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Speaker 1: They're happy Wednesday and welcome to another episode of the
Speaker 1: Chuck Podcast. Let me give you a quick little rundown
Speaker 1: of what to expect in today's full episode. I will
Speaker 1: have an answer to the question that I get more
Speaker 1: often than any other will the midterms happen? But I
Speaker 1: want to explain it in such a way that kind
Speaker 1: of builds off of what we talked about on Monday.
Speaker 1: I will get to that in a minute. My interview
Speaker 1: today is with author David S. Brown. He's got a
Speaker 1: great it's a new ish Teddy Roosevelt book out there.
Speaker 1: It's called In the Arena, came out last year. Many
Speaker 1: of you know, I'm obsessed with the sort of this
Speaker 1: fifty year period between eighteen eighty and nineteen thirty in
Speaker 1: America because it really feels like we are, you know,
Speaker 1: that fifty year period that basically nineteen ninety through where
Speaker 1: we are today, that we're kind of living a similar
Speaker 1: time frame. That was a transition from an agrarian economy
Speaker 1: to an industrial economy. We had income inequality growing by
Speaker 1: leaps in back, and the democracy did something about it,
Speaker 1: and Teddy Roosevelt sort of captured the anxiety of those
Speaker 1: moments and he became the sort of the lead figure there.
Speaker 1: But what I also find fascinating about Teddy is is
Speaker 1: how often and how much similarities there are, at least
Speaker 1: to his personality that are similar to Donald Trump. So
Speaker 1: we get into that, and we get into all things Teddy,
Speaker 1: both the era, how much the current era we live
Speaker 1: in and the era of sort of Teddy from you know,
Speaker 1: nineteen hundred to nineteen twenty. Is you know that we're
Speaker 1: we're in a moment that feels like we need a
Speaker 1: you know, who's going to be the Teddy Roosevelt, right,
Speaker 1: Who's going to be the one that says, you know what,
Speaker 1: this is out of hand tech Titans. We've got to
Speaker 1: rein you in, so we make a So that's the interview.
Speaker 1: I'll also going to have my top five list, and
Speaker 1: this one has to do with thought I'm calling Project
Speaker 1: twenty thirty two for the Democratic Party. I'll just leave
Speaker 1: that little tease at that, and you'll get an idea
Speaker 1: of where I'm going to go with my top five
Speaker 1: list on that, and of course we'll take some questions
Speaker 1: and go from there. All right, So let's go back
Speaker 1: to the to this exercise I want to do, and
Speaker 1: it wants to I want to build on the story
Speaker 1: we talked about on Monday, but try to explain why
Speaker 1: why it's disappearing, and I'm going to lament why it's
Speaker 1: disappearing because I don't think it should be disappearing, and
Speaker 1: try to sort of help you discern which one of
Speaker 1: these alarming stories. How much do you worry about Trump's
Speaker 1: alarming rhetoric versus his alarming deeds. So look, if you
Speaker 1: listen to Monday's episode. You know, I spent a good
Speaker 1: chunk of time slowing things down, walking through a story
Speaker 1: that I think is easy to miss in this current
Speaker 1: information ecosystem. I knew that this didn't have easy visuals
Speaker 1: to show bells and whistles. But what I really believe
Speaker 1: is that this is the worst sort of This is
Speaker 1: the worst corruption scandal we've ever had involving an American president.
Speaker 1: It's bigger than teapot doma bigger than Watergate. And I know,
Speaker 1: because we're so numb to Trump's transactionalism, we just don't
Speaker 1: see it right. But that's why I wanted to walk
Speaker 1: through the details very deliberately, because it's incredibly important and
Speaker 1: it was. Of course, I'm referring to the Wall Street
Speaker 1: Journal story, the report about how Sovereign Wealth Fund of
Speaker 1: UAE investments into a crypto company that really wasn't going
Speaker 1: anywhere for Trump that suddenly became relevant. It led to
Speaker 1: a change in America in the United States of America's
Speaker 1: policy on AI and chips, and of course led to
Speaker 1: a pardon of a very controversial figure in the crypto world.
Speaker 1: And all of it happening while Trump was receiving hundreds
Speaker 1: of millions of dollars in cash Trump and his family. Now,
Speaker 1: the story didn't have to metic visuals, and it wasn't
Speaker 1: easy to villainize somebody in a moment. It was a
Speaker 1: dense it was It's a story that requires some patience
Speaker 1: in some ways. As I said, right, you need a
Speaker 1: you need to either the whiteboard on a beautiful mind
Speaker 1: or clar Danes and Homeland to sort of see how
Speaker 1: everything is connected. And I really believe that it was
Speaker 1: the most important story of the weekend and really something
Speaker 1: that that should be seen. You know that every congressional
Speaker 1: reporter should be asking every member of Congress about it. Right,
Speaker 1: that type of story to sort of get Congress off
Speaker 1: its ass and start worrying about whether presidents are following
Speaker 1: the constitution. But then the rest of the then the
Speaker 1: rest of Monday happened. Right, You had the Dan Bongino
Speaker 1: podcast that the President did where he mused about federalizing elections, which,
Speaker 1: of course that quick comment coupled with the video footage
Speaker 1: of the bizarre Telsea Gabbard leven FBI rate of Fulton
Speaker 1: County in Atlanta with the twenty twenty ballots and boom, Right,
Speaker 1: you instantly had a bit viral of a feeding frenzy
Speaker 1: on a specific story. You know, by Tuesday morning, you
Speaker 1: wake up and it's Kennedy Senator has been Kennedy Center.
Speaker 1: He's just canceled it, shutting it down for two years. Again,
Speaker 1: a shiny metal object story became the lead of the day.
Speaker 1: And oh, by the way, the government was shut down,
Speaker 1: so we had to reopen that and all of it,
Speaker 1: shoving what is the perhaps the biggest scandal in American
Speaker 1: history further and further and further down the information ecosystem ladder.
Speaker 1: And of course, the sudden burst of rhetorical crazy from
Speaker 1: Trump involving the midterms led to a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: questions that I regularly get from both listeners, viewers and
Speaker 1: friends and family starting to panic, you know, is going
Speaker 1: to is he going to cancel the midterms? And it
Speaker 1: always leads to this, because how anxious should we all
Speaker 1: be right now? And you know you can and I
Speaker 1: get it right. Are things collapsing? Is this different? Is
Speaker 1: Trump actually serious this time? What guardrails are left that
Speaker 1: could stop him on this? So here's what I want
Speaker 1: to do. I don't want to hype your anxiety and
Speaker 1: I don't want to dismiss it either. What I want
Speaker 1: to try to do is organize it, because one of
Speaker 1: the biggest mistakes we make in moments like this is
Speaker 1: confusing volume with importance and mistaking what feels scariest for
Speaker 1: what's actually doing the most damage. Right. It goes to
Speaker 1: the original trope with Trump. You know, right, you know
Speaker 1: which is you know, do you take him literally or
Speaker 1: seriously or both? Right? And in this case, what I
Speaker 1: would say is should you worry about what he's saying
Speaker 1: or should you worry about what he's doing? Now, of
Speaker 1: course I would argue the answer is yes to everything.
Speaker 1: And that's what going to get to. So let's start
Speaker 1: with the story that everyone understands. Immediately, Donald Trump goes
Speaker 1: on a podcast muses again about federalizing elections, which, of course,
Speaker 1: you know, reminds people of him musing about just I
Speaker 1: wish I could cancel the midterms, and almost simultaneously, right
Speaker 1: when you play that, you have your file footage, right,
Speaker 1: So if you see this on video, you could just
Speaker 1: show the weird Tulsea Gabbert thing and the striking images
Speaker 1: out of Georgia of federal agents executing a raid connected
Speaker 1: to election materials from twenty twenty. You know, we're at
Speaker 1: nearly six years later. We've had multiple elections in Fulton
Speaker 1: County ever since. I mean, I sort of look at
Speaker 1: what he's doing is laughable. I think it's silly, but
Speaker 1: it's also very serious. Right, we know he's desperate to
Speaker 1: continue to sell this lie that he somehow was illegitimately
Speaker 1: thrown out of office in twenty twenty. So Trump talks
Speaker 1: about overriding elections and then all of a sudden, you
Speaker 1: see federal agents seizing ballots. Right, the great fear that
Speaker 1: so many people have. So you don't need a constitutional
Speaker 1: law degree to fill your stomach drop. That is scary.
Speaker 1: Rhetoric plus visuals, threat plus spectacle. It's an easy story
Speaker 1: to tell. It fits in a tweet, it fits in
Speaker 1: a cairn, and it fits in your nervous system, and
Speaker 1: it rides the algorithm. Now, let me be very clear,
Speaker 1: the rhetoric is not harmless. This isn't normal, and it
Speaker 1: shouldn't be normalized. Election interference talk is as damaging as
Speaker 1: election interference itself, and using federal power to intimidate state
Speaker 1: workers matters a great deal. So I don't want to
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to minimize what he has said or
Speaker 1: what he has done. But here's what I want, I
Speaker 1: want you to understand, and I want to make this
Speaker 1: clear because it's essential. What feels existential is not always
Speaker 1: what's most consequential. So these two events, the rhetoric and
Speaker 1: the raid, landed together. They functioned together, They were consumed
Speaker 1: as one narrative event. It almost doesn't matter which technically
Speaker 1: came first, right, the raid itself or is rhetoric To Bongino,
Speaker 1: the meaning formed through proximity and imaging. Right, that's how
Speaker 1: political narratives work now, thanks to these algorithms, thanks to
Speaker 1: these big tech companies that control the flow of information
Speaker 1: that you and I get to see. Isn't done through
Speaker 1: chronology or nuanced but through what shows up next on
Speaker 1: your screen. And that's why this story dominates. It feels
Speaker 1: like democracy itself is on the line, and it animates
Speaker 1: a lot of people. But feeling existential isn't the same
Speaker 1: thing as actually being the thing that does the most
Speaker 1: lasting damage. Now, let me talk about the Kennedy Center here.
Speaker 1: First glance Trump's move to effectively just shut down the
Speaker 1: Kennedy Center unilaterally under the guise of renovations. I see
Speaker 1: why some see it as cultural authoritarianism. And symbolically, sure,
Speaker 1: it's pretty ugly, and if fits a broader pattern of
Speaker 1: treating institutions as enemies and loyalty tests. But then the
Speaker 1: context of all this matters, right, and I think it
Speaker 1: tells us something pretty important about how Trump actually operates.
Speaker 1: So why did he shut this down? This wasn't a
Speaker 1: first strike, This was a reaction. He was being humiliated right.
Speaker 1: Artists were pulling out, performers were canceling, events were unraveling
Speaker 1: quietly but visibly. The reputational damage was happening big time
Speaker 1: for Trump. Right the minute Trump touched the Kennedy Center
Speaker 1: got involved. Everybody wanted out. The opera wanted out. People,
Speaker 1: every classical, anybody with any level of integrity wanted in.
Speaker 1: The art community wanted out. And it was humiliating the
Speaker 1: Kennedy Center. It was humiliating Trump. Right. So Trump wasn't
Speaker 1: dominating the story. He was losing control of it. So
Speaker 1: what does he do? This is a classic Trump. He
Speaker 1: flips the script. Instead of having to deal with they're
Speaker 1: rejecting me, which is what they are doing, it becomes
Speaker 1: I shut it down and instead of absorbing a thousand
Speaker 1: small acts of descent, he creates one big spectacle. Instead
Speaker 1: of reputational damage accumulating quietly, he centralizes the conflict and
Speaker 1: reframes it as Trump versus the culture. Right, it's just
Speaker 1: simple spin. Right, And notice what happens when he does that, right?
Speaker 1: The story becomes about Trump's power, Trump's move, Trump's dominance.
Speaker 1: Can he do it? Is it legal? The stories of
Speaker 1: the cancelations fade, the accountability dissipates, and the noise replaces
Speaker 1: the consequence. This matters because it's the same dynamic we're
Speaker 1: seeing everywhere else, which brings me back to Monday. Right.
Speaker 1: While George and the Kennedy Center sucked all the oxygen
Speaker 1: out of the room early part of this week, the
Speaker 1: story I walked through earlier in the week is already fading.
Speaker 1: And that should worry us more because that story, the
Speaker 1: fact that Donald Trump has turned America into a kleptocracy
Speaker 1: for his personal enrichment, that's the story that ought to
Speaker 1: be alarming everybody, because he's already doing it, and he's
Speaker 1: already done it. He has taken these payments, he has
Speaker 1: enriched himself. This isn't he might he's thinking about he's doing.
Speaker 1: This is stuff he's done, okay, Foreign sovereign wealth flowing
Speaker 1: into Trump linked enterprises, policy decisions especially around AI chips
Speaker 1: and crypto, suddenly aligning with the private financial financial upside, pardons, permissions,
Speaker 1: and access, all moving in parallel. And as I said,
Speaker 1: the journal never says it was a quid pro quo.
Speaker 1: But all you have to do is look right. The
Speaker 1: modern corruption doesn't look like a brown paper bag anymore.
Speaker 1: It looks like timing, proximity and mutual benefit. Each step
Speaker 1: defensible on its own and technically legal in some sort
Speaker 1: of byzantine way of looking at it, but it is
Speaker 1: damning when taken together. And it is illegal when you
Speaker 1: realize it's being done by the President of the United States,
Speaker 1: and violation of the Constitution. And here's the moment that
Speaker 1: really sort of crystallized all this for me. So on
Speaker 1: Tuesday morning, I was scanning my usual mountain of newsletters
Speaker 1: right by us. You know, lots of good ones out there,
Speaker 1: lots of mediocre ones, but I read a lot of
Speaker 1: them good faith actors, smart people, outlets that are deeply
Speaker 1: focused on democratic norms. And the foreign policy story was
Speaker 1: gone from a couple of them that I was shocked
Speaker 1: to see it gone from. But the election rhetoric that
Speaker 1: was everywhere, the midterm anxiety that was dominant. I mean,
Speaker 1: my friend Bill Crystal, who does the Morning Shots newsletter
Speaker 1: for The Bulwark on Tuesday, not a single mention of
Speaker 1: this Wall Street Journal story anymore. Look, they did a
Speaker 1: lot on Monday, but they were obsessed with the midterm
Speaker 1: issue with playbook. Had nothing on that had a slew
Speaker 1: on the midterm issue. We all know how how this
Speaker 1: stuff right, Some stuff travels more, some stuff rides the
Speaker 1: algorithm right, And the way the independent media landscape works,
Speaker 1: a lot of editorial folks examine what's getting attention what isn't,
Speaker 1: and they may lean more heavily on the stories that
Speaker 1: are getting more traction, even if there are other stories
Speaker 1: that are arguably more important. And I'm not calling it.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's bad faith. I don't think it's corruption.
Speaker 1: But it is sort of how our information ecosystem is
Speaker 1: kind of doing exactly what it's designed to do. It
Speaker 1: rewards stories that are visually immediate and emotionally legible, and
Speaker 1: quietly pushes aside stories that are technical, slow and complicated.
Speaker 1: It and might not be as gripping to as large
Speaker 1: enough of an audience. And that's exactly why the story
Speaker 1: of the of the creation of the American leptocracy is
Speaker 1: much more dangerous. So it brings me back to the
Speaker 1: anxiety question and something I want to be very clear about.
Speaker 1: As alarmed as we all are by some of Trump's
Speaker 1: rhetoric and by the sense that there are no guardrails left,
Speaker 1: the truth is a bit more complicated because what's interesting
Speaker 1: is every time we lament this idea that there are
Speaker 1: no guardrails, you start to see that some of them
Speaker 1: do work, not all of them, not consistently, but some
Speaker 1: of them some of the time. And it's interesting for
Speaker 1: us to realize when they do work and when they
Speaker 1: don't work. And understanding which ones work and why is
Speaker 1: the difference, I think, between whether you should panic and
Speaker 1: whether you should view it as some sort of strategy.
