John Dickerson: When the Media Helps Rewrite Reality

Hello, welcome to the board podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. We have one Monday

without Bill Crystal because, well, I could not turn down this beautiful setting for those of you on YouTube, we're at the Aspen ideas festival. So I searched for a suitable replacement. Among the global elite, the thought leaders, the illuminati, we needed someone wise and dry. And among all the notables here, the only choices, of course, the former host of CBS Daily News and the politics, pod, father, himself, John Dickerson and I hear you have a

substeck. Oh, I do. I have a substeck. I like it like everyone. Like all humans now must have a substeck.

“I think you're born with them. I have one. That is nice. It's good to see you. It's great to see you,”

Tim. This is nice doing this in Aspen. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if you hear last night, but what's gorgeous about the clear sky is that it's a clear sky because there's their fires over in Utah that at the end of the day, everything looks, you know, is totally haze. Yeah. When we got in yesterday morning, it was a little spooky. Yeah. Yeah. Red Sun. It's a little ominous. All right. We got a bunch to get to. We'll do a little media talk at the end. Is there any media news that you think what you might be worth?

There is a very shoot mountainous media news. I am in the flatlands of my ability to weigh in on it. Oh, I'll enjoy ducking at questions. Well, I don't know about that. We'll see. We can my questions

might be more fun than you think. Well, let's talk about Iran first. I'd write this down because

since Friday's podcast years would happen. Can I run you through this? Yeah. Iran launched a drone offensive on ships in the straight. They were mad that Oman had opened an alternate lane for ships. They said that that other route violates the MOU, the US retaliated. We bombed Iran again. Iran then hit back against 8 US military targets in Kuwait and Bahrain. Those were countries that you might remember where on Marcos, all those well-trip just last week. We were telling you it again.

Then Trump threatens Iran with annihilation again. Iran then says, "Now we're going to go ahead and get a nuke then." And then our friend at Axios Bragrovid reports. Well, we've actually now agreed to stop escalating right before the market's open. And we plan to meet again this week. Talks Tuesday and Doha, probably New York Times, Iran is not yet confirmed. They're sending reps. So we'll see. So that's the state of affairs on our ceasefire. Yeah, it feels like visit the state of affairs

every Friday weekend and Monday. Because we did more. One of the subject things I do is it is a compilation of the weeks news and every Friday I ended and I think, "Oh, there's a break through at the end of Friday." President was often saying we're ready to sign a deal. I haven't really accounted for that. But then it washes away by the time you get to Monday. So this feels like a similar

“thing. The fact is that all of the issues, the key issues are so up in the air, they can't even”

get to the other issues that are up in the air. And that shipping lane, if you look at the number of ships that are still able to get through, it's tiny compared to the 130 a day that we're going through. I think it's over a couple of days, they had 78. And they've got to go through that narrow non-mind lane even in the best of terms. And we should talk about what that even looks like. This is just super slow going half a foot forward two steps back. Yeah. And the two things

that just stand out on this, which you will note are not, we're not neither of these things, we're part of the reason why we went into the war. As particular hold-ups here is Lebanon. Item number one of DMOU mentioned Lebanon on three times. So I think Iran was pretty clear about what was important to them. So that makes things challenging when that's out of our hands. And then when it comes to the straight, it seems that there is maybe an intentional miscommunication,

I don't know. What are miscommunications about like what an open straight is, right? And I think this seems like Trump is at least pretending like our acting like an open straight means ships can just go through. And Iran means no. And open straight means that you know you get our approval, you send an TPS report like we let you know if you can come through. And that's open. Right. And that's a precursor to Iran saying after 60 days in the MOU is over, we're going to hold,

we're going to have tolls, we're going to charge people to go through this. This is, which is a new arrangement pre-war this didn't exist. And so all this conversation about the straight either what's going on now or what will happen after the MOU is over is all leverage points that Iran gained by the war. And so as we measure, was this worth it, which is a question we should

always be asking about everything that happens. All everything that's being debated was didn't

exist as a point of leverage or a complexity beforehand. So it's a new thing that's been created. Leaving aside all the other thorny issues, Lebanon's another one, that was not originally a leverage point, but now is as a part of these negotiations on Iran's side. JB, the Vice President has been a point man on this lately. I like this little fact that I read during the negotiations in Switzerland last week, one of the things that Vians thought was

“important that they agreed to is that there's a hotline in the U.S. military in Iran because”

we haven't been able to get a hold of them. They keep saying, I go, the Iranians are in caves. And so we don't know, and then a Taz number, whatever they'll put out information on state news. It seems like we can get to them, but they keep acting like it's hard to get hold of them.

droning the straight again on Friday. And JD sends out a tweet that's like, I wish they were

to call me. They should have just called. And as of like a Saturday, I don't know if they've thought hotlines become operational since then, but we still didn't have hotline. It feels like the hotline is like when people are in the salary negotiations with a job and they can't give more money. So they give them a title. It felt like the hotline was the thing that could name as a piece of progress when there was no actual progress. On the other hand,

it has been reported throughout these negotiations. That one of the challenges for the U.S.

“negotiators for JD vans and others is like who's in charge? Remember that first round of”

meetings, the back of St. Andy spent more of their time trying to adjudicate the arguments among the Iranians, let alone then between the Americans and the Iranians. And so getting a person on the other end of the line would be nice, because it would mean there was one person on the other end of the line. On the other hand, the idea of a hotline is the reason I'm being a little bit glib about it is because this war has taken place by social media. Essentially,

each side acting and then threatening in public for a variety of their different reasons. So a hotline is like, it's a little late because it's all happening in real time on social media. I see it. You're here for your wisdom. Jeff, any wisdom about where things go? Well, I don't know. I have no wisdom about where they go, but I do have what I hope is

wisdom about what we should always keep in mind. Was the war worth it? And I think there are three

“ways you measure that. Was it worth tearing up the Obama era, JCPOA, which was negotiated by several”

countries had a series of constraints on Iran, which President Trump tore up and thinks he's going to get a better deal? Let's talk about just one little thing, inspections. When JCPOA came out, Senator Tom Cotton and others said, the inspection regime is too puny. It has to be inspection at any time anywhere. J advanced just announced before things fell apart that the Iranians were going to have inspections again. They were not anywhere any time inspections. So if you measure

the inspections that they might get out of this deal, against what was the previous standard, this war has not been worth it. So you measure the war against the JCPOA, you measured against where things were before the bombing started, because there were negotiations, the state of Ramirez was not a leverage point, and then you measured against what the President Trump said this war was about. So keeping those three things in mind, every time there's a development

like the hotline. Great. Okay, hotline's a development, but if you measure that against all the previous situations, like hotline's a meaningless development. Yes. So I just think you want to keep

those three in mind, because the problem is when there are some of these agreements like to reopen

the state of Ramirez, it's treated by the White House as a great development. Okay, without thinking about the context, maybe it's a great development, but the context is it wasn't a point of contention before the war. It was open already. So just keeping those three things in mind, every time there's development, I think is. I mean, given those three things, I don't see any path back to something that looks even remotely like success. Like honestly, I could even if you

think about what a best case outcome from here could be, like it's hard to see how it would be any better than the pre-war status quo or the JCPOA. I think that's right. And by the way, if you're really doing the math, you've got to then calculate all that was expended, not just the lives of lives, the damage to the international economy, all those missiles that you can't replace very easily. So that's another thing worth keeping in mind, because there's really nothing more important

for a president than the decision to go to war. And so this isn't some decision about a reflecting

