The Chris Cuomo Project - Can You Stay In The Middle In The Trump Era?

Episode Date: September 24, 2026

If your business generates $25,000 in monthly revenue and needs fast access to working capital, Delta Capital Group can get you funded in as little as 48 hours. Visit https://dub.sh/delta-business-capital-chris-cuomo to apply now to see how much you qualify for Joshua Doss (political strategist, pollster, and content creator) joins Chris Cuomo to break down why Donald Trump remains so effective at commanding attention, how outrage and social media are reshaping American politics, and what voters actually want from their leaders. Doss and Cuomo examine Trump’s connection with working-class voters, the incentives driving political media, and whether online debates are persuading anyone or simply feeding the algorithm.  Doss also challenges Cuomo on his anti-partisan approach, his decision in the 2024 election, and whether it’s possible to stay in the political middle in the Trump era. Join The Chris Cuomo Project on YouTube for ad-free episodes, early releases, exclusive access to Chris, and more: https://www.youtube.com/@chriscuomo/join Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday: https://linktr.ee/cuomoproject Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We all know what's wrong. What's going to make something better? I have something, or more importantly, I have someone who is absolutely part of getting us to a better place. And if you don't know him, you're going to love him and you should, even though he's probably going to take me to task, but he'll be right about that too. I'm Chris Cuomo. Welcome to Chris Cuomo Project. If you're a critical thinker, you've got to be open to different opinions and you've got to be different in terms of being open to criticism about your ideas, your beliefs, and yourself, okay? Joshua Doss. Do you know him? Look him up. Look up his site. Put it in right now.

Put it in while we're talking. Okay. Joshua Doss is a smart, you'll find him under DOS discourse. Now, his background is as a tech. He's a data. He's a pollster. He's an analyst, but he is not boring. Okay. It is mixed with an intellectual and a emotional alchemy of here's how I see things, and not simply as a black man in America, but as a black man in America who's super intelligent, who knows polling, who understands our history, who knows what wins elections, who sees what's happening with Trump.

And in fact, I'll be honest with you, saw what was happening now with Trump before even I did. And not that I didn't know what Trump was, but I never thought it was going to get this bad. Oh, shame on you. Yes, shame on me. But that's why we have Joshua Dawes around us. And I want you to hear him now,

understand why his platforms are growing so robustly, why he's so sought after by so many. He will call it, I just have regular thoughts. But how does he define that and what does it really mean? Check it out for yourself, Joshua Dawes. Joshua Doss, one of my favorites. I think a young, thought leader, part of the next, but also the now. Introduce yourself to the audience, your handsome bastard, and why you decided to get involved in the maelstrom.

Hey, everybody. I am Joshua Doss. I am a poster political consultant originally from Chicago. Why did I get involved in the first place? I don't know. I mean, I think same stories everybody else I looked around and was like, you know, I think that the things that are being discussed here

from a political standpoint when I was in college were really important. I was like, if I'm going to put my time and energy into something, it's going to be understanding what's going on around me from a data standpoint. So, yeah. Tell them a little bit about what motivated your interest to be in politics. You could do anything. Yeah.

I think, you know, originally I had like political aspirations, which is laughable now, because I would never, ever, ever run for anything. But, you know, I grew up in Chicago when Barack Obama was our senator, he started in the state Senate and then went up to, you know, Washington. And I was just deeply inspired by how he communicated. I didn't know much of what he was talking about. I'm from the west side of Chicago. I just thought he was really cool and interesting. And then as I got older, I started to kind of just admire not just that he had the charisma and that he was suave, but that he was doing it to help people in communities that look like mine.

So, yeah, when I went to college, I was like, I want to do something like what Barack Obama is doing with his time, and he was a big motivation for me. Are you surprised by your success? I mean, it depends on what you're considering success to be. You are known. The algorithms like you, other thinkers, is the only thing that you haven't gotten yet in a big way is you're not a hate target yet.

You know what I mean? You don't have people who disagree with you trying to kill you. It's coming. Literally and figuratively. It'll come. Don't worry. You'll get there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm ready for when it comes to. I know I can't stay on the good side for long. Yeah, I mean, I guess to certain extent, I am surprised. I mean, I didn't grow up in a political household. I didn't grow up in a, you know, a household that was really. discussing these issues. So I play college basketball. I was mostly focused on sports, all the way I'd say until like my junior year of college. And, uh, you know, when I really started trying to take, uh, my polyside classes seriously, people were not shy to tell me that I was

behind the ball, that there were really fundamental things that I didn't understand and that I had never done student government. I'd never done debate. And so yeah, I didn't, you know, I didn't think I was going to be able to have success, at least within the first couple of years out of college. But I think it's gone well for me. And I think it's probably because, you know, I got a little lucky. Our politics right now are just kind of craving people who have regular thoughts and aren't, you know, necessarily the most polished. So I think I kind of fell into that.

Help me understand what you mean by that and what you think, uh, your space is. And we'll ignore the fact that you couldn't go left and you didn't like playing defense. Who couldn't go left? Just saying. Just saying. No. You insult somebody's game. They always get upset. I could have attacked anything he has said before.

Not that way. I was going to let. I was about to pull up some YouTube videos. You see how big his eyes got? Wow. All right. I'm glad we're not in the same room. So what do you think your space is what you call regular thoughts?

Yeah. I think, you know, I remember being in college and people being like, you got to go to law school. You got to get a JD. You have to be able to, you know, I started off talking about Barack Obama. You know, he went to Harvard law. These are the type of things you have to do. The barriers of entry are that are high from an academic standpoint, like a traditional

academic standpoint. And, you know, I think that what politics was missing and probably still is missing. And for that matter, President Trump has done a good job of penetrating this is finding people who can communicate sometimes really complex things in really. simple manners, right? President Trump took a very complex issue with the ways in which the economy was changing to not value manufacturing brought anymore, but moving to information age technology and all of these other places and the angst and the anxiety that working class people felt from that and really just told a quick story that was like, oh, it's the Mexicans, it's the Muslim,

that's the reason for your pain. And whether folks on the left loved it or hated, and we know they hate it, it was a simple story. It was a, it was a story that a lot of people could understand, and it ignited a lot of people to get involved with politics. And so that ability to take a complex thought and make it, make it really simple and be able to communicate with an everyday person is something I think our politics was missing. And so me as a person who came in kind of late, I feel like I was not drenched in D.C. speak and was able to kind of just communicate with folks that I like grew up around, you know. So when you look at at the state of play. What do you think is going on? Um, I mean, the, the polling is is overwhelmingly

in, in the favor for the, for Democrats. You believe it? I do. I mean, look, midterm elections are always referendums on the sitting president. Um, we have data to kind of show. Presidents usually lose some around 20, 20 to 30 seats if their approval ratings are below 50. We haven't had a president with a approved rating above 50 going into midterm for a long time. And, you know, President Trump has kind of reneged on a lot of his promises. Really in a bold manner, too. Like, he hasn't even hidden from the, he said no new wars and then it was like, we're going to war. He believes in strong and wrong.

Strong and wrong, you know, I like that. I mean, that is his thing. So what do you think is winning right now? And then I want to get a little bit deeper into polling because you understand. the in quotes science of it and you have a different, you have good understanding and explanations for why it's been off, more often than not lately. But in terms of what you see winning,

what do you think is moving the needle right now for people? Yeah. I mean, I think it is, you know, I hate to simplify it this way, but it has been President Trump's performance over the last two years. I mean, he is such a big character. he has such a massive personality and he color like he we watched a single person like usurp a major political party in the in the matter of eight years right like the the republican party was like he was like a joke you know and now he is the entire party and that comes with you know some advantages

for him when it when you know he's running for office but it comes with some disadvantages for everybody who's associated with him uh because his performance because becomes what they associate with the entire party's performance. And that's like that's typically true in our politics in America in general, but it's like even more true when President Trump will take credit for every win and will dish every loss onto someone that is not him, right? And so I really, to answer your question, I really think right now what is winning is just how frustrated people are with the economy, with affordability,

two things he communicated on a lot when he ran. and they're either the Republicans are either not going to vote or independent voters are going to, you know, take a little step over the fence. How do you deal with the distractions? Like, for instance, this was the best, I've said this multiple times, but I, you know, facts change, feelings change. This is his best distraction. Banning CNN, banning MS. This was a great distraction because his people hate the media, right? I mean, pretty much everybody hates the media.

