Chuck’s Commentary - Chuck’s Experience At The Correspondents’ Dinner Shooting + America Is A Tinderbox & Trump Is Fanning The Flames

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Well, happy Monday and welcome to another episode of the Chuck Todd cast.

I need list to say what what I thought I was going to be focusing on with this

episode has changed quite a bit.

But let me give you a quick rundown.

Look, I'm going to give you my first day in account of what happened at the

White House correspondence dinner from my point of view.

Yes, I attended as a guest of national journal.

I will literally share all the details on that.

And then take a step back and just sort of talk about this moment that we're

living in politically, basically through my political anthropologist glasses here.

Because I think there's no doubt that we don't have the political

leaders to deal with the moment that we need to be dealing with at the moment.

So and I will get into all of that.

But we just this is a this is this is the the worst set of political leaders

that we could have to meet the moment that we need.

Which is why we need clearly we need new leadership in this country collectively.

And this is across the board left right center, etc.

We will get I will get into that.

Of course, this is Monday, which means I have a new time machine segment.

And we are we are going back to a story that would eventually

help create the name for one of the most popular bands of my generation.

So there's your clue.

There's your clue to what a historical event I will be taking a deep dive in with the time

machine this weekend. Of course, we will do questions from you.

And yes, despite the events of the weekend, I do have a few thoughts

in my compartmentalized brain on sports, the draft and all things from there.

But look, let me start with I figure the best thing I can do is just sort of take you

through. Take you through what I what I did with the dinner.

And it really my evening begins at 6 p.m. Eastern time.

I'm walking out of the house.

And just to give you a full picture, I had planned to go to the after party.

My friends at MS now had invited my wife and I to the after party.

They're after party and we were planning to attend.

I was attending the dinner itself as a guest of national journal.

I've been doing a lot of work with them lately.

National journal for many of you knows my former as a former employer of mine.

I've been we've been doing some brainstorming together and we're in this collective world.

And so that's that's why I was attending.

That's who's who's guest I was.

My wife was going to meet.

She did this was one ticket.

So she was going to we were going to meet essentially at the at the after party about 11 p.m.

And as I'm leaving the house and the Uber at 6 p.m. I turned to my wife and I say,

I hope I'm not making a mistake.

And what did I mean by that?

I just set it out loud and I had a lot of sort of trepidation about going.

I hadn't been to the dinner in probably four or five years.

I used to, frankly, when I had a job on Sunday morning,

some of you might might know.

So I had stopped doing these Saturday night dinners.

Sometimes I would go for basically like the first hour and leave early,

frankly, just to get a tiny bit of rest before the next morning.

Sometimes I didn't go at all.

It just you know, it's just it's just a

it can be it's a it's a I used to joke with when I was in my 20s, the dinner was fun when

by my 40s, it became work.

But I was going, look, I'm doing a lot more in the media entrepreneur space.

And this is a so there's certainly a lot of interesting people

that I am working with.

I'd like to be working with.

And I thought this was be as good of a time as any to connect with some people.

But I knew that there was going to be a lot of protests.

I knew there was going to be a lot of tension.

And so when I said that to my wife, she was like, why do you know, she sort of

haunted her as I left.

And then of course, we all thought about it a lot after the incident itself.

And I'm not going to sit here and say I thought violence was going to happen.

You know, I didn't know if it was going to be just, you know,

was I walking into something that I didn't really want to be a part of.

It's probably a better way to describe it, right?

I think I told you I think I expressed earlier.

I thought all the look, this is one thing people need to understand.

This is not the president's event.

This is the this is the White House press associations event.

He's an invited guest.

It is tradition to invite the president hardstop.

He chose to come for the first time.

This is not his event.

And this is an important point because this is not an event to be held at the White House.

If he doesn't feel comfortable coming, then he doesn't come, right?

This is a trade association event for White House press,

remembers the White House press corps at the end of the day.

So I sort of I found the sort of

hand-ranging about, you know, whether press should attend or not.

This is not the president's dinner.

Look, everybody made their individual decisions about who they invite,

right?

And that's a different decision and you can hold individual

organizations accountable for who they choose to invite or not.

But at the end of the day, we're journalists.

And I just wanted the story.

You have to have good sources in order to report, period.

And so I understood the criticism of those that say,

oh, don't give them a platform.

Don't do this.

Don't do that.

At the end of the day, it was his choice to come.

And you know, the press can, to me,

a good journalist should be able to handle that situation.

And should be comfortable going in.

You know, nobody's asking you to become a maggot cheerleader or a left-wing activist.

If you're going there to be an activist, don't go.

Right?

That, you know, if you're more interested in being an activist,

then you shouldn't have gone.

But look, I thought all of that was overrated on that front.

So,

but, you know, I knew the protests were going to be large.

And I've certainly been to that hotel so many times.

I knew that there were alternative ways to get into the hotel.

So, I was very careful where I had the Uber drop off.

In fact, I knew I was going to decide it.

I was going to basically, for those of you familiar,

where they help them go in the back way,

go in the other, you know, and don't come in on Connecticut Avenue.

I basically came in behind sort of between,

essentially, strapped off not quite at the corner of Florida Avenue

and Colombia, excuse me, in 18th, but close-ish.

It's basically like 19th and Florida.

Because I knew I could walk.

Now, with those terrible tux shoes, I even double-socked.

Knowing I was probably going to be walking more than usual

in order to, little, then I know how much I was going to end up walking

after the event says it was.

So, look, I was pretty, you know, I get dropped off by the Uber walk-in,

get in the, essentially, the back way without,

without going through any of that protest or stuff that was taking place

which was on the other side of the hotel,

which is basically where Florida and Connecticut

come together, which is essentially where the Hilton, the Washington, and Hilton is.

And if you're wondering, I'm getting into the Hilton, you know,

there is no magnetometer to get into the hotel itself.

This is, look, there's a reason why this dinner is always held at this hotel.

They have a unique situation where you really can

take the ballroom sections and essentially secure it away from everything else,

which is what they have done.

In my experience, I've been going to these dinners,

like the first one I went to was probably in 1995, 1996, something like that.

And it is, you know, this is why there's been chatter about moving it to the convention center,

moving it to some other places, but this really is sort of a unique ballroom.

You know, every community has come in.

I can't believe this is at a Hilton, like sort of mocking the idea that it's at a Hilton,

no offense to my friends at Hilton.

But it's always been kind of a butt of jokes that this fancy black tie dinner

is at a Hilton, but this ballroom setup is an incredibly unique setup.

After the Reagan assassination attempt, they even created more secure areas.

They basically, they have some of the easiest ways

for a highly secure individual to be brought in and out of the hotel.

More so than really any other hotel in the city,

especially with a ballroom like that of that size that they can do.

So it is, it is why it's there.

And they've always, the hotel itself has always sort of been divided like that

when this dinner is here.

So you can just like walk into the lobby, which is where I went.

You just go into the lobby and I was going to the precocktail parties,

National Journal's Cocktail Party to go most a lot of times.

If you're an invited guest, that's how you pick up your ticket.

As you go to your sponsoring organizations,

pre-dinner event, it's sort of been what a lot of news organizations do.

So you ignore all that.

And it was, you know, you could tell.

I mean, it was pretty heavy with the protesters.

The rain probably made it.

Did I bring up it?

It was raining at that point in time.

So everybody is sort of, you know,

they went with your hairdos and stuff like that on that front.

So we get into the dinner and it's the usual.

Everybody is mag that you in before you can get to even the ballroom area.

There is a set of magnetometers that everybody goes through.

And essentially just about everybody,

not you don't not only go through a magnetometer,

but if there's anything that pops up in the magnetometer, you get you get the wand.

And it's pretty if you've ever been to any presidential events,

it's very similar to that.

It's, if you've ever been to even a sporting event where the president was going to be there,

you'll notice that sometimes there's a little bit more extra security.

You go through magnetometers and there's a person wanting.

This was the same setup.

And then the dinner itself, you go down a set of staircases.

Yet another set is sort of almost like a sunken, you come in at one level and the ballroom

itself is like further down and you walk down, it's two sets, two flights of stairs.

