Speaker 1: Happy Monday. Welcome to another episode of the Check podcast.
Speaker 1: I am coming to you. It's a Sunday evening. I
Speaker 1: have had personally a busy weekend. I traveled down to
Speaker 1: go see a college football game Miami survive a wet
Speaker 1: and soggy challenge from the Florida Gators. I will at
Speaker 1: the at the other end of the interview give you
Speaker 1: my towards the end of the podcast, because I know
Speaker 1: not all of you care about college football, but I'm
Speaker 1: going to keep this up over over over the over
Speaker 1: the season, so we'll do that. At the end, I
Speaker 1: have to say my Sunday didn't go so well in
Speaker 1: the football front, thanks to some offensive line problems for
Speaker 1: the Green Bay Packers, but I will I will save
Speaker 1: that when I always try to tell my son when
Speaker 1: it comes to the NFL college football, you cannot lose
Speaker 1: a game the NFL. You can survive dumb losses. You
Speaker 1: can serve five dumb losses. That was a dumb loss.
Speaker 1: So we shall see. But ultimately, I'll be honest, I
Speaker 1: feel a tiny bit guilty even referencing football, considering the
Speaker 1: alarming sort of ninety six hours that we and I
Speaker 1: say this because you can claim every week depending on
Speaker 1: where you stand, depending on how concerned you are about
Speaker 1: the Trump presidency and where this is headed. But this
Speaker 1: is one where you know, and this is you know
Speaker 1: again we've and I can get into did we spinal
Speaker 1: tap the Trump presidency back in the first term, So
Speaker 1: nobody can hear anything and everything is always to eleven,
Speaker 1: so nobody's quite sure what's a serious threat to the
Speaker 1: Constitution and to the republic and what is just and
Speaker 1: own the lib's angry moment, if you will. But I
Speaker 1: do think we need to put this last week in
Speaker 1: a little bit of context here, because this last week
Speaker 1: has been some of the most direct challenges that we've
Speaker 1: seen from Donald Trump on some basic things that previous
Speaker 1: that would have driven impeachments plural one that you know,
Speaker 1: the behavior actually that he's doing right now with the
Speaker 1: Justice Department was not dissimilar to what happened with Richard Nixon,
Speaker 1: who resigned the presidency to avoid being impeached and convicted
Speaker 1: and kicked out of office. You know, look, and this begins,
Speaker 1: I'm not even going to be getting into the entire
Speaker 1: FCC situation where he has ordered it appears he has
Speaker 1: ordered a regulator to just target his media enemies, because
Speaker 1: there really is no other explanation for this, for what
Speaker 1: Brendan Carr is doing and the way he publicly celebrates
Speaker 1: because he wants to make the Boss happy, but he
Speaker 1: is systematic going after only those that Donald Trump wants
Speaker 1: him to go after. We now have him upset and
Speaker 1: angry that he can't get the people that came after
Speaker 1: him in over the last five years. Leticia James, the
Speaker 1: Attorney General of New York, Adam Schiff, who is now
Speaker 1: US Senator, James Comey, the former FBI director. He went
Speaker 1: on a truth social rant, upset that none of these
Speaker 1: people have had charges brought against them. In fact, he
Speaker 1: fired or a US attorney resigned. We can have a
Speaker 1: debate about that, because the US attorney was doing this
Speaker 1: horrible thing as far as Donald Trump was concerned, he
Speaker 1: was actually following the law to try to figure out
Speaker 1: if there actually was a case to be made against
Speaker 1: Leticia James and this mortgage fraud that the Trump administration
Speaker 1: was alleging. He didn't have enough evidence to bring charges.
Speaker 1: Donald Trump didn't care. He wants charges brought anyway, pushes
Speaker 1: this US attorney out, and once the attorney who was
Speaker 1: a former member of his legal team. So that's just there.
Speaker 1: Never mind the direct sort of rants, maybe you call
Speaker 1: it an order to Pambondy. I didn't even bring up
Speaker 1: the unconstitutional attacks on Venezuelan ships that I think have
Speaker 1: led indirectly to the Pentagon trying to essentially prevent the
Speaker 1: press corps from reporting from the Pentagon. I will get
Speaker 1: into that also here in a minute. So let's just
Speaker 1: step back here. Oh and then there's the borders are
Speaker 1: who have took a bag of cash in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: Tom Holman and the Trump Justice Department decided to drop
Speaker 1: the charges because they couldn't prove anything. Though they're not
Speaker 1: they're not somehow denying that Tom Holman took a bag
Speaker 1: of cash under what was apparently a promise to bring
Speaker 1: government contracts to these FBI agents who were posing as
Speaker 1: undercover businessmen. So all of this has happened in the
Speaker 1: last week. Again, we have Brendan Carr systematically targeting, going
Speaker 1: after and trying to target media and political enemies of
Speaker 1: Donald Trump and the press, even using mafioso language, drawing
Speaker 1: the ire of some conservatives, which I want to get
Speaker 1: into a minute. Donald Trump firing or forcing a resignation
Speaker 1: from the US attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia
Speaker 1: because they wouldn't bring charges against Letitia James, angry that
Speaker 1: his attorney general has yet to bring charges against Adam
Speaker 1: Schiff or James Comy let alone Letitia James. We've got
Speaker 1: this Tom Holman story that, you know, frankly reads like
Speaker 1: a bad you know, a bad update to the old
Speaker 1: famous ab scam story if you ever followed that, it
Speaker 1: got turned into a fun movie. And then of course
Speaker 1: what the Pentagon is doing, and the possibility that there's
Speaker 1: extra judicial killings going on without any sort of congressional
Speaker 1: authority to go with it. So here we have all
Speaker 1: of these challenges essentially to the basic in some ways
Speaker 1: what are the basic premises of our constitution? And I
Speaker 1: think the question is is any of this going to
Speaker 1: be alarming enough that you start to see Republicans say, hey,
Speaker 1: this is too much? Enough is enough? I might argue,
Speaker 1: you actually are starting to see some of this because
Speaker 1: the difference between term one and term two. Right, we've
Speaker 1: gone through this right and Trump one point, oh, writes Pribish,
Speaker 1: and Mike Pence made sure that administration was stocked with
Speaker 1: professional conservatives. What did I mean by that? Yes, they
Speaker 1: were conservative, but they believed in these crazy things like
Speaker 1: the constitution, the rule of law. You get my point.
Speaker 1: Donald Trump wasn't going to let that happen. In Trump
Speaker 1: two point oh, he's surrounded by sick of fans, and
Speaker 1: he made sure to put in people who were going
Speaker 1: to personally do him favor. He even put his personal
Speaker 1: attorney as the deputy attorney general, which is just you know,
Speaker 1: that in itself, and Todd Blanche that in itself is
Speaker 1: I guess you would use the word praising. But here
Speaker 1: we are, and this is this last ninety six hours.
Speaker 1: It is about as troubling as we can get. So
Speaker 1: let me get into some of this a little bit.
Speaker 1: Let's go into the what's going on with Letitia James. Right,
Speaker 1: he's been trying just using you know that he has
Speaker 1: this guy that's been combing through the records of high
Speaker 1: profile people's mortgages and trying to come up with finding
Speaker 1: to see if they, you know, somehow committed mortgage fraud
Speaker 1: by declaring more than one residence a primary residence. They've
Speaker 1: been using this mortgage fraud. They Adam Schiff is one
Speaker 1: of them. Leticia James is one of them. Of course,
Speaker 1: the whole fight about does he have the authority to
Speaker 1: just randomly fire FED governors whose term if he can
Speaker 1: claim that there was wrongdoing, although there's seems to be
Speaker 1: no proof that Lisa Cook, the FED governor, did that.
