Chuck’s Commentary - Democratic Dysfunction On Full Display + Branding Protest As “Hating America” Is Un-American - The Chuck ToddCast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hello, They're happy Thursday, and welcome to another episode of
the Chuck Podcast, our third for the week. Yes, I
am wrapping up my visit to the financial capital of
the world here in New York City. Gotten quite a
bit done, learned quite a bit at these various industry

(00:26):
summits that I'm learning both on digital media and in
the world of investment, in the world of the media space.
Just wanted to be a bit transparent about what I'm
up to here. I actually have a notebook of items
I want to get to sort of I'm gonna sit
here and say, have one giant theme to me, it's
stuff that I want to alert you guys to that
I want to surface sort of things that I think

(00:48):
are percolating, that are coming around the corner. But we're
going to go ahead and start with a quick update
on the shutdown. And I say that because I don't,
you know, there's really nothing to update. As my friend
and Brendan Buck tweeted our early on Wednesday, he said,
there was not a single story I think it was
in the Wall Street Journal of the Washington Post about
any update on the shutdown, and it was just it's

(01:11):
it is not having a impact in the larger media space.
And again it goes back to one reason. You know,
we are now organized. Whether that's good or I'd saying
this is a good thing, this is just the reality.
But the entire political media ecosystem is really organized around Trump,

(01:34):
and Trump's just not engaged at all in this shutdown.
My friend George Conden, who works over at National Journal,
he's been there a long time, long enough that he
and I were colleagues at National Journal before I left
to go to NBC. He did some terrific analysis on
sort of the lack of engagement by this president on
the shutdown issue, and he compared it to the big

(01:58):
shutdown that happened in his first term and how engaged
he was in there. So I want to read a
little bit from Condon's story here in National Journal this week.
Since the current shutdown began in October one, Condon rights
Trump has met in the Oval Office with the leaders
of Canada and Finland. He's traveled to Israel in Egypt,
and he's meeting this week with the presidents of Argentina

(02:18):
and Ukraine. He has not met with any Democratic Party leaders.
While the trip Israel in Egypt made a lot of
sense no matter what. It is worth noting that Trump
is also planning later this month to go to Malaysia,
South Korea, and Japan. These are more routine trips. Their
meetings with these various international associations at the United States

(02:41):
dabbles in the Asia Pacific Economic Conference APEK. It's known
as the Association of Southeasts Asian Nations. These are all
places that the United States likes to be a part of.
They're basically collections of Asian countries that want to put
a check on China in some form or another. What's
interesting is that these summits always take place around this

(03:04):
time of year, and if we were in a government shutdown,
both Bill Clinton Barack Obama didn't go to these events.
If they were in the middle of a shutdown. Both
of them thought it was a bad political look if
they were continuing the business of the country overseas, spending
money overseas while people weren't getting paid there. And Donald
Trump himself during and this is where Condon did some

(03:26):
terrific analysis. In the thirty five days between December twenty second,
twenty eighteen and the reopening of the government on January
twenty fifth, twenty nineteen, Donald Trump tweeted. Back then he
was tweeting there was no truth Social. He hadn't been
deplatformed from Twitter yet. He tweeted thirty seven times about
the shutdown, and the post projected a mix of frustration

(03:48):
and sense of urgency. That was the thirty five days.
So far, we've been in this shutdown for fourteen days.
Trump has posted only seven times on the shutdown on
truth Social, and he's only posted twice since the second day,
so twelve of those were in the first essentially thirty
six hours. But since then he has posted thirty two
times on foreign policy, sixteen times in the Middle East,

(04:10):
five times on the Nobel Peace Prize, eleven times on
his grievances with the FBI, the Russia probe, and Jim Comy.
It goes back to what I've said now for I
don't know three straight podcast openings, which is this is
going nowhere until Democrats find a way to engage Trump.

(04:31):
The congressional Republicans cannot negotiate without Trump in the room.
They have no standing, right. Mike Johnson has no He
cannot do this without Donald Trump. He has never been
able to pass a vote without the help of Donald
Trump among House Republicans. So there is you know, the
only entity to negotiate with is the White House, and

(04:52):
the fact that Democrats can't get Trump to engage. Trump
doesn't want to engage. Whatever it is. This and again,
and I will say the same thing that I said
twenty four hours ago. Every day now that this goes
is one day less that this becomes politically. You know,
I know that Democrats think they've won something out of

(05:14):
this so far, and I think that you can. I
think it's clear that they've made healthcare a bit more
front and center on the mines, and we're now seeing
other reasons why healthcare. You're going to see the premium
notices go out on November first. That will get some attention.
It's why I think actually that the Democrats probably made
a tactical mistake in triggering this shutdown when they did.

(05:37):
I think they would have been better off triggering the
shutdown after those premium hike notices went out of November first,
not before. But the problem they have now is every
day this goes on, more damage is done to the
federal government. Russell Voyd fires more people, targets more blue areas,
I want to get to that in a minute, and

(06:00):
Creds may start to lose sort of the momentum that
they believe they were getting on the healthcare issue. Again,
Democrats are terrible about declaring victory. They don't know how
to ever act like they've won something and when they're
actually they're actually winning this argument. But the longer they
go they will not They will lose whatever they've gained here,

(06:21):
and you can kind of tell they're kind of flailing here.
I don't think Schumer knows how to get Trump in
the room. That's clearly a problem. Jeffreys doesn't. So if
they're the two lead negotiators here, it's in that sense,
if you can't get in the room to negotiate with
the person you have to negotiate, you're not doing a
very good job leading here. So this is I don't

(06:45):
think this is going to age. Well, we'll see, but
again Trump's not engaged. That's a huge issue. But I
want to point out something this sort of the way
that Trump administration is targeting things and and sort of
how stuff their math is. So we've seen that Russell
Voyd omb he's trying to essentially cut programs or cancel

(07:08):
funding or suspend funding. And it's targeting blue areas, right,
They're targeting the Democratic agencies, the Democratic this prominent geographic
areas they've targeted, or you know, funding for things in
and around LA County, funding for things in and around Chicago,
and funding for things in and around New York. Well,

(07:29):
one of the things I'd love to remind and I
and I just did a data deep dive on this.
So Donald Trump received one point one eight nine million
votes in LA County. Okay, Yes, Kamala Harris got one
point three million more than him. Okay, it is a
blue county. But the raw number of Republican votes that

(07:53):
Donald Trump received in LA County one point one eight
nine million. That is more raw vote than he received
in fifty states that he carried Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada,
North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

(08:13):
There are more Trump voters that they're punishing in LA
County than any of those fifteen states that I talked about.
This administration's inability to understand that they're supposed to be
the president of the entire country. When they start nitpicking
at quote unquote blue areas or blue states, they're punishing

(08:34):
a lot of people that supported them, a lot of
their own supporters who have it comes across as if
they have no respect for the system and no respect
for some of their own voters. And by the way,
in Cook County he received over five one hundred and
eighty thousand votes. Well, in case you're wondering, that's more

(08:55):
raw vote, all right, he got crushed in Cook County.
It is a blue county, but total was more than
the raw votes he got out of Alaska, out of Idaho,
out of Montana, out of Nebraska, out of North Dakota,
out of South Dakota, out of Utah, and out of Wyoming.
That's eight states. It's it is, it is sort of.

