A Warning For American Democracy: How Trump Is Following Putin's Corruption Blueprint

issues at Georgetown University. But she spent a lion's share of her career in the military, educated at the Air Force Academy, and she's a specialist in kleptocracies, and actually, you know how democracies get corrupted, and she wrote a pretty provocative piece for Foreign Affairs about that issue. Is America creeping into a kleptocracy? You've probably heard me use that word. I said that in twenty twenty four, at a minimum, that Donald Trump had turned the Republican Party

in some ways into a kleptocracy. I don't think we're there yet as a country, but when you have things like this inaugural fund that law firms have to pay into in order to keep the government off their back, that would pretty much put you into that in that category where you might be arguing that we are creeping

into that. So, look, it's a long conversation. I want to get into that, but before I get into that, I want to talk a little bit about the second hundred days because I think in fairness to him, you know, look, I've been highly critical because I think this has been a disastrous start. This is not because whether I support them or oppose them. This is just political incompetence how they've gone about this. Yes, I think it's economic incompetence too.

But if this was the plan, they've executed the plan extraordinarily poorly. Right, there was a way to do government reform better and more secure. There was a way to do Tariff's better. There was probably a way to order reorder his agenda, but he chose not to do it. And there's a fundamental part of his presidency that strikes me as a bit lazy, that he is kind of ailing it in. And you know, one way you can see this that Donald Trump is now mailing in the presidency.

It's his travel schedule for the first hundred days. He marked the one hundred day with a trip to Michigan. What's shocking about his trip to Michigan is that that's the first essaidually, it's the first battleground state he's bothered to visit since the beginning of his term. He had one day where he traveled to North Carolina, Nevada, in California. He was checking out flood damage in North Carolina. This

was right there. He was trying to It was something he had been scoring points on due to the what was a poor recovery effort led by FEMA in western North Carolina during the remnants of a hurricane that devastated them with floods in western North Carolina. So he made a political stop there, made a political stop in Nevada, and then made a tour of the wildfire damage in LA.

But you take that day away, and that's three less. Basically, the only trips he would have made are to the super Bowl, to the Daytona five hundred and to Bedminster

or mar A Lago over and over and over again. And what's interesting is that it's quite the contrast from his first term and his first term. In the first under days, he traveled quite a bit. In fact, he was a very you know, yes, he's still golfed quite a bit. Now he seems to be only golfing on weekends. He's spent at one point six days in a row mar Alago, going to my friends over at NBC News where some federal workers were wondering if he was qualifying

for work for home benefits there. He was there so long. But there is a sense that he is just either not interested in traveling the country, not wanting to hold his rallies, which he used to love to do in his first term. And I think it's it's I actually think this is another bad political mistake, right, And this is what happens when you surround yourself with people that

just tell you what you want to hear. He doesn't want to travel, he doesn't want to work very hard, so he gets to go back to Marlago so he can go golf, or he gets to go back to Bedminster and so he could go golf. He was in the first term surrounded people that said, you know, especially if you want to win reelection, you need to be communicating with the public what you're trying to do. The

tariff policies are extraordinarily unpopular. His inability to even communicate what they're supposed to do has made it even worse for him. So the fact that he waited literally to his hundredth day to have his first public event outside of Washington to explain his tariff policy. I think that just strikes me as lazy, and it is kind of the hallmark of how this White House has been run. You know. In some ways they make it look like there's a lot of motion going on, but in some

ways they're not. You know, take he signs executive orders, but he doesn't try to pass legislation. They're trying to take a lot of political shortcuts they're not doing If you wanted to cut government, you wouldn't do it the way they're doing it with those because most of the cuts that they make are going to get restored. Most of the executive order he's signing are going to get

thrown out by the courts. If he wanted to make real change. He has a Republican Congress. It's pretty compliant, but guess what legislation is hard. Trying to get lawmakers to do. It's going to take time and effort, and I think, you know, we sit here and wonder, Oh,

he's an authoritarian. In some ways, he's an authoritarian by laziness, meaning he'd prefer to just sign edicts because he doesn't want to have to put in the work that it takes to host members of Congress and cajole them to do X, or host members of Congress and condrole them to do why, or travel the country and put public political pressure. He doesn't know. For a guy who prides himself at being mister salesman and mister art of the deal, he's done a terrible job of selling his policies and

selling them to the country. He has spent a lot more time on true social that he has talking with people outside of his bubble. It is notable to me that this week he's at least doing interviews with media entities that are not just espousing the MAGA line of thinking. He interviewed with ABC News, interview with The Atlantic, and that is a huge difference from Trump one point oh, Trump one point oh talk to everybody. Trump one point oh was tweeting. Trump one point oh was trying to

communicate with the entire country. I mean, even if let's just take the example, let's say he was just so lazy he only wanted a golf on weekends. Well, then travel the country to different golf courses in golf on weekends, actually connect with the rest of the American people. Right now, He's conducting a presidency that is essentially sitting on Air Force one or one of his two clubs. He's a creature of habit. He's creature comfort, and when you get older,

that's what happens. Joe Biden spent just about every weekend in Delaware. Well, you know, Donald Trump wants to spend every weekend at mar Lago or Bedminster. And so it just struck me that to see this event, which was right. He gets a lot of energy from these things. So the question is perhaps he maybe he's just getting older, getting more tired, doesn't want to you know, needs to work three and a half four days a week, doesn't want to have the full five day weeks. It wants

