The Dispatch Podcast - The Next Four Years

Episode Date: January 22, 2021

Will Joe Biden’s governing strategy be effective? “I don’t think Biden has ever been driven on ideological issues, what he’s driven on is keeping his party together,” NBC’s Chuck Todd tells Sarah and Steve on today’s episode. “There is a part of me that says Biden can be the Reagan for Democrats.” How does the filibuster fit into the president’s call for unity? Is Joe Biden really a centrist? What role will Kamala Harris play in this administration? Todd answers all of these questions and more. Stick around for their thoughts on the Democrats’ $15 minimum wage proposal, the future of immigration reform, Biden’s relationship with Congress, and the evolution of cable news over the years. Show Notes: -“Biden's centrist words, liberal actions” by Dion Rabouin, Courtenay Brown, and Jennifer A. Kingson in Axios. -Take our podcast survey Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome back for a special Friday Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isger, joined by Steve Hayes. And this week, the political director for NBC news. Chuck Todd, of course, he is the moderator of Meet the Press. You can check him out this Sunday on NBC. Check your local listings and Meet the Press daily on MSNBC. We have so much to talk with Chuck about. I mean, most importantly, the Packers, but we will save that till the end. First up, what a Biden and might mean for the next four years. Let's dive in. Chuck, the first thing I want to talk about is you have, on the one hand, an inauguration, a campaign even, all geared toward unity from Joe Biden. but what unity means seems to be in the eye of the beholder. And for Republicans and conservatives, a lot of them seem to think that unity means

not pursuing progressive policy goals. But I don't think that's necessarily what Joe Biden and his administrations think. What does unity mean to this administration? I think it means exactly what he said at men in the inaugural address. I mean, it means we, you know, it's basically, it's the whole phrase, It's being disagreeable, it's being, it's disagreeing without being disagreeable.

It's, you know, I guess a phrase that I'd use the other day that, that, you know, was, look, if everybody just changed the, change their tone and not their mind, we'd still be more unified, right? Like, that is what I think, it's sort of being unified at how we conduct ourselves, being unified in what tone and tenor we use to debate policy. how do we learn to disagree? You know, can we make it so that we don't take every disagreement as some sort of personal affront to where you feel as if you have no choice, if you don't defend your stand, you're not defending your, you know, humanity? That's how I've always heard it from Biden, and Biden said it. Now, that said, you know, I do, I get where some people hear the words unity and think,

oh, you want everybody to get behind you on your agenda. and it's like, you know, maybe Biden needs to make that clearer that he's saying, hey, no, I'm just saying, hear me out, I'll hear you out. And if we still disagree, that's fine. Let's at least not blow each other up. So on the hearing the other side out point, how does the filibuster fit into that? So right now there's this power sharing agreement. Obviously, Vice President Harris is the tiebreaking vote.

But Chuck Schumer's the majority leader. And that means that right now they need. 60 votes to get, for instance, Biden's immigration bill through the Senate, a lot of discussion going on that they're just going to blow up the filibuster and start getting stuff done. How does that fit with this idea of unity? Well, this is, look, I have a, the filibuster is, I can't stand the way the Senate has handled the filibuster over the last 20 years, right? If we, if we disciplined our kids this way, I mean, imagine this.

So your kid is, you've told your kid, you've got to take the garbage out every night. And your kid says, well, I'll do it two nights. You know, does it two nights a week. And then you decide, all right, now you have to do it two nights a week. It's like you keep lowering the threshold. Like what I would have done with the filibuster is saying, you know what, you're right. We shouldn't need 60 votes to break filibuster. You should need 75 votes.

And oh, by the way, if you want a filibuster something, you better put on a diaper because you're not going anyway, right? You know, sort of like I wish we would strengthen both aspects of the filibuster. meaning make it, you know, raise the threshold even more, but raise the threshold at how to trigger it to, right? Meaning it isn't just about, you know, yeah, I'm going to object to this legislation and fly back to Missouri or Kansas or wherever, you know. So, but that's in the, that's in my monarchy that I will, I will never be able to do. Look, I get what McConnell was trying to do here, right? You know, forget, let's, if you think about it in terms of, of a coaching strategy, right? So McConnell is sitting there going, okay, when you're in the minority, you want to,

you're trying to do two things, delay and divide, right? You want to, you want to try to delay your, the majority from being able to get what they want to get done, and you hope, and maybe you hope you can divide the opposition so that that's another way, right? So, So this tactic by McConnell with fighting over the filibuster, it's doing a couple things, right? It delays the start of the administration, gums it up, right? That's on the majority. So that's one piece of strategy. And he's hoping to see if he can smoke out a Joe Manchin or even a Joe Biden to essentially

to tell Schumer, hey, back off on the filibuster. Now, it turns out, it looks like Mansion, it, Mansion didn't take that bait, right? Mansion's saying, no, I'm with Schumer. I'm not, you know where I stand on it, but he shouldn't, he should be able to use it as leverage. And Biden clearly has made the decision he's staying out of this fight. So, you know, I'm, I don't know why Chuck Schumer doesn't say, you know what, for I can pledge to you for the next six months, I won't even consider it. You know, you do something like that. You know, it's sort of, you know, if you were, if you were trying to create peace in a foreign country between two warring factions, you'd say, you'd say, okay, what's a baby step?

