Speaker 1: It is a real pleasure to be joined by somebody
Speaker 1: I've known for a long time that I have a
Speaker 1: great deal of admiration for. We live in an era
Speaker 1: where there has been a profound and I mean profound
Speaker 1: collapse of trust between the American people and institutions, and
Speaker 1: that crisis of character is not something that ever caught
Speaker 1: up to the person I'm real privileged to be able
Speaker 1: to be with this afternoon. That's Terry Moran, journalist, ABC newsman.
Speaker 1: When those words meant something and there were inviolate standards,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about some of that today. I've worked
Speaker 1: with Terry over my political career. I have no idea
Speaker 1: where Terry's politics ever ever worked. You could hold a
Speaker 1: gun to my head. Didn't know. He was an objective, fair,
Speaker 1: straight shooting reporter. It's the work privileged to have him
Speaker 1: with us. You can find Terry on his sub stack
Speaker 1: type in Terry Moran. It's growing fast. It's a great, great,
Speaker 1: great read, and it's good to see Terry out there. Terry,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to ask you today that there will
Speaker 1: be a large, large cohort of this audience that remembers
Speaker 1: Peter Jennings. Take us inside the room to the best
Speaker 1: of your ability, imagining Peter Jennings was still with us today.
Speaker 1: And you you you watched what unfolded on television with
Speaker 1: the President of the United States flanked by the Attorney
Speaker 1: General of the United States, by the by the Defense
Speaker 1: Secretary of the United States, and you have to get
Speaker 1: ready for an evening newscast that that's going to try
Speaker 1: to explicate this to the to the American people. And
Speaker 1: you know, we're back any day. There are serious people
Speaker 1: sitting around the table to take their obligations and their
Speaker 1: duty very very very seriously. And and and I'm just
Speaker 1: take us into the room imagining Peter Jennings is just
Speaker 1: walking into the room as the managing director of World
Speaker 1: News World News tonight. You guys got to get ready
Speaker 1: for the broadcast after watching that what what what did
Speaker 1: we see today? Wow?
Speaker 2: That is such a great invitation because I love Peter Jennings.
Speaker 2: He was kind of he was a mentor to me
Speaker 2: in many ways, as he was to many people. An
Speaker 2: interesting man, a curious man. And the thing that he
Speaker 2: brought to the coverage Steve day after day and he
Speaker 2: got in trouble for it, good trouble, as they say
Speaker 2: was values if he felt something was wrong, he didn't
Speaker 2: stand up and write an editorial about it, but he
Speaker 2: wanted to tell the truth about what he saw. And
Speaker 2: I'll give you a very good So I was white rookie.
Speaker 2: White House corresponded. When George W. Bush came into office,
Speaker 2: and you know, we did the nine to eleven happened,
Speaker 2: the response to the country, and then the administration started
Speaker 2: planning an invasion of Iraq on the basis of weapons
Speaker 2: of mass destruction. I talked to people all across the
Speaker 2: government and outside of our government and other governments, people
Speaker 2: in the Israeli government, people in the British government and
Speaker 2: intelligence that people at the UN, former weapons inspectors.
Speaker 1: All kinds of people on the hill. There were only
Speaker 1: two people.
Speaker 2: Who said, not Saddam jose and does not have any
Speaker 2: weapons of mass destruction. One was that guy Scott Ritter,
Speaker 2: who is the He was a weapons inspector, kind of compromised.
Speaker 2: He was cozying up to Saddam and Tarikazi's It was
Speaker 2: a little of the foreigners.
Speaker 1: It was a little weird. But the other one was Peter.
Speaker 2: Jennings, and I remember I got out of having an
Speaker 2: editorial meeting with them, and I'd gotten out of a
Speaker 2: briefing that the White House was giving and I and
Speaker 2: Peter said, you know, tera Ed, I'm looking at these
Speaker 2: scientists who are coming out. He'd lived in the Middle
Speaker 2: East eleven years, covered the region extensively and had a
Speaker 2: feel for it, right. I don't think they have it
Speaker 2: that he has any webs the best distrection, I said, Peter,
Speaker 2: I'm in the White House. I just talked to kind
Speaker 2: of these a rice. I just you know, I know
Speaker 2: what I'm talking about. I'm the reporter here. It was
Speaker 2: a lesson and one that I a burden that I carry.
Speaker 1: In some ways. I could have done a better job.
Speaker 2: I understood diplomacy in some ways, and I kept challenging
Speaker 2: Bush on why are you abandon in our allies? Why
Speaker 2: are you going it alone? You know, this is a
Speaker 2: major enterprise. But I didn't have an experience in the
Speaker 2: classified intelligence kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: And it was Peter's feel for it.
Speaker 2: And he wasn't afraid to say it, and he made
Speaker 2: my pieces better than they would have been by injecting
Speaker 2: that that understanding he had, being unafraid in front of
Speaker 2: seventy percent of the country was in favor of that invasions.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying Peter was in favor of it or not.
Speaker 2: He just had a sense that truth mattered and that
Speaker 2: you had to bring your own understanding based on your
Speaker 2: reporting and on your values. That tone, that language is
Speaker 2: gone today. The network news, you know, corporate news, legacy news,
Speaker 2: whatever you want to call it. They they're afraid of
Speaker 2: that kind of language today. They don't use it. It's
Speaker 2: become more simplified. There are hardly any verbs anymore. Everybody's
Speaker 2: always saying today the president talking about, well, it's nighttime.
Speaker 2: My favorite example of that is when Elizabeth Taylor died,
Speaker 2: the headline was tonight Elizabeth Taylor died.
Speaker 1: I was like, no, she did that already.
Speaker 2: So the language has been dumbed down, which is for urgency, urgency,
Speaker 2: the terror of the past tense I call it.
Speaker 1: But then I think the other thing that happened is that.
Speaker 2: The retreat from values try to try to try to
Speaker 2: tell the story one side the other side, and all
Speaker 2: that without without any sense of the actual truthful value
Speaker 2: values that are at stake. And I think that's partly
Speaker 2: the influence of the corporation that doesn't want to rock
Speaker 2: the boat, and I'm just talking about I'm not talking
Speaker 2: about anything internal. I'm talking about obviously what we can
Speaker 2: all witness, and my understanding in general is from my experience,
Speaker 2: the corporation certainly doesn't want that, and it also is
Speaker 2: a moment that is too big for that model. My
Speaker 2: friends and colleagues, whom I respect tremendously, they still do
Speaker 2: great work.
Speaker 1: I look at ABC News every day. I got no
Speaker 1: hard feelings.
Speaker 2: Genuinely, it's their business, it's their see how they can
Speaker 2: do what they want.
Speaker 1: I crossed the line.
Speaker 2: They didn't like whatever, But they aren't meeting the moment.
Speaker 2: They're one of our many institutions that are failing to
Speaker 2: tell the truth to themselves in the first instance, or
Speaker 2: maybe they are behind closed doors about what is happening,
Speaker 2: what is clearly happening in our country, and that model,
Speaker 2: which is imposed to some extent by corporate interests, can't
Speaker 2: tell the truth as in full as it is to
Speaker 2: the American people. And I think that's one of the
Speaker 2: reasons why, one of the many reasons why that's a
Speaker 2: very difficult business to being. Right now, what's happened today?
Speaker 1: What did you witness Trump do today?
