Interview Only w/ Dana Bash - The Elections That Changed The World

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Speaker 1: This episode of the Chuck Todd cast is brought to you by Chapter. Now, almost everything you hear about Medicare is somebody quietly trying to steer you somewhere. And you're skeptical of that, as you should be. I get it. I mean, there's a federal lawsuit going on right now over exactly this. Companies that branded themselves as unbiased while allegedly pointing people toward whatever would pay them the most as some sort of broker. So if your default is to distrust everyone in this space, honestly, I get it. I'm a bit distrustful these days myself. That's the whole reason I want to tell you about Chapter. They're independent Medicare advisors whose entire model is that their advisors are not paid to push any one plan. They're just trying to help. Yes, there's compensation that goes with it. but it's across the board is what they're trying to do. At the end of the day, they're advocating for you. They're not the insurance companies themselves. They're an actual person who actually goes through your doctors, your prescriptions, your needs, and then compares them to every single plan available to find the best one that will work for you and hopefully save you a couple dollars too. And here's the part that sets chapter apart. They don't disappear once you've been in They will keep advocating for you. They're kind of like almost like a concierge service. You're just there. I need help. You're like customer service. You know, the plan, you know, help me navigate this again. So you ever get hit with a wrongful medical bill, they'll help you fight it. They want to stay an advocate for you even after you've done this. So look, I get it. I think there's all sorts of space. You see a lot of people are throwing themselves in this healthcare space. What I like about these chapter folks, I've spent time with them. This is a very transparent organization. It is Medicare and all of its affiliated stuff can be very confusing. The whole point of this is to make this easier and less confusing. OK, so look, take the skepticism you already have in all of this, point it at your own plan for 20 minutes. It's free. There's no pressure. And then call chapter today at 980-734-4200. three, nine, eight, five. Well, my next guest has a fascinating book that when I first saw the title, I was thinking, I can't wait to see what elections she picked. And then you get the book and you're like, Well, this is even more interesting. But now a lot harder for me to debate her on. It's my guest is Dana Bash, and she's got a terrific new book called Fifteen Elections That Changed the World. And I will not to give it away here, but the most recent election is 1994. which is basically the beginning of our collective adulthood. So let's start there. Look, everybody knows you from CNN, chief political correspondent, State of the Union, all of those things. So what got you into this? What got you into this topic? And then I want to talk about your criteria for picking your 15 Elections to Change the World. And I'll just give it, your first one is Julius Caesar and your last one is Nelson Mandela. And in between, we have 13 other ones that you included in here. So explain the premise.
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Speaker 2: Well, first of all, thank you for having me on.
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Speaker 3: This is a huge thrill, honestly, because, no, it's true, because only till recently did you and I have the ability to go on with each other on public platforms and not just talk behind the scenes as friends.
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Speaker 1: Or be at GW together since we're GW's favorite media people out after, because Frank says no, didn't go to GW. Sorry, Frank. I know you're watching.
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Speaker 2: No, he did not. But he just, he's a mockery there, as they say.
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Speaker 1: He's a middleberry guy.
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Speaker 3: Okay, so the answer is, first of all, this is obviously very subjective. And I, before this is over, I'm dying to get Chuck Todd's elections that might not be included in this.
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Speaker 2: Recent ones excluded.
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Speaker 1: My wheels have been turning. I've been trying to get there. I do have one country I'm going to single out and I'm curious where you went there, but we'll wait.
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Speaker 2: We'll wait till we get there. Okay. So the answer is.
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Speaker 3: The criteria were that they had to have a real impact, not just in the current events and current times, modern times, but also that rippled even at the time beyond the borders, but also through generations in some way, shape or form.
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Speaker 2: And I think that was really the sort of the bottom line.
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Speaker 3: We had lots of ideas, talked to actual real historians, And we just decided 15 is a good number.
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Speaker 2: And we and we did this.
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Speaker 3: But we say right at the beginning of the book, very clearly, this is obviously not exhaustive. And we're hoping that David Fisher, who I say we my amazing co-author and I are hoping that this does stir some discussion and conversation from those who think about it to come up with other ideas.
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Speaker 1: Well, look, let's also start with the year. You're expansive with the definition of the word election.
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Speaker 2: Precisely.
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Speaker 3: So election doesn't just mean a president, a prime minister, a senator, but it's also.
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Speaker 1: Or democracy itself, right?
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Speaker 2: Right. I mean, democracy... Well, democracy....
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Speaker 3: Democracy itself matters for elections, but sometimes elections and democracy are the people who are elected and democracy. And that certainly is the case in several of these elections. But one of the examples that we give is the good Pope, Pope John XXIII, his election in the conclave. And we can talk about that if you want. And another is Martin Luther King.
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Speaker 1: Second.
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Speaker 2: He was never elected to office.
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Speaker 3: No, he was never elected to government office, but he was elected to lead the bus boycott in Montgomery when they needed somebody who was new and fresh and.
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Speaker 2: Who could inspire people. And they found him.
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Speaker 3: He was a relatively new pastor at the Dexter Avenue Church in Montgomery. And by a show of hands in a church basement, they said, oh, sure, we'll pick this guy.
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Speaker 1: That's probably my most favorite in here because it's the it is there is a Forrest Gump like quality to it a little bit.
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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
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Speaker 3: And it actually and it's just one of the important. which is elections big and small. You don't always know how critical your vote is going to be. nevermind for that election, but for future generations and for movements beyond what that vote carries. And that was true in Montgomery, Alabama, when they said, yeah, we like this guy, Martin Luther King Jr., who's in his twenties and doesn't know, have experience in any of this, who obviously went on to help change America and really the world. And definitely for bad, Because we have Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party in this book.
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Speaker 2: Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, really.
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Speaker 3: Hitler used the tools of and the structure of democracy to take over an entire country and then almost an entire continent.
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Speaker 1: So let's go through this. I assume you start with Caesar just sort of as the idea of just giving others a choice.
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Speaker 2: That's right.
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Speaker 3: Well, Caesar because the Greeks and the Romans were really the Greeks. That's really the birthplace of the democratic system and some form of democracy.
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Speaker 2: But Julius Caesar is Julius Caesar.
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Speaker 3: And there's so many learning about him and his election the way I did with this book. There's so many cautionary tales. There are so many what's old is new again characteristics and dynamics. For example, number one, Julius Caesar ran for the office that he ran for ultimately, the biggest office, because he didn't want to be prosecuted.
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Speaker 2: He was in debt because he was.
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Speaker 3: The lower offices, the lower sort of ranks that he ran for, he had to borrow a lot of money and he was in a lot of debt. And he said, I'm either going to go to jail or I'm gonna be exiled or I.
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Speaker 2: Can run for office. Sound familiar, Chuck?
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Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know who you could be referring to, but anyway.
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Speaker 3: That's A. B, when he was running, he was a huge populist. The masses loved him, even though the kind of masses didn't really vote. It was mostly people in and around Rome.
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Speaker 2: And C, money mattered.
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Speaker 3: And money helped to buy votes, not officially, but effectively.
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Speaker 2: Right.
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Speaker 3: And then he, another cautionary tale is that he was this great democratic leader who said, Nope, I'm not going to let anybody else run for this. I'm going to take it as my own. And he became a dictator, maybe a benevolent dictator, depending on who you liked, but he became a dictator.
