Full Episode - 2025 Election Preview + Viva Las Voters: Why Nevada Has Become America’s Ultimate Political Bellwether - The Chuck ToddCast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hello, they're happy Wednesday. Welcome to another episode of the
Chuck Podcast. We are creeping ever so closely to the
end of October, which doesn't mean just Halloween and trick
or treat candy boy Friday Night Halloween. Man, that is
let's just say for communities that go crazy for Halloween,

(00:26):
oh the poor dogs, right, it's going to be later nights,
louder kids, all this stuff. It's gonna be a lot
of fun for people of a certain age. It's going
to be a really rough night for our canine friends
on that front, that's for sure. Friday Night Halloween. Who
I know here in d C. Georgetown used to be
a lot of fun for Halloween. Madison, Wisconsin, that's a

(00:49):
big Halloween place. There's a lot of great Halloween college
towns and celebrations. So always on the lookout for that.
And then, of course, if it's the end of October
and your name is Chuck Todd, all you think about is, oh,
there's an election day coming up, because it's November. And
every November, whether it's an odd number and even number,

(01:11):
there is enough important state wide elections that we have
to give a darn. So this is a political Junkie episode.
Just warning up front, I'm going to do my sort
of dive into how I'm watching the twenty twenty five elections.
I got John Ralston, one of the political gurus I
like to tap into out west. He's publisher and founder

(01:32):
of the Nevada Independent. I've known him since he was
the guy that had the Ralston Political Report. He's basically
been the man to understand Nevada politics for years, but
really bigger than that these days. On that front, He's
got a new biography coming out of Harry Reid coming soon,
so we spend a lot of time doing ww HD.

(01:56):
What would Harry do in this current situation with the
budget shut down? What would his advice be for Chuck Schumer.
Let's just say I hope Chuck Schumer's folks aren't listening
to this episode. They may not love everything they hear
from the grave when it comes to Harry Reid, but

(02:16):
it is a I've known John a long time, and
as I think a lot of you have known it.
When I have guests where we know each other a
long time, that only these conversations go deeper and into
some rabbit holes that only a political junkie can love.
So given that this is also Top five Day, I've
got a fun top five list that's campaign twenty twenty

(02:37):
six related, if you will. It's not necessarily your normal
rankings that you're going to expect from me monthly. My
more monthly Senate rankings will be coming up starting in
November again on the early part of that. But I
do have a fun top five list. We'll do some questions,
so the interviews with Ralston, but let's kick things off,
and more importantly, I got a fun announcement. I'm going

(02:59):
to be doing a election night live stream with my
friends Chris Salizza, the Decision DEAHQ, folks who are going
to be providing the data that I'll be using. They'll
be calling elections. I promise you you'll be getting probably
election results faster in our live stream and their Twitter

(03:20):
feed than anywhere else in legacy media or internet media.
We will have a cavalcade of political stars, everybody that
you love to follow in the political data world, whether
it's on stage, left, stage, right, stage center, they're all
It's almost like Jerry Lewis's telethon. I'm going to bring

(03:41):
everybody in so you'll have my friend Chris Saliza you
have that. We'll start from there, but we're going to
start our coverage six thirty pm. Go Live. We'll be
live on Twitter, live on a variety of YouTube channels,
not just Mine, Decision shq's Solissa's, everybody that's going to
be a guest, and you'll see those guests coming up.
We'll have some great graphics provided by Decision Desk. We're

(04:03):
just going to have a good time. It is an
election result coverage designed for people who eat, breathe, and
sleep politics. I assume if you listen to this show,
this is how you're going to and you're at all
curious what's happening on election night, whether it's the Virginia
ag race, Virginia governor, New Jersey governor, who's going to

(04:24):
finish second in New York City mayor can Mom Donnie
get fifty percent? You see where I'm going. We'll cover
Pennsylvania judges, mayor's races, the referendum out west. We're going
to go at least till eleven o'clock at night, maybe longer.
If there is a race that hasn't been called, we
will stick it with you. But it's election night like
you've never experienced it before. Essentially election coverage geared to data,

(04:51):
geared to results, and geared to understanding what is happening.
We won't have rank ass sort of crappy tree that
you get tired of when you see the Cavalcada stars
show up in other places. I promise you we will
let the data be the star. So please, if you

(05:12):
haven't subscribed to my channel or anybody else's channel, subscribe.
And of course I'll be promoting the heck out of
this so you won't be able to miss it again.
You better watch it on my Twitter feed. We'll go
live on Twitter, We'll go live on YouTube, go live
in as many places as we can do it. So
with that, let me give you a little preview of
the most important election we will hold until the next one.
I love sort of. I don't know about you, but

(05:34):
I've been exhausted. I've covered the most important presidential election
of my lifetime five straight presidential election. So you know,
this is easily the most important Virginia governor's race I've
covered since the last Virginia governor's race, and it certainly
is the most important New York City mayor's race since
the last race for New York City mayor that we've had.
But in all seriousness, I do think there's a lot

(05:56):
to learn even in these off years. This is my
friend John ella So who does news items political items.
If you don't subscribe to that substock, you should. It's great,
it's terrific. He has a fun science and tech bent
that I just love. So it's not just the political
and national security coverage that he prioritizes. But he did

(06:17):
a pretty good deep dive into his take on these
off off year elections and basically he called it the
local elections that have national impact because they are very local, right,
these are in some ways, yes, there are some national
trend lines to read into what happens in Virginia, and
we're possibly may be seeing something happening in New Jersey,

(06:38):
and certainly directionally, how are incumbents doing in general, particularly
incumbent mayors, things like that. So there's plenty of tea
leaves to read for the national trends, but these are
largely local elections being driven in many cases by local issues.
So I just want to do a little primer for
you and how in some ways this is I'm giving

(06:59):
a little preview of what we're going to be looking
for on election night itself. So let's start in the
state of Virginia. A few little interesting nuggets. Virginia has
I think been a pretty good foreshadow of our politics nationally. Well,
Virginia is in a perfect Bellweather state anymore, I think
for a couple of terms there in peak Obama, it

(07:21):
was I think Virginia, arguably, particularly Virginia twenty oh eight
and Virginia twenty twelve were probably sort of, you know,
right where the country and as you know, whatever, whatever
the number was for Obama and Virginia's what his number
would be nationally, it was very it was it was
pretty much the Bellweather state. But Virginia's had an allergy

(07:44):
to trump Ism. It is not this is a purple
state that is not mega, right, It certainly has some
Mega supporters, but you know, there's a reason why it
took a non Maga Republican to win statewide in Cleannenton, Right,
So there's a you know, and I'm one of those
who believes when when Trump is done with the Republican Party,
when it pulls back from its sort of isolation at streak,

(08:07):
and it's sort of I don't want to call it
anti business, but certainly business skeptical streak that it's in
that Virginia is one of those states that may go
back into the battleground. So it's always worth noting there
a few fun facts about Virginia. Right since nineteen seventy seven,
it's a remarkable streak. The party controlling the White House

(08:30):
has lost the Virginia governor's race every single time except
for once in seventy seven, and that was Terry mccalloff
in twenty thirteen, and arguably he only won that race
because there was a government shutdown happening at the time
and it helped Terry mccoff. Terrymcaff couldn't clear fifty percent,
but he did win the governor's race. It is there

(08:50):
is something there right. Virginia is the first time opportunity
for the Out Party to make a statement for the
Out Party, Virginia being so close to Washington, and they
get big access to frustrated national donors of the Out Party,
so they doubled down. It's the first test of an
out Party to come up with a new message, a
new type of Republican to try to talk to the

(09:13):
electorate or a new type of Democrat, you know, to
talk to the electorate. Right. In this case, it's you know,
after Biden's election. You know, it was a new type
of Republican in Younkin. After Trump's election. It's a different,
you know, different type of Democrat than Biden and a spamburger, right,
So you see that it is there is something to
it as to why I think you've seen you've seen

(09:35):
Virginia b so bell Weathery. Let's be honest, Samberger's running
very careful race, very risk averse race, and you know
she began the race ahead. I don't think she's trailed
a single day in this race if you were actually
doing tracking polls. And part of it is I think
the lieutenant governor win some earl series has had a
hard time separating herself from the from just being you know,

(09:56):
being a standalone candidate. She's at times tried to run
as the heir apparent to Youngkin. You know, there's yard
signs in my neighborhood. Let's keep a good thing going,
you know, like WinCE some world sears. She tried to
dabble in Maganism, but then she tried to pull back.
That's actually frustrated some people in Trump world, so that
that that tense relationship really set her back financially for

(10:17):
a while. Organizationally, Trump's on board kind of, but not
with the enthusiasm that she needed. It's ironic because her
she sort of rose on the scene of Virginia politics
sort of from the outside by being one of the
early MAGA supporters. That's arguably how she ended up the
nominee for lieutenant governor the first time. But she really did.

(10:41):
She tried to look into the future and didn't and
and basically picked the wrong picked the wrong path, and
she's assumed that Trump would be in the rearview mirror,
and now he's back, and in some ways that that
made her path to the governorship nearly blocked. And you
could see that she's that she's trying to take advantage

(11:01):
of the scandal involving the Attorney general nominee, the Democrat
j Jones, and those awful texts that he that have
been exposed to what he said about a Republican couple
of Republican politicians. She's tried to use. It hasn't quite worked.
You know, She's she's not been as accessible as Youngkin

(11:24):
came across. She kind of you know, she walks into
every interview a bit defensive, you know, doesn't doesn't know
how to sort of let water roll off a duck's
back type of mindset. Right, and voters sort of see that, right,
And Virginia again, they're not going to reward grievance. Virginia's

(11:46):
kind of an optimistic state, so they don't want a
ba humbug candidate. Bah humbug candidates haven't done well in Virginia.
You've got to be sort of sunny side up, right,
Terry mccalloffe, sunny side up, Len Younkin, sunny side yep,
Terry sound Terry wasn't Terry in that race against junkin
Youngkin was the more optimistic guy, right, And and so

(12:07):
there's something about it. And Spanburger's tried to run a
more upbeat race, and series is not run a very
upbeat race. And so I know that that seems like
a shallow way to look at things. But there's a
pattern here. You know, George Allen was a Sonny was
the sunnier candidate when he in ninety three, Mary suit
Terry was sort of you know, tough law enforcement who's
trying to be the first woman governor, And that's not

(12:28):
I shouldn't get lost on everybody, right, No matter what,
Virginia's going to lect the first woman governor. That's that's
not an insignificant glass ceiling they've Virginia Democrats thought they
were going to do this in nineteen ninety three with
their nominee at the time, Mary suit Terry, who was
up at the time. It was seen as a pretty
big upset when George Allen topped her back in that

(12:50):
ninety three race. So I think the question with Spamberger
is what's the margin If it's five or less. I
don't think she she's going to bring all three the
other two down ballot candidates with them. Virginia elects three
races statewide, governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general. What's been
interesting is that Virginia hasn't split their ticket for those

(13:13):
big three races since two thousand and five. So in
two thousand and nine it was a Republican suite, twenty
thirteen democratic sweep, twenty seventeen a Democratic sweep, in twenty
twenty one a Republican sweep. Before the J. Jones, Texan controversy,
it looked like Democrats were on their way to a suite.
I'm not so convinced. I think there's If there's a

(13:38):
split ticket result, it's the attorney general's race. It's more
likely to be split tickets the one place where an
incumbent is seeking reelection while governors can't seek reelection. Attorney's
general and lieutenant governors can. Believe it or not, it's
just the governor that is term limited to a single term.
That you can run a second for a second term,
just not consecutively. In Virginia, by the way, Terry mcculloff
attempted that and did not win obviously in twenty one.

(14:02):
So Mirs has totally altered his campaign in the last month.
Has run the type of campaign we haven't seen in
the Trump era in a long time. We haven't seen
it during the Trump era. It was much more common
in the pre Trump era, where you have a candidate
kind of running in enemy territory. Right, Merris is a
conservative Republican running in a light blue state and he's

(14:24):
trying to win over some light blue voters. So he's
been he's been running ads that say, hey, Abigail s
Bamberger can't endorse Jay Jones. You don't have to either
write noting some highlights from her debate because she has
not reindorsed him. She has essentially said it is up
to every voter to make their own decision. Not exactly

(14:44):
a not exactly the biggest what you might call it
reassurance if you will, right, I don't. It's not even
clear who she's going to vote for on that ballot.
And if I'm her, I'm a little I'm a mixed bag. Right.

(15:04):
You want politically, you want to be seen as a
powerful enough victor that you brought as many Democrats across
the finish line as you can, that you'll bring State
Assembly Democrats across the finish line and increase the Democratic
majority in the State Assembly. You know, you'll be given
credit for whatever victory the lieutenant governor has. You could
be given credit if you drag Jones off the finish line.

