Full Episode - Trump’s Decline Is Obvious…But Republicans Refuse To Acknowledge It + America’s AI Liability Crisis & Constitutional Breaking Points - The Chuck ToddCast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(01:47):
another episode of the Chuck Podcast. It has been a
busy seventy two hours since we've last chatted. I got
a lot to get to in this episode, including what
I think is an increase what is going to be
increasing scrutiny and increasing concern about the President's ability to
do the job. His temperament. The most recent set of
meltdowns with his Wisconsin trip, he impulse control is one

(02:13):
of those things that you lose as you get older, right,
your filter goes away. This was already a gentleman that
didn't have much of a filter to begin with. So
I know it's very hard to see, but I think
it's increasingly clear that Republicans now know what it was
like for elected Democrats in twenty twenty three, twenty twenty four,
when they would avert their eyes anytime Joe Biden had

(02:36):
a public event. We are in that stage with Donald
Trump on and to dig into that for a little bit,
Senate Republicans basically choked on an attempt to check the
president's power and the weaponization fund that I think is
a huge political mistake. I don't think they fully realize
how disastrous it is that they had a proactive chance

(02:59):
todentually kill it and do a favor for a whole
bunch of Republicans who maybe didn't have the guts to
vote against the president. But we're going to get to
that as well. We had huge primaries on Tuesday. Tuesday
is turning into as I said in a text back
and forth with my friend Chris Eliza will have our
live stream of course on Tuesday night. Tuesday is going
to be lit. The Graham Platner primary is suddenly fascinating.

(03:22):
We know he's going to win, but what is the
Janet Mills number going to be? I gave you a
sort of a formula of what what should qualify as
as yellow flag or red flag and the Janet Mills
percentages there. But clearly there's something going on there. Clearly
there's something happening in South Carolina, Lindsey Graham hitting the
panic button over a primary challenger that could force him

(03:45):
into a runoff, which leads to a larger trend that
I think is happening before our very eyes. Right, we
already knew, we've known for some time that there's an
anti establishment streak in both parties, but it is as
strong as ever inside the Republican Party. I think there's
still a debate inside the Democratic Party about how anti
establishment to get. Rhetorically, you can sound loud, but you

(04:08):
don't see the same results. But given what we've seen
sitting members of Congress being rejected as gubernatorial candidates in
South Dakota, Iowa, are we about to see that next
week in Alabama Senate on that runoff. We're going to
see it on this Tuesday. There's something happening out there,
and unlike my friend my friends at Buffalo Springfield, I

(04:28):
think what it is is exactly clear in this case.
So we will get to that. And then finally, I
think quite a few people ask me my two cents
of the sixty minute situation, Scott Pelley, what would I
do in that situation given my own experience having a
run in with network bosses more worried about a political

(04:49):
agenda rather than journalism. It's very, very difficult spot to
be in. And I know from experience how many people
are backseat driving at the moment he should have, would
have could all these different things, whether or Leslie Stall
or Bill Whittaker, And as anything you know there, everything
is complicated. Everything isn't an easy answer, and I just

(05:12):
want to sort of dive into there. Tremendous guests today,
it's David French. You may know him from The New
York Times. You may also know him from The Dispatch,
the Advisory podcast that he co hosts with the great
Sarah Isker. And David and I get into a lot
of sort of of of legal debates, if you will,
from regulating AI to the Weaponization Fund, how constitutional is it?

(05:37):
Things like this, the simple fact that so few members
of Congress seem to understand the Constitution, that maybe we
need a baseline of acknowledgment before you take the oath
that you actually read all of the Federalist papers. I mean,
I think not asking all Americans to read the Federalist papers,

(05:58):
but can we just ask those that have aten elected
to Congress to have read the Federal's papers? Right? You've
got to have a commercial driver's license to drive a
eighteen wheeler in this country. Maybe to be a member
of Congress, you better certify that you read all the
Federal's papers. I'm not asking you to come down on
a certain side based on what you read, but fricking

(06:18):
read them, because it's pretty clear we have a lot
of members of Congress that probably didn't get past the
preamble if they got there at all, let alone read
the supporting materials with everything there. So I think you
will enjoy that, And I propose a radical solution to
basketball tanking that he endorses, Mister David French endorses. If

(06:42):
you don't know David French is a huge basketball fan.
When you grow up in Lexington, Kentucky, you can't help
but become a big basketball fan. I also have my
podcast time Machine to give you a little hint of
what's coming in the time Machine. I quoted I use
the most famous quote that I'm building the time Machine
off of in my monologue on Thursday. That is the

(07:05):
one hint I'm going to give you. But I'm going
to start with what the Germans would called Schodenfreud, I guess,
and that is what elected Republicans are now having to
experience with their president and the fact that he is
now we are, as of this writing, less than a

(07:26):
week away from when he turns eighty. He is creating
a celebration to himself, as we know, for his eightieth
birthday with the whole UFC business, something that apparently like
the Eiffel Tower, would like to keep the uf C
Claw as the apparently it is called, which I guess

(07:51):
encompasses the steel cage as a permanent structure on the
South lawn. I'm sure Andrew Jackson would smile about that.
That's probably the only president that would smile about something
like that. So it is. I say all this because, look,

(08:12):
let's not kid ourselves. He's not he's not doing well,
and you kind of know it because of how we're
watching Republicans behave almost identically to how Democrats behave when
it was painfully obvious what was happening with Joe Biden.
Because there's a particular kind of quiet that settles over

(08:32):
a political party when it has decided collectively and without
ever voting on it, to essentially stop seeing what's in
front of him. Democrats lived onside that quiet for just
about all of twenty twenty three and into twenty twenty four.
Everyone knew Staffer's new donors, new members of Congress, knew
the reporters covering them new We all knew this, you know,

(08:54):
we reporters were struggling to convey it because of all
the chicken chits in the party that wouldn't go public
with it. What no one had was a reason to
be the first to say it on the record right then,
and so the thing that everyone could see became the
thing that no one would describe right up until that
debate stage in Atlanta made a description unnecessary. Everybody saw it,

(09:16):
and it was almost like Okay, we can all now
admit what we've been thinking for months when it comes
to Joe Biden. Well, it's pretty clear now. Republicans are
now living inside the same quiet and they are doing
it with less self awareness than the Democrats managed, which
is frankly saying something. The evidence is no longer subtle.

(09:38):
Just consider this. Three years ago, twenty eight percent of
Americans told pollsters at the Washington Post that the president
wasn't healthy enough to serve effectively. That was back when
Joe Biden was president. This bring the same pole asked
the same question, and the number was up to fifty
five percent. It was about a different president. By the way,
Reuters and Hipsos have found that sixty one percent of

(09:59):
the country, including nearly thirty percent of Republicans, believe Donald
Trump has become more erratic with age. Now, these aren't
numbers of a fringe concern anymore, right, They are the
numbers of consensus that has not yet been granted permission
to speak. Right, we were sort of dealing with the
same thing during the Biden presidency. Large majorities thought he
was too old to serve, and yet none of that

(10:22):
was beyond Dean Phillips right, convincing many Democrats to speak
out publicly. You had plenty of reporters that were even
speaking out about this, but you didn't have a lot
of that. You know, you had certain coverage, and I
will always defend some of the you know, I think everybody,
you know, somehow wants to blame the media, not the
Democratic Party or not the Bidens for everything that happened

(10:43):
there that somehow the media was supposed to make them speak,
make the sources say things that we couldn't make sources
to say. So all you could do was show things
in public. Right, Hey, guess who's using the short staircase
on Air Force one? Now? Look at how few public
events they're doing, right, sort of we were treating viewers
and voters with a lot more intelligence than frankly, the

(11:05):
Democratic Party was. Well, we're sort of seeing the same
thing now with Donald Trump, and I think, frankly, there
is some new some coverage that we haven't seen, that
we actually did see during the Biden presidency, that we
haven't seen during the Trump presidency that I think is
quite necessary. I'd start with something simple. I've done a
cursory a bit of research on this, but I don't
have the archive of video that a TV network has

(11:28):
because they archive. And I know of this, I know
we did at NBC. All the networks, you know, want
to keep everything right. You don't want to lose anything
anymore after that small period of time in the sixties
when networks throw everything away. But that's a whole long story.
All you have to do is see that the president
won't do any events where he has to stand for
a long period of time anymore. Right, All events are

(11:50):
designed for sitting, right, All of the things at the
White House more and more are now taking place in
the oval office. He sits right. There's very few standing
events anymore, right, few rose garden events. The weather's been
terrific in Washington. There's not been bad weather, but they
which normally during previous White Houses, anytime you could do
an event outside, you did an event outside. It was

(12:10):
just better, better TV, better everything, better coverage. You know,
you ask any White House press shop veteran, then they'll
tell you, oh, yeah, good old fashioned rose garden events
much better than an oval office event because loss events
are crowded and all this stuff, but they have to
do so many of them. Then look at that Wisconsin event.
He you know, he's not standing for twenty minutes, and
I'm very curious he's going to give a rally speech

(12:32):
at some point during this birthday celebration sometime at the
end of June. Will he stand for it or will
will they figure out how to sit? If you notice,
again is Wisconsin situation, he's sitting. He's clearly you know
it's not it's something it's either hurts for him to walk,
it's uncomfortable for him to walk, whatever it is. He

(12:54):
clearly there is something going on here. And again they
don't have to acknowledge anything. You can show the visuals,
just like with Biden. The reason the country figured it
out is because the media did show the visuals. The
media did show, Hey, this is what he was, this
is what's going on now. He seems to be using

(13:15):
a shorter staircase. He seems to be using a shorter staircase.
He seems to not have a lot of big events
with a lot of people coming in and into the office, right,
and so you're starting to see a little bit. And frankly,
there's been some reporting in January see and reported the
Trumpet personally directed his team to start patting his public
schedule to start listing quote closed door meetings that had

(13:37):
previously gone unmentioned. Many presidents don't put all the meetings
that they have there, but it was specifically intended to
push back on this idea that he was having stamina
issues that basically he couldn't really have more than a
six to eight hour day. What it appears to be
he doesn't really have six to eight hour day, although
he can't sleep at night and he post untruth social
so it does sort of allow people to think, well,

(13:59):
he's always on. Well, just because somebody's always on doesn't
mean they're always on top of things, right, So it
is so there are little things that you're starting to
see on this. So the irony to all of this
obviously is almost too neat to dwell on. So I'm
not going to dwell on it. But let's not forget

(14:21):
that Trump built his entire campaign on the premise that
the other guy was too old. And he will mark
his eightieth birthday this month, having just completed his third
annual physical in less than two years in office. Okay, fine,
we'll note it. We'll move on. You know, the interesting
question was never about whether there's the symmetry exists. We've

(14:42):
always been seen that the symmetry exists here. The interesting
question is why one party silence broke in ninety minutes
of a TV news debate and why the others hasn't
broken it all yet. Now, part of it is Joe
Biden didn't have a hold on a piece of the
electorate that Donald Trump has, right, So there's a little

(15:04):
bit of that. But in some cases the reason why,
you know, the Biden team had effectively threatened Democrats from
speaking out against him by saying, the more you speak
out about his health, questioning Biden and his health and
his stamina, you're only helping Donald Trump. So the basically
it was this idea, if you speak out right, and

(15:26):
that's sort of essentially what the what the Republicans or
what the Trump White House is going to try to do.
Speak out about this at you know, it's your own peril,
and you know, look, when when we decide to come
after you, it's terrible, it's uncomfortable, and most of the
people we lose. Right, Ask the Indiana State senators who

(15:46):
are not going to be in office next year, Ask
Thomas Matthey. Massey's not going to be an office next year.
Ask anybody who's worked for Brian Camp, asked Brad Raethensberger, Right,
so they certainly have, you know, proof positive this list. Right,
That's what always made what the Democrats did head scratching,
because Biden had no kind of hold on the party
like that, right, there was death. Nobody could somehow claim

(16:08):
that they wouldn't be in politics without Joe Biden outside
the state of Delaware. And I'm not saying this to
be dismissive of Joe Biden. It's just that is not
that is not the type of poll he had inside
his own party. Donald Trump has influence and poll inside
his party. They're just stronger. And in some ways it
at least explains the behavior. It certainly explains the fear.

(16:33):
But my goodness, these Republicans are going to look really silly, right,
And the basic questions that local reporters are going to
ask them about the president's obvious slowing down, obvious health issues,
obvious like he can't seem to stamina questions, the falling asleep,
the nodding off. Again, he's acting like a typical eighty

(16:59):
year old, right, this is not unusual behavior for an
eighty year old. It's just unusual behavior for a president
of the United States. And obviously the amount of hey,
the Republicans made about this with Joe Biden and the Democrats,
all this is doing, you know, And of course this
is where, you know, by Republicans ignoring what's right in

(17:23):
front of them and not sort of being honest about
what's right in front of them, they're doing enormous damage
to everybody's credibility left and right, right. They're essentially reinforcing
this notion that everybody's a freaking liar. In politics, both
parties just say whatever it takes to get elected. This

(17:43):
is the majority view because it's true. I somehow sometimes
want to sit here and explain to you why politicians
behave certain ways. Yeah, they make some compromises to do
this in order to do that. Look at ain't easy
being an election of office because you have to make
compromises and the public never wants you to make any compromises.

(18:04):
I mean, I saw some silly progressive get all angry
at the Amy Acting campaign in Ohio. She's running in
a state that Donald Trump carried by nearly double digits,
and she pledged that if she gets elected governor, she's
going to appoint Republicans to her cabinet. And this progressive
Democrat was like, why do Democrats always do this? And

(18:26):
it's the sort of like, you know, criticizing a Democrat
for attempting to actually rise above partisanship is exactly what's
wrong with the base of both of these parties, right.
The base of both parties do not want our system
to function. They want the other side defeated, humiliated, and ostracized.

(18:48):
They're not interested in accepting the premise that in a
country of three hundred and fifty million people, not everybody's
singing from the same song sheet. And if you want
to govern this country incrementally, you better govern incrementally, all right.
And it is very difficult to bring sixty percent of
people along, let alone one hundred percent. It's really easy

(19:10):
to get thirty to forty percent of people to be
on your side. But you're never going to get anything done.
And all you're going to do is make the country
worse by being divisive. Even if you think you're right,
even if your policies look great on a spreadsheet, if
you don't have the will of the majority, you don't

(19:32):
have a good idea, So you better work harder at
persuading for a will of the majority. And if you're
going to criticize, right, I mean just ridiculous. If you're
going to criticize a Democrat running in a red leaning
state for pledging to have a bipartisan cabinet, then you
don't want pluralism. And this country thrives when we embrace pluralism.

(20:00):
When we try to unilaterally govern with a forty percent mandate,
which is what the Republicans have been trying to do.
They don't have a majority mandate, let alone barely over
forty percent that want them to go in the direction
they're going. Democrats didn't have a fifty percent mandate, let alone.
They were also sitting in about a forty to forty

(20:20):
five percent when they went for what they went for
and didn't get it, and then they had to default
to what was actually a majority mandate, and then it
looked like they lost something rather than the fact they
actually won something. But it's all about prioritizing, right, It's
all about expectations, it's all about how you sell it.

(20:41):
But I think this is increasingly for the short term
going just more credibility problems for the Republican Party right.
One of their effective knocks on the Democrats is that
they were, you know, they couldn't tell the truth about
what was staring them in the face. Can Republicans tell
the truth? But what's staring all of us in the face.

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And yes, I too, am a customer, which leads me
to a I think colossal political mistake that Senate Republicans made.
They had an opportunity to kill this weaponization fund once

(22:52):
and for all, codifying the death of this weaponization fund
with an active with an amendment to the bill for
this homeland security thing. The votes initially were there, and
John Thune and the Senate Republican leadership decided not to
allow it to happen, and they twisted enough arms, and

(23:17):
they clearly made some promise that maybe it was coming.
Whatever it is that they did to sort of get
the Yolo caucus to basically, I don't know, it's no
longer you only live ones apparently only dream of living ones. Right,
They're just the dreaming Yolo caucas Since they didn't actually
not doing this, You've just opened up every Republican running

(23:42):
for reelection to the easiest attack ad there is. They're
so not looking out for you. They're trying to pay
off people that beat up cops. Whose side are you
on and who's on your side? Who wants to protect you?
Who's trying to hire more cops? Who's trying to pay
off people that attack cops? Right? What are you doing? Guys?