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Speaker 1: Hey, how much is wealth a through line in all of your elections?
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Speaker 2: Yeah. It's a good question. I didn't think about that. Wealth is a big deal. Wealth is a big deal. I think more.
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Speaker 3: So the money in and around whatever democratic system process that we're talking about.
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Speaker 1: Yeah.
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Speaker 2: But but it's it's always been.
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Speaker 3: And I think that's one of the things that I learned since the beginning of democracy in Julius Caesar's time, money in politics was a thing.
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Speaker 1: Was this human nature, do we think? I mean, you know, this the human being assumes that if somebody has a little bit of money, then they must be They must do something. They must know something. They must be better at something. And so therefore, is that what it is? What do we think it is?
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Speaker 2: Is it more basic than that?
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Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's that if you have money, you want to keep the money and you want to put somebody in power who will help you keep that money.
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Speaker 2: I mean, let's just fast forward.
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Speaker 3: Now that I'm thinking about that, this is a really good sort of through line that.
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Speaker 2: I'm now exploring in my head. Let's fast forward to the Magna Carta. Mm-hmm.
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Speaker 3: Because the only reason the Magna Carta was written and drawn up and approved of is because the barons and the earls, they wanted to keep their money in their land. And they were pissed off that the king kept taking it from them to.
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Speaker 2: Fight his wars.
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Speaker 3: And so they said, hold on a second, we need some kind of system where we have more of a say here. So that's an example of money in politics, but in a different way.
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Speaker 1: It is, you know, when you look at all of these, it feels like a lot of it is about, a lot of it is about power, right? Obviously, it's about getting power, but it just feels like in each case that money mattered quite a bit.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, money matters quite a bit. And in some of these cases, people didn't, the sort of concept of a democracy and being included. And for most of human existence, when we're talking about people, we're talking about men and white men. Yeah.
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Speaker 2: Yeah.
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Speaker 1: Well, we don't know if they were all white back in the Julius Caesar day, but.
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Speaker 2: Okay. Fair. When men and mostly wealthy men. Wealthy men. Yeah. Depending on where they live.
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Speaker 1: Status, whatever.
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Speaker 2: Exactly. And, and, and so.
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Speaker 3: Part of the sort of exploration also is when democracies were born, trying to engage the people who were eligible to vote on how to do it, come up with the systems that allowed it to be as free and fair as possible. And so the education there, the Mayflower Compact is the third that we talk about. And I mean, they came to, they thought they were.
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Speaker 1: It blows them north.
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Speaker 3: They got blown north, ended up at Plymouth, you know, Thanksgiving time back in the 1600s.
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Speaker 1: People from Boston are still pissed off about it, right? They hate their weather. They're still angry that they ended up in New England. But anyway, go ahead.
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Speaker 2: Exactly.
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Speaker 3: But because they got there and they realized, wait, we don't have to... abide by the laws that were set up for Jamestown. We can come up with our own. They were like, oh, okay, we can do this. And they sat on the ship and they came up with this compact.
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Speaker 1: Who did they model it off of? Is it, you know, obviously there was, there had to be some inspiration for the Mayflower Compact. What was it?
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Speaker 2: It's a great question.
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Speaker 3: Some of it was sort of church elections back home. Some of the sort of leaders were very well read and, you know, kind of gentlemen who did a lot of sort of thinking and studying and learning.
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Speaker 2: And They also knew that there was.
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Speaker 3: A form of it in Jamestown, but Jamestown was much more dictatorial because Jamestown was settled by businesses. And the people on the Mayflower were kind of a combination of effectively religious refugees and others who were working for a business. But I think for the most part, it came through.
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Speaker 2: basic rudimentary church elections.
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Speaker 1: Um, I want to go back to the Roman empire here a little bit before I get to, um, and it is, and I'm curious, and I guess the Magna Carta is your transition here between sort of the, the idea of lords, barons, whatever we wanted to call it, you know, these, you know, Basically, the Roman generals who went unpaid and then became kings, I guess, you know, is sort of, you know, I remember when I finally realized, oh, all these kings were just unpaid generals who decided to hold their people hostage and make them pay money for them to get protection. Right. They were just a bunch of protection rackets. Yeah. Is I was surprised if I were to say this in hindsight, I'm surprised there's so few people elections on the continent of Europe that you chose.
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Speaker 2: That's fair. That's fair.
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Speaker 1: And France was, would be the one that.
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Speaker 2: Which one? Okay. Tell me which one.
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Speaker 1: Well, I don't have, look, you're, you're, it's a fair point. I don't have a good, I don't have a good way of doing it. Whether is it, is it, you know, after the French revolution, is it, I don't know. You could, there is, whether it's the French revolution period, the failed one or the successful one, I don't know. But I, That would look, I think, you know.
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Speaker 3: That actually that actually would be a good one, because I think that the first one is such a glaring example of how revolutions sometimes eat their revolutionaries with Robespierre.
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Speaker 2: And that would be that would be a good one.
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Speaker 1: Look, you could actually your sequel could be about revolutions.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I like that.
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Speaker 1: And you could sort of do the frame as revolutions, you know, and then you have the Russian Revolution, French Revolution, different versions of it.
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Speaker 2: Yeah.
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Speaker 1: Which sort of gets you on the same, you know, in some cases, like, you know, was 1932 in Germany, was that an election or a revolution? Revolution. It really probably depends on your perspective.
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Speaker 3: It was a very clever revolution using the democratic system put in place after World War I, the parliamentary system, to taking advantage.
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Speaker 2: Of that to revolution, coup, whatever you want, but they did it with the will of the people. They did it with the democratic system.
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Speaker 3: You know, there are some kind of, it depends on what you consider revolution, right? there's a Chinese election in here, Sun Yat-sen.
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Speaker 1: I thought that was interesting. Did you feel, what I liked about is how global the book was, right? You're like, okay, you got the biggest country in Asia, the biggest country in Eurasia, the British, you sort of a nod to the British empire a little bit, I guess, with the Magna Carta, certainly a little, you know, One in Africa. You know, you sort of cover your bases. I guess you could say, hey, where's South America? And I'm sure you had some cutting room floor stuff. But tell me about the president of China.
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Speaker 2: I loved this one.
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Speaker 1: And how successful did somebody have to be to qualify for the list?
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Speaker 3: I think it's... it's not so much the success of the individual in the individual's election.
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Speaker 2: It's the impact of that election. And to me, this is one of the most impactful elections that I knew I'm embarrassed to say like zero about.
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Speaker 1: This is why I wanted to single it out too.
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Speaker 2: I didn't know anything about it.
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Speaker 1: You know, my, my, look, I feel this way about Chinese history in general. It's like, I, I constantly, when I'm like, I need a new history book to read. I always now defer something Chinese because I feel, I mean, you probably had a similar education as I did.
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Speaker 3: Yeah.
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Speaker 1: You're just not, you know, we sort of gloss over. We do a few dynasties here or there in your high school history or even college history. But you move pretty quickly to Mao, you know?
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Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
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Speaker 2: That's exactly right.
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Speaker 3: So this is in between imperial and Mao, and frankly, how China got to Mao with this individual, Sun Yat-sen. And he, so there was like 500 years or more of imperial dynasties, right? And Fast forward to 1911 and this guy, Sun Yat-sen, who's 13 years old, goes with his father who has a job in Hawaii, the kingdom of Hawaii back then. And he starts to learn and starts to kind of get wind that there's something other than imperial rule.
