Full Episode - Marjorie Taylor-Greene Is An "America First” True Believer…Trump Isn’t + The Barn, The South, and the Stories America Still Won’t Tell - The Chuck ToddCast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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percent off. Hello, They're happy Monday, Happy Thanksgiving week. Welcome

(01:25):
to another episode of the Chuck Podcast. Look, it is
a holiday week, but this feed is not going to
be light this week. It's just going to be our
normal feed. Monday, We're probably going to do Monday, Wednesday,
Friday in dropping stuff. Not going to bother to drop
something on Thursday morning. Assuming you will need more time
to you can catch up on the Monday and Wednesday
drops right on that front. But look, we've got a

(01:49):
lot of intro I've got some fun different types of
interviews that I've done over the last couple of weeks
that are you know, I always say, kind of culture adjacent,
less than new adjacent might be with the way. Including
my guest today, right Thompson easily one of my favorite
sports writers to read well. He's just one of my

(02:10):
favorite people to read. It doesn't matter whether he's writing
about sports or his book The Barn, which is a
very what I would call a very personal He inserts
himself in the narrative because he grew up twenty three
miles from this place, as he will tell you in
the interview. The Barn is about where Emmett Till was

(02:32):
killed in Mississippi. And what I just really enjoyed about
Writ's book is that he really sort of brings you,
brings the Till family, brings the region to life, brings
the Delta to life in ways that no matter how
much of the Till story you think you know, you

(02:52):
don't know the whole story. You don't know life in
the Delta. You don't know life in that part of
Mississippi today and back when Emmettil was killed. It's just a,
like I said's where Right Thompson grew up. So it's
very personal and it reads personally, but it is just
a terrific book. And I think the interview, I'm, like

(03:16):
I said, I'm kind of a fanboy of Right Thompson
as a as a sports reader. If you will, I
think I think it easily. When I think of some
of the great sports writing of all time. Some of
the pieces that jump out and you'll hear him and
I talk about it include Richard ben Kramer, among others.
Obviously you have Frank the Ford, just some terrific long

(03:38):
form writers. Where we don't get long form the way
we used to anymore. You know it just Sports illustrated
isn't Sports isn't the sports illustrated. I grew up with
Esquire and GQ, where a lot of these and even
Rolling Stone where you'd get some of these interesting long
form sports right, sort of interesting profiles of major sports

(03:59):
face tears. It's just there's just not the same homes
that we were so used to getting, but instead we
get it orally Right, you get it in the podcast,
or you get it in a great book. This is
a great book. And i'd like to think that Right
and I had a pretty pretty good conversation. And if
you dig this podcast and you sort of like where

(04:22):
I sort of take things both with news and culture
and where what spots I like to pick, I do
think you'll trust me on this one. I think you'll
enjoy this conversation with Right. Just so there's that. I
also have my one week to go before Doomsday for
the ACC and Miami and the College Football Playoff Committee.

(04:44):
I will get into the week that was in college football,
and of course we have a tremendous, amazing final regular
season week that is coming up, especially if you were
fans of the Big Twelve and the ACC since we
don't quite know who's going to playing in those championship games.
And then of course I'll have some I have the

(05:05):
toodcast time machine and a few a few of your
and I'll answer a few of your emails. I'll just
say the time machine. It's just very you. Obviously, you
know what I do. I'm always in the week that
we are in, so as you might imagine, Thanksgiving plays
a role in my toodcast time Machine segment this week.

(05:27):
Other than that little hint, I will make you wait
until after the Right Thompson interview to find all that out.
But before we get started, obviously, there's been a couple
of major pieces of news since I last checked in,
the biggest being the resignation from Congress of Marjorie Taylor
Green after a very high profile split with President Trump.

(05:51):
Almost a clearly this was her response to whatever threats
Trump made to her politically about primary challengers and all
of that, and she made the decision that I'm out,
and I think a lot of people are making a
lot of assumptions in different ways. She's already responded to
one of the rumors that she's pulling back now because

(06:13):
she's thinking about running for president. She tried to shut
that down as best as she could on that. And
then of course there's those that have jumped on the ah, Look,
she's resigning just in time to get her pension. Yes
that is a fact. Yes that is true. But do
look at the numbers. This is the minimum amount that
she'll get, because five years is when it is the

(06:35):
minimum time served before you're eligible for a pension, for
a congressional pension. Certainly, because there's so few pensions in
the private sector these days, any pension sounds like a
good thing. But this isn't like she's going to be
collecting the max of her congressional salary or anything like
that when you hit the minimum. So certainly, yes, she

(06:58):
did make sure she add he resignation to make sure
she made it to that five year anniversary. It is
given the amount of money she's likely to make, giving
speeches and some other things to say she did this
just for her pension. I think it's reach and it's
looking for a story. So it's certainly I don't see

(07:20):
a lot of evidence that says that. Only if you
really want to make that an issue, if you want to.
It's one of those if you want to, if you
want to squit really hard and think you're you've you've
got a gotcha here, you can go for it. This
one doesn't feel like it passes that smell test to me.
What this is about is what I've been chronicling, and
I think, arguably not to pull a muscle trying to

(07:43):
pat my own self on the back, but I believe
I've been telling you that this crack up is coming.
I wrote about it about a month ago. You could
start to see all the signs and there were just
various trigger points, whether it was Epstein, whether it was
the tariffs, whether it was souring economy. Then we got
I know, wrote all this before what happened in twenty
twenty five for the election. So this is obviously something
that if you've been a listener to this podcast I've been,

(08:04):
you're sort of been on top of and we're watching it,
and I said, you know, you were going to see it.
In some cases it would be big deals, in some
cases they would be small cracks. And just in the
last if you look at the last seventy two hours
or ninety six hours you've had her resignation, you've got
a huge divide inside the Republican Party over this Ukraine
peace deal that the President is trying to shove down

(08:26):
Ukraine's throat. It is not a good deal, nowhere close
to being a good deal, and it does feel it.
And there's some confusion driven by a Republican senator named
Mike Grounds who said Rubio told him this was a
Russian author document and then but you really have to
parse the words there, and I'm going to get into that,

(08:47):
but I'm going to start with Marjorie Taylor Green because
I do think that the she fits the definition of
true believer, and she is a I think in America. First,
I think going back, you know we've talked about I've
spent some time talking about the history of the Republican
Party on this podcast, and how you know we've they're

(09:08):
actually are ebbs and flows to the party. If you
look at it over the last one hundred years. Right
one hundred years ago, this party was very isolationist. This
is in the nineteen twenties. It was pro tariff at
the time, it was considered about protecting American industry. It's
what the business community actually was pro tariff. So and
they were in bed with that administration, the Harding administration

(09:30):
and then later became the Coolidge administration. So you had
sort of that similarity there was. This was a party
that was for immigration quotas. You know, we don't call
them quotas now, but you're seeing you know, whether it's
Trump pulling the temporary protected status, whether it's for Venezuelans
or somalis that he just triggered over the weekend. So

(09:50):
the fact is this, there is this wing of the
party that Trump essentially is trying resurrect it. Right, Trump
himself isn't as America first, or is his isolationists or
is his maga as the rest of his coalition actually is.
And you can take a look at somebody like Marjorie
Tayl Green, who I think in some ways is more

(10:11):
maga than Trump, and certainly more you know, when if
I go back in history more of the it was.
You know, in nineteen fifty two, it was considered the
Taft Eisenhower split inside the party. Right, he had the
Eisenhower wing, which became the predominant wing of the Republican
Party for basically about seventy years, essentially from Eisenhower to Romney.

(10:33):
And you had the taft Republicans who were the remnants
in fifty two of the protectionists of the twenties and thirties,
of the isolationist movement of the twenties and thirties. And
this is what Pat Buchanan brought back in nineteen ninety
two and what Donald Trump basically cobbled together. Right, don't
I think we all know this about Trump. Trump's no
political scientists, He's no political theorist. He just sort of

(10:55):
is a a gut politician. He found a constituency, he
found a way to differentiate himself within the Republican Party
that actually stumbled into a coherent ideology of sorts. And
this is what it is. It's why. But when I
say stumble, I use that word for a reason because
this is why he's had real a ton of trouble governing.

Speaker 2 (11:17):
Right.

Speaker 1 (11:18):
He's he's really not successfully governed at all, not in
his first term, not in his second term. Right, that
tax cut was more of the of the Republican Party
that is not represented by Marjorie Taylor Green back in
the first term. All of what he's his adventures, right,
what he's doing in Venezuela, that's a that's a that's
an eye that is absolutely more of an Eisenhower wing

(11:39):
of the party type of move. What he's been doing
in the Middle East. So it is this is not
a presidency that has actually been governing by the ideological
coalition he built. And I think in many ways, even
though Epstein is clearly the breaking point here between Marjorie
Taylor Green and Trump, when you start to look at

(12:03):
what she's and this is what I want to spend
a few minutes doing. I want to read her entire statement.
I'm not going to read the whole thing, but I
want to read certain parts of this statement because I
do think if she does want to run for president
representing this wing of the party, she may be more
of a you know, she is going to be this

(12:25):
She could be the stalking horse for the Bannon, for
Steve Bann. Right, there's always been some jokes that Steve
Bannon himself may run. Steve Bannon will. The things he
espouses and what MTG espouses are very very similar, right,
Bannon is not going to be a vanced guy. Bannon,
I think, is going to be the guy that does
everything he can to stop Vance, at least in the primaries, right.

(12:47):
And he certainly isn't going to be a Rubio guy.
He is absolutely going to want to stop Peter Tiel though,
and the entire big tech community, at least the Steve
Bannon that I've dealt with over the years, and that
I've been dealing with a bit this year. I think
in this sense, this is where there is a Venn
diagram here, and if she is running for president, I

(13:08):
think we got a hint at what her messaging might
look like. So look, let me start with her opening
statement here. I've always represented the common American man and
woman as a member of the House of Representatives, which
is why I've always been despised in Washington, DC and
never fit in. Americans are used by our Americans are
used by the political industrial complex of both political parties
election cycle after election cycle, in order to elect whichever

(13:30):
side can convince Americans to hate the other side more
and the insults are always the same. Think about that
statement there a minute, right, This is why I want
to annotate this statement a bit. Political industrial complex is
a fascinating phrase. She's not wrong, right, some people use uniparty.
I think that there is a certainly the way K
Street works, Certainly how the big tech community has worked,

(13:53):
how the crypto world has worked. They have basically bought
off pieces of both parties. That is when I political
industrial complex. That's what first place I go, Yes, the
way your major industries buy off pieces of both parties
because the whole goal, which is frankly smart as far
as business is concerned, but very I think demoralizing if

(14:17):
you're a true believer in either party, right on where
you are, depending on where you are in some of
these issues is how easily you do have And it
almost always is. Every time you see somebody be in
the minority in their party but be supportive of some issue.
Maybe it's a trade issue, maybe it's a terrif issue,

(14:37):
maybe it's a new helping a new sector. It's always
followed by and they've just had a shit ton of
money raised for them in a superpack or a ton
of money raised for them here, or their former chief
of staff is now working for this lobbying firm. Right
it is. So the point is is that she's identified

(14:58):
a correct issue that I've been talking about before, and
that is there is truth to what is the political
industrial complex. Just like the right likes to think there's
a media industrial complex, some of us have broken free
and don't buy that as much, but there certainly is one,
and there's now one developing in some ways. That's the

(15:20):
Ellisons and the Murdochs. I would argue that they're what's
been created on the right. That is something that has
concentrated power among two families who have a political agenda
that are going to own something like seventy to eighty
You throw in this next Artegna business, and this wing
of the party is going to control seventy or eighty
percent of sort of legacy media over the next couple

(15:41):
of years. I think that in itself is also going
to make people a bit upset. Let me keep going
here and note the various things she says. So then
she adds, no matter which way the political pendulum swings,
Republican or Democrat, nothing ever gets better for the common
American man or woman. The debt goes higher, corporate and global,
and just remained Washington sweethearts. Well, let me put a

(16:02):
pause in there. We've been voting against. Right, She's not
wrong about this in her what she's identified now. I'm
not raising her up as some political hero. I think
her rhetoric, I think her conspiracy theories have made her
a sort of a very questionable player at times in
the political space. I think she got, if I'm going

(16:23):
to take this statement at face value, then early on
she got caught up in the wrong part of politics,
thinking the theater was the point. Hopefully, maybe she's really
gotten religion here and realized this theater is actually a distraction,
and theater is how you avoid accountability. But the fact is,

(16:46):
why do we had voters that are going back and forth?
We have been literally like a windshield wiper of the
political electorate going back to twenty twenty oh six. Right,
you know, we had a pretty stable election in twenty
oh four, thing got reelected. Right, then at twenty oh six,
both the House and Senate flip twenty oh eight, the
White House flips twenty ten, the House flips twenty twelve,

(17:09):
our last non flipping election, okay, where status quo is reelected.
Twenty fourteen, The Senate flips, twenty sixteen, the White House flips.
Twenty eighteen, the House flips. Twenty twenty, the White House
flips twenty twenty two, The House flips twenty twenty four.
The White House flips. Oh, and the Senate flips too. Sorry,
the White House and the Senate and twenty twenty six

(17:30):
he looks like the House is going to flip. And
if it is, if current trends hold, the Senate's going
to flip too. I am getting more bullish on the
Senate for the Democrats simply because of how poorly Trump
is managing his current coalition one two, how poorly he's
managing this economy, and frankly, because this economy is not good.

(17:53):
So she is right the way I think working class
swing voters feel. They keep voting against, they're not voting for.
They know what they don't want, and they keep expressing
those views. Then she gets into the issue that I
think is going to become a very salient issue in
twenty twenty eight.

Speaker 2 (18:10):
Jobs.

Speaker 1 (18:11):
She goes this, American jobs continue to be replaced, whether
it's by illegal labor, legal labor, by visas, or just
shipped overseas. Small businesses continue to be swallowed by big corporations.
I could easily see her adding an issue of big
tech and AI and that job displacement as well. Job displacement.
Fear of job displacement is going to be singularly the

(18:33):
most I think, a very important issue in twenty eight,
and likely you'll start to see a lot of it
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(19:39):
unless they win. Then she goes right into our America
First focus. Here, America's harder and tax dollars always fund foreignwards,
foreign eight, and foreign interest. The spending power of the
dollar continues to decline, the average American family to no
longer survive on a single breadwinners income, as both parents
must work in order to simply survive. So this is

(20:00):
where I look at a sentence like this and say,
she's a shunned true believer. She really believed in this
conservative America First movement. She believed in this idea. Hey,
we're doing too much overseas. We need to focus at home.
You need to focus at home so you can give
people the opportunity to raise a family with only a
single income. Right this is culturally where many on the

(20:20):
right would also like to be as well. So this
is where i read this statement, and this was the
first time I'm like, she's a spurned She basically she
believed the talking points, she believed the bullshit that Trump
has been saying, and she's really and it's like, I think,

(20:40):
in some ways it's possible her anger and reaction is
she's mad at herself for buying into it, mad at
herself for buying into Trump and realizing because I think
a lot of people, I mean, I think this is
the big danger here, especially when you're in your tenth
year as sort of leading the creating the political weather
that Trump's been doing. In general, his Jedi mind tricks

(21:04):
don't have the same impact anymore.

Speaker 2 (21:06):
You know.

Speaker 1 (21:07):
It's sort of like, or to put it in football terms,
you know, he's still running the same offense that works
seven years ago, and he's not making enough adjustments, and
everybody else has made adjustments, and he still hasn't made
any adjustments. Trump still tries the same stick, still tries
the you know, fake news media's lying business, still tries
the intimidation tactics still, and it's just right, you do

(21:31):
something over and over again, and you realize that, you know,
maybe he doesn't have and you know, look at his
track record in Georgia. Whenever he's targeted a Georgia Republican,
that Georgia Republican hasn't just survived. In some ways, they've thrived. Right,
Brian Kemp is a frankly I think he's somebody that
is not the most charismatically, not the most charismatic guy.