(09:20):
It really is a bit self defeating. And by the way,
you want to add more states to that. He received
over eight hundred thousand votes in the five boroughs of
New York City. When you put that together, and that
would mean more votes than what he got in Alaska,
more votes than what he got in Kansas, more votes
and what he got in Mississippi, more votes than what

(09:41):
he got in West Virginia. So you see the point
I'm making here, This sort of what they think the
own the Libs move is right, They're just attacking hundreds
of thousands of their own voters. Now maybe they think, oh, well,
this will teach those Trump voters from living in these

(10:03):
blue areas, I guess. Or maybe they're trying to punish
the Democratic voters and get whatever whatever they think they're accomplishing.
They're not accomplishing with this. So it is this is
this may unfortunately end up motivating Democrats to keep sticking

(10:23):
this out because they are it is triggering the Trump
administration to do a lot of dumb things. Here the
House Republicans are behaving bizarrely. Here Mike Johnson's inability to
swear in a duly elected member of Congress in a
now certified election down from Arizona at Alita Grialva, the

(10:44):
daughter of Raoul Garalva, who passed away a few months ago.
I have to tell you I am not the quickest
person to jump down a conspiracy theory hole. Don't get
me wrong. I'll let me a good conspiracy theory. But
it's hard to now now I understand why all the
Epstein folks are saying, Hey, what are they afraid of?

(11:07):
Are they really afraid of seeing this vote forced? I mean,
it's a it's a headst Obviously, Mike Johnson's trying to
prevent putting Republicans on the record on these Epstein files, right,
they don't. And that's there's no doubt there's something here
where Republican leadership is petrified of forcing because guess what

(11:29):
this If the Epstein vote does hit the floor of
the House, it's going to get four hundred votes because
you're gonna have all the Democrats vote for it, and
you're going to have at least one hundred if not more,
Republicans vote for it because they don't want to be
on the record. It's somehow not voting it. And it's
actually a safe vote because the Senate isn't ever going
to you know, this is just simply a vote in

(11:51):
the House. So it is the only motivation I can
see if Epstein really is the motive, And I don't
know any other reason other than Epstein at this point, right,
Johnson is really sort of losing his rationale. He keeps
changing his rationale, so it's making it's making even the
biggest skeptic like me think, wow, you guys are this

(12:13):
paranoid about the Epstein files vote. Unbelievable? So what is
the paranoia. It is about a whole bunch of Republicans
not wanting to upset Donald Trump who doesn't want this
vote to happen. That's pretty clear. And we know many
of these House Republicans have been so public in their
demand for the Epstein files to be released that they

(12:34):
that they cannot go back to there. They're afraid of
going back to their constituents and not having to do that.
So it is a it is It is fascinating to
watch this. I do think this is what happens right
the shutdowns. It's sort of like when you may think
you know how to start one, but nobody it is

(12:56):
amazing how hard it is to end one, even though
logic lee. And again this goes back to a rant
from two weeks ago. The government should never be allowed
to be put in this situation. And the fact that
the government just decides that it is going to abide
by this absurdity that we somehow aren't going to pay

(13:18):
our bills if there's a funding dispute in Congress is
no way to run It's no way to run a country,
it's no way to run a company, it's no way
to run a household. No rational person would behave this way,
but unfortunately Washington is filled with the irrational. The big thing,
one of the big moments this weekend we're going to

(13:40):
learn a lot, a little bit about sort of language
and all this stuff is the No King's protest. There's
been some really disgusting language. The Speaker of the House,
Mike Johnson, described the planned protests. I don't think it
will end before the Hate America Rally on the ball

(14:00):
on Saturday, where all the Marxist and Antifa people and
all the people who hate Trump and hate America will
be there. This idea that if you don't, if you
protest something Donald Trump does, you hate America is the
single most undemocratic thing you can actually accuse a fellow
American of doing. The whole point of being in America
is the right to disagree. We founded this country on

(14:23):
a fuck you Britain man. Yes, I'm not going to
apologize for it, but this is one of those that
this is who we are. We have the right to
flip the bird at people. We have the right to protest.
It is smack dab in the First Amendment. And one
of the dumber arguments that you hear people say is
well somebody paid for a protest, Well, who gives a shit? Sorry,

(14:45):
I get and this stuff. It's it's just this is
do you know nothing about the founding of this country
When you sit here and and essentially accuse anybody of
protesting their government as being on a American It is
the most American thing you can do, the most patriotic
thing you can do, is to protest your government, because

(15:10):
in this country it is it is a right, not
a privilege. It is a right written into our constitution.
So the behavior I'm old enough to remember when these
were the free free speech absolutionists, right, which then brings
me to the JD Vance defense of those awful telegram

(15:33):
chat techs that were released on from the young Republicans.
The whole thing is such a weird story. I mean,
first of all, it is this, Here's what's troubling, right
that these young Republicans believe there's a they've been given
a permission slip by the MAGA movement in Trump to

(15:56):
just casually talk about gas chambers and Nazis and all
all this hateful rhetoric. What's really troubling is that these
young Republicans think that this is this is okay in
the new Trump dominated Republican Party. We are in this
moment right and I connected back to the incredibly rude

(16:16):
behavior of the golf fans at best page Black. This
is we are culturally. Donald Trump has culturally changed us,
and there are many people who think the best way
to become Trump is to behave like these hooligans did.
What's interesting here is how they're all there's this weird

(16:39):
Apparently one of the guys involved says, this is part
of a long conspiracy theory. This is what the political
article noted, and this gets it to the bizarre world
of MAGA and this I think you know how the
whole lower lumer nonsense works. So one of the young
Republicans claim that the release of the chat is part
of a quote highly coordinated, year long character assassination led

(17:03):
by a guy named Gavin Wax and the New York
City Republican Club. Everything is always a conspiracy and people
sort of a grievance against them and all of this
it is it really is sort of it to me,

(17:23):
is emblematic of the culture that has been created in
this young mega movement. And what's interesting is the lack
of consistency among those that try to champion speech and
free speech right. This in some ways is you know,
you know, if you want to be anti woke, apparently
it's become a permission slip to say whatever the hell
you want about anybody, right, That is what's anti woke.

(17:45):
What's fascinating, though, is to watch people like JD Vance
trying to apologize for these for these folks, but say
that these awful things that are being said by these
young Republicans, hey it's just nothing but a college group chat.
But the leaked text from the former Virginia delegate who's
running for attorney general in Virginia, J Jones, you know

(18:07):
that those are much worse. Here's the thing. If you
believe that there should be no speech police at all,
which is what the mag of movement and Jade Vance
campaigned on and Donald Trump campaigned on. Jade Vance went
to Europe to lecture Europeans on speech. But there's and
he's always willing when somebody on his side of the

(18:28):
aisle says something stupid, They should be forgiven. When somebody
he doesn't like says something stupid, they should be prosecuted. Okay,
this is somebody who does not understand the Constitution. I
know JD. Van's Vance went to Yale Law School. I
assume Yale's going to ask for their law for their
degree back because he does not understated. He clearly didn't
pass constitutional law with with what he's doing here. But

(18:51):
what's really frustrating here is the fact is both are shameful.
The fact that Jay Jones fantasized about what he did
shameful and disqualifying. And the fact that these young Republicans
behave this way is incredibly disqualifying. And those that are
losing their jobs deserve to lose their jobs. Okay, they
need to make they do need to pay a penalty

