Full Episode - Democratic Dysfunction On Full Display + Trump, China & The Rise Of A New World Order - The Chuck ToddCast

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

(00:26):
summits that I'm learning both on digital media and in
the world of investment, in the world of the media space.
Just wanted to be a bit transparent about what I'm
up to here. My guest today for those that are
listening on the extended full download, is Mike McFall. I've
known Mike forever. He was a source of mind back

(00:47):
during the Obama years. After that, I recruited him to
become an NBC News analyst on all things having to
do with Russia. I remember at the time not everybody
thought it was going to be a big deal story,
and I was pushed real hard. They'll needless to say,
Russia became a big deal story, and McFall became a

(01:09):
household name to many of you that watch NBC News
or MSNBC over the years. Mike's out with a great
new book, really a book of scholar that is both
sort of scholarly history, but important in the moment we're
living in now, and it's essentially the the authoritarianism versus

(01:32):
versus the democrats. Essentially, those that are looking to you
know that this is the new divide in the world.
And of course most of our conversation was how new
is this? And we spend a good chunk of time
talking about a topic that I've had I've discussed with
you guys here, which is how much of the Cold

(01:53):
War was an outlier period, not just an American history,
but perhaps world history. So for those of you interested
in that type of discussion, I think you will enjoy
this interview. Mike's just a wealth of knowledge. But we
dabble in just about every hemisphere. We talk Venezuela, we
talk Russia and Ukraine, we talk China, we talk NATO,

(02:16):
we talk about the need for an Asian NATO. We
dabble a bit in the Middle East. It is another
world tour of sorts on that front. But you know
that the question is what is America's role And if
the small d democrats want to win the argument around
the world that this is the better governing model, we're

(02:38):
gonna have to come to an agreement in this country
that we believe it's the best governing model, and the
biggest retreat, frankly when it comes to democracy around the world,
has been America's leadership promoting it. The Trump administration is
selectively pro democracy. They're pro democracy in Venezuela. They're not
necessarily pro democracy in the Middle East. You know, there

(03:00):
is definitely a if you're an ally in you're a democracy,
We're all for it. If you're a democracy, but it
is not very friendly to this administration. We're not always
necessarily the administration doesn't necessarily speak in that way. So
it's look, it's been unusual to have an American president
that is essentially not knee jerk pro democracy. He is

(03:26):
not somebody and we you know, this is something we've
not experienced as a mature democracy where our leader is
not necessarily in favor of it, that he doesn't mind
dabbling in, you know, in some form of authoritarianism, meaning
you know, I alone can fix it that mindset, and

(03:48):
we know that there is some appetite for it. Not
everybody believes in a small l small liberal democracy. There
are some people on the right these days that believe
that wants something that is more ill role democracy, but
on my terms type of mindset, think hungry on that front.
But anyway, it's a terrific conversation. I think you'll enjoy it.

(04:09):
Before I get to it, I actually have a notebook
of items I want to get to sort of I'm
going to sit here and say, have one giant theme
to me. It's stuff that I want to alert you
guys to that I want to surface sort of things
that I think are percolating, that are coming around the corner.
But we're going to go ahead and start with a
quick update on the shutdown. I say that because I don't,

(04:30):
you know, there's really nothing to update. As my friend
Brendan Buck tweeted our early on Wednesday, he said, there
was not a single story I think it was in
the Wall Street Journal of the Washington Post about any
update on the shutdown, and it was just it's it
is not having a impact in the larger media space.

(04:52):
And again it goes back to one reason. You know,
we are now organized. Whether that's good or I'd say
this is a good thing, this is just the reality.
But the entire political media ecosystem is really organized around Trump,
and Trump's just not engaged at all. In this shutdown.

(05:12):
My friend George Condon, who works over at National Journal.
He's been there a long time, long enough that he
and I were colleagues at National Journal before I left
to go to NBC. He did some terrific analysis on
the lack of engagement by this president on the shutdown issue,
and he compared it to the big shutdown that happened

(05:32):
in his first term and how engaged he was in there.
So I want to read a little bit from Condon's
story here in National Journal this week. Since the current
shutdown began in October one, Condon writes, Trump has met
in the Oval Office with the leaders of Canada and Finland.
He's traveled to Israel in Egypt, and he's meeting this
week with the presidents of Argentina and Ukraine. He has

(05:53):
not met with any Democratic Party leaders. While the trip
Israel in Egypt made a lot of sense no matter what,
it is worth noting that Trump is also planning later
this month to go to Malaysia, South Korea, and Japan.
These are more routine trips. Their meetings with these various
international associations at the United States dabbles in the Asia

(06:16):
Pacific Economic Conference Apec. It's known as the Association of
South Seats Asian Nations. These are all places that the
United States likes to be a part of. They're basically
collections of Asian countries that want to put a check
on China in some form or another. What's interesting is
that these summits always take place around this time of year,

(06:38):
and if we were in a government shutdown, both Bill
Clinton Barack Obama didn't go to these events if they
were in the middle of a shutdown. Both of them
thought it was a bad political look if they were
continuing the business of the country overseas, spending money overseas
while people weren't getting paid there. And Donald Trump himself
during and this is where Condon had some terrific analysis.

(07:01):
In the thirty five days between December twenty second, twenty
eighteen and the reopening of the government on January twenty fifth,
twenty nineteen, Donald Trump tweeted Back then he was tweeting
there was no truth social he hadn't been deplatformed from
Twitter yet. He tweeted thirty seven times about the shutdown,
and the post projected a mix of frustration and sense

(07:22):
of urgency. That was the thirty five days. So far,
we've been in this shutdown for fourteen days. Trump has
posted only seven times on the shutdown on truth social
and he's only posted twice since the second day, so
twelve of those were in the first essentially thirty six hours.
But since then he has posted thirty two times on
foreign policy, sixteen times in the Middle East, five times

(07:44):
on the Nobel Peace Prize, eleven times on his grievances
with the FBI, the Russi of Probe, and Jim Comy.
It goes back to what I've said now for I
don't know three straight podcast openings, which is this is
going nowhere until Democrats find a way to engage Trump.

(08:04):
The Congressional Republicans cannot negotiate without Trump in the room.
They have no standing, right, Mike Johnson has no He
cannot do this without Donald Trump. He has never been
able to pass a vote without the help of Donald
Trump among House Republicans. So there is, you know, the
only entity to negotiate with is the White House, and

(08:26):
the fact that Democrats can't get Trump to engage. Trump
doesn't want to engage whatever it is this and again
I will say the same thing that I said twenty
four hours ago. Every day now that this goes is
one day less that this becomes politically you know, I
know that Democrats think they've won something out of this

(08:48):
so far, and I think that you can. I think
it's clear that they've made healthcare a bit more front
and center on the minds and we're now seeing other
reasons why healthcare. You're going to see the premium notices
go out in November first. That will get some attention.
It's why I think actually that the Democrats probably made
a tactical mistake in triggering this shutdown when they did.

(09:11):
I think they would have been better off triggering the
shutdown after those premium hike notices went out in November first,
not before. But the problem they have now is every
day this goes on, more damage is done to the
federal government. Russell Voyd fires more people, targets more blue areas.
I want to get to that in a minute, and

(09:33):
Democrats may start to lose sort of the momentum that
they believe they were getting on the healthcare issue. Again,
Democrats are terrible about declaring victory and they don't know
how to ever act like they've won something. And when
they're actually they're actually winning this argument. But the longer
they go they will not they will lose whatever they've
gained here. And you can kind of tell they're kind

(09:56):
of flailing here. I don't think Schumer knows how to
get tri in the room. That's clearly a problem. Jefferies doesn't.
So if they're the two lead negotiators here, it's in
that sense, if you can't get in the room to
negotiate with the person you have to negotiate, you're not
You're not doing a very good job leading here. So

(10:17):
this is I don't think this is going to age. Well,
we'll see, but again Trump's not engaged. That's a huge issue.
But I want to point out something this sort of
the way that Trump administration is targeting things and and
sort of how messed up their math is. So we've
seen that Russell Russell Voyd Omb he's trying to essentially

(10:39):
cut programs or cancel funding or suspend funding, and it's
it's targeting blue areas, right, They're targeting the democratic agencies,
the democratic this prominent geographic areas they've targeted, or you know,
funding for things in and around LA County, funding for
things in and around Chicago and funding for things in

(11:00):
and around New York. Well, one of the things I'd
love to remind and I just did a data deep
dive on this. So Donald Trump received one point one
eight nine million votes in La County. Okay, Yes, Kamala
Harris got one point three million more than him. Okay,

(11:21):
it is a blue county. But the raw number of
Republican votes that Donald Trump received in LA County one
point one eight nine million. That is more raw vote
than he received in fifteen states that he carried Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada,
North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

(11:47):
There are more Trump voters that they're punishing in LA
County than any of those fifteen states that I talked about.
This administration's inability to understand that they're supposed to be
the president of the entire country. When they start nitpicking
at quote unquote blue areas or blue states, they're punishing

(12:08):
a lot of people that supported them, a lot of
their own supporters who have it comes across as if
they have no respect for the system and no respect
for some of their own voters. And by the way,
in Cook County he received over five one hundred and
eighty thousand votes. Well, in case you're wondering, that's more

(12:28):
raw vote. All right, he got crushed in Cook County.
It is a blue county, but his raw vote total
was more than the raw votes he got out of Alaska,
out of Idaho, out of Montana, out of Nebraska, out
of North Dakota, out of South Dakota, out of Utah,
and out of Wyoming. That's eight states. It's it is,

(12:52):
it is sort of. It really is a bit self defeating.
And by the way, you want to add more states
to that. He received over eight one hundred thousand votes
in the five boroughs of New York City when you
put that together, and that would mean more votes than
what he got in Alaska, more votes than what he
got in Kansas, more votes than when he got in Mississippi,

(13:13):
more votes than what he got in West Virginia. So
you see the point I'm making here. This sort of
what they think the own the Libs move is right.
They're just attacking hundreds of thousands of their own voters.
Now maybe they think, oh well, this will teach those

(13:34):
Trump voters from living in these blue areas, I guess,
or maybe they're trying to punish the Democratic voters and
get whatever they think they're accomplishing. They're not accomplishing with this,
So it is this is this may unfortunately end up

(13:54):
motivating Democrats to keep sticking this out because they it
is triggering the Trump administration to do a lot of
dumb things. Here the House Republicans are behaving bizarrely. Here
Mike Johnson's inability to swear in a duly elected member
of Congress in a now certified election down from Arizona

(14:16):
at Alita Grialva, the daughter of Raoul Garalva, who passed
away a few months ago. I have to tell you,
I am not the quickest person to jump down a
conspiracy theory hole. Don't get me wrong. I' let me
a good conspiracy theory. But it's hard to now Now
I understand why all the Epstein folks are saying, Hey,

(14:40):
what are they afraid of? Are they really afraid of
seeing this vote forced? I mean, it's a head obviously,
Mike Johnson's trying to prevent putting Republicans on the record
on these Epstein files, right, they don't, And that's there's
no doubt there's something here where Republican leadership is petrified

(15:00):
of forcing because guess what if the Epstein vote does
hit the floor of the House, it's going to get
four hundred votes because you're gonna have all the Democrats
vote for it, and you're going to have at least
one hundred if not more, Republicans vote for it because
they don't want to be on the record it somehow
not voting it. And it's actually a safe vote because

(15:21):
the Senate isn't ever going to you know, this is
just simply a vote in the House. So it is
the only motivation I can see if Epstein really is
the motivate, and I don't know any other reason other
than Epstein at this point, Right, Johnson is really sort
of losing his rationale. He keeps changing his rationale, so
it's making it's making even the biggest skeptic like me think, wow,

(15:46):
you guys are this paranoid about the Epstein files vote unbelievable?
So what is the paranoia? It is about a whole
bunch of Republicans not wanting to upset Donald Trump, who
doesn't want this vote to happen. That's pretty clear. And
we know many of these House Republicans have been so
public in their demand for the Epstein files to be

(16:06):
released that they that they cannot go back to there.
They're afraid of going back to their constituents and not
having to do that. So it is a it is
it is fascinating to watch this. I do think this
is what happens right the shutdowns. It's sort of like
when you may think you know how to start one,

(16:28):
but nobody it is amazing how hard it is to
end one, even though logically, and again this goes back
to a rant from two weeks ago, the government should
never be allowed to be put in this situation. And
the fact that the government just decides that it is
going to abide by this absurdity that we somehow aren't

