¶ Introduction
Well, good Monday morning, Welcome to another episode of the Chuck Podcast. I really want to be uplifting. I'm not gonna lie to you, but first of all, even in my even in the world of lightness, meaning my sports fandom,
¶ Nats swept by the Marlins
I'm feeling down in the dumps thanks to the Nats getting swept by the Freakin' Marlins, the forkin' Marlins. I'm going to get this rant out of the way really fast, but let me just say, as much as I love Davey Martinez, it's time to go. It is time to go. We need a house cleaning with the Gnats. It's pretty clear this coaching staff and these players are not connecting, and he threw the players under the bus over the weekend.
It's bad. So I say.
This, this is the lightest thing I'm going to talk about, because we are obviously living into some a very very
¶ The country and the world depend on Donald Trump's leadership
dark period. So if you are listening this on a Monday morning, it is painfully obvious. But the world and this country are in desperate need of presidential leadership, and we're about to find out whether Donald Trump is up to the moment. And I'm saying it that way because we almost have no choice, because I know many of you don't believe he's up to the moment. I know many of you believe he's caused all these moments. I'm
a huge skeptic myself. But here's the reality. We don't get to pick a different president just because the moment feels bigger than the man in office. At least, we don't get to pick one yet. You only get one president at a time. And when you consider the two biggest stories dominating the globe right now, growing unrest in the United States and a spiraling hot war in the Middle East, both require someone who can lower the temperature.
And right now there's only one person who who can do this if he so chooses, and it is Donald John Trump. Ironically, he may be more inclined to try to turn the temperature down overseas before he ever considers that doing it here at home. And I'll get to that Sunday Night on my new program for Newsphere, the app Sunday Nights with Chuck Todd. Please take a look get the Free trial right now you can catch up with the ban and interview in this My latest interview
is with Treta Parsi. He's written three books on Israel and Iran. He's easily one of the most sober clinically minded journalists and observers of that region and conflict you can find deeply sourced in Jerusalem and Tehran. And he
¶ The only person who can end the Israel/Iran war is Trump
made one thing clear in our conversation. There's only one person who can bring this war to an end right now, and it's Donald Trump. Because if the American President can't pull the right levers, no one else can in that region. No one else can get both either Iran or Israel to pull back from the break here. And yet you do have a situation where Trump's political base is not
exactly looking for more political, more foreign entanglements. You could argue that Trump rose to power taking over the Republican Party by attacking the neo conservative foreign policy of the Bush Romney wing, or frankly, the Eisenhower Romney foreign policy consensus that has dominated Republican politics for a couple of generations. He branded Bush era interventionism as a failure, and he
turned much of the GOP against it. His America first instincts are now baked into his coalition, particularly when it comes to Ukraine, for instance. And we're going to find out about Iran it is a different ballgame, but it
¶ Trump has infused the Republican Party with isolationism
may be similar feelings about it. Some of Trump's biggest donors and even some of his business partners in the region are actually strongly supportive of Israel's campaign to weaken Iran, but not the active rank and file base, the ones that buy into America First and a bit of the isolationism. And it's been interesting to watch Trump over the last seventy two hours. He claimed that since he is the only one, it's interesting here and this whole idea is
violating his America First policies. Well, he was asked this earlier on Sunday and he said he was the only one. He says, well, considering that I'm the one that developed America First, and he put that in quotes, and considering that the term wasn't used until I came along, I think I'm the one that decides that, meaning what falls
under the American First umbrella. Now, Donald Trump, obviously no student of history isn't fully either isn't aware or chooses not to be aware that America First was a big movement inside the Republican Party.
In the nineteen twenties and thirties.
So he is simply borrowing something that existed before rebranding it as his and claiming no one's ever invented a political movement like this. So the bottom line is, though, is that what it does tell you is that he's going to try to whatever he ends up doing, he's going to try to sell his base that this is a good thing and that this falls under America First. So that may explain why you've seen a bit of whiplash with Trump, while so him quickly praise what appeared
to be an early Israeli success. Right, the decapitation strike on the military leadership of Iran felt like we were seeing a rerun of what happened with Hesbola. But the strike, while lethal, wasn't necessarily decapitating. Right, the nuclear program remains intact, and now the war threatens to escalate, and there doesn't appear to be a clear exit strategy because you now have domestic you have domestic influences on both Iran and
¶ Israel can't end Iran's nuclear program without direct US support
Iran's leaders and Israel's leaders that are going to essentially, I think, prevent a quick walk back, not without the intervention of the United States. Now here's the hard truth. Israel could cannot finish this mission by themselves. They lack those bunk or busting capability bombs that are capable of destroying Iran's underground nuclear sites. They have to get US firepower to do that, and without it, this conflict I don't know how it ends. And I'll tell you. If
the US gets in, how do they get out? How do we get out? We've been down this road before. Now there's a growing sense and no one really knows what's going on. Did the United States give Israel a green light or not? Did we think the threat of Israeli action would bring around to the negotiating table? Were we leading around on while giving Israel space to strike? Are we active players in this or were we passive bystanders. Whatever we were may not matter. It's what is perceived
and believed in the region that may matter more. Here there's no doubt that for now, this ambiguity is intentional by the United States. Our government is trying to have it both ways, cheerleading success if Israel prevails, denying involvement if things go sideways. In fact, that's sort of a Trump staple on most things in life that he's tried to deal with, and that's part of the trust deficit though we're all experiencing. Middle East is long in a
place where truth is and perception is weaponized. But now that sense of confusion is creeping into our domestic life, and I want to get to that as well. And here's the thing. Donald Trump's at the center of both. In the Middle East, he could very well be the person to broker peace, strange as that may sound, but here at home, it's increasingly clear he's been a driver
¶ Trump's deportation policy is a major driver of instability
of instability, not a buffer against it. Take immigration. His latest round of aggressive deportation tactics sparked protests nationwide, particularly though in Los Angeles. But behind the scenes now he's pulling back, pressured by agricultural and hospitality interest warning of dire economic consequences for their industries. Translations, we don't get our food supply without migrants, and you don't get your
bed made at hotels without migrants. Apparently that includes some of his own backers, hotel owners, something he's familiar with, and farm and the farm corporations, people who rely on that undocumented labor to keep their businesses afloat. Here's the economic reality. Farmers are reporting shortages and harvest cruz crops are at risk of rotting and fields. Meat processors are already warning of bottlenecks, and as we head into the summer travel season, resorts in hotels and tourist towns are
facing major staffing shortfalls. Guests are already noticing longer waits, fewer amenities, and rising costs, all due to essentially a choice in how Donald Trump's gone about deportation. And that's just the political fight. It's also a supply chain crisis in the making, and the president knows it. So it's
¶ Economic damage could cause Trump to back off deportations
quiet backpedaling while avoiding public acknowledgment. Sort of is a contradiction between his populis rhetoric and his business first impulses. He needs the tough talk to energize his base, but he can't afford the economic fallout that comes with actually falling through. In this case, the business world is cheering for Taco Trump. They want Trump to taco i e. You know, the acronym Trump always chickens out. They're desperate
for him to chicken out on this immigration stuff. Look, and considering what we went through last week and what happened between Homeland Security and that security detail and the US Senator Alex Padilla, none of this what was a net positive for him, the immigration and being aggressive with these tactics is going to start to turn south on him.
¶ Minnesota shooter was radicalized online
And then there's Minnesota.
Two elected Democrats are gonne down and what now appears to be a politically motivated attack. The alleged shooter apparently had a list of dozens of names of other Democratic officials over seventy You would think a story like this would stop us all on our tracks, But in a week like this, I honestly don't know if anything can sort of sober us up or make us go wait a minute, we've got to change something here. We still have the detail, We still are looking for the details.
As of my conversation here, we still hadn't gotten the guy. But there's a familiarity to this, and least of what we've known about the suspect, it has the hallmarks.
Of some thing we've seen before.
The Tree of Life synagogue shooting, the country music festival massacre in Las Vegas in particular, both very heinous acts committed by older men, middle aged men radicalized apparently online.
We don't quite know that about the Vegas guy.
We do know that on the Tree of Life guy, and it's hard to imagine with this won't be the case with this Minnesota assassin, with what's happening online, right, And look, I know there is this sense of, oh, you know, these guys are crazy people. Rhetoric's just rhetoric. But we know crazy people get triggered by rhetoric. And here's the uncomfortable pattern. The politically motivated violence in this country has been more often coming from the right than
¶ Most of the political violence in the country has come from the right
the left.
Now, the right.
