Chuck's Commentary - Mass Shootings In A PolarizedCountry + Ask Chuck

afternoon evening here for Thursday morning. The big news, correctly consuming much of the much of the political and news world is the mass shooting in Minneapolis at that Catholic school. Given what I did for a living doing live television and anchor many many A special reports when it came

to school shootings, sadly, there's a pattern. There's a pattern in coverage. There's a pattern, you know, where there's sort of there's there's a lot of this that becomes very familiar. There is a quick, sort of all consuming moment and then as fast as people pay attention is as fast as the coverage usually goes away. Uh. There in many

cases this is fitting a pattern. Young person in their twenties shoots up a school that they once attended, a manifesto that sort of indicates a lot of mental health challenges, and you ask yourself, how did this person get all these weapons? And there's good, there's so, there's there's certainly, And this is where I hope we can have political leaders try to have an uh, what I would call

an am conversation rather than an or conversation. Too many times with these school shootings, I think everybody wants everybody's the wrong word. There's sometimes a political instinct too. If you believe in an idea, if you believe in gun control,

or you believe that this is a mental health issue, whichever one it is, you find you find a piece something in the current investigation that reinforces your belief and you sort of dismiss the idea that there are other factors that contribute here beyond what your core belief is the motivation of these things, whether you believe it's a mental health is the primary issue, Access to guns is

the primary issue, School security is the primary issue. Rhetoric rhetoric online being the issue right there, And my encouragement would be I wish we could get to a place where we had some and conversations. Let's look at the access to weapons and the conversation and the rhetoric that takes place on social media, and the divisive and divisiveness and hate that's going around, and the issue with protecting kids in schools and the issue of mental health for

young people. I think we all know, unfortunately that we're not going to have and the conversations that we'd like to have. This particular story has the potential of truly becoming very divisive in our culture wars, given that the

shooter transitioned from being a man to a woman, This is already something that many on social media are using and want to make certain points. Again, it's an attempt to cherry pick something to reinforce a core belief, regardless of any of the other factors that may be involved

in this situation. So this is one of those times where you're just where I get hopeful that the political community will be mature and sort of rise above partisanship, rise above the ability to exploit something for a cheap political gain. And yet what world am I living in? Right? I think we know that this has every chance of being politicized in all the wrong ways. I hope I'm wrong.

I hope that the online conversation is the outlier and that the in person conversations that the focus is in

the right direction here. Unlikely. I'm aware of the world we live in, but it is this is something where I wish we could have this and conversation because you have rabid people who don't even want to touch the access to guns issue, and you have others that don't want to have certain conversations about rhetoric online, about about identity, and so this is going to be one of those moments where you need a really good leader, and perhaps in a tough moment, we don't have the leadership in

this country to rise to the occasion that's necessary. But hope Spring's eternal, and perhaps and perhaps cooler heads and more empathetic heads are going to prevail here. But we shall see. We are at a moment for what it's worth. Right, We're going to have some federal agencies. We've already had

the FBI director pretty high profile talk about that he wants to make that they're investigating this as a hate crime against Catholics, and they're looking at this as domestic terrorism. I've heard from some folks fearing that the calling it domestic terrorism will then single out certain groups of people. I am. I am hopeful that does not happen, but it does serve as a reminder of the importance of

whether you trust law enforcement or not. And there's actually some new polling data indicating just how polarized we are in our trust or distrust of law enforcement agencies right now that it is completely based on what your political party is when it comes to your views of ICE, your views of the Department of Homeland Security, your views of the Department of Justice, your views of the FBI.

