The Chris Cuomo Project - Mark Halperin on Why Democrats Lost and Why Trump Won Again

Episode Date: November 26, 2024

Mark Halperin (political analyst, Editor-in-Chief, 2WAY Interactive, and founder, Wide World of News Concierge Coverage) joins Chris Cuomo to break down the lessons from the recent election, exploring why Trump’s coalition prevailed and what Democrats must learn to compete. Halperin discusses the role of media bias, the challenges of covering Trump fairly, and how Democrats’ shift to the far left has alienated voters on key issues like the economy, immigration, and cultural debates. They also examine the growing influence of independent voters and the importance of fostering civil, productive conversations across political divides. 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 Join Chris Ad-Free On Substack: http://thechriscuomoproject.substack.com Support our sponsors: Get Maine Lobster Visit GetMaineLobster.com and use promo code CUOMO for 15% off your order today! Oracle See if your company qualifies for this special offer at Oracle.com/CCP That’s oracle dot com slash CCP. Shopify Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial period at SHOPIFY.COM/chrisc to upgrade your selling today. Cozy Earth Want your Cozy Earth pajamas by Christmas? Order by December 13 for free shipping! Missed it? You can still get expedited shipping until December 20 to ensure it arrives in time. Don’t wait—head to cozyearth.com/CHRIS now and use my exclusive code CHRIS for up to. 40% off. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Want to hear from one of the best brains in politics? Good, because that's who I have. I'm Chris Cuomo. Welcome to the Chris Cuomo Project. It's certainly not me I'm talking about. Mark Halprin. He now has these two booming businesses in digital media all around the political landscape. He's got his concierge politics where people pay for big money for his newsletter and his

conference calls where he is on and all these people join in, all these power players to listen to what he sees on the political landscape, okay? And then he has a really cool business, I think, for the rest of us called Two Way, which is where people, anywhere they are, get to interface with people in the media and in politics and ask them questions in kind of a way of engendering more productive conversation. And I wanted Mark to come on.

We worked together for a long time at ABC News, and I've been watching his development on the independent level and in the digital space. And I wanted to talk about the takeaways from this election for all of us, from one of the best minds in the business. Support for the Chris Cuomo project comes from Get Main Lobster and I love that it does. It's Thanksgiving. Hey, everybody has the same things. Why not add something new to the table?

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CozyEarth.com slash Chris. If you get a post-purchase survey, please tell them where you heard about it. The Chris Cuomo Project. Mark Halpern, it's been a long time. Very good to see you. Very happy for the success that you're having on your own. Good to see you, sir. I'm very happy for you. I wish I were as tan as you, but otherwise I feel okay. I don't know how much of the tan is tan and how much of it is my long COVID histamine response that reddens me up.

I don't know, it depends. Whatever it takes, you've got color. Hypertension. So let's remind the few in this space that don't know where you are and what you're doing now. How has Mark Halpern established himself within digital media as a resource, a clearing house, a community for people who want to know

the inside scoop on what's happening in our politics? Well, I've got two businesses. One is for the wealthy, uh, and because the price point, so I called concierge coverage, you can go to my Twitter account and see how to, how to access that. And that's a daily newsletter and a series of private conversations, but the business I'm really focused on building now is called Two Way and that's for everybody. And it's a place to have the kind of conversations that you have

where people from around the country can interact with political figures, journalists, politicians, strategists, but also hear from real people. To interact in a way that is meant to have Trump supporters, listen to Harris supporters and Harris supporters, listen to Trump supporters and rather than getting angry about it, learn from it. And 2A is an extraordinary community of people who some of them, they're not all moderate,

centrist and independents. A lot of them are very far left or very far right, but they're interested in having civilized long conversations under our watchword of peace, love and understanding. For you there, I've known Mark forever. We worked at ABC News together at a long time when it was a hegemon in the news business, entirely populated with the greatest in TV journalism's history. And Mark was the political go-to then. But now, you're able to do what you couldn't do at a news organization, which is to define

the how, the modalities, the culture. And do you believe that conversation has come back into common appetites? I think for a lot of people it has. They might like TikTok, but they also relish the difference that comes from an hour long conversation. Most two ways are an hour long, and they're serious and substance. Our average view time on YouTube is over 20 minutes. That's a long time for most people in this current media environment. But it exists because, as you suggested,

people want conversation. They want sophistication. They don't want to be dumbed down. And with respect to our friends in cable, a lot of cable is dumbed down. It's not as sophisticated as you hear if you went into a Manhattan bar or a Green Bay diner or a Colorado daycare center. It's more sophisticated. So whether you're talking about Joe Biden's acuity level or Donald Trump's lack of self-discipline, people want a real conversation about that. And they don't want it to just be elites. They want it to be a broader base conversation.

