The Secrets, Crime, & Media that May Swing The Midterms

- Hey everybody, welcome to Next Up on Mark Calprint.

“Thank you for being here, editor and chief of two way”

and your host here for everything that's happening. Next up, I appreciate you being part of the program. Great episode today. Let me tell you who's with us.

First off is a great, great, interesting,

Leland Vitter, my friend who's the anchor and news nation, their chief Washington anchor. And he goes on balance with Leland Vitter. We're gonna talk about how to cover the news when you're shackled to a camera in a studio.

And then a young reporter who I'm just so impressed with Steve Robinson, editor and chief of the main wire on covering his state, which has become quite front and center in the news of late excited to have them both here. So a quick break and then next up, Steve Robinson of Maine,

Steve Robinson's next up. (upbeat music) So this episode, Next Up is sponsored by Rowe. A lot of people here at GLP one end immediately assume treatment is going to cost a fortune.

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All right, dextup and joining me now, Steve Robinson, editor-in-chief and investigative reporter at the main wire and someone who's found himself now at the center, not just of the political universe in some ways, but in the center of our cultural conversation

about 148 things, Maine's not just for lobsters anymore. It's for so much more. Steve, grateful to you for being here. - Okay, thanks for having me on mark.

First, just tell people what the main wire is

so we can sort of set the context. - Yeah, so that being wire is an online investigative news platform.

“I think it's fair to say it's the conservative news outlet”

of Maine, if not New England. And I took it over in about 2022, and given it a renewed focus on actual investigative journalism rather than becoming an echo chamber for conservative opinion pieces,

which is something that I've seen happen with a lot of these state-level conservative news outlets. And we've done investigative journalism into Chinese organized crime, Medicaid fraud, political corruption, as well as your day-to-day coverage

of municipal governments and state-house politics. And these days, lots of political coverage. Obviously, we have Senator Susan Collins running for reelection. We have an open house seat in CD2. Lots of different political races to cover here in the state.

- Yeah, and again, as people have heard me say before, I look at politics as an interesting prism through which to understand America or in this case, Maine. There's lots of things going on, particularly in the Senate race, that tell you about the country and about that state.

So we'll get into that, but I wanna drill down on one thing you said. When you said it's a conservative news site, what does that mean to you? - To me, that means it's the value judgment we make before we do an investigation into something.

So rather than reporting on a press release that the government puts out, we decide what we think is newsworthy. So, for example, a few years ago, there was a leak to Department of Homeland Security memo that said that there were 270 illegal Chinese marijuana growth

throughout the state. A couple of me outlets reported on that memo and dropped it and we went out and found them all. And later, did a documentary that we released in partnership with Tucker Carlson where we showed people

what was happening and we got into the human trafficking and the human cost of what was happening with those illicit marijuana grows. That was something that we thought was very interesting in newsworthy because it affected the quality of life

of people in the state. I also think that we've taken a little bit of a different tack when it comes to covering controversies in our public school system. We've interviewed parents rather than superintendents and principles to understand what's happening in schools

and how people feel about that.

“And I think we've also had a much more critical coverage”

of the way our Secretary of State has handled

kicking Trump off the ballot, that sort of thing.

“And we're very aggressive when it comes to freedom of access”

back to quests. So we don't play access to journalism. We start from the assumption that the government's full of criminals and work backwards. - So, ladies and gentlemen, just so brilliant, Steve. Just to clarify, and it's not true of every organization

national or local that calls itself conservative. But so many of the things Steve's doing should be done by what I call dominant media should be done by news organizations that are liberal. Number one, they shouldn't be liberal.

They should be for everybody and they should be

for holding powerful interests accountable.

But things like no access to journalism, things like transparency, things like asking hard, right, tough, fair questions of people in power, not just in government, but in business and labor unions. These are all things that these organization aspires to

that should be done by everybody. So I'm very grateful to and very filled with praise for the way you describe your mission. It's extremely important. And it's a product of the fact that in the digital age,

things like the main wire can exist and be out there and get attention and compete, including some big scoops you've had, which we'll talk about.

“It's extremely important in the age we're in,”

that there'll be organizations that take advantage of the absence of barriers to entry to be on the national town square, doing journalism and do it with the values that Steve talks about. So I'm grateful to you for that and really you deserve

a lot of credit for what you do.

Who funds the main wire? How do you make money at the main wire? - So we're funded through philanthropy where a project of the main policy institute, which is a state policy network think tank.

We, as a rule, MPI doesn't disclose their donors, but in the past, since we have his permission, Leonard Leo has contributed some funding to our effort. And we're right now in the process of spinning off into a more independent model where we're going to try

to, I guess, mimic the daily call or a daily call or news foundation model and do more of the regular income generating activities that a media outlet does to try to become sustainable long term. Ideally, we'd like to build up an endowment based on philanthropy

that allows us to have that kind of independence. But that's one of the things that has been used to undermine the quality of our work. If you look at the news rating websites, whether they're funded through the Point Nur Institute

or the Neeman Foundation for Journalism or whatever, they are polluted effect. They'll all say, it's far right journalism,

“but I think that the quality of our work speaks for itself.”

