Speaker 1: Hello there, I'm chucked out. Welcome to another episode of
Speaker 1: The Chuck Podcast. And yes, I'm still the host of
Speaker 1: my own podcast. I tas because I don't know who
Speaker 1: else would do it if you're going to name it
Speaker 1: the Chuck Podcast. But I digress. I welcome new listeners,
Speaker 1: new subscribers to the content, whether you've liked and subscribed
Speaker 1: on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, wherever you get your podcast, if
Speaker 1: you watch us in video form as well, thank you.
Speaker 1: We've seen the growth lately. It's great, it's reassuring, and
Speaker 1: it's good to know. Look, this is a tough business
Speaker 1: to get into the independent media business, especially if you're
Speaker 1: not a partisan hack.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: It's a lot easier to be a partisan hack in
Speaker 1: this world in order to quote get attention. But when
Speaker 1: you're building something that I'm hoping to be building here,
Speaker 1: it's incremental. So it makes you more grateful that I
Speaker 1: know I'm earning every like and subscribe that you get,
Speaker 1: rather than just trying to ride a grievance wave, whether
Speaker 1: it's a liberal one or a concern a bit of one.
Speaker 1: On this front, I'm going to go through three topics, well,
Speaker 1: two topics today, plus a fun interview hip the Welcome
Speaker 1: to Welcome to Reality with the World of Epstein, Jeffrey
Speaker 1: Epstein and the Epstein Files going to tackle a little
Speaker 1: bit of where Elon Musk if he chose to actually
Speaker 1: engage in third party politics, where in twenty twenty six
Speaker 1: he could be the most impactful I'll give you that
Speaker 1: guide there. Then my interview with Marjorie again and Jim Roddy.
Speaker 1: Jim and Marjorie have hosted the Jim and Marjorie Show
Speaker 1: throughout the Boston media markets on a variety of places
Speaker 1: that currently with WGBH, which is Boston Public Radio. I've
Speaker 1: appeared on their show for over a decade and I'd
Speaker 1: never had them appear in my show, so finally I
Speaker 1: get them. It's lively, it's fun, it's interesting. If you
Speaker 1: love politics, you're going to love these two. Well, you
Speaker 1: talk every thing future of media. If you like your
Speaker 1: Kennedy politics, We talk a little Kennedy. What happened to
Speaker 1: the Kennedy mystique? Is it still viable? How much is
Speaker 1: Bobby Kennedy Junior sort of destroyed the brand? So a
Speaker 1: fun conversation will be had there. We even touched on
Speaker 1: the Epstein Files a little bit, And that's where I'm
Speaker 1: going to begin, because I think the most distressing thing
Speaker 1: here is that you know what happens when conspiracy theorists
Speaker 1: become the government, and that's that's you know, this is
Speaker 1: the lesson right. You know, the expressions you reap with you,
Speaker 1: so you know when you when you create an information
Speaker 1: ecosystem that's built on conspiracy and built on distrust, that's
Speaker 1: all well and good. If that's how you're going to
Speaker 1: exploit and profit from it. Your Dan Bongino's did that
Speaker 1: your cash betels Donald Trump? There's no doubt quite a
Speaker 1: few people in the right wing ecosphere has created this
Speaker 1: misinformation nightmare that we've all been living in a lot
Speaker 1: of distrust and many folks on the right and particular,
Speaker 1: but frankly with Jeffrey Epstein, there isracy. The conspiracy theorists
Speaker 1: are not on one side of the aisle. They're everywhere.
Speaker 1: The belief that there is always more that's hidden than
Speaker 1: what's been revealed, and it's I'm not going to sit
Speaker 1: here and discount that that isn't true. Why won't I
Speaker 1: discount it? Because our government only in the last month
Speaker 1: admitted that the CIA had a file on Oswald before
Speaker 1: and even had and there was even a case worker
Speaker 1: on Oswald, Lee Harvey Oswald, before he shot Kennedy. So
Speaker 1: the CIA had been trying to deny anything like that
Speaker 1: for decades. So if our government is capable of keeping
Speaker 1: a secret like that for over sixty years, I understand
Speaker 1: why there's so much skepticism of how government handles anything,
Speaker 1: let alone something that could be as controversial as Jeffrey
Speaker 1: Epstein's alleged client list. Right, I say alleged because there's
Speaker 1: been reporting that it exists, and then suddenly it supposedly
Speaker 1: it doesn't exist, et cetera. I'm one of those, as
Speaker 1: many of you know. I'm an Okham's razor person. I
Speaker 1: also think it's very hard for conspiracies to sort of hold,
Speaker 1: if you will, right, there's always a break. I mean,
Speaker 1: I I'm on Kennedy. I've always believed that the government
Speaker 1: conspiracy is simply covering their ass. It's not CIA at
Speaker 1: c YA. They're paranoid that they did that one of
Speaker 1: their guys, somebody they were keeping an eye on they
Speaker 1: weren't doing a good job with, because if they had
Speaker 1: kept a really good eye on them, maybe they would
Speaker 1: have been able to stop them. And my thesis on
Speaker 1: that has always been that that it with the CIA
Speaker 1: didn't want to admit that it messed up like this.
Speaker 1: That's been my thesis, not alone in that thesis. Others
Speaker 1: believe that it must be if they're concealing that what else?
Speaker 1: So they're concealing And it's a reminder. I've talked to
Speaker 1: some good friends on this issue of the JFK conspiracy.
Speaker 1: Is there anything the government could release that would say, Okay,
Speaker 1: I now know the whole story, anything right? And the
Speaker 1: answer I get is, well, know that the assumptionet is
Speaker 1: if you if you give them some moll out, you
Speaker 1: hit that or there must be something more hidden. And
Speaker 1: that brings me to the Jeffrey Epstein phenomenon. Right and
Speaker 1: right now, you know this is the akin of Maggie
Speaker 1: Maga eating itself. Right, They're literally this this. The snakes
Speaker 1: are swallowing their tail, their own tails, if you will.
Speaker 1: And it's because they've created you know, they created an
Speaker 1: information of distrust, They created an atmosphere of distrust. They
Speaker 1: raised expectations and turned rumors into potential facts. Uh, and
Speaker 1: they were going to get to the real story once
Speaker 1: they got power. And you know it. You know this
Speaker 1: isn't deep state figures. You know this that's in power.
Speaker 1: These are the conspiracy theorists themselves got the power. They
Speaker 1: got the keys, they got the access. Tulsa Gabbert got
Speaker 1: access to the JFK files, right, Cash Betel and Dan Bongino,
Speaker 1: Dan Bongino in particular, who has become wealthy trafficking and
Speaker 1: these conspiracy theories and misinformation. They got the keys to
Speaker 1: the kingdom. And either there are now participants in this
Speaker 1: conspiracy that they have been railing about for years and
Speaker 1: now the shoes on the other foot, which some in
Speaker 1: MAGA now believe, or the more likely result is, oh,
Speaker 1: the truth is the truth, and there's no more there
Speaker 1: than anybody else could hope, might have hoped that there was,
Speaker 1: because you know, this has been some you know, desperate
Speaker 1: attempt to try to you know, look, I understand, you know,
Speaker 1: when you have this moment that we live in, which
Speaker 1: is just a lot of people don't like the elites,
Speaker 1: don't like their station in life, and so they want
Speaker 1: to believe that the elites are like not human beings,
Speaker 1: that they are off and creating pedophile islands and all
Speaker 1: sorts of bizarre, weird behavior because it makes it easier
Speaker 1: to then hate the elites and dehumanizing the elites. And
Speaker 1: now we're now now now you have the Trump administration
Speaker 1: that can't get their own people to believe what they're saying.
Speaker 1: They're not going to believe it, especially because of Pam Bondi,
Speaker 1: who while Attorney General, kept trying to play into the story.
Speaker 1: Right She was leaning into the story a few months ago,
Speaker 1: claiming she was going over the client list, she was
Speaker 1: getting ready to They did that ridiculous pr stunt where
Speaker 1: they handed these notebooks to the to these right wing
Speaker 1: influencers who all flashed it in front of the White House,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of part one of all these secret
Speaker 1: files that they were going to release. And now suddenly
Speaker 1: you know, they're trying to wrap it up. And look,
Speaker 1: the behavior of the administration is extraordinarily defensive. Donald Trump's
Speaker 1: immediate shutting down of the question of Pambondi and the
Speaker 1: cabinet meeting shows you. It's just they consistently are behaving
Speaker 1: as if they do have something to hide. Now, I
Speaker 1: happen to think what they're hiding is that they've been
Speaker 1: bullshitting you for years. They've been making stuff up about
Speaker 1: this for years and now, but at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, they don't want to admit that they were lying,
Speaker 1: because the minute you admit you were lying, then what
Speaker 1: else are you lying about?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: So this is the trap that the Trump misinformers, who
Speaker 1: are now in office and are now supposed to be
Speaker 1: those that have the government facts that who is to
Speaker 1: believe anything? And this is the concern that I think,
Speaker 1: you know a lot of people have had about our
Speaker 1: misinformation crisis, about the big tech companies only surfacing information
Speaker 1: based on popularity or interest rather than in truth, is
Speaker 1: that we now have a situation where nobody knows what
Speaker 1: to believe. Number one and number two an assumption of
Speaker 1: everybody's lying, and you've got to somehow find a way
Speaker 1: to be you know, you're sort of you're guilty until
Speaker 1: proven innocent. And in the in the world of social media,
Speaker 1: the world of internet algorithms, it's pretty hard. It's pretty difficult.
Speaker 1: In a world where you've got Elon Musk reprogramming artificial
Speaker 1: intelligence programs in order to reflect his not so mainstream politics,
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden, you know, you've got even
Speaker 1: more reasons why people are going to question anything they read,
Speaker 1: anything they hear, anything they see. And so this moment
Speaker 1: here where Maga is essentially not wanting basically not wanting
Speaker 1: to accept what Trump's government is telling them, this should
Speaker 1: be this should be the moment that everybody takes a
Speaker 1: step back and says, oh my god, what have we done?
Speaker 1: What have we done to the the information ecosystem we
Speaker 1: have now? You know, I think it's perfectly reasonable now
Speaker 1: for most folks to assume that Trump is bullshitting first,
Speaker 1: and the truth is somewhere. You're going to have to
Speaker 1: hope for seven different reports to figure out the truth
Speaker 1: that everything is sort of you know, this is the way.
Speaker 1: By the way the American information ecosystem worked in the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. Nineteenth century wasn't such a good century for
Speaker 1: us politically. We were divided the entire time. You know,
Speaker 1: there was at one point a storming of the capital,
Speaker 1: storming of the capital city in Washington, DC, based on
Speaker 1: some bizarre conspiracy about the pope. This is in the
Speaker 1: eighteen fifties. This was before the start of the Civil War.
Speaker 1: So the America the nineteenth century, which was in many ways,
Speaker 1: had a information, a daily information ecosystem that was very unsteady.
Speaker 1: Trust me, go do some research in old archives and
Speaker 1: read news stories about events that we now know what happened.
Speaker 1: And then you read during there would be all sorts
Speaker 1: of partisan takes and every city had their own politically
Speaker 1: aligned news organization. Frankly, it's very similar to what the
Speaker 1: last ten years have looked like on cable news or
Speaker 1: what you've seen on social media and sometimes what you've
Speaker 1: see and now in the world of independent media. But
Speaker 1: this moment where we don't know was was Dan Bongino
Speaker 1: lying to you then or lying to you now? It's
Speaker 1: Cash Betel lying to you then or lying to you now.
Speaker 1: It's Pam Bondi lying to you then or lying to
Speaker 1: you now she lying They lied to you at some point.
Speaker 1: And what you've created is is not an information you
Speaker 1: know is now we're in a We're living in a
Speaker 1: world where you just don't know what the truth is.
Speaker 1: This is life in Russia. Talk to or Russian somebody
Speaker 1: who lives in Moscow who's not a Putin fan and
Speaker 1: ask them, how do you know? What's you know? What
Speaker 1: do you believe? And they're like, it's hard to know
Speaker 1: what to believe. This is what life is like many
Speaker 1: times in the Middle East, and the way the media
Speaker 1: is sort of both consumed and interpreted, lots of skepticism.
Speaker 1: Nobody believes anything. And by the way, the only people
Speaker 1: that benefit from a world where nobody believes anything are
Speaker 1: those in power, right, because then they get to manipulate
Speaker 1: the information. They're the ones in power. So is this
Speaker 1: should be this should be a five alarm fire, right,
Speaker 1: this is a moment and we're going to have more
Speaker 1: of these where the government is going to say something
Speaker 1: and literally seventy percent are not going to believe it.
Speaker 1: And we're in a situation with Epstein. And look, there's
Speaker 1: partisan reasons for it.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: You have those on the left, they're convinced that there
Speaker 1: is something there in Trump's just a frame of how
Speaker 1: many times he shows up in the so called Epstein files.
Speaker 1: There's those on the right that believe that that maybe, well,
Speaker 1: they're covering something up. Maybe it is not about Trump,
Speaker 1: but maybe it's about somebody else in the quote elite
Speaker 1: ecosystem that just happens to be on the right side
Speaker 1: rather than on the left side. But when you stoke
Speaker 1: conspiracies and automatically assume there's a conspiracy and then you
Speaker 1: get power, and then you realize the truth, and then
Speaker 1: you realize you don't know how to release the truth.
Speaker 1: You don't know where to put it where people will
Speaker 1: believe it. And right now, I mean the number two person,
Speaker 1: the number one and number two people at the FBI,
Speaker 1: how are we supposed to believe anything they have to say?
Speaker 1: The Attorney General, how are you supposed to believe anything
Speaker 1: she says? So this is real crisis. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: in the short term, arguably the president probably ought to
Speaker 1: fire all three of these folks, because if you don't
Speaker 1: have the if the public isn't going to believe what
Speaker 1: you have to say in law enforcement, you're in trouble.
Speaker 1: You're completely inoperable as ahead of a law enforcement agency.
Speaker 1: So now perhaps those three just had to take the fall.
Speaker 1: But look, there's reason for the phrase you reput yourself
Speaker 1: and this is a classic case of that. But instead
Speaker 1: of dunking on them, this is you know, this is
Speaker 1: why I'm here, This is why I want to rebuild
Speaker 1: the local news ecosystem. We need to rebuild mainstream media.
