Chuck’s Commentary - Character Is Destiny In Politics + Iran Has Turned Into A Costly Stalemate - The Chuck ToddCast

Episode Transcript
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to another episode of the check podcast. It is in

(01:46):
some ways, I've got a episode that has a ton
of stuff that I'm gonna touch on. Right, I'll touch
on a ron. I'm gonna touch on main Senate and
California governor and Texas governor and the presidency in America
to fifty and in many ways, I could sit here
and say I'm checklisting off of all these different topics

(02:06):
and headlines and the bidens and all of this stuff.
But I'd also argue I have one issue in some ways,
and in a few minutes it's sort of the larger
point I want to make. I'm going to get on
that in a minute, but let me give you a
complete rundown of today's episode, so you know what you're

(02:26):
getting yourself into. Like I said, I got there's a
lot of things that have happened over the last seventy
two hours. I think they all think there's a big
there's a large theme to them that I want to
get to about character in politics and whether it is
the people with bad character, the people that defend the
people with bad character that are the real problems in

(02:47):
American politics. And I'm going to get to that in
a minute. The Iran stalemate. You know, we in some
ways the more things, the more this is delayed and baited,
the more likely the outcome that I've been outlining for
you for some time is going to come to fruition.
It's just the question is how many stages does it take?

(03:09):
And we'll see where it goes. I do have a
little riff about you know, we sit here and worry
a lot. Where are the guardrails? The guard rails kind
of work this weekend. I'll get to it. I'll get
to that in a few minutes as well. Plus we've
got the big, first big primary in June likely one

(03:31):
of the largest single days that people will be voting.
Given the size of California's population, it obviously punches above
above the average primary day. But we also have Iowa,
South Dakota, and New Jersey that all have some interesting
races all happening. Obviously in the next thirty six hours
we'll have some signaling there. And I think actually one

(03:54):
of the more intriguing aspects is, after all this hand
ringing from Democrats that they could get shut out, there's
seems to be if we're we're we there's some pulling
out there indicating that the Republicans could get shut out
of the top two in California. So the point is
a lot of interesting headlines to talk about. Plus I've

(04:14):
yet to weigh in on the mess that the Big
Ten and the SEC are making of college football. Uh,
and of course we've got both the owners and the
players have released their first UH. They're sort of their
their their dream scenarios, their dream pitches of how they
would solve baseball's labor and spending problems going forward, and

(04:40):
more of an equity issue that I think we know
baseball teams are dealing with. So it's a it's a
pact and busy show, and I'd like to think I'm
giving you guys everything you expect to come here for.
I want to just quickly deal with Iron here because
in some ways there is a there's quote I want

(05:00):
to share for my friend John Ellis, who if you
don't subscribe to news Items, it is a sort of
a a really well curated news of the day with
a focus a bit more on international politics, some domestic,

(05:21):
lots of market stuff, lots of science and tech as well.
I can't quite put my finger on exactly what I
would say is John Ellis's focal point, but I can
tell you it's a different type of aggregated newsletter, smart
news items things like this, and you know, you get
his smart takes. John Ellis, for those of you who

(05:43):
don't know, he's actually the first cousin of George W.
Bush and Jeb Bush. He is if he is part
of the Bush family. He has been in and out
of Republican politics, worked in media over time. I think
it's pretty safe to say he is a one of
those never Trump right leaning folks. But you know, I

(06:04):
think his own politics is I don't think a clean
thing there. So point is Is. I think his newsletters
are outstanding, and news items is one of them, and
I want to highlight a news item from the weekend
because it was just it was a very concise paragraph
that I think sort of sums up where we are

(06:24):
in Iran and is sort of almost the frankly, what
I would just what I wanted to say is yeah,
what he said. I want to quote this news item directly,
but it was so good that it is also what
John Ellis did because it is the words of a
Substack author named William Usher. He's a former CIA analyst.
He's got this terrific newsletter on subsect that I'm not

(06:47):
a subscriber of what He's been quoted quite a few times,
and John Ellis's newsletter seems to be maybe I ought
to think about subscribing, So mister Usher, you can think
of mister Ellis for potentially another subscriber. But he quotes
he quotes him here, and I just want to do
it word for word here. This is where things stand
at the end of May twenty twenty six. A ceasefire

(07:07):
that neither side fully observes, a framework that neither side
fully accepts, and a set of core demands that neither
side shows any willingness to abandon. The war has settled
into a costly stalemate, military operations paused but not ended,
economic damage compounding daily, and the political clock ticking in Washington. Realistically,
Trump now faces three options, the clear victory and walk away,

(07:28):
cut a deal, or restart the war. Look, everything that
mister Usher wrote there is not is something that hasn't.
I'm sure you know, is something that I've been conveying.
It's something plenty of us have been conveying, I think
for some time really since the since since the ceasefire began,
and one realized what little leverage that the United States

(07:50):
had and how much more leverage Iran and ended up
with after this war started, thanks to ignorance or something
by our war planners having to do with the straight
up war moves. Well, I just think it succinctly sort
of tells you where we are. This is where we are.
We're in this stalemate. Here's what I can tell you.

(08:12):
The Iranians will continue to keep negotiating. Donald Trump does
not want any sort of deal. He just simply wants
the concepts of a deal so that he can essentially
declare some form of accomplishment. We need even call it victory, right,
but some form of Okay, I've checked that off the list.

(08:33):
I've got a plan to potentially implement a plan that
would prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. Right, That
might be the best we can hope for here at
this point. He's going to end up giving them money,
But my guess is he'll do it in such a
way where he can claim he's not doing it the
way Obama did it when sanctions relief came. It'll probably
go through some third party country. It'll be either Pakistan

(08:54):
or Cutter that ends up cutting the actual check or
whatever it is to Iran, so that he can look
like he's not capitulating in a way that he had
criticized Barack Obama from doing. Because, again, other than restarting
the war, the only way out of this where they
where the United States can hope to save a tiny

(09:15):
bit of face here is to essentially create the USMCA
of Iran nuclear deals. And what am I referring to
when I say that, right, Trump, I ripped up NAFTA
only to renegotiate NAFTA. But ah, it's not NAFTA. I've
renamed it. It's USMCA, it's NAFTA zero. Right, So here's

(09:42):
so anyway, that's where we are. You know, we're at
this point. It's nothing but market manipulation. Every morning, right,
we all wake up to see, how's he manipulating the
stock market today? Does the stock market thing? Things are
getting closer to a deal, Okay, then he has to
say nothing. If suddenly the markets are spooked, oh my god,

(10:03):
he's got to let them know that a deal is
imminent or that oh they're they're exchanging paper, et cetera.
So that's getting old, this market manipulation, which is really
what may has been about right since the seas fire.
But the here's the real scary part that's coming and
why we really do need a deal sooner rather than later,
is if you've been paying attention, very close attention to this,

(10:27):
most of the economists and experts on our oil markets
have set, including the conversations I've had with people like
Daniel Jurgen and some poem. We had these conversations in
March and April, and all of them said, look, it's
going to be starting in June that we're going to
start to feel sort of the longer tail of this,
right that in June is when you would see strategic

(10:48):
oil reserves start to be run down. It was in
June that you would start to see fertilizer inventories at zero.
That it's in June that you would start to see
the almost the you know, you've heard of the hockey
stick moment when you're examining, when you're watching a company
where you know, you're you know, things are going well,
and all of a sudden, you know, instead of you know,

(11:10):
two million dollars in revenues, you have fifty million dollars
in revenues, and it all happens within like a six
month period. It's your hockey stick moment. Well, this is
a negative version of that hockey stick moment, but it's like,
you know, we've been middling along and we've been surviving,
and we can handle, you know, a six week disruption,
and we can handle a twelve week disruption, and then

(11:32):
all of a sudden, we can't handle that disruption, and
we go from handling it with a little increase in
costs and a little bit of this to suddenly the
hockey stick moment where it's holy s, we've got to
start rationing, and we've got to start doing this. And
all of the experts had pointed to the month of June,

(11:54):
right that said, look, this needs to get done before June.
Well it's not before June anymore. Here we are, so
you know, every single day exponentially adds to the damage.
Like we are, we are in that period here, and
I know that's that's frustrating to hear. It's very you
could say, hey, you know, the media needs to you know,
go in. It is hard to it is hard to show, right,

(12:16):
it's very hard to to competently predict catastrophe because you know,
how people handle a crisis. Moment is uneven. You know,
some people suddenly quickly want to hoard, right, Like the
toilet paper situation we had at the beginning of COVID,
where all of a sudden, eybody decided that they better
go grab the toilet paper now. Then all of a
sudden we had a run on toilet paper. We had

(12:38):
plenty of toilet paper, but people perceived that we wouldn't
and then everybody began hoarding. And I think that's the
type of situations that's why you're it is you're never
quite sure it exactly right, there's sort of rationality to
this until there isn't. And the thing that we ought
to fear here is that we may hit an a