(21:55):
I don't immediately see presidential candidate in his future, but
in some ways the ability to beat Trump back has
made him more interesting to a lot of donors who
don't like who who would like a small government conservative
maybe maybe even somebody that that is a bit I
think Kemp really is a little bit more of the
Paul Ryan Ron DeSantis side of conservatism, less Trump's side,

(22:20):
less populist and all of that. But his ability to
withstand threats from Trump and beat Trump, I mean, have
made him made him a stronger political figure, has given
his political machine a lot a lot more haft in
the state of Georgia. Just in general. Right, Trump has

(22:40):
not been able to successfully work his will in punishing
any Republicans that have gone sideways with him, and I
think in who's had a front row seat to this,
Marjorie Taylor Green. So let me read this next two statements.
Here I ran for We're going back to Margie tillergrad.

(23:01):
I ran for Congress in twenty twenty, and I fought
every single day believing that make America great again meant
America First. Going back to my belief here that the
whole point that she is a quote unquote true believer
and essentially a shunned You know that she feels that
she feels essentially let down. Right, let me continue. I

(23:25):
have one of the most conservative voting records in Congress,
defending the First Amendment, second Amendment onworn babies because I
believe God creates life at conception, strong safe borders. I
fought against COVID tyrannical insanity and mandated mask vaccines. And
I have never voted to fund foreign wars. And then
she keeps going. However, with almost one year into our majority,

(23:46):
the legislature has been mostly sidelined. We endured an eight
week shutdown, wrongly resulting in the House not working for
the entire time, and we are entering campaign season, which
means all courage leaves and only safe campaign reelection mode
is turned on. I have to tie. Yet, whatever you
think of her, she's got Congress figured out. She understands
how Congress works, and she's not wrong about what the

(24:09):
next year is going to be, which is avoid any
tough votes. During the longest shutdown in our nation's history,
I raged against my own speaker and my own party
for refusing to proactively work diligently to pass a plan
to save American health care and protect Americans from outrageous,
over priced, unaffordable health insurance policies. The House should have
been in session working every day to fix this disaster,

(24:30):
but instead America was force fed discussing political drama once
again from both sides of the aisle. She is absolutely
wanting to send the message that I'm the true believer.
I'm real America first. All of these others are a
bunch of pretenders and in many ways, including the President

(24:50):
of the United States. I think this is interesting. Many
common Americans are no longer easily convinced by paid political
propag and to spokespersons and consultants on TV and paid
shills on social media, obediently serving with cult like conviction
to force others to swallow the political party talking points.

(25:11):
If there is a machine, it is more on the
right these days when it comes to propaganda and sort
of how Trump runs that social media machine, right, and
everybody's supposed to get in line. Somebody doesn't like getting
in line on this one. Let me keep going here.
Here's a good one. I have fought harder than almost

(25:36):
any other elected Republican to elect Donald Trump and Republicans
to power. She argues, traveling the country for years, spending
millions of my own money, missing precious time with my
family that I can never get back, and showing up
in places like outside the New York Courthouse and collect
Pond Park against a raging leftist mob as Trump faced
democrat law fair. Meanwhile, most of the establishment Republicans who

(25:56):
secretly hate him, who stabbed him in the back and
never defended him against anything, have all been welcomed in
after the election. Interesting way that she words that, and
I understood. You know, she looks at a Marco Rubio
and thinks that's what I was fighting against, right, she
looks at some of these folks, That's what I was
fighting against. A Scott Besson. You know, the folks that

(26:20):
have been they're not maga people, but they're there in
some ways, you know, to reassure the business community. Well,
she's somebody that's clearly was trying to wanted to see
this blow up the system. And of course, Trump, while
he's blown up norms, he's certainly blown up the system
within the Republican Party, and he's certainly turned the Republican
Party into a kleptocracy, he has not actually blown up

(26:43):
the system in the way that he promised some of
his true believers. And again I go back, this is
a statement of somebody who's a true believer. In fact,
let me read these next two statements and you will
see where how why she feels so personally just personally
aggrieved by what the president did to her. And I

(27:03):
will never forget the day I had to leave my
mother's side as my father had brain surgery to remove
cancer's tumors, in order to fly to Washington, DC to
defend President Trump and vote no against the Democrat's second
impeachment in twenty twenty one. My poor father, my poor mother.
It was way too much. Through it all, I never
changed or went back on my campaign promises and only
disagreed in a few areas, like my stance against H
one b's replacing American jobs, AI state moratoriums, debt for life,

(27:27):
fifty year mortgage scams, standing strongly against all involvement in
foreign wars, and demanding the release of the Epstein files.
Other than that, my voting record has been solidly with
my party and the president. She's making a She is
correct on this. Yes, she is split with him on
a few things, but in many ways she's split with

(27:47):
her because she's a true believer and President Trump is not.
He doesn't believe his own ideology of which he pitches
and of which he convinces a person like Marjorie Taylor
Green to be. Again, I am not sitting here trying
to lionize her. I'm just trying to explain I don't
like her anti Semitic thoughts. I don't like some of
this conspiratorial mindset when going down QAnon, the you know,

(28:12):
she sort of you know, created a lot of the
you know, sort of participated in this hate mongering that
took place, the demonizing of the unfair demonizing of some
members of the press. So I'm not going to sit
here and and but I do want to explain this split,
because she does, I really believe speaks for those that

(28:33):
actually thought Trump believed this stuff. But is in all
those of us that have covered Trump for thirty years
and knew he's a bullshitter. He's always been a bullshitter,
and once again he's being exposed as who he is.
He is always bullshitting you, always, He is always, always bullshitting.
Rarely does he tell the truth, and now more of

(28:57):
his people are starting to figure this out. Then, she continues,
loyalty should be a two way street, and we should
be able to vote our conscience and represent our district's
interests because our job title is literally representative. America first
should mean America first and only Americans first, with no
other foreign country ever being attached to America first in
our halls of government. Standing up for American women who

(29:19):
were raped at fourteen, trafficked and used by rich, powerful
men should not result in me being called a traitor
and threatened by the President of the United States, whom
I fought for. However, while yes hurtful, my heart remains
filled with joy, and my life is filled with happiness,
and my true convictions remain unchanged because my self worth
is not defined by a man, but is said by God,
who created everything in existence. So then she explains why

(29:42):
she decided not to do it, not to face off
with a Trump funded Republican primary opponent. My only goal
and desire has been has ever been to hold the
Republican Party accountable for the promises it makes to the
American people and put America first. And I have fought
against Democrats damaging policies like the Green New Deal, or
why I'd open deadly unsafe border policies and the Transagenda

(30:02):
on children and against women. With that has come years
of NonStop, never ending personal attacks, death threats, law fair,
ridiculous slander and lies about me that most people could
never withstand even for a day. It has been unfair
and wrong, not only to me and especially my family,
but to my district as well. I have too much
self respect and dignity, loved my family way too much,
and do not want my sweet district to have to

(30:24):
endure a hurtful and hateful primary against me by the
president we all fought for only to fight and win
my election. While Republicans will likely lose the midterms and
in turn be expected to defend the president against impeachment
after he hatefully dumped tens of millions of dollars against
me and tried to destroy me. So this is now
at the heart of why she resigned. She's sitting and

(30:46):
she's not wrong on this. Right, he is desperate to
prove that he has political power, and right now it's
not clear that Trump has the power he thinks he has.
Thomas Massey looks like he's going to win reelection. He's
afraid of putting his finger on the scale for anybody
in Texas for fear of picking the wrong guy, which
tells me he has no comfort level of whether he

(31:08):
has the ability to persuade the way he used to.
He was clearly a net negative to anybody that touched
him during during the twenty twenty five elections. And she's
right if she wins now, I don't think that democratic
leadership that is stupid enough to try another impeachment, and yes, stupid,

(31:31):
like why politicize this move on from Trump? Trump is
leaving the stage. It is clear his own party at
times wants him to leave the stage. Don't do something
that might actually galvanize the party against him. Right, it
was always the head scratcher of when Republicans, even after
they cut the impeachment effort in ninety eight, didn't was

(31:52):
essentially the voters told Republicans, don't do it, and essentially
gave a collective bird to the Republicans. They did it
out of bitterness, they did it anyway, and of course,
you know, politically, you know, pissed away whatever moral or
ethical high ground that they thought they were kidding.

Speaker 2 (32:14):
But she is right.

Speaker 1 (32:16):
She could win, be in the minority and then be
expected to defend the president and his policies, which in
some cases she might instinctively defend because she believes in
the policies. But she's thinking, I'm going to be there
a bulwark on your behalf after you've beaten the crap
out of me and launched your political goons and to
go after her. So it is understandable. I get why

(32:43):
she's walking because the upside again, there is no worse
job in elective politics than being in the minority in
the House of Representatives. The political wins are clearly blowing
against Donald Trump right now. And you know, again I
go back. This is why you know the phrase six
year itch, which I believe was coined by a longtime

(33:05):
political scientist named Kevin Phillips. I think he gets credit
for that phrase, which is sort of after you know,
in the sixth year, after parties had a lung it
really you know, you really see a hunger to flip.
And we generally see that, right, eight years of one
party in a governor's mansion usually means the out party
is slightly favored or was certainly going to overperform what

(33:26):
they normally do. And I think, you know, this is
no ordinary second term for Trump. This is the end
of a ten year run for him. You know, he
had that gap. In some ways, it's sort of like
he did get a third term. Even though he lost
in twenty he was still sort of the leading political
figure in America still for that period that Biden was president.

(33:48):
So this is now the essentially a mid term for
Trump's third term, right, you know, the FDR was wearing
his welcome out. He would struggling to hold his coalition together.
But for World War two, maybe he doesn't run. But
but for World War two he certainly doesn't. I don't
think wins that third term as easily. And you know,

(34:12):
third term wasn't wasn't I've probably read three or four
different books on the nineteen forty presidential election. I've always
been fascinated by that election, and I encourage you. I've
read him from different points of view, one you know,
from you know, from a more anti FDR view, one
from a more pro FDR view, but which I highly encourage.
By the way, when you when you read about historical figures,

(34:33):
try to find try to find, uh, you know, a
negative critic and a positive critic, you know, and and
and try to consume both. I know that is extra homework,
but you know, it is what it is. So I
think she's right about this. I think her explanation is

(34:55):
perfectly rational. And you know, there's many political reporters or
trying to at this the way we all do sometimes,
which is all right, what's her real angle here? Maybe
what is she really setting up? Maybe she's doing this.
I think if she had she really was was interested
in sort of more of a to be more of

(35:16):
a political agitator, she'd jump in that center race. I'll
tell you this far, John Astuff, I'd be petrified if
she had jumped in the center race, because I think
she'd win this primary. I think this type of candidacy
could win a republic particularly a four way crowded Republican primary,
but it would turn it into some sort of weird

(35:36):
sort of anti It might create frenzy. But my point
is is that if she did harbor the ambition that
I think many are assuming she does, and I think
sometimes we all have to be careful sometimes of these
new figures that come in. You know, how many of
them suddenly get into the club and think, oh, now
I want to be president of the club, versus how

(35:57):
many even get in there because they actually really wanted
to do something. And she is expressed in this statement
that she's sort of turned off by Congress because she
hasn't because Congress on work. She's not the first person
to figure this out. And there's been quite a few
that that bail after five or six years, that that
you know, on their own, who could stick around but

(36:18):
don't see the value in another two years, especially if
you're going to be in the political minority. So anyway,
it's I'm fascinated by her statement. I would encourage you
to read the whole thing. I've obviously read quite a
few clips of it, because I think this is yours.

(36:39):
This fracturing is real. Humpty dumpty, and I guess Humpty
Trumpy I should call him right, is not going to
be able to get this put put this back together.
I think that we are. We're sort of because it's
in the late stages of this movement. For in the
early stages of this movement, maybe that would be another story.
We're in the late stages of this movement. We have

(36:59):
a week in the economy, and then you have a
president right now who is so he's clearly irritated by
his political standing getting so sour. So he doesn't ever
sit idly by, and in some ways he's making things worse,
and he could continue to do this. I thought it
was fascinating that he quickly said she just needed a

(37:21):
time out. She's going to be great when she comes back.
That's some acknowledgment that he knows she could be a
potent political force that on a movement for a movement
he helped create, but that he may lose control over.
And that's going to be something that I think it's
worth is Thomas Massey in some ways was Trump before

(37:42):
Trump in the same way, and he's going after Massy
in extraordinarily hard ways, and Massy in some ways is
a more pure American first, or more pure isolationist, and
he's also now very pro Israel. Neither's Marjorie Taylor Green.
And it's under for the same supposed reason. They're also
not in favor of sending any money over the Ukraine.

(38:04):
Right all sort of you could say, you could disagree
with it, but it is consistent with the ideologies she's preaching,
and I imagine that they're not going to be very
favorable towards Venezuela either. Before I go and sneak in
a break here and we get to this right Thompson
interview that I'm telling you, you're going to say to me,

(38:25):
get right Thompson on more often, and I'm going to say,
it's really hard to book them, but I agree with you.
But before we get to it, I do want a
quick little update on what we're seeing with this Ukraine
peace deal. There was a bit of a dust up
over the last forty eight hours where you had Republican
senators that are at the Halifox Security Conference. This is
a security conference always held in Halifax, Canada. It is

(38:48):
a you've heard of the Munich Security Conference. This is
essentially one that's about North America, and there's always bipartisan
groups of senators up there, and you have the sort
of the hawkish bipartisan Senate brigin Aid that's up there,
that's a little less America. First, Mike Grounds, he's been
he's been pretty anti Russia, pro Ukraine, sort of the

(39:09):
old Marco Rubio wing of the party, even though Rubio
is now in the Trump administration. It's interesting that Mike
Grounds and Angus King both went public saying that Secretary
Rubio told them the Russians authored this peace plan, that
this was the Russian peace plan. Now, when Rubio said, well,
that story is not true. This was a US author

(39:30):
document in I want to read this. Read these words
carefully here one more time, and the exact way that
he worded this, because I do believe, I do believe
he left he left open the possibility that what he told,

(39:50):
what he was what has been reported that he said
privately is indeed, both things can be true. So here's
what he said. He says, the peace proposal was authored
by the US. Let's parse that. Okay, the peace proposal,
all right, the actual piece of paper is that what

(40:12):
he's referring to so Steve Witkoff took dictation from the Russians.
That's possible. The Russians, this was their suggestions, and we
took all of their suggestions and put it on a
piece of paper. But the US authored it.

Speaker 2 (40:26):
Right.

Speaker 1 (40:28):
Then he says it has offered a strong framework for
ongoing negotiations. This is no final offer, right, This is
an offer, not a final offer. And then third, it
is based on input from the Russian side, but it
is also based on previous and ongoing input from Ukraine.
So this was Rubio's response to the feeding frenzy that

(40:51):
got started when Mike Rounds and Angus King both went
public saying, hey, this piece deal isn't true. So Rubio
kind of tries to say no, oh, no, no, But
he doesn't say Rounds is wrong, and he doesn't say
against King was wrong, right, He just puts up it extraordinarily. Remember,
Marco Rubio did go to law school, went to the
Years of re Miami law school, went to went to

(41:13):
Gainesville for undergrad So he's one of these weirdos that
claims to be both a Gator fan and a Hurricane fan. Sorry,
Secretary Rubio, it is not allowed at the nursery of Miami.
There's no such thing. You can have a divided household
about Florida State, You're not allowed to have one about
the armpit of Florida. I love my Gator friends, as
you can tell. I only love them almost as much
as I love my Domer friends. But I'll get to

(41:34):
them in a minute. But the point of this is
so Rubio is clearly uncomfortable with what to me he
is signaling. Look, this isn't my deal. This is one
of these crazy ass wit cough deals who got essentially
once again, you know, taken in by the Russians, and
he just plays stenographer for whatever the Russians want. He's

(41:58):
done this multiple times, which is how he ended up
with that ridiculous summit where Trump got nothing out of
it and it allowed Putin to sort of try to
reteach history. I should read another Rubio tweet from a
couple of days ago, when this peace deal was circulating
and he was trying to show that he was supportive
of the idea. If even if he wasn't supportive of

(42:19):
the deal, he writes this, ending a complex and deadly
war such as the one in Ukraine requires an extensive
exchange of serious and realistic ideas, and achieving a durable
piece will require both sides to agree to difficult but
necessary concessions. That is why we are and will continue
to develop a list of potential ideas for ending this
war based on input from both sides of this conflict. Again,

(42:41):
Rubio is very careful here. He is not trying to
go up against the President, but he's clearly trying to
rain him in on this. He is clearly wont trying
to make it clear this is a deal that the
US did not author It was actually the US may
have taken dictation from a Russian in order to put

(43:04):
this on paper, but that this was not necessarily based
on any contributions, certainly from the Secretary of State or
the National Security Advisor. A wait, it is the same person.

