Full Episode - Republicans Avoid Disaster In Tennessee, But The Midterms Look Great For Democrats + How Drones Are Reshaping Modern Warfare & Why America Is Behind - The Chuck ToddCast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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and welcome to another episode of the Chuck Podcast. Well,
one of my favorite sayings used to be, if it

(01:49):
was Tuesday, somebody's voting somewhere, which means, if it's Wednesday,
we have some election results. And this happens to be
no ordinary Wednesday. It's a day after a special election.
I know the most devoted of your time podcast subscribers
and listeners caught our live stream or I hope caught
our live stream election show and partnership with Decision Desk
HQ and Chris Solisa. We were essentially watching the returns

(02:14):
with those that chose to watch with us, and we
had another huge turnout. We are overwhelmed by the response
we've been getting for these election night specials. Let's just say,
you're you're only encouraging us to do this more and more.
But in some ways, this is one of those special

(02:34):
elections where both parties are going to take something away
that they feel better about. Both parties are going to
look at this and say what could have been for
different rays, And in another way you look at it
is in some ways it changes nothing. It taught us
nothing we didn't already know. So I'm gonna start with
that part right. In some ways, this special election went

(02:54):
as expected. What do I mean by that? Well, as
Jeffrey Scaleling said there at the end, it's like the
final margin of victory looks like to be somewhere around,
you know, somewhere between four and six percentage points, which
means you're looking at it at approximately a sixteen to
eighteen point Democratic over performance based on the twenty twenty
four results, which is exactly pretty much in line with

(03:17):
what we've seen with various special elections. We've had some
special congressional elections. Two that happened in Florida. One had
a sixteen point over performance another one actually had a
twenty three point over performance for Democrats. Both are still
Republican victories like this one, but there was this over
performance right super red districts that suddenly got much closer

(03:37):
in a special election. In some Democratic victories, their over
performance has been in the sixteen to eighteen point range.
Why do I keep using this number sixteen to eighteen
And no, I'm not saying six seven. I'm not participating
in that nonsense. But the importance of that sixteen to
eighteen point range is that it's about the same number
that we saw in twenty seventeen and twenty eighteen special

(03:58):
elections going into that mid cycle, where that over performance
did end up translating to a good Democratic Knight. But
of course the question is is twenty twenty six going
to be another twenty eighteen or it's twenty twenty six
going to be something bigger, something akin to what Republican
You know, Republicans nineteen ninety four they swept both the

(04:18):
House and the Senate, or Democrats two thousand and six,
where they swept both the House and the Senate. When
you have a to me at this point. A wave
is when you're the party out of power, you're not
holding either of the House and Senate, and after the
wave hits, you end up controlling both the House and
the Senate. And I think the question we're all looking

(04:39):
for is, is this in a political environment that is
developing into a wave for the Democrats right to You know,
we love our weather metaphors as political prognosticator types, and
there's clearly a storm brewing, and the question is is
this going to be you know, to use hurricane terms,
a Cat two, a Cat three, a Cat four, a

(04:59):
Cat five. Right, if it's a Cat one, Republicans probably
can hold both the House and the Senate. If it's
simply a Cat two or a Cat three type of storm,
where it's a bigger Democratic turnout than Republican turnout, more
enthusiasm on the left than the right, but the money's
kind of equal, the candidate performance is kind of equal.
You know, that's an environment that the Democrats probably wouldn't

(05:21):
control the House but come up short in the Senate.
This thing gets bigger than that and it becomes where
they can win both the House and the Senate, where
you start to have more retirements, and you have lopsided
candidate issues. And that's what we were watching for tonight, Right,
was the bottom going to fall out for Republicans. It's
been a rough couple of months for Republicans in general,

(05:44):
Donald Trump specifically. The narrative is not going well. The
headlines aren't going well. Right, you look at the MAGA
coalition and there's been a lot of cracks in that coalition.
Marjorie Taylor Green. The Jeffrey Epstein files created cracks. What's
happening in Venezuela, in Israel, in Ukraine has created some cracks.
And it's you know, it's a reminder, you know, Trump

(06:04):
Trump put together this coalition that doesn't really share any
sort of ideological values other than they don't like the
left right. There's a cultural bind that keeps this coalition together,
but there's not really an issue bind that keeps this
coalition together, you know, And so if you start to

(06:26):
see fracture, it's fracture that may be really hard to
put back together. And I think the fear Republicans had
about this special election in Tennessee that a loss would
essentially lead to the bottom falling out. And what does
the bottom falling out look like for Republicans, another ten

(06:47):
to fifteen House members deciding to retire and not seek reelection,
maybe a senator or two. That you don't that Republicans
thought we're going to seek reelection. That says, you know what,
I'm out of here. I'm not going to do this.
I'm gonna I don't want to either be in the
minority or worse risk losing my seat. I don't want

(07:07):
to go out that way. And a loss in this
special election would have been that, but that didn't happen, right,
So I think what we have is you have Republicans
feeling as if, Okay, there's a way to survive these midterms.
They can survive the storm that's coming. It's not going
to be pretty. They may lose some windows, they may

(07:27):
lose a piece of their roof. That's the equivalent of
losing House seats and losing control of the House. Maybe
the Senate goes from a three seat advantage down to
a one seat advantage, but they hang on to some
power in Congress.

Speaker 2 (07:44):
And.

Speaker 1 (07:46):
It's not a total loss if you're Donald Trump, and
if you look at and I think that that's what
each party's going to take away from this, right, I
think the Democrats are going to look and say, look,
we got an enthusiasm advantage. Voters are ready to walk
on broken glass to show up. The turnout in this
special election was was very high, but it also meant

(08:07):
it engaged the other side too. I think a lot
of Democrats are going to whisper today that hey there,
you know, imagine if they had a candidate that ideologically
fit the district better. Right this If you remember the
famous Connor Lamb special election of twenty seventeen and twenty eighteen,
that was sort of the first big, you know, sort
of tea leaf that when Connor Lamb won a district

(08:29):
that had been a double digit Republican district and he
won that special election, that was like whoa. And I
remember at the time Republicans were going, well, Democrats won't
find candidates like that in all these races. But it
was an acknowledgment that the Democrats had found almost the
perfect candidate to run in that district. That is not Aftenban, Right,

(08:51):
she was definitely the progressive in the primary. She was
outspent in the primary by more establishment candidates, and you know,
she was the more democratic socialist leaning candidate, if you will,
I think even you know had some kind things to
say about it. Let's just say anything she had said
positively about democratic socialism or progressive politics. Republicans found and

(09:13):
used it in their at and she ended up being,
in some ways the referendum in this race, right. It
was Republicans wanted this to be a referendum on her
and left wing politics. Democrats were hoping this would be
a referendum on prices, the economy, and Donald Trump. And
the fact of the matter is they both succeeded. Right.
Democrats succeeded in getting a turnout that made this race

(09:36):
incredibly competitive, fairly close, probably as close as they realistically
could have gotten it given the makeup of this district.
But Republicans got the nominee they wanted, right, And I
think that's what Democrats are going to ask themselves the
special had they had a Jim Cooper like Democrat. And
for those of you who are familiar with old Tennessee politics,

(09:57):
Jim Cooper was sort of an old school blue dog Democrat,
which was code for more you know, he was closer
to Joe Manchin on the ideological scale than even say
Chuck Schumer. Okay, I'm not even saying, you know, going
to AOC definitely was more center left than just mainstream liberal.
And I think that's going to be a fair, a

(10:19):
fair piece of analysis that you know, would that have
would that have been the difference? Right? A couple of
points been harder to paint, you know, somebody like a
Jim Cooper as a radical. But then you got to
ask yourself, if you're Republicans, can you do this in
forty races? Can you do this for thirty districts that
you've got to defend? Because it's going to be somewhere. Now,

(10:41):
you know, anything that is our anything that Donald Trump
won by say twelve to fifteen points, I think now
is a house seat. Realistically, the Democrats, that they find
the right candidate can potentially put in play. So, you know,
can they run the kind of camp essentially emergency triage
campaign that Republicans came in and ran. And by the way,
they deserve credit for this because you know, failing to

(11:04):
answer the bell on these warning signs and losing this
would have led to a total catastrophe. So doing the
triage sort of bought them some time and probably saved
a handful of retirements on this front, But can they
scale this right? You know, you might be able to
save a race here or a race there in this game,

(11:25):
but you're not going to be able to hope that
you get Democratic nominees that don't fit the district across
the country. Now, do I think Republicans are going to
get into the habit now of trying to actually play
in Democratic primaries, because that's been the biggest That's the
other difference between the twenty eighteen cycle and the twenty

(11:46):
twenty six cycle. In twenty eighteen, the Democratic leadership and
at that time, you know, and yes that included Schumer
and Pelosi, But back then they had a little more juice.
The Democratic Party had a little more credibility with its
own voters and donors that when they squeezed people out

(12:06):
of a primary, they listened and they said, hey, this
is who we were supporting, this is who the national
party wants. They could clear a primary field and they
could sort of minimize the number of nominees that we're
going to be too far to the left to win
general elections. They don't have that credibility this cycle. While

(12:27):
I think a bit more enthusiasm for Democrats. You also
have a national party that can't sit here and say
we're going to squeeze out this candidate, and the Michigan
Senate primary squeeze out and in some ways, an endorsement
from the national party for in certain primaries maybe a
kiss of death that it puts the scarlet e on

(12:49):
your coat for establishment right and in these days, being
part being seen as part of the political establishment, whether
you're on the left or the right, is not a
good place to be politically. So, you know, I think
that the challenge the Democrats have is they have a
great environment building. In fact, if you look at my
latest substack, I kind of think we're I think we're

(13:09):
sort of underrating what is growing here. I think this
is when you look at it, Yes, things look very
similar as twenty eighteen, but I sense that Trump's script
on his own party is loosening a little bit. And
ask yourself over the next five months, what good headlines
are going to help a Republican that's going to be

(13:29):
on the ballot in twenty six Right, they're having this
argument over extending the Obamacare subsidies. In fact, I believe
that had Ashton Bain won this special had the Democrat
pulled the upset. I think you've seen those subsidy extensions
like happen within forty eight hours. I still think they're
going to happen because I think Trump is going to
flip a switch in his polster who's been warning a

(13:52):
lot of Republicans that healthcare could be the issue that
takes down the Republican majorities in both chambers. That Trump
will end up weighing in and doing a one year
or two year extension because he just wants to get that.
They want to mitigate the damage. Not extending these healthcare
subsidies would do so. But the point is just that

(14:15):
fight alone, there's not positive headlines being created. Those are negative.
That's defensive headlines. Then you've got we've got a ter
ruling that's coming. Well, no matter what the ruling is,
it's a bad I think it's a bad headline for
the Republicans. Right. If if the Supreme Court upholds Trump's authority, well,
the market's going to go haywire. It means these tariffs
stay in place and the uneven economy continues, right, and

(14:38):
we have prices continue to rise, We continue to have
inflationary pressures, and we've weakened the global economy. And when
the global economy gets weaker, our economy can't get as strong.
You know, we might you know, I saw somebody cheering
on that that we you know Japan, you know, the
tariffs have really slowed down Japan's economy. That's not good
for America. Of Japan's economy, it goes into recession. That's

(15:02):
not anything to cheer. That's only going to hurt our economy.
Economies are too interconnected. So this is the naivete of
this whole teriff regime. But the more nationalistic we go
with our economic policy, the more nationalistic everybody else is
going to go with their economic policy. And that is
bad for prices, and that is bad for GDP growth
around the world, And it doesn't solve the income inequality problem,

(15:26):
and it just puts a sort of a wet blanket
over any economic growth. But you still have inflationary pressures, right,
Costs still go up because of these consumer taxes. We
call them tariffs, but they're nothing more than an additional tax, essentially,
a form of almost like a vat tax that Trump
has tried to institute here. But that's not going to

(15:47):
be a great headline. You've got what's happening in Venezuela,
where where you know, is this war even legal? Have
any of the you know, it's possible. Nothing is legal here, right,
There's been no congressional authority that you know is clear
to me that has given the president the authority to

(16:08):
do this. This definition of narco terrorism to me, is
a It is not something that's been tested in the courts,
whether you can truly I go to war and if
this is you know, is this a regular crime or
is it a homicide or a war crime. But either way,
the second strike attacking those that survived the first strike

(16:32):
in that first attack on the alleged Venezuelan and cocaine traffickers,
either one creates a congressional inquiry that again, this is
not a positive headline for the Republican Party and anybody
running for office. It is a headline that puts you
on the defensive at best, and if anything, may put

(16:53):
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(18:23):
the more unpopular Trump is growing and his approval rating,
his disapproval rating continues to rise, and his his approval
ratings floating downward. I wouldn't say it's diving downward, but
it continues to float downward. You put all that together
and you're going to have in comment Republicans looking for
ways to subtly distance themselves from Trump. In fact, we

(18:44):
saw it in the special election. The most remarkable thing
about the Matt Van epsads is that they didn't use
Donald Trump. Yes, he phoned into a rally, right you know,
and the national media covered that rally, but you know
that was they did not want a picture of Donald
Trump with this candidate. He never used Trump's name, you know.