“pool. This is like at the center of the presidency. The only thing that would be worse in terms of a”

president using or misusing their power would be if they encouraged some sort of kind of an attack on the free and fair elections that are a part of the American Constitution. Back to JD. Lastly, he was at the Nixon Foundation or something libraries. And this was not an off-the-cuff comment. He was a prepared comment. He went to go to this event and announced that he thinks that Richard Nixon's having a renaissance. Actually, actually, he says actually a couple of times, and that if

Watergate Heaven today be 12-hour story, I did say on Friday's show, I said that that was not true. That's what the Nixon's having renaissance, and I follow a lot of political watcher. I haven't seen any of this. My colleague will summer did correct me that there is like a niche subculture on right wing TikTok, where they do Nixon edits to Charlie Xiex songs. So it's a brave new world. So there's a small, small renaissance happening there. Your mother, Nancy Dickerson,

was there. She was covering all of it. She was there. She actually, she was covering the White House for the, for NBC, and Nixon during the period that where there were protesters on the mall, he gave a press conference, and she asked him, "Why don't you speak to the protesters?" And his answer was, you know, a traditional press conference answer, but then he called her later

"I love those kids." And then he later, that was the night that he went down on the mall and met with

“the protesters. It was a very odd conversation after that. Yeah. And Holomon writes about this in”

his diaries, the drinking part. I mean, and this period, we're going down to talk to the, to the young protesters in the end of talking about like the Super Bowl. It was not a deep interaction. But that was one. And she knew Nixon going back to when he was on the hill in the 50s, because she'd been working on the hill. And she also did a documentary about Watergate. So, yeah. So, how do you think she'd process the notion that Watergate wasn't that big of a deal

and did that? He's, now, many years later, having a supposed Renaissance going to a new vice-president. Yeah, defining Deviancy. Yeah. Essentially is what's happening. I, you know, there has been line of thinking and Republican thought over the years since Nixon and, and among obviously his defenders, that they all do it, Nixon just got caught. That was, that's been around for a while. That, that, that abuses of power happen in every White House, you know, Kennedy, Bob Abbaugh.

And you know, Trump line about all were so great when Scarborough is asking him about, you know, yeah, what Putin had done? Yeah. Exactly. Right. Like, who are we to talk about

“Putin's throwing people out of windows? We're not so great ourselves. I think what struck me”

about what JD Vance said is he said, well, this is the deep state. And Nixon certainly, if you read the tapes and you listen to him, he was obsessed with the deep state and, and the bureaucrats in it and the liberals in the media and everything. But the problem for that argument is that if there was a deep state, it was Nixon's mouth. I mean, the thing that got him in trouble is the smoking on tape. Right. He's Nixon himself saying to have to have the CIA stop the FBI

investigation into a break in, in a political party's headquarters, which is, you know, again, messing with elections. So you can't define that. Also, just, we should just say also about the deep state at the time. This is kind of this amorphous word. And I was trying to figure out like, what he's talking about because, you know, when Trump was talking about the deep state, you know, he was going after him. He was talking a lot about like the intelligence services.

And the intelligence services were working for Nixon. Yes. Like the CIA was part of the cover up. Trump also talking about the justice department as part of the deep state. The justice department was on was with Nixon. Like there were some lower level people, but like the attorney general left by the time watergate had happened, Mitchell. But was like part of the planning on the, when the front end, while he was still attorney general, the United States. Right. You know,

the obvious benefit of this politically for J.D. Vance at the moment is to connect their sense of grievance about any questioning of presidential power with with a big popular thing you know, and to try to say essentially that it has a modern valence, which really has nothing to do with Nixon, but which has to do with basically like these nines who who think that what Nixon did was bad, they're the same nines, you know, barking at our heels. And the whole thing is just the product

of elites and not actual law-breaking caught on tape. I mean, think about what J.D. Vance is trying to do. This is literally the definition, smoking gun, right? Literally the definition of evidence

that is so powerful, it is unfalseifiable, except think about one of the projects of this administration

in J.D. Vance in particular. He said essentially, okay, maybe they, there aren't Haitians eating their dogs, but if I have to tell you something that's untrue to get attention to it, it's okay. You know, he called them domestic terrorists in Minnesota, which they weren't, and which there was no evidence of for Rene Good and Alex Pretty. And that project of taking things you can see and know what your own eyes and trying to cast it as something else is essentially what's happening

in that in that watergate exchange. Nimi, sir. Nimi, that ring neighbor. That ring neighbor. That was a mega-tissum. Yes, that was the previous, that was the other right. I also think it's shady Vance saying it's okay for us to do the crimes. Like we're, I mean, there's a certain group that we're tough on. When it comes to the rule of law, but us in Washington, if you're on our side, you can, you can do it. It's fine. Well,

we deal. Right. When a president says that it's law, which is a version of, or I'm paraphrasing,

“what Nixon said. But I think that's right. You define down any previous crime, any previous abuse”

of power, any previous obstruction of justice. So then when you are accused of the same, it's like, oh, this is the same. These are just, these are points of etiquette that we were being called on.

And that's always, there's always been a sort of etiquette critique by elites in Washington.

It happened with Nixon and now, you know, it's happening to us to, to downplay the severity of breaking essentially your constitutional oath. Here's another reason they want to downplay it. It's a New York Times story this morning. The government is actively doing critical minerals deals with, do you want to guess how many different companies that have financial ties to Trump or Latinic? Oh, dozens. 14. I don't know. It doesn't plus in plus. Yeah. 14 different companies.

It's worth in total that nine billion, nine billion. How much was in the paper back?

September, Trump, Latinic in the president of Kazakhstan. After the meeting, it resulted in

“exclusive deal for the American company, Kaz resources to mine, tungsten in the country,”

both Trump and Latinic family soon announced a highly lucrative business connections to the deal. tungsten mining in Kazakhstan. That's some creative corruption. Yeah, well, ahead of time, I guess. What every time I hear about one of these deals, and you know, there've been a lot of them, or the business that comes the way of the Trump family. And also, obviously, this is shot through all of the Middle Eastern negotiations going on. It's hard to keep up with. I mean, it's hard to keep

up with what's in the MOU and what's not getting dealt with just in the MOU, but then all the relationships in the Trump family to the various countries that are involved, it's very hard to track.