to see. What's the ceasefire agreement? That would, to me, would be my ceasefire agreement. All right. You know what? Let's try it for six months. And then if we think you're being overly obstructive, then we're going in. We don't want to do this, but your behavior is going to, you know, it is, and I'm wondering if that's what Schumer comes back with on this. But I get what McConnell's trying to do. I do think he should be thinking about that if he pushes this too far, he could motivate you know mansion wants his gavel and if you know he could end up pushing the democrats into saying okay we didn't want to do this but you know what mansion cinema and tester are now on board and now we're going to start the whole way this way so now that's not what joe biden wants to do

and in fact i'm looking um ahead i am anticipating a fight between the biden white house and congressional Democrats over strategy because I know Biden is always going to take the extra day to find the 10th Republican. And Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, look, Nancy Pelosi's now. She's like, use reconciliation. Let's go. Biden's not going to do that. So look, I get what McConnell was trying to do. Think of it more as like what Belichick would do in a situation like this, right? He's just trying to be. But I do think he ought to be careful here, because if he keeps it up, And he owns the obstruction. It could unify the Democrats.

Steve, will Mitch McConnell be donning his gray hoodie anytime soon? That's a good question. I don't, it's hard for me to tell exactly what the plan. I think Chuck is right that he's trying to just slow things down and delay and divide to the extent that he can at the outset. And to be fair to Mitch McConnell, precisely what Chuck Schumer did at the outset of the Trump administration. And I would say in an even more partisan manner, I mean, he was, he made a pledge at the beginning of the Trump administration that he would allow voice votes on national security cabinet officials and then he just flat out went back on his word and earned public on the record condemnations from normally sort of mild-mannered people like John Cornyn and Richard Burr and others. and then he had a famous fight in the well of the Senate with Tom Cotton about this.

So there's precedent for that. That's not what aboutism. That's just pointing out the precedent here. None of this is new. What I can't understand is on this question of unity, it seems to, I agree with the way that it sounds like both of you are interpreting both Biden's campaign rhetoric and the words he used in his inaugural, sort of unity of, of broad purpose, if not unity, on the specifics of policy agreement.

But what I don't understand is some of the steps he's taken to start to launch the administration. And I don't begrudge him any of the executive orders. He campaigned on this stuff. I don't agree with 90% of what he's doing. He won. Like, that's how this works. He won. Trump did a lot of executive orders.

Obama did a lot of executive orders before him. Joe Biden can do these orders. It doesn't matter much if Republicans or conservatives disagree with them. But when you're talking about the aid package, the relief package, which Democrats have complained loudly and frequently, was stopped by a Republican, you know, stubborn behavior and general grouchiness, why include in that, why did Democrats include in that a $15 minimum wage, which they know is going. nowhere. It's not, you're not going to win Republican support on that. And it seems to me all that's going to do, it's not even a smart leverage play. All it's going to do is poison the debate. So why do that? To me, it's, yes, it's a policy preference. Yes, we've just stipulated that he's not suggesting that everybody has to agree on policy preferences. Yes, he won the election. So he's

free to include what he wants. But it just is a bad, just sends a bad sign. If you actually want to have this moment where you can say let's have good faith negotiations about this stuff and then you throw in something you know Republicans are going to object to strenuously into the first big aid package that Democrats have been saying for months has to happen just sends the wrong signal to me well I look I get it but at the same time I mean look Biden can't start a fight with the left immediately and if you don't even put it in and try I do think it'd be to me, it was pretty clear they want to negotiate. I mean, I was shocked by this how quickly Jen Saki on night one essentially said, yeah, look, we know that it's not going to look like

what we proposed. So, you know, I guess I took all of that as everything's negotiable. So I think we want to make sure to include things that they, that you're willing to lose. Yeah. Yeah. I look, on the minimum wage thing, I do not understand why anybody hasn't discussed indexing. Right. You know, the issue in the minimum wage is the flatness of it, right? That's the hardest part, you know, you can't, is, is, is, is, is, is, is the flat wage. Fifteen dollars is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is a new York City. Um, a fine wage to live on a mountain view, Arkansas, um, where my uncle owns a logging business, right? So it, it's, it's, on that sense, um, I wish, I wish we would sort of, I hate the policy, way we argue policy sometimes when it's like, yes, we, can we have an indexing conversation? And then we can, we can, discuss this. But anyway. No is the answer. No, we clearly cannot. I know. But the same thing... That's too rational. The same thing happens with immigration, which looks like it might be one of the Biden administration's first non-pandemic related legislation pushes. Looking back to 2008, when Barack Obama also had both houses of Congress in Democratic control, he went with