Speaker 1: We need to rebuild trust because too many partisan hacks
Speaker 1: like Dan Bongino and others have systematically helped accelerate distrust
Speaker 1: and purposely did it in order to gain power. And
Speaker 1: you can sit here and say, isn't it rich that
Speaker 1: now that they're in power, they're not believed. Well, they
Speaker 1: did it. They did it to themselves, but more importantly,
Speaker 1: they've done it to all of us, and they've done
Speaker 1: it to the country, and they're doing it to the government. Look,
Speaker 1: the government has earned its distrust the Iraq War. Just
Speaker 1: look at the last twenty five years, right, no WMD,
Speaker 1: the financial crisis, nobody held accountable, government did shit, did
Speaker 1: squat right. Not a single banker, not a single person
Speaker 1: that took down the entire world economy was held accountable
Speaker 1: for their actions. COVID happens upon that after the fact,
Speaker 1: and only adds to it the Russia investigation. All of
Speaker 1: these things that were not fully that were you know,
Speaker 1: in some ways manipulated, in some ways you had misinformers
Speaker 1: trying to get involved. But it doesn't matter. It created
Speaker 1: an environment of distrust that was built on two particular issues.
Speaker 1: Where that distrust was was was earned right, And then
Speaker 1: I'd go back to the core one that I brought up,
Speaker 1: which is the government took sixty two years to finally
Speaker 1: admit that it had a file in that the CIA
Speaker 1: was following Oswald. So it is obviously government did this
Speaker 1: to themselves. But the but the people that have tried
Speaker 1: to benefit have tried to essentially profit off of this.
Speaker 1: You know, they're they're they're the they're on the I mean,
Speaker 1: at least they're the ones having to deliver this message
Speaker 1: and they're watching their reputations with with their right wing
Speaker 1: conspiracy friends go down the train. But again, if this
Speaker 1: were a functional presidential administration that was not sort of
Speaker 1: the way it operates right where it's just on the
Speaker 1: whims of one person. But if this were an administration
Speaker 1: that did care about whether the public was going to
Speaker 1: believe its law enforcement agencies, all three of these people
Speaker 1: would be fired tonight, Bondi, Patel and Bongino because they're
Speaker 1: just they've they've been they're too toxic. They're two points
Speaker 1: I it is, I go back, why should anybody believe
Speaker 1: anything they say? And they did it to themselves, all right.
Speaker 1: I want to pivot here to a topic I touched
Speaker 1: on a little bit about Elon Musk and third parties.
Speaker 1: So a little bit of what I wrote about in
Speaker 1: my substack piece this week as well. You can go
Speaker 1: read the fuller version of this, because look, this is
Speaker 1: a theme I want to say, Hey, Elon Musk, welcome
Speaker 1: to the party. Right, this is a theme I wrote
Speaker 1: two months ago. I've been talking about here a lot.
Speaker 1: I do think the two party system is on the
Speaker 1: brink of collapsing, and if it does, it's actually could
Speaker 1: be very healthy.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: If we want to rebuild this democracy, a functional democracy
Speaker 1: for the twenty first century, we need to create us
Speaker 1: the condition so that we can be a multi party country.
Speaker 1: In fact, I just had an interesting conversation for a
Speaker 1: for an episode of my new sphere show that'll be
Speaker 1: coming out in a couple of weeks with the head
Speaker 1: of the George Washington Presidential Library, And you know, she
Speaker 1: was telling me that the founders, you know, whether it
Speaker 1: was Hamilton Adams all, you know, they knew parties were
Speaker 1: going to form, but the assumption wasn' be factions, that
Speaker 1: there'd be multiple parties. They really thought it would operate
Speaker 1: a bit more like the UK, even though we were
Speaker 1: a parliamentary system, but we did sort of emulate the system.
Speaker 1: And the fact that she put it to me, many
Speaker 1: of the founders saw themselves as Whigs, you know at
Speaker 1: the time, which was a borrowed essentially a borrowed political
Speaker 1: movement from the UK, and the assumption was it would
Speaker 1: be multi party, that it wouldn't it wouldn't sort of
Speaker 1: devolve into what we have, which is this two just
Speaker 1: a two party system, And look, the work that it
Speaker 1: would take to break it up is is where is
Speaker 1: where you would need rich people to get involved. But
Speaker 1: the fact is, you know what's bothered me about the
Speaker 1: coverage of Musk is that it's it's the conversation has
Speaker 1: shifted not towards the vulnerability of the parties, whether whether
Speaker 1: actually there's a market for this, which I believe there is.
Speaker 1: I've been making that case for a while, but instead
Speaker 1: it's been focused on him. Right, you know, all things Musk.
Speaker 1: I get it right, Musk is sort of sticky all
Speaker 1: that stuff. What's his motive? What's his angle? Is it
Speaker 1: a brand play? Is that revenge is at boredom? All right?
Speaker 1: I get it. But I also don't want you to
Speaker 1: dismiss anything Musk is up to just by saying, well,
Speaker 1: you know, look what he did with Twitter, because you know,
Speaker 1: the blind squirrel finds an acorn a stop clock is
Speaker 1: right twice, and Elon Musk is right right. Our two
Speaker 1: party system doesn't fit the moment because right now both
Speaker 1: parties our cultural are stitched together in culture. Neither the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party of the Republican Party. It's held together by
Speaker 1: any sort of coherent ideology. The glue is cultural identity,
Speaker 1: economic policy, foreign policy, institutional theory. These are all fractures
Speaker 1: within both of these parties.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Right on the Democratic side, you've got a growing divide
Speaker 1: over capitalism itself. Democratic socialists like Zorn Mamdani and others
Speaker 1: are openly questioning whether the system can even be salvaged.
Speaker 1: And they're not on the fringe anymore. They have momentum,
Speaker 1: they have organizing power, and they have a sharp critique
Speaker 1: of both Wall Street and Washington. On the right, the
Speaker 1: old Reagan coalition is just simply gone. The Party of
Speaker 1: Free Markets and Globalization has morphed into a party skeptical
Speaker 1: of trade, allergic immigration, isolationists. In his worldview, you've got
Speaker 1: the Mago wing on one side and what's left of
Speaker 1: that Chamber of Commerce crowd on the other trying to
Speaker 1: hang on. So if ideology isn't binding, these parties together.
Speaker 1: What is well we know it is it's cultural grievance,
Speaker 1: tribal loyalty, fear the other side. And that's the problem
Speaker 1: because that kind of glue is very brittle, doesn't hold
Speaker 1: under pressure. It makes people dig in deeper. But it's
Speaker 1: also the vulnerability as to why I think a third
Speaker 1: and fourth party could come up and if we had,
Speaker 1: if ballid access were fair, and again I do think
Speaker 1: that there is not equal access, and I think it's
Speaker 1: a violation of the Constitution. I think these ballot access
Speaker 1: rules that favor the two major parties over minor parties
Speaker 1: in each states are unconstitutional and probably ought to collectively
Speaker 1: be challenged in a smarter and better way. An interesting
Speaker 1: use of elon musks of money, by the way, But
Speaker 1: the fact of the matter is we've got we've got
Speaker 1: a country that would be a lot more comfortable in
Speaker 1: four parties. A populist nationalist right, a pro business center right,
Speaker 1: a progressive economic justice left, and a liberal institutionalist center
Speaker 1: left right. That is the four sort of groups of voters,
Speaker 1: and they are about twenty twenty, twenty and twenty with
Speaker 1: another twenty percent of the country just all over the place.
Speaker 1: So those factions are there. The voters are there, but
Speaker 1: they've been awkwardly stuffed into this binary system that no
Speaker 1: longer fits. And that's why we get this dysfunction. That's
Speaker 1: why we get the performative politics, and that's why we
Speaker 1: get loyalty tests instead of policy debates. So I want
Speaker 1: to be clear, the demand for a real alternative is there.
Speaker 1: The market exists. What's missing is infrastructure and patience. So
Speaker 1: just because Elon Musk's is involved, don't just dismiss it
Speaker 1: because you you know, he'll lose interest and he'll do
Speaker 1: all that you know, and he'll make bad decisions and
Speaker 1: all those things are true. Right, maybe he's smart enough
Speaker 1: to let somebody else do it, and that's going to
Speaker 1: be something I'm looking for. But the fact is it's possible,
Speaker 1: and I just wouldn't dismiss dismiss this moment. I think
Speaker 1: we've never been I don't think the two parties collectively
Speaker 1: have been this week in a long long time, because
Speaker 1: neither party is stitched together in policy. They're only stitched
Speaker 1: together on identity and feared if you could break that,
Speaker 1: the volatility could end up breaking the two parties. So
Speaker 1: while I'm very skeptical that Musk is going to follow through,
Speaker 1: but if he does. If he does, there is a
Speaker 1: path for him. He is something few others have in
Speaker 1: this goal to start a third party. He's got money.
Speaker 1: Ross Bureau was filthy rich, and that's what helped him
Speaker 1: get on the ballot. He used it in the nineties
Speaker 1: to break through the ballot access wall. He built a
Speaker 1: political party. Musk could do the same. He could build
Speaker 1: the infrastructure and if he wanted to play the long game,
Speaker 1: not just make headlines, he could actually reshape the party
Speaker 1: infrastructure for decades to come. So if he is interested
Speaker 1: in doing this, and if I were advising him politically,
Speaker 1: I'd say this number one, don't try to create one
Speaker 1: centrist party. Create two. A center right party, say in
Speaker 1: the state of Texas, and a center left vehicle stay
Speaker 1: in the state of Florida. Those are my two test cases.
Speaker 1: Use those two states as your test markets. Thank you
Speaker 1: for yourself as sort of a startup right because if
Speaker 1: it works in those two places, it's going to work everywhere.
Speaker 1: And those two places, why do I pick there? Because
Speaker 1: the ruling party is dominant, but it's internally divided. Texas
Speaker 1: is divided between sort of that John Cornyn institutionalist wing
Speaker 1: and the ken packstif Magna win, what an opportunity for
Speaker 1: Musk right now to go get build an infrastructure that
Speaker 1: John Cornyn could run in as a third party candidate
Speaker 1: and probably win in a three way or four way race.
Speaker 1: And in Florida you have a divided Republican party there
Speaker 1: is somewhat it's a little more personality divide, very loyal
Speaker 1: to Trump, distrustful of There's not a lot of love
Speaker 1: these days. For DeSantis, it's more of a personality issue.
Speaker 1: But there's a large independent population and a fractured Democratic
Speaker 1: party that's kind of broken, but a center left independent
Speaker 1: that's interesting. So the point is is that both you
Speaker 1: have two big states that would be very expensive. But
Speaker 1: if you're Musk, money is no issue, and I think
Speaker 1: it's the two best proving grounds.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: His goal is to see if he can elect three
Speaker 1: or four independent senators right to become sort of the
Speaker 1: majority makers of Senate control. So if you're going to
Speaker 1: go down that, this would be the states that I
Speaker 1: would be targeting first. So I gave you my Florida
Speaker 1: and Texas big examples. So you obviously need more than
Speaker 1: just two targets. The next two places I'd be targeting
Speaker 1: if I were him, would be Maine in Alaska. Both
Speaker 1: states have a history of electing independent candidates. There's an
Speaker 1: independently elected senators in both states right now, Murkowski one
Speaker 1: not because she was outside the Republican Party structure, and
Speaker 1: Angus King and Maine one outside the Democratic Party structure.
Speaker 1: Perhaps Susan Collins, who's not very popular inside her own
Speaker 1: Republican party these days. Maybe she would take the third
Speaker 1: route on that and he could get her to become
Speaker 1: a member of his party. You know, you can get
Speaker 1: that quickly. The point is that both states also have
Speaker 1: easier ballot access laws. They're both ranked choice voting states,
Speaker 1: so there is almost an openness and it allows you
Speaker 1: to do this. So again, two places to do. Michigan
Speaker 1: is another place. There's going to be a very competitive
Speaker 1: three way governor's race thanks to Mike Duggan, the former
Speaker 1: mayor of Detroit, running as an independent for governor. Well,
Speaker 1: if you have a highly contested three way race for governor,
Speaker 1: easy to create the conditions to make the Senate race,
Speaker 1: which is an open seat. Gary Peters, the Democratic senator
Speaker 1: not seeking reelection there's going to be a Democratic primary
Speaker 1: there of interest, and then some going to probably not
Speaker 1: be a Republican primary. We'll see Mike Rodgers, who lost
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty four, is going to run again as
Speaker 1: a Republican nominee. So you could find a third party candidate,
Speaker 1: be cut and basically ride the codetails of the governor's race.
Speaker 1: Then the four other states that I would be looking
Speaker 1: at where there are divides on Republican philosophy are in Ohio, Kansas, Nebraska,
Speaker 1: and Iowa. Me take Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa together. These
Speaker 1: are the farm states. These states are getting hit extraordinarily
Speaker 1: hard on the tariff war, and the trade war is
Speaker 1: going to make people poor, particularly Republican voters poor. In
Speaker 1: those three states, there's opportunity. It fits Musk's ideology of
Speaker 1: sort of center right, pro business, pro trade. I think
Speaker 1: the opening is there any of those states. We already
Speaker 1: see there's an independent candidate in Dan Osborne running against
Speaker 1: Pete Ricketts. Osborne's worldview is probably further afield than where
Speaker 1: Musk is. He maybe actually is pro tariff as Trump
Speaker 1: on some things, but we've seen Osborne have some success.
Speaker 1: It's a weak Democratic Party in Nebraska, so you could
Speaker 1: see that. Throw a third party, a third independent, a
Speaker 1: second independent candidate in Nebraska, and suddenly you have a
Speaker 1: very interesting three way race and it creates what Musk
Speaker 1: claims he wants, which is a potential check on the
Speaker 1: MAGA majority, if you will. And then there's Ohio right
Speaker 1: where you have a real divide between sort of the
Speaker 1: institutionalist wing think Mike DeWine and the MAGA wing like
Speaker 1: Vivik Ramaswami and JD Vance. You've got a Democratic party
Speaker 1: that's struggling with its brand, but it's fairly competitive, especially
Speaker 1: if Shared Brown or Tim Ryan ends up running. But
Speaker 1: I think you could go a long way. I think
Speaker 1: some of their success is winning over some voters who
Speaker 1: normally wouldn't be Shared Brown voters, but they can't stomach
Speaker 1: supporting MAGA. That's the constituency that Musk his center right
Speaker 1: party could so it's another testing ground. And then two
Speaker 1: other states I might throw in in senate races. You
Speaker 1: have the open seat in Kentucky. He's already going to
Speaker 1: probably spend some money helping Thomas Massey out in the
Speaker 1: Kentucky house race.
Speaker 3: There.
Speaker 1: Ran Paul is certainly no maga guy. So I do
Speaker 1: think there could be an environment and interest of an
Speaker 1: alternative to the Maga Republican Party in Kentucky and then Colorado.
Speaker 1: While John Hickenloop is not somebody that I think is
Speaker 1: very vulnerable, Colorado is a state. It's kind of a
Speaker 1: weak Republican party these days. It's a state where he
Speaker 1: could get some traction with a third party that, even
Speaker 1: if you don't win the race, just getting over ten
Speaker 1: percent in any of these places could get you semi
Speaker 1: permanent status for the next election, i e. The presidential election.
Speaker 1: So that would be the path I would advise him.