That's just one thing. What I keep thinking about is the President Trump's first inaugural address.

And when she said, this period where the elites in Washington protect themselves and ignore the forgotten men and women of this country, that ends right now, that there will be no more of this using the system to, to, to, to Latinic and Wittkov kids with the forgotten men. Yeah, what we didn't know is that the, what we didn't know is that they were the forgotten. And so every time you, you see a perfection of the use of, or the benefit of people with ties to the Trump family,

in a way that he directly built his entire presidency around in that inaugural address. It's crazy to think back, I was kind of young, but like some of the other ones like Roger Clinton, trying to think of the other family members who are in on the take. Right. And I don't recall More than an reveal bush getting in on anything. Oh yeah, no, no, no, but Neil, there was a lot of Neil. Neil got in on such stuff. Well, is that anything? I don't, I don't, I don't want to be, be wrong

or more wrong than normal, but um, there was a lot of speculation in the SNL crisis about Neil Bush as I recall. I don't know where that ended up. I'm not trying to impure Neil's character. Yeah, and the point of it is just like how small ball that stuff was. Yeah. Yes.

And for me, one of the tip-offs was when President Trump made those first faints about giving up

control and access and connection to his family business. His, he had his lawyer go out there and say, you know, when Nelson Rockefeller was Vice President, nobody cared about this. In other words, again, like with Watergate, nobody cared about it. In the, the Rockefeller case, therefore you shouldn't care about this now. So it's using the past to try to frame the present. Except that the past was totally wrong. Rockefeller had to go testify on Capitol Hill

about his private fortunes, right? So when they were preparing the way like that, just at the beginning of the first term, you kind of got the sense in Haberman and Swan's book has a passage where Trump and I'm paraphrasing essentially, you know, I did some of that stuff and nobody cared about it. So I'm not kind of bothered with it anymore. That stuff being caring about the, um, the parents all within the business and I, you know, pretended it and they stopped doing some of

their hotel deals overseas, not all of them, but it's like, that's not now. All that shit's supercharged. Yeah, we should, I should do this. Actually, this would be a fun podcast game with guests, is like, uh, create like a fake Trump business deal and a real one and try to give me a chance. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. We're so preposterous that you could not possibly believe that it was true. You all know, I love souls out of office sparkling beverages for an easy

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“this felt like a good podcast topic. And I was just like, what ideas are hot right now? Do you think?”

You've been coming to this thing for a while. So there's something that's new. It's out of fashion.

is a very popular topic right now, whether the shape of that. Yes, certainly not in the UK. Well, the UK is a big counter-veiling point to that. Yes, the UK Prime Minister is the spinal tap drummer of world leaders. I mean, they just keep as he in breath. You can't, you can't Peru. You're beating. Yeah. Right. Ian Brahmers said, you know, in the future, everyone will have 15 minutes of UK Prime Minister. The UK thing is pretty good worrying because we did kind of follow their footsteps

and Brexit. And some of the problems that they're having, budget-wise, immigration-wise, do feel like things that are coming down the pike for us. You're exactly right. And this is

“incredibly important. So we just had the 10th anniversary of Brexit. You now have a majority of”

Britain saying, hey, can we get rid of that? Like, let's go back to one analysis set is between

4 and 8 percent of GDP has been hurt over the 10 years of Brexit for a variety of reasons. The trade

didn't take place with the, is easily with the EU labor was restricted. But as your more important point is the right one, which is when you look at Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, interest on the debt, we are facing the same fiscal problems, challenges that they are in the UK. And why did Starmer among other things get bounced? Because he tried to do some, you know, restrict the payments that went to pensioners, restrict the disability payments. And like,

got screamed by his own party. Same in the States. If we tried to tinker with some of those programs or tinker with the other parts of the budget, which you're tiny by comparison, politically it's too too painful. Yeah. Another one I'm noticing. And I guess I'm trying to put this right away because obviously it has been, and here there's a lot still of talk about climate happening. I almost felt like a little bit of a time machine, you know, coming here and looking

at the panels and saying all the climate talk because that is like so absent from the political discourse now. Like, that's another kind of trend I've noticed. Even like the DSA types, right, you're this kind of big moment with all these DSA left candidates. In 2018, like Green New Deal would have been their thing. Like, right, it goes 2018. And, you know, some of the trends have gotten slightly better on climate, but like, the things that we haven't

solved it in the intervening eight years. And now it's, you know, health care, it's been a care for all, it's Israel, it's costs. Right. It's not even really on the, on the agenda. I mean,

“sometimes it gets mentioned, but it's like that on the agenda. Yeah. Well, I think when you have a”

40% increase in the price of gas as a result of the war on Iran, you have a difficulty selling

an argument that has always had embedded in it. Some upfront costs to make a better future,

which is often what the case with a lot of climate conversations. Also, though, I think it's just, this is distinct from an aspect, for the moment. But when you think about housing education, health care, those are like, you got to get to those three first. We now have a situation where wages are for the last two months behind inflation. So, you know, in the order of operations, talking about long-term threats is tricky. Now, it's not a long-term threat when you look at the

fires in California and the way, but still, what I'm seeing at the gas pump or seeing it month by month of my bills are always, as you know, so well from politics are going to get in front. One of the wonderful things about the ideas festival is those ideas are still important. And they are what, you know, they are important, but if you don't tend to them at a place like this, then by the time they make it into the political conversation, it's too late, because you haven't

done any of the work. Okay, this is a half-baked idea, so we're just doing this live, because it's another thing that I'm noticing that's different is, um, did all my previous ideas have to be fully-baked, because I'd like to restake now. That's one particularly half-baked. This is what's a quarter-baked.

Um, but, you know, I mean, all of these sorts of things you always have corporate sponsorships

and stuff, like the corporate America shift, you know, particularly somewhat on climate, on DEI, on tech, you know, it's pretty noticeable. Again, this is nothing, we come here in 2018.