And again, that's why I think we continue to grow pretty rapidly because it's a unique product. It's not one way, it's two way, because people can talk to and back with people they see on TV, people whose work they read or who they hear on podcasts. Time is always a factor of how much time people wanna spend on something.

But I think tone and substance is what I'm hinting at a little bit more. I talk a lot about how conversation is the cure, not just because it's alliterative, but the division has just gotten exhausting, right? We got Thanksgiving coming up and everybody's talking about who they're not inviting. And it just seems to me that just from a pragmatic standpoint, it seems like divisions kind of run its course. Like people can only get so angry and that there is an emerging appetite to listen to people and talk with people you do not agree with.

Yeah, I would say you're absolutely right. Two ways pretty new. One of the most heartening things that's happened so far is we've had so many of our Harris voters say, I'm less upset than my friends who voted for Harris, and I'm less upset because I've listened here to long conversations with Trump supporters for months about why they were voting for Donald Trump.

They weren't white nationalists, and they weren't Nazis, they weren't fascists, and they weren't people who wanted big tax cuts because they're rich. They're people who had problems with the Democratic Party, and who saw in Donald Trump, uh, when he had on offer better solutions. So it's, it's not about kumbaya, although I'm for that too.

It's about understanding intellectually, emotionally as Americans. What, why, why things seem so different to two different people was we, you and I both know so many people who can't imagine voting for Donald Trump. I find it hilarious how many people I meet in Manhattan and Washington. I say, what friends do you have who voted for Trump? They say, none. None. That's incredible. They say, well, maybe I do, I just don't know. Well, if you do,

you should find him and talk to them and try to understand because he won. And even if he lost, you know, I say this to people and I said it during the campaign, Trump's going to get 47% of the vote. He might get 50, but he's going to get at least 47. You should be intellectually curious as an American as to why those people are about to do something that you say you can't imagine anyone doing. Now the answer, let's start with what the answers are and kind of do a regressive analysis on it. The main answer you'll get is, that's right Mark, 47% of this country is racist, sexist, bigoted, and now we know it because Trump has won twice. What do you say?

I don't know what the percentage of Trump voters who are racist and bigoted are, but it's not a majority. It's probably not a very high percentage at all. And again, just look at some of the people who voted for Trump and ask yourself, do you really think they're racist and bigoted? Trump derangement syndrome is a serious thing. It's very difficult for the people who don't like him to

accept any flaws in the Democratic Party, which is one of the main reasons I think they lost, but to accept any of the positives in Donald Trump. I think it's important but to accept any of the positives in Donald Trump. And I think it's important for Trump supporters to say, as many of them do, our guy's flawed, don't like the fact that he sat there on January 6th, don't like the way he belittles people, don't like the way he manages his mouth or his staff. They're willing to acknowledge that, almost to a person, even people who work for him.

On the left, if you say, well, wasn't it a problem that the administration did nothing for three years about immigration? Or isn't it a problem that the president's mental acuity decline was so obvious and everyone around him said, we can't keep up with him, he's so sharp? They won't acknowledge it. And so I think part of the problem for the left is to say, we can't imagine really that everyone who voted for Donald Trump is a racist or fascist or bigot. It just, it can't be true. So we need to think about whatever the percentage is who fit those descriptions and it's not big. What were the other reasons? Because most of them

did not vote for Donald Trump because they're bigots. The second level of resistance is, oh I'll tell you what the reason is. People like you Cuomo, you normalized things that Trump did that would be completely unacceptable and anyone else. One of my friends who's a big brain, a very smart guy, said, no, no, no, it's not that people know what Trump is about and voted for him anyway. They don't accept how he is. They accept it. They rule it out of theirs and that's because it's been normalized and that's a problem. Do you agree with that? Yeah.