Speaker 1: But he did appeal to the Supreme Court to see
Speaker 1: if the Supreme Court would okay that firing given what
Speaker 1: we what the Supreme Court said over when he did
Speaker 1: get their permission, essentially to fire folks on the National
Speaker 1: Labor Relations Board, that the FED was going to be
Speaker 1: treated differently as an independent agency versus the NROLB. So,
Speaker 1: but this little gambit of trying to use mortgage fraud
Speaker 1: has been, frankly, is kind of it's not kind of failed,
Speaker 1: it has failed. Right. You have Eric Siebert, who is
Speaker 1: the US Attorney from the Eastern District of Virginia, who
Speaker 1: Donald Trump is frustrated that there were two Democratic senators
Speaker 1: who were okay with that person being the US attorney
Speaker 1: and because this person was going to get bipartisan support,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump thought that was one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: this was proof this person might be a rhino. Both
Speaker 1: Tim Kane and Mark Warner were fine with this. Ironically,
Speaker 1: the current Attorney General, Pambondi, has actually desperately been trying
Speaker 1: to save this, to save secrets nomination, because they do
Speaker 1: feel as if he's been there a long time, he's
Speaker 1: considered somebody who knows what he's doing, and they've been
Speaker 1: trying to stop it. Of Course, the last time an
Speaker 1: attorney general got in a president tried to get this
Speaker 1: involved with firing US attorneys, it cost an attorney general
Speaker 1: their job. Alberto Gonzalez. Back during the Bush forty three administration,
Speaker 1: they fired a whole slew of US attorneys essentially very
Speaker 1: upfront as political, you know, sort of political reasons, saying
Speaker 1: they wanted to put in their own folks on that.
Speaker 1: But how it was done, how it was conducted, was
Speaker 1: pretty controversial, and it cost the attorney general's job. In
Speaker 1: this case, we don't have any kind of uproar, we
Speaker 1: don't have any kind of bipartisan concern yet, but I
Speaker 1: think it's possible that's going to happen. Should know, the
Speaker 1: Eastern District of Virginia is one of the more important.
Speaker 1: This is where a lot of the terror counter terrorism
Speaker 1: trials happen. It's you really have to have really good
Speaker 1: people here. They're politically sensitive cases get brought here, get
Speaker 1: brought in this in the Eastern District of Virginia, and
Speaker 1: so the main Justice Department of Justice doesn't like this
Speaker 1: one to be as politicized as other slots for the
Speaker 1: US Attorney So so that's troubling number one. And after
Speaker 1: that rant, then he went on a true social rant,
Speaker 1: really upset that none of these people have been indicted.
Speaker 1: He addresses his Attorney General, Pam Bondi as Pam, and
Speaker 1: he goes, we can't delay any longer. It's killing our
Speaker 1: reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, they indicted me
Speaker 1: five times over. Nothing. Justice must be served now. Now again,
Speaker 1: he is only targeting the people that he believes brought
Speaker 1: charges against him. He wants charges brought right back against
Speaker 1: them on this front. So it is it is he's
Speaker 1: ranting about this. It's unlikely at this point, right if
Speaker 1: the Justice Department does end up bringing charges against any
Speaker 1: of these folks, if the court, if it's in a
Speaker 1: legitimate court of law, the prejudicial aspect of Trump's own words,
Speaker 1: are going to likely have all these cases either dismissed
Speaker 1: or juries are just going to not Grand juries won't
Speaker 1: in diet or if they're in jury trials, juries aren't
Speaker 1: going to convict because it's blatantly obvious. He's basically already
Speaker 1: wanting to convict these folks. He's just searching for evidence
Speaker 1: in order to get his conviction. The evidence he hasn't
Speaker 1: found yet, even people who want to try to help
Speaker 1: him can't find the evidence to do it. And yet
Speaker 1: he doesn't care. The question is what is the Department
Speaker 1: of Justice going to do next in order to appease him?
Speaker 1: Is this going to get uh? Is this going to
Speaker 1: get really ugly? Uh? And is this gonna you know,
Speaker 1: are they going to just bring indictments whether they have
Speaker 1: it or not. I mean, look, they tried to bring
Speaker 1: some indictments back in DC and we saw grand Jury's
Speaker 1: just said no. Normally grand juries will say yes to
Speaker 1: the Justice Department. But this Justice Department has been so compromised,
Speaker 1: its credibility so compromised in the public that I think
Speaker 1: they're going to have a harder and harder time bringing
Speaker 1: basic charges and getting indictments out of grand juries because
Speaker 1: of the reputation that they're starting to get for basically
Speaker 1: just trumping up charges and yes, pun was intended on
Speaker 1: that one. Let me get into the Tom Homan situation
Speaker 1: because I think that one is is something else. So
Speaker 1: I don't know if you've you've paid attention to this.
Speaker 1: So MSNBC broke the story Caro Lenox, former longtime reporter
Speaker 1: basically you know who own owned all of the secret
Speaker 1: service stories over the last decade from the crazy secret
Speaker 1: Service stuff back during the Columbia days. I mean, Carolina
Speaker 1: has been sort of on top of this, and they
Speaker 1: broke this story here here's the basics of the story.
Speaker 1: In September of twenty twenty four, while the president's borders
Speaker 1: are Tom Homan was a private citizen at that time,
Speaker 1: basically just campaigning for Donald Trump. Homan was allegedly recorded
Speaker 1: accepting fifty thousand dollars in cash from undercover FBI agents.
Speaker 1: Fun little detail was in Akva bag, So you know
Speaker 1: that'll be a fun Maybe Cava will do some viral
Speaker 1: marketing based on that. So these agents, this goes back.
Speaker 1: If you've ever if you're real political junkies, you'll know
Speaker 1: what I mean when I say abscam. This sort it
Speaker 1: has all reeks of abscam Apparently agents were posing as
Speaker 1: business people or contractors who were seeking immigration related government contracts,
Speaker 1: contingent of course, on Trump winning the twenty twenty four election,
Speaker 1: and they assume that Homan, if they did, would be
Speaker 1: in a position of influence. This meeting was recorded. There
Speaker 1: apparently were also hidden cameras in audio, so there may
Speaker 1: be video of Homan actually accepting this money. We'll see
Speaker 1: if this video exists or if it's going to get destroyed.
Speaker 1: Now here's the issue, right, these are various and this
Speaker 1: happened dur an abscam. They couldn't It's tough to bring
Speaker 1: the charges. Right, you promise you're going to do something
Speaker 1: for this cash. If you cannot prove the quid pro quo, right,
Speaker 1: you have the cash, but you don't necessarily have anything
Speaker 1: else proving that there was a quid pro quo, then
Speaker 1: it is sort of difficult to bring charges. Now, the
Speaker 1: Department of Justice under the Trump administration. This is what's
Speaker 1: amazing about this story and the fifty thousand dollars here
Speaker 1: is that the Trump administration is not denying that he
Speaker 1: took fifty thousand dollars. By the way, the irs may
Speaker 1: want to have may want to know a little something
Speaker 1: about that fifty thousand dollars now, so he may he
Speaker 1: may end up having some tax problems. He's not careful
Speaker 1: on this, and if they choose to bring charges, right,
Speaker 1: the federal government could easily a lot of times with
Speaker 1: bribery cases, that's what you do. If you don't actually
Speaker 1: you can't prove the bribery, you can prove the unreported income.
Speaker 1: And so he has this extra fifty thousand dollars. So
Speaker 1: either he has reported and paid taxes what are to
Speaker 1: report the income as, or he didn't and he's going
Speaker 1: to owe some taxes, which means he possibly broke the
Speaker 1: law doing that. But the Department of Justice under the
Speaker 1: Trump administration decided to close this investigation earlier this calendar year.
Speaker 1: They're totally upfront about it, and they said the state
Speaker 1: of reason is lack of credible evidence of criminal wrongdoing.
Speaker 1: The FBI director Cash pttel Right, donald Trump's handpicked FBI director,
Speaker 1: and the Deputy Attorney General Todd blanche again, donald Trump's
Speaker 1: former personal lawyer, who's now in this position of authority
Speaker 1: for some bizarre reason. Why he got confirmed by a
Speaker 1: United States Senate is up to United States senators to
Speaker 1: explain this. They used to have joined statements saying the
Speaker 1: evidence didn't meet the threshold he took the cash. They're
Speaker 1: not denying this, and they're not going to break charges
Speaker 1: because he's a friend. Right, we all know this. They're
Speaker 1: not saying that part of it. If I promise you,
Speaker 1: if this were oh, let's let's do you know, let's
Speaker 1: say this work somebody that had been working for Kamala
Speaker 1: Harris on her campaign taking a bribery. Do you think
Speaker 1: they would just drop these charges because the person is
Speaker 1: no longer in a position to agree to contracts. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is sort of the bizarre stated reason for doing this,
Speaker 1: but it's something else. Right, And here's the thing. None
Speaker 1: of us are going to be surprised by this, Right,
Speaker 1: the amount of and in fact, fifty thousand dollars of
Speaker 1: small potatoes. Look at all of the pay to play
Speaker 1: that we've already seen in this administration, whether it's pay
Speaker 1: to pay to corporations all right, look at his inaugural fund,
Speaker 1: pay to play and diplomacy cutter and the plane that
Speaker 1: eventually goes to the Trump Library, The shakedown of ABC
Speaker 1: that gave money to the library, the shakedown of CBS,
Speaker 1: which gave him also some more money to that the
Speaker 1: crypto industry, which has basically been just lavishing all sorts
Speaker 1: of investment opportunities on the Trump family just so that
Speaker 1: as president he will legalize as much of the crypto
Speaker 1: industry as possible, trying to make a bunch of wealth
Speaker 1: that we weren't sure was going to exist or not
Speaker 1: depending on various regulatory rules. So fifty thousand dollars is
Speaker 1: small potatoes, But sometimes some stories are sticky because of
Speaker 1: some of the details and the details that it's in
Speaker 1: a kava bag the Mediterranean fast food restaurant. It's one
Speaker 1: of those that probably means this will stick for a while.