to have extra recovery time. Whatever it is, I actually think it's harming his presidency just from a communications standpoint. Whether you love him or hate him, he's the best communicator they have, and he doesn't seem to actually want to go out there and communicate with the public. Right now. He went to Michigan. It's almost like they said, okay, we got to have a hundred days event, but he's

right back here. So anyway, it's just fascinating to me how I think that as tumultuous as the first one hundred days, there's an underlying aspect of this that there's actually kind of a laziness to the president in his lack of salesmanship, lack of doing these things. One other thing,

because I think it's a fair question, so what would a you know, I've been pretty doom and gloom. I think it's gonna be pretty hard for Donald Trump to recover. I think he's probably if you told me if I went into a coma today and didn't wake up until January twentieth, twenty twenty nine, and you said to me, you know, Donald Trump's approval rating never got over forty five percent for the rest of the term while you were in a coma, wouldn't surprise me. And I've gone

through the reasonings before of why I did this. I think, particularly in a second term, that's part of the you know, that's part of the why there's probably a shorter lease with the public, public like sort of oh, he's going to be that all right, forget it right, And there may be they may give up on him quicker, especially since he's messing up on supposedly the issue that was his core competency. But let me let me do the

other side. So let's say I wake up and from my from my mythical coma, and it turns out he's popular. What would have happened, Well, I think in this next hundred days he must for that to happen, for him to sort of write this ship, he needs some points on the points on the board. Maybe he cuts in a Ran deal. Maybe he gets both Russian and Ukraine to agree to a cease fire. Maybe he's able to get Israel and the Palestinians to at least cease violent interactions.

Perhaps he's able to get some trade deals with India, Australia, Japan, the UK. I'm skeptical of all those things, but it's not out of the question, right, It's not as if those aren't active things he's engaged in at the moment. But that's what the next Oh no, by the way, how about putting some shovels in the ground for some new factories. Right, there's a lot of pledges out there, you know, he doesn't doesn't He doesn't even have a

fox con that he's been able to. Which was that company that announced this big I remember Trump and Paul Ryan together they announced this big investment into Wisconsin, this company called Fox Cohn and and the investment never really happened. But he needs some shovels in the ground somewhere, some ribbon cuttings to do that. So you know what would if day one on one to two hundred, If on day two oh one his numbers are ten points better than they are today. These are the things that need

to happen. Peace steel in Ukraine, pea steel in the Middle East. Maybe he gets Saudi Arabia to formally go public in their recognition of Israel. Trade, the individual trade deals with a Japan, in India and Australia. Perhaps maybe some some pullback on the tariffs in China, and positive

market reaction. Now again, all of those things are certainly things he's trying to do, and I think all of them are quite tough because here's the other problem that he has, and I think I mentioned this during the last one. He's I think he's given up a lot of leverage because guess what, everybody knows he needs a deal and now the UK is teaming up with the EU. So I guess not only has Donald Trump impacted the

politics of Canada. But did he just unbreaks it. I guess we call it Brentrance at this point, with the UK and the EU essentially doing their own trade deal to start working together to deal with America, perhaps that he can call that an international victory he brought. He's helping reunite Europe economically. But these are the things that I think he needs to get to happen, and I think he's going to have a hard time doing it.

And he's going to have an even a harder time doing it if he is going to go about this presidency sort of working three and a half four days a week and not traveling the country and not communicating with all of America. Right now, he just rants to his supporters. Makes him happy. Untruth social What he doesn't fully appreciate is no one sees this stuff outside of his filter. Bubb guess what that forty of the countries

with him, there's another sixty percent that's not with him, And he doesn't seem to be that interested in communicating with that sixty percent anymore. Trump one point oh was Trump one point oh traveled the country? Trump one point oh, see seem to want to connect to the public. Perhaps This is the best evidence we have yet that Trump has no interest in a third term, because if he did, he'd be behaving like somebody who wanted to run for reelection.

He's behaving like somebody who's worn out already at the start of a second term. And look, he's not a spring chicken. And it could very well be that the job itself has become physically taxing. All right, So with that, I want to pause here. We're going to sneak in a quick break and when we come back. This is a fascinating conversation with Jody Vittori, and again we talk about a lot of countries and sort of the various phases when is something a kleptocracy, when is in it?

And you know, can can you have sort of pieces of a democracy become a kleptocracy, but the democracy itself is still healthy enough to push back on authoritarianism. What I like about doctor Vittorre is that she is this is she is not an academic first, she is a practitioner that is now in academia teaching her real life experiences. So with that, enjoy the interview. So what is the

state of the American democracy? This is a question I get frequently from friends, neighbors, viewers, listeners. Are we in a constitutional crisis? How clear things are? And my answer for the last six months is like, well, you know, the thing that I'm nervous about is that, you know, stage one of an authoritarian regime is when a democracy

becomes a kleptocracy. And I had been kind of saying it without a lot of academic rigor, and then I read a terrific piece in Foreign Uh in Foreign Policy by Georgetown professor doctor Jody Vittori, who is my guest today, who wrote about this very issue, that making the case that we are now in an early stage, early stages of what if this were happening in any other country, we would identify as hey, there, this appears to be

forming a kleptocracy. So doctor Vittori, it's appreciate you coming on.

you hear the word kliptocracy, and I'll be honest, it's like, is this some sort of superman word or does it have to do with the Kremlin? Right, Like, there's a lot of people kleptocracy. You know, define it and tell me give me a couple of an examples around the world that are that you might file under kleptocracy right now.

