Chuck’s Commentary - Trump Is Setting Up A Midterm DISASTER For Republicans + America Needs To Side With Democracy In Iran

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don't worry. The NFL is working on the idea of another week to the season so that they officially take over President's Day weekend for the super Bowl. And you can see where it goes. Super Bowl Sunday we get President's Day off, because what's more American than that. The super Bowl itself, well, it kind of, it kind of went. It kind of went. The conventional wisdom I mean, when a sort of amateur like me is out there on the record saying I think this game's going to be

like twenty to six. Well, you know, I missed a few points here or there, but it kind of went exactly how we thought that Seattle would. Just so what they've done all year. They kind of grind teams down and you're like, oh my god, we can't catch up when you're playing them, They're just there is a relentlessness there. I'll say this, I got to give credit to the Pats defense. They Seattle could have blown this game open

in the first half, and they made it. You know, Darnald missed a couple of throws by that much, a couple of great plays by the defensive backfield at Christian Gonzales. That was impressive. But at the end of the day, man, you cannot The Patriots tried to do something that no team had ever done in a Super Bowl. They try

to win a Super Bowl without a left side of their offensive line. I know they were actual physical human beings. Perhaps I think they were. I wasn't live at the game, but if you told me that was just a green screen for their left tackle, because my god, poor Drake May I mean running for his life. It is what it is. That was the fear going into this game. Is that's what we'd expect, but that's what it was. But come on, for us football fans are not Patriots fans.

Did we really want to see them just make it this easy to get back and win and winning super bowls? That it couldn't be this easy. They should be happy they're going to be contenders again when they get an offensive line. That's a great defense. It's a well coached team. But you got to give your hats off to the Seattle defense. Unbelievable. Kenneth Walker was unbelievable. Before those last couple of touchdown passes, Kenneth Walker was looking like the

MVP in that front. But look, Sam Donald, he made a few throws that you're like, you know, when you're a Sam Donald fan, I didn't. I imagine there's a lot of no, no, no, no, no yes when it comes to Donald, but there it is. Kudos to the Seahawks,

it was. This is one of those years where it felt like the NFC was just that much better and the Super Bowl produced kind of exactly how the season went. The AFC was weaker and a bit of a jumbled mess. The NFC was stronger with Seattle constantly on top, and we got the scroll. They got a few things on the non football playing side. First of all, look love Mike Turrico, consider him a friend. He had one of my favorite calls of the night when he talked about

the rocket scientist jumping onto the field. I just thought that was a I love that. That's what he That's how he referred to the guy that whatever happened on the field. Obviously, those of us not there live don't know what the interruption was, but I liked the shout out to rocket scientists, bad bunny. The Super Bowl party, I was at everybody's like, well, that was interesting, and as somebody who grew up in Miami, it was very

familiar to me. I enjoyed sort of the tour of Latin culture and the Puerto Rican culture, you know, going through the dominoes and the weddings and the cantinnaras and all that stuff. I thought that was a nice little touch. But I have no doubt that there'll be a lot of dumb social media takes on this. But if you're the NFL, you were there to expand your fan base, to continue this outreach to Latin America, and Bad Bunny

did the job. I think that the NFL was hoping that he would do on that front. I'm sure if you're trying to find out how popular it was, my guess is, if you like Trump, you didn't like Bad Money, And if you didn't like Trump, you said, wow, that was terrific. You know, not everybody's a Bad Bunny fan, but I get what he was trying to do. I thought it was interesting, I thought it was unique, and I thought it was worth watching. On that the commercials, I'm just creeped out by the d aging. I'm sorry

that weird Eccinity ad with Jurassic Park and all. I'd rather see all those actors as they are now, give them to me with all their gray hair. It might even be funnier if they did that. But all of the d aging, and it was in a few ads. It wasn't just that one. It was oh, the Goodwill Hunt, the dunkin Donuts ad with everybody looking d aged except for Brady, which I guess was the Brady was always

sort of Benjamin Button. Anyway, Again, I know all these guys, have these all these great new tools to mess with thanks to AI, thanks to d aging, but eh, a little overused. I'm a little creeped out about it. I'm intrigued. I didn't know there was going to be a Once upon a Time in Hollywood sequel, so call me intrigued on that. So thank you super Bowl commercial for that. And finally, I guess this was I said it would

be the year of the AI ad. There were certainly AI companies and teases and and different AI agents being advertised. It felt like, my guess is just like what we saw during the Crypto super Bowl a couple of years ago, and we had our Internet super Bowl way back when half of those AI agents that advertised in this super Bowl will not be in existence in what three years?

What should we make the over under that two and a half years that some of these companies will no longer be be relevant or be ever heard of, or some of these things the only time we'll ever hear from them might actually be the Super Bowl ad you watched last night. But all in all, I'm sad that football season's over. I am a huge football fan. I love it, but hey, let's turn to basketball. We got

the All Star weekend. Next weekend, we got the best part of college basketball coming up, so I know how I'm going to be spending a lot of my evenings over the next over the next few weeks. And as I told you before, I love the Olympics. So there. So look, we got through the Super Bowl without two without any political disruption, which is kind of nice. And I barely made it through the Super Bowl without one Cali disruption from my dog. All right, so let's get

focused on the show ahead. Let me give you a quick little table of contents. I've got a few things to say about the about the weekend that was with Donald Trump, both the European essentially the Europeans at the Olympics expressing their expressing their opinion about Team USA and how humiliating that was for US Americans watching on TV and live. We'll get to that. We've got the Donald

Trump racist meme. And what's interesting about that story is, like with a lot of things with Donald Trump, I don't know how we're surprised or shocked that he does something that's racist, that he either shares a post that's racist or implies something that is racist. And you know, there's always this question, is he you know, he always

wants to say I'm the least racist person. But as there was a great debate line back in twenty eighteen, I think it's Andrew Gillham to Ronda Santis, I don't know if you're racist, but a lot of racist people

think you're racist. The point is this consistency of Donald Trump that whenever sort of there's a line, he's willing to cross it and be on the side of those that would be accused of being racist. But we're going to get to that in a minute. I also have the most underreported story last week that is is a huge consequence to campaign twenty twenty six and why perhaps we can call the election right now. We can, at least on the House side, that we can call it

right now. I will explain statistically why that is later in this episode, but let's get started with the fallout from Donald Trump and the racist meme attacking the Obamas, because you know, whenever we have these incidents with him, because these are very frequent, right, you can go down the litany of lists. We can go back all the

way to twenty fifteen. Frankly, with Donald Trump, you can go all the way back to the eighties in the Central Park five. Actually, if you want, you can go. When it comes to race and the questions of racism, you go all the way back to the early seventies when he had to go hire a lawyer named Roy Cone because the Nixon government, the Nixon led Justice Department, was investigating his father's firm, essentially for bias in how they rented and sold houses and apartments in suburban New

York City. So the point is the accusation of racism. The question about whether he was racially tolerant or not, or racially accepting or not, has been hovering over Donald

Trump for his entire adult life. He leans sometimes, it seems as if he leans into racist tropes almost as a way to quote. Maybe he thinks he's owning the Libs or he's somehow giving fuel to his base. I think sometimes he insults his own base. I think he thinks that deep down that the MAGA base is all racists. So that's why he plays to it, which if you believe it is in his agenda, but you're not racist, should offend you. And I think that that was so. The what I took away from this story was not

that Donald Trump did this. Of course Donald Trump did this, right, That is not the news. What was new and important to chronicle in this story was the immediate reactions of people like Tim Scott, who said, this is the most racist thing that's come out of this White House. By the way, that phrasing was fascinating, right, talk about a guy you'd like to put under a polygraph and say, huh, you're implying you've seen other racist things come out of

this White House. Right by saying this is the most racist. He didn't say this was the only racist thing that came out of this White House. So that's of note. Let's just say I listened to words very carefully, and yes I part sentences too much. So assuming the other aspect of this was watching how many other Republicans decided to go in on that, and there was the weasel words. I can't imagine he did this. It must have been a staffer, right, these staffers that apparently are up as

late as he is. To the President's credit, he essentially while he didn't he's essentially admitted he did it. He's now,