(19:06):
He certainly said I will fight for America first, and
used radicals, used different buzzwords that are very familiar buzzwords
in maga circles. But there was no use of Trump,
and there are going to be other Republicans are going
to be looking for specific places to start splitting from Trump.
They may do it on tariffs, they may do it
on Venezuela, they may do it on healthcare subsidies. But
the point is all of the near term events that

(19:30):
are going to impact this political environment, they all seem
like negative headlines right now for the Republicans. What is
going to be a positive headline that's coming up. Are
we suddenly going to see prices fall and saving these
accounts grow over the next six months. That doesn't seem likely.
And then there's the intangible here of Donald Trump and

(19:53):
Trump fatigue. Don't I think we underestimate the length of
the you know, of the hold he's had on our politics.
Right it's been now over ten years that he's essentially
dominated politics. His movements about ten years old. And if
you look at the history of modern political campaigns, at
modern politics, which I defined modern politics as essentially the

(20:17):
end of World War two to now, you know, these runs,
these sort of cult We've basically had a series of
cult to personalities. It's not that parties have have runs.
It's almost like political personalities have run, right. You know,
Eisenhower had himself of basically an eight to ten year run,
and Kennedy Johnson had eight to ten years, and Nixon

(20:38):
had his ten year period. You know, Carter was sort
of a four year interlude, and Reagan Bush dominated about
ten to twelve years, and Clinton had his eight to
ten years, and George W. Bush and then Barack Obama
and then we're in the air of Donald Trump. The
point is is that it's really hard to extend this
to eleven and twelve years successfully. Right by the ninety midterms,

(21:01):
everything was petering out for the Reagan coalition. By the
twenty oh two midterms, the Clinton or Clinton coalition was
completely gone. By twenty sixteen, we saw the Obama coalition
already fracturing. It kind of got put back together during
COVID for Biden, but that might have been a bit
of a COVID effect than anything else. So I don't

(21:25):
think we fully appreciate that we're at the end. We're
at the end stages here of the Trump era. Is
it going to go out with a whimper? Is it
going to go out with a bang? Is it going
to be escorted out by the voters or sort of
fade away. I think that's the only unknown here, right,
and it being escorted out by the voters is a

(21:46):
wipeout in the twenty twenty six midterms. Fading away is
you know, losing the House, holding the Senate and staying
competitive in twenty in twenty twenty eight and so you know,
I think that I am sort of think I believe
we're underestimating the sort of the intangible Trump fatigue here.

(22:08):
And the fact is, when this economy sucks and the
economy member did not suck in twenty eighteen, that's a
big difference between twenty eighteen and now. You had a
people felt pretty good about that economy in twenty eighteen,
and Democrats still won the House though they lost two sentences.
You're now going to have a similar enthusiastic democratic environment,

(22:28):
but with an economy that a lot of people don't like.
And I always say that because you know, the stock
market looks good, but the real world looks uncomfortable and bad, right,
And I think it's because the issue of costs is
really starting to pinch. And you know, now you've got
the high cost of electric bills and that's starting to
hit and that's being connected to these a ideals. And

(22:50):
I just think that Trump Trump now instead of being
teflon don, he's now wearing some beltcrow and whether it's
his weekly pardons that become less and less defensible, particularly
this one of the former Honduran presidential cocaine trafficker. I mean,
you know, on one breath, Donald Trump is going after
Venezuela because of cocaine distribution, and in the next breath

(23:12):
he's pardoning somebody who's responsible for my massive cocaine distribution
into this country. Is the only difference that Roger Stone
got paid for one and didn't get paid for the other.
I mean that that is an uncomfortable thing. And there's
not many elected Republicans that want to have to defend
that pardon. And Trump's doing this almost on a weekly basis.

(23:33):
Where there's some pardon that you're like, oh, BOYD, does
that stink? That's impossible to defend. In a normal political environment,
there might be borderline impeachable offense. We're obviously not going
to head in that territory. But the point is is
that not only are the macro is the macro environment
pretty bleak right now? If you're an elected Republican and

(23:54):
the headlines that you know are coming, there's sort of
the what Trump is doing to you, and you know
Trump is not thinking about the Republican Party at all.
Trump never has right. It is about himself and whether
it's these pardons, whether it's these personal business deals that
he cuts on behalf of his son, the weird business

(24:15):
relationships that is chief envoy in these negotiations Steve Woodcoff
is involved with, and the mixing of all this, none
of that's defensible. And when people don't, if people are
unhappy about the economy, that stuff will then really irritate them.
They overlooked it the first four years, they overlooked it
maybe during the Biden presidency, but if they don't like

(24:37):
their current situation, they're really not going to like you
benefiting Donald Trump while they're in this tough situation. So
that's why I'm a bit more bearish on Republican chances
of holding each chamber. And I think that the for
those that follow these political prediction markets, I think everybody

(24:59):
is under under rating Democratic chances of winning the Senate.
Fun little fact that I put into my sub stec
this week, and then I'm gonna We're going to transition
to my interview. There have been you know, since there
have only been six times six midterm elections. The first
was eighteen ninety four. But six midterm elections where the

(25:20):
party not in power in the White House won both
the House and the Senate in a midterm. It's only
actually happened six times. The last time was two thousand
and six. On election day, Republicans held both the House
and Senate. By the time all the votes are counted,
Democrats had flipped both the House and the Senate. The
Republicans did flip them both in ninety four. Then it

(25:42):
happened again in the fifties, and it happened again in
the forties. First time it happened was eighteen ninety four,
and it was Grover Cleveland's second presidential term. In the
midterm of that election, and he was dealing with the
depression of eighteen ninety three. Republicans sweep the midterms in

(26:05):
eighteen ninety four, and that second non consecutive term. Is
that familiar to anybody? Are we dealing with a president
in his second non consecutive term. The out party sweeps
in eighteen ninety four, and it foreshadows a big Republican
sweep in eighteen ninety six, which leads to sixteen straight
years of Republicans holding the presidency until Woodrow Wilson's victory

(26:25):
in nineteen twelve. So that's the first time it happened.
Here's what was interesting that we've had thirty three midterm
elections since eighteen ninety four, and in twenty one of
the thirty three the out party picked up Senate seats,
and in eighteen of those twenty one instances the pickup
was four or more Senate seats. Well, Democrats only need

(26:48):
four Senate seats to win control of the Senate. I
know the map's not great for them when you're you know,
and this is sometimes I question whether the Democrats are
truly a national party because they don't. They barely contest
elections in a third to the states, and I think
that's why they may have a hard time putting enough
Senate seats in play with this particular map that they

(27:08):
have to run on. But if history is any guy,
the likelihood of them winning at least four Senate seats
is actually quite high. And so that's why I think
the bar I think people are underestimating democratic chances here. Look,
they still have a lot of recruiting to do and
finding a cannon in Kansas, finding a rallying around a
Canada in Mississippi, seeing if they can target places like

(27:30):
Kentucky or Alaska or Iowa. But they've got to put
a lot more races in play. But history says they
actually have a pretty good shot at doing it, Which
leads me to the rest of the rundown of this episode.
I'm going to wrap things up here in a second
coming up. It's a conversation I have with Matt Higgins.
Matt's got a fascinating background. He spent ten years in

(27:51):
Washington trying to be a political guy, I say trying,
who's actually pretty successful. Worked a little bit in Washington,
worked a little bit for Rudy Giuliani, helped with the
work at Ground Zero during the redevelopment of Ground Zero.
Then sort of transitioned into the world of business. Was
a sort of a frequent Shark Tank guy, so some

(28:14):
of you who are fans of that show may recognize
him from there. Worked for a couple of professional teams,
the Jets and the Dolphins. But it's what he's doing
now that took up the largest chunk of our time
in the conversation. He's running a drone company that has
a pretty large contract with the Defense Department, And you know,
it sort of is in line of the conversation that

(28:35):
I had with Dexter Filkins a few months back about
what we've seen the changing nature of warfare and what
we've learned and what militaries around the world have learned
from the Russia Ukraine war that has really changed from
sort of what started as a fairly conventional war sort
of with twentieth century technologies, has really become a drone

(28:56):
war with the use of twenty first century technologies, and
what Matt describes as a US military that right now
is not prepared for twenty first century conflict. And the
question is are we going to be able to get
prepared as fast, if not faster than our potential adversaries
and people like China and Russia, but more importantly are

(29:19):
smaller countries Are they going to be able to catch
up to US quicker thanks to drones and things like this.
So it's fascinating conversation and it's certainly I think going
to be worth your time because I think This is
one of these uncomfortable converts that nobody likes to talk
about the military industrial complex in general, or you know,
the need for defensive weapons. But if America is going

(29:40):
to remain the superpower, it's going to have to figure
out and be a bit more nimble in the area
of drones. And it's and it's pretty clear that in
some ways where we have antiquated procurement systems in the
Defense Department. Still I wonder if we're going to be
able to move as fast as necessary to make sure

(30:01):
we don't fall behind. And then after that interview, I've
got a top five list that actually goes well with
what we're talking about tonight, which is top five center
races that Democrats if they actually can put the Senate
in play in twenty twenty six, then of my top
five list, one of them, at least one of them
has to be a single digit race and very competitive

(30:24):
by October if that's going to become realistic. I'll let
you get to the list before I tease which states
are in that. Of course, I have some Q and A.
So with that, yes, I have a lot to say
about the college football ESPN Invitational and all that nonsense,
but I'm going to save that for twenty four hours.
Get my thoughts together. I've poured my heart out about

(30:45):
all things Tennessee seven. I'd rather let that, let that settle,
let that simmer, and I'll see in twenty four hours
with the hottest of hot takes, not just on the
world of politics, but on the being invitational and the
leadership or lack thereof inside the acc So Gocaines, thanks

(31:08):
for listening. Let's sneak in a break when we come back.
My conversation with Matt Hagens all right, joining me now
is somebody who quite a bit of experience in the
world of startups and business and sports, also dabbled in
politics a little bit, and it is I thought it

(31:33):
would be an interesting conversation with somebody more in the
entrepreneur space, given I'm also in my own entrepreneur space.
So it's Matt Haiggins. I hope. I've he sort of
dabbled in politics at a time, working for Rudy Giuliani
back when he was mayor of New York City, but
has mostly been on the business side over the last
twenty years, but understands both sides of the street and

(31:57):
I kind of want to get a better understanding with
the business community how they really view politics, necessary, evil
or partner in different aspects. Matt, how'd I do in
describing your background?

Speaker 2 (32:08):
Pretty good? I mean that hit the most important points.

Speaker 1 (32:11):
Are you consider yourself a serial entrepreneur? How do you
describe your path in business?

Speaker 2 (32:19):
Yeah, I would say I'm a super a serial entrepreneur.
I'm a builder, and my building impulses come from childhood.
I grew up abject poverty in Queens, New York. And
what does that mean. I took care of a disabled parent.
I would sell flowers on street corners and scrapecum tables
and McDonald's literally, so I really grew up with nothing,

(32:40):
and then I had to create my own path to
get out of poverty. I dropped out of high school
when I was sixteen, tok gd to go to college
so I could get a job. So that that faith
that I could architect my own life then began to
translate into just building businesses. We can go deeper into
any of that, but.

Speaker 1 (32:58):
Well, you know, it's interesting. I'm to start there a
little bit because I for somewhat different reasons. I also,
I always say, end up growing up early. In some ways,
my childhood ended when my dad died at sixteen, and
you just does right your childhood you didn't sounds like
you didn't. Really you didn't have the traditional childhood there.
And I'm curious, as you've gotten more resources where there,

(33:20):
how you've scratched that itch. And I'll get to that
in a minute. But that is sort of what makes
this country. I always say, what makes this country different
is that there are different paths up the ladder. Yes
there are. It does feel like there are hurdles that
sometimes are bigger than they should be for the average American,

(33:43):
but it's not impossible to climb over them, right it is.
But I'm curious how you view Do you view your
success as hey, anybody can do this, or do you
think you had unique help at certain forks in the road.

Speaker 2 (33:59):
Such a great question. The answer is both. I do
think that I always believe that education and work was
my way out of poverty, and those two never failed me,
so that's definitely true. I remember as a kid realizing
it was a lot better to be the person who
bought the flowers and put margin on them. R I'm

(34:20):
the kid who knocked on your window that was like
my first lesson on capital deployment. I grew up in
a really poor neighborhood in Queen's but I was also
very cognizant of the fact that there was a difference
between being a white kid and a black kid growing
up in that area. And to this day I still
feel and people say, what do you mean, what advantages
did you have? You grew up with nothing. Your mother

(34:41):
literally died when you were twenty six, so I was
living in a roach motel, and I was like, there
still was an advantage of being a kid who.

Speaker 1 (34:48):
Grew up in that context, and so hay to be
totally cynical about this. You could get a cab a
lot easier than a black man your age.

Speaker 2 (34:56):
Well, you know what it was. And I see. The
good part is I can transcend both sides because I
have a g came from nothing. So you can't tell
me I'm not credible to speak on this topic of
you know, is there any kind of eyes in the
world if you back when I was growing up, if
you've had a kid back then, at least in the eighties,
a black kid who had a ged, maybe there would
be a degree If it's confirmatory right. Lots of kids, uh,

(35:16):
And I never had you meet you know, smiley, little
white kid, you know who's out there hustling and he
has a GD and you say, oh, what happened? So
I talk about that in my book like that is
that is a difference. Does that mean you can't overcome?
But of course not. I also have my own things
to overcome. I had a mother who's completely not equipped
to take care of kids, sadly, and she died rotting
in a chair. We had no health insurance, right, so

(35:38):
I had to overcome the absence of health insurance and
the trauma of raising a parent. And another kids had
to overcome the color of their skin. And so I
don't think any it doesn't you know what that's We're
in a funny time. It doesn't invalidate anybody's journey to
say that you had some type of built in advantage,
you know.

Speaker 1 (35:55):
So well, it goes actually the other way. It's funny.
It's like it doesn't matter whether it's somebody who's a
scholarship football player on college team or somebody we are
almost we have convinced ourselves we all have to tap
into a her radio Alger story or we don't have
a story to share. And I don't know whether I

(36:19):
Sometimes I think I worry that it almost encourages victimhood.

Speaker 2 (36:23):
That's so funny you said that. I say. I get
asked this question recently. Somebody said a teacher at Harvard
Business School, and they were saying, oh, when you get resumes, now,
are you like, you know, you throw away those kids
from those elite schools because you only look at the
kids from who are downtrod. And I said, no, that's
not true at all. Actually, I have a greater appreciation
for what it would actually take to go to Harvard.