Speaker 1: So see that story that percolated, and again they are
Speaker 1: just wiping it away because they can so uh once
Speaker 1: again undermining the credibility of the rule of law. Right,
Speaker 1: if you're a friend of the president, the law doesn't
Speaker 1: apply to you. If you're an enemy to the president,
Speaker 1: they're going to look for ways to use the law
Speaker 1: to punish you. It's pretty simple. We're seeing it now.
Speaker 1: Tom Holman is caught on tape doing this. They're dropping charges.
Speaker 1: They don't have enough evidence to go indict Leticia James
Speaker 1: for mortgage fraud. He doesn't care. They don't have enough
Speaker 1: evidence to get anything on James Comy, he doesn't care.
Speaker 1: They don't have enough evidence to get anything on Adam Schiff.
Speaker 1: He doesn't care. He just wants and you know, he
Speaker 1: actually just wants them to go through a court case.
Speaker 1: He even said that during a gaggle about this he
Speaker 1: was he was asked a little bit about it, and
Speaker 1: he simply said, look, you know, if they're they're innocent,
Speaker 1: they're innocent, but they need to go through this, right.
Speaker 1: That's that's really what this is about for him, Right,
Speaker 1: is that in his head, they have to go rule this.
Speaker 1: And then it brings us to a third story here,
Speaker 1: which I think is a huge challenge, direct challenge to
Speaker 1: the Constitution. And that is and it's trying to and
Speaker 1: I want people to understand the timeline. So the Pentagon
Speaker 1: has put into place a new me I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be generous here and call it a tighter press
Speaker 1: access policy. And what it does is that they want
Speaker 1: to require credentialed Pentagon reporters to quote, to get permission
Speaker 1: or sign a pledge before reporting any information that's gathered
Speaker 1: inside the building, including some unclassified material that would give
Speaker 1: the Defense Department brought authority to revoke passes for violations.
Speaker 1: So basically, if you have somebody in the Pentagon that says, hey,
Speaker 1: this something little shady's going on here, and you get
Speaker 1: a leaked document, I help you finish the reporting your story,
Speaker 1: which is frankly, I had to say, is pre standard
Speaker 1: operating procedure for any reporter. Right, we never get any
Speaker 1: official documents from the government. It's usually some whistle blower
Speaker 1: or sometimes the staffer that you know. Maybe they want
Speaker 1: to do the right thing, or maybe they just want
Speaker 1: to get their boss right. I don't know what their
Speaker 1: motive is to leak, but if the information is solid,
Speaker 1: it helps you report a story. What the Pentagon wants
Speaker 1: to do is criminalize that, and if you get caught
Speaker 1: doing it, then they want to get you off the
Speaker 1: premises completely. Now you might ask why now, right, we
Speaker 1: already know that there's been all right, that Pete hagk Set,
Speaker 1: the Secretary Defense, has been getting some terrible press and
Speaker 1: I for you know, we have the weird where he
Speaker 1: shared classified material on a signal, and a lot of
Speaker 1: that came from leaks, and he started firing people that
Speaker 1: he thought were leaking. So now instead of trying to
Speaker 1: fire the leakers, because I think he realized that that
Speaker 1: was sort of a game of whack a mole that
Speaker 1: he would never win. Could they just simply get rid
Speaker 1: of the reporters from the Pentagon right, thinking that that
Speaker 1: will somehow prevent people from leaking. Buddy, I could tell
Speaker 1: you, you know, the more you try to stop this, the
Speaker 1: more it's only going to encourage people to find other
Speaker 1: ways to get these things, other ways to leak these out.
Speaker 1: But I do think it's a pretty important to understand
Speaker 1: a bit of the timeline of this story, okay, because
Speaker 1: I think there's a real reason why this happened when
Speaker 1: it happened. Let me give you this timeline on September seventeenth,
Speaker 1: last week, So this is just so where am I
Speaker 1: at here? So last Thursday was September excuse me? Last
Speaker 1: Wednesday was September seventeenth. The Wall Street Journal published the
Speaker 1: phone report. Pentagon lawyers raised concerns over Trump's strikes on
Speaker 1: alleged drug boats, these Venezuelan drug boats, where the military
Speaker 1: has been launching strikes against these boats without any congressional
Speaker 1: authority whatsoever. They claimed some authority having to do loosely
Speaker 1: if because they've somehow designated these posts as narco terrorists,
Speaker 1: and that this falls under the same thing that would
Speaker 1: allow them to go after al Qaeda and things like that.
Speaker 1: On September nineteenth, the Washington Post reported on legal concerns,
Speaker 1: internal legal concerns about the strikes themselves, Pentagon officials voicing
Speaker 1: uneasiness that their opinions, their legal opinions about whether these
Speaker 1: extra judicial killings were legal or not, that they were
Speaker 1: being sidelined. That happened on September nineteenth, And when did
Speaker 1: this story come out? On these new roles, So that
Speaker 1: story came out in the nineteenth, which means the reporting
Speaker 1: happened on the eighteenth, and lo and behold on the nineteenth.
Speaker 1: The Pentagon press secretary decides to come up with these
Speaker 1: new roles because what were the important sources of these
Speaker 1: stories to both the journal and the Post. It was
Speaker 1: classified Pentagon information from people that worked at the Pentagon.
Speaker 1: These reporters did not get permission from there. The person
Speaker 1: who runs the press shop there, Sean Parnell, And therefore
Speaker 1: they wanted to create a situation where that if you
Speaker 1: somehow used anonymous sources or classified material that was not approved. Again,
Speaker 1: I don't know in what part of a free country
Speaker 1: with a free press that this would be a situation
Speaker 1: that would be acceptable. They suddenly put out these new rules.
Speaker 1: So what this is really about is they don't want
Speaker 1: they don't want there to be stories that there are
Speaker 1: a lot of people raising legal questions about whether the
Speaker 1: president has the authority to just drop bombs on a boat.
Speaker 1: He decides to tell people in the Caribbean, is we
Speaker 1: know they're narco terrorists. How do you know, Well, we
Speaker 1: just know what's your evidence. Don't worry about it. Oh
Speaker 1: we saw the evidence once we blew it up. There
Speaker 1: were floating bales of fentanyl and things like that. Again,
Speaker 1: this stuff ill legal, This stuff's unconstitutional. He does not
Speaker 1: have the authority to do this. I promise you that
Speaker 1: if at some point right somebody is going to have
Speaker 1: a due process, it's going to bring a case before
Speaker 1: our court system, it'll be some family member of somebody
Speaker 1: who was killed on one of those both, and I
Speaker 1: don't think they're going to have very good legal standing
Speaker 1: on any of them. So once again, to understand, I
Speaker 1: just want to make it clear what the legal questions
Speaker 1: are involving these these bombings of these boats. Is there
Speaker 1: authority under US law or international law? Right now, it
Speaker 1: is unclear if there's any legal basis for these strikes.
Speaker 1: The use of legal force in international waters against unarmed
Speaker 1: or not obviously armed boats carrying drugs rather than weapons
Speaker 1: has been extraordinarily unusual. It's something we haven't seen. There
Speaker 1: was no attempt to board these boats, arrest right extradite
Speaker 1: that would have perhaps given a little more clarity as
Speaker 1: to what would be allowed and whatnot under the law
Speaker 1: of war or the doctrine of self defense. There usually
Speaker 1: needs to be an imminent threat, and there's no clear
Speaker 1: imminent threat now. I think that the President would say
Speaker 1: the threat of these drugs coming into the United States
Speaker 1: was going to harm more Americans, and that is the
Speaker 1: imminent quote imminent threat standard that he believes that this
Speaker 1: could be met with. But if these strikes are accepted
Speaker 1: without scrutiny, it could lower the bar for what military
Speaker 1: force in similar international waters could be done without any
Speaker 1: sort of judicial process, And we already may be seeing
Speaker 1: a huge misuse of this. And where does it end
Speaker 1: right If there is no court scrutiny over this, no
Speaker 1: congressional scrutiny of this. We know very little about this.