- Yeah, go on the website folks and take a look and you'll see, did they have the same orientation as a main public radio? No, they don't, but are they doing quality work? It doesn't matter who pays for it.

Truly, it doesn't. There should be transparency about it. And I'm glad you said, Leonard Leo is a controversial figure in some quarters, but he cares about American. He's free to spend his money in any once.

If people want to support you, do you take donations? - We do, yes, people can go to themainwire.com and sign up there. There's a mailing list that we have that sends out

just our news for the day out of the state. Lots of news relevant to the U.S. Senate race and lots of interviews with Senator Collins coming up and maybe former state president, Senate president Jackson, will sit down with us for an interview, though.

I strongly, strongly doubt it. - So it's hope he does. - Okay, so Steve, again, we're talking to Steve Romson in the mainwire. You're a mainer, right?

- Born? - You haven't lived anywhere, but they've lived anywhere but main. - Well, I live for a little while in Washington, D.C. as a younger man, fresh out of college,

but the Capitol City chewed me up and spit me out. So I came back to New England and I worked in talk radio in Boston as how in cars executive producer for a few years I worked for bar stool sports and then eventually came back to Maine to take over the mainwire.

- First of all, you pronounced how he's last name wrong.

(laughs) - Yeah, sorry. Some people don't think I'm from Maine because I don't talk like that. - Yeah, it's pronounced a cat.

- Yeah, maybe after six or seven beers, I can start my main accent. We'll start going out. - All right, so I've covered politics in 49 of the 50 states, including in Maine and I will tell you,

there's a leave a why in Alaska out of it. There's only one state in the country that acts like they're not part of the United States. If you show up in Maine and you're not from Maine, they act like you've come in to East Berlin or something.

Wiremainers so insular, what is it about people in Maine who just feel like they're just distinct from the rest of the New England, let alone the rest of the country? - Well, I'll say that growing up in central Maine

and Dexter, the people that we encountered from away, the flat landers, they were all of a type. They moved up here from Massachusetts and they would tell you how grateful they were to get away from Massachusetts

and then they would immediately start trying to make Dexter like Massachusetts.

they're running for the town council or they're showing up at meetings and complaining

about the property taxes on their million dollar lake front home.

So I guess the ambassadors from away who came into our communities weren't exactly, they weren't sending their best. - Yeah, I just, I just, I just, I just wanted to know what's that. - Yeah, I just get stuck.

And again, Steve's using the phrase away, the word away.

“That's what people in Maine think about.”

Every, every, everyone else from the United States, everyone else from, who's not from Maine, even if you're from New Hampshire, even if you're from Connecticut, if you come to Maine, you're from away.

- Correct. - And that's the mindset. What, why is that? People in Vermont and New Hampshire don't say you're from away if you come there.

- Well, I think New Hampshire and Vermont

don't have the same tourist-based economy that we do,

whether it's the coast or it's inland in the western part of the state where they have some skiing mountains. There's this huge influx of tourism that happens every year. And I think it's just a, it's a system of, it's a cultural system that Maineers have adopted

to understand whether someone is here in their part of the community, or are they an interloper who has come from away who are just gonna be here for a few months. And, you know, they've got a cottage or something on the coast,

but they're not really part of the community. They don't have such a, they don't have kids here. They don't have a vested interest here. They don't have kids going to the school system.

“So I think it's been a, it's a useful survival mechanism”

for local people to understand who's actually part of the community and who's just here to spend their money. - Yeah, now Maine is so distinct and interesting geographically.

It's got two congressional districts. The one in the southern part of the state, Democrats win every time. Donald Trump wins the northern district and because of the way Maine awards its electoral college votes, Donald Trump keeps getting an electoral college vote

out of Maine. That suggests a pretty big cultural and political divide between northern Maine and southern Maine. The most interesting stat in politics I've read this year is that if Troy Jackson, the Senate Democratic nominee leaves his home in a car and drives to Portland Maine

and Chuck Schumer leaves his home in Brooklyn, New York and drives to Portland Maine. Chuck Schumer lives closer to Portland Maine than Troy Jackson. Talk about northern Maine. What is northern Maine like in New England,

which now has with the exception of Susan Collins, no Republicans in Congress,

“what is northern Maine like it's compared to Portland and southern Maine?”

- Yeah, well, I grew up in what you would call northern Maine. If you looked at the map, it's really in the central part of the state geographically, but the congressional district line does a pretty good job of differentiating northern Maine

from southern Maine. Although I would say Lewis did an Auburn count as southern Maine even if they're in CD2, but the difference I think really is a product of domestic immigration that we've seen over the last 15 years,

but it really accelerated since COVID. You see that the southern part of the state is where primarily people from Hawaii to start to keep using this phrase, but out of stateers will buy properties on the coast,

move here, and they bring their politics with them. So you see lots of baby boomers, liberals who move to Maine, they buy a place on the coast and they continue to vote for far left progressives like Shelley Pingray, who has held that district for a very long time,

multiple cycles. So I think that the domestic immigration explains the difference culturally, but also politically. And in northern Maine, you see a really a crisis of rural poverty that is not captured effectively by the media

that is very underplayed, northern Maine is almost. And in some ways, it has the same dynamics going on as Appalachia.

