Full Episode - American Democracy Is Clogged, But Not Beyond Repair + Florida Man Goes to War: The Coup That Failed in Venezuela - The Chuck ToddCast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello, They're happy Thursday, and welcome to another episode of
the Chuck Podcast. Here at Chuck podcast World Headquarters. The
Thursday recording means we are at the end of our
production week of sorts, and we say of sorts because
they've oh sixty or seventy other commitments that I feel
like I'm constantly juggling here. But these are good problems

(00:29):
to have, right you know, at the beginning of this
calendar year, there were not as many commitments, so that
is a tribute to the growth of the audience. You
guys have been out there. You guys have been terrific.
Got my newsphere show coming up later this week. Please
tune in for that. We'll have another version of a
preview of campaign twenty twenty five. You know, it's interesting

(00:52):
I can tell that Campaign twenty twenty five is not
grabbing folks. You know, is not the you know I
assume on too day itself, people will be fascinated with it.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
You should tune in.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
I'm going to be doing an election live stream along
with pretty much all of my friends in the political
data geek world. We're going to be doing it in
partnership with my friend Chris Eliza Decision Desk HQ, which
is quickly turning into the premier organization for counting and
calling elections these days, and so I'm looking forward to

(01:25):
this live stream.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
But it was interesting. I did my preview on.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
Substack, and you could just sort of feel the And
I think part of it is there's actually no drama
in the top tier part of these races. So maybe
that's why people aren't just gobbling up every piece of information,
whether it's Virginia governor, feels like you kind of know
where that's going, New York City Mayor, and the really
drama is does he get over fifty or not? And Mom, Donnie,

(01:50):
I am here to tell you folks, New Jersey Governor.
I think it's got some drama to it. But for
whatever reason, I think the candidates are running. They're pretty
normal politicians and we're so used to crazy thanks in
the Trump era that when you have two people running
relatively normal campaigns that would have been normal in the
pre Trump era, that maybe it doesn't grab our attention,

(02:14):
grab our attention the way all things Donald Trump grabs
our attention. But this week you're reminded when Donald Trump
is is in essentially halfway around the world and therefore
time zone wise halfway around the world as well. There
is a perception of a slower news cycle in Washington,

(02:35):
which frankly shouldn't be the case, because we're in the
middle of a government shut down and you're sitting there
going where is the sense of urgency. We've got deadlines
happening all over and you know, in some states, the
expiration of funding for snap benefits for people for working
poor and others who need school assistant, school lunch assistants,

(02:59):
things like that. The fact that that's expiring, that that
isn't creating urgency here is frankly a bit frustrating for
someone like me who's sort of a considers myself a
reformist and just wants to get things working. You know,
I count myself among those who views government like your toilet.

(03:20):
When it doesn't work, I just want to do whatever
it takes to get it working again, and then I
don't want it to bother me that much overall, And
I think we're the fact that we have a clogged toilet.
The collective American government is clogged, and nobody's even willing
to pick up the plunger at this point is kind
of frustrating, But I think there is a I think

(03:44):
it's obvious if you sort of sit back here and
understand why we're going nowhere in shutdown negotiations at this point.
Number one, I've been telling you there's no Donald Trump
in the room right his inability to sort of focus
on this be dragged into the conversation. As he himself
said earlier earlier in the week, he is both the
speaker and the president, and Mike Johnson cannot do a

(04:06):
thing without Donald Trump. Mike Johnson is a Spino speaker
in name only. He has to get all of his
you know, whatever he needs to get done whenever he
needs votes, he has to get the White House involved,
he has to get Trump twisting arms. So he can't
speak for the Republicans only. Donald Trump speaks for the Republicans.
So that inability right now of him engaging being interested

(04:29):
in this is one of the problems. But there's a
second problem here, and that is sort of when you
sort of look this century in particular, but really going
back to the two you can go all the way
back to the Reagan era and note this, and that
is when you when you don't have divided. When you
don't have power divided among the two parties, the moderates

(04:50):
in both parties become extraordinarily weak. There are a handful
of moderates a lot still left in both parties. They
don't really have power within their own conferences unless there
is split government. Unless there is a divided government Republicans
controlling either one House of Congress, Democrats controlling the other House,

(05:12):
or obviously split between the White House and Congress. And
the fact that you know it's this is a you know,
full Republican control of Congress, and you need but you
do need a bipartisan vote in order to open up
the government in the Senate. In the Senate without without

(05:33):
this sort of split control, there is no incentive for
the moderates to sort of tiptoe out and work amongst themselves.
We don't really have the gangs of the past, even
of the recent past. Right, there's no cinema and mansion there.
But their empowerment either comes with when you're sitting literally
at a fifty to fifty Senate, which we are not

(05:54):
in this case, or you have this divided government. The
point is the lack and I think you can look
at one of two ways. They're not enough moderates who
truly see themselves as moderates, or the moderates are too
weak politically to sort of step out in this moment
because of the polarization issue in the country. But the

(06:16):
bottom line is that's why we are getting nowhere. The
moderates have no power in Congress. And whether you want
to argue, do they have a spine, I think they
do have a spine, but you know it's within reason, right,
it's a soft spine, if you will, and without without
the ability of sort of obvious compromise that has to

(06:39):
be made because of split in a situation where there
would be split party control of some form or another.
The fact that there's not. There's just at this point
there's I think the moderate Democrats, not enough of them
see enough to be gained. That said, I do think
we're tiptoeing to a point where Democrats, frankly, probably a

(07:00):
week or two too late as far as it because
of some of the damage that's going to be done,
I still think they can declare victory here. They still
have Donald Trump on the ropes with health care. He's
sort of rambling about, oh, you know, we've got to
do something better than Obamacare. Dude, You've had ten years
to come up with a plan. The Republicans have had
ten years to come up with a plant better than Obamacare.

(07:22):
They've yet to be able to agree on anything. Donald
Trump had a whole term in Congress and couldn't do it.
He had a whole exile, you know, he was exiled
for four years, didn't focus on a health care plan,
and now here he is again sort of begging for
help to come up with an alternative to Obamacare. It's
just not going to happen because there is a policy
laziness on the right to come up with an alternative,

(07:43):
because the only alternative that's affordable will deny most of
you insurance.

Speaker 2 (07:47):
Right.

Speaker 1 (07:47):
The only way you can create affordable insurance is if
you create a healthcare situation where they can deny insurance
coverage for people that actually need it.

Speaker 2 (07:55):
Right.

Speaker 1 (07:56):
But as long and at this point, there is a
baseline believe here, pre existing conditions cannot be used to
decide what your premiums are and whether you get insurance
coverage or not. And because of that, this is always
going to get expensive unless there's a a tougher regulation
on the insurance markets in general.

Speaker 2 (08:15):
Number one or.

Speaker 1 (08:16):
Number two is sort of an acceptance that medicaid is
America's catastrophic insurance coverage. Ultimately, I think that is what
medicaid is basically become. But until there's sort of an
acknowledgment that that's what it is going to be for
the country rather than always just based on income there,

(08:39):
I don't know how much stability you're ever going to
have in the insurance markets there.

Speaker 2 (08:43):
But the point is.

Speaker 1 (08:46):
The fact that Democrats orchestrated the shutdown and snap benefits
are going to expire. How do you explain that away
long term? I think that's a tough thing to explain.
Democrats have the power to open temporarily, open up this government,
get this money flowing to the people that really need it,
and they still have Republicans on the defensive on healthcare.

(09:07):
What's the why keep this shutdown? This isn't going to
make this better for better politically. And I know I
sound like a broken record here, but you're in a
great place at this point. Mike Johnson has completely abandoned.

Speaker 2 (09:24):
Work here.

Speaker 1 (09:26):
You have a restive Republicans, there is a divide among obamacares.
You're going to win this And the question is do
you just hope that you can extract a little more
political pain and hope it doesn't punish more Americans while
you extract and ounce more of political gain. Here just
something to think about as this shutdown drags on, as

(09:49):
we get closer to November one, because oh, by the way,
the bill that's been on the floor would only open
up the government till November twenty first. As it is,
so we're really starting to feel the pinch. And if
this is why, I think this is an easy answer.
If snap benefits are about to expire, Democrats, just vote

(10:09):
yes on this thing. You're looking at three weeks and
then you get to force leverage one more time and
healthcare premiums are out there for all to see. So look,
no one said Chuck Schumer was really good at tactics.
He has displayed a lot of mediocrity right now. I mean,
I think the fairest way to describe Chuck Schumer's leadership

(10:32):
is kind of like Bill Belichick as coach of North
Carolina Great career Hall of Fame coach Chuck Schumer peak.
Chuck Schumer political savviness as good as anybody for a
long time. You know, knew that there was always a
little bit of baggage trying to be a national Democratic leader,
but being based in New York City, always was really

(10:53):
good at balancing it really well.

Speaker 2 (10:56):
You know.

Speaker 1 (10:56):
I think now he's in the Bill Belichick coach of
North Carolina faith. Every once in a while he calls
a pretty decent play. The game plan may be there,
but I think in this moment where politics are today headed,
et cetera, et cetera, I think tactically this has passed
them by. But the fact is both Jeffreys and Schumer
seemed paralyzed in some form here, and I think some

(11:21):
of it has to do with what's going on in
New York City and this divide inside the party and
this fight inside the party between progressives and pragmatists, which
I think is certainly really what is the overhang of
this government shutdown strategy that were't in. But it leads
me to something else about Washington these days that I

(11:42):
thought I would share for my non Washington listeners. I
think those that live in and around here, and we'll
find what I'm saying to be quite familiar. Look, I'm
participating in quite a few reform projects. Many of these
meetings or conferences that I go to or all Chatham
how rules meaning you.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
Know, we're we're We're.

Speaker 1 (12:02):
There with unique groups of people trying to figure out,
you know, if it's on the journalism side of things,
ideas and fixing this information ecosystem, how do we reanimate
local news? If it's on the democracy reform side of things,
you know, it's with you know, do you break up
the duopoly? How do you open things up here? Do
we there is this the moment to call for a

(12:25):
constitutional convention? Things like that? And what's fascinating about Washington
in this in twenty twenty five, And I think I've
discussed this before, the sort of you vacillate between you
know when when you know right now in DC it's
just a it's a weird feeling, right the way Trump

(12:45):
sort of stormed the city this time, there's almost right
he's there's there's self segregation of the sort of political
elite in Washington, right, MAGA only hangs out with MAGA.
Then there are Republicans who aren't MAGA, who still want to,
who still believe that there's a Republican party, think like
you know that will exist after Donald Trump. I think

(13:07):
the John Thune wing of the party, right, whatever's left
of there, which is really a lion's share of Republicans
in Washington or not MAGA, right, they are sort of
institutionalists Republicans, and you know they still you know that
part of the political bipartisan world. You still you still
see that. But MAGA is its own separate thing, right,

(13:28):
The MAGA elite, you know, payoff Donald Trump Junior for
his club that he created. And then you have some
of the you know, the tech bros that have moved here,
that throw their own parties. They all just sort of
mingle with each other and all that. And there's in
some ways that that group of people is constantly thinking out, hey, man,

(13:50):
there's no security right now in government contracts, government money,
there are no rules. What can we do in this
moment before the gig is up to sort of secure
government contracts?

Speaker 2 (13:59):
He said secure. It's a bit of a grift, right.

Speaker 1 (14:03):
They're just constantly saying, you know, hey, now that we've
got a president that will blow past any ethical line,
that there is a compliant Congress, a House Republicans set
in particular, that will do whatever is asked. There won't
be oversight. It is open season for a certain group
of lobbyists. And so there's basically three groups, three types

(14:25):
of Washington gatherings these days. Right, There's those in that
sort of mega lobbying world who are like, oh my god,
it's a jewelry store without security, and there's all sorts
of things we can get and everything is open season,
and you know, how do you make as much money

(14:46):
off of this period in time where Trump is basically
created a no rules environment. Right, So that's one group
of people who sort of are occupying Washington in this moment,
who go to gatherings, but who are just there trying
to figure out out, Hey, this is there's never been
at a time essentially to steal money from the government
with nobody watching anything. What kind of schemes can we

(15:10):
come up with, Whether it's a crypto scheme, whether it's
a creating a new you know, public private partnership for
screwing the government taxpayer. I think I made up that
last part, but the public private partnership I didn't. And
then there's two other sort of entities out there that meet.

Speaker 2 (15:28):
Right, you have this group.

Speaker 1 (15:29):
Of of Democrats and it's two different groups of Democrats
that are constantly having various meetings. Right, I think you
have a progressive set is saying, okay, this is a
moment where progressives can take over the party. The established
inshment has proved that they can't deal in the Trump era,
they can't win in the Trump era. Clinton, Biden, Harris,

(15:49):
you know that wing of the party is atrophying, Schumer, Jeffreys.
They don't know what they're doing. This is the moment
for progressives to takeover. So there's this, you know, instead
of you know, sort of a lot of a lot
of gatherings that are about, you know, how can progressives
take advantage of this moment. Then you have sort of
what's left of sort of the establishment wing of the party,

(16:12):
or the pragmatic wing of the party, or the frustrated
Democrats who want to win first, want to.

Speaker 2 (16:21):
Want to.

Speaker 1 (16:24):
Rally the base into something and say, hey, look, the
goal should be to build a broader coalition that that
has an animated progressive base but also is appealing to
swing voters. And there's you know, those types of gatherings.
You know, it's it's the abundance debate that has recline.
Matthew Iglesias Derek Thompson have been sort of talking about,

(16:48):
you know, is there better policy solutions that Democrats ought
to be standing for that would be more appealing to
a broad a broader set of the electorate. So you
have those conversations, and then there's a third group of
gathering of gatherings, And this is the group of gatherings
I'm most involved with. And one last week a trusted
with a organization that I've talked about before on this

(17:10):
podcast called Trusted Media, where it's a sort of it's
a coalition of folks who have worked in government, worked
in a national security space, including uh NSSA and CIA
and State Department, who are concerned that the information ecosystem
is untrustworthy. And it's like, this is bigger than just
a media problem, right, you know, this is this is

(17:31):
larger than that. So we did a gathering that gathered
business leaders, gathered scientific scientific experts, journalists, government of former
government officials talking about why you have if you don't
have trust, if our information ecosystem is untrustworthy, how this
suddenly essentially makes us less safe, you know, less safe

(17:54):
as a country, less safe. Uh individually, you know, when
you think about health scares and viruses and things like
that and less safe.

Speaker 2 (18:03):
In your community.

Speaker 1 (18:06):
And so that's one type of sort of gathering that
I am anticipating in because we've got to fix this
information ecosystem. It's not just about journalism. It's not just
about you know, what corporations have done, the legacy media,
what big tech is doing and what and the AI
impact is about whether we're going to be able to

(18:28):
you know, scientists can come up with something and it's trusted,
and whether a doctor prescribing a pill won't get sort
of distrusted by their patients because of what doctor Internet
is telling them or is pretending to tell them, or
what you know, the Kennedy crazies.

Speaker 2 (18:45):
Are assuming at any moment in time.

Speaker 1 (18:47):
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(19:10):
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(19:57):
And then there's also those that are in the They're
they're there that are in the how do you stop
prevent Another Trump? And that group of folks are sort
of the true what I call the true reformists because
they're not partisans. That doesn't mean they don't have partisan
points of view that they do, but these are gatherings

(20:17):
that include liberals and conservatives who have one thing in common.
They're constitutionalists and they are alarmed by the fact that
there are so many entities essentially not using the Constitution right.
You have Corporate America choosing not to use it to
defend their First Amendment rights. You've had other companies choosing

(20:38):
not to use it to to defend their their various
constitutional rights when it comes to mostly frankly due to
First Amendment issues in different free speech free speech issues.
So it's in this space that I'm also like to
get involved. And again, all of these are under Chathamhouse Rule,

(21:00):
so I'm you know, I don't want to I'm not
going to out any individuals, but I wanted to share
an experience I had recently because it was a new
take on how to find hope. Right, there's there's always
you know, I had somebody ask this question in the
last podcast. You keep using the expression your short term

(21:20):
pessimistic but long term optimistic, and you know, explain that
more if you will, And you know, I always sit
there and say, well, I'm my long term optimism is
mostly due to our history, our nation's history, and that
we've had moments like this before where we're at a
fork in the road and you know, we can end
up in one direction or the other, and we sort

(21:42):
of always end up in the right space. We meander,
you know, you know, I will reiterate what I love
to reiterate the Martin Luther King quote about the arc
of history. Well, an arc sometimes goes backwards before it
loops its way around to go forwards. And sometimes you
have to go backwards if you're going to if you
are going to be able to do something that actually

(22:04):
takes this country forward. And it's pretty obvious that we
have to update this constitution, we have to update the democracy.
I mean, what's happening now with the redistricting wars is
just a symptom of this larger problem. I mean, we
now have Virginia is going to try to do this,
and you have Indiana is going to try to do this,
and you're in North Carolina is going to try to

(22:24):
I mean, we're just it's it's getting absurd, and it's
clear that we need to do a constitutional reform, specifically
on this issue in particular, to sort of stop this madness,
because what it is doing is disenfranchising voters, pure and simple.

Speaker 2 (22:41):
Right.

Speaker 1 (22:41):
It's state after state after state, partisan disenfranchising of voters.

Speaker 2 (22:46):
Part stop.

Speaker 1 (22:47):
That's what Texas Republicans want to do to Democrats. That's
what California Republicans are doing to Republicans in California. Response,
it's what Indiana Republicans are doing to Indiana Democrats. It's
what Virginia Democrats are going to be doing Virginia. You
see run point here, right, It is depending on the
state that you live in. If you're in a one
party control state, there's now an incentive politically to disenfranchise

(23:10):
voters of the other side. This is you know, I
could argue that all of this is it should be
covered by the equal Protection Clause in the Constitution, but
I think we have to spell it out and spell
out exactly what is fair.