health care first. And the result was that they really couldn't get immigration done. He ends up doing DACA and DAPA, which was, for those who don't remember, the parents of DACA's, basically. DAPA gets struck down by the courts, the executive order. Daka is actually now still pending in that Texas court. He sort of put it on hold now that the Biden E.O. has gone forward. I expect to hear from Judge Hainon down in Texas any day now. Do you think that's going to be the Biden administration's first legislative priority outside of the pandemic? Or was that just floated to kind of keep the conversation going? And in fact, once again, we're not really going to make any progress on immigration. I'm going to hesitate which Biden officials said this. So I don't, I know, I know I read this

yesterday, but it was a pretty high up Biden White House person, the West Wing person who said, I think it was Cedricman, but I'm not 100%, which is, hey, just because we sent it over first doesn't mean we want it dealt with first, right? Like this was, it was more of a statement of, it was an aspirational. It was more aspirational. Look, I, you know, it's, it's immigration and health care, both parties, actually, there's a parallel structure here. Democrats will always tell you what they're against when it comes to border security and in an immigration bill. They're very, and they're very uncomfortable ever putting down on paper what they're for when it comes to border security. It's similar to Republicans with health care. They'll tell you what they don't want,

but try getting them to actually write down what they will do. It's coming in two weeks, I think. Right. It's always coming in two weeks. Right. It's always coming. And the thing is, and Democrats on immigration, you know, they'll put in all this detail about what the pathway to citizenship is and how the asylum laws will work and all this stuff. What they won't tell you is what border security is going to look like, right? Because they know the second they put it down on paper, there's going to be at least one or two important groups on their coalition that will scream bloody murder and it will be it could blow it up on the left right and that's what happens with health care and the republicans right they're they're they're afraid of putting a marker down

because they know they're just there's no unity on the issue so look i'm very i think i've i believe immigration is is just is just constantly you know and this is something that if joe bide wants to do once to get immigration done, he's got to figure out how to get, how to, how to push back on the open borders talking point from the right. And until he's, until they put pen to paper on what their border security will look like. And instead of calling their, you know, in some ways, call their immigration bill a border security bill. You know, they ought to just simply call it that sometimes. I mean, you know, do so that people don't, so that, you know, what they're proposing If you look at it in detail is not radical, there's a lot of common sense in it that makes a lot of

sense. But because it lacks, really, it's nothing, no details on the border security part, it's easy to just dismiss it if you were looking for a reason to dismiss it. So look, I don't believe this, you know, this to me was more about, let's throw it out there because we're going to try. And by the way, Obama had one, there was one moment in 2010 and not to plug it. my book on Obama, but I write about this in my book on Obama in 2010. Lindsay Graham and Rahm Emanuel had, they were there. They had, they were, they were this close. They were really close to cutting this deal.

It was Chuck Schumer that didn't want to do it. And he, he did not want to do it. He wanted the issue for the midterms in the presidential. And, and the Schumer folks will deny he, he, but everybody you talk to around him said that, you know, he was not interested in getting, in finishing that issue. he wanted it for the election and and it's you know i would question whether it's been that effective i mean immigration is one of those issues immigration and health care are the two issues that we watch the independent voter right the non-aligned d or r they are moved to the left on health

care and to the right on immigration and whichever whichever issue is is higher up and pick your race that's usually where that independent vote goes i think it was a good bet for chuck schumer politically if you were just looking at that moment in 2010 that keeping the issue alive would help Democrats, it just turns out it was wrong. Over and over again, Republicans made gains. 2018, I think you can attribute some of that to immigration.

And certainly in 2020, you know, the border numbers in Texas, Miami, obviously, was kind of bizarre over there. The issue is not turning out the way that Democrats wanted, which makes me wonder between that on the one side, the politics shifting, And on the other side, a Supreme Court that I think is overall going to disfavor deferred action on anything,

climate change, deportations, et cetera, as being legally cognizable. Maybe we're in a moment where it's possible, but it feels wishful. Look, it would be, there is a, if the Supreme Court made, you know, got rid of some things where it forced Congress to legislate, I mean, is that which I'm, open force era? Yes. Yeah, I mean, because I think the Supreme Court, unfortunately, when they've come in, they have had the opposite effect. They've allowed Congress not to do anything. And there is a world in which the Supreme Court now in a post-Trump era can actually force Congress's hand. And that is absolutely entirely what the country needs, oddly. It may seem divisive in the short term, but in the long term, the worst thing that is

happening right now is this concept that whoever has the presidency can just change everything on day one. That is bad. Especially immigration law. Yeah. But that's, but that's the way we've been trending. And I've got to say, I'm pretty pessimistic that that will change. Even if the court, I mean, even if Sarah, what you're suggesting the court does kicks this back to Congress and, you know, forces its hand in some way on these narrow, narrow specific issues, there's very little indication. that Congress is a body is interested in returning to being a legislative institution. It is a performative body. They don't want to do this stuff.