(24:07):
This seems like a really massive You had an opportunity,
a small minority of you had an opportunity to essentially
take one for the team. This is terrible politics. John
Houstad is not going to be able to answer this
very well. He's going to fumble and mumble, and these
are going to be the debate questions per se. Are

(24:27):
just going to be horrible moments for these guys. That's
if these debates take place. I hope they do. But
my goodness, the Senate Republican leadership, John Thune, you began
the week asserting your leadership and seeing you know, calling
Bill Poulti's acting appointment for what it was, a bunch

(24:47):
of bs. You're not going to put a weaponizer in
charge of our intel, by the way, I think it's
I think it's illegal for him to be the acting
d and I. While while the President of the United
States can certainly declassify by information for anybody he chooses
to declassify it, for there is a specific written set

(25:08):
of credentials you have to have to be the dn I,
I cannot imagine that an acting DNI is not supposed
to have those same credentials. Bill Pulti does not have
those credentials. Therefore, I do not believe, even though that
there is there that because Congress wrote into the law
this specific that the executive branch come out can can

(25:30):
overdo this even temporarily. So I actually don't think Pulty
can legally do the job. Now, it doesn't mean that
the president can't declassify things and allow Pulty to pull
his weapon hiss as in garbage like he's been doing
with them, digging into people's mortgage mortgages, like he was
doing with elected and political enemies of the president. But

(25:54):
it does mean it's probably illegal for him to hold
the acting title at all under any circumstance, because it's
written through now that you know the problem is with
any of these fights with the judiciary, in order to
have standing, the Act has to take place. Well, the
Act has taken place, and now you've got to sue.
And it does mean he can operate, and he's going
to have operated into the job for maybe as long

(26:15):
as a week two weeks before the courts I do
think will ultimately say he is ineligible to serve as
the acting DNI because he does not meet the credential
that Congress wrote into the law. Again, it is written
into the law. It is very specific. Mitch McConnell pointed
this out. Very few Senate conferbabile positions come with a

(26:40):
statutory set of qualifications, and there are deliberate reasons D
and I is one of them. This is what the
statute says. A D and I quote shall have extensive
national security experience and management expertise, and then it says
specifies that the Principal Deputy DNI Director, currently a gentleman
by the name of Aaron Lucas, shall act for and

(27:01):
exercise the powers of DNI during a vacancy. So it
is all spelled out in this On other things, at
who the acting or the should be is not spelled out,
this one does. So this creates two legal questions on
this vacancy, whether the extensive national security bar essentially constrains

(27:22):
acting service or any of only formal nominees, and whether
the DNI specific succession provision overrides the Federal Vacancy's Reform Act,
which is the general law that otherwise lets the President
install any acting, any official as acting for a two
hundred day window. So I'm very curious to see. I

(27:43):
think this is something that somebody should file suit in question,
because we've got to find out whether Congress writing these
specific qualifications into the law matters. One thing about judiciary
when it comes to these political disputes between branches. Usually,
and it hasn't meant whether judiciary is leaning left or
right usually on these things. They when there's a dispute

(28:09):
between the legislative and the executive. Usually the legislative gets
the nod here, and I can't imagine that it wouldn't
write even with the tariffs, right, the legislative branch and
an Article one got the nod, So I would assume
that that will be the case. But we shall see.
And by the way, just a simple thing that David
French and I talked about later in the interview. Have

(28:29):
you ever made a list one, two, and three and
made the most important thing too? Just stew on that.
When you hear people talk about article one, Article two,
and article three of the Constitution, again, ask yourself, what
list have you made of one, two, and three where
number two was more important than number one? Right, I'm

(28:50):
not saying I'm just saying, all right, I want to
pivot to Tuesday. So it seems as if there's sort
of multiple things worth watching on Tuesday, which is why
our livestream, I think, is going to be lit. First
of all, you got the South Carolina. How many runoffs

(29:11):
are we going to get? We know we're going to
get a run off in the in the South Carolina
Republican primary for governor. Does Nancy Mace make it into
that runoff or not? The President has endorsed the lieutenant governor.
It does not appear as endorsement has had the impact
he hoped it would. This would be Can you imagine
if second time in our second state in a row

(29:32):
where the endorsed Trump can actually this would be the
third time we're endorsed Trump candidate finishes second, not getting
in the runoff. Even Cornant, I guess Cornan and Paxton
were unindorsed at the time, So that's a I won't
I won't use that example. But we saw it with
Fienstra where the last minute Trump endorsement did not have
the impact that they thought that Trump endorsement was going

(29:53):
to happen. We're going to find out a lieutenant governor
evert whether she gets the benefit from this endorsement. Who knows,
but you have that. The other more interesting situation going
on is with Lindsay Graham. And look, Lindsay Graham, There's
always been a thirty percent of the Republican Party who

(30:16):
has never thought Lindsa Gram was conservative enough. This goes
back to when he was hanging out with John McCain.
This goes back what wing of the party, the South
Carolina Republican Party has always actually been in some ways
a bit more ideologically diverse. You've had your business community,
you've had your more culturally conservative, you've had more religious base.

(30:37):
But it's been a it's a tapestry, and there's different facets.
It's why South Carolina makes for such an interesting, interesting
sort of battleground during the Republican presidential primary process, because
there are different facets of a military community, retiree community
in South Carolina that's not nearly as religious but certainly

(31:00):
is right leaning. Then you have this more religious So anyway,
the point is is that there's there's different flavors of
the conservative movement all over South Carolina, and Lindsey Graham
has has always been seen with a with a skeptical
eye by members of the of the certainly of the
Christian Conservative more the Christian conservative wing of the party.

(31:22):
And now you would throw in the populace maga, the
sort of libertarian right. Certainly, the anti war right is
no fan of Lindsay Graham and has never been a
fan of Lindsay Graham. And in this and that's what
I think we're going to find out here is this
combination of whether the two things right. So if if

(31:45):
if the sort of anti war right and the sort
of more culturally conservative animated wing of the party down there,
if the combo of the two is enough to keep
Lindsay below fifty because there's other people along the ballot,
and then of course on a runoff, all bets are off.
And that's the thing we're are we starting to see

(32:07):
a pattern here, right. So in Iowa you had an
outsider and you had a sitting member of Congress basically
as the two leading candidates, and the outsider got it.
You had a sitting US Senator in Texas, you had
the outsider running sort of the anti establishment campaign in Paxton.
Paxton wins to run off going away. How about South

(32:27):
Dakota where the runoff is going to be between the
sitting governor and the outsider populist and the person left
that finished in third place was the sitting member of Congress,
Dusty Jones. I'm not ready to declare that this is
definitely going to be across the board, but if you're

(32:50):
very more in Alabama, in that runoff, you're the sitting
member of Congress, You're facing somebody that is suddenly getting
to run as the outsider. Hey, I'm not my hands
aren't dirty from how Washington has been working. Right, You
have a similar situation perhaps playing out in the Georgia
Senate runoff, Right, is, can Derek Duley take advantage of

(33:11):
this over Mike Collins? Right, Mike Collins, the sitting member
of Collerce if indeed we do see Lindsey Graham forced
into a runoff. So the point is there's clearly a
trend here, right and it you know, and you could
argue that that we've seen this go off and on
since the rise of the Tea Party, that when Republican

(33:34):
primary voters are presented with an option to defeat somebody
that's it that is more establishmenty. Maybe they're a sitting
member of Congress trying to jump up to statewide office.
Maybe they're the sitting lieutenant governor, maybe they're whatever it is,
maybe they're the sitting US Senator. When presented with that

(33:56):
option and it's viable, they do it now. They will
enthusiastically support the nominee, even if it's somebody that may
not be their preferred flavor of conservative. And we've seen this, right,
these folks have certainly won and gotten the votes of
some of these people when they've just chosen to turn out.

(34:16):
But there certainly is plenty of evidence that we're here,
and the question is are we now? Are we in
that tumultuous of a moment here where you do and
you know, we're pretty fractured in both parties right now.
You have a real fracture inside the Republican Party still
between sort of the business wing what people in the

(34:39):
maga world would say, the real populace, and then sort
of the way Donald Trump's behaving right He's basically trying
to be all things to all of these wings, and
he's done nothing to try to settle him down. If anything,
he's only made life more miserable for the establishment by
pushing this war with Iran, and by the way that

(34:59):
you want to talk about sitting with you know him
just trying to deny that he ran on no more wars,
and then he did this like he didn't even attempt
like there was a better way to defend it. If
he was going to defend I didn't start this war.
If he really wanted to go down that front, he
could say the Iranians started this war forty seven years ago.

(35:21):
I'm just trying to finish it. And I'm trying to
end it, but he frankly is not nimble enough to
make that argument, and I don't think it would be
seen as as an honest argument because he himself didn't
say that about Iran when he was campaigning. In fact,
just the opposite, he said, if you elect Kamala Harris,
she's going to start a war with Iran. So while

(35:44):
he could come up with spin that would be completely
dishonest and completely throw himself and make him look like
a liar from the campaign trail, he still wants to
look like a liar from the campaign trail and not
even have an honest way to answer this question on Iran.
The point is what he's done on Iran has actually
put some of his own allies and has made his endorsement.

(36:07):
The question is is it made his endorsement sort of
less definitive? Right? If you're still angry about this war,
Trump endorsing the person you're not happy with isn't going
to make you more inclined to support that person. So
I don't think it'll be as helpful as one thinks.
But let's be honest here on Lindsay Graham, isn't this

(36:31):
the way the movie should end for Lindsey Graham's political career.
Here's a guy who has just been so blatantly fingering
the wind of wherever the Republican Party is going. Oh,
I'm going to go here. Oh I want to go here,
or I want to go here. I don't know what
Lindsey Graham believes in anymore, and I understand if many
of you don't either. He seems to be a conservative

(36:55):
of convenience and wherever it's convenient to be conservative, he's
gung ho about it, and the minute and if he
is and as long as it's good for him politically, Look,
I'll give him this. He understands his state very well.
When he did the flip on Trump, he actually did
it a lot earlier than some of the other establishment
critics of Trump. Flipped because he realized he was a

(37:18):
fish out of water in his own state, and he
quickly realized how much potential political trouble he'd been, so
he fought. He flipped fast. So as somebody who understand,
I will say this, I think the man is very
in tune to his own state and very in tune
to understanding where his state goes on. Some of this

(37:38):
stuff and understands the power of Trump. But you know,
when you look at the totality of his career, right,
he's just been to the things that he has been
righteous self righteous about. When a Democrat has done it,
he looks the other way when Donald Trump does it.
Right again, it's all explained away in his desire to

(38:02):
do whatever it takes to keep that senen seed. So
a guy who's been has done everything he can to
keep that Trump endorsement, has kept that Trump endorsement, and
eventually it doesn't work. I believe some some would argue
that that is that is probably the rightful way that
this would end. If it does end this way, that somehow,

(38:23):
because I'll tell you this, if he gets forced into
a runoff, that's usually it is. It is not a
good history for incumbents forced into a runoff surviving those runoffs.
It happens, it does in this political environment. Does this
feel like the political environment where an incumbent can survive

(38:45):
a runoff anyway? That's just the South Carolina portion of
our Election Night livestream on Tuesday, folks. Then you got
Maine and Graham Plattner, and I'd set that bar earlier.
I will say this. I think on the on Thursday's podcast,
I said fifteen to twenty five. We're entering red flag territory.
I would raise the bar a little bit to twenty

(39:06):
plus now, simply because she's a kind OF's on she's
on the verge of actively campaigning. Okay, Janet Mills, she's
not actively campaigning, but she reminds, she's continuously reminding people
she's on the ballot. So I might raise the bar
that anything, you know, you need to hit twenty before

(39:27):
you to truly if you're in Platiner world, start to panic.
But it's look, it's interesting that the new defense of
Platner is, yeah, these wars mess them up, and this
is and he should be you know, and this is why.

(39:48):
And this gets back to do you have the temperament
to do this job? Right? Do you have the ability
to do this job? Is your life in a position
where you have the you have the ability to be
a public servant at this moment? And I and I
and that's why I've constantly said empathy is required here,

(40:11):
all right. I don't know if anybody is going to
come out with their with one hundred percent their head
on straight after multiple tours of duty in Iraq or Afghanistan,
and I think that we all have to be a
bit uh, I have to show empathy on that. At
the same time, that doesn't make one more, you know,

(40:31):
I think that that means somebody that I would like
to see testify in Congress and make sure people understand
though the impact of this, and people need to understand.
And he would be a powerful surrogate supporting somebody else
running for the Senate against the decision Susan Collins made
to send people to war. So this is not dismissing
that as concerned. If anything, it's it's reinforcing it. But

(40:53):
the damage that that, you know, But to try to
say that everything he's done is that number one puts
it all onto that. And you're does that mean you're
supposed to if you're feel uncomfortable with the way he
treated women, you're just supposed to just chalk it up? BETSD.

(41:14):
That doesn't mean that just because you can explain somebody's
behavior doesn't mean that you that that behavior somehow gets excused.
It can be explained, you know, but it doesn't get excused.
So anyway, it's I get look where platterers and save

(41:37):
his campaign mode. The way they're going about to save
this campaign, I think is I'm dubious, But ultimately it's
going to be in the hands of the voters. And
let's see where this number is. Well. This episode of
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they're favored by two and a half. The money line
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(43:05):
can't it's it's Spurs And I'm still you know, I
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(43:25):
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so far has risen to the occasion every time they

(43:47):
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hyphen terms. I did not four weeks ago think South Carolina, Maine, Nevada,

(44:48):
and North Dakota election night was going to be the
best election night of June. But it's going to be
the best election night in June. And hey, the good
news is we'll also be counting California ballots also on Tuesday,
so you know, we'll be able to sort of bring
you up to date. Hey, what's going on in California?
Still counting ballots here. And this is where, by the way,

(45:09):
our political debate world is terrible about this, right, which
is everything is you know, if you're on the right
and you're just assuming theft on this election, because California
has a very thorough way that they that they approve,
you know, that they make sure they certify that a

(45:29):
voter is the voter, They do the signature match right,
do everything. They've certainly built in plenty of protocols to
for security purposes, and I think they're quite good, but
they've got it is on them. Their inability to do
this faster is on the administrators. It is on the state,

(45:50):
all right. At the end of the day, there are
always going to be bad actors that try to exploit
slow government responses and try to create conspiracy theories around it.
This is not a new phenomenon. This has been happening
for centuries. So it is incumbent and bound government to
mitigate that. Get your act together. It is a really

(46:10):
bad sign that we are going to probably have all
the votes counted in Maine in South Carolina before we
have all the votes counted in California, and Maine in
South Carolina will have done their primaries a week after
California began its counting last Tuesday. That's I know, it's
a big stake. I know there's a lot of people

(46:31):
to verify. If this is how you want to do it,
spend because part of an election process is being able
to have a process where a large majority of people
have faith in it, and the longer this takes, you
lose that. So this needs to be addressed with a

(46:57):
lot more urgency than the Democratic leaders are addressing it
in California. I think it's been They just sort of
they was just there, just wave it off. Oh, this
is just reporters, you know, upset that they have to
wait longer for results. No, it's fricking voters that are upset.
And if every other state can get it done faster,

(47:18):
come on, California, get your shit together. It is ridiculous
that we're going to have another a primary, a set
of primaries a week later that all but Nevada will
probably be counted completely. Three entire other states. And yes
they're smaller than California combined. But come on, if you're

(47:42):
too big to do this, then cut the state up
in two or something. But admit, in all seriousness, I
you know it is. I'm not blaming the leaders of
California for the lying that takes place by people like
Donald Trump. But you have a duty to do whatever

(48:07):
it takes to make your citizens confident in the system.
And the longer it takes, the easier it is for
confidence to be weakened in the system. Do your part
and speed things up. It's too late now to have
credibility with it for this cycle. But you when you

(48:30):
see some crazy rants like Megan Kelly declaring that if
somehow Spencer Pratt and Steve Hilton are found to have
not qualified for the runoff, that somehow that means things
were nefarious. No, it doesn't. It means they didn't get
they didn't finish in the top two when all the
votes were counted. But it is allowing this gap. We've

(48:52):
done our job in the honest press, right and I
know what is honest press anymore. I'm gonna get to
that in a minute. But we've done our job. We
explain the red morale at the beginning. I certainly did.
I kicked off our coverage with it. We've explained how
this works, and we've even explained it in this unique
primary that people held their ballots to the very end.
And yes, ballots sort of get counted as they come
in in a lot of these counties, not every county.