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Speaker 2: And he starts to....
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Speaker 3: Find other people who feel that way. And he pushes, pushes, pushes, mostly from the outside. He travels around really the whole world, but especially in the United States to get money, to get attention.
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Speaker 1: Well, it's important to point out, like the world is on fire during these two decades.
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Speaker 2: And the world is on fire.
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Speaker 1: You know, this is very similar, frankly, to the world we're living in right now, where there is uprising political activity Uprisings everywhere. It is a global phenomenon.
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Speaker 3: Anyway.
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Speaker 2: Yep. That's exactly right. It's a global phenomenon.
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Speaker 3: And I'm glad you said that because up until just a few years before this time period, China was still kind of walled off from the world.
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Speaker 1: So have these influence.
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Speaker 2: Right.
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Speaker 1: What was happening in Europe or North America didn't really have any impact on China.
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Speaker 3: It didn't have any impact because they literally refused to have any kind of trade or. Well, they had some trade, but it was slow, slow, slow. And the opium wars that China was involved with. Which several of them, they ended up losing. The result of the losses to those wars meant that the treaties were such that they had to open up the country more and more to the West. And the more they were open to the West, the more the economy changed, the more information got in there and so forth. Right. So this guy, Sun Yat-sen, he pushes and he gets to the point with the people around him that.
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Speaker 2: He is able to get a democratic.
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Speaker 3: Election going because the imperial family, the Qing dynasty became so weak that they had to agree to a democratic election.
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Speaker 2: So he's elected.
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Speaker 3: He actually vows that he's not going to served more than, I think, six months and ended up being true that he didn't serve one term. Maybe that goes to your question about how significant of a player did they have to be. And he wasn't in the actual job of the president of China. But because the democracy didn't go so well and things started getting really even worse economically, particularly for the villagers and the, frankly, the peasants, that They and he and the people who succeeded him said, make a deal. They made a deal with the Soviets that they could come in and help.
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Speaker 2: And then Mao.
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Speaker 3: Comes in and China and the CCP is born and China has not been the same since.
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Speaker 2: Look, it's always hard to know. It's always hard to know. Is it possible that.
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Speaker 3: The imperial family was so weak that Mao and the Soviets could have come in without.
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Speaker 2: Sun Yat-sen, maybe?
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Speaker 3: But also maybe not, because the other dynamic here is that the... successor to sung yet sen in in his party was chang hai shek right and he is uh the one who said i'm out of here went to taiwan and started pushing for taiwan and this is the father of taiwan chang hai shek is the father of taiwan so this this guy sun yet sen is in especially given what we know about the the differences between China and Taiwan, Sun Yat-sen is a hero for the CCP because they consider him as the person who allowed for communism. And he's a hero for the Taiwanese because without him, there would not be Chiang Kai-shek.
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Speaker 1: That is fascinating. And that is a terrific story. Before we get to the American elections that you include in here, I want to touch on a couple others. Let's talk about the Pope and you in this one. It's John the 23rd, who's arguably the first television televised Pope, I guess, meaning like it's, you know, the Pope that showed up to Yankee Stadium was John the 23rd. Right.
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Speaker 2: Like it's it's.
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Speaker 1: And I assume you view his election and just how we modernize the Catholic Church. Is that exactly. Yeah.
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Speaker 2: Well, and that it's that. But then there's another theme that. Hmm.
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Speaker 3: Is true in several of these elections that this illustrates, which is the cardinals who elected him in the conclave thought because he was older, he would just be a caretaker and he wouldn't do anything to change the Catholic church very much. And then he certainly did because he called an ecumenical council and which happened like 10 or 12 times in the history of the entire Catholic church. And what that means is that you want to make some serious changes. And among the changes he made was saying that masses are allowed to be held in the local language because until then they were all in Latin. which made Catholicism so much more accessible to people and the dogma and the prayer so much more accessible to people who were Catholics around the world. And then it's also that he's known as the good Pope, what you were just referring to. He, People knew him because of television, because of radio.
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Speaker 2: He went out.
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Speaker 3: I think he was the first pope to ride a train and see people that way. He went to prisons, famously saying, you can't come see me, so I'll come see you. He was a pope for very long, but he was not what the cardinals who elected him apparently were bargaining for. But he became a saint, so they clearly liked him.
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Speaker 1: If I'm wrong about this, I know my listeners and viewers will let me know. But I believe John the 23rd is the only pope in Monument Park at Yankee Stadium.
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Speaker 2: Is that right?
00:28:07
Speaker 1: I think because he he was the first pope at Yankee Stadium. I think there's been other popes since. And they used to have I know at one time in Monument Park, they had a there, you know, that, you know. next to Gehrig and Ruth and all of that stuff is a homage there to, I believe, to John XXIII.
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Speaker 3: He also, I just want to say one more thing about this pope, which I think is cool. What he did for the Jewish community is also historic. Just going back to World War II, when he was a cardinal, he helped make.
00:28:46
Speaker 2: make available baptismal certificates for churches in, in Hitler's wake. Go ahead.
00:28:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, no, no. Go keep going. Cause he was also a father of the Catholic charities too, right? Oh, actually I didn't know that. Or was he a big player? Cause I, you know, it's funny. My, my grandmother, my grandfather was in World War II, you know, to this day it was like the Catholic charities were the best Jewish charity there was back then.
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Speaker 2: Oh, that's interesting. Well, yeah.
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Speaker 3: I mean, and so, so he, he's saved, untold lives, um, of Jewish children in Europe because Catholic local Catholic churches got these baptismal certificates from this Cardinal in Italy. Uh, and they were able to use them to say, no, no, no, this isn't a Jewish baby. This is a Catholic baby. And that's that was not nothing. And he also, as part of that ecumenical council, when he changed the rule about Latin, he also explicitly said that Jews were not responsible for killing Jesus, which was not nothing.
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Speaker 1: It's a it was an important thing because that is still that is still something used all the time.
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Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:29:56
Speaker 1: And when when when anti-Semitism started. shows up and rises. You know, when I saw the title of the book, I went, oh, there's got to, I know Indira Gandhi and Golda Meir are going to be. Of course.
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Speaker 2: I know.
00:30:09
Speaker 1: You did it as one chapter. Why is that?
00:30:11
Speaker 2: Yeah.
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Speaker 3: Because I think that they're, obviously their personalities are so different, but they were around the same time. They, again, they were put in place by the men who led their parties in the parliamentary system's.
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Speaker 2: In which they served.
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Speaker 3: And they were largely put in place by the men because they thought they would be malleable. Right.
00:30:36
Speaker 2: And guess what? They weren't malleable. Right.
00:30:39
Speaker 1: Well, it's just like how the first women became governors, right? It would be the spouse. And it's like, man.
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Speaker 2: Precisely.
00:30:45
Speaker 3: Right.
00:30:45
Speaker 1: It didn't turn out the way these men thought it would.
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Speaker 2: It didn't at all. And in one of the cases in Dhiragandi, I mean, that's another example of somebody who, she came from a family like one of the founding families of indian democracy you know gandhi is not gandhi is her husband's name uh and now and it's no relation to mahatma gandhi no i.
00:31:08
Speaker 1: Mean there was like maybe like it's her husband a distant or something like.
00:31:11
Speaker 2: Yeah distant but but she's not like you know his daughter.
