¶ Chuck Todd's introduction
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the check podcast. If you are waking up in the Assella Corridor, I hope you don't have a foot of snow outside those of us on the southern end of the Slate Corridor or breathing a sigh of relief those of you in New York that might be another story, But for those of us that make content, it means you have more time bundled up in your house or you have to get out put the AirPods in. So I hope I can be a useful distraction while you're shoveling, sweeping,
whatever you may be doing this morning. Look, it's a packed episode. As you know. I did a quick sort of emergency response as we got the big tariff ruling, and this is just such a monumental moment in the Trump presidency. It's very well, we look back, this is the beginning of the end. We may look back and
¶ We are in an especially precarious moment of Trump's presidency
say Liberation Day was sort of when it all actually was starting to come to an end. I'll get to that point in a minute, but let me give you a rundown of everything we're going to do. I'm going to unpacked all things tariff, because look, an important moment, the democracy, the guard rails, separations, like all of the features of this republic blossomed a bit. So that's that.
And then you have a president responding as if he is now his goal is to destroy his own party in the midterms and do whatever it takes to help the Democrats, because his initial response on this is politically catastrophic. But hey, by the time you're listening to this, we also could be launching a new over the ron because oh guess what, before the tariff ruling, we still have the largest build up in the Middle East of military assets since the start of the Iraq War. What's going on?
What are we up to? Congress still is not being told. Is this about the nuclear program? Is this about negotiation? Is this about regiem change? The president who loves not to explain his rationales, is I think underestimating how precarious of a position he might be in here. But we'll see, and who knows. Maybe he's going to I mean, my goodness, the State of the Union on Tuesday? Is he going to announce that the missiles are dropping as he begins to State of the Union? Does he want to step
on his own State of the Union? Is that his goal? Does he want to announce something? Does he want does he not want the specific does he have not maybe he doesn't have much to say beyond or does he rant and rave about the tariffs and complain about that? Does he ask Congress for some help on this? So we are in an incredibly precarious moment of his presidency, though to say it's the most precarious is sort of
how do you pick right? We kind of live in a constant state of turmoil and instability ever since he came down that escalator. So we are in one of those moments, massive economic instability. Small business is still trying to figure out what comes now. But we got some important institutional pushback on Trump's attempts to usurp power from Congress. So again, I'm gonna get to all that. Let me give you, like I said, a quick rundown, I'm going
to break down. We got seven of the nine Supreme Court justices felt like they had to express their own view as to why they came to the decision. They came seven of the nine. The only two justices not to write their own separate either concurrence or dissent, Samuel Alito and Sonya Soda mayor everybody else had something to say, with the Neil Gorsuch concurring opinion being the most fascinating of all of them. But we're going to get into that. There's a brand new and ABC News poll out that
shows incredibly bad news for the President and Republicans. But guess what doesn't show much good news for the Democrats. I will get to that in a moment. I spent part of my weekend at the Principal's First Conference at the Gaylord Hotel in suburban Maryland outside of DC. They've built. This is their six six year gathering. It was an impressive event it gave. I had a ton of in moderator panel with Pat McCrory, Bill Crystal, and another member
of the Principal's First organization. And because it really is a gathering of center rights, sort of ex Republicans lost in dependence, a lot of military veterans and even a few active duty people I met there who feel politically lost but are alarmed by what's happened in this current moment inside the Republican Party. So it was an interesting conversation and I've I was moderating some interesting tension. Let's just say Pat McCrory and Bill Crystal, well they both
have an agreement about Trump. They weren't unnecessarily on the same page of what comes next and how to do this? And I think that this is this is the debate that many non you know, sort of independence and anti Trump Republicans are having is do you try to save the Republican Party? Do you try to start something new? Do you try to get behind an independent or do you make common cause with the Democrats temporarily? That debate
is a very lively discussion inside this group. I found it to be shall we say, intellectual nourishing might be a way to put it. Meanwhile, Team USA, right, how do I I want to get to that? That's very exciting, and I'm going to over I'm going to overanalyze the period of time. We haven't won the Olympic hockey goal
since nineteen eighty. What's interesting is that in many ways America in nineteen eighty, that in that February, January, February and March period, that first quarter of the year nineteen eighty, we were in a meles We were isolated, We felt isolated from the world. We aroan had our hostages, we were a divided politically in a sort of beginning of a political depression. Sounds familiar, doesn't right, By the way, we had an unpopular president, and we have an unpopular president.
We have all of this, so and that Olympic gold sort of was the beginning of you know, and we ended up on a good sort of twenty year run, you know, with a few ups and downs, but a nice twenty year run. Arguably starting with that Olympic gold
¶ Supreme Court tariff ruling shows the guardrails still exist
all the way until nine to eleven. When you think about america role in the world, all of those things, end of the Cold War, et cetera, et cetera. So you know, maybe this is a good omen. I choose to believe it is a good open on that front. So, and my conversation today is with filmmaker Gita Ganderbeer. She is the director and producer behind an incredible documentary that is on Netflix at the moment called The Perfect Neighbor. It is unbelievable. It is unique technically only uses bodycam.
Basically it's majority bodycam footage. But I think it it.
¶ Without tariffs, U.S. budget deficit will grow even faster
Is the.
In this day and age where we have so much distrust of the you know, if this is just raw footage, and it allows you, as the consumer of this documentary to see for yourself what's happening in real time, to see what appears to be a racist neighbor sort of viewing, you know, and somebody who's broken, who's mentally having a breakdown, somehow raised or has a core racism in her, is whipped up by fear and grievance and then ends up killing somebody through through her own front door. She just
a fellow neighbor. It's not an easy watch, but it's important watch and I think you'll enjoy this conversation with Gita. So with that, let's unpack what the Supreme Court just did, because after you know, our guardrails are battered, they're bruised, but as we found out Friday, they still exist in this constitutional republic, and frankly, the results not surprising. You know, I got started with this relaunch of the check podcast. It was in April, about a week before so called
liberation debt. And if you want to go back to those earlier episodes to fact check me on this, I can tell you I said, Look, these are not going to be seen as constitutional. These will not survive a court challenge. The only question is whether this ends up costing all of us more money. Right, it's already cost consumers money. Now there's going to be people looking for their refund. And the irony is that the president is
¶ Trump plans on going down with the ship, may sink GOP
now going to accelerate our debt and deficit in ways that we already knew. He didn't really care about the national debt or the deficit. Again, this is a guy who's always borrowed other people's money, used it for himself, declared bankruptcy, and walked away. Right, He's done it many, many times, so of course he's going to do it with the US government. He doesn't care about those things. He just doesn't sort of see it. And he certainly has.
If he took basic macro and microeconomics in college, he clearly didn't absorb anything with what he learned. I mean, this has been an economic disaster for the country. It
has been a terrible for global leadership. And again, we I think may look back that this is in sort of you know, I'm reminded of George W. Bush right after he wins his second term and he pursues an unpopular policy of privatizing social security just you know, blew up in a faith, wanted to do immigration that wasn't popular inside his own party, and eventually he had approval rating somewhere in the mid ti thirties, and you had a Democratic streep in that midterm of his second term,
and then the biggest Democratic essentially the biggest Democratic victory in a presidential race, with the Democratic cannon getting over fifty percent for the first time since Jimmy Carter. And then before that LBJ. So that's what this sort of and you know in the moment, you didn't quite know when Bush was just never was had hit unrecoverable status really until the election itself. So you know, I'm not going to declare Trump dead. He's going to be president
for another two and a half years. He can make a lot of trouble. How he responds to this moment will tell us whether his political demise will get accelerated or not. And I would say the first seventy two hours his response tells me he wants you know, he
¶ Courts ruling wasn't surprising, tariff authority belongs to congress
plans on going down with the ship here, and he may burn his party down with it. So look, there was a reason why I was pretty confident that these tariffs were never going to be seen as legal, because tariffs are taxes, and taxes live in Article one. Simple as that. I mean, it was basically what Robert said, this is this is sort of high school constitutional law. Okay,
this is not even law school constitutional law. So when you try to run a sweeping global tariff regime through a nineteen seventy seven emergency statute that never mentions the word tariff, you're taking a pretty big legal risk. Pretty much open and shut case rightly. The only surprise to me was that the ruling was six to three in the court, not seven to two. It should have been at nine zero. But I expected Alito and Thomas to
be partisans in here. They've never been serious jurists. Maybe they were serious jurists, but not in the last ten or fifteen years have they been serious. They've been always take thief. What they believe is the own the Libs partisan right. Never may never embarrass your own party in any way. Anyway, The point is is that they they've stopped being legal guys a long time ago. But I thought both Corsa and Kavanaugh had come in here so mild. The real surprise to me is that Kavanaugh ended up
in the descent on here, and it was interesting. He of course had to write his own He wrote the overall descent and he's hiding behind foreign policy, which of all the weak arguments the Trump lawyers were making, it
¶ Gorsuch called out his colleagues in his opinion
was the strongest of the weak arguments. Was saying, well, this is part of foreign policy, and a president has to conduct foreign policy. Still, at its core, this was not about trade. This was about who governs, who's in charge of the purse in the United States of America. So the Court ruled six to three that the International Emergency Economic Powers AIPA reminds me of the Simpsons movie ep ba yepa, this is ai ba IPA. Sorry, I couldn't help myself. So it does not authorize the president
to impose sweeping global tariffs. Six justices ended up in the majority, three dissenters. But here's what matters. There were seven opinions. Seven. Okay, that tells you something. This Court agreed on the result, but not on the reasoning. Chief Justice Roberts wrote the controlling opinion. His argument was institutional, straightforward. Regulate importation does not equal impost tariffs. Simple as that Congress knows how to say duties, Congress knows how to
say tariffs. It did not say either of those two words in the i EPA legislation. Tariffs are taxation. Taxation belongs to Congress. Hard stop. Then there's the there there's the concurring opinion that I would want all of my wanta be law school folks. And you know I always joke I don't play a lawyer. I'm not a lawyer, but I have been playing one on TV for a long time. I am I'd like to think I have gotten sort of a pretty decent legal education over the
¶ Kavanaugh's dissent argued tariffs as a foreign policy issue
last thirty years, as I love reading me some good Supreme Court opinions or just sense at times, because you learn a lot about the politics of the court when you do. And he wrote separately, and he leaned hard
into what's known as the major Questions doctrine. And then he also called out pretty much five of his colleagues, by the way, kind of amusing, but still before we get to what he called him out on, he was tackling major Questions, right, which is the idea that when a president claims extraordinary economic power, Congress must speak clearly.
And here's where it gets interesting, or so it's called out all of his colleagues, first the liberals for what he described frankly as a flip flop, because he basically said, hey, you opposed this idea of the major questions when it limited democratic administrations, in particular Biden on issues involving COVID in the workplace, COVID mandates, and the student loan issue. But now you're using the same structural instinct. Justice Kagan, she was joined by Sotomayor, agreed with the outcome. But
rejected the idea this was a major question issue. She said that the ordinary statutory interpretation was enough. Essentially, she was trying to defend the fact that she was not
flip popping here. She was trying to disaggregate the rationale she used to be in favor of Biden using emergency powers to do the student loan cuts, and she was trying to essentially separate it from her what appears to be literally the opposite point of view, which to somebody with no skin in the game, you know, the same way. It looks like robertson excuse me, Thomas and Alito were
partisans here. Essentially, of course, is saying he said, hey, looks like Kagan, So to my own Jackson essentially have been partisan here as well. Then you have Justice Brown Jackson. She leaned into legislative history, saying Congress never intended AEPA
¶ There are three distinct wings in this Supreme Court
to become a tariff machine, and therefore that's why she came to the same conclusion as roberts On the other side, Justice Kavanaugh wrote the principal dissent in his argument foreign affairs is different. He saw this as part of foreign affairs. So the president traditionally has brought her authority here and major questions doctrines shouldn't apply in the same way in trade and diplomacy. Then Justice Thomas went even further, arguing
Congress can delegate tariff authority broadly. He basically said, nope, these emergency powers delegated it all away, and the President was perfectly within his constitutional rights to do all of this. So to say this was it your typical liberal conservative split is an understated It was a structural split, and that matters. And by the way, just a little history lesson here, because I was curious, how often have we had seven of the nine justices all write their own
either supporting opinions or dissent. Well, in nineteen seventy one, during the Pentagon Paper's case New York Times versus the United States, all nine justices wrote their own opinion. They agreed on the ruling, but they did not agree on how they got there right. They went nine nothing, but they ended up having individual opinions explaining that away a case that effectively struck down all existing death penalty laws
in the United States. Furman versus Georgia nineteen seventy two, same thing, All nine justices wrote their own rationales for how they got to their opinion, and then of course dread Scott, the infamous dread Scott decision, one of the worst in the history of the Supreme Court, also featured all nine justices in the last few decades. Seven opinions usually signal a massive turf war between the different wings of the Court. And as I've told you, there's three
¶ Ruling reflects the public's disapproval of Trump
distinct wings of the court, okay, and I think Gorcious and Kavanaugh are sort of somewhere in between the two of the conservative wings. Right, you have sort of a institutionalist conservative wing which is anchored by Roberts and Barrett. Kavanaugh mostly is with them on these institutional rulings. In
this case it was Gorsich, not Kavanaugh. Thomas and Alito are usually in the more on the on the further further the right spectrum, a little more in favor of even stronger executive authority essentially, but a bit more partisan, you know. There takes seem to be grounded in well, what ruling do we want to get to, and then they find a rationale to get there. And then of course you have the three liberals that rarely do they
do they break ranks. So it is a. I think a court that is split more in three than it is in two, because that's what Donald Trump does, right. He has divided his own party in that case, and you see that divide on on on the Supreme Court. So I think that is there a is there is there that? Or is this a case where they all
wanted to explain their own rationale? And I think it is clear that they really didn't agree on they you know, you had a strong majority agree that the president overstepped his constitutional overstepped his constitutional authority, but they just disagreed
¶ We saw tariff price spikes in Q4, ruling would help GOP
on exactly what how he overstepped that authority. Still I can't help but when you when you look at it, sort of seven responses like that, it really is sort of it reminds me of the coalition against Trump in general, right, which is there's a large majority of the country, say fifty five sixty percent that don't like how Trump governs, the general direction that Trump is taking on. This episode of The Chuck Podcast is brought to you by Zebiotics.