(49:14):
Every county kind of does it a little bit differently.
But you were more likely to see a surge of
Democratic leaning ballots towards the end, more so than before
because of all the tumult that was taking place in
that governor's race. And it is playing out exactly how
we told you it was going to play out, right,
Spencer Pratt might even have a lead, Steve Hilton might
even have a lead. And Pratt's lead melted pretty quickly.

(49:38):
Hilton's took a few days for it to melt, but
it all happened just the same. But come on, California,
spend more money to get this stuff counted quicker. If
you care about the integrity of the democracy and the
citizens belief in it, you're going to get this done,

(50:00):
all right. I've had a lot of questions, and I've
not said much about what's happening at sixty minutes, what's
happening at CBS and what's happening with Scott Pelly. Given
my own experience dealing with network management, who made a decision,
who let politics sort of get in the way of journalism,

(50:23):
I certainly understand the situation that the folks at sixty
minutes Pelly in particular, find themselves in. I think there's
been a lot there's almost too much focus on Scott Pelly,
and they're not enough focus on the Ellisons because we
got to focus the main thing is the main thing.

(50:45):
The fact is, all of these media companies have proven
to be horrific stewards of media, of journalistic of news organizations. Disney, Comcast,
Paramount and before that, Viacom and Warner Brothers. They do
not when when when the chips were down at all

(51:08):
of those entities, all of those publicly traded companies, when
the chips were down, they folded whatever it did to
appease Donald Trump, to appease the administration in some form
or another, regardless of whether the facts matched the complaints.
They all went for appeasement, whether it was paying off

(51:31):
these settlements which sort of looked like bribes that didn't work.
By the way, because one payoff, you know, he keeps
coming back for more. Have you noticed that? Or the
you know, the well timed spinoff of MSNBC by Comcast

(51:52):
right when you know they I give Comcasts he a
little more elegance about it than both Disney and Paramount.
And then of course there's this you know, no man's
land that CNN is operating in where they basically have

(52:13):
two owners, no owners, and they're just waiting for shoes
to fall, and they're probably sitting there watching CBS wondering, Okay,
so this is how it works. So I think there
are two things you could do, and I think Scott
Pelly's interview sort of got at a couple of things
that I'm always hesiting. I don't want to backseat drive

(52:36):
too much in this situation because I've, like I said,
I've I during the the issue when when the news
organization attempted to hire ron A Romney without sort of
going through any sort of public vetting or sort of

(52:59):
count of Lily interview nothing right before before signing her,
uh and not and not explaining what it is that
they were signing her. Somebody who had literally questioned the
integrity of the entire news division multiple times through her
stewardship at the RNC. But NEBC wanted a debate, right,
they wanted an RNC debate. So I don't know what happened,

(53:23):
but somehow they got one. And look, I understand why
these media companies did what they did. I've said this before.

(53:44):
They have a feudatial responsibility to the shareholders, not to
the public. And so if that is going to be
your north star, don't own a news organization because you're
going to always compromise the integrity of the news organization.
I I think it is hard a heart's Bob Eiger
didn't think he was compromising the integrity of ABC News
when he settled the frivolous lawsuit against short Stepnopolis, but

(54:08):
that's what he ended up doing. I'd like to think
he will one day publicly express regret for that decision.
He's in the middle of a transition, he's in the middle.
He may be tired of talking about these things, of
which I understand. But it was a big It was
a big mistake. But I under the decision was rational,

(54:31):
even if I disagreed with it, and I think it
did enormous damage because it was the first one, and
then it just put pressure on everybody else. Now, the
question is why is Trump obsessed with sixty minutes? Sixty
minutes is a symbol, and if he can make sixty
minutes heal, then he's making all of all of sort

(54:53):
of mainstream news heal. Right. You know, this is the
most popular, most well known news brand in America. And
so if he can just you know, sort of somehow
claim that he was able to topple sixty minutes, whatever

(55:17):
that means to him, that's a that's a that's an accomplishment,
and it doesn't matter what happens in any other news organization, Right,
It's that symbolism that he wants there. Right, you sort
of you take out sixty minutes, and in some ways
it it decaps the entire and but the point is
is it's already over right the second that I have

(55:41):
I don't know what the politics of the lessons are.
I know some of you think you know what the
politics of the lessons are. We don't know for sure.
Here's what we do know. They want to take advantage
of a situation. They want to own this big media conglomerate.

(56:02):
They want to be able to try to put together
the biggest media conglomerate they can possibly imagine with this
paramount Warner Brothers thing. And they know it is a
questionable decision by government to approve the merger. So what's
the easiest way to do it, given to the president's
shiny metal objects right, and turn it into just remember,

(56:24):
sixty minutes is probably not even not five percent of
paramounts bottom line, but probably point of five percent of
paramount the bottom line. But the Allisons know that Donald
Trump is erratic, and if literally one piece shows up
in sixty minutes that he doesn't like, he could just
blow up the whole thing and the merger's off. And

(56:45):
the Ellisons, more importantly, Larry Ellison, the father, is left
holding a really really expensive back that he is already
personally essentially used his own wealth as collateral to guarantee.
So it would be a huge blow. So if you're
the Allisons, you're gonna do whatever it takes to appease

(57:07):
this president and get through this regulatory merger. They don't
care about the long term interest of the news division
for one simple reason. The second this merger gets approved,
the combination of CBS and CNN will likely be put
up for sale, and the second Trump leaves office, they're

(57:28):
going to put it up for sale. They're not interested
in the long term. So I do think that that's
if I were sitting at sixty minutes, That's how I'd
be approaching this. Okay, we know what the motivation is.
We know there's nothing we can do currently Internally. You
blow up Barry Weiss, the Allisons will find another Berry Weiss,

(57:53):
you know, and this isn't you know. My only question
for her is is she come trouble being used this way?
She's being used? Maybe she doesn't think she's being used.
Maybe it aligns with what she wants to do or
what she believes, and that's fine. But she's being used here.
And I assume she knows it because she seems like

(58:15):
she's got a lot of common sense to her. But
I don't know. But she's being used here. But just
remember the main thing is the main thing, which is
and this is the calculation that I think that I
would be thinking about at sixty minutes, which is, can
sixty minutes be repaired if it has a new owner.
I think it is reasonable to conclude that CBS and

(58:38):
CNN will have new owners sometime in the next thirty
six months. It's not a guarantee, but it's pretty reasonable
to conclude that that's going to happen. There's massive debt
that this new merger has taken on. They're going to
have to start trying to whittle down that debt. Thing

(59:00):
that is the biggest headache, least impactful to their bottom
line is anything news. So and you know, and then
and then if you're CNN's last sixty minutes SA CBS, right,
and you're there and you're deciding do I put the
raincoat on, see if I can get through this storm
and see if the next owner isn't crazy, especially if

(59:24):
you don't have the financial savings to sort of have
the few money, right, Scott Pelly had some few money,
and he took it was sort of like you know,
I I understand the situation he was in, right. He
he could take hits that others couldn't. And that was
that was I think as much of anything as why

(59:46):
he chose to concentrate your er was on me seeing
if he can speak and protect those behind him and
blow him. But I think that's the calculation I'd be making,
do I And I think that's what Whitaker Install and
those folks decided and why they said, look, we're gonna
stick and see if essentially we can if the franchise

(01:00:11):
cannot get so damaged between now and the eventual soon
sale of the combination of whatever seeing NCBs looks like.
Is that, you know, is that better than everybody quitting
simultaneously and starting something that looks awfully similar to sixty
minutes down the road? There is a you know, so

(01:00:33):
it's a it's a fifty one to forty nine call
as far as I'm concerned. So I'm not gonna That's
why I don't know enough internally for sure, but I
do think that's the calculation I'd be making. But ultimately,
I think there's a lot there's been too much focus
on sort of how Pelly's gone about this, and not

(01:00:55):
enough focus on the larger issue here, which is what
the Ellisons are using Barry Weiss to do. And the
goal is to make the President think they have changed
the ideology of sixty minutes. Whether they do it or
not doesn't mean. It's all about convincing him that they've

(01:01:15):
done this. So high profile firings and you know, bringing
in unusual people to run it, and things like that
are all designed for an audience of one. No serious
journalists would have made these decisions. No serious person about
the future, thinking digital first would have made these decisions.
You wouldn't take something that has such incredible brand equity

(01:01:36):
and positive a positive view from the public and got
it like this if there wasn't a larger financial incentive
to do it. And you know what, the larger financial
incentive is the only way the Ellisons get this monstrosity
combination of Paramount and Warner Brothers is if they sacrifice

(01:01:58):
sixty minutes on the altar of Donald Trump, and it
is the symbol. It's not you know, it doesn't matter.
The rest of CBS doesn't matter. Right for Trump, he
just sees sixty and that's all this is about, which
is why they're thankfully other shows she's not messed with
over there, other shows that I think do a terrific job.

(01:02:19):
And they've basically been living. You know, they've been just
avoiding the war, if you will, God bless them, hopefully
the war doesn't come to them. I'm not even gonna
mention to you the names of the people I'm talking
about or their shows, because I do not want to
make sure that those targets are not tarnished by me.

(01:02:42):
You know, it's like, do you what's better for you
to my friends over there and endorse or criticize. Right,
But let's not take our eye off the main All,
my media reporter friends, this is not a Scott Pelly's story.
This is always about the Ellison's allowing sixty minutes to

(01:03:04):
be used as the chip to get a questionable merger
approved by Donald Trump's government. That is and has always
been the north star of all of this. Don't confuse
anything else from what that is. And it doesn't matter
whether you like the direction of sixty minutes or not.

(01:03:24):
When that is the motivation, it should upset even those
that at the moment consider themselves allies of this administration,
because government influencing the media is that it is the
step one in eroding the democracy. Just ask the no
longer free citizens of Turkey. All right? With that, I'll

(01:03:47):
sneak at a break and when we come back, a terrific
conversation with my friend David French. Well. Joining me now
is my friend David French of the New York Times.
He's also co host of the Dispatch podcast Advisory Opinions

(01:04:11):
with my with our friend Sarah Isker, who many of
my podcast listeners find her. She's a favorite a guest
as well. She's yeah, my goodness, always so smart and entertaining.
She's great. The last time we saw each other in person,
we were in Chicago, and it was a debate that
you and Chris Christy had and I moderated it and

(01:04:32):
I shared a little bit of our of what that
was like with my audience at the time, and it
was about sports gambling and really the impact on young
men in particular. We're not saying there aren't young women
out there that are susceptible to this, but it's there's
clearly more of a frontal lobe issue here and a
with with with young with young men. And you know,

(01:04:55):
I want to begin where we ended in that conversation
because it feels like as these prediction markets have actually
lowered the threshold now from twenty one to eighteen. Right
with prediction markets, it's pretty clear. I mean, I use
the example of rental of basically insurance companies and the
rental car companies decided we're just not going to ensure

(01:05:18):
drivers under the age of twenty five, and magically there's
no law that was passed that says you can't rent
a car until you're twenty five. It's insurance companies made
this decision, and one could argue that they're onto something
with twenty five maybe being the proper age to introduce
vices where you have to have self control.

Speaker 2 (01:05:41):
Yeah, you know, it's interesting how the insurance companies financial
incentives are directly opposite, aligned from the gambling financial incentives.
So insurance companies they implement the twenty five year old
limit because of documented actuarial risk, then young guys just
drive more recklessly and that's going to cost the insurance

(01:06:01):
company money. When it's young guys driving the gambling bus recklessly,
that is exactly what the companies love. I mean, yeah,
we want to pour marketing dollars towards the people least
able to control themselves.

Speaker 1 (01:06:16):
And you know, when we were.

Speaker 2 (01:06:19):
Taught, we had a really it was a really interesting
debate because on the one hand, you know, Governor Christy
was defaulting towards less government regulation. I was defaulting towards
in general, I was defaulting towards much more. But we
we did at the end degree on a couple of
things that I think are really important. And this is

(01:06:40):
sort of an example of how you can reach seventy
thirty kinds of solutions that don't address everything, but they
at least address something. And as I recall, it was
three prongs. One was raise the age to twenty five.
The other one was regulate prediction markets at least as
tightly as regularly securities markets. And then number three was

(01:07:02):
some form of regulation on a certain kind of bet
called a prop bet. Right, this is your live in
game betting where you're going to say this the next ball,
is the next pitch going to be a ball or strike?
Or is the next foul shot can to be a
hit or amiss, And those single individual can essentially totally
warp the warp the odds if they check exactly, like

(01:07:24):
they could tell their friends that the third batter of
the first.

Speaker 1 (01:07:29):
Inning, I'm going to walk them right. And by the way,
we're not manufacturing something out of thin air. That's what apparently
what a manual class A did as the closer for
the Guardians. He exactly not going to throw up a
strike on the first pitch, I promising, in fact, I'm
so nervous about making sure it out. I'm going to
bounce the ball so bad.

Speaker 2 (01:07:49):
And it's one of these things, Chuck, where I think
what you're actually watching is sort of the laboratories of
democracy that's right, working in real time, maybe in the
sense that, Okay, we had a bunch of states that
liberalize sports gambling, and a lot of Americans now don't
like what they see, and there is a building response

(01:08:10):
to it. That is I think it's arising and it's
bubbling up, similar to the way sort of like the say,
the phone free schools movement bubble up.

Speaker 1 (01:08:19):
Bubbled up.

Speaker 2 (01:08:19):
First is a notion, as an idea, then as an experiment,
then is a policy. And I think that we're at
the notion or idea stage of gambling regulation where we're saying, wait, whoa,
this is not good, This is especially not good for
young men. What can we do about it that's reasonable
and we can get consensus on generally?

Speaker 1 (01:08:42):
Do you think that is the best? You know, it's
funny because one of the things that I think we're
terrible at as human beings is trying to anticipate what
could happen based on a law that's passed. Yeah, in
fact it sometimes you need to see the unintended consequences
that then to properly regulate something that perhaps you wouldn't

(01:09:02):
have thought of if you tried to regulate from the start. Yeah,
you're You're you're an interesting cat ideologically, right, because on
one hand, you're I think you've got a lot of
libertarian in you. Yeah, and at the same time you're
also a bit of an institutionalist. I think is that fair?

Speaker 2 (01:09:21):
You know, you know Chesterton's fence kind of conservative, yes.

Speaker 1 (01:09:26):
Right where I think a lot of libertarians they're you know,
the purest horbar libertarian is Hey, you know you do
you right? Like? And that's it? Is that? Is it
better to I mean, because that's essentially what we're doing
with AI. I'm on, you know, the downside of letting
something happen first, then figuring out what the unintended consequences are,

(01:09:48):
and then figuring out how to regulate. Is it Sometimes
it's impossible to quote put toothpaste back in the tube,
and yet it there. It is true that it is
hard to anticipate what the the effects of a policy
are going to be.

Speaker 2 (01:10:02):
Yeah, And I also think that a lot depends on
sort of how you came up in the world sort
of from a legal political perspective. I came up in
the world as a lawyer where I'm doing a lot
of litigation, and litigation not all the time, but most
of the time is backwards looking. This thing happened in
the past, and we're going to try to reach a
legal resolution to it that involves compensation or punishment or whatever.

(01:10:27):
And then it's based in real world events, but it
sets a precedent that essentially regulates going forward. But unlike
a regulation that is anticipatory purely we think this is
going to be bad in this way or that way,
so we're going to sort of anticipatorily ban it. What
the common law typically does is, let's think, it lets

(01:10:48):
things unfold. It takes a sort of a much longer view.
It lets things unfold and then strikes at the elements
where people's rights are violated, our people are harmed, and
so it's more of a backwards looking analysis. And I
wrote about this about AI recently because we're beginning to
see these common law concepts come into AI, where AI,

(01:11:12):
whether it likes it or not, is going to be
quote unquote regulated away by jury by jury verdicts by
judicial decisions such a So for example, there is the
the the Attorney General of Florida is undertaking a criminal
investigation of open Ai because what they did is they

(01:11:33):
looked at chat logs around a mass shooting at Florida
State and they said, wait a minute, well.

Speaker 1 (01:11:38):
You know it's funny on that one. I let's dig
into that because I, first of all, he I I
interpreted what the Attorney General of Florida is doing is
borrowing a page from what is happening in the social
against the social media companies in the in the in
the combined lawsuits that we're watching in the southern in
Southern California, already at one verdict where it's a fault

(01:12:03):
it's a it's a faulty product attack. Right, Isn't that
how that basically that the potential lawsuit is it's a
defective product. Yeah, And that's how they're going to try
to go at it. Yes, rightly that they are.

