Epstein Backlash Could Fracture Trump’s Coalition + Could AOC Become President? + Will Israel Divide Democrats

hundred million what is it? It's the excuse me more than that, the I think seven hundred million English speaking world is the goal. Two hundred million in the in the in a certain demographic group of English speakers around the world. But we talk a little bit of state of the media, a little bit of this state of

international media, a little bit. I find Semaphore extraordinarily helped full in They have newsletters about every continent, the politics, the business of different continents, and I think their daily newsletter on Africa and the Gulf States has made me a heck of a lot more informed than just reading just trying to, you know, read the Economist or Financial Times or New York Times to try to keep track of that stuff. So I find it to be an

exceptional publication. I find Ben to be a fascinating He's got a fascinating view of media in general. But he's a New York City guy, and so we spent a lot of time talking about Mom Donnie and the future of that race, what does it mean for New York. He is a New Yorker through and through, loves his city, loves the history of the city. If you love New York,

you're going to love this conversation with him. Before I get to it, I got a few other things I want to get to including I want to tell you about an event that I would just participated in yesterday. It was about the local news crisis. That was an event in the state of Michigan. This one is about the future of independence and whether there is a viable path.

And I moderated an interesting panel with the chair of the Forward Party as well as sort of the chief political analyst of the Independent Center, with the goal being to try to build an infrastructure. And that's what's interesting there. It's an infrastructure. The goal is to try to build an infrastructure to help independent candidates when they get swamped at the end by big money, either from Republican super

PACs or Democratic superpacks. So they're trying to create an ecosystem, and you know the challenges of that, and I want to speak to that in a minute. But it is, it is, it is. It is the story that won't

go away. It is the piece of toilet paper that is stuck on the bottom of Donald Trump's loafers, if you will, or I guess is a Floorsheim's shoes or whatever it is that he wears. I'm sure he doesn't do Floorsheim And for those of you who know that brand, enjoy the throwback to that. But he can't shake Epstein anywhere. And what's interesting is in fact that this independent event

there's a few former members of Congress there. I was talking with Red Ribbel, a former Republican Member of Congress from Wisconsin who has basically left the Republican Party, and he was speaking to some current members and he wasn't naming names, but he was telling me about how important this Epstein issue is to constituents in the very conservative districts. So what this really is so in sort of like reality based land, Epstein is a curiosity of a story.

But in some of the deep red districts and in the deep and I've told you this, there's a piece of the Republican base that has been he sent I

call it's a form of grooming of sorts. I know that word is going to trigger some people, but they have been conditioned is probably the better term to use. Some of you are not going to like that I use that, and so conditioned is a better word. But this, these group of voters have been conditioned on the Epstein story that it was sort of the tip of the spear.

It was sort of the way to prove that there was there has been a deep state, that there is this cupal of elites where the rules only apply to them and not to anybody else. And I've told you this before. The importance to these folks that believe in this conspiracy, this conspiracy the elites, that there is a there there to Epstein, and the idea that even Donald Trump can't tell these people that there's a there there because with this group of voters he did, they're not

his base. This is the piece of the base that belongs more to the movement than it does Donald Trumps. We've learned there's sort of two parts of MAGA. Half of it is Trump's and they'll do whatever they say. And most of the elected Republicans, not all, but most of the elected Republicans believe there is more to fear from the Trump wing of MAGA than there is to say from the q Andon wing of MEGA. And that's really what this is. This is the q and On wing.

This is you know why Mike Flynn is pushing back. You know, he's sort of the unofficial pope of the remainder of q Andon since there is no que anymore. Maybe there never was a que or maybe it is Mike Flynn, right, I its or do I dun dun dunk. But what Epstein sort of represents for these voters is sort of you know, truth are you are these lawmakers going to keep their word? You know, it's like anything right any elected official if you get caught breaking sort

of a core promise. You know, voters are used to politicians lying all the time, and there's sort of an

there's almost like an accepted an acceptability of certain lies. You know, going to balance the budget and they're full of shit, They're not going to balance the budget. But well, but as a voter, you'll weirdly accept that. But when you do things like I'll give you an example of a famous pledge, read my lips, no new taxes, right, And there were some people that really took that to

the bank. And why did they take that to the bank. Well, at that time, it's because there were conservatives that were skeptical of George H. W. Bush and they thought, oh, he's he's gonna you know, he's not a real small government conservative. And so, by the way, those conservatives are right. And you know, George H. W. Bush was a compromiser, and he had a Democratic Congress, and he compromised, and yes,

they raised taxes. By the way, it set the country up for an extraordinarily great run on the economy in the nineties. Built Bill Clinton built upon it. It's not like he undid what George HW. Bush did. He built upon it. Another famous sort of pledge that really sort of hurt that person was when Barack Obama said during the debate about healthcare, if you like your plane, you get to keep it. It got turned into the lie of the year. Now, it never harmed Obama's politics personally, right,

it didn't cost him reelection. In twenty twelve, Part of it is he never fully faced reelection when it was fully clear that not everybody was going to be able to keep their plan if they liked it. But it did harm some Democrats. It was a huge It was sort of one of those sort of and this is where I think the Epstein promise falls for this core group of voters. You promised you were going to release this. We knew we couldn't trust the Democrats to release this,

but you could release this. And you guys promised to release this. And you know, if you've spent any time on X and you follow the Lincoln Project or the podsave they have some or the Bulwark people, they have found pretty much every single tweet that Donald Trump Junior has said about release the Epstein files, every single tweet that that Jade Vance has said to release the Epstein files.

And so for these voters, this was the equivalent of read my lips, no new taxes, or if you like your plane, you get to keep it and it is possible. And I think this is this is this is what Trump has to fear, is that it's reached that level.

And how do we know it's reached that level? Because there are a handful of Republican members of Congress that are so scared of this issue that they are willing to break with Trump on it. Okay, And maybe some of them are doing it out of principle. I think most of them are breaking here out of they believe their constituents that there there is a big enough constituency in their district that this could cost them reelection, that

this could be into a primary problem. And so you're seeing there is somewhere between twenty and forty Republicans who are absolutely not going to walk the plank here with Trump. They don't want to look like they're covering something up with Trump. And you saw the movement and that subcommittee in the House Oversight Committee, the fact that Mike Johnson just sent him home. Part of this group I was

telling you about that. I was the panel panel before the one I moderated, featured three former Republican members of Congress. They did Joe Manchin did something as sort of a Democrat who's moved to the independence, and then they had sort of three Republican members of Congress. Was red Ribble. It was Ken Buck from a Republican from a former Republican from Colorado, and Mark Sandford, former Republican member of Congress from South Carolina. And it was Mark Sandford that

said that he can't believe that. It just he was remarking at how broken Congress is and how broken the House is, the fact that Speaker Johnson had to shut the place down for fear of members of Congress wanting to work their will, like he was appalled at simply, hey, you don't like it that there's two hundred and eighteen votes, and the fact that because it is not on partisan

lines and it's on bipartisan lines, you're just shutting the House down. And in some ways, you know, sort of the point he was making is that actually is bringing more attention to the issue, and what he thought was an attempt to quell things actually probably made it worse with those twenty to thirty Republican House members who really

believe this is an issue that moves their constituents. Look, I'm not changing my opinion on whether I think this is a shiny metal It is a shiny metal object that has been sort of force fed upon the media ecosystem. Thank you algorithms, Thank you hackers of the algorithms. Thank you to those and the right, who broke the information ecosystem, and who trafficked in conspiracy theories and who allowed this

thing to get traction. This is why the phrases hoisted on your own petard and you reap what you're sew are sayings, because this is the world that many of these folks helped create is now biting them in the you know what. And here's the other problem with conspiracy theory. There's no amount of information that gets released is going

to be believed. No amount maybe at this point and now, of course, and this is you know, of course, the more Trump denies sort of any sort of or tries to detach himself, the more it becomes a newsworthy story to go find out, well, what's he hiding? And the more that he acts that he's hiding something, the more, you know. I use this with my friend Chris Saliza,

