Is the Republican Establishment Trying to Politically Kill JD Vance?

- Hey, everybody, welcome to Next Up with me,

your host, Mark Calpard, I'll say it in chief of live interactive video platform two way and your guide to everything coming next up. Happy to have you here, glad that you're here. Two great guests and my reporting on a bunch of stuff.

Joining us today is my two way colleague, Ethan Sucle. Host of life long and if you're someone who's ever struggled with some combination or individually wait, gain and addiction, you're gonna wanna hear Ethan's message

and how he talks about these things. It's unlike anything I've seen

“and I think he's gonna be part of leading a revolution”

in this country about being healthier. And then also Fred Ryan, Chairman of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute used to be the Guy Ryan Politico and also at the Washington Post.

Now that also the director at the center of civility

and democracy. He's got a new book called the Civility Handbook and Guide for All Americans and it is an important stake in the ground to try to turn this country around

so that we could have conversations that are spirited, important and civil. And do we talk about the benefits of that and how to bring it about grateful to them for being here, looking forward to talking to them both.

But before that, before they're here, my report in monologue on JD Vance, king off of his interview with Joe Rogan, which has gotten a ton of attention and paid also to the reality

that the presidential race is coming. Hundred days to the midterms and then shortly after that, you'll start to see people running for, now it's their running for president.

“We'll be towards the early primaries before too long”

and I get accused of times of rushing this process but it's no rush folks, this is happening. And it's happening on each side, the Democrat and the Republican side in different ways. On a Democratic side, the thing is more chaotic

than even I had thought. I've talked about it being a weak field. I do my eight for 28 and have had a bit of a hierarchy. The new polling out of New Hampshire and nationally demonstrates what I've been feeling for a bit.

This thing is so wide open. The vacuum at the top is massive.

We've never had a race with so many candidates who are seen

as either boom or bust. That Democratic Party process will play at particularly as the DNC puts its calendar together of the early nominating states. So, on the one hand, you've got folks eyeing the race

and on the other hand, they don't know where they're gonna be competing early on and as you know from history, those early states are so important. So, the Democratic race for president in 2028 to define the presidential campaign

to define the Democratic Party, to define America. That's a wide open mess. The Republican side is totally different. The Republican side, it's about one man right now. It's about JD Vance.

It's binary. He'll be the nominee or he won't. I think if he wants to be the nominee, he's still celebrating the birth of his fourth child. If he wants to be the nominee,

“I think he'll get the nomination pretty easily”

with the support of president Trump. But this has been a watershed week and it's grown to this. I've been trying to do my reporting this week on Iran. Trying to do my reporting on the midterms.

But they fall out from the JD Vance interview last week of a piece with the trends we've talked about here before, forced my reporting to be a bad JD Vance in part because I find what's happening so interesting. And in part because of incoming

from Vance supporters and Vance to tractors and the support and detraction said a word. It's coming from inside the Republican Party. I'm not talking about how Democrats feel about JD Vance. Although I think eventually, if he does run,

that'll be a big issue. Can JD Vance be someone who unites the country? We had three straight two term presidents, Clinton, Bush, and Obama, who aspired to unite the country and failed?

President Trump talked about it, but really his campaign was not geared towards unity in 2016 or in 2024. JD Vance biographically maybe could unite the country. The discussion of whether JD Vance can appeal

to independence, who leaned democratic or to Democrats, that's a discussion for another day. What we're discussing now is the current state of how people say JD Vance. I have become so fascinated by this I like to say.

I'm America's leading chronicleer of how to Republicans feel about JD Vance. If you look at the public opinion polls, they like JD Vance a lot. He's very popular with Republicans overall,

where he's become less popular is with some democratic elites, with these donors in the party, and with some of the pundits in the party, some of the columnists, some of the people

who are columnists who I most respect in this last week have written scathing columns, a bad JD Vance scathing. In one case, my friend Brett Stevens of the New York Times,

Brett keyed off of the interview

that JD Vance's vice president did with Joe Rogan. Kim Strousel keyed off of complaints on Capitol Hill that I've heard too, that the vice president who's president of the Senate,

“and who has often been a key voice lobbying Congress”

on the administration's behalf, complaints that he's not been as engaged at a time when Congress has a lot on its plate. So what we're talking about here today is my reporting on the one hand from elites

and some you see this married, mirrored publicly, who do not like JD Vance, and then the Vance supporters coming to his defense and saying all of this is not just unfair to JD Vance, but in some cases they're saying

the criticism of JD Vance is coming from the establishment because they don't like him and that they're making up controversies in order to try to bring him down. So what happened in the interview with Joe Rogan,

that set off this latest round of conversations about how do people feel about JD Vance? It was almost three hours and he talked about a range of stuff. What's gotten the most attention

is some of the stuff he said about Israel.

He made basically two accusations about Israel.

One is that they, some people in the Israeli government are trying to stop the peace talks from happening because they don't want peace with Iran. They want the war to continue.

Now, that's something that is controversial for him to say aloud. You wouldn't have heard Kamala Harris say that probably or any other recent president or vice president, but a lot of them think it, right?

Saying it aloud, somehow caused a backlash. But then he also said something about an article in Time Magazine that suggested that Israel was engaged in some sort of improper illicit secret covert influence campaign

to spend money in the United States influence public debate. Here's JD Vance with Joe Rogan on that accusation. S4, please.

- But I definitely think you have seen

this very discrete, extremely well-funded campaign to try to derail the negotiation and try to derail the deal. And you know, again, there's this time article that came out yesterday for incentive to me.

It's like worth reading because it lists a bunch of people who have quite literally been paid by a former Trump campaign person who was himself paid by certain elements

within the Israeli government. And those people are attacking me viciously for quite literally trying to accomplish the negotiation objective that the president set for the country. What bothers me is actually when Americans

allow, meaning American leadership, allows that influence to affect their judgment into effect what they are advocating for. - A lot of people who are big supporters of Israel, in this country, like bread Stevens,

do not like those remarks. But the criticism of the Rogan interview extended far beyond that. Look, you go to an interview at Joe Rogan, he's gonna ask you about some off-beat stuff.

But you don't necessarily have to give off-beat answers. I can't show you the whole two and a half hours. But here's a bit of how JD Vance talked about a range of topics with Joe Rogan S5, please.

“- Republican still fundamentally have a cool problem, right?”

There's something more charismatic, more cool about the Democrats as opposed to the right. - Thing I could get a reminder is, it's like they would get him eating ice cream and the most ridiculous, suggestive way imaginable.

- Well, you think that we would have started this war in Iran without the influence of Israel. - There are some people within their system, we know beyond a shadow of it out, manipulating and trying to change American public opinion

to keep the war going on indefinitely. - If it was your call, would you have done exactly the same thing? - Well, what did the President said, JD was less enthusiastic about it. My approach to this is not to Monday morning quarterback

a decision that was made three months ago. I'm not one of these people who says we should just abandon California to the Democrats like let them deal with their own problems. - I think they stole the election.