(36:45):
Number one. Number two, I have a built in excuse
why I didn't go to Harvard. I was working and
taking care of my mom for seven years going to
Queen's College. But could I have really gotten into Harvard
even if I didn't have the circumstances? So I agree
everyone now has to have this, you know, come up
and story of transcendence, and I think, honestly a lot
of people make it up or amplify it, but it

(37:05):
does create this culture of victimhood, and I completely reject it.
The reality is if I didn't grow up in that circumstance,
there is zero chance that I would end up going
from sixteen, you know, and Julian's secretary of twenty six.

Speaker 1 (37:19):
And I, you know, it's funny, I say, that's it's
it is. It is true. It's sort of like sometimes
you see this with super successfully ambitious people where in
some ways they needed chase something, you know, in politics.
I always say, it's fascinating to me how many presidents
we've had that have had daddy issues. And I say

(37:41):
this with no disrespect to anybody. I have my own.
I My dad died at sixteen, So I'm constantly trying
to to help live the life that he should have
had and he never got to live. And he had
a variety and there's a variety of reasons for that.
And I've watched all these presidents, but there's something about
if you don't have that drive, maybe you don't run

(38:02):
for president. George W. Bush or Donald Trump or Barack Obama.
But if you look at our particularly the last five presidents,
they've all had some form Either they were looking, you know,
searching for the father figure they never had see Bill Clinton,
see Barack Obama. Or they were trying to prove something
to a father figure, right, see Donald Trump, see George W.

Speaker 2 (38:21):
Bush.

Speaker 1 (38:22):
Arguably even you see it a little bit in Joe
Biden's story. But it is funny how this is why
I always say, you know, and I'm gonna guess it
is hard to imagine an alternative path because you don't
no other path than the one you than the one
you travel, right.

Speaker 2 (38:37):
Yeah, I love the patterns that govern us. I always
govern us. I get made fun of a lot because
I use psychologists a lot in business all the time.
Because one time I went through one twenty five years
ago and revealed everything I thought I was hiding was
perfectly on display to anybody who worked for me or
around me. So I was like, apparently I'm bleeding out
in front of everyone. But a lot my decisions to
this day, you're talking about daddy issues, my mommy issues

(39:01):
that nobody helped, you know, nobody cared to intervene. And
I got to witness what powerlessness looks like up front,
and that there's no happy endings. She died without ever
taking a plane, and so I have these, you know,
un boundless empathy that shows up for a single love.

Speaker 3 (39:16):
But I agree, we're all just little creatures. Primitively, what
is your Let me ask you this, what is it?
How has it informed your views of the role of government?
And where where do you think government should be involved
in your life? Looking back now, where should government have
been more involved or less in Well?

Speaker 2 (39:32):
Such a great question. I mean I take a cynical
view of both sides because I've been on both sides.
I've been up close. My earliest days. We're working for
a Democratic Congressman, Gary Ackerman back in Queen's I got
to see what that looked like, and I worked for
Rudy Giuliani for a while. Then I helped mid Romney's
campaign and John Mcca. I've been everywhere, and the reality is,

(39:53):
you know, when when let's just take on the left,
you know this sort of cynical over promising and then this,
you know, pop feel dis blame somebody for what you're
not given. As a kid, I was subjected to those
feelings too, like who's wronging me? Why is no one
taking care of me? And that didn't do me any,
to be honest. What did me good was cultivating my
belief that I have agency, that I can transcend my circumstances.

(40:16):
And so the answer is where does government belong level
the playing field? Passionate conservatism is something that has really
resonated with me as I've gotten older, but didn't What do.

Speaker 1 (40:25):
You think that means now? I mean, because I don't
know what it means. I had an idea of what
George W. Bush meant by it. But what do you
think compassionate conservatism means?

Speaker 2 (40:33):
I think it begins with empathy of somebody's circumstances and
trying to figure out a solution that you wish would
be advocated for if you were in the same position.
And so what does that really mean? We should figure
out a way that everybody can have health care, because
you would want that if you were not in that position.
There's nothing wrong though, with requiring people to work and
work as a path to self respect and self esteem.

(40:56):
That's a good question. I don't know what it means,
but weirdly resonates with me. Is probably closer to the truth, right.
I just remember as a kid when we I would
be sold those empty promises too, and trying to point
you know, who's to blame for my servus. They didn't
do anything for me. What did something for me was
work and and so I think government's roles leveling the
playing field and approaching everything with a degree of empathy.

Speaker 1 (41:18):
You've been sounds like the last chop.

Speaker 2 (41:22):
I know. That's not like I didn't give you no.

Speaker 1 (41:24):
I mean I get it. I mean I think it's
a fair no. And I think ultimately, you know your description.
I find that to be a fair description. I have
no you know, I don't feel the need to make
you follow up, which is, you know it sounds like
you believe in equal access, not equal outcomes, right, And
I think that sometimes there is a different I think
some people want equal outcomes, and that is that that

(41:47):
gets you in one type of redistribution of wealth versus
equal access, equal opportunity, which I think is ultimately probably
at the core of even what the founders thought they
were creating here in the United States, right, like this
is about creating so that you don't have to be
related to the king or you don't have right you
know at that time, right, you have an equal opportunity

(42:10):
versus equal outcome. And I think that that's always been
arguably one of the simplest ways to differentiate left and
right at times.

Speaker 2 (42:19):
And one thing remains true whatever we are in our
current political climate and what people think, like, what's great
about this country that die is never cast. I love
the fact that I always say I'm here, I'm here
in the circumstances I'm in through an accident of birth
that I didn't make a choice. But I'm really glad
that nothing about my future is going to be pretty
determined based upon where I was born.

Speaker 1 (42:39):
I knew one at every single person born in America
or frankly born in the world. In theory, right, this
is what the Founders said, right, the life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness. In theory, they were saying that
that all of us, that that's we have the those
are the inalienable rights that we are born with.

Speaker 2 (42:57):
Yeah, and I think we're struggling with where that pendulum
is right. Where where does leveling the playing field in
terms of trying to reckon with the past fit in
with the excluding other people who had nothing to do
with it, right, It's a really I mean, I'm hoping
that the pendulum comes right back to where it's supposed
to be, which is probably what will happen in the long.

Speaker 1 (43:14):
Arc of his It always does, right, it always does.

Speaker 2 (43:17):
I would say I'm not sure what period we're in
and what we're reckoning, to be honest, because there was
a period in which we had the exclusion with the
other direction, which isn't right answer either.

Speaker 1 (43:26):
Well, what's interesting is that in the moment when we're
living through one of these transitional periods, right, and I
think we're in the middle of a realignment, and we
think every election is an answer to the realignment. Oh,
re alignment's over. No, we just don't have another election
for another two years, right, Like we're it just because
we hold you know, an election happens as a mean
realignment stopped. Right, We're sort of we're in the middle

(43:48):
of something, and we have been, frankly since the end
of the Cold War. Right, the country had a north
star defeating communism in the Soviet Union, Well, then we
did it. We've actually struggled with our next north star.

Speaker 2 (44:00):
And what I find I wrote, I gave a commencement
speech at my mom's college, where my mom had went
the place she had any dignity, and I came back
and give gave the speech, and I was in my
speech I noted that when I was when she had
when I was there, when she was graduating on that
you know, same quad, the percentage of people that believed
in gay marriage was completely flipped. So in the time

(44:20):
that it took for me to graduate and give that speech,
you know, a decade. And so I always think, I
use this metaphor of tacking, you know, with a boat
that doesn't look like it's forward progress, but if you
were looking down from above, you would see it's moving.
We are always moving. Our values aren't evolving. And then
there are these reckonings where the pendulum swings violently one
way or the other.

Speaker 1 (44:39):
Way, turning an aircraft carrier, you know, I mean, we
are an aircraft carrier and moving. It takes a long
time to turn. But watch out when we turn, you know,
we're a powerful force. So let's get into the world
of business. It sounds to me over the last twenty
five years, the first half of it you spent in politics,
the second half in business. Is that roughly the split.

Speaker 2 (45:00):
That's probably right. I mean, I started so young, so
I've had a degree of a little bit before scum career,
because if I started with Giuliani, I started as a reporter,
actually a cub reporter in when I was seventeen and
then I started Rudy when I was maybe twenty and
I became Pressbactoria by twenty six, so I've been able
to leave multiple lives. So I was a first employee

(45:20):
and one of the first of the redevelopment of the
World Trade Center site, and then I became chief operating officer.
So I spent two years of ground zero at the
age of twenty nine, I guess my government career ends.
So and I'm fifty, which I cannot believe fifty one.

Speaker 1 (45:31):
Yeah, yeah, every check engine light's going to go off, brother,
just trust me.

Speaker 2 (45:36):
I'm feeling it.

Speaker 1 (45:36):
Yeah, yeah, I feel it because I rarely I don't
think I interviewed anybody older than me anymore. It feels
like everybody I'm interviewing as well. Another building three. Yeah, no,
I'm making you feel better A couple of years older
than you.

Speaker 2 (45:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (45:48):
But so tell me on the transition to business. The
longer you've been on the business side, has it, how
has it changed your view of politics?

Speaker 2 (45:59):
Well, when you're in politics. Anybody in politics can relate
to this when they leave one of these heady jobs,
like when I had to leave being press secretary of
the mayor or the ground zero. There is this fear
that you're just not going to be valued the same
by the society. And then once you step out, you
realize you're in an ecosystem that a lot of people
are frankly apathetic about. First, that bothers you don't you

(46:20):
realize how important it is to work with the mayor.
And I worked all night and I showed up to
every crisis, and you realize, oh, it's because you're trying
to feed yourself and you want government to exist in
the background, and you don't want it to occupy every
minute of your life, which is why.

Speaker 1 (46:34):
The theory of I ascribe to the theory of the
clog toilet that most people view don't want to think
about government, and then when the toilet's clogged, they don't
want to think about the plumber until the toilet's clog,
and they really hope they don't have to call the plumber.
That's how most people view government. They just don't, Yeah,
just make sure the toilet plushes.

Speaker 2 (46:51):
I thought that was like, that was unsophisticated and apathetic.
I don't understand how important it is to be dialed in.
But as I've gotten older, I realized, no people just
want to take care of the family, have a degree,
which is why I'm sure we have collective adrenal fatigue
at the moment because you're bombarded with politics, you know,
every day.

Speaker 1 (47:05):
But yes, so yeah, go ahead, finish.

Speaker 2 (47:08):
No No, I was making the point that was one
of the things that was the first transition I had
to get used to going into is that that people
didn't care as much as I thought they cared, and
then as a result, there is a degree of narcissism
when you're in government that you think there's nothing more important.

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It's interesting, and it's uh it's true, right, it's by
the way, true the media side.

Speaker 2 (49:09):
Apologies at city Hall or where No.

Speaker 1 (49:13):
I mean, I think you know, look, I didn't get
into this to become a celebrity reporter or whatever you
want to call that. And unfortunately or it happened, right,
It just it's I say unfortunately because I think the
personalization of the media has politicized the media, where when
we were more of the fourth estate mindset, where we
you know, we were there, we were that we were

(49:34):
a check and balance. You know, we were a branch
in some ways, the fourth branch, and that meant we
were supposed to be a check and balance, not necessarily
picking a side type of mindset. But then you know,
the politicians in some ways surfaced us up individually in
order to whack us down right like. And that's that's
the mistake. We collectively made it because we individually could

(49:58):
get more station and more or prominence, but it actually
collectively weakened us as the individual became.

Speaker 2 (50:05):
This conversation I was obsessed about when I was there.
I started as a cub reporter. I thought I was
I was going to go work for the City section
of the Times and always investigative pieces. Bob wouldword owned
a piece of my newspaper, so he nominated me for
a pultzer. Anybody by the way, but it sounded good
when I was at city halls apress like. I used
to be obsessed with the fact that each reporter has
own their own context, that they live in, that cultivatessonal bias.

(50:29):
But yet you're holding me accountable in a pseudo objective way.
We believe all the news that's you know, but no
one's actually revealing your bias. I used to be obsessed
by shouldn't there be a way in which I could
look into your bib your background, I can assess whether
or not you bring some type of bias to the table.
Now we will the other direction, But I.

Speaker 1 (50:48):
Would argue this, and this is where I just don't
accept the premise of I think bias is the wrong
part of this conversation to have, right, because we're born
you just you said it earlier in this conversation. We're
all born with original bias. Who you're born to, where
you're born, your circumstances, your geography, your socioeconomic status, color
of your skin, all of that is original bias, all right,

(51:09):
And it's just the life you lead where you grow up,
how you grew up. It just, you know, So I
always want to know where somebody. I always want to
know where you grew up and how you grew up
that I have an idea of the different biases that
may have contributed to your political worldview. I sort of

(51:31):
get it, you know. I do my best to try
to be transparent about you know. I always say I
was lucky enough to grow up in a household where
my parents canceled each other's vote out and talked about it.
So I heard the conversation that they had about Reagan
versus Carter, and I remember it very intuitively. And my
mother just couldn't bring herself to vote for Reagan. Thought
Carter had to go. So she writes in Gerald Ford,

(51:53):
my father's a big Reagan guy. But hearing the conversation
and then reading about it later as an adult, you
realize that it was the conversation of many voters were having.
It was sort of like they knew Carter needed to
be fired. They just weren't comfortable yet handing the reins
to Reagan, and they were trying to figure that out.
And it is so I grew up I was. I
always say I was lucky to grow up hearing those conversations,

(52:15):
so at least understanding how my parents were a microcosm
of a debate about that. But you know, as far
as bias and a reporter, to me, it's not about bias.
Every reporter is going to have a bias. Are they fair?
I think fairness is the only That's why I never
accepted the premise of fair and balanced. You can't balance

(52:37):
the truth. All you can do is be fair. Are
you a jerk to boat everybody that's the press secretary
to the mayor? You know those reporters. Some reporters are
just irascible, right, They're just going to be a pest
no matter who which side of the isle they come from.
And then there are those that get in the tank,
and you know who those are pretty quickly too.

