Chuck’s Commentary - Is Trump Prepping The U.S. For War With Venezuela? + This Week In History + Ask Chuck

I also my guest over the weekend for my new sphere show is Chris Murphy, Democratic senator from Connecticut, somebody who wants to go harder at Donald Trump pre twenty twenty five was I think if some people were watching him, they say he wants to move to the left. He wants to be a bit more to the left of left of center wherever the party is. If the main if you know, if you just put a number on it, right, one hundred is sort of Joe Mansion on the scale

of Democrats. Zero is Bernie Sanders. Chris Murphy wanted to be somewhere close to the fifty yard line, but closer to Bernie rather than closer to Mansion. And I say

this and that the Chris Murphy I encountered as a guy who clearly is interested in trying to improve the Democratic brand, would like to be a leader of the party, is looking to see if there's an appetite for him to run for president. He did not sort of shy

away from any of those questions. But what was interesting was how he really said, Look, the Democratic Party's got to figure out how to win voters that are much more conservative on cultural issues, that there is more of a common bond on economic issues, and something you'll hear from Abdul say ed that's else I ed, that's an argument he's making. It's an argument he made in his

first candidate campaign for office in twenty eighteen. Same argument he's making there, that the economic pain is shared sort of on the ideological spec and that one way to sort of put Democrats and independent voters and maybe even some skeptical working class Republicans is to focus on economic issues and also security issues. Don't shy away from the

security issues. What do I mean by the security issues, Whether it's the border and get a little tougher on immigration, or it's law and order in the cities, And it's all about whether how are you careful not to take

the bait that the White House clearly is setting up here at the White House absolutely does not want to have a discussion about the economy right now, doesn't want to have a discussion about tariffs in particular, doesn't want to have a discussion about Epstein, doesn't want to have

a discussion about Ukraine and Russia. What they do, what they would love to do, is continue to sort of bait Democrats into pushing back at the White House on the issue of how aggressive should these should these tactics when it comes to the cities, how aggressive is too aggressive?

What is And there's no doubt that the ridiculous social media memes that the President has already retweeted, sort of him doing an Apocalypse Now parody when it comes to Chicago, it got the intended response, right, which was it got the entire sort of Illinois pushback, whether it was JB. Pritz Or as governor or others that it was the intended pushback that they wanted, which was this was over the top. And there's no doubt the public does not

like the tactics. We continue to see polling that says they don't want to see the National Guard go in. But when you look at the two parties and you say which party seems to be more concerned about law and order, the Republicans are winning this argument, and they're winning it big time. And that's why it is interesting

to watch how the different mayors handle this. Right I'm intrigued by what they're doing in Mayor Maryland, where I or the governor said, hey, we don't want any federal reinforcements, but we're going to help Baltimore and we're going to help with some state reinforcements. You've got a Mariel Bowser who was saying, Hey, I welcome the federal intervention. I don't like the masked ICE agents because that's pretty undemocratic

and un American. But for the most part, I appreciate the extra resources in order to allow the police to focus where they need to focus, versus other cities that are thinking about a wholesale pushback on this. And I

think you know, there is nothing the administration wants more than a showdown in Chicago. Now, does that mean rolling over on civil libertarian issues. I don't think anybody is suggesting rolling over on these issues. The question is can you take the issue away from it's like, look, we're focused on this too. We're trying to do it within the constitution, rather than only fighting the constitutional grounds and saying, hey, everything is fine and saying, look at how great these

trends are. There's got to be sort of somewhere in between here because when you look at it, that perception and reality are blurred here, and it's going to be

really hard to win that larger argument. And it is Look, at some point, it may be they use a tactic that goes too far and it will implode on them both politically and then some and I do think that that in the long term they're a I mean, just look at their trial balloon on trying to attack transgender Americans and take away their rights when it comes to two guns created a fascinating coalition that said you can't do that, that that's unconstitutional, that that essentially the gun

rights groups going that that's a slippery slope. But it's also an acknowledgment that this idea of trying to label, I mean, I think the two most dangerous things rhetorically that we've heard from some on the right are the attempt to label transgender Americans and lump them in with mental illness. That's what clearly the Justice Department was trying to do in order to get at that issue of guns. That's going to be a losing argument. I like to

think that there's given that there is zero accepted science on this. And then the second is who you designate a terrorist organization? And who do you designate as terrorists? And you hear Stephen Miller's rhetoric increasingly tries to call sort of people that disagree with them on the left, equate them, uses the T word and terrorists and it