(15:26):
But for governing, is Jay Jones going to be an
effective attorney general? And is Jay Jones going to be
a problem for Governor Spamberger? I think it's one of
those Is she secretly better off if me rs wins?
Even if that you know might complicate things every once
in a while when it comes to governing. It's something

(15:47):
I've pondered. You'll never get an honest answer out of
any of the politicians on this one, because there's no
upside to give anybody an honest answer on that one.
But if if I were Spamburger, I think it's a
little bit easier if I don't have to constantly answer
for that Jay Jones controversy, even if it has nothing
to do with me. But if he's sitting there as

(16:08):
a sitting Attorney general, it strikes me as something that
doesn't ever completely go away. It may fade, but it
won't completely go away. There's a reason results matter more
than promises, just like there's a reason Morgan and Morgan
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(17:15):
on your cell phone. And remember all law firms are
not the same, So check out Morgan and Morgan. Their
fee is free unless they win. To me, what we're
what we're what? The real question is Spamberger win by
enough to drag everybody across the finish line? And if
Mirs wins, does he win because Democrats there are a

(17:38):
handful of Democrats that cross the line and vote for
him as a Republican or does he win because a
whole bunch of Democrats decide not to vote in the
attorney general race. So two things to watch for an
election night is the drop off number? How big is
the drop off number? And it's not the drop off
number from Governor to AG. To me, it'll be the
drop off number from LG to AG because it goes
in that order in the ballot, and so you'll see

(17:59):
people vote for the first two. What's the gap, and
that's the one I'm curious, but there's always a gap.
How big is it? That will will tell us a
lot a few bellweather things to watch in Virginia House
of Delegates, for what it's worth, the Virginia House of Delegates,
there's been an interesting correlation where in years that Democrats

(18:22):
add seats to the House of Delegates. In this odd
numbered year two thousand and five, two thousand and seven,
twenty seventeen. A year later, Democrats also gained seats in
Congress and six, eight and eighteen. And it works the
other way when Republicans have picked up seats in the
House of Delegates in the State Assembly. Here in Virginia,
they did it one oh nine and in twenty one. Well,

(18:43):
guess what it foreshadowed Republican gains in the House overall nationally,
you know, two in ten and in twenty two. So
Virginia has been a fairly reliable bell weather. It's not perfect,
you know, there's always exceptions to the rule, but there
is a general trend line that Virginia does help you
at least see which way the playing field will be

(19:06):
tilting in twenty sixth I know we have a whole
bunch of redistrict and crap to deal with, but that
is I think that that is in some ways what
to pick from from there. Let's go up the coast
a little bit New Jersey. A few things about unique
about New Jersey and why I've not I'm surprised that

(19:29):
over the last week or two we've actually seen Mikey
Cheryl's lead. By the way, it's notable Abagail Spamberg or
Mikey Cheryl, the two Democratic nominees for Virginia and New
Jersey governor, both won swing districts in twenty eighteen. This
twenty eighteen House Democratic class has already produced two US
Senators in the House class in twenty eighteen, Alyssa Slockin
and Michigan. She won a House seat in eighteen, just

(19:50):
won a Senate seat. Andy Kim won a House seat
in eighteen. Just won a Senate seat in twenty four
Colin all Red's already run for a Senate seat. He
won a House seat in eighteen, he's running again for
a Senate seat. You got deb Holland, who won a
House seat in eighteen, served in Biden's cabinets, now ringing
for governor of New Mexico. So it's you could have

(20:14):
a Sharise Davis who won an eighteen in Kansas. If
she gets redistricted out, she pretty much is guaranteed that
she'd run for the Senate in Kansas there. So it's
turning into an interesting farm farm team class the twenty eighteen,
particularly this next generation of women leaders right slacking Spamberger,
Cheryl Scharise Davis. So's it's certainly certainly something to watch there.

(20:40):
For what it's worth, I think Cheryl's run a bit
of a less of a She hasn't been a pure
front runner. She had a more contested primary. She did
have to worry about candidates running to her left during
the primary, so she had to watch her left flank
a little bit. Spamberger didn't have to worry about that.
Right early on it looked like she'd have a primary.
The field eventually cleared, so she never had to do

(21:00):
deal with any of the progressive centrist splits that are
taking place in other parts of the country kind of
reminds you of someone in Virginia politics, right, Glenn Youngkin
got to avoid a MAGA primary and that helped him
a lot in the general election, allowed him to be anybody,
be whatever you wanted him to be. And I think
Spamburger's had that. Cheryl's had a little less of that.

(21:23):
She's also running to succeed a less popular Democratic governor.
He's not as unpopular as like a John Corsign when
he ran for re election and lost to Chris Christy
or Jim Floya when he ran for a reelection and
lost to Christy weapon back in ninety three, but he's
not super popular either. Fac Murphy almost lost to the
Republican nominee this time. Jack Chidarelli was the Republican nominee

(21:48):
in twenty one and came much closer than the pole set.
And in fact, that's something I would just caution you.
I know, all the polls are showing Cheryl with a
fairly commanding lead, not quite as big as Spamburger's lead,
but pretty substanti. New Jersey's notorious for underpolling Republicans specifically.
Part of it is just it's a tough state to sample.

(22:10):
It's tough state to poll, always has been. So this
is not a it's not like there's bad pollsters. It's
just a tough it's harder to get a hold of people.
It's a transient state filled with commuters, hard to get
to commuters. It's just so a lot of polling is modeling,
and people just if you don't model it right. Our friends,
my college, my former colleagues over an NBC noted that

(22:31):
in polls that have shown Phil Murphy, the outgoing governor,
with an approval rating or a favorable rating in the thirties,
the race has been somewhere only one to three points.
Whenever a poll has shown Murphy's approval rating or favorable
rating in the mid forties, it has shown Sheryl with
a bigger lead. So you know which electorate is correct,

(22:53):
Which electorate shows up? Donald Trump certainly improved in New
Jersey in twenty four than his performance in either sixteen
or twenty. Do Trump voter show up? Do mainstream Republicans
feel more comfortable? Do swing voters? You know? The problem
I have with assuming with getting Chittarelly across the finish
line is he's got to win some Harris voter who
doesn't like Trump, and I you know how many of

(23:18):
them are there, so we'll see. But one other notable fact.
The last three successful Republicans to win the governorship in
New Jersey all did it with less than fifty percent.
Whitman the first time won with less than fifty, Christy
the first time one with less than fifty, and Tom
Kine won the first time with less than fifty. Keep

(23:40):
an eye on those third party candidates. I think the
path for Chittarelly is to make forty seven or forty
eight percent of winning number. I don't think he can
get to fifty, but if he can if five, that's
if somewhere between four and six percent of the electorate
vote third party, he could have a chance. In New
York City, the story is Mamdanni. I think the only

(24:03):
mystery is whether he clears fifty or not. I'm in
an interview with Garrett Graft that'll be appearing in this
podcast feeding the before the election, but not in today's episode.
He thinks it's possible we're underestimating mam Donni, and he
gets closer to sixty, not only clears fifty, but gets

(24:24):
closer to sixty. I'm not sure I buy that hot take.
But the hot take I have is I think it's
possible curtse Ly while the Republican nominee ends up ahead,
finishing second instead of Cuomo. The point is is, I
think there's a lot of fluidity in this in this race, still,
is there an excited base of mam Donnie's that shows

(24:46):
up and overwhelms things. Could Cuomo's The difficulty to find
Cuomo even on the ballot, he have to go way
down if you look at the ballot, but it goes
like Mamdanni Curtisely, while the Republican nominee than Mamdanni, Working
Families party and the you got to keep going until
you find Cuomo's name on the ballot. How much a
drop off effect that is? I will tell you this.

(25:07):
There is a history of candidates running on third party lines,
either as independents or third party candidates, who underperform their
their poll number, while major party candidates who are polling
lower like Courtessly, while the Republican nominee end up doing
better than what they were polling. And part of it

(25:28):
is that there's a lot of people are just habit
voters and they going, oh, hey, honey, who do we
vote for? We're Republicans, right, I'll pull the Republican ticket.
So the point is is that I think we all
think there's that what we're seeing in the polling is
probably only directionally correct but not necessarily numerically correct. And
there's I think of, you know, there's a variety of

(25:49):
ways Mamdani wins that creates different storylines. Mamdanni getting the
sixty percent is a real message to the entire Democratic
Party and probably freaks out the leadership in ways we
haven't seen yet. I'm Donnie getting less than fifty percent
reassures a whole bunch of Democrats that if a Democratic
Socialists can't get a majority in New York City, where
can a Democratic Socialist get a majority? And frankly, he

(26:10):
can't get fifty percent, he's probably gonna have a hard
time governing because he will automatically. There hasn't been a
mayor elected in New York City with less than fifty
percent of the vote since John Lindsay in the late sixties,
So that stuff matters, right, That's the difference between saying
you have a mandate or not. So I think those
are the ways I'm watching those three races, we're also

(26:36):
you know, if I will say this, I think a
democratic sweep of the two state wides, plus the victory
in California, which seems pretty assured now with the new map,
and avoiding any upset in the retention races of the
judges in Pennsylvania where conservatives are trying to see if
they can house to do a vote no on one

(26:57):
of the retention races for the Supreme Court in pennsyl.
I do think that foreshadows that twenty six will set up.
It's a it's a democratic gear. The question is how
good of a year could it be for them? Anything
less than that right chedda ally winning New Jersey Boy,
that would, to me, would foreshadow that this is going

(27:17):
to be a more knife fight type of midterm than
we realize. That we're still pretty evenly divided. You know,
a strong Mamdani victory could really complicate a lot of
democratic primaries and really start to see more progressive feel empowered.
And then that and you just have more contentious primaries

(27:40):
in the left, which could create problems in general elections.
And the way that you had contentious primaries on the
right during Trump's first term and even in the latest
twenty twenty two which those eventually would cause problems in
general elections, right where Republicans would lose generals if they
had they not had the bad primary, they would have won.
You know, are there races like that on the Democratic

(28:00):
side if this happened. So that's why what happens here
will tell us. We'll give us sort of a few
of the directionally, let us know where things are headed.
Where's things headed inside the fight for the soul of
the Democratic Party, where's the nation as a whole? Right?
How do we feel about incumbents in general? We've seen some,

(28:21):
you know, we are It's not a great year for
incumbent mayors, right, Eric Adams is out. The mayor of
Seattle got put into a runoff. He could lose. That's
something we're going to be following in our election night special.
The mayor of Pittsburgh already lost in a primary. So
there's there's you know, by the way, Seattle, I think
it's re elected a mayor and five tries they keep
having new mayors. So you know, it's not quite a

(28:45):
big enough trend to say, hey, this is Nashville. But
you feel the there's a there's certainly this isn't an
incumbent friendly environment. It's another reason why I think I'm
a little you know why. I think Cheryl has just
slightly worse odds to win than Spamberger. She's replacing a

(29:06):
Republican administration, where Cheryl is wanting to succeed a fellow
Democratic administration. I just think her jobs a little bit
harder in an environment like this. But the important thing
to realize about these elections is they're not local elections
that only impact things locally. There's a lot to learn
from them nationally, and they will. They will tell us

(29:27):
something about where things are headed. So come spend election
night with me and all of my dorky and nerd
friends that just love politics, love campaigns, love dissecting election results,
love trying to figure out what this means for reading
the tea leaves going forward. So with that, I'll sneak

(29:49):
in a break here for you everybody listening on the
extended podcast. Got my friend John Ralston for a deep
dive really into WWHD what would Harry.

Speaker 2 (30:00):
Reid do in this current moment in time. Let's sneak
in that break. I'll see on the other side.

Speaker 1 (30:18):
And joining me now is John Ralston, somebody I have known. Jeez,
it's now. I've only had two employers, and I've known
him during both of my during my stints at both employers,
I guess working for myself means it's my third employer.
But John Ralston does what I've been thinking about, and
then I follow in his footsteps. So, mister Ralston, it's

(30:39):
nice to see you.

Speaker 3 (30:40):
It's nice to see you, Chuck. Just for everyone's reference,
it was two thousand and eight when we became an
early state then I first met you, and I want
to tell your audience not the flatter you, but you
have been good to me ever since. You have promoted
me wherever you could, and I appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (30:57):
I actually think we go back to my hotline days,
which is before eight. Back during those days.

Speaker 3 (31:02):
I certainly knew who you were back at the hopital.

Speaker 1 (31:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (31:05):
No, you deemed to communicate with the rule back then.

Speaker 1 (31:08):
Oh wow, man man ah, But I digress. Look, you've done,
you know, for you know, it's interesting you've done. You've
been in the world of sort of political expertise journalism
before that was cool. Now you were doing independent media
before it was cool, sort of just before everybody else

(31:30):
gets there. So I'm dead serious. You sort of you
jump into a space before everybody else, does you seem
to be Were you that way as a kid or
are you the first one to jump off a cliff
into a body of water thinking yeah, it'll be all right?
Were you that guy?

Speaker 3 (31:46):
I guess I've been a risk taker, and I've been
told that before that. I've been a risk taker my
whole life, even by my siblings to some extent.

Speaker 1 (31:55):
Oh so you were that sibling.

Speaker 3 (31:57):
I'm not sure about that. I mean, was it risky
to try to dunk over my brother when we had
a nine foot rim? Maybe that was a little risky.
I didn't hurt myself too.

Speaker 1 (32:06):
I love that you don't forget that dunk over here brother, Right,
you're not going to forget that one.

Speaker 3 (32:10):
Yeah, I do not forget that because he became a
much better athlete than I was. But seriously, I guess
what I've done is a journalist, chuck, And you've done
this now too. I tried to adapt to the changing times.
I mean, when I started covering politics in nineteen eighty six,
there was no such thing as the Internet. You know,

(32:31):
the cycle was twenty four hours at least and maybe
even longer, and you didn't have to worry about what
happened while you were on the phone with someone that
you might have missed, right, And so the velocity with
which information moved, And so I've tried to adapt to that.
And you know, my my nonprofit that I run now,

(32:51):
I started almost nine years ago. Again, shout out to
Chuck Todd for the early support on that, and I
appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (32:58):
Not independent.

Speaker 3 (33:00):
It has been the roller coaster ride and the best
thing I've ever done. But it's I still think nonprofit journalism,
independent journalism is the future. Chuck. I'm just not sure
how the for profit model in the way that it
is just now, unless you're a billionaire, is going to
pencil out.

Speaker 1 (33:19):
Well. I want to have a little bit of a
conversation about that, because I'm I hear you on that argument.
I'm not ready to concede it. I'm not saying or not.
You may be right, but I'm not ready to concede
the for profit. But I want to get to that.
But I don't want to start there. I actually want
to start because what I I want to actually start

(33:42):
because I feel like you're in an incredible position. Look
in theory you're on here. You've got a new book
on Harry Reid, sort of which I think is going
to be the definitive work on Harry Reid. And I
think Harry Reid knew you'd probably be the person to
write that. And I want to get into that because
it has a lot about the future of the Democratic
Party and what's going on there. But I first want
to talk about Nevada and Las Vegas because in some

(34:06):
ways now, and I was thinking about this and preparing
for my interview with you, I think, well, you know,
I think you're the pre eminent swing state in America,
even if you won't be the deciding state in America.
And let me let me say what I mean by this,
which is, there was always a saying as such, and
huts goes, so goes America. We had Peoria. I wonder now,

(34:30):
if Clark County, specifically Nevada in general is the Peoria
of the twenty first century, how's it playing in Peoria?
Nevada was its unique economy for a long time. It
would be an early warning sign about economic recession coming
because it was quote unquote extra money that people had
that would spend in Nevada. But now, to me, Nevada

(34:52):
is the economic model of Nevada today might be the
future of a lot of states. The service industry being
a primary employer. We're all going to be service industry employees.
It's in some form or another. I know I'm preaching
to the choir on this, but as somebody who transplanted

(35:13):
from another swing area of the country, Buffalo, and went
to school in another swing state in Michigan, here you
are in Nevada, I just feel like it's a state
filled with people from everywhere else and collectively it is
now the twenty first century. How's it playing in Peoria?
I need to know how's it playing in Vegas? And

(35:34):
I have an idea where working class America is. Well.

