Chuck’s Commentary - A Growing Number Of Republicans Are Breaking From Trump + Todd Blanche Has ZERO Chance Of Getting Confirmed - The Chuck ToddCast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Speaker 2 (01:40):
Hello there, Happy Thursday, and welcome.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
To another episode of the check podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
It has been quite a week.

Speaker 1 (01:48):
There's been a lot of political news, a lot of
campaign news. We're in the middle of the never ending
vote count in California, which, yes, this is a problem
the state needs to deal with. I'm tired of people
trying to defend the system and so just be patient. No,
this is creating problems. But I'm going to get to

(02:08):
that in a minute. Don't want to start my start
some of these election counting rants too soon here. But
I've just had a week because I also have some
sad news. But in some ways that that is that
has hit my family. We lost my grandmother this week.

(02:30):
She lived an incredible life ninety nine years on this
on this earth, and I am going to use the
privilege of this podcast at the end of it to
share a few a few thoughts on her and just
share a few nuggets about her that I want anybody

(02:52):
that wants to know me needs to know about her.
So it's just all happening. I've been traveling a lot anyway.
My point is is, it's it's been a week. It's
been a week both it was a busy week in
and of itself in my professional world, in our professional
world of campaign politics, a busy week, and what's happening
in the real world of war and peace and and

(03:14):
and things like that with Ukraine, with Iran, et cetera.
We just kind of we just got a lot going
on so and got my own situation there so, but
I think we had to begin.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
Let me be a rundown.

Speaker 1 (03:28):
Now. On the political front, I want to tackle a
few things. We've got some new news out of the
White House regarding potential permanent pick for the post of
Attorney General. I've got some updates on Maine Senate and
a focus on how what I would say is how
we should assess how Janet Mills does against Graham Plattner,

(03:51):
and the Democratic primary planner is going to be the
Democratic nominee that we know, but Janet Mills's name is
on the ballot, and it is going to be a
barometer to see how, you know, how much of a
problem has all of this, all of these disclosures about
his personal life and personal habits. How much of a

(04:11):
toll has this taken with rank and file Democratic voters.
Let's just say I did a little bit of research
and have a data driven metric for you to watch
that main center race, and I want to go through
a poll memo that he put out to try to
reassure donors and supporters that things aren't as bleak as
the media coverage has said. But I want to begin

(04:35):
and then we'll a little update about California, because I
think the best you can hope for is maybe maybe
my friends over at Decision to SAQ will have enough
information to at least call the second slots of the
runoff in La Mayor and in California GOV. Maybe, and

(04:57):
we're hopeful by Friday or Saturday. But if it, obviously
if some of these drops make things even closer between
second and third and it could go another few days.
But not only will I sort of help you in
how to watch this a little bit, but I do
think we've got a this really needs to I think

(05:18):
the way California is conducting itself here is introducing more
just allows for conspiracy theories to fill the vacuum. And
it's just unnecessary to feel to allow a vacuum like
this to exist. But we're going to get to that
as well. But I want to begin what I think

(05:38):
has been the most significant development of the week, and
that is Congressional Republicans and starting the increasing number of
Congressional Republicans that are pretty much done capitulating to Donald Trump. Now,

(05:59):
maybe for some of you it may not be enough,
and for some of you, you may think that they're,
you know, only doing the minimum and there are more
ways that they should push back on Donald Trump. But
the reality is this has been a pretty significant development.
When the Senate Republican leader, as I was telling you
in the last episode, he immediately reacts to the Bill

(06:19):
Poultine nomination as we don't for the Director of National Intelligence.

Speaker 2 (06:24):
We don't need.

Speaker 1 (06:26):
Weaponization and a weapon using the word weaponization, right, it
was not a democratic talking point. First, it came from
the leading Republican in the Senate. It's you know, and
Thune wouldn't have done this if he wasn't speaking for
a majority of his own conference. The Senate Republicans have
had enough, and now you've even got any you know,

(06:47):
some of this is due to absentees, but you continue
to see a trickle of House Republicans, at least on
the War Powers Act when it comes to Iran, and
we'll see if more happens of the next day or
two when it comes to aid Ukraine, but an increasing
number of Republicans slower in the House. I remember, House

(07:09):
Republicans are more closely aligned with Donald Trump's wing of
the party than Senate Republicans. Has just been the case
pretty much his entire presidency. But the fact that you know,
it's a symbolic vote in the House, but Republicans lost it,
or more importantly, the Trump administration lost it. So even
though that Donald Trump has had mostly success in punishing

(07:33):
Republicans that have crossed him, it appears there are fewer
that fear him, and there certainly is this growing Yolo caucus.
Of course, that we've been talking about in the Senate.

Speaker 2 (07:45):
But even on Tuesday night, his.

Speaker 1 (07:50):
Ability to tell primary voters what to do was has
been called into a little bit of questioning, at least
in the state of Iowa, given that his endorsement, which
was seen as necessary essentially to rescue the Republican ticket
for fear that Zach Laine, who did win the Republican nomination,
is just not going to is going to be a

(08:11):
bit of a drag on Ashley Hintson, the Republican Senate
candidate nominee, rather than an asset. And so there's no
doubt how the President was talked into that. But the
point is is that tons of data points this week
that the Republican Party that is not Trump centric is
ready to move on and they are comfortable now treating

(08:35):
this president as a lame president. And then of course
there's his behavior himself, and when things are going badly
for him, he gets cranky, he lashes out, he's doing
his misogynistic attacks on journalists. I mean, what he does
to Caitlin Collins is just outrageous, and.

Speaker 2 (08:57):
It's so.

Speaker 1 (09:00):
You know, I don't react every time he unfairly maligns
reporters unfairly maligns news organizations, because it would be all
I would do if that's what I do. And I
do think that the compact I've made with you with
this podcast is to basically try to do two things.
Cover politics as it is, but also present politics perhaps

(09:24):
as it could be or should be. That's essentially my
north star here, and I don't want to be labor.
I mean I could sit here and wine and wine
and wine about just how ridiculous, how un american that
the Pentagon behaves when it comes to the First Amendment
in journalists, how the White House behaves when it comes
to the First Amendment in journalists, and then just the

(09:47):
absolute nasty way that he speaks about women journalists in particulars.
And this is sadly not anything new. What's disappointing is
not that plenty of us fellow journalists will speak up
from time to time, because you just get to a
point where, like Jesus, you know, does anybody you know

(10:08):
have you no decency?

Speaker 2 (10:09):
Sir?

Speaker 1 (10:10):
I mean, this is the moment, but I really would
like to hear it from somebody inside, you know, the
Republican Party that you know this is, this is becoming
embarrassing and it's damaging and it's fairly destructive to the

(10:30):
political discourse in the country.

Speaker 2 (10:35):
But he's not.

Speaker 1 (10:37):
You know, he's clearly when when, like I said, when
things don't go well, you can you know, he wears
he wears it all. You know, he is terrible. You know,
We've said this, He's a terrible poker player. He wears
all of his uh, he wears it all out there
in a sleeve. Both how he's feeling his strengths, his weaknesses,

(10:58):
his vulnerabilities, his projections. Right, he does not hide any
of them, right, he is he is oddly incredibly easy
to read. Which is why he can't get a deal
with the Iranians, right, which is why he's been such
a terrible negotiator and trying to supposedly put together a
ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine. Right, because he's just in

(11:19):
why she is eating his lunch in every single negotiation
the United States has had under Donald Trump with China.
He's a terrible negotiator. You know, That's why he loves
to say he's a great negotiator. This is a classic
attempt at gaslighting. Right, But he is just awful, Right,
one of the worst that we've had in this in

(11:40):
this position. So he's in as he wears it all
on his sleep, He's not in a good place. And
this is all happening right when he's about to have
this inward celebration of himself while trying to wrap himself
in America to fifty. And I will tell you, I
think there's a lot of political riskiness here, you know,

(12:01):
creating this UFC event on the South Lawn. You know,
I know how Republicans would have reacted if Barack Obama
had decided to host the All Star Game on the
South Lawn and manufactured a basketball court. Might be a
lot of fun, might be a great idea, but nah,
I think a lot of people would at the time
would have seen that that's you know, is that the
way we should use the White House? And oh, you're

(12:22):
just doing it because you love basketball, right and all
these things, But that's not the way Barack Obama was
going to conduct his presidency or use the White House
this way. And you do this and there's a part
of this it's like, you know, put it on the
National Mall, and.

Speaker 2 (12:41):
You know it is some way.

Speaker 1 (12:42):
It's like, you know, there's it's always with Trump, like
especially with this beautification aspect of DC. There are things
that I'm glad he's doing. Cleaning up some of these monuments,
absolutely please. The federal government should spend money to present
a capital that people can be proud to visit in see.
But it is your federal government, mister President, that consistently

(13:04):
underfunds things like this and makes it very difficult for
the Park Service and the Smithsonian to keep everything in
tip top shape. Good to see that there's some part
of this is but like with everything with Trump, by
ten percent of what he says is legitimate, but he
goes ninety percent too far, almost all of it. Right.