(16:51):
going to pay our bills if there's a funding dispute
in Congress is no way to run It's no way
to run a country, it's no way to run a company,
there's no way to run a household. No rational person
would behave this way, but unfortunately Washington is filled with
the irrational. The big thing. One of the big moments

(17:11):
this weekend we're going to learn a lot a little
bit about sort of language and all this stuff is
the No King's protest. There's been some really disgusting language.
The Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson described the planned protests.
I don't think it will end before the Hate America

(17:33):
rally on the Mall on Saturday, where all the Marxist
and Antifa people and all the people who hate Trump
and hate America will be there. This idea that if
you don't, if you protest something Donald Trump does, you
hate America is the single most undemocratic thing you can
actually accuse a fellow American of doing. The whole point
of being in America is the right to disagree. We

(17:55):
founded this country on a fuck you Britain man. Yes,
I'm not going to apologize for my but this is
one of those that this is who we are. We
have the right to flip the bird at people. We
have the right to protest. It is smack dab in
the First Amendment. And one of the dumber arguments that
you hear people say is well somebody paid for a protest, Well,

(18:16):
who gives a shit? Sorry, I get that. In this stuff,
it's it's just this is do you know nothing about
the founding of this country? When you sit here and
uh and essentially accuse anybody of protesting their government as
being an American, It is the most American thing you

(18:36):
can do, The most patriotic thing you can do, is
to protest your government, because in this country it is
it is a right, not a privilege. It is a
right written into our constitution. So the behavior I'm old
enough to remember when these are the free speech, free

(18:57):
speech absolutionists, which then brings me to the JD Vance
defense of those awful telegram chat techs that were released
on from the young Republicans. The whole thing is such
a weird story. I mean, first of all, it is this.
Here's what's troubling, right, that these young Republicans believe there's

(19:22):
a they've been given a permission slip by the MAGA
movement and Trump to just casually talk about gas chambers
and Nazis and all this hateful rhetoric. What's really troubling
is that these young Republicans think that this is okay
in the new Trump dominated Republican Party. We are in

(19:46):
this moment, right, And I connected back to the incredibly
rude behavior of the golf fans at Bethpage Black. This
is we are culturally. Donald Trump has culturally changed us,
and there are many people who think the best way
to become Trump is to behave like these hooligans did.

(20:09):
What's interesting here is how they're all there's this weird
Apparently one of the guys involved says, this is part
of a long conspiracy theory. This is what the political
article noted, and this gets it to the bizarre world
of MAGA and this, I think you know how the
whole lower lumer nonsense works. So one of the Young

(20:30):
Republicans claim that the release of the chat is part
of a quote highly coordinated, year long character assassination led
by a guy named Gavin Wax and the New York
City Republican Club. Everything is always a conspiracy and people
sort of a grievance against them and all of this.
It is it really is sort of. It to me

(20:57):
is emblematic of the culture that has been created in
this young Maga movement. And what's interesting is the lack
of consistency among those that try to champion speech and
free speech. Right This this in some ways is you know,
you know, if you want to be anti woke. Apparently
it's become a permission slip to say whatever the hell
you want about anybody, right that that is what's anti woke.

(21:19):
What's fascinating, though, is to watch people like Jade Vance
trying to apologize for these for these folks, but say
that these awful things that are being said by these
young Republicans, hey, it's just nothing but a college group chat.
But the leaked texts from the former Virginia delegate who's
running for Attorney general in Virginia, J. Jones, you know

(21:40):
that those are much worse. Here's the thing. If you
believe that there should be no speech police at all,
which is what the mag of Movement and Jade Vance
campaigned on and Donald Trump campaigned on. Jadevance went to
Europe to lecture Europeans on speech. But there's and he's
always willing. When somebody on his side of the aisle

(22:02):
says something stupid, they should be forgiven. When somebody he
doesn't like says something stupid, they should be prosecuted. Okay,
this is somebody who does not understand the Constitution. I
know JD. Van's Vance went to Yale Law School. I
assume Yale's going to ask for their law for their
degree back because he does not understated, he clearly didn't
pass constitutional law with what he's doing here. But what's

(22:24):
really frustrating here is the fact is both are shameful.
The fact that Jay Jones fantasized about what he did
is shameful and disqualifying. And the fact that these young
Republicans behave this way is incredibly disqualifying. And those that
are losing their jobs deserve to lose their jobs. Okay,
they need to make they do need to pay a

(22:47):
penalty for what they did. It's free speech, but nobody
says there aren't consequences for your behavior and for your speech.
But the fact that jd. Vance does not understand that
this is a culture that's being created on the right
that's celebrating the anti woke has turned into permission to
say anything and a celebration of hateful rhetoric. If you

(23:12):
don't like hateful rhetoric thrown at you, then you should
denounce hateful rhetoric that's thrown at others. And if you're
uncapable of doing that, then you're incapable of being a
leader in the United States of America. I know I'm
sort of preaching to people who understand this, and those
of you that listen are sort of you guys are
come from the rationally frustrated I assume is most of

(23:36):
the folks. But I have found all this and I'm
really concerned about what we may see from the right
in an attempt to weaponize what's said or what's done
in these protests. Do I think you know the thing
is is politically to me, I think the more the
Trump administration tries to denounce these protests, the more energy

(23:58):
they're going to give to them, the more attention they're
going to receive, and the more politically problematic they're going
to become. That's the irony here. The more they the
more they go after this, the worse off they're gonna
that this, the more impactful that they have a potential
chance to be here. But it's to just the lack

(24:21):
of consistency, and I know nothing matters anymore, right, consistency
doesn't matter. Principles have been thrown out the window. But
particularly JD. Vance, who does sort of play an intellectual,
his incredible lack of consistency on his belief system is startling,

(24:42):
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(25:50):
unless they win a few of the notes I want
to hit the Voting Rights Act and the Supreme Court

(26:12):
argument today. I know there's a lot of concern on
the left, a lot of concern among Democrats that essentially,
if the rest of the Voting Rights Act gets gutted,
that this is going to be an automatic win for
Republicans in sort of remapping of congressional seats, and an
automatic loss for Democrats. I'm not so sure I'm old enough.

(26:35):
My first professional year covering American politics was the ninety
two campaign. That was a year of brand new districts,
and at the time, the Bush forty one Justice Department
worked pretty closely with the Congressional Black Caucus to interpret
the Voting Rights Act in such a way to essentially

(26:55):
try to create as many majority African American seats as
they could in the South. And the reason this was
one of those the Congressional Black Caucus wanted to increase
its ranks and the Bush forty one Justice Department wanted
to pack more Democrats into you know, pack more Democrats
into fewer districts. What would that do? So one of

(27:18):
my favorite examples at the time there was there was
eleven congressional districts in Georgia at the time in nineteen
ninety Democrats had eight Democratic House seats and Republicans had
three by nineteen ninety two. In January of ninety three,
I believe it went from eight. It literally was eight
three again, eight Republican seats and three Democratic seats. And

(27:41):
I believe all three Democratic seats were African majority African American,
or at least plurality African American. So I'm not so
sure that this. You know, again, everybody thinks they understand
how easily they can pack, crack and pack districts do
the hub and spoke model as we've seen, you know,
But if this idea that if you don't have to

(28:06):
do a majority African American district, that this is automatically
going to help. If more Democratic vote gets dispersed to
more congressional districts in a given geographic area, you may
see a lot more swing seats in the Sunboat. This
may be a lot harder to Jerrymander than many folks
are thinking today. So look, a few things to keep

(28:29):
in mind with this Supreme Court argument. It does seem
as if Roberts and Kavanaugh are looking to put an
end date to the Voting Rights Act on Section two.
What does that end date look like. It's at the
end of this decade, right, is it a review in
another four years? Is it throwing it back to Congress

(28:50):
to come up with an end date. That's something else.
They're very good at punting, particularly Roberts in Cavanaugh. They
do like to sort of see if they can come
up with an extraordinarily narrow ruling. I can tell you this,
I don't think John Roberts wants to be make feeling
as if he is deciding the midterm elections, so I
anticipate this is going to be narrow. But another thing

(29:13):
to keep in mind. If this ruling comes out when
most Supreme Court rulings come out, which is late June
early July, and it does have these dramatic changes into it,
it's not going to impact twenty twenty six. It's just
too so there'll be too many filing deadlines will have passed.
You won't be able to see that. This probably is
more likely to impact twenty twenty eight, and frankly is

(29:35):
more likely it could. I could even you could even
see in that this will apply to the next census
to the next reapportionment, which would take place the census
in twenty thirty in the next reapportionment in twenty thirty one.
So keep in mind those deadlines. And do you know, I,
like I said, I'm not as I'm not as convinced

(29:56):
that this is as clean of a political victory for
the right. Now. There may be other issues. Representation may
go down. You know, those are some our serious issues
that we need to have a conversation about. But if
you're just playing a numbers game here, I'm not sure
this is going to be as damaging to the Democrats

(30:18):
or as helpful to the Republicans as a lot of
what I would say the chief commentary has come. You know,
there's just a lot of so much of our reporting
and commentary just comes from does this help the left,
doesn't hurt the left? Does its help the right? Doesn't
hurt the right? And you know, sometimes you just don't know.
You can have a larger conversation about whether do we

(30:40):
need this anymore? Do we not do this? Are we
going to have disenfranchisement of African American voters and of
African American representation, which was the whole point of the
Voting Rights Act. That needs to be the conversation that's had.
Everybody is trying to apply it to gerrymandering and redistricting.
It's why I tell you, if you just looked at
it through the data lens, this isn't as clean as

(31:02):
the commentary is making it seem. The other interesting news
over the last twenty four hours, so yesterday I made it,
or at least on Wednesday, I made a bit of a
deal about the main Senate primary. I have Graham Platner,
the Oyster farmer, Janet Mills, the city governor. For what

(31:22):
it's worth, the DSCC claims that they have not endorsed
in the primary, but they set up a joint fundraising
committee with Janet Mills. Now they've set up joint fundraising
committees in the past with multiple primary candidates. I'll be
curious to watch the d SCC here. Do they set
up a joint fundraising committee with Graham Platner. Do they
offer to send one to actually put some to make

(31:48):
the case that they're not taking sides, or maybe they
want donors to think, no, we have a preference here
and this is how it's going to work. How are
they going to operate in Minnesota. How are they going
to operate in Michigan. I'm curious with both of those
primaries where they we'll see, well, what's going to happen
in Iowa, what's going to happen in these Senate races

(32:10):
in the Texas Senate race. So I am curious to
see if the d SEC is serious about making it
clear they're not endorsing Mills in this primary, because they're
operating as if she's their preferred candidate. But then Kirsten Jelburn,
who is the d SEC chair said said that they

(32:34):
would not do an official endorsement. Look, Platner is already
on the air. The UAW has already taken sides and
is endorsing Platner in this one. And I also think
the fact that another New England state is going to
have another sort of generational primary, and the big one
is Seth Moulten, Democratic Congressman from Massachusetts, deciding the primary

(32:56):
at Marquee. This is actually the second time Markey's had
to deal with a Democratic primary that is more or
less more of a generational argument, and he turned it
into an ideological argument in his initial race for the
seat against Joe Kennedy the third Joe Kennedy was making
a he was making a generational argument, and essentially Marky

(33:21):
Randa Kennedy's left had the backing of AOC. In particular,
he had become sort of a big champion of the
Green New Deal, and I think he's counting on that
this time. Seth Moulton comes from a bit more of
the of the middle, I don't know what you call
mainstream liberal versus or you know, sort of a closer
to the center than Marky is. So it's going to

(33:45):
be an interesting test of so Platner and Mills. Platner,
I think, arguably presents himself as is more populous, more
progressive than Janet Mills. In the case though, of Moulten
and Markey, it's market that is going to make the
cases more progressive. But he's going to be on the
older side. So it's gonna be interesting. There's a lot

(34:05):
of democratic groups out there calling for generational change. The
question is is it generational or is it ideological? The
Markey Molten primary is going to test how many of
these young groups are actually more focused on ideological purity
than generational change. If Molten gets the same support that

(34:28):
Platner gets from many of these groups, then maybe it
really is generational. But if Markey and Platner have more
endorsements in common then than than than Molten, uh uh,
then then if you know, if it's it's sort of
sort of if if Molten and Mills have sort of
more of the same endorsements than Platner and Markey or

