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Hello there, Happy Monday, and welcome to another episode of the Chuck Podcast.

We are ticking ever so closer to the holiday break first night of Hanukkah, ten days to Christmas, the New sixteen days to New Year's Eve, and of course when I'm counting down five days until the University of Miami's debut in the college football Playoff, I've got a pretty good I've got a pretty sort of robust show today that's going to hit a bunch of topics.

A fascinating and an incredibly important study by some from some folks from the Council on Foreign Affairs about the state of the United States and its democracy.

It's extraordinarily important read.

I'm going to.

Pass on the highlights in a minute, fascinating new poll from the Searchlight Institute on corruption and more and portantly, it's not about the concern about political corruption.

It's about what voters believe is corrupt versus sometimes what lawmakers.

View as corrupt.

Here's a hint.

Let's just say that they don't share the same definition of what is political corruption these days.

It is Monday, which means we're going to hop into the time machine, and I'm just going to give you one hint at what I'm going to be talking about in the.

Time machine monorail, mono rail, monorail.

How many of you will figure out what I'm going to talk about based on that hint?

Guess what I won't actually find out the answer to that.

But I thought that would be a fun little clue.

We'll do some ask Chuck and I have a few thoughts on the state of college athletics given what happened what we're watching at the University of Michigan.

But I'm going to start.

With the news out of Australia.

It's pretty painful first night of Hanuka around the world, that this is what all of us had to wake up to on Sunday morning here in the United States and what the world is grappling with, and that is just yet another reminder of that anti Semitism is at an ugly level globally right now.

Look, this is anti Semitism is not new.

We've gone through fits and starts.

Anybody who's Jewish knows the history.

We know the history of this quite well.

The rise and falls of attempts eradicating Jews, blaming Jews for financial problems, blaming Jews for cultural problems.

We are the smallest of the major religions.

We are the smallest of groups that there are.

It's amazing how much power so many people try to attribute to us, and we're not even three percent of the world's population.

Obviously what we've been You know, there's a lot of people that are looking at this and and immediately trying to make a political argument, to make the case that it's the left that is supercharging antisemitism or the right that is supercharging antisemitism.

I will remind you all once again, I have only experienced it in stereo.

All right.

Before twenty fifteen, I experienced very little anti semitism, if any at all.

I think I shared a story with you an old friend of mine, we were talking about this one time, and sort of right right when the rise of sort of it was those of us in the press that were starting to feel it first, and then it sort of broke open out into the mainstream.

But in twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, you can say it was coincidental with the timing of the rise of Donald Trump, or if that is what sort of essentially lifted up the pretext on all of this.

But essentially the rise of the postopulous left with Bernie Sanders and the rise of the populos right with Donald Trump has given a permission slip to anti semits to either to either use it to promote a left wing ideology or use it to promote a right wing ideology.

Here's what I will say.

If you're using anti Semitism to try to promote the left or the right, you're obviously doing it wrong.

And you're not very small d democratic, and you certainly don't believe in freedom, that's for sure, freedom of anything, let alone freedom of religion on that front.

But I remember talking with this old friend of mine and we were talking about how our mothers would tell us these stories about anti about their about their anti Semitic experiences in grade school and high school.

My mother's second generation in America.

I believe his parents were first generation, and you know, they would tell us these stories, and my friend and I would sit there and go, you know, my mother would tell these stories about you know, kids in her high school looking for her horns or asking about her tail.

And you know, he would say that, you know, his mother would you share similar things?

And we would just look at them like they were strange beings.

That's this can't be the case.

What do you tell?

You know?

I didn't.

I didn't want to say I was dismissing mother, But you know, you think, well, maybe our parents.

Are exaggerating a little bit.

You know maybe, and I'll tell you ten years later, a right, eleven years now, we're almost we're getting close to the eleventh year of sort of this what has been a consistent uptick?

Really really you can I do believe the line of demarcation is June twenty fifteen, but you can see this uptick.

And it is.

This is not something that either side if we're going to try to make this always a two way fight between whose fault is it?

Is it the left, isn't the right?

This is collective.

And there's a lot of there's a lot of blame to go around, but I think the one that's sing singular, singular for blame and most important is social media.

