¶ Introduction
Well, Happy Friday, and welcome to a special episode of The Chuck Podcast. So today my guest is Frankly, one of probably the when you think of great documentarians of our times, I think there's really two that stand out. There's Ken Burns and his documentaries on American history, and there's Alex Gibney, who has done some just groundbreaking work on society and culture.
And he is out with.
Frankly, two feature length documentaries, almost episodic, but they're both two hour documentaries on HBO.
On dark money.
One is a very specific it's sort of it's very much on sort of how dark money, this ability to take big money in politics put launder it through an organization you'd never heard of. You know, Oh, Iowans for
¶ Citizen's United created the dark money era
Love or Americans that love America and you know, thanks to Citizens United, and you're gonna hear a lot about this. The ability to spend big money on politics, move big money, and do so more anonymously than ever has never been easier. And I'll be honest, I'm somebody who's been a bit of a skeptic of attempts to try to reform and get money out of the system. You know, you know,
I'm one of those. I sort of bow at the altar of Jeff Goldblum's character in Jurassic Park when the old man is trying to tell you that he can keep keep those dinosaurs from breeding because he made them all female, and Goldbloom is playing the mathematician, the chaos theory guy says.
Life finds a way.
Well, I've always felt that about money in politics, right,
¶ Reform efforts have failed
money finds a way, And in fact, some of the great reform efforts of our time have actually created the disastrous situation that we're in today. McCain fine Gold, McCain find gold has thought of as this great reform that attempted to take big money out of political parties and out of the system. But what all McCain Feinegeld ended up doing is moving the money out of the political parties.
At the time one of the few places where there was accountability, where they had to file it, had to disclose that their donors were maybe not in this timely of a fashion as people wanted to see, but they could do it. And yes there was something called soft money, but these people you still had to report where this
money came from. And so here was this incredible you know, this legislation that was monumental at the time, and all it did was was sort of shift the money out of political committees and out of the politicians' hands and into these third party groups.
Now we call them super packs.
But there was different sort of tax code versions of this five oh one seed threes, five four c's, things like that, and it is it is taken. It is essentially hidden the money in playite right. You know, we
¶ Campaigns used to cost millions, not billions
generally know where this money comes from, but we now don't find out when they do it through third party networks and channels. You don't find out about it until after an election. And so we've gone from an election that if you're ready for this in two thousand, where collectively, collectively Gore and Bush.
Spent this is just twenty five years ago.
Collectively they spent about two hundred million dollars in their campaign. You know, two hundred million dollars is what Donald Trump just raised for his inaugural fund. Okay, it is two hundred million dollars is a good first quarter for a general election presidential candidacy. We've now got you know, you know, you now can legally give I think a million dollars to a party individually these days, and you couldn't do
that before, let alone money. You can give to a third party group your money and you never have to disclose it, or you can do it through a foundation and et cetera. So the point is that we really do have.
A mess in our hands.
Alex Gibney will tell you it's Citizens United, and I think there's no doubt that the unintended consequences of Citizens United has certainly created this. The question is what do
we do about it? Because I do think we're in a situation where money is consuming Look, my friend Tony Coenheiser, let's ease read all your listeners of of mister t K out there, as he will tell you they answered, all your problems is money, and in many ways that has become I think the north star of almost every industry these days, whether it's sports, whether it's politics, whether it's you know, anything in business, you know, employee issues, whatever it is, right, the way out of a mess
is usually by by some financial contribution or distribution, but there is you know, and in fact I think the problem is there's a lot of well, my donors are good donors. Your donors are bad donors. So this so
¶ Money has cut voters out of the equation
called good billionaires versus the bad billionaires. Well, one person's bad billionaire is another person's political ally, and one person's good billionaire is another person's political opponent. And so the question is whether who should be manipulating the democracy right, the voters, the majority or a handful of people with their own motivations. And I'll tell you this man, I will say, you know, Alex Gibney has two different feature link films, but the one about Ohio it's like a caper,
and I don't want to spoil it. It's a scandal that if you're in Ohio you probably are familiar with it. But essentially a candidate was able to take over an entire state legislature. He was not even in office, and he became speaker by recruit by essentially being able to finance primary challengers in enough state legislative seats to make sure he had the votes to become Beaker himself if
he too got elected. The point was, that's how easy it was for essentially one company to write one check and be able to get an entire legislature to flip in their direction. This didn't flip parties, by the way, just flipped having, you know, supporters of what they wanted to get done, and when you realize how easy that is now and you realize that the voter has been
cut out of this. You know, take the issue of lobbying and one of the books that I've recommended and people have asked me, you know, what's what's a good book to understand how Washington works? And there's no one book I have a I gave you five books in a previous episode, but one of them is The Wolves of k Street, written by Brody and Luke Mullins, two reporter brothers. Brody Mullins a longtime investigative reporter for The Wall Street Journal, colleague of mine back in my National
Journal days. And look, it's a great read. This is not like a boring book about lobbying. It lobbyists are characters and you know, a good Let me just put it this way.
The brothers are good storytellers.
But there's an essential thing, that conclusion that comes out of it that to me is really striking, which is, you know, when the lobbying industry first became a big deal, it was in the seventies and it was really thanks to Ralph Nator. Ralph Nator was sort of the you know, had a very successful time becoming a citizen lobbyist of sorts.
Started Public Citizen and the pergs, both US PERG and state level pergs, Mass PERG, Florida PERG, Colorado PERG, et cetera, et cetera, and they were, you know, and they were having some success at sort of getting government to either regulate big business or push big business to be more consumer friendly, you know. You know, it was thanks to the pergs that got people to not have to wait a week before their paychecks would actually get cashed by
the banks. Banks used to be able to hold your money for a week before you had access to it in your checking account, and they helped speed that up to one to three.
Days, you know.
And now, of course it's it's it's instantaneous on those things, but there was a time where banks got to hold your money and it took citizens complaining together. So obviously Nator is most famous for unsafe at any speed, the infamous coveyor with the seatbelts. And without him we wouldn't have airbags and seatbelts and all those things. Right, Well, corporations thought, well, hey, if he could do that, we'll
start We'll hire our own lobbyists. And for the seventies and eighties and nineties there were sort of citizen lobbying groups and corporate lobbying groups, and they were often on opposing sides. Well, in the last twenty five years things have gotten so perverted and gamified that there's very few citizen lobbyists anymore or citizen advocacy groups that have do successful lobbying. There's some, don't get me wrong, they still exist.
But now what you really have is big businesses, sometimes on opposite size, trying to manipulate government so that a regulation doesn't hurt their business but hurts somebody one of their competitors. So now you have armies of lobbyists essentially
¶ Trump's memecoin is a bribery scam in plain sight
out opposing sides, nobody worrying about the average voter. The point is it is, look, money has obviously corrupted the system, I mean massively. And when you look at what Donald Trump is doing with this meme coin, which is just a blatant bribery scam in plain sight. Okay, let's not. It is absolutely that right. He puts out an announcement that says, hey, I'm going to have dinner with the top whatever it is.