But there's a couple of things that we look at that when we're thinking about a place that is a kleptocracy. One is that just the amount of money and stuff that is being basically stolen by these thieves, and what happens to the institutions of a government. And so we have different terms that have like if you like ven diagrams, there's a lot of overlap. Sleptocracy, grand corruption, and state capture often get used interchangeably. There's some slight differences between them.

totalitarian regimes, that don't engage in large scale grand corruption. Okay, so there's still hideous lot in Cambodia, lots of petty corruption, you know, people paying bribes to just survive. But Poulpot was not buying mansions in the south of France or anything during this or NII in Tanzania. You know, the entire population was impoverished under his regime, but you know he wasn't buying fancy mansion somewhere in the States or something like that. So they are rare. But you can't

have authoritarian and even fatality and regimes that are not leptocracies. Okay, but most pleptocracies will be at least competitive authoritarianism have significant backsliding if they've been democracies ever, because you can't have rule by thieves in a functioning government democracy and have people not protesting and voting the bumps out and so forth. So you need to make sure you stay

and power run your cryptocracy. So they'll at least be very shaky on the democracy side all the way up to full fledge totalitarian dictatorships like Kim Jong un or you know, North Korea or something like that.

The lack of democracy in there. They have kind of fake votes, but it's not obviously it's not a functioning real democracy, but just the huge amount of money what we call assets shripping and so forth that occurs there. That's one kind. You have other kleptocracies, like in Afghanistan under the Talla Bond Part one and the United States where it's just a free for all. In Russia's case, you know exactly who's the We have.

of they kind of wanted to control their economic weather in Afghanistan.

You know, Hungary is is the classic example. Orbond calls his country an illiberal democracy. That's his goal, of course, is an oxymoron liberal with a small obviously not a big l. It's an oxymoron. You can't be democratic and and not be liberal with the rule of law and in the rule of law institute. But he has made it so that his cronies control the media. He makes sure his friends get contracts. These are very expensive contracts,

and so forth. The United States, if it does slip into club totocracy, will be unique because we've never had a situation where a consolidated democracy with strong governing institutions has gone to a full fledged cleptocracy before. It was always theoretically possible, but it hasn't happened. There's been grand corruption scandals in places, right.

we can. I'm going to set that aside the real benefit that he enjoyed in the first term with tariffs, that he learned about. And this is how I always say Trump is very much as a rote learner, and

he you know, you can't fool them twice. And so what the tariffs allow him to do is encourage people to have to come to him for exemptions, and that the exemption process is what how we can end up in a kleptocracy where he has full control of different aspects of the economy because he can decide winners and losers. He can decide you get a tariff, you don't get a tariff, you get this, you don't get this, and that this is what was so dangerous about his tariff policy,

because it wasn't about the tariffs themselves. It was about that he was going to have singular control of the economy. But what you just described, I'm actually questioning whether that's you know that maybe we don't we have enough checks and balances that that he can create an administration that's a leptocracy, but he can't really change the system into that per se am I being naive, I think.

one little thing aside, the idea that presidents couldn't be put on trial very easily and that you might actually have to do it in a different way like the I mean, it is remarkable to me how they understood what could what the public would be able to take, and what they couldn't and well.

person's greed against the other. It's one of the things I've always loved most about our founding fathers is someone who reads a lot of political theory, Marxism and a lot of the Islamism under side could have been others assume that you could make a perfect society, and our founding fathers took people as they were, And so you know, it's this idea that Congress should be a check on the present actually supposed to be the most important power,

which you've brought up before in other episodes, in the role of the Supreme Court evolves over time, but right now there's big concerns because of course Congress isn't acting as a check. Indeed, Trump is not unlike in his first.

thought that these people are qualified to be in government. You know, we have a Supreme Court that basically gave a tremendous amount of impunity to Trump himself in the United States versus Trump, which is extremely concerning, and a Supreme Court that, especially since twenty ten, has really shrump what the definition of corruption in any.

he thinks he's trying to avoid how's that? But they look way too captured, They look way too afraid of the of the people on this one and of a small group of people.

in any ways degrades itself.

we're already in it. We don't feel it right, the bog we've been we're of the boiled frog and we just don't fully realize it yet or are there more signs we should looking for.

were those few. It's an Aristotelian term literally from three fifty BC, that you know, these are individuals that are in charge for their benefit, not for the benefits society overall.

have these horrible, bad actors, we don't have time to decide who was who was nefarious and who was accidental. We have to just use we have to bail out the economy so that it doesn't destroy the rest of the global order. Right like it was, it felt as if it was like people exempted the people from punishment because you don't understand we're in the middle of it. You know, we don't have time to arrest people in the middle of a hurricane.

money is playing increasingly in politics. How different. As you know, we focus a lot on the Supreme Court and Citizens United, but a lot of campaign finance laws and rules have actually been degraded under the courts, in particularly the Supreme Court over the years to a shell of what they were in the past. The amount of what constituted corruption

has shrunk, the ability of politicians to accept money. You know, one of the interesting things about the definition of a conflict of interest overall is we know it's very it degrades a democracy, but conflict of interest doesn't actually have to be illegal, unlike Briberry or something where there's illegality. The concept is of a rational person and could have questions about that civil servant or that politician and where their interests lies. That's where the conflict of interest is.