(34:49):
whatever that works out, then you'll know that this is
more ideological. So it's going to be fascinating to watch
to watch that Molten candidacy. There two other nuggets I
want to mentioned before letting the weekend go. One is
back in Virginia a G. Two. Both are having to
do with TV ads that I really would like you

(35:10):
guys to take a look at. One is a new
ad from the Republican Attorney General in Virginia, Jason mirais
addressing Abigail Spanberger voters. And what's interesting here is so
in the Virginia governor's race, Winston Earl Sars, who's basically
thrown spaghetti at the wall to try to make to
try to pick up ground on spamburger, has been desperately

(35:32):
trying to use the texting controversy of the AG's race
to try to make look like Spamberger is somehow supportive,
won't denounce Jones enough. But guess what. The Miras campaign
has obviously decided Spamberger's already has got this race in
the back. So they've got an ad ut that essentially says, hey, look,

(35:52):
Spamberger refuses to endorse Jay Jones, and they play clips
from the debate where she will not reiterate her endorsement
for Jay Jones. She's asked multiple times during the debate,
and she will not. She says it is up to
everyone's individual decision on how they're going to vote in
that race. Essentially, it was Spanberger giving her permission slip, going,

(36:15):
you know what, I'm not vouching for this guy. I'm
certainly not going to put my campaign in jeopardy to
help out this guy. And she made that clear during
the debate. She didn't say, don't vote for him, but
she didn't say to vote for him. Now you got Winston.
Earl Sears' campaign is trying to say, Aha, it means
she secretly supports Jason Miaris Republican Attorney Jay are going Aha,

(36:37):
See she doesn't, She's giving you a permission slip. The
ad is addressed to Spanburger voters, essentially saying, look, she's
giving you. She may not be voting for him. She's
not comfortable with it. You don't have to be comfortable
with it either. It's a fascinating ad. It is a
subtle way of mirs throwing winsom Earl Sears under the

(36:59):
bus on Look, we know she can't win. We know
who the next governor is going to be. So hey,
Abigail Spamberger, voters, are you sure you want this guy? J?
Jones is the chief law enforcement officer anyway. A fascinating
development in that race, and frankly kind of predictable because
it did seem at some I've said this before, if

(37:20):
the governor's race were closer, Spamberger would have called for
him to get out of the race. I think the
fact that it isn't closer, she's trying to not engage
in that issue, or engage in it as little as
she possibly can. And now in some ways Miaras has
just inoculated her because he's going to be up with
an ad that's probably going to have more money behind

(37:40):
it than what Winston Earl series is. And if you're
the in Earl Series campaign. You hate this ad. You're
frustrated because it is essentially mi are is giving Spamberger
a pass and in some ways inadvertently praising the fact
that she refuses to endorse J. Jones. So it really
does undermine whatever last minute strategy the Winston Earl Series

(38:03):
campaign thought was going to work for them. And then
one other ad I want to alert you to because
it it is and yes, it's you know, I have
a feeling that if somebody wanted to develop a drinking
contest with my podcast, it would be how often he
mentions Florida. Well, I'm about to mention Florida, so drink.
There is a new Senate candidate that jumped in the race,

(38:25):
a gentleman by the name of Hector Muhika. He is Venezuela.
He has worked with Google in the past, and it's
he's got this personal video that he's put out and
he's an any and what's interesting to me, and I
think his background potentially is interesting and we'll see if
he can get traction and is he got He's been

(38:47):
he was a Google He worked in Google fill phil
philanthropy for a while, handing out Google money. My guess
is he must have some of his own. We'll see
if he's going to use some of his own. But
what I want to alert you were sort of two
policy hits that were AI related that he used in
this As you know, a few weeks ago, I said,

(39:09):
I have a feeling that come twenty twenty eight, the
most animating issue that you're not going to be able
to run for president and not have a some sort
of answer to a voter concern about AI job displacement. Right,
fear of AI job displacement, whether it's a real thing
or not, by twenty twenty eight won't matter. The fear

(39:31):
of it is going to be an issue. Well, this
Mohika announcement video touches on it in a couple of
ways that I hadn't seen. So he attacks Ashley Moody currently,
who is the appointed senator to replace Marco Rubio, who
of course has been who's the Secretary of State, National
Security advisor, head of the Archives, and maybe the chief

(39:52):
dog walker two. I'm not quite sure what other jobs
that Trump has made him have on that front, but
to her, and said, she is basically on the side
of the AI. You know that she cheered on the
federal job cuts which put clean water and all this
stuff in danger. She is for using AI to get

(40:14):
rid of human jobs. She is for AI to set
medicare pricing. I found it to be an interesting hit,
and it was clearly here's the Google exec using fear
of AI as an attack. I don't think he got
it quite right. For what it's worth, I think AI

(40:38):
using AI itself is sort of a double edged sword.
I think those who know what AI is are sort
of are a sort of tech optimists, and you don't
want to be seen as the candidate not on the
side of progress more. But I do think an older
electorates are going to be a bit skeptical and fearful
of AI. And the smarter way to probably go about

(41:03):
this is to say, do you want a computer deciding
what the pricing is on medicare? Or do you think
you know or do you think that you know human
beings should be involved in those decisions? Do you want
a computer deciding whether your insurance covers this, or do
you think human beings ought to be involved in that decision?
I think talking about it as a computer rather than
using the phrase AI probably will make it more effective.

(41:25):
But the real reason I'm learning to this ad is,
I think, is this is my Canario. So it's the
first one I've seen in a Senate race in twenty
twenty six to start to put AI in the mainstream
political conversation and fuse it with healthcare pricing, fuse it

(41:46):
with job displacement. I have a feeling he will be
the first that this is. He's not going to be
alone in using AI this way. So again, take a
look at it, see how he did it. Like I said,
I think if you're a political strategist here trying to
trying to figure out how do you talk about AI
without sounding anti progress, there are probably ways to do

(42:10):
it that just talk in the form do you want
a computer deciding these things or do you want a
human being who understands the impact on your life making
these decisions. That is a conversation that I think voters
do want to have. And I go back, I think
that in a larger sense, I think the big the

(42:32):
release of this Sora video app right, We're already two
weeks into it, and it feels like you can't trust
any video now that you see on social media. It
is going to put a premium on human interaction, live
in person interaction, and even perhaps in the digital realm,
being at least live streaming at any one time, but

(42:55):
the premium. I did this when I was doing this
talk at the industry conference earlier this week. I asked
for a show of hands, how many of you would
pay extra if you knew you could get a human
customer service run? And literally two thirds. This is a
crowd of about five hundred people. Two thirds of people
put their hands up. It is I do think this

(43:19):
is why I'm weirdly optimistic about all about right. The
unintended consequence of AI advancement may be reminding people the
importance of human connectivity. And if that ends up being
the unintended consequence of the rise of AI, is that
so bad? If we end up deciding, hey, the human

(43:42):
element is more valuable than ever, that, my friends, would
be serious progress. All right? With that? Let me pause,
sneak in an ad and my conversation with Mike mcphone

(44:05):
well joining me now is a longtime friend of mine.
Mike McFall is the former Ambassador to Russia, among other
stints in and out of government. He's at Stanford University
at the Hoover Institute, and he's author of a new books,
author of a lot of books. This is what right
these days? But his latest is called Autocrats Versus Democrats

(44:25):
and in some ways essentially trying to I think you
tell me, trying to explain the world these days, like
how is the world being divvied up? And I guess
the where I'd want to jump before we get into
some of the nitty gritty of the current situation. Is
everything old new again? Meaning is the world back to

(44:47):
where it was pre World War Two?

Speaker 2 (44:51):
Well, chucks, First, thanks for having me. Second, I have
written a lot of books you're write. But this is
my last book. This has been This is my most
ambitious book.

Speaker 1 (45:00):
Government amos last words, my last book. It's politicians say,
my last election, my last book, the last time I'm
doing this.

Speaker 2 (45:09):
Okay, tig on my hands by saying it on the
public record, because I really it killed me. This is
a hard book to write. It took me many years,
and I you know, I do other things, as you know,
I run an institute here at Stanford, I teach at Stanford.
But but it's ambitious in a good way because I
try to answer your question and the original question that

(45:32):
I started with when I you know, it goes back
to twenty seventeen, when President Trump first won and he
brought in his national security team and they wrote a
very i would say, historic National Security strategy. Hr McMaster
at the time was the National Security Advisor. He kind
of spearheaded it. Whether the President himself read it or not,

(45:55):
I don't know. I've heard that he didn't. We'll come
back to him later. But it was a pretty It
was a statement that said that old post Cold War
order with American hegemony and everybody wanting to be part
of the democratic world, was over and we'd answered a
new war era of great power competition.

Speaker 1 (46:17):
And I thought they were right about that. But then
they and.

Speaker 2 (46:21):
I would say that the debate in Washington especially circled
around are we in a new Cold War with China
and at sidekick Russia? And you know, as an academic,
I wanted to answer that question as a hypothesis, what's
the data to support that or not? And you know,
I know a little bit about the Cold War. I
wrote my PhD about Cold War competition, so it wasn't

(46:44):
like I was starting from scratch, but I answered in
a pretty complex way, which is why the book's five
hundred pages long. You should know it used to be
twelve hundred pages long. So I did a lot of
cuts to make it more exciting.

Speaker 1 (46:56):
So you could have had volume two and then come
out with a second edition. Well, there was talk about
that one on China, Ron and Russia.

Speaker 2 (47:03):
I didn't want to do that. But the very complex
answer that I have to your question, but I'm going
to get to the thirties as well, before the World
War two? Is is it a new Cold War?

Speaker 1 (47:16):
Yes? Is it a new Cold War? No?

Speaker 2 (47:21):
I answer it in both ways, which is to say,
there are some things that are similar in some things
that are different, and similarities to great powers China and Russia,
China and the United States ideological contests most certainly. That's
why my book is called Autocrats Versus Democrats. Different conceptions
of the world order. Absolutely, and yet on the different side,

(47:44):
I think they're even bigger and more important. So yes,
it's an ideological struggle, but it is not to the
same intensity as it was with the Soviets. I think
that is overstated, especially with my Republican colleagues that say
we're in an existent'll fight and this is a bigger
challenge than ever before in the history of the United States.

(48:06):
That's just wrong in my view. Second big difference, complex
difference with pluses and minuses, is our economies are highly intertwined.
We didn't have that with the Soviets. But the biggest
differences are about us, Chuck, are the biggest differences are
here in the United States. We today have a level

(48:26):
of polarization that you know, we might have had it
in the late sixties, early seventies, but I think it's
actually more acute today. That's different. That weakens us in
dealing with our adversaries abroad. And the other piece that's
different is we're in a new era of isolationism, most
prominent in the Republican Party, but not only very growing

(48:48):
within the Democratic Party as well. And that piece reminds
me more of the nineteen thirties than the Cold War,
because during the Cold War there was a broad consensus
kind of forty five yard lines, right, It wasn't streams.

Speaker 1 (49:01):
And that's not true.

Speaker 2 (49:02):
We had our Communists. I'm a Stanford guy. You know,
we had our Communists up at Berkeley. You know, they
were there, but they were pretty marginal. Uh, And there
was a kind of broad consensus that in order to
prevail in the Cold War, we had to be engaged
in the world. Uh, that is no longer true. I

(49:22):
mean that that.

Speaker 1 (49:23):
Sentiment which we see in opinion polls, and I feel
when I'm out talking about the book around the country,
that's no longer true to it. That's a big difference.
So I will I appreciate the way you address the question.
I will confess that I meant it in a different way,
and I'll tell you what I'm I'll tell you what
I meant. Look, I've been tackling this current era in

(49:46):
polarization through my own lens of histories more domestic, more
domestic than than than international. But I keep coming back
to the same conclusion, and I can back up up
with different data. Six of our last seven presidential elections
been cited by five points or less. In the entire
twentieth century, we only had five elections decided by five

(50:08):
points or less. I didn't know that. Wow, Okay, and yeah,
it's one of those You're just like, it's it is.
It is like there's something has radically changed this century.
Right when you look at the nineteenth century, we had
two different periods where we had like, first of all,
we had two different periods where we elected five one

(50:30):
term presidents in a row. We did it at the
end of the century. We did it sort of in
the run up between Jackson and Lincoln twenty you know,
I'm obsessed with that. We had seven presidents in twenty
eight years between Jackson and Lincoln. Only one was due
to death, right, So it was parties were consistently throwing
and it was all every election was about the same thing.