They're thrilled to be able to pass, to pass on doing, not pass the legislation, but to kick the can to not do their jobs and to go on MSNBC or Fox or CNN and shout about doing their jobs. out about how bad the other people are. That's where we are at this moment. And I just, you know, I don't want to sound too pessimistic, but it's just hard for me to see even Supreme Court decisions doing that unless and until Congress itself says, enough, we're done with this. All right. Let me be one Pollyannish moment here. I will say the one thing that I think we all might be underestimating is that we have the first president, none of us have ever been

a lie for a president who actually likes Congress. Oh, my. That's actually, think about it. Wait. Think about he is the first person to be elected president in my lifetime that didn't find a way to run against Congress. Huh. And he is not since LBJ have we had somebody who likes the goddamn place.

I mean, I don't know what that means. Okay. Yeah, Ford is a distance second because, yeah, right, because he was only there for, you know, He really, there wasn't only so much he could do, although I think they did do some business together post-Watergate. That's it. And I just wonder, right, Carter's presidency became a failure because he fought with his own party in Congress, right?

Reagan constantly ran against Congress. So did Clinton, you know, Obama used to, you know, they all used to use the same joke when they'd go overseas. Oh, you don't have a Congress. I wish I didn't, you know, right? And it's like it was always sort of a standard joke. And if you think about it, our entire lie, I mean, Steve and I are old now. Like, we've never experienced a president that actually likes Congress.

I don't know if that changes a thing, but I, but it's, I guess it's better than having, saying there's a zero percent chance. Can I ask you, let me ask a big picture question related to this and the, the topic we were discussing with respect to immigration. So a lot of discussion, both during the key. campaign and since about sort of where Joe Biden is. What kind of a president is he likely to be? Is he, you know, is he the moderate? In fact, Axios had a piece today, we're talking on Friday, had an article this morning saying Biden uses sort of centrist unifying rhetoric. But if you

look at his governing plan and the things he campaigned on, he's really a candidate pretty friendly to the left. That's actually an argument that I've been making for a long time. We've discussed that quite a bit here on on this podcast. Where does he end up? And Chuck, and is it your view that he's going to be, what's the left going to do? What's the progressive left going to do with Biden? Are they just going to, is there going to be the equivalent of a House Freedom Caucus on the left to drag Joe Biden kicking and screaming even further left than he campaigned on? So I would, I will, I will semi agree with your analysis of Biden, but I will, I will take, I, I have another way that I describe Biden's ideology.

If you actually look at Biden's entire career, on one hand, if you look at it on a, if you, if you kept your ideology flat, you would say, boy, he's evolved over the years. But if you look at it through the prism of, of where the center of the Democratic Party was, Joe Biden always made his way, always makes his way to wherever the center is of the Democratic Party, not the center of, of, you know, both in the middle of the two parties. Wherever the main, I've always said he's in the mainstream of the Democratic Party, right? And which meant busing, you know, in the 70s, right? That was a, in the Democratic Party, his position was in the mainstream on crime in the 90s.

He was in the mainstream of where the Democratic Party was, right, on this stuff. So like everything that was a blight on his record. to the left over the last 40 years, when you look at it, if you go back in time in where the country was and where the Democratic and what left, right and center was inside just the Democratic Party, right? He's always been a little bit to the left of the conservative Democrats and a little bit to the right of the liberal Democrats. And so, so it's a, to me, it's a, so as the Democratic Party has moved basically further

to the left, you could look. at Biden and say he's become more liberal, or you could say, well, he's still the center of the Democratic Party, right? Like, so I guess that's my way of sort of another way of explaining. My point is, is I don't think Biden has ever been driven on, on ideological issues. What he's driven on is keeping his party together, right? I've always thought that that's sort of, when he, he's always looking to keep his party together, and then, okay, then I'll work from there to figure out a compromise with the other side. So then the question is, can that be an effective way to get stuff done?

And I don't know. I mean, you know, there is a part of me that says Biden can be the Reagan for Democrats, right? You know, I do think we all underestimate Biden at our own peril. After all, everybody underestimated this guy. Three years ago, right, who thought he was going to be the nominee of the party, let alone president of the United States? Now, I'm sorry, who the hell could have won this election other than Joe Biden? in that Democratic field, right?

So Democrats underestimated Ronald Reagan, you know, in 79 and 80, and even thought he'll be a one-termer. He's too old, all of those things that we're hearing now. So I would throw that sort of context out there. But I don't know how much patience the left of the Democratic Party will have for Biden's style. I think the biggest clashes he's going to come into, you know, they agree. The left and Biden agree more than they disagree, their biggest disagreements are on tactics. Right.

That's where there is a perception that Biden is somehow a centrist. Because Biden doesn't want to use the same tactics that the left wants to use. He's not interested in just jamming everything in, right? So I think the real dust-ups are not going to be on a policy. I think the dust-ups are going to be on strategy. For instance, if he decides to dump the minimum wage, in order to get this deal done, right? He'll get some leeway from the left, you know, in the first six months.