I say all the time, the only thing harder than politically defeating Donald Trump is covering him as a journalist. He is very difficult to cover. It's impossible to not, to some extent, normalize him because of his skill and the rapidity with which he, the repetitiveness with which he does outlandish things, lies, belittles, breaks norms that are not proper to break. I

don't mind breaking norms that are not improper to break. It's difficult because the first three letters of news are N-E-W and on the 12th day he lies, it's very difficult to convince yourself as a journalist, well he lied for day 12, so it's the biggest news of the day. It's a real challenge and I don't minimize the complaints of those on the left who say you do not call him out proportionate to the outrages. I don't minimize that at all. But what I also say is, you're the party of a conspiracy with the press to cover up the commander in chiefs of the United States mental decline. That's a lot of normalizing. After he speaks to a dead congresswoman,

you pretend it didn't happen. You make it a two-day story and you never bring it up again. That's normalizing something that's super dangerous more dangerous than Donald Trump and Mar-a-Lago and When Democrats want to say what about ism? Sir, no two situations are the same. I gave you one example of how Donald of how Joe Biden is normalized How about no press conferences? of how Joe Biden is normalized, how about no press conferences? How about no interviews with the New York Times during the entirety of his term? How about normalizing that?

How about normalizing, I could give it that as an example. So the point is no one's covered perfectly. Trump is particularly hard to cover, but you cannot blame the press for under covering Donald Trump. I think what you can blame the press for is for covering him so hard that you force voters into the arms of Donald Trump. We had people on two way throughout the year who said, I don't like Donald Trump. I've never voted for him. I voted for Biden last time. I'm voting for Trump this time because the press coverage of his legal cases, trying

to keep him off the ballot, of the vice president of the United States, he's talking about normalization, saying that Donald Trump said good people on both sides, that Donald Trump said there'd be a bloodbath in America if he won. These are in her stump speech every day. They're falsehoods, they're lies, they're simply not true. I don't know if she knows they're not true or not, but again, you talk about normalization, that normalization produced votes for Donald Trump.

Yeah, I think that's the correct synthesis. The people, I know a lot of people voted for Trump. I got a ton of shit for writing in my brother. I just believe, it's funny how many people were upset about that, of course all on the left, the Trumpers don't care because they won. But my point was the choices are unacceptable to me. America should do better than Trump and Harris. And so and I knew she was going to win in New York City anyway. I mean, even though she got a record low since Dukakis. I think the synthesis that you make is proper because it's not that people look at Trump

and ignore what is so fucking obvious about him because we cover it all the time. It's that they say, you know, the people who are outraged by him are really not that much better than him. These politicians lie. They use the system to their own benefit. They used it against him. They say he's a threat to democracy and then they subverted democracy with how they picked Harris. You know, there is a feeling among people

who don't love how Trump is, who also don't love who's telling them how bad Trump is. I think that's part of it also. Yeah, I think I totally agree with what you said. There's one exception, which is convincing tens of millions of people that the election was stolen in 2020. I consider that to be egregious and of a magnitude of

destruction to our democracy that may be unmatched in the last 30 years. Outside of that, I can point to things that Democrats did that, again, it's hard to argue that they've got clean hands. And look, I would have no problem saying back to you, well, then other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play? Absolutely. He disqualified himself.

It's egregious. And I agree. I have said many times here, NewsNation, anywhere else, I think Trump has disqualified himself from consideration for president of the United States. That's my call, not yours, not what I have to do for the audience. I got to be fair. So when you look at this election, even though I would suggest that Democrats should have been able to beat Trump in this election, especially when you look at how the polls weren't really off, they just lost every close call that there was in the electoral college.

What is your take on what the lessons are for the Democrats? Well, I think there's some idiosyncratic things. Joe Biden should never have run, he really shouldn't have run in 2020, but he certainly shouldn't have run for reelection. And she shouldn't have run. When Joe Biden called her and said, I'm not going to run, maybe she should

have said, you know what, I'm not going to run either because I can evaluate. My capacity to beat Donald Trump in a hundred days and I'm not the right person. There may not be someone better, but I know it's not me. Why, why would she, why should she have thought that? Well, not because she's a woman and not because she's not white and not because she shouldn't be ambitious because she should know herself as well as I do in terms of knowing her and I don't know her all that well, I've known her a long time. She's not good at making difficult choices under pressure.