Speaker 2 (43:18):
It is.

Speaker 1 (43:19):
I do think the fact that it looks like, you know,
Trump put this Thanksgiving deadline on here, I think if
you're Zelensky, you realize you still have a majority of
Congress that supports you over what Trump is trying to
shove down your throat. I think he feels I think
he's managed this smartly, which is he's not in the
greatest position these days because of this corruption scandal that

(43:41):
he's been dealing with. But he knows it's better to
work with Trump than to try to work against him publicly.
He may work against them behind the scenes, but he
can't work against him publicly. But as you could see,
I think, I think we're we're going to see two
more weeks. We're going to get you know how, Donald
Trump's got a habit of when he wants to punt something,
he's going to buy himself two more weeks, which could

(44:02):
mean two days or two months, but it doesn't. But
it never means it's two more weeks. But you could
see something going here. Finally, before we get to write Thompson,
I just want to flag something for you. I'm going
to talk more about it in my next episode. But
I did an interview with Mike Turner for Newsphere. Please
go check it out, I promise you. This is from

(44:23):
my episode of Sunday Night with check to out on Newsphere.
Mike Turner, former House Intel Committee. We talk extensively about
this deal. Look, he is somebody that is he's a
former mayor. He was a former mayor of Dayton, Ohio.
So we actually talk a little bit about sort of
how do we depolarize why are mayors less partisan figures
than any other political figure in America. We get into

(44:44):
that conversation a little bit, but I want to I
do want to highlight the interaction we have over Venezuela
and whether Congress has been informed or not, and what's
missing and whether whether there is whether the president, whether
what he's doing is legal. Look, if you read the transcript,

(45:07):
Mike Turner didn't say anything counter to the president. Sometimes
you have to watch an interview. You got to absorb
an interview. You've got to see the pauses, the awkward pauses,
You've got to hear the responses to certain follow ups
that I have to to try to understand where he's going.
Put it this way, it is painfully obvious to me

(45:29):
that this administration has not made the case to Congress
that what they're doing in Venezuela, off the coast, is legal,
that what is happening here is quite dangerous, that it
may be counterproductive. I'm not saying. I'm not putting words
in Mike Turner's mouth. I don't want that to come
across here. I want you to watch it on your
own I'm just telling you what I took away from it.

(45:53):
I can match that with my own reporting from different
members of Congress who have certainly said similar things to me.
And we've seen much in the public about this, but
he's done a but the president that has not made
the case to the American public at all. You saw
some CBS polling indicating just as much these extra judicial killings.
To me, the great misstep in this is the risk

(46:17):
and this is what I'm really concerned about, the risk
of somehow galvanizing Venezuelan's behind Maduro and if this ridiculously
laid out policy that has just not been well thought
out leads to that talk about counterproductive, setting us back
in this region fifty years. If we end up with

(46:39):
an outcome like that, which is certainly the way we
are operating, that is, that is not a zero percent
chance of a possibility, and it's not even in the
single digits. The way we're operating here could galvanize pieces
of the Latin American, of Latin America, of South American

(47:00):
countries against us in ways that we will regret, and frankly,
in ways that we have mismanaged the hemisphere pretty much
since this since arguably even before the Spanish American War.
But we never get this region right. We always play
colonists in some sort or imperialist in some ways, and

(47:21):
every time we do it, it backfires. But I do
think you've got to understand Mike Turner is no softy,
he's no Trump hater. He may not ideologically align with
him on foreign policy, but you can just see the
lack of I mean, there's been total disregard for the

(47:41):
role of Congress in whatever the hell is happening down
on the coast, off the coast of Venezuela. But it's
pretty clear not a lot of people think what's happening
is legal, and this is something that Congress ought to
ought to be a bit more united on. There should
be a bipartisan anger about this, and unfortunately it has

(48:02):
only been a blip because we've got so many other
things that we have to do in our crazy political
theater of the day. All Right, that was a longer
intro than I planned, I will admit that, but we
did hit. Like I said, I think this Marjorie Taylor
Green thing is a big deal because I do think
we haven't heard the last of her she has put
herself in a position to be potentially the real heir

(48:25):
to the America First, non Trump aligned America First movement.
Different from what Tucker Carlson is doing. I think he's
kind of clown. He's a clown. He's not a serious guy,
and he gets exposed to being an unserious guy all
the time. Weirdly enough, a person like Marjorie Taylor Green
has a lot more credibility to lead that movement than

(48:46):
the clown that is Tucker Carlson. And with that, let
me sneak at a break and when we come back,
a terrific conversation with Right Thompson. This episode of the
Chuck Podcast is brought to you by Waldgrain. Waldgrain is
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Always use the code, get the discount. I'm telling you
it's excellent. Excellent bright Well joining me now is somebody

(50:34):
I've never met, but I'm big static to finally interview
them because I've been reading It's right, Thompson. Who if
these days, if there's a great profile of a sports
figure that you couldn't put down, I promise you the
byline was right Thompson. But right, it's good to meet you,
good to see it.

Speaker 2 (50:53):
It's great to meet you, and it's a real treat
to be here, so thank you. Well.

Speaker 1 (50:57):
Look, man, the treat's mine. And I book you because
of a book that wasn't about sports. It's about where
you grew up. It's about one of the most wrenching
stories of civil rights in our history. And it's a
book called The Barn. And it's just everything that I
love about your writing is showcased in this book because

(51:20):
it's both personal, factual relevant. Look, you tell me this
was clearly a work of love, meaning whether you had
a publisher willing to do this or not, I'm guessing
you were going to write this book.

Speaker 2 (51:37):
You know, the barn Rymintil was killed was twenty three
miles from my family's farm, and I didn't you know
the barn had been completely erased from history, and so
I really look, I don't know the right way to
say this, but if you don't know something that essential
about the place that you claim to know best in
the world, then you're kind of not actually from anywhere.

(52:00):
And so it you know, it was important to me
to understand how this came to happen in this place.
And you know, like one of the interesting things and
I don't know if you've had this with your work,
but you know, when the public gets something, they you
lose control over sort of how it's you know, how

(52:20):
it lives. And so one of the things that was
so interesting, it's been so interesting to me is people
understand that like it's a story about nineteen fifty five,
and it's a story about right now, and you know
that that, you know, in a certain way like separate
from whether you were for it or against it. Like
in some ways, what the MAGA project really is is

(52:42):
an attempt to go back before the civil rights movement.
And so we actually have a date for that because
you know, people point to the murder of him Attil
is the starting gun. And so the America that was
Great again was August twenty seventh, nineteen fifty five, and
so it's been interesting over the last year as people
have read sort of a deep history that more and

(53:03):
more feels like a current events quoes.

Speaker 1 (53:06):
You know, it's interesting about what you said about why
you felt you felt like here you thought you knew
where you grew up, and yet you didn't realize what
was happening where you grew up. I always say I
was both lucky to grow up in Miami in the
seventies and eighties, when I always said I was born
in Miama, and then I graduated high school in Miami.

(53:28):
But I remember thinking about Florida's history, and during the
sort of the George Floyd reckoning that we had with
some various historical events, one that hit me hard that
I didn't know about was called Axe Handle Sunday, and
it was essentially a white supremacist, you know, race riot

(53:49):
that was started in Jacksonville. And I'm like, how come
we didn't tell that? How come I didn't learn that
in Florida history, you know. Never mind Black Wall Street
and Tulsa, never mind you with the barn I mean,
this is a lot of the history of the South,
isn't it.

Speaker 2 (54:05):
Look I'm going to read you a this is what
is being taught about in it Till in a school
in the Mississippi Delta right now, and like so I
have a picture of this textbook and so just in case,
like you know, so this is what they're teaching. This
is like a current textbook to your point about axe
handle Sunday. In nineteen fifty five, JP Coleman, the Attorney

(54:28):
general from Choctaw County, was elected governor in Mississippi's first
general election after the Brown v. Board of Education decision.
Coleman promised to keep the schools segregated. He proved to
be a moderating force during a very difficult time. Just
after the election, Emmett Till, a young black man from Chicago,
allegedly made a pass at a white woman in a

(54:48):
rural store. Two men kidnapped him, beat him, killed him,
and threw his body in the Tallahatchee River. The coverage
of the trial and acquittal of his accused murderers, who
later admitted their guilt in an article in a National
Man magazine, painted a poor picture of Mississippi and it's
white citizens.

Speaker 1 (55:05):
I mean, that's that's twenty twenty five textbook.

Speaker 2 (55:09):
Yes, and so like, oh my god, no, I know,
and so like we're not when you wonder, like sometimes
when you turn your TV and you're like, well, who
are like what is like how is my reality so
different than this reality? Because you know, you see people
who how could you possibly think that? And you know,
one of the reasons there's such a war on black

(55:29):
history sort of disguised as a war on like the
excesses of locism, which, by the way, like you know,
those are two very different things that they've been lumped together,
and so like the war on Black history is being
waged by people who have been rewriting history in textbooks,
specifically for fifty seventy five years, you know. And you
know in Mississippi. I don't know about growing up in Miami,

(55:51):
but in Mississippi, the trick to understanding the state is
the accusation is always the confession and so and so, well.

Speaker 1 (56:00):
My god, we see that with Trump now, the joke
is always projection, Right, whatever he accuses opponents have done,
it's exactly what either he's doing or wants to do.

Speaker 2 (56:08):
Yeah, and so that's been true Mississippi for a very
long time. And so you know, I mean, like sometimes
it feels so disheartening because like there's an entire history
of the state that like I certainly didn't know. And
you know, the degree to which you know all this
is tied to capital markets. You know, the plantation where
Mattil was killed. Until very recently it has been owned

(56:31):
by a publicly traded company. So if you had a
four oh one K with Vanguard Fidelity or black Rock,
you owned a tiny piece of the plantation where Mattil
was killed. And so like, I mean, so much of
the scholarship around America's original sin feels like it stops
at the water's edge, you know, I mean, like it's
some ways the biggest flaw of sixteen nineteen is that

(56:52):
it wasn't radical enough, right, you know that, Like they're
like it's stopped at the water's edge, as opposed to
following the money to Manchester and Liverpool and London and
sort of how you know, you know Manchester, which is
where Rolls met Royce and also where Marx met Engele,
you know, and like and so like, it is interesting
when you start following the money about how a murder
happened on a piece of land in Mississippi, you end

(57:13):
up very quickly seeing that like, oh this is you know,
this is not just some backwar water where America can
store its sins. This is like deeply connected to the
whole world.

Speaker 1 (57:26):
So one way that I try to have some optimism
about this fight that we're having about frankly, what is
recent history is that there are still a lot of
us alive. Now, I was, I went. I started school
about six years after desegregation in Miami. I think you were.

(57:46):
You were just after you started school, just after desegregation.

Speaker 2 (57:50):
Yeah, Missisi. Yeah, Mississippi desegregated in nineteen seventy. So the
first class in Mississippi that went to an integrated school
all twelve years, graduated from high school in nineteen eighty two.

Speaker 1 (58:03):
Okay, those folks are still alive. Do you hold out
the hope? And I know this is a weird way
of saying it that when the last person who was
essentially raised and segregated America passes on, that maybe we
have a different we are able to have a different,
more honest conversation about the first fifty years of the

(58:27):
twentieth century.

Speaker 2 (58:28):
No, And because the right answer in the test is
painted a poor picture of Mississippi and it's white citizens,
and you know, like, you know, one of the things
people always ask me is because the barn wherem Until
was killed is it's just a barn. It's a guy's barn.
You know, he has his Christmas decoration.

Speaker 1 (58:43):
Why is it in a landmark?

Speaker 2 (58:44):
Yeah, well there you're you know, that's a good question.
And so it's in the process of being turned into one,
which is an interesting thing, but like right now, it's
just a guy's barn, and so people always ask, well,
you know, how can he sleep next to it? You know,
from his barbecue grill by his swimming pool, you can
see it, it's like right there, And so people, how
could he do that? And I'm like, well, every single

(59:06):
authority figure in his entire life, every coach, every teacher,
every preacher, every scout master, every elder, every friend of
his dad's at the hunting camp, every single person with
authority in his entire life has told him his entire life,
a very specific version of this history. And so like,

(59:28):
I mean, you know, in some ways, like you know,
Mississippi is you know, Mississippi elected ray Mabeth not that
long ago, right, you know, and like Mississippi was a
place that really had a moment miss Mississippi had a
bunch of Democratic governors in a row through William Winner,
who I'm sure you.

Speaker 1 (59:49):
And they all want on promising to improve public education,
which is really like this was the one through line
that got him elected, right.

Speaker 2 (59:57):
Yeah, I mean, and you know, William Winner sacrificed his
political career forcing through universal kindergarten, you know. But so
Mississippi was a progressive enough place that in nineteen eighty
eight they elected Ray Mavis. And so, you know, my
worry is that the opposite of what you suggest is true.
That you know, the Irish, you know, the Irish remember

(01:00:18):
the defeats long after the British have forgotten the victories.
And like, my worry is that the further this gets
from actual human beings experience, and the more it becomes
the sort of property of myths, that like that we
end up in this situation where it's actually auguring in

(01:00:39):
on itself. But I mean, you know, the I don't know,
I mean, like the question you're asking obviously is the
central question, right No, I I.

Speaker 1 (01:00:48):
Guess I look at it this way, like, is it
progress that most of us now view the gone with
the win as a bunch of fictional garbage.

Speaker 2 (01:00:57):
I think it's incredible progress because you know, I mean,
I was just talking somebody this morning about this. You know,
Kentucky was a neutral state during the Civil War. They
had three times as many citizens fighting for the Union
Army as the Confederate army. And now when you go
to Kentucky, I mean they draped themselves in sort of
the old South Lost Couset mythology. So like the question

(01:01:17):
I love to ask about the state of Kentucky is
is this the only place in the world that claims
to have lost a war at one?

Speaker 1 (01:01:27):
Have you been to West Virginia. Look, let me tell you, dude,
I mean, I find it hilarious that West Virginia and
Virginia have essentially traded. It's West Virginia. I'll never forget
when the governor chose to join the Southern Governors Association.
This was about twenty years ago, and I'm like, does
the governor understand the history of West Virginia? What are
you talking about?

Speaker 2 (01:01:48):
Well, I mean, you know, I mean to your question
earlier in my answer, you know, I mean, what is history?
You know? Also, like West Virginia, though, like West Virginia
does have rolls.

Speaker 1 (01:02:02):
That's their union credit.

Speaker 2 (01:02:05):
I like a pepperoni role. I used to cover the
LSU football team when Nick Saban was the coach, and
one time his mother, who's from West Virginia, made us
all pepperoni roles. So, you know, West Virginia of course,
has turned its back on its entire reason for existing,
but it still has the Pepperoni roles.

Speaker 1 (01:02:21):
Suck fair enough. Well, look, the capital of the state
that had the capital of the Confederacy I think seceded
from the Confederacy about fifteen years ago.

Speaker 2 (01:02:30):
Well, you know, and all this stuff. I mean it's
you know, my high school American history teacher in the
eighth grade, Miss Halcombe, called it the War of Northern Aggression.
You know, this is not that long ago.