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¶ Trump's response was to attack his own appointees for disloyalty
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¶ Trump lashed out, afraid dissent will become contagious
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¶ Trump accused SCOTUS of "foreign influence"
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what he's doing on tariffs. But it is it does sort of the fragmented court knows that Trump is an unconstitutional president and probably the most abuse abusive of the constitution of any president we've had, going even Nixon included. And yet right there you can't get a coherent, singular message to sort of take them on, and even in the legal community, you can't do that. Now there's Trump's response, And as I said on Friday, before knowing Trump's response,
I said, he's the wild card here. There was a real opportunity right this This economy sucks, people don't like it, and you know, these tariffs have been attacked on consumers. It is served as inflationary. In fact, earlier, just before this tarif ruling came out, we got news the economic growth stagnated massively in the fourth quarter, right under one and a half percent growth, which is just terrible. Anything under two doesn't even allow us to sort of keep
up with inflation. That is not good, and it is part of it is attributed to the shutdown, but there also has been this continued, you know, as we're seeing, you know, for about six months many businesses tried actually not to pass on the cost of the tariffs that ended in the last quarter and the begin and we've seen in January a lot of price spikes in particular,
all of that has gone away. And that's so so ironically, you know, the best thing that could have happened to the Congressional Republicans was for these tariffs to be viewed as unconstitutional. That's if Trump would go along and accept the premise that the Supreme Court is correct here. That's not what he's doing. And this is what should make all of us pause here.
Man.
The President didn't respond by arguing on the merits. He didn't argue about the statutory interpretation. He didn't respond by seeing the court misread history. He responded by doing what
¶ Trump is too lazy to become one of history's worst autocrats
he does best, attacking his own appointees for simply being disloyal. And it is a reminder, right if we did not have lifetime appointment to Supreme Court. He tried to fire Gorsage, he tried to fire Barrett, just like he's doing with the Fed. So just keep that in mind. The bounders knew that. I mean, look, none of us love this lifetime appointment business. And maybe we should have age limits, and there's some ways to end it. But what you cannot have as an executive having the ability to fire
somebody in another branch of government. And obviously our founders knew that, and that's why it's important to give Supreme Court justices this. So here he is personally attack Neil Gorsuch and Amy Cony Barrett. Neil Gorsuch, who was voted with Trump quite a bit. In fact, he's rarely in that institutional Every once in a while he surprises you. I was pretty convinced he'd be with the seven to two majority, Like I said, the surprise for me was capital.
But Trump did the usual personalization, right, he said, this was an embarrassment to their families. So he's attacking the families of Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barr. And we know when Trump does this, it does it does you know all of a sudden there are mentally unstable people out there who start doxing people start going after it is.
It is terrible what he does, and it's designed as a chilling effect, right, what you know, he goes after anybody that was supposedly that he viewed as on his side, and when they break ranks, he he goes after him in nasty ways because he's trying to prevent it from happening again. He's afraid it's going to get contagious. But here's the thing, more and more people, more and more Republicans.
¶ Trump's laziness is his greatest weakness
I think this is why I think this could be such an important moment that the breaking points don't happen. The breaking points are realized six months after that breaking point happens, right, And so you know, if we go on and I promise you Democrats sweep the midterms, we'll say, Okay, this thing started collapsing. And it really sort of took another nose dive with the Supreme Court ruling and then his just unhinged response to it. And look, we're all kind of numb to this. Oh, just another day at
the office. He's just attacking members Supreme Court. He also thinks there's some conspiracy blaming foreign influence. You have the conspiracy of these foreigners right there infiltrating the Supreme Court. This is some foreign influence campaign on Justices Gorsach and amy Cony. Barrett. Let's take it all the way through. Tell me how that works, mister President. Tell me how there's foreign influence on Neil Gorsich. Tell me how there's
foreign influence on John Roberts. You know you can't. You're gonna throw this out there. Give me some details. Show your proof. I'm sure your proof is with the with the with all the stuff you found out during when you when you swore that you had evidence that Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States. I'm sure that evidence is in the same place at the evidence of of that's somehow foreign interest swayed Neil Gorsach and Amy
Cony Barrett. Show your evidence. You don't do that. What you do is you count on your lapdog supporters to
¶ Emergency powers are a shortcut to avoid legislating
just take your accusation and run with it, and you count on algorithms to amplify it and make it seem like a legitimate talking point. It's disgusting, it's awful, and yeah, we already have Look, another person came after you, mister President at mar A Lago. All right, stop this. The more you do this stuff, the more you put everybody at risk physically. You're putting the lives in dangers of two Supreme Court justices that you appointed, You appointed these people,
and you're attacking them and attacking their families. It's outrageous and it's awful. And the again, right, you have an entire Republican party who just doesn't respond to this anymore. I understand rationally why they don't. Doesn't get him anywhere, just causes more problems for them, And it's all sort of self preservation is why you don't speak out. But folks,
he is super weak. This is the absolute definition of an emperor with no clothes, and every day we keep finding out how little he's wearing under his little garments there. So he obviously is decided not to not to do this the normal way any other president when they're set back, they criticize the court, they're frustrated, they say this or that, but then they are like, figure out another way. Maybe
¶ Chaos is coming, people will want refunds for illegal tariffs
they want to work with Congress. But nope. He doesn't view his loss as a constitutional issue. He viewsed the loss as a loyalty issue. But let's go back to April. And this is why I fear long term impact of Trump less than most people do. He really is lazy. I mean, he is super lazy. Right. I often used the joke look he's too lazy to be Hitler, he's too lazy to be Orbon, he's too lazy to be air to one. Okay, forget any of these other you know, forget using the north star of the Nazis. Right, just
picked today's sort of authoritarians. Too lazy to be Orbon, too lazy to be air to one. Right. Imagine, you know, he actually had some political capital in the first ninety days of his administration, and he could have probably strong armed his narrow congressional majorities in the House and Senate to give him the authority if he simply said back in late March, Hey, Congress, I want I want specific tariff authority. I'm going to I'm a better negotiator than
you are. I'm going to negotiate these trade deals, but I need to control the tariff. I need you to delegate tariff authority to the president. Let's debate it, let's vote on it. And there'd have been wouldn't have been easy, and he may not have won that argument, but that is how you try to win an argument. And then if you can't win the argument, then he can go find his own Republicans to challenge the primary folks and
you try to do it that way. It's what FDR would do when he had racal centrin Democrats to some of his ideas, but he also had pretty decent political capital with Republicans in that moment. You certainly know he
¶ Consumption taxes put the burden on lower income people
would have strong armed the House at that time. Right, he was pretty much the House Speaker at that point, and John Thune was in go along, get along mode. I know, McConnell and you know. And they could have done it through the reconciliation process when they were doing their big beautiful bill. They were too lazy to pursue because it's what was it going to be hard? They were going to have to do some good old fashioned horse trading. But remember, right, the greatest weakness Donald Trump
has is his laziness. It will always be the key as to why he didn't have the success he could have had in business. Right, too lazy in the casino business to right, he didn't want to deal with competitors, so bought them up, drowned himself in debt, and walked away. Right, He's just always looking for a shortcut. Right, Donald Trump has shortcuted his way to being a billionaire. Good for him. He's used the power of the federal government to actually
make himself a billionaire. Again a shortcut. But as president, his agenda is failing and he's failing to remake the American economy in his vision because he's too lazy to work with Congress. Bottom line, had he done that, he'd had a shot. Markets would have been calmer, his political capital was fresher, Party was more unified in that moment, and he wouldn't have gotten all the authority he would have wanted, but he would have gotten some targeted authority
and it would have been legitimate. But again, he didn't
¶ Fallout from the ruling will be a mess for businesses
want to bother He wanted speed, he wanted leverage, immediate leverage. He wanted unilateral control. But it's lazy because doing it doing it every way I'm describing is a little bit harder. It's effort, It takes it. You have to have an attention span a little bit greater than a nat Well, we know he doesn't. So he reached for the emergency powers because they worked so well during COVID. So he loves these shortcut emergency powers that Stephen Miller consistently finds
for him now. And he didn't want to have a debate in his own Party, and this avoids deliberation. Well, guess what his shortcut ran into Article one. So within hours of the ruling, Trump announces a new global baseline
¶ What will happen to trade deals that were cut based on illegal tariffs?
tariff under Section one twenty two of the nineteen seventy four Trade Act. So he's going back even further now in congressional authorization to try to find a legal way around this. By the way, this new fifteen percent flat tariff that he's sent across the board expires in one hundred and fifty days, so it is he's going to need to go to Congress if he wants to continue it. I'm looking forward to Congress weighing in on this. This
¶ Trump has alienated every major ally the U.S. has
is where it belongs, and I think it's going to be quite the MRI. We're going to find out where the Republican Party is today. Because one thing that has been true since Donald Trump took his second oath of office. Every day he's lost a Republican supporter. Every day or every week, somebody leaves the reservation. Nobody he has not added anybody to his coalition. You see it in the form of elected officials breaking from him. You see it obviously in all of these in all of these polls.
But what his response to this ruling is not good in the short term. This will be good in the long term because we've established some guard raids, but it's going to be unstable in the short term. We have a bunch of instability where they'll be refunds. Justice Kavanaugh warned of chaos. Yeah, I mean, there was no reason to violate the Constitution, But there is some truth to this. Yes, there's chaos. The importers had to pay billions under this
i epa misuse of the IEPA authority. They're going to sue.
¶ Trump is vulnerable to Republicans walking away from him
They're going to want their money back. Sounds like the government's going to fight having to give any of the money back. These are lawsuits could take years. It's not good for small businesses that need to deal with imports. It's not good for any business, but small businesses. Big business can can figure out how to mitigate the impact of this on their on their bottom lines. They can write it down right, they can, and they can get some tax savings out of something like this. But boy,
small business, this is a killer. That's why it was NFIB was a part of the groups, a part of the bigger group of people that were suing over this, and oh By the way, the President just exploded the deficit with his illegal tariffs, because what looked like was going to be the ability to actually see some revenue come into the country used to at least shrink the
deficit annual deficit. I don't think we were going to make any progress on the debt itself, but to shrink the deficit, well, now, if you've removed it, you know he was. Look, this has always been part of a larger project. As I've tried to let try to walk people through, we're ultimately the goal here. The people that have really gotten a hold of Trump are the folks that want to get rid of income taxes. And you've seen in the States, you've seen attempts to get rid
of property taxes. There are a whole bunch of people that want to move all taxation back to being consumption oriented, right, much more like a vat tax, like the European right that everything is consumption oriented. Well, guess what that was our tax policy before we before the sixteenth Amendment and legalized income taxes. And you know what, that was worse for everybody, and it meant poor people paid a lion's
share of the taxes. Rich people hid from paying most taxes because they were consumption based and the impact was much greater on lower income people than it wasn't higher income people, which is what made the income tax popular in that time. It was to it was to make the rich start paying their fair share. And here we go again, right, it's rich and wealthy people. They don't want it. They think that once they have money, they shouldn't get taxed on it until they spend it, and
dindo with their property. Well, good luck funding any service
¶ Trump reaction to tariffs was a gift to the Democrats
that government provides today if you take away income taxes and property taxes. But we are going to have a ton of instability now for a while. Right, he's going to all right, so we found one hundred fIF the day's worth of ways to do tariffs. So he's going to find there's sort of five or six, my friend Bruce Melman, go check out his substack. There's five or six other pieces of various authorities that he can start
to rebuild his tariff structure. And he'll do that, but it's going to cause all sorts of instability in prices. Prices aren't going to come down, they're only going to go up. And at this point, right, you think Oh, great, there's going to be no terriff. But as a business, you have to plan that there's going to be some more tariffs somewhere. So this is a mess. But you know,
did anybody expect Donald Trump to leave? I mean, at this point, when he leaves office on January twenty, twenty twenty nine, we're going to have half the White House probably not be rebuilt, a Kennedy Center that's gutted and not finished, half built structure, and an economy in tatters because of the mess he has created with this tariffs. So let's zoom out internationally. What's going to happen all these trade deals he cut using this illegal tariff authority.
