Chuck's Commentary - Trump's Actions Are Impeachable + Ask Chuck

the season, so we'll do that. At the end, I have to say my Sunday didn't go so well in the football front, thanks to some offensive line problems for the Green Bay Packers, but I will I will save that when I always try to tell my son when it comes to the NFL college football, you cannot lose a game the NFL. You can survive dumb losses. You can serve five dumb losses. That was a dumb loss.

So we shall see. But ultimately, I'll be honest, I feel a tiny bit guilty even referencing football, considering the alarming sort of ninety six hours that we and I say this because you can claim every week depending on where you stand, depending on how concerned you are about

the Trump presidency and where this is headed. But this is one where you know, and this is you know again we've and I can get into did we spinal tap the Trump presidency back in the first term, So nobody can hear anything and everything is always to eleven, so nobody's quite sure what's a serious threat to the Constitution and to the republic and what is just and

own the lib's angry moment, if you will. But I do think we need to put this last week in a little bit of context here, because this last week has been some of the most direct challenges that we've seen from Donald Trump on some basic things that previous that would have driven impeachments plural one that you know, the behavior actually that he's doing right now with the Justice Department was not dissimilar to what happened with Richard Nixon,

who resigned the presidency to avoid being impeached and convicted

and kicked out of office. You know, look, and this begins, I'm not even going to be getting into the entire FCC situation where he has ordered it appears he has ordered a regulator to just target his media enemies, because there really is no other explanation for this, for what Brendan Carr is doing and the way he publicly celebrates because he wants to make the Boss happy, but he is systematic going after only those that Donald Trump wants

him to go after. We now have him upset and angry that he can't get the people that came after him in over the last five years. Leticia James, the Attorney General of New York, Adam Schiff, who is now US Senator, James Comey, the former FBI director. He went on a truth social rant, upset that none of these people have had charges brought against them. In fact, he

fired or a US attorney resigned. We can have a debate about that, because the US attorney was doing this horrible thing as far as Donald Trump was concerned, he was actually following the law to try to figure out if there actually was a case to be made against Leticia James and this mortgage fraud that the Trump administration was alleging. He didn't have enough evidence to bring charges.

Donald Trump didn't care. He wants charges brought anyway, pushes this US attorney out, and once the attorney who was a former member of his legal team. So that's just there. Never mind the direct sort of rants, maybe you call it an order to Pambondy. I didn't even bring up the unconstitutional attacks on Venezuelan ships that I think have led indirectly to the Pentagon trying to essentially prevent the press corps from reporting from the Pentagon. I will get

into that also here in a minute. So let's just step back here. Oh and then there's the borders are who have took a bag of cash in twenty twenty four, Tom Holman and the Trump Justice Department decided to drop the charges because they couldn't prove anything. Though they're not they're not somehow denying that Tom Holman took a bag of cash under what was apparently a promise to bring government contracts to these FBI agents who were posing as

undercover businessmen. So all of this has happened in the last week. Again, we have Brendan Carr systematically targeting, going after and trying to target media and political enemies of Donald Trump and the press, even using mafioso language, drawing the ire of some conservatives, which I want to get

into a minute. Donald Trump firing or forcing a resignation from the US attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia because they wouldn't bring charges against Letitia James, angry that his attorney general has yet to bring charges against Adam Schiff or James Comy let alone Letitia James. We've got this Tom Holman story that, you know, frankly reads like a bad you know, a bad update to the old famous ab scam story if you ever followed that, it

got turned into a fun movie. And then of course what the Pentagon is doing, and the possibility that there's extra judicial killings going on without any sort of congressional authority to go with it. So here we have all of these challenges essentially to the basic in some ways what are the basic premises of our constitution? And I think the question is is any of this going to be alarming enough that you start to see Republicans say, hey,

this is too much? Enough is enough? I might argue, you actually are starting to see some of this because the difference between term one and term two. Right, we've gone through this right and Trump one point, oh, writes Pribish, and Mike Pence made sure that administration was stocked with professional conservatives. What did I mean by that? Yes, they were conservative, but they believed in these crazy things like the constitution, the rule of law. You get my point.

Donald Trump wasn't going to let that happen. In Trump two point oh, he's surrounded by sick of fans, and he made sure to put in people who were going to personally do him favor. He even put his personal attorney as the deputy attorney general, which is just you know, that in itself, and Todd Blanche that in itself is I guess you would use the word praising. But here we are, and this is this last ninety six hours.

It is about as troubling as we can get. So let me get into some of this a little bit. Let's go into the what's going on with Letitia James. Right, he's been trying just using you know that he has this guy that's been combing through the records of high profile people's mortgages and trying to come up with finding to see if they, you know, somehow committed mortgage fraud by declaring more than one residence a primary residence. They've been using this mortgage fraud. They Adam Schiff is one

of them. Leticia James is one of them. Of course, the whole fight about does he have the authority to just randomly fire FED governors whose term if he can claim that there was wrongdoing, although there's seems to be no proof that Lisa Cook, the FED governor, did that.