Speaker 1 (01:02:41):
We used to laugh about this. I mean I was
raised with that, you know, all this stuff. But the
fact that that mythology just sort of did take hold,
I mean that really was damaging. And I don't think
we fully appreciate how damaging that is when you just
allow the pop culture to oh that's hilarious. Oh that's funny.

Speaker 2 (01:02:59):
And also like, I mean a real like interesting comparison now,
because you know, you have a lot of people now
who campaigned on saying wild stuff and now actually have
to govern. I mean one of the things, you know,
the people who were agitating for secession in eighteen fifty eight,
fifty nine, eighteen sixty, like these were just bomb throwing politicians.

(01:03:22):
It never occurred to them. I don't think that anybody
would actually do this shit, you know, and so like
you know, in the big argument for the Civil War,
this is not the conversation I expected to have, but
this is fascinating. But no, but the argument for the
Civil War was that that this is you know, cotton
was oil, so Mississippi was Saudi Arabia, and this is
the world's most powerful commodity, and so the sorry that's

(01:03:45):
a jet, I'm right by lax. So that was the
world's most most powerful and important commodity, and that Europe
and all these textile mills would be so desperate to
get the southern cotton back that they would stop the
US and make us settled the war. The problem was
is that none of these politicians, I guess we're actual
cotton farmers, because every cotton farmer, you know, we've been

(01:04:08):
doing it a long time, will tell you that the
most important thing to know when trying to predict what
the price is going to be is something called the carryover.
And that's how many bales are sitting in warehouses waiting
to go into textile mills. And so what's the carryover
and so because that determines how much cotton people need.
So the largest carryovers in history to that point had

(01:04:31):
been eighteen fifty nine and eighteen sixty, which meant that Manchester,
England didn't need a single bail of southern cotton until
at least deep in the winter of eighteen sixty three,
by which point the war was lost. So all of
these eighteen year old boys who got convinced to go
fight for something went to these far away fields and

(01:04:53):
died in the most painful ways possible because their leaders
couldn't bother to learn basic micro and like like. And
so that's sort of like unwilling, uncurious, the desire and
almost fraud and being uncurious and stupid like has real
impact on actual people's lives. And it's just like it

(01:05:14):
seems like we just you know, do it again and
again and again and again.

Speaker 1 (01:05:18):
No, it's it's actually I look at this era and
I keep saying, well, we get through these. We've had
these other similar periods in history. We get through them.
And then under my breath, I say, well, it took
a civil war to get through one. It took a
total economic collapse, the Great Depression, essentially to get us
to figure out that we had to regulate business, right, like,

(01:05:40):
we do have to have catastrophic moments essentially close to
death as a country before we pull out of the
death spiral.

Speaker 2 (01:05:51):
Well, you know, and like the idea that you know,
the modern clan really was sort of came back like
say nineteen twenty two ish, right, and the you know,
the March on Washington was nineteen sixty four, So what's
that forty two years? Yeah, so what's forty two years
from today? You know, Like I mean, these are long

(01:06:13):
roads back. I mean, you can vandalize something very quickly,
but it takes a long time to put it back together.
I Mean. One of the things that I like, really
am proud about about this book though, about the Barn,
is that there is a sort of playbook of people
who resisted really powerful forces and have managed despite sort

(01:06:34):
of all of the all of the things conspiring towards
a rasure to keep this story alive, you know, I
mean Reverend Wheeler Parker, who was Immitt Till's first cousin,
best friend, next door neighbor, rode the train south with
him in nineteen fifty five's the last living eyewitness to
the kidnapping. He and I went to the African American
History Museum in DC, and you know, when he came

(01:06:56):
out of the room wherem Attill's coffin is, I mean,
he was just making annoyses and like, you know, this
is a guy's a coaching minister. He's one of the
most sort of you know, this guy's a professional speaker.

Speaker 1 (01:07:07):
And so yeah, and.

Speaker 2 (01:07:09):
So we're like halfway up the you know the sort
of ramps. You know, we kind of go back up
until he can talk again. And then the thing he
says is we got to make sure people remember, like
we can't let people forget. And so, you know, I
got invited to this thing in Chicago. I was actually
just you know, this is odd, but you know, I
worked for ESPN. So I was just having breakfast with

(01:07:30):
the basketball coach Phil Jackson, and we were literally I
was literally telling him this exact story about.

Speaker 1 (01:07:36):
Knowing Phil Jackson's probably more interested in this than anything
you want to ask about basketball way more.

Speaker 2 (01:07:41):
And also you know he's a Chicago guy. And so
I said, I got invited to what would have been
him Until's eightieth birthday party. And we go into this
like parish hall essentially in Argo Summit in Illinois, suburban
arg and it's where the Argo starts plan is. They
make like k ro syrup and uh. And so we're
like we're sitting there and I slowly realized that every

(01:08:05):
living person who knew him, that Phil is in the rooms.
So like when I started doing this, there were probably
twelve people, and now they're eve been dying in front
of me. Now they're probably eight. And like there was
this moment where his aunt, I think her name is Thelma,
stands up and in this really really quiet voice says,
I wasn't there the night he died, but I was
there the morning he was born. So and you know,
people talk about him until like he's a symbol, and sure,

(01:08:27):
he absolutely is, but he's also like he was a boy.
You know, it was such a specific age. You know,
he uh, you never.

Speaker 1 (01:08:34):
Got to become a man, despite all in Mississippi history books, right, No, and.

Speaker 2 (01:08:38):
Like you know, he was just like he was that
unique age of boyhood where he was starting to get
his At his fourteenth birthday, his mother heard him and
his friends playing Spin the bottle. But he also like
loved comic books. So he was that age where you
know where you're kind of maybe sorry.

Speaker 1 (01:08:56):
Fourteen going on twenty or fourteen one on ten.

Speaker 2 (01:08:58):
Yeah, yeah, you sort of like maybe you're interested in
maybe trying to kiss a girl, but you still like
Spider Man, you know, and like that. That's such a
specific age of boyhood and like and you know, right
now in Chicago there is a like a storage facility
that the family keeps. I guess they don't really know
what to do with it. And and it is his
toy train. And I think as long as there's a

(01:09:20):
room in Chicago where Emma Tell's toy trains there waiting
on a boy who's never coming home, it is incumbent
upon every America. And almost as an act of patriotism
to say that name over and over and over and
over again, like as some sort of shibbles, it's like
a prayer on what we want to be.

Speaker 1 (01:09:46):
Look what you've done here, I think is so important.
Where you take a symbol of a larger moment in
history and sort of and by unpacking that symbol you
learn a bigger story. The best history books are what
I are, the undiscovered history that gets resurfaced. And I

(01:10:07):
assume this is this is you know, is this a
one off for you? Or do you want to pursue
other sort of symbolic ways that that history got buried
that you could uniquely resurface.

Speaker 2 (01:10:20):
You know, I have a couple of things kicking around,
you know, I uh, and like, I guess I'll bit
to test this with you right now. I am very
interested in a book that I haven't figured out the
structure or even the characters of it that goes from
the last US soldier off who's out of Saigon in

(01:10:40):
seventy three and when those before, like you know, before
Saigon fell, but from seventy three to NAFTA, because it
feels like so many of the seeds of our current
predicament were sown in that period of time, and like
you know, the last US soldier to get on the
last transport out of Vietnam was killed in the Pentagon

(01:11:01):
on nine to eleven. He was there as a civilian contractor,
and like in like the way those things, you know,
the way those things just start turning in on each other.
You realize this happened yesterday. I was just in uh
in Vietnam for vacation and a bribe security guard to
let you know, on the roof of the old CIA

(01:11:22):
headquarters where that famous photograph is the helicopter.

Speaker 1 (01:11:26):
Where the helicopter.

Speaker 2 (01:11:26):
Yeah, people, yeah, And dude, there's all all of the
Mercury lights lands government made Chicago, Illinois, Like all of
that stuff was still there. It's like we left yesterday.
It's like in like so like I'm into the history
that is hiding in plain sight. And you know, and

(01:11:49):
you know, in the history of Mississippi. Uh, you know,
what's the great Malcolm X. Everywhere south of Canada's Mississippi.
You know. I think there's a way in which you
have to understand Mississippi to understand America. And like, the
thing that haunted me in the process of reporting this
book is that people don't realize the Mississippi Delta, like
Paul Simon had it wrong. It is not the highway

(01:12:10):
through the cradle of the Civil War. Most of the
Mississippi Delta was uninhabited, hardwood swamps until around nineteen hundred,
Like the land clearing started like mid eighteen nine.

Speaker 1 (01:12:20):
We didn't have the technology, right, No, And so if
you couldn't.

Speaker 2 (01:12:22):
Get life insurance if you lived to the Mississippi Delta
until nineteen hundred. So I have this map. I mean,
so this is like twenty years after Frederick Turner's essay.
This is twenty years after we caught Geronimo, twenty years
after the Ok Corral, And like I have this map
that shows the railroads and they haven't joined yet, and
this is well after like the Golden Spike out west,
and they're laying these railroads in the Mississippi Delta, and

(01:12:45):
you realize that the piece of land that is that
it is in the middle of the gaps in the
not connected railways is Township twenty two north range four West,
which is the exact piece of land where Emmitt Ttil
was killed. And so manifests destiny is like the you know,
I love Greg Grandon's book The End of the Myth
because he really deals with this. But like if the if,

(01:13:06):
the if the well spring of American identity flows from
this idea of manifest destiny, and if the place where
we actually settle the continent, wasn't somewhere out west with cowboys,
but was actually underneath the bar the ground where em
at Till was killed. I think that suggests something fundamentally
different about everything we know about American history. And so, like,

(01:13:29):
you know, one of one of the reasons the book
is so uh in noted is well one, I mean,
in this day and age, I think you have to
show your work two, but two they're like there are
ten more immittental books to be written, and like you
just want to make it easy for the next person
to strip it for parts.

Speaker 1 (01:13:47):
Well, that's I mean, that's that's what a good history
book is supposed to do, because you know most and
it's interesting. You know, you can't help, but I always,
you know, I've learned this. I'm obsessed with the the
era between Grant and McKinley because you know, I'm one
of these people who the more I've learned about Garfield,

(01:14:09):
the more I've decided, Boy, if Garfield had lived, maybe
we passed a civil rights bill literally eighty years sooner
than we did that he might have been that guy.
And it's always easy to mythologize dead presidents, right, we
did we do with Kennedy, you know, I don't. And
the more I learned, the more you're like, Eh, Kennedy
probably takes his the Vietnam. Let's not pretend he wouldn't have.

(01:14:32):
But I've read so much on the eighteen seventy six election,
which was sort of planted the seeds of Jim Crow
and got rid of reconstruction, all of those things. And
what you noticed so much is how much the whatever
the author's politics is in the current era, ends up
helping to be their own conclusions about what they discovered

(01:14:56):
and reported on eighteen you know. And I don't know
if you you know, I don't think you can separate
that right from the writer from the from you know.
I mean, you know, how did you view your job
in writing this history book? Were you trying to surface
it by the way you understand today's politics, or by

(01:15:17):
how what was understood back then? Right?

Speaker 2 (01:15:19):
I mean I think, well, look, I think certainly you
know it is we get into the trap of judging
people from the comfort and safety of wherever we are now.

Speaker 1 (01:15:30):
I mean take Woodrow Wilson's a great example. We've all
decided he's a racist now and should be almost erased
from presidential.

Speaker 2 (01:15:37):
History, which is I mean, you know, he was a
product of his era and the other thing. So I've
been I've been working on a book right now that
is uh, it's about a French spy and like VC
government minister. And so one of the things that's so
interesting is to go look at you know, you go

(01:15:59):
read Robert Paxton's history of VC France and you start
to realize like, oh, this was not this was a
you know, this was a French project where like, you know,
the French far right was going to use the Nazis
to settle all of their old lingering colors.

Speaker 1 (01:16:15):
The Nazis didn't they there were people ready to embrace
Nazis had already lived in.

Speaker 2 (01:16:20):
Oh yeah yeah, Like the French were writing their anti
Jewish laws before the Nazis told them to. But one
of the things that's interesting is you watch all these
people trying to fence it because they don't know whether
the Germans or the English are going to win. And
so you know, have you have General Vegan telling Churchill
that your next will be rung in three weeks. So

(01:16:40):
what you have are people who have who's who never
got out from under their sort of collaborationist decisions, and
a lot of them are just trying to sit the
fence as long as they can. And like the ones
who sort of didn't get wrapped up and brought down
in all of the purges in forty five and forty
six were the ones who understood enough about sort of
military operations that when Germany invaded Russia that it was

(01:17:04):
over and that everything else was in game, and so
they could afford to support the Allies. Robert Paxton, who
wrote the great books about V. C. France, told me
that he found the widow of Marshall Paton's chief of staff,
and she gave him his diary, and what he realized

(01:17:28):
is there were two diaries. There was one that was
written that was I'm all about Germany and Italy and
the New Europe and the Fascist experiment, and the other
one was all about Churchill and the Allies, and like
literally in real time, they were trying to go both ways.
And so I think one of the things we do
from the safety of the future is we don't understand

(01:17:49):
that maybe the only point, the only thing to do
in a world war is to try to survive it,
and what that looks like afterwards is often very very ugly,
and the price that people pay for their survival is
having to walk around with the things they did to survive.
And so, like, I mean, that's a long answer to
your question about eighteen seventy six. Sure, but like I

(01:18:10):
also think that, like people are self interested, and people
are in the moment trying to read the tea leaves
and figure out what to do.

Speaker 1 (01:18:19):
How'd you end up being a sports writer? I wanted
to be easily been doing this.

Speaker 2 (01:18:24):
I wanted to write about music, and I was randomly
assigned to sports at the college newspaper. Like you know,
I was a big deadhead. All I really wanted to.

Speaker 1 (01:18:33):
Do is like, yeah, where were you at school?

Speaker 2 (01:18:35):
University of Missouri, Go Tigers, there you go, And so
like this has all been a very odd accident, you know,
and so but yeah, I mean, like the thing that's
cool about sports is that you have a group of
people who are have nothing in common except they all
want some sort of genetic lottery. And like, I'm very

(01:18:57):
into tribal identity. And you know, I love the line
from the Episcopal liturgy we do this in remembrance of you,
and like so much of the ways in which really
complex ideas about home and family are coded and handed
down or through sports, and so like, I love the
way that sports is a carrying case for people's mythologies
and their family stories. And you know, so I don't know,

(01:19:21):
like I've never I've always thought that if I got bored,
that I would quit, and I just have never gotten bored.

Speaker 1 (01:19:27):
So I had a conversation with Jayadande recently in Batak.
We were talking about, you know, I had a you know,
why is it that sports in the forties and fifties
was leaning in to essentially, you know, the new America

(01:19:48):
was leaning in on civil rights, even if the sports
owners themselves weren't always right. You know, look that some
of them were just doing it because they wanted to win.
But in some ways sports was ahead of you know,
we segregated sports before we desegregated schools. And you know,
so I've always held sports up as sort of, hey,
this is the cultural corner of America that can actually

(01:20:12):
bring us together and maybe it can help us solve
a problem before, you know, you know, instead of the politicians.
And then he brought up something he goes, but you know,
we're not seeing that with today's athletes, that today's athletes
have no interest in using a sports platform to fight
for a civil right, And he pointed out the example

(01:20:32):
of the Latino ball baseball players have been pretty silent
about what's been going on with ice in America. Do
you see that change in the in the sports figure
of today versus the sports figure that you and I
grew up with.

Speaker 2 (01:20:47):
I think a couple of things. I mean, I think,
you know, they're the exceptions that proved the root. Like,
you know, like Lebron James has put his literal money
where his mouth is over and over and over again
and sort of great personal cost to his ubiquity. I mean,
one of the things that I was just talking to
Phil about was could Michael Jordan? Would Michael Jordan have

(01:21:07):
been as universally beloved now as he was in the
nineteen nineties, which was a very specific time in America.
It was you know, uh, and and you know, I
think the answer is no. Like I think that he
wouldn't be allowed to fence, sit and be and be.

