Hi, Brian Hik. Now, this is very exciting. We're on location, which we don't do that often, but we're in Aspen, Colorado, beautiful Colorado, at the Aspen Ideas Festival. And when we found out that Mitch Landrew was going to be here, we immediately thought, what a great podcast guest, because he's very much been in the news of late, not only because he's head of the U S Conference of Mayors, but also because that incredible speech he gave about taking
down the Confederate statues in New Orleans. And he comes from a really storied New Orleans and Louisiana family. His dad was the last white mayor of New Orleans. Before him, he was known as a real progressive on civil rights. He desegregated the city. His sister was a senator from Louisiana for many years. He's the fifth of nine kids. He's got a lot of interesting stuff to see. He's a music of theater nuts. So he had me at Jesus Christ Superstar. So we have so much fun talking
to Mitch. He told me I could call him Mitch instead of Mr. Mayor. Honestly, you were a little disappointed that he didn't go full man of La Manchro No I really wanted that. You know, I made up for his shyness by belting out a few of those songs myself. But we talked to him about life in the big easy, and we talked to him about climate change, and of course we talked to him about that incredibly well received,
an eloquent speech. So here he is, Mitch landru I became the president of U S Conference of Mayors yesterday. Congratulation so much. And but I'm really intent in this time of getting people to think that although we think about Washington all the time, and it's appropriate that we do so, the national policy doesn't just get set in Washington. Mayors across the country really doing innovative things. We're learning from each other and we're creating national policies from local
action and that's really exciting. And before we talk more about the Conference of Mayors and about that extraordinary speech you made on May nineteenth about Confederate memorials coming down in New Orleans, I want to give our listeners a better sense of who you are and where you come from. Is that from the greatest place in where all New Orleans, Louisiana, The soul of America. You're you're the fifth of nine kids. Your dad was the story real quick. My father was
one of two children. His mother had a third grade education. His father worked as an employee of the city in the public service building. He turned the lights on and off in the city. He grew up in a house that was seventeen feet wide, literally slept in a storehouse. He he found a way to get himself through Jesuit
High School and then Loyola Way. He met my mother and uh, they fell in love and they wanted up getting married, and they went right away to the Pentagon when my dad served, and in the next eleven years they had nine children. So my oldest sister is Mary, who people remember is now as the United States Senator, but sure appreciates she's bossy. But there were nine of us and we grew up in the first integrated neighborhood
in the city of New Orleans. My dad got himself into the state legislation, didn't know anybody, and this first act in office was to vote against the governor's plan to keep the schools segregated in the state. He was one of two people and uh, on that day that he voted for that Leander Perez, who was a great racist. Shaff suck his finger in his chest and said you're dead. And from that moment, from there until today. You know, our family kind of grew up in the Broadmoor neighborhood
of New Orleans. As I said, my mother had nine children in eleven years. And he was known and and is known as a hero of civil He was the one that integrated. That's true. Joined it's because we grew up how we grew up in Whale. We grew up in a middle class neighborhood. We both we all went to parochial schools, the same school. We walked to school every day, we caught the bus to school. All of us have gone on to you know, grow up and get married. We have thirty eight children between us on
the landry side of the family. You give make got to make sure you get you get to the table first, I would say that. And so we grew up in the city of New Orleans, and we've been part of the city for a long time. And uh, and it's
been a great experience. And politics are sort of in your I mean, it's just you marry and your dad because your mom Verna said, I told you, Mitchell, you've got politics and the Mary Well, the reason she says that is because I was a very bad little boy, and as I told you, she had nine kids, and I kept running outside. So she she chained me to the front porch with a leash. She did, she did. It's terrible and she didn't. She actually tied me to the front porch and so I stood out there all day.
