Chuck’s Commentary - Both Parties Point Fingers… And Fix Nothing + Top 5 GOP Races That Could Signal Trouble For Trump

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free quote at ethos dot com slash chuck. That is ETOs dot com slash chuck. Application times may vary and rates may vary. Hello Aaron, Welcome to another episode of the Chuck Podcast. Let me give you a quick rundown of what we have for today's episode. Look, I've got a little more fallout from the events on Saturday, and frankly a laments, I'm not gonna lie to Yeah, this is you know, I know we're all shocked that our leaders aren't meeting the moment, but our leaders aren't meeting

the moment. Let's not take our eye off the ball of Iran. We have just hit essentially a new high and gas prices since the start of this war. We're now at a high on gas prices that we had to deal with at the start of the Ukraine Russian War. The problem here is that there doesn't seem to be a near term solution on the horizon. Then we have a bunch of political updates. We have a new house map in Florida. It's a fascinating new map. My quick headline is this is a great map for Republicans in

a presidential year. This is a shaky map for Republicans in a midterm year, particularly a midterm year where they could where they're the party in power. I will dig

into that a few Senate race developments. Obviously, it's Wednesday, so it's Top five day, and I've got a fun little take on a top five list today. The top five races that are that are the most dangerous for Donald Trump to cement lame duck status right. The test of his political strength inside the Republican Party is these are five Republican primaries that will tell us how lame the duck in the Oval office is these days. Right,

So I think you're going to enjoy that, and plus I'm going to take some questions. But let me begin with a lament. And I know this isn't a shock or a surprise, but it is still striking to me over the last couple of days that, you know, to see what didn't happen after last Saturday night's events, we had a man show up at the White House, correspondent

Centner armed had written a manifesto anti Trump's screed. He was stopped at a security checkpoint and the response from the White House has essentially been, well, we should tighten security and build my ballroom. And it's the Democrats and the l fault. And that tells you something, because there was a time in this country not that long ago, when something like this would happen, a president in particular

would treat it very differently. There would have been an attempt, at least in an attempt to study the country to lower the temperature, like what George W. Bush did after nine to eleven, ex making it crystal clear that the United States was not at war with Islam. Right, there was an important he had to say it, and it took an American president to say it. There isn't there

was nobody else that could say it that would have any sort of meaning beyond the President of the United States in that moment. Presidents are in charge of the thermostat of the political temperature of the country period, and he chose to turn down the thermostat. Saw what was building, feared what was building, and he turned down that thermostat. But we haven't really had that moment, right they even had the moment where this president said, this isn't who

we are, this is not acceptable. Maybe it's time to take a breath here. I know we've all allowed political rhetoric to get out of hand, right, and yet that's not the instinct right now, is it? And that's the problem. So instead of relitigating how we got here, and I think that's part of the problem, everybody feels pretty confident that they're right and the other side is wrong. I have felt it. I wrote sort of a similar thing on in my column this week for Newsphere and substat

that essentially argued that look, we're here, and you know, yes, there's no doubt that Donald Trump's arrival in twenty fifteen accelerated this moment, But that doesn't excuse the behavior now on the laugh to just say, well, Donald Trump started at your reptce you so that's not good either. So that's why you know, we can re litigate. I mean, there's definitely nobody can deny how this began. But everybody's

in charge of their own behavior here. And I still believe ultimately it takes a president, and we may have a president who is not interested in turning the temperature down. But here's the simplest way I can explain it. Because we've produced a new kind of political environment that's quite scary. For years, we treated certain rhetoric as performance. And I know we're going to go through this again, and some of you may roll your eyes, Oh we've been through

here before. Yeah we have, and apparently we haven't learned the lesson, so we've got to keep going here, right, But we treated the rhetoric that's campaign stuff, and there was you know, you know, I think frankly I have a higher tolerance than most right because I'm used to

heated campaign rhetoric. It's crowd stuff. It's right out of the WWE and that's what Trump thinks, that he's doing it for entertainment purposes, things like that he doesn't really mean it, and I believe that I don't think he really meant it. But that's me that doesn't mean what other people. And then there are people that act in

his name that did mean it. Right. But when this has start to when this is when this starts happening at scale over time, it stops being performance and it gets turned into a permission slope and then after a while becomes something bigger, becomes the environment itself. We can

trace that shift pretty quickly. Right. We know Donald Trump didn't invent anger in politics, but he absolutely changed what was acceptable to say out loud, punching protesters, carrying them out on stretchers, personalizing everything, turning all personal opponents into enemies. Many of us felt it personally. And you know, with

fellow Republicans who are not MAGA members, many of them don't speak out for fear. Out of fear. Trust me, I've had every single mainstream reporter has had this conversation with an elected Republican, every single one in Washington. We all have an off the record, and I have multiple off the record conversations with elected Republicans, essentially saying I don't call it out because you have no idea what his people do to me or due to my family,

or the threats that are made. Right, it is there is a coercion that has taken place here, and that's why it's sometimes frustrating to watch this. Right, some people only want to look back the last four years and say, boy,

look what the Democrats have done. And there's some truth to that. Right, the democratic rhetoric has gotten harsher, the violence that being prone to violence does seem in the last couple of years coming more from the left than the right. But you're sticking your head in the sand if you don't realize we're living, if you don't pull back the camera more and realize, oh, how did we get here? This is how we got here? Right, And the fact is, anybody that's been doing this for a

decade knows this is how we got here. Now you can choose to put your partisan blinders on and say it's their faults. Look at how nasty and awful the left is. Look at how nasty and awful Donald Trump is. The fact is both things can be true at the same time. You know, and that's something. And this isn't both siding everything. This is, you know, two wrongs don't

make a right. Our politics is fucked up because of too many people believing that two wrongs make a right and this sort of idea that you fight fire with fire, and whether it's on things as sort of arcane as drawing congressional district lines to the rhetoric that is used to describe a political opponent that you don't agree with. But the bottom line is the line has been moved and we have created the conditions for more of this not blessed. Now, we spent years talking about January sixth

in that matters, But here's the thing. I think we've missed that in the end of something that was actually the beginning of something, especially after he pardoned everybody in January sixth. So the real question now is what happens after that kind of permission has been established and what is it going to take to create a safer sense of normal in our political discourse. Because here's what we've learned right now, the permission slip of January six has

not has not stayed contained. It has spread, and it

didn't spread ideologically, it's not on one side of the aisle. It has spread culturally, and you can see it big and small. You see it in moments that would have been unthinkable before. Sitting precedent reacting to the death of a former FBI director, Robert Muller, by saying, good, I'm glad he's dead. You know that moment, The fact that he couldn't even fake it until the man was buried.