- Yes, all right, a lot there, a lot of stylistic stuff on display, here's a bit more from the interview. And this is some of the stuff Brett Steven's keyed off. Please roll S1 and then S3 back to back. - But if we're talking about an extra terrestrial being

that is human-like, but not human, that contains effectively infinite powers in his torturing human beings, you can call an alien if you want,

“but I think there's a lot of historical precedent”

to call that a demon. But if you're looking for me to concede the point that there is something different

between an angel of demon, a space alien, a supernatural, but non any of those other things, being yes, I can see that. - All right, I look at the Rogan interview and I have an understanding of the people

who contacted me and said, wow, what an incredible interview.

J.D.D., that's such a great communicator. No one else at his level of politics today could go on Rogan like that. And then I look read the con by my friend, Brett Steven, who I respect so much.

And I say this with no judgment. Brett is a charter member of what I call the gang of 500. He is a member of the establishment. He's writing from the point of view far from the grassroots. But I was surprised to ask anything this was.

A1, please. This Brett Steven's writing in the New York Times.

“He says, the truth is that the demons are here.”

He's referring to the demon reference from J.D.D.D.D., "The demons are here. "We elected them. "A2, please." The truth, the J.D., the van's interview with Rogan,

as closest politics gives us to a national cancer diagnosis,

was a blip in the New cycle because crazy today is every day. And our capacity feels shocked and diminishes with every astronaut, utterance, coming from the vice president's mouth to say nothing of that of his boss.

And here's the paragraph that really stunned to me. A3, please. "The truth," Brett Steven's writes, "that the current vice president is by far." The worst person ever to hold the office move over air

in Burjansi, Calhoun, and Spirit to Agnew, that he thinks probably correctly that there's no political downside in today's Republican party to talking like a guy who thinks Dan Branden novels are works of nonfiction.

And that it's equally okay for a person who buys his own admission has access

“to all U.S. intelligence to tease the possibility”

of deep faith conspiracies of the sort his political base is likely to believe. The prospect of this calo and sinister opportunist, taking the place of the erratic buffoon now governing us maybe the single scariest thought

in world politics today. Brett does not like Donald Trump, that's clear from this comment is past writing. But the scathing way he's talking about J.D. events is character, the trepidation he has at the person

who's the most likely next president of the United States on paper is quite striking to me. And it contrasts with the people I know who looked at the same interview and thought it was great.

Here's Kim Straussle's column. It's a goto A4, please. Kim writing in the Wall Street Journal right around the time Brett did. It says by contrast, lawmakers can count

at a few fingers, the Times Former Senator Vance has set foot in the Capitol. As they twist the legislative wins, they glimpse him mainly on his TV and podcast book tour. A5, please.

The anger has only grown over Mr. Vance's decision to position himself as a skolder of the body of a witchy constitutionally presides rather than showing up for the work. A lot of the back and forth on Twitter

that Kim participated in was about the timing of whether he was on paternity leave or not. But the point is, here you have another columnist when the leading voice is on the center right,

being extremely critical of J.D. events.

And J.D. Vance has a lot of supporters out there, not just in the grassroots, but on social media. Here's some of the ways people responded to Kim's column. And some of this could be seen as the way a response would come as well to what Brett Stevens wrote.

A6, please, Sean Davis, big supporter of the president and a V.D. Vance said about Kim Straussle. I'm sorry, but pulling the obvious little stunt against J.D. Vance, who just, whose wife just gave birth, when Mitch McConnell hasn't been seen in weeks,

is absolutely absurd. What are we even doing here? Here's Steve Courses, he says, the legacy media continues to coordinate it up to smear J.D. Vance. These actions from, quote, conservatives are obvious

and regrettable. Thankfully, they won't sway the masses of voters who matter. The Steve's argument is, this stuff is just the establishment trying to stop J.D. Vance. Here's John Schweppie, I think they pronounce his name.

He worked in the Trump administration. He's now conservative activists. He says the anti-vance op isn't working. And shows a chart with a data suggesting J.D. Vance is very popular.

Lastly, here's Brett Creses a producer on the blaze who says everything Vance says here, talking about the interview

“with Rogan is entirely correct and you should be highly”

skeptical of anyone who attacks him for this. Calling it an op is kind of a term of art. These folks are supporting J.D. Vance. And you know how supports him is the public. He's ahead in almost every poll.

But it's lead over Marka Rubio, nationally in New Hampshire, has narrowed for sure. Here's the New Hampshire poll, a 10, done this week.

You can see they have pulled in October of last year.

February of this year, now July.

“And the vice president's lead over Marka Rubio has narrowed”

substantially. You see, again, Marka Rubio is very close. Now, as he've heard me say before, Marka Rubio is not going to run against J.D. Vance. I don't believe.

So the notion that Rubio is going to enter a primary process and beat him, that's not what we're talking about. But what we are talking about is if you look on social media and for positive and negative, you look at the polls, J.D. Vance is still super popular with Republicans,

but so Marka Rubio right now. It's unusual for a vice president who wants to be present to waltz into the White House, to waltz into the nomination. It's the challenge because vice presidents

get covered in a particular way.

But what we're seeing now with people lashing out of J.D. Vance, some of it over Israel, some of it over his character, some of it over a feeling that he's not the right person to carry on to a Republican legacy. Nobody thinks, I shouldn't say nobody.

Few people think it's not, it's not because he's not mad enough. It is, as J.D. Vance Defender say, it is largely the establishment who sees, in some cases, the opportunity to break the Trump grip on the Republican party

to go back to a Republican party that they liked before. They see that opportunity to say, J.D. Vance is not the right person to be the next president, to be the next nominee. And J.D. Vance isn't counter-counting to that.

He's not catering to that. He's not trying to ameliorate it, at least not publicly. What he did on Rogan, and again, he's been on paternity leave, largely since then, what he did on Rogan, is that's the real J.D. Vance.

Same things other people won't say. Engaging in conspiracy theories. He describes himself as a conspiracy theorist. Making jokes, making light of things, speaking sometimes in an off-color way,

being openly critical of certain people

and organizations who most people in public life wouldn't publicly criticize. That's who he is, and that has robbed some people on the establishment the wrong way. Some of it is no doubt the establishment bristling.

The establishment wanting to take back the party in the post-Trump era. But some of it is a judgment about J.D. Vance, about his character, about the way he conducts himself in public life.

Those people are on the wrong side of the opinion of the party. But if what they want is either or returns the pre-Trump Republican party, or a president who can be a Republican in a conservative and unite all of America,

they don't see that in J.D. Vance. What's happening now may not matter, but it may be everything. If J.D. Vance struggles, because someone, I don't think it'll be Mark Rubio,

because someone runs against him and like most all vice presidents, the coverage he gets could make it a challenge to win the nomination.