(13:00):
moment where the consumers started to behavior irrationally in their
own very rational ways, if that makes sense, you know,
like the hoarding of toilet paper. Like, they're not wrong
that we're going to have these supply chain issues, but
they were focused on the wrong thing. It turned out
toilet paper was going to be the least of our issues.
It turned out we had other issues that we should
have been a bit more worried about, but it was

(13:22):
certainly symbolic. That's the situation we're starting to head towards
now and God forbid. By the way, speaking of June,
that's also the start of hurricane season. As an East coaster,
as a Florida boy, you know, June first means is
a big deal date on the calendar. It's when we're
all sort of every morning you wake up and you
start looking at the Horn of Africa, anything out there, right,

(13:47):
God forbid, we have a natural disaster in the middle
of this man made energy crisis that the world is experienced.
We're already seeing what happens when you have a man
made aid crisis like in world health. With the United
States pulling out of the WHO no longer any expertise,
we've now got one of the worst of Bola outbreaks

(14:08):
we've ever had to deal with in the United States.
His expertise is essentially on the sidelines because of Donald
Trump's personal war against international organizations, and that is having
a potentially calamitous effect in the Congo. And it's certainly

(14:31):
something that you know, again, I go back to something
I mentioned last week, which is, you know, the United
States uses soft power not out of the goodness of
their heart, but also to protect ourselves. It's national security.
It protects the health and safety of US citizens. And
pulling out of the WHO put human beings lives at risks,

(14:55):
which of course puts the United States lives at risk.
So you know, this is the These are the type
of you know, this is why the damage that Trump
has done to the government, to our international relations. You
don't fully appreciate how bad the damage is until you
really until you hit some crisis. Right, Abola is suddenly

(15:16):
we're realizing this crisis that Trump and Kennedy have created
in public health is now. Is now you know, putting
pressure on the entire world and could could take something
that would have been that essentially, had Kennedy and Trump
not touched a thing, then we'd have probably a hell
of a lot more control over this outbreak than we

(15:37):
do at the moment and have a lot more experts
on the ground. Donald Trump's experiencing the same thing with
his inability to deal with the Iranians in the Strait
before moves. If he hadn't beaten up every American ally
that the United States has had other than Israel, if
he hadn't beaten up every ally in Europe that we had,
and maybe some of them would want to help us
out more. But alas this is what happens, you don't,

(16:01):
and this is what can be frustrating for those of
us that are in this space of trying to call bullshit,
trying to call balls and strikes. Let you know, hey,
this is what's happening. You need to need to worry
about around this corner. We need to worry about now
going around this corner. We can't tell you exactly, We
can't always tell you exactly how this is going to

(16:21):
have a negative impact on us. We're just promising you Unfortunately,
it's going to have a negative impact on us. Pulling
out of public health was going to do this, how
do we know it. We're now starting to experience what
this is with this, with the with the struggle to
to try to contain the same ball out right. You
want to understand why multilateralism has been such a good

(16:42):
thing for the United States, just look at how hard
it is to go it alone in the Middle East
when you choose to go it alone. So it is,
it is, it is down the road that you sometimes
see these negativities, and it's it's it's unfortunate, but it

(17:04):
also is why Winston Churchill famously said you can eventually
count on the Americans after they've exhausted every other path.
And that's why I have my own version of optimism.
That's how I stay optimistic even in some of these
darker moments and darker days. This episode of the Chuck

(17:28):
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(19:12):
But I do have a larger topic I want to
hit on today, and it is about the issue of
character and politics. And if you think about it, there's
a lot of a lot of issues over the last
few over the last week which has sort of resurfaced.
You know, to me, what is a constant in American politics,
which is character is always destiny. The question is whether

(19:35):
everybody sees it at the right time to deal with it.
Whether it is the success of Ken Paxton and what
that says about our politics, the potential success of Graham
Platner and what that says about our politics, the fact
that we should We knew in twenty fifteen that if

(19:58):
Donald Trump became president, he would somehow try to manipulate
the government so that he could escape a tax audit
for the rest of his life, something which, by the way,
we are now finding out is among the real motivations
of this slush fund, is him escaping accountability from the government.
In a battle that he's been having with the government
for a couple of decades. There's the new revelations by

(20:25):
Joe Biden where she clearly was either lying in twenty
twenty four about concern about her husband's ability to run
for president, or she's lying now about her fears that
he was having a stroke at that infamous debate. It's
all about It all gets to this larger question, right,

(20:46):
and it's one of the oldest questions in politics and
still one of the simplest right is how much does
character matter? It's not about policy, not ideology, not party affiliation,
but character. Generation ends up having the same argument when
it comes to this issue of character and politics. Some
voters think personal conduct is highly relevant. Others think it's

(21:08):
a distraction. Some voters care more about what a politician
says they'll do, others care more about how they've lived
their life. There's no right or wrong way. It's called democracy.
Right in the words of Getty Lee, if you choose
not to decide, you've also you've still If you choose

(21:28):
not to decide, you still have made a choice. The
point is everybody has their own motivation for why they vote,
why they don't vote and who they vote for, but
who they won't vote for, because in this country, everybody
gets to make that decision for themselves. Well, what I've
been thinking about lately, though, isn't whether character itself matters.
It's something else. It's who ends up defending the character flaws,

(21:53):
because the people who coume up our politics the most
are not always the people with the character flaws, to
the people who defend the people with the character flaws.
We spent the better part of a decade having this
argument about Donald Trump. One of the great frustrations many
Democrats had with Trump supporters was watching behavior that they

(22:16):
themselves found disqualifying for the last few decades, at least
if a Democrat did it. Democrats found were frustrated when
these Trump supporters would sort of excuse things that he

(22:36):
did or said that had any other politician said it,
they wouldn't have allowed it to be explained away. The
argument was always some version of yeah, but right, Yeah
but he's fighting for us, Yeah but the economy, Yeah
but immigration, Yeah but the alternative is worse. This whole

(22:57):
flight ninety three mindset, it doesn't matter, right, And eventually
a lot of people stopped evaluating the behavior and just
simply started defending it. I'm old enough to remember when
Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio had cared about character in politics.
They have chosen to defend this bad character. Now, before

(23:17):
anybody misunderstands me, this isn't actually supposed to be a
Donald Trump monologue. And no it's not really a Grand
Platiner monologue either. But yes, what's been happening around him
and with him helped inspire this. But the reason I'm

(23:38):
interested in the Platiner story is because I think it
reveals something a lot bigger about what's going on in
our politics. Because what I've watched over the last few
weeks is a lot of people who spent years criticizing
Republicans for enabling Trump suddenly sounding awfully familiar. Not because
the conduct is the same. It's not. Not because the
facts are the same. They're not. The reasoning is the same.

(24:02):
The reasoning goes something like this, Yes there are concerns,
Yes there are warning signs, but that's what campaigns are for.
Yes there are things that make me uncomfortable. The cause
is too important, but the movement needs But the alternative
is worse that's the moment when political judgment starts getting clouded,

(24:27):
because every political movement does this, and they've been doing
it since the dawn of time, every single one of them.
When a movement finds somebody it wants to believe in,
yellow flags become green flags, and red flags become yellow flags,
and anybody who points them out gets accused of helping
the other side. Everybody thinks they're good at spotting enablers

(24:52):
do they just think the enablers live on the other
side of the political aisle. The deeper issue here is
one I don't think we talk about enough of why
do people run for office? We tend to assume everybody
runs for some form of the same reason, but they don't.
Some people genuinely want to solve problems. Some people have

(25:13):
ideas that they think are unique to them and that
they can solve a political conflict with a unique solution.
Some people just simply want to serve believe that hey,
that's what citizenship's about. And there are plenty of people
that are driven by ambition they want a capstone on

(25:34):
their resume. Still others are driven by a massive ego,
and some people are searching for something purpose identity community, meaning, validation, redemption.
Politics can offer all of those things. If you're a
washed up actor and you haven't gotten work in a

(25:54):
long time, you can run for mayor of America's second
largest city. And maybe you're pretty good at this. We'll
find out. I don't know, but politics maybe the most
powerful identity building exercise available in American life today. Right,
we've really sort of almost abused politics of this. Join

(26:15):
a movement, find a tribe, find your mission, find people
who tell you you're changing the world. There's something incredibly
seductive about that. Sometimes it's healthy. Sometimes politics does give
people purpose. Sometimes public service brings out the best in people.

(26:36):
But sometimes politics becomes therapy, and that's where trouble starts.
I've become increasingly convinced that some people use political campaigns
and political movements in lieu of therapy. Maybe they're lonely
or washed up reality TV host and they don't know
what to do. They can't do business because they've scared

(26:57):
off everybody they've ever done business with, because they're a
bad businessman. Maybe that's why they try politics. Instead of
confronting problems in their own lives, they throw themselves into
politics instead. Of dealing with personal struggles, they seek validation
from a movement. Instead of figuring out who they are,
They let politics tell them who they are, and for

(27:20):
a while it can work. Politics is a fantastic distraction.
The problem is that distractions don't solve the underlying problems
that perhaps people did need therapy for. They just simply
postpone them, and eventually those problems show up again, only
now they're attached to public power. And that's why character matters,

(27:46):
not because we're looking for saints. Politics has never been
populated by saints. Character matters because it is predictive. That's
why it matters. That's why the phrase character is destiny
has meaning. Character flaws rarely stay confined to a personal
life forever. Eventually they influence decision making. Eventually, they affect judgment.