Just to give you a taste of this conversation on the Department of Justice. From the big picture standpoint, the numbers haven't changed all that much. Right last year overall, the Department of Justice in this Pew survey had a forty three favorable rating versus a forty four percent unfavorable rating. Okay, this year right now, it's thirty nine percent favorable forty six percent unfavorable. But boy, when you go inside the numbers, you start to see the politic how politicized the views

of these agencies are. Majority of Republicans now rate the Department of Justice favorably. It's up eighteen points from Republican views of the Department of Justice last year. And guess what the trend is the opposite among Democrats. Just twenty eight percent of Democrats view the Justice Department favorably, and that's down twenty seven points from last year. You can see similar polarized movements when it comes to the favorable

or unfavorable ratings of the Department of Homeland Security. You have sixty eight percent of Republicans viewing it favorably, just twenty six percent of Democrats view it favorably. Last year, Democrats were more likely than Republicans to rate DHS favorably. Partisan gap on ICE is wider there than under any other group that was tested by Pew. Seventy two percent of Republicans favorable, have a favorable view towards ICE seventy

two percent, twenty one percent unfavorable. In contrast, Democrats, literally it's a mirror image, just thirteen percent of a favorable rating of ICE, seventy eight percent unfavorable on that front, and obviously on the FBI itself, just to give you a sense of that, on the FBI, you still you have a fifty four percent of Republicans have a favorable rating of the FBI, and right now a ray of Democrats have a favorable rating of the FBI forty five percent.

It shows you that it hasn't totally trickled down just yet. There, For what it's worth, there actually are places where both where there isn't a polarized view of certain federal agencies. The National Park Service basically seventy percent of Republicans and Democrats have a favorable view of the National Park Service. Let's see how the dosee cuts impact that over time. The National Weather Service has a fairly high favorable rating

sixty one percent of Republicans, seventy three percent of Democrats. Oddly, NASA is a bit more polarized, believe it or not. While it has a net favorable rating, more Democrats have a higher favorable rating of NASA than Republicans. And the Social Security Administration is a huge partisan divide, with more Republicans having a positive view of it versus versus Democrats.

But the point is, we are living in a time where I think most Americans, and I think correctly now view the at least the federal law enforcement agencies through very partisan eyes. Because they are being run by very partisan actors who are not trying to hide their partisanship. Right, Pambody is a Republican operative in the role of Attorney General, Cash Bettel a Republican operative in the role of FBI director.

That's not healthy for our society. This is why there is a real debate here if the more the president wants to concentrate power through him in the executive branch and control these agencies that multiple presidents left and right believe they had to create some distance from in order to keep credibility with these agencies, whether it is the FBI, whether it is the Department of Justice, whether it is

the Federal Reserve. And when you concentrate all this in moments like we're dealing with where we need where a very political response is the last thing the situation needs, you're going to have extraordinarily partisan actors whose first instinct is to exploit for partisan gain, and it is only going to erode the credibility of these agencies. Right now, I gave you the partisan leanings here. Essentially, independence are

essentially moving there. In these cases, the Independence look slightly more left than right as far as their ratings are concerned, and I think independence just look at it a little more straightforward, not necessarily through a partisan lens, but through a reality lens. And the reality is the right believes the left politicize these agencies, the left believes the rights

politicizing these agencies. If both sides are saying these agencies have been politicized over the last two years, I promise you independents are going to view that the agencies are always being politicized, and they're going to line up essentially against the political party and power in that one. And I think that's the situation that we're going to see here and let's see, let's see how political this investigation

itself gets. But this is we are dealing with a very with a very skeptical public in general right now,

where everybody is looking at sees everything through a very partisan lens, and in many cases that's exactly the way Donald Trump. This is a feature of the Trump administration.

They don't view They're okay, if it's seen positively only by their voters, that is an acceptable outcome, and that's that's I think the ultimate problem with the current situation we're living in is that this is the first administration that didn't care whether people that didn't vote for them respected their ability to govern one and two whether they ought to govern for people that didn't vote for them.