In that moment, he couldn't think about people that loved that man, who were children and grand children and nieces and nephews and spouses. That was the President of the United States's reaction. And then we're surprised when people who don't like this president decide, you know, they're going to fight fire with fire. It should be an earthquake in

American politics, and it's barely a tremor. So why does that moment matter? Not because it's shocking, but because it's not shocking. Nobody's batted an eye at it. It just simply got absorbed, filed away, added to the pile of incendiary rhetoric that we've now decided is normal. And that was the tell. That was the normalization. And once you get there, this is how it works. It doesn't take

a movement, and it doesn't take coordination. It just takes one broken person who may have their own problems, and who may decide maybe they our own sociopathic tendon and their own narcissism. They think somehow they can solve a problem,

or they can be a hero. One unstable, angry person who looks around, seize the tone, seize the language, thinks that this is now more acceptable than ever, or that it's the only thing left in the arsenal to do, and then they decide to act within it, within that environment. That's it. That's the mechanism. Now let's layer something else on the top of all this. The last decade has made a lot of people feel like they've lost control.

These technological changes are fast. Our cultural changes are super fast, right, economically, culturally, socially, it feels we've all we feel less stable in all parts of our lives today. And then we have an information ecosystem that is exploitive, reinforces one idea over and over. Someone else is responsible for the situation, point the finger. Don't look in the mirror. There's no such thing as personal responsibility anymore, no self reflection. Right, you see it.

Politicians refuse to take to take stock in their own behavior,

they just point a finger. Political parties won't take stock in their own behavior. They point fingers or exploit for political gain. Quote the system, right, And this is what the system looks like. And once you've believed that, the distance between blame and justification gets a lot smaller. And here's the part. A lot of people are going to miss or ignore the guy on Saturday Night, right, and the left has to deal with this. And this wasn't caught,

This wasn't somebody acting on Trump's behalf. His grievances ran in the other direction. But he chose to believe this was the way out. He'd lost faith in the political system. It's not a contradiction. It's a confirmation that we have. The environment has changed. American politics is now brutal, it's now violent, and this cold civil war is warming up.

We should not want this environment to set in. It takes and there's only one president at a time. And now we've learned this doesn't stay directional. It gets adapted, it gets mirrored, and it gets thrown back. And you know, I've been disappointed in watching the reactions from the left, which has been frankly similar to the reactions on the right, just coming up with the evidence of why it is all Donald Trump's fault, and there's a strong case that

he created the conditions for this moment. But it doesn't justify the behavior, and it doesn't justify amping up your rhetoric, and it doesn't justify any of the behavior we'd fight. No, all you're doing is accelerating your tape. It's a race to the bottom, and you're trying to win. Nobody wins a race to the bottom. Yeah, you can comfort yourself by saying Trump's reaping what he sewed, but it doesn't solve the problem. You and I aren't any safer with

that attitude. The question is what are you doing to change this. I'm sorry that most people don't think Michelle Obama was right. I don't even know if Michelle Obama believes she was right that when a political opponent goes low, you go high. Because the minute you start rationalizing your violence, well they started it even rhetorically, you've crossed the same line. You're no longer arguing about politics, you're justifying outcomes different side,

same logic, and that's what this environment is produced. That's why, unfortunately we don't have a president that can deal with this moment and take it head on, because it would take self reflection. He doesn't have it. It would take an admission that he was a big contributor to what's to this broken environment that we're living in but I don't like. But at the same time, those on the left should take no comfort that he started. It doesn't

justify the actions or the behavior. So what would leadership Would a good leadership moment look like right now? Well, it certainly would sound different. You'd hear a president ignotging the moment, not spin it, not as sign blame, just simply acknowledging it. You'd hear something like, we've all contributed to this town here, we need to say it back, we need to lower it, and I need to do a better job myself. I do you know some of you are probably laughing if Trump would ever admit anything.

I'm just telling you what it would look like if we were modeling this moment correctly, you'd at least see an effort, a small one, to create space to try to interrupt this cycle. That's what leadership in this moment would look like. That's not what we have. And now we have leadership in the in the on the Democratic side who's like, screwm, let's go. We don't have the president we needed right now to get through this moment,

and we're not going to get what we need from this White House. So instead, what we're going to get is finger pointing, one sided explanations and political framing of this moment. There'll be no acknowledgment of how we got here, and without that, there's no way to actually deal with this moment. So we're going to end up moving on, not because we should, but because we can't get out of it right. We don't have the people at the table.

The voters are going to have to give us new leaders to see if they can get the country unstuck here. And look, we might hear a lot about security, more barriers, more distance. Boy, is that that's not the issue. And if anything, ratcheting up security only makes this worse. You want to create more barriers between the elected officials, the powerful, and the actual rank and file people. That's not a free society anymore. Security is not the problem. Fact, security

work here. Can't secure your way out of a culture. This is not about just going into a bunker or finding a ballroom on grounds that are impossible to get on unless you've given biometric issues. So right now we don't have the leadership that's interested in reversing this. We

are escalating. We believe that you can't show weakness, and because there's this fear of ever showing weakness politically, we now default to confrontation. And the problem is that confrontation is only going to make us less safe. We're less stable. So it's a lament. I'm not going to be labor this anymore. I am going to do my best to continue to highlight why we have You know, we've this is a this is a collective failure of American leadership. Donald Trump's on top, but he's not alone. Get to

the ballot box and realize that character matters, that morality matters, that temperament matters. Policy goals matter too, But how do you want to achieve those goals? How do you plan to achieve those goals? Persuasion or coercion. It's a big difference. One is something you do in a democracy, the other is something you do in an authoritarian regime. It's the decision we have to be and we have to make speaking of boring fuel on this fire. As I was

putting this monologue together, we got news that at federal grand jury North Carolina, somebody went shopping for a grand jury and dieted former FBI director Jim Comey. The Justice Departments to attempt to criminally charge the former FBI director

that President Trump fired. The charges are not immediately clear, but apparently the case stems from a photograph that James Comy posted online last year showing seashells on a beach that were arranged to write out the numbers eighty six and forty seven, with forty seven supposedly being representative of the president in eighty six meaning banning or removing someone or slang for killing someone. So you can see exactly