Ecosystem will respond and attack me. For instance, I was saying this by trying to equate violence from protests with the same violence from these radicalized assassin But the two are not the same. Right one is collective outrage that can sometimes spiral into chaos because bad actors infiltrate the
other's premeditated, premeditated political murder. Ten X, I'm sorry than anything, you can equate with what happened, whether you want to equate during the George Floyd protests or what we've seen with these other protests, and the distinction matters a lot. So look, and let me accept the premise of the right wing for a minute. In fact, let's say you are on the right and you believe the left is
a more violent political movement than you are. Then it should be all the more reason to condemn this action in Minnesota with even more vigor and more outrage, because if you believe this is not becoming of the right wing, this is not becoming of the conservative movement in some ways, there should be more outrage from the right about this.
A whole bunch of what about is because one of the things that drives me batshit crazy when it comes to our political debate is the number of people that justify their bad actions by pointing to the other side.
¶ Trump is not interested in lowering the temperature
Nobody seems to want to live by the adage of two wrongs don't.
Make a right.
And look, it's pretty clear Donald Trump is not interested in lowering the temperature. Let me quote from you. Let me quote you what he said on Sunday when asked about the situation of Minnesota. The President said, well, that's a terrible thing. Then he's referring to Tim Walls. I think he's a terrible governor. I think he's a grossly incompetent person. But I may I may call him, I may call other people too.
The question was about whether.
He was going to call the governor of Minnesota think about just let me read this statement again.
This is again.
In the last forty eight hours, Tim Walls finds out two people he worked quite closely with were gunned down by an assassin a bunch of friends. He's probably on this target list as well. We don't know that for sure. Tina Smith, the US Senator, said she's on the list, but a slew of Democrats are on the list. Pretty Much every elected official in Minnesota is scared assless. Okay, and Donald Trump says the following. I think he's a
terrible governor. I think he's a grossly incompetent person. But I may I may call him, I may call other people too. In the pre Trump era, moment like this might prompt an American president to give a unifying speech,
¶ Trump won't accept that he's contributed to the tension
maybe even a prime time speech. We got to turn the temperature down. But the president isn't going to do this. It's not this president because confrontation is his comfort zone. Reflection is not in his rhetorical playbook, and he won't accept the premise that he has contributed to this atmosphere.
That we're all living in.
Okay, I could argue and make a strong case that he is he is the instigator here, but I'm going to accept the premise that there are more than one instigators. But here's the thing. He chose to be president of the United States of all Americans, and I know he only wants to govern for his base, but this is a moment where if he doesn't do it, we're on the precipice and we all are feeling this way. One spark feels like it's going to set us off into
some explosive, horrendous moment. Now, none of this is playing well for him politically. In fact, you actually saw that on display at as military theme birthday parade this weekend.
¶ Trump's parade fell flat, but the No King's protests were massive
Whether was grim, crowd was thin, and the mood was flat. Meanwhile, the No King's protests drew thousands from coast to coast. A lot of those protests were also in the rain, and yet they showed up for those might be the clearest signal yet where the political energy in this country
is heading. And that's the thing, you know. The irony here is that if Donald Trump would accept the tiniest bit, except the tiny his bed of the premise that he is participating and contributing to this current unstable political environment, he could buy himself some political some political lifelines here. A little bit he could, it would turn the temperature down and would give him an opportunity to try to
try to actually heal politically. But he's going to go down this road, and this isn't going to this isn't going to live well. Look, I lived through this cycle myself.
¶ Chuck ended up on the hit list of a radical in 2018
In twenty eighteen, I had to wake up to the news of a man who mailed pipe bombs to CNN, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and others. Turned out, he had my face on his van literally with a group of four of the reporters that were considered the quote enemy of the people, a phrase that of course he got and was inspired by Donald Trump. It was that phrase all came from him, and all of this man's rhetoric
came from him. I'm not saying Donald Trump ordered this crazy man to attack members of the press, democratic office holders, but he is creating an environment and is inspiring weak minded individuals who are a bit broken, who take his words literally and seriously and in some cases act upon them. And not once has this man has ever acknowledged the role he's done in there. And you know, I had to be honest, I still to this day was not comforted when I got visited by the FBI inform me, hey,
by the way, this guy targeted you. This is what's happening to all these elected officials in Minnesota. They're getting a visit from the FBI to let them know he's on their list. You know what all that does is dud. It's like, g thanks, Now, what am I supposed to do? What we just want to let you know and what it is, it's the FBI doing a little cya. But look,
¶ Trump has created an environment of violence with the J6 pardons
he has created an environment of violence. Right, he pardoned the January sixth rioters, right if he didn't believe, if he thought political violence was wrong, He never pardons those folks, but he sent a clear message political violence is tolerable if the target is your enemy. That's the message he sent with those pardons. And you know, you live in a world where you reap what you sew. And what's not fair is that state representative. She didn't do this,
She didn't create these conditions. This crazy man was whipped up and he's responding to a whipped up political environment. And it's a whipped up political environment led by one man. Now here's the thing he can tone it down. He has the ability to do this if he wants to be president of a country that doesn't hate each other and isn't on the brink of some sort of hot war. But he is creating a terrible situation. And this is, you know, it's morally wrong, and it's how republics fall.
And here's another thing, considering that the president was a target himself of an assassination attempt and a second assassin that seemed to be stalking him, that he could be speaking to this issue with credibility, with a kind of a different kind of credibility. Unfortunately, as somebody who has felt this moment, and it clearly impacted him for a period of time, So it almost makes it even more head scratching and more frustrating that he doesn't.
Speak to this moment.
Finally, I want to end on a thought that's been haunting me all week. As we've witnessed some of these historically horrific moments, we've entered what I call an Orwellian moment,
¶ We've entered an Orwellian moment with disinformation online
and easily I think the last week was the most Orwellian week we've lived in the Trump era. Because you go online and you don't know which images are real, You can't trust what you see what you read or even what you think you know. In Los Angeles, manipulated videos, AI generated vote photos, They spread confusion, and they did so faster than any fact check could catch up. I mean, I had to use my own network of people in LA that I trust to really understand what was going on.
You could not trust what you saw online. And that is a scary moment. And we know there are professional propagandas out there. Some of them are domestic who just are trying for clicks. Some are funded by foreign adversaries like russ of China, north of Korea, and they flood the zone with all of this junk. And the goal is in persuasion. It's paralysis. If they can make everything feel a bit unknowable, then nothing can be acted upon canon And when the public no longer trusts what it sees,
¶ Kristi Noem's "liberate California" rhetoric was insane
when truth itself feels up for grabs, that's when democratic systems start to wabble. We're watching that unfold right now. The chaos in LA this week felt like a test run for that uncertainty. And it's not just by the way. I mean, listen to the garbage writer that Christy Nome used. She was talking about liberating Los Angeles from some socialists. What the fork is she talking about? And can you imagine if Ali Mayorcis said something about liberating a Texas
town from its racist tendencies or something like that. This is insane rhetoric being used by a cabinet official, and not just any cabinet official, a very important one, all right, I would you know, no offense to laborhood, but DHS is one of the big five after Treasury, State, Pentagon, and Attorney General, and I have that kind of sloppy rhetoric, ridiculous rhetoric. And it was a sentence that was said right before her security detailed tackled Senator Alex Badia. Anyway, Look,
it's not just a domestic problem. By the way, this issue of this Orwellian moment we're living and we've had this same cloud of ambiguity over the role over our role in the Israel Iran conflicts. I told you before, did we help, did we know? Are we responsible? Nobody seems to know for sure, and that ambiguity again, may it may help short term for us politically, long term,
¶ When people don't know what to believe, it makes democracy unstable
no one knows what's going on. This used to be the kind of uncertainty you'd only expect in the Middle East, or you might expect in Moscow or Beijing, authoritarian places. But now it's here. It's in Los Angeles, it's in Washington, it's in your Twitter or TikTok feed. And when the public's instinct is to say I don't know what to believe, that is when you know the democracy itself is extraordinarily vulnerable. I don't know what to believe is a phrase you
hear all the time in Russia, all the time. So no, this wasn't the uplifting, feel good Father's Day PostScript I was hoping for.
But here we are.
The world is unstable, our country is unsettled, and the one person who may be able to calm things down is also the one person who's helped stoke this fire. I think he might try to else the flames abroad. I fear he has no interest in doing it here at home. So on that uplifting note, I actually have a fun and I would hope to think. Actually a slightly more uplifting conversation. It's with Mike Pesca. He's the
man behind the gist. You may be longtime listeners of him on Slady to Me He's like an original podcaster. He was doing it before anybody thought it was that cool to do it. His Gist substack is a lot of fun, It's smart, and MY favorite thing about Mike is that he is always asking a question. Sort of a professional he is. When I think of somebody that is a professional skeptic who should practice Joe who does practice journalism sort of as a professional skeptic.
I'd like to think I do that.
I know Mike does it, and it's what I think makes him so readable and so interesting.
And I think you're going to up this conversation.
¶ Mike Pesca joins the Chuck ToddCast!