How many countries are going to say, hey, we want a new deal. The deal we cut is no longer operational. I think quite a few countries are going to do that. So if the tool he used for leverage is unstable, then the leverage itself shrinks. And oh, by the way,
¶ New poll shows Trump's disapproval at 60%
he still hasn't finished this trade deal with China and he's going to meet with she in April. My god, has it ever been a better environment for the Chinese than the environment Trump is created? Now he's alienated every major ally the United States has right handing over China, you know, handing, Canada and India, all these in the European Union better trade relations with China than with the
United States. And he has sort of usurped his own leverage that he was trying to manufacture in going back and forth. Heck of a job, Trumpy, because every foreign leader is going to look at the Supreme Court rule and go Court's gonna intervene. We may there may be some refunds. Congress may have to insert its control again, why do we have to negotiate with Trump on these trade deals? So we'll see, it's going to be a mess.
But Donald Trump's been weakened quite a bit. So here's where it's going to get interesting politically if this now moves to Congress, and we'll see, right Mike Johnson does
not want to put these votes out there now. I mean, right now, Trump's going to be super vulnerable to Republicans walking away from him, right, I mean, we've already seen a handful of Republicans and Trump got angry when a when a Colorado Republican voted against voted to get rid of that symbolic vote to get rid of the Canadian tariffs, and Trump withdrew his endorsement endorsed his primary opponent. Uh Now,
¶ Democrats brand still bad despite Trump's terrible approval
in some ways, if Trump wants to try to purge his party and reorient it around his protectionist vision for for the United States, then this is how he's you know, he's going to have to go find more like minded folks and get them elected to Congress. But I'll tell you this, Colorado's have always been a free trade state. Colorado's was one of those states that, you know, while they lean left there, they're you know, they're not anti right to work, not the most pro union state. They
don't like tariffs. It's free trade state. I have a feeling that Jeff heard, the congressman that Trump wants endorsed and has now unendorsed, knows his electorate better than Donald Trump knows that electorate. So bottom line is this is an MRI moment for the Republican Party. Right We're going to find out who is still a free market conservative and who isn't. So we'll find out if they're how big this fracture is. We know there's a small fracture
in the Republican Party over trading tariffs. We know there's a silent minority. I still think it's close to a majority. That's close to a majority that doesn't like these tariffs, but they're scared to say anything publicly. You got to cover the Supreme Court. Well, we see more folks, especially as balloting gets closer, expose themselves as free marketeers. We'll
see and there might be votes. A rational reaction by a president would be to try to get authority in Congress, try to persuade, try to find a way to do this. I don't know if he's going to try to do this that way. I don't I don't expect him. I mean, he's already responded as I mean literally, A Democratic strategist said to me, if I could have scripted Trump's reaction to this ruling, I couldn't have scripted it any better. I mean, he is. He is owning that every tax
hike now in the country, every consumer tax hit. He just announced a fifteen percent tax hide and consumer goods across the board, So you now know that if you're paying more, it is directly associated with Trump's economy. It's unbelievable. So I said in April this would likely end in the situation we're in now. The only surprise was that the ruling wasn't even more emphatic it was seven two or nine zero. But what happens next is far more important.
Does Congress reassert its authority in the moment? Do we see free market republicans speak out publicly? Does the loyalty tests continue by Trump? If Gorsach and Barrett are disloyal for reading a statute narrowly? What happens the next time the disagreement is over something bigger than Tariff's So this wasn't about trade policy. This is about how we govern and whether we have three co equal branches of government. And Donald Trump shortcut just ran straight headlong into the
brick wall that is the US Constitution. And guess what, He's super unpopular at the moment. Let me tell you about a new poll in the Washington Post. I want to run through this for a few minutes before we get to the interview. Now, it's a poll of all adults, and so far as we've seen the pattern, when it's adults, it's his job approval can't get out of the thirties. When it's registered voters, you'll see his job approval. It's somewhere in the forty one two percent range. Sixty disapproved.
It's that disapproval number is huge. Here's a few more things. Do you approve a disapproval of the way Trump is handling This is again Washington Post Ipso's pole. So it's a you, gov, i'm, i'm, it's episodes. I'M it's not my favorite methodology. But look that ship has sailed, but he is upside down on every single issue. He's got a majorities disapproving of him on every issue. They tested us Mexican border. Fifty percent disapprove of his policy. That
was the best issue he performed on. Forty seven percent approve of his border policy, Fifty eight percent disapprove of his immigration policies, fifty seven percent disapprove of his handling of the economy, sixty two percent disapprove of the relations that he has with other countries, sixty four percent disapprove of the tariffs, and sixty five percent hate this inflationary Now here's the thing that ought to scare democrats. Americans are split on who they trust to handle the country's
main problems. Here's the specific wording of the question. Overall, who do you trust to do a better job handling the country's main problems Trump. Of the Democrats in Congress, well, thirty three percent picked Trump, thirty one percent pick Democrats in Congress. Thirty one percent said neither. How about that? Right? Does that not tell you where America really is? Right?
You know, you basically have the base of the basis of two parties saying one thing and everybody else feeling I don't trust either one of these parties at the moment, you know, you know, I continue to wonder, is this an opportunity for a third party and independent? Does this? You know, are Democrats going to realize they have a
huge problem that their brand is shit. They are seen as way too liberal, way too progressive, way outside the mainstream on some of these issues, and this is why they don't have confidence and sort of the rest of the electorate. Right the base is animated on hat and Trump, and that might be enough in the midterm, but this poll is still revealing as again, Donald Trump unpopular in
every single issue that matters to Americans. The fact that this is not a blowout, that Democrats aren't more trusted right now to handle everything than Trump by ten or fifteen or twenty points. It's a reflection on the Democratic grand that's that's just a reminder of a red flag, all right. I like I said, I've got a terrific interview with Get to gainda Beer here it is, like I said, the perfect neighbor is I used the MRI metaphor before. I think it's an MRI and race and
culture in America a little bit. Some of our gun laws are stand your ground laws is sort of relevant in here. But here's the beauty of this documentary again, using only footage from body camera, no narration, no talking heads, it is a classication. You get to decide your own reaction without letting others try to influence you and tell you what you're seeing. You're seeing it all raw and
in real time. And I highly encourage it. I really do, because I think it will when you hear people say that, you know, it is just a reminder that we've raised a lot of racists in this country multiple generations, and it's going to take a while for us to eradicate that strain, that virus out of the American society. We're making progress, not fast enough, and this, this this documentary will tell you that. So let's sneak in a break and when we come back to my conversation about the
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¶ Geeta Gandbhir joins the Chuck ToddCast
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¶ "The Perfect Neighbor" isn't a gun story, it's a societal story
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¶ How important is a potential Academy Award for you?
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Well.
One of the more powerful documentaries that you will hear about during the Academy Awards is called The Perfect neighbor, and it is by the filmmaker Geta Gandibier, Getha Gandibier. My apologies there, and it is First of all, the film itself is unique because it's the type of documentary I love best, meaning no talking hits. It is a documentary of real footage and it's about a story sadly
¶ Awards give you a platform to talk about issues & bring change
in my home state of Florida. And the standard ground law will come into play here a minute, but it's a story that's more. This is not a gun story. This is a society story. This is a story of race, This is a story of policing. This is a story of how we live together as Americans. And it's incredibly powerful and it couldn't have been done without bodycam footage. So if you haven't seen it, it's on Netflix now,
I highly recommend it. It's powerful, it's disturbing. It's also heartbreaking, as we were just discussing its grief and rage, as Gita will tell you wrapped up in one and Pizza
¶ Film produced independently, then Netflix gave it a huge platform
joined me. Now, Gita, how did I do introducing your film?
That was great? Thank you so much for having me.
You're first of all, it's nominated for all sorts of awards. How important is an Academy award to you?
So the Academy Award is a huge honor. I think it's every you know, it's a dream. Honestly, it's a dream.
And sometimes feels like a pipe dream, you know, in our in our field.
But I think what makes it so significant it's that it's our peers who vote right, people that we admire, people that inspire us, our idols, our colleagues, you know, so that community feels so meaningful, and the idea that they choose your film of the many, many many disturbing films means so much. So that makes it an incredible honor.
Again, a dream. I think beyond that though, to all.
The awards really give us platform to talk about the
¶ How close did you follow this story in real time?
issues that and the impact that we want to have goes far beyond the film. We're really hoping for change, that the film will be a vehicle for change.
So I think the the.
There's two things that come into play with the awards. The just the owner of it all and so grateful that the platform is equally important.
No, and you know, kudos to Netflix for making you know, for promoting it. Not just there's one thing to just put it on your streamer. It's another thing to actually
¶ Ajike Owens was a personal friend of Geeta
promote it and make sure people can see it.
Which they could have honestly, And this was an independent film. We made this independently. My team Message Pictures, Park Pictures joined us, SOB Productions also joined us. We were a very small but mighty scrappy team for very little money. We also got some development funding, but the from Peacock, but they chose not to take the film ultimately, so we but you you know, small resources. But the Sundance Film Festival accepted the film and really give that platform.
That was our first premiere. And after that Netflix made us an offer. So Netflix took it to the next level again, a global platform.
Look, my head is in two different places. Like one part, I want to talk about the decision to go without a narrator and to use all the bodycam footage. On the other hand, I do think we should spend a few minutes on the story itself, sure, and so I want to begin with there, which is what did you when did you become you know, how closely were you following this story in real time in Marion County, Florida. You know, I hate to say it, when I watched this,
¶ There's so much gun violence, individual stories don't break through
it was a very you know, I knew a little something about the story itself, so I knew I was going to end. But that community, that fight, I've seen that, it's a very familiar thing. What was unfamiliar was to see it chronicled, yeah, right in real time, and that's what made it, I think so powerful. But I am curious what was your familiarity with the story at different points in time while it was unfolding.
Sure, so there is a personal connection to this story because Ajica Owens was a family friend, so you were involved from the minute that had happened.
Unfortunately, from the minute that you.
Show you knew immediately you were brought in. Did you know about what was happening in that neighborhood before.
She was killed?
No, we didn't, and we myself and Mama say, we am talking about myself and my husband.
Who's also a producer on the film that come onto.
And my teammate Message Pictures, Alisa Payne and Sam Pollard,
¶ The production team received body cam footage from family lawyers
you're my producing partners. We got a distress call though from my sister in law who was best friends with Ajaca Owens.
And when I say sister in law, she's really my cousin in law.
But we culturally don't differentiate like she's We're very close.
That's my sister in law.
I've got cousins, Yeah, exactly so.
But just you know, in case anybody wants to, you know, wants to fact check it, right, cousin in law. But we got we got a call the night that had happened, and we're immediately on the ground trying to support the family and help gathering the children and getting Achica's mother into town.
And also we.
Were very aware that the story needed to be in the media because without media attention, cases like Ajica's often get.
Swept under the rung.
I mean, there's so much gun violence, unfortunately in our society that it's almost an everyday occurrence.
There's another story of somebody getting.
Shot and neighbor dispute with it turning into a deadly gunshot is sadly almost it probably is a daily occurred.
Daily occurrence, right, more or less.
So, so we were because we work in media, our team, that's what we felt.
We could do and how we could help.
¶ We usually see the aftermath of shootings, rarely the before footage
And Susan was not immediately arrested because of stanyar ground laws. They had to stand your ground investigation, and we have the precedent of the Trayvon Martin case that happened in Florida, So we were deeply concerned that there would be no justice for Ajica. And then about two months later, Susan was eventually arrested. About two months later, we received the body camera footage from the family lawyers and who we were still involved with the family and again still trying
to support the case because we didn't know. Again, we were worried it might languish, you know, it could take years for anything to happen. But the footage came to us and they asked us to go through it.
They were like, can you look through it? Is there anything in here for the media?
And it was about thirty hours of material and I was shocked. I'd never seen that much footage around a case before.
Can I just say, I'm I was oddly impressed with how much there was in How you know, I'm a cynic on this stuff. I assume all these guys are going to turn it off when the real you know, and they there was so much there. It felt real. It felt like I got a real sense of how Marion County Police officers handle these disputes.
Yes, now one hundred percent, and they were there so often because Susan called so often. But I think what struck me is that you got to see in this footage the community as they were before, and it was undeniable. You got to see this beautiful multi racial community living together, loving each other, acting like a big extended family, taking care of the kids, you know, And you got to see the kids playing outside, being precocious and funny.
¶ Needed to understand chronology of body cam footage
And you know, and loved.
And because there is so much gun violence, we are used to seeing the grieving family.
We know the.
Aftermath of what happens, but we never get to see the before me, the story of this community and what they had to go through and how one outlier who was emboldened by Stanley ground laws plus combined with our access to guns, disrupted their whole world.
What did you know? What when did you know you had a film?
Sure? So, when when we saw the body camera.
Footage, immediately like this is I can do something with that? No?
Because because what Because like I said, it was thirty hours, It came in a jumble, it came on a thumb drive and there were folders. But there's the cops unintentionally function like multi camera with the you know, with the footage, because sometimes there were two of them unseen.
Sometimes there was a little it could be a little uh, it was a little love don't I don't want to say it, you know, sort of like wait what I mean? You know it's sort of dizzying.
Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. But this is again the nature.