what the Trump administration is up to. They are taking they are trying to weaponize this moment to prove that all of this is on the backs of Trump critics and that somehow they have clean hands and they have nothing to do with amping up this rhetoric. The amount of exploitive ways. The president has ordered his government to harass the Komi family, including his daughter who had a job in the federal government, and she's now in the middle of a lawsuit about her firing. Look, I'm not

going to sit here and justify Komy doing what he did. It was stupid, and I think a lot of Komy's

actions while he was FBI director were just horrendous. He had the disease of eye alone can fix it disease, right, But the first Amendments, the first Amendment, And unless this government can prove that this is connected to anything and it actually was an instigated actually somehow somebody took it as an order, I don't know where this case is going, if this has anything remotely to do with that, with that social media post, but that is pouring fuel on

this fire. That is not an administration interesting in turning down the temperature. And this is my fear. If Democrats get into office and win a majority in the House, in the Senate and immediately go for impeachment, we are just going to be in a cycle and a race to the bottom. I know the elected officials I'm looking for. I'm looking for people that are going to turn the page, that want to restore honesty and credibility and trust into government,

and they show a little bit of humility and character and morality while in office. That might be too much much to ask for in our politicians, huh. But if this is what we ask for in our friends, if this is what we ask for and how we raise our kids, and you know what it should be what we ask for, and what kind of representatives that we have in this country. Character is destiny. It's a cliche for a reason, because it's amazing how often it turns out to be true. By the way, one final point,

then Jimmy Kimmel's stuff. Jimmy Kimmel should apologize. Do I think the government should be going after him like this? Of course not. He's got First Amendment rights. But the joke in hindsight after the events on Saturday, looks terrible. So say it, admit it. It's okay. You can say

I was not intended for what it got interpreted as, which means you've got to write a better punchline, or you got to write a better joke. I'm not sitting here defending the behavior of this government or the president in targeting Kimmel. But see, this is sort of the problem, right, Everything is about you got to pick a side or you're on. Jimmy Kimmel's side, or you're not on his side. I'm on Jimmy Kimmel's side. I'm on the side of

free speech. But if I said that and then that event happened and somebody got mad, I'd have apologized because I'd have felt like shit because it wasn't what he I do believe it was not what he intended, but I'm not here to explain him. I just think that again, it goes back to are you going to be a de escalator or do you want to be an accelerant in this moment. It's pretty simple decision people have to make. This episode of The Chuck Toodcast is brought to you

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I urge you to watch the interview in whole. I hope some of you have subscribed a newsphere. I'm just telling you it's really it's a high end news product and if you really really want not just reporting, but really smart analysis, looking around the corner type of stuff, new Sphere is the place for you. But I want to share a little bit because look, we're in the middle of ran We just hit a new high end gas price. This is not getting resolved tomorrow. And the

impact on our economy, I mean it is. You know, there's been this sort of like stick the markets have been sticking their head in the sand. Very hopeful almost like on some sort of AI high if you will, right. But I can tell you the way consumers are going to feel. Consumers are going to hate this economy, and they already hate this economy. But I just want to sum up a few things. My conversation with Best Sayer, I would call was very sobering, and she kept returning

to one basic point in our thirty minute sit down that the US may be measuring this war one way, bomb damage, destroyed ships, degraded assets, but Iran is measuring it another way. Entirely, as Saner put it, Iran's measuring stick is regime survival. Something I've been emphasizing here that the problem we have is what does our victory look like?

And what does their victory look like? And right now their victory simply surviving gives them leverage, and that means we may be winning tactically while still moving farther away from what was supposed to be a strategic solution. So her argument is that we've fallen into a very familiar American pattern assuming military superiority can solve a political problem. She compared it to Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan. Moments when we misunderstood the culture, the leadership, the decision making,

and the resilience of the adversary. I mean, how many

times do we have to wash rents and repeat? Apparently we had to do it again. And one of her sharpest lines in this interview was, we're fighting the Iranians in time, right, that's the warning. We're focused on what we can destroy and they're focused on what they can survive. And that brings us to the Strait of hormones. Sander said, the strait is now the immediate crisis, not because the nuclear she has gone away, but because this is the thing that can blow up the global economy right now.

I love this line she gave me. She said, the strait is an emergency, which is the alligator closest to the boat. Yes, and our nuclear armed iron is bad. You know what's the worst thing right now? And a runne in control of the Strait of hormones. It's the

alligator closest to the boat. You can't get to the other one until you deal with this one. That's the frame. The nuclear program is still the long term strategic threat, but the Strait is the crisis sitting in front of us. Shipping insurance, energy prices, allies, China, Russia, all of it, all of it choked off at this choke point. And Sander's broader critique is that we are not sequencing our power very well. We actually sequenced our power really well

in Venezuela. She used Venezuela as a net positive comparison. Right, we had diplomacy, we had information, military, force, economics. These are all the tools that she outlined that are supposed to work together, but you need to do them in a certain order. And instead she's arguing we're relying too

heavily on the military hammer and then wondering why the diplomatic door is harder to reopen. And she made this chilling observation, the Iranians understand us better than we understand that. That does seem like a scary proposition. They see the threats, they see the pauses, right, they're paying attention. They see the extensions of the ceasefire, and every time we threaten something and don't do it, they read that as proof

that they're winning. The bottom line from Santa is this, you can have overwhelming military success and still not have an endgame, or she put it, you can have overwhelming conventional military success and still be no closer to a solution. Welcome to the Iran that we have in front of us right now, that's the warning. This doesn't end with a bomb damage assessment. It's going to end with diplomacy. And right now, the question is not just whether Iran

comes back to the table. It's whether we know who exactly we're supposed to be negotiating with and whether we know how to get to an endgame. All right, let me get through a few political questions that I know you guys are interested in. Let's start with the Florida remap here, and it is, like I said at the top, this is a map that if you're Republicans, you would

have loved to run on in twenty four and you may like to run on it in twenty eight, especially if Marco Rubio's on the ticket. Right, it basically dilutes some Republican some big Republican congressional districts in central Florida, both near Tampa Bay and near Orlando, and makes them a little bit more competitive. Ditto in South Florida. And that all makes sense in a presidential year. The problem with this map for Republicans it's made. It has now