I think, claiming he didn't see it all the way through. So we didn't see how it was ending. It's how he wants to go. But it's it's interesting that he kind of, you know, reversed the bus that that the that ran over the staffer that everybody decided, whoever this imaginary staffer was that did it. One would assume it's the caddy Dan Scavino, who supposedly runs all the social media accounts from time to time, but they never did say his name. It was sort of implied, but it

was Donald Trump's way of bringing back the PUS. But the point was, and this goes back to something I wrote on Substack last fall, which was the cracks are beginning to show in the Trump coalition. Well, I don't know if a week's gone by where the cracks haven't gotten deeper, where you haven't had another Republican either decide not to seek reelection or decide to back away in some way. The comfort that more Republicans have in criticizing

him publicly, in questioning him publicly. Look, I'm not going to sit here and say it's an avalanche of criticism coming from Republicans, but you are starting to see that more of them realize they're the ones that are going to be on the ballot. The future of the party is in their hands because Donald Trump doesn't care about the future of the party. And you throw in the fact that I know to say Donald Trump had ever had a filter, it might be might be an understatement.

But here's what we do know. As people age, whatever filter they have goes away. So he didn't have much of a filter before. But it's but it's possible Donald Trump five years ago might have might have had some little voice in his head to say, don't retweet that Obama Obama racist meme. And this time there's no right He's that he's living in his He's living in a cocoon that seems to be even more self serving than

ever before. He does not seem to appear like when he was asked about Jadie Vance getting booed at the Olympics during the opening ceremonies, he seemed to feign surprised by that. Maybe that's his way of spinning, or maybe he really is in this cocoon that he doesn't realize how unpopular his administration is, how unpopular he is, and how unpopular jd Vance is growing, but particularly in Europe. If he doesn't understand Teddy Vance has gone to Europe

and attacked Europe every different way. He has attacked the culture of Western Europe. He is he essentially said, you're bringing all this on yourself, and and he has gone there to to to give aid and comfort to all of these right wing movements that are very offensive to a lot of Western Europeans, particularly the ones that go to the Olympics that can afford to travel. Let's just say this ain't a jade Van's crowd, and it's you know, it's I would caution the president to be careful attacking

Americans who American athletes who speak out. This is the age we live in. And I have to say I've been impressed. The athletes are all trying to walk a line. You can see it. But it's uncomfortable. It's no fun to be an American overseas. And no, I have no doubt there are other athletes in the in the village giving American athletes grief that there is a cold shoulder. You talk to any Americans to travel overseas right now, it is uncomfortable. It's much worse than it was during

the Iraq War. So it is. It wouldn't surprise me that when you sort of look at why Trump doesn't see how bad things are going for him, that because they've created this safe space in the Oval Office for him and they sort of block out any negative news, only show him like pieces of polls that give him aid and comfort, but they don't show him the big pictures.

So he really doesn't know how bad things are. It only is going to lead for him to do more mistakes. I mean you want to if you want evidence by the way of the filter being totally and completely gone, just look go back and look at that performance at the National Prayer Breakfast where he was just awful and attacking, just attacking Democrats, saying democrats aren't can't be religious people. It was just it couldn't have been more American and

certainly more anti First Amendment than what he did. But I do think it's important to note how much he has put his party in jeopardy just in these first six weeks of this calendar year. Right, the year began with the Madua extradition, which looked like it was going to be a good news story for him. Right, it was an impressive military operation. They extracted Madureau out and it seemed as if they made it seem relatively easy,

and as a military operation, it was relatively easy. Now he is now botching the aftermath, right, he is not interested in standing up democracy. He has rejected the democratic elected leaders in Venezuela and not endorsed them. He went ahead and accepted that peace prize from MS Machado, which is still one of the most It's not surprising, but still seems so brazen and I can't believe he did it.

But I say this because beginning with then, and if you think about it, there hasn't been a week that hasn't gone by, if not more, where he has said or done something that has put Republicans on the defensive.

It's one thing to see, right the left get upset and the media and you can say, okay, this is

partisan back and forth. But the distinction I want to make here is, like what we saw with the Obama racist me the Obviously there was plenty of outrage from people on the left and in the center, but to see elected Republicans express public outrage and the type of Republicans that did these weren't the liberal Republicans that always criticized Trump, right, like you're Lisa Murkowski's perhaps you're Don

Bacons and folks like that. It was no or Tom Tillis who has become more comfortable criticizing Trump of late. It was Tim Scott, right, it was Roger Wicker. It was Pete Ricketts, who, by the way, in an increasingly more competitive US Senate race, Tim Scott, head of the NRSC, who just delivered some dire warnings to his Senate Republican conference that hey, Trump's approval ratings are a huge problem,

and the Senate is really in play. And oh, by the way, it may not matter who they nominate in Texas, it's going to be a competitive race and a money suck. So look in each individual case. And by the way, Roger Wicker, I think is just speaking out because he's got an extraordinarily large African American constituency in Mississippi. But if you wanted to put it in pure political terms,

there's also a potentially competitive US Senate seat there. It's not his seat, it's Sydney hind Smith, the other Senate seat there. So you could say the three of them all have their own political motivations to speak out and not wanting to be seen as silent co conspirators to Trump's racism. But that's just the latest. Right, last week,

did I lead my what did I lead the show with the corruption from the corruption story from the Wall Street Journal that had a the UAE essentially as a government invest in the National Security Advisor, the UAE invest in Trump's company for Trump's kids, company's crypto company four days before the inauguration, and of course it leads to a foreign policy change. It is at least half a billion dollars in investment, one hundred and thirty million dollars

in direct cash to the Trump's literally just cash. And as Andrew McCarthy, this conservative legal analyst that writes for The National Review, said, you know who was extraordinarily critical of sort of the mixing the bidens did of the professional, the personal, the political, and the family with Hunter Biden and Joe Biden. He said this, this is literally exponentially worse,

uh and at a at another level of corrupt. So if you were outraged by the corruption of of of Joe Biden and thought that it may have reached in the level of impeachment, what Andrew McCarthy is arguing, and again conservatively right, This is the conservative National review legal ailis this he said, is literally he said, add a

couple of zeros of worse to this. Okay, not one zero, a couple of zeros when it comes to this, because the actual financial corruption is unbelievable, and the direct policy changes that came from you know, following the actual transactions, you know, you didn't quite see it as crystal clear with the purchase of the Hunter Biden paintings and all of that. It was a little less directly related to actual policy changes with Trump. Right, there's no there's no subtlety.