Speaker 2 (01:12:18):
That is accurate description of the way they're going at meta.
And they're using product liability principles. And I've got some
beef with some of that, to be honest, because you know,
you are starting to intrude on protected speech, for example.
But when it comes to open AI, it's a subtle difference.
So the subtle difference with open AI is unlike say, your.

Speaker 1 (01:12:43):
Your interactions with real.

Speaker 2 (01:12:44):
Live human beings on a social media app, where a
lot of the question is how much should kids be
able to interact with real life human beings sort of
how is that ordered? This interaction with human beings actually
sort of ordered, governed regulated. With chat GBT, you're interacting
with an entity that is designed to be at least

(01:13:07):
to some degree autonomous. That's its design is to be
to some degree, that's what part of the whole point
of AI is that does its own thing.

Speaker 1 (01:13:15):
But how can that exist legally?

Speaker 2 (01:13:20):
Where you cannot There is no such thing as machine liability.
There always has to be human liability in the chain.
And so here's the dilemma that I think that the
that the AI companies are facing and will continue to face,
is that they're ultimately going to be held liable for
the quote unquote autonomous actions of their AI. Well, if

(01:13:44):
they're going to be held liable for the autonomous actions
of the AI, how autonomous can they ultimately end up being?
Because do I want to delegate the possibility of criminal
sanction to a machine that I'm intentionally or you know,
software that I'm intentionally not.

Speaker 1 (01:14:02):
Well, let's let's take let's take this specific Florida case.
This involves the school shooting at Florida State. Uh huh,
and correct me if I'm wrong. I've been followed. My
wife went to Florida State, so we followed this pretty closely. Yeah,
just you know, we keep up with it. And I
guess because he used chat GPT to essentially help him

(01:14:24):
find the best way to the best places to do
the shooting, the best places to escape and all this stuff.
Why should open AI be held accountable for doing something
he could have done. He could have done another way
if he chose to. There just happened to be a
more efficient way to do it. I mean, you know,

(01:14:45):
this is the case of technology is neither good or bad.
People are good or bad, and they can use technology
to do good or bad.

Speaker 2 (01:14:53):
Yeah, it's a really good question, and the answer lies
in a statement that I think that the Pory General
of Florida made that I thought was very interesting. He said,
if you had seen that text exchange between two people,
we would have already charged the other person.

Speaker 1 (01:15:11):
On the as like a co conspiratory, essentially aiding in
a betting.

Speaker 2 (01:15:14):
So and if you if you look at some of
the interesting prosecutions we've seen over the last couple of.

Speaker 1 (01:15:19):
Years of parents of school shooters, right there is we've
gotten a few of those guilty verdicts and sort of
essentially neglect, is that what it is.

Speaker 2 (01:15:28):
It's also a criminal neglect at some at the edges
and aiding in a betting theory.

Speaker 1 (01:15:37):
But what you found in these cases really is.

Speaker 2 (01:15:41):
What you would call criminal neglect, like they completely ignored
warning signs. And in fact, and most of these parent
criminal charges criminal trials, you do not see anything as
overt as what you see in the chat open AI
chat logs here. So, for example, in the open AI
in this case, you have finding questions about, you know,

(01:16:04):
media coverage of school shooters, questions about criminal penalties for
school shooters. You have questions about when is the student
center the busiest, and the thing that's most chilling is
about three minutes before the shooting. You have questions with
open AI about how to disengage the safety. So imagine
if the humans on the other end where you say,

(01:16:24):
you know, Hey, mom, how do I disengage the safety
on my weapon? And mom knows the kids at school,
and like that mom is going to get hold that
mom is getting prosecuted, and.

Speaker 1 (01:16:35):
That mom's going to jail.

Speaker 2 (01:16:36):
Right, So so there's a parallel here that is very troubling.
Although it is also the case, Chuck, that you could
maybe just do normal Google searches for some of this
information as well, but it's not and.

Speaker 1 (01:16:52):
When you have held Google accountable for it, and that's
circumstaniving him the right answers, right like as a Google search.
I mean, I take your point, and I've been as
you were talking, I was thinking, well, I guess the
AI companies could say, you know, could essentially program the
model to say, if somebody asks more than one question

(01:17:14):
about a school shooting, you need to at least say,
if you're what are you asking these questions for? You
know that you know or you know you shouldn't be
taking actions, don't do this or something like that? Is it?
Do you think they have a responsibility for that? Would
goog Now let me go further, and I'd like to

(01:17:36):
know when you think the First Amendment applies here? How
many Google searches on school shootings. Do you have to
do before you think Google should report it? Yeah, it's
that's that's a really good question.

Speaker 2 (01:17:48):
And we actually have cases currently pending that are related
to some of what you said. So again we're talking
about AI and a mass shooting that happened in Canada,
a school shooting that happened in cant and there the
interaction with a school shooter on chat GPT was so
overt that open ai considered contacting Canadian authorities and chose

(01:18:12):
not to.

Speaker 1 (01:18:13):
And then there was the attack on the school.

Speaker 2 (01:18:16):
And so now the lawsuits are pouring into open ai
because this is something.

Speaker 1 (01:18:20):
That's they're almost admitting liability amount one.

Speaker 2 (01:18:23):
And so so basically, I think it really does turn
on what is the nature of the technology. So, for example,
we would never say that if I want to know
how to disengage the soft the safety on my weapon,
that if I go to a library and I look

(01:18:44):
up at a technical manual using the Dewey decimal system,
the library.

Speaker 1 (01:18:49):
Is like no.

Speaker 2 (01:18:50):
And I feel like if you're looking at a Google
search that's a typical Google search is very much more
like I'm walking in I'm accessing it pre existing database
of information that is available on a neutral basis. The
whole premise of these chat bots and these llms is
something very different that you are communicating with and with

(01:19:14):
a an entity that is different from although the Google
Search and AI are now merging a lot more, I
mean that look, there is not much to my frustration,
But although there is. I just interview to Todd Ricketts
who's got a an app that he's promoting called free
Spoke that is trying to essentially be bring search back,

(01:19:37):
essentially search without the without you know, monetizing the user
and all of that business and et cetera. So how
much of this is autonomous operation of the actual software
And if you're talking about these chat bots, and there is,
you know, we've also seen, for example, evidence of chatbots

(01:19:58):
because they're trained to be so sycophan, you know, they're
trained to be your sycophant, right that they will kind
of encourage you in an effort to commit suicide even
you know. And so we are seeing something that is
different in kind from a Google Search and if I
am an a but what we're seeing from the AI
companies on the one hand saying this is completely revolutionary

(01:20:22):
technology that is going to revolutionize the world. It's going
to transform the way we do everything. It has a
it has ability to sort of learn on its own
in a way that we've never seen before, learn it
at geometric rate, new, new new, And then I come
around and go, okay, we need liability rules around this
new new new, And then they turn around and go, well, it's.

Speaker 1 (01:20:44):
Just basically a Google search, right, what is it? Guys?
Let me throw another and maybe this is an awkward
somebody reads a Sylvia Plath book and or a pome

(01:21:05):
and decides to kill themselves. Do we hold the publisher accountable? Oh? Absolutely,
absolutely not. You know, you know, but you see where
all right, Like it's like, I mean, I think, right,
you get to these places you're like, well, definitely not this.
If you read a book and you feel like that
book reinforces, or you read a poem and that reinforces
your decision to kill yourself, we're not holding the publisher accountable.

(01:21:29):
You do a Google search how to do it, and
you find different ways of how to kill yourself. Where
I think we've decided we're not holding the search engine responsible.
If you're asking a sentiment, if you're basically suddenly having
a chatbot, which sort of where you're having this conversation
is just a good idea or not right, then you're right,

(01:21:53):
I guess. So it's like, what is the line between
Google search.

Speaker 2 (01:21:58):
And an actual relationship relationship with the search Because in
the real world, if a human being encourages another person
to commit suicide, depending on the extent to which they
do it, we've even seen criminal prosecutions in that context.
So in that circumstance, when part of the theory is

(01:22:19):
that if you're in an actual relationship with the human being,
there's a degree of coercion, control, persuasion, et cetera that
doesn't exist if you're reading a book or if you
are making a reference search in a library or a
Google search online. That there is this element that the

(01:22:40):
relationship itself contains an element of coercion slash persuasion. And
the question is, if you're talking to a chatbot, is
it more like the relationship or more like the Twoe
decimal system. And the whole emphasis of the chatbot is
to be more like the relationship. That's why it is
so revolutionary, and so that's why I don't think they're

(01:23:03):
going to be able to have it both ways, they're
not going to be able to sort of say, we
are revolutionizing your interaction with technology. How but the legal
framework has to treat us like a Google search. Do
you think this is only civil vulnerability, not criminal? Mostly civil?
There are circumstances in which I think criminal liability could attach.

(01:23:25):
Now you know if you had so, for example, if
you had internal safety protocols at.

Speaker 1 (01:23:31):
Flag and section two thirty doesn't apply to this. You
don't believe.

Speaker 2 (01:23:34):
I don't believe section two thirty applies to this that
if you had, because what you're doing is you're actually
holding the company responsible for its own speech, not for
the speech of others that's being hosted on the platform.

Speaker 1 (01:23:48):
Right, yeah, that's right. You guys manufactured the ability for
this speech. This is you.

Speaker 2 (01:23:53):
When that chatbot is speaking, it is open Ai speaking,
and so I can imagine a criminal life ability. Let's
say conversation flags the safety protocols, and open AI officials
watch the sort of plotting unfolding in real time and
then just deliberately.

Speaker 1 (01:24:13):
Choose as they see that this.

Speaker 2 (01:24:17):
Person is okay, chat I'm at a stoplight, I'm five
minutes away.

Speaker 1 (01:24:22):
What should I be doing?

Speaker 2 (01:24:24):
How should I what should my final prep be and
they're like, well.

Speaker 1 (01:24:27):
That's interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:24:28):
Let's see what Chat says to him versus we got
to do something. You know that they're extreme circumstances where
I could imagine criminal liability attaching, but what you might
end up seeing is civil liability and sometime and civil
liability at a large scale. The question, though, is, given
the economics of AI right now and how much money

(01:24:49):
is flowing into AI, how affected would civil judgments be
even in the millions of dollars if we're dealing with
country companies with hundreds of billions of revenue potentially trillions
in market capitalization. So could civil liability actually be a
deterrent as opposed to just something that compensates victims.

Speaker 1 (01:25:12):
I'm just trying to amun what I guess the solution
is the let's at the end of the day, these
large language model creators need to build in some of
these protections, build in alarm essentially alarm systems, right security
systems on stuff like this. What's the most effective way

(01:25:34):
to force this basically probably essentially pass a lot saying
you have to do this or or if you don't
do it, and I guess, or do you do it
at Carrot and Stick and it's like, if you pass
this law, we'll give you some indemnification on some liability
shield up to a certain amount of money. Like you

(01:25:55):
Carrot and Stick this, what would you how would you
propose a solution? Yeah, so a couple things.

Speaker 2 (01:26:02):
One anything I'm saying right now, I say with extreme
humility because this is Look, we're.

Speaker 1 (01:26:07):
Both doing what we do. As I joked with that
in a great conversation with them guests and the other day,
and they were just I'm not I said, we backseat
drive for a living in Go ahead, right, back seat driving.

Speaker 2 (01:26:21):
And especially when we're talking about AI AI, it's such
an emerging technology that you know, you almost feel like, well,
I have reached this definitive conclusion and.

Speaker 1 (01:26:29):
Then I know it's like.

Speaker 2 (01:26:32):
Yeah, whatever, yeah, and so here here's what I would think.
Do the same one two step step one two process
that we saw in a lot of American law, which
is this common law. And when I say common law,
common law is the precedent based law that exists when
I sue somebody over these ancient legal concepts like you know,

(01:26:56):
invasion of privacy or negligence or you know, and so
so what's happened in America is a process where court
cases have yielded precedent, and then legislators have come in
and legislated the precedent. In other words, what I like
about that process is that when you have something that's
worked through a court system, it's been pressure tested in

(01:27:18):
an adversarial environment, and hopefully by the time the case
is all done, ratified or upheld in some way by
the highest court and the jurisdiction, and so you have
an actual legal wrong remedied successfully within the legal system,
and then the legislative process can come in and say, Okay,
this has established a very important principle. We don't want

(01:27:39):
to have people to just file a million lawsuits to
deal with it.

Speaker 1 (01:27:42):
We're going to.

Speaker 2 (01:27:43):
Pass a law that codifies this legal precedent and applies
it in a blanket basis. That I think is a
very nice way of pressure testing and legal reform and
then implementing it. You pressure tested in the adversarial process,
you implement it in the legislative process. Now, the disadvantage there, Chuck,

(01:28:03):
is very obvious. It's there's a lag time. There's a
lag time where there are a lot of a lot of
harm can happen, and a lot of harm can happen
in that lag time. Now, over time, I think you
end up with a better set of regulations down the line.
But how much cost are you willing to bear in
the interim, And that's where the all these prudential judgments

(01:28:24):
come in. But then also you have to realize there's
costs if you start to preemptively regulate in ways that
are ham fisted or uninformed and could have their own,
their own cascading secondary effects. So there's either way you go,
there's trade offs. You have to you have to think through.

Speaker 1 (01:28:45):
Well, it's a we're we're we're a long way away,
and we're probably going to have more harm before before
before we get somewhere. I want to shift slightly to
but I want to stay in your your sort of
legal lane. Talk about the weaponisation fund, and I don't
know how any part of this is legal constitutional, and

(01:29:07):
forget let's let's assume we're going to the money's never happening.
But it's clear that there's an attempt to say, well,
but the but the agreement that essentially provides blanket immunity
for tax audits up through twenty twenty five for the
entire Trump family and Trump organization. How is it that

(01:29:30):
that's a that is something that is in the hands
of the government to be able to do without Congress
ratify it.

Speaker 2 (01:29:39):
Yeah, there's nutchuck. There is nothing about this that is legal.
And there's just nothing about it that's legal. The only
quirk here is and the only complicator is who has
standing to walk into court to challenge it to get
it struck down, Like who is the injured party that
can go into court? The the natural entity for addressing

(01:30:02):
this is Congress. Congress should jump all over this because
this is us.

Speaker 1 (01:30:06):
John Corny and tweeted the other day that maybe Congress
ought to essentially codify the decision to kill this fund.

Speaker 2 (01:30:14):
I totally think they should one hundred percent. I don't
know that they will, but they absolutely totally should. But
this is a really interesting case study and how you
just can't rely on the judiciary to do everything to
save this republic. The judiciary is an entity that.

Speaker 1 (01:30:31):
Has and Scott they basically got bamboozled on this one,
as the judges admitting and now wants to order them back. Well,
and I think the judge's right to order them back.

Speaker 2 (01:30:41):
I don't necessarily love all the retired judges making the
argument for it, but I think the actual decision to
reopen because there was a fraud on the court. And
let me sort of explain that to people. Our legal
system rests on an adversary adversarial relationship. So if I

(01:31:02):
am the CEO of a company, for example, and I
sue the company that i'm the CEO of, it would
not a court would never in a million years permit
me to then hire the lawyers for the company that
I am suing and direct the lawyers for the company
to settle with me in the amount that I want.

(01:31:23):
There would be, you know, there would have to be
a separation where, you know, the corporation has a council
that represents its interests and I, as the CEO, would
have counsel that represented my interests, and you'd have a
real adversarial proceeding.

Speaker 1 (01:31:39):
Here. What you had was nothing of the sort.

Speaker 2 (01:31:42):
You had the president, the chief of the executive branch,
suing the executive branch for conduct that occurred while he
was running the executive branch to be defended by an
agency that he directs and runs.

Speaker 1 (01:31:58):
And so where was the matter should it also matter
that the person that's in charge of that agency that
he directs and runs was once his own personal attorney.

Speaker 2 (01:32:08):
Oh, it's like the cherry on the top. I mean,
it's not the Sunday, but it is the cherry on
the top.

Speaker 1 (01:32:14):
And so there's no adversarial proceeding.