00:31:14
Speaker 1: I'm sure the name didn't hurt yeah it didn't hurt.
00:31:18
Speaker 3: Uh But so she grew up literally working to create democracy in.
00:31:28
Speaker 2: India.
00:31:28
Speaker 3: I mean, if she were a man, we write in here, if she were a man, she would have been groomed to be one of the first leaders of India. And she only ended up there by happenstance, again, because she was in the party structure and somebody died. And so they put her in there.
00:31:45
Speaker 2: But she's a.
00:31:46
Speaker 3: Another example of somebody who, when shit started getting real and hard, she didn't do some great things.
00:31:55
Speaker 2: She took some of the democratic principles and powers away from the people.
00:32:01
Speaker 3: In a not so great way. She then came back and she was reelected and she sort of changed her ways. But, you know, she went off the.
00:32:13
Speaker 2: Off the road, off the Democratic road for a little while.
00:32:17
Speaker 1: Well, she's not the only Indian president that has done that. They go back and they they they're mostly Democratic. Sometimes you emphasize the word mostly.
00:32:26
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then she did not have the greatest end. She was she was murdered.
00:32:30
Speaker 3: Apparently by somebody in her own security team.
00:32:36
Speaker 1: Golda Meir. Why? Why do you feel like her election changed the world?
00:32:43
Speaker 3: Well, I think for both of them, it showed that in major.
00:32:51
Speaker 2: Countries... power then probably not yet.
00:32:58
Speaker 3: Probably not yet not yet but it was a major it is a major country in the world there was a already a woman elected in uh what became Sri Lanka but these were sort of the first majors and again they were around the same time but they changed the world because they showed what was what was possible that it actually is possible for a woman to be a leader Even and especially when the men who say, OK, fine, you can be the you can be.
00:33:29
Speaker 2: The prime minister.
00:33:30
Speaker 3: Don't really expect them to to amount to much more than, again, caretakers.
00:33:36
Speaker 2: And they did so much more. So it's if you can see it, be it. And you can see them and. People said, oh, wait.
00:33:45
Speaker 3: Them and then for golda meyer it's not just that i mean she she was a an international sensation well before she became a prime minister because she was born well born in ukraine and then grew up in america and so she used her and then she moved to what was then um the British controlled Palestine with her husband. And she used her knowledge of America and her.
00:34:13
Speaker 2: Passion for creating a state of Israel to really help build them. And she was, there were founding fathers and then there was the founding mother.
00:34:20
Speaker 1: Well, and you could argue she did, she probably, you know, when you think about, and look, this is, this is a relationship that is more fractured than ever, but the, the American Israeli relationship in some ways she was, She helped create it. She helped really create that bond.
00:34:36
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:34:37
Speaker 1: That was different. It wasn't necessarily, you know, the relationship in the United States and Israel was always close, obviously. You know, we played an important part in recognizing all that. But I think you could make the case that she really cemented this partnership that right now is under stress. Yeah.
00:34:57
Speaker 3: One of my favorite quotes, and you'll love this, is when she was on the phone with Henry Kissinger.
00:35:02
Speaker 2: Apparently Nixon loved Golda Meir, by the way.
00:35:04
Speaker 3: She's on the phone with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. And she said, you know, come on, we need to get whatever weapons she was asking for. And Kissinger said, I am a, I think he said, I'm an American first, a patriot second, and I'm a Jew third. And she said, well, you know, Henry and Israel, we read backwards.
00:35:30
Speaker 1: Well, it's funny today. What is that's funny. I see. Now I see. Now I got the punchline. Took me a second. I got you now.
00:35:39
Speaker 2: That is a good one.
00:35:40
Speaker 1: The what is it? What did Mike Pence used to say? He had a line like that. I'm a conservative. I'm a Christian and I'm a Republican Republican in that order.
00:35:50
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:35:50
Speaker 1: A Christian, a conservative and a Republican, I think, in that order was.
00:35:53
Speaker 2: I think he said American. American was in there somewhere. OK.
00:35:58
Speaker 1: May not have even said Republican was a conservative American and Christian.
00:36:02
Speaker 3: Maybe.
00:36:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe. Well, definitely his party was third.
00:36:06
Speaker 1: Yes, that was his religion and his and his his faith and his beliefs. Exactly. Came ahead of the club that he was a member.
00:36:14
Speaker 3: Correct.
00:36:15
Speaker 2: Boy, there's that point. Yeah. He lived up to that.
00:36:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, he did. He really did. Look, Mandela, obvious on that one. Was there another African election you thought about at all? I mean, look, that's that's it. I'm just curious.
00:36:34
Speaker 3: And maybe it's maybe it's it's sort of a weird thing. you know, form of confirmation bias and that it's, it's, we were, we were alive. We were just graduating from college and, you know, he.
00:36:47
Speaker 1: Went to college. There were still protests. You didn't drink Coors beer at any party in college that I went to. If you were caught with.
00:36:56
Speaker 2: Coors, why you drank in college.
00:36:59
Speaker 1: Well, you know, you didn't know that liquor store didn't card around the corner from Riverside at GW?
00:37:05
Speaker 2: I can't believe you drank underage.
00:37:08
Speaker 1: That liquor store never carded.
00:37:09
Speaker 2: How dare you, Judge Todd.
00:37:11
Speaker 1: But, you know, we had Mr.
00:37:12
Speaker 3: Beer.
00:37:12
Speaker 1: Remember Meisterbrow?
00:37:14
Speaker 2: Mr.
00:37:14
Speaker 3: Beer.
00:37:15
Speaker 1: Oh, so gross. $ 7 cases at that.
00:37:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it tasted like it.
00:37:19
Speaker 1: Like a $ 7 case.
00:37:20
Speaker 2: But, yeah, I mean, of course, you got to do Mandela. Also, the story is. It's remarkable.
00:37:30
Speaker 1: It is remarkable. And again, just.
00:37:33
Speaker 3: Learning more about it in hindsight, I can't imagine being in prison for 30 years without the internet, without modern technology and becoming an international symbol.
00:37:47
Speaker 2: Of the plight for freedom like he was.
00:37:50
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, there is a, I guess you could say Navalny is the closest heir apparent we've had in the modern era. Yeah, that's a good point. But unlike Mandela, Navalny didn't get to get out.
00:38:08
Speaker 2: And he, right.
00:38:09
Speaker 3: And, and what I learned, and I guess, again, shame on me, because I should have known more of the details, particularly since it was happening when we were kind of alive and conscious, conscious. But the fact that he rejected so many offers for his freedom.
00:38:25
Speaker 2: Right.
00:38:26
Speaker 3: Because he would not do anything that was not absolute blanket freedom. of the systemic racial segregation and everything that went along with it. And it also is a reminder that you can push, push, push, but until you get a person in power who is, to quote one of the people we covered for a long time, John McCain, who's willing to put country and and and humanity ahead of your own political it's not going to happen and the clerk was the guy because he said all right like we're done let's talk.
00:39:10
Speaker 1: About it's interesting like the clerk and that's the clerk and Gorbachev it sort of was happening right around right that's right shop happens first where and then the clerk right after but it was I wonder I've always wondered how much Gorbachev and what happened there had some impact on the clerk. I don't know. Because it was all happening right around the same time.
00:39:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was.
00:39:33
Speaker 1: It was.