Of his meme hold holders. So what does it do?
More people buy the coins so they can get access to the president. You know, his club at mar A Lago is a legalized bribe, right. He raised the price after he became president. He doubled the cost of membership of mar A Lago. And what does he do? Basically, people now know they just buy a membership of mar A Lago and they get access to the president and likely the president's aids and likely all the cabinets. This is this is this is basically legalized bribery and plain sight, right,
and there really is no other than thickle standards. There's no legal way to stop this. And you know, I'm old enough to remember when a lot of Republicans were outraged when Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton hosted fundraiser, you know, coffees in the White House where they didn't they were essentially giving people access to the White House so they could ask for money later.
And there was a lot of people uncomfortable with that.
And you know, boy, I think we all long for the days when that was the scandal when it came to money in politics, and now it's it's on a
¶ We need strong disclosure laws
whole other level. And I do think we've become numb unfortunately. And this is where I'm I am, I am not. I don't have a great answer in what works. I think I fall into disclosure, disclosure, disclosure and limiting and instant you know, and the transparency. I'm for the nascarization of money in politics, meaning I think we should allow unlimited donations to candidates, but we shouldn't be able to
have super PACs and third party groups. Fine, you want to be a candidate for office, you want to take a billion dollar check for Elon Musk. The only requirement is that every TV ad you run you have to say that I'm Joshmengi and this ad was paid for by Elon Musk and this person and this person, right, anybody that gave you, say over two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. You've got to actually name check them all the time. You've got to say who you're paid for.
You've got to wear their logo, if you will, just like NASCAR drivers where the logos of their sponsors, you've got to wear the logos of your donors. You've got to say their name all the time. And here's the thing. If you did that, I promise you most donors would come up. You know, I've got a friend of mine who regularly gives donations, but he always gives it in to federal candidates, but only he only gives one hundred
ninety nine dollars at a time. And you know why only give one hundred ninety nine dollars at a time, because he doesn't have to You can, you can take anonymous donations under two hundred dollars, but any donation you'd take in a federal campaign of two hundred dollars or more, you've got to identify who in the FEC database, in the federal election database, who gave you, everybody who wrote you a check or sent you money of two hundred
dollars or more. So I do believe those thresholds you could you sort of can create market incentives to prevent sort of you know, certain things, so unlimited contributions, but if they give you more than a ninety ninety nine dollars, you've got to name check them all of your paid advertising, all the time, not just once, not just sort of in a small print at the bottom, you know where
you see that. Sometimes democratic mailers will have to let you know, the union paid for to when you look carefully, these super PACs paid for by Americans who love Americans.
Who the hell is that group? Right?
That's the that's the sort of the misinformation money We've got to get out of politics. I think what Americans accept is competition, transparent competition. And so ultimately I'm a Sunshine guy. I believe transparent s with speech. I don't know if we can limit speech. I believe good speech will drown out bad speech. In this case, I'm hopeful
¶ Public funding of elections is an all or nothing propositionv
that Sunshine can do this. But I understand the frustration, and I know some well meaning people who think we should have you know, maybe they publicly funded campaigns. The problem with that is that either you're everything's publicly funded or none of it is. You can't sort of go half in and half out. And whenever we've played with public funding, there's always a mechanism to go around it, right, And of course wealthier candidates or popular candidates who can raise a ton of money have been.
Able to do that.
So there, you know, whatever it is, I think we've got to come up with a system that does a couple of things.
Number one is prevents dark money. That you just can't do this.
I don't believe if you want to get involved in anything funded by American taxpayers, you don't get to be anonymous. I'm sorry, and I know the argument for anonymous money is, well, it might be on you know that the person giving the money, you know, doesn't want the blowback. Well, then don't get involved in politics, right if you're trying to manipulate the system in your favor. You know, the price
of it mission is public disclosure. And if it's not important enough to you for you to publicly disclose yourself, then okay, then you do. You're not participating. You get an option to do it. But disclosure is the price to essentially buy a member of Congress by a US senator or by a president. But the way we're doing it now, which is a sort of open, you know, and it is sort of in some ways, we've made it where, you know, there's an old joke. I think
¶ Distrust in politics centers on money in the system
it's Ever Dirkson that said this, you know, a millionaire and a millionaire, and eventually you have real money, and it's like it's a billionaire and a billionaire, and eventually, you know, we're starting to talk about real money. But I think there's certainly the cynicism that's out there, the distrust of politicians and politics all centers around how important money has become in manipulating the system.
And so.
I do think the only way you can get because right now, anytime you try to limit money, limit donations in different ways, one party belo it's going to hurt them more than the other, and so then you get sort of a part of everybody gets into their partisan corners about the issue. Ultimately, I think transparency is one
of those things that everybody should be for. You know, I'm old enough to remember when Mitch McConnell, who was a big opponent of McCain fine gold, his alternative solution was instant disclosure.
I think people should run with instant disclosure.
I'm surprised campaign reform advocates today aren't saying, yes, what Mitch McConnell introduced twenty five years ago. It's that and then some. But the bottom line is, we know we have to do something about this. There aren't a lot of easy answers citizens United. You know, if you want to make the argument that corporations also can go into free speech, fine, but we've got to know you're the
ones buying this speech. If you want free speech, you shouldn't be able to hide while exercising your free speech. If you want access to the public debate, you're more than welcome to do it, but you've got to show your face. You've got to disclose that it's your money doing it. Corporation A or Corporation Y. So, And in fact, I do think that's the that's the least partisan solution that might actually have some some effort at at least slowing down the growth of influence of money and politics.
So that's the Chuck Todd solution there, which is the nascarization of politics. Where are your donors? If you will show us your donors, put them on your jacket, have to, you know, stand by your donors. You're welcome to as big of a donation as you want, but you've got to let the public know I'm bought and paid for by these people.
I promise you.
If that's the law, people will want to limit how much they want to be associated with an individual political candidate, or whether that candidate wants to be associated by in that kind of for that kind of price, with any indie, visual, corporate or billionaire interests. So with that, I hope you enjoy this conversation. Again, Alex Gibney, He's been on this beat a long time, and like I said, I've I've been I've been a cynic myself on what is realistic
when it comes to regulating money in politics. But when you see this story about this Ohio scandal and how easy it was to manipulate essentially an entire state legislature in one election cycle, our system is broken and we're going to have to figure out how to fix it. So with that, enjoy this conversation.
¶ Alex Gibney joins the show!
All right.
Enjoining me now is Alex Gibney. Right now, He's got two whether we call it an episodic series or two feature length documentaries, but The Dark Money Game has debuted this month on HBO with back to back feature length documentaries essentially on the corruption on how the corruption of money in politics. And you may say, don't roll your eyes at me on this one, money in politics, and trust me, I can get cynical too, and I get it.