(50:52):
I can bring the country together, right, Okay, we'll try this, right,
And it was different things. We'll try a Democrat from
the north right, that was Franklin Pierce, you know, all
sorts of different things. What's hard. And you look at
our partisan media today, it looks a lot like the
partisan media of the late nineteenth century early twentieth century.
Is it possible the Cold War era was simply an
outlier period in world history like that. There is no

(51:15):
other period like it. And what we're dealing with today
is no different than the nineteenth century globe we had
great powers then, right, no different than the fifteenth century.
We can keep going back, and in some ways, the
globe in human history has been defined by great powers
only in this unique sixty year period where you and

(51:38):
I had the luxury of growing up in it. Thinking
this is normal, and I think because I sit there
and I wonder how much it's almost like is this
bad data? Right? If this word numbers, we'd say, oh,
this is outlier data. Throw it out.

Speaker 2 (51:52):
Yeah, Well that's a great observation, Chuck, And I hope
you're writing your book on that topic.

Speaker 1 (51:58):
That's a great Seriously, that is a great tile.

Speaker 2 (52:01):
And I don't think a lot of Americans know, including me,
by the way, and I have a lot of books.

Speaker 1 (52:05):
You can see it. I see that. I don't know.
You know that history the way you just described it,
that would make a great book. But you appreciate you
saying that. I'll make sure we'll clip this and I'll
send it to all the publishers here in New York.
You should, you should, But you're you're onto something. Absolutely.
I agree, and I also hope you're wrong. So let
me Yeah, I hope I'm wrong too, you know I do.

Speaker 2 (52:27):
So there's two things that are going on, I would
say in the Cold War period. One is you do
have we have an adversary that everybody understands is an
ad adversary, existential threat, all that stuff, and I did,
you know, to write this new book, I went through
all that history again.

Speaker 1 (52:45):
I used to know it, but I had to relearn it.

Speaker 2 (52:47):
And that helped to create some sort of consensus and
unity in the United States. You know, we had this
word containment. That was our strategy towards the Soviets. It
was pretty elastic, right the way Reagan you defined containment,
and you know, Nixon was very different, but it still
was this thing. It brought us together, Democrats and Republicans.

(53:09):
There was a lot of consensus on foreign policy, partly
because of the Soviet threat, but the other piece it
was partly because we were so powerful, the United States
of America, and that part where we were the great power.
We were the great power, and in retrospect, the Soviets
were not as great as we were. We didn't know

(53:30):
that always at the time, right we overestimated the Soviet threat.
By the way, I think we're doing a little bit
of that with the Chinese threat today. But it was
our power that was this organizing principle, not just visa
the Soviets, but around the world. And you know, Bob
Kagan has this great book, I'm going to forget the

(53:52):
name of it. Oh, the Jungle Grows Back, which is
which is basically laws of the Jungle.

Speaker 1 (53:58):
Right when we.

Speaker 2 (53:59):
Became the hedge, I'm on the jungle receded. But now
that we're falling back. And he wrote this book like
a decade ago, not in the Trump era, the jungles
growing back. And his argument is, just like yours said,
this is a unique period in history and now we're
back to normal, you know, Besian anarchic dog yak dogs politics,

(54:20):
great power politics. You know, if I analytically, I think
there's a lot of evidence to support that hypothesis. So
if I have my analytic professorial hat on, I see
those trends.

Speaker 1 (54:35):
But if I have my.

Speaker 2 (54:36):
Normative hat on, I still want to fight for a
different world than that, because that world is not a
great world.

Speaker 1 (54:44):
People forget.

Speaker 2 (54:45):
You know, when I teach a course on American foreign
policy here at Stanford, I started with a map of Europe.
It's a thousand year map of history of Europe in
six minutes, and what you see is the you know,
border moving all the time, right like you know, the
Napoleon comes on the scene, the Nazis comes on the scene,

(55:06):
the Soviets come on the scene, go back farther. It's
the Mongol, hordes rights, it's it's what we use the
word chaos. It's a lot of chaos. It's a lot
of killing. Millions and millions of people die. We fought
World War two to end that. And by the way,
the movie does kind of freeze in forty five, right,
borders in Europe, there's some there's some changes a little bit,

(55:29):
and then eighty nine we get some changes, but it
does kind of freeze because we agree we don't want
to live in that world, and even with the Soviets,
we agree we don't want annexation. But we're creeping back
to that of course, you know, with Russia's eric invasion
of Ukraine. But I just don't think that's a great
world to live in.

Speaker 1 (55:48):
And oh, I agree, and I think we.

Speaker 2 (55:50):
Got to fight to all and you know, that's that
is the major reason why I wrote this book, to
fight to renew reform, of course all that, but another
form of liberal internationalism, so that we don't go back
to that world.

Speaker 1 (56:06):
So the problem right that you're facing, and well, frankly
that all small d democrats are facing is that there's
not unity about this in our own country. And until
we have a unity about small D democracy in our country,
we can't export it. We can't be the beacon. I mean,
I'm looking at certain things like are just what appears

(56:28):
to be indiscriminate bombing of boats in the Caribbean, And
I say indiscriminate, Perhaps there's intelligence to support it. I'm
hoping our members of Congress demand it. Yes, we've not
seen it with people. The point being is our behavior
is not small D democratic behavior here, correct, and we

(56:48):
just lost whatever a moral authority we had to lecture
any other country, including one that you wrote about here
called Russia.

Speaker 2 (56:57):
Yes, you're absolutely right. And you know my book is
called Autocrats Versus Democrats, the title China, Russia, America in
the New Global Disorder. Right, So poltically, I'm agreeing with you.
And by the way, I wrote most of those book
obviously before our last election. I had about three weeks

(57:18):
to scramble to do some updating. And you know, often
times it's not clear what side of that divide we're on.
President Trump, he doesn't define the world in Autocrats Versus Democrats.
He likes strong leaders versus week leaders. Right, I feel
like it's a movie version. I call him like, I
feel like he's a movie mobster, meaning it's not the

(57:39):
real I think the real mob is real, dangerous, and
there's a lot of things and it shouldn't be glorified.

Speaker 1 (57:44):
But the movie mob right, movie mobsters. I think Trump
sees himself as the head of that kind of benevolent
movie mobster family. And this is just how you do
it sometimes. Sometimes you do things ethically, but sometimes you don't,
depending on the situation.

Speaker 2 (57:58):
Right, Well, and you know that could work in the
short term, as I write about it.

Speaker 1 (58:03):
Worked in the Middle East. I think it's the only
place it works. Maybe it works with Putin if he
would be if he would treat Putin the way he
treat Bybee, maybe he could have similar outcomes. But it
feels like the only places where his style might be
an asset not a liability. Well, it definitely doesn't work
with allies.

Speaker 2 (58:20):
So you know, as I write about, and you know
you can if you're really powerful. You know, I grew
up in Butte, Montana, pretty rough place, mining town, and
Eddie and his gang every you know, for three years
would try to beat me up every day, and they
were stronger than me and more powerful, and I would
they could coerce me to do things, and I would

(58:41):
do it if I had to for survival purposes.

Speaker 1 (58:45):
But did I like it? No?

Speaker 2 (58:47):
And when I got strong enough that I could push
back on it, I did, And that you know, that's
not a good way to do transaction. Always coercion and
put and trump. He always thinks about power in terms
of coercive power. He doesn't think about cooperative power when
earning trust.

Speaker 1 (59:06):
Or like, look what he did to the Argentinian people.
Well here's your loan, but you better support my guy
or I'm pulling the money. And you're like, that's all.

Speaker 2 (59:13):
That's corsion, you know, right, Cred's to the allies about
they should share more of the burden. They there's a
different way to do that. And then and eventually people
get tired of being coerced, as I did on the
streets of Butte, Montana. And you know, if we were
the only head jemon, that would be one thing. But
China's offering a different world order. They're offering something else.

(59:35):
And and so I just think this, this is not
a long term strategy. The one he's doing is just
not a long term strategy. But there's another piece to
it that that is also is equally uh you know,
unnerving for me that if you go back to the
Cold War, and I'm going to oversimplify, of course, but
you know, it was kind of Red team versus Blue team, right,

(59:58):
we knew the common US and the capitalists, the free
world and the you know, the autocratic world. And remember
those maps, you know, with sides would flip, right, So
like Angola became read, you know, and Nicaragua became read
at least you know.

Speaker 1 (01:00:12):
Everybody was defined by it, right, I was Pakistan and
ally in India, you know, you had the underlying countries,
you know those three or four right, Your South Africa's
your your India, You're Brazil. Right.

Speaker 2 (01:00:24):
So what's new today is that the fight between autocrats
and democrats is not just between countries like it was
during the Cold War, it's actually within countries. And Putin
and Putinism as a set of illiberal, nationalist, anti democratic
ideas of what he's had for a long time, and

(01:00:46):
he's invested in propagating those for a long time. I
think we really have been sleeping on this. I have
old chapter on it in the book, where we just
don't we just think, oh, he's just some transactional thug.

Speaker 1 (01:00:56):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:00:56):
And and when I was in the government, that's the
way many of our senior leadership referred to him. And
my point is you can be a transactional thug and
an ideologue at the same time. You know, think of
Stalin and he's both of those things. And what he
has done through Russia today and NGOs that reach out
to our NGOs, and the Russian Orthodox Church that reach

(01:01:20):
out to our religious communities with the same ideology he's
now helped and that's also happened organically. It's not just
all from Moscow. But now there's fights you know.

Speaker 1 (01:01:31):
Within Hungary, within Italy, within Germany, within France, and within
as this you know better than I within our country.
And so you have now Americans.

Speaker 2 (01:01:43):
That and even sometimes our president by the way, he's
all over the place these days on Putin. But there
are millions of Americans that ideologically are closer to Putin
than they are to me, even though I'm an American, right,
So you have like there one of their main ideologues,
Chuck in Russia today is his name is Alexander Ducd.

(01:02:05):
He's one of the main ideologues of Putinism. He appears
regularly on Info Wars. He is a he is a
beloved guest of that podcast of that show.

Speaker 1 (01:02:29):
See a Tucker Guy too.

Speaker 2 (01:02:31):
I yes, yes, has interviewed him. Yeah, I forgot about that.
They have also interacted. So that's different, right, that's and
that's and then of course therefore, to support small d
democrats abroad when we're.

Speaker 1 (01:02:46):
Doing these things near to impossible.

Speaker 2 (01:02:49):
And what I'll also add to this because it's on
my mind, because Machada just won the Nobel Peace Prize
right in Venezuela. Here at Stanford, we were quite connected
to Democrats movements all over the world, including Venezuela. One
of her closest colleagues was here at Stanford at a
summer program I run during the elections that they won,

(01:03:11):
stolen from them, and then the Venezuelans canceled his passport.
He's been stranded here at Stanford ever since.

Speaker 3 (01:03:18):
Those people want us to be involved, right, Am I
wrong to be extraordinarily that the Nobel Committee did us
all that this was a good I mean, look that
this was a good pick.

Speaker 1 (01:03:29):
I mean that this was sort of they found somebody
that wasn't going to divide us. Like, I am just
so excited, and I'm glad that Trump administration's excited. There's
something about her, and there's something about it feels like,
you know, sometimes the Nobel Committee rewards the past and

(01:03:51):
sometimes they give you something for now, and this felt
like they gave us something.

Speaker 2 (01:03:54):
I'm not agree more one hundred percent. And you're right
about that past rewarding stuff. Let's not get name names,
but they don't. Yeah, yeah, this is not that. She's
still she's still fighting for democracy and brilliantly, in my view,
her messaging to the Trump administration afterwards could not have
been better.

Speaker 1 (01:04:15):
Yeah, she's been She's been terrific. There. Sorry I interrupted
you on that, but I just wanted to set that.
I mean, I just think that this feels I just
you know, this feels like this just feels righteous, right,
you just sometimes a moment is righteous, right, This feels
right more and not agree more. Yeah, So this is
one of those moments with Venezuela where we're going to

(01:04:39):
be on the side of the of the democrats here.
But is it because of democracy? Well, the tragedy of Venezuela.
I mean, the tragedy's inside.

