00:00:06
Speaker 1: Hi, and welcome back to Carol Marcowitch Show on iHeartRadio. My guest today is Susan Crabtree. Susan is the national political correspondent for Real Clear Politics, author of the book Fools Gold on California corruption, and a contributor to the California Post and City Journal. Hi, Susan, so nice to have you on.
00:00:25
Speaker 2: It's great to be with you, Carol, thanks for having me.
00:00:27
Speaker 1: So I've been on a little bit of a California run on this show. I had Joel Pollock on, he's the opinion editor at California Post. I had Jennifer ven Lar from Red State on. And so the question I asked my California buddies is are you hopeful about California.
00:00:46
Speaker 3: Oh?
00:00:47
Speaker 2: No, I'm actually not. I have to be brutally honest.
00:00:52
Speaker 4: That's the bluntest answer I've gotten. Calibuny Post is actually a bright light. I think the things are changing bit in the media landscape because of the California Post. And now there's a new venture within The Manhattan Institute is launching their California Anti Fraud venture.
00:01:10
Speaker 1: I know that that's great.
00:01:12
Speaker 5: Yes, everybody, you know, fraud is suddenly sexy in California. We've been dealing with it people who live here for you know, decades, and it's only gotten worse and worse. But at least there's some there's some signs of hope flickering. But the problem is that the politics aren't changing we have. You know, if I were to predict at this point who's going to win the governorship, we're going to go from Gavin Newsom possibly most likely to Eric Swalwell.
00:01:44
Speaker 1: Wow.
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Speaker 2: And that is someone as you.
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Speaker 5: Know, Kroena, who's had a very dodgy record in Congress about his own personal ethics and you know, caught with a relationship Chinese spy. And this is who I'm complaining about, Gavin Nuisance connecting.
00:02:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, suddenly we're like, maybe we'll keep Gavin.
00:02:07
Speaker 5: It's on the horizon here as we look to the actual politics of California, I don't think it's going to change. I do think that there's more accountability happening now.
00:02:18
Speaker 2: I hope that lasts. I hope it's not a flash in the pan.
00:02:21
Speaker 5: Just right as the national media outlets on the conservative side are wanting to take Gavenusom out, and I think I hope it's not short lived.
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Speaker 2: Right.
00:02:32
Speaker 1: So your book is subtitled The Radicals, con Artists and Traders who killed the California Dream and now threaten us all. What's the common thread there between the radicals, the con artists and the traders.
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Speaker 5: Well, we do have a lovely list of characters underneath the book title, Gavin Newsom, Nancy Pelosi, Kamla Harris, and Adam shiff And the common theme is that what I just mentioned a lack of ability in California. I grew up here and it wasn't the case, right. It's a one party system, and so the corruption just feeds upon itself because no one's watching. And we've lost that. The media, these smaller media outlets that everybody these newspapers that sometimes were family run, locally focused and really held these people accountable. Has everybody's reading habits have changed, Where we get our information has changed. You have the death of these local news outlets, and even the Los Angeles Times has seen its test staff decimated and they've gone in a much more openly liberal direction, its access journalism in California. So the common theme is these you know, I just did a story on Behested payments this is a comment. This is a unique phenom to California, and now the national media is getting wind of it, and they can't believe.
00:04:06
Speaker 6: That you can just the new second of politicians can direct hundreds of millions of dollars from their chair from corporations with business before this date, to a charitable cause of their choice, even their wife's charity that she takes a salary from. It sounds questionable, yeah, but this is common practice in California. So how did you get into this world? How did you get into writing about California specifically or just being a writer in general.
00:04:37
Speaker 5: I think my mom encouraged me to be a writer. I give him credit to my mom. She said that she was a teacher. She's a kindergarten teacher, and she always been a stressed reading. We couldn't watch too much TV, and we were she liked. She thought that I was talented. At a young age. I had I did long writing. I think my boss Carl Kaden, I'll tell him it be again. Then I always write to on. But she's my mom saw something in me. Then I always pursued it. In high school it was on the newspaper staff and then and I went to college, I took journalism courses.
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Speaker 2: I didn't.
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Speaker 5: I honestly don't think that was a great decision. But I wanted to pursue journalism instead of a wider major, so I didn't.
00:05:23
Speaker 2: I ba bypassed all.
00:05:24
Speaker 5: The ucs and only chose schools that had journalism as a major. Then I went immediately to DC and started there with the American Society of Magazine Editors. I got a internship at National Geographic and I got the bug for Washington d C. I thought I was going to be there for three months. It turned out twenty three years and lots of ups, and.
00:05:50
Speaker 1: That happens dcipeople, you know.
00:05:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was sort of addictive.
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Speaker 5: The the climate there is great for young people and journal and politics in general. It's like, you know, going to a graduate school of for It's like another college atmosphere and extension of college.
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Speaker 1: Uh.