Speaker 1: So let me give you two examples. First, there's Minneapolis
Speaker 1: after the killing of two Americans, and let's just say
Speaker 1: it took two American deaths for Trump to do this.
Speaker 1: Trump did something almost never does rhetorically. He back down,
Speaker 1: He sat down Senate Democrats, he negotiated, he accepted the
Speaker 1: premise that they were going to shut down the government
Speaker 1: if he didn't negotiate constraints on ice, and he said, okay, right,
Speaker 1: here's a guy that his critics consistently say, you know,
Speaker 1: doesn't listen to anything, there's no and he did on
Speaker 1: this one. So why was it because of norms? No,
Speaker 1: we know he doesn't care about norms. Was it because
Speaker 1: someone made a better constitutional argument to him? Sorry? Or
Speaker 1: was it because the political costs suddenly became undeniable even
Speaker 1: for Trump? Right? Public opinion has shifted dramatically on this issue.
Speaker 1: Republicans got nervous. The backlash wasn't abstract anymore, and it
Speaker 1: wasn't just coming from Democrats that owned the Libs. It
Speaker 1: was measurable. And Trump does respond to measurable pain, at
Speaker 1: least political pain in Poland look at the Fed. We
Speaker 1: heard all the noise, the threats, the posturing, and then
Speaker 1: the choice came down to picked Kevin Walsh, a conventional,
Speaker 1: even market reassuring pick. He didn't pick a sickaphan, a
Speaker 1: guy like Kevin Hassett, who might have been somebody who
Speaker 1: would have just yes, you know, been a yes man
Speaker 1: for whatever Trump wanted on interest rates. So why did
Speaker 1: he do that? Well, one guardrail. He does seem to
Speaker 1: care about our markets, right, and he cares about what
Speaker 1: some donors think, his donors, and he certainly cares about
Speaker 1: what the elites that he interacts with think. So the
Speaker 1: guardrail wasn't the idea of FED independence. It was the
Speaker 1: risk of immediate, tangible financial consequences for him and his friends.
Speaker 1: So it's an interesting pattern that you've watched over. It's like,
Speaker 1: every once in a while he responds to a guardrail,
Speaker 1: but it's never that for the reason you want him
Speaker 1: to respond to a guardrail. It's for usually some sort
Speaker 1: of personal cost and personal nervousness. So it does seem
Speaker 1: as if Trump accepts push back when when three conditions
Speaker 1: are met. First, the cost is immediate, it's not theoretical,
Speaker 1: it's not long term, it's immediate. Second, the backlash is
Speaker 1: something he sees poll numbers, market drops, donor anger, maybe
Speaker 1: even a ratings issue. Right, It's not an editorial, it's
Speaker 1: not a whole bunch of statements, right. And if the
Speaker 1: pressure is across the board, right, lots of people and
Speaker 1: lots of different parts of his life going hey, are
Speaker 1: you sure about this? Are you sure? About this. Are
Speaker 1: you sure about this? Right? It was. It's why he
Speaker 1: seemed to back down a bit on Minneapolis. And I
Speaker 1: know some of you are going to say he hasn't
Speaker 1: back down that much, But for Trump, he's back down.
Speaker 1: Right what happened? You had Republicans saying, oh whoa, well
Speaker 1: this went too far. The same with the FED. But
Speaker 1: all those reasons are also explained why it's so hard
Speaker 1: for the foreign policy monitoration story to get legs. Because
Speaker 1: it fails those three tests, the costs are delayed. We
Speaker 1: won't see the impact of selling out American form policy,
Speaker 1: creating loopholes for China to catch up. We won't know
Speaker 1: this until after it's too late. The consequences are on
Speaker 1: a spreadsheet, and none of us like to read spreadsheets.
Speaker 1: And of course the backlash is a bit fragmented. There's
Speaker 1: no market crash, there's no single dramatic moment, there's no
Speaker 1: image on cable news. Just a slow monetization of power.
Speaker 1: And we see it almost every week when he signs,
Speaker 1: when he releases the list of people he's pardoned, and
Speaker 1: you start to go through it and you realize most
Speaker 1: of them were represented by friends of Trump, and he
Speaker 1: just was monetizing, helping them win fees from these rich crooks.
Speaker 1: And it also explains why I'm less worried about Trump's
Speaker 1: election rhetoric than I am about what he's doing in
Speaker 1: the form. Elections in the United States are decentralized by design.
Speaker 1: States run them, counties administer them. The diffusion isn't a weakness.
Speaker 1: It's actually a firewall. Right. Trump doesn't control it. Republicans
Speaker 1: quietly know he can't override it without detonating their own power.
Speaker 1: They can't do it. They'd have to pass Acts of Congress.
Speaker 1: There's so many different ways in order to make this happen.
Speaker 1: It's for it to happen, the Republican Republic would essentially
Speaker 1: have to collapse. We'd have to suspend the Constitution, and
Speaker 1: we're not. And he doesn't have that kind of power.
Speaker 1: And now, ironically, I think politically, every time Trump muses
Speaker 1: about interfering with elections, he doesn't suppress turnout, which I
Speaker 1: know is of fear some people have. He fuels it.
Speaker 1: He energizes opposition voters, he repels swing voters who just
Speaker 1: want to get rid of the chaos, and he deepened
Speaker 1: cynicism among his own bank so if you were trying
Speaker 1: to design the dumbest possible strategy heading into the midterm election,
Speaker 1: you'd be hard pressed to beat the one Trump is
Speaker 1: doing right now, talk about if you're on the Democratic
Speaker 1: side of the isle, you should want him talking about this.
Speaker 1: All it does is make it saved you money on
Speaker 1: get out the vote. Donald Trump is going to get
Speaker 1: your base out to vote, and then he's sending a
Speaker 1: message that he thinks the whole thing is rigged anyway,
Speaker 1: and he's sending a message to his own base that,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe he's sort of winking and nodding, don't worry,
Speaker 1: I'll rig it, so it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2: They're not going to show up.
Speaker 1: So, yes, the rhetoric's extraordinarily dangerous, and I don't want
Speaker 1: to dismiss it, but it is institutionally constrained and politically
Speaker 1: incredibly self defeating. That's not the case with this foreign
Speaker 1: policy story. Congress is supposed to be the check here.
Speaker 1: The voters are never going to be the check on
Speaker 1: this story. It's going to take him a while to
Speaker 1: get it. This Congress has shown no interest in investigating
Speaker 1: the leader of their own party, so that story is
Speaker 1: just going to keep going he's going to keep selling
Speaker 1: foreign policy decisions to the highest bidder. Sometimes he'll do
Speaker 1: it right out in the open. Sometimes they'll do it quietly.
Speaker 1: I mean times it feels like Venezuela and the oil
Speaker 1: is he's just doing it right out in the open.
Speaker 1: Most of this he'll do out of view. So the
Speaker 1: point is this, No, I don't think the country's collapsing tomorrow,
Speaker 1: and no, I don't think elections are going to get
Speaker 1: canceled twenty twenty six. But I do think we're watching
Speaker 1: something more subtle and more corrosive. Democracies don't usually fall
Speaker 1: from who's they actually erode. They look more like what happened,
Speaker 1: what's happening in Turkey, what's happening in Hungary. They erode
Speaker 1: when corruption becomes complicated, normalized, and easier to ignore than
Speaker 1: the latest outrage, cultural outrage. You know, bad bunny. You know,
Speaker 1: pay attention to bad Bunny, but don't pay attention to
Speaker 1: the selling out of American foreign policy. So what Trump
Speaker 1: does say threatens democracy symbolically, but what Trump does corrodes
Speaker 1: it materially, and our information ecosystem, whether it intends to
Speaker 1: or not, keep steering us towards the loudest, scariest stories,
Speaker 1: while the most consequential ones fade in the background. That's
Speaker 1: the real danger. It's not the panic, it's not the calm.
Speaker 1: It's miss placed attention and mist placed concern. There used
Speaker 1: to be a publication out there that once reminded us
Speaker 1: democracy dies in darkness, but sometimes that darkness is also noisy,
Speaker 1: and the democracy can die in a lot of distraction
Speaker 1: and noise. All right, on that uplifting note, let's sneak
Speaker 1: in a break and when we come back, we're going
Speaker 1: to talk a little Teddy Roosevelt with David S. Brown.
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Speaker 1: you have heard me talk to da that history is rhyming,
Speaker 1: that there's a familiarity in our recent history early twentieth
Speaker 1: century with what the current situation is. We're in a
Speaker 1: we're in a we've got these big tech titans. We
Speaker 1: had the big robber barons. And you've probably heard myself
Speaker 1: another say that, you know, boy, the country really needs
Speaker 1: a Teddy Roosevelt. And what's fascinating about Teddy Roosevelt is
Speaker 1: that he's a rorschach Test. If you're a liberal, you
Speaker 1: love certain parts of him. If you're a conservative, you
Speaker 1: love other parts of him. He is somebody. He is
Speaker 1: like Lincoln in Washington and maybe to a lesser extent, Eisenhower,
Speaker 1: where it's the rare biography you can write, where there
Speaker 1: are interested people on the left and the right, and
Speaker 1: there are people that are devoted to say, no, he's
Speaker 1: really a progressive. No, he's really a conservative. He's a disruptor,
Speaker 1: he's this, and Teddy is definitely one of those. And
Speaker 1: let's just say I devour every Teddy Roosevelt book. I
Speaker 1: think I've only read more Lincoln books than Teddy Roosevelt books.
Speaker 1: He is clearly one of the most fascinating Americans we've
Speaker 1: ever had. My guest today is David Brown. He's got
Speaker 1: one of the more recent additions in the Teddy Roosevelt Library,
Speaker 1: if you will, is called in the arena, which of
Speaker 1: course is a homage to his man in the Arena
Speaker 1: speech back in the day. And this is a it
Speaker 1: is it is not just the Teddy of the Roosevelt
Speaker 1: presidency or the Roosevelt this it really is as much
Speaker 1: an attempt to capture the zeitgeist and the culture that
Speaker 1: was Teddy, that inspired Teddy, and the culture that he
Speaker 1: helped try to create and build. So that's my intro.
Speaker 1: David hod I do mysell in your book pretty well?
Speaker 2: Wonderful?
Speaker 1: Yes, he's a magnet for historians like yourself, right, like
Speaker 1: Teddy is just there's in the only challenge I imagine
Speaker 1: you had was writing something unique that that others hadn't attempted.
Speaker 2: You know, you're right, here's a magnet. Not because not
Speaker 2: just because it's an incredible life. Yeah, really an incredible life,
Speaker 2: but that life it tells us so much about America.
Speaker 2: And I think what I think, what an a story
Speaker 2: and can bring to it, you know, five years from now,
Speaker 2: twenty five years from now is the perspective of the culture.
Speaker 2: And so as you note, you know, there's something of
Speaker 2: the times in this book. You know, it's a life,
Speaker 2: but it's also at times and historians also bring, you know,
Speaker 2: additional perspective. They've seen additional presidents, they've seen people use
Speaker 2: and the used roseults reputation. We might read Roosevelt's actions
Speaker 2: differently in say nineteen fifty or twenty twenty five, then
Speaker 2: we would have in nineteen ten in the moment. So
Speaker 2: in that sense, I think that there's almost always something,
Speaker 2: something fresh, something interesting perspective that the storying can bring
Speaker 2: to a topic.
Speaker 1: How did you tackle this? I mean, there's, like I said,
Speaker 1: there is so much incredible scholarship on Teddy. You know,
Speaker 1: did you go how much core sort of you know,
Speaker 1: back to letters and all of that sort of the
Speaker 1: ground zero type research. How much did you either devour
Speaker 1: or avoid other takes on him? What was your balance? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I read the major biographies, but made notes selectively because
Speaker 2: I didn't want too much of the perspective to sink in,
Speaker 2: And I focused most of my research on Roosevelt's writings, letters,
Speaker 2: journals at the Journal when he was younger, and as
Speaker 2: many many books. He was a voluminous writer.
Speaker 1: He wrote.
Speaker 2: He wrote many books and also the private papers, some
Speaker 2: of the newspapers, the culturea milliear the people who knew him,
Speaker 2: the people who loved him, the people who didn't love him,
Speaker 2: Because I wanted to get a broad sense of the
Speaker 2: man and the times, because I think that the two
Speaker 2: go hand in hand.
Speaker 1: I'm always curious of why an author chooses their subjects,
Speaker 1: and more importantly, when they choose their subjects. Is there
Speaker 1: something that was happening in the moment that made you
Speaker 1: turn there and you realize I want to unpack this,
Speaker 1: tell me walk me through. You've done a few other books,
Speaker 1: and so what drew you to Roosevelt? And when did
Speaker 1: you decide you wanted to tackle Teddy?
Speaker 2: So about twenty or thirteen years ago I started an
Speaker 2: a biography of Henry Adams and Henry Adams from the
Speaker 2: Great Adams family. It was a neighbor of Roosevelt's in Washington.
Speaker 2: Roosevelt was, of course living in a White House, then
Speaker 2: Henry Adams was living well what is now the Hay
Speaker 2: Adams Hotel.
Speaker 1: Right across the street, although I think it's technically the
Speaker 1: building was across the street from the across the bed. Anyway,
Speaker 1: there's some yeah, there's some origin story of the hotel itself,
Speaker 1: but yes, basically right there, Walkable's lists so.
Speaker 2: They knew each other. And Henry Adams was generation older,
Speaker 2: old money, likes her dry wit, somewhat acerbic, and he
Speaker 2: saw not unlike Mark Twain, he saw Roosevelt as something
Speaker 2: of a big boy. Mark Twain said route to someone
Speaker 2: said basically, this is this is, this is Tom Sawyer.
Speaker 2: We have Tom Sawear in the White House. And I
Speaker 2: just found roosevelts excuse me. Adams's take on Roosevelt's so interesting,
Speaker 2: so pungent, so provocative, and it kind of drew me in.
Speaker 2: And also I think writing that biography of Henry Adams,
Speaker 2: it drew me to the late nineteenth century. So I
Speaker 2: was starting my graduate work. I tend to focus on
Speaker 2: America in the early Republic seventeen nineties, eighteen twenty, eighteen thirties,
Speaker 2: and there was a lot there in the late nineteenth century.
Speaker 2: Early wasn't aware of cultural history, intellectual history. So I
Speaker 2: do Henry Adams. I'm thinking there's a lot there about
Speaker 2: intellectual life at that time. Now I'm interested in the politics,
Speaker 2: so i'd obviously read something. You know, some things about
Speaker 2: Roosevelt before, but never systematic, never in depth, And so
Speaker 2: I started to read just my own curiosity and the
Speaker 2: deeper I got into it, the more I said to myself,
Speaker 2: you know what I really want to write on this guy.
Speaker 2: I want to write a biography. So it was deep
Speaker 2: in COVID back in twenty twenty, and that's when I
Speaker 2: started the project.
Speaker 1: What makes Roosevelt so intriguing to me is, like Lincoln
Speaker 1: and Washington, he's a president. And like I said to
Speaker 1: a lesser Eisenhower that anybody running for president, far left
Speaker 1: or far right, moderate, centrist, you name it, would love
Speaker 1: to be compared favorably to said president. Right, And I have,
Speaker 1: I've been having an uncomfortable intellectual exercise which that I've
Speaker 1: and i'm and I'm gonna I'm this is with trepidation
Speaker 1: that I and that I tiptoe on this, which is
Speaker 1: Donald Trump and Teddy Roosevelt and the shocking amount of
Speaker 1: similarities that there are. There are some important differences, and
Speaker 1: if you're a fan of Teddy and not a fan
Speaker 1: of Trump, you probably recoil at this. But you know,
Speaker 1: there's there's there is something about Teddy in the time
Speaker 1: that he served of narcissism, right, I mean the original
Speaker 1: great quote the bride at every wedding, and the and
Speaker 1: the corpse at every funeral was about him, right, you
Speaker 1: know it was it was said of him by his daughter. Right.