That is the job description of president and presidential candidate. And she should have said, this is gonna require a lot of very difficult decisions about how to talk about the Biden Harris record. The biggest vulnerability Joe Biden had besides his loss of acuity and his age was our failed record. Anyone else isn't gonna have to defend

the Biden Harris record, maybe Pete Buttigieg would a little, but not the same way. She should have said to herself, I think, I'm not good at making difficult choices under pressure, and trying to figure out how to explain why the country should vote for me as part of an administration where they think the country's on the wrong track, it's going to require making a lot of difficult decisions under pressure, and I shouldn't do it. That's what I think she should have done.

So those are two lessons. He shouldn't have run and she shouldn't have run. I think the bigger issue, and people say it's economics, it's this, it's that, Ronald Reagan talked about a three-legged stool. One leg was national security, one leg was economics, one was social culture. I think the Democratic Party has allowed Donald Trump to take the majority position on all

three legs. Now national security has flipped from the Reagan days because now the dominant position is in the forever wars. But I think that she got caught up in the forever wars and being tagged with that. Two, economics, inflation obviously but also an economic theory of the case. It wasn't really discussed very much by the press but Joe Biden had brought the economy back by spending a ton of money and having all these government programs. A lot of Americans don't like that and then on the cultural stuff, yes, abortion,

better for the Democrats. But some of these other issues, trans, immigration, which is also of course an economic issue, the Democrats let Donald Trump become a centrist. I would say the biggest failing of the media in covering Donald Trump, and it

lulls the Democrats into this, of all the failings, they say, he's just appealing to his extreme MAGA base. Well, it turns out the extreme MAGA base is 50 percent plus. Okay. The extreme MAGA base. Yes, a lot of what he talks about, including the dog whistles appeals to people who consider themselves MAGA. But on the three-legged stool, stop the forever wars, deal with inflation,

close the border, more energy production, less regulation, no trans athletes in women's sports. On all those issues, Donald Trump is not appealing to the extreme MAGA base. He's appealing to the center. And so the lesson for the Democrats is figure out that in fact, you've moved so far to the left on all three issues that you can't compete even against someone as unpopular as Donald Trump. And how are you going to have positions on those three legs that are in fact, more appealing to the American people? Do you think if it wasn't Trump, it was Haley that she would have won and buy more. No, I think she would have lost.

Had to be Trump. Didn't have to be. It's just running for, you know this well, running for president is not as easy as it looks. And these people like Gretchen Whitmer or Governor Newsom or Governor Murphy or Ron DeSantis, like just being a governor or just being a senator and having some presence on the national stage does not mean you can build the aircraft carrier, raise $2 billion, have issue conditions, hire the people, go on different media. It's not as easy as it looks.

And I think if you look at Nikki Haley's performance, look at Ron DeSantis' performance, look at Gretchen Whitmer's performance, I can't tell you that they'd be good. Donald Trump was one for two. Now he's two for three. That's Hall of Fame, batting average. And until you prove you can do it, my assumption from watching many people try and fail, you can't do it.

Hmm. That's interesting. Cause I had been wondering, you know, Trump is so unpopular. It's there's so many people who really didn't want to have to vote for him. I mean, just think about it. All the campaigns that you and I have covered, the idea, imagine the proposition being like, God, I really don't want to have to vote for this person. But I think I have to. I mean, that is a very unusual standard for people, you know, usually it's like a 50 plus split, you know? And it makes it easy to say if it had been Nikki

Haley or any other Republican, they would have won easily. I don't know what States they would have won that Trump didn't win. You know, I don't think Nikki Haley was going to win New Jersey. And again, it's like an athletic competition. They're not played on paper. This is why people who do these models, these political models, who know nothing about either campaigns or politics are playing at a level of abstraction that I think makes their models silly. It's about the blood,

sweat, and tears, and the guts. I'll personalize it. Your dad was an incredible politician. He's an incredible governor, incredible civic leader. He toyed in 1992 with running, had a plane on the tarmac, ready to fly him to New Hampshire. He might've been spectacular, but we'll never know

because he never tried. And it's not the same as anything else. I agree. And I'll take it a step farther. One of the things you have to have, I think, to win, if you don't have this, you can't. If you do, you still may lose. You have to believe you're the best person.