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Speaker 5: But I loved it for so long. I had great experiences at the Washington Times then Roll Call Newspapers, where I did a lot of my uh cut of my teeth with other journalists that have gone on to bigger and better places, like I was there with Jim Van Hyatts, some little happing with him, a founder of Politico and Axios, Paul Kaine. It was the political editor, sorry, the congressional reporter, senior one at the Washington Post, Crystaliza and Mark Preston at CNN, and a lot of others that I'm not going to mention.
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Speaker 1: But so that was that, I uh, you know, like your teeth.
00:06:54
Speaker 5: But yeah, then I I kind of went to the trader side of the I decided to go to the Hill Newspaper and work for them.
00:07:03
Speaker 2: It had a great run there.
00:07:05
Speaker 5: Did a lot of ethics, recording and corruption cases that launched FBI investigations.
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Speaker 2: I really loved it.
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Speaker 5: I think I should have been a prosecutor if I wasn't in I.
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Speaker 2: Just I loved it.
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Speaker 1: Would you say that investigative journalism is your passion?
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Speaker 5: Oh?
00:07:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, it really is.
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Speaker 5: And I've been so lucky to have the opportunity to do it because it's sort of a rare thing in these days, but I kept getting new opportunities. It's it's amazing. I'm so thankful for them.
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Speaker 1: What do you love about investigative journalism? Is it the discovery or is it the process? What do you enjoy?
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Speaker 5: I think it's sort of like you know, a mystery of you know, you see something that is you think is bizarre or not right in some kind of filing looking at and that role call. We were trained to look at these federal election records on a quarterly basis for all the big politicians, all the big senators and member leaders in Congress, as well as the party committees. So you see something and then you thought, okay, you talked to your editor about it and see if you can get some time to pursue it.
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Speaker 2: And sure enough, I did a lot of ear mark reporting that was corruption.
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Speaker 5: I got a little stuff with it where you're plotting out the ear marks for local in California.
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Speaker 2: Actually a lot of work in California.
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Speaker 5: Where they would get like a beautification one million or two million dollars for beautification right near the Target store that they owned right right. Yeah, and you know, the bridge to nowhere was a great one. We followed that senator evens and in Alaska, uh that those pet projects you know, just were there was an abundance of material.
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Speaker 2: There always is in common.
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Speaker 1: But I feel like we're in a particularly like corrupt time right now. I don't mean that more people are corrupt. I'm sure, it's been the same amount of people throughout history, but I feel like a lot of these stories are surfacing. Like on my other podcast that I do with Mary Catherine Ham, we've just covered a lot of corruption stories in the last few months where it just seems to be everywhere and maybe coming to the surface more. Is that just because of reporters making these discoveries that they didn't make before, or has it always been here?
00:09:31
Speaker 5: I think the corruption is his part of human nature, so it's always going to be there. But I do think because of X there's an excitement for even citizen journalists to get involved. I think you have Nick Shirley tugging at something and going and confronting these daycare centers, these go stay care centers in Minnesota, and then you have the follow up and you have people like CBS News going in and really you know, nailing it down and making sure that everybody's interviewed that should be interviewed.
00:10:04
Speaker 2: And so it seems to be starting at.
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Speaker 5: The grassroots level and then percolating up and then you've get some really solid journalism where it's confirmed absolutely this is happening. So I honestly think I credit X even though I don't love X at.
00:10:24
Speaker 1: Times, I understand that feeling. We all have to very love it or hated situation over there.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe you could get sucked in and your whole day has gone. As journalists, we have to, you know, actually do the work that it takes to produce these stories and really nail them down more as like a citizen journalist, they can just put something out there and their reputation is not and their job is not tied to it, so.
00:10:52
Speaker 1: They make a mistake. They make a mistake and kind of their audience is more forgiving. But when you work for an established news brand and you make a mistake, it's a lot harder. I even typos make me, you know, feel so terrible. When I have a typo in one of my columns, I I stress out about it. I'm like, oh, it's in the newspaper. It's in the actual newspaper that you're can be holding in your hand, and I can't fix that.
00:11:16
Speaker 2: It's tough. I'm just mad about the ones that I constantly have typos in my I have a I'm doing.
00:11:23
Speaker 5: I'm juggling so much as we all, we all are as parents and journalists and trying to break stories and trying to dig deep. It's a lot, and follow the news that's breaking, you know, constantly on a variety of topics, you know, international news and local news here because I'm a national reporter, so I feel like, you know, I'm covering it all. But you know, sometimes very interestinct. But you know, I will have I use that mechanism on X to try to edit my my tweets, and when it's not working, I'm scream at at elon musk what.
00:12:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, sometimes you just don't have the edit button. Sometimes it just does not use it.
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Speaker 2: It's random though.
