Chuck’s Commentary - The Shutdown Has Become A Choice + Trump’s Showdown In Chicago

my nostrodama sword. I really did think we were going to be done after a week. I think we should be done with this by now. I think the Democrats have accomplished what they wanted to accomplish out of it politically.

this week. If they want to declare victory, they could and say they got what they wanted to get out of this. And if the Republicans back off their agreement to try to hammer out a deal on Obamacare, well this continuing resolution is only for another six weeks, so they have another leverage point. And I would say this, I mean, look, there's no evidence that this is going to end this weekend. I you know, so I was wrong about that, but we're we're going to be missing

a paycheck. The first paycheck missing happens at the beginning of next week. We've got already impacts on the traveling

public right now. You know, I didn't have any problems going from lax to Washington Dulles after visiting USC. But I promise you, if you're traveling, whether it's Nashville, Indianapolis, Des Moines, Albuquerque, any slightly smaller market than some of the large ones, you know, it doesn't take too many air traffic controllers in that region to suddenly call in sick to where you're grounding all flights.

the pushed into the into the zeitgeist here a little bit. Look, it's hard for any issue to break through in the Trump era for any given period of time, but this

issue of health care certainly has the attention of the Republicans on this. So now it's a game of chicken and the longer, frankly, if I look on the Democratic side, the longer they hold out what I say yesterday, then this really isn't about health care. This is about something else. And frankly, it is about something else, right. It is about the fact that Donald Trump is not respecting the Constitution, he's not respecting the appropriations process, he's not respecting the

legislative branch. But the Democrats have a problem. They're not in charge of the legislative branch right now. It's the Republicans who are allowing the executive branch to steamroll them because they're the ones in charge, and it's an issue that's hard to get the public to rally around. They're

going to rally around things and impact their lives. Yes, what's happening with the misuse of appropriations and the sort of the aggressive nature of what O and B has tried to do is impactful on people's lives, but it's much harder for them to see it. You know, it's

it's healthcare hits their bottom line. That this is premiums doubling that that is, that is the cost to live issue, which of course has arguably been what's been hanging over our politics since we got out of the COVID shutdown. And I think in some ways, the healthcare the rising healthcare premiums would only feed into the cost of to live issues that the tariffs and some of the other policies that President Trump has pursued has done. I mean,

we are, as I said before, we have this. We have this weird economy that will statistically look good for those that have money, but it is completely impossible to catch up or get ahead, or if you don't already have a little bit of savings earning, you know, getting taking advantage of the supercharged markets that we have right now,

fueled by all of this artificial intelligence investment. So we are in a situation where either party can end the shutdown right now. Democrats could declare victory, provide the eight votes, open the government up, and have six weeks to hold them accountable again if they don't come to the table. And of course Republicans could open the government right now themselves. They don't need a single Democratic vote. They'd have to get rid of the filibuster, but they could do it

on a party line vote anytime they wanted to. So we are in the This is a choice aspect of the shutdown. This is truly a choice. And I just

would warn Democrats on this one. You've had some success here getting this issue more front and center in the public's mind, but by the way, your negatives are rising as a political party over the polling that matriculated out this past week one on two in that risks potentially at some point, the more Americans have their lives disrupted, the more they're likely to then sour on everybody and then whatever slight even issue advantage of just getting the

healthcare issue into the ether disappears, and then it becomes, well, what did you gain for all that adjuta with the shutdown? So you know, there's a point of diminishing returns here. At what point does Team Blue see that? We shall find out. But again, before I get to a few other issues I want to get to, Republicans could just

do it on their own if they chose to. They're also apparently don't mind, and that that gets sort of what I said yesterday my groundhog Day response here, which is I think the base of both parties think they're winning, and so when you think you're winning, you don't want to stop.