This is important because the attacker, the gunman, did not get even down one flight of those stairs.

It's two flights of stairs to get into the ballroom area itself.

So in the ballroom, they serve, they're serving the salad first and everybody was done with the salad.

And the timing, I was fascinating because so the shots ring out,

right, about one minute after there was probably 200 weight staff that all came out at the exact same time.

This was sort of a bit of an orchestration and it's almost, it's the server ballet, if you will,

that we've, it's always, it's very impressive how it's done where essentially every table is cleared

and every table is served pretty much simultaneously, right? It's an incredibly quick turnover.

You have this rush of people come out. So my initial thought, so this rush of people's coming out and

you see, the tables are all close together and it's pretty crowded anyway because people are,

it's still early in the dinner, so there's still a little socializing. People are doing a little

table hopping to see, to catch up with people. You might get a text, I'd got a text from a friend of

mine, it was two tables over that I didn't see until after the incident itself. So we're sitting at

the dinner, everybody's finished in the salad and, you know, they just, they had just finished the

head table introductions. President of White House Corresponds Association basically said, okay,

now we're going to, now we're going to serve dinner. So it was actually going to be a quick pause

in the program. I think as far as timing events is the minute dinner was served that it was going

to be pretty soon after that that we were going to hear from the president. So the rush of

white staff floods the ballroom and it's about a minute later in my recollection that I heard,

you hear the pop pop pop and that's what I heard pop pop pop some of you saw I did a preliminary

Instagram last night that went on a few of my socials just to give you a quick sense of what I saw.

So you hear this pop pop pop and I'll be honest at first, you know, you're not, you don't expect to

hear gunshots and so you don't automatically assume that's what you heard. And I didn't within,

I want, you know, it's sort of like within two seconds to you sort of realize Jesus, I think that

was gunshots, but that like the first thing in my mind was, oh, what just what accident just

happened? I mean, as the president himself said, did somebody drop a tray? It just just felt like an

accident because again, this is the case where you're visuals and your audio can sometimes be in

conflict. What did what were we all seeing? We were seeing this rush of people of white staff coming

to essentially do the do the appetizer plates clearing and the entree serve. And so that's in your

head. So any noise you hear, I think automatically you're just associating with what you see. And then

you realize pop pop pop and then somebody heard shots. And then you saw a whole bunch of people

just dropped to the ground, including all the white staff. I will confess, I was a little slow

getting to the ground. I was like continuing to just try to and even even when I knelt on the ground,

my table mates were like, get down and then like, like, oh, my head up to try to get a sense because

I was trying to, I generally heard where I, you know, where I heard, where I thought I heard the

shots from turned out to be exactly where the shots came from, which is it felt like it was

coming from behind the entrance to the ballroom. And the question was, were these shots had fired

in the ballroom. And it's now pretty obvious to me because of the why they weren't loud loud,

they were loud enough to hear the pop pop pop. But then you realize it was not in the ballroom,

right? So everybody says we're first looking around here. Do we hear anybody screaming? Do you

see any paramedics? And then you realize, okay, nobody was shot in the ballroom.

It was clearly coming from up to the, at this point in time, I don't know whether it is

right outside the doors where they come in, down those two flights of stairs I was talking about,

or if it was further up the two flights of stairs, sort of where the magnetometers are before you

go walk down after you've been cleared of security. And again, I'm just trying to put you in my shoes

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I too am a customer. Now, one of my witnessing is we're on the floor. There's a few things. One is

obviously you see you start to see a parade of security detail. First of all, there was security

everywhere. And in fact, it's probably pretty clear that there were a handful of tables where

they were undercover security, right? There was just too many people in that room not to have

something like that. You immediately see probably a hundred law enforcement throughout the

ballroom, essentially just trying to clear everything, right? Everybody guns drawn. They're trying

to clear everything. And then you have these security details. And I think most of these people

were associated with a security detail. I don't know this yet for a fact, but it seems that way

because you'd start to see this parade. First, you know, I think I saw Hegseth get escorted out. I

saw Scott peasant get escorted out. I saw Mike Johnson get escorted out. I saw Steve Scalice get

escorted out. And so you started to see those folks getting escorted out. Then there's a lockdown in

the room, right? As you might expect as they're now in hindsight, it's because the main entrance

to the ballroom was a crime scene. So, you know, I think they were trying to make a quick determination

to see if this was some sort of conspiracy. I could tell you what I first thought is, oh,

this person come in with the wait staff and then use that moment, you know, I probably watched

too many movies, right? You know, you have too many movies in your head and you start thinking

about different things. Although there is a there is a weird movie. Life imitates art aspect to the

the alleged assassin who apparently got a room in the hotel, which by the way is a security loophole,

which I'm going to get to in a minute. So, at this point, everybody and it looks like we're sealed

in. And then you're then the question is, and you know, everybody's comfortably, you know,

starts popping their head up and we're all trying, we're all trying to work, you know, I mean,

everybody, you know, is just trying to, we're all trying to find out what happened. You have a

room full of of reporters plus self-important people, plus actually important people and everybody

want everybody wants to know what the hell is going on and everybody's trying to figure out what's

going on. And you know, at first, it's just simply everybody trading, did you hear gunshots?

What did you see? Did you see anybody get hit? And that was just sort of the determination,

was there anything anybody hurt within the ballroom? You know, trying to figure out if anybody had

gotten in, you know, was it was it was it somebody who took a shot, you know, with did the shots come

into the ballroom, right? And that is, you know, now it's like I said, the the sound was not

loud enough to have been in the ballroom, which is why it wasn't 100% convinced it was gun shots

right away. Now I know exactly what I heard, I heard the gunshots based on behind closed doors

two flights up, but within earshot of where we were, right? So now I understand, now I couldn't

process why they were, you know, sort of heard, but not just dominant as far as the audio in that,

the audible nature of the of the sound. So then they about, it's pretty fast that they make the

determination that they can open the doors. And then the minute they open the doors, they decide

it's let's evacuate. But they don't, they just basically encourage everybody to leave. I will be

honest with you when I saw that there was a door open and people were starting to trickle out

before they made the announcement. I was like, first of all, I, you know, the table I was at, we

sort of just in our own little like, well, we all looked at each other, we toasted and we're like,

well, we're never going to forget this dinner. And so it was just one of those things we all

realized we sat there together and that we will never forget. I was sitting next to a woman named

Nicole who I knew a little bit through a old friend of mine back in the day of sitting next to

another gentleman named Wajwado who had not met before. But we're all, we're all connected now.

Jeff Dufour of National Journal, the editor in chief was at the table. He did a fine update,

by the way, on news fear last night. I hope you caught that. So you have that sort of, we did have

that little bonding moment as a table. And I think other of my guests as other tables did that same

thing. It's just such a real thing that you're with. And then it was sort of like, all right,

good luck, everybody. And at that point, I'm ready to evacuate. And it looks like everybody's

going in one direction. And I'm like, if they really want us out of this building, you know,

and finally one of the security folks says, look, go follow exit signs. And it was like, you don't

have to tell me twice. So I end up going through the kitchen at some point. I was like, just

following around the hotel staff, somebody recognized me was really nice. And basically help,

help me navigate through the kitchen at that point. I think I, it was just all sorts of security

personnel back there, just sort of huddling. And I was kind of the first one through the doors.

And there was clearly going to be a whole slew of people on me. And I end up coming out of an

exit. Of course, that I've never been out before at the Hilton. So the hotel backs up against,

why I believe it's Wyoming, I think it's Wyoming Avenue, sort of where T Street and Wyoming,

I'm going to go behind it. And I end up there and I just decide, all right, I'm going to walk

as far away from the hotel as I can and go find an Uber. So that's my plan. I walk up about a half

a block and all you do is you start running into groups of people in tuxedos, right? And formal wear.