Well joining me now we did a home and away, I think is the way to do it. It's Mike Pesca, who, of course is best known as host of The Gist. I think of you, Mike, as sort of a podcast pioneer. Do you feel like you're a pioneer of this, of this day and age. I mean, you've been doing this for more than a decade. Who else can say that?
Many can? They'd be lying.
I do think it's the longest running I guess us an analysis.
You and Bill Simmons right right? If it's Newsy.
You know, Terry Gross has had a podcast version of Fresh Air longer than I have. So if you take all the radio shows that went into pod had a podcast version in two thousand and seven or eight.
Sure, but doing it as a daily show news.
Analysis, I think it's me If not, I'll take on all comers in the next.
Daily show, since there is always a daily show.
Well, hey, look, whether you're you're one of the pioneers, right, let's let's put it in those terms. I think we'd all accept that. I think it's fascinating. I just had this conversation with a media reporter who was asking me what do I make of podcasts shifting to video and you know, and I said, look, I'll be honest. Six months ago, I still would have argued against video for podcasts because what I what I liked the best about a podcast is eavesdropping on a conversation and the idea.
And I'm a believer that once you introduce a camera, I'm going to get a less honest take. I'm going to get a less honest version of that person. But that is where the world is headed, and in fact, you will. You will not have a successful podcast if you stick to audio only. Now, that's just it just is what the business is. But when did this transition take place? And where are you on it? I mean, obviously you've you've embraced it. Was it a reluctant embrace or or an enthusiastic one?
¶ Is video format actually good for podcasts?
Yeah? I hate it. I gotta be honest.
My friend PJ Vote has a great podcast and he doesn't want to do video because he says he wants to do the best version of what he's doing, and the best version of what he does Search Engine, which is a nonfiction podcast, would be a documentary, and documentaries are their own skill set. So he's either doing the very best audio.
Podcast or a third rate documentary.
I feel like I'm doing the best podcast that I could possibly do, or a TV talk show with a weird green curtain behind me. The curtain is going to get better, you know, at some point, I swear to God. So I also think, was this what it seems like? It's what the audience demanded. If you look at audio audience metrics right, videos are doing really well. And if you look at people under thirty two, they don't think of podcasting as an audio medium. They think of it
as a video medium. But so often it is the algorithm or it is the some corporate boss that made a decision. And what really is going on is that Spotify has to creed that this is the way to go because they're thinking of.
You put this on differentiate on Spotify, not YouTube.
That's interesting, yes, yeah, this is YouTube is benefiting from it, but mostly it's Spotify saying video. There's one other aspect I'll get into, but Spotify has said to themselves if we become a video player, that's much better for business because as an audio player, we're not differentiated from the Apple podcast or some of the other audio podcasts out there, but we've got video from the jump. So some of the most popular ones, like Joe Rogan, they've always been video.
So then they started to tell everyone you got to go video. I think they probably punish.
People who didn't go video. The other thing that's going on.
Is podcast has a terrible problem with discovery, right. The funnel is if you get attention, maybe you got attention you left NBC, people said where's Chuck, and early on people started to find you, and to this day people are probably saying, oh, Chuck's there. On podcasting, the funnel in almost only works in the beginning and then a year and two years in, how do you get attention? It's terrible. There's no way in podcasting to kind of tell people that you're out there. But video is the
one way to do it. So you have clips. I only do video. I do a video of every interview I do. I think we'll put this up on video and some people will watch it. The only reason I'm doing that is to generate clips from Instagram, so that maybe someone will see this Instagram clip and say, oh, Mike Pasca, Chuck Todd. That exists as what I consider to be the primary product, which is audio. It's crazy and it's algorithm driven.
It's so true and what you just described, and I appreciate you describing it that way because it's it's.
It is, it is.
¶ Video feels like the only good way to market a podcast
It's weird something in human nature. For whatever reason, we won't clip on an audio clip. You send a great exchange between you and I audio only, and it doesn't get whether it's on a social media app or via text or whatever. I'm this way, like, send me a piece of video, I quickly watch it. Send me a piece of audio. I'm like, well, let me put my
headphones in or whatever whatever it is. And so it feels as if almost ninety percent of the reasons most podcasts went video as well, it's the only way to market the podcast.
Yeah. I think it has fundamentally to do with attention.
So when something has a visual component, including words, it's vying for your attension.
It's announcing itself. It's saying, pay attention to me.
Probably because of the kind of animals we were on the savannah as prey. By the way, anthropology is finding out more and more that we're inherently prey, and most of our motivation is we're worried about the armed anyway. Yeah, yeah, we're where animals were worried about this, and the visual is how we stay alive. The audio is a little bit deeper. It probably activates other aspects of our brain, but it's not as urgent visual, as urgent audio less urgent.
This used to be great, the lack of urgency in audio, and I work for NPR for ten years. We would use phrases like you know, it's a companion and it's uh, and we'd have driveway moments. But it was sort of the warm bath of attention as opposed to a tiger is going to eat us?
Of attention.
So I do, Yeah, I do think that there's fundamental difference between each medium.
And I think that.
It's have people really said, you know what, I like audio video podcasts.
I just like them. They just appealed to me. I don't know how many people have said that.
Maybe young people have said that, but I think it just you can't get away from it. And in this attention economy is also the urgency economy.
Yeah, here's something else though. That why I think many people wouldn't have predicted that podcasts would continue to grow, And in some ways this is right. We're in a second growth period because of the video component. I guess it was probably the best way to put it. But and maybe this is going to change as more people do live. But I think about you doing a daily podcast. How how did you get over the moment that you finished your recording and then some breaking news happened in
you'r lie? Oh man, this is going to feel, you know,
¶ The public hasn't published the podcast industry for not being in real time
because you have to get over that. Because I could make a case that you can always find a story.
I wish we would have done this.
You can always find a reason to be How did you get over that? And does it surprise you that the public has it punished the podcast industry collectively for its ability not to be in real time because it's really not in real time. It's we are I always say a good podcast is on the news, not necessarily, you know, it's news adjacent. Sometimes can feel on the news, but it's not necessarily in a breaking news moment.
Well, it's a problem, and I don't know if it's gone. You're framing the question. Look how much podcasting has thrived even though this is the case.
I think it's thrived despite that.
I think if there was a way to be on the news, it would be even better. And it's especially true when news happens on a Sunday and I listen to a lot of sports podcasts, and if the game was on a Saturday and the production schedule is not to come back to a Monday, I have to wait two days to get my podcast discussion of the game.
I do not like that. So I think that it is a problem. How'd I get over it?
Just when it became a parent that I was killing my staff The first three times I said we got to go live and it didn't really matter. But here's what's happening we're now in an age. We are in an age of media abundance. Abundance, but it's really commentary. There's so much more commentary than news, and even so much of the news is commentary, as you know.
And I don't know how much the consumer really.
Realizes that, but I think we've gotten to a ratio that's I don't know if it's dangerous, but it's certainly not optimal and place my due. Yeah, yeah, are more commentary than is I think optimal?
¶ News has become more commentary than news reporting
No, it is, and it's you know, I get so frustrated when people are even trying to pay me a compliment that they'll say, oh, I can tell you're really speaking your mind, and I'm like, yeah, but that doesn't mean I'm a partisan, you know, I'm just sort of I'm no longer what I always say is I'm no longer rounding the edges as much. Right for network television, i'd have to round the edges. Sometimes it's because my first name was meet, or sometimes because I didn't want to.
I knew whatever I said was going to reflect all on the entire network. Fair unfair that it would, and I was mindful of that. I always got irritated when certain colleagues who hosted certain cable news morning shows didn't seem to care about their colleagues and the perception that they were creating for the rest of us that have to do this. And so now I'm no longer rounding the edges, right, I'm like, yeah, Joe Scarborough is the singular.
If you're looking for somebody who did the most damage to the press and the Joe Biden story, it's Joe Scarborough.
Now, it just is maybe that was as long game as a Republican I don't know, but it's like, I don't know how else to put it right.
He was Now what I always found unfair is that was just his opinion and it should have just been seen as like, I don't mind that he did that, that was an opinionated show. What I minded was the perception that somehow this was a media driven narrative. And it's like, no, he's a partisan. But all of that has gotten so lost. I mean, me trying to explain that that, hey, morning.
Joe is not this it's not a news it's more of.
A commentary thing. And you know, it's at this point, what does the viewer see? You know, as I've always said that Peacock is on every channel, so the viewer just sees it all as one thing. Don't differentiate it
¶ The lines between news and opinion have been blurred
that much. It's true, right, newspaper headlines, whether the headlines over an op ed or a news story, the headline's the headline, and it's a Washington Post headline, right.
Regardless of which section of the paper. So it is.
You know, I don't know whether it's even worth fighting those particulars anymore in the news consumption space.
The last one hundred people who pointed out to me, well, that's an opinion piece, not from the news section.
We're all journalists. No citizen has ever said that to me. But was that a news piece?