H And that was another point that McCarthy made. That's just that was last week, right in the week before we had this second killing of an American citizen by ICE agents in Minneapolis, right two different weekends, essentially due to that, where again Republicans were criticizing the policy and feeling uncomfortable on this Abu Dhabi investment. Many Republicans aren't

saying a word, but you now have Republican legal analysts who can't look away and have to realize that, hey, this, if you thought Biden, what the Bidens did between Hunter Biden Joe Biden was corrupt, then what the Trumps are doing is historic in its level of corruption. There's the bizarre raid of Fulton County and the votes. There's the talk about federalizing elections, which the most anti small sea conservative thing you could come up with. The thing is

all of this. If I brought up Greenland and the controversy that sort of Royal Davos, and essentially it's arguably it is Greenland that has helped you unite Europe against the United States, which of course triggered Canada to go

do a trade deal with China that we had been hoping that they wouldn't do when it came to our concerns about sovereignty and security when it involves China. So again, everything I've just discussed has all taken place since January third. We are at this is February ninth, folks, and I say a week hasn't gone by. It seems like every there's at least two major incidents a week where Trump either says something or does something that's putting Republicans on

the defensive, that is urging Republicans to have to speak out. This is a growing electoral disaster, and I don't think folks fully appreciate what's coming. This episode of the Chuck Podcast is being brought to you by Quints. As you know, a well built wardrobe is about the pieces that work together, hold up over time, and frankly allow you to be flexible and sort of business. It's casual to say social casual.

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Com use the promo code toodcast. Don't forget that code. That's getsold dot Com promo code toodcast for thirty percent off. So that brings me to what I think is the most underreported story from last week. Obviously the Obama racist beme. We have the Abu Dhabi story. You have the fear

of federalizing elections. Those arguably those three stories all got more attention last week than the milestone that was reached week when we got our fiftieth and fifty first incumbent member of Congress deciding not to run for reelection in twenty twenty six. This marks now we are inching ever closer to the highest ever open seat total in a midterm year basically since World War Two. Okay, in twenty eighteen, there were fifty five members of Congress who chose not

to return. Either they didn't seek reelection or they decided

to go seek higher office, but they did not seek reelection. We are sitting now at fifty one. There's still most of the filing deadlines have not yet passed. We haven't had the California filing deadline pass, and we know there's going to be a handful of Republicans likely that walk away because of the remap. We have the Virginia remap that's likely to happen, that's going to lead to some retirements. We've got the Florida remap that's likely to lead to

some retirement. So we are well on our way. The all time record, by the way, is sixty five open seats going into an election year, and that was back in nineteen ninety two. That was a confluence of circumstances. It was a reapportionment year, so you had your typical you had that, but it was the first time that the Justice Department insisted on majority minority districts in certain Southern states, which even led to a more upheaval in how the maps were drawn all over the country, but

particularly in the South. And you also that was the if you did not if you chose to retire that year. There was one other loophole which encouraged a lot of incumbents to leave office at nineteen ninety two and not seek reelection. If you left in nineteen ninety two, you got to keep whatever leftover campaign money you had, and you got to keep it and make it your money.

You could turn it into an ioa or investment fund literally. But if you chose to stay, you no longer it was no longer legal for you to make campaign money your own money. That's right, folks. It used to be members of Congress could take their campaign treasury and when they were done running, they could pocket whatever was left.

That was perfectly legal. Now if you pocket it, at least you have to come up with dummy corporations and charge your campaign account invented items for reimbursement in order to try to get that money, but before you could just pocket it. So that's why ninety two is sort of an outlier. But the real important story is for a mid term cycle. And I've gone back and studied this since nineteen fifty four at fifty one open seats.

Right now, we are only four away from the modern record of fifty five, which was twenty eighteen, which led to a forty seat pickup for the out party. We're going to pass that. The question is how close to sixty five will we get? So how did we get there? All? Right? The latest two names, right, it didn't make what didn't make huge news? You didn't see it on any cable news. Chiron was Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, Mark Emmedi of Nevada.

Both Republicans and Republican solid Republican seats. They're unlikely to see de You know, they were going to likely win reelection had they chosen to run. But what's interesting about

both of them, and it's part of a larger trend I want to get into. Both were elected before Donald Trump took office, and both fit a growing category of Republican retirees that I call the exhaustion caucus. These are members who are no longer looking for a promotion in politics, right running for governor, running for Senate, running for some over the office. They're just looking for an exit, right. Ludermoak was elected in twenty fourteen and started serving in

January twenty fifteen. In fact, in his statement announcing his retirement, he leaned into the citizen legislator idea. Representing people in Congress, he said is a service, not a career, and he talked about focusing on family, being a husband and a grandfather. He didn't come up and just try to light the place on fire. Amedi has represented that second district in Nevada. He won a twenty eleven special election. He's the lone

Republican in the Nevada delegation. And he framed his decision as passing the torch after roughly fifteen years in Washington, and he said it's time he announced early because they have a later filing deadline. Want to give others time to step up. And again, this is the one congressional seat that represents basically everything in Nevada that is in the Las Vegas media market. Essentially. Now, look, they don't seem like guys that are plotting a comeback. They're just done.

And I think that distinction matters, because the most revealing thing to think about in these retirements is that there's clearly two different forces operating here at once, particularly when it comes to motivating what certain Republicans try to degree do. Because you have now we're up to I believe, twenty nine Republicans who have announced that they're not seeking reelection, About half are running for another office, and about half

are just walking away. Right that group that's walking away, they're tired, tired of the grind, tired of the incentives. A lot of them don't like the performative, the way political theater now is the dominant force of American politics

that you don't get any credit for doing legislating. Of course, the other group is leaving because you know, they just always had viewed the House as a stepping stone, and this is going to be a bad year to be an incumbent Republican, so you might as well go up and out because maybe you can set yourself up for

another office two or four years down the road. Now, it's going to create a massive experience gap at some point, right we are seeing a massive churn, and so there's going to be a lot of institutional memories that go away because the longtime members are the committee chairs that are leaving the institutional memory types when they walk out

the door. You don't just lose votes, you lose people who know how to legislate, how to negotiate, frankly, how to work across the aisle, even in this dysfunctional atmosphere. And what it will mean is we're going to have a House it's likely to be more political, more partisan, more junior, more ambitious, more online, which means less functional. So it's you know, we'll wait to see what this Congress looks like in twenty twenty seven, but that's a

likely problem. So fifty one, Why does fifty one open seats matter beyond being just a big number? And why am I now essentially saying, hey, you can call it now. The Democrats have one, They're gonna win the House. It would take an historical set of events that we have no idea what they would look like for this not to be the case. Because open seats always behave like a political accelerant. Right when a seat is open, the

incumbent advantage disappears. National environment matters, more, money matters more, Candidate quality matters more. Historically, when open seats pile up early, it tends to mean one of two things. Either the majority party is bracing for impact or the members closest to the ground are seeing something coming that everyone else is still denying. And the other tell, of course, is that it's February. February. Retirements are the early warning system.

If you're already at fifty one now, it suggests there's a lot of quiet quitting still sitting on people's desks. So let's talk about records, because this is where people can get sloppy. As I said, the modern mid mid

term era benchmark, and then there's the all time benchmark. The modern benchmarks midterms since nineteen fifty four, the cycles with the huge retirement waves in the television era nineteen ninety four, twenty ten, twenty eighteen. Those are my modern

reference points. And when retirement numbers start approaching that neighborhood forty plus, history usually points in one direction, trouble for the party in power, right, And if you extend the lens beyond the midterms, you have to use nineteen ninety two. Is that modern is that modern high of retirement, sixty five House members choosing not to run again. And as I told you, there was a variety of reasons why

that created such a massive shake up. It was still to this day over there, I think, where there was one hundred and ten new members of Congress, and it also led to then seventy three more new members of Congress the following cycle in a four year cycle really basically cycled out. Anybody that was left from the fifties and sixties in Congress was sort of really totally cycled out by nineteen ninety four. So now I want to

be mindful of the fact that nothing is statistically sound here that I'm gonna say, right, when you only have when you only have like fifteen incidentss to use, right, you can't say this is statistically sound. But I do think the patterns matter here a lot. So in the spirit of that argument, I'm gonna frame it this way. Once you see the number of open seats get over twenty, just twenty, it becomes extremely difficult for the majority party to hold the line because open seats are the proxy