Speaker 2 (01:32:17):
And the judge was obviously very very concerned about that,
and I think the Trump administration was staring a dismissal
of the case it was, or holding it in abeyance
until another administration, and they thought, what can we do,
what can we do to accomplish our goal? And so
they negotiated with themselves to reach this sweetheart deal. And honestly,

(01:32:43):
I would I truly think that Trump cares much more
about the release of liability than he cares for the
slush fund for other people.

Speaker 1 (01:32:51):
Hundred thousand percent. Yeah, and that's why they better not
let that go. It's exactly one hundred. He has been
fighting over these audits for decade, or over a decade.
I believe this goes back. I think his tax returns
from at least twenty eleven, twenty twelve. Right. Oh, it's
a middle of an odd It's it's been a constant.
He's been in this fight since before he ran for

(01:33:12):
president at the first Oh.

Speaker 2 (01:33:13):
Absolutely, and the potential liability, you know again, resilience one
hundreds of millions, so and another thing that's important for
people to realize. And you know, this is sort of
a deep cut in constitutional law. But the pardon power
only extends to federal crimes, so a president could only

(01:33:34):
theoretically parted himself for criminal liability. In other words, you know,
I'm going to preemptively pardon myself for any investigations regarding
to you know, regarding financial enrichment while in office or
something like that. That would apply only to crimes. The
pardon power does not extend to civil offenses. So even

(01:33:55):
if a president has pardoned his staff, pardoned himself, they
can all still be sued and maybe sued for a
giant amount of money if depending on the circumstances. And
so what is happening here is he's starting the process
of trying to use his power to relieve himself from
civil risk in addition to the power he already has

(01:34:17):
to relieve himself of criminal risk. And so what you're
looking at really is a full spectrum assault on the
rule of law to try to take one man, the
President of the United States, and just remove him from
the operation of law every bit as thoroughly as King
George the Third was removed from the operation of law.

Speaker 1 (01:34:37):
You know, in seventeen seventy six, the President meused that
there are other ways to compensate people he believes were
victimized by previous administrations. In the Justice Department, it's super easy.
Let's just file individual lawsuits and then the government and
the Justice Department quickly settles before anybody. What can be

(01:35:01):
done about that? How could Congress mean? Congress? I was
reading this Congress basically in order. There was a time
where Congress always had to have a say before a
settlement payout happened. And then for efficiency purposes, it was like,
all right, you've got a essentially a petty cash fund
that we will allocate blankly, you know whatever. It is

(01:35:21):
one hundred million, two hundred million every fiscal year for
you to settle lawsuits when you have to settle them
without having to come to Congress each time, which in
theory makes a lot of sense. But as always, Donald
Trump has been I've always said the gift of Donald
Trump's two terms is that he's provided an MRI for

(01:35:41):
every loophole that exists that we've got a close. He
is providing the roadmap for reform for the legal community,
for the political community. Probably that should keep us busy
for a couple of decades. There's huge need for reform
here because what Trump. There is a prior to Trump,
and this was there was a practice that became known

(01:36:03):
as sue and settle, where an allied organization or friendly
group would sue the administration. The administration would then reach
a settlement agreement on terms friendly to the allied group
without going through regulatory processes, without going through congressional approval.
And there was already criticism. And one of the things

(01:36:23):
you got to everyone's got to know about the Trump
world is an enormous number of their outrages are related to,
adjacent to reminiscent of previous scandals and previous administrations. And
then the Trump administration just kind of comes along and says,
hold my beer, you think that was bad, let me
show you what we can do next. So there was

(01:36:45):
already a problematic practice of these very sweetheart deals for
ideological allies and settlements, and so I think there's an
obvious legislative remedy which would inject the legislative branch into
approving any settlement with either a financial a direct financial
payout above a certain amount of money, or a settlement

(01:37:06):
that has an economic effect in other words, a regulatory
effect above a certain amount of money, and then that
goes to Congress. I think would be a extremely reasonable
legislative reform. And yeah, it would require Congress to do.

Speaker 2 (01:37:21):
Some work, but you know what, Chuck, they should they
they've got the opportunity to cancel a few cable news
hits and do their real job.

Speaker 1 (01:37:29):
They at some point, you know, it's funny. I've proposed
a class for incoming freshmen working with USC. I've been
teaching a class for them, a d C annex class
for visiting students that do a semester in d C.

(01:37:49):
And they've asked me to come up with a class
for incoming freshmen that may be housed in DC for
the first semester. And I said, how about just an
introduct to the Constitution like a citizens you know. And
it turns out, because it is amazing, we just don't
teach it very well. Number one, I kind of think
members of Congress I'd love to you know, to me,

(01:38:11):
you shouldn't be able to take the oath until you've
read the Federalist papers improved. To me, you've read the
Federalist paper if you're going to be a member of Congress.
I'm not asking every American citizen, but I want every
gosh don member of Congress to read every Federalist paper.
I think that's a minimum requirement that doesn't seem too onerous.
I love that.

Speaker 2 (01:38:28):
I love that if you, if you between the time
of your election and when you're scorn in, you have
to be able to certify you read the Federalist papers.

Speaker 1 (01:38:35):
Yeah, like some sort of certification you have to do. Look,
you got certification to be a real estate person. You
got to get you pass the bar. You know. Look,
you won Congress, great, but in order for you to
get your keys to your office and get your voting guard,
you just have to get certified in the Constitution. You know.
And because it turns out a lot of these guys
and gals are.

Speaker 2 (01:38:54):
Not you know, here's here's a reform I don't know about.
If this is this would have to be voluntary from
the political parties, more so than imposed by legislation because
of constitutional concerns.

Speaker 1 (01:39:06):
But as we're.

Speaker 2 (01:39:09):
Awaiting the next shoe to drop on old Graham Platner,
which I.

Speaker 1 (01:39:14):
Mean feels like it's I mean right, it's one of
those you're like, you can't You're better off betting that
there will be another shoe than not.

Speaker 2 (01:39:21):
Yeah, I don't know of anything that's coming, but it
is like one of the most heavily rumored things happening
right now. And who knows if any there will be
anything more or not. I have no idea. But as
we're watching all this unfold, you know, here's here is
one thing that I think would be interesting is what
are politic where? What role do political parties or should

(01:39:42):
they play? The political party as the institution and candidate
selection or eligibility. And I think a very basic rule
that a political party could implement is to be on
the ballot with R D or R by you you
have to pass a comprehensive back ground check with the
results to be published in the public and so so.

Speaker 1 (01:40:07):
In other words, you can probably do this for federal
law right for federal offices. At a minimum, I would think.

Speaker 2 (01:40:13):
Well, it would be hard because they were political party
is a private entity, and so they can do their
own sort of membership rules and candidate eligibility. But I
would love to see. Look, you don't get to be
on the ballot through this private entity called the Democratic
Party the Republican Party unless you have either a passed
aboutground check or be at the very minimum, endured a

(01:40:33):
background check for which we publish the results. And in
that circumstance, what is this It's basic due diligence. Can
you in the private sector get a job of serious meaning,
with serious meaningful responsibility without going through some form of
a background check anymore?

Speaker 1 (01:40:51):
Yeah? All right, triggered something that you you have because
I'm curious, would you represent me in a case if
I said to you, I think partisan, state funded partisan

(01:41:12):
primaries are a violation of equal protection. That's my theory.
Why isn't Why isn't that the case? And here's my argument.
You're telling me that in order to participate in a
state funded not every state of state funded primaries, all
this stuff, But if you are going to if the
state is funding a partisan primary, how is it that

(01:41:35):
I have to join a private organization in order to
participate in this state funded event? How is that not
a violation of equal protection. That's a very good question.

Speaker 2 (01:41:50):
However, the reality is that so long as state funding
of private organizational opportunity, private organizational activities is undertaken on
a viewpoint neutral basis. In other words, we're going to
fund a primary system that any political party can join.
That's generally the way in which we deal with this

(01:42:12):
with the concept of state.

Speaker 1 (01:42:14):
How many states are funding party primaries, how many states
are funding libertarian party primaries. Yeah, that's a great question.
That's a great question.

Speaker 2 (01:42:22):
Now the answer might be, well, we would, we would,
but we're going to ask that it would be undertaken
in the same day as the you know, one of
the major party primaries, for efficiency reasons or whatever. But
I think the general way in which we deal with
state funding of private activity is that we don't if

(01:42:42):
we put too many conditions on the state funding, it
stops being private activity. And so but at the same time,
there's a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:42:50):
Of elections private activity.

Speaker 2 (01:42:52):
Though the election, the election election private club's nominee is
private activity.

Speaker 1 (01:43:00):
So the Democratic Party is a private club.

Speaker 2 (01:43:03):
Look at it this way, and the state is choosing
essentially to subsidize the election process of this private club
and the decision to subsidize that election process doesn't make
it a public club. It's still a private club. And
so I would think the better argument is, let's just
not fund it. Don't fund it, right, That's the simpler part.

Speaker 1 (01:43:26):
Let parties figure out either fund their own, you know,
do firehouse primaries, which literally were just that, you know,
you'd go to the firehouse to vote, and it would
be sometimes it would be you know, paid for by
the state. Part I mean South Carolina famously in their
presidential primaries have actually only recently has the state giving
them some money. Basically, the state used to say, you

(01:43:47):
can use our system, but you have to pay for it, right,
And that's why the South Carolina presidential I think the
Republican presidential filing fee is astronomical because the party has
to actually pay to implement implement the primary. But so
you think that's not a slam dunk the equal protection

(01:44:07):
argument Hardison on. You know here, I look, I raises
a single eyebrow.

Speaker 2 (01:44:14):
It raises a single you think, you think, to paraphrase
the rock, it raises the people's eyebrow.

Speaker 1 (01:44:21):
But you don't you think it is a If the
state defended it, they would win.

Speaker 2 (01:44:25):
Yeah. Yeah, now here would be an interesting thing if
a state. I mean, here's where I'm going to get
in too. I mean, which is we get Look, partisan
primaries are killing us. Okay, they're killing the political system.

Speaker 1 (01:44:38):
We know this. It's killing the political system. Yes, you
can say, well, the public needs to do a better
job participating in primaries. Yeah, well, who wants to be
a member of these two clubs right now? Yeah? Okay,
Like so I'm not going to lecture the public going.
I don't want to be associated with one of those
two clubs. God bless you. I get it. That's why
the fastest growing party in America is no party. So

(01:45:02):
you know, I'm just looking frankly for a backdoor way
to get rid of partisan primaries.

Speaker 2 (01:45:08):
I would love to get rid of partisan primaries. And
you know what, here's a potential way. A state says
we'll fund a primary. We'll fund an open primary. Right
that is the only primary that we will fund. Maybe
you know, open primary with top two and the top
two go to a runoff regardless of their party, et cetera.

Speaker 1 (01:45:28):
And which which is a system I don't mind.

Speaker 2 (01:45:31):
Or you could even have somebody say we're going to
fund an open primary that's ranked choice right or you know,
and so you could fund a particular kind of primary,
and then if the if the parties want to do
their own little club thing, that'd have to come up
with their own dollars.

Speaker 1 (01:45:46):
And if they want to maybe put a put a denotion,
you know, it's up to the parties if they want
candidates to have their party label next to them, but
that's on that's the party, that's between the parties and
the candidate. Yeah, but I'm I'm with you.

Speaker 2 (01:45:58):
You know, my our mutual friend Jonah Goldberg, he he
has written about like bring back the smoke filled room.

Speaker 1 (01:46:05):
Well, no, he's not wrong about that. I mean, now,
in order to do that, we got to bring money
back out of the you know, it's almost you got
to ban outside money and let the two political parties
be be the financial engines. Right. When the parties were
responsible for money to candidates, they had a hell of
a lot more say over which candidates got money. Right.

Speaker 2 (01:46:26):
Yeah, And people don't realize the way in which campaign
finance reform by d by disempowering political parties, law of
unintended consequences and empowering the super packs and all that
has really.

Speaker 1 (01:46:40):
Messed with the Muricane find goal was a was well
intentioned and absolutely catastrophic to catastrophic. And then are this romanticization.
I get Citizens United is bad, but you don't get
the Citizen United situation without the initial McCain fine Gold passage.

Speaker 2 (01:46:59):
I think you Citizens United was completely rightly decided.

Speaker 1 (01:47:04):
But I've heard that argument.

Speaker 2 (01:47:05):
Yeah, it's a rounding error in importance in my mind
compared to McCain, Fein Goeld, the parties I agree with that.

Speaker 1 (01:47:13):
I want to I want to I want to close
with two topics. One is about the founders. You are
not just a man of faith, but you you made
an early living essentially defending religious freedom for whether it
was on campuses in private organizations. And but it goes

(01:47:35):
back and I want to to me you you're more
scholarly on this than anybody when it comes to religious
freedom and the founding of this country. There's a lot
of very religious people who say, no, no, no, no, Our
founders meant for us to be a religious nation, meant
for us to be a Christian nation, meant for us
to be and they say, you know, just look at

(01:47:58):
the background of all these founders, they were very reallyious people.
And I turn it and I say, well, I actually
have the reverse logic, which is they were incredibly religious
people who decided not to allow for the country to
essentially choose a religion. And that to me is proof that, hey,
you know, this is why we're supposed to essentially be

(01:48:21):
neutral on this, and that the government is neutral on this.
Where do you come down on this? Yeah, that's you're
understand what your forget? Come down what's your understanding of
what you think the founder's intent was. Here's here were
very religious people at the time who again chose not
to insert it. You know, it's it's in the First
Amendment for a reason. So let's let's take this into parts.

(01:48:44):
Who were they?

Speaker 2 (01:48:45):
What did they want to do? So the who were
they part? You said very religious, And for some of
them that's true. I would say that most of them
would be very religion curious or very religiously informed. But
they were also not the kind of people you would
see right beside you in the pew and first Baptist
church every Sunday. They were. Many of them were more

(01:49:07):
say High Church Anglican. Some were often functionally Deist, but
they were very biblically and religiously literate, and some of
them were.

Speaker 1 (01:49:17):
More literate on the Bible then than collectively we are today.

Speaker 2 (01:49:21):
Then many pastors, but many of them were not particularly
devout as we would categorize devout. So this was not
a religious revival. You know that when you're talking about
the American founding. It was a moment of extraordinary philosophical tumult,
a lot of religious argumentation, but this was absolutely not

(01:49:43):
the founding of a Christian nation, and intentionally so. And
one of the things you can do is don't you
don't have to trust me on this. You can go
and read the key founders like Madison and Jefferson, and
I very much appreciate Madison in this very famous memori
real and Remonstrance against religious assessments. This is a seventeen

(01:50:04):
eighty five document, so this is two years before the Constitution,
you know, the seventeen eighty seven Constitution. It's a few
years before the Bill of Rights. But it really does
show what does Madison think this country is about?

Speaker 1 (01:50:19):
And what was that issue? Was going to be.

Speaker 2 (01:50:21):
A money tax, money being used to pay clergy, for example,
and he calls this as an establishment of religion, and
this is this is the language, and I'm going to
read it because the proposed establishment is a departure from
that generous policy which offering an asylum to the persecuted

(01:50:41):
and oppressed of every nation and religion promised a luster
to our country and an accession to the number of
its citizens. So marinate with that for a minute and
think about its import on two huge debates in American life,
immigration and religion.

Speaker 1 (01:51:02):
And here that's wrapped up in the right in one sentence.

Speaker 2 (01:51:06):
And he says, and he says that this offering an
asylum to the persecute and oppressed of every nation and
religion promised a luster to the country. In other words,
it will increase our national greatness. And it says an
accession to the number of its citizens, it will increase
our numbers. And in that way, Madison is rebuking Christian

(01:51:28):
nationalism and sort of this hardcore immigration restrictionism at the
same moment at the same time. And I've become very
fond of that short passage because it's just perfect Twitter length.
There's not many like founding statements that are perfect Twitter length,
but you can just pop that up there and the

(01:51:49):
reaction to it is really curious. Often a lot of
the more nationalists will just the kind of act as
if it never existed. It just it didn't exist. And
Jefferson has quotes that are even you know, more explicit
naming you know, Muslims and Hindus for example, as people
welcome in this country.

Speaker 1 (01:52:07):
And so, yeah, anybody ever single out atheists or no.

Speaker 2 (01:52:12):
That was that was a much more minority category back then,
much much more minority.

Speaker 1 (01:52:17):
But the.

Speaker 2 (01:52:19):
And so, you know, these are not hard questions to answer,
it's just that people don't like the answer when they
find it.