(13:27):
How he's behaving with this reflecting pool, I mean, he
almost is convincing himself that he built the reflecting pool
now that he's comparing it to skyscrapers. And as someone
said in social media, ay man, if he can build
a vertical reflecting pool that would be taller than you know,
I'm here for it. Love to see it. That'd be

(13:47):
an engineering marvel. We'd love to see this. But I
think that this sort of exhaustion, this sort of inward
celebration at a time when the economy is not popular
when people feel as if this White House is focused
on anything but people's day to day lives, spending two

(14:10):
months celebrating himself in June, sort of hijacking the two
hundred and fiftieth birthday to make it all about himself,
the Indy car race, which we'll try to make all
about himself. I don't know if it's going to wear well.
And this is a campaign year, and this is a
time when the Republican Party's brand is not in it

(14:33):
in some ways has been in slightly better shape than
the Democratic brand. I don't think it's going to be
after Donald Trump's finished for the next sixty days, especially
as his actual political grip on governing the country and
controlling the Republican Party is slipping away. And so he's
going to you know, almost be more desperate for these

(14:53):
events to be about himself, more desperate to you know,
and he's going to you know, continue need to get
angry when you know, major celebrities feel uncomfortable with how
much he's politicizing America's birthday. As I said before, you know,
Donald Trump could have gotten all of the ego bump
he wanted out of this if he knew how a
tiny bit of humility and he knew how to actually

(15:16):
engage the former presidents into co hosting a great celebration
of America two fifty. But that's not who Donald Trump is, right.
He burns bridges with everybody, burned bridges with the former presidents,
Republican and Democratic alike. He burns bridges with our allies
in Europe right when we have no help. We're having
to go it alone with the straight ofform muvesm with
what's happening there. Right. All he does is burn bridges

(15:39):
on this front. But I you know, I don't know
if this is going to go so well and it's
going to be this is you know, the Marie Antoinette
comparisons to let them eat cake.

Speaker 2 (15:55):
Optics on this.

Speaker 1 (15:58):
I think are a lot more dangerous for Republicans that
are on the ballot. Wouldn't be surprised if you start
to see some Republicans find more ways to distance himself
even from these celebrations. I think, and maybe Donald Trump
doesn't want some of these people around, but they're not
going to be with them. And one other thing to watch,
Supposedly they're going to do this midterm convention, and he

(16:18):
hasn't quite announced it yet. I think it could be
Dallas is one idea that they had it. I'm not
sure Republicans running in some of these Senate races want
to have a nationalized political rally with the president, right.
I mean, you know, the Republican coalition is a tricky

(16:39):
thing in a midterm year because there is some data
that says, well, actually getting the president's base fired up
about the midterms could help, right with turnout.

Speaker 2 (16:51):
But the very.

Speaker 1 (16:52):
Voters they need as sort of the ones that are
not big Trump fans, but maybe you are, are kind
of turned off by the left woard turn of the
Democratic Party. Do they become less gettable if he magnifies
things too much? Of that midterm convention, for instance, you
think Dan Sullivan's going to show up to that, I
know if I were one of his advisers, and you're like, yeah,

(17:13):
you might want to go to that, right. You think
Ashley Hinson goes. Maybe she goes because maybe she needs
she needs a Trump voter turnout in Iowa, you know,
so it you know, I'm not sure John Houston goes, right,
I'm not sure Johnson who goes, I'm not sure Mike

(17:33):
Rogers goes. We'll see it'll be an interesting test over there,
and you'll know by those that go to that convention
who needs Trump based voters more and who needs swing
voters more. So it may depend a little bit on
the nature if you're electorate. This episode of the Chuck

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Bonus hyphen offer hyphen terms, which brings me to what
may be the news of the of the morning, because
by the time I'm recording this, there's one report that

(20:35):
indicates the President is likely to announce that Todd Blanche
is longtime his personal attorney who has been the acting
Attorney General. He's going to nominate him, to formally nominate
him for the post of Attorney General and have them
put up for confirmation. This is this could be the

(21:00):
jump the Shark moment for Donald Trump. And I'm sorry
for using that old cliche in metaphor, but this is this.
There is zero chance Todd Blanche can get confirmed. And
I think Trump in his own head thinks, well, you
know what if I flood the zone with crazy at
the Senate. They're not going to reject all of that. Right,

(21:20):
That's how it worked in the beginning of this second term,
right when he flooed the zone with crazy Matt Gates, RFK,
hag Seth, Tulci Gabbart, he got three of the four through, right,
So maybe he thinks Bill Poulti and Todd Blanche that
you know, it's like Darren to reject both. And my

(21:41):
answer to the President and to folks in the West Wing,
I don't know if you're paying attention here, Todd Blanche
has not made any friends. This weaponization fund was the
clearly Todd Blanche creation. And if he didn't create it,
he blessed it. It doesn't matter.

Speaker 2 (21:56):
It's his. He owns it.

Speaker 1 (21:58):
And by the way, they haven't scrapped they just scrapped
the financial reward. Part of this settlement in place is
still this ridiculous idea that the president's former personal attorney,
but I don't know if it's former, if he's acting
in his personal capacity or for the government, has somehow
agreed to give I guess amnesty to Donald Trump on

(22:21):
every tax form and anything any of the Trump's have
filed with the IRS through calendar year twenty twenty five.
I don't know about you, guys. You love to have
permanent amnesty from any sort of IRS scrutiny of your
taxes in you know, for every single tax form you've

(22:44):
ever filed, especially if you run some weird, sketchy development
deals all over the country. I mean, it is, you know,
the idea that Blanche has a snowballs chance in hell,
there's no Susan Collins votes to confirm him. She's got
a very winnable race for reelection Uphill, and she can't.

(23:08):
The further away she is from Trump, the better chances
she's going to have. There's no way Dan Sullivan is
going to vote for this. We kind of know where
the Yolo caucus is. We really think Tom Tillis will
vote for Tom Blanche. You think John Cornyn or Bill Cassidy,
So there's three. How about Mitch McConnell. How comfortable do
you think he is? Then you have to start looking

(23:31):
at Kenned John Houston afford this vote. I don't think
they fully appreciate how tough these votes are going to be.
And maybe this could be an indication that Trump's done
listening to any sort of advice like this, maybe he's
done with Senate Republicans. He's so angry that they took
the fund away from him. He's so angry that that

(23:57):
they can't pass that they won't pass this funding for
his East wing project, and he's just you know, this
is he's just gonna go Tony Montana on the Republican
Party and just you know, push the envelope, wait for
the courts to say no, wait for the Congress to
say no, still try to get away with it as

(24:19):
much as he can until he's sort of forced not to.
And maybe that's what the next two years are like.
But my word, it's one of those I I'm like
I said, there's one report indicating that this may happen,
and by the time you hear this, it may have
already happened.

Speaker 2 (24:39):
But as I indicated.

Speaker 1 (24:41):
Before and Bill Poulti yesterday, there's no way where this
Republican Senate is currently. There is no way Bill Poulty
has a snowballs chance in hell of getting confirmed, and
neither does Todd blanche And it's almost as if Donald
Trump wants to put a neon sign on the White House.
That's as I no longer am I am a lame

(25:05):
duck that and just put it in flashing lights when
you offer up people that your party is just going
to summarily reject. That is I think the very definition
of what a lame duck president starts to look like.

(25:27):
And we haven't even gotten to the midterms yet. Usually
this formally doesn't begin until after you get the sill
acking in your second midterm, at least the way it's
happened in the last couple of decades. Speaking of the midterms,
two things. One quick California update. So we've gotten you

(25:47):
as I as we left off with each other after
the results, going into Wednesday's podcast.

Speaker 2 (25:55):
I indicated that there's.

Speaker 1 (25:56):
A that there's an open question can Spend Pratt's hold
on to that second runoff spot or is the Momdaniaca
like remain going to catch him? And in the governor's race,
does Stire have a chance of catching Well, right now
it's as I'm taping this, it is still Kilton that's

(26:20):
ahead in the governor's race. But all indications and all
sort of our understanding of when these vote drops are coming,
and you can see it by the by Friday or Saturday.
But Sarah's going to be the first place candidate. Kilton's
likely to hang on to the second slot. The question
is how much will the Styre vote grow now we've
seen we saw a lot more drops on Wednesday in

(26:44):
La County than we really did statewide. Not every county
updated their vote counting, which is just absurd. But we'll
get to that in a second. But it was some
interesting trends in La which means these are ballots that
came in closer to election day and we're getting closer
election day vot vote and in those votes and the
governor's race, at least in La County it was Besarah Stier,

(27:05):
Hilton and Hilton being in third. So Styre certainly did
pick up some you know, made up a little bit
of ground on the top two. As he is, he
tries to see if he can pick up six percentage
points minimum to try to sneak into this runoff. I
think it's unlikely, but again I think that you're going

(27:26):
to see some unusual late like we saw even in
La Mayor with the last drop. Well, you know, Pratt
seems a bit stronger I think in holding onto the
second slot than what we might see in the governor's race.

Speaker 2 (27:42):
And but you know, I'm.