Speaker 2 (23:27):
And what isn't on that front.

Speaker 1 (23:31):
But the reason, you know, sometimes there's something that's staring
you right in the face and you're like, well, duh,
I should have of course, that's the best argument you
could make for why we shouldn't be afraid to ask
the voters for big change. And this person was making

(23:53):
the case that the second election of Donald Trump is
actually the best case you could come up with to
prove that Americans are looking for something different.

Speaker 2 (24:05):
They're not looking for status.

Speaker 1 (24:06):
Quo and The point is is that you can make
an argument for something different, something big, something bold. This
is an electorate that if you persuade them, if you
go out there and make the case, you know, if
you say to them, look, we've got we cannot allow
ourselves to again have seventy five year old presidents. We
have our second seventy five year old president. I think

(24:28):
we now second term in a row where many Americans
have real questions about whether our president is all there. Right,
There was obvious moments during the Biden presidency where that
was an issue, and there are obvious moments pretty much
now every day.

Speaker 2 (24:42):
With Donald Trump.

Speaker 1 (24:43):
Right, Donald Trump cleverly set the bar of crazy so
lower high, depending on how you want to describe the
metric that you know it was. It was easier for
folks to see that something was wrong with Biden because
we had seen a competent version of Biden for so
long in the public SA square. With Trump, right, he's
had his meandering, his weight, weave, his crazy. He's been

(25:05):
out there for so long that only the folks that
are following, that follow him super closely start to notice that, hey,
you know this he's using. His vocabulary is shrinking. He
seems to be harping on the same stuff. He seems
to not quite always know who's all there. And maybe

(25:29):
some of it's laziness. I've always said, a big chunk
of Donald Trump's misspeak and all that stuff, he's just lazy.

Speaker 2 (25:39):
Right.

Speaker 1 (25:39):
He never reads a speech before he gives it, you know,
let alone actually participates in the writing of any speeches.

Speaker 2 (25:45):
Right.

Speaker 1 (25:46):
I don't even think he does the dictation into a
into his iPhone and then hey, transcribe this as a
way to get started on.

Speaker 2 (25:53):
A speech for speech writers.

Speaker 1 (25:56):
So there's always been an inherent laziness that weirdly has
made me, has given me a sense of hope, hope,
hope's not the wrong way, a sense of why I
don't assume the worst, because he's too lazy to pursue
the worst course, right, the worst course, you know, trying
to consolidate power being an authoritarian. There's actually some work

(26:19):
that would have to be done, right, you know, if
he truly were desired untiltalitarian authoritarian, you know, presidency, he'd
be orchestrating a campaign to amend the constitution to allow
him to run again, right, to come up with some
sort of amendment that somehow would allow him to run,

(26:40):
but would bar Barack Obama from running for a third term.
Maybe it would be you know, presidents can run for
reelection if they don't win reelection the first time, or
some bizarre thing, right, the non consecutive to sort of
find a to create a non consecutive term loophole. But
the fact of the matter is he's he and mag

(27:01):
are too lazy to pursue a constitutional option, right, So
it's always at you know, if they really you know,
if there's an easy shortcut, they'll try it. But if
if it's a little more legwork or if it's a
little more effort, like writing a health care plan. You know,
he's always claimed he wants to come up with a
better healthcare plan, that it would be easy, Well do it,

(27:21):
write it. But he's lazy, right, you know, he's not.
You know, the reason our democracy is, I think safer
than some people think, is because of how lazy he is.
Just let's not you know, overestimate you know something. He
may have desires, but he is too lazy to pursue

(27:44):
some of those some of those desires. But I want
to go back to this optimism and I want to
go back to frankly, a call to action. I think
we've all you know, there's one of the ways that
some people have explained Trump's success in twenty twenty four

(28:06):
over Democrats has been because he's on the right side
of eighty twenty issues, right like the border wasn't turned
out to be an eighty twenty issue. Transgender women in
sports is an eighty twenty issue, you know. So he's
been on where Democrats have had to explain exactly why
they're on the side of an issue that doesn't have

(28:27):
popular support. And you know the rule in politics if
you're explaining you're losing. Reforming this government and reforming our
constitution is an eighty twenty issue, folks. The lack of
leadership in the general common sense middle has been quite frustrating.
It does not exist in this current Congress. Nobody has

(28:49):
stepped up to be the leader of the common sense
movement that says, hey, what we've been doing these last
decade is insanity.

Speaker 2 (28:58):
This is crazy.

Speaker 1 (29:00):
This is no way to run a lemonade stand, let
alone the largest government in the on the globe. And
it's about time that we fixed the proverbial metaphorical bridges
and roads of the American democracy. Would you tell folks

(29:22):
about it? It's in eighty twelve. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah,
that makes sense that we need these things. Getting rid
of partisan primaries right like it is obvious. Now you've
got to connect these issues to people's day to day lives.
It can't just be an esoteric Hey, this is what
the founders would have wanted. Right That may that may
appeal to someone like me, but that's not going to

(29:43):
appeal to the to the everyday American who's not a
political or civics junkie, who's simply trying to make the
best of their lives, raise their kids, build a nest egg,
and and have a good life in this country. But
if you tell them that the current system is rigged
against them and you want to unrig the system, you

(30:06):
can't trust a part of politician to do this on
their own because either they don't have the power or
they are never going to be looking out for you.
They're going to be looking out for their self interests.
We need to prevent that. We need to create a structure.
We need to update the constitution to change our incentive structures.
You know, whether it's getting rid of partisan primaries, putting
in a campaign finance reform minimum, putting in age maximums

(30:29):
for serving in federal office, whether it's an appointment to
the Supreme Court or running for the presidency. And yes,
all of those are going to have to be constitutional amendments.
If you have age minimums in the constitution, it means
you have age maximums. The US House was supposed to
expand with the population. It is stopped, but you're going
to have to force that into the constitution. There's an

(30:49):
easy metric to come up with on that point zero
zero zero one percent of the population.

Speaker 2 (30:53):
Boom done.

Speaker 1 (30:55):
You have your baseline metric for that, and it will
easily decide how many congressional districts state. And oh, by
the way, the electoral college and the popular vote won't
be as easily split if you actually have a Congress
and a US House that fits the country. So if
you already have a group of voters that are willing

(31:16):
to experiment on the first African American president right where
there was some skepticism is this going to work? And
they were willing to do it, And then you have
group of voters that are willing to basically a failed celebrity,
fake billionaire as president and try him twice because they
want because they know the current system is broken. So
this is the good news. The voters already know the

(31:38):
system is broken. What we need is a good leader
from the common sense center that makes the case of, hey,
we can fix this. Are you tired of having to
just find a cult of personality that might be able
to be the bull in the china shop to shake
things up?

Speaker 2 (31:57):
Right?

Speaker 1 (31:58):
That is not how you run a country. That may
be how you run a small business. Right, you get
a better leader, and you might be able to transform
a small business. It might be a better way to run.

Speaker 2 (32:10):
A football team.

Speaker 1 (32:12):
You don't want a democracy deciding deciding a game plan
for a football game. Your head coach does need to
be an authoritarian of some sorts, benevolent. I think a
malevolent coach these days doesn't work, but a benevolent authoritarian.
But in this case, just this isn't going to be
a functional solution. The functional solution to the dysfunction that

(32:37):
we have is to update the rules of our democracy,
update the blueprint of our democracy. That's the constitution, that's
the leadership that is necessary. And the fact is, and
like I said, I just wanted to channel. If you
don't believe the public would would support this, you haven't

(33:01):
been paying attention.

Speaker 2 (33:03):
Right.

Speaker 1 (33:03):
The public knows something's wrong, which is why they keep
voting against status quo. Whenever they get the chance, they
keep throwing people out. Okay, but in fairness to the
general public, they've got to live their own lives, and
so you need to If you lead them to the stream,

(33:26):
they'll drink the reform water. But someone's got to lead
them to the stream, and you've got to galvanize it.
And again we have seen it. That's why I began
with the shutdown and the lack of leadership from the
Common Sense Center here, and this is what needs to happen.
We're going to continue to sort of, you know, go

(33:47):
back and forth, like we've erected barriers in front of
the gutter. You know, they have little kids come up,
they erect the little barrier so that they don't have
to throw a gutter ball. So we always the system
does just enough to pure gutter balls presidencies, But we're
sort of our ball is slamming back and forth. If

(34:07):
we need is a bit a bit smoother set of leaders.
But we're not going to get it without an updated
structure that creates.

Speaker 2 (34:17):
The incentives, that makes it so that.

Speaker 1 (34:20):
Some some terrible leader doesn't take advantage of our weak system,
you know, whether it's for personal financial gain, or whether
it's for some other pet project that they might have
their own narcissism, or whatever it is. And right now

(34:43):
our system is weak enough and rickety enough where we've
allowed that to happen, and the focus needs to be
on preventing the next strump. In some ways, you know,
you can tie some things up with lawsuits and it
slows things down, it comes up the works, But the
real solution is going to be coming with fixing this

(35:05):
small d democratic infrastructure. But this lack of interest in
a political leader making this the platform to run for
national office to galvanize the country on this has been
disappointing to me that that somebody hasn't had the guts
to go down this road. But I actually think that

(35:28):
you have an electorate that is hungry for this. They
don't fully know what they're hungry for, they know what
they don't want to eat, but they're hungry for this.
You just have to make the case and you have
to connect it to hey, the shittiness that they feel
about how government's been and not helping them live their lives.
This better structure will create the We'll create the opportunity

(35:52):
so that government can be put to work to simply
help you live your life better. So, look, I'm often asked,
you know, sometimes I'm a bit pessimistic on here. You know,
give people something tangible to be hopeful on. The tangible
aspect is we have a hungry electorate that wants change,

(36:13):
wants reform. What we need is some leaders that have
the guts to pitch the reform in such a way
that it is not about themselves, that it is not
about Donald Trump alone. Okay, that is about you know,
how we end it up in this situation, how two
parties exploited Rickety rules to do put us in the

(36:35):
situation that we're in. Because I promise you, I know
there's some of my friends of the left and think,
stop both sidesing this, or some of my friends on
the right saying you're you're picking on Trump, You're not
doing you're not saying enough about how the left contributed
to this. The point is we're never going to get
anywhere if we just argue about who's more fault. That's

(36:56):
why we need a leader that comes from the eighty
This this is an eighty twenty issue, fixing the infrastructure
of American democracy. It's an eighty twenty issue, folks. We
just need the right leader to grab this, grab this platform,
and run with it. The good news is this electorate's
hungry for it. They just haven't been given a meal

(37:19):
prepared for them in such a way that.

Speaker 2 (37:21):
They're ready to eat it.

Speaker 1 (37:23):
All right, with that, we're going to sneak it a break,
My guests, You're going to love this conversation. It's my
friend Billy Corbyan. He is a documentary filmmaker. He's one
of those documentary filmmakers that makes movies that happen to
be documentaries rather than just sort of talking head documentaries.
This is the man behind the You, so you know
why I'm a big fan of him. But he's also

(37:45):
behind I think one of the most foundational films you
can watch to understand the growth of Miami in the eighties.
It was called Cocaine Cowboys, and it really sort of
put it this way. After seeing and I understood my
childhood and better if you will. But He's got a
new documentary. It's actually almost a year old now called

(38:05):
Men of War, but it couldn't be more timely.

Speaker 2 (38:09):
It is about a failed sort of this.

Speaker 1 (38:12):
It centers around a former Canadian military guy who renounces
his Canadian citizenship to become an American to join the
American military and he just you know, does a bunch
of tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. Anyway, when
he's a civilian again, he ends up somehow a mercenary

(38:34):
ready to help with a with a potential coup in Venezuela.
And this was about an attempt about four or five
years ago to deal with Maduro in Venezuela. There's there's
some interesting people that make cameos, including Donald Trump's former
body man Keith Schiller, if you remember that name.

Speaker 2 (38:53):
The point is the.

Speaker 1 (38:55):
Movie is both satirical, but it is it satirical meeting
it is. If you were trying to make satire, you'd
be like, well, this is kind of weird, but it's
not right.

Speaker 2 (39:07):
This is just what it was.

Speaker 1 (39:09):
And now that we're actually in the middle of what
appears to be a military operation that is really about
regime change in Venezuela, but we've made up this new
phrase called narco terrorists, and essentially it's a total gaslighting
by this administration. Right they are absolutely not telling the

(39:30):
truth about anything they're doing right now in Venezuela. And
the only things they tell the truth on are the
ore stuff that we can verify a satellite imagery and
we can verify with the naked eye. But they are
not telling the truth about anything that's going on here.
So this documentary, which you can watch wherever you rent movies, Amazon, Apple,
et cetera, go take a look. But conversation with Billy

(39:54):
it goes everywhere. We talk a little Florida politics, we
talk a little city of Miami politics, we talk a
little Venezel whale, a little Cuba, and maybe a.

Speaker 2 (40:03):
Little bit of Miami Hurricanes football as well.

Speaker 1 (40:06):
So we'll sneaking a break Billy Corban on the other side,
and then we'll do some questions and the most anticipated segment.

Speaker 2 (40:15):
Of the week, my college football preview.

Speaker 1 (40:29):
And joining me now is somebody I've known a long time.
We share a love of the Miami Hurricanes. We both
grew up in South South Florida. I always forget exactly
where you grew up, Billy Miami. I grew up in Miami,
in Miami, which part of Miami.

Speaker 3 (40:43):
On northeast mind, like just east of Joe Robbie Stadium, Right,
you were sort of an Aventura boy. Well, Aventurer didn't exist,
but we you were just we're between ninety five and
Aventura and this sort of No, let's.

Speaker 1 (40:56):
Just let's put it in good Miami terms. I was
a Dadeland Mall kid and accasionally a cutler Ridge Mall kid.

Speaker 2 (41:02):
For you, Yeah, my god, you lived in Guanta. My
grandfather lived in p ry No, that is you're yeah,
you're a Southwest kid.

Speaker 1 (41:11):
I was very Northeast and there were those were the
two like get know, those were sort of the two
suburban pockets.

Speaker 3 (41:18):
Arguably, Yeah, and you would know there would be really
little to no reason for you to ever venture to
that end of the I.

Speaker 1 (41:25):
Know, going to north north part of the county is
like going to Sarasota for me, like it's just like
could be all the same.

Speaker 3 (41:33):
And now more than ever in those es it could
take about a half hour. Now it takes about the mountains.

Speaker 1 (41:37):
It might be easier to fly to Sarasota. But Billy,
you are are, Like I said that probably the definitive
documentary slash film, because I think you're you're one of
these documentarians. It's a filmmaker who does journalism.

Speaker 2 (41:52):
I would say, there's two types.

Speaker 1 (41:53):
You know, we know there's I just interviewed the the
gentleman behind the new or Well doc that's out.

Speaker 2 (42:02):
Two plus two equals five.

Speaker 1 (42:03):
And it's very much a filmmaker who does journalism, not
just a bunch of talking heads and cocaine cowboys. To
this day does a better job of explaining Miami in
the eighties than any other entity you can watch. And
I think, I think your success since then proves.

Speaker 2 (42:21):
That and I think you you.

Speaker 1 (42:23):
Did do this, and so you have found there are
so many rich stories in Miami to tell. And you
have another one, Men of War. It couldn't be more
well timed. It actually came out last year. You can
see it everywhere right Apple, Amazon, anywhere you want to
get this. It is about It's like Bay of Pigs

(42:44):
for Venezuela. Is that how am I doing?

Speaker 2 (42:48):
Like?

Speaker 3 (42:48):
Yes, someone said like Bay of pigs. What they call
it Bay of piglets? But someone someone described it as
Rambo meets Firefest.

Speaker 1 (42:55):
Yeah, and I remember when it came out, when I
first read about it, I'm like, wow, what this is
interesting and I can't wait to talk to Billy about this. Now,
all of a sudden, we have our interview in the
United States government. It's taken over. It's amazing.

Speaker 3 (43:14):
Where so kind of like semi relevant on the verge
of war with Venezuela and with our documentary about a
failed coup of Venezuela.

Speaker 2 (43:23):
That was what happened like five four years ago. So
here we are. Tell me the story.

Speaker 1 (43:29):
And you know, in Miami you can always find somebody
who claims they're going to be starting something somewhere.

Speaker 3 (43:36):
Yeah, well this is a perfect racking tour our company
Racin Tour, which has been in my beach for twenty
five years.

Speaker 2 (43:42):
And you mentioned Cocaine Cowboys. It turns twenty next year.

Speaker 3 (43:45):
Next year is the twentieth anniversary of the first Cocaine
Cowboys documentary.

Speaker 2 (43:49):
I made it when I was ten. It's true, of
course you did. Of course you did this. And so
this is what I love to tell people.

Speaker 1 (43:55):
By the way, why it's so, you know, because I
have often that people you grew up in my in
the eighties, you know it was our cocaine everywhere, and
I'm like, you know, it's the strangest thing. It was everywhere,
but if you weren't involved, it was nowhere. And I
literally lived next door to somebody who worked for one
of these cartels, who couldn't have been a better neighbor,
who was just sort of a like And I didn't
fully know it until after I left, how connected they

(44:16):
were and it was always happening and right around us.
But if you show if you weren't involved, you never
saw it, well, your doc captured my understanding of it
even better.

Speaker 2 (44:29):
The only.

Speaker 3 (44:31):
Real world successful case study of Reagan's trickle down economics
is Miami in the Cocaine Boom, because it really did
the rising tide, at the risk of using a climate
change metaphor.