(28:12):
Eventually they affect how somebody handles power. When people bring
personal baggage into politics, eventually that baggage influences their decision making,
just as the Bidens who did preemptive pardons. We've seen
this over and over again. There's Donald Trump. How many
decisions of his presidency were influenced by personal grievances. How

(28:35):
many were influenced by his need for validation renaming the
Kennedy Center. Folks, how many were influenced by old scores
he wanted to settled. The character flaws did not stay private,
they became public. You can make a similar argument about
John Edwards. This is one of the examples I use

(28:56):
quite a bit when talking about this, because I have
a miss empathy for a mister and missus Edwards and
what the late Elizabeth Edwards went to. But they used
politics in lieu of dealing with a problem. Democratic Party

(29:16):
became enamored with a candidate who, in retrospect, was clearly
carrying around unresolved personal issues. A family that suffered an
unimaginable tragedy losing a child also threw itself deeper and
deeper into politics, and eventually the entire party paid the price.
You can make a version of this argument about Andrew Cuomo.

(29:36):
You can make a version of this argument about a
lot of politicians. Frankly, you can make a version of
this argument at the Biden's Joe Biden, Joe Biden, why
they ever run in the first place when their kids
were in crisis In twenty eighteen, one of the tragedies
of Biden's political career is that the line between family
struggles and public responsibilities became increasingly difficult to separate the

(30:01):
deaths he endured. Nobody wishes that upon anybody, the burden
he carried, the challenges surrounding Hunter Biden, and no doubt,
his own guilts or whatever you know that a parent
has when grieving both a dead child and trying to
parent a troubled living child. All of those experiences shaped him.

(30:26):
He's an enormously empathetic figure because of it in some ways,
and he knows how to give empathy. And of course
these tragedies shaped him. He's human. The question is whether
there were moments when family obligations began competing with presidential obligations.

(30:47):
Just A good example is the preemptive partons. As a father,
I understand them completely. I have the power to make
sure my son is never touched by this mess again.
I'm going to use that power to protect my kid.
I get it. As a president, it's a huge mistake,

(31:08):
such a terrible precedent, and might undermines the legitimacy of
the rule of law. As a father, protecting your child
as instinctive. As a president, your responsibilities are broader than
your family. It's not an easy distinction. Again, that's why
we cared about character, but it's an important one because

(31:32):
democracy depends on public officials being able to separate personal
interests from public responsibilities. That's why the character discussion matters
so much. Not because we're moralizing, not because we're pretending
politicians should be perfect, but because power magnifies whatever is
already there. If somebody is running for something, power doesn't

(31:55):
fix it. If somebody is searching for validation, power doesn't
solve it. Somebody has unresolved personal baggage, power rarely makes
it disappear. Actually, it usually makes it more consequential and
ends up involving innocent people that had no part of
your personal issues. One of the things we've lost over

(32:18):
the last few decades is an appreciation for why political
parties existed in the first place. They weren't just ideological organizations.
They actually were vetting organizations. They weren't imperfect. They were imperfect.
They weren't perfect. They made mistakes. Sometimes they protected the
wrong people and sometimes they kept out the right people.

(32:41):
But they did ask hard questions before someone got too
close to power. Today, social media allows candidates to build
emotional relationships with supporters before they've been fully vetted. Movements
fall in love first. The movement progressives are just in
love with so no new information. It's got to be

(33:03):
explained away right. Questions come later, and by then it's
often too late, because once people become emotionally invested in
a candidate, they stop evaluating. Then they just simply start defending.
We've seen it with Trump, and that's the cycle I
worry about. And not just on the Rhine, not just
on the laugh this is everywhere. As we've seen, this

(33:25):
type of behavior is contagious. The lesson of the Trump
era wasn't that Republicans are uniquely vulnerable to overlooking character flaws.
The lesson was that every political movement is vulnerable to
overlooking character flaws. When the cause feels important enough. The
ridiculous Flight ninety three defense the moment we convince ourselves

(33:48):
that the mission is more important than the flaws, we
do enter dangerous territory, and the Republic is put at
risk because the flaws don't disappear, they don't become less relevant,
they don't magically stop mattering. Those flaws show up. They'll
affect judgment, they'll effect of other decisions, which then affects

(34:11):
all of us. That's why voters should pay attention not
just to the candidate with the baggage. They should also
pay attention to the people explaining why the baggage doesn't matter,
because those are usually the first warning signs that a
movement has stopped asking questions and has started making excuses.

(34:35):
So look on when it comes to what's going on
in main center. I don't want to also say, hey,
this means that those that were advocating for Janet Mills
should be getting drunk and I told you so juice,
because I'm not sure Janet Mills is the answer. That's

(34:57):
also misreading the moment. What has happened, though, is that
and you see it. You see it when anybody that's
part of a certain wing of the party, when one

(35:19):
of their well known proponents gets accused of a character issue,
there's this immediate rallying around them that they're just under
siege because of what they believe, not because of who
they are. Look, it's good, it's a good pr tactic,

(35:40):
it's a good crisis management tactic. Deflect and blame, right,
I get it. But when you've spent when you've spent
a decade absolutely eviscerating one party for looking the other

(36:01):
way on character flaws that were so obvious. Even the
character himself admitted that he could shoot somebody and get
away with it. Right. That's when you know your movement
is no longer sober. They are high on their own
supply and the supply of others. And I think this

(36:23):
is where Democrats are now in a very difficult spot
here with Platter. I don't know what to make. I
think it's there's a lot of yellow flags here. There's
a lot of issues. These issues with him are not

(36:45):
from twenty ten. This isn't like George W. Bush in
two thousand and us arguing about his behavior in the seventies,
which happened twenty five or thirty years, or the conversations
around Bill Clinton in the nineties, which were about his
behavior in the late sixties early seventies. He was accused
of sexty in twenty twenty three. Folks, just checked my

(37:08):
calendar again. Okay, it's twenty twenty six. This isn't a
youthful indiscretion. Now. I'm also aware that someone will say, well,
he's been going through a lot of stuff. I get
that the question is whether politics should be used in

(37:30):
lieu of therapy and lou of dealing with your own problems.
And this is what has bothered me. Right, so many
people have figured out how to use running for president
to profit or to launder their public image, and so

(37:52):
much so that that you've seen it sort of right.
I mean, you know Eric Swollwell create you know, essentially
patted his resume by a useless case and paying for president,
and it almost got him the nominee, almost got him
to the governor's mansion, until somebody decided those character flaws
were just too much to leave dead and buried. Mike

(38:18):
Huckabee had no interest in being president when he ran
the first time. He was just looking for a talk show,
looking for money, and he got it. In fact, he
was almost too successful. He became a serious candidate for
the nomination for a brief period of time, and I
remember they struggled with it because I don't think they
ever planned on being that successful. Donald Trump never planned
on being that successful. He was just doing it for ratings,

(38:44):
for his own Q rating, hoping to make himself relevant.
And we've seen it. Gary Bauer, al Sharp, that Alan Keyes,
Mike Huckabee, Ben Carr's, Herman Kane, I mentioned Swallwell, Tulsa Gabbard, Right,

(39:09):
we can keep Bobby Kennedy Junior. None of these people
were serious presidential candidates. None of them just wanted to
have a real job. They were looking for a shortcut
to the thanks to the celebrification of politics, right, which
really started to be an obvious career path when we

(39:31):
became a full three cable channel world back in the
late nineties, early odds, and now with fragmentation. Right, Hell,
look at what I'm doing. All Right, I'm an individual
creator in that sense, I don't even need a network.
But I promise you I'm not going to use politics

(39:52):
in lieu of therapy. This episode of the Chuck Podcast
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See the terms at fandel dot com. Slash predicts, slash bonus,
hyphen offer hyphen terms. You look at a lot of
the issues we have here, the biggest one being who

(42:02):
ends up as our elected leaders. We've made the process
weirdly easier for flawed characters to do this than for
true normal people to do it, and that's something I
don't know how we fix overnight. Now, Platner could still win.

(42:30):
There's no doubt Susan Collins has worn out her welcome.
She probably shouldn't have run again. And if Jared Golden
had agreed to run for the Senate seat, there'd be
no Graham Platner. Right, that was the ideal democratic replacement,

(42:56):
but perhaps there should have been a bit more. I
mean it was folks were so you know, I think
progressives were so excited about having somebody who's charismatic who
didn't look like a stereotype of a progressive that they
may have put blinders on. We'll see. Maybe Platner has

(43:19):
figured all this out, and the decision to put it
all out there is part of it. The voters have
Manald decide this. But i'd be you know, I'm watching

(43:42):
a lot of really, I'm watching a lot of people
who mocked, a lot of Republicans who rationalized Trump support
now using some of the same language and same defense
mechanisms to explain away any thing that's uncomfortable regarding Platner.