Speaker 3 (35:38):
I couldn't have made the case better than you just did, Chuck,
And you know there's a hashtag for that.

Speaker 1 (35:44):
Yeah, we matter, right, But I do think to some expence.
But you lived it. You've been there before this happened.
You've you've been an eyewitness to this. So you tell
me it in your words.

Speaker 3 (35:56):
You know, it's interesting because you mentioned of the book
and I'm just here to shamelessly promote the book. But
the book doesn't just talk about Harry Reid and how
he went from coming from nowhere in Nevada to becoming
the most powerful democrat in the country. It's about the
evolution of the Vada along with Harry Reid, and it
has changed. You know, I am sure there was still

(36:18):
the caricature that some people still have of that's just
the casinos on the strip or is the mob still there?
People want and only did the mob really beat up
Harry Reid? And is that what happened to his eye?
And this kind of stuff. But what's really happened since
I moved here in nineteen eighty four is and you
mentioned Clark County, which is where Las Vegas is, which

(36:39):
is worth seventy percent of the population is and the electric.

Speaker 1 (36:43):
Still today, right, still still today, and it's it's but
that's a decreasing share. It used to be eighty percent, right,
whether they go upwards there or I don't think it
ever always be Okay, I.

Speaker 3 (36:54):
Don't think it ever. It did get into the load
the mid seventies at one point, and it's starting to
grow again because of the explosion of independent voters and
motor voter law. But what's really happened is and you
mentioned that the service industry, the changing demographics of Nevada.
Nobody talked about the Hispanic vote in Nevada when I

(37:14):
started covering politics in nineteen eighty six. That's almost all
anybody talks about now. And there's even a significant Asian
American vote and a still robust African American vote, And
so Las Vegas has become a melting pot. Sure, it's
that weird city that with those miles long of casinos glittering,

(37:36):
and that's how that's what drives the economy. But you
can make a case, even if you look at the
electoral results that as Nevada goes, so goes the country.
And especially true I think chuck of the Democratic Party
and why the Democrats here again and this comes full
circle to two thousand and eight, are trying to make

(37:56):
the case why Nevada is most representative of what the
Democratic Party needs to be, needs to appeal to and
we should be wait for it first in two thousand
and eight to decide the nominee. That's the case that
we're reflective of the nation.

Speaker 1 (38:14):
No, it is, I think the only challenge you have
to be first in the nation. I think you're going
to be among the first contests. What I would say
is just simply geographic diversity, right like it is. It is.
If you just own Vegas, you win. Right now. It's hard,
it's not easy. It's it's increasingly inexpensive. Well, I'm old

(38:35):
enough to remember when targeting Nevada is a cheap state,
and now I think the Las Vegas media market, because
of the saturation issue, is among the most expensive to penetrate,
because of our heart, because of how dense it is,
so you get big bang for your buck and all
of that. But I think it's the only thing that

(38:57):
harms you. A good to me, A good first to
the nation is a small state that has some geographic diversity,
right Iowa was, you know, if you think about it, Iowa, Nebraska,
Kansas all sort of offer that probably Nebraska is the
best of the three because Omaha actually has some diversity
right where there's not of ethnicity and there's African American population.

(39:20):
You don't really have that as much in a little
bit in Kansas City, Kansas. But you don't really have
it there. You guys have the diversity issue. But I
don't know about the geographic diversity, the cultural and ethnic diversity.
That's my only concern for you guys to get first.

Speaker 3 (39:37):
Well, I am concerned about that, but we will continue
to lobby for it in every venue that I'm on,
including the truck.

Speaker 1 (39:43):
At no I get it. I get it, I mean,
and I'm a huge advocate of small states going first. Ultimately,
that is the best way for us to get a
measure of these candidates, and it's the only time they
can expose themselves physically to vote in ways you won't
get in Michigan, you won't get in Florida, you won't

(40:03):
get even in Arizona.

Speaker 3 (40:06):
It's harder to do in Nevada too, as it is
in Iowa or New Hampshire. Right to just go into
all these different venues in Las Vegas doesn't even have
the obvious coffee shop that you should go to or
go to.

Speaker 1 (40:19):
Restaurant arena probably has a little bit more of that, right, right,
exactly exactly so when you see.

Speaker 4 (40:30):
You know.

Speaker 1 (40:30):
The other thing that I find myself is I still
think when people say they're from Las Vegas, I'm always like, well,
where else are you from? And then I catch myself
because you know what, I grew up in Florida. When
I surprise people growing up in Miami, No, I'm born
and raised in Miami. Wait you were born in Miami.
I still feel that way when I hear people say, wait,
you were born in Las Vegas. My last public relations
person with NBC is born and raised in Las Vegas,

(40:53):
and I'm like, of course, there's a whole generation. But
if you're of a certain age, you still think of
Las Vegas as a day destination place, not necessarily an originator.

Speaker 3 (41:04):
Yeah. I think I think that's still true. And you
still find some people here who when when you ask them,
where are you from originally, and they said, well, what
do you mean I was born here? That that is
unusual to find.

Speaker 1 (41:16):
That is still unusual.

Speaker 3 (41:18):
It's still unusual. I don't have the actual numbers at Handchuck,
but it's still pretty small. Although they they are still very,
very active, and all of them are understand the politics.
Not all of them, but a lot of them understand
the politics and the changing nature of Las Vegas. I mean,
Las Vegas had changed even to an extent I didn't

(41:41):
realize in twenty twenty four, and we talked about the
potency of the culinary union and the so called read
machine which was integrated with them. There it started to
be cracks forming that I didn't think were as big
as they were, and they were emblematic of what happened nationally,
right with Latino men suddenly gravitating towards Trump and he,

(42:02):
I have to tell you, he was very smart to
do the no tax on tips thing here in the VAT.
I think it made much more of a difference here
than people think.

Speaker 1 (42:12):
You know that It's funny. You know, remember during the
early days of the woke conversation, there was a movement
that said, Hey, I just want to be heard. I
want to feel seen. To me, what no taxes on
tips meant Trump saw these people doesn't mean his policies
were going to be the right answer. Doesn't mean those

(42:32):
folks thought that Maybe even thought, well, these no taxes
on tips, what's that even going to look like? But
he said it, so at least he sees us. He
knows it's hard, he knows this isn't easy. That's what
I think my friends on the left fail to understand, Like,
why does Trump connect well just by simply saying it okay?

(42:54):
It seems like an impossible thing to actually put into law, right,
But it's like building the wall. What voters heard was, oh,
he's serious about immigration. Doesn't mean they were necessarily believing
he was going to build a wall, where the left
would say he's never gonna be able to build a wall.
That's not the point, am I is that how you

(43:18):
sent no taxes on tips plate.

Speaker 3 (43:20):
I think you're right. And I think that the left
and especially the far left, thought that just saying Trump
is bad, Trump is evil. Have you seen the things
he said? And he's going to do that would be enough.
But that is kind of the haughtiness of the left
that really became more and more pronounced. I think through
the cycles and they took certain things for granted here

(43:41):
and elsewhere, and I think that was a real problem.
And whatever else you think about Trump, you're right. He
had these messages that resonated, symbols that resonated with people
and people who they began to feel that the Democratic
Party had taken them for granted. That made a lot
of promises that just weren't there. Now, this was not

(44:02):
a huge thing, Chuck, but it was enough in these constituencies.

Speaker 1 (44:06):
As you well know, doesn't take much to change the election.
This is still a tight state, right, I mean here,
you know, I find it you feel I feel like
you learned a lot from twenty four about the electorate,
and it both confirmed some suspicions, but it also seemed
to make you rethink a few pieces of conventional wisdom

(44:30):
that you frankly helped set. Give me a few of
the highlights. What did what did you get? What do
you think you got wrong that you're that you're correcting,
and what do you feel like you were you saw
first before other people were noticing.

Speaker 3 (44:46):
You know, there are actually signs I think in twenty
two Chuck of things changing when Joe Lombardo, Republican candidate
challenged the democratic governor. And governors here are so powerful
the legislature barely meets form one out of twenty four
can do all kind. It's very hard to beat an
incumbent governor in a Jenert it's a.

Speaker 1 (45:04):
Single I always say this. The only thing harder to
do is beat a sitting president. I think that's right.
And the second hardest thing to do in politics is
defeat a governor that's running for a second term. Once
you start running in states, that allow third and fourth terms.
That's a different story. But we are usually as an electorate,
and this is true in all fifty states. We're inclined

(45:27):
to give a governor a second term unless they're a
total and complete disaster.

Speaker 3 (45:32):
I think that's right, and I think that there were
some signs in twenty two and Lombardo upset Steve sis
like it was a very close race, but the margin
in Clark County, which as you know, and I won't
bore everyone with the so called Clark County firewall, where
the Democrats we're so they're so populous down here, they
had a huge advantage registration and they were able to

(45:53):
turn out those folks. Now, some people will say it's
no coincidence that Harry Reid died at the end of
twenty twenty one, and then twenty twenty two showed some slippage,
and then twenty twenty four of the reading machine could
not pull Harris over the top.

Speaker 1 (46:10):
Here.

Speaker 3 (46:10):
Now, the Democrats still did well down ballot in both
of those years. But I think what I missed was
was and this has to do with the Culinary Union too,
which is half Latino as you know, a little bit
more is that they don't have the kind of sophisticated
political operation they once did. I think that was an issue.

(46:30):
And I think again, this slippage, whether it was no
tax on tits, whether it was a young latinos saying
you know what, as Trump would say, what kind of
chance are you take? And what you know? What have
you gotten so far? Why not try me? And I
think I missed that that slippage was going on. But
you know, we'd like to say, Chuck, elections are about

(46:51):
a lot of things, issues and interest groups and campaigns,
but they're about math. And if the Democrats could not
make the math work in Clark County, than they were
going to lose. And I still thought barely barely that
they could still make the math work enough to beat Trump. Now,
I will say one other thing about the conventional wisdom

(47:12):
about the electorate here, I am not so sure that
there is any conventional wisdom anymore about the electric And
I'll tell you why. There's been this explosion of non
major party voters here in Nevada. And I mean there's
more of them than there are either Republicans or Democrats.

Speaker 1 (47:32):
Now, this had been a trend even before motive voter,
though right.

Speaker 3 (47:36):
Not as pronounced though, Chuck. And what happened once motive
voter passed is they had you know, if you don't
register as a party, then you're automatically put as a nonpartisan.
Now they've adjusted that a little bit, but you still
I look at these figures every week because I'm not
a normal person chalk and like to see all this data.
And I see, you know, sixty more Democrats, sixty more Republicans,

(47:58):
and two thousand more nonpartisans.

Speaker 1 (48:02):
Now, I wonder if that's a if that's a commentary
on politics where the average person is like, hey, I'm
not interested in identifying with either party in front of
somebody else. I'm going to just be be that Like
it's it's almost it's easier to virtue signal as and
independent these days than it is as a partisan. Are
a partisan?

Speaker 3 (48:21):
D There's no question that's going on here in everywhere truck.
But I also believe, and I've used the term zombie
voters to describe some of these folks who will never vote.
And how do you, let's say it's two thousand a week,
how do you figure out what number of those two
thousand or ones you should go after that they really
still care that they may vote. Those are harder to find.
Do we register D or R?

Speaker 1 (48:43):
What? Look you talk to these statewide strategists? Are they
you know, is either party offering them a welcome basket?
Are they like, Hey, you just registered to vote. Let
me tell you a little bit about urg I mean,
you know both of us. If kids go to college, right,
you go in and student organizations or join my organization,
joined my Do the d's and the rs make a

(49:06):
case to these new voters or do they just ignore them?

Speaker 3 (49:09):
So one of the reasons I thought Trump would still
lose here in twenty four is the Democrats have always
done a much better job of targeting here than the Republicans.
It's not even close to The Republican Party has generally
been very inept here. There have been some outside groups
that have formed that have done some things, But the
Democrats explicitly told me, people I trust that we know

(49:29):
who these Democrats in independent clothing. You know, Mark Melman,
the Democratic poster, once told me that there's no such
thing as an independent John. You just got to strip
off their clothing to get to their jersey. I'm not
sure that's so much true anymore. By the way, Jackie
told me that about ten years ago. But the Democrats,
I thought that they had targeted enough and they were

(49:50):
going to turn them out. But the Republicans haven't done
that much. Although I will say that the infrastructure erected
by the new governor Joe Lombardo after twenty two, looking
ahead to twenty four, I think has helped the Republicans.
They want to say that. They like saying now the
Lombardo machine has supplanted the Red machine. We'll see, well,

(50:14):
we'll see a lot about that, both in twenty six
and in twenty eight. Lombardo's up in twenty six.

Speaker 1 (50:31):
You are assuming that's going to be a competitive race.

Speaker 3 (50:35):
Maybe I'm way.

Speaker 1 (50:37):
We just got done discussing how hard it is to
knock off it income the governor, so I'll admit I'm skeptical.
But the sitting age is a formidable candidate, so I
don't want to dismiss mister Ford.

Speaker 3 (50:50):
So here here's the issue, though, Chuck, Yeah, we're still
a purple state. The registration number between Democrats and Republicans
are very very Lombardo has good numbers, I wouldn't say
invincible type numbers in a purple state. But he has
very good people around him. He does have the advantage

(51:11):
of incumbency, and he will raise way more money than
either the age or his prime. He has a primary
opponent at least right now too, who is the chairwoman
of the Washoe County Commission. But Ford himself, while very
ambitious and has wanted to know, has known where he's
wanted to be for a long time. Here, he has
some real baggage and it's starting to come out. And

(51:32):
you know this better than anybody. It came out that
he had traveled he was out of state a third
of the days last year. Now, imagine if you're a
campaign consultant what you can do in ads with that.
And they are beating that drum every day. Lombardo has
a pack that sends out messages on social media and
to reporters inboxes every day just on that issue, and

(51:55):
they have him supporting a so called sanctuary state bill.
I think that it's a little of an exaggeration, but
that term is thrown around somewhat recklessly by Republicans. So
I think Ford's an underdog. He's probably a six or
seven point underdog. But what Lombardo was worried about the
most I think is what is the Trump factor? We

(52:16):
don't know what are his numbers going to look like.
And Lombardo, I'd like to say he's done a pretty
good job of threading that needle. The Democrats like to
call him Maga. He's not Maga, but he has done
enough speaking of virtue signaling to Trump to make them
keep Trump at Bay.