The ability for large amounts of money to be bundled and so forth and given to politicians, the weakening of the rules of what they can use for personal use versus non personal use, in the role of private loans, even book sales, stuff like that.

And there was a variety of reasons for that. Number one, you had a check bouncing scandal where they got to write checks without any money to cover it, and the government just covered it. That was a weird and even when you go back to this day, you're like, I can't believe members of Congress just had this sort of create a checkbook without money in it and it always cash year less, Like that's crazy. There was also a

reapportionment year, and so people don't like to run a new lines. But there was one other thing. They had just changed the law. Prior to nineteen ninety two, a member of Congress could retire and keep their campaign money as their own personal just like an IRA, Like here you go, I mean, I'm after nineteen ninety two. In theory, members of Congress are not allowed to personally pocket campaign

money once they're done running for office. But prior to nineteen ninety two, so Congress could do that like so I do. I take your point here, but we've actually had the looser laws in the past that allowed for some shocking things like what I just described.

Registering people to vote is not advocacy, so you can use this dark money to do that, right, Like, we keep changing, but there's definitely, there's definitely been. I think it's really hard to legislate money out of politics.

loophole somewhere that everybody thinks is crazy. But you know, this whole Citizens United and dark money capability, that one really stands out in the world that you don't have another that you really don't see in other places. When you get a big corruption scandal with campaign finance in Britain or something, you're talking about a few million dollars, not tens and tens and millions of dollars now.

corruption task force. What really stands out for me is the fact that as the Trump administration has come in this time, they have undermined so many of the anti corruption rules and the Department of Justice institutions that are

meant to minimize the levels of corruption coming in. So we already had lots of issues and lots of loopholes and questions about enforcement, like with two thousand and eight and nobody going to jail, but things like we're just not the fact that this ties with their constitutional crisis concerns, the fact that the government said, we're just not going to enforce the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for the next

six months. Yeah, and we're not going to enforce the law, ironical ly, which passed in Trump won that most anonymous shell companies. Not only are we not going to enforce it,

we're going to make an interim final rule that is the exact opposite of what Congress legislated. And and you know, Congress, good luck with that, and the court's good luck with that. These are very frightening issues. And then you add crypto to it, not only the Trump family and their business interests with crypto, but just putting crypto friendly individuals in there.

Lots of people have different opinions on what is the value of crypto or does it have a value outside of money laundering and corruption.

is not anonymous shell companies. For example, the United States on January one, twenty twenty one, past the Transparency Act

as part of the National Defense Authorisation Act. They did have to override Trump's feto for it, not because of the act that ended this anonymous disability to anonymous shell companies. So if you have anonymous shell companies, we have anonymous trust. We have all sorts of anonymity that we treat as basically the getaway car for all sorts of illicit money

coming by with the United States. But if you think of a society with so much dirty money coming in into its politics, into its economics, sectors, into we've often focused in the federal government, but state and local governments are particularly susceptible to corruption and what that does to

your larger country, what it does to your democracy. So we were already the easiest place to launder money, and we basically put out a giant welcome sign that says, bring it here, bring it on, and here's if you have five million dollars, you can buy some citizenship too.

me of the most corrupt corrupt a ball. I'm not saying they're all corrupt corruptible, because you know, developers, we all know. You know that that stories as old as time.

But since you brought up states, are there certain states that are worse than others that stand out to you?

Perceptions Index, there's the World Bank Governance Index. There's all these indexes, but none of the states. There's only been a couple attempts to even look at how corrupt states are, and there's a lot of issues in even trying to measure a couple of different ones. One of them looked at what were some of the worst states when it came to their actual laws. For those who live in Rjimia, it actually comes out as one of the worst ones because they have some of the worst laws and you know, well.

And strangely enough, like North Korean's, North Korean government was using those the ability to form these anonymous companies and trusts and so forth in Wyoming, particularly to undermine US national security, to be able to get into companies and so forth and make these fake LinkedIn profiles and so forth, and get their people embedded in companies, secrets and so forth, and money. So it's undermining US national security with no

real benefit to the state of Wyoming itself. And so other ways we measure states is just an attempt to look at do their laws actually meet the needs of their citizens and stuff. Not surprisingly, Southern states do particularly

poorly by that. A recent book that literally just came out in the last month by Michael Johnston and Osgan Dincer tries to tries to do different assessments of states and try to figure out looking at things like police violence and its links to racial politics and the environment

within those states.

We had direct election of senators, we got women the right to vote, We've got the trustbusters, and you know this idea that you know, maybe the government ought to be involved in regulating business. What let's assume we are we are going to enter a period of reform, and I think that the fact to the matter is the

most likely scenario. If we don't like how things turn out in this administration as a public, we're probably going to correct in that direction, Like we're going to be looking for, you know, ways to make sure we don't have this happen again, right that whatever we decide that is, So, what is some reform legislation that, you know, assuming we

do head in that direction, what makes sense? What would you like to see or is this stuff that's already on the books and we just need better enforcement of the laws on the books and a Justice department focused on it.