“I think that there would have been a lot of the big tech companies, you know, either sponsoring”

or doing panels that are like, you know, we got to think about trust and safety, you know, we've got, we're a little bit worried about disinformation on the platform. Not really a ton of that anymore, and like there has been, and I think one of like the big cultural shifts of Trump, and obviously this pain with the broadblocks, they're good CEOs. But like, is, kind of in Trump, two point now, there's been a kind of like, we're unleashed for having

to do some of this stuff. Well, I mean, you see it explicitly from the, the CEO's who went to the White House and visited with him. You see it in Abraham and Swan's book about how, and this is one of the, you know, particularities of President Trump's, a felicity with power, and the enjoyment he takes when when Jeff Bezos or Zuckerberg sucks up to him, it's a thrill. I mean, those companies trying to stay alive and under the terror regime, like, it was existential for some of them. I mean,

Apple and particular, so there was, there was both a diminution of the virtue signaling that

the things you had to do to stay on the right side of the administration. And now with the AI

“companies, there is this new sort of emerging White House policy that you have to run your new”

models by me. Yeah. I mean, that's a lot of great leverage. Yeah, Mark and Jason basically said

he supported Trump because he was worried what the Biden or the then Harris administration would do to do oversight of AI. And like now, it's, I guess as long as they feel like as long as they're inside the house, it's fine. Yeah, so though, I mean, so anthropics into two front or with the administration, the LGBT just wrote on Friday that their new model has to go through the administration before it can be released. LGBT has a better relationship with the administration

than an anthropic thing. But even a good relationship doesn't mean that you can get, you can just do what you want, which was the original promise of the Trump policy on AI, which was like a thousand flowers bloom. There is now a gatekeeping function, which I'm fascinated to watch because if you can control the spigen on what gets to go forward or not go forward on what might be the most powerful technology in our modern age, that's a lot of leverage over activity.

This is kind of one of those, be careful what you wish for lessons. Like, there's my self included. There's a lot of mockery of like, you know, the Chevron plight pride float. And, you know, you know, these sort of performative, you kind of verge of having these like corporate performative efforts to show that the company's care about the, you know, society and the environment and equity. And now that that's gone, it's kind of like, what? You know, there's

something to be said for Virtus. Like, do I maybe, maybe better than the alternative?

Oh, totally. Well, because Virtus. I mean, this is always true, you know, okay,

let's strip, let's strip away the Virtus. Accordingly, which might have been a kind of cynical, glad thing for me to say. We know this from, oh, no, there was, there was some fucking

“Virtus. Like, it's fine. And that's why I think it deserves some teasing. What I, what you don't want”

to lose is the scholarship that shows the benefits of diversity, right? That this is both decisions are better. Your workforce is more robust when people can see models of others like them who've risen up. I mean, as the son of the first woman correspondent for CBS News, the number of people in my life who've said, who would never gotten in the news business, who said that their eyes were lifted up on the horizon by seeing a person like them doing a job in public, where

there were no, where there were no other women. Like, that is super powerful. And so to deny the power of that, to deny the power of human example, for basically everything other than white men, is ridiculous, because it is powerful. It's some of the most powerful stories in American history, or the power of what diversity can do. And then there are the studies to show the powers of what diversity can do. So I don't want the mocking, which is justified in some cases,

behind it, there is a reality, which is that the diversity, economic equity and inclusion was a part of a real and important thing for government and for corporations. Was your mom torn it all about being recognized in that way? Like, what rather have not been,

you know, always cited as the first or did she have just a pure pride about it?

As she was, yeah, she had a pure pride because it was a bit of a climb to get there. I mean, told for years that audiences didn't care about women, and then also you can imagine in the 50s and 60s how an attractive woman was treated by men in power. If you would like to, if you would

“like to advance in your career, we have some ideas for you. And so if you have to crawl across”

all that glass, she would also recognize that she maybe was a little too proud of herself, which caused some trouble later in her career. But, you know, success of pride in the media. Exactly. Exactly. I think there's been plenty of men that got went down there. Right, exactly. She has a good example of that. And then all the men that came before. That's very cool, though. I'm like that. All right, I want to do open ended 2028 on you. Okay. Because I think we first met. I mean,

this is not true. Do you know what we're referring to? I think we first had dinner in Oklahoma city at a Midwestern governor's conference or something that all the candidates were supposed to come to. I don't know if Jeb actually went. We might have met before that, but I remember having dinner. There you go. I met you one time before that. I can remember. Right. It's 2011. Okay. That's 15 years ago. All right. But the Iowa straw poll. She doesn't exist anymore. Yeah. The Iowa straw poll, which was

what have been the Romney year? The Romney year. Yeah. I don't even remember who won the straw poll that you stay in tour of, I think. Didn't Romney win, but because he'd finally decided to pass the people. He just dropped money in on him. Yeah. That's right. He bust all the people in damn it. I'm going to Google it. We should now. Okay. But in the meantime, I brought that up because, you know, you've been covering these things a long time. And I mean, I don't care if you were

talking about Republicans' Democrats just what's catching your eye. Oh, well, you know, I, oh, man, I love those days. The, you know, oh, my God, we're both wrong. Oh, no. Michelle Bachman won the 2000. Oh, oh, oh, oh, my gosh. Well, sound guys, that's who came in.

on the path. Oh, my gosh. He was a hoot. I have a particular fun this for Iowa because I spent so much time there covering both Republicans and Democrats. And also I started my career. Well,

first covering our own specter. Can you imagine a pro choice Republican candidate? He never got like 0.01%

“in any poll. But even just saying, like, I think I'm going to run, that just would be on her to have”

now. But then Lamar Alexander, who, you know, essentially tried to, he'd visit the next way. Before Jeff, just all the exclamation point from the moment. Exactly. Went to all 99 counties. I traveled with, with, with, with Lamar all through this state. Anyway, huh. Well, you know, my boring feeling about 2828, which is the same boring feeling I had about 24 and 20, which is that the horse race, uh, fine. But what we're learning in the Trump administration is we learn

with all presidencies. But particularly in the Trump administration is this person you're picking has the ability to go to war unchallenged, basically, because Congress is, uh, uh, uh, uh, supined for the moment. We'll see if that changes when there's a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress, if that's the case. But they can, like, launch a war. Keep that front of mind, right? Um, keep in mind all of the power that a president has. And that it's not just about the single

president. It's about the team. They put around, build around them. You know, uh, Stephen Miller has extraordinary power. Yeah. And there is, there are, there is a lot of reclamation that needs to happen. The department of justice needs to be moved from the personal, personal grievance factory of the president into something that actually deals with the challenges that we face from crime and terrorism and, and, and the rest. Like, there's a serious bunch of issues and

the parlor game is like, I spent my whole career as you said. I like you resisting, you're resisting doing the horse race parlor game. I am. We're going to do it that. Okay. Okay. I, because I only allow myself 15 to 20 minutes a week on 28. I have a cap. Some weeks. I don't even use the cap.

“Yeah. That's why I haven't, I have a, I have a ceiling for myself. Now, it's looking at the”

guests this week and you're really the only one that I want to talk about 28 weeks. So we're

going to use some of the, some of the cap. Let's just do the Democrats for a second. Well, I have a

particular Democrat I want to ask you about, but do you have any thoughts just about the field broadly right now? Well, the field broadly, the Democrats are about to have a big, I like these fights in parties. I love these fights. They're going to have a huge fight between, if you look at the Pew political typology survey of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party and you look at, it's about 14% of the Democratic Socialists inside the Democratic Party. They, however,

are the noisy end of the room right now. Right. You know, and so what's going to happen when the Democratic Socialists and the energy behind that movement clashes not only with the establishment, but with the political scientists and the political hacks who will say, we love your energy, what you're talking about in the distribution of wealth in America and the diminution of the American dream. Love it. We'll get back to you. You know, because we're going to go run our race.