Speaker 1: What do you make of it? And how much? How
Speaker 1: much do you see of it? And how did you
Speaker 1: avoid it? How did you write about it?
Speaker 2: Sure know?
Speaker 1: How did it? How did it influence you?
Speaker 2: Sure I make some notes of this late in the book,
Speaker 2: last all pages. The narcissism was there. The question is
Speaker 2: how do you deal with the narcissism? And uh and
Speaker 2: Roosevelt's it was.
Speaker 1: All about Roosevelt.
Speaker 2: But there was this sort of generosity underlying Roosevelt, and
Speaker 2: that generosity I think really drew people to him. Of course,
Speaker 2: Trump has a wide appeal as well. Some of the
Speaker 2: similarities are a tremendous charisma on the part of both men.
Speaker 2: The loyalists, they've really been loyalists for both men. Roosevelt
Speaker 2: had a broader reach. Roosewolt got I think like fifty
Speaker 2: six percent of the popular vote in two thousand. Excuse
Speaker 2: me the nineteen oh four.
Speaker 1: As an important point you made that I didn't fully
Speaker 1: appreciate that it was the It was actually the most
Speaker 1: dominant vote total we'd had really in the with the
Speaker 1: country that big at the time.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right. So he was really popular. He
Speaker 2: could really cross over. Trump doesn't have the crossover appeal,
Speaker 2: but to the loyalists, they could do no wrong. Roosevelt's
Speaker 2: was seen by party regulars in the GUP as being
Speaker 2: a threat. He was never supposed to be presidents. He
Speaker 2: was a war hero, and they made him a veep,
Speaker 2: and of course McKinley wasn't supposed to get shot and killed.
Speaker 2: But then Rosald becomes presidents and he's so popular that
Speaker 2: they can't do anything with him until Roosevelt decides that
Speaker 2: he's going to leave after a couple of terms and
Speaker 2: then once the crown back, and at that time, for
Speaker 2: GOP regulars, this sort of gave currency to their concerns
Speaker 2: for the last few years that Roosevelt was a maverick,
Speaker 2: he was a loose cannon. He could not be trusted
Speaker 2: for party regularity, and they opposed him, and they were
Speaker 2: able to essentially keep them from getting the nomination in
Speaker 2: nineteen twelve, and in Roosevelt said that this was stolen,
Speaker 2: that the people wanted him, and of course he then
Speaker 2: broke away from the party, which is said that Trump
Speaker 2: had talked about doing in twenty sixty if the GOP
Speaker 2: at that time had kept the nomination from him.
Speaker 1: Don't we credit Teddy with primaries? Essentially that that that
Speaker 1: that that sort of It was right after that that
Speaker 1: we I think Oregon had the first presidential primary.
Speaker 2: There were there were, there were, there were a few,
Speaker 2: and they're about thirteen. But in raise what actually got
Speaker 2: more votes and delegates in these thirteen primaries? Right the
Speaker 2: sitting president did. And there's a number of reasons why
Speaker 2: these these these these primaries would expand, but one was
Speaker 2: that it was seen that that perhaps that people need
Speaker 2: to have more say and we would look back to,
Speaker 2: for example, nineteen twelve and say so, clearly the party
Speaker 2: wanted Taft to get the nomination, but clearly most garden
Speaker 2: variety Republican voters wanted Roosevelt.
Speaker 1: It's obviously the era that I think makes this an
Speaker 1: extra magnet for me right now. And there's always been
Speaker 1: something about Teddy. Did it take a rich guy to
Speaker 1: go after rich guys? Did it? Meaning you know that
Speaker 1: the progressive populist politics of that era only gets traction
Speaker 1: when a rich guy turned on rich guys. That's too simplistic.
Speaker 2: Not necessarily, he was a different kind of rich guy
Speaker 2: like Henry Adams.
Speaker 1: He was old money and inherited inherited well, which is
Speaker 1: always important. I always find it fascinating. I track, I
Speaker 1: love to see right now where billionaires go right, new
Speaker 1: billionaires support Trump. Inherited billionaires support the left right now.
Speaker 1: It's just an interesting era that we're in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is. Yeah. So Roosevelt did not like new money.
Speaker 2: Roosevelt thought that that new money was essentially, you know,
Speaker 2: building factories and whatnot, which he recognized the country needed
Speaker 2: if it was going to be strong. But and his
Speaker 2: notion of the string of his life sitting in office
Speaker 2: all day just making money, there was nothing romantic, There
Speaker 2: was nothing important about that. It's going to lead to
Speaker 2: the country becoming soft and not sharp any longer. So
Speaker 2: he did feel I think, when he called, for example,
Speaker 2: JP Morgan into the White House, that there was a
Speaker 2: sense of superiority on his side in reading, in culture
Speaker 2: and background. And if Morgan had a bit more money,
Speaker 2: which of course he did, that was okay because Roosevelt
Speaker 2: had had some money too. But more important, I think
Speaker 2: I think Roosevelt thought that he Roosevelt understood how money
Speaker 2: should be used, and people like this new rich They
Speaker 2: liked imagination. They didn't know what was best for the country.
Speaker 2: They only understood what was best for themselves.
Speaker 1: Why do you think he had this this sense because
Speaker 1: I mean, is it because he went on his travels
Speaker 1: or you know, he did seem to at least understand
Speaker 1: you couldn't concentrate this much power in the in in
Speaker 1: in with these the titans of that era. But was
Speaker 1: his motivation because he didn't want them stronger than the government,
Speaker 1: or was his motivation because the little guy was getting hurt?
Speaker 2: I use all those things.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: He never called himself a populous and there was a
Speaker 2: populist party at that time, is a gram farmers, and
Speaker 2: he thought that they were just radical and vaguely ridiculous.
Speaker 2: But there was a populistic bone in Roosevelt. He wrote
Speaker 2: to John Hey, the Secretary of State, after he Roosevelt
Speaker 2: had toured the country, and he said, you know, seeing
Speaker 2: these these common people out there who were standing in
Speaker 2: you know, by a train stession for two hours in
Speaker 2: the wintertime, you know, waiting to and we talk. Uh,
Speaker 2: they're so sincere. There's so they're such hard workers. You know,
Speaker 2: we we we need to we need to do right
Speaker 2: by these people. He did believe that, he did believe
Speaker 2: that he that the presidency, that the government had a
Speaker 2: responsibility the people. So there was something also, I think
Speaker 2: a little bit of old money about that, the sense
Speaker 2: of paternalism where they're they're social work economic betters so called,
Speaker 2: and we need to take care of them. That's our obligation.
Speaker 2: Also though when when he's thinking about obtaining the trusts.
Speaker 2: But I think I think there's something about Roosevelt that
Speaker 2: is vaguely consulted, that that these that these titans, that
Speaker 2: they should have so much just because they invented something
Speaker 2: or they have a factory, and why should they have
Speaker 2: so much say in our politics? Why should why should
Speaker 2: they be able to put politicians in their pockets through
Speaker 2: through through lobbying. So I think he sincerely saw them
Speaker 2: something of a potential thread to the Republic in a
Speaker 2: different way, but not unlike say Jefferson with the First
Speaker 2: National Bank and Jackson with the Second National Bank, looking
Speaker 2: at money congealing together and saying, if this continues, this
Speaker 2: could be a real problem for the Republic moving forward.
Speaker 1: So let's let let's do this intellectual exercise. What would
Speaker 1: Teddy be doing right now with the aim like with
Speaker 1: the with the with with the AI technology that we're
Speaker 1: trying to build, the infrastructure and the concentration of wealth
Speaker 1: that we're experiencing at the moment.
Speaker 2: I think if it was President's with AI, he would
Speaker 2: want to harness AI. He would he would want to
Speaker 2: use it to make you know, as America as powerful
Speaker 2: as possible. That would also tie him with the second
Speaker 2: part of your question, because so these people who have
Speaker 2: this this this this resource, some of the billionaires, I
Speaker 2: suspect that he would look upon them not unlike he
Speaker 2: looked upon the rich class of his own day, which
Speaker 2: is they have a purpose. The purpose is to continue
Speaker 2: to be patriotic and contribute to the growing wealth of America.
Speaker 2: And they could have their nice houses and and and
Speaker 2: and and whatnot. But but I think he would draw
Speaker 2: a real line at the kind of influence that these
Speaker 2: people would have. So I wouldn't see him inviting billionaires
Speaker 2: to be in his official cabinet family.
Speaker 1: And yet he's super transactional, particularly in foreign affairs.
Speaker 2: Right, Yes, he's he's savvy. He looks to get things done.
Speaker 2: He wants to build a canal, not not in Panama
Speaker 2: because there's no country in Panama, but there's a province
Speaker 2: in Colombia.
Speaker 1: Huh.
Speaker 2: And when the Colombian Senate sort of bulks a little
Speaker 2: bit on what was supposed to be a done deal,
Speaker 2: then he will essentially, you know, support the independence movement,
Speaker 2: which which would not have succeeded without just.
Speaker 1: Let's just be let you're being a little gentle here.
Speaker 1: He manufactures this movement in this separatist region called Panama
Speaker 1: a little bit. There were certainly some independence people that
Speaker 1: were but it you know, it's it was a pretext, right.
Speaker 2: He samships and he sends men, and they will support
Speaker 2: and in a sense, it's it's what John F. Kennedy
Speaker 2: tried and failed to do with.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the uh, the Cubans they the quote unquote lead it.
Speaker 2: But but but there was American support, but there wasn't
Speaker 2: enough American support. Rose, I'm sure that there was that
Speaker 2: there was more than enough American support. So you're right,
Speaker 2: this is this is trans is actual here. He's very
Speaker 2: happy to play both with Columbia. When Columbia wouldn't play
Speaker 2: ball with him any longer, he gave him what the boy.
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Speaker 1: you know, when you look deeper at rule Roosevelt's sort
Speaker 1: of point of view and actions in the Western hemisphere,
Speaker 1: the actually pale in comparisons to Trump's beltic.
Speaker 2: You know, it was a different time, and so it's
Speaker 2: a period when that type of American imperialism, the so
Speaker 2: called Banana Republic era, is just beginning to take off.
Speaker 2: We had this early phase of American form policy, you know,
Speaker 2: Ceptain American Revolution, we're very Atlantic facing. And then you know,
Speaker 2: by the time you get to the eighteen twenties, thirties
Speaker 2: and forties and you're talking about bringing Florida and Texas
Speaker 2: into the Union. Then we become a golf golf of Mexico,
Speaker 2: golf of America, depends on who you talk to these days.
Speaker 2: That becomes the focus of our foreign policy, and then
Speaker 2: American it becomes this beginning of a global power in
Speaker 2: the late nineteenth century with with with the acquisition Philippines
Speaker 2: and whatnot. So the Central in South America had always
Speaker 2: been sort of an abstraction. There was the Mono doctrine,
Speaker 2: but America didn't really have much power to police that.
Speaker 2: There were there were there were various individual filibuster attempts
Speaker 2: by American citizens with armies and whatnot private, although some
Speaker 2: were sort of okay by congressman senators to cut out
Speaker 2: parts of Central and South America. It's really not until
Speaker 2: about nineteen hundred. It's all through the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, there's a whole part in the Grant
Speaker 1: Presidency where there's where a bunch of Republicans want Canada
Speaker 1: as reparations for the UK's for Britain's role in the
Speaker 1: in the Civil War. Sure too. I mean like it
Speaker 1: seems like we had all sorts of ambitions to grab
Speaker 1: parts of the Western hemisphere in the nineteenth century, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I got about one third of Mexico. So
Speaker 2: with with Roosevelt, and I'd also extend this to look
Speaker 2: at Woodrow Wilson. There then is is I think, I
Speaker 2: think more over not simply using filibusters or threads, but
Speaker 2: actually you know, going into countries and and and putting
Speaker 2: putting some teeth into the Monroe doctrine.
Speaker 1: Well, and that was the thing I mean he almost
Speaker 1: wanted to I mean, it was interesting you used a phrase.
Speaker 1: I think he viewed it as a police you know,
Speaker 1: he wanted to police the governments in the Western hemisphere,
Speaker 1: you know, know what was going on, right, And it
Speaker 1: was almost the first use of the idea that we're
Speaker 1: going to be the global police force. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 2: So I think that there Bracklin Roosevelt related distantly, sort
Speaker 2: of gets the credit for the American century and for
Speaker 2: this notion of when the Second World Wars over, re
Speaker 2: going to the four policemen, you know, sort of take
Speaker 2: care of the world. And I think a lot of
Speaker 2: these ideas, including the social welfare state with the progressive
Speaker 2: here under ro results. I think actually the antecedents are
Speaker 2: there around nineteen five, nineteen ten, and it's a result,
Speaker 2: but it's with the different Roosevelt. And so certainly you
Speaker 2: know Roosevelt have been the top cop in New York
Speaker 2: when he was a commissioner, and he took policing very seriously.
Speaker 2: He applies the concept not just to you know, a
Speaker 2: city or a state, but to an entire country. If
Speaker 2: countries will not live up to the obligations, he said,
Speaker 2: the name must be they must be policed. Of course,
Speaker 2: what we know is happening here also is that there's
Speaker 2: there's a game that's being played by European countries as well,
Speaker 2: which is to get some of these Latin American countries
Speaker 2: into debt and then it would be made to pay
Speaker 2: by for example, leasing a ports, we're opening up markets.
Speaker 2: And Roosevelt was very very quick to ensure that, for
Speaker 2: example Great Britain and in Germany, we're not going to
Speaker 2: be effective doing that, violating the minour doctrine. But it
Speaker 2: was also tactic, as you suggested, that he from time
Speaker 2: to time employed as well.
Speaker 1: I want to go back to his days in New
Speaker 1: York politics, because that was a very machine heavy wing
Speaker 1: of the Republican Party in the eighteen eighties, in the
Speaker 1: eighteen nineties, was he seen as a good party Man
Speaker 1: in the eighteen eighties and nineties because of because he
Speaker 1: was connected to wealthy patrons of Manhattan, or was he
Speaker 1: already being identified as a bit of a disruptor inside
Speaker 1: the party.
Speaker 2: It was always a bit of a disruptor. He was
Speaker 2: connected to wealthy people in New York. But many of
Speaker 2: these wealthy people, including much of the people in his
Speaker 2: graduating class at Harvard, thought he was nuts for getting
Speaker 2: involved in politics, at least politics at the local level.
Speaker 2: If somebody wants to bring you into their cabinet and
Speaker 2: make you Secretary of States, well then what kind of
Speaker 2: a service. But Rosewock came in at the low end,
Speaker 2: and he was questioned about this some of his friends,
Speaker 2: and he said, you know, either either I'm going to
Speaker 2: be part of the willing class or I'm not, and
Speaker 2: I aim to be part of the ruling class. In
Speaker 2: other words, the ruling class had been losing its share
Speaker 2: ever since whenever eighteen under eighteen twenty, eighteen thirty, the
Speaker 2: Patricius right, and so Roosevelt is going to, in effect
Speaker 2: try to reassert that no bless oblige. So in democratic age,
Speaker 2: well you've got to get involved. He gets involved, but
Speaker 2: he was not he was not a great party man.