Illinois and the mayor of Chicago. This is you know this it it is a few updates. Obviously you had the President escalating his war of words with the mayor and the governor, calling on the Democratic leaders to be impeached, actually be imprisoned for failing to protect ice officers. Trump wrote on his truth social post, Chicago mayor should be in jail for failing to protect ice officers. Governor Pritzker also, I don't think anybody's saying that they're not protecting ice

officers here. But of course this is this sort of the the the the pretext that it appears the Trump administration's trying to create in order to force this situation. I have to say, the most bizarre aspect of all this is the is what the state of Texas agreed to do? You know, It's one thing, Look, the President

has the authority to federalize the National Guard in Illinois, so he did it, but to use Texas troops to essentially invade Illinois, right, And I don't you know, I know, it can come across that everybody's getting very dramatic here about some of these things, but nobody seems to remember the golden rule in life or in politics. Right, do unto others as you want done unto you.

seems to be thinking about, Oh is you know what happens if the roles are reversed? Right, And this has certainly been a virus. It's in our politics these days where nobody thinks of the of the reactionary consequence to anything. We don't treat people the way we want to be treated. In some ways, we're treating people the way we we think how poorly we're being treated.

a role here and are providing. You know, the Constitution hasn't been shredded yet, okay, and I think that should be seen as a positive and not something that is that is it is me being naive on this front. We had a federal judge in Chicago on Wednesday extending

a nationwide consent decree that requires ice to better document and report probable cause for their immigration arrests, and they have found this judge found that the agency repeatedly has violated the twenty twenty two agreement by making warrantless arrests, both before and during what they called Operation Midway Blitz. The judge also took particular issue with the practice by ice A here, according to the Chicago Tribune, of carrying blank warrant forms known as I two hundred's with them

on missions and essentially filling them out at the scene. Right, they cannot prove that where they're going that there was a there was a criminal intent by the person that they believe is in this country illegally, so they're basically, you know, getting there and then coming up filling out the form to try to to try to sort of

come up with a legal pretext after the fact. And the judges rightfully, I think, lecture them about this and I can't imagine this one that this part of the ruling somehow gets over overturned or overruled by.

troops to face quote external threats. Now, part of that

may explain why the president Stephen Miller in particular, keep using overheated rhetoric to describe what they say ICE agents are dealing with and what they say the threat is from some of these undocumented immigrants. But it is there's clearly a line here where the more militarized this looks, the more uncomfortable the public gets, including plenty of Republicans. Now that said, and what's interesting here is that there is not a majority that believe that the president has

some sort of huge authority to do this. Thirty seven

percent agree that the presidents of either party should have the power to deploy troops into states even when state governors object, but forty eight percent disagree with that, and in fact, eighty three percent overall in this poll agreed that the military quote should remain politically neutral and not

take a side in a domestic policy debate. Now, there's another poll that was out in the New York Times Siena Poll, and it's part of the same poll that came out last week that I was telling you about. But they released their immigration questions on Wednesday, and essentially it's showing you the same thing that I've been telling you for a while, which is a majority agree with the goal of what Trump is doing, but a majority don't like how he's trying to do it. Let me

put some numbers around that. Fifty four percent of registered voters broadly favored deporting immigrants living in the country illegally. Okay, that's ninety percent among Republicans, fifty two percent among independents, and about twenty percent of Democrats think this. Now, you'll see on that issue of mass deportation, Independence much closer to Republicans than they are Democrats. Right, it's a majority of Independence. That to me a little warning sign there

for Democrats on their stance on immigration. Now, that said,

fifty three percent of voters feel the process of deporting people has not been fair, and forty four percent said it was mostly fair. So that tells you. And fifty two percent of those surveyed also disapprove of Trump's handling of immigration. The point is this, a majority of people in this country do think that too many people were let in illegally and many of them should be returned.

But there is a discomfort in the aggressive tactics that are being used, and the more that is front and center, the more Americans may sour on the policy.