(44:06):
As I said, with redistricting, and look, I don't I
wish I had a better answer here as to what
the alternative way for the Democrats to behave other than
I just happened to think of you just sort of
behave in your principles. Eventually that might matter. But you
can see this mindset of if you can't beat them,

(44:27):
join them tactics, use the same tactics. It's a bad
road to go down. If it was, if it was
the wrong road for Republicans to go down, why do
you think that's the right road for some Democrats to
go down. If it's wrong, it's wrong. The same criticisms

(44:48):
apply to the right the same things they say is wrong.
If you're offended by Platner and you're on the right
and you look the other way on Trump or Paxton,
you have no credibility, zero zilch. At some point, credibility

(45:10):
is going to matter to a majority of voters. It
does more than I think. I think our politicians have
such low disregard for you, the voter. They think they
can bullshit their way out of anything. Pay no attention
to the guy who doesn't pay his taxes honestly for
the last thirty years. So he's decided to try to

(45:32):
come up with some convoluted scheme to prevent the government
from ever looking at any taxes he has filed up
up to the point he leaves office. I'm referring to
what we're learning more about this, But this crazy defense
fund of Donald Trump's, the weaponization fund, by the way,
is a reminder now that we have a judge sort

(45:52):
of reopening the case and the guardrails are working. You know,
sometimes we think, oh, no, you know, nothing matters. Well enough,
Senate Republican squealed, his agenda got stalled. Guardrails are always

(46:15):
going to get dented. I've got a little area over
here near Glee Road and Chambridge that a guard rail
gets knocked over and gets reput back up all the
time because people take the curve too fast. The guardrails
there to minimize the damage, not to ever prevent any

(46:35):
damage ever, but it's to force it back on the
path if you can, and worst case scenario at least
just sort of end the destruction right there at the moment,
mitigate the damage that's done so our guard the guard
rails are still working. I do think this weaponization Fund's

(46:57):
never going to see the light of day. It's such
a political liability that you have people leaking from the
White House that they're looking for a way to kill it.
And it's guardrails that got Donald Trump's name off the
Kennedy Center. A judge decided to read the Constitution and

(47:22):
realize what article won that it's Congress that named the institution,
and it's Congress that has to rename the institution. Donald
Trump can lobby Congress to add his name to the Institution,
but he's got to have the votes. He won't have

(47:43):
the votes because Donald Trump's alienated a third of his
own party, his own people aren't going to want to
give him this honor because of the way he's behaved.
Comes back to the irony I was painting earlier about
every decision comes with consequences. You just don't know when

(48:04):
you have to pay your consequences, pay that bill. Take take,
for instance, you know the fact that every everybody that
was in just about everybody that was invited to participate
in the America two fifty, which was really being done
handled by the Trump super pac version of it. This

(48:26):
Freedom two fifty, which is has you know, America two
fifty was a bipartisan organization passed by Congress. Freedom two
fifty is a slush fund for Donald Trump and his cronies. Well,
it was Freedom to fifty that was inviting those artists.
But here's the irony. And I know we can't create
a personality transplant of Donald Trump. But let's say Donald

(48:47):
Trump had at least some check on his own ego.
But let's say Trump really wanted a massive turnout of
great celebrities. A normal American president would have made all
the living presidents the honorary chairs of America two fifty,
and all of those presidents would have worked with this

(49:09):
president and had an array of artists get involved that
they all individually have relationships with and you would have
had a true celebration of America with cultures, with every
culture or every large culture in this country represented quite well.
But Donald Trump's ego is such that he can't bring

(49:30):
himself to share anything, including the presidency, with which he
has shared with forty four other individuals. I guess technically
forty three other individuals, since he and Grover Cleveland are
both kind of twice. But he couldn't even share that distinction.
And that's what I find sad about this whole America too.
I want to celebrate America two fifty. Donald Trump is

(49:53):
making it very He's politicizing. He politicizes everything. The irony
is that he wrote to power by complaining that the
left politicized everything. All he does is politicize again. Two
rungs don't make a right. We have an entire right
wing political movement that is based on two wrongs make
a right. I am. If the left behaves the same way,

(50:24):
it's not good for any of us. Jokers to the left,
clowns to the right, and here I am. Here we
are stuck in the middle with these guys, but we
can always do something about it. That's why character is
supposed to matter. Here's the thing. We knew all of

(50:47):
Donald Trump's character flaws before he was elected president, and
everything that even his supporters don't like about it was
revealed before he ever became president. If you chose to
ignore those character warnings, you are now you know. Unfortunately,
you alone don't get to play the consequences. We all
are paying the consequences for your decision to look the

(51:09):
other way, so we can't This is ultimately right. When
you know, last week I brought up and I spent
a lot of time on what the on the pope's
encyclical when it came on artificial intelligence. And the reason

(51:32):
I did is because I do think that this is
American pope, because he doesn't just speak English, he speaks American.
He is going to be a He's probably going to
be the moral leader. America's desperate for some new pulling
out last week that showed that a larger, growing chunk
of Americans are concerned about America's moral values. We've become

(51:55):
Donald every Donald Trump is the north Star. This is
why I've talked about this when it comes to all
of this right, he is in charge. The American president
is in charge of America's thermostat, whether that's on whether
violence or a culture, or in anything else. His behavior
is a role model, whether he chooses to be the room,

(52:18):
whether he wants to be a role model or not,
people model it. It's why we need to get back
to character counting for a lot more than it has

(52:39):
in our politics for a while. And I get it right,
you're a little nervous about institutions, you're a little miss
about group think, and look at you know these people
that were sorely good character people. Got it. Look, people
with good character have bad ideas. I'm not saying they don't.
You vote them out. And when they're voted out, they

(53:02):
respect the decision. See George W. Bush. That's what you're
looking for. And a good character person, Barack Obama George W. Bush.
Two high character people. They accepted the premise of when
they were right or wrong. They listened to voters when
voters expressed concern, and they and they and they and
they calibrated. That's all we can ask from our leaders,

(53:25):
and that's all we really can look look for when
we're trying to figure out whether you know we're the vetters.
Now there are no political parties vetting anybody. All parties
want to know is who gives them the fastest track
to power. Parties are no longer seems to be worried
about finding the responsible actors. And I know someone'll say, well,
Chuck Schumer try to get Jana Mills. He didn't. He didn't. Really,

(53:51):
he still misread the room. He was right about He
may have been right about Platner, but he may have
been right about Platter for all the wrong reasons. So
it's a It's funny, you know, I was tracking all

(54:13):
of these different stories and was thinking about doing them
as as sort of these separate things, and you realize
it's really sort of this larger crisis that we have,
which is we stopped. We decided collectively not to value
character and morality, and that was a decision we made

(54:35):
with Trump. And now we're getting folks who have decided, well,
this is what this must this must be better. So
now the Democrats are copying right in some ways. And
this is why I've said Plattner Collins feels like a
rerun of Trump Hillary from sixteen. Parties are in reverse

(54:57):
similar sort of mindsets, one side rationalizing their support, the
other side struggling to convey why status quo is changed.

(55:19):
But I think this platinum election is going to teach
us a lot about where the Democratic Party is headed
and where twenty twenty eight is headed. It's also why
we're not one election away from sort of getting past
this moment we've been living in. We have a couple

(55:39):
more false starts, I think before we truly sober up
enough and realize that both parties have gone off the
deep end in different rays for different reasons. A few
other notes, a few other notes on the weekend, just
a few other things. Jill Biden, like I said, I

(56:08):
was part of the reason for my long monologue was over,
you know, was this sort of changing explanation. You know,
it's interesting the I don't you want to talk about
a group of people who have been totally insulated from
what the rank and file really thinks. I think it's

(56:30):
the bidens. I you know, I'll be curious. I'm not
sure people are going to want to read this book.
I maybe hate readers, angry readership, but that was it
was if you don't know the bidens. What she said

(56:55):
seemed like an empathetic spouse. But if you covered the
Biden dis closely, you covered this story closely, it doesn't
ring very honest at all. And that's a shame, it is.
You know, it's so funny. Before Biden decided to run

(57:16):
for president in twenty nineteen, I think that they probably
had the highest approval rating of any family in the
Democratic Party. There was empathy for them, There was sort
of this he was sort of this beloved, sort of
wingman of the presidents, referring to President Obama. But you know,

(57:49):
it's funny what ambition does to people. He wanted something
so bad that he ignored everything around him that was
going on, and they did enormous damage to their Their
own irony is that they did enormous damage to the
Democratic Party, enormous damage to their own legacy, and they
did some I think they did real harm to their

(58:10):
own family. And I'm sorry to think that is. Every
interaction I've had with every Biden living or dead, was
nothing but a good interaction. These are good people, and

(58:31):
good people can go down certain roads. That happens. Bad
people can do it too, so can good people, just
like you know, so I saw you know, I think
that that there was a lot of us that had
a lot of good will that overlooked some of these flaws.