Speaker 1: He doesn't take advice very well. But if that is
Speaker 1: what you were looking to do as a third party,
Speaker 1: to both be disruptive and to find places you could
Speaker 1: actually win, that's where I'd be focused Texas, Florida, Maine, Alaska, Michigan, Ohio, Kansas, Nebraska,
Speaker 1: and Iowa, with maybe Kentucky and maybe Colorado throwing bones there.
Speaker 1: When do it everywhere, focus there, you might win two
Speaker 1: or three of those races. Because I think things are
Speaker 1: I just think this electorate just think it's a bit
Speaker 1: more unsettled, all right, Yes, midterms more or less operata
Speaker 1: as a referendum on the incumbent party. But I just
Speaker 1: think this is going to be a very volatile electorate,
Speaker 1: so keep an eye on it. And look, I am
Speaker 1: somebody who believes if we can actually break up the
Speaker 1: duopoly create a healthy four party system, you may need
Speaker 1: some money, like from people like Elon Musk in order
Speaker 1: to in order to pursue, in order to succeed sort
Speaker 1: of breaking these barriers. If he's willing to spend his
Speaker 1: money but take a step back in his personality, the
Speaker 1: possibilities are really there. And look, it's it's I'm one
Speaker 1: of those who believes a two party system isn't bending anymore.
Speaker 1: It's calcified, and if we want to fix it, we
Speaker 1: need we may need a break for both parties. All right,
Speaker 1: I'll sneak at a break and when we come back, a
Speaker 1: fun conversation with my friends from Boston politics and Boston media,
Speaker 1: Jim and Marjorie. So for over a decade, every Thursday,
Speaker 1: I've made an appearance on Boston Public Radio w GBH,
Speaker 1: the Jim and Marjorie Show. And now that I have
Speaker 1: a podcast, I realized I have never been able to
Speaker 1: flip the script on them, and instead of them peppering
Speaker 1: me with questions and basically trying to goad me to
Speaker 1: end my career in some sort of viral moment in
Speaker 1: the Boston media market, I want to try to present
Speaker 1: them with the same opportunity. And you know what I
Speaker 1: was doing the mathire guys. I realized, I've been doing
Speaker 1: this over ten years, and then are you have you
Speaker 1: guys been doing this for thirty years close together since
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 3: We've been doing radios for twenty six years, six years,
Speaker 3: and we did an under the radar television show that
Speaker 3: absolutely nobody watched for a bunch of years before that.
Speaker 2: When I say nobody, I don't mean nobody.
Speaker 3: I mean nobody watched this television show, not even our
Speaker 3: pounds watching television show.
Speaker 1: One of my first shows was a cable access show.
Speaker 1: I know it should talk about those. That's how you learned,
Speaker 1: That's how.
Speaker 4: You learn, That's how we learned.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: When I was at the Hotline. We started a show
Speaker 1: in ninety eight or ninety nine on a cable access
Speaker 1: that was only available on like one of the cable
Speaker 1: systems in DC. And it was and the channel itself
Speaker 1: was owned by some looney tune widow who was sort
Speaker 1: of like crazy right wing, was willing to fund this
Speaker 1: channel and they just needed a film programming. And I
Speaker 1: remember our pre the guy who who was our the
Speaker 1: show that preceded us, Billy Bush, oh before Billy Bush
Speaker 1: made it like he was scrabbing Billy Bush. Yes, yes, god,
Speaker 1: you know he was a local DC DJ.
Speaker 2: I didn't know.
Speaker 1: But but it's funny. You guys have been in this
Speaker 1: business a long time, you know, we we've all we
Speaker 1: were all experimenting in the late nineties, and now we're
Speaker 1: all kind of re experimenting again. You guys have shifted
Speaker 1: to a YouTube format from public radio a little bit,
Speaker 1: and obviously still doing public radio. I'm doing what I'm doing.
Speaker 1: But in some ways, the more things change, the more
Speaker 1: they stay the same, right, I hope.
Speaker 5: So I don't I don't know where journalism is going.
Speaker 5: I get you know, these are tough times for the business,
Speaker 5: and I'm nervous about it. You know, people that have
Speaker 5: their kids in college now say tell me about journalism,
Speaker 5: and I don't know what to tell them.
Speaker 4: Chuck, is it so different?
Speaker 3: You know you don't even know this, Chuck Todd, But
Speaker 3: you are part of a quote. We have a feature
Speaker 3: on Friday on our show, one of our segments called
Speaker 3: press Play. We started about I don't know three months ago,
Speaker 3: and I ask every guest the same question every week,
Speaker 3: and it goes like this, I said, a couple of
Speaker 3: months ago. Marty Baron, form writer of The Boss and
Speaker 3: Globe and the Washington Post, was on our show. A
Speaker 3: day later, Chuck Toddho's with Us every Thursday was on
Speaker 3: our show. And it was right after Ruth Marcus had
Speaker 3: not only had her problem with the bosses of the
Speaker 3: Washington Post, but had been honest enough to write in
Speaker 3: a long piece in The New Yorker that at least
Speaker 3: on two of her columns, one of which I think
Speaker 3: was about Bezos who owns the Washington Post, one of
Speaker 3: which I think was about Trump, where she admitted she
Speaker 3: pulled back from what she was going to say. And
Speaker 3: we asked, Marty Baron, do you know any about the
Speaker 3: Washington Post reporters, not editorialists, who are even if it's
Speaker 3: not truly intentional or pulling back a little. He said,
Speaker 3: absolutely not. We asked you the same question and you said, yes,
Speaker 3: that there were people at NBC. That's What really worries
Speaker 3: me that people with good intentions who are worried about
Speaker 3: their boss, worried about their own career, are not trying
Speaker 3: to be unprincipled, but maybe doing things that are unprincipled
Speaker 3: in the spirit of self preservation.
Speaker 2: I hope I'm wrong. I hope you're wrong.
Speaker 1: I hope so too. And yet you know, I understand
Speaker 1: it's human nature, right, some of this, right, which is
Speaker 1: you're trying to You think, well, if I can just
Speaker 1: survive the storm in the moment, then I can do
Speaker 1: Then I can you know, if I can stay in
Speaker 1: the room, you know, it'll it'll help in the long run,
Speaker 1: you know. And we're I mean, you know, the rationalization
Speaker 1: for why you compromise a principle or compromise an ethic,
Speaker 1: right like, and it makes sense until it doesn't, right,
Speaker 1: until you've twisted yourself into a pretzel. And so I
Speaker 1: don't know, But Marjorie, it's interesting you don't. Here's the
Speaker 1: way I give hope on journalism. Okay, so young journalists,
Speaker 1: I say, well, because I got my start in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety two, which was a time of terrible transition for
Speaker 1: legacy media at the time. Right, you had newspaper consolidation.
Speaker 1: It was the beginning of the cable boom. Broadcast TV
Speaker 1: was pulling back. It was very similar to this, and
Speaker 1: then O. J. Simpson happened, and then the rise of
Speaker 1: cable with internet as almost like an accelerant with it helped.
Speaker 1: But it was a disruptive time, and as a young person,
Speaker 1: I got a lot of opportunity that I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: gotten if it hadn't been a disruptive time. So I do.
Speaker 1: That's how I give hope to younger journalists.
Speaker 5: Okay, you want to hear my serious give hope to
Speaker 5: younger journalism thing. What I usually say to people is.
Speaker 2: We should say you were a big time columns.
Speaker 5: I was a newspaper report and most of the people
Speaker 5: on talk radio in Boston come from newspaper, not you,
Speaker 5: But I did.
Speaker 1: And would you say, this is two big chapters you've
Speaker 1: had in journalism. One was print and one was radio.
Speaker 1: Is that how you put it, Marjorie?
Speaker 5: Well, I did print until just a few years ago.
Speaker 5: So I've been a newspaper person most.
Speaker 4: Of my life.
Speaker 5: And I added on the radio, you know, I'm a
Speaker 5: divorce a and I needed the two jobs.
Speaker 1: I was just going to say it's whatever. Print journalists.
Speaker 1: Why did print journalists move to another medium?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Never, because the other mediums better. We all know writings better.
Speaker 1: Writing is the best of the mediums, right, you never
Speaker 1: it yet? But why do you do other mediums?
Speaker 5: It's money, money, yeah, But I tell the young journalists.
Speaker 5: Gay Talise was a great writer. He wrote for the
Speaker 5: New York Times. He wrote for a lot of places.
Speaker 5: He wrote novels and books. But he wrote something called
Speaker 5: The Kingdom and the Power about the New York Times
Speaker 5: years ago, maybe thirty thirty five years ago, and he
Speaker 5: talked about how becoming a reporter enables young people, kids
Speaker 5: from you know, middle class backgrounds, working class backgrounds like Talise.
Speaker 5: Maybe they didn't go to the best schools, but they
Speaker 5: can go become a newspaper reporter and they can meet
Speaker 5: people and talk and ask questions to people.
Speaker 4: They would never get a chance and any other opportunity.
Speaker 5: Presidents, governors, mayors of cities, celebrities, to be able to
Speaker 5: cover trials and fam as people. And I think that's
Speaker 5: so true, and I think of when I look back
Speaker 5: in newspapers what I got to do, and in radio too,
Speaker 5: but in newspapers because you had to actually go to
Speaker 5: the scene. I got experiences that I would never ever
Speaker 5: have gotten working anywhere else. I think being a reporter
Speaker 5: is one of the great jobs of all time. And plus,
Speaker 5: you know, you could actually make a difference in people's lives.
Speaker 4: And I think that that that's kind of neat.
Speaker 1: You've Marjorie, You've worked all over New England, big markets
Speaker 1: in small markets.
Speaker 2: Is it?
Speaker 1: You know it? I sort of live in this fantasy
Speaker 1: world that I that it is ultimately as a as
Speaker 1: a newspaper reporter, economist, that it is better to be
Speaker 1: the big fish in the small pond. You really can
Speaker 1: have bigger impact locally than trying to have you know,
Speaker 1: Bob Woodward like impact nationally. Yeah, is that is that
Speaker 1: your experience?
Speaker 4: I think I think.
Speaker 5: That's probably true. You know, I spent most of my
Speaker 5: life working for the tabloid in town. Uh my former
Speaker 5: husband worked for the Globe and they, you know, we
Speaker 5: were so I'm so old.
Speaker 4: They had a nepotism rule.
Speaker 1: You that's quite the mixed marriage, right, It was a
Speaker 1: mixed people have Jews and Catholics exactly exactly.
Speaker 5: I just say that, so people, don't you know know
Speaker 5: that I could have been at the Globe, but I
Speaker 5: wasn't at the Globe, you see, I just say that
Speaker 5: to make myself puff myself up. But but but the
Speaker 5: point is that, you know, you write something about somebody
Speaker 5: that got really screwed in some way, and this is
Speaker 5: the working class, blue collar paper was in all the courtrooms,
Speaker 5: all the subways, all the buses. You wrote something with
Speaker 5: someone that got screwed, and it would matter, you know,
Speaker 5: that the checks would come in, or the phone calls
Speaker 5: would come in, or the head of Charlie Baker.
Speaker 4: I remember he called me.
Speaker 5: When he used to be an administrator in the in
Speaker 5: the Weld administration, called me and said, you know, uh,
Speaker 5: I'm going to fix.
Speaker 4: This, you know.
Speaker 5: And I did a lot of stories about child welfare,
Speaker 5: which is no one wants to read those cases. So
Speaker 5: it's it's a it's a wonderful, wonderful job. I would
Speaker 5: never ever want to do anything else and be a
Speaker 5: newspaper reporter because of that.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, in all fairness, Chuck, I think we
Speaker 3: have to add when Marjorie saying, you know, writing about
Speaker 3: people who got screwed, one of the people who Marjorie
Speaker 3: knows got screwed because of one of her columns.
Speaker 2: Was me I was doing.
Speaker 3: I was doing a ballot question in nineteen ninety against
Speaker 3: the woman.
Speaker 1: This is how you guys? Met is this how you guys?
Speaker 5: We're not sure you doesn't remember I made question impression.
Speaker 2: He doesn't even remember a.
Speaker 3: Woman who was the doyen of the tax cutting movement
Speaker 3: master since Barbara Anderson had a question on the ballot
Speaker 3: and I was leading the opposition, and in an attempt
Speaker 3: to throw the vote to Barbara Anderson, Marjorie wrote a
Speaker 3: column saying one the opponent that be me drove a
Speaker 3: Volvo station wagon. I never owned a Valvo station one.
Speaker 2: We did. After the column, I'm not done yet. It
Speaker 2: was two years later. Why don't you tell them what
Speaker 2: you said I wore, Marjorie?
Speaker 4: Why don't you Oh, I said he wore whale pants.
Speaker 1: Yeah in Nantucket, like applying, he's like a vineyard nine.
Speaker 3: So let's not say like Marjorie's career helping me oppressed
Speaker 3: because I was the oppress.
Speaker 1: Ee, yeh, from Cambridge, I know, I know the oppressed oppressed.
Speaker 4: Yeah that's right, from Cambridge. That's right, that's right.
Speaker 1: So Jim, your path to this is is you were
Speaker 1: politics really activists at this? I mean you both there's
Speaker 1: two ways into this world, right, what is you know
Speaker 1: starting you know, the small newspaper Falls River right going
Speaker 1: through and there's you know you were on the activism side.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's so many things. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: why I think your partnership is so good in that
Speaker 1: you had different experiences. In that way you can you
Speaker 1: can attack sort of issues and questions and even media
Speaker 1: coverage from both of those perspectives. What did you think
Speaker 1: of the media when you were an activist.
Speaker 2: That it never treated us as fairly should.
Speaker 1: Like everybody else feels about the media, right, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: tell you something.
Speaker 3: This is beyond dispute, and this is something that I'm
Speaker 3: going to take to my grave with me. It's nobody's
Speaker 3: fault in I can't even mention because she's.
Speaker 2: Gonna mock me.
Speaker 3: I led what I believe was probably the single largest
Speaker 3: pro taxt rally maybe in the history.
Speaker 4: You wanted to raise everybody's tax.
Speaker 1: So that you jumped into the Boston harbor and pulled
Speaker 1: the tea out. Is that what you're saying.
Speaker 3: I'd say that's a variation on a theme. And unfortunately,
Speaker 3: even though it was the biggest rally ever. It is
Speaker 3: a bad example because it's not the media's fault. You
Speaker 3: know what happened on the exact same day as a rally,
Speaker 3: tim and square And as a result we got to
Speaker 3: paragraph everybody.
Speaker 1: You got to pick which is the lead today.
Speaker 3: But one experience that neither of you had, and it
Speaker 3: wasn't just doing politics, because they did do politics.
Speaker 2: You know, ran campaigns, You ran for government. Well, I
Speaker 2: ran for governor for months. No, but that wasn't these stories.