At the same time, a majority of the country's more open to immigration than perhaps the Trump administration is behaving. So like everything in our politics, there's more nuanced in gray area than the two parties are presenting each other. But it is where we are at this moment. I do think the Trump White House believes that Pritzker and

Mayor Johnson are good foils for them politically. I think they're personalizing this on purpose, and Pritzker and Johnson are playing right into it because I think they think it's good politics to get personal right back, It is worth noting that Trump put out that truth social statement on Wednesday after Pritzker on Tuesday night opened wondered aloud whether

Trump has dementia. So it is certainly getting personal, and in that sense that's also a bit of a you know, it goes back to my whole who's going to be the adult in the room. And when you start to go name calling against Trump, you have to remember the rule of the pig, which is careful getting to a mud fight with a pig, because you'll both get dirty and the pig will enjoy it.

Perhaps this is the Stephen Miller plan to create a confrontation, to create a pretext to then do more of this and get more aggressive of these tactics. But the political warning signed to Miller and the Trump White House is the more aggressive they get, the more Americans are going to turn on them on this, and even among Republicans, so as much as it looks as if they're completely ignoring sort of the reality of the situation, and they're frankly lying about the threat. The level of threat that

folks in Chicago are dealing with. There's real political risk in how they're handling this, just as much as there's real risk for Democrats not looking like they're not in

favor of the rule of law either. So I wanted to deal I will say this, I'm not. The reason I'm not my hair's not on fire on this is that.

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they win. The DNC is starting to circulate its after action report on the twenty twenty four election. Politico has gotten a few sources to talk about the sword of top lines that are being circulated to certain Democratic leaders, and here's sort of the early take on this according to the political report, DNC officials argued Democrats. This is

I'm reading directly from the political article. DNC officials argued Democrats didn't spend early or consistently enough to engage and persuade voters, one of several problems the party face in.

social anxieties. Now here's the thing. This idea that the Democrats didn't spend early enough actually doesn't fit the facts the job. Back when Biden was still actively running for president, their campaign actually bought twenty five million dollars worth of ads in September of twenty twenty three. It was earlier than either Barack Obama or Donald Trump aired ads during their first reelections. They also spent another thirty million dollars on ads in March of twenty twenty four, and they

were arguing. Biden's team at the time was arguing, according to Political that this early investment for activate key voters. So I'm confused here. The DNC is claiming it was too late of investments and money in this idea when actually Democrats had the advantage early with money. Look, it sounds like this autopsy is going to end up if this is what it is. If this is what they concluded. Then they've it is just a a whole bunch of words to not say what the real problem was, which

is Joe Biden shouldn't have run. Joe Biden didn't have the capacity to articulate the message that they needed to do. But more importantly, the Biden white House totally disagreed with

the public on what the top issue was. Remember you had the Biden white House putting out surrogates constantly saying, the economy is recovering, the economy is great, look at all the job creation. And they kept arguing making the job creation argument, saying, this economy, you know, pay no attention to what the rest of the country essentially we don't, you know, pay no attention to what you think the problem is with the economy, i e.

was the issue. He couldn't sell his agenda, and then more importantly, whoever was surrounding him totally misread the did have any clue at what the country was upset about, which was the cost to live. I don't know what more the autopsy should say other than that, and you know, other than you know, do they want to try to

light on fire certain consulting groups or people. Obviously a whole bunch of people made a whole bunch of money based on bad strategy. Okay, that's a fair point. But on the other hand, considering how poorly all of this was handled, the fact that they came essentially about one hundred thousand voters away from winning the electoral college is still pretty remarkable. Again, if Kamala Harris simply flips Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, she's at two hundred and seventy electoral votes.