for vulnerability and opportunity. Well, guess what we're now over fifty with essentially too with essentially about sixty percent of them being Republican, it's about two one. Here is where we're sitting at now. Open seats aren't a cause for the wave, but they're the early warning sign that the ground is shifting and that you have some longtime incumbents reading tea leaves deciding they'd rather leave on their own

terms than get swept out and humiliated. And then there's always one other piece to the puzzle. Presidential approval. Open seats are the engine. Presidential approval rating is the fuel. The president is popular, the party can sometimes blunt losses the president is unpopular, especially if they're just sitting below fifty percent approval, and Donald Trump hasn't seen forty five. It seems like in four months, let alone fifty. Midterms

usually then become nationalized and become a national referendum. So you have a president's approval ratings sitting in the low forties, which look a lot like Bush going into six, Obama going into fourteen and ten, frankly, and Bill Clinton going in to nineteen ninety four. So, putting all this together, here's why this story is in face. It's accelerating we've entered the most volatile period for retirements, late winter to

spring wind decision window. Members are looking at fundraising, the map, the mood, their own lives, and of course all these redistricting threats as well, and they're all deciding whether it's worth it. Do they want to get to know a new constituency for a cycle that may not go very well. I think we know the answer to that. And if you want to know where the next tranch of names is likely to come from on the retirement watch list, there's a couple of states where maps are in motion,

Florida and Virginia. Right DeSantis has a special session in April where he wants to focus on redrawing the map, try to pick up four or five seats of more seats that are more Republican, seeing if he can somehow squeeze more Republican districts out of that map. I'm skeptical, but they think they can get a couple, especially if the Voting Rights Act essentially gets swept away by the Supreme Courts. But when you're shaking up that map, it's

likely to lead to retirements. We hadn't thought about even some incumbents. If it creates an incumbent incumbent fight stuff like that. Then, of course Virginia where Democrats are pushing for a mechanism to enable new maps, right, there's going to be a special constitutional amendment election in order to get permission. And if they do that, they may eliminate four Republican incumbents and most of them likely won't try to seek re elections. So we're sitting at fifty one

right now. The likelihood that this grows to over fifty five, which was the number that was hit in eighteen when Democrats then the out party, won over forty seats, then

you see where this is going, right, We already see the Houses already showing signs of high volatility. Majority party is bleeding its incumbency advantage. And oh, by the way, what happened over the weekend? Two more special elections we're in very red And yes they're state legislative elections. Yes they're special elections happening on a weekend, And yes, the Democrats have more voters who pay more attention to these special elections and Republicans do. Okay, Well, that means Democrats

are pay attention. It means Democrats are more fired up and you know, we're seeing another weekend of over performance by Democrats in legislative districts that Trump carried by double digits. And it seems like another you know, this is like you know, another plane land safely at national right. It's happening with such frequency it's hard to call it news. It's almost like that continuation. So you all, this is happening. You've got open seats hitting critical territory. And like I said,

we've got I looked it up. There's another and this is this is intriguing here, there's another one, two, three, four, five, six, seventy eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventy eighteen, nineteen, twenty twenty one to two, twenty three, twenty four to twenty five, twenty six, twight seven. Okay,

there's another twenty seven Republican incumbents sitting in districts where Donald Trump received fifty nine percent or less into twenty twenty four presidential vote. And I've put the market fifty nine percent I think now given the over performance, given Trump's approval ratings, and frankly is just terrible leadership right now of the party on messaging anybody sitting in a fifty nine percent Trump district or less should be scared nestless. Okay,

they should be feeling it a lot. Well, there's these Republicans I was just telling you about. There's a big chunk of California Republicans. That filing deadline is March six. Some Georgia Republicans sit in there. Do any more throat decide to do that. Wisconsin's filing deadline, Michigan's filing deadline, there's a New York filing deadline in May, which you could see it change a little bit. So this is a list that's likely to grow. And again I go

back every single here. You could just look at this. I put together these different midterm charts. So twenty eighteen fifty five open seats the out party, the Democrats, gained forty seats, flip control. Right. In twenty twenty two, there were forty nine open seats, Republicans nine seats, and they flipped control. Nineteen ninety four, there were forty eight open seats,

Republicans netted fifty two overall and flipped control. Twenty ten, thirty eight open seats, Republicans gained sixty three flipped control. Two thousand and six, thirty one open seats, Democrats gained thirty one seats and flipped control. Nineteen fifty eight, there were twenty eight open seats, Democrats gained forty eight. They already held control, they were already in charge, but they

netted another forty eight. Nineteen eighty two, a similar situation. There were twenty four open seats, So I just gave you in the midterms in order there right, every single one, twenty four and above, going back to nineteen fifty four to midterms, and the out party always gained seats, and many times it flipped. Most of the time it flipped control of the House. So the point is, at this point in time, it is hard to come up with a scenario where Republicans are going to hold the House.

Every historical marker says otherwise. The only two times where the party in power was able to do well is when the two when presidential approval was over sixty percent Bill Clinton in nineteen ninety eight and George W. Bush in two thousand and two. That was post nine to eleven. Nineteen ninety eight was the Monica backlash, where Clinton's personal rating was in the toilet, but his professional rating was sky high. It was this weird. The voter was almost

like stubborn about it. No, we don't like Clinton, and yes we love the job he's doing. It was like we were It was this fascinating split in the way polling was registering. No, people were looking for a way to express personal disgust at what Trump, at what Clinton did, but they didn't. But they wanted to make it clear they didn't want him thrown out of office over it. Right, And so you would see this dichotomy in the where his favorable rating, his personal favorable rating was upside down,

but his professional rating was through the roof. The point is those are the two exceptions. Now ask yourself, what's Donald Trump going to do between now and November to somehow get a sixty percent joberating? Is it improbable? Yes, I'm never gonna say anything's impossible in the Trump earrow,

that's for sure. But the point is massive unexpected outside events like you know, aliens landing, you know in the Arctic, I mean, you know, whatever it is, like, it is stuff you cannot you cannot say is a feasible likely

event to happen? Right? So, and of course what's really happening right now with Donald Trump, is he is epitomizing the saying that I love to quote from Haley Barber, the long time Republican operative and governor of Mississippi, who'd love to and I think it's somebody else's expression first. But good gets better and bad gets worse. And as we're seeing with Donald Trump, that is getting worse every week. Right.

It feels like every week he throws another log on the let me piss off more than half the country bonfire. And that's why you're seeing more and more Republicans figure out a way to push back. Some say it publicly, some choose not to file for reelection, and others may be contemplating doing either of those things. Because if they want to speak out but they think it'll backfire, then my guess is they walk away if they assess their political situation and decide maybe they can survive by going

after Trump. Maybe he's becoming more unpopular. Maybe the Epstein files have left to Mark by the way, I didn't even get to the Epstein files. Right, That's like the other none of that has gotten any better for him either. It may be sullying the Clintons Bill Clinton a little bit. By the way, I still don't I don't under you know, other than Republicans wanting to attach Hillary Clinton to anything that they can attach her to. I do not understand

why she's being asked to testify on anything Epstein. Right. There's nothing in the files in any case she was ever on the planes, ever did anything, et cetera. I guess they'll say, well, she must have had some played some part in the Clinton Foundation and the relationship with Gallaine Maxwell, even that seems beyond tenuous at best. She was a sitting senator at the time, So I don't

get that one. I don't see Melinda Gates being called up to find out what she knew about about Bill Gates's relationships with Jeffrey Epstein, Right, We don't see any of that. So that seems to be a head scratcher on that one. And we'll see if that that's one of those that I would say to mister comer, be careful what you ask for, Be careful of what you're doing there. You want to talk about something that's more likely to blow up in your face than somehow create

political deflection for Trump. It's playing games like this with trying to We're trying to target Hillary Clinton in particular. Just you know, I know you think she's so unpopular, it doesn't matter what you do. I'd watch it. I think there's that's something I would be extraordinarily careful with. This episode of the Chuck Podcast is brought to you by American Financing. Let's be honest, the math just isn't

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ethos dot com slash chuck. So again, that's Ethos dot com slash chuck. Application times may vary and the rates themselves may vary as well, but trust me. Life Insurance is something you should really think about it, especially if you've got a growing family. By the way, one of the things that I wouldn't mind hearing from you the viewers.