00:12:06
Speaker 1: It's yeah, and I think that, I mean, we're at a stage with AI and stuff where we could use you should be able to use the edit button to fix a typo and not have it be like a whole new tweet, Like it's just be the old tweet, if you know, if it's one word, it's okay to change it and move on with our lives instead of being like it's a whole new tweet.
00:12:29
Speaker 5: Now, yeah you have to take it down, and yeah, yeah, you have to take it down and redo it.
00:12:33
Speaker 1: That's basically what I do.
00:12:34
Speaker 5: I almost never already I just go you know, what, Yeah, exactly. You know, me and Donald Trump, we have big thumbs. So I talk about same same.
00:12:43
Speaker 1: We're going to take a quick break and be right back on the Carol Marcowitch Show. What are you most proud of in your life?
00:12:52
Speaker 5: I'm most proud of and I when you were getting at this and the previous question that I decided in two thousand and seven, as a new mom and someone who had been in DC for twenty three years, that I needed to do something different with my life and I needed a change of scenery and a new job. And it was all scary for me. I wasn't a little scary in my early forties. I'll date myself here, I age myself to be doing that. But I was forty three and just had my only child and wanted to really experience it with her. And it was clear to me was it went. Four days went by where I was not seeing her at night or in the morning. Hard in Donald Trump's first term. And I still wanted to do journalism, which was hard for me. But I had the opportunity with my husband, who could work from anywhere, and we decided we would move and I decided to take sort of like I was a White House respondent for the Washington Examiner.
00:14:00
Speaker 2: Was moved over to the Senate at that time.
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Speaker 5: I didn't really want the Senate because you have to be there at all hours of the right of the night depending on the White House is actually a little bit more.
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Speaker 2: With Donald Trump, the hours are slightly and I didn't.
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Speaker 5: Want to get a night nanny and a day nanny and do all of that A lot.
00:14:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was. It was a lot. So I did. And also I think just challenging in my job.
00:14:26
Speaker 5: I wanted I didn't need to cover the Senate again, I had already done that many years.
00:14:32
Speaker 6: So I decided to just go through.
00:14:35
Speaker 5: I wanted to do a freelance story for the Free Beacond. I decided I was going to move no matter what, We're going to go back to my home state of California where I grew up. I love the landscapes here. I missed the recreation, being able to just jump in your car and go to the beach if you wanted to go to the mountains, all of those things that were part of my upbringing, my childhood, and so I.
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Speaker 2: Just I freelance.
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Speaker 5: I decided I was going to freelance the story or try to pitch the Free Beacon. And they actually said, well, we have an position that's opened up, an investigative report position. And honestly, I love the washing Free Beacon. I love how Yeah, it's just a really great place because they give you a lot of freedom and if you're performing, they let you run with it.
00:15:22
Speaker 2: So said we have a position. I'm as well, oh I'm moving to California.
00:15:25
Speaker 5: And they thought about it for a second and I said, well, we'll try you out and we'll see how it goes.
00:15:30
Speaker 1: A lot to investigate in California.
00:15:33
Speaker 2: And actually they loved having me out here.
00:15:35
Speaker 5: Yeah, And that was when Newsom was first on the rise and he was leading his first resistance to Trump. So it was it's been great fun and I've had lots of material to work with. It is difficult to live in California at this time if you're a multi millionaire, to be quite honest, especially because the coast we live at the Coast Hill area of San Diego. I grew up more inland where it's cheaper, so you know, there's challenges for sure, But for me it's a passion and I'm learning so much more than if I were just circling the same hallways and actually learning how policy affects people.
00:16:15
Speaker 1: States. We're going to take a quick break and be right back on the Carol Markowitz Show. So you love California, but you're pessimistic about the future of California. But you stay, Yeah, stay a fight.
00:16:31
Speaker 5: I think that you've as long as you can stay as you have resources, because like I said, it's becoming.
00:16:37
Speaker 2: Quite harder and harder all the time. Right, the elites can stay and then we have harvety rate. So the middle class is shrinking. I'm talking When I talk about middle class, I'm talking to anybody who's making under three hundred thousand for your household income.
00:16:52
Speaker 5: And that's middle class out here. It is unless you live in the Central Valley or Inland.
00:17:00
Speaker 2: But it is something I feel like I'm I shouldn't be.
00:17:05
Speaker 5: This is my home state. I had wonderful, wonderful memories. I want my daughter to experience it. I don't know if she'll be able to. I go back and forth with my husband all the time because he's from He's from Boston and he has a lot of family in Florida, and we do evaluate it on a regular bath list. But now we're staying to fight. And I love the fact that there's a new arsenal, there's a new group of reporters out there with a big masthead to bring in some true accountability to this to the state.
00:17:42
Speaker 1: It's really great. And I'm rooting for California. I mean, I always loved California, and I always saw it as like you know, just I would say, like a promised land in America. But it was it was the new frontier. You guys were supposed to be the leaders of what came next, and I always wanted California to be that. And of course the politics over the last decade plus have just done so much damage. But I root for California to pick itself back up. And I hope you're all successful with that.