Speaker 2 (44:42):
Really did raise all the ships.

Speaker 3 (44:44):
And you saw that all over your neighborhood, but you
weren't necessarily touched, Like you didn't have to even be
in the drug business to be positively or negatively for
that matter, impacted by it.

Speaker 2 (44:54):
But it wasn't like this idea that drugs were everywhere.

Speaker 3 (44:57):
Cocaine was everywhere, but the money, I feel was everywhere,
Like you like.

Speaker 1 (45:03):
No I've always I've compared it to and I think
we've had this conversation. What bootlegging meant to Chicago is
what the cocaine sort of gang's cartels, whatever you want
to call them, meant for the rise of Miami. We
don't have what the modern Miami without these guys, just
like you wouldn't have had the modern Chicago without the

(45:23):
criminal element.

Speaker 3 (45:24):
It's a gold rush. It was a gold rush in
Dodge City. I mean, that's exactly what it was. So
men of war this So listen when you know they
had me at Venezuelan coup hatched in a we work
in downtown Miami.

Speaker 2 (45:39):
I mean, you have my attention.

Speaker 3 (45:41):
You know, this is our this is our genre, right,
Florida fuckery, which which I can also sum up as
like Florida man behaving badly with international implications.

Speaker 2 (45:52):
And that's kind of that's that's really what this is.

Speaker 3 (45:56):
And and what was even more intriguing about it for
me is that, like we always look for that irreverence
and that comedy.

Speaker 2 (46:03):
Dare I say, in our stories especially.

Speaker 1 (46:06):
There's like like Argo had this, you know, right, and
you yours is real life the way you capture.

Speaker 2 (46:12):
It it's a great guy. I haven't heard that. Argo
is a great comparison for this, and it does it.

Speaker 3 (46:17):
It kind of starts out as this like irreverent, like
geopolitical action thriller, but like by the Coen Brothers almost,
and then it evolves into I think a pretty surprising
character study and of this like of this damaged war
hero and this exploration about like what happens to Captain
America's and g I jans when governments are done playing

(46:40):
with them and in this case, they kind of are
never done playing with them. And this idea of like
a generation of perpetual war or I should say now
multiple generations of Americans who are who were us trapped
in a perpetual war, and then this idea that what
do you do with these guys after we've invested did
millions of dollars in their training and their deployments in

(47:03):
this case Jordan Goudreau, who is a legit war hero
and you know, with a dozen deployments to Iraq in
Afghanistan starting literally at his age of adulthood, all the way.

Speaker 1 (47:15):
And this is one of those does any human can
any human do a dozen right? Like I've done? You know,
as you know, I love me a good documentary. I
promote festivals when I can. I've probably been, I know,
I've helped with two or three of them, showcase these
documentaries about how this stuff just totally damages guys after

(47:39):
the third or fourth tour and a dude doesn't. I mean,
it's I don't know if the human brain can handle it,
and his could until it couldn't anymore.

Speaker 3 (47:51):
And it's really something to just see how we abuse
these men and women when they come home, and by
abusing them just by doing nothing for them, like providing
little to.

Speaker 1 (48:06):
Know, so we break them emotionally. We make that where
they are incapable of just having normal interactions and normal relations.
It's it's it's a.

Speaker 2 (48:15):
But hey, this is Pete Haiksteth's Warrior Ethos, right, Well.

Speaker 3 (48:19):
This is a human tragedy. And if it's if it
applies to this guy, it applies to you know, mountless
managed women, you know, coming back from the His grandfather
was his hero, who fought in World War One, trained
soldiers for World War Two. But he describes accurately he
went to war and then he came home from war
and that was the end of it. This guy lived

(48:41):
in war and would occasionally get a hiatus, you know,
to come back home.

Speaker 2 (48:45):
But for him, there was no home. For him.

Speaker 3 (48:47):
It was Fort Brad was his home because he was
a Canadian kid who was kind of a rough kid
in school and decided to go to the mill into
the military early in Canada.

Speaker 2 (48:59):
Needed his mother to sign off because he was only
straightened himself out. That's always one of those, yeah stories.

Speaker 3 (49:04):
One of those exactly, And his mom had to sign
off on it because he was only seventeen. And then
he goes into the Canadian military and he's bored. He's
bored because he knows he's never going to see any
action and there's not a lot going on. So he
decides to move to the United States and join the
army the military here, and he does so less than

(49:27):
one year before the nine to eleven terrorist attacks. And
so he describes a scene at Fort Brad he well,
as he often does, he compares it to pop culture
and to movies. He's kind of a he's kind of
a postmodern soldier in the way the Sopranos were postmodern gangsters.
You know, they're constantly referencing the pop culture that they

(49:48):
are both like making new and emulating at the same time.

Speaker 2 (49:52):
It's like it's life imitating art imitating life.

Speaker 1 (49:54):
See how I described Trump. I say, he's a movie mobster.
Like he's not a real mom uster, but he plays
a movie mobster in real life.

Speaker 3 (50:02):
Yeah, life imitating art imitating life imitating art. It's like this,
it's this. We're stuck in that postmodern cycle now, and
that's what this this This guy Jordan's constantly making allusions
to James Bond. I think he is double O seven
in his email address, you know, to Jason Bourne, to Rambo,
to in this case Starship Troopers. He wants to be
a super soldier, is what you're sapaying. And he was

(50:25):
for a time, there's no denying it. And but like
this is you were talking about sort of the mentality
and what the human brain is capable of as a warrior.
And he described this scene comparing it to Starship Troopers,
where everybody cannot suppress their joy at going to war,

(50:47):
like the fist pumping and the the high fiving, and
like we're going to war like so where the rest
of us we're watching, we can put ourselves in that moment,
watching the twin Towers on television and just the state
of mind that we were in, of shock, of fear,
of uncertainty. These guys on base were like, fuck yeah,

(51:08):
you know that Team America, you know American Fuck yeah,
Like that's going crazy, you know. But but again that's
a mentality. And and there's a moment where I'm like,
fuck yeah, I want you on that wall.

Speaker 2 (51:21):
I need you on that wall.

Speaker 1 (51:22):
And by the way, there are times you want those
are the soldiers you want there, you know, right, those
are the guys you want out there if if, if
shit's gonna happen.

Speaker 3 (51:32):
And he is one of those guys, and they and
he renounced his Canadian citizenship so that he could expedite
his Green Beret, his Special Forces training, and so we
could get the you know, the the access to classified
you know, the clearance that he needed. And he was
and he became an American hero like kind of overnight.

Speaker 1 (51:53):
So how does he get into the world of trying
to overthrow Maduro.

Speaker 3 (51:59):
It's like us, Chuck, when we're done with corporate media,
we go indy, right, we go we become mercenaries.

Speaker 1 (52:05):
That's kind of we Well that's what he became. He's right,
one of those mercenaries, right.

Speaker 3 (52:08):
He wanted to be Eric Prince when he grew up,
you know, that's what he wanted to do. And so
he starts this company. Here's a deleted scene. You didn't
get this. It's really interesting. He starts this company, silvercre
In like Sarasota, Florida, shortly after the tragedy, well, the
mass shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas implantation. He gets this one,

(52:32):
I think is a very good idea many years later,
I feel like Lindsay Graham floated it on an interview someone.
But Jordan's idea was that in order to make work
and protect schools, he was going to start a company
that took former soldiers, retired soldiers in plane clothes or
in suits and ties, and was going to get contracts

(52:53):
with school boards or public schools and systems and put
these guys into schools as safety officers, security whatever you
want to call them, better train.

Speaker 1 (53:04):
Than probably regular law enforcement officers at least on that
kind of stuff.

Speaker 2 (53:09):
Absolutely, and also again like what do these guys do.

Speaker 3 (53:13):
We've spent, we've invested as taxpayers as a military, so
much money in training these men and women.

Speaker 2 (53:19):
Why not why not get the roi, you know, so
to speak.

Speaker 3 (53:25):
And so this was his idea, and he started to
go to like, you know, PTA conventions and school board
conventions and started it never quite got off the ground,
but that's where this started. And it evolved into an
opportunity to go to Puerto Rico after the hurricane and
do some hurricane relief and security efforts down there. And
then kind of one thing led to another and he

(53:46):
winds up working a Trump rally I think in Tampa,
Florida as security, playing close security. This is pre twenty
sixteen or during the time, say during the twenty sixteen campaign.
And now he kind of falls into some kind of
upper level people in the first Trump administration, including this

(54:09):
this guy, Keith Schiller, who was the President's body.

Speaker 1 (54:13):
Man from Miss Trump body man for he was the president. Yeah,
I mean he was.

Speaker 3 (54:18):
I mean the kind of loyalty that this president demands,
the kind of guy who was not just by his
side but in front of him, you know, for decades
at the Trump organization. And so this guy is working
for a company and they start having conversations about what
they're calling humanitarian aid in Venezuela. I think I should

(54:40):
maybe should I do air quotes.

Speaker 2 (54:41):
I'm doing quotes for it. Ye so hard.

Speaker 3 (54:43):
I'm getting crympal tunnel right now from my haircut. But like,
but so, there is some discrepancy about this we work
meeting Chuck and whether or not it was about you know,
humanitarian aid or whether there was an overt conversation about
regime change, and depending on who you asked. I think
Keith Schuller said he was present for a conversation about

(55:05):
humanitarian aid and if there was any talk about military
or intervention, it happened while he was in the bathroom,
is what he said.

Speaker 2 (55:14):
So that's a direct quote.

Speaker 3 (55:16):
You know.

Speaker 1 (55:16):
It's funny about all of Trump World, like that they're
all well trained. Jason Miller was king of this with me.
I'm like, I heard this, What can you tell me
about this? And he says, well, I haven't heard it,
but it's possible you did, Like would never rule it out,
like you don't because you learn in Trump World somebody
you know, every reporter has six people in Trump World

(55:39):
on speed dial, not just one or two.

Speaker 2 (55:42):
Everybody's running to the bathroom, you know, everybody's figured out.

Speaker 1 (55:45):
Yeah, you didn't hear everything, and you probably don't try
to own everything, because you won't. I mean Trump had
literally two different political consulting teams looking at twenty twelve,
and the two didn't know the other was working for him.
Roger Stone was doing one, and he had he had
these other aunt Michael Cohen doing another, and they weren't communicating.

Speaker 3 (56:06):
Well that's how that's how you get the best intel
I guess right, yes, yeah, accurate information.

Speaker 2 (56:11):
But uh, this guy gets dragged into this scheme. The
question is what was this scheme?

Speaker 3 (56:19):
Jordan comes along with a lot of receipts, a lot
of text messages, a lot of video. Again, he was postmodern.
He was kind of self documenting a lot of this
adventure on social media, on private.

Speaker 1 (56:36):
Sort of building, you know, just to protect himself or
just because you just said he's postmodern, meaning this is
just the way the world works.

Speaker 2 (56:43):
I'm gonna share it all. I think there was three reasons.
One was self promotion.

Speaker 3 (56:47):
I mean you can see on his Instagram it's you
know a lot of you know, bad sort of you
know Rambo stuff, and hire me to help. We're the
only ones who can help. Second is self preservation. He
does does indicating the documentary that as you know, being
trained in the military, He's like, I should record, I
should memorialize this to ensure that in the event that

(57:09):
they deny my you know, the mission impossible style. He yeah,
he there was in his contract because ultimately he signs
a contract with this so called interim government of Venezuela,
this Juan Guido character, who's an interesting Guido.

Speaker 2 (57:24):
Okay, yeah, right, yeah, So.

Speaker 3 (57:26):
He signs this contract and there is this this kind
of disclaimer clause, this mission impossible clause, in the event
that you and your men get captured, we will disavow
your existence, like any knowledge of of you, this contract
to your existence, et cetera. So he was recording for that.
And lastly, at some point, well two points, the funding

(57:49):
fell through his Parkers fell through at least twice that
I know of, and he needed he actually he made
a sizzle reel chuck to go out to investors, to
private investors to finance his coup. So the video that
he was, you know, he had some videographers embedded so

(58:09):
that he could put together a trailer basically for his
for his proposed coup and go out to financiers. And
so those were the three the three. It's very convenian
for documentarians now that No, I mean, you know, you went.

Speaker 1 (58:25):
So much access and footage that it almost felt like
this was a ruse.

Speaker 2 (58:30):
Yet there were various times when I felt like, is
this guy are you being played? Yeah? Were you worried
you were being played?

Speaker 3 (58:38):
Well, I mean he is not the world's most reliable narrator,
which I think is part of what makes this story
so compelling. But then when you're when you're thinking this
this is at its most outlandish, suddenly he produces receipts.
There's text messages, Instagram, dms, emails, videos, audio recordings, and

(59:00):
you're like, oh shit, I guess this really did. But
think about your own experience in Miami.

Speaker 2 (59:05):
Is it shocking?

Speaker 1 (59:06):
It's you know, it's never shocking in Miami. There is
weird There is a weird amount of those type of
people always in circulation in Miami, Florida.

Speaker 3 (59:16):
Rarely shocks me, but regularly disappoints me. So that's a
good way of putting that. Yeah, and no, but you're right.
I mean, listen, the assassination of a Haitian president at
the same time happened out of out of Miami.

Speaker 2 (59:29):
It was basically planned out of Miami.

Speaker 3 (59:31):
Well totally see. I don't think it the we work
per se. But maybe they had an Airbnb. I don't
know Verba, I'm not sure. But but no, I mean
this is this is always right. My Miami is America's Casablanca,
and like this is where and like I've always my
pastime here has always been dive bars. I'm not much
of a club guy, because you go to a dive

(59:52):
bar in Miami and you want to find the crustiest
old dude you can find. I mean literally a guy
who just who just looks like, you know, a crustae
like growing on a pile on you.

Speaker 2 (01:00:01):
And you know, way too sun dried, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:00:04):
And he's like he's like attached to the barstool and
idle up. You strike up a conversation, and invariably you're
talking to a guy that just left federal prison three
days ago, or a deposed Third world dictator or his
son or what like.

Speaker 1 (01:00:22):
No, you go to the publics and you're running to Bolsonaro, right,
like that happens one hundred.

Speaker 3 (01:00:27):
That is like like just a thing. It's it's just
a thing that in Miami and still is and so
these characters are you could argue, are are pretty commonplace
down here, so it's it's it's easy to to doubt it,
and then it's really easy to.

Speaker 2 (01:00:43):
To go But no, but because Miami, right, like of course.

Speaker 1 (01:00:59):
So I'm just curre is what's been your reception in
the Venezuelan community in Miami to this doc.

Speaker 3 (01:01:06):
It's a good question. I'm mostly very positive. I think
there was a lot of people who are skeptical about
Wanguido and this interim government. By the way, that's I
want to be the fake president of a country, of
an oil rich country when I grow up, because that
is quite a hustle. I mean, being the so called
democratically elected president.

Speaker 2 (01:01:26):
In what are they like in exile?

Speaker 3 (01:01:29):
But he was living in Caracas, which strikes me that
like do you not have to pay a viig to
the dictator when you're living in like how dangerous?

Speaker 1 (01:01:37):
Well this is like Maduro's and before him, Chavez's genius.
It was this weird way and it, frankly, it's a
pattern Trump is following. And I always vacillate by how
far down the road to go and the whole what
is Trump? And authoritarian? All this stuff and you know,
I think he I think he's so lazy. He wants

(01:01:58):
to be but he's too lazy to make it happen.

Speaker 2 (01:02:00):
But either way, right, he surrounded himself with the right
people to help.

Speaker 1 (01:02:05):
That's right, and he it is there's something about there's
something about you know, being able to I guess it
was like, this is what the Shah did, right, we
have these there's a there's a few other like leaders
in exile from the Middle East or from African country.

Speaker 2 (01:02:26):
It's it's the w W E. Yeah, that's what I mean.
It's it's the Harlem globe trotters and the Washington generals.
I mean, it's and what you're doing. In some ways.

Speaker 1 (01:02:34):
What I loved about this is I have a feeling
this is what what the Cuban community was like in
the sixties before you and I were born in Miami,
when they were constantly somebody saying no, no, no, no, no,
I've got I've got all this land, I've got all
this power, I can do all this. And I feel
like that's what Guido and others do with Venezuela.

Speaker 2 (01:02:53):
Every now.

Speaker 3 (01:02:54):
Oh yeah, there's always like a next the next president
or the president of a free Cuba. Listen, Marca Ruby
once to everybody in Miami wants to be the president
of a free Cuba. You know, it's it's so so
that's I think that that I don't know that well.
I mean, I'd love to see that, but just just
so I could go to Cuba. I've never been to Cuba.
My grandparents used to talk about going to You never

(01:03:16):
you never tried to go.

Speaker 2 (01:03:17):
I went once.

Speaker 1 (01:03:19):
You know what I went. You know, I went looking
two thousand. I happened to be there during the summer
of eleon, Oh my god. And I went through Mexico City.
You know, my statute of limitations is up, so I
fully will Are you sure?

Speaker 2 (01:03:34):
I don't you know what?

Speaker 1 (01:03:35):
You know that just because just because the law should apply,
it doesn't mean it will, right, And uh.

Speaker 2 (01:03:44):
I'm really glad I did.

Speaker 1 (01:03:46):
It is the greatest lesson of why communism is a
failure than I've ever really And here's the here's the
thing that sticks is stuck with me the most been
twenty five years. There's a real reason why those all
those nineteen fifties cars are in pristine condition down there.
It's the only thing you're allowed to own.