But he did appeal to the Supreme Court to see if the Supreme Court would okay that firing given what we what the Supreme Court said over when he did get their permission, essentially to fire folks on the National Labor Relations Board, that the FED was going to be treated differently as an independent agency versus the NROLB. So, but this little gambit of trying to use mortgage fraud has been, frankly, is kind of it's not kind of failed,

it has failed. Right. You have Eric Siebert, who is the US Attorney from the Eastern District of Virginia, who Donald Trump is frustrated that there were two Democratic senators who were okay with that person being the US attorney and because this person was going to get bipartisan support, Donald Trump thought that was one of the reasons why this was proof this person might be a rhino. Both

Tim Kane and Mark Warner were fine with this. Ironically, the current Attorney General, Pambondi, has actually desperately been trying to save this, to save secrets nomination, because they do feel as if he's been there a long time, he's considered somebody who knows what he's doing, and they've been trying to stop it. Of Course, the last time an attorney general got in a president tried to get this involved with firing US attorneys, it cost an attorney general

their job. Alberto Gonzalez. Back during the Bush forty three administration, they fired a whole slew of US attorneys essentially very upfront as political, you know, sort of political reasons, saying they wanted to put in their own folks on that. But how it was done, how it was conducted, was pretty controversial, and it cost the attorney general's job. In this case, we don't have any kind of uproar, we don't have any kind of bipartisan concern yet, but I

think it's possible that's going to happen. Should know, the Eastern District of Virginia is one of the more important. This is where a lot of the terror counter terrorism trials happen. It's you really have to have really good people here. They're politically sensitive cases get brought here, get brought in this in the Eastern District of Virginia, and so the main Justice Department of Justice doesn't like this one to be as politicized as other slots for the

US Attorney So so that's troubling number one. And after that rant, then he went on a true social rant, really upset that none of these people have been indicted. He addresses his Attorney General, Pam Bondi as Pam, and he goes, we can't delay any longer. It's killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, they indicted me five times over. Nothing. Justice must be served now. Now again, he is only targeting the people that he believes brought

charges against him. He wants charges brought right back against them on this front. So it is it is he's ranting about this. It's unlikely at this point, right if the Justice Department does end up bringing charges against any of these folks, if the court, if it's in a legitimate court of law, the prejudicial aspect of Trump's own words, are going to likely have all these cases either dismissed or juries are just going to not Grand juries won't in diet or if they're in jury trials, juries aren't

going to convict because it's blatantly obvious. He's basically already wanting to convict these folks. He's just searching for evidence in order to get his conviction. The evidence he hasn't found yet, even people who want to try to help him can't find the evidence to do it. And yet he doesn't care. The question is what is the Department of Justice going to do next in order to appease him?

Is this going to get uh? Is this going to get really ugly? Uh? And is this gonna you know, are they going to just bring indictments whether they have it or not. I mean, look, they tried to bring some indictments back in DC and we saw grand Jury's just said no. Normally grand juries will say yes to

the Justice Department. But this Justice Department has been so compromised, its credibility so compromised in the public that I think they're going to have a harder and harder time bringing basic charges and getting indictments out of grand juries because of the reputation that they're starting to get for basically just trumping up charges and yes, pun was intended on that one. Let me get into the Tom Homan situation

because I think that one is is something else. So I don't know if you've you've paid attention to this. So MSNBC broke the story Caro Lenox, former longtime reporter basically you know who own owned all of the secret service stories over the last decade from the crazy secret Service stuff back during the Columbia days. I mean, Carolina has been sort of on top of this, and they broke this story here here's the basics of the story.

In September of twenty twenty four, while the president's borders are Tom Homan was a private citizen at that time, basically just campaigning for Donald Trump. Homan was allegedly recorded accepting fifty thousand dollars in cash from undercover FBI agents. Fun little detail was in Akva bag, So you know that'll be a fun Maybe Cava will do some viral marketing based on that. So these agents, this goes back. If you've ever if you're real political junkies, you'll know

what I mean when I say abscam. This sort it has all reeks of abscam Apparently agents were posing as business people or contractors who were seeking immigration related government contracts, contingent of course, on Trump winning the twenty twenty four election, and they assume that Homan, if they did, would be in a position of influence. This meeting was recorded. There apparently were also hidden cameras in audio, so there may

be video of Homan actually accepting this money. We'll see if this video exists or if it's going to get destroyed. Now here's the issue, right, these are various and this happened dur an abscam. They couldn't It's tough to bring the charges. Right, you promise you're going to do something for this cash. If you cannot prove the quid pro quo, right,

you have the cash, but you don't necessarily have anything else proving that there was a quid pro quo, then it is sort of difficult to bring charges. Now, the Department of Justice under the Trump administration. This is what's amazing about this story and the fifty thousand dollars here is that the Trump administration is not denying that he took fifty thousand dollars. By the way, the irs may want to have may want to know a little something about that fifty thousand dollars now, so he may he

may end up having some tax problems. He's not careful on this, and if they choose to bring charges, right, the federal government could easily a lot of times with bribery cases, that's what you do. If you don't actually you can't prove the bribery, you can prove the unreported income. And so he has this extra fifty thousand dollars. So either he has reported and paid taxes what are to report the income as, or he didn't and he's going to owe some taxes, which means he possibly broke the

law doing that. But the Department of Justice under the Trump administration decided to close this investigation earlier this calendar year. They're totally upfront about it, and they said the state of reason is lack of credible evidence of criminal wrongdoing. The FBI director Cash pttel Right, donald Trump's handpicked FBI director, and the Deputy Attorney General Todd blanche again, donald Trump's former personal lawyer, who's now in this position of authority

for some bizarre reason. Why he got confirmed by a United States Senate is up to United States senators to explain this. They used to have joined statements saying the

evidence didn't meet the threshold he took the cash. They're not denying this, and they're not going to break charges because he's a friend. Right, we all know this. They're not saying that part of it. If I promise you, if this were oh, let's let's do you know, let's say this work somebody that had been working for Kamala Harris on her campaign taking a bribery. Do you think they would just drop these charges because the person is

no longer in a position to agree to contracts. I mean, this is sort of the bizarre stated reason for doing this, but it's something else. Right, And here's the thing. None of us are going to be surprised by this, Right, the amount of and in fact, fifty thousand dollars of

small potatoes. Look at all of the pay to play that we've already seen in this administration, whether it's pay to pay to corporations all right, look at his inaugural fund, pay to play and diplomacy cutter and the plane that eventually goes to the Trump Library, The shakedown of ABC that gave money to the library, the shakedown of CBS, which gave him also some more money to that the crypto industry, which has basically been just lavishing all sorts