So they're going to release the whole thing. Apparently they're going to release the whole thing after this November's elections, but it is if this is what the early word is,

I don't know if anything's going to be learned from this.

a ten to one. Look, Republicans have lost registered voters over the last few years, and so of Democrats. Literally it's a ten to one ratio. Democrats are losing ten voters for every one voter the Republicans are losing. That is an unsustainable path on that front. A few updates on Virginia. It does appear that everybody is going to

rally around for now. Rally around on the Democratic side, Jay Jones, I want to read you a few statements that a few state Democrats are they're rationales for sticking by, for sticking by Jones, the Attorney General nominee, who of course had those text messages that were sort of fantasizing

about the death of a former Assembly speaker's kids. Virginia State Senator Lamont Bagbee, who chairs the state's Democratic Party, asked the following question in an interview and asked whether Jones should resign, and his response was Republicans that are asking him to resign? Where were they when Trump and other Republicans have made their comments? Ah, the old what

aboutism defense? And another I want to read you one more west blamea well connected progressive activist who teaches at Virginia State University, said the following. People I'm the feel as if they have to be the perfect, highest moral individuals in the world. Normal everyday people stay stupid things and text messages online all the time. If that is the thing that means the Democratic ticket doesn't win the election, then they've got bigger issues. Look, I don't think this

is going to take down the entire Democratic ticket. It probably is only going to take down his own candidacy. Could make the LG race a lot closer, and maybe Spanburger wins by single digits and it costs them some opportunities and down the ballot and state legislative races and

things like that. But this public defense. This is exactly what I've been sort of ranting about now for a few months, that the rationales that many Republicans would use to overlook hateful and violent rhetoric from Donald Trump and some of his supporters, and the sort of oh, can't you take a joke and nobody it's not that serious that the democratic defense of when somebody on their side

sort of behaves similarly as well, is now going to go to the same thing. Is that really the answer? I go back to the whole golden rule. Right, you do unto others as you want done under you.

got to take the high ground here. Somebody's got to want to have some moral authority here, and these defenses, and look, in fairness, not many well known Democrats are willing to stick by and make the defense like that. But that mindset, and I know it's there in the base of the party.

in the room voter, who I do believe they've had an inside track on essentially during most of the Trump era. But if it's a if you can't beat them, join a mindset, I don't know what happens. Then you don't know where this goes. Does a go third party, does it go splintering. There's a lot of ways that this could go. A few campaign notes, I think we have another Democrat to add to the presidential list. So we told you any be been in New Hampshire. He was

just there this week. I told you there was already a pro Palestinian group running an attack ad on Bisher. Sort of an early warning shot I think to all presidential candidates that there are going to be some activist groups that are going to want to make Israel and arming Israel e litmus test. Well, we've got additional Democrats

on the schedule in New Hampshire, Chris Murphy. I think many people already knew the Connecticut Democratic senator was sort of at least toying with a national campaign in twenty twenty eight. He's going to do a town hall in

New Hampshire November twelve. But Alyssa Slockton, the first term senator from Michigan, is going to headline a fundraiser for the Manchester Democratic Dinner on October fifteenth. As my friend Chris Eliza likes to say, you know, nobody shows up to ior in New Hampshire by accident without at least

you know they're kicking the tires on something. And what's interesting about Slockton is this is she's doing this within about two weeks of Gretchen Whitmer, the term limited governor of Michigan, sort of indicating that she's probably not going to run for president in twenty twenty eight, that she's let that she hopes to be participating in what's next, but that she probably wouldn't be at the top of

the ticket herself. Is this coincidence? Is this related? Let's just say inquiring minds want to know, and a few other California notes. I was just out in California. First of all, it does look like the redistricting effort it is. I think Gavin Newsom is going to win this prop It looks like they've successfully turned this into a referendum on Trump, which was the way to win this. And it also looks like money is drying up on the

no side of things. Kevin McCarthy, according to punch Bull News, who had pledged to raise and spend one hundred million dollars to try to defeat the proposition in the November elections, has so far only been able to spend seven millions. So it does seem as if that it's possible some money is drying up. So if you're you're if you're keeping track of the redistricting wars, so if California is

gonna happen and Texas is going to happen. They've canceled each other out, so now it becomes this sort of night fight one by one. So we're gonna have Missouri, you might have Indiana. Then there's the Utah redraw. There could be now a Maryland redraw. Does Florida get into

the game, right, there is another potential seat or two they could attempt in Broward County. If you remember my interview with Jared Moskowitz, even w Wasserman Schultz's district, they think maybe they could they sort of stretch it across Alligator ally and essentially try to create districts that would have nothing in common. I mean, trust me, growing up in South Florida, you know the Fort Myers and and Fort Lauderdale have nothing in common that much other than

one's on water and the others on water. But one's on an ocean and one's in a golf right.