Speaker 2 (52:57):
Yeah. No, I think we're saying the same thing about
was saying twenty five years ago, the idea that somehow
a context let's not call bias, let's call this your framework.
Wherever you grew up at environment sure influenced how you
chose the lead or how you chose the first quote
was sort of rejected back there, this like you know
that there was some theoretical objectivity about writing, which is

(53:19):
impossible to obtain. And now I think the pendulum has
gone so far the other way that we can't trust anything,
which I don't think is the right view. The right
view is we should assess how you've chosen to present
those facts and understand that you have your own implicit
context that's shaping how you write an article. Now we've
gone well, now we can't trust anything, which I can
I completely reject. But back then it was interesting. You
couldn't have the debate that somehow are you the way

(53:40):
you chose that first quote might have been influenced by
your background.

Speaker 1 (53:44):
Now you're right and it's true and you get that,
and then the question becomes and I always say this
about covering a story or covering a person. Right where
there was this debate about plat, you know, deplatforming Trump,
which I think when if I were to say, what
did legacy meant? Why did they essentially knock themselves out right?
And I always believe this was a self inflicted wound

(54:07):
in this respect, deep platforming Trump was couldn't have been more,
you know, couldn't have been a bigger mistake. And I
thought it internally. I thought it externally because it sort
of got to this. It it sort of the voters
decided to platform these people, right, You, as a reporter,

(54:30):
are there to explain what's happening, to tell people what's happening.
But hey, the voters have done this. And if you
don't accept the premise as a political reporter that you
know so and so is important because the voters have
decided it is, then you don't accept the premise of
the democracy.

Speaker 2 (54:47):
Which is amazing. I never would have thought, I mean,
you were similar ages that we could have such a
shift in the collective way we express ourselves and social norms.

Speaker 1 (54:55):
And these are the algorithms. To me, it's the algorithms
that have destroyed us. I mean, to constantly feed people.
I mean, you strike me as somebody that probably sought
out you want contradictory information, I do. The tech companies
make it impossible to get contradictory information that isn't sort
of overly contradictory, right, It isn't well thought out contradictions.

(55:16):
It's just almost partisan contradictions. It's very hard to get
a more balanced view because I can't curate what I want.
The algorithms keep trying to curate what they think I
want because I match some profile. That is what I
think has been so destructive to the trust of the media.

Speaker 2 (55:33):
Yeah, it's true. If you're on Twitter, I mean that's
your whole existence, right, you could see where you're spending
your time.

Speaker 1 (55:38):
I want Elon musk Ney's to get off his own platform.
You know, if you spend only your time on there,
you think the world is on the brink of a
civil war every night.

Speaker 2 (55:48):
It's true.

Speaker 1 (55:48):
Get off of online and you realize now most people
are pretty comfortable living in this country. They're basically pretty
you know. You know, they wish the economy were more even,
and they wish a lot of things. But we're not
ready to pull guns on each other. But that's not
the way it feels on Twitter sometimes.

Speaker 2 (56:03):
Yeah, I have a new approach, by the way, which
has really been helpful for how I approach both business
and my sanity is an idle after I check in
on it, so I have to go through the extra
step of reinstalling it, which has been so healthy productivity
wise and otherwise. Because to your point, it was I
couldn't tell what's real or are we on the brink
you know, or are we as Kim Kardashian launching a
new you know, sweatpants on skims Like it's like, what's reality?

(56:27):
So I literally deal everything? But LinkedIn LinkedIn is like
eating vegetables and lima beans all day, like it's not
going to hurt you.

Speaker 1 (56:33):
Well, you know, it's funny you say that because LinkedIn
has become a fairly trusted space, and I've been interested
as to why that is. And I think the users
of LinkedIn don't want it to become like X. And
I think LinkedIn at least those folks realize, Hey, be careful,
don't overserve people what they want here, or you might
create yet another Instagram or another X or another Facebook

(56:55):
that just divides and that isn't what the LinkedIn community wants.

Speaker 2 (57:00):
Yeah, it's to your point. Now you don't get the extremes,
which is good, but you also don't get any toxic toxicity.

Speaker 1 (57:07):
No, it does it. Well, let me get back to
your world of entrepreneurship, and do you it is you've
had more of a background in sports than any other
sector of business or is that am I overreading? No?
It is.

Speaker 2 (57:23):
I can give you a quick for the audience. So
I've had a crazy career in business and that I
partnered up after running the Jets, and then I ran
the Dolphins as a vice chair. So I ran two
NFL teams in one capacity at least off the field.

Speaker 1 (57:36):
For a career post. So you worked for Whatody Johnson?
Did you work for Steve Ross?

Speaker 2 (57:41):
Well, I have this philosophy andes for anyone listening is
like never put yourself in a box. So as a
kid who grew up in a certain box right object poverty,
total dysfunction, I had to get out of that box.
And government was my path. What's great about government is
it has a bias towards young people because then they
don't wan's dumb enough to work these hours, and they
believe too finally, like you know that the cause matters

(58:01):
and you know whatever it takes. So I put in
those crazy hours. But in fairness, government didn't judge me
for being a poor kid wearing second hand clothes and
living in a roach motel. Was I going to put
in the hours and that was my first path out.
So that was one box. I knew that if I
didn't transcend from being Press secretary, ID always be the
press guy. But as you know chalk, the press guy
or girl ends up running a lot of the power. Right,

(58:23):
they have a lot more power than you would ever believe.

Speaker 1 (58:25):
More Now, I'm not at first boy. When I first
started covering politic ninety two was my first campaign professionally,
and the press shops were definitely.

Speaker 2 (58:36):
Down.

Speaker 1 (58:36):
The totem pole right fundraisers were held in higher esteem,
the media consultants were held in higher esteem. The policy
person was helt. I think of the twenty first century
that is completely flipped. And I think now the communication side.
I mean, look, even in business in two thousand, there
was probably not a single Fortune five hundred company that
had a chief Comms officer that the word Comm's office

(58:58):
coms in a C suite title did not exist. Now
that a majority of Fortune five hundreds have that title.
So I do think we've transitioned to believing that communicating,
whether in politics or business, is now a front of
brain lobe. Right, It's a frontal lobe necessity in order
to succeed.

Speaker 2 (59:18):
I think that's true so externally, but internally in the
Apparasa government, that comms person, if they were good, was
all powerful because they had proximity. They have proximity. So
I was close to power and I had that power externally,
though back to your point, it would not be seen
as anything. So my whole life is career in business
has been about breaking out of those boxes. And the

(59:39):
first box was to become an operator. I became chief
operating officer of the World Trade Center site, and now
I had this new skill of being able to manage
complex variables in a land used context in a city
of New York, and I use that to join the
Jets to run their effort to build a stadium. Now
I'm in a new box. I'm in a business guy.
I'm running a sports team. And then but my dream
was to build businesses from scratch. And then I became

(01:00:01):
partners with Steve Ross, owner of the Dolphins, so left
that last skill to run the team, but started doing
what I would really wanted to do, was build businesses
from scratch. And so now I'm at the end of
this journey of Okay, Now I'm a builder. I build businesses,
and I've been able to do it in different different contexts,
communications but also a military of a pretty significant drone company.

(01:00:22):
Now that is very important and it serves the US
Army and a bunch of other government agencies that I'm
the co founder of. So so it's been this constant evolution,
but leveraging the last thing I did to get out
of that box.

Speaker 1 (01:00:37):
Let's uh, let me start with the drones, because I
think I had a long podcast interview with Dexter Filkins,
who's one of the best war correspondents, living war correspondents
that we have, always embeds himself in different variety of places.
Is just one of those war correspondent is just wired
differently than most reporters. And you know, he wrote a
big piece.

Speaker 2 (01:00:57):
It's a great movie in the Civil War. By the way,
have you seen it? About it war? About war photographers?
You have to see this movie a document, it's a movie.
I don't think it did that that well, but it's
actually fantastic and it covers it's a theoretical you know, oh,
the Civil War movie.

Speaker 1 (01:01:12):
I refuse to watch it. I didn't like. I don't
well because I think it plays off of some cynical
stereotypes of our political discourse these days, not the actual
but war a photographer that I yeah, well, what I know.
What Filkens was writing about though, was just like how
much warfare has changed. Just in the three and a

(01:01:35):
half years we've been in a hot war between the
Russians and the Ukrainians and how that is probably and
it's panicking the Pentagon at the moment that basically we
are prepared for a war we'll never fight, but we
are not prepared for the next war we're going to fight.
And it's been the acceleration of drone war drone warfare

(01:01:57):
that is really catching the Pentagon off guard. And I
imagine it's been a pretty big boom for your business.

Speaker 2 (01:02:04):
Right, let me tell you the origin story, since we
were talking about patterns in childhood. But when I partnered
with Steve Rossby started writing checks into some nascent sports.
The first check I wrote was into the drone Racic
League in twenty fifteen, and my partner, who's you know,
now eighty five, But back then it's like, what the
hell or why is anybody gonna watch flying robots? Fair point,
But nonetheless took a flyer and as I got closer

(01:02:27):
to the technology that.

Speaker 1 (01:02:28):
By the way, two hundred years ago, do you think
people said, why would anybody want to watch two horses race?
And eventually it became a thing. Why would anybody want
to watch two cars race?

Speaker 2 (01:02:36):
Yeah, go ahead, So that was my logic, and also
who cares to fly? But as I got close to
what we were inventing, we broke the Guinness Book World
records for flying a drone one hundred miles an hour.
We were organizing drone races in stadiums, so you have
to fly around the crevice, you know, make sure there
was no latency between the drone and the pilots.

Speaker 1 (01:02:55):
Sounds like the Star Wars prequels. You're describing an arena's
and stadiums. Since that getting to the point of the story.
Because of my pattern recognition and because I was on
the ground at the World Trade Center site on Church
Street looking up at that building, I always have had
that terror and that just intersectional military very clear to

(01:03:15):
me early on and my co founders that Pandora's box
has been opened, and that that actually at the time,
China was running an economic sabotage campaign to undermined the
entire US drone market.

Speaker 2 (01:03:26):
Those close to it knew what China was doing. We
didn't know the ultimate endgame, but completely undermining the US
drone market. So in twenty seventeen we started working on
standing up someb rosa a company to make sure that
we had this technology on us soil. Nobody at the time,
there was no market, there was no anything, So we
put it into all Alabama. We put tens of millions

(01:03:47):
of dollars through the value of death, which is the
long period of time it takes place to win a
single contract. So my point to you is, I've been
living this nightmare for a long time, and then Ukraine
starts and everything changes. Bring you forward. Our drunes are
fitting a rugsack. They can enable a warfire to call
in their own air support on the edge. It does
a ton of things. But what's remarkable is how incredibly

(01:04:11):
behind our country is and how hard this administration has
been working to catch up. You could say whatever you
want politically, but what the Trump administration has tried to
do in this category is so overdue and so necessary.
But for the longest time, people just were ignoring it.
Ukraine has been on the radar for years now, right,
but there wasn't a lot devoted to it in any
meaningful way. So when you see the Pentagon scrambling to

(01:04:32):
catch up, it's because the need is so urgent and
it was it was going unaddressed, not not entirely. A
lot of good people in the military were trying to
stay on the alarm.

Speaker 1 (01:04:42):
Right, So are we to you know, sort of sort
of going forward if all warfare is going to be Yeah,
I was just going to say, we go to robotic war.
Of course, the biggest, you know, the biggest concern I
would have about that, right, is the other intended consequence
of automating warfare. Does it one allow smaller countries to

(01:05:06):
potentially be on equal footing if you're essentially just buying
robots that's one.

Speaker 2 (01:05:11):
Two?

Speaker 1 (01:05:12):
Does it make if if does it make it easier
to kill? If it looks like a video game, right,
which has always been a I think of fear that
the the the drone wars, if you will become sort
of almost like you know, life imitating sci fi, right,
the Clone wars. You know, if the if the damage

(01:05:34):
to humanity is minimal, does it increase the likelihood that
that people go to war or does it decrease it
because there's less casualties or does.

Speaker 2 (01:05:43):
It decrease it because it's futile and we just simply
know it's AI generated you know, warfare?

Speaker 1 (01:05:47):
But allah that I allow, so that it's mutual assured
destruction is growing back to the old ICBM.

Speaker 2 (01:05:53):
Right. But let's before we get to that deterrent, we
need to go through this phase. I'll tell you my
hierarchy of things I worry about. World Number one, the
United States needs a drone arsenal that we don't currently have,
particularly FPV drones. The administration is working over time to
fix that problem, to their credit. But what I care
more about. I was watching a documentary for some reason.
I'm obsessed with this nineteen eighties period of the Mujadin

(01:06:15):
and what we did in Afghanistan through proxy wars, right,
and then we gave the Stinger missiles you know, to
the Mujad dein right, and it ended up haunting us
because now Stinger missiles are everywhere similar in Ukraine, our
adversaries are getting a PhD and how to operate an
FPV and all the tactics, which is forget about IP.
That knowledge is very scary. That knowledge. Once this war ends,

(01:06:36):
it's going to be disseminated to bad actors all over
the world. So we post Afghanistan and we need and
don't have, nor does any country on Earth have a
multi layered solution to an incoming drone attack for not
just a swarm, but just like any drones. And so
there's a whole effort behind the scenes to do whatever
we can to get ready. But I think that is

(01:06:57):
the scariest part of it. So how are they related.
You need to master offensive drone tactics on your soil,
including the supply chain, to also be able to understand
defense because they go hand in hand. So there's a
tremendous effort behind the scenes to redomesticate all the means
of production around drones. And the most important part of
that is magnets. You cannot make drone motors without magnets,

(01:07:19):
and magnets are not made in the United States. So
when you read all this geopolitical stuff coming on magnets,
it all goes back to drone wars. So back to
your point, Chuck, maybe one day it becomes mutually assured
destruction and therefore a deterrent, But in the interim, there
are a lot bigger problems I think to get there.