“If that's what happens, what we're seeing now”

will be foreshadowing the very dynamics that could occur. And what we're also seeing now is online, and with the media, J.D. Vance has a lot of supporters who not only are rallying to him reflexively, because they're loyal to him, but who see in J.D. Vance

including the exact same interview to announce by Brett Stephens, something they find, not just appealing, but most appealing. They see in him the person who is not just the rightful heir to the president for whom he serves, Donald Trump,

but someone who will change the country in ways, maybe even more profoundly, MAGA than Donald Trump has. This debate will be on a low simmer through the end of November, or through the election in November, low simmer. But immediately after the election,

the heat's going to turn way up, and you're going to see a battle over the heart and soul of the Republican Party, what it should stand for, who should lead it? That's going to center around one man

and the different views that I've heard so intensely this week and seen online. And what he actually is, who he is, what he stands for, and who he can be both for the Republican Party and for the country and maybe in the Oval Office.

I'm going to keep reporting on this story because to me, it's so interesting. So interesting to have smart, serious people with a lot of data have different point of view about the one man and one interview.

Let me know what you think.

“Am I right about J.D. Vance or maybe more of the point?”

Which view of J.D. Vance is more correct?

You see, the future of the Republican Party or a big phony, or his Brett Stephens says

the first twice president of all time.

Send me an email next up at devilmakeairmedia.com. Let me know what you think. Next up at devilmakeairmedia.com. All right, quick break, when we come back a special treat, someone who I hope will,

“I think will inspire you and allow you to think about”

health, eating, exercise, addiction, and how to move forward in life in the face of adversity. By two-way colleague, Ethan Soobley will be here. Ethan is next up. (upbeat music)

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go to www.suercentry.com. Next up, the kind of guest we like to have here, is someone who has done extraordinary things, and can talk about them in a way that's compelling. You probably best know, even Sucleave,

for his roles as an actor.

“Remember the Titans, American History Act,”

my name is Earl Wolf of Wall Street. A great actor is its extraordinary accomplishment. A competitive field, and Ethan's had extraordinarily success there. But now he has turned his, part of his efforts

to something that is maybe I would say more extraordinary, acknowledging problems grappling with them, and using his experience to help others, Ethan is my colleague at two-way, where he hosts the program Lifelong,

here is a bit of what Ethan's story tells us. 50, 50, I've been sitting with that number for a week now.

When I was young, I never pictured myself

as an older person. They're loud, I was 21 or 22, I was over 500 pounds and my legs were so swollen with the demon that they produced two kinds of pain at the same time. Heroin helped with all of that.

Heroin dissolved time. I remember that so clearly, and I also remember going to bed last night, genuinely excited about today. Being sick on healthy, having addictions,

these are tough things to combat. And most people, unfortunately, don't combat them in a way that helps others, and many people, of course, don't try or do and fail. I'm proud to say that next up is my two-way colleague,

Ethan Sucle, host of Lifelong Airs, streams Monday, nights at 7pm Eastern, on two-way, and on podcast platform, is a person who has overcome adversity and is now helping others in an extraordinary way.

Ethan, great to have you here. - Thank you so much for having me, what an intro. I appreciate it.

- Yeah, I mean, ever since we first started

talking to you by coming to two-way, I've said, this is exactly what America, that the world needs is someone who can share, not just information, but at ethos, of fighting back and dealing with adversity.

The weight loss alone is an extraordinary achievement, but talk about how that's coupled with dealing with addiction and what that challenge is like. - Yeah, the two things ran really similar and parallel for me, and it took me a long time

to figure that out. My instinct at first with addiction was, if I can stay sober for 30 days, I will remain sober. And that just wasn't the case. It was something that I had to confront

would be a lifelong management. There was no real curing of that for me. So it's something I still have to deal with day-to-day. Although it gets less, it's less hard to deal with. And similarly with food, you know,

my mom was one of these kind of hippy health people,

only shot at organic stores, and her way of trying to deal with my weight as a little kid was to say that the things that I was eating were bad.

And it never really confronted my relationship

with food, my personal habits, my proclivities, my compulsions. And so when I as an adult tried to address that, it took me many, many years of, you know, pick your poison, whether it be carbohydrates

or lectins or night shades or ultra-process foods, and by saying, we're thinking that if I just exercise those from my diet, I will miraculously get better and get better for me meant lose weight. And while I would lose a little bit of weight sometimes

by doing that, the weight always came back, and it came back rapidly. And so it was a similar thing of going, like, oh, no, it's not the food that's the problem. Really, it's my behavior with the food.

It's my overconsumption of the food. And so I also had to figure out for myself that that would be a lifelong battle and something that I couldn't cure through weight loss, but I could learn to manage it.

- I'm a big fan of well-named programs.

“I think a well-named programs got a lot better,”

change to succeed. A year of one of the best-name programs of anybody I know, and I know a lot of people with programs, lifelong. Explain what that title means to you. - It really means that, you know,

the, for me losing weight is the easiest part, maintaining weight loss is going to be something I have to work on forever. And getting okay with that, accepting that, coming to terms with that,

that this will be something that I deal with forever, that I have to put some effort into, you know, man, I go to the gym six days a week and have been doing that for many years,

and you would think like it's just second nature,

like I don't ever wake up and not wanna brush my teeth, but I often wake up and don't wanna go to the gym. And this is something I have to decide to do, not every single day, but often I have to wake up and decide to do that.

I have to wake up and decide to eat better. I have to wake up and decide to keep my habits in check, and my compulsions in check, and not be so overly swayed by marketing. This is a lifelong endeavor.

- Everybody's different. Everybody's body's different. We all know people who eat whatever they want, and they don't get fat. We all know people who die regularly,

and way more than they want to. So everybody has to adjust the reality. I wanna talk about two topics that affect most of us. One is portion control, right? You could say, how many really healthy?

I'm not gonna eat meat, process foods, whatever. I'm gonna eat protein, and then you, you know, a whole chicken with the skin. How do you think about portion control

“in terms of the lifelong commitment to being healthy?”

- portion control was the single biggest determining factor in me successfully maintaining the weight I lost. I've been the weight I'm at now since 2019, and portion control was the entire game.

I tried keto, and I would lose a little bit of weight by cutting out all carbohydrates. I would lose some weight, but then because there is no real discussion of portion control on keto,

I can out eat my body's needs in ribbi steaks, and olive oil, very, very easily. I can eat too much of that food. If all that's available to me is lobster tails and a clarified butter, I will overeat that.

