Full Episode - The End Of The Government Shutdown? + From Nixon to Trump: America’s Nonstop Modern Presidential Scandals - The Chuck ToddCast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Hello there, Happy Monday morning, and welcome to another episode
of the Chuck Podcast. I'm full disclosure when I'm taping.
It is Sunday evening. We are likely. It feels as
if there is real momentum to get a deal to

(01:53):
open the government. It seems like we're very close here
actually working a weekend. The fact that the House of
course hasn't been been around in weeks, but the Senate actually,
instead of going home for the weekend, stayed in and
perhaps it did some good because it does appear we're close.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
What is close?

Speaker 1 (02:18):
Is it going to be later on Monday? Is it
on Tuesday clearly, I think the air travel threats however
you want to whatever you want to look at him.
Those Some Democrats say that Sean Duffy at the Transportation
department's playing politics. Sean Duffy says he's just taking He's

(02:39):
just taking his advice from the FAA. We hear at
the Check podcast, like Leland Viidder's idea from News Nation
or Leland suggested, why are we cutting any commercial flights? First?
Cut off private air travel first. Let the rich people
have to fly commercial. They'll get angry at the members
of Congress that some of them think that they own,

(03:00):
and maybe it'll get resolution even faster. That was a
good idea. I don't know why there hasn't been, especially
both parties claim to be populous these days, right, so
act like it right, actually behave like a populist. But
in all seriousness, I think we're close, and there's a
variety of reasons neither party can afford for this to
drag on. You know, I think, you know, Chris Murphy

(03:22):
probably wishes he didn't say the following Right after the
big night that Democrats had last week in the elections,
he goes, well, you know, now it's to our advantage
to keep the government closed. You know, it is. There's
no doubt there's a lot of progressives that are putting pressure.
Don't want Democrats to quote unquote give in yet don't

(03:43):
do this. This is you know, and you know, I
I've look, I'm not I have been wrong about this.
Democrats have had a stiffer spine than I expected. Part
of it is the more center centrist wing of the
Democratic Party is just a small group of people, right
it is. There are a couple of senators that normally

(04:03):
would have been in the middle of this who are
no longer in the United States Senate as Democrats anymore.
And that's Kirsten Cinema in Joe Mansion. So that's two
less senators there that might have cut that deal. So
it is, But obviously Republicans know this is hurting them.
Why the President is trying to play hardball with snap

(04:25):
benefits is a real head scratcher to me. The fact
that the administration over the weekend ordered states who are
trying to pay the benefits in full doing essentially abiding
by one court ruling, We're suddenly being told not to
fulfill that by the Feds. That's a head scratcher. It
goes back to I think the administration and this is

(04:49):
the weird coalition that Trump put together. Right, Trump's winning
coalition includes quite a few voters that are on snap benefits,
quite a few voters that are on Medicaid, quite a
few voters that do you need government assistance to live?
And you still have people sort of that come from

(05:09):
the maybe you call it the Heritage Foundation wing of
the party or from some other the the Hey government,
you know, the super inn ran libertarian wing of the
party that says government shouldn't be doing this, and that
most government there's you know, the stereotype that somehow people
on government assistants are somehow lazy or somehow you know,

(05:33):
not deserving of this need or not not in a situation.
So it is I think this is a case where, boy,
this was is just a bad politics for the Trump
administration what they're doing here and those that are trying
to guide this and trying to weaponize government benefits as
some stereotype from the eighties and the welfare queen and

(05:56):
all that nonsense that took place back in the eighties
and nineties when people were trying to stereotype those on
government benefits, particularly those activists on the right. You know
what has made you know, what got Trump into power
was him sort of stopping that kind of class warfare
from the right, you know, stopping attacking Social Security or

(06:17):
attacking those on Medicare and pronouncing that he wasn't going
to touch those things. Now the Republican Party has and
I think they're paying a price for it, but then
then to actively not again, this is just a head
scratch politically, and it gets it something that I think,
you know where you can feel the growing coverage of,

(06:39):
which is what's going on with the president. You know,
he pronounced himself all last week was saying that somehow
the affordability issues that Democrats successfully ran on in all
of these particularly in New Jersey, New York City, and Virginia,
that somehow it was a con job that some of
this wasn't true. And he comes out there and claims

(07:00):
essentially claiming the economy is better than it is. I mean,
it is as if there's Biden advisor suddenly advising Donald Trump,
when all the Biden economic advisors would would say, hey,
pay no attention to cost the living issues. This is
just the right wing spinning it. This economy is great
and there's so many people with jobs, the unemployment rate
is low, and they came across extraordinarily out of touch.

(07:22):
Well guess what Donald Trump now looks extraordinarily out of touch,
and the way he's speaking about it, it's so out
of touch that you have to say, hey, what's going
on here? Is he not fully briefed? Is he not
getting a full picture? Is he got an information bubble
now that does not give him any sort of reality anymore?

(07:44):
Is the filter? So I mean to think that he
was more focused today on going on Sunday going to
a commander's game in order to lobby the Washington commanders
to name the new stadium after him rather and oh,
by the way, in the same weekend that he says,
don't even let them eat crumbs of a cake. We're
going to pull all attempts by states to fund snap benefits.

(08:08):
This is just really stupid politics. It just it hands.
And this goes back that this is a Republican party
that's still not comfortable being Trump's party at times, not
understanding who its voters actually are, that the voters that

(08:30):
they think they're representing, and the voters that they're actually representing,
that they present essentially two different messages there to them.
So it's been a it is. I think this is
weirdly the out of touchness of the Trump administration on
the shutdown is I think motivating a bunch of Republicans

(08:52):
to say, hey, healthcare is going to kick our ass
in the midterms if we're not careful here anyway, let's
at least deal with the Obamacare premiums. Here, Democrats are
offering Republicans a political lifeline here to extend them a
year and see what happens. Basically get through the election year.
I mean, the political picture is bad enough that's being

(09:14):
painted right now going into the midterms when you look
at what happened in fact, you know, the further away
we get from those Tuesday elections, the more you realize
just how much energy is on the left and how
little energy is on the right. I still can't get over.
And I think this is where, you know, there's a
lot of people distracted by Mamdani. Okay, and there's unfortunately

(09:37):
a lot of the political conversation is just completely distracted
by Mamdani. What happens in New York City is a
new York City thing it is. I know there's gonna
be a lot of people trying to extract what's happening
in New York City and apply it nationally. And anybody
that tells you that was the most important election, by
the way, not the other two, but that what happens

(09:58):
about New York City is more important than anything else.
They have their own agenda, they want it, they're trying
to will it to be. I saw Barry Weisse put
out her weekly email from the Free Press that's now
I guess owned by the Allisons. I'm not sure if
it's an independent organization anymore. But she came out and
said the single most important, you know, the biggest, the

(10:18):
most important election was newer I mean, it is such
a New York centric thing. It's clear this is a
person that doesn't really live in the rest of the country,
doesn't live in the you know, this is not the
most important election. I know there are folks that want
it to be. They want this to be the conversation,
they want this to be the debate. There are progressives

(10:39):
that want Mom Donni to be seen as sort of
the shining star of the left, and there are folks
on the cultural right that want the same thing. And
so when you see people trying to make the Mom
Donnie election somehow more important than anything else, it usually
tells you more about their own politics than the reality

(11:01):
of the situation. The reality of the situation and the
single most important result, I would argue was in the
state of New Jersey because of the following issue that happened,
the Republican candidate for governor got more raw vote. Jack
Chittarelli got more rav vot about one hundred thousand more
then he got four years earlier when running against Phil Murphy.

(11:23):
That was a good Republican a year, by the way,
But this time he got one hundred thousand more votes.
Four years ago he lost by three percentage points. This
year he lost by thirteen percentage points. You know why
because Mikey Cheraw got four hundred thousand more votes than
Phil Murphy did. More than four hundred thousand more votes.

(11:44):
That is an ass whoop in number one and number two.
That is a turnout. So when you see the president's
political director, James Blair go out there and say, oh,
there was nothing in the exit pole that indicated that
this somehow is a referendum on Donald Trump. You're like, Okay,
there was nothing in the exit pole that said it
is a referendum on Donald Trump. You know what was
proof that there was a referendum on Donald Trump the

(12:04):
raw vote totals in all of these elections. That's proof
that this was a referendum on Donald Trump. You have
a Republican Party and independent voters who are not interested
in voting as much as independents that want to check Trump,
and Democratic voters, the surge in Democratic participation in Virginia,
in New Jersey. In the fact that you also have

(12:28):
the non the other tests that we got, which is
the state of Georgia, where neither party spent any money
on a couple of statewide races for public service commissioner,
and the Democrats won both races in a route against
two appointed incumbents. They're incumbents, but they were appointed. They
hadn't faced the voters before. But you put all that together,
this is a referendum on Donald Trump. So that's whistling

(12:51):
past the graveyard again. All of this, I think is
also pushing congressional Republicans to hurry up and get a deal.
Now do Democrats how quickly do they want this deal.
You know this is I do think you've had the
center and center left Democrats have been a little antsy
about this. The poll numbers have been narrowly favoring sort

(13:14):
of Democrats on this shutdown issue. They're winning the issue
by a lot healthcare specifically, so that's a net positive
for them. But with so many with you know, past
forty days, with what's happening, whether it's it's the FAA
issuing safety regulations or the Trump administration playing hardball with
air traffic, it doesn't matter. We're too close to Thanksgiving.

(13:37):
Take the win. I've been saying it for three or
four weeks, Right, take the win. You got what you
wanted out of these elections, out of the these off
off your elections. You've got what you need out of this.
You've got the ability to recruit more candidates. You get
mired here and you start impacting more and more everyday people,
then it looks like you really just want the issue

(13:59):
rather than the solution. And if you've got a half
measure here that guarantees these Obama Care subsidies for another year,
you're going to get full snap benefits paid immediately. You're
going to get these folks paid for you take the deal.
You take the deal. You've got the win, you take
the deal. So it does appear as if things are

(14:24):
getting close. But I'll tell you the other thing that
I'm watching for now, and as the pivot out of
this is is this, you know, and to me it
was going to be the this is the big test
out of these off off your elections. Is this the
beginning of Donald Trump's lame duck period in his presidency?

(14:46):
And for it to begin, Republicans have to bail on him. Right,
So we've already seen, you know, he tried to say, Nope, Nicks,
the Philipbuster, don't give into the Democrats. Just reopen the
government on its own and we'll have this debate about
Obam mccarelay, and Senate Republicans said no, they felt comfortable

(15:08):
enough on that issue, and they had enough votes there.
I mean, look, you had a few the people who
are the most sensitive to not ever disagree with Donald
Trump or folks, it turns out to be Jim Banks,
Josh Holly, right, Rick Scott. You sort of see and
we know who that wing is. In many cases, it's

(15:28):
the senators that voted for Rick Scott instead of John Thune. Right,
those that voted for John Thune wanted him to protect
as much of the institution of the Senate as was
possible in the Trump era. What that really means is
just simply protect the fellowbuster. And that's about all Thune
is done.

Speaker 2 (15:47):
Right.

Speaker 1 (15:47):
He did not protect his members from making bad votes
on Pete Hegseth and making bad votes on Tulsa Gabbart,
or making bad votes on RFK Junior. These are things
Mitch McConnell would actually never allowed his Republican senators, I think,
to vote on those guys. I think he would have
found a way to kill him sooner. Fune wasn't going
to do that. That's his way of trying to appease
the Trump White House. But he is going to hold

(16:10):
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(17:17):
the beginning of Republicans showing an ability to want a
distance and telm from Trump. I'm not sure I'm there yet,
but I do think this is where we are headed,
and it is you know, the way they've hand away
the Trump Administration's handled the shutdown has been terrible politics
for the Republicans right. The aggressiveness on snap going basically

(17:41):
pushing back on federal judges who are just telling them, hey,
just feed those in need, that's what this program is
supposed to be for, and then pulling it back again.
This is many of their own voters. There are more
poor white people in this country than there are poor
people of color. Just just remember that. And many of

(18:02):
those poor white people were voters of Donald Trump. So
the inability for them to see that does put them
in where the affordability message suddenly becomes even easier for
the Democrats to adopt. I mean, that's what's so funny
about politics sometimes is how often, how often parties don't

(18:27):
learn the lesson from the other party. I mean, on
one hand, Democrats got the memo after the twenty twenty
four election, hey, stop talking about any other issue other
than affordability. And by god, whether it was progressive zo
On Mamdani or milk toast moderates like Mikey Cheryl and
Abigail Spamberger, they all got the memo and it worked,

(18:51):
and worked big time. When you look at independent voters,
you can see it there. When you look at a
fact that in the Eggsit poll, one in four voters
who are proved of the job Republican Governor Glenn Younkin
was doing in Virginia voted for Spamberger. That tells you
that the affordability message was something that penetrated the culture war.
Stuff that Winson Sears ran on and that some in

(19:15):
the Maga world beliefs still can help them didn't didn't
work at all. So it is the fact that the
Trump White House, who got back to the White House
on affordability issues, on painting Kamala Harris, is more worried
about they them than your issues at the grocery store.
Now it's Donald Trump that's more worried about his name

(19:39):
on the Commander Stadium, his own crypto businesses trying to
get a peace prize. By the way, it's interesting to
me that FIFA, and I don't know if you caught this,
but FIFA that the organization that runs World Soccer, essentially
the entity in charge of the World Cup. The United States,
along with Mexico and Canada is joined going to be

(20:00):
hosting the World Cup next year. It's going to be
an extraordinarily extraordinary event and one that's turning more precarious.

Speaker 2 (20:07):
Right, what are what.