I mean, that's never, that's not new. But it is a distraction that's worth taking the bait on because he's trying to distract from affordability, right? He's got his guys out there, really borderline lying about the economy, economy. Besson and Hassett, with borderline lying about inflation and what interest rates mean and why Warsh is doing what he's doing. This is a good distraction. How do you deal with the distractions off of what you just,

said, hey, people's main frustration, real people, regular think is my wallet, the affordability thing is crushing me. Why aren't you doing anything about it? How do you negotiate the space of, oh, but this? Oh, but you see what he just said? What he just did? How do you negotiate it? Because that's what works with the algorithm. Yeah, I think, I think in any other case, it's actually really difficult to deal with the distractions. And President Trump is so good at creating distractions. Like he's a master of attention. Like he understands,

I always say I think that he is maybe one of the best communicators and maybe understands attention better than any president we've ever seen. And I think in any other case, it's really difficult to deal with the distractions. But, you know, when people just have to get gas, like when people have to buy groceries,

this is one that is you almost can't distract from. He distracted us from Epstein. When was the last time? I mean, I watched your show. Like, when was the last time we talked about Epstein? Right? Long time. It's been a while.

You know, I catch myself doing this all the time. Mm-hmm. Where I'll be like, someone said the other day, Nolan Wells. And I could feel people saying, who? Yeah. You know, I mean, we're like goldfish. You know what I mean? We've got like no memory passed.

like five minutes, and he takes great advantage of that. Do you think it's talent, or do you think it's part talent, part dispositional with him? That this is, you know, people like to be psychologist with him. That's not my thing. But I wonder how much of it is by design and how much of it is by instinct. Because I got to tell you, he's been doing this the entire time I've known him, and I've known him since I was about 14. I want to know more about that. I'm curious to to why you don't think, and this is not me trying to, like, come at you. I'm curious as to why you don't think it's psychological. Oh, no, you can come at me.

I said the thing about you having no left hand. You know, that's okay. No, truly, because, I mean, as a person like you know him, I do think it's like a lot. Like, I think it's talent. Like, I really do think it's talent. Like, he is deeply anthropological, no? You don't, you don't, I mean, the way that he, I, I don't think that a person that is not talented and does not have an astute. read on human behavior would be able to do this to a major political party, no?

I think that my answer is yes, you could do this without the profound talent that you're designating as essential. I don't think it's essential. I think that he has great instincts for the cell. I think he has great salesmanship. And he always has. and that works really well in politics, and it matters more because perception often beats reality in politics. So it doesn't matter that he doesn't know.

He's very common in that way, is that his opinions greatly outpace his understanding. Yeah. And, you know, like Van Jones, once, oh, he's got a genius. I don't see the genius. I think he's very good at salesmanship. He always has been. And in politics, he has. And some will say Roy Cohn taught him, I don't know.

I don't know. He is one of the few men I've ever seen connect with a group he has nothing in common with and has spent no time with. You know, it's like one thing. When you're around, which you have been, I'm sure, you're around white guys who play ball. They get an organic understanding of black culture that most white people won't have. And you wind up eating each other's houses and dating it.

You know, you wind up having these intimacies and these. these bonds that most don't have. He was able to connect with people that he has none of those bonds with. He used to not even shake their hands. Yeah. That's impressive. That's impressive. Yeah.

I mean, I think the common thread was like it was, it was a time period where he was able to exploit a really, really available amount of anxiety and angst that was coming from the failures. of our American political systems as it pertained to working class people, right? And so the thing he connected with, I think, was a little bit of racism, a lot of anger towards our enemies.

Or I'll say this. I think he came with the story about you should be angry towards your enemy. But I think Americans were looking for somewhere to put their anger for why it felt like our economies were leaving them. behind. As I said earlier, as we moved from manufacturing bronze to information age technology to, you know, now we're integrating AI. Government's jobs are to buffer the American people from one stage of economic development to another. And we just weren't doing a good job of that. And people were getting left behind. And he came in with a really good story and a place for them to put that anxiety. But I do see that as like, him growing up as a rich man, being able to do that with his

suit on. Like he didn't, he didn't pretend to be like, he didn't roll up to sleeves or any of that. That's like, I, I'm deeply impressed by his ability to do that. I think it was disgusting, but I also would love to study it. I'll tell you, you know what I was fortunate to correct. Okay. So I got to tell you, it's a little bit less forgivable for me to have not seen this coming because I, I know him. I've been around him. So I'm covering the rallies back 2015. And I'm like, what the fuck?

Why are these people gobbling this up? They cannot believe that he... And then I realized, wait a minute, they don't know him the way I do. He's a TV star. He is believed to be a charismatic billionaire who has always figured out how to win. That's how they see him.

And in America, our celebrities are the closest thing to royalty. And I slept on that. I also woke up to it a little bit sooner than other people did, which was why I won a lot of $1-dollar bets about him ruining the presidency. But because, you know, you can't beat a movement. You can't beat a movement. My brother just learned that in the mayoral.

You can't beat a movement. A movement will beat you. It doesn't matter if you have the money. It doesn't matter what other boxes you check. A movement will beat you. And in that is the beauty and the romanticism. of we the people. Okay, it can also be frustrating if the movement is motivating the wrong thing, but that's how it goes. And that's how it went here, where people wound up voting against their

own interests. But when I woke up to that, it explained a lot to me. When people are like, I don't, how do they not see this bullshit? How do they not understand? He's a huge celebrity. He's a billionaire that reads in certain things to regular people. They think you're special. And once I understood that about him and that people weren't judging him as a joke and a dilettante and a poser, which is how he was always seen in New York City. Really?

He was always seen as like the jester. You know what he mean? Like the commercial real estate guys, nobody took him seriously. That's why he has animus towards them. You know what's interesting about that is I don't mean this cheaply when I say this. I actually mean this like from a historical standpoint.

Hitler was also seen as a joke. Like, people don't talk about that. Like, Hitler, for many, many years, the intelligentsia saw Hitler as, like, a buffoon. And some of even, like, the political cartoons mirrored, like, how silly they thought he was. And, but his impact was seeding psychologically among that same level of angst and vitriol that was happening in that part of the world during that time period. I think another thing, too, and this is, like, we're way off the path here. But like, I think another thing, too, is I do think that the Republican Party, which is like disproportionately more Christian, more evangelical Christian than the Democratic left, was also primed for pretty well for cult-like devotion. because so much of the ways in which evangelical Christians go about their, you know,

dealings with people in the world is needing a very charismatic leader, right? You see these, like, massive pastors and they're just, like, great speakers. Sometimes they're not even really saying anything, but they connect with emotions really well. And I think that there is something really evangelical while Donald Trump. Like, when he speaks, you can see people. him connecting with a lot of working class people in ways that no politician even attempted to connect with. And I think that that was like, I think the timing was really perfect for somebody like President Trump in 2015 and 14. How much damage? I can't. I, thinking about that

makes my brain do an error. Like, I can't even. I, it's so, it's so great that I think it almost, it almost perfectly just lines us up to start having the conversation about breaking the whole system and rebuilding it. Which is in a weird way where we needed to be anyway. It's kind of where he was, by the way. When he said, I am your retribution

and we're going to drain the swamp and we're going to break the deep state and we're going to, he was a burn it down guy. Yeah. And we just didn't expect, I didn't expect him to be so violent towards the institutions that he was in control of once he won. You know, usually the demagogue shifts when they get power.