Speaker 3: I ran for governor for a month in nineteen ninety
Speaker 3: but I did run, unfortunately, and won a city council
Speaker 3: seat in Cambridge. And while both of you may mock
Speaker 3: me for that.
Speaker 1: That people's you must have been the conservative let's compared
Speaker 1: to everybody.
Speaker 3: Let me tell you something, it was one of the
Speaker 3: most valuable experiences in terms of what we do now.
Speaker 3: And even though it's a low level kind of thing.
Speaker 3: When you're on the other side of the fence and
Speaker 3: you're getting screamed at by not screamed abt ask tough
Speaker 3: questions by reporters, scream that by constituents, your one's ability
Speaker 3: to understand what the hell you're doing when you're asking
Speaker 3: the questions is enhanced a millionfold and so well, it
Speaker 3: was a horrible experience in many ways because the people
Speaker 3: in the city Council on Cambridge is sort of believe
Speaker 3: they're in the United States Senate, not in the But
Speaker 3: it was really value I wouldn't really say it was
Speaker 3: a really valuable tool in terms of what it is
Speaker 3: we do.
Speaker 1: Now do you worry Jim that let me ask you this,
Speaker 1: would you if you know, if you were knowing what
Speaker 1: you know now, would you still run for office? Would
Speaker 1: you still have tried it? Or do you look at
Speaker 1: how hard it is to sort of not get you know,
Speaker 1: pilloried and docksed and all these things, or you know,
Speaker 1: your families get targeted. I mean the Tom Tilli situation.
Speaker 1: I tell people about this one all the time. Now
Speaker 1: now that Tillis chose to retire. You know, he was
Speaker 1: going to vote against Hagseth and he didn't. And one
Speaker 1: of the reasons is his family was getting harassed. It
Speaker 1: wasn't just him, and it was people that hadn't They
Speaker 1: didn't run for office. He ran for office, and he
Speaker 1: just decided to back off of that. The way we
Speaker 1: the pugilistic nature of politics today, where there is no
Speaker 1: there seems to be no rules, right, and the elected
Speaker 1: official is seen as a dehumanized figure. How do we
Speaker 1: encourage people like you to run again? You know, how
Speaker 1: would you encourage yourself to run again? Or are you
Speaker 1: kind of fearless about it?
Speaker 2: Well, I'd like I'm fearless about nothing.
Speaker 3: By the way, let me clear about that, to be
Speaker 3: totally honest. But you know I was going to have
Speaker 3: I was going to answer your question by saying, which
Speaker 3: is true? When I did political stuff, particularly against the
Speaker 3: very popular anti text leader, I got death threats all
Speaker 3: the time in our earlier career on the radio, death threats.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm not trying to show.
Speaker 1: Braver now, I understand them. I've been getting them for
Speaker 1: a while, and you sort of shrug them off because
Speaker 1: you'll know that is nine percent of them aren't true, right, Differently,
Speaker 1: worry about the one percent is the.
Speaker 3: Kids and the family, the wife, the husband, the kids
Speaker 3: that don't And I don't know what the answer because
Speaker 3: one of the things we talk about a lot on
Speaker 3: the show is how leaderless we are in lots of ways.
Speaker 3: And if one believes one is a person and principle,
Speaker 3: look it up. Believe you'd like to think you'd take
Speaker 3: the opportunity, but I can't answer, honestly say to you
Speaker 3: that I'd be willing to do it in this sort
Speaker 3: of environment because it's dangerous in lots of ways. Which
Speaker 3: is I'm almost embarrassed to say those words, but I
Speaker 3: think that's unfortunately.
Speaker 1: Real, Marjorie. This is my biggest concern that we have driven.
Speaker 1: It is such a toxic place that good people are
Speaker 1: fone around.
Speaker 2: Listen.
Speaker 4: I could not agree with you more.
Speaker 5: I can't believe how insane things have gotten. It's really
Speaker 5: bad now. But I think it started to start with
Speaker 5: Obama or did it even start before then?
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny, you could keep going back. I've
Speaker 1: thought about this, right, which is, you know when did
Speaker 1: it start? You know, we could go to New Kngridge, right,
Speaker 1: you could go to the Clintons and then you could say, well,
Speaker 1: it goes back for the Robert Borke. Right, some people
Speaker 1: on the right will bring up Robert Borke and that
Speaker 1: that was a character assassination. You can keep going, but
Speaker 1: we've been slowly increasing the character assassination quotient in politics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all you know, almost on a steady rise. Right and
Speaker 1: to here we are. You know in what I hope
Speaker 1: is that we can't get that it can't get worse. Well,
Speaker 1: that's my optimism.
Speaker 3: I know this is the dread of local angule as
Speaker 3: Mardie would call it, But don't you think it was?
Speaker 3: The Willy Horton ads were a pretty major moment against
Speaker 3: the Caucus. And by the way, I hope people realize
Speaker 3: while they blame it on George H. W. Bush, I
Speaker 3: believe the first person to talk about Willy Horton was
Speaker 3: Al Gore in the primary against.
Speaker 1: Was right and he did it the New York primary.
Speaker 5: John willy Horton was a black guy ken furloughs and
Speaker 5: then ended up going out in a weekend furlough and
Speaker 5: raping a woman. And that was something to Caucus did
Speaker 5: for lifers, would give them these weekend furloughs for good behavior,
Speaker 5: and I think that was the end.
Speaker 1: Was it not?
Speaker 2: Well? Then the commercials Willy fort Horton with a who's
Speaker 2: a black man? A close up on his.
Speaker 1: I think the I think the person who made the
Speaker 1: was it Floyd Little was the guy's name. I think
Speaker 1: it was an independent. It's one of the first super
Speaker 1: PACs and we didn't call him then that it was
Speaker 1: an independent The actual ad itself was not paid for
Speaker 1: by Bush or the RNC. It was an independent committee. Right,
Speaker 1: it was this there was. But by the way, when
Speaker 1: you watch the ad today, most people would be like,
Speaker 1: really that was contra you're a meeting, like because we
Speaker 1: see such garbage now you know that. But at the
Speaker 1: time it sort of it it crossed the whatever the
Speaker 1: line is, as Bill Hurt said in broadcast News, they
Speaker 1: keep moving the sucker, right, you know, with the line
Speaker 1: whatever this line is. But look, I actually go back
Speaker 1: to Roger Ales and Roger Stone in Nixon and that
Speaker 1: if you actually look, you know, ultimately the entire invention
Speaker 1: of the liberal media phrase liberal media didn't you don't.
Speaker 1: I believe you cannot find liberal media as a phrase
Speaker 1: before nineteen seventy two, and that it was the Watergate coverage.
Speaker 1: It was the initial sort of I don't know if
Speaker 1: it was Buchanan that came up at the line or
Speaker 1: you know, one of the Nixon operatives is or Ales.
Speaker 1: And you know, Roger Als' entire professional career after leaving
Speaker 1: Nixon was about exploiting this concept that the liberal media
Speaker 1: is out to get conservatives, and it began with Richard Nixon.
Speaker 1: And and you know, for me, I look at it,
Speaker 1: it may be that this is the end of the
Speaker 1: long arc. This is the the ultimate and the fact
Speaker 1: that Roger Stone's still alive, right, He's the only one
Speaker 1: left of that Nixon ar are still alive. But these
Speaker 1: were the people, and so many of them are derivatives
Speaker 1: that are left where you know, here they are with
Speaker 1: you know, Roger als built the ecosystem that Donald Trump
Speaker 1: exploited to sort of finally right every wrong that they
Speaker 1: believe happened to Nixon. So I kind of think this
Speaker 1: is the endpoint of that. But that's just the thesis
Speaker 1: I've been working on lately.
Speaker 2: You know, Can I get back to one thing you asked,
Speaker 2: you know about running for office kind of thing. With
Speaker 2: all the scary stuff that's happening, how about the flip side.
Speaker 2: I don't know if we've ever talked to you about this.
Speaker 2: I continued to be amazed that that other than the.
Speaker 3: For example, let's take senators, Republican senators who probably can't
Speaker 3: read a stop sign, you know, like a Tuberville or
Speaker 3: whatever the hell's name is that kind of a guy.
Speaker 2: But those who were relatively intelligent, and.
Speaker 1: Tom Cotton, who got you know, who was educated at.
Speaker 3: Cabridge how well, and he's gone right, yeah, So how
Speaker 3: do they live with themselves? I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean I'm not naive enough to say all of
Speaker 3: a sudden, the majority are gonna wake up. They got
Speaker 3: to go home and face their kids, their grandkids, their spouse.
Speaker 3: I always think, if you're a politician, do you think
Speaker 3: about the first paragraph of your obituary in your paper?
Speaker 3: What's it going to say, Trump's sycophant voted to cut
Speaker 3: a trillion dollars from Medicaid voted?
Speaker 1: What if that isn't the media?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: What if I read a very disturbing stat today that
Speaker 1: seventy percent of the country is unaware that Donald Trump
Speaker 1: has a cryptocurrency business.
Speaker 2: I can't even what did you? Yeah, go ahead, you
Speaker 2: see what I mean?
Speaker 1: Like, so you know, it may be that those that
Speaker 1: know will know, and those that don't won't.
Speaker 5: I am such a believer in that, Chuck Todd I
Speaker 5: was telling Jim I was talking to somebody over the
Speaker 5: weekend who used to be in politic dish in Boston
Speaker 5: his whole life, and he was we were talking about
Speaker 5: the Trump administration. He said, well, you know, look at
Speaker 5: Marco Rubio. He's been a stand up guy.
Speaker 2: And I said, the.
Speaker 5: Guy who's been in fifty years in politics, And I said,
Speaker 5: Marco Rubio, who was the guy that stood up for
Speaker 5: US aid that would you know, have the the the
Speaker 5: HIV virus and food for starving children, all the things
Speaker 5: that they did, disease prevention and stuff like that. Who's
Speaker 5: now done a complete one eighty and he has been
Speaker 5: the architect of getting rid of us AI D.
Speaker 4: And I thought that.
Speaker 5: This person doesn't know about Marco Rubio is really upsetting
Speaker 5: to me. And I don't know the explanation, because he
Speaker 5: is a smart guy.
Speaker 4: I think that.
Speaker 5: But I think that the Fox News and social media
Speaker 5: has been really effective. We get text here we are
Speaker 5: when an NPR station. We get text messages all day long.
Speaker 5: We get text matches just from people who basically believe,
Speaker 5: you know, there are little men walking on on Mars.
Speaker 5: It's crazy stuff and they believe it. And I think, wow,
Speaker 5: what's going on here?
Speaker 3: So some little men walking in Mars, some little men
Speaker 3: walking on Inside RFK Junior's brain, those are the.
Speaker 4: Ones that might be little men walking.
Speaker 1: Well, this is a good transition. This is a good transition.
Speaker 1: When you guys began your career together, the word Kennedy
Speaker 1: meant something. Yeah in Massachusetts, Uh, in a way that
Speaker 1: was just you know, it was still a gold brand. Yes,
Speaker 1: it wasn't perfect, and no, Joe Kennedy the second couldn't
Speaker 1: get elected governor. You know, it wasn't it wasn't you know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't as if it was an automatic, but there
Speaker 1: was a reverence that went with it. Is it done done?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: Is this thing?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: Is this the are we at like the Freuling Housen stage?
Speaker 1: Like there for those of you who are like not
Speaker 1: total American history dorks like me, Freuling Housen, there was
Speaker 1: a Freuling Housend in Congress I think for like two
Speaker 1: hundred straight years out of New Jersey. You know, it
Speaker 1: was this constant like sort of regional family name, and
Speaker 1: you know, I think they were signers, and I think
Speaker 1: there was a Rodney Finland Housen in the nineties in
Speaker 1: New Jersey. And eventually sort of you know, the names
Speaker 1: go away and all of that. Where would you put
Speaker 1: you know, we saw Joe Kennedy the third lose a
Speaker 1: primary right, So a Democratic primary. So and this was
Speaker 1: before RFK is crazy. What's what's the state of the
Speaker 1: Kennedy brand?
Speaker 2: What do you think, Marjorie Well?
Speaker 5: I think that even when we began, when Ted Kennedy
Speaker 5: was still alive, and people might argue that in terms
Speaker 5: of getting legislation passed, he was one of the most
Speaker 5: successful settlers ever. But even then, when you would talk
Speaker 5: about Ted Kennedy, the messages would come through about chap
Speaker 5: equintic And I think, as as.
Speaker 1: I know, is that an original sin? Is this an
Speaker 1: original sin? That boy talk about a do over in life?
Speaker 1: What would have happened if he'd just I think like
Speaker 1: I choked, I fessed up. I was afraid. I looked
Speaker 1: out for myself first. I didn't want her to die.
Speaker 1: I just I choked. I panicked, you know, And if that's.
Speaker 5: The better, it might have been better if you'd done that.
Speaker 5: Because he never admitted it. I thought the rest of
Speaker 5: his life was like the as we Catholic sate to
Speaker 5: venance for letting a woman die in that car and
Speaker 5: going off and going back to that hotel and sleeping
Speaker 5: and getting up in the morning and having breakfast.
Speaker 4: And knowing that she was in that car.
Speaker 5: I thought, I think he was trying to make up
Speaker 5: for it, but because he never admitted it, you know,
Speaker 5: you can't you get a tone right, and he never did.
Speaker 1: The stories I hear about him in the nineties and
Speaker 1: the aunts I went to school with somebody who had
Speaker 1: no health insurance, and he put them This was a
Speaker 1: student at GW and he put him on staff to
Speaker 1: get him healthcare, to get him the right. They've extended
Speaker 1: this person's life an extra five years. Like the number
Speaker 1: of stories like that that you'd hear that nobody he
Speaker 1: didn't ask for attention. You're right, it almost feels like,
Speaker 1: you know, that was the inner Catholic in him. I've
Speaker 1: got I've got to I've got to right the wrong.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I always thought that. I don't know if that's true,
Speaker 5: but I always thought that.
Speaker 3: Let me give you a personal story if I can,
Speaker 3: about Kennedy's effectiveness, which doesn't answer your question, but does
Speaker 3: speak to how incredible he was. I was the president
Speaker 3: of the union that represented legal services lawyer secretaries and
Speaker 3: paralegals from Ronald Reagan proposed abolition of legal services for
Speaker 3: the poor, and the two champions were a freshman in
Speaker 3: the house, Barney Frank and Ted Kennedy, and so a
Speaker 3: bunch of we were affiliated with the United Order Workers.
Speaker 3: A bunch of us met with Ted Kennedy, first time
Speaker 3: any of us had ever been in office with him.
Speaker 3: We're all, for the most part, from all over the country.