Just the other day on the show, I did a big story on a Guardian piece trying to say that the defund movement worked well in Houston and Seattle, and it clearly didn't if you look at the murder rate.
And I was like, wait a minute, is this a newspiece?
And I scanned it and I actually put it through chat GPT. Is this a newspiece or is this an opinion piece? And it was in the news section, and then we figured out it probably shouldn't have been but you're so right that no one gets the distinction. And there's one of the reasons they don't get to the distinction isn't just on the consumer. Certain outlets will sometimes cordon off news and opinion, but there are almost no outlets anymore that you would be shocked that that opinion
is being run in that outlet. There's almost no outlets where you'd even be a little bit surprised. I think The Atlantic will consistently if we stripped the title and I said, where did this run, you might consistently say that could either be in the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times. So that's a little bit unique. But especially before Jeff Bezos had this turn with the Washington Post, where.
I know I used to think the Post was the best of all worlds for a while, I really did, yes, I felt like for a period the time, the Post was its best version of itself.
And then Jeff right, because I think they were reflecting Washington, and Washington was a town with functional Democrats and Republicans, and they would sometimes talk to each other.
But when that ought to change, the Post got to change.
And now there are there are many many stories that were in the post opinion section that were you wouldn't say, oh that could run in another newspaper's opinion section who had a reading of Donald Trump that wasn't caustic. So yeah, I think it's I think it's very one of the very bad trends of journalism. Also, could I just say, when you say, I've heard you say that before, my first name is meet as in the press, how many people?
And did you guys have a super cut in the studio where people called you Todd by the stake?
Oh? Yeah, that happened once every four shows. It did.
What's funny about it for me is is that actually I grew I grew up with that because my grandfather his first name was Merle and his middle name was Lynn.
So what do you think he preferred to be called Todd?
Okay, so he actually all of his friends called him Todd. My father had it literally, his his asociates would call
¶ Chuck's take on having two first names
him Tom. My mother when she got into real estate, all of she would be just referred to as Todd.
It was.
It's such a normal thing in my family that I would It's funny you bring it up. It always seemed to bother other people more than it ever bothered me.
It didn't.
I never I used to let I get up. The only time I'd get annoyed is when I would get Chuck Dodd or Chris Todd or you know, there was a time i'd get the Chuck rob you know that, or or but that would annoy me a little bit. But it never bothered me. But you're so, it's so funny how often the Todd thing happened. But that is something I grew up with and all the time. You know,
when you grew up with two first names. I mean I used to joke NBC we were the home of two first names, Brian Williams, Andrea Mitchell, Chris Matthews, David Gregory, Chuck Todd.
It was sort of astonishing how many of them?
You're like, joy, you know, yeah, it was like how high that's Jen Sackey. There are no sacking the.
Right, no Madows out there anymore, you know whatever. I once did a story on the Senate.
First of all, there's a good statistic how many Americans have two first names? And you know senators, uh have double the rate of two first names.
Interesting, So I went into the long business. I could have I had a shot at this if I wanted to.
And then you could be a senator and get on a Sunday show and call someone about their last name.
Yeah.
So let me let me to go back to the
¶ What topic doesn't make the cut for "The Gist"?
timing issue of your podcast. What what's a story that I would think belongs to your podcast that you don't do because of timing or because of topic. What what's something that doesn't make the cut that might surprise people?
Well, how I describe it to people is ideally it's an op ed of the air. And okay, that's me using these antiquated terms.
We were just done talking about it. Talking about it right understands what an is.
Yeah, but it is a good gi just discussion is subtly a debate. It's always a debate. And I'm not taking the other side of the debate. I'm not a partisan, but I want them to explain, not just there are great interviews that the question to be asked and answered is and then what happened or what happened next? That's a great interview. It's not a great gist interview. A great gist interview is why.
Yeah, those are Larry King and Charlie Rose I always thought were underrated interviewers. Because they were so good at at just sometimes saying and then what.
You know? And why is why is still the best question?
But if it's we don't do a lot of history unless there's an angle to it, bringing it up to the present, or let's re examine why.
People thought that.
But I would love to if I had a show that wasn't to just I do a ton of history, and when we do history podcasts or history interviews, people love them. But I do think it's because I'm engaging a little bit of a debate.
What's a if you had more bandwidth, what's a what would you be doing?
Uh?
Yeah, that's a great question.
I have two shows besides this one, but they're sort of shows within a show. And what is called funny you should mention it's where I interview comedians sort of about their theses. You know, comedians being the new philosophers,
¶ Comedians are the modern day philosophers
and we deferred lots of our punchlines insights.
It's been that way for decades.
I mean, you know, I've always dot comedians were comedians. Stand up comedians were always the most well read people you'd ever meet.
They read more than all Yeah, a lot of times and a lot of times not formally educated, and they felt bad about that, and then they became auto di dacks.
They're great love I love them. I love the way they think.
But I think since you know, definitely pre George Carlin and Richard Pryor, no one was looking to comedians for inside And then there were the niche Yeah, and then there was Mort Saul who read a newspaper on stage. I don't know how funny it was. And then Lenny
Bruce and this all changed. But I do think there was a story in the either Late Night Now that must have been the odds where it just quoted Chris Rock as an expert on the black experience, and maybe said comedian Chris Rock, but he was there for his insight. And that's when I said, Okay, they're pundits now, you know, they're pundits with punchlines.
So that's one of the shows that another thing, have you ever done it? Have you ever done stand up comedian?
You know when I was in college, I did, and so the read my and my kids do it, and the reason that I'm not good at it could be many things, right, but the big one is a stand up comedian will do when you see his act it's like, oh my god, what fresh insights. But of course they'd have done this hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times.
So I'd rather do a show every day and have a couple of hits and say to myself, you know, if I had more time to work that over, it could be a fantastic it could be an a plus. But I'd rather have a string of, let's hope, a minuses. This is also one I'm my problems with. When I worked for NPR, I was on I did mostly sports, and I would crank out a lot of stories because when you cover the World Series, you do two stories every day, and then you cover the Super Bowl, and that's great.
I love the pace of that.
But there was a certain kind of NPR reporter as epitomodz by this American Life for cereal, where man, did they love going over their tape and with a lapidary fineness bringing out that one cut of sound. Some of my best friends are great at this. I had no patience for that. So, yeah, this was the problem with stand up. It's you really have to.
Work it over and over and over again. You don't want to be a refiner.
You're like sort of an entrepre you want to you want to be, you want to break the mold quickly type of thing.
Yeah. Yeah.
Adam Carolla has this great analogy where he says, we're either a factory or a warehouse, right, and the factory is putting out content and the warehouse is storing it and maybe crafting it. So he sees himself more of a factory. A stand up comedian is more of a warehouse. I'd say maybe a curator if they're really good. All right,
¶ So many podcasts are just people agreeing with each other
so you do that Moselle on the other show, the show within a show. Yeah, it's called Not Even Mad, and this is there's an interesting backstory there.
So I would always listen.
I do always listen to all these podcasts, and the standard form if it's not two people being interviewed, three guys talking, not always guys, that's changed a little bit, but let's call it three guys talking and agreeing with each other, right, it's three guys from the Bulwark or three guys from the Dispatch, or three guys from Commentary, and three guys from Pod Save America. And I can't I listened to all these shows, and I can't tell you how many times I've listened to it.
As you listen to it in speed sped up one and a half speed Yeah, I'm two and a half and a half Wow.
Yeah wow.
And the app my app of choice, also cuts out silences. We could listen, by the way, much faster than we do. So yes, so maybe you've had this this thought. Also, I listened to the three people at the commentary podcast talking about whatever they're talking about, and John pod Hortz makes a good point, and then I'll listen to the three guys at Pod Save America talk about what they are talking about, and luckily it's another job.
You know, John love It or John Favreau makes a good point.
But Favreau and love It are always agreeing with each other, and pod Horrits and his guys are always agreeing.
What what if we took a love It and put him next to a pod Horrit.
So this was my idea, right, this is my idea to have a liberal and a conservative talk And the first iteration of it didn't really work because of well it was called not even mad, but there was a little bit of madness. And so now instead of I
¶ Audiences gravitate towards partisan content
do think that for these shows to have a lot of traction, you get to know the host and the panelists, and that would be ideal. But I'm just changing panelists every week, and it's, uh boy.
It's a tough I'm I'm rooting for you on that, but the algorithms really fights you on that.
It really is hard.
I mean, look, I'm watching this myself, right, I'm trying to build a specific I do not want to pick a side, right. Megan Kelly made a decision and she built a big audience quickly. That's one way to do it. I kind of want to, you know, I sort of believe in the I want to get it. I'm going to do it my way and hopefully it'll be a more durable audience. It's actually what worked for me on Twitter versus the way others did.
It, and and so i've i'm I'm mindful of that.
But there are just the distribution models don't reward left this, left right.