But what Alex Gibney does, and money's always been a through line for him, But in general, what he does is he tackles in many ways tackles some of the more complicated subjects that we have to deal with in society, and he makes it watchable, he makes it digestible, he makes it accessible. And let me tell you, I think
¶ Dark Money is the best attempt at telling the story of money corrupting politics
dark money, which is a story we can't we journalists haven't done a good job telling. We've tried, we haven't made it as compelling to the voter as it should be. I will say this, I think this is the best attempt I've seen yet trying to get people to understand how corrosive this is become to our political system. Alex Gibney joins me. Now, Alex, good.
To see you.
Good to see you, Chuck.
I want to start with this larger issue of trying to take the scandalous nature of money in politics right now, which is I would argue it's been somewhat of a I don't want to call it a through line in your work, because you've you do a you can get into a variety of things. But this is not the first time you've tackled money in politics in your various documentaries. You've tackled it before. This felt like, you know, it's like it's like we always say no, no, no, no. This
is really bad. And yet no, no, no, no, now it's worse. And the dark money, the five oh one C.
¶ How hard is it to make this story accessible to the public?
Four is the fact that we can hide money now in ways in this post citizens United World is really complicated, and you decided you found, I think, a more compelling way to tell the story. But just in general, how much of a challenge is it to make this campaign finance issue accessible to the general public.
It's hugely challenging, and I think in part because of what you outlined earlier. In other words, we're all cynical about, oh, sure there's money in politics, we get it, but.
We don't really.
There's that great set line from an old senator ever Dirkson, a billionare and a billion there, and eventually you get get to real money, right, you know, it was, And it feels that way sometimes in campaign finance. Oh he's got a billionaire super pack, he's got a billionaire super pac, and we all just sort of, you know, roll our eyes.
Yeah, but I don't think we really get it in terms of where it's got to at this point and exactly how it works. And so that's why and I had done this, you know, I'd been on this beat for a while some years ago. I did a film
¶ Campaign finance should be rebranded as bribery
called Casino Jack in the United States of Money, and it was about disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who I give a sort of tip of the hat.
To in Ohio potential, but.
That one was not that did not break through because it people are like lobbyists money.
I'm saying.
What people need to understand is that we've created a system of legalized bribery. And I think most people don't really understand. Most people get emotionally the idea of a bribe and they're deeply offended by it. So if we
replace campaign finance with legalized bribery, now we're talking. Now we're talking about true crime, and we're talking about the real problem, which is a few people getting advantage over the rest of us, and they're the ones who are insisting that the policies work for them, not us.
So I want to dig into Ohio confidential. Yeah, I'll be honest.
I look as a political reporter, I was certainly aware
¶ Ohio state legislature captured by special interests
of what was happening in the Ohio legislature. I was looking at it in terms of, oh, this is interesting. Is this going to put Ohio a little more competitive? Are our voter is going to punish the Ohio you know that, I'll be frank. That was the prism with which I was looking at at that story at the time, and in many ways I didn't I didn't fully appreciate
the totality of what happened. But the way you presented the story of essentially it felt it's it's a You almost do it as a as a caper, right, you got a lobbyist.
Paper, it's a it's a it's a true crime thriller.
Yeah, it's a true crime story.
You have a lobbyist, a disgraced politician, and an energy company and they get together and they literally take over the Ohio state legislature.
That's right. And and it starts with a death, violent death by gunshot, originally possibly murdered, de deemed by the police to be suicide. And indeed I kind of envisioned that as sort of my there was a nod to that movie Sunset Boulevard, where William Holden tells the story from the from as he's floating in the pool after he's dead, and so Neil Clark, who's the crooked law is to kill himself, kind of tells us the story.
Are you convinced he killed himself.
He pretty convinced that he killed himself. The telltale sign if he you know, maybe the clue is he's wearing a Mike Diwine T shirt.
He wanted to send a message, right, Yes, that was that was his suicide.
Note. That was a clear that was his suicide. Note.
It's like, don't forget look at Mike Dwines and Malmon in this case. Uh and people have nobody's come to any illegal conclusion about it.
But but I think that was the message he was sending.
But it's you know, suicide is tricky. I say tricky. Suicide is tragic and it's mysterious. But at the same time, I think he was also clearly trying to send a message.
I will tell you what, and you tackle this a little bit. As much as I wanted to see the politician get brought up on charges, as much as I wanted to see the lobbyists get brought up on charges,
¶ Why did First Energy execs not end up in prison?
it bothered me that only a couple of executives got brought up on charges. I just googled this morning. First Energy. There's still a there's still a company. I'm just I'm sorry when you get caught doing what you're steal. You want to steal a billion dollars from Ohio taxpayers, how are you still in business?
Well, the question is why are parts of HB six, which was the bill that they essentially bribed to get, still in operation.
Some of it has been dialed.
They haven't repealed it, right, it's not repeal now.
And this is I mean, just for for the viewers who haven't seen it. I mean, this is the most bald faced kind of bribe where executives from First Energy dumped sixty six zho million dollars into a slush fund for the use by Ohio politician named Larry Householder. He uses it first to get to be Speaker of the House in the Ohio legry.
He basically hacked What I would say is he used maga. Okay, he used the divide inside the Republican Party in Ohio in that period. I'll just paint a political picture, right.
¶ Huge money ensured GOP candidates in Ohio won, then were beholden
We've seen this sort of in a lot of Republican parties, from the sort of the pre Trump establishment to the Trump Maga establishment and Householder, you know, very cleverly. This wouldn't have been able to work in many years, but it could work here because there's there is this movement of new MAGA adherents who want to push out the sort of the non MAGA Republicans. So he seemed to use MAGA in primaries to primary his way into getting
the votes he needed to become Speaker. Again, did I paint that picture correctly?
You did?
But even more than that in the few swing districts that there were, and Ohio is an extremely jerry mannered state, but in the few swing districts that there were, he used massive amounts of money to make sure that his GOP candidates got elected. And then they owed him, and they owed him big time. And he had a way that they could pay him back, and that way was
to pass this signature bill that was written by First Energy. Okay, that was the quid pro quo, and the bill was give us a one plus billion dollar subsidy for our failing energy company. So from the First Energy executive standpoint,
¶ The bribe was a good investment
it's a good return on investment. You dropped sixty million dollars in Larry Householder's lap and you get back one point three billion dollars.
Pretty good video, and you prevent bankruptcy. Yeah, well they were literally it was worse.
It's hard you get to keep your you get to keep your you know, your executive salaries. There was another scheme too, where they thought they could spin off part of the company that would earn them another one hundred million dollars. So so it was just literally robbing the state. Robbing it was. It was sheriff of Nottingham stuff. It was like taking from the poor.
To give to the rich.
And at the heart of it was this this quid pro quo deal and this dark money organization called Generation Now, which initially nobody knew, really knew what it was because if you were a five oh one c four, you can't penetrate it using all sorts of you know, public inquiries.