We were planning because we all played in the streets, so I wasn't by myself and U she said, that's what you learned how to tell people hello, Okay, you kept trying to get them to let you go. Because she was managed to survive and so she she's mortified by that story, but it's true. But she's otherwise a lovely woman and a great mother and a great grammar
as a chad of thirty eight kids. Wow. One of the fun things we learned about you, Mitch is that you were really into musical theater when you were in high school and the East start in Anna You're this does extensive research, and you were in Jesus Christ Superstars and tell me who it was and what were you in Jesus You were Jesus. That's the part you want. You want the title because he has the best song. He does. So you're Jesus Christ. You were the great
Jesus Christ proved to me that you're awful. Walk across by the way. You've got to sing something for us, no little to dream, the impossible dream, the impossible dream. I'm not saying that whole thing. I'll come on one more. I know the worst to fight, Right to fight the unbeatable foe. Right, that's where to bear with unbearable, Sorry, to go with a brave They're not go. This is my quest. Right to fight, no matter how hopeless, no matter how far, to strive for the right to be
doing great. You're discovering a real musical theater junkie. Yeah, I'll tell you like I'll tell you how this happened. Actually, And in seventh grade a new nun came to St. Matthias School named was Sister Jane, and she decided to have a Christmas cantata. And everybody tried, I don't want bed, but I had tonsilitis. I got my tonsil was taken out. Would you know when I came back, I could actually sing?
And so she said you're in it, and I saying it came upon a midnight clear and everybody thought, well, he can kind of sing. And then about a month later, my mother and father took me to the theater. It was right around when The Jungle Book was coming out, which I was mesmerized by, and then I saw Oliver and then I thought, that is what I want to do. I want to be I'm going to Broadway. And I
actually did theater at Jazzuba for four years. I became a trot out for a professional show and I was sixteen and got my equity card and started doing professional work. And besides Man of Flamanche and Jesus Christ Superstar, were you ever in Oliver? No, I never got to Oliver. I'm crushed by it. But but I attend the Catholic University of American got a double degree in theater and political science. We knew that. And then you went on to loyal like that. Well what happened was I really
wanted to. When I finished, I had gone on a couple of USO tours and when I finished, my father said, you know, it's really a tough business. You ought to think about having something to fall back on. So why don't you come home and go to law school? And if after you finished law school you want to go back, then go. And I went to Loyola Law School, and of course I met my soon to be wife on
the first day of law school. We got married, then we had five beautiful children and the rest of this history. So I'm stuck. So I really want to be an actor. I don't this politics stuff is. Well, maybe maybe you could have a second career. That's where I'm going. That's where I'm heading too. I'm going to Broadway if they'll have me. But I think maybebe I can only mop up the stage now. Well, you know, I think there is some theater in politics, right because they're in in
a positive way. And one of the things we really wanted to talk to you about today, Mitch, is that extraordinary speech that that Brian meant and that got so much attention. A lovely op ed by Frank Brooney in The New York Times. In fact, I was going to read the uh the first part of it. The title is Mitch Land who reminds us that eloquence still exists? And Frank wrote it to interview. Well, listen, I I believe in giving props where props are deserved, and he writes,
these are hard days. Of course, language of tweets and cat calls that appeal to the worst in us, not the best. Maybe that's why a big, sweeping, old fashioned speech delivered in New Orleans on Friday made such an impression on me. It was a reprieve, It was an antidote at let's talk about why you gave that speech.
It was all about taking down four Confederate statues. But can you give us the context, because this was a combination of a very long process getting New Orleans to face It's not so it would careful history is that history, But generally from the day that I was born a couple of months later was when my father took that
first vote. So really, our entire political life, aside from trying to make government work well for people and trying to solve difficult problems, some of which have not yet been solved, around the kind of things that we talked about every day, from healthcare to education to crime, all that kind of stuff, race has been a very important part of our need to move New Orleans. It could this could be related to other places, but this is where I grew up, so this is my wheelhouse, and
the South to a better place. So there's always been this concept of the new South, and well we never really got there versus the old South, and why other parts of the country were growing and why we warn't.