All trying to debate what to do, right? Are they going to reopen the dinner? As far as I was concerned,

I was done with the dinner. You know, this was not, I was not going to be in the closed end

event. I've been through enough of this. I've had enough death threats. And, you know, my feeling

is I'm not getting very close anymore to that world until we sort of get to a better place

as a country, but I'll get to that in a few minutes. And so I'm like, well, it may be hard

to get a ride out of here if I stay too close to that area. So I'm walking, I end up running

into the federmines. On the corner, I think it was at the time. I think we were on the corner

of Columbia and Wyoming. As you know, John Federman is not hard to miss. And it was just him and

his wife. They were on a corner. And so I went up, you know, we, he recognized me and we, he

waved over and he was, they were looking, they had, they had had a driver, which was not surprising

many US senators do have somebody that they're, you know, they get a driver for the night or maybe

it's a driver all the time, but that's, so he was looking, they were looking for their ride.

He, by the way, couldn't have been nicer. He was trying to, he was trying to convince me,

don't know, we can give you a ride. I'm like, I'm good. I'm going to, I'll walk up,

I'll walk up a couple more blocks and I'm just going to get home. I had suddenly I had my kids

wondering what the hell was going on at my wife was, so at that point, I'm trying to keep them

up to date. Everything's okay. I'm fine. You know, this is, this is not about me. We're all good.

Um, and then, um, it was in, and in fact, where I did, I filled my video as I was waiting

for my Uber there at the corner of Columbia and Adam's mill as sort of as you're walking towards

Woodley Park and, and that Woodley Park area. What's interesting is the Uber driver picks me up and

he goes, Hey, were you at the dinner? What happened? And so he goes, I just, listen to this eerie

thing. He goes, I just dropped off an elderly woman who was going to the dinner, who was telling

me this whole story about being there when Reagan was shot. And so he was just sort of processing

his own, that own sort of weirdness, if you will. Um, so that was my, um, that was my experience.

I end up getting home about 10 o'clock, 945, 10 o'clock. Um, we decided, uh, that's, uh, you know,

I didn't care whether the after parties were on or not. It was like, you know, I, I think we're good.

Right. I'm not interested. And the best now was going to be in the Dupot Circle underground. It's

like, hmm, don't know if I want to be underground, right? And sort of a, a, a guarded space like that

a little bit because we are, I think we are living in a, we're, we're, we're, we're living in a

tender box. And that's, and that's the thing. So look, this is what it felt like being in that room,

right? That's what it sounded like. And that's how fast it all happened. And so, you know, that's,

that's the instinct I had last night was simply to describe it. Uh, and then perhaps start to move on,

right? You know, unfortunately, we've become used to this. This is weirdly normal now.

Um, and if it were just an isolated event, I think it'd be easier to move on. But the truth is,

this doesn't feel isolated anymore. And the fact of the matter is we know we are living

through something different. It's not just more political anger. We've had angry periods before.

And it's not just more division. We've had that too.

What feels different now is a growing comfort with the idea of violence. We've normal,

we're normalizing it. Not just the act itself, but the idea that it just sort of, hey,

it's a part of it. It's a part of politics. You just have to accept it.

Hmm, I'm not there. But we do. We have the willingness to imagine it. Now we have the willingness

to justify it, to talk about it as something that exists just one step away. That's what feels new.

That's why before I walked out of the door, I wondered if I was making a mistake.

Not because of what the dinner could or should be. But we know we're living in, we're not living in

normal times. So I can tell you this from experience. I've covered politics for decades now.

Going back to the 90s, early 90s, campaigns, presidencies, moments of real national attention after

9-11, I worked in an office right across the street from Saudi Embassy at the Watergate.

And yet I've never dealt with anything like this. Not in terms of threats, not in terms of the volume,

and not in terms of the tone. That is until about 10 years ago.

Some time in 2015, things started to change. The start of the Trump era. And once it started and it

didn't stay contained, at first it felt targeted in one direction. When my face was on the back of the

pipe bomber's van that they found in Miami, when I had FBI agents visiting me to let me know I was a

target of this. Nobody in the administration, by the way, cared, called any of these reporters at the

time that I digress. So then I felt targeted in one direction. Then it spread. And now, let's be

honest, it feels ambient. It's everywhere. Like it's just a part of the environment. Violence and

politics go in hand in hand. Not in America. That wasn't the way it was supposed to be in America.

Now, many people are asking. The Donald Trump caused this.

And I understand the instinct. There's no doubt I'm making the case that he's responsible for the

era. But it is the wrong question. Because we can argue it forever. Supporters will say it's the

rhetoric against him. We're already seeing that. There's this determination by his most devoted

supporters to just say, hey, the assassinations, the leftists, this is the left. It's all the

Democrats fall, right? Critics of Trump will say it's his rhetoric. This is the guy that introduced

political violence and mainstreamed it. The point is, we're going to spin in this loop all day and

we're not going to get anywhere. All we're going to do is foment more violence. It's not going to

solve the problem. But it doesn't mean we can't identify how this got normalized. So that's the

better question we need to be asking. What has been normalized? And how are we going to get out

of this? Because presidents don't just govern. They set the tone. They set the tone for the country.

They define the boundaries of acceptable behavior. It is a choice to pardon violent extremists

that attack the Capitol. That's a choice. And over the last decade, these boundaries have shifted

quite a bit. You can hear it in the rhetoric. Let's go back to the beginning. Donald Trump at rallies

in 2016 talking about wanting to punch protesters, suggesting they should be carried out on stretchers,

offering to pay the legal fees of anybody prosecuted for violent political violence on his behalf.

At the time, it sounded like WWE inspired bullshit performance, right?

Crowd work, if you will. But the language matters.

Right? Most people may hear it just as

idle rhetoric, innocent rhetoric, but not everybody. Because over time, what starts as performance

becomes a permission slip. And then fast forward to just the last few months. After the death of

Robert Mueller, the President of the United States actually posted the following quote,

Robert Mueller just died. Good. I'm glad he's dead.

That's not ambiguous. That's the President of the United States celebrating the death

of somebody he believed was a political adversary. I say he believed because all Robert

Mueller wanted to do is to get to the fricking truth of what the Russians did and weathered.

And any Americans helped. Or how about earlier this year when you just posted a whole civilization

will die tonight, never to be brought back again. It's not normal American political rhetoric.

It's not normal political rhetoric period, but certainly not the behavior that we should

expect from an American president. It's existential language. And even in moments of tragedy,

mocking the death of someone like Rob Reiner suggesting his death was somehow tied to his political

views. Again, this is the President. This is the tone being set by the President of the United

States. And there's another shift that's happened at the same time. And it's just as important.

And it's this idea that politics is responsible for everything.

If you're struggling, it's not your choices or circumstance. It's someone else's fault.

It's a political grievance, blame a politician, blame a party, blame the press.

Because you can't look yourself in the mirror and realize you made bad decisions.

You need someone else to blame. Donald Trump never does self-reflex. Always has to blame someone

else. And once you start to believe that, once you internalize this idea that your problems

are caused by all these other people, you're not that far from believing they should pay for it.

And then you hear something just bizarre, like we heard last night after this incident when

the President chose to have a press conference. And the President was asked whether he was the intended

target. And part of the answer is this idea that he basically said, well, only the great

presidents, the great ones, as he said it, have to deal with this. Lincoln, Kennedy.

He viewed being targeted as kind of a validation, a badge of honor.

Implying that if you didn't get, if you're a President that wasn't targeted for assassination,

like he's been, then you're not a successful President. You're not trying to do big things.

Think about all this for a second. Is that de-escalation?

That's reframing something dangerous and un-American as somehow proof of greatness,

turning risk into mythology. This is something we should all be concerned about because if he's

basically resigned himself to be martyred, well, then no wonder he took a risk like he has with

Iran and he essentially is putting all of us in an economically precarious position.

And this is, but this is where the presidency matters because whether intentional or not,

the President creates the political weather. Not every storm, but it's the climate.

He's very divisive. He thrives on divisiveness. His supporters want the divisiveness.

They feed off the divisiveness and he knows it and he does it and it's more and it's more.

And you know what happens? People think there's only one way to respond.

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And the climate is shifted, behavior shifts with it. The barrier moves. What once felt unthinkable

becomes thinkable. Then, saleable. And eventually, for a very small number of people, doable.