it was amendment that passed incredibly rapidly. So it's hard, it's not impossible. But with some of the Supreme Court decisions that have come down, Trump versus the United States is probably the most frightening one. And then you know movements to reform the Supreme Court itself. You know who gets to pick the judges, maybe having a certain term

limits on the court. You know, people so many years and then go back to their old courts, for example, so you have a concerant rotation or giving every present two you know, two justices that come in so that you're not always having this makes your fight. So these are some of the standard things that really stand out, and a lot of the just the campaign finance reforms sort of things that were there in the past, sort

of getting back to the original founders limiting lobbying. The you know, lobbying was not an enforceable contract in the United States and the eighteen seventies, per the Supreme Court, it wasn't criminal, but if you got double crossed by you know, if you paid a lobbyist and then the lobbyists felt like they didn't get paid enough, they couldn't take you to court because it wasn't considered a enforceable contract because you were monifiing your citizenship.

the citizens group or the corporate group. Now you have two companies in the say, the same sector, who are essentially trying to put the other company out of business, and they each use a lobbyist, and it's sort of like, we're not involved as citizens. It's just two companies arguing who can weaponize government regulation in their favor, And like, we've really perverted lobbying really down to that, and it

is it is. The concept of lobbying makes a lot of sense to me, as by the way, the federalist papers point out they expected some form of this citizens

groups things like that to various factions, But how it works right now in Washington, I don't know where citizens go to lobby.

They're definitely not secondary, maybe tertiary. In some states like Democratic Republic of Congo or something, they don't even show up. They're not you know, they're not even there. And so your discussion about different lobbyists for different industry arguing with each other, where does this where does the citizen go to have their interests brought forward? There are some controversial studies that say citizens actually have very little influence on government.

Those are controversial there, and there's a lot of legitimate arguments that the methodology was flawed in those particular studies. But certainly we've seen the realm where money seems to at least buy more influence work for civil society. We would often go work with the staffers for various members of Congress. They were wonderful staffers, they were great to work with. But I live in or outside of Washington, d C. My lobbyist friends would meet with the senator,

not the staffers, just that access. I mean the advocacy groups, and these included religious groups and so forth.

who wants to play by the rules decides, well, that's what the rules are, so I got to play by those rules. I'm not going to play by the rules. I'm playing by his rules.

R S's ability to go after major taxpayers. Doesn't mean you're in one, but it's a very concerning set of red flags that you're making it easier to engage in significant corruption.

I haven't looked at this year's, but we're always in like the top three, which is not a top three you want to be in, but that was those Those are even before we get into the changes since January twentieth, with you know, enabling further enabling crypto, saying you're not going to enforce anti coruption laws, gutting various asset finance, asset forfeiture, and other task forces that have have now

been dissolved by the Attorney General. The Golden passport thing is not really helping the situation in that regard because you're saying, hey, pay me off and you can have US citizenship and all the rights and protections that are actually that go with it. But even before that, there were concerns. The reasons the United States was already at the top. It was the easiest place to form anonymous

shell companies, anonymous trusts, et cetera. It was the loopholes for being able to evade tax and stuff are already incredibly high those shell companies and through other means, but also things like tax sharing information share. So when you filed your taxes, assuming you did it since we just passed tax day, yep, you had to file whether you

had any overseas bank accounts. Right, United States with Switzerland in particlar was something called Swiss Leaks in twenty sixteen where they found out all these Americans are hiding their money in Switzerland. They require countries, they've had a lot of pressure and companies to send their the information on bank accounts of American citizens to the US, but the United States doesn't share that information with other countries in return.

So what that did is become well, open all your bank accounts in the States and get an anonymous shell company, get an anonymous druss. You can't just directly open anonymous shell company into a US banks, It's not quite that easy because banks have rules under the bank secrecy on and so forth. But you can use that as an ability to put money hedge funds or other areas to laander your money. And so if you're a Swiss citizen, you know that information isn't going to be shared back

to Switzerland. If you're American citizen with a bank account in Switzerland, that information is going to come to the

US government. If you're a Swiss citizen hiding your money in the United States, that's not going to go to this was government. So that started bringing in that made the United States an even better place to launder their money.

stuff was already there. But then you know, whatever duct tape was kind of holding the system together and things were actually starting to improve a little bit in the United States with these new laws, with the new regulations that were going in, Like that's just sort of that's

rapidly marg as we speak.

So there we go those who can't do teach. Yeah, But and it kept working on it, and I come from corruption from a different perspective than a lot of others. Most come into it from law enforcement or human rights perspective. I come from it from a hard military perspective because I.

When you start to lose it, and I think we need to be a little more aware of it.

here today. I really appreciate it.

the variety of my guests here. You know, the ease with which money circulates in the political system does make this the opportunity to pay to play, pay to survive, whatever you want to call it, it is it is. It is just it is more likely to happen, and it is a problem. And we're going to need more politicians willing to essentially not be tempted by the opportunity that is out there for pay to play and instead try to find some laws that perhaps protect the democracy

from that. But voters are going to have to care about it enough to scare these politicians into doing it.