(19:15):
for what they did. It's free speech, but nobody says
there aren't consequences for your behavior and for your speech.
But the fact that JD. Vance does not understand that
this is a culture that's being created on the right
that's celebrating the anti woke has turned into permission to
say anything and a celebration of hateful rhetoric. If you

(19:39):
don't like hateful rhetoric thrown at you, then you should
denounce hateful rhetoric that's thrown at others. And if you're
uncapable of doing that, then you're incapable of being a
leader in the United States of America. I know I'm
sort of preaching to people who understand this and those
of you that listeners sort of you guys are coming
from the rationally frustrat I assume uh is most of

(20:03):
most of the folks. But I have found all this
and I'm really concerned about what we may see from
the right in an attempt to weaponize what's said or
what's done on these protest in these protests, do I
think you know the thing is politically to me, I
think the more the Trump administration tries to denounce these protests,

(20:24):
the more energy they're going to give to them, the
more attention they're going to receive, and the more politically
problematic they're going to become. That's the irony here. The
more they the more they go after this, the the
worse off they're gonna that this, the more impactful that
they have a potential chance to be here. But it's

(20:47):
to just the lack of consistency, and I know nothing
matters anymore, right, consistency doesn't matter. Principles have been thrown
out the window. But particularly JD. Vance, who does sort
of play and intellectual, his incredible lack of consistency on
his belief system is startling and the lack of self

(21:10):
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(22:14):
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unless they win a few of the notes I want
to hit the Voting Rights Act and the Supreme Court
argument today. I know there's a lot of concern on
the left, a lot of concern among Democrats that the essentially,

(22:36):
if the rest of the Voting Rights Act gets gutted,
that this is going to be an automatic win for
Republicans in a sort of remapping of congressional seats, and
an automatic loss for Democrats. I'm not so sure. I'm
old enough. My first professional year covering American politics was
the ninety two campaign. That was a year of brand

(23:00):
new districts, and at the time, the Bush forty one
Justice Department worked pretty closely with the Congressional Black Caucus
to interpret the Voting Rights Act in such a way
to essentially try to create as many majority African American
seats as they could in the South. And the reason
this was one of those the Congressional Black Caucus wanted

(23:21):
to increase its ranks, and the Bush forty one Justice
Department wanted to pack more Democrats into pack more Democrats
into fewer districts. What would that do? So one of
my favorite examples at the time, there was eleven congressional
districts in Georgia at the time in nineteen ninety Democrats

(23:43):
had eight Democratic House seats and Republicans had three by
nineteen ninety two. In January of ninety three, I believe
it went from eight. It literally was eight three again,
eight Republican seats and three Democratic seats, and I believe
all three Democratic seats were African Geordie, African American or
at least plurality African American. So I'm not so sure

(24:06):
that this. You know, again, everybody thinks they understand how
easily they can pack, crack and pack districts, do the
hub and spoke model as we've seen, you know, But
if this idea that if if you don't have to
do a majority African American district, that this is automatically

(24:27):
going to help. If more Democratic vote gets dispersed to
more congressional districts in a given geographic area, you may
see a lot more swing seats in the in the sunbought.
This may be a lot harder to Jerrymander than many
folks are thinking today. So look a few things to
keep in mind with this Supreme Court argument. It does

(24:49):
seem as if Roberts and Kavanaugh are looking to put
an end date to the Voting Rights Act on Section two.
What does that end date look like. It's at the
end of this decade, aid right, is it a review
in another four years? Is it throwing it back to
Congress to come up with an end date. That's something else.

(25:09):
They're very good at punting, particularly Roberts in capitall. They
do like to sort of see if they can come
up with an extraordinarily narrow ruling. I can tell you this,
I don't think John Roberts wants to be make feeling
as if he is deciding the midterm elections. So I
anticipate this is going to be narrow. But another thing

(25:30):
to keep in mind. If this ruling comes out when
most Supreme Court rulings come out, which is late June
early July, and it does have these dramatic changes into it,
it's not going to impact twenty twenty six, it's just
too so there'll be too many filing deadlines will have passed,
you won't be able to see that this probably is
more likely to impact twenty twenty eight, and frankly is

(25:52):
more likely. I could even you could even see in
that this will apply to the next census, to the
next reapportionment, which would take place census in twenty thirty
in the next reapportionment in twenty thirty one. So keep
in mind those deadlines. And do you know, I, like
I said, I'm not as I'm not as convinced that

(26:13):
this is as clean of a political victory for the right. Now.
There may be other issues. Representation may go down, you know,
those are some our serious issues that we need to
have a conversation about. But if you're just playing a
numbers game here, I'm not sure this is going to

(26:33):
be as damaging to the Democrats or as helpful to
the Republicans as a lot of what I would say,
the cheap commentary has come. You know, there's just a
lot of so much of our reporting and commentary just
comes from does this help the left, does it hurt
the left? Does its help the right? Doesn't hurt the right,
and you know, sometimes you just don't know. You can

(26:55):
have a larger conversation about whether do we need this anymore?
Do we not be this? We're going to have disenfranchisement
of African American voters and of African American representation, which
was the whole point of the Voting Rights Act. That
needs to be the conversation that's had. Everybody is trying
to apply it to gerrymandering and redistricting. It's why, I
tell you, if you just looked at it through the

(27:16):
data lens, this isn't as clean as the commentary is
making it seem. The other interesting news over the last
twenty four hours so yesterday I made it. At least
on Wednesday, I made a bit of a deal about
the main Senate primary, Graham Platner, the Oyster farmer, Janet Mills,

(27:37):
the sitting governor. For what it's worth, the DSCC claims
that they have not endorsed in the primary, but they
set up a joint fundraising committee with Janet Mills. Now
they've set up joint fundraising committees in the past with
multiple primary candidates. I'll be curious to watch the d
SCC here do they set up a joint fundraising committee

(27:58):
with Graham Platner, do they offer to send one to
actually put some uh to make the case that they're
not taking sides, or maybe they want donors to think, no,
we have a preference here and this is how it's
going to work. How are they going to operate in Minnesota?
How are they going to operate in Michigan. I'm curious

(28:20):
with both of those primaries where they we'll see, well,
what's going to happen in Iowa, what's going to happen
in these senate races in the Texas Senate race. So
I am curious to see if, if if the d
SEC is serious about making it clear they're not endorsing
Mills in this primary, because they're operating as if she's

(28:41):
their preferred candidate. But then Kirsten Jelburn, who is the
d SEC chair, said said that they that they would
not do an official endorsement. Look, Platner is already on
the air, the U a W has already taken sides
and isn't sing Platner in this one. And I also

(29:02):
think the fact that another New England state is going
to have another sort of generational primary and the big
one is Seth Moulten, Democratic Congressman from Massachusetts deciding the
primary Ed Marquis. This is actually the second time Ed
Markey's had to deal with a Democratic primary that was
more or less more of a generational argument, and he

(29:22):
turned it into an ideological argument. In his initial race
for the Sea against Joe Kennedy the third Joe Kennedy
was making a he was making a generational argument, and
essentially Marky Randa Kennedy's left had the backing of AOC.
In particular, he had become sort of a big champion

(29:44):
of the Green New Deal, and I think he's counting
on that this time. Seth Moulton comes from a bit
more of the of the middle, I don't know what
you call mainstream liberal versus or you know, sort of
a closer to the center than Markie is. So it's
going to be an interesting test of so Platner and Mills. Platner,

(30:06):
I think, arguably presents himself as is more populous, more
progressive than Janet Mills. In the case though, of Molten
and Markey, it's Markey that is going to make the
case he's more progressive, but he's going to be on
the older side, So it's gonna be interesting. There's a
lot of democratic groups out there calling for generational change.
The question is is it generational or is it ideological?