And so for me, and I appreciate what you said, and I completely agree that everybody is different, and a life is very nuanced, but for me, portion control was very, very important. - Yeah, and of course in America,

particularly if you get a restaurant, or even to a supermarket and get some packaged, like a chicken, the portions are just too big in America. They're just, they're way too big, and you gotta have the courage

and the concentration to focus to say, somebody cooked me this whole steak, I'm not gonna eat the whole steak,

I'm gonna eat a third of this steak,

but that requires it's practical, but for me, in my own life and studying this, a lot of it is added to it's almost like an ethos,

“and part of why I think you're such an important voice now,”

is you have the right ethos, your calm about it, your focus on it, but it's not consuming you, and when you make a mistake, it doesn't ruin your life. You get refocused, so talk about the discipline, the mindset that's required to live a healthy life,

not just eating, right, but exercising, sleeping, doing all the right things. What's the, how do people get to the right mindset if they're off-track? - Well, if something you said,

and that is that if you make a mistake,

you get back on track for many years, my operating basis was holding on, like, white-knuckling perfection, and then any mistake would drift me into months of a relapse, you know, like I'd messed up,

and I couldn't get back to whatever my baseline was. I had to come to terms with accepting that perfection was impossible, that I had a structure that I could live with, that I could maintain, and that some slight deviation

from that was part for the course. It was gonna happen, you know,

“I think it was like a number of holidays in a row”

that I just didn't participate in the food that my family would spend days and days making. You know, Thanksgiving would come and I'd eat only white meat turkey, peeling the skin off, and this was disappointing to my kids.

My, I have four daughters, they like to bake a lot.

They were always baking stuff.

I think the most devastating thing came to me on the day that they didn't invite me to try what they'd make. You know, after years of me declining to taste the food that they make, they just stopped inviting me to participate, and that hurt my feelings.

So I'm like, wait, you don't want, there's not gonna be an argument over this banana bread that you made that I'm denying to participate in, and so I went like, you know, in order to have the best life I can have,

I will occasionally eat off my plan, right? And it's not gonna be the end of the world. - Yeah, you know, friend, one of my friends has used this a famous expression. Nothing tastes as good at being thined feels.

The opposite of that for me is I would rather die than give up turkey skin. - That's right. - That's a, that's a, that's a, the stuff of life. Two way our tagline is conversations like no other.

There are lots of shows people can watch on YouTube on television, et cetera, about healthy eating and about being healthy, how are your conversations on life-long conversations like no other?

“- I think that we get into specifics about people's lives”

that can be relatable in the broad sense. You know, hearing about what one person is struggling with can unlock some perspective, you weren't even aware of in yourself. And so really having as broad conversation,

you know, I wanna talk to people who are hell bent on focusing on the ingredients rather than the total intake. Because maybe that'll unlock something that I wasn't aware of with myself.

I think the other thing is for a long time, I tried to do weight loss by myself and was not accountable to anyone. And so that portion of actually talking to other people and being vulnerable and getting as honest

about my own struggles, as I can, really helps me deal with them. - Again, the whole point of two ways to build authentic community around ideas and passions and personalities.

And if you have any need for help in your life to understand how to live a healthy life, to eat right, to exercise, to have the right mindset, you wanna be part of the lifelong community.

Again, as Ethan said, he's guests on the program.

Some of them are people you've never heard of,

a recent episode had someone lots of you have heard of, actor is fellow actor Kevin Smith. Here's a bit of life long with Ethan and Kevin Smith as seven please. - I first met Kevin Smith on an audition for Mallarat in 1995.

God damn, that is over 30 years ago. It wasn't until after 2018 that he and I sat down and talked about our weight. Something both of us had struggled with for a long time. How much of a motivation is family?

Is your kid, is your wife? - Honestly, I'd sad to say, for most of Harley's life, it wasn't a motivation 'cause you go back in, you know, this is Google Kevin Smith 2000s or whatever.

You know, all throughout Harley's life, I've remained heavy. In fact, God, heavier. And like when Jen got pregnant, I kind of, you know, gained the sympathy weight.

And she had the baby and lost the weight and I kept it and then I just kept going. Sorry, one till I had the heart attack in 2017. Is that what it was? - Yeah, 'cause yeah, we're coming up on,

you know, 2018, 'cause we're coming up on, we just passed eight years. So when I had the heart attack, that was a wake-up call 'cause suddenly it was like, what do you mean I could die, you know?

- That's a bit of the conversation. I recommend the whole thing to people.

“How hard is it if you're in public life to do this?”

Is it harder? Is it easier? Then if you're an anonymous person? - You know, it was really, I will be honest with you, when there was a point in my life,

And, you know, when I lost weight,

“when I lost the substantial amount of weight”

the first time, I kind of wanted to just, tell people, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but tell people what the number, when you say substantial, tell people the number. - Yeah, okay, I went from the highest weight I saw on a scale was 536 pounds.

At 536 pounds, swings could be 1520 pounds. So I like to round that up and say 550,

but I never actually saw a five out of 10.

- And how tall are you? - I'm 61. - So it's almost impossible to imagine the proportions of that. - Yeah, 536, so it's almost impossible to imagine it. - I was very, very large.

And by 2011, I was down to 220. So I had lost over 300 pounds. And I hadn't talked anybody about this. I just, it was all, you know, diet and exercise. I tried many, many diets and at that time

I was super obsessed with riding bicycles. I would ride my bike 6 to 8 hours a day. And I got properly lean. And I wanted to just pretend the old version of me had never existed.

And there were a number of paparazzi incidents of them taking pictures of me while riding my bike, you know, in Spandex and doing super close-ups of loose skin around my knees. And then there was another thing that happened

where TMZ interviewed me. And then one of the producers of that TMZ show set on Twitter, well, he's still fat. And I was, yeah, I'd lost 300 pounds, but I'm still fat. And so that kind of thing really discouraged me

from wanting to talk about it publicly. But the other problem with that was holding it all inside and not opening up to anybody about it, really made it hard to get totally under control. It was part of that, like, pretending I had hit some

finish line, and I didn't have work. It was partially pretending that it wasn't going to be a lifelong struggle that it was a fixed or finished process. And so when I did accept that this was something I was going to have to deal with, by the way,

from that point, I gained a hundred pounds or more. I gained a hundred and eighty pounds. I went back up to 400 pounds.

So I never really had held on to substantial weight loss

without regaining weight for a long time. Until I started talking to people about it. Until I opened up and became more honest with myself and other people about it. And at that point, I've now maintained this weight loss

since 2019. Amazing. Where are your fat clothes? You still haven't read your throw them out. I have a couple of things. I have a couple of things.

Mostly it's wardrobe from movies.

“I have a jersey from remember the tightens and jacket”

from more hats. I find it dangerous to keep the fat clothes around because I know I can put them on. And if I gain just a little weight right now, I got one suit I can wear.

I have a lot of beautiful suits. But I only have one I can wear currently. I'm getting clothes to fit in in the other ones. But the fat clothes are, to me, the throwing away of the fat clothes is not only it takes away the crutch,

but it's a great feeling to say I've eliminated

that period for my life and I'm never going back.