Speaker 1 (01:21:24):
The North Carolina Senate race is one of my favorite examples,
right the nineteen ninety race. This was Helm's gant, This
was a big deal of African American mayor of Charlotte,
Jesse Helms the and you know, the myth and I
know that we've never found the actual quote, right, but
the myth was he set that race out because Republicans
by sneakers too.

Speaker 2 (01:21:44):
And you know, one of the things that's so interesting
about that is that you know, like the like you know,
I think that like, my favorite living American writer is
this guy named kiss A Layman who's from Mississippi, who
I just love. And so one of the things KSA
and I talked about in the contest to Jordan is
he was, like, you have to understand the rural urban interplay,

(01:22:06):
especially as it relates to Michael Jordan, because if you're
from this people say he's from Wilmington, which is true,
but really he's from Liken, the country right outside of Wilmington.
And you know, he knew his great grandfather who was
the son of a slaved man, and you know, in
his like he grew up in a very rural life.

(01:22:26):
And so the things A says about Michael Jordan is
that his his chase of public excellence and universal acceptance
is political in its own way. And so like I mean,
I think one of the things is, you know, there's
a it always used to be better when but there's

(01:22:49):
but to your point, there's a certain you know, the
quarterly earnings report, obsession with accounting, you know, the you know,
like that has invaded sports. Like the entire goat argument
is utterly absurd, and that is a product of a
very specific America that didn't used to exist. And so
if you know, if you look at sort of nineteen

(01:23:11):
forty five to say nineteen sixty, if you like, from
the end of the war until Kennedy beating Eisenhower or
Kennedy winning. I don't know if he beat Eisenhower actually
I should know that, but beat Nixon, that's right. So
until the end of Eisenhower's term, Like, you know, the
the ideal of an American man wasn't Michael Jordan, who

(01:23:31):
is a zero sum, cutthroat who prioritizes winning against everything
and is lauded for it. I mean, the American heroes
were Eisenhower and Jackie Robinson, and I mean sort.

Speaker 1 (01:23:43):
Of Joe Demagia, Joeomaggio, you got to marry Marilyn Monroe,
and yeah, I mean that'd be a TV pitch Man.
He was the first in some way meter coffee, right,
he was the first. He might be the first modern
sports celebrity.

Speaker 2 (01:23:58):
But all of those guys are rooted in a kind
of morality too, like, you know, like one of the
sort of problem, you know, the postmodern death of the
platonic ideal of a person, you know, is certainly at
play with athletes, where it's just you know, it's like
the Bill Bill Belichick fundamentally misunderstood everything, you know. I mean,

(01:24:18):
it's the idea that like, uh like we still deal
with myths, you know, I mean we you know, like
you know, Bill Belichick, who accidentally drafted Tom Brady, is
one of the greatest coaches ever with Tom Brady and
is below average without him, and like so like we
are so quick to point to the coach as the genius,

(01:24:39):
and like that's leftover muscle memory from that thing you're
talking about. About. You know, all the sports writers come
home from all the war correspondents come home from World
War Two writing about Patent and Nimitz and Omar Bradley
and Eisenhower, and they all go work for the sports departments,
and now they're writing about the coaches using the sort
of hand me down vocabulary interesting and like so a

(01:25:00):
lot of that stuff still exists, and you know, I
think there are a lot of athletes who are you know,
you know, Dale Murphy is eligible for the Hall of
Fame again and like should should be in because like
that's a guy who you know lives his American values.
You know, Jackie Robinson is a huge like like archetype

(01:25:23):
of what an American should be. And so like, you know,
I think it goes in waves. I certainly think we
are in a you know, a moment of reductiveness.

Speaker 1 (01:25:32):
No, I think that's true. I look at your career
and I think of Richard ben Kramer.

Speaker 2 (01:25:37):
Do you take that as a compliment, yes, I mean
what it takes is like to what it takes as unbelievable.
And then you know his Ted Williams story.

Speaker 1 (01:25:45):
That Ted Williams' profiles. You know, sorry to not say
this about what are your profiles. It's the greatest sports
profile I've ever read.

Speaker 2 (01:25:52):
And it's not close. I mean, like you know what
I mean, like like I'm trying to think of what
might be the second best, and I mean, you know,
maybe Gayta least on Joe Demaggio. But like, I mean,
there's a you know, it's probably like Frank the Ford
on Bobby nine and.

Speaker 1 (01:26:08):
Albert Stam on October sixty four, whether you believe that's
a book or really a big lung magazine piece. I
could argue it's an awesome like Albert Stamm it was
a magazine piece, Like what's the difference.

Speaker 2 (01:26:18):
You know? I mean like like uh no, I mean
like that that I mean that Richard ben Cramer story
is crazy. You know, there's like this a legend. Somebody
should fact check this for me. There's a legend that
Esquire tried to cut it and that he went into
the office himself like during clothes and restored all the cuts.
And I want to believe that's true so badly because
it is. It's like the biggest like fuck you, like

(01:26:41):
I just love like, you know, no, no, Richar bend Kramer,
You're gonna run his whole story. He did you know him?
Did you know Richard?

Speaker 1 (01:26:50):
I never got to meet him. He was he was
not far. He was in Annapolis. I knew he lived
in Annapolis. I mean, look, that book was my bible.
That's what I I know. And I'll be honest, I
actually think it taught us a bad lesson in political journalism.

Speaker 2 (01:27:06):
Oh, let's do this. What what lesson did it teach?

Speaker 1 (01:27:09):
Well? That that that there is this sort of different kind?
I mean it made us. What it did is that
it turned us all into pop psychologists as political writers.
Get I found what's that?

Speaker 2 (01:27:22):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:27:23):
No, because I love I'm obsessed with trying to figure
out why do these people think they can be leader
of the free world. They look in the mirror and
they think I should make the decisions for three hundred
and fifty million Americans. I think that is a sickness
as a part of me that thinks that that's a sickness,
It's a total sickness.

Speaker 2 (01:27:42):
I mean, the act of warning the job should disqualify
you from it.

Speaker 1 (01:27:45):
Yes, that's sort of, that's a that's a great you said,
this is why you're such a great writer. It's a
great way of putting it. And yet you know it
is in some ways. He said, you know, look, there's
a there is a DNA that's different with a presidential candidate,
and here's the failed, failed versions of it. And you
will see the successful versions of it over here, or

(01:28:08):
you'll you'll figure out why it is, and I think it.
I think it cheap and political reporting. It's not Richard's fault.
He did a tremendous service. It's the problem isn't copycatters, right, well,
it's like the problem.

Speaker 2 (01:28:24):
The problem isn't Richard Van Kramer. It's all the people
who tried to do it. The problem isn't Gary Smith.
It's all the people who wanted to write and second
person to imitate him. The problem isn't Bill Simmons, who
does this as an incredibly high level. It's all the
people who just think they can riff and like, no,
you're exactly right, like the cheap imitations of a high
wire act always sort of like, you know, culture bending

(01:28:48):
in that way. I mean that you know, well, like what,
let me ask you this, like, so, is that book
more for you than like the sort of Curtis Wilkie
era boys on the bus.

Speaker 1 (01:28:56):
Oh it's not even close. Yeah, because you know, and
that's and that's sad. And I've now literally gone the
other way, meaning like I I call myself now a
political anthropologist. I'm more interested in the political tribes of
America than the leaders. I don't care about the chiefs.

Speaker 2 (01:29:13):
Well, I'm like, you know, one of the interesting things
is like, and we could do an entire podcast about this,
but like, the idea of the American tribe has been
under relentless assault by the left and the right for
the last thirty years. And if you don't, if you
take away people's tribes, they're gonna find a new one
and you're probably not gonna like it, and like, you know,
and so like, it is interesting the degree to which

(01:29:35):
we are still so in our sort of Foxhole's pointing
fingers that people don't realize that, like we're all to
a certain degree guilty of Boy, it's should be nice
to have the founding fathers right now, you know what
I mean. Yeah, Like, there's been sort of such a
war on the idea of there being an American tribe
that I'm not sure there is one anymore. And I'm

(01:29:55):
not entirely sure anybody has an idea of how to
build one.

Speaker 1 (01:29:58):
There never were, there's been multip tribes. We've been a
coalition of It's what makes us look I sort of yeah, yeah, yeah,
there's no other country like us that's tried to do
this well. And I don't know if we're a success
or a failure yet.

Speaker 2 (01:30:12):
Well, and like you know, I, you know, look, I
grew up with you know, my father was a lifelong
liberal Democrat who cried every time they played the national
anthem at a sporting event, and you know, and so
like I very much sort of believe in there is
something exceptional about even the attempt of the American experiment.
And so it feels like it was out of vogue

(01:30:34):
to sort of traffic and American exceptionalism. And I think
that's clearly a mistake, because like, we are trying to
do something that is really really hard, and the reason
that we keep taking one step forward and two steps
back is that it's really hard to take a group
of people and turn them into a new trial.

Speaker 1 (01:30:57):
Human beings are tribal, very much stuff, right, and so
and so we're trying to you know, it is no,
it's it gets at I think that why we've are
political journalism. You know, you default to looking for the
great hope, right. It used to be the great White hope,
but now it's just simply the great hope and everybody.

(01:31:19):
And this is in a weird way, what too many
young reporters took away from Richard's book right, which was well,
let's go find you know, and and frankly, it turns
out Milton Friedman had was more accurate about things when
he says you can elect bad people or you know,
it's not whether you elect good people or bad people,
it's whether you have good incentives or bad incentives. And ultimately, like,

(01:31:43):
what makes us different is if we create a structure
that allows us to have a certain type of politician.
And instead we spent too much time as political reporters
for a generation coming at it from that somehow the
great leaders created the politics when actually no, it's an
it's an entire structure that did it well.

Speaker 2 (01:32:02):
And you know, there was the sort of real trauma
of World War Two meant that you know, and a
lot of people like on a lot of people on
both sides like attacked this, which I understand why, but
we I think we took it for granted that one
of the Trump trauma responses, it's politically, it seems of
World War two was of the idea of we could
never you know, eighty five million people died, like, we

(01:32:23):
can't do that again, Yeah, let's not do it. Yeah,
it was let's prune every extreme. So we're going to
govern from here to here, and like that's going to
leave a lot of people behind. But that seemed to
be a very intentional choice of we cannot let we
cannot do that again.

Speaker 1 (01:32:42):
So let's it worked until the Berlin Wall fell.

Speaker 2 (01:32:44):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (01:32:46):
I mean, I look at this and I'm I'm obsessed
with this that it turns out the era you and
I grew up in might be the outlier era of
American history.

Speaker 2 (01:32:54):
Well it you know, it certainly feels like a pause
that the collective action required to survive the Great Depression,
followed by the collective action required to win World War
Two and the sort of countrywide pr campaign that had
to be waged about the moral reasons for the war

(01:33:15):
to convince people to send their boys to go die
in places they'd never been and couldn't pronounce. Like that
created a pause in the history of America. People forget
like the Harriman family who founded Sun Valley, they were
also the primary funders of the was it the Coal
Springs Harbor eugenesis eugenics research facility in Long Island, And

(01:33:37):
like you know, Nazi Germany sent lawyers to the University
of Arkansas to study Jim Crow Laws to learn how
to write the Nuremberg Laws. The head of the Coal
Springs Harbor Facility got an honorary doctor from University of
Nuremberg in nineteen thirty six. Before Roosevelt and the government
could attack fascism in Europe, had to defeat it in America.

(01:34:01):
And it wasn't a slam dunk which way we were
going to go. So like to your point, like I
do feel like we have a huge pause in what
was happening, So like in some ways what's happening now
isn't new. We've just gone back to action previously in progress.

Speaker 1 (01:34:15):
We're in the nineteenth century again with modern tools. Yeah,
and like that's terrifying, because like absolutely terrifying.

Speaker 2 (01:34:23):
Yes, you know, and and and you know and like
you know, like Obama made that funny joke when the
Jonas brothers were at the White House because you know,
his daughters had crushes on him and he was like, uh,
you know, I got two words boys, predator, drones, and
like it was funny, but it's also you know, not funny.

Speaker 1 (01:34:39):
Oh you want to talk about I had Dexter Filkinson
recently and me too.

Speaker 2 (01:34:44):
The Forever War is my favorite war book not named
the things they carried.

Speaker 1 (01:34:49):
He he went into Ukraine recently, and warfare is changing
before our eyes and I don't think people understand it.

Speaker 2 (01:34:58):
The drones so new person. Yeah, I was in Ukraine
twice in the first year of the war, and it's
like the drones, man, it's not it's not be fifty
two's you can't see. And it's like, you know, if
you're seeing a video of the drone finding Drake on
this outdoor patio and playing the Kendrick Lamar song and
I'm like, I'm like, dude, nobody's safe. Like you know,

(01:35:19):
these things are terrifying.

Speaker 1 (01:35:22):
And this is coming and this is this is an
age that I don't think we're fully well.

Speaker 2 (01:35:28):
It'll be war without myth and war without heroism and
war without sacrifice and like in some way and scare.

Speaker 1 (01:35:35):
I mean, if you don't have the human element, what
you know, does if war is easier to wage without
risking lives, are we going to pre perpetually a war?

Speaker 2 (01:35:45):
Yeah, and that's terrifying and you know, and like but
like you see, I love the political anthropologist is a
really interesting way to describe it, because I don't I
don't think anybody has any idea what we're going to
look like in ten years, during fifteen years or twenty
And I feel like anybody who says they do, if
you really knew, you would be running a campaign like you,

(01:36:06):
if you really knew, you'd be Josh Lyman.

Speaker 1 (01:36:08):
You know, I know what I want to see happen.
I'd love to see a lot of things happen. I
just don't know whether we're capable of it.

Speaker 2 (01:36:15):
I hope so, because I genuinely, like, I genuinely believe
that that what most people want is to raise their
kids and to save some money for retirement, and to
be to be around their parents and to be around
their friends, and to like, you know, have a normal Thanksgiving,
And like, I like, there has to be at some

(01:36:38):
point everybody's got to put their guns down, right, like,
And so I don't know what the moment will be,
but I do. You talked about your hope earlier that
like if all these people who remember this are gone,
I mean, like my thing that I really hope for
that might be totally naive is that America longs for
a kind of radical cynerism. And I like, a a like,

(01:36:59):
we got to stop screaming at each other and realize
that the problem isn't somebody who disagrees with you. The
problem is it's the algorithm. The problem is the entire
nature of the structure of the debate. And if like
the story I like to tell is, my wife's grandfather
was a German prisoner of war, and staal aloof III,
which is the prisoner of war, cam up from the
Great Escape, and so you know, they had these reunions,

(01:37:23):
and I went to them, and then you know, it'd
be all these old men who show up at a
Marriott and Cincinnati or somewhere, and they'd sit around and
tell stories. But the craziest thing happened the very end
of their lives. They started inviting their German guards, who
would show up with their families and their children and
their grandchildren. And they would be all these old men
who didn't see each other as enemies. They saw themselves

(01:37:45):
as allies, and the enemy was war itself. And like,
you do get the sense that when you, when people
with wisdom are thinking about these conflicts, that like people
are desperate for for your enemy to not be your
fellow citizen, but for your.

Speaker 1 (01:38:00):
Well, we we're sort of seeing that now at the
Vietnam generation, right, you're seeing more soldiers wanting to meet,
wanting to you see those types of reunions with Vietnam
as well, where you'll have.

Speaker 2 (01:38:11):
And one hundred percent and like there are a lot
of soldiers who go back. You know, I this terrifying thing.
A friend of mine, Ken Moorefield, who was literally on
the last helicopter out of saw I got in nineteen
seventy five, he physically put the ambassador on the next
to last helicopter and he was on the last one.
And he was a tet offensive as like a like

(01:38:33):
I think a company I think he was a captain,
will make him a company commander. And he went back
to that battlefield with the opposing commander. In the nineties
when he went he worked for the Clinton administration and
went back to Vietnam and the State Department, and that
guy walked him around the battlefield and he described he
realized how little they knew about where the enemy was
and what they were trying to do, and he was

(01:38:53):
just like, man, it's a miracle any of us lived.
Because he was like, he was showing me where they
were and that is not where we had and told
they were, and he was just like and it was
terrifying to sort of to go back as an old
man and see it and be right. I mean it.
You know. The hope is that people realize that the
algorithm is the enemy, and it's not somebody who.