(30:30):
The Markey Molten primary is going to test how many
of these young groups are actually more focused on ideological
purity than generational change. If Molten gets the same support
that Platner gets from many of these groups, then maybe
it really is generational. But if Markey and Platner have

(30:51):
more endorsements in common then than than than Molten, uh,
then then if you know, if it's it's sort of
sort of if Moulten and Mills have sort of more
of the same endorsements than Platner and Markey or whatever
that works out, then you'll know that this is more ideological.
So it's going to be fascinating to watch to watch

(31:13):
that Molten candidacy. There two other nuggets I want to
mention before letting the weekend go. One is back in
Virginia a G two. Both are having to do with
TV ads that I really would like you guys to
take a look at. One is a new ad from
the Republican Attorney General in Virginia, Jason Mires addressing Abigail

(31:37):
Spaanberger voters. And what's interesting here is so in the
Virginia Governor's race, Winston Earl Sars, who's basically thrown spaghetti
at the wall to try to make to try to
pick up ground on Spamburger, has been desperately trying to
use the texting controversy of the AG's race to try
to make look like Spamberger is somehow supportive, won't denounce

(31:57):
Jones enough. But guess what. The Mira's campaign has obviously
decided Spamberger's already has got this race in the back.
So they've got an ad out that essentially says, hey, look,
Spanberger refuses to endorse j Jones, and they play clips
from the debate where she will not reiterate her endorsement

(32:18):
for Jay Jones. She's asked multiple times during the debate,
and she will not. She says it is up to
everyone's individual decision on how they're going to vote in
that race. Essentially, it was Spanberger giving her permission slip, going,
you know what, I'm not vouching for this guy. I'm
certainly not going to put my campaign in jeopardy to
help out this guy. And she made that clear during

(32:39):
the debate. She didn't say don't vote for him, but
she didn't say to vote for him. Now you got Winston.
Merl Sears' campaign is trying to say, aha, it means
she secretly supports them. Jason Miaris Republican Attorney Jay are
going aha, See she doesn't. She's giving you a permission slip.
The ad is addressed to Spanburger voters, essentially saying, look,

(33:02):
she's giving you she may not be voting for him.
She's not comfortable with it. You don't have to be
comfortable with it either. It's a fascinating ad. It is
a subtle way of Mirs throwing winsome Earl Sears under
the bus, going look, we know she can't win. We
know who the next governor's going to be. So hey,
Abigail Spamberger, voters, are you sure you want this guy?

(33:25):
J Jones is the chief law enforcement officer anyway. A
fascinating development in that race, and frankly kind of predictable
because it did seem it some I've said this before.
If the governor's race were closer, Spamberger would have called
for him to get out of the race. I think
the fact that it isn't closer. She's trying to not
engage in that issue, or engage in it as little

(33:47):
as she possibly can. And now in some ways Mirs
has just inoculated her because he's going to be up
with an ad that's probably going to have more money
behind it than what Winston Earl Series is. If you're
the in Earl Series campaign, you hate this ad. You're
frustrated because it is essentially me are is giving Spamberger

(34:08):
a pass and in some ways inadvertently praising the fact
that she refuses to endorse j Jones. So it really
does undermine whatever last minute strategy the Winston Earl Series
campaign thought was going to work for them. And then
one other ad I want to alert you to because
it it is, and yes it's you know, I have
a feeling that if somebody wanted to develop a drinking

(34:30):
contest with my podcast, it would be how often he
mentions Florida. Well, I'm about to mention Florida, So drink.
There is a new Senate candidate that jumped in the race,
a gentleman by the name of Hector Muhika. He is Venezuela.
He has worked with Google in the past, and it's

(34:51):
he's got this personal video that he's put out and
he's an and what's interesting to me. I think his
background potentially is interesting and we'll see if he can
get traction. And he's been he was a Google he
worked in Google phil philanthropy for a while, handing out
Google money. My guess is he must have some of

(35:13):
his own. We'll see if he's going to use some
of his own. But what I wanted to alert you
were sort of two policy hits that were AI related
that he used in this. As you know, a few
weeks ago, I said, I have a feeling that come
twenty twenty eight, the most animating issue that you're not
going to be able to run for president and not

(35:34):
have a some sort of answer to a voter concern
about AI job displacement. Right, fear of AI job displacement,
whether it's a real thing or not by twenty twenty
eight won't matter. The fear of it is going to
be an issue. Well, this Muhika announcement video touches on
it in a couple of ways that I hadn't seen.

(35:56):
So he attacks Ashley Moody, who's currently who is the
appointed senator to replace Marco Rubio, who, of course has
been who's the Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, head
of the Archives, and maybe the chief dog walker two.
I'm not quite sure what other jobs that Trump has
made him have on that front. But when he could

(36:16):
hit her and said she is basically on the side
of the AI. You know that she cheered on the
federal job cuts which put clean water and all this
stuff in danger. She is for using AI to get
rid of human jobs. She is for AI to set

(36:37):
medicare pricing. I found it to be an interesting hit,
and it was clearly here's the Google exec using fear
of AI as an attack. I don't think he got
it quite right. For what it's worth, I think AI
using AI itself is sort of a double edged sword.

(36:58):
I think those who know know what AI is are
sort of are a sort of tech optimists, and you
don't want to be seen as the candidate not on
the side of progress a more. But I do think
an older electorates are going to be a bit skeptical
and fearful of AI. And the smarter way to probably

(37:19):
go about this is to say, do you want a
computer deciding what you're what the pricing is on medicare
or do you think you know or do you think
that you know human beings should be involved in those decisions.
Do you want a computer deciding whether your insurance covers this,
or do you think human beings ought to be involved
in that decision. I think talking about it as a
computer rather than using the phrase AI probably will make

(37:41):
it more effective. But the real reason I'm learning to
this ad is I think this is this is my canarios.
It's the first one I've seen in a Senate race
in twenty twenty six to start to put AI in
the mainstream political conversation and fuse it with healthcare pricing,

(38:02):
fuse it with job displacement. I have a feeling he
will be the first that this is. He's not going
to be alone in using AI this way. So again,
take a look at it, see how he did it.
I Like I said, I think if you're a political
strategist here trying to trying to figure out how do
you talk about AI without sounding anti progress, there are

(38:26):
probably ways to do it that just talk in the
form do you want a computer deciding these things? Or
do you want a human being who understands the impact
on your life making these decisions. That is a conversation
that I think voters do want to have. And I
go back, I think that in a larger sense, I

(38:48):
think the big the release of the Sora video app. Right,
We're already two weeks into it, and it feels like
you can't trust any video now that you see on
social media. It is going to put a premium on
human interaction, live in person interaction, and even perhaps in
the digital realm, being at least live streaming at any

(39:10):
one time, but the premium. I did this when I
was doing this talk at this industry conference earlier this week.
I asked for a show of hands, how many of
you would pay extra if you knew you could get
a human customer service rep. And literally two thirds, This
is a crowd of about five hundred people. Two thirds

(39:30):
of people put their hands up. It is I do
think this is why I'm weirdly optimistic about all about Right,
the unintended consequence of AI advancement may be reminding people
the importance of human connectivity. And if that ends up
being the unintended consequence of the rise of AI, is

(39:54):
that so bad? If we end up deciding, hey, the
human element is more valuable than ever that, my friends
would be serious progress. Well, I hope you enjoyed that

(40:19):
tour of the world with my friend Mike McFall, and
do get the book. Yes it's a readable book. Yes
it's a big book. Okay, both things can be true.
And it's a good long holiday weekend set of reading.
So maybe it's something you think about for either your
the Turkey week or the end of the year holidays.