And when I became the mayor after haven't been a legislator for sixteen years and lieutenant governor for six I had a very strong desire based on what Mary had done and my dad had done, to to really have a conversation about race and for the city to think about not building the city back the way it was because it Katrina didn't cause all of our problems. It didn't create our education problems are raised problems problems. It well, here's what it did. It made everything that was real
that much more noticeable. So that which was beautiful and rich and deep and made it much more so. And and the kind of things that we saw after Katrina, people helping each other just really is a is a message to the rest of the country about even in our darkest times, we can find unity, which is why I'm hopeful about the country. But it also put a magnifying glass on a really dirty stuff and the nasty
stuff and the bad stuff. And so as we started rebuilding the city physically, it's easy to build a city back physically than to repair of city soul. And so the mantra that we use preparing for our three hundred anniversary, which is next year, was to build a city back the way it always should have been if we would have gotten it right the first time. So that's not
just a physical thing. So if you come to New Orleans now, we've rebuilt thirty two new schools, or a bunch of health care centers, were building a new airport, we're building a new riverfront. The issue then got to be about the public spaces, and this came from Went and Went and Marcelo, So I said, Went, and I need you to help me carry the three on the universary. He said, do you know Lewis Armstrong left because of those statutes? And I said what statutes? He said, I want,
I need you to think about those statutes. And I said, when what statutes are talking about? He said, Roberty Lee. I said, what's your problem with Roberty Lee? He said, have you ever thought about who he is, what he stands for, why they're there? And I said, you know, honestly, when I never really did. I was kind of like everybody else. He said, well, look, you think about them.
So I started thinking about him, and it became fairly obvious to me, fairly quickly that those particular statutes, and I picked those four for a reason, will put up by the same group of people over the same period of time, for a specific reason, which was to send a clear message that even though the Confederacy lost the war, they were still in control, because what sixteen years after the end of the Civil War. Yes, way, they will put up substantially after, and they will put up with
a specific purpose. And the specific purpose was enunciated when they put them up, which was too demn me straight that the South was on the right side, that even though the United States of America one, that they were wrong, and that the South was not going to concede. And it was to send a message to who was still in control, and that white supremacy was superior, specifically to African Americans. We were genetically and in every other way
and spiritually superior. Now in a city that six African American forcing African Americans to walk by public property that they own, having statutes standing above them in reverence seemed to me to be perverse. It was property Lee and Robberty,
left Buregard, Jefferson Davis or the three. And then there was another monument called the Liberty Monument that was put up in the eight nineties to celebrate, no, to celebrate the fact that a number of police officers were killed who were trying to protect a buy Ratio police department. So it was actually done to honor the people who killed the police officers for the wrong reason. And it was put up by the clan. And I want to give our listeners a sense of the speech if they
haven't heard it. These statutes are not just stone and metal. They're not just innocent remembrances of a benign history. These monuments celebrate a fictional, santitized Confederacy, ignoring the death, ignoring the enslavement, ignoring the terror that it actually stood for. Why do you think for so long we were okay with all of this Confederate celebration. Listen, I think that race is really hard for us. It's hard for everybody to talk about. And I've said many times on this issue,
we have made a lot of progress. I mean, John Lewis, will remind us of that every day, who is one of the great heroes of our time. But when I finished, and this whole notion of of aspiring to a more perfect union is something that Americans really ought to think about on a regular basis given this last election. And by the way, we started this well before the election, so it really didn't contemplate anything having to do with
the politics of what exists today. But even before that, we were really thinking about how the country could come together on issues of criminal justice, equity, police community relations, and just straight up racial stuff that we had. And it started it occurred to me that the way we curate our public spaces either informs that in a positive
way or in a negative way. And if you just think from a mayoral perspective, and we're all into design and what our cities look like and how you build beautiful, world class cities, why would you have a public space that's the most central thing sending a message that has never been true about your city. And so as we began this introspection, the people of the city started thinking, Wow, you know, this is a new awakening that we're having, so let's deal with it. So this just wasn't about
the statutes. The statutes are much or just kind of a physical way to talk about a much deeper problems. Badly, how many times we walk by things that we don't notice every day. They're so symbolic and emblematic of sort of race in general. I think one of the most moving parts of the speech was when you talk about a friend, uh and how he would explain this to
his fifth grade daughter. Let's listen to that. Another friend asked me to consider these full monuments from the perspective of an African American mother and father trying to explain to their fifth grade daughter, why Robert E. Lee sat the top of our city. Can you do it? Can you do it? Can you look into the eyes of this young girl and convince her that Robert E. Lee
is there to encourage her. How much pushback did you get for this, because I imagine there were some people who were pretty hoping mat huge, huge, Well again, you know, I had been thinking about this. Meant three three and a half years ago was when I think I had the first conversation with It might have been three years ago, so as well before the election. It was well before
South Carolina. The city had been engaged in racial reconciliation discussions that we put together called the Welcome Table, where people of color and whites met and talked in small groups. So this has been kind of part of what we did.