Speaker 1 (52:34):
You know, it's interesting there's just three Republican governors in
excuse me, four if you count the Vermont governor. But
I weirdly he's sort of he's kind of more of
an aberration than the other three. I want to make
a point about, and that is you have Glenny Unkin
in Virginia, Brian Kemp and Georgia Joe Lombardo Nevada. Point is,
these are places where Joe Biden carried the state right,

(52:57):
and then, of course the case of Virginia, Kamala Harris
also carried. It's not lost in me that the Republicans
that win there are a little less Maga, right whatever
that you know. And in another on Earth too, Joe
Lombardo is a is one of the leading candidates for
president in twenty twenty eight for the Republican Party. And

(53:18):
yet I you know, despite what Nevada partisans might think,
he's nowhere near He's not maga, all right, You and
I both know he's not nearly maga enough to be that.
And he because he never could have won office anywhere
had he been. Do they have ambition beyond the state

(53:40):
of Nevada?

Speaker 3 (53:41):
Does Lombardo?

Speaker 1 (53:43):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (53:43):
No, no, no, no, he's not a guy who wants I mean,
he kind of was an accidental candidate for governor. He
had served two terms as sheriff in Clark County, and
some guys came to him and said, you know what,
you're the perfect profile. You're from southern Nevada, you have
a bay. We just need to cut into the Democrats,
and you're the best guy to do it. And I

(54:04):
think Laard was more like that sounds like a neat
thing to do well.

Speaker 1 (54:07):
It was sort of very similar to the Younkin strategy
in Virginia, which was, yeah, he was a little conservative
for northern Virginia, but not an out but not a
virus right, not where everybody would be allergic to it.
And he and he could he had a guy smiley
type of sales salesman looked to him, which was he
wasn't going to carry northern Virginia, just like Lombardo wasn't
in Kerry Clark County. But he wasn't gonna get blown out.

Speaker 3 (54:30):
Now, I remember, Siciliac lost to Lombardo by fifteen thousand
points a point, fifteen thousand votes a point and a half, Chuck,
and I still believe that because of the Democratic machine
they got him that close. I mean, Siciliac had a
COVID hangover to deal with, there was.

Speaker 1 (54:47):
A lot of money he shut the strip. I mean,
who's going to be the Nevada governors shut to shut
the strip? I mean, you know that's that's going to
be the historic explanation for why you get And.

Speaker 3 (54:58):
There was a scandal that he had to deal with
about one of his close friends and donors, Sons, getting
a COVID testing contract which with the state, which Lombardo's
team brilliantly exploited. So I think in some ways Cisilac
was lucky to only lose by a point after by
the way, Chuck, I should mention so everyone knows Cisilac

(55:19):
has not taken himself out of running. In twenty twenty
six and if he believes Ford is weak enough, he
might get into that race.

Speaker 1 (55:27):
That's interesting. Are there people trying to talk him into
it or is he trying to talk people into supporting them.

Speaker 3 (55:32):
It's still latter for sure. It's going to be very
difficult for him to raise money now. He has some
personal wealth, it's unclear how much, but he wants back
in the game. I think mostly for redemption because he
thinks what happened was really unfair, that he did the
best he could with COVID, that this scandal was blown
out of proportion, et cetera. And so that can be

(55:54):
a very powerful motivator for someone.

Speaker 1 (55:57):
What is how would you so? I had a friend
of mine who uses who frequently travels to Vegas to
play poker, and he talks about the few times that
he's been there when it felt a little light, meaning
there weren't as many people around, and he described that
very recently. Is this a Canadian thing or are we starting?

(56:21):
Is this the Canarian the coal mine on the overall
nation's overall economy?

Speaker 3 (56:26):
Yeah? I think I think it might be what you
just said. And there have been stories talking about the
Las Vegas economy and the issues that exists.

Speaker 1 (56:35):
Now.

Speaker 3 (56:36):
The Canadian thing is not insignificant. People may not know this.
I think the numbers twenty seven percent of our answer.

Speaker 1 (56:41):
Is much bigger than I remember reading that number. I
went wow. And you know, Orlando's experiencing a similar Canadian falloff,
which is impacting the theme parks in Orlando. I mean,
you know, Canada may only be the size of California,
but California's pretty big state.

Speaker 3 (56:58):
Exactly right. But that's only part of it, Chuck. There
are some people here who think that the fears over
the immigration policies have affected this because of the large
Hispanic populations and the number of Hispanic visitors that we
have gotten in the past. But one factor that's really
just endemic to Nevada is that people are starting to

(57:22):
think that these companies don't provide a value proposition anymore.
Remember there's been large changeover and who owns these places,
and the fact that they're charging twenty dollars for a
bottle of water, doing all kinds of little things. Originally
this was just bubbling up on Reddit threads, but now
it's become much more mainstream. The Convention Authority is seeing

(57:43):
it in their post visitation surveys and visitation has been
going down. If, by the way, if it weren't for
Baccarat and the high rollers losing all their money at Baccarat,
then numbers would be even worse.

Speaker 1 (57:54):
Interesting, And so it's more of the corporatization of the
casinos and that mindset, because you know, the whole point
of Vegas was, oh, you can get a cheap room.
Why can you get a cheap room because they're making
They're gonna make money on you in other ways. You know,
it's interesting, John Is this is the same complain about
disney World, where Disney World is so expensive now and

(58:17):
then they make you buy access to a short pass
or whatever, so the no line thing, and but all
of a sudden you're charged all these different subsets of money.
That used to feel Grottis and Vegas was the town
of Grottis.

Speaker 3 (58:33):
Absolutely right. And by the way, I went to Disney
World for the first time with my family and my
brother's family, and I know exactly what you're talking about.

Speaker 1 (58:39):
Last year.

Speaker 3 (58:40):
That was really something. But Vegas that is starting to
becomeing viewed now. And as I said, there's been several
national stories talking about this kind of backlash uh, and
so it's not like we're in a recession, but there
are real worries about about the economy. I think, by
the way, that could have a u impact on the
governor's right.

Speaker 1 (59:01):
Well, that's what I was just going to say. I
mean that that is, you know, when America gets a cold,
economic cold, Nevada gets the flu, which has always been
this is why it's like usually the first place you
see sniffles, right, And that's what That's what my friend
was reacting to. So let me ask this. There's always
been an effort to diversify the Nevada economy. There's only

(59:23):
so much diversification when when when you're when Vegas is
what it is. But what kind of progress has been
made on diversification? What's real data centers?

Speaker 3 (59:35):
Yeah, I mean there's been data centers that have been
other tech stuff, A lot of it in Reno, by
the way, or near Reno, where Tesla has this gigafactory
as you may know, and Apple and Google have interests
up there. Not as much in Clark County as you
might think. The big push now and there's going to
be a special session of the legislature to decide this

(59:57):
is whether we should become Hollywood East. Mark Wahlberg and
Jeremy Renner, both of whom live here have residences now
in Nevada, are pushing this. It's a film tax credit built,
which has been very controversial both here and elsewhere. There's
a lot of evidence elsewhere that it has not worked
out as well. But they're saying this is going to

(01:00:17):
create all kinds of jobs, create a new industry here.
I still think, Chuck, it's very, very difficult to diversify
this economy for the reasons that you understand. The gaming
is just so dominant, and listen, I think there have
been some really good, smart people who have tried to
do this at the state level and at the local

(01:00:38):
convention authority level. But it's very, very difficult. And I
don't think that building a huge studio in summer, which
is what the proposal is, is going to totally change
the dynamic. It may be good for the state, but
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:00:54):
Movie tax credits or the riverboat casinos of the twenty
first century, you know what I mean.

Speaker 3 (01:00:59):
That there are some people who think that this is
this is again talking about math, This is just getting
to the right number of votes in the legislature to
get this done.

Speaker 1 (01:01:08):
So what happens is the initial hit feels good. The
film tax credit in Santa fe in New Mexico, the
film tax credit in Atlanta. You get like one big entity.
You got it in Atlanta, you got it in New Mexico.
And then all of a sudden, you know, it's like, well,
I'll give you an example. My son goes to school

(01:01:29):
in Dallas. He's now discovered. He and his friends have
discovered eight it's under twenty. If you're eighteen, you can
gamble in Oklahoma. Well, the second Texas gets casinos, nobody's
traveling to Oklahoma. So, and that's what I mean by
the riverboat craze, where you know, it made sense until everybody,
you know, oh well, now you know we used to

(01:01:51):
have the only place to gamble on the East coast
in the mid Atlantic was in West Virginia. And then
Maryland happened, and then Delaware happened, and then you know,
et cetera, et cetera. So it's like why Mohegan Sun
and Connecticut really hurt Atlantic City? I mean, you get
where I'm going. That's what this film tax credit feels like.
Everybody does it and then when everybody does it, then

(01:02:12):
all of a sudden, what have you created? Right on
that front? So I get that, but what about energy?
I mean, if I were to to me, the most
realistic way to diversify the economy is to sort of
double down on energy, right, whether it's solar, whether it's
these portable nuclear plants. Although I know yucka mountains a

(01:02:32):
whole separate conversation, but it feels as if the energy
industry in theory could be a place to go.

Speaker 3 (01:02:40):
No. Yes, And then you know, there's been a lot
of controversy, lady, because there's this huge solar project that
was planned and Trump has slowed that down and they
may even be canceled, and so they're trying to save that.
But you also have the very very powerful utility monopoly
here that's owned by One and Buffett by the way,

(01:03:01):
that has blocked a lot of these efforts because they
want it for themselves if it ever happens. And so
there there is that kind of politics. Hathaway controls the
power out there. Huh yeah, Berkshire. Hathaway bought the company
is called Envy Energy. It's been five eight years now,
I forget how long it's been I.

Speaker 1 (01:03:22):
Remember, I think I remember you bringing this up once.
It was amazing a public utilities owned by a private company.

Speaker 3 (01:03:28):
Yeah, and and uh it's it's a monopoly and has
a tremendous amount of political power here in the state.

Speaker 1 (01:03:35):
I bet it does.

Speaker 3 (01:03:36):
And and so what they want they usually get. And
so you know, they they don't want a bunch of
other companies coming in here and doing solar. They want
to do solar on their own timeline. And of course
this Yeer club and all the others are apoplectic about
all of this, but they don't have the cloud that
Envy Energy does.

Speaker 1 (01:03:58):
Let's talk about nonprofit versus for profit journalism. So you
have said, and look you you have kept the Nevada Independent.
It is still free if you don't want to subscribe. Correct,
what have you done on that? You have no paywall?

Speaker 3 (01:04:16):
Right, you have no paywall. It is free. We survive
on donations of all kinds, whether it's you know, the
people pay five dollars a month or corporations that I've
believe it or not chuck charmed into giving us a
whole bunch of money. But that there's no paywall. We
will never have a paywall.

Speaker 1 (01:04:34):
How do you handle you know, the corporations that you're
going to cover, what's the how do you just you know,
I assume you must have an upfront conversation with these
bigger donors who want to give on a corporate because
you guys are very transparent about it. I mean, you're
one of those You're like, hey, look i'll be NASCAR.
Here are my sponsors. And it to me, it's such

(01:04:57):
a variety that it's you can't pay you down with,
which is exactly what you want. But I assume you
have a let's have a realistic conversation. You know, you
have an issue with something I am covering, you know,
what do you say to them?

Speaker 3 (01:05:15):
You know, it's a great question, and I think you'll
be surprised that the answered Chuck. And it's hard for
this to not sound self aggrandizing, but you know, I
built a reputation over thirty five years in this state
for a certain kind of journalism, and so when I
went to these corporations, originally they didn't I didn't have

(01:05:35):
to ask that conversation I had that because they knew
they knew that.

Speaker 1 (01:05:39):
But you started this in the pre Trump era, and
I do think that's an important part because Trump is
sort of forced a conversation that you're either with them
or against them. There is no nuance, there is no
middle or ground, there's no gray area.

Speaker 3 (01:05:50):
Well, what's interesting about that is I started the India
on January seventeenth, twenty seventeen. So think about that, so
not barely the pre Trump era, right like three days
or so. Excuse me, so listen. But the key person
to mention, who is not unrelated to Trump in this

(01:06:11):
sense of Sheldon Adelson, who who was the biggest donor
to the Republican Party, had just purchased the Las Vegas
Review Journal, and so I saw an opportunity there. Some
people were worried that he was just going to use
it as his political play thing. Horror, what a shocking speculation.
That turned out to beat, Chuck, and so people were

(01:06:32):
willing to get for that reason. But having said that,
through the years, and we're going to be nine years
old pretty soon, I can't believe it, Chuck, it's been.
I could spend all day talking about what a rollercoaster
rideing the mistakes and the things that I've done right,
But I know of only one instance in which a
major donor called to complain. Wasn't to me. It was

(01:06:54):
after I had bumped myself up to CEO to the editor,
and that person got nowhere. And I think that people
just have a yearning, even people in business, for places
that they can read and in depth information and know
what's really going on so they can make business decisions
based on that. And so you have kind of an

(01:07:15):
implosion of the of the mainstream media here that occurred
with the Review Journal losing a lot of credibility because
of battle Sid.

Speaker 1 (01:07:23):
There was a Sinclair by a bought up. What are
your affiliates, right?

Speaker 3 (01:07:27):
I think sink Sinclair owns two affiliates in this day,
one in Vegas, one in Reno and uh in fact,
I got fired from a Sinclair film, but that's a
that's a different story check. But anyhow, the Sun has
essentially retrench covers entertainment in sports not a lot more.

Speaker 1 (01:07:44):
And the Reno.

Speaker 3 (01:07:44):
Gazette Journal has been hollowed out by Gannett. And so
even though that's terrible for journalism, it is a nerd
to our benefit and we've been able to expand into
northern Nevada as well. We're the only statewide news organization. Now,
so if you're seen as the go to place, essentially
the only place, then that helps with donations.