And I think this is this is unfortunately a time where you need max trust in your law enforcement agencies, and we are at a time where we probably are as low as it's been probably since the nineteen seventies, certainly has polarized on these agencies. We didn't have the same amount of polling that we do today, and how often would we do it. But it is nonetheless a

we're in a period of low trust. We know this across the board, and so it is like, again, you hope that the moment is heavy enough that even the most partisan actor realizes this is not the time for partisanship. But if passed his prologue, it's unlikely that your hope is going to turn into reality. Let's get into some

asshat ask Chuck. First question comes from Jeff, and it's a perfectly timed sports and politics question. He says, Hey, Chuck, Jeff from Pittsburgh. Here. I just dropped off my oldest son off for his first year at university. He has a great interest in journalism, particularly sports and politics. Hey, that's familiar to me, But my fear as a parent

is naturally the dying legacy of legacy outlets. I've heard you mentioned in passing on the podcast about how local sports coverage may have the potential to transform, support other local coverage, or remake the media landscape. Can you elaborate on this? Yes, Look, I've been examining the local news landscape for quite some time through a variety of potential business proposals. For one, I'm going to keep some of it a bit cryptic on that, but here's the basic premise.

You know, local news they had two main revenue streams for a long time, right advertised, well, three main revenue streams, advertising, subscriptions and classified. And it was really classified that were the sort of the reliable revenue generator. ADS. ADS would go up and down, if you will, and even like subscriptions, you know, yes that mattered, but in some cases it wasn't you know, you know, they were just dying to

make sure you got the pay. You know, it was more important for them to have higher circulation numbers to sell to advertisers than it was necessarily to get direct subscription income revenue from each household. So that's why I've always looked at it more as two primary primary resources there. And you know, as i've you may have heard me say this on this podcast, I say it wherever I go. I said, a man named Craig decided classified zuta be free. YadA,

YadA YadA, Donald Trump became president. Because what happened is, I do think when we knocked out local and classified, when when you got rid of classified revenue for basically any news newspaper that had a circulation of fifty thousand

or less, that was sixty to seventy percent of their revenue. So look, let me speed through this part, which is I don't think nonprofit is a way to is a long term solution to the local news crisis that we have in America. Uh So, I think that you got

to find a revenue stream. And I actually think the fact that for all the reasons I just talked about in this episode about how much money is coming into college, how much money is being poured into high school sports to prepare to get your opportunity in college now and

this is no longer just about basketball and football. This is across the board, right beach volleyball, lacrosse, both men's and women's soccer, both men's and women's women's softball, even men's baseball in some places is a net positive revenue sport and what that's going to do even as we're at this weird demographic cliff where we were actually stagnant when it comes to to growth of the under seventeen generation, Like you know, universities have been talking about this that

this was the beginning of this demographic cliff where we you know, and then you throw in that we're a little more restrictive on immigration, so are we are? We are getting older as a country, not younger. But when it comes to youth sports, it's primarily been pretty boy heavy, and I think now with the amount of opportunity in women's sports, you're going to see gender parity among youth sports. So it is going it is a huge growth area

and there is just a ton of money. And I think if a way you're trying to build a local news organization, and I've I've there are some good examples that I've come across in my research of the local news ecosystem that local sports is a pretty good uh magnet to get readers to get people interested in what

you're doing. And if you can become in the same way, right, then my friends at NBC through a bunch of money to get the NBA because in there and you know, live sports during the week is sort of one of these last ways you can get people to turn on a legacy TV each It's the same thing in local if you can become the hub and I believe if you can become the local hub of how the community watches the local high school football game or watches the

twelve you travel teams in your community play each other, and maybe you put that behind a paywall, but you also are creating a friendly or advertising environment. Small businesses love being associated with youth sports. Right. It's not polarizing as a as somebody who cares about trying to glue communities back together between red and blue. I think sports is one of the safe zones that you can do

that with. You can if you start with sports, you build your trust that way, and then over time you can build trust with them and then eventually they will believe you when you say and oh, by the way, we're also doing this reporting over here to tell you that your city councilman's corrupt. So that's the that's that's my that's my thesis, and it's one I've put together in a business plan and it's one I really believe in.