doesn't take much. I mean, if you look at the rationale that's being used by the administration and targeting that ship outside Venezuela, it all began with the State Department designation of the cartel designating at a terrorist. That isn't It's not an Act of Congress that makes that decision. It's essentially an an interpretation of the current administration. How far are they going to go with that? Right? How

much are they going to go with that? And this is going to get and I want to get at this debate here in a minute, but this gets at the when it comes to these law and order issues, and when it comes to these immigration sort of aggressive tactics, the White House is not going to back down, especially since it is the only thing they're doing, the only thing they're doing where there is positive poll response from

the public. The base loves it and is more devoted than ever, and the goals themselves are seen as goals that the public wants and those want to see. Again, it's the tactics that are disagreed with, but when political opponents read that disagreement, they sometimes interpret it that it's the policy as well. Is also unpopular when it appears

to be just the tactics. And this is why I'm intrigued by how Governor more has been handling this versus some of these versus Governor Pritzker, and I think it's it absolutely is worth a twenty twenty eight comparison. There. There's no doubt the base wants some fight, right And

this is something I talked with Chris Murphy. This is why a government shut down is almost a given right now it given everything that's going on in Washington. So and Pritzker certainly sees what Gavin Newsom is doing. There's no doubt if you show some fight the base is

going to reward you to a point. The question is how do you tactically do it without also keeping yourself electable In twenty twenty eight with swing voters and Pritzker is coming across a bit in denial about the problem in Chicago versus A Wes Moore saying, look, we know there's more work to do. We just don't think you should use unconstitutional means to do it. That is politically a much smarter place to be. But I understand you

sort of need to do both. You need to fight on the civil libertarian grounds, make sure all the stuff

gets forced through the courts. I think I'm one of those people that you know, that's what these interest groups are good at doing, and sort of forcing judicial review over controversial policies, and forcing judicial review is something that I think if you have a weak legislative branch, which we do right now, the only really recourse that you have besides protests in the ballot box is judicial in

some sort of judicial review. So you can do that and at the same time accentuate policies that respond to what the electorate is seeing. But it sort of takes me to I guess the which is an eternal challenge with the Trump administration is that, you know, if you look at everything that's that sort of front and center right now with the administration, any one of those stories could be the dominating story for an entire week, and

it would make everything else sort of disappear. We've seen this, right, the Epstein Files being the best example of a story that can just totally consume everything. Well, we're in the middle of apparently launching a war against Venezuela, right, We've stationed F thirty five's in the Caribbean. We've already blown up a ship, and I'm going to get to that.

Because that debate, I think it opened up and gave us a preview of what could be a fascinating debate on the right in twenty twenty eight between the Rand Paul wing of what's left of the libertarian wing of the Republican Party and the JD Vance and the rhetorica. He used that basically, the ends, what I'm calling an ends justifies the means ideology, which borders on authoritarianism. If the goal is to destroy these cartels, then so what if you bomb them? So what if we don't due process?

So what if we don't make the case to the world what we're doing. You know, once we start ignoring international norms that the United States helped set, that the United States over decades has helped champion, when we want to set those aside, we're just going to blow up a ship. I mean, why we didn't board the ship. There's a whole bunch of things to go with the story with Venezuela. One. If you're going to designate them a terrorist organization, get out there and make the case.

The administration has not made a public case about this sort of When you think about all the criticism of the Bush administration, of the second Bush administration during the first decade of the century over the Iraq War, you know what they did do. They went in front of the United Nations to make the case. They went in front of the American people to make a case. Multiple times. They put out the evidence that they claim that they have. Now now it turned out to be wrong. It turned

out to be bad intelligence. And we've had a debate about whether it was intentional miss you know, whether the public and the and Congress was intentionally misled, or if it was just simply bad interpretation of intelligence. Regardless, he just didn't go into a rock before getting a vote

in Congress. This is you know, you know, it's interesting and I can't help but looking at his what's going on here with Venezuela here in the moment and sort of see it as sort of, you know, Trump just glorifies the eighties, right, he glorifies sort of two decades, the fifties, in the eighties, right, he kind of wishes all energy. He's trying to turn the Kennedy Center into

some sort of combination of the two. Right, that that sort of glorifies those decades. But in the eighties there were sort of two. There were two sort of moments where the United States played bully a little bit with a small country. Right. We had Granada, where where Reagan

went there in a sort of overnight deal. It was seemed to be a bit over the top, some loose connection to communists in Cuba, but it was a pretty aggressive action for but it was almost it was quote unquote sending a message and it was in and it was out, and it was a quick success, so fast before Congress could really belch clear their throat. And then there was George H. W. Bush and the and the

essentially the seizing of Noriega. And I guess you could kind of put this what is going on here in Venezuela with what was done with Panama, where Noriega was appeared to be a part of the drug trade. We were trying to crack down down on various ways that drugs were getting into the United States, and here was, you know, a puppet in Panama who was once sort of a puppet for the United States or for the West.