Speaker 3: He says, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that,
Speaker 3: and I'm going to meet with the senator whose name
Speaker 3: I forget, from Texas, who is wildly anti legal service,
Speaker 3: is not talk to him. And so we say thank you,
Speaker 3: we got in the hole, and we're all saying that
Speaker 3: was great, But I mean, really, I mean, the guy
Speaker 3: is the most right wing, vicious, anti poor person. Okay,
Speaker 3: next day we go back to his office. Who do
Speaker 3: we see in the distance walking arm in arm down
Speaker 3: the hole but the Texas Center and Kennedy and we're
Speaker 3: still incredulous. Nothing's going to happen. The vote comes up
Speaker 3: the next day.
Speaker 2: I forgot.
Speaker 3: It was an amendment about class actions or something around
Speaker 3: legal services lawyers around the country, and we have a
Speaker 3: the word we need. I can't remember what the exact
Speaker 3: vote was, but this guy's vote, he has still not voted.
Speaker 3: The guy from Texas was the critical vote that was
Speaker 3: going to was going to kill our ability to do
Speaker 3: class actions. You know what happened. Didn't show up for
Speaker 3: the vote, and it was totally a function of Ted
Speaker 3: Kennedy getting a guy who had nothing but hatred for
Speaker 3: legal services for the poor to dissa exactly because he
Speaker 3: had respect for Ted Tenny.
Speaker 2: So that maybe a.
Speaker 3: Small thing, but he was really one of the most
Speaker 3: effective characters ever.
Speaker 2: Now and answer your question.
Speaker 3: Even though young Joe Kennedy lost to Ed Markey, I
Speaker 3: am among those who thought he'd beat Ed Markey.
Speaker 1: I did too.
Speaker 3: Expect for Markey, but I think he would generational kind
Speaker 3: of thing. I'm not sure he's done.
Speaker 2: I mean, I haven't spoken to him in recent times.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: But he is a really skillful, talented young guy. And
Speaker 3: I think it's maybe too early to write off the
Speaker 3: whole family name.
Speaker 1: I think that's fair. I mean, you would you would think.
Speaker 1: I wonder how much damage Bobby Kennedy Junior is doing. Ah,
Speaker 1: I think he's look I am irrational about I'm pretty
Speaker 1: irrational about him. And I think I went off on
Speaker 1: your show once you did. I mean, I just find it.
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm gross I'm just sickened by this, intentionally
Speaker 1: watching kids die, having measles, like letting the outbreak happen.
Speaker 1: I'm just I just like, who does this? Who does this?
Speaker 1: Just shocking to me?
Speaker 4: Aren't we saying that almost about everything that is stopping?
Speaker 5: I know who talks about Alcatraz, you know, alligator Alcatraz
Speaker 5: and seems to repels merchandise. Apparently now you can buy it,
Speaker 5: could buy the merchandise. And who thinks it's okay to
Speaker 5: throw to give million take away the healthcare of millions
Speaker 5: and millions of people so you can give tax breaks.
Speaker 3: To I'll tell you who thinks okay, everybody? Because nobody's
Speaker 3: doing anything, are they. We talk about this all the time,
Speaker 3: Chuck on the show, and I'm sure with you too.
Speaker 3: You know, you raise the tuition for public universities in
Speaker 3: Paris and there are a million people on the street.
Speaker 3: The next day, you take twelve million people off healthcare
Speaker 3: or whatever it is. Let's go on the list the
Speaker 3: poor people who are wonderful members of our communities on
Speaker 3: and we tweet about it or.
Speaker 2: X about it or whatever the hell we do. I
Speaker 2: think the answer is we're.
Speaker 1: Look, I got I have family, members who don't look
Speaker 1: like you and me who are American citizens who were
Speaker 1: detained off a plane and had to prove their citizenship.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, And this just happened recently, and it's
Speaker 1: it's you're just sitting there, You're just you know, I
Speaker 1: think it's because until it happens to you, you don't,
Speaker 1: you know. It's like, you know, what's the great poem?
Speaker 1: First they came for the you know, the Jews, and
Speaker 1: I just you know, said, well, it's not me or
Speaker 1: whatever it is. You know that that lioselle poem. That
Speaker 1: and and that's I guess the world we're living in.
Speaker 1: This is where I always vacillate. Do we are we
Speaker 1: in a Is this a five alarm fire, a seven
Speaker 1: alarm fire? Or where I try to end up? Hey,
Speaker 1: we've done this before. We survived George Wallace, we survived
Speaker 1: Joe McCarthy, we survived Charles Lindberg, we survived Civil War,
Speaker 1: we survived you know, I I vacillate, right and I
Speaker 1: choose right now. I choose to make the case we've
Speaker 1: been through this before, we know how to and this
Speaker 1: should give you comfort that we know how to get
Speaker 1: out of it again.
Speaker 3: But can I tell you we have had this discussion
Speaker 3: with three relatively reputable historians in recent times, Heather Cox,
Speaker 3: Richardson ken Burns, and Darris Kurrn's Goodwin. Every single one
Speaker 3: of them's answer to our question is exactly yours. And
Speaker 3: I'll mean this with any because I have huge respect
Speaker 3: for all three of them. I'm not sure any of
Speaker 3: the three of them believe it.
Speaker 1: I think we asked, you know, I don't know if
Speaker 1: I believe it. I choose to believe it. That's why
Speaker 1: I emphasize.
Speaker 3: That's why they asked Dars and she said exactly that
Speaker 3: I need or I choose to believe it.
Speaker 4: Who's the president who's been this corrupt? Who's the president
Speaker 4: this live as much as he has?
Speaker 5: You know, I was listening to one of my favorite
Speaker 5: podcasts besides of course, the Check podcast This Morning and Daily,
Speaker 5: and they were talking about a man who had uncovered
Speaker 5: cigarette smoking. He did big expose on cigarettes, and then
Speaker 5: they were threatening. Then I think it was again CBS
Speaker 5: and CBS people know has just knuckled under to Donald Trump.
Speaker 5: They're going to give him sixteen the whole Parent corporation
Speaker 5: par I'm not going to give him sixteen million dollars
Speaker 5: to his library to get out of this lawsuit. This
Speaker 5: this this frivolous, ridiculous lawsuit. But anyway, he was saying that,
Speaker 5: the interviewer said to him, well, it was the same
Speaker 5: thing that they that you were under pressure not to
Speaker 5: tell the truth about cigarettes from the cigarette companies. As
Speaker 5: what's going on now? And he said no, because then
Speaker 5: it was the cigarette companies. Today it's the President of
Speaker 5: the United States, and it's a Justice Department and the
Speaker 5: wheels of power and ice agencies and doing all these
Speaker 5: This is this is the power of the federal government,
Speaker 5: which is more powerful than any other entity in the country.
Speaker 4: Picking on is.
Speaker 1: This administration is now realizing you reap what you sew.
Speaker 1: The Epstein story, right, they create this, you know, they
Speaker 1: they all make money Dan Bongino, cash Betel, they you know, Pambondi,
Speaker 1: They all make political hay and and get their viral
Speaker 1: clips and get their notoriety by by flirting with this
Speaker 1: Epstein story. And then they're the deep state. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: and here we are. But you know it is damaging
Speaker 1: because guess what, who do you believe, Jim, Do you
Speaker 1: believe the government on Epstein or not.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 2: I honestly don't know. I don't know what I believe.
Speaker 2: And answer isn't that the problem, isn't it?
Speaker 1: I do not believe, you know. I'm one of those
Speaker 1: who believes that if it were as if it were
Speaker 1: is uh, if what is alleged is true, there's no
Speaker 1: way this these secrets hold, right, Maxwell would have used
Speaker 1: it to get out of going to Jay Okay, So
Speaker 1: I just I don't think there there. I think all
Speaker 1: these people hung out with him. I think they all
Speaker 1: knew you. Oh yeah, Jeffrey's a little bit this right,
Speaker 1: but you know, but he gives me free rides and
Speaker 1: his plane or I rather like hanging out at his resort. Man,
Speaker 1: it's really fun to get served pina coladas by these
Speaker 1: scantily clad girls.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Do I think all of that was true? You know?
Speaker 1: But the next level of it, right, like, look, if
Speaker 1: there was another Prince Andrew, wouldn't we know? Yeah, That's
Speaker 1: sort of where I'm at. That said, I understand if
Speaker 1: most people go I don't know what to believe anymore,
Speaker 1: because the same people who were telling me don't believe
Speaker 1: what the government's telling you are now the government and
Speaker 1: they're telling you believe what the government is telling you.
Speaker 2: So let me pose a question return in the other direction.
Speaker 3: Let's assume that what was exposed were unsavory conducts. Talk
Speaker 3: about euphemisms with Bill Clinton and Donald Trump. I would
Speaker 3: posit that Bill Clinton would never be invited to any
Speaker 3: event again for the rest of his life, and Donald
Speaker 3: Trump would be the same as if nothing had happened
Speaker 3: the day before.
Speaker 2: Is that a fair And.
Speaker 1: I'll give you another one. You caught Donald Trump's line
Speaker 1: on Friday where he said I hate all Democrats. Of course,
Speaker 1: Barack Obama had said that after the passage of Obamacare,
Speaker 1: I hate all Republicans. What would happen?
Speaker 2: That is so true? That was on July fourth.
Speaker 3: By the way, didn't this didn't Carolyn leven or whoever
Speaker 3: was say this is going to be a unifying things.
Speaker 2: This is a thing where he reaches out to other
Speaker 2: than Democrats.
Speaker 1: This idea that you only govern for those who support you.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is really the virus that I really
Speaker 1: I'm you know, I did you see the axiom? I'mous.
Speaker 1: Here's something I've been curious your guys take on.
Speaker 2: Marjorie.
Speaker 1: I'll let you take the first bite. I assume you
Speaker 1: saw the Axios newsletter this morning, Mike Allen. They had
Speaker 1: the little nugget about how they had these anonymous Democratic
Speaker 1: members of Congress who said, hey, man, the base is
Speaker 1: really fired up. They they don't care if we break
Speaker 1: rules to fight Trump. In fact, they don't understand why
Speaker 1: we're You know, if you have to start a fire,
Speaker 1: get shot whatever, it is like, fight fire with fire.
Speaker 1: And this has always been my concern that a second
Speaker 1: Trump term was going to not change just the Republicans,
Speaker 1: but it would change the Democrats. And in the zeal
Speaker 1: with defeating trump Ism, how many rules are how many
Speaker 1: norms and rules is it okay to break if it's
Speaker 1: in defiance to Trump, right like? And what kind of
Speaker 1: slippery slope art could we be ending up on. It's
Speaker 1: a concern I have, yeah, but I understand the Democratic anger.
Speaker 2: That's a tough an answer. I don't think well.
Speaker 5: I was going to say, maybe I'm being Pollyanna here
Speaker 5: in Massachusetts, but I want some leadership for the Democrats.
Speaker 5: I don't think that they should lower themselves to steal
Speaker 5: and cheat and lie and do what Donald Trump has done.
Speaker 1: I don't think I'm with you. I think Kamala Harrison
Speaker 1: I got as many votes as she got because they're
Speaker 1: the party that isn't doing that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I hope so, but I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 5: I think the Democrats have going to do something you
Speaker 5: mentioned Kamala Harris. I think the Democrats have got to
Speaker 5: do more to recognize talent. You know, you don't want
Speaker 5: to keep putting up people. You know, Barack Obama was wrong.
Speaker 5: Biden should have run against Donald Trump the first time around,
Speaker 5: not Hillary Clinton that was.
Speaker 1: So un anybody else, or it should have been an
Speaker 1: open primary. Should maybe Barack Obama shouldn't have been the
Speaker 1: one to decide who. Let the voters decide. Had the
Speaker 1: establishment decided in know seven, Barack Obama never would have
Speaker 1: been the nominee.
Speaker 2: That's a good point.
Speaker 5: I also think it was too bad that the Democrats.
Speaker 5: You know, Kamala Harris was a tough candidate when she
Speaker 5: ran for president, she was eliminated very quickly. I think
Speaker 5: she I mean, obviously there was sexism, there was racism,
Speaker 5: but in general, I don't think she's that talented a
Speaker 5: politician to have growne up against Donald Trump. And I
Speaker 5: wish they'd had a primary then with the Josh Shapiro, etc.
Speaker 5: So anyway, that's I'm getting off.
Speaker 2: For break is rule breaking, the rule breaking.
Speaker 3: I understand the rule breaking that you don't want the
Speaker 3: Democrats across. I'd like them to break some rules. I
Speaker 3: mean the example, I'll give you an example, Martin and
Speaker 3: I talk about it quite regularly. A bunch of years ago.
Speaker 3: I'm sure you'll remember this, Chuck, they had to sit in,
Speaker 3: and I thought they had to sit in because wouldn't
Speaker 3: allow voting guns.
Speaker 2: Do you remember how the sit in, this principled sit
Speaker 2: in were breaking.
Speaker 1: They were breaking house rules?
Speaker 2: You're right? Do you remember remember how the sit in ended?
Speaker 3: It was a holiday weekends and they ended they ended
Speaker 3: the sit in because they had to.
Speaker 2: Get home for the holidays.
Speaker 3: I would argue a little more rule breaking might be
Speaker 3: a thing.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I get that. That's that's you know, as
Speaker 1: as John Lewis love to call it, good trouble yo truck.
Speaker 1: But you know, we all know there's this line. You know, look,
Speaker 1: there's a whole group of democratic consultants who want to
Speaker 1: come up there like, hey, the right wing is doing
Speaker 1: this information, maybe we auto too, you know what I mean? Like,
Speaker 1: that's the slippery slip I'm worried about.
Speaker 2: I don't think that's true.
Speaker 5: I think you wonder why the Democrats aren't better at
Speaker 5: certain things. The old line about how you know the
Speaker 5: Democrats are showing up with scissors or a gunfight, or
Speaker 5: knives at a gunfight, or the Republicans were brilliant enough
Speaker 5: after Roe v. Wade to spend twenty or thirty years
Speaker 5: organizing the judicial pipeline which has brought us the Supreme
Speaker 5: Court we have now. I don't know why Democrats are
Speaker 5: better at those kinds of things, why we get out smarted,
Speaker 5: why we didn't know so much about Project twenty twenty
Speaker 5: five before the election, or maybe people didn't didn't care.
Speaker 5: But the Democrats are lousy I think at messaging to
Speaker 5: meant too much.
Speaker 2: But even when they're good, I mean, look at this.
Speaker 3: I'm hesitant to be critical of these two things because
Speaker 3: so many people saw them as great moments in political history.
Speaker 3: Corey Booker stands up without paying for twenty six hours
Speaker 3: or whatever he did and gave a speech.
Speaker 2: I heard about an hour of it.
Speaker 3: Was pretty impressive eight hours or whatever for a king.
Speaker 3: Jeffreys and the words of Peggy Lee that you're not
Speaker 3: old enough to remember her famous song.