00:18:12
Speaker 2: Well, thank you, we need it. The more accountability the better.
00:18:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's the way to go about it. The more accountability the better. Give us a five year out prediction, it could be about anything at all. Well, what I'm.
00:18:25
Speaker 5: Worried about in five years is our information flow of information, how are receiving it. I feel like I have so lucky to work for Carl Caannon. He's one of the best editors I've ever known and worked for the best actually, and people like Victor David Hanson who have a knowledge of so many things, you know, thinking so great, yeah, turensive or they can talk about you know, the political what happened in the rag and administration, and to science. It's so many different subject matters and I feel like on X we will be laughing about what we are tweeting. On x, X is going to probably it's already exploding with information that you feel like you have to keep track of the little tidbits. And I think it's going to be far more siloed. You're going to have a maybe have like sort of an X for just politics or California politics versus national politics.
00:19:25
Speaker 2: Because people want to be experts in their feeling and they love chat.
00:19:29
Speaker 5: But if you lose that, if you lose that wider breadth of information, you just become sort of siloed and and sort of just thinking about things in a very incremental way instead of.
00:19:45
Speaker 1: You know, reperture.
00:19:49
Speaker 5: I truly worry about that for my daughter, and I also worry about these new.
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Speaker 2: AI bots.
00:19:57
Speaker 5: Okay, there's a new phenomen and on that I just discovered it. What's this WhatsApp. It's so disturbing. It really is to one another and how kids are relating to these I mean, honestly.
00:20:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, nothing creeps me out more than the idea that my kids are going to have a friend who is a AI bought. I mean, I had Debrissau on the show recently, and she has a book called Extinction about how Americans aren't having sex, and she said, you know, in our lifetime, somebody's going to bring a like a sex robot to your party and that's going to be their girlfriend, and you're going to have to be like, well, that's just how it is. And I was like, not to my party, they're not.
00:20:39
Speaker 2: That is so weird.
00:20:40
Speaker 5: No, absolutely, but it happened first in California. Of course, you would not believe what we run into on the daily basis in our communities and what we have to fight in our schools.
00:20:53
Speaker 2: What's going on.
00:20:54
Speaker 5: I mean, several national news stories came out of our school district, both the elementary school and the high school, now the high school district. It's unbelievable what's going on and what is succeptable. I do think things not in California, but in the rest of the country are changing in terms of the transgender ideology.
00:21:15
Speaker 2: So hopefully we're.
00:21:16
Speaker 1: On the right track with something I guess, yeah, but I do worry.
00:21:21
Speaker 5: We'll take the win, right, yeah, at least at the Supreme Court.
00:21:26
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
00:21:26
Speaker 2: And in others and certainly even over seas.
00:21:31
Speaker 5: You know, they're not Trensgender surgeries are when they're realizing that hormones for kids is not helpful.
00:21:37
Speaker 1: Bad idea. Yeah, Susan, I've loved this conversation. I really enjoyed talking to you and getting to know you a little bit more. Leave us here with your best tip for my listeners on how they can improve their lives.
00:21:51
Speaker 2: I try to, I'm not always successful.
00:21:54
Speaker 5: I try to start my day with a few minutes of just calm and for me, I read scripture and do a little study for that, even if it's five minutes, because as a journalist in a rough and tumble world, you never know what's going to be coming at you throughout the day. The same as a parent, you know your kid might be sick as my kid is this morning, as your jade changes, and so it's sort of like that rude you're keep your kipling phrase that poem you know, if you can keep your head about you when all the rest are losing. That to me, like if you've sent to yourself in the beginning of the day and realize, like I'm busy, what my values are, this is how I like to handle things. I'm going to start. I'm not going to just react. I can only control how I react to something. I think that if I would have really focused on that as a younger journalist, I think things would have been smoother, and I think I would have been let more emotionally regulated, because it is a difficult business, especially when you're in the throes of it on the front lines in Washington, and so you can then as you approach these either conflicts with other people, news stories that didn't work out, or you wanted to disappointment, or you're something's going on in your personal life, you can just go back to that place that of calm and centered And for me, it is my belief in Christ. So I truly value that and I try to live it. I'm not always successful to live out my values, but it has helped.
00:23:35
Speaker 1: I love that. Yeah. She is Susan Crabtree. Read her at Real Clare Politics, California Post the City Journal and pick up her book, Fools Gold. Thank you so much for coming on, Susan Carol.
00:23:47
Speaker 2: It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me so much.
Speaker 1: Hi, and welcome back to Carol Marcowitch Show on iHeartRadio. My guest today is Susan Crabtree. Susan is the national political correspondent for Real Clear Politics, author of the book Fools Gold on California corruption, and a contributor to the California Post and City Journal. Hi, Susan, so nice to have you on.