Speaker 2 (01:04:49):
And you know, in my opinion, we should have done
more when they had that electoral breakthrough, they documented it
was falsified, and you know, the Biden administration and the
whole world should have leaned in more.

Speaker 1 (01:05:01):
I just kind of feckless. What more could we I mean,
we didn't do anything because I think there was a
fear of doing it that other than rhetoric, it would mean,
you know, maybe we would have to you know, move
carriers or do something like that. And and Biden just
wasn't it just wasn't willing to do that.

Speaker 2 (01:05:18):
They had a lot of they had a lot on
their plate.

Speaker 1 (01:05:20):
And and I don't want to say that doing more
would have, you know, overturned Maduro, but there were they
They could have done sanctions, they.

Speaker 2 (01:05:30):
Could have been more aggressive. Not you know, we didn't
need to do military action. But when I think of
like the Orange Revolution in two thousand and four, which
was a very similar situation in Ukraine where the Democrats
small d Democrats documented that it was falsified. We sent
Senator Lugar there and and said we're not recognizing this election,

(01:05:51):
and we got involved in negotiating the Europeans did. But
that you know that that train has left the station,
that that is not there.

Speaker 1 (01:05:59):
Well, that's the story of in America. We never have
We always have something else on our plate before we're
going to tackle that. It is the sorry, as a
guy who grew up in Miami, this is what this
is why they resent us. This is why they resent us.
And hey, we never focus on their problems first. It
always takes a backseat.

Speaker 2 (01:06:19):
Well there's something to that, but here's the IRA irony
or tragedy also of what's going on with the Trump administration.
So President Trump talked to Machado, right, she's a leader
of the Venezuelan opposition.

Speaker 1 (01:06:33):
That's great.

Speaker 2 (01:06:34):
But what I think a lot of Americans don't know
is the NGOs that have been working with the Venezuelan
opposition for decades, groups like the International Republican Institute, the
National Democratic Institute, the two arms.

Speaker 1 (01:06:50):
I've done a little bit on them. These are the
two international arms of our domestic major parties, the Democratic
Party which overseas. These are I've been in the past
very simpatico. Exactly know how simpatico it is these days,
but it has been. It's still this. It's still this.
I used to work for ENDI and I'm on their board.

Speaker 2 (01:07:10):
And but these all these organizations that help small d
democrats and independent media.

Speaker 1 (01:07:18):
President Trump just shut them down. You know, he just.

Speaker 2 (01:07:20):
Closed the United States Agency for International Development. He's going
after the National Endowment for Democracy.

Speaker 1 (01:07:28):
Uh. And you know, we just can't.

Speaker 2 (01:07:30):
Compete with the Chinese if we don't support those that
are ideologically aligned with freedom, liberty, democracy. And I chose
that those words very precisely chucked because this is a
nonpartisan thing. Freedom tends to be a liberty tends to
be a republican word. Democracy tends to be a democratic word.
I think they're all the same. And we got to

(01:07:52):
be in this fight in the long run or we're
going to be in trouble.

Speaker 1 (01:07:55):
No, and it we're And I guess the question is
we've just got to run a better persuasion campaign of
wide democracy around the world benefits us. I mean, I
look at this weird strain of anti NATO fervor inside
the right, and I'm sitting there going look, in the
nineteenth century, we would have just colonized Europe. Yes, it's

(01:08:18):
the Great power, and we would have been responsible for
social security for all these people and responsible. You know,
here was a case where Europe was essentially we had
the I mean, I hate to be this cynical about it,
the modern version of colonialism, which was we were their
security blanket. Yes, and it was working out pretty well
for everybody. Why would we want to give that up?

(01:08:38):
I mean, the ability to essentially have countries without having
to be responsible for governing these countries, and yet they
were under our sphere of influence. I mean, to just
be totally looking at it as cynical way, it was working,
and it was working quite well.

Speaker 2 (01:08:54):
One hundred percent. And you know, my lessons from the
Cold War for what we should do today. At the
top of my lists in my book and my book
talk is Allies. That was our superpower during the Cold War.
It remains so today. And to add to your list,
we also did an incredible amount of economic business with Europe.
We continued to do so. It was win win for

(01:09:16):
both sides. And to undermine that is just not strategic
at all. And you know, I'm not giving up, Like
there's a lot of people in my world that have
given up and say we're lever go back to thinking
about supporting democratic ideals or allies or trade.

Speaker 1 (01:09:35):
But we'll go back, but we're probably going to have
to go through something nearly catastrophic in order to sober
ourselves up. I mean, you know, right, you know, I
have this dark joke these days where I'm short term optimistic,
short term pessimistic, long term optimistic. And I say, in
nineteen thirty nine, I'd have said I'm short term pessimistic
and long term optimistic. In by nineteen forty six I

(01:09:57):
had have been right. But a lot of bad stuff
happened between nineteen thirty nine and nineteen forty six, and
it feels as if, unfortunately, we're going to have to
have a near you know, something bad has to happen.
They people have to feel the pain of the hot stove. Yeah, tragically.

Speaker 2 (01:10:15):
I think you're right, And you know, the thirties is
an excellent metaphor for the moment that we're in now.

Speaker 1 (01:10:22):
I would all the thirties are the twenties. We twenties
are fascinating me because of the industry and government got
so intertwined in the twenties. Well, that's true, and we're
watching some of that now. You have a front arguably
have a front row seat out there in Silicon Valley
and that didn't end well either. Well, yeah, you're right.

(01:10:44):
We start with the twenties.

Speaker 2 (01:10:45):
We're in the late twenties now, and if the analogy
is there, history doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.
And it feels like that and the pivot that they
all had, all these companies out here with the Trump administration.
And you're right by inter with all these folks and
I knew them back when Chuck I knew them, you know,
and they had different ideas.

Speaker 1 (01:11:05):
Do they have ideologies or are they just transactionalists? Is
that really what we found out about Silicon out.

Speaker 2 (01:11:11):
Uh, you know, there's a range. There's a range. I
think some are just it's about business interests and we
got to do what's right for the company. I think
there are some that, you know, I think of a
guy like Reid Hoffman, I think is much more thoughtful
about the world and understands the dangers.

Speaker 1 (01:11:32):
And then they are just you know, some have changed
and that happened. I'd love to see read Hoffman and
Peter Tield debate. Well, funny you say that because I
arranged that debate. Did you really I would love to see.

Speaker 2 (01:11:42):
About eight or nine years ago, we had a program
we are trying to bring together different perspectives, and I
was there's this guy, Neil Ferguson who's at the Hoover section.

Speaker 1 (01:11:54):
And it ended up not working out because it's hard
to do these things. But we started it.

Speaker 2 (01:12:00):
Neil was, you know, the cares about It was kind
of like remember Hannity and Colmes.

Speaker 1 (01:12:04):
You're old enough to remember Handy and Colins. Yeah, right, yeah, Yeah,
I was to Neil because I think we called that
the Washington Generals and the hanb.

Speaker 2 (01:12:14):
Trotters, right, But you know, Neil is a very charismatic
and I we're friends, and I you know, we don't always.

Speaker 1 (01:12:21):
Sell yourself short. You're pretty charismatic. But that was our idea.
And the best one we did, yeah, is Reid Hoffman
and Peter Teel and interesting. It was extraordinary, and it
had the virtue that they were college kids together here
at Stanford, so those they were they were friendly, they
had a relationship, Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:12:40):
And they were and they're both super smart guys and
and we need more of that. That's we they are
not to what I understand. I haven't seen Peter for
a while, but I don't think they're doing many of
those events these days.

Speaker 1 (01:12:52):
And we feels like everybody's closing off, everybody's retreating right now.
Do you feel it in academia fear of debate right now? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:13:02):
Yeah, well, fear of debate absolutely, even fear of me
Chuck speaking on campuses. You know, there's a there's a definitely,
you know, sensitivity to anything.

Speaker 1 (01:13:15):
That might sound partisan. And you know, I'm very clear
in fact, because apparently the definition of partisan now is
anything somebody disagrees with. I'm sort of great, right we're living.
This is where I sit here and go, hey, we're
living a free country. Yeah, and yet do you feel
comfortable debating in this country right now? It's tricky. I

(01:13:37):
mean what I try to do militantly And I even
wrote a piece about this on substack to start our
school year. Here.

Speaker 2 (01:13:45):
It's how I teach at Stanford, and I wrote to
explain because I published something. You know, this is my
thirtieth year at Stanford, by the way, so wow, starting
my I'm going to take.

Speaker 1 (01:13:57):
What you take is proof California living's good. You know
you don't look like a thirty year professor. Well, thanks
for saying that I appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (01:14:04):
Going to my reunion, my fortieth reunion on Friday.

Speaker 1 (01:14:08):
Check here at Stanfield as a kid.

Speaker 2 (01:14:10):
But you know, I put something up and you know
the usual crap about you know, wokeness and brainwash, and
you know, the way I teach all my classes are
about why questions, you know, why is their great power
competition today versus not? Why do some countries become democratic
versus not? And you see set them up as hypotheses,

(01:14:31):
and then I compel my students to debate. You pick
lotteries and you get numbers, and then you have to
take certain positions. And by doing that, by the way,
they're arguing a hypothesis that need not necessarily be their
own belief system, right, so I free them of having

(01:14:51):
to all that I feel I want you know that
I feel that whenever sentences start that way, you know
it's going to be complic And but then for every class,
sometimes before sometimes after, we like say okay, we're out
of the classroom setting and ask me anything, and we're

(01:15:12):
going to talk about what I believe. And I think
there's a way to separate out beliefs.

Speaker 1 (01:15:17):
And as I do this, I have this class I
teach for USC this cohort how Washington works. And it's
been very it's a pretty bipartisan group of students and
has been a couple semester now and you can do this,
And this is what I want to tell some. I mean,
I do think I do send some professors spend time

(01:15:37):
lecturing about what they believe rather than helping their students
come to their beliefs exactly. I mean, my son said
something about he's taken this one political science class and
he goes, I really like the professor because you're not
telling me how I'm supposed to think. He's giving me
the information and explaining how each side thinks about it.

(01:15:58):
And it's like, that doesn't seem to be a difficult
thing to ask for from a professor. And by the way,
if you're an expert, you're going to have an opinion
on which side is right right that I expect, but
I want to hear the understanding of each side of
the argument. Well that's so your son's getting a good education.
That's what it's supposed to be.

Speaker 2 (01:16:17):
And for those that know some of my debates about
NATO expansion in Ukraine and Russia, first second week of
my class on a Great Power competition is John Mursheimer
at the University of Chicago. We could not agree disagree
more in terms of our theories of international politics. But

(01:16:37):
I want my students to read John. And by the way, Chuck,
I did a poll last time I taught it. The
majority of my class actually agreed with Mursheimer and not me,
even after twelve weeks of me.

Speaker 1 (01:16:49):
So, but that's the way it's got to be. That's
the way it's got to be. Yeah, no, I mean,
and I assume. But when I want to get back

(01:17:11):
to your book, because I want to get back to
Europe here a second, so I know we don't have
too much time left. His is the only beneficiary of
what's happened over the last ten years been Europe's at Europe.
And I say this in that I feel like there's
a strength in the EU that didn't exist ten years ago,

(01:17:32):
didn't exist twenty years ago, there is now. Look, each
of these countries have their own polarizing debates that look
like ours, right the UK, France, Italy, Germany. We're seeing
it pop up everywhere in Western democracies. Don't get me wrong,
but the collective action of the European Union has been

(01:17:52):
quite impressive. Yes, and in some ways they're like, Okay,
America is not going to be here anymore. We've got
to take matters into our own hands. And there's been
a ton more cooperation than I expected. I think we
all thought Europe would fracture without us being the glue.
You know, that's a great observation. I agree.

Speaker 2 (01:18:13):
It of course started when Putin invaded, or to be
more correct, he invaded Ukraine in twenty fourteen, and that
war persisted.

Speaker 1 (01:18:22):
Our president sometimes forgets that.

Speaker 2 (01:18:24):
The war went on the entire first term of the
Trump administration, but then he escalated. The full scale invasion
was twenty twenty two, and that helped to bring Europe together.
Without question. That was the first big event. But the
second big event was the reelection of President Trump. And
I was at the Munich Security conference when the vice president,

(01:18:44):
Vice President jad Vance came and lectured them about democracy.
It was a pretty shocking speech. The Europeans were in shock,
and that's in the hallways. The whole conversation was all right,
we are now alone. We have to get our act together.