We love suggest booking suggestions. We get plenty of booking people throwing stuff our way. But if there are specific candidates or individuals or historians you'd like to hear on the podcast, don't be shy. Let us know. Ask Chuck at thechucktodcast dot com. Yes, the same place that you send all your brilliant pieces of email and analysis and questions to me that I'd love to read and absorb.

But please use that address if you've got any other folks you'd like to see as My goal is to try to between now and the filing deadline for the Iowa Caucuses if they are indeed first in the nation come January of twenty twenty seven, I hope everybody of consequence that's running for president that I get to spend

thirty to forty five minutes here with us. So with that, one quick addendum before I get to the Toddcast time Machine event for this week, and that is it's like a little we had a little coda to the Washington post event. Will Lewis the publisher in name only, I guess because he was nowhere to be found at the announcement of the layoffs. He was nowhere to be found in frankly the last nine months of the newsroom itself.

A photo showed up of him at the Super Bowl at one of the pre parties on the red carpet for NFL honors. And let's say that suddenly an email resignation statement showed up and a lot of inboxes come Saturday. I believe it was Saturday morning that a very abrupt he thanked Jeff Bezos and walked away, had nothing to

say about the journalists that he oversaw for a couple of years. So will lewis cementing his place as the single worst publisher in the history of the Washington Post. So congratulations mister Lewis on that. And probably you know, unhire should be seen in journalism circles. It's completely unhirable, just completely unhirable to run. To run an enterprise. He might, he might have some smart things to say about trend lines and what's happening, but a manager of people and

a leader of people, he is not. Uh, And I think that that is obvious. Look, it's it's it is. It's really weird to be sort of, you know, our fourth day five without essentially without the Washington Post, because I know, yes, there's national reporter still doing good work, there's a congressional team that's still doing good work, and I don't want to I don't want to shit on them, Okay, but you know, the Washington Post is going to slowly,

essentially fade into more is relevant in Washington as Politico, which is there's nothing wrong professional professionally, political punch bowl relevant professionally, the Washington Post will be relatant as a member and a leader of the of the DMV in this community, it's over. That's what's dead, and the idea that they don't care about local sports, which is just

such an important part of the community. So it's in that vein that I have a you know, sometimes sometimes I have interesting business ideas that I don't share with you because I'm working on them myself. And then sometimes there are things that are above my pay grade, you know, and instead feel like something a challenge that should be

issued publicly. So here's my public challenge to the three major sports owners of the Washington, DC market, Mark Lerner, who runs the Nationals, Ted Leons's owner of both the Caps and the Wizards, and Josh Harris, owner of the Washington Commanders. You three have an enormous interest in having a local and regional news organization that is trusted, that is frankly a bit of a cheerleader to the local

sports teams, even if they are will every once in a while attack all of you for doing crappy things as owners every once in a while because we fans might get upset at you because we want to spend your money in ways that you don't want to spend your money. My tongue is I'm going hard in cheek

here a little bit, but you get my point. But you you know, if your teams don't get attention and people don't know what you're up to, then maybe you have a harder time selling season tickets and maybe have a harder time selling single game tickets, maybe have a harder time letting people know that Taylor Swift's coming to the new RFK or Bad Bunny's coming to the Capitol One Arena. And I say this because both Josh Harris

and Ted Leones is in particular. I don't know the history of Mark Learner's investments, but both have invested in media organizations in the past. Josh Harris has been a funder and has made money off of investments on new startups and the By the way, I want to throw my uh Mark iin into this conversation. He's another sort of major player in the Washington sports market. He's one of the I think minority owners and investors and the

commanders owns. I think he's very involved in the in the professional tennis league that's here, and I believe in some of the soccer franchise as well. So and he's also very much a what I'd say is a member of the Washington community and in some ways of more vocal than some of his other fellow sports investors there.

So I should have included Mark iin into this, but I'm saying it publicly. You guys know how to get a hold of me, So I'm happy to help out in any way possible. But I think it's your your best interests to come help fund. Whether it's d MV today, maybe it's a sports vertical at first, sports local culture. The point is, you guys have the resources to do this. Don't hire Will Lewis to do it. That would be

my number one piece of advice. But beyond that, I hope you have an open door for whether it's myself, whether it's my friend Kara Swisher. And speaking of Kara Swisher, she's my guest this week on my Newsphere program Sunday Night with Chuck Todd. And I'll just put it this way. If you enjoy hearing sentences that include Jeff Bezos in the F word, you're gonna love this Kara Swisher interview.

She doesn't hold anything back. She's got a lot of strong opinions, and she knows these people better than any other person. And by the way, if you want to know for care, if it's personal, Yes, it is her first job, mailroom inside the Washington Post, so it's personal for her. But she has a lot of smart ideas here. And I think we and it's not just about the Washington Post that we spent We talk about the tech titans in general and whether there are any good guys

in Silicon Valley. Here's the good news. She thinks there's at least one good guy there. I'm not going to tell you is here. Go check it out on newsphere. So just wanted to do that little coda on the Washington Post. Given how much time I spent on it last week, it's still pretty painful to realize that what just happened to the Washington Post, and then to see the will Lewis thing. I mean, it was deserved, right. Whether Bezos fired him out of just a pr pr necessity,

it was necessary. It gives Matt Murray a chance at maybe rallying the remaining troops there. And look, I'll say

what I said last week, I feel for him on this, and you know, some of you look, he made his own bed, so you know, yes, but he's there to execute strategy. And the fact that the owner and the publisher didn't have the guts to be the face of this tells you who they are, tells you a lot about their character. And that's what I think has been the most damning thing about all of this. All Right,

let's go back into time. It's time machine time. So where are we going in history? I kind of want sound effects, right, we'll get there. So where are we going?

We're going to go to February eleventh, nineteen seventy nine, It's the day the Iranian monarchy collapsed. The Shaw's government fell, military declared neutrality in Iran, and a revolution that had been building for more than a century finally broke through. What followed was the creation of the Islamic Republic and authoritarian theocracy, one of the most consequential ruptures in US foreign policy, still shaping the Middle East today, global energy markets,

and American politics. And as questions once again swirl about the future of Iran's regime, it's worth remembering something clearly at the outset as we go into this time machine. The Iranian Revolution did not come out of nowhere, and America was not a bystander in it all right. So to understand how we got to February nineteen seventy nine and the Ayatola Khamane becoming essentially a dictator of Iran, we have to go back a lot further. Iran didn't

suddenly appear in the twentieth century. For thousands of years, of course, it was known to the outside world as Persian, one of the oldest continuous state traditions on Earth, and the monarchy in Persia was not some modern invention either. By the time of World War one. Iran had been ruled by kings for centuries, most recently under the Kajar dynasty, which took power in seventeen ninety four. In fact, even

the title Sha itself matters here. It's not Islamic. It's a Persian word, ancient Persian, and it dates back more than twenty five hundred years. The fuller imperior title is Shahanshah, which literally means king of kings. So when Iranians overthrew the Shaw eighteen seventy nine, they weren't just rejecting a modern autocrat, and by the way, that last Shaw was an autocrat, I'll get to that. They were rejecting a pre Islamic royal tradition that stretched back to the antiquity era.