00:00:25
Speaker 2: It's great to be with you, Carol, thanks for having me.
00:00:27
Speaker 1: So I've been on a little bit of a California run on this show. I had Joel Pollock on, he's the opinion editor at California Post. I had Jennifer ven Lar from Red State on. And so the question I asked my California buddies is are you hopeful about California.
00:00:46
Speaker 3: Oh?
00:00:47
Speaker 2: No, I'm actually not. I have to be brutally honest.
00:00:52
Speaker 4: That's the bluntest answer I've gotten. Calibuny Post is actually a bright light. I think the things are changing bit in the media landscape because of the California Post. And now there's a new venture within The Manhattan Institute is launching their California Anti Fraud venture.
00:01:10
Speaker 1: I know that that's great.
00:01:12
Speaker 5: Yes, everybody, you know, fraud is suddenly sexy in California. We've been dealing with it people who live here for you know, decades, and it's only gotten worse and worse. But at least there's some there's some signs of hope flickering. But the problem is that the politics aren't changing we have. You know, if I were to predict at this point who's going to win the governorship, we're going to go from Gavin Newsom possibly most likely to Eric Swalwell.
00:01:44
Speaker 1: Wow.
00:01:44
Speaker 2: And that is someone as you.
00:01:46
Speaker 5: Know, Kroena, who's had a very dodgy record in Congress about his own personal ethics and you know, caught with a relationship Chinese spy. And this is who I'm complaining about, Gavin Nuisance connecting.
00:02:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, suddenly we're like, maybe we'll keep Gavin.
00:02:07
Speaker 5: It's on the horizon here as we look to the actual politics of California, I don't think it's going to change. I do think that there's more accountability happening now.
00:02:18
Speaker 2: I hope that lasts. I hope it's not a flash in the pan.
00:02:21
Speaker 5: Just right as the national media outlets on the conservative side are wanting to take Gavenusom out, and I think I hope it's not short lived.
00:02:31
Speaker 2: Right.
00:02:32
Speaker 1: So your book is subtitled The Radicals, con Artists and Traders who killed the California Dream and now threaten us all. What's the common thread there between the radicals, the con artists and the traders.
00:02:46
Speaker 5: Well, we do have a lovely list of characters underneath the book title, Gavin Newsom, Nancy Pelosi, Kamla Harris, and Adam shiff And the common theme is that what I just mentioned a lack of ability in California. I grew up here and it wasn't the case, right. It's a one party system, and so the corruption just feeds upon itself because no one's watching. And we've lost that. The media, these smaller media outlets that everybody these newspapers that sometimes were family run, locally focused and really held these people accountable. Has everybody's reading habits have changed, Where we get our information has changed. You have the death of these local news outlets, and even the Los Angeles Times has seen its test staff decimated and they've gone in a much more openly liberal direction, its access journalism in California. So the common theme is these you know, I just did a story on Behested payments this is a comment. This is a unique phenom to California, and now the national media is getting wind of it, and they can't believe.
00:04:06
Speaker 6: That you can just the new second of politicians can direct hundreds of millions of dollars from their chair from corporations with business before this date, to a charitable cause of their choice, even their wife's charity that she takes a salary from. It sounds questionable, yeah, but this is common practice in California. So how did you get into this world? How did you get into writing about California specifically or just being a writer in general.
00:04:37
Speaker 5: I think my mom encouraged me to be a writer. I give him credit to my mom. She said that she was a teacher. She's a kindergarten teacher, and she always been a stressed reading. We couldn't watch too much TV, and we were she liked. She thought that I was talented. At a young age. I had I did long writing. I think my boss Carl Kaden, I'll tell him it be again. Then I always write to on. But she's my mom saw something in me. Then I always pursued it. In high school it was on the newspaper staff and then and I went to college, I took journalism courses.
00:05:14
Speaker 2: I didn't.
00:05:15
Speaker 5: I honestly don't think that was a great decision. But I wanted to pursue journalism instead of a wider major, so I didn't.
00:05:23
Speaker 2: I ba bypassed all.
00:05:24
Speaker 5: The ucs and only chose schools that had journalism as a major. Then I went immediately to DC and started there with the American Society of Magazine Editors. I got a internship at National Geographic and I got the bug for Washington d C. I thought I was going to be there for three months. It turned out twenty three years and lots of ups, and.
00:05:50
Speaker 1: That happens dcipeople, you know.
00:05:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was sort of addictive.
00:05:56
Speaker 5: The the climate there is great for young people and journal and politics in general. It's like, you know, going to a graduate school of for It's like another college atmosphere and extension of college.
00:06:11
Speaker 1: Uh.