And that is absolutely a form of arrogance, no matter what good place it's coming from. My father, I mean, you knew him, but my father did not have that. The worst thing you could do was compliment that guy. He was pathologically humble. And he did not think he was good enough to be president of the United States. And I remember people saying to him, even in 88, well, look at this guy, Clinton, who ran, you know, or in 92, Clinton's

running. Well, you think he's better than you? And he would literally wince like it was something south. That's for him to decide. That's for him to decide. I decide for me. I'm governor of New York. I have a responsibility here. I don't know about those ambitions. And he did the same thing with the Supreme Court. Now, just for a little Cuomo lore, that's where father and son divided on both levels,

big brother and me. My father should have said yes to the Supreme Court. His reasoning for not doing it was, I'll never be able to make a speech again. And even I, as a little pisher at that time, was like, that's bullshit. These guys speak, you know, he knew Nino Scalia, you know, he knew Nino Scalia well.

He gave speeches the whole time, that guy. And that was a mistake, but you are right. You gotta think you can do it. And people underestimate that. I guess the theory of the case is that the grievance movement, the desire for disruption is what carried Trump. And that was gonna be there, whether it was him or not. And if it had been somebody who was more palatable,

it may have even been a bigger wave. I just don't think anyone else in the party right now captures that movement, energizes it, gives it voice the way Trump does. And Nikki Haley sure doesn't. MAGA does not like Nikki Haley. There are other leaders of the MAGA movement. But Trump is, I've often said, and I take heat sometimes for saying it, Trump's the second best presidential candidate I've ever covered after Bill Clinton,

better than Obama, better than Bush 43. And I say that because he is so unpopular, and yet he somehow has been able to win two of three and almost won the third. Because he has an incredible high human intelligence level, an incredible fingertip feel for the mood of the country, and a drive to win that's vital. You have to wake up every day and say what are the 10 things I need to do today to get elected president and if one of the things on the list is you need to gnaw through the handcuffs that

have you chained to a fence, you need to gnaw through the handcuffs and Trump will do it and I don't think there's any evidence that Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis or Gretchen Whitmer or Gavin Newsom will gnaw through those handcuffs. Maybe someday they will. But I haven't seen it yet. Support for the Chris Cuomo Project comes from ground news. Information overload.

Look, man, we're getting shit from all directions all the time on social media. You don't know what's true. You don't know what's exaggerated. You don't know what's true. You don't know what's exaggerated. You don't know what's consistent. You don't know the source. You need ground news. Ground news is a website and an app that helps you make sense of the news

by aggregating, curating, okay, organizing related articles from around the world in one place so you can compare coverage. You compare how outlets from left, center, and right cover the same story. So you get factuality. Also, you can spot bias and sensationalism with the help of the app. Go to groundnews.com slash Chris, you get 40% off the ground news vantage plan.

What does that do? It unlocks access to all of their features. I think this is a genuinely cool essential tool in today's world. They're doing important work and I hope you'll check them out. That's groundnews.com forward slash Chris, G-R-O-U-N-D, News. Support for the Chris Cuomo Project comes from radioactive media. Business owners, CMOs, gotta grow, right? How, how is the question? People plateau pretty easily on social media. I'm one of them, online efforts.

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Learn how you can experience the power of audio marketing by utilizing the strength of text messaging, as well as audio message integration. And as a result of combining, you generate a return on investment as high as seven to one. Now, I'll give you a little bit of a deal. Text my name, Chris, to 511-511. Heck, you can even buy spots on my show. All right, if you to 511-511.

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Go to RadioActiveMedia.com. Text rates, sure, it's worth it. What do you think the Democrats should do in this incoming administration to best improve their position? Well, I'm not in the business of advising candidates or parties, so I'll say this. The point of politics is not more politics. The point of politics is governing to improve the real lives of real people. So I hope that at least in the initial days and months, they'll look for opportunities to work with the administration and the majorities of the Republicans in Congress to find common ground to make the real lives of real people better.

Immigration, access, housing. There's a number of areas where I think they could find common ground, and they should challenge Donald Trump, and they should do it based on ideas. Along those lines, I'd like to see all governors, including the Democratic governors, treat their states as what was called in the 90s, the laboratories of democracy,

where they come up with innovative ideas that other governors can copy and can maybe make federal programs where that's applicable. I really do believe that we're better off if both parties look to be aggressively competing for the other side's votes. And that means the Democrats can't be the far, far left party that they've become.