And I'm being a little over the top with the use of the word puppet here, but the point was there was a time he was our ally and then he got himself engrossed in the drug trade. And so we sort of did a military ish operation, right to go get noriek and hold them and hold him to account for his role in the drug trade. So Trump sent followed the war powers. You know, he's got to send within a quick period of time. He's got to send within twenty four hours his justification for the attack.

And here's and he writes the Senate President pro ten which in this case is Juck Grassley in the Speaker of the House, which is Mike Johnson, And here's the letter because the letter's not got enough attention, because I

right to apprise you military action taken on September second, twenty twenty five in the Caribbean Sea, and of the potential for further such actions. And then he writes this extraordinarily violent drug trafficking cartels that the United States is

designated as terrorist organizations. Again, the United States has designated as terroist organizations have wrought devastating consequences on American communities for decades, causing the deaths of tens of thousands of United States citizens each year and threatening our national security and our foreign policy interests both at home and abroad.

These organizations have evolved into complex structures with the financial means and paramilitary capabilities needed to operate with impunity, engaging in violence and terrorism that threaten the United States and destabilize other nations in our own hemisphere. Friendly foreign nations have made significant efforts to combat these organizations, suffering significant losses of life due to organized violence at the hands of the groups designated as terrorist organizations. But these groups

are now transnational and operate throughout the Western hemisphere. In the face of the inability or unwillingness of some state in the region to address the continuing threat to the United States and its persons and interests emanating from their territories. We have now reached a critical point where we must meet this threat to our citizens and our most vital national interests with the United States military force in self defense. Accordingly,

at my direction, on September two, twenty twenty five, the United States Forces struck a vessel at a location beyond the territorial seas of any nation that was assessed to be affiliated with a designated terrorist organization and to be engaged in illicit drug trafficking activities. It is not possible at this time to know the full scope and duration of military operations that will be necessary. United States Forces

remained postured to carry out further military operations. I am providing this report as part of my efforts to keep the Congress fully informed. Well, I'm not sure there was much fully informed there. If you look any any signs at Donald J. Trump again, So you take this this gang, they've they've taken this Venezuelan national gang of a lot of Venezuelan national gang and they've designated a terrorist organization.

And then because it's a terrorist organization. Essentially, you see him, he's making the case, Hey, they're beyond this is They're not a nation state, They're not one nation. He's not. It's fascinating that he does not mention the word Venezuela here, because if if he was talking about a country, he'd

have to go to Congress. But they're trying to make the case that this is this is not about a specific country, but a specific country hasn't done any work, and therefore there's a threat to the United States and taking out this ship, not boarding it, not sending the

message that way, not arresting these individuals or boarding the ship or frankly, to make sure you know what you know, they quote just decided to send message. This is what Secretary Review said. And again, I know politically this is going to seem popular and justifies the means we're getting rid of these bad Narco traffickers. This is good Venezuela. If Maduro's upset, this is good. But we have a constitution, we have a process. We're sitting here behaving no different

than Putin's been behaving in his region. He designated Ukraine is essentially a threat like this. They were not he used the word Nazis, and all of this has been his rationale for invading this country in their own sort of again claiming some version of self defense. This is the same crap that Putin's pulling, except he's not in a democracy. And we are show us your evidence that you knew what was on that boat before you blew

it up. You just decided to blow it up. Are they going to share this intelligence when we have a Congress that's acting as if it is an equal, coequal branch of government, there'd be some immediate hearings. I haven't heard anything. It's been crickets on this, and it appears

we're going to do more. And it's interesting, you know, you see the political fallout from this was, you know, Jade Vance is sort of the social media defender, mainstream social media defender. Trump does this crazy truth social posts that you make it into sort of mainstream social media with retreats and all this stuff. But Vance is the one he actively is on there, and he basically said he thought this was the highest and best use of