All right, there are a couple of reasons why this documentary worked so well.
They did.
It felt as much like a movie as a doc, right, And that's that's that's your gift. I mean, look, I'm not going to continue to blow smoke, but you do this better than everybody is always trying to be Alex Gibney with their docs. And I say this, you know, the people would be would be in better shape if they did try to model themselves after But you had
¶ How did Alex access the wiretaps?
a few pieces of material that I found to be amazing, and I got to ask, it's the FBI wiretaps?
Was that foyer? Was that government? I mean?
Or was that just stuff they made public during the court cases?
How did you get all of that material?
Most of it was stuff that they made public during the court cases. I mean in a funny way, you know, the moral of the you know, this was a funny story to look at in terms of dark money, because here's one case where they caught you know, the Purpose, and they sent them up.
The prison't happen very often, but this doesn't happen very often. But the intriguing thing is, and the reason.
We thought this was a good story to tell as
¶ Investigators stumbled into the case
opposed to the cases where everybody gets way with it is you can hear how the Purpose talked about their broad because they and and because what happened was the FBI was actually looking in to another political corruption case involving gambling. And the key character at the heart of this tale, a lobbyist named Neil Clark, was on those wires and some were body wires, some were phone taps, and.
Then he started talking about Larry Householder and House Bill six, and they were.
Like, what's this?
So they literally stumbled into this case.
They had no I was going to ask that, because you don't you don't make that clear, know how of what the other case was.
So it was a gambling corruption case.
Yeah, and and and and so. But you know that's the thing. When you pull a subpoena and and and you have an order for a wire tap and you stumble on another crime, you're with any rights to then pursue it. And then if you want to pursue it further, of course, you have to you know, file other requests for wire tabs and body wires they had. They had a group of you know, guys posing as businessmen body wires and going out.
It was a little ab scamish to me. I was, I was how active the FBI was in this?
Yeah, and they were going out to dinner with Neil Clark and Larry Householder and and it was amazing how candid they were about the scam that they were pulling off. And what first energy was, well, Alex.
Can me make a I don't know if I want to call this a confession, but do you know how often I've heard that conversation when I've gotten just a basic briefing from a super pack that is in charge of of Republican house races or super pac in charge of Democratic house races, where they'll just casually say, well, you know, we're able to use this money in our
¶ We've accepted money in politics and are numb to it
five oh one C four that does this, and you know, so way of this what's interesting.
And it was just such.
A reminder how you can be captured by your beat sometimes, okay, and and and look, this is why I love Jane Mayer, who's who's also I noticed an executive producer on this terrific report at The New Yorker who's really sort of been a been been on this beat better than be
better than any of my colleagues on this. But I realized how warped my own brain had become about money and politics as I was hearing those wiretap conversations about oh you put them in a C four and it's not disclosed and all of this stuff, and I'm like, yeah, this is this is just how business is done in Washington this century. And then I realized that, yeah, this
¶ Citizens United opened the floodgates to corruption via PACs
is our problem, right, We're we're this.
Way we accepted, but the you know, the in some of the rulings, and then the biggest ruling of all by the Supreme Court was of course the Citizens United decision. But in some of these rulings the intent was, Okay, we're going to allow unlimited amounts of money to enter the political process by corporations and to some extent, unions. But the deal is, we are concerned about We're concerned
that sounds like Susan Collins. We're concerned about corruption. So so we're going to insist that you can't give money directly to a candidate. You have to give it to an independent organization, a super pack or sometimes a five oh one c four even better, because you a super pack, you have to disclose where the money comes, and they are not supposed to have any contact with each other. Well, you know, ridiculous. Of course they have contact.
With each other.
It reminds me it's sort of like recently, you know this one hundred this sorry million dollar a person candlelight dinner at mar A Lago, you know, for a super pack called maga Inc. Right, And by law, maga Ink can't coordinate with Trump's campaign organization. So invitations say that Trump is a guest speaker. Well, is there any illusion amongst us here or in the country that there's.
Alex do you know Rond de Santis ran an entire campaign where every campaign stop in Iowa that he held, he was a guest his super packed. It was hey, come, you know, come, come to whatever they called their super pac guy. You know, I concerned Iowan's for the future with special guest speaker Ronda Santis.
You know that's right.
So that's how he funded his campaign.
¶ Bribery is now legal
This goes on in every state of the Union. And the beauty of Ohio Confidential is you actually get to hear and see how it works. Because these guys were chuckling to each other over you know, four or five martinis that.
The Citizens United is so great because now Brad legal wow.
And and so that was the aspect of it I found intriguing because while they did get caught and most people don't, we can assume, you know, if you find uh, if you find a rat in your house, you got to assume it's not the only one.
We can assume.
These conversations, as you just said about Ron DeSantis, are going on in every state in the Union, and it's just bribery. It's quid pro quo, it's pay to play, and that's what we have to call out because I think, you know, people I think are starting to get worked up about it, you know, in you know, in Wisconsin, the idea that the Supreme Court judge got through despite the amount of money that Musk spent, because people are offended at the idea that you can just buy elections.
But this idea of money in politics, we've become too cynical about it without really thinking that this is a system.
A bride that we have the stuff.
Look, you do a good job in the piece of noting. Look, you may be featuring a republic a set of Republican corrupt officials here, but this is not as if. And this is the problem, right, is that I'll hear from I'll hear from those that feel guilty about taking dark money. But they'll say, well, we have to be competitive.
We can't.
We can't have one arm tied behind our back against
¶ We're in a kleptocracy now
our opponent. We you know, and look, the fact is, we can rationalize our way to a kleptocracy if we keep doing it this way, which, frankly, I think we're in the early stages of kleptocracy if you if.
You study this as a I'm not sure how early we are. I mean, yeah, wel fair, Well, we're full on crony capitalism. Now, when when you have a mean coin that's introduced, you know, right after the presidential election, you know, and cryptocurrency is flowing to the president of the United States.
¶ Reed Hoffman donated millions to Harris and wanted Lina Khan fired at FTC
I mean, I think we're there.
And I do point out in the film, you know, most the centers on this Ohio corruption case.
But I do point out in the film that, for example, in the you know, in the.
I call out the example of Riet Hoffman, who started LinkedIn, who gave or or was inclined to give Kamala Harris seven million dollars, but he wanted something in return.
He wanted her to fire Lena Khan at the FTC.
So that's where you get to that weird place where, oh, is that a quid pro quo or is he just suggesting that it might be a good idea, you know, for her to fire Lena Khan and in exchange, well let's not call it an exchange, and then surprise, surprise, I give you seven million dollars.
But let me let me introduce an uncomfortable fact about this scandal. Nobody lost their reelection over it.
Larry Householder was re elected. I mean, but I think that goes to.
Is a jury convicted him, right, and he gets re elected anyway, well million dollar.
As president of the United States, Okay, and he was convicted.
He's a felon. So so yeah, there's that.