Speaker 2: Well, this was the theater of authoritarianism and the reality
Speaker 2: of it. Right, this is the kind of thing that
Speaker 2: you'd see in South America in the nineteen fifties, or
Speaker 2: you know, it's the Orbon playbook, the Polish playbook. This
Speaker 2: is put troops on the streets, even if they aren't
Speaker 2: really needed. He did that in La. You know, there
Speaker 2: ryots out of control of La. In LA they kept
Speaker 2: showing the same one car burning. The police in La
Speaker 2: are pretty good, they were on top of it. There
Speaker 2: were protesters, legit peaceful, some getting out of control. No
Speaker 2: sign that the local authorities were unable to deal with that.
Speaker 2: But he wanted the troops on the street. He wanted
Speaker 2: you to feel that. And I'm talking to friends around
Speaker 2: here who live in DC. I live out in Frederick, Maryland,
Speaker 2: and he wants them to feel it. He wants people
Speaker 2: to feel the exercise of his domination on their streets
Speaker 2: and on the streets of somebody else's city. So you
Speaker 2: don't want to, you know, you don't want to get
Speaker 2: two out of the lane that you're supposed to be
Speaker 2: in in your own city.
Speaker 1: And don't think that's not working. It is working.
Speaker 2: I was in a foreign correspondent for five years. And
Speaker 2: I was in London one night waiting for the evening
Speaker 2: news to Peter Jennings News, although he was gone by then,
Speaker 2: which comes out at twelve thirty in the morning in London.
Speaker 2: So there with my producer from Poland to mcroski, great guy,
Speaker 2: and he was in there were in the throes of
Speaker 2: that government in Poland, the Law and Justice Party, which
Speaker 2: did something very similar that from what we're enduring now,
Speaker 2: and they were just stripped the judiciary of authority, that
Speaker 2: kind of thing. And I said to Toemik, I said,
Speaker 2: what's it like to live there? Just what's it like
Speaker 2: for people are in agreement with the government. And he
Speaker 2: said something that has come back to me a lot
Speaker 2: these days. He said, your life gets smaller. You try
Speaker 2: not to look around, you try not to stand up,
Speaker 2: your life gets smaller. That's what Trump wants. What we
Speaker 2: saw today was a performance of authority backed up now
Speaker 2: by presidential powers that nobody's going to stop him from using,
Speaker 2: not Congress, not the courts, in order to dominate dominate opposition.
Speaker 2: And it's also on an issue. You know that a
Speaker 2: lot of ordinary Americans are only glancing at the news,
Speaker 2: you know a little bit every day. He say, well, okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: I guess DC's full of crime.
Speaker 1: Go get him. He's not stupid. You lost your job
Speaker 1: at ABC News for offering an assessment about Steven Miller,
Speaker 1: and you were gone within within forty eight hours. And
Speaker 1: I have been really looking forward to you talking to
Speaker 1: you about it, particularly with the with the passage of
Speaker 1: of some time right out of the out of the
Speaker 1: moment where I think you can objectively analyze some some
Speaker 1: of this a little bit better. Do you?
Speaker 2: Do you remember exactly what you said about them? I
Speaker 2: mean not word for word, but I remember writing. I
Speaker 2: mean I was a sound mind and body, so I
Speaker 2: certainly remember writing it. And I remember that I thought
Speaker 2: before I said that, I thought this is pretty hot,
Speaker 2: this is this is tough. But I looked at it
Speaker 2: before I sent it, and I thought that's a description.
Speaker 2: I knew people would not like it within and without
Speaker 2: ABC News, but I thought, I'm describing something, and I
Speaker 2: believe that was describing it accurately and fairly. I do
Speaker 2: remember I said I called him a world class hater,
Speaker 2: which he is. I've been thinking about it all day
Speaker 2: that day, something about the man in which his public
Speaker 2: persona was just bludgeoning the body politic every day almost
Speaker 2: with with lies and kind of spitting venom, and and
Speaker 2: it was it's.
Speaker 1: Let me ask, Let me ask this question, right. Would
Speaker 1: would there have been an objection if you described David
Speaker 1: Duke as a world class hater? That's a great question.
Speaker 2: Probably I might have had a minor reprimand I would
Speaker 2: not love my job, but I might have had a reprimand.
Speaker 1: Is there such a thing as a world class hater?
Speaker 1: Do you think that that's a fair description, that there
Speaker 1: are people that, for whatever reason, burn with a deep
Speaker 1: hatred that just objectively, those those human beings have existed
Speaker 1: over the over the course of history. Sure. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm as a reporter.
Speaker 2: I look at the way Stephen Miller addresses the public,
Speaker 2: the way he fills the airwaves with lies and with
Speaker 2: this intense almost almost desire to to enrage and to humiliate.
Speaker 1: He almost spits out his words. I mean, how would
Speaker 1: you describe that? That's hatred? Hi Trump too, Morgan. I
Speaker 1: think about your description and the consequence of it through
Speaker 1: a very singular appraisal. There's only there's only one person
Speaker 1: I think about, and in the moment that happened, it
Speaker 1: was a man named abner Less, and abner Less was
Speaker 1: a German Jew who became an Israeli police captain, and
Speaker 1: he was the singular person who interrogated at Off Hikman,
Speaker 1: which he did for two hundred and seventy five hours,
Speaker 1: and he never talked about it. Who lied to his
Speaker 1: bosses about his family because he wanted the shot to
Speaker 1: interrogate him and knew he was up for it and
Speaker 1: wouldn't get it if his bosses in Israel knew that
Speaker 1: he was a that he was in fact a survivor,
Speaker 1: you know, and had lost lost his family. So however, however,
Speaker 1: he obscured that he did. And he's asked about the
Speaker 1: experience in nineteen eighty once, so twenty years later, and
Speaker 1: he said, did you have any takeaways from that? And
Speaker 1: he says absolutely, he gave me my full faith in
Speaker 1: democracy because there are Adolf Kamans everywhere. They're all around us.
Speaker 1: But they're harmless in a democracy, but they but they
Speaker 1: but they turned deadly in an instant and a dictatorship.
Speaker 1: And what Stephen or is is a is a little Aikman.
Speaker 1: And he would have been understood as a little iikeman
Speaker 1: contemporaneous to when that term was familiarized and popularized in
Speaker 1: the in the nineteen sixties. And so if you if
Speaker 1: you eradicate objectively right as a news organization s right,
Speaker 1: the ability to describe someone accurate, precisely, surgically, then what
Speaker 1: you do is remove at a foundational level the keys
Speaker 1: to understanding someone like a Reinhart Heidrich, someone like a
Speaker 1: Joseph Goebbels. And you really censor historically by removing from
Speaker 1: consideration the role that this hatred had, any events that
Speaker 1: transpired when the personality disorder came into contact with the
Speaker 1: men's political power. And so if you can objectively look at,
Speaker 1: say Pope Francis, and say that this is a person
Speaker 1: who advocated for love in the world, and also appreciate
Speaker 1: that there are doctrinal differences in a two thousand year
Speaker 1: old church if you're covering it through that praism, But objectively,
Speaker 1: what did he stand for? He stood for these values?
Speaker 1: And are there antithetical values to that? And I would
Speaker 1: argue that there are, and are they represented right by vices?
Speaker 1: And among those vices, are there such things as bigotry?