There's an incredible addiction problems.

It's neglected by Augusta and Washington DC. There are something like 40 factory-sized buildings that now are just totally empty. Because, for example, in my hometown in the 1990s, we had Dexter Shu.

Dexter Shu was a prestige brand. Everybody wanted Dexter Dresh Shu's, and Warren Buffett bought the factory, ended up outsourcing it. And now there's a factory-sized building. It's like four or five football fields

in terms of its footprint that sits totally empty. There's nothing productive happening there. There's no jobs happening there. And the town of Dexter, now, I think the biggest employers are legitimately fentanyl trafficking and Chinese marijuana,

or the biggest economic activity in that town. And that is a story that's played out in communities all over northern Maine. If you go up to East Mill and Acute, a paper mill that once employed 800 to 1,000 people

who could graduate from Stern's high school and go get a job sweeping a mill room floor, making $30 an hour, a good union wage with healthcare, right out of high school, they could go get that job working at the mill.

No longer exists. That mill is literally crumbling in on itself. The brick towers are crumbling in on themselves, and there've been multiple initiatives

or whatever.

There's every time you turn around,

Angus King or Susan Collins have a new earmark to try to revitalize that area, but just nothing has worked. And as a result now, we've entered this negative feedback loop where young people are fleeing.

We're in population decline.

“The state as a whole, I think we do 32 to 33 births a day.”

And that puts us 46% under replacement rate. - Ladies and gentlemen, again, brilliantly laid out by Steve Robinson, tale of two cities, tale of two states within one state. The tourism of Maine, it's beauty, it's coastal beauty,

it's leisure activities in the inland extraordinary, and extremely lucrative for the state. And then the disappearance of trade of a lot of traditional industries, blue collar industries, as left the state, like Appalachia,

or other the industrial Midwest, and no solution. So that brings us now, let's start talking about some of the reports. - Well, one last thing I would point out, it's kind of interesting is,

it means the decline of Maine's industry is tied up with the decline of actual physical newspapers. 'Cause there was a time when Maine's logging and paper mills were responsible for something like 90% of all newsprint. So as newsprint went away and people increasingly

got their news online, the demand for newspapers declined. And now there's very few paper mills that are actually operating in the state. The ones that are owned by great dragon paper, which is a Chinese company.

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Again, that's promo code next up at takeline.com. (upbeat music) So now let's talk about some of the politics and some of the stories. Graham Platner, I urge everybody

the soap opera that the allegations is temperament, all of that extremely interesting important stories. But Irish people have focused on the why. Why did a guy like that who had so many obvious

vetting issues and who had never run for anything?

Why did that guy have such resonance within Maine that he not only was gonna win the Democrat did win the Democratic nomination, but consistently ahead of Susan Collins that incumbent Republican Center?

What is it about the mood of Maine, the atmosphere of Maine, that a lag Graham Platner to become the Democratic nominee?

“- Well, for one, I think you have to look”

at the demographic changes that happen in Maine since the Serragity and Susan Collins election. COVID triggered another round of this mass migration to Maine, it was liberals who could work from home moving from Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts.

You can actually see it in the electoral numbers and in the census figures. Specifically, if you look at Janet Mills's first election in 2018 and then her reelection in 2022, there's this block of like 25,000 Democrat voters

that seems to materialize from nowhere that is solidly promills. And the predominantly they're moving into the coastal area like I said before. So the electorate is different than it was in 2020.

And I think that's the biggest danger to Senator Collins is not understanding that this is not the same electorate that she's won election in every time before, including in 2020. I think those people largely formed the base

of Graham Platner supporters. But I also think there was a tremendous effort from out of state online activists to gin up and create this false sense of grassroots enthusiasm around Graham Platner.

And you really have to be involved in digital media in the way that we are on social media platforms all the time, taking criticism, interacting with people, seeing who people are, you know, Maine is not that big of a state so you come to know

who the figures are, who are busy on Facebook, for example. And when Graham announced,

there was this tsunami of people who had never been involved

in Maine politics from a digital perspective,

about how they were going to be voting for him. There was just this rise of support for him that was totally inorganic. And I can't help but suspect that this is linked with some of the digital influencers

that the campaign was paying, which we now know, he was being online influencers where essentially selling their platforms to the Platner campaign and it changed for endorsements and praise.

“But I think that had a big part of it and there was just also”

some normal progressives from out of state from California, New York, all across the country who really liked his message in the same way that they're not in New York, but they like mom Donnie's message or AOC's message. And so they gravitated to that.

And I think once he got this celebrity appeal and then you get Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren up here, that kind of gives him the stamp of approval for other progressives in the state, kind of drift over into his column.

But the third thing I would say is he was a performer.