And obviously we've entered a world where we have such a tribal political system that it is very difficult to persuade people that, you know, they should do other than vote for their tribe, however they define the tribe to be. But I also think in Ohio the problem was compounded by this system of gerrymandering, which resulted in super majority rules rule, so that you know, Larry Householder came from
¶ Big money interests can just buy their own news coverage
the district that was so so read that there was never going to be somebody who was going to you know, particularly on short notice. You know, they just they'd elect a you know, a dead cat before they'd elected a Democrat.
But he could even be hit in a primary. And you know what this also, I'm sitting here as sort of like peeing and a hurricane as a journalist, right which is if we wonder why journalists have so little impact on the converce on accountability right now, well, literally they're just buying their own coverage. Right, it's so ubiquitous,
the amount of money that that's being put in. And frankly, let's be honest, it's these are state house races, which if we don't have good community local information ecosystems, which we don't right now, there is no Literally, trees are falling in little state house district forests and nobody's there to tell you they fell except for the super pac who is able to put all this money in, and they're the ones informing that public about this or that
there's there. They're you know, I'm going to guess that some Ohioans are going to see this and go I had no idea.
I think they are. I think they are. I hope they do, because they should be. They should be ripper at what's going on in their state and not just at the passage of this bill. The justice astounding to me was how the Householder team Team Householder or generation now, how they muscled the repeal effort because in Ohio you can mount you know, you can repeal laws by popular vote effectively.
Right, this is why they have abortion rights in Ohio. Correct, I mean because the voter said, voters took over.
Because the voters finally took over. Well, in this case, they were mounting a campaign to repeal House Bill six secretly, and we had a whistleblower who's amazing. I mean, to the caper, you get the crime play because you the whistleblower who's talking about here's his best friend. He realizes his best friend is trying to get him to do something super unethical. He first turns him down, then he gets uncomfortable. He goes to the FBI.
¶ Ohio whistleblower turned in his friend in service to his state
They say, go.
Back and nowtray his own friend for the good of the state, which he does.
He wears a.
Wire and ultimately reveals that and this guy, the whistleblower, his name's Tyler Furman, who's working for an organization that's trying to drum up signatures against House Bills six. But he learns from his old pal, who was ultimately convicted, Matt Borgeous, that they're literally paying canvassers to leave the state so that or they buy up all the canvassing companies so that there's no ability to canvas. You know, there's one tape recording where the guy says, well, you've
just given me I can't remember. It's like, you know, thirty five hundred dollars was on a ticket home.
What do you want me to do? He said, that's the service you're providing. You're going home.
This signature business I saw, I got a story and
¶ Florida gambling initiatives bought and sold petition signatures
I and it was a tip, but I only had it. It's like one part of it. But there was an initiative fight in Florida. Basically it was between the casino the sports books who want to run mobile gambling in Florida versus the tribes who want to run mobile gambling in Florida. So they had these they were doing competing initiatives and they were and literally there was a signature broker, okay,
who said, I got half a million signatures. They cost a certain amount of money if you want the signatures, and then they cost a certain amount of money if you want the signatures to be disappeared. And this is what I was told by this one political consultant, is that this is a more regular practice that in the petition gathering world.
This is more of.
A more of a common practice than you might believe. That these essentially petitioned signature brokers, you know, the people that you pay to go collect these things. And it's you know, there's a handful of states that do this more often than others. California Florida are two big ones. Colorado, Washington State and Ohio. You know Ohio in various ways it is. It was one of those You're like, I rarely shocked anymore, but even that one shocked me.
Yeah, no, I agree with you.
And that's why people's hair better be on fire, because this is what happens. This is what money in politics means.
¶ Money in politics is like the mob bribing cops
It's like, it's like crime families paying off the cops.
That's what it's like.
It's not just you know, money in politics, it's it's graph it's corruption.
It's no, you're describing this is how. This is how the the Tammany Hall worked. Yeah, okay, these but the political machine.
That's how they worked.
We got rid of them, and in fact, we got rid of the last two in the last few years. There was one remaining machine in Illinois, and that state speaker finally has been put on a corruption trial. The guy's been sort of the head of that machine forever. And they finally got rid of New Jersey's machines where
where you got to control ballot access. And literally here we were the twenty first century and literally some county hack if they were connected to the right machine, could decide who got on the ballot and who was on the ballot, but about seventeen spaces down the slate so they could make sure.
I get the copyright notice. Yeah.
Oh, the current senator there, Andy Kim, who replaced Bob Menendez. Andy Kim never could have gotten elected Senator from New Jersey under any other period until they finally got rid of this corrupt practice in the last year in New Jersey because of the way. He's not an establishment guy. He wasn't with any of the machines, And it's a I it is frustrating to me that generally the public
is cynical about politics. They assume they're all corrupt, but specifically they actually don't realize where the real corruption is versus the ones that are not that corrupt.
Right, and the fact that they're the ones who are you know, money's being taken right out of their pocket. So it's I think there's a tendency real I think those politicians or I know that the government as if the government is not us, but these folks are. I mean, in the case of Ohio, they literally took a billion dollars out of the pockets of Ohioans.
To give it to a you know, a handful of executives, or to give it to a company.
But they wrote that that that message to each other put their heads on Mount Rushmore.
That was something else there.
They know what the.
Standards and practices are on this show. But basically screw anybody that ain't us is what they said.
They didn't use.
That's all right.
If I if I can put the E for explicit on the on the podcast, I think it helps the helps the Doblenes.
Right.
Yeah, But let's go back to the fact that what
¶ Candidates don't run on an anti corruption/campaign finance platform
did I didn't see any candidates in twenty twenty two run on this, and they should have run on this. I didn't see candidates in twenty twenty four o high run on this, and we've had some really high profile Senate races, really high profile fights. It's it, and this is why I think so many politicians are afraid of running on the campaign finance issue.
They're afraid of it because they need to raise money and and so what do you do, Like, if you need to beat your opponent in the primary, you're going to need money, and you don't get money by telling your big donors that you're trying to sideline them, right, I.
Mean, what donor is there?
I think Warren Buffet's about the only billionaire that I feel like has some ethical code. I don't know, maybe I'm being a little a little little facetious.
Here, but let's just say at times he does.
Yes, No, that's exactly. That's the point, right. A billionaire doesn't become a billionaire because they're because they're they look the other They don't look the other way every once in.
All figuring out how to cure polio, right.
Yeah, And I mean I don't believe there's such thing as a good billionaire supporter in politics and a bad billionaire support in politics. And I know that some wealthy people might not like hearing me say that. I might hurt my ability to you know, find investment down the road, right, and you need investors to help you, right, like you know,
¶ Billionaires shouldn't get define the world for the rest of us
it's this is the the trap we're all end.
Sometimes all of us have got to get.
I mean, you know, if you're a billionaire, you made a lot of money through your business, you know, God bless, but that doesn't mean that you get to define the world for the rest of us.
You know who was it told me, I believe this is the correct statistic.