Well, this takes us back to Valkmann, actually. So, 2010 was the Tea Party. Yeah. Yeah. And 2012, the Republicans dominated Mitt Romney. But what's funny about that is, so you have the Democratic Socialists representing about 14% of the Democratic coalition. On the Republicans side, the Tea Party represented a much bigger part of the coalition, as you know, sent 70 people to Washington, and sent 70 to Congress as opposed to, you know, maybe we'll have a handful. So it had a much

bigger part of the party, and yet mixed with Romney. Never the last. It's the Mitt Mitt

one's CPAC, the second about struggles. Mitt Romney won the CPAC's drop-hole, which is hard to imagine. But he won it as an unexpected fusionist. And so this is where the DSA can end up having power. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And this is where the Tea Party had power, Romney. I, you know, I never believed it. I love Lower Mitt Romney. But the idea that Mitt Romney was like a tough border deportation wall guy. Sure. Well, he was the first one to put self deportation into

the... Yeah, exactly. Self deportation? Yeah. I think that, you know, that that was to me. It seemed like him trying to appeal to the Tea Party guys and find a lane and realizing that I just doing the belt tightening, economic stuff wasn't going to be enough. You needed to do part of the culture war. And I think you'll see some of this from the Democrats. And you look around and

“it's like, well, who can do that? And I think that the key Democrat, like, that my little rule of”

thumb I'm trying to use is, I feel like Kamala, who I like first of all, was in the sour spot, where like the DSA types or broader progressive thought that she was a corporate chill, and the moderate thought that she was a California progressive, right? And the challenge will be to find a Mitt Romney doesn't end up winning. So this person ideally for the Democrats would be more talented than Mitt Romney, more appealing to a general election audience. But the principle

of letting the primary is you have someone who's more from the middle that who has an appeal to both sides. So the progressives feel like, oh, they're pantry to be enough to make me feel like they believe it. And I can get on board with them because I don't know if I really trust Rick Santorum, right? I don't know who the Rick Santorum in Michelle Bachman is in this analogy,

you said, which is like, the thing about, as you know well, about both a conservative, the most

“conservative wing of the Republican Party, and I think is also very true of the most liberal wing”

of the Democratic Party being humbled, being like managed, is infuriating. So a candidate who tries to do that can, in fact, cause more problems. Yeah. And there will also be a candidate who decides, hey, I'm going to grab the core part of the left wing part of the party and be their spokesman. And so now, when you try to handle the very progressive part of the ring, you've now got a person who's going to come at you at every debate. So you're going to spend all this time on that territory.

Sure. No one was basically in the situation where she ends up having the burning people go after

her very aggressively last time. Let me pitch you on something else though, then. Maybe it's just grabbing an issue that they care about. Maybe the immigration stand in is either Medicare for all, or maybe a foreign policy thing, such as our relationship with Israel. And you have someone that kind of really captures the mantle of that, but also, you know, not maybe checking all of the boxes. Right. The issue rather than being, you know, we need a ball, a wall with a note with alligator's

in it to appeal to the tea party. It's something, you know, something to appeal more to the DSI type. And that issue has to be both one that appeals to the actual voters. And then one that is a valence or sends a message about your entire, you know, it becomes the proxy for all your positions on everything else. Does that exist? Well, they used to think in an democratic party,

when in 2020, that that was Medicare for all. Remember how much they debated that and it was never

going to happen, but they spent a lot of time in the debates talking about it because it was a way to send a signal to voters about where you were in the party. I don't know if that's possible or whether the more powerful a prospect maybe that a candidate comes forward, maybe it's off, maybe it's somebody else who has the athleticism of the political skills, where basically everybody decides at some level, he's just good at this. And we're going to just kind of shilly shally around

the real fights inside our party. The thing is Democrats like to have the real fights out of the party. I find that hard to believe. It's an immigrant to the coalition. I noticed that there's a lot of a lot of nitpicking, a lot of fighting about white papers. And also a lot of discussion about like, hey, we need the fight. We got to figure out who we are because like all this trying to kind of maneuver around our differences as a disaster and it's part of what happened in 2024, some would argue.

In other words, there should have been a robust fight. It shouldn't have just been an anointment of a common inheritance. Whether you agree with that or not, there is a significant number of Democrats who want to have this big open debate. They want to have it too early for my taste. I'm like, sometimes I want to say to some of my Democrats, I'm like, you're weird, Donald Trump's still president for two and a half years. Yeah, there's a lot of time ahead. Like, why are we

doing Twitter fights to the death right now? In the summer of 2026, there's a lot of prepositioning as if Trump's already gone. Is it the future's already here? And I need to win for my faction. And there's like a big fight going on right now in Twitter where there's like a group started, like we're representing the center and they're fighting the, and they're nasty or to each other than they are in a Trump. Yeah, this is, right, this is all church basement fights over.

“But I think as you know, though, when two members of Congress incumbents are bounced within their”

own party in New York, that is political, there's like political gold there and somebody wants to

grab that energy to, as you said, define where the debate is. You can, you can really never start

too early defining where the territory is because if you define the territory, then oh, look, I have to find the territory of the future around all the things my candidate is good at, right? So they're trying to say this is what the fight's going to be about and it should be about this. And then, and then they'll come up and they'll say, well, this is why so and so should be president. So you got to start that all early, but it's all completely detached from the actual job itself,

which is what I always constantly keep coming back to. Yeah, I just want to be in the opinion. But I have some disagreements to Zoran. I have some disagreements with Josh Gothheimer. I've had both of them on the show. We've argued if you're mad at them, then you are at Stephen Miller. I do think that maybe your eyes and on the ball, one man's opinion.

“Yes. And also, you need to be able to articulate the arguments against Stephen Miller more than just”

bad Trump. Right. Because obviously there's some people in the country who are not where you are on whatever issues you want to be against Stephen Miller and the White House and the inability to articulate that the set of values underneath, what you're disappointment with the Domain Administration or whatever is has been damaging for those for those kind of candidates. They need to be able to talk about why Trump is bad, not just say Trump is bad. You're good. You keep getting the author's race, but we're

going to do the payoff on us. But I feel like you, I feel like this is useful 20, 28 conversation.

This is all quota. All right. So us off, you know, has been doing the strategy, which is working for him. We give these speeches on the weekend. He's very good at them. The clips from the speeches go out on social media. They start to go viral. There's another one. This weekend, talking about corruption, those excellent. Just a couple of tweets. I saw about it. Osof just has the sauce, man. It's a guy Jeremy Johnson. I follow Tommy Vitor. I want to roll

“this speech up and smoke it. Sarah Longwell on the secret podcast. She was thinking about how much”

she likes optimistic guys with nice young man energy. Yeah. Rogan and Tim Dylan. We're in having a Manisfier podcast. I was listening to on the flight out here. They were talking about Osof. Rogan actually didn't know who Osof was, which shows you how much tension he's actually paying to the news. But then they played some clips. And they're like, yeah, that's guy could be the right guy. Yeah.