Speaker 2 (01:04:08):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (01:04:09):
You don't own your where you live, you don't own
any of that stuff. So all of that stuff is
just a pig style nobody. Most people don't keep there
because it's not theirs. It's just a government hand on
all this stuff. But what they own, that car, that's theirs,
and there is a reason why they're in amazing and
it's just a it's my way of understanding. This is innate,

(01:04:32):
you know what belongs to me. No industrial Revolution, it's the.

Speaker 2 (01:04:35):
Last thing.

Speaker 1 (01:04:38):
Yeah, before the and people saying having to whisper in
order to tell you what they really feel. It was
that it was an important experience for.

Speaker 2 (01:04:49):
Me having grown up in Miami.

Speaker 3 (01:04:51):
I grew up with a certain you know, conservative right
wing think about.

Speaker 2 (01:04:56):
And we both probably both did.

Speaker 3 (01:04:58):
Yeah, I could never understand for me like I was
very much you know, I'm very much about the Davida.
I'm very much like I will go to I will
spend my money in Cuba when it is free, when
I am not, when I don't feel like I am
supporting or buttressing that evil dictator. All the Cubans in
Miami send money down there and going.

Speaker 1 (01:05:18):
I felt like I don't. I felt like I was
there to help the people that are stuck. It is
funny once you get there, you realize that's actually the
reason to visit is to give them some hope.

Speaker 2 (01:05:30):
Interesting, well, listen, I was always a big bill.

Speaker 3 (01:05:32):
I've never really understood or not never, but as time
war on, never failed to understand came to fail to
understand the wisdom of the embargo because like I thought,
either like yeah, I felt like, well, free trade is
probably the best hope we have, both to bring hope
to the people, obviously, to stop the suffering. I mean,

(01:05:53):
it's a humanitarian crisis there as we speak, and finally
to maybe bring a taste of of American freedom and capitalism.
I never really understood it, but I also felt very
hardlined about it that I'm like, you know, I'm like,
you know, fuck Fidell.

Speaker 1 (01:06:09):
Because we liked our we you know, we we liked
our Cuban friends and neighbors, and it was really important
to them.

Speaker 3 (01:06:16):
I understood, But I also, like, I feel so much
of it is like not been ingenuous, Chuck, Like, like,
I feel so much of it has been like if
not a lie, then just certainly misinformation or probably.

Speaker 1 (01:06:31):
Well yeah, I will tell you. I mean I had
firsthand experience. My grandfather was an engineer.

Speaker 2 (01:06:36):
He moved.

Speaker 1 (01:06:37):
The whole reason my family ended up down in Miami
was my grandfather got a got an engineering contract to
build sugarcane plants to help with sugarcane plants in Havana,
in Cuba, not Havana, and so he moved his business
from Iowa to Miami in.

Speaker 2 (01:06:52):
Order to go.

Speaker 1 (01:06:54):
And you know, we're one of the non Cuban Miami
families that says, oh, you have no idea how how
much more wealth we might have had if type of thing.
But my grandfather used to constantly tell stories he was
living in the more rural parts of Cuba when he
would go down there, and he had to keep photographs
of Fidel in his trailer in order to make sure

(01:07:16):
he didn't get harassed by Fidel's guys. And the point
he was saying, he had CIA interviewing him and other
American businessman saying, hey, what do you think of Fidel,
And he'd be like, he's no better than Batista, And
it was like there was a whole bunch of American
businessmen who who are like, don't trust this Fidel guy.
And even as the CIA was working to overthrow Batista

(01:07:37):
and thinking Fidel was going to be their guy. It
is that is where there's an ingenuineness to this entire
Cuba story, is the role that America played in getting
Fidel into power.

Speaker 3 (01:07:47):
Truly, the idea that has sort of been a sixty
year battle of my dictators better than your dictator, And
basically that's right. Yeah, I mean, my grandfather was in
Cuba in nineteen sixty before anybody knew who this guy
was as bad as he was right right, who this
guy was gonna be and whose allies were. He was
in the lobby of the Hilton along with all the

(01:08:08):
other businessmen looking for me.

Speaker 1 (01:08:10):
He was like he had all sorts of friends and
right because he had. It was like a presidential election
in Cuba, except it was two dictators with their little armies,
Batista versus Castro, but they each had their funders.

Speaker 3 (01:08:22):
My grand my grandfather was with a buddy or his
business partner who was friendly with Rita Hayworth, and so
they were sitting with Rita Hayworth.

Speaker 1 (01:08:31):
In the feeling our grandfathers probably knew each other and
didn't realize.

Speaker 2 (01:08:34):
It, but feeling they probably did. And so what happened was.

Speaker 3 (01:08:39):
I said to Grandpa, I'm like, did you ever get
an audience with Fidel?

Speaker 2 (01:08:43):
He goes, No, he goes.

Speaker 3 (01:08:44):
But Rita did and because because somebody came down to
the lobby and.

Speaker 2 (01:08:50):
To go get her, to get her, and she loved them.

Speaker 3 (01:08:54):
But they never came for my grandfather and his partner
to have their meeting. And then of course the ship
hit the fan, and that was the end of doing
business with Cuba, you know, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:09:03):
No, And that's why I just sort of is that
the vet is is there that kind of expat Venezuelan
in Miami the way there was those expat Cuba Jude Darrowzuela.

Speaker 2 (01:09:14):
I mean, we have a whole municipality that you know.

Speaker 3 (01:09:17):
I often say that that, and this is true of
a lot of major America, you know, diverse American cities.
If I'm allowed to use that word, the d word,
then you know, there's a misconception that Miami is a
is a melting pot, and we are not a melting pot.
We are far more akin to a TV dinner where
sometimes the peas fall into the mashed potatoes, you know,
And and obviously we'll.

Speaker 1 (01:09:39):
Share the same county boundary. But my god, there's like
seven ethnicities and nationalities represented within it.

Speaker 3 (01:09:45):
And you better not get into a road rage incident
until you see which flag is hanging from.

Speaker 2 (01:09:49):
The rear view. I'll tell you that right now.

Speaker 3 (01:09:51):
I mean, and there's just self segregation. Listen in Miami
Beach alone, in North what they call North Beach, every block,
this is the Venezuelan building, This is the Brazilian building,
This is the Argentinian building because one person moves there
and then friends and the flats literally on the balcony.
The flags are flying at World Cup time.

Speaker 1 (01:10:11):
It's very That's when you really see it was always
World Cup tribe.

Speaker 2 (01:10:17):
Where rival is it? Yes, during the.

Speaker 1 (01:10:19):
World Cup I remember that feeling in eighty two and
in eighty six, right when Argentina won, it felt like
Miami blew up, like it was like the It was
like why I knew we had some Argentinians here, I
didn't realize how many.

Speaker 3 (01:10:32):
You know, but Durrau they call it Duauzuela because of
the I think it's the largest Venezuelan population out in
the country outside of Yeah so and and I think
sixty percent of them voted for Trump, who are who
are legal registered vote, and now we're seeing the Wall

(01:10:52):
Street Journal just covered a few weeks ago there's like
this peculiar exodus, like literally people leaving their furniture and
their clothes and their belonging and just disappearing, some of
them going to Spain, some of them leaving the state,
some of them going back to Venezuela for crying out loud.
So there's like this, there's a disproportionate number of like

(01:11:12):
of of vacancies in rental.

Speaker 2 (01:11:15):
Units in terral which has been growing exponentially.

Speaker 3 (01:11:18):
There's a the starting price for a for a rental
unit is much lower than it is in the rest
of the county.

Speaker 1 (01:11:26):
Well, they've made you know, they targeted, you know when
they when Steven Miller took you know, Steven Miller wanted
to up the deportation numbers and there were too many
groups that had Temporary Protected Status TPS status, including Venezuelans
for like a real reason, right, you know, you have

(01:11:46):
a regime that will target these people if they go home,
like this is a real issue, and they simply wanted
to up their numbers. They take it away, and I
think this is you know, look, I've seen those a
few of those stories before. I think the Herald did
one about we voted for Trump. We thought he was
going to protect our people.

Speaker 2 (01:12:06):
And he didn't. He go and he goes.

Speaker 3 (01:12:08):
I mean, I don't know that the President signed an
executive order on March first of this year declaring English
the official language of the United States of America.

Speaker 2 (01:12:17):
They did, we not get the memo down here? What happened?
I mean, are we? Are we?

Speaker 3 (01:12:20):
I mean, if they're going to start hitting Miami and
profiling and listening for I mean, there's a lot of
people or even people, if they are going after quote
unquote convicted criminals, there's a lot of our friends and
neighbors who did their time decades ago and who have
gotten out and have since been relatively productive members of society.
They do their annual check ins with ICE, you know,

(01:12:41):
they pay their taxes, they have jobs, their parents, their
business owners, their homeowners. And if we're going to say, oh, well,
you got convicted of something thirty years ago or twenty
years old, forty years then I'm telling you there's gonna
be there's gonna be a listen, it's really going to
stabilize our housing market now for us locals because we can't.

Speaker 2 (01:13:00):
Afford houses uh here right now.

Speaker 3 (01:13:02):
I mean, it's it doesn't It doesn't seem entirely productive
to vote to deport yourself and it It also was
surprising to me because I thought, what a fabulous moment
in history to have our first Cuban American secretary of
State and then to watch his soul leave his body
in the Oval Office sitting with you know, sitting with
you know, Putin somewhere sitting with with with with Zelenski.

Speaker 2 (01:13:25):
Like just it's it was. It made me feel like.

Speaker 3 (01:13:28):
So much of my childhood in my Miami education wasn't
by like it's really.

Speaker 1 (01:13:34):
I guess I still think there's a little Anakin Skywalker
in Rubio. And I say this, I'll say it this way.
He keeps he keeps preventing Trump from going too far
with Putin. He keeps preventing like it is it is.

Speaker 3 (01:13:50):
You know what happens to Anakin skywalker at the end,
don't you.

Speaker 2 (01:13:54):
I'm aware.

Speaker 1 (01:13:55):
I'm not saying the Emperor won't eventually get his revenge.
Oh is it not obvious that Rubio is going to
be the Maga Patsy when all is said and done,
that when something goes extraordinarily wrong with all these blamed
the Mexican Yeah, they're going to blame the guy who
was not with them this at the beginning. He is
the guy that will be at Whether Marco knows this

(01:14:18):
or not, maybe he went in knowing this. He is
going to be the fall guy for whatever foreign policy
failure happens on Trump's watch.

Speaker 2 (01:14:26):
Be it this what's.

Speaker 1 (01:14:28):
Happening in Venezuela right now, be what happens to you
will he will be the fall guy. Look, he's got
he's both National Security Advisor and Secretary of State and
the head of the National Archives.

Speaker 2 (01:14:39):
I never want to leave that job out.

Speaker 1 (01:14:41):
Craft Service, right, he's also with Craft Service, and he
may be the next football coach at the University of Florida.

Speaker 2 (01:14:48):
Maybe, like you know, so right, this actually might be
the time to get out right.

Speaker 1 (01:14:55):
But he's going to be the mega fall guy because
he's never been mega right, So it's so obvious to
me he'll be the fall guy win something goes wrong,
because they're playing with fire with what they're doing in
Venezuela right now.

Speaker 2 (01:15:08):
I just this.

Speaker 3 (01:15:09):
I thought of him as a for all the things
I might have liked and not liked about him ideologically
and otherwise.

Speaker 2 (01:15:15):
I still thought of him as a statesman.

Speaker 3 (01:15:16):
I thought of him as you know, a responsible Listen,
how many you know how many Democratic senators voted to
you know, uh, to approve him and I.

Speaker 1 (01:15:27):
They all bought it too, and I I, look, I
will just leave you with the warning I've left my
wife ten years ago. I'm still with my I didn't
leave my wife, but I remember saying this to her
ten years ago. Sorry, I said, be careful. You don't
know who you don't like today. That might be the
hero of the story down the road. And then within

(01:15:49):
four years she's donating money to Liz Cheney, right, like,
you don't know who's going to stand up when the
chips are down.

Speaker 3 (01:15:56):
Yeah, well you can say you can tell me whatever
you want about your wife, because you know that nothing
is certain in this life except death taxes. And nobody's
wife listens to their podcast, So so true.

Speaker 2 (01:16:09):
She listens to the beginning every day. She tells me,
I was gonna say that you're enough of this us
you know exactly? Do you want to hear more? Right?
I'm going to opt into this.

Speaker 1 (01:16:19):
I hear it all all the time. I guess where
I'm going here is I'm curious looking at your your
doc now through the lens of what we're on the
verge of doing. I mean, look, I'm just I cannot believe.
I'm going to quote James Langford, Republican senator from Oklahoma,
who is who said this weekend, if Biden were giving

(01:16:43):
us the lack of insight into what they're doing in Venezuela,
I'd be apoplectic. He's sort of admitting, well, because he's
on our side, I can't be upset about this. But
Congress has no idea what the administration is up to
in Venezuela.

Speaker 3 (01:16:59):
And I mean, and Rand Paul is the voice of reason,
and Marjorie uh uh Taylor Green is the voice of reason.

Speaker 2 (01:17:07):
All that.

Speaker 1 (01:17:07):
By the way, there are real isolationists and they're like, hey,
he just said be careful.

Speaker 2 (01:17:11):
You don't know who the good guy is going to be.
That's right here. And yes, you I think Rand Paul
said it.

Speaker 3 (01:17:19):
You You, A terrorist cannot be just whoever the executive
Branch says a terrorist is. And and in foreign or
international waters, we cannot just be blowing up boats and fishermen.

Speaker 2 (01:17:35):
But what's interesting about this to your question, is that,
you know, uh.

Speaker 3 (01:17:39):
A month before our world premiere of Men of War
at last year's Toronto last Summer's Toronto Film Festival, we
Jordan Gudreau, this man who we had been embedded with
and spent years kind of documenting this misadventure, gets arrested
by the United States, by the FEDS, UH, for arms

(01:18:00):
trafficking related to this operation Gideon. This this this ill
fated coup that resulted in two of his fellow compatriots
from you know, from Special Forces being arrested sentenced to
twenty seven years in a tropical gulag in Venezuela for

(01:18:20):
terrorism eight of their Venezuelan kind of defector military guys
who came back and they were killed. An epic debacle
that got kind of memory hold in the pandemic because
it happened right in the spring of twenty twenty and
so this would have been a huge I mean, it
wasn't big international story.

Speaker 2 (01:18:40):
But then it kind of got suppressed in nothing nothing
has legs anymore.

Speaker 1 (01:18:44):
Have you noticed that, by the way, I mean, no
stories have leg We demolished the East Wing. We've already
moved on now. Trump has had an MRI that we're
not sure about. Like it just it's astonishing our short
attention span theater.

Speaker 2 (01:18:57):
But so, Jordan.

Speaker 3 (01:18:58):
Gudreau is scheduled to go to trial shortly after the
first of this year on these arms trafficking charges related
to this coup alleged coup attempted to I don't know
what you call it, but his is effectively a public
authority defense. Okay, what might otherwise be criminal is legally
justified because I was doing this at the behest of

(01:19:20):
my commander in chief of my government, which was then
the first Trump administration.

Speaker 1 (01:19:24):
I thought that Kevin Pollack character told us in a
few good men that that didn't work at Nuremberg.

Speaker 2 (01:19:30):
Yeah, listen.

Speaker 3 (01:19:31):
Also it seems here he was more reading smoke signals
and wings and odds and than he was actually getting
direct orders. Also, so like there is this issue of
who exact on whose authority are you claiming?

Speaker 2 (01:19:47):
Whose public authority your claim?

Speaker 3 (01:19:49):
But that being said, what he is the argument he's
making is that there was every indication that Trump one point.

Speaker 2 (01:19:58):
Zero was looking at change.

Speaker 3 (01:20:00):
You know, there was the beginning of the of the
there was the indictment against Maduro and some of his
generals for drug trafficking. There was the uh, the the
bounty put on his look.

Speaker 1 (01:20:12):
It looked like we were redoing Noriega and Panama.

Speaker 2 (01:20:17):
Absolutely, I mean it looks like what we're doing now.

Speaker 1 (01:20:20):
I mean this feels like, you know, Trump is obsessed
with the eighties, and it's like, how do I take
Granada and Panama and do it all in one felt swoop?

Speaker 3 (01:20:29):
Here we are, and I think that's going to be.
I think the current policy might wind up being I
have no insight to this, but it might wind up
my just the theory based on your you know, thinking
about it on your question, might very well, that.

Speaker 2 (01:20:44):
Might very well be.

Speaker 3 (01:20:45):
Jordan Gudro's defense is, look at the policy of this administration.

Speaker 2 (01:20:50):
It was always this, It was always regime change.

Speaker 3 (01:20:53):
It was always take Maduro out, and that was exactly what.

Speaker 2 (01:20:56):
I was trying to do. How has he not gotten
a part? I think it's a really good grad I.

Speaker 3 (01:21:14):
Guess he didn't have the cash or he hasn't hired
the right lobbyist, I mean lawyer yet No, listen, I
think that he is certainly attempted to get the administration's
attention as far as I know, on social media, through
other other podcasts.

Speaker 2 (01:21:32):
I also don't know that.

Speaker 3 (01:21:34):
I mean, I don't know that what he's saying though,
is entirely accurate. So the idea that he's you know,
because I mean think it was the Secretary of State
at the time said what was the line? The line
is we had nothing to do with this. If we had,

(01:21:54):
if we did have something to do with it, it
would have gone much.

Speaker 2 (01:21:57):
Better or you know, it would have been much more
interesting successful. So I feel like it was on.

Speaker 3 (01:22:09):
So I feel like Jordan is maybe not playing his
cards just right because because he has it. It was Pompeio.
It was Mike Pompeo. Oh sorry, when what I call
I call a COVID brain, so like it's for free,
Like I feel like there are words that are names

(01:22:30):
that are on a top shelf that I can see
but can't reach, you know, like and then and.