and make a couple of Democrats in the Broward County area a little more a little more vulnerable. But if we do have sort of this stand off between California and Texas. Then it probably means at best Republicans are going to net maybe three or four I think max out of this redistricting effort now in an extraordinarily close

midterm election, that could be the difference. And if it is that close, and to me, Democrats already have lost, right if they can't make this where they're sort of winning the national argument, you know, in the generic ballot five six, seven points, well then you know we're going to be looking at you know, two or three seats on either side. And speaking of California, I think what's notable if you're listening to this podcast, my guess is

you've already seen the Katie Porter clip. The former member of Congress who lost a Senate campaign against Adam Schiff, has been the nominal front runner for governor ever since Kulanacas got out of the race and Kamala Harris announced she wasn't going to run. So Katie Bore has kind

of been the front runner. I've never really thought of her as the front runner because I think Rick Caruso, the guy who lost the mayor's race to Karen vass in LA when he jumps in, he was likely going to be the new front runner when he gets in. My guess is he gets in after the November elections. But for now, Porter had been the one. She had the most name id from her previous campaign for Senate, so she'd been ahead, but she was like in the twenties,

you know in some of these polls. Well, anyway, that the viral interview, I'm not going to sort of just

describe it in detail because it's been everywhere. I think what's notable is how much both Republicans and Democrats piled on this. Plenty of us who have covered Katie Porter, covered Congress, covered the California delegation have known that she's

not very popular among Democrats. You know, she may be popular among MSNBC viewers and among many progressive activists, but among the sort of insider crowd, she wasn't very popular, and not because of her stances, but sort of because of her attitude and sort of how she went about it. You know, she's in some ways what's good outsider politics

is not always good insider camaraderie. And frankly, if you're going to be governor, you gotta work with other people I think her inability to handle what wasn't tough questions. These weren't hard questions. It makes me wonder has she spent too much time in a blue safe space when she interacts with maybe blue leaning me that don't challenge her, and these were lightly challenging questions. I mean, no, I'm not disrespecting the reporter at all. I think the reporter

it's clear what she was doing. She was doing a larger package and talking to all the candidates, you know. I think she made that, made that pretty clear. But you want to be governor of the world's fifth largest economy and you can't handle a tiny bit of a tiny bit of a follow up question about Trump voters

and you sort of lose it really quickly. I mean, you're not gonna be able to control every setting in politics, no matter where you go. So but the most notable thing about this is not the incident itself. To me, it's how much everybody else piled on.

top two face off would be Shift versus Garvey. D versus are very easy campaign for Shift to win, rather than Shift versus Porter, which would have been D versus D might have been very awkward and a much closer race, much more competitive, and we don't know which way it would go. Obviously, Porter was still very bitter about it, and sort of the way she went about it, you know, it was sort of like sour grapes that Adam Shift did something, you know, did a campaign tactic that is

not new, not that controversial anymore. It's sort of how, you you know, he had the resources to do it,

and because she didn't have the same resources in him, she was frustrated that he got to have more impact on who he got to run against than she could. And so I do think that how she how she carried herself in losing that primary didn't exactly win her a lot of friends outside of her core base of supporters. So this was a red flag and probably probably the type of thing that will be hard for her to shake off, especially since how easily everybody seemed to pile

onto her on that fashion Cure. A long time political consultant, he ran Bernie Sanders' camp campaign for president in twenty twenty. He's right now aligned with the video the Progressive Lean video Have More Perfect Union.