Speaker 1 (27:45):
Always hesitant here because of how we still don't know
how many ballots, our total ballots we're dealing with. We
may not actually feel comfortable saying what that number likely
estimate is going to be until Friday or Saturday, because
at that point they'll know as they deal with the
trickle of member. Ballots can keep being processed up to

(28:05):
one week after Tuesday, so up to June ninth, as
long as the ballot was postmarked on June second, and
it's quite common. There's one of the California race I
want to point out, and it's one I was talking
about a lot in the live stream, and it's one
that at the time we didn't make that our friends

(28:28):
and Decision a SQ weren't making it one of our
key races to watch. And that's California six. And this
is the race that features Kevin Kylie, a republic who
was first elected to Congress as a Republican who decided
to drop his Republican party affiliation and run for reelection
in the sixth congressional district after the remap in California

(28:49):
as an independent and as and look, it is only
half the vote is in and as of this taping,
a Republican is in second place and the Democratic that
this district was drawn to elect a Democrat. It's about
a fifty six fifty seven percent performing Democratic district. The
Democratic candidate is currently in third place, not that far behind,

(29:10):
about a thousand votes behind second place the Republican candidate.
But there's every chance they're you know, on paper right now,
if these if somehow this these percentages hold, Democrats will
get locked out of a congressional district that they designed
to win. But it would be kind of and the

(29:32):
Republican and I think the question is is if you're Kylie,
you're going to You're going to be in the top two,
You're going to be an I do you? You know?
Is it is probably an easier path to re election
for him if the Republicans and second, and he's got
a better shot at winning over some skeptical Democrats if

(29:54):
he says, no, I'm going in there to be an
independent and I'll make my decision who who if either
party I call becus with depending on on what happens,
or he may say, you know, which is what I
might do if I were an independent. Look, if elected,
I'm going to caucus with the majority. I'm not going
to be the candidate that gives any party the majority,

(30:16):
but I'm I'm going to caucus with them because that'll
be in the best interest of my constituents in my district.
It will give me the loudest voice that I can have.
But if the other party went, I'm going to switch
and organize with them. That's how I would handle trying
to be an independent and just the way our system
is set up in the House of Representatives. But it's

(30:37):
it's to me, it's one of my It's one of
my under the radar favorite races because UH an independent
has as I think, a real shot UH winning here
and it you know, we've had a growing no party
affiliation set of registrants. You know, can Kylie actually appeal

(30:59):
to that growing set of electorate? So I just think
it's an interesting political science experiment at a minimum on that.

Speaker 2 (31:05):
But before I moved to.

Speaker 1 (31:08):
This deep dive that I did on Maine and how
to watch the primary on June ninth and how you
should interpret that pole memo that has been circulating on
social media from the Platner campaign, I just want to
put a plea out there to the California Legislature. California governor,
you know, my understanding governor Knews called up these counting

(31:28):
clerks and said, you gotta you really got to, you know,
work faster. And essentially the response to the governor was
give us more money. You know, if you want the
count faster, we you know, we need to hire more people.
We need to be able to pay more overtime, put

(31:48):
the resources in place to count these ballots faster, to
process these ballots faster. The integrity of the democracy is
on the line, guys. You know, I you know, do
I trust this process? I do, all right, I've toured
to vote Voting Center. I understand your signature match, but

(32:09):
a lot of Americans don't. And the ability to fill
a vacuum here with conspiracy theories, nobody has enough credibility
to convince people that they don't get to see it
with their own eyes. Okay, So, and when forty nine
other states seem to be able to get somewhere to
ninety five two one hundred percent, I guess forty eight
because Washington State can take a little bit of time too.

(32:33):
But at forty eight or forty nine, other states can
pull this off. Come on, California, you spend a lot
of money on governance. Put some here. If you care
about the democracy, if you care about the perception of
the democracy, if you care about trusting the democracy, then
the California Legislature and the California governor should be focused

(32:56):
like a laser beam and making sure the vote can
out happens accurately and quickly, so that you are protecting
the integrity of the democracy. So you're minimizing the ability
of people who want to fill that vacuum with misinformation
and who want to play games like Donald Trump does

(33:18):
because he's he's impatient, or he's ignorant, or he just
wants to be exploitive on it. Right, you pick your
pick your answer on that one. The guys, this is
I think this is this is not a nice to have.
This is something that is uh that again, if you

(33:39):
if the rhetoric that many of you California leaders use
about the democracy, if you mean it, start by making
this a pristine process. State of Florida does a lot
of early vote, a lot of mail and vote, and
they seem to be able to pull this off. But look,
we are friends in Maricopa county need need a lot

(34:01):
more resources to I am all for giving people as
many options as possible to vote. I think there's nothing
wrong with mail in voting, and you have signature verification
and it's The California system is very impressive when it
comes to security and verification. The one thing it lacks

(34:23):
is speed, and that can be fixed with resources. So
come on, guys, get your act together. Don't make it
easy for trolls on the Internet to create conspiracy theories
about these votecasts. This episode of the Chuck Podcast is

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(36:23):
here before we get to the interview with Todd Records
with an update on the Platner campaign. The most fascinating
thing about what's coming next with Platner. It's clear that
his visit to d C was okay when it came
to his meetings with Democratic senators. Those that wanted it,

(36:44):
that were desperate to look for reassurance believe they somehow
found it. But you can kind of tell if you
if you read that Wall Street Journal story about what
he said, where he he didn't seem to say no
more was going to come out. You just seemed to
say that the worst stuff you've the worst stuff you've

(37:05):
heard is not true. That was to me far did
not quite get to the point of there's nothing more
there and there's no there there. So you get that
report and then you get this memo that the Platner
campaign put out as an attempt to and they shared

(37:25):
it all over social media, and it's clearly an attempt
to try to calm calm down the nervous the folks
that are nervous about Platter and they they go, hey,
we just we just came out of the field and
they did a quickie pole. But they didn't use you know,
one of their uh, they didn't use put it this

(37:47):
way anytime I've ever seen a poll where Democrats wanted
to make it look like they had a better chance
somewhere than they probably have. It's amazing how often the
poll comes from PPP. PPP is definitely a Democratic leaning firm. Uh.
It is a robopoll, it is, you know, but there's
a lot of VR, you know, where you press a

(38:08):
button or now it's talk to text and all that stuff.
But if you track PPP surveys, you know, it has
definitely a den bias to it. There's always a two
to four point you know. It's it's always sort of
the perfect electorate that Democrats would need. I'm not saying
they manipulate the numbers that. I'm not saying. It's just

(38:29):
you know, they they they they will, they will do
a SAMP, they will do the they will find the
rosiest sample that is defensible in order to put it,
get get a result, get a pole result that reinforces
a narrative that they're trying to get out there. And
so what's the narrative the platner wants to get out there.

(38:50):
Hey we've had a terrible week, We've gotten all this incoming,
and you know what, guess what we're still ahead of Colins.
So that's what this poll says. Except if you're going
to throw out a pp P pole and you know,
this is one of those for the political community, if
you know, you know anybody that does this for a living.
And again, I'm not here to tell to wish cast here,

(39:13):
I'm just telling you the reality. Anybody that's serious about
political announcers handicapping discounts PPP polls by a couple of
points for Team Blue, and the best they could, the
best results that the PPP folks could produce for the
Platiner campaign was a forty nine to forty five lead

(39:36):
over Collins. Now you say, hey, he leads an incumbent.
This is an incumbent senator under fifty the challenger is ahead,
that's a big deal. Except all the public polling for
weeks has shown Platiner with the massive lead over Collins,
you know, anywhere from high single digits to even some
low double digits, and he would So this is definitely

(40:01):
left a mark. And then they did a when you
hear the worst about Platiner and you hear the worst
thing that they believe they can stick on Collins, that
it doesn't it that the damage is minimal to his standing,
and essentially it produces the same result. Well, you've got
to be careful when you do these. You know, you're

(40:22):
trying to do these hypothetical questions. So you know, if
you learn that, you know, and they read the text
messages or they read about sexting with Platner, and if
you knew that, you know, Susan Collins's husband benefited from
insider government contracts to a massive amount of money, you
know it wouldn't you know? You know. So they introduced

(40:42):
both pieces of information to their voting sample and it
didn't change their head to head. The point is is
that while the memo on its face was an attempt
to reassure support everything's going well. We still we've got
some good fundraising metrics to share and we're still leading

(41:07):
in the poll because we did this quickie pole. But
we didn't use the polster we normally use. We used
PPP to do this. So again, it feels like a
trying to just plug a hole here, right. So the
bottom line is, I think Platiner is in much more
trouble than anybody's letting on. And I don't know if

(41:29):
there's you know, if there is any more shoes that drop,
if there's any more drip drip here, I'm not sure
how many more drip drips that he can handle. So
the question is how much of this matters to main Democrats. Well,
we're gonna have an interesting experiment on June ninth looking
at this Pole memo and realizing, oh wow, this must

(41:52):
be a lot worse. You know, Look, I am not
convinced this is going to end Platner's campaign. He could
recover from this and win. I think there is definitely
Collins fatigue in the state, right He could still win
with all of this out there, So I don't rule

(42:12):
that out. But I thought, wow, that Pole tells me
this is this. You know, basically the memo is saying, hey, yeah,
we took a hit, but this is recoverable. Don't panic yet.
That was essentially the tone of the memo, even though
you know it didn't. They weren't acknowledging any of the

(42:33):
negatives in it. But if you sort of read between
the lines, they're telling you, yeah, Platner took a pretty
big hit. So if there is any buyer's remorse on Platner,
this is one of these occasions where voters actually can
get a do over if they really want it right.
Janet Mills, while she's not actively campaigning, did not take

(42:57):
her name off the ballot, a fact that Janet Mills
herself chose to remind a reporter about during an interview
earlier this week. So I thought, Okay, Mills is going
to get some votes obviously in the Democratic primary next Tuesday.