Speaker 1 (01:08:03):
So because there's some of these other nonprofits that I've
come across that have run into donor fatigue in about
year seven, eight, nine, ten, how have you dealt with
donor fatigue?

Speaker 3 (01:08:18):
Can you hear my sigh? Yeah, exactly, it's Chuck. This
is I still say it's the most exhilarating and the
hardest thing that I'd ever done in my career. And
as you know, and as you've done a lot of
different things in your career, the hardest thing I've ever
had to do, Chuck, was about in my professional like,
was about a year and a half ago when I

(01:08:39):
had to lay off four people.

Speaker 1 (01:08:41):
I did that once, worst thing. I still have nightmares
about la.

Speaker 3 (01:08:44):
It's horrible. And while it may have been the best
thing in the long run, forty ar that these are
four people I liked. I helped three of them at
least find other jobs. But still it was just a
horrendous thing to have to go through. And it was
maybe because I, you know, got ahead of myself and
thinking how big that we could get, and thinking that

(01:09:06):
certain things would come through that didn't. But we've rebounded
now and then through the work of our revenue team
and me just really beating the bushes. We now have
more money in the bank than we've ever had. And yet, Chuck, Yet,
as I look towards the end of twenty twenty five
and twenty twenty six, we're not sustainable. Yet I can't.
I still wake up every morning and the first thing

(01:09:28):
I do is I click on the bank accounts so
I can project how much revenue we have and how
far out it goes. It's harrowing to some extent, but
it's also a challenge. And I do believe. I do
believe that the talent, excuse me, the skills that made
me a good journalist, that is, being shameless and ready
to ask any question at any time is pretty good

(01:09:49):
for fundraising too, because you're just not shy about college
with people, what you have to do and which you know.
As much as I've started to be more of a
CEO than a journalist, and you know, of course I
keep close to the journalism et cetera, but uh, I have.

Speaker 4 (01:10:04):
I've had to devote almost full time to it and
I'm still not done.

Speaker 1 (01:10:19):
Have you has it given you a different level of
respect for the politician. I say that all the time.

Speaker 3 (01:10:26):
Track it's true, and I say the politicians I know, Uh,
it really has just you know, going and asking people
for money and saying here's why you should give, which
which is easier for politicians. Somewhat that it's hard to
make the value argument.

Speaker 1 (01:10:40):
To well, well, they're selling an idea. You're selling, Well,
you're selling an idea, but.

Speaker 3 (01:10:45):
A different kind of idea. The idea they're selling is
you put me in office, I'll be good for you
in some way. I'm I'm appealing to people's you know,
sense of civic duty, citizenship, the importance of journalism, which,
as you well know, is getting harder and harder to sell.

Speaker 1 (01:11:01):
Yeah. Look, I'm sort of I'm obsessed with trying to
find a revenue stream that's for profit. I've got this
notion that maybe youth sports and high school sports can
be a bit of more of a magnet for advertisers.
What's the look? I know, to me, there's no one

(01:11:25):
revenue answer, and every local organization some may subscriptions may
be the primary revenue, philanthropy may be the primary revenue.
Advertising events, What are the challenges in the advertising space
that prevent that from being the be all, end all

(01:11:47):
for you.

Speaker 3 (01:11:49):
Well, there's still not a lot of money to be
made in digital advertising as much as there used to
be in print advertising. However, I will tell you, Chuck,
and this is not to my credit. In fact, quite
the opposite. Until a couple of years ago, I refuse
to take ads.

Speaker 1 (01:12:02):
On remember that, but you but you have sense, right.

Speaker 3 (01:12:06):
And people like Evan Smith, whom you know from the
used to running Texas Tribune and others. I go to
conferences and they said, how are you doing this? You're
the only one to make ends meet without it. You
have to take ads, And I said, you know, it
just feels right. And then finally, like I had an epiphany,
which is like, how stupid are you? If I'm going
to take two hundred thousand dollars from a casino company,

(01:12:28):
why is that different than taking, you know, fifty thousand dollars?

Speaker 1 (01:12:32):
Do you know what you're doing for them? You know
what you're doing for them when you promote the fact
that they gave you money at your event, you're advertising
for exactly right.

Speaker 3 (01:12:41):
And listen, either the work stands for itself and it's
separate from any money that you're taking, or it doesn't
you mentioned that we're transparent. We mentioned in every story
that that a donor is mental who who that donor is.
And a lot of elected officials on both sides, companies
who run by CEOs or on both sides of the
spectrum have given to us. And you know, you're still

(01:13:05):
always going to get oh you're so far left, Oh
you're a Democrat, all the rest of that stuff. But
I love telling people really. Joe Lombarro, the governor, by
the way, Chuck has sat down for interviews at events
of ours four different times with me, and he's about
to sit down for a fifth one early next year.
So I mean, listen, that's noise to some extent, but

(01:13:25):
it's something that I have to be concerned about.

Speaker 1 (01:13:30):
So going back to advertising, now that you've decided to
take it, what is why is there not more advertising
in the news space? What do you think has been
Is it because it's programmatic? Is it because it's not
hyper local? Why doesn't it have the same value proposition?
Have you guys cracked that code?

Speaker 3 (01:13:50):
I still think a lot of people don't understand it,
and you still have to sell why it's important. It
has become a significant revenue stream for us in the
last two years. And I was very foolish, I think.
In fact, I talked to Evan Spent at one point
like should we take campaign advertising from candidate? My instinct
was that we should take everything from everybody, uh, as

(01:14:13):
long as it's legal, a legal business. And Evan told
me this is interesting that at the Texas tributing and
he argued for years against taking campaign as he thought
it would look bad, and then he suddenly realized he
was wrong about it, that it's no different than any
other kind of advertising, and in some ways it's good
because you take you take advertising from the Democrat and

(01:14:33):
the Republican is going to want to match it. But
get getting back to your original question, maybe it's a
couple questions ago. The key to making this successful, Chuck,
is diversifying your revenue base. So we have donors, we
have foundation grants, we have advertising, and what we've really
done well in the last few years or events we
do we do. We do eight or nine events in a

(01:14:55):
year now, including something called IndieFest in a few weeks
that you aware of and that we modeled on Tripfest
in Texas and we make a significant amount of money
off of those events. I have a great team that
helps sell sponsorships and that's really you have the diversified
revenue you can survive. And by the way, I will

(01:15:17):
repeat again, we're not sustainable yet, but I'm hoping we're
going to get there soon.

Speaker 1 (01:15:23):
Do you own your own building, because that is seen
as something as a way to create. And do you
feel as do you guys meet in one area? Do
you or is that are you more remote than in
one newsroom?

Speaker 3 (01:15:38):
I feel like I'm giving you a how to guide
on how to do this.

Speaker 1 (01:15:41):
No, well it is. It is well some of it
because I've been I've been surveying in this landscape right
because I really would like to see if we can
scale it. And I've had a lot of skeptics. You
can't scale local news, and it's like and yet I
also don't think we can expand local news if we
don't have a way to scale it. So that's why

(01:16:04):
I'm curious. I've had some that argue that, you know,
one of the reasons why so many hedge funds targeted
newspapers early on, they didn't care about the newspaper. They
wanted the downtown real estate. Right, the Denver Post had
a great building in downtown Denver. You know the Chicago
you know the NBC building, It's called the NBC Building
in Chicago. NBC is like one floor now, right, But

(01:16:25):
these these the real estate was the value proposition to
these hedge funds. They didn't care about the newspaper. But
the real estate actually could be a way to essentially
if things, you know, in a recession climate, you don't
have big donors, you could take a mortgage out on
your on your real estate truck.

Speaker 3 (01:16:46):
There is no real estate. I made a decision when
I started the nd not to have a building because
I thought I didn't want that cost, which was a
gamble in some senses that you know, you want to
create the camaraderie too, and and have people there, and
plus you know some of these young people. And this
has been the great part of this is all the

(01:17:07):
young people I've had come work for me. Yeah, yeah,
yeah exactly. And I didn't know that I could finally say, well, yeah,
I'm old enough now to maybe mentor some younger reports.
I'm definitely old enough, juck. But the point is is
that they adapted to that very very well, and they
meet in coffee shops, and we had a shared workspace
that we paid a very small fee for or was

(01:17:28):
traded out to us. And so I've never really wanted
to have a building. The danger is, and I don't
know if you've come across us as good as these
young reporters are, some of them think that journalism is
sitting in their apartment and texting people, texting sources instead
of getting out there and meeting for lunches or dinners
or drinks or breakfast or whatever, which I love. That

(01:17:50):
was my favorite part of covering politics, being everywhere all
the time, because you just you pick up so much
stuff that say, you can't sit in your apartment, text people,
get on the phone, go meet them, I know. Except
that's a young people's thing nowt I know.

Speaker 1 (01:18:06):
Except I was just going to say, the sources they're
dealing with are their age, and you know what they
want electronic relationships they don't necessarily want.

Speaker 3 (01:18:13):
Too many of them do.

Speaker 1 (01:18:14):
But you know, we're the old guys and we enjoy that.
And it's true. You know, I've been asked, you know
what is going to be lost by not being there?
If you're a Pentagon reporter. And you know, I used
to say with the White House, I could have done
eighty five percent of my reporting without ever stepping foot
in the White House. But I could tell you the
fifteen percent that pays the bills is what gets you that.

(01:18:38):
You know, it's the ability to understand body language, to
see it, to feel it all. Look, it's one of
those things you appreciate later in life, not in the moment.
And that's what's really hard to convey. I think to
these younger reporters before I let you go, we're getting
close here on time. What would Harry Reid say the
Democratic Party would need to do today? Because I find

(01:19:02):
it interesting that his former chief of staff is using
his name and hometown as sort of an homage to
this is what needs to be done. Harry Reid would
be calling for this giant, big tent that you cannot
have a a purity test that kicks John Fetterman out,
that kicks Joe Mansion out, that kicks Mom Donnie out.

(01:19:25):
What what would Harry Reid be saying in this moment, Well, you need.

Speaker 3 (01:19:28):
To talk about that. And you're referring to Adam Jeneralston
in the Search Flight Institute, which he's very proud of,
meaning at the Search Flight Institute. Listen. Uh, There's a
great analogy to take from Harry Reid's career, and it's
it's in the book Chuck about what he did with
Joe Lieberman a couple of times, and his caucus wanted

(01:19:49):
to throw out Lieberman a couple of times, and Reid
played the long game there and in a paid off form,
especially on Obamacare, although I think he regretted it when
Joemanu said he was going to vote against the public option,
which Harry Reid really wanted, but he kept Lieberman in
the tent. He kept him in the tent even though
he was in a postate to many of his caucus colleagues.

(01:20:11):
But I think I think Read would be very not
just upset with that what Trump is doing all the
rest of it. Of course he would be, but I
think he would be thinking that Chuck Schumer and others
should be a lot more pugnacious and effective in different ways.
I will tell you when I interviewed Harry Read for
the book, he he died very early in this process

(01:20:33):
has been a four and a half year odyssey. Book's
coming out January twentieth. And in case you forget to
mention to go go pre order it please, I'm supposed
to say that. I think I'm contractually obligatding.

Speaker 1 (01:20:44):
I didn't realize we're that far away from it.

Speaker 3 (01:20:45):
Gosh, it's three months from today, Chuck.

Speaker 1 (01:20:49):
As that means in three months, I'll have you on again.
After I read the book.

Speaker 3 (01:20:52):
We should yeah, we should be. I should send you
a galley.

Speaker 1 (01:20:55):
I should have said I'd love to I'd love to
be sent galley.

Speaker 3 (01:20:57):
You should send me your address and all again. We'll
do that, and Schuster to send you lucky hear what
you think of it. But I asked Harry read at
one point, you know, tell me what kind of job
you think Chuck Schumer is doing as your successor. And
this is in twenty twenty one, late twenty twenty one,
and Harry Readers always does. He looks down for about

(01:21:19):
five ten seconds and looks up and says, I made
myself a promise I would never say a negative word
about Chuck Schumer. John next question, I don't think he
would be happy with with what Schumer did is doing.

Speaker 1 (01:21:32):
He just he just answered the question, because you just
that's going to be devastating that that nugget, I mean,
that says everything. Yeah, yeah, because because Harry Reid essentially
agreed to humiliate Dick Durbin in favor of Chuck Schumer.

Speaker 3 (01:21:49):
And how I saw it, I'm.

Speaker 1 (01:21:52):
Sorry, that was a total humiliation of Derbin. I understand
Durbin's reputation, which was he didn't run a very sharp
his office was undisciplined, would be the phrase. I'd here
all the time. I can't have somebody who's undisciplined running.
He's a great number two, you know, it won't be
a good number one. There were always all these euphemisms
that were used in my reporting what sources would say,
because everybody liked Dick. Nobody wanted to be negative on

(01:22:13):
Dick Durbin. They just said, eh, it just he lets
things slip through the cracks. That would be the sort
of the was essentially the vibe they were doing. So
Read really, you know, he had to eat it in
order to keep Durbin out of this. And it sounds
like he regrets it. Huh.

Speaker 3 (01:22:30):
I'm not sure he regrets it. And I think that
Schumer and Read and loved each other in a way,
But I think that Reid thought Schumer would be more
effective than Durbin for a variety of reasons. I asked Urban.
By the way, I interviewed both Durbin and Schumer for
the book, and I asked Urban about being passed over,
as it were, And of course he handled it very

(01:22:51):
diplomatically and even.

Speaker 1 (01:22:52):
Such a midwesterner.

Speaker 3 (01:22:53):
Yeah, after after I pushed him, Uh, he still was.
But he was a great source for the book and
always better than Schumer. Although the Schumer stuff in the
book is much more and I think this is not great.

Speaker 1 (01:23:04):
You're given away one of Washington's secrets about Derbott. But anyway,
go ahead, Yeah, right, is.

Speaker 3 (01:23:10):
That Schumer is that Schumer does at least a couple
of I told you sos on Reid that are very
I thought were very taste. So like I told Harry,
you shouldn't go nuclear, and it turns out I was
right about that kind of thing.

Speaker 1 (01:23:23):
Yeah, I mean, look, I I have you know, it's
one of I earned the ire of Reid's office for
a while because I was Look, I believe the biggest
black marks on the on Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid
are there collective? Are there? Collective? Actions that delegitimize the
judiciary branch. They they couldn't have done it without the other.