And it doesn't stay on one side. Escalation invites escalation. That's how being a divisive

leader works. One side raises the temperature, the other responds. And before long,

you're not looking at two sides anymore. You're looking at reflections sort of out of a fun house mirror,

same intensity, same language, same sense of urgency, existential threats,

just pointed in different directions. And this is where the language matters again and again and

again, because everything now is framed as some existential challenge that we're all dealing with.

Every election, every issue, a battle for civilization itself. Have you seen that? It's the

battle for the West. Violence being, I don't know, sometimes you're going to have, if you want to

save Western civilization, how many, how many people have you seen use ridiculous rhetoric like that?

They're part of the problem too. Because if everything is existential,

then anything becomes justifiable.

Any rhetoric, any tactic, any escalation.

The reality is we are a country of 350 million people who agree on some things and disagree on a lot.

And for a long time, we managed that because we had leaders who didn't lean into being divisive,

who backed off when they realized the temperature had been too hot.

This president never knows how to turn the temperature down. Never.

Even last night in his attempt to do it, he glorifies the violence as some sort of

of reflection of his greatness.

This is, like I said, he needs, that's a separate issue. And maybe this is, look, I,

he's a human being and he's been targeted multiple times for death.

So it might be a coping mechanism.

And we should have empathy for that.

I have empathy for that.

But he chose to be the leader of all Americans. And he's pitting Americans against each other on

purpose. He has to turn it down. We have one president at a time. No other political leaders

have the power that he has to do this. He can't do it. He is incapable of doing this.

That's the unfortunate part.

But people around him need to restrain him better.

Because here's the part that should worry everybody. It only takes one person.

One unstable, angry, perhaps isolated person

who has absorbed all of this over the last decade.

And they decide, boy, they have no choice but to act. And that's it.

So when the broader culture is reinforcing grievance, reinforcing blame,

reinforcing confrontation, that person doesn't feel like an outlier.

They feel in some distorted way like they're acting within the logic of this moment.

If we were a healthy political culture, those impulses would be rare. They'd be contained,

marginal. But right now they're not. Not because most people believe in violence,

I think it's pretty clear most of us don't. But because the environment is no longer clearly

rejecting it. And this is where leadership matters the most. Because in moments like this,

someone has to step in and lower the temperature. It isn't going to come from the speaker of the house.

It isn't going to come from the Senate Democratic leader, the House minority leader,

the Senate majority leader, the governor of Colorado or Pennsylvania or California,

New Yorker, Florida, whatever. It has to be the president. Someone has to say this is not who we are.

But he's built an entire brand claiming this is who we actually are.

Someone's got to step in here and say this stops now. We got to turn the temperature down.

We got to not govern in the most divisive ways possible.

We don't have enough of that. We don't have, like I said, I don't know if we have the leaders to

meet the moment we need. We're going to say it's what presidential primaries about.

I don't know if the two political parties are capable of producing a leader that can meet the

moment. I think the leaders exist. I fear the party bases won't allow those leaders to emerge.

That is why you've seen me so lean so hard into an independent third or fourth parties here

because we need to force a reconciliation in these two parties to just change their ways,

starting with the president and the Republican party.

But instead, we keep moving forward in this cycle. It's a little more escalation. It's a

little more normalization. It's a slightly lower barrier each time.

And the question isn't whether this will happen again. It's whether we're doing anything to make

it less likely. And right now, it doesn't feel like we are. And that's the uncomfortable truth

about all of this. Our political culture was certainly had heated rhetoric, but it wasn't this

actively violent. Now it's actively violent. It's a regular basis, reporters, members of Congress.

And I see that literally we have, Congress right now is half filled with people that have been

produced by this culture. So they don't even know how to engage in rhetoric to turn the

temperature down. Instead, it's escalation, escalation, escalation.

And I can hear the what aboutism. I've seen it on the right and I'm seeing it

should pop up on the left now. But the fact is looking at this through the lens of being a

political anthropologist, this is what happens. You stoke violence, you celebrate violence,

you pardon violent actors and violent criminals, you consistently pardon white collar criminals

all the time just because they're your friends. And you create a you create a world where

people don't respect the rule of law. People don't respect the normal barriers of America of

civilization. So I saw one thing, we need some bipartisan commission on political violence,

give me a fricking break. We don't need a committee or a commission to figure out how this happened.

We know how it happened. This era that we live in is being led by somebody who celebrates political

violent rhetoric and it has increased and increased and increased. And you're going to get reactionary

politics in response. I said it before, my greatest fear was the the election of Trump

the second time was going to have people decide that the normal rules don't apply

and it's time to quote fight fire with fire as you've heard. And there is no worse outcome

for our near term politics than a response to this is fight fire with fire. And yet that's

that's the situation that feels like we're in. I would suggest to some of my legacy media

colleagues, let's not sanitize this. I'm already sniffing a lot of sanitization here.

This is not an isolated incident. This it continues to be a combination of a normalization

of violent rhetoric and violent events. Pure and simple. A few things about the future of this

dinner, security wise, there were two loopholes this attacker exploited. If we are to believe

everything we're hearing from government and unfortunately because of the track record of this

justice department, needless to say, it is hard to find second and third sources when you're dealing

when the government's in charge of all the information. So let's just say I you know 80% confident

in what we're getting, not 100, certainly not 90. But if you if we take to understand that this

attacker took trains to get to DC, well, what's the loophole by taking trains? There's you don't

put your bags through any act trade machines on on on Amtrak, right? If you went from LA to Chicago

shit, you're just sort of, you know, so he could bring everything he wanted to bring and no one

was inspecting anything, right? That we don't have any of that via on the train system. There's never

been a magnetometer that I've ever gone through getting on Amtrak. You can bring anything you want

on that Amtrak train. No one's looking at your bags. Yes, there is. Yes, there is

dogs that sort of sniff around and perhaps they're bomb sniffing dogs and things like that.

But they're not there to sniff whatever weapons you might be deciding to pack with you.

So there's loophole one and then loophole two was looking a room at the hill.

Now, when I've traveled overseas and stayed in the same hotel as a president,

and I would say about half the time that I traveled with the president when I was a White House

correspondent, not even less than half the time did I actually stay at the same hotel as the

president. Most of the press court stays at a separate hotel, frankly because of security issues.

But the press pool, if you're going to be traveling in the presidential motorcade and on Air Force

one in and out, the press pool does stay at the same hotel. And when you stay at the same hotel

as a president overseas, everybody goes through security magnets right at the lobby of the hotel.

I've, that has happened to me every time I've traveled overseas.

Or if I've stayed domestically in the same hotel that the president is overnighting.

But we don't do that for hotels where the president is just going to be there for an hour delivering

a speech. But this is, you know, so those are the two security loopholes. But I do want to say

from the get go because there's a lot of people trying, this was a security failure. Actually,

it wasn't security worked. Security, the security parameters worked as intended. He didn't get

through the, he got nabbed in the first line. Now you may argue that the first perimeter should

be further. And there's, you know, okay, well, that probably, you know, but how this was secured,

it worked. Nobody got hurt. Nobody was killed. Yes, we have one secret service agent that got

hurt. Thankfully, he's, he's, he survived the, because it was where the bullet proved that.

But the security perimeter worked. There was not a failure on that front.

And I think that's an important fact that we have to just, you know, because there's this,

as everything, there's almost a knee jerk overreaction, right? Well, we got to do this, you got to

do this. Got to be somebody to blame here. You know, this, they're not getting paid and all this

stuff and people want to spend it. We gotta have the presidential ballroom. What are you talking

about? This has nothing to do with building the presidential ballroom. And the presidential ballroom

is not about security. The White House is a secure space. The building of the presidential ballroom

is because he just wants to have giant events. He wants to have much bigger events. He wants to put

his stamp in the White House. There's the Truman balcony. He wants the Trump ballroom. All right,

it's a vanity project. We all know it's a vanity project. It is kind of gross that there, that,

that there's this attempt to use this incident as, as a rationale to somehow have the government

speed up the building of this vanity renovation project. How about going and solving the,

the war of choice you made in Iran? First of all, number one, but number two, this is not, and again,

this is not a White House dinner. White House state dinners, that's on the White House grounds.

You know, are we going to never have presidents leave the bunker of the White House anymore?