00:39:35
Speaker 2: I bet it did.
00:39:37
Speaker 3: Because Gorbachev, once he was out, he did go around and talk about other countries and he became, you know, he had a big platform and people listened to him and he did talk about Mandela.
00:39:49
Speaker 2: So I bet he did.
00:39:54
Speaker 1: Hey, this episode of the Chuck Todd cast is brought to you by Ethos. Look, let me tell you about life insurance. As you know, Ethos is an incredible portal for helping you find the right life insurance policy. I'm a huge believer in life insurance. I wouldn't have gotten to college in Washington, D.C. without life insurance. My father had a policy buried somewhere that we discovered, and it wasn't a lot of money, but it was an important bucket of money at a time that my mother, newly widowed, single mom, me, I'm 16. It was of enormous, enormous help at that time. And this is why I believe in life insurance. You don't know what could happen to you on any given day. This is literally an insurance policy for that. So let me tell you a little bit about Ethos. Ethos makes getting life insurance fast and easy. It's 100% online. You get a quote in seconds. You apply in minutes and you can get coverage the same day you begin this process. There's no medical exam. You just answer a few simple health questions. You can get up to $ 3 million in coverage. Some policies are as low as $ 30 a month. And you'll get your lowest rate from their network of trusted carriers. Ethos has gotten 4.9 out of 5 stars on Trustpilot with over 5,500 reviews. So take 10 minutes to get covered today. Life insurance through Ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com slash Chuck. That is E-T-H-O-S dot com slash Chuck. Application times may vary. The rates may vary. That Trustpilot rating was as of August of 2026. So you stop in 94 and you say you don't do it any sooner. Because look, there's two presidential elections that I think 50 years from now, we'll be looked back as it's consequential, right? One is 2000 and the other is 2016. No, I don't know. I know. Look, and I'm going to get there. But that's what's interesting. And this is what gets to why.
00:41:56
Speaker 2: And I'm saying, what about Obama?
00:41:57
Speaker 3: Just so everybody understands, not because he's a Democrat, because he was the first black president. Right.
00:42:02
Speaker 1: And I think there's, you know, look, I wrote a book on Obama and I remember writing and I said, he will always be America's first black president. you know, for no matter what his presidency, how his presidency ages, the good, the bad, the indifferent, he's always going to be historically a bit more, a matter more because of the country's history with race and because he was the first Black president, right? So that's always going to be there. The question is how much, you know, what, you know, the fallout from his presidency, in some ways, that's the verdict that history hasn't rendered yet, right?
00:42:34
Speaker 2: Or the backlash, right?
00:42:36
Speaker 1: And the backlash to it and Trump's relationship to it and the election in 2000. By the way, do you have do you get Obama without the election in 2000? You get Obama without the Iraq war. I mean, there's all sorts of right. You know, what if in there? The point being is as much as is I think that the first thing people will do is do what I did. Well, boy, you know, we these we have two incredibly consequential elections, I think history will say. But guess what? 10 years ago, 08 would have been, no, no, we had two, and I would have said 2000 and 2008. And now 2016 keeps growing, right? Just like 2000 did. You know, I always say this about the 2000 election. It was the most important election that people didn't realize was important until after it happened.
00:43:20
Speaker 2: That's the whole point of this book. I'm so happy you said that. You don't realize it always in the moment.
00:43:26
Speaker 1: And that was a classic one because the campaign itself, I mean, you and I were both younger covering that campaign and having, and the joke about that campaign is how little difference there was between the two of them. You know, I mean, it was sort of like, you know, Bush was basically saying, hey, if you, if, don't vote change, vote for me. You know, it was just sort of like, I'm not going to, I'm not going to change the way things are. You know, I'm just going to restore honor and integrity into the White House.
00:43:55
Speaker 3: Right.
00:43:55
Speaker 1: It was like, I'm just running against his character. That's it. And, and, and I always thought.
00:44:01
Speaker 2: But he was, but he was running on conservative principles.
00:44:05
Speaker 1: No doubt.
00:44:06
Speaker 2: You know, but the distinction.
00:44:08
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:44:08
Speaker 1: The distinction between these two were so small. And I think it's why turnout was so blah. I think it's all, I always said the reason that election ended at a tie is neither one of them made the case to win, right? Because they were both sort of just running to replace. They weren't, they didn't necessarily, neither one of them knew exactly what their presidency was going to look like. And obviously, you know, a certain day changes everything for George W.
00:44:34
Speaker 3: Bush.
00:44:35
Speaker 1: But, you know, boy, in hindsight, 2000 becomes this incredibly consequential period. election.
00:44:41
Speaker 2: And I totally agree with you.
00:44:43
Speaker 1: You know, it will. All right.
00:44:44
Speaker 3: So now that you're saying that, I understand why you said 2000 and 2016.
00:44:48
Speaker 2: That makes more sense.
00:44:49
Speaker 1: Right. No, it's sort of like it's the fallout from it.
00:44:52
Speaker 2: Right.
00:44:52
Speaker 1: And and and I think that this is why I think you picked your correct elections and you left off some correctly because it's too early. A, it's too early or B, sometimes consequential people getting elected are didn't necessarily, it wasn't a necessarily, you know, it was sort of like the change had already happened and that's why they got elected, you know, type of mindset or whatever it is. So, um, you know, so I, I sort of, I sort of get, um, I get that, but I, I, I look at these three elections, right?
00:45:28
Speaker 2: 2000, 2008, 2016.
00:45:28
Speaker 1: Um, I think in 20 years, you know, who we may say 2016 is the most consequential of the first quarter. of this century, right? Like we still don't know fully yet.
00:45:45
Speaker 2: And by the way, 2028.
00:45:46
Speaker 3: Maybe or maybe.
00:45:49
Speaker 1: Not. How is that going to be the reaction?
00:45:51
Speaker 2: I don't know.
00:45:52
Speaker 3: How is that going to be the action or reaction to what started in 2016?
00:45:57
Speaker 2: Will it continue it or will it say, nope, we're done?
00:46:04
Speaker 3: Right.
00:46:04
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that that's the, and it does take, You know, I'm being a history junkie, and one of the questions I ask historians all the time, what is the ideal space before you think you can write about an event and get the most accurate picture?
00:46:24
Speaker 2: Oh, what's their answer?
00:46:26
Speaker 1: Right. And it's, well, it's short enough where there are people still alive who went through that event.
00:46:37
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
00:46:38
Speaker 1: But far enough away where there is no consequences for them to tell their story, right? Like that's the sweet spot you want. Is it 20 years? Is it 25 years? Like for instance, I think this was the first time we've had a more honest conversation about 9-11 and about the fallout from 9-11 without feeling like, I felt more comfortable having certain conversations about the fallout of 9-11. just like security, the debate, you know, should we have had a Homeland Security Department? Should we, you know, there were certain debates that we had, but you muted them a little bit because you didn't want to offend anybody, right? There was still, there was still a lot of people that was raw for, and frankly, because we, you know, when you lived, when you lived, I always said that New York and DC, because it happened to us, it was more acute. And one thing I'll never know the answer to is whether the rest of the country was as obsessed with it as we were. And did it wear away sooner than we allowed it to wear away in the rest of the country? It's always a question I've had in my head. I'm not, how do you, you know, you can't, you can't, you can't take yourself out of having been a part of the story.
00:47:57
Speaker 3: So. Yeah.