Speaker 1: Are there such things as hatred? Are there such things
Speaker 1: is cruelty, and there are all of those things, and
Speaker 1: they are really the singular lessons of the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: And to watch you lose a pristine journalism career for
Speaker 1: the precise description of such things six months in to
Speaker 1: an autocratic travesty was quite a jar and moment in
Speaker 1: all of it. But the one thing that no one
Speaker 1: will ever be able to say about you is that
Speaker 1: you lost your integrity with so many others along the
Speaker 1: road over these many years. So good for you, yeah, Steve,
Speaker 1: thank you on many counts. There.
Speaker 2: First, you helped me, help me understand sort of why
Speaker 2: I did it. I can tell you the feelings, but
Speaker 2: I think the language was necessary to accurately describe what
Speaker 2: was in front of me. And the way you just
Speaker 2: put it is really helpful to understand that we must
Speaker 2: use the language of values in covering the world, because
Speaker 2: the world is made up of that of right and wrong,
Speaker 2: of love and hate. And if you can't, as a
Speaker 2: journalist describe and perceive those values at work, good and evil,
Speaker 2: then you can't. You are really doing your job. You're
Speaker 2: collecting a paycheck, and it was a pretty good one.
Speaker 2: But you are really doing your job, and then the
Speaker 2: other I also thank you for the compliment. It's people
Speaker 2: sometimes come up to me now and say, oh, thanks
Speaker 2: for your courage. I'm like, well, I just got fired.
Speaker 2: I mean, but I do understand sort of what they said.
Speaker 2: My wife, my dear wife, Johanna, we are ten years
Speaker 2: married now, it's way closer to twenty years together, but
Speaker 2: ten years married. And she said, the night we told
Speaker 2: the kids I got three kids, she said, often when
Speaker 2: people get fired.
Speaker 1: It's because of something shameful that they did.
Speaker 2: And Daddy got fired for telling the truth, and which
Speaker 2: met a great deal to me that she said that,
Speaker 2: and that the kids heard it, and it's.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons that I am as upbeat.
Speaker 2: Look, I have a very daunting personal challenge ahead of me,
Speaker 2: and God love some tips from you as how how
Speaker 2: you would more experience in these new media spaces which
Speaker 2: are exciting, which definitely are the media of tomorrow, that
Speaker 2: news communities rather than news networks corporate networks. But I'm
Speaker 2: I'm upbeat about it because I don't think I did
Speaker 2: anything wrong. And as I said, I know I'm not
Speaker 2: bitter about it's their companies, their policies.
Speaker 1: Fair enough, I am.
Speaker 2: Who I am and I remain that way and fair
Speaker 2: forward that way.
Speaker 1: And that's that's what I'm gonna do. When when you
Speaker 1: when you look at what happened today, what would I
Speaker 1: see is is a I see a couple of things.
Speaker 1: The first thing I see is you described it perfectly
Speaker 1: as the is the autocratic fear. And if you're of
Speaker 1: a certain age and you grew up in in the
Speaker 1: place that I grew up with, which northern New Jersey,
Speaker 1: with with Donald Trump in the in the frontal lobe, right,
Speaker 1: since since I was since I was nine years old,
Speaker 1: everybody knows that person. I was talking about this on
Speaker 1: a podcast earlier that if you say, hey, we're going
Speaker 1: to the beach, they're like, yeah, not made sharks, right,
Speaker 1: Or like, yeah, I'm going on a vacation in Montana,
Speaker 1: They're like, yeah, I won't go there. Bears right, that
Speaker 1: they have some right fear right that's completely unnatural, And
Speaker 1: you can go back forty years. Donald Trump's fear right,
Speaker 1: that his boogeyman, right is the Central Park five right,
Speaker 1: he is afraid of black teenagers. Right to him, this
Speaker 1: is the lion amidst the savannah grasses. Right, this is
Speaker 1: the great predator in America. And you can look back
Speaker 1: forty years to his call for the death penalty of
Speaker 1: the Central Park five. All the racial animis, all the
Speaker 1: racial bigotry, never missed an opportunity right to pile on
Speaker 1: to make a declaration to use force. And so you
Speaker 1: have this spectacle today like this right, And I don't
Speaker 1: know how you detach these two things. Is that the
Speaker 1: executive action right, which is that we must assert these
Speaker 1: powers now? And these powers and you can tell me
Speaker 1: if you think I'm overstating it, but I but I
Speaker 1: think functionally he rescinded home ruled today, right, which he
Speaker 1: has he has the authority to do.
Speaker 2: Basically, he's going to have to have the prostrate Congress
Speaker 2: pass the law.
Speaker 1: But yeah, right, where that where that path? Right? And
Speaker 1: so he has taken power from a majority black city,
Speaker 1: neoner their elected officials, really stripped them as a fundamental
Speaker 1: right of of citizenship. Has has pointed you're and stigmatized
Speaker 1: them as as criminals. Right, a city of a city
Speaker 1: of criminals. He's cleaning up the slums. He's given license
Speaker 1: to the federal agents to do whatever they want to
Speaker 1: whomever they want, to beat anyone they want. He made
Speaker 1: that clear, and all of the homeless people are going
Speaker 1: to be shipped away somewhere quote far away. And that's
Speaker 1: the that's the news conference, that's the announcement. He's got
Speaker 1: the Attorney General who's covering up the Epstein situation and
Speaker 1: will be a party to the partning of Gislaine Maxwell,
Speaker 1: standing on his left. He's got the Defense Secretary standing
Speaker 1: on his right, who's saying he's ready to deploy the
Speaker 1: armed forces into all the American cities where there's where
Speaker 1: there's where there's disorder and chaos. And it's some hours later,
Speaker 1: and I don't see really any type of what I
Speaker 1: would assess as coherent response right from the from the
Speaker 1: opposition party, right like at a at a at a
Speaker 1: national at a national level. And so what what what what? Like?
Speaker 1: How do you account for the lacks of daisicalness, the
Speaker 1: lack of urgency, the lack of ability to speak out
Speaker 1: and denounce this in a way that connects with people
Speaker 1: across the country. Why, like I saw someone who was
Speaker 1: incoherent and deranged today, Why why does he have Democrats
Speaker 1: on their back foot? Yeah, that is that is a
Speaker 1: great question. Also, I'm glad you went there on the
Speaker 1: question of race because.
Speaker 2: Ause, you know, for a long time in my life,
Speaker 2: my now long life, if you were a racist, you
Speaker 2: were shamed to say so, right, And now they're all
Speaker 2: out in public, they found each other online.
Speaker 1: It's it's pretty ridiculous.
Speaker 2: The problem now is if you want to call out
Speaker 2: what is actually factually racism in front of you, you're
Speaker 2: afraid to do it because you're just you're dragging up
Speaker 2: the boogeyman of race again. And I think you're absolutely
Speaker 2: right here the way he talks about slums, this dirty city.
Speaker 2: Get these guys out of here, get rough, and you
Speaker 2: can hear the animus in there. As for the Democrats,
Speaker 2: they lost their working class roots.
Speaker 1: You know this better than I.
Speaker 2: Right many how many of those leaders actually seem to
Speaker 2: have a stake in these things and they're getting funded
Speaker 2: by people who don't if I mean, that's too much, obviously,
Speaker 2: I think obviously there's some really great democratic emerging leaders,
Speaker 2: from Jasmine Crockett to John ass Off. I think AOC
Speaker 2: remains a compelling figure, but the actual leadership seems still
Speaker 2: stuck in the nineties almost in terms of their model
Speaker 2: of rhetoric and how they view the issues and now
Speaker 2: they're kind of they're kind of trapped by being to
Speaker 2: tether to the professional classes. You need some kind of
Speaker 2: brawlers in there. You need people who didn't, you know,
Speaker 2: go to the right college. They weren't, they weren't in
Speaker 2: the front row with their hand up getting the A
Speaker 2: every time.