put more seats in play for Republicans. It now means they have to spend more money than ever. Yes, they can claim Democrats have to spend a bunch of money because the Democratic seats they have to fight for, and then they have to see if they can win a couple of others. So let me give you a few little highlights for those of you that are familiar. Basically, it didn't make any changes in the northern part of

the state. It really is sort of Tampa Bay, Orlando, and the Miami mostly the Miami for Lauderdale market, a little bit of Palm Beach. So let's start with Jared Moscowitz w Washerman Sultz. This is Districts twenty three and twenty five. This is parts of so Moscow. It's basically used. It's been the congressman for Parkland, right, and so it's both I think, a little bit of Palm Beach and a little bit of Broad County and w Washerman Souls, who used to be almost all exclusively browd County gotten

more Miami. So there's less now of a Broward County base in District twenty three, which was Moscowitz, and that puts them in danger. Meanwhile, you've got w Washerman. Soultz's twenty fifth district now essentially is a coastal seat and now is Delray Beach to Miami Beach, so it's both heavily Latino and really wealthy. You know, she's if she were not pro Israel, I'd say she'd have a hard time holding that seat. But she can hold the seat.

It may be a swing district now, and she's not running swing districts very often, and that's something that might be different, you know, to me. You know there's certain members of Congress. When you're always in a swing district, you're sort of you have muscle memory for it. You develop. It's like anything when you have one workout routine, if you do the same thing over and over again, That's what I do. Unfortunately, I don't diversify my workouts. I'm you know, I I sort of I'm really good at

handling treadmill running. I'm really bad at handling anything else. So, you know, I think what's new for w Washerman Childs is going to be being in a swing district mindset. But she's kind of I've noticed she has lowered her national profile a bit and gone more, I think frankly in response to I mean, her district has been getting a little bit more competitive over time. Meanwhile, the twenty

second district, this is lowis Frankle. This was mostly Palm Beach. Well, it now is shifting parlisan balances across both Palm Beach and Broward in central Florida. The ninth district, this is Darren Soto. This one gets dramatically. This one essentially gets erased. It's moved from a majority Latino seat to a plurality white one, and if you just look at the data, goes from a plus three point five Harris district to

a plus eighteen Trump district. Meanwhile, Kathy Castors seat in Tampa Bay fourteenth district, it's been we've drawn to be much more competitive, and it shifts to a narrow plus three Republican edge. The point is that Castor has been targeted, but this is not an automatic loss here. Meanwhile, there's been some huge fallout. Right, So Daniel Webster, longtime member of Congress in Florida, he'd been one of the louder voices saying don't do this. He walked, He's like, I'm

not defending this new seat. Here's what happened to his seat. The seat is no a R plus twenty fortress. The new lines moved parts. He had the villages in his district, so it took the deep red villages and put them into some adjacent districts. And it's just turned what was a very Republican district into essentially a lean R. And I think they just assumed Daniel Webster, who's been everybody, yes, he could hold it, but he doesn't want to hold it.

And as an open seat in a midterm year, this is the first district created that could start to get us into dummy Mandar territory. And then to make Castor work, they had to pull Republican voters from neighboring thirteen and fifteen districts. Well, the thirteenth is represented by Anna Paulina Luna, who was already in a fairly competitive district as it is, and she is somebody who's always been seen as a little bit too conservative for the district she's represented. Well,

now what is it now? She's even more you know, so she might not be the right person to hold

that for the Republicans. So that seat arguably now has become more vulnerable. And then in South Florida, in order to do this, this sort of cracking and packing of they did that they to spread out the Broward County voters a little bit so that they didn't all get consolidated. They had to move some reliably Republican voters into these more competitive districts. What it is left is it's left both Mario Diaz Billard and Carlos Smenez with more diverse

and less predictable red electorates in Dade County. And it wasn't that long ago that both of those districts had plenty of Democratic voters. Miami, Dade County is a swing county. It's still a swing county. Yes, a lot of Republican money has moved to Miami, a lot of major private equity firms have moved to my All of that is true. But all the people they bring are they're bringing, They're

not necessarily bringing Republican voters. And it is not clear that the Latino vote is going to be as republican in twenty six as it was in twenty four. And

if it is not, then suddenly these two districts are in play. And Maria Salazar was already in play, although that got configured a bit too so bottom line, I know I went through it individually. Bottom line, this will be a good map for Republicans in twenty eight, but they may this basically may not pick up four probably

is maybe it picks up one or two, could be break even. But it has done this, It's made Florida. It's actually this is what it did is that Florida was not going to be home to many swing districts, and now it is. Now there's going to be more money spent. Right, Virginia created a situation where there's much fewer swing districts, much less money will be pouring in from either party. This new Florida map actually increases the need for campaign spending. You'll see there's a bit more competition.

And then we've already seen that both the governor's race and the Senate race aren't cakewalks for the Republicans. So it's Florida battle around state again. I'm not quite ready

to go that far, but it is more competitive and might have as many house seats in play, certainly more house seats in play, or maybe as many a house season play as a state larger than it than Texas. A few other nuggets just to share with you. One interesting new Democratic poll out of Texas that shows tall Rico within a high single digit lead over Paxton and a low single digit lead over Cornyn. That's not surprising,

I think. What's surprising that there is still a lead over corn I think the real question is if Cornyn wins this runoff, is this still a competitive race? Now? The problem that Taller Rico's going to have is that I think if Cornyan wins a runoff, they'll be less national. There'll be less money coming from the Senate packs because there'll be a belief that it you know, and we know John Thune's going to be more willing to spend

more money than ever. Now, Look, do I think no matter who the Republican nominees, there's going to be a ton of money poured into Texas. I do. But there'll be more if it's Corny than if it's Paxton. So that's a note there. And I still you know, you still see all the and I'm going to get to this in my top five list, but you're still going to see You're still going to see Paxton still seems to have an advantage of the runoff Susan Collins deciding

to go negative on grand platter before the primary. If you're jan and Mills, this is exactly what you were hoping for. But it might But there's another way to look at this. The fact that the Colins superPAC has decided to engage Platiner now rather than after the primary sort of gets there was this growing conventional wisdom that if Collins could choose, she'd rather face Platiner than Mills. Well, guess what, the super pac has decided. No, no, no,

no no, they want to kill Platiner. Now they want to face Mills. And you know what, I think the Collins people are right, And I think we've been watching this race together. You've probably seen me evolve on this a little bit. Myself. I was a little skeptical, and now I see the strength of Platiner, don't get me wrong. And so it's interesting now you see the Colins super pack essentially deciding, oh no, we much rather face Janet Mills. Look,

she's just not a good candidate. Doesn't mean she might not make a great senator. She's just not a good candidate, whether a primary candidate or general Electric candidate. It's been exposed in the primary by Platner, who's a very good political athlete, and now the Collins people see it in their numbers. Right. This just reinforces what we've all been seeing in these public polls. Platner's a strong is in a strong position at the moment to win this SENENCEE.