Yeah. Doesn't mean I don't like, I don't like progressives or I'm not interested in their ideas, but they've never been this left wing. They're substantially to the left of 1988 when Michael Dukakis lost. Oh yeah. And Bill Clinton brought them back to the center with

a range of more moderate positions. Yeah. Look, my father is, you know, he was mentioned numerous times at this convention. This is not his party. That cat was all working class all the time. And anything that had to do with money in the system, he thought was obviously poison. And everything on culture, I mean, even though he was, you know, a noted Catholic, he was all about keeping

it out of other people's lives. Keep it out, you know? And I agree with you so much on this one point. If for no other reason that they keep, the Democrats keep making the mistake of playing Trump slash the new GOP's game, which is like, for instance, opposition as a position, like the idea of we'll stop them, we won't do anything for them, we'll stop everything they do.

That won't work for the Democrats. I think they should now and they're doing it a little bit. Of course, Trump is tempting them to do it with Matt Gaetz and some of these other picks. I don't know that Lutnick as Commerce secretary will freak them out the same way the Gates did, but they're taking the bait again and just attacking everything he does and everything he says and asking questions on the news shows, not Democrats,

but journalists are making the mistake also. How are you gonna do the roundup? What about the families? What about this? They haven't even said what they're gonna do yet. I had Holman on and he was like, well, no, I'm gonna go after these, we believe it's 700,000, but the low number is 300,000.

These people have felonies on top of the illegal entrance. I'm going after them. I said, well, that's not what Trump's saying. He said, well, I don't know what he's saying. I'm just telling you that that's the plan that we want to put into place. And that's what the president has said is okay. I think if they resist that, the Democrats, and the media too, by the way,

of just jumping on everything the guy says and wait for what he does, and on the political side, try to collaborate as much. I think that's how everybody's best served, including their party interests, no? I agree with everything you said, Chris. You know, you never once have heard Donald Trump or Joe Biden or

Kamala Harris express outrage at people coming to this country legally and committing crimes against American citizens. Never once. And most Americans are outraged. I haven't done a poll, but I bet if you did a poll and said the president Trump wants to use the military to help deport people in the country who've come illegally and then committed a second crime against an American citizen.

I think that'd probably get 75% support. And so for these, just as a matter of politics and policy, for the media and the Democrats, without knowing the plan, as you said, but even if that's the plan, to scream hysterically about what a horrible idea that is, seems to me kind of a mistake. Now, there may be civil liberties issues, there may be issues about the military that should be robustly publicly debated, but to be hysterical about something that, as you

said, that hasn't happened yet that would probably be popular seems like a bad idea to me. Yeah, and look, I get about not allowing the many, you know, America's about not letting the many to overrun the few, but you can't do the reverse either. You can't have the interest of the few, um, be foisted upon, uh, the many. And you are right. They didn't do that because it was a narrative that they had to own. They had to own the status quo and they had screwed it up, especially on the border. They did not screw up the economy.

Trump gets a pass on the economy because he gets to look at his administration without the pandemic. They never factor in the pandemic, but that's politics and whoever makes the better case makes the better case. But I wonder, do you believe that this suspicion of him and his revenge agenda and all of the bogeymen that were waved in front of the MAGA voters faces, how much of that do you think comes to pass? I hope none. I don't really know. I mean, I've never covered an incoming administration about which I had so little sense of what would

actually happen. I think if you look at his personnel picks so far, it's mixed as T. Lee's has clues to understand what his agenda will be like. He wants to go down in history as a great president. He wants to be loved by the New York Times and loved by Vanity Fair, He wants to be loved by the New York Times and loved by Vanity Fair, as he always has. He wants to be on Mount Rushmore. He wants people to call him one of the all-time great presidents. And so, can he do that if his administration's about vengeance? Can he do that if he's constantly at war with the New York Times? I don't think so. So I hope that as a lame duck, who doesn't need a whipped up base after his nominees are confirmed very often, I hope that he won't do any of that

stuff and that the side of Trump that you and I have both seen, that's one of the most gracious and fun people who isn't interested in anything but bygones being bygones. I hope that's who the president is, but I can't rule out that it's closer to the Heather Cox Richardson conception of Donald Trump, who will use his four years to, you know, maraud through Washington and destroy the lives of those who he thinks wronged him. What is your best advice for the media in covering this administration and what is your advice for concerned citizens? For the media, it's, as I said before, I think come clean on the failures of the last four years.