But then when South Carolina happened and Nicki Haley and the leaders did such a wonderful thing of taking that flag down in such a beautiful way, um, I said to myself, now is the time to call the question publicly about these monuments and basically said something really simple, which is, I think it's time for us to have a conversation about this. Well you would have thought that,
I mean it was. It really got rough. So we had a bunch of community meetings that were all very aggressive, and then as soon as the legislator, as soon as the city council vote had taken them down, lawsuits began. And so it took a two and a half year process with seven different courts, federal, state, and local, and thirteen different judges to confirm that we actually had the authority to do what we were doing. Do you get a lot of people angry on the streets, like, what's
the worst thing someone has said to you? Well, there's a beautiful park, in New Orleans. I rode around on my bike every morning, and it is not uncommon for people in that park to yell at me, like, get out of this park. This is not your park. You're a dictator. We hate you. We hope that you've stopped being mayor tomorrow. There's actually one particular woman that does this the other day, does this all the time to me, which was really curious because when I went to church
the other day, she was actually a eucharistic minister. What yeah, So, I mean it's it really got hostile and bad. Now not everybody I have to be it just this is really clol I know my city really well. Most of the people in the city wanted to take these down, but as you can say, this is a national issue, so people came from across the country into the city
to use us as an example for us. So the alt right was there, you know, and a couple of other groups, and it got really dangerous and it required us to take these things down because of security reasons. Three of them at night, and then we had to take Roberty Lee down during the day for the same reason, security reasons because of the electrical wires. But it required us to be very vigilant because subsequent to the election,
the temperature in the country has gotten really hot. We've gotten worse at talking to each other, and it wasn't easy to do. But I think after the speech to that credit, a lot of people have come up to me and said, you know, I really wasn't down with this, but now I get it and I understand. But there will be some people who will never forgive. And it's one of these things that it's it's like abortion, or it's like the death penalty, or it's like war in peace.
It is a seminal issue that if someone you know is on the other side of it, no matter where you are, it's like, that's a defining moment, and you know, you stole a lot history and I'll never be for you. And I think for a lot of people it leads to a series of questions like where do you draw the line which people are okay to leave up and which people do you have to take down? I mean, do we do we tear down the Jefferson memorial because
he was Actually I don't think it's that complicated. I think that you cannot go back and relitigate whether a human being was a good human being or not? Um. All of us come to life with our own faults. And do you just watch people to confession as Catholics health the time? Do you judge people by the standards of their time or our time? Well, I don't. I don't know that that's the issue either. In this instance, it is absolutely clear that you cannot rewrite history. History
is history. The monument to down right, but the Civil War still took place, so we didn't need race history. What we did do, though, is we course corrected something that a mayor did in that was wrong, which was to put in a place of reverence a statute that promoted a cause that denied humanity to millions of Americans. That act was wrong. We've got a lot more to talk about with Mitch Landrew, the mayor of New Orleans. Right after this New Orleans as he says, New Orleans.