Speaker 1: But they're right.
Speaker 2: But they're right. They're right about things, and they know
Speaker 2: it and they live it. And you have some people
Speaker 2: like that. But it is it is dismaying that the
Speaker 2: Democratic Party seems unable to find that voice. You know,
Speaker 2: Corey Booker speaking for twenty five hours or whatever it was,
Speaker 2: I don't remember it. You know, it is a nice try,
Speaker 2: but in order to do what, in order to do
Speaker 2: what now, they don't have power and the Republicans aren't
Speaker 2: going to give them power. But I think this is
Speaker 2: going to be something that I think this is the
Speaker 2: set piece for a longer display of force in the cities,
Speaker 2: and I expect that to come around the mid terms.
Speaker 2: I think we're going to get accustomed to seeing troops
Speaker 2: on the streets of our cities. He'll cook up some
Speaker 2: emergency around the election and there will be troops monitoring
Speaker 2: the election. I think that's the worst case scenario, but
Speaker 2: I don't think it's out of out of the possibility. Democrats,
Speaker 2: how are they going to stand up to that? When
Speaker 2: they march, They'll they'll get marked, They'll they'll be confronted
Speaker 2: with another emergency order that will bring the authoritarian heal
Speaker 2: down even harder on them. I think the model for
Speaker 2: resistance for me right now is what we're seeing that's
Speaker 2: really changing hearts and minds on the immigration authoritarianism. Right
Speaker 2: They're the ripping of children from school rooms and women
Speaker 2: from their from their kids, out of their cars and
Speaker 2: all the rest of it. And that's citizen journalism. And
Speaker 2: I'm looking at my phone, So it's people doing that,
Speaker 2: confronting the authorities and putting it out instantly into the
Speaker 2: world where it gets picked up. And you hear people
Speaker 2: like Joe Rogan, You hear neighbors of mine. I live
Speaker 2: in kind of a purple district who didn't really sign
Speaker 2: up for that level of brutality.
Speaker 1: Dairy farmers.
Speaker 2: I'm open go to out and talk to dairy farmers
Speaker 2: who certainly voted for Trump in big numbers but now
Speaker 2: are without without workers. It is it is connecting with
Speaker 2: people like that and more than anything standing up, not
Speaker 2: in a protest necessarily.
Speaker 1: Protests are fine.
Speaker 2: They raise awareness, they forge solidarity, but at the end
Speaker 2: of the day, they don't do much. You put pictures
Speaker 2: out you we go to where the where the where
Speaker 2: the troops are or whatever. We put our bodies out
Speaker 2: there with our own cameras and record what's happening.
Speaker 1: There's a better chance.
Speaker 2: Of mobilizing the great muddled middle of America, which is
Speaker 2: still there. It's important to remember what we saw on
Speaker 2: the Oval Office today is not really what most Americans
Speaker 2: voted for. I'm convinced of that. You know, Trump is
Speaker 2: underwater still because most Americans want what they've always wanted,
Speaker 2: a pragmatic way of making life better, not a theater
Speaker 2: of authoritarianism, not boots on the ground to terrorize black people.
Speaker 2: They want problems fixed, and crime is a problem in
Speaker 2: many places. I don't think democrats should understan under sell that.
Speaker 2: But it's more affordability, and he's making that worse. And
Speaker 2: there's openings for democrats I don't see him taking because
Speaker 2: it doesn't feel like they're connected to to normal people,
Speaker 2: ordinary people as much as they used to be.
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe I'm wrong about that, but it feels like.
Speaker 2: They're they're at one remove and like they're reading a
Speaker 2: script as how to connect with you rather than connecting
Speaker 2: with you. I mean, look, Gavin Newsom, who I talk to,
Speaker 2: is you know, is I think on the page?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 2: And is trying really hard to shed some of the
Speaker 2: slick politic politician that he does so well and find
Speaker 2: himself and find solidarity with other people.
Speaker 1: Is that gonna be enough? I don't know.
Speaker 2: I think there's some really good Democrats out there are
Speaker 2: the in Congress, some of them, but not that many.
Speaker 1: That's my own.
Speaker 2: You you're much more astute political minds than I am.
Speaker 2: What is wrong with the Democrats?
Speaker 1: I don't know. But like the most obvious thing in
Speaker 1: the world to me is something we'd all talk about
Speaker 1: at all, which is Zurhamndami and Trump beat the same guys.
Speaker 1: Huh as well. Yeah, and you know, the American people
Speaker 1: have made made a judgment and they're not You're not
Speaker 1: seeing any elasticity in the numbers right with with the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party, right, So at some level you're witnessing a
Speaker 1: game of chicken, right. And I have a I have
Speaker 1: a republic I have a Republican friend in New York
Speaker 1: and you know he's he's like Zorhan, Right, He's like,
Speaker 1: I'm voting for his or He's like, he's like, you
Speaker 1: give me the choice, right Andrew Cmo and Eric Adams,
Speaker 1: and he goes, I got Zorhan. He is into the
Speaker 1: fucking ground. He's like, I'm just sick of it. Right.
Speaker 1: So he's like in a category of voters that the
Speaker 1: Democratic establishment place checking with, right, that they that they say, well,
Speaker 1: you're gonna abide in Eric Adams, You're gonna tolerate a Clomo. Right,
Speaker 1: We're gonna we're gonna let you you know, we're gonna
Speaker 1: tell you that. Right. It's either you know these guys,
Speaker 1: or there's gonna be a crisis. Right, democracy is gonna
Speaker 1: be in trouble or this or whatever whatever. And people
Speaker 1: are just sick of it, right, calling call him bullshit
Speaker 1: out of it. And I and I think the Chuck
Speaker 1: Schumer thing is a is a big deal. Like you know,
Speaker 1: you talked about kind of common sense. Right, you know
Speaker 1: you're in a crisis, You're in trouble. Right, we're in
Speaker 1: a proverbial plane crash in the middle of the Alaskan bush. Right,
Speaker 1: we got a we got to hike out of the wilderness,
Speaker 1: and we had to hike out of the wilderness. Right
Speaker 1: on what planet is the guy at the front of
Speaker 1: the column, Chuck Schumer? Right? And I think that's a
Speaker 1: huge issue for for the Democratic senators. And he's running
Speaker 1: for reelection, you know, he's running for reelection as the
Speaker 1: as the Senate, as the Senate leader, and there has
Speaker 1: to be fresh faces forward who can go out and
Speaker 1: I think talk about some of the some of the uh,
Speaker 1: the federal comments. I mean, I think you know, I
Speaker 1: just saw one of the comments there stop vilifying Democrats. Right,
Speaker 1: there's a there is a culture a fan boy and fangirlism,
Speaker 1: right where you have two reciprocal cults right where you know,
Speaker 1: no half field will dare speak badly about a half
Speaker 1: field to know McCoy about McCoy. And the problem with
Speaker 1: it for Democrats, right is that they're the weaker party,
Speaker 1: right in the weaker party never loses to the stronger party, right,
Speaker 1: And so what what the Democratic Party has to become
Speaker 1: is a strong party. And the way it becomes the
Speaker 1: strong parties by being the American party against an non
Speaker 1: American party. Right, that's the that's the identity that the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party has to espouse is an American identity right,
Speaker 1: and to say that the American identity is open to
Speaker 1: all people. We believe in a quality for all people right,
Speaker 1: and that whether you're a black, brown, white, whatever, is
Speaker 1: an American right. We believe in a creed, and that
Speaker 1: creed is that we're all created equally. And this is
Speaker 1: what we have to be able to put into competition
Speaker 1: against an idea that holds that Donald Trump is the law.