There was 20 year period where I just kept sections in my closet. You have different weighted clothes. And it wasn't until about five years after I had maintained this weight, I got to this weight.

And I never really deviated from it for five years. That my wife finally said you're not going to wear those clothes again, we're throwing them away. And it still made me very nervous to be honest with you. - You could have donated them to a sailing team

and they could have made sales out of some of that stuff. That's the same with mine. I'm not making fun. What do you think about kids? Yeah, kids in America,

Candy, they eat carbohydrates like crazy. They don't really worry that portion control. And in fact, a lot of parents will be like eat more. You need to grow.

“Is it important to you think to teach kids about”

a bad nutrition portion control, not eating processed foods or when their kids, it's okay? - No, I think it's vitally important. If we look at the rate of, you know, I have a kid with type 1 diabetes.

Which forever, she got it when she was four, had nothing to do with her weight. And that at the time was called juvenile diabetes, because you didn't get the other type as a younger person.

'cause so many kids are getting type 2 diabetes

because of their diet and lifestyle. I think that this is a total travesty in our country with the resources we have and what we know about nutrition, that, you know, in the public schools,

the food being served to these kids is horrendous. And there's not more emphasis on physical activity.

“I think education is the best place to do it.”

And it's vitally important. You know, when I was a fat little kid, I felt like I was alone. I didn't know another fat little kid. And now, when I look at schools,

there are just so many overweight little kids that it's very upsetting. I wish when I was a kid, some grown-up, or somebody said to me,

"Don't go to shaky's in order

"or a large pepperoni pizza and eat it all yourself." Because I thought that was just normal. Maha, I thought from the beginning of Bobby Kennedy's place on the national stage as a presidential candidate

that he was doing something historic and important. But that has its critics. What do you like about the Maha movement? What do you worry about or concern about? I like the increased protein on the suggestions.

I just, I don't think a lot of people pay attention to that. Had they been paying attention to the previous one, we would be a healthier nation. - The government recommendations. - The government recommendations.

Yeah, had people been following the previous recommendations diligently, we would not be as obese as we are.

“And so, while I think they've improved on that,”

I don't have a huge amount of faith that that's gonna actually solve anything for us. For me, I think Maha focuses too much on ingredients. So there's gonna be like a big argument to overfood dies or over seed oils or over the minutia

and not enough focus on total intake, which I think is a much bigger problem. You know, if you swap out high-for-dose corn syrup for cane sugar and Coca-Cola, but people don't stop drinking as much Coca-Cola,

the problem doesn't get any better. And so, I think there's an opportunity. You know, miraculously right now, and I think this is the due largely to the pharmaceuticals that have just recently been released,

but obesity is ticking down. I think we're down three or four percent in the last couple of years, which is miraculous because it had been ticking up for 30 years steadily.

So something good is happening right now. We are on a better trajectory. I just wish Maha talked more about overall pushings than they do about specific ingredients. - Right.

Two ways meant to build authentic communities and no matter how big the company grows, no matter how many shows we have, how many hosts we have, even your community will be as important in what we do as anybody's, because this is the stuff

of life and the challenge of life for so many people in this country and around the world.

And I literally never met or heard of anybody

who's more qualified to lead this conversation than you are, very grateful to you. - Thank you so much. It's really become a mission for me, yeah. - Yeah.

Join the mission, join the community, every Monday, 7 p.m. Eastern time, and you can watch on demand, lifelong with East and East, and sooply, available on two way and as a podcast and gives you

an opportunity as Ethan said, to hear other people's stories to raise your hand and share your story, to ask questions. This is a solvable problem for almost everybody,

“but you need to have the opportunity, Ethan ad,”

which is to talk to people about it and not try to do it on your own, become part of life like. Ethan, thank you, great to see you. - All right, quick break, next up by discussion now of the Iran situation and the choices present from faces

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at GetAkerGold.com again, go to GetAkerGold.com/mark to subscribe today. (upbeat music) All right, next up, a bit of my reporting right now on Iran, of course the story we've been talking about here,

I've been reporting on for quite some time. And for a while, this week, it is appeared. Confuse, what's the president gonna do? As I sit here and talk to you right this minute, growing sense amongst my sources, growing sense in reporting

that the president may escalate with Iran.

And people cast it now as, he can't walk away from Iran because of the straight. He's either got escalated big, or he's got to continue to do what's being done, which is every so often hit Iran

and try to get through the midterms, hope gas prices don't go up, hope the market doesn't go down. And they say, well, he can't strike big because Iran could strike back. We've seen Iran has the capability to strike back.

He can't strike big, back big, because a expanded conflict will raise gas prices before the midterms. He can't strike big because he can't have American casualties.

“Well, I think one of the mistakes people are making”

is when the president says he doesn't care

about the midterms, which he said several times. When he says he doesn't care about the economy, he doesn't mean it doesn't care. What he means is he's determined to win this war. And winning this war, he hoped involved

an initial military confrontation, leading to negotiations. If you listen to me, I was skeptical about the memorandum of understanding. I'm skeptical that Iran, whoever is at the negotiating table, whoever is leading that country,

I'm skeptical that they'll make it deal. Which doesn't mean I'm sort of unbridled in support of turning Iran into a parking lot, but rationally, many people have now told the president, you can't expect it to do the same thing over and over

with this group and get a different result. And the Pentagon has plans and plans about plans and all sorts of views that they've conveyed to the president about how to escalate this and perhaps change Iranian behavior.

I find it hard to believe that Iranian behavior is gonna be changed, but there are things that can be done. That make the Iranian leadership pay a price, make the Iranian military capacity, which has been degraded, be degraded even more.

And make it harder for Iran to think about restarting its nuclear program.

“If I were a betting person, I'd bet that's what the president's going to do.”

He won't do it lightly. He won't do it in a way that everybody will like to say the least, but as I've talked to folks this week and as I've looked at the public statement, and I've read the body language of the president,

I've reached a conclusion that my guess is before we reconvene next Tuesday, you'll see a pretty big escalation of this conflict. And an escalation that will be risky that will involve potential damage to American life and property and folks in the region.

But more and more as I talk to folks, I hear a dismissiveness about the prospect of a negotiated deal. The Iranians might say, as the president does, that they want them to meet, the intermediaries may be pushing for another deal, but there's a certain body opinion around the president

that says, "No Moss." No prospect of signing anything with these folks and assuming that they'll live up to it. The president needs to open the straight and he needs to diminish even further the Iran nuclear capacity

as well as their missile capacity. And I believe right now on a nice edge, the president's leaning against thinking there's can be negotiated and thinking it has to be accomplished by military force. We'll see, I'll keep the reporting going

and we'll bring you specials as we need to. But as I said, more than since the MOU was signed at this moment,

“I believe military confrontation of a large nature”

is more in the cards than I have up until now. All right, as I said, we'll keep following it. Quick break, and then next up, Fred Ryan, chairman of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation in Institute and the Director of the Center on Civility and Democracy.