Speaker 1: There's been very little interest in Congress on trying to
Speaker 1: get some oversight about what they're doing. So it's it's
Speaker 1: and by the way, now Trump is in this, everything
Speaker 1: always goes back to immigration. So over the weekend, Trump
Speaker 1: issued a warning to Venezuela on true social and he
Speaker 1: said that the nation immediately must accept all the prisoners
Speaker 1: and people from mental institutions, which includes the worst of
Speaker 1: the world insane asylums that Venezuelan leadership has forced in
Speaker 1: the United States of America, or you will pay. The
Speaker 1: price you pay will be incalculable. So basically what he's
Speaker 1: saying is, hey, I'll stop these bombings if you take
Speaker 1: a bunch of these Venezuelans that we're trying to deport,
Speaker 1: if you want to take a back. Now, by the way,
Speaker 1: this whole weirdness of Trump, I think it's looking more
Speaker 1: and more likely he just doesn't understand what the word
Speaker 1: asylum means. These folks were seeking asylum in the United States.
Speaker 1: I think he hears the word asylum and assumes insane asylum.
Speaker 1: And so this is why he has Maybe he does
Speaker 1: it on purpose, but I don't think he has. He
Speaker 1: probably would claim he's doing it on purpose now, but
Speaker 1: he seems to conflate those seeking asylum with people who
Speaker 1: are mentally ill and who quote unquote belonged to an
Speaker 1: insalem silum. So in his head, all of these folks
Speaker 1: seeking asylum in the United States were somehow released from
Speaker 1: Venezuelan insane asylums. I know you're thinking that can't be
Speaker 1: the case, and I'm saying it's Donald Trump. The likelihood
Speaker 1: of this being the case is extraordinary high. Nobody out
Speaker 1: there is no evidence that any of these folks or
Speaker 1: what he claims has happened in any of these countries.
Speaker 1: This is what Castro did in the late seventies. That
Speaker 1: now Castro did this. He emptied out his prisons in
Speaker 1: order to try to in order to try to cause
Speaker 1: problems for us here in the United States. The so
Speaker 1: called marri Lee took boat lift. But that's the last
Speaker 1: time something like that happened. So we've had all these things, right,
Speaker 1: We've had Trump weaponizing the FCC against the press with
Speaker 1: Brendan Carr. We have Trump weaponizing the Department of justice
Speaker 1: against his political enemies. We have him firing a US
Speaker 1: attorney because this US attorney won't bring charges just because
Speaker 1: the US attorney was following the law, so he was
Speaker 1: fired for following the law. We've got a Pentagon that's
Speaker 1: trying to essentially kick out the press for doing its job,
Speaker 1: on top of all of the other concerns that we've
Speaker 1: had about his his inability to follow the Constitution. Now
Speaker 1: what's been interesting here is on the issue of Brendan
Speaker 1: Carr in free speech. You've had three Republican senators who
Speaker 1: normally don't come out and criticize him very often, all
Speaker 1: criticized Car hard on this one, Ted Cruz, Ran Paul
Speaker 1: and David McCormick, the freshman Republican senator from Pennsylvania. The
Speaker 1: point is that while I know there are fewer Republicans
Speaker 1: willing to publicly stand up to Donald Trump right now
Speaker 1: than there were in the first term, because look at
Speaker 1: what happened in the first term, and there's no doubt
Speaker 1: he has been on a systematic purge or anybody he
Speaker 1: thinks might question him. He wants them out, He tries
Speaker 1: to primary them, he tries to pressure them not to
Speaker 1: run for reelection. He tries to whatever it takes. He
Speaker 1: doesn't want anybody with an R next to their name
Speaker 1: looking like they can be an obstacle to his agenda
Speaker 1: or his revenge or whatever it is that he's trying
Speaker 1: to do. But he's getting so aggressive now that I
Speaker 1: do think you're going to find out which conservatives have
Speaker 1: principles and which don't. Right, we learned who the principled
Speaker 1: conservatives were during Trump one point zero, Liz Janey, John Fulton,
Speaker 1: Jeff Blake, Bob Corker. We can go down the list, right,
Speaker 1: and we're starting to learn those that believe that are
Speaker 1: uncomfortable abandoning their principles for Donald Trump. They've abandoned some
Speaker 1: of them for some time. You might argue, but Ted
Speaker 1: Cruz is uncomfortable. Ran Paul's uncomfortable. Dave McCormick's uncomfortable. Where's
Speaker 1: just going to keep going? Right? Bill Cassidy doesn't like
Speaker 1: what's happening inside of HHS. So one thing that I
Speaker 1: would keep a real eye on here And the reason
Speaker 1: I'm bringing all these stories together and leaning with him
Speaker 1: because I know in some cases you think, ah, you
Speaker 1: know you and others with your Trump derangement syndrome. You're
Speaker 1: always saying, look at what Trump's doing, watch out, this
Speaker 1: is going to be terrible. But what he really has
Speaker 1: is he's numbed us. Just some things that are happening
Speaker 1: that are really terrible. And if we if we do
Speaker 1: what we're doing here, as you can see, you can't
Speaker 1: hope that the next time Democrats get put in charge
Speaker 1: that they're not going to that they're not going to
Speaker 1: be Democrats who decide, hey, I'm going to be my
Speaker 1: own Trump. In fact, I had an interesting conversation with
Speaker 1: a frustrated progressive few a few weeks ago who said,
Speaker 1: I want my own Trump, who will go in there
Speaker 1: and do this, this and this, and you know, forget
Speaker 1: trying to play nice, and forget trying to do these
Speaker 1: things and so. And it was in actually that spirit
Speaker 1: that Ted Cruz came out pretty strong against Brendan Carr
Speaker 1: by basically saying, this is eventually going to be bad
Speaker 1: for conservatives. Look, as I've said on the media, the
Speaker 1: original sin on this was the the less we have
Speaker 1: to push to get Trump and anybody associated with January
Speaker 1: sixth purged from Twitter and Facebook and polite society. And
Speaker 1: I know that felt good in the moment, but it
Speaker 1: ended up doing a couple of things that have actually
Speaker 1: brought us to now a worse moment than where we
Speaker 1: were four years ago. Right. Moment. Number one that it
Speaker 1: brought us to is that you have we now have
Speaker 1: a Trump created his own information ecosystem. He has no
Speaker 1: sort of there's no sort of pushback happening anymore in
Speaker 1: that world. He doesn't have the same conversation we don't.
Speaker 1: His folks are having a conversation over here. Trump opponents
Speaker 1: are having a conversation over there. Nobody's talking to each other.
Speaker 1: Everybody's talking past each other. And literally we have harder
Speaker 1: silos and more bubbles because of this, not less bubbles.
Speaker 1: But it was also you know, hey, be careful you push,
Speaker 1: you go down that road, and you're going to get
Speaker 1: you know, political physics will kick in, right, you will
Speaker 1: get an equally harsh and opposite reaction. So that's what
Speaker 1: I would be keeping an eye out for. I think
Speaker 1: what's happening with Tom Homan. I think there are going
Speaker 1: to be some some elected Republicans who think, hey, maybe
Speaker 1: you should release we should know more about this, Maybe
Speaker 1: he shouldn't be in the White House. Maybe there is
Speaker 1: something more to this. I think when it comes to
Speaker 1: what he's trying to do with Pam BONDI in ordering
Speaker 1: her to get indictments, that you will have others that
Speaker 1: will start pushing back on that. So I think that
Speaker 1: you know, in you know, in some ways this over
Speaker 1: the summer and you start to see it now. Donald
Speaker 1: Trump's getting impatient, right. He wants to just he just
Speaker 1: wants all this, all of his revenge to happen, all
Speaker 1: of his retribution to happen. He wants every thing his
Speaker 1: way now, and he seems to be speeding up that process, right,
Speaker 1: He seems to be in a hurry. But I think
Speaker 1: he's getting sloppy about it, and I think in some
Speaker 1: ways he's starting to He's starting to acquire some enemies
Speaker 1: that I think he's going to regret. He's starting You're
Speaker 1: starting to see independence bail on him. His numbers are
Speaker 1: going down, and all of this is just accumulating. Right.