of investment opportunities on the Trump family just so that as president he will legalize as much of the crypto industry as possible, trying to make a bunch of wealth

that we weren't sure was going to exist or not depending on various regulatory rules. So fifty thousand dollars is small potatoes, But sometimes some stories are sticky because of some of the details and the details that it's in a kava bag the Mediterranean fast food restaurant. It's one of those that probably means this will stick for a while. So see that story that percolated, and again they are just wiping it away because they can so uh once

again undermining the credibility of the rule of law. Right, if you're a friend of the president, the law doesn't apply to you. If you're an enemy to the president, they're going to look for ways to use the law to punish you. It's pretty simple. We're seeing it now. Tom Holman is caught on tape doing this. They're dropping charges. They don't have enough evidence to go indict Leticia James

for mortgage fraud. He doesn't care. They don't have enough evidence to get anything on James Comy, he doesn't care. They don't have enough evidence to get anything on Adam Schiff. He doesn't care. He just wants and you know, he actually just wants them to go through a court case. He even said that during a gaggle about this he was he was asked a little bit about it, and he simply said, look, you know, if they're they're innocent, they're innocent, but they need to go through this, right.

That's that's really what this is about for him, Right, is that in his head, they have to go rule this. And then it brings us to a third story here, which I think is a huge challenge, direct challenge to the Constitution. And that is and it's trying to and I want people to understand the timeline. So the Pentagon has put into place a new me I'm gonna I'm gonna be generous here and call it a tighter press

access policy. And what it does is that they want to require credentialed Pentagon reporters to quote, to get permission or sign a pledge before reporting any information that's gathered inside the building, including some unclassified material that would give the Defense Department brought authority to revoke passes for violations.

So basically, if you have somebody in the Pentagon that says, hey, this something little shady's going on here, and you get a leaked document, I help you finish the reporting your story, which is frankly, I had to say, is pre standard operating procedure for any reporter. Right, we never get any official documents from the government. It's usually some whistle blower or sometimes the staffer that you know. Maybe they want to do the right thing, or maybe they just want

to get their boss right. I don't know what their motive is to leak, but if the information is solid, it helps you report a story. What the Pentagon wants to do is criminalize that, and if you get caught doing it, then they want to get you off the

premises completely. Now you might ask why now, right, we already know that there's been all right, that Pete hagk Set, the Secretary Defense, has been getting some terrible press and I for you know, we have the weird where he shared classified material on a signal, and a lot of that came from leaks, and he started firing people that he thought were leaking. So now instead of trying to fire the leakers, because I think he realized that that was sort of a game of whack a mole that

he would never win. Could they just simply get rid of the reporters from the Pentagon right, thinking that that will somehow prevent people from leaking. Buddy, I could tell you, you know, the more you try to stop this, the more it's only going to encourage people to find other ways to get these things, other ways to leak these out. But I do think it's a pretty important to understand a bit of the timeline of this story, okay, because I think there's a real reason why this happened when

it happened. Let me give you this timeline on September seventeenth, last week, So this is just so where am I at here? So last Thursday was September excuse me? Last Wednesday was September seventeenth. The Wall Street Journal published the phone report. Pentagon lawyers raised concerns over Trump's strikes on alleged drug boats, these Venezuelan drug boats, where the military

has been launching strikes against these boats without any congressional authority whatsoever. They claimed some authority having to do loosely if because they've somehow designated these posts as narco terrorists, and that this falls under the same thing that would allow them to go after al Qaeda and things like that.

On September nineteenth, the Washington Post reported on legal concerns, internal legal concerns about the strikes themselves, Pentagon officials voicing uneasiness that their opinions, their legal opinions about whether these extra judicial killings were legal or not, that they were being sidelined. That happened on September nineteenth, And when did

this story come out? On these new roles, So that story came out in the nineteenth, which means the reporting happened on the eighteenth, and lo and behold on the nineteenth. The Pentagon press secretary decides to come up with these new roles because what were the important sources of these stories to both the journal and the Post. It was classified Pentagon information from people that worked at the Pentagon.

These reporters did not get permission from there. The person who runs the press shop there, Sean Parnell, And therefore they wanted to create a situation where that if you somehow used anonymous sources or classified material that was not approved. Again, I don't know in what part of a free country with a free press that this would be a situation that would be acceptable. They suddenly put out these new rules.

So what this is really about is they don't want they don't want there to be stories that there are a lot of people raising legal questions about whether the president has the authority to just drop bombs on a boat. He decides to tell people in the Caribbean, is we know they're narco terrorists. How do you know, Well, we just know what's your evidence. Don't worry about it. Oh we saw the evidence once we blew it up. There were floating bales of fentanyl and things like that. Again,

this stuff ill legal, This stuff's unconstitutional. He does not have the authority to do this. I promise you that if at some point right somebody is going to have a due process, it's going to bring a case before our court system, it'll be some family member of somebody who was killed on one of those both, and I don't think they're going to have very good legal standing on any of them. So once again, to understand, I just want to make it clear what the legal questions

are involving these these bombings of these boats. Is there

authority under US law or international law? Right now, it is unclear if there's any legal basis for these strikes. The use of legal force in international waters against unarmed or not obviously armed boats carrying drugs rather than weapons has been extraordinarily unusual. It's something we haven't seen. There was no attempt to board these boats, arrest right extradite that would have perhaps given a little more clarity as to what would be allowed and whatnot under the law

of war or the doctrine of self defense. There usually needs to be an imminent threat, and there's no clear imminent threat now. I think that the President would say the threat of these drugs coming into the United States was going to harm more Americans, and that is the imminent quote imminent threat standard that he believes that this

could be met with. But if these strikes are accepted without scrutiny, it could lower the bar for what military force in similar international waters could be done without any sort of judicial process, And we already may be seeing a huge misuse of this. And where does it end right If there is no court scrutiny over this, no congressional scrutiny of this. We know very little about this. There's been very little interest in Congress on trying to