Collins would much prefer to face an opponent who also is an incumbent politician. Pretty logical to me. This episode to the Chuck Podcast is brought to you by Soul. So if you love that end of the day unwined but hate the hangover, Soul's out of Office is for you. These sparkling THCHC drinks and gummies give you the same relaxed social feeling without the alcohol, without the calories, and without the crash. Soul is a wellness brand that believes

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We just haven't fully realized it yet. Sometimes you have to go back, you have to go forwards, and then you'll go, oh, it turns out that he was a lame duck starting, you know, with the with the you know, it could could have begun all the way on tariff day, right. It was like with Joe Biden, you know, in the moment of the Afghanistan withdrawal, it you didn't realize, oh,

that's the beginning of the end of his presidency. Then the farther away we got from it, and the less unless he recovered from that moment, the more you're like, oh, hey, that turned out to be the beginning of the end of his presidency. Right. In some ways, that's when it began, right, And it is one of those things you sometimes it

takes takes a beat to look back. But I definitely think in this midterm cycle, especially with the way that Donald Trump has tried to exert a grip on the Republican Party, right, he is he took over he you know, at first it was a hijacking, and now he's done a purge, and this is his party. His endorsements usually

lead to victories. And that's what I'm framing my top five list around, which is the top five primaries where Trump is most vulnerable to seeing his choice lose and essentially which would then trigger the narrative that perhaps his grip on the party itself is loosening. And we know that that has all sorts of contagion effects, right, And there's no doubt you can probably guess what the Number one race is going to be. But all of this

begins in the next couple of weeks. Okay, four of my five primary races are all in the month of May,

So we're going to find out in the month of May whether Trump's grip on the party is as strong as it has been over the last few cycles. So my top five races that will be to me are a measurement of his strength in the party and will be a essentially success. Right, Well, then the critics quiet down and his grip on the party titans failure and the grip starts to loosen. How many multiple failures and the whole thing could collapse. So Number five on my

list is actually not a primary. It's the only non primary I put on the list in his North Carolina Senate because Michael Wattley essentially got handed the nomination, right,

he was the de facto candidate after Laura Trump decided she didn't want to be a senator. But this was essentially Trump blessed. This was Trump's rn C chair, so you know, he walked. So this is somebody that Trump has groomed to be a party leader, essentially shifting him to the top spot at the RNC and now shifting him into the nomination slot for the open US senency to replace Tom Tillis. And oh, by the way, he essentially chased Tom Tillis out of the party. Don't believe me.

Just look at Tom Tillis's behavior right now in the Senate. He ain't doing Trump's bidding. Look, losing to Roy Cooper is not a sign that Donald Trump has lost his fastball. Okay that I'm not going to sit there. But if Michael Wattley loses by double digits, then this is proof that Trump really just absolutely made a gigantic mistake. Right, probably should have let if he didn't really have confidence in Watleys as a statewide candidate. Well, let a primary happen.

In some ways, a competitive primary might have given new name id to somebody that's a rising up, might have been a member of Congress. But that is not how they wanted to handle things. So I do view this raise, and for me, the marker is double digits versus single digits. A double digit Roy Cooper victory really is an indictment on Trump's political acumen, right, and will be will cause all sorts because this is a former R and C chair.

We'll cause all sorts of handwringing and blind quotes and all of this stuff saying, you know, this was crazy. What was he even made the nominee? This is all Trump? Right, So he is just large ownership of the North Carolina Center race, more so than Maine, more so than really any other competitive Senate race. Right, this is his creation. Right, He bullied that till us out of the party. He put his person in there. He cleared the primary field, right, so there is no senate race he in some ways

owns more than this one. So that's number five of them. List number four. It's another center race, Louisiana Senate. Now we've got the primary on the sixteenth of May, and then there's likely to be a runoff because we've got

a three way competitive race here, and with of course Bill Cassidy, the incumbent, Julia let Loowe congresswoman, and then John Fleming, who's been in this race before. So it's a three way race. They've all got reasonable money and there's going to be two that make it through. If Cassidy's one of the two, you know, Cassidy is a puncher's chance in this thing. Now, Look, they've rigged the

rules in Louisiana to try to punish Cassidy. Right, this is the first they're ever doing a partisan primary that Louisiana needs to be an all party primary, one ballot, and then there was sort of a runoff situation. Frankly, it's actually a model that I wish more states would have adopted. And so it's a shame to see this go the other way. But we know why it went the other way. Cassidy voted to convict Donald Trump after the second impeachment, and this they knew that in the

old system Cassidy would survive. How do we know this, Well, there's still two impeachers in the House, Dan Newhouse in Washington State and David Valadio. And what do they both have in common? They are in all party primaries. They did not have a partisan primary that they had to get through. Anybody that had to get through a partisan primary lost. So look, I am I certainly think Cassidy's the underdog here. I think he'll get into the runoff. I assume he loses, But what a repudiation to Trump.

If he doesn't. It's a big win for Trump. If Cassidy doesn't even make the runoff, it's a small win for Trump. If he knocks him off in the runoff, it's a humiliation. If Cassidy wins renomination Texas Senate. This is number three on the list. Look, even though Trump

is supposedly not endorsed, it's pretty clear Paxton's maga Cornin is not right. So Trump is. You know. My guess is if he the fact that he hasn't endorsed now means he's probably not going to because he's afraid. I think of this one because it's not clear. I don't know, you know, I don't think he has the standing with the party anymore that endorsing corn would put automatically put him over the top. Put it this way, he's afraid

to find out. And the lack of him not wanting to get involved in this race says more about his own fear of exposing himself. Right, does the Emperor have clothes on or not moment than anything else. So you know, he'll take credit for a corn and win if corn

somehow gets out of this runoff. By the way, this runoffs May twenty six, end of the month, right after Memorial Day, so likely to be low turnout, usually not a good sign for the for the for the more center right candidate or center left candidate, you know, always usually an advantage for the base. But this is one that I think, you know, Cornyn surviving this is a repudiation of Mega and that in it indirectly is a

repudiation of Trump or a loosening of the grip. Next sudden, this is Georgia governor, and this is going to be an interesting test. So Trump's already endorsed in Georgia governor. He endorsed the lieutenant governor Burt Jones, and he's endorsed him from the beginning. And Burt Jones has been somebody

that has flirted with some of these conspiracies. He's been on the mega train from the beginning, very much like Paxton in Texas. Well. A new candidate jump in this race, sort of a former healthcare executive named Rick Jackson, got a terrific personal story that really I think resonates with people. He's essentially a foster kid that built his own life after that and he's been incredibly charitable with Foster organization. So he's just he's got a he doesn't have the

usual political narrative for a biography. I think it's quite syllable, and I think him is you know, you know, if you're gonna ask me, I think Rick Jackson's the favorite to be the next governor, let alone the primary winner. Now.