Look, we're a democracy. We've chosen this freedom, which means, and, and the president himself

noted this, you cannot have security. If you'll, there is no such thing as a 100% security from

somebody that is determined to do something like this. There's just attempts to minimize the

damage that can be done by a lone wolf who snaps. And that's what our, that's what the

secret service does quite well. But it's kind of, I just, please, this is as dumb and silly of a,

of a, and a spin attempt to try to use this as a way to rationalize the building of the ballroom

for, for, for this, for mythical, for this mythical security issue, and it, please,

White House is a very secure space. The size of the ballroom is not about security.

Just realize that. As for, look, the White House press dinner, you know, this, I wish there were

no cameras at it. There were no cameras at it. You wouldn't draw the attention. If it doesn't draw

the attention, it's less likely to be a magnet for violence and for protest and for all of these

things. We don't, the grid I ended and wasn't put on camera. I wish the grid I didn't state off

the record, but it's not been put on camera. I guess they invited cameras finally one year,

which is just a terrible idea. But you know, it's just a trade association dinner. The US Chamber

of Commerce throws them. Center for American Progress, the Congressional Black Caucus,

the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, everybody throws their sort of organizational annual dinner.

You know, it is not a crime. It is not some sort of violation of journalistic principles for

journalists to get together and have dinner and celebrate their, their, their, their industry.

The celebration of the event was the mess was the giant disgusting mistake. And by the way,

that taught us as a press court, right? We allowed it to become this because it became, frankly,

a great way to appease advertisers that news organizations were desperate to appease so that we could

keep our newsrooms afloat.

This week in history avoided, we have a lot to choose from. I mean, in the, you know,

we've the White House Correspondence Weekend. And I know there was another infamous White House

Correspondence dinner that I also attended, that Donald Trump also attended, that had a huge news

event, but we didn't know it was happening at the time it was happening. And of course,

it was the famous Ben Laden raid. That is actually something that happened this week, but it's not

the moment I am choosing to focus on and do is our history lesson of the week. Instead,

we're going to go back to the Cold War, to 1960. Did you figure out the clue, by the way,

that the incident was the inspiration for one of the most, for the names for one of the most famous

rock bands of my generation? Have you figured it out? Have you still haven't found what you're

looking for? But let me begin. Just months before this week in 1960, the Cold War looked like

something that could be managed in Moscow, vice president Richard Nixon and Soviet leader Nikita

Khrushchev stood in a model American kitchen arguing about appliances, about prosperity and about which

system worked better. It was a tense confrontation, but it was contained. It made the rivalry between

the two superpowers look like something you could stage, frankly. But within a year, that version of

the Cold War would start to fall apart. Not because of one crisis, but because peace by peace,

the story stopped holding. So it's May 1, 1960. President Dwight Eisenhower is preparing for a

summit with Khrushchev. There's cautious optimism. But beneath that diplomacy, the real Cold War

is still being fought in secret. You two spy planes flying deep over Soviet territory,

high enough to be considered untouchable. One of those planes is being flown by a pilot named

Francis Gary Powers. Fly across the Soviet Union, photograph military sites, return.

That was the mission. The assumption is simple. Even if detected, they can't stop you. You're just

too high in the sky. That was until May 1. Turns out, a Soviet missile reaches that altitude.

The plane is hit. Powers ejects. He survives, descending by parachute to Soviet territory.

And like many pilots on missions like this, he's actually carrying something else.

A coin with a concealed poison needle inside. A last resort. He doesn't use it.

Back in the United States, officials lose contact with the plane. They assume the pilot did not

survive. So the United States, through the CIA, decides to tell a story. It wasn't a spy mission.

It was a weather plane that drifted off course, plausible, deniable, the kind of story

governments tell themselves and tell the public all the time. But this time, the other side

knows exactly what happened. Kruschev has the wreckage and he has the pilot alive.

But he waits. He lets the United States tell the world its story. Repeat it.

Stand by it. And then he reveals the truth. Pilot is alive. He confesses. It was not a weather

plane. It was espionage. Well, the Eisenhower Kruschev summit collapses.

The real damage isn't diplomatic. It's credibility. Because the issue wasn't the

spine. Everyone assumed that each side was spying on the other. The issue was the story.

More so for the public, the United States told one and it didn't hold.

We're supposed to be the good guys, the truth tellers.

Well, once that happens, a different question starts to creep in. That wasn't true. What else is it?

And here's what's striking. Remember, this doesn't stop there. Within a year,

the United States backs an invasion of Cuba. A force of Cuban exiles lands at the Bay of Pigs,

expecting support, expecting momentum. And instead, it falls apart in less than four days.

Captured, defeated, exposed. And for the world watching, including Americans watching at home,

there's no ambiguity about what it was. It was not a spontaneous uprising. It was an American

backed operation that failed quickly and publicly. President John Kennedy goes on television and

takes responsibility. But by then, the image is already set. At the same time, the United States is

deepening its involvement in Vietnam, not all at once, but step by step. Advisors become

deployments, support becomes commitment, always described as limited, temporary, tell it isn't.

And let's not forget, this false story lands in a country that had just come out of the Arab

Joseph McCarthy, where Americans had already seen claims made with certainty and trust stretched

too thin to hold. So one incident can be dismissed. Two starts to raise doubts. By the third,

people aren't just questioning the event. They're questioning the explanation.

Sound familiar?

The early Cold War wasn't just a contest of power. It was also a test of credibility.

And in just a few years, a spy plane shut down. A failed invasion for a coup, perhaps.

A war explained one way, but experienced another.

The United States didn't just face pressure from abroad. They began to lose something at home.

Trust. By the way, this was all before Watergate. Sometimes the turning point in history isn't

something that happens. Isn't something isn't when something happens. It's when people stop

believing the version of it that they're being told. The trust deficit that we're all experiencing

right now with government, with institutions in general. Sometimes we forget. This began even further

than we realized. So there you go. Now do you know what you're looking for? Now do you get the clue I

was giving you out there? All right, let's take some questions. First one. I love this. Steve

Frank, Newport Beach, California, fellow member of the two first names club. Yes, you are.

But I bet you don't get called Frank Steve, right? Because Steve's not in the last night. It's like

with me. It's like I understand getting my last name confused for a first name, just like with you,

Steve. But where I struggle is like, wait a minute. You really think my last name's Chuck?

And just like you really think your last name is Steve, right? That's the

toys funny to me when they when people say, well, I'm not sure which name it is. Well,

which one's least likely to be a last name? But anyway, I'm guessing you have the same frustrations

at times that I do. But hey, I turned my head for Chuck or Todd at this point. I'm guessing you turn

your head at Steve or Frank at this point. All right. Here's your question. Huge fan going back

to the hotline days. And now I'm hearing there are Chuck Todd trading cards. Remember you mentioning

losing your quote, new music pipeline after your kids left for college. And I'm in a similar spot.

My daughter and I are even thinking about starting a podcast to bridge the gap across generations.

I love that idea. What advice would you give amateur podcasters trying to turn an idea into something

real, even if it's just for a small audience. Steve Frank, the number one thing is consistency.

You know, the biggest, you know, the reason why most podcasts fail is people get tired of doing

it after two episodes, four episodes, eight episodes. Stick to a schedule, stick to it. It is

one of those if you've ever heard of hockey, you know, the whole quote unquote hockey stick moment,

right? Well, the reason it's called a hockey stick moment because like in any sort of anything

you're building, sometimes it's a business, sometimes it's an audience, whatever it is,

it's like you, you know, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, and then boom, right?

It feels like it all happens at once. Look, I'll be honest, as I've been building this audience,

it was sort of like we were grinding, we were grinding, and we were grinding, and then suddenly we

about six months in, we had our first bite, right? And, you know, the key is consistency.

It is posting. Look, you've got to be platform agnostic. You've got to go everywhere.