doing when it came to short form video. You know, he was saying that that while people like Gavin Newsom and you've seen Akim Jeffreys and Chuck Schumer all doing more videos themselves trying to talk to voters sort of explaining different policies, that he thinks it's not worked, and he thinks that if you want more effective viral videos, you've got to talk to people who's actually impacted by

the situation. And he noted the he said, the raw, emotionally jarring clips of human suffering in Gaza and the outrages videos of ice agents separating families, that those videos go more viral than when a politician is telling you what they think, and as he said, those clips have done more to change public opinion on those issues than

anything else. His point is, real people are who you should be featuring when you're trying to make a point on the cost to live, on the impact of healthcare subsidies going away, or the impact of no childcare tax credit, things like that. And this goes back to some politics never.

Q and as ask Chuck. This one comes from John A from New Orleans. Hey, Chuck really loved the cast. As Mayor Koch would say, you are a voice of reason.

Thoughts interesting, So we're paying people to vote? I guess that's you know, it's not like Australia. What is I think it's Australia that has sort of mandatory voting.

to sort of keep the influence of money down. Well, eventually, you know, I think George W. Bush was the first one to be able to raise enough money not having to worry about the federal system. And then all of a sudden, everybody got out of it, and so it's it's sort of lost its relevance. But I do agree with you generally that the tax code is a good that financial incentives. In some ways, it goes back to

the incentive issue. Right, if you want if you want better outcomes, then create better incentives.

help people. If you will, but interesting thought and certainly worth chewing on. Thanks for the question, John all right. Next question comes from Carry and saying Lewis, Hey, Chuck, You've mentioned the logistical challenge of third parties, But with Democrats wandering in the wilderness and Republicans without a platform, what about an American unity platform that anyone running could

pledge to support. Focus on making government more responsive to the needs of citizens, working to get big money out of politics, constitutional convention ending, germ mandering, maybe even required civic service for young people. Yes, I'm huge national service person.

the most popular Republican among Democrats was John McCain. They both did well among independence and they both won their nomination, So it made Unity eight kind of a pointless exercise. He was anticipating that it would be Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani right, a more polarizing, divisive matchup that would then leave room for a more unifying bipartisan ticket. But it is, you know, and in fact, what is the today's Forward Party has some of the remnants of what

Doug began. Some of the folks that have been working on the Open Primaries movement to try to sort of get rid of partisan primaries, the gentleman that's been working on trying to get rank choice voting to be considered in other states. All of it is derivative of what Doug began with.

of running a race that did this. And I think you don't you want to plan And this gets it to a debate that I know some folks that are involved with the Forward Party, Andrew Yang, Christie Whitman Party, the sort of the third party movement where there's a debate are they a movement to try to get the two parties to become more rational or do they want to be their own standalone party that essentially replaces one

of the two major parties and why? And if you're going to be one thing, then you're going to have more issues you might take a stand on. And the more issues you take a stand on, the more opportunity you have of potentially pushing some people, you know away.

If you're trying to be this sort of moderate party that sort of shoots you know, that sort of shoots the gap in between the two parties, then I do think you want a platform like the one you describe, where hey, look, we need to we need to make some massive reforms in how the democracy works. And this isn't going to be about whether we should have more immigrants or less immigrants. This is about whether we're going to have a system that is easily understandable and how

immigration works. Right, it is almost like a technocratic campaign that you would run. Now, the problem with that is, I think you need an incredibly charismatic individual to be the leader of that movement. Ross Perot had his own charisma, Teddy Roosevelt had his own charisma. Shoot, even George Wallace, who was arguably had some success at least in shifting that election to Nixon in sixty eight, had had enough

charisma to lead a movement. So there is a you can't just do this as a dry technocratic exercise.

who I know listen to this podcast regularly. It's a good idea because, especially if it's about how you centered it, how do you make government more responsive?

Getting rid of partisan primaries where you're doing things that are not about specific issues themselves, because that's where you start to third parties can sometimes lose support almost the more positions you start taking.