and I'll share it with you guys. If you didn't hear the podcast I did with Solissa earlier this week, one of my favorite, there's a Harrison Ford gave what I think is the best political advice I've ever heard in a fictional movie. It's from Clear and Present Danger. Harrison Ford plays Jack Ryan, and I forgive me if some of you have heard me say this one before. But there's this moment, and it's sort of a sidebar. It has really nothing to do with the main part

of a plot in that movie. But you know, suddenly Harrison Ford is in with the fictional president and the president has some sort of his biggest donor has become

a political problem, and he's got an aid in the Oval office telling the fictional president, Hey, you know what, You've got to distance yourself from your pal here. You know this is becoming a problem. And Harrison Ford, the CIA guy, overhears and he goes, Oh, you shouldn't do that. If they ask you if he's a friend, you say no, he's a close friend. And if they ask you if he's a close friend, you say no, he's your best friend. The point is he's like, don't give him something they

can disprove. Don't make your real life relationship the news story. And Trump has made the relationship itself now a story. Oh well, here's more wedding photos, and here's a birthday card, and here's a poem, and here's a drawing. When all Trump had this is one of those moments where if he says I was close friends with the guy I knew he was, I knew he liked him young, I didn't know he liked him that young. We broke off when he did this. He had a built in story.

But for whatever reason, he is afraid to admit he's

a member of the elite right. And we know at the heart, at the core of the MAGA movement and the populist movement in general, it's been to burn the elites to own the Libs has really own the elites right to those cultural whether it's the Ivy League institutions, the mainstream media, etc. And Epstein is seen as sort of one of the players of the elite now, you know it is there's so Trump feels as if he can't even admit that the relationship that we all know

he had with Epstein is something he just wants to pretend didn't happen. I mean, one of the craziest things

that jad Vance has said in defense of Trump is following the Wall Street Journal story about the infamous birthday card or birthday poem, is Donald Trump doesn't speak that way, And you're like, oh, son, you know this is every once in a while you got to remind yourself. Jady Vance is sort of a man child rights he's for there's always this sort of weird immaturity that still sort

of hovers over him. And by the way, anybody in their late thirties early forties, you know, when I was in my late thirties or early forties, I still every once in a while I enjoyed being an immature. You know, you sort of you want to revert back to your twenties. You want to be a snarky. You want to be a snark, you want to be a smart ass. But you're also a little bit uninformed. And sometimes either he thinks that if he just plays the Jedi mind trick

with the base. Donald Trump never speaks this way. What are you talking about? This is the lane. Donald Trump is a guy from Queens. Trust me. He has spoken that way and then some. So it is this, you know, this is a this is a feeding frenzy that Donald Trump. You know, he is both the arsonist and he has poured gas on the fire. Right he lit the fire in the first place. With the conspiratorial you know, there's some deep state dark it's all these dark forces, and

he basically glombed on. You know, these this weird movement existed before Trump was there, and he scooped him up. And he loved how loyal they were to him online and they became his online warriors. He loved that they saw him as a messiah. They love and he he didn't fully appreciate suddenly what some of the expectations would be.

And a big one is He's supposed to be the one to prove this crazy conspiracy theory is true. And now what is he doing. He is behaving like the deep state. So look, it's interesting that John Thune is saying, now this is a Mike Johnson problem. Look, eventually this is maybe it won't be a problem in the Senate because whatever the House votes to do, the Senate would probably do ninety ten on this front because none of

them want to get caught up in this story. And being in favor of transparency is always a better political place to be, whether you're on the left or the right. But by the way, I told you, the whole grand jury shenanigans that Trump tried to create with Pam BONDI was a sleight of hand because Trump knew darn well that none of this stuff was ever going to get released by a judge, And sure enough, a judge just said that none of this grand jury testimony can be released.

So it is you and you want to talk about a spectacle in September or October of Galleine Maxwell, right. I mean, this is like right out of a movie. You know, they're going to bring them in for a congress bring her in for a congressional hearing. And there's there's a good group of people there that seem pretty insistent. This is what Comer wants, this is what timber Chit wants, this is what Massey wants. I don't know if Trump's

going to be able to stop this now. The only thing he now should wish is that he just sort of ripped the band aid off a lot sooner, because this becomes a lot more painful for him politically. If

this becomes the dominant issue when the calendar turns to September, this can be a sort of summer silly season story that he sort of struggles with but gets over, or this could linger and stick with him. You know, I can't help but notice there is a little bit of a parallel. Remember things went Things looked like They were going pretty well for Joe Biden in the first five months of his presidency, and he got the checks out the door, and he got the vaccines out the door.

In July fourth he declared independence from the virus. And then at the end of that month the withdrawal from Afghanistan, and it was a disaster. And then they were trying really hard to make it seem as if it wasn't their fault and they weren't owning the problem. And then infestered and it festered, and I would argue it was the beginning of the end of that presidency. Other things became problematic, but he never politically recovered from this moment.

Trump's already in a hole politically, He's already in a lower place than Joe Biden was right before the Afghanistan withdrawal problem. And so Trump already has a substance problem with the voters. They don't like how he's implemented the deportation policy, The Big Beautiful Bill is unpopular. This economy is not popular right now because housing's expensive, the cost

of living is still up, et cetera. And now there's this Epstein issue, and so this is he is going to wish he just dealt with it in July and August, and that he let the house work its will, and that he just kept following disclosures, because then it looks like he's not afraid of any of this. But now he seems to be afraid of disclosures. So now we have the leaked we have leaked stories that say he found out his name was in these files multiple times.

And you know, this is what happens when you have this sort of He's got a bit of a god complex that he's developed, particularly after going You know, in his mind he's here, he's defeated two impeachments, he's been indicted multiple times and somehow has not had to pay any price. He survived one actual assassination attempt and a second potential assassination attempt. So perhaps he, perhaps any of us would have a god comp after going through everything

he went through. But he's got the god complex and thinks he can just will anything away, wish anything away, do the Jedi mind trick, and his base is going to follow, and it hasn't worked. And now he's so

hanging out there and they don't know what to do, right. They seem to be tied up because their most loyal media audience, half of them want more information from him and think Trump's hiding stuff from him, and they're not happy. So he doesn't. He doesn't. He can't even use his attack the mainstream media. They're out to get me, uh political, you know, sort of uh uh whatever you want to call it. You know that that version of his excuse of trying a distraction trick is a little Jedi mind trick.

It's not and that one's not working. So he's if he goes into September and this is an unresolved issue and we have votes in the House, and I you know, I don't think this economy is going to hold up by the fall all of his tariff That the weight of the tariffs are going to start to hit and hit harder and harder as each month goes on, and we'll have this spectacle of Epstein. I'd be shocked if

we get Gallainne Maxwell going. But at this point, if you're Trump, you might be it's better off doing that because if they look like they're afraid of her, they look like they they don't want to hear from her. At this point, it only may make the you know the wounded fester even more so. Look, you know my opinion about this story. It's a it's sort of a story being forced upon us by the big tech companies. And there's abserd algorithms that got abused by these right

wing conspiracy theorists. But here we are so enjoy being hoisted on that petard on this front. But I can tell you this, They've got to find a way to

rip the band aid off. They cannot. He waits till September. He may splinter his party, and there is nothing that accelerates lame duck status for a president. Then when the party begins to realize there's always going to be a point, and even Donald Trump is going to face this. And I brought this up in my substack this week. The question is when there's always a point in a second term of a presidency where the party realizes that guy's not going to be in charge anymore and you start

to see people peel away. Epstein is now allowing Republicans to start peeling away and distancing themselves from Trump faster than I think this White House was prepared for. And this isn't something you get back once it starts a drip becomes a leak, becomes a gusher. Don't believe me, Go take a look at how the first nine month of George W. Bush's second term win. It started off like it was going to go really well after his impressive reelection, and when it started leaking, it suddenly became

a gusher. And then politically he was in the It was a disaster, and the Republican Party abandoned ship as fast as they could. That's what Donald Trump now has to fear. If he's smart, believe it or not, he

should call up his buddy Mike Johnson since he's also the you know, basically, Mike Johnson is whatever. His only speaker, only executes his his speakership, when when Donald Trump asked him to, he should be telling Speaker Johnson to get back, go deal with this, release the files. Deal with it now, deal with it in the August recess. You let this come come in September. It's only going to make it worse. A few other notes I want to make before we

get to my Ben Smith conversation. First of all, thank

you Google. I made a big deal out of the fact that Google's AI was incorrectly diagnosing me with Parkinson's disease. I had an entire sort of obviously bringing it up. Somebody's listening over there. And now if you search Chuck Todd illness, it says there is no evidence of this, and none of this is true, there's no confirmation, etc. But this is a reminder of AI is only as strong as the information that gets put into it, and

how these large language models are built. What these large language models train on matters a great deal, not a little bit. And the thing that I learned about Gemini versus chat GPT is interesting here. Chat GPT doesn't sort of scour, you know, unless you ask it to sort of scrape the internet over the last seventy two hours.