I know this the youth sports world is going to be is growing, and it's growing extraordinarily fast, and it's only going to get bigger, and there's a whole bunch of people wanting to invest money in it. There's not as many people that want to invest money in local news. They've sort of almost written it off, thinking, oh, it should be just a project of nonprofit. Well, I'm not ready to write it off, and I'm like, can we

marry these two entities if you will right? Ultimately, you need a local publisher to let you know that the youth sports tree fell in the forest and here's the scores, and somebody's got to deal with the infrastructure to make sure the stream lives somewhere and you can have a place to see the highlights, etc. So I just think that this is one of these things where it's when, if you will right, we can rebuild a more trusted local ecosystem and oh, by the way, we're providing a

service to the community. That it really wants. Trust me, as a parent of two kids that were pretty active in the youth sports space, five or six different apps you'd run late you didn't want to miss an app bat, you know, towards the end of their youth sports careers. There'd be the occasional parent that says, hey, I've created a live stream, go to this what was it Vimeo? I think is the Mayo. I don't know if I've said it right, and you could kind of watch it

and all this stuff. So I do think this is actually and it goes back to what I believe a successful local news publication has to be, which is a service journalism, meaning you really are in service to the community. You're helping people in the community live their lives. So one part of that is making it easier for them to keep up with the youth sports scene. But another might be you hire an influencer who's just there to

help you save money on food. They keep track of, you know, the price of chicken on everywhere, the price of eggs, and what restaurant makes it easier to take two small children to go out and not break the bank, et cetera. Right, you essentially recreate the old As I say, you're recreating what everybody loved about the newspaper bundle. Right. I've always said this about the old newspaper. We all got it, but only ten percent of it cared about

the news part. The other ninety percent had something else we had in there. It was just a terrific bundle. Well, you start to unpack that bundle and say, what is it that helped you know? So you need to find out what's going on in your community. You need to find out how to save money in your community. You need to find out what's the weather in my area going to be, not just on the other side of the county. Well, my goodness, weather forecasting has never been more.

The only good local news the Washington Post does anymore is its weather in Capital Weather Gang. Because of the ability to micro forecast, they literally can have pretty accurate forecasts of my neighborhood and the neighborhoo next door and be correct it is it is, and so every community. If I were running a local news operation, whether it's in Pittsburgh, Kansas or Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, I'd be hiring a local meteorologist. By the way, my daughter's minoring and meteorology,

so she needs a job too. And one other thing to sort of alleviate you your concern about about journalism as a career for your for your for your son. When I entered the information ecosystem, space journalism, whatever we want to call it anymore, in the early nineties, it was at a time of media contraction. But there was a whole bunch of startups, and I got a whole bunch of early experience and startups where the old legacy reporters didn't want to bother understanding what the internet was.

And at twenty three, because I was comfortable on the internet, you know, I you know, had an early political column. I was doing analysis on the days, all because the old legacy reporters didn't want to do it. So what I would say is that if there's ever an exciting time to be in in the world of journalism, it's when you're in your twenties, not when you're like me

in your fifties. And here's one other way to give you some to give you a little bit more comfort that this isn't a wasted degree for your for your son, more and more Fortune five hundred. There is now this belief in the in the in the corporate world that you've got to run your own communications. This isn't just about finding a media outlet that will be friendly to you when you roll out your new logo or your

new this. You've got to create your own content. And more and more Fortune five hundred companies want to be their own publishers. They're setting up comm shops that look more like newsrooms than they are just marketing material, and

so there is a actually a demand. There's quite a few of my former colleagues are going into the corporate world to essentially set up be a news newsletter publisher, or be a content creator for their TikTok page, or to set up podcasts, you know, maybe a weekly podcast that the CEO is a part of, or that they

do for communication. So I think that the while the narrow when you look at the world of journalism through the narrow lens of sort of what we thought of as journalism twenty years ago, it looks like a shrinking field. When you look at it through the prism of communications and managing media, well, then suddenly the same skills are necessary and many more entities want to hire people with this skill set. So I think it's a I think

there's more opportunity than you realize. So I, you know, I want to make you feel better Jeff that this is I get it. But if you sort of sort of what is it? Widen your aperture here of what is? You know, the traditional jobs are gone, but there are suddenly a lot of other opportunities that also exist where getting this journalism degree is going to be an asset not a liability, I promise. Okay. Next question comes from Bobs.