00:06:11
Speaker 5: But I loved it for so long. I had great experiences at the Washington Times then Roll Call Newspapers, where I did a lot of my uh cut of my teeth with other journalists that have gone on to bigger and better places, like I was there with Jim Van Hyatts, some little happing with him, a founder of Politico and Axios, Paul Kaine. It was the political editor, sorry, the congressional reporter, senior one at the Washington Post, Crystaliza and Mark Preston at CNN, and a lot of others that I'm not going to mention.
00:06:50
Speaker 1: But so that was that, I uh, you know, like your teeth.
00:06:54
Speaker 5: But yeah, then I I kind of went to the trader side of the I decided to go to the Hill Newspaper and work for them.
00:07:03
Speaker 2: It had a great run there.
00:07:05
Speaker 5: Did a lot of ethics, recording and corruption cases that launched FBI investigations.
00:07:11
Speaker 2: I really loved it.
00:07:13
Speaker 5: I think I should have been a prosecutor if I wasn't in I.
00:07:17
Speaker 2: Just I loved it.
00:07:20
Speaker 1: Would you say that investigative journalism is your passion?
00:07:24
Speaker 5: Oh?
00:07:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, it really is.
00:07:27
Speaker 5: And I've been so lucky to have the opportunity to do it because it's sort of a rare thing in these days, but I kept getting new opportunities. It's it's amazing. I'm so thankful for them.
00:07:38
Speaker 1: What do you love about investigative journalism? Is it the discovery or is it the process? What do you enjoy?
00:07:45
Speaker 5: I think it's sort of like you know, a mystery of you know, you see something that is you think is bizarre or not right in some kind of filing looking at and that role call. We were trained to look at these federal election records on a quarterly basis for all the big politicians, all the big senators and member leaders in Congress, as well as the party committees. So you see something and then you thought, okay, you talked to your editor about it and see if you can get some time to pursue it.
00:08:19
Speaker 2: And sure enough, I did a lot of ear mark reporting that was corruption.
00:08:23
Speaker 5: I got a little stuff with it where you're plotting out the ear marks for local in California.
00:08:30
Speaker 2: Actually a lot of work in California.
00:08:32
Speaker 5: Where they would get like a beautification one million or two million dollars for beautification right near the Target store that they owned right right. Yeah, and you know, the bridge to nowhere was a great one. We followed that senator evens and in Alaska, uh that those pet projects you know, just were there was an abundance of material.
00:08:56
Speaker 2: There always is in common.
00:08:59
Speaker 1: But I feel like we're in a particularly like corrupt time right now. I don't mean that more people are corrupt. I'm sure, it's been the same amount of people throughout history, but I feel like a lot of these stories are surfacing. Like on my other podcast that I do with Mary Catherine Ham, we've just covered a lot of corruption stories in the last few months where it just seems to be everywhere and maybe coming to the surface more. Is that just because of reporters making these discoveries that they didn't make before, or has it always been here?
00:09:31
Speaker 5: I think the corruption is his part of human nature, so it's always going to be there. But I do think because of X there's an excitement for even citizen journalists to get involved. I think you have Nick Shirley tugging at something and going and confronting these daycare centers, these go stay care centers in Minnesota, and then you have the follow up and you have people like CBS News going in and really you know, nailing it down and making sure that everybody's interviewed that should be interviewed.
00:10:04
Speaker 2: And so it seems to be starting at.
00:10:07
Speaker 5: The grassroots level and then percolating up and then you've get some really solid journalism where it's confirmed absolutely this is happening. So I honestly think I credit X even though I don't love X at.
00:10:24
Speaker 1: Times, I understand that feeling. We all have to very love it or hated situation over there.
00:10:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe you could get sucked in and your whole day has gone. As journalists, we have to, you know, actually do the work that it takes to produce these stories and really nail them down more as like a citizen journalist, they can just put something out there and their reputation is not and their job is not tied to it, so.
00:10:52
Speaker 1: They make a mistake. They make a mistake and kind of their audience is more forgiving. But when you work for an established news brand and you make a mistake, it's a lot harder. I even typos make me, you know, feel so terrible. When I have a typo in one of my columns, I I stress out about it. I'm like, oh, it's in the newspaper. It's in the actual newspaper that you're can be holding in your hand, and I can't fix that.
00:11:16
Speaker 2: It's tough. I'm just mad about the ones that I constantly have typos in my I have a I'm doing.
00:11:23
Speaker 5: I'm juggling so much as we all, we all are as parents and journalists and trying to break stories and trying to dig deep. It's a lot, and follow the news that's breaking, you know, constantly on a variety of topics, you know, international news and local news here because I'm a national reporter, so I feel like, you know, I'm covering it all. But you know, sometimes very interestinct. But you know, I will have I use that mechanism on X to try to edit my my tweets, and when it's not working, I'm scream at at elon musk what.
00:12:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, sometimes you just don't have the edit button. Sometimes it just does not use it.