It doesn't automatically do that when searching for information. Google's AI does it, and so frequency of something becomes factual rather than actually discerning to find out if something is true or not. So I hope this is a little bit of a reminder of folks that AI has got a long way to go, and that remember what AI is. It's just a really smart search engine. If you think it's there to help you to it's there to help you solve problems, It's not there to solve problems for you.

And I wish, I wish the you know, I understand why the people that lead AI want want, you know, want to be aspirational and oh no, this is you know, this is going to be like science fiction and you know these these computer models are going to reason even their reasoning is a computer program based on probability. Okay, so it is. I do think that the leaders in the AI community need to remind people what the large

language models are not versus what they are. One other note from a previous episode that I wanted to bring up in my conversation with Lena Khan, we were talking about what are some of the things about AI, what

are some of the regulatory concerns about AI? And she brought up something called surveillance pricing, which is this idea that you know, each of us are individually only going to see prices that that retailer thinks, using AI researching us figures out what we can pay. And Lena brought

up an interesting scenario. Let's say you have a death in your family and you've got to fly to Denver, Colorado, and the program knows knows enough about you and is able to do enough research to know you have to go. They know that you have this relative who died, and so they know you have to pay, have to get this ticket that you're going to see. They know that you might pay not quite any price, but close to any price. Well, lo and behold. What did Delta Airlines

announced earlier this week? Delta Airlines? And I give them credit for being forthcoming about this, but they said in their earnings call that going forward, twenty percent of their fares may be set by basically AI, which means it's trying to figure out what is it how much I

will pay versus how much someone else will pay. I don't see how that is anything other than predatory and discriminatory. I assume that's why we have consumer protections as something that we expect our government to do. But the fact that we are not yet, we don't yet realize that this is probably something that needs to be regulated and controlled. That's a bit scary. But keep that in mind. Keep that in mind. I said, I give Delta. I think

Delta by the way of the three big airlines. I wish they flew to more cities that I fly to. That's all I'm going to say. The fact that every Delta experience I have is so much better than the other two major airlines that I end up flying more frequently, so I give kudos. It's a In fact, I was on a Delta flight today and the pilot came out to thank to thank those I happen to be sitting

in a frequent flyer section, if you will. I'll just leave it at that and think, you know, appreciated the business. And da da da dah went through this stuff. I've never had that an American. I've never had that in United It was you know, plus you throw in the fact that it's free Wi Fi and Delta. It's not free Wi Fi and the other two they do a lot of things that is there's a reason why it is. I think it is right now the more popular airline,

but Delta. I will not say nice things about you if you go down this AI surveillance pricing bs because it's extraordinarily discriminatory and I think predatory. So I just

wanted to bring that up because literally had the conversation with Lena con and I think was two days later that the news about Delta Airlines was there a couple of political notes in North Carolina. Roy Cooper has decided to jump in. We kind of knew. I think i'd let you know that it would have been a shock to Democrats had the former governor not gotten into the Senate race. But what's interesting I told you before Laura Trump has frozen the Republican field, saying she isn't going

to make a decision until Thanksgiving. However, according to my friends at the Hotline, she actually has to make her decision sooner than that, even though she wents to state law North Carolina requires her to move back to North Carolina by late September in order to meet a ninety day party affiliation requirement before the December candidate filing deadline. So while Laura Trump wanted to buy time until Thanksgiving, according to my friends in Hotline, that is something she

can't do anymore. So with Roy Cooper in, I actually do think because he's going to get a huge financial head start on that, I do think there'll be a lot, you know, a she's got an actual deadline in order to meet residency requirements. And frankly, I think it's something that national Republicans are going to want her. It's going to I think this is a double edged sword in a midterm year sharing the last name with the sitting president. I don't care which party you are. In any midterm year,

that's usually not a good place to be. So while being a Trump will clear the field for her, means there'll be no serious primary challenge, She'll have all the money in the world, et cetera, et cetera. She may acquire all of Donald Trump's political baggage. And is that something that is going to make that seed harder to hold or easier to hold? All right, let me tell you quick two minutes about this independent there was. There

was two interesting pieces of information that I learned from it that I wanted to share. One is sort of the demographic makeup of self describe independence. I think many of us have been telling you for quite some time that you know, the fastest growing party in America is no party you go around any There's about thirty five states that keep track of that force you to register by party. There's another fifteen where you don't have to register by party. I live in one of those, Virginia.

It's that you don't have to declare party to registered vote. But among those states that do the fastest growing party has been either no party affiliation independent however, and I think they call it NPA in Florida. Different states call it different things. Nearly seventy five percent of all those that have been registering as independence are under the age

of forty five. This is primarily a phenomenon of millennials and gen Z. And what's also interesting is that the gentleman that was on my panel believed that by twenty twenty eight, millennials and gen Z combined, so basically, all voters under the age of fifty will outnumber all voters over the age of fifty in the electorate. So this is the growing part of the electorate as the older

part is shrinking. And what's interesting older voters because once you get into the habit of either voting read or voting blue, the older you get, the more likely you keep that habit. You view third party candidates or independent candidates more as spoilers that end up benefiting one party or the other party. That is not where millennials see independent candidates, and that is not where gen Z sees

independent candidates. It's fascinating statistic and the question really is is this something is the something to build on and

I do think it means that if you're going to run as an independent, you really you know that your best potential constituency is going to probably be voters under forty five, which some argue is a is a harder group of voters to get focused early in a campaign, which an independent candidate sometimes needs. You can get to those voters late, right when you're under the age of fifty. You've got a lot of other things going on, raising kids, do da da, you know, mixing all sorts of things,

and sometimes you don't tune in until late. Older voters today know how they're voting in twenty twenty six, younger voters don't yet know how they're going to vote because they have busier, busier lives and they're still forming their opinions. But I thought that was a fascinating point on that.

And then the other is this question of whether is there a I don't want to call it a legal loophole, but is there a better way for the Green Party, Libertarian Party, Working Families, Party, Forward Party, all of them working together and filing essentially class action suits against all

these state parties that put up higher barriers. I don't understand how you don't have an equal protection argument that basically, voters, if you're not a registered D or R and you want to either run for office or you either want to participate in a primary in some of these states, you're being disenfranchised and register have it being forced to

have to register with one of the two major parties in order to either get ballot access or to participate in a primary. It's a form of coercion. Right is that legal? How is that constitutional? So anyway, it's the question is whether all these entities could work together, could do this, because ultimately we're not going to know if independent candidates or a third party movement can really take off unless they get an equal shot at getting on

the ballot. And right now, ballot access is usually the biggest hurdle for many of these candidates. All right, let's sneak in a quick break and when we come back my conversation with Ben Smith, like I said, the quintessential New Yorker, and I say that with nothing but respect and compliment on that front, coming up, Ben Smith, well

joining me now is the editor in Cheap of Semaphore. It is Ben Smith. I've known him in so many of your iterations. I have multiple, many of yours exactly. This is the world, the world that we occupy in media and journalism. But looks semaphore is what do you celebrating your third birthday? Pretty close?