A lot of smack talk here on football. Looks like I've been a long time listening to your podcast, always enjoyed your work on me the Press. I'm listening in listening to your most recent podcast has struck me that two of your favorite sport teams sports teams happen to be playing two of my favorite sports teams in their opening games. That said, let me make these predictions. Notre Dame beats Miami in a close game. Detroit's Bank screen Bay. Thanks.

Should these results come to fruition, I just hope it will not impact your excellent commentary in the ensuing days, nor teint the remainder of their respective schedules. Except for Green Bay second less to Detroit on Thanksgiving, compounding any gastro and testinal issues for Green Bay fans that day. Hey, by the way, that game's at noon, so it's actually before you start totally consuming too much food. Trust me, my son and I have already noted what time those

Thanksgiving games are. Cheers, Go Irish, go Lions. Appreciate that, Bob, You're gonna love this. My son's roommate, he knew his roommate a little bit, but he didn't know his roommate really well. His roommate moved in the day before, and when we go into the room, the first thing we see is this Lion's flag all taped up on the wall. And I was like, oh man, and my son brought to Jordan love Jersey, but he didn't bring up the

packer flag. So of course I have I am win on Amazon quickly to order him a packer flag so he could have some he could have, hey, and some fun and fun little Miami news. My son ran into Tyler van Dyke. If you're an old school her Knees fan, or if at least been following them from more than the last twenty four last year, Tyler van Dyke was was had sort of six great games for Miami a few years back, and there was some thought that maybe in Manny Dias his last year, that maybe he could

get us over the finish line. He didn't. But his best years at Miami were when Rhet Lashley was the offensive coordinator. Well, Rhet last he's now the head coach at SMU, and Tyler Van Dyke is playing his last

season right now, he's the backup at SMU. My son ran into him, recognized him, and he couldn't have been nicer, couldn't have been you know, So's like, Wow, I'm eighteen and he's a grown man. He goes, I just felt like I believe we're both students at SMU was sort of his reaction. But if Tyler, for whatever reason, if you're listening, I really appreciate how great you were to your fellow SMU Mustang freshman there, So thank you for that.

Next question comes from Brian in Massachusetts, second time writer here. Recently, you said that Marco Rubio was one of the only adults in the room, Bessen being the other. Have you heard if Rubio has any regrets or is embarrassed his body language tends to say so, but when he's interviewed, he sounds trumpy. I was never a big fan of his, but this feels like when Hulkogan became a bad guy. Brian from track at Massachusetts. I'll tell you. Look, I

Marco Rubio and I grew up. Both grew up in Miami. Think he graduated the year after me or a year before me, I can't quite remember. I think he graduated from South Miami High School. I went to kill And High School. His football coach was an old family friend of mine. So we've but we didn't know each other back then. And I'm not gonna but there's certainly we know a lot of people who know each other type of mindset. Right. It's a you know, like any like

any community, it can feel like a small town. The more you get to know people, it's a riddle. It's a riddle on Rubio. I will say this. I think that I look every time I see the administration be surprisingly supportive of Ukraine, I think, oh, Rubio had a good day getting to Trump, And when I see then Trump going the other way, it's like, oh, Rubio wasn't there today. Vance had the presidents here on that stuff. So look, I don't know where you know, Ruby is

not the only one. There's a lot of Republicans who have expressed discomfort over the years, some of them publicly who have since acquiesced, some of them privately who have never gone public. I look at some of the things that happened, you know, I can't believe the the irresponsibility of confirming Robert F. Kennedy Junior to HHS. I got it. I got to think there are some well, I know

there are at least two or three Republican Senators who regret their vote. But you know, the confirmations of Patel, hag Seth, Gabbert, and Kennedy are probably for the most irresponsible ones that we've seen the Senate do, and there were a majority against them. What they were afraid of