Speaker 1 (01:22:34):
Then they come to this all the time. I have
this all the time. Maybe it's just my late forties.

Speaker 2 (01:22:39):
I'm not sure. Yeah, well I kept messing up.

Speaker 1 (01:22:42):
I keep wanting to call the guy who did this,
or well it's Raoul Peck. But it's like I can
see the name and I want to say something else
and it's terrible.

Speaker 3 (01:22:49):
And I was like, I'm talking, I know the word,
I know the name, and then all of a sudden
it stops. You know.

Speaker 1 (01:22:56):
So the great question that all of us have had
being Miamians and I'm curious, which is, if Cuba was free,
would have the population leave Miami and go back to Cuba?
If Venezuela is free, would draw empty out?

Speaker 2 (01:23:15):
What say you define free? I mean, so if we.

Speaker 3 (01:23:21):
Replace Maduro with a Malay kind of character, like is
that for like like when you say he wants to
do like like it's the eighties all over again. The
theme of our I think the running theme of our
intervention in Latin America is puppet dictators.

Speaker 2 (01:23:38):
Right is it?

Speaker 1 (01:23:38):
Which is like the fifties and eighties all over again?
And this, I mean, this doesn't end well for us.
The last time I checked, everybody's number one ally in
Latin America is China, not the United States. I find
it to be the biggest, Like you know, there's and
this has been multiple presidents have just botched the Western hemisphere.

Speaker 3 (01:23:57):
Well, look at Argentina soybean sales crying out loud, I mean,
and look at America first, Yeah, and look at what
I uh, the guy that cuts my hair as a
South African white guy and he's talking to me. One
of his clients is very conservative Cuban lady Uh several
months ago, whispers to him. He says, you know, ear
to ear, like a lot of conversations at Ventana's in Miami.

Speaker 2 (01:24:20):
You know you're ear to ear. He goes. He goes,
is your family okay? And he my family in South Africa.

Speaker 3 (01:24:28):
Are because she watched a lot of Fox and she says, well,
of course they're they're fine. Why do you well, because
there's the the massacre of the white the white genocide,
you know, the white people in South and she and
he goes, no, She goes, sweetie, that's a that's a lot.
But I heard Elon Musk and I heard the He goes, no, No,
that's a that's totally made up.

Speaker 2 (01:24:49):
That's a total lie. And and he tells his to me.

Speaker 3 (01:24:53):
He says, you know, in the poor, you know, black
nations of Africa, he said, what, of course has happening
with the end of us aid he said, is that
it's not just simply people dying and suffering.

Speaker 2 (01:25:08):
There is a vacuum that is being filled and gangs
and strong men and things.

Speaker 3 (01:25:12):
Like that by care packages that say, from your friends
in China. So when you when you when you have
a lack of sophistication on geopolitics and diplomacy, and you
don't understand that that you know, what what what good
we do in the world, not just for the purpose
of saving lives and protecting children and and uh offering

(01:25:37):
vaccines and and and aids prevention and cancer treatment is
not just because that's what Jesus would do. It's because
we also do earn goodwill and allies in the world.

Speaker 1 (01:25:51):
You're describing soft power, Billy, and we just and this
guy has gotten you know.

Speaker 2 (01:25:57):
We've abdicated, we've advocated.

Speaker 1 (01:25:58):
Well, I mean, I mean it's ironic to call it
soft power, and it's be you know, this guy because
he's soft it doesn't want to use soft power. And
it's like dude, But anyway, sorry, I was going down
a weird rule.

Speaker 2 (01:26:12):
You decide where I was at it.

Speaker 3 (01:26:13):
This is the question like what what does a free
what does a free venezuela look like? In this era
of the United States of America when you don't necessarily.

Speaker 1 (01:26:25):
The Peace Prize winner as president, maybe that's a real
free Venezuela.

Speaker 2 (01:26:29):
She seems sweet.

Speaker 3 (01:26:30):
It you mean if Obama runs in twenty eight, is
that what you mean for a third term?

Speaker 2 (01:26:35):
Is that what you mean? I was talking about the
new woman who won. But I take your point.

Speaker 1 (01:26:38):
I take you well, that's always the reminder I have
of of like, if you think Trump can run again,
soa can Obama? You sure you want to go down
that road? Maybe it's the ultimate showdown America needs.

Speaker 2 (01:26:52):
I mean that.

Speaker 3 (01:26:53):
I mean, listen, in a democracy, we get the government
we deserve, and that is the election we deserve.

Speaker 2 (01:26:58):
Chuck, I think, yeah, probably, it probably is. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:27:05):
Every time, every time I think you can't top what
you do. This one is one of those that you're
just like and it's sort of like life imitating art,
back to imitating life. Have you talked to him since
the military campaign against Venezuela.

Speaker 3 (01:27:19):
No, I mean, he's in quite a bit of legal
jeopardy obviously, I mean he is he nervous about talking
to you now because his liberty is on the line.
You know, his freedom is on the line, and obviously
he feels a sense of betrayal by everybody.

Speaker 2 (01:27:34):
I imagine, right, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:27:35):
And this is the country that he's fought for and
now and to do what this guy did in the
name of freedom and democracy in the United States, to
change the flag on his arm, you know, from being
a native Canadian to an American war hero and then
to see the words United States of America versus Jordan Gudru.

Speaker 2 (01:28:00):
I mean he's having a hard time with it. Yeah.
It damages an already damaged psyche. You know, it does.

Speaker 1 (01:28:06):
No, it's a it's a it's another way we're letting
we abuse these soldiers.

Speaker 2 (01:28:11):
You know, I'm not sure, you know, I go.

Speaker 1 (01:28:14):
I've said this about social media in general, right, I
think social media is a human experiment that has failed,
and here we are, we're living with the consequences of
It's a total I mean, what good is social media brought.

Speaker 2 (01:28:26):
To the world.

Speaker 1 (01:28:29):
Well, we're friends, so I mean I do miss those
first couple of years when we we were like, wow,
this is great. I get to interact with people that
I've been meaning to interact with but never had a
chance to.

Speaker 2 (01:28:41):
It was it was it was a real community. It
was novel. Look, it was the first couple of years.
It was the it was town square. It was what
it was, as Adams, It's the algorithm. What really destroyed
it is the algorithms.

Speaker 1 (01:28:53):
Right, Like, when we were organically building it, it was
great when they decided, hey, this is so much fun,
let's keep people on it, let's peet, let's actively get
them addicted to it. It's like, you know, it an
occasional cigarette might have been okay, it was smoking twenty
a day that was terrible.

Speaker 2 (01:29:10):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:29:10):
It was the nicotine that right, it was the ninety
nine percent pure coke was good. The second they started
cutting it with fent and all that other shit, it
started to get sort of but it was it was
as advertised. Early on, it felt like that town Square.
It felt like, well, you know, like it went from
Arab Spring to like storm storm front, you know, like,
you know, no, in.

Speaker 1 (01:29:30):
Some ways, this this guy, it is sort of the
transition right during you know, in Arab Spring, we were
celebrating stuff like this.

Speaker 2 (01:29:39):
You know, eventually it turns into this, you.

Speaker 3 (01:29:41):
Know, right, and it's it's not entirely pleasant. Listen to
paraphrase one of my favorite Miami artists, the algorithm is
going to get.

Speaker 1 (01:29:51):
You Miami politics really quickly. What is Miami Dade County
right now red blue, somewhere in between in transition, it's
I find Miami Dade's the most fascinating I think political
community in the country, and in some ways it is

(01:30:13):
served to sort of be both a precursor and a
PostScript to what's going what's happening in the Trump era.
You live it and breathe it, and you're very active
in local politics. What would describe the state of the
political world in Miami Dade County as far as you're
concerned in these days?

Speaker 2 (01:30:29):
Oh, it's redder than red, I mean. And is it
an ideological red or a cult read? Do you know
what I mean by that? Yes? Yeah, the answer to
either or question is affirmative.

Speaker 3 (01:30:42):
I think because I well with obviously now there's a
lot of people, or quite a few people who are
having other ideas or adding second thoughts about some of this.
Even though I think the Trump this second Trump administration
has been as advertised, I don't know, you know, none of.

Speaker 2 (01:31:01):
This is anything we didn't see coming, right.

Speaker 1 (01:31:04):
It was like, you know, you're just like, you know,
we knew he would do stuff like this, But the
details have been fascinating. But the general pattern was very
pret Trump is a terrible poker player. I've always said
I'd love to play poker with him because he literally
holds his cards this way.

Speaker 2 (01:31:21):
I mean, he just flips them around so you can
see him.

Speaker 3 (01:31:23):
Yeah, and then and then lies to you about what
he has. Yeah, and a third of the country believes it.
On question, I mean two plus two eals five.

Speaker 2 (01:31:33):
Billy, I only.

Speaker 3 (01:31:34):
Knew he was going to knock down the entirety of
the East Wing when he said he wasn't going to
touch the East wing to build this way, I'm like, oh,
that's probably the end of the.

Speaker 2 (01:31:41):
Entire East wing. Just I mean sure, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:31:47):
And that's the thing too, is that, like, there's this
really interesting moment where you know, we're getting away this
three hundred and sixty million dollar piece of property for
the Trump Hotel and casino and also Presidential Library in downtown.

Speaker 1 (01:31:59):
Just I can't believe this. By the way, this is
where the Marlin Stadium should have been. But that's a
whole other story.

Speaker 3 (01:32:05):
Well, when they talk about waste, fraud, and abuse, it's like, well,
I just I found some I mean, you just violated
sunshine laws in the state of Florida to secretly give away.
Like this last piece of property that is owned by
what was our community college.

Speaker 2 (01:32:21):
It's now a college.

Speaker 3 (01:32:22):
But like this is I think by student body size,
is the largest college in the country.

Speaker 2 (01:32:27):
He is, Yeah, Mimy Day College is for a four
year college.

Speaker 3 (01:32:30):
Now consequential to Miami both economically and educationally. Eduardo Padron,
the president many years ago, what he had to go
through to generate to raise twenty four million dollars to
buy this piece of property because when you're in a
landlocked downtown area, there's not a lot of room for growth,
and so he wanted to preserve the future of this institution.

(01:32:53):
So they buy this property. It's now appraised, not even
a praise, but the property appraiser of the county says
it's worth estimate it's worth sixty five people have said
easily on the open market three hundred and fifty million.

Speaker 2 (01:33:05):
Dollars, and they they want to give it away like
for free. It's it is the biggest land.

Speaker 3 (01:33:11):
I mean, it makes the Melury Soccer Stadium hustle and
the Marlins Park scam look like good deals in comparison.
By the way, I have no problem with there being
a Trump Library or whatever. It's going to be just
you know, in downtown Miami. But you got to pay
some market value for you. I mean, especially if you're
going to deprive Mini Dade College of its future effectively

(01:33:34):
like and I also have no problem with the fact
that it shares a lot with the Freedom Tower, which
of course is the Ellis Island of the South where
review the earliest some of our earliest Cuban refugees fleeing
the tyranny of v If.

Speaker 1 (01:33:47):
I were Trump, it's where I would want my library.
It would be a symbolic place to go. Row.

Speaker 2 (01:33:54):
I love it that the deporter in chief, the proud
Deporter in chief, is going to be I think it's like, listen,
I've been I've been sitting Shiva for irony for years now,
so I think it's I have no problem with that.
It's just the For me, it's always the real It's Florida.
It's always a real estate hustle.

Speaker 3 (01:34:10):
And by the way, a majority of Miami Dade County
residents certainly more NPAs and Democrats than Republicans, but a
vast you're talking almost sixty percent are against this this
land giveaway. So there is a tied a sentiment on
certain things that that that is turning, but we are.

Speaker 2 (01:34:32):
I mean, this is a firm red county.

Speaker 1 (01:34:37):
What will be your canary in the coal mine to
see if there's movement in there? Is that the the
one congressional race, I'm Toronto blank in her name real
here at Salazar, y Salazar who replaced Illiana.

Speaker 2 (01:34:52):
No, I don't think.

Speaker 3 (01:34:53):
I mean, listen, speaking of the Washington generals, the Florida
Democrats are the Washington generals of politics. I mean, they
are unbelievable control of that position at this point. I mean,
they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity, so
I wouldn't so, I mean, I think we've seen the
canary in the coal mine. I think I think the
Democrats are not a broken brand or a damage brand.

(01:35:15):
I think they're just a dead brand in the state
of Florida and certainly in Miami.

Speaker 1 (01:35:20):
Day I would love to see a John Morgan that
was fifteen years younger running right, like you know, you
could see I just don't know if he's got the
energy or the or the ambition to do it. He
talks about it, but I just think you know, there's
you could just sort of tell. It's like I'll do
it if somebody else will do the work.

Speaker 3 (01:35:39):
No, No, he doesn't want to Listen, he loves the
real liar, won't die of it, you know, as Trump
did for a while.

Speaker 1 (01:35:45):
You know, well that's why you're like, none of us
are fully dismissing it. You're like, well, the dude can
write a check, and my god, those ads are he
is in. He figured out how to create a fifty
state law firm. Right, I mean, the job sucks, the
job of being Florida governor. Actually, he's got a great life.
This guy's got life perfected. John Morgan, what the hell
or would you want?

Speaker 2 (01:36:06):
That's right?

Speaker 3 (01:36:06):
The hellou do you want with that job? I mean,
but you're right, I mean is it going to be?
I mean, listen, he strikes me a little bit more
as like kind of a blue dog Democrat, that style
of like you know, Mia Miami.

Speaker 1 (01:36:18):
When I've interviewed him, you can't once you spring up
Bill Clinton. I mean, it's just like I'm brought up
his first wife, the one he fell in love with,
like he just loves you know. That's what he wants
the Democratic Party to be. Was what Bill Clinton was
in nineteen ninety seven, you know, I don't think that's
the future of the party either.

Speaker 3 (01:36:35):
So I don't think that that's going to be what
is going to win the day here for for Democrats
in the state of Florida. I mean, listen, it's a
red state. I mean, that's the bottom line. Certainly jerry
manders into into into being that. So I don't really see.
And again, there's no leadership here, there's no vision on

(01:36:56):
there's just like just bad ideas. I left the party.

Speaker 2 (01:37:00):
Listen.

Speaker 3 (01:37:00):
Donald Trump was a Democrat longer than I was, But
I left the party last year with an open letter
that was not I said, this is not uh exhaustive,
but it is thorough and and uh or not comprehensive
but exhausted perhaps and all hyperlink. I brought the receipts.

(01:37:22):
And I wish that was just over a year ago.
And I wish I could say, I wish I could
say that it's it's just as bad, but it's not.
It's it's worse. And how the Democrats could be worse
off now than they were a year ago? When when
when I think Trump is arguably less popular now right.

Speaker 1 (01:37:45):
Now he is, and especially in some communities like you know,
if a functional Democratic party is all over.

Speaker 2 (01:37:50):
Durrath absolutely functional being the key.

Speaker 1 (01:37:56):
No, I mean, it's just your you should be there,
you know. That's what the Republicans did really well when
Democrats weren't in some of these communities.

Speaker 2 (01:38:03):
They showed up and and and stayed and and and yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:38:07):
I mean, believe me, people in this community always say,
you know, why aren't you here at church when you're
not running for office? Why do we only see you
once every two years or four years or what?

Speaker 2 (01:38:19):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:38:20):
It's it's it's hard not to be cynical. Uh when
when when? That's how the party operates. But to be fair,
they have no money, they have no leadership, they have
no vision, so it's really hard to have any kind
of consistency or any kind of I mean, look at
the voter registrations.

Speaker 2 (01:38:37):
It's it's unbelievable. It's insane.

Speaker 3 (01:38:39):
I mean, part of it certainly is transplants and and
you know, people uh moving here, but but the rest
is just bad.

Speaker 1 (01:38:46):
This is this is going to air before election day
next week. Who's going to be mayor of Miami? City
of Miami?

Speaker 2 (01:38:51):
Do we care?

Speaker 1 (01:38:52):
I mean it's a weak mayor, so it's you know,
it's really more of a market It's like you're the
it's like you're a marketing executive when you're the mayor
of the City of Miami, versus you're the actual work.

Speaker 2 (01:39:01):
But still it is it is.

Speaker 1 (01:39:05):
Uh, Francis Suarez showed you could make a ton of
money being mare of Miami.

Speaker 2 (01:39:08):
So it's good. It's good. Uh, it's good business. Who's
the Mayorican with socialism to hustle?

Speaker 3 (01:39:13):
No? Yeah, like you said, the mayor of Miami is
like a mascot who thinks he's the head coach.

Speaker 2 (01:39:19):
You know. That's that's kind of what that position is.

Speaker 3 (01:39:22):
They're really they're really a glorified hood ornament is kind
of of of what know.

Speaker 1 (01:39:26):
I mean, because the county does all has all the power,
all the money, all the everything.

Speaker 2 (01:39:30):
The city is is you know has you know, there's.

Speaker 3 (01:39:33):
This city's opery budget is now over a billion dollars
for as well city like four hundred and fifty thousand people.
They're just absolutely stealing from us.

Speaker 1 (01:39:42):
Yeah, and well, the fact that Joe I always look
at it this way, the fact that Joe Caroyo never
tried to go anywhere else tells you it was just
too much.

Speaker 2 (01:39:51):
Why would I leave a good thing? Sorry that dude.

Speaker 1 (01:39:54):
You know you're like, You're like Joe Croyle's been ripping
people off since I was a kid, and he's just
never left.

Speaker 3 (01:40:00):
Joe Carollo was the youngest to this day, I believe,
the youngest city commissioner ever elected in Miami in nineteen
seventy nine.