He's got a new book called The Civility Handbook.

and why you can get it. Fred Ryan is next up.

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for your discount. Again, that's promo code next up at takeline.com. All right, next up everybody, it's Fred Ryan. He's the chairman of the Rotoragan Presidential Foundation in Institute. He was the founding president, CEO of Politico

and now the director of the Center on Civility and Democracy

“and the author of a new book that fits right in”

with my vision of not only what's wrong with America, but what's right with America. It's called the Civility Handbook, a guide for all Americans next up here is Fred Ryan. Fred, welcome.

Thank you, Mark. Great to be with you again. You confront and have for a long time the same paradox I do. Tencent of means of people around the country say, why can't there be more civility?

Why is our politics become so rough? And then yet everybody just sits back and lets the loudest and angriest voices dominate the national town square. So talk about the center and the book and how that mission is going to try to change the dynamics of our country.

Well, thanks, Mark. And I mean, just as you point out, we've done some research to show a couple of interesting things.

One, less than a third of Americans believe

that our civil discourse is healthy. And that's a reason to be concerned, because it's a threat to our democracy. But the other number that was encouraging 75% want to move past it. And the point that you make, they're frustrated with it.

And they want change. So we've been working with a lot of different groups with academic institutions, with elected officials, with sports organizations. But one question that people have raised is,

what can we do? What is it that we can do is ordinary Americans? And one of the questions is, well, they want some practical. So one of the things we did is, so let's put together something very simple. Civility Handbook.

So actually, for the last year, we've been working with scholars, with students, clergy, media to put together this Handbook. It's something that is nonpartisan. But it offers simple solutions that people can do to address this civility crisis.

All right, so first of all, if people want to read the book, how can they do that?

It's free. It's available. In fact, over your copy right here, it's called the Civility Handbook. And it's available at civilityhandbook.com. There's also a digital version of people want to read the book book.

But they just reach out to us. We'll send it to them. And individuals, we've had teachers wanting it for their classrooms, elected officials wanting it for their state school system. So we've been really encouraged by the response so far.

“All right, and again, if you want to read it online, where do they go?”

Go to civilityhandbook.com and you can read the digital foot book. You can forward it to somebody or you can order a hard copy, too. All right, now since you're given it away, and since you're probably not going to sell the movie rights, let's give away the ending.

What do people learn from this? Like, is it just a bunch of homage to civility? Or are there practical things in there that people can use? It's meant to be practical. It's not an academic exercise or even a scholarly work.

It's simple things that people can do. And to give away the kind of the storyline, it is that, yes, we're going to disagree. And some of our greatest leaders have had strong views, and they've been firm in their views,

but they've been able to disagree respectfully. And they've also been able to disagree in a way that they can come back and get something done in the areas where they do agree. And that's one of the problems we have right now. And it gets one of the reasons Americans are frustrated

was it is because we disagree on a certain subject, and we immediately conclude that that person has a bad idea, and they're a bad person, conversations over, and our elected officials are doing the same thing. But people want to get things done.

So they want us to disagree, but they also want us to do it in a way where we can get something done in the areas where we do agree. There's a lot of work for President Reagan, and he had a saying that kind of stuck with me. He would say, if you can get 80% of what you want in a deal,

take it, and come back and next deal and try to get the rest.

It's sometimes it seems it's even more important for your opponent

to have a humiliating loss. And when you get in that mode, it doesn't really advance the interest of our democracy. So given example of something in the book that not a member of Congress could use, but a normal person that would contribute to the solution. Well, there's several. One is to tolerate disagreement.

And the book has quotes from a number of different people from Sandra Dio-Conner to Snoop Dogg, but one is Steve Case. I mean, excuse me, Steve Jobs at Apple. And he said, we like disagreement. And we like arguments.

And the reason was, they could build a better product. So he was very open to having a lot of clash of ideas. And in the case in point, we used that led to the creation of the iPhone. There was a strong disagreement on what it should look like, and what it's features should be.

And he let that disagreement continue and continue and have built a great product. Another example is a humility.

“That's one of the things I think all of us,”

I try to work on, and we all need to work on, I think, is to bring that to the argument. If you come in saying, I know I'm right. And it doesn't matter what you say. And I'm just listening long enough to refute what you're saying,

you're not really going to get anywhere. But if you can be open to the idea that there might be something that your adversary has to say or your opponent has to say, then that could be valuable.

And then I'd say, finally, one of the things is that none of us do enough

is listen. And we've got a quote from Larry King. He said, I've learned everything in my life from listening. Not from talking. And listening to what someone has to say before you respond

is also something that's very important to promote disability. All right, that's a great list and a great group of people. Are we talking here about political disagreements, about Congress, the presidency, and about issues related to public policy, or are you hoping more broadly

to diffuse a community's trying to decide

“where to build the snack bar and have a fight about that?”

But in all realms, are you really focused more in the political room? No, we're trying to go everywhere from the family dinner table to the political arena. And some of the same rules apply.

We've got one chapter on just basically.

We've been through these. You get a family dinner. It's Thanksgiving, whatever. And Uncle Solan says something. And the next thing you know, everybody's arguing.

So we've put some very practical things that people can do in that environment. But as you point out, and you cover it, obviously, the political arena is where we see it at its worst. And where we see it really hurting the country. And I've seen, and you've probably seen over the years,

what helps people succeed in the political arena? Years ago, you could be an effective member of Congress if you had subject matter expertise, or you were a parliamentarian, or you could raise money. Now, and they're still good people trying to do that.

But now you have people who were there to get high profile on social media, say something on social media that can get them a cable hit, go on cable, and then raise money off of it. And it's kind of rewards. This hostel behavior, toxic behavior, rather than penalizing.

I'm going to give you an example from yesterday in my life that fits right. It illustrates the problem you're trying to address. And I can't be too specific about it. But there was a group of people on a Zoom, and we were supposed to all be working together on a project.

And the whole point of the project, again, is to save me those as a civility and book. It was supposed to be let's have conversations that are in about conflict, but are about understanding and search for common ground. And when there's disagreement, let's have honest disagreement, but not assume bad faith on the part of others.

We were having a practice for the real session. And after it ended, one person dropped out. And they said, "I'm dropping out because the other people don't agree with me." And I felt they were hostile to me. And so now we've lost one of the key participants

because of the exact dynamic we're trying to address. So people get the handbook, they look at it online, they've read it.

“How did they have the courage then to actually practice that?”

Because to some extent, and if it's in the context of let's be honest, we haven't said that the T-word yet. If it's in the context of, here's a group that likes Trump, here's a group that doesn't like Trump. The minute somebody's triggered, the minute somebody feels like it's tribal, they're done.