You know what I mean? Because now you got the reins. You know, you can no longer really bitch the same way about the direction of the horse. He hasn't stopped, which I also think has started to become a form of attrition. I think the reason he's losing it is he's forgetting that at some point people want you to do shit that makes it better. Yeah. And instead of just satisfying them.

that it's their fault. It's that group. It's that party. It's that thing. Now it's, well, what are you going to do for me? Yeah. And he's short on that.

Has this same problem too. It's just like solutionless curiosity. Like before he was in any power, he was just like, hey, have you noticed this thing? That's, that's off, right? And I'm like, oh, hey, have you seen that? Why did they do that?

And then people called his bluff and they were like, all right, fix it. And he's like, uh, yeah, it's still fucked up. But it's like, yeah, we know, fix it. Like, so they're all struggling. I'll tell you what, running a small business is hard. Got employees, you got expenses, you got customers, you've got accounting, all this stuff that comes with making a business go.

And then you need money to grow. Finding the capital, that can be tricky. 36 million small businesses in the U.S. And more than 70% of us need additional funding at least once a year. But you go to a traditional bank, you know what's going to happen, right? Paperwork, waiting, more paperwork, we need this, we need that, maybe months before you even get an answer. Delta capital may be right for you. If your business is generating 25 grand or more a month in revenue, the application will take under five minutes.

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I don't know, Josh. I don't know if that's true. Yeah, I know you don't know. And that's why I did the research and I just told you it's true. So now you know, I don't know. I don't know if I believe it. Okay. It's yeah.

I mean, I think some of the skepticism, I'm curious as to your thoughts about this, but like I think some of it was warranted pre-Trump. I mean, we do know, and you know, you being somebody that's like, stretched in media, some of what he was saying about how media consolidates, how money buys opinions,

was true. Some of it was true. I think that's why his terrible narratives landed so well because they were sometimes like coaxed and cloaked in actual reality sometimes. I think it's why people, I think there are two main reasons people give him the measure of forgiveness he gets, which I've never seen before. It is an identity for them.

He has tapped into who they think they are, their values, you know, their real sense of individuality and their place. And that's very powerful stuff. The second thing is, is that they've all sucked for a long time. Politicians lie. They don't use the levers of government.

They misstate data. They say they're going to do something and then they don't. They don't answer a question. You know, all of those things were true. So it gave people the ability to do something that I've watched in real time. And I get it. I just don't understand. I don't know yet where the adjustment takes us.

but it's going to be like, wait a minute, Josh Dawson, you're saying that Cuomo's a liar, but you're a liar. You've been in Congress. So you're saying that Trump is a liar, but you're a liar, but he's a worse liar? Okay, maybe, but you don't get to tell me he's a liar. You don't get to do it. It's got to be someone who wasn't lying to me also, but just less so.

It's kind of like once you get into the parent game, when the kid says, I got a 75, but my friend got a 70. It's like, yeah, yeah, I don't want to hear that from you. Like, that's not our standard. So that also played into his favor and still does. But to your point, this shift of where you broke it all, none of it matters anymore, is what motivates your good friend Scott Jennings. So you get somebody like a JD Vance or a Scott Jennings where you

know they don't believe what they're saying. You know they have said other things, the opposite things, with equal conviction. Okay? But why, but the rules don't apply anymore. Yeah. This is what applies. Scott Jennings, he used, I used to sit, he used to sit next to me. And he would say the worst things about Donald Trump as a person, as how offensive he was as a person, the way Mike Pence used to talk about Bill Clinton. You have to judge him as a neighbor. The morality matters as much as the law and maybe more so. All the things he forgot to stand next to Trump.

That's what Jennings is doing. That's what Vance is doing. My question is, does it get punished? Is there a reckoning? You know, or does it just get forgotten and we move on to the next? I think it's getting forgotten. Every person, you know, I don't know, Scott well. We, you know, frequent that, the Abby Phillips show.

And we'll, you know, like, go at it on camera and stuff. And I don't really know him outside of that. But, like, everybody that I've talked to about him when he comes up say that, like, he was a kind of like a different guy before, you know, the Trump usurping of the Republican Party. And now you're saying the same thing. Like, what you just said, I've heard a couple of people. couple of times. And I'm sure he would have his own defense as to why, but like when we live in this like clip economy, when we live in this world where our attention spans are as long as the video that's in front of us, you know, it gets to the point where it's just like, it's just

going to get drowned by all his news takes, right? Like Scott can because of the way. So you don't think post-Trump that when the conservative party comes back, because I'll tell you something, And this is something we know. No party has ever been consumed by its fringe the way this party has. And they can say, well, yeah, the DSA, and we'll talk about them. But I have no idea whether or not they're going to consume the Democratic Party the way MAGA has consumed the GOP. And by consumed it, I mean nobody references the party without saying MAGA. Nobody speaks out against MAGA.

And the best you'll get is quiet. And the only people who speak out have left. That's what I'm talking about by consumed. but I believe that when he exits and he will exit, that they're going to fly back to character, fly back, and they're going to make him the aberration and the people wanted him, so we had to work with him and he was better than those crazies on the left.

But I'm not him. I'm not him. I'm a good Christian. I'm a character guy. You know what I mean? That's who I'm. That's who we are. That's where they're going to run back to.

The question is, will the people let them? You know, apartheid in South Africa really gets its biggest blows, like, in, I'd say in like in the 90s, right? In 1990s, which is crazy to think about. That wasn't that long ago. When you go to South Africa now, and I've been, you know, lucky enough to do some polling work, some public opinion work in there, nobody was supported apartheid. Nobody can't find them. It was only 30 something, 30, 40 years ago. You can't find them.

We're like, wait, hold up. Where were all these, like, apartheid supporters? They should all technically still be alive, right? Marloni King was younger than Betty White. So that means that, I mean, Betty White died in, what, 2020? Martin Luther King was the most hated person in America among big groups of people who should still be alive. Some of them, right? Where are they at?

Like, we see these disappearing acts happen all the time. And I think that the Trump supporters, not just the J.D. Vance's, not just the Scott Jennings, the every regular day people are going to try to and probably be successful at pulling off the biggest disappearing act we've ever seen. No one, no one's going to be, I didn't support them. Like, well, you know, yeah, like sometimes you got to like the person in power, you got to work with the person power. This, this and that. And like I said, because of how the clip economy works, because we're just going to get drowned by the next thing

and the next thing and the next thing. I think they'll get away with it. I don't know. I would like this to be different. I would like this to be different because even what we're seeing this week, Trump TV, if you're afraid of communism, you have to see this for what it is.

And the only reason you won't see it for what it is is convenience. And I think that if it's that cursory, If it's that basic, if it's that fake and shallow, there may be a makeup period. It may be like, say, for instance, if I'm Marco Rubio, the reason that you say, oh, listen, I'm not going to run against JD is I don't know that any Republican can win in 2028. I don't know who the Democrats would have to put up who could be so condemned and so unwanted by many of their own that you would think about a Republican. because coming on the heels of Trump, I don't know how a Republican wins. If I'm Rubio, I'm looking at 2032.

I'm not messing with 2028 because I don't know how you win after coming off MAGA. How? What are you going to say? You'd have to be a Republican who was openly against Donald Trump. And who's that?

Marjorie Taylor Green. She can't be president. I don't think it's true. I think if you, I don't think Trump, Trump would have won 70 million votes two years ago, if that was true. I think that there is still... You don't think the Democratic Party gave him a big chunk of those votes?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right. I do agree by the messiness of obviously President Biden stepping down. But, you know, I think that messiness probably just demobilized a lot of voters as opposed to handed them to Trump. 70 million is a big, big number. The biggest ever. I think it's not just because President Trump is popular or charismatic, which he is. I do think that the Democratic Party has been very careless in its persuasive practices, particularly among some of its most reliable voters.