Speaker 1: It's no one story is going to take down Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: But in the same sort of reasons why the country
Speaker 1: moved on from Trump the first time, he's exhausting his supporters.
Speaker 1: He's making those that are sort of Trump skeptics but
Speaker 1: decided to join the Trump team. More and more uncomfortable
Speaker 1: figuring out how to defend him. It gets harder and
Speaker 1: harder to defend some of these crazy truth social posts
Speaker 1: that he puts out there, these crazy ideas that he
Speaker 1: throws out there, and he's getting to the point where
Speaker 1: he may you know, if Republicans decide he's a political liability,
Speaker 1: they'll throw him overboard. So far because we live in
Speaker 1: these polarized times and because our frankly, thanks to jerry
Speaker 1: mandering and all these things, the primary process matters more
Speaker 1: so because he has this huge stranglehold over the base
Speaker 1: of the Republican party. You're gonna have it is why
Speaker 1: most elected Republicans stay silent rather than pushing back. But
Speaker 1: boy is he pushing the envelope right. He went Brendan
Speaker 1: Carr went too far, and he got people like Ted
Speaker 1: Cruz and Rand Paul Again, we're not we're not talking
Speaker 1: Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, Dave McCormick again, not not
Speaker 1: talking Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins or Don Bacon. Okay,
Speaker 1: so all of these things should be alarming. A normal
Speaker 1: legislative brand would look at this regardless of party and
Speaker 1: say hey, we need some deuce, some more oversight. I'm
Speaker 1: not that pollyannish just to think that's going to happen.
Speaker 1: But he's putting more and more Republicans in uncomfortable positions,
Speaker 1: and I think you're going to start this is this
Speaker 1: is why his numbers are eroding, and this is why
Speaker 1: suddenly you've seen a few more Republican voices speaking out
Speaker 1: that maybe three months ago people didn't expect to stay time.
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Speaker 1: Their fee is free unless they win. Well. This coming week,
Speaker 1: we are going to have to see here the seventy
Speaker 1: third anniversary of the first ever example of a savior
Speaker 1: political skin speech that would end up being the model
Speaker 1: of how to get out of controversy political problems. Really
Speaker 1: to this day. On September twenty third, nineteen fifty two,
Speaker 1: and we'll at nine thirty Eastern Times, the nominee for
Speaker 1: the Republicans for Vice President, Richard Nixon, took to the airways.
Speaker 1: He bought time on CBS, NBC, ABC and Mutual Radio simultaneously.
Speaker 1: At the time, it was a cost of seventy five
Speaker 1: thousand dollars for thirty minutes of airtime to essentially explain
Speaker 1: himself and save his vice presidential candidacy. Let me take
Speaker 1: you through the timeline. So the crisis began on September
Speaker 1: eighteenth of nineteen fifty two. The New York Post, Yes,
Speaker 1: that New York Post, they ran the first big expose
Speaker 1: on Richard Nixon's expense fund. What it was is he
Speaker 1: basically had. Today we would call it a hand paign,
Speaker 1: you know, some sort of super pac fund, but back
Speaker 1: then it did. None of these ever existed. So we
Speaker 1: had this. Some people referred to it as a slush fund,
Speaker 1: but it was essentially a fund where political supporters had
Speaker 1: money to help Nixon with expenses. Maybe it's expenses with
Speaker 1: politics or expenses for himself. But the way it was,
Speaker 1: this had never been seen before. The public had never
Speaker 1: heard of anybody doing this what I'm describing. Today, you'd
Speaker 1: be like, oh, every politicians does this. But at the time,
Speaker 1: nobody believed politicians did do this, nor did they believe
Speaker 1: they should do this. So the New York Post runs
Speaker 1: a story on Nixon's personal expense fund. A whole bunch
Speaker 1: of papers pile on right. Dwight Eisenhower's the newly minted
Speaker 1: Republican nominee for president. In his inner circle, they weren't
Speaker 1: big Nixon fans to begin with Eisenhower. I'm gonna give
Speaker 1: you a little backstory here. Eisenhower was very obviously was
Speaker 1: being recruited by both parties. Right Truman tried to get
Speaker 1: him to run as a Democrat. He decided run as
Speaker 1: a Republican. But what that really meant was he was
Speaker 1: a pretty pretty moderate Republican. He did not necessarily and
Speaker 1: he was not necessarily trusted by some of the conservatives
Speaker 1: in the party. Back then, the conservative wing was essentially
Speaker 1: referred to as the Taft wing of the Republican Party.
Speaker 1: Back then, Taft was sort of a keeper of the
Speaker 1: conservative flame of the Ohio Tafts if you're keeping track
Speaker 1: at home. So Nixon was seen as a necessity, meaning
Speaker 1: Eisenhower had to find a conservative running mate in order
Speaker 1: to essentially appease the right flank of the Republican Party.
Speaker 1: So Nixon wasn't popular with Eisenhower in the first place,
Speaker 1: so the second there's a problem with his nomination, they
Speaker 1: were ready to turn tail. And Nixon knew this because
Speaker 1: Eisenhower's inner circle was furious about the story, and some
Speaker 1: of them immediately wanted him dropped from the ticket. Nixon
Speaker 1: himself thought it was over. So what happened? So Nixon
Speaker 1: and his friends of ad buyers. The person who gets
Speaker 1: the most credit for this is a guy named Murray Chattener,
Speaker 1: who was his campaign manager for his Senate races back
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty. Roger Kent, another political ally. They thought
Speaker 1: Nixon should bypass the press. Don't do a press conference,
Speaker 1: go to this use this new medium, television. Nixon made
Speaker 1: wide use of television and his successful nineteen fifty Senate race.
Speaker 1: By the way, that's been one of my book recommendations.
Speaker 1: Nixon and the Pink Lady, go read that book. It's
Speaker 1: a terrific book, and it will also serve as a
Speaker 1: good primer for the red scare stuff because it was
Speaker 1: a lot of Senate races in nineteen fifty was essentially
Speaker 1: the year of the red Scare in Senate races. But
Speaker 1: he used some television and he was one of the
Speaker 1: first non presidential candidates to use television back in nine
Speaker 1: teen fifty, so and it was thought of that if
Speaker 1: he could go on TV, he could bypass the press. Right.
Speaker 1: Nixon was looking to sort of talk around the press.
Speaker 1: So they decide to buy thirty minutes of national TV time,
Speaker 1: and he goes into the El Capitan Theater in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: At the time, it was a TV studio, and he
Speaker 1: prepared a thirty minute speech details essentially in essence defending
Speaker 1: himself from this story about what was this slush fund
Speaker 1: all about. So he decided he would detail his finances
Speaker 1: down to what his family owned to show transparency. So
Speaker 1: it ended up working right. Some of the more famous
Speaker 1: lines that come of it, you know, the it's known
Speaker 1: as the Checkers Speech for this reason because the Checker's
Speaker 1: moment is Nixon admitted that one of the gifts that
Speaker 1: he got was a dog named Checkers for his daughters.
Speaker 1: And they, yes, they did keep the dog, and he
Speaker 1: wasn't going to give back the dog. And it became
Speaker 1: this because the girls really loved the dog. And so
Speaker 1: he has he does that. He talks about, you know,
Speaker 1: the amount of money they spend. You know that Pat
Speaker 1: his wife doesn't have a fur coat or a mink coat,
Speaker 1: but she does have a respectable Republican cloth coat. And
Speaker 1: I always tell her she'd look good in anything. Then
Speaker 1: he went on and just do mundane things. We owned
Speaker 1: a nineteen fifty Oldsmobile we have our furniture, and we
Speaker 1: have a mortgage of twenty thousand dollars on a house
Speaker 1: in Washington, d C. And then he goes into the
Speaker 1: whole thing of Checkers. Let me repeat the line here
Speaker 1: because it's really good. One other thing I should probably
Speaker 1: tell you, because if I don't, they will probably be
Speaker 1: saying this is about me too. We did get something
Speaker 1: of a gift after the election. A man the nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty cent election. He's referring to a man down in
Speaker 1: Texas heard Pat and the girls on the radio mentioned
Speaker 1: that they'd like to have a dog. And you know
Speaker 1: what it was. It was a little Cocker Spaniel dog
Speaker 1: and a crate that he sent all the way from Texas,
Speaker 1: and our little girl, Trisha, the secure old named it Checkers.
Speaker 1: And you know, the kids, like all kids, love the dog.