This wasn't just political upheaval. It was a civilization break. In nineteen thirty five, Iran's ruler asked foreign governments to stop using Persia and adopt the name Iran instead. It was a nationalist gesture meant to assert sovereignty and create a modern identity. It wasn't the creation of a new country, but it was a demand to be seen on its own terms. So we all need that little history lesson every now and then, So now we place a rain into its regional context and just sort of a little

bit of the backstory here on Iran. In the early

twentieth century, during World War One, Persia was officially neutral, but neutrality never did protect it as a country. Its territory was repeatedly violated by the Russians, the British, and at times even the Ottoman forces. Persia was never part of the Ottoman Empire. That's an important note. Historically it was often the chief rival to the Ottomans, particularly along

sectarian lines. We had the Sunni Ottoman rule versus the Shia Persian identity right Sunni Shia, something that's been there from nearly the beginning of Islam. The lesson Iranians absorbed from World War One, though, was a harsh one. Neutrality does not stop great powers from using your country as a chessboard. So at the same time, the Ottoman Empire

collapsed at the end of the war, and it gave birth largely through a European mandate system new states like Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. Right. Iraq, for example, emerged as a British backed monarchy in the early nineteen twenties, and it gained full independence in nineteen thirty two. So Iran is sitting there watching its neighbors be invented by outside powers while struggling to preserve its own independence in a world dominated by empires. What's interesting is this Iran did not passively

accept monarchy as destiny. In fact, just the opposite. In nineteen oh six, Persia experienced a constitutional revolution. It produced a written constitution, a parliament. The majills, I hope I get that jealous and I have no doubt, and I will mess up some of these pronunciations of some of

these Persian words. My apologies, but essentially it was a parliament and limits on royal authority. This was one of the earliest constitutional movements in the Middle East. There's a real small d democratic tradition inside of Iran. Iran had a They did this decades before many of its neighbors,

but it was fragile. Iranian politics became defined by a persistent tension monarchy, secular reformers, religious authorities, and foreign powers, and they were all always pulling around in different direction. Tension has never disappeared. It simply evolves in different ways over times. And we're seeing it play out at the moment. So in the nineteen twenties you had Resa Shah pa Lavi.

He sees power and eventually crowned himself. Shaw His project was modernization, centralizing the state, building infrastructure, weakening the religious authority, clerical authority, and enforcing secularism. But it was modernization from above,

enforced by coercion. Parliamentary democracy was weakened, political pluralism shrank, the monarchy reasserted itself as the center of gravity. So we can look at it and say, well, great, they were modernized, they were westernizing, but they were essentially beating people into modernizing. Right. It was not a democratic move to modernization, and it meant that Resia sh Shaw's project also came across as nationalists. He was attempting to reduce

British and Russian influence. Of course, that independence would not last. The most important Hinge point before in nineteen seventy nine comes in the early fifties. By then Iran had another Shaw, Riza Shaw's son, Mohammed Riza Pahlavi, and a democratic chosen prime minister by the name of Mohammed Mozadek. Well, Mozadek the prime minister moved to nationalize Iran's oil industry. At the time, it was an attempt to challenge the British

dominance and over their oil economy and asserting their own sovereignty. Well, guess what the Brits panicked called Warfares intensified and in nineteen fifty three, the United States and the UK back

the coup that removed the prime minister. So here's what happened next. The coup didn't just restore the Shaw, it also transformed him from a constitutional monarch into the central pillar of the state. And so yes, the United States effectively helped rip up a fragile parliamentary democracy in favor of a more centralized, more authoritarian and at the time, because this was the Cold War, a more pro Western monarchy.

It was what was in America's national interests that mattered more than what was in the small d democracy interests. This is an important point to understand. This is why a lot of things we did in the fifties and sixties in the name of the Cold War and dealing with the Soviets created a lot of anti americanism around the world. This is one of them. So from Washington's perspective at the time, right, Hey, this was all about stability and anti communism, pure and symbol From Tehran's perspective

and the perspective of quite a few individuals, it was about lost sovereignty. So from that moment on, the Shah in the United States became politically intertwined in the Iranian imagination. Opposition to the Shah increasingly meant opposition to America. And this is where the long fuze toward nineteen seventy nine is let the Shaw modernized rapidly, expanding education, advancing women's rights, pouring oil wealth into development. All that's good stuff. But

the modernization was paired with repression. There was censorship, a powerful secret police. They crushed descent, and they were really tough on those that were overly religious. And it all came with visible American back in Regionally, Orion stood apart because while you had Arab states experiencing cups and military rule and pan Arab nationalism all over the place, Egypt under Nassar Syrian, Iraq under the Baptist regimes, Iran was actually the pillar of America's Middle East strategy in the

Gulf region. That alignment bought power, and it also planted some rage. And this is the environment in which a man named Ayatola rulej Hala Komene. Yes that Komenee emerges

as a symbol of the resistance. Here's an important clarification in history. Komene did not flee Iran. Comeni was arrested, released, and then banished from the country. In the early sixties, Comene openly denounced the Shaw's reforms and crucially attacked Iran's relationship with the United States, particularly laws that granted US

personnel legal immunity inside of Iran. Remember this came up again during our in the attempt to build a democracy in Iraq that giving immunity to outside forces is never popular domestically wherever you are. Well. The Shaw had options and what to do with Komene. He could imprison him.

He could have executed him, or he could have silenced him another way. Executing him risk turning him into a martyr. So the Shaw decided to expel. First it was to Turkey, then it was to Iraq, and eventually he'd end up in France. Well, exile was a mistake because while exile was meant as an attempt to neutralize komene Instead, he kind of professionalized his movement and gave him gave him

more rhetorical power from Paris. In exile, Komeney gained something no opposition figure inside Iran could safely have had at the time, global media access without fear of arrest. So he unifies the opposition, and there was a by the way the opposition in Iran was dispersed. Here wasn't just the theocrats that were against him, right, So Coomane unifies the opposition and he frames it as a resistance not just on religious terms, but also moral terms, and he

positioned clerical rule as authentic national liberation. So on February first, nineteen seventy nine, Comeni returns to Tehran to thousands of cheering crowds. Ten days later his February eleventh, and the monarchy officially collapses. The revolution that toppled the SHAW at

the moment was broad based. There were secular liberals, there were leftists, students, merchants, clerics. But the revolution didn't end when the regimes fall. They end when power consolidates, and the most organized faction was the clerical one, and they won. So what followed was not just a change of rulers, but a new governing model. They called it an Islamic republic, a theocracy fused with state power, something the region and the world actually had never seen before. Now you may

be wondering when did the hostage crisis begin. So, the US embassy hostage crisis actually didn't happen immediately with the start of the revolution in February of seventy nine. It

came nine months later, in November of seventy nine. But it flowed directly from everything that came before, memories of fifty three, fear of American interference and the revolutionary need to define itself against an external enemy, and the United States was an easy target because of our history with the country, and from that moment on US Iran relations froze into hostility. So what lessons should we take away from this, Well, we're in the middle of something here

that we may help foment another revolution in Iran. We may be more active on this one, as active as

we were in nineteen fifty three. Now this time we may be on the side of the people. We were not on the side of the people in fifty three. We were not on the side of the people in seventy nine. This time we might be on the side of the people. That's the one thing that's different here, and maybe that means a different outcome, But it is a warning about foreign intervention, right, and modernization without legitimacy,

and what happens when democracy is sacrificed for stability. And in fact, when you hear the story of the Shah and the fifties and sixties, I can't help but think of NBS in Saudi Arabia. Right, Oh, hey, there's good news, he's modernizing, he's given women rights. But at the same time, there's still censorship. Right, there's still very little, you know, there's still terrible human rights violations, particularly when anybody violates the law. So it is there's a lot of lessons

to take away from this So America. We can't say it created the Iranian revolution alone, but it did help destroy the alternative that might have prevented it. And that's the hardest left in them all. When you weaken a democracy to protect your own interests. We actively weakened a democracy in nineteen fifty three. You don't eliminate the instability, you simply delay it. So as we decide how involved,

we're going to get and what's happening in Iran. And you know, look, I look at you. I think that whenever we're on the side a small d democracy, that usually ends up at a better place than when we're just on the side of helping somebody who's just simply on our side in a larger fight against some other foreign power. And the Cold War created those types of relationships. The fear of China is creating those type transactional relationships.