What is that? What happens in the second six months? Look, well, Clinton found that out until, you know, Clinton was having bigger and more and more problems with the left flank of this party until impeachment, right? That, you saw that happen when he started working with the center there. And in some ways, impeachment sort of rallied the base to his side, but he had base problem. People forget he had major base problems in his party until impeachment. And sort of, I think as this term goes on, that's going to be, you know, my, now, if Biden is chalking up legislative wins that are, that six or seven incremental bills that collectively are like, Jesus, more stuff sat and done under this guy.

Yes, it's small potatoes. Maybe that buys him some leeway with the left. But that's where I think the first clashes between Biden and the left come. It'll be on strategy and tactics and less on a specific issue. Speaking of the left, what role is Kamala Harris going to play in this administration? I'm trying to figure that out. I find it interesting that she has no portfolio. And I make that, I don't, you know, I assume at some point she'll want one.

Like maybe it'll be a specific thing, like Biden, Obama handed Biden, the end. implementation of the of the stimulus right it was member biden got put in charge of that um but how much of her time is used as a tiebreaker vote in the senate right i think there is some some limitations there you know is she going to be i i assume they'll use her as an attempt to talk to more progressive groups when they're trying to sell progressive on, hey, it's not everything that you wanted, but it's more than what you, you know, you were going to get. What I don't know is whether she'll be good at that.

You know, I think that's her job, but I don't know if she'll be good at that. And I think I can anticipate your next question. And I don't know if progressives think of, you know, Kamala Harris is one of these people. Progressives have never thought of her as a progressive, and the right swears she's nothing but a progressive. It's so fascinating.

Well, and she has her own political ambitions, certainly, this. She doesn't want to stop at vice president. And so that's always been some tension. I think back to Gore and Clinton. Like, Gore doesn't want to carry all this water for Bill Clinton. He wants to run for president as well. And so there's, there was always this like tension of like embrace some of it, Heisman, some other things. It puts Harris in an odd position when you have a vice president who has things they want to do later, which that was why in some ways, Dick Cheney was such an effective vice president to George W. Bush and arguably why Joe Biden was effective for Obama.

Because they weren't seen as ambitious. Yeah. They were done. Their ambition was done, right? That's right. They were, and by the way, it built real trust between Obama and Biden, and it built real trust for a long time between Bush and Cheney until they had their dust up. But, you know, look, I will tell you this, during the campaign, the trust issues between

Biden, Biden, the individual, and Harris have a terrific relationship. relationship, the individual. There is still, which shouldn't surprise you, there's still some tension between the longtime Biden team and those that are Harris people. And it is, it's that, and, you know, it's the tension that comes with a rough primary campaign, right? Which for, for a brief period between those two, it was. And a very rough debate. Yeah. That's right. And, you know, look, Joe Biden's the forgiver here. I hear Joe Biden's a little less forgiving. But I think that that got better, which is not unusual. Spouses, you know, Bill Clinton, Bill Clinton had a harder time forgiving some people than Hillary Clinton. And then the roles were

reversed when he was at the presidential ticket. Well, I think that's going to, I think, I think there's no getting around the fact that Kamala Harris wanted, wanted to be president and presumably still wants to be president. And that some of what she does in the conduct of her job on a day-to-day basis now will be driven by the fact that she hopes that it boosts her, boosts those ambitions. I'm not necessarily being critical of that, but it's a fact. I think it'll be very, very difficult to get around. If you go back to the Bush-Cheney example, at the end, Chuck, you mentioned the dust-ups that they had. They had serious policy disagreements on Iran, on North Korea, in particular, among many others. The interesting thing, when I interviewed President Bush at the end of his term and asked him

specifically about Dick Cheney and about some of these dustups, it was so clear that even if they didn't see eye to eye and Bush ultimately, particularly on foreign policy, chose sort of a Condoleez of Rice approach more than a Dick Cheney approach in his second term, he understood that Dick Cheney was telling him to do because it's what Dick Cheney believed. He didn't think it was because Dick Cheney saw some benefit to doing this and that he was going to, you know, run for president. And even that, I think, allowed them to have that disagreement, as frustrated as I think they both were at times on a sort of intellectually honest basis, which I think won't happen. I don't think we can, I don't think we should underestimate just how much tension that can

really create. And, you know, certainly some of it will be subject to the Washington gossip mill and, you know, little items everywhere with AIDS anonymously sniping at one another about motives. But I think it'll end up being a real factor. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones and give them that extra layer of security brings real peace of mind. The truth is the consequences of not having life insurance can be serious. That kind of financial strain on top of everything else is why life insurance indeed matters. Ethos is an online platform that makes getting life insurance fast

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this effort among House, some Trump-friendly Republicans in the House to oust Liz Cheney, the number three Republican from her leadership post. You have big fights between Trumpy Republicans and more traditional movement conservatives and establishment Republicans in some of the state parties, Georgia, Arizona, to be sure. You've got these divides in the Republican Senate, I think we'll find out in the coming days that they might not be as big as we might have anticipated. But where you've got, you know, a few Republicans, a handful probably who will vote to convict on impeachment when that comes up. And what seems to be a growing group that will not and hopes to sort of let the Trump era end as it began with Republicans, and I think was for