Speaker 1: Donald Trump decides who's above the law, who's below the law,
Speaker 1: who gets to make money, who doesn't get to make money,
Speaker 1: who gets to have an opinion, who doesn't get to
Speaker 1: have an opinion? And I would just say that any
Speaker 1: time you see a person like the nutty pastor of
Speaker 1: Pete Hegseth go out and start doing CNN interviews, you
Speaker 1: gotta think, like, why is now the time to start
Speaker 1: surfacing right my belief that women should lose their right
Speaker 1: to vote, and that slavery was a good thing and
Speaker 1: the black people enjoyed it, and the white slave master
Speaker 1: was benevolent and kind, and the patriarchy worked and so
Speaker 1: on and so forth, and Churchill was the villain and
Speaker 1: Hitler was mis understood, and and and and so on
Speaker 1: and so forth. And you know, look, you know, all
Speaker 1: of these things are connected, and all of these things
Speaker 1: are worrying, and all of these things demand people to
Speaker 1: be really alert and to wake up, right. And you
Speaker 1: know when when when people kind of reflexibly say, you know,
Speaker 1: they say, this this institution that lost an election to
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, Right, that's how fucked up it is. Right,
Speaker 1: it lost two elects to Donald Trump. I lost an election,
Speaker 1: you know for a guy in a Barack Obama, right,
Speaker 1: big difference, right, But but you lose two elections to
Speaker 1: to Donald Trump. And we we face a political position
Speaker 1: in the country now where Trump is growing more unpopular
Speaker 1: by the day but more powerful by the hour. And
Speaker 1: and and that has to be arrested. It has to
Speaker 1: be challenged in the and John Kennedy spoke to this.
Speaker 1: He said, you know, what is the purpose of a
Speaker 1: political party if it's not to serve a national purpose?
Speaker 1: The purpose of the Democratic Party can't be the vehicle
Speaker 1: for the power of like Amy klobach Or and Chuck Schumer. Right.
Speaker 1: And I'm not trying to disparage him in any way
Speaker 1: other than to say the purpose of the Democratic party
Speaker 1: isn't a vehicle for individual and bitching. It must be
Speaker 1: the vehicle for the defense of the country against the
Speaker 1: fascist cause. And and and that is the essential challenge
Speaker 1: for Democrats right now to rise up, put the country
Speaker 1: in an American identity for four square at the center
Speaker 1: of the party's brand. And I think that'll work. But
Speaker 1: they're not there yet.
Speaker 2: They're not there by a long shot. And I think
Speaker 2: you're exactly right. This is a this is a moment
Speaker 2: where I kind of in your description of Schumer and Klobashar,
Speaker 2: two things occurred to me. First, the next Democratic Party
Speaker 2: is going to be the people that rebel against this
Speaker 2: Democratic Party. They got to take sure. Yeah, they have
Speaker 2: to throw it. They have to like like mum, done
Speaker 2: right there. They're gonna have to overthrow the establishment. And
Speaker 2: the second thing is because that establishment, the way you
Speaker 2: describe it, it reminds me of ABC News and of
Speaker 2: the other network news media that I was part of
Speaker 2: for so long. And in this way, that language, that
Speaker 2: way of doing business doesn't work.
Speaker 1: The times have changed.
Speaker 2: You're not meeting the moment because you you aren't able
Speaker 2: to given the the preconceptions that the idea, given how
Speaker 2: you do business.
Speaker 1: It's not going to work. It's not going to work.
Speaker 2: The world has changed, change with it, and I think
Speaker 2: that's what people want to see from the Democrats. I
Speaker 2: do think they have a a great heritage and a
Speaker 2: great message, the patriotic one that you just that you
Speaker 2: just outlined. The Democrats have, my entire life stood for
Speaker 2: the people, all of the people, without embarrassment. And second,
Speaker 2: I think the other thing is that they have lying
Speaker 2: on the table there, you know, the populist economic message
Speaker 2: that I think people still want seen put into action.
Speaker 2: Donald Trump is cutting taxes for the wealthiest people in America,
Speaker 2: and he's cutting healthcare for the people who need it most.
Speaker 2: If you can't win an election based on it, you
Speaker 2: know what the matter is. And there's this incredible concentration
Speaker 2: of wealth at the top, which everybody knows is a
Speaker 2: huge problem, and the Democrats have a solution on the table.
Speaker 2: In some ways, it is what Elizabeth Warren calls the
Speaker 2: ultra millionaire's tax.
Speaker 1: She's got to get with the era of Trump.
Speaker 2: It's the filthy rich people tax, right, I mean, a
Speaker 2: wealth tax might be complicated, might be unconstitutional. Well, one
Speaker 2: hundred and some years ago we rose up as one
Speaker 2: people when there was an illegitimate concentration of wealth crushing
Speaker 2: the hopes of so many people, and passed the constitutional
Speaker 2: modment together. And if you put that kind of thing
Speaker 2: before the American people or policies in that direction, Bernie
Speaker 2: Sanders shows it. You know, Trump was more prey to
Speaker 2: Bernie Sanders exide from the socialist level label, than he
Speaker 2: was of anybody else because he he understands that's where
Speaker 2: the votes are.
Speaker 1: People want change.
Speaker 2: They want change to make life better for them, to
Speaker 2: make the opportunities real.
Speaker 1: And to bring the high and mighty down a bit.
Speaker 1: This is America.
Speaker 2: We don't have some tech oligarchy. We shouldn't at any
Speaker 2: rate who kind of pay to play. Look at the
Speaker 2: deal and Vidia just made, you know, the distorting our
Speaker 2: democracy with the United States, and people should be able
Speaker 2: to rise and not be blocked by people who have
Speaker 2: illegitimate power that they're basically purchasing now from the federal government.
Speaker 2: And I think that's you know, that's the next Democratic Party.
Speaker 2: Whether they like it or not, they're going to find
Speaker 2: people who do that and they're going to win.
Speaker 1: I think that a huge part of the future message
Speaker 1: is about confronting power and taking it away from the
Speaker 1: accumulation of some of the most powerful interests in American history.
Speaker 1: And that means very specifically from the office of president.
Speaker 1: It means re establishing the coequality of the congers, means
Speaker 1: re establishing the checks and balances. It means putting a
Speaker 1: check on the tech companies. But the accumulation of power
Speaker 1: through big institutions, all of it starts, I think with
Speaker 1: an embrace of fundamental ethics reform, campaign finance reform, and
Speaker 1: some big structural reforms that the Democratic Party should should
Speaker 1: embrace at a at a return to roots level, so
Speaker 1: we can go out and talk about the type of
Speaker 1: serfdom that too many people live under. Forty percent of
Speaker 1: the country is four hundred dollars cash available. And you know,
Speaker 1: these are the people that are dealing with thirty percent
Speaker 1: credit card rates. They like their life and opportunity is
Speaker 1: defined by an invisible algorithm, a credit score. Right. You know,
Speaker 1: every every major bank is bailed out there in debt
Speaker 1: up to their eyeballs. We have loaded the young people
Speaker 1: up with debt. Their degrees are meaningless, so we have
Speaker 1: not created the conditions of opportunity. And I say this
Speaker 1: the candidates all the time, you know, I talk about
Speaker 1: you know that, you know, talk about a race to them.