Speaker 2: Is that all there is at the end of both
Speaker 2: I saw it, and I don't have a better idea.
Speaker 2: Is that all there is?
Speaker 3: Long speeches that are substantive and well, and then you
Speaker 3: go home.
Speaker 2: I mean, what is it?
Speaker 1: Well, here's what all? Right, I'll throw something else. I
Speaker 1: had Kristin Sultez Anderson on the show last week and
Speaker 1: she said something that I thought she just thinks we
Speaker 1: were talking about mom Donnie right and the whole Why
Speaker 1: did he win? Did he win on substance or did
Speaker 1: he went on style?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Essentially right. I think there's still this debate was it
Speaker 1: substance or style? And her she is basically saying, look,
Speaker 1: he really is like Trump. He filled he filled all
Speaker 1: the empty space with entertainment, if you will. It was
Speaker 1: substantive entertainment. But oh, you know, I'm going to show
Speaker 1: up here, I'm going to show up there. Yes, it
Speaker 1: was a little performative. She thinks you have to be
Speaker 1: performative now in order to be seen as legitimate. Right,
Speaker 1: And this is sort of a problem in the in
Speaker 1: the media space. Right, good journalism isn't enough?
Speaker 3: Are you?
Speaker 1: Do you know how to sell it. Are you a
Speaker 1: good influencer?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Do you know how to go viral? Do you know
Speaker 1: how to do these things? And that that is the
Speaker 1: skill set and that in some ways right right, this
Speaker 1: this comes back to like Donald Trump's been doing this
Speaker 1: this whole life. Suddenly the media ecosystem changed to his strength.
Speaker 1: He didn't, he didn't change. It's just suddenly his style
Speaker 1: of zero attention span suddenly was an asset when it
Speaker 1: used to be a liability, right, Like you know, it
Speaker 1: was sort of we evolved towards we devolved arguably towards him,
Speaker 1: uh in our in the way we consume information. But
Speaker 1: that was sort of her conclusion. She's not alone here,
Speaker 1: thinks that performance is more crucial than ever and performative
Speaker 1: being knowing how when do when to do these So
Speaker 1: I'm with you, Jim. I don't know what the hell
Speaker 1: either got you because you because here's the thing. It
Speaker 1: wasn't like it was going to lead to a new vote.
Speaker 1: There wasn't like there was going to be this is
Speaker 1: not mister Smith, that suddenly you've persuaded people who are watching,
Speaker 1: all right, I'm now going to vote with him, Right,
Speaker 1: Corey Booker wasn't changing a vote. A Kim Jeffreys wasn't
Speaker 1: changing a vote. They were there literally to raise money. Okay, Now,
Speaker 1: when Corey Booker did it, I think it it was
Speaker 1: the day of those special elections. It was April first,
Speaker 1: and it was the day of those special and I
Speaker 1: think it was an asset to turn out in Wisconsin
Speaker 1: and in some of these places because it gave base Democrats. Hey,
Speaker 1: while you're getting ready to vote, are you excited about this?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: So, I do think the theatrics. I think what we
Speaker 1: have to learn from Trump is that the theatrics do matter.
Speaker 1: Filling the space matters, dominating the space matters. And you
Speaker 1: know who understood this accidentally, It turns out who Bill Clinton?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, right, because Bill Clinton. We were assumed by
Speaker 1: all things Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton loves to go to McDonald.
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton's going to a football game, Bill Clinton. You
Speaker 1: know this, Bill Clinton that, And it drove the right
Speaker 1: wing crazy, right, And yet it was profied arguably Ronald Reagan.
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan, this, Ronald Reagan that, and it drove the
Speaker 1: left wing crazy. You know, they couldn't seem to touch
Speaker 1: this guy. I you know, I don't like to admit
Speaker 1: that that's where we are. But maybe that is where
Speaker 1: we are.
Speaker 3: Well, why can't you be? I mean, it's funny we
Speaker 3: have this exact same conversation. I don't know if you
Speaker 3: know nik Koaha, who's the podcast for a Vulture and
Speaker 3: rights for New York Magazine too today.
Speaker 2: I don't even know how we got into this.
Speaker 3: Oh, because he had a conversation with mom Donnie about
Speaker 3: what podcasts he was listening to and whatever. And I
Speaker 3: think we the three of us, agreed that the delivery
Speaker 3: was hugely important with Mom Donnie. But I would argue,
Speaker 3: you can be both things. You can be substantive and
Speaker 3: be good messager, as opposed to Donald Trump, who's an
Speaker 3: incredible messenger and has no substance whatsoever. So I don't
Speaker 3: think being I don't think valuing the quality of the
Speaker 3: message and how it's delivered means you have to cheap
Speaker 3: one has to cheapen the policy prescription of the messenger.
Speaker 4: We don't have one at the moment, do we.
Speaker 2: Well, we were just.
Speaker 3: Talking about how Mom Donny, in a local way, if
Speaker 3: you like his politics, is doing both.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: So look, I think Mom Donnie is an important you know.
Speaker 1: I think if he sparks, there isn't a necessary debate
Speaker 1: that the left needs to have about socialism versus capitalism.
Speaker 1: And I mean this like, I do think that there
Speaker 1: is a true dispute. Is capitalism too broke, too broken
Speaker 1: to fix? Or can you know you know which side
Speaker 1: of this column you're on. I remember, remember Elizabeth Warrenson,
Speaker 1: I'm a capitalist. I want to reform it. You know
Speaker 1: something Bernie Sanders wouldn't say. It was her way of
Speaker 1: trying to differentiate herself between Sanders and her I think, mom,
Speaker 1: Donnie's I do think this is an important debate because
Speaker 1: I do think we're in this weird moment with both
Speaker 1: parties where they're the only thing that keeps them together
Speaker 1: is cultural issues, not economic issues.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: The divide in the Republican Party is essentially free trade
Speaker 1: versus protectionism or isolationism versus internationalism. And it's a real divide.
Speaker 1: You know, they're papering over it. You know. Trump's personality
Speaker 1: I think in the Democratic Party really is it's sort
Speaker 1: of socialism versus a technic what I call technocratic capitalism, right,
Speaker 1: sort of that public private partnership, but for the most part,
Speaker 1: a regulated free market, if you will, and we weren't
Speaker 1: and the left wasn't having that debate. They're just so
Speaker 1: consumed with not being divided, and maybe having this debate
Speaker 1: will be healthy.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Well, I also think, you know, there's a difference between
Speaker 5: being a democratic socialist and being a socialist, and socialism
Speaker 5: has got more to do great, I know, but that's
Speaker 5: sort of That's another problem is that we seem to
Speaker 5: have people that either don't care to learn about you know,
Speaker 5: they all detoke.
Speaker 4: The line that we all read in college.
Speaker 5: You know, this republic only survives if it's got it
Speaker 5: educated electorate. And I don't know that we have an
Speaker 5: uneducated electorate, but I think we have an electricate doesn't
Speaker 5: pay much attention. And I think that's a problem because
Speaker 5: you do have to kind of pay a little bit
Speaker 5: more attention and know a little bit.
Speaker 4: More what's going on.
Speaker 5: But I think socialism is to help with your childcare.
Speaker 5: I don't think socialism is getting help on rents. You know,
Speaker 5: they could people can turn it.
Speaker 1: Well, actually, I would argue you're arguing that now helping
Speaker 1: with childcare isn't socialism, it's part of the the sort
Speaker 1: of the how government should assist with capitalism. Well, if
Speaker 1: you're helping with childcare, you're helping people participate in the
Speaker 1: private sect. Well versus socialism, it's everything right, Well.
Speaker 4: We've got social Security.
Speaker 5: I don't see that's socialism, right, we know what's complaining
Speaker 5: about that or Medicare. So I think you have to
Speaker 5: people have to stand up and say this is not
Speaker 5: social Maybe you're right, maybe no one is too dim
Speaker 5: witted to get the nuance I'm messaging.
Speaker 2: The answer is don't use the terms. Is the is
Speaker 2: the thing? I mean? You know what we talk a
Speaker 2: lot on the show. Do remember that.
Speaker 3: I'm sure you've seen this the great Jimmy Kimmel thing
Speaker 3: when he sends a reporter at the Hollywood Boulevard and says,
Speaker 3: which do you prefer the Affordable Care Actor Obamacare? And
Speaker 3: everybody hates Obamacare and Olibrett loves the Affordable Care Act.
Speaker 2: Marjorie says this on the show all the time.
Speaker 3: If you take away the alleged radical left slash democratic
Speaker 3: socialist agenda and say, do you want more affordable childcare?
Speaker 3: Do you want some control on rent so I can
Speaker 3: go down the whole mom dummy or whatever list?
Speaker 5: Do you want to give taxes to rich people? Almost
Speaker 5: everybody got climate change. Almost everybody will not an agreement
Speaker 5: and say this is what I want. But if you
Speaker 5: then said either socialism or democratic socialism, and I don't
Speaker 5: think anybody knows the difference except who are one of
Speaker 5: those things, You're going to lose a lot of people.
Speaker 5: But on substance that debate should be had.
Speaker 3: And if you can avoid the terms without Donald Trump
Speaker 3: forcing you to use them, I think it'd be really
Speaker 3: valuable for a party that doesn't quite know where it's going,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 1: Let me, for my entire professional life, Massachusetts has been
Speaker 1: sort of among the heartbeats of American politics, right, not
Speaker 1: the sole heartbeat, but among the heart beats multiple people
Speaker 1: coming running for president, multiple nominees, and my professional life.
Speaker 1: So I'm always right in on both sides of the
Speaker 1: aisle we've had. We've had since nineteen eighty eight former
Speaker 1: governors of both parties of the state of Massachusetts been
Speaker 1: major party nominees. Is the brand of Massachusetts tainted too
Speaker 1: much now for anybody to rise up and become a
Speaker 1: nominee again? Is there like too match Buyer's remorse on
Speaker 1: the left and sort of Taxachusetts branding on the right.
Speaker 1: For for the next generations of Massachusetts leaders to populate
Speaker 1: our national political debate, or or or am I buying
Speaker 1: into the to the right wing and left wing spins
Speaker 1: of Massachusetts politics?
Speaker 3: Jim Well, you know, I guess I would say, on
Speaker 3: one hand, a really smart, really competent, talented senator run
Speaker 3: for president and she didn't even win her home state.
Speaker 3: That was Elizabeth Warren So and she's I think she's
Speaker 3: a really talented person. But I mean, let's do both
Speaker 3: sides of the equation. While there is no Republican Party
Speaker 3: for him anymore, if Charlie Baker decided to run to
Speaker 3: represent that minority part of the Republican Party, he'd.
Speaker 2: Do better than his former boss Bill Well did. So
Speaker 2: at some point, hopefully trump Ism is going to die
Speaker 2: and Republicanism comes back, there'd be a place for that
Speaker 2: kind of person.
Speaker 3: And I don't buy. I don't buy the notion. I
Speaker 3: know you're just asking a question, not positing an answer.
Speaker 3: I don't buy the notion that our influence is going
Speaker 3: We have a lot of really talented politicians here, and
Speaker 3: I think the question is just Tommy, don't you.
Speaker 1: Think Martin Well, I've always thought the reason that is
Speaker 1: for what it's worth is that the local politics is
Speaker 1: so well informed, you know, I mean I you know,
Speaker 1: every little township seems to produce some pretty quality people.
Speaker 1: Not to say there isn't less quality people too, but
Speaker 1: that there is. And this is New England in general, right,
Speaker 1: that there's a bit of a there's still a legacy
Speaker 1: or an expectation that all politics is local and and
Speaker 1: and they kind of mean it in New England. Am
Speaker 1: I am I overlyingizing Marjorie Listen.
Speaker 5: I have lived in Massachusetts my whole life, and I
Speaker 5: am more grateful than ever that I live in Massachusetts,
Speaker 5: because I don't think people were outraged when Ramesa Osturk
Speaker 5: was taken off the street by masked ice people in
Speaker 5: Somerville for writing co authoring on OpEd. When they took
Speaker 5: that young man that was on the way to volleyball practice,
Speaker 5: ice did and hauled him out of the car. When
Speaker 5: they broke a window in New Bedford with children in
Speaker 5: the back seat to get people out of the car,
Speaker 5: people took to the streets.
Speaker 4: They were outraged.
Speaker 5: If you're a gay person in Massachusetts, I don't think
Speaker 5: you have to be afraid to live here. You know,
Speaker 5: it's tough for trans people. But it's better here than
Speaker 5: there's a lot of other places. You have people like
Speaker 5: more Heally when she was Attorney General, and Andrea Campbell,
Speaker 5: the journey General now who are taking Trump to court
Speaker 5: on all these outrageous things. We have some very talented
Speaker 5: politicians here. We have a very good school system here.
Speaker 5: If your kid is disabled, you may have to fight.
Speaker 1: To get always been, I mean, it's always been. Public
Speaker 1: school rankings, Massachusetts is always number one.
Speaker 5: I think a lot of people would be lucky to
Speaker 5: live here here. It's very expensive to live here, tough
Speaker 5: to buy a house here. But I'm really proud of Massachusetts.
Speaker 2: We also have a mayor on our show tomorrow who
Speaker 2: kicked Congress's as a couple of months ago.
Speaker 5: Only one I've ever seen give as good as she got,
Speaker 5: better than what she got with a nursing child, infant
Speaker 5: newborn at her breast, I might add, I love that
Speaker 5: for all the women of America.
Speaker 1: Well, what I was that was actually going to be
Speaker 1: how I was going to land this plane, which is
Speaker 1: the Boston Mayor's race. Yeah, and mister Craft, is it
Speaker 1: Josh Craft? Josh Craft that's running? It looks like an
Speaker 1: invisible campaign at the moment in that it's a lot
Speaker 1: more advertisements than it is hand to hand campaigning. But
Speaker 1: you tell me you guys are on the ground there.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 5: People are mad about the bike lanes in Boston and
Speaker 5: Michelle Man, that's.
Speaker 1: Welcome to being mayor of any town. It's a huge
Speaker 1: I get it where you park space.
Speaker 4: I have been amazed by her.
Speaker 5: She's got a great backstory as a mother with mentionalininess,
Speaker 5: raised her two younger kids, brought them all to Boston,
Speaker 5: the mother and the two younger sisters, while she went
Speaker 5: to Harvard and Harvard Law School. Uh. She, as I said,
Speaker 5: she out smarter them all in Congress. I've not seen
Speaker 5: anybody do as well in one of those gang bangs
Speaker 5: as Michelle Wu did and as I said, a nursing
Speaker 5: mother of three. We've had a chance to interview a
Speaker 5: lot of politicians in our time, Jim. Is there somebody
Speaker 5: that knows more about the city of Boston as the
Speaker 5: mayor than Michelle Wuh, she's very impressive. Whether she's going
Speaker 5: to do I think she. I think she will win
Speaker 5: big again. I could be wrong, but I think I
Speaker 5: think she'll win big again.