But these transactional relationships, and this is right. Donald Trump wants to make America. You know, when he talks about making America great again, he wants to go back to nineteen fifty style kind of imperialistic like foreign policy approach, right,

and all of that bitness in the ass in Latin America, all of this is bitness in the ass in the Middle East. Transactional politics without some sort of small the democratic moral code is never going to create long term stability or security for us here in the United States. So with that, there's your time machine. All right, let's get to some questions. Ask Chuck, if Trump continues to claim you when the twenty twenty election, wouldn't that make

the potential twenty twenty four run unconstitutional two determinants. I love how you're thinking. If you somehow approved he was the rightful winner in twenty twenty, wouldn't that undermine the legality of a future term and even weaken his legal protections side to the presidency just seems like a self

defeating argument. You know, this reminds me of a of a of a rule I used to have I meet the press meetings with my staff, when we have these daily meetings about the editorial day, I'd say we've banned logic in the Trump era. And because what you're making,

you're taking a news story and applying logic to it, and say, well, doesn't this mean this Donald Trump has never allowed logic to get in the way of a

good narrative, right of a good owned the libs mean of a good attempt at not having to admit defeat right. And so everything you're saying is correct. But that isn't what he's up to here, right, We know what he's

really up to here. This is just continuing to try to continuing to try to sort of undermine more legitimacy of more institutions, and the more institutions I mean, if he is able to fully undermine the entire election system, which is what he's attempting to do here with twenty twenty, then everything he would do to question the midterms and anything like that becomes then natural or normalized because of what he's done with twenty twenty. So this is what

makes what he's doing so dangerous. Here. He's trying to sort of legitimize interfering with future elections, right, and he's desperate to try to find even you know, even the illusion of evidence to reinforce his beliefs about what happened twenty twenty. And they look, it's clear they're manufacturing pretext here. They have not legitimized a single fact. I mean, you go to this about twenty twenty. He's only gone after Georgia.

By the way, let's I've gone in another place. Let's say he magically somehow figures out that he won Georgia, he still doesn't have enough electoral votes to prove that he won in twenty twenty. There's still other states. He hasn't been able to find the votes in Arizona, he hasn't been able to find the votes in Nevada. He hasn't be able to find the votes in Wisconsin, he hasn't been able to find the votes in Michigan, he hasn't made to find the votes in Pennsylvania. So but

again that's logic. This is not about logic, right, I mean, he thinks if he can somehow find anything that becomes believable behind his delusional followers on this, it allows him not to declare any victory about twenty twenty, but then he will use that as a way to legitimize likely using the government to interfere in the actual elections themselves in twenty twenty six, twenty twenty eight. Now I say that in that I still don't believe he can effectively

do that. I think there's enough checks and balances in the states. I think it's not going to happen. And I think that, you know, I vacillate between being worried and laughing at these attempts that he's doing. I think

he's making just an absolute fool of himself. And more importantly, I mean, I mean literally the laughing stock of the intelligence community is Tulsa Gabbert, Right, but she has been I will say that she must be beyond humiliation which means she has her own sort of delusions about all of this. But it's it's whenever you apply logic to anyone of Trump's arguments, they fall apart completely, which means it's never been about logic all right. Next question comes

from Luke Hey. Thanks for tackling the issue of sports betting. I've seen it devastate families, and I refuse to work for gambling platforms because of the ethical concerns. My question is about professional ethics. It people with integrity keep quitting problematic institutions. Do those spaces just get worse? Is it better to stay and try to limit the damage from within? I'm torn between sticking to my moral line or trying

to be sand in the gears from the inside. Loops, Well, welcome to what a lot of prosecutors, career prosecutors are contemplating at the Justice Department, What a lot of career form policy folks are thinking about at the State Department. What many career military particularly for one, two and three star generals, high ranking admirals. You know that this is

this is this is a huge dilemma, you know, I don't. I think everybody's got their own line, So I'm not going to tell you what your line should be. I'll just tell you what my line is. If I feel like I can be effective, not just being sand in the gears right and doing you know, feeling like I have to sneakily upend things, but I feel like I can turn the tide, I can report what needs to be reported or whatever it is, then it is worth

sticking around. If you feel like your position can prevent the worst things to happen, and you say to yourself, well, hey, you know, I just have to do it for nine months until we get new leadership. Right, That's why it to me. I would advise somebody at the Justice Department, in somebody the state department to stick it out right, believe in the democracy. You don't have to believe in

the administration. You can believe in the democracy that there will be you know that bad There are good stewards and bad stewards, but there'll be another steward. Because I do think on the political side and in the public service sector, the more good actors that leave, they will only be filled with bad actors and it will only get worse than it might be irreparable. Right, So on the private sector side. I think it's a harder call, right. It's one thing to be stand in the gears to

another thing. If you're literally working against the business interests of the company, and if they're not committing illegal acts, then I think it is better to quit on moral and ethical grounds, but do so publicly say why you're

doing it. To do it silently, then it's ineffective. You know, speak out, become a whistleblower, right, become the person that worked for the tobacco companies to talk about all that you know, or the person that worked at Meta and saw everything that Facebook was doing to sort of weaponize the likes and the algorithms and stuff. You know. But I guess that's where I would go. I think it's I think if you're in the if you work for government,

I think you're obligated to stick it out. I think if you work in the private sector and you have ethical and moral quandary, is I think then it's you know, I probably would be on the side of make it. It would be easier for me to support you walking than not walking, But I wouldn't do it quietly. If you want to, if you want to try to effect change, you know now if there can if you think you know there is a reason to stay is if you think they're doing something illegal and you need to gather

evidence and and and become a whistleblower. That's that's yet another motivation to potentially stay if you truly believe something illegal is taking place. All right, appreciate the question, Luke, and you know there's no easy answers on those things. Next question comes from Tyler. Hey, I saw your video on the state's Democrats might put in play by twenty thirty two. I'm curious why Mississippi wasn't on your list. It's clearly it's nearly for percent African American and often

shows more Blue counties than other Southern states. Couldn't increasing registration and turn out among African American voters make it competitive. Would love to hear your thoughts. I think I did

mention that Mississippi's on my next round of lists. I think I believe it's in that and as you know, I keep talking about the Mississippi as Democrats search for more Senate seats to put in play in the twenty six cycle that I think Mississippi should be one of those states for all it's exactly the reason you lay out right. I think Mississippi, into a lesser extent, South