Speaker 1 (20:08):
Are what's ice going to do. You know, are they
going to use World Cup events to try to aggressively
deport people that they think don't belong here. So we've
got a mess potentially building with the World Cup. But
there's also a lot of excitement here. Well you know, FIFA.
FIFA is known as perhaps the most corrupt international sports

(20:33):
body there is. You know, maybe the IOC after Salt
Lake had the had the had the belt of being
the most corrupt international sports institution. But it looks like
since I mean when you look at where the World
Cup has been, right when it's been in Russia and
it's been in Cutter two places that arguably should never

(20:53):
have been hosts, but they were bribed. I mean it
is you know, everybody knows FIFA's for sale. Well what's
FIFA doing. They're creating a peace Prize And apparently there's
going to be an event at the Kennedy Center sometime
this year so they can give Donald Trump the FIFA
Peace Prize again. Donald Trump more worried about a grand ballroom,

(21:18):
More worried about putting gold LeMay all over the White House,
More worried about putting new gold lettering identifying which door
belongs to what we've got, the new titling of the
Oval Office, more worried about, to see if he can
get international acclaimed, to see if he can get his
name on a building just before he passes away, his

(21:39):
name in a football stadium. All of that are things
that he's focused on that doesn't have to do with
your electric bill or your grocery bill, or your rent
or your mortgage, or your ability to find a mortgage
that's affordable. And so as the Trump White House continues

(22:04):
to sort of be more obsessed with image, culture, his celebrity,
all of that, his retribution campaign, you've got a bunch
of elected Republicans on Capitol Hill that realize they've got
a break from him. It's not easy, right because you know,
in some ways we saw it even an election day

(22:26):
last week. If mag if Trump can't get Trump voters
to the polls, Republicans get killed. If he goes out
of his way not to support you, like he did
to win some earl series that costs you three or
four points. Now, even if he had done a bunch
of stuff for her, maybe Spamberger wins by twelve instead
of fifteen, because maybe turnout in the rural areas is

(22:48):
a little bit better. And you know that if you
do break with him too publicly, he'll go to war
trying to stop you. But the fact of the matter
or is it's going to be better politics to break
from him on something. And what does that look like? Well,
let me give you one example. Down in Georgia. Brian

(23:11):
Kemp's got a super pac the governor outgoing governor there.
He's got a candidate that he believes can win that
Senate seat and knock off John Ossoff, the Democratic incumbent.
His candidate is Derek Dooley. Derek Dooley is the son
of legendary Georgia football coach Vince Dooley. Derek Dooley tried
a little head coaching himself. Didn't go as well as
his dad's stints did. He was at tennesseeat It's the

(23:31):
most prominent spot that he went. But what was interesting
is that the Kemp super pac didn't add boosting Derek
Dooley for Senate and the ad blamed both Congressional Democrats
and Congressions and Republicans for the shutdown because there are
two members of Congress Republican members of Congress in the
primary field against Derek Dooley. And of course there's an

(23:53):
incumbent senator, Democratic Senator in John Ossa. So here's Dooley
wanting to put all of the Washington crowd, Democrat and
Republican and kept into one bucket. Well, the congressional Republicans
are quote unquote furious about this, right, Buddy Carter and
Mike Collins are upset about this, almost called him by
his dad's name. Mac and Mike Collins are upset about this,

(24:16):
the two Republican candidates running in that primary in Georgia.
But I'll tell you, I think it's smart politics on
Duley's part, Right, I think being associated with Washington, particularly
being associated with Washington Republicans right now, when the economy
is upside down, when right track wrong tracks upside down,
when the president's job rating is upside down, why do
you want to be associated with Congressional Republicans, especially House

(24:39):
Republicans right now, who have just completely abandoned their duties.
I think Mike Johnson has made an incredible fatal air
here in how he's conducted himself during the shutdown. Obviously,
he's you know, We've said this, he's a Spino speaker
in name only, and in some ways the only Spiney
has is Trump's right arm, because Trump appears to be

(25:02):
a puppeteer to Mike Johnson. He doesn't ever question anything
out of the White House. He doesn't ever question any strategy. Essentially,
they didn't he didn't want to be here if it
was all about squeezing Senate Democrats and making this about
Chuck Schumer. He went ahead and agreed with the White
House policy. Now, look, he wouldn't be Speaker without Donald Trump.
So in some ways he understands where his political bread

(25:24):
is buttered, but he has put he has made life
so much harder for congressional Republicans that are running for
reelection or running for higher office. And so this entire
sort of three weeks, and I'd say the last three weeks,
right about the last week before the elections, the elections themselves,

(25:44):
we sort of saw the test and then the bizarre
reaction of Donald Trump, where he you know, clearly is
doesn't have he either doesn't have grasp on reality or
is trying to alter reality.

Speaker 2 (25:59):
Right.

Speaker 1 (25:59):
And unfortunately, given the president's age, none of us know
for sure what the situation is other than you know,
these little anecdotes. I mean, the same thing the right
used to beat up Joe Biden and show him forgetting words, mispronouncing,
calling things other things. Like Donald Trump last week went

(26:20):
to Miami to talk about South America and kept talking
about South Africa, and he kept saying it over and
over again. Well imagine that Joe Biden thought, oh wait,
we did have moments where Joe Biden did this, and
it became a huge thing on the right. And now
you've got people on the right going, oh my god,
they're overdoing it. They're trying to make a big deal.
I saw somebody from the world of real color politics say,

(26:40):
you know, all of a sudden, mainstream media cares about this,
They didn't care about Joe Biden, of which I would say, well,
first of all, do two wrongs make a right? You know,
if you believe there should have been intense coverage of
Joe Biden's mental declines while he's president, then of course
you should believe that another eighty year old president should
have get tough coverage that you were calling for before.

(27:03):
Unless you're a partisan, right, This is how you find
out who in the media is actually a partisan.

Speaker 2 (27:07):
Right.

Speaker 1 (27:08):
Why when they call for one thing when one side
is president, but then they complain when it's being done
to the other president. So you know, be careful letting
your bias show there. It's I would say, it's not
very clear which side, or maybe I would say, you're

(27:28):
being really clear about which side of the aisle you're
trying to report from. And I just come on, come on. Now,
we know a president falling asleep in the middle of
meetings is not a small thing. It's kind of a
big deal, especially a president that we know has been
mister energizer Bunny. So if suddenly he's not mister energizer Bunny,

(27:51):
then maybe we all are be concerned that something is
wrong here. So bottom line, I do think we are
in the very early stages of the Trump lane duck presidency.
It's not there yet. You know, he's he does have
too much executive power in too many ways, and he's
still good at being able to hijack a media, you know,

(28:15):
a media news cycle and all of those things. But
you have a lot of elected Republicans who are trying
to find a way out. How do they distance themselves
without full alienation of the magabase You're you're you're seeing
the tiptoes. And look, there's some other things that are
dividing MAGA right now to including the bizarre, the bizarre

(28:37):
Tucker Carlson. Like I, I sort of follow this. It's
funny to me that a whole bunch of conservatives are
just discovering now that that there's a Tucker, an anti
Semitic Tucker Carlson wing of the party. Guys, some of
us experienced that anti semitism from that wing of the
party ten years ago. Okay, but I have Look, I

(28:59):
get it. Everybody's got their own information bubble, and maybe
maybe they compartmentalized the anti semitism on the right and
only was focused on the anti semitism on the left.
As I've said repeatedly, anytime you hear anytime you see
the rise of populism, left wing or right wing populism,
I promise you the anti Semites, the left wing anti

(29:19):
semites or the right wing anti Semites come out from
under their rock and embrace that populism and go and
target the Jews. It's been happening on the right, and
it's been happening on the left. Those that think it's
only the other side literally have blinders on, so sadly,
I've experienced it from both sides of those aisles, so

(29:43):
something to keep an eye on there. My interview this
week for this episode is Garrett Graff Garrett at these days.
I've known him since he was on the He was
an early blogger before anything any of.

Speaker 2 (29:55):
That was cool.

Speaker 1 (29:57):
He was editor of Washingtonian for a period of time.
He's really made his mark though as a historian and author,
and what he really does tremendously well, Like he did
a nine to eleven book, An Oral History of nine
to eleven that was just tremendous, And he's really good
at sort of going back to a going back to
recent history and unpacking some new revelations. He's done it

(30:20):
with Watergate and it led to an interesting discussion that
he and I had, And I think that you would
appreciate those of you that already subscribed to this feed,
which is when is the best time to fully believe
you can get an accurate picture of some key event.
Is it five years later, ten years later? We know

(30:40):
it's not in the moment, right, It's never in the
heat of the moment. We know whatever, no matter how
well an event is reported out in the first seventy
two hours, even first six months. There are things that
we don't learn until years later, right until classified documents
get released, until presidential library prairies are built, and information

(31:02):
is available, and Freedom of Information Act requests get fulfilled,
all of those things. And so what is the peak period?
And we sort of, I think we agreed it's somewhere
in the twenty to twenty five year range. Right, you
get too far away, and there's just not enough people alive,

(31:22):
not enough first hand accounts to pick apart. If you
get too close, some of the principles still have power,
and there are people that work for those principles that
may be afraid, still afraid of telling the full truth.
And so some of the principles have to be deceased
before you will get all until you get a big

(31:43):
chunk of this information. And so anyway, I think whether
we were talking Iron Contra, we were talking Watergate, we
were talking how Watergate and the Vietnam War, the secret
deal of Nixon's and sixty eight actually all were one
large scandal, and we were both He was implying that

(32:05):
perhaps the Iran hostages and that whole weirdness that the
Reagan campaign seemed to have some backchannel with the Iranians.
Was it all tied to Iran contra? Was that actually
one big that the Iran conscious scandal that we knew
of in eighty six and eighty seven actually begin in
seventy nine when the hostages were still in captivity in Tehran.

(32:29):
So anyway, I think a conversation that you'll appreciate. We
tackle a whole bunch of scandals of the recent past
and sort of speculate about when would be the peak
time to get all of that information. I even slip
in one of my favorite theories as to the death
of cable news that it all began with a former

(32:51):
football player accused of double murder by the name of
Borenthal James Simpson. So with that, let me sneak in
a break, we'll have my girgraph interview. After that, it's
the Toddcast time Machine. A huge event is coming up
this week, a big holiday. No, my Toddcast time Machine
isn't about the origin of that holiday, but it's close.

(33:16):
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Speaker 2 (35:16):
Well.

Speaker 1 (35:16):
Joining me now is someone who I've known forever, which
means all of the twenty first century. I first got
to know him when he was an blogger, and I
believe correct me if I'm wrong. What did we call those?
What was the DC version of that thing that predated TV.

Speaker 2 (35:34):
Newser Fishbowl DC?

Speaker 1 (35:37):
Fish Bowl d C. Is it fair to say that
that's how you feel like you cut your teeth in
the Washington ecosphere with Fishbowl DC.

Speaker 2 (35:47):
That is exactly where I got myself started in journalism
in Washington. As you remember, this was two thousand and five.
Brian Stelter was writing TV newser out at Taos. I
was a student at Towson University, also for Media Bistro,
and I was writing Fishbowl d C covering Washington politics,

(36:10):
all under the pseudonym.

Speaker 1 (36:14):
Right, was it in a pseudonym for a while? Were
you a pseudonym? You didn't release?

Speaker 2 (36:17):
No, no, no, no, you might you might be thinking of
want at at the time at the pseudonym.

Speaker 1 (36:25):
Right, she did the pseudonym for a while. Right, Well, look,
you have taken that, and in some ways you've always
been an entrepreneurial journalist, meaning that you're very comfortable going
off on your own. You've dabbled in establishment journalists, and
you ran the Washingtonian for a bit. You certainly contribute

(36:46):
to plenty, but uh, look it's an you know now,
you're I think one of our better historian writers of
of I guess recent history is probably how you would
describe it, right, You specialized sort of in looking back
at recent history. I think you've carved a carved a
great franchise there because, as we now know, with with

(37:10):
so much information being thrown at us all the time.
We forget look at it, look at look at the killing.
Netflix is making just doing nineties bs history, right, pop
culture history like missing kids and balloons and planes and stuff,
to do actual interesting political and government stories. Uh is

(37:30):
going to be pretty uh, a pretty interesting way to
go what uh? What made you stumble into that franchise?

Speaker 2 (37:38):
So I've always been on the magazine writing side of journalism,
as you know, was at Washingtonian, as you mentioned, an
editor of political magazine, and then after I left there,
spent the better part of a decade as a contributor
it Wired. And I've always been fascinated at returning to

(38:04):
stories a couple of years after the sort of daily
media has moved on to try to understand what actually
takes place, because you know, you know this as a
student of history, so much of what we think about
an event as it flows by us in the on

(38:27):
rushing tide of daily news turns out to either be
sort of slightly mistaken or not the full picture, or
sort of otherwise not fully understood. And so I've spent
a lot of my career as a writer, as an author, historian,

(38:49):
and now as the host of this podcast series Long Shadow,
returning to events, you know, five, ten, fifteen, twenty five
years later, to try to put them in better context
and help use that history to tell the story of today.

(39:10):
That that I think sort of all of the work
that I do is really aimed at trying to make
sure that we understand why the world is the way
that it is today, because I think so much of
so much of sort of what Russia's past us in

(39:30):
the news today feels unconnected, and you know, journalists love
to throw around this is unprecedented, but the truth is like,
nothing is really unprecedented, and that what's really fun to
me in understanding history and studying history is going back

(39:53):
and looking at how the way that the world is
today is the often very deliberate choice of a small
group of people during identifiable moments.