Speaker 1: By the way, can you be mayor mumbles anymore and win.
Speaker 2: Well, can I tell you something? They loved him.
Speaker 1: I know they did.
Speaker 3: There was a level that came out about him and
Speaker 3: a predecessor of his, Ray Flynn, which are two of
Speaker 3: the most amazing pauls ever saw.
Speaker 2: I think the Globe did it.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure have you ever you have ever met
Speaker 3: the mayor of Boston? And by the way, it didn't
Speaker 3: mean have you been at a rally where he spoke
Speaker 3: or in an auditorium?
Speaker 2: Have you ever.
Speaker 3: Met and it was in the high fifties and low
Speaker 3: sixty percent. Yeah, major American city where people had met
Speaker 3: Tominino or ray Flynn.
Speaker 2: I mean it's just it is that's become a traditionary wor.
Speaker 1: Old school really old school? Is Mayor wu this way?
Speaker 1: Does she do the same thing? Do you see her
Speaker 1: out there.
Speaker 2: The same way?
Speaker 3: I mean she has a brand new baby, as you
Speaker 3: probably know. As Marty said, she bought the baby to Congress.
Speaker 3: She often brings the baby to our radio show and
Speaker 3: then hands it off to her husband, who has decided
Speaker 3: to put his career on hold to take care of
Speaker 3: of the baby for the time being. But yeah, she's
Speaker 3: I think they established this notion. If you're not out there,
Speaker 3: Marty Walsh, doo, if you're not out there meeting people
Speaker 3: almost twenty four to seven, this is not the job
Speaker 3: for you.
Speaker 4: So touchcraft. We should give credit.
Speaker 5: I mean, Josh Kraft ran the Boys and Girls Clubs
Speaker 5: of Florid for I mean in Boston for years and
Speaker 5: years and years, and we did a great job. I'm
Speaker 5: not sure why he's running at this particular juncture.
Speaker 3: I tell you, I'm laughing. I left him because of
Speaker 3: this covers that you just mentioned a minute ago. We're
Speaker 3: talking about bikelnes. I love that you said a chuck.
Speaker 3: You know where do you park? All our listeners mocked
Speaker 3: me because I made the big mistake when we had
Speaker 3: our first bike line discussion about six months ago, mentioning
Speaker 3: was my birthday last year and I couldn't. I had
Speaker 3: to get my own cake, which is bad enough to
Speaker 3: begin with, and I couldn't find a space nearby side
Speaker 3: to walk two blocks to get my own birthday cake.
Speaker 3: And I will never live.
Speaker 1: Was it raining at the time or snowstorm?
Speaker 2: Both ways? Actually, and I was boiling unbelievably hot, and
Speaker 2: I was snowing. It was uphill. It was hard.
Speaker 1: So is this you know, I do think there's an
Speaker 1: anti incumbent vibe that is nationwide.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: You saw at Pittsburgh's incumbent mayor lost. We saw that
Speaker 1: San Francisco's at mayor loss. So I look at these
Speaker 1: things through that national lens. Are we going to see
Speaker 1: more of this? I think it's a terrible time to
Speaker 1: be an incumbent, right, just in general? Definitely, you can
Speaker 1: feel it, right, people are just like you know, I
Speaker 1: think this is why we've had three one term presidents
Speaker 1: in a row. You know, people didn't vote for Trump.
Speaker 1: They just voted against, you know, they voted against at
Speaker 1: least that final slice of voters did. How concerned should
Speaker 1: she be about that? In Boston? Is that you've sense
Speaker 1: that feeling?
Speaker 3: In all Jim not as concerned as the other guys
Speaker 3: should be about the fact that his father, fairly or
Speaker 3: unfairly has a friendship with Donald Trump, and some major
Speaker 3: Donald Trump donors have given a huge pile of money
Speaker 3: to a pack that's sports truck.
Speaker 1: So she she's gonna be able to turn him into
Speaker 1: a Trump she'sis or something like that.
Speaker 3: She's trying. And even though he has said I a
Speaker 3: poor Donald Trump. He has supported members of Congress who
Speaker 3: are trumpified and are bailed on every issue except Israel
Speaker 3: and uh choice, anti choice, anti same sex marriage. So
Speaker 3: I think the answer is a fair unfair. That's I'll
Speaker 3: leave that up to voters. That's going to be a
Speaker 3: has been and will be a major thrust the of
Speaker 3: the She often says to at events. He just moved
Speaker 3: here too, from Chesnut Hill, which is right across the
Speaker 3: thing there.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Boston, Josh. That's funny that that worked well.
Speaker 1: That worked well against Andy Cuomo was like, oh, hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to New York.
Speaker 5: I know that was It was an amazing That was
Speaker 5: an amazing race in New York City.
Speaker 1: So we'll see and it's not over, you know, we
Speaker 1: we That's say I saw a poll today that you
Speaker 1: can if there's consolidation behind somebody, there's you can see
Speaker 1: that Mom, Donnie has a harder ceiling. Yeah, Now the
Speaker 1: question is is it forty five or is it fifty one?
Speaker 1: But the ceiling is there and you can see. You know,
Speaker 1: it was interesting the pole I saw broken up by
Speaker 1: Burrow and he's the mayor of Brooklyn today already. You
Speaker 1: know that's not a problem. It's a coin flip in Manhattan,
Speaker 1: and he doesn't win any other borough. So look, you
Speaker 1: can win it on the strength of Brooklyn and Manhattan alone,
Speaker 1: So it doesn't matter. But you can see the path
Speaker 1: to stopping mom Donnie if there is, if there is
Speaker 1: reason to do it, I guess would be the way
Speaker 1: I'd look at it.
Speaker 3: I think you for a Cuomo to have a shot,
Speaker 3: as he has to decide, well, I should accept the
Speaker 3: endorsement of only one sexual harasser, Bill Quinton, not a second.
Speaker 2: Don't you think there's a there's a ceiling to that?
Speaker 2: And then yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, culture, No, I think I don't understand. And this
Speaker 1: is where I think Schumer and Jeffries have escaped accountability. Here,
Speaker 1: your national leaders that live in New York City, you
Speaker 1: look the other way while everybody rallied around Andrew Cuomo.
Speaker 1: You want to lead the Democratic Party seriously.
Speaker 3: And also if they endorse Mom donniet or no.
Speaker 1: No, they haven't. I mean, you know they've They've got
Speaker 1: this massive problem now that is dividing the Democratic Party.
Speaker 1: I think it'll be healthy in the long run, but
Speaker 1: still it is. And you're the the facto leaders of
Speaker 1: the party right now. There's nobody else. You're the Senate leader,
Speaker 1: and you're the House leader. You're both New York City guys,
Speaker 1: and you and you. You couldn't find a better candidate
Speaker 1: than Cuomo. Seriously.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I don't know that they've been that.
Speaker 1: You want to be my late tech salesman.
Speaker 2: Come on. They reached out to Joe Biden, but he
Speaker 2: was unavailable.
Speaker 1: I can't wait till Biden runs for Wilmington mayor h
Speaker 1: Beach mayor. I feel like that's coming. I feel like
Speaker 1: something like that, or Hunter Biden runs for mayor of Wilmington,
Speaker 1: Like I just you know, something like that's going to
Speaker 1: happen sooner than we think, because you know, you know,
Speaker 1: every every TV series needs a needs an episode like that.
Speaker 5: Can I ask you a quick question before we leave here, Chuck, yes, ma'am.
Speaker 5: Are we going to get out of this mess?
Speaker 1: Do you think, well everything ends, It's just going to
Speaker 1: end badly and here's the here let me ask. I'll
Speaker 1: leave you as this will make my real out question. Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't think this is a a you know, the
Speaker 1: Trump arrow will come to an end. My guess is
Speaker 1: it'll be abrupt, and I don't know how right, Like,
Speaker 1: maybe it's a natural disaster, maybe it's an economic collapse,
Speaker 1: maybe it's something else. It's going to be a mess.
Speaker 1: There's going to be one of two directions we go
Speaker 1: as a country. We decide, uh, that's never going to
Speaker 1: happen again, and we move on, or we try to
Speaker 1: Trump proof the Constitution and the government so that we
Speaker 1: don't allow that to happen again. Which direction do you
Speaker 1: expect us to go?
Speaker 4: Marjorie, Well, I'm not discouraged.
Speaker 5: I'm not encouraged by the ability of the Republicans and
Speaker 5: Democrats to agree to to to do something as dramatic
Speaker 5: as Trump Proof. But maybe if Trump is gone, because
Speaker 5: I don't see a jd. Vance or anybody able to
Speaker 5: take up that charismatic place he holds for the country,
Speaker 5: maybe then they could.
Speaker 4: I don't know. I don't know. I'd like to think
Speaker 4: they could do that, but I don't know. I'm sorry,
Speaker 4: I don't have a good answer.
Speaker 3: We want to do something that people love. In talk radio,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna argue both sides very quickly. Well, I don't
Speaker 3: think there will ever be another leader who can do
Speaker 3: what Trump does, even though they've tried. Ron Desanta's being
Speaker 3: a perfect example bismal failure. I think the freedom that
Speaker 3: Trump has given to people to be like him is.
Speaker 2: Going to be hard to get rid of.
Speaker 3: I think people find it liberating to be able to
Speaker 3: say they're worse innermost thoughts and things like that. Having
Speaker 3: said that, the other side is I'm a huge believer
Speaker 3: in leadership, and I'm not the first person who said
Speaker 3: if Ronald Reagan had run as a liberal Democrat, he
Speaker 3: would have been elected in a landslide.
Speaker 2: Leadership really matters in this country. It really matters to me.
Speaker 3: And I think if the people with the right thinking
Speaker 3: approaches find a leader who has charisma, who is youngish,
Speaker 3: who is tough, I think this could end in a
Speaker 3: far better way than I worry that it will. It's
Speaker 3: such a great point. My wife says this all the time.
Speaker 1: She goes, if Joe Biden had been a better leader,
Speaker 1: there would have been no second Trump term. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's a fair ethic, it's the fairest critique of it. Look,
Speaker 1: it just is true. He just wasn't the leader that
Speaker 1: was necessary to have us turn the page. Maybe it
Speaker 1: was due to age, maybe it was due to other things,
Speaker 1: but he wasn't And that you're right. Leader leadership can
Speaker 1: overcome a lot of things. If you have good leadership
Speaker 1: or bad leadership.
Speaker 4: That's what we're looking for. If you are not.
Speaker 3: Before we leave, I just say one thing for the
Speaker 3: record here so people know this. I did not own
Speaker 3: a Volvo station Wagon and I did not have pants.
Speaker 1: It was probably a suber Uh.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I can't talk about.
Speaker 5: I also called him the heart throb of economics one
Speaker 5: oh one.
Speaker 2: That was very complimentary.
Speaker 1: And let me let me uh, Will Bond and Cornheiser
Speaker 1: actually can socialize like they're off off camera?
Speaker 2: All right?
Speaker 1: How how are you guys able to socialize like off hours?
Speaker 2: You have enough of friends tonight the road tonight?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, the.
Speaker 1: Red Sox just make some gnats ass this past Fourth
Speaker 1: of July weekend beautiful. That was embarrassing, lovely.
Speaker 2: It was expression made you.
Speaker 1: Guys look like, gave you guys hope.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: Now we're playing the worst team in baseball, right, so
Speaker 3: it's even more we're very excited.
Speaker 1: No, you just played the worst. I thought you just
Speaker 1: played the worst even baseball? Who is it?
Speaker 2: Tonight? Do you get the rock in Colorado even worse? Yeah?
Speaker 1: The Gnats have more losses than the Rockies since twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: so really, yeah, we've really done well.
Speaker 4: Sausage.
Speaker 5: Think of those sausage things tonight, the sausage and onions things.
Speaker 2: That was the fun things.
Speaker 3: They're bold sausage onions, onion things.
Speaker 2: I'll have a salsage and onion thing. Please, thank you.
Speaker 1: Now everybody knows why. This is my favorite half hour
Speaker 1: that I spend every Thursday with.
Speaker 2: We love well. Thank you, the guests, the audience, Chuck. Thanks.
Speaker 1: It's always fun when you get to interview friends and
Speaker 1: people you just like each other.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 1: So, I hope you enjoyed that conversation. I enjoyed having it,
Speaker 1: so I hope you enjoyed listening to it. All right,
Speaker 1: let me do a few questions, and I love it, man,
Speaker 1: The questions are getting better and better. Feedback's amazing. Uh
Speaker 1: And I admit I'm getting to the point where we
Speaker 1: may have to do entire episodes that are just as
Speaker 1: Chuck as Chuck. The real reason is because you want that,
Speaker 1: You want that sort of that music's kind of familiar,
Speaker 1: but you don't know where it belongs. That's the trick, right,
Speaker 1: All right, let's start with this, this comes from Grants.
Speaker 1: It looks like he's writing from Alabama, and he writes,
Speaker 1: Chuck love the pod, especially the longer episodes. Well, all right,
Speaker 1: the roganification of podcasts are here. Don't do any podcasts
Speaker 1: under an hour and a half, right anyway? I tease.
Speaker 1: He continues, great insights and analysis. I wanted to bounce
Speaker 1: something off of you. Have you noticed how the left
Speaker 1: and right seem to have switched places when it comes
Speaker 1: to cultural orthodoxy? He goes, when I moved to d
Speaker 1: C from Alabama, I felt judged by moderate dem staffers
Speaker 1: for things like smoking, but my GOP and libertarian friends
Speaker 1: never cared. Is this hall monitor vibe a bigger challenge
Speaker 1: for the Democratic Party? And can they shed it? Would
Speaker 1: love to hear your thoughts. You're right, I especially sort
Speaker 1: of Southern Democrats, right, you know, you know, I'll give
Speaker 1: you another one. It's not as common, right for a
Speaker 1: Democrat in d C to bechure going, and yet it's
Speaker 1: quite common in the South for everybody to be church going.
Speaker 1: So I think you're not wrong that there's a little
Speaker 1: bit of that going on. But let me flip the
Speaker 1: script here. You know where I thought you were going
Speaker 1: at first had to do with the nanny state, and
Speaker 1: I sort of more focused on sort of the bizarre,
Speaker 1: sort of the bizarreness, if you will. It's not really
Speaker 1: that bizarre anymore of Kennedy, at least on the right
Speaker 1: when it comes to that, which is you know, ten
Speaker 1: years ago, when Michael Bloomberg was trying to get rid
Speaker 1: of the big gulp, the right went crazy. Sarah Palin
Speaker 1: came out and gave speeches with a big gulp as
Speaker 1: a prop. You know, it was their way of going
Speaker 1: after the crazy left. You know, I don't know if
Speaker 1: we were calling it woke then. Right now, who's the
Speaker 1: one trying to get rid of sweets and trying to
Speaker 1: get rid of you know, trying to decide, no, you
Speaker 1: shouldn't eat this and you shouldn't eat that. Right, it's
Speaker 1: suddenly the right. So I do think these things go cyclical.