(58:54):
And I you know, when I when I heard this
interview again, I was just reminded, why did they run
in the first place? And the alternative would have been
probably Pete Pootage and Bernie Sanders fighting it out to
the end in twenty twenty and probably wouldn't have mattered,

(59:15):
Meaning COVID was going to elect the Democrats no matter what.
So who knows where this would have had it. But
this is the world, this is the timeline we're on,
this is the one we live in. Uh quick preview.
I'm we're gonna have live coverage of the big primary

(59:37):
night on Tuesday night. The most interesting development over the
weekend has been in the governor's race. It shows polling
now Javier Bassa and Tom Steyer could both finish in
the top two slots, locking out Republicans from this, which
of course would be a nightmare for Besara or of

(59:58):
styr Right. They both want Hilton in the top two,
and for a while Democrats are worried they'd get locked
out completely. The Trump endorsement of Hilton has sort of
prevented that, and now it's possible that this just ugly
race for governor, which you know, it's funny, with its

(01:00:20):
serial sort of front runners and constant searching for something
else and alternative and dissatisfaction with the candidates that are there.
Is this going to be a preview of the twenty
twenty eight presidential primary season, Because that's one theory I have,
is that we could have a series of front runners,
meaning that people are just constantly you know, they know

(01:00:42):
what they don't want, and they're going to keep trying
different trying on different outfits and seeing which one they
decide looks best. That's kind of what we've been watching
with California governor. Eventually, the primary comes and they have
to make a decision. But the lack of people turning
in their ballots and the fact that people are turning
in as late as they have is proof that they're

(01:01:03):
waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting. They don't love
their choices. They know they're settling. They're just trying to
decide is this the last thing they have to settle for? Anyway,
It's just one way that I think you could watch
California governor and the other race that I'm intrigued by.
Of course, on Tuesday night, we've got Iowa Senate, a
little progressive versus establishment going on there between Josh Turrick

(01:01:24):
and Zach Wallas. I think in this case a lot
of money's been spent on behalf of Josh Turick, and
I certainly I think would rather be him than Walls,
but we shall see. And then there's an LA Mayor
where Karen bass is playing an interesting game here. She's
not really responded much to Spencer Pratt, and people have

(01:01:44):
probably have been wondering how come she doesn't respond to
all this and how much is Spencer Pratt a right
wing fever dream that sort of doesn't really exist in
the real world. Look, I think it's I think practic
certainly going to do better than you think, probably will
underperform the polling in general. LA Mayor polls usually you know,
under under pole African Americans, So she's probably gonna be

(01:02:05):
a little stronger in this top two. But secretly she
wants to face Pratt. She wants Pratt finished second, not
the not the Democratic Socialist, not the mom Donni Acolyte
to finish second. That's a much tougher top two general
election for her. So if you're wondering why Bass has
been weirdly silent on Spencer Pratt and sort of the

(01:02:27):
these Fox News manufactured this, this sort of AI campaign
for mayor that uh feels like more of us. I
think this is a little bit more of a phenomenon
online than in real life. But we're going to find
out on Tuesday. But secretly, the Bass people, I think,
are hoping for Pratt as their number two opponent as
they think that he he is somebody that won't wear one.

(01:02:52):
They're probably right on that one, but hey, you know
this is a this is an angry electorate, especially out
in California, where it doesn't seem as if anybody is
satisfied with their current set of elected officials. Well, this
episode of the Chuck Podcast is brought to you by Quints.

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it's time Machine time. Let's go one of the podcast

(01:05:00):
time Machine. As you know, for those of you knew
to this, I try to take something that's happening in
the next week in history and do a deep dive
on it. And this week we're going We're going back
into the time machine on June fourth, nineteen eighty nine.
It's a day that the future's split in two. Now

(01:05:24):
when Americans think about June fourth, nineteen eighty nine, if
you go ahead and google it right, look it up,
you'll usually think about one image the minute you realize
what anniversary I'm talking about. A lone man standing in
front of a column of tanks. Tank Man. It's one
of the most famous photographs ever taken. It was a
symbol of courage, a symbol of resistance, a symbol of

(01:05:46):
freedom standing up to oppression. Right, you know, the expression
of picture as it's worth a thousand words. I think
that's two volumes of books in that picture. But here's
the thing that most people don't remember about June fourth,
nineteen eighty nine. The most important thing that happened that

(01:06:06):
day may not have happened in Beijing. It may have
happened in Poland, because on the very same day, while
tanks were moving towards Tenement Square, Polish citizens were casting
ballots in their first semi free elections in the Soviet Bloc.
On one side of the world, people voted for the

(01:06:26):
first time in decades in a free Ish election. I
had a little ish there. On the other, the government
prepared to send in the army. One communist system responded
to public pressure with elections. Remember the wall hadn't fallen yet, folks.
Another responded with force. The world remembers the tanks, But

(01:06:50):
understanding both stories may be the key to understanding why
the world looks the way it does today and why
one of the biggest assumptions of the post Cold War
era not to be wrong. Look, I remember those days vividly.
I was in high school. Like a lot of Americans,
I became really fascinated by what was unfolding in China.

(01:07:13):
I was, you know, This may not come as a
shock to you, but I was usually the student in
my group of friends that was paying a little bit
more attention to current events. So I got a bunch
of us to wear black armbands in solidarity with the
students at ten. In fact, I was pretty proud of it.
I got, I think I got. I got folks from

(01:07:34):
all walks of mine I had. I had at high
school in Miami that was a third to third a third.
And if you know, you know, the students, of course,
looked familiar. That's they were easy to empathize with. They

(01:07:54):
looked like students anywhere. They weren't armed revolutionaries. They carried banners,
they held vigils, They demanded reforms, They talked about corruption, accountability,
political openness. When the crackdown came, I remember trying to
wondering something else as we were trying to organize global

(01:08:15):
empathy for these students. And it was this the overwhelming
assumption shared by almost everybody paying attention to world events
at the time. Man history all seemed to be moving
in one direction. Freedom was advancing, America was winning, We
were winning right, Communism was retreating, Democracy was spreading. The

(01:08:37):
future appeared obvious. Looking back, that confidence may have been
one of the great misreadings of modern history, because to
understand Tiana Men, you have to remember the broader context
of nineteen eighty nine. The protests were not happening in isolation.
The entire communist world was under pressure. Across Eastern Europe.

(01:08:58):
Reform movements were gaining moment. The Soviet Union was still around,
but it was weakening. Mikhail Gorbachev was introducing reforms. The
old order was clearly wobbling. And then came June fourth,
because on that day, voters in Poland delivered a stunning verdict.
What's often forgotten is that these elections were supposed to

(01:09:18):
be controlled. The communist government had negotiated what become known
as the Roundtable Agreement, allowing partially free elections while reserving
many seats for the ruling party. The idea was to
open the system without surrendering power. Instead, voters delivered a
political earthquake. The Solidarity movement, led by the now famous

(01:09:43):
Lek Wallessa, once virtually every seat it was allowed to contest.
The Communist government in Poland was humiliated. The results sent
shockways throughout the entire communist world. Five months later, the
Berlin Wall would fall. Within two and a half years,
Soviet Union itself, which ceased to exist, and a whole

(01:10:03):
bunch of US twenty somethings had to figure out what
the hell had to figure out the names of a
whole bunch of new countries on the map. What looked
like a carefully managed opening had become the beginning of
the end, and Chinese leaders were watching all of it.
And this is the part of the story many Americans

(01:10:24):
either memory hole or forget, because the story of Tianaman
isn't simply a Chinese story. It's also a story about
how China's leaders interpreted what they were seeing elsewhere, because
while Europe was moving in one direction, China was debating
whether to follow. The protests themselves began after the death
of Hu Yaobang. He was a reform minded communist leader

(01:10:46):
who had become popular among students. What began is mourning
quickly evolved into something larger. Students gathered in Tanaman Square,
then workers joined, intellectuals joined, journalists joined, ordinary citizens joined.
The demonstrations grew into one of the largest protest movements
in modern Chinese history. At their peak, hundreds of thousands

(01:11:09):
of people filled Beijing streets. Some estimates, but participation at
more than a million, and the timing could not have
been worse for China's leadership. Because Gorbuschev was visiting Beijing,
the world's media had already arrived. Instead of covering a
diplomatic summit, cameras focused on the protests. The symbolic heart

(01:11:31):
of communists China had become occupied by its own citizens.
The entire world was indeed watching. What many people forget
is that there was a real debate inside the Chinese government.
History often gets simplified into students versus the Communist party.
The reality was a bit more complicated because there were
some leaders who favored compromise. There were some who favored

(01:11:52):
dialogue with the students. There were some who believe reforms
should continue. Others believed the party itself was at risk.
The road not Taken had a name, Zoxiyang. He was
China's General secretary. He was considered a reformer. He was
a believer in gradual political opening. In fact, a few

(01:12:12):
weeks earlier, on May nineteenth, nineteen eighty nine, he visited
the students that had gathered in Tenement Square. Many were
on a hunger strike. He spoke to them directly. We
came too late, was the quote that gets remembered the
most from his visit. It would be the last public
appearance that Zaoxiyang would ever have in his political career.