Speaker 1 (01:07:35):
So you view this as an arms race, right, China
is trying to start a drone up that we're in.
We're sort of in the early days. This is like
nuclear weapons circa nineteen fifty five.

Speaker 2 (01:07:44):
I think it is the biggest arms race that we've
had since nuclear weapons and is not one answer to it.
And I think drones eventually become like the rifle or
the artillery, the one five to five shell. You need
all sorts of different kinds. There's no question, and it
was very intentional. I don't know if China had the
foresight to recognize we're going to undermine the US domestic

(01:08:06):
drone industry through And for those who don't know, I
know I'm going on on about this, but I will
make it very simple. We used to make a lot
of drones in this country, and then Dji came along
and started selling exquisite drones that are really, to this
day incredible at a suspiciously low price. And what ended
up happening is a lot of the drone makers in
the US disappeared, and at the same time, all law

(01:08:28):
enforcement in the U. In the United States, I think
almost ninety percent now used Chinese made drones. So a
dependency was created in the US on these drones, and
now there's no drone industry to fill it. So they say, okay,
well why can't we just build a drone industry. It
cost a lot of money to make a competitive consumer drone.
It's up four billions of dollars and then okay, well
the military can help. If there's no demand signal from

(01:08:49):
the military, then there's no market. So that's what's being
fixed right now. Government is putting out affirmative demand signals
so that a domestic drone industry can sprout up.

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Their fee is free unless they win. What's the biggest impediment?

(01:10:04):
So if you've got a defense department that says, hey,
we're ready to be the biggest customer, that obviously matters
a lot. What's the next impediment you talked about magnets?
What would it take for us to be able to
produce our.

Speaker 2 (01:10:15):
Own government has to speak in very concrete demand signals
so that the different drone companies out there can raise
the venture funding against it. We still aren't quite in
that place. Two as just having the means of production
to build those drones at scale all very insurmountable in
the next twenty four to thirty six months.

Speaker 1 (01:10:33):
You know, the surmountable, not insurmountable.

Speaker 2 (01:10:35):
I'm sorry I should have said surmountable. Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:10:38):
I know that's one of those words, but we don't
always know. You know, we say insurmountable a lot. We
never say surmounting.

Speaker 2 (01:10:44):
That is surmountable in the next thirty for thirty six months.
What we need to work on as a country before
there's a disaster is this multi layered counter drone solution.
That part is the part. There's lots of directed energy
and you know, catch a drone with a net. There's
all sorts of you know, geeky solutions, but none of
them quite broad together stitch together in a solution that

(01:11:04):
could protect a city.

Speaker 1 (01:11:06):
Well, I was just going to say, let's let's go
back to your coming Arguably, I'm going to guess is
in some ways you're almost coming of age moment right
being being press secretary on the ground during nine to eleven.
You know, now, if those nineteen hijackers and if those
folks planning that attack on America, they you know, they
wouldn't have used airplanes, they'd be they'd be it would

(01:11:29):
have been a drone like assault on us that we
were quote unquote not ready for, right, we were not
back then. The biggest what was the biggest criticism of
the intelligence community both you know, it didn't matter partisanship.
It was simply failure of imagination.

Speaker 2 (01:11:44):
Rights all the time. We have a failure imagination right now.

Speaker 1 (01:11:47):
And I think right now it sounds like what you're advocating.
And some might be a little say, well, he'd make
his business, will make money on this bet. Well, look,
the drone wars are here, whether we whether whether we
like it or not, we got to come up with
some sort of per perimeter. I mean, I look, some
of us laugh at the Golden Dome, right you know,
I'll uh, the Iron Dome type of security structure that

(01:12:10):
that we've helped Israel build. I don't know if we
can put an entire dome essentially invisible dome over the
continental United States, but we do need some sort of
security field on drones that you could picture could suddenly.
I mean, look at the panic. Do you remember the
panic about six to nine months ago over the drones

(01:12:31):
off the coast of New Jersey And it turns out
they were weather drones, right you know. I mean that's
the problem. We don't even know the inventory of drones
that are constantly in the air all the time as
it is.

Speaker 2 (01:12:39):
Yeah, So first of all, I live in New Jersey,
so everyone assumed I had the answer to that, which
I which I I don't believe anybody did, which should
tell you something. Second, whether I stand a benefit, I
actually don't do counter uas. But regardless, that's not even
the point the point.

Speaker 1 (01:12:53):
Of course, but I did want to just that everybody's Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:12:56):
It would be fair, it would be fair. I don't
want people to reject it base it on, So it's
it's a fair suspicion. More importantly, we live in a
paternalistic society subconsciously, so we presume when we walk into
a stadium, somebody's got that figured out, right, Like there's
a way that somebody could get and let me tell
you something. They don't have it figured out. And so
if you know that they don't have it figured out
and we are vulnerable. We know that nine to eleven

(01:13:19):
was a failure of imagination. We know that there was
a cell, for example, in Europe, a Hesbala cell that
had been ordering drone parts on Amazon. We know that
AI is going to make autonomy and automatic target recognition,
these kinds of tools that enable a drone to fly
with no signature. They're going to make it possible for
anybody to do a eighteen year old, you know, aspiring

(01:13:39):
parist in the next twenty four months, we know these
things are happening, then we know that we need a national,
multi layer solution. Unfortunately, the problem is we don't always
learn from the past, so we don't respond until something happens.
That's my biggest fear again, and maybe, like I saw,
have a lot of trauma from nine to eleven. To
be honest, if I take the train to New York
and I get stuck underneath the tunnel, I have a
total panic attack of texting my wife just stay with me.

(01:14:01):
I know this sounds totally unbalanced, and I'm fifty years old.
So I live with the memory standing under those towers,
just thinking like, how does that happen?

Speaker 1 (01:14:11):
Well, I always thought, I'll be honest, I always thought, Matt,
that DC in New York nine eleven was personal for us.
I mean I was in d C. I was at
the Watergate building. We were seeing smoke come from the Pentagon.
I was trying to keep my staff as calm as
you could in a situation you had no idea what
was happening. Our offices were acrossed from the Saudi Embassy.

(01:14:33):
We were all freaked out, and it's always been remarkable
to me that the rest of America cared for as
long as they did. But the fact of the matter is,
think about your reaction to Oklahoma City. You probably had
a visceral reaction at first, and then over time because
it wasn't in our face every day, we sort of

(01:14:54):
it ventured to the back of your brain. Being a
New Yorker. Nine to eleven doesn't venture back to your
brain being a DC or nine to eleven never ventures
back to my brain. Right, I know I live. We
can argue about whether it's New York or d C,
but we know that they are two of the most
biggest targets in the world. Right you know, I've I've
always sort of since nine to eleven had a all right,

(01:15:18):
if I think of nuke's coming, what am I doing?
You know, where am I going? And can I leave
in time? How much time would I actually have? And
would I mean, in the.

Speaker 2 (01:15:27):
Last subway car, I was thinking, that's not the one
to tear. It was a strike, you'd strike the middle.

Speaker 1 (01:15:30):
I mean, like we interesting, it's good, but that's the point.
It's sort of like and I and I do wonder,
right when you think about it, we don't really have
you know, there's most you know, yes, there's a New
Yorker's president, and there's two New Yorkers in leadership, and
certainly people that were here when nine to eleven happened

(01:15:50):
that are kind of still in power, though not many
of them left. You do wonder how much of that
contributes to this lack of realizing that, hey, we might
want to look at nine to eleven is okay, what's
the next nine to eleven look like? What could we
be missing? Drones feels like some combination of cyber sabotage
and drones feels like the most likely way next sort

(01:16:14):
of tragedy that we quote miss as a society that
we have to fix.

Speaker 2 (01:16:20):
Yeah, I agree, And I don't know quite how you
sound the alarm to make people hacked, because then people say, well,
what am I supposed to do about that? Right at
the end of the day. But the difference the next
nine to eleven is next nine eleven doesn't require elaborate
flight training at a flight school. It's a simulator that
you do online. It requires parts that you could buy
in Amazon. It's just so much very It's a different attack.

(01:16:40):
There is there is a way to counter it, but
it requires such a multi layered federal, state, local solution
that I think is the part that hasn't come into focus.
So when you read the government pentagon eyone advocating, it's
because they know more than you do about the true
nature of threat and how at the moment where we
are unflanked. I could go this, I don't have.

Speaker 1 (01:17:05):
But that's that's all right. That's what makes a good
that's what makes a good conversation. Let me get you
out of here. On sports, I was like you, I've
gone back and forth in sports and politics in the media.
I helped found the Sports Business Journal, which is used
to be called the Sports Business Daily, so you probably
were familiar with it back in your Jets and Dolphins days.

(01:17:28):
So let me ask you this.

Speaker 2 (01:17:30):
Thank you Chuck for that.

Speaker 1 (01:17:30):
Oh congrats, all right? You know my man a mat core,
he knows how identify him. So good, good for you.
So what makes a good NFL owner? And does it matter?
Because it is a socialistic enterprise, right, even a bad
owner makes money because everybody makes money in the NFL.
What do you think separates a good owner from a

(01:17:51):
bad owner?

Speaker 2 (01:17:52):
Such a great question. Well, yeah, your audience might be
surprised if I've been around a lot of owners work
for two directly, but know all them sit at the
table at the NFL for a long time. Every single
one of them desperately wants to win. So there's some
sentences and they're in for the money. No, they're in
it to compete the competing.

Speaker 1 (01:18:09):
They bought a trophy. I've always said, they bought trophies.
There's thirty two trophies to own in the NFL. And
these guys, you know, they're just another Bill Simmons has
this and he's like, you know, if Woody Johnson doesn't
own a sports team, nobody knows Whoddy Johnson is.

Speaker 2 (01:18:23):
Well, there's there's that. Also, any one of them have
different levels of success and failure. They're not on display
every Sunday, so they're now stepping into the arena where
they're where their success. So that's number one. I never
met somebody who was appetite about winning and didn't.

Speaker 1 (01:18:37):
Really want no right because they're already rich guys, so
they want something to get as much money as they
got right now. They want to now they're good to
play in the rich guys circle. And they want to
beat the other rich guys. Right.

Speaker 2 (01:18:47):
I think what makes a good owner for owner probably
makes what makes a good CEO or business owner anywhere else,
is you have very strong values and you telegraph them
and apply them consistently throughout the entire organization. Like you
really you believe in what you believe you are. Consistent
values can form around that. Consistent because an owner is
an asset too, because it means it's not changing every

(01:19:07):
every two years. Right, we're not president of the United States,
got eight years, right, An owner could have thirty years.
And so I think consistent values that spread through willingness
to invest and play the long game, maybe not respond
to headlines and make changes, you know, on a win.
Number one bad quality would be placating the press you know,
or or or or an uprising of sorts by making

(01:19:28):
a short term move, because then you're then you're under
You're undermining the very benefit of the fact that no
one could displace you. You're an owner, no one can
fire you. So you should be able to make long
term decisions, even more so than a publicly traded CEO. Right,
at the end of the day, it's it's it's your.

Speaker 1 (01:19:42):
Why do you think it's so hard to build a
winner with the Jets?

Speaker 2 (01:19:46):
What do I think it's so? Why do? I Let
me ask you why it's so hard to build a
winner with any team?

Speaker 1 (01:19:50):
I mean, I was, I was some teams look at
the look at the Steelers. The Steelers are consistently competitive,
which is all you can ask for in a in
an owner. They put they seemed why did this? Steelers
are always in the mix and the Jets can't be well?

Speaker 2 (01:20:05):
I think without speaking to the Jets, I was around
Winny for a long time. I'll tell you what. He
cares deeply as much as any owner.

Speaker 1 (01:20:11):
I believe he does. But he's not had success. And
I'm just curious if it's just bad luck or you
think it's something else.

Speaker 2 (01:20:17):
And I've been around the Dolphins too with Steve, and
they tried, you know, really hard to win. I think
the first answer is that it's that it's really hard.
I think the Steelers have had success. If I go
back to my first criteria I told you, right, values
that float out from the bottom, that are that are
imviewed in the organization. Sometimes the Steelers probably could be
judges being rigid or you know, they stick to their
own not bridges, wrong word, but you know, you get

(01:20:37):
the point. I think that the Steelers have a phenomenal,
you know, culture. But the non satisfying answer I'm going
to give you is that it's really hard. If you
you right, you can't give me the formula. And I
was around it for fifteen years, and I can't give
you the formula.

Speaker 1 (01:20:52):
I don't think even today's really smart football fan understands
that quarterback is ten times harder to better or whether
it's a bad quarterback or not, than it is to
be a running back. Like I'm all for Jonathan Taylor
being the NFL MVP, but I promise you all thirty
two starting quarterbacks job is much harder than Jonathan Taylor's,
and it's hard to convey that. I think the Manning

(01:21:14):
broadcast does a good job of conveying the difficulty of
being the coach on the field, but it's the only
place you get that come.

Speaker 2 (01:21:20):
It's the other hard, hard job to hire as the coach.
I've been involved multiple coaching searches. The one thing consistency
I've seen is the pendulum always swings violently from one
direct of the other players coach think a disciplinarian.

Speaker 1 (01:21:30):
Then yeah, well the joke is like, you know, the
first thing a new coach does is decides what to
do with a ping pong table. If there's a ping
pong table in the locker room, they take it out.
Oh this is a serious coach. If there wasn't a
ping pong table in the in the locker room, they
put one in. Oh this is a different But it's like.