He was great. I mean, you think about this four or five months ago, the guy was crowd surfing at a dropkick Murphy's concert. He's up on stage at the Portland State Theater. Knows all the words to the song is rocking out

like he's part of the band and then jumps into the crowd. You know, that kind of talent, that natural ability to interact with crowds. That's something that you can't teach at, you know, the Harvard Extension School

and politics or whatever. It may not. And Maine hasn't seen much of that.

“You look at most of the Maine politicians there.”

They're not as colorful. They're not as naturally renowned as them. All right, let's say people who didn't understand the cost of the working waterfront bought into this oyster men's stick, but everyone on the coast was totally alienated by it.

Like lots of men were very alienated by the idea that Platner's, you know, hobby, oyster cages where the equivalent of them waking up before in the morning to go pull traps for a living. - Yeah, I've heard that.

All right, so that's my bad Troy Jackson. It was now that Platner's replacement is the Democratic nominee. You broke the story that he's fathered a couple of children with his second cousin.

As you know, for many in the media and the elite media, for people around the, some people around the country, that they've got shades of deliverance. They think, oh, Maine's is some sort of backwater place. In Maine is, or did people look at that and say,

well, of course, many of us had fathered children with our second cousin, or did people in Maine look at that as a little weird, too. - People in Maine look at that as a little weird. I mean, the St. John River Valley up on the Canadian border

is an insular place, almost a totally different, you know, community and culture from Maine. There's more strong French Canadian roots there, but even there, people are, you know, a little, they look a scant at that.

And I would also say, people are more offended in that area

by the fact that he never married you know,

when I, there was a controversy a few years ago when Troy, despite being the Senate president, the strongest, the most powerful state lawmaker in the state running a Democrat majority that controlled the House, the Senate,

and had a Democratic governor. He ran for the Alligash Select Board. So this is a town of 240 people, and he ended up losing by seven votes. He conceded the election and then he asked for a recount.

He decided that the election had been rigged against him, even though he had family on both sides who were counting the ballots. So actually drove seven hours up to Alligash to observe this recount and talked to the lot of people

in Alligash and people have very strong opinions about Troy, but the one that overwrote everything was that he wasn't married and he purported to be married. - How could it be that he was a Senate president

and fathered children with his second cousin

and that hadn't become a story before? - Because I hadn't recorded it. - Well I know, but how could no one else have been? Well, how could the major media of Maine? Even if it's not morally reproachful about it,

and again, it also the piece of not marrying the mother of his children, having children with your same cousin, it seems like if it were true of the governor or the Senate leader of California, we'd probably know.

“- Well, I think you have to understand the media,”

how the media works in Maine. And the media, in some ways, the media in Maine is a microcosm of what's happening across the country, at the state level, the local level, where all of these media organizations are trying to figure out

how do you survive as a legitimate, reputable news organization at a time when nobody wants to pay for news and all of your advertising is being eaten up by Facebook and Google, and maybe increasingly large language models.

So we have the Portland Press Harold newspapers, which are like five daily newspapers in the southern part of the state that for a time we're owned by Estonald Sussman, a billionaire Democratic donor who was at the time married to first district congressman,

They got married and he bought her as a wedding present,

“all of the big newspapers in her district.”

You know, what happens when, you know, the husband of the Democratic congresswoman owns all of those newspapers, they didn't do a lot

of critical investigative journalism.

I can tell you that, the newspaper of record in the central part of the state, the Bangor Daily News, has taken no bid contracts from the state of Maine, government, because they also operate a public affairs company, and they are now partnered

with a government-funded 501C3 organization, the Eastern Maine Development Corporation. So there's all these weird kind of entangling alliances where other outlets are dependent on government money or they're dependent on democratic money.

And also there's, you know, there's not a dedicated investigative news outlet other than the Maine wire that really looks into this kind of thing. - Sorry, let's talk about two investigative pieces

you've broken, which again, are extraordinary stories, both of them extraordinary stories, that the government and other news organizations should be up on, but haven't been. One is the Medicaid fraud involving immigrants

from places like Iraq and Rwanda and Somalia. And the other is, Chinese criminal operations throughout the state. Talk about those two pieces, what the dimensions of them are,

how you broke them and where they stand.

So I guess I'll take the Chinese organized crime first.

The Daily Caller News Foundation reported on a week to memo that said that there were 270 properties across the state of Maine that were linked to Asian Transnational Criminal Organizations. We saw that report, where a republication partner

for a Daily Caller News Foundation, we reposted it. And then I reached out to the reporter and said,

“hey, can I work with you to try and find some of these places?”

I mean, if there's 270, you know, elicit marijuana grows in my backyard, I should be able to find them. And contact a Jenny Tair, who broke the story. And we worked together to find a few of them.

And then once I started learning the telltale signs of an elicit marijuana grow, you know, certain electrical indicators, some permit information that we were able to get our hands on, talking to local sources, law enforcement.

We were able to identify hundreds of these locations throughout the state of Maine and then looking deeper into financial records, tax records, other public records. We were able to put the dots together and show how this was really one organization.