Speaker 1 (40:07):
I'm obsessed with butterfly effects. So I do a series
every year where I just simply call it what if.
Where it takes you take one specific thing that didn't happen,
What if this had happened? How everything else would have changed?
And you know, it's as as small as what if

(40:28):
Hillary Clinton had run for president in two thousand and four.
I think it's the only time she would have won.
It's the only time her last name would have been
an asset, It's the only time. Like so it's sort
of a way, you know. So that's sort of my
way of trying to tackle recent history. What if Bill
Clinton had resigned in nineteen ninety eight when his own
party kind of wanted him to, We're kind of opened,

(40:49):
he'd read the room, he chose not to. Well, you
know what that would have meant. Al Gore would have
been president during nine to eleven yep. And do you
know how much different politics would be because of that,
Because then you would have had twelve years of democratic,
straight democratic running of the government. There would have been
a more partisan reaction to nine to eleven, and who
knows how everything we have today might have been accelerated forward.

(41:11):
But the point is is that it is always it
strikes me, you know, this is why I love your work,
and that this is how you think you're like looking
for these pivotable pivotabal listen to me, pivotal moments that
were the fork in the road yep, you know.

Speaker 2 (41:29):
And I think it often takes a long time to
put that framework together.

Speaker 1 (41:34):
Well, that's what's going to be my next question. It's
like a piece of fruit, you know. You cut a
peach too soon and it sucks. You cut a peach
too late and it sucks. Right, I'm obsessed with peaches,
and it bugs the crap out of me that it's
so hard for me to figure out the perfect time
to eat a peach.

Speaker 2 (41:51):
Right.

Speaker 1 (41:53):
That is way when peeling back this, how do you
know when an event in history is ready for your
deep dive where the eyewitnesses are ready to talk but
not performatively and stuff like that, Like is there a
specific thing you look for to know? I think that

(42:16):
that's a right piece of fruit, historical fruit. I can
it's time to eat it.

Speaker 2 (42:22):
So there are a couple of different answers to that,
because I sort of think about this in different epochs
of sort of returning to a story. You know. Probably
the most famous piece I ever did, as you know,

(42:43):
was in twenty sixteen, for the fifteenth anniversary of nine
to eleven, I went back and did an oral history
of being a board Air Force one with President Bush.
Ten years later, or not ten years later, for the
tenth anniversary of the killing of Bin Laden, I went
back and did a similar oral history of the killing

(43:07):
of Bin Laden and sort of what it was like
to be part of the Obama White House at that time.
And that ten to fifteen year window I think often
ends up being really fruitful because you'll find that the
major players are out of the job at that point

(43:30):
but still alive, but still alive, and their memories are
still pretty good that they you know, that they'll be
able to sort of talk more freely in off. Usually
at that sort of ten or fifteen year mark, they
have sort of achieved in their career something meaningfully different,

(43:52):
so that they are more comfortable talking about a moment
in the past when they you know, their legacy might
sort of still be in shape. But it can also
take a lot longer. I wrote a book about Watergate
actually that came out in twenty twenty two.

Speaker 1 (44:12):
I thought that was a brave decision you made to
do that one. Well, thank you, because you know, especially
with Woodward still alive, right, are any of us allowed
to write about Watergate while Bob's still alive?

Speaker 2 (44:23):
Right?

Speaker 1 (44:23):
So this was you know, that's why I found you brave.

Speaker 2 (44:27):
Right, the fiftieth anniversary of the burglary in nineteen seventy
two and yet it had taken most of those fifty
years to answer two of the central questions of Watergate.
Who is deep throat? And sort of why did Nixon

(44:50):
launch the Watergate cover up? And so when I sat back, I.

Speaker 1 (44:56):
Think there's a third question that we've never pursued well enough.
Way not to go down a rabbit hole. All right,
what actionable intelligence did they learn from the phone tapping?

Speaker 2 (45:12):
We have the phone tapping of the d n c H.

Speaker 1 (45:19):
Now I've talked to sources who've given I've gone down
this rabbit hole, and I've talked to people that were
could you know, that were convinced that John Connolly sold
them out for a variety of reasons. And but that
part of Watergate doesn't get told very well. Right, it's
always through the prism of Nixon. But the manipulation of

(45:39):
the nomination was real, you know, the the what Nixon
did with the Texas delegation to make sure McGovern was
going to get was gonna was to make sure nobody
could have basically so that McGovern could win it at
the convention. I think was the intelligence they got over
the over the over what they learned from the dnc HM.

Speaker 2 (46:01):
But you know, when I sat down in to write
that book to come out in twenty twenty two, no
one had ever been able to tell the story of Watergate,
knowing the identity of Deep Throat as we now know
FBI Deputy Director Mark Felt, and no one had ever
been able to write it knowing the sort of original sin.

Speaker 1 (46:25):
That kicked off the Nixon Well, Woodward and Bernstein and
Theory knew.

Speaker 2 (46:30):
No, they definitely didn't the documents. So the original sin
of Watergate, the reason that Nixon doesn't sort of launches
the cover up and doesn't hang the burglars out to dry,
is the way that it traces all the way back
through the Pentagon papers and to the Shenalta Fair in

(46:53):
nineteen sixty eight.

Speaker 1 (46:54):
Well, that this was a whole But he's been doing
this in multiple ways, and this was part of a
larger operation where the Democratic nomination fight was just the
latest operation that he was running.

Speaker 2 (47:07):
Yes, But what no one understood until the documents were
declassified from the Lynden Johnson Presidential Library in twenty eleven
was the extent of Nixon's treachery in the sixty eight
campaign and how he had been exposed by Johnson confronted
by Johnson, and that this.

Speaker 1 (47:29):
Start is over the South Vietnamese right, the.

Speaker 2 (47:31):
South Vietnamese treachery where Nixon is interfering in the Paris
peace talks, and that this becomes sort of the Edgar
Allen Poe telltale heart beating away at the center of
the Nixon presidency that he is then desperate to cover
up in when the Pentagon papers start to come out

(47:54):
in seventy one, which brings him to hire the plumbers
in the first place to sort of set and set
g Gordon Liddy sort of at loose inside the Nixon
White House. But you know, until you understand sort of
those two central parts of the narrative of Watergate, you know,

(48:16):
identity of deep throat and the sort of original sin
of the Nixon administration, you know, we've never really understood Watergate,
and it took us forty forty five years to actually
begin to piece together the totality of what that story
actually was.

Speaker 1 (48:32):
You know, the one of the unintended consequences of Watergate
was was the destruction of the White House taping system.
I don't know if you watch, if you've seen the
Apple television show for All Mankind.

Speaker 2 (48:49):
I'm aware of it.

Speaker 1 (48:50):
Yeah, so they it's an alternative history, and they do
have this sort of American politics in real life back
they don't, well, it's not part of the show. It's
sort of in the backdrop. They do a fun little
like little vignettes to sort of And in this scenario,
because Nixon loses the race, Nixon's president when we lose

(49:10):
the race to the moon, he's of course a one termer,
not a two termer. Well, what does that mean? The
White House taping system never gets discovered by the public,
nor by Congress or anything like this, and it doesn't happen.
And in the way this TV show worked, it makes
it all the way to the nineties before people find
out there's a White House taping system, and each president
subsequently anyway, but it's made me like I remember when

(49:34):
I saw it. I remember thinking, can you imagine how
much richer our knowledge of presidents would be if we
always had this information like this eventually available to us?

Speaker 2 (49:43):
Yeah, and I actually I really worry about that as
a modern historian, in the extent to which you know
the future historians of the White House and you know,
US government, and really.

Speaker 1 (50:01):
Look at this White House you know, we already we
already have caught Donald Trump meaning to direct message his
attorney general on truth social he ends up making it
public the infamous you know, what are you doing? Go
get Camy, Go get you know, James, go get Shift.
And we learned it's intended to be a direct message.

(50:24):
And now you're thinking, think about Presidential Records Act? How
many direct messages? What are we not seeing? What don't
we know? And we know this president has had no
interest in seeing records preserved for history's sake.

Speaker 2 (50:41):
Yeah, and you and so so much of that conversation
is now taking place, you know, over text message, over
direct messages, over encrypted signal chats which may or may
not be being properly maintained for Presidential Records Act. And

(51:02):
I really do worry about how hard it's going to
be to recreate some of what we are used to seeing.
And you know, everyone one of their first questions about
Watergate ends up being you know, well, if it took
us forty years to figure out the truth about Watergate,

(51:22):
you know, what are we going to learn about Trump's
presidency in forty years? Fifty years? You know, what do
we not know now about what is going on, and
I don't know. There's clearly a lot that we don't
know about what's going on behind the scenes that we'll
have to wait for memoirs or future declassified documents. But

(51:47):
I would like to think that this administration is, uh,
we sort of know more at least of what's transpiring
in real time.

Speaker 1 (52:02):
Well, that's funny you say that. I don't disagree like
I think I've I find it fascinating how often what
you think is the case is the case.

Speaker 2 (52:15):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (52:15):
Have you noticed that?

Speaker 2 (52:16):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (52:17):
And now part of it is I joke that, you know,
if I'm not a great poker player, but I'm a
better poker player than Donald Trump. I'd love to play
poker with him because he shows his cards constantly, Right,
you don't have to work very hard to figure out
what he's holding. I actually think that's what what is

(52:38):
some of his appeal as I think people think, well,
I know exactly what he's doing in thinking. I don't
love it either, but he's pretty you know, it's the
what's it's the It's one of my favorite things that
Mike Johnson likes to to try to use as a rationale.
You know, well, Donald Trump's very transparent about what he's doing.

(52:59):
He doesn't say whether it should be should be happening.
You know, you always know what he's doing, you know
when you ask him about crypto or the or a
you know, an insider trading deal or a pardon. You know,
he's a very transparent president. Well that's kind of true.

Speaker 2 (53:14):
Yeah. Yeah. Mike Johnson to me, is always fascinating as
the world's least informed human being. Like you, you can
sort of walk up to him with any Trump story
and he's like, ah, never heard of it. First, I've heard, right, first,
I first time. I'm really gonna have to look at
I just heard about that as I was walking into

(53:35):
this room.

Speaker 1 (53:36):
Well doesn't it though, Like weirdly, you know it is.
But then it's it's funny to be that Mike Johnson
saying well I don't think he can serve a third
term was a headline, right, because you're like, Mike Johnson
never says anything definitive, so what he does take it
to the bank.

Speaker 2 (53:51):
Yeah, yeah, but just sort of the the idea that like,
you're Speaker of the House and you appear to have
no access to news information on a daily basis.

Speaker 1 (54:03):
So let's take your theory of ten to fifteen years,
maybe as far back as we're right at the we're
just past fifty with Watergate. Now Watergate, as you noted,
there was a specific thing to get released, yep, that helped.
So the Iran hostage crisis, have you thought about that?

(54:25):
You know, there's allegations. You know, there's a couple of
books that were written at the time right about you know,
the erig that's where October Surprise sort of got mainstreamed
back in the day. And there certainly were plenty of
sort of you know, conspiracy theorists about what did the
Reagan campaign know about the hostages and when did they
know it, et cetera, which has always had a little

(54:46):
bit of echo to the South Vietnamese allegation with Nixon.

Speaker 2 (54:50):
Yeah, I actually would love to do a book on
Iran contra. I have noodled that. I've got a big
stack of research materials here in my office to that
I've been saving over the years, assembling it. I think
it is something that we don't understand how fundamentally it

(55:15):
reshaped American politics thereafter. Of course, you've got Bill Barr
right there in the midst of it. You know, Oliver
North infamously a huge part of that.

Speaker 1 (55:27):
But like Watergate, you know, you described how the burglary was, actually,
you know, there was a whole other you know, this
all began in sixty eight. Like Iron Contra as the
way some people may remember it, may they may think
of it as a late eady scandal, arguably it started
before Reagan became president.

Speaker 2 (55:43):
Right, Yes, And I actually just read Jonathan Blitzer's amazing
book on immigration that I think came out last year.
Everyone here is Gone, Everyone who is gone is here.
Couldn't couldn't recommend it more sort of history of US
policy in Latin America. And it's fascinating to sort of

(56:09):
realize how much of Iran Contra and the sort of
Reagan era Bush era efforts to you know, destabilize Central
American politics are what kicks off downstream the immigration crisis
that we are now living with today. And like you know,

(56:32):
I'm scribbling in the margins of this book as I'm reading,
like Iran Contra in some ways is what gives us
Donald Trump.

Speaker 1 (56:39):
Yeah, it's an interesting through line. Look, I constantly so
let me run a theory by you. I have thought
that one of the reasons why the CIA just won't
come clean about what it knew about Oswald is not
because they were involved. It's just the opposite, right. It

(57:01):
was the fear that everybody would think they were involved,
but more importantly that he was simply a thread into
a larger what they were doing in the Western hemisphere,
and that copping to Oswald could be a string that
you start to pull that unravels a whole lot of
bad shit that we did in Latin America in the

(57:23):
fifties that could actually be problematic today. Like because here's
why I think about it this way, Garrett, how is
it that we've had back to back presidents Biden and
Trump who have had CIA directors, one of whom Trump appointed,
one of whom Biden appointed, who in the laws said

(57:44):
you got to release it. All the CIA directors is no, no, no, no,
you can't let this happen, and somehow both Trump and
Biden agreed to it. I've always wondered, what do these
CIA directors say to these presidents to make them say,
got it, Okay, I won't do it, I'll figure it,
I'll shut this down. My thesis has been that yeah,

(58:07):
and that because it would only extend like our playing
around with Latin America has sort of like bid us
in the ass on multiple times in our sort of
recent history. And if you told me that was the
reason why Oswald gets this special, weird, special treatment, it's
less about Oswald, this person and Kennedy the assassination, and

(58:28):
more about what bad shit we were doing in Latin America.

Speaker 2 (58:31):
Yeah, but Chuck, don't worry what we're doing in Venezuela
right now, it's going to go great. This is the
time when the US meddling in the foreign politics of
Latin America will go great.

Speaker 1 (58:43):
Garrett, I speak as a Miamian. I want to see
Chavez and Maduro, that entire regime out of there. I
have plenty of friends, I get it, right. I be
more honest with us, mister president, right, like, tell us
the truth about what you're up to, and you might
actually get some support for supporting democracy in Venezuela. But

(59:07):
to do it this backhanded way, the unintended consequence could
be what if Maduro is popular?