the military. And he had this back and forth with an anti Trump, a guy named Brian Crassenstein and who denounced the strike. Then called it a war crime, and then Vance just simply wrote back, I don't give a shit what you call it. Well, what's interesting about that statement, because again, what we did and our lack of rationale and our lack of justification before we did the attack and just waiting until after the fact, because we have to take the Trump administration's word for this. His word

is not good with the American people. At best. It's forty percent of the country that accept accept things he says, a face value majority does not. Certainly a majority of the world does not. So Vance basically says, I don't give a shit. And that's when Rand Paul jumps in, Republican senator from Kentucky, who's, of course more of a libertarian, and he's certainly somebody who believes that Congress has a

lot more authority to exert when it comes to military decisions, and he called that statement, what a despicable and thoughtless sentiment it is to glorify killing someone without a trial. And that was the point he even said, it was really interesting. He goes, I should read you the whole tweet. Some of you may have seen it, but let me read you the whole tweet. JD. I don't give a shit. Advance says, killing people he accuses of a crime is the quote highest and best use of the military unquote.

And then Paul goes here, he goes, did he ever read to kill a mockingbird? Did he ever wonder what might happen if the accused were immediately executed without trial or representation? And then the next sentence, which has gotten some mainstream play. What a despicable and thoughtless sentiment it is to glorify killing someone without a trial. So look, I don't expect this current makeup of Congress to engage in this, right, I mean part of the problem. Again,

this is the whole. The Trump administration does five or six things that deserve extra scrutiny. In messing with the independence of the FED is another one. The use of the military as domestic police officers is one. Then there's this and essentially conducting military action against a foreign country. We didn't say it here that it's Venezuela. Venezuela sees it as an attack. So are we at war with Venezuela?

Are we about to go to war? Are we about to do regime change? Now? Trump was smart enough some lawyer, his White House Council got to him. He did not go down that road. He can be very sloppy with his argument with his statements sometimes, but he did not say anything about that. He said no, no, no, because the minute he says that, then he essentially lied in in the statement of Congress when he informed them based on the Warpowers Act. So this is one of those stories.

It should be consuming Washington in a world without social media algorithms that are more obsessed about Jeffrey Epstein. And I sit here and I understand this, But when you look at all the stories that we're all dealing with right now, it's still Jeffrey Epstein that seems to be where traditional media is trying to go because it trends better, or because social media algorithms report it. Whatever it is. This has totally warped the news cycle a little bit.

This issue with Venezuela should be first and foremost right now. The economy is right there, and law enforcement in our cities, these sort of collectively here, this is sort of challenges to the constitution right in front of our face, right in front of our face, and most of the obsession and the coverage and even political attention elected leaders, where are they gravitating to? They're not gravitating towards many of these stories on this anyway. But what have we learned

from sort of all of this? Over the weekend, we'll say this a vance Rand Paul primary is going to be fascinating, it's going to be interesting, and it's going to be nasty. We'll see how far we get there. We'll see whether Rand Paul his what his political standing looks like in two years. But he's now. It's interesting to me watching him. He is been a bit more

combative with the Trump administration. He doesn't do it as much sort of on the floor of the Senate, and he's not really been you know, it's not like he's organic. It's not like he went out of his way to try to get more people to stop the one Big Beautiful Bill, even though he wasn't a fan of it. But he does seem to be carving out a place he's trying to He's going to try to make an

ideological argument. Now, the question is whether the party is interested in an ideological debate or this is a cult of personality debate. And I think, you know, Rand Paul was hoping to have this ideological debate in twenty fifteen, and a guy came down the escalator and turned it into a cult of personality debate and the rest his history. All Right, I told you before I get to my

little sports page for the week, I'm day viewing a new segment, and I am calling this segment this Week in History, basically your history and Chuck Todd's history lesson. One of the things that I find shocking is how often I see, really, you know, this current generation, whether it's political reporters, elected officials, sometimes how little they know about information about things that happen in the twentieth century. Now, not everything I'm going to do is this going to

be twentieth century. But each week I'm going to be looking for an event that happened in that week sometime in the last one hundred years, and we're going to do a quickly explainer about it and go from there. So this week, and by week is September eighth through the fourteenth. That's the window. And each week it'll be Monday through the Sunday. That's the window. I'm going to

choose each week. Well, September eighth, nineteen seventy four is one of the more momentous occasions in the history of American of the American legal system. On October eight, nineteen seventy four, just one month after Richard Nixon's resignation, the new President Gerald Ford issued a full and preemptive pardon for all federal crimes that Richard Nixon quote committed or