And now we're back with Mayor Mitche Landrew talking to him from Aspen. I know Brian wants to talk a lot about cities and climate change, but I just want to put a button on this because I'm curious, Mitch, have Mayorlandrew, you have other have have other Um mayors, have other governors, have other leaders in the Deep South contacted you? Are they wrestling with these same issues or
would you like them to more? Well, you know, again, every city and every group of people take their own You're being very diplomatic, but no, no, what I'm saying. I mean this seriously. I didn't like people not from New Orleans tell New Orleans what to do. We had a right to determine with our own property what we thought was appropriate. I will say to the people of America very clearly, though we clearly have an issue with race, we also have one with class, and we also have
it around a whole bunch of stuff. And we don't talk to each other well about the things that divide us. I happen to think they are a great source of strength, and I think it weakens us when we divide ourselves the way we are and we can't even have a an adult conversation, so to the extent that it's a conversation starter. Yeah, start the conversation, but you have got to recognize, like white people need to recognize that Frican
Americans were horribly offended by going past those monuments. Listen, I'm not judging anybody I had the same problem, and until went and told me about it, it never really occurred to me to think about it. But once I started thinking about it, and once I saw the truth, then I was like, all right, there's some things that I can admit without having to feel awful that maybe I had somebody that fought on the wrong side of
the war. I mean, nobody today is responsible for anything that happened during the Civil War in that regard, and you can't spend your life talking about whose fault it was. I guess if people get excited about that, they can. I can tell you whose responsibility it is to fix it. It's ours. Some folks have called me and said, look, I've thought about this, and I want the monuments and send them to me. Some people have sent have said, uh, look I thought about this and I don't want to
go as far as you went. How can you curate these by being additive? Which is interesting, and you can do that. And some people have said, yeah, I want to do that too, and I said, good luck. But you know, really think a lot about this and be careful and be thoughtful, and by the way, be hard on the problem, soft on the people. There's a way
to get through this that makes us better. And although it was hard in New Orleans, I have the full confidence that the people in New Orleans are gonna get past this and we're gonna be a better city because of it. So, Mr Mary, the last time before your speech, New Orleans was really in the national spotlight was around Katrina, which you referenced earlier. I was looking at some of these stats in preparing for this interview. I was really stunned.
You know, more than eight percent of the city flooded, seventy billion dollars of damage, more than a hundred thousand people homeless. But then I found another stat that that staggered me, maybe even more, which is that, according to one study, which was a reputable group, a third of New Orleans population was going to have to flee by because of rising sea levels. Basically in my daughter's lifetime. They're not there may not be a New Orleans as we know it today. What can cities or even states
do on their own to fix this problem? I mean, is it too late? Are we doomed to have to manage the sens this? Well, it's getting too late. It's not too late yet. I was in Miami yesterday, and Mary Levine has talked a lot about Miami. Everybody's focus has always been in New Orleans, and New Orleans said, look, you know, we didn't we didn't get hit by Katrina because we stay up lade drinking too much. You know.