You've got to, you know, when it comes to music, you've got to be in, you've got to sort of be

on top of the big moments in the that are happening so that you can, because unfortunately,

the way the algorithms work, right? You don't get, you don't get, you can have a great podcast,

but if you don't make it into the algorithm, people aren't going to see it, right? It isn't

going to get shared. So you've got to sort of ride trends when they exist, and try to be relevant

around them, right? Like a simple thing might be, you know, everybody's talking about us, you know,

maybe there's a certain new Taylor Swift album. So, you know, ride the Taylor Swift wave without

doing Taylor Swift, and, you know, you know, just do like, you know, it's like something adjacent so

that you can sort of make it into the algorithm and get some attention for what you're doing.

But that's really, and there's almost, there's different, frankly, there's just different ways

each one of them work. I mean, my guess is your, your daughter might be better at it,

at figuring out which algorithms work best for which audiences, etc. Look, the other challenge

you're going to have is music rights, right? So be sure to know your, know the limitations,

you know, YouTube will just not include, you know, you may post something, but if the music,

if they don't think you have the rights to the music, you know, all of a sudden you can get,

so it could cost you traffic. So you do have a little bit of an extra challenge on the licensing

issue. So know your fair use rules very well. You know, you could do what my friend Tony Cornheiser

does, which is he only plays music, people send in and get permission from the owner of the

license to Arrett, and they're very, you know, they're very, they make sure they have permission

in writing. You know, they're still waiting for Paul McCartney to give them permission, right?

Is the joke. So you are going to need to know some of those rules. I mean, it is what makes

music podcasts, I think, quite difficult because of the licensing issues, right? Because in order to

showcase music and to share music, you want to play a clip, right? So, you know, be learning what

your clips are, or, you know, things like that. But then, but again, I go back to the single,

most important thing is consistency of production. You know, if you're going to be twice a week,

always be twice a week, always be at the same time and be consistent, right? The minute you start

being an inconsistent updater of your podcast, you will not build an audience, people will forget,

you'll stop being in their feeds, et cetera. So it is the number one, it doesn't matter what

topic you're doing, consistency in a schedule. And frankly, once a week is probably not

enough if you want to grow, grow an audience long, long term. But if you're going to do it once

a week, realize it may take upwards of a year for you to feel, you know, so be sure you enjoy

doing it for yourself, regardless, and just be consistent. That's the consistent about updating.

That matters more than anything. Good luck. Let me know when you get it up and running.

We'll promote it. All right. Next question comes from Patrick and LA and he says,

hey, Chuck, let's say, quote, asking for a friend on this one. How does a nation apologize to the world?

Well, what you do is you don't go about just, I would, I think this is going to be a really

tougher for the next president than you realize.

What I think you have to do is just other countries are not going to just take our word.

It doesn't matter how much they like the next president. So it isn't going to be a matter of

apologizing. It is making agreements and making America's word verified, not just trusted,

but verified, right? It means putting pen to paper. It means getting congressional authority

when you need congressional authority. It means sort of following the rule of law as you're going

about. I don't, if we just go around saying sorry for the behavior of our last president,

frankly, I think that all that does is divide us more, right? We need our next president to not

divide us. And you know, you may disagree. Look, there were some tactics that I disagreed with

my predecessor and how he went about it. But he had the best, he had the best interest of the

United States. In mind, I just disagree with how he went about doing it. And I think he inadvertently

alienated allies, right? That is how I would sort of dispassionately say it.

And I know you're going to have a hard time trusting us. So here's what I pledged to you. When we

signed this agreement on tariffs, it's putting here, I'm taking it to Congress. I'm essentially,

I'm, it's like, I'm getting a notarized. I'm getting it. It's a version of that, right? We don't

notarize, but you get my point, right? It is, it is not just, I don't think it's just, I'm sorry,

it's behavioral changes. And it is verifying the trust that we're asking for.

Right? We've, you know, the famous phrase, trust but verify. We're going to, we're going to,

we're not just taking the word of the Soviets. We're going to create a system where we can verify

that they're keeping that word. And I think unfortunately, America's next president is going to

have to create a verification process for our allies to know that we're going to keep our word.

Because that's the thing that we've got to fix. Yes, apologizing might, might be politically

feel good for your political base. But I actually think going about it as, as a straight-up apology

to her is probably self-defeated. Nick from Michigan writes, hey, I've been reading that Republicans

are openly hoping that Alito will retire from the civilian court and hopes it will juice turn out

from Republican voters in the midterms. What do you think? Go to Supreme Court vacancy meaningfully

increased positive outcomes for the GOP, the cycle. Well, the answer to that is it could, but this

is why you have some Republicans wanting this now because 2018, which was overall a pretty big

Democratic year, particularly in the House, Democrats actually lost two senators. And it was

Missouri and Indiana. Now they were two tough Senate seats to hold, two incumbents who were

sort of kind of accidental winners the previous time, right? Claire McCaskill, one thanks to Todd

Aiken, legitimate rape comments, and Joe Donnelly won because Dick Luger lost the primary,

Joe guy named Murdoch, and was just considered to outside the mainstream for Indiana.

So the next reelection was always going to be hard, right? They sort of were accidental winners

in 2012 a little bit, and it was no doubt they were uphill battles. And then the Kavanaugh

confirmation turned raw, personal, partisan, polarizing, and Indiana and Missouri are

redder states and it fired up a base. Claire McCaskill believes, but for the Kavanaugh hearings,

if there's no Supreme Court vacancy, there's just no debate about a Supreme Court.

The Republican base stays demoralized and she might have been able to eat it out. That's what she

believes. It certainly made it harder for Democrats in red leaning areas where the base was fired

up about Kavanaugh. So that's what this is about. And so it means, you know, I might argue if,

you know, is it, this is where what's good politics might not be good politics, right?

So take, you know, the left's going to want to oppose whatever nominee Trump makes to the court

on ideological grounds, and there may be a good case to make it if you're on the left.

The question is, are you getting anywhere with it? This is a conservative,

Republican conservative, right? Alito has not exactly been a mainstream justice. He's sort of been

on the, he is, I think, in the majority, he's not in the majority as often as your barracks,

as your Roberts, as your Kavanaugh's, as your Kagan's, as you all learn from a terrific

conversation and book from Sarah Esker. And so I probably, so I unders, so what you're seeing

as Republican, hoping to replicate what happened and thinking that all they, they just want to save

this Senate. And when you look at what would be seat three or four or five for the Democrats and

their pickups, you're looking at red leaning Ohio, red leaning Iowa, red leaning Alaska, right?

This, this worked in the red leaning states. It didn't work in swing areas or blue leaning areas,

the Kavanaugh outrage, but it did work in the red leaning battlegrounds. And when you look at

the battle for the Senate in particular for Democrats, they have to basically win in red leaning

areas, Ohio, Iowa, Alaska, Nebraska, right? Those four Montana, those five, all red leaning.

And so what the average Republican strategist is, hey, if we can have recreate the political

environment in October of 18 in October of 26, where the right feels marginalized and outraged,

and by whoever the Supreme Court nominee is, that that could save the Senate. So I'm skeptical,

this can work a second time, but I understand, but I'm trying to explain why they think this.

And that's what they're pointing to. And it did work for, it did work for Republicans in 18.

Next question comes from Jeremy. He goes, hey, love the podcast and appreciate the space you

create for political deep dives. I'm currently living in Japan, but spends much of my adult life in

Florida and grew up in Missouri. I'm curious that Democrats can regain a foothold in Missouri,

which has shifted from a swing state to reliably red, even as voters support progressive politics

like marijuana legalization, higher wages and abortion rights, where's the disconnect?

Is it branding messaging or something deeper? And is the Missouri Democratic Party even trying

to make the state competitive again? Thanks, Jeremy. So I would answer the last question first.

I don't think the Missouri Democratic Party is even trying anymore. And I say that I'm being

a little probably snarky about it, but it does feel like a bit of a give up. Now part of it is

the suburban swing voter in Kansas City now lives in across the state lines in Kansas.

And I have a feeling that if you're blue leaning suburban nine in St. Louis, you might be on the

Illinois side of things now, rather than in the Missouri side of things. So whether it's on

abortion rights, if that's something you're going to live across the river, whether it's whether

you're in Kansas, whether you're in Illinois, right? Both of both states that have codified.