get some oversight about what they're doing. So it's it's and by the way, now Trump is in this, everything always goes back to immigration. So over the weekend, Trump issued a warning to Venezuela on true social and he said that the nation immediately must accept all the prisoners and people from mental institutions, which includes the worst of the world insane asylums that Venezuelan leadership has forced in the United States of America, or you will pay. The

price you pay will be incalculable. So basically what he's saying is, hey, I'll stop these bombings if you take a bunch of these Venezuelans that we're trying to deport, if you want to take a back. Now, by the way, this whole weirdness of Trump, I think it's looking more and more likely he just doesn't understand what the word asylum means. These folks were seeking asylum in the United States. I think he hears the word asylum and assumes insane asylum. And so this is why he has Maybe he does

it on purpose, but I don't think he has. He probably would claim he's doing it on purpose now, but he seems to conflate those seeking asylum with people who are mentally ill and who quote unquote belonged to an insalem silum. So in his head, all of these folks seeking asylum in the United States were somehow released from Venezuelan insane asylums. I know you're thinking that can't be the case, and I'm saying it's Donald Trump. The likelihood

of this being the case is extraordinary high. Nobody out there is no evidence that any of these folks or what he claims has happened in any of these countries. This is what Castro did in the late seventies. That now Castro did this. He emptied out his prisons in order to try to in order to try to cause problems for us here in the United States. The so called marri Lee took boat lift. But that's the last

time something like that happened. So we've had all these things, right, We've had Trump weaponizing the FCC against the press with Brendan Carr. We have Trump weaponizing the Department of justice against his political enemies. We have him firing a US attorney because this US attorney won't bring charges just because the US attorney was following the law, so he was

fired for following the law. We've got a Pentagon that's trying to essentially kick out the press for doing its job, on top of all of the other concerns that we've had about his his inability to follow the Constitution. Now what's been interesting here is on the issue of Brendan Carr in free speech. You've had three Republican senators who normally don't come out and criticize him very often, all criticized Car hard on this one, Ted Cruz, Ran Paul

and David McCormick, the freshman Republican senator from Pennsylvania. The point is that while I know there are fewer Republicans willing to publicly stand up to Donald Trump right now than there were in the first term, because look at what happened in the first term, and there's no doubt he has been on a systematic purge or anybody he thinks might question him. He wants them out, He tries to primary them, he tries to pressure them not to

run for reelection. He tries to whatever it takes. He doesn't want anybody with an R next to their name looking like they can be an obstacle to his agenda or his revenge or whatever it is that he's trying to do. But he's getting so aggressive now that I do think you're going to find out which conservatives have principles and which don't. Right, we learned who the principled conservatives were during Trump one point zero, Liz Janey, John Fulton,

Jeff Blake, Bob Corker. We can go down the list, right, and we're starting to learn those that believe that are uncomfortable abandoning their principles for Donald Trump. They've abandoned some

of them for some time. You might argue, but Ted Cruz is uncomfortable. Ran Paul's uncomfortable. Dave McCormick's uncomfortable. Where's just going to keep going? Right? Bill Cassidy doesn't like what's happening inside of HHS. So one thing that I would keep a real eye on here And the reason I'm bringing all these stories together and leaning with him because I know in some cases you think, ah, you

know you and others with your Trump derangement syndrome. You're always saying, look at what Trump's doing, watch out, this is going to be terrible. But what he really has is he's numbed us. Just some things that are happening that are really terrible. And if we if we do what we're doing here, as you can see, you can't hope that the next time Democrats get put in charge that they're not going to that they're not going to be Democrats who decide, hey, I'm going to be my

own Trump. In fact, I had an interesting conversation with a frustrated progressive few a few weeks ago who said, I want my own Trump, who will go in there and do this, this and this, and you know, forget trying to play nice, and forget trying to do these things and so. And it was in actually that spirit that Ted Cruz came out pretty strong against Brendan Carr by basically saying, this is eventually going to be bad

for conservatives. Look, as I've said on the media, the original sin on this was the the less we have to push to get Trump and anybody associated with January sixth purged from Twitter and Facebook and polite society. And I know that felt good in the moment, but it ended up doing a couple of things that have actually brought us to now a worse moment than where we were four years ago. Right. Moment. Number one that it brought us to is that you have we now have

a Trump created his own information ecosystem. He has no sort of there's no sort of pushback happening anymore in that world. He doesn't have the same conversation we don't. His folks are having a conversation over here. Trump opponents are having a conversation over there. Nobody's talking to each other. Everybody's talking past each other. And literally we have harder silos and more bubbles because of this, not less bubbles.

But it was also you know, hey, be careful you push, you go down that road, and you're going to get you know, political physics will kick in, right, you will get an equally harsh and opposite reaction. So that's what I would be keeping an eye out for. I think what's happening with Tom Homan. I think there are going to be some some elected Republicans who think, hey, maybe you should release we should know more about this, Maybe he shouldn't be in the White House. Maybe there is

something more to this. I think when it comes to what he's trying to do with Pam BONDI in ordering her to get indictments, that you will have others that will start pushing back on that. So I think that you know, in you know, in some ways this over the summer and you start to see it now. Donald Trump's getting impatient, right. He wants to just he just wants all this, all of his revenge to happen, all

of his retribution to happen. He wants every thing his way now, and he seems to be speeding up that process, right, He seems to be in a hurry. But I think he's getting sloppy about it, and I think in some ways he's starting to He's starting to acquire some enemies that I think he's going to regret. He's starting You're starting to see independence bail on him. His numbers are going down, and all of this is just accumulating. Right. It's no one story is going to take down Donald Trump.