Speaker 2 (59:15):
Yeah, to answer your real question about the Oswald stuff,
you know, I don't know whether your thesis is right,
but you get at what to me is sort of
my central organizing principle of understanding conspiracies, which is my

(59:38):
challenge as someone who has covered government for twenty years.

Speaker 1 (59:42):
And usually debunk conspiracies. Yes, is you're pretty good at
debunking them.

Speaker 2 (59:46):
Yeah. Is that government conspiracies presuppose a level of competence, foresight,
and strategy that is not on display in the rest
of the work that the government does. And it's on
c y a right, right, And that the the government

(01:00:06):
is sort of able to keep two kinds of secrets.
They're able to keep big secrets for a short period
of time.

Speaker 1 (01:00:17):
This is the Lodden's you know, Ben Loden's Whereabouts.

Speaker 2 (01:00:22):
No, I'm talking about something different actually, like the Manhattan
Project or the D Day invasion, something that is thousands
of people, but we only need to keep this for
a period of months or weeks. Or they can keep

(01:00:42):
sort of small secrets for a long period of time.
And this is where you get in into sort of
secrets that the you know, the Argo plot, you know,
sort of things that the intelligence agencies are able to

(01:01:03):
keep for a very extended period of time. The challenge
for me with something like the Kennedy assassination, UFOs and Roswell, which,
as you know, I wrote a book about or or
you know, nine to eleven Truthers is sort of you're

(01:01:27):
asking us to believe that the government is able to
keep big secrets for a long period of time, that
sort of secrets that encompass sort of hundreds or thousands
of people for decades with no meaningful.

Speaker 1 (01:01:44):
Compromise, and that thedea, that area fifty one could be
what people what the conspiracy theorists think it is. And
somehow it would be the secret that we could keep
for fifty years, that there wouldn't be some cleaning service,
some some kid, right, some disgruntled fired employee who didn't have.

Speaker 2 (01:02:08):
The goods right exactly so, and that's where I think
that you know, sort of whatever is sort of left
at the core of the Kennedy records, I think to
your point has nothing to do with Kennedy anymore.

Speaker 1 (01:02:26):
That it has to be about CIA workflow of some sort, right,
And I you know, I it's it's my version of
Okham's razor. I cannot imagine they weren't, like, I don't
buy the idea that they didn't have them under surveillance.
You're telling me a marine who defected to the Soviet Union.
Wasn't a known person to the CIA? Is that a

(01:02:48):
believable fact? Absolutely not, at least in that era, right, Yeah.
But the idea that the CIA would somehow create this
Patsy through this entires program like our our version of
a reverse Americans, right, like that also seems kind of

(01:03:09):
out there. Absolutely, So there's iron contra. Is there more
to be done on Monica Lewinsky in the first and
the first modern impeachment?

Speaker 2 (01:03:26):
I think I think so in part because again that's
and this is a little bit of what you were
talking about with, you know, Bill Clinton resigning hypothetical. I
don't know that that history has been meaningfully revisited sort

(01:03:47):
of post me Too, which I think would be.

Speaker 1 (01:03:51):
It's an interesting way put it. We were kind of, look,
it's funny Bill Clinton's reputation went into the shitter the
height of Me Too, Right, it was sort of like, hey,
what about all that, And Everybody's like, yeah, you're right,
we shouldn't have been toleranted that. Well, everybody just moved on.

Speaker 2 (01:04:07):
Well, and I think that the reputations changed on both sides,
Bill Clinton's, but then Monica Lewinsky that I think we
as a country have really revisited the you know, stereotypes,
if that's what you want to call it, about how

(01:04:28):
we viewed Monica Lewinsky in the nineteen nineties as this
scandal was unfolding, and that she has done such an impressive.

Speaker 1 (01:04:37):
Job of.

Speaker 2 (01:04:41):
Not just rebuilding, but I think changing the way that
America thinks about her.

Speaker 1 (01:04:48):
There was no greater victim and a scandal that we've had.
And I remember, I've always felt that boy that Clinton's
never never fully could ever apologize enough.

Speaker 2 (01:05:05):
Yep. And I think that, you know, one of the
things that I sort of came to think about Watergate
is Watergate is best understood not as an event, but

(01:05:27):
as a mindset, and that really Watergate is this umbrella
for like thirteen to fifteen distinct but overlapping scandals that
sort of all emerge from the paranoid, conspiratorial mindset of
Richard Nixon that sort of he brings in and.

Speaker 1 (01:05:51):
That really date back to.

Speaker 2 (01:05:54):
Me.

Speaker 1 (01:05:54):
Shoot, one of my favorite Nixon books is one about
his California Senate race.

Speaker 2 (01:05:58):
I mean, exactly like his parent is exactly who he's
he is straight through his career.

Speaker 1 (01:06:04):
Nineteen fifty, Richard Nixon running for the US Senate against
Helen Kahagen Douglas nineteen fifty two. Checkers speech Nixon nineteen sixty. Right,
it's the same guy, except every loss or grievance fuels him.

Speaker 2 (01:06:20):
Yes, and that he I don't know that we have
ever sort of reappraised Bill Clinton's presidency through that lens.

Speaker 1 (01:06:35):
That It's funny you say that, because you're right, because
Monica Lewinsky was the culmin nation exactly of what Hillary
Clinton called a vast right wing conspiracy. My only criticism
of her comment was the word conspiracy. It wasn't being
done underground, right, it was we were all watching it

(01:06:58):
and playing. It started with Trooper game. It started with
Whitewater and Vince Foster and and Travel Office and you
know the stocks and you know all of this, you know,
attempt until they finally got him on something.

Speaker 2 (01:07:13):
Yep. And that I think we would look very differently
at all of that. I mean, remember, like this is
where a lot of the modern Supreme Court ends up
sort of getting their start in the right. Yeah, you know,
this is where Rod Rosenstein gets his start, and that

(01:07:36):
sort of there's a long shadow to a lot of
what transpires during impeachment there and the ken Starr investigation
that I see what.

Speaker 1 (01:07:47):
You did there, by the way, mister longshadow.

Speaker 2 (01:07:50):
That I think we would look very differently at now.
You know, I think one one of the things, and
this is just not an impeachment thing. There's going to
be a big biography written at some point about Bill
Clinton that has not been done yet, and I don't

(01:08:14):
know whether it will be done during his lifetime that
I think will dramatically rewrite his his presidency as viewed
by history, you know, I think, and you understand this. Presidents,
the view of presidents changes dramatically across decades.

Speaker 1 (01:08:36):
Arry Truman is a great example, right. It's one of
the easiest ones for people to grasp because he was
an unpopular president when he left. In fact, he was
a punching He was a punchline for Republicans for a
long time. In fact, it was Ronald Reagan that arguably
revitalized Truman's brand before any Democrat did, and before David

(01:08:57):
McCullough did. And then David McCullough comes out, everything changes, right,
Harry Truman is now a top fifteen president in many historians'
minds because.

Speaker 2 (01:09:09):
And Dwight Eisenhower sort of I think undergoing that same
change right now, we're living in you know, this is
sort of someone who there was sort of you know,
he's a doddering old golfer for you know, much of
his and then you've seen sort of work by Evan
Thomas and others that have really made us sort of
rethink that this was a much smarter and more strategic

(01:09:31):
and more consequential president than we've given him credit for.

Speaker 1 (01:09:41):
Okay, while I count myself among those, I think there's
only been two, and I think we've had two presidents
who have been independent, truly less the least partisan presidents
we ever had. And both of them were commanders, and
both of them were supreme Allied commanders in the army right.
One was General George Washington and the other one was
General Dwight Eistewer.

Speaker 2 (01:10:01):
So I.

Speaker 1 (01:10:04):
Want to associate myself with that historical line of thinking
about Ike. However, how much is Eisenhower's this renewal of
this sort of renewed positive look at Eisenhower a reflection
of how crappy our leaders are today and that we're

(01:10:27):
actually judging Eisenhower not through the prism of what he
did in the fifties, but through the prism of looking
back and going wow, he wasn't what we have today.

Speaker 2 (01:10:40):
I think that the revisionism around him is something that
started before we fell into our current age of poor
leadership in America. I think the example you're looking for
is George H. W. Bush, where I think you see

(01:11:03):
a lot of celebration of George H. W. Bush as
sort of the upstanding, you know, president, dedicated in a
life of public service, you know, sort of not of this,
you know, not of this time anymore like that. That
to me is a big part of the gloss that

(01:11:24):
we put over George H. W. Bush these days.

Speaker 1 (01:11:26):
Oh interesting, Okay, I just it's always you know, I
have found myself and I'm curious if you do this.
There are more and more history books I read where
I realize when the book was written is very important
to understand before you dive into the interpretation of the
of the history that the book is attempting to interpret.

Speaker 2 (01:11:45):
Yeah. Absolutely absolutely, And I think, by the way, as
a historian, that's one of the things that is always
incredibly humbling, is you never understand a topic more than
when you've only read one book about it, and it's
sort of every book thereafter only makes life more complicated.

Speaker 1 (01:12:09):
I'll give you an example of where I think this
is the most, where I have run into it the most,
because I spent a lot, I read a bunch about it.
I'm obsessed with the essentially the post Grant politics of
America yep. Eighteen seventy six. I've probably read four or
five different books on the eighteen seventy six election, and

(01:12:33):
I would argue that the politics of the author are
what distinguishes each of the books, not the information. The
information is mostly the same. The interpretation of the information
is what's different. And that is one that I find
myself pulling my hair out sometimes reading these various accounts

(01:12:53):
because they're this similar, but they're not the same, and
they really are more about how the author perceives Republicans
versus Democrats in the twenty first century or late twentieth century,
when one of them was written versus versus in that
moment in time.

Speaker 2 (01:13:12):
Yep. Yeah, No, I think that's very true, and I
think that that's a challenge across a lot of the
way that narrative history ends up getting written, you know,
as you know, I spend a lot of time doing
oral history, and to me, part of the power of

(01:13:34):
oral history and why I think it's sort of so
important as a tradition and a writing form is the
way that it puts you back in moments when the
participants are living them, are experiencing them before they know
the outcome. That I think sort of one of the
drawbacks of a lot of narrative history. May events seem neater, cleaner, simpler,

(01:14:04):
and more preordained than they felt to anyone who was
living through them at the time. That you know, you
and I you know, think about where we are right now,
Like none of us know where we are in the
arc of the American story right now. And if you
if we sit down someday, ten years, fifteen years, fifty

(01:14:25):
years later to write the story of today, like we'll
know exactly how it goes, and we'll be able to,
you know, sort of plot our story. But if you're
interviewing you and me about you know, well, what did
you feel in September twenty five, you know, October twenty five,
November twenty five, you know, we're going to give you

(01:14:47):
very different answers.

Speaker 1 (01:14:49):
On the oral history front, it seems that a great
January sixth is going to be a terrific oral history
at some point, but I'm gonna I don't feel like
it's ripe yet. I assume you don't think it's ripe yet.
My gut is that's not ripe until Trump dies.

Speaker 2 (01:15:10):
Yeah, So they're actually, you know, January, this January twenty
six will be five years. There are actually two good
oral histories that are coming out, one by Nora Noose
who wrote an oral history of of Charlottesville, and then

(01:15:35):
the other by Mary Claire Jolanic, who you probably know
from the AP and I think that they are, you know,
very solid, good sort of first drafts of oral histories.
You know. Part of the challenge with the January sixth
oral histories, I think forever is going to be unentangling

(01:16:02):
the truth because there are so many villains in that
story whose voices need to be in there that.

Speaker 1 (01:16:11):
And they're tough. You know. It's funny. I've interviewed Roger
Stone a lot for various projects. I think I know
when he's bullshitting, and I think I know when he's
telling me the truth. But I Garrett, you have to
take my word for it. Yep, he's not. I also
know he's not a reliable narrator.

Speaker 2 (01:16:33):
Yeah, my trustee, Roger Stone. Mug here where I said,
I wrote a history of Watergate that was a finalist
for the Pulitzer Prize last year. And let me tell
you when Nixon said, if the president does it, it's
not illegal, no one believes that that was true, to
which Roger Stone replies, your book is laughable fiction, Pulletzer Prize.

(01:16:54):
My ass, get the truth now, my coffee mug.

Speaker 1 (01:17:01):
That's fun. Roger has this. Roger and I have a
love hate relationship. I think he loves to hate me,
and yet he can't quit. He's obsessed with because he
was obsessed with the Hotline back in the day, and
that was you know, we covered back when he was
a relevant political consultant and things like that. But you

(01:17:26):
kind of I'm curious how you we all develop our
bullshit detectors with people that are serial liars, right, you know?
And and I do feel like there are ways to
figure that out. I mean, you know, do you feel
I mean, you've had to I don't know. Did you
ever interview g Gordon Letty for anything?

Speaker 2 (01:17:46):
No, yeah, here on his radio show, But never actually
interviewed him.

Speaker 1 (01:17:53):
Do you feel like you've interviewed a serial liar and
you knew it going in and how did you deal
with it?

Speaker 2 (01:17:58):
Yeah, I absolutely have it. You know a lot of
my work has been with in covering federal law enforcement,
and so you know, I've interviewed a fair number of
criminals over the years in one form or another. You know,

(01:18:19):
when I was doing the Watergate book, you know, I
actually joked. You know, the core primary sources for that
are about three dozen memoirs, all of which were written
by people who were later convicted of perjury or obstruction

(01:18:40):
of justice, and so they are sort of the most
unreliable sets of memoirs you could ever possibly imagine. And
I dealt with it in my book with a whole
lot of footnotes that are like, you know, it's also
possible this meeting never happened, because all three of the
participants in this meeting you know, who wrote about it,

(01:19:01):
denied that they said anything in it. Right, That's funny.