All right, let's take a few questions. Let's dig in to the file what we call around here, they ask Chuck File, ask Chuck, there it is. You got the music? So that helps get me in the mood. All right,

I'm just going to plow forward here with four questions and I'm going to kind of keep my answers tight and we'll go from there. In a society this one comes from Dave in Alexandria, Virginia, in a society that is granted personhood to corporations, I assume he's kind of referring to citizens United. Has it come time to grant the same protection to the state and it's populous in

preventing them from reckless and false statements? Is it time to make false, active and malicious statements by the government or actively filed political candidates illegal. So I think what you have to get at is intent, right. It is somebody making a false statement because they believe in that falsehood, or they're making the false statement because they know it's false, right, And that's you know, motive when it comes to speech,

is a very difficult thing to prove. And I'll be honest with you, I read this question about three or four different times, and I was thinking about not bothering with it and not answering it. Because I was worried it would come across the wrong way to folks and stuff. But I wanted to address it because I understand where you're coming from, right, which is like when you know,

should and I think I'd go deeper than that. You know, could a could it almost like voters file a class class action suit against a Maybe it's a sitting governor, maybe it's a sitting president, Maybe it's the HHS. Right, you know, does a group of Texans decide to file a class action suit against HHS and Secretary Kennedy for

misleading people on the measles vaccine? Now, look, there's obviously indemnity and government government officials are supposed to be indemnified, and it's very hard to sue them on a personal basis. You could get to defamation and things like that, but I guess I would, You know, I was trying to think of what would be an example of a suit that might get standing. Right, did did did a government official provide essentially mislead the public and it led to deaths? Right?

This would be the measles Right? Is there is there some standing there? So I guess my answer to this question is I think this would be difficult to make happen. I think there's a you know, elected officials have, particularly in Congress, have protection the Speech and Debate Clause the First Amendment does does sort of protect. You know, you have a right to lie. You know you have a right to mislead. The question is maliciously intent. There's defamation.

Did your you know, did you do your misstatements to purposely cause harm? Right, there's there's sort of you do

have to can acted the motive there. But in coming up with an example, the one that would perhaps could have standing, and I'd be fascinated to see if there was a federal court that would take this, and what the Supreme Court would say is if a group of citizens in Texas sued the sued Kennedy and HHS essentially by saying that they they helped they helped enhance the measles outbreak which have then caused this damaged loss of life,

et cetera. So it would be on I think health statements that I think perhaps the government would be the most vulnerable on in something like that, especially if you can scientifically prove that they were just wrong on the facts. I mean, we have a there's the Surgeon General of Florida is a massive misinformer on so many things on health.

He's the one that's been trying to convince people to take floride out of water, misleading people about the damaged floride could do like anything, if you just injected fluoride into your body at you know, a whole tube of toothpaste of it immediately or whatever it is, yeah, it could poison you. But that is not the amount of

fluoride in water that is taking place. So I would love to see a class action suit about health advisories from the government that that possibly, possibly could be something

that would put them at risk. Certainly would be an interesting and interesting thing to watch unfold in the courts. All right. Next question here comes from James E. Are there any realistic possibilities to stop jerrymandering? It gets tricky because this comes down to a state and county law thing correct. For example, if Congress makes a law banning it, the states don't have to adhere to that. I feel that this problem could fix a lot of Washington by

promoting more moderate candidates and more competitive races. Curious about your thoughts of what it would take to ban jerrymandering. So here's the problem. If you start banning. You know, one person's jerry mander is another person's attempt at creating a competitive district. You know, one of the one of the hallmarks of our society over the last twenty years. You know, jerry mandering was a gigantic problem in the nineties, in the first decade of the odds, and then we

started self sorting. Meaning you know, when I was growing up, I had no idea. Nobody had any idea whether you lived in a Republican neighborhood or a Democratic neighborhood, and especially if you lived in sort of a mixed neighborhood like I did. It was sort of a middle class neighborhood in what I call East Kendall. There's no East Kendall, but it was east of the Turnpike for those of you keeping track of Miami geography. And you know, I

think our block. You know, I have no idea. You know, my father was a bumper sticker guy, so he had a bob Old bumper sticker for the eighty eight race. So I'm sure that sort of I marked our house, but I don't, you know, I don't really have a strong memory of anybody on either side, and people weren't sure what people's politics were on different things. Now there's this bit of cultural self sorting where people want to live, whether it's in a similar ethnic group or with similar

cultural ties. And so if you're trying to create, you know, congressional districts that are competitive, you actually might need to gerrymander in order to create the competitive nature. So I'm not sure gerry mandering itself is something you want to ban. Now. I do think you could create guard rails on gerrymandering, right, And I think I've brought this up before, where you know, there's always been this idea that the courts could come

up with a formula. So, for instance, let me give you a formula that I've wanted to test out, which is you take, you know, in any decade, at the end of the decade, when you're trying to figure out how you're starting your apportionment, you take the last two gubernatorial elections and the last two presidential elections, and you basically you put all four of those votes together and you split the dn R and whatever it is, whatever

that spacing is. If the party that has an advantage is at fifty two percent, then no district can be ten points greater than fifty two, you know, for for said party. You know that you can't make a district bigger than sixty two percent advantage for Party X. And if it's fifty five, then that number would expand to

sixty five. Right. You sort of create some sort of you know, no more than ten points in one direction or the other based on the statewide partisan split over the last four statewide elections for the two executive offices in the state, governor and the presidency. That's a way to create a formula. I'm a data guy. I would love to just have rules that you would follow. It's

math and you go from there. The other idea, of course, is what I floated in my ted talk, which is you want to if you want to limit the damage that jerrymandering can do and the fact that political leaders in a state can essentially, you know, put the finger on the scale for one party or the other. I mean, the fact of the matters Republicans have an advantage, you know, have the majority in Congress, not because of the voters that voted, but because of congressional districts that were redrawn

in North Carolina and Florida. That's the margin for the Republicans. If they don't get those corridorder redraws that go their way, Democrats probably control the House and we have a much different situation here with Trump and his attempt to govern. So I do think that that gerry mandering as it stands now, and I think we have two we don't have. We have too many people in per congressional district, eight

hundred thousand per congressional districts too many. There are only thirteen cities that have a population of greater than eight hundred thousand, Okay, so that means we have four hundred and thirty five congressional districts that are the that would be individually, you know, bigger or as big as just about every major city in America. But for the top thirteen, Austin,