00:47:59
Speaker 1: No, I mean, I just so I don't there is no perfect answer, but.
00:48:03
Speaker 2: I found this year harder on 9-11.
00:48:07
Speaker 1: Did you? Well, it's just probably the last one. It's probably the last big anniversary, you know, that I'm not saying there won't be commemorations, you know, as long as there are survivors that are alive in the same way. There's commemorations every year at D-Day. And about every five years, a president comes.
00:48:24
Speaker 3: Right.
00:48:24
Speaker 1: You know, so I'm not you know, we will have those things. But this is probably, you know, the last time that we have the big conversation. And I you know, I'm. You know, there's plenty of young adults who weren't even born.
00:48:40
Speaker 3: And I think that's why I think I found it harder because for the first time I'm looking.
00:48:45
Speaker 1: Around the office. You had to explain it.
00:48:47
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:48:48
Speaker 3: I mean, nevermind to our kids, which that's understandable, but like to my colleagues and peers.
00:48:53
Speaker 2: And I'm like, wait a minute.
00:48:54
Speaker 1: I'll give you, here's a good reason why you need time to truly understand why an event has a huge consequence that you don't fully appreciate. Take what was happened to us with data and the digital revolution.
00:49:10
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
00:49:11
Speaker 1: So 9-11 happens and suddenly the country is comfortable giving up a little bit of its privacy and experience for security.
00:49:21
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
00:49:22
Speaker 1: And it's a habit that we develop out of necessity because our government asks us to. And for the most part, we're scared and we agree to it collectively as a side. Not everybody was on board, but it was a 65. You go back to those polls, right? It was like 65% were willing to give up some freedoms in exchange for security, right? That was how acute the threat was. The 9-11 Commission comes out and we basically decide to embed all of these new surveillance systems and all of this stuff. And we've got to find out more about everybody. And it literally the month that the 9-11 Commission report comes out, there's this kid in a dorm room in Harvard that that starts an entity called Facebook. Mm hmm.
00:50:05
Speaker 3: And.
00:50:06
Speaker 1: All of a sudden, we go from agreeing to give up a little bit of our privacy in exchange for security to then getting in the habit of giving up a little bit of our privacy in exchange for using a piece of software that we now.
00:50:18
Speaker 2: Call an app. I think there's a book in here, Chuck. Oh, well, I wrote a column about it.
00:50:23
Speaker 1: But the point being is.
00:50:24
Speaker 2: I think this is fascinating. I love this.
00:50:28
Speaker 3: Europe.
00:50:29
Speaker 1: Never feels as comfortable giving up data to social media companies, to digital. To this day, Europe is, I always say, if you care about privacy in America, be thankful for the Europeans because they're the ones pressuring these big tech companies to have to play by a more stringent set of rules when it comes to cookies and all this stuff. But guess what they didn't go through? They didn't go through 9-11, right? We in America have gotten into this habit of just handing over everything. And I think it's one of the fallouts from 9-11. And if 9-11 doesn't happen, is our relationship with big tech completely different than what it is today, where it feels like we've been, I feel like we've collectively, we're held hostage by big tech.
00:51:16
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:51:16
Speaker 3: Right?
00:51:17
Speaker 1: Think about how do people see your show? How do people read your book? If you don't make an algorithm, you don't, right? It's like, it is, it is, it is, And it's funny, it's like, this is not something I felt like I could see until you're this far away from the actual event that happens.
00:51:34
Speaker 2: I would totally read that book. Yeah, but that's- And you can say it was born in this conversation.
00:51:39
Speaker 1: Born in this conversation. All right, we're 47 minutes in and I, look, one of my focuses when I bring people on to talk about their book is I actually like to talk about their book and what they wrote about. But there's a lot of people- Yeah. That say, Dana Bash is on. Can you please talk about the frickin midterms and come on? And can you talk about.
00:51:58
Speaker 2: Washington from Chuck Todd? They don't need me. They do.
00:52:01
Speaker 1: But let's let me let me get your, you know, give me your five favorite races that you're obsessed with at the moment that you feel like are going to tell the story of 2026. Because I know when I was sitting in your shoes, you know, at the end of the day, you want to cover everything. But you you have to use. you know, when you're in this national platforms, you have to use a handful of races as avatars.
00:52:24
Speaker 2: Totally.
00:52:24
Speaker 1: Right. You know that, you know, because, you know, you can't do it all no matter how much bandwidth.
00:52:29
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:52:30
Speaker 1: 24 hour news channel should have, but we all know that way. We all know the way our business works. It isn't, it doesn't always work that way. So what are your avatars for the story of, of 2026?
00:52:42
Speaker 3: First of all, the Michigan Senate race. Yeah.
00:52:45
Speaker 2: I mean, that's, I know that's maybe obvious, but It just is.
00:52:49
Speaker 1: I would have opened a bureau there if I could have. I mean, especially when, you know, when Mike Duggan was running as an independent in that governor's race, you had the crazy center race with the ideological fight on the left. And then you had this three-way dynamic as an independent. You know, you had either scenario at one point. I literally, I would have begged NBC to open a bureau. full-time bureau in Michigan. I think it's that important this cycle, but even just with Abdul Al-Sayed, I mean, what happened? The 2028 primary is being impacted right now in that race.
00:53:21
Speaker 2: 1000%.
00:53:23
Speaker 3: And it's because the question is, can one of the Bernie Sanders left candidates win beyond a blue state or a blue district? And Michigan is as swingy as it gets right now. So that's going to determine the answer to that.
00:53:43
Speaker 1: Well, there's no doubt. Michigan won. Totally agree. Totally see it. Absolutely. What else?
00:53:50
Speaker 2: I also think that Mike Lawler's district in New York.
00:53:56
Speaker 3: And the reason is because he is.
00:54:01
Speaker 2: He's running against a not a.
00:54:04
Speaker 3: Liberal, a moderate Democrat, who's kind of got the perfect resume, the military background. And he is running, embracing Trump, where he thinks it matters, but also pushing him away or at.
00:54:23
Speaker 2: Least separating himself. But I think that, I think that if she wins. Yeah.
00:54:30
Speaker 1: He says yes to everything. Yeah.
00:54:32
Speaker 3: But if she wins there, if she beats him, then, um, or let me, let me actually do the flip side.
00:54:40
Speaker 2: If he loses. Mm-hmm.
00:54:44
Speaker 3: I think it means that Democrats are going to do really well, even though you would think, no, that that should be one of the first to go because it's a Harris one district, one of only three. But I think because he frankly is running a very smart campaign and she is running a very smart campaign. So I think that that could be determinative of the mood.
00:55:07
Speaker 1: I heard that the personal relationship between Jeffries and Lawler is awful. That if there is one race.
00:55:13
Speaker 2: I can tell you it's awful.
00:55:15
Speaker 1: I was told if there is one... Akeem Jeffries only cares... Someone joked with me that, honestly, if they didn't win the House but beat Lawler, he wouldn't consider it a failure. That's like however personal that's become between the two of them.
00:55:28
Speaker 3: Wow.
00:55:29
Speaker 2: I didn't know it was that bad.
00:55:30
Speaker 1: It may explain why there was so much anger... at this Jared Golden, Marie Glusenkamp-Perez rules committee vote.
00:55:40
Speaker 2: Right, right, right.