Republicans throughout with a shrug of the shoulders. I don't like what he did, but eh, how does this, how does this work itself out? And how much of a presence do you expect Donald Trump to continue to be in the Republican Party? You know, it's funny, how often have we said, well, maybe it'll take another election before they realize they have a problem, right? And, And, you know, I find myself thinking that again, that maybe it's for the Republican Party to resolve this Trump issue. And that's really what it is, right? He's, look, they've had this sort of, they've had this wing of the party, the talk radio

wing that was, that has now grown to the cable news wing to the whatever you want. And then Trump sort of weaponized it, right? He sort of was able to put it all, take the whole sort of conservative eco chamber and turn it and sort of turn it into a movement, right, and in a way that became, I think, effective to a point. It, you know, it feels like, well, if not, if losing the White House House in the Senate doesn't force this conversation, maybe having the first ever, first midterm in a generation that the out party loses ground rather than gains ground is what it's going to take. I mean, I feel like I'm envisioning a scenario here where this Republican infighting leads to

primary challenges all across the spectrum in various states. And because the state party and national party apparatuses are Trump folks, even as maybe the congressional leadership is a much less Trumpy, but the party folks seem to be winning out here. But these divides, it could lead to sort of a repeat of what we saw, you know, in 2010, where winnable races for the Republicans, you know, Senator Mike Castle, that no longer exists there, that never happened in Delaware, things like that. And we could see that all over the board. And maybe it would take another, you have to lose ground another cycle in a row. You know, the thing with the Trump era is a lot of us, whether Full Obser, whether what we have

done, the three of us, what we do for a living, saying, you know, you keep touching the hot stove, it's going to burn your hand. And yet, it hasn't burned it off, right? Like, they're scarred, but they're like, well, it was only a 50-50 Senate. And oh my God, we gained seats in the house. We don't control it, but hey, we got some seats back and 74 million votes. You know, don't mention the 80 million, right? But 74 million, right? You know, I, I don't, when does the hand burn off when they touch the stove, right? And the thing is, is that they've grown a tolerance to the heat and they've survived. They've not thrived.

They've survived. And I don't know if it takes a full on thumping for this, for this sort of reckoning to happen. But to answer your second question, I think Trump's a nun is going to fade more than people realize because he's lazy, right? like ultimately he is he's he he gets he it if somebody doesn't spark him you know he can get if if the movement is stays alive for him and it and he can just waltz in I'm sure he'll take leadership of it and try it again but I do think it's fascinating to me that this deplatforming of Trump has been as effective as it has been I'm and what's funny is that Trump has not looked

for another way to talk. Like, you know, whatever you want to say, we can have a debate about whether you think Twitter or Facebook should have done this. But look at how lazy Trump is. He's not, there's, the internet is wide open. There's press releases. There's TV interviews you could do.

You could put on, you know, there's plenty of ways to communicate if you chose to do it. He just seems to be too lazy to do it. So I think this is a sign that he himself's going to be a little lazy. But I'll tell you, I do think the person I'm most intrigued about that could inherit his movement is Christy Gnome. And I think she is, she is, she is somebody that clearly wants this movement is, seems to be very

comfortable going, she's going, as everybody else is starting to swim away from Trump, she's decided to go and, and yet she doesn't have the dirty hands that Josh Holly has, right? I, I, I, I, um, she's somebody that I think that a lot of people are going to mock in this town and roll their eyes about there's a lot of reasons why I could see the MAGA crowd suddenly following her

and that becoming and her becoming quite formidable. Speaking of the deplatforming issue, yes, we haven't heard from Trump for two days. I know it feels like a longer time, but it hasn't actually been that long.

But you know what? No, I would say, but think about it, though. he's been the platform on January 7th, have you woken up, have you noticed the lack of anxiety you have when you wake up going, gosh, what do I have to chase this morning? I just say this is a reporter. Like, you wake up and you'd be like, oh, what, your day was already like, you were already behind. You felt like you're just like back on the treadmill. Here we go. Chuck of all the people on this podcast. I just want you to think of where I was in 2017. And who was waking up.

Yes. With more anxiety. I covered it. You lived it. You're right. You're right. You're right. I look. As bad as any of us always, I've always said, somebody has it worse. And yes, you had it worse. Okay, so fast forward. It's been a few months. And, yeah, Trump largely stays out of sight. Media companies, from a business standpoint, benefited from the clickiness of Donald Trump and the anxiety that other people felt.