Rick Jackson, in some ways he's been He jumped in this race, and he proclaimed himself, you know, very much a Trump Republican, basically trying to trying to trying to triangulate a little bit and sort of either forced Trump to duel endorse like he's done in the past when he sees somebody playing up to him, or in some ways dare Trump to back up his endorsement. And I think that's you know, if Trump doesn't come to Burt Jones's aid here because Rick Jackson is self funding, well,

what's Trump raised all this money for? Right? Is he going to use his money to show to defend those that stood with him and that you know got in early or not. And if he doesn't come in and help Jones here, if this Maga super pac, I really think it does send this broader message and it's a bad look for the Trump movement that hey, it's a one way loyalty street and he's going to he will run away from you if you look like you're weak

or losing, even if it's not on you. And you know, the idea that he is not a reliable ally I know is going to shock people. But you know, if Burt Jones wants to know what this feels like, he can go ask Lensky what it feels like. Right. And the number one on the list that to me probably matters more than any of the other races on this list is the May nineteenth primary in Kentucky's fourth congressional district and Thomas Massey. A Thomas Massey victory I think

cements the narrative that Trump's Elaine Duck his his his control of the party is loosening and there's no going back from it. Like it becomes just it it is. It is probably this single most powerful narrative reaction of anything on this top five lists. That's why it's number one for me on this list. I think this has the you know, he has repeatedly gone after Massey. This is one of the few races he's put his money

where his mouth is. Massy has done his thing and he's gone back and he's certainly not been shy about trying to fight fire with fire back on him. You know, past is if past is any guide here, Massy's going

to lose. But there is risk if Massy wins this, and he's pretty connected to this district and Kentucky Republicans tell you talk about a group of Republicans that just aren't cooked cutter right, and there's none of them you can point to and say, well, they're you know, look at the Senate race, right there's it's easier to make the case that they're non Maga than Maga. There is

this own sort of independent streak that they have. McConnell is no Maga Republican for different reasons than Ran Paul is no maga Republican for different reasons, and Thomas Massey and then you could keep money. You got the Secretary of State Michael Adams is a different type of Republican, but so is Daniel Cameron, and so is Andy Barr. I mean, it's just been you know, in some ways, I'm going to be culturally surprised if Massey loses because

it's not in the culture of Kentucky politics. And at the same time, right history shows that when Trump really wants to weigh in on something and throws actual money behind that weight, he can have some success. But if you're trying to keep track, when does lame duck status officially begin for Donald Trump? Thomas massey victory on May nineteen would cement the narrative is that he's fully in

the lame duck status. Ask Chuck, all right, let's do

a little last Chuck here. First question comes from Doug and Shaker Heights, a wonderful community in Cleveland, and he goes new listener here, really appreciate the measured analysis on the show. I'm wondering if Ohio Democrats made it a strategic mistake by backing Shared Brown again, given concerns about his age, branding and his association with the national party leadership.

Would nominating younger, newer candidates be a better way for Democrats to rebuild their image and compete more effectively in states like Ohio. Curious to hear you take thank you, Doug and chicker heights. So I think, big picture, your instinct. I could see where you're thinking, and I kind of tend to agree with it. And I'll be honest, I was surprised that Brown got into this race because do you realize and I bet I don't know if you do.

I don't know if many Ohioans realize this. This is technically not the time for this seat to come up, but this is a special election to fill out the JD Vance's term that began in the twenty twenty two cycle, right, and John Houstad was the appointed successor. He was the lieutenant governor before that, the Secretary of State, sort of really sort of a more of an Ohio Republican and

anything on the mega side of things. But this was DeWine's appointment and it's only for two years, and your reward for winning this massive, expensive Senate race in twenty twenty six is you got to run again in twenty twenty eight. And I just couldn't believe that Shared Brown was going to sign up after running in twenty twenty four. We know he already did this running in twenty twenty six and then running in twenty twenty eight. Is he really going to have run three straight Senate races? If

he wins, does he not run for reelection? And then if he doesn't run for reelection, who the hell are Democrats going to find that con somehow hold a seat when it apparently is going to be proof that only only only a Shared Brown can hold the seat. So yeah, it was a head scratcher to me on a number of levels. And I expect that Shared Brown I knew he wasn't done running like he just certain people his motor was still going right. The one office he never ran for was governor. He's run for a lot of

state wide offices. I think it was secretary state at one time. I think he ran for another state white office. I mean, he and Mike de Wine have you know, and the one you know he could have and there would have been some sort of poetic irony, you know, following Mike the Wine because the one office, Mike the Wine always that he had eluded him before finally winning and in uh back in twenty eighteen was governor. So I figured Shared Brown would run for governor because it's

a four year term. Number one, I think it was an open seat. It was winnable. I think Ramaswami has proven to each week a very week Republican nominee and maybe Amy Acton who's going to be the likely Democratic nominee for governor switches over to the center race, now, I don't you know. And and my concern about Shared

Brown as the nominee is that Houston. You know, normally what makes a midterm year advantageous for the out party is you get to run against incumbents and I guess Shared Brown could run against Trump, and he's going to run against Republicans. But it's it's hard not for voters to see him as anything but part of the establishment, just the Democratic establishment. So all your choices, do you want the Republican establishment or do you want the Democratic establishment?