This is not production footage, right, they just just it's
¶ Film's tension building compared to Blair Witch & Paranormal Activity
please evidence. But I spent about two weeks along with Nikon Kwan two again my producer and partner, stringing it into a timeline. I used to be an editor, so I pieced it together and synchronized all the footage and the sound, and also took time to figure out the chronology. And it was once we had the whole thing strung out and we watched it down and we could understand the chronology and what happened, that's when I was like, Aha.
The family. So one of the things I was curious about is that the family attorney immediately asked for body cam footage for every incident that had ever taken place to differ in that neighborhood.
Okay, I asked, of course, for the court case, that's what they would need, right, So they asked for everything,
¶ Racial justice/tension movies can make for a difficult watch
and what you see in the film is pretty much what we got, what the.
Lawyers were given.
There was also some ring whether it's some doorbell cameras or wing cameras as well.
Right, I was part of it also because that was collected as evidence. But I think the thing that to me that struck me was that I felt like the footage played like a horror film. It played to me I thought of films. I come from a scripted background. Originally I came up with Spike Lee and Sam Pollard.
And actually it had a Jaws vibe to me, the original Jaws, right, which is the you know, the initial Steven Spielberg horror creator of that moment of where you don't see, you don't see the menace, but you know it's coming out there. And that's what I felt body came for. You're just like I had. I just got the Jaws vibe in that sense, because you know it's building up, but you don't know when it's coming, but you know it's coming.
Nobody has said Jaws before. I love that.
¶ Movie doesn't preach, just shows the event & let's audience decide
The references for me were paranormal activity and you know, things that used and also the Blair Witch Project, like films that were made that was meant to be found footage or you know again CCTV footage, surveillance camera footage. So those were sort of my references, and I wanted to make something that was immersive, that would grip audiences
and hold them. Oftentimes, when we make documentaries, particularly if they're social justice, sometimes people don't want to you know, they don't want to hear it, like or they're not interesting, you know.
I that was. Look, I had my wife and I was saying, I'm gonna watch this from an interview. She's like, I don't know, like you know, I know this story. I don't know right, like because you're right. And that's why I'm like, no, people, you need to see this. You need to see it because it's a groundmaking way
to make a movie. Number one. So there's a technical aspect of this that's I mean, I'm not a voter, but if I were to me, this is why to me, it's an e're the easy winner simply because it's both a technical You've done something new and interesting and different in a basically because we now have all this stuff
we didn't. You know, you couldn't have made this with Trayvon Martin it didn't exist, but one of the other no, no, no, no, and so, and then there's the powerful story itself that you tell where you don't have to you're not trying, You're you're you're helping people get to a place, but you're not preaching. You're not telling people what should be, what to think, You're just showing. You're letting us decide what should be. And you're like, that wasn't right.
¶ Footage portrayed a working class, striving community
Thank you for that. Now we trust our audience. I think that was a big part of it.
We were are belief that we could live in this body camera footage and the you know, the police evidence footage.
And there was a couple of thoughts.
One was that we didn't want to go back and retraumatize the community by making them relive it again interviewing them.
They've they'd already been interviewed by detectives, they'd lived it, like, I didn't want to burden them with that.
Then the the other part of it is we felt the body camera footage was really undeniable and right now we live in a time where everything the media does is questioned, and with this footage, there was no film crew on the ground, right there was we were not there directing anything. So again, because it is police evidence, you see things exactly as they happened, no one, there was no outside journalist influencing, So so I think that
makes it undeniable to audiences. And also you can see in this footage again how this community was oftentimes after after people of color in particular are victimized after a crime happens to us, we are often criminalized, and our children are adultified. And we felt in the footage again the police did not mean to capture this, but they
did that. Again, this community, this incredible community, and this like you have the mother who says, you know, oh, these kids, they're all mine, and the father comes out and is like, I look out for these kids like they're my own. You see in footage, even footage that
¶ Everyone knows the Susan Lorincz, "get off my lawn" type character
Susan shot, the adults playing football with the kids like it was and the kids are outside having like you know, healthy connected fun.
And I think what all of our political leaders say, hey, kids need to be outside more, not in front of their screens. Right, these kids were outside.
They were outside, and I think and also you saw a community of upstanders like Susan, the two neighbors, and it wasn't. It's interesting because even though it is about race, and Susan tried to weaponize race.
You know, you see the two.
Neighbors that AA that lived on either side of Ogica or white women and were complete upstanders.
What I saw it as is this is why it's a familiar community to me. In Florida. There are a
¶ No understanding of why Susan Lorincz was so broken as a person
lot of this is just a working class middle sort of what I working class, you know, strivers is what I would call it though, right, working crass driver community who like don't want to live in an apartment complex with their kids, want their kids to have more of a of a of a of a you know, sort of that whatever whatever, the idealized version of growing up in a neighborhood and all that stuff and there, and
you know, these communities are all over Florida. It's sort of what makes Florida an attractive melting pot to many people and why they move. And it's affordable.
It's the best of us. It's really that's the American dream.
It's the best of us, right, like a place where and with that strong social network. I think Susan, on the other hand, is sort of represents a microcosm of all the bills that are plaguing our society.
She kind of holds a mirror up.
Two movies jumped out at me with her, because there been attempts to sort of portray that character, is what I would call it. Right, We know this person exists, this person lived in my neighborhood. We all had a person like this, right, and you don't quite know what they were. Right. You had the Clint Eastwood movie where he's the old man torn out Bohite Tornado or something
like that, where grand grands grand Tino. That's right, And then I was thinking of the that Michael Douglas movie right falling Down whatever, you know, the whole white grievance, white rage. Right. She she felt like a very familiar character, right that we'd seen portrayed. But here was here here, I think there's there's this assumption that maybe these folks no longer exist. No, well, she very very much she must exist. I'm curious, did you want to what did you?
I was? I wanted to know more of like how did she become so broken? She's broken? There's no doubt she's broken. We don't know what's it.
We don't know this.
She moved into the neighborhood two years before everything happened, and we don't have much of her backstory, you know, nor did we want to speculate on it.
No, I get that too, but it's clear she some somebody something something she's broken, and you know, I don't know who knows when it happened, right, might have happened years ago or two years ago.
You might just be racist though until.
Well, and that's the thing. She got broken early. Then, you know, I always say you, you know you have to be raised a racist?
Uh huh.
I do believe that. I don't think, because kids are not racist unless they're caught it now.
And I appreciate you thinking of that as broken, because yeah, it should be thought of that way. But I think
¶ Lorincz was the only woman in the neighborhood that complained to police
I was the one thing I wanted to say, though, is that she also seemed to be someone who absorbed a lot of the rhetoric that is coming from the top down today in our country, which is manufactured fear, weaponized racism again, and that those kind of things combined with her access to weapons.
PA, well, think about those law What was this the incident in Saint Louis. Absolutely it was about three years ago with a guide shot and then was the kid who went to the wrong door. It was going to go happen more.
It happened recently there was a woman who was supposed to clean someone's house and came to the door and the man shutter the wrong house. Like it is, this idea, but the manufactured fear is a tool to divide us, right,
¶ This didn't feel like manslaughter, it felt pre-meditated
and when we fear our neighbors, when we like again, then we're okay with them being kidnapped and put in detention centers. Right, Like, it's used the idea, and it allows an authoritarian government to say things like, noah, we'll protect you. We just need to get rid of these people over here. So she seemed to be a symptom of all those societal ills.
And that is why, in some ways I wanted to know more, Like is she just sitting on her lounge chair watching one feed of stuff? And you know, is her information ecosystem very blind or oriented? Right? You know? But it struck me she never had anybody with her.
Yeah, then at once, now when she was moving out
¶ Prosecutors felt a manslaughter charge would be easier to convict
of the house, that was her sister.
There was a woman there who was her sister.
But other than that, that was that we didn't see much of anybody near her. But what's interesting, like I said, is there were other older women.
There was another woman who was her neighbor who appears in that.
Same scene, who is an older woman who similarly lives in that neighborhood. But she was the only one. That is what is so interesting. She is the only one who ever complained.
¶ Hope DeSantis understands the damage stand your ground laws cause
Right, which tells you, you know, says more about.
Her than anything else, and anything else.
You know, the try to me all, you know, your documentary sort of makes the case that in some ways this was a form of premeditation. Now we can debate that. I get that that there's the letter of the law and premeditation, but this was not manslaugh. I think we all know that. And yet I understand that the state of Florida passed a law that tied the hands of those prosecutors.
Yeah, but I think also I will say this, I think the prosecution, from what happened in the Trayvon Martin case and others, I think they went for the lowest hanging fruit as.
Well, because I wanted a conviction.
They wanted a conviction, and with Trayvon Martin, George the Merman walked in the charge's murder, so I think with manslaughter and Florida, manslaughter carries up to forty years, sorry, thirty years. Manslaughter carries thirty years. So I felt, I feel that they thought they could get a conviction with manslaughter and.
That she would serve. She would still end up with a.
¶ If there was no body camera footage, Susan could have walked
Long sentence effectively life. Effectively, she was going to be incarcerated for.
Right yeah, for a sixty years, right yeah, thirty.
You know, as she ended up with twenty five.
She had not committed any other violent crime before, so I think so, but the judge gave her.
The maximum that he could and that was twenty five. So she will be if you know again, where she just served the entire sentence, she would be eighty five once she gets out.
So so let's say Governor DeSantis watches this film. What do you hope he takes away.
I hope he takes away the damage laws that Standard Ground do to communities. I hope he takes away the fact that we need gun control, that in Florida you can buy a gun like you can buy.
A toaster or a microwave.
And there's a point you see in the film where Susan is clearly behaving erratically, and there should have been a question around her buying a gun. I also hope it that folks take away DeSantis included how policing works and how they could have and should have caught Susan, you know, and seeing her as a threat earlier on
¶ Police bodycams should be on at all times to prevent distortion of truth
instead of just treating her like a nuisance. But I think because they the police again were not equipped to handle it. But they also brought there, you know, they brought their own biases to the scene, and she was able to weaponize them.
Well, it's interesting with them, you know. It was interesting to hear how the officers saying, look, I'm going to believe you, and I'm going to believe them. I remember that was like it stuck out at me, and it's like it it was a reminder of why it's important for all of this to be on tape. Yes, all right, and I and again I go back. You and I both know that if this happens ten years ago, there's every chance in the world she's never charged.
Oh and if there was no footage, I don't know that she would be charged.
If you didn't see her erratic, you know, her behavior,
¶ Bodycam footage is a double edged sword, can be used for surveillance
calling the cops again and again and again, and if you didn't hear the community side of the story, right this, Yeah, she could have walked, And this is we honestly we didn't until the very end. We had that in our hearts that like we were we were like, she's probably going to get off, Like it's no way, it's not possible.
This is the story of the twentieth century. In these incidents, they all walk, it felt like almost all the time. Yeah, you know, this is why you know, I sit here and it's like it's an imperfect body camera footage is imperfect on all those things, but it's better.
And it's also incredibly relevant today when you think about what's happening in Minnesota, when we were living in a time where we have a government who will distort the
¶ Original footage included protests, funerals & B-roll of the neighborhood
truth at any given moment freely, has no no moral.
Compass around doing that. You know, with the murders that have happened in Minnesota, where I says murdered a number of people is.
Exact that we're debating whether or not they should have body cameras I know, and they're saying, well, we'll put them on, but we want to be able to could no, no, no, Yeah, we're putting that in your hands of deciding when those cameras go on and off, you.
Need it at all.
It should be on it all time because like I said, there there is clearly audacity, you know, of the powers that be. They like again, they feel they can distort the truth at any given moment to their advantage.
And I think with and body camera is still only in eight states, it's only required in eight states that law enforcement wear it, And it could not be more critical right now. And it's it is a double edged sword for communities of color because it's it's also a tool of surveillance, you know.
And no, look, I think about this a lot, you know when it comes to privacy, but you and iron I fear that people younger than us have like, don't don't view it as surveillance.
It's surveillance, yeah, and it absolutely is. So it's a double edged sword, particularly for vulnerable, the most vulnerable. But I think right now, the particularly with the case of Ice and what is happening and with who we have in power, it is absolutely needed all law enforcement and government agents should be required to wear it.
Opinion. A few sort of technical things about doing the film. Every once in a while you would have body camera audio and then it would just did you do sort of just sort of almost file footage of the neighborhood
¶ Neighbors had a very visceral reaction to the film, but did find it therapeutic
once or something? Yes, so we did.
There was we did shoot bee role of the neighborhood. So some of the things we shot, we shot vigils, we shot protests, the funeral, and we shot bee role of the neighborhood. And some of that was for we shot originally as to give to media to share with news because we wanted use organizations to to to talk about what was happening.
And then some of it.
We shot afterwards just as part of the film so that we could again sort of create texture and.
Also as people could see what the neighborhood looked like.
What was the Was it a struggle to get everybody greed to allow their likeness to be used.
No, What's so interesting is that that community was really like a family. We the body camera footage, we had to sort of work in reverse and try and find people. I did like look at them and get them identified and then find them at some of the people. It's interesting some people came to us redacted by the police, Like some of the footage the police had.
Already we had already redacted. It interesting why would they.
I think there was us to redact all of it. I see it didn't happen, so we so then, but if there were people that we could not find, particularly children, we would.
Just redacted it. We redacted it. So that's so that any of the blurred faces were not people that said, no, you can't do this. It was more of the other way.