(40:40):
All right, let's do some questions and then I'll do
my little college football preview for the week as Chuck.
This comes from Chase c Little Rock, Arkansas. Anyways. Well
after another derailed Arkansas Razorback football season. Sigh, my uncle
Joe concur, I've shifted my attention to the new season

(41:03):
of The Morning Show. Giving your experience in the industry,
I'm curious how closely does the show reflect the inner
workings of a real network news operation. Is it anywhere
near reality? Pure dramatized fiction. Would love to hear your take.
Oh man, all right, you're gonna get my whininess about
this stuff. It is. It is more fiction than real.

(41:25):
Do they get you know? I would argue in the
first season you know, and look, I'm never, never a
fan of these shows as much that involve things that
involve entities that I've actually been a part of or
have covered. Right, you know, the West Wing used to
frustrate me because it is just not how Washington worked.

(41:49):
It is. It is Veep right, that is more likely,
certainly at least how the how, the how, how how
Washington politicians behave and how they really are. Veep is
more accurate. And it doesn't matter the party of the person.
The sort of the lack of self awareness, the the

(42:12):
narcissism that Julia Louis Dreyfus's character emits is all very
much in line. You talk to any political operative left
and right and they would say, oh, yeah, Veep is
much closer. So, you know, I used to because I
do think some people watch it and think this is
the way it should be, and I just would argue,

(42:34):
the West Wing has never been that way. It is
literally a utopian version of how life works, or actually
life never has worked, at least in the political sense.
And I would argue with the you know, I felt
a lot of the Sorkin work, which I love, Right,
It's just like I love a few good men. But
I don't know the jag world that well, and I'm

(42:54):
sure it doesn't work that way in real life, right
that Tom Cruise is going to, you know, bendering away
at Colonel Jessop and all of that. So I just
I'm just, you know, I'm suspect on the Morning Show.
It is based loosely in a book that was written
by Brian Stelter about the Morning Show Wars. So what

(43:17):
I would say is that there was a time when
there was these outsized personalities. There were the executives behind
the scenes who felt that they were star makers. We
will designate you an anchor and you must leave, you know,
that sort of thing. And there was some truthiness that
that is the way it is, but it is really

(43:38):
more of a twentieth century phenomenon. It led into the
twenty first century. I mean the I to this day
don't know if Matt Lauer made the amount of money
that was reported about him. For those of us even
within it was a shocking amount, and it certainly made
a lot of people related to me assume that I

(43:59):
was far wealthier than than I am, or I made
far more money than I actually did. It was always
an I'll be honest, it was a bit uncomfortable. How
often it's like, what am I going to do? Go
out there and say, no, that's just you know. I
did get a piece of advice once from somebody that said,
if you never want, if you never want your how
much you make to leak in the public, don't tell

(44:20):
anybody because the minute you tell one person somebody is
you know, outside your basically immediate family, it's going to
get out. And the fact is, nobody's ever accurately had
my ever had because I've never told anybody. I refuse.
I don't tell any extended family member, Nobody, nobody's business,
nobody should. These larger contracts, a lot of times there

(44:45):
are people that want to brag that they were able
to get that amount of money for somebody. So maybe
it's an agent, maybe it's a lawyer, maybe it's whatever.
Sometimes it's the principle themselves think that it somehow makes
them a bigger star if they're seen as being worth
a certain amount of money. So I would say what

(45:05):
the Morning Show captures sort of what that world was
like when I first entered it in twenty eight, twenty
oh seven, twenty eight and twenty oh nine. But literally,
by the time of the end of the Great Recession
in twenty twelve and twenty thirteen, the place stopped. You know,
it was sort of it is, you know, you stopped

(45:26):
having the larger than life anchors who could get executives fired.
I did see that in my early days. So, you know,
the way to watch the morning show is this is
the way that this world worked for about the first
decade of the twenty first century. This is not how

(45:47):
the world of Today's show works or Good Morning America.
You know, I'm not saying that there isn't some attempt
in the world of Page six and some of these
other gossip columns to try to create drama where there
isn't any, but it has doesn't have near the amount
of drama because frankly, the stakes have never been lower. Right,
everybody's losing audience. The fight for exclusives isn't the same anymore.

(46:09):
But you know, if you were asked me, when is
the morning show sort of peak? Sort of the zeitgeist
of it that it's trying to capture in reality is
somewhere Serkha, I would basically say the peak morning show
power was probably mid nineties to twenty to twenty twelve,

(46:33):
and in that sense that that culture which the Morning
Show still seems to lean on is that. But I
will make a confession I won't watch it. I watch
enough to understand where they're going, because I don't even
want to see how they're trying to portray people that

(46:54):
I know and they're not portraying them correctly. I don't
even want to get into that game, and so it
is kind of why I kind of I'm not a
viewer of the show anyway. All right, next question comes
from mattam. Hey love the new podcast. I come for
the political analysis and stay for the college football talk.
I appreciate saying that there's more college football is coming up.

(47:15):
In a few minutes. You mentioned how the new rules
have made FBS football feel more like the NFL. But
what are your thoughts on fcs and Division two and
three programs as the truer representation of college athletics. My
alma mater, Presbyterian College is a great example. For years
of struggle, they've turned things around and are now six
and oh, proving that good leadership and love of the
game still matter. Matt, m Look, I do think you're

(47:36):
going to see. It's going to be interesting about the
way D three works and actually how D three could
end up being sort of for the love of the
game division on that front, and obviously with some D
two in that. But I emphasize D three because my

(47:57):
beloved University Miami Hurricanes won the D three hockey championship
and they're a W REC team. They never actually are.
They don't play, they're not a Division one team. They
don't have an on site facility to practice in or
anything like that. I think the I think there will
be somewhere something in between REC and this professionalized minor

(48:22):
league football that's being created, right which will you know,
I think you're going to see a whole bunch of
Division I schools go down to D three. There won't
be scholarships, and so it will be more of the
for the love of the game type of stuff, and

(48:43):
I you know, in that look, sports is still important
to alumni. Sports is still I'm very friendly with the
president of GW where I went. She's new president, Ellen Gramberg.
I'm biased. I think she's terrific. I think she's been
a breath of fresh air for the university. She views
sports as a way to build community. It's look, it's

(49:05):
there's a financial cost to it if you want to
be competing on that division IE level, and there's always
some set of donors that want to do that. But
she also believes that there's you know, wouldn't be a
surprise if you see a lot of the mid major
conferences sort of get cut in half because schools decide
they don't want to try to keep up financially to