But in the same sort of reasons why the country moved on from Trump the first time, he's exhausting his supporters. He's making those that are sort of Trump skeptics but decided to join the Trump team. More and more uncomfortable

figuring out how to defend him. It gets harder and harder to defend some of these crazy truth social posts that he puts out there, these crazy ideas that he throws out there, and he's getting to the point where he may you know, if Republicans decide he's a political liability,

they'll throw him overboard. So far because we live in these polarized times and because our frankly, thanks to jerry mandering and all these things, the primary process matters more so because he has this huge stranglehold over the base of the Republican party. You're gonna have it is why most elected Republicans stay silent rather than pushing back. But

boy is he pushing the envelope right. He went Brendan Carr went too far, and he got people like Ted Cruz and Rand Paul Again, we're not we're not talking Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, Dave McCormick again, not not talking Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins or Don Bacon. Okay, so all of these things should be alarming. A normal legislative brand would look at this regardless of party and

say hey, we need some deuce, some more oversight. I'm not that pollyannish just to think that's going to happen. But he's putting more and more Republicans in uncomfortable positions, and I think you're going to start this is this is why his numbers are eroding, and this is why suddenly you've seen a few more Republican voices speaking out that maybe three months ago people didn't expect to stay time.

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we are going to have to see here the seventy third anniversary of the first ever example of a savior

political skin speech that would end up being the model of how to get out of controversy political problems. Really to this day. On September twenty third, nineteen fifty two, and we'll at nine thirty Eastern Times, the nominee for the Republicans for Vice President, Richard Nixon, took to the airways. He bought time on CBS, NBC, ABC and Mutual Radio simultaneously. At the time, it was a cost of seventy five thousand dollars for thirty minutes of airtime to essentially explain

himself and save his vice presidential candidacy. Let me take you through the timeline. So the crisis began on September eighteenth of nineteen fifty two. The New York Post, Yes, that New York Post, they ran the first big expose on Richard Nixon's expense fund. What it was is he basically had. Today we would call it a hand paign, you know, some sort of super pac fund, but back then it did. None of these ever existed. So we

had this. Some people referred to it as a slush fund, but it was essentially a fund where political supporters had money to help Nixon with expenses. Maybe it's expenses with politics or expenses for himself. But the way it was, this had never been seen before. The public had never heard of anybody doing this what I'm describing. Today, you'd be like, oh, every politicians does this. But at the time, nobody believed politicians did do this, nor did they believe

they should do this. So the New York Post runs a story on Nixon's personal expense fund. A whole bunch of papers pile on right. Dwight Eisenhower's the newly minted Republican nominee for president. In his inner circle, they weren't big Nixon fans to begin with Eisenhower. I'm gonna give you a little backstory here. Eisenhower was very obviously was being recruited by both parties. Right Truman tried to get him to run as a Democrat. He decided run as

a Republican. But what that really meant was he was a pretty pretty moderate Republican. He did not necessarily and he was not necessarily trusted by some of the conservatives in the party. Back then, the conservative wing was essentially referred to as the Taft wing of the Republican Party. Back then, Taft was sort of a keeper of the conservative flame of the Ohio Tafts if you're keeping track

at home. So Nixon was seen as a necessity, meaning Eisenhower had to find a conservative running mate in order to essentially appease the right flank of the Republican Party. So Nixon wasn't popular with Eisenhower in the first place, so the second there's a problem with his nomination, they were ready to turn tail. And Nixon knew this because Eisenhower's inner circle was furious about the story, and some of them immediately wanted him dropped from the ticket. Nixon

himself thought it was over. So what happened? So Nixon and his friends of ad buyers. The person who gets the most credit for this is a guy named Murray Chattener, who was his campaign manager for his Senate races back in nineteen fifty. Roger Kent, another political ally. They thought Nixon should bypass the press. Don't do a press conference, go to this use this new medium, television. Nixon made wide use of television and his successful nineteen fifty Senate race.

By the way, that's been one of my book recommendations. Nixon and the Pink Lady, go read that book. It's a terrific book, and it will also serve as a good primer for the red scare stuff because it was a lot of Senate races in nineteen fifty was essentially the year of the red Scare in Senate races. But he used some television and he was one of the first non presidential candidates to use television back in nine teen fifty, so and it was thought of that if

he could go on TV, he could bypass the press. Right. Nixon was looking to sort of talk around the press. So they decide to buy thirty minutes of national TV time, and he goes into the El Capitan Theater in Los Angeles. At the time, it was a TV studio, and he prepared a thirty minute speech details essentially in essence defending himself from this story about what was this slush fund all about. So he decided he would detail his finances down to what his family owned to show transparency. So

it ended up working right. Some of the more famous lines that come of it, you know, the it's known as the Checkers Speech for this reason because the Checker's moment is Nixon admitted that one of the gifts that he got was a dog named Checkers for his daughters. And they, yes, they did keep the dog, and he wasn't going to give back the dog. And it became this because the girls really loved the dog. And so he has he does that. He talks about, you know,

the amount of money they spend. You know that Pat his wife doesn't have a fur coat or a mink coat, but she does have a respectable Republican cloth coat. And I always tell her she'd look good in anything. Then he went on and just do mundane things. We owned a nineteen fifty Oldsmobile we have our furniture, and we have a mortgage of twenty thousand dollars on a house in Washington, d C. And then he goes into the whole thing of Checkers. Let me repeat the line here

because it's really good. One other thing I should probably tell you, because if I don't, they will probably be saying this is about me too. We did get something of a gift after the election. A man the nineteen fifty cent election. He's referring to a man down in Texas heard Pat and the girls on the radio mentioned that they'd like to have a dog. And you know

what it was. It was a little Cocker Spaniel dog and a crate that he sent all the way from Texas, and our little girl, Trisha, the secure old named it Checkers. And you know, the kids, like all kids, love the dog. And I just want to say this right now that regardless of what they say about it, we're going to keep it. And then he ends his speech this way, I'm submitting to you, the American people, my side of