(01:12:37):
Within weeks he was removed from power. He would spend
the rest of his life under house arrest, dying essentially
in house captivity. In two thousand and five, every turning
point as a road not taken for China. In nineteen
eighty nine, that road was Zoxiyang. But there were others
inside the leadership who saw a different lesson. They had

(01:12:59):
just watched the events unfolding Poland, where a gradual political
opening turned into a nightmare for the powerty and power.
They had watched a communist government attempt to keep some
control over free elections, and they had watched that opening
escape its control. To them, Poland was not an argument

(01:13:23):
for reform, it was an argument against it. The hardliners prevailed,
Martial law was declared, Troops moved toward Beijing, Residents blocked roads.
For weeks, there was uncertainty where was this headed. Then
came the night of June third and the early hours
of June fourth, the military entered the city, live ammunition

(01:13:44):
was used. Civilians died, students die, workers died. To this day,
no one knows precisely how many. The Chinese government has
never provided a full accounting. The death toll. May have
been in the hundreds, may have been in the thousands.
The exact number remains one of the most disputed facts

(01:14:06):
in modern history. Perhaps it's something kind of like Chernobyl,
where it's going to take the fall of the Chinese
Communist Party for us to ever find out the truth.
But then came the image that everyone remembers actually was
not on June fourth. It was on June fifth, the
morning after a lone man standing before a line of tanks.

(01:14:27):
Tank man. The photograph became the defining image of Tieneman.
But in some ways the image has obscured the larger story,
because while the world focused on the courage of one individual,
a much bigger question was unfolding. What would happen next?
Most Western observers believe they knew the answer. China had
only delayed the inevitable. Maybe reform would take longer in China,

(01:14:50):
but it would happen. Maybe democracy would arrive more slowly,
but eventually economic modernization would produce political modernization. It was
inevitable because look that's what seemed to be happening everywhere
else Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union. The
assumption was simple. Growing middle class would eventually demand political rights.

(01:15:13):
Markets would lead to democracy. Economic freedom and political freedom
were ultimately linked. It seemed obvious, and yet Tianeman should
have been the first warning that perhaps they weren't. At first,
China's future was uncertain. The crackdown produced international condemnation. Reformers
were sideline, economic changes slowed. There was a genuine debate

(01:15:37):
about what came next, and in nineteen ninety two, Dang
Jao Ping settled the argument. Deng is one of history's
great paradoxes. He was the architect of China's economic transformation,
and he was also the leader who ultimately backed the crackdown.
The same hand that approved the tanks helped design the
system that followed. During his famous Southern Tour, Deng pushed

(01:15:58):
China back towards market forms and rapid growth, but political
liberalization would not return. That message became clear. Get rich,
build businesses, invest innovate participating global markets, but do not
challenge the communist party. Political reform ended, economic reform accelerated,
and that formula changed the world. In retrospect, Tieteman wasn't

(01:16:23):
simply a story of failed of a failed democratic uprising.
It was the birth of a different model, a model
many Western leaders spent decades under estimating bipartisan mistake in
this country. The assumption in Washington remained remarkably consistent. As
China became wealthier, democracy would eventually follow. That belief helped
shape American policy for years. You can see it most

(01:16:46):
clearly in the debate over China's entry into the World
Trade Organization back in two thousand and one. The logic
was straightforward. Trade would create prosperity. Prosperity would create a
middle class. A middle class would demand political rights. Political
liberalisation would eventually follow. That was the bet. But it
was a bet Tianamen had already called into question. Today

(01:17:07):
we live at the consequences. The defining geopolitical competition of
the twenty first century is increasingly between the United States
and China's unique system. We always wondered what happened if
a authoritarian communist regime would essentially dropped the ideological part

(01:17:28):
of communism shared everything and instead create open economic freedom
coupled with political repression. It's not simply two countries. It's
two models, one rooted in democratic governance and one rooted

(01:17:48):
in authoritarian control. Both claimed to be good for your
economic well being. One believes political freedom and economic freedom
reinforce one another, the other obviously believing they can be separated.
And that's why I think June fourth, nineteen eighty nine

(01:18:09):
deserves to be remembered for a variety of different reasons.
It's not simply as the day democracy was qrust in China.
It's not simply as the story of tank Man. But
it's a day that the future split into two. It's
the birth of this sort of bipolar world would suddenly
have stumbled into. In Poland, voters use ballots to begin

(01:18:31):
dismantling communism. In China, leaders use tanks to preserve it. Now,
that's a reminder nobody will if given the choice of
keeping communism or dumping it. If you have free will,
you're going to dump it. That's the other lesson of Poland,
and that's why the authoritarian leaders realized they needed tanks.

(01:18:52):
One path led to the post Cold War Europe. We
know today the other led towards China that now stands
as America's principal rival. Back in night teen eighty nine,
many people believed history had chosen its direction. Democracy was winning,
Communism was collapsing. The debate seems settled. But on June fourth,
nineteen eighty nine, two communist governments confronted the same challenge

(01:19:13):
and arrived at two very different conclusions. Poland chose the
ballot box, China chose a tank. Thirty seven years later,
we're still living with the consequences of both decisions. There's
your history lesson for the day. Now, one other thing
to look for in June fourth. Now that there's supposedly

(01:19:34):
American control and ownership of TikTok, let's see what kind
of Tieneman Square remembrances show up on TikTok this year.
I know we won't find them on we check ask Chuck.

(01:19:58):
All right, let's take in this some questions. First one
comes from Jamie k hey check, long time listener, first
time writer. Hear me out. Would you ever consider running
for president? Maybe even a ticket with Stephen Colbert? You
have a way of dealing complex issues clearly and you're
not seen as a culture warrior. Plus you're willing to
call out both sides. Could you build a broader coalition?
What say you? It is? I guess you could say,

(01:20:23):
why don't you put your money where your mouth is? Right?
I certainly have plenty to say. I'm a pretty good
backseat driver, et cetera. Look, will I just I've never
had the ambition to personally run for office. I've not
wanted to deal with the sort of you know when

(01:20:47):
you're a quasi public figure, and I was for a
period of time. I guess I still am in some ways,
you missed your privacy when you're not a public figure.
You think you want the attention, uh, and then you
get the attention and you're like, oh, I want the
attention on mind because you never Here's what you learn
is none of it ever gets to be on your terms.

(01:21:09):
And I think when you run for president. Now that said,
I think I'm in a stage of life where it
is I'm in a better place to run for office
than when a lot of people choose to do it.
You know, where what I think is wrong is running
for office because you don't know what to do with
your life. Running for office because your celebrity is wearing out,

(01:21:29):
running for off is because you're you're just you know,
putting off making you know, dealing with the with the
problems in your life, which is sort of the point
I was making at first. But I will say this,
I've certainly been more empathetic of people that are trying
to challenge the system. And I do think the duopoly

(01:21:50):
has broken us. It doesn't, you know, And I do
think both parties need massive reform, and I think we
need to open up open up the system from more
or from more points of view, but have a system
that allows for it to work so that people can
be feel both heard represented at the table and realize

(01:22:13):
not everybody's gonna get one hundred percent of what they're advocating.
So you're you're oddly not the first person to throw
that out there. But you know, I also feel like
a trader to journalism in some ways, like I'm happy
to help others figure out how to get into the

(01:22:34):
reform aspect of it. But you know, I was you know,
if I ever did contemplate office, it wouldn't be with
either party, That's for sure. I would never feel comfortable
doing that to my fellow journalists at the end of
the day. But I will say this, whoever runs, I

(01:22:56):
think a little bit of an education component to running
wouldn't be such a bad thing. But I'm not sure
the constituency for that is as large as you may think.
But who knows. All Right, we get fifty million subscribers
to this YouTube channel before the end of this calendar year,
and then maybe I'll have to change my mind. That's

(01:23:17):
not a challenge, folks, that's just me being snarky. Jamie,
thanks for the kind words. Paul k Right, Hey, Chuck,
proud of you for the move into independent media. It's
great to see. I was struck by the recent Center
primary results and had a question, do you think Paxton
heads into the general election over confident or will you
lean more into a grassroots approach? Also curious how you
see the broader impact of negative campaigning and races like this. Paul, Kay, Look,

(01:23:42):
I think packs you know, it's funny Paxton's never lost
a race, and you know, for the longest time, until
Donald Trump, we had had an interesting We had had
an interesting list of presidents and presidential nominees whose hallmark

(01:24:05):
in many ways was an election defeat that helped make
them a better candidate. So I would say this meaning
I'm always when somebody's never lost a race, the possibility
of overconfidence is through the roof. When you've lost an
early race in your career, you just simply are usually

(01:24:26):
a bit smarter about how you go about things, and
you're a bit more I don't want to say you're
risk averts, but you're more aware of pitfalls. I think
that Barack Obama losing a race for Congress against Bobby
Rush was a huge lesson for him and how to
run the next time he ran. George W. Bush losing

(01:24:48):
a race for Congress in the seventies was incredibly helpful
that you know understanding that loss there. Bill Clinton lost
a race for Congress before winning his first race for governor.
Jimmy Carter lost the campaign before he became governor of Georgia.