(43:18):
Maine is one of a couple of states next year.
We're going to Nevada, South Carolina, Maine. Maine's got a
tremendous governor's race. It's crazy on both sides of the aisle.
That'll be a lot of fun to watch. We're going
to do our live stream. But what I wanted to
do is try to try to come up with a
metric to decide what is the Mills number that she
gets in a primary that should set off alarm bells

(43:40):
at the d SEC or set off alarm nails among
Democrats to say, hey, maybe you out a swap platiner
out And Maine, for what it's worth, is actually one
of the easier states to replace a candidate on the
ballot if the candidate willingly wants to get off of
the ballot by the deadline in July. Literally, there's no
other rigormarole. You have to go to party can decide

(44:01):
who they want to put on there. It's a you know,
New Jersey and Maine two of the easier states to
pull this off. So she's going to get some number.
Is it ten percent, is it eighteen, is it twenty five?
And there's no doubt whatever her number is, there's going
to be a temptation for myself and everybody in the
chattering class to try to react to that number, what

(44:22):
does it mean and decide on the fly whether it's
a disaster for Platner or whether hey, you know, because
I think there's some amount of mill support that was
always going to be there because her name's on the ballot.
So I don't I don't want to be knee jerk
about it, and I want to, frankly give you some
tools to decide for yourself what the metrics should be.

(44:43):
So I did a little I did a little research.
So this is what I want to do. So tonight
I'm sort of channeling a little. This is something you
normally would see in the Nate Silver substack. So stay
with me here a minute. I want to set the
bar of what the Mills primary number. You know what Mills'
primary number is sort of a nothing to worry about

(45:05):
at all, that's kind of an issue or oh my god,
five alarm fire. So we're gonna start with this. A
chunk of whatever Mills gets has goods, nothing to do
with how Democrats feel about Graham Platner. Two things guarantee that. One,
there are already going to be some banked votes. Maine's

(45:26):
been voting early for weeks. A lot of those ballots
were even filled out, probably before folks fully understood that
Mills was getting out, was right around it, so she
was still to a lot of voters in Maine, probably
seen as a real candidate. So she probably banked, you know,
in the first or you know, part of early voting,
banked a bit more vote than usual. And they're already

(45:48):
locked in, right, they're in a box. They count for Mills,
no matter what anybody thinks today. And then of course
there's the name id factor. She's true term sitting governor.
So some people are going to walk in see two
names they sort of recognize and one they really recognized,
and they'll pick the governor. It's not a protest, that's
just fame, right. So I know there's going to be
a certain amount of votes she gets that you kind

(46:08):
of you shouldn't make a big deal of. So part
of her number is going to be mechanical inertia, if
you will. So the real question, and the only interesting question,
is how much sits on top of that sort of
mechanical floor that we're creating here, because that part the excess,
that's the part that's actually a message to Platner and
to figure out where the floor is and where the

(46:28):
danger starts. I use two recent elections to basically do
all the work for us on this. So the first
yard stick I used was a campaign in Iowa in
twenty eighteen. This was a governor's race in Iowa Democratic
primary in twenty eighteen. A state senator named Nate Bolton
was running second, pulling around twenty percent semi serious candidate.

(46:49):
Then about twelve days for the primary, multiple women came
forward with allegations of sexual misconduct. After those allegations of
misconduct from the multiple women, Bolton suspended his campaign. And
this will sound familiar, early voting had already started in Iowa.
His name stayed on the ballot and the votes for
him got counted. He ended up finishing with five percent,
pulling at twenty at the time of the allegations ending

(47:13):
at five. So there's that lesson, and this is the
limit of the lesson. The five percent is the floor.
That's the name id plus banked early votes, and not
much else. Because when you leave a race and disgrace
your supporter scatter, they run away from you. So Bolton
tells us that that mechanical floor is real and it's low.
But Mills did not leave in disgrace. There's no scandal

(47:36):
attached to her. She left over money and frankly, over math.
She was losing her voters don't have a reason to
be ashamed of her. So Mills starts probably above Bolton's
five percent. So Iowa gives us the floor, It does
not give us the ceiling on this sort of inertia business.
Right for the ceiling, I'm using Nicki Haley. So in

(48:01):
twenty twenty four, remember Nicki Haley drops out of the
Republican presidential race in early March of twenty twenty four,
but her name stayed on ballot after ballot and the
guide she'd been running against Donald Trump was somebody a
real slice of the party just would not get behind.
So Haley became a protest vehicle, a way to vote

(48:21):
not him without having to vote for a Democrat if
you were a Republican. And the numbers were quite striking.
Right two months after she quit, she pulled seventeen percent
in Pennsylvania, almost twenty two percent in Indiana, twenty in Maryland,
eighteen in Nebraska. And nobody thought Nicki Haley was going
to be the nominee. This was all protest vote. Everyone
understood those numbers for what they were, a measurement of

(48:44):
how many Republicans were not sold on there on Donald Trump.
Both campaigns read it that way. The phrase that got
used over and over was red flag. Now here's the
part that matters the most for Tuesday. It wasn't just
how big the Haley vote was. It was where they
Haley vote was. It piled up in the affluent, college
educated suburbs in all of these places, the Philadelphia Coller counties,

(49:07):
places like that, which happened to be the exact areas
where Trump was weakest later in November. The size of
the number told you the size of the problem. The
map told you whether the problem actually mattered, And that's
the platinor parallel here. Yes, no he's not Donald Trump,

(49:28):
but I'll let some of you sort of think about
that metaphor here a minute. But let's be clear, but
he is a wounded front runner. Those old Reddit posts,
the tattoo that resembled a Nazi sign, and now reporting
about explicit, you know, some sexting with women. If Maine
Democrats are nervous about handing this guy the nomination against
Susan Collins, Janet Mills is the obvious easy place to

(49:50):
register that discontent, a respected governor right there in the
ballot who pointedly has not told them to stand out.
So let's start to the bar. Well, we're gonna start
with that floor pull out of late May, a month
after she quit the race and before the latest story broke,
had Mills sitting around ten percent. So we're going to

(50:11):
call that a pure sort of stagnant mechanical number and
inertia number, right name I D in early votes, basically
nothing else. So here's how I'm going a great Tuesday night.
Low teen, say, twelve thirteen, fourteen percent for Mills. I'm
going to chuck that up to just inertship to just
this mechanical floor that we're discussing here. That's the famous

(50:32):
governor's name doing famous governor things, right, green light, don't
need to overreact, don't let anybody tell you it's a story,
you know. Fifteen percent, that's where you start to see
the green turned to yellow as far as my flag
is concerned. So why am I saying fifteen because that
clears the famous person who quit zone, if you will,

(50:54):
and it beats this this sort of stagnant you know name,
you know number by enough of a margin that you
can credibly say the scandals moved real votes, that people
went out of their way to send a message about Platnter.
So if you look at it, fifteen to twenty five percent,

(51:14):
that's kind of the Hailey band, right. She would be
somewhere between fifteen and twenty five. That's where she lived
in stayed after state, and in her case that range
was treated correctly as a genuine warning to Donald Trump.
So if Mills lands in there, I'm not going to
call it on the top line alone. I'm going to
I want to see the map of where this vote
came from, and we're going to go more on that

(51:36):
in a minute. Obviously, anything over twenty five percent, and
this is you know, where you have one in four
Democratic primary voters or more than one in four actively
choosing the woman who quit the race over the man
who is going to be their nominee. That's a red flag,
no asterisk, no explanation. Twenty five or more, and then

(51:56):
you're going to start hearing about should he be replaced,
because that's even greater than where Haley landed in most
states in twenty four That's a party standing up and
telling you it is not sold on its own presumptive
front runner, and you're going to put him up against
one of the most durable Republicans in the country in

(52:18):
Susan Collins. Sitting there in November was Senate Control writing
on it. Now, let's talk about the gray zone of
that fifteen to twenty five percent bar, which is actually
where I expect the number to be. I don't think
unless somebody decides to insert some super Pac money over
the weekend to say, you know, you have literally proactively

(52:38):
trying to get Mills more votes or try trying to
damage Platter, I think we're looking at somewhere between fifteen
and twenty five percent, you know, and this is where
how to interpret the Hailey lesson I think helps us here.
If the Mills protest vote is concentrated in the first district,

(53:00):
basically Portland and the southern suburbs, the wealthy areas, Democrats
should be less worried about it, right. Those are blue voters.
These are people that don't want to vote for Susan Collins.
However grumpy they may be about Platner's character in June,
they're probably simply going to go in there and vote
Jersey color in November. You could consider a lion's share

(53:26):
of the votes coming from the first district for Mills
as basically a bit of a wine of a tantrum,
but not a full defection. But if Mills over performs
in the second district, the rural, working class, more conservative
northern half of the state, the district that Donald Trump
has carried three times now in presidential elections, that makes

(53:50):
that yellow flag look a little more red because the
second district is where all the swing voters are. That
is where a statewide main race is one or loss.
And if Platner is bleeding Democratic votes in the second
on Tuesday, means he is weakest in the precise place
he cannot afford to be weak in the fall. So

(54:12):
it's the same stay wide number, twenty percent, let's say,
but it means two to completely different things depending on
where the twenty percent is coming from. Twenty percent out
of Portland, yeah, footnote twenty percent out of the second district.
That's a warning Democrats to take quite seriously. And you
might actually hear chatter, a little bit of chatter about replacement.

Speaker 2 (54:34):
So that's the bar.