Speaker 2: There's a maverick. There was a lot of talk in
Speaker 2: eighteen eighty four about the Republican Party's presidential candidate, James G. Blaine,
Speaker 2: as someone had the continental liar from the state of Maine,
Speaker 2: very controversial, reputed to be the dirty politician, had taken bribes,
Speaker 2: and so Roosevelt fought very hard as a young man
Speaker 2: to try to stop that nomination, and of course he
Speaker 2: couldn't at that time, but there was a real question
Speaker 2: would you stay with the party or would you bolt?
Speaker 2: And Rooselt understood that if you bolt it, if he
Speaker 2: was not regular, then he would have really no chance.
Speaker 2: There was no way he was going to become a
Speaker 2: Democrat at that time. The Democrat Party in the North
Speaker 2: was associated with the immigrants, with Irish, in the South
Speaker 2: was associated with secession. And so he swallowed real hard
Speaker 2: and he became a regular politician in eighteen eighty four,
Speaker 2: and he gave campaign speeches on behalf of Blaine. But
Speaker 2: that was of the moment that was opportunistic, and he
Speaker 2: was always free. He thought to go his own way,
Speaker 2: and sometimes he did.
Speaker 1: Maybe this is the fault of some of the educators.
Speaker 1: I have, But I've always tied William Jennings Bryan and
Speaker 1: Roosevelt oddly more together than separate. And yet they were
Speaker 1: on opposing tickets, Right, What did you think of William
Speaker 1: Jennings Bryan.
Speaker 2: So he was not a big Brian fan, probably for
Speaker 2: a few reasons. Some would be political. He just didn't
Speaker 2: like Brian's politics. Brian was a populist. He was also
Speaker 2: a Democrat. Brian was concerned with, for example, enlarging the
Speaker 2: country's money supply with free silver. Roosevelt's on the East coast.
Speaker 2: It's the gold standard all the way. And so Brian
Speaker 2: represents to conservatives. And we were talking earlier about you know,
Speaker 2: sometimes Rooselt's progressive and sometimes he's a conservative. He was
Speaker 2: earing a conservative on Brian, who he thought was just
Speaker 2: you know, this kind of you know, was going to
Speaker 2: make the French Revolution happen in America, was going to
Speaker 2: attack the money supply, and and representing a group, you know,
Speaker 2: American farmers who Roosevelt respected but did not really take
Speaker 2: seriously as as being a part of part of the
Speaker 2: ruling class. They had their place, they should vote, and
Speaker 2: they should have like like Roosevelt. I wonder if Roosevelt. Also,
Speaker 2: you know, we think of Roosevelt being so young, the
Speaker 2: youngest American president, Brian was actually just a little bit younger.
Speaker 2: He was the boy orator. I always wondering if there
Speaker 2: was a part of Roosevelt it was vaguely jealous that
Speaker 2: Roosevelt didn't have a great speaking voice, could get a
Speaker 2: good speech, great speaking voice, and here's Brian, just wonderful.
Speaker 2: He would have been on radio time or television and
Speaker 2: really give a speech. If we know, blind's because this
Speaker 2: cross of gold speech you gave. There wasn't a little
Speaker 2: bit of jealousy that here was this younger man who
Speaker 2: had these qualities that he aspired to have himself.
Speaker 1: You know, by the way, I'm really taken with the
Speaker 1: cover of your book because of the it feels like
Speaker 1: an authentic photo. I'm assuming it's not in that it's colorized.
Speaker 1: It is colorist, right, but it has this just wonderful right.
Speaker 1: And you just brought up something that I think is
Speaker 1: you know, one of the things I like to say
Speaker 1: is you know about certain people that run for president
Speaker 1: in the modern era, boy, they'd have made a great
Speaker 1: nineteenth century president, meaning when you didn't need this sort
Speaker 1: of public oratory or the public charisma, And here's Teddy
Speaker 1: Roosevelt thought of it as this incredibly charismatic president, larger
Speaker 1: than life figure. Would he have been a nobody in
Speaker 1: the TV? The TV era?
Speaker 2: Oh, you know, it's hard to answer because I'm not
Speaker 2: sure how the charisma translates.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Again, didn't have a great projecting voice, the pond's neck glasses,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure about that. Wasn't a particularly tall man.
Speaker 2: And sometimes you kind of look back at those photographs
Speaker 2: and you see him as a forty year old officer
Speaker 2: in the Spanish American War, and he just doesn't maybe
Speaker 2: maybe look like, I don't know, Douglas MacArthur, you know, with.
Speaker 1: No, he doesn't that right, Yeah, the square job.
Speaker 2: So so it is. It is a real question.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: And I guess to answer your question, I don't know
Speaker 2: if that, if all that would have translated particularly well.
Speaker 2: He was very well read, He was a thoughtful man.
Speaker 2: He was an intellectual one. Is America ever been in
Speaker 2: love with people who have demonstrated intellectual qualities? Uh, that's
Speaker 2: pretty tough to come up with. It's possible though, that
Speaker 2: his argumented the skills and debates would have caught people's eye.
Speaker 2: It's also possible that because people who went to see
Speaker 2: him live they said, wow, you know, there's.
Speaker 1: Good always really good reactions. Right, Yeah, there were, there
Speaker 1: were good reactions there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I wouldn't I wouldn't count him out.
Speaker 1: One of the other points you make that I thought, frankly,
Speaker 1: it was one of those I'm my boy, there's a
Speaker 1: whole book in here. Was the how Roosevelt's presidency was
Speaker 1: sort of the first one. You know, Lincoln challenged the
Speaker 1: supremacy of Congress for obvious reasons during the Civil War,
Speaker 1: but the but the sort of the strong presidency versus
Speaker 1: the strong legislative branch. You know, the last time there
Speaker 1: was big fights like that was you had to go
Speaker 1: back to Andrew Jackson, and you were sort of painting
Speaker 1: a picture that Roosevelt in many ways was, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of certainly in the twentieth century, and now in hindsight,
Speaker 1: looks like he laid the groundwork for a strong the
Speaker 1: strong executive that we're now used to today. And in
Speaker 1: many ways he epitomized this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, go ahead, Yeah, it was semi cael an imperial presidency, and.
Speaker 1: It was the big the what realistically really kind of,
Speaker 1: in hindsight, now the first of its kind, right, And.
Speaker 2: I think I think what makes it unique is that
Speaker 2: you mentioned you mentioned Andrew Jackson back in the day,
Speaker 2: and even Lincoln a little bit later. Nobody really had
Speaker 2: the kind of force and power that Roosevelt had. The
Speaker 2: country had obviously grown great development, including industrial development, and
Speaker 2: so Jackson and Lincoln were primarily presidents of groaring republics,
Speaker 2: and Roosevelt was a president of a country that was
Speaker 2: industrializing and that was urbanizing. We just become an overseas
Speaker 2: imperial power. And that means that how the presidency is
Speaker 2: also going to increase. There's more resources, there's a bigger military,
Speaker 2: there's more money available, and this can give someone who's
Speaker 2: interested and not necessarily expand the part of the presidency
Speaker 2: just to do it or to challenge the constitution, but
Speaker 2: to project, say his vision about what America should look like,
Speaker 2: or the fruition of America. If you don't have a
Speaker 2: real strong congress or court system, then with those advantages,
Speaker 2: that president can really push things. And it doesn't come
Speaker 2: just with the times. The individual is also important, because
Speaker 2: we don't talk about McKinley that way. We don't talk
Speaker 2: about William Howard Taff that way, and if talk about
Speaker 2: Wilson that way. Wilson came from a southern state troits tradition.
Speaker 2: What allows Wilson to and somebody's expand the power of
Speaker 2: the presidency. Not unlike Lincoln, he was involved in a
Speaker 2: great war.
Speaker 1: Right. You point out something and I remember this being
Speaker 1: I remember reading something about Bill Clinton feeling this way
Speaker 1: after nine to eleven that he lamented that his presidency
Speaker 1: was too peaceful and too prosperous. Right, Like, he didn't
Speaker 1: he didn't have a moment where he could have made
Speaker 1: history right. You know, there's always the debate, right, do
Speaker 1: the men make the history or just the history make
Speaker 1: the men right? Type of thing. And you write something
Speaker 1: similar about Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt that there was
Speaker 1: a jealousy of sorts that Wilson, you know that he
Speaker 1: didn't get a chance to lead. But here's the thing,
Speaker 1: Like he ran for president in nineteen twelve. You know
Speaker 1: he could get elected in nineteen twelve and in theory
Speaker 1: have been president during World War one. Give you know,
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of alternative histories. That's a that's
Speaker 1: a sliding door. That's not unrealistic. Teddy Roosevelt as president
Speaker 1: at the start of the Great War, there's a America
Speaker 1: get in sooner or later? Or is it just different
Speaker 1: rhetoric but same same basic result.
Speaker 2: I think that he begins to arm the country a
Speaker 2: percadials campaign, I would guess pretty much right away, like
Speaker 2: in late nineteen fourteen, whereas the Wilson administration waited until
Speaker 2: hunting right and I think unless the Germans had sort
Speaker 2: of pulled back on unrestricted some warfare, I mean they did,
Speaker 2: but then by nineteen seventeen they they put it back
Speaker 2: in play. I think Roosevelt I could see a Roosevelt
Speaker 2: administration going to war in nineteen fifteen unless the German
Speaker 2: government recognized this guy's real serious, this guy will do it,
Speaker 2: and then completely, you know, leave the Americans alone. And
Speaker 2: then I wonder in that context if Roosevelt would have
Speaker 2: found ways too, For example, aid the Allies even at
Speaker 2: the United States wasn't part of the Daly cause of
Speaker 2: course you could do so saying we're neutral country and
Speaker 2: we can trade with who we want to. In that sense,
Speaker 2: it would not have been much different than what occurred
Speaker 2: under Wilson's presidency, which is that billions went to the
Speaker 2: Allies and millions went to the Germans. But I think
Speaker 2: we would have been in the war earlier.
Speaker 1: That's my initial instinct when even asking you the question,
Speaker 1: was I assume he gets us in earlier? Is it?
Speaker 1: You know? Do you know does the groundwork for the
Speaker 1: United Nations get laid if there's a Roosevelt presidency in
Speaker 1: the teens rather than a Wilson presidency.
Speaker 2: You know, it's possible, because Roosevelt really came to loathe Wilson,
Speaker 2: and so anything that Wilson proposed, Roosevelt was going to
Speaker 2: argue against it.
Speaker 1: He wasn't alone among conservatives both of that era and
Speaker 1: of today when it comes to Wilson, I guess.
Speaker 2: And and so when when Wilson proposes the League of Nations,
Speaker 2: t R really attacks it. Of course, but one can
Speaker 2: imagine that that Roosevelt would have loved to have had
Speaker 2: the world stage, and if he had been in power,
Speaker 2: one could easily imagine that he would have made some
Speaker 2: proposal for this great, huge crusade which is world peace. Well, actually,
Speaker 2: you know, that's sort of what Wilson was asking for
Speaker 2: the war to end all wars. One can imagine Roosevelt's
Speaker 2: sort of adopting like rhetoric and the like mission. I
Speaker 2: can't remember who it was, but the research one of
Speaker 2: contemporaries said the other thing that really bothered Roosevelt was
Speaker 2: that Wilson was doing things that that Rooselt would have
Speaker 2: loved to have done, including including, uh, go to Congress
Speaker 2: and and give the you know, the State the Union Address,
Speaker 2: which which was just like habitually just sort of like
Speaker 2: delivered this this this big long paper. And now here's
Speaker 2: Wilson going to Congress and delivering it. And of course,
Speaker 2: you know from now once a year that's what we do.
Speaker 2: We sit around our TVs and whatnot, and we've watched
Speaker 2: rallies depending on this, and I think, uh not unlike
Speaker 2: Roosealt's relationship to Brian, there was a little bit of
Speaker 2: jealousy in Roosevelt's reaction, it seems criticism to Wilson.
Speaker 1: Part of the reason I think the presidency had a
Speaker 1: chance to sort of dominate Congress, as Congress was pretty
Speaker 1: evenly divided. That was another mark of similarity between the
Speaker 1: era we live in now in the air then, is
Speaker 1: that we were in the middle of a political realignment
Speaker 1: back then. We just didn't fully realize that. You know,
Speaker 1: that's the beauty of historians like yourself, right, you can oh, well,
Speaker 1: that was the middle of a political realignment. Well at
Speaker 1: the moment, people didn't realize it, right. I always say
Speaker 1: that about the moment we're living in. Like, you know,
Speaker 1: we think every election is this permanent you know picture
Speaker 1: of a coalition. I mean I watched these people going
Speaker 1: the Trump coalition. It's like, Okay, on one day, Trump
Speaker 1: had these voters and there's a whole bunch of people
Speaker 1: that literally the next day might not have voted that way.
Speaker 1: Like a This is a more fluid situation than we
Speaker 1: give it credit for. But as you went through and
Speaker 1: writing this book, you know, how much did it echo
Speaker 1: with the current era? In your mind as you were writing.
Speaker 2: You know, I think back to nineteen hundred nineteen five,
Speaker 2: anxiety about where the country's moving, anxiety about form policy.
Speaker 2: We were just entering a phase where we're going to
Speaker 2: become an imperial power, which seems to contradict our history, right.
Speaker 2: I mean, the United States was born in a great
Speaker 2: anti colonial rebellion. We identified ourselves as the world's leader
Speaker 2: against colonization. And now with the war against Spain. You know,
Speaker 2: there's Hawaii, there's the Philippines.
Speaker 1: There's suddenly acquiring territory. And this was quite a This
Speaker 1: was a something we hadn't really done since Mexico, I
Speaker 1: guess exactly.
Speaker 2: And then you know, I'm thinking, you know, we're industrializing,
Speaker 2: there's monopolies, there's a need for reform. This would become
Speaker 2: the progressive era. There's the Populist Party. These farmers in
Speaker 2: the frontier, hitherto the bone and sinew, the backbone of
Speaker 2: the country. The here's the textbooks, the agrarians. If you
Speaker 2: were a president back in their own republic and you
Speaker 2: were listing what you did for a living, you would
Speaker 2: check I was a farmer. Of course, farmers are the
Speaker 2: best people. So the American identity is undergoing a great change.
Speaker 2: Some people would argue of last twenty five years or
Speaker 2: so from policy AI dot com billionaires, the American identity
Speaker 2: is undergoing a great change, and so in times of uncertainty,
Speaker 2: one might rebel against the existing structure. In nineteen you know,
Speaker 2: term the century. It wasn't that that people dumped the
Speaker 2: Republican Party, but in a sense and latched under Roosevelt.
Speaker 2: They latched onto a maverick within the party who was
Speaker 2: never within the good graces of the party's old guard.
Speaker 2: One could say that Trump is a transactional Republican and
Speaker 2: was quite willing to go his own way. So he
Speaker 2: said that maybe in twenty sixteen and run a third
Speaker 2: party candidcy, which is what Roosevelt did, And so the
Speaker 2: party sort of, you know, went with him whenever he
Speaker 2: was in power. And when Roosevelt was in power, the
Speaker 2: old guard went with him too. But when Roosevelt left,
Speaker 2: they quickly moved on to Taft.
Speaker 1: So what's the lesson there, because that's fascinating to me too,
Speaker 1: And I feel like the McKinley wing of the party
Speaker 1: took back control of the party by nineteen twenty, right
Speaker 1: and Harding and Coolidge, we're really more Republicans in the
Speaker 1: in the style of your of your McKinley's or or
Speaker 1: your Tafts less so Roosevelt. Is that is that foreshadowing
Speaker 1: what we should expect inside this Republican party as they
Speaker 1: move forward post Rum.