Speaker 2 (01:21:49):
The second thing they do they paint. They paint the
walls and they put up new slogans which I always
look sobody now some of them are good, Rex, Ryan
gam Me one, you appreciate you play through the whistle,
play through the way, her her herm ed where's you
played it? You play to win the game?

Speaker 1 (01:22:06):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:22:06):
Eric Mangini, who.

Speaker 1 (01:22:07):
Is you know, very smart of the man, genius.

Speaker 2 (01:22:09):
Yeah, yes, he had all his own things. Like what
I found. There is always a consistent attempt on the
coach level to bring a control and try to isolate
some variables that can make the difference, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:22:22):
But yeah, it is true. But whatever the culture was,
you just change it to the other culture.

Speaker 2 (01:22:27):
Right, So back to what you wanted, which youlied a
good owner. You want a good owner as a culture
that can transcend coaching changes.

Speaker 1 (01:22:35):
Uh, Matt, this was great. I am out of I
think we're both running up against time. I appreciate the
uh so is the drone world? Your full time job? Is?

Speaker 2 (01:22:45):
That?

Speaker 1 (01:22:46):
Is that where?

Speaker 2 (01:22:47):
This is what I was meant to be working on.
It's from a degree of destiny. It's that brings me.
It's the most important work I've ever done in my life.
I get to be around the military all the time,
and it is mostly what I focus on now peacefully
you how much of.

Speaker 1 (01:22:58):
Your business is commercial and how much of it is
all defense contracting? These days? Oh so hard.

Speaker 2 (01:23:03):
We only own a lot of brands and a lot
of businesses, But in terms of where I put my time,
over half half of my time is spent on this.
We have other businesses, but this is where my heart,
my energy goes because the mission is so important, That's
where I spent my time.

Speaker 1 (01:23:16):
Well, this is something that I have a feeling. I
want to be checking in with you a lot more
because I do. I don't think Washington official Washington is
fully aware of how dramatically warfare is changing right now,
and we are we we just are it explains why
they You know why there's so much effort in the

(01:23:39):
in the tech community, and I know it's at times
I'm uncomfortable with how much government and tech are fusing,
but it is because of this panic of the nature
of the change in warfare.

Speaker 2 (01:23:49):
Is a danger. We're so part as an only leave
you with this. It's so easy to dismiss the efforts
based upon which side of the ali you're on. But
the one thing I can deliver you from the other side, Hey,
this patch, which is the response, is because there's exiting
crisis happening that we need, we need to stand up
this industry and you. Lastly, the seventy percent of all

(01:24:11):
kills or casualties in Ukraine are caused by a flying
object the size of a dinner plate that you can
make for eight hundred dollars. You can't make it here
for eight hundred dollars. But what does that tell you?
So the second question is our adversaries North Korea, all
our different enemies are getting a PhD and how to
make these in scale and them very quickly. So what
you're reading about is because of that threat and that

(01:24:33):
we're not.

Speaker 1 (01:24:34):
One hundred percent No, I think we just generally all
need a better education in what is happening at the moment.
I mean, this is unfortunate. We cover the war in
Ukraine now through the prism of how it ends. We
don't actually cover the war in Ukraine collectively anymore through
what's happening in the moment, and that that's probably actually

(01:24:54):
is hindering your ability to communicate the urgency of this
and frankly mine as well. We need more pictures of
what's happening in the moment.

Speaker 2 (01:25:02):
I agree, thanks.

Speaker 1 (01:25:06):
Exactly. Other than that, enjoy the end of the year holidays.
The exactly good to meet with it like that. Well,
I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Matt Higgins. Look,
every once in a while we want to showcase some

(01:25:26):
folks that you may not know, may not be household names,
but they know, but they're innovating, or they're in a
part of the economy or in the world of national security,
like in Matt's case, where there is where there is
something to learn and something to understand. And you know,
as if you recall the interview I had with Dexter
Filkins regarding the changing basically the changing nature of warfare

(01:25:52):
of military warfare. Then you understand what's happening in the
world of drone warfare and how transformational this is going
to be. Is it going to make war easier to conduct,
harder to win, easier to win, fewer human casualties or
does it lead to more human casualties? Right? You know,

(01:26:15):
if the personal cost seems low, does that increase the
likelihood of leaders escalating military conflicts or not? So I
think it turned out to be an important conversation and
certainly something that I'm glad to be more familiar with.

(01:26:36):
So with that, I want to transition a bit. Look,
given what happened in Tennessee, I thought it would be
worth focusing my top five list before I get to
the as check segment. I thought it would be worth
focusing the top five list this week on five Senate
races that are not competitive at the moment. They're Republican

(01:26:56):
health seats, but what I would call is blue wave
watch Senate seats. To top the five I'm going to
give you are or my five nominees for what happens
in an actual wave. Is that a Senate race that

(01:27:18):
was not on the map a year out ends up
flipping in two thousand and six, there were sort of
three candidates. There were arguably four candidates for that. Three
candidates really for that For that idea, you had Virginia
Senate at the time, a Democrat had n't want to,

(01:27:40):
you know, had Chuck rob But it was the sense
that Virginia was still a Republican state. George Bush carried
Virginia in two thousand and four. Democrat hadn't carried carried
in a presidential race since Carter in seventy six. So
the perception of Virginia was that it was a tough place.
So and Jim Webb was an unusual candidate. George Allen
was a perspective presidential candidate. It was a race that

(01:28:02):
developed late and popped on the radar late, and then
it was a flip. And then it turned out to
be a canary in the coal mine. It turned out
to foreshadow was a growing shift of Virginia from light
red to now light blue. But each one of those cycles,
there's always a seat or two that you're like, well,
how did that happen? Sometimes it's a special election win

(01:28:23):
in the Senate side. Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts it
was it a seat could hold on his own in
twenty twelve. Nope, that's what gave us Elizabeth Warren. But
in that unique environment, in that moment in time, that's
how much the ground had shifted underneath Democrats when it
came to the issue of health care, and it certainly
foreshadowed what was not a very good mid term. So,

(01:28:47):
with that caveats out of the side, here are my
nominees of the five. You know, and like I believe,
I think all five of these Senate seats have a
chance to become shockingly competitive. And I'll explain what the
unique circumstance for each of them, but they are ones
that have been written off, right, and I'm not even
talking about Alaska and Texas don't make this list because

(01:29:08):
or even Nebraska, because they're already seen as quasi competitive
at the moment. Right Alaska, especially if Democrats get Mary Patello,
Texas looks like it's going to be competitive, no matter
what part of it is demographics, part of it is.
Explain to me how John Corny gets out of that
gets fifty percent plus one after a runoff. Really hard
to see that, and without him as the nominee, suddenly
that becomes a winnable race. Although the Democratic primary is

(01:29:31):
a mess there. It's a topic for another day. But
these don't count those races to me. You know, it's
the job of the Democratic Party to put those races
in play because they're competitive enough sort of on paper.
Then then it becomes, hey, you should be able to
find candidates, you should be able to target those races.

(01:29:52):
The five states I'm going to be emphasizing here are
not obvious. A couple of them would have been ten
years ago, but they're not obvious at all. And what
I would theorize for you is that if Democrats, you know,
if I go into a coma and I wake up
the day after the midterms and you tell me Democrats
flip the Senate, I'm going to guess one of these
five races was either actually flipped or was one of

(01:30:16):
the final was one of the six or seven Senate
races in the country that was decided by five points
or less. So here are my candidates for that, And
then I'll put in an order of least likely to
end up on that last minute competitive slate to most likely.
So I'm going to start with my home state of Florida.

(01:30:37):
You know, I think there's still a competitive nature to
the state of Florida. I think there's definitely some sort
of Republican fatigue in general. I think the governor's race
still has a shot at getting competitive. There's a couple
of quality candidates on the Democratic side. We're not seeing
the same level of energy or interest on the Democratic
side on the Senate race as much. Ashley Moody, of course,

(01:30:58):
is running to fill out the rest of Marco Rubio's
term after he left to become Secretary of State, National
Security Advisor, head of the Archives, et cetera. All the
different jobs that he still holds. He does hold all
three of those that I just mentioned. And you know,
it just it's a very expensive state. So the work
and the Democratic Party nationally has done a terrible job

(01:31:20):
at incubating the state of Florida. They don't help the
state party. The state party doesn't help itself very well.
You know, there's a variety of reasons why Florida sort
of under punches its voters. Right. This is a state
that you know, is still probably a fifty three to
forty seven state if both parties were equally funded. You know,
it's a leaner I think I still think Florida's light red,

(01:31:41):
not dark red yet, but you know, the incompetence of
the state Democratic Party makes it seem like it's dark red.
So that's why I put it in the fifth slot here,
because I do think the political environment could shift in
such a way where we could see and Ashley Moody's
not a household name and it is an appointed senator.

(01:32:03):
If you told me in October fifteenth, twenty twenty six,
you had a poll show in that race forty five
forty with the Democratic nominee in Moody, in a political
environment that looks like a growing blue wave, which at
the moment to me, it looks like that. That's what's happening.
Florida gets more competitive. It's just inevitable that you would

(01:32:24):
see that. So Florida's fifth on my list. But I'm
not yet impressed with the canaid. I almost think it's
too expensive to put in this category, to actually take
it from from could we make it competitive to look
it's kind of competitive, to actually competitive. Fourth on the
list of Kentucky, it's an open seat. This is the
Mitch mcconnel'sy. There's actually we've interviewed one of the Kentucky candidates,

(01:32:47):
Amy McGrath, is running again. There is you know, the
Republican Party in Kentucky is pretty divided, right because it's
there's some pretty strong anti Trump Republicans in the state
of Kentucky. The retiring Senator Mitch McConnell ran Paul Thomas
Massey the potential for the Republican primary to turn into

(01:33:11):
a bloody mess. It's already kind of that way, right. Look,
I think Andy Barr, if he's the nominee, is very
difficult to be But I also think Daniel Cameron would
be a pretty you know, a strong potential Senate nominee
as well. But what if one of them aren't the
nominee and it is, like I said, it is nasty.

(01:33:32):
The primary campaign is heated up. There is a sense
on the Republican side that it doesn't matter what happens,
it can be as bloody as you want. Sometimes that
mindset might leave a potential nominee weaker than they should be.
We saw that with Jade Vance out of his Ohio primary,

(01:33:53):
which was a bloody mess and ended up creating a
much more competitive general than was necessary. All the ingredients
are there in Kentucky for that. So it's I tell you,
this is one of those things that if there were
a more, if the Democratic Party had a slightly better
brand and slightly better leadership, Andy Basheer would be the

(01:34:17):
Senate nominee in that campaign, and we'd be talking about
Kentucky Senate a lot differently. But the fact that that's
not even on the table, and there wasn't and there
wasn't anybody with the heft to go to Andy Basheer
and sort of beg him and twist his arm in
a way that could talk him into it. I think
it just shows you how weak the party is. And
I think Andy Bisheer certainly has his eye. I think

(01:34:37):
he thinks his skills translate better to a potential presidential campaign.
But again, all the ingredients of there in Kentucky for
something late to surge if the Republican primaries is messy.
It is again I'm assuming only if this environment continues
to be as poor as it appears to be for

(01:34:57):
the party that's currently in power. Three and this list
for me is Lindsay Graham and South Carolina. I know
we've been here before with the with the with Jamie
Harrison and all that wasted money, just like with Amy
McGrath and that wasted money. But I would argue that
six years ago the political environment wasn't as weak for Republicans.
It was a very competitive environment. What does that Senate

(01:35:19):
race look like in twenty twenty six without Trump on
the ballot? Is Lindsey Graham wearing out as welcome? Does
the mess that is the South Carolina Governor's race sort
of put an entire pall over the South Carolina Republican brand? Look,

(01:35:41):
South Carolina Democratic Party is very similar to the Florida
Democratic Party. They really underperformed their potential. You know, there
is a stronger floor in South Carolina. I mean, you know,
I'm sorry. South Carolina is surrounded by competitive states Georgia
to the south, North Carolina to the north. They just
had they've had bad leadership in the state party week

(01:36:02):
voter registration campaigns. It is South Carolina and Mississippi are
the two. And I've just previewed the next Senate race
on my list, But these are two places where if
the Democratic Party invested serious resources and voter registration campaigns
and and sort of had a better message for rural
blacks in South Carolina and Mississippi in general. But it's

(01:36:25):
a problem they have across the black belt in the South.
Is Democrats underperform among in all rural communities, not just
rural white communities, but at rural Latino communities and rural
black communities. It has been a it is, it has
been a nagging problem for them, and they've done very
little to fix it, very little investment. And this gets
it to, you know, is the you know, does the

(01:36:48):
party see the opportunity that's staring them in the face
or have they Is it being run by a frankly,
a bunch of people who live on the coasts and
and just have written off and assume all rural America's
white when in the South, not all of rural America
is white. And I think that's been a huge missed
opportunity in states like North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia,

(01:37:12):
uh in general. I mean, the only reason they throw
money at Georgia is do the Atlantic growth of the
Atlanta suburbs. They're not. They're not doing as good of
a job in the rural black communities as they could be.
So anyway, I again, South Carolina's another one of those
there's a mess. You know, yes it's in the governor's race,
but that it's just creating a bad juju if you will.