(49:25):
try to be you know, even just mid level relevant
and Division I college basketball, for instance, and instead drop
down to D three and if you can still keep
a culture, I mean, because that sports does create community
on college campuses and content and that is part of
the student experience and it's becoming an important part of
recruiting students to apply to schools. So I'm hopeful. I

(49:51):
want it to be that. I want to have that nostalgia,
But I wonder if we start to see something that's
a little more that you have. And I'd love to
see the NCAA change these rules. I think every school
should be able to find something their Division one in
and right now, I think you can be Division one

(50:12):
in one sport and then and then Division three and
everything else. I think you have that in hockey, there's
a I think Colorado College is one of those, if
I if I'm not mistaken, I'd like to see that
more loosened up a little bit where you pick and
shows it. You know, because you're you're going to have
certain sports that maybe you have the alumni financial network

(50:33):
to support to be Division one, and then certain sports
that you don't, but you still want to have students
feel as if there's something to play for and compete
with and have in the world of Division three. I'd
love to see a little more flexibility there. I think
it's a way to sort of keep up the spirit
of amateur athletics and at the same time embrace this
new world that's going to that is the reality of

(50:57):
of of the revenues, the revenues generating sports in college.
All right, next question. Two part question here comes from
John from Frisco, Texas. I'm learning more about Frisco, another
one of these growing ex serb suburbs of the Dallas
area of the Metroplex. Anyway, two part question. Love the

(51:18):
show and have followed the podcast from your Meet the
Press days. Given Greg Abbot's enthusiasm for supporting the Trump
administration by sending the Texas guard to Chicago. Do you
think that the Texas governor is using the national notoriety
as a launching point towards twenty twenty eight in the
Republican nomination. You've mentioned that members of the administration maybe
I'm twenty twenty eight, but may not have as much
of a resume to run on. Would Abbot be more

(51:39):
formidable in the primary? Also, what sorts of other non
political podcasts do you listen to? I think you mentioned
some economics ones. Would you name some of them here? Thanks?
Love the show. Go Caines John from Frisco, Texas. So, look,
I think Abbot wants to be would like to try
to run for president. I think Dave Carney, his chief
political advisor, who I've known forever, one of the savvier

(51:59):
republic strategists out there, has some unique New Hampshire ties,
and he could certainly help Abbot there. I just don't
know if Abbot's going to be able to be I
don't know what his lane is, right. You know, one
of the stories that I meant to bring up at
the start of this podcast that I didn't get to

(52:22):
was the story about how Christy Nomes government paid ad
campaign praising you know, sort of praising President Trump for
the elevated deportations. It's funny the coverage of it is
being portrayed as you know, this ad campaign to support

(52:42):
the Trump administration. I look at it as a taxpayer
funded ad campaign to promote Christy Nome for president in
twenty twenty eight. The point is is that you have
Christy Nome wanting to run for president, Tulsey Gabbert wants
to run for president, RFK Junior wants to run for president,
Marco Rubio wants to do it. Maybe he joins as

(53:03):
a ticket with JD Vance. What what do Donald Trump
Junior Eric Trump end up doing? I think they both
have some interesting ambition. Is twenty eighth the year that
they try to execute it? The point is is that
and then you have Rand Paul and Glenn Younkin who
are clearly going to not run as MAGA candidates. All
these other candidates I mentioned are all going to try

(53:24):
to be in the Magaline. What is Abbot going to do? Right?
Abbott in some ways has succeeded in Texas politics because
he's been He's been somebody that hasn't been seen as
on one side or the other in this intra party
war that is happening in Texas. Right, Cornyn v. Paxton
in the Senate primary is actually more than about John

(53:45):
Cornyn and more than you know, sort of a maga
versus the rhinos, whatever you want to to describe that.
If you're if you're on the snarky right, you know,
it was it was a Republican controlled House of State
House or representatives in tech is that impeached Ken Paxton, Right,
it was. This has been a bipartisan effort, but it's

(54:05):
really been sort of a divide inside the Texas Republican Party.
And Abbott you know, is at times nervous about the
Ken Paxton and Dan Patrick wing. Dan Patrick the lieutenant governor,
and in Texas, the lieutenant governor in some ways has
more actual policy power than the governor, being the president

(54:27):
of the Senate and really sort of very much has
has a lot more influence at times on the legislature
than the governor does. But Patrick's clearly to Habbit's right,
Paxton clearly Tobbits right. Abbott definitely you know, came up
more through was an ag during the Rick Perry came
up through sort of the Bush and Perry years of
the Republican Party, and Perry, all you might say, is
slightly more conservative than w I mean, you know, Perry

(54:51):
is never you know, this is the guy that once
called Donald Trump a cancer on conservatism. We used to
run these clips so often. I used to know them
cancer on conservatism that he said multiple times the day
he dropped out of the race, and an attempt to
consolidate an anti Trump candidate back in the twenty sixteen race,

(55:11):
remember he ran twice. He was a front runner for
about two days until he couldn't figure out which which
of the three agencies he wanted to eliminate, and that
sort of went the campaign went south there. So I
just don't know if Abbot has a as a as
an easy lane. I think Abbot only becomes a viable

(55:32):
candidate if MAGA is seen as a broken ideology or
as a as a net negative in the Republican Party
in twenty twenty eight. What's the likelihood of that, right?
I think, I definitely think Abbot's itching to do something

(55:53):
else and he wants to run for president. But I
you know, I just I don't know what he doesn't.
He's not comfortably mega. He tries to be Mega adjacent,
but he's also you know, he does. He does end up.
I think he's a closet Chamber of Commerce Republican who

(56:14):
is trying to play mega and every once in a
while that comes through. So I don't see it. That
doesn't mean he won't try. He's going to want to
do it. You know, he would be the third straight
Texas governor to try to do this. W did it.
Perry ran twice and it didn't go well, and you'd

(56:36):
have Abbot there. Abbitt's on the verge of Actually, Rick
Perry's the longest serving governor, and now Abbot, if he
wins this reelection, is going to end up surpassing that mark.
So I'm a I'm I'm a bit I'm a bit
more skeptical. So you're asking me my podcasts, how much
do I confess trying to see here? How much do

(56:57):
I confess to my some of these gambling podcasts that
I listened to, But you're asking what I listened to.
So I listened to Simmons, I listened to Kornheiser. Their
pals during football season. There's a couple of I like
the guys at the Action Network. Their football previews some
of the best. There's I can't even I keep forgetting

(57:21):
the guys. He goes by his last name his last
name only. I'm drawing a blank on it. I think
it's Sharky or Stucky. Excuse me. Sharky's another friend of mine,
a guy named Stucky. I enjoy his football previews. I
think they're very good. Other podcasts that I enjoy I

(57:44):
listened to something the White House sixteen hundred Sessions. This
is basically the White House Historical Association. They always have
some fun sort of history nuggets about presidents. They have
one unpresidential Pets that I have found myself enjoying. The
Acquired podcast. These are these huge, long deep dives on

(58:08):
like how did Google become Google? And it's almost like
a like a biography of a company. They did one
on JP Morgan and had an hour long interview with
Jamie Diamond that I felt found just super fascinating. And
you know, look, their podcasts are commitments, so sometimes you know,