Texas has just under eight hundred thousand. So that is not a community of interest and that and when you have districts that big, it actually becomes easier to jerrymander. And I know nobody wants to put more members of Congress and more politicians in Washington, but I believe it or not, more democracy is better for the democracy, not less democracy. And if you want to get rid of jerrymandering or limit the damage jerry mandering is do, then

we should expand the House. You don't need a constitutional amendment for this. This is just an Act of Congress. Expand the House. We're at one per four hundred thousand. You're going to have more communities of interest. By the way, four hundred thousand, it's a population of America's fiftieth largest city, which is Arlington, Texas. That's a suburb of Dallas. That is a community of interests. I expect there to be a member of Congress for Arlington, Texas. You know that

makes sense to me. In the likelihood, if you have eight hundred and eighty one districts rather than four hundred and thirty five, it's just harder to slice and dice them. You're actually going to have more of everything. And it should create more diversity, a bit more small d democracy in the House. And yes, you're going to have a different class of people finally have an opportunity to run for Congress. It isn't going to be somebody you know

or some ideology that you share with. Just enough people in order to break through with an interest group to get the nomination in a congressional district that only the primary would decide things. So, if you're looking to get rid of jerrymandering, I don't think it is by doing a law as you're describing, because people move around and you never know when you're going to need to create jerrymander in order to create competition, Right, So I do

think the better answer is double the size of the house. All right, let me move on to the next question here, and this one comes from it's unsigned, long time listener, first time caller. I love that you always like to talk about finding people in the middle, and I've always liked your description that most Americans live between the thirty yard lines referring to a football field. But my question for you is, could you explain what you're measuring with

that metaphorical football field when you're talking about moderates. Is it a question about tone, not being a bomb thrower, deference to process, policy, incrementalism, people who try to triangulate some position that seems to appeal to some imaginary swing voter, or is it really just about being pragmatic as opposed

to seeming like a doctrinaire partisan dialog. Yes, okay. The answer is that he goes on which version are the people you think politicians need to speak to when you're talking about moderates, and which of these voices should the media try to find. Look, I am a one of those who believes that I always say that I, you know, I don't share my I have Depending on the issue, some people might say my views are radically left or

they're radically right or whatever. Right they don't. But what I always say is you can't sort of make progress without incrementally in the middle. It doesn't mean, you know, I think there's there's two types of moderates. I think there's moderate in temperament and then there's sort of moderate in and that they have a mixed constituency and they're trying to represent maybe a business community on one part of their district, and maybe they're trying to represent a

religious community and another part of their district. And maybe there's sometimes some things go together. But I'm mostly in for tone or tenor. I mean, I think that you know, there there used to be Republicans try to get the most electable conservative. I've heard someone the left describes themselves as a pragmatic progressive, meaning they're always looking to make progress, but they're not trying to you know, they're not trying

to solve the problem. And one fell sloop swoop. You know that in a country of three hundred and fifty million people with a lot of diverse opinions, you got to bring them along one step at a time. So when I speak about the thirties, it's not that people don't have some things that they may be further to the left than somebody and further to the right. It's just that they accept the fact that, hey, their point of view is out of that mainstream and isn't going

to get a dress. But maybe there's something in between. So maybe you believe that all abortions should be banned, but you know that's a that's not a seventy percent issue that in fact, there's a seventy percent issue against your point of view. So instead you may be for parental notification, or you may be for you know, trying to limit the number of weeks somebody has access to abortion, because then you find yourself sharing the views of people somewhere in the in the in this larger middle. So

when I refer to that I do refer to. I think of it as that way because I don't think anybody. I don't think anybody per se. I think people define themselves as centrist based on the caricatures of the two parties that are out there. But I actually think that isn't the issue. It really is more I see it as more temperament. Right. You know, you have people that

are going to take a sledgehammer to government, right. I mean, Donald Trump's no moderate here, even though he actually has positions that might not you know, that might not put him as an ideologue traditional conservative on X or Y or Z right. He's actually a protectionist, which in the

eighties was considered a left wing position. But it you know, he is not conservative at all in his in his in his mindset of trying to hurry up and change things, right, that is not you know, the first part of conservative is conserve right, which means you you you don't do anything too rashly, if anything, you don't you know you incrementalism, but even even smaller right on that front. So look, you you outlined it well. But that is usually what

I'm referring to. It's not necessarily an ideological It's more about temperament and whether and whether you believe that, hey, the goals should be to give something, you know, get a little something for everybody. A seventy thirty win if you're the party in majority, that's a win versus this idea that the other side doesn't get any say at all. It's either ninety five to five. You know, you know,

it's either my way or the highway. You know that to me is not a moderate position, even if you you know, if you have no interest in engaging with the other side. All Right, The final question I'll take

today is this comes from a guy named Rocky. Gotta love that. I always appreciate when you insert some sports knowledge into a political conversation. Based on your experiences, what elected official was is the most knowledgeable sports and you've interacted with disclaimer former athletes or coaches like Jim Bunny, Steve Large, and Tom Osborne. They don't count extra points if you want to break it down. Baseball, college football, NFL,

college hoops, NBA, NHLPGA. Enjoying the podcast Rocky, So, I look, I got a couple of quick answers on this. I'll tell you the person that Tom Davis. He's a former Republican member of Congress from Northern Virginia. He basically came to Congress when I got to the hotline. I think he won in ninety two and then ninety four. Anyway, this is a guy who didn't just know every presidential result going back to the forty eight presidential election by county.