Speaker 1 (01:52:26):
Out right, I want to close with and I've I've
sort of challenged Sarah Esk around this too, and so,
and which is I think that it's pretty clear that
the Department of Justice should not be in the executive
branch and or we have you know that it has

(01:52:48):
to be something more akin to the Federal Reserve in
some forms. So maybe it does technically stay in the
branch or something. But look, you know, we were able
to we were able to pass a law about nepotism
them after the Kennedy Kennedy right attorney general. As I
said earlier, Donald Trump has given US provided US an
MRI for all the different loopholes. We had no idea

(01:53:09):
like a personal attorney can end up attorney general. Now, look,
I do think we're going to see a Republican Senate
summarily reject Todd Blanche. I just I you know, I
don't see there's not forty five votes for him, let
alone fifty. But we'll see, right, we'll see if at
one point, is this the President trying to shove both

(01:53:32):
Bill Poulti and Todd Blanche and say, you know, like
with Matt Gate when he did Matt Gates and Pete
hagg Seth and said, okay, we'll sacrifice Gates as long
as you give us heg Seth type of business. But
it seems to me, no matter what that we have
unfortunately politicized the rule of law. And that isn't something
that's just going to somehow go back. Everybody's going to say, oh,

(01:53:55):
it's no longer politicized now that Trump and Blanche are gone, right,
just like plenty of people on the right that think
that Biden and Garland were somehow weaponizing. But the point
is the Department of Justice is lost credibily with a
large chunk of the country, and I think we're going
to have to figure out a way to it cannot
be this closely tied to a president. What do we do?

(01:54:18):
I mean, I'd like a federal reserve type of system,
where it's different entities, different term links. Maybe the attorney
general is always appointed by the opposite party, you know,
or something. You know. It seems to me we have
to change this because this will turn into a massive
crisis if we just don't believe the Justice Department anymore.

(01:54:40):
So I'm going to be a little radical, chuck.

Speaker 2 (01:54:42):
So I think that the actual issue here is that
the dependence and the sort of the the the ineffectiveness,
the corruption of the Department Justice is downstream from a
bigger issue, which is unitary executive theory. Now, unitary executive

(01:55:03):
theory is rooted in a problem that the anti federalists
identified with the seventeen eighty seven Constitution. And it's a
problem that see I now see what their argument was,
and I now see what the problem is, and it
is this George Clinton, who was the governor of New York,

(01:55:23):
was writing under the pen named Cato, and he was
an anti federalist, and he wrote a paper where he said,
the first sentence of Article two of the Constitution is
vague and inexplicit. And because it is vague and inexplicit,
those were his words, A corrupt, a partisan, a corrupt

(01:55:45):
president can pour his power and ambition into that ambiguity.

Speaker 1 (01:55:50):
What is vague inexplicit?

Speaker 2 (01:55:52):
Here's what the sentence is, that the executive power shall
be vested in a president of the United States. Now
that raises the next question, what is the executive power? Okay,
I think the best answer to that question is that
the founders and envision the.

Speaker 1 (01:56:12):
Executive power is the is It is this and only this.
It is the.

Speaker 2 (01:56:17):
Power to execute laws passed by Congress. That's the executive power.
But nobody says that explicitly, and it's not said explicitly,
So then this becomes a question, Well, wait a minute.
The executive power because it is not so limited to
only executing the laws passed by Congress.

Speaker 1 (01:56:35):
It's its own thing.

Speaker 2 (01:56:37):
And what unitary executive says is that the executive power
is the power to control the executive branch. That core
to it is the power to control the executive branch.
That is, if the executive power means anything that's what
it means, and I suggest that we should actually engage
once we get out of this miserable period of American life.

(01:57:00):
The things that we've seen is historically when we get
out of very dark periods, there's a period of reform
where we try to make sure.

Speaker 1 (01:57:07):
That's sort of how I try to be optimistic. I'm like, look,
it's going to be we probably have We're probably going
to need one more bad partisan president period before we
get to the enough is enough, the Samuel L. Jackson
snakes on a plane moment where we're just like, you
get them off the goddamn plane, right exactly. Yeah, we're
probably so, I'm hoping for mid thirties for this reform movement.

Speaker 2 (01:57:29):
I would love to And here is one of my ideas,
change that sentence in the Constitution to be something much
more limiting of the president and much more magnifying of
the power of Congress, to say that the power to
execute the laws shall reside in a president of the
United States. So then all of a sudden, if Congress says,

(01:57:50):
let's let me make it concrete. The difference if Congress
right now said the the Attorney General shall answer also
to or prosecution decisions by political of political entities shall
be approved by and overseen by a House committee or
what you name it.

Speaker 1 (01:58:10):
I mean, I'm just making stuff up.

Speaker 2 (01:58:11):
Or sure may regulated by bipartisan Congressional board or something
like that.

Speaker 1 (01:58:17):
That would be struck down.

Speaker 2 (01:58:18):
Instantly, because if that sentence means anything, it means the
president controls the executive branch, not Congress. Congress doesn't have
the power to control the executive branch. But if the
power of the president is to execute the laws passed
by Congress, then that flips the dynamic on its head,

(01:58:38):
and it says that Congress can in fact regulate the
executive branch, and it's the president's obligation to comply and
ensure and guarantee the execution of that regulation. And so
what you do is you see that that sentence essentially
puts Congress back in the driver's seat.

Speaker 1 (01:58:57):
And one thing that.

Speaker 2 (01:58:59):
I think not enough Americans appreciate is this was not
supposed to be actually coequal branches of government, much less
the executive supreme as it is now.

Speaker 1 (01:59:10):
Really, you've made a list of one, two, three, By
the way, yeah, have you ever made the most important thing.

Speaker 2 (01:59:16):
To exactly no that's a great way of saying it.
But you think about it for half a second. Congress,
right now, you under the Article one, you can't spend
a dime, and let's been appropriate by Congress, and Congress
has the power to fire the president and to fire
the Supreme Court. I don't know about you, Chuck, but
I call the person who has the power to fire

(01:59:37):
me boss.

Speaker 1 (01:59:38):
Right. Actually I used to say, who signs my expense report? Yeah? Exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:59:45):
So we need the boss to be the boss again.
And how do you make the boss be the boss? Well,
one of the ways you do it is you remove
from the under boss the president the capacity, the power,
the ability to claw to claw.

Speaker 1 (02:00:00):
To the top. Short of that, though, I mean, would
you change the would you move the Department of Justice
further away from from the presidency in some form? Just

(02:00:22):
when I say further away like the Federal Reserve? Like
in theory, what the you know, the an fbid doesn't count,
but federal reserve is probably the best example.

Speaker 2 (02:00:30):
Yeah, I would be open to interesting two interesting ideas
on that front. Although it would be very hard to
make it like the Federal Reserve without actual constitutional reform,
because the Federal Reserve is sort of a legacy institution
that you know, dates back to god gosh, was it
second banking.

Speaker 1 (02:00:47):
The United States?

Speaker 2 (02:00:47):
First banking United States and has a very very unique
history that you cannot replicate just by a legislative reform.
If you're going to do if you're going to pull
the DOJ essentially out of the executive branch to some degree,
I think that would probably require some constitutional reform, although
I'd be super interested in your smart legal listeners. Yeah,

(02:01:11):
who you know had an alternative idea. You know, it's interesting.

Speaker 1 (02:01:15):
You know, Japan has something interesting in their parliament where
they where the opposition just has a lot more potential
oversight authority and it's sort of accepted it just you know,
there's little things I'd like to see and some things
you don't need a constitutional amendment. I mean, you know,
to me, the Oversight Committee in Congress. You know, I

(02:01:36):
could argue, shouldn't the Oversight Committee always be the opposite
party of whoever's got power like in some ways in
order to give it credibility? And if we always operated
that way, or you do it, or it's a that,
or it's always equally bipartisan, like the Ethics Committee it
seems like there's certain things we could do that would
sort of at least attempt to restore the old you know,

(02:01:59):
essentially use is your north star trust but verify.

Speaker 2 (02:02:02):
Yeah, and you know other things that would be clearly constitutional,
such as funding only aspects of the DOJ's work and
defunding those aspects that you find corrupt until there's reform.

Speaker 1 (02:02:13):
So using that power of the purse.

Speaker 2 (02:02:15):
But the problem that we have right now, you know, Chuck,
I mean, gosh, you know this is better than anybody.
Congress is a font of like messaging legislation where you know,
a Congressman will file a bill and like this is
my stand and everybody knows it has no chance.

Speaker 1 (02:02:34):
I mean, Congress, you know, we talk about looking for
a president that can sort of rise above partisans. We
really need a Speaker of the House that cares more
about reforming the institution than than exact, you know, than
essentially executing whatever partisan promises the party made in order
to grab power.

Speaker 2 (02:02:52):
Can you imagine tip O freaking Neil ever agreeing to
be so subordinate to anybody as.

Speaker 1 (02:03:03):
I feel that way about Jim Wright. I don't think
he felt like he would have done that and I don't.
You know, we never had Newt with a Republican president,
so we don't know. But I don't I mean the
new you and I both know. I don't think would
have just felt like he had to always count cow
to the to the president of his own So we
don't know. But i'd like to think you're right about Newt.

Speaker 2 (02:03:25):
I think he would have It would have required punishing
him to get him to cow Tew.

Speaker 1 (02:03:29):
I think he would write.

Speaker 2 (02:03:30):
He would have had to have suffered the consequences because
he wouldn't voluntary voluntarily as seed power, you know.

Speaker 1 (02:03:36):
And I think Pelosi, you know, she's probably a little
more pliant than Tip of her was, but she was
you know, she wasn't easily pushed around by Obama or Biden.
But still it does feel as if at the end
of the day, she still chose to be a speaker
for the Democratic Party, not a speaker to say, hey,

(02:03:59):
how do we for that House of Representatives? And we really,
we really haven't had one of those, probably arguably since Tim.

Speaker 2 (02:04:06):
Yeah, I would say Tip would be the last one.
And the interesting thing about Tip is he was overseeing
a house which he always had a majority with the
d by his name, but not always a working majority
and not iralogically right, Yeah, Reagan could command a majority
all the time.

Speaker 1 (02:04:24):
And in fact, it gets to actually burst one of
those myths that I always like to say. I said,
you know, Reagan and Tip weren't you know, it didn't
work together because they loved hanging out with each other
and telling bs stories. They both it was necessary the congression.
Conservative Congressional Democrats were part of Reagan's base, and the
Conservative Congressional Democrats kept Tip in the speakership, and so

(02:04:46):
Tip had to make sure to keep those guys happy.
Reagan had to work with you know, Tip, because Tip
was keeping those guys happy. Right. It was sort of
you know it is it goes to the you know,
Milton Friedman example. It's a it's an incentive system that
forced them to do good things together because they because
that's what the incentive system created, not because they wanted to.

Speaker 2 (02:05:08):
Well, you know, it's very interesting because in some ways
in the Reagan era and around sort of also at
the beginning of the Clinton era and other eras in
American history, we had a two party system that was
also simultaneously almost like a four party system because you
had a Democratic coalition that included Southern Democrats who were
quite culturally conservative and sort of Midwestern populist Democrats. You

(02:05:32):
had north the Eastern Liberal Republicans and sort of the
Western libertarian Republicans. These were very different factions, and you
could play one off against the other. You could do
cross partisan coalitions. And then you know, now we do
not have coalition parties nearly to the extent that we
did before.

Speaker 1 (02:05:51):
And we got rid of regionalism though in beer and
in flavors. Right, we've nationalized everything. I mean, I missed
regionalism on that. We need more of it. Let me
get you out of here on this. The the m
are You are a huge NBA fan. Are you as
equally into college basketball? I was?

Speaker 2 (02:06:11):
I was, in fact, I used to be principally into
college basketball.

Speaker 1 (02:06:14):
I grew up in Kentucky, of course.

Speaker 2 (02:06:17):
But the NIL era, one and done's is just it's
just too much for.

Speaker 1 (02:06:21):
But okay, but so I'm a I'm an nil optimist
in disrespect for college college basketball in particular. But I
see this now in football, which is the one and
done era sucked. Yeah, you know what's solving the one
and done era? And idea that these guys can make
a decent living for four years in college before like

(02:06:42):
especially you know, take Ty Simpson who was drafted in
the first round, first round for the Rams. He could
have made more money next year being the starter for
the University of Miami yep than he is first round
draft pick. You know, it used to be these guys
left early because of the money. And yeah, I would argue,

(02:07:03):
we're seeing the quality of college basketball has improved dramatically
in the last four years, and I credit and I
l no.

Speaker 2 (02:07:12):
Okay, so I'm going to I'm going to agree with you.
But with this, we still have one and done in
a different form the transfer portal. True, this is something
that's frustrating me, Like your team's overturn, like you turn over.

Speaker 1 (02:07:25):
You're a good libertarian, how would you handle this? Right,
You've got a legal I mean, freedom of movement is
something that labor law believes it well. At the same time,
so our contracts.

Speaker 2 (02:07:38):
So in other words, you're going to get in an
il deal, but you got to enter into a three
year contract. Well, I think that's fairy and I so
what I would like to see is I'm all in
favor of an il in the sense that I like
to see players compensated when they're the drivers of the revenue.

Speaker 1 (02:07:55):
Absolutely compensate them. I also want to see.

Speaker 2 (02:07:58):
If you're going to compensate them, you're going to have
to professionalize the sport, and that means longer term contracts.
That means limits on player movement, which is part of
what every professional league does. And so if you have
it where it's both a combination of you get paid
and you're a free agent every single year, what you've

(02:08:19):
created is just permittent instability. And I think you're going
to see you know, you've seen legislation, you know, the
Cruise Bill, which is you're going to get one transfer
and then after that you'd have to sit out a year.

Speaker 1 (02:08:32):
I hate the idea that we would.

Speaker 2 (02:08:34):
Need federal legislation to implement what would be should be
a common sense.

Speaker 1 (02:08:38):
We're not going to get federal legislation. I think we're
going to get collective bargaining before we ever get federal legislation,
and we might do Honestly, maybe this is better to
do let collective bargaining because and then see what happens.

Speaker 2 (02:08:54):
Yeah, that might be where this ends up, because I
do think we're unsustainable with the new version of one
and done.

Speaker 1 (02:09:02):
All right, let me get you out of here. On
the court thing. Can we solve the regular season best
NBA sucks versus the playoff NBA's fantastic problem not at
eighty two games. So that's what you would do, is
reduce You can make it better, like I do.

Speaker 2 (02:09:21):
Think the new anti tanking rule is going to help.
You can make it better. But I think I don't
hate the NBA Cup like I hate.

Speaker 1 (02:09:30):
I liked it. I've enjoyed it. I'm and they've done.
They've gotten me to watch the NBA earlier than I
normally have as a sports fan. I'm a football guy first,
and November and December I sort of, you know, gloss
over the NBA. It's early, you know, I'll tune in
starting in January and February. But NBA Cup has brought me.
I mean, it has succeeded in what you know, Adam

(02:09:53):
Silber wanted to have happened. So that's an improvement. What
else would you do?

Speaker 2 (02:09:57):
Yeah, So I think the younger NBA fan is not
a pre shape that the intensity of the regular season
is ramped up considerably, and with that injuries, which, by the.

Speaker 1 (02:10:06):
Way, I read an old Rick Berry memoir that was
written in seventy two. He was complaining about the eighty
two game season then and he was twenty seven years old. Okay, Like,
these guys have been complaining about it for years and
talking about the play and talking about how much the
extra games making the postseason really wore them down and
all of this stuff. So ironically, this isn't a new thing. Yeah,

(02:10:28):
you know, it really is something that they've NBA players
have been complaining about going back to the sixties and
seventies totally.

Speaker 2 (02:10:35):
But if you watch the if you could find tape
of an eighties or early nineties regular season game, yeah,
you would be shocked at how little effort there is
compared to a current regular season game. And it was
three quarters of pickup basketball followed by a pretty intense
fourth quarter.

Speaker 1 (02:10:53):
And only the Lakers Celtics matchups in the regular season
had intensity to them, right, those are the only two
ones that ever had intensity because they met twice a
year in the regular season and it always felt like
a oh magic at Bird Finals preview, let's go up.

Speaker 2 (02:11:05):
Yeah, you know, it was like a gentleman's agreement between
the teams. We're going to play pick up hoops. It's
going to be like an exhibition, and then we're gonna
we'll bear down in the fourth quarter and then playoff.

Speaker 1 (02:11:14):
Basketball is fantastic.