may have committed during his presidency. The decision at the time was unprecedented, it was controversial, and it was probably

the defining moment of Ford's very short presidency. My longtime mentor, Doug Bailey may rest in peace. I don't think he's I worry sometimes he sees what's happening right now. It's not a he's not at the piece he would like to be at. But Doug Bailey was Gerald Ford sort of chief, one of his chief media strategists in that seventy six campaign. And when you look at all of the baggage that Nixon was carrying into that campaign, inflation

was a big one, right, Stagflation. Being Nixon's vice president, it was the part. It was the part, and they came with it. Look, when you only lose by a percentage point in the national popular vote. It's pretty easy to look at anything and say, oh, jeezs Bob Dole hadn't accused the Democratic Party of starting World War Two, that would have maybe that was worth a point, maybe,

but that the umbrella issue that was hanging over the head. Why did Jimmy Carter end up the nominee not somebody else in the Democratic Party because he was completely from outside Washington of faith right, So it was Nixon informed the entire political environment at the time, and he lost for the part. Now here was the case for the part at the time. Ford made the argument for national healing right, our long national nightmare, although that was mixing

my speeches there, but essentially that was the message. He argued the country needed to move beyond Watergate focus on the economic and the Cold War challenges that were very real in the seventies. This country was very We had really crappy economy, so that was a problem, and there was a real belief that a war with Russia with the Soviet Union wasn't it if it was simply a win. Another case for it was that the there would have been endless trials. And this is the political reason for

if you're Ford or you're the Ford White House. It would have been a complete utter distraction. The prosecution would have dominated his presidency, and it would have probably destabilized our politics. How well did the Trump trials? How did the country handle that he wasn't a city in as a former president. Accepting the pardon meant that Nixon sort of confessed that that was one of the other arguments

that the pardon worked. By accepting the pardon, Nixon implied guilt under Urdick versus the United States in nineteen fifteen, which is as if you accept the pardon, essentially you're

accepting you committed some crime. Now the quest and it's and in two thousand and one he got the Kennedy family gave him the Profile and Courage Award because it has been interpreted as if that it was politically courageous because Ford did it even though he knew would hurt him politically, but he acted for what he viewed was the greater good. I think you could easily look at it as that he was trying to do what was in the best interests of the Ford presidency, which was

to get all things Nixon behind him. So I think it's sort of I really think It depends where you sit on whether it was a courageous argument putting country over party, or did you put his presidency over the rule of law as well? Right, But that to me's debate points now, well, the arguments against the pardon, both at the time and today are pretty much the same.

The pardon meant you're going to lose accountability, right, that it undermined the principle that no one is above the law, even the president, and that by issuing this pardon we essentially said political leaders are immune from the basic laws of prosecutions because of who you know. Right. I certainly

think that over time this isn't aged. Well, I'm giving it away where I sort of lean on this, And there was a time twenty years ago I might have argued that I might have accepted the historical verdict that said, oh, this was the right thing to do. It he of the country allowed us to move on. But it's set a dangerous president, and I think now, in hindsight, we have decided that trying to get political accountability is too hard.

Right now, Look, I do think the founders were right that the best place to put a president on trial was in the United States, Senate, the Democrats, not just the Democrats, Republicans obviously in the second one that was attempted with Trump twice, and he was acquitted in that court twice. Now I could argue that that should have probably preempted that when you know, that was the where

the Founder said a president, an elected president, is held accountable. And I could make the case in hindsight that all those other independent jurisdiction sort of laid down their arms, if you know, that was the most appropriate place to try to hold them accountable was in the United States.

But had Ford never pardoned Nixon and we'd had a trial and he had been convicted and had served time, Here's what we don't know, right there was an assumption that somehow it might have it might have created, it might have turned him into a political martyr in some cases.

I guess we're seeing an alternative universe here in Brazil right where instead of letting it go with Bolsonaro, the current administration is deciding to go ahead with a prosecution on Bolsnaro and banning him from the ballot and all those things that come with it. Perhaps that's what could have been done with Nixon, was our system strong enough to handle it. Ford's decision implies that he didn't think the country was going to be able to handle it.