Speaker 1: And I just want to say this right now that
Speaker 1: regardless of what they say about it, we're going to
Speaker 1: keep it. And then he ends his speech this way,
Speaker 1: I'm submitting to you, the American people, my side of
Speaker 1: the case. I am proud of the fact that I've
Speaker 1: got a wife and two wonderful daughters, and I don't
Speaker 1: intend to let the American people down. But ultimately the
Speaker 1: decision is not mine, it's yours. Now, the speech worked,
Speaker 1: and why how did they determine that the speech work, Well,
Speaker 1: they got a whole bunch of Back then, people would
Speaker 1: send it in telegrams to let you know if they
Speaker 1: liked something. They got four hundred telegrams to one they
Speaker 1: claimed in favor of keeping Nixon. Even the New York
Speaker 1: Times described it as a masterful use of the new
Speaker 1: medium of television to appeal over the heads of party
Speaker 1: leaders directly to the voters. Now here's the irony. Everything
Speaker 1: in this New York Post report was true. Nixon really
Speaker 1: did have a private expense fund. About eighteen thousand dollars
Speaker 1: was raised, which is the equivalent of about two hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars today. Donors contributed it to cover his travel
Speaker 1: political expenses, which were not fully reimbursed by the Senate. Now,
Speaker 1: this fund wasn't illegal, and Nixon didn't pocket the money
Speaker 1: for personal gain. But the optics were bad because it
Speaker 1: looked like wealthy donors were secretly bankrolling his career. Because
Speaker 1: guess what, wealthy donors were always bankrolling his career. Whether
Speaker 1: it was secret, I think is sort of up for debate.
Speaker 1: But the bottom line was this story was true, and
Speaker 1: he just put a different spin on it. He didn't
Speaker 1: deny it existed, but he went on television and he
Speaker 1: made his appeal without having to deal with a reporter
Speaker 1: questioning him. It completely transformed how politicians dealt with controversial things.
Speaker 1: It made television these things now the irony is here.
Speaker 1: TV save save Nixon in nineteen fifty two, and then
Speaker 1: of course the first televised debates in nineteen sixty would
Speaker 1: doom Nixon, right, you may you may make note that
Speaker 1: this is the second you know here, I have done
Speaker 1: this three times in this month of September so far,
Speaker 1: and two of the anecdotes or Nixon, I would I
Speaker 1: would submit that Nixon is probably in the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: the single most important elected politician we had in the
Speaker 1: twentieth century. All he whether it was pioneering political consultants
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty being the first to use television to
Speaker 1: try to go around the press and try to create
Speaker 1: his own press, try to create his own communications to
Speaker 1: everything he did as president, which you know, sort of
Speaker 1: created all sorts. You know, we didn't used to report,
Speaker 1: we had no campaign finance laws, ever, you had no
Speaker 1: idea who was funding what elections, how much money was
Speaker 1: being spent. There was no reporting mechanism whatsoever. The boint
Speaker 1: was is that for better or for worse. Nixon was
Speaker 1: sort of almost like Forrest Gump right in that he
Speaker 1: was a part or influenced so many aspects, whether it
Speaker 1: was American foreign policy, how political campaigns are done, are
Speaker 1: done the Republican Party. And I would submit to you, Look,
Speaker 1: without Nixon, you wouldn't have Trump. So it is, it is.
Speaker 1: It is quite the lineage anyway, the Checker speech completely
Speaker 1: you know now, of course what what Donald Trump's his
Speaker 1: version of the Checkers speech just to was Twitter, right,
Speaker 1: Instead of using television to go around people, he used
Speaker 1: social media. So it is. The Checkers Beach is one
Speaker 1: of those. And this week's anniversary of it is a
Speaker 1: good time. You should go take a look at it.
Speaker 1: It's you can find it anywhere on YouTube. It's a
Speaker 1: good listen, but it's a it was a pioneering moment
Speaker 1: in political communications, and it sort of sort of set
Speaker 1: us on a path. And look, if it wasn't Nixon,
Speaker 1: somebody else probably would have tried this and found success.
Speaker 1: At the time, Nixon just happened to be the first
Speaker 1: one under threat of having his political career and before
Speaker 1: it really began, and he decided to use television to
Speaker 1: save it. And the irony is that to save himself
Speaker 1: from a story that was true. It was not as
Speaker 1: if this story was not true, all right? So with that,
Speaker 1: let me take a couple of questions here before I
Speaker 1: get to my college up tack, ask Chuck. First question
Speaker 1: comes from Drew a and he writes, Hey, podcast team,
Speaker 1: is there a scenario where mom Donnie's brand? Does socialism
Speaker 1: actually helped independence like Dan Osborne by giving them a
Speaker 1: sharper contrast not just against Republicans tied to Trump, but
Speaker 1: also against Democrats flirting with socialism and letting them argue
Speaker 1: that both parties are failing in different ways. He writes
Speaker 1: Cocaine's GW Class of twenty ten, I don't think Here's
Speaker 1: why I don't think it's going to help Osborne in
Speaker 1: twenty six. Look, I'm going to start off with I'm
Speaker 1: a huge skeptic of whether democratic socialism can succeed, not
Speaker 1: just not just as a way to convince voters to
Speaker 1: vote for it, but even as a policy implementing these
Speaker 1: policies that I'm skeptical that he's going to be able
Speaker 1: to pull this off. But the point is is that
Speaker 1: if it's going to end up being a net positive,
Speaker 1: he's gotta I think it would take a it would
Speaker 1: take a term of Mom Donnie succeeding for it then
Speaker 1: to have, you know, maybe by twenty you know, if
Speaker 1: he is able to implement some of his policies and
Speaker 1: they work, somehow, he somehow finds a way to find
Speaker 1: the money to implement these things. And I just that's
Speaker 1: to me, that's the big question. Where's he going to
Speaker 1: get this money? I Mean, he always says he wants
Speaker 1: to get it from Wall Street and all this stuff,
Speaker 1: But realistically, is he going to be able to somehow
Speaker 1: either get the cooperation of the state legislature to help
Speaker 1: him do this or the cooperation of the New York
Speaker 1: City Council. And I'm just skeptical on the implementation front.
Speaker 1: But even if he is, I don't think there's anything
Speaker 1: to quote unquote succeed with yet in time to help
Speaker 1: anybody in twenty six. But I do think if you're
Speaker 1: if I'm look, I think the S word is just
Speaker 1: impossible to think. I do not think there is going
Speaker 1: to be any way to somehow make that the Democrats
Speaker 1: can lean into this and and successfully stay in national
Speaker 1: a competitive national party. And I've gone through this with
Speaker 1: you know, I please take a look at the substack.
Speaker 1: I wrote a couple of weeks ago about this. But
Speaker 1: but the s words socialism in New England right home
Speaker 1: of Bernie Sanders, or even in the Northeast where Mom
Speaker 1: Donnie is, when you think of socialism, you're more likely
Speaker 1: to think of the European socialism down in the Sun
Speaker 1: Belt all right where I grew up in Miami, particularly
Speaker 1: in Florida. And you know, I've made this point quite
Speaker 1: a bit, but this is also I think through throughout
Speaker 1: the Sun Belt, right, we have a lot of first,
Speaker 1: second and third generation Latino voters, many of them come
Speaker 1: come from countries or have or come from countries who
Speaker 1: are neighbors with countries that we're sort of socialist regimes
Speaker 1: that either became authoritarian or bordered on authoritarianism. So that
Speaker 1: to a lot of Latino voters, they hear the word
Speaker 1: socialism and they think authoritarianism. First. They don't think government
Speaker 1: funded policies, right, they don't think universal health care they
Speaker 1: don't think rent control, and I think that that is
Speaker 1: what makes the branding of this just. I think that hard.