Speaker 2: It's hard to say, because on one hand, there's just
Speaker 2: there's just politics, right sure, and so and so, even
Speaker 2: even if I'm the old guard, you know, and we
Speaker 2: look like we've got control this year, there's there's there's
Speaker 2: elections coming, and if you want to stand power, you
Speaker 2: have to win elections. And so on one hand, it
Speaker 2: would be easy to say, yeah, I can imagine that.
Speaker 2: Uh you know when when when frum scone the cult
Speaker 2: of Chrisma that's there, that the Republican Party is going
Speaker 2: to look quite a bit different. Maybe so perhaps, But
Speaker 2: another hand, you have to win elections, and so what
Speaker 2: are the voters pushing for? What are the voters demanding?
Speaker 2: And in nineteen twenties, you know, even though farmers had
Speaker 2: are difficult, there was a booming stock market, the standard
Speaker 2: living kept increasing, and so they were Republicans who might,
Speaker 2: you know, in their library have a couple of books
Speaker 2: by Roselant, say Roosevelt's Great, Roosevelt's My Hero, and I'm
Speaker 2: supporting the results because I'm voting for Republicans. But really
Speaker 2: they might be supporting a Republican party that was antithetical
Speaker 2: to Roosevelt. They can't necessarily see the difference because it's
Speaker 2: party labels. They're voting the pocketbook. They feel good.
Speaker 1: About this.
Speaker 2: With us, It's not exactly clear where some of these
Speaker 2: Republican voters might go after Trump, and that depends upon
Speaker 2: all kinds of things, the future of the economy, the
Speaker 2: future of how the things that been happening the last year.
Speaker 2: So I'll jacked in play out this year we have
Speaker 2: elections and in you know, three years and moving forward.
Speaker 2: So wow, it's a steal. It's a hard question.
Speaker 1: Man. Well, I'd like to actually spend the next five
Speaker 1: or so minutes here as we wrap up, talking about
Speaker 1: another book you wrote, which has to do with moderates.
Speaker 1: It's called The Vital Center of American Politics from the
Speaker 1: Founding to Today. And I look at these two books, right,
Speaker 1: you wrote about Teddy and you wrote that book, and
Speaker 1: it tells me you sort of which is why, frankly,
Speaker 1: I was why I wanted you on, because I sort
Speaker 1: of I always say I'm not a liberal or conservative.
Speaker 1: I'm an incrementalist, and that I'm a believer that ultimately,
Speaker 1: like you know, we have you know, whenever we incrementally move,
Speaker 1: it's on solid footing. It takes you know, and it's incremental, right.
Speaker 1: SOID security is the best example of incrementalism that over
Speaker 1: time takes root and then it becomes something something more permanent.
Speaker 1: To many people. When you view the center of American politics,
Speaker 1: do you view it in terms of the middle ground
Speaker 1: between left and right or do you view it more
Speaker 1: in terms of how I describe, which is it's not
Speaker 1: whether I have some views. I'm very progressive, some views
Speaker 1: I'm very conservative, but ultimately I come down as an incrementalist.
Speaker 1: Some might call that a pragmatist. However you want to
Speaker 1: view it, What do you view as the center of
Speaker 1: American politics? Is it ideological or is it really more
Speaker 1: about how you practice politics?
Speaker 2: I do you tell you practice politics? You could be
Speaker 2: you know, I mean, you know, to be a Democrat
Speaker 2: in nineteen thirty five, it's much different than to be
Speaker 2: a Democrat in twenty twenty five. And the party's origins
Speaker 2: are actually I think the protection institution, slavery, or these
Speaker 2: forms in the seventeen nineties, principally by the efforts of
Speaker 2: Jefferson and Madison. For parties to be successful, they have
Speaker 2: to attract coalitions and people, and so that's where I
Speaker 2: think of moderate, That's where I think of connecting with voters.
Speaker 2: And if you're too far on the right, I think
Speaker 2: if you're too far on the left, you're not gonna
Speaker 2: be able to do that effectively. You'll have your hardcore,
Speaker 2: you know, enough to lose elections respectively. But that's not
Speaker 2: the name of the game. And so, you know, when
Speaker 2: I think of the two major parties and I look
Speaker 2: at some of the rhetoric, I can usually find some
Speaker 2: appeal at a center, and sometimes it's a big appeal,
Speaker 2: and sometimes maybe not. For example, it's not such a
Speaker 2: big appeal. And when I don't see the appeal to
Speaker 2: the center, that gives them suggestion that that party may
Speaker 2: not be very successful in the next selection.
Speaker 1: You know, I answer this question people are I had
Speaker 1: a student in a class I teach currently was asking
Speaker 1: me why the Democrats come across as lashier than the Republicans,
Speaker 1: And to me, it's a matt I always say, well,
Speaker 1: there's your answer is a mathic problem, meaning there are
Speaker 1: more base Republicans and based Democrats, and so the path
Speaker 1: to fifty percent plus one for a Republican allows them
Speaker 1: to be more conservative than the path to fifty percent
Speaker 1: plus one. And this is generically you know, in certain
Speaker 1: places it's blue or and you can you can do this,
Speaker 1: but the Democrats need more of these moderates to get
Speaker 1: to fifty percent plus one. By the way, this was
Speaker 1: reversed right when you and I were growing up in
Speaker 1: the sixty seventies and eighties. You could argue it the
Speaker 1: other way. The Republicans right where they considered more of
Speaker 1: the centrist party, well they didn't. They had a smaller base.
Speaker 1: The Democrats had the larger base, so the Democrats didn't
Speaker 1: have to you know, it always I always was trying
Speaker 1: to tell the student, Look, it's just a numbers game.
Speaker 1: You know. Parties aren't centrists because they want to be
Speaker 1: Parties reach out to the center out of necessity, right,
Speaker 1: not out of so in looking at that, there's clearly
Speaker 1: a vacuum, right, there is a We always say there's
Speaker 1: this vast middle of America, and some of us want
Speaker 1: to believe it's between the thirty yard Lindes. Is it
Speaker 1: is that correct? Or how should we describe the vast
Speaker 1: moderate center of the American electorate?
Speaker 2: You know, I think that's one of the great narratives
Speaker 2: that's been out there for at least the last half century.
Speaker 2: I think back, for example, to Richard Nixon, the Forgotten American.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it's it's it's about recognizing you can't reach
Speaker 2: these people unless you recognize that they're there, that that
Speaker 2: they're not going to automatically vote for you, automatically not
Speaker 2: vote for you. And so I I, you know, I
Speaker 2: look at the hardcore voters on both sides, and what
Speaker 2: always interests me though, is that who's available, who is
Speaker 2: in play, And it seems to me that that's that's
Speaker 2: who you need to go after. That that, to me,
Speaker 2: that's that's the art of politics, which is which is
Speaker 2: building coalitions, big tents. And you obviously have to do
Speaker 2: this because if you if you're in a country our
Speaker 2: size and you only have two major parties, well.
Speaker 1: I think that's the flaw in our system right there,
Speaker 1: is that we're trying. Can you imagine going to a
Speaker 1: clothing store and they're only being small and extra large,
Speaker 1: And that's what we've done to you know. And you know,
Speaker 1: I think people sit there and say, yeah, I'm registered
Speaker 1: as a Republican, but the Republicans don't represent everything I believe.
Speaker 1: Or I'm registered as a Democrat, but the Democrats don't
Speaker 1: represent everything I believe. That if we had, you know,
Speaker 1: if we had more parties and no majority and no
Speaker 1: party had to get a majority to get power, but
Speaker 1: you had to form a coalition. I mean, in some ways,
Speaker 1: I always say both parties are coalitions, are not parties,
Speaker 1: They're coalitions of multiple sub parties. Right, there's a there's
Speaker 1: a Christian Conservative Party, there's a business party, right all
Speaker 1: on the right, there's a progressive you know, you could
Speaker 1: put together your for pieces of each you know, basically
Speaker 1: multiple political parties within this umbrella group called the left
Speaker 1: and the right. You know, look, I will I will admit, well,
Speaker 1: I don't want us to be a parliamentary system. I
Speaker 1: do wish we had a system that allowed for parties
Speaker 1: to be more representative of where people wanted to be.
Speaker 1: But you but you had sort of top four, right,
Speaker 1: we had four major were really I think we're really
Speaker 1: four major political parties stuffed into two.
Speaker 2: Interesting. Yeah, well it's it's obviously it's a very diverse country.
Speaker 2: And I think some of the difficulty in going after
Speaker 2: the center is you don't want to alienate certain coalitions
Speaker 2: within your coach right, and and obviously if you do that,
Speaker 2: there's there's there's the fear of alienation. But you know,
Speaker 2: there's also the question of do you want to government
Speaker 2: from fear? Do you want to do you want to
Speaker 2: try to gain things all the time. So if I
Speaker 2: could do in one more result reference and this guy
Speaker 2: really was a romantic and he wasn't thinking about, you know,
Speaker 2: sort of electoral votes, and he wasn't counting. He was
Speaker 2: really leading from his heart. And maybe this is romantic
Speaker 2: thing to say, but I think if we had more
Speaker 2: of that, I think voters would really resonate to someone
Speaker 2: who they thought was speaking directly to them, was mostly
Speaker 2: sincere and believed that we all had something in stake together.
Speaker 2: It wasn't just reading spreadsheets.
Speaker 1: As a historian, who's a president, we don't have enough
Speaker 1: scholarship on that. You wish people would spend more time
Speaker 1: getting to know deserves the better biography treatment. You know,
Speaker 1: I used to say I felt like Eisenhower was under scholarship.
Speaker 1: Then that's changed, I would argain in the last twenty years,
Speaker 1: we've gotten the proper what I think is a proper
Speaker 1: amount of historians tackling him in different ways, which feel
Speaker 1: there's some people that are overwritten about, like Kennedy, and
Speaker 1: I say this with no disrespect, they just you know,
Speaker 1: I get, I get why what what does it? Because
Speaker 1: of the circumstances of his death. But I'm curious because
Speaker 1: I still actually think there are more things to learn
Speaker 1: about Teddy. So I'm not saying this to say, hey,
Speaker 1: we've written. You know, we've had too much on Teddy.
Speaker 1: I don't agree. I think not enough sometimes still there.
Speaker 1: But who's somebody that he thinks a bit under represented
Speaker 1: in your ranks of the historians? Now you like to
Speaker 1: see tackled?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I sure have to see some aspects of James
Speaker 2: Monroe's presidency looked at more carefully. So this is kind
Speaker 2: of going way back. But you know, he was the
Speaker 2: last president to heurre knee britches, and so we're really
Speaker 2: moving from you.
Speaker 1: Use that phrase, and can I make a confession. When
Speaker 1: you use the phrase the first time, I'm like, what
Speaker 1: the hell are knee britches? So I literally the old
Speaker 1: I hadn't done this in a while. Where I did
Speaker 1: the old? Okay, I gotta I gotta go look up
Speaker 1: what that is. You know, you know when as a kid,
Speaker 1: you know you're reading books that are a little ahead
Speaker 1: of your time, you're constantly doing that. I had done that.
Speaker 1: I was like, neighbor, oh, neighbridges, got it? Okay?
Speaker 2: Sorry, so very eighteenth century. Yes, it is Monroe as
Speaker 2: this transitional figure, right, I mean he was a founder,
Speaker 2: was he was neighbors.
Speaker 1: He was the last founder president, right, I would.
Speaker 2: Say so, yeah, John Quincy Adams follows him. But John
Speaker 2: Quincy Adams was bored in the revolution, right, And we're
Speaker 2: moving into what would be called machine politics, and Monroe
Speaker 2: sort of resisted that. Monroe wanted to push what he
Speaker 2: once called amalgamation politics, which is we need to go
Speaker 2: back to where there are no parties. There's just essentially,
Speaker 2: you know, Americans in governments and we're not fiderlists and
Speaker 2: we're not we're not republicans. We're just all in this together,
Speaker 2: which which looks so antiquated by that time, it's just
Speaker 2: blown out the waters in eighteen twenties. But I'm interested
Speaker 2: in the intellectual history that's there, his readings of you know,
Speaker 2: I Thinkian democracy and the Roman Republic, and you know,
Speaker 2: he was the last chief executive to essentially run you know,
Speaker 2: all by himself. There was there was no one opposed him.
Speaker 2: So there really was that moment of what do you
Speaker 2: call it moderation or the center or consensus that we
Speaker 2: could we could, we could as a country say, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, we're essentially behind this person. It doesn't last.
Speaker 1: It's interesting, you know Lincoln has that now, but he
Speaker 1: never had it in practice. Right, what's that meaning that
Speaker 1: what you just described that Monroe had this sort of Hey,
Speaker 1: he's representative of all of us. Well, that's right. In hindsight,
Speaker 1: we've decided Lincoln is is an avatar for the for
Speaker 1: who we want America to have been in the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't what America was, but he's the avatar
Speaker 1: of what we could be. Right, he's America. I think
Speaker 1: FDR is pretty close to achieving that status. Eisenhower, I
Speaker 1: think has that status. But there's not many presidents that
Speaker 1: have that status.
Speaker 2: No, there isn't. Oftentimes it's it's chief executives who are
Speaker 2: associated in some way, shape or form with wars, with
Speaker 2: America's more popular wars, more necessary wars, and and so
Speaker 2: that blups off.
Speaker 1: You made a great case for James Monroe America at
Speaker 1: two fifty. How should the average citizens celebrate.
Speaker 2: I'm part of their country, cognizance of are our successes,
Speaker 2: cognizance of our failures, and to love and respect our
Speaker 2: country enough to look at it wholly and clearly as
Speaker 2: as best we can and to do what we can
Speaker 2: to be good, productive, honest, deliberate, considerate citizens.
Speaker 1: Well, David, I enjoyed it. Uh, you know, look, I'm
Speaker 1: an easy mark. I enjoyed Teddy Roosevelt books. But look,
Speaker 1: you the best history books to read are the ones
Speaker 1: that make you feel like they echo in the moment
Speaker 1: we're currently living in. And I would say that you've
Speaker 1: you've you've done a good job of trying to capture
Speaker 1: you know. I think that's a plus side of a
Speaker 1: history book, right is when it can also it's writing
Speaker 1: about the past, but it's writing about the present. Well.
Speaker 2: Thanks, You know, the historian is objective as objective can be. Us.
Speaker 1: This sources you're you're going to get, You're going to
Speaker 1: get influenced by the times you're living in. It's just inevitable,
Speaker 1: right exactly.
Speaker 2: The history is living is living through the times.
Speaker 1: Well, we need a lot more historians as journalists these days.
Speaker 1: I feel like context and nuances uh falls off too much.
Speaker 1: So I'm glad to surface this and uh, well done.
Speaker 1: It's great to get to know you, David.
Speaker 2: Thanks check.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite historical debates over the next few
Speaker 1: decades is going to be tr and Donald Trump. It
Speaker 1: is sort of where there are similarities and where there
Speaker 1: are differences. And I know my tr lovers are horrified
Speaker 1: that the comparisons get made, but on some of these
Speaker 1: character issues and some of these narcissistic issues, it's hard
Speaker 1: not to see to see some comparisons there. So for
Speaker 1: my top five lists this week, I'm going to the
Speaker 1: Census and a little bit of a riff as there's
Speaker 1: some new census updates went around and there there was
Speaker 1: a new round of panic among Democrats and liberals about
Speaker 1: how the electoral college map in twenty thirty two after
Speaker 1: the twenty thirty census is going to become a disaster
Speaker 1: for the Democrats because the power shift essentially, you know,
Speaker 1: the Democrats. You know, had Kamala Harris simply carried Pennsylvania, Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: and Michigan in addition all the other states she carried,
Speaker 1: she'd have been right at two hundred and seventy By
Speaker 1: twenty thirty two, the same configuration of states would have
Speaker 1: only gotten heard to two hundred and fifty nine electoral votes.