(01:25:11):
Richard Nixon lost a campaign for governor before winning the
presidency in sixty eight. The point is Ronald Reagan lost
a race for presidency in seventy six before successfully winning
an eighty George H. W. Bush lost a Racers say, anyway,
do you see where I'm going here? Up until Bill
Clinton and then Bill Clinton. Up until Donald Trump, it

(01:25:36):
had been remarked me Milt Romney lost a race for
US Senate. John McCain lost that presidential primary in two
thousand before it became the nominee. John Carrey lost a
race for I think it was lieutenant. He ran early
in the in the eighties and lost, and it was
an important lesson to him. So it was there was

(01:26:01):
always I think that there's something that you learn that humility.
I prefer an elected official that's lost an election once
because I think that they understand that they have to
listen when the voters are speaking. And usually a somebody

(01:26:25):
who has lost once is more likely to pay attention
when poles turn against them versus somebody who's never lost. Now,
you could say, just in theory, Donald Trump should have
learned a lot from twenty twenty. But if you refuse
to acknowledge that you lost, you learn nothing from it. Right,
It's I think Paxton will be a bit overconfident. I

(01:26:51):
think that there will, and you know, my guess is
he's going to live more in his grassroots on this.
But I also think we ought to be a bit
show some humility here. He clearly has a hold over
his constituents. A question I have is can he grow

(01:27:11):
his movement and how will he handle It's one thing
to be a Texas feeding frenzy to another thing to
get the national attention that he's going to get. Now.

(01:27:33):
Maybe he thrives in it, but he couldn't melt down too.
So if I were him, I'd lean into the movement
that got me there, and I'd be running as an outsider.
I'd be portraying Tall, Rico and Cornyn as part of

(01:27:56):
the same movement in some form, and I'd be staying
the outsider. I don't know if he will. He's got
his own financial issues and then don't forget, he's got
his own court cases that are all starting to pile up.
He's still got his divorce, all this stuff. So that's
why he probably needs to lean on those that have

(01:28:16):
stuck with him through all of this, because in some
ways they're a cocoon and there will be a bit
of a safety net for him and may be enough. Right.
I mean, I think we've all underestimated Paxton's hold on
his on his voters. I know, I know I have,
and I'm not going to underestimate them again. But you know,

(01:28:42):
I will say this, I think the Paxton strategy. If
you're not for Paxton, but you're just want to stop
Talla Rico, you're asking the broader impact of negative campaigning
and races like this, it will be a battle of
the bases. What you will likely see is that the
more the swing voters are going to be as likely

(01:29:03):
to skip the race as they are to pick aside.
And I think that's why Paxton would prefer a just
a race to the bottom, because in a race to
the bottom, their base is slightly bigger than the Democratic base.
Can Talla Rico keep his keep that sort of optimistic cheerfulness.

(01:29:25):
I think it's its only path to victory is to
literally zag. If he if he sort of fights fire
with fire, it undermines whatever identity he has established for himself.
By the way, that may not work either, But I
know just going negative ad for negative ad isn't going
to work because they're basic because because that is a

(01:29:46):
universal way that those campaigns play out. What we don't
know is does does running the turn the page? Aren't
you exhausted? I'm not going to respond to every negative
with a negative probably, I mean it fits his brand.
You always should run the campaign that fits who you
are best, and I think that fits somebody who's who

(01:30:09):
fashions themselves A Sunday pastor, Brent and Phoenix, Arizona Rights, Hey,
aspiring member the Five Question Club. Well, Brent, are we close? No,
we're not. You said this is your second attempt. All right,
two down, three to go. I agree with you on
expanding the House, but wonder if something like the Wyoming
rule might be more realistic path in today's environment. Do

(01:30:30):
you see that as a viable step towards better representation
or does it run into similar challenges? I don't know
if I've cut off your question by the time I
saw it. Of what you meant like the Wyoming rule? Like?
Is Wyoming the baseline? Like? Why you know? What are
you gathering? Like the Wyoming rule? You know, should we

(01:30:50):
set a bar that no state should have any more
than two and a f times the voting power of
any of any other state? You know, no state should
have more than two and a half times voting power
than any other state in the electoral college? Is that
what you mean by a Wyoming rule? Look, I do

(01:31:10):
think that the best argument I would come up with
for expanding the House is to that this is designing
political power to Texas, Florida, California, and New York. And
that's two blue states and two red states. It's just
simply denying political power for big states. And it's certainly

(01:31:36):
denying political power for medium sized states too. I mean,
this system is only good for small states. It is
not good for where everybody lives. So that's you know,
but you're right, in these times, you've got to come
up with sort of an a political answer or a
nonpartisan answer. Right. That's why i'm you know, of look

(01:31:58):
that Texas and California both should share the same concerns,
right that there this system denies them voting power in Washington.
And that's in that there was a time that that
would have been enough. Maybe there needs to be more,
but what you're talking about might Maybe that's where if

(01:32:21):
you had a constitutional amendment that stipulated then certain things,
then it would force the hand of Congress to do
things like expand expand the size of the House, you know,
say by ten members for every ten million, you know,
for every ten million that the population expands, we had

(01:32:41):
to expand by ten members through a certain period of
time right, like you could do it that way. I mean,
there's all sorts of ways you could come up with
metrics that could could force the hand here. But if
I misread, if we shorthanded your question too much, if

(01:33:01):
you have a better explanation of wyoming role Brtt, please
please share. Andy from the Quad City's Rights. Hey, longtime listener,
first time email aer here. I'm currently in a production
of seventeen seventy six Nice, which got me thinking about
how some founding fathers are portrayed versus their real impact.
Do you have any lesser known figures from that era
you think deserve more credit or are often oversimplified? Best
Andy from the Quad Cities huh oh gosh. I mean,

(01:33:26):
I think you know, the more I why watch the
Ken Burns Ben Franklin thing, the more you realize Ben
Franklin's both over sort of an overrated and underrated founder
in different rays for different reasons. I think it's fair
to say all of our founders have been oversimplified and
undercomplicated a little bit. I need to put more thought

(01:33:48):
into that question. You know, I don't think John Hancock
is is. I don't know if everybody would align with
the character of John Hancock, the more they knew about
you on Hancock, right. But that is also why I
love the ken Burns American Revolution series because it it

(01:34:08):
just sort of noted that these were these were all
people that had a normal set of flaws like all
of us do. So I mean, look, I think that
I believe it or not. And this is going to
sound crazy when you say it, but if you spend

(01:34:30):
some time looking for scholarship on this person, you'll realize
what I'm talking about. I think we undervalue, under rate,
and under examine George Washington. There is this, you know,
there's this There's only been a couple of really good

(01:34:54):
books on him. And part of it is, you know,
there's always been this quiet like, well, he wasn't he
wasn't his book smart as Jefferson, you know, or or
you know that you both Adams and Jefferson were more
intellects than Washington was, whatever that was supposed to mean.
So there was sometimes a dismissiveness amongst some historians and

(01:35:16):
I think even among other others in the movement that
Washington was this great figurehead, but he really wasn't that smart,
really wasn't that bright, and I just think that we
we sort of we both lionize him and certainly make
him this incredibly large figure when we're little kids, but

(01:35:41):
we don't spend enough time on him intellectually. And I
don't think we've you know, I think you know, I mean,
his Pharaoell address is more brilliant than you know, get.
It gets more brilliant to me the older I get,
so you know, it's it's I know you may think
I'm doing a cop out here, but I really think

(01:36:03):
that Washington is sort of you know, the you know,
the guy who you know, the actual founding father of
the of you know who many people would put in
the you know, literally on the Mount Rushmore right of
our founding president. He's I think the most famous person

(01:36:26):
people don't know a lot about. And I don't think
we weirdly enough study Washington enough. I feel like we
study Jefferson and Madison and Adams even and and I don't.
And again, part of it is that the scholarship on
on Washington is I don't want to say it's simple.
Simple is not the right word I'm looking for. It's

(01:36:47):
just it's it's not as rich and dramatic and as
controversial as Jefferson right and so right. Jefferson just has
a lot more interesting country. You know, we love contradict
It's more fun to write about contradictions than than to
write about somebody who was pretty easy to explain. And