¶ Having body camera footage could have prevented historical race riots
It was more it was more people we couldn't find.
But there were one or two people who were worried about it and we wanted to We were respectful of them, of course. I think though for the most part, the community stood behind what we were doing. Like they really loved each other and they we actually showed the film to them before it aired on Netflix, and it was very hard. They had a very visceral reaction to it, but they afterwards they they kind of talked through it and with each other and you know, had a lot
of memories. I think it was I think ultimately they said it was therapeutic and that they wanted it out in the world because they understood what we were doing, and they said no other community should have to go through that. There is only one family left on that block. Everyone else has left.
They left, They moved.
How did you stay? And that's how So it's like the ripple effect.
What's your kids?
Yeah, the ripple effect is enormous.
And that so that beautiful communal again community where kids came from all the neighboring streets to play on that one block decimated.
Because they had the empty grass field. Every neighborhood has that one and it yes, there said, but so you're not sure. I don't know who owned it.
Actually it belonged to the neighbor. It belonged to Susan's neighbor who allowed them to.
Play there, who had said yes.
So it was often out there with them like it was. It was they had permission to be there.
So, you know, I just think about you know, I
¶ The ultimate hope is to eradicate "stand your ground" laws
I often believe that it was a It was helpful that I grew up in Miami. When I grew up in Miami. I grew up in Miami in the in the seventies and eighties, and we went through three race riots in the eighties, all of which might not have happened if there had been body camera footage. You know, I was just thinking about just that aspect, like, you know, we ripped. Now it's Miami a beautiful place today in some ways because of the pain we all had to go through in the eighties. I think there is there.
You could make a case that in some ways it is. But I think about all this sort of last decade that we had and how many and the destruction of a coup of these communities, Liberty City in particular, and and how it could have been avoided. Yeah, you know, and so easily. Now, I mean, you know, I mean, so that's what makes your film both there was like a hopefulness to it, like look, this, this is this
¶ There's power in telling a true story with unscripted footage
is why we need body camera footage. We get a fuller picture, you get the better story. You know who the guilty party is. There's no question who's the instigator. There's no question. This isn't it he said, He said, like Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman in that business, you know. But it hasn't. It doesn't eradicate racism.
No, no, unfortunately it doesn't.
But I think they the hope is is that it might the film for us in some ways, that it serves as a deterrence. And again, because of the outcome at the end of the trial, we're like, maybe people will think twice about, you know, trying to trying to pervert the law, which is already a problem in and of itself, but pervert stand your ground laws and use them claim self defense when you're actually committing a crime.
And that is the.
Hope and again, and the ultimate hope is to have this law eradicated state by state and particlarly because of the danger as.
Opposes your career. You started working in scripted film with Spike Lee, and he is he had spent a lot of time doing scripted social justice messaging, right, you know, and what do you think is the more effective way to get a message across? When is a documentary better than better than scripted? And and is it you said something earlier that sort of hit me in this day and age when we're not sure what to believe. You know, in some ways the body camera footage is the most
believable material you could come up with. That tells me that maybe the better way to to to to tell a story is with is with is with real footage rather than scripted you know, in manufactured book.
I think they both I love both mediums and I think they both absolutely have their place.
I think if you have.
The material to make a really compelling documentary. Why not, particularly if you're telling a true story, because I think
¶ Ajike Owens was a bright young woman with a promising future
people connect connecting to the fact that this is someone's actual life. It impacts them differently, whereas if it's actors or people. You know. Again, I love scripted was where I started, and so and I love it so much. But if you have the means to tell the story for real, you know, then why not why not do that?
You know? And I think.
I think that truth is often stranger than fiction, you know, Like I the this film to me is a stuff have like you said, of a community of human behavior, of policaying, like it has so many layers and yeah, and it's real, right it is. It's this is stuff that actually unfolded. Uh So I think that makes it really powerful. But like like I said, I love both. I love both, and so I'm always happy to see, you know again, stories be told in multiple ways as.
Creatively as possible.
I think if it's really up to the vision of the team and the director to decide.
Well, you know, it's funny. I think you set a bar here that I wonder for yourself, is it is it going to be? If you want to do a documentary about another topic and you don't have enough footage? Are you going to say, oh, geez, you know, I don't know. If I don't, I don't want to go back to the talking head.
¶ How are her children doing?
I might need to tap out. I feel like, I.
Mean, I mean in some ways, right, You're like, well, this is I mean, there's I don't it's not. Who knows how often you can just get that, yeah, to tell a story.
Yeah. No, it is a rare, tragic confluence of things that led to this film.
But I you know, I kind of believe that, and this is interesting. I'm usually not a person who thinks like this, but I sort of feel like this film. There's a story about Ajica. Her mother always tells about how she was this.
Ojika was a really vibrant, funny, bright person who had a lot of big dreams. She was young, you know, she was in her thirties, and she wanted better for herself and her family. And she used to talk to her and call her mom every day.
They were very close and they'd talk about her plans. She wanted to be an entrepreneur. She was going to you know, be world famous, and her mother would laugh at her sometimes, like moms do you know, just like because of her ideas and you know, just whatever. And she would say to her mom and was one of the last things she said to her, and she would say, wait, you know you just.
Wait, you laugh. But one day the whole world's going to know my name.
So for us, we're left with that in her absence, and I kind of feel like she's a part of this somehow. She wanted the world to know her name, obviously never in this way, but that's become it's now on us to make that happen and to try to
¶ Watching the grief of the children was devastating & powerful
do more with her legacy and to make change in her name.
So yeah, I think this film it has so much more.
Every film is so important, but this film, in a way, there's a bit more weight on.
On how what we do with it and the impact.
How are her kids like it?
It's I think it's up and down that for children.
Children are both incredibly resilient but also fragile and are not I mean and this is this would devastate anyone. So I think they are. They are loved, They're deeply loved. The one incredible thing too, that we were able to do, which was part of my dream, was with this film. I had hoped that if we sold it then we could give the money to the family, because we had nothing to offer them. Otherwise, we didn't have any money,
you know, we're just filmmakers. But the sale to Netflix that happened out of Sundown's allowed us to give the majority of the money to the grandmother and to the family so they could again these kids, children can have security, so they have that they are loved and taken care of. But there's struggle. There's emotional struggle, which will probably again,
¶ Family wanted the world to see their grief
it's going to take many.
Years to hear.
I don't know if you ever get over it.
Yeah, I don't think. Yeah, I think that's right. That kind of loss and that kind of trauma, you.
Build resources and you build strength to work around it.
I mean, you know, I'm haunted just talking about it at the moment by her son, at the moment she's
¶ Hope the film can inform police training
shot and he's just gasping for air.
Yeah.
No, it's it is to see children, and it's interesting that grief. We've had many conversations about it because that grief, watching the children learn that their mother is not coming home is the most challenging thing I think.
And that was on body camera footage that moment with their.
Father, just because the police were around them.
Just you know, you're just sitting there and you're just that was a moment I forgot it was body camera footage and I'm like, wait a minute, isn't just so intimate, right? It was felt it almost and then and then it's like, wow, what was that police officer invading their space?
Yeah, it was he invading themselves. But at the same time, the police are trying to comfort them. So she was like,
¶ In other states, Susan would have been charged for nuisance or harassment
it's weirdly human also like it's a moment of humanity that I think where the police officers were trying to hug them and we're trying to console them and didn't also didn't know what to do, you know, because it was such a so heartbreak. I think though, the it's interesting that footage because I think we are so numb to gun violence. Audiences react more to the grief than anything else. And we talked about it with Ajika's mother. I was like, do you want this in Like should we remove this?
This is the worst day of these children's lives and here it is like do we want this out in the world. And she said to me, no, you leave that.
In She was like, you leave that like Attil's mother.
Yes, she was like, the world needs if they had to go through that, if my grandchildren had to live through that, the world can bear witness. You know, it's a society failing them. They need the world needs to know. And I was like, okay, whatever, you know, that's obviously it's her call.
What do you want the average police officer to learn from this?
I think that I would love this to be used as a tool for police training, and I think I do think there's multiple things at play here. I think a lot of police departments are not trained or equipped for.
¶ Some police funding would be better spent on social workers, psychiatrists etc
These kinds of issues. They're civil, they see them as civil.
And it was funny to even hear that once during the thing, well that's criminal, where Susan's trying so hard to like get that, Yeah about criminal, I'm here for that.
You know what's interesting, though, is we did have a police officer, a former law enforcement officer, approached us after a screening. He approached my producer and Elisa Payne and talked to her and she was nervous because you know, he came up and said, I I'm a I used to be in.
Law enforce, and she was like, Okay, here we go.
I'm about to get a lecture. But he was like, you know what after the third time Susan called here in this state and this was in Utah, he said, in this state, she would have been flagged as a problem and she.
Would have been interesting.
He would have been ticketed. She would have been given a warning for abusing emergency services, for essentially calling for things that were founded.
And she was like, in the.
The community would have been told they could file restraining order or charges against her for harassment.
And that is that.
How many states have laws like that? I didn't you know, I.
Don't know, but it's true.
I do think and we have I think I understand that in states, if you constantly call the police and
¶ It felt like police didn't know how to handle Susan
it's unfounded, you can be you know, you become Well.
We've had we I had to pay a fine because our alarm went off and our fire alarm went off and the fire department came. And I thought, well that in some ways that is reasonable. I just you know, that should be fined, and like I understood it. I was like, oh Jesus, I you know, I hate this thing anyway, you know, but I know we have some form of that here in Arlington.
There's no real emergency.
Right, there was not a fair point, and I.
Think she so they said that, And then I also believe that really there there should be alternative services to police, which are for again, community disputes, mediation, mental health crises, that type of thing.
I think that's we don't have enough law enforcement officers and then they would have to hire I mean that's like, right, we are so well, we're underfunded in things that we don't prioritize.
That's exactly well, I don't know that we because some police departments are very well funded, but the funding goes to, you know, only specific things.
Some of that funding could go to again services that where you send out a social worker, a psychiatrist, you know, like and a team of nurses.
Like this is the kind of thing now here.
In New York we're talking about for people who are having or who are either unhoused or maybe having a mental health crisis, because otherwise they end up dead. If you call the cops, people get shot, you know, So there should be something else in place.
¶ Police saw Susan as a nuisance, not a threat. Her whiteness protected her
And I feel like if the police are meant to deal with criminal stuff, first of all, you see, they don't prevent anything, because Ajka ended up dead regardless, right, even though they came home.
True it didn't work. They were responsive. You can't say they weren't responsive. So in that sense, good they were.
They didn't prevent anything.
They tried to de escalate in the moment. Oh yeah, but they didn't have it didn't prevent it.
Didn't They didn't have a solution.
And also Susan, but I get the sense they almost felt like they couldn't impose a solution. They didn't. It wasn't they didn't know what to do. I did get the sense they didn't know what to do.
Yeah, then they are not they are not trained.
Actually, I think we got we got a hint. And I'm curious. So there was a moment where one that's sorry, where one of the officers they leave. You know, this is probably the third time that they second or third visit. This is sort of early in the film, and the officer refers to her as an fing b.
Yeah, one of them says that, another one calls her a.
Psycho, and then the audio abruptly cuts. I was curious, was that your editor there edit that's shut off, was like realized she was She was probably saying something despair. It was like, God, she's a and then she like, so, I'm guessing they're like, well, if you're gonna dispara, you know, be careful getting caught on camera disparaging people or something. She then that means that's the police officer realizing I better shut this off before I get myself. That's right,
that's right. So there's a sense where the officers know who the party that's in the wrong here. They didn't know it. They don't have any Is it the law
¶ Susan seemed to be a loner & clearly always miserable
that's missing? Is it or is it their training? I mean, I don't what what do you think is the issue here?
I think they never saw her as a threat. I think she was able to weaponize her as a nuisance, yeah, but not a threat. And she was able to weaponize her race and privilege to make that true. Had she been a person of color filming children and using hate speech against them and saying threatening things, I don't think this would have gone the way it did, or that she would have, you know.
Not been she might have been an intervention.
It's more than a nuisance.
And they also the police also didn't see the community is needing protection from her, you know. So I think This is unfortunately that they aside from lack of training, et cetera, et cetera, and again they are our bar for the police. My husband says, this is so low that we often mistake they're polite. We missed stake their politeness for competence. You know, they didn't see her as a threat.
Meanwhile, in Florida, you could not go there like like a toaster or microwave, so that could make anybody a threat.
¶ Police never checked into whether Susan was a gun owner
And even after she behaved radically driving her car into a fence, there was a scene where we saw that they didn't think about it.
You know, she never got connected.
M like, hey, systemic issue.
She's a she's uniquely broken. I go back to broken. I always like to use broken because I assume everybody has the potential. Yeah, and you know so you usually try to go with broken. But she was something happened right, she was not she was She did not process the way most people process.
But she was left over here to fester, right by them then saying, oh.
My guess is she alienated everybody in her own life?
Huh?
I mean it was not, and I don't to me, the footage doesn't lie. You didn't paint her as a loaner. But we never saw her with anybody, and that doesn't surprise me.
Yeah, we knew know she attended a church, so there
¶ What type of projects are you working on next?
was you know, she was there was a community like.
She was clearly always miserable. I mean, if if kids playing drives you crazy, you've got your own issues.