And you see that at the dinner table with families. I saw yesterday in this meeting, how do you expect people to read the book, and then actually have the courage to do it because it's hard because it's hard because it's necessary. Well, part of what is important in this, and it sounds like that's the purpose of your project was to show and model the good behaviors, and to showcase it.

And we've been doing a lot of that. We bring together people from opposite political parties. We bring people in the media, from the far left far right. They talk about where they disagree, and that's fine.

And in the case of the person you mentioned, I mean, the best thing I can just say is

“modeling it, in fact, if you want, Mark, I'll send you a copy of this, and you could,”

you could send it to him anonymously. They get too late. I probably should have distributed beforehand. But it's, you know, it's something that people say, well, is this manners, is this niceties, whatever?

No, it's not what it's about at all. It's about being able to effectively disagree, because the reason we launch this whole center is not to teach people manners, or protocol, or edit it or anything like that. It's because our democracy only functions when we can have constructive disagreement. And this is something that you mentioned, people in there in their different bubbles and all,

it goes all the way back, George Washington, and his farewell address.

His warning to America was, don't devolve into factions where you put the factions interest above the nation's interest. And that was a concern he had, and we're seeing a lot of that now.

“Yeah, so as you said, it happened in Washington times.”

I tell people regularly or remind people, we fought in actual civil war. There was a shooting civil war. It seems one thing that's different now that didn't exist previously, social media. And even the world's biggest experts on the way social media contributes to polarization and discord and lack of civility, I contend even the world's biggest experts don't truly understand it.

Because to understand it would require an interdisciplinary understanding of the minds of a child, the minds of an adult, how people consume social media. But we all know intuitively, that's a big part of what's happening now. Because the loudest angriest voices have unlimited access to what used to be relatively controlled public airway.

So how do you see the connection between a handbook and the unlimited amount of content on social media

every second since we've been talking, there have been a lot of instability that's taking place.

How does this handbook possibly, a surmount the obstacle caused by discord and lack of civility on social media? Well, social media is one of the biggest challenges to civility today. And we have an entire chapter in the book about social media. But the problem isn't you mentioned the civil war and all of our differences in the past.

It's kind of human instinct to move past things, to come back together, the time heals all wounds. But social media is a roadblock to that. It blocks the off ramps. Instead of if you imagine you have a disagreement with a friend and pretty soon you want to move past it and you're ready to.

But social media is like someone whispering in your ear constantly saying, no, they're bad. They're worse than you think they are. They're a terrible human being. Don't think about trying to make up with them. And as the outrage is the oxygen on social media.

People if feed you the goal any social media platform and we spend a lot of time on this, the goal is to keep you on that platform. So if you're looking at pictures of puppies, it's going to send you more puppy pictures. If you're looking at cars, it's going to send you that. If you're in political conversations, it's going to keep upping the outrage to keep you on.

And it puts you in an environment where even the worst views are reinforced. So you might have a view that in the pre-social media days, you would be standing in a park screaming and people will be ignoring you. But now social media brings all those park screamers together. And it reinforces what they believe and it leaves them feeling that they've got the right view.

“So the best thing to do with social media, particularly with young people, you mentioned,”

their brains are developing, is to stay off of it. But secondly, go on and by all means, don't treat social media as a source of news. As social media platforms, they have no journalists, they have no editors, no fact checkers. So go to trusted sources of news rather than social media. If you're going to try to prepare yourself for conversation.

What about my idea that I've posited for a while and haven't had time to do anything about? Let's build an army of people who believe in civility and democracy, get them on the social platforms. And when someone's acting not civil, when someone's attacking someone else personally, swarm the thing and add messages that are positive and constructive. Is that something that could scale and be done?

Yeah, I mean, the way our view is the way we get past this is when people say we've had enough. And the way you do that is call people out in individual cases. You can do it in a very friendly way. You can give them a copy of the handbook as a message, but also with our elected officials. You look at these town halls and taking place and they become very uncivil.

But even when they're not, so often the elected officials stand up and say, "I'm going to wash and I'm stopping all those bad things that the other people on the other side are doing." I promise I'll stop it all. The better question may be from all of us as citizens is,

What have you accomplished?"

Some of the loudest voices in Congress right now have not introduced a single bill that's passed through Congress. Yeah, but they're very loud and they have high profile. And I think a lot of this, it's going to come back to us as a citizen just to demand accountability. From the people who we send it to Washington and we send it to representatives in the state houses. Yeah, it's loony how few tweets and Twitter is a big part of the problem.

There's other platforms, of course. Twenty tweets will cause a member of Congress to go in some nuts direction, because they're so intimidated and they're so afraid. Oh, they're press secretary will come running in.

“You know, it's all over Twitter, you know, you need to not support this bill.”

And so, again, my idea is, it won't take many of us of like-minded people.

We just need a little organization and direction to not walk away from social media, because if we do, we see the ground. Twenty tweets to the Congresswoman to say, "Carris, we know this bill's important to your constituents, please vote for it." And then the press secretary walks in and says, "Twitter's mixed," you know. You've served in two newsrooms, and part of why you're such a valuable part of our conversation

about democracy and civility is you've worked in politics, you've worked in media at a very high level. And you've got a big heart, and I have to say, I was thinking this morning and preparing to talk to you. There really aren't very many people who've done both those things. High-level in politics, high-level in media, and a big heart, because most people in those businesses don't have that, and very few people go back and forth.

So, you're very valuable, and you've served in two newsrooms that are nationally and significantly in Washington Post and Politico. I don't want to single them out and say they're the worst actors, because they're not, but they're not great for these very issues, explain how the culture of all big news organizations, including Politico and the Washington Post, how the profit motive and the habits and practices

of editors and reporters contributes to a lack of civility.

Well, one thing is there's a rush to be first, and sometimes when you're rushed to be first,

you're not accurate, and sometimes what that inaccuracy can lead to a lot of misunderstandings and anger from the part of people who are receiving. So, that's one thing that's important.

“I think the second thing is, as those organizations do, and a number to do well,”

make sure there's a clear separation between the opinion side of the house and the reporting side of the house. You've seen the numbers I have, that the level of trust in news organizations is at an all-time low right now. And as we go into the AI era, which we're in it already, it's going to be more and more important for us to have news sources that we can trust. And I think it's going to be some of these established news outlets and some that are still

information. They're going to be places we go to try to find out what's true, what's accurate in the world. I would point out, and I know you and other nationally known journalists of faces is when I was in both of those news organizations, the doxing, the attacks on the journalists were terrible. We had, we had a journalist, kill, we had journalists, bullets shot through the door, their house, we had social media, especially towards female journalists, it is just toxic.

