

449
00:28:49,880 --> 00:28:54,640
Speaker 1: who doesn't believe that there should be a free press

450
00:28:55,800 --> 00:28:58,400
Speaker 1: that's there to be critical of him as much as

451
00:28:59,640 --> 00:29:02,320
Speaker 1: is a free press there that can be praiseworthy of

452
00:29:02,360 --> 00:29:10,840
Speaker 1: him if that organization deems it worthy. So I do

453
00:29:10,880 --> 00:29:13,440
Speaker 1: think it's important that I accept the premise that this

454
00:29:13,560 --> 00:29:15,640
Speaker 1: was a business decision. But don't you tell me it's

455
00:29:15,640 --> 00:29:18,680
Speaker 1: about the business of news and information, because if he

456
00:29:18,760 --> 00:29:21,120
Speaker 1: was making that kind of business decision, number one he

457
00:29:21,120 --> 00:29:24,240
Speaker 1: would have sold it, or number two, he would have

458
00:29:24,280 --> 00:29:29,240
Speaker 1: created the Everything information store. Right now, as somebody else

459
00:29:29,280 --> 00:29:33,800
Speaker 1: said to me, you know, it's possible that, you know,

460
00:29:34,640 --> 00:29:38,720
Speaker 1: Jeff Beson is just not that bright, meaning he's really

461
00:29:38,720 --> 00:29:45,760
Speaker 1: good at one thing, building Amazon. There's no evidence at

462
00:29:45,760 --> 00:29:48,960
Speaker 1: Blue Origins any good as a private space company. Yet

463
00:29:50,360 --> 00:29:54,320
Speaker 1: you know he is not you know, look whatever, Elon

464
00:29:54,440 --> 00:29:57,480
Speaker 1: Musk has a lot of character flaws as a human being.

465
00:29:58,960 --> 00:30:01,240
Speaker 1: But the guy's a genius. We know that, all right.

466
00:30:01,280 --> 00:30:01,640
Speaker 2: He is.

467
00:30:01,760 --> 00:30:03,440
Speaker 1: You know, if you're going to tell me, who do

468
00:30:03,480 --> 00:30:05,880
Speaker 1: you want in charge of building a tunnel from LA

469
00:30:05,960 --> 00:30:10,600
Speaker 1: to San Francisco. Yeah, I trust his math before I

470
00:30:10,680 --> 00:30:14,760
Speaker 1: trust anybody else's math. I just don't want Elon Musk

471
00:30:15,520 --> 00:30:19,120
Speaker 1: worrying about culture and society because I think he's a weirdo.

472
00:30:20,920 --> 00:30:23,600
Speaker 1: But even weirdos are geniuses. In fact, a lot of

473
00:30:23,920 --> 00:30:27,880
Speaker 1: geniuses are weirdos. So it's just possible he you know,

474
00:30:27,920 --> 00:30:31,200
Speaker 1: he's just you know, net worth does not a high

475
00:30:31,280 --> 00:30:35,640
Speaker 1: net worth does not always mean high IQ. Donald Trump

476
00:30:35,680 --> 00:30:38,320
Speaker 1: wants to believe that, right. He wants to believe only

477
00:30:38,400 --> 00:30:42,240
Speaker 1: dumb people are poor and all rich people are smart

478
00:30:42,400 --> 00:30:44,720
Speaker 1: because he's rich and he knows he's not very smart,

479
00:30:44,720 --> 00:30:48,040
Speaker 1: but he wants people to think he's smart. So this

480
00:30:48,200 --> 00:30:52,680
Speaker 1: is sort of the paint by numbers perception that way

481
00:30:52,680 --> 00:30:55,680
Speaker 1: too many people in government are practicing these days. And

482
00:30:55,760 --> 00:30:58,640
Speaker 1: I watch it a lot. The deference that gets paid

483
00:30:58,640 --> 00:31:03,440
Speaker 1: to wealthy people in general, but particularly by politicians and

484
00:31:03,520 --> 00:31:07,200
Speaker 1: others is kind of gross when you know they were

485
00:31:07,200 --> 00:31:09,760
Speaker 1: an expert at one thing either they you know a

486
00:31:09,800 --> 00:31:13,360
Speaker 1: lot of times right, I would say about the super

487
00:31:13,440 --> 00:31:16,600
Speaker 1: rich people I've ever been around, about half inherited their

488
00:31:16,640 --> 00:31:21,000
Speaker 1: money and about half, you know, did it because they

489
00:31:21,000 --> 00:31:27,080
Speaker 1: were a part of building a business. But it didn't

490
00:31:27,120 --> 00:31:29,520
Speaker 1: mean they were an expert at that business. It didn't

491
00:31:29,520 --> 00:31:31,480
Speaker 1: automatically mean they were any good at anything else.

492
00:31:33,680 --> 00:31:35,600
Speaker 2: So that is a possibility.

493
00:31:36,040 --> 00:31:37,600
Speaker 1: Because if you were to look at the what the

494
00:31:37,640 --> 00:31:41,040
Speaker 1: Washington Post is deciding to do, it is about the

495
00:31:41,120 --> 00:31:44,360
Speaker 1: dumbest business decision you can do. So let's go back

496
00:31:44,400 --> 00:31:48,040
Speaker 1: to my Matt Murray emails. You could say, I've got

497
00:31:48,040 --> 00:31:55,000
Speaker 1: a lot of strong opinions on this. For the immediate future.

498
00:31:55,000 --> 00:31:58,160
Speaker 1: We're going to concentrate on areas that demonstrate authority, distinctiveness,

499
00:31:58,200 --> 00:32:01,240
Speaker 1: and impact and that resonate with readers. Politics, national affairs, people,

500
00:32:01,240 --> 00:32:03,920
Speaker 1: power and trends, National security of DC and abroad. Forces

501
00:32:03,920 --> 00:32:07,200
Speaker 1: shaping the future, including science, health, medicine, technology, climate, and business.

502
00:32:08,080 --> 00:32:11,000
Speaker 1: You know who else has that same north star? Every

503
00:32:11,040 --> 00:32:15,360
Speaker 1: other news organization that cover is in Washington or covers Washington.

504
00:32:15,400 --> 00:32:18,760
Speaker 1: That's Politico's north star. I could argue that's you know,

505
00:32:18,840 --> 00:32:22,840
Speaker 1: punch Bowl probably covers eighty percent of that National journal

506
00:32:22,920 --> 00:32:25,520
Speaker 1: or the Hotline would have said something like that, The

507
00:32:25,560 --> 00:32:27,720
Speaker 1: New York Times coverage of Washington.

508
00:32:27,360 --> 00:32:28,400
Speaker 2: Has that as a north star.

509
00:32:29,320 --> 00:32:32,600
Speaker 1: So what the Washington Post had that none of these

510
00:32:32,640 --> 00:32:36,400
Speaker 1: other news organizations had is they also were the regional

511
00:32:36,440 --> 00:32:42,280
Speaker 1: and local authority, So they had a distinct You know,

512
00:32:42,680 --> 00:32:48,120
Speaker 1: last time I checked, do you want to stand out

513
00:32:48,480 --> 00:32:50,840
Speaker 1: from your competitors or do you want to look very

514
00:32:50,840 --> 00:32:53,480
Speaker 1: similar to your competitors? The Washington Post has made a

515
00:32:53,520 --> 00:32:58,880
Speaker 1: decision to go small and to become more like Politico,

516
00:32:58,960 --> 00:33:01,280
Speaker 1: and the irony is it right? The founders of Political

517
00:33:01,360 --> 00:33:05,000
Speaker 1: Jim Benheid and John Harris left the Post and said, hey,

518
00:33:05,040 --> 00:33:07,840
Speaker 1: they basically say there needs to be you know, the Post,

519
00:33:07,880 --> 00:33:10,520
Speaker 1: and you know, the Post should be focusing more on

520
00:33:10,600 --> 00:33:14,200
Speaker 1: these areas and they could own this area now. Jim

521
00:33:14,280 --> 00:33:18,120
Speaker 1: Benheid John Harris weren't advocating getting rid of sports and

522
00:33:18,160 --> 00:33:20,400
Speaker 1: culture and all of that. What they were arguing is

523
00:33:20,400 --> 00:33:23,200
Speaker 1: that the Post should be more robust, be smarter about

524
00:33:23,760 --> 00:33:27,280
Speaker 1: some of its core authoritative topics, including politics in the

525
00:33:27,320 --> 00:33:30,520
Speaker 1: coverage of Washington. And I've always said that the Washington

526
00:33:30,560 --> 00:33:34,360
Speaker 1: Post for my adult lifetime used to what I used

527
00:33:34,400 --> 00:33:35,840
Speaker 1: to say when I worked at the National Journal in

528
00:33:35,880 --> 00:33:38,040
Speaker 1: the Hotline. He said, boy, the Washington Post lets a

529
00:33:38,040 --> 00:33:43,120
Speaker 1: bunch of us live right, roll call, Politico, National Journal,

530
00:33:43,440 --> 00:33:48,200
Speaker 1: punch Bowl. If the Washington Post chose to get involved

531
00:33:48,240 --> 00:33:52,160
Speaker 1: in any of those areas and become you know, hourly

532
00:33:52,200 --> 00:33:54,640
Speaker 1: authorities on what's happening on Capitol Hill like punch Bowl,

533
00:33:55,000 --> 00:33:58,040
Speaker 1: you know, or daily authorities about what's happening on campaign

534
00:33:58,120 --> 00:34:03,040
Speaker 1: trail like Hotline, or daily and hourly newsletters about all

535
00:34:03,080 --> 00:34:07,800
Speaker 1: sorts of industries in Washington like Politico, they could do it,

536
00:34:10,600 --> 00:34:13,000
Speaker 1: but it would put these others out of business, you know.

537
00:34:16,719 --> 00:34:20,960
Speaker 1: So now the Post wants to retreat and essentially become

538
00:34:21,840 --> 00:34:25,560
Speaker 1: a Washington trade publication that covers the business.

539
00:34:26,800 --> 00:34:27,480
Speaker 2: Of Washington.

540
00:34:28,880 --> 00:34:33,320
Speaker 1: That's Politico, that's Role Call, that's National Journal, that's Bloomberg.

541
00:34:33,440 --> 00:34:37,200
Speaker 1: That's how the New York Times covered all. You get

542
00:34:37,239 --> 00:34:41,080
Speaker 1: my point. So, if this were a business decision about

543
00:34:41,080 --> 00:34:44,520
Speaker 1: positioning The Washington Post in a place to be a

544
00:34:44,600 --> 00:34:48,040
Speaker 1: successful standalone business on its own, this is not what

545
00:34:48,080 --> 00:34:54,160
Speaker 1: you would do. So again, it's a business decision, but

546
00:34:54,239 --> 00:34:56,279
Speaker 1: it had nothing to do with the business of the

547
00:34:56,320 --> 00:34:59,759
Speaker 1: Washington Post. Now I'm going to close on this before

548
00:34:59,800 --> 00:35:02,640
Speaker 1: we get to my conversation with Danny fun about mobile

549
00:35:02,640 --> 00:35:09,040
Speaker 1: gaming and whether this is a if we suddenly put

550
00:35:09,080 --> 00:35:14,360
Speaker 1: a carton of cigarettes, the proverbial cartner cigarettes in the

551
00:35:14,480 --> 00:35:18,640
Speaker 1: hands of every eighteen year old boy in America, I guess,

552
00:35:18,680 --> 00:35:24,160
Speaker 1: twenty one year old boy in America, young man in America.

553
00:35:26,160 --> 00:35:31,640
Speaker 1: I'm going to confess something I am. I am enthusiastic

554
00:35:31,680 --> 00:35:36,160
Speaker 1: about the future of news and information. I'm enthusiastic about

555
00:35:36,200 --> 00:35:42,240
Speaker 1: independent media because look, I think the I think Jeff

556
00:35:42,239 --> 00:35:45,759
Speaker 1: Bezos here behaved like an evil rich guy stereotype, right,

557
00:35:46,080 --> 00:35:48,440
Speaker 1: couldn't faith when he bought the Washington Post, he couldn't

558
00:35:48,440 --> 00:35:52,520
Speaker 1: wait to be in the newsroom when he absolutely destroys

559
00:35:52,560 --> 00:35:57,560
Speaker 1: the Washington Post. He's meeting with peg Pete Hegseth at

560
00:35:57,560 --> 00:36:00,960
Speaker 1: Blue Origin and his wife hanging out at a Paris

561
00:36:01,000 --> 00:36:04,160
Speaker 1: fashion show. Right, it is a classic, Like, I mean,

562
00:36:04,360 --> 00:36:07,440
Speaker 1: you couldn't script it better, right if you wanted to.