We just ran a survey. 57% of black women feel like their votes are being taken for granted by the Democratic Party. That's their most reliable voter. That is scary. If they were over 45, over 45-year-old black women have to vote Democratic for them to win. 57% say they feel like their vote is being taken for granted. Do you think that Democrats are going to spend money with that stat? Do you think that they will then spend money seeing black women as mobilization targets and persuasion targets or just mobilization targets?

It's going to be the same thing. And so I'm saying, I'm saying this to say, and we're going to see a shalacking in this midterm, but the midterm electorate is not the general electorate. Midterm electorate is far more educated, far more reliant on suburban white voters. I still think 2020 is up for grabs for a Republican. I do. And I think that's because of the DSA thing or because of something else? No, just because the Democratic Party hasn't done the type of open and shut job it would need to

to nail this. Trump sucks is not a good enough message, right? The Democratic Party does not have a forward-facing message right now that is mobilizing. Maybe it will when it comes out of the, you know, that's the point of a primary, right? Like, maybe it will. But like to sit here right now and say that 2028 is just completely shut because Trump did that bad of a job, I don't buy it. I don't buy it. What do you think of the DSA?

At first I was, I believe now what your rationale is, which is grievance. disgust, disaffection, desperation makes burn it down appealing. And this is reaction formation

to MAGA. And this is what a diverse coalitions burn it down looks like. They just picked one of the only words that you can say in America

that everybody's conditioned to be afraid of, which is socialism. And, if they had called themselves the Fix America First Party or the Do It Better part or whatever, if they had called themselves anything else that doesn't have that word in it, I don't think we'd even be having this conversation. I think that the, you said that that word they've been conditioned to be afraid of.

Socialism. Socialism is a bad word. It killed Bernie. Bernie should have won, even with the party hating his ass. Bernie, Bernie was dealing with a different electorate. I think as millennial and Gen Z voters are growing into the largest part of the voting electorate, they are significantly less averse to that, the concept of socialism. It's in the all in the polling data.

We asked them, put it like this, in Colorado, I just saw a poll that came out. Socialism is more popular than Democrats, Republicans, and capitalism. Why? Is it because they want state-owned assets? or they want real change? I think they just want real change. And I think that I think that they want to see their politics

react to them. I think it's almost like a poking. It's like a stick poking. It's like, are you on? Is this thing on? And I don't think that any of the, you know, maybe left liberal candidates that weren't necessarily socialists were coming with the type of upheaval break the system message that so many voters are willing to see.

When you see the type of wealth inequality we have in this country, we're near oligarchy levels. People don't give a fuck about whether or not it's socialism, capitalism. They know that they are being screwed out of the fruits of their labor. So I said this on CNN. If people want young voters and other voters to stop, being curious about about socialism. Capitalism just has to work a lot better, you know. But look, if you look at our own history from the FDR administration up and through until Carter,

how are we not social Democrats? Now, I know that that term means nothing to people. I know socialism means something. Communism means something. They're always surprised. when I tell them there is not a single communist country on the planet. But whatever, social democracy, which is, you know, a lot of countries for you guys at home, Germany is a social. How are we not that? We had a big government that did what it could to let corporations succeed as long as they were taking care of their workers and passing along productivity. And when they didn't pass along productivity, they had a problem. Teddy Roosevelt, long before his cousin or whatever FDR was to him, he was about that.

I'm going to punish you if you don't take care of your people. They're going to be rules for you. We were that up until the 70s when he took us off the gold standard and we started printing money and all of a sudden everything became about investors instead of workers. So weren't we a social democracy? We weren't socialist, but we were social democracy. Look, I think you can make a lot of, you know, I think you can make that argument. I think that's a fair argument.

I mean, FDR did advocate for the expansion of the Social Democratic state. I mean, this is how we end up with things like Social Security, which work really well for people prior to that. It was a scary place to America was a scary place to grow. You were dependent on the church. Yeah, you had to hope and pray that you had enough kids and they were going to take care of you, which some people are still in that condition today. But, like, you know, I first got interested.

interested in, you know, socialism through King, through Dr. King, through how Dr. King talked about, you know, we would not see more racially equitable progress until we had some serious expansions of the social democratic state. So we talk about like the, you know, the Fair Labor Standards Act and public housing and all these other things that happened in the 30s, 40s, I think that's a good argument. And I think that some of those same programs now, are in real, real trouble. And so when we're talking about this, you know, at the same time, Texas delivers us or the United States delivers us like the world's first trillionaire,

I think that people will look back to an FDR and some other folks and say, well, there was a time period where the United States, where our growth was like illustrated by really high corporate tax, in terms tax rates and the like. and we want to go back to that. So I don't argue against that. I think that's a good point. Do you think it wins? Or do you think it's a good enough boogeyman still

with the composition of the electorate as it is that socialism, even, you know, as a boogeyman, as an alternative to Trump may wind up balancing the field more than we expect? I think its success will be based off of how effective the left. is with its narrative in this narrative warfare, right? Like I think... Well, how do you think it's going right now? Poorly.

Poorly. I mean, even with Hassan Piker, I'm curious as your thoughts about Hassan Piker, I feel like he's just making his rounds for all the most important people in the media. I don't know if you've had him on just yet. But, you know, I think Hassan Piker is kind of like, it's a blessing to the Democratic Party.

He's manna from heaven because... If you cannot create a messaging apparatus that takes the energy that a Hassan Piker has and places it where you need to place it to gain electoral power and stays away from it where you need to stay away from it, if you can't do that, then you can't pass policy. Right? Like that, creating a media narrative around a YouTuber and a streamer is a lot more difficult than passing policy. So if the left continues to cannibalize itself around people like Piker and the DSA, it's a good litmus test for whether or not it can stay disciplined enough to even deliver for people at all. So this is new, and you're actually dealing with this, you know, going on the CNN roundtable.

I'm not really conflicted, but I have a nuanced opinion of it. I care about CNN. I like, you know, I don't have any beef with CNN. I have beef with the guys who fired me and lied about it. Not CNN. I wish them well. I miss them. I love Abby Phillip.

Know her well. Happy for her having that platform. Wouldn't be my dream platform for her, but, you know, it's better to have one than not have one. I see the show as part of the problem, though. And I know it's doing better than other things, but that doesn't mean. mean that it's the right thing to be doing. And Hassan Piker is getting traction. Scott Jennings, getting traction. You know, Don Lemon, not a demagogue, not a divider. You know, he and I have our issues, but I only want good things for him. I hated that they arrested him. I mean, I liked it for

his profession. You know, I liked it for his cachet and for him getting the boost. I knew he'd get from it, but it's a little scary to have Trump coming after you with the DOJ. And I hope it goes away and he should not have been arrested. He was obviously doing his job. Putting that to the side. He would not be as successful at CNN, and he wasn't as successful as he is now. Why? Because provocation is the commodity. It is the coin of the realm. So a Hassan Piker, I don't have him on because I have a real problem with hate. And I got to be really careful about how I magnify hate. And I see him as a hater. So, and I don't see these other people as that per se, but that's what works. So like you go on CNN, you're going to get a lot of clicks.

People are going to come, they're going to see you. But if you're not really careful, you're contributing to a dynamic that is completely reductive. And that's what's winning. Benny Johnson can buy and sell me in terms of his media cachet, probably a couple of times over. He is a fool. and he is a divider and he is a clown on purpose. That's what's winning with social media. So how in this new age where the absurd is more of a commodity than ever,

how do you get past MAGA, people are like after MAGA, we're going to get back to sanity? Why, that's not what gets rewarded. That's not what gets you paid. You know, take it from somebody who's decided to not have a side. And it is not a great business plan. So how do you see that and how do you deal with it within your own choices? I think about this all the time with my platform.