the case. I am proud of the fact that I've got a wife and two wonderful daughters, and I don't intend to let the American people down. But ultimately the decision is not mine, it's yours. Now, the speech worked, and why how did they determine that the speech work, Well, they got a whole bunch of Back then, people would send it in telegrams to let you know if they liked something. They got four hundred telegrams to one they

claimed in favor of keeping Nixon. Even the New York Times described it as a masterful use of the new medium of television to appeal over the heads of party leaders directly to the voters. Now here's the irony. Everything in this New York Post report was true. Nixon really did have a private expense fund. About eighteen thousand dollars was raised, which is the equivalent of about two hundred thousand dollars today. Donors contributed it to cover his travel

political expenses, which were not fully reimbursed by the Senate. Now, this fund wasn't illegal, and Nixon didn't pocket the money for personal gain. But the optics were bad because it looked like wealthy donors were secretly bankrolling his career. Because guess what, wealthy donors were always bankrolling his career. Whether it was secret, I think is sort of up for debate. But the bottom line was this story was true, and

he just put a different spin on it. He didn't deny it existed, but he went on television and he made his appeal without having to deal with a reporter questioning him. It completely transformed how politicians dealt with controversial things. It made television these things now the irony is here.

TV save save Nixon in nineteen fifty two, and then of course the first televised debates in nineteen sixty would doom Nixon, right, you may you may make note that this is the second you know here, I have done this three times in this month of September so far, and two of the anecdotes or Nixon, I would I would submit that Nixon is probably in the twentieth century, the single most important elected politician we had in the twentieth century. All he whether it was pioneering political consultants

in nineteen fifty being the first to use television to try to go around the press and try to create his own press, try to create his own communications to everything he did as president, which you know, sort of created all sorts. You know, we didn't used to report, we had no campaign finance laws, ever, you had no idea who was funding what elections, how much money was being spent. There was no reporting mechanism whatsoever. The boint

was is that for better or for worse. Nixon was sort of almost like Forrest Gump right in that he was a part or influenced so many aspects, whether it was American foreign policy, how political campaigns are done, are done the Republican Party. And I would submit to you, Look, without Nixon, you wouldn't have Trump. So it is, it is.

It is quite the lineage anyway, the Checker speech completely you know now, of course what what Donald Trump's his version of the Checkers speech just to was Twitter, right, Instead of using television to go around people, he used social media. So it is. The Checkers Beach is one of those. And this week's anniversary of it is a good time. You should go take a look at it.

It's you can find it anywhere on YouTube. It's a good listen, but it's a it was a pioneering moment in political communications, and it sort of sort of set us on a path. And look, if it wasn't Nixon, somebody else probably would have tried this and found success. At the time, Nixon just happened to be the first one under threat of having his political career and before it really began, and he decided to use television to save it. And the irony is that to save himself

from a story that was true. It was not as if this story was not true, all right? So with that, let me take a couple of questions here before I get to my college up tack, ask Chuck. First question comes from Drew a and he writes, Hey, podcast team,

is there a scenario where mom Donnie's brand? Does socialism actually helped independence like Dan Osborne by giving them a sharper contrast not just against Republicans tied to Trump, but also against Democrats flirting with socialism and letting them argue that both parties are failing in different ways. He writes Cocaine's GW Class of twenty ten, I don't think Here's why I don't think it's going to help Osborne in

twenty six. Look, I'm going to start off with I'm a huge skeptic of whether democratic socialism can succeed, not just not just as a way to convince voters to vote for it, but even as a policy implementing these policies that I'm skeptical that he's going to be able

to pull this off. But the point is is that if it's going to end up being a net positive, he's gotta I think it would take a it would take a term of Mom Donnie succeeding for it then to have, you know, maybe by twenty you know, if he is able to implement some of his policies and they work, somehow, he somehow finds a way to find the money to implement these things. And I just that's to me, that's the big question. Where's he going to

get this money? I Mean, he always says he wants to get it from Wall Street and all this stuff, But realistically, is he going to be able to somehow either get the cooperation of the state legislature to help him do this or the cooperation of the New York City Council. And I'm just skeptical on the implementation front. But even if he is, I don't think there's anything to quote unquote succeed with yet in time to help

anybody in twenty six. But I do think if you're if I'm look, I think the S word is just impossible to think. I do not think there is going to be any way to somehow make that the Democrats can lean into this and and successfully stay in national a competitive national party. And I've gone through this with you know, I please take a look at the substack.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about this. But but the s words socialism in New England right home of Bernie Sanders, or even in the Northeast where Mom Donnie is, when you think of socialism, you're more likely to think of the European socialism down in the Sun Belt all right where I grew up in Miami, particularly

in Florida. And you know, I've made this point quite a bit, but this is also I think through throughout the Sun Belt, right, we have a lot of first, second and third generation Latino voters, many of them come come from countries or have or come from countries who are neighbors with countries that we're sort of socialist regimes that either became authoritarian or bordered on authoritarianism. So that to a lot of Latino voters, they hear the word

socialism and they think authoritarianism. First. They don't think government funded policies, right, they don't think universal health care they don't think rent control, and I think that that is what makes the branding of this just. I think that hard. I might even use the word toxic. Okay, And I say it not that I know the specific ideas. Many some of the ideas that Mamdani is calling for are popular when you put them to a poll test. But I will submit anytime. You know, there's a lot of

things that are popular. If you say, hey, would you like the government to do this, the answer is yes, Now here's how much it will cost? Will you pay for this? Well, then the answer is no, right on those things. So the specific part of your question is just simply timing, right. I think Mom Donnie has to have success for it to translate on the campaign trap I do on that front, all right. Next question comes from Max Beck from Philadelphia, who also notes he's proudly