Speaker 1 (54:36):
So when you're watching us on our live election stream
and you see us pull up, we're going to constantly
check that main Senate vote. You know, we're going to
do our best to let you know where the votes
where her support appears to be coming from. And if
you want to do it on your own, keep track
of where if you start to see Mills in the twenties,

(54:56):
where's it coming from? Is it coming from the first
or is it coming from the second. And if this
is making you nervous about democratics chances to win the
Senate or making you nervous about Republican chances to hold
the Senate or Collins's chances to win, I think that's
the best way to look at this unique situation where

(55:16):
we have a candidate that appears to be a bit
in battle, and voters have an opportunity to essentially escape
this if they choose to just a little extra something
to watch for on Tuesday night. Ask Chuck, it's a

(55:47):
Thursday episodes. So we'll go we'll go a little a
little long on questions here. So the first one comes
from Bill s Newberg, Oregon, and he writes, Hey, thanks
for the focus on character and politics. I agree that
it matters. I'm curious though, if a candidate's poor character
is clear, how do you think about voter responsibility in
choosing to support them? Is voting for that candidate in

(56:08):
some way a reflection on the voter as well? Also,
if you tried to book Graham Platner on your show,
thanks Bills in Newberg, Oregon. PS, My mariners are finally
firing on all cylinders. Listen to Ian Bremmer on as
our client show. Would love to see you too, do
a home and away on that well. Ian Bremmer's coming
up pretty soon actually. And as for Graham Platner, we
we the invitation is out, it has been out for

(56:32):
a while. We would love to have him. I'd love
to talk with him. I've certainly he strikes me as
somebody that would want to have the conversation I want
to have. At least that's what a lot of people
tell me. So I am not going to pre judge.
I think he's I think that I think the campaign

(56:53):
is a may put him out, So we'll say, but
I look forward to it, and I think we and
have a you know, I've had I'll do ls I
ed on this podcast. I've you know, I want all
flavors of the political spectrum to make their way onto
this podcast because I think the the the audience that

(57:14):
I'm hoping to appeal to is is quite broad and
and one that understands that that you can be one
hundred percent assured of your point of view, but you
know that ultimately you're going to have to compromise somewhere,
and that's that's sort of the big picture thing. So
yes on that. So as for character, look and and

(57:37):
in some ways I'm glad this question is coming here
because I also want to In fact, I got a
few on sub stack from folks that I'm going to
include because they're very similar. In questions that you asked
me here because it's it's it's it's it's this question

(57:57):
of degrees. Right. Let me let me read you one here.
Here's one that I think gets it sort of similar.
Here's a one from Amy Smith. She writes, I get
where you're coming from, but I don't agree with you
one hundred percent. I've been a lifelong Democrat from a
lifelong Democratic family. As such. Truthfully, there has been a
lot of judging over the years, a lot of we
are a party that is better than that. While I
agree that there should be norms and standards, I'm not

(58:18):
sure that space really exists anymore because that leaves no
room for people who are different than I am, who
think differently or speak differently. It also doesn't allow for
rehabilitation if someone accepts responsibility, realizes the air of their ways,
and no longer behaves in that manner. Should personal stuff
really matter that much? Now? I'm not saying that covers
terrible people like Donald Trump who have abandoned morality altogether.

(58:39):
But I know in my own life I have made
terrible decisions, have hurt family, friends, etc. When I was younger,
I had terrible ideas and behaviors, But I eventually quote
got it, did what I had to do, make it right,
and don't make those same mistakes anymore. Does that mean
I should never run for office because at some point
in my life I was on the wrong side of something. Truthfully,
I don't want to be a part of a party
that believes that flawed character is a non starter. I

(59:00):
don't know if that makes any sense. Honestly, it makes
a ton of sense. And I think this is the look.
I don't think there's any one way to look at this.
I think we all process this slightly differently. I do
process it differently than most of you because I probably

(59:21):
not probably I know I do this, which is I've
had a lot of experience covering candidates, covering flawed candidates,
being surprised at the flaws, right, you know, stuff that
gets unearthed, affairs, money issues, all sorts of things like that.
It's how somebody deals with it. And ultimately, I guess

(59:44):
I would put it this way in because I as
I it's sort of hinted at you, Bill, I got
a lot of versions of this same of some form
of this question, and I guess I think the voter
responsibility is this. You've got all these data points. Think

(01:00:08):
about your own life. We all know people that have
that have you know, had a rough time in their twenties,
maybe had a rough time in their forties, but you know,
pulled things together, became the most important or started a
great business, or did all these things, you know, after
sort of getting getting back on track right on their life,

(01:00:34):
whatever back on track is for them. And yes, I
think a rehabilitated person in public office in some ways
is somebody who who's probably going to bring a bit
of empathy to some decisions. And that's something that does
matter to me. So, for instance, I think there were

(01:00:54):
some people with George W. Bush who saw his ability
to quit drinking as an asset, and there were others
that saw the fact that he became an alcoholic for
a period of time as a flaw and the and
in some ways, it's probably more reflective on who you
are as a person to decide which should matter more

(01:01:16):
to you. And that's ultimately it, right, I can't sit
here and say what matters to me should matter to
you when it comes to character. But you take all
this and it's predictive, and ultimately it does become predictive.
I will just tell you this. In my experience, it's
how the candidates that handle it's it's it's how you

(01:01:39):
find out about their mistakes. It's how how they decide
to handle it when those mistakes become public information that
ultimately tells me who somebody is and perhaps tells me
how they'll handle pressure or crisis or own situation. I mean,

(01:02:02):
you know, that's that's what these campaigns ultimately are about.
It's pressure testing these folks to see, you know, who
are they and how and are they going to be
able to in some ways do to do the job.
And just because one person believes somebody's personal life should
be fair game and another says somebody's personal life should

(01:02:22):
have nothing to do with X, Y or Z, well
look we all we all have different reasons for voting
the way we vote. So I don't think it's that.
But I worry about the slippery slope. I worry about
looking the other way. And when you you know, the
ability to step back and say, if if this, if

(01:02:46):
instead of Graham Platner, this were Ashley Hinson, right, what
would you say? Or instead of Graham Platner and this
were Byron Donald's And if you're defending name Graham Platner,
how would you you know? And the thing is, actually,
I don't even have to pretend about bio en Off.

(01:03:07):
It's Ken Paxton. It's it's Graham platter And I've seen
folks say, yeah, but this is worse than this. And
it's like, you know, now, if you wanted to make
the case to me that Paxton has already proven that
in public office, he brings his bad morality and bad
ethics into office, so that obviously makes him even more
unqualified than Platner. That's a fair argument, right, Platner hasn't

(01:03:29):
been in public office. There is there is concern that
if he's you know, had had a hat a very
you know, a bit of a tumultuous feels like not
the right word here, but uh, A challenging first twenty

(01:03:51):
years of adulthood is you don't know for sure that
he's going to somehow bring some of the irresponsibility. And
I think in the case of Platinum, it may not
be irresponsibility. It may be struggles coming back from war,
which I think you know. But the question is when

(01:04:12):
if you've got your personal struggles, if you haven't dealt
with them, should you be bringing this into the public
square because there are many people that are counting on
you to look out for them, not yourself. And the
decision to go into public service to me is you've
made the decision that you're going to put put others

(01:04:34):
ahead of yourself. And if you are not prepared to
do that because of what's happening in your life, then
please go fix what's going on in your life first.
Don't bring your personal life and have it get in
the way of public service. Now that's where I come
down on this. I will you know, I've been making

(01:04:55):
the case that I think that unfortunately this is this
is predictive, and we've seen this. You know that that
doesn't mean there isn't a redemptive quality to plenty of people.
I think. Take the Speaker of the Virginia Assembly. Here's
somebody that in his early life got into a lot

(01:05:17):
of trouble. I had to serve some time, fully rehabilitated,
paid his debt to society, came back, and over time
worked his way into politics. It's right there front and
center he you know, announces for office. Here's here's essentially
here's my APO file. These are the mistakes I've made.

(01:05:38):
Here's how I've learned from these mistakes, and let me
so let me and I know I'm a bit rambling here,
and I'll explain why I'm rambling. Some of it is
lack of sleep from our near all nighter with the
California Primaries on Wednesday night Tuesday night. But there's a
few other things that I'm going to get to at
the end of the podcast, So stay tuned, as they say,

(01:06:01):
but let me let me put out another scenario for
for everybody that has written me about the about my
character critiques here and the yes, I both sided it
and some people hate both sighteries right decided, But this
is one that I'm very concerned about because I do
think this is a spiral that that we're going to
regret that we're going down. If Graham Platner said, look,

(01:06:27):
I'm sorry that this came out the way it came out.
I'm sorry that somebody decided they didn't want to respect
the privacy of my marriage, uh and decided to leak this.
But I'm not going to hide from this. Yes, I
did these things, and and you know, if you and
if it bothers you, I understand, and you're going to

(01:06:50):
give me time to work back up. It's, you know,
the more defensive someone gets in these situations without sort
of knowledging the wrongdoing or accepting responsibility or trying to
sort of say, yeah, but you know, one of my
this is a piece of advice I gave a commencement

(01:07:10):
to me, Yeah, butt right, don't give me the butt
you know, yes, take responsibility. Don't say but if it
wasn't for this, this or this, I might not have
made this mistake, or I might not or you might
not have known, and we wouldn't have had to have
this conversation. I think perhaps this might have landed differently.

(01:07:33):
So this is a very long winded way for me
to say. Ultimately on these issues, in my opinion, it's
as much of how they acknowledge the character flaw, how
they lean frankly lean into it, accept responsibility and say,
well this is look I'm you know, this is not

(01:07:54):
who I am, and let me explain why I'm not
this anymore. And then you know, look, we can you
ask a great question about when does forgiven And this
was the question I think from substactic sort of when
when does somebody get when have you paid your debt.