Although because most of your cities, some people thought that we were since city, and you know, God visited evil upon our heads because of that, because well it was we We are the canary in the coal mine. There are tons of places around this country that are below yeah, that are below sea level as a matter of fact, whether Washington Monument is that hill is a berm that is supposed to be there for flood protection. And of course people now have seen as a result of Sandy,
unfortunately that the Northeast is vulnerable. When you look at the at the list of the most vulnerable cities, New Orleans is not at the top. Miami is there, and by the way, a ton of other places. So this idea of us being threatened by sea level rise is real, it's imminent, and it's that outdoor step now New Orleans. As a couple of other problems, One we have coastly erosion that is happening quickly for a lot of different reasons. Some is because the Mississippi River is levied and the
silt is not moving off into it naturally. Some is because the island gas pipelines cut through it oreland gas that we produced for the rest of the country. And some is just sinkage. So when you put all four of those things together, we have what I would consider to be a slow moving but imminent threat, which is
why we're really focused on this. We've built a huge levy system, but if we don't get in hands around this climate issue, New Orleans as you know it, or at least south of New Orleans, could cease to exist by so could Miami, and so could a lot of other places. So it's not just such, which is why mayors have been so engaged in this, from the Kyoto Protocols to the Paris. Of course, we had a thousand mayors from around the world in Paris. So in President
Trump erroneously wrongly said we're not going to stay. Bad mistake for the country. We said we and abide by that. We have to keep going. We're not bound by the federal government. We can create a national policy by acting locally. And so mayors across America, Republicans, Democrat Jim brainded from like Indiana Republican, I mean republican red state said, you know, I'm I'm into this, and you know a lot of
others have too. So we're actually trying to do the best we can reduce our carbon footprint and to get ahead of this so that we don't get so far behind. And that's just something that mayors have decided to do because we can't we have to govern. We can't wait, can you do it without the federal government? I think we can't. I mean, it would be much better to have them with us. But there's a lot of things
we can do without the federal government. If two hundred and sixty cities get together and decide, look, we're gonna run a certain fleet of buses, We're gonna have a certain number of bike lanes. We're gonna retrofit all of our buildings with you know, better stuff. We're gonna work on the utilities that reregulate in what the UH energy mixes that's coming in. There's quite a lot that we can do. So why do you think President Trump made the decision he did. I mean, I know I know
the reasons he gave were demonstrably false. I don't know. I mean, I don't. I have no idea. I quit, I quit trying to figure it out. I can't. I don't. I don't spend any time worrying about that, other than saying that's a shame, because that's a mistake for the country. We're just gonna move past them, and I think that's happening a lot. You know, again, we would prefer our mayors of America want a constructive relationship with who's ever in Washington, d C. But we cannot wait, and we're
not waiting on anything. We're doing our own stuff on infrastructure, We're doing our best we can we can on healthcare, and then we're gonna solve as many problems as we can. Mayor Bloomberg yesterday announced the two hundred million dollar Challenge grant across all cities so that we can share best practices with each other. And we think the country can learn the federal government can learn a lot from the innovation that's happening in cities across America. He's been a
pretty phenomenal leader. He's just incredible. I mean, you know, a lot of people give a lot of money away for a lot of causes, and that's all wonderful. But he has really focused his attention on making government work better and then creating better partnerships from the private sector to the government. And you know, the guy just is he's gold and he put his money where his mouth is. Not everybody agrees on all of his host stances, but
that's you know, He's given May's room to run. And by the way, he helps cities at a Republican Democrat that are left, that are right. He's into innovation and change, and he's given us a chance to compete with each other, which we love to do, you know, and we and we share best practices all the time we have. I know you have to go to a dinner, but just I have to ask you. You You didn't mention Donald Trump in your your now quite spa? No? No, But he
takes up enough air tone, don't you think? What do you think of him? I think he's mostly wrong. I just think he's mostly wrong. There are some admirable qualities about him, actually, which makes it's so hard to watch him do so poorly. Are admirable. Well, first of all, he's he's got really um good instincts about other people
that serve him well in a negative way. You know, you saw him take down a lot of different opponents that he should have never taken down because he's got an animal instinct for finding people's weaknesses that he can exploit. And so, you know, I say it's admirable. It's kind of a weird thing. Like when you see a war you're fighting, You're like, that guy's got special skills because everybody wants that he doesn't know what he's talking about.