Yeah.
But I think the thing that's really important to say here is too the system also failed her. The system failed Ajica and her family and that viewpoint.
But it failed her. She should have never had access to again. She should have never you know, if there had been an intervention, she would not be in jail for ostensibly the rest of her life.
I mean, one law Florida did pass. Was there a red flag law after the Parkland shooting that has been quite effective in Florida. What happened, and she would have been a prime candidate, uh, perhaps for it. Yeah, they knew, you know, and that is a question. Did they know she was a firearm owner? Because they could have found out that they chose.
To, they could have fell out, but they just did not.
They never chose to.
But she also saw her play victim, right, She weaponized victimhood the minute she thought she was in trouble, suddenly.
Welcome to our welcome to our politics and social media everybody.
Also, yes, weaponizing victimhood and I think but that has been a strategy, I have to say, all like, it's
¶ Another documentary will be announced in a couple weeks
part of white grievance, right, It's like and also white women and their and fear when you look at Emma Till's case, right, has led white women and as we you know, it's now termed Karen is a Karen.
I saw that the kids were you Karen, Karen.
But it's been the weaponization of racism right since.
The time neighbor named Karen. She hates it. I feel bad for her that her name's now a pejorative.
Helpless people have been lynched because of a white woman said, oh, I'm afraid. I don't feel safe. They you know, they whistled at me or he said he talked to me, you know.
I mean that's how I until died. So we think about this and and Susan was doing that. She was doing that, and it's like a modern version of that.
So so what's next for you? Projects? I mean, I know most documentaries have like eight projects that they and they're waiting for see which one is going Okay, this one's ripe, right, it's.
Last year, I should say my Message Pictures which is Sam Pollard, Alisa Payne and myself and the con Kwon two is a longtime collaborator. We had Katrina come Helen high Water come out on that in October. It was a very successful series was number one for them for
¶ Telling the story in a visual medium reaches people who don't read
a couple of weeks or for at least a week, but it did really well for them. And then we also had a short come out, The Devil Is Busy, which I co directed with Crystal and Hampton, my best friend from college, and that is also nominated for an Oscar. So I have two films that are nominated, which is apparently the first time it's ever happened for a woman, two films all right directed, So that is a huge you know again for me in honor, also a little disappointed that I am the first.
It should have happened already, but whatever, I'll take it.
So its yeah.
And then we have the perfect So so now we are. So we're starting up.
There is another documentary which we'll be announced in a couple of weeks that we're about to we're beginning on that we're excited about and then we're also diving back into scripted. We have some because I come from scripted, Alisa comes subscripted, Sam does scripted, so where ni Con was an animation producer, so we have we want to sort of branch out into back into other forms that we've always been part of.
Well. One of the things that I've since leaving sort of the legacy media world is realizing that there are just a million ways to teach people. Yes, right, and you know, film, especially with this younger generation that is much more visual than they are text. And there's I say that I'm not judging, you know, we all learn differently, we all absorb differently, and the visual medium as a story, you know, and telling stories in some way the best storytellers.
We need now more than ever in order to educate the country about our history, educate people about our history. So in that vein, I mean where you know this to me is is it's an education film as much as it's you know it's there to it's there to visually show you something that you can read about. This is not a new story, but this was told in
¶ Comedy and humor is a great way to teach
a more powerful, in a different way, in a way that is hopefully going to get absorbed by people who may not read. You know, a story I just had an author on not too long ago, the person who wrote about and the Barn that Emmettil was killed in, right Thompson. And it's a terrific book. But in some ways not everybody reads books.
Yeah. Yeah, so it's like, how do we reach people?
You know?
Ryan Coogler told a really beautiful story we were We have Sinners has been on the you know, we've sort of been on the road together and the team.
¶ How do you use AI, what are you comfortable with, what will you fight?
You've been seeing you've been doing the circuit with. Yes, Sinners is another that's awful, which is such a way to do horror.
Yeah, it's such a like again, such a thrill for us. But he talked about how in the neighborhood he grew up in, like, there were elders who actually, because of lack of schooling or they had to leave school at an early age, you couldn't read. Like they could run a business, they could navigate street signs, they could understand, they couldn't actually read and comprehend a book.
That they had.
Movies.
Movies were their medium, you know, a medium for them to like gain information and think about the world and interact with it because they didn't have the privilege of learning how to read. And I thought that was so powerful and that I have.
There's some relation to that for me with like the women in my family who you know, again elder women not my mother's generation, but further back, who might have been taken out of school at like a young age.
They're supposed to you know, at the keep house or something.
Yeah, And so for them even movies were like an escape and something, you know, a medium that they could really be immersed in.
So is there a topic you haven't done that you want to tackle.
I would like to do a comedy. I would like to do something I think I've in need. I would like to do a humorous movie. That's my That's one of the.
Dreams, just that of funny.
Yeah, because the humor is so critical. Humor is a revolutionary So I feel like that is something.
That I would like. It's also another way to teach.
Yes, it is, and it's been used in so many ways. I think about Whoopy Goldberg talks about moms Mabley, who was her icon, who used that platform of comedy to talk about deeply political things she would never have been able to talk about otherwise.
So what me I to get a creator? And I'm very curious how do you use AI and what are you comfortable with and what are you going to fight to the death on when it.
Comes to the side, we don't use that. I don't use that as in my filmmaking, So that does not.
Are you convinced you'll never use it?
I I am right now convinced I'll never use it.
But I can't predict the future, right.
No, I mean I don't think any of us know how they Yeah, I do tools get changed on us and you're.
Yeah, right, and also too, does it just become so ubiquitous that we have no choice?
I'm worried about that. I would like to say I will never use it.
I and that is my stance, But there comes a point where you end up shut out, right, like if you, for example, like I know I will not have a cell phone, but then if you don't like it, actually you have.
You just to navigate the word like now you can't.
Not have one, you cannot have one, and my children too, Like it's interesting.
Even in speaking of surveillance, I always say this, imagine if the government. Imagine if the government had said we're you have to carry a phone with you all the time. What do you mean we have to carry a phone with us? Right, yeah, yeah, we all did it voluntarily. It's but I think, but.
I think so that's the thing, like I right now, no, but twenty years from now.
I mean you talked about you have a friend who's doing an animation. I mean that that that scares me at how that will be the first I fear that's the first thing that falls.
Yeah, yeah, the first to.
Go because it's so expensive and labor intensive.
Yeah, so.
You know, but I think we'll have to see it's up to our community, right, like we really have to make.
¶ ToddCast Time Machine - February 27th, 1933
Decisions well, and it's also up to the public hopefully. The stuff that's made with AI is you know, it's like you don't want to eat plastic fruit, no, you no? And I think we've all learned, oh gross, it looks good, but probably.
Right we continue to see the value in what we do and don't want to replace.
Us with well, and it goes like I said, it goes back to to take this back to the beginning as we land this plane that you know, I believe
¶ Reichstag fire gave Hitler emergency powers
there's a premium on real life in person live authenticity, no editors, no anything, and in some case your body camera footage is all of that wrapped up. It is, you know, the the pushback against you know, manufactured content.
Thank you, Thank you for saying that. That means a lot.
Well, look, good luck and uh, I know who I'm rooting for night.
Thank you so much.
All right, it's great to get to know. Well, let's get into the time machine because guess what, let's just
¶ Germany's economy had been devastated
say thematically, it sort of fits with the UH with the broader theme of the beginning of this podcast having to do with emergencies and how those in power can abuse UH legislation that gives them emergency power. So let's get into the time machine. Where are we going? We were going back to February twenty seventh, nineteen thirty three, the German parliament building known as the Reichstag burned. The
fire matters, but the story isn't the flames. The real story is how fragile Germany's political system already was, how quickly legal authority became a vehicle for authoritarian power. And to understand the night of the Reichstag fire, you have to understand why Adolf Hitler was even in office in the first place, because he didn't seize power, he was handed power. That's how this authoritarian regime in Germany began. By the early nineteen thirties, Germany was exhausted. The Great
Depression had devastated the economy. Remember America was pursuing that
¶ In three years, Germany cycled through three unstable governments
horrible protectionist tariff policy that was essentially causing the rise of nationalism all around the world. That's my historical opinion. But it had devastating impact than the European economy, particularly the Germans. Unemployment sword banks collapsed. Faith in the parliamentary democracy in Germany erode it. The president, Paul von Hindenberg, had already appointed three chancellors in rapid succession before he ends up appointing Adolf Hitler. First, it was Heinrich Bruening.
He governed through the harsh austerity measures during the depression. He was the one that had to cut spending and wages in hopes of trying to stabilize the currency. Instead, it deepened public misery and he lost support inside that parliament. Then came Franz von Poppen, who had virtually no base inside parliament and ruled almost entirely by presidential emergency decree. He alienated both the left and the right and could
¶ German elites thought they could use Hitler's popularity & manage him
not build a governing coalition. And then the last one before Hitler was a gentleman by the name of Kurt von Schlatscher who tried to split the Nazi Party and construct a cross party alliance. It failed and he quickly lost Hindenburg's So in under three years, Germany cycled through
three increasingly unstable governments. And during that entire period they had something called Article forty eight, the emergency clause of the Weimar Constitution, which was used regularly to bypass parliament because parliament was so dysfunctional and divided, so emergency rule had already been normalized in German society's some From there, Hitler didn't invent the habit. He stippingly stepped into the void.
So how did Hitler get there? In nineteen thirty two, the Nazi Party had surged to become the largest party in parliament. It was real popular support, but he did
¶ Whether Nazi's helped, or just exploited the fire is still debated
not The Nazi Party did not have a majority in parliament, but in the November nineteen thirty two elections, the Nazis actually lost seats. Momentum was slipping. Hitler was not inevitable. But what changed was the calculation of the elites. Again, just think about the Republican Party circa twenty sixteen. But I digress. So what changed was elite calculation. Conservative insiders, especially Franz von Poppin, believe they could use Hitler's popularity
to stabilize government. They assumed that they would dominate the Captain, that they could box Hitler in, that his radicalism could be managed, that his mass following could be harnessed. Well, they were wrong, but they tried so. On January thirtieth,
nineteen thirty three, Hindenberg appointed Hitler Chancellor. Not because he was democratic, not because he had a majority in parliament he did not, but because the elites at the time thought, well, he's got the biggest block of supporters and we can control him. Or so they thought, so he gets appointed January thirtieth, twenty seven. Twenty eight days later, excuse me,
¶ Reichstag Fire decree suspended civil liberties
February twenty seventh, the Reichstock burns now a Dutch communists Marinis vander Lub was arrested at the scene. Most historians today believe he likely acted alone. Whether the Nazis helped or simply exploited the fire is still debated to this day. Right was it an inside job? Was you know? Was vander Lubi a patsy? But politically it didn't matter. Hitler immediately framed the event as the beginning of a communist uprising,
and that framing found fertile ground. Enemy of my enemy is my ally, and everybody feared the communists in Germany. Germany had a growing Communist block inside the Reichstock Street. Clashes between Nazis and Communists were common. Political violence was happening a lot. The violence was real and fear moved quickly. So the next day after the fire, February twenty eighth, Hindenberg signed the Reichstag Fire Decree under Article forty eight.
That decree suspended, essentially what is the equivalent of our
¶ Enabling Act allowed Hitler to legislate without parliamentary approval
first Amendment. It suspended freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, protections against arrest without charge. This was constitutional authority, legal authority. Their constitution essentially created a dictatorship. Legally. Thousands of communists were arrested immediately, their ability to organize a campaign was crippled. And then here's the here's the key with it. A week later, they're holding elections. Anyway,
they were having another round of elections in March. So on March fifth, nineteen thirty three Germany votes, the Nazi Party receives forty three point nine percent of the vote two hundred and eighty eight seats, not a majority. Even after the fire, even after the repression, the Nazis did
¶ The German dictatorship was created via constitutional rules
not command a majority of German voters. But here's where the mechanics mattered. The Communist Party won about twelve percent in that election, but many of its deputies were prevented from taking their seats. They wouldn't let the Communists in there. So it you take away the Communists, suddenly that looks like they do have a majority. So when you combined with conservative allies, the Nazis had the numbers to move forward.
Later in March, they passed something called the Enabling Act, in a granted Hitler's cabinet authority to legislate without parliamentary approval. Just they just he would decree. There was no more legislative bridge in Germany at this point. By the way, to get this pasted, it required two thirds majority. The legislature basically voted to eradicate its existence. And why did it pass because the Communist Party members weren't allowed to vote,
they were absent. Some opposition members were simply intimidated by the Nazi thugs. Conservative parties calculated that cooperation was safer than resistance. Again go back to nine twenty sixteen. Sorry,
¶ Emergency powers aren't always authoritarian, it's who uses them
the authoritarian turned required votes, it required signatures, it required a legal procedure. The German dictatorship was done via constitutional rules. Why did it work well? By February nineteen thirty three, emergency governance had already been normalized. Parliament had already been weakened in Germany. The economic crisis had eroded faith in liberal democracy in general. What they looked around and wasn't working. People didn't like people didn't like that economy. Elites believed
the temporary authoritarian measures would restore order. So the Reichstag fire did not create authoritarianism, but it accelerated a system that was already leaning in that direction. And that's what's so always been so unsettling about this incident and history, because the incident is not the fire or the arson.