(01:08:15):
We went through this with the me too movement, which is,
if you own up to your bad behavior, if you
sort of you know, take take responsibility and all of this,
are you canceled or are you suspended? You yet my
drift there right? And are you welcome backed or is

(01:08:35):
there always an asterisk and you're not necessarily welcome back
into your profession, whatever this profession is. And I think
we you know, we've we've collectively struggled with this, and
I think we individually are always all more empathetic, and
collectively collectively we're usually a bit more skeptical of people,
of people's redemptive qualities, and so you know, it's and again,

(01:09:02):
the other point of the column is my criticism was
less about Platner himself and more of the blind defenses
that partisans are making to sort of look the other way.
Some of these same people that are defending everything, defending
Platner like this mocked those on the right who were

(01:09:23):
using the same language, the same rationalizations to come to
the conclusion that they were going to support Donald Trump
or that they were going to support Ken Paxton. And
I think that that's where the brand damage to the
Democrats comes in, it's not. It doesn't become about grand
Platner anymore. It becomes like, oh, you only believe character

(01:09:46):
counts for the other side that when questions are raised here,
if the person's winning, you know you're not going to
risk a sentence it over fact just the other way. Right,
it wasn't that long ago that essentially Democrats forced al
Franken to resign. Also that they could have Democrats could
keep the high ground in the Doug Jones Roy Moore

(01:10:08):
Senate race, which they did win. Next question, chrisin Roscoe, Illinois. Right,
second time are here. I don't miss an episode, even
on trail runs. Well, I appreciate that. As someone who
worked in the in facilities management, I'm all for expanding
the house, but I wonder about the logistics. How would
the capitol accommodate hundreds of additional members and staff. Would

(01:10:30):
it require major construction or is there space to support
that kind of expansion. Well, actually, I hope you caught
and I'll be curious. I hope you caught the Q
and A portion they asked Chuck from Wednesday's episode because
someone asked a similar thing, and we talked about one
of the questions was about. It wasn't necessarily about the logistics,

(01:10:52):
but I sort of turned it into the logistics because
I told I was telling folks that I had a
student and I'm going to share more of these next week.
Their ideas that they had of fixing Washington, because I
know you guys will love to hear some of the
But one of the more unique one was to take
Congress out of Washington. That basically Congress should should meet

(01:11:13):
every year in a different location around the country, and
that you know, logistically, this is much more viable to
do today than it would have been thirty years ago,
let alone two and fifty years ago. So to get
at your physical so to get at the facilities issue.
So here's how I would do it. My recommendation. We're

(01:11:36):
at my eight hundred and ninety members, if from my
House of Representatives at eight hundred ninety members, which would
be one per four hundred thousand, I would make the
district offices the main offices for members of Congress, that's
where all the staff is there. I would make Washington
so we already have all this house office space that

(01:11:58):
there's suites, offices or you know, multi floors, you know
there's there's one hundred person staffs and Senate offices. Uh
So if you essentially, at least on the House side,
everybody just you know, every member of Congress got a
office and like you know, one other room with two

(01:12:18):
you know, with with with with the two staff are shared,
that would be enough. And that the essentially the main
office and the main staff and the main people that
interacted with constituents were all in the state offices, all
in the district offices. I would allow for remote voting,
but only from the district office main office of the

(01:12:41):
of the House representatives. And then you'd have these so
I you know, I think that's how you would deal
with this logistics challenge. Right, this is not about adding
you know, if there's say three thousand house staff, right
more than that. But I'm gonna let's put it five
thousand staff for the four hundred and thirty five members. Suddenly,
where the hell are we going to put another five

(01:13:03):
thousand staffers? See, I wouldn't do that. I'd almost figure
out a way to take your eight ninety and cap
it at about twenty five hundred staffers total for the
for the form for the eight hundred and ninety right,
So what does that puts you at about two and
a half two point five staffers, right, you know, per
per office in the capitol, and then you have a

(01:13:25):
more expansive office in the district itself. So I think
remote governance plays a role here in order to make
this a bit more feasible rather than just building three
more house office buildings and that, you know, maybe you
build one more house office building because they got to

(01:13:46):
put Pelosi's name in a house office building, first woman
Speaker of the House. You know, her name needs to
be on a building. I think, you know, whatever you
whether you're left or right, I think she's earned that. Moniker,
uh the ploe, you know, So maybe you add the
polos Se house office building when you expand the house.
But I think that there is I think there is

(01:14:06):
a way to do this without allowing logistics to crush
the idea. Next question comes from Jake and Denver, Colorado.
He says, Hey, your recent deep dive on character raised
a question for me. How much should in Canada's private

(01:14:26):
sexual behavior factor in public judgments of character and where
should journalist draw on the line and reporting on those details?
Are we're at risk of setting a standard that discourages
otherwise qualified people from running for office. A loyal to timer,
I mean ask questions, not fulling. That's very funny, Jake
in Denver. Well, look, here's the thing. We over corrected

(01:14:47):
after Gary Hart, right, we excuse me, we over corrected.
We were on the wrong. We were sort of overly
moralistic with Gary Hart. And we've clearly over correc acted
with Donald Trump, right like you know, we we've you know,
and and so we've we vacillate here. It is ultimately,

(01:15:09):
if you're going to do risky behavior and you're going
to have a security clearance, that's a national security vulnerability.
So if you're asking me about that, I think that
it is the line you got to draw, is you know,
are you know? Is you know? It's just why there
is a deeper dive of background checks and extra vetting

(01:15:33):
for people that get various levels of security clearances when
it comes to the American government. So I think that
there's there's some fair lines to draw here. I think,
I I, you know, what happens in the bedroom should
stay in the bedroom. How people treat people and deceive

(01:15:58):
people is a different story. And if you're a serial
decepter in your personal life. I think that's a relevant
piece of information for the voting public. There are plenty
of people are going to say that's a character trait,
that's you know, if you're comfortable doing this, then you
might do this. And I don't know if I want that,

(01:16:18):
I don't. You know, you know so right, you're getting
at to all of the debates that we've had in
I've had in newsrooms for thirty years. What's fair game?
What isn't? Now I could tell you what political consultants
believe is fair game, all of it. Everything is fair game.

(01:16:40):
They'll say, oh, some things are off limits, will say
kids are off limits. But at what point are kids
off limits? Right? Kids below twelve are off limits? Kids
below sixteen? You know at eighteen and nineteen. We've certainly
seen plenty of political campaigns try to make behaviors of
adult children part of part of the issue. I'll just

(01:17:02):
be frank. I've always thought it was weird that Hunter
Biden is about the same age as I am. We
treated this idea that Joe Biden should know everything about
Hunter Biden's finances of a forty nine at the time,
a forty nine year old man, and I was like,
my mother knows nothing about my finances. And I think

(01:17:23):
at the time I was a forty nine year old man,
and I, you know, just not. I don't think it's
you know, I'm sure there are some adult children that
are very financially intertwined with their parents and they and
they share, and there's plenty of adult children who you know,
don't necessarily share their financial details with their parents, and

(01:17:47):
vice versa that their parents. And so I've always been
I've always thought, I don't see how that's fair game.
Now if you're trading off your family name, like you know,
Hunter's business dealings, that was another story, as he was
certainly basically pitching himself as the son of a vice
sitting vice president to get business, not necessarily something else.
But to me that there was some life, you know,

(01:18:09):
that was the debate we would have in our newsrooms there.
And so I think in the private life, it's well,
I'll give you I'll give you an example where I thought,
I think that there's a fair critique of whether this

(01:18:30):
was this should be a news story. The original potential
Republican challenger to Barack Obama in two thousand and four
in the Illinois Senate race gentleman by the name of
Jack Rynan. The scandal that basically took him down was
a detail in his divorce records. He was married to
at the time. I think she's still an actress, still

(01:18:50):
a working actor, but it was of some prominence at
the time Deep Space Notch. She was a character on
that show. For any of you Star Trek fans, and
you know, in the divorce records, I think it came
out that she, you know, was you know that one
of the one of the things that you know, she
basically said was he was trying to pressure her to

(01:19:13):
have essentially to have sex in a in a public
club of some sort or some sort of swingers club
or something like that. And you know, one of one
of my sort of punchlines back then, and I'll admit
the younger version of me being a little snarky was man,
It's not often that a politician finds themselves in a

(01:19:35):
scandal because they want to have sex with their own wife.
But obviously you needed to know the details understand it.
But was that relevant to voters? You know, sex lives
or sex lives, people have kinks, fetishes, and you know,
there are some laws on the books that some fetishes
are illegal, but you know, kinks there's plenty of people

(01:19:58):
have their thing, and if we start going down that road,
we start losing, you know, the feeling of personal freedoms. Right,
This is you know, we're not we don't want to
get a welly in here, but you're you're The question
you're asking is also exposing that there is no right answer.