That exactly what I'm saying is in a in a warrior kind of way, you look at that and you go, wow, that's impressive. That guy got to be president the United States. So you can't completely dismiss that. When people say he's got no talent, that's not true. This is not a man that's not smart. He is smart and and he is he is tough in a bad way. And in my opinion, his his unwillingness to think deeply about things
causes him to be half wrong all the time. And when you're half wrong, you're never right because you know, you never really think about things clearly and deeply. And it's very, very troubling. I think that he has, in a demonstrable way, made people who shouldn't agree with him think that he's fighting for them. And I think that a lot of folks think, well, the pots on everybody's house in Washington. You know, I don't really care about
all of this other stuff. At least he's fighting for me, and I'm hurting really badly, and somebody focus their attention on me, and so well, I don't. I think most of the polls indicate that his base is not falling away from him. And I think they know he doesn't tell the truth. I mean, at the president, clearly he doesn't tell the truth most of the time. And I
think it's just kind of a way of being. It's not a and And I think they don't care because he has somehow demonstrated to them that I am fighting for you. And in this moment, they they are feeling so left out and so forgotten and so not known and so like people have been unaware of them that the fact that he's focused on them, they forgive everything else.
So one of the things I learned about the monuments is that when people are on your side and they like you, they'll almost forgive anything that you do, and when they don't like you, they will hate you for everything that you do. So post my you meant talk even people who are my friends before who are against me now. I can't do anything right. I can't pick the garbage upright. I can't drive my car right, I
can't fix the potholes right. Nothing's right. It's like when you get in a fight with somebody that you love. I mean, the fight's not always about what the fights about, right. And meantime, the Democratic Party, your party is in the weakest position that's been in nearly a hundred years. There's a major divide between the kind of the pragmatic wing um and the progressives led by Sanders and Warren. How
do you think the party can come back? Because your sister, for instance, was the last Democratic senator from the Deep South and she lost in I'll tell you the premise of your question is is interesting to me. It seems like the Republican Party is in complete and total shambles. You've got Donald Trump and then you've got a whole bunch of but they're running the White House and the legislatures. That's true, But how long is that gonna last, what's
it gonna look like. Is this just a moment and then we're gonna come out of it or are we forming a new way of governing? And I think we don't know that yet. I think it's too early to tell. I think it's pretty clear that the republic this. I'm gonna get to the Democrats in a second, but they have a bunch of different factions that are all over the place, and you won't see this bust loose unto whenever Donald Trump leaves office, which maybe in four years
or maybe in eight. But the next fight that that's gonna be very interesting. On the Democratic side, you see us licking on wounds on the national level in a
pretty dramatic way. Um, and as every party begins to rebuild itself, you're gonna start having fights about left, middle, and center, and how that works out in some fashion is gonna be related to how President Trump does in the next couple of years and then with the public se So you asked me a question before it does you does his base still think that unless and until his base starts peeling off of him, Congressman on the Republican side are going to continue to back him that's
just how the politics works. Then not, in my opinion, they'll be outflanked on the right. So that's a politically equation of for them. And until that base starts eroting. So everybody said, oh, it's terrible because as approval ratings lowest has ever been, Well, let me tell you something. His approval rating amongst his base is directly related to what the congressmen need to be secure in that district.