Speaker 1: I might even use the word toxic. Okay, And I
Speaker 1: say it not that I know the specific ideas. Many
Speaker 1: some of the ideas that Mamdani is calling for are
Speaker 1: popular when you put them to a poll test. But
Speaker 1: I will submit anytime. You know, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: things that are popular. If you say, hey, would you
Speaker 1: like the government to do this, the answer is yes,
Speaker 1: Now here's how much it will cost? Will you pay
Speaker 1: for this? Well, then the answer is no, right on
Speaker 1: those things. So the specific part of your question is
Speaker 1: just simply timing, right. I think Mom Donnie has to
Speaker 1: have success for it to translate on the campaign trap
Speaker 1: I do on that front, all right. Next question comes
Speaker 1: from Max Beck from Philadelphia, who also notes he's proudly
Speaker 1: Delaware born. Hey, Jack, I'm a Duke med student doing
Speaker 1: a research year in pediatric brain tumors, and I often
Speaker 1: listen to the podcast while in the lab. I've long
Speaker 1: been interested in redistricting. I was struck by Senator Roger
Speaker 1: Marshall's full throat of defense of RFK Junior and his
Speaker 1: spread of medical misinformation. Given that and the impact of
Speaker 1: Trump era tariff's and US AID cuts on Kansas farmers,
Speaker 1: do you think Democrats should target Marshall c or at
Speaker 1: least invest now to build competitiveness for the future. His
Speaker 1: comments as a physician felt especially misleading and troubling. Look,
Speaker 1: I do think, you know, mar I think when you
Speaker 1: just look at Kansas in general and demographically, it has
Speaker 1: three major it has three you know, decent sized media
Speaker 1: markets Topeka, Wichita, and and Kansas City right the Kansas
Speaker 1: side of Kansas City. When you look at other purple states,
Speaker 1: you know that having having at least three media markets
Speaker 1: of that of a certain size is usually a recipe
Speaker 1: for that. Right, Virginia has Richmond, Norfolk Virginia, you know Norfolk, Virginia, Beach, Richmond,
Speaker 1: d c Rono. You know. So North Carolina has multiple
Speaker 1: so you you do need that. So Kansas has that.
Speaker 1: They have a couple of fairly decent sized college towns
Speaker 1: in Lawrence and Manhattan. Those are pretty big state schools.
Speaker 1: So and you've had now Democrats, have you had a
Speaker 1: where the Republican brand went too far to the right
Speaker 1: and that seemed to alienate a lot of moderate Republicans
Speaker 1: who became independent, some of them even switch parties. A
Speaker 1: few of them ended up as Democrats. So I do
Speaker 1: think there is a Kansas Democratic, Kansas Democrat brand that's
Speaker 1: similar to like a Kentucky Democrat brand that Andy Bursheer
Speaker 1: has that I think you could separate yourself from sort
Speaker 1: of the national brand that you know, there hasn't been
Speaker 1: a Democratic elected US senator since before FDR. Okay, so
Speaker 1: you got to go way back into the way back
Speaker 1: machine to find evidence of a Democrat winning a US
Speaker 1: Senate seat in Kansas. But when you look at the
Speaker 1: map and I outline this in a sub stack a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks ago, it's the same substack where I
Speaker 1: talked about the branding issue with socialism and how troubling
Speaker 1: it was because it was just shrinking the map for
Speaker 1: Democrats to find places to win Senate seats. Right now,
Speaker 1: if they won every single Senate seat in the seven
Speaker 1: battleground states plus every blue state, they'd have fifty two macs.
Speaker 1: Right So they've got to put Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Mississippi, Alaska, Ohio.
Speaker 1: They've got to put these states in play. They've got
Speaker 1: to give themselves more potential opportunities that are realistic to
Speaker 1: win Senate sees. And I think Kansas for everything you
Speaker 1: just outlined, I think mostly really due to aid cuts
Speaker 1: and tariffs. I think all I think the three farm
Speaker 1: states in general, Nebraska, Iowa, and Kansas. I think all
Speaker 1: of them have the potential where tariffs could could really bite.
Speaker 1: But you know, you gotta I'm a little more bullish
Speaker 1: on Kansas than I am Nebraska because Kansas has elected
Speaker 1: democratic governors. Right, Cibilia's got two terms or Kelly got
Speaker 1: two terms. So this isn't again you got to brand
Speaker 1: yourself as a Kansas Democrat. You got to sort of
Speaker 1: separate yourself a little bit. But I think it's real,
Speaker 1: and I think it's a huge. In fact, I think
Speaker 1: it's a This goes to the there is no leader
Speaker 1: of the Democratic Party. They don't think about party building
Speaker 1: because this is the state. Arguably they should have been
Speaker 1: targeting more seriously a few years ago. Right, the evidence
Speaker 1: of Kansas pushing back on going too far to the
Speaker 1: right happened during Sam Brownback's governorship. Well that was nearly
Speaker 1: a decade ago. All right, last question for day, and
Speaker 1: then I'll do my little college football round up. Hey check.
Speaker 1: I agree that local news coverage provides huge value to
Speaker 1: the public in terms of transparency and local politics, and
Speaker 1: that we've lost that in many markets. My question is,
Speaker 1: if we move beyond the easy answer of money, what
Speaker 1: else do these local news organizations need to be successful?
Speaker 1: Local talent, a means of distribution, the newsroom that supports research,
Speaker 1: assignments and editorial Is it something else completely? How did
Speaker 1: the current efforts at limiting freedom of speech impact your answer?
Speaker 1: Thanks for the show and detailed discussions you do, Terrell. Look,
Speaker 1: I think the biggest thing is that you need a business.
Speaker 1: You need a revenue stream for local news. Right. What
Speaker 1: local news needs to succeed is to find a replacement
Speaker 1: for classified advertising. Classified advertising, for a good hundred years
Speaker 1: was the lifeline for local news, right, the ability to
Speaker 1: you know that that was the consistent revenue you could
Speaker 1: count on. It was the only place locally to go
Speaker 1: look for a job, to go buy and sell a
Speaker 1: use car, to go buy and sell use furniture. You
Speaker 1: get my drift, right, So losing all of that to
Speaker 1: Craig Right, Craig's List, or Facebook Marketplace or all these
Speaker 1: other entities, you know, So what local news needs is
Speaker 1: that the second thing, though, that local news needs to
Speaker 1: succeed is a mindset of service journalism, meaning help people
Speaker 1: live their lives, and not every news story has to be,
Speaker 1: you know, an attempt to go win the Pulitzer Prize.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you're just simply helping people find it cheaper chicken.
Speaker 1: You're helping people find a better way to plant flowers.
Speaker 1: You're helping people find an easier way to get to work.
Speaker 1: You're helping people find a better way to enroll their
Speaker 1: kids in youth sports. So I think that you know,
Speaker 1: right now, when we talk about the crisis of local news,
Speaker 1: it just doesn't exist. And everybody immediately like zooms in
Speaker 1: on journalism for journalists. And the thing is is that
Speaker 1: we have a trust issue first, So I view it
Speaker 1: as an opportunity to rebuild trust with media in general.
Speaker 1: And if you focus on being public servants and helping
Speaker 1: people live their lives. Number one, I hope you have
Speaker 1: journalists that want to live in the community and stay
Speaker 1: in the community. I'm not saying, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: want people trapped in jobs, but I do think that
Speaker 1: that makes for a healthier and a more robust local
Speaker 1: information ecosystem if there is a consistent group of people
Speaker 1: who stay and want to do it right rather than
Speaker 1: just people coming in using it as a stepping stone
Speaker 1: and leaving. But the biggest thing that we need to
Speaker 1: find is a revenue stream. Nonprofit's not going to be
Speaker 1: the answer on this, But if I were to say
Speaker 1: what am I looking for, it's almost a mindset change.
Speaker 1: And we need to have journalism schools emphasize service journalism
Speaker 1: as well as accountability journalism. Not all journalism is woodward
Speaker 1: and burnstay. Some journalism is simply helping people figure out
Speaker 1: how to navigate the community, whatever that means on any
Speaker 1: given day. And it's those little things that build the
Speaker 1: trust so that then they will believe you when you
Speaker 1: tell them the mayor's corrupt, or they will believe you
Speaker 1: when you tell them that the borders are is taking
Speaker 1: a bag of cash from Kava and promising government contracts
Speaker 1: in return. See how I turned it all the way around.
Speaker 1: All right, So with that, appreciate the questions this week
Speaker 1: a little so as I teas stepped top I was
Speaker 1: at I was in Miami for the Miami Florida game,
Speaker 1: my second University of Miami game. This year I was
Speaker 1: at the Notre Dame game made it down for that.
Speaker 1: It was raining the whole time, and I think that
Speaker 1: is why you saw. I was a little frustrated that
Speaker 1: this was the worst offensive performance that Miami's had so
Speaker 1: far this year. Part of it, I think was the
Speaker 1: wet ball, but part of it was it was really
Speaker 1: good Florida Gator's defense. The fact is, while Carson Beck
Speaker 1: had all the time in the world when he needed it,
Speaker 1: he couldn't find open receivers. Eventually they figured out that
Speaker 1: if you just did the little the little flares to
Speaker 1: the running backs, that those were open and they could
Speaker 1: do some real damage. Uh and both Mark Fletcher and
Speaker 1: uh and Marty Brown did a ton of damage there.