Speaker 1: You know, when people call and I make the point,
Speaker 1: I say, have you ever had have you ever been
Speaker 1: on a ladder? And and they and every every person
Speaker 1: I've ever asked that question says yes. And I said, well,
Speaker 1: when you're climbing the ladder, what what direction are you looking?
Speaker 1: And you know, they they they, you know, everyone pauses
Speaker 1: and they say up. And I go, well, when when
Speaker 1: when you stop climbing the ladder right? You know where
Speaker 1: people start looking? They start they start looking down right,
Speaker 1: And and if they're if you're stuck on the middle
Speaker 1: of that ladder and you're no longer looking up and
Speaker 1: you're looking down, will you become concerned about is someone
Speaker 1: trying to pull you down off that ladder right coming
Speaker 1: up from behind you? And that is that is that
Speaker 1: is fundamentally the story of American immigration is that when
Speaker 1: we have declining opportunity, uh you have rising at any
Speaker 1: immigration sentiment and the accumulation of a lot of different
Speaker 1: factors have created the opportunities for the demogragory we've seen.
Speaker 1: But when you look at the fact that ice is
Speaker 1: the fifteenth largest military in the world. Now we got
Speaker 1: mask guys running around the country. That that with the bonuses,
Speaker 1: every whack job deputy sheriff and bad cop is gonna
Speaker 1: is going to wind up being a federal agent. Right,
Speaker 1: They're going to be shed from their police forces. Right,
Speaker 1: every loser and every police force is going to get
Speaker 1: the pat on the back. It'd be like you make
Speaker 1: a great ice agent talk, right, you know, that's just
Speaker 1: human nature. Get them, get them off right the force
Speaker 1: and get these eyes. Get these guys over over there,
Speaker 1: and the and the if you had a bet on it,
Speaker 1: like the American people, right, they're they're going to tolerate it, right,
Speaker 1: the the you know, the mass guys in the militarized cities.
Speaker 1: Where does this? Where's that gut?
Speaker 2: I don't think that's that's us? And uh, I don't
Speaker 2: think we've changed. Yeah, I think there is a mass
Speaker 2: movement like none I've seen in my lifetime. I don't
Speaker 2: think there's been one in the country's history. Tens of
Speaker 2: millions of Americans will follow this authoritarian personality.
Speaker 1: To the ends of the earth. Uh.
Speaker 2: And they get a kick out of it. The trolls
Speaker 2: are delighted This isn't it. This is a government of
Speaker 2: trolls with power to impose uh, their their hatreds, and
Speaker 2: their inadequacies on the country. But most people are still normal.
Speaker 2: I believe this truly the best kept secret in American life.
Speaker 2: Most people are still normal. They are not for cruelty.
Speaker 2: They don't get giddy and gleeful at some woman being
Speaker 2: dragged away.
Speaker 1: From her children. Nobody like nobody. We're decent people.
Speaker 2: Americans are still a middle of the road, middle class,
Speaker 2: middle temperament people. We are not zealous, we are not ideologues.
Speaker 2: We like what works. Still, they have been persuaded by
Speaker 2: hucksterism and by the lack of an effective democratic response
Speaker 2: that Trump is going to make things better pragmatically.
Speaker 1: Now his base, which is.
Speaker 2: Tens of millions strong, they'll follow him to his program
Speaker 2: of authoritarianism, no question about it.
Speaker 1: But if it results in.
Speaker 2: Wrecking opportunity, in restagflation, in the kind of economic misery
Speaker 2: that that could well come because of what he's doing,
Speaker 2: and the weakening of America around the world.
Speaker 1: Then they won't win.
Speaker 2: They won't win, and I don't think they win on
Speaker 2: the national character either. We don't like to think of
Speaker 2: ourselves as the bad guys. We don't we yes, we
Speaker 2: fail at living up to our ideals, but they're still
Speaker 2: our ideals, and I think trashing them.
Speaker 1: He makes a big point of kissing the flag and
Speaker 1: all that. It's all bs.
Speaker 2: What is real is that we're decent people and as
Speaker 2: his government makes us different in the eyes of the
Speaker 2: world and increasingly in the eyes of Americans.
Speaker 1: I don't think they're going to win.
Speaker 2: That's why I don't think he wants to face true
Speaker 2: in fair elections, because it's not a majority.
Speaker 1: How much how much rope do you think he has?
Speaker 1: How much how much time right that do you that
Speaker 1: the did the American people indulge us? Well?
Speaker 2: I saw that the price of some grocer's go to
Speaker 2: go up forty percent under these tariffs because.
Speaker 1: We get so much food for overseas. I think that'll
Speaker 1: that'll do it. I think the inflation, the decline, the
Speaker 1: job numbers are terrible.
Speaker 2: I think the economy people people want, they want a
Speaker 2: better life, and he's giving them a worse one. They
Speaker 2: aren't quite feeling it yet, and then they're going to
Speaker 2: go around with this cartoon dime store fascism that that
Speaker 2: is on display I think that everything will look differently
Speaker 2: if he is seen as I believe he is, to
Speaker 2: be incompetent when it comes to the economy.
Speaker 1: You know, he's.
Speaker 2: He's a businessman really only in a reality TV and
Speaker 2: I think that is going to be his downfall. What
Speaker 2: he's doing to the budget, what he's doing to the
Speaker 2: to the economy, was doing the world economy, was doing
Speaker 2: the American reputation in the world. I mean, they're buying
Speaker 2: a drop of bourbon in Canada, right that is you
Speaker 2: see a the world, other nations making other arrangements.
Speaker 1: I was in a lcbo in uh Toronto yesterday and
Speaker 1: there there is not a drop of fucking American liquor
Speaker 1: in it, not a drop. They're angry.
Speaker 2: They're angry, yes they are, and more than angry, they're
Speaker 2: doing something that will take a toll four years to come.
Speaker 2: They're making different arrangements right now, after forty years, Trump
Speaker 2: is drawing down the reservoir of goodwill and good trade
Speaker 2: with the world that the world counted on. And so
Speaker 2: countries around the world embedded themselves with the American economy,
Speaker 2: understanding that there might be a little bit of change
Speaker 2: of direction this way, and that way, but he's vandalizing
Speaker 2: the entire system and it's damaging them to their core,
Speaker 2: and they are not going to be so dependent on
Speaker 2: the American condomy again. Brazil is now buying all its
Speaker 2: oil and Chinese currency. Now they're trying to d dollar
Speaker 2: their economy as much as they can. That's going to
Speaker 2: be happening around the world. Canada even is deciding to
Speaker 2: make closer trade arrangements with Europe than with the United States.
Speaker 2: He's got a few years of that he made, you know,
Speaker 2: not last that long, just given the actuarial tables. But
Speaker 2: he's definitely these policies are going to make Americans poor
Speaker 2: and unhappier. And I know that because I covered Brexit.