So, you know, he's got a Senate race to do first. But I don't know. It does feel like there is

there's a lot of Osof energy. But now, you know, and we'll just trade the cliches of the business. Okay. We've trafficked in the peak too early. Right? We're peaking too early. Here we go. Here's another one. His best day was the day and that was for President, you know, actually. We had a great and that's the day. I was a great announcement. I was a great announcement. It was a really nice day. It was either the day before or after the Trump came down the day before. That's why we had one

“good day. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. It's no, I remember that quite well. So, that this isn't to take”

any way. It's just it's early and you never, but I think the secret sauce for for a democratic candidate is being able to tie. So, corruption, right? So, that corruption is a thing. People get angry at it. But once you get outside your coalition, what does corruption mean? Corruption

means that the attention of the person who is the powerful job in the world is always centered on

himself, which means he doesn't care about your housing costs. He doesn't care about your education costs. He doesn't care about your health care. And guess what makes up a life? Those three things. The American dream is not possible if housing is going up 40% in the last 10 years. If education and health care are beyond what a middle-class family can afford. Like, so the corruption on its own terms is a powerful issue, but as a signal of the president's

attention and the attention of his administration, which has not been on what is the concerns of the American family, that's a way in which a subtle politician can weave those things together and somebody's like, starts nodding. Yeah. Now, if they're good looking and they can do it with certain alon, then that is the short guns. That's the beginnings of what is a candidate where who could bring a whole coalition. You wouldn't tell me what his workout routine was on the

pod. You told me before you started that you listened to the pod sometimes while working out. So you tell me what your workout routine is? Well, I'm 57. So it's actually there's a lot of mobility, a lot of mobility work, a lot of body weight work, because there's a point in where we're sleeping starts to hurt. You know, you went through your whole life, you know, a teenager, you slept for 16 hours, maybe in college, you didn't sleep for several days, but the act of

sleeping, what didn't used to be a possible source of pain. Now, sometimes I get up, I got like my shoulders on this. So that's a mobility thing, like some some bands? No, it's a lot of like rolling around. We had these gorilla mats, which you put on the floor, the garage, mostly, because there's a lot of oil and gasoline on the, so you try to cover that smell. But also, you just do a lot of like rolling around. And it's like yoga/stretchy. The IT band sure there's a lot of,

like now that we've said it out loud, your Instagram account is going to be full of people doing the windshield wipers with their hips and all that stuff. And then, you know, I'm hurling around some steel, you know. I bet you are. I know that you've called in some bloggers, called in a band, a symphony to try to play me off so that before we start asking about CBS, but you were on success. Exactly, at the time. It's time to talk to you. It's like an airborne is coming. I'm trying to talk about

the media. Yeah. We're going to start with this. I noticed when I said it that it was wrong, but it's kind of about what I introduced you. I called it the CBS night. I was the CBS evening now. I didn't want to correct you. Okay. I think it's out because it's kind of like who cares does the does it matter? Like what who is on the evening news anymore? Does the evening news programming matter? Do you think, you know, I know that this was your job. And so I hate to kind of

diminish your life's work. Here's what we, here's what we believed when we tried to create a different kind of

“evening news, which is that at the end of a busy day, 1000 things going on. What, what is important and what”

can you tell people about that respects their attention? Treats it not as something you want to freak them out about so you can hold on to it, but respects their attention and puts the days of ants in context and does it with storytelling because you remember stories more than facts often and tells the story in the tradition of CBS news. That's what we tried to do and we felt like at the end of the day that is

that was under 60 and getable for Donald Trump? I mean, were you really just talking to Boomer and Elder Gen X liberals though? No, no, no, no. CBS has a, has a good strong solid and God love them audience in rural America, which are not these are not big city liberals. Oh yeah, oh yeah, it's one of the joys of working for CBS, is that it forces you to practice the kind of journalism I was trained in at time, which is not to present the final product as like, you know, this person believes

drunk driving is good. This person says it's not. Who's to say? No, but you go and talk to everybody and then you draw, you use the evidence to marshal your claim about what you think is actually

happening and CBS always had a good relationship when I would be out in, in red state America,

you know, there are lots of good people who, when you said CBS, they weren't angry. Having said that, CBS, you know, there's a long history of things that that conservatives and Republicans

“have not liked about CBS. You may remember the George W. Bush, then I don't have a mess. Yeah,”

yeah, yeah. So, so I'm not, I don't want to create a false, sure. But I do think at the end of the day, if you could deliver to people, here are the top 15 stories in your world ordered in order of importance with context facts, color, attaching people to the wonder of the world, like we're not supposed to just keep people freaked out about politics all the time. Yeah. The news is supposed to attach humans to knowledge and knowledge is happening in science, in sport, in fashion, like that's

also part of the mandate. If you could do that at the end of the day, if you could get that at the end of the day and half an hour, Bob, you're on call, you'd be so happy. Okay. You have some early 20s

children? Yeah. Then were they, did they watch you? Would you run that? Oh my gosh, they've never watched

anything. Did any of their friends watch you? Yeah, actually they did because I'm, um, and then I taught at the Institute of Politics at, um, University of Chicago, and spent a lot of time with college students. And they care a lot about CBS, the New York Times, mainstream media, in part, not necessarily because they watch it. They do read the times, but because they think it's shaping worldview. They also cared about the Ellison family because of their relationship with Tik Tok,

right. CBS, and as I said, when I worked at CBS, I basically don't want to talk about CBS now that I'm going on because I have a lot of dear friends who worked there who are fighting the good fight and whatever my opinion is positive or negative. When you're in the middle of it, like some

“dude kibbitsing on the outside, like, yeah, it's, uh, I don't, I think it's kind of Dickish. I hear that.”

The Tik Tok thing though does tie it to like a bigger thing. I guess part of why I'm being cheeky, of course.

So obviously, like, whatever, 4 million people, uh, I want to change the CBS evening news,

maybe a little bit less now with Tony deep. You know, so that's something. I like, obviously it has a big audience still, but like the Ellison thing is it ties to Tik Tok. I guess my just concerns going forward when it comes to these questions about media consolidation is what's happening on the platforms, like where people are really consuming stuff and where there are no editors and where the algorithm is editor and it's feeding them the nonsense. And if you have the Ellison

family who's close to Trump on Ink Tik Tok, Elon, close to Trump, big Trumps like his donor owning Twitter, you know, Zuckerberg. Can you have a democracy when the billionaires own the way that we learn

“things? Yeah, I think it's a fundamental question for our democracy and also for our ability to”

think critically because when you're being whipped around by the algorithm, even if you told the algorithm, like, just give me political news, you know, because there are now some ways you can train the algorithm. It's not working. When the algorithm is whipping you around, it's pickling you and diminishing your ability to actually evaluate questions of the day. So it's not only keeping you addicted and stealing your attention, but it's creating habits of mind that are not healthy.