It's hard to find an audience. It says they they.
Want that, and it's I don't know. I don't know whether that's the algorithms speaking or whether that's reality.
I do think it's mostly reality.
I think the algorithms figured out what works because the audience told them. And I think that there's a niche for it, but it is a niche, and I hope you come to dominate the niche. And I've got my little toe hold in the direction.
It's all niches. You're right, really, you're right. It's a series of them. I do think.
I think it's mostly like when you listen to a radio station. Remember kids, there was a thing called radio. There's no radio station that plays a little country, a little hip hop, and a little classic rock.
You have to have a format.
And the format of podcasts is this is a conservative podcast, this is a liberal podcast. The exception are the ones that are neither liberal or conservative but are actually more radical than either.
Maybe not consistently left.
And right, but I think you know, uh Sargar and Breaking Points, Crystal Ball, that's in that category. Maybe I guess you could dub them, you know, far left, but so far left that there's a lot of right to them.
But they're also have a consistent, yeah, consistent format.
Well, look, I I look, I think I don't want to do too much more on sort of the business of what we're doing, but it does feel like you you have such a knowledge of this and you've been are you you know, are you one of those folks? Do you think is there more change in the next five years or less of it? You know, we're all preparing for radical transformation, and usually sometimes if everybody's betting
¶ AI will make the media ecosystem more efficient
on that, it sometimes doesn't become self fulfilling.
Right in terms of media, in terms of politics, in terms of what media or media. In terms of media, I would expect I would expect there to be a lot of change.
I would expect AI to change things greatly.
I would we gotten to this place where there used to be a lot of inefficiencies and now there's a war on inefficiency and it's working. But you know, inefficiency in many systems is a really good thing. Like if the in the animal kingdom, inefficiency is a mutt and by the way, the healthiest dogs.
That's right.
And what it's funny you say that you know why our voting system is so secure because it's inefficient, because it's methodical, because there's these paper ballots that have to follow this, and if we it is actually something that's completely inefficient. But if you made it efficient, you'd actually send a message of life. Lack of confidence in the system we wouldn't trust it. I'm going to give you an advision one makes it more trustworthy.
I'll tell you one right in your wheelhouse. So in the as you I'm probably telling you something you know. But one hundred eighty years ago, the political science movement du jore, started by and led by A. Shatschneider, was we have these political parties and they're inefficient. It really got the political scientists upset. The parties need to sort according to ideology. It doesn't make sense to have all
these conservatives in the Democratic Party. Then that happened, not because the political scientists said it, but this is what the political scientists wanted, and it was a total.
Be careful disasters for Oh yes, I talked about this
¶ There's a lack of ideological diversity in the two parties
all the sorting, oh one hundred percent. The lack of ideological diversity inside the two parties. I mean, you and I grew up with liberal Republicans working with conservative Democrats, with the populist Democrats in the Midwest work and it.
Was public living from when FDR had to work it out with Theodore Bilbo and the very Democrats.
But I and I.
Grew up with a with a basically a conservative Democrat who left the Party and would say, well, Sam Nune would be.
A Republican in New York.
Would be always he would always say that, like, you know, that's why I like because I'd always said I thought that I thought you were Republican. He said, well, Sam, none would be a Republican if he were in Iowa. To be a Republican, you know, he's just a Democrat in the South because you have to be in order to vote right because at the time there was no.
There weren't many registered Republicans. So it is.
But you're right, I think that lack of ideological you know, the conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans are extinct, and that's what we miss.
Yes, And I was just I was just in Seattle, and I was spending some time with a very top political consultant. And he's because he makes a living, he's a Democrat. I don't have to say he's a Democrat Seattle. But he bemoans the fact that the Republican Party is pretty much non existent and all they could do is run some protest candidates who are way out there ideologically and never have a chance for winning. This is another pretty bad aspect of monopolies.
¶ The political duopoly has been bad for voters
Monopolies are bad for economies. Doopolies are not great to economies, but monopolies are worse. And what's what's a what's a what?
You know?
The political economy that has become a monopoly in rural America for red and a monopoly in urban America for blue has been bad for the voters. It's just been bad, been bad for diversity of thought. It's been bad for new ideas, you know, and it's a that's a problem.
And your other business, or your main business, which is media, has been waylaid by efficiency. Because a newspaper used to have all these advertisements. And the point is, you knew you were throwing away ninety percent of your advertising dollar, and everyone who took out a want to add, nine point nine percent of the people weren't in the market.
For a boat.
So is this inefficient way of hitting a lot of people than when the Internet and especially the Google out algorithm got really efficient, great for advertising, pointless for newspapers, they were left with maybe cars and supermarkets and not even that because you're only on the move to buy a car once every seven years. Yeah, So efficiency, So to go back to your answer, we're going to get more efficient there's no way that the media ecosystem is
not going to get more efficient. And from what I see, efficiency more often has costs than benefits, except for the very specific person who is served by the efficiency.
All Right, I got to ask about.
The comic books because if you look carefully, you look carefully behind me.
The Roy Campanella is.
Actually a portrait of one of his baseball cards. Yeah, from tops in the early early fifties. I'm a baseball card guy. Are you a comic guy?
I'm probably more of a baseball card guy, But you know what I am. I may I just moved my parents out of the house that not only they lived in for fifty years, that I was literally born in the driveway of. And so now I have all these baseball cards and comic books that I gotta sell because I have no room. So when you have no room for something, you put a Howard the Duck comic on the wall.
I do like nice Howard the Duck. Nice nice Well. I worked at a baseball card store.
That was my first job, and it was the era of Matt I guess I learned about bitcoin then because Kevin Seisser rookies were selling for like seventy dollars if you remember that funny use.
I'm so glad you referred to it as bitcoin, because
¶ Crypto is not much different from baseball cards and comic books
that's been my analogy is tell me how it's not like I have these mic I have a stack of Mike Trout Rookie cards. Can I Can I buy something with them directly? No, I've got to trade it in for cash, and then I can. And what's the difference between my mic trop baseball card and bitcoin? And when you throw that out there at a crypto person and it's like, you know, it's probably the same thing.
Yeah, and then if you get into blockchain, I don't know, Ray Fossey blocking the plate chain, I don't know what our analogy could be, but yeah, I remember I was listening on NPR and then the beginning of the Ukraine War there was a story about how it's fun to via bitcoin and isn't it great that bitcoin can get this money to the Ukrainian fighters, and like that seems
much less efficient than a bank account. Like I understand, you have this interesting thing in the news called the Ukraine, the War on Ukraine, and then you have this thing called bitcoin. I think there are more layers in between. Then are just bank account that works.
Look, I do I accept the premise it's a little bit easier to hide money. And when you're funding a war and an insurgency, you need to hide stuff.
Okay, I get that the block Maybe that's the.
What's hell full in a moment, But most of the time,
¶ Crypto is inefficient but it's good for hiding money
if you're something that is able to hide transactions or money, that's usually not a net positive for society.
That's usually a net Yeah, that is true.
I mean my suspicion is mostly and by the way, I've lost out on a lot of money because of my suspicion. But there are two things that these cryptocurrencies are supposed to do, and there are exact odds with each other.
Right, this is almost like Donald Trump.
The great thing about tariffs is that they will both give us money in the treasury and suppressed trade. No, they can't do both. But the one thing they're supposed to do is be a great store of value. I get the intellectual case for that. But the other thing why everyone loves them is they're going up to the moon. Now, nothing that doubles or triples in value is a great store of value if it's always if it's also being traded as the priceiest commodity ever made.
So yeah, no, I mean like I remember as a kid.
Growing up when I think the Hunt Brothers tried to corner the silver market thinking it was an underutil commodity, and it's this just feels like it's going to end badly. And the question is how many Americans are going to get stuck holding the crypto bag when this happens, because we know the super wealthy are going to are not going to be the ones hold in the bag. It's going to be the everyday people. Yeah, just crazy housing.
So there's an example.
Would you would you say that in that way when your first name was meet?
That's interesting?
So I feel like no, because you know I would be you know, then I would be blamed for you know, some other entities inability to book so and so or I came across, and so you worry about that. And it's like I will just say I you know, I would sometimes speak out on some things and then someone would say, hey, we're trying to book so and so, you know, try not to do that again type of mindset. And it's like, look, I'm a team player and I get it. You know, look you know this this balance
between you know, I'm always careful. I don't respect access only journalists, but I respect the need for access, right, there's a there's a fine line between that, and I
think you can a good journalist draws a distinction. But but sort of I kind of view it similarly on that So I understand it from that, But I certainly feel better about not asking permission, right, And I know so for instance, like I've I've been very I've been very straightforward, but I've been tough on Biden's for the Bidens for a couple of years, and you know, they wouldn't return any of my calls. Well, I understood that, Like I made a you know, like and that's okay.