Speaker 1 (01:19:00):
Because they saw the next president. In JD Vance's comments,
didn't they They weren't looking at that as that's what
the Vice President is saying. He'sle as far as the
Europeans are concerned, they just assume he's the next most
likely person to be president. And by the way, odds
are that's correct, right, okay, right now. I mean he
may not may be only a twenty percent chance, but

(01:19:20):
no one has a higher percent. Right, he is the
most likely next president of the United States. So Europeans, that's
how they viewed that speech. I assume that's right.

Speaker 2 (01:19:28):
Yeah, And so they did two or three really big
important things. So one greater unity, and we've seen the
emergence of some new leaders. That's helped, especially in Germany.

Speaker 1 (01:19:38):
But even even even like the Italian Prime Minister. I mean,
I think a lot of people weren't sure about her,
and she's been she's had a nice stip spine on this.
I am with you one hundred percent. He is fantastic.

Speaker 2 (01:19:50):
I was just in Italy about a month ago at
a conference that was about Europe.

Speaker 1 (01:19:54):
Has been also about a time politics. She was not
there this time, but many of her leadership was. But
I mean she's still in power, which says a lot
and they were talking about that.

Speaker 2 (01:20:05):
I'm not an expert in Italian politics, learned a lot
in a week. And you know, they've had more stability
with their governments under Maloney than they've had you know,
for most of the earlier peer.

Speaker 1 (01:20:16):
They're more stable than France.

Speaker 2 (01:20:18):
And also the southern part of Europe is growing at
a higher rate than the northern part. That's also new.
That didn't used to be the case. But she's been fantastic.
Another guy, he's just in Washington this week, President Alexander
Stubb from Finland. Not many people know alex I know

(01:20:38):
him personally. He's a big thinker. He's got a book
just like mine coming out soon, similar themes. I blurbed it.
I'm not so sure he wants that blurb now. You know,
this is before the election that I blurned.

Speaker 1 (01:20:52):
Because he's got to have relations with Trump. But he's
good at that.

Speaker 2 (01:20:55):
And what I would say is two things that want
more unity for two, greater clarity on why they have
to stop Putin's army and Ukraine because if we're seeing,
you know, the threats are growing and that's been happening
for two or three years, but now they're all focused
on it, right Sokorski, by the way, is another one

(01:21:16):
of these new leaders, Deputy Prime Minister, Foreign Minister Poland fantastic, big,
big thing kind of guy. But then three, they are
collectively dealing with President Trump, I think, in a more
sophisticated way than they did the first time around.

Speaker 1 (01:21:35):
You know, when Trump went if a Democratic Party could
learn a lesson or two in that, yes, yes, but
will you know more about that than I do?

Speaker 2 (01:21:42):
But you know, Trump decided to meet with Putin in Alaska,
give him the big summit and roll out the red carpet.
And I just want to say, like, I support the
president for trying to end this war. He's putting effort in.
I give him credit for that. Number two, he's engaging
with the Russians. You have to do that to try

(01:22:03):
to end the war. I support this. That's controversial in
my world, but I support that. And we're talking about
a guy, you know, Putin, who I believe is evil.
He's killed friends of mine, He's killing Ukrainians every single night.
You still have to talk to them. But the mistake
of Alaska was it was all about the meeting and
not about the substance. And you know, he should read

(01:22:25):
George Schultz's memoirs about how you know, you got to
have an agenda for these meetings and you don't have
to check your values at the door to meet with
thoughts like Putin. But then I said on on camera,
you know for NBC names by the way, I'm still
with them for a little bit longer. I said, whoever

(01:22:47):
had the brilliant idea of having all the Europeans come
and meet with Zelenski with the President two days after
that Alaska summit, that was a brilliant idea. I don't
know who idea it was, but I can tell you
that the White House claimed it was their idea, yeah,
and put out I don't get quoted by the White
House too much check these days, but they put out

(01:23:09):
a press statement saying mc fall believes that Trump was
brilliant to organize that meeting. I'm pretty sure I know
that it wasn't a Trump idea, but it was a
really brilliant thing. And they're showing that they can work together.
That's that's a big accomplishment.

Speaker 1 (01:23:26):
So the upside of Europe. Why do I feel nervous
that even though there's a need for collectivism in Asia,
we're not going to get it, and this is I
guess I need to get you out of here on this.
But considering it felt like the Quad was going to
be the beginning of something. Yes, and now we've got
a trade war with India. You know, I'm intrigued by

(01:23:49):
the new leader in Japan. I'm very intrigued to see
how she does. There. Seems to be right, and it'll
be interesting to see them. Them doubling their defense spending
is a b FD. I think I agree on that front.
But it feels like we're a long way away from
some sort of collective security agreement there.

Speaker 2 (01:24:07):
So I agree, and tragically I agree. In my book,
I write about so the books about you know, Cold War,
great power competition. I look at power, ideology, global order.
But then, because there was this debate about the Cold War,
I have three chapters of prescriptions. One is about mistakes
by the way Chuck during the Cold War, which a

(01:24:29):
lot of Americans forget because we won the Cold War,
so we forget about the mistakes. Sure, but you know,
I coached third grade basketball for years, and you know,
when you win, everybody forgets about when your star player
fell out.

Speaker 1 (01:24:43):
There's still there's still stuff on film you need.

Speaker 2 (01:24:45):
To fix exactly, and so I won't go through that now.
But we did do a lot of big mistakes. We
can't repeat them, and we are tiptoeing towards.

Speaker 1 (01:24:53):
Some of them.

Speaker 2 (01:24:54):
But the successes that I have a whole chapter on successes,
and the one is about allies and how we got
our allies together in Europe, and I pretty provocatively in
this book say we need more collective security and even
a NATO like structure in Asia to deal with the
rise of China's today. And I think we do need that,

(01:25:15):
and I spend more. I can't go to Rush anymore.
So I spend a lot of time in Asia these days,
and tragically it's moving in exactly the opposite direction, partly
because of Trump, partly because the you know, the more
leftists took over in South Korea, partly because of the
crisis inside Japan, you know, the trading brand ministers. But

(01:25:35):
we are not there yet, and I'm nervous about that.
I'm nervous about that. I was just in Taiwan a
few months ago. They are nervous about it too, that
they should. I just feel like we might sell them out.
And I think that would be a big disaster.

Speaker 1 (01:25:49):
I thought Scott Besson put it on the sellout list,
I mean the negotiating list. Yes, sorry, I mean that
looked like we know where that's at it. Sadly, I
think that's going to take hostile action by China. Before
before everybody says, hey, wait, maybe we had to put
together a coalition.

Speaker 2 (01:26:09):
Well and back to your you know you're analogizing from before.
That might be the wake up thing that we need tragically,
because because as the thirties prove, as you know better,
why but we were asleep and we put our head
in the sands and we said, what you know, Italians
went into Ethiopia, nobody knew where that was.

Speaker 1 (01:26:28):
Japanese went into China, and it's like, you know, why
do we care?

Speaker 2 (01:26:33):
And even when Stalin and Hitler both went into Poland,
you know, in thirty nine, and then Stalin went into
a bunch of other countries, still millions of Americans said,
you don't have a you know, that's not where's that
that's far away. It reminds me so much of what
I hear about Ukraine, and it took forty one to
wake us up. It might have to be something much

(01:26:55):
more kinetic with the Chinese, make us realize that we
can't prevail in the twenty fifth three without being engaged.

Speaker 1 (01:27:02):
Well, the only region we didn't do was the Middle East,
and I know I gotta let you go, So I'm
not gonna there's I could one last question you, but
it's tough.

Speaker 2 (01:27:12):
I'll just say one quick thing, some good news so
you know, I give the President and his team some
credit there. They got a long ways to go. We
need to celebrate good news when it happens, and this
week was good news for the president.

Speaker 1 (01:27:27):
Is it his skill set uniquely suited to the Middle East? Oddly?
Do you buy that earlier?

Speaker 2 (01:27:33):
This works with those leaders and Prime Minister net and Yahoo,
I'm not so sure those those methods are transferable to
guys like.

Speaker 1 (01:27:43):
Putin and she. No, that's I think the that's the
real lesson learned there, because those guys still have they
actually do have ideologies. Correct the other guys power. They
are not They are not dependent on us. The other
guys are are really transactionalists.

Speaker 2 (01:27:57):
Yeah, I agree, Mike.

Speaker 1 (01:28:00):
I Uh, it is a big book. I still got
I still got to finish making my way through it.
But it is definitely a readable book, which that's always important.
So well done, my friend, appreciate that. Thanks, thanks having me.
H well, I hope you enjoyed that uh tour of

(01:28:28):
the world with my friend Mike McFall And do get
the book. Yes it's a readable book. Yes it's a
big book. Okay, both things can be true. And it's
a it's a good long holiday weekend set of reading.
So maybe it's something you think about for either your
the Turkey week or UH or the end of the
year holidays. All right, let's do some questions and then

(01:28:52):
I'll do my little college football preview for the week
as jerk. This comes from Chase Rock, Arkansas. Anyways. Well,
after another derailed Arkansas Razorback football season. Si oh, my
uncle Joe concurs, I've shifted my attention to the new
season of the Morning Show. Giving your experience in the industry,

(01:29:14):
I'm curious how closely does the show reflect the inner
workings of a real network news operation. Is it anywhere
near reality? Pure dramatized fiction. Would love to hear your take.
Oh man, all right, you're gonna get my whininess about
this stuff. It is. It is more fiction than real.

(01:29:34):
Do they get, you know, I would argue in the
first season, you know, and look, I'm never never a
fan of these shows as much that involve things that
involve entities that I've actually been a part of or
have covered. Right, you know, the West Wing used to
frustrate me because it is just not how Washington worked.

(01:29:58):
It is. It is Veep, right, that is more likely,
certainly at least how the how, the how, how how
Washington politicians behave and how they really are. Veep is
more accurate. And it doesn't matter the party of the person,
the the the sort of the the lack of self awareness,

(01:30:19):
the uh, the narcissism that Julie Julia Louis Dreyfus's character
emits is all very much in line. You talk to
any political operative left and right and they would say, oh, yeah,
Veep is much closer. So, you know, I used to
because I do think some people watch it and think

(01:30:40):
this is the way it should be, and I just
would argue, the West Wing has never been that way.
It is literally a utopian version of how life works,
or actually life never has worked, at least in the
political sense. And I would argue with the you know,
I felt a lot of the Sorkin work, which I love, Right,
It's just like I love a few good men, but
I don't know the jag world that well, and I'm

(01:31:03):
sure it doesn't work that way in real life, right
that Tom Cruise is going to, you know, be thundering
away at Colonel Jessup and all of that. So I
just I'm just, you know, I'm suspect on the Morning Show.
It is based loosely in a book that was written
by Brian Stelter about the Morning Show Wars. So what

(01:31:26):
I would say is that there was a time when
there was these outsized personalities. There were the executives behind
the scenes who felt that they were star makers. We
will designate you an anchor and you must leave, you know,
that sort of thing, And there was some truthiness that
that is the way it is. But it is really

(01:31:47):
more of a twentieth century phenomenon. It led into the
twenty first century. I mean, the I to this day
don't know if Matt Lauer made the amount of money
that was reported about him. For those of us even
within it was a shocking amount, and it certainly made
a lot of people related to me assume that I

(01:32:08):
was far wealthier than I am, or I made far
more money than I actually did. It was always an
I'll be honest, it was a bit uncomfortable. How often
it's like, what am I going to do? Go out
there and say, no, that's just you know. I did
get a piece of advice once from somebody that said,
if you never want, if you never want your how
much you make to leak in the public, don't tell

(01:32:29):
anybody because the minute you tell one person, somebody is,
you know, outside your basically immediate family, it's going to
get out. And the fact is nobody's ever accurately had
my ever because I've never told anybody. I refuse. I
don't tell any extended family member, nobody, nobody's business, nobody should.