Speaker 1 (01:39:13):
Discounts it is. It is what I ran about the most.
I mean, the fact is the founders created a constitution
that was all about a compromise that the whole point
was to constantly realize, if you're going to put a
bunch of tribes that don't normally govern together to govern together,
you're gonna nobody gets to nobody gets their way. Yeah no,

(01:39:36):
and and like so like, you know, that's the radical
quote unquote centrism. Like I got called a radical centrist
ones and I thought, well, that's a huge storm. I'm
just an incrementalist. It said, I don't believe you can
move three hundred and fifty million people by leaping a
foot ahead. You've got to go a centimeter at the time.

Speaker 2 (01:39:53):
And you know, it's like I do obviously acknowledge the
fact that that you know, it is cruel to ask
people who've waited for so long to keep waiting. You know,
it's the idea of the dream deferred is like.

Speaker 1 (01:40:06):
Well, like civil unions versus same sex marriage. But guess what,
you weren't going to get same sex marriage without first
getting civil unions.

Speaker 2 (01:40:13):
And you know it also like you know, I remember
Obama couldn't admit he was in favor of getting like
that's not that long ago, and so like you.

Speaker 1 (01:40:21):
Just this century, you know, this was this was the
twenty first century.

Speaker 2 (01:40:26):
I know the uh so, if Trump runs again, can
Obama run again? Well?

Speaker 1 (01:40:30):
See that to me is the great way to stop
him from running. I've always I've always thought that the
liberals ont a wink and just say, okay, you do
know that if you get a third, if you get
to run again, they Obama gets to run again.

Speaker 2 (01:40:43):
How's that?

Speaker 1 (01:40:43):
R and I one could argue, it's sort of like
oballa I love about sports. Argument. Right, Let's see, you know,
let's see the Lebron Miami Heat play the Michael Jordan,
you know, ninety two team. Let's see the Lakers. If
Magic doesn't get HIV, play Jordan and see who gets
you know my favorite. You know, the point is, maybe

(01:41:04):
Obama v. Trump is the cultural showdown this country needs.

Speaker 2 (01:41:09):
I mean, do you think that all of this started
when Obama said at the White House Correspondence Center said.

Speaker 1 (01:41:15):
Uh uh, humiliated him.

Speaker 2 (01:41:17):
Yeah, yeah, I said, you know, Donald Trump says, I'll
go down as the work's president history. At least I'll
go down as president huh did in his anger translator,
didn't he like name drop you?

Speaker 1 (01:41:28):
I think, Oh I've yeah, I've got I got all.
That's just no, I've gotten a few of those. But
you know what, Trump, I'm convinced that. And the reason
I'm convinced, I'm convinced he never thought he was going
to be president, and he never really wanted the job.
What he wanted was the recognition, and he wanted to
get to where he got, which was that nomination proved

(01:41:51):
that he could do it. Because the fact that he
didn't have a victory speech written, the fact that they
were shocked they actually won, is to me the tell
of oh god, I've got it. And my favorite, my
favorite anecdote that never has gotten a lot of attention
is when Trump met with Obama after he's president elect
and Obama's hosting him, and Trump says he learns in

(01:42:14):
that moment that the White House staff doesn't come with
the White House. Like he knew that there was a
residential staff, but he thought that the people that worked
in the West wing. You know, that this was like
a corporate takeover, and the employees of Barack Obama would
then become on January twenty at the employees of him.
And then somebody told him, no, you've got to hire

(01:42:35):
all that anyway. Oh my god, Like that's when it
would hit him that suddenly he didn't have a network
of people. He's never had a network of people. He
only surrounds himself with four to six people that will
suck up to him until that relationship deteriorates and he
then moves on. He never has the same eight people
for an eight year span, but he is the same.
But he always has a circle around him. And that's

(01:42:58):
why I'm convinced he never actually won it. He wanted
the idea of the presidency, he wanted a profit off
of it, all of those things. He didn't want to
actually have to do the job.

Speaker 2 (01:43:07):
Well you know, I mean the job is it's the
impossible job. Like, you know, it was either Obama or book.
Somebody said, like, by the time the problem gets to
the president, there are no good options.

Speaker 1 (01:43:19):
They're all bad.

Speaker 2 (01:43:20):
Like everything, if it's that complex that it gets to
your desk, everything is a bad option. I would like
it would be terrifying to wake up and be president.

Speaker 1 (01:43:31):
No, and you would and the idea that one person,
you know, frankly, it probably should be a committee of
people are doing these things.

Speaker 2 (01:43:39):
But or just like just if we could just put
the people in charge of Chick fil A in charge
of everything or waffle House Joe Rogers to just run
the country like like like you know, like the like
every time I go into waffle House, I'm like, this
is the greatest, Like can they just be in charge
of everything?

Speaker 1 (01:43:57):
Their logistics are fantastic, it's all believed. I mean, it's
all very good. Hey, natural disasters come. Waffle House is
a comm shop is pretty good. Well.

Speaker 2 (01:44:06):
That and the thing about Chick fil A that I
would love to know is that they don't the pickles
are never slimy, and so I'm.

Speaker 1 (01:44:17):
Curious how do they do that?

Speaker 2 (01:44:18):
Yeah, I would just like to know, like what is
that like? And why what's the difference between McDonald's pickles
and Chick fil a pickles? Because there's a there's some
sort of something in the process where someone who's decided
that we care about pickles, and I just would like
to know how you go from being a guy in
a room who cares about pickles to actually manifesting that

(01:44:38):
at scale.

Speaker 1 (01:44:41):
Well, you got to Todd that that's a fair point.
All right, let me get you out of here on this.
I got to ask you one sport. Who's somebody you
haven't profiled right now in sports that you'd like to
but you can't break through. And if they won't give you,
I assume you don't get a certain amount of access,
you won't write about well.

Speaker 2 (01:45:00):
I mean sometimes you can, but sometimes it's just the
doughnut hole. Like if you don't have access to the
sort of someone's interior monologue, it feels still born. I mean,
you know, like Sandy Kofax, who promised.

Speaker 1 (01:45:17):
Please, what's Jane, what's your last Jamie?

Speaker 2 (01:45:21):
Jane Levy? Jane Levy's talking.

Speaker 1 (01:45:22):
That book is amazing because of how hard it was
to break. I mean, you're right, Sandy Kofax is still
the most anonymous famous person alive in baseball right now.

Speaker 2 (01:45:32):
So I text with him a little and because I
tried to get him to for a story when he
was turning ninety, and he has promised me, Sandy, if
you're listening, I'm going to hold you to your word.
He has promised me that if he lives to one hundred,
he will let me come spend a bunch of time
with him.

Speaker 1 (01:45:46):
So, I mean, he's he's one of those. I had
an uncle who we all knew there was some hidden story.
We just didn't know what the story was, and we
didn't get it until he died and it turned out
he was secretly married to a black woman and he
didn't think his family could handle it. And it was
this is nineteen eighty five. It's it's sort of and
they were always speculation in my family. Oh maybe he's

(01:46:08):
closet a gay, Maybe he's this, maybe he's that. There
was just like he's just hiding something he thinks the
family doesn't want to know or whatever. And it's there's
it's always been interesting to me. You know, we're going
to learn something about why he always kept to himself
the most right. But he is probably I mean, he's
so important to Jewish Americans. Oh, it's incredible, and you know,

(01:46:33):
I it looked, you know, we joke at as Jews joke, right,
he's he's He's on the cover of the pamphlet of
Greatest Well Jewish.

Speaker 2 (01:46:40):
It's like, what's the thing from Lebowski. It's like two
thousand years from Moses to Sandy Kofax. You got damn right,
I'm living in the past, Like do you know what
I mean? Like, yes, you know? And then you know,
I'm really interested in Lebron because like Lebron's school, an
Acrid is the real thing, and Lebron has over and
over and over had great cost to his own sort

(01:47:04):
of piggy bank of adulation, yea, like spoken up for
the things that matter to him and like just you know,
a lot of respect for Lebron.

Speaker 1 (01:47:12):
Oh, I I find I think Lebron is so under
appreciated because look what we've done to him. Oh and
he I mean what Sports Illustrated putting him on the
cover at fourteen or fifteen and he actually lived up
to the expectations. Who does that? And Lebron James And
that's it.

Speaker 2 (01:47:31):
And also it's the list somebody with no like he's
an incredible dad and like he's a really like I
don't know, like in some ways, like that's all you
could really want, Like you're if you had a son,
you would be like, I hope he turns out.

Speaker 1 (01:47:48):
We always want our sports figures. We always say, are
they good family people? Lebron's And you know, you never
have with Lebron some story about him gallivanting out late
at night. You know, I've never heard.

Speaker 2 (01:47:58):
Any, but you know it's a funny. Michael Jordan one
time held up his cell phone and said, I'm glad
we didn't have these in nineteen ninety three. He's like,
I might have had any one of them, Tiger Wood situations,
the but like, you know, like I would love to
profile Lebron, you know, because I'm a baseball like I'm

(01:48:19):
a little I'm into sort of Mike Trout. But I can't.
I can't tell if that's just because he doesn't talk,
like you know, just because just because they're private doesn't
mean they're interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:48:31):
That's fair. Well, you finally got each yi road to talk.
What took him so long to share?

Speaker 2 (01:48:36):
Well, he wouldn't talk to me. I just followed him
around Japan.

Speaker 1 (01:48:41):
He didn't. I thought he did eventually talk.

Speaker 2 (01:48:44):
No, I just knew where he would be at all times.

Speaker 1 (01:48:46):
Because you know, interesting the uh, but I was such
a fascinating look. I I certainly felt like you you
always told me something about him that I didn't know, Like.

Speaker 2 (01:48:55):
I talked to you know, it'd be easier just to
talk to him, but said, you have to go talk
to like eight hundred other people.

Speaker 1 (01:49:03):
Well, show Hayes another one, none of it. Nobody knows
anything about him.

Speaker 2 (01:49:06):
No, And like Mookie Betts was just on All the
Smoke talking about him, and it was just basically saying
the same thing, like game ends and he leaves. I'm
also like, I think the greatest piece of American media
is All the Smoke. I love that podcast. I don't
know if you listened to that, but it's really well
not enough, dude. They get people to say unbelievable stuff

(01:49:29):
like they are like really really good interviewers because people
say crazy shit to them.

Speaker 1 (01:49:36):
Well, it's my reason why I love the podcast format.
I do think the longer you go in an interview
that you know, you can only stay on message for
ten or fifty Look, I've learned this. This is this
was the flaw of the Sunday Show. The Sunday Shows
worked when they were thirty to forty five minute interviews
when they started to get truncated, and unfortunately I was

(01:49:57):
in the era where I was getting this pressure, no, no, no,
you need more people on and all this, and you know,
you realize everybody figured everybody. It's like analytics and baseball
at the peak horrible part of baseball. Everybody's figured out
how to hack the Sunday Show interview as long as
it's less than ten minutes. Now after ten minutes, it's like,

(01:50:17):
there's there's a character of Will Ferrell. You know, if
you ask them that question in some movie. I think
it's Austin Powers, where if you ask them a question
three times, the third time you ask them, he actually
has to answer the truth. I think is like the character,
it's like a shtick thing. But I actually believe that
that once you there's a like the human brain can
sort of stick to a script only for so long.

(01:50:41):
And why the podcast format has turned into a better
way to talk to people because it's essentially it's taken
the magazine piece and turned it into an oral history.

Speaker 2 (01:50:52):
Well, you know, and I'm sitting at a picnic table
in Los Angeles on my laptop in this is the
exact window that all my work zooms look like and
the like, frankly, you just forget that anyone's ever going
to hear any of this, and like that's like a
really danger Like I joked that the most dangerous thing

(01:51:12):
in the world is to think out loud in public,
and like this like this format gets you doing that
in a way, and it's like like sometimes like you
finish and you're like, I really hope nobody listens to that,
because like I'm really not sure what I've said.

Speaker 1 (01:51:28):
I'll say things about my childhood and I'm like, oh, no,
I hope my my mother's still alive, and I'm like,
oh she listens, Oh she's gonna she's gonna probe me
on that one my mom was in.

Speaker 2 (01:51:40):
Still, I think every podcast I do, Hi Mom, and so,
like I always I always catch myself being like, you know,
don't don't embarrass the family, embarrass leave the locker room,
talk in the locker room, like like you know, like
just keep it together, be classic.

Speaker 1 (01:51:58):
Well, right, this was great. I kept you for an hour.
I don't want to do it any longer because I
feel like I've overstayed my welcome.

Speaker 2 (01:52:05):
H this was really fun, man, I really appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (01:52:08):
Well, I appreciate it, and like I said, love the book,
and have I know where my audience thinks, and I
know that if they haven't gotten this book, they will now.

Speaker 2 (01:52:17):
Thanks so much, Chuck.

Speaker 1 (01:52:27):
Well, I hope I hope you weren't disappointed by right Thompson.
I wasn't. So I I don't think I oversold it.
I hope you don't think I over sold it. I
am again. The book itself is tremendous. I encourage you
to read this book. It's called The Barn by Right Thompson.

Speaker 2 (01:52:45):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:52:45):
You know we're not asking you to read a thousand words,
a thousand pages on this. Uh. It's a it's a
it's a worthy read, and it's a book worthy of
your bookshelf for what it's worth. All right, let's go
back in time. It's time for the history lesson of
the We're gonna go into the podcast time machine. Let's
see where we're going. You know, I always I always

(01:53:13):
think that somehow I'm there's squiggly lines, right, That's what
I'm that's that's a move I'm trying to go for you.
So we're gonna go all the way back to nineteen
thirty nine, it's Thanksgiving Week, and I thought I've not
done it for the toodcast time machine. I've made references
to it before. But for a few years we had
two Thanksgivings. And how did we end up with two Thanksgivings? Well,

(01:53:38):
it was the year FDR chose to move Thanksgiving and
guess what, it nearly tore America in half. Let me
tell you the story. So we it's it is Thanksgiving week.
And by the way, it's kind of a late version
of Thanksgiving. Right, Thanksgiving is gonna be the twenty eighth
this year closer, you know, and that what does that
really mean if you're a Christmas retailer means, oh, there's

(01:54:01):
not You get one essentially one less week to sell
Christmas presents. Right. You could kind of tell that retailer's
a bit a little bit nervous about the shortened Thanksgiving
to Christmas window this year. Because I don't know about you,
but I guess we've all agreed. Black Friday now starts

(01:54:21):
the Friday before Thanksgiving because it was Black Friday week.
We are already discussed last time that now colleges send
all their students home the Friday before Thanksgiving. There's no
more short week at all, no more Tuesday and Wednesday
being the crappy time at the airport. Trust me, both
my wife and I could tell you Friday night we

(01:54:42):
will each went there once and it was a madhouse
at National. So clearly now the Friday before the Thanksgiving
is the new Wednesday before Thanksgiving. And we now have
decided to make Black Friday a week. It is no
longer a day, it is a week. Perhaps it's a
state of mind, right. So part of that, I think

(01:55:05):
is because this year Thanksgiving does come a bit later,
so when the shopping window shrinks, you know, retailers want
to stretch, including Amazon, want to stretch the whole calendar backward.
But of course, this isn't the first time that America
has faced a late Thanksgiving and retail anxiety. And there
was one year when a president tried to solve it himself.