(01:37:07):
I guess that's why we, in a weird way, have
fewer books on Washington than we do on Jefferson. Why
there's sometimes less debate about Washington than Jefferson. Anyway, there's
just a it is I've I've I've every time I
read a new Washington biography, IM always feeling like, is

(01:37:30):
there's something I and I guess it's it's that I hold,
you know, It's like it's it's this this, what there
is everything we know about Washington, what there is right,
there's no hidden this hidden that. But I've always I've
always felt that Washington is both incredibly well known. You know,

(01:37:52):
this used to be said about Harlely Clinton, the most
famous person nobody knows anything about. And I think George
Washington is this famous founding father that people know much,
people know much less about than they realize. Next question,

(01:38:15):
Ah Kevin rants Hey, I have a question about the
Catholic Church's role as a moral authority. Do you see
any real movement on issues like women in leadership, celibacy requirements,
or recognition of same sex marriage. Curious how you think
about the church's influence on these debates today. Well, it's
a good question, and it may prevent the opportunity that
I think Pope Leo has in this moment. Now. I
think Pope Leo, because he sort of shares the moral

(01:38:37):
concerns that many other people have about the Trump era,
that people will start looking to him and maybe overlook
some of these other issues that they have at the
Catholic Church. But it's pretty clear that both that Pope
Leo is going to be similar to Pope Francis, and
that he is trying to move the church from the
eighteenth century to the nineteenth century and some of these issues.

(01:39:00):
I know, I'm being a little facetious here or maybe
trying to you know, Pope Francis, you know, in the
twenty first century, tried to get the church into the
twentieth century. And maybe the argument is, you know, can
they get the church out of the early twentieth century
and into the late twentieth century with women in leadership

(01:39:21):
or letting priests marry and we'll see. I mean, I
think it's a that is going to be the other
way that plenty will judge the papacy of Pope Leo.

(01:39:43):
But if you're going to speak in basic human rights,
then having women treated as second class citizens is a
tough place to keep hanging your hat on. And so
if I look at all of the things that the
church hasn't shifted on, that could I expect the church,

(01:40:09):
maybe we'll see. I am I expect the church in
my lifetime to have women priests before they get there
on same sex marriage, before they get there on celibacy
or on priest marrying. I think some of it is
just going to be a numbers game. They need priests,

(01:40:31):
and I think they will start to tap nuns, and
then that's where this comes. It's my own speculation. Everything
is always, you know, very much incremental steps in these
institutions that are hundreds of years old. But that would
be my guess is that they would move in that direction.
Everything would be out of necessity, right, necessity of keeping

(01:40:52):
the membership going, necessity of right, different reasons. So that's
why I don't expect the movement on same sex marriage,
given how you know, this is not something that the
continent of Africa is embracing in the way that Western
the Western civilizations are, So I don't know if they
make that they made that same movement towards recognition of

(01:41:16):
same sex marriage. I'm more inclined to believe that they
equalize women in the church before they take any of
those other steps. But you know, I will also confess
that it's hard enough for me to what I'd like

(01:41:41):
to think is correctly or coherently explain American politics. Trying
to decipher the future of the Catholic Church probably belongs
to my friend mister Weigel. George Weigel's somebody I am
a long time intellect about the about the Vatican here
in many American publications, and he's certainly somebody that I

(01:42:06):
may invite on this podcast very soon because I think
he does a good job of at least explaining the
internal machinations of the organization that is the Catholic Church.
All right, last question, big fan, I've been listening for years, Yes,
even the Meat the Press podcast. I'm in the early
I'm in my early forties, and my parents, now in

(01:42:27):
their seventies, have the news on constantly which seems to
be fueling a lot of anxiety. Do you have any
advice for helping people step back from the twenty four
to seven news cycle while still staying in form Thanks
for all you do, Lenny in Ipswich, Massachusetts. Well, yeah,
you know, whether it's turn off the Fox or turn
off the MS. Right, we all have this conversation about
our parents or older relatives because they, you know, during

(01:42:52):
the day, they're looking for company. I get it. Look,
if they're sports fans, try to introduce them to the MLBP,
especially during baseball season. They have a lot because I
think a lot of times people turn the news on
for company, a little noise in the house, and you
don't just want a boring TV show or just a
rerun of something. This used to be what you know,

(01:43:16):
Oprah's popularity was sometimes just to have some noise on
instead of music in the house or whatever it is. Right, So, look,
there are other things there are you know, there's there's
sports podcasts, there's you know, now that all of us
have turned podcasts into video things, they can find something

(01:43:38):
on their interests that do this introduce them to these
ten and fifteen minute news, little updates that you get
from like, you know, whether it's a legacy news network
an independent news aggregator, you know, you can curate something

(01:43:58):
that can essentially place the cable news sort of vacuum filler,
which is what I think cable news became in a
lot of households. You're just sort of filling the air,
filling noise, keeping you company. There's a lot more interesting
people on YouTube, right, it can keep you a company,

(01:44:19):
and there's a lot of other subject areas. When I
have a day off, I used to just you know,
when I had one of those week days off and
I was at home and I was like, I will
I can keep up. I get enough of a news
feed on here and all the different things I get,

(01:44:39):
and I don't need to listen to handwringing about the
headlines all day long. But I'm in the middle of it, right,
I'm in the business. So I'm looking for in some
ways a palette cleanser. And so I've always used sports
talk as that. Although I can't stand these ESPN shows

(01:45:00):
in the daytime. I mean, the only you know, there's
PTI that's fantastic and everything else, the manufactured chat shows,
they're sort of just trying to you know, that's that's
a little much for me, so not a huge fan.
But that's what I would do, is if you've got
if your parents have another interest, well I promise you

(01:45:22):
there's a daily podcast that would scratch that interest. So
find them a couple. That's the best I can help
you with. Well, look, I've gone long on this one.
I have a you know, I had a bunch to
say about the latest on on the mL, what both
the players and the owners are putting on about baseball.
By the way, I have an interview coming up with

(01:45:43):
the owner of the Chicago Cubs later this week, Todd Ricketts.
It's mostly about a new app that he's got out
that's a way to try to cut through the partisan
noise that's out there. It's a very interesting technology and
I think it's worth a look at. But we actually
spend a few minutes talking about, you know, the likelihood

(01:46:03):
or unlikelihood of there being a workstoppage in baseball in
twenty twenty seven. I just want to I don't I
will say this. I think a salary cap is coming,
but how do you define salary cap? You know, we
could have this huge cap that eventually becomes relevant in
ten years down the road. That would be my advice

(01:46:25):
to the owners. You know, if you want to get
the players to agree to a cap, have the cap
be absurd for the next ten years. Then eventually you'll
value yourself closer to it, and then it might actually
be an acceptable cap. But it might be the best
of both worlds there for everybody. But that's thinking like
a compromiser and a rational or and a collaborator. But

(01:46:47):
who knows. And I don't want a twenty fourteen playoff.
I can get behind a sixteen team playoff. I think
I've advocated for one. I think sixteen teams is the
perfect size. Any bigger and you get teams that don't
belong any smaller, and you will always leave out a
team or two that that would have been better In

(01:47:08):
the right twelve left out probably two teams that belonged
Texas and Notre Dame. Sixteen probably would have allowed one
more team in that shouldn't have gotten in, But you'd
rather have one, you know, that's probably the right twenty
four I don't want eight and four. We don't want
four loss teams in the playoff. You really don't want
three loss teams in the playoff, and that should be

(01:47:32):
the be the be the goal, because if the regular
season starts to get diluted and and and a third
loss is accepted, but a fourth loss and literally you
can get in with a fourth loss, then what are
we even doing here? What's the point of the regular season?
It just you know, it's sort of as bad as
the NBA. And again, nobody wants to become the NBA

(01:47:52):
regular season, right is there? Sick? It is all? It
is all it is. All it did was decided who
hosted Game seven in the Western Conference, and it turns
out that home court advantage didn't matter. So I'll admit
i had a lot more in both. But I'm mindful
of your time. I'm mindful of my own. I appreciate

(01:48:14):
how much time and devotion you do give to the
hard work that gets put into this podcast. And with that,
I'll see you in forty eight hours with a new episode.
But hopefully i'll also see you Tuesday night for our
live election coverage of the June second primaries. And this
is a big one, California. We're gonna be on for Atlite.
We're gonna be on for a good four hours we're

(01:48:36):
gonna go past midnight on the East Coast. Trust me,
We're not gonna go days, which is how long it
actually will take the count all the ballots in California.
But we're gonna go past midnight and then some and
have a nice good West Coast flavor to our election
life coverage on Tuesday. So if I don't see you
Tuesday night, then i'll see you Wednesday morning. But either way,

(01:48:59):
i'll see that. Thanks for listening, and until we upload
again

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Chuck’s Commentary - Character Is Destiny In Politics + Iran Has Turned Into A Costly Stalemate

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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 - Character Is Destiny In Politics + Iran Has Turned Into A Costly Stalemate