Speaker 1 (01:19:07):
I'm enjoying that sort of going through. But answer the
other question, do you think it'll be easier to get
more truthful answers of the people that were in and
around Trump after Trump is gone, and that that would
be my concern about an oral history of January six.

Speaker 2 (01:19:25):
Yeah, yes, I don't think we're I actually I talked
a very prominent Washington journalist, or helped to talk a
very prominent Washington journalist out of doing an oral history
of Trump's first term for sort of exactly that first.
That reason was, I was like, the only reason there

(01:19:47):
has been any good journalism about Trump is anonymous sources,
and you can't do an anonymously sourced oral history.

Speaker 1 (01:19:54):
So I've done a few Q and a's with Ryan
too previous. Recently, I work over at USC. He's got
a kid at USC, so we are doing a little
something for USC, and he is this great line because
he told me the story. So I've used it as
a way to I said, so, why haven't you written
a book about your time in the Trump White House?

(01:20:16):
And he says that Trump will ask him that how
come you have written a book? Right, And he says,
mister President, I can't tell the truth and I won't lie. Yeah,
So I say that in that you know, there are
plenty of people in this town that have a living
to make in their minds, and they're just not going
to do it. It's not worth it, right Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:20:39):
Well, and by the way, what you're talking about right
now is not unrelated to the unraveling and backsliding of
American democracy, which is a whole lot of very powerful
people in Washington and elsewhere in the country, and a
whole lot of powerful institutions making a very cynical truth

(01:21:00):
that it is not worth their own personal cost to
stand up and you know, speak the truth or object
or you know, to be the person who the Trump
administration ends up zeroing in their fire.

Speaker 1 (01:21:21):
I don't want to assume where your head is at
when it comes to how could what you know on
the defcon scale? Where are you when it comes to
the future of our democracy? I use a phrase that
says I'm long term, I'm short term pessimistic, the long
term optimistic. And I often joke that in nineteen thirty
nine I would have said I was short term pessimistic

(01:21:43):
and long term optimistic, and by nineteen forty six I'd
have been correct. A lot of bad shit happened between
nineteen thirty nine and eighteen forty six. I get the
impression you're more alarmed at times than maybe you think
the rest of us are. And yet at the same time,

(01:22:04):
I also notice every once in a while you take
a step back the other way, where Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:22:08):
I think that's accurate. I think we are underestimating how
bad things are right now and the trajectory of where
we are, you know, nine ish months into this administration,
and sort of how much worse it can get, because

(01:22:30):
I think we are still as Americans trapped in a
it can't happen here. We're America. You know, this is
you know, I think Chuck, too many of our colleagues
and friends are not speaking clear eyed in the media

(01:22:52):
about sort of what is actually happening that we sort
of continue to know.

Speaker 1 (01:22:57):
The more you speak clear eyed, the more you don't
have a job in.

Speaker 2 (01:22:59):
That well, yes, which is you know, which which is
not nothing an accident, right, but the you know, the
the way that we sort of still use a lot
of euphemisms of you know, Trump is pushing the bounds
of presidential power.

Speaker 1 (01:23:18):
Uh, but that's editing. That's editing, that's editing. That's not
coming from the journalists. Yes, yeah, just so you know,
I mean, unfortunately.

Speaker 2 (01:23:27):
But I do agree with you, and I actually I
sat down at a little bit ago this fault and
tried to organize my sense of hope into uh, sort
of three buckets, because I do I think have long

(01:23:49):
term hope for America. We will never be the country
that we were before, because we can now never say
this didn't happen here. But I do think we are
in a moment where, uh, there is more reason for

(01:24:09):
long term hope or long term optimism as you say.
And and the sort of three reasons that I ended
up sort of organizing my thoughts around we're one uh
and and this is all me speaking for myself and

(01:24:30):
not necessarily associating you, uh with with with any of
this is you know there are more of us than
there are of them. That Trump is actually a historically
unpopular figure. You know that there two thirds of America
did not vote for Donald Trump. He is h institutionally

(01:24:55):
and politically much weaker than I think many journalists and
institution and sort of think that he is day to
day and that.

Speaker 1 (01:25:08):
You know, he's got a strong grip on a weekend.

Speaker 2 (01:25:11):
Yes, exactly. The second is and this is exactly I
think the what what you were talking about and what
we've talked about a little bit over the course of
this episode is for me, history is a source of hope,
which is America has had dark chapters before, sometimes those

(01:25:32):
chapters are long, but that there are many stories of America,
and the one that I choose to believe is that
we are a country that strives to get better. That
sort of decade by decade, generation to generation, we are

(01:25:55):
a country that tries to get closer to living up
to the very imperfect creed that we were founded upon,
of all men are created equal. That at that point
was a creed that you know, not only excluded women
and minorities and Native Americans, but also you know, white

(01:26:19):
men who didn't own property. And that sort of decade
by decade, generation by generation, we are a country that
has sort of been generally moving towards progress. And then
the third for me is actuarial, which is, I don't

(01:26:40):
know where we are in the Donald Trump story. I
don't know whether we are in the beginning, the middle,
or the end. I don't know whether Donald Trump will
figure out a way to hold on for a third term,
maybe a fourth term. But I do know that, you know, actuarily,

(01:27:01):
Donald Trump's reign over American politics is going to be
measured in years and not decades. That this is not a.

Speaker 1 (01:27:08):
Situation closer to the end than the beginning.

Speaker 2 (01:27:11):
Yeah, that this is not him as America's Franco who
reigned in Spain from nineteen thirty nine right through the
nineteen seventies. And that I think whenever Donald Trump exits
the stage, however that happens, and I'm not I have
no medical conspiracies to offer you. I have no predictions

(01:27:35):
about how or when that happens, whether it's noon on
January twentieth of twenty twenty nine, or before or after.
But he has failed to build an actual movement in Maga.

Speaker 1 (01:27:53):
He has heard, Oh I talk about this. He's too
lazy to be Hitler, right.

Speaker 2 (01:27:58):
That he I mean, I'm sorry, I don't know how
to put it. He has sort of assembled a weird
coalition of a personality cult of white nationalists and conspiracists
and anti government extremists and crypto bros and couple of grifters,

(01:28:20):
and then a whole bunch of grifters and a group
of people who are genuinely correct in their belief that
they have been You know that the era of sort
of neoliberal Larry Summer's globalization has not worked out very
well for them as workers and citizens and a whole

(01:28:41):
bunch of people whose brains have been rotted by Fox
News and Facebook, And that the moment Trump exits, that
coalition fractures, and that you know, this is not a
coalition that sort of immediately transfers its loyalty to JD Advance.
It doesn't immediately go to Don Junior, it doesn't immediately

(01:29:04):
go to Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio, And that there
will be a moment at that fracturing where sort of
people in history can begin to try to reassert itself.

Speaker 1 (01:29:24):
You have, you've given voice to why. I just think
that we're going to turn a corner now it's going
to be uneven, and I don't know, you know, the
Democratic Party still had you know that there. They still
think they're just going to benefit from a CEESA effect
and until they sort of come up with a better

(01:29:46):
theory of the case, we could be living in this
sort of uneven period for for some time.

Speaker 2 (01:29:53):
And by the way, there's there's an there's a point
there that I think is important, Chuck, which is I
think Democrats have still not appropriately admitted that Trump voters aren't.

Speaker 1 (01:30:09):
Wrong well, until they get there. I wrote this couple
substeps ago, the Democrats don't don't recover until they admit
Trump voters were right about some things. Yes, And because
they have to go win those voters, and you're not
going to win them by telling them how wrong they

(01:30:31):
were about Trump, that the best shot you have at
them is to say you were right, and Trump lets
you down.

Speaker 2 (01:30:39):
Yes, And then I think Democrats have done this weird
thing where the two times Donald Trump has beat them,
they have just put an asterisk next to that election
and been like, oh, you know, twenty sixteen Russia, Hillary's emails,

(01:30:59):
that'll memory happen again. Oh, twenty twenty four, Biden was
too old, We shouldn't have nominated Kamala. There were only
one hundred and seven days. You know, that'll never happen again,
and that sort of all. Were only one white male

(01:31:23):
away from running a totally normal election that we can win.
And I think it's a lot deeper than that.

Speaker 1 (01:31:37):
No, I don't think Democrats have lost enough yet. It's
not lost on me that they needed a second kick
to the head after eighty four. You know, eighty four
was supposed to be the all time low for them,
and then they went and nominated a technocrat, not a
total liberal, but a technocrat, and that didn't work either, right,

(01:31:59):
because he was a cultural It was just sort of
culturally out of touch and it just was a you know,
that's when they realized they had to have a cultural makeover.
It wasn't just a policy makeover. They needed to because
do Caucus's policies were fine for the electorate. What it
really was was cultural issues. And that's what Bill Clinton understood.

Speaker 2 (01:32:22):
I would like to have to live in the country
where Mike do Caucus's rail policies kicked in starting in
nineteen eighty nine.

Speaker 1 (01:32:35):
I had somebody say something made myself. I had somebody
who made me feel better about our rail policy when
he noted because you know, I did, you know, over
a couple holidays ago, did a family did the family
did a family trip to Germany and did the whole thing,
the whole German history thing, which is just amazing. And
we took the train from Berlinda Munich and it's unbelievable, right,

(01:32:55):
unbelievable ride, beautiful train. And as somebody said to me,
is because you're a prioritized their trains for people and
their roads for freight, and America prioritize their trains for
freight and their roads for people. And then this person argues,
and you may not love it, but whose GDP is bigger?

(01:33:19):
And I just thought it was somebody when this person
framed it that way, and they weren't a lobbyist for
CSX for what it's worth, Okay, I'm not gonna that
wasn't like it was more of an economic economist. And
I thought, huh, I hadn't thought of it that way.

Speaker 2 (01:33:34):
That.

Speaker 1 (01:33:34):
Look, it's true, and had we prioritized trains for people
instead of freight, we would have better rout.

Speaker 2 (01:33:41):
I believe that certainly has some truth to it. I
would like to think in a country with as much
space as the United States has, we could have gotten both.

Speaker 1 (01:33:49):
We could have done both, had too right and had
a nice, nice, comfortable rail system. And yeah, and with that,
you ever thought about DA outside of politics and government. No,
you're not going to get suckered in like Woodward did
with John Belushi.

Speaker 2 (01:34:10):
Uh, very very boring. Uh answer, I.

Speaker 1 (01:34:14):
Because oj I here's what, here's the only thing I
would love to see us do. When I say us
somebody of your historical, because I do think OJ is
a story we haven't revisited correctly.

Speaker 2 (01:34:28):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 1 (01:34:29):
I think we got close with the We got close
with at least explaining why LA responded the way they
did to OJ, and that's what the ESPN, but we've
never fully explained how. You know, I'm I'm one of
those who says, without OJ, you don't get Trump. H hmm.

(01:34:50):
Because OJ fundamentally changed the TV news business. Before OJ,
it was not you know, there there's always been this
obsession that it's a ratings driven business, but it actually
wasn't until OJ, because that was the moment when news
divisions decided, hey, why don't we give people what they

(01:35:12):
want to watch as a newscast rather than what they
need to watch? M h We didn't do that pre OJ,
but OJ was the first time, Hey, this was this
was an event we wanted treated like a news story
and the audience asked for that, and CNN said okay,
and CNN made a boatload of money and they made

(01:35:33):
so much money doing it. Then NBC and Fox said,
wait a minute, we want a piece of this cable business.
You guys can't have it alone. So if I were
to throw an eye if I were throwing pitches at
you for what you should tackle. How OJ changed you

(01:35:55):
know how? I do think the OJ aification of the
news business set us on this course. Yeah, that we
are that we of the algorithmic. You know, before we
had algorithms deciding what we wanted to see. We told
you know, we told CNN no, no, no, no, we're
going to watch court TV if you don't cover OJ.

(01:36:17):
And they said, okay, we'll cover OJ. We'll stop covering news,
We'll just do OJ twenty four seven. It's a great
business decision. It changed journalism forever, and it gave us
the Kardashians. I love to remind people of this. You
will love this, Garrett. I teach a class at USC.
OJ died on the day that I was teaching. So

(01:36:41):
I thought, oh, at USC students, I've got to do OJ.
So I said, all right, we're scrapping what the lecture
is going to be. We're going to do OJ. You know,
this is USC you guys, you know, and before I
got there, this is whatever he died last year.

Speaker 2 (01:36:55):
I think it was.

Speaker 1 (01:36:56):
So I do a quick ask, you know, what do
you guys know about OJA? First thing, someone says, is
isn't he Chloe Kardashian's father?

Speaker 2 (01:37:06):
And I knew.

Speaker 1 (01:37:06):
I was like, oh man, this is going to be
a long couple of hours. I just throw that out there.
I think it's the one pop culture event that had
true political ramification. Yeah, but I think you're right just
because of what it did to the news media, and
I don't think we've fully reckoned with it. I've had
this conversation with my friend Andy Lack, who was head

(01:37:27):
of the NBC at the time, and he pushes back
on me a little bit, and you know, he says, Oh,
the news business has always covered a little bit of
what people want and a little bit of what people need.
And it's like, yeah, but we used to have a balance. Yeah,
the minute we had a metric every fifteen minutes of
what people were thinking. Then all of a sudden we changed.
We let the audience be the managing editor.

Speaker 2 (01:37:48):
Yeah. That's an interesting theory. I like it.

Speaker 1 (01:37:53):
What do you got going on with Long Shadow?