But I am where do you? Where are you today? And where did you think you would be three years ago? Yeah?

One hopes for that, and instead we've just done a series of been saying different things.

one point oh was fragmentation number one. That was sort of what the hotline was. That was in some ways the end of one point zero is what Politico came in and did that. And now streaming and where we are now is sort of fragmentation. Independent journalism, whatever you want to call it, is fragmentation two point zero. And in some ways that's what semaphore right. You guys are trying to challenge traditional media. I'm trying to do it

in my own way. And here we are, and as I joke, and I think you guys probably feel the same way. The goal is to be consolidator, not to get consolidated. But if you get consolidated, it might not be so bad either.

think you know somepore. You know, we launched, We launched, I think as people were saying, hey, the web as we knew it, in social media as we knew it don't seem to be working quite so well as we thought. And with a kind of with a thesis that we're going to have to reach people one to one and also that convening at events are going to be a big part of this business and a big and sort of the core of how you reach pop one to one. That second thing has just been truer than we could

have imagined. Like we built these really in the short period time, pretty huge. We have a Davos competitor in Washington called the World Economy summit which you actually gatherather maybe I think it was the biggest gathering of CEOs in America this year, and we did it in April.

It'sn be a lot bigger next year. And so I think the notion that you could sort of build a news organization whose core was convening it was a little exotic and has really been truer than we expect it in a way, like we said it, but now we have really like that's really what we're doing. And then the notion that in a world with like where social media is really untrustworthy and polarized, where the web is really untrustworthy and polarized, you know that we could build

something and I think maybe more than we expected that. Like, there's a group of people, and it's particularly like people who make decisions in business and government elsewhere, who just like can't afford to be lied to because for them news is a tool they used to make decisions. And most of the rest of news consumers. I think the thesis of a lot of media companies is, oh, like,

this is entertainment for people. It doesn't have to be true, it has to be emotionally engaging, and so like I think there's a real split there, and we definitely have taken that former path of like, we're news for people who really probably know what their philosophy of the world is, and we're probably not going to change that, but we

can inform them. We can open that, we can provide different perspectives in different legitimate points of view and tell them even what people who they despise think about this, and that that's a really valuable service. We can tell them, we can separate news from opinion. They're not out shopping for new points of view on the world or for new opinions for themselves. They're trying to understand what's going on.

I'll be a subscription model, but I am a huge believer that paywalls are not going to solve the information ecosystem problem. So explain why you decided to be free for all and that you've not I think a lot of people assume, well, you're going to be free for now and then you're going to put up the paywall and that's not happened. Explain that philosophy.

And you hear people in particularly there's a way of people saying like, subscription is the only like pure way to do journalism because you're not corrupted by advertisers, can be you can really say what you think, you can be honest.

the journalism. I do think that we grew up in this like utopian moment of just open information and free information that was new that I mean, and you know, I guess made a way that probably started with television broadcast right broadcast was free as a matter of like you can figure out how to make people pay for it. I'm sure they would have if they could have. I'm sure you know, the founders of CBS News, if they'd figure out a way to make people pay, like the

BBC does. They come and they like raid your apartment and they see if you have a television, and if you do, they make you pay the license fee and you can be in trouble if you don't. Like that's literally how they do.

is another big crisis. But I don't want to like make it harder to pay journalists because I am ideological of that thing too, I guess is my and and for our for ourselves, like we're you know, we think the advert we were having a great run in the advertising business and the sponsorship business. And I don't have any plans to charge subscriptions. But if I thought that it would help me hire more journalists, so would do it.

always one and the same. But let's put it in one that they're all going to own their own work. You know, I look at the you know, I'm doing some work with Newsphere, which is which is another type of model, which is and people it's a it's a it's I'm really enjoying sort of just that learning about that business model. And it's a different business model than substack. But I do think there's going to be these different because everybody that's on Newsphere owns their own material. They're

just used, they're just licensing to that platform. Do you

think that I think I think this is a generational shift and this will be the way it works for another decade or so. Are you convinced of this?

is a little overstated. And I think people are going to make financial decisions that are pretty boring about which pays you more. And I think there's also like is it ai training data? That's another form of ownership and licensing that might make yesterday's show have a little more value or not. But I think it's interesting. I mean, I surprises me, actually, But Fox Corp. The parent company of Fox News, is way ahead on this, like.

Fox did? They acquire this podcast, right wing podcast called Ruthless. Yesterday, they acquired a company called Red Seat Ventures, that is the production company for Here's Morgan Tucker, Carlson, Megan, Kelly, Bill O'Reilly like they're starting to basically take what they have, which is capital, Like they can pay you a bunch of money and a real advertising sales operation and to and basically between the and a bunch of distribution. I'm like to be and I'm Fox, and you're going to

see these big media companies. Versut which used to be MSNBC is going to figure is going to get around to this soon. I gotta figure and we'll get around to this, say like, oh, what we are is a collection of shows and talent. That's what we've always been.

paramount's going to. I assume they don't spin off, they just sell to either the Warner brothers, uh can spin off or versant. But it feels it's very similar. I've described it. So I'll give you an example. You'll appreciate this. When I was at National Journal in about two years before you guys showed up when I mean you guys Politico or what was it called for a brief period

before it was politically the Capitol leader of the capital Leader, right, And there was a bunch of us that went to David Bradley and went to John Fox Sullivan at the time, and said, hey, we should shut the magazine down and put all of the efforts into Congress Daily, which was

a growing digital product and hotline. You know, we had all we were we were, we were, and and it was we had a huge debate about it, and it was sort of the digital side was going, hey, you know, and but there was a but there was a bunch of revenue still available, and it was sort of like you didn't want to just throw away that big chunk of money. Every think we were talking eight figures in revenue, and you didn't want to You couldn't and yet everybody

agreed it was a diminishing asset. That it was that eventually the trade association guys that bought all this full page advertising in the magazine were going to retire and be replaced by people who realized, no, no, no, no, you don't want to advertise in a magazine. You want to be in the digital product. But you never know when

to when to say no to that cash. And that's what I think is happening with there's a certain amount of money to be made in owning some of these cable channels, probably for another just like there was with FM radio in the nineties. Yeah.

to go away like what I always describe. And I'm curious if you agree with this, which is, look, mainstream, there's always a publication, there's always a version of mainstream

media that's dying. Right. Life Magazine was a major deal until it wasn't right And at some point having a magazine with the best photos around the country no longer meant anything anymore, right because moving pictures was better and we had color TV, and Life just sort of it stopped, and you know, we didn't have this big pearl clutching moment where we said, oh my god, mainstream media is dying.

Life Magazine is dead right. Like, the point is that we just evolved, and I think we're having the same thing. Cable news is probably going to evolve out of this. But and maybe not all three major networks survive in the next decade, but some of them will, right, and they'll and and then there'll be new main you know, and something on YouTube may become the thing. Maybe the midast much becomes the next CBS News, right, you know that. You know there was a time when CBS was a startup.

a long time until the NBC finally. Yeah, it was an interesting arrangement.

was a big deal. But the Cold War also stabilized us as a country. It stabilized our politics. The two parties agreed that we had to fight the Cold War. They may disagree on how to do it, but everybody agreed on what to do, and both parties kept their fringes.