563
00:36:08,280 --> 00:36:11,239
Speaker 1: It is gilded age. Let them eat cake. You can

564
00:36:11,320 --> 00:36:17,160
Speaker 1: pick your metaphor. And I'll tell you I do think

565
00:36:17,200 --> 00:36:21,279
Speaker 1: the pitchforks are out. Bernie Sanders said something interesting, and

566
00:36:21,360 --> 00:36:23,240
Speaker 1: you know, Bernie has a way of taking any issue

567
00:36:23,239 --> 00:36:26,719
Speaker 1: and saying it's about the millionaires and the billionaires. But

568
00:36:26,760 --> 00:36:28,960
Speaker 1: he made an interesting observation about the Epstein files, and

569
00:36:28,960 --> 00:36:30,680
Speaker 1: he says, you know, one of the reasons he thinks

570
00:36:30,760 --> 00:36:32,839
Speaker 1: that there's so much interest in the Epstein files beyond

571
00:36:32,880 --> 00:36:35,759
Speaker 1: the conspiracy theorists. Right, conspiracy theorists love the Epstein files

572
00:36:35,760 --> 00:36:38,360
Speaker 1: for a variety of other reasons. But there's sort of

573
00:36:38,360 --> 00:36:40,680
Speaker 1: there's a next level of interest. Right, there's just a

574
00:36:41,000 --> 00:36:44,799
Speaker 1: it just garneled it, and that is, these fucking rich

575
00:36:44,840 --> 00:36:47,799
Speaker 1: people play by their own set of rules, and look

576
00:36:47,840 --> 00:36:52,200
Speaker 1: at the shit they get away with. And so here's

577
00:36:52,280 --> 00:36:54,640
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos behaving by a whole other set of rules.

578
00:36:54,680 --> 00:36:58,480
Speaker 1: And I you know, look, I blame myself for assuming

579
00:36:58,560 --> 00:37:02,640
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos what's more worn than Elon Musk? Right, you know,

580
00:37:02,719 --> 00:37:04,719
Speaker 1: Warren Buffett bought the Omaha World Herald of years ago

581
00:37:04,760 --> 00:37:06,640
Speaker 1: because he wanted a good newspaper to read as he

582
00:37:06,640 --> 00:37:10,439
Speaker 1: stayed in Omaha. And I think I know what I thought.

583
00:37:10,680 --> 00:37:12,839
Speaker 1: I thought, Jeff Bezos sort of raised middle class kid,

584
00:37:13,080 --> 00:37:16,239
Speaker 1: you know, sort of raised in a way that a

585
00:37:16,280 --> 00:37:19,080
Speaker 1: lot of Americans go through, you know, single parent for

586
00:37:19,120 --> 00:37:22,160
Speaker 1: a while, stepfather all, you know, moved around a couple

587
00:37:22,239 --> 00:37:26,920
Speaker 1: of times, sort of lived, had a lived, had a lived,

588
00:37:27,000 --> 00:37:31,400
Speaker 1: working class, middle class ferry experience that maybe may have

589
00:37:31,560 --> 00:37:35,719
Speaker 1: ground him differently than it grounds a guy like Elon Musk,

590
00:37:35,719 --> 00:37:39,000
Speaker 1: who was you know, raised by a weirdo father. And

591
00:37:39,280 --> 00:37:42,440
Speaker 1: you know, or some of these tech guys who are

592
00:37:42,480 --> 00:37:45,040
Speaker 1: all you know, a lot of them are, you know,

593
00:37:45,280 --> 00:37:48,360
Speaker 1: like Bill Gates was you know, his dad had you know,

594
00:37:50,200 --> 00:37:51,759
Speaker 1: he wasn't. I think he was born in second base,

595
00:37:51,840 --> 00:37:52,399
Speaker 1: not third base.

596
00:37:52,440 --> 00:37:56,880
Speaker 2: But you get the drift, right, you get my drift.

597
00:37:58,120 --> 00:38:02,960
Speaker 1: And so I think, you know, I was even impressed

598
00:38:02,960 --> 00:38:04,960
Speaker 1: with how he handled his divorce. Right, he didn't fight

599
00:38:05,000 --> 00:38:08,920
Speaker 1: it half and half, except that the premise that he

600
00:38:09,000 --> 00:38:14,680
Speaker 1: couldn't have built his built Amazon without a spouse. You know,

601
00:38:14,800 --> 00:38:16,960
Speaker 1: perhaps he was the guilty party and he felt like

602
00:38:17,000 --> 00:38:17,680
Speaker 1: he had to just.

603
00:38:19,080 --> 00:38:27,960
Speaker 2: Do it that way. I don't know, but it's interesting.

604
00:38:28,520 --> 00:38:32,960
Speaker 1: It feels like there was one Jeff Bezos that we

605
00:38:33,040 --> 00:38:35,920
Speaker 1: all thought we knew, and then there's the guy who's

606
00:38:36,120 --> 00:38:40,200
Speaker 1: more interested in being in Hollywood, more interested in having

607
00:38:40,280 --> 00:38:44,800
Speaker 1: these you know, weddings in Italy and Europe and having

608
00:38:44,920 --> 00:38:52,000
Speaker 1: all sort of being flashy with his money. Right, it's

609
00:38:52,040 --> 00:39:02,040
Speaker 1: his prerogative, enjoy it, Sure, go ahead, But I don't

610
00:39:02,080 --> 00:39:07,040
Speaker 1: know if you know it is the amount of white

611
00:39:07,080 --> 00:39:10,720
Speaker 1: collar anger that's going to be now coupled with blue

612
00:39:10,760 --> 00:39:15,359
Speaker 1: collar anger. Right if blue collar Americans didn't like Mett

613
00:39:15,440 --> 00:39:17,120
Speaker 1: Romney because he looked like the boss that was going

614
00:39:17,200 --> 00:39:19,680
Speaker 1: to lay them off, and that's why some of these

615
00:39:19,719 --> 00:39:21,680
Speaker 1: guys who may not have liked the skin color of

616
00:39:21,680 --> 00:39:25,720
Speaker 1: Barack Obama but voted for him in twenty twelve, because

617
00:39:26,080 --> 00:39:27,640
Speaker 1: Mett Romney looked like the guy that was going to

618
00:39:27,719 --> 00:39:32,719
Speaker 1: lay him off. Well, now blue collar and white collar

619
00:39:32,800 --> 00:39:35,240
Speaker 1: America are going to be pretty angry at the boss.

620
00:39:36,600 --> 00:39:40,239
Speaker 1: And you know it's it is actions like this that

621
00:39:40,640 --> 00:39:48,480
Speaker 1: I this this sort of moment that's coming, and I think, again,

622
00:39:49,080 --> 00:39:53,040
Speaker 1: I blame myself. I thought I'd bet I've been in

623
00:39:53,120 --> 00:39:57,560
Speaker 1: a few dinners with Jeff bezos side, you know, clearly

624
00:39:57,560 --> 00:39:59,920
Speaker 1: not enough to truly get the measure of the man.

625
00:40:00,640 --> 00:40:03,480
Speaker 1: But he seemed like a pretty smart, well read, sort

626
00:40:03,520 --> 00:40:12,280
Speaker 1: of pragmatic individual. Meaning I thought he could read a room,

627
00:40:12,400 --> 00:40:13,960
Speaker 1: and I don't think any of these tech guys can

628
00:40:14,000 --> 00:40:17,200
Speaker 1: read a room right now. And you know, whether we

629
00:40:17,280 --> 00:40:20,000
Speaker 1: call him a tech guy, he's kind of more of

630
00:40:20,000 --> 00:40:22,200
Speaker 1: an old retail brick and mortar guy that used sort

631
00:40:22,200 --> 00:40:27,920
Speaker 1: of technology to sort of take over the retail market.

632
00:40:29,400 --> 00:40:31,880
Speaker 1: But you know, I don't think this is good politics.

633
00:40:33,560 --> 00:40:36,840
Speaker 1: And the party that associates the most with the wealthiest

634
00:40:36,840 --> 00:40:39,640
Speaker 1: people right now is on the right. You know, it's funny,

635
00:40:39,680 --> 00:40:42,000
Speaker 1: for a period of time, all the rich people, the

636
00:40:42,080 --> 00:40:45,319
Speaker 1: richest people in America seemed to be Obama supporters, right

637
00:40:45,360 --> 00:40:47,400
Speaker 1: They loved Obama, the celebrity of Obama.

638
00:40:48,840 --> 00:40:50,880
Speaker 2: And now they are.

639
00:40:52,600 --> 00:40:54,719
Speaker 1: Whether they don't, maybe they don't like hanging with Trump,

640
00:40:54,760 --> 00:40:59,520
Speaker 1: but they're all paying the price to hang with them.

641
00:41:00,360 --> 00:41:03,440
Speaker 1: But like I said, the good news is the public

642
00:41:03,719 --> 00:41:06,160
Speaker 1: is not going to trust corporate owned media or billionaire

643
00:41:06,160 --> 00:41:09,480
Speaker 1: owned media. They're only going to trust independent media. And

644
00:41:09,520 --> 00:41:12,920
Speaker 1: the good news is there is whether we call it

645
00:41:13,000 --> 00:41:18,520
Speaker 1: DMV today, DMV now, But the appetite, I mean, the

646
00:41:18,560 --> 00:41:21,600
Speaker 1: Anthony Davis trade for the Washington Wizards has not been

647
00:41:21,640 --> 00:41:24,440
Speaker 1: covered by the Washington Post. It broke about three hours

648
00:41:24,480 --> 00:41:28,160
Speaker 1: after the Matt Murray announced the end of the sports department,

649
00:41:30,239 --> 00:41:32,719
Speaker 1: and so I was curious if they'd even like note like,

650
00:41:32,719 --> 00:41:36,759
Speaker 1: this is the biggest trade in Washington Wizards for the

651
00:41:36,800 --> 00:41:39,759
Speaker 1: Washington Wizards, at least since getting rid of Black Bradley Beal,

652
00:41:39,800 --> 00:41:42,000
Speaker 1: and I think bigger than that, maybe not since Chris

653
00:41:43,080 --> 00:41:50,120
Speaker 1: the acquiring Chris Weber. And there's no Washington Sports section

654
00:41:50,200 --> 00:41:52,480
Speaker 1: to cover it. I went over to see if they

655
00:41:52,520 --> 00:41:56,400
Speaker 1: had any updates, maybe just carry a wire story. So

656
00:41:56,440 --> 00:41:58,600
Speaker 1: now in order to call it, you know, I'm going

657
00:41:58,640 --> 00:42:02,080
Speaker 1: to check out. I keep, for no offense to my

658
00:42:02,120 --> 00:42:04,319
Speaker 1: friends at the Washington Times. I keep forgetting that they're

659
00:42:04,360 --> 00:42:07,439
Speaker 1: still doing some sports coverage there, and good for them.

660
00:42:07,600 --> 00:42:09,880
Speaker 1: So I'll check that out, and I'll be checking it

661
00:42:09,960 --> 00:42:13,240
Speaker 1: out more for obvious reasons. I love my local sports teams,

662
00:42:13,280 --> 00:42:15,640
Speaker 1: not all of them, but if you will. But the

663
00:42:15,680 --> 00:42:18,640
Speaker 1: point about sports is This is sports is the community

664
00:42:18,680 --> 00:42:22,600
Speaker 1: glue that builds the trust that gets people to believe

665
00:42:23,040 --> 00:42:27,279
Speaker 1: the hard news that's being reported. So don't tell me

666
00:42:27,840 --> 00:42:32,520
Speaker 1: sports is not worth the investment. What that tells me

667
00:42:32,560 --> 00:42:34,840
Speaker 1: is you have a bunch of newsroom leaders, particularly somebody

668
00:42:34,840 --> 00:42:38,399
Speaker 1: that you're importing in where they don't have you know,

669
00:42:38,440 --> 00:42:43,560
Speaker 1: they they their news organizations. You know, they've never covered

670
00:42:43,600 --> 00:42:46,480
Speaker 1: sports the way our news organizations have. So it is

671
00:42:46,520 --> 00:42:49,040
Speaker 1: a cultural disconnect. And I think will Lewis doesn't fully

672
00:42:49,120 --> 00:42:53,040
Speaker 1: appreciate what he has just done or what he thinks

673
00:42:53,040 --> 00:43:01,680
Speaker 1: he's recommended. But here's what I will say. I don't

674
00:43:01,719 --> 00:43:04,840
Speaker 1: think the Post will recover from this. They may exist,

675
00:43:05,480 --> 00:43:10,279
Speaker 1: just like Newsweek exists, but his newsweek, the newsweek of

676
00:43:10,320 --> 00:43:15,880
Speaker 1: Howard Feinman, of Evan Thomas, we all know it's not.

677
00:43:17,120 --> 00:43:21,480
Speaker 1: It's kind of newsweek in name only. Now, look, there's

678
00:43:21,520 --> 00:43:24,160
Speaker 1: still some good reporters left. The congressional team at the

679
00:43:24,160 --> 00:43:33,399
Speaker 1: Post was fairly untouched. But what's it going to look

680
00:43:33,400 --> 00:43:36,680
Speaker 1: like in a year. And let me just tell you,

681
00:43:37,600 --> 00:43:40,759
Speaker 1: it is going to be fascinating to see what the

682
00:43:40,760 --> 00:43:42,080
Speaker 1: subscriber base looks like.

683
00:43:43,880 --> 00:43:44,680
Speaker 2: In six months.