Speaker 2 (02:11:16):
I just that I tell you that the current game
is so fast. There's a lot of interesting science now
that the way in which the game is played with
the Euros step the step back three, it places stress
on the joints in a way that the old form
of older forms of basketball didn't. So I I think
they should really think about a shorter season.

Speaker 1 (02:11:39):
Well, look, it's either shorter season or larger rosters, you know.
I look what NHL does you know no player ever
plays more than eighteen minutes of a sixty minute game. True, okay,
I mean it's constant, you know. And I wonder if
you know, I've thought about this with the NFL. You
want to do twenty game season, fine, nobody can play
more than sixteen games. And then part of the strategy

(02:12:02):
is deciding when do you sit you know, you know
you have to sit a starter four games, which four
games do you pick? Like? It actually adds some strategy
to things. I love that idea that you know, It's interesting, right,
Imagine you have you know, Caleb Williams. You're a Chicago
guy now, right, so you're going to be watching these
Bears a lot. You have your twenty game season that

(02:12:23):
they're going to implement. But Caleb Williams can only play
sixteen you know? Do you gamble and assume you're going
to be in the playoffs and you just sort of
lack it, you know? Or do you know, do you
decide you're going to take the Tennessee Titans game that
week and buy week it and use the backup, right?
You know?

Speaker 2 (02:12:38):
Oh, Chuck, that idea is so brilliant. It is also
quite self interested because it's a full employment act for
podcasters because think about the arguments, yes, four odd quarterbacks
running backs, the four game sample versus the sixteen game,
oh man, endless content.

Speaker 1 (02:12:57):
And more jobs. You know, you increase the foster size,
you know, to go to you know, instead of expanding
the league like in the NBA, instead of instead of
you know, adding more teams, go to twenty five rosters
and have the up and down, have the flexibility, and
nobody can play more than sixty games, you know in
a season, and you just and you make that the

(02:13:18):
standard across the board, and then it's strategy a little
bit intriguing. Intriguing. Yeah, favorite French. Always fun to talk
with you. That's great to chat Chuck, it's a all right,

(02:13:44):
it is toodcast time machine time. So where are we going? Well,
we're going to go back to the mid nineteen fifties.
We're actually going to go to June ninth, nineteen fifty four.
I just it's actually a phrase I repeated as I
told you earlier in this broadcast on the podcast on Thursday,

(02:14:08):
have you no sense of decency? I think I just
said have you no decency? Sir? When it came across
to the president's treatment of women reporters in particular, but
Caitlin Collins specifically. But it's that phrase, have you no
sense of decency? When Americans think about Joseph McCarthy, they

(02:14:29):
usually remember that one sentence. That's the sentence, right, have
you no sense of decency? Sir? At long last? Have
you left no sense of decency? It's one of the
most famous lines in American political history, and it's certainly
the most famous line ever uttered in congressional testimony, probably
right up there along with you have a cancer. There's
a cancer on the presidency. The no sense of decency, Sir,

(02:14:53):
came during the Army McCarthy hearings on June ninth, nineteen
fifty four, when Army Attorney Joseph walch I finally confronted
the Wisconsin Senator after one accusation too many. Now, the
way we remember this story today is a bit simple.
McCarthy was a bully, well stood up to him. America
watched McCarthy fell the end. It's a good story. The

(02:15:16):
problem is it's not quite how it all happened. In fact,
I think we remember the Army McCarthy hearings backward. The
famous line didn't end McCarthyism. Joseph McCarthy wasn't brought down
because Americans suddenly stopped fearing communism. And the real story
isn't primarily about ideology. It's about media. I think it's

(02:15:39):
an undertold part of the McCarthy story. It's about attention,
and it's about how one politician tell me where you've
heard this one before. It's about how one politician learned
to manipulate the fastest news cycle America had ever seen,
and how eventually millions of Americans got a long, long

(02:16:00):
enough look at McCarthy to then make up their own minds.
And that's the part of the story worth revisiting seventy
years later, because to understand McCarthy, you have to start
with the myth itself. The myth is that McCarthy created
the Red scare. He did not. By the time McCarthy
emerged as a national figure in nineteen fifty, Americans had

(02:16:23):
already plenty of reasons to be worried about the Reds.
The Soviet Union had exploded its own atomic bomb right
the nuclear arms race was on. China had fallen to
Maus communists. It's one big giant country going communists. The
alger His case dominated the headlines. The Rosenberg investigation was underway.

(02:16:46):
The Korean War was about to erupt. The Cold War
was not some distant geopolitical abstraction. Millions of Americans in
nineteen forty nine and nineteen fifty genuinely believed this country
faced a growing threat. And we had just had two
wars in thirty years, so the likelihood of war seemed high,

(02:17:09):
not low. And that's all very important because it helps
explain why McCarthy was so effective, As in his sphere mongery.
The soil was fertile. He wasn't inventing the fear, he
was writing it. He wasn't creating a wave, he was
surfing it, and he did it with a skill that

(02:17:34):
was surprisingly modern and very innovative at the time. Today
we talked constantly about social media and cable news, podcasts,
the attention economy. But every era has its own version
of a fast moving information environment. And in nineteen fifty,
especially after the war, think about this. If you have

(02:17:56):
any memory of nine to eleven, in the post nine
to eleven, remember it. It basically created the always on
news channel, right the newstickers Suddenly we didn't have newstickers
until then, and we have these newstickers constantly going all
the time. And I know we used to have newstickers
like in the Times Square in like the forties and fifties.
But the point was being right after World War Two,
we became news junkies, and so yes, there was a

(02:18:20):
faster news cycle than ever. Now us looking back on
it, it looks like a slow news cycle, but to Americans
living then, this was speeding up. This was speed. So
that's why it's important to understand that every era has
its own version of what is a fast moving information environment,
and in nineteen fifties. In nineteen fifty this was speeding
up dramatically for that era. There were morning papers, after

(02:18:43):
noon papers, national wire services, hourly updates on radio, a
growing television audience. Okay, all of this was new, and
it was speeding up the information wars. Politicians themselves for
the first time, multiple chances every day to shape the conversation.

(02:19:04):
And most of McCarthy's colleagues were still operating in a
much older political news cycle. But McCarthy wasn't. He understood
headlines and he rode these afternoon to morning to afternoon
to morning cycles so cynically and well. He understood the
deadlines that those wire reporters were on, and most importantly,

(02:19:25):
he understood creating anticipation. You won't believe the names. You
won't believe it right. A favorite tactic was a hint
that a major revelation was coming tomorrow or next week
or soon. Reporters would rush to father stories. Wire services

(02:19:45):
would move the news nationally. Hey we're just covering Editors
would splash it across front pages. It was urgent. People
would buy papers. Then the promised, bombshell would arrive and
often failed to match. The build up would change, the
numbers would change, the evidence would be a lot thinner
than advertised. It's und familiar, but McCarthy always had an explanation.

(02:20:11):
His investigation had frightened people, the guilty parties went underground,
the bureaucracy was hiding the information via those bureaucrats, and
now there was another day's worth of headlines. And he
understood something that remains true in politics today. The accusation
usually gets more attention than the repbubbal. The promise of

(02:20:34):
a revelation often gets more attention than the revelation itself.
I'm going to go find the real killers. Joseph McCarthy
didn't invent the politics of attention, but he may have
been one of the first modern politicians to truly master it.
And yes, it's amazing that Joseph McCarthy had Roy Cone

(02:20:56):
working for him, and Roy Cone ended up the most
important mentor to Donald John Trump. But I digress. So
what you also need to understand is the nineteen to
fifty election cycle ended up becoming a very important one,
probably the one of the five most important midterms in
American political history, because today we tend to remember McCarthy

(02:21:20):
as the loan figure of the Red Scare Senators, but
he was part of something much larger. The nineteen fifty
cycle became, in many ways a national referendum on anti communism.
Richard Nixon sentate race against Helen Kagen Douglass in California,
Claude Pepper's defeat, and the Democratic primary in Florida to
George Smathers. So it didn't matter if it was general

(02:21:40):
elections like the one in California or primaries like the
one in Florida. The Communism was the wedge, and it
wasn't are you a communist? Are you going to be
tough enough on the communists? Right races across the country
where candidates discovered that accusing an opponent of being soft
on communism could be devastating, And that is it was
important that the charge was always they were soft on communism,

(02:22:03):
not that they were a communist, because more often it
was that they didn't they couldn't be trusted to confront
the Communism, that they were naive, that they were weak,
insufficiently vigilant. McCarthy didn't create that atmosphere. He just became
its most recognizable spokesperson, right, and that's why it became
his era. It's the celebrity, he's the headline machine, he's

(02:22:24):
the pied piper. But it brings me to the second myth,
and it's the myth that McCarthyism somehow ended in June
of nineteen fifty four at those hearings where mister McCarthy
was asked to be at any decency because it didn't.
Anti Communism, in fact, remained one of the most dominant
forces in American politics for decades after McCarthy. The Soviet
Union didn't disappear. The Cold War didn't end. Containment remained

(02:22:48):
American policy. Defense spending remained high and went higher. Both
parties remained fiercely anti Communists would purge itself of any
time anybody at all dabbled closely to it. Change wasn't
the fear. What changed was McCarthy's credibility. The public gradually
stopped believing that Joseph McCarthy was the best interpreter of
this fear. So if you ask Americans what brought down mcarthy,

(02:23:11):
ELO's usually hear one of two answers, Edward R. Murrow
or Joseph Welch. Now Murrow's famous see It Now broadcast
in March nineteen fifty four and Welch's famous con confrontation
in June. They both mattered, but neither was sufficient. The
country's verdict wasn't delivered in a single evening or a
single sentence. It accumulated, and the Army McCarthy hearings became

(02:23:37):
the place where that accumulation became visible. And what's fascinating,
isn't that television wasn't really responsible for McCarthy's rise. McCarthy
was primarily a creature of these post World War two
expansion and seriousness of newspapers, wire services, and radio. Television
served a different purpose. Then television exposed him. For years,

(02:24:00):
Americans mostly encountered McCarthy through excerpts, headlines, quote summaries the
army hearings for something that we had never seen before.
Now people could watch the entire performance, hear the detail,
and here's a detail that often gets forgotten. The major
networks weren't exactly eager to carry these hearings. CBS and

(02:24:20):
NBC largely protected their daytime schedules, but there was one
network that embraced the hearings more aggressively. It was ABC
then they were the struggling third place network. The upstart
network carried extensive coverage called there was a Dumont network
that also carried coverage. But one of the most consequential

(02:24:40):
political broadcasts in American history wasn't the result of some
grand civic decision by television executives. It was. It sort
of happened, partly as an accident of economics. The smaller
networks had less to lose, so they aired more of it.
And what americans saw it did matter because the public
wasn't just hearing acquations anymore. They watched the whole process.

(02:25:02):
They'd see McCarthy's interruptions, they'd see his insinuations, they'd see
his bullying, the constant search for advantage. McCarthy may have
mastered the headline in a press scrum that most Americans
didn't see. The raw footage of the army hearings forced
Americans to actually watch the whole movie and the process
take place. So why was McCarthy, by the way, fighting

(02:25:25):
the army in the first place. This is a fun
little side story. The dispute centered on guess who Roy
Cone McCarthy's then Chief Council and David Shine, a wealthy
friend and aid. When Shine was drafted into the army,
McCarthy's team allegedly sought special treatment on his behalf. The
army pushed back. Accusations followed. The army accused McCarthy, McCarthy
accused the Army. So it started as a personnel dispute

(02:25:48):
over somebody. Roy Cone cared a lot about and mister
Shine exploded into a national confrontation. And politically, McCarthy had
made a huge mistake because for years he had targeted
institutions and individuals that struggled to defend themselves. He was
really good at picking his targets career bureaucrats who didn't
quite know how to defend themselves, state department officials, academics, diplomats.

(02:26:12):
Now he was fighting the United States Army, an institution
that was trusted by millions of Americans. We had just
successfully won a World war. It was a prestigious institution
of many Americans resources, credibility, and so McCarthy, for the
first time, picked a fight with somebody who could fight back.
Even President Eisenhower played a role. Privately, Eisenhower despised McCarthy,

(02:26:36):
but he rarely attacked him directly, and it frustrated actually
many critics at the time that Eisenhower wasn't more vocal.
Eisenhower believed confronting McCarthy haad On would have strength, only
strengthened him. This sort of was This was Obama's view
of Trump back in the day, and why he didn't
go after Trump very often. Instead, Eisenhower worked quietly, allowing
institutions to isolate McCarthy, supporting the army, letting the Senate

(02:27:00):
gradually move against him. It's one reason the story doesn't
fit neatly into the popular version. There wasn't one hero,
there wasn't one decisive moment. There were multiple institutions moving
at different speeds, gradually reaching the same conclusion. So that
brings us to June ninth, nineteen fifty four, the moment

(02:27:23):
everyone remembers they're in the hearings. McCarthy turned his attention
to a young lawyer named Fred Fisher. Fisher had briefly
belonged to the National Lawyer's Guild while in law school.
McCarthy raised it as another point of suspicion, another insinuation,
another attempt to create guilt by association. Joseph Welch had

(02:27:43):
finally had enough. He looked at McCarthy and he defended Fisher,
and then he delivered the line that entered American history.
Have you no decency? Sir? Excuse me? Have you no
sense of decency? Sir? A long last, have you left
no sense of decency? The room fell silent, the audience applauded,

(02:28:05):
and the moment became legendary. But the line's power wasn't
that it revealed something new. It didn't expose a hidden fact.
It didn't suddenly change public opinion. Its power came from
perhaps something else. It gave words to a conclusion millions
of Americans were already reaching on their own. Welch wasn't

(02:28:30):
creating the verdict. He was simply articulating it. History is
a way of compressing these stories one sentence, one hearing,
one hero, and one turning point. Right. It's easy to
understand it that way, and these Joseph Welch was incredibly important,
and it was a huge moment, right, But you need
moments to create momentum that get institutions to do what

(02:28:52):
they should have done in the first place. The verdict
on Joseph McCarthy is one of those that accumulated. Millions
of Themmericans watched. Eventually, parts of the press that had
helped amplify McCarthy began challenging him. So the Army pushed back,
Then the Senate pushed back. Then even members of McCarthy's
own party began to push back. The line became a symbol.

(02:29:16):
And that might be the real lesson of these hearings,
not that one person defeated McCarthy, but that eventually an
entire system decided to stop accommodating him. What defeated McCarthy
wasn't simply exposure, It was shared exposure. It was millions
of Americans watching the same man, the same hearings, the

(02:29:37):
same behavior, day after day after day. I wonder if
we'd just had cameras up twenty four to seven in
the Oval Office and let all Americans observe the behavior
on their own, without a filter, for the conclusion that
people would take it. That said, back then, there was

(02:29:58):
still a common audience. We had a common experience, and
there was a common narrator essentially narrator. That didn't mean
everyone agreed, but they were watching the same thing. And
that made a national verdict possible. The harder question is
whether the conditions that made that possible still exist today.
The shared audience, the common set of facts, the institutions

(02:30:20):
willing to absorb the political cost of pushing back. I
just told you about media companies that refused to do that.
None of those things are guaranteed, as we in the
that either had worked in the legacy media space or
do work in the legacy media space are finding out
in real time. It wasn't the end of anti communism,

(02:30:42):
but it wasn't the end of fear. It was the
end of one man's ability to monopolize both. History remembers
the moment, but the moment only mattered because of everything
that came before it and the collective reaction we all
had after it. So there's a history lesson for the week.