Speaker 1: So basically Democrats in the next census are going to
Speaker 1: lose a dozen base electoral votes, which means the Republican
Speaker 1: floor is going to go up about a dozen votes.
Speaker 1: Just to give you some technical numbers, Essentially, you've got
Speaker 1: Republican states Florida, Texas, Idaho, Utah that collectively are going
Speaker 1: to net anywhere from say ten to twelve congressional districts,
Speaker 1: which means electoral votes. And then you will have a
Speaker 1: bunch of losses in the blue based states. Right, California
Speaker 1: in your collectively are going to lose eight to nine.
Speaker 1: Throw in Illinois's going to lose another two, and then
Speaker 1: you're going to lose one each from Oregon and Minnesota.
Speaker 1: Never mind some of the swing states that you're going
Speaker 1: to see someromp shifts in right, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin each
Speaker 1: lose one, but North Carolina, Arizona, and Georgia will each
Speaker 1: gain one. So in that sense, the swing states, the
Speaker 1: numbers are going to be the same, but it is
Speaker 1: going to mean that the Blue wall is not going
Speaker 1: to be the important thing. It's the Sunbelt purple wall
Speaker 1: that's going to matter more. Of Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona
Speaker 1: are going to be at least as important, if not
Speaker 1: more important than the trio of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin in Michigan.
Speaker 1: But that's just if you're sitting there, assuming the map
Speaker 1: is what it is. Right, Political parties are supposed to
Speaker 1: be dynamic organizations, and they, based on investments, can can
Speaker 1: try to take a base state from the other party
Speaker 1: and turn it into a swing state. Take a swing
Speaker 1: state and try to turn it into a base state. Right.
Speaker 1: Virginia and Colorado Democrats successfully took what were swing states
Speaker 1: and turn them into base states. Arguably, Republicans Florida and
Speaker 1: Ohio took what was swing states and turned them into
Speaker 1: base states. Right, So political parties, right, you've got right. Now,
Speaker 1: Republicans would love to take a swing state like Minnesota
Speaker 1: and see or a lean blue state like Minnesota and
Speaker 1: see if they can turn it into a swing state.
Speaker 1: Democrats have been amusing about the idea of taking Texas
Speaker 1: and making it a swing state. But now the project
Speaker 1: is more acute than ever for the Democrats. Now, look,
Speaker 1: I'm going to make one tangent real quick because those
Speaker 1: of you that read me closely and listen to me closely, No,
Speaker 1: I'm obsessed that the easiest way to fix this electoral
Speaker 1: You know that one of the ways we need to
Speaker 1: fix the electoral college unfairness is to not have a
Speaker 1: constitutional amendment but simply expand the House to the size
Speaker 1: that the founders and tended it to be. Right, it
Speaker 1: is no longer a representative democracy we have now. We
Speaker 1: now have every congressional districts the size of a major
Speaker 1: city with about eight hundred thousand. They're too big. They
Speaker 1: don't they are not representative of communities of interest anymore.
Speaker 1: They're simply dominated by the most powerful faction within each
Speaker 1: of these congressional districts, and so they're not doing what
Speaker 1: the founders intended. The House of Representatives was supposed to
Speaker 1: expand with the population of the country, and they did
Speaker 1: this every decade until nineteen twenty when there was a
Speaker 1: dispute between the two parties, and then they locked it
Speaker 1: in at four hundred and thirty five. That is now
Speaker 1: why you feel like you live in a congressional district
Speaker 1: likely where you feel like your a member of Congress
Speaker 1: doesn't really represent the district. They either represent to liberal
Speaker 1: part of the district over they sort of overrepresent the
Speaker 1: liberal part or overrepresent the conservative part. But it doesn't
Speaker 1: feel like anybody represents right the district as a whole.
Speaker 1: So I want to set that tangent aside. So if
Speaker 1: you're the DNC and you have leadership that is thinking
Speaker 1: beyond tomorrow, and I don't know if that's the case,
Speaker 1: I say it. I'm not trying to be snarky, but
Speaker 1: you know, leaders of political parties are like general managers
Speaker 1: for sports teams. The fan base expects immediate results. They
Speaker 1: are not interested in you building a foundation that pays
Speaker 1: dividends in eight years, because that general manager won't even
Speaker 1: be there in eight years, just like that political party
Speaker 1: leader won't be there in eight years. So it is
Speaker 1: the incentive structures are messed up. But that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: there aren't other outside entities that should be thinking about
Speaker 1: the following, which is, if the Democrats are suddenly have
Speaker 1: an electoral college majority problem, then they need to design
Speaker 1: what I call a Project twenty to thirty two and
Speaker 1: decide they've got to put eight to ten They've got
Speaker 1: to invest in eight to ten states, and about half
Speaker 1: of them are swing states that they've got to attempt
Speaker 1: to make more reliably blue and or red states that
Speaker 1: they can put into the competitive category. They have got
Speaker 1: to expand the map even though it doesn't look obvious
Speaker 1: that they can expand the map, so that long wind
Speaker 1: up is designed. So if project with twenty thirty two's
Speaker 1: presidential election in mind, with the new map that we'll have,
Speaker 1: then I give you the top five list of states
Speaker 1: that the Democrats should be targeting now in an effort
Speaker 1: to keep them competitive on in the electoral college going forward,
Speaker 1: top top top, because the political power that California and
Speaker 1: New York, that sort of floor of support at times
Speaker 1: made it seem like the electoral college, and this is
Speaker 1: something that always is cyclical. At times it looks like
Speaker 1: there's an advantage to the Democrats, at times looks like
Speaker 1: there's advantage to Republicans. Really it usually is who's winning
Speaker 1: the middle more often, right is and who's got the
Speaker 1: larger base, And right now Republicans have a slightly larger
Speaker 1: base than the Democrats. So with that in mind, I'm
Speaker 1: going to give you my top five lists of states
Speaker 1: that the Democrats have to invest in, either because they
Speaker 1: need to try to make that state more reliably competitive,
Speaker 1: or they need to try to take a state and
Speaker 1: make it competitive in the first place. So number one
Speaker 1: on the list is North Carolina. North Carolina by twenty
Speaker 1: thirty two is likely to be up to seventeen electoral votes.
Speaker 1: It's arguably should you know, it is trending the way
Speaker 1: we've seen with Georgia trending. It is younger, it's a
Speaker 1: bit more diverse, but it hadn't quite tipped yet. Right,
Speaker 1: But it is one of the highest education to growth
Speaker 1: ratios in the state. Right, it's seven percent higher education
Speaker 1: than some of its neighbors. So you know, here they've
Speaker 1: they've got Virginia as a light blue state. Georgia is
Speaker 1: a model here. But North Carolina they have multiple markets. Charlotte, Raleigh,
Speaker 1: Ashville can serve as anchors there. But the bottom line
Speaker 1: is they've they've acted while they are while they're competitive
Speaker 1: in North Carolina, they usually come up short. Right, It's
Speaker 1: sort of what Minnesota has been to the Republicans. And yes,
Speaker 1: Barack Obama carried North Carolina once and in that one
Speaker 1: year they won a Senate seat, and occasionally they win
Speaker 1: Senate seats just like Republicans occasionally win statewide. In Minnesota,
Speaker 1: there seems to be a hard cap of about forty
Speaker 1: eight percent in most federal elections. DIDO in Minnesota for
Speaker 1: the Republicans did oh for that in North Carolina. They've
Speaker 1: got to change that. And North Carolina has been a
Speaker 1: state that they you know, it's always like, was on
Speaker 1: the periphery of targeting in the swing states. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: gonna to target North Carolina the same way they would say, yeah,
Speaker 1: we might target Florida back in twenty twelve and twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: and sometimes they didn't. Sometimes they didn't. Now they've got
Speaker 1: to treat North Carolina the same way they treat Wisconsin
Speaker 1: and Michigan. It's got to be that that sort of
Speaker 1: you know, it's got to be treated on another level.
Speaker 1: So that's number one North Carolina. In some ways, I
Speaker 1: don't know if a Democrat's going to get elected president
Speaker 1: without carrying North Carolina and Georgia. At the end of
Speaker 1: the day, you know, when you start to look at
Speaker 1: this in the way trend's going in the demographic makeup
Speaker 1: of the Democratic Party versus what we're seeing in the
Speaker 1: Republican Party aging in smaller populations, I suspect over time, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: Wisconsin's going to start drifting right, which means Democrats have
Speaker 1: to figure out how to turn Georgia, Arizona and North
Speaker 1: Carolina collectively into the new Trio into their You know
Speaker 1: that's going to be the new wall, right, It's either
Speaker 1: a red wall for the Republicans that Democrats can't penetrate,
Speaker 1: or becomes the building blocks of a Sunbelt blue wall.
Speaker 1: But either way, the anchor of it is likely North
Speaker 1: Carolina number two on that list, I think of targeting
Speaker 1: is a bit of a reach state, but it's Texas
Speaker 1: Texas more than Florida right now. It's I think the
Speaker 1: trend lines in Florida for some demographic reasons with the
Speaker 1: Latino population. In some ways, I think Hispanics are more
Speaker 1: gettable for Democrats in Texas than Hispanics are in Florida.
Speaker 1: They're more swing voter, swingy swing votery in Texas than
Speaker 1: they are in South Florida. So I think that when
Speaker 1: you start to just look at the numbers, they're there.
Speaker 1: Texas is just getting a lot of new residents and
Speaker 1: any just like how Florida transitioned in the nineties from
Speaker 1: being a fairly reliable Republican state to becoming a swing state.
Speaker 1: First Clinton carried it in ninety six, and then of
Speaker 1: course it became the single most important state in two
Speaker 1: thousand thousand and four. That's the sort of reasoning and
Speaker 1: rationale why Texas has to be a focal point. And
Speaker 1: the fact is, rhetorically, the Democrats have talked about Texas
Speaker 1: for a long time. They've never actually put their money
Speaker 1: where their mouth is. Maybe this year's Senate race, if
Speaker 1: it's indeed competitive, if Ken Paxton is the Republican nominee,
Speaker 1: that jump starts interest in it. But I would argue regardless,
Speaker 1: they have to treat Texas like a swing state even
Speaker 1: when it's not, in order to get that state comfortable
Speaker 1: supporting a Democrat by twenty thirty two. It's not going
Speaker 1: to happen overnight. And that's why it's sort of like
Speaker 1: again I go back, I have. You know, it is
Speaker 1: hard to get political parties to think more than a
Speaker 1: luncheon cycle ahead. That's not how the incentives work. But
Speaker 1: when thinking this far in advance, that's why Texas arguably
Speaker 1: is number two, because it's going to be very expensive,
Speaker 1: and it's going to be and you just got to
Speaker 1: plot along. Number three on my list is the state
Speaker 1: that I talk about all the time that it's a
Speaker 1: head scratcher to me that Democrats really don't focus on it,
Speaker 1: and it's Kansas. It is. We've seen this now two
Speaker 1: different Democrat, two term Democratic governors over the last you know,
Speaker 1: sixteen of the last twenty four years have had Democratic governors,
Speaker 1: and they've won due to Republican overreach, but they've also
Speaker 1: won because you've seen you know, you have a growing
Speaker 1: you know. Look, the biggest sort of deno way to
Speaker 1: find out if a state leans will inherently lean red
Speaker 1: or blue is you know the number of college grads. Well,
Speaker 1: Kansas is one that in Kansas and Missouri are kind
Speaker 1: of going in the opposite directions. You've got the growing
Speaker 1: suburbs of Kansas City in Kansas that have taken have
Speaker 1: basically taken what used to be a lean red district
Speaker 1: and turned it into a lean blue district. Both with
Speaker 1: Chaitan Tipeaka are growing. You've got two big state schools
Speaker 1: in Lauren and in Manhattan, Kansas and Kansas State. And
Speaker 1: so when you look at the sort of formula that
Speaker 1: Democrats have used to succeed in places like Wisconsin or Michigan,
Speaker 1: or let's see smaller states or like Nevada, I could
Speaker 1: I could argue that Kansas looks more like that. Look
Speaker 1: there I get the sort of the historical trends of Kansas,
Speaker 1: but Kansas is not as you know, Yes, there's MAGA
Speaker 1: in Kansas, but there's sort of this Kansas Republican that
Speaker 1: is different than the MAGA makeup as well. Where Missouri.
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny, Missouri feels more like a southern
Speaker 1: state and Kansas feels more like a Midwestern state. And Democrats,
Speaker 1: I think right now have a better shot, particularly among
Speaker 1: white voters in the Kansas winning those folks over than
Speaker 1: they do winning the white voters of number four on
Speaker 1: the list. Very similar argument to North Carolina. It's Georgia.
Speaker 1: Georgia is a state that you know, we're going to
Speaker 1: find out in twenty twenty six just how strong the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party is. Is this a state that just is
Speaker 1: competitive only when they have Rafael Warnock on the ballot,
Speaker 1: or is this a state that is going to be
Speaker 1: competitive now no matter what. And asof winning reelection would
Speaker 1: send one signal, Democrats winning the governor's mansion would send
Speaker 1: another signal. So I think we're going to learn a
Speaker 1: lot about just sort of the health of the Democratic brand.
Speaker 1: How much is this the marginal success Democrats have had
Speaker 1: in Georgia been just because of backlaster Trump or is
Speaker 1: there is this starting to become durable. I think we're
Speaker 1: going to learn, but no matter what, again, because of
Speaker 1: the math issue, right Georgia. When you think about how
Speaker 1: much money and resources over the decades have gone into Michigan, Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: and Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina and number five of my
Speaker 1: list Arizona, three the they have to become just core states.
Speaker 1: Arguably now they're as important, if not more important, than
Speaker 1: the blue Wall of the Midwest. It's going to be
Speaker 1: a red wall, a purple wall, or a blue sun
Speaker 1: butt wall either way. So there's that. So three states
Speaker 1: that didn't make my list that I think deserve some
Speaker 1: investment in when you're looking at Project thirty two, Iowa, Indiana,
Speaker 1: in Florida, I think all of them. It's one of
Speaker 1: those where you want to get into a position where
Speaker 1: you're competitive in those states where you have enough because
Speaker 1: you need some buffers. You can't always have to draw this.
Speaker 1: You know the perfect inside straight and you know if
Speaker 1: you want to expand the map for Senate seats, and
Speaker 1: you want to expand the map for more governor's mansions,
Speaker 1: you've got to give yourself buffers and Indiana, Iowa, and Florida,
Speaker 1: in theory, all have enough combiny of metro areas and
Speaker 1: suburban populations in some allergies to MAGA policies that collectively,
Speaker 1: in theory, should give the Democrats opportunity. Now, you know,
Speaker 1: it's interesting the Democrats in this in what should be
Speaker 1: a focal point here Project twenty thirty two. And I'm
Speaker 1: at some point waiting for there to be an organization
Speaker 1: that's spun off just called this, right, you know that
Speaker 1: some big donor decides to fund and just focused on
Speaker 1: voter registration programs things like that is when the Democrats
Speaker 1: decide what the early calendar looks like. And they just
Speaker 1: over the last week greenlit twelve states that plan to
Speaker 1: petition to be in the early primary window for presidential politics.
Speaker 1: If the Democrats are thinking long term, they should be
Speaker 1: thinking about these four states as this decision as an
Speaker 1: opportunity to invest in Project twenty thirty two for them
Speaker 1: how to strengthen their ability to get more a few
Speaker 1: more states in play, expand the map. Right, So I
Speaker 1: wanted to look at their twelve states and see where
Speaker 1: they overlapped with states that perhaps they need to strengthen
Speaker 1: in in order to give keep themselves competitive and a
Speaker 1: presidential by twenty thirty two. So the twelve states they
Speaker 1: put in out of the east, it was Delaware, New Hampshire.