I think about this all the time because, you know, I've said this a couple of times. Like, I really, I don't love to debate. It's not my favorite thing. You know, I'm a data scientist by trade. I just like, I like to talk about data and I don't, and I don't even know if, What we're doing these days is debating. You know, like, I know you've had Mockler on a couple of times. Mockler is outstanding at what he does.

Like, it is, it's unbelievable to watch. I could never do that. I don't know how he does it. Like, he, the way he, like, robed people into questions and then he asked, it's like a science. And that is where all of, like, politics seems to be moving when it's on. online and the algorithms like it, like so and so destroy so and so. Two things.

One, I don't know if I'm good at it. And two, I do have questions sometimes about, is it helping anything? And that's not me saying it's not. I just sit and think about that. I'm like, is this, the couple of times I have, I've seen clips. Oh, Joshua Dostroes, Scott Jennings. And I'm just like, did I can, did this, did this move anything in a right direction? Or did it throw red meat to like an all red meat?

It helps you with the left. It helps you with the left. But it does not make anyone on the right, even if they're a critical thinker, move their opinion. Because really now they're just like, steel sharp and steel. I got to get better on my game. You know, I can't let somebody say what he just said. I got to, that's not the goal. Well, it shouldn't be the goal, right?

And I'm okay with debate. I'd prefer a conversation. But I'm okay with it, but now when it becomes a sport. And it's not my problem with Adam because he's rewarded for. it and it is what is rewarded. So I can't pun it. I can't be mad at a guy for appealing to what the incentive structure is suggesting, right? So I can't do that. But like Medi Hassan, also very talented guy, but it's not a game. And my problem with politics is the gamesmanship of it. You know, we used to say, Josh, the way to relay this used to be to people, you should see him in

the commercial. I know it looked like, you know, Doss and Jennings were about to square, not in the commercial. In the commercial, there's all, you good, you're good, we're good. And that's how I used to relay it to people. Now, that is all social media is. I can't tell you how many guys I've stood with in person. And I always say the same thing. Say it now. And part of it is, they don't know that I'm a vanilla gorilla, right? So like, you know, first they're like, oh, shoot, I didn't know you a bit. But then, then it's like, no, no, it's not like that, man. No, no, no. And that is how it is like for me, because there's nothing fake about this. There's nothing that I'm not in person.

This is who I am. And that's what gets rewarded. And this sport debate, Medi Hassan, you know, what is he making better? He's making his P&L better. That's what he's making better. He's making his cash flow better. I want to say this in defense of them, too, because I have two minds on this, especially, you know, I think Mockler is a great example because he's so smart and he's so smart.

so quick, smart, clever, study. Clever, he's so good. And like, the other side of it is Mockler, and people say this all the time, like, he is communicating the feelings that people have when they're having these conversations at the dinner table. And that is what Abby Phillip is trying to do as well. It's like they want to give people an opportunity

to have people as brilliant as a Mockler put their brains on issues, that you're putting your brain on and you maybe can't communicate it the way that he does, right? And so it's this weird world where like, and I'm a part of the problem as well in a lot of ways. I think if you're in the algorithm,

we're all a part of this problem and I don't think I have a solution for it. I just notice sometimes that I catch myself being like, did I help me? Did I help? Where some see heroes and other see egos. Bloomberg sees the era of billionaire athletes. A fad to some, the future of money to others.

We see crypto's trillion-dollar swings. The end of jobs, or the end of human struggle. We see the endless funds fueling the AI hype. While others follow the noise, we follow the money. Learn more at Bloomberg.com. I know what the solution is. The solution is catastrophe. when there's a, when there's a catastrophe, we'll all have our brain on the same place.

I see what you're saying. How do we deal with the catastrophe? That happened after 9-11, yeah. Right, but I don't know what's big enough now, to be honest, because I'll tell you what, if 9-11 happened today, God forbid, I lost too many people that day, Trump would blame the left, and the left would certainly blame Trump. None of that happened after 9-11. And there were some good fights going on before 9-11.

On 9-10, 9-9, Bush was the dumbest president we'd ever seen in our lives. He was constantly lampooned, made Will Ferrell's career. Rudy Giuliani was a dumpster fire. You know, like there were more stories about him banging his niece than their cousin or whatever it was than there was anything about his grandeur. But, you know, the moment can make the man, depending on what happens. and I think catastrophe is what changes it. And here's how we know. The night that Abby Phillips show,

and I'm only slow to call it that because I know this isn't what Abby would want to do if it was up to her. You know, she's not about that. She's never been about this hot talk bullshit. You know, she's always been the antidote to that. But if she said, all right, tonight at the roundtable, what do we do about drug prices?

The show is over. The show is over. the night that it's like, you know, Josh, what does the polling say about what people want when it comes to health care pricing? And you'll be like, all right, here's the data. They say this, this and this. And here's the things. We mine down on it. Now the fight is never going to be as satisfying to that audience as someone owning somebody else. You're not going to own me about what the right fix for health care is. The way you're going to own me about whether or not I'm a socialist or whether or not I'm empowering an audience. who is a liar and a cheat. You know what I mean?

So that's the problem. But will that show be representative of how people actually experience talking about politics in their everyday lives, you know? And like I think that's what Abby's trying to do. And, you know. Oh, I'm not blaming her at all. She's doing what they want her to do. I'm just saying like, you know, a crazy, when you think about Trump and when we think

about how people have reacted to this Trump era of politics, a crazy. person is only a widespread menace in a crazy society, right? Like a lot of what we're seeing is just kind of indicative of how we actually do our politics. Like we can get really mad at the Trumps of the world, but like he speaks to people because that is how a lot of people speak, right? We're in a representative democracy in a lot of, in a lot of regards. So I think that if Trump got up there and blamed a lot of, you know, folks on the left after 9-11, the question is like, how many people would be like, yeah, that's actually a plausible route here?

And is that a, how much of that is an America problem? You know what I mean? Like Donald Trump is exploiting what already lives inside of this country. He is definitely a symptom. Now, some get frustrated with me when I say that. They say, no, he's the worst. Yeah. And there's also a worse fever you've ever.

ever had, but it's still just a symptom of a virus. We have, you know, there's this very old, old, old understanding. Hard times make strong people. Strong people make good times. Good times make weak people. We're weak people make hard times. And every society is going through that dynamic. We are in the weak people make hard times phase, in my opinion. You know, you could define it any way you want. But, We have a cultural problem right now. It's just, I don't believe that the cultural problem is writ large. Like I think if something happened in my, I don't think I know, if something happened in my community,

which outside the summer season is a very middle class place, people would come from all over to help whatever it was. People would be killing themselves to help. I see it all the time, okay? Every traffic jam in the off season where I live is because someone's been in an accident and everybody's stopping. I'm telling you, I see it all the time. Our communities are good. We got good communities all over this country. Our media, our politics is dominated by fringe extreme thoughts.

And that's the disconnect because now the many are getting uniquely conditioned by the few because of social media. And I think that's changed how we talk about politics because the rule used to be, Josh, you know, when you were a kid, was you don't talk politics. You know, at Thanksgiving. You don't talk religion, you don't talk politics. What do you think about, like, your role in the media, and maybe not so much your role now, but, you know, the criticisms that you have,

do you feel like you held those criticisms when you sat? I mean, you sat in one of the most central positions in media for, you know, decades. I mean, do you feel like you have more criticism now that you have made some maneuvers, or do you think you've always felt this way? Well, I think that circumstances change perspective. And, you know, people say, oh, you know, you're different now. No, I think times are different now.