There's a lot of voters out there who, in theory might agree with this platform, but are more worried about the near term and are going to be more in tune with somebody that's going to throw them a bone immediately, right, a benefit bone of some sort immediately, And I think that's the only risk in trying to run a very sort of let's fix the democracy, because you almost have to have a majority agreement that it's broken. And we're getting there, right. We have over sixty percent saying we're

in a political crisis. So it may be that by the fall of twenty seven this is a very appealing idea, which is but the idea of just putting out a platform, almost without a candidate and even without a political party is an interesting idea as well. So anyway, you've given

me a lot to chew on that this is not something I want to give up, the American Unity Platform. I love how that sounds, all right. Next question comes from Heather from Littleton, Colorado.

feared that would happen under his presidency. Sadly, both his temperament and character of only worsened. Sense Heather from Littleton, Colorado, Well, you know this.

to be out for themselves. And I certainly believe that. Unfortunately, a second Trump term has perhaps, Look, we're coarser, we just are as a society, and you can't tell me it's disconnected from the way Donald Trump has modeled himself for the American people.

if the president does it, why can't I? And of course this gets it to what we're watching how the Democrats are dealing with this Virginia issue, where there was there was an attempt to hold Republicans accountable when they misbehaved like this, and there are a lot of Democrats who were lecturing Republicans for not holding their own side accountable. And here you have something on the Democratic side and they're not immediately taking the moral high ground here on character,

and it's you know how much of that is? And you see that sort of some supporters of Jay Jones have essentially said, well, if Trump can do it, why can't Why can't we is essentially, you know, if the voters are going to forgive him, why wouldn't the voters forgive Jay Jones?

going to go find the quote for you. So Madison Cawthorne, the guy, the kid who was sort of who when he came to Congress sort of was just he admitted the only staff he wanted to hire work communication staff. He didn't really see the job as representing his constituents. He saw it as just messaging and trolling. He offended so many Republicans that they recruited at candidates to primary m get him out of office, and he was a

one term wonder. Well now he has shown up in Florida and he wants to run for the open seat that Byron Donalds is vacating to run for governor. Well, he's not the only former member of Congress running in that district for Byron Donalds. There's another disgraced former member of Congress that's also running in that race. It is

Chris Collins. And if you're wondering who Chris Collins is, he was a Republican member of Congress from the from western New York, representing the Buffalo area, and he was notable at first. I mean, I could tell you how he got my radar, and first time I interviewed me, he was the only member of Congres. He's the first member of the House of Representative, the first House Republican to officially endorse Donald Trump, and for the longest time,

he was the only one that endorsed Donald Trump. I mean, it was it was, it was something else, and he was the only one, and he was sort of he was kind of. I enjoyed interviewing him, and in fact, I'm going to try to book him for the podcast because this quote really stood out to me, and I don't get to it in a minute, but it sort of gets it to what I fear elected office has become for too many character challenged people, and perhaps describing Chris Collins this way.

nineteen after he pled guilty to some insider trading. Collins, who's now seventy five, he suggested that he wasn't coming out of involuntary retirement purely because of his desire to serve his new community in southwest Florida. Here's what he

said to a podcast in August. He said, quote, if I they then retire as a congressman from Florida nineteen and Marco Island in Naples, I think I would be welcomed then to serve on some of the you know, the not for profit boards and hospital boards and being invited to the you know, fundraisers and galas and being welcomed. He said, that would be a great retirement because right

now it's kind of lonely. He goes, you know, I'm not invited to any of those things because all I am is, you know, the former congressman who resigned in disgrace, convicted felon This was this is Chris Collins in a nutshell. He will he speaks some blunt truths. He's self aware and not self aware sort of all at the same time. Right says the quiet part out loud that the only reason he wants to run if he could just win

a term. Then suddenly he's invited to all the local events and he gets to I guess, sit on the dais rather than I'm sure he could be invited to these events, but he doesn't want to beg to be there, I guess. Anyway, I use this as an example to sort of respond to your question on that, because that is my concern, is that politics is turned into this place where people rehab bad images because we now think politicians are kind of you know that we assume a

politician is slimy. You know, you're guilty of being slimy until you prove.