Delaware born. Hey, Jack, I'm a Duke med student doing a research year in pediatric brain tumors, and I often listen to the podcast while in the lab. I've long been interested in redistricting. I was struck by Senator Roger Marshall's full throat of defense of RFK Junior and his spread of medical misinformation. Given that and the impact of Trump era tariff's and US AID cuts on Kansas farmers, do you think Democrats should target Marshall c or at

least invest now to build competitiveness for the future. His comments as a physician felt especially misleading and troubling. Look, I do think, you know, mar I think when you just look at Kansas in general and demographically, it has three major it has three you know, decent sized media markets Topeka, Wichita, and and Kansas City right the Kansas

side of Kansas City. When you look at other purple states, you know that having having at least three media markets of that of a certain size is usually a recipe for that. Right, Virginia has Richmond, Norfolk Virginia, you know Norfolk, Virginia, Beach, Richmond, d c Rono. You know. So North Carolina has multiple so you you do need that. So Kansas has that.

They have a couple of fairly decent sized college towns in Lawrence and Manhattan. Those are pretty big state schools. So and you've had now Democrats, have you had a where the Republican brand went too far to the right and that seemed to alienate a lot of moderate Republicans who became independent, some of them even switch parties. A

few of them ended up as Democrats. So I do think there is a Kansas Democratic, Kansas Democrat brand that's similar to like a Kentucky Democrat brand that Andy Bursheer has that I think you could separate yourself from sort of the national brand that you know, there hasn't been a Democratic elected US senator since before FDR. Okay, so you got to go way back into the way back machine to find evidence of a Democrat winning a US

Senate seat in Kansas. But when you look at the map and I outline this in a sub stack a couple of weeks ago, it's the same substack where I talked about the branding issue with socialism and how troubling it was because it was just shrinking the map for Democrats to find places to win Senate seats. Right now, if they won every single Senate seat in the seven battleground states plus every blue state, they'd have fifty two macs.

Right So they've got to put Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Mississippi, Alaska, Ohio. They've got to put these states in play. They've got to give themselves more potential opportunities that are realistic to win Senate sees. And I think Kansas for everything you just outlined, I think mostly really due to aid cuts and tariffs. I think all I think the three farm states in general, Nebraska, Iowa, and Kansas. I think all of them have the potential where tariffs could could really bite.

But you know, you gotta I'm a little more bullish on Kansas than I am Nebraska because Kansas has elected democratic governors. Right, Cibilia's got two terms or Kelly got two terms. So this isn't again you got to brand yourself as a Kansas Democrat. You got to sort of separate yourself a little bit. But I think it's real, and I think it's a huge. In fact, I think it's a This goes to the there is no leader of the Democratic Party. They don't think about party building

because this is the state. Arguably they should have been targeting more seriously a few years ago. Right, the evidence of Kansas pushing back on going too far to the right happened during Sam Brownback's governorship. Well that was nearly a decade ago. All right, last question for day, and then I'll do my little college football round up. Hey check. I agree that local news coverage provides huge value to the public in terms of transparency and local politics, and

that we've lost that in many markets. My question is, if we move beyond the easy answer of money, what else do these local news organizations need to be successful? Local talent, a means of distribution, the newsroom that supports research, assignments and editorial Is it something else completely? How did the current efforts at limiting freedom of speech impact your answer? Thanks for the show and detailed discussions you do, Terrell. Look, I think the biggest thing is that you need a business.

You need a revenue stream for local news. Right. What local news needs to succeed is to find a replacement for classified advertising. Classified advertising, for a good hundred years was the lifeline for local news, right, the ability to you know that that was the consistent revenue you could count on. It was the only place locally to go look for a job, to go buy and sell a

use car, to go buy and sell use furniture. You get my drift, right, So losing all of that to Craig Right, Craig's List, or Facebook Marketplace or all these other entities, you know, So what local news needs is that the second thing, though, that local news needs to succeed is a mindset of service journalism, meaning help people live their lives, and not every news story has to be, you know, an attempt to go win the Pulitzer Prize.

Sometimes you're just simply helping people find it cheaper chicken. You're helping people find a better way to plant flowers. You're helping people find an easier way to get to work. You're helping people find a better way to enroll their kids in youth sports. So I think that you know, right now, when we talk about the crisis of local news, it just doesn't exist. And everybody immediately like zooms in

on journalism for journalists. And the thing is is that we have a trust issue first, So I view it as an opportunity to rebuild trust with media in general. And if you focus on being public servants and helping people live their lives. Number one, I hope you have journalists that want to live in the community and stay

in the community. I'm not saying, you know, I don't want people trapped in jobs, but I do think that that makes for a healthier and a more robust local information ecosystem if there is a consistent group of people who stay and want to do it right rather than just people coming in using it as a stepping stone and leaving. But the biggest thing that we need to

find is a revenue stream. Nonprofit's not going to be the answer on this, But if I were to say what am I looking for, it's almost a mindset change. And we need to have journalism schools emphasize service journalism as well as accountability journalism. Not all journalism is woodward and burnstay. Some journalism is simply helping people figure out how to navigate the community, whatever that means on any

given day. And it's those little things that build the trust so that then they will believe you when you tell them the mayor's corrupt, or they will believe you when you tell them that the borders are is taking a bag of cash from Kava and promising government contracts in return. See how I turned it all the way around. All right, So with that, appreciate the questions this week a little so as I teas stepped top I was at I was in Miami for the Miami Florida game,

my second University of Miami game. This year I was at the Notre Dame game made it down for that. It was raining the whole time, and I think that is why you saw. I was a little frustrated that this was the worst offensive performance that Miami's had so far this year. Part of it, I think was the wet ball, but part of it was it was really good Florida Gator's defense. The fact is, while Carson Beck had all the time in the world when he needed it,

he couldn't find open receivers. Eventually they figured out that if you just did the little the little flares to the running backs, that those were open and they could do some real damage. Uh and both Mark Fletcher and uh and Marty Brown did a ton of damage there. So there's you know, it's funny when you're a fan, you know you can nit pick the crap out of

your team. You know, everybody is throwing the accolades right now at my beloved Miami Hurricanes, and maybe they're the best team in the country, maybe this, maybe that, And I'm sitting there going, boy did they play a terrible game. But here's the upside. Over the last ten years, when they played a game like that, they usually lost those games like that was a game that was sitting there when it's thirteen to nothing. I said to my daughter,