Speaker 2 (01:40:09):
Think about the fact that they's never progressed because you
know what, it must have been too good. It reminds
me it's like when when Trump said, like, like, if
I ever run, I have to run as a Republican
because they'll vote for anybody, and I love them. I mean,
like he carved his niche. That's what Joe did. Joe
Carlo is unbelievable. Now I don't think he wins this

(01:40:31):
marriage rate. What I love is the drama between Francis
and Javier. So nobody's going to win this mayor's race.
By the way, here's a runoff, right, it'll be top two,
fast paced, right, there will be.

Speaker 3 (01:40:41):
I think there's no question this goes to a December runoff.
So now I'm just choosing the top two. And you
are right, Francis Suarez is not supporting his father.

Speaker 1 (01:40:52):
In this neighbors, well, his father is literally when people
talk about voter fraud, I always say, we actually had one.
We had the most outrageous voter fraud scam ever, and
it was for Javier Schwires to.

Speaker 3 (01:41:05):
By the way, I keep I've been, I will I
will pick up when when when Xavier or Javier Suarez
announced he was running, Yeah, which is it?

Speaker 2 (01:41:12):
It's Javier now used to be Xavier.

Speaker 3 (01:41:15):
It's I think it's I think it's either it's like
it's a it's a it's sort of the English version
or the Spanish.

Speaker 1 (01:41:19):
I've always assumed Javier because you and I grew up
down there, and that's what. And yet he will use
Xavier everyone and he well he likes.

Speaker 3 (01:41:26):
X because like it also because he's like you know,
and then Francis Is Francis x Francis Xaviers or Francis
Xavier soars also. I think with the popularity of x men, uh,
it was it was a good uh adaptation. But he
so I start reading about his run, you know, a
couple of months ago, and all the headlines and all
the leads are uh, Miami's first Cuban born mayor in

(01:41:50):
nineteen eighty five.

Speaker 2 (01:41:51):
And I said, a big deal. I remember when that happened.
It was the guy.

Speaker 3 (01:42:05):
It's nineteen eighty five, the guy showing up to debates
today in a DeLorean with a flux capacitor. Chuck in
nineteen the guy talks about every year except twenty twenty five.
It's unbelievable. So bless his heart. It's like, what did
Jim Norton say it? That's watching them watching at one
of the roasts, watching Norm McDonald do his set was
like watching Henry fond Of pick blueberries. That's what it's

(01:42:28):
like watching Xavier Suarez in these debates. It's like watching
Henry fond Of pick blueberries. And so this. But I
called all my friends in the media really pissed, because
you know, this is a town Chuck, with a transient
population and a lack of institutional memory. And what we
need the local media to do is to when the
city transforms as often as it does, to remind us

(01:42:49):
who these dynastic political crime families are, what they've done,
and what they're capable of.

Speaker 2 (01:42:53):
And I called them all. Nobody mentioned Chuck. Yes, they
mentioned in nineteen eighty five. The first thing he did was.

Speaker 1 (01:42:58):
They didn't mention the absent ballot. I mean, it's the
greatest fraud.

Speaker 2 (01:43:03):
They didn't mention.

Speaker 3 (01:43:04):
Your last thing he did is mayor in nineteen ninety
eight is get removed from office by a judge for
absentee ballot fraud so bad in fact, that they didn't
even order a new election.

Speaker 1 (01:43:14):
They just gave it to the other guy. They gave
it to Joe Corroll. You of all people, Well that
was the reason. You're like, who could out corrupt who?
It was just like, you know, that's why at first
you're like, I don't know. They both probably tried to cheat.
One guy just was more brazen about it.

Speaker 3 (01:43:29):
It's extremely relevant that you bring this up because all
of Trump's a kind of like, what sounds like this
sort of apocryphal demagoguery about not only election fraud but
immigration emptying out the asylums.

Speaker 2 (01:43:45):
Dude, that's the Mariel boat lift.

Speaker 3 (01:43:47):
And when he talks about dead people voting, that is
the nineteen ninety seven Miami mayoral election, where as Carl
Hyasin called a manny Yip and his buddies down at
the cemetery who were super voters. They voted in every
election since they died seven years ago, and.

Speaker 2 (01:44:03):
That's how they got caught.

Speaker 1 (01:44:04):
Because you're like, wow, Well, first of all, if I
remember correctly, Suarez got more absentee votes than real votes
back in a time when we weren't doing a lot
of early voting in the late nineties.

Speaker 2 (01:44:15):
But wast that's like, but but so the kernel of
truthiness in Trump's in Trump's election fraud that election, yes,
but a lot of.

Speaker 3 (01:44:24):
It comes from Miami, the kernel of his emptying out
the like I said, the emptying out the asylums, the
dead people voting.

Speaker 2 (01:44:31):
Well, you know what happened in Miami. Whoa, whoa?

Speaker 1 (01:44:35):
Be careful falling for his asylum line. You know, this
is one of those where I'm pretty sure.

Speaker 2 (01:44:40):
He used about what asylum is.

Speaker 1 (01:44:41):
Yes, every time he hears the word asylum, he doesn't
understand what it means. He thinks it's the insane asylum.
It's a what you know that you seek it.

Speaker 3 (01:44:52):
I think he's conflating it though, because he knows he
seems starface.

Speaker 2 (01:44:55):
He knows did that you know byami politics, he's seen scarface.
That's what I'm what I'm seeing is that it's a
movie mobster. I know, it's the kernel of truthiness there.
You know that the uh that begs?

Speaker 3 (01:45:08):
But I think on I you cannot and you know this,
you cannot count Joe Carollo out.

Speaker 2 (01:45:16):
No, somehow he could end up being mayor.

Speaker 3 (01:45:18):
He knows how to drink this better than anybody else, does,
Dude like, because this isn't a citywide election.

Speaker 2 (01:45:25):
This is a bulletarra election.

Speaker 3 (01:45:26):
Because we're going to have such low voter turnout that
it's gonna it's gonna be about it.

Speaker 2 (01:45:31):
There's nothing else on the ballot, right, I.

Speaker 3 (01:45:33):
Think there's a there's a couple of referendums in the city,
but no no state wide, no county wide.

Speaker 2 (01:45:38):
No, you know obviously no, And.

Speaker 1 (01:45:40):
This is one of those where and I know it
got turned into Francis Soarez was trying to go another year.

Speaker 2 (01:45:46):
This was not He's not wrong.

Speaker 1 (01:45:48):
We actually, if you want more voters participating in this
election should be in the even numbered year. La mayor
did this and they extended they had one five year
term in order to do the same thing.

Speaker 2 (01:45:59):
It it is.

Speaker 1 (01:46:00):
The problem is in Miami, the assumption is, you know,
this must be a corrupt angle here.

Speaker 3 (01:46:05):
No. No, But but it was because I mean if
you saw it, like all he cares about is next
year is World Cup in G twenty.

Speaker 2 (01:46:12):
No, he wanted the tickets. He's not the mayor.

Speaker 3 (01:46:14):
Then he's a relevant and this guy has zero path
forward politically or diplomatically for that man he really wanted
to be. He worked basically as a unregistered lobbyist for Saudi,
the Saudis, and then wanted to be the ambassaard you know.

Speaker 1 (01:46:30):
You know, he was a never trumper and he's like
h DeSantis for some in that, you know. And there
was a minute that he flirted with running for governor
as an independent for like two seconds. And then now
he's trying to get into Trump world, you know. And
he hired Kelly Ann I think as a consultant for
a while there, which got him. That's when the VP
running mate stuff got got created. Right, it was because

(01:46:52):
he basically tried to get back into Trump world.

Speaker 2 (01:46:55):
That was a rumor. That was a rumor that he started.
It is correct quite successfully. Mind you.

Speaker 1 (01:47:02):
All right, how are you feeling about Mario Cristabal these days?

Speaker 2 (01:47:07):
Listen, If Mario can't do it, nobody can. It's over.
Like that's interesting. I sort of agree.

Speaker 1 (01:47:14):
I hate admitting that, but Mario is what got all
the investment, and you can't. And right now, that's the
way college football works. There are forty programs that can
play at the top level, and somehow Miami decided to
become one of those financially and that's because of Mario
and his friends.

Speaker 3 (01:47:29):
NCAA fucked up their own their own game, and now
we're all living with the consequences of it.

Speaker 2 (01:47:36):
Now, for better or for worse. I mean, you know,
it's funny.

Speaker 1 (01:47:39):
I admitted this to a friend of mine the other day,
which is, if if Miami weren't weren't able to show
that it could play in this new world, I'd hate
this and I'd be criticizing it. Right I'm less critical
because at least we're the have because it's a we're
going to the premier league. There are going to be
forty programs that can play at this level, will consistently

(01:48:03):
have the resources to do it, and they'll have another
twenty programs that every once in a while we'll get
lucky and it'll be a fun little thing like Wichita
State in the basketball world, right every once in a while,
or a Gonzaga and and you know, unless they less
the FEDS truly get involved, and and you know, Miami
is going to be a market that survives and a

(01:48:24):
school that's a that's on the alet on the A team,
and you have all the What's interesting is watching whether
a Florida can do it, right, whether Florida State can
do it, whether a Clemson can do it, and some
of them aren't.

Speaker 2 (01:48:38):
Going to be able to do it.

Speaker 3 (01:48:39):
I'm I will say that I thought that we grew
out of being the team that has that senseless mid
season loss that we had.

Speaker 2 (01:48:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:48:48):
Well, by the way, though, I sort of ask me
again next week because I'm going to that game. My
son's at SMU, so I got my daughter at Miami,
my son at SMU, so we don't have family outing
to the Miami SMU game. I'll learn a lot about
We'll learn a lot about this team to me in
that game, because that's the game they lose the last

(01:49:11):
five years.

Speaker 2 (01:49:12):
Right. Well, but I think we did it to Louisville already.
I think, well, that's my point.

Speaker 1 (01:49:17):
You're okay to do one that happens every season we
had this, even during the heyday. I remember a game
against Boston College in two thousand and one where Ed
Reid saved the game, right, you know, we almost blew
that game. There's always a game like that where you
either do lose or you almost lose it. We lost
a stupid game at BYU one year that cost us
a title, you know, So I'm not I'm okay with

(01:49:41):
one and this new system. At least for the ACC schools,
you can survive one, you can't survive two. Only SEC
schools get to survive too.

Speaker 2 (01:49:49):
I think I don't think there's going to be another
loss this sub.

Speaker 1 (01:49:53):
I worry about the PIT game, and I worry about
this the two road games SMU and PITT.

Speaker 3 (01:49:57):
I just think I hope, I hope they've learned some less.
I hope they made some adjustments. I hope they're going
to it certainly seems from this from this week's game
that they are last week's game, that they're going to
be coaching a bit more aggressively.

Speaker 2 (01:50:10):
They're not.

Speaker 1 (01:50:10):
I appreciated that they ran up that Mario Christobald never
cares about covering spreads, and they went to score that touchdown.

Speaker 2 (01:50:18):
They knew that.

Speaker 1 (01:50:20):
Look the difference between Miami getting a BUYE or not
getting a BUYE or getting into the tournament or not
getting into the tournament might be. How big your victory is.
I mean, look what Florida State got left out after
being undefeated, right, we know that the ESPN Invitational will
leave teams out. Is if Alabama's a notre name are available.

Speaker 3 (01:50:42):
It should have been forty to seven at the half
of the Notre Dame game, like it, just like the
conservative I'm hoping that.

Speaker 1 (01:50:49):
You know, we're this conservative coaching. It's the first half stubbornness.
They stick to the game plan, and then God bless
them now that they have all these advisors who basically
come up with the game plan at halftime while the
coaches are on the field. I mean, this is what
these big time programs can afford to do now, and
Miami's now doing that. We have an entire coaching staff

(01:51:11):
that does nothing but scout the next opponent and then
here's your game plan.

Speaker 2 (01:51:17):
Yeah, I listen, I saw that. And if it was.

Speaker 3 (01:51:21):
Three of our signature wins this year were as close
to meltdowns and major meltdowns as they were sign like
major wins two years ago.

Speaker 1 (01:51:29):
We lose those games. Two years ago, we lose to
Florida State, two years ago. We might have blown that
Florida game. At Florida game was there Dame game right,
and we didn't. I didn't mar the Louisville game.

Speaker 2 (01:51:43):
Can't do it.

Speaker 1 (01:51:44):
In the Louisville game, Louisville threw everything at us in
that first drive, got their touchdown, and basically they hung
on for dear life.

Speaker 2 (01:51:53):
Carson Beck just tried to be a hero.

Speaker 1 (01:51:54):
If he doesn't try to be a hero, we win
that game, probably with the last minute field goal.

Speaker 3 (01:52:00):
I again, if Mario can't do it. No, I think
this this investment by this this school, which you and
I are both extremely impressed, and because.

Speaker 2 (01:52:10):
They've never done it in the past.

Speaker 1 (01:52:11):
Despite all the rumors about Miami and money, it was
never anything like Alabama and A and M and l
s U. Nobody Miami never spent like those three programs.

Speaker 2 (01:52:21):
And this year they are.

Speaker 3 (01:52:22):
And I think that this is this is like, this
feels like the last coach of the Canes in meaning
like it.

Speaker 1 (01:52:29):
Rights it's either he's r. Saban and the next Jimmy
Johnson or or Miami is you know, Georgia Tech football
at best an occasional at occasional lightning strike.

Speaker 2 (01:52:42):
Once a decade, but that's probably it.

Speaker 3 (01:52:43):
And all of our games are on the History Channel
kind of vibe and like that. And they and they, well,
they do what they did during the Shalila era, which
is to kind of trade on their reputation and rest
on their laurels, which they're not doing right now. They're
trying to build their own reputation in a new dynasty.

Speaker 2 (01:52:58):
And I mean, Emmy, I'm sure.

Speaker 1 (01:53:00):
You feel this, and we're going on too long here,
and I apologize, but Rubin Bain is the first guy
that's reminded me of old Miami.

Speaker 2 (01:53:08):
I'm like that.

Speaker 1 (01:53:08):
That's what I'm telling my son, I Mike, that we
always had a guy like Ruben Bain always, whether it
was Daniel Stubbs, Kevin Fagan, you know, a Cortes, Kennedy,
Wolf Fork sap right, we always had a Ruben Bain
and we haven't had one in a while. It's nice
to have one.

Speaker 3 (01:53:25):
I'd like to see that the players, you know, get
coached up, play more aggressive, maybe even you know, what
you also had in that era was you had players
who were calling audibles, who were changing the play on
the field. It didn't matter what they said on the sideline,
if they were reading efense differently, if they were you know,
if they had something else, some other scheme in my

(01:53:46):
like and I know that gets your benched these days
in this big time college football game. But that that
was the It was the what was that great line
from one of the U documentaries. It was the first
the U documentary when Dennis Erickson came in, I think
Jerome Brown somebody went to him and said, you've just
been handed the keys to a Ferrari, like just you know, know,

(01:54:06):
just you know, like this is not something you have
to worry about, Like just it's a perfectly oiled machine.

Speaker 2 (01:54:14):
Just don't fuck it up, dude.

Speaker 1 (01:54:16):
And by the way, he kind of he won two titles.
Can't say he messed it up. He didn't leave us
in the best of shape.

Speaker 3 (01:54:21):
But no, listen, I mean that's sort of that's the
sort of semi absentee coaching style. Letting the assistance and
the and the lunatics run the asylum got the man
some jewelry, man, I mean.

Speaker 1 (01:54:32):
Yes, it did, and it got him in a couple
of NFL coaching gigs to boot. I like the siren,
by the way, I like that we I rarely like
trying to start a tradition that never existed. Don't hate it.
I think the sirens are pretty good new tradition.

Speaker 3 (01:54:46):
I also love that, like Michael Irvin is it every
game is hit every game.

Speaker 1 (01:54:51):
So my daughter's a little She's like, what does he
do for the university? And I'm like, she goes, because
he's every He's at every game and you know, she's
part of homecoming. And she's like, and then, so have
you ever been to a Cowboys game?

Speaker 3 (01:55:05):
No?

Speaker 2 (01:55:06):
This is a little disturbing.

Speaker 1 (01:55:07):
So I went to a Packers Cowboys game a couple
of weeks ago and Michael Irvin the you know that
you go to a Miami game and before the fourth quarter, right,
they blair the Michael Irvin raw Ross speech to get
you fired up.

Speaker 2 (01:55:23):
It's a fourth quarter, it's green tree, right, all this stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:55:26):
He does the same thing for the Cowboys for their
fourth quarter. And I'm like, and I tape it and
I send it. You know, I record it. Listen to me.
I'm an old guy, right, I tape it, I record
it and send it to my daughter. And she went,
so does he just do this for every team? And
I'm like, well, every team he played for. But it's
literally the same stick that he does for Miami that

(01:55:48):
he does for Jerry and the Cowboys.

Speaker 3 (01:55:50):
I love it. I love it, and I love that.
I mean he's like Sebastian and Michael Irvin. I mean
like they are are, like he.

Speaker 2 (01:55:57):
Is our mascot.

Speaker 1 (01:55:59):
I think I think Malachai Tony's probably had to google
Who's Michael Irvin.

Speaker 2 (01:56:04):
I mean, like, I you know, it's been that long.
These kid Yeah, these kids were eighteen nineteen years old.

Speaker 1 (01:56:10):
Right, he was, he had already he he literally he
was in the Hall of Fame when they were born.

Speaker 2 (01:56:16):
Dude.

Speaker 3 (01:56:16):
Two thousand and two was the last time this team
won a national championship. I mean there are people on
this team who were not born yet. I mean just
not born, not alive.