And it's basically in the hands of, like, a few people. Yeah. Not good. No. And so I guess like when you assess the landscape broadly, like where is your alarm the highest? I guess. I'm going to come to the media and social media companies. My alarm is the highest when you have a kind of an alley-oop that happens where you have an administration that tries to rewrite what's happening literally in front of our eyes. I mean, Secretary Nom when she talked to Jake Tapper right after

the deaths in Minneapolis. And there was video. And she was arguing for something that humanized could tell was not true on the actual video. That's, that's the further example of what is a thorough going effort to reshape the very, very, very, the very notion of verifiable information. Yeah. If you have the most powerful person in the world and his administration trying to teach the country that verifiable information is totally up for grabs and there is no such thing.

And then if you have news organizations who are supposed to fight like hell against that idea,

allowing it to go forward, not fighting like hell or, as I said when I worked at CBS and I make that distinction because again, kibbitsing now that I'm not there, I don't, I find sort of, I don't agree with, but when I was there, maybe it's not why I'm not there anymore. The idea of paying off a president in a meritless lawsuit completely undermines your ability to hold that administration account. And it's not just holding it people in power account. It is holding

people in power who are trying to rewrite things like an attack on free and fair elections on January six, like the stakes are extremely high. So the effort to rewrite misinformation plus the,

“at the very least, supine response to that effort to rewrite misinformation, that's what worries me.”

This is where, so the meritless lawsuit point, this is like what I care about more than I care about

the characters and the drama and the personalities of what's happening in CBS. It was a corrupt game, like it was a rigged game from the start. It's like everything that happens underneath that is the fruits of a rigged game, right? So if you even, I believe you that you have former colleagues that are working there, I have friends or at CBS that are good reporters that are doing their job. And yet, like the whole structure now is a structure that was started because the president

bullied the network. Like, that's bad. And it's bad because it undermines again. As I said at the time, it undermines the ability of people to trust, trust is a big problem. Trust, those of us who are in the job of saying, you know, you can't ask the president a question, but we can on your behalf. And so we're going to ask him a question that's going to directly affect your life. And we're going to try and do it with you in mind. Well, can you do that when you've shown

that you're going to pay off the lawsuit, which is basically keeping him in mind. And that

is just directly contradictory to the job that a, that a news network does. And again, I, you know, I said that. Well, this work there. So in anything, where are you? TVD. I don't know. I've spent a lot of my time since I left in December thinking about other things. No, no. See, and then people have called you. I find that hard to believe. The college of me, like, what should I do, Dickerson? You've already been through this. Yeah, yeah, no, I do. I don't believe you. Well, I know, I don't know. No,

“no, no, no, no. This is where nobody calls me. I think because, like, I'm not useful. Like,”

which is to say, like, I don't, there are people who have called me at many of them who were fired or let go at CBS. So I talked to about what you don't want to do with your future. All of those things. I really care for a lot of people who worked there. But I don't, um, I got no advice and I, because I, because I got no knowledge. And, and I mean, despite all the hot takes I've had here, I usually try to base what I say in some reporting or some analysis or some, and I haven't,

uh, I've spent my thinking. I have some knowledge. You don't have to comment on this. But I have some knowledge because I've, I've watched Donnie D. So I've got a little bit of knowledge because my eyes can see in my ears can hear. Okay, this is my last question for you on this. I just wanted to how makes you feel like on the inside, like this, the, everything that happened at CBS. Like how, how are your emotions as you relate to all this? I mean, Kelly said that the dismantling of 60

minutes was similar to the death of a spouse. That's some pretty. Yeah. That's, uh, well, you know, Scott, I worked very closely with Scott when I was political director and then when I was at fascination. I mean, I was on two or three times a week when he was anchored in the news. And

“one of the great things about Scott, which is I think important in any organization, was that”

he not only worked, you know, incredibly hard. But he was a model for everybody else and one of the things that I'm that I'm saddest about is that being in touch with Guy Campaniel, who was the EP of the evening news one for most of the time I was there, was, you know, modeled what being a leader was. And being in the, being in the company of people who do work where you're like, oh, I want to, I want my game to be that good. That's thrilling. When Colbert's show is ending, you know,

I spent some time there and you look at his staff, like, everybody wanted to be better because of the leader. And that is a cool thing to be under when you're a part of a tradition where people are like, wherever you are in the ratings, I want to be good because of this sort of thing inside that we all believe in. That's a great thing to be a part of. So I miss being a part of that. So I missed being a part of that. You don't seem that fat. Oh, hang on. I'm Ellen Colt. I'm being incredibly lucky. I get to,

you know, moderate panels here. I've been, you know, one of the great things about Substack, which you've lived and breathed, is you have a barn, you can put on a show. And so I spend a lot of time, you know, writing and thinking about things that I might get an audience of four people who, really, you know, want my, we're going to get more than that. My perfectly thought through about

nobody may care about it. But I do, and that's really fun to work on. So I'm, I'm having an

“finding internal fulfillment is important. I learned about this in therapy. You know, not requiring”

the praise of others, but finding fulfillment within yourself. Very challenging for people in our business. Sure. Yes, exactly. That's an important thing to continue to work on. It is, it is in one of the ways you can do it is to try to develop a value system where you think, seeking to achieve these goals within my value system is important to me and fulfilling for me. And I can spend my day doing it. We all still seek validation of it. Yes, sure. People, sure. It's not driving

the bus and helping you validate my interview skills. Yes. I'm trying to give validation right now. I value, it's already been validated by the enthusiasm with which I'm responding to your questions. All right. Well, that's good. I'm happy you're not sad. And there's just a little bit of melancholy about everything, but things move forward. Well, this is life. I mean, I'm really lucky. I can go and subject and write and come to places like this. There are people who were at the beginning

“of their careers who are, don't have a job now. And to bought into the idea of meaning and the mission.”