Speaker 2 (01:37:54):
Before I let you go? People come in and subscribe,
what do they get so Long Shadow? We are just
out with our fourth season. This is the story of
every season. We try to do a as I was
saying at the top, sort of pick us story in

(01:38:16):
the news today and tell us how we got to today.
And this year's season available wherever you get your podcasts,
is the breaking of the Internet, sort of how a
tool that was supposed to bring us together ended up
driving us all apart. And it was, as I was

(01:38:38):
talking about earlier, I think, a fascinating example. I lived
a lot of the story. You lived a lot of
the story, you know. I think one of the hardest
things that we struggled with in this season was to
take people back to the early two thousands and sort
of how promising and exciting the Internet seemed before we
sort of all realized it was going to ruin our

(01:39:01):
politics and our world. Was sort of just how exciting
the Internet was, and that trajectory from there to you know,
the manosphere and the red Pill today, you know, turns

(01:39:22):
out to be a much more linear story of individuals
making important decisions along the way that seemed relatively inconsequential
at the time, but really altered the trajectory of the
way that we consume information.

Speaker 1 (01:39:40):
What is the fork in the road moment on algorithms?

Speaker 2 (01:39:43):
The fork in the road algorithms is Facebook choosing to
be advertiser driven. That's what changes the whole Internet, because
the moment that they decide that they are going to
be advertised driven.

Speaker 1 (01:40:02):
Maximizing basically driven by shareholders or investors.

Speaker 2 (01:40:05):
Right, Yeah, that was you know, Facebook going public and
you know, needing to make a lot of money really quickly,
and Facebook deciding that begins to optimize the whole site
for how long they can keep users engaged. And what
Facebook figures out pretty quickly with its newsfeed algorithm, followed

(01:40:31):
later by Twitter and you know, almost every other social
media site since, is that things that make people angry
make them engage, and so if you want engagement, you
want enragement, and that sort of they begin to very

(01:40:53):
carefully tweak that algorithm so that what you see in
your news feed is the story of things that make
you mad, that polarize us. And that we now sort
of understand from internal Facebook documents that Facebook weights prioritizes

(01:41:15):
the equivalent of its dislike button five times more strongly
than the like button. And so you know, whatever you're
scrolling through chuck that makes you personally angry, you get
five times more that content than that which you actually like,
and that that it becomes the backdrop of so much

(01:41:38):
of the backlash to the Arab spring, you know, literal
genocide in Me and mar the Russian interference in the
twenty sixteen campaign, and then of course you know COVID
and anti vaccine conspiracies and sort of the the big

(01:42:02):
lie leading up to January sixth.

Speaker 1 (01:42:05):
I love what you're doing. There's a similar there's a
business podcast. Do you you ever done the Acquired series?

Speaker 2 (01:42:12):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:42:13):
Yeah, there they do very It's sort of episodic, big long,
deep dive. Slightly different but like on a company, how
did Google become Google? That sort of thing. It's a
I think it's the best of podcasting. Yeah, you know,
so I am. I'm glad it's there. Do you do

(01:42:34):
you think it's that? I don't think books are getting replaced,
but do you Is this a because these are all
things you could have done as a book, but you're
doing it as a podcast. Is that simply a choice?
Or it could be in either or and right now
the podcast makes more sense to.

Speaker 2 (01:42:56):
Be there a little bit of either or. You know,
podcasts each a different audience, which you know is uh
has its strengths and from a production standpoint, they're also
sort of slightly different stories that you can sort of
tell and in a podcast where you have good archival sound,

(01:43:20):
where you have you know, good interviews that you can
do that sort of make these stories more come alive
than I think they can on the page.

Speaker 1 (01:43:31):
Well, look, it's what you're what you were built to do.
So it's now it's like you don't you know, usually
big historical book authors they do a big book, they
take a break and they do you're just now you've
I'm guessing you always have how many projects, live projects
do you have going at one time.

Speaker 2 (01:43:49):
Oh? I love the mix of sort of the short
term magazine newsletter writing, the you know, sort of mid
term mid length podcast writing, and the long term book writing.
You know. I try to do a book every year
or eighteen months, depending on what the topic is, and

(01:44:11):
then one podcast season a year, and then try to write,
you know, more or less weekly for my newsletter.

Speaker 1 (01:44:17):
It's wonderful, seems very simple, but I'm well aware of
that that you fall behind very quickly, exactly matter what,
no matter what, no matter how well you think you're
scheduleding Garrett, thanks for humoring me. I went a little
longer than I planned to. But you know, you're too
good of a conversationalist. I'm just too into this stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:44:36):
Well, it's always a pleasure to talk to you, and
I've appreciated our friendship across a lot of different chapters
of our respective lives.

Speaker 1 (01:44:43):
No, and at a minimum, I enjoyed the history brainstorming here. Yes,
you know of different ways to tackle different things, and
I have a feeling you would be an interesting candidate
on Bill clin.

Speaker 2 (01:45:00):
I have considered it.

Speaker 1 (01:45:01):
Yes, well, I hope you pursue it, and I totally agree.
I think it's it. Probably it probably needs to wait
until there's there's a till all the actuary tables have
kicked in.

Speaker 2 (01:45:17):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (01:45:19):
Well, I know we all are interested. We're all interested
in what Hillary Clinton has to say, and I.

Speaker 2 (01:45:26):
Will look forward to crediting you on the first line
of the acknowledgments of the OJ book. There you go.

Speaker 1 (01:45:32):
Well, there's more to be done here. I keep trying
to look for a better way.

Speaker 2 (01:45:36):
To do it.

Speaker 1 (01:45:36):
I know when I spend time. Let's just say, I
wrote an entire essay and my former company begged me
not to have it air, and they had that right
but I do think it's it's our it's case, it's

(01:45:56):
television news is original sin.

Speaker 2 (01:45:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:46:00):
Anyway, h right, my friend, thanks for the time.

Speaker 2 (01:46:02):
Good night.

Speaker 1 (01:46:11):
Well this is you know you would you would think
here at Toodcast World Headquarters that that all of this
is extraordinarily well planned because to have a guy like
Gerrit Graff, who's sort of a recent history buff, if
you will, and so good at sort of connecting the
present with history, that it's a perfect Monday interview because

(01:46:35):
it's podcast time Machine Day. We're just that good here
at Toodcast World Headquarters. So it is time for the
Toodcast time machine. And look we're going to go back
and leaning into November eleventh, right, the eleventh hour, the

(01:46:58):
eleventh day, eleventh every November. You know, this was the
real I want to talk about the real end of
World War One. And those of you that know me
very well know what pet peeve I am about to
go off on. But this is the perfect time. This
is essentially a plea to teach World War One act

(01:47:20):
more accurately than how all of US Americans get taught
World War One in school. So here we go. Every November,
we pause for this familiar ritual. The eleventh hour of
the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the guns fell silent.
The Great War was over, or so the story goes.
We call it Armistice Day, we renamed it Veterans Day.

(01:47:42):
But here's the thing. That famous moment on the Western
Front wasn't the true end of the war. It was
the biggest headline, but it wasn't the closing chapter. Because
twelve days before Germany surrender aboard a British warship anchored
in the Agency, another armistice was signed, the Armistice of Mudros. Yes,
and that one, that's the one that really changed the world,

(01:48:05):
and that's the one that still leaves World War One
unresolved today. It marked the surrender of the Ottoman Empire.
It was the empire that had ruled the Middle East
for six centuries, six hundred years of ruling, governed Jerusalem, Damascus, Bagdad,
Mecca and Istanbul, and it collapsed almost overnight. When we

(01:48:28):
commemorate November eleventh, we're not just honoring the end of
a war. We're marking the moment when an entire world
order vanished and left a geopolitical mess that we still
haven't cleaned up. So let's talk about that forgotten surrender,
the one before the one we talk about, and made
a national holiday. On October thirtieth, nineteen eighteen, Automan officials

(01:48:51):
met British admirals Somerset, go Calthorpe aboard the HMS Agamemnon
in the harbor of the Greek island of Lemnos. They
signed away an empire. The terms were extraordinarily harsh. Allied
forces could occupy forts, control the Bosphorus and the Dardnellis,
and moved troops anywhere they deemed necessary. Within days, British

(01:49:13):
and French soldiers were marching into Istanbul Arab lands that
had been Ottoman provinces were carved up on European maps
by November eleventh. Today the world remembers the Ottoman state
already existed in name only. It was less a peace
than a liquidation sale. The Syke's picket lines drawn a

(01:49:34):
few years earlier. Those straight colonial borders that paid no
attention to tribes, sects or languages suddenly became real. France
got Syria and Lebanon. Britain took a rock Transjordan and Palestine.
The seeds of modern conflict were being planted even as
the victory parades began in Paris. So welcome to the

(01:49:58):
unfinished war. You like to think World War One ended, folks,
It never did. It metastasized. The collapse of the Ottoman
Empire created a power vacuum that has never truly been filled.
I argue that to this day, World War One is
an unresolved conflict, no less unresolved than the Korean War.

(01:50:18):
Every crisis you can name in the modern Middle East,
from Israel and Palestine to the Sunni Shia divide in Iraq,
from the Syrian Civil War to Turkey's uneasy relationship with
its Kurtis population, all of it traces back to those
few months between October nineteen eighteen and the early nineteen twenties.
Europe may have stopped fighting, but the Middle East never

(01:50:40):
got its peace conference. It got foreign administrators, new flags,
and a ton of broken promises. The British had pledged
independence to Arab leaders who fought alongside Lawrence of Arabia.
They had also promised a Jewish homeland in Palestine through
the Balfour Declaration. Well, guess what those two commitments could
not coexist. Still living with this contradiction today. The French,

(01:51:03):
for their part, wanted to secure influence from the Mediterranean
to the Euphrates, and the Turk, stripped of an empire,
turned inward, rallying behind a young general named Mustafa Kamal
Ada Turk who would fight to reclaim sovereignty and reinvent
Turkey as a secular republic. By nineteen twenty three. It's
fascinating to go to be in Ankara. I've been there

(01:51:24):
a couple of times for work back in the day,
and how important out of Turk is. He sort of
treated like the George Washington now of Turkey there, but
it is as strange. It's almost as if Turk, you know,
Turkey became this sort of modern country then. But it's

(01:51:44):
weird to have so little about the Ottoman Empire itself
when you're there. But the Caliphate, the symbolic headship of
the Muslim world, was gone, and the vacuum of spiritual
authority has haunted the Islamic world ever since as well.
Here in the United States, we teach World War One
mostly as a prequel, the war that made the next

(01:52:07):
war possible. Right almost, I promise you all of you
go back and think about how you were taught World
War One, and I promise you you likely taught it
like this. We talk about German reparations, the Treaty of Versailles,
the rise of Hitler, all through the prism of Europe.
We barely mention the Ottoman empires collapse, even though it's
arguably the most consequential outcome of the entire conflict. We

(01:52:29):
treat the Great War as if it ended in the
mud in France, not in the deserts of Arabia or
the streets of Istanbul. Because guess what, it's not a
clean history if you have to go in there, because
it's a complicated history. Let's talk about there's no clean narrative.
There's not a it's hard to find good guy, bad
guy back and forth here, black hat, white hat type

(01:52:52):
of stuff. It's simply competing betrayals and a centurial fallout.
But if we're serious about understanding why the modern Middle
East looks the way it does, why its borders don't
fit its peoples, why faith and nationalism remained so intertwined,
why outside powers keep being pulled back in, we have
to start with the Armistice of Mudros, not the one

(01:53:13):
at campaignang One hundred plus years later, the ghosts of
nineteen eighteen are still arguing. Turkey is once again projecting
power into its old Ottoman neighborhoods, Northern Syria, the Caucasis,
and the Balkans. What President Erdowan openly calls a neo
Ottoman vision, Arab nationalism born in the ashes of the
empire that's faded into sectarianism, and Israel and Palestine remained

(01:53:37):
the unfinished ledger of those post war promises. The irony
of Armistic's Day is that it celebrates the idea of finality,
the notion that a world war could end cleanly with
signatures and silence. We're so proud of ourselves about it,
But the Middle East proves the opposite, that some wars
don't end, they just simply changed shape. The Ottoman Empire fell,
but the conflicts it managed among ethnicities, religious and empires

(01:54:01):
survived that fall. So this week, as we mark Armistice Day,
listen for the echo under that bugle call. That's not
just the sound of the guns going silent. It is
the sound of an empire collapsing, of maps being redrawn,
of the modern Middle East being born in chaos when
we teach history in this country, we spend too much

(01:54:24):
time teaching about the Western Front. Maybe it's time we
also teach the Eastern aftermath, because the world that ended
in nineteen eighteen is the same one we're still trying
to manage today. And by the way, I believe that
the shocking amount of young people that don't understand the
history of the Middle East and think it all began

(01:54:45):
with a partition in nineteen forty eight by the new
United Nations. This is among the reason they're so ignorant
of that era because of how poorly we collectively taught
our own society about World War One. So as a
Jewish American, I do get really upset and worked up.
And I've been a huge advocate and really believe we've

(01:55:09):
got to improve how we teach World War One larger
in middle school, in high school, not just waiting for
college to learn about the Ottoman Empire. It would have
a better understanding of the Muslim religion, we'd have a
better understanding of the Middle East, and yes, people would
have a better understanding of the history of the Jews

(01:55:31):
in Jerusalem. The Great War never truly ended. It simply
left us a lot of homework. There you go, there's
your toodcast time machine history lesson of the week. I
know we don't know the names as well. Doesn't seem
like that history is as fun as watching a Netflix

(01:55:52):
documentary about Hitler and his goons. But trust me, you'll
understand the Middle East of today a lot better if
you spend some time learning more about the fall of
the Ottoman Empire. All right, with that, let's take a
few questions ask Chuck.

Speaker 2 (01:56:14):
As Chuke.

Speaker 1 (01:56:18):
This one comes from Betsy W. Longtime follow here from
your time covering elections on NBC to Meet the Press
to the Check podcast. Can you please explain the rules
of voting in the Senate, specifically with regard to why
and when a simple majority is needed to pass something
such as HR one versus the Clean Resolution, which needs
a sixty vote majority, and then this is considered the filibuster.
Thank you for including a snapshot of sports on each show.