I think he could name every World Series lineup that goes back to nineteen forty eight. Davis was a baseball savant, is a baseball savant. I've enjoyed going to Nats games with him in the past. If he's listening now, he might be. He's an old friend, easily the most knowledgeable baseball fan of any elected official I've met. But you have these sort of specialists like Shared Brown. He's got this. I don't want to give away his email address, but his email address is a tribute to the tribe. To

the Guardians now, I guess we refer to them. Massive Cleveland baseball fan and knows can go deep on Cleveland baseball. Not sure about the other sports. Steve Israel, a former Long Island congressman, goes deep on the Mets just his mats can go super deep. Then there's a lot of I've always had some pretty good Haley Barber. Boy does he love Old Miss football, And that is somebody you can have a deep and long conversation on Old Miss football.

So you know, Marco Rubio can go He's a guy that will go deep on the backup cornerbacks of the Dolphins. You know, he's a super fan of the Dolphins in a way. And I you know, I'm not sure where I think his son's a Gator so and he went to so I'm not quite sure of his college football how obsessed with college football he is. But I know he's a he's a massive Dolphins fan and can go deep on the Dolphins on that front. So you know, there's quite look, there's This has been one of the

more helpful ways as a reporter. I've always said, you know, being a sports fan, there's always a way to connect. And I'm an eclectic sports fan. I like, you know, baseball and college football are probably my two first loves. But boy, the NFL's right there. I love the NBA. My son loves it more, so I've gotten into it a little bit more. By the way, Barack Obama, he goes that guy watches a ton of basketball. I remember I busted him. He wasn't a huge baseball guy claimed

to be a White Sox fan. And I remember one day there's some big trade the White Sox have. I was doing small talk. He wasn't paying attention to a Jake PV trade at the Chicago White Sox. But like, he's the guy that was going. Did you see the backup guard that played the other night in the Bulls game? That guy, you know, he played it. I watched him at Marquette. Like he goes deep both on college basketball and the NFL. You know, ironically, Donald Trump's not, as

you know, where he goes deep as golf. He weirdly doesn't go that deep on some of these other sports. He knows culturally he needs to connect. But as he will say, he's friendly with a lot of sports owners. But you know, I know he loves boxing, he loves wrestling. Wrestling's been a good, good thing for his businesses in

Atlantic City. He was the one guy that was willing to host the WWE back in the days, and that was an important you know, the snobs of Madison Square Garden weren't so into it back in the day, and it gave him a tenant when he needed a tenant. But he doesn't go as deep on the players on some of this stuff unless he is a personal relationship. But on golf, and I tell you there's a reason golfers are so loyal to him. They will tell you. And I've had this conversation with golfers, even those that

don't like his politics. They say, you don't understand he really cares about making great golf courses. They've always felt very, very well treated by any Trump course. So you know, the golfing community isn't just formed of before him. He has treated the golfing community quite well over the years because he wants more of these tournaments, right he does. The guy loves his golf and he does and he does go deep on that. So I will say this, it is whether you're whether you're into sports or not.

If you're going to get into politics as an elected official, as a reporter, or as a staffer, you're going to have to learn how to speak that language. It is the It is the best way to connect with communities. It is a frankly, it is a way to bring communities together without you know, and especially you know, I wish Donald Trump didn't make this so difficult for people politically,

sort of almost being negative if somebody doesn't come. Really would love to separate out the politics of the presidency so that plenty of teams can just feel good about showing up at the White House. You know, I'm sorry that that it is treated so politically these days. You know, there were plenty of players at boycotted showing up at at showing up for the events when Obama was president, but it didn't get you know, it's not like Obama

got angry about it and said something and tweeted or whatever. Right, And I think it's why it never seemed like it was as big of a deal as it comes across now because the president himself, it personalizes everything and to assume, you know, he whether it's about him or not, as we know, in some ways he loves it if he can make something about him on that. But look, that's my rundown of sports fans. You know, my friend Chris E. Lizza wrote a whole book about presidents and sports. It's

really good. I highly recommend it. It's a good way to sort of get you get you acclimated with which politicians truly like sports, and which politicians simply use sports as a way to try to connect to the everyday voter. All right, well that does it for that group of We've got four questions in for Ask Chuck again a lot. Be sure you can send me an email at ask Chuck at the Chuck com. You can put a comment on the YouTube with a question. You can do it

on our Instagram feed. You can send us questions wherever you want to send us questions Instagram feed, Twitter, YouTube. Yes, I have a TikTok feed too for the podcast. Don't tell anybody at TikTok no, actually please do so the algorithm can get better. So anyway, I would love to get your questions from that. And with that I will take a break for at least twenty four hours until we upload again.