684
00:43:46,000 --> 00:43:48,640
Speaker 1: They thought they lost a whole bunch of subscribers after

685
00:43:48,719 --> 00:43:53,520
Speaker 1: the bizarre editorial page shakedown, another business decision that it

686
00:43:53,560 --> 00:43:56,840
Speaker 1: was all about space and nothing about the business of

687
00:43:56,880 --> 00:44:04,440
Speaker 1: the Post. They ain't say nothing yet, So rest in peace,

688
00:44:04,520 --> 00:44:09,640
Speaker 1: Washington Post. Maybe the brand will come back, maybe somebody

689
00:44:09,640 --> 00:44:12,399
Speaker 1: else buys it, or maybe we just build something new.

690
00:44:13,040 --> 00:44:16,920
Speaker 2: It's okay. The New York Herald Tribune is no longer here.

691
00:44:16,800 --> 00:44:20,279
Speaker 1: Than the world's okay. The Washington Star is no longer here.

692
00:44:22,480 --> 00:44:26,879
Speaker 1: There's some great journalists looking for work. I am many

693
00:44:26,920 --> 00:44:29,480
Speaker 1: of you know what I'm up to. I've been quiet

694
00:44:29,560 --> 00:44:33,160
Speaker 1: lately about what I'm up to, but I'm I'm getting

695
00:44:33,200 --> 00:44:35,520
Speaker 1: closer to being in a position that hopefully I can

696
00:44:35,680 --> 00:44:38,479
Speaker 1: help contribute to solving this problem in the Washington market

697
00:44:38,520 --> 00:44:43,840
Speaker 1: in particular. So in that sense, thank you Jeff Bezos

698
00:44:43,840 --> 00:44:46,920
Speaker 1: for giving an entrepreneur like myself and a few others

699
00:44:47,520 --> 00:44:51,840
Speaker 1: the opportunity to show that you can do your civic

700
00:44:51,920 --> 00:44:56,920
Speaker 1: duty for your community and also make a dollar or

701
00:44:56,960 --> 00:45:03,960
Speaker 1: two while you're at it. Having good life insurance is

702
00:45:04,040 --> 00:45:08,040
Speaker 1: incredibly important. I know from personal experience. I was sixteen

703
00:45:08,080 --> 00:45:10,720
Speaker 1: when my father passed away. We didn't have any money.

704
00:45:10,880 --> 00:45:13,279
Speaker 1: He didn't leave us in the best shape. My mother,

705
00:45:13,480 --> 00:45:17,240
Speaker 1: single mother, now widow, myself sixteen, trying.

706
00:45:17,000 --> 00:45:18,680
Speaker 2: To figure out how am I going to pay for college?

707
00:45:19,200 --> 00:45:22,240
Speaker 1: And lo and behold, my dad had one life insurance

708
00:45:22,239 --> 00:45:25,200
Speaker 1: policy that we found wasn't a lot, but it was

709
00:45:25,239 --> 00:45:28,360
Speaker 1: important at the time, and it's why I was able

710
00:45:28,440 --> 00:45:31,800
Speaker 1: to go to college. Little did he know how important

711
00:45:31,800 --> 00:45:33,680
Speaker 1: that would be in that moment.

712
00:45:34,440 --> 00:45:35,160
Speaker 2: Well, guess what.

713
00:45:35,440 --> 00:45:37,920
Speaker 1: That's why I am here to tell you about Etho's life.

714
00:45:38,360 --> 00:45:40,719
Speaker 1: They can provide you with peace of mind knowing your

715
00:45:40,760 --> 00:45:44,040
Speaker 1: family is protected even if the worst comes to pass.

716
00:45:44,440 --> 00:45:47,680
Speaker 1: Ethos is an online platform that makes getting life insurance

717
00:45:47,719 --> 00:45:50,800
Speaker 1: fast and easy, all designed to protect your family's future

718
00:45:50,840 --> 00:45:54,359
Speaker 1: in minutes, not months. There's no complicated process, and it's

719
00:45:54,480 --> 00:45:58,640
Speaker 1: one hundred percent online. There's no medical exam require you

720
00:45:58,760 --> 00:46:01,239
Speaker 1: just answer a few health questions online. You can get

721
00:46:01,239 --> 00:46:03,000
Speaker 1: a quote in as little as ten minutes, and you

722
00:46:03,040 --> 00:46:06,720
Speaker 1: can get same day coverage without ever leaving your home.

723
00:46:07,440 --> 00:46:09,320
Speaker 1: You can get up to three million dollars in coverage,

724
00:46:09,360 --> 00:46:11,400
Speaker 1: and some policies start as low as two dollars a

725
00:46:11,480 --> 00:46:14,759
Speaker 1: day that would be billed monthly. As of March twenty

726
00:46:14,800 --> 00:46:17,799
Speaker 1: twenty five, Business Insider named Ethos the number one no

727
00:46:17,920 --> 00:46:22,320
Speaker 1: medical exam instant life insurance provider. So protect your family

728
00:46:22,800 --> 00:46:25,560
Speaker 1: with life insurance from Ethos. Get your free quot at

729
00:46:25,600 --> 00:46:29,880
Speaker 1: ethos dot com slash chuck. So again that's Ethos dot

730
00:46:29,920 --> 00:46:34,520
Speaker 1: com slash chuck. Application times may vary and the rates

731
00:46:34,560 --> 00:46:37,880
Speaker 1: themselves may vary as well, but trust me, life insurance

732
00:46:37,960 --> 00:46:40,640
Speaker 1: is something you should really think about it, especially if

733
00:46:40,680 --> 00:46:48,759
Speaker 1: you've got a growing family. All right with that, let

734
00:46:48,760 --> 00:46:50,520
Speaker 1: me give you a few thoughts on the on the

735
00:46:50,560 --> 00:46:55,640
Speaker 1: Super Bowl, Eric, I have my fear is that it's

736
00:46:55,640 --> 00:46:59,399
Speaker 1: a blowout that we're having eighties nineties Super Bowl right

737
00:47:00,360 --> 00:47:03,080
Speaker 1: where the NFC is so much more dominant than the AFC.

738
00:47:03,760 --> 00:47:07,440
Speaker 1: And you know, it was like, you know, whatever AFC

739
00:47:07,480 --> 00:47:10,640
Speaker 1: team sort of hacked their way to the Super Bowl.

740
00:47:11,239 --> 00:47:14,400
Speaker 1: Remember when the San Diego Chargers with Nate Tron means business,

741
00:47:15,719 --> 00:47:19,120
Speaker 1: you know, and they got there and they got kind

742
00:47:19,120 --> 00:47:22,239
Speaker 1: of pummeled by Steve Young's forty nine ers. Right, all

743
00:47:22,280 --> 00:47:26,200
Speaker 1: those Buffalo bill blowouts from the Jim Kelly era. I mean,

744
00:47:26,320 --> 00:47:30,279
Speaker 1: the only team NFC team that didn't they would win

745
00:47:30,360 --> 00:47:33,520
Speaker 1: super Bowls without blowing out the AFC were the Giants, Right.

746
00:47:33,560 --> 00:47:35,879
Speaker 1: You had the Scott Norwood field goal. And then even

747
00:47:35,920 --> 00:47:38,360
Speaker 1: the game against the Broncos. I think that the Giants

748
00:47:38,360 --> 00:47:40,919
Speaker 1: trailed at halftime and then they ended up they ended

749
00:47:40,960 --> 00:47:43,719
Speaker 1: up beating the Broncos for the first Super Bowl for Parcels.

750
00:47:44,600 --> 00:47:47,879
Speaker 1: So I fear we're gonna have one of those games.

751
00:47:47,920 --> 00:47:48,360
Speaker 2: I hope not.

752
00:47:48,560 --> 00:47:54,200
Speaker 1: Right the borings there was, there was nothing that I

753
00:47:54,239 --> 00:47:57,480
Speaker 1: don't know whether super Bowl parties right now, That's that's

754
00:47:57,480 --> 00:47:59,520
Speaker 1: the That's the other question, is a super Bowl party.

755
00:48:00,719 --> 00:48:02,120
Speaker 1: Is it better to be at a super Bowl party

756
00:48:02,160 --> 00:48:05,040
Speaker 1: if the games will blowout? And is it better to

757
00:48:05,080 --> 00:48:08,160
Speaker 1: be at home if the game is close? Right? So

758
00:48:08,760 --> 00:48:11,600
Speaker 1: that's the one upside might be if this is a blowout,

759
00:48:12,120 --> 00:48:14,400
Speaker 1: it makes for socializing at the super Bowl party a

760
00:48:14,400 --> 00:48:17,120
Speaker 1: little bit easier. But there's nothing I hate, you know.

761
00:48:17,120 --> 00:48:19,319
Speaker 1: I love me a good super Bowl party. I've got

762
00:48:19,320 --> 00:48:22,320
Speaker 1: a great We've got some great friends that love to host.

763
00:48:22,360 --> 00:48:27,960
Speaker 1: And but my only small peeve about it is if

764
00:48:27,960 --> 00:48:30,239
Speaker 1: it's a really competitive game, It's like, I don't want

765
00:48:30,239 --> 00:48:32,680
Speaker 1: to be at a party while I'm watching anyway, So

766
00:48:32,760 --> 00:48:37,280
Speaker 1: my fear is that, right. I love the Sam Donald story.

767
00:48:37,480 --> 00:48:41,640
Speaker 1: I still remember Freshman, the freshman at USC who was unbelievable,

768
00:48:43,160 --> 00:48:45,120
Speaker 1: and I have I've not seen him be that good

769
00:48:45,200 --> 00:48:46,120
Speaker 1: until he was a Viking.

770
00:48:46,239 --> 00:48:46,439
Speaker 2: Right.

771
00:48:48,920 --> 00:48:51,160
Speaker 1: By the way, what an indictment on the Jets, right

772
00:48:51,440 --> 00:48:54,239
Speaker 1: the Sam Donald redemption Tour. Basically once he left the

773
00:48:54,320 --> 00:48:58,319
Speaker 1: Jets and could get anywhere else, it seemed to over

774
00:48:58,400 --> 00:49:03,919
Speaker 1: time write his mental state memo to young quarterbacks, pray

775
00:49:03,960 --> 00:49:09,800
Speaker 1: you don't get drafted by the New York Jets. My

776
00:49:09,920 --> 00:49:12,279
Speaker 1: gut is also low scoring game because the dirty little

777
00:49:12,280 --> 00:49:15,200
Speaker 1: secret about watching the Seahawks is they don't seem to

778
00:49:15,400 --> 00:49:20,960
Speaker 1: want to put the game in Darnald's hands one hundred right,

779
00:49:21,000 --> 00:49:22,839
Speaker 1: They've had they had a great one two punch, they

780
00:49:22,840 --> 00:49:25,440
Speaker 1: only have one running back obviously that they're they one

781
00:49:25,480 --> 00:49:27,200
Speaker 1: of their two stars there.

782
00:49:27,239 --> 00:49:29,680
Speaker 2: But I mean, he's been a.

783
00:49:29,560 --> 00:49:35,120
Speaker 1: Machine walker the way I mean, I know, I know

784
00:49:35,200 --> 00:49:40,120
Speaker 1: this facing him in fantasy right, and that defense is outstanding.

785
00:49:42,400 --> 00:49:45,080
Speaker 1: Here's what I think about the Patriots. A Mike Vrabel

786
00:49:45,360 --> 00:49:47,520
Speaker 1: Patriots team is not going to get blown out. So

787
00:49:47,640 --> 00:49:49,960
Speaker 1: I do believe that they will muck this game up

788
00:49:49,960 --> 00:49:54,960
Speaker 1: a little bit. So I am I am smelling very

789
00:49:55,000 --> 00:49:58,919
Speaker 1: low scoring. You know, I could see twenty to three,

790
00:49:59,200 --> 00:50:02,160
Speaker 1: I could see sixteen to seven. I could see, you

791
00:50:02,200 --> 00:50:06,759
Speaker 1: know that it could be Seattle's always in control, but

792
00:50:07,239 --> 00:50:08,800
Speaker 1: right they don't seem to pull away.

793
00:50:10,320 --> 00:50:11,200
Speaker 2: Maybe a few more.

794
00:50:11,080 --> 00:50:15,440
Speaker 1: Field goals than touchdowns. The May injury concerns me a

795
00:50:15,520 --> 00:50:18,239
Speaker 1: little bit, you know, nothing like having a shoulder issue there,

796
00:50:18,280 --> 00:50:21,319
Speaker 1: because his great strength is to throw the ball down

797
00:50:21,360 --> 00:50:23,839
Speaker 1: the field a little bit, so you have to ask

798
00:50:23,880 --> 00:50:27,920
Speaker 1: yourself about that. So needless to say, you know, I'm

799
00:50:28,120 --> 00:50:30,839
Speaker 1: If you're going to make me put money, I'm I

800
00:50:30,920 --> 00:50:34,879
Speaker 1: would I'd feel the most comfortable with, particularly a first

801
00:50:34,920 --> 00:50:39,239
Speaker 1: half under and probably the overall as well. And I'd

802
00:50:39,280 --> 00:50:43,960
Speaker 1: be And I think it's Seahawks or nobody for me.