It wasn't just phenomenon where, you know, Chinese immigrants had decided this was where you go to make money, you know, like a gold rush in Maine. It was one hierarchical organization that was systematically buying up houses,

using certain realtors, using certain mortgage companies, and they had unified supply chains. So we did, I mean, we've done hundreds of stories on it at this point. It really culminated in the documentary.

We made that people can watch at triadweedmovie.com. We ended up calling the series triadweed because that was the informal term that marijuana business owners had developed for very low quality weed that is laced with pesticides

and is probably going to make you sick. So that's one of the outcomes or one of the things that we've learned doing this journalism is that there's this entire supply chain of, you know, billions of dollars in illicit marijuana being grown in Maine.

I think in Oklahoma, it's $150 billion is their illicit industry

and it's low quality, tainted with pesticides and fundicides and it's a serious health risk. - That's the same time there's the money, go to the communist party of China.

“- That's what the Department of Homeland Security believes, yes.”

And last, you know, we found there was, there was a raid in Pasadumkage, Maine, which was about an hour north of Bangor where Xi Shan Guo was arrested for illicit cannabis trafficking. He pleaded guilty and at that scene they found evidence

of money being wired back to someone in Hong Kong. There's also a material that's come out through lawsuits showing that there are Chinese individuals in Hong Kong who are fronting $2 million loans to people in Maine so that they can go get involved in marijuana businesses

that are part of this network. But the Department of Homeland Security has assessed that the money being generated from these activities are supporting the other clandestine activities of the Chinese Communist Party, whether that's espionage,

you know, surveillance or narcotics trafficking. - A massive story, super interesting. And again, people should go read the work and watch the documentary. Talk briefly about the Medicaid fraud stories

and how we've heard about Medicaid fraud in Minnesota and other places, talk about what you've uncovered in Maine. - Yeah, so we started maybe a year and a half ago with public records requests trying to get the Medicaid payment data from the state of Maine

so that our investigation would be driven by the data not just showing up at sketchy-looking Medicaid provider offices

then in January, the Trump administration released

“a more detailed data set that allowed us to see provider level data”

and it gave us all kinds of neat ways to look at mathematical outliers. So we could see the home healthcare agencies or the autism home operators that were billing 99th percentile compared to other similar businesses nationally.

So the ones that were interested in interesting to us based on the math, we reached out and contacted them and tried to interview them, try to see what exactly is happening here that is making these people so much more lucrative

than any other autism home operator or home healthcare agency. And what we found was really alarming, you know, the scene, whether it's the home healthcare agencies or the autism home operators, it seems to be that there's no one regulating

or policing this activity, some of these autism home operators don't even have to be registered with the state or haven't had to be until January, your February of this year when we started digging into them and reporting on them.

On the home healthcare side, it seems like

“any predominantly Iraqi or Somali migrants”

can form a home healthcare agency send invoices to the state and they'll get paid no questions asked. They have an office suite somewhere in a building

that never has anyone in it.

You call them and try to become a customer and they can't actually sell you their services. So it's very, very strange and the Mills Administration has moved to shut down a lot of those home healthcare agencies but on the autism side, what we find is predominantly

central Africans, Rwanda and CEOs have started these autism companies and unlike the daycares in Minnesota where the kids were fake, with the autism centers, the patients are very real. And we found, frankly, horrifying levels of neglect

and abuse targeted towards means disabled population about 3,000 people who have main care section 21 waivers which is the most costly service that is provided under main care and these autism home operators, they can make $400,000 a year for every patient

that they put in a two bedroom house in the state. So for every two bedroom house that they buy through a real estate holding company, they can turn it into an $800,000 a year revenue generating property.

So some of these autism home operators are making $30,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 a year. And they all appear to be friends and relatives and half brothers and cousins, they all know each other. They're all living in houses that are twice as expensive

as the median home in the state. And for whatever reason, they're all driving Mercedes G wagons as well. But it's a story we've seen not play out over and over again with these companies and the Mills Administration

has actually terminated on an emergency basis funding for two of these organizations after our reporting on them. And I think that there's more to come. I think that administrator Oz is paying attention to this.

I think that there's a lot more to this story. And again, horrifying abuse of disability rights.

“Like that's what makes this unique from California”

or Minnesota or Ohio is that means disabled population not people adults with autism who are non-verbal or who have developmental disorders are being systematically abused and neglected so that people who came here illegally in the COVID era

can make millions of dollars in drive G wagons. - Ladies and gentlemen, if you want great journalism in America, you need folks who are smart, experienced, determined, principled and know how to build a business model to allow them to keep operating.

If you've listened to Steve about the substance of what he said in the attitude he has, you should be pleased if you live in Maine or care about Maine that he's there doing what he's doing is the editor and chief of the Maine Wire.

Steve, tell folks where they can see, read, listen, watch your content. - Yeah, you can go to v-manewire.com. We're on X and Facebook at the Maine Wire. And I have a sub-stack that operates kind of the same level

of journalism, but a little bit deeper. RobinsonReport.substack.com. - Yeah, folks, go subscribe to it all. Even if you don't live in Maine, this is serious journalism that deserves a wide audience.