(01:56:38):
Helps me keeping the loop for some upcoming games. Take
care so you know, look, you have most of the
time you need sixty votes in order to avoid a filibuster.
And once you avoid what it technically is, it's not
the legislation itself that is subject to sixty votes. It
is the rule of the rule to finish the debate,

(01:57:05):
to either start debate or end debate, that is subject
to the sixty votes unless and here are the exceptions. Now,
the exceptions have to do with budget reconciliation. If you
quote unquote do a reconciliation, So anything that impacts the budget,
you can make it a fifty vote threshold. And you
see Biden used that for his agenda. Trump used it

(01:57:30):
in his first term for his tax cut. Trump just
used it with the Big Beautiful bill. Ironically, that is
not how Barack Obama passed Obamacare. He had to do
it with sixty votes. He got sixty in the Senate.
Then they lost a vote in the Scott Brown special
election that got Scott Brown elected for the Ted Kennedy
after Ted Kennedy died in that seat, and then he

(01:57:52):
went down to fifty nine. And then that's why all
the action ended up in the House and the House
had to basically adopt the Senate bill as is, and
it was sixty votes. Now, the other exceptions to sixty
votes now are judicial. Are all the judges right, and
now presidential cabinet appointee confirmations. All of this stuff now
has been they've essentially made it exempt from the sixty

(01:58:13):
vote debate threshold. I hope that so anything that isn't
part of a budget reconciliation process, which again you have
to declare that it's part of reconciliation. So in theory,
if you wanted HR one, the big sort of campaign finance,
if you can make a case that it's part of
a budget issue, you could in theory, you know, tie

(01:58:35):
some of it to budgetary and again it's subject of
the of the Senate parliamentarian determining whether an issue is
part you know, would be part of impact the federal
budget or not. And some of those things in HR
one clearly are not technically budgetary impactful on the budgetary

(01:58:57):
side of things. So I hope that cleared things up.
That essentially, anything that isn't part of a reconciliation process
or a confirmation for an appointee, either to the President's
cabinet or the federal bench, everything else is subject to
sixty votes. And the larger budget itself, you know, is

(01:59:19):
subject to sixty votes. It's only if you declare a reconciliation,
which it's sort of an invented idea that started during
the Robert when Robert Byrd, an old timey Democrat from
West Virginia who was Majority leader forever, he sort of
created this process when they thought things were you know,
every time we created these exemptions from the filibusters because

(01:59:42):
perhaps the filibuster was being was too effective. It was
sort of grinding things almost to a halt. And so
whoever the Senate leader is at the time, they look
for a carve out. The first carve out was the
invention of this reconciliation process. Then that's where you hear
the bird is something called a bird rule every now
and then if you've well, it sort of has its
origin when Robert Byrd helped sort of create the idea

(02:00:04):
of a budget reconciliation that could be exempt from the filibuster.
Then you have you know, Harry Reid, and he did
it for lower court, for the lower courts, and then
Mitch mcconnald did it for the Supreme Court. So it
is always wherever there has been whenever a Senate leader
feels as if they've gotten to a point where it's

(02:00:27):
clogged up their sides agenda in one form or another.
So we keep doing all these I will just tell
you I'm somebody who thinks it should be seventy five
votes all for the federal bench, and I it would
you know, when we hold our mythical constitutional Convention in
the next couple of years, which I hope is not
mythical and actual real thing, that would be an amendment

(02:00:47):
that I would say, all, maybe at least Supreme Court justices,
maybe you start with that are subject to seventy to
three quarters votes in the US Senate, and I promise
you you would get more neutral, truly neutral umpire referee
style judges if we made it seventy five votes in

(02:01:08):
the Senate or three quarters whatever, seventy five percent whatever, whatever.
We probably have to do a percentage because you never know,
if we had a couple of states, right, you guys
just learned both Puerto Rico and DC. I think within
my lifetime. So I'd like to think I'm gonna last
on this, on this marble that we call Earth at
least another three decades. I think in the next three

(02:01:28):
decades we had a state, all right. I hope that helped, Betsy.
And if you need more clarification, shoot us another email
and I'll clean that up for it. Next question comes
from Bryant. While the US Virgin Islands may not meet
today's population standards for statehood, they actually have more people
now than Nevada did when it joined in the eighteen
hundreds to Shay. If combined with other English speaking Caribbean

(02:01:48):
territories like the British Virgin Islands, Antigua or Barbados, there
could be enough population for a Caribbean West Indies state.
It could have strategic and economic benefits for both the
United States and those islands. Do you think an idea
like that has any marrior, even politically Bryan, It's interesting
your idea of putting them all together, And I do
buy that if somehow they all did sort of banded

(02:02:09):
together and said, hey, we wanted to be a country,
you know, we wanted to be a or we wanted
to be a US state, I think the United States
would get more out of it, for sure, strategically influenced
in the Caribbean. But everything you just described, you could
also say, maybe they become their own country, independent of
either the United States or the Brits or anybody else

(02:02:33):
in Europe. Right, So that's another angle that can go in.
I just you know, I'm just sensitive, as somebody who
has been a resident of DC a couple of times
in my lifetime, I'm very sensitive to taxation without representation,
and I think when we just sort of decide that
status quo should be there for a long period of time,

(02:02:55):
like we've done to Puerto Ricans and people that live
on the US Virgin Islands or pople that live in
the District of Columbia, that we ought to be making
a better effort to figure out how to get them
fair representation. Next question comes from Brad, no question. Just
want to say I loved your election. I coveraged thanks
as a politics nerd. I love the depth you guys
went into. Also loved all the guests. Great job all around.
Hope you three and others do it again for the midterms. Hey, Brad,

(02:03:17):
I appreciate it. We're pretty proud of what we did.
Very little marketing, as you noticed, right I marketed it
on the podcast, Chris marketed on his Stuff Decision Desk
HQ did theirs. We believe we peaked with some like
nearly three hundred and fifty thousand at one time. We're
pretty convinced we probably had over half a million uniques collectively.

(02:03:41):
You know, if you put it all together throughout the evening,
I'll tell you the future is now. To quote quote
an old Washington football coach named George Allen, this was
this was basically a proof of concept, and I think
we proved the concept. And let me just say this,

(02:04:02):
I'll see a Texas primary night. That's the first primary night.
I think we're going to do special coverage like that again.
So thank you, Brad. Next question comes from Colonel Steven
m Us Air Force retired. Hey, big fan of yours
and curious if you can shed light on any reason
why the twenty twenty six federal appropriations haven't approved as
of today. I can't think of any and hope you
will share with us your thoughts. Well, why do I

(02:04:27):
feel like you're sort of tweaking here right Like, why
can't they get any appropriations done? Why is it so
difficult to get the basics done with Congress? I can't
tell you how weak Congress is, right, it is so
weak on this front, and the fact that they've allowed
the executive branch to take over spending issues, you know,

(02:04:51):
taxing authority when it comes to the tariffs, so it is,
you know, they they do. I think they got the
National Defense Appropriation A bill done. I believe they got that.
You know, they they do pass some you know, these
appropriations bills do get pass chunks at a time, so
you'll get like, you know, dhs done, although I think

(02:05:14):
that one's gonna be a little tougher given given what
Ice is done, you'll get like specifics done. Usually defense
is the easiest one to get done. That's usually where
there's the most bipartisan you know, there's a reason the
military industrial complex is so successful. There are so many
congressional districts that have that have some impact on their

(02:05:35):
economy when it comes to defense that you see, that
is usually the one appropriations bill that gets approved and implemented,
but so many other ones sometimes never get implemented. They're
basically you keep the same levels of funding as the
year before and it keeps going through. So look, I
just think we've got Congress. You know that we've had

(02:05:57):
a succession of weak speakers who maybe they're politically strong,
like Nancy Pelosi was politically strong with inside the Democratic Party,
but all of these speakers were too weak when their
party had the White House and we're too willing to
give up certain things, you know, due to pressure from

(02:06:20):
their political allies in the executive branch. And you know,
you chip away, you chip away, you chip away, chip away,
and then you have a Then you suddenly are facing
the constitutional crisis that arguably we're in the middle of
right now, and that is very frustrating. Hey, colonel, first,
just thank you for your service. And this trigger is
something else I wanted to share with you guys before

(02:06:41):
I get into my football my football nuggets. Here for
the weekend, I spend Friday evening at a terrific event
was a fundraiser called Vet's in Tech. It was founded
and run by this woman named Catherine Webster. I met
her at a fundraiser for the Medal of Honor Museum
few months ago that was taking place here in DC.

(02:07:02):
I don't do a lot of socializing in DC very much,
just as a journalist there's always and everything has gotten
so partisan that I only like to try to go
to things where I think you'll be sort of above politics.
Medal of Honor fundraiser is one of them, and the
Medal of Honor Museum, by the way, just you know,

(02:07:26):
I as a sports fan love to give a lot
of grief to Jerry Jones, right, he is fun to
give grief about. He's not been the smartest of owners
where he might be. No, actually I disagree. He's been
a great business owner of the Cowboys. He's not the
best general manager when it comes to the on the
field product, but everything he does off the field is

(02:07:46):
actually quite savvy, quite smart. He and his daughter Charlotte Jones,
have been big supporters. They essentially the money that was
raised for the Medal of Honor Museum. It is essentially
on the campus of AT and T Stadium there in Arlington, Texas.
I think it's a terrific idea to take something of
historical importance like a museum that honors our Medal of

(02:08:07):
Honor recipients, which every story if you've ever read just one,
you know, if you want to, if you're ever feeling
really shitty about yourself or really shitty about the country,
go just read any citation for a Medal of Honor winner.

(02:08:27):
I mean, you could literally pick one at random and
you'll see like, oh my god, how selfless they were,
Oh my god, they saved how many lives? Oh my god,
they did what you know, if you're into Marvel superheroes,
these people are real superheroes in the Medal of Honor Museum.
So anyway, I say all that, it's just to give

(02:08:48):
you a little bit of backstory of how I got involved,
and Katherin Webster asked me to come out and say
a few words. Now, I'll be honest, I didn't. I
didn't feel qualified. I haven't served, and but I am
somebody who believes that we need more veterans and more
walks of life. Now, this was a fundraiser that was

(02:09:10):
for you know, encouraging the tech community to recruit and
hire veterans. But really what I decided to use my
time to do is basically making a case that we
need veterans in a in a in a bunch of
walks of life. And you guys have heard me talk
about it before, but it's a you know, we've got
a trust deficit in this country. We've got to trust

(02:09:33):
deficit in my industry, in the media, and I'm you know,
I believe that in order to restore trust, we have
to start locally.

Speaker 2 (02:09:39):
Right.

Speaker 1 (02:09:39):
It's ground up, Frankly, it's everybody has to when you're
rebuilding trusts. You start from the bottom, right, So we
and media have to start local. In politics, you've got
to start at the city council level, right, you know,
et cetera, et cetera. But we do have one entity,
and hopefully it doesn't get messed up by the current
leadership right now. But the one institution in America that

(02:10:01):
still has an enormous level of trust is the military,
particularly military veterans. You know, it's it's I think been
one of the great things that have changed about our
society that we have We as a society collectively have
compartmentalized the decisions civilians make in misusing our military, say

(02:10:25):
the Vietnam War, the Iraq War, from those who are
following orders and who are you know who who? You know?
They didn't make these political decisions, but they had to
execute a decision under under our constitution. And we have
figured out how not to punish veterans. You know, we

(02:10:45):
weren't look as I say, my father's generation, my mother's generation,
they were you know, that is not how Vietnam soldiers retreated.
They were sometimes held seen as to be held as
accountable as the civilian leaders who led us into that
horrible conflict. I think we've now matured, frankly as a

(02:11:06):
society and see it that way. But the reason that
I want to see more in the way, I call
it the reason I want to see more veterans, and
I think we could. You know, the one candidate for
president that I thought could have broken through both the
Democrats and Republicans, could have broken through as an independent
was Bill McRaven. He was the of course he was.

(02:11:27):
He's retired admiral, but he was. He's the architect of
the Bin Laden Raid, sort of oversaw what Seal Team
six accomplished. When he left the military, became the chancellor
of the UT system, and he also gave one of
the great commencement addresses of all time, the Make Your
Bed Speech. He turned it into a book, but I

(02:11:47):
promise you, if you want to go look at it
on YouTube, you'd be one of twenty million people who
have who have watched his make Your Bed Speech. But
the reason I thought we needed him is because I
do think we need a lesson that we don't. We
need what I call pastors for patriotism. And that was

(02:12:09):
my plea. You know, we need veterans in the classroom
who can be you know, I'm not a religious person,
but so that's why when I say, you know, in
some ways I worship our Constitution, Right I do. I
think it's a marvel and I think that it gives
us all the tools for self governance that there is,
and I think we could make some improvements to it.

(02:12:30):
And you know, I think we should have a constitutional convention.
It's time to update the constitution for the twenty first century.
I think there's bipartisan agreement that there's plenty of things
we can do in there. Let's contemplate age limits, Let's
contemplate term limits. Let's contemplate campaign finance reform. Let's contemplate
a violence budget amendment. There's a lot of things here
that I think we should we should be thinking about.