Speaker 1 (01:56:27):
We may live in the past, but they weren't even
there for the past anyway.

Speaker 2 (01:56:31):
Us.

Speaker 1 (01:56:35):
If you want to see the preview to Donald Trump's
New War with Venezuela, Billy Corbyn already did it.

Speaker 2 (01:56:42):
Cocaines, all right, my man, good to talk with you.
Thank you. Sorry I stepped on your plug at the
end there, No, it's your plug. Men of war.

Speaker 1 (01:56:51):
Oh, I know everywhere everywhere you want to get you know,
do you have a it's you can stream it everywhere?

Speaker 2 (01:56:58):
What Amazon? Apple?

Speaker 3 (01:57:00):
Oh yeah, everywhere, I mean direct TV, anywhere you rent
or buy or stream movies.

Speaker 2 (01:57:06):
Very nice, very nice. Well go say it.

Speaker 1 (01:57:08):
It's it's worth it's worth the money, it's worth your time,
worth the rental, even an ownership.

Speaker 2 (01:57:14):
I assume you do.

Speaker 1 (01:57:17):
What what is the difference in your finances between rental
and owning?

Speaker 2 (01:57:22):
Nothing? Zero?

Speaker 3 (01:57:23):
H yeah the yeah, it's because Neon is distributing. So
what No, I don't know if there's any trickle down
you're it doesn't help you either way. Renting it just
seeing is what I would I would love for people
to see it. I think it's I think it's some
I think we did. I think I think it turned
out very well. You know some of these things with some.

Speaker 2 (01:57:42):
Of them, and as anything, whuld you do it?

Speaker 1 (01:57:44):
You're like, oh my god, it's even more relevant now
that's my point.

Speaker 2 (01:57:47):
It's even more relevant now, all right, my friend, thank you,
thanks so much, Chuck.

Speaker 1 (01:58:01):
Well, I hope you're rushing out and going and renting.
Move go again, Go spend a few bucks on Metal war.
Just trust me, you'll learn you'll learn a thing or
two which will be helpful as we uh as this
issue in Venezuela will be front page news in the
next couple of weeks when when Trump green lights this
secret whatever we're doing here, Since there's no explanation to Congress,

(01:58:27):
just a reminder, Republican James Langford said, if Biden we're
not informing Congress as much as Trump is not informing
Congress on this.

Speaker 2 (01:58:35):
He'd be apoplectic.

Speaker 1 (01:58:38):
But we digress, all right, little Q and eight time
ask Chuck, this comes from Mike Slex.

Speaker 3 (01:58:46):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:58:48):
I don't know if this is Mike P. From Salex,
Iowa or Mike P. Salex from Iowa. So as an
Iowa guy, I'm going to see if say it is.
It's town, So my apologies for not knowing Salex, Iowa.
It's a small city in Woodbury County near the Missouri River,

(01:59:09):
so the western side of the state. All right, I
see I see you there, I see you Salex, Iowa.
So it might be my apologies.

Speaker 2 (01:59:19):
A little.

Speaker 1 (01:59:20):
Uh. My eastern Iowa geography is much better than my
western Iowa geography. But anyway, here's your here's your question.
Chuck Love the podcast never missed them. I'm curious what
you think would happen if Democrats took back the House
with a five to ten member advantage and took the
Senate fifty one to forty nine. You think Dems would
try and impeach Trump? Obviously they would start huge amounts

(01:59:40):
of oversight and slow down or completely stop as agenda.
Just curious on your thoughts. Did that happened. I do
not think there will be a third impeachment, Okay, I
really don't.

Speaker 2 (01:59:51):
It just it is.

Speaker 1 (01:59:55):
I don't think a Democrat will it will will instigate
a third impeachment. The only shot you would have at
a third impeachment of Trump is if Republicans in the
Congress were the ones to instigate it. For some reason,
there's Democrats are not going to start this because the
minute it becomes partisan, you're not going to get anywhere.

Speaker 2 (02:00:16):
You're going to get a lot more.

Speaker 1 (02:00:18):
It's going to be a lot more fruitful, frankly, to
do the oversight, a lot more fruitful to force this
administration to tell to tell the country what it's doing,
whether it's on military campaigns like what's going on in Venezuela,
what they've been doing with usaid, what's been happening at
the Department of Education, what's been happening at HHS and

(02:00:39):
the CDC, that is, you know, there's a lot of
you know, in some ways, impeachment would be a distraction
from all the work that in oversight, work that needs
to be done in a variety of other places. So
I think it would be politically it is. Look I
think Republicans in some places are going to use as

(02:01:01):
part of their counter messaging in the midterms that Democrats
just want control of Congress in order to impeach Trump,
because they're going to be trying to figure out how
to goose the Trump voter to show up for the midterms.
And so I do think the impeachment issue is going
to be somewhat salient in these campaigns, but mostly from

(02:01:25):
Republican campaigns. And you're going to have I think a
lot of Democrats running for the House and Senate saying no,
we're not going to pursue impeachment, and probably saying it
on the campaign drum. So I don't expect an impeachment.
I expect rigorous oversight. I go back to something I
hinted at in a previous episode.

Speaker 2 (02:01:45):
This is the bad bet. Corporate America's making.

Speaker 1 (02:01:49):
This decision to essentially allow themselves to be extorted by Trump,
whether it's to give money to the building. Again, I
could make a patriotic case for funding the building, and
you know, and as the way presidential libraries are sort
of kind of bipartisan money, people will throw money at,

(02:02:10):
you know, the Biden Library and the Trump Library right
to sort of claim that they're balancing themselves out. I
think all of these corporate entities, whoever's given money to
the inaugural fund, whoever's given money to the to the building,
these various crypto ventures, they're all because while Trump may

(02:02:32):
be able to use executive privilege to prevent a lot
of testimony from Trump appointed officials, Corporate America is not
going to be able to hide from these subpoenas as well.
And that's where I expect there to be a lot
of action and potentially a lot of confessions, and where
we'll find out exactly how how Trump Trump World's extortionist

(02:02:59):
tactics work. Right, How does it work? There's going to
be corporate entities that, if Democrats get control, that are
going to be put in some uncomfortable positions thanks to
subpoenis that's where I expect the most fruitful ways. And
you may say, well, they'll probably what gets uncovered. May say, hey,

(02:03:22):
that's impeachable, of which I would argue anything's impeachable. It's
whatever a majority of the House says, right.

Speaker 2 (02:03:28):
It is.

Speaker 1 (02:03:29):
There's basically a similarity. You know how they say grand
jury's you know you can get it. You can indict
a ham sandwich. Well, you can impeach a ham sandwich
if a majority of the House decides to impeach a
ham sandwich. So anything to me and an impeachable offense,
I think it goes into what should be an impeachable
offense on that front.

Speaker 2 (02:03:46):
All right.

Speaker 1 (02:03:46):
Next question comes from Chris k out of South Carolina.
Chris K Junior, don't want to leave that out. We
got it have we got it wrong? When it comes
to how we compensate members of Congress and government officials,
lately have been wondering a better pay might attract more
serious qualified individuals to public service. If term moments are
the future, who besides the wealthy can afford to pursue

(02:04:07):
a short lived political career. Would a higher salary make
it more palatable, demanding stock trading and divesting from personal
financial interests within that helped shift the focus from personal
enrichment to public service. Civic duty may only go so far,
go Hawkeyes. So look, I've always been a bit more

(02:04:27):
empathetic of members of Congress and this salary. Right, I
think you have to do this one of two ways.
You either have to make it easier to be a
member of Congress and have essentially have two living conditions. Right,
the idea that members of Congress have decided they're going
to sleep in their office because they don't want to

(02:04:49):
have to pay extra money for you know, a rental
or something like this.

Speaker 2 (02:04:52):
Look, I think we out of corporate housing for members
of Congress.

Speaker 1 (02:04:59):
So you know, we might have dormitories, right, you know,
high end dormitories, high in corporate housing. That was a
popular thing a decade or so ago with remote stuff.
It's corporate housing is sort of not, no, not as
prolific as it once was. There was used to be

(02:05:19):
quite a few corporate housing complexes here in DC. There's
still a fair number because you do get a lot
of temporary deployments in the government, particularly military or defense
contractors and things like that, But I think corporate housing
would be a more affordable way. You know, it's funny.
I I think congressional pensions. I I don't think members

(02:05:48):
of Congress should get a pension.

Speaker 2 (02:05:51):
But.

Speaker 1 (02:05:52):
Or if you do get it, or it should be
sort of if you want the pension, then you got
a band stock trading like I think you could do
something like that or what it's worth, because once you've
hit five years, you get this pension and it's you know,
it's quite something.

Speaker 2 (02:06:06):
I think staffers ought to be eligible for this stuff.

Speaker 1 (02:06:10):
But I think you could have a conversation about elected official.

Speaker 2 (02:06:13):
But look if you.

Speaker 1 (02:06:18):
If you could, if you had corporate housing so that
there wasn't this pressure to have two locations, if you
could have remote voting. And I do think if we
don't look the House of Representatives, if we if it were,
if it were right sized, what with the ratio that
it should be about, want to say, one for every
four and one thousand people, we'd have about eight hundred

(02:06:40):
somewhere between eight hundred and fifty nine hundred members of
Congress eight hundred and eighty one if you buy one
calculation that I did, but somewhere between eight fifty and
eight ninety, and.

Speaker 2 (02:06:53):
I do think that that would diversify the pool of people.

Speaker 1 (02:06:57):
It would sort of make it a little more accessible
to get in, if you will, but you allowed people
to still could deal with their families, remote vote every
once in a while, have remote committee meetings. I do
think there should be some more flexibility where your main

(02:07:20):
office is your constituent's office, and maybe you really only
have a small hideaway here in Congress. You know, there's
there's very The bottom line is I think it's Congressional
salaries are awfully low for have to have two households, right,
essentially two places to live At one hundred and seventy
thousand dollars a year, that's you know, that's not yes,

(02:07:43):
you get all your expenses paid, your travel expenses.

Speaker 2 (02:07:46):
You know you're likely eating for free things like that.

Speaker 1 (02:07:51):
You know, if you told me we were going to
have hard term limits to you know, to your terms,
and I might be all in favor of doubling or
tripling the south because it's only a finite amount of
time and then definitely no pension on that if you
did term limits. So I think it really just depends
on this goes back to the need for a constitutional convention.

(02:08:12):
I think we would rethink all this if you will,
I really do, and I think it all needs to
be thought about here. But corporate housing could help, and
I think that would lower the barrier or entry, the
financial barrier to entry to some.

Speaker 2 (02:08:26):
I think that would help.

Speaker 1 (02:08:29):
Making a little more ease of participating in committee meetings,
remotely voting from your congressional district. You know, I might
say you have to vote from your congressional office. You
couldn't just vote from anywhere remotely, that you'd have only
either vote in the four of Congress or your vote
from your official district office. But it's I think there's
a lot of room here, which is why we need

(02:08:51):
a constitutional convention, all right. Next question comes from Greg
from Alexandria, Virginia. You've talked a lot about political refums, Yes,
I have. So what are your thoughts on the biggest
reform of them all? If you could wave a magic
wand would you make the US a parliamentary system where
the executive branch is chosen by the majority party in Congress?
Things raise high, Greg, You know no, and I'll tell

(02:09:12):
you why.

Speaker 2 (02:09:14):
I thought. You know, one of the most compelling.

Speaker 1 (02:09:15):
Articles I've read about the state of the American democracy.
Was about a month ago. I recommended it. If for
some of you may remember when I recommended this reading.
It was in Politico magazine, right, and I don't even
know if they publish a hard copy, but it was
under their magazine section of their website. And it was
a case of sort of like you know, it was

(02:09:36):
as a writer. It was a political science professor was
basically arguing that, hey, you know, all we read about
is all the ways that were the democracy is eroding,
but not explaining, like you know, and comparing different things
here with what to happen in countries where the democracy failed. Right,
Usually it's a comparison to something that happened in Germany

(02:09:56):
in the nineteen twenties or thirties. But this person pointed out, hey,
take a look at the countries that didn't fall to
authoritarian fascism or authoritarian socialism versus the countries that did.
Parliamentary systems are very vulnerable to authoritarian populists. You can,

(02:10:19):
you can sort of, you can, you can you can
win with a minority.

Speaker 2 (02:10:24):
You know.

Speaker 1 (02:10:25):
The issue with a parliamentary system and how it makes
you I think more vulnerable to an authoritarian is that
you can win with a minority, you know, with the
largest minority, and then cobble together a majority to hold power,
you know, using you know, just look at how Netanyahu

(02:10:45):
has held power. He's held power by cobbling together a
majority in order to get power in the Knesset even
though none of those parties have sort of majority support
in the country, right, and so you can you can
sort of win small by democratically and have a government

(02:11:07):
that is immediately unpopular with a majority of the country
because it's not what a majority of the country voted for. So,
you know, it's funny when I grew when I was
growing up, I grew up in a household that was
I think i've expressed this, that was, you know, somewhat

(02:11:29):
divided politically. So I grew up in a very bipartisan way,
sort of always being shown you know, well at this
point of view, that point of view, and I'm always
was very thankful of that.

Speaker 2 (02:11:39):
You know.

Speaker 1 (02:11:39):
My mother and father in some ways were training me
for this job, and I don't think they fully do it,
and my father wasn't would occasionally make the argument in
favor of a parliamentary system, and he was, you know,
he was somebody who was frustrated that Democrats always had
control of Congress, even though a majority of the country
seemed to prefer sort of you know, more center right politics, right,

(02:12:04):
and that was in an era, right we kept electing
Republican presidents because we had the assumption was, well, Democrats
always control Congress, and for like forty years it felt
like they did that this was just sort of the
permanent majority, and that was the case. I mean in
the eighties, you know, we were in the thirty fifth,
thirty six, thirty seventh, thirty eight, forty you know, year

(02:12:26):
of democratic control of the House, and and the six
years that Republicans controlled the Senate in the eighties at
the time was sort of a I think the first
time that happened in a couple of decades. So, you know,
he would occasionally express interest in that. But the older
I've gotten and that that article really, you know, I

(02:12:48):
could I could go back and forth.

Speaker 2 (02:12:49):
I mean, there's a.

Speaker 1 (02:12:51):
I think the ideal system is more I'd like to
see a four party system in presidential runoffs. I think
the top four system is probably the best of both worlds,
where it forces some coalition building right where you'd have
the top two party vote getters then meet in a
runoff so that somebody wins fifty percent of the presidency.

Speaker 2 (02:13:16):
That I think that that's the system.

Speaker 1 (02:13:19):
I would want four major parties, top four, you know,
and frankly, no other third part you know, no other
top four political parties, you know, no independence you'd have
to form your own party to get on the ballot.
That might be one reform I might include in here,
but top four party nominees, you know, essentially, you know,

(02:13:44):
can get major party status in any election cycle, and
the top two vote getters meet in the runoff, and
then they figure out in a democratic way with the voters,
rather than in a back room, smoke filled way that
would happen in parliamentary system whose voters you go after
to build your coalition. I think you would get the

(02:14:06):
best of what parliamentary systems give you, which is sort
of a force of compromise coalition building without the vulnerability
of minority authoritarianism. Next question comes from David in Highland Park.
All right, hey, check, I'm a longtime fan of yours.
Thank you love the podcast. SAW sixteen minutes interview with

(02:14:27):
Dana White on Sunday, and I couldn't help but notice
this a couple of weeks ago. Now I'm catching up.
I'm trying to catch up on some questions. So my apology,
but couldn't help but notice the softness of the questions
as well as not asking once about his efforts to
change the Muhamad ali ak. Is this a signal that
sixty Minutes and CBS are transitioning to a fox stout
propaganda machine. Side note, I used to be a sports
reporter in Tallahassee and some of the most intense football, baseball,

(02:14:49):
and basketball rivalry games were between Miami and FSU. Yes, sir,
they were, That's for sure. I'd almost say the baseball
games equal the intense hatred between the two schools on
the football field. In your mind, who is Miami's most
hated rival? Regardless some sport, keep making these podcasts. Your
unique long term optimism means a lot in these uncertain times. Kindly, David, thank.

Speaker 2 (02:15:07):
You for that. Yes, look, I think you have to realize.

Speaker 1 (02:15:11):
That the data wide interview happened what like one week
after Paramount announced a massive investment in UFC rights right
for Paramount plus and all of that. So I think, look,
I think what's fair to say is on what you're
going to see with sixty and this, And I kind

(02:15:35):
of almost want to defend the promotion. As long as
sixty minutes can do, it's still going to devote a
segment to something hard hitting. You know, you can sort of,
you know, you can accept the premise that, hey, corporate
overlords want to promote UFC, so here you go, and

(02:16:01):
you can sort of suck.

Speaker 2 (02:16:02):
It up and accept it.