Steve, congratulations on what you built and very grateful to you for making time. - Thank you, Mark. - All right, we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back, next up is my pal Leland Vetter

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They shop you save, get the right life insurance for you for less at select quote.com/mark. Again, go to select quote.com/mark today and get started. (upbeat music) All right, ladies and gentlemen, next up

and joining me now, Leland Vitter News Nation, Chief Washington, Anchor and host of On Balance with Leland Vitter. It is week nights at 9pm, many nights, they book great guests occasionally, I'm on as well.

Thank you for being here, my friends. - You are the greatest guest. - Some people say, many, you would buy mom. One of the things about becoming a newspaper reporter is sometimes he had promoted to editor.

And it turns out it's a different job. At some reporters say, I don't want to be an editor. I don't want to worry about people's vacations, and I don't want to be doing reporting. Comparable, if you're a journalist,

you're a reporter, corresponded out in the field, you get sent around the world, you get to cover things, you're reporting these things together. And then they say, Leland, we want you to be an anchor. We want you to sit shackled to a camera,

you have to be at the exact same place for an hour on the air and then preparing every night. And it doesn't suit everybody. So having gone from a reporter to anchor, man, how is that going?

Are there days when you'd say, you know what? I'd rather be out in the field do in some actual journalism. - Absolutely. And I would just like to say, Mark,

it's so nice to finally speak to someone

who understands my plight and life. And the difficulties of being a television news anchor. - Well, there's a downside to it. - Thank you. When I was in the Middle East as a foreign correspondent,

running with a small team behind enemy lines, outside the wire, in Libya, Indigaza, a couple of other places in eastern Ukraine for the first Russian invasion, I knew it was the best job I would ever have.

And unquestionably, I think, in order to be a good anchor, you have to be a great reporter. And the great anchors, I'm not saying I'm one of them, but the great anchors all followed that,

especially when you think about my personal hero Peter Jennings, was a great reporter.

And that always was my North Star of how to approach my career

“was you have to learn how to be a great reporter first.”

And I think one of the challenges of cable news right now is how many anchors we have in cable news and in national news who never went through the pipeline. They never spent four or five years overseas. They never spent years at the White House,

learning how to report. They never spent years out in the field for the networks domestically, covering disasters or being on the campaign trail. All of these life experiences put together

allow you the opportunity I think to be a great anchor. - I've never agreed with anything you've said more and I agree with you a lot. I want you to take it a step further. You said that allows you to be a great anchor.

What is it matter if your job is to sit and read a teleprompter for an hour, minus 22 minutes for commercials? What is it matter if you've ever reported in the Middle East on a campaign trail in Washington

investigative work? Why does that make someone a better anchor? - Well, I said not to put a finer point on this, the opportunity to be a great anchor. I don't think it makes you a great anchor.

- Yeah, pre-requisite for being a great anchor. Well, if your job as an anchor is to simply read the teleprompter well and look good on camera with a lot of cloth hair, then probably not much, but one of the great things that you are entrusted with

when you have your name on a show is to shape the editorial vision of that show and especially in cable where you're trying to explain to people as we are every night, not just what's happening, but why it's happening.

You can't do that if your only perspective is from inside the beltway of Washington or on the Ascelicord or and then stretching up into the Hamptons or Nantucket or wherever it is during the summer and down south of Miami

and Palm Beach during the winter. There is no substitute for on the ground reporting.

“I think one of the things that Mark that makes you so unique”

is your ability and why so many people,

the pedigree that you have and the smarts that you have

but to have spent so much time intentionally out actually with the people you cover.

“And I think so many people in Washington make the mistake”

of thinking the people we cover are the members of Congress or the president or the presidential candidates. No, we are actually covering the people who are voting for those people. So many reporters say, my job is to explain Washington

to America, no. I think my job is to bring my Midwestern sensibilities which is where I am right now to Washington and to the events of Washington, very different things. - Couldn't agree with you more on that one too

and people say to me, a mark you're obsessed with politics or you cover politics. I say no, I cover America and the president I used to cover America is politics and government in campaigns. Which you're interesting in and of themselves,

but that's not the point of it. The point of it is, as you said, is to understand the people of the country and of the world and it's a challenge though. We don't need to bore people with the logistics

but if you become a big time anchor like the Leal Invitter, you can't just say, hey, I'm gonna go do my show from Michigan 'cause I wanna spend time with Mike Rogers and Dr. Elsa. They say, well, no, because now we have to build

a little Taj Mahal of production and we need to need hair and makeup and you need a camera, one to at least one camera and you probably need two 'cause a camera could conquer out. And now we're talking about tens of thousands of dollars

at a time when even the most well-funded news organization say, what's the value of Leal Invitter going to Michigan for two days or three days versus the cost

“of supporting Leal Invitter to do a show from there?”

And for most anchors, unfortunately, the answer is no.