(02:12:54):
But it seems to me that we keep trying our
two political parties keep trying to paint the other side
is unpatriotic. Let me just tell you what patriotism is.
Patriotism is waving the flag, and patriotism is burning the flag.
Patriotism is flipping off the president, and patriotism is saluting
the president. Right, That's what made makes our country different, Right,

(02:13:16):
It's we were an idea and we were wanted to
have essentially free will and self governance and self determination.
And that's the beauty of our system at its best.
And I think it is members of the military who
are sometimes forced to be in a platoon with people
that don't look like them, that don't worship the same God,

(02:13:38):
that don't live in the same you know, urban America,
rural America. They're all US soldiers, and the experience over
time of figuring out how to work with a diverse
set of fellow Americans only makes you potential. I think

(02:14:00):
that's why our American veterans, and on this Veteran's Day,
our American veterans can be the pastors for patriotism that
we need to essentially not allow a political party to
hijack patriotism, not allow a political party to hijack the flag,
and instead sort of teach what this constitution is about.
But I think that you know, you bring a veteran

(02:14:23):
into your workforce, whether it's a teacher, whether it's at
a tech company, whether it's in a media company, and
you're going to automatically diversify the experience of your workforce.
And if you're looking for somebody that is going to
be able to handle high pressure situations or uncomfortable situations.

(02:14:48):
A veteran is more likely to be able to do
that better than anybody else. But I also think that
a veteran has the ability to culturally help us all
appreciate what the idea of America is in its best form.
So look, it's yes, it's a fundraiser. You can say

(02:15:12):
I'm being a little sappy here, but I mean it here.
I think that there's something about going through and it's
why I think national service could be such a help.
We could take mandatory national service and go beyond just
the military with where you would serve, Serve in classrooms,

(02:15:32):
serve in river cleanups, serve in community hospitals, serve in
community centers that help people find work. Things like that.
Having rural twenty one year olds and urban twenty one
year olds working for a common good and for the
same goal, I think it would help us all appreciate

(02:15:56):
just the ideal and the idea of America. So there's
my there's my veteran state.

Speaker 2 (02:16:00):
Pitch for you.

Speaker 1 (02:16:09):
All Right, with that, let's have a little lightness here
and let's talk a little football. First of all, I
was down I just saw my beloved Miami Hurricanes again
back to back weeks. They won after another sluggish first
half with terrible play calling. Now I was not there
for the terrible play calling in the first half. I

(02:16:30):
was there to see my daughter get hunted during one
of the commercial breaks in the first quarter. She's part
of the homecoming committee. She put on. This was the
U one hundredth. It's the hundredth anniversary of the Unversity
of Miami. This was the one hundredth homecoming, so it
was pretty special that my daughter, being a senior, got
to essentially help organize it. She her fingerprints were all

(02:16:51):
over the campus. It was kind of cool to see that,
so I'm pretty proud of her. It was neat to
see her get honored on the field. Her old man's
never been honored at a University of Miami game, so
it's uh. She she was beyond ecstatic, and so was I.

(02:17:13):
I'm glad we won. She was not happy when Miami
lost SMU last week. Worried that somehow fewer people show up,
and it's possible fewer. I think the stands were a
little less filled than they would have been had Miami
only had one loss versus two and the perception that
we're out of the college football playoff. And I'm going
to get to that in a minute. By the way,
I should note Central and Western New York football teams

(02:17:36):
ought to ought to not come down to Miami in November.
Syracuse got a butt weapon by the University of Miami,
and then the Buffalo Bills come down and get their
butts handed to them by the Devon A Chainers, and
and and what's left of the Dolphins, even after they

(02:17:57):
traded away their best pass rushers. So just a tough
time for the Central and Western New Yorkers there when
it comes to the football field. But look, a few
things happened that might that at least made it.

Speaker 2 (02:18:15):
You know.

Speaker 1 (02:18:15):
I've said Miami's chances of getting into the a SEC
title game, which is really the probably the only shot
they have of getting into the playoff, given how the
committee decided to treat Miami in the first week. They've
set it up so that Miami that Notre Dame, despite
losing to Miami. If Miami and Notre Dame have identical records,

(02:18:35):
they're going to take Notre Dame right they've started them.
It's almost like they under ranked Miami on purpose. They
had no business being ranked as low as they were.
I am curious to see if there's a real correction made.
And they're in the thirteen fourteen, fifteen range, which which
I think is the minimum they should be. You know,
I think that when you look at and this gets

(02:18:56):
at to the great debate of committees in general. Right,
when you and you decide these things, what matters more
your your wins or your losses?

Speaker 2 (02:19:06):
Right?

Speaker 1 (02:19:06):
Is it better to have a good win or is
it better to have a good loss? And you know
how it works. If you want to get your team
into the mix, you talk about the thing that you
think is the best thing.

Speaker 2 (02:19:18):
Right.

Speaker 1 (02:19:18):
So Notre Dame doesn't have any good wins, but they
have two great losses, right, four total points to Miami
in Texas A and m Miami doesn't have two. You know,
they don't have bad losses. They're conferdent to me, when
you lose a conference game to a winning program, those
aren't bad losses because conference games are just harder. I know,
the SEC thinks it's the only football conference that exists.

(02:19:41):
Every football conference, all conference games are hard, and all
conference games ought to be treated sort of similarly, as
you know Greg sink in Mississippi State. And if you
think that's a tough conference game, well, okay, I'll accept
the premise. So's playing at wake Forest, okay. And just
because you don't respect wake Forest doesn't mean when you

(02:20:02):
have to play them every year, they don't bite you
in the ass. You know, conference matchups are hard, hard stop.
And Miami basically, you know, had like nine turnovers in
those two games, and that's why they lost, right And
they were still both games that they could have won
on the last possession. So are those good losses bad losses?

Speaker 2 (02:20:23):
Right?

Speaker 1 (02:20:24):
You see where I'm going here. I make no apologies.
I think this coaching staff let this team down. I
think this I think our offensive game plan sucks. I
think the only reason why Miami scored a bunch of
points in the second half of that game is sort
of the the floodgates open. Thanks to the defense, they
got to pick six and then then suddenly they used

(02:20:46):
essentially every trick play that that Shannon Dawson has come
up with.

Speaker 2 (02:20:50):
They used. They had a.

Speaker 1 (02:20:53):
Malachai Toni threw a pass to Carson Beck, Carson Beck
to would tackle eligible play to France. This is Mayonoa,
who's going to be a first round draft choice next
year as an offensive lineman. So that's you know, those
were fun to see, but they were kind of you know,
they were still you know, the regular game plane didn't

(02:21:16):
really work. They did have to do a bunch of
these sort of trick plays to sort of open the
offense up. I appreciate that some efforts were made in
the second half to do that, but there's still the
basic formations, and the basic offense is it's just pretty predictable,
and the more it's on film, the more teams seem

(02:21:38):
to be prepared for it. And Syracuse in the first
half was extraordinarily prepared for the normal Miami offense. And
then by the second half, when they got worn down
a little bit and Miami started doing a few trick plays,
then things started to work. Now I'm a little frustrated
that they made a real effort to get the ball
to Malachai Toni in any way they could possibly get
to him in this game. Where was that in the

(02:22:00):
Louville game? Where's that been in the last six weeks?

Speaker 2 (02:22:02):
Right?

Speaker 1 (02:22:03):
Not enough of that? That's number one. And then to
really rub salt in the wound. On the last play
of the game, Miami's went in thirty eight to ten.
Miami had the ball and the last play of the game,
they didn't take a knee. They ran the ball. They
didn't need to do that. They were up twenty eight points.

(02:22:24):
But you take a knee when the game is tied
and you have twenty five seconds and one time out.
I am never going to forgive that Miami coaching staff
and coach Crystal Ball for taking a knee and the explanations.
I'm sorry local media has not been tough enough on
this question. Coach Crystal Ball's response on this has been terrible.
When he said, it's well, we just determined that anytime

(02:22:46):
you're in the twenty five yard line or closer to
the gold line, only bad things can happen. Well, if
that's what you claim, and that's why you took a
knee in the SMU game, which I think, again the
single worst decision that's been made all year long by
coaching staff taking a knee with twenty five seconds, game
tied and a timeout, and all you need is forty yards.

(02:23:08):
All you need is forty yards to get the to
attempt the game winning field goal, and you don't do
it when college rules where the clock stops after every
first down, and you don't do that. What you really message,
you're really sending is you don't trust this quarterback. Well,
then what do you spend the money on If you
don't trust, Let him succeed or fail on his own.

(02:23:31):
This trying to sort of manage risk, manage your way
around a quarterback that I guess you guys don't trust,
is no way to win a championship. It's no way
to get yourself in the playoff.

Speaker 2 (02:23:45):
Now.

Speaker 1 (02:23:46):
As much as I'm going to give this coaching staff
grief on what I think is under performance by them
holding back a team that is arguably the most talented
in the country, I'm also going to argue that you
can't have a media company deciding who gets to be
in the college football playoff because if they do take

(02:24:06):
ten and two Notre Dame over ten in to Miami,
they're only doing it because of TV ratings in their heads, right,
and it's just the bigger program. Because I promise you
if it were ten and to anybody else and ten
in to Miami, they probably would take Miami. But they
can't do that to a Notre Dame, They're not going
to do it to an Alabama. They're probably not going
to do it to a Georgia certainly won't do it

(02:24:29):
to an Ohio State. It's worth noting that Miami is
the highest rated ACC team when it comes to TV ratings.
How do we know this? Miami is getting the biggest
bonus because ACC has is giving bonuses to the teams
that get the best ratings to sort of quote unquote
have extra value on their football program. So but if

(02:24:55):
Miami wants to get to the ACC title game, they
did get a few breaks Uva losing. They need all
of these teams that lost this weekend. They all have
to lose again. I mean, that's what makes it difficult.
But hey, at least they got a couple of losses
in now. I certainly would have liked to have seen
Penn State finish up Indiana, and I really wanted to

(02:25:16):
see Iowa beat Oregon to potentially limit the Big Ten
to two to open up the door to maybe they
only get two. I think they're only going to get
three at the end of the day, but we'll see.
But that both of those games I think needed to
go the other way to to sort of open the
door up a bit more for them to where the

(02:25:40):
committee has no choice but to take Miami. But look,
whatever they do with this football playoff going forward, the
NFL doesn't have a committee to decide who's in the playoffs,
because if they did, Dallas would be in the playoffs
every year, right, regardless of their record, because they're the
TV They're the ratings juggernaut. The Jacksonville Jaguars would never
make it to the playoffs, right. The Houston would never

(02:26:00):
make it to the playoffs. So whatever it is, I
would just like it to be decided on the field.
If you win X number of games you get to
you know, you can qualify. And if you do finish
this place in your conference, you can qualify. And if
you want to say each year before the season starts
and say, okay, this year, based on last year's record,

(02:26:21):
this year, this conference is only going to get three
slots into the playoff instead of four. You know, is
a form of quote releg you know, this year due
to their past records, conference A gets five slots instead
of four, or three slots instead of two, or something
like that. Whatever it is, there should just you should

(02:26:42):
be able to either play yourself in or play yourself out.
It shouldn't be subject to a lobbying campaigned by Greg Sanke,
the chairman of the SEC. And that's or a media
company who's in business and cares more about the profitability
of one conference for the profitability of another business partner
that they don't value as much. Anyway, it was kind

(02:27:10):
of a you know, I think we all were hoping for.
I will say this, that catch in Indiana. We watched
that just before the kickoff to the Miami game. That
kid made an amazing catch. And then I watched the
end of the Iowa Oregon game where the i was
trying to go for a two point conversion. And I mean,
if you want to talk about the quote unquote game
of inches, just take those two highlights. Indiana's successful touchdown

(02:27:34):
and the toe tap Iowa's unsuccessful two point conversion, which
ultimately cost them the game. Since Oregon was able to
kick a field goal to win the game rather than
to just hie was missed by essentially two inches. So
another reminder to just how fun, crazy and cool college

(02:27:55):
football can be. Look, I don't know about you, guys,
I didn't learn anything new about everybody other than I
thought we'd get a better effort out of LSU and
Garrett Nsmeyer. We didn't get that better effort. I think
we did expect a good effort out of Penn State.
By the way, imagine if the interim coach had knocked

(02:28:17):
off a top five team, but James Franklin could never
be a top five team. In some ways, there's probably
relief in the James Franklin camp that Penn State came
up just short on that game. BYU was exposed. That's
going to be the interesting thing on the college football players.
So by you got its first loss, and this is
one of those Look, they only have one loss. Are

(02:28:38):
they going to be ranked behind Miami or above Miami?
You know, if you're going to be the subjective game,
and if you're holding Miami accountable in the ways that
they're being held, which I think is sort of every
standard is different based on the team they're looking at. Right,
That's what's my frustration. There's no it's so subjective that
there's not a consistent measurement of how one team is

(02:29:00):
assessed versus another team is assessed. And yes, BYU seems
to have gotten lucky, just like UVA. Luck finally ran
out right. They didn't lose any fumbles all of a sudden,
they lost three fumbles in that game. I'm very curious
to see if BYU is below Miami or above Miami
and the college football rankings. That will tell me how
realistic it is that Miami has a shot at somehow

(02:29:22):
sneaking in or not. And does Vanderbilt at all move
up or down based on it surviving that game with Auburn.
Obviously a loss would have knocked them out completely. That
was another game that frankly, it was kind of hopeful,
just to you know, at this point, I got to
get anybody who's going to share a record with Miami

(02:29:43):
out of the way from an SEC or a Big
ten school if I'm going to have any hopes of
that committee having to be stuck to have to invite Miami.
When all is said and done, so, all in all
a successful trip because my daughter was honored on the field.
I don't care what the score was beyond that she

(02:30:06):
did a great job. It was a bang up homecoming
and in fact, she convinced the school to minimize the
use of fireworks and instead use drone do a drone
light show, And the biggest hit of Homecoming weekend was
the drone light show. It was amazing. Go find all
things having to do with the universe. Remind me Homecoming

(02:30:27):
and the drone light show on Instagram, and trust me,
you will be impressed and you will realize why are
any of us bothering with fireworks anymore? The coolest ways
to do displays in the sky are are these drone
light shows? All Right, I've rambled on long enough. I
hope you enjoyed your weekend. Let's hope by the next

(02:30:47):
time we talk in the next forty eight hours, the
government is open and air travel is smooth. And with that,
I'll see you when we upload again.

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