So there's a small part of me that wonders if it's become self-selecting over time, right? I

take, you know, I've been saying that Missouri and Kansas have essentially switching places,

right? Missouri was a swing state that kind of had some some rural conservative vote, right?

Kansas was the, you know, home-about-doll, right? Mr. Republican. And what you've seen in the 21st

century is that Missouri has become more like a southern, you know, it has, it has arguably,

it looks more like a Arkansas or an Alabama in its rural areas than it does like a Kansas and Iowa

or in Illinois. And I just think that you've seen as sort of Missouri was a midwestern state in the

20th, culturally midwestern in the 20th century. It is now culturally southern, I think, in the 21st

century. And then you've seen, like I said, the biggest thing is the shrinkage of St. Louis in

general, right? And this is what I think if you're really wanting to understand how, you know,

essentially St. Louis being gutted as a major city. When I say gutted, right? They've had a lot of

industries that just sort of disappeared. You go to downtown St. Louis and it just feels like a

shell of its former self. You know, this was a place that was a hub. It was a headquarters for a

major airline, TWA. Anisor Bush is really only symbolically headquartered in St. Louis anymore,

right? As in Bev, it's this huge international operation. I think the CEO is actually in New York

these days, not in St. Louis. Again, they have the symbolic headquarters of Anisor Bush in St. Louis,

but it is, it is, it is, it is, it is literally a shell of its former self. So,

you know, there's a time St. Louis as a city was, you know, closer to being Chicago and Dallas

than it was being Wichita or an Omaha. And I don't say that as nox. It's just shrunk.

It shrunk in relevance. And then of course, you know, it's, it's, it had some international,

it had magnets that attracted new people into it and attract it. So as that disappeared,

you almost had almost like a contraction, certainly of St. Louis in the St. Louis metro area.

So that, that's kind of what I chalk it up to, like a long term, that this has just been a long

term that the, the, the sort of demagerifying of St. Louis as a major city. And I kind of think

St. Louis needs a revival plan the way Detroit got one, right? And, um, you know, I remember when,

I think I've said this before, I remember when the Amazon eight was, was doing a, a country wide

search for a new place for headquarters. I was really pulling for St. Louis. I've family there,

very familiar with it from a previous previous iteration of my life.

Um, and it's a, it's, it, it, I actually think it's a, it's a terrific place to put a headquarters

in the central part of the country that has an easy to get to airport. You know, it should be

easier to get around than, than a Chicago or even a Dallas. But both Chicago and Dallas have just

sort of there, they're, they're the central, they're the central tent poles in, in the middle of

the country now for regional stuff or gatherings and things like this and St. Louis is just sort

of giving up that. And I just think that that, you know, the sort of the downsizing of St. Louis

in general for a variety of reasons why it has, um, has been a, it's probably as big of a contributor

to moving Missouri out of the battleground as, as anything else. So if I were in charge of the

national party for the Democrats, I'd actually be, you know, you certainly,

I think the, you know, I would be go, go, go, go solve your St. Louis problem first, then

start worrying about the rest of the state. And instead, go, I think Kansas is ready to be a swing

state. That's where I'd be in the state.

Next question comes from Adam B in Charlestown, West Virginia. He says, hey, big fan here. Seeing

a recent interview with former presidents made me reflect on how despite political differences,

many still feel a level of respect for past leaders. Do you think Donald Trump will continue

to provoke strong polarized reactions, long after his presidency or will time soften those

divisions? And if not, is that more about his leadership style or the modern media environment?

Thanks for everything you do. Adam B. Look, I'm inclined to believe it's his leadership.

So you know, it like anything, you get out of something, what you put into it, right? If you,

if you lead with division, you're going to get division as a response. If you try to lead

with a sense of unity, even if people don't agree with your definition of what unity looks like,

you're going to be received at least net positively as someone who who wanted to bring people

together, right? You know, I was thinking about this when I was putting together that opening

monologue about sort of how Donald Trump has handled divisive times versus say how George W. Bush

did. George W. Bush made sure right after 9-11 to make it clear to the Muslim world we were

not at war with them. And that people shouldn't be taking out their anger on, um, members of that

faith went out of his way to do that after 9-11. Do you think this president would have done that?

So my point is, is that I think that what you're experiencing is, you know, and I think you

can feel it in the in the genuine affection that many Americans have for George W. Bush who probably

didn't vote for him at the second time, perhaps or don't want to or didn't vote for him the first time

or maybe didn't vote for him at all. Because you cannot say he didn't care about the country and

he didn't care about people. You may have disagreed with his tactics. You may have disagreed with his

policies, which you got a sense that he genuinely cared about the country and he genuinely cared

about everybody, even people that he disagreed with. You know, Donald Trump wants to deport people

that disagree with him. He's openly talked about it. Um, so, you know, if you, you get back

what you put into it. And to answer your question, will Donald Trump continue to provoke strong

polarized reactions long after his presidency or will time soften those divisions? It's up to him

to soften the divisions. It's not up to the rest of us. It's up to him.

Steve in Orange County, long time first time, as a recovering polysignor, your commentaries

bring back fond memories of lectures from my favorite political science professors in college

decades ago. That can I just stop right there? Steve, that is the single best compliment you can,

that's, that's, that's, I am tinyly hoping. I just want to be, I want to make it fun and interesting.

So thank you. During one of your recent podcasts, you said the writing is on the wall that Trump

has laid in lame dark territories and Trump almost certainly will not go quietly into the night,

like most of his predecessors, how likely is it that there will be a bigger faction of Republicans

willing to push back against him without going the way of Jeff Flake Ben Sassert,

someone's besides Rand Paul at least, thanks. Well, I think, you know, as you see, it sort of,

it starts incrementally. If Thomas Massey survives his primary, I think that's another step and

you'll see more, one of these things is nobody wants to be first, but as, as, as more Republican survive

the wrath of Trump, then, you know, so Tom Tillis's protest worked. It got Trump and the Justice

Department to back down on their Trump-up charges against Powell, right? As more Republicans see certain

things work and the pushback works, then more will get comfortable doing it. So I think it's one of

those things. This is why, just politically, if you're Donald Trump, you care so much about this

Thomas Massey primary, more, really more than anything else because he has put this guy on blast

for almost a year now. And if he can't take him out, and as Republican of an area as you can

find in Kentucky, in, in theory, a mega area, that will stiffen the spine of a lot of Republicans

who maybe are quiet right now, but would like to push back. So it's one of those things that

every, every little incremental pushback of the president, every stumble, every special election

loss only increases the courage of those who realize they're the ones left holding the bag

and the bill, and they'll, they'll start to get a little and little, a little more each time.

It's, I don't, don't ever expect this to look like a rush and a flip and a sea change.

It will be one of those things more like the hockey stick where all of a sudden you're like,

holy cow, third of the party's now voting against them really regularly. Now that might not happen

until the summer of 28. But you're starting, I do believe that it's sort of we're in the stages.

And it's one of those things with, it's like, you know, we never, we always know when, when

recessions begin, but not until after the fact. It's kind of with lame duck status. You know,

is it right now? Has it already begun? Did it, you know, did it begin with the, you know, with the

25 election, you know, we'll, we'll, we'll post date this at some point. But we're in the,

we're definitely in the, in the landing zone of lame duck, of lame duckness.

Um, take one more question. It's a number seven here. Uh, Nasa, then we will save eight and nine.

For the next episode. Um, Andy Y from, um, Miliwake writes, you mentioned recently that Trump

may be setting Vance up to fail and it made me wonder if Vance sees that too. Could he be positioning

himself to benefit it from it long term? Is there a scenario where he distances himself at the

right moment to capture voters who were aligned with Trump's agenda, but fatigued by him personally,

or are there risks of staying tied to Trump too high for that to be a viable strategy?

Best Andy Y from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Well, I, we actually, the question would be, have

we had a, but has Trump had a vice president who tried to do this? The answer is yes, right?

I was thinking about Pence, the whole time that you were asking this question.

And I know what Pence thought to himself, starting in 20 January of 2021 and frankly,

thought all the way through when he started running for president in January of 2023,

that there was a scenario where he would distance himself at the right moment, January six,

that he could capture voters who were aligned with Trump's agenda, that he was, you know,

that he agreed with what Trump was trying to do. He just didn't like what he was doing.