(01:23:45):
So I do not accept the premise that only one's
more to blame than the other. It's one of those
that they were simpatico into this. They went down this
hell hole together and here we are. But but that
doesn't mean that both of them weren't very rude and
understanding how to manage their caucus in the moment they
were living in. And I'm mindful of that as well.

Speaker 3 (01:24:06):
Yeah, it was tough, Chuck, And you'll appreciate this as
a guy who knows even more minutia about politics than
I do. Is that Harry Reid getty access to his archives,
which had a thousand boxes and twelve million digital files.

Speaker 1 (01:24:19):
I mean, she's enormous.

Speaker 3 (01:24:21):
And the people at that university were phenomenon giving me
spreadsheets and I found a lot of incredible stuff. But
my wife, who helped me research this, was in the
archive with me, and I would show her these documents,
say look what I found, and she would say, quite accurately,
it turns out there are two kinds of things we're
going to find, honey book stuff and John's stuff. And

(01:24:42):
there's so much inside stuff that I would have wanted
to keep in the book that I couldn't.

Speaker 1 (01:24:48):
John, stuff I love that is so true, I know exactly.
My favorite it's at my Obama book. My favorite scoop
is something that is such a it never got the traction,
and I'm still it was Bob Menendez saved Obamacare because
Bob Menende said, Jesus crime and he please don't have

(01:25:09):
this be implemented before the twenty twelve elections. And he
was about a well, the guy who saved Obama's second term.
Like I found it to be an amazing nugget and
it was just such an arcane piece of medutia for
ninety percent of readers.

Speaker 3 (01:25:22):
You know, yes, yes, that's stuff we love. Chuck.

Speaker 1 (01:25:25):
Right, So when you say he would expect Schubert to
be more pugnacious, would he not? How would he? How
would he have had a confrontation? He wouldn't have picked
this as the confrontation with Trump? Would he have done
something else? Is that right?

Speaker 3 (01:25:43):
I don't know. I don't know. I just I think
just from talking from thinking about the read that I knew,
I think I know way better than anybody.

Speaker 1 (01:25:51):
More than anybody. I was just gonna say yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:25:54):
And I'm talking to some of his staff, I think,
I mean, they all tell me that he loved Schumer
and he and they did, and they were they were opposites.

Speaker 1 (01:26:03):
I thought they were a great team when it was.
Schumer was the sort of the guy who went and
cajoled the candidate to run and promised him the moon,
and Read was the cold hearted you know, uh, I
don't know if we want him, yes, we want him,
go get him type of They were a nice little
good cop bad cop combination is the sense I got.

Speaker 3 (01:26:24):
I just think, and you're you're absolutely right. And he
loved that. Schumer wanted to go on TV every day
because he didn't want to. Oh, he didn't care about that.
The few times that he did didn't usually turn out
so low.

Speaker 1 (01:26:35):
Oh my god. I never enjoyed any interview on air
that I did of Harry Reid. I enjoyed every off
the record session I ever had with Harry Reid.

Speaker 3 (01:26:42):
Yeah, exactly right. And and listen to these zoom sessions.

Speaker 1 (01:26:46):
I had with him.

Speaker 3 (01:26:47):
I did twenty four of them before he passed away, chucking.
I mean, they were all I mean, he was still
pretty sharp until the end. And there were some priceless
things that he said, and and almost all of them
were on the record, but some of them, I'm afraid,
were relegated to the John stuff category and had to
be taken out of the book.

Speaker 1 (01:27:08):
Can you make a friends and Family edition? Can you
give me the John stuff chapter after the book? That's like,
I want a John Stuff chapter because that's the stuff
that I'm gonna want.

Speaker 3 (01:27:19):
Well, I started a sub stack and I'm starting to
put out some of the documents that I didn't use
in the book. But you know, they thought that Simon
and Schuster thought the book was two hundred pages too long.
I thought the book was two hundred pages to guess
who won on that one shock and so but listen,
I am I'm I'll say the same here that I've

(01:27:41):
said to everybody who are my friends. I'm excited that
that that, at this four and a half hero Odyssey
is finally uh And man, I'm also terrified h sitting
in a dark room awaiting the reaction from everybody.

Speaker 1 (01:27:57):
No, I guess before I let you go? Are you
so prized? It's Jackie Rosen is the one that's voting
with Fetterman, right, and Angus King. Oh, No, Catherine Court
has a master. I'm sue Catherine Court is master. I
guess if you had asked me to pick which one
would be voting with TOPA and the Government, probably been
Jackie Rosen, not Catherine courtez Masto. So what is that
surprise you?

Speaker 3 (01:28:17):
You know, it's it's interesting, Chuck. I wasn't that surprised.
She's only so deliberate, so loyally, so careful, and I
think the case was made, and I think she believed
that so many there's so many federal workers in Nevada,
that this was the right vote, whether it was the
best thing for her politically, and I've heard and you

(01:28:37):
know more about this than I do. I'm sure I've
heard contrary stories about whether her ambition actually is to
be a successor eventually to Chuck Schumer to do what
Harry reidid, and whether this is a good thing for her.
But you know how the guys like you will meet,
we look at every single little thing and say, what's
the political motivation?

Speaker 1 (01:28:55):
No, I'm just it's it's Angus King, I get it,
John Fetterman. Again, I was just mildly surprised, but only mildly.
I do think the state's more swingy, and the senator
should behave more swingy if they want to, if they
want to be there long, if they would like to.

Speaker 3 (01:29:13):
I think Jackie Rosen was surprised by it, which is interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:29:17):
Huh. Yeah, how's that relationship?

Speaker 3 (01:29:21):
It was very good and I think it still is
pretty good. But if you look at a few comments
that are made, uh, it seems like there might have
been some friction caused by this because it's very difficult.

Speaker 1 (01:29:32):
But they're both they catch you. I was just going
to say, it makes well, you're you're you're you know,
the other Democratic senator is voting to open the government.
What I mean. Sure, it puts Rosen in a defensive posture.
I get it.

Speaker 3 (01:29:44):
And every time Rosen attacks the shutdown, the Republican's problem. Look,
Jackie Rosen's attacking Catherine cord That, Yeah, what's going on?
They have fun with that. So I think she was
taken a little bit by surprise on that.

Speaker 1 (01:29:56):
All right, I'll get you out of here on this.
How are you feeling about your Buffalo bills?

Speaker 3 (01:30:01):
Chuck? I wish and I promise not to bring up
Miami if you wouldn't no Bills.

Speaker 1 (01:30:06):
Well, I actually think that we're both in the same spot.
You have a team that can win it all and
a team that can break your heart. It's all at
the same time. I mean, Miami's I have this. I'm
gonna you know. My hot take is there will be
no undefeated teams in the playoffs, that everybody is likely
to have one loss. I think that's I think that's more.

(01:30:27):
Look High States House played Michigan and Indiana. You know,
it's just really hard to get twenty year old kids motivated.
I don't care how much money you're paying them. So
that's my hot take. Yeah, I love it.

Speaker 3 (01:30:39):
Yeah, can you believe it? It's such a great story.
But let me just say what the Bills will be
very simple with you. I've been a Bills fan for more.
I'm much older than you are, been a Bills fan
for more than you were born and raised right, Yes,
for more than sixty years. I am used to heartbreak, Chuck,
I expect heartbreak. I try not to get too excited.
They have some real issues, but I still believe, and

(01:31:02):
people are going to disagree with me. Josh Allen is
the most exciting player I've ever watched in football.

Speaker 1 (01:31:08):
I will just tell you this. Growing up in Miami
in the seventies and eighties, the Miami Dolphins had a
quarterback that was extra worldly and never could surround him
with a supporting cast that could win the whole thing.
I will just simply say, I just you know, there's

(01:31:29):
never a deep threat. I got another former EP of
mine that's a Big Bills fan, John Reese, and he's like,
you know, we're never trying to get Terreek Kill, and
we're never trying to get these speedsters. You got a
guy who can literally throw it out of the stadium,
but yet there's nobody that can run underneath it. It is
you worry that do they not surround them with enough talent?

Speaker 3 (01:31:52):
You know, we could have gotten Worthy too, That's the story.
People forget. We could have had Worthy and instead traded
and god who guy from Florida by the name of Keon.

Speaker 1 (01:32:01):
Coleman Florida State. No, And look, I couldn't I have
to watch all Florida State. G's my wife with the
Florida State Ken Coleman will win a one on one
like rebound type of throw. Okay, that's what he does.
He was never the guy that got space. He's never
the guy that's right. He's not a big pattern. Like
you know, you see some guys and you're like, everybody

(01:32:24):
knows they're trying to throw the ball to him. How
come nobody's on him. Well, they just know how to
get open, Like Ceedee Lamb is always wide open. You're like,
how the hell has that happened? Right, everybody knows he's
the number one receiver. Coleman is a What he's great
at is winning those one on one So he's a
great number two or number three receiver on your team.
But he's not your number one. That's the problem.

Speaker 3 (01:32:44):
Just remember we came this close again to get into
the super Bowl last year and had still had no
deep threat because Alan put there.

Speaker 1 (01:32:52):
He's a one man show, that's right.

Speaker 3 (01:32:53):
And so listen, I'm very worried now. I mean, Bills
aren't even in first place anymore in HEAs, I'm not
used to that anymore.

Speaker 1 (01:33:00):
The Frickin' Patriots, I know again.

Speaker 3 (01:33:04):
I know, I know, I know that guy's for real too, though.

Speaker 1 (01:33:08):
Chuck he is.

Speaker 3 (01:33:09):
I know.

Speaker 1 (01:33:09):
I was hoping that the nickname Drake maybe would take off,
but I don't know if that's going to happen anymore. Anyway,
all right, brother, good luck with the book. Roll out
Nevada Independent. It's where I get my news political news
on Nevada. Are you guys is your Have you dabbled
in sports? You guys have it right, you've held off
on sports.

Speaker 3 (01:33:28):
It's funny you mentioned sports. My wife was constantly tell
me you got to have a sports page. You'll get
more readers. We are thinking of hiring somebody to cover
at least a business of sports since, as you know,
we've become a major league town.

Speaker 1 (01:33:39):
Now, way, I guess it's a base No, it's an
important you know. And the w NBA in some ways
a huge business out there. And Vegas is going to
become more of an industry town for sports. So uh,
and all of the combat sports come into Vegas, you know. Now,
I mean there's there's a business of sports angle and shoot,

(01:34:03):
I will tell you this. More great college football players
are coming out of those Las Vegas high schools. Bishop
Gorman number one. But you know with Bishop Gorman come
other upstarts.

Speaker 3 (01:34:13):
So, Chuck, you're the only DC guy who would know
what Bishop Gorman is.

Speaker 1 (01:34:18):
Well, I'm a recruiting nerd. I know we've had We've
had one success out of there, I think Brevin Jordan,
and one not so success. The quarterback who was like
Ohio State by I mean and yeah, yeah, yeah, the
Internet kid, the Netflix kid. You know, I'm talking about
where they made the Netflix. Yeah. He just was too short.
I mean, I hate say it. You know, sometimes there

(01:34:39):
are physical limitations to somebody's things. All right, my friend,
be good, Thanks Chuck, all right, I hope you enjoyed
mister Ralston. Yes, he's a both of Buffalo Bills and

(01:35:00):
a Michigan Wolverines fan, so at least he experienced some
winning with the University of Michigan. Will he ever experience
the ultimate prize as a Buffalo Bills fan? Uh, let's
just say I do think America deserves a Packers Bills
super Bowl. All right? With that, it's my top five
lists of the week.

Speaker 3 (01:35:21):
Top f top.

Speaker 1 (01:35:25):
To test, and I have a fun, fun little one
that I want to do. It's I'm a history buff
I'm a political junkie. So what does that mean? I
love sort of keeping track of science, right, I guess
today in the modern language, it would be the Neippo babies.

Speaker 4 (01:35:44):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:35:44):
Uh, you know, politics in this country has been a
fan to shoot. Politics in every country is a family
business these days, right, But politics is a family business.
It always has been in this country. You know. Our
second president had a son who became what the eighth president,
ninth seventh president, you know in Quincy, q as the

(01:36:07):
colloquialism was back then. And I think when we got
George W. Bush, if you will, so, you know, for
a for a country that revolted against a monarchy, we
weirdly love our political dynasties. It's only been recently that
a Freulinghausen hasn't represented something in New Jersey going all

(01:36:27):
the way back to the Revolution. So to say that
we don't love political science. But in this day and
age of distrust of institutions, frustration with the status quo,
not happy with elites, it hasn't been a good time
to be, you know, a member of a so called
political dynasty. Right. We had Joe Kennedy the third lose

(01:36:52):
a primary in the state of Massachusetts to Ed Markey.
You had a Hillary Clinton lose. You had a h
You had a uh which which Bush? We had a
we had a Bush Oh my god, I'm drawing a
blank on Jeb Bush's oldest son, Jeb Bush Jr. And

(01:37:18):
who was the other Bush? Shoot? Sorry, you got to
edit here. You got to edit here. Don't screw me.
You got to edit here. George p. That's what it was,
George P. R. The last decade hasn't been great for
political science, right. You've had a Clinton spouse not be

(01:37:41):
able to win the presidency. You've had multiple Bushes lose
out on promotions. Jeb wanted to run for the presidency.
His son George P. Tried to win a state wide
office in Texas. It didn't a promotion there, he didn't
get it. You've had uh A Kennedy not be able
to win a primary in Massachusetts. So this is not
the ideal time to run as a scion. But I

(01:38:04):
thought it would be fun to have a top five
political families who have who have got members trying to
keep the family legacy alive in twenty twenty six. So
my top five is most likely where you'll see a
scion win to least likely. And I'm going to start
with my first two are going to be states, not individuals,

(01:38:28):
because these two state races have multiple political scions running.
We're going to start with main governor. Main governor has
the son of Angus Bush. Excuse me, the son of
Angus King, who's the US Senator running for governor, The
son of Congresswoman Shelley Pingree, excuse me, the daughter of

(01:38:49):
Congresswoman Shelley Pingree running for governor, Hannah Pingree, she's already
herself served in the State House. And then on the
Republican side, there's a first cousin of George W. Bush
running for governor, Jonathan Bush. So in this one race
for governor, the Democratic primary features Angus King the third