(01:20:23):
I think what you're what you're what you're helping to though,
explain is this is why? This is why a lot
of people don't want to run for office who might
make terrific public servants. It's not that they have things
in their life that they think are disqualifying. It's maybe
there are things in their life they just don't want

(01:20:44):
to see public. And whether we like it or not,
this stuff always going to get public because we live
in a zero sum game when it comes to political campaigns,
and each side simply once they know there might be
at least one voter that that bothers, and hey, every
vote counts, right, So you know, there's no one rule

(01:21:05):
book for how reporters report things. The standards that I
have are different, frankly than the standards that that somebody
else has. They what what I would do versus what
someone you know? I I you know, do I think
I've do? I think I I could set some standards

(01:21:29):
that that should be broadly agreeable to seventy percent of
people in my business. I do. I think I I
think I could come with I think most of us
in this business could. But I don't think you're ever
going to get that. So it comes down. This is
why it ultimately comes down to. You know, you're when

(01:21:50):
you when you're in for public office, You're going to
have to be comfortable in your own skin because nothing's
ever going to stay a secret. All right. Next question
comes from on and Los Angeles. Sing writes, can you
help me understand something? If states like Florida have no
income tax and are exploring eliminating property taxes, where does
the revenue come from to fund government and services? With
population growth already straining resources, how does that model hold

(01:22:12):
up long term? Appreciate your insight Regards Andre in La PS.
If you're reading this on the pod, I'm now a
member of the four time four x Timers Club, PSS.
You nailed something many missed about the Spencer Pratt mayoral run.
His reach doesn't seem to extend beyond certain areas or
into working class communities. Yeah, if it's if you haven't

(01:22:34):
figured it out now, it is. It's pretty clear who
Karen Bass would prefer to run against, and it is
not the mom Dannie Acolyte. Karen Bass's political base and
Spencer's Pratt's political base do not overlap at all. Karen

(01:22:57):
Bass's political base is about three x higher on a
bad debt then Spencer pratt political base in La So
I think I think, you know, do I think he'll do?
You know, he may get You know that you're looking
at a fifty four forty six, fifty five forty five
final between the two of them. If it does, for

(01:23:17):
sure come down to them. And then we had a
lot of ballots account literally as the time of this
question being asked, half the ballots there. Look, you just
asked your question about Florida. I can tell you how
they fund service is now right when you there are
certain things like registering a car in Florida is astronomically expensive. Right,
so you get feed to death, You get feed over here,

(01:23:40):
feed feed, feed, feed fees. You know, we don't in Florida.
They don't raise taxes, they raise fees, and they say, hey,
we don't raise taxes, right, but they raise fees. There's
quite a few Republican governors over the years who have
claimed they have not raised taxes, but if raised fees
through the roof registration fees. And because it doesn't apply
to everybody, isn't sort of force supply to everybody, but

(01:24:04):
it's sort of only if you choose to do certain
things do you pay this fee? Is it not considered
an overall tax? But to me, if you're paying money
to the government, it's a tax. You can call it
a fee, you can call it a tariff, you can
call it a tax. It's it's money out of your
pocket that goes into the coffers of the government. This

(01:24:27):
you're getting at the fundamental problem. And this is why
this is this is it's not feasible like at all.
This is simply a pr stunt to desperately try to
motivate some voters in Florida to show up to the
polls in twenty six with this sort of you know
there is in it. This is where I think people

(01:24:50):
misunderstand the Santists. DeSantis comes from a certain strain of
the conservative movement there really wants small government and doesn't
believe that government should be involved in the services that
it's involved in, and would like to starve the beast,
as the right used to call it. And so if
you get rid of property taxes, well then that is

(01:25:11):
going to put strain on local governments and you and
I I think look at it as bugs. And I
think DeSantis would argue this is a feature of this idea,
and those that are the most fired up about that
or that, now, the campaign against this is really easy.
Do you like trash pickup? Okay, then don't vote for this.
Do you like this, well, then don't vote for this, right,

(01:25:32):
And I think that that's why I think this is
going nowhere. All right, last, let me do one more
question here and ask check. And then I got a
little something I'd like to share with you guys, longtime listener,
first time writer. This comes from audib Audi writes, with
recent large settlements by the government, what's to stop future
administrations from using similar tactics for their own policy goals?

(01:25:54):
Does this risk creating a race to the bottom and
how policy gets implemented? I know you often advocate for
taking the hi how does that apply in moments like this?
Thank you well. I think good news here is that
we finally found the line right. And this was sort
of the point that I was making in Wednesday's episode,
and perhaps you wrote in this question before you heard
that we found the line on the weaponization fund right,

(01:26:19):
and it did it to me. It's proof if Republicans
that are uncomfortable with Trump's behavior want to push back,
they can. They can do it. We just saw it.
They made them shut down this fund. Now they're still
trying to keep the settlement, with this ridiculous settlement that
somehow the IRS never gets to look into his taxes

(01:26:40):
going backward ever again, and he somehow settles some years
long audit dispute, the audit and dispute over his tax
filings that he's been having with the government for decades
somehow just goes away. I think we still have to
deal with that situation. And if you are following John
Cornan's Twitter feed, John Cornan is ready to stick a

(01:27:03):
knife into this idea, and meaning Congress can essentially proactively
kill this deal completely rather than let the deal. They're
trying to say, oh no, we're getting rid of the fund,
but they're trying to keep the one small part of
the deal on somehow giving him permanent immunity on every
tax on everything he's ever filed for his taxes. Not

(01:27:25):
immunity going forward for what it's worth, but immunity. But
I don't know how. I don't. I just don't know
how that's feasible there. So I guess what I'm saying
is is that I don't know if I have to
accept the premise of your question. And isn't that good
news that that in this case? I mean, I think
that that was the point. Like if somehow that became
legal and I don't know where the hell we're going, right,

(01:27:50):
if that became legal and we had more and more
presidents manipulate, you know, executive power this way and essentially,
you know, find the loophole to essentially steal money from
the tax payers, Yeah, this would be you know, what

(01:28:10):
I really hope we all do collectively. And I know
what I'm hope. What I'm trying to do here is
Donald Trump has provided an incredible public service and we
ought to we ought to thank him for. And what
do I mean by that? He has been an MRI

(01:28:32):
for loopholes in the government, in our system, in the
executive versus the legislative. And you know, whether it's violation
of quote unquote norms which turned out to be just
accepted practices that I had no controlling legal authority to borrow.
Phrase and so we're he is, to me, made it.

(01:29:00):
He's helped us find the things that we need to
codify to essentially prevent future presidents from abusing the system
the way he abused the system, whether it's pardons, whether
it's how the Department of Justice works. You know, one
of the reforms no one talks about that I think
is one hundred percent necessary. Is I am Now, you know,

(01:29:23):
I am never trusting another president to appoint attorney general.
And I know I say that, you know it's you know, Donald,
you know, Donald Trump, But I mean, think about it.
You know, we sort of look back fondly at the
idea that a president appointed his brother attorney general. Point

(01:29:45):
in hindsight, is one of the most ridiculous things that
we could have ever thought of. Like imagine if Donald
Trump tried to appoint his sister at the time, who
was alive, was a federal a federal judge to the
Attorney General. Now I know that after that was done,

(01:30:08):
I think we passed a law to try to prevent
something like that from happening again. But it's pretty clear
to me that the risk of putting the rule of
law in the hands of a president is a mistake.

(01:30:28):
And because if they're going to if they can essentially
put their personal attorney there. I don't know who Todd Blanche.
I know Todd Blanche just draws a paycheck from the
United States taxpayers. He does not work for the United States.
He works for Donald Trump. And he's made it almost
crystal clear that he works for Donald Trump. He should

(01:30:49):
he is somehow he should never have gotten to that position. Now,
we counted on norms to do that. We counted on
checks and balances and the legislative branch prevent something like this.
He's the acting Attorney General. I do not think he
could get confirmed to the permanent job for what it's
worth at this point in time, given the relationship. You know,

(01:31:10):
Trump has fully burned his relationship with the center Republicans,
so you know he's going to get ideological things that
he wants to get done. But of the some of
the ego stuff. He's going to have a much harder
time getting out of the Senate at this point for
the rest of his term, because it's not like the
Senate numbers are going to get better for Trump after

(01:31:30):
twenty twenty six, whether Republicans have control or not, it's
going to be a smaller majority. And so the point
is that's just another example. Trump has exposed a laundry
list of reforms we got to do to Essentially, it's
like it's like your house went through a storm and

(01:31:52):
you found out, oh, we have leaky windows here, we've
got a roof that we need new roof tiles over here,
and we weren't. We didn't real the house couldn't handle
a heavy storm, right, And you now gotta You've got
to put in stronger reinforcements. And Donald Trump has provided

(01:32:12):
a roadmap for reform in all of the ways that
he has legally abused the system to his own personal benefit.
And we've got a lot of work to do. And
it begins with dealing with, you know, with preventing things
like these personal lawsuits that get settled with the government,
that whole business. But there's a lot of things and

(01:32:32):
like I said, this is I am. I am bullish
that we are that over the next fifteen years we
are going to do a lot of reform. I'm not
saying it's going to happen this year, over the next
two years, but I think we are. We are we
are nearing this breaking point where we're going to have
the Samuel L. Jackson reaction. Enough is enough. I'm sick

(01:32:53):
and tired of these gosh darn MF snakes on this
MF play right, We're gonna we're we're going to hit
that moment as voters. I've personally hit that moment. I'm
just enough is enough? Can we just you know, stop
this race to the bottom crap? And I think the

(01:33:17):
voters are going to get there. You know, it may
not be this cycle, maybe one more cycle, maybe it's
a cycle and a half, but you know, in the
decade of the thirties, we're going to start to really
have a major reform movement. Certainly if you if we
continue to track the way we're tracking with sort of
history rhyming of the early twentieth century in the in
the mid to late nineteenth century. So someday we may

(01:33:42):
thank Donald Trump for showing us all the ways that
we needed to repair this democracy. Before I go, I'm
going to tell you the story of a remarkable one,
Dorothy Burns. She happens to be my grandmother, and she

(01:34:07):
passed away this week at the age of ninety nine.
She turned ninety nine this February. And she never she never,
She had her faculties to the very end. Her memory
was terrific. She never missed a birthday, whether it was