That said, I don't know if there's a stronger Democrat that anybody that you could have found other than Chuck Schumer for the center race. I think governor's races are still winnable in Ohio. I don't know if center races are, but maybe Shared Brown's the one Democrat that can win. Maybe Tim Ryan could have you know, maybe there's somebody new or younger. Maybe there's a Tallerrico out there. I've always say, you know, you know it is. I do believe Ohio is a light red state, not a dark

red state. So the right type of Democrat can still went out there. You know, maybe maybe Greg Landsman from the Cincinnati area. Right, So let's just say I've I've gone at this one hundred ways from Sunday, I think

from sixty thousand feet. I agree with your take on this that this is, but there's also an argument to be made who else could have done it in this environment for the cost of this race, And when you look at the larger map that the Democrats were facing, this was you know, a tried and true and proven

voke get her in Ohio. Right, But there's a lot of and I've given you all the reasons why I'm surprised he said yes, and that to me is to me still the biggest surprise because of by saying yes, I think you've inadvertently signed that if you win, you've signed up for one more ride on twenty eight and my god, I know he used to be a House member and you're used. But senators usually don't like to have to run every two years, and if he wins, his reward is to run again, literally in two years.

Dean from a Long Island rights with Donald Trump paying off wind companies to abandon offshore win project, I way thank you for writing this. Sin. I have a piece

of my monologue that I put together that was going to be on this, and then I just there's so many other things that piled on top of it. So I'm so glad this is a question. So thank you, Dean. But let me bears repeating with Donald Trump paying off win companies to abandon offshore win products, so you know, if that would be considered interference with contracts, could be allowing the States to sue the administration and keep the companies involved. Thanks Dean from Long Island. Look, I think

it's an interesting way to go. I think there could be lots of lawsuits on this, But I just this whole thing, you know, again, it goes back to sort of what's wrong with our politics? In general, not everything is either or. Some things are ants, okay, and we need energy badly. Why are we ruling out parts of energy? Right? I think you know, weaning yourself off of any energy

is a bad idea at the moment. All of the above, but it's really foolish not to be thinking about alternative energy sources at a time when literally wars get started over access to energy. So this is just stupidity. This is bad policy, This is bad for the country long term, all because of a fetish about climate change. I mean this is literally like, well, I don't want to I don't want to do these wind farms because somehow it'll make us think we believe in climate change, and we

would need to prove that renewables don't work. Why do we want to prove that renewables don't work. All we're doing is handing more more power to China. Right. The war of choice against Iran has absolutely scared a whole bunch of smaller and middle sized countries who don't have their own energy access, who rely on buying oil from the Strait from the Gulf. And it comes to the Strait of hormones, it go, man. We got to find alternative sources. And it isn't all just finding alternative sources

for oil and gas. There's going to be a surge in interest in renewables. And guess what country they're going to go to for the supplies to tap into solar and to tap into win. It ain't going to be the United States because this administration is gutting the entire industry. It's again, this is self inflicted. There's no part of this that makes any sense. And the amount of people that don't say this is nonsense. This is not about

climate change. This is about preparation. Buy the freaking insurance policy. Sorry. I find the war against climate change to be just so asinine because at this point, who cares whether it's man made or not. The climate's changing. We have more wildfires happening, we have stronger hurricanes, we have coastal erosion. Why does it matter how it started? We should all be trying to mitigate it and all be trying to

and there's no interest. Literally, this ideology on the right is to pretend it doesn't exist, that it's made up. It's not made up. You want to disagree in the origin story, fine, but the results not made up. This is the world we're dealing with, the climate has changed. You want to fight over whether it was a hidden hand above or an actual person or an industry or entity. Sorry, I know I get a little ranty about this. I just find this one of the dumber things where we do.

I just you know, why wouldn't we want the insurance policy? Next question comes from Pete. What do you make of the what if scenario where Trump bought the Buffalo Bills in twenty fourteen? Could owning an NFL team have kept him from unning for president in twenty sixteen? And so how differently do you think that election in the broader

political landscape since might have played out? Pete, That's a good one. It is a what if. You know, when I did my original what if on twenty sixteen, I think I was riffing with Jonathan Martin. I worry this is in the old NBC feed their own They didn't get to own the name, but they owned my intellectual property there. But we went through all these various scenarios on that. Do I think if he were the owner of the Buffalo Bills he wouldn't have run for president? Yes?

I do, And I think the NFL would be something. Put it that way, and you'd have, you know, the war between Jerry Jones, Bob Kraft and Donald Trump, those three egos fighting each other for supremacy among owners. Right, like, man, let's let's let's get that. Forget the TV series running point about, you know, loosely about the Genie bus lakers. Let's do that, right, Craft Jones and Trump NFL owners, right, you know, the New Housewives of the NFL, but starring

Jerry Jones, Donald Trump and there. So what would happen in twenty sixteen? I will tell you so if Trump never runs, there's sort of two what ifs that I've entertained on this, and they I have to talk about them sequentially because when this, if there's no bridge Gate, Chris Christie's the nominee in sixteen. Chris Christie's personality fit the moment, right, because Donald Trump proved that this is what kind of the country was looking for. It fit

the moment. But he'd have been a lot easily. He

probably wins big, not small Christy versus Clinton. Christy probably gets fifty one to fifty two, fifty three percent of the vote, and Christy would have been challenged from the right by you know, by the Ted cruises of the world, would have been hit hard on judges, on abortion, on some of these cultural issues that I think wouldn't have mattered because Christy was just a better debater and he would have been, you know, without Donald Trump involved, Christy

would have been the star of that show. All right, that that's one scenario. But Bridge Gaye did happen, and it and it was a different It was a you know, it's funny. It was sort of like a wounded version of Chris Christy in that primary, and we didn't get the best version of him it would have been, because I do think if Christy's in that race, Trump's just an endorser of Christy. He never jumps in because he doesn't think he can be Christy. So that's sort of

where one my head. That's one of my what if scenarios. The second one if on this is so let's say Bridgegate happened, and so what you essentially have is is I think Rand Paul would have been a much bigger factor because Paul had the non traditional Republicans that were interested in something new. Now, the minute Trump got in, it was like a vacuum cleaner on Paul's support. Right, the first chunk that he took, first, lunch money he took was not Jeb Bush's lunch money. It was actually

Rand Paul's lunch money. And so I think without Trump, Paul's a much bigger player and Rand Paul. You know, there's a scenario where Rand Paul's nominee and Paul versus Clinton is very similar to Trump versus Clinton, except probably a little less personal. And I think given what we saw with the with the vote and the desperation that there was among you know, there's sort of the obstinates

that there was into electing Hillary Clinton. Right. There definitely was a strong anti Clinton chunk of voters that just we're put a low ceiling on her ability to gain votes. So I think Paul, so Christy Paul, and then probably Ted Cruz. That's probably the order of likely nominee with no Donald Trump and no bridge Gate. I think Christy with Bridgegate, I probably think the nominee is still Paul

or Cruise. Like I don't think Rubio. I think we found out that Rubio was trying to straddle too much there. Now maybe Rubio looks like a better candidate, but you know it's pot You know you could, you could if you want to argue with me that maybe Rubio gets in there. Now, Rubio and Nominee probably wins by a bigger margin over Clinton too than Trump. I do think both Rubio and Christy would have been stronger candidates than Trump.