Speaker 2: Brexit was the same kind of spasm of emotional vengeance
Speaker 2: wreaked upon those front row kids right that had taken
Speaker 2: over their government and rendered them, you know, irrelevant to
Speaker 2: their own self governance in Britain, and they are making
Speaker 2: themselves poorer and they are making themselves The food is
Speaker 2: going to be worse because only the thing, the only
Speaker 2: reason that made British food better was joining the EU
Speaker 2: and getting all that Spanish cheese and Italian ingredients without
Speaker 2: tariffs without without any impediment. As a result, Britain is
Speaker 2: feeling smaller in the world today and the regret, the
Speaker 2: regret in Britain about Brexit is huge, is huge, and
Speaker 2: was pretty early on. I think we're going to have
Speaker 2: much more regret when we see that people will not
Speaker 2: want to engage in trade with US at the same
Speaker 2: level for the foreseeable future, and that will make our
Speaker 2: lives poor.
Speaker 1: How do you process the stories that are accumulating at
Speaker 1: a frightful pace about human rights abuses by US government
Speaker 1: personnel in these private prisons and these detention facilities, where
Speaker 1: through arrogance or stupidity, you have a group of people
Speaker 1: who've decided apparently they can do whatever it is they
Speaker 1: wish to do to other human beings without having to
Speaker 1: worry about accountability, which is definitely not going to be
Speaker 1: the be the case. But when you read about uh
Speaker 1: people drinking out of toilets, children sleeping on on concrete floors,
Speaker 1: why why is there? Why is what? What? How do
Speaker 1: you account for the lack of meaningful what I would
Speaker 1: describe as as as meaningful denunciation in the in the
Speaker 1: in the public square at full volume. Is it that
Speaker 1: the media has an allergy to to covering it vividly.
Speaker 1: Is it that elite institutions are intimidated? Is it that
Speaker 1: there's a collapse of moral authority generally in civil society?
Speaker 1: What's the where where? How do you account for that?
Speaker 1: Or is it is it simply the case that the
Speaker 1: issue isn't severe enough yet. Yeah, that's a good push
Speaker 1: that it's not. It's that it's not it's not hot
Speaker 1: enough yet. Maybe I think it is.
Speaker 2: And what I flashed to once again, Look, I had
Speaker 2: a great career at ABC News. The people were there
Speaker 2: doing good work as under difficult conditions as best they can.
Speaker 2: That said, they are failing there and across legacy media,
Speaker 2: which still has such a big influence, it's hard to
Speaker 2: get these stories right. Actually it's not that hard. You're
Speaker 2: seeing people with cell phones getting them every day. So
Speaker 2: but getting into Alligator Alcatraz or getting to the site
Speaker 2: in Pennsylvania that they're building, you know, I kind of
Speaker 2: this is when I missed the resources of a major
Speaker 2: corporate news network. You should be down there getting arrested
Speaker 2: right or whatever, for at least make a noise like
Speaker 2: this is happening in your name. You might not know
Speaker 2: about it, but there are these terrible conditions people coming out,
Speaker 2: talk to the lawyers, all the rest of it. And
Speaker 2: I think you also need Congress. The institution is failing us.
Speaker 2: Even a little bit of oversight would help on that.
Speaker 2: But I do think that there's a reluctance. People have
Speaker 2: seen too much of it. Right, The news is always new,
Speaker 2: and so I was looking for the next bright, shiny thing,
Speaker 2: and yet this is a huge story, and I believe
Speaker 2: we are failing to cover it, we all of us.
Speaker 1: If I can get down there, I would.
Speaker 2: And you know, I think that getting in trouble, getting
Speaker 2: in good trouble might be necessary. And I think there's
Speaker 2: an allergy to that, right the lawyers. I can't tell
Speaker 2: you any specifics, right because it's whatever, But though it
Speaker 2: had over the course of my career, and I think
Speaker 2: across the networks, the lawyers, the corporate lawyers, went from
Speaker 2: defending journalism to make journalism much more difficult to do that.
Speaker 2: The bottom line became, not get this story out as
Speaker 2: best you can, but stop this story from hurting the corporation.
Speaker 2: And I absolutely am convinced that that is a general statement.
Speaker 2: As these corporations saw the disadvantages of owning news networks,
Speaker 2: and I do think at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: they won't. Trump has made it very difficult for them.
Speaker 2: They don't want to, you know, heuse He's a tiny,
Speaker 2: tiny part at Disney. Did they want to have to
Speaker 2: worry about some schmuck like me giving them a headache
Speaker 2: With the president of the United States, they do not
Speaker 2: want to worry about that.
Speaker 1: So, you know, although I think what it might have
Speaker 1: been a.
Speaker 2: Better play for them was to stand up and say no,
Speaker 2: you can't, and then they'd get a lot of good
Speaker 2: publicity and all the rest of it. But their bottom
Speaker 2: line is what matters. So I don't think the lawyers
Speaker 2: are going to let you go get that story. I
Speaker 2: don't know that as any kind of confidential information. But
Speaker 2: my hunch is that the media is failing us. The
Speaker 2: established media is failing to cover this story in a
Speaker 2: way that grabs the attention to the American people and
Speaker 2: awakens their conscience.
Speaker 1: You know, if I was trying to do anything, maybe
Speaker 1: I was trying to do that too.
Speaker 2: And that's uh, that's that values based journalism we were
Speaker 2: talking about that is so difficult to do in this moment,
Speaker 2: and that I think that the corporate corporations that run
Speaker 2: the legacy news media are reluctant to engage with They
Speaker 2: don't want them to language of values to be part
Speaker 2: of the journalism.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a it's a astonishing moment. It It truly is.
Speaker 1: UH as we watch all of this, as we watch
Speaker 1: all of this unfold, when you look out at at Democrats,
Speaker 1: who who do you see that you regard as that
Speaker 1: person has presidential temper, that that person is, that that
Speaker 1: person is is rigged for this moment in uh, in
Speaker 1: the next that they that they're going to be able
Speaker 1: to play at that level.
Speaker 2: Well, there's no question that Gavin Newsom wants it. And
Speaker 2: that's that's a necessary thing to have. You got to
Speaker 2: want the job. And as you know, that's you got
Speaker 2: to have the hunger in your belly does and I
Speaker 2: do see this shift in his you can almost see
Speaker 2: it dawning on him. I need to be with the
Speaker 2: people in this way, not the way I have been right.
Speaker 2: That kind of slick looks like he was born slick
Speaker 2: and he's trying to unslick himself. Can he I don't know,
Speaker 2: but he certainly is somebody who is reaching for the moment.
Speaker 2: I don't know that that, you know, being governor of California,
Speaker 2: is that Is that something that's going to appeal to
Speaker 2: a lot of people. I don't know aside from him,
Speaker 2: you know, on the other end of the spectrum, I'm
Speaker 2: not sure he's in fact, I don't think he's presidential timber.
Speaker 2: But I'm very intrigued by the tone and the seriousness
Speaker 2: and the power and strength of John Ossoff, a very
Speaker 2: quiet way that he that he has confronted Trump administration
Speaker 2: officials with surgical cross examination that backs them down. I'd
Speaker 2: like that that's not a presidential thing. Look there, the
Speaker 2: bench turns out to be deep. There are a lot
Speaker 2: of people on it, most of them governors. I'd like
Speaker 2: to see what Gretchen Whitmer is made of right out there.
Speaker 2: You never know until they start clashing. This is Biden's great,
Speaker 2: great sin, right, is that at Thanksgiving in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 2: somebody in his family didn't tell him, Hey, you know,
Speaker 2: you've done your best.
Speaker 1: Let's let's spend some time together now.