(01:32:51):
These larger contracts, a lot of times there are people
that want to brag that they were able to get
that amount of money for somebody. So maybe it's an agent,
maybe it's a lawyer, or maybe it's whatever. Sometimes it's
the principle themselves think that it somehow makes them a
bigger star if they're seen as being worth a certain
amount of money. So I would say what the Morning

(01:33:15):
Show captures sort of what that world was like when
I first entered it in twenty eight, twenty oh seven,
twenty eight and twenty oh nine. But literally by the
time of the end of the Great Recession in twenty
twelve and twenty thirteen, the place stopped. You know, it
was sort of it is, you know, you stopped having

(01:33:35):
the larger than life anchors who could get executives fired.
I did see that in my early days. So, you know,
the way to watch the Morning Show is this is
the way that this world worked for about the first
decade of the twenty first century. This is not how

(01:33:56):
the world of Today's show works or Good Morning America.
You know. Yeah, I'm not saying that there isn't some
attempt in the world of Page six and some of
these other gossip columns to try to create drama where
there isn't any, But it doesn't have near the amount
of drama because frankly, the stakes have never been lower. Right,
everybody's losing audience. The fight for exclusives isn't the same anymore.

(01:34:18):
But you know, if you were asked me, when is
the Morning Show sort of peak? Sort of the zeitgeist
of it that it's trying to capture in reality is
somewhere Serkha, I would basically say the peak Morning show
power was probably mid nineties to twenty to twenty twelve,

(01:34:42):
and in that sense that that culture which the Morning
Show still seems to lean on is that. But I
will make a confession, I won't watch it. I watch
enough to understand where they're going, because I don't even
want to see how they're trying to portray people that

(01:35:03):
I know, and they're not portraying them correctly. I don't
even want to get into that game. And so it
is kind of why I kind of I'm not a
viewer of the show anyway. All right, next question comes
from Mattam. Hey love the new podcast. I come for
the political analysis and stay for the college football talk.
I appreciate saying that because more college football is coming up.

(01:35:24):
In a few minutes, you mentioned how the new rules
have made FBS football feel more like the NFL. But
what are your thoughts on fcs and Division two and
three programs as the truer representation of college athletics. My
alma mater, Presbyterian College is a great example. For years
of struggle, they've turned things around and are now six
and oh proving that good leadership and love of the
game still matter, Matt m Look, I do think you're

(01:35:45):
going to see it's going to be interesting about the
way D three works and actually how D three could
end up being sort of for the love of the
game division on that front, and obviously with some D
two in that. But I emphasize D three because my

(01:36:05):
beloved University Miami Hurricanes won the D three hockey championship
and they're a rec team. They never actually are, they
don't play, they're not a Division one team. They don't
have an on site facility to practice in or anything
like that. I think the I think there will be
somewhere something in between rec and this professionalized minor league

(01:36:31):
football that's being created, right, which will you know, I
think you're going to see a whole bunch of Division
one schools go down to D three. There won't be scholarships,
and so it will be more of the for the
love of the game type of stuff, and I you know,

(01:36:53):
in that look, sports is still important to alumni. Sports
is still I'm very friendly with the president of GW
where I went. She's new president, Ellen Gramberg. I'm biased.
I think she's terrific. I think She's been a breath
of fresh air for the university. She views sports as
a way to build community. It's look, it's there's a

(01:37:14):
financial cost to it if you want to be competing
on that division ie level, and there's always some set
of donors that want to do that. But she also
believes that there's you know, wouldn't be a surprise if
you see a lot of the mid major conferences sort
of get cut in half because schools decide they don't
want to try to keep up financially to try to

(01:37:35):
be you know, even just mid level relevant and Division
I college basketball for instance, and instead drop down to
D three and if you can still keep a culture,
I mean, because that sports does create community on college
campuses and content and that is part of the student
experience and it's becoming an important part of recruiting students

(01:37:55):
to apply to schools. So I'm hopeful, well, I want
it to be that. I want to have that nostalgia,
But I wonder if we start to see something that's
a little more that you have. And I'd love to
see the NCAA change these rules. I think every school

(01:38:17):
should be able to find something their division one in
and right now I think you can be Division one
in one sport and then Division three and everything else.
I think you have that in hockey, there's a I
think Colorado College is one of those, if I'm not mistaken.
I'd like to see that more loosened up a little
bit where you pick and shows it, you know, because

(01:38:37):
you're going to have certain sports that maybe you have
the alumni financial network to support to be Division one,
and then certain sports that you don't, but you still
want to have students feel as if there's something to
play for and compete with and have in the world
of Division three, I'd love to see a little more
flexibility there. I think it's a way to sort of
keep up the spirit of amateur athletics at the same

(01:39:00):
time embrace this new world that that is the reality
of the revenues generating sports in college. All right, next
question two part question here it comes from John from Frisco, Texas.
I'm learning more about Frisco, another one of these growing

(01:39:22):
ex serb suburbs of the Dallas area of the Metroplex.
Anyway to our question. Love the show and have followed
the podcast from your Meet the Press days. Given Greg
Abbot's enthusiasm for supporting the Trump administration by sending the
Texas Guard to Chicago. Do you think that the Texas
governor is using the national notoriety as a launching point
towards twenty twenty eight in the Republican nomination. You've mentioned
that members of the administration maybe I'm twenty twenty eight,

(01:39:44):
but may not have as much of a resume to
run on. Would Abbot be more formidable in the primary. Also,
what sorts of other non political podcasts do you listen to?
I think you mentioned some economics ones. Would you name
some of them here? Thanks? Love the show, Go Caines
John from Frisco, Texas. So, look, I think Abbott wants
to be would like to try to run for president.
I think Dave Carney, his chief political advisor, who I've

(01:40:06):
known forever, one of the savvier Republican strategists out there,
has some unique New Hampshire ties, and he could certainly
help Abbot there. I just don't know if Abbot's going
to be able to be I don't know what his
lane is, right. You know, one of the stories that

(01:40:26):
I meant to bring up at the start of this
podcast that I didn't get to was the story about
how Christy Nomes government paid ad campaign praising you know,
sort of praising President Trump for the elevated deportations. It's
funny the coverage of it is being portrayed as you know,

(01:40:48):
this ad campaign to support the Trump administration. I look
at it as a taxpayer funded ad campaign to promote
Christy Nome for president in twenty twenty eight. The point
is is that you have Christy Nome wanting to run
for president, Tulsea Gabbert wants to run for president, RFK
Junior wants to run for president, Marco Rubio wants to

(01:41:11):
do it. Maybe he joins as a ticket with JD Vance.
What do Donald Trump Junior Eric Trump end up doing?
I think they both have some interesting ambition. Is twenty
eighth the year that they try to execute it. The
point is is that and then you have Rand Paul
and Glenn Younkin who are clearly going to not run
as MAGA candidates. All these other candidates I mentioned are

(01:41:33):
all going to try to be in the Magalene. What
is Abbot going to do? Right? Abbott in some ways
has succeeded in Texas politics because he's been He's been
somebody that hasn't been seen as on one side or
the other in this intra party war that is happening
in Texas. Right, Cornyn v. Paxton in the Senate primary
is actually more than about John Cornyn and more than

(01:41:55):
you know, sort of a maga versus the Rhinos whatever
you want to describe if you're on the snarky right,
you know, it was it was a Republican controlled House
of State House or representatives in Texas that impeached Ken Paxton, right,
it was. This has been a bipartisan effort, but it's
really been sort of a divide inside the Texas Republican Party.

(01:42:19):
And Abbott, you know, is times nervous about the Ken
Paxton and Dan Patrick wing. Dan Patrick the lieutenant governor,
and in Texas, the lieutenant governor in some ways has
more actual policy power than the governor, being the president
of the Senate and really sort of very much has
a lot more influence at times on the legislature than

(01:42:41):
the governor does. But Patrick's clearly to Abbot's right, Paxton
clearly to Habbits right. Abbott definitely you know, came up
more through as an ag during the Rick Perry came
up through sort of the Bush and Perry years of
the Republican Party, and Perry, all you might say, is
slightly more conservative than w I mean, you know, Perry
never you know, this is the guy that once called

(01:43:02):
Donald Trump a cancer on conservatism. We used to run
these clips so often. I used to know them all
cancer on conservatism that he said multiple times the day
he dropped out of the race, and an attempt to
consolidate an anti Trump candidate back in the twenty sixteen race,
remember he ran twice. He was a front runner for

(01:43:23):
about two days until he couldn't figure out which which
of the three agencies he wanted to eliminate, and that
sort of went the campaign went south there. So I
just don't know if Abbot has a as a as
an easy lane. I think Abbot only becomes a viable
candidate if MAGA is seen as a broken ideology or

(01:43:46):
as a as a net negative in the Republican Party
in twenty twenty eight. What's the likelihood of that, right?
I think I definitely think Abbot's itching to do something
else and he wants to run for president. But I

(01:44:06):
you know, I just I don't know what he doesn't
he's not comfortably mega. He tries to be Mega adjacent,
but he's also you know, he does he does end up.
I think he's a closet Chamber of Commerce Republican who
is trying to play mega and every once in a
while that comes through. So I don't see it. That

(01:44:30):
doesn't mean he won't try. He's going to want to
do it. You know, he would be the third straight
Texas governor to try to do this. W did it.
Perry ran twice and it didn't go well, and you'd
have Abbot there. Abbitt's on the verge of Actually, Rick
Perry's the longest serving governor, and now Abbot, if he
wins this reelection, is going to end up uh surpassing

(01:44:53):
that mark. So I'm a I'm I'm a bit I'm
a bit more skeptical. So you're asking me my pod casts,
how much do I confess trying to see here? How
much do I confess to some of these gambling podcasts
that I listened to? But you're asking what I listened to?
So I listened to Simmons, I listened to Kornheiser, their

(01:45:15):
pals during football season. There's a couple of I like
the guys at the Action Network. Their football previews some
of the best there's there's I can't even I keep
forgetting the guys. He goes by his last name his
last name only. I'm drawing a blank on it. I

(01:45:37):
think it's Sharky or Stucky. Excuse me. Sharky's another friend
of mine, a guy named Stucky. I enjoy his football previews.
I think they're very good. Other podcasts that I enjoy
I listened to something the White House sixteen hundred Sessions.
This is basically the White House Historical Association. They always

(01:45:59):
have some fun sort of history nuggets about presidents. They
have one on presidential pets that I have found myself enjoying.
The Acquired podcast. These are these huge, long deep dives
on like how did Google become Google? And it's almost

(01:46:20):
like a like a biography of a company. They did
one on JP Morgan and had an hour long interview
with Jamie Diamond that I felt found just super fascinating.
And you know, look, their podcasts are commitments, so sometimes
you know, they only put the big ones out once
a month because it takes almost a month to do that.

(01:46:43):
I enjoy the Bulwarks Hollywood podcast Sunny Bunch as sort
of an an entertainment culture that you know, talks a
little culture stuff in the media world I enjoy. I
enjoy both the Ben Smith podcast on Semaphore and Dylan
Buyer's on Puck. It's funny. I don't listen to many

(01:47:06):
political podcasts. I listened to sort of media podcasts on
that front. I'll listen to some issue specific stuff on
foreign policy and on domestic policy, and then I just
grab highlights of some of the other political podcasts out
there that I know have have that but as far
as my own personal those those are the ones that

(01:47:28):
do and I should. There's there's also there's one baseball
card podcast I consistently listen to. It's it's called There
Is No Off Season. I believe it's what it's called.
And uh I they do a pretty good job of

(01:47:49):
sort of assessing the market for sports cards. So there,
I probably revealed too much about my habits, but you asked,
and I thought i'd chair. I'm gonna take one more
question here and do my little college football preview here.
This comes from Aaron from Skokie, Illinois. Why are conservatives
attacking bad bunnies? Citizenship? It's hard to believe they don't

(01:48:12):
know he's an American citizen. Yeah, I know, Puerto Rico
is one of those. Apparently that's one of those trick
questions on the test right just feels like a blatant
display of racism. If they were honest and said they
simply don't like that the Super Bowl halftime show will
be in Spanish, they might actually find more agreement than
they expect. I'm a Mexican American but don't speak Spanish
and his music isn't really my style yet now, because

(01:48:32):
of his backlash, even people like me feel compelled to
watch just to push back against the hate. The idea
of replacing him with Lee Greenwood is laughable. There's zero
chance that happens, right, pr Nightmare, thanks for the show. Look, Aaron,
you're not wrong, and you know I'm now of the
age that I expect whoever's picked is somebody that isn't
appealing to me. You know, I know what the NFL

(01:48:52):
is up to. They're trying to appeal to a younger demographic,
and they're really trying to appeal to a more Latino demographic.
The single, by the way, the single most streamed. You know,
he said, what was it, Ronda Santis attack Bad Bunny.
He's like, I don't you know, I don't even know
who this guy is. Well, he was only the most
streamed artist in the state of Florida according to Spotify

(01:49:15):
in calendar year twenty twenty four. So a lot of
Ronda Santis's constituents seem to know who Bad Bunny is.
But whenever you're picking any genre of music, you're gonna
alienate people who don't like that genre of music. It,
you know, I'm sure a lot of when they did
the Who, there were a lot of people going, why

(01:49:38):
are they doing old people music? Right? So it's a
it's obvious to me this is it's almost always the
halftime show feels like an attempt to talk to a
demographic that the NFL feels like that they don't know
how to talk to h and they use an artist

(01:49:58):
to try to do that, and frankly, they're pretty smart
about it. The NFL continues to grow its fan base.
They're the most you know, the thing that everybody ought
to respect here in the NFL. I think has learned this,
you know, sort of figuring out how to try to
get above the culture wars right, Colin Kaeperne put them

(01:50:20):
knee deep into the culture wars between. Really, Donald Trump
suck them into the culture wars more than anything. But
when you look at the demographics of football fans, it
looks like the demographics of the country right when I
mean football is the single most sort of honest representation

(01:50:40):
of the It is literally something like thirty seven percent Republican,
thirty seven percent Democrat right, and everybody else independent. I mean,
it's like the actual presidential electorate is represented. You know
amongst football fans. Most other sports haven't have a lean right.
Baseball fans it leans right, golf fans that leans right,

(01:51:01):
NBA fans lean left, NHL fans lean right like WNBA
fans lean left. So you see, there's some of the
sports you kind of like you could look you just
look at the crowd when you see go to a
game and you have an idea of the because our
politics is in some ways is so identity based right now.