803
00:50:44,280 --> 00:50:47,400
Speaker 1: And like I told you, I I you know, there's

804
00:50:47,680 --> 00:50:51,560
Speaker 1: there's plenty of player props out there, but in some

805
00:50:51,600 --> 00:50:55,800
Speaker 1: ways I do think player props are sort of a

806
00:50:55,840 --> 00:50:56,640
Speaker 1: bigger problem.

807
00:50:57,000 --> 00:50:57,200
Speaker 2: Right.

808
00:50:57,280 --> 00:50:59,840
Speaker 1: It's sort of my own more my own small little

809
00:51:01,080 --> 00:51:04,040
Speaker 1: moral line in the sand that I'm drawing on that.

810
00:51:04,239 --> 00:51:09,919
Speaker 2: So enjoy the Super Bowl.

811
00:51:10,480 --> 00:51:14,000
Speaker 1: And you know, I have to say, I'm as you know,

812
00:51:14,040 --> 00:51:17,680
Speaker 1: I'm a huge football fan. It's going to be a

813
00:51:17,680 --> 00:51:21,120
Speaker 1: long five months until the start until the Hurricanes first game,

814
00:51:22,080 --> 00:51:24,240
Speaker 1: which by the way, is Labor Day Friday.

815
00:51:24,520 --> 00:51:25,479
Speaker 2: Get ready so.

816
00:51:25,440 --> 00:51:30,360
Speaker 1: I will not be talking about college football perhaps until

817
00:51:30,400 --> 00:51:39,480
Speaker 1: at least September second or third. The one thing I'm

818
00:51:39,480 --> 00:51:42,959
Speaker 1: going to watch for the advertisements is I am very

819
00:51:42,960 --> 00:51:48,280
Speaker 1: curious what the AI messaging is. Not how many ads

820
00:51:48,440 --> 00:51:52,160
Speaker 1: use AI, but how AI is messaged. Right, remember a

821
00:51:52,160 --> 00:51:55,160
Speaker 1: couple of years ago the Super Bowl is where we

822
00:51:55,239 --> 00:51:58,480
Speaker 1: found out how Crypto is going to market itself. I

823
00:51:58,520 --> 00:52:01,320
Speaker 1: have a feeling right this captive eyeballs we're going to

824
00:52:01,560 --> 00:52:04,320
Speaker 1: I'm very you know, to watch all the different ways

825
00:52:04,360 --> 00:52:09,440
Speaker 1: the AI lean in AI companies are going to communicate.

826
00:52:09,600 --> 00:52:13,400
Speaker 1: I know that's something that I'm intrigued about, curious about,

827
00:52:13,440 --> 00:52:15,680
Speaker 1: and we'll be making a note up. So with that,

828
00:52:16,200 --> 00:52:18,080
Speaker 1: let's do a little last check and then we'll get

829
00:52:18,080 --> 00:52:22,319
Speaker 1: out of here. As Chuck, all right, I got six

830
00:52:22,320 --> 00:52:25,759
Speaker 1: on the screen. I'm going to hit six. That's my goal.

831
00:52:25,800 --> 00:52:29,200
Speaker 1: I'm sticking to it, all right. This question comes from James.

832
00:52:29,280 --> 00:52:31,880
Speaker 1: He says, thanks again for the podcast. Listening from France

833
00:52:32,080 --> 00:52:34,719
Speaker 1: right on helps me think differently about US politics and

834
00:52:34,760 --> 00:52:38,120
Speaker 1: gives me hope. As an institutionalist, I am the king

835
00:52:38,160 --> 00:52:42,319
Speaker 1: of the institutionalists in independent media. You've said Congress has

836
00:52:42,320 --> 00:52:44,920
Speaker 1: lost its incentives to act as a check on presidential power.

837
00:52:45,000 --> 00:52:47,240
Speaker 1: And I wonder if that's partly due to nationalized parties

838
00:52:47,280 --> 00:52:49,880
Speaker 1: expecting members to fall in line behind the president. But

839
00:52:49,920 --> 00:52:53,040
Speaker 1: states still defend their authority across party lines. What incentives

840
00:52:53,080 --> 00:52:57,480
Speaker 1: allow that? And could something similar help Congress reclaim its power. Well,

841
00:52:58,000 --> 00:53:03,200
Speaker 1: so this is where I believe that the fact, you know,

842
00:53:03,239 --> 00:53:10,600
Speaker 1: this is where the power of the primary coupled with

843
00:53:10,719 --> 00:53:14,319
Speaker 1: the power of gerrymandering, coupled with the power of too

844
00:53:14,320 --> 00:53:17,080
Speaker 1: big of congressional districts. Right, So I'm on my hobby

845
00:53:17,120 --> 00:53:20,839
Speaker 1: horse and about that the actual size of the US

846
00:53:20,840 --> 00:53:24,760
Speaker 1: House is way too small and the shrinking, the fact

847
00:53:24,760 --> 00:53:29,319
Speaker 1: that the that the representative democracy is further away from

848
00:53:29,400 --> 00:53:33,000
Speaker 1: the average person. Right, we have one member of Congress

849
00:53:33,040 --> 00:53:36,560
Speaker 1: now per eight hundred thousand people, when in nineteen thirty

850
00:53:36,600 --> 00:53:39,200
Speaker 1: we were one member of Congress per three hundred and

851
00:53:39,280 --> 00:53:44,120
Speaker 1: fifty thousand people. Eight hundred thousands is the size of

852
00:53:44,120 --> 00:53:47,520
Speaker 1: a major city in this country. And you can't tell

853
00:53:47,520 --> 00:53:49,759
Speaker 1: me that is a single community of interest, right. New

854
00:53:49,840 --> 00:53:52,360
Speaker 1: York City is not a single community of interests. Austin,

855
00:53:52,400 --> 00:53:55,280
Speaker 1: Texas is not a single community of interests. Detroit, Michigan

856
00:53:55,360 --> 00:53:57,240
Speaker 1: is not a single community of interests. There are multiple

857
00:53:57,320 --> 00:54:03,200
Speaker 1: communities of interests within said metro area. So this is

858
00:54:03,200 --> 00:54:05,040
Speaker 1: where it's like if you were to ask me, what's

859
00:54:05,160 --> 00:54:09,759
Speaker 1: one reform that could do this, Well, it's getting rid

860
00:54:09,800 --> 00:54:14,000
Speaker 1: of partisan primaries, right if you could empower all voters

861
00:54:14,040 --> 00:54:16,600
Speaker 1: in every congressional district to have more of a say

862
00:54:16,640 --> 00:54:21,880
Speaker 1: on who the representative is. So either you're drawing districts

863
00:54:21,880 --> 00:54:24,360
Speaker 1: to be competitive, which is why I'm always careful not

864
00:54:24,440 --> 00:54:27,239
Speaker 1: to just trash all jerrymandering because in the way we've

865
00:54:27,280 --> 00:54:29,880
Speaker 1: all self sorted as a country, we may need a

866
00:54:29,960 --> 00:54:34,680
Speaker 1: gerrymander to create competition. But you know, you could mandate competition.

867
00:54:36,320 --> 00:54:38,840
Speaker 1: You could mandate the size of the districts. Maybe no

868
00:54:38,920 --> 00:54:40,719
Speaker 1: district can be bigger than point zero three percent of

869
00:54:40,760 --> 00:54:42,800
Speaker 1: the population, which would put it in about one perform

870
00:54:42,840 --> 00:54:46,319
Speaker 1: in two thousand at the moment. And if you did that,

871
00:54:46,920 --> 00:54:48,920
Speaker 1: I think it would do. If we did that, and

872
00:54:49,440 --> 00:54:55,200
Speaker 1: then the gerrymandering doesn't is an impactful. Partisanship gets diluted,

873
00:54:56,280 --> 00:55:00,719
Speaker 1: and I think incentives become more regional and geographic rather

874
00:55:00,880 --> 00:55:06,799
Speaker 1: than partisan. Right now, when you have jerrymandering and partisan primaries,

875
00:55:07,360 --> 00:55:10,000
Speaker 1: it means the head of the party has all sorts

876
00:55:10,040 --> 00:55:14,320
Speaker 1: of outsized influence on the individual member of Congress.

877
00:55:15,160 --> 00:55:15,680
Speaker 2: But if you.

878
00:55:17,200 --> 00:55:21,320
Speaker 1: Have if your power comes from because you're you know,

879
00:55:21,400 --> 00:55:24,120
Speaker 1: the whole of your electorate, well, then the electorate itself

880
00:55:24,200 --> 00:55:26,640
Speaker 1: has more influence on you than the party leader, because

881
00:55:26,680 --> 00:55:28,600
Speaker 1: the party leader can only help you with one part

882
00:55:28,719 --> 00:55:35,200
Speaker 1: of your of your constituency, versus having to answer to everybody.

883
00:55:35,320 --> 00:55:38,799
Speaker 1: So you know, I think we need all three things right.

884
00:55:39,200 --> 00:55:41,799
Speaker 1: Doubling the side of the house right now, it would

885
00:55:42,640 --> 00:55:45,040
Speaker 1: I would want it should just be one perform a

886
00:55:45,120 --> 00:55:47,040
Speaker 1: thousand right now. That would mean doubling the sides of

887
00:55:47,040 --> 00:55:51,000
Speaker 1: the House. That in turn minimizes the impact of jerrymandering.

888
00:55:51,480 --> 00:55:53,200
Speaker 1: And on top of that, I get rid of partisan

889
00:55:53,239 --> 00:55:57,120
Speaker 1: primaries and essentially all party you know, everybody votes, and

890
00:55:57,880 --> 00:56:00,879
Speaker 1: you know, uh for for everybody, the top two whatever

891
00:56:00,920 --> 00:56:03,320
Speaker 1: it is, you do it that way. Doesn't mean parties

892
00:56:03,400 --> 00:56:06,839
Speaker 1: can't endorse, doesn't mean parties won't have preferences of who

893
00:56:07,000 --> 00:56:10,120
Speaker 1: the officially endorsed candidate is, and then they can give

894
00:56:10,200 --> 00:56:14,600
Speaker 1: those resources in a larger in an all voter primary.

895
00:56:15,320 --> 00:56:17,239
Speaker 1: But this is how we elect our mayors, and our

896
00:56:17,320 --> 00:56:20,880
Speaker 1: mayors are the least partisan office holders in America and

897
00:56:20,960 --> 00:56:24,640
Speaker 1: if we're tired of partisanship, that's the path to go.

898
00:56:26,880 --> 00:56:27,520
Speaker 2: Thank you, James.

899
00:56:29,520 --> 00:56:33,359
Speaker 1: Next question boy, another year, European question from another question

900
00:56:33,440 --> 00:56:36,239
Speaker 1: from Europe. It's a sextuary insight insightful analysis that really

901
00:56:36,239 --> 00:56:38,160
Speaker 1: helps me understand you as politics more clearly from a

902
00:56:38,160 --> 00:56:39,120
Speaker 1: European perspective.

903
00:56:39,360 --> 00:56:40,080
Speaker 2: I have two questions.

904
00:56:40,120 --> 00:56:41,880
Speaker 1: How likely is it that the divide between MAGA and

905
00:56:41,960 --> 00:56:45,680
Speaker 1: Liberal America becomes unbridgable and turns violent and our Americans

906
00:56:45,719 --> 00:56:48,719
Speaker 1: even able to protest effectively given how comparatively limited their

907
00:56:48,760 --> 00:56:52,439
Speaker 1: demonstrations seem compared to European protest kind regards Bernard from MEU.

908
00:56:52,880 --> 00:56:54,920
Speaker 1: You know, Fuddy Bernard, I've heard this from some of

909
00:56:54,960 --> 00:56:57,520
Speaker 1: my other European friends, going, how come more people aren't

910
00:56:57,520 --> 00:57:02,480
Speaker 1: in the streets right? My counter on that is, we did,

911
00:57:02,880 --> 00:57:05,160
Speaker 1: we did the streets stuff, and you know, the public

912
00:57:05,400 --> 00:57:07,400
Speaker 1: was in the streets a lot in twenty seventeen. In

913
00:57:07,480 --> 00:57:12,839
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, I think now it's a bit more concentrated.

914
00:57:12,880 --> 00:57:17,200
Speaker 1: But one one could argue that, you know, those No

915
00:57:17,400 --> 00:57:21,560
Speaker 1: Kings protests keep growing, and we're about to have another one,

916
00:57:21,600 --> 00:57:24,640
Speaker 1: I think, and that's only going to keep growing. So

917
00:57:25,920 --> 00:57:28,680
Speaker 1: and we've seen the demonstrations in Minneapolis have been huge.

918
00:57:30,560 --> 00:57:33,200
Speaker 1: But I understand, I get what you're saying. I think

919
00:57:34,400 --> 00:57:36,720
Speaker 1: what you're saying is it feels like European protests have

920
00:57:36,800 --> 00:57:40,560
Speaker 1: been bigger than about Trump in America than the American.

921
00:57:40,240 --> 00:57:48,560
Speaker 2: Protests about Trump in America. As for the issue of.