And now, if you look at our politics today, it's actually very similar to the politics pre World War Two, and it's very similar to the politics of the entire nineteenth century and the media and media partisan media, and so in some ways, you and I I've always wondered, did we grow up in an outlier period of the American.

a messy one, not a great one.

great journalist and the and there's an enormous amount that's been reported, and specifically Gawker posted the quote unquote Epstein and whatever list. It's his address book. It's been on the internet for like what twelve years. It was like

a medium sized scoop in the year twenty sixteen. And you know, and the Washington Post and others have documented in great detail his long and warm friendship with Donald J. Trump, Like again like not only not a news story of like the nineteen nineties, like you could ask to anybody in New York like, oh, yeah, they're friends, like not

not secret in any way. And then all this other stuff is basically made up, Like it's to me, like this is pizza gate for people with college educations like Jeffrey Epstein obviously horrific abuser of young women in Florida in the early aughts. I think that's about blackmail. The stuff abit. I mean, this is supported well.

it's funny, it's like and that's the And I guess the question when does this end? Because I would argue it's always been there. It's just yeah, the Internet mainstreamed it.

they dueled, Like I think, like really dark sexual smears are like very very deeply connected to global politics always and probably not and.

collective action. Right, there's always been this this push and pull. Nobody has the finger on the pulse of New York City in the reporting world. I think like you do. You're a believer in New York being the center of everything. And I say this, and it's.

there was this this whole back and forth. But I set this up because this is one time where I

am going to agree with you. What happens in New York City is going to reverberate around the world. In this election, I think this is as big of a of a of an election as we had that's not a presidential in a long time. I mean the Mamdani election. I think is this is potentially this significant for the future of New York City. But I'm curious if you share that view.

I think not necessarily emblematic of what's happening. If you look at the Senate primary in New Jersey across the river where Mike No, it's not really it's really representative anything except that you really do see and you just feel it here that the only people who have any

energy are is the real left, is the hard left. In the same way I think that you could feel in Republican politics that the only people who who had

any energy was the Trump movement. Like that, and there's really there's passion, and there's energy, and it's young people and they're not going to adore and they have figure and they and the thing that mcdanie really has, which I think the kind of previous iterations of the young Left really didn't, is how to communicate with working people, with people who don't share their ideology, with people who aren't interested in ideology with people who don't want to

learn some new language to talk about the world and talk about politics. Mamdani doesn't come, is not trying to persuade you of anything in particular about gender. He's not really interested in talking about the control of the means of production. He's not like, you know, I mean, if you read that, if you're like, if you are someone who like thinks maybe capitalism is good, you should like and you read the DSA manifesto like your hair will stand on end. But Mamdani's not out there reading from

the DSA manifesto. He you know, he's in some ways of a very normal politician. I think in a way, I think the tradition that he's in in New York is actually the other the last socialist mayor we had, who was Firella LaGuardia, Like I don't know if he will pull that off, but LaGuardia was divisive and similar ways actually was of the left in a pretty deep way.

But also it was like relentlessly focused on like building stuff and moving stuff around and cleaning up the garbage, which is what these meanest blopses actually are.

You know, our government actually pulls that off for less than a dollar And it's quite remarkable. And I sort of feel that, you know, we take for granted sometimes these mundane things that government does almost without us noticing.

to me of optimism about Mom Donnie in town among people.

no attention to what was happening. It was it is the biggest sort of leadership failure of a political party that was happening right in their backyard, and they paid no attention to it until it was too late.

and Cuomo took Coo became the establishment candidate. And now we're in this situation where the people who everybody in New York hates most, which are billionaires who spat off on Twitter all the time, and they're going to basically saying I'm gonna we are going to take not actually enough money to make it work, which is, by the way, a billion dollars that's what Bloomberg spent, but a totally trivile all amount of money, which isn't even enough because

New York is so expensive, so big, Like you want to buy TV ads in New York, they're going to put like fifteen million dollars in. That's what like T mobile spends in like fifteen minutes. You know, Like it's just not it's not It might get you a couple of taxicab to try to bribe you to take some disgraced elderly gentleman, whether it's Adams or Cuomo. They're deciding which one to try to force down the throats of the kind of you know of New York voters who

are kind of cynical about that exact move. Like I actually think when people saw flyers and saw TV ads from these super pecs supporting Cuomo, I think regular voters thought, oh, this is who the billionaires are. Sorry, this is the corrupt old guy the billionaires want us to vote for it. Like,

I think that's a real dynamic and problem. And Mam Donnie like Trump, who was a very underfunded candidate in certain ways, pointed to the big money supporting his opponent and said, look at this, and people kind of got it.

know what, you get that done? All right? I'm just you know, I mean, you know it done well.

stronger establishment contender than Ry Party. My Bay might still have one, like there was something, there was something really

real happening there.

eats the banana, then he flings his speces at you. Oh my god, that Schubert did not appreciate it.

And so I think he probably thinks nobody else could do this job.

which was of course what was Mitt Romney. The post Mitt Romney recommendation was no, no, no, no, you got to get softer. No. He went harder, and he diversified the party and he made it different. You know, for whatever you think, it's a different Republican party, but he changed it. He changed the electorate more than he's changed the elected officials. So I'm not going to sit here and say that. So, you know, what do you expect? What kind of national

candidate do you expect her to be? And do you assume, by the way, how I assume she's running, do you you know?

you know, you really changes your life forever. And I don't know where and I don't know where she is on that. I think that's a real consideration for anybody. And she may want family and this is like she had people family mode. People underestimate the extent to which

like real personal decisions are a factor in it. I do think she shares with Trump at this point in fact, she's a real celebrity and that she's actually like better, She's better with this than people realize.

clip of him saying something like totally bananas. Half the time, it was in the context of a joke that the and part of the joke was that the media is going to clip this and take it out of context. But you, my true follower, are in on the joke with me, right, And so, like, I think people missed a lot of his appeal because they processed him through short clips and similarly theyoc you can find clips of

her saying very very strident stuff. She's very she actually shares with Mom Donnie, like her style of communications is not hyper polarizing. It is about like try, it's not about finding the sort of buzziest buzzword. It's the most

alienating way to speak to people. She's very, very talented, and I do think that the question is which I think with Mom Donnie, there was also a sense and I just like hear this from people who I have a very specific conversation with somebody we both know who's voting for Mom Donnie, that I was like legitimately shocked that she has voted for Mom Donnie last night. Yeah, like not a person of the left like at all, like a person of the you know, active person of

the Democratic center. And I do think, you know, there's this sense of just like like this this is like the particularly after the sort of Biden train wreck, we got to sweep everything aside. We've got to the whole system is broken. We got to blow it up. We need new people. This guy is an instrument for that. And I think, you know, the question is how many Democratic voters.

don't I know who Trump is. I know he's full of shit, but you know what, Yeah, we need to blow this up, and he's he's going to blow it up, right, and they want it Like I.

the same sort of setup as what happened in Kansas. Everybody's pissed off about school funding. It's one of those hyper local school funding has. You know, all, here's the problem in these conservative states that are that are have a lot of rural areas. School choice in theory sounds good, but then if you live in certain areas, your choice is homeschool or the school right there isn't really a choice. And Iowa was always very proud of its public school system.

I always always had a very strong one. When you look at those national rankings, it was like Massachusetts its one, Iowa was always in the top five. So yeah, and he's a pretty conservative d right, he knows his state, he was elected statewide. If he wins, I think the DNC goes back and sucks it up and realizes, you know what, it's better for the party to start in Iowa because you got to learn to talk to rural America and it's the right.