When I was like, for instance, when I was at CNN and Trump came into the frame, I had unique perspective on him. He would talk to me. I'd have him on. And I was very, I wasn't dismissive of his potential, but I was dismissive of his tactics because, I know him. So, um, and he would say, oh, you're the worst, you're the worst, you're the worst. And I'd be like, all right, be nice, be nice. Um, and it was, uh, engaging for people. Then he started to get a lot

of traction. And I believed it needed a muscular response because I saw what he was doing, was bullying people. Like, he did something that's really interesting that we had never seen before, really, not in a real way. Like, once in a while, like once the president said to Sam Donaldson, something personal to him was like you know stop yelling at me with that but you know and it would be like dan rather once spoke back to the president and it was like whoa and he was like persona non grata for a minute trump said you know joshua dawes you're the worst you're terrible you're unfair and we were not used to being targeted that way we were used to being targeted as a thing not as an individual and it worked really well for him.

Now, people adjusted, and then people started to seek out the conflict because you know it's going to make you a fortune right now, especially with the people who don't want to support Trump. But so the time required, I believe, a muscular response to what he was doing because I thought it was bad for us. And then he became president, and it became what I thought it would be, but then we had the pandemic. All right.

Now I'm in the pandemic. In my opinion, he screws up the pandemic early on, blames it on China early on when he screws up the PPE, takes Tony Fauci, puts him in charge because he doesn't want the stink of what's going on with COVID. So he puts Tony Fauci in front. I tell Tony Fauci at that time, I don't like it.

I don't like it, Tony. You're not a politician. They're having you own. a lot of shit that has nothing to do with science. And he's like, oh, you know, it's too important. You know, I'm working with the White House. I'm working with the White House, but you're the one telling everybody everything. Trump didn't tell us anything if you think about it.

Trump never said, we got to do this, we got to do that way. He never did any of that, right? He had Fauci do it. It was very interesting to remember that. So then what was his big thing in COVID? What did Trump make his signature thing? Operation Warp Speed. Operation Warp Speed was the game change.

baby, I'm going to get us the cure and I'm going to get it faster and nobody else could have get it done. And you know what? He was right. No one else could have gotten it done as fast as him. And now we know why, right? Because he had the process circumvent things that the makers didn't want to circumvent. So what did he give them? Immunity. And when they gave him immunity, no pun intended, when they gave them immunity from any consequences from the vaccine, then all of a sudden they were able to develop much faster than anyone expected because they didn't have to worry about what happened. So they say, here's the vaccine, take the vaccine.

Who says they won't take the vaccine? Kamala Harris says I won't take the vaccine. I'm not taking any vaccine and Trump created. So I lived all of these swings in perception, and I wound up being like the mascot for the government. messaging on the vaccine or whatever you wanted to be. And it was the circumstances. Same guy, different circumstances, always a renegade within the media, never accepted by the media, always dogged by the media. Back when I was at ABC News, they were coming at me. They never wanted

me in it. Now, everybody in the media is unconventional. Nobody comes up the old way of, you're in West Virginia, and then you're in Chicago, and then you're in New York, and then the network picks you up, and then you get an anchor position. And then nobody does that anymore. People are doing what you do. And, you know, they get a platform on regular media, the digital media, whatever it is. So I was always targeted, always in the mix, but the circumstances would influence what I think. Like right now, the circumstances have made me demonstrably anti-partisan, which I say a lot that people in my positions don't usually say. I think the parties are the problem. I don't accept that we have to have parties. We don't have to have parties. We didn't

start out with parties. They're not in the Constitution. And they were created for bad reason by a couple of founding fathers who used them to try to kill the other's perspective. That's where the parties came from. They didn't come into 1800s. That's when they started calling them Democrat and Republican. Hamilton and Jefferson started them as mouthpieces for their own battle over power with a weak Washington in his second term. So I'm the same guy. I'm focused on different things. Okay. I've never hated Trump. I don't do hate. I'm too old. And I've been too traumatized by things. I cannot give people that kind of energy. To me, it's an extension of when your coach, your first good coach said to you, I know the guy is jawing in your ear. I know what he's

saying to you. Shut the fuck up. Don't listen to him. Play your game. That's how I feel about hate and hating Trump and hating this guy. I don't do it. It's not a thing for me. I don't let them have that kind of access. But it's different circumstances now. So I'm talking about different things and I'm trying to empower different things. I didn't need during COVID to tell people, you've got to be a critical thinker. You've got to be a critical think. You've got to be processing this shit

because we didn't know what we didn't know. So do I see myself as responsible? 100%. 100%. Why? Because I have been part of a dynamic for 20 plus years that has absolutely been part of the problem too often in our politics. And I've been in it.

And sometimes I make the wrong calls about where to put my influence and where not to put my influence. Sometimes I make the right calls. But I have never shape shifted. Like I've never gone from being like a righty to a lefty or a, you know, liking some, hating somebody to liking somebody because they gave me a job. Like, you know, that's never been my thing. How do you see it? I mean, I think you would agree, though, that this, even among the, amongst your like anti-partisan stance,

that this administration is demonstrably dangerous. And like, it is uniquely, uniquely, bad. It is uniquely bad, this administration. I think, Chris, honestly, I think a lot of people would make the argument that if you can, you can state that this party or this administration is uniquely bad,

uniquely dangerous to some, you know, vulnerable Americans, Americans, lower class Americans, then an anti-partisanship, a forward-facing antipartisanship disposition towards politics could elevate a uniquely bad administration higher than it ever should be and either demobilize people, like make people think, well, maybe both sides are the same. Chris Cuomo is saying that he's anti-partisan, so maybe it's because both sides are the same, or maybe both sides have the same level of legitimacy.

And that can result in things like a second Trump term, right? Like, I understand where you are trying to, like, you are a member of the media. You are not going to come out and be like, I'm a lefty, liberal, here is where you should vote. I understand that. But in your approach of calling one party uniquely dangerous and then also saying that you are trying to be anti-partisan, And do you think that that can have a demobilizing effect on people who would otherwise Yes. Yes, I am in a tough spot because I go after Trump.

I go after his administration. In truth, I don't dog him on a personal level as much as I used to because it doesn't work. So for independence, and that's really my main focus is trying to talk to independent voters, trying to get them. It's very hard because they're all over the place. And they're usually reactive. So they're usually like, let me see what those fuckers on the left are saying. Let me see what those people on the righters say. And so I'm not really in their space very often. But I go after this administration every night, going after it tonight. I say the two sides are not equal offenders of what matters in this country all the time. I say I've never seen a power,

a party devoured by an extreme and fringe viewpoint the way MAGA has done to the GOP. There is no more GOP. And I will say, and they'll beat me up for it, I don't know that that's what the DSA is. I think the DSA is a bad branding mechanism. And they'll say, no, they want to take over. They want state-controlled ass. I said, I don't believe that. And I don't believe it any more than I thought Project 2025 was going to be everything that Trump

did exactly how he did it. Why? Because it came from a heritage group and a bunch of their, more out there thinkers and this was their set of goals and that's what I'm hearing from those DSA people. This is their far-fetched goals. But this guy in Michigan,

even Mom Donnie, I mean, my brother ran against them twice. They are not saying I don't want private industry anymore. They're not saying that. So I'm not as afraid of them as I am with what I see in MAGA actually doing. I say it all the time. It's not enough. It is not enough.

People want to hear, Trump is Hitler. Trump is Hitler. And J.D. Vance is Mengela, or best, minimum, Himmler. And these are Nazis, and that's what this is, and you have to see it as that

because it's existential. And it doesn't matter what is on the left. And the more socialistic they are, the better because it's opposite of MAGA. And that's where you have to be because it's existential. And I don't think

that's the right. adjustment. But it is what is wanted from me and of me. And I know that because I have it thrown at me all the time 24-7. So I'm in a bad spot. But it's not that I say, I'm not creating false parity, not consciously. Anyway, Josh, like, I'm anti-partisan because I believe the two-party system is choking us. That's what I mean. I don't know if that was a fair depiction of the position you're in, though. I distinctly remember, of course, a video of you before the election being interviewed saying that voting for Donald Trump wasn't off the table for you. Well, one, that wasn't now, right? No, it wasn't, but it was after a first term.