00:12:05
Speaker 2: It's random though.
00:12:06
Speaker 1: It's yeah, and I think that, I mean, we're at a stage with AI and stuff where we could use you should be able to use the edit button to fix a typo and not have it be like a whole new tweet, Like it's just be the old tweet, if you know, if it's one word, it's okay to change it and move on with our lives instead of being like it's a whole new tweet.
00:12:29
Speaker 5: Now, yeah you have to take it down, and yeah, yeah, you have to take it down and redo it.
00:12:33
Speaker 1: That's basically what I do.
00:12:34
Speaker 5: I almost never already I just go you know, what, Yeah, exactly. You know, me and Donald Trump, we have big thumbs. So I talk about same same.
00:12:43
Speaker 1: We're going to take a quick break and be right back on the Carol Marcowitch Show. What are you most proud of in your life?
00:12:52
Speaker 5: I'm most proud of and I when you were getting at this and the previous question that I decided in two thousand and seven, as a new mom and someone who had been in DC for twenty three years, that I needed to do something different with my life and I needed a change of scenery and a new job. And it was all scary for me. I wasn't a little scary in my early forties. I'll date myself here, I age myself to be doing that. But I was forty three and just had my only child and wanted to really experience it with her. And it was clear to me was it went. Four days went by where I was not seeing her at night or in the morning. Hard in Donald Trump's first term. And I still wanted to do journalism, which was hard for me. But I had the opportunity with my husband, who could work from anywhere, and we decided we would move and I decided to take sort of like I was a White House respondent for the Washington Examiner.
00:14:00
Speaker 2: Was moved over to the Senate at that time.
00:14:02
Speaker 5: I didn't really want the Senate because you have to be there at all hours of the right of the night depending on the White House is actually a little bit more.
00:14:12
Speaker 2: With Donald Trump, the hours are slightly and I didn't.
00:14:16
Speaker 5: Want to get a night nanny and a day nanny and do all of that A lot.
00:14:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was. It was a lot. So I did. And also I think just challenging in my job.
00:14:26
Speaker 5: I wanted I didn't need to cover the Senate again, I had already done that many years.
00:14:32
Speaker 6: So I decided to just go through.
00:14:35
Speaker 5: I wanted to do a freelance story for the Free Beacond. I decided I was going to move no matter what, We're going to go back to my home state of California where I grew up. I love the landscapes here. I missed the recreation, being able to just jump in your car and go to the beach if you wanted to go to the mountains, all of those things that were part of my upbringing, my childhood, and so I.
00:15:00
Speaker 2: Just I freelance.
00:15:02
Speaker 5: I decided I was going to freelance the story or try to pitch the Free Beacon. And they actually said, well, we have an position that's opened up, an investigative report position. And honestly, I love the washing Free Beacon. I love how Yeah, it's just a really great place because they give you a lot of freedom and if you're performing, they let you run with it.
00:15:22
Speaker 2: So said we have a position. I'm as well, oh I'm moving to California.
00:15:25
Speaker 5: And they thought about it for a second and I said, well, we'll try you out and we'll see how it goes.
00:15:30
Speaker 1: A lot to investigate in California.
00:15:33
Speaker 2: And actually they loved having me out here.
00:15:35
Speaker 5: Yeah, And that was when Newsom was first on the rise and he was leading his first resistance to Trump. So it was it's been great fun and I've had lots of material to work with. It is difficult to live in California at this time if you're a multi millionaire, to be quite honest, especially because the coast we live at the Coast Hill area of San Diego. I grew up more inland where it's cheaper, so you know, there's challenges for sure, But for me it's a passion and I'm learning so much more than if I were just circling the same hallways and actually learning how policy affects people.
00:16:15
Speaker 1: States. We're going to take a quick break and be right back on the Carol Markowitz Show. So you love California, but you're pessimistic about the future of California. But you stay, Yeah, stay a fight.
00:16:31
Speaker 5: I think that you've as long as you can stay as you have resources, because like I said, it's becoming.
00:16:37
Speaker 2: Quite harder and harder all the time. Right, the elites can stay and then we have harvety rate. So the middle class is shrinking. I'm talking When I talk about middle class, I'm talking to anybody who's making under three hundred thousand for your household income.
00:16:52
Speaker 5: And that's middle class out here. It is unless you live in the Central Valley or Inland.
00:17:00
Speaker 2: But it is something I feel like I'm I shouldn't be.
00:17:05
Speaker 5: This is my home state. I had wonderful, wonderful memories. I want my daughter to experience it. I don't know if she'll be able to. I go back and forth with my husband all the time because he's from He's from Boston and he has a lot of family in Florida, and we do evaluate it on a regular bath list. But now we're staying to fight. And I love the fact that there's a new arsenal, there's a new group of reporters out there with a big masthead to bring in some true accountability to this to the state.