922
00:57:50,160 --> 00:58:00,760
Speaker 1: That unbridgeable divide, I am. I'm mostly common this won't

923
00:58:00,840 --> 00:58:05,640
Speaker 1: end with violence, that this era that here's what I

924
00:58:06,000 --> 00:58:08,480
Speaker 1: and I say this, and I don't say it for

925
00:58:09,360 --> 00:58:12,080
Speaker 1: dramatic purposes, but look, we're going to get through this.

926
00:58:13,680 --> 00:58:15,960
Speaker 1: We've been through these periods before.

927
00:58:16,120 --> 00:58:16,280
Speaker 2: Now.

928
00:58:17,200 --> 00:58:19,440
Speaker 1: A lot of people had to die before we got

929
00:58:19,480 --> 00:58:22,280
Speaker 1: through it with the Civil War, a lot of people

930
00:58:22,720 --> 00:58:27,840
Speaker 1: died with our horrible labor laws in the nineteen hundreds

931
00:58:27,880 --> 00:58:30,919
Speaker 1: and the nineteen tens. A lot of people die during

932
00:58:30,960 --> 00:58:34,560
Speaker 1: the Civil rights movement. So the question is how many

933
00:58:34,600 --> 00:58:37,080
Speaker 1: people have to die before we sort of turn the corner.

934
00:58:38,280 --> 00:58:43,600
Speaker 1: How violent it's already violent. We've already had violence right

935
00:58:43,720 --> 00:58:47,880
Speaker 1: January six was pretty violent. We've had two assassination attempts

936
00:58:47,880 --> 00:58:53,560
Speaker 1: on Donald Trump. We've had those assassinations in Minneapolis, first

937
00:58:53,600 --> 00:58:54,880
Speaker 1: of the lawmakers, then.

938
00:58:59,760 --> 00:59:00,439
Speaker 2: The two.

939
00:59:02,000 --> 00:59:08,800
Speaker 1: The two killings by by Ice agents. The question is, so, look,

940
00:59:09,840 --> 00:59:13,400
Speaker 1: we'll get through this? How how much blood has to

941
00:59:13,440 --> 00:59:19,000
Speaker 1: be spilled? Can we get through this without a full

942
00:59:19,040 --> 00:59:22,920
Speaker 1: fledged civil war? And you heard Tim Wilson. Now, I

943
00:59:23,840 --> 00:59:26,080
Speaker 1: I think we don't want to be there, but it

944
00:59:26,560 --> 00:59:28,760
Speaker 1: only takes you know, we are on it. We're in

945
00:59:28,800 --> 00:59:29,520
Speaker 1: a tinder box.

946
00:59:32,480 --> 00:59:32,640
Speaker 2: You know.

947
00:59:34,120 --> 00:59:36,640
Speaker 1: I'll tell you a scenario that I've been very nervous about.

948
00:59:37,960 --> 00:59:42,640
Speaker 1: If things had kept escalating in Minneapolis. Now, Donald Trump

949
00:59:42,760 --> 00:59:47,680
Speaker 1: chose the escalation, so did Tom Holman, right by sending

950
00:59:47,760 --> 00:59:49,760
Speaker 1: Tom omen there. And they're making and some of the

951
00:59:49,840 --> 00:59:52,440
Speaker 1: moves are real, and some of them might be the

952
00:59:52,760 --> 00:59:56,840
Speaker 1: UH for show. But it all is in an attempt

953
00:59:56,920 --> 01:00:01,440
Speaker 1: to de escalate, not escalate. And what it but things escalate?

954
01:00:01,480 --> 01:00:04,200
Speaker 1: It does Tim Walls call in the National Guard? And

955
01:00:04,280 --> 01:00:09,040
Speaker 1: if Tim Walls calls in the National Guard? Does Trump

956
01:00:09,120 --> 01:00:10,760
Speaker 1: then try to federalize that National Guard?

957
01:00:11,000 --> 01:00:11,800
Speaker 2: And who does is?

958
01:00:12,040 --> 01:00:17,720
Speaker 1: Do we see the National Guard and Minneapolis PD shooting

959
01:00:20,160 --> 01:00:22,080
Speaker 1: or being shot at by Ice and vice versa?

960
01:00:22,440 --> 01:00:22,560
Speaker 2: Right?

961
01:00:23,560 --> 01:00:34,200
Speaker 1: So I almost am uncomfortable even articulating that scenario, But

962
01:00:34,320 --> 01:00:36,520
Speaker 1: we have to be honest, right, it's all it's crossed,

963
01:00:36,800 --> 01:00:41,200
Speaker 1: clearly crossed your mind and it's crossed my mind. But

964
01:00:41,280 --> 01:00:43,720
Speaker 1: I don't think these divides are unbridgable. But I do think,

965
01:00:43,840 --> 01:00:46,960
Speaker 1: and I go back to something I've said, and I

966
01:00:47,040 --> 01:00:48,840
Speaker 1: think I've said it here a few times, and I

967
01:00:48,960 --> 01:00:54,000
Speaker 1: certainly say to my speeches, which is, you know what,

968
01:00:54,160 --> 01:01:00,120
Speaker 1: I think the biggest reason why particularly you guys, you

969
01:01:00,200 --> 01:01:03,960
Speaker 1: guys in Europe are struggling. You can't figure out what

970
01:01:04,000 --> 01:01:06,080
Speaker 1: you're seeing here. This looks so un American. Is the

971
01:01:06,160 --> 01:01:12,640
Speaker 1: American the America you're used to was Cold War America. Well,

972
01:01:13,800 --> 01:01:17,480
Speaker 1: Cold War America was an outlier in America. Cold War

973
01:01:17,560 --> 01:01:20,280
Speaker 1: America was the most pragmatic version of America that we had.

974
01:01:24,000 --> 01:01:24,680
Speaker 2: The rest.

975
01:01:26,200 --> 01:01:32,720
Speaker 1: American politics up until nineteen forty, you know, seventeen eighty

976
01:01:32,840 --> 01:01:36,720
Speaker 1: nine right for the Constitution in nineteen forty and American politics,

977
01:01:38,200 --> 01:01:44,840
Speaker 1: you know, from I'm going to go ahead and say

978
01:01:44,880 --> 01:01:48,240
Speaker 1: two thousand and five, two thousand and four to today

979
01:01:51,200 --> 01:01:58,040
Speaker 1: has been very familiar. Our natural state is polarization. We

980
01:01:58,200 --> 01:02:01,040
Speaker 1: make fifty two forty eight, fifty one forty nine decisions.

981
01:02:02,640 --> 01:02:05,560
Speaker 1: We don't make seventy thirty decisions. So there's a lot

982
01:02:05,640 --> 01:02:07,760
Speaker 1: of people that are always going to be in the

983
01:02:07,800 --> 01:02:14,200
Speaker 1: minority when we make decisions as a country. It's not

984
01:02:14,320 --> 01:02:17,960
Speaker 1: lost on me that we had our biggest growth as

985
01:02:18,000 --> 01:02:24,560
Speaker 1: an economic and security power in the Cold War, when

986
01:02:24,640 --> 01:02:27,680
Speaker 1: we were the most pragmatic, when we both parties kept

987
01:02:27,720 --> 01:02:33,480
Speaker 1: their extremes at bay, and you know, we focused on

988
01:02:33,560 --> 01:02:38,040
Speaker 1: the existential threat that was the Soviets and the fear

989
01:02:38,040 --> 01:02:43,960
Speaker 1: of nuclear holocaust, and that kept us sober politically. Then

990
01:02:44,000 --> 01:02:51,000
Speaker 1: that fear went away. So it so, I don't so,

991
01:02:51,080 --> 01:02:53,600
Speaker 1: I guess what I'm saying is the divides have always

992
01:02:53,640 --> 01:03:00,960
Speaker 1: been unbridgable. But it but they but they've been tolerated. Right,

993
01:03:01,320 --> 01:03:06,760
Speaker 1: We tolerate our divides. We accept that we disagree on

994
01:03:06,920 --> 01:03:08,680
Speaker 1: what those divides are, and we kind of muddle through.

995
01:03:11,640 --> 01:03:12,400
Speaker 1: So we'll get there.

996
01:03:14,800 --> 01:03:18,600
Speaker 2: But we've done a ton of damage. And you know,

997
01:03:18,920 --> 01:03:20,840
Speaker 2: I it's going to.

998
01:03:20,880 --> 01:03:25,400
Speaker 1: Take decades to restore the faith of global allies to

999
01:03:25,480 --> 01:03:29,200
Speaker 1: stick by the United States again. We're probably going to

1000
01:03:29,280 --> 01:03:33,400
Speaker 1: have to We're probably going to have to go seventy

1001
01:03:33,440 --> 01:03:35,520
Speaker 1: percent of the way when all of these relationships for

1002
01:03:35,920 --> 01:03:37,880
Speaker 1: a while, when for a long time we only had

1003
01:03:37,920 --> 01:03:41,920
Speaker 1: to go thirty percent of the way. And we're going

1004
01:03:42,000 --> 01:03:48,840
Speaker 1: to have to have leaders, people that run for president

1005
01:03:48,880 --> 01:03:51,720
Speaker 1: that accept the premise of what America is supposed to be.

1006
01:03:51,840 --> 01:03:54,440
Speaker 1: And you know, look, this is the first un American

1007
01:03:54,480 --> 01:03:56,800
Speaker 1: president we've ever had. He does not believe in the

1008
01:03:56,840 --> 01:04:00,520
Speaker 1: story of America. He does not believe that America an idea.

1009
01:04:02,440 --> 01:04:03,240
Speaker 1: You know, he doesn't.

1010
01:04:03,440 --> 01:04:03,800
Speaker 2: I don't.

1011
01:04:04,920 --> 01:04:06,680
Speaker 1: And here's the thing with Trump. It's not that he

1012
01:04:06,760 --> 01:04:08,960
Speaker 1: doesn't believe it. I don't think he's really thought about it.

1013
01:04:12,000 --> 01:04:13,960
Speaker 1: You know, I think about it all the time. I

1014
01:04:14,360 --> 01:04:16,640
Speaker 1: think of every president as a chapter in the story

1015
01:04:16,680 --> 01:04:23,600
Speaker 1: of America. He doesn't most of our not most every

1016
01:04:23,760 --> 01:04:27,200
Speaker 1: president in my lifetime, and every president for the most

1017
01:04:27,240 --> 01:04:30,560
Speaker 1: part that I've read about, believed that a baton was

1018
01:04:30,640 --> 01:04:33,560
Speaker 1: passed to them and they were going to be passing

1019
01:04:33,600 --> 01:04:38,000
Speaker 1: a baton, and that they were all writing another chapter

1020
01:04:38,080 --> 01:04:41,680
Speaker 1: in the story of America. Donald Trump doesn't want a chapter.

1021
01:04:41,920 --> 01:04:43,920
Speaker 1: He wants to throw away that book and only have

1022
01:04:44,120 --> 01:04:47,120
Speaker 1: a book, the Book of Trump. But he does not

1023
01:04:47,280 --> 01:04:51,080
Speaker 1: believe in the You know, I don't think he knows

1024
01:04:51,120 --> 01:04:53,520
Speaker 1: what a Federalist paper is. And I promise you he

1025
01:04:53,560 --> 01:04:55,560
Speaker 1: hasn't read it all. If he's read one, he didn't

1026
01:04:55,640 --> 01:05:07,760
Speaker 1: done it since grade school. Next question comes from got

1027
01:05:07,840 --> 01:05:11,760
Speaker 1: somebody from Chicago it's Mike, he said. Some presdident I

1028
01:05:11,760 --> 01:05:14,400
Speaker 1: were debating wild scenarios where Trump could serve a third term.

1029
01:05:14,480 --> 01:05:16,400
Speaker 1: One theory floated was that if Trump became Speaker of

1030
01:05:16,440 --> 01:05:19,000
Speaker 1: the House and the newly elected president and VP resigned,

1031
01:05:19,320 --> 01:05:21,240
Speaker 1: he could ascend to the presidency again. I know the

1032
01:05:21,280 --> 01:05:24,280
Speaker 1: Constitution bars him from being elected president again, but could

1033
01:05:24,360 --> 01:05:30,120
Speaker 1: he legally return via the line of succession. So it's funny.

1034
01:05:30,160 --> 01:05:32,000
Speaker 1: The Speaker of the House loophole has always been the

1035
01:05:32,040 --> 01:05:38,440
Speaker 1: one I've thought about too. I interviewed Steve Bannon about

1036
01:05:38,440 --> 01:05:41,680
Speaker 1: ten months ago and we went through this sould Trump

1037
01:05:41,760 --> 01:05:43,760
Speaker 1: twenty eight and he's like, oh, he's going to be

1038
01:05:43,840 --> 01:05:47,200
Speaker 1: unbalot And I said, I said, I know you want to.

1039
01:05:47,240 --> 01:05:51,040
Speaker 1: I said, constitution bars it. And he says, well, you

1040
01:05:51,200 --> 01:05:55,520
Speaker 1: just wait, We've got a path. It's the only one

1041
01:05:55,640 --> 01:06:00,400
Speaker 1: I can think of, is that one. I think that's

1042
01:06:00,440 --> 01:06:04,800
Speaker 1: the only one. I think it's the you know, it

1043
01:06:04,960 --> 01:06:08,560
Speaker 1: fits the description that my friend likes to say, which is,

1044
01:06:08,800 --> 01:06:11,240
Speaker 1: you know, our biggest problem with Trump is failure of imagination.