But this was one of those cases where if you know, and I go back to if you don't trust the voters, and what are we doing with this experiment anyway? Right, like the argument about the Constitutional convention. Oh no, if you do that, there might be some people who who may have some wacko wacko ideas that they introduce. Yeah, welcome to America. Okay, we we have people on every

single notch of the political spectrum. Of course, there's going to be all sorts of but there's a process, and there's there's a process that should make it so that it's fairly mainstream. But the minute you start making decisions that take away the ability of the American voter or the American system to do its thing, to essentially usurped

the democratic process, which is what Ford did. I think it turns out, especially given what we've gone through over the last decade, that despite what was over time and what's interesting pulling over time right at the time, a majority of the country, including according to an exit poll in the seventy six presidential race, a majority of the country thought the pardon was wrong. Fifty five percent thought it was a mistake. By the early eighties, it was

sort of a split decision. In eighty six, it was the first time any pole ever showed a majority support for the part. Part of that may have been sort of, you know, Reagan's popularity helped the country had sort of moved sort of into center right situation. Maybe that is why Nixon had sort of rehabbed himself, had become mister foreign dignitary, if you will, writing books, mister foreign policy advisor.

A few months later, Bill Clinton, you know, I remember when Bill Clinton made the trek to visit with former President Nixon before he died. But I think when you think about the situation we're in now, where it's not clear there's a rule of lawe where we've now had a president, we've had a fear that presidents would issue preemptive pardons, and out of fear of a president weaponizing the legal system, a president went ahead and issued a preemptive pardon for a bunch of his family members. And

I'm referring, of course, to Joe Biden. Does any of this happen without the initial decision by Gerald Ford to pardon Richard Nixon. Some of you may say, obviously the best I think the best outcome would have been. I

don't think the former president of the United States should serve time. I might have drawn the line on that. You commute the sentence, but you let you make him go under on trial, you go through that whole process. Then you commute the sentence. You see if he's guilty or not. He should have his due process. Nixon never

got his due process. So I think it. You know, it's interesting the Ford pardon for the longest period of time, aged very well, and I think when we look back on it, and I look back on it and everything I did when you it is just this. This was the wrong action at the wrong time, in the wrong country. You know it just it is if if you believe in the rule of law, you should have let it work its will. That everything about our system is supposed

to make us different, including that, but instead that pardon. Essentially, what we've done is that was the beginning of treating the presidency like a monarchy where they're kind of untouchable. All right, there's your history lesson. It was September eighth, nineteen seventy four that this pardon was issued, and fifty one years later, Let's just say I think it's now a stain unpresidential decision making. Joe Ford was a good man,

no doubt about it. This was a patriot, but they made the wrong call. All right, my quick little Before I get to a few questions, you gotta understand how how I viewed college football. I mean, is it is for me? It's everything. So I watched every second of the Miami Bethune Cookman game. Here are things that made me extraordinarily excited. First of all, they unleashed the offense

a little bit. Carson had zip on his ball. It now makes me think that the Notre Dame game plan was very conservative, was very careful, and this is an offense that is very likely to get better as they keep adding more things. So let's just say I am cautiously enthusiastic. Miami plays at the University of South Florida next week, which is just upended poor Sunbup Billy Billy Napier, the coach of the Gators. I just find that they'd

be the funniest nickname for it. That's one of those I'm not gonna explain if you know, you know, but sunbout poor sunbup Billy losing to a group of five teams, and South Florida may be the best group of five teams. Maybe not? Is Boise State any good? You know? The thing that I had to remind my own son right, is LSU any good? Clemson was losing to Troy. We

don't know who's good or not yet. I think Miami's good. I think Florida State's good. I think Ohio State's good. I think Penn State's good. Looks like Texas is going to be pretty good. What about Alabama? Alabama? Man, they they certainly got their act together. And yes, it was, you know, against the little sisters, you know, and there's week two has a lot of little Sisters of the poor games. It's amazing how many, how many, how many

teams the Little Sisters play. It's one of my favorite cliches to use in college football. So you're gonna hear me do it a lot. But I uh. The couple other things that jumped out of me from over the weekend was I was bummed to see what happened with Duke. Financially, I had I had a good week that would have been fantastic had my my friend Manny Diaz, the head coach of the Duke Blue Devils, had showed up. But man, every time I turned around, they were turning the ball over.