(01:39:09):
again he's running as a Democrat, even though his father
has served both as governor and Senate as an independent,
not as a Democrat, but his son is running as
a Democrat. He founded just so you know what he's
been doing over the years. He founded Peaks Renewables, and
he announced his run for governor. Bet He calls himself
a pragmatic energy business leader, and he wants to focus
the state on clean power. Hannah Pingree the daughter of

(01:39:33):
Congresswoman Shelley Pingree. She served in the Main House. She
worked for the governor. Governor Janet Mills for a while,
so she herself wants to run for governor. Both of
them are obviously going to have access to decent donors,
and we'll be quite competitive running against each other. We'll
see if if neither one of them win their primary,
because somebody is able to say, hey, you know, should

(01:39:54):
somebody else who's not related to a politician have a chance.
But on the Republican side, you'll let Jonathan Bush, who's
not a big Trump guy, but he has been trying
to sort of straddle the fence. You know, he talks
about you know, he goes to blue areas and tells
them things about Trump that they think that they might like,
and goes to red areas and reminds them of stuff
that he thinks Democrats do better for some of the

(01:40:14):
red areas. So who knows, but my goodness, when you
have three shots in one race to elect a somebody
from a famous political family, I think you get to
share the number one slot up most likely to elect
a political scion in twenty twenty six, so main governor.
Number two on the list is Georgia's Senate. Specifically, it's

(01:40:36):
the Republican primary for Georgia Senate that features not one
political scion, but two sort of I'll show you where
I'm going. So Mike Collins is the son of former
Congressman Matt Collins. Mike himself has been in Congress, you know,
since twenty twenty three. But obviously he got the he
got the bug for politics. Matt Collins first got elected

(01:40:59):
to Congress back in night ninety three and served all
the way through two thousand and five. But that's obviously
where Mike got the bug. So we shall see, and
he's certainly a competitive candidate. The other person that I'm
qualifying here as a quote unquote scion is actually Derek Dooley,
the son of former Georgia Bulldogs Hall of Fame College

(01:41:19):
Football Hall of Fame coach Vince Dooley. So, while Vince
Dooley never actually held political office, some would argue, if
you're the head football coach of Georgia, it may be
a tougher job than being the governor of Georgia because
of the expectations to succeed or so high there. So
Derek Dooley being a Senate candidate and son of a

(01:41:40):
famous football coach, I think I'm going to say qualifies
a bit in the science category, so number one most
likely main governor, number two most likely Georgia Senate. Number
three on my list is bo Bye, and Bobie wants
to follow pretty much in the same footsteps that his
father did, which is start at a lower rung statewide

(01:42:02):
office and slowly work your way up. Bow Bye, who
is the grandson of birch By, the son of Evan By,
filed to run for Indiana Secretary of State, a job
that we opened in twenty six. This is an office
I believe that Pete Boodajete attempted to run for and
didn't win. It's look Indian as a red state, but

(01:42:23):
it's not a dark red state. The Bye names does
mean something to some people, doesn't mean enough to enough
people to win a race. Look in in a slightly
in a year where the breeze will be blowing a
bit more favorably to the left than the right. A
familiar name among swing voters who you know, didn't think

(01:42:47):
By was sort of a woke, live Democrat, right, That
isn't the Bye brand. I think Bo Bye, you can't
you know this? This feels like the right entry point
if you're trying to sort of dabble your toe and politics.
And if you've got a brand name like by so
Bo Bye number three on my list, keep an eye
on that number four. It's hard to have a scion

(01:43:10):
list of top five political famous political dynasties that might
see things continue with a new generation if you don't
have somebody connected to the Kennedy. So Jack Sloshburg comes
in at five. He's, of course the son of Caroline
Kennedy and the grandson of course President John F. Kennedy.
He's got a very popular TikTok feed that is popular

(01:43:36):
on the left. He is officially exploring a run for Congress.
I believe he wants to run for Jerry Nadler seat
in Manhattan. Should be interesting. I think, Look, his cousin,
Joe Kennedy the third couldn't win a primary in Massachusetts, right,
that's got to be you know it is. No, you
don't just get to walk into these seats anymore, the
way Kennedy's used to be able to sort of walk

(01:43:57):
in and carpet bag their way into things. You're gonna
have to work hard for it. But I one would
argue Schlossburg already has a pretty decent profile in his
social media profile in particular, and it's been a you know,
been a pretty successful progressive influencer. So I wouldn't I would.

(01:44:23):
I think he's certainly earned, uh earned, uh, the opportunity
to be number number five on that list, number four
on that list. So we got main governor, you got
Georgia governor, you got we got excuse me, we got
main governor Georgia. Senate Bobie in Indiana, Jack Schlossburg, New

(01:44:45):
York City, that's where he's thinking about running for Congress.
And then number five is Chip Keaty. Now, Chip's gonna
he's the son of Frank Keating, who was governor of
Oklahoma from ninety four to two. That's a long time ago. Oh, right,
Keating hasn't been on the ballot in that sense, Right,
Frank Keating hadn't been on the ballot in a while.

(01:45:05):
It's a long way, almost an entire generation, if you will.
So look, it's you know, he's dabbled in hips, dabbled
in politics a little bit, but that's going to be
if look in Oklahoma, you win the nomination for governor
because the Kevin Stick's going to be term limited. So
it's an open race for the governorship. He did service

(01:45:26):
secretary of Public Safety, so he's got he's got his
own he's got his own career in politics a little bit.
But if he does win that primary, he's going to
be the favorite to win the race. You have to
put him in there a number five. So and then
at this point i'd probably put as honorable mention.

Speaker 4 (01:45:46):
Is uh.

Speaker 1 (01:45:47):
I think Kevin White is what I would put there.
He is the son, excuse me, Andrew White. Andrew White
is the son of former Texas Governor Mark White. And
Andrew White's running for Texas governor. That's an uphill battle.
That's why it doesn't crack my top five, but I
thought I would throw it out there. We'll be keeping track.
So there it is top five political dynasties that may

(01:46:10):
have a chance to extend their dynastic lives in the
twenty twenty six. You've got three shots in Maine, two
shots in Georgia. If you count the duelies as sort
of as political and sports type of dynasty of sorts.
Kennedy a Kennedy derivative in New York City, the son

(01:46:32):
and grandson of birch By and Evan By in Indiana,
and maybe the son of Frank Keening and Oklahoma or
the son of Mark White in Texas. Always fun to
keep track of those things as well. All right, with that,
let's do a few questions, ask Chuck. All right, first
question comes from Ryan parts unknown. He says, hey, check.

(01:46:55):
We always hear that most Americans grand certain issues, bors
and rights, border policy and so on, usually based on polls.
But what if instead of polls we had televised debates
featuring skilled debaters, not politicians who had to stick to
verified facts, with a live audience voting like American idol.
It could be a new way to gauge what people
truly think once they've heard both sides areg you honesty,
love the pod. You know that's interesting, Ryan, I think

(01:47:15):
that's what our friends at c SPAN are hoping ceasefire becomes.
But let me posit. You know what I thought of
when I read your question. What if you designed sort
of the best the best briefed AI candidate to debate

(01:47:35):
a topic pro and then the best briefed AI candidate
to debate the topic con And that was it was
almost like here, here's a prototype, in a perfect world,
what a good debate would look like. And you can
kind of use AI to Is this a good way
to use AI or not? On first blush? Like I said,

(01:47:58):
the first the first thing I thought of, what if
we aid this just had a really good person making
the case for abortion rights and a really good, smartly
brief person making the case against and had that in
a debate format sort of with a very sort of
you know, neutral, dispassionate moderator. Is that a good way

(01:48:21):
to use AI as a tool? Right? What does a
prototypical debate on this topic look like? What would a
fantasy debate between two well educated people on tariffs look
like about tariff policy? I don't know. You actually got
me thinking that maybe we ought to just create an
entire sort of AI Wikipedia of do you want to see,

(01:48:44):
you know, two women debating this issue, to men debating
this issue, to crasshoppers debating this issue. But what you
really have is it's it's really you know, sort of
AI trained, best available way you could do it. Your
vehicle for showing the debate could be a human like being,
could be an animal or a desk lamp whatever. Right,

(01:49:09):
I'm being some facetious and some not here put it
this way, I'm curious enough to see if I could
create a really like you know, imagine a really good debater,
two of them going back and forth on a variety
of issues that seem to divide us. Would it be

(01:49:31):
persuasive to people? Right? Would a debate that was filled
with really good substance and no zingers penetrate the mind
or would people not hear anything that was said if
it didn't have a zinger. So there's a lot of
things that I'd almost want to test drive, and this

(01:49:51):
is a way where AI allows you to test drive it.
I haven't decided that whether this is a good or
bad thing, but it's the first thing I thought of
when I read your question, Ryan, so appreciate it. By
the way, you could do this right still have your
robot animated AI version of these debates and have people
vote on it. Who won. And I guess the question
would be would it really be more reflective of what

(01:50:14):
people already thought or would it be reflective of what
they heard in the conversation? That's always really hard to
fully get. Next question comes from Greg Hey. He goes
Hey is an IO and expat. I currently live in
Pure Illinois. It was great to listen to reta heart.
I had to chuckle a bit about the Fox News
comment because when I visit family, it is always on.
As you have mentioned before, the Democratic Party is having

(01:50:35):
an identity crisis. Would it be better for the state
level party to develop its own identity separate from the DNC. Yes,
A thousand times. Yes. I'll get to an example in
a minute. For example, if the Ioademocrats address local issues
Soybean's hogs increase cancer rates in the failing educational system,
this could be a two fold benefit. The state level
parties could almost silence the GOP culture war messaging. The

(01:50:55):
DNC can develop messaging and platform planks that could be
used to better reach rural America. Greg. Yes, and I
would argue the state parties used to be a lot
more independent from the national party. And the best most
recent example comes out of the state of Minnesota. Wasn't
that you know? Minnesota's Democratic Party used to be referred
to as the Democratic Farm Labor Party, and they would

(01:51:16):
proudly say, no, no, no, no, We're affiliated with the DNC,
but we are our own identity. We are the Democratic
Farm Labor Party. And the Republicans of Minnesota were known
as the Independent Republican Party of Minnesota. Again, it was
both state parties they were and I feel like it
did help their brand seem distinctive from the national party.

(01:51:40):
And oh, by the way, you'd see it was a
different flavor of Minnesota Democrat and a different flavor of
Minnesota Republican that would win statewide election. So I absolutely
believe this is needed. I think that. I mean, just
look at you see many a Democratic group is saying,
you know, don't even run as a Democrat if the

(01:52:00):
brand is that bad in your state, go run as
an independent. See Idaho, South Dakota, Nebraska. Right. We're seeing
pretty strong candidacies developing there among people that in a
if we had a normal sort of competitive two party
system in all fifty states, they'd probably be the Democratic nominees.
But the Democratic, the national Democratic brand is what the
brand of the state party has become in those states,

(01:52:23):
even when they don't want to be but state. You
can't differentiate yourself if you don't have your own source
of money and your own sort of source of leadership.
And that's I think been the struggle is too many
national donors worry about the national races. Some of these
state parties need state based sugar daddies and Mommy's. In Iowa,
there used to be and has been some It's less

(01:52:45):
so in some of these other red states. But I
think it would really behoove the Democrats to let their
state parties create their own brand identities. Andy Busheer would
be better off being able to say he's a Kentucky
Democrat and have that means something to people, But I'm
not sure that's going to be the case if he

(01:53:06):
runs for president in twenty eight. You know, he's going
to make the case that hey, being a Kentucky Democrats
different than being a national Democrat. And I might buy
that as a political reporter, but I don't know if
voters will totally buy it completely. So but anyway, the
point is one hundred percent agree with you. I absolutely
think this is the way to, you know, essentially decentralize

(01:53:28):
the DNC right decentralized the Democratic Party. The Republican Party
used to be the party that wanted to decentralize right.
In some ways, maybe the Democratic Party can win over
some of those voters by by trying to be more
state and local based. Next question comes from Keith J.
Which I really really wish your name. I hope your

(01:53:51):
last name is Jackson, because I'd love to have some
Keith Jackson and an excuse to talk about the grennetti
of them all. Sorry, I'll check my respect for you
continues in your new endeavor. Thank you. I hope I
didn't lose your respect with my lane Keith Jackson impersonation there. Keith.
You have often said you are a short term pessimist,
long term optimist. Yes. Would you define your terms? How
long do you think a short term? Approximately? How long

(01:54:13):
is long term? Not trying to pin you down too much,
just want a better idea of what you mean. Many thanks.
So what I mean is I don't think that we
solve this in the next election cycle or two. You know,
I'll give you the sort of the dark example I
use In nineteen thirty nine, I think I would have
described I'd like to think I would have described our
situation in America even as short term pessimistic, long term optimistic. Right,

(01:54:35):
our economy was still shaky. Things were you know, we
saw that our allies were in you know, things weren't
going well in Europe, and you know, something seemed wrong.
You saw that there was an American Nazi Party developing
all sorts of like ugly stuff, and by nineteen forty six,
I'd have been right that we were. Things were short
term pessimistic, long term optimistic. But a lot of bad
stuff happened between nineteen thirty nine and nineteen forty six.