And they were tired of him personally. That was Pence's theory of the case. It is still

Pence's theory of the case. I think long term, like I think he really is playing a long game.

He's trying to start an alternative to heritage that he wants to be the guy. If they're,

if this version of the conservative movement collapses and there's a lot of evidence that Trump's

movement will collapse at some point, Pence wants to be the guy organizing the next conservative

movement or sort of a revitalized version of it. So, but I ask you, I'll flip it to you.

Is that, you know, if that's a long game, you know, is, can both these guys be playing the long

game like this, right? Or I am more inclined to believe that the stain of Trump is too hard to get

rid of. And then it is too difficult to try to be, to try to be a half measure version of it.

We're going to find out, right? I think you're going to have a variety of candidates who say that

they're, you know, they're the real mega movement. And, you know, I think I think that's how Rand

Paul might position himself. And I think Pence's going to position himself as more of a traditional

conservative who's, who's also morally upstanding. You know, I think it's Vance that is,

you know, Vance has never really been a part of any, any, any political, you know, he's never

really had success being his own, having his own political identity, right? His entire political

identity was rescued by Donald Trump with that endorsement in the Senate primary in 2022. So

Pence had a political identity before Donald Trump, right? In fact, Donald Trump needed a mic

Pence. Donald Trump didn't need a JD Vance, just the opposite, right? Vance needed Trump. So

that's why I've skeptical that there's any sort of, you know, Rubio is more likely to have the

ability, because again, he had a political identity pre-truck. Vance didn't really have a sustainable

pull, right? Not, you know, once he started running for office, he tried, he tried to do it with his

own political identity and couldn't. And instead, just sort of, if my most cynical version of it,

Peter Teal bought the Trump endorsement for Vance, hardstop, right? In some form or another. And

here we are. And that's why I'm pretty skeptical on that. All right, a few draft reactions.

Number one, I'm really happy for Carson Beck. It's pretty cool that he's QB3. Look, he

understood he has been in two different offices. And I think that that just helps you transition

better. So I do think he'll transition. Well, he does well in the scripted portion, you know,

he struggles a little bit when, when offensive line protection falls behind and we'll see, I mean,

he was behind arguably one of the best offensive lines in the history of the University of Miami.

He's not going to have that right away at Arizona. But he's going to get a chance. I mean,

I'm guessing he'll be the starter by somewhere in the, you know, barring injury or something like

that or just a total inability to get the playbook, which I just find unlikely. You know, he's

going to get a real chance. And you just, you don't know if you're going to get a situation where

you get some just happy he's going to get a chance to Arizona. We know it's uphill. You know,

that's a franchise that just never seems to get out of its own way, right? But how get have

Trey McBride to throw for that three. That's pretty good. He's got Marvin Harrison there. He's got

Jeremiah Love. I mean, there's some interesting tools there. I mean, he's, so I'm happy for him.

That's exciting. I'm trying to remember the last time the University of Miami had two starting

quarterbacks simultaneously. And they got a felons that think we have to go back to the Vitty

Bernie era for that. So that's, that would be, that would be fun. Look, you got to say,

you got to give the Packers credit what they told the press before the draft is what they did.

They said they needed work on cornerback. First pick was a quarterback with a C, by the way,

corner and that quarter. A little bit of a project out of South Carolina, but huge athletic upside.

But frankly, this is what the Packers do, right? They loved draft guys like that are just,

you know, have all this athletic ability, but, you know, need a refinement here or refine it there.

Their believers in their system. And frankly, it usually works out pretty well. I mean, you know,

I would put the Packers up against anybody in their record of particularly, just feel like they

kill it, frequently kill it in the second round. First round, they can be all over the map.

So needless to say, I liked our first round pick this year because it was Michael Parsons.

We traded it away as part of that trade. So I liked that. One other note that I think is

interesting about the draft that tell it, you know, so there's been all this stuff about NIL and

how the last three rounds of the draft, there was just, you know, the talent fell off a cliff because

those tweener players, those players that had some upside, they now stay in college an extra year,

they get refined and then they end up being drafted in one of the first three rounds, right? So

you have this, what you have right now is you have,

is you have the first, you know, I think the first

70 players off the board, all now, if, you know, they've all played quite a few snaps,

there's a few exceptions, Tyson Simpson's an exception. But they've all played

a lot of college ball, right? Where there's fewer that are coming out early for the money because

you're actually better off staying getting the money, right? I mean, David Bailey is as good of

an example as anybody, right? He's a guy that contemplated going to Harvard, decides to go to

Stanford, gets his degree early, then ends up playing one year in Texas Tech, and then becomes the

number two overall pick, right? Kim Ward is another one, right? From last year, for an

amendment knows as another one, right? He could have after graduating Cal left early and then

would have been a third or a fourth round pick. So you've done all this, here's something else

that I noticed, right? The top ten picks, first pick was in the playoff, second pick was in the

playoff, third pick was Notre Dame should have been in the playoff, fourth pick was in the playoff,

fifth pick was in the playoff, sixth pick was LSU, not in the playoff, seventh pick was in the playoff,

eighth pick was not in the playoff, neither was the ninth pick, but the tenth pick was, right?

You start to go through here, and the first round is just essentially the entire top ten,

Indiana, Texas Tech, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Miami, Alabama, Oregon, Georgia, Texas A&M,

and then you look at the schools that weren't in the top ten that had players, LSU projected to be

there, Arizona State a playoff team the year before, Utah projected to be a contender for their

Penn State was supposed to be there, Clemson was supposed to be there, Florida was supposed to be

better than they were, USC was supposed to be there, you know? So it is, I think what you're seeing

is just what NIL is doing, which is it you're going to have more prepared for more first rounders

are going to be starters in the NFL than ever before, more second rounders and more third rounders.

Then you're going to have this just sort of a lot more experimental picks. This is where I think

over the next couple of years, you'll start to see more of the foreign academies get into the

fourth, fifth and sixth round, where instead of drafting somebody who didn't get noticed by the

powerful conferences and paid NIL money to come join them, you know, taking a flyer on somebody

at North Dakota State, they'd rather take a flyer and somebody that went through the Australia

Academy or went through the Canada Academy, went through Canadian high school or I just think you're

going to see more of more that more diverse because ultimately, you know, they want they want

these picks to matter and you may see also more teams trade away these fifth six and seventh round

picks and they start to seem less valuable more experimental. But look, everything is we're still

only two or three years into like this feels like the first draft of the more mature NIL era

and it's why I think the last part of the draft really is filled with guys that are probably not

going to make the team where before you still thought you were drafting special teams guys in the

sixth and seventh round and I think it's just less likely, less likely, you're going to have that.

All right, the next time I see you, how many NBA first round matchups will be over? Will it be done

will it be done in Houston? That's the big question I have, right? You will next here for me,

we will tape I will tape on Tuesday, you will next here from the air, how many series will be

officially over? By the time I drop on one team morning, one, two or three, I'm going to guess just

I'm going to guess two, I want to go with two, but we shall see. All right, with that, I've gone

quite a bit. Obviously, I had a lot to say about the weekend's incidents. I heard from a lot of you

appreciate it, don't worry about me. I know, we know, I do know, I'd like to think I know how to keep

my head on a swivel and I sort of look at all of these events with the eyes wide open,

but we all need to be vigilant out there a little bit number one and number two,

we all need to do our part to de-escalate, de-polarize. Our institutions, our geared towards polarization,

the algorithms are geared towards polarization, we as voters have to find less polarizing people

and be putting them in leadership positions. You know, we need to fix some of the systems,

right? We got to get rid of partisan primaries, no doubt about it. That's a massive contributor to this.

But the partisan leadership, right, partisan primaries give us more partisan leadership,

and of course, we have a president who is intentionally divisive and all of that trickles down.

So, we all have some work to do, but it starts with demanding better,

more moderate and temperament. Moderate does not mean some sort of uncomfortable compromise

between the left and right. Moderate means, for me, temperament matters more temperamenting

character, matter more in making a president than ideology or policy position.

And with that, I'll see you in 48 hours.