(02:31:05):
Ask Chuck. All right, let's do a little ask Chuck.
I know this thing's getting long, so I'll just do
four questions today. You know, four questions. That's something that
we have a dinner once a year where four questions
matter in my household. But I digress. First question comes

(02:31:26):
with Kevin b in Nashville, and you're right, Hey, Thanks
for the podcast. Always appreciate your perspective. Two part question here,
when do you think Congress will more actively hold cabinet
officials accountable and what mechanism actually exists to enforce that?
Looking ahead, is there any realistic way to establish clearer
qualification standards for cabinet and other political appointees. Kevin B.
Nashal Tennessee. Look, I mean, this is why I brought

(02:31:46):
up the Bill Poulty attempt to point him acting, and
that's actually a very important This is why you just
gave me another reason why we need to get the
courts to litigate this. Because Congress did write in a
very very specific set of qualifications for d and I.
Normally there is not the same set, but it was

(02:32:07):
a very specific set of qualifications. If the courts say
that that supersedes the president's authority to just appoint anybody,
you know, as far as acting, then I would say, well, actually,
Congress then can if they write it into the job
description of how they will And I do think Congress

(02:32:29):
because they have the power of the purse, and they
can connect the job essentially the job itself, to their
decision to fund it. Right, they can say funding is
only you know, funding automatically ceases to go to this
agency if the person does not meet you know, these
minimum standards. So I think the answer is yes. Now,

(02:32:52):
I'd like to see clarification with this Pulty and this
Pulty moment actually provides an opportunity to test the But
I'm pretty confident that as long as you tied it
to funding and the funding was only triggered based on
qualifications and there's and again clear power of the purse
does belong to Congress, I think that yes, you could

(02:33:14):
do that. Now. As for as for holding that you know,
it's for holding the cabinet officials. I mean, I think
that you're going to see, you know, these are the
subpoenas that I would do. Look, I think that I
think it's important to put everything Trump did on the record,

(02:33:38):
and I think it's important for future administrations. It's important
because I think there's two ways to look at the
Trump presidency, right, and I think that this is where
there is a divide inside the Democrats, and certainly a
divide in amongst the group of people that are trying
to resist Trump, those that believe there's an emergency at
the moment that has to be dealt with at the moment,

(02:34:00):
and you kind of have to throw away some guardrails
if you're going to deal with the emergency at the moment, right,
And that's how people rationalize their way to support people
that probably are unqualified for office, and why you end
up supporting gerrymandering even though you spent ten years being
against gerrymandering. But if you believe the threat is so
existential and so urgent that the republic, you know, it's

(02:34:24):
sort of it's literally a Sophie's choice type of situation.
I at least understand that behavior. It doesn't mean I
agree with it, and doesn't mean I believe the situation
wherein is quite the same. I look at the situation
where Donald Trump has provided he has been an MRI
to every loophole that could destroy this republic via the

(02:34:45):
executive branch. And we've got a lot of work to
fix it. And in order to understand what you need
to do to fix it, you need to chronicle everything,
and you need to do it sort of and so
particularly the pay to play and the transactional nature of
how so many of these apartments basically wherein they pay
to play functionary position that to me would be what

(02:35:06):
I would be from center on. I mean, what's happening here,
I think is the is the grift and plain sight.
This is the straight up stuff that needs to be
dealt with asap. And look, cabinet secretaries may may somehow
hide behind executive privilege, and the White House may do

(02:35:26):
their best to sort of prevent the testimony of its
own aids. Obviously, the cabinet secretaries are going to have
to show up for budget hearings and things like this.
But I think anybody, any private entity that benefited from
participating in these transactions are probably going to get subpoened
by Congress. It's certainly what I think is the you know,

(02:35:48):
it's sort of like gather your evidence before you try
to get an indictment. I think that the mistake Democrats
could make here get control of the House and the
Senate is to basically write the indictment and then search
for the evidence to support it. And you may think

(02:36:08):
you've got everything that you know has happened. I think,
go go gather. I think the evidence is wor is
more is more powerful than you would imagine. I mean,
just focusing on these pardons, I mean we just got
another one over the weekend, Steve Buyer, Right, I mean,
my goodness, you know, talk about a White House that
doesn't care about the Republican Party. Right. There's this huge

(02:36:29):
debate about whether that whether Congress should be banned from
buying and selling stock, right, And what does Donald Trump
do in the middle of this debate pardon somebody who
was a member a former member of Congress who was
convicted of insider trading. I just have to present you
the headline. Forget the details of the story. He tells

(02:36:49):
slightly different than it, but it doesn't matter. Right, Optics
are everything here, I think just focusing on how he
has perverted the pardon process, always undermined the rule of law.
You know, all of these, but you've got to gather
your evidence, and you got to go in there and
put it all on the record, not just relying on

(02:37:11):
other media accounts of this stuff. You got to get it,
put it on the record, pressure test it. And you
know That's what I'd be doing because I think ultimately, again,
you can treat the Trump era like a catastrophe, or
you can also say what are we going to learn
from it? And he's providing an MRI for every loophole
that exists, Norms that need to be codified and made

(02:37:34):
into laws, right, guardrails that need to be erected in
places we didn't normally know we needed guardrails, all of
those things. His presidency has been an incredible help and
exposing right. It's like a black light and suddenly showing you,
oh my god, look at that loophole. Look at that loophole.
Look at that loophole. My goodness. You know that's what

(02:37:56):
to me, irresponsible party would would take as their mandate
if they did. Indeed, win control the cigner all right.
Next question comes from Katie and Winston's Salem should write, Hey,
love the podcast or appreciate your straightforward balance takes. Curious
about reports that DHS may pull CPB from certain Blue

(02:38:17):
state city airports. Does that seem feasible or would it
create major logistical and economic issues? If it's not a
serious proposal, what do you think the goal is? Thanks
a lot, Katie and Winston Salem ps fully support your
and Sarah Esker's idea for a top five political songs list,
perfect overlap of music and political nerds. I love it,
you know, I have a whole. I have an election
day playlist. The two songs that anchor it are the

(02:38:42):
Ramones I want to be Sedated, you know, twenty twenty
twenty four hours to go, So that to me is
my election day song because usually we're twenty four hours
ago and we're going to finally get the answer and
then one day more from La miss right if so?
And that. If I could sum up my music taste
with the Ramones, Meat Lames, that musical that I'd be

(02:39:07):
okay with that. If you said that, try to try
to draw conclusions of him based on that, I'd be
okay because I think it paints incalctic picture. So on
election Day, November, I will post my playlist again. I
may have even boasted it on Spotify a few years
ago if you wanted to go seek it out and

(02:39:29):
search for it. But it's a pretty lengthy playlist. It's
just some of my favorite songs that I that I
can that I think at least have some campaign or
election type homageries too. Ask for your specific question, I
just I don't think that. I just don't think that's legal.

(02:39:52):
I don't think that's constitutional. You know, this is this
is you know there is such thing as a tenth
amend in states rights. So I just don't think this
is even constitutional what they're threatening. If you're wondering why
he says it, I think it's just it's just base rhetoric.
It's not serious. There's no serious way to do it.

(02:40:12):
And if you did it, I mean you would just
all right, I know this is going to sound hyperbolic,
but it's it's almost like an act of war. Right,
if you essentially say we're going to cut off Blue
States from air travel, I mean it's kind of an

(02:40:38):
I mean, I don't again, I don't want to come
across hyperbolic, but what else would you call it? It's
a trade embargo, right, it's a it's a you know,
it's it's an embargo on air travel. So anyway, I
don't it's beyond illegal, beyond unconstitutional. I believe with with

(02:40:59):
with states in here. I don't think there's this superseding
law in this, and I think they would have to
specifically right into the law in order to make this
even legal for them to do it, and they don't
have that kind of statutory authority number one, So it
just I'll be honest, I don't take it seriously. I

(02:41:20):
chalk it up to just red meat that's being fed
to the to the to the to the part of
the base that just obsesses over a problem that is
a bit overheated in this country. And I think now
most people, if you work in an agricultural economy, if
you work in the service industry, you realize how self

(02:41:42):
defeating and how terrible for the economy this entire process
has been, and you will understand how defeat us this
all is. But forget that. I just that's why I
don't take it very seriously, because some of the president's
biggest supporters would be put out of business by a decision.
This next question comes from Ken. He says, Ken from

(02:42:05):
Maine again, then political analyst here. I was struck by
your point on Mills's support in the second district. But
wouldn't her share and the more progressive first victor would
be just as telling, if not more? Yeah, you know,
you're right. Also, how do you think about the tension
between voting four can versus voting against one? Thanks? Ken, Look,
you know what you're in some ways if the more
support she gets from the first you know, even you know,

(02:42:27):
I think, but look, there's no good explanation for her
getting twenty percent or more anywhere. Right, Like, it's all
bad for Blatner at this point. Right. So, but it's
a it's a fair point that it's one would actually show, Hey,
this is rank and file Democrats, people that will vote
Blue the entire time and are uncomfortable with this. But

(02:42:49):
I guess the point I was making there is that
you're probably gonna have an easier time convincing Mills voters
in the that are first district voters who are probably
more regular Democrats to hold their nose, take one for
the team and vote for Team Blue over you know,
if despite your character questions, then you will. In the
second district, it's a little more independent voter, might have

(02:43:09):
a little more you know, sort of independent streak to it.
I think so that. But anyway, it's a it's a
fair point. Look, I think Senate races are often votes
for Jersey. You know, do you do you want to
Republican Senate or a Democratic Senate. I think I've shared

(02:43:29):
with you a story that is just I just will
share you my father's final vote before he died, and
any of you that have been listening to me a
long time in public forums. I've used this before. I
remember vividly my father couldn't speak at that time. He
had a he had he was on a breathing tube,

(02:43:50):
but he could write. And he died on November fourteenth,
about a week after election day. But he wanted to
vote absentee, and the time that getting an absentee ballot
was a big was much harder in nineteen eighty eight
than it is today. And I remember helping him vote.
He couldn't quite, you know, do all the bubbles and

(02:44:11):
all that stuff. So I was reading him and he
would read it, and I'll never forget the back and
forth he had with himself. We got to the Senate race.
It was a very competitive center race, open seat. Lawton
Childs was retiring at the time. He'd retired because he'd

(02:44:33):
become the first, sort of the most public, one of
the early people to go on prozac, and at the
time that was considered a stigma. Oh my god, he's
on an antidepressant. He can't seek reelection, Believe it or not.
That's how stigmatized depression was back in just as the
late eighties, right, it was considered politically impossible to run
for reelection. With that going on, obviously, it turns out

(02:44:55):
talk about underestimating the voter. Laton Chile's two years later
would be elected governor of Florida for two terms. But
I digress. The two candidates were Connie Mack and Buddy McKay.
And my father was a political junkie, I think many
of you know in many ways. But you know, my
father's love of politics got passed down to me. You know,

(02:45:16):
my politics was a bit less formed when I was sixteen,
and when he died then his politics were very, very
much a he would have he would have called himself
a one time Reagan Democrat who was now a conservative
for politics. That's how he would have described himself in
nineteen eighty eight. But he really liked Buddy McKay, he
he and he didn't know much about Connie Mack and
wasn't that impressed with him at the time and is

(02:45:39):
in Congress and whether that you know, and thought Buddy
McKay was the type of Democrat he could support, a
more conservative Democrat, and and he was going back and forth,
and he decided to vote for Mac. And I remember
asking him, so, why'd you vote for Mac? I thought
you liked McKay better, and he goes control the Senate

(02:46:02):
matters more right that he said, and in fact he said,
if I'm going to die, I want to die knowing
I voted for a Republican Senate and that that was
what he believed in. So my point is is that
now he was a pretty he was a voter. He's
strategic voted all the time. He was a registered Democrat
his whole life because at the time in the South,

(02:46:23):
it's the only way you can participate in primaries. He absolutely,
in his mind would be you'd say, as a strategic voter. Look,
I don't want to let one person's experience color what
I think is everything. But you asked about this idea
of voting for or against a candidate. I just think
that Senate races generally, it is a lot easier to

(02:46:45):
get people to think party, you know who should control, right.
It's why you're more likely to get unusual why a
minority party can get get their candidate elect and governor
more often than they can get their candidate elected Senate.
Because most people, I think it's not about voting for
or against. I think a lot of people, certainly we

(02:47:08):
know with the double negatives of Clinton and Trump that
people voted, you know, they were voting on negative they
were negative voting. And we know that negative partisanship in
some ways drives our politics. But I think in Senate
races in particular, and I think that this is going
to be And at this point, if Platner survives all
this and gets through it, I think if he wins,
it'll be because he made the case that Democrats need

(02:47:30):
to control the Senate heartstop, and that is you may
like Susan, you may think Susan Collins is better than
most Republicans, but ultimately she's a vote for a Republican
Senate which supports Trump's agenda. YadA, YadA, YadA. That's my guess.
The of the best possible messaging that Democrats can come
up with that can at least nod to the character

(02:47:52):
discomfort that voters have and at least have the conversation
with those voters who are who are not sure whether
they should let the character issues impact them or not.
But I do think Jersey Color, I think control the
Senate does have more of an impact on voters today
than ever before. All right, last question, this one comes

(02:48:13):
from Donatello who writes another registritating question here, do you
think it would be effective for Democrats to adopt a
pledge to ban jerry mandering nationally, similar to how Republicans
once used pledges on taxes. Curious if that kind of
approach actually could actually work. Well, what could argue they've
kind of been the party that was against jerry mandering
until they decided to go. I mean, you could be pledge.

(02:48:36):
You could pledge it all you want, but if you
don't act upon it when you have an opportunity to
do it, does the pledge mean anything? Right? And I
think Republicans have a bunch of pledges where they've not
when push came to shove. They didn't support the pledge
when it was necessary, so then there's a sense that
they didn't care about the pledge in the first place.
So I, you know, I alter think that the better

(02:49:01):
answer on this, and I know I'm going to go back,
but I feel like I've said I want to do
two things with this podcast. One is cover politics as
it is, but the other is to cover politics as
it could be or should be. And I just think
that the right answer on this is to advocate for
a larger Congress. If you want more representation, more people

(02:49:21):
represented and feeling like they're represented in Congress, then you
need to expand the size of Congress. That needs to
be it. It improves everything else below it. It makes
gerrymandering less necessary. It does give people more a more
direct feeling like they have a little more direct link. Ultimately,

(02:49:42):
you should be pro democracy, and the pro democracy stance
here is not about gerrymandering. The pro democracy stance is
I think two things, more voters involved in the selection
of members of Congress and more members of Congress so
that the country can be accurately and correctly represented the

(02:50:03):
way the founders intended for Congress to represent the people.
And with that, that's gonna do it. For my quick ask,
Chuck of the day, I've gone on. This is a big,
long episode. I gave you a little sports with the
French interview. I will admit that there are two rants

(02:50:25):
that I haven't gone on in the sports world that
I'd like to go on. Rant one is where's the
love for James Wood? You know It's funny is somehow
the Nationals become the team that gets guys Compared to
Ted Williams. I remember Soda in his first couple of
years was doing things that Ted Williams was the only
other hitter that had ever done. And now Wood is

(02:50:48):
doing things that only Ted Williams and one Soda or
the only two other hitters are ever done number one
and number two. You know, the hard part is what
do you do with show hey? Because the easy way
to say, you know, there's no doubt what is in
a conventional year would be the be the at least

(02:51:10):
a co favorite or a co front runner for MVP.
The numbers are just I mean, he is easily the
best hitter in baseball right now, and that could change
and we know that, but I mean you just look
across the board, right he just dominates in so many
of these factors. But you know what James Wood hasn't done,
isn't he doesn't have an ERA below one? Right? Like

(02:51:31):
that's the that's the killer aspect of show hey here.
But I want to recommend what my son did was
he voted for Schwarber for DH, not Otani because he
says Otani should be the starting pitcher for the National League.
So and who's been the better DH this year? Then
I guess you would give it to Schwarber right on

(02:51:51):
that front. But anyway, there's a long rant there. And
the other is, of course, how the SEC and the
Big ten twenty four playoff teams is ridiculous idea, and
the SEC and the Big Ten tired of them not
wanting to grow college football. All they want to do
is freeze college football so that only the SEC and
the Big Ten. They want to essentially lock any other

(02:52:14):
entities out from participating in the spoils of college football.
I say, screw you, guys, enough of this. It's obvious
what you're doing, and all you're doing is creating a
situation that baseball finds itself in. Right. It was greedy
ass owners for one hundred years that refuse to share
their local revenue that put them in the situation that
they're in today. And it's the greedy SEC and the

(02:52:34):
big Big Ten that are trying to so desperately lock
out any other schools or conferences from ever expanding and
touching college football that they're going to destroy the sport.
In the meantime, how about this sport is more popular,
expand it more access, my god, better scheduling. You're just
trying to essentially hoard an advantage and create more velvet

(02:52:58):
ropes and make it impossible for the sport to grow.
That's what irritates me the most about Sankie and the
Big Ten is that their interests are just self serving.
They just want to make their two conferences stronger and
more influential. Neither one of them gives two shits about
the future of college football. So those are the two
rants that I've been saving. So I will postpone them

(02:53:21):
and save them for another time. And with that, I'll
see the election night stream on Tuesday and Wednesday in
this same pod channel. Talk to you then,

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