And the mission can sound super elite. And it's basically just trying to tell stories on behalf

of the people in the country. Like, it's a basic job of journalism. There were people who bought into that who don't have jobs now. I'm super sad for them. I'm sad about one other thing. When it closes one thing that we're here, so I was one of the neat things about being here, I honor and respect you doing six panels up here. And I'd love the people of us and the ideas that I appreciate them having us. I just don't really like rich people, panel stuff. Like, it's

tough for me sometimes. Like, I just... Because it feels detached from it. Yeah, and I don't city hall. Yeah, a little bit. I'm a man of the people. I like being at the bar, chatting with people. I like people, but it's something about the panel culture is something I need to work on

to find value from. But there is one element that I do like, which is for all of like some of the

nonsense that you get and some of the fart sniffing at, you know, at a place like this, you also have people that did real interesting things. And like, I just could have, I just do give you one and then you can jump. Yeah. At a guy last night it came up after the show, old a guy. And yeah, they're just excited to see the boardwork thing. And like, we're just chatting about the news. And his wife was like, well, he was an ambassador for 35 years. That was like,

I didn't, I didn't know that. They agreed it up. So we started talking about that. And he was talking about how he was an ambassador from Reagan all the way through Obama, different administrations. Yeah. And like the thing that I gave, I'm going to get a much I'll talk about. The thing that gave in the most pride about that job was like, we had values that we cared about. And like, there are different, just agreements with every president at that time, but there were like basic

values of human rights, free people, open markets that like, we argued for in those jobs. And he's like, I couldn't do that anymore. We couldn't that, like, that the person in that job is an ambassador doesn't, we don't have any values anymore. We argue for. And even if the someone who does have values gets back in in 29, I kind of feel like in some ways it's over in the same way that the CBS experience is over because it's like, if you're worried that in 232 someone's going to come back

in and we're going to be back to this mercantilism, then it's kind of like, well, then your values have no weight. Yeah. And you needed it to be both parties. Yeah. And that makes me melancholy. That's kind of over. Well, let's hope it's not. But having a space where you can talk about that

“is useful. So that's what, what's something like this. And any big idea panel type thing is,”

but I think that in a world where our attention is so, so shredded where there are the best minds of Silicon Valley and the best minds of Wall Street trying to keep our attention atomized that if you can get out and meet with people, this is just modeling. You can meet with somebody who went off and had an idea and sat down for weeks, thinking through that idea, why it was important? How do we restore the values you're talking about? Not in the sense of like hot takes.

Oh, you know, they used to do deals on a handshake in my grandfather's day. No, what do we do at like the personal level at the city level, the state level, the national level to build trust? What do we do to make a better workforce when you have so much of the country unable to afford college and so many businesses needing people with technical skills that they're not going to get at Harvard? Answering those questions can't be done in the cut-and-thrust of politics

and in the cut-and-thrust of the atomized algorithm-driven public conversation. So if you can get people together either to talk about those ideas or to be adjacent to them to go, "Hey, you know what?

And that takes us back to the point you just made. A life of fulfillment and meaning is driven by values. So if you don't have values, you're in the tough shape. So it's pretty good for everyone to

“go somewhere whether it's here or just, you know, a weekend away to go like, "What are my values?”

What do I want to leave behind? Why do I who would I sacrifice for?" And so I think the more we are forced into those kinds of conversations, the better. Not all the time, but as it leads to counterbalance

as a counterbalance to, because here's what happens. You think through your values, the interaction

you had to vignan ambassador, you will then bring that to every future podcast. Now of course you already cared about those values and it's the death of those that have animated your work. But if you've gone off and thought about those things, then you bring them into the cut-and-thrust. And now you're leaning forward a little bit more. You're asking different kinds of questions. I think you have a little optimism about our trajectory. We're in this, we have 250.

And it's kind of a bleak 250, you know what? Well, except it doesn't need to be. So here's there's a Reverend Harry Emerson Faustek who wrote a book during his World War II and said, "How lucky this generation is to be alive." Because he basically said, "There are all these challenges to freedom and humanity, but you are being called on to fight for them." And so you're lucky to be in that fight. At 250, a lot of people are for very good reason, worrying about the American

experiment. But it also forces people to say, "This is the American experiment I want to fight for.

“You recognize and kind of distill what is really important in a country when it's threatened.”

What I take hope in is if you look at Frederick Douglass's writing, including after the

dreads got decision." When he's basically said, "You can't, you are not a person because you

are formerly enslaved person. You are not a citizen." And he's nevertheless could talk about his hope in America. His sense of hope in the face of absolute cruelty and an entire system that wanted to make him a non-person, not a human. His ability to talk about hope and that the declaration and the constitution were glorious, liberty documents. Like, if you can stand up and do that, inspired by these slave-owning white men and their ideas, we can take nourishment from that.

And we can stand up a little straighter and keep the fight because those values, which are the same ones that Ambassador was talking about, they've lived for 250 years. Like, there is strong stuff in the cupboard. We just have to grab it and bring it out into the podcast. I have strong stuff last night. John Dickson, man, I need more Dickerson in my life. That is great. I need that at some point. You're getting your, I don't know, your free man.

The weight is off your shoulders. Frederick Douglass, inspiration. You know, you're drinking the old whiskey. Nice. That's great. Well, you bring it out in me. Okay, this is a testament again. I don't think that's true. You were the past. I said the pun further. I'm, you'll be great on subject because you, you were doing all this foreign apisless in the podcast. Gap fast. Yeah, the G-O-G, right? Started more than 20 years ago. We had to, we had to burn wood to get the

podcast machine to start. And yeah, and it was also, when you talked about doing podcast back then, you know, it's, um, it's like, Jimny Glick says in one of his interviews, he said,

I've never been that desperate to start a podcast. I mean, people thought you would join some sort of

cult, you know, a podcast that you sort of alone in a small broom closet, you know, telling your stories. And here we are. And here we are in the, in the sweep of the world, talking, uh, big ideas. By the way, I'm not going to let you off the hook on the big ideas thing, too, because what you do when you

“question people is like, you challenged them with that. I like ideas. That's what I say. I like that.”

I'd love, I mean, I'd like listening to and hearing from smart people. That is the good part of those things. It's like the happy hour. It's not the ideas that I'm, I'm pro ideas, John, I'm a fucking podcast host. I'm bringing them experts. I'm, I don't, the, the small social, oh, the small talk as an incredible, um, introvert and miss and throw. I can't do small talk. So I think it's like with the necklace. I don't want to do the small talk with the necklace. Yeah.

Well, uh, I, I can put it in the necklace helpful because if you can't remember your own name, you're like talking to somebody, you're like, yeah, self. That's right. There it is. That's John Dickerson. Uh, we're back tomorrow. Who do we have on tomorrow? Who knows? Katie, we've got somebody good, though. Yeah. I think we've got somebody good coming on tomorrow. We still, uh, oh, we got a bunch of spring court decisions. So we're going to do legal decisions. And by the way, it's not just that

decisions to come, but last week, all the decisions on temporary protected status on asylum, asylum, ask you whoever your guest is asylum done. Yeah. That's horrible. Right. And Steven Miller boasting about it being over. That's horrible. Um, okay. We do another hour if you get me start talking about the Haitians. It gets me so mad. So we're just going to leave it there. I like the optimism end. Okay. We're gonna end on that. That's John Dickerson. Well, we back tomorrow. I'll be back in my hole in New Orleans.

Thank you, too. This great. The board podcast is brought to you. Thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Ansley Skipper, and with video editing by Katie Loots, and audio-engineering and editing by Jason Brown.