I don't They don't have credibility with me, so why would I want to interview them anyway. So I'm okay with that, And I think that that's sort of that's that if you're going to burn something, you better feel comfortable burning it.
Yeah, As an example, I don't know if they're the best example of someone who will punish a journalist for not doing this story they want because they were in the mode of we only want to talk to one or two people.
They were very much in the mode of our way.
Our theory of the case is to do almost no interviews, and when we do, maybe do it on morning Joe. I think your listeners to the Chuck podcast get this. But what maybe people don't when they criticize you for being or when they question your partisanship and are you able to be partisan? You and I have opinions and strong opinions, but you know what wake us up in the middle of night. I think that's true for you.
I know it's true for me. The thing I won't be shouting is you got to vote for this guy. That's not where my strong opinions lie. It's more like looking at a system and we're being crazy when it comes to whatever it is MMT or funding.
Well, look I look my rant. Look the current podcast that I have up. One of them.
My rant this morning was, you know, was how poorly Trump and Musk executed Doge. But the idea was a
¶ Political criticisms aren't always partisan
really good one and there was a better way to do this, and sort of like it actually was empowering because I realized this is what you do I think extraordinarily well and what I hope to do better, which is explain why. Look, you know this is the criticism is in execution. The criticism isn't in ideology. And so my biggest criticisms of Trump are execution. This is just a terribly incompetent administration in just doing the basics doesn't mean his ideas. I'd like to see more manufacturing back
in America. There is a systematic way I had to Orange cass On. The way he would have implemented this tariff regimen might have had a better shot at triggering better trade deals and not shaking up the markets. But that's not the way Donald Trump did it. He did it in an incompetent way. Making government more efficient and more modern. We need to update the infrastructure of government
the same way. You can't have the same bridge that you're going over from the nineteen fifties with today's traffic patterns. It's the same thing with various government agencies. But dose was a poorly executed version of this, and in fact, the dirty little secret is those will cost the American taxpayer more money than it saved because of all the lawsuits, all the restoration of benefits, all the restoration of contracts that got unconstitutionally.
Nick paying people for ninety days not to work and
¶ DOGE will cost taxpayers more money than it saves
then filling them in.
So we've just cost us. And yet the irony is, you know, had bipartisan buy in. There was a whole bunch of Democrats. I mean, this is what really frustrates me about the mindset of Trump and Maga, which is they won now will never work with the other side, when every other president of my lifetime said, hey, you know, the best way for me to be to get something
done is to And it's sort of two motivations. One, I can divide the other already by getting some of them to work with me, and it guess what, it helps me in the macro it's better for the country.
Oh and I divide my.
Opponent like it's it's it's a you're still you know, but it's an effective way to still be partisan, but maybe doing it through the prism of the best interests of the country versus Trump, who's refusing to work with Democrats.
Just fired you know.
Suppose you know and you're like, dude, there's a whole bunch of Democrats that want to prove that they do want to work with you. Take advantage of it, and your inability is on you you're in and guess what
¶ Trump is great a diagnosing problems but isn't interested in solving them
you're now going to just drive people away. This is why his approval rating is already under forty five is he refuses to be president for all the people.
He just does.
His great skill is at diagnosing the problem, and then he has no interest, in fact a negative interest in actually solving the problem.
And I think that, oh, you'd rather have the problems to use as a cudgel.
Yeah, But one of the things that makes him so good at diagnosing the problem is what he's been doing for fifty years as a salesman. You know, every innovation is what problem does' solve. So he'll put his finger on the problem, he'll put it in a more vivid way than anyone else in politics, and have absolutely no interest in solving it. But I do think the knowledge of how hard these problems to solve holds a lot
of Democrats and some Republicans back. It would be great to just point your finger to the problem of infrastructure and say, infrastructure, it's the other guy's fault.
But no infrastructures a giant lift.
Once you know that, maybe you don't speak as starkly about it as Donald Trump does. So I do think the more you know about the problem, sometimes the more it gets in the way of actually solving it. You know, I did this pretty much the same segment, but I did it in a different way through an interview.
As we're recording. I had a niche chopra On.
He was the first ever Chief Technology Officer of the United States and he ran essentially ran the office that became DOGE, and we just talked about So tell me he didn't do it in the style that you did. I understand Elon had a hat and a chainsaw and you wore a suit. But what were the things that he did that you liked?
And we had a.
Very good conversation, was very constructive. He talked about a lot of the things that he admired that Doje actually did. He made a couple of points, one explicitly and won by inference. The point he made explicitly is, you know, he could have come up with more savings if he was or that office was as prioritized by the Clint by the Obama administration as Doge was. Right, So presidential bandwidth in mental time that counts for a lot.
And so Obama was doing.
Other things and he wanted this as a backstop. He'd never be able to achieve the actual cuts, not even the minuses that Elon did. But also, as I was talking to him, I just said to myself, yes, you.
Know what you are. You're reasonable.
You look at the net benefits, right, you definitely don't have a chainsaw and a hat, and that alone is.
Not holding you back.
But the way that any shoppeur would have done it, he could have gotten billions more in savings and we would have known a billionth of what he did. There was no pr aspect. It's almost negative pr Yeah.
Well that's I mean that goes back to I mean, you know, it's amazing to me how many.
People don't learn the lesson from Trump. I mean, have you.
Noticed like what to me, like the brilliance of Trump
¶ Democrats haven't adopted Trump's "everywhere" strategy with media
twenty fifteen was he was He'd go anywhere, he would interview with anybody, he didn't care, and he sat down with everybody. I've not seen a democrat implement that same strategy, not once.
You're like that guy comes close, right?
He and by the way, who got traction out of nowhere?
Yeah boodag right?
Why because he was showing up and everywhere, right, he was willing to show up everywhere, So it is weird to me how long it's taken.
Pare you know there's such.
This this anger, this you know, it's it's funny.
It's like.
There's people on the left who view Trump the same way as society views Hitler. And I know that the minute I bring up the H word, like people start tuning out. But the point is is that you know, there is no praising any idea Hitler ever had because it was all in service to something grotesque, right right? You know, the Democrats, I think sometimes too often look at Trump and saying, if he's for it, we have
¶ Democrats can learn from Trump without emulating him
to be against it because his ends, everything he does is and you're just sitting there going, you know, there's ways to learn from him without emulating him, and I don't, you know it is And I don't know why I don't. I don't know whether we blame internet culture for this right where where too many of politicians today are so responsive to the moment that they actually can't take a step back and see the big picture.
I don't. I don't know.
I wish I had a better answer as to why Democrats have had such a hard time learning.
What has made Trump work there's some.
Parts of this that work, and they are I think Democrats, especially when they were a sentant, their skill set, what success in the party selected for was the ability to relentlessly stay on message and not make a mistake. And it's the and this was what Obama was great at. And you could see that this was what Kamala Harris, this was her theory, even if she didn't articulate, it is how she operated.
Trump's the opposite.
Mistakes don't matter, mistakes probably help them, and there.
Is no message.
But I do think because of all fractured media society, and because of podcasting and long form podcasting and the fact that an audio interview could go an hour and a half, I think that old Obama way of don't make a mistake and get your three messages message points of the day out, I think that's done. And I don't know that the Democrats have realized that. The other thing is the things that Trump does.
Well. We were just talking about dose and you know democrats. You said Democrats would love to cut Would they? I think probably in their heart of hearts, a.
Few would, maybe many would, But in terms of the salience of the issue, it's not one two, or if you're right, and.
I mean I hears it about a democratic ten years ago. Yeah,
¶ Trump's plan to eliminate the penny is a good one
and maybe that one doesn't exist, because you know, not every answer is government, but I do think a growing number of democratic office holders believe that it is well.
One thing that I support Trump on is the elimination of pennies. And I've been talking about this on my show for five ten years, and every time a presidential candidate or a senator anyone else would come through, I would ask them, why do we still make the penny? What do you think about the elimination of pennies? And I asked many senators about this. I asked Michael Bennett, I asked sp Bootage, and every single one of them was interested in the idea, but they were all hesitant
to just sign on to the obvious. They all claim they hadn't thought of it before, and I believe them. They're all unbelievably cautious in embracing the riskiness of eliminating the penny. And you know, Donald Trump, sure he gets himself in trouble with much more consequential items like yeah, maybe we should arrest doctors if they give it abortion,
¶ Trump is willing to cut deals with hostile countries
But he definitely would have said, oh yeah, pennies to no, and that's the right answer.
By the way, look, do you think Kamala Harris would be negotiating with Iran right now?
No?
I mean, you know, so I sit there and it's like, now, am I troubled that the what's motivating Trump to do this is his business deals in the with the golf guys. Yeah, I'm troubled by the motivation of it. But at the same time, sometimes you need some pragmatism. Has to be the coin of the realm in the Middle East, or you're not going to have any stability in the Middle East. And I say stability, not peace. They actually think there's
a difference. And you know, so, you know, these are the things that the left needs to realize why the public is more tolerantive Trump than they are because on some of these things, Trump's behaving no different than what I think they think anybody.