It was after his first term. And my point with it was, because look, I've never voted for trying to even vote in the last election. I voted for my brother. You know, I wrote it in. That's also dangerous, Chris. I understand that. That's also very dangerous. Your platform, as many of people who pay attention to you and listen to you, you, even saying that right now is...

Well, I'm not going to lie. It's a negative effect. I'm not going to lie. Because, you know, that's the worst thing. The worst thing is to try to make it better when it's not really what happened, right? So in New York, it didn't matter who I voted for. She was going to win. If I had been telling people...

It always matters for you vote for you. Don't vote. It always matters who you vote for you vote. It does in a different way. It matters as an agency. It matters as a franchise. But for me, I was so disgusted with what they did and how they did it. The, well, really, in my opinion, because there really is, I mean, as you probably know now, there really is no DNC, okay?

Whoever the president is, if you're in party, you're running it, it's all your people. Biden's mistake, and this is not a bad guy, okay? I've known him a long time. I don't like how he treated my brother, but he's not a bad man. He's a good man, okay? he was so pissed that they didn't want him to run again that I believe he's submarineed the whole thing. I believe he forced Harris on them. I believe he delayed it.

I believe he screwed up the process. I believe that he wanted to punish them for not letting him run again. I really believe that. And in fact, I've talked to people very recently who say he's still saying that when they're with them in private moments. And I was very angry about that. But here was my point. I don't think it's right for me to tell people who to vote for. Now, the counter is, yeah, but Trump, you saw him in his first term, you knew what he was going

to be and what he wasn't going to be. And that's probably fair criticism. I probably, because I was never going to vote for Trump, so why would I tell you that I was open to it? Because I was really speaking for everybody else, that, you know, you should be open to who the choices are and then make the right choice based on the campaigns. But you were never going to vote for him, so why didn't you say that too? Probably should have.

Maybe that's why I'm so tough on him now, because I don't want to repeat the mistake. Maybe that's why I take so much stink from his people that usually, if you were a friend of mine, you'd tell me, you know, I think you're taking too much heat. Maybe I'm making up for it. You just do a really good job of talking about how existential the threat is, and I do agree with you when you do it. It's also gotten worse. I mean, we're not just talking about building a wall on the border anymore. Okay. You are extremely smart and smart enough to see that first term and know that it was going to get worse in the second term.

And so, you know, there are a lot of people, I think, in your life who you not voting against a pretty obvious fascist would take it as an act of you choosing not to protect their, to protect them. Yes. Right? I mean, all of how you talked about, all of how you talked about how Trump has denigrated, you know, civilized society or what was left of it. And all of the attacks against black and brown people that have been like pointed, anytime I meet somebody who couldn't stand up and vote against that, it does not feel like that person would be that interested in protecting me in any other situation. They don't feel like an ally. I totally get it.

Yeah. I totally get it. And I've been hit with the stick many times. my, and it's not about defending because I want people to feel however they feel. And, you know, you're going to disappoint people. You're going to fuck up. Just wait till you're a parent. You know, you, and you learn in your life through your failures, you know. The only real failure I've never really learned from in a way that was fundamental to the dynamic was getting fired. Because if I were in the same situation, the only thing that I would do differently is I would have left CNN. Now, I

offered to leave multiple times when Andrew was in the crucible. And they didn't want me to leave because I was number one, right? And I think they misread the situation the same way I did about how much animus there would be directed towards me because of animus towards my brother. That's the only thing I would have done different. I would have helped them the exact same way I helped him and said the exact same things about what he should do and when he should have done it. And I'll always put my family before a fucking profession, especially this one. But, and that's unfortunate for me because every other failure I've ever had in my life has been a real pivot point for me about, all right, that can never happen again. And here's why it won't happen

again if I do these things. And, you know, I really try to live that way. And that one was a little tricky. But with Trump, I don't know who's more of a hammer on him. And I don't mean in some sport sense. Like, he gets really angry at me. Like, you know, the messages that I get communicated to me, from him and from people who know how he's feeling, you would not want to have because you, you know, this is not me we're talking about, okay? It's not like, oh, Josh is pissed at me. Oh, Cuomo's pissed at him.

It's like, all right, well, what's he going to do? This guy can do some shit to you. You know what I mean? Like, you know, things can happen in your life. That you don't want to happen. So people forget that part of it. You know, they always say, you know, I'd love to interview him and I would fucking say that, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You think you would. But when you're sitting across from him, it's not Donald Trump. It's all of these people and all of this power and all of the things that can happen as a function of what happens there. I remember interviewing Obama. And Obama had just put out an ad. This was during the campaign. Just put out an ad about John McCain being old. And it wasn't him.

It was some pack or whatever. And I was interviewing him. And I was like, I thought you said, no cheap shots. and he's like I did say no chief traps there shouldn't be any we don't have to I said okay why are you calling him old well hold on now you know he was like that's not what it wasn't me that was I said come on come on come on and then

when I interviewed him and at that time people were like and I could feel it they'd be like whoa whoa take it easy man you know we're on the verge of a historic accomplishment here for this country don't don't be picking bullshit fights with this guy and I remember people in the media saying it me. Not because I didn't interpret it at the time as, ooh, you're a lefty. I didn't interpret it as that. I think people had very clear eyes about what Barack Obama meant for this country's historical

arc, okay? And they were very keen on it. I've never seen so many members of the media cry over something happening in a good way as they did when Barack Obama won. And I don't judge it. I think it mattered to people, especially people of color. I think it mattered. And I remember seeing my colleagues at ABC and how move they were as minorities and see that and I loved it. I loved it for us. I loved it for them. I really did. Then he's president and we have the red line in Syria. And I don't care what you say. He moved that fucking red line like 10 different times because he didn't want to go in there. He was smart enough to know you never get out with a win in the Middle East. Okay. He was smart enough to know. And he was smart enough to know, don't make all Muslims think

you think they're the enemy. They were right to not say Islamic terror. I know it was bad optics. I know it didn't pull well. I know it didn't look and feel right. But he was right. So anyway, I go at him about the red line. And I'm like, man, you're moving this fucking red line. The guy's gas in his own people. If that doesn't cross your line, I don't know what it was. And he wound up going, I got all this shit for it. Forty eight hours later, you know what Barack Obama did? He went to Congress. and he said, I think we got to do something about what he's doing to his people, but it's on you, which was absolutely right as a function of law.

He was right. That's the way it's supposed to work, okay? Because they weren't attacking us. They were attacking their own people. He didn't do what Trump did. He didn't do what Bush did. He didn't do what Clinton did. He didn't do what Biden did.

You know, he went and said, you tell me, it's your call. Congress didn't want to own it. We didn't do anything. People said he was weak because they wanted to attack him. What is my point? It's the circumstances and what I think is needed in that moment. Right now, if you would ask me, well, he can't run again. But if you were to ask me if I would vote Republican in the midterms, fuck no.

They need to be punished. We must have balanced power. We have to. And I don't like the binary. But one thing has become very clear. And as you know, as a student of our history, American people have always felt this way. They don't like having one side in control of everything. It very rarely works out well for them.

So we need it as a general proposition. We need it specifically now to offset the malignancy of MAGA. MAGA is a uniquely destructive ethos. And you have to have it change. I don't care who you vote for. But you cannot vote for anyone who supports this guy and what he's doing right now. Can't. it's too important he's fucked up too many things and i'll be honest with you josh uh i never look at

myself as anybody who's particularly talented uh i just i just study a lot i study a lot because i'm insecure and i study a lot i read a lot um and i read history a lot and i watch history a lot and i research a lot and i i bother chat gpt like doesn't want to answer my questions anymore you know because i'm always asking you things so it always tells me content I'm asking for is restricted. But you have to have it. It is uniquely that way right now. And I don't see it as me being a Democrat. And I don't see it as me hating Donald Trump. I think that's cheap. And I think that it's an excuse structure. So the circumstances are different. And I didn't think his next term would be worse. I didn't. I thought he was a

opposer and a pretender and that he doesn't know enough or have strategic sense enough to actually have ambitions of an autocrat, like that he's not deep enough for that. He's just trying to do good for him and have everybody say he's great. You know, his signature thing, his big agenda when he won his first time was called DJT-100. Get me to 100% popularity. That is what he had Jared Kushner in charge of. That was supposed to be his big thing. I want to get, I want everyone to love me.