I said, this is not good. We should be up twenty, we should be up three or four scores, and the fact that we're not means one score. And that's suddenly it's a one score game. And sure enough, right from the about five minutes left to go, it's a one score game. And I know, and every Miami fan was thinking the same thing. I was thinking, like, oh no, the same thing's about to happen again. Miami's going to figure out how to blow this. They're going to Georgia

Tech itt up. They're gonna Syracuse it up like what happened last year and then they did. Number One. They have a beast of a defense that is fantastic. They have an amazing offensive line. When they need to just get two or three yards, they get two or three yards. In fact, their offensive line so good. I'm hoping my Green Bay Packers can borrow some of these offensive linemen that the Nursery of Mimmy have because they clearly have

a problem. They couldn't do anything to stop the to move the Cleveland defensive line on Sunday and that, so I am. I'm relieved that Miami got a victory there, and I'm relieved they have a week off because in two weeks it is Miami Florida State. And yes, that game's in Tallahassee, and yes I'll be going to that, and yes we're a divided household on that. So I don't know if I'm coming back on separate planes or not.

We will see how the game ends up, right. Is it a super close game where a rematch is inevitable between Miami and Florida State, or is it not close for one of us and there's some bitterness that takes over and then we'll want to find a new seat on the plane. I kid, I think on that. A few other things from the weekend that I thought was of notes. Look, we're really screwing up college football rivalries.

For instance, Miami and Florida aren't gonna play where they're not scheduled to play, and they may never play in the regular season for some time with these new you know, demands at the SEC schedule nine conference games. Florida already has a mandatory game with Florida State. The state legislature mandates that game as their tenth Power four conference. They're not They're not going to be enthusiastic about adding Miami

to that schedule. Steve Spurrier dropped us the first time when he took over because he was trying to make Florida's schedule easier so that they could they could they could have a better record. The TCUSMU rivalry for the Iron Skillet. They may have played their last version of that rivalry for at least five years, maybe longer because ones in the Big twelve, ones in the ACC and the same thing. Right, all these conferences are trying to

they got it there. They're so big, you've got to make time to actually play the actual teams in your conference. So having these out of conference rivalries are just going to be harder and harder to keep up. I mean the fact that the weekend had the Apple Cup in Washington and the Civil War in Oregon. Yeah, they're not what they used to be because all four of those

teams used to be in the same conference. And by the way, those games used to always be in October or November, and they'd be rainy and they'd be cold, and they'd be filled with intrigue because there's always at least one of those four teams, if not two, that were in the conversation for the So it's a shame that we're really sort of the best part of college football are some of these traditions and the silly trophies, the oaken bucket or whatever the hell you come up

with as a trophy game. But it's kind of it's kind of it's kind of fun, and it's terrible to see that happen, to see that go away. I have to say as much as that, I'm I go hot and cold on some of the antics that take place now on sports television. I know that my University Miami senior had a blast at college game Day and the university. I you know, I gotta thank you ESPN for forgiving the university a heck of a showcase. The place look great,

the patio look great. And you know, here's what I give McAfee a lot of credit for you because he does this with all the game day you know, I know some McAfee's an acquired taste for some people. He's not always you know, I go back, I go hot and cold on him. But boy does he know how to just throw himself into the college student, you know

sort of stuff. I don't know how much longer he'll have that, Like in his own way, he might be the new Courso right instead of putting on you know, mascot heeads, he's going to be doing you know, crazy stuff like doing high die you know, jumps off a high die board like he did at Miami or whatever. But what's interesting is is how sticky that is for

the students that are there. So some of us old fogies may roll our eyes at it, but they're making Bud ESPN is making real connections there on that front. Next week, I'm glad Miami's off, But wow, what a college football card we have, right, it's Penn State in Oregon, it's George and Alabama. Yes, there's some other games and I'll get to it then, but we're going to learn a lot about that. And then later this week will

there be more head coach firings. There are two one and three teams, actually there'll be three, I think schools, big time schools where you're going to hear loud conversations about what is happening and what's their future. Daboswiney at Clemson Yes, they're one and three. How's that working out? Billy Napier at Florida, he's one and three, And of course Mike Gundy at Oklahoma State are they one and three? Two? They may be over. It's the thing that all of

the those coaches have to worry about. It's the weird rules of college football. Now. You can play four games and then claim a red shirt and essentially get your eligibility back. That that is, if you're a Florida or Clemson and you've got a one in three team and you thought you were going to be a contender, you may have players that say, you know what, this coach may be out of here. I'm not putting my future on the line. I can make money in an extra

year of eligibility. I'm in a red shirt. I want out, and they'll enter the portal. They can't switch teams this season, but they can actually enter the portal now and essentially stop playing and claim a red shirt if they haven't claimed a red shirt already. And that is the sort of quitting issue that I think both Clemson and Florida have to be on the lookout for. And I think that's going to be an underrated story to follow as the week goes on. All right, so there's my little

college fotball update with my little personal touch. Yes, it was raining the whole time, and that you know, it's a it's here's the best part. It poured for three hours straight and sixty five thousand people still show them at hard Rock. So for those of you who think the University of Miami are fair weather fans, the weather wasn't very fair and we showed up anyway. So with that, I will see in about forty eight hours, so we upload again.