In that position should be behaving, which is, hey.
Sometimes you got to make deals with people you don't like, and that there's no you know, that's that's real politique.
So it is.
It is interesting to me, how and I think what's going to be interesting is that if Democrats do win the presidency in twenty eight. My assumption it's because somebody has learned those lessons.
If they have a nominee that hasn't learned those lessons, are not going to win in twenty oh. Well, have to be, have to be.
Yeah, And I think everyone's running is positioning themselves as the guy who's learned the lessons, and I think they all have a different version of right. Gavin Newsom is, I talked to Michael Savage and contradicted, you know, twelve years.
Of my record.
And I think Tim wallas is, I'm that regular guy who code talks, comes off as a little clok.
I think if you're caught trying too hard, you're just that trying to let me close out with this. Since you're a recovering sports reporter, and I spent a brief period I helped found a sports business publication back in the early nineties, so I guess I can claim some stint on the sports reporting world. I do view sports
¶ Will sports & sports media end up becoming partisan?
as sort of the last bastion of our culture that can bring us together, Like I have this thesis that I can make youth sports and high school sports. The revenue stream that classified advertising was to support local news that in the long term that that could be. I think when you look at you know, a live event, a sporting event can bring red and blue together better.
I mean, the NFL's the king of all of it.
And yet coverage of sports is becoming more partisan and more. You're starting to see there's conservative sports guys and there's liberal sports guys. Where's this headed. Is sports going to become as polarizing as politics because of the nature of how independent media works, or will it continue to be the last piece of glue we have in society.
I think sports themselves are going to continue to be the glue. The talking about sports is definitely going to fracture along the lines that you're talking about, but the
¶ Caitlin Clark is a political lightning rod
sports themselves.
Take Caitlyn Clark.
She can be the epitome of everything that a progressive believes in, and she could also be the epitome of everything that a conservative.
Says is good about the country.
Right, one of the best, actually, my favorite Rorschach test in America these days, Right, Like, Yeah, I can learn a lot about somebody by how they feel about Kaitlyn Clark.
Right, look at what she's done as a woman. Look at what she's done for women's sports.
Look at how she's unapologetic, or look at how a dad and daughter work together.
Look at all the hard work, look at all the teamwork.
So Caitlyn's going to be Caitlyn and is when she goes back from her quad and is going to be converting these twenty five footers, She'll be the thing, and then everything around it can talk about her however they want.
Right, But it is sort of I am hopeful that we can stay glue.
But you know, I we'll say, you know, I.
You know, I am a little concerned that a few sports are the participants are all lean one way, Like it's tough to be a liberal.
Golfer and it's tough to be a conservative NBA player.
Right, Well, I know examples both, and I think it's much less tough.
I could speak. I know that golfers.
I think I think twelve years ago I read a story that there were no registered Democrats on the on the tour. But I know that especially among conservative or people who are not orthodoxly or progressive among the NBA, much easier than it was during the days of the bubble and the lockdown.
Oh that's interesting, easier I find it interesting.
You know, Bruce Pearl is fascinating to me because you don't don't see a lot of college basketball coaches being
¶ Bruce Pearl is the only college coach that's overtly political
so political, I think, for fear it would harm recruiting. Right now, he's political on one story and on one issue, though I notice he's every once in a while he'll he'll just do regular politics, but for the most party sticks to just Israel. And obviously it hadn't had any impact, right, Auburn's had too and terrific and in fact, he's turned them more into a basketball school than they've ever been, even in the Charles Barkley days.
Right.
But but it is that that stuff fascinates me, and I am very curious because you also see it, you know, certain in college football, certain coaches, if they're believers on a religious front, almost then do better with other believers, right, And it's almost how they recruit is through that prism. And it is still interesting to me that how much college football does work that way and that and people are are not quite aware of that.
Right.
Bobby Batnan was a great example of that. There are many others, but I do think Bruce Pearl, I think the team responds to it. You know, there's a lot of inspiration there, and he brought these this hostage family to the final four and they were eventually freed. I also think that uh, Steve Kerr, Okay, I know they're professional, but Kerr and Popovich.
Were are very vocal.
Popovitch was on the progressive side, and I think what people respond to.
You think ku Indianapolis versus San Francisco, be with a coach and anything.
I think so because I think people respond to his conviction, the strength of his conviction. I don't think most of these twenty something year olds really have strong They might have inclinations, but they have.
Deep political opinions to begin with.
And when they see Kerr as interpersonally, they respect him and therefore they respect the stances that he takes. He also, you know, it's very important that all of these cases, no one is taking really outlandish, outray dangerous everyone. You could always criticize everyone in someone's eyes as doing that, but I think they are sticking mostly to, you know, the factual basis of their arguments and doing it with conviction and responsibility overall.
And I think you just said the same.
I mean, in some ways, Bruce Pearl and Steve Kerr both have that they speak with such a conviction on the singular topic right Tricklarly Current on gun reform, pearl on On on the Israeli hostages that that if you, you know, if it's deeply held, I think in some ways even people that don't agree with you will.
Respect it right to that. Yeah, let me get you out of here.
On this, which is an expression Tony Korneizer uses, and I love it, and it's and it's simply this, what's there?
¶ What is Mike reading that would surprise people?
Or four things you read every day that people that that most people would be shocked to know that you read every day in order to like, what's what's your Not to give away any secrets, but you're clearly a pretty well read in person. You're you have a diversity
of interests. You know, I thought I had a diversity of interests your Times a thousand and and in fact, I'm very jealous of your newsletter at times because I'm like, yeah, you literally have I think have created a newsletter of just your interests, and you're just like, if you have my interest, then you'll enjoy my newsletter.
Period.
This is this is the newsletter the just List, which I probably should have played it really is just my stuff, right, it's the pescal list rights.
What's a couple of things you read in on every day that is just that just nourishes you to a point.
Whe're like, everybody should be reading this, and I know they don't.
Right, So I will say the New York Times, which doesn't surprise won't surprise everyone.
The Financial Times is fantastic.
I think the Financial press overall is I don't know if the last bastion, but they're much more truthful and honest and the least.
It's the least partisan.
It certainly has an ideology you could devolve it, but it's less.
I don't think they're trying to convince you of anything other than this is really the story, and so Bloomberg and the economists or things that I'm happy to spend subscription money on. And then I also read, uh the Nick Reports from Japan just to get some interesting, kind of funny news. I read another newsletter put together by Walt Hickey called Numblock. He's been doing it for so
many years. I love that newsletter. I have vowed never to steal an item, but I steal his sources or I see where he's getting and then.
You're like, I'm gonna start reading that sour. Yes, exactly. That's how I got Nike.
And then I read I read Eric Zorn, who does a thing called the Piki un Sentinel. He used to be the best columnist of the Chicago Tribune, and the Tribune has been facimated. Zorn is awesome, and especially my sister lives in Chicago.
I'm fascinated by Chicago.
I have a few stories like the last he was like the replacement for Roiko, wasn't he? And he was sort of like the last of his kind. I think there's like a direct line there. Yes, I think he's in that linea jill though.
You know, I think everyone probably who is a columnist editor the Tribune, like John Cass and all these guys were kind of anti Roykos would say I'm the I'm the last roy Co And Bob Green there was another controversial figure.
What a paper? What a paper that is now a husk of itself.
And there's a building in Chicago called the Tribune Building, and I bet people don't even.
Know there's a newspaper associated with it.
Yeah, some of the papers that didn't survive, I just that one, you know.
But there's it's there, but sure.
But like the Boston Globes the same way, like it was Wow, it was like a more of a sports section.
The Globe Sports section, Oh my god, everyone in section, the Post, the Post dial section, there was a that was a great tangium of greatness.
Yeah, and now.
Boy, the Post both are just you know, they're they're they're not what they used to be.
Uh, Mike, this was a pleasure.
Uh.
You're, like I said, you're a pioneer in the space and you you you you you have an originality that.
You know you can't it's hard to emulate, and I think that for me it feels like the key to your success.
Well, thanks, thanks Todd. All Right, Pasca Italian for a fish. I mean, is it that simple? You grew up as a fish.
The name of the production company is Peach Fish Productions because Italian Pasca is peach, but pache is fish, so it's peach fish.
Oh that's funny. I like that.
I love a good sort of naming origin that that does stuff like that with words and language.
That's awesome. Mike, appreciate the time. Oh, thank you so much.
All Right, see that dark open that I brought to you a tad lighter right with the conversation with Mike anyway,
¶ Ask Chuck
So with that, let's do a few questions. The last chuck here ash chuck. This one comes from Angela from New Orleans. I check love the podcast and enjoyed the new Sphere interview Sunday.