(01:55:29):
That's right, a president tried to move Thanksgiving and Americans
reacted as if he'd committed a crime against Turkey and tradition.
So today we're going to get back into the time
machine and we're going to revisit nineteen thirty nine. It's
the year Franklin Roosevelt changed the date of Thanksgiving and
accidentally triggered a culture war. But to understand why it
blew up, we should understand a little something about what
most Americans have forgotten, and that is that Thanksgiving wasn't

(01:55:50):
always on a fixed date or even a fixed week.
In fact, presidents used to move it all the time.
Thanksgiving before FDR, for most of you US, say, Street,
Thanksgiving was not a settled holiday. Before Lincoln, we had
thirteen states with thirteen different dates. Each governor used to
pick their own day of Thanksgiving, usually somewhere between October

(01:56:11):
and early December, and it would move constantly. There was
no national standard. Then, in eighteen sixty three, in the
middle of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a single
national Thanksgiving on the last Thursday in November, hoping it
would unify the country during, of course, what was unimaginable division.
But here's the part that people forget. From nineteen sixty

(01:56:33):
three through nineteen thirty eight, every president issued a new
proclamation each year declaring the specific date of Thanksgiving. We
didn't do it. We didn't have a standard method. Each
year a president essentially would decide, So Thanksgiving wasn't always
a statutory holiday. It existed entirely at the whim of

(01:56:55):
the White House. When the president wanted to have the holiday,
presidents tweaked it ulysses As Grant, he moved it twice
eighteen seventy one. In November twenty third, he moved it
for harvest and travel reasons. The eighteen seventy harvest was
late and early snowstorms hit the Northern States hard, so
governors and clergy petitioned Grant, saying that a late November

(01:57:17):
date made travel dangerous and excluded rural families. Grant decided
to move Thanksgiving up a week to help travelers and farmers.
Then in eighteen seventy five he moved it back. Newspapers,
especially in New England, complained that Grant had disrupted tradition
and commerce. So four years later Grant restored it to
the last Thursday of November, which is of course the

(01:57:38):
original Lincoln proclamation. Two moves for do different reasons, both
of more more logistical than cultural. Right then came Grover Cleveland.
He adjusted again. In eighteen eighty five. Cleveland shifted Thanksgiving
slightly earlier for two reasons. Their economic jitters. After the
Panic of eighteen eighty four, merchants wanted a steadier December,
so in a symbolic reset, Cleveland wanted a hecast Thanksgiving

(01:58:01):
as more secular, forward looking national holiday, not as a
Civil war remembrance. So again he changed it slightly more
to create a little bit more unity, but again it
had to do with commerce. Then in eighteen ninety nine,
William McKinley tweaks it. The Spanish American War just ended,
Troops were slowly returning from Cuba, and the Philippines Veterans

(01:58:23):
Group asked the White House to push Thanksgiving later so
that more soldiers could actually get home in time. So
McKinley obliged, and he actually picked a date that gave
returning servicemen a chance to join their families. He moved
it later. Across all these shifts, one theme would stand out.
Presidents had moved Thanksgiving before, but always for weather, harvest, travel,

(01:58:45):
or wartime logistics. It was never specifically for economic intervention.
It was never specifically for retail sales, and it was
never specifically for the shopping season. That's what made FDR's
decision in nineteen thirty nine different and politically a bit explosive.
So in nineteen thirty nine, we had a retail panic

(01:59:06):
over a short shopping season. Why that year, Thanksgiving was
scheduled for November thirtieth, right, as basically as late as
it can go, Right, when the fourth Thursday can be
that like it's possible, Right, it's as late as it
can go. Here we were in nineteen thirty nine. The
US is still trying to clocks weight out of the
Great Depression. Unemployment is still high, Retailers are anxious. So

(01:59:29):
retailers won the White House at a very short shopping season,
will tank Christmas sales and tank the economy overall. So Roosevelt, ever,
the economic thinker, right many ways, this is exactly something
Trump would do. Let's not pretend he wouldn't even the
believer that government could nudge consumer behavior. Hint, he decides
to help. So he moves Thanksgiving up one week to

(01:59:51):
November twenty third, And just like that, there was no
consultation or snow congressional vote, just simply a presidential proclamation. Well,
guess what happened. FDR's opponents dubbed it Frank's Giving, right,
get it, franklindellan Roosevelt Franksgiving. So we have Franksgiving. The
reaction became immediate, so families complained that school calendars didn't

(02:00:11):
line up. Churches complained that the holiday schedules were thrown off.
College football coaches even came out against it because rivalry
games were being messed up for years were based on
the last Thursday, so you had small business complaints. Governors complained,
radio commentators were mocking the president for Franksgiving. Republicans accused
Roosevelt of behaving like a monarch hint hint. Alf Landon

(02:00:35):
in the GOP nominee just three years earlier, declares, this
is another illustration of the confusion which has characterized this administration.
All of this is nineteen thirty nine. People are calling
Roosevelt authoritarian over this Thanksgiving proclamation, and then the states
get involved. We end up with two Americas and two Thanksgivings.
States were not required to follow the president's proclamation, so

(02:00:57):
guess what many did not. In nineteen thirty nine, the
country ended up with twenty three states celebrating FDR's early
Thanksgiving or show we call it Franksgiving, twenty two states
refusing and sticking with November thirtieth. At three states decided
to have two Thanksgivings. God love those three states. The
three states in case you're wondering, Colorado and Texas, and

(02:01:21):
I say potentially Mississippi because it is unclear whether they
put out a second proclamation or not. Definitely, it's clear
that Texas and Colorado were two states that decided to
have the two Thanksgivings, but Mississippi is the other one
that didn't seem to also have proclamations for either. So
either way, imagine having two Thanksgivings. Man, you know, in

(02:01:46):
some ways, if you have two giant families and the
in laws don't get along. You know, I'm somebody who
I remember as a kid, my parents didn't want to
say no to either one of their sets of parents.
So I think I had Thanksgiving lunch with my father's
side of the family and thanks Giving dinner with my
mother's side of the family. We were early, right, you know,
And that happens when you're on there, when you have

(02:02:06):
kids early and you're in you're in your twenties, still
you don't You're you feared disappointing your parents, so you
end up trying to make everybody happy. By the way,
this didn't last one year. Nineteen thirty nine. This ended
up lasting in nineteen forty and we became a nation
divided over Turkey. So by nineteen forty one, Congress finally

(02:02:26):
decides to step in, so we had the war looming.
Of course, Congress decided that Thanksgiving chaos needed to end,
and they passed the resolution that we live with today,
Thanksgiving as the fourth Thursday of November. It's not the
last Thursday of November. That was a you know, it
is the fourth Thursday of November. Roosevelt signs it into
law December twenty sixth, nineteen forty one, and that is

(02:02:46):
why Thanksgiving floats the way it does today. But wow,
how about that? Huh? That the fact that we had
these two Thanksgivings it split us on political lines. Look
at how that feels. And I also bring it up
because this was also sort of This was late in

(02:03:08):
the second term of Roosevelt, right he's getting ready to
looks like run for a third term. That exhaustion was
in anyway, The point being is that there's so many
similarities of the times we're in now and where we
are right, especially with this year's Thanksgiving. It's late, the
shopping windows tight by the way consumer sentiment sucks. Right now,

(02:03:28):
we're a decade low in consumer sentiment. Retailers are very nervous,
just like they weren't thirty nine. So that may explain
why they've taken matters in their own hands. And now
we have Black Friday Month, or Black Friday Week or
Black Friday, which may begin I think with I think
it begins sometime on the fourth of July, you know,

(02:03:50):
maybe just after the fireworks that that's the official kickoff
for Black for the Black Friday season. Kind of half kidding,
but you see where this is going anyway, It's it's
an interesting story. It's a reminder sort of how some
you know, wait all I tell you the story of
Red Santa Claus. That's that, and how sometimes when you

(02:04:14):
find out some of the sources of where it's a
little it's a little bit of a bummer that it
wasn't just this collective. No, we rose above partisanship in
some ways because I think Thanksgiving is our best holiday.
It's the one time that Americans try to be their
best versions of themselves more so than in any other holiday,
I think, more so than the than the religious holidays

(02:04:36):
in the winter. I'm not saying people don't get holiday
spirit and all that stuff, but there's Thanksgiving is because
it's not because it's secular. It feels as if it's
the most inclusive of all the holidays. I think first
gen Americans dig it just as much as as fifth
and sixth generation Americans. It is. It is a very

(02:04:59):
American thing do so. But like everything that we may
think of as traditional now, at some point it was
a political controversy.

Speaker 2 (02:05:10):
All right.

Speaker 1 (02:05:11):
So with that, let me dig into a couple of
questions before I get in my college football stick for
the week, ask Chuck.

Speaker 2 (02:05:20):
Ah.

Speaker 1 (02:05:20):
These are some well timed questions. Thank you very much
producer Nesa for making sure I answered this question because
it's something I didn't discuss in the open. First question
comes from mel and asks, hey, can we please get
your hot take on Trump falling head over heels in
love with New York City mayor Mom Donnie? This is
one hundred and eighty degree change. What magic does Mom
Donnie have? Trump with smint and why? Well, a few

(02:05:41):
things I think. Look, Trump wants to be associated with winners.
That's number one. Two, when somebody gets it gets good
press for being Trump like he wants to find a
way to to say nice things. Look what he does
with Bernie Sanders, right, he knows many of sanders voters

(02:06:03):
ended up with him. He My guess is, Mom Donnie
came armed with letting him know, Hey, some of my voter,
some of your voters voted for me in twenty five,
who voted for you in twenty four? And you know
Trump is you know, the last person that whispers something
in his ears is what he ends up spewing out.
So you know, look, everybody we already learned. Mom Donnie

(02:06:27):
called other governors and mayors who have dealt with Trump,
including Mayor Bowser, I think Governor Wes Moore, who confirmed
with me he had that conversation with Mom Donnie. Apparently
Shapiro and Whitmer as well. How do you manage Trump?
What's you know what some advice at dealing with them?
And uh, it wasn't in either one of their interests
personally to get into a feud, especially in this moment.

(02:06:50):
Trump's in a bad place, right, he can't get on
the wrong side of somebody that just won on the economy.
So I think think that that was a motivator. But
you know, anybody that is compared to him favorably, he
is going to find a way. I mean, for the
same reason he can't help himself with Putin right. Whenever
Putin says nice things, he loves it. Why these dictators

(02:07:10):
will say nice things and he melts. So, you know,
Mam Donnie's no different than anybody else that works Trump
from overseas as well. So I thought it was fascinating
that he said out words are words Trump. You know,
I know where I spent a lot of time saying
off in Trump Bullshit's the American public. He does one

(02:07:33):
place where he's telling the truth is it is where
he's telling the truth is when he says, oh, that's
just campaign talk, right right when he was helping Mam Donnie, Oh,
don't answer that question. They just you know, about whether
he's a fascist or a despot or a communist. Right,
Trump views all of that, He had views it all's
fair during the campaign, and then he wants if you're
willing to put aside things and just say, oh, we're

(02:07:55):
just falling around than he is. Look, I can just
tell you my own interactions with him when he when
he's come after, when he came after me in some
really harsh ways. You know, I'd say, you know, mister President,
you know when you called me a son of a bitch.
My daughter saw it first. She's fifteen. I'm not crazy
about that. He goes, well, you can tell her, I
don't really mean it, you know. I don't say these

(02:08:16):
things about reporters. I don't like I say things about
the reporters that matter to me, you know, And that,
you know, he sort of he thinks it's all part
of the game, and that I'm playing a role and
he's playing a role. And I think he's always playing
a role. I think there's there's and he wants us
all to play the role a certain role too. And

(02:08:38):
I think that that's where some of this sister, where
he views the theater as the theater. And then he's
also somebody that says he'll talk with anybody, and if
you're wanting to talk with anybody overseas, then you should
be able to want him to talk with anybody that
you politically disagree with. It is strange, though, that he
seems to have a warmer relationship already with Mom Donnie
than he has with either Schumburg, Jeffreys and he's made

(02:09:00):
a choice not to have a relationship with Schumer, Jeffreys
or moreover, uh, it's possible that his own staff has
kept Schumer and Jeffries away from Trump for fear he
may cut deals with them, which is not which is
not an uh, which is not a which is not
something that those who don't want to see deal Scott

(02:09:21):
with them. And it's there's a reasonable likelihood of that anyway.
So I at first was I surprised by it? I
was was I shocked by it? I wasn't by the
way he really Let imagine you're at least stephonic, right,
you came up as a fast rising star of Paul

(02:09:43):
Ryan's and Mitt Romney's Republican Party. You decide I'm gonna
go a maggots to sort of replace Liz Cheney in
the leadership. Right, I'm gonna take advantage of this moment
and and and just suck up to Trump sort of
be something I'm not and pretend I'm this. And so
she does and becomes this sort of maga transforms and

(02:10:04):
like kind of like we see Lindsey Graham and his
sort of pathetic heel turn that he's done and now
he's all, you know, mister magnet, because he felt like
it was the only way he could stay relevant, and
that's all he cares about is relevancy. But it's kind
of for those of us that thought there was something
more to him than just staying relevant, you know, And

(02:10:25):
it's always amusing to me. People need to remember that
the reason that Steele Dosi I got credibility is because
of Lindsey Graham. Lindsey Graham is literally the person that
handed the steel dos out to about half the reporters
that ended up taking a look at it. So never
nobody should ever forget that fact. And he has been
running away from that fact ever since he did that flip.

(02:10:46):
But you're at least aphonic. Did you sold your own
your ideology out? You sold your own soul out all
to quickly move up thinking it was going to work,
And what has it gotten you? You got the leadership
position for a period of time, so you got to
replace Liz Cheney. Let's see, did you end up ambassador
to the U. N Nope, that got yanked from you.

(02:11:08):
How's that governor campaign gonna know? You're trying to literally
use mom Donnie to to hang uh and use Mom
Donnie to defeat HOKL And what does Trump do literally
pulls the rhetorical rugout from under you on this because
now anything she says about Mom Donnie, you say, but
President Trump, she tried to clean it up. She tried

(02:11:30):
she put out a you know, I I don't know
what he sees. I still see this and he's a
communist and he's this, this and this, and it's like, oh, well,
but one thing Donald Trump did do is it really
did expose at least Stephonic and she just is you know, again,
this is why if you're a Republican and you're and
you're trying to figure out how to navigate Trump, when

(02:11:52):
you when you when you flip your who you are,
when you completely try to change your identity, just know
when you get exposed, you'll have no clothes on.

Speaker 2 (02:12:02):
Right.