¶ Ask Chuck
The most unsettling part of this story is its legality. German democracy didn't collapse because laws were ignored, just the opposite. It collapsed because the laws were used expansively, but they
¶ Why does populism lead to antisemitism?
were used, and they were used under crisis conditions. Our emergency powers are not inherently authoritarian. It's who uses those emergency powers. But when crisis becomes the organizing principle of governance and legislatures differ rather than assert authority, emergency becomes permanence. Hitler did not overthrow the system in one night. He operated within it, stretched it until it snapped, and then created his own scary version. The reichs Dog didn't fall
in flames, It fell with signatures. Boy, such a reminder. History doesn't repeat, but it certainly does. Right, all right, little question time. By the way, I might as well share this with you so that don't name anything Hindenburg, because Hindenburg is a politician and Hindenburg is a blimp all end in catastrophe. That's the real takeaway. That's my other takeaway from our time machine history of the Reichstag Fire. But anyway, let's take some questions.
Ask Chuck.
This comes from Jaye New York, and he says, hey, you mentioned last week that populism almost always leads to with anti semitism. It is an accurate correlation with some obvious historical examples Hitler's Germany. But my question is why does populism lead to anti stism? Is it simply because populis often look for a scapegoat and Jewish people provide an easy target as a non Jewish person. I've accepted the correlation of populism anti Semitism. I've never really considered the
why Jay It's an excellent question. I think one is we're a super small minority already. Two that's so, and minorities get scapegoated generally. Two Jews do punch above their weight in corporate America, in the finance world, So in tough economic times it becomes if you already, especially if you you know, look, there's less anti Semitism in South Florida because there's more Jews that live in South Florida, right, you know, they're to me, the correlation of anti Semitism
usually is where there's fewer Jews. Right wherever you see the least amount of Jews, you'll see the most amount of anti Semitism. Some of it's driven by some some hateful sects of Christianity, not Christianity itself, but there are some sort of sex that most Christians would denounce that that that use religion to sort of teach hate of Jews.
But it's it. I've all, you know, looked as I look at it, and you're just like I just I find it amusing that this tiny you know, that that we Jews here that were like point three percent of the globe's population or something like that, and yet we're and in fact, we're still below our population high are below the popular what the Jewish population of the globe was pre World War Two. And you know, we're apparently, you know, behind all these incredible conspiracies. So we really,
¶ Is this the administration that's run the most like a business?
I guess, punch above our weight. But look, it's always easy to scapegoat entities you don't know. And it's still there are still huge pockets in this country, huge pockets around the world that no Jewish people exist, but have never met one. So when you have not when you don't know anybody as a three dimensional figure, it's easy to turn them into sort of two dimensional enemies. It's the best explanation I have, But it is, you know,
I appreciate that. I mean, it's interesting the way you word it, you sort of you accept you accept that as an accurate correlation. I mean it just it just is always what happens. I think sometimes we forget that, you know, bad ideas are usually not rational. Maybe that's a better way to look at him. Next question comes from Bills from Newburg, Oregon, but he says temporarily false Church, Virginia. Well, it's nice to have you as a neighbor, Bill, he says.
I think if you answer this one, then I'll enter the five timers club. If that means that you've read five of my questions on here. If you do honor me thus, I humbly thank you. Is this the first administration that runs the most like a business that you've ever seen? Long a mantra of Republicans, I think they finally got their wish and this administration is run the most like a business or any other. Your defense of Casey Watperson's corporation is acting rightly in the face of
the Epstein files made me shake my head. I think this administration is handling the Epstein files exactly the way a corporation's PR department went. I often say go Kaines, but this time I'll say go Seahawks, my adopted team. Thanks billis I didn't know I was defending the Casey Washerman Corporation ex actly rightly in the face anyway, Not
quite sure. I get the question you're asking if it's running more like Well, it depends on if by running the business, do you do what's in the best interest A business is supposed to do what's in the best interest of its bottom line. The question does Donald Trump run this administration and the best interest in the bottom line of the United States, or does he run it in the best interests of the bottom line of Donald Trump.
I know that sounds a bit sort of like hyperbole, but I feel like he makes more decisions based on what's in his best interest in the private sector, he and his friends, et cetera. But it's not always in the best interest at the bottom line of the United States. So that's where you know he's picking winners and losers. So I understand the I understand the premise here question.
I just don't see the evidence that he is running it like a like a If he's running it like a business, he's not running it like a business that wants to grow, expand and be successful over time. Right, it feels like he's running it more like how does a legacy business that's trying to survive rather than thrive. But I've always you know, if you ran the government like a business, you would you probably would get rid of a lot of poverty measures because they you know,
you might get rid of. You might not stockpile as much defense weaponry either, right, you know, so there'd be a lot of regulation, a lot more regulation you might get rid of if you were running it like a business. Anyway, I don't think he's running it in the best interests of the US government's bottom line. I think ultimately, if he's running it like a business, he's running it in the best interests of his own bottom line. I'm trying to see where you caught what I was saying about
Casey Wasserman, and how you any I wasn't defect. I look at the Casey Wasserman situation and think, you know, I was talking with the journalists who said that they they had a line. The way they were dealing with it is anybody with Epstein ties pre two thousand and seven, they weren't going to treat treat like what were you thinking that they were willing to give anybody preos basically pre charges being brought against him some benefit of that.
There's a middle ground of people that sort of still kept in touch with him and then until he you know, then and then walked after that, and then there's anybody that you dealt with him after two thousand and nine, you don't, right, Wasserman is one of the few that is being punished for emails that go back to twenty oh two, twenty three that don't seem to go there.
So that would be one, but it is, you know, and yes, I do agree that the Epstein files in that sense are being Yes, the handling of that on a pr level, I'll give you that that right, The best way of business would do is just put it
¶ Starting to see Republicans breaking with Trump?
all out there, make every you know, don't organize it for people, make other people have to figure it out. The problem with this is that every couple of days there's like a new It feels like a new development because you know, somebody is you know, methodically, you know, there's hundreds and thousands of people methodically going through these these files, and there's always something new to find. And again you look around, I mean, I miss this. I'm
a I'm an adjunct professor at USC. Apparently we had some USC professors get caught up in the Epstein files. So this has been like a machine gun that went off erratically and bullets went everywhere, and everybody's paying a price except Donald Trump. I think Donald Trump's paying a price too, right, you know, is he going to pay a direct price or does he pay an indirect political price?
And I think he's paying the indirect political price more importantly, Bill, if that is your five timer, congrats, welcome to the five Timers club. Maybe we should get mugs or something, get some swag for that as well. Next question comes from Philip in Biloxi. He says, hey, they're my Congressman.
Mike Eazell surprisingly is embracing the Supreme Court's decision. He was interviewed locally on WLOX where he said, and I'm paraphrasing, we may not like it, but the Supreme Court is the final word, and we have to obey the law of the land. He's also running a local radio that says something like, thanks to Trump and Eazel, the economy is booming and we're living in a golden age, which is why I say it's surprising because he normally echoes
all of Trump's talking points. Thanks also for being the only national voice I know that occasionally speaks about Mississippi politics, Philip and Biloxi. You know, that's very heartening to hear. And I think it is a reminder that that I do take the more optimistic approach about elected officials, that most of them do want to accept the structure of the constitution. That really the most abusive, the person that
¶ What if the Constitutional Convention had not been held in summer?
has the least amount of respect for it is the guy sitting in the oval office. And and yes, you certainly have people who don't want to look like they're on the wrong side. And notice how you know that there's different ways you can you can sort of accept, well, Supreme Court the law of the land. He doesn't want to get caught being anti Trump, but he may be
very happy that this happened, you know. So the point is is that given where he is at, you know, I think the the he couldn't get caught pushing, you know, publicly celebrating the Supreme Court ruling. So I think there's a difference. Right, I'm curious to see who celebrates it, who uses the this is a moment. You know, who else is Don Bacon not running for reelection? Right? Who else goes that far? Out on the limb on that.
But and let's see, you know, what does he do if he does have to vote in Congress on any of these things. I'm not convinced that Trump wants to go do that, but we'll see. Next question comes from an elected official, John m imperially, a mayor from New Jersey, and he writes, first, Chuck, thank you for the podcast Political Junkie and amateur Historians Dream Come True. I'm the mayor of a small town in New Jersey and frequently electure on American history and specifically the Constitution from a
quote citizen's point of view. So here's my question. What if the Constitutional Convention had been held in the spring or fall of seventeen eighty seven rather than the summer. My point is that the delegates of the Constitutional Convention could not wait to get out of the hot, muggy, miserable Philadelphia that summer. The result of brilliant constitution and principle, but with way too many particulars rushed over and not
properly thought out. One of the thought for you is to throw out in your podcast, exactly who are the founding fathers? The fifty six men who signed the Declaration of Independence, the thirty nine men who signed the Constitution or the six men who signed both. And when I asked, who do the six men who signed both are, no one gets it right. They are George Climber, George Reed, Roger Sherman, Robert Morris, James Wilson, and Benjamin Franklin. Mayor Imperiality.
First of all, I want to come visit your town. Love love hearing this. Appreciate you loving the history part. I think you had to sign both. I think to be founding father. So let's go at the six right they should they shouldn't. We probably should make a bigger deal out of them. You know, I have confessed a few times that I'm a sports card junkie. I guess you called it a baseball card junkie. In two thousand and nine, Tops put out an American History set and
it was great. It had like little insert sets of Medal of Honor winners, and every Medal of Honor winner up through two thousand and nine gave you a little and I I just loved it. I you know, my daughter was five at the time, and so I made a big deal and we built we have this great album of it and all this stuff, and and it
¶ Thoughts on Gallup ending presidential tracking, NJ-11 election?
has a whole bunch of subsets of those that signed the Constitution and those that signed the Declaration of Independence. But we really ought to say, make a bigger deal on the six. You know, and you know, at least one is a name that most people already know of, Benjamin Frank. So it's a it's a pretty good it's a pretty good place to start. But that's a kudos. Let's make those Let's make the uh the founding six. Let's maybe over time we give them more and more
of their due. Thanks for listening and thanks for your service. John another New Jersey and writes in this is John from New Jersey. I don't think it's the same, John, an he rights was waiting to hear your thoughts on these two news bits. One that Gallup ending its presidential tracking poll in two and Alila Mahea is beating Tom Malinowski in New Jersey special election. I think it's upsetting the Gallup is choosing to stop polling presidential approval rather
than report on the current administration's coort rating. Do you see other firms mimicking this? And what are your thoughts on Mahia's win. I'm curious about how the June primary will go if there's more of a consolidation in that primary, But it looks like the establishment is already called lest a rounder. I did some Gallup thoughts on my sub stack last week. If you wanted to read those. You know, it's funny when you're in this, when you're making content
in multiple places, you touch everything. You don't know if you've touched everything in every place, and I have not, you are correct. I have not touched New Jersey eleven here. I've done it in a couple other spots. I think I did it with the Silissa podcast, and we haven't touched and Gallop. I don't think I mentioned on the podcast maybe quickly in passing, but I did write up on gal I look, first of all, parse the announcement very very carefully from Gallup. Gallup said they're going to
stop publicly releasing their job approval on the president. I didn't get clarification of whether they're not actually asking the question. It's absolutely malpracticed, and not ask the question on any survey you're doing on anything in the public policy space at all, because you've got it is it is a helpful way to at least understand how partisan folks are
behaving where they lie. It gives you a better sense of which policy ideas have political traction versus those that may have, you know, or less driven by ideology, more driven by popularity. It's it's just a it's it's it would be malpracticed not to have that piece of data with you. It is hard not to wonder Gallups Primary. You know, they do a lot of survey work and private survey work, and they have a lot of federal contracts.
The lack of trust anybody has in this country right now of any corporation and Donald Trump is amazing because a lot of people immediately looked up the amount of federal contracts that Gallup has with the government, sees that was quite a bit and could easily see right, Donald Trump already was mad at Politico, So then everybody in the government had to cancel their political subscriptions, whether they
had a political produce subscription somewhere, et cetera. And it sounds like Gallup was worried about its bottom line and worried about its business. It's possible they thought there was no upside to it, since a whole bunch of other people were putting it out publicly. Nobody was saying Gallups was the best of the polls that are out there. Gallup had the best brand name out there, but their poll for a long time hadn't been the best poll. It had been sort of problematic for a long time.
You know. I remember when they stopped, they had a daily tracking pole, which was a total mess because while I don't think their methodology changed, how people interpreted the changes just created all sorts of friction, and they did a terrible job of communicating when they're when the tracking pole would change. So, you know, I think Gallup got out of the public polling business a long time ago.