Carolina is the other state in the South where there's clearly an un activated African American vote, either underregistrated in the rural counties in Mississippi and South Carolina or just

under campaigned. Right, I've I've spent a lot of time a couple of cycles ago, we were doing some some of our counties to watch and before the twenty sixteen cycle or for the twenty twenty cycle, one of the counties I wanted to focus on was one of the African rural African American majority African American counties on the border of North and South Carolina. And how that the one time Barack Obama that Democrats carried North Carolina in

the twenty first century. Barack Obama was on the ballot the first time, and he did a great job of activating the rural African American vote. North Carolina in twenty oh eight did not do as good of a job in twenty twelve, and they didn't carry the state, but they did in twenty oh eight. The point is, I do think that one of the reasons why Democrats have been slow at seeing the opportunity in Mississippi is that

they're blind on rural on rural America, right. You know, their inability to get support from rural whites isn't due to just rural whites, it's all over. It explains why rural Hispanics lean right in Texas, rural blacks are. While they don't necessarily lean right in the South, they're less supportive of Democrats than urban African Americans. So yes, I do believe Mississippi should be in that if you expanded it out to the top ten states they should be

focused on. I think it's six or seven on that list, and they need to. But it's a multi year project in Mississippi because there's a lot particularly in rural America, rural Black America, rural Wide America, and rural Hispanic America. Democrats have stopped showing up over the last twenty years and they have to reverse that trend. Next question comes

from Charles Davis. Great name, Charles, Love to know, Charles, Charlie, Chuck, Chaz, Chad you what's your favorite of all of our The insane amount of nicknames that can come out of the name Charles. But I digress. It says, thanks for your recent podcast of the Kenny Center. It really resonated. I believe Trump and his allies are following authoritariing playbook, but they underestimated the resolve of cities like Minneapolis and the

power of grassroots resistance. The militarization of police and the behavior of ICE agents are deeply concerning in tragedies like the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Preddie show this takes serve my country in many ways, and I've never been more worried or more hopeful that Americans are waking up. I voted our most of my life. Trump ended that

no more, and I enjoy your podcast. Keep the good work. Look, I appreciate you writing this note, And obviously it's not really a question, but it's a statement that I'll want to refer have a lot of people refer to when they start to feel bleak. You know, what he's doing is not popular. That's sort of the point of the opening of this podcast. Republicans don't like what he's doing. In the words of John dan Forth, aren't we better

than this? Right? Jack dan Forth thought the Republican Party had had more morals than than it does under Donald Trump,

and had any sort of ethical lines that they would draw, and they don't. But nobody likes this, you know, and it goes back to, you know, the whole, the whole. I do think there are a lot of people who supported Trump who don't like being seen as racist like Trump. And it's you know, I always say this about Trump. Everybody has their own line, and Trump crosses it at

different times. It sounds like Charles for you, he crossed the line a while ago, as I always say for Liz jad he didn't cross the line until January sixth, right, But when he crossed that line, man, she was out, and she was out loudly. John Bolton was out, probably sooner than most people thought he'd be out. Mike Pence, Right, you see where I'm going here. Everybody has their line at different moments. Looks like Rand Paul has a line, looks like Thomas Massey has a line, looks like Marjorie

Taylor Green has a line. And three years ago, if I said every republic has a line, some of you might have said, well, Marjorie, there's no line for Marjorie Taylor Green. Yes, there is. Everybody has a line, and I think and this is what I think you're right about, which is, you know, not all of these stories impact everybody the same way, but a lot of people are impacted by at least one of these stories in the same way. And that's why he's got approval ratings that

at best are in the low forties. That's why we're on the verge of having a record number of lawmakers say I'm out of Trump's Washington, get me out of here. By the way, you know, it's interesting about these retirees, right those that there's about thirty retirements Republican retirees so far this cycle, Essentially half of them are retiring to run for higher office, and the other half of them

are just walking away from politics. Well, the lion's share of those that are just walking away from politics all Republicans elected before twenty sixteen. Those that are doing the upper out are just about all Republicans elected twenty sixteen or later. The old Republican Party that accommodated Trump. More and more of them are having trouble accommodating him. And like I said, every week somebody he crosses the line for somebody else. He is not gaining any new support.

Every week Donald Trump loses more support. Next question comes from Rico from Sequoia National Forest. All right, well, here we are two big baseball fans gearing up for another on hundred and sixty two game season. But I still can't get over what I think is the dumbest rule in sports, the intentional walk of teams want to pitch around guys like Otanni. Fine, but make it cost two bases instead of one. I like where you're going there. MLBE keeps talking about speeding up the game. So why

not fix this? What say you keep the cowardice or change the rule? Wow? Two bases for intentional walks? You know I could see I could buy into that. You know, maybe it's something like you get it. You can't you

can only intentionally walk a player once again, and and you know you can so because I think what's first of all, it's bad for the fans, right, we want to see Otani hit. So let's just you know, I remember this with Bonds too, but let's just say it with Otani. You know, you know, Tani is like, you know, a version of the NBA on the road, right, you know, NBA in the regular season and Lakers come to town.

All right, I want to see Lebron. Oh, Lebron's resting tonight, you know, you know, with the with the with the with the minute. So it's not very fan friendly. And you spend all this money, you think take your kid to see Lebron the one time a year that Lebron shows up, particularly if you're in the Eastern Conference. Right, So nobody wants to go to a game all excited to see Otani play for the first time, only to

see him intentionally walk three times. So I think an addendum I would make to your rule is I think it's one that you can't intentionally walk any player more than once a game. And if you do I want to intentionally walk, it's it's it's two. It's two bases, I think. I guess I look at it this way. Rico and my dog here has a very strong opinion about this too. Speaking of intentional walks, she would like to be intentionally walked. Right after I finished taping this episode.

But I think I don't think you will get support for just doing all intentional walks two bases. But I do think if you make it one per game per player, that might be a better way to do things, all right, last question, Like I said, I gotta intentionally walk Cali just wanted to toss out a new name that scandal headlines Okay, here it is, the Abu Dhabi crypto affair, all right, the Maga coin con okay, the shake Steak scandal kind of sizzling, right if the words sizzle in there, right,

hope one of these sticks best. Chase from Little Rock, Arkansas. He claims it's he keeps saying the five Timers Club, Chase. I think we're up to six or seven Timers Club on this. So well, there it is. That's a good way to end this, end this episode. Let's see what you guys come up with. He's trying Abu Dhabi crypto affair,

the Maga coin con, and the Shakesteak scandal and Chase. I would probably say, let's go back to the drawing boarder. Let's get some more nominees out there. That's all I'm saying. Let's get some Let's get some more nominees out there. So with that, hey, listen, I I'm going to be a cheerleader for one thing, and that's Team USA. I love you know, I give my old, my old, my old workplace, a lot of grief on what they've done to the new side of things. I'm not gonna walk,

I'm not gonna relitigate what's happened on that front. I just want to give a lot of kudos and credit to the coverage of the Olympics by my old employer. I think IBC Sports do a terrific job. They have finally, I think, and you saw it with the last you really saw it in twenty twenty four, with the gold

Zone and everything they've done. But they have really figured out I mean the Olympics and this streaming moment, right like, if you talk about a sporting event that was built for this moment that we live in where you can just go find your sport, find your stream, the gold Zone. If you actually want to watch the Olympics for competition, you can just watch a stream that does that. You know. If you do want the stories and sort of the soap opera part of the Olympics that the network always

gives you, you can do that too. But I just will say that I am there's no qualification here, guys. It's fantastic. I love what's being done. I love the coverage. It breaks my heart that Team USA and Team Israel gets booed as hard as they are right now in Europe. That that hurts, right, I wish I but I also understand it. And the only word of warning I'd give to my friends at NBC Sports is, you know, I get you want to try to make the games about

the games. There's there's there's avoiding politics, but then they're censoring it. Be careful of walking that line. I'm all for avoiding it. You want to showcase the games, but be careful censoring. I think it's important for the audience to know how unpopular an American official is. If there is a moment that that happens, all right with that, I'll see in forty eight nine,