The failure to, the participation in a conspiracy with Biden administration to cover up his loss of mental acuity, analyze the qualitative and quantitative data that exists about how unequal the coverage was, particularly the failure to hold Joe Biden and Kamala Harris accountable, and the overreach on things like covering illegal cases against Donald Trump, which in some cases have some merit, but in all cases have fundamental flaws for the prosecution of a former president. So start by truth and reconciliation about the last four years, and then cover him aggressively, but fairly and ask every day is what we're doing fair?

Is this the way we'd cover a democratic president who did the same thing? Not harder, not easier. Those would be my basics. Uh, purge the newsroom of liberals. Also would probably do that. Be a lot of other things sterile. Be a lot of empty seats. Yeah. It'd be a lot of opportunity Be a lot of things sterile. Be a lot of empty seats. Yeah, it'd be a lot of opportunity, a lot of open jobs.

We'd have a lot of migrants into the news business. In terms of citizens, patronize the Chris Cuomo's of the world. Give them your consumer dollars that reward people who want to cover the country fairly without regard to party or ideology, but who do things that are both interesting and important to hold all powerful interests accountable to the public interest. Read a lot, listen a lot, be informed, be open to your neighbor's point of view, even if they support a different candidate. If you're on the

left, don't be afflicted by Trump derangement syndrome. Don't tolerate people telling lies about Donald Trump when the truth is bad enough. Focus on the things that are true and worthy of consideration, strong pushback. Give money to political figures who use they represent the future. That is not about tearing people down, but about building us all up. And sign up with Two Way. Sign up with Two Way.

And then finally, be an example for your kids. Teach your kids to be serious citizens, to serious consumers, to serious information and news, and to recognize that they're part of their obligation as Americans, as human beings, as members of their community, is to engage in the national town square in a constructive and non-superficial way. What is the message at the Halprin Thanksgiving table this year or the Thanksgiving table that Halprin will be at?

What is the message? Probably thank God daddy doesn't have to work so hard now that the election's over. It is. People do not know how hard it is, do they? And on top of you building businesses, which is not easy either. Look, it is good to see your success. I have been tickled for years listening to people discover you, especially on the concierge side and everybody wanting to get on your calls

and hear what you're gonna say. And it's great to see the success. I welcome you everywhere that I am. I'd love to bring you to the NewsNation audience. We're overweighted, independent. Oh, one last thing on that. How cool was that, that the first time in your and my careers,

independents, or people who identified as that, voted more that way than as Democrats and the same as Republicans. What does that mean? Last thing. Well, I have mixed feelings about it. I like the fact that people are independent and not tied to the party. On the other hand, a lot of the strengths in American history of our democracy has come from our strong two-parting system. There are downsides to it, but there are some upsides as well.

So I have mixed feelings about it, but I do think people, it certainly at a minimum, should put pressure on the Democrats and the Republicans to recognize that what they're selling is not particularly popular with tens of millions of folks. Mark Halpern, all the best to you with your concierge service for the big shots and Two-Way, which is absolutely fundamental to getting us back to baseline where we have to be.

Disagreement with decency. I'll see you soon, my friend, and happy Thanksgiving. Chris, thank you. Happy holidays to you and your viewers and listeners and I'm very grateful to you for getting to visit. Thank you. So there you have it. We may not agree about the party system, but his analysis is something for any independent

critical thinker, even though he's got mixed feelings about independence, but that goes to how he feels about the need for the two-party system. But you should be taking his stuff to head. I know everybody always says to Hart, I say you take it to head as brain food about what he saw and what he doesn't see and think about it and what makes sense to you What do you not agree with and why let me know and we'll get after it as always. I'm Chris Cuomo Thank you very much for subscribing and following very important if you want it without the ads I get it You want the long kovat stuff you want longevity stuff from my doctor? Who's killing it in that space weird thing to say about a doctor who's in the healing business? I get it. You want the long COVID stuff. You want longevity stuff from my doctor

who's killing it in that space. Weird thing to say about a doctor who's in the healing business, but there you go. All of it is right on the sub stack, but you have to subscribe. Following is not gonna get you the content because I gotta pay to make it and I wanna use the money to help people get long COVID

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And of course I'll see you on News Nation, eight o'clock Eastern every weekday night. Appreciate you giving a place, an opportunity to have conversation as the cure all sides of issues everything discussed not as a food fight not as a gotcha contest but as an act of faith in a better future all right I'll see you soon