(58:28):
they only put the big ones out once a month
because it takes almost a month to do that. I
enjoy the Bulwarks Hollywood podcast Sunny Bunch as sort of
an an entertainment culture that you know, talks a little
culture stuff in the media world I enjoy. I enjoy

(58:49):
both the Ben Smith podcast on Semaphore and Dylan Byers
on Puck. It's funny. I don't listen to many political podcasts.
I listened to sort of media podcasts on that front.
I'll listen to some issue specific stuff on foreign policy
and on domestic policy, and then I just grab highlights

(59:12):
of some of the other political podcasts out there that
I know have have that but as far as my
own personal those those are the ones that do and
I should. There's there's also there's one baseball card podcast
I consistently listen to. It's it's called There Is No

(59:33):
Off Season, I believe, is what it's called, and they
do a pretty good job of sort of assessing the
market for sports cards. So there, I probably revealed too
much about my habits, but you asked, and I thought
i'd chair. I'm gonna take one more question here and
do my little college football preview here. This comes from

(59:57):
Aaron from Skokie, Illinois Wire Conservatives attacking Bad Bunny's citizenship.
It's hard to believe they don't know he's an American citizen. Yeah,
I know, Puerto Rico is one of those. Apparently that's
one of those trick questions on the test right, just
feels like a blatant display of racism. If they were
honest and said they simply don't like that the Super
Bowl halftime show will be in Spanish, they might actually

(01:00:17):
find more agreement than they expect. I'm a Mexican American
but don't speak Spanish and his music isn't really my
style yet now, because of his backlash, even people like
me feel compelled to watch just to push back against
the hate. The idea of replacing him with Lee Greenwood
is laughable. There's zero chance that happens, right, pr Nightmare,
thanks for the show. Look, Aaron, you're you're not wrong,
and you know I'm now of the age that I

(01:00:39):
expect whoever's picked is somebody that isn't appealing to me.
You know, I know what the NFL is up to.
They're trying to appeal to a younger demographic, and they're
really trying to appeal to a more Latino demographic. The
the single, by the way, the single most streamed. You know,
I saw what was it? Ronda Santis attack Bad Bunny's like,
I don't you know, I don't know who this guy is. Well,

(01:01:01):
he was only the most streamed artist in the state
of Florida according to Spotify in calendar year twenty twenty four.
So a lot of Ron DeSantis' constituents seem to know
who Bad Funny is. But whenever you're picking any genre
of music, you're gonna alienate people who don't like that

(01:01:21):
genre of music. It, you know, I'm sure a lot
of when they did the Who, there were a lot
of people going, why are they doing old people music? Right?
So it's a it's obvious to me this is it's
almost always the halftime show feels like an attempt to

(01:01:44):
talk to a demographic that the NFL feels like that
they don't know how to talk to, and they use
an artist to try to do that, and frankly, they're
pretty smart about it. The NFL continues to grow its
fan base. They're the most you know, the thing that
everybody ought to respect here in the NFL. I think
has learned this, you know, sort of figuring out how

(01:02:06):
to try to get above the culture wars, right. Colin
Kaeperne put them knee deep into the culture wars between really,
Donald Trump suck them into the culture wars more than anything.
But when you look at the demographics of football fans,
it looks like the demographics of the country right when

(01:02:26):
I mean football is the single most sort of honest
representation of the It is literally something like thirty seven
percent Republican, thirty seven percent Democrat right, and everybody else independent.
I mean, it's like the actual presidential electorate is represented.
You know amongst football fans, most other sports have have

(01:02:47):
a lean right. Baseball fans it leans right, golf fans
it leans right, NBA fans lean left, NHL fans lean
right like WNBA fans lean left. So you see, there's
some of the sports you kind of like you could
look you just look at the crowd when you see
go to a game and you have an idea of

(01:03:08):
the because our politics is in some ways is so
identity based right now, But I would caution everybody be careful.
I mean, the NFL is America. It is a tapestry.
It is the NFL fan base is the complicated picture
of America that is an asset for the NFL. And

(01:03:31):
I do think when it comes to their attempts to
do more outreach, particularly in the Western hemisphere. They've now
had back to back years of games in Brazil. There's
no doubt in my mind that I think Mexico City,
at some point or Monterey, one of the two is
going to have a major league sports franchise, and maybe

(01:03:52):
it's an NFL team first, although the Dallas Cowboys, who
have the largest number of fans in Mexico, actually don't
want to see a Mexico City team because for the
same reason they that they don't want a team in Austin,
Texas either, even though that's a metro a metro area
that actually could support one, because they want to have

(01:04:13):
they want to have the demographic to themselves. They want
to make uh, they want to make money off of
off of that demographic. So I find the whole thing
it's just a pretty closed minded way of thinking. I
look at this, when I see these decisions, I'm like, oh,
I need to understand that this lad of the NFL
is not picking somebody that isn't popular, Okay, So and

(01:04:35):
I know that this is you know what, to me,
the most amazing fact about what the NFL does is
that they never pay the halftime they know, they like
they basically say, if you you're going to make so
much money becoming the halftime entertainment, we don't have to
pay you. That is extraordinary. How powerful that that that
the NFL has that kind of power. So this is

(01:05:08):
the first of what are going to be a series
of games for my beloved Miami Hurricanes where they're supposed
to win, and they're going to face a whole bunch
of teams and they get the big target on their back.
And if you want to make a name for yourself,
you've got a shot at doing it. I am petrified
of this Louisville game. I'm glad it's first of all.

(01:05:29):
These standalone games on Thursday and Friday are just always,
you know, feel like traps. You know, my wife's beloved
Florida State Seminoles lost them this Friday night game at Charlottesville. Now,
if this game we're at Louisville, I'd be a lot
more nervous. In fact, Miami's been through tough games. Louisville

(01:05:50):
has always seen Miami as an aspirational rival, is what
I would call it. Miami. You know, like Louisville is
you know, right. They they had Howard celiber as a
coach after Miami. They recruit sort of, you know, they
try to recruit anybody that Miami rejects down in Miami.
That you look at their roster, it's filled with a

(01:06:11):
lot of South Florida guys. They actually won one of
the bigger recruiting battles that I can remember about ten
years ago, when they got Teddy Bridgewater. Teddy Bridgewaters should
have been a University of Miami quarterback. We had a
guy named Jacorey Harris at the time. Teddy Bridgewater was
actually his replacement at the same high school that Jacorey
Harris played at, Jack Cary. Harris was a full four
year starter, very good. Bridgewater was better. Bridgewater didn't want

(01:06:35):
to sit behind Jacorey for two or three years, which
is why I ended up going to Louisville. I'm convinced
had Bridgewaters come to Miami sat behind Harris would have
ended up probably having well. It certainly would have helped
Miami's football program in the early teens. But look, I'm
nervous about it. You know, right now, it's Miami against

(01:06:59):
themselves for the rest of their schedule. On paper, if
you look at it analytically, they're going to be double
digit favorites in every game they have left. To me,
the nervous the games that I'm nervous about going forward
for Miami. One is this Louisville game Friday night. And
my daughter will tell you, traffic to hard Rock is
our you know, it sucks on a Saturday. It really

(01:07:20):
sucks on a Friday evening. So I'm nervous about the
crowd attendance though this year Man Miami fans have turned
out even for sort of the you know, the games
that don't that aren't on the marquee, so I'm pretty
pleased about that. But that game has me nervous. The
game at SMU Road game that'll be for Miami's first