1045
01:06:12,280 --> 01:06:15,080
Speaker 1: You know, Donald Trump doesn't spend a lot of time

1046
01:06:15,160 --> 01:06:17,400
Speaker 1: thinking about what's the best way to tame the Iranians,

1047
01:06:17,480 --> 01:06:19,080
Speaker 1: but he does think a lot of time about all

1048
01:06:19,120 --> 01:06:21,840
Speaker 1: the different loopholes that he can exploit.

1049
01:06:21,760 --> 01:06:22,600
Speaker 2: In the Constitution.

1050
01:06:23,480 --> 01:06:26,040
Speaker 1: When you look at the language of the twenty second Amendment,

1051
01:06:26,560 --> 01:06:30,160
Speaker 1: it keeps using the word elected. Right, So that's loophole

1052
01:06:30,560 --> 01:06:33,959
Speaker 1: that you've found very well, and I think that that's

1053
01:06:34,000 --> 01:06:39,080
Speaker 1: a fair loophole. But the twelfth Amendment is fascinating because

1054
01:06:39,120 --> 01:06:43,080
Speaker 1: the wording doesn't have elected in there. It just simply says,

1055
01:06:43,480 --> 01:06:47,080
Speaker 1: no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall

1056
01:06:47,200 --> 01:06:50,000
Speaker 1: be eligible to that a vice president of the United States,

1057
01:06:51,360 --> 01:06:54,680
Speaker 1: and you're ineligible, no person. Let's read the word, no

1058
01:06:54,800 --> 01:06:57,600
Speaker 1: person shall be elected to the office of president more

1059
01:06:57,640 --> 01:07:00,360
Speaker 1: than twice. And no person who has held the office

1060
01:07:00,360 --> 01:07:03,080
Speaker 1: of president or acted as president for more than two

1061
01:07:03,200 --> 01:07:05,720
Speaker 1: years of a term to which some other person was

1062
01:07:05,760 --> 01:07:08,000
Speaker 1: elected president shall be elected to the office of the

1063
01:07:08,040 --> 01:07:09,560
Speaker 1: president more than once.

1064
01:07:12,080 --> 01:07:12,200
Speaker 2: Right.

1065
01:07:12,320 --> 01:07:15,640
Speaker 1: That's if a vice president takes over and serves less

1066
01:07:15,640 --> 01:07:18,080
Speaker 1: than two years of the previous president's term, they can

1067
01:07:18,120 --> 01:07:20,760
Speaker 1: still run for two full terms of their own, potentially

1068
01:07:20,800 --> 01:07:26,960
Speaker 1: serving ten years. So you know, the word elected matters

1069
01:07:27,000 --> 01:07:32,000
Speaker 1: a lot there. Right. You have to assume that Republicans

1070
01:07:32,040 --> 01:07:35,680
Speaker 1: win a House majority for this to happen. You have

1071
01:07:35,800 --> 01:07:39,880
Speaker 1: to assume that Donald Trump can get all the votes

1072
01:07:39,920 --> 01:07:44,320
Speaker 1: he needs to be speaker, so he would still have

1073
01:07:44,400 --> 01:07:48,960
Speaker 1: to go through a process right to become speaker. And

1074
01:07:49,320 --> 01:07:53,440
Speaker 1: I just, you know, so I think you've identified the

1075
01:07:53,560 --> 01:08:00,200
Speaker 1: one loophole where you could claim a fig leaf of

1076
01:08:00,360 --> 01:08:05,920
Speaker 1: constitutional legitimacy. But in some ways it reminds me of

1077
01:08:06,600 --> 01:08:11,560
Speaker 1: Putin and Medvedev. So Putin decided to become prime minister

1078
01:08:12,800 --> 01:08:16,719
Speaker 1: to abide by what was a two term limit in Russia,

1079
01:08:17,120 --> 01:08:18,320
Speaker 1: right for president.

1080
01:08:18,840 --> 01:08:19,479
Speaker 2: So what does he do?

1081
01:08:20,520 --> 01:08:25,559
Speaker 1: He makes the prime minister slot of the more powerful slot.

1082
01:08:27,080 --> 01:08:31,840
Speaker 1: He slides in and becomes prime minister. Medvedev becomes the president. Right,

1083
01:08:31,920 --> 01:08:33,720
Speaker 1: he's the head of state. But that's really it. It's

1084
01:08:33,760 --> 01:08:36,800
Speaker 1: kind of like he weakened the presidency for that period

1085
01:08:36,880 --> 01:08:41,439
Speaker 1: of time to sort of how Israel's presidency works. Right,

1086
01:08:41,560 --> 01:08:45,000
Speaker 1: the prime minister has all the power, the presidency is

1087
01:08:45,040 --> 01:08:49,000
Speaker 1: head of state, a little more ceremonial, a few pieces

1088
01:08:49,040 --> 01:08:53,360
Speaker 1: of power, but not a ton. That's what this would

1089
01:08:53,400 --> 01:08:56,920
Speaker 1: feel like, right, And I you know, I think you've

1090
01:08:57,000 --> 01:09:01,840
Speaker 1: identified the loophole, and I all so believe that attempting

1091
01:09:01,920 --> 01:09:06,000
Speaker 1: it it would be impossible. I still think if there's

1092
01:09:06,080 --> 01:09:12,160
Speaker 1: going to be a Trump on the ballot, and that's

1093
01:09:12,200 --> 01:09:14,840
Speaker 1: the thing, right, Like Republicans would rather have a Trump

1094
01:09:14,880 --> 01:09:18,240
Speaker 1: on a ballot than Trumps president, right because they it's

1095
01:09:18,280 --> 01:09:22,200
Speaker 1: Trump's voters that they need to get their majorities in Congress,

1096
01:09:22,560 --> 01:09:25,040
Speaker 1: and they don't necessarily want to actually work with Trump

1097
01:09:25,760 --> 01:09:28,720
Speaker 1: the situation you're outlining, you know, and do they just

1098
01:09:28,880 --> 01:09:32,479
Speaker 1: campaign that Trump's going to run for speaker and then

1099
01:09:32,520 --> 01:09:35,840
Speaker 1: you make it a referendum on that? Right? But I

1100
01:09:35,960 --> 01:09:41,240
Speaker 1: do think you've found the loophole that it in theory

1101
01:09:41,680 --> 01:09:47,639
Speaker 1: could be it. I will just say I just don't

1102
01:09:47,680 --> 01:09:49,720
Speaker 1: think it could. I don't think he could pull it off.

1103
01:09:49,760 --> 01:09:52,400
Speaker 1: And then you know, the actuary tables are going to

1104
01:09:52,439 --> 01:09:54,440
Speaker 1: catch up to Donald Trump sooner.

1105
01:09:54,240 --> 01:09:54,680
Speaker 2: Than you think.

1106
01:09:55,840 --> 01:09:58,080
Speaker 1: Next question comes from Branden and Charlotte. Hey, I really

1107
01:09:58,120 --> 01:09:59,920
Speaker 1: enjoy the podcast. Appreciate how you keep us in FUM

1108
01:10:00,240 --> 01:10:02,599
Speaker 1: without leaning into full doom and gloom. What are your

1109
01:10:02,600 --> 01:10:05,040
Speaker 1: thoughts on the DJ Collecting voter roles and seizing ballot

1110
01:10:05,080 --> 01:10:07,599
Speaker 1: boxes in Fulton County, Georgia feels like voter suppression or worse,

1111
01:10:07,920 --> 01:10:09,639
Speaker 1: a way to track and target people who didn't vote

1112
01:10:09,640 --> 01:10:12,520
Speaker 1: for Trump. Why isn't this getting more attention and how concerned.

1113
01:10:12,160 --> 01:10:12,600
Speaker 2: Should we be?

1114
01:10:14,080 --> 01:10:17,280
Speaker 1: Well, I think it's getting a decent amount of tension.

1115
01:10:17,320 --> 01:10:19,479
Speaker 1: What I don't understand is what they want to do

1116
01:10:19,600 --> 01:10:21,200
Speaker 1: with all these voter roles. I think some of this

1117
01:10:21,400 --> 01:10:24,599
Speaker 1: has to do with just simply purging roles voter roles,

1118
01:10:25,320 --> 01:10:28,200
Speaker 1: and just trying to make it harder. You know, people

1119
01:10:28,200 --> 01:10:29,200
Speaker 1: are going to have to reregister.

1120
01:10:30,280 --> 01:10:31,240
Speaker 2: I know what I would do.

1121
01:10:31,520 --> 01:10:35,439
Speaker 1: If you're concerned that they're messing with your voter registration,

1122
01:10:35,600 --> 01:10:38,439
Speaker 1: just go register to vote again. You know it cancels

1123
01:10:38,479 --> 01:10:43,640
Speaker 1: out the old registration and just do it again. That

1124
01:10:43,720 --> 01:10:45,720
Speaker 1: would be the number one way I'd protect myself on

1125
01:10:45,840 --> 01:10:48,559
Speaker 1: this if if I had, if I were a registered

1126
01:10:48,640 --> 01:10:52,320
Speaker 1: voter in a state that has agreed to letting the

1127
01:10:52,360 --> 01:10:59,559
Speaker 1: Department of Justice have the voter roles. You know, there's

1128
01:10:59,560 --> 01:11:03,920
Speaker 1: a part of me that says, call their bluff and say,

1129
01:11:04,120 --> 01:11:06,840
Speaker 1: you know, yes, let's let's let's do an audit of

1130
01:11:06,880 --> 01:11:10,040
Speaker 1: all the voter roles. Let's set up a special committee,

1131
01:11:10,040 --> 01:11:12,479
Speaker 1: and let's explain how it works and explain how each

1132
01:11:12,520 --> 01:11:20,960
Speaker 1: state does it. Ultimately, what I think Trump's up to

1133
01:11:21,120 --> 01:11:24,519
Speaker 1: is that he just he just wants to keep feeding

1134
01:11:26,920 --> 01:11:32,280
Speaker 1: the conspiracy that he's somehow won in twenty twenty, and

1135
01:11:32,640 --> 01:11:38,680
Speaker 1: it's he is just so committed to it. I mean,

1136
01:11:38,760 --> 01:11:41,360
Speaker 1: I guess it's amazing that he's committed to the bit

1137
01:11:41,520 --> 01:11:45,160
Speaker 1: this long, right, but it is sort of I find

1138
01:11:45,200 --> 01:11:48,800
Speaker 1: it laughable, except it's so serious, right, what he's trying

1139
01:11:48,840 --> 01:11:53,000
Speaker 1: to do in the manipulation of it all. Yeah, I

1140
01:11:53,040 --> 01:11:57,200
Speaker 1: think what you're I think the realistic fear we should

1141
01:11:57,240 --> 01:12:00,760
Speaker 1: have is is a form of voter suppression, which is

1142
01:12:00,880 --> 01:12:06,200
Speaker 1: just purging of voter rolls or using it to you know,

1143
01:12:07,160 --> 01:12:12,479
Speaker 1: perhaps the information is given to some nefarious political direct

1144
01:12:12,520 --> 01:12:17,600
Speaker 1: mail company to scare those voters from voting. But there

1145
01:12:17,640 --> 01:12:20,800
Speaker 1: are other ways to get those voter roles too. But

1146
01:12:20,920 --> 01:12:24,200
Speaker 1: that's what that's why, you know. I think the fail

1147
01:12:24,240 --> 01:12:27,000
Speaker 1: safe is if you're in one of these states that

1148
01:12:27,200 --> 01:12:31,760
Speaker 1: is decided to not care about their Tenth Amendment rights.

1149
01:12:32,720 --> 01:12:34,920
Speaker 1: I'm very curious to see what happens with this lawsuit

1150
01:12:34,960 --> 01:12:36,559
Speaker 1: from Fulton County with it and see if they get

1151
01:12:36,600 --> 01:12:41,320
Speaker 1: their ballots back. If federalism is still in existence, they'll

1152
01:12:41,360 --> 01:12:42,160
Speaker 1: get their ballots back.

1153
01:12:45,080 --> 01:12:46,120
Speaker 2: But I would.

1154
01:12:47,640 --> 01:12:50,800
Speaker 1: I would advocate for, you know, just go run story again,

1155
01:12:53,000 --> 01:12:58,439
Speaker 1: give them more voter roles to go through. Next question

1156
01:12:58,520 --> 01:13:00,599
Speaker 1: comes from Brian. Hey, I've been a fan works since

1157
01:13:00,640 --> 01:13:02,400
Speaker 1: twenty oh seven. All right, thanks for everything you do.

1158
01:13:02,760 --> 01:13:06,240
Speaker 1: Maybe I need a refreshment. Our politics usually works what

1159
01:13:06,720 --> 01:13:11,280
Speaker 1: as usual anymore? But anyway, but isn't it unusual for

1160
01:13:11,360 --> 01:13:13,080
Speaker 1: the out party to get a bill through? How much

1161
01:13:13,120 --> 01:13:15,719
Speaker 1: influence should we expect in a situation like this? Best bride?