Speaker 1: Out of the midwest, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan. Out of the south, Georgia,
Speaker 1: North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and out of the
Speaker 1: west Nevada and New Mexico. So North Caro and the
Speaker 1: top five lists Georgia and North Carolina overlaps. You know,
Speaker 1: I think on the you know, I've said this before
Speaker 1: in the early state stuff, the bigger the state, the
Speaker 1: more ineffective that state can be at being sort of
Speaker 1: a fair fairness because with the bigger states then rewards
Speaker 1: those with big money. And both Georgia and North Carolina
Speaker 1: are expensive states. So while I think you could argue
Speaker 1: this would this in theory them as early states, having
Speaker 1: more Democrats campaign in them all the time could serve
Speaker 1: to overtime invest them, I don't know if they're the
Speaker 1: best states to create a level playing field for those
Speaker 1: candidates with big money and those candidates that don't have
Speaker 1: big money at the beginning. That would be the two
Speaker 1: negatives right, just very expensive states to advertise in, but
Speaker 1: having them as early states where Democrats are just always
Speaker 1: traveling to those to Georgia or North Carolina. Certainly, I
Speaker 1: think that is why Iowa state in the battle round,
Speaker 1: even though demographically Iowa looks like a state that should
Speaker 1: be darker red than it is. Iowa. Obviously, I think
Speaker 1: this is a way on the smaller state scale. I
Speaker 1: was disappointed to see that either Kansas didn't apply or
Speaker 1: there was no interest. I saw that Nebraska didn't do
Speaker 1: this either. So when you look at it, the only
Speaker 1: viable small states that applied for the early state window
Speaker 1: for the Democratic president primaries with Iowa right. The other
Speaker 1: two in the Midwest or Illinois Michigan again too big,
Speaker 1: too expensive, will only be there to help the big
Speaker 1: name candidates. It doesn't really doesn't really work as a
Speaker 1: good early test where Iowa you have to campaign in
Speaker 1: rural parts of the state in order to win. Versus
Speaker 1: Ellinois Michigan, you don't have to campaign in the rural
Speaker 1: parts of the state in order to win. The most
Speaker 1: interesting state that's on there that's got advanced for consideration
Speaker 1: to be in the early state window is Tennessee and
Speaker 1: I want to close with Tennessee because Tennessee is a
Speaker 1: state that has been a head scratcher to me. Twenty
Speaker 1: years ago, I thought Tennessee was going to go was
Speaker 1: going to be a part of Georgia North Carolina. Right.
Speaker 1: You always said Florida was the first state in the
Speaker 1: sun Belt that became competitive, and then the question was, okay,
Speaker 1: which ones are going to go next? And if you
Speaker 1: went by sort of socioeconomics, where we were seeing more
Speaker 1: people move to write Georgia North Carolina on the list,
Speaker 1: but so is Tennessee and Tennessee is is actually moved
Speaker 1: become more Republican, not less Republican over the last twenty years.
Speaker 1: Is that going to continue? Does the growth of Nashville
Speaker 1: does that sort of the bigger it grows, the more
Speaker 1: it becomes sort of Austin meets Las Vegas, which then
Speaker 1: creates your sort of suburban and you just get more
Speaker 1: non sort of cultural Southerners in your in your electorate.
Speaker 1: It's certainly something that I think a lot a lot
Speaker 1: of US election observers have been waiting to see, and
Speaker 1: there's been very little evidence of it. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: if this were happening, that Tennessee special in December would
Speaker 1: have would have seen a flip, while we didn't see
Speaker 1: a flip. Right, it was a little bit more competitive,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't necessarily a flip. So, you know, part
Speaker 1: of it is, you could say the election lines. I
Speaker 1: do think Democrats have a Memphis problem in the state.
Speaker 1: Memphis is just it's just it's a city that is
Speaker 1: not as it's not what it was thirty years ago.
Speaker 1: It feels as if and there's this whether it's fair
Speaker 1: or not, this perception, well, it's a Democrat run city
Speaker 1: and it's poorly run and et cetera, et cetera. And
Speaker 1: Republicans have weaponized sort of Memphis a long time to
Speaker 1: win elections. It's been sort of something they've done, been
Speaker 1: sort of a you know, Memphis has been used as
Speaker 1: sort of a code word for race. But when you
Speaker 1: look at the elector in Tennessee, you know the I
Speaker 1: know that if I if I were a strategist over
Speaker 1: at the DNC, I'd be thinking, you know, yeah, Tennessee's
Speaker 1: a reach state, but here's the state that that is
Speaker 1: that's got something in common with Virginia, something in common
Speaker 1: with North Carolina. You know, maybe more resources into the
Speaker 1: state opened some doors here. I found of all the
Speaker 1: of all the states that made it through in the
Speaker 1: top twelve, the one that you know, which one of
Speaker 1: these is not like the other, It was Tennessee. But
Speaker 1: I'll tell you if you if you went back thirty years,
Speaker 1: a lot of US election forecasters would have said Tennessee
Speaker 1: was one of the states that we expected to start
Speaker 1: to sort of I think a lot of people saw
Speaker 1: the South sort of splitting into sort of you know,
Speaker 1: the South more Cosmopolitans south of quote New South, right,
Speaker 1: and the sort of old South, deep South, however you
Speaker 1: want to describe it. And there was a you know,
Speaker 1: you had sort of your your Tennessee, your North Carolina,
Speaker 1: your Georgia, You're Virginia in one area, Florida in one area,
Speaker 1: and then you're Alabama, your Mississippi, You're Louisiana, South Carolina
Speaker 1: in another area. So it is mostly broken along those lines,
Speaker 1: but not totally. In Tennessee has been interesting. I know,
Speaker 1: my friend Brad Todd has a lot of theories there.
Speaker 1: He thinks that that Tennessee Republicans have benefited from a
Speaker 1: lot of Midwestern refugees, if you will, sort of Midwestern
Speaker 1: conservatives who have left the higher tax states of Ohio, Illinois,
Speaker 1: Michigan and have not moved all the way south, but
Speaker 1: moved to Tennessee, a low income tax state. So he says,
Speaker 1: one of the ways you notice it is if you
Speaker 1: go in the suburbs some of these suburban communities in
Speaker 1: Nashville on a fall Saturday, you don't see Tennessee flex.
Speaker 1: He goes, you see a lot of Ohio, State, Michigan, Purdue,
Speaker 1: Indiana flex. So that's been It's an interesting anecdote. I
Speaker 1: think it's one worth processing. But the reality is this
Speaker 1: Democrats have a major problem on their hands come twenty
Speaker 1: thirty two, and if they start worrying about it in
Speaker 1: twenty thirty one, it's going to be too late. So
Speaker 1: if they're going to launch Project twenty thirty two, now,
Speaker 1: let me go through it again. The five states. They
Speaker 1: should be focusing on North Carolina, basically the sun Belt,
Speaker 1: Purple Wall of North Carolina, Arizona, and Georgia, and then
Speaker 1: i'd throw in Texas and Kansas. They've got to expand
Speaker 1: their map, and then maybe you dabble in Indiana, Iowa,
Speaker 1: and Florida. And then of course we'll see what they
Speaker 1: do about Tennessee. But if the party doesn't start thinking
Speaker 1: that way, they could get locked out of the presidency
Speaker 1: for a generation. That's how dire this population shift is
Speaker 1: from California, New York to Florida and Texas. Ask Chuck,
Speaker 1: all right, let's do a little last chuck before we
Speaker 1: get out of here. I think I'm going to try
Speaker 1: to do six of them today, so let's keep me honest.
Speaker 1: Number one. This came from Brian from New England. He says, Hey,
Speaker 1: it's been about a year since you announced your departure
Speaker 1: from NBC. Yes, it is feels like it feels like
Speaker 1: a de but anyway, I imagine you're happy with the move.
Speaker 1: Was there a moment that made you realize going independent
Speaker 1: was the right call? Or had you just done everything
Speaker 1: you set up to? Two in a broadcast? Any regrets
Speaker 1: or roles you wish you'd tried, like foreign correspondent or
Speaker 1: local politics, and any future plans you can tease, maybe
Speaker 1: a check sports cast. Thanks Brian from New England. Well,
Speaker 1: there is a fun little sports project I'm working on.
Speaker 1: I'll have more details soon ish. Partnering with somebody that
Speaker 1: is probably very familiar to many of you in the
Speaker 1: sports space. I'm looking forward to it, but it sort
Speaker 1: of combines my love for sports in history. So I
Speaker 1: will throw that out there and leave that out there
Speaker 1: as a tease for you, but it's something that should
Speaker 1: be come into fruition in the next four to six weeks.
Speaker 1: On that front, Look, I have, I have no regrets.
Speaker 1: Miss I missed the collaboration. I miss some of my
Speaker 1: friends in colleagues. I ache currently for my longtime friend
Speaker 1: Savannah got three, who's going through just the worst, the
Speaker 1: worst experience imaginable.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: You know, something happens to your parents and your kids
Speaker 1: and they're just there's there's no there's no consoling that,
Speaker 1: and it's just heartbreaking. I know Savannah's mother a little bit.
Speaker 1: I love Nancy. She's just terrific. I hope by the
Speaker 1: time you hear this, she's home safe. So moments like this,
Speaker 1: you know, I miss, I miss just miss being able
Speaker 1: to be a be a friend on that. But I
Speaker 1: can always be a friend. I don't have to be
Speaker 1: an NBC to do that. But I'm just in pain
Speaker 1: for that, you know I have. When you go on
Speaker 1: the regret front, you know, some of my regrets. I
Speaker 1: I it's not really regrets. It's sort of like, I, uh,
Speaker 1: I leaned in, I should have jumped into certain to
Speaker 1: certain things, right. But I honestly, I'm pretty proud of
Speaker 1: my work. I think it's aging. I think it's aging
Speaker 1: very well, so in that sense, And frankly, I feel
Speaker 1: like I got out at the time, just before everybody
Speaker 1: else was being shoved out because of what's happening with
Speaker 1: corporate ownership of media. So in some ways I feel
Speaker 1: lucky to be in the independent space before it was cool.
Speaker 1: I feel lucky to get this opportunity to help really
Speaker 1: talented friends and former colleagues jump into these waters. As
Speaker 1: I say, it's a big cliff dive, but I promise
Speaker 1: you there's water there. And you know, I you know,
Speaker 1: when you look back and realize this moment that we're
Speaker 1: in with corporate owned media, I don't know. I think
Speaker 1: I think I was able to maximize everything that was
Speaker 1: possible under that situation. And you know, that was as
Speaker 1: I was talking with an old friend yesterday. Actually we
Speaker 1: were doing a little catching up and reminiscing and lamenting
Speaker 1: about what's happening to our friend's mom, And you know,
Speaker 1: He put it as like, you know, it's so different
Speaker 1: now that it's it's not even the same thing I worked.
Speaker 1: I don't recognize this network. I say, it is. No.
Speaker 1: This not me dissing them. It's just totally different, right,
Speaker 1: the separation from the there's no cable channel anymore. They basically,
Speaker 1: you know, just reimagined. Right, there's a real shrinkage of
Speaker 1: what NBC News is. And you know, I don't I
Speaker 1: know this. I wouldn't be happy under this circumstance, but
Speaker 1: you know, I wore the jersey, so I still root
Speaker 1: for him. I root for the individuals there because there's
Speaker 1: some good people. I'm still there doing some good reporting.
Speaker 1: I just hope they're given the opportunity to do it all. Right,
Speaker 1: next one, let's see, He says, Hey, I rarely miss
Speaker 1: an episode and really appreciate how you approach issues with
Speaker 1: balance and thoughtfulness. You give me hope multiple times a week.
Speaker 1: My wife tells me this all the time. You have
Speaker 1: to get people help, don't depress them too much. So
Speaker 1: I appreciate you saying that. I sensed a bit of
Speaker 1: fatigue in your one twenty six episode, which is understandable
Speaker 1: given the repetitive nature of our political chaos. Just wanted
Speaker 1: to say, your perspective is helping thousands of us see
Speaker 1: the bigger picture and hold on to hope. Keep it up. Well,
Speaker 1: can I confess your You know, I worried that I
Speaker 1: let my fatigue show that night. I just was tired.
Speaker 1: I'd been traveling and doing all this, So I you know,
Speaker 1: my goal is to never let you see me tired.
Speaker 1: Trust me, I always have a cup of coffee going
Speaker 1: because I don't you know, I appreciate the sentiment, but
Speaker 1: you shouldn't catch that. But you were correct. You caught
Speaker 1: me a little tired. Next question comes from Eric R.
Speaker 1: North Oaks, Minnesota with parentheses. Want to be Canadian Chuck?
Speaker 1: First time? Long time? Why isn't there more discussion about
Speaker 1: the contrast between Trump wanting to send US troops into
Speaker 1: Iran to protect protesters while abeying protesters in Minneapolis as
Speaker 1: domestic terrorists. Imagine if Canada crossed our border to defend
Speaker 1: US protesters, how would MAGA respond? The inconsistency is baffling, Eric,
Speaker 1: That's a terrific observation. I you know, I want to
Speaker 1: sit here and say, oh, well, you know this is
Speaker 1: apples and pairs and you know, no, it's a terrific observation.
Speaker 1: I think the second part, what if Canada sent in
Speaker 1: troops to protect protesters. It's you know, if you recall
Speaker 1: Tim Wallas was asked about bringing in the National Guard
Speaker 1: and he seemed to think he was concerned that you
Speaker 1: know that maybe the military confrontation is is is the
Speaker 1: pretext that that Trump might be looking for and all that.
Speaker 1: So it's I, you know, I don't have I don't
Speaker 1: have a lot to add to your comparison. It is now,
Speaker 1: can I just say something on Iran? Donald Trump is
Speaker 1: playing with America's credibility again, these Iranian protesters. It's just
Speaker 1: like he is messing with these Venezuelan Venezuelan dissidents. You
Speaker 1: know what, the Venezuelan dissidents want, the democracy. You know what,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump is not delivering a democracy. He is keeping
Speaker 1: right Maduro's number two in power because she is simply
Speaker 1: trying to buy time and is playing the transactional game.
Speaker 1: And Trump, as long as he gets what he wants
Speaker 1: in regards to control and oil, he doesn't care about democracy.
Speaker 1: So I do think Donald Trump is telling us something
Speaker 1: about what he thinks of democracy by what he's not
Speaker 1: doing in Venezuela. The fact that this is not a priority. Well,
Speaker 1: if democracy is not a priority when you have an
Speaker 1: opportunity to make it a priority in another country, it's
Speaker 1: clearly not a priority for him here. So that's the
Speaker 1: unfortunate takeaway. Now, speaking of American credibility with the Iranian
Speaker 1: hostage of the Iranian protesters, you know, every time we
Speaker 1: make a promise and don't follow through overseas, a potential terrorist,
Speaker 1: future terrorist attacking the United States or a US entity
Speaker 1: only increases. Right, somebody who's fifteen protesting in Iran will
Speaker 1: see their parent killed and wondering how come the Americans
Speaker 1: didn't come. They said they would come, but they didn't
Speaker 1: follow through. Their word means nothing. The impression that leads
Speaker 1: each time, right is it is to make a promise
Speaker 1: and then abandon is in some ways worse than not
Speaker 1: doing anything. But at least you didn't promise that you would.
Speaker 1: So look, it's a fair picture you're painting about, you know,
Speaker 1: the sort of protesters. But I think if we're really
Speaker 1: trying to understand does he care about democracy or not?