The three riches richest Americans, which would be I believe Bezos, Musk and I think Zuckerberg.
Yeah, they have.
A higher net worth in the bottom fifty percent of all Americans.
Right, No, we are we are the guilded age. I mean, do you feel like we're just rerunning the guilded age?
Yeah?
And and but you can see the rumble. People are getting angry. It my you know, I'm talking to you from Maine, and Maine's got a pretty robust set of rules about you know, against money.
In always has on state political level. Main has always been a little bit. Yeah, they've been they have public financing, I believe, right.
And and I think that.
Uh, you know, you're beginning that what happened was Wisconsin
¶ Bernie/AOC turning out huge crowds tapping into anger against a rigged system
was a kind of emotional pushback. But I also think that it's interesting this campaign that AOC and Bernie Sanders are running, sometimes in liberal districts, sometimes in red districts. They are turning about some pretty big crowds.
And I think.
The the anger that that they're invoking, the channeling, is the anger toward a ri e sistem where whether you're Democrat or Republican, it's the rich people who are calling the shots, and we're getting policies that benefit them, not the rest of us.
Now, And it's funny. I think that's the way in to make this bipartisan. I think there are some true believers on the right about feeling that it that that it was big corporations that got rid of their you know, that that gutted their towns.
Was one, right, and at some point, I mean I saw it in Montana.
There was a by artists and effort in Montana to try to at least push back on dark money.
You saw that.
But they also have a it's a little bit ingrained in their history, right, they push back at the Copper Kings back in the day, like it is, and in some I think Wisconsin has the Leaflette history, right, the progressive movement in many ways, so there's a little bit of that. But you go my home state of Florida, Ohio's always had a frankly, you know, they've had political machines. Illinois, Right, there's certain states where it feels like it's always been even freer and easier.
Right, I think that's right.
I mean, but you know, one of the things that tried to point out in Ohio Confidential, though, is that
¶ Dark money started as one film and became two because there was too much material 50:55 Evangelical grifters became fused with dark money in exchange for political influence 53:55 Corrupt Religious leaders "bless" political corruption to their followers
as you talk about money and politics, it's also true that for most people, nobody likes to bribe right right.
They feel it's unfair, it's wrong.
You know, you see it in crime films, and you know you wish them ill.
We've done a lot on Ohio Confidential. The second By the way, how do you describe this series?
Is this?
Because it's not. It's two films.
It started out as one film and then we just got too much material. I mean, we got into the Ohio story was so good. Yeah. Also we discovered this guy, the Reverend Bob Shank, who had kind of infiltrated the Supreme Court. So suddenly the film that was going to be one just split into two. And but they're not you know, they're not episodic in the way that one leads to another. So there are two films that are related. There are two independents that are related by a common theme.
So the second film, you you explore the sort of this to you borrow a phrase, an unholy alliance, if you will, right of sorts. But you know, you know, it's always funny to me. I've always thought that, you know, Donald Trump and Jimmy Swaggert have a lot in common, right that the sort of the the call it the prosper now now it's called prosperity gospel.
If you will.
But you explore this world of sort of how even some of these evangelical grifters, because I think they're the true believers and then they're they're grifters. And you attacked this a little bit, but how sort of the grifter wing of the evangelical movement became fused with the money people, essentially for the corrupt bargain on the judiciary.
Yeah, so that I mean, you know, you had evangelical Christians who were fiercely anti abortion, but they weren't getting over. They needed money. You had people with money.
Who wanted to deregulate the American political system because they didn't want things like laws that regulated the amount of pollution that they could dump into rivers and lakes and and and any regulations on cigarettes or or anything like that.
But those.
Causes weren't very popular, you know. So so the deal was basically, we'll put up the money. We the billionaires will put up the money, and you'll give us the emotional fervor that we need for a political campaign, will help to fund the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and you'll help to turn the evangelical movement into a deregulatory movement so that we can you know, destroy all the laws that protect the citizens, you know, and and enrich us.
Look, it was a clever it's clever messaging. Right, government's trying to get involved in your religious practice, and government gets involved in business, so we should be allies.
We should be free, right, Yeah, that's right.
And liberty religious liberty a phrase that it was sort of frankly a political phrase that you've been used and weaponized politically.
Yeah, well you can you can see how religions being weaponized now as we see what's happening with anti Semitism, you know, and and how it's basically trying to be used to destroy something called habeas corpus, which is the
very foundation of the rule of law. But I also think that the other you know, there's an interesting character in the film, this guy, Reverend Bob Shank, who's an evangelical minister, and he was a very radical anti abortion activist who was literally you know, carrying fetuses.
To Yeah, it looked like he was part of the Randall Terry world that operation.
Yea, he definitely was close to that. But anyway, they want to infiltrate the Supreme Court ultimately.
And so he has that phrase the wealth of the wicked is.
Laid up for the righteous, and he says, we'll baptize the billionaire's money.
We can do that.
You know, it sort of reminds you of the indulgences of the Catholic Church from way back in the day. So this weird corruption of religion because you know, Evangelical Christians end up supporting somebody like Donald Trump, who you know is would otherwise be anathema to everything that evangelical Christians engaged. But he is the sinner that's going to take them to the Promised Land. But they become corrupt
and in the meantime, the billionaires become sanctified. So it was a good deal and it ended up in you know what, our contention of the argument in the film is that it ends up effectively corrupting the Supreme Court.
Have you thought about the fact that right now it feels like the that we have such a devotion in our society to mind right now, Right, you look at college sports and high school sports. You look at frankly, the world that I'm venturing into. I think it's independent media, but some people call it an influencer game, right, which is also about, Hey, I'm going to go get mine.
Everybody wants to get theirs. And I had a student.
I was giving a lecture this past week at the University of Arkansas Journalism School and one of the students came up to me and he said, Hey, I'm majoring in accounting but minoring and political science, but I really want to get involved in politics. But I thought, well, money drives everything, so I better understand how money works in order to be in politics. And I was I
¶ Society is driven by, and consumed by money
put my head in my hands and went like, oh my god, this kid is right, but I wish he wasn't. We do seem to be consumed with money these days as a society, like it's driving everything because I think we ultimately believe, well, the only way, the only way we can have a we can control our lives, as if we have enough money to control it, like that's become the only the And you know, I don't know if this takes leadership what it takes. I don't know
why we're here, but we're at a moment. And I think it's why we're numb to politics and money in politics, because we think money is driving everything else.
Yeah, I think it's I mean, in a way, it's worse than that, though. I think we're we're seeing a reckoning now. You know, money is the one way you can avoid reckoning with ethical issues, you know your way out of it. We love to clean up the river that we've been polluting for the last twenty years, but you know, I have a fiduciary responsibility to my shareholders. Right.
¶ Law firms and universities have capitulated to Trump over their financial interests
But okay, let's look what's happening recently as Donald Trump has been going after the big law firms, and some have been resisting for the very best ethical reasons relating fundamentally to the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary.