That is one of the biggest misleading finals of the weekend. Be very careful, assuming you know for sure that Illinois is good and is the new Indiana they were. Duke gave away so many possessions in that game, So be careful, be very very careful. And then I have to close with the disappointment of my one of my new teams. The way we look at it, anytime I have a family connection, that becomes one of my teams that I keep an eye on and I try to root for

as long as they're not playing Miami. So Florida State is now back in there. That's my wife, Alum. I have now family connections to Auburn, So I'm i'm I'm trying to be nice and not say bad things about coach Freeze. Obviously I've got I'm paying money over at SMU these days that oh can't blow it to score lyad. As I said to my son, SMU has the offense of a playoff team, But the defense of a group of five teams, so that but fear not, SMU fans,

they're spending real money. They're going to be in the top tier. They lost a whole bunch of great defensive linemen to the NFL, so that's why they were so poorous and it was so easy to run on them. They'll fix this, maybe not this season, maybe not in time to be playoff contender, but still don't sleep on them because they can score a lot of points and it can be an exciting game. By the way, my favorite game might have been the Kansas Missouri game, the

old border war. Speaking of history lessons, I would encourage you to take a look at the history of that. I mean, it really was. When they first started playing, blood was really bad. It was Civil War blood, like the actual Civil War type of disputes. Still that was still lingering when that rivalry began. So always fun when you see a rivalry that hadn't been going on for a while come back like that. That's what makes college

football great. That's why I love college football so much, and that's why I wish the two major conferences weren't trying to squeeze everybody else of this all right, I'm off my quick sports soapbox. So with that, let's take a few questions, sneak in some mess chuck ass chuck. All right, I've gone all along with my little history thing today, so I'll probably do the lion's share of question answering for the Thursday episode, but let me sneak

in a couple here this week. First question comes from overseas Dublin, Ireland. Comes from Danny Oh, Danny Boy from Dublin, Ireland. Thank you very much, love the podcast. I don't think Putin could handle Trump the way you suggested. He knows Trump would spin even a short CeaseFire's proof of his influence. Putin granted a ceasefire because I asked him, and Trump would never stop boasting about it. That would quickly become magadogma, which would be excruciating for Putin, worse than any short

lived credit he'd get for the ceasefire. Thoughts, keep up the good work. It's an interesting way to look at it. But here's the other thing Putin has made him look ridiculous. Right, look at what Putin is doing now with Ukraine. He is being more aggressive. He is going after government officials, he's gone after European officials, He's gone after places in Ukraine that haven't been touched before. He's doing it with impunity, and the United States is sitting here in silence. And

that I mean, look, I go back. I think, you know, I am surprised that Putin didn't try to strengthen Trump, the perception of Trump by giving him a short cease fire. That's why I think this is one of those if

you're the if you're the KGB operative portion of Putin's brain, right, you give a little something so that the Europeans are of no choice. But now by totally snubbing, he is potentially making it. It's making it harder for Trump to somehow defend Putin and serve as this buffer that he's been serving as against the West. And I think, I mean, you're going to have h Look, you've a whole bunch

of Republican senators who are spineless about going up against Trump on all these other things, but they are willing to to to get tough on Russia, and I'm Putin. I think it's inevitable that this is coming. Uh, But I do think this has been what what when you just look at it as far as you know, people like to say, oh, Putin is such a chess player. It's not a chess move. This is sort of dumb checkers.

He's just counting on Trump being weak and right now Trump is extraordinarily weak, and that's a you know, and that has emboldened that weakness is emboldened Putin. Now, if you want to talk about political messaging, I don't know where the where the opposition to this is in the in in you know, it's it's it's sort of there. But the way to go after Trump on this is he is weak. Putin has spit. He is He has done what Jalen Carter did to Dak Prescott. He has

literally spit on Trump's red tie. And Trump's not can do anything about it, not a thing, all right? Next question Sandro from Italy. Wow, we have a we have a theme today. Hello check Sandro, a listener from Italy. The reason Epstein File's discussion made me think about public trust in victims. Watching the Depth versus Herd trial at seventeen, I saw how misogynistic attacks and online trolling dehumanized Herd, turning serious abuse allegations into jokes and fueling a one

sided narrative. I worry Epstein's victims could face similar treatment, defamation suits, tax and credibility, and a loss of political support. Why do female victims and even female politicians face this dehumanization while Trump has avoided the same level of scrutiny from the media. Thanks well, I think he's gotten I don't know if I agree that he hasn't gotten scrutiny from the media. I think he's gotten scrutiny from the media.

That's not the issue. The question is why doesn't it stick? Right? Why do these things stick to others but it doesn't to him? Now, in part, he's got all sorts, you know. Part of it is, you know he's he is mister distraction, and everybody always thinking, so this is a distraction for this there's no one thing that's a distraction specifically for

another thing. It is this is how he wants. He wants seven things, seven balls in the air, so that it looks like he's there's always something going on, and you know he can do is and and and it has allowed them what what what second term Trump is?