And you can certainly tell yourself a story where AMC comes in, she wins Iowa, jses New Hampshire and then goes to South Carolina. And I think people like one of the really interesting things in the mom Donnie races that younger black voters are not voting like older black voters, And.

younger Black voters. And I think like maybe our sort of some of our assumptions about the way democratic politics work might be a little off and in a way

that could favor the left.

about Jimmy Carter. In nineteen eighty nine, nobody was talking about Bill Clinton. And in two thousand and five, the Barack Obama conversation was a point, maybe he'll be Hillary Clinton's running me, you know, maybe he'll be or maybe he'll run for governor of Illinois and then run for president in twenty twelve, but they weren't. Fully it was really all about her, right, And so the point is

is that, you know, and Pete Boodagic. Did anybody talk about Pete Bootaget after his failed DNC race other than he was really good on television interviews? Maybe you ought to do something more right, and all of a sudden he runs for president and look without COVID, I still think that thing comes down to Buddhajid and Sanders, not by.

most fascinating issue in the in the next Democratic primary is going to be Israel and the divide and that that's going to be. That's going to be the divide that probably gets overcovered by people like you and I. Right the grid we're you know, we're we're probably going to over index on it, fairly or unfairly, but in some ways it will be when you.

think it's going to be an unpredictable litmus test. And I don't know what what's the right answer as far as the politics of this going forward in the next couple of years.

it's not what he ran on. But on the other hand, he is a very like convict committed pro Palestine activist right like if for all his lean and can talk about these issues very surefootedly and fluently because he's been doing it for fifteen years. And and I think it's so I think, I mean, one question is how salient will be right, But I think right now it's a hugely salient issue and Democrats are increasingly andy Israel, and I think there's you're gonna have You're gonna think what

I bet. I think you'll have a sort of normal democratic platform that when elected, I'm not going to cut you know, I'm not saying I'll cut funding the Israel, but I want to pause funding and do a review the way Trump just did with ukrit right, like we want to do We're gonna want to review how our age Israel is being used. I bet it's a formula like that, and you're going to see like that because like, yeah, I think you know, do you want to Are you going to keep funding the Netnia?

that party. I think is real. I think just the partly it's just the nature of our incredibly polarized system that the more closer Trump hugs and Yahoo, the more idiou is Wrael the Democrats are going to become. And yet but also but also I think it's but I also think it's a feature of a sort of political

media campaign to silence pro Bellstadian voices. Like obviously that is a real thing, and what you see, like if there's any lesson of like how does it work when the when powerful forces try to silence the speech like are we like we're like you know, how did how did that work? With vaccines? Like we're now like incredibly like an insanely anti vaccine country. Well, so I look at the deep platform, it's going to.

you know, I always find Israel. Let me I'll throw one more question at you. Do you think that Israel's politics is our future or did we export our politics to them? Meaning? You know, I find it interesting that bb IS has gotten more and more power while also becoming less and less popular. Donald Trump's got more and more popular powerful, but he's arguably just as unpopular as he was when he began right. In fact, we're starting to see. And yet the left in Israel tried all

sorts of ways to stop BB. Right, they tried, and it's like same and you're watching the left here in this country try all sorts of ways to stop Trump and they've all failed. They tried in the lawsuit, they tried creating a centrist party that didn't work, right, Like, they've tried all these things. I look at Israel and BB and think, hey, the left, the anti Trump forces ought to spend more time studying the mistakes of the ANTIBB forces in Israel.

But I think the I think the assumption there was this assumption that somehow, the further the right that BB went, that it was going to alienate And the fact is it was, you know, BB being sort of always being tough, uh to those forces trying to sort of get rid of Israel was always going to be better politics than whatever problems were domestically. And I think, you know, for whatever reason, the two state solution just never resonated as much as I think the left thought it would.

their fear around immigration at all. I mean that I find that fascinating. I don't really know it.

don't like the immigrants they don't know. And that's always and which is ultimately why we don't why Americans are recoiling it. Why are you getting rid of these people that are are making chicken affordable? Why are you getting rid of these people that are making produce affordable? What are you doing? Hey, that person that cleans my house, she's really she's terrific, She's not a criminal. Why are

you attacking her? Why are you scaring her? Right? I think, and ultimately we're still there. It's right. Look at how many times you can write the story of well, I voted for Trump, but I didn't want that immigrant to get deported. I like it, you know, one hundred percent, because he's a hotel person. He gets it. Every time he's been that argument's been made to him, he gets it.

And I at some point, because the polls are showing this is not popular, The question I have is does he turn on Stephen Miller on this or does Stephen Miller realize is he smart enough to realize what's coming? And he sort of and he you know.

And the other thing that I think we really see ourselves competing with is the World Economic Forum MEDABAS like that is a interesting fascinating institution that is, you know of also very root in the twentieth century.

political actors is a really strange twist. Like I don't think that, Like I think Elon Musk and Bill Ackman earnestly consider themselves the voices of the people.

You know, hedge fund managers and short sellers who spend who often spend like one hundred and seventy nine days in the cities that are to pay local taxes are having these huge public freakouts. These are not beloved specific leaders.

a very small de democratic tradition. But if you think about there was a period where New York was kind of run by the science of these great New York mostly kind of our crowd Jewish families, the Morgan Thaws, Robert Moses, like, who felt to some degree like they owned the place because they did and operated with a level of kind of no bless Obliege actually, and she's

certainly the inheritor. And I think that's actually a great tradition, Like it's some problems with it, but like there's something nice about that tradition of people who really feel a commitment to the civic life of the city and feel grateful and feel a level of gratitude about what they were given and are incredible, intense, hard working public servants. And she was showing up at four am for Sanateasian roll calls when she was a great sanitation commissioner, Like

she sort of embodies that. I think, like he's a tough, driven, driving manager that's not always the personality type of a politician. And I think there's a question of does she want the political job, but she I think, you know, people think she's doing a pretty good job running government agencies she runs, so I assume she wants to be mare at some point she can.

I always learn something from him, and I enjoy debating him about all sorts of intricate ways to deal with the press and media, et cetera. But let's do a little last Chuck. Ask Chuck. We got a lot of them.

I'm going to try to get through four or five questions instead of just doing two or three. But a lot of it depends on how much I ramble on.

he says, Hey, I found the Chuck podcast after hearing your convo with Chris Salissa really enjoyed it. All right, look at that selizza. You got me another. You got me a podcast listener. I appreciate it. He goes, I'm a lapsed Red Sox fan, but you're talking about the Nationals got me thinking about baseball again. With two MLB teams still playing in minor league parks? Is this a Rob Manfred problem? Has he lost the will or ability

to hold owners to basic league standards? If teams like Tampa and Oakland can operate like this, is the sport really sustainable long term best? Matt Jay, I plead you asked this question. I go hot and cold on Manfred. I do think you've got to give Manfred credit for the rules changes, right, So you know, we sit here, I think we if you're a baseball fan, your program to hate the commissioner. Right, we all hated Bud Ceiling. And then like the longer you go, you're like, well,

well he really messed up ninety four. But you know, jeez, the wild card was turned out to be a pretty good idea, and this turned out to be a pretty good idea. And you know, he got baseball back to DC and he got baseball into Miami. You know, these are two things I didn't think was going to happen. And with Manfred, I there's a part of me that says, yeah, I think the you know, I put it this way. Look, Manfred was also chief legal counsel even before he became commissioner.

When I look at the state at baseball, where I get angry as a baseball fan is that is the fact that the owners canceled the World Series and still didn't get a salary cap. I mean, if you're going to basically do the worst thing you could do to your sport, you better get a financial struck. Sure, that is sustainable for a generation and they didn't do it. Look, Baseball it is, you know, the Baseball Union is is

easily the most powerful players union. And by the way, as we're finding out, if you're if you're following my friend Pablo torre Uh and Pablo Tory finds out, the NFL p A is probably the worst of the players unions.

And part of that has to do with baseball players are more likely to have longer careers than football players, and I think the football players the players don't get as active in the union until until they have more than a cup of coffee in the NFL, and so that's it's a lot of players that don't end up, you know. So I think it's it's unfortunately the the owners have had a way to sort of take advantage of that a little bit, and they it is the

nfl PA, you know. I think when Damar Smith was there, he tried to be a bit tougher with the owners. You know, the owners always sort of had control of the NFLPA when Gene Upshaw, and he was always considered sort of you know, secretly always in the in the always a bit too easy to deal with with the owners, right not as not as not as pro player as he could be on that front. And that's sort of been the reputation of the NFL P a versus the MLBPA.

But when I look at the fact that baseball is about to go through another tough situation, and they do have a mess on their hands. Okay, the TV deals, you know, and this, and the question is is this on Manfred right? The two minor league stadiums. You know, I do think the owners need to get control, you know, but this is because they don't share revenue equally. They don't seem to be as concerned when they have crappy owners.