(01:55:00):
Say a way for me to describe. But what I
mean is, you know, it always takes sort of us
one cycle longer than you think. Right. It was pretty
clear when Teapot Dome and the stock market crash and
all of that was happening in the mid twenties that
we probably needed a course correction in twenty eight, but
we didn't get it till thirty two, you know. So

(01:55:21):
it is, it just usually feels like we're one more
cycle than it should be. And so that's why, you know,
I imagine we got to sort of we're going to
have you know, it's going to take the Republican Party
they've got to lose a couple in a row before
they're going to reform themselves. Democrats probably have to lose

(01:55:42):
one more before they reformed. That's what I mean here.
It's sort of like, do I think we will collectively
turn a corner and start start in a more reform
minded situation. You know, I'm a believer that this is
we're in one of those moments where to get out
of it, we'll do some serious amending of the constitution.
We did it around the Civil War, we did it

(01:56:04):
around right in and around the Mets. That was Teapot
Dome and the sort of the robber barons of that era.
And it feels like we're on the cosp of something
like that now, but it kind of needs some time
to happen, so you know, you know, this is always
the frustration. Right, nineteen thirty to nineteen forty is a

(01:56:29):
blink of an eye when you look backwards. But in
nineteen thirty, nineteen forty was ten years away, and it
felt like a long way away, right, But it wasn't
that far away. If by twenty thirty six were in
a different path and we've passed a couple of new
constitutional reforms that've set some age limits and you know
how old you can be to serve and things like this,

(01:56:50):
and you know that'd be about ten years from now.
Historically that's a small period of time, but it's going
to feel like a long way away as you and
I are discussing it now. I hope that gives you
some sort of sense of what I'm trying to what
I'm trying to communicate there when I say that, you
know we're not We're probably you know, not going to

(01:57:14):
quote unquote elect the right people or fix our incentives
in the next two election cycles. But in a decade
we will. Next question, first time, long time. Thank you.
You didn't leave a name, but that's okay. I've been
being in the pod, being in the pod, binging the pod. Duh,

(01:57:34):
I can't read. Sorry, Anonymous. I've been been to the
pod and loved your recent chat with Mark Sany. I've
been reading about a theory that market's usually rise when
a new president takes office, but dip in the second
year before rebounding. Seem true for both Trump and Biden.
I'm curious if that might repeat in twenty six and
what that means for investors. Also, as a fan of
your what ifs, how different do you think history would
have been if the US had been behind in the

(01:57:55):
space race? Would competition have pushed us to innovate even more?
You don't have to ask me about that hypothetical. Go
watch the movie for all Mankind movie. Excuse me, the
TV show for All Mankind. It's on Apple TV plus.
It is this is the what if scenario. The Soviets
beat the Americans to the moon, and basically it's exactly

(01:58:19):
the implication that losing makes us invest even more and essentially,
instead of a nuclear arms race that we have for
thirty years with the Soviets, we just have a space
race and we're headed to Mars by the nineties because
we never stopped investing in space once once once we
finally got to the moon. So I think frankly that

(01:58:43):
the folks that on that show have pretty much got
the scenario correctly. We will spend money to innovate when
we think it's a national security threat. Once we're winning,
we sometimes slow down our innovation. Right, We should have
based the moon a long time ago. We were there first,
We were there for a long time. Why did we
rest on our laurels. No, we didn't want to spend

(01:59:05):
the money at the time. We didn't think we had
to spend the money we had already won. It was
going to be tougher to sell the American public. Do
you know how much time has been lost in our
ability to travel the solar system. Imagine if we had
based the moon twenty years ago, we've already have you know,
people living on the Moon. We might have already found
an alternative energy source, right, but we won. We didn't.

(01:59:26):
It was tougher to make the case to spend more
money doing that when we had by the time the
seventies came along with stagflation. So but no, that show
made makes me. I think they make a reasonable case
that that's how we would have responded had we lost
the initial race to the Moon to the Soviets. Look,

(01:59:47):
I want to be we all know the long term
trajectory of the stock market is always up. That's just
I don't know if I would go about this presidential
term thing. It is interesting that Trump is the first
president a long time who technically the stock market during
his first term lost value, didn't gain value. There's a

(02:00:08):
lot of my Democratic friends like to point out that
it seems democrat the stock market does better overall during
democratic presidencies than it does during Republican presidencies. And you know,
the data is the data. One could make an argument
is it because of policy set by Republicans that do that,
or is it because the confidence that people have in government,
and that's why people invest. I mean, you can sort

(02:00:30):
of argue both sides of the coin, but the biggest
and most important thing, you know, is the long term
trajectory usually is up because of the stability of the
United States. What happens if the stability of our economy
is being questioned. So I'm just very nervous about long
term independence of the FED. What that means we seem

(02:00:53):
to were we've we've we've we've allowed the same people
that gave us social media to try to give us
AI just a lot of things that should be of
concerned us that, you know, I again, to borrow a phrase,
I'm short term pessimistic about the stock market and long
term optimistic. An anybody should be long term optimistic about it,

(02:01:16):
because that's what history tells us. But something feels there's
you know, these these big cap stocks, they are they
really never are they really sort of never going to
reach a peak. So and I'm haunted by how familiar
and how similar things looked in the nineteen twenties to

(02:01:39):
what they look today. And the beginning of that decade
was a lot of public private partnerships that turned into
graft that by the end of that decade turned into
the stock market crush and the Great Depression. I'm not
predicting that, but there's a lot of there's a lot
of created wealth that feels it feels like it makes

(02:02:04):
the system more unstable than it should feel in the moment.
So you know, that's where I get a little bit nervous,
and you know, at a minimum, I'd look at this
current stock market more through the prism of what happens
when there's sort of new major technologies, right peak Internet.
You know, we kept investing, investing, but we knew there
would be a dip until you know, that sort of

(02:02:25):
weeded out the bad actors, right the pets dot Coms
of the world. What I keep asking my advisor is, Hey,
which one of these AI stocks is pets dot com?
You know. My thesis is that the more somebody talks
about AI and their quarterly earnings report, the less AI
they're actually probably using, because it feels like many of
these folks just drop the words AI in order to

(02:02:46):
try to get investors to spend money on their stock. So,
you know, but that's me playing cynic I love that
you're asking me these questions anonymous here. I don't have
your name here, but I don't come to me for
stock advice. I don't want to be held responsible for
your savings. All right. Next question comes from Doug and

(02:03:12):
he writes, Hey, I like your idea of revisiting, refreshing,
updating the Federals papers. My question, who are three people
today to step into the roles of Hamilton, Madison and
Jay to perform this duty. I don't mean who today
is the most representative of Hamilton, but who today are
three political thinkers best suited to express our ideals and aspirations. Boy,
that's interesting. So, I, you know, look on the on

(02:03:38):
the right, I always read every you know. You know,
you could make a case and I'm gonna on the
conservative side. If you want a boomer conservative, it's George
will If you want a gen X conservative, it's David French.
And if you want a millennial conservative it'd be Matthew Contnatty.
I think they are interesting thinking on that front. I'd

(02:04:02):
love to see Derek Thompson tackle a Federalists paper or
two for sort of you know, team center, team center left,
whatever you want to refer to him on that I
think it's fair, you know, maybe you would put a
maybe you'd have a Heather Cox Richardson for Team left

(02:04:25):
right on that I don't know. Those are those are
potential folks on that front. Some names that you don't
hear as often that I think I always learned something
from Greg Easterbrook. He writes a substack called Tuesday Morning Quarterback,
but he's also written some books. He's done a lot
of sort of culture and political commentary. He wrote a

(02:04:47):
book that I've I've often quoted. It's sort of like, hey,
you know, we're winning history, you know, basically meaning look
at all the great things that have happened, how many
lives have been saved, how much longer humans live? That
sort of like, you know, his whole thesis is we
moan and grown every day about how bad things are,
and actually, overall things continue to get better for the

(02:05:09):
human species. Yes we've got challenges with climate change, and
yes we've got these challenges here there, but that overall
we keep helping people live longer, we keep helping people
live softer and less harsh lives. Overall we keep raising
more people out of poverty. Anyway, he'd be somebody intriguing
on that list, maybe some elected officials that I might

(02:05:35):
be curious. You know, I'd want Ran Paul in the room.
I might want Michael Bennett in the room. I might
want Elizabeth Warren in the room. I might want Lisa
Murkowski in the room. You see where I'm going. You know,
it's sort of like, I want sort of people that
don't mind being challenging other intellects and at the same

(02:05:57):
time don't mind being challenged. That would just be my
own rule on this. So those are just a few
people i'd throw out there. You know. I'd certainly like
to I'd like to be a note taker. I don't
know if I put myself there, but I'd certainly enjoy

(02:06:19):
being a note taker and a compiler of the various arguments.
And I'd love to moderate these debates about rewriting the
Federals papers House of that anyway, So there were a few,
there were a few thoughts there. I might. Oh, I'll
give you another one. Bill mcgraven, the guy who wrote
the make your Bed speech. He's somebody i'd like to

(02:06:41):
see a part of this conversation. All right, Hey, Chuck
and everyone at the podcast. I'd love to hear a
discussion about the ways the Trump administration is trying to
rig the next election Texas mail and ballots, troops in
blue cities, et cetera. What other ways might Trump try
to affect the election? How effective would they be? How
would DEM's fight back? Thanks sent from Planet Earth, edge
of the Milky Way. That is very funny. I appreciate

(02:07:01):
that those folks, those of us that live on the
third rock from the sun, think it's just hilarious. Look,
I think it is. I think if one person's attempt
to rig an election is another person's attempt to gain

(02:07:22):
an edge, right, And so I'm just you know, all mail.
You know, one person thinks doing more mail in balloting
is reform. Another person think that open things up to rigging.
So I'm just just trying to be Devil's advocate here
on this. I'm not saying you're not wrong that Trump

(02:07:43):
is trying to do everything he can. He is petrified
of Democrats getting subpoena power in the House, right. He
is petrified of irrelevancy, which if Democrats win one House
of Congress, his presidency becomes a lame duck immediately. Right.
It's also why he doesn't like to talk about twenty
twenty eight without his name in it, because that is

(02:08:03):
acknowledging that he's about to become an historical figure, but
in history, not in the present nor in the future.
So I think, look, he's certainly doing things that if
you were to say that's his goal. You know, they're
trying to subpoenas state records of voter files. You see

(02:08:28):
that they're going to monitor elections in Virginia, New Jersey, right,
are they looking for some sort of trigger to get
them more involved. So I'm not going to sit here
and rule out that there is some people in Trump's
orbit that want to fully rig this election. I would

(02:08:50):
just say, and I think others would say they're just
simply trying to gain an edge that anybody in political
power would be trying to do. I think it's pretty
clear that Trump goes asked these sort of the normal rules.
You know, as I always said, there's you know, there
used to be honor among thieves in politics, and now
there is there is there's no honor anymore among among
some of them there, particularly on the right. So it

(02:09:16):
would you know, I I think if we really do
see troops, more troops and multiple cities at the same time,
and I just I guess I'm I'm still skeptical we're
going to beyond a couple of cities that are just
simply being used as an examples to quote own the
Libs and to fire up his base. But if I'm wrong,

(02:09:39):
I will I will flog myself on this podcast, and
and we will we will go from there. Next question
comes from Brian and right here in Arlington, Virginia. I
think I'm gonna make this the last question. Yeah, dear Chuck,
about an MTP fan and watch us since the speedbac
days a the founder as a young person, I particularly

(02:10:03):
enjoyed your work and russeer to your podcast as a
weekly must listen. Thank you well. I agree that the
First Amendment issues that have been emphasized in the wake
of the Kimmel cancelation are the most important. I disagree
with the characterization of what he actually said. Many well
respected commentators, including you, have said that Kimmel got the
that's wrong. I like to push back on that. Perhaps
he got a larger uncomfortable truth. Right. Isn't the scary
reality for the political right? The very thing that Spencer
Cox laments that Kirk's murderer is likely a product of

(02:10:25):
their own community, like the young man who shot Donald
Trump Pennsylvania, this disaffection and anger from within, Well, what's
your definition of community? If you know the fact that
we're doing this to each other, we all live in
this same community. I think the question is was this
politically motivated? And where you had somebody who believed that

(02:10:49):
the violence was justified to make a larger political statement.
And that's where I think we all want to draw
the line at politically inspired murder, that this is not
who we are. That said, there's certainly plenty of examples
in American history where this is exactly who we've been.
And we've done this before, and we've had political murder,

(02:11:09):
politically inspired murder. So I'm not naive and say it
doesn't exist. It it is. I guess you're implying that
demographically Kirk shooter, there are more people in Utah that
are demographically look like MAGA that also looked like the shooter.

(02:11:34):
I guess that's where you're going where I think others
would argue this is an ideological argument. So I think
really what MAGA doesn't want to accept it is that
they somehow it's this what about is am on violence?
And this is where I just draw the line everywhere.

(02:11:54):
It doesn't matter if you think only thirty percent of
your side is violent step percenter of theirs, and that
somehow because they have more violent people than your side
does ergo. You don't have to apologize for your violent people,
or you don't have to police your side. The problem
we have in American politics is these days is nobody's
willing to police their own right. You didn't have Democrats

(02:12:16):
trying to police Hunter Biden, and you didn't you don't
have any Republicans here trying to police the Trump family scam.
Here we have a full on kleptocracy inside the Republican
Party that's now the US government, and a whole bunch
of House Republicans are doing nothing about it. I know
they're all ashamed of this, but they all want to
keep their job more than they want to do something
about it. And there were plenty of Democrats that didn't

(02:12:40):
want to do something about Hunter Biden or just wanted
to bury it because they didn't want to quote unquote
give the right an issue. That is the problem. There
is this constant we look at some political problem, and think,
how's it going to reflect in the great battle with
the other side, rather than boy, this is wrong, this

(02:13:03):
is not who we are. Let's just denounce this hard,
stop right. And I just don't want to play the
game of who's right or wrong on this, implying that
one side is trying to justify their violence more than
the other side. No matter how you're doing it, it's

(02:13:25):
never going to come out right and we all lose.
So I don't know. I'm not trying to be both
sideris both sides on this. I'm just trying to be
like we've got to there's certain things certain. If you've
ever had an argument with somebody you love and you
know in your heart you're right, but do you want

(02:13:47):
to be right? Prove that you're right to the point
where you no longer have a relationship with that person
that you love. I may be talking about a spouse,
a son and a daughter, father and mother. It's not
worth it, right, It's easier for everybody to admit some fault.

(02:14:09):
If everybody will admit some fault, right, you sort of
just say, man, we've got to cut, We've got to
turn the temperature down hardstop you know if you want
to sit here and argue who's got to turn the
temperature down more, then neither side's going to turn the
temperature down at all. If everybody agrees we need to
turn the temperature down, maybe it won't be enough. But

(02:14:30):
if we all turn it down a little bit, it's
a start, all right. I will drop my sanctimony there.
With that, I will see you in twenty four hours.
Be sure to be prepared Election Night like no other,
a live stream with all your favorite political friends. It

(02:14:52):
is coming. Election Night twenty twenty five. Decision Desk HQ
the best in the business when it comes to figuring
out who, who voted, when and why and all of
that jazz. We will have that data for you. We
will have the analysis, We will have the Political Junkies
show for political junkies. And with that I'll see it

(02:15:13):
when we upload again.

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