00:17:42
Speaker 1: It's really great. And I'm rooting for California. I mean, I always loved California, and I always saw it as like you know, just I would say, like a promised land in America. But it was it was the new frontier. You guys were supposed to be the leaders of what came next, and I always wanted California to be that. And of course the politics over the last decade plus have just done so much damage. But I root for California to pick itself back up. And I hope you're all successful with that.
00:18:12
Speaker 2: Well, thank you, we need it. The more accountability the better.
00:18:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's the way to go about it. The more accountability the better. Give us a five year out prediction, it could be about anything at all. Well, what I'm.
00:18:25
Speaker 5: Worried about in five years is our information flow of information, how are receiving it. I feel like I have so lucky to work for Carl Caannon. He's one of the best editors I've ever known and worked for the best actually, and people like Victor David Hanson who have a knowledge of so many things, you know, thinking so great, yeah, turensive or they can talk about you know, the political what happened in the rag and administration, and to science. It's so many different subject matters and I feel like on X we will be laughing about what we are tweeting. On x, X is going to probably it's already exploding with information that you feel like you have to keep track of the little tidbits. And I think it's going to be far more siloed. You're going to have a maybe have like sort of an X for just politics or California politics versus national politics.
00:19:25
Speaker 2: Because people want to be experts in their feeling and they love chat.
00:19:29
Speaker 5: But if you lose that, if you lose that wider breadth of information, you just become sort of siloed and and sort of just thinking about things in a very incremental way instead of.
00:19:45
Speaker 1: You know, reperture.
00:19:49
Speaker 5: I truly worry about that for my daughter, and I also worry about these new.
00:19:55
Speaker 2: AI bots.
00:19:57
Speaker 5: Okay, there's a new phenomen and on that I just discovered it. What's this WhatsApp. It's so disturbing. It really is to one another and how kids are relating to these I mean, honestly.
00:20:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, nothing creeps me out more than the idea that my kids are going to have a friend who is a AI bought. I mean, I had Debrissau on the show recently, and she has a book called Extinction about how Americans aren't having sex, and she said, you know, in our lifetime, somebody's going to bring a like a sex robot to your party and that's going to be their girlfriend, and you're going to have to be like, well, that's just how it is. And I was like, not to my party, they're not.
00:20:39
Speaker 2: That is so weird.
00:20:40
Speaker 5: No, absolutely, but it happened first in California. Of course, you would not believe what we run into on the daily basis in our communities and what we have to fight in our schools.
00:20:53
Speaker 2: What's going on.
00:20:54
Speaker 5: I mean, several national news stories came out of our school district, both the elementary school and the high school, now the high school district. It's unbelievable what's going on and what is succeptable. I do think things not in California, but in the rest of the country are changing in terms of the transgender ideology.
00:21:15
Speaker 2: So hopefully we're.
00:21:16
Speaker 1: On the right track with something I guess, yeah, but I do worry.
00:21:21
Speaker 5: We'll take the win, right, yeah, at least at the Supreme Court.
00:21:26
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
00:21:26
Speaker 2: And in others and certainly even over seas.
00:21:31
Speaker 5: You know, they're not Trensgender surgeries are when they're realizing that hormones for kids is not helpful.
00:21:37
Speaker 1: Bad idea. Yeah, Susan, I've loved this conversation. I really enjoyed talking to you and getting to know you a little bit more. Leave us here with your best tip for my listeners on how they can improve their lives.
00:21:51
Speaker 2: I try to, I'm not always successful.
00:21:54
Speaker 5: I try to start my day with a few minutes of just calm and for me, I read scripture and do a little study for that, even if it's five minutes, because as a journalist in a rough and tumble world, you never know what's going to be coming at you throughout the day. The same as a parent, you know your kid might be sick as my kid is this morning, as your jade changes, and so it's sort of like that rude you're keep your kipling phrase that poem you know, if you can keep your head about you when all the rest are losing. That to me, like if you've sent to yourself in the beginning of the day and realize, like I'm busy, what my values are, this is how I like to handle things. I'm going to start. I'm not going to just react. I can only control how I react to something. I think that if I would have really focused on that as a younger journalist, I think things would have been smoother, and I think I would have been let more emotionally regulated, because it is a difficult business, especially when you're in the throes of it on the front lines in Washington, and so you can then as you approach these either conflicts with other people, news stories that didn't work out, or you wanted to disappointment, or you're something's going on in your personal life, you can just go back to that place that of calm and centered And for me, it is my belief in Christ. So I truly value that and I try to live it. I'm not always successful to live out my values, but it has helped.
00:23:35
Speaker 1: I love that. Yeah. She is Susan Crabtree. Read her at Real Clare Politics, California Post the City Journal and pick up her book, Fools Gold. Thank you so much for coming on, Susan Carol.
00:23:47
Speaker 2: It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me so much.