(01:34:27):
her great grandkids, her grandkids, her kids, friends, family. Her
physical infrastructure started was breaking down much faster than her
brain ever did. And I always felt that, you know,
it was she, you know, to know she couldn't she

(01:34:47):
couldn't really move anymore. Her osteoporosis made that very difficult.
She couldn't see. She'd maclear degeneration and she'd become fully
blind over the last five years she was started the
Loser hearing. But she was a red book on tape listener.
My friend Daniel Silva, the author used to be so

(01:35:09):
he She loved Daniel Silva books, and she used to
first read the large print editions as her vision was going.
And then and God blessed Jamie, my friend Jamie Gengell
and Daniel Silva. They would always always make sure that
they had the right type of addition that my grandmother
could read. I just that always tickled me, and it

(01:35:30):
always tickled her as well. She lived in and I
just think about the life she lived. Born in nineteen
twenty seven and all the things she saw, she did.
She went to one year of college in what is

(01:35:54):
now Illinois State, but back then it was a teap
the Illinois Teachers College, as she used to say, My
parents let me go there, but I was to get
my Mrs Degree as many people back then used to
call it. She met my grandmother, grandmother, my grandfather. He
came home from the war, went to essentially a Jewish

(01:36:14):
singles night at the temple, and met my grandmother and
the rest is history. I look, when you're a fifty
four year old man with a ninety nine year old grandmother.
I've known her a long time, and I would say,
you know, we're selling celebrating America to fifty And it's

(01:36:38):
made me think about the first time I got to
participate in a big national celebration of a commemoration, and
it was the one hundredth anniversary of the Statue of
Liberty and this is the summer of nineteen eighty six,
and this is probably when my grandmother and I bonded
the most. My grandmother, like I said, so, you know,
nineteen eighty six, I'm fourteen. Do the math. She's fifty

(01:37:04):
seven to fifty basically about my age right now. And
she was she was wanting to take some dishes and
some things to one of her children. Her my aunt
lives in New York City, and she wanted to drive
from Delray Beach, Florida, to New York City during the summer.
And she didn't want to and nobody wanted her to

(01:37:25):
drive alone. So I'm fourteen, and I uh, we do
this road trip and we decide and she, you know,
we take our time. She used to do the driving
the whole time, right, I'm fourteen, so she wasn't going
to do me I'm doing. I'd have done it in
one night, but you know, she we stopped. We stopped
in Savannah, and we spent a little extra time, and

(01:37:46):
we did Williamsburg and we did we did essentially what
I would call the American Revolution to her, all up
and down the East Coast and any major historical site
that was within within driving range of I ninety five,

(01:38:08):
we hit making our way, spent a lot of time
in Washington, d C. And back then I had a
cousin here who and that's for what it's worth, it
is when I really got the bug about politics. We
were visiting my cousin at the time, he was like
twenty five, and we stayed with him, and he had

(01:38:28):
this big old apartment in Adams Morgan, and he gave
me the sort of the tour of DC that a
twenty five year old would give. And man, I just
thought DC was amazing. And from then on I was
coming to school in Washington. I didn't know how I
was doing it, where I was going, but I was
coming there. And we did everything together. We did this

(01:38:54):
entire tour, all the Smithsonian stuff, and then then we
went to New York and we did the un and
we did, you know, all of the more historical stuff.
I'm not a bit, you know, fourteen year old fourteen
year old boys who loved baseball and football at the time.
Every time we stopped somewhere, I was buying a pack
of baseball carts. You know, this is eighty three, eighty four,
So I was obsessed, still obsessed with collecting it. Ohm,

(01:39:17):
I kidding, I'm obsessed with baseball cards today, right. So
we didn't she didn't, and we didn't do a lot
of the art museums, although my aunt did make me
go to the go to the go to the mat
and then we enjoyed the amazing it's the frankly, the

(01:39:39):
greatest fireworks display outside of Washington, d C. That I've
ever seen to this day was the Statue of Liberty
celebration in nineteen eighty six. And now we drove drove back,
but it was this was it was interesting. You know,
my memories of my grandmother as a little kid, she

(01:40:00):
was not the person to get on the floor and
do that type of stuff. But the second I was
reading books. She read all the time. She was somebody
that knew a little bit about a lot of things
because she was constantly reading. And after my grandfather died,
she was constantly traveling. She loved cruises and she did

(01:40:24):
all sorts of cruises and she was always trying to
not She didn't go on a cruise to relax. She
wanted a cruise to get to somewhere. She wanted to
see whether it was. She did a freighter cruise. She
didn't want to spend twenty hours on an airplane, so
she wanted to go see Australia. So she spent thirty
days on a freighter cruise with nine other senior citizens

(01:40:45):
and a crew and played bridge for thirty days and
read a bunch of books and literally sailed the seas
thirty days to Australia. Three weeks in the country thirty
days back when I think she left and came and
went out of Jacksonville, if I if I remember, and

(01:41:08):
she was just what I think what my grandmother passed
on to me was this sort of curiosity. She always
wanted to know more. She wanted to see the taj Mahall,
so she figured out a way to get to India
to see the tag Ma Hall. She wanted to see
the Pyramids. She is somebody she got to check off,
she did. You know, this is what's remarkable. At ninety nine,

(01:41:28):
you know she was, she said, she goes, I'm not
saving any money. I'm not here to pass on money.
You know. She wanted to live these experiences and see
the world. And she did. And I used to always
get a T shirt from wherever she wherever she came

(01:41:49):
from that, and that's that was my grandmother through my
teenage years. So fast forward a little bit, and you know,
I'm starting to have a little bit of success in
the late nineties, and I want to I want to
get my grandmother a fun gift for her. I think

(01:42:09):
at the time it probably was her seventieth birthday. This
is twenty seven, Yeah, right around her seventieth birthday. Actually
probably it was probably it was probably for her seventy
fifth birthday. I got her computer and one program, a
genealogy program. Well, I'm not sure if the rest of

(01:42:31):
my family loves that I did this or hates that
I did this, but my grandmother for the next ten
years became essentially an expert at genealogy, and she threw
herself into it, and she made family trees for all
every every aspect of my family, of my family lines
on my father's side, on my mother's side, she did
it for my wife on her father's side and on

(01:42:53):
her mother's side, and she did it for her in
laws and anybody that asked. Frankly, and she she got
so into it. She would show up and do research
at the Mormon temples because the Mormons, as you know,
have some of the best uh uh research centers when

(01:43:14):
it comes to genealogy records that you can find. And
you know, she just she learned the you know, I
knew that I had a grandmother that would figure it
would would sort of take to the Internet, and she
really she was a great Web one point zero user. Unfortunately,
as her vision went, you know, she she the technology

(01:43:39):
that would allow for a lot more verbal to be
able to do a lot more of this communication just
straight verbally and even like texted type and all this
stuff really didn't didn't quite come into time for her
to take the best advantage of it. But even in
these last few years where she couldn't see it all,
we had set up her iPhone so that it would
be essentially automatically answer always on speak her phone and

(01:44:02):
put it this way to allow her and she would
just say, call Chuck or call Sherry, or call Janet,
and she was able to communicate like I'll get out.
And the other thing that she was incredibly good at
is just she was always finding family with this genealogy.
Sometimes you're like, you know, hey, I'm going to Charleston,

(01:44:26):
South Carolina for some work, Grandma, and she goes well,
you know, we have a cousin that lives so and
so I found this cousin. I didn't know them, but
I've since called them. They helped me fill out this
part of the family tree of an in law that
was like and you're just like, okay, I'm not going
to go look up that relative. Grandma. Sorry. What she
always did she was incredibly good at making friends with

(01:44:50):
people she didn't know. She just had a couple and
so look, this all just happened recently, meaning in the
last few hours, so I'm not on a lot of sleep,
but I wanted to be able to share something about her.
I think her great gifts was her curiosity. Her was
her openness to how quickly she would make somebody a

(01:45:14):
close friend. She'd loved getting to know new people, and
it was part of that curiosity in her. There's a
part of me that's always lamented. Was she born thirty
years too soon? You know, she she was stroves. You know,
she she loved the fact that she was able to

(01:45:39):
do job work when she was younger, but not everybody,
and at that time that was not seen as acceptable
that she would work outside the home. And there was
I've always gotten the sense there was some tension there,
and it was always a part of me. I was lucky.
I've had two grandmothers who, in my heart of hearts,

(01:45:59):
you think, you know, they didn't get to live the
life they deserve to have simply because of the way
society treated women as second class citizens in their jair
in most of their life span. But I just wanted
to share that with you guys. She was a force
of nature. And you know, when you make it to

(01:46:23):
ninety nine, you never think you're going to lose them.
And yet at the same time, you know her body
was breaking down. Her brain was all there, but her
body was breaking down. And so I think she's at peace.
I think she is no more pain. And I just
thank her for giving me that curiosity, giving me that

(01:46:50):
setting an example that hey, you can always make new friends,
and she did it almost all the way to the
end of her life. One of the great gifts. So
thanks for humoring me here and listening to me sharing
my memories of my grandmother, Dorothy Bernstein ninety nine years old.
And with that, don't forget to call your grandmother. If

(01:47:16):
your grandmother's stolen around and your grandfather and your mom
and your dad all right, and i'll see in about
seventy two hours

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Chuck’s Commentary - A Growing Number Of Republicans Are Breaking From Trump + Todd Blanche Has ZERO Chance Of Getting Confirmed