Right when it used to be the CNN USA Today Gallup pole, that was the you know, basically the only pole that was considered better than that one was NBC News Wall Street Journal. But over time, the CNN the Gallup pole had shown a lot more instability, and I know that we we certainly stopped using it as a
reliable indicator. So I'm not going to sit here and call the Gallup pole, you know, but I but it would be it would be malpractice, not the doing any survey that you do public, public or private in order to understand your survey better, in order to have a baseline, in order to know your your your survey isn't totally
out of whack. You know, job job approval is one of those ubiquitous questions that helps you and you know, understand whether you basically have a you know, it's a the fact that so many other posters do it, it serves as almost a check to make sure you're you don't have a you know, you know for sure, do you have an out could you have an outlier survey, et cetera. So do pay attention to the fact that they just simply said they stopped they were going to
stop publishing the result. Again, I can't imagine anybody would actually stop asking it. I mean again, it's a it's it's one of those questions. It's almost like a stabilizing question. It helps you understand whether your your survey is is A is a trustworthy uh A trustworthy survey. As for the MAHI, I think look that the most fascinating aspect of this was the aggressiveness of apac Right. They wanted to take Malanski down. They went after them hard, and
they were successful. They is the negatives of Malinowski, and they see but the candidate they were hoping to help ended up finishing third, and the candidate that benefited from APEX attack ads in Malinowski was somebody further to the left than Malinowski and perhaps just as unfriendly to some of APAX issues as Malanowski had become. So it was really one of those a reminder that when you do attack ads and multi candidate races in primaries, know what
you're trying to do. If you're trying to take somebody out, do know who could benefit you know? And are you sure you're going to end up with somebody that isn't going to be more more of a problem for your issues? In this case, I think it was. It was that, I think it And this is where when interest when a big interest group goes after somebody, sometimes it's you know, Canada and candidate be cancel each other, it's out and a candidate ce ends up benefiting. We got some three
way prime. We got a three way primary coming up in Texas, Right, We're going to see something like that take place. Right, does Wesley Hunt benefit from all the
¶ Need for regulation on prediction markets
cornant attack ads on Paxton right? Rather than Cornyn. I mean, it certainly looks like Cornan has not benefited from all these attacks on Paxton, but instead the demo generic Democratic vote has benefited when matched up against Paxton in general election matchups, and Paxton's negatives keep going up, but it is not helping Cornyon. So it is a reminder that basically negative ads can work, but don't assume those negative
ads will accrue to the benefit of another candidate. That if you want to benefit, it could always accrue to a third candidate. But as for look, I think I certainly, you know, I see why everybody's going ahead and rilly knocked off somebody who used to have the title Corners and seem to win despite not being the biggest spender or anything like that. So I understand why the establishment at this point is like, well, might as well, might
as well get behind money. Next question comes from Robert Leeds. Any rights, Hey check meet the press, missus. You I worked in several campaigns. Anyway, I'm a Gold trader and have said for years that during Trump's first term and again during the second, Gold seems to do weird things. On the eve of the job's report, huge sell orders would come in overnight when the market was strong, gold would crash for five seconds, go back up, and then a bearsh report will come out at eight thirty. After
seeing your podcast today, I wanted to share this. You're doing a great job. Thanks. Well. What he was talking about was this weird again. And I think we've got to get some regulatory structure around these prediction markets versus gambling markets, et cetera. But there's got to be a way to deal with fraud. And somebody gained the jobs numbers. Right when Peter Navarro goes out warns of a bad jobs report, jobs report turns out much better the next
day than what he went out there. And of all people to go out there as somebody who's already of
¶ What's going on with Virginia's redistricting effort?
questionable credibility on his information in general, right, that just smells crazy. And you know this is where I you know, we're going full speed into these new markets without you know, we were building the ideas first and trying to come up with the regulation later. Very hard to put regulation
on something that's already left the station. And I'm concerned about this, but we don't seem to have a very good, very interesting what you say on gold, You've just explained why I do not get involved in those markets at all. I don't trust them. I think there's the people that are most involved are doing it as hedge hedges and games and gaming it in some form, and those are just not That's not where my comfort level is, you know,
like I like, I'm more of them. My financial advisor and I were more of the warm Buffett acolytes, right, like investing in companies that people use, you know, durable goods, not always durable goods, but some durable goods, some texts on this, on that, but you know, companies that actually succeed, not just hypotheticals. Next question comes from Dan in Fairfax. He goes, hey, I consider myself an informed voter, but
I am lost when it comes to this issue. From what I gather, a judge in Tazewell County has ruled twice that the redistricting effort shouldn't proceed, but the state government is moving ahead anyway. I also read that state democrats think any lawsuit of posing the measure can only be filed in Richmond, which is really confusing. Further, the state Supreme Court doesn't seem to think this is anhe requiring urgency can you explain what's going on. Thank you,
Dan in Fairfax. Look, it's a fair point. I think the the the legis the Democrat The Democrats and the legislature continue to believe that the Supreme Court is going to overrule this staswell judged like they did the last time. But let's just step back. You know, I find this whole campaign. I've seen the ads, the ads for Yes use every talking point I was using about why there shouldn't be re redistricting around, and it was just like confusing, Like when you hear an ad or you're like, well,
I agree with that. I agree with that. You know, there shouldn't be politics in this. We got to take the politics out of this. That's why you've got to vote yes. You're like, wait what And I sit here and I'm like, I'm you know, am I being gas lit by this ad campaign? Look? Ends, justify the means is bad policy, period And ultimately that's what this entire effort in Virginia is about. Ends, just find the means. We have to do this now because of what they're
doing in Texas. We have to do this now, and what they might do in Florida, what they might do in Indiana, what they might do in Missouri. Uh, I get it, politics, ain't bean bag. You've heard me say it before on the Virginia front. Your right to be confused. I'm very confused too. Some of it had you know.
I Ultimately it feels as if these state supreme courts are you know, and what we've seen, the courts are ultimately going to side with uh legislatures on this because ultimately, right, that's that's who has the supremacy here is the legislature. Uh And if this is what they've chosen to do, and they're going to the voters. So I suspect that this stay you know, I guess it's weird early voting
starts before the end of the stay, right. I think early voting is supposed to begin the six and this stay this this, this is supposed to basically be a not a statement, sort of an injunction against this that's till the eighteenth. I think it's extraordinarily confusing. I have a feeling this map's going to pass pretty but this amendment to do this is going to pass pretty easily. But I'm just I don't think this is a good
long term look for Democrats. And I you know, I understand, Hey, you got to get power now, you'll worry about how it looks later. Is the mindset. But again it goes back to ends justify the means. And we're watching an entire Republican party that's probably going to regret at some point being an ends justify the means party. And they've been that party in particular since certain certain orange haired man strode down an escalator. And it is, it is,
it is. I can tell you this. I know Spamberger is going to regret having to start this partisan and it's interesting how she is having you know, some of it is just because the legislatures this there, this redistrict effort, you know, they vary, the clock is sticking, you know, they they literally had to move this in days and get it done even before she got sworn in. And
¶ Does international diplomacy have a greater impact on the president's legacy?
it has put her more as a partisan actor than I think I ever thought she would want to be, and look like very curious to see, by the way, what her State of the Union response comes across. As I think when you're when you're the Democrats, it's who i'd pick, right, you want to pick somebody who just won and won by a lot from a state that used to be you know, and share her profile from the national security space. So I I you know, I
think I get why they picked her. I do, I mean, I'm I'm there's two ways about sort of her tenure. If you're going to do hardcore politics, better to do at the start of your term, and then you moderate us the term goes on. On the other hand, it's hard to make. You know, this is a first impression for a lot of voters in Virginia. But Dan, I'm as confused, and the ad campaigns are only more confusing.
But look, it's gonna pass because this will be a super small turnout election and we already know those that are fired up on any messaging that involves checking Trump are gonna win the Battle of Turner. All right, last question for this episode comes from Jim Tobahana, Pennsylvania. I think you're giving me your age, but I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna do it. I don't want to. I don't watch you bragging about how much younger you are than I am. Jim, all right, just because you got
you got eight. If you've been on this planet eight less years than I have, you don't have to rub it in my face.
Uh.
Anyway, your question, does international diplomacy have a greater long term impact on legacy Trump, with his focus on the second term so much abroad, I don't see how this positively impact his legacy. Putting his name on statues the Kennedy Center giving seems like a short term ego boost for him, band aid that the next administration can reverse. Ultimately, long term legacy seems like strengthen in the US with a focus domestically, with an emphasis on improving his approval rating.
Focusing on more of a bipartisan agenda would be the biggest way to improve as a long term legacy. Am I right? If prices continue to soar in the behavior of his cabinet, no Marf k Junior Agency's ice, he's diminishing his own legacy. Jim, you're you know you're doing You're you're applying something that I used to have to ban during my meet the press days during our staff in There'd be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Stop trying to use logic with me. You know, in the
Trump era we banned logic. Jim. Everything you're saying is so logical. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, right George W. Bush did that. Right, He's like, you know what, I'm gonna focus on pep bar. By the end, I realized that Rack was gonna be a terrible legacy all this stuff, but he's still you know, there were some things he did that that were about his legacy. And guess what one of the most positive legacies he has is what he's done in helping fund cures for AIDS in Africa
and what the pep far program has done. I know that Elon Musk and that dose people. I have been trying to destroy that last positive legacy of the Bush administration. But you know this goes back to I, don't you know, Trump's the first guy.
You know.
I used to do these exit interviews with retiring members of Congress when I when I had my multiple when I with with the Daily Rundown and with then I would eventually change it to Meet the Press Daily and Meet the Press now. And I used to do these exit interviews with retiring members both sides of the aisle and get as many of them that would sit down, and they were really legacy questions, and you know, but I also wanted to know, like you know, when was
the first time you wanted to run for office? And why do you want to run? Things like that? You know, because I've done these sort of candidate interviews going back thirty five years now where people want to run for office the first time, you know, back at the hotline, we used to interview these candidates Cook Report, and we used to you know, piggyback on the Cook Report. This is what they They do this more strenuously than we
did a hotline back in the day. And one of the things that I that I've learned from those interviews over the years is that I used to say, you know, it always made me feel better about the democracy because everybody, whether they were, no matter where they were on the political spectrum hard left, center, left, hard right, center, right, independent, whatever you wanted to put it, they all ran for office on for one thing. There was always something they wanted.
There was the initial trigger. You know. I remember talking to one commresceman, I said, so, what got you involved in Congress? His first office was on the school He was mad that they drew drew the lines, drew his kid out of a certain school district. I'm gonna go on the school board and he admitted, he goes. Once I got on the school board, I realized they had nothing to do with the lines. It was somebody else,
he goes. But but I got involved and and and suddenly, he said, the more he learned about government and how it worked, the more interested he got. So Donald Trump's one of the few people to successfully gain office whose simple motivation seemed to be sort of the same motivation somebody has to go streaking on a football field. They just wanted to be noticed, right. They just wanted to, you know, be famous. They wanted more people to have
to respect them. It's a weird motivation. But he wasn't motivated because he's got an issue he cares the most about. He was maybe he has a daddy. There's plenty of We've had a handful of presidents and presidential candidates who I think got involved in politics as there they felt like it was the only way to please their dad, you know, boys said, there's a lot of politics is filled with presidents are filled or it's amazing how many of our presidents have daddy issues one way or the other,
including this one, by the way. But I don't think he really cares, you know, when you when you're so worried about putting your name on stuff, it shows you that you really don't care about Like the Institute of Peace was never his idea. He just wanted to slap his name on it because it uses the word peace. The Kennedy Center isn't his idea, but he wants to slap his name on it because he's afraid his name
is going to disappear. You know, He's only a real legacy is going to be that ballroom in the White House, right, And I think he thinks, hey, they still call the balcony Truman's balcony, so hopefully they'll always have to call you know, the ballroom will always be the Trump ballroom. Well he might get that, and there'll be some Donald. There'll be some Donald J. Trump elementary schools, and I you know, you know, we know this, it will be.
But I don't think he's got an issue. He If he cared about one issue throughout his entire career, it was, you know, his belief in tariffs. But even that, I don't think he fully understood why he believed in tariffs other than he was trying to come up with a talking point to insert himself into a political conversation back in the late eighties. So again, to go back to your question, Jim, everything about him makes sense, But you're that that's not how Trump's wired. It's just not how
he's wired. You know, you're you're one hundred percent right in these things. By the way I've gone, we've gone now a couple hours, and I didn't get to and I'm going to save this for Wednesday, but we're going to do I'm going to give you. I'll give you this hint now, the Christy Nomes Senate campaign. That's a fascinating exit ramp that the Trump White House is trying
to come up with to get rid of Nome. Fascinating situation. Also, want to get into the Maha moms and how yet another monsanto, the first major donation they'd ever given to Trump. Let's just say they reminded Trump of that. That's why they got the executive order that they got. But those Maha Moms, We're going to get into that too on Wednesday. So look, it was a hugely busy weekend. That last question reminded me of a couple other issues. I didn't get to get to. Maha moms, and Nome for South
Dakota Centate where two of them. But I'm not gonna I'm just going to leave that as a tease for the next episode in forty eight hours. Thanks for listening. By the way, we're having some of our you guys have been great. I know there's some new subscribers out there, some new devots. I appreciate having you. How do I know new Because we keep growing and things are going well. I can tell because I now got more people telling me hey, I've got fewer people coming up to me
saying hey, I miss you. What are you doing now? Now it's like, hey, I miss you over there, but I really like what you're doing now. So that's all because you guys are liking, You're subscribing, word of mouth, all of those things. And so let's just say I appreciate it because it's you know, this is an entrepreneurial business, and it is credibility has earned one listener and one viewer at a time, and this growth tells me that you guys are help are expressed or saying that I'm
earning it with you. So thank you, and with that, I'll see you A forty eight dollars