going public? You know, if there had been secret ballots, none of those four in the Senate, none of those four get confirmed, not a single one of those four that I just mentioned, only because it's on the public record. And in some ways that's why you noticed there's always a move to try to make certain things more public because it is harder to say no to the president when you have to do so in public it is a lot easier if you can somehow stop him without

having to publicly go after him and do that. But I'm not gonna look, I played the what is Rubio really thinking game for a few years during the second half of term one. I have retired that part of my part of my obsession over there, and so it is you know, look, I do think that on his foreign policy issues, that when it comes to Latin America, when it comes to America's national security, that he does have some deeply held beliefs, and it does seem to me that he tries to not throw away all of

those beliefs in service to Trump. But he has certainly proven to be a I guess the polite way would be calling it flexible when it comes to what he used to define what he wants to find is conservative

and what he embraces his conservatism today. But I do think he is ecstatic to sit there and be in in some ways, to be compartmentalized as the foreign policy guy, because let's just say, I think even Senator Rubio would have spoken out against taking a piece of intel, and I think he would have been, like you knows, as the son of exiles, Cuban exiles, nationalizing the idea of any sort of government control of a company is something that is that that that many a true sort of

anti Castro Cuban exile would just find appalling and be very concerned that it was a slippery slope to Latin American style authoritarianism. And in fact it's funny. I have I've actually been thinking about that I've been putting together. I haven't, I haven't, and it's not quite ready, it's

not quite ready to debut here on the pod. But there are a number of similarities here to sort of what we've seen in South America, for whether it's in Venezuela, whether it's in Argentina, frankly, whether it's in Bolivia, whether it's in Mexico. But you're seeing certain certain things that Trump is doing that we've seen in countries where we

have said democracy is backsliding. All right, next question, um, like, I'm going to try to sneak in two more here on Georgia Show on Georgia Show on me Press and was delighted to join your podcast. Two things I want to follow up on One, where can I find a book or publication that explains voting trends by generations. I'm a baby boomer and want to understand the number of voters it turned out and the results of voting in this country since Kennedy, that is, when I was able

to vote. He died before I could vote for him. I'm hungry for better world news. Oh number two, I'm hungry for better world news. You mentioned a publication that shares more information. Will you share that with me? Please? Thank you very much, Keep up, keep up, keep making us think, Barbara Jane, thank you, Barbara for both of those questions. You know, there's not really one publication on

the on the generational voting patterns. This is I don't know if you may be reacting to the conversation I had with Charlie Cook about our deep collections of the omen x of American politics, because in some ways these are things that we've we've had to do together. There there is the Brookings Institute puts out a publication called Vital Statistics on Congress. It does have some voting trends

in there. You can actually it looks like they now just offer it up as a PDF download that goes through. At least it gives you a sense of of the shifting the shifting map of congressional seats more for Congress than anywhere else. Congressional Quarterly used to puts out something called Politics in America, where they've kept a more of a of a longer. I think in the publication itself they include the sort of longer voting trend lines on

that front. But what you're describing itself doesn't really exist in one book form, right, I think it is. In fact, I've been encouraging my friend John Delavope, who you may have heard a podcast with him a couple of weeks ago.

For twenty five years he's run the Harvard Youth Poll. So what does that mean? He has been polling basically millennials since they were eighteen and now since they were before eight before they were eighteen, going into college, and now that they're heading into middle age. You know, this is all this is twenty five years of data. I'm like, John, You've got a book here just sort of millennials, the next big generation, you know, in comparing them to the boomers.