But of course Amendment right to counsel, you know, things like that.
All that, you know, the fundamental rights of the rule of law. You know that in theory, every everyone's equal under the law. That's what That's what it says on the front, you know, at the front of the Supreme Court. But but they cave and they diminished themselves massively because of the money. It's like, well, we have a fiduciary responsibility of the firm.
Well, screw well that whole Paul when Paul Weiss is managing partner, put out that statement saying, we were trying to see if we had any allies and instead they were poaching our clients. Right and and by the way, so everybody individually rationalizes why they're cutting a deal, Well, it's it's the best. I'm trying to save the jobs here, or I'm trying to so you know, you you're you're trying to you know, be able to tell yourself a story. I guess to hope that you know, it makes you
feel better with what you're doing. And instead, you know, we're all living that. There's a great children's book out there called If You Give a Mouse a cookie, right, and you know, and it keeps going and they're finding out if you capitulate a little, he's going to keep asking for more.
That's right. Well that's what Columbia found out.
To switch from you know, law firms to universities found that out right quick.
You know, look, I don't think traditional media companies have done a pretty good job of standing up for a at.
All struggling lawsuits.
It's it's terrible, sah, just because they want to pursue a merger or other financial interests.
You know. But at some point, you know.
We all have to realize that we're citizens of a country that's supposed to stand for something, and unless we stand for it's not gonna be here anymore. Because that is just about the money. It's just about the money. Then we're a mob state, you know, we're all capone in Chicago.
Which before I let you go, I just want to
¶ Alex's advice for young documentarians
spend a few minutes with tips for young documentarians because I just think there's nobody like you. You know, there's the fact like you've got they're they're you're you're both prolific. But I do feel like there's always something different about your docs right there.
You you you.
Try to make them not just talking heads, you know, trading, trading sound bite. It's nothing wrong with that, right that's that was a style for a while.
And you don't have a lot of funding.
But you seem to always let me ask this, will you only end up doing a doc if you can find a character that will help drive the narrative I mean, is there what what is the secret sauce in your head of how you can take a story and turn it into an Alex Gibney di coumentary.
Well, I mean, I do think it's about the story. You know. I remember talking with Bethany McLain.
Who was the co author of Smartest Guys in the Room, when we were doing the Enron doc and we're going on the PR tour and the joke, which I mean wasn't a joke, but the line that we would use every step of the way was it wasn't about the numbers. It was about the people. What made that story interesting were the characters. And you know, there were a lot of issues that may be good and very important as issues, but may not lend themselves to a story. So first
thing is is there a good story? And then how do you tell that story in a way that is
¶ Lobbying is now corporation vs corporation
compelling to somebody who doesn't care.
At all about the issue? Right? That's really the trick.
That's your north star. You're thinking, how do I make this?
Can I make it interesting for somebody that doesn't think that they would want to watch this?
And I have no apologies about the idea that I think Ohio Confidentelism movie, you know that too. I think his patterned after Sunset Boulevard. You know, it's it's it's you know, Michael Imperioli plays the character of Neil Clark.
So you know, I think it's.
Because because you've got a lot of you know, for people at home, they've got a lot of choices, like they can fire up, you know, whatever movie it is that they want to see, or they can look at a doc and and in a way, that's your competition.
But it's also a compelling reason to tell a story. I mean, the best non fiction books.
Read as compellingly as a novel because they pay attention to.
Character and plot and narraive momentum.
By the way, I hope you read.
My friend Brody Mullins and his brother Luke Mullins wrote something called The Wolves of k Street. It is one of the most compelling narratives about the history of lobbying. And you know, they have this great story and you know there's so many of it. I know you've been down the lobbying road before.
No it is it is one.
Because you know they've come to the conclusion that you know, the lobbying industry now in Washington works this way. Used to be it was corporations versus the people. Now it's corporations versus other corporations. Essentially, the people are not involved. Different corporations right, are irrelevant. They're all fighting over getting a law that will help their business and put their competitor out of business. Like there's no longer about whether
the citizens think it's a good idea or not. But they wrote it like a you know, same thing. They start with a murder, they start with a death right. It was just it does strike me that if you don't have a character, it is sometimes hard to tell these stories.
I agree, Yeah, it's the story that matters, and that's how we learn. We learn with stories, you know, that's how we retain information.
What topic do you want to tackle next or are you tackling in the moment?
Well, believe it or not.
For the last two years, prior to the election, I was working on a documentary on Elon Musk, and so now that is my brief has been expanded. It will get longer, and I'm continuing to work.
On Well you want to talk about compelling. I joke about Elon Musk if he were a Bond villain. You wouldn't even change the name.
¶ Elon Musk is Alex's next topic
No, think it sounds like what you'd come up with. I mean, he is somebody.
The truth is stranger than anything you could come up with with. I mean that Wall Street. I don't know if you saw that Turtle store.
Yeah that.
Yeah, the compound, that is something else. Well I'll just give me yeah, go ahead.
The Legion, the Legion of Children, right, yeah.
Oh my goodness, I mean sorry, we're all having boys from Brazil flashbacks, remember anyway, Jesus. All right, Alex, appreciate the time the Dark Money game. It's two great feature films, and that's what they are, feature films. That kudos to HBO. I know a lot of people wondered if HBO was still going to be in this game. It's good to see that they're still in this game.
Oh God bless HBO.
Yeah, no, I I they they I appreciate that they
¶ Chuck's thoughts on conversation with Alex Gibney
still care about this stuff, so it's good for them.
I'm good for you, Thank you, sir.
Thanks Chuck.
Well, I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Alex, and honestly, i'd love Look, I've gave you my plan.
All right.
Uh you know let's let's Nascar up the candidates. Were your donors on your suits? Wear your donors on your website? Where are your donors in your political TV ads? But what would you like to say? I'd love dc you share your thoughts on this, Give me a few ideas, pounce them off the next the next couple of episodes, I will gather together the most intriguing ones and share them with everybody else. So as you as you ponder this, as you watch these Alex Gibney.
Feature length docs.
On on Dark Money, I wonder after if you come
¶ Ask Chuck - How can voters in states with later primaries feel involved in choosing presidential candidates?
up with a different idea than maybe what you had going in. So share me your thoughts there, throw it in the YouTube comment section. Send me an email at Aschuk at dchucktodcast dot com, which of course brings me to.
Some ass Chuck. Ask Chuck. All right, I'm just gonna do one question.
I've had a put up a lot a lot for you guys this week, so I don't want to overload you, but it's a good question.
It's kind of a long one, and I think it kind of fits.
This one comes from Jim in Oshkosh, Wisconsin and Jim Wright's congratulations on the move I look forward to hearing your points in interviews from an independent viewpoint. In an episode late last summer or early fall, you had mentioned that even if voters have to choose between the two presidential candidates, they have their opportunity to choose their candidates through the primary. Living in Wisconsin, I've never voted in
a meaningful presidential primary. Wisconsin's presidential primaries well after Super Tuesday, and the election slate is set before I have a chance to make my decision. Sure, Wisconsin is always a swing state that helps determine the general election, but it usually feels like the choices shrimp or scallops, and I'm allergic to shellfish. I like that neither are a good option.