I like that format.
I wanted to follow up on John from Fairfield question about Trump and Musk. Trump's tweets seem to admit he gave Elon Musk a government contractor sweeping access to government systems,
¶ Was Elon Musk's access to government data considered corruption?
raising serious conflict of interest concerns within the level of influence. If true, suggests corruption or at least poor judgment for both Trump and his advisors. Also, how are tweets viewed legally? Can they be used as evidence or trigger congressional inquiries?
Thank you? Well, look, they are considered.
I do think that the tweets are you know, they're not somehow protected as some sort of like half speech or something like that. Right, what he says on a social media what he says in social media is no different than what he says in public. And he's the president whenever he does it right, and it can be a presidential So no, I don't there's no there's there's no less. I guess there's no less. You know, a tweet hasn't viewed any less any differently than what he would say in a TV interview.
Or a print interview.
But you're right, I mean, this goes back to about what you said, you know, sort of he he basically confesses to what he's doing up front, right, And it goes back to my to that quote from Speaker Mike Johnson, who I think I've quoted now there will probably be the fourth time in two weeks where he said the biggest difference between Trump's corruption and Biden's corruption is that Biden tried to keep his corruption on the down low with what Hunter Biden was doing and what Frank Biden
was doing. Donald Trump does it out in the open and transparently so because he tells you in plain sight that he's handed the keys to the government over to Elon Musk, and he's allowed Elon Musk to have his way, you know, when it comes to certain things that impact his businesses, get Star Link into the White House, whatever right, you know, allows him to get more government contracts. That that's well, it's out in the open so it's not
unethical anyway. My skepticism is there. Now here's the problem the entity we have two. There are three different places that could investigate what is clearly obvious conflict of interest and it may be corrupt, right, it may be a crime. We don't know that it's a crime. We would need more evidence to prove it. But there are three entities that could essentially do this investigating to see if a crime was committed. Entity one would be an inspector general
at any of the agencies. But of course Donald Trump fired all the inspector generals. Now summers are kind of be back in place, and when he fires one, there's a temporary but by doing the across the board firing, he was sending a warning shot, don't come after me.
The second group is your is your congressional committees? Well, guess what Congress is controlled by his party and they seem to I mean the House Oversight Committee is literally holding investigations about whether Joe Biden had control of his autopen or not.
They are not.
Investigating what's hitting them in plain sight, which is he handed government contracts, gave them away like candidate Elon Musk, and he gave Elon Musk unfettered access, probably illegal, unfettered access to the federal government to different databases like Social Security in the IRS. But we don't know if he did it corruptly or not. It certainly looks like it is, but there's no investigators. And of course the third entity
that could do this is the Justice Department. I'm going to pause here to let you laugh when I said the Justice Department. So you get my point here. Everything you say is valid. The problem is the entities that are in charge of sort of the rule of law in these scenarios. Your inspectors generals, your Justice Department, and your congressional committees have all been compromised. I wish I had a better answer for you, Angel, I appreciate the question.
Let me go this second question, alternate history question. Where would we be now if Trump didn't withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal?
¶ Where would we be now if Trump didn't withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal?
Jim E.
Well, that's an interesting question. Well, I can tell you what Israel feared of Trump doing a new deal. Here's what Israel feared in a new deal. And by the way, if you're really interested in the sort of the nitty gritty of this, I do hope you tune into the interview I did with Treta Parsi on Newsphere. This guy, he just he really laid it out well, and we go back to that, you know, back to that original deal and sort of he really just explains the political
motivations that each government has domestically. Anyway, It's a terrific conversation and I think we'll fill in some blanks here, But.
Look what Israel.
One of the reasons there's real acted is they had a fear that Trump would cut a deal with Iran, and that the deal would give Aron some money that could in turn allow them to replenish Hesbalo, perhaps replenish the Hoodies, and maybe even help Hamas, although I'm less not one hundred percent sure they would be as inclined to help rebuild Hamas as they actually the Iranians, I think blame Hamas for creating this situation. They suddenly find
them in right. Hamas did not have Iran's green light for the October seventh attack, and yet that October seventh attack could look looks like it's turning into the beginning of the end for a Ran or at least certainly for many of Iran's proxies. But if we still had this Iran deal, well they would have you know, in theory, they would have more money to at to use, they would be more The question would be would they be as aggressive if we were if we had if we
were on top of them all the time. You know, it was interesting what Treta thought. You know, they're in the first Iran deal. The Golf States were also against the United States cutting a deal with Iran, and as he put it, he said their fear was that the United States would end up just doing business with Iran over time and essentially not allowing the Golf States to have the advantage that they've had for quite some time,
at least financially in the region now. And so that's why they were They shared the same position as Israel. Now they're less you know, they're not as supportive of what Israel did, and at the same time, they're not any more pro Iran. They just at this point, don't they just want stability in the region, because it's the instability that costs the money, and it's the instability. Look what it's going to do to I don't think this is going to be good for anybody in that region.
So I still don't know how how to answer your question. There's so many what ifs here, would be be still still be in power?
Right?
Would he be considered? How would that have happened? Would this if? If Iran? If this deal is staying, does Iran pull back on its proxies or get more aggressive with its proxies? I I am, I don't know. I'm I'm I'm not going to sit here and claim that things would be better. It's very possible we could have been in the same place because maybe Iran gets cocky and violates the agreement, and if they do, then we're
drawn into this. So I don't know if there's any if there's any upside to have to have now at this point, I don't know if there had been upside, especially if it appears that you were about to get them back into a deal that might have been slightly tougher than the deal that was cut with Obama. But Jim, it's a great question. I don't that's let me put
it this way. I'm going to go ask some of my smarter Middle East experts that very same question, and I'm going to see if I can get you a better answer down the road, all Right, let's see here, Joe may do one more here, Joe R. He's just got a note. Not necessarily a question, but it's an interesting one. So I thought I charged from Joe. Ours from Vero Beach, home of Dodgertown. When I was a kid, I went to Vera. We got to Vera Beach every spring break to go check out the Dodgers. My dad
was a Dodger fan. That was the team of my youth as well. So love me some Vera Beach and I'd love to see Vera Beach get a new team for spring training. How another club hasn't said, hey, we want a piece of Dodger Town is beyond me. But Joe, here's your observation. Watched your Newsphere interview with Steve Bannon. It was like a fresh breeze coming off the ocean.
Wow.
Well, see, this is why I'm going to share this with you, right. I mean, been to meet the press and face the nation fan for decades. In the last few years, I've been fast forwarding through the interviews with politicians who appeared merely to repeat the party line and
¶ Long-form podcast format vs Sunday show format?
ignore hard questions. Your podcasts and Newsphere interviews provide more information on the state of politics in the world than those shows. So congrats on moving to your new formats and providing real sight on today's weighty issues.
Co Gators, Oh man.
That pains me to have to repeat You'd said all these nice things and then you had to say, go Gators. Anyway, Joe, let me defend those Sunday shows here. Though I think both Margaret and Kristen are trying their very best. I think the formats are what prevents them, I think from doing the interviews.
That they would like to be doing. So don't trust me. I've been in that seat.
I understand the different pressures that come with it. So I want to be as much as much as I appreciate the question and appreciate the sentiment, I'm not interested in and dunking on them. I just think that we're in a different place now, in this current media ecosystem, and I.
Do think that.
There is a that there's a better way to surface information. I know it's not as sometimes, it's not as shiny, it's not as much of a shiny metal object right to grab your attention. But I fear traditional media in general.
You know, when you start to lose audience. You start to like try to grab viewers by the lapels, don't leave, don't leave, right, and you start to sort of chase certain shiny metal things, thinking that it's going to help when sometimes zagging just when everybody's zigging is sometimes the better move. But look, you know it's a this is
the advantage of the formats that I'm in. But at the same time, sometimes you don't there aren't You can't get these people to sit down for twenty at thirty minutes, right, So the people I am getting are end up sounding forthcoming because they're willing to come on for twenty thirty forty five minutes, and you get a better understanding of how someone thinks, even if they're not being straight with the answers that they're giving, and you kind of catch
them with it. Right, that five to ten minute interview, I don't know if it serves anybody anything, And I think that unfortunately, everybody knows how to do the five minute interview, right. You know how to avoid making news. If you have to avoid making news, you know how to hijacket if you'd like to make a one particular piece of information and then make it so that it's nothing else.
I think that's what has made it.
It's just, you know, look, we just got to the end of the usefulness of that kind of format, is the way I.
Would put it. But anyway, I appreciate the sentiment.
I hope my media writer friends out there don't try to overwrite what I just said there, don't aggregate what I just said.
Just let it be all right with that. It's Monday.
I know there's a lot of maybe there might be another podcast or two you want to catch up with, so I won't add to the U add to your listening time today, but I promise you a couple more fun drops later this week and with that until we upload again.
M M