(01:37:36):
And you know, Lindsay's his own worst enemy at times,
and his mouth can certainly inspire donors to give money
to candidates in ways that that that he may and
he may have tied himself too much to Trump in
ways that are not you know, you know, Lindsay's problem
is is I think that there are there is this
center right voter in South Carolina that assume Lindsay was

(01:37:59):
one of them, and I think they still think Lindsay
is one of them. But he's so desperate to stay
in Trump's good graces that he he sort of does
some rhetorical gymnastics that's embarrassing to some voters. They just
have not had the right Democrat to to to sort
of expose that side of Lindsay. But look, this is

(01:38:19):
a guy Lindsay reminds me of Chuck Schumer in this respect.
These are two two politicians who've had a really impressive
career who are probably here a term too long. Had
they left a term sooner, they'd be they'd have they'd
have been lying. They literally would have been treated as

(01:38:41):
lions of the Senate, you know, if they had left
on their own terms. And yes, you can say they're
going to be leaving on their own terms, but in
some ways, you know, it's it's they're they're they they're
kind of here past their cell by date. And the
longer they're here, I think the smaller they've become in
some ways. And and I think that's the danger here
for Lindsay on this one. And that's why again I

(01:39:04):
put it in here. I think that it's it's another
political environment, right, you know, you tell me how South
Carolina working class voters are going to benefit from high
tariffs and things like that. So, uh, it's it's a
it's it's again. I'm not saying it's going to happen,
but it's if it does happen. It's one of the

(01:39:25):
five races I would put in there. Number two on
my list is Mississippi, as I previewed, almost the identical
situation uh as South Carolina. But you also have an
incumbent who's just not hasn't left a heavy footprint yet
in the state, Cindy Hyde Smith. You know, Roger Wicker
is definitely more of the senior senator and he's on

(01:39:47):
the higher profile committees. He's sort of involved in the
higher profile issues. I don't think Cindy Hyde Smith has
the same hold over over her voters or her seat
that are previous senators from Mississippi have had in their
Senate seats. So look, she's you know it is this

(01:40:08):
is actually her campaign for a second full term she
got she got appointed there two years and then second
full term. So look that the Democrats have an interesting
candidate here in somebody that was put up for a
judicial nomination rejected. Again. Mississippi a state we've seen it

(01:40:31):
in the governor's races. It can be a competitive state.
Takes a little bit of work, but this is one
of those where come October, I fully expect a poll
showing forty five to forty Sydney hind Smith and where
there's a striking distance where there is a debate about
whether how all in should Democrats go on Mississippi Senate.

(01:40:52):
And then number one on my list of the of
the five is actually Montana. You know, Montana is an
R plus ten state. It is you know, in some
ways not having a high profile challenger this time, like
Steve Danes had the last time. But the thing it
might might be more beneficial. Right. When John Tester ran

(01:41:12):
the first time, he was kind of the outsider. When
Brian Schweitzer ran the first time, the outsider, Steve Bullock,
you know, was seen as an outsider. So I think
Dane's a pretty savvy politician. So I don't think he's
going to get caught napping maybe the way some of
these other incumbents could get caught napping. But Montana is
also not a hard right state, and they're going to

(01:41:34):
be pretty sensitive, especially if corruption starts to pop Montana
voters are a bit more sensitive to corruption issues I
think in general, and a bit less tolerant of it
no matter whose side is doing it. And if that
becomes you know, sort of gets into the ecosystem, in

(01:41:55):
the campaign ecosystem, what Trump's been doing with pardons and
the self enrichment and all of that. You know, I
think there's a reason, if you've noticed Steve Danes keeps
a pretty low profile. He does not want to necessarily
pop his head up on this front. It is Look,
Montana is a populist, it's a right leaning state. But
there's a it's a populous state and it is one

(01:42:18):
of those you can get on the wrong side, and
the Democrats are well organized in the state. So the
point is is that I think these are five races
nobody's talking about at the moment. Nobody believes are going
to be competitive. Nobody believes, maybe nobody at the d
SEC is even looking at it. But I promise you,
if this is as bad of a political environment as
it looks like it's growing into for Republicans, one of

(01:42:41):
these five, if not more of them, but one of
those five Florida, Kentucky, South Carolina, Mississippi, Montana, will be
a seriously targeted race and might actually flip come election
Day twenty twenty six if this trajectory of where the
political environment is going stays on the same trajectory. All right,

(01:43:06):
So with that, let's get to se Aster Ash Chuck.
All right, first question comes from Nate Nate's in Yorkville, Illinois.
Nate confesses, I almost skipped the Clay Travis episode, but
I'm glad I gave it a listen. It was a guest.
It was a great conversation. He came across as thoughtful
and engaging. Thanks for pushing us outside our bubbles and
featuring voices we might not normally hear. I also fully

(01:43:29):
agree with your Thanksgiving take best holiday by far and
your Turkey Day top five A spot on, especially the
pumpkin Pie thoughts Nate podcast fan since the nineteen forty
seven days. That's super old school. Appreciate it, Nate. Thanks
for saying that, Like, That's what I'm trying to do,
And in some ways I hope Matt Higgins is a
similar type of conversation, trying to expose people, to expose lists,

(01:43:51):
expose you know that this is I just look at
it this way. These are people I'm trying to learn
something from, trying to understand better, and if it's helping
me understand something better, I'm assuming it's going to help
you understand something better. So that's kind of the way
I just view myself as sort of what helps me
sort of get smarter about both sides of the aisle,

(01:44:12):
understanding the as I call myself a political anthropologist. You know,
I want to understand folks that live in a variety
of bubbles and I don't I'm not going to presume
we just have two bubbles. In this country. I think
we have quite a few, so I appreciate that. And
I left out, by the way my numbers, I left

(01:44:35):
out the single most important thing I do every Thanksgiving,
and that is I make this turkey chili with the
leftover turkey. And the real question is how long? The
question is how long is it? Is it okay to
keep around? Because it is one of those chilies it
gets better every day for a period of time. Then

(01:44:57):
there's the point then everything starts to taste old, right,
But there's something about putting all the flavors together. You know. Today,
certainly I'm taping here on a Tuesday. I had it
a lunch again for lunch today. We're still in peak.
I think we're still in it's in peak mode. But
I'm probably now on the other side of the hill.
Is it worth freezing or not? Would you freeze left

(01:45:20):
over at chilling? I am probably not going to do it,
but I'm contemplating it, so I would love I'd love
your thoughts on that, if any of you want to
chime in that all right, next question comes from Dan.
He says, Hey, Chuck, what is the public to make
of all the recent attempted censures in the House of Representatives.
Some of it is dem on dem and GOP and GOP.
Is it based in a sense of morality, opportunistic acts,

(01:45:42):
grinding or both? Dan, you know, it's interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:45:45):
Dan.

Speaker 1 (01:45:46):
I talked to Mike Turner about this on my new
Sphere show. He brought this up to me as a
Republican from Ohio. But he noted how at the time
of our interview sort of this it was sort of
almost a similar observation that you did, which is like,
what the hell is this? What is it? I mean,
you know where it is. But it was his way
of pointing out of what a terrible place it is

(01:46:06):
to work right now. He chalked it up to being
kept away from Washington for over a month. Mike Johnson's
decision to keep the House out of DC during the
shutdown just drove members crazy, and so it was like,
you know, it's like you kinked hose and then young

(01:46:27):
kinked it and whoom, right, and when people came back
to Washington, they came back ready to go.

Speaker 2 (01:46:34):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:46:34):
So you had Marie glusen Camp's going, what the hell's
Chewy Garciodo on?

Speaker 2 (01:46:38):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:46:39):
That was the demon dem one where she's like, that
was an underhanded move. If we think Trump's regging an election,
that's no different, we should denounce it. By the way,
I think MGP is right, I am. I think Marie
Glusoen camp Perez is one of the If I were
to say, who the if I were to do my
best Barbara Walters and who's the five most interesting Democrats

(01:47:00):
right now to talk to, she'd be in my top
five list on that one. She's fascinating to me, and
I think that there's a there's a populist honesty to
her that I think is infectious and fascinating and you know,
definitely worth Uh. She's trust me. I'm trying to book her.

(01:47:23):
I'm going to bring her to you as soon as
we can get her to say, agree to agree to
an interview. So some of it is the members blame
on that, but I think some of it is just
simply the current political environment. Right think about it. The
Democrats are unhappy with their leadership, and they're unhappy with
what they're having to deal with Donald Trump, and they're
really mad about Joe Biden still, so it's just a

(01:47:44):
cranky group of Democrats. Republicans feel as if they've been
pushed aside, particularly after the shutdown, they feel as if
they do nothing but to you know, go back to
Marjorie Taylor Green statement, they feel as if they do
nothing but defend Trump, and all they get is grief
in return, or they get set aside, or they get

(01:48:06):
dealt out. So even though in some ways this is
a Republican governing renaissance, in theory it could be. Right.
You have controlled the House, the Senate, and the presidency,
and the president has control of his party in a
way that no president has had. Frankly, you know, Obama
didn't have a grip like this under Democrats, and maybe

(01:48:27):
for a temporary period Bush had a grip on the
Republicans like this after nine to eleven, but not not
like this, And so in theory it should be a
golden age for legislating, and yet it hasn't. Right. Instead,
Trump wants to sign executive orders. He doesn't want to
bother watching letting the sausage be made. So I think

(01:48:50):
it's that nobody's happy, right. House Republicans aren't happy that
they don't get to govern, and House Democrats are unhappy
at their position and are pissed off at all their
leaders for they believe putting them in this place. So
you put it all together and it's just think about
your own bad day. I think about this, and I

(01:49:12):
will you know. I've been this way as a boss.
I've been this way as a parent. Right You've had
a bad day and then somebody does something that's just
slightly annoying, might be an employee, might be a kid.
Isn't worth you losing your cool about? But you lose
you're cool because you're already upset about sixteen other things.

(01:49:33):
That's the equivalent of I think the situation that the
House of Representatives is feeling these days, and I just
think that's the way anybody in elective politics feels this
way right now. Everybody feels like they're all out, that
they all are out for themselves, not because they want
to be, because they don't think they have any other choice,
because they really don't trust anybody else to look out

(01:49:54):
for themselves. Next question comes from Randall and der Vaal
from Lighten, Netherlands, leading r Lighten My Apologies. He says,
as a listener from the Netherlands, I struggle to understand
how so many still support leaders who behave irresponsibly and unpredictably.
It feels like both Europe and the US are losing
a shared sense of purpose with real leadership and short supply.

(01:50:17):
I agree Europe should take more responsibility for its own security,
but we need leaders who think beyond themselves. How do
we get accountable, responsible leaders into power again? And what
needs to change in our democracies to make that possible.
So this is where I think populism and nationalism gets contagious,
and it's the wrong type of contagious. So and as
leader of the free world, the United States, how you know,

(01:50:38):
we set an example, right whatever whatever posture we take
when we are when we're leaning in as as leader
of the free world in a more internationalists posture, say
in the era of Frankly, from Eisenhower to Obama in general,
right we viewed we did. Every president between Eisenhower and

(01:51:02):
Obama came into office believing America was leader of the
free world. And we put that in quotes their free world.
Believe that the relationship with Europe was second to none,
that it was the single most important relationship there was,
and that democracy was the ultimate goal. Freedom and democracy

(01:51:29):
was the ultimate goal. Didn't mean that that was going
to be our number one export over time. But in
many ways we set an example. So how we behave
is how other countries think it's okay to behave. And
as we sort of became more nationalistic, other countries get
more nationalistic. When we decide to erect tariff barriers, other

(01:51:50):
countries decide to America tariff barriers, and so you end
up it. And so this is a case where I
think the United States and ye you could say Brexit
was sort of a sort of a starting gun that
was fired on this movement towards nationalism, but that the
collective move towards nationalism. I mean, this is you know,

(01:52:12):
the last time we were in a position like this,
you know, we ended up in a couple of world wars.
You know, we had forms of nationalism arguably or how
we got into World War One and certainly how we
got into World War Two. So I think that's I
think that is at the root of all this. Right
the more, when when America becomes more isolationists, more protectionists,

(01:52:38):
well so does everybody else because it's you know, you're
you're going to behave like the you know, like the
big dog is going to behave and so I think
that has a huge part of it. I think that
we do. We are in the middle of an economic transition,
and this is a major one. We haven't had an
economic transition like this in over one hundred years, and

(01:52:59):
the last time we had it when we went from
an agrarian to industrial. Think about all the revolutions that
happened across the globe. Right, we had the Russian Revolution,
we had the fall of the Ottoman Empire, we had
the First World basically the First Great War we called it,
where it felt like the entire globe was fighting each other.
But in some ways that was due to fear of

(01:53:20):
what was coming next. Right, the Tetanic place were shifting
in geopolitics, the United States was becoming a world power,
and the powers that were the dominant powers of the
eighteenth and nineteenth century we're trying to hang onto power. Right,
So we are in the middle, and I think we

(01:53:41):
can't underestimate we are in the middle of this great
transition from an industrial to whatever this new economy is
going to look like, this tech driven, service driven AI
driven Right, we know, we know this is going to
dramatically change the nature of work and ultimately over time,
it's probably going to be to the benefit of humanity,

(01:54:03):
but the transition is going to be awful, just like
the Industrial Revolution was to the overall benefit of humanity
when you look at it through one hundred year prism.
But the first twenty years of the Industrial Revolution was
terrible if you look at it in terms of livelihoods
lost and things like that. So this is where I
play sort of amateur historian, and I said, let's take

(01:54:25):
a step back and realize, this is a moment in time. Now,
why are we in this moment in time? I try
to comfort myself by sort of trying to at least
understand how we got here, and we kind of know
how we're going to get out. The question is can
we get out without a world war? Can we get
out without internal civil wars, without dramatic sort of ideological revolutions?