When they start feeling insecureing that districts, right, it's gonna be interesting to see what happens with them when they go home for healthcare this week and how that works. But if they don't do that, they're gonna stay with him because one of the kind of unspoken deals is, well, even if I disagree with him, and even though I think he's wrong most of the time, he's gonna help
us on tax reform. And by the way, we got Gorsage and we're likely to get the Supreme somebody else, and then we'll have the Supreme Court for thirty years. So look, we'll put up with whatever the president has to deal with. So that's kind of a that's the deal on the Democratic side, I think, you know, the Democrats are trying to figure out what in the heck went wrong and how did the Democrats lose being the
champions for the middle class. So we need to go listen to people and they may be saying, you know what, we're not gonna rely on Washington for anything anymore, and we're gonna just really focus on what we have to do in our day to day lives. Is that why you would never run for president? Well, that's that's one of the reasons why. I know it's an incredible thing to say, but that might not be where the action is in years to come. I know that's kind of
a crazy thing for people to think about. But the most innovative stuff that's happening in the country is happening on the ground, in the streets, in cities and in country and in counties and in rural American And by the way, this whole notion now that rural America is
divided from urban America. I don't want to say that's a complete myth, but I'm telling you that I can prove to you in a very demonstrable way how urban areas rely on rural areas for our lifeblood, and they rely on us if you just think about farm to table, if you think about getting fish from the Gulf into the restaurants in New Orleans, if you think about getting the corn from the fields in Iowa to where we needed to put gas in our cars, we are inextricably
linked to one another. The reason, by the way, in case anybody wants to read into that, the reason I said that was because when Katrina hit and we closed the port of New Orleans, the farmers in Iowa took a dramatic hit because they couldn't export their goods. I mean, so we we are. We are completely connected. And so while people try to tear us apart and say, well, you know that the different well, we read the same Bible in New Orleans that we do in small towns.
But I don't think this is the media deal. I mean, there's a massive political difference between the way rural Americans vote in the way urban Americans, and also just attitudes and values, and I think sort of, I think there's a lot of class condescension between coastal and rural. Well that's none that you're talking about the coast. I think that's true, but all all cities are on the coast, I mean, and and by the way, it's not all
people in the cities that think like that. So this notion that the only elites that live in cities, well, that's not true about New Orleans, and that's not true about Louisville, and it's not true about a lot of other cities. Albuquerque, you know, San Diego, all across America. Cities are doing great things. And by the way, eight of people in this in the country, you're gonna live in cities, and that's where all the demographic trends are coming.
And so this notion that somehow we're different where aliens are ones of Martian you know, that's that that that is kind of of the moment that is going to change over time as demographic trends change. And I would just continue to say this, the more we can do stuff together, the better we're gonna be. Diversity is a strength,
not a weakness. Inclusion is better than exclusion, you know, and hanging out with other people that are different from you, you might learn something from time to time, and we ought to do more of It's true. Brian Stevenson talks about the importance of being proximate, like getting out of your stylo hanging out with people from different socio economically. It's easy. Let me tell you this. It's easy to
scream something nasty across the tweet at somebody else. It's really hard to do it when you're sitting across the dent table. I know, and we need and we need to have more face time with each other. Absolutely well, Mitch Landrew, we're going to get in big trouble because we're keeping you from your dinner. But we could talk to you all night if if you'd let us. Thank you so much back, A huge thank you this week to the Aspen Ideas Festival for hosting and recording this conversation.
Thanks especially to Zach st. Louis from the Ideas Festival for coordinating all of the technical details on the ground, even Brian's airline tickets. So Zach, a big thank you for that, Zack, You're in a special place in heaven. As usual, Thanks to our producer Gianna Palmer, our sound engineer Jared O'Connell, Alison Bresnik for her social media prowess, and to Emily Bena and Nora Richie for their editorial support as well. What would our theme music be without
Mark Phillips, I shudder to thank Katie. Thanks as always to Mark, Katie Kirk and I are the executive producers of this show. Thank you all so much for listening. As always, we'd love to hear from you, so please leave us a message at nine to nine to two four four six three seven or email us at comments at kurr podcast dot com. You have no idea how excited we get when we get a comment or a phone call. Giannic's forwards them to us on our email.
Brian and I squeal with delight anyway, little school girls were all on Twitter. Also, speaking of Twitter, find us on social media. I'm at Katie Curic on Twitter and Instagram and Katie dot Kuric on Snapchat, and you can find me on Facebook as well. And Brian, your Twitter handle is at goldsmith b. Lastly, if you enjoy our show, please make your appreciation known by rating and reviewing us on Apple podcast. That keeps us in business everyone anyway,
that does it for us. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next well, you'll hear us next time.