Right in the NFL, they got tired of crappy owner Dan Schneider, And eventually, essentially it was driven by the late Jim Mersey, right. He he he gave voice to

what was a growing majority opinion of those owners. But because the NFL owners are essentially equal shareholders, when one is not when one is dropping the ball, right, And you know what really irritated the owners about Dan Schneiders he was they found out he was withholding ticket revenue, the visitor team ticket revenue, that he was keeping more of it than he should it's money out of the

owner's pockets. So with baseball, because of the disparity, right, the Yankees and the Dodgers don't care if the Rays and the A's are mismanaged, right, or have bad ownership groups, or have bad relationships with their But if they were all equal partners and there was a little bit more, you know, and then then there would be I think, a better policing by the owners and therefore the commissioner. When you have weak owners and the fact is the

a the ownership of the A's is a mess. Should have been forced to say sooner, should have should have inserted itself into that situation and did it with Tampa Bay. And look, I see the mismanaged the ownership structure of Florida multiple times, right, First it was the garbage man. Then it was the diamond dealer from Marlins fans, they'll know who I'm referring to say it that, but you know, literally,

they gave a free franchise. They gave an owner handed the he was the owner of the exposed They didn't want him owning the team, you know, moving the team to DC and staying the owner. But they couldn't take a team so they traded teams right, and then the league took over the Expos franchise and sold it to the Learners, and then they gave the Diamond broker the Marlins franchise. So I do think that that if you

believe Manfred has this power, they're there. They've done a bad job of policing bad owners and now they have new ownership. They did finally force to sail in Tampa, so you know, so they are working to try to fix that situation. But they didn't in Oakland. And I have to tell you I feel this way about on the Oakland front as I do about what happened to the Chargers. I think the leagues should be better partners

when it comes to stadium financing. It was pretty clear that Oakland had a fan base for baseball, but the city of Oakland and the County of Alameda wasn't interested in chipping in money. Just like in San Diego, the owner of the Chargers couldn't get the community to vote for essentially giving taxpayer subsidies to the NFL owner. So the NFL decides to take a franchise away from San

Diego rather than they could have financed the stadium. They could have turned it into an incredible stadium that was a showcase and a host of a Super Bowl. Over time, the owner essentially pay back right. They could have essentially been the banker for the owner, if you will, or the partner with the owner, and they'd have a franchise that wasn't a zombie franchise. The Chargers have zero, Uh, they have no fan base in LA. Both the Raiders in Las Vegas and the Rams have more fans in LA. Frankly,

you know than than than this. You know, the Steelers probably have more fans in LA than the Chargers. The Packers probably have more fans in LA than the Charge than the Chargers, and the Cowboys probably have more fans in LA than the Chargers. But San Diego is a great football town, and I think the same with Oakland and major League Baseball. Had the revenue, they could have

stepped up. And you know, let's see how you know, the the the management of the regional media and all of that, and the fact that that's not as shared as it is in the NFL. It has created sort of haves and have nots in baseball. I'm a believer that baseball can support thirty two franchises, but not with this current financial structure, not where the Dodgers can do one thing, but the Twins are limited in what they

can do. And so if you've got a situation like that, you have to blame the ownership, and you had to, you know, and who works for the owners? Manford works for the owners. But you know, I, like I said, I do, I am glad Manford made the rules changes

because it's really helped baseball. But I do think you really do have to hold both of both Manfred and Sealing responsible for not dealing with a situation that we all saw coming that the baseball finances and the lack of a salary cap was going to create more and more problems, and it has, and so but I don't know if a different commissioner would have made things any differently, because ultimately this is an owner issue, and until the owners of the Yankees and Dodgers care about whether the

Oakland A's or whatever we're going to call him right now, the Sacramento A's and the Tampa Bay Rays are well won France. Until they're incentivized to care how well run other franchises are, I don't know if baseball is going to be able to fix itself without having another catastrophic work stoppage, which I do think is coming soon. I bet you you didn't think I was going to have that strong and long of an opinion on that one. But there you go. You teed me up on that one,

all right. Next question, this comes from Dylan R. From Lebanon, Pennsylvania, and he asked this, do you think we will ever see a US sitting president ever get primaried and lose? I know we were close with Ford and seventy six Carter in eighty. Well never say never. You know. One of the one thing we'd never seen until we finally

saw it was a sitting governor losing a primary. That happened to Frank Murkowski, Lisa Murkowski's father, and it actually happened due to Frank Murkowski's decision to appoint his daughter to the Senate. I know, for many Lisa Murkowski is

considered a maverick and in some ways a hero to many independent minded voters. But I guess you could call her a NEPO baby. But that became an issue, and a woman named Sarah Palin beat Frank Murkowski in a primary, and it looked defeating any executive in a primary extraordinarily hard. You know, you could argue that LBJ was going to get defeated in the primaries, which is why he ended

up not running, right even though he won. People forget that LBJ win or lose the sixty eight New Hampshire primary. Most people if you think he actually lost, But he actually he won the primary. He just didn't win it by a big enough margin. It was just amazing that the sitting president barely could beat clean for Jean McCarthy by less than ten points. So I think if a sitting president is vulnerable to losing in a primary, they're more likely to step down right as we saw with LBJ,

than not. But I don't know. I think our politics are so disruptive right now, and I you know, one of the things that I'm looking for I think I think this is going to be one of those years where we see a surprising number of incumbents lose primaries. So I know it doesn't really answer your question, but I think we're in a period. If we're ever going to see a sitting president somehow losing a primary, it's

going to be in this era if you will. But boy, you know, it is hard to make happen because presidents, once they become president, they become the establishment and they sort of control the infrastructure and can make it extraordinarily difficult to to you know, get the delegates you need and things like that. But I think if you're so vulnerable you could lose a primary with voters, you're going to see. Uh, these guys quit before they would actually

go through with it. All right. This one comes from Greg parts On known. Hey, Chuck, where does all the tariff money go? There must be billions coming in, but who collects in and who controls it? It seems like the dollar stream that's just begging for Shenanigans love the cast. Greig. No, it's like tax revenue. It comes into the treasury and so and in fact, they they want to use it to sort of and they've been talking, you know, Trump's been talking up how much revenue is coming in. It's

it's like tax revenue. It comes into the treasury. It's it's a tax. It's a tax on on other you know, other entities. It's no different, goes into the treasury just like your income tax does. The question is where did

that money actually come from did it come from the exporter or did they or did they mark it up? And you and I pay for it with an increased price, right, So it is, but the money all goes to the same place. And this has been one of Trump's arguments. I mean, in some ways, I think what Trump wants to go through is essentially ava tax. They don't call it that, but essentially getting rid of the income tax and essentially going to a form of a consumption tax.

Now they're not, you know, which is consumption tax attacks on everything. But you know what, when you raise tariffs ten percent across the board, what have you just done? You've just taxed pretty much everything. But no, it just goes straight into the treasury. Next question comes from Dan A. Carlsbad, California. Hey, Chuck, I've been listening since the original NBC version and I'm

really enjoying the new format. Well, thank you. The long form interviews and sharp inside on current events are great. Keep up the great work. Thank you. I'm blushing. I had a question about candidate recruitment. Given how hard it is to win in states that heavily favor the opposite party, why don't parties try to draft non politician celebrities with

name recognition and brought appeal to shake up races. Even if they don't win, it could force the other party to spend resources, Like why haven't Tennessee Democrats approach someone like Dolly Parton, Eddie George or Taylor Swift or do these conversations happen and it really goes far due to a lack of interest from the potential candidate. It's more of the latter, right, is that is usually lack of

interest in said celebrity, especially these days. What celebrity wants to do that to themselves. But there is a specific type of candidate that parties do try to recruit in these one party states where they think if they could find the right candidate, and it's not quite a celebrity, but it's sort of. It's like public service celebrity, meaning a military hero, an astronaut. That's that's usually, or you know somebody who's famous with their business if you will,

So you do get attempts like that. Dave Thomas, some people wanted him to run for governor of Ohio. He got into it. My old mentor Doug Bailey tells a great story about it. Dave Thomas, you know, was basically like he founded Wendy's and he was feeling pretty good and he was in his ads, and you know, there was this idea that he could and at the time, Democrats were dominating governor's races in Ohio, and you know,

part of the problem is desire and Doug. Doug always had a very specific question to anybody he worked for, and if they couldn't answer the question, he didn't want to work for him, no matter how much money they had to spend. And Doug's question was, why do you want to be whatever office you're running for? So in this case, well why do you want to be governor? What do you want to do? And the way he tells the story is that Dave Thomas sat there and

said and he had all these big time consultants. He brought in all the best, you know, because everybody knew rich guy, Dave Thomas, founder of Wendy And he said, all right, I have to think about that. And the next day he calls him up and says, I'm not running. He goes, because I don't know why I wanted to run.