Now he's become this malignant divider who is more about destruction than creating anything. And I didn't see it. Maybe, of course I should have, but it didn't. Trump was always a malignant divider. I think, I think some people maybe struggled seeing it because of where they sit in social, where they sit in society.

But it was always pretty clear to people who sit where I said that Trump was always a malignant divider. I will say, though, I appreciate where you have come and what you are, what you are saying now. And I also hope that you don't say on your platforms anymore that you either didn't vote or won't vote in the next. I don't want to lie to people. You know what I mean? You can just leave it out. We can just leave it out.

I do leave it out. But you asked me about it. But there are people in swing districts that need to think, oh, man, everybody I listen to votes. and so and I hope that you vote in every single election, Chris. Let me tell you, do you know how hard it is for me to vote? Because I don't do mail-in voting. I want to go because I always want to check it out. But it is not easy for me to walk in and out of the place, by the way, just so you know.

That's true. And poll workers can say anything they want about how they don't get involved. They get fucking involved, okay? It takes me 25 minutes to get in and out of those places. We got to get you some mail in, but why you can't see no mail? I like to see it. I like to be there. I got to tell you something else.

It gives me the feels also. Now, sometimes it's because the polling places I go into are either schools or churches out here and in the city, school. And there is something about those that make me, that give me the feels, you know, that give me this sense of community, this sense of, you know, this being tight and about us. And, you know, and it really chokes me up pretty much every time I go in there. And I want that. I want to see that.

I need it because, you know, I'm in Thunderdome. You know what I mean? Like, you know, I don't go on Abby's show. I mean, I get that 10 times over all the time. I mean, I'm in sword fights, in night fights with people all the time. But I'm not doing it as a sport. It's not a game for me, okay? And like, you know, Machler comes on and I like it,

but I come at him about this every time he's on. And what I do is I split it. I talked to him about why this isn't going to get us where we want to be. And then I'll play his game a little bit and say, you can't beat me. I'll pick any position you want me to pick. He can beat you. He can't beat me. He can beat you.

Can't beat me. Can't beat me. You can't go into a game thinking you're going to lose, right? That's true. That's why you couldn't go left. You know, you told yourself, I can't go left. And I went left more than I went right. So, you know, we got to get back.

I know that's sensitive. I know you're sensitive about it. But you've got to leave it alone. You've grown past that. You're like. You're like. You hoop, Chris. I'm out of, I'm going to get you on this court.

Back, no, not now. You can't, I hurt myself. My son almost killed me a few weeks ago. He, as a joke, as a joke, it was like a stupid Shack Instagram thing where they tried to dunk on him on the, you know, remember where like Michelle Obama was in that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He, we were outside at a real hoop. My son is not a ball player, but he is a phenomenal athlete.

It's one of my great. disappointments that I didn't get him to love it, but you can't make somebody love something. But he can jump. He is so strong. He is a phenomenal athlete. So he throws the basketball, and I see the basketball going past me off the backboard, and it doesn't register in my head soon enough. This fool is coming. And he hit me, when I tell you, for days, I was discovering injuries that oh my I have whiplash oh my shoulder blade is a little so those days are over I don't even play in the old man game anymore no I went to the old man game and all we were doing it was foul call every 15 seconds I'll take it that's that is what it's like playing with all way I'll take it

I'll take it you know so I don't do it anymore I've I've moved on I'm a firefighter I do a lot of self-defense training and instruction and that's enough it's enough for me no more sports This is the closest thing to sport that I'm in, but it's way more important than a game. I'm a huge fan of yours. You are right to hold me to account. You are right to say you've got to have clear eyes on it. It is no time to play scared. It is no time for half stepping.

And you're right. You're right. And if I could go back, I would go back. But that's not how life works. All I got is right now. All I got is my next. If God willing, I'm given one. And I'll do the best with it that I can.

can and I accept the judgment because that's how it works. That's what I signed up for when I decided to have one of these in front of my face. I love talking to you. I hope to do it more. I believe you are part of the solution. I don't care about your politics. I don't care where you're coming from. This is burning some serious calories on you. And it is guided by this. And clear eyes, you know, strong heart can't lose. So I wish you well. You let me know if I can ever help you on any platform. I'll keep bugging you to have you back here and on cable when you're not, you know, playing for sport on CNN. I appreciate you, brother. Thanks for having me on.

I'm so happy for your success. I really am. And I know you're just getting going. You're going to go like that. And I'm going to be here for it. Take care of yourself. Yes, sir. You as well.

And don't worry about this, you know, that you, you know, that you're like when you were trying to put the ball up with the left, you had to come underhand. You ain't seen the highlights. That's your private. You got to Google me. I have. I have. I have. Oh, I Google Jazz.

I've seen you, I've seen you through three hairstyles. I've seen you through three, three hairstyles I've followed you through, okay? Okay, you might just need a little something. It was a little of this. I know, I know, I'm a lefty, so I know, you know, you know, you tried. I got it, I got it. College, college, I figured it out. I had a little floater with my left, too.

I figured it out. I'm not sure what bothers me more, that he's younger, that he's bigger, that he's better looking, or that he's smarter. I'm not sure, but when I figure it out, I'm going to call him up and I'm going to tell him. about it. Look, he's right about so much. He's thought it through. He has powerful perspective. Of course, he's not perfect. We don't need perfection. We're human beings here. But he's coming from the right place. He's young. He's part of the now and he's part of the next. He's someone worth following. And he is right. This is different. It is not normal. Okay? Maga has to lose. I don't know what replaces it. I don't even know that it really matters, but it has to be

something that is about making things better, not just destroying us, not just blaming, not just otherizing. It has to be something, including if it comes from Democrats. I agree with Josh about that also. Trump sucks. Maga has to go is not enough, but I'm not doing the messaging. I'm judging it, just like you are. The Democrats, if that's who's going to replace this, and of course it will, especially in the midterms, right, because there's no real alternative to it. Once we get into the 2028 cycle and we see what the presidential campaigns are in the messaging, then we'll see what's coming from the right, what's coming from the left outside of MAGA, because it will not just be MAGA. I can't believe that. I hope I'm right about that. The Democrats need a forward-facing

message. Joshua Dawes is absolutely right. What will that be? I don't know, but I'm waiting for it. Are you? Thank you very much for, joining me here at the Chris Cuomo project. I love doing this to have conversations with guys like Josh. And I think it makes us better. I hope it helped feed you as a critical thinker. That's why I sell the gear to show that you're a free agent, you're a critical thinker, you're different, okay? We need that right now. We've got to brand back into moving past right and left and back to reasonable. We've got to get there. You got to get there, especially right now in the trough that we're in the hole, we're in the nadir that we're in. All right? So, thank

you very much for checking out the gear. You'll see the link there. Thank you for checking me out here. Please subscribe to Cuomo Crime Time, where I look at true crime through the lens of what it means to society. What are the big issues, okay? What is in there behind the drama, okay? It matters. It's probably the last safe space we have to talk about big issues like mental health, mental illness and its impact on us and how real it is. That was why Lindsay Clancy mattered to me, not the BS about her husband, you know, not any kind of feelings about her. It's about why she did it, what motivated it, and how we understand that. That's what it's about.

That's what we have to be about. So let's get after.