Speaker 1 (02:12:02):
It is the literally, she is politically naked now, and
it is you know, it is likely an unfixable situation
for her at this point. Next question comes from Austin
from Austin. It's just you gotta love that, right, Austin
from Austin. I'm hoping for a question from Orlando. From Orlando,

(02:12:23):
that would be nice we could get that. That would
be that would be fantastic. He goes, I know you're
a journalists not a politician. You've made clear you want
to contribute from your current platform. But given your name, recognition,
trust with the public, and ability to communicate across the
out without ego or spin, I can't help, but wonder
is it totally out of the question for you to
run for office some day? You check a lot of boxes.
People say they want a leader, deep knowledge of policy,
respect for institutions, genuine desire for unity, even if it's

(02:12:45):
a long shot. I think the question's worth asking, Austin.
I appreciate the question. I have gotten a few inquiries
from a variety of places. I just I really think
it would. I care about the institution of the media enough,

(02:13:06):
you know. I go back to something when Jay Carney
made the decision to become go from being bureau chief
of Time magazine a spokesperson for Vice President Biden. I
understood the decision he had to make, and he was
making for his family. Time was he said, you know, look,
this was he was sort of the beer chief for

(02:13:28):
when Time had relevancy and it was quickly fading away.
I mean you know, his he had to look, he
decided he had to pivot careers. And I understand it,
and I understand it from his point of view, but
his decision hurt all of us. It hurt the entire
political media community, because there are those of us who

(02:13:48):
just you know, aren't political actors. And he just called
making the decision he made called, you know, only reinforced
this belief those in the right that all mainstream media's
you know, if given a choice, is always going to
pick one side of the aisle. And of course it
calls into question the reporting itself for a period of time.
It's why, that's why so many journalists are just outraged

(02:14:11):
by this. Olivia Newsy, I cannot believe Vanity Fair is
employing and anybody that trades sex for scoops, if that's
what this is, certainly what it looks like, right, It's
it's wrong on any number of levels. But your credibility
as a journalist should matter. You know, if I ever
did run, I would never run with either of the
two parties. It would be some sort of you know,

(02:14:32):
nonpartisan or independent. But I just the only the only
office that would intrigue me would be would be some
sort of mayor position. If I ever did it, To
be fully, you know, I'm not going to be here
and be one of these. I'd never do it. I'm
pretty sure i'd never do it. But if I thought

(02:14:52):
I could help my community where I lived in as
a as some sort of county or you know, or
mayor in a way that might you know, to help
solve problems, if I thought I could do that, I
would not go and be in the legislature of any kind,
not under these circums. I just not the way these

(02:15:12):
legislatures are working these days, there would be no chance
on something like that. So it is seriously unlikely at all.
And like I said, the thing that the only elected
officials I've come across who have gotten satisfaction out of
the job are mayors and governors and obviously presidents. I'm

(02:15:33):
not even remotely putting myself in that category. But that's
why it's sort of mayor feels like the the most
credible place that someone like me can end up. All right,
one last question, and then I want to do my
college football. This comes from Greg from Peoria. I always
love to find out how it's playing in Peoria. You
mentioned we're now more of a You're now more of

(02:15:55):
a policy want than a political one would led to
that shift. I think I've always been both. For what
it's worth, do you track evolving policies across administrations, especially
when some change constantly or barely exists. On a lighter note,
my son and I are both Notre Dame fans. He's
die hard, I'm fair weather. He got fired up when
you defended Miami and downplayed Notre Dame wins. He swears
teams are never one hundred percent, So please don't tempt
him into researching resting starters. It'll tank his GPA. Greg

(02:16:19):
for purious is ps, love the election coverage, Watch the
whole night, Thank you well man. It turns out our
numbers were even bigger than I thought. I've now heard
some estimates that we might have even crossed over a
million combined when you count our x and our various youtubes.
I'm still trying to figure out the references on that.
It's I guess the argument I would make is I've

(02:16:41):
always been I think that, and this is true of
most people that cover politics I think for a long
period of time, is that there's always an issuer too,
that you're very passionate about that sort of gets you
interested in getting involved or reading about politics. And then yes,
political reporting can be very much, very campaign focused, and

(02:17:01):
certainly the first fifteen years of my career were much
about the business of getting people elected. That's what I
did for a living. I ran the trade publication that
just focused on that, so that's what I had to
be an expert on. The great thing about shifting over
to NBC is that is that it was like I
had one foot in both camps and I got to
finally showcase a little bit more of the policy chops.

(02:17:23):
And that's what made why I Meet the Press was
sort of the perfect job, you know, perfect job in reporting,
you know, and for the night and it just was
and it was great, and I'm glad I had my
nine year run. I don't think i'd want to go back,
and I you know, I want to just create the
stuff I liked the best about it and try to

(02:17:44):
build a better version of it here. So the longer
conversations and the ability to do both policy and politics,
so it's not really that it's one over the other.
It's just my career was focused on the business of
campaigns and elections for fifteen years. That was my job.
That was the profit motivator of the publication. Even you know,
there would be policy stuff that I'd read about, but

(02:18:07):
we didn't have a place to cover it. That's obviously
was different than the last twenty years of my career
here where I've been in that mode. And now that's
the beauty of this podcast that essentially I get to
do a little bit of mold. All right, I'm gonna
put a button in that for this week we will do.

(02:18:30):
I will do a lot more questions later this week,
I promise, But let me give you what you know. Look,
I'm gonna be honest. I don't think this was this
weekend could have gone better for Miami's chances in the
college football playoff. I was my producer, who's listening right now,

(02:18:50):
one of my producers who's listening right now, Lauren Gardner.
It's a big, utal youth fan. Let's just say I
was a big Kansas State fan this weekend. And how
the hell did you tah end up winning that game.
I'm still trying to figure out Kansas State had that
game in the bag. I was hoping at least one
team that was unfairly ranked above Miami. I don't accept
the premise of Miami should be ranked as low as

(02:19:11):
they were, but I wanted at least one team ranked
ahead of them to lose, and that didn't happen. I
I'm not gonna you know, at this point, it's a
moot question. My son and I disagreed on whether we
needed whether USC win over Oregon would be good for
Miami or bad for Miami. He thought it would be

(02:19:32):
bad for Miami because that USC would then leapfrog Miami. Maybe,
but then I think Oregon. I kind of think both
Oregon and USC are gonna lose next week. Oregon's gonna
lose to Washington. I'm just convinced of it. That game's
in Washington, it's in Seattle. It's going to be weird,
that weird weather. Yes, I know, Organs, you said weird weather.
But that's a real rivalry game. And Washington's not a

(02:19:52):
bad team, and Jed Fish a great coach, and so
and or. I'm not convinced Oregons. Certainly they don't. I
don't not convince their top five team. I get that
they're right. You are what your record says you are.
As the great, Bill Parcels said, but I just don't
buy that they're a top five team. They just they

(02:20:13):
just I smell an upset there. And if you told
me you U CLABTSC, that wouldn't shock anybody right. In fact,
I I'll never forget one of my favorite Miami games
of all time as a game where Miami actually was
part of one of their worst years they ever had.
It was in nineteen ninety eight, I believe, and it
was Miami had Miami played Ucla in the last game

(02:20:38):
of the Sea. It was sort of like in the
in the first December, and it was a game that
was actually supposed to be the first week of the season.
It got postponed because of a hurricane, so ended up
getting moved to the last game of the season. Well, Ucla,
Kansas State, and Tennessee all entered that weekend ranked number one.
Kansas State I think lost. This was a stranger. I
think Kansas State lost in the Big twelve title game.

(02:20:59):
I think they lost a text Florida ends up losing.
I think in the SEC game title game, I think,
if I'm not mistaken, but they were ranked number one
and UCLA was number one, and some boards and they
lost in one of the craziest games where Edgerrin James,
who would go on to be an NFL I think
he's gotten. I think he's in the Hall of Fame.
If he's not, he will be. But he was sort

(02:21:20):
of the you know, one of the big three for
the initial run of Peyton Mannings Colts right Edgrid James
ran for over three hundred yards against UCLA. Okay, ran
for over three hundred yards. It was one of these
crazy games that just went back and forth and buy
me somehow hung On totally ruined UCLA season, cost them
a shot at the national title. But that day everybody lost,
and I think Florida and Florida State ended up playing

(02:21:41):
a rematch for the national title. One of the worst outcomes,
but it's what the computers came up with somehow. I
think everybody loses. Florida State had already lost. I think
to to I think it was Florida or I know
what it was, that's the and then Florida State Tennessee,
that's what it was. Tennessee ends up in the national
title game. And this is tem Martin's Tennessee volunteers who

(02:22:04):
ended up facing I think a third or a four
street Florida State quarterback due to injuries, and we had it.
But what I remember is that that last weekend was crazy.
You had because of the crazy BCS rankings. There were
three different number one teams, depending on which poll computer
you were looking at. Tennis floor, I think it was
probably was Tennessee, Tennessee, Kansas State, and UCLA. They all

(02:22:27):
three lose, but then somehow it's Tennessee and Florida State
in the matchup. So point being, I'm expecting real chaos
next week, but that preview is coming, I do want undo.
So let's talk about Miami went in Virginia Tech. It
was a bit frustrating that Miami didn't have more points
because they dominated the game. Game was never in doubt,
just like the Miami Notre Dame game. People are really

(02:22:49):
forgetting how actually that game played out, and it's driving
me crazy. Notre Dame lost by three points in the scoreboard,
but that was not the game. Miami controlled the game throughout,
had a double digit lead throughout, and it was just
you know, a late, sort of cheap touchdown because Mario
Crystobal does what he does and sort of playing prevent
rather than just sort of smothering a team, which, of

(02:23:12):
course he slightly learned the lesson differently and actually went
ahead and scored a cheap late touchdown pat Miami's lead
here in this Virginia Tech game. But we were playing
a team that cared, right, It's clear, you know this
is now third week in a row where Notre Dame
has not played a team that really cared about the
game you had, Pitt. Clearly, now we know the difference

(02:23:34):
between Pitt caring about a game they beat Georgia Tech
save players didn't play against. Again, Notre Dame should not
get much credit for that game, for that pit win,
nor should they get much credit for the Navy win.
And I, you know, sorry to my friends in Peoria,
but that should matter. You and I both know if
Miami ended up in a situation like that, they sure
as hell hold that against Miami. But I'm not going

(02:23:57):
to sit here and say, hey, seventy points is seventy points, right,
And obviously they had all those pick sixes from the
lacrosse player who didn't know how to throw football. God
love them all, right, Miami could also put up seventy
against a lacrosse player. I don't think we faced the
lacrosse player for what it's worth. But I digress. I'm
not going to sit here downplay their win. It was
a great win. Good for them for putting seventy points
on the board. Trust me, we had put seventy points

(02:24:19):
on the board, I'd be going, hey, we put seventy
points on the board. But I will say this, I
do not only does Miami need to be Pitt next
week on Saturday, a game that my daughter is pushing
me really hard to do as a day trip. It's
only a four hour drive. So let's just say we're
contemplating here at the Todd household. Certainly would like to

(02:24:41):
see Miami win by more than twenty one points, which
I believe is the I believe Notre Dame one thirty
five seventeen in that game. I want to say it
is I think that's what they want by or was
it thirty seven to fifteen something like that. Either way,
if Miami can be Pitt by more than Notre Dame,
that may matter. There is a chance. Right the path
to Miami getting the ACC title game is simpler now,

(02:25:04):
meaning if Miami beats Pitt, Virginias is a Virginia Tech,
I think, and SMU wins. I think it's Miami and
SMU in the for essentially a rematch for the AC title,
which is probably would be the matchup of the two
of the two currently best teams in the ACC, and frankly,
they may be the best teams in the ACC, or
Miami in SMU, which arguably were the two best teams

(02:25:27):
in the ACC last year when SMU got the invite,
but but Miami did not because frankly, Mimmy screwed up
that last game against Syracuse. So it's not an unrealistic path.
Will Virginia Tech get up for the Virginia game. It
is an in state rivalry game, I hope so James
Franklin being I wish James Franklin being introduced as coach

(02:25:48):
next week, not this past week. I think it gave
him a little extra juice, which is why we got
a pretty good effort out of them. But I think
if you watch the game, you realized Miami's one of
the ten best teams in the country. They have easily
one of the two or three best defenses in the country.
It is I if Miami's ten and two, I don't
know how you leave them out if you want the
if you're trying to find the ten best teams plus

(02:26:09):
you know, the app plus those that have to get
put in. I don't know how you don't include Miami.
I'm I am I accept the premise that Miami will
get in with Notre Dame. Miami isn't going to get
in instead of Notre Dame. Should they? Of course if
the idea that you don't use head to head and
more and more of the college football media world realizes

(02:26:30):
how ridiculous that sounds that somebody that literally a head
to head isn't going to matter, which is just asinine
and makes college football look like the WWE. Okay, this
is what wrestling does. It just decides who they want.
It is not a real sport, and why college football
wants to be more like the WWE. But of course ESPN,
now in bed with the WWE, now wants to manufacture competition,

(02:26:54):
fake competition, like they're doing with the ESPN Invitational. I've
watched Oklahoma play football. I know they may be ten
and two. This is not a top ten football team, folks.
This is not a team that is gonna I don't
know they took all those turnovers by Alabama for them
to lose for Oklahoma to win. They have a good defense,

(02:27:15):
but man, that offense is futrid. I watched every I
had it on my multi box at Missouri Oklahoma game
because obviously I wanted to just get Oklahoma out of
the way. I can't believe they're ranked ahead. If the
teams are ranked ahead of at all, I just don't
get it. So LSU do something, you know, take let's
put Oklahoma out of it, out of its misery, because

(02:27:37):
that's a team that's going nowhere in the playoff anyway.
Sorry to my Sooner fans, but not this team. It
is just I don't see it. I don't get it.
I don't see it. I'm going to stop chirping about BYU.
All they do is show up and win football games.
This they went on the road and did it again.
You know, I think they're in and I think the

(02:28:00):
Big twelve. I think if they lose to Texas Tech
a second time, they probably won't get invited losing to
the same team twice. But if b WHYU wins and
lose and Texas Tech loses, I think you have a
case of two teams from the Big twelve going and
only one from the ACC. So I am I am
not going to sit here and be upset if at
eleven and two b YU gets in over at ten

(02:28:21):
into Miami, just like an eleven and two SMU got
in over a ten into Miami. I think that is fair.
Utah should not be ranked ahead of Miami. Sorry, Lauren,
I don't see it. I don't get it. And you know,
if there's a chance Vanderbilt I saw that one of
the polls Vanderbilts behind Miami and the College Football Playoff poll.
I think they've now been ranked ahead of Miami on that. Yeah,

(02:28:45):
if you just want an SEC invitational, you would take
more of these, you know, SEC teams that may or
may not be probably not as good as Miami. But
I you know the headquarters of the SECS in Nashville.
Don't think I'm not nervous about that one. And look,
if Michigan beats Ohio State, I know, I know Miami

(02:29:06):
at ten and two, Michigan that beats Ohio State's getting
in ahead of Ah, ahead of A ten and two Miami.
Uh So I am I am not naive on that one.
So let's just say I have to be a big
Ohio State fan because we don't need any more ten
and two teams, nine and three Michigans. No nine and

(02:29:28):
three teams getting in without a conference title, not with
this many ten and two teams floating around. So I
don't think it was the best week for Miami's at
large big chances. I do see that the college football
press is now on Miami side. I think people realize
ignoring a head to head is a dangerous precedent to set.

(02:29:49):
I think the ACC it's pretty pretty fair that this
this specific committee, this ESPN run committee, has gone out
of their way to screw the ACC three straight years,
legitimately so but really badly with the Florida State year,
and they're setting this one up here. But ultimately I

(02:30:10):
think this they are. My guess is they're hoping against
hope that Miami gets into that ACC title game so
that there is no question about it. And if Miami
loses in that title game, they not getting an invite
and they can just chalk it up to a third loss.
And if Miami wins, they're automatically in and maybe we'll
get to do a rematch with Notre Dame and once
again defeat Notre Dame and make it clear that they

(02:30:33):
don't belong. By the way, if you want to sit
here and talk about the teams that are head of
Miami in this college football rankings, you know there is
a I would argue they have a real problem in
how they've done this with these rankings because you've got

(02:30:53):
Alabama ranked out of Miami, and if you compare them
one to one, Miami defeated the team that feed at Alabama.
For those that were entertaining the idea of Texas being
ahead of Miami, Florida b Texas, Miami be Florida. So
that's a tough one to overcome on that one. And
of course the head to head with Notre Dame. So

(02:31:15):
never mind that Ole miss struggled with a Florida team
that we beat the crap out of Does that matter? Right?
And now they're they're a one loss team, right they?
I think they probably survive a loss to the Mississippi State.
But I do think this Lane Kiff and drama, you know,
doesn't don't we don't isn't this all like, isn't the

(02:31:37):
correct narrative going to be Lane Kiff and Lee's old
Miss costs them, you know, teams distracted, they lose the
Egg Bowl, and he goes to LSU. Is that the
Is that the turn of events that we see this weekend.
If that is, does Ole Miss not even get an
invite to the playoff? If that's what happens anyway, I

(02:31:58):
just have a feeling where we're head of for some chaos.
But bottom line, not a great I thought Miami played
well on the field. I wish we had more points
to show for it, but they played really well on
the field. I think reminding people that they are one
of the ten best teams in the country, and you
want to it's not a complete playoff bracket if you're
not including Miami this year. If you're not gonna include

(02:32:20):
the best team in the ACC, you're not. You don't
have a complete playoff bracket. But hey, on this one,
I'm quite biased, all right with that. I'm going to
take a break for forty eight hours, but I will
see you on Wednesday. Thanks for listening.

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