Speaker 1: So there's you know, it's funny when you're a fan,
Speaker 1: you know you can nit pick the crap out of
Speaker 1: your team. You know, everybody is throwing the accolades right
Speaker 1: now at my beloved Miami Hurricanes, and maybe they're the
Speaker 1: best team in the country, maybe this, maybe that, And
Speaker 1: I'm sitting there going, boy did they play a terrible game.
Speaker 1: But here's the upside. Over the last ten years, when
Speaker 1: they played a game like that, they usually lost those
Speaker 1: games like that was a game that was sitting there
Speaker 1: when it's thirteen to nothing. I said to my daughter,
Speaker 1: I said, this is not good. We should be up twenty,
Speaker 1: we should be up three or four scores, and the
Speaker 1: fact that we're not means one score. And that's suddenly
Speaker 1: it's a one score game. And sure enough, right from
Speaker 1: the about five minutes left to go, it's a one
Speaker 1: score game. And I know, and every Miami fan was
Speaker 1: thinking the same thing. I was thinking, like, oh no,
Speaker 1: the same thing's about to happen again. Miami's going to
Speaker 1: figure out how to blow this. They're going to Georgia
Speaker 1: Tech itt up. They're gonna Syracuse it up like what
Speaker 1: happened last year and then they did. Number One. They
Speaker 1: have a beast of a defense that is fantastic. They
Speaker 1: have an amazing offensive line. When they need to just
Speaker 1: get two or three yards, they get two or three yards.
Speaker 1: In fact, their offensive line so good. I'm hoping my
Speaker 1: Green Bay Packers can borrow some of these offensive linemen
Speaker 1: that the Nursery of Mimmy have because they clearly have
Speaker 1: a problem. They couldn't do anything to stop the to
Speaker 1: move the Cleveland defensive line on Sunday and that, so
Speaker 1: I am. I'm relieved that Miami got a victory there,
Speaker 1: and I'm relieved they have a week off because in
Speaker 1: two weeks it is Miami Florida State. And yes, that
Speaker 1: game's in Tallahassee, and yes I'll be going to that,
Speaker 1: and yes we're a divided household on that. So I
Speaker 1: don't know if I'm coming back on separate planes or not.
Speaker 1: We will see how the game ends up, right. Is
Speaker 1: it a super close game where a rematch is inevitable
Speaker 1: between Miami and Florida State, or is it not close
Speaker 1: for one of us and there's some bitterness that takes
Speaker 1: over and then we'll want to find a new seat
Speaker 1: on the plane. I kid, I think on that. A
Speaker 1: few other things from the weekend that I thought was
Speaker 1: of notes. Look, we're really screwing up college football rivalries.
Speaker 1: For instance, Miami and Florida aren't gonna play where they're
Speaker 1: not scheduled to play, and they may never play in
Speaker 1: the regular season for some time with these new you know,
Speaker 1: demands at the SEC schedule nine conference games. Florida already
Speaker 1: has a mandatory game with Florida State. The state legislature
Speaker 1: mandates that game as their tenth Power four conference. They're
Speaker 1: not They're not going to be enthusiastic about adding Miami
Speaker 1: to that schedule. Steve Spurrier dropped us the first time
Speaker 1: when he took over because he was trying to make
Speaker 1: Florida's schedule easier so that they could they could they
Speaker 1: could have a better record. The TCUSMU rivalry for the
Speaker 1: Iron Skillet. They may have played their last version of
Speaker 1: that rivalry for at least five years, maybe longer because
Speaker 1: ones in the Big twelve, ones in the ACC and
Speaker 1: the same thing. Right, all these conferences are trying to
Speaker 1: they got it there. They're so big, you've got to
Speaker 1: make time to actually play the actual teams in your conference.
Speaker 1: So having these out of conference rivalries are just going
Speaker 1: to be harder and harder to keep up. I mean
Speaker 1: the fact that the weekend had the Apple Cup in
Speaker 1: Washington and the Civil War in Oregon. Yeah, they're not
Speaker 1: what they used to be because all four of those
Speaker 1: teams used to be in the same conference. And by
Speaker 1: the way, those games used to always be in October
Speaker 1: or November, and they'd be rainy and they'd be cold,
Speaker 1: and they'd be filled with intrigue because there's always at
Speaker 1: least one of those four teams, if not two, that
Speaker 1: were in the conversation for the So it's a shame
Speaker 1: that we're really sort of the best part of college
Speaker 1: football are some of these traditions and the silly trophies,
Speaker 1: the oaken bucket or whatever the hell you come up
Speaker 1: with as a trophy game. But it's kind of it's
Speaker 1: kind of it's kind of fun, and it's terrible to
Speaker 1: see that happen, to see that go away. I have
Speaker 1: to say as much as that, I'm I go hot
Speaker 1: and cold on some of the antics that take place
Speaker 1: now on sports television. I know that my University Miami
Speaker 1: senior had a blast at college game Day and the university.
Speaker 1: I you know, I gotta thank you ESPN for forgiving
Speaker 1: the university a heck of a showcase. The place look great,
Speaker 1: the patio look great. And you know, here's what I
Speaker 1: give McAfee a lot of credit for you because he
Speaker 1: does this with all the game day you know, I
Speaker 1: know some McAfee's an acquired taste for some people. He's
Speaker 1: not always you know, I go back, I go hot
Speaker 1: and cold on him. But boy does he know how
Speaker 1: to just throw himself into the college student, you know
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. I don't know how much longer he'll
Speaker 1: have that, Like in his own way, he might be
Speaker 1: the new Courso right instead of putting on you know,
Speaker 1: mascot heeads, he's going to be doing you know, crazy
Speaker 1: stuff like doing high die you know, jumps off a
Speaker 1: high die board like he did at Miami or whatever.
Speaker 1: But what's interesting is is how sticky that is for
Speaker 1: the students that are there. So some of us old
Speaker 1: fogies may roll our eyes at it, but they're making
Speaker 1: Bud ESPN is making real connections there on that front.
Speaker 1: Next week, I'm glad Miami's off, But wow, what a
Speaker 1: college football card we have, right, it's Penn State in Oregon,
Speaker 1: it's George and Alabama. Yes, there's some other games and
Speaker 1: I'll get to it then, but we're going to learn
Speaker 1: a lot about that. And then later this week will
Speaker 1: there be more head coach firings. There are two one
Speaker 1: and three teams, actually there'll be three, I think schools,
Speaker 1: big time schools where you're going to hear loud conversations
Speaker 1: about what is happening and what's their future. Daboswiney at
Speaker 1: Clemson Yes, they're one and three. How's that working out?
Speaker 1: Billy Napier at Florida, he's one and three, And of
Speaker 1: course Mike Gundy at Oklahoma State are they one and three? Two?
Speaker 1: They may be over. It's the thing that all of
Speaker 1: the those coaches have to worry about. It's the weird
Speaker 1: rules of college football. Now. You can play four games
Speaker 1: and then claim a red shirt and essentially get your
Speaker 1: eligibility back. That that is, if you're a Florida or
Speaker 1: Clemson and you've got a one in three team and
Speaker 1: you thought you were going to be a contender, you
Speaker 1: may have players that say, you know what, this coach
Speaker 1: may be out of here. I'm not putting my future
Speaker 1: on the line. I can make money in an extra
Speaker 1: year of eligibility. I'm in a red shirt. I want out,
Speaker 1: and they'll enter the portal. They can't switch teams this season,
Speaker 1: but they can actually enter the portal now and essentially
Speaker 1: stop playing and claim a red shirt if they haven't
Speaker 1: claimed a red shirt already. And that is the sort
Speaker 1: of quitting issue that I think both Clemson and Florida
Speaker 1: have to be on the lookout for. And I think
Speaker 1: that's going to be an underrated story to follow as
Speaker 1: the week goes on. All right, so there's my little
Speaker 1: college fotball update with my little personal touch. Yes, it
Speaker 1: was raining the whole time, and that you know, it's
Speaker 1: a it's here's the best part. It poured for three
Speaker 1: hours straight and sixty five thousand people still show them
Speaker 1: at hard Rock. So for those of you who think
Speaker 1: the University of Miami are fair weather fans, the weather
Speaker 1: wasn't very fair and we showed up anyway. So with that,
Speaker 1: I will see in about forty eight hours, so we
Speaker 1: upload again.