He basically just wanted to run to run and I think that happens sometimes with you know, you and I might think, boy, they would make a great candidate, but if they don't have any interest in it, they'll actually make a terrible candidate. Right, they're a non paper candidate. You know, they might pull well, or they're likable or people, et cetera. But look when they happens, it happens. You know,

Arnold Schwarzenegger. I don't think Arnold Swarzenegger ever would run for governor if it had been a conventional campaign for governor. But he was able to get the celebrity. You know, you can talk a celebrity into doing it if there's like an easy way to do it. And the recall suddenly, the fact that it got on the ballot and Davis was going to get recalled, suddenly it was a much

lighter left. He didn't have to go through a primary. Right, and this was before they even had a top two in California, but the recall ballot ended up being all party, all candidates on the same party. Back then, Arnold was a modern Republican, and he might have struggled to win a conventional Republican primary, which is was among the reasons why he was staying out of electoral politics. And it wasn't until the basically a loophole showed up, which in this case was the recall that got him in to

do it. So, look, candidates, party leaders constantly are searching for what you're just saying. I mean, I think you know that you want to. I was just talking with a gentleman who came to this event featuring you know, independence and trying to figure out how you can create more of a movement so that independents, you know, don't get drowned by money from team Red or team blue.

When when when they actually get competitive? And I met this I met this one gentleman and he was and he was saying, you know, do I have the right profile to run for office? And he goes and he was telling me his profile and he started his own business and he turned it into a multimillion dollar bet. I said, I'm gonna stop you right there. I said, the greatest halo effect for a candidate description when you go to voters is not celebrity and somebody you know,

it's self made business person. Immediately voters want to hear more. Now they may you know, if especially if they've like a brick and mortar business, like building their own business, that sort of business. Not Wall Street, not that kind of of business person. But really somebody who you know, meets a payroll, you know, makes a product or does a service that helps everyday people. That's actually some of the bed. There are two great halo effects for first

time candidates. One is what I just described in business, and the other's military veteran, especially if military veteran comes with Medal of Honor, purple heart, things like that. So the celebt everything. It's kind of interesting for you and

I to talk about. But in some ways, the ideal candidate profile for the voter is self made business person who wants to give back to the government, or somebody who's who you know, who offered up their blood for the country by serving in the military, is and is willing to continue in public service. Those are probably the two best Profilesta all right, I'm going to do one more question. This comes from Barbara B. I really enjoyed

the Lena Khan interview. It was very enlightening. Your comments about the faulty AI info you found on a search of your name made me wonder what might have happened. If the mistaken information said that you had died, how do you think that might reverberate across the internet. Can you imagine how hard it might be for someone who's not a public figure to disprove something like that. To keep up the good work, Barbara, this is exactly why I brought up this situation, you know, because my son

asked me the same question. By the way, it turned out, he never said this to me when I when I went public with this with this situation. He goes, Dad, my friends have been telling me about you with asking me about you with Parkinson's for months. And he goes, and I kept telling him there's nothing too, that it's just a bad rumor. And he goes, I didn't bother telling you about it at home, And I said, you know,

I said okay. But then he asked me a very similar question. He goes, I see that once you said something, they're like, oh, they got to fix it. He says, what if you weren't Chuck Todd? And I said, well, I, first of all, I don't know how much Chuck, how much influence Chuck Todd has anymore. Sorry, I'm channeling my old Bob Dole. But that is I think that's a

very fair concern. And you know, you've you've you've I've read stories what you just described where somebody is accidentally declared dead because maybe somebody you know, had the wrong middle initial on a death certificate and it ended up you know, getting ready, you know, you you know this is something that has happened before, but you're right on the internet it is. And I think this is the This gets it to what. I brought this up in a previous podcast, but I can't remember which one, so

I'll repeat myself. I think I've told you about a project that Frank McCourt, the former owner of the Dodgers, had put together called Project Liberty, and one of his motivations he wrote this book about about sort of trying to reclaim our data from big tech. And one of the points he was making is he describes in the book you know, look, Frank McCourt's ownership of the Dodgers is most infamous for the high profile divorce which forced

them to sell. It became a storyline on Curb Your Enthusiasm, right, that was a rip from the headlines. And so because of the settlement, you know, they didn't neither Frank or Jamie McCourt had enough money to buy the other one out, so they had to sell the team in order to settle their divorce. It has been some fifteen years since their divorce, and to this day, if you google Frank McCord, it's among the first things that comes up. And this was sort of this was something he's like, at what

point is that? You know, he goes my ex wife and I they both remarried. They both have a pretty good relationship because they had kids, their adult children now they all get along at family gatherings, et cetera. But his identity on the internet, if you google them immediately sort of goes back to that moment. It's like, when when do you get to control your own biography, your own persona, who you are? And the fact is we have no, we don't have any control of that, right

they do. And this was his he you know, his whole thing, and it's a little pie in the sky, but he basically wants to sort of reorient the internet right now. If you think about it, when you agree to terms and services, you agree to terms and services on Google or Apple or Amazon's terms, they don't agree to terms and services on the user's terms, we don't get to tell them you know, yes, you're you know. Thanks to the EU privacy laws, there's you can control

some cookies now, right. Not every website allows it, but in some website you can control some cookies, especially those that cater to your European users. But that is a I think, a fundamental issue where we don't control our own persona. But you know, one of the more interesting generational divides on the issue of privacy. For whatever reason, millennials and Gen Z don't view privacy with the same sort of concern that older that Gen X or baby

boomers do. And I think part of it is that they've they've been sort of Internet native, right, and there their whole lives. They in some ways they voluntarily have put their personas on the Internet, right, and and they've sort of just they've they've been on the whole time, their whole lives. And I think until I guess I would make a plea with my millennial friends here, will

you please get angry about privacy and data? I understand why you assume it's too late, Genie's already out of the bottle, But there are things like this, like, you know, how do we know if we can? Hey, you say I'm dead, I'm alive. What do I have to do to tell you this? Right? Things like that getting I think this is an issue that if when you when you start to talk to people about you're like, hey,

you're right, I should have more control of this. But we have sort of almost surrendered this idea that we can somehow wrestle our You know, who owns the data? Right? Do we own our own data? Or does the does the tech company who gathered all of our data individually and put it into one larger file and made a unique product. Do they own that unique product? One of us are shareholders of our own data within that unique product? I don't know. This is why I always joke why

God invented trial lawyers? Some trial lawyers going to figure out a class action suit on this, uh, and then some and and at some point I'd like to think that that there'll be some a political sort of a rise from the electorate, if you will, about this issue. But look, this is this what you just asked about. You know, what do you do if you're not you know, if you if you don't have a platform like the one I have in order to say, hey, Google, you

messed up. If you don't have that kind of platform, how do you how do you wrestle control of your own persona. I think this is I think this should be a bigger concern, and I think government should be a bit more on the side of the consumer on this one. All right, I am I gonna did five questions, all right. I will try to get better because we're getting more questions from you guys. I appreciate it. You can send it to ask Chuck at chucktodcast dot com.

You can leave a question the Instagram feed, TikTok feed, YouTube feed, send me a DM on X. I'm not going to really look at replies on X. That's toxic bot stuff, but dms I will. I keep my dms open, so you're welcome to come in on that front. However you want to get a question to us, we do our best to scoop it up and put it in the queue to get to it at some point. All right.

With that, I hope you enjoy your weekend. Barring massive breaking news or Congress returning to deal with Epstein, I will upload again, probably in the next ninety six hours, and with that until I upload again.