And I'm curious what you think the reaction media-wide will be in a few months when the ratings go down when there's actually a business side effect to this? And Donald Trump says, hey, I'll call into your morning show. Yeah, I want to believe the bosses that I've heard that say, you know, we know that audiences, you know, that that the, that a restoration of sort of norms and more a business-like approach or a more formal approach to government. isn't going to be as interesting. I mean, I do the Tony Kornheiser podcast every week just to pick football games. But he made a, he made a, his little funny this morning was this. He said, yeah, I watched about 20 minutes of Jen Saki's press conference. She seemed to tell the truth. She evaded some

answers, but she seemed to have a few, you know, she didn't answer what she didn't want to answer. But what she did answer, she seemed to have some facts. It was boring. I'm not watching that again. And he was obviously, right? He was obviously being facetious except, you know, he was It's funny because it's true, though. Exactly, right? And so, look, I got to do a segment on China yesterday. It was just sort of, I remember, I got to do a segment that we wanted to do. I have reminded some of my reporters that, you know, one aspect of the Trump era, I've always said was extraordinarily,

covering Trump was intellectually easy and emotionally exhausting. covering Biden is going to be intellectually difficult and emotionally a lot easier. But it's a lot harder to report. Reporting in the Obama years, reporting in the Bush year, would you have a government that actually wants to be competent? You could decide whether they actually are or not, but they aspire to competency. They aspire to being on the same page. They aspire to supporting each other, right?

This is, it was true of the Bush, Obama, and I think now the Biden White House, right they're not interested in creating drama they try to mitigate it um that means you got to work harder to find out what's going on and you know i've always said the best way to cover a white house that's disciplined is cover it through congress right usually that's where the where that's where you find your leaks and that's where you find your you find most of your information um i had to talk with a lot of reporters over the last day or two saying you know yeah everything changes like you're you're you got to come down from this you know it it is but i actually think a lot of reporters are having sort of weird withdrawal symptoms, you know, because of the way covering Trump

worked. And it was so, it was basically, I guess, the way the paparazzi works, right, or Hollywood gossip works, except it was about our government, you know, that you're always constantly chasing reactions, right? And going, well, look at this. What do you think of that? You know, now you get to actually report on, you know, identify the problems, report on what you think, you know, is something that needs surfacing and stuff. And that's harder reporting, but it's actually more satisfying. So how, how concerned are you? And Chuck, you and I have talked about this at length on various, when we worked together at the hotline 20 plus years ago, over beers more than once or twice on podcasts. I am concerned. I buy your description. I buy your analysis there.

I am concerned, given that I believe most journalists come from a center-to-left worldview, that the relief they feel and not having to chase the crazy all day, every day, is going to translate into less subjective reporting, particularly from the mainstream media, where the Biden team, precisely because of what Tony Kornheiser said in jest, is not going to be subject. The presumption for the Biden team will be that they're telling the truth. This is the way that I think many of my mainstream journalist friends will see. Jensocky's telling the truth.

She might get a tough question every now and again, but she's not going to really be pressed in the way that Kaylee McEnany wasn't. And look, I'm not saying that's not without cause. I mean, I think a lot of the stuff we got from the podium under Trump, certainly a lot of stuff we got from the president was just false, was just lies. But isn't it incumbent on journalists? I think particularly mainstream journalists who are looking to rebuild trust and I'm not sure it can be rebuilt to to to work with great to press great scrutiny on

the Biden administration and to double and triple check their claims well I would just say this it depends on what you do what you what you just what you describe as the mainstream media I don't know if cable news is a fair barometer of journalism anymore and I'm going to and I say and, you know, I can get in, when I, I have a, I do a show on cable news, but I don't believe I'm of the cable. I, you know, I say this. And I, and cable news and social media have fused together. Yeah. And obviously what we consider cable news is prime time. Okay. That, that is whatever, they're, there, I'm not saying there, there's plenty of people that attempt to practice journalism on all the cable channels. I, I believe I'm one of them. But like, I'm not saying

that you don't attempt to do it. But, but, but cable news is basically, been defined by what happens in the evening on all of those programs. And I know CNN likes to try to pretend it somehow not a part of this. It's like, please, your prime time is just as advocacy journalism as most certainly as as MSNBC or Fox. And, you know, so here's where I get my, here's where I get defensive. I don't want to be defined by that. I don't like the media is defined by these three cable channels. Like I saw Jack Schaefer wrote, he goes, you know, the cable media has got to do this, it's like, well, if you watched the networks, the networks were very much more reserved about this in their treatment. And we have more skepticism, and there is more of a professionalism.