Stay in the studio. And that is the problem I think now, increasingly, with cable news and I think one of the great parts about news nation is the commitment and certainly one that I've enjoyed

of allowing me to spend time outside of the studio. And personally, I spend six weeks of summer up in Michigan and I spend a lot of time in Florida and I spend my weekends either in Michigan or in Missouri or in Idaho and in different places to soak in

that feeling and to feel America and to go to the Iowa State Fair for a couple of weeks and this campaign season will be on the road and all the states that you mentioned. I think also, there is a lack of desire,

at least at the networks now, to hire people and put people in these jobs who have been there and done it. Because even if you can't be out on the trail every day as an anchor and I'll speak to it a little bit more

“in the Middle East, even if I can't go to the Middle East”

right now and report on what's happening in Israel or with the war with Iran or a war with Gaza or whatever. The fact that I've been there, I understand the people because I've sat there and had tea with them. I've lived there, I've lived that experience in that culture.

It gives you a wildly different perspective, even if those who just parachute in for a couple of weeks. And you've lived on the trail in Iowa, you know what that's like. You can watch what's happening and apply

what you've learned in your, your prism to the events of today in a way that somebody who's just, you know, lived in Washington, can. - Right, 100% well said again. And again, this serves the public interest

because it means the anchor's gonna ask better questions. They're gonna book better guests. They're gonna edit scripts better. They're gonna be able to present the reality

to the audience in a way that someone who has never

reported in their life, it's just not gonna be able to do. And I cherish a place that's like where you work that allow you to do that. Lay to have those experiences. 'Cause you gotta stay up to date, you gotta see.

I never cover politicians who I haven't met in person, as well as ones who I have. Never bring some of my life. It's just, I've never met Dr. Alsat. I'm desperate too.

I want to take the measure of them. And I need that opportunity. Even a day with them would make me a better presenter of stories about him. - A thousand percent.

What I think is interesting now, and it's different than when you were on the trail a while ago and even from when I was on the trail, the lack of access now to anybody, but clearly sick of phantic media

for these types of candidates is stunning to me. - Stunning. - The, and it's sad because if either you or I call Dr. Alsat's campaign and said, hey, I want to come on the trail with you for a day,

even if it's on background or I want to sit down and have a lunch, on background.

- Yeah. - In that.

“- It's a huge change and it's a horrible cycle”

because the less you can get going out

to cover a candidate, the less serious reporters are interested in going out. The people who travel are inexperienced people who don't really have any access and whose time is not valuable enough

for anybody to care about that, unfortunately. But it just as you said, in the olden days, regardless, even if it were a president of the United States, if I went out and said, I want to spend some time with candidate X,

I could either get it with permission or I could walk up to the minute event, right? Even if they had security. Now, part of why I don't go out as much as I did, there's other reasons as well, but part of why is,

I could fly to Michigan, they may not even, and this is not just applying to one party of the other,

they literally may not tell you their schedules.

- Right, literally, like the fragility of these candidates, it is though they want to run for Senate or Governor or President, and yet they are treated by their staffs as frabber J.A.s, is they put in this bubble that is so carefully constructed

and scripted, it kind of makes you wonder how if they faced even, again, both sides, even a modicum of regular reporting questions, as you and I would do, what happened to you? Like, what are you so scared of?

- And again, you could get their schedule, either because they give it to you or you track it down, and then you could show up, and they'd be, like treated like a frabber J, they'd be sequestered, you couldn't have conversation with them.

This is a bad thing for America, it's bad for us because we want access, but because we want access

to tell the story, we want access to be able

to explain these people to the rest of the country, and you don't have the opportunity, which means fewer people go out. When I go out now to try to cover a candidate, presidential Senate as whatever it is,

typically the only reporters there, as I said, are young and experienced reporters whose who aren't have the expectation of getting access, and it happens more and more. The campaigns are fought out on social media and cable TV.

They're not fought out in real life in front of real voters, and in front of reporters who can try to, again, hold them accountable and help explain. Let's say you were cloned, okay? So one cloned can see.

- Lord help, my wife and anybody else, but keep going. - The original Leeland is shackled to the camera and has to go live every night on news nation. The cloned can cover the midterms for 75 days or so.

I send you to Texas, I say, shoot whatever you want for three days, talk to everyone.

“How would you cover the Texas Senate race with three days?”

What would you want to see? What kind of story lines would you pursue? - If it was just the Texas Senate race, I think the house races in Texas may actually be more interesting,

because the jerrymandering by Republicans with the expectation that Hispanics had actually turned Republican after 2024 could prove to be a super, super important, super important. - A horrible miscalculation, but to the same point,

I would be down a lot of the time in South Texas, down into the Rio Grande Valley and Star County, down along the border. These are the counties that were historically Democrat that the Hispanic vote switched to Republican in 2024,

and I would be trying to understand whether they will come out for James Talereco does traditionally culturally conservative Hispanics, which they are, they willing to vote for a guy who talked about non-binary Jesus

in the way that Talereco does. Does that present a Kazan they can't leap?