Speaker 1 (02:16:04):
And by the way, I would argue, sixty minutes is
always sort of have They've always preserved one of their
pieces for something soft, for sort of a cultural icon.
That and and those interviews never have heard any questions.
And you can go back to the Mike Wallace days
and know that those things existed. Right there was like

(02:16:25):
they would almost have three types of segments, and I
suspect that because of the sixty minutes brand, you'll still
have this, You'll have one that was basically to service
the football viewer, right, so they could they you know,
with the sixty minutes is mostly a ratings juggernaut thanks
to football, right, you sort of can see the distinction

(02:16:45):
between sixty minutes ratings in the spring versus the fall.
But there's always been sort of the tough, hard hitting piece,
the think piece, the analytical piece, and then the soft piece,
right the entertainment piece. And in sports, they've always kind
of been soft. So I understand, I'm not I'm not

(02:17:07):
disputing your observation here. I had the same reaction. And
I think Dana White in particular has been a polarizing
figure and probably deserves some questioning in a in a
straight news setting, and you're not. And unfortunately it was
pretty clear that in that first week of Paramount Control,
sixty wasn't going to do that. I'm guessing there's you know,

(02:17:32):
it's Dana White's not the prime minister of a country,
and he's not a US senator, and he's not a governor.
So it is it is, you know. I also don't
know if you know, if you're if we're going to
totally hammer them for this. Do I wish they did
a little accountability with him. I do with Brian Gumbel
and real sport. I mean, but there's a reason real
sports existed even in the era of sixty minutes, because

(02:17:56):
sixty minutes never did sports in a hard any way,
Real Sport and my friend Brian Gumble, that was another story, right,
they'd have done a piece on Dana White that that
that would have that would have either included him or
not included him. But that might have been And by
the way, I miss Real Sports and Bryant. If anyone

(02:18:18):
gets this to you, man, just thinking about you, hang
hang in there. But that was you know, I think
Brian Gumble is one of the last great sports journalists
on that on that on that run. If you will
ask for Miami's most hated rival, I don't hate Florida State.

(02:18:44):
And it's not just because I'm married to a Florida
State alum. This was true even before, Right, It's what
made my family accept the Florida State alum and why
her family accepted a Miami fan because it's a sibling.
Florida State has always been a sibling.

Speaker 3 (02:18:59):
Right.

Speaker 1 (02:19:01):
The heated rivalry for Miami's is basically for me and
my childhood is Notre Dame. But that was more of
we were like, screw Notre Dame. Right, We were not
Notre Dame's biggest rival, but we felt Notre Dame was ours.
And it's the same with Florida. So the hatred is
for the Gators and Notre Dame. But I'll even admit
my hatred for Notre Dame is softened with Marcus Freeman

(02:19:23):
ause I just think he's a stand up dude, and
I think that there's less arrogance to the team. Right,
Lou Holtz plus Notre Dame. I mean, you couldn't have
come up with an easier sort of villain to deal with.
And oh, by the way, Steve Spurrier and Florida combo
platter was a good set of villains for me. And

(02:19:45):
throw an urban Meyer and Florida was a good combo
platter for that. You know, there's never even been a
coach pairing with Florida State that says, oh, what a
jerk coach?

Speaker 2 (02:19:54):
You know.

Speaker 1 (02:19:54):
Do I think what Jimbo did to them was a
jerky move? Yes, I don't think he was a jerk
coach on that front. So I think Look, the ESPN
archives will tell you. I think who Miami's you know,
most hated rival is. For a certain generation of Miami fans,

(02:20:16):
it's those boys from South Bend.

Speaker 2 (02:20:18):
That's for sure.

Speaker 1 (02:20:20):
All Right, I'm gonna do one more question here and
then we'll just in college football. Gillian F. Frights, Hey, Chuck,
I was listening to your podcast on the treadmill this morning.
Had to write in, I share your belief that political
violence is no place in America, but I disagree that
it's equally fueled by all sides. I never said it
was equally fueled by all sides in reference. In fact,
that's been my frustration from my view, the rhetoric and

(02:20:41):
in action on gun violence coming from the right, epitomized
by Charlie Kirk's comments about accepting gun violence to protect
the Second Amendment, drive much of today's dangers. His racist
and homophobic remarks like saying black women lack the brain
power to be taken seriously, make that hypocrisy even starker.
As a pre k teacher and mother of an adopted
black daughter, I find it infuriating, especially when those same
voices hide behind Christianity.

Speaker 2 (02:21:01):
I appreciate the pod, Jane.

Speaker 3 (02:21:03):
I.

Speaker 1 (02:21:05):
Don't you know I'm not gonna first of all your
concern I get it, and I share it. My point
on all this is trying to trying to win the debate.
That one side does this more than the other is
an unwinnable debate because it just it's no way to

(02:21:27):
get anything done. Like you're going to have to if
you want to get a larger focus on this issue,
you're going to have to let someone think, well, they're
going more than halfway, so I'll meet them there and
vice versa.

Speaker 2 (02:21:40):
It just you sort of have to you have to.
It doesn't matter.

Speaker 1 (02:21:46):
If it's thirty sixty or sixty thirty. If everybody's going
to come to the table, there has to almost be
this sort of Okay, we're all going to admit some
fault here, but we're all secretly going to believe the
other sides more at fault. But we're gonna we're gonna
we're gonna stop that part of the argument and accept
the premise that we've got to turn the temperature down.

(02:22:06):
So that's that's, you know, my nuanced way of trying
to go about this, like trying to say, you know,
trying to own a moment that's terrible, particularly when it
you know, came from one side, you know, did come
from from you know, this person was inspired. You know,
there's enough political violence inspired by the left and the

(02:22:27):
right to say there's a problem on both sides is
it equal. It's never equal. There's moments in time that
that one rises more than the other. It's never equal.
But it is very reactionary and violence always is met
with more violence, and so we have to stop. And
we could probably agree that, you know I do. I

(02:22:52):
I think Donald Trump is responsible for the atmosphere. I
think he creates the political weather. That does not mean
somebody that's inspired to violence on the left while due
to the weather that Donald Trump is created, that that
person that we should blame Trump for that for that
person on the left's actions, No, the person on the

(02:23:15):
left actions are who responsible for that action?

Speaker 2 (02:23:17):
Anyway?

Speaker 1 (02:23:19):
I hope that gives a little more clarity to what
the argument I'm trying to make and why it's not
about whether I am not. And this is where people
people sometimes with this both sides stuff it is they
use it as a way to compartmentalize and ignore the
times where maybe an ally isn't behaving correctly. And I

(02:23:43):
think that's that's our problem right now in our polarized system.
The left doesn't police the left and the right doesn't
police the right. The right only wants to police the left,
and the left only wants to police the right, and
until we get out of that cycle, we're going.

Speaker 2 (02:23:59):
To be stuck in this place that we're stuck in.
I'd be remiss if I didn't.

Speaker 1 (02:24:15):
Admit that I'm now two days removed from that eighteen
inning game, and I still feel like I haven't recovered
from enough sleep. I fell asleep between innings twelve. Sort of,
I sort of woke up when Kershaw survived it got
out of the inning. I didn't see him come in.
I was like, oh, Kershaw's pitching, but he survived the inning.

(02:24:38):
And then I kept watching that game, and you know,
it was interesting. I was listening to somebody, somebody who
talked about being at that game. You know, when you're
at a game like that, you don't actually know some
of the little things that's going on. I mean, I
was mesmerized in the eighteenth by the fact that Yamamoto

(02:25:00):
warming up to come in in the nineteenth and Shane
Bieber was stretching to get ready to warm up to
come into the nineteenth. So as a as a baseball fan,
I was sort of kind of rooting for the nineteenth inning,
But then all of a sudden, it was two forty
five e straight time and I was like, man, I
couldn't fall asleep. But anyway, it was just a mess
on that front.

Speaker 2 (02:25:18):
But I know some of you have known me a
long time ago.

Speaker 1 (02:25:22):
Aren't you a Rabbit Dodger fan? You know, aren't you
excited about this? And you know the rise of the Gnats,
My son's love of the Nats really has I've, you know,
so the first time I've lived in a city with
a major League team. So I'm I'm more Nats fan,
you know, the Dodgers of the team of my youth.
I still collect Dodger paraphernalia from my youth and even
further back. You know, I'm a Roy Campanella collector because

(02:25:45):
that was my dad's favorite player. I collect any cool,
affordable pieces I can get, Jackie Robinson and Don Newcombe.
I just love those, those those early Dodger players, and
of course all things Sandy Kofax. You know, us Jewish Americans,
we love our avatar in Sandy, if you will. So

(02:26:06):
I still sort of glorify the past. My greatest memory
as a Dodger fans the eighty eight World Series. Watching
watching the Dodgers win that World Series with my dad
on his deathbed, but he did get to see the
Dodgers winning win that World Series from there, so it
is there is so much and so I will always

(02:26:29):
root for the Dodgers as my second team. But as
I learned during the NATS playoff run of the teams,
whenever they were matchup with the Dodgers, I wanted the
Nets to win. So I knew that the switch had
been the switch had been complete. But wow, is it
so much fun to watch Otani play baseball. I mean,

(02:26:50):
it's just unbelievable. Five walks, nine reached base nine times
in one game, four for four and it's not even
the best game that he played this postseason.

Speaker 2 (02:27:00):
It's just astonishing. Is it is awesome when great players
are great in big moments, It's just awesome, right, It's
amazing when they step up in great moments, right, Like
it's like, you know, I'll tell you when I finally
sort of got over my sort of denial that Brady
was great and it was the twenty eighth to three
Super Bowl, You're like, the dude did it in a

(02:27:21):
Super Bowl, right, something like that at a Super Bowl? Right?

Speaker 1 (02:27:24):
You just when great players are great in big moments,
it's there's.

Speaker 2 (02:27:29):
Nothing like it.

Speaker 1 (02:27:30):
It's just a joy to watch as a sports fan,
even if it's for a team you're not rooting for.
All right, let's talk about this weekend in college football,
because guess what, I'm about to go see my beloved
Miami Hurricanes in person for the fourth time this year.
Went to the Notre Dame game, went to the Florida game,
went to the Florida State game, going to the SMU game.
Close Listeners' podcast know, I now have a divided family.

(02:27:52):
I my mother, my kid's grandmother, tried to get the
tried to get a Miami SMU half an half shirt,
and she the companies she's tried so far claimed that
they don't have the copyrights to do that. I'd love
some advice from any of you on how to do
those divided loyalty shirts, because I can tell you I

(02:28:16):
have a mother and grandmother who would both like to
be wearing Miami some sort of joint Miami SMU. It's
not the most requested dual jersey type things out there.
They're probably there are Miami Florida State divided loyalties. Those exist.
I'm guessing the big Miami Florida State SMU ones are

(02:28:36):
harder to come by, but if anybody has advice on
how to do that, I would love to have it.
So I will be seeing SMU in person there. I'm
not gonna lie little concerned, not as concerned as I was.

Speaker 2 (02:28:49):
Going into the Louisville game.

Speaker 1 (02:28:51):
But this is Miami's first road game out of the UH,
out of the state of Florida, believe it or not,
first time they have traveled outside the state of flo
This is a small stadium, but this is going to
be an excited SMU fan base.

Speaker 2 (02:29:05):
It's a good thing for.

Speaker 1 (02:29:06):
Miami that this is a day game, not a night game.
I think this would be a much tougher atmosphere if
this were at night there. But I'm looking forward just
my first in person SMU football game, if you will,
so looking forward to that. That should be fun. I
do wish SMU had won last week because then I
think it would make this game a little bit bigger.
The game would have probably been later in the afternoon,

(02:29:27):
maybe even at night, and oh, by the way, game
day might have been there. In fact, I think game day.
Can you imagine, like they assumed Penn State, Ohio State
would be where they would go or maybe Miami SMU.
I think they're out West, They're doing Utah, Cincinnati. Anyway,
we shall see. But I think the most important thing

(02:29:48):
is is there any coach that gets fired this week
for performance? Or are we done with all the fired
coach games?

Speaker 2 (02:29:57):
Right?

Speaker 1 (02:29:58):
I guess the only coach that might be on the
hot seat before the end of the season at this
point is Luke Thickle at Wisconsin, but he has you know,
been shut out and back to back games. Frankly, played
a slightly better game against Oregon than I think many
people expected last week. He's probably the only in person,
the only coach left that could get at least in

(02:30:20):
the power for that could get candled. Though, what happens
if Brent Benables loses two of the next three games
just something to think about in Oklahoma. But anyway, so
we got the big Miami SMU game. Other than that,
I think that you know the playoff implication games. Mimi
SMU is one of them, right. The third loss for

(02:30:41):
SMU eliminates them, right, and they're basically they have a
very narrow path at the ACC title game. But it
does seem unreal and I'm really curious, right, three loss
teams this week, who maybe had visions of of making
the playoff? How do they perform right? How does an

(02:31:04):
LSU perform? I just just very curious on those front.

Speaker 2 (02:31:09):
So anyway, the.

Speaker 1 (02:31:10):
Playoff oflmitigation games Vanderbilt Texas. Right, if Vanderbilt beats Texas
backup quarterbacks starting this week at Texas, what happens if.

Speaker 2 (02:31:19):
Backup quarterback does well? Anyway? As a gambler, Texas underdog?
Are they an underdog?

Speaker 1 (02:31:31):
I think they're going to be a slight favored by
game time and kickoff. Look, Vanderbilt wins this one and
I think they lock a playoff spot. Vanderbilt loses this
one and they may not, I don't you know. Then
they have to win out. And I do think if
they went out, which would mean a victory over Tennessee
they attended to, Vanderbilt does get into the playoff, but
nine and three Vanderbilt doesn't.

Speaker 2 (02:31:52):
At this point.

Speaker 1 (02:31:52):
So and certainly for Texas, this is a playoff elimination game,
and they can they have.

Speaker 2 (02:31:57):
The schedule to win out.

Speaker 1 (02:31:58):
Now they have to play Georgia and am Now I
only anybody thinks they're going to win both those games.
But guess what when they were preseason number one ranked
team in the country. I think there was some assumption
that they they could and so in the Texas defense
is pretty good. Point is Vanderbelt Texas. They gets a
playoff elimination game. The other playoff elimination game is probably

(02:32:21):
Oklahoma Tennessee. Certainly a third loss for either team, and
that's it, right, That's that's done. There's no I don't
think we're seeing a three loss team get into this
playoff win the first three loss team that isn't a
conference champion, because we've had that with Clemson, but a
three loss team at large that gets into the playoff,

(02:32:43):
it will be an SEC team and it will be Alabama,
Notre Dame.

Speaker 2 (02:32:46):
Those are right now.

Speaker 1 (02:32:47):
I think the only two programs that the ESPN Invitational
because it is and I know, you know, my friends
at ESPN don't like when I want I refer to that,
but it's it's hard. You know, we know that that
stuff matters. Okay, that stuff matters because if it were

(02:33:08):
straight metrics, they'd tell us.

Speaker 2 (02:33:09):
It was straight metrics, and it is not. Right.

Speaker 1 (02:33:11):
There's there's enough leeway there in order to find ways
to make sure you find ways to to get bigger
programs into this thing. So sorry, Vanderbilt, you're not going
to be the first three loss SEC team to crack
the playoffs. So playoff elimination game there, playoff elimination game
Oklahoma Tennessee and technically I think Cincinnati Utah USC Nebraska

(02:33:37):
are both playoff elimination games. But you have to believe
that USC Nebraska are are somehow realistic. If the winner
of this game could win, could win out now they
both could, And that's the point. Big ten and SEC.
You know, ten and two Big ten teams we're going
to are going to get strong consideration, and ten and
two SEC teams are almost all going to get in.

(02:33:59):
And USC Nebraska still technically can both become ten and
two teams. So loser, though, you know you're out. So
that's why pay attention to that. And Cincinnati Utah, right,
the loser of this game is going to not be
able to get to that Big twelve title game, but
the winner is gonna I think the winner is still
going to feel alive. So I have to say this

(02:34:20):
is where I love the addition of this playoff, and
I'm all for making sixteen team shoot. I like the
twenty four and twenty eight team idea that the Big
ten through a round. Actually I could get behind that
idea because I think you could actually make it a
little more metric based and keep the ESPN TV executives
out of the decision making process. But the point is

(02:34:40):
this expanded playoff means we have essentially playoff games. Look, Miami,
I would argue, sorry Miami to say this. Do I
think AT ten and two Miami team should have been
invited last year?

Speaker 2 (02:34:52):
Yes? Should AT ten into Miami team probably get invited
this year? Yes? Will they No? Not unless it's Miami
Notre Dame for the last two slots, and then they'd
have to give it to Miami since Miami beat Notre Dame.

Speaker 1 (02:35:04):
But I think Miami has to operate on the one
loss mindset and that every game now is a playoff game.
And this is the real test for me with Mario
and this staff, which is and this team is do
you have these team mentally prepared to realize that every
game is an elimination game going forward? There can't be

(02:35:27):
any slip ups. I was sorry to see Shannon Dawson
take the bait of some straightforward media questions about about
run calls, the play calling on the run side of things.
Never let them see your sweat, Shannon, You've been pretty
smart about that going forward.

Speaker 2 (02:35:44):
Don't do it. Don't do it.

Speaker 1 (02:35:46):
You never win a debate with crazy fan boards, so
don't try to win the debate with fan boards simply saying, Hey,
you know, we've been pretty happy with our run game.

Speaker 2 (02:35:54):
You could just say it.

Speaker 1 (02:35:55):
You know, we've got running backs that note that are
more comfortable running in those small.

Speaker 2 (02:36:01):
A and B gaps.

Speaker 1 (02:36:02):
You know, there were better ways to answer that question
without getting defensive on the play calls. And you know
you do try to run outside, right, That's what jet
sweeps are for, and a few other things. But I
thought the defensive nature of your response, it strikes me
that you're feeling some pressure.

Speaker 2 (02:36:23):
I get it.

Speaker 1 (02:36:25):
This is the big time. All of you are going
to feel pressure. I understand it. But always think about
your answer before you say it, especially in this media climate.
I am happy, by the way, coach Chris Ball, if
you would like to hire me for any media training.

Speaker 2 (02:36:44):
For any of your coaches, count me in for that.

Speaker 1 (02:36:47):
All right, with that, I've gone ramblan long enough, by
the way, for you NFL gamblers out there, nine home dogs,
be careful out there, and with that, i'll see you
next week.

Speaker 3 (02:37:00):
Hey,

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