Speaker 2: And instead he robbed the Democrats of having a primary
Speaker 2: where you would have had Newsome, Whitmer, Pritzker, Basher you know,
Speaker 2: right across the board, slugging it out. And that's when
Speaker 2: you really when you really see what people are made
Speaker 2: of who at the beginning of the Republican primaries, obviously
Speaker 2: Trump quickly dominated, But of the other mooks up there,
Speaker 2: who would have said at the beginning the class of
Speaker 2: that field was turned out to be Nicki Haley. She
Speaker 2: she was the one who actually had you have to
Speaker 2: see them kind of an action. The last thing I'll
Speaker 2: say is I covered the collapse of the Baltimore Bridge
Speaker 2: and and the and the recovery of the bodies and
Speaker 2: the rebuilding of it for weeks, and I got to
Speaker 2: know Wes Moore, the Governor of Maryland, pretty well. I
Speaker 2: was I was there four in the morning the morning
Speaker 2: after it collapsed, and stayed there for a while. He
Speaker 2: is a very impressive man. He is a he is
Speaker 2: a getter things doner. And I think one thing that
Speaker 2: you can never forget is the American people understand the presidency.
Speaker 2: It is an executive office. They want people who can
Speaker 2: have a vision, can set an agenda, can marshal the
Speaker 2: resources of the country to execute on it.
Speaker 1: And he's that guy. Saw him do it with compassion
Speaker 1: and smarts and firmness.
Speaker 2: To to get that thing cleared out and get the
Speaker 2: channel open to poor to Baltimore open, to do so
Speaker 2: with heart and and to start uh at work on
Speaker 2: a on a new bridge. I did see presidential timber
Speaker 2: in that way. He's a very impressive guy.
Speaker 1: What about uh, what about a what do you see
Speaker 1: in a Pritzker?
Speaker 2: What do you see in uh? In a bashir Well?
Speaker 2: I kind of love Pritzker's game. He's game for a
Speaker 2: for a rhetorical fight, and he's good at it. He's
Speaker 2: really good at it. There was a I first kind
Speaker 2: of tweaked out how good he was at that graduation
Speaker 2: speech he gave which kind of went viral where he says,
Speaker 2: if you don't don't follow idiots, right, that's that That's
Speaker 2: one rule of life that he was giving the graduates.
Speaker 2: And he says, how do you know an idiot? Look
Speaker 2: for the cruel person in the room. That's the idiot.
Speaker 1: And I kind of loved that whole kind of brawling.
Speaker 2: Ham fisted Illinois politician I grew up in outside of Chicago,
Speaker 2: you know, and uh, and kind of I like him
Speaker 2: and I think he's you know, he's ready for a
Speaker 2: fight now. He's also a billionaire. He's very liberal on
Speaker 2: social issues in some ways, to the left of Americans.
Speaker 2: But he's a skilled order and can self fund, I guess,
Speaker 2: which is also important. But I kind of like the
Speaker 2: fact that he's a happy warrior in the fight, you know,
Speaker 2: and I think people appreciate that that happy warrior. I
Speaker 2: describe myself as a Hubert Humphrey Democrat. I'm quite sure
Speaker 2: what that means except that I'm old. But he was
Speaker 2: a hero in my family. My mom remembered the nineteen
Speaker 2: forty eight Democratic Convention and the young mayor of Minneapolis,
Speaker 2: Hubert Humphrey, calling for civil rights plank in the platform,
Speaker 2: and she loved him. And he was a happy warrior.
Speaker 2: He hit the campaign trail with the same upbeat energy
Speaker 2: without backing Dawn down. Could fight for his people, could
Speaker 2: fight for his positions with with cheer, good cheer, and bravery,
Speaker 2: and I think people respond to that. Pritzker has a
Speaker 2: little bit of that.
Speaker 1: What about Bashir another another young governor, young governor? Obviously
Speaker 1: he leads with his heart.
Speaker 2: It seems to me moderate, maybe too moderate for where
Speaker 2: the country is, Like we're in a fight.
Speaker 1: I don't like it.
Speaker 2: I'm a mod' I'm a I like to I am
Speaker 2: a member of the most despised tribe in American politics.
Speaker 2: I'm a proud centrist. But right now this administration is
Speaker 2: giving you the opportunity to be moderate. You have got
Speaker 2: to stand up and say what is there factually in
Speaker 2: front of us, which is an attempt at authoritarian takeover
Speaker 2: of our system of government and a degrading of democratic
Speaker 2: opportunity within it. And if you can't say that, then
Speaker 2: I don't think you're going to win a democratic primary.
Speaker 2: And Basher, I think while appeals to a lot of
Speaker 2: those people in the great muddled middle that that still
Speaker 2: runs the country.
Speaker 1: I believe the people that will go back and forth.
Speaker 2: And I'm not talking about the people are it self
Speaker 2: declared independence. I'm talking about the people who steer the
Speaker 2: ship of state ultimately with their instincts. I think they
Speaker 2: want to see They will want to see someone stand
Speaker 2: up to trump Ism with a stronger alternative than I
Speaker 2: feel from Bashir. Right now, people want to fight their
Speaker 2: right to want to fight. This needs to be fought against.
Speaker 2: We're a perfect place to leave it there. Veteran ABC
Speaker 2: news man Terry Moran and I use that designation, uh,
Speaker 2: with with a lot of with a lot of intent. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that was you know, whether it's Frank Reynolds, whether it's
Speaker 2: a Peter Channing's, you know, the intiger of that institution,
Speaker 2: World News, World News Tonight, and you honored and met
Speaker 2: it all the days.
Speaker 1: That you work there. And I know that is a
Speaker 1: long time watcher. And I mean fifty four, I was
Speaker 1: watching ABC World News Tonight from age six, right all
Speaker 1: the way all the way through, and you met the
Speaker 1: you met the moment. You filled the highest ethical standards
Speaker 1: of a worthy and noble profession and necessary one in
Speaker 1: a democracy. And you're doing great stuff in an independent
Speaker 1: media role, particularly when you're out there, you know, traveling
Speaker 1: around the country meeting people. And I hope you'll keep
Speaker 1: doing more of that. And what i'd say to everybody,
Speaker 1: you know, the almost three thousand people you know, we're
Speaker 1: with us this afternoon. You know, again, this is a
Speaker 1: very serious moment in this country's history. This is a
Speaker 1: very real crisis. What what Donald Trump was talking about
Speaker 1: today is without precedent in the modern history of the country.
Speaker 1: And it's right to be alarmed about it. Uh, it
Speaker 1: is right to be disturbed about it. It's right to
Speaker 1: be talking about it tonight at the at the kitchen table.
Speaker 1: And it's also right, uh to say to your neighbor
Speaker 1: and to your friend, that I'm an American and I'm
Speaker 1: not going to stand for it, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: do something about it, and to get engaged, get involved.
Speaker 1: Your rights do not come from MAGA, they do not
Speaker 1: come from Trump. They come from a higher place and
Speaker 1: a higher power. And uh, never forget that. But with that,
Speaker 1: you would find Terry Moran on substack. I urge you
Speaker 1: to do so. Subscribe to him there, follow him there.
Speaker 1: I'm Steve Schmid at the Warning. Thanks for joining this
Speaker 1: afternoon for another conversation. I appreciate it very much. Thanks.
Speaker 1: Take care. I'm Steve Schmidt. This is the Warning.
Speaker 3: I invite you to join this community where I promise
Speaker 3: to be honest, blunt and direct about what is happening
Speaker 3: in this country. America is in crisis. Follow and subscribe
Speaker 3: to this channel and on substack.
Speaker 1: Thank you,