00:55:41
Speaker 1: I think Lawler was a part of it. I think Lawler was helping Jared Golden in there too. What's interesting about Lawler, you're right about to single him out because here's a guy who's got incredibly good relationships with people like Jared Golden, Marie Glusenkamp, with the sort of the blue dog Democrat crowd, and at the same time went to the Trump convention. There's not many people sitting in districts like his that are trying to do both. And I think you and I both believe, I think that's a trap for these Republicans, right? Can you, you know, when you look at that New York Times poll, it might not be. And Lawler, Lawler's the only one trying to do both. I can't think of somebody else trying to, I mean, I look at Mike Rogers and I don't understand why he's not pivoting more to the center. It's just been surprising to me. He sort of stayed- You know, they're so.
00:56:35
Speaker 2: Concerned about base turnout.
00:56:36
Speaker 3: Because the whole country is running against Al-Sayed and he's actually running against Al-Sayed.
00:56:40
Speaker 2: So he might as well do it.
00:56:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, that could be.
00:56:43
Speaker 2: All right.
00:56:44
Speaker 1: So Lawler and Michigan, those are two good avatars. Give me give me two or three more that you feel like will help.
00:56:51
Speaker 2: I think Iowa.
00:56:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm with you. And that's where I say. For me, the whole state of Iowa is the blue wave test, right?
00:57:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree.
00:57:02
Speaker 1: If the wave is big, Iowa.
00:57:04
Speaker 2: Is a lot of blue.
00:57:07
Speaker 3: Because I think in both the governor's race and the Senate race, it's the blue wave and it's people are so pissed and they're so hurting and they love Trump and the tariffs and the Iran war and all that. But the governor's race, the Democratic candidate is so strong. And in the Senate race, the Republican candidate is strong. is whether or not the Democrat at the top of the ticket is going to pull over.
00:57:37
Speaker 1: I don't know how many coattails he's going to have. I know I've been obsessed with the coattail. Because I think these governor's races, right? I mean, does Abbott have coattails? And if so, what are they? And can Abbott get over 54, 55? Right, I don't know. But let me give you one more little fun little Iowa nugget because you may want to use it. You may have seen this. And to me, it tells you everything. It sort of reinforces your Iowa point. Zach Nunn and Miller Meeks.
00:58:03
Speaker 2: They just voted on Iran. Yeah, we just did that in Inside Politics today.
00:58:07
Speaker 1: If that is not your canary in the coal mine.
00:58:13
Speaker 3: I feel so vindicated right now and seen because on Inside Politics, I just did something that Chuck Todd did.
00:58:21
Speaker 2: Blessed without knowing it. I feel like my job is done.
00:58:26
Speaker 1: I think that's a huge turning point.
00:58:28
Speaker 2: I agree. I agree because they're big Trump supporters and vice versa.
00:58:41
Speaker 1: And not only that, it's the fact it just tells.
00:58:44
Speaker 2: You how 100 percent how.
00:58:46
Speaker 1: Hard defending this Iran war is becoming 100 percent. These are Zach Nunn. He's not. I mean, he is a look. He is a card carrying member of the Republican Party. You know what I mean? And I mean that in a he's a he's a good Republican. He is not. He is Bob Dole like right. If Trump's the nominee, he's with him. If he's with him, like he's just a loyal party soldier. And when he moves that means something's happening in his district on this issue.
00:59:13
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. So people are pissed. They don't want to spend all the money that they're spending for fertilizer, for for diesel. Oh, my God. Diesel. And that's directly from the Iran war.
00:59:24
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Then there's Texas. We've been here so many times, but I actually think this is the first time.
00:59:31
Speaker 2: Where.
00:59:33
Speaker 1: We're getting close to October, and the Texas fantasy hasn't gone away yet for Democrats.
00:59:39
Speaker 2: I try to remember, was that true for Beto? Was it already going away at this point?
00:59:45
Speaker 1: It wasn't quite going away. I actually think with Beto, nobody still believed it. Nobody was believing it still. Didn't you feel that way? I don't remember.
00:59:53
Speaker 2: I don't know. I have to go back. I don't remember. You have a better memory than I do. I think what's interesting is that it's not.
00:59:59
Speaker 1: Just what I remember. It's pre-COVID.
01:00:01
Speaker 3: Yeah.
01:00:01
Speaker 2: Yeah.
01:00:02
Speaker 3: I think that in Texas that it's it is like Iowa. It's not just one race. It's not just the Senate race because it's Ken Paxton, who's a very flawed candidate against Tallarico, who's, you know, a different kind of Democrat down there.
01:00:17
Speaker 2: It's Abbott. Who is Texas. I mean, he is Texas and he's obviously worried.
01:00:23
Speaker 3: He completely changed his position on data centers, for example.
01:00:28
Speaker 2: Well, and then there's.
01:00:30
Speaker 1: South Texas where Republicans, I mean, this is talk about hubris. They just because you win Latino voters once doesn't mean they're a permanent member of the coalition.
01:00:39
Speaker 2: Right. Because they're hurting economically.
01:00:42
Speaker 3: Oh, and maybe because people who are maybe even citizens are getting picked up by ICE for no reason other than the fact that they are Latino.
01:00:54
Speaker 1: They have a last name that ends in Z or something.
01:00:58
Speaker 3: Yeah.
01:00:58
Speaker 2: Doesn't always stick.
01:01:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, Texas. I mean, so give me one more that you think helps tell the story. I'm with you. I mean, because Texas also, I mean, look, you go.
01:01:08
Speaker 2: You're with me so far. You're with me.
01:01:09
Speaker 1: OK, all four. I think those are all.
01:01:13
Speaker 2: I am going to go with. I'm going to go with Alaska.
01:01:19
Speaker 1: Oh, that's interesting.
01:01:21
Speaker 3: I know it's a little offbeat because it has its own DNA in every way, shape or form.
01:01:27
Speaker 1: But a lot of Western, you know, in fairness to other Western states like Montana. Right. Like, yeah, I feel like, yeah, they all have their own identity. That's not quite what we East Coasters sometimes do with politics.
01:01:39
Speaker 2: OK, scratch that.
01:01:40
Speaker 3: I'm actually going to I'm actually going to put a pin in Alaska. I'm obviously watching it and I'm going to go to Ohio, the Ohio Senate race.
01:01:49
Speaker 1: Because the governor's race he could and the.
01:01:51
Speaker 3: Governor's race but the senate race in particular the the fact that schumer convinced um our our senator we've been covering since he was a house member sherrod brown who went head-to-head with you in political trivia every time i saw it happen i did not know who was going to win.
01:02:11
Speaker 1: Um he is he's he also is good with uh some baseball trivia. Oh, really? But it has to involve the Indians or Guardians.
01:02:19
Speaker 3: Yeah, I get that, which is why he's on the ballot again. So he, I mean, the fact that Schumer, I don't think it was probably very hard to convince him to try to run again, but he's genuinely a populist. He always has been. And so Ohio, when we first started covering it, it was politics.
01:02:37
Speaker 1: Remember when we first started covering it?
01:02:39
Speaker 2: So goes Ohio, so goes the nation.
01:02:41
Speaker 1: But think about the shared brand that we governed in 06. The question was, is he too liberal for the state? Right. Should Democrats have found somebody? And now it feels like his economic populism is liberal, sort of call it just mainstream culturalism.
01:02:59
Speaker 2: I don't know.