“And the flip side is will they turn out for Paxton?”

The fact that Paxton really won't campaign, won't do even friendly cable news hits, is starting to really weigh, I think on his popularity and his campaign, that's a key issue.

I wanna try to understand in the traditionally, shall we say upper middle class conservative suburbs, around Dallas, around Fort Worth, around Houston, if this shift we're hearing about to Talereco is real among more educated, but traditionally conservative

Republican voters, those would probably be the two areas that I would focus on the most. Obviously you'd wanna get time with both Talereco and Paxton, but to your point, we tried to go down to interview Paxton, I said I wanna come spend the day with you

before the Republican midterm convention. Let's go out, I wanna be with you while you go meet voters at a lunch line somewhere, let's go get barbecue, whatever it is, zero interest by the campaign. - Yeah, not a surprise.

And again, it's not about Leeland, it's their general posture towards all media. The same question about Michigan besides spending time with the two candidates, if you had three days to talk to voters, talk to other political players,

- The Muslim turnout in Dearborn is gonna be critical

if Al-Siaid is gonna win.

“So I think you need to spend time understanding”

that vote and understanding the Muslim fervor for Al-Siaid. You've got to understand the African American vote around Detroit. You also have to understand where the disaffected white liberals are, which actually interestingly enough is where I am right now,

which is up in Northern Michigan, Leeland, I County, Grand Traverse County, if you weather the counties, that have gotten more progressive over the past couple of cycles. Whether they'll really turn out for Al-Siaid,

there is something happening in Michigan, I think that is very interesting, which is the middle is revolting against Al-Siaid, and the way they wouldn't have against Hailey Stevens, and I think there's a lot of people who are not happy

with Donald Trump, but are willing to come out and vote for Mike Rogers. And we're seeing that movement starting, once that kind of movement starts, think it's very difficult to put the Jeannie back in the bottle.

- Yeah, I'm super interested in this and tell me if you would do this, if your producers could set it up or you could set it up. A focus group, it ran Dearborn,

“with four Muslim Americans who plan to vote for Dr. Al-Siaid,”

who are traditionally Democratic voters, and four traditionally Democratic voters who plan to vote for Mike Rogers, and the eight of them in one room, and talk to them about the race.

What do you think of that? - Yeah, you have a unique ability to do focus groups in that way.

That's not my reporting never really revolved around that,

but if you could do it and set it up, it's a fascinating window into what is going to probably determine this race. - How about this? How about you do a piece,

and then you do one of those drop-ins where you say, my colleague Mark Halpern talked to eight Michigan voters that I think-- - I would be honored at any time to consider you a friend in college. - I think we call that a collab if we did.

- That's what the kids call it. - Yeah, one more race I want to ask you about. In Iowa, there's a competitive governor's race and a competitive Senate race. If you went to Iowa and there's two house races,

who would you want to talk to in Iowa to cover the midterm? - I think Rob Sand is one of the more interesting political-- - He's the Democratic nominee who's running not as a Democrat, but it's kind of an independent and his favorite

down to win it.

“- Well, I'll never forget-- - Anyway, he's interesting.”

- This goes to your point. When I was in Iowa for the summer before the primary, so the 2023 Iowa State Fair, I'd heard about Rob Sand, I called him up and I said, "Hey, I want to have breakfast with you."

And Rob Sand showed up at this little breakfast place in Des Moines. And he drove over on what looked like an old Harley Davidson from World War II. Remember the bikes used to see the GIs

or like the airborne riding route on? And I asked him about it and he goes, "Oh, that's my e-bike." And it was an electric bike built to look like a motorcycle that he rode around as the state auditor on.

Shows up with no staff sits down for an hour and a half. And it was a remarkable insight into what candidate. And I said at that time, and I said it on TV before, I think he is a talent to watch over the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years. - Ladies and gentlemen, that story alone tells you

why Lil and I talked so much about anchors, TV anchors who've been reporters, the value of it, and you see it every night in Leeland show. Every syllable comes out of meth, every scripty writes, every interview question he asks is informed by the fact

that he's actually talked to real people, not just around the country, but around the world. It's incredibly valuable, Leeland, and grateful to you for taking all that experience and applying it to your nightly program

and for taking a little bit of time while you're in Michigan to check today.

- Well, and grateful to you, Mark, always for joining us,

and I would say, and I've said it on TV, so you know it's true. It must be true if you've said it on television. - Has to be. - That Mark's books is what inspired me to get into political journalism

in the beginning. - Very grateful, Tia. I look forward to spending time with ya after Labor Day and covering this alongside you collab, formal, or anything. - We'll be out on the trail together.

Thanks, Mark. - Every week night on News Nation, you can watch Leeland for an hour, and people can subscribe to your newsletter, too, right? - Warnotes.com to subscribe for free.

- For free. Thank you, sir. See you soon. - Thank you. - All right, that's it for today's program.

Back on Tuesday with a whole brand new episode of Next Up. I wish everybody a great weekend, subscribe to the program on YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts, so you always know what's coming.

Next up. (upbeat music)