Speaker 1: I think the actions in Venezuela say it all and
Speaker 1: the lack of prioritization of making this a democracy. There
Speaker 1: is a democratic elected government already ready to go, and
Speaker 1: the inability to acknowledge that is because for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: they haven't financially paid whatever price. I guess it needs
Speaker 1: to be paid to become to get this, to get
Speaker 1: the support of the United States for what the will
Speaker 1: of the people want it. But I also worry about
Speaker 1: you know, he's used a lot of hot rhetoric with
Speaker 1: these Iranian protesters, and we can debate whether American firepower
Speaker 1: should be used to protect these protesters or not. You know,
Speaker 1: why in Iran but not in me? And mar right
Speaker 1: why in you know? Picking and choosing when we step
Speaker 1: in is always comes with that comes with a lot
Speaker 1: of problems long term. But making a promise and not
Speaker 1: keeping it is in some ways the worst possible outcome.
Speaker 1: Next question comes from Darryl He says, longtime listener and
Speaker 1: fellow alum of Miami Killian and the University of Miami
Speaker 1: at class in ninety seven. Hey, what you take on
Speaker 1: the current state of NILAN college football, specifically Yum's approach
Speaker 1: to bringing established quarterbacks rather than developing talent from within.
Speaker 1: I worry this could push promising recruits like Darien Coleman
Speaker 1: to transfer and thrive elsewhere. Thanks and keep up the
Speaker 1: great podcasting, Darryl. You're not the only person worried about this.
Speaker 1: And I saw that the Hurricane. You know, I'd say
Speaker 1: the Hurricane fanatics like yourself and myself were pretty divided,
Speaker 1: right Like I was, I was weirdly not confident that
Speaker 1: we'd be okay if we didn't get a top notch
Speaker 1: portal quarterback. But that but that, I'm like, all right,
Speaker 1: you know, we'll find a Ken Dorsey. We'll find it
Speaker 1: Steve Walsh. And what do I mean by that? Both
Speaker 1: Steve Walsh and Ken Dorsey did get a couple of
Speaker 1: cups of coffee in the NFL. Ken Dorsey became a coach,
Speaker 1: really and he's a really good coach. Steve Walsh, I
Speaker 1: think does some coaching in Minnesota. But neither one. We're
Speaker 1: sort of highly touted NFL quarterbacks. But they had great
Speaker 1: offensive lines, they had great running backs and receivers, and
Speaker 1: they were I don't want to call them game managers,
Speaker 1: sounds like a negative. They were better than that. They
Speaker 1: were cerebral, they understood the offense and all that so
Speaker 1: I certainly think that the way Miami has built this
Speaker 1: brother the way Mario wants to build, which is, you
Speaker 1: get as deep of an offensive line and defensive line
Speaker 1: as you can, you get as many playmakers as you can,
Speaker 1: and then you know on receivers, and then you make
Speaker 1: it where it is hard for an average to above
Speaker 1: average to a great quarterback to fail no matter what
Speaker 1: level they're in. And so as long as we're building
Speaker 1: these powerful offensive lines, I'm not concerned about this, and
Speaker 1: I think that this quarterback. I mean, here's the thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, look at the top, look at all of
Speaker 1: the top top ten. Let's just go through the top
Speaker 1: ten programs real quick. Ohio State last year won a
Speaker 1: national title with a portal quarterback. In the end of
Speaker 1: this year went to a national lade with a portal quarterback.
Speaker 1: Notre Dame was in the finals, lost the finals with
Speaker 1: a portal quarterback. Miami lost the finals with a portal quarterback.
Speaker 1: It is it is not you can do both. One
Speaker 1: could argue Georgia hasn't won a title because they stuck
Speaker 1: with Gunner Stockton when maybe they should have shopped for
Speaker 1: a portal quarterback. Is that what happened? To Alabama, right
Speaker 1: is you see LSU has had some success with portal quarterbacks,
Speaker 1: Texas has arch Manning. I don't even think that counts
Speaker 1: right on that front. But I think that, you know,
Speaker 1: you're assuming this is in Miami's control. I think until
Speaker 1: we get some sort of parameters around transfers and how
Speaker 1: this all works, the quarterbacks themselves are going to keep
Speaker 1: shopping because the paydays are there. Because you know, there's
Speaker 1: always one program that thinks they're a quarterback away from
Speaker 1: relevancy if some form or another, and will overpay. So
Speaker 1: you're going to get more of these quarterbacks to get
Speaker 1: out of the portal and go in. And so do
Speaker 1: I do? I you know, think, well, my guess is
Speaker 1: sixty percent of Miami starting quarterback until the system is
Speaker 1: sort of changed. If this is the system, that a
Speaker 1: majority of our starters will be portal quarterbacks. But if
Speaker 1: there's you know, we'll find out, you know, what happens
Speaker 1: to how we recruited for we get a major injury, right,
Speaker 1: you know, there's also unforeseen issues that could pop up
Speaker 1: that could end up forcing our hand, and we'll find
Speaker 1: out just how good our high school recruiting has been
Speaker 1: and our quarterback development has been But I think as
Speaker 1: long as we're building an offensive line and whether it's
Speaker 1: making sure we have the best freshman and the best
Speaker 1: portal right like that is you know, then I do
Speaker 1: think you can plug and play quarterback. It's probably the
Speaker 1: only position I'm comfortable plugging in playing like that. But
Speaker 1: I think you can. Next question comes from Heather from Decatur,
Speaker 1: longtime listener. I'm curious Illinois or Alabama. Heather, long time listener,
Speaker 1: appreciate the clear, nonpartisan analysis that helps me stay grounded
Speaker 1: in two day's political climate. Well, thank you for saying that, Heather,
Speaker 1: as a Georgia native, I'm curious about your recent confident
Speaker 1: that's in John Ossoff holding the Senate seat beyond the
Speaker 1: two flipped PSC races. Do you have other insights? I
Speaker 1: were those results might be skewed since many Republican areas
Speaker 1: had fewer races on the ballot compared to Democratic strongholds.
Speaker 1: Thanks and war Eagle. Obviously it's de cater Alabama. What
Speaker 1: you take on Auburn's new head coach. I love Auburn's
Speaker 1: new head coach, Alex Grolls. I think he's got a
Speaker 1: great story. I don't know if you know it. I
Speaker 1: think he was, if I'm not mistaken. He was born
Speaker 1: in Moscow in nineteen eighty four. Parents brought him over
Speaker 1: to the United States at the age of seven, became
Speaker 1: a football crazed, got into it, all that stuff, and
Speaker 1: he's bringing over a great quarterback and Byron Brown. So
Speaker 1: I you know, look, I've got Auburn fans in my
Speaker 1: in my family and two our closest friends, and some
Speaker 1: of my closest relatives big Auburn fans. So I'm I'm
Speaker 1: an Auburn apologist in general. I've become I'm learning to
Speaker 1: become one. They still didn't deserve a shot at the
Speaker 1: national title over Miami in nineteen eighty three, Stephen, and
Speaker 1: I'll just leave it at that. But I'm bullish on him.
Speaker 1: I uh, you know, I just hope the Auburn powers
Speaker 1: that be have patience, right, They're so impatience nobody ever
Speaker 1: seems to get a chance to build a program. But
Speaker 1: I think I like that they they're trying this, you know,
Speaker 1: instead of like trying the searching for Bobby, you know,
Speaker 1: in the obsessions with Bobby Petrino or throwing cash at
Speaker 1: Lane Kiffin or doing something like that, right, seeing if
Speaker 1: they can get a guy from the level below, find
Speaker 1: their own Urban Meyer, right, who came at the time
Speaker 1: from the mid majors and then turned you know, came
Speaker 1: in and helped make Florida power. So I would I'm
Speaker 1: I am more bullish on him, and I'd like I'd
Speaker 1: like to see the South Florida guy do good on
Speaker 1: that front. Now, as for the other part of your question,
Speaker 1: John Assoff, what gives me this confidence? It's the weak
Speaker 1: Republican primary field as well. Right, So you throw a
Speaker 1: bunch of things. Number one, you know, Asofsun and Coombent
Speaker 1: has an enormous financial advantage. Number Two, the only can
Speaker 1: the I would argue, there were two candidates he had
Speaker 1: to fear, Brian Camp and Brad Rathensberger. Neither one of
Speaker 1: them are running. Three, you have the national climate and
Speaker 1: Georgia clearly being a swing state now seems to move
Speaker 1: in that direction. I agree with you, I I it
Speaker 1: is not the margins. It is the result of the
Speaker 1: PSC races, not necessarily even the margins. That impressed me
Speaker 1: because you're right, you know, you had you had to
Speaker 1: turn out differential that was huge. But the fact that
Speaker 1: you still got those huge margins, says something, but it
Speaker 1: mostly goes this is a weak field. I think the
Speaker 1: strongest candidate will be Derek Dooley, but it looks like
Speaker 1: the likely opponent's going to be somebody with the first
Speaker 1: name of Congressman, which I think is an absolute gift
Speaker 1: because his biggest competitive you know, in theory, being a
Speaker 1: part of the Washington Swamp is not good. But if
Speaker 1: you're a House Republican people, people don't like Congress. I
Speaker 1: think they hate the House more than the Senate, just generically, right,
Speaker 1: So I just think you throw all that together, open
Speaker 1: governor's seat. No Brian camp leading the ticket either, right,
Speaker 1: his his political machine. Just yes, it's helping Derek Dooley
Speaker 1: in that Senate primary. But I think when you throw
Speaker 1: all that together, and I was, you know, look, I
Speaker 1: thought as Off was the accidental senator when you know,
Speaker 1: sort of writing the coattails of Raphaeld Warnock back in
Speaker 1: during those runoffs. You know, he's got a formidable he's
Speaker 1: always been formidable on raising money, and he works his
Speaker 1: you know what, off, he works his as Off Off.
Speaker 1: I guess it's a to to try to create a
Speaker 1: Dad humor pun there. So, yeah, that's I think this
Speaker 1: is I'm I'm inclined to right now. It's in lean
Speaker 1: deed to me. Until you show me proof that one
Speaker 1: of these Republicans can get the fifty percent plus one
Speaker 1: right now, I don't see it all right. Final question
Speaker 1: of the day comes from Colonel Stephen Mitchell, the United
Speaker 1: States Air Force retired, and he writes this good day check.
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed your January twenty ninth podcast, especially in
Speaker 1: the segment on Trump's pull numbers. It seems he's losing
Speaker 1: support from voters who backed him for economic reasons, but
Speaker 1: I'm unsure if the same is true for those focused
Speaker 1: on the border. Given your polling expertise, what you take
Speaker 1: and aside from the economy, what do you think will
Speaker 1: be the top issue on voters minds? Thank you very much. Look,
Speaker 1: I think obviously you're gonna have economy one. I think
Speaker 1: there's the question I have is is there a do
Speaker 1: we create a bucket called sort of chaos or tumult right,
Speaker 1: Because ultimately, I think the reason why Trump won in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four is because the perceived chaos Biden created
Speaker 1: at the border. In addition to sourness about the economy,
Speaker 1: like you need it, you needed sort of both things.
Speaker 1: I think sourness in the economy, plus you know, is
Speaker 1: he intentionally dividing the country with ice? Right, it's not
Speaker 1: that the it's not that what he did on the
Speaker 1: borders unpopular. In fact, that's an important distinction, which I
Speaker 1: which you're I think indicating that you understand about how
Speaker 1: you know. The danger for Republicans now is that the
Speaker 1: voters are pretty sophisticated in how they are processing the
Speaker 1: immigration issue. When you ask them about border security, they're
Speaker 1: impressed with the Trump administration. They're mostly approving. When you
Speaker 1: ask them about immigration, they see that through the prism
Speaker 1: of ice, not security anymore, and they don't like what
Speaker 1: they're seeing. So I think the fact that that's been
Speaker 1: split right where it's an opening if a nimble Democrat
Speaker 1: knows how to take it, which is look, Biden was
Speaker 1: terrible on border security. I'm not going to let that
Speaker 1: happen again. And I'm glad to see what the Trump
Speaker 1: administration has done at the border, but what they're doing
Speaker 1: in our communities across the country is outrageous, etc. Etc. Right.
Speaker 1: So the point is that I think what it does
Speaker 1: provide is the Democrats an opening to look like, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm no Biden on the border, but I'm no Trump
Speaker 1: in harassing Americans either. Right, It's a way to differentiate
Speaker 1: yourself from the Democratic brand on a negative aspect of
Speaker 1: the border and at the same time being able to
Speaker 1: differentiate yourself and show empathy and compassionate about what's happening
Speaker 1: in places like Minneapolis. So that's where I think that
Speaker 1: there's a real problem now for Republicans on this issue,
Speaker 1: and why so many of them are starting to whisper
Speaker 1: loudly that Stephen Miller's a problem, that he is creating
Speaker 1: a narrative, creating a perception about Republicans. It's going to
Speaker 1: be hard to overcome in many of these places. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe the base is happy, but that is it on
Speaker 1: this stuff. But when you're asking about other issues, look,
Speaker 1: I think obviously economy, anything that's you know, So do
Speaker 1: you consider healthcare and economy issue? I kind of do, right,
Speaker 1: So I think that's there. If Democrats let me do this,
Speaker 1: let me flip the question here. If Democrats have a
Speaker 1: huge night, it isn't going to be because they only
Speaker 1: want on the economy. If Democrats have a huge night,
Speaker 1: it means they got the corruption issue into the mind
Speaker 1: of the swing voter, that they found a way into it.
Speaker 1: Maybe they did it via exhaustion, you know, the Trump
Speaker 1: chaos idea, look what he does at the White House,
Speaker 1: Kennedy Centers selling foreign policy, like lumping it all in together.
Speaker 1: But you know, I think the difference between Democrats having
Speaker 1: a good night in November and having an incredible night
Speaker 1: in November is their ability to take these various gross, corruptive,
Speaker 1: uncomfortable stories and figuring out how to package it as one. Right.
Speaker 1: COVID helped paint a picture of, you know, all the
Speaker 1: Trump chaos and it led to this right, and so
Speaker 1: that's why that messaging was was pretty easy to get
Speaker 1: him out of there. If you know, it's sort of
Speaker 1: I'll be curious to see how they do it and
Speaker 1: if they can do it. But my point is is
Speaker 1: that it's one of those if I'm in a coma,
Speaker 1: If I go in to coma to my and I
Speaker 1: don't wake up till day after election and you tell
Speaker 1: me they won six Senate seats and thirty House seats,
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh wow, the corruption issue must have played
Speaker 1: that would be my initial instinct. So I don't know
Speaker 1: if it's going to play, but I think this is
Speaker 1: one of those for them to go from good to great,
Speaker 1: they need to figure out how to get the corruption
Speaker 1: issue to be easy to digest and something the quote
Speaker 1: check on Trump, right, the check on his power, you
Speaker 1: know it is. It is the path for them to
Speaker 1: get to that messaging. But you need to make the
Speaker 1: case that he's corrupt and that this corruption is happening
Speaker 1: in order to do it. And we'll see if they're
Speaker 1: able to pull that off. All right, there you go.
Speaker 1: That does it for me. On a Wednesday, man, I
Speaker 1: got to this is a political junkies, junkies episode trying
Speaker 1: to explain this is like the old hotline for me,
Speaker 1: little media narrative explanation, a little historical comparison with Eddie Roosevelt,
Speaker 1: a little electoral scoreboard in college strategizing for twenty thirty two,
Speaker 1: plus this, and somebody's asking me whether you know what
Speaker 1: do I miss about NBC at this point? Nothing? This,
Speaker 1: This is this is the broadcast, the type of broadcast
Speaker 1: I've always wanted to do. So I appreciate you listening,
Speaker 1: appreciate your support. I can subscribe, don't forget to use
Speaker 1: all the codes from our advertisers, and with that, I'll
Speaker 1: see you in twenty four hours.