So I think that there is I think that I'm obsessed with the generation of sort of how you know, I buy into the scholarship that says we there's basically four types of generations, and they just kind of repeat each repeat each other. You know, since we have about four, I guess we're now. You know, there's always pieces of a new generation an old generation on the on the outer edges there. So you know, parts of six generations are living at one time these days, because because we

keep living longer and longer on that front. But I certainly think a good analysis of the boomers over the years would be quite healthy. I think what you learn is and this is what we're seeing, at least with the millennials. They started out very liberal. They have become less so as they've aged. Boomers have been interestingly fairly even split the whole time. What I find interesting about the generations is it is that you know where you begin politically, you know, how close or far away from

the center do you begin. Usually is about what you're coming you know, what was the politics during your coming of age? Well, what's interesting with the boomers the coming of age times and some it was basically in the heart of a very polarized period of America right the sixties. Well, here we are at the endgame of the boomers, we're in a polarized era. We weren't as polarized in between

as much, but we were there. Millennials came in and sort of at at a low point for the Republicans and at a hot and it's sort of a rising point for the Democrats with Obama, and that I think started them further, you know, started them in a more liberal trend. Gen X, when my coming of age Republican leadership in this country brought about the end of the Cold War, right, Well, guess who's the most supportive of Republicans to this day.

Of the four generations. It's not Boomers, it's not millennials, it's Gen X. So it is interesting to me for what it's worth is how much impact over time that sort of first coming of age for a generation, what the coming of age which period was politically in the country, and how it sort of has influence on sort of directionally how that generation votes and sort of how close to the center will they get to or deviate dep

depending on course of where they started. All right, last question here we are bordering on one hour of non interview time. I want to be mindful of that. This comes from Blaze M. And Blaze Rights. Listening to your message about chicken at Trader Joe's got me thinking I was recently shopping for Halloween chocolate to eat now, of course, and realize most of what was on the shelves wasn't actually chocolate at all, just chocolate flavored candy with barely

any cocoa didn't qualify to be labeled as chocolate. Later that day, I noticed a store brand apple drink that was really just apple flavored sugar water, sitting right next to real apple juice that cost a bit more. It makes me wonder how many people actually check the labels and how often we're left without the option of the real thing. That's interesting, Look, you point out something that you know, especially especially when it comes to chocolate or

in particular. I had a lung conversation actually with Steve Moore, conservative economists who's very friendly to Trump but at the same time very nervous about these tariffs, and noted that, hey, you know, all of our coffee is imported. And when you were writing this, it made me think, how much are we going to see coffee flavored drinks without coffee in it because it's cheaper to make the artificial flavor.

Let's say, if it's a cold brew, or if it's you know, you know, one of those canned lattes or whatever, because the cost of coffee is skyrocketing, and we're also in a we've politicized the trade war with Brazil over over Trump's obsession over Bolsonaro there and the fact that the Brazilian government held Bolsonaro accountable for his attempt at coup. But all of that is contributing to just skyrocketing prices on coffee. And so your observation is interesting, and it's

gonna make me look at chocolate. I've been ignoring chocolate for quite some time because I you know, once you hit Middle Ages, there are certain things that don't you know,

I like chocolate. Chocolate doesn't like me. So I've actually not been in the market for even chocolate like substances and sometime, but I do see a similar I'm going to be looking for it there, and I would be saying I think I wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing the same thing when it comes to coffee flavored, especially if the price of coffee itself continues to go up due to the terrafes all right, I will leave

it at that. I think I've said this a few times this week. I've mentioned it now College Football Week one. College football is sort of my great and favorite and

most passionate distraction. Baseball is also a passionate distraction. It really stunk for me throughout this baseball season that, in this tough time professionally, that we're covering these issues with Trump, that my distraction in the evening Nationals baseball was almost was almost as frustrating and didn't exactly uh, it didn't exactly uh give me the uh, give me the detached entertainment that you kind of want when you're trying to when you're trying to uh trying to check out a

little bit, if you if you'd like to. I'm really nervous about my Miami Hurricanes. I've been it has been so long since they were the team to beat that I now, you know, I'm always now, I'm like I'm I'm I'm like Wiley coated. I'm always waiting for the anvil to drop. How are we going to blow this? How are we going to screw this up? The infamous fumble with Georgia Tech two years ago, the blown twenty

one point lead against Syracuse. But in some ways I have some confidence that Miami at night is just a whole different place to be when it comes to college football. If not, I'll be eating some Irish crow the next time I upload on Tuesday morning. With that, enjoy the final weekend of the summer and until we upload again.