(01:51:23):
But I would caution everybody be careful. I mean, the
NFL is America. It is a tapestry. It is the
NFL fan base is the complicated picture of America. That
is an asset for the NFL, and I do think
when it comes to their attempts to do more outreach,

(01:51:45):
particularly in the Western hemisphere, they've now had back to
back years of games in Brazil. There's no doubt in
my mind that I think Mexico City, at some point
or Monterey, one of the two is going to have
a major league sport franchise, and maybe it's an NFL
team first, although the doubts. Cowboys, who have the largest

(01:52:07):
number of fans in Mexico, actually don't want to see
a Mexico City team because for the same reason they
that they don't want a team in Austin, Texas either,
even though that's at a metro area that actually could
support one, because they want to have they want to
have the demographic to themselves. They want to make they
want to make money off off of that demographic. So

(01:52:29):
I find the whole thing it's just a pretty closed
minded way of thinking. I look at this when I
see these decisions, I'm like, oh, I need to understand
that this are the NFL is not picking somebody that
isn't popular, Okay, so and I know that this is
you know what, to me, the most amazing fact about
what the NFL does is that they never pay the
halftime they know they like. They basically say, if you

(01:52:53):
you're going to make so much money becoming the halftime entertainment,
we don't have to pay you. That is extraordinary, how
powerful that they NiFi has that kind of power. So

(01:53:17):
this is the first of what are going to be
a series of games for my beloved Miami Hurricanes where
they're supposed to win, and they're going to face a
whole bunch of teams that they got the big target
on their back. And if you want to make a
name for yourself, you've got a shot at doing it.
I am petrified of this Louisville game. I'm glad it's

(01:53:37):
first of all. These standalone games on Thursday and Friday
are just always, you know, feel like traps. You know,
my wife's beloved Florida State Seminoles lost them this Friday
night game at Charlottesville. Now, if this game we're at Louisville,
I'd be a lot more nervous. In fact, Miami has
been through tough games. Louisville has always seen Miami as

(01:54:02):
an aspirational rival, is what I would call it. Mimi.
You know, like Louisville is you know, right. They they
had Howard celiber as a coach after Miami. They recruit
sort of, you know, they try to recruit anybody that
Miami rejects down in Miami. That you look at their roster,
it's filled with a lot of South Florida guys. They

(01:54:22):
actually won one of the bigger recruiting battles that I
can remember about ten years ago, when they got Teddy Bridgewater.
Teddy Bridgewaters should have been a University of Miami quarterback.
We had a guy named Jacorey Harris at the time.
Teddy Bridgewater was actually his replacement at the same high
school that Jacorey Harris played at. Jack Cory Harris was
a full four year starter, very good. Bridgewater was better.

(01:54:43):
Bridgewater didn't want to sit behind Jacorey for two or
three years, which is why I ended up going to Louisville.
I'm convinced had Bridgewaters come to Miami sat behind Harris
would have ended up probably having.

Speaker 2 (01:54:57):
Well.

Speaker 1 (01:54:57):
It certainly would have helped Miami's football program in the
early in the early teens. But look, I'm nervous about it.
You know, right now, it's Miami against themselves for the
rest of their schedule. On paper, if you look at
it analytically, they're going to be double digit favorites in
every game they have left. To me, the nervous the
games that I'm nervous about going forward from Miami. One

(01:55:20):
is this Louisville game Friday night. And my daughter will
tell you traffic to hard Rock is a you know,
it sucks on a Saturday. It really sucks on a
Friday evening. So I'm nervous about the crowd attendance though
this year man, Miami fans have turned out even for
sort of the you know, the the games that don't
that aren't on the marquee, So I'm pretty pleased about that.

(01:55:45):
But that game has me nervous. The game at SMU
Road game that'll be for Miami's first road game outside
of the state of Florida on November first, And then
of course the Pit game that's the last game, that's
our last regular season game of the year, and that
Pit We've struggled that pit before. When we were we

(01:56:05):
blew a Pit game in twenty seventeen. We were on
our way to and were already qualified for the a
SEC title game. So it didn't really matter, except it
was the beginning of sort of we lose to pit
then we get pummeled by Clemson, and then it was like, oh,
Miami was a mirage. We were a ten and oh
start and then we turned into a mirage. So we
don't have Georgia Tech on our schedule, thankfully, which is

(01:56:28):
the other nemesis in Miami. So obviously Friday night, I
think a lot of you will end up watching that game.
I hope it's not a game by the second half.
We shall see a couple of other games of note
this weekend. You know, Brian Kelly will find out the
Brian Kelly hot seat. You know how hot will his
seat get in LSU? Well, he LSU's going to Vanderbilt.

(01:56:55):
LSU's an underdog at Vanderbilt, right, and I'd love to
know I Every week there's a new stat not since
the nineteen forties is a ranked Vanderbilt team played another
ranked team or not since the nineteen forties has the
YadA YadA YadA happened? Right with Vanderbilt. This is a
hugely important game for both teams. If either team basically
winners winner is this is a playoff elimination game. They're

(01:57:18):
both five and one second loss for either one of
them I think puts them on a path to not
make the playoff, and in Lshu's case, it probably puts
Brian Kelly on the hot seat. An unlost to Vanderbilt,
so that'll be a big deal. Duke Georgia Tech. This
has Georgia Tech upset. I think they should be an

(01:57:39):
upset alert. Duke's actually the favorite. It's a home game
for Duke. If Georgia Tech loses before you know, loses
before the end of their see, this is probably their
toughest game left on their acc schedule. A little of course,
play Georgia at the end of the year their and
their annual rivalry game. But this is probably the game

(01:58:00):
I'm going to be putting in one of my four
boxes at noon on Saturday. I would have put Ohio
State Wisconsin on this. I can't believe Luke Fickle still
got a job. The embarrassment of getting shut out by
Iowa after they supposedly did push ups, being embarrassed that

(01:58:22):
they gave up forty two points to Iowa the year before,
and they were this focused on the Iowa game that
I guess this time they only gave up thirty seven
points instead of forty two points. Something ain't right in Wisconsin.
I hate that Wisconsin football all of a sudden looks
like they did in the eighties. Right. Wisconsin football was
a doormat in the eighties until they finally Frankly, it

(01:58:45):
was the leadership with Dona Shalala, who spent more money
hiring when she was the chancellor at in the University
of Wisconsin. She deserves a lot of credit for getting
sort of both Wisconsin football and Wisconsin basketball sort of
back off the mat in the sort of higher tier
of Big Ten football. It's just something's wrong that Wisconsin.

(01:59:06):
This isn't working. I you know, I can't imagine that
they're going to get up for this Ohio State game,
but you know, it might be the only shot Thickle
has to give himself one more year. One other game
that I think a couple other games Texas A and

(01:59:26):
m at Arkansas is it. Did Bobby Patrino give Arkansas
a sort of one game dead cat bounced type of
focus or does the Patrino difference carry over in a
second week? And if it does, this is a dangerous
game for an M on the road at Arkansas. It's

(01:59:51):
you know, you saw the game with Tennessee. The one
thing about Patrino he wants you know he's playing for
this job. I think it's an absolute non starter. I
cannot believe he's in a candidate to be coach again,
considering all the drama. There's the athletic that a terrific
sort of rundown of all the ways that he's been

(02:00:14):
an untrustworthy person to hire, whether it was in his
flirtations to go to other schools, let alone the infamous
motorcycle incident at Arkansas, et cetera. But if he starts
winning football games, as we know, winning changes everything, right,
Winning cures a lot of concerns among donors or administrators.

(02:00:34):
Upsetting Texas A and M would go a long way.
So I don't think Arkansas is going to quit in
this game. Katrino's going to keep throwing, going to keep
trying to do trick play. It's going to do all
sorts of things. If I were an A and M fan,
because I think A and M's best team in the SEC,
I'd be really this game would really have me nervous
the way I'm nervous about Louisville that I think it's

(02:00:56):
that time of game and them should win. But if
you told me this were a field goal game in
the fourth quarter, wouldn't surprise me. And then, of course,
the best story in the SEC this year is the
is the new quarterback for ole Myths? Let me get
his name right? Uh? I read a terrific story about him.
Trinidad Chambliss. Uh, it's a. It was for the Trinity.

(02:01:19):
If he had been a girl, he was going to
be Trinity. They decided to do Trinidad. It's been. It's
this guy is a as a marvel. And the fact
that they they couldn't believe what they saw his story.
He was sort of a multi sport athlete, was was
focused more on basketball, ended up playing D two football.
Folks didn't realize how good he was at it, and

(02:01:41):
lo and behold, he's quite the story. We'll find out.
I don't know if either Georgia or ole Miss is
playoff quality, right, I you know, the the ole Miss
barely getting by Washington State last week. Maybe there was
a look I had spot with Georgia. I'm I'm, I'm
fine with that, But Georgia needs to sort of have
something to prove as well here. This is one of those.

(02:02:02):
It's not an eliminator for Ole Miss if they lose,
but it is if Georgia loses. So this is an
important in some way. It's a more important game for
Georgia than anybody else after that. Alabama Tennessee. I know,
Alabama Tennessee. This one also might be an elimination game, right,

(02:02:26):
Not every two loss team in the SEC is going
to make it, and the loser of this will have
their second loss, so it's Alabama's of course doesn't have
only this would be their first conference loss, so that
is a bit of advantage here for them. Tennessee cares
about the Alabama rivalry more than I think Alabama cares

(02:02:47):
about the Tennessee rivalry. That's one of those big brother
little brother games. I'm more of a believer in Alabama
this one. I'm curious if they can get margin here.
Expect them to get some margin. If they don't, maybe
that tells us maybe maybe I'm not so not so

(02:03:07):
right about that. USC. Notre Dame is this week. That's
one of these great rivalries. My wife's got no attend
one of those games at Notre Dame. It's one of
those I'd like to I'd like to see. It's an
important game for both teams. Obviously, every game is an
elimination game for Notre Dame now with their two losses.
As long as Texas A and M and Miami keep winning,
Notre Dame is going to make it into the playoff

(02:03:28):
as a ten and two team. They will not make
it to the playoff as a nine to three team.
This is the toughest game remaining on their schedule, hands
down the toughest game remaining on their schedule. So a
pretty important game. And then I realized I should not
be remiss. One of my favorite rivalry names is the
Utah BYU game, The Holy War. I don't know is

(02:03:48):
it politically correct to say the Holy War or not.
Either way, it's one of the great names for a
rivalry game. This one's at BYU, and this one also
actually had some playoff implications, big twelve implications. Don't sleep
on BYU. They're still undefeated. They are still undefeated, all right.

(02:04:11):
Enjoy your weekend in college football. Hopefully, depending on how
Friday Night goes, I get to do the same. And
with that, I'll see you next week,

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