I do think what the Trump era did, right, by weaponizing, by the weaponization of Fox prime time, led to the reaction by both MSNBC and CNN to sort of be sort of an alternative force to this. And so it is also, you know, there's a whole new generation of activist journalism and journalists that have come into the system in the last decade. And I think there's plenty. The problem is it isn't a clean issue anymore. There is a smaller group of journalists who believe they're journalists first and activists, you know, for their own lives. There's, you know, we're all, I'm going to advocate for something. my life if something affects my life type of thing, right? But you, but you believe in a dispassionate

distance. And we came when we're, but I would argue we're of another generation. This newer generation, in some ways, got into journalism motivated by what they saw on cable news. Yeah. Yeah. And so it's a reaction. Now, there's been some terrific new young journalists. You know, I really admire, for instance, on our team, this guy, Ben Collins and what they have done in the Q&N world. You know, I'll admit, I was. sort of, you know, I'd roll my eyes when they were doing this stuff two and three years ago, boy, they turned out, you know, thank God somebody went into these dark holes. You know, it wasn't easy. That is, that is what we would call gum shoe reporting, right? You had to

go in in order to get it. And so there's been some terrific new young journalists who have thrown themselves into some parts of the, that needed to be reported in. But overall, I would say that there is a younger generation that I think has come in in a more activist mold than I I see it with those on those that you might say are working at the legacy mainstream media, and I've seen it on some of the newer on the right-hand side. And I don't know what to do about that part of it, right? And it's just sort of, I just think this is a, this is, this is where we are. The consumer, I will say this, I'm a believer that cable news, I keep saying that,

this will wear itself out, you know, and I think when John Stewart killed Crossfire, we all thought, oh, maybe that'll happen. And it turned out, oh, no, crossfires the good old days, right? At least a Crossfire had left and right, talking to each other, right? Like, we've just, you know, and, you know, I'll say this. Um, you know, I wonder the, I wonder if as people are cord cutting. And as people have decided, you know what, they're going to get, they're going to consume their news in multiple different ways. And they go ahead and view cable news programs more as sort of, well, I'm curious what so-and-so has to say about this issue. And if we, if the media critics sort of treated cable news that way, then I wonder if the perception the media would be

slightly, would be seen as it's a slightly more diverse community. What I would say is this, I, it's a long way of saying, I feel like the prime time of cable news is defining the perception of media and it's really screwing it up for a whole bunch of other people. And it's, in fairness to the people on primetime cable, I think they don't, they weren't trying to be journalists in the old school sense. But it's what the viewer has consumed. Exactly. Well, this has been a treat for me to get to hang out with YouTube because y'all are just like buddies and in real life. And then I just get to interlope here and be part of this super fun conversation. But there's a topic that we haven't touched on, which I expect I'm about to be totally excluded from. But on Sunday,

305 p.m., it's Tampa Bay versus the cheeseheads. I believe the Packers are favored by three, Chuck and Steve. How are you feeling going into this weekend? I feel stupidly, I am so confident in this team that I'm now totally believing we're not going to win. It's like this strange feeling. This team for everybody is the Packers. You are a Packers fan. Yeah, it is so, I mean,

the Packers are peaking. Like, everything is perfect. The weather is cold. It's exactly the way you'd want it to be. There's this old guy who retired to Florida that's trying to revitalize his career. I mean, it's everything you want. And I'm like, when is the other

shoe going to drop? What's going to happen? Look, I could speak for, I'm just, I'm relieved. Now, I'm nervous for Aaron Rogers more than anything else because I feel like if somehow he does not beat Brady here, then we can never have the what-if argument of Brady versus Rogers. So it really, more than anything, I care about this win more than I do the Super Bowl. Wow. Because I really want to make sure Rogers beats Brady.

It, it, I've, I will, I do not accept the idea, you know, Rogers, Rogers won a Super Bowl without a head coach. And I, my, my whole theory on, my joke to Patriots fans is, if Rogers had been a Patriot, he'd have nine rings. Yeah. So I'm, I'm in the same place. I know you've got to run, Chuck. I'm in the same place. I will say the one distinction we were talking about it, um, over the past couple weeks is with Matt Lafleur's offense, it's just so incredibly fun to walk. And you've come to expect them to succeed, whereas with Mike McCarthy's offense, we often hope that Aaron Rogers could succeed in spite of the play calling and in spite of the offensive scheming. And that just in and of itself makes the game so much more enjoyable to watch. I hope they obviously hope the Packers win this game.

I care more about the Super Bowl. I want them to win another Super Bowl. I know. I hear you. But I'm nervous. I'm nervous going in. look it's so funny you bring up the head coach just real quick this week is the i it has been a long time as a packer fan where you get to stare at the other side of the sideline and go i think

our guy's better than that guy yeah and and i by the way this is why i wanted to face tamp tampa and not the saints because i'll say this even though i think we could have beaten the saints too they have a great coach yeah i'm arians doesn't scare me as much as sean peyton did that's gonna come back to bite us. I know. Thanks for jinks. I know. Thanks for jinks. That's great. Of course. You managed to talk about it for like two minutes without jinxing us and then we jinks that's the jinks. That's the jinks. And with that dispatch listeners, we'll leave it there. Just know that if Green Bay doesn't pull this out on Sunday, all of the dispatch will be in a miserable place.

And our, you know, all of our work will be edited to death. It's going to be awful. So please, all of you, please root for the Packers this weekend. If not for your own sake for mine. We'll see you next week. Thanks, guys. With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot trackside. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Pre-sale tickets for future events subject to availability and varied by race. Turns and conditions apply.

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