I think both CRUs and Paul would have been kind of the exact, very similar races where we're some sort of split decision. Well that was fun, Pete, all right. Next question comes from Ben s from Tona Wanda, New York. One of my favorite undergrad courses I took at the University of Rochester was titled the Mythology of the Founders.

I remember writing my final paper on Congressman Raoul Labrador on behalf of the Tea Party advocating for the repeal of the seventeenth Amendment because it deviated too far from the Founding Father's intentions. For better or worse, Many Americans mythologize our Founding documents and their authors, and I wanted to know how you might navigate that with some of

the proposed constitutional membents you have discussed on the podcast Go sabers ps. Did you have a favorite course from your college days. I did. I had all. I would say, you're gonna you know, it's gonna be a bit dorking out. I loved all my history classes. It didn't matter which is, you know, I had a general one, I had an

at least history that I took. Two different mid least history courses I took, but I always say this the two courses I used the most in life in my professional life after I took an elective on the federal budget, which is the type of the type of course that

only a GW is going to offer. Right, you're in DC, and it was taught by somebody that worked at OMB and I just it was you know, it is certainly benefited me in my ability just simply learning how to read a federal budget right when you see how you look at it and things like that, and how it's done and how the math works. Right, the math isn't the rules of math for federal budgets don't necessarily follow the general rules of math. That was That was a

big one for me as well. But as for your so, I believe in founders intent, right, but that doesn't mean you don't modernize with founders intent. The seventeenth Amendment is an interesting debate. You know, in my class how Washington works that I briefly talked about here that I teach part time at USC four for the visiting students that have internships in DC. We just did our final They

just did their final prison. They just did their oral presentations on what their final paper is going to be on, and one of them is for and the whole is what's what's a you know, how would you try to make Washington work better? What's run reform you would do to make Washington work better? And there's one gentleman who picked repealing the seventeenth Amendment and about how you know it would and one of the benefits that he believed brought to it was that it would actually make state

legislative elections more important. More people would look into that more, more senators would be more representative of their states, rather than an ideology. So it's an interesting argument on the seventeenth On the seventeenth Amendment, we know what the intent, but the intent of the electoral College was to actually be a bit of a vetting mechanism in case the public went too far off out of the mainstream. And we've let the states essentially create what are likely unconstitutional

faithless elector laws on that. But we've never tested the faithless elector issue in court per se. But right now states just bound electors, and so they've kind of made the electoral college no longer a vetting issue. So I think I am a believer in Founder's intent, which means to me, if my amendment couldn't easily be defended by something already written in the federalist papers, then I might be willing no longer to defend that addition to the

Constitution and said, just why don't you just codify this? Look, there's certain ideas that should just simply be codified into law by Congress. Like I don't think there should be a constitutional amendment for reproductive rights. I think that's something that should just simply be codified into law, why you know, And it's sort of a fear of doing it that now makes you think, well, I guess you got to

do it as a constitutional amendment. And it's perhaps if you make a better argument about equal protection, that the equal protection argument on reproductive rights trumps the original back and forth on Row and Dobbs anyway, But set that aside, but I'm sort of it. I take your point here. Like, so, for instance, I think the nullification of a presidential pardon, the way it is framed, this constitutional amendment actually fits

the vision of the Founders, right. It uses the same logic of a supermajority that a that overwriting a veto would use. It doesn't you know. It's still respects the idea that a president does have this power. It just offers a nullification by Congress if it's if Congress deems

it so. So I could argue that that, you know, But I think that where I generally agree with you is that proposed constitutional amendments that there should already be Federalist papers written that already would defend the concept even

if the amendment hadn't been proposed back then. And I could argue in some of these proposed amendments, whether it's on whether it's on money campaign money, I think they're you know, whether it's on the election of judges, right, there's there's certainly the Founders have made their made their They've told us what they meant based on the Federalist papers. So I'd sort of think that should be the guidepost. All right, last question, it comes from fred A. Hey.

I been thinking about Thomas Jefferson's quote that the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants, and now it's often used to justify a more extreme interpretation of the Second Amendment parts of the country. That idea still resonates deeply, but I wonder if it's something we should be moving

beyond as a modern democracy. How do you interpret that quote in today's political context? Best regards freda A. Look, I think that that you know, we didn't there wasn't many democracies in free societies that even existed when Jefferson said that quote, and there were a lot more authoritarian regimes we called the monarchies, but they were just that you know, you know my attitude on this, I think the monarchies are just a just a way to beautify

the term dictator. And I do think that we, you know, one of the things, and the sort of fits hand in glove with the last question. Actually, one of the things that we failed to do is understand, you know,

what moment were they living in at the time. And that's why I would emphasize this what moment was he living in at the time, Right, he was living in a moment where there was some where you had revolution brewing in France, and he certainly had been in a back are there he knew that there was, right, we had it brewing in the and it already happened in the United States, So there was definitely we definitely had

you know, you could you could feel it. I find it hard to believe that he thinks this would apply to our democracy. That instead it applies if democracy. You know that, you know, every once in a while, you've got to fight for democracy. I think that's what it is. But there's no doubt that quote gets gets weaponized by those who rationalize or justify behavior. That is that a mature democracy shouldn't be dealing with right, that with a

steadier instead of leaders. But we're not in a stable place, right And so what I think that quote really means is that you got to fight for democracy and freedom every once in a while. Because notice it says the blood of patriots and tyrants. Right. So, now, where what may be subjective is one person's patriot is another person's tyrant. It's like I've always said, one person's patriot is another person's terrorist, right, The British monarchy thought the American those

that were revolting were terrorists. We call them patriots.

separated out. We rarely rarely do that with the ass Chuck segment, but to say you touched a nerve as an understatement on that. So with that, I'll see you twenty four hours