Guys like to Stephen Miller and others have figured out how to use the fog of Trump set a fog of war, right, using the fog of Trump to sort of manipulate and take advantage of him and get him to do things in extraordinarily aggressive actions, like what he's doing right now in Venezuela. But I would argue, I mean, my goodness, I mean the singling out Trump's misogynistic behavior

and his character. I mean the entire Access Hollywood tape. I mean, we had a And I think that's the problem sometimes with our politics. You know, you have such a high profile moment like that, and it dominates a couple of weeks of the final four weeks of that campaign, and then there's this sense so we got by it,

so don't ever worry about using it again. Like there's this weird mindset in political campaigns that once you survive, if you get elected, and the attacks thrown at you don't stick enough to cause you enough to win that election, to cause you to lose that election, and you win for whatever reason, political opponents stop using the same material

they think, well, we can't like. And there is an old news thing, right that has been effective for Corpa politicians in the past've been able to say, oh, that's old news. I don't know why we're bringing that up. Well, I know why you're bringing it up, because it deserves to be brought up. But the point is is that because it's it's part of trying to figure out what

makes these politicians stick. But you're right, I mean, this hasn't gotten the same and I think in some ways, you know, so those that don't like Trump have their point of view. Those that do have decided to compartmentalize this. You know, it goes to it's sort of like why

did the character attacks. It's funny they never worked against Clinton, the Democrats when Clinton was in office, but when he was leaving office, the sort of the character stuck, stuck a little bit the gore, and he had to figure out a way to distance himself from it. Right, it was like the country was like, we're not going to do it again. And that's why I am skeptical of behaving like Trump. That the answer that I think the next president wins because they're they have higher they have

a higher they have perceived higher character than Trump. I say perceived, because you can have people that can hold themselves up as high character and they're they're hiding low character. Tendencies. But my assumption is the public doesn't want this kind of self enrichment, amoral and immoral behavior out of their

chief executives. I just I don't buy that. All right, I'm gonna steak in one more question here, uh, and this one comes, We're going to go stateside here, Adam in Minneapolis, he said, I love hearing your discussion on the best comedy Satirical writers a while back and was very excited to hear you conclude with Trey Parker and Matt Stone in South Park. Curious to hear if you

have tuned into the current season a spoiler alert. I have. Personally, I had to spit out my drink moment when I saw Trump with the classics that I'm cut out face and voice. Love to hear any thoughts on the political salience of the direction this season best, Adam, Well, it's interesting because you know, they're they're they're to me, they're

calling card. Over the last decade has really been on on trying to sort of call out cultural hypocrisy from both from the woke left and the grievance right, and Andy they've so effectively, I think culturally still even in these episodes I think have mocked both quite well. You know, It's funny. What I've noticed is that the coverage of each South Park episode is almost done exclusively through the

prism of Trump. But I thought I thought the uh I thought the last episode or no, I think it was two episodes ago, the one that featured Tim Cook was as much about the tech world and the sort of the bowing down. Anyway, the point is is that

I think, what's I again, They're They're not They're not late leaving anything untouched here at all. But it is a direct There's no doubt this is a direct response to sort of what I would say is almost maga and and sort of a morality of Trump. But look, it's been let's just say, they've done things that I can't even feel like I can repeat. Obviously I could. There's you know, this is the world of independent media. We can do what we want, but it feels next

level over the top. But then I could also argue that in this day and age, in order for anything to break through the algorithms and break through in some ways, do you have to go that far. So there's there's a there's a part of me that you know we have, really I don't think we have fully appreciated how much we've sort of gotten rid of every guard rail possible when it comes to sort of political satire and commentary.

There's pretty much there's no line, there's no guardrail, there's no norm, and some of it is funny, but we're actually doing what I would say is real satire, because the best satire should make you a little uncomfortable before it makes you laugh. And I think this season South Park is making you a little bit uncomfortable just before you laugh. All right with that, I think we can put a pin in this episode. Appreciate you out there. We've been by the way, response has been terrific, and

people are out of their August doldrums. That's exciting. I'm having the I'm enjoying this, enjoying this medium, appreciate the opportunity it gives me to sort of complete whole thoughts and to sort of do, as Trump likes to say, my own little weave about sort of how I'm watching the current American political system as it potentially unravels in front of our very eyes, and so I feel like chronicling this almost on a daily basis is necessary as we figure out how we can navigate our way out

of this mess, and so with that, I will upload again in approximately forty eight hours. Y