sides of the aisle. The pay is guaranteed, that the pay can be delayed, but it's guaranteed, and the military pay was always guaranteed as a carve out, and then they have to a lot of times. Most of the times when they've done these shorts shutdowns, they do pass a bipartisan bill that says, hey, we're going to go

ahead and let military pay happen on time. And that was frequent when we always had some you know, some members of the military in a hot zone or a war zone, notably for whatever reason, they didn't you know Democrats. In fact, that's one of the ways that Democrats are now trying to go to Mike Johnson back to bringing the House back this week, is to just simply vote on that so that there's no interruption in their pay.

But the carve out, they're guaranteed their pay and in the case of active duty military, you know, they're housing, the don't have to worry about that. So that's why it's that carve out. If they weren't guaranteed their pay, I.

That was a separate law that was passed in twenty nineteen that Donald Trump signed the law and now that his current budget director is trying to claim does not abide. But anyway, apologies for confusing you on that, but that that's where that goes, all right, So with that, I am this is my first weekend and four weekends and I'm not traveling to see a football game.

profile games to come. And of course that you know, the whole recency bias, right, He's going to be having that Michigan game, you know, not very far from the voting itself, perhap. Ohio State Oregon in the in the Big Ten Conference final itself is another stage for him. Anyway, It's it's interesting how good is he? How good is is Illinois. It's slowing this game down in order to give themselves a chance. They can't afford to trade scores

with Ohio State. So I'm intrigued by that game. I don't know if I buy into Illinois, And in fact, their victory over USC makes me doubt USC more than it does make me more confident in Illinois. And then there's Indiana in Oregon right the other game, So it all depends on how much of a juggernaut you think Illinois. I think it's clear Indiana is better this year than they were last year. But does that mean they're they're

they're a contender for the whole thing or not. If they can put up a once, you know, even lose just by one score in Eugene, I think it's fair to say, because that is one tough place to play, I think it's fair to say they are contenders. Uh.

in twenty six. Perhaps he knew his grandson needed more time to sort of in the football factory to get better. Look the hype machine. It's not as if the Manning family didn't contribute to the hype machine. And you know, it is what it is. Sometimes you can't do anything about it. You know, if he were Arch Smith, he wouldn't be He wouldn't have gotten the same amount of hype, nor would he be getting the same amount of criticism.

But the real question is whether John Matteer, Oklahoma starting quarterback, is really going to try to play here in this game. Except look, Oklahoma are are they legit contenders for the whole thing? They beat Texas without Matier as a relevant force. That's a big deal and that shouldn't be ignored. So that's probably the third most interesting game for me on the docket. Then after that, everything else is only interesting depending on how much money you plan on putting down there.

I mean, Georgia Auburn, I think we thought that.

to be able to stockpilot. So that's a little bit of a we'll learn a little something there, depending on the on the spread of that game and if baseball is not doing it for you. That Friday night South Florida North Texas game, it's a big deal to South Florida if they want to be the group of five representative in the playoff. I think it's gonna be a great game. They're going on the road. They got to

win that game. And as a Floridian and as a team that that the Hurricanes have defeated, I want to see everybody that Miami.

get a buy week before Florida State bye. I have to tell you The scheduling this year for Miami has been fantastic, which means, let's not screw this season up. We are not going to have where we get a buy before Florida State and then a BUYE to recover from Florida State before going into this Friday night game that we have coming up next week with the always dangerous Louisville Cardinals. So with that, I'll see in about ninety six hours. Enjoy what is this is right now,

we are at peak sports fandom. They're all coming together, NHL, NBA regular seasons begin, baseball playoffs, college football, NFL. It is a smorgasboard, So enjoy it while it's here. Enjoy this October weekend, and with that I'll see in my name