1162
01:13:16,000 --> 01:13:22,280
Speaker 1: One hundred percent? Now, I'll say this. Traditionally, when a

1163
01:13:22,479 --> 01:13:28,519
Speaker 1: president gets shellacked in a midterm George W. Bush oh six,

1164
01:13:29,320 --> 01:13:33,000
Speaker 1: Barack Obama twenty ten and twenty fourteen, Bill Clinton nineteen

1165
01:13:33,040 --> 01:13:40,280
Speaker 1: ninety four, they've wanted to prove that, particularly Obama twenty

1166
01:13:40,360 --> 01:13:44,599
Speaker 1: ten and Clinton ninety four, because they had their own

1167
01:13:44,720 --> 01:13:48,200
Speaker 1: real storry about that. Hey, all right, we can go

1168
01:13:48,360 --> 01:13:50,320
Speaker 1: I can govern with the other side. Let me show

1169
01:13:50,320 --> 01:13:51,679
Speaker 1: you how I can govern with the other side.

1170
01:13:51,840 --> 01:13:52,240
Speaker 2: And there's you.

1171
01:13:52,560 --> 01:13:54,880
Speaker 1: And by the way, the new majority. Usually it's in

1172
01:13:54,960 --> 01:13:57,320
Speaker 1: their interest to prove because a lot of them won

1173
01:13:57,400 --> 01:13:59,160
Speaker 1: by saying, look, I'll work with Trump where I can,

1174
01:13:59,320 --> 01:14:00,760
Speaker 1: or you know, I'll work with Obama where I can,

1175
01:14:00,840 --> 01:14:07,560
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera. So so bad, there might be

1176
01:14:08,080 --> 01:14:10,800
Speaker 1: a few a few things here or there. Maybe it's

1177
01:14:10,840 --> 01:14:14,599
Speaker 1: on healthcare subsidies. I mean, Trump's such a political chameleon, right,

1178
01:14:14,640 --> 01:14:18,920
Speaker 1: he has no ideology, and if you know, it all

1179
01:14:18,960 --> 01:14:25,200
Speaker 1: depends on how much the Democrats want to want to

1180
01:14:25,560 --> 01:14:30,439
Speaker 1: allow Trump to come along for the ride, you know,

1181
01:14:30,720 --> 01:14:33,760
Speaker 1: or do they want instead to prepare for twenty twenty

1182
01:14:33,800 --> 01:14:38,200
Speaker 1: eight in twenty twenty nine, right, and you and you

1183
01:14:38,360 --> 01:14:40,960
Speaker 1: actually pass bills that are designed to be vetoed.

1184
01:14:41,960 --> 01:14:43,120
Speaker 2: So I think there are two ways.

1185
01:14:43,160 --> 01:14:46,160
Speaker 1: If Democrats get control of Congress, of what you know,

1186
01:14:46,439 --> 01:14:49,200
Speaker 1: you find a few things you can work on, particularly affordability,

1187
01:14:49,320 --> 01:14:52,360
Speaker 1: maybe something on electricity. You know, there's going to be

1188
01:14:52,479 --> 01:14:54,920
Speaker 1: things that you should You got your budgets and things

1189
01:14:55,000 --> 01:14:58,760
Speaker 1: like that. But I might argue that if you're if

1190
01:14:58,800 --> 01:15:03,840
Speaker 1: you're trying, you know that you pass some bills and

1191
01:15:03,920 --> 01:15:06,120
Speaker 1: you dare him to veto it. Now, the question is

1192
01:15:06,160 --> 01:15:08,760
Speaker 1: what if he doesn't. And this is Trump, you never know.

1193
01:15:10,160 --> 01:15:15,200
Speaker 1: How much do you attempt to work with him? I

1194
01:15:15,280 --> 01:15:17,840
Speaker 1: think it depends on how you got elected. I think

1195
01:15:17,880 --> 01:15:21,360
Speaker 1: some people got elected to say we've got to eradicate

1196
01:15:21,439 --> 01:15:24,640
Speaker 1: Trump from politics, and some people will get elected by

1197
01:15:24,960 --> 01:15:27,880
Speaker 1: promising those swing voters, look, they're you know, I'm not

1198
01:15:27,920 --> 01:15:29,840
Speaker 1: going to throw out every idea just because Trump came

1199
01:15:29,920 --> 01:15:37,599
Speaker 1: up with it. But I do think when you look

1200
01:15:37,680 --> 01:15:44,120
Speaker 1: at you know, there was some affordability bills, that some

1201
01:15:44,280 --> 01:15:48,200
Speaker 1: economic stimulus that the Democrats passed in O seven that

1202
01:15:48,320 --> 01:15:53,920
Speaker 1: George W. Bush signed. There was certainly welfare reform that

1203
01:15:54,040 --> 01:15:59,160
Speaker 1: Republicans passed that bill Clinton signed. So and we like,

1204
01:15:59,320 --> 01:16:03,800
Speaker 1: I go back to there's no greater political chameleon than

1205
01:16:03,840 --> 01:16:08,639
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. And you know, there's always this one instinct

1206
01:16:08,680 --> 01:16:11,120
Speaker 1: of his like, look at what he did, was how

1207
01:16:11,200 --> 01:16:14,040
Speaker 1: he was with mom Donnie. Oh, Mom Donnie won by you.

1208
01:16:14,160 --> 01:16:17,800
Speaker 1: You know, he likes to be associated with winners, and

1209
01:16:17,960 --> 01:16:20,559
Speaker 1: he may deem especially if it's a blowout. He may

1210
01:16:21,200 --> 01:16:23,439
Speaker 1: want to show that there are some things he's because

1211
01:16:23,439 --> 01:16:25,400
Speaker 1: that means some of his voters voted for the Democrats.

1212
01:16:27,320 --> 01:16:33,400
Speaker 1: So I wouldn't don't I wouldn't assume. I wouldn't assume

1213
01:16:33,439 --> 01:16:36,080
Speaker 1: it's that it's going to be nothing but messaging bills

1214
01:16:36,560 --> 01:16:39,800
Speaker 1: if Democrats win full control of Congress in working with Trump.

1215
01:16:41,680 --> 01:16:43,200
Speaker 1: All right, I'm going to have two more questions here

1216
01:16:43,240 --> 01:16:46,479
Speaker 1: and this will be I will empty my my cue

1217
01:16:47,120 --> 01:16:50,720
Speaker 1: four this week, Hey, Chuck, Anthony from La here, long time,

1218
01:16:50,760 --> 01:16:52,880
Speaker 1: first time quick question. If the Senate ends up split,

1219
01:16:52,960 --> 01:16:55,720
Speaker 1: say forty eight Republicans, forty eight Democrats and four independents,

1220
01:16:56,000 --> 01:16:58,400
Speaker 1: who are the independence By the way, how is majority

1221
01:16:58,520 --> 01:17:01,040
Speaker 1: controlled determined? Do Independence have to declare caucus and can

1222
01:17:01,120 --> 01:17:02,920
Speaker 1: they switch at any time? Could that lead to the

1223
01:17:02,960 --> 01:17:05,439
Speaker 1: majority leadership changing hands? Thanks for turning me into a

1224
01:17:05,479 --> 01:17:09,560
Speaker 1: college football fan last year, Anthony right on. Perhaps the

1225
01:17:11,040 --> 01:17:14,240
Speaker 1: the conferences ESPN or Fox can give me a kickback

1226
01:17:14,280 --> 01:17:18,880
Speaker 1: for for bringing bringing another fan into the full well.

1227
01:17:20,000 --> 01:17:24,840
Speaker 1: The independents also vote on who which who which party

1228
01:17:24,880 --> 01:17:29,960
Speaker 1: should organize. Now some of that stuff's usually negotiated, you know,

1229
01:17:30,080 --> 01:17:33,320
Speaker 1: behind the scenes. Now, who are your four independents? Right?

1230
01:17:33,760 --> 01:17:35,759
Speaker 1: I think Lisa Murkowski is up for grabs?

1231
01:17:37,080 --> 01:17:37,240
Speaker 2: Right?

1232
01:17:37,320 --> 01:17:42,360
Speaker 1: I think Lisa Murkowski if if if her vote is

1233
01:17:42,439 --> 01:17:46,280
Speaker 1: the difference between the Democrats having full control of Congress

1234
01:17:46,960 --> 01:17:50,599
Speaker 1: and organizing with them, right, if they are a seat short,

1235
01:17:51,760 --> 01:17:58,000
Speaker 1: does Murkowski become you know, and do Democrats offer her,

1236
01:18:00,760 --> 01:18:04,920
Speaker 1: say energy and natural resources in exchange for coming over?

1237
01:18:05,040 --> 01:18:09,400
Speaker 1: So the Independence in theory have some leverage here if

1238
01:18:09,439 --> 01:18:11,719
Speaker 1: they choose to use it. Right, you know, I've always

1239
01:18:11,720 --> 01:18:13,599
Speaker 1: had this dream that the four to six of them

1240
01:18:13,640 --> 01:18:16,880
Speaker 1: in there would be independence and they would always vote

1241
01:18:16,880 --> 01:18:20,600
Speaker 1: in a block right each time and maybe maybe they

1242
01:18:20,640 --> 01:18:25,680
Speaker 1: would agree, okay, for calendar year twenty twenty seven, Democrats

1243
01:18:25,720 --> 01:18:28,680
Speaker 1: are in charge for calendar year twenty twenty eight, Republicans.

1244
01:18:28,240 --> 01:18:28,920
Speaker 2: Or whatever it is.

1245
01:18:30,120 --> 01:18:35,439
Speaker 1: But ultimately it's it's you know, if it's one of

1246
01:18:35,479 --> 01:18:39,120
Speaker 1: those where you know, we had it when we had

1247
01:18:39,160 --> 01:18:42,000
Speaker 1: a fifty to fifty Senate with Dick Cheney as the tiebreaker,

1248
01:18:42,080 --> 01:18:45,120
Speaker 1: when George W. Bush came into office, and then Jim

1249
01:18:45,200 --> 01:18:48,320
Speaker 1: Jefferts decided to leave the Republican Party become an independent

1250
01:18:48,360 --> 01:18:50,880
Speaker 1: and caucus with the Democrats, and the minute he did that,

1251
01:18:51,439 --> 01:18:53,320
Speaker 1: it went from a fifty to fifty Senate to a

1252
01:18:53,360 --> 01:18:56,879
Speaker 1: fifty one to forty nine Senate and the Democrats had control.

1253
01:18:57,880 --> 01:19:02,920
Speaker 1: So that's how works, right, And yes, it can be

1254
01:19:03,080 --> 01:19:03,639
Speaker 1: that fickle.

1255
01:19:04,439 --> 01:19:04,600
Speaker 2: You know.

1256
01:19:04,760 --> 01:19:07,800
Speaker 1: Jefferts just said, ask screw it, I'm out now. I

1257
01:19:07,840 --> 01:19:10,080
Speaker 1: think there was a lobbying campaign by Dashel that Harry

1258
01:19:10,160 --> 01:19:12,400
Speaker 1: Reid and all of that stuff that was taking place.

1259
01:19:13,600 --> 01:19:15,560
Speaker 1: You know, Jeffers was the most liberal Republican in the

1260
01:19:15,600 --> 01:19:19,400
Speaker 1: Senate at the time, right, Barack Obama got on inspector

1261
01:19:19,439 --> 01:19:22,559
Speaker 1: to flip to become the sixtieth Democrat for a small

1262
01:19:22,600 --> 01:19:27,679
Speaker 1: period of time until the Scott Brown election. So yeah,

1263
01:19:29,479 --> 01:19:33,000
Speaker 1: in theory, majority can change hands mid term. Wheat, Like

1264
01:19:33,080 --> 01:19:35,439
Speaker 1: I said, it happened in my lifetime in twenty oh

1265
01:19:35,479 --> 01:19:43,240
Speaker 1: one with Vermont Senator Jim Jeffers. Last question comes from

1266
01:19:43,280 --> 01:19:47,559
Speaker 1: Nelson H and New Orleans, Louisiana. I love the podcast.

1267
01:19:47,600 --> 01:19:50,000
Speaker 1: I'm calling my shot. If James Talerico wins the Democratic

1268
01:19:50,080 --> 01:19:53,000
Speaker 1: primary upsets John Cornyn, I'm getting the vibe that his

1269
01:19:53,080 --> 01:19:55,200
Speaker 1: timing could be perfect to catch fire, just like Barack

1270
01:19:55,200 --> 01:19:57,439
Speaker 1: Obama did in twenty eight. Sure it probably won't happen,

1271
01:19:57,479 --> 01:19:59,439
Speaker 1: but think about it. As we all say, history doesn't

1272
01:19:59,439 --> 01:20:01,439
Speaker 1: repeat itself, but it sure does. Rhyme all the best

1273
01:20:01,479 --> 01:20:04,720
Speaker 1: and ghost saints spelled of course with the French do.

1274
01:20:06,400 --> 01:20:11,599
Speaker 1: I am a believer of the following that the most

1275
01:20:11,800 --> 01:20:14,680
Speaker 1: likely Democratic nominee in twenty eight is somebody we're not

1276
01:20:14,840 --> 01:20:19,719
Speaker 1: talking about today. I have floated Tall Rico as that idea.