(01:07:42):
road game outside of the state of Florida on November first,
And then of course the Pit game. That's the last game,
that's our last regular season game of the year, and
it's at Pit. We've struggled that Pit before when we
were we blew a Pit game in twenty seventeen. We
were on our way to and were already qualified for

(01:08:02):
the a SEC title game, so it didn't really matter,
except it was the beginning of sort of we lose
to pit then we get pummeled by Clemson, and then
it was like, oh, Miami was a mirage. We were
a ten and oh start and then we turned into
a mirage. So we don't have Georgia Tech on our schedule, thankfully,
which is the other nemesis in Miami. So obviously Friday night,

(01:08:22):
I think a lot of you will end up watching
that game. I hope it's not a game by the
second half. We shall see a couple of other games
of note this weekend. You know, Brian Kelly will find
out the Brian Kelly hot seat. You know how hot
will his seat get in LSU? Well, he LSU's going
to Vanderbilt. LSU's an underdog at Vanderbilt, right, And I'd

(01:08:49):
love to know every week there's a new stat not
since the nineteen forties is a ranked Vanderbilt team played
another ranked team or not since the nineteen forties, has YadA,
YadA YadA happened? Right with Vanderbilt, this is a hugely
important game for both teams. If either team basically winners
winner is this is a playoff elimination game, They're both

(01:09:10):
five and one second loss for either one of them,
I think puts them on a path to not make
the playoff. And in l s Hu's case, it probably
puts Brian Kelly on the hot seat Unloster Vanderbilt, so
that'll be a big deal. Duke Georgia Tech. This has
Georgia Tech upset. I think they should be an upset alert.

(01:09:31):
Duke's actually the favorite. It's a home game for Duke.
If Georgia Tech loses before you know, loses before the
end of their see, this is probably their toughest game
left on their acc schedule. A little of course, play
Georgia at the end of the year and their and
their annual rivalry game. But this is probably the game

(01:09:51):
I'm going to be putting in one of my four
boxes at noon on Saturday. I would have put Ohio
Wisconsin on this. I can't believe Luke Fickle still got
a job. The embarrassment of getting shut out by Iowa
after they supposedly did push ups, being embarrassed that they

(01:10:13):
gave up forty two points to Iowa the year before,
and they were this focused on the Iowa game that
I guess this time they only gave up thirty seven
points instead of forty two points. Something ain't right in Wisconsin.
I hate that Wisconsin football all of a sudden looks
like they did in the eighties. Right. Wisconsin football was
a doormat in the eighties until they finally Frankly, it

(01:10:36):
was the leadership with Dona Shalela, who spent more money
hiring when she was the chancellor in the University of Wisconsin.
She deserves a lot of credit for getting sort of
both Wisconsin football and Wisconsin basketball sort of back off
the mat into the sort of higher tier of Big
Ten football. It's just something's wrong that Wisconsin. This isn't working.

(01:11:01):
I you know, I can't imagine that they're going to
get up for this Ohio State game, but you know
it might be the only shot Thickle has to give
himself one more year. One other game that I think
a couple other games Texas A and M at Arkansas
is it. Did Bobby Patrino give Arkansas a sort of

(01:11:25):
one game dead cat bounced type of focus or does
the Patrino difference carry over in a second week? And
if it does, this is a dangerous game for A
and M on the road at Arkansas it's you know,
you saw the game with Tennessee the one thing about

(01:11:47):
Patrino he wants you know he's playing for this job.
I think it's an absolute non starter. I cannot believe
he's in a candidate to be coach again, considering all
the drama there's a the athletic that are terrific sort
of rundown of all the ways that he's been an
untrustworthy person to hire, whether it was in his flirtations

(01:12:10):
to go to other schools, let alone the infamous motorcycle
incident at Arkansas, et cetera. But if he starts winning
football games, as we know, winning changes everything, right, Winning
cures a lot of concerns among donors or administrators. Upsetting
Texas A and M would go a long way. So
I don't think Arkansas is going to quit in this game.

(01:12:32):
Katrino's going to keep throwing, going to keep trying to
do trick plays, going to do all sorts of things.
If I were an A and M fan, because I
think A and M's best team in the SEC, I'd
be really This game would really have me nervous, the
way I'm nervous about Loloivlle. I think it's that time
of game and them should win. But if you told
me this were a field goal game in the fourth quarter,
wouldn't surprise me. And then, of course, the best story

(01:12:55):
in the SEC this year is the is the new
quarterback for old myth? Let me get his name right.
I read a terrific story about him, Trinidad Chambliss. It's
a It was for the Trinity. If he had been
a girl, he was going to be Trinity. They decided
to do Trinidad. It's been it's this guy is a

(01:13:18):
as a marvel. And the fact that they couldn't believe
what they saw his story. He was sort of a
multi sport athlete, was was focused more on basketball, ended
up playing D two football. Folks didn't realize how good
he was at it, and lo and behold, he's quite
the story. We'll find out. I don't know if either

(01:13:38):
Georgia or Ole Miss is playoff quality, right, I you know,
the Old Miss barely getting by Washington State last week.
Maybe there was a look I had spot with Georgia.
I'm I'm fine with that, but Georgia needs to sort
of have something to prove as well here. This is
one of those It's not an eliminator for Ole Miss
if they lose, but it is if Georgia loses. So

(01:14:02):
this is an important in some way. It's a more
important game for Georgia than anybody else after that. Alabama Tennessee.
I know, Alabama Tennessee. This one also might be an
elimination game, right not every two loss team in the
SEC is going to make it, and the loser of
this will have their second loss, so it's Alabama's of

(01:14:27):
course doesn't have only this would be their first conference loss,
so that is a bit of advantage here for them.
Tennessee cares about the Alabama rivalry more than I think
Alabama cares about the Tennessee rivalry. That's one of those
big brother little brother games. I'm more of a believer

(01:14:47):
in Alabama this one. I'm curious if they can get
margin here. I expect them to get some margin. If
they don't, maybe that tells us maybe maybe I'm not not.
So that's all right about that. Notre Dame is this week.
That's one of these great rivalries. My wife's got no
attend one of those games at Notre Dame. It's one
of those i'd like to I'd like to see. It's

(01:15:09):
an important game for both teams. Obviously, every game is
an elimination game for Notre Dame now with their two losses.
As long as Texas A and M and Miami keep winning,
Notre Dame is going to make it into the playoff
as a ten and two team. They will not make
it to the playoff as a nine to three team.
This is the toughest game remaining on their schedule, hands
down the toughest game remaining on their schedule. So a

(01:15:31):
pretty important game. And then I realized I should not
be remiss. One of my favorite rivalry names is the
Utah BYU game, The Holy War. I don't know is
it politically correct to say the Holy War or not.
Either way, it's one of the great names for a
rivalry game. This one's at BYU, and this one also

(01:15:51):
actually has some playoff implications, big twelve implications. Don't sleep
on BYU. They're still undefeated, the undefeated, all right, enjoy
your weekend in college football. Hopefully, depending on how Friday
Night goes, I get to do the same. And with that,
I'll see you next week.

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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 - Democratic Dysfunction On Full Display + Branding Protest As “Hating America” Is Un-American