Speaker 2 (01:54:49):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:54:50):
Will the transition be smoother than it was between the industry,
between the agrarian and the industrial You know, that was
a very violent transition when when you look at it
in hindsight, we don't necessarily always cover it that way.
We just sort of like, ah, and then the Industrial
Revolution began, and yeah, we had some child labor laws

(01:55:11):
and we had something to that, right, you know. I
it is like when we were in the moment, I
don't think people felt like, oh, some man, this is
going to be great. Everybody's gonna have electricity, and everybody's
gonna have We're all going to someday just sit on
couches and watch stuff moving pictures on video screens. Right.
You know, people didn't know what their lives were going
to look like thirty years later. Then they had no

(01:55:32):
clue what their life was going to be like thirty
years later because that unknown was because it was unknown,
it was all fear. So I think that here's here's
why I always say, trust the voters. The voters eventually
figured it out. I think the voters are starting to

(01:55:52):
figure it out in Europe. I think the voters are
figuring it will continue to figure it out in this country.
And in stability, you know, there's always a uh a
bias towards stability, okay, whatever that is. And at some
point you know we're gonna we're going to get there.

(01:56:13):
But I think we're in the middle of something that
is just simply we're in the middle of a rocking
you know, vote and choppy waters, and it's just going
to be a while intil the water settle. I know
that wasn't the best answer, but I think that that's
the larger reason why we're here. But I also think that,

(01:56:37):
you know, ultimately, people vote based on their own livelihoods.
And there's been a lot of promises made by many
of these nationalists and many of these populists, and they're
not being able to fulfill them. And I think and
instead it looks like there's just been nothing but grift
and graft. I think that's going to be how these
movements end. That's usually how many a political movement ends.

(01:56:58):
It ends in corruption. That's what this one feels like,
at least in this country. Next question, I love it.
You signed it your champ. It's pretty neat to end
up with the nickname Champ. I hope you're a champ
in something, but anyway, this next question is just from Champ.
You better have won something that got you the nickname,

(01:57:21):
and I kind of think it's got to be at
least high school championship are above. Like, if you're going
to come at me with a middle school championship, I
don't know if that's worthy of the Champ nickname. It's
just my opinion. But what am I doing insulting my
listeners like this? So no insult Champ. You know, I'm
just let me know what you want, hey check. I'm
curious about why President Biden seems to be facing challenges

(01:57:43):
with donor support first presidential library, especially compared to past
presidents like Clinton or Obama, who secured major deals in
funding post being in office. Reports suggests donors are hesitant
due to the twenty twenty four election outcome, concerns over
Biden's South, then fear of Trump error retaliation. Why do
you think these post presidentcyp coutunities are so different for Biden?
And why might donors be so reluctant despite having the

(01:58:03):
right to support him. So, look, I think it's just
donor anger at the moment. And these weren't Biden donors, right,
These were Democratic Party donors who always donated to who
the Democratic nominee was, right, So they were their loyalty
was to the party before it was loyalty to Biden.

(01:58:24):
So I think there's a little bit of that, and
it goes back to this has been a problem Biden's
always had, right his his his loyal set of supporters
have been very small. It's always been at small, tight circle.
But there weren't you know, he was never a prolific
fundraiser before he became president. So he didn't have like
a donor network that akin to what most presidents have.

(01:58:45):
And when you have a donor network like that, it's
easy to tap into them. For the library, Obama had
a devoted donor network that was the Obama donor network.
It wasn't one that belonged to the Democratic Party more
than it belonged to him. This is also true of Trump.
This is also true of Bush. It's also true of
c It's also true both Bush, Bushes, Reagan. I can
keep going on and on it is you know, even

(01:59:08):
Carter had his set of his set of donors. I'm
surprised that Biden doesn't have more folks in Delaware and
in Philadelphia chipping in right. That was always his sort
of community, was the Philadelphia business community, and the and
the banking sort of the banking industry of Delaware or
you know, because of the incorporation rules that they have

(01:59:30):
in Delaware that there was certainly a lot of He
never had any trouble raising pack money as a senator
put it that way, but he was never the most prolific.
So but I think so I think you have the
main You have Democratic donors who donated to Biden but
never considered themselves Biden donors still pretty angry at him,

(01:59:50):
and so I don't think there's so you have that issue.
You know, he could use a sugar daddy, like one
big donor that might be, you know that might really
want to have a presidential library at the University of Delaware,
might really want to see something like that, or if
they wanted to see it at Penn. Yeah, it's definitely
supposed to be in Delaware. He announced that in September.

(02:00:15):
Here's my guess, and what usually is the secret to
finding presidential donors wealthy foreigners.

Speaker 2 (02:00:27):
And so uh.

Speaker 1 (02:00:29):
In that sense, I do wonder if Trump does scare off,
if you know, if he's gonna raise money anonymously, But
I don't think that's in Biden's nature, and that would
make people uncomfortable. I do think there is some concern
by some major donors that they don't want to they

(02:00:49):
don't want to, they don't want to that they they
believe that donating to Biden in a public way in
the Biden Library would put a target on their back
for the Trump administration. I think that fear is real,
and I don't think it's unfounded in defense here. But
I do think the biggest reason why he's had so

(02:01:10):
much trouble is is anger. All right? Next question comes
from Adam Shlip. I hope I pronounced that correctly. Hey,
listen to your episode on MTG, and Trump reminded me
of Benedict Arnold, specifically how he flipped not for ideology
but for vanity and money. Trump, like Arnold, seems to
have no real convictions, just a price. Even the British

(02:01:31):
Canadians eventually rejected Arnold because no one trusts someone who
sells out their own cause. Could Trump's legacy follow a
similar arc if the true believers eventually walk away? You know, Adam,
I think that's quite possible, right, you know, I have
said that I think the biggest problem Republicans face in
general over the next two years is I don't think

(02:01:53):
Donald Trump cares about the future of the Republican Party.
He didn't care about the Republican Party before he got
into it. In fact, when he got there, he said
you know, all he did was criticize the party. All
he said is what a terrible party it had been.
They'd had stupid ideas or stupid people, you know, the
typical Trump words and analysis. And if you told me

(02:02:18):
in ten years Republicans hadn't elected, hadn't gotten control of
the House or the Senator, hadn't elected a president, whether
Trump would be happy or sad about that if it
were deemed that, you know, boy, only Trump seems to
be the only Republican that can win elections. That's the
legacy Trump would actually like the most, not that he helped.

(02:02:41):
You know, if there were four straight presidents under the
umbrella of MAGA post Trump, would that make them happy
or would it make them happier if nobody could win
that didn't have the last name of Trump? Right? I
think we all know the answer to this, and I
think deep down most Republicans know this too. He does

(02:03:04):
not care about the future of the party. He cares
about him. And that's the stuff in the last two
years of a presidency and why these midterms, and this
is why I think that some people are really hesitant
about this redistricting gambit because they're trying this is all
about Trump staving off lame duck status for about six months,

(02:03:26):
which is all it would do if he somehow holds
the House. But he's just trying to preserve his own
status at the expense perhaps of making Republicans more vulnerable
in the long term. I think that's why you're seeing
pushback in the places that I would expect it. Indiana
is one of those kind of states that they're Republicans

(02:03:47):
before they're Trump people, and you know, you tells another one,
but it's certainly a place that I would and I'm
not surprised to see this. But I also think that
there's a little bit the I think the average Indiana Republican,
I think thinks that there's thinks about the world beyond Trump,

(02:04:10):
and I think that that's that's what you might be
seeing this. I you know, I happen to think that
the I will go this way. As one of my
favorite movie lines to use when talking about the industry
of television is from the movie Cocktail. Everything else everything
ends badly, or else it wouldn't end. It's kind of

(02:04:32):
how I feel about the Trump, how Trump's ten ure
is going to end. And by the way, this is
you know his You know, he was a disaster for
Atlantic City. He eventually had his TV show canceled due
to low ratings. Right, everything in Trump's life, every sort
of six or seven year cycle, has ended badly, or

(02:04:53):
else it wouldn't have ended. I suspect his political career
is it's hard to imagine that's a legacy that's going
to get better rather than worse. All right, last question
for this episode. It comes from Andy from Indy speaking
of Indiana. Hey, check, as a millennial ouf and here
from my peers at the political system feels broken and
any honest critique tends to spiral into both parties are bad.

(02:05:16):
The constant partisan battling has left many of us exhausted
in disillusion. While a viable third party seems unlikely anytime soon,
do you think we could see a mixed party presidential ticket,
say a Democrat with a Republican VP. Would love to
hear your take on any combos you think could actually work.
Andy from Indy. You know, look my old mentor the
late Doug Bailey, he had a vision in two thousand

(02:05:37):
and eight. He thought he feared that a presidential election
between which if starting in two thousand and five, the
two front runners were loosely Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton. Right,
this is before McCain didn't seem like as where the
Republicans were going to go, and he thought that was

(02:06:00):
going to be an opportunity for a bipartisan ticket, that
that Rudy v. Hillary, that Rudy v. Hillary would be
so divisive that it would open the door for a
potential unity ticket. You know, think boy in two thousand
and eight, I think he I think he had a vision.

(02:06:22):
He hoped it would be an Obama McCain or McCain
Obama right like type of mindset. Or I think John
Huntsman as sort of a Republican on one end, or
a I'm trying to think of another Democrat at the time,
maybe Mark Pryor, who was a conservative Democrat from from

(02:06:42):
from Arkansas, but something in under that category. You know,
I think the only here's where I think that, you know,
I look at we've had three major, three major third
party candidates for president in the last say one hundred

(02:07:04):
and twenty years. Right, One was Teddy Roosevelt in nineteen twelve,
one was George Wallace nineteen sixty eight, and one was
Ross Pero in nineteen ninety two, and they did sort
of help tip the election right, and they certainly influenced
Right Wallace's success, which nearly handed the election to Humphrey

(02:07:27):
even though he was winning some of these But it
certainly motivated Nixon to pursue a Southern strategy for the
Republican Party and led to the eventual sort of Republicanization
of the South. It sort of convinced Nixon to shift
the Republican Party to the South for the future. Obviously,

(02:07:50):
Teddy Roosevelt handing the presidency to the Democrats led to
a different outcome on a variety of things, but sort
of was an attempt to sort of reform both parties.
I don't know if it fully did, to be honest,
because a very corrupt Republican Party followed Wilson in the twenties,
and and so in some ways Teddy failed to do

(02:08:11):
what he was trying to do, which is reform the
Republican Party. We didn't get that version of the Republican
Party really until Eisenhower, and I would argue that Perode
had an impact on both parties fairly positively. Right got
Republicans not being so reflexively free trade and got Democrats
to be a bit more concerned about the debt and
deficit and more into fiscally responsible things, so I could

(02:08:35):
picture eate. You know, we have sort of we have
a trust deficit in this country, and that's where a
bipartisan ticket could help restore that. If we're trying to
restore trust in some institutions, if we're trying to reform institutions,
doing it on a bipartisan level is about the only
way you're going to get collected buy in. And you know,

(02:08:56):
if we feel as it, you know, to me, if
the country, I think we need a by something like this,
some sort of third party or to sort of to
sort of force both parties to think of themselves in
broader terms. Right, I don't think either party. I feel
like they're both in retreat as far as they're you know,
not thinking about creating broad majorities, but thinking about creating

(02:09:20):
deep majority deep majorities, but more narrow and so you know,
you look out there. I would tell you this if
you you know, Wes Moore, uh, Spencer Cox, right, And
I don't care what order you give it to me.
If we're looking for a pair of leaders a bipartisan

(02:09:43):
set of leaders who who who singular goal was to
be pastors for patriotism, to sort of restore the idea
of America before the country before party. I think that
would be your best ticket. And I don't care which
order you put it in, but I think I think

(02:10:04):
both of those gentlemen do govern thinking about their state
before thinking about their party. And you know, I don't
know how many I don't know how many elected officials
i'd put in that category, but they're you know, they're
two people, Mark Kelly, John Curtis, another Utah politician, John

(02:10:28):
Curtis as a senator, you know, Rafael Warnock and James Langford,
the two ordained pastors in the Senate. That would be
an interesting pairing. To me, It's all about what moment
are we trying to meet right at the time that
you're trying to put this together. Is it to restore
trust in government? Is it to restore faith in the country,

(02:10:51):
Is it to heal the country? Is it to try
to unify the country?

Speaker 2 (02:10:54):
Right?

Speaker 1 (02:10:54):
I think it there's you know, I think there's different
skill sets. But when I start to think about certain
people who I think have the ability two because it
would in order to work in order to pair up
with somebody on the other side of Oh, you got
to leave your party. So who could I picture being
comfortable leaving their party under a circumstance like that. And

(02:11:15):
you know, look, I could you know, I'll give you
another odd pair that you would say, what are you
talking about? But you know I could see Rand Paul
and a John Tester, you know, type of type of
pairing when you're looking for bipartisan pairs that I think
could work together again depending on you know, if they
were depending on what problem you were trying to solve.

(02:11:38):
But I you know, Mark Kelly is in that category.
John Curtis, Lisa Rakowski, I'd probably put I'd have put
a John Cornyan in that category. I had to put
a Build Cassidy. We know Buil Cassidy actually showed some
interest in the No Labels in the no label situation
when No Labels was seeing if they recruit a bipartisan ticket.

(02:12:02):
You know, I think they were dreaming of a Mansion
Hogan ticket, Joe Manchin and Larry Hogan. So you know, look,
I love these fantasy conversations, but I emphasize the word
fantasy a lot of times. It's very hard for these
guys to leave their party. It's so hard for them
to leave their party. They have a hard time doing it.
And you have to leave your party to do something

(02:12:23):
like this, you have to be done, and it's it's so,
you know it. And for this to succeed, it requires
both parties going to their extremes, and usually we don't
have that right. When one party goes too far one way,
usually the other party then tries to become the party
for the center right, tries to absorb the center and

(02:12:45):
so which is frankly, I think it been a very
effective way to create a check and balance in our
country between the two parties. It's when it's in those
weird moments when both parties split apart. Maybe we're oncoming
to one of those moments, and if we do, then
perhaps there is room for this year. But I ultimately

(02:13:06):
don't think we're going to be there. And obviously my dog, Kelly,
she is ready for this podcast to end, So with that,
I will see you in twenty four hours

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