1277
01:20:19,880 --> 01:20:22,320
Speaker 1: Now I will say this, I think he's This was

1278
01:20:22,360 --> 01:20:28,280
Speaker 1: a bad week for tall Rico's politics, right this story

1279
01:20:28,600 --> 01:20:34,040
Speaker 1: about how he referred according to an influencer, Tall Rico

1280
01:20:34,280 --> 01:20:38,840
Speaker 1: referred to Colin Allred as a mediocre black man versus

1281
01:20:39,040 --> 01:20:45,080
Speaker 1: Jasmine Crockett, a talented black woman, and that phrase really

1282
01:20:45,200 --> 01:20:48,599
Speaker 1: took off on social media. Colin Allred certainly took offense

1283
01:20:48,640 --> 01:20:52,240
Speaker 1: to it, understandably, So now there was no recording, it

1284
01:20:52,360 --> 01:20:57,920
Speaker 1: wasn't clear what was what I found interesting to pick

1285
01:20:58,000 --> 01:21:00,640
Speaker 1: a word was tall. Rico never did I'd saying it

1286
01:21:01,320 --> 01:21:05,559
Speaker 1: and basically confessed to saying something like it. And then

1287
01:21:05,840 --> 01:21:08,760
Speaker 1: because when you're doing the that isn't what I meant

1288
01:21:08,800 --> 01:21:12,080
Speaker 1: to say, that's code for.

1289
01:21:12,400 --> 01:21:14,439
Speaker 2: Yeah, I probably was a little loose.

1290
01:21:15,000 --> 01:21:16,680
Speaker 1: Now you've thought he was off the record, but hey,

1291
01:21:18,600 --> 01:21:24,439
Speaker 1: if you're not assuming, you know I do. The only

1292
01:21:24,560 --> 01:21:26,680
Speaker 1: time I assume I'm not being quoted is when I'm

1293
01:21:26,720 --> 01:21:29,880
Speaker 1: in a private home with my close friends or in

1294
01:21:30,080 --> 01:21:34,759
Speaker 1: my house. I am very careful in public. I assume

1295
01:21:35,560 --> 01:21:38,000
Speaker 1: when people say anything to me that it's very possible

1296
01:21:38,000 --> 01:21:41,600
Speaker 1: they're recording that they could be used, you know, in

1297
01:21:41,720 --> 01:21:46,479
Speaker 1: social media, for better or for worse. Right, So I

1298
01:21:46,600 --> 01:21:49,840
Speaker 1: am a big milk toaster. When you come and see

1299
01:21:49,920 --> 01:21:53,519
Speaker 1: me in public. It's sort of in sort of you know,

1300
01:21:53,640 --> 01:22:01,320
Speaker 1: unofficial venues. So so I think it's he's I think

1301
01:22:01,360 --> 01:22:05,160
Speaker 1: it's done some damage. And you know, I'm not one

1302
01:22:05,240 --> 01:22:07,920
Speaker 1: hundred percent convinced. Colin all Redwood have Endorseddasman Crockett, but

1303
01:22:08,040 --> 01:22:16,720
Speaker 1: he is now and he's all in now. So but

1304
01:22:17,880 --> 01:22:20,479
Speaker 1: where your head is at is where my head's at.

1305
01:22:21,439 --> 01:22:24,760
Speaker 1: So another name I throw out there, Molly McMorrow, Right,

1306
01:22:24,880 --> 01:22:27,599
Speaker 1: I think she's somebody who are already went viral once

1307
01:22:27,640 --> 01:22:30,000
Speaker 1: when she was a state legislator. She's now decided to

1308
01:22:30,080 --> 01:22:34,439
Speaker 1: run for US Senate. She's I think she's going to

1309
01:22:34,439 --> 01:22:38,360
Speaker 1: be the goldilocks candidate that Democratic primary, right, Hanley Stevens

1310
01:22:38,360 --> 01:22:40,720
Speaker 1: is going to seem to establishment Abdul say it, it

1311
01:22:40,800 --> 01:22:42,479
Speaker 1: might seem too progressive. She's going to be the one

1312
01:22:42,520 --> 01:22:44,840
Speaker 1: that seems to bridge. That's certainly the race she's trying

1313
01:22:44,880 --> 01:22:48,200
Speaker 1: to run. And it's probably going to work just because

1314
01:22:48,240 --> 01:22:52,000
Speaker 1: of how defined I think Stevens and I'll say it

1315
01:22:52,280 --> 01:23:00,719
Speaker 1: are becoming maybe Rob saying getting elected governor of Iowa

1316
01:23:03,800 --> 01:23:07,240
Speaker 1: if some Democrat pulls a statewide upset in the Deep South,

1317
01:23:07,320 --> 01:23:10,200
Speaker 1: in any race. Right, the point is is that I

1318
01:23:10,479 --> 01:23:14,360
Speaker 1: think it's just as likely. I'm with you, remember better

1319
01:23:14,439 --> 01:23:17,960
Speaker 1: O'Rourke was considered a major presidential candidate. He didn't even

1320
01:23:18,040 --> 01:23:22,519
Speaker 1: win in twenty eighteen, and within six months of losing,

1321
01:23:22,680 --> 01:23:25,519
Speaker 1: he's considered one of the front runners for the nomination

1322
01:23:26,640 --> 01:23:29,080
Speaker 1: because of how close he came to defeating Ted Cruz

1323
01:23:29,120 --> 01:23:33,639
Speaker 1: in twenty eighteen. So the Democratic Party's history is they're

1324
01:23:33,920 --> 01:23:37,360
Speaker 1: likely more likely to go with the new, freshest face

1325
01:23:37,479 --> 01:23:41,519
Speaker 1: they can find Pete Bootage. Look, without the intervention of

1326
01:23:41,600 --> 01:23:44,960
Speaker 1: Jim Clyburn and COVID, I will go to my grave,

1327
01:23:45,040 --> 01:23:47,880
Speaker 1: believe in bodhajj and Sanders have a fight to the convention,

1328
01:23:48,280 --> 01:23:51,200
Speaker 1: and I think Pete wins the convention fight, but it's close.

1329
01:23:52,240 --> 01:23:54,400
Speaker 2: But you know, and that's a.

1330
01:23:54,439 --> 01:23:59,400
Speaker 1: World without COVID essentially, and in a world that Iowa

1331
01:24:00,240 --> 01:24:03,479
Speaker 1: the Caucuses correctly and gave Pete his correct victory there

1332
01:24:03,520 --> 01:24:07,080
Speaker 1: in Iowa. But either way, the point was this former

1333
01:24:07,160 --> 01:24:09,800
Speaker 1: mayor of South Bend, who lost a race for d

1334
01:24:09,920 --> 01:24:12,040
Speaker 1: n C chair suddenly is one of the front runners

1335
01:24:12,040 --> 01:24:17,080
Speaker 1: for the Democratic nomination. Right the Democratic Party, an unknown

1336
01:24:17,160 --> 01:24:20,080
Speaker 1: governor from Georgia ends up the Democratic nominee. A lesser

1337
01:24:20,160 --> 01:24:23,680
Speaker 1: known governor of Arkansas ends up the Democratic A guy

1338
01:24:23,720 --> 01:24:27,920
Speaker 1: who was state senator in six years before he ever

1339
01:24:28,040 --> 01:24:30,599
Speaker 1: ran for president ends up the nominee in Barack Obama.

1340
01:24:32,520 --> 01:24:34,680
Speaker 1: The history of the Democratic Party is when they and

1341
01:24:35,120 --> 01:24:39,479
Speaker 1: here's another fact in this recent era, when they go

1342
01:24:39,720 --> 01:24:42,960
Speaker 1: with first time candidates, the new candidate, they're more likely

1343
01:24:43,040 --> 01:24:45,080
Speaker 1: to win. When they go with people that have been

1344
01:24:45,120 --> 01:24:50,000
Speaker 1: around a while, they're more likely to lose. Al Gore,

1345
01:24:50,880 --> 01:24:57,799
Speaker 1: John Kerry, Joe Hillary Clinton, sitting Vice President, Kamala Harris.

1346
01:24:58,080 --> 01:24:59,680
Speaker 2: Right, Biden was an.

1347
01:24:59,600 --> 01:25:03,559
Speaker 1: Outline, an unusual you know, in a normal primary process,

1348
01:25:03,680 --> 01:25:06,720
Speaker 1: Joe Biden never wins that primary. Right, it was a

1349
01:25:07,000 --> 01:25:11,960
Speaker 1: he was an accidental primary winner because of the circumstances

1350
01:25:13,439 --> 01:25:21,080
Speaker 1: of of Covid and Clyburn, and that nomination was looking

1351
01:25:21,120 --> 01:25:24,800
Speaker 1: a lot more like seventy six with beat Boodaget's Jimmy

1352
01:25:24,840 --> 01:25:31,960
Speaker 1: Carter parallels, or even a bit ninety two with Bill Clinton,

1353
01:25:32,280 --> 01:25:33,720
Speaker 1: you know, having to go all the way to the

1354
01:25:33,760 --> 01:25:41,080
Speaker 1: convention and keep beating back Jerry Brown. So I don't

1355
01:25:41,120 --> 01:25:47,720
Speaker 1: think you're off kilter here. I like I said, let's

1356
01:25:47,760 --> 01:25:50,479
Speaker 1: see how taal Rico manages this first crisis of his

1357
01:25:50,600 --> 01:25:53,920
Speaker 1: political career. And I'll tell you this. I you know,

1358
01:25:54,120 --> 01:25:58,280
Speaker 1: I was I was more pro tol Rico as a

1359
01:25:58,320 --> 01:26:02,240
Speaker 1: potential dark horse if he'd run for governor then running

1360
01:26:02,240 --> 01:26:02,719
Speaker 1: for Senate.

1361
01:26:03,479 --> 01:26:04,360
Speaker 2: I do think that.

1362
01:26:06,200 --> 01:26:08,720
Speaker 1: He's going to I think he'd have made it more

1363
01:26:09,320 --> 01:26:10,920
Speaker 1: because I think he could have run and lost for

1364
01:26:11,000 --> 01:26:13,760
Speaker 1: governor but kept it close and still preserved sort of

1365
01:26:13,840 --> 01:26:17,840
Speaker 1: a future. I think this Senate seat right, especially if

1366
01:26:17,920 --> 01:26:20,560
Speaker 1: Kakeet past the primary. But I just think it's the

1367
01:26:20,600 --> 01:26:23,360
Speaker 1: wrong position. I think he had a serving in Austin

1368
01:26:23,479 --> 01:26:26,599
Speaker 1: in the Texas State legislature. I just thought his issues

1369
01:26:27,000 --> 01:26:29,720
Speaker 1: that he was that Abbott would have been a better

1370
01:26:29,800 --> 01:26:34,120
Speaker 1: foil for him, and it would have been a It

1371
01:26:34,160 --> 01:26:36,680
Speaker 1: would have been better for the party, better for the

1372
01:26:36,720 --> 01:26:39,320
Speaker 1: future of Texas Democrats. But he's trying to take a

1373
01:26:39,360 --> 01:26:43,280
Speaker 1: short cut. He has too many consultants, I think whispering

1374
01:26:43,360 --> 01:26:46,639
Speaker 1: sweet presidential nothing's in his ear and saying, hey, senate's

1375
01:26:46,640 --> 01:26:47,439
Speaker 1: an easier road.

1376
01:26:48,760 --> 01:26:52,120
Speaker 2: Okay, good luck with that.

1377
01:26:54,280 --> 01:26:58,120
Speaker 1: But I like your thinking, Nelson, because history backs up

1378
01:26:58,160 --> 01:27:01,800
Speaker 1: your prediction whether it's him. The point is, if you're

1379
01:27:01,800 --> 01:27:05,679
Speaker 1: going to close this off into gambling terms, go find

1380
01:27:05,760 --> 01:27:08,720
Speaker 1: the twelve to fifteen to twenty to one shot. Right

1381
01:27:08,760 --> 01:27:11,439
Speaker 1: now in the Democratic primary, they're more likely to be

1382
01:27:11,520 --> 01:27:18,479
Speaker 1: the nominee than one somebody who's run before, and two

1383
01:27:20,200 --> 01:27:27,439
Speaker 1: somebody who had national name recognition ten years earlier.

1384
01:27:29,640 --> 01:27:31,439
Speaker 2: How are that? Enjoy your weekend.

1385
01:27:32,280 --> 01:27:37,759
Speaker 1: I hope nothing crazy happens that I see you before Monday,

1386
01:27:38,360 --> 01:27:42,479
Speaker 1: but if not, hey, that's the beauty of being in

1387
01:27:42,600 --> 01:27:43,080
Speaker 1: this world.

1388
01:27:43,200 --> 01:27:46,080
Speaker 2: We can pop in and quickly jump on something. But

1389
01:27:46,320 --> 01:27:49,080
Speaker 2: if not, for that, I'll see it Monday. Joy the

1390
01:27:49,120 --> 01:27:49,519
Speaker 2: super Bowl