Speaker 1: You know, I'll give you another thing. Right, it was
Speaker 1: more likely you'd see a Democrat, a Democratic voter or candidate,
Speaker 1: would you know, if you saw somebody with more than
Speaker 1: one tattoo, you would assume they were their politics were
Speaker 1: on the left. Now these days, if you see somebody
Speaker 1: with more than one tattoo, you might assume their politics
Speaker 1: is on the right. So I do think some of
Speaker 1: this thing can be generational or subgenerational, and we don't
Speaker 1: see it. I do think I'm smoking. There's a few
Speaker 1: things smoking. Maybe I would have said three or four
Speaker 1: years ago, tackle football, where if you were on the left,
Speaker 1: you might get judged by your friends on the left
Speaker 1: on some of these things. So look, I do think
Speaker 1: one of the core problems, and I've said this, is
Speaker 1: that if there is a basic sort of one line
Speaker 1: descriptor problem that the Democrats have is that the Democrats
Speaker 1: seem to be always wanting to tell you how to
Speaker 1: live your life, where Republicans are trying to agree with
Speaker 1: are always going out of their way to agree with
Speaker 1: your grievance about life.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: You know, it's sort of the idea that in general,
Speaker 1: Democrats are telling you, well you no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: that isn't the most important issue. This is really the
Speaker 1: most important issue, versus the Republicans are saying, oh, you
Speaker 1: think that's the most important, okay, Right, They go out
Speaker 1: of their way to try to agree with the voters.
Speaker 1: Democrats go out of their way to try to tell voters,
Speaker 1: you know, no, no, no, you should think about it
Speaker 1: this way. So, yes, I think there's I think this
Speaker 1: what you've hit on something. I don't think it's as clean,
Speaker 1: quite as clean as you've gotten it. But but I
Speaker 1: know exactly what you mean, and I think it is
Speaker 1: a there is a slight. It does feel as if
Speaker 1: you're somehow. When I was growing up, it was the
Speaker 1: Republicans that were the judge Party. Now it feels like
Speaker 1: it's the Democrats of the judging Party. If we wanted
Speaker 1: to be simplistic about it, and it's and it's something
Speaker 1: they have to shed.
Speaker 2: I know it.
Speaker 1: Here's a good question for a local government administrator from Peoria, Illinois.
Speaker 1: How's it playing in Peoria? An old phrase for an
Speaker 1: older set, Chuck. I make a genuine effort to source
Speaker 1: my news from multiple perspectives, and the Check podcast has
Speaker 1: been one of my sources for a long time. Today,
Speaker 1: I have two mostly unrelated questions. First, every empire rises
Speaker 1: and falls. Are we currently living through the fall of
Speaker 1: the American Empire? Second, as a timestamp, I'm listening to
Speaker 1: your interview with Ian Bremner. Bremmer, what do you think
Speaker 1: it would actually take for the magabase to abandon trump Ism,
Speaker 1: not necessarily Trump himself given out strong echo chambers, or
Speaker 1: for both parties. Hope you find either or both of
Speaker 1: these worth tackling on a future pod. Happy Independence Day,
Speaker 1: Scott Sorow Scott, I appreciate the question, and I guess
Speaker 1: I would tackle it. You know, the last people to
Speaker 1: know when an empire falls are those that are part
Speaker 1: of the empire. Right, I'm I'm way back in my
Speaker 1: previous life when I was working at National Journal and
Speaker 1: also working a bit with The Atlantic. They and an
Speaker 1: editor there who wrote a book that was titled Are
Speaker 1: We Rome? And I think it came out in twenty ten, Right,
Speaker 1: so you're talking, you know, here we are fifteen years later,
Speaker 1: And for what it's worth, I feel like about every
Speaker 1: fifteen or twenty years, this concept of hey, you know,
Speaker 1: are we in the late stages of something? Is this
Speaker 1: like late stage Roman empires collapse, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think it's fair to say that
Speaker 1: a fall of a country politics or constitution, or however
Speaker 1: you would call the fall of the American Empire, it's
Speaker 1: going to feel I'm sure it would feel the same way,
Speaker 1: just like the metaphor about bankruptcy. Right first it happened slowly,
Speaker 1: then quickly, right all of a sudden, it's gone. Right,
Speaker 1: And we've seen that when the fall of leaders, right Assad,
Speaker 1: when Assad fell, whoa we all I think eventually we
Speaker 1: all thought eventually Aside's going to fall, but nobody knew
Speaker 1: when it was going to happen. And then when it happened,
Speaker 1: it just happened. It was like gone overnight. Now he's
Speaker 1: shopping at Russian grocery stores. So you know, it is
Speaker 1: one of those things that that I think that I
Speaker 1: think the better way to look at it is if
Speaker 1: we're not careful, we could end up on the path
Speaker 1: and we could see the fall of the great democratic experiment.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: The challenge to capitalism is that if we don't figure
Speaker 1: out how to reform capitalism in a way that feels
Speaker 1: that everybody's got a shot. If people feel as if
Speaker 1: they don't have access to the American dream, the country's
Speaker 1: politics is going to collapse. It just is because it's
Speaker 1: when people feel like they don't have an ability to
Speaker 1: make a living, they don't have an ability to better
Speaker 1: their lives on their own, that's when governments fall. That's
Speaker 1: when revolutions happen, that's when you're able to gather people up.
Speaker 1: So if you look at it through that prism, right,
Speaker 1: if you look at it to see you know, how
Speaker 1: did Venezuelan fall? How did Turkey fall? If you will,
Speaker 1: there are few things that concern me. I think our
Speaker 1: rural urban divide is is UH is very makes us
Speaker 1: very vulnerable to a collapse because when you look at
Speaker 1: what happened to Venezuela, it was an authoritarian taking advantage
Speaker 1: of poor, of the rural poor and pitting them against
Speaker 1: the UH. The elites of Caracas. Airdwan got to power
Speaker 1: using both religion and and and resentment at the elites
Speaker 1: in Istumbul. You know his weakest is you know he's
Speaker 1: weakest in Istumbul because that's where the money people live.
Speaker 1: That's where the elites live. That's where they're basically the
Speaker 1: pro Democrat, pro small deed to myocracy folks live. So
Speaker 1: the the fact that that there is a monolithic political
Speaker 1: identity in rural America, I think is potentially dangerous for us.
Speaker 1: And it's why the Democratic Party has to find a
Speaker 1: way back into because that's where the seeds of this
Speaker 1: could could get worse. So I'm you know, I would
Speaker 1: I wouldn't put this as a flashing red light, but
Speaker 1: it's it's one of those if if we continue to
Speaker 1: make bad decisions over the next decade or so, then yeah,
Speaker 1: we may look back and say, oh, it's late stages
Speaker 1: of of the fall of the American Empire. But I
Speaker 1: choose to be optimistic. I choose to believe that We've
Speaker 1: had these near misses before, Mcarthyism, isolationism, a civil war,
Speaker 1: and we and we got through it. We're in one
Speaker 1: of those moments. We're going to get through it. Why
Speaker 1: do I believe that? Because why do I want to
Speaker 1: believe the alternative? Ask for your second question, what would
Speaker 1: get mega? Well, what brought the isolationists sort of what
Speaker 1: brought the isolationists back to the mainstream in the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: Pearl Harbor. So you're asking what would it take to
Speaker 1: sort of for the MAGA world to essentially abandon trump Ism.
Speaker 1: I think it's two things. One if trumpsm harms their livelihood.
Speaker 1: So I think the terror for the trade wars makes
Speaker 1: it very vulnerable when it doesn't work, and I just
Speaker 1: don't think it's going to work. But I'm you know,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be sitting here watching with the rest
Speaker 1: of you when it fails. The people that are going
Speaker 1: to get harmed the most are is that mega coalition. Particularly,
Speaker 1: like I said, rural farmers, those in the agricultural sector
Speaker 1: are going to get hit the hardest. That could be
Speaker 1: one thing. But the isolation it's back was, you know,
Speaker 1: an attack on Americans themselves. So you know, I have
Speaker 1: one of my theories as to why we're so polarized
Speaker 1: today is we don't have the Cold Wars as a
Speaker 1: as a way to sort of keep people from going
Speaker 1: to their political fringes, right, the threat of war with Russia,
Speaker 1: nuclear war, fear of that the Cold War kept the
Speaker 1: fringes in the fringe, and party leadership left and right
Speaker 1: did their best to sort of right. There was an
Speaker 1: agreement who the enemy was. There was a disagreement on
Speaker 1: how to confront the enemy, but that was the divide. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, those would be the two ways that I
Speaker 1: could envision Maga leaving Trump is and these folks leaving
Speaker 1: Trump is. I'm gonna take one more question here and
Speaker 1: then wrap it up for the for the day. This
Speaker 1: comes from Micah Chuck You've talked extensively about the need
Speaker 1: for more options for political parties in the States. Yes,
Speaker 1: I just did it again. To the biggest factors of
Speaker 1: poor performance in the pastor money and personality. If Must
Speaker 1: launches this America Party, it seems like those two factors
Speaker 1: are less of a problem. Obviously, he's very polarizing, and
Speaker 1: while I myself do not agree with most of his ideas,
Speaker 1: I am intrigued by the possibility that he could actually
Speaker 1: rupture the two party system. He stated that his strategy
Speaker 1: would focus on a few seats in the House in
Speaker 1: the Senate. Which states do you think he would focus
Speaker 1: on traditional swing states or red leaning libertarian es states?
Speaker 1: And if he were to run for Senate in Texas
Speaker 1: right now, could the combination of him and Paxton running
Speaker 1: as the Republican be enough to give Democrats an even
Speaker 1: greater fighting chance? Thanks Micah, Well, obviously, here I am
Speaker 1: answering your question after I've given you the beginning of
Speaker 1: this podcast my guide the states I would advise Must
Speaker 1: to go through. And you add an important point, which
Speaker 1: is Musk has Texas business ties. Right He's building his
Speaker 1: own compound in Austin for all of his children, to
Speaker 1: potentially live in. I don't think all of the mothers
Speaker 1: of his children have decided they're comfortable living together in
Speaker 1: a compound in Austin. But he's building one there and
Speaker 1: hopeful for that he's trying to start. He's incorporated his
Speaker 1: own city. We know that as well, with SpaceX there.
Speaker 1: But no, I don't think Musk himself should run ask
Speaker 1: You know, Henry Ford once ran for US any lost
Speaker 1: primarily because he was exposed as an anti semi But
Speaker 1: you know, the rich people that fund their own campaigns.
Speaker 1: And I put that caveat on there because Donald Trump's
Speaker 1: a rich person who did not fund his own campaign.
Speaker 1: But rich people that fund their own campaigns usually make
Speaker 1: terrible candidates because they think about everything through the prism
Speaker 1: of their own. You know, this is theirs, they own it,
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera. So I continue to believe the
Speaker 1: best way Musk can help break up the two parties
Speaker 1: is if he writes the checks and sort of handles
Speaker 1: it the way he handles SpaceX, which is he lets
Speaker 1: competent people run the day to day parts of the company,
Speaker 1: and he plays dreamer. He plays pie in the sky guy,
Speaker 1: and he plays funder. If that's what he is, maybe
Speaker 1: there's a there's a possibility there. The problem is must personality.
Speaker 1: You can just see totally blowing this thing up and
Speaker 1: becoming too definitional to the party. And then it's what's
Speaker 1: going to scare people. I mean, I think, you know,
Speaker 1: I think in all these places, you know, the minute
Speaker 1: you introduce a third candidate that gets over five percent
Speaker 1: of the vote, you scramble all of the coalitions and
Speaker 1: it opens the door for all sorts of outcomes that
Speaker 1: are unexpected. So in theory what you just described, yes,
Speaker 1: Musk and Packston, Yeah, two very unlikable people. I do
Speaker 1: think that opens the door. But I think if it's
Speaker 1: Corn and Packxton and already I'd put my money on
Speaker 1: corn and to win that three way race. And the
Speaker 1: question is do you want what is the goal?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Is the goal to elect more of the of the
Speaker 1: other party or is the goal to create a fulkroum
Speaker 1: of folks who can sort of decide which side, sort
Speaker 1: of the way that the the lib Dems had been
Speaker 1: in the UK, right they were sort of the third
Speaker 1: partyment would they work with conservatives? Would they work with
Speaker 1: labor who needs the numbers? You know, maybe that the
Speaker 1: Tories will become that party, that they'll be the third party.
Speaker 1: Do they end up? You know, it'll be interesting. Would
Speaker 1: Tories team up with the with Labor in order to
Speaker 1: stop Nigel Ferrage and the Reform Party?
Speaker 2: Right? You know?
Speaker 1: So the point is, the minute you open the door
Speaker 1: to a third and a fourth party, I think you
Speaker 1: opened the door to all sorts of potential outcomes that
Speaker 1: are unpredictable because we've not had many you know, we
Speaker 1: don't have enough instances to know exactly we to sit
Speaker 1: here and tell you for certainty which way things would go.
Speaker 1: But again I go back to what would be healthier
Speaker 1: for the democracy more choices?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Are you comfortable shopping at a store if you were
Speaker 1: trying to buy a shirt and all they offered was
Speaker 1: small and extra large?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: And that's all we seem to to give the only
Speaker 1: two options we get the voters when people would like
Speaker 1: do they have extra small, do they have extra large?
Speaker 1: They have medium? Do they have sh medium? Do they
Speaker 1: have medium large. I'm not saying we need seven new parties,
Speaker 1: but a more robust Libertarian party would be an interesting
Speaker 1: check on the Republicans, and a more robust Forward Party
Speaker 1: could be an interesting check on the Democrats. So there,
Speaker 1: all right, I think I'm going to call it an episode.
Speaker 2: There.
Speaker 1: Appreciate you listening, Thanks for sticking with me spending time.
Speaker 1: If you enjoyed the listen, give me that five star
Speaker 1: review wherever you want to do it, Tell your friends
Speaker 1: like and subscribe. By the way, have a sub stack,
Speaker 1: so please go over there and subscribe to that. I
Speaker 1: post every Tuesday, and I have a more detailed guide
Speaker 1: to how and where a third party candidates could really
Speaker 1: which states would it make the most sense to target
Speaker 1: if you were Elon Musk, So you will enjoy that.
Speaker 2: We got.
Speaker 1: I'll have a new episode on the new Sphere app
Speaker 1: coming up this Sunday with Rom Emmanuel, so be sure
Speaker 1: to check that out as well. If you haven't had
Speaker 1: your free try to go grab it so that you
Speaker 1: can catch that episode in full. And with that, I'll
Speaker 1: see you the next time we upload this