01:03:00
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's sort of like he fits the state better now than he did in 06.
01:03:06
Speaker 2: It's really true.
01:03:08
Speaker 3: And so so the question is whether or not that what what would if Sherrod Brown wins. You know, this is the only part that tells me about.
01:03:19
Speaker 1: Yeah. Here's the only part that shocked me about why he ran.
01:03:21
Speaker 3: Yeah.
01:03:22
Speaker 1: That he ran.
01:03:22
Speaker 2: Yeah.
01:03:24
Speaker 1: The reward for winning the Ohio Senate race in 2026.
01:03:27
Speaker 2: You have to be in. In the Senate.
01:03:30
Speaker 1: You got to run again. No, you got to run again in two years.
01:03:33
Speaker 2: It's special.
01:03:34
Speaker 1: Oh, right.
01:03:34
Speaker 2: That's true. It's special.
01:03:35
Speaker 1: This is the rest of Vance's seat.
01:03:37
Speaker 2: It's J.D. Vance's term. Yeah.
01:03:39
Speaker 1: And, you know, Sherrod Brown, you know, he's going to have to run in 28 with J.D. Vance at the top of the ticket. It's just hard. It's just that I always thought he was going to run for governor because there were a bunch of Democrats trying to get him to run for governor. And I don't know if that would have meant Amy Acton would have moved to the Senate race because she was in very early. And it was there was a bunch of people that assumed that because the Senate race was a two year gig, that he would pick the governor's race so that he wouldn't have to turn right around. But that to me is what gives it it's more of a Schumer recruiting coup than he gets credit for, because he talked him into doing something essentially. All right. And if you win, you're going to run again for me. Right. I assume Schumer got that. Look, I think we now know that Sherrod Brown would love to be a senator for life if he could be. He's going to have to work really hard to do it.
01:04:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is definitely true. Thank you for having me.
01:04:41
Speaker 1: It's great to have you here. Let me have one question that I get a lot from folks that I don't have the same. How much would you say is the Trump White House harder to work with now than the first term? Is it still weirdly easier to work with because they care about what's being on air, but hard to work with because I like how do you care? How do you how would you characterize the sort of the relationship that, look, you have to have if you run a Sunday show? You know, we can talk this balance between access and non-access. It's just it is what it is. Right. Now we say, look, if we want to know what's happening, you've got to be able to bring the Treasury secretary on at the same time. They make demands that are sometimes very hard to deal. How would you characterize the relationship these days?
01:05:32
Speaker 3: I don't think it's great with the mainstream media, but I think we always have to keep in mind, and people may or may not realize this, that the.
01:05:43
Speaker 2: President, for all of his.
01:05:47
Speaker 3: Knowledge and use of modern media, of social media and so forth, he's a creature of the 80s. So he wants his people to be on our shows. He just does. He wants himself to be on our shows. Maybe not my show, but your former show. And, um, and he, uh, and so that is, that does help in being able to ask the tough questions of people who work for him. Yeah.
01:06:22
Speaker 1: What do you make of what a bunch of us are doing out here in independent space?
01:06:25
Speaker 2: I love it.
01:06:26
Speaker 1: Do you? You know, it's funny. Oh, my God, I love it.
01:06:28
Speaker 2: Are you loving it? Are you having a good time?
01:06:30
Speaker 1: Absolutely. And when I was seeing, when I was on the other side, I remember going, I don't know. You know, and then you're over here and you're, look, there are a lot of things I miss. Um, the collaboration is the biggest thing, right? The hardest thing is the, the hardest thing about independent is the eye and independent, because there's not a lot of, we, you can build some, we don't get me wrong. And, and, you know, we've all got you, you, you put in together, but, um, the collaboration is, the team, you know, those resources, they're still really good resources. So as much as we like to be, you know, us independent people like to be like, it is, there are trade-offs. I, you know, there are certain things I can do and say in topics I get to cover that I never would have been able to do or say or cover before. And I think, frankly, there's a more honest relationship between sponsors and what I do. And yet the things I do with sponsors, I never would have agreed to in my other life. And yet I'm wondering if actually that would have been a better way to handle it. It's just interesting. Like the lessons you learn on this side, which is, you know, we build this firewall. There was such a firewall built. And, you know, the thing that we overrate is what the public thinks of that. Public doesn't care. And they don't, even if we tell them there's a firewall, they don't believe it exists anyway.
01:08:00
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
01:08:02
Speaker 1: That's probably the one small aha I've had about that. But, you know, the resources are awesome. So having a polling outfit, you know, those are the things I miss.
01:08:16
Speaker 2: Well, so I look at you and our other....
01:08:20
Speaker 3: Friends and colleagues, former colleagues who are doing what you're doing. And I'm like, God, that is so, I absolutely love it. I love reading your sub stacks and everybody's and watching and all of your YouTube channels. Like it makes me so happy.
01:08:38
Speaker 1: But there's too much stuff to go through sometimes.
01:08:40
Speaker 2: It also looks like so much work.
01:08:44
Speaker 3: Like I work hard, I work hard, but I think that being an independent, because it's just you, like you are working, you're soft.
01:08:53
Speaker 1: I will say this. It's, I've suddenly realized I'm doing five shows a week. I was like, wait a minute. I thought I left. The whole point of walking away was not that. to do five shows a week anymore. But there's something about if you feel like it is funny. If you have control of a situation, you'll end up working more.
01:09:09
Speaker 2: Yeah.
01:09:10
Speaker 3: Yeah.
01:09:10
Speaker 1: Whatever it is. It's you know, perhaps it's the incentive of, you know, you have to sing for your own supper and those sort of things. You eat what you kill. Yeah, it is. Here's the thing. I used to joke the grass is always browner. You know, everybody that would leave, you know, people would leave NBC all grumpy and then they go to one of brand X or brand Y and they go, oh, wow, I missed this. The point is, is that, look, there is some green grass and then there's brown grass too. And in both sides of the equation, what we don't want to see happen is we're is it any of it going away, right? It all needs to be reanimated. There's no, and refreshed all the time, but you don't want it to go away and you just keep fighting for the independence because that's what you don't want to lose.
01:10:01
Speaker 2: Yep. Amen. Amen.
01:10:03
Speaker 1: And that's what I feel like you guys are the what you're one of the last ones standing on the independence front.
01:10:09
Speaker 2: So we're trying.
01:10:11
Speaker 1: I know we are. I don't want to get into the other part of it. It is what it is. There's not much you can do. You know, you're a journalist. The corporate boardroom is the corporate boardroom.
01:10:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, I will say and I really mean this. I know you said people don't believe it. I don't care because no one, no one, I don't, it has zero impact. I don't have any idea. It does. It does. There's no pressure.
01:10:45
Speaker 1: When would you have time actually to like worry about what's happening in corporate boardrooms? This story is too big to ignore.
01:10:52
Speaker 3: No, but I mean, like people think, oh, they're doing it because of, you know, the billionaires who run their company.
01:10:58
Speaker 2: I mean, no.
01:10:59
Speaker 3: Billionaires do run our companies, but there's no impact on what I'm doing on the ground.
01:11:05
Speaker 1: I don't have time cues, but I bet you, you do. I need to let you know. Dana, it's always great. This was awesome.
01:11:11
Speaker 2: Chuck, so good to see you. I'm very grateful. Go revolutionaries.