How could voters in states with later primaries feel involved in selecting the presidential candidates when the final candidates are picked in late February or early March. Well, Jim, look, there are so many ways I'd love to fix the presidential primary calendar. And there have been a ton of people who have been on this. There's some long time
¶ A rotating system for primaries based on region is a potential solution
former secretaries of states in particularly in Maryland and Massachusetts,
have been We're on this forever. They were desperate to create a regional system where basically every four years, you know, we would rotate which region went first, you know sort of, and you would have sort of March would be, you know, the East, and April would be the Midwest, and May would be the South, and June would be the Pacific West or something like that, and you'd rotate it around, you know, you'd give it every and so that every
twenty years, one region. And by the way you start, you know, there's a very simple I'm a big advocate of the small states going first, right, whatever it is, but you know there are small states in every region. So you know, Iowa is great to have as a starter. In the Midwest, they could rotate with Kansas or Nebraska. But in the mid Atlantic, maybe you want Delaware to be the first one. Why do I think small states are good to have this as the starting process because
it makes it sort of levels the playing field. Right, there's a whole there's a whole episode about money in politics. Say, if we started with California, only the biggest donor biggest money candidates would be able to go. Whether you started with New York or Florida or Michigan, right, any of the big states suddenly that favors the big money candidates a small state. You know, there's the grass there's the grassroots. But what we need is a rotation, right. You know,
I think people were tired of Iowa going first. People were tired of New Hampshire. Why did these two states get to pick it? You know, why why can't there be other states in the early in the process.
Uh?
And for me, you know, look, I think there's there certainly should be a logic to this. But here's the problem. Right, these rules are usually set by by the previous winners, and who, however a president wins, is usually how they want to design the primary calendar. Look no further than what Joe Biden did. So he didn't win Iowa and he didn't win New Hampshire. So what did Joe Biden do? We wanted to make South Carolina the first in the nation primary? Right now, we never really had a competitive
Democratic primary this last cycle. We now we know, we know why we probably should have. But that's that's a debate for another era. So you're right about Wisconsin. Now, I would argue that Wisconsin has been a it's been it was an it. Look, Wisconsin was a really important primary to Ted Cruz at Donald Trump in it's sitting in its late April. It was also a pretty important primary to Barack Obama during the Hillary Clinton Barack Obama uh long slog to that two thousand and eight fight
for the nomination. So and Wisconsin has had a history in the past of being important presidential primary, if you will. There's some Kennedy's that have had have done well in Wisconsin, and it's been important. Reagan Ford that you know there there that certainly was a competitive primary. But I take your point, and really what we need is again, you know,
¶ There are ways to make the system fair, but the people in charge don't want a fair system.
some of this stuff, it's just simple logic, right, and you know a region, you know, we could either do it one of two ways. All the small states, you know, no state with more with with more than four congressional districts, they all go first. They all go in the first month. Then you go, say five to ten you know, go in the next month, and then.
You you know, save the big states for the end.
There's all sorts of what I think are logical good ways to do. It's like the college football playoff. There's plenty of ways to come up with something that's fair. But the but the problem is that people in charge of the process don't want to make it fair. They want to rig the system for their side.
Right, So in this.
The college football playoff, the SEC in the Big Ten are not interested in creating a fair system for all schools. They just want a system that's accessible to the Big ten in the SEC and enough of everybody else to make people think it's fair. And that's what happens kind of in these presidential primary processes. Each party kind of decides their calendar. They've mostly tried to do their calendars
together because they realize one help. You know, in some ways, they're both they both benefited, they're both competing in the same state at the same time because they actually, you know, it's like it's like a small town. You know, if you're a lawyer, you don't want to be the only lawyer in a town. You want to have at least two lawyers so that somebody else can hire a lawyer and you can you can get business, right, you each can have a lawyer. So there's some there's some synergy
in that. But look, you're you're it's a fair point. But there is a part of me that says, hey, quit your quit your complaining in that you get to be the decider, and and and which which allergic, which shellfish, which food that could potentially kill you? You get to you get to pick from. But you know, there's there's definitely a better way to do this, but neither political party
seems to be incentivized to be logical about this. There's always a governor, there's always somebody who's got power within the RNs here the DNC that wants to just twist him. Look what Donald Trump did. He changed all the primary rules for the delegate selection process in these various states to basically make it nearly impossible for anybody to get any traction of enough delegates to make his life miserable
at the convention. He created a bunch of winter take all scenarios or nearly winter take all, which sort of starved Nicky Haley of any opportunities to chip away at a delegate lead, and things like that. So I certainly, like I said, I gave you two solutions that I believe in. One is a regional by month four months March, April,
May and June. And you've split the country up in four either do it small states, small, small, medium, medium, large, large, or you do it by regions and you rotate it and the region part you would rotate in each one.
¶ Voters in early states take the process very seriously
Either one would be a fairer system and eventually get more people involved. And here's another benefit. And I know I'm rambling on this one, but I'm obsessed with the presidential primary calendar. I've lived it for thirty years. I have war gained this so many different ways. My favorite aspect about why it's important to have early presidential primaries, why you want to be a state that does that,
because the voters take it really seriously. Iowa is not demographically should have never been a swing state for as long as it was, but it was a swing state because the voters appreciated the fact that they were the initial vetters of presidential candidates. They took the process seriously, and they really did take it. You know, it really was sort of a candidate you know, they vetted candidates,
they didn't vet parties. And I think the process created made Iowa New Hampshire swing states when demographically neither state should have been a comfortable swing state. And we now see now that the presidential primary calendar has sort of shifted away in some ways in both states and differ in different ways that now both states are sort of reverting to to to ones. One's a bit, you know, light blue and one's a bit dark red these days.
But you're you know, when when they were the centers of the political universe, it kept them, kept them in the middle, right, it kept them being a little more starting from the center out. So I certainly would love to see more states get this opportunity because I think that voters when they get more of an opportunity to vet these presidential candidates, they start to take their boat a bit more seriously, they take character a bit more seriously,
and I think it creates a better process. All right, So with that, appreciate the question, and I love the opportunity to talk Wisconsin because hey, it's the Green Bay Packers right now, are hosting the NFL Draft all weekend long. Very exciting. I'm a Packer fan. It's very exciting time to watch. I want to I can't wait to find out how. I think Packer fans are nicer than most fans, which means Goodell, the booze for Goodell should be should be less than usual. But we shall see.
Uh.
With that, I hope you enjoy your weekend.
I will give you a full report of the craziness that may or may not take place over the Nerd prom weekend of White House Correspondence weekend.
Uh and I'll see you when we upload on Monday, m M M m m