So, that's one of the reasons that, I mean, I've seen it in the instability in the damage it does,

“but I also, when I was had the chance to work for President Reagan in the White House, I saw how”

he could reach across the aisle with people of the opposite political party who were also like minded and trying to find common ground, like Tuponio, that famous Tuponio Ronald Reagan relationship, and they agreed on a disagreed on a lot of things, probably more than they agreed on by far, but they were able to find the areas where they could agree and get things done, and that was because neither of them, just using that Tuponio Ronald Reagan example, they disagreed about as far

as you could, you had a conservative Republican governor from the West and a liberal Democratic Speaker from the East, and they would still get together at night and have a drink, and tell Irish stories. They would, they would, but there also was people forget, before Donald Trump, there was demonization of Ronald Reagan, and demonization of George Bush, one, and George Bush too. This is not brand new, and for all the Romanization of President Reagan, and no doubt it was a

different era, and there was more more comedy and more civility. It, it, it pretty rough stuff, regarding Iran contra, regarding his career as an actor, and whether he was qualified to be president, you know that, and, and, and, and so it's not a new problem. Now, what is new is the current age, and you and I've talked largely in abstractions, we've only mentioned President Trump once. I've, I find in trying to convince people to move towards civility that there's two big camps,

right? There's the camp that says it's all Donald Trump's fault, because Donald Trump has violated norms, and he's broken the law, and he's, he's, he's profiteeered, and, and he's not all these horrible things, all his fault, and then, and then people on the other side will say,

or so biased, it's just liberal establishment, deep state. It's all therefore, and all President

Trump's doing is trying to fight back. How do we get beyond that current dynamic, which, in my experience, in, in the moment, we're in it currently, it's the biggest barrier to get people to lay down their arms on one side or the other of that divide? Well, as you point out with President Reagan back when he was running in sense, and this, this is a problem that is, is not new. It's been evolving. In fact, some of the research we've done, some people feel it goes all the way

back to the Vietnam era, where there was a distrust and institutions, and Americans were deeply divided. Others point to the Supreme Court confirmation cases. You know, Senator Deo Conner

was confirmed 99 to 0. Anthony Kennedy, who turns 90 today, by the way, he was confirmed 97 to 0.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 96 to 3. That was a time, but the things started to turn. Supreme Court confirmations evolved to what they are now, where they're strictly party-line votes. So that contributed to it. I also, and then the most recently, the kind of, the era of wokeness versus the era of

“Maga. So I think it's important to not say this is just a problem that popped up now, but something”

that's been growing. I think we're in an environment now, where as you see in Capitol Hill and elsewhere, it's almost a case where elected officials determine their position on something based on how the other party is on it. So if someone so's in favor, I have to be against, and that's not a, you know, it's become a little bit of, not a little bit, probably a lot of a zero-sum game, right? It's not enough from, from me to win. You have to lose. And we've got to get back, and even

as this was going on at previous administrations, and now, you find a way for both sides to go away with a win. In the business world, you know, a good deal is a win-win, both sides can go back. Nobody wants to be the one who says I got nothing here. If Jeff Bezos brought you back to the poster, you brought back to Politico now. What would you differently than you did at the time to try to promote civility in conjunction with, in concert with, the mission of a major news

“organization? Well, one thing I would do, and I think, and this is a small point, but it comes back”

to what you said about commenting on social media, is in the comments section, people are right of very thoughtful piece, and then there'll be a thoughtful conversation in the comments, and then somebody will come on and say something like, "You deserve to die." And that conversation just ends right there. So one thing I would say, this is very tactical, but just, I think anybody who comments ought to be signed in under the name that they subscribe. So they're doing it, because

going back to social media, part of the problem there is so much is anonymous. People will say things when they're anonymous, if they wouldn't possibly say face to face. I'd make them put their name in their picture. Yeah, absolutely. So that's one small thing, but I think there's, it's very important that a lot of these arguments that we're having now in the divisions in the country occur when we're acting off opinion rather than fact, and that's one of the things we put

in the book as well, is it? No, whether you're your argument is grounded on opinion or it's grounded

on facts, and those news organizations and others, their mission is going to become even more critical

as we go forward, because it's so easy to create false news at scale, and as we note, false news

“travels faster than the truth. So it's a burden, an obligation, I think, on everyone in the”

media now, to make sure that they are, that they are that trusted source in an information, an era where there's so much misinformation and disinformation coming at us. Yeah. Always important to ask this question, because people wonder who funds the center on civility and democracy? It's all that we're a 501C3. We have many, many donors across the country. It's part of the Reagan Foundation Institute. We've got from foundations to individuals. In fact, we've got a

program next week, by the way, we've got talking about modeling or behavior, and even in the future, we have a hundred students that were picked from 85 universities across the country who are interested in exactly the problem that you and I are discussing, how we move forward in a more civil, respectful discussion in our democracy. We've got Supreme Court Justice speaking, Senate members, the Senate Media Organizations, a couple of our buddies, Jim Vandaheis, going to be here,

talk about Axios perspective, and Sam Fides from C-SPAND, and Steve Hayes from Dispatch,

in this environment where we're so divided seems to be one of the areas that we come together.

“Yeah, you can go to a sporting event, and the most woke person sitting next to the most”

right-wing person will be cheering for the same team. So it's a unifier, and it's also an example on the field where athletes and competitive athletes, they follow the rules, they respect their opponent, because they want to play again, they honor the refs, and it's an example for our

political life. Maybe a little more of that, so we have a whole panel on sports rivalry where we've

got some NFL, former NFL players and the announcers and college students, so those are all

“things that can be done and that we are trying to do and move this forward. Yeah, ladies and gentlemen,”

this is not touchy-feely, this is not pine to sky, this is not silly idealism, this is the stuff of America right now. Fred, Fred, group, center on civility and democracy, what I'm doing

a two-way, what I do here, we can solve this one and guess what, it doesn't require a higher taxes

or big government spending, it just requires all of us to take back the country, to take back the national town square for robust disagreement, for conversation, for comparison, for questioning, but also for civility. And Fred, the country owes you and the center, a great debt of gratitude, because you're trying to actually grapple with it, rather than to profit from what's wrong.

“And again, thousands of people have already gotten the handbook you should to tell people again,”

Fred, how can we get this? So they go to civilityhandbook.com and we'll send you a free copy and we'll send you a package if you're a teacher and you want it for your classroom and Mark, thank, thanks for what you're doing in this space. I know you've been, somebody who's been in the forefront and appreciate all you're doing and thanks for giving me this time today. Fred, thank you, congratulations on the book and ladies and gentlemen again, be part of the solution here, get the handbook,

read it and then give it to someone you love or better give it to someone you don't love. I won't say hey, Fred, thank you, grateful to you, great to see you. Thanks Mark, great to see you. All right, that's it for today's program. We'll be back next week on Tuesday. I hope everybody has a great weekend as we gear up for a couple new episodes next week. Don't forget to tell your friends and family. I'm not just about the civility handbook,

but about how to become nexters by subscribing to the program on YouTube or wherever you and they get their podcasts, so everybody within the sound of my voice can know what's coming next up. Have a great weekend, everybody.