In this, we've always had to anti semis.

We've always had hate in the world, Okay, just it's just a fact.

We've always had small minded people who have wanted to blame an ethnicity or a religious sect for their for their own personal problems.

That's in it, and that is that is not new.

Sometimes these sick people end up leaders of countries see Hitler, Kama Adolph.

Sometimes these sick leaders end up leaders of political movements, and then there's always this what about is that comes along with with folks that are trying to defend their side from charges of anti Semitism, and it'll be like, yeah, but you know, yeah, but this disselected leader of Israel's bad about X, Y and Z doesn't justify hate on little kids celebrating Hanukah in Australia.

There's nothing that justifies that.

So I don't want to hear the Abbots and I ignore.

And I'll tell you this, the beauty of social media and stories like this is it becomes self selecting.

You see the people that immediately want to point fingers and say, aha, it's the left, a hats the right, And I'm like, aha, it's somebody that doesn't have a mirror in their own frickin' house.

But I want to put the emphasis on the distinguishing characteristic here of this era of anti Semitism, and that is social media.

I put my.

I want to align myself with some remarks that Spencer Cox, the Governor of Utah, Republican governor of Utah said last week, and it wasn't on a specific thing, wasn't specifically about anti Semitism, but it was more about the toxicity, the toxic culture, the increase in violence that we've seen in politics.

And what's interesting is, my friend Jonathan Martin Wright wrote in Politico this week the following comment received the loudest applause.

He did a joint form with Josh Shapiro on this issue, Spencer Cox and Josh Shapiro in conversation with my friend Sabana Guthrie, and the loudest applause at the form was when he said the following.

If you want to be angry at someone, be angry at the social media companies.

These are the wealthiest and most powerful companies in the history of the world, and they're profiting off of destroying our kids and destroying our country.

And the amplification the algorithms, the fact that fellow crazy anti semites can find other fellow crazy anti semites online and think, oh, I'm not the only one that thinks this.

And the minute you think you're not the only one, that you're not alone, it somehow rationalizes, It makes you feel better.

It makes you think, oh, and then when you set up an ecosystem and a bubble that sort of self reinforcing, you think you're the mainstream.

Everybody thinks their own media diet is a mainstream diet, right.

It is the inability of so many people to put their feet in other people's shoes and other people's media filters.

In fact, I think there's been some experiments.

I really would like to see people sort of spend a day in a media filter of somebody else, and you do these various media filters just you know, I look at it as an academic exercise to try to understand the electorate.

As you guys know, I have been referring to myself as a political anthropologist, meaning that I that is constantly what I'm ultimately always trying to figure out is what is why are we in this place?

And if you're trying to figure out why, you have to understand the various political tribes in America.

Some of these tribes overlap.

People are members of multiple tribes, sometimes a remember of only one.

But ultimately that's why I say I'm a political anthropologist.

I'm trying to figure out how do these tribes align?

Hey, gress what I know, I'm in my own tribe.

I just try my best to roll down the window in my bubble and see what's going on outside of my bubble.

But you have to it is hard to do it.

You have to intentionally do it.

You have to have the crazy ass Twitter feed that I have.

That I promise you most people at America probably don't because I do try very hard to get the normies and the extremes because I want to understand what the conversation that is going on.

Trust me, I'm sure some of you go.

Some of you listening to me wouldn't even know who Candice Owens is.

And by the way, God bless you, I'd love not to know who this woman is.

But there are people, there's an entire community on the right that is consumed with trying to extricate this crazy woman from the mainstream of the MAGA world because of her just outlandish conspiracy theories.

I can't tell if she's mentally ill or just simply a shameless grifter, or perhaps the two of the two go hand in hand.

But there are plenty of people in mainstream America.

I'm sure if I said the words Candice owned, my mother and my brother in law, my sister in law, who all are pretty pretty smart about this.

Would be like, who the hell is that?

And I wouldn't blame them.

But that's because this is the world that we've all constructed, but it's the world that social media has gone out of their way to construct.

And this is why, you know, I look at this rise of anti Semitism, and I look the fact that this was not a lone nut right, but there appears to be some coordination down there in Australia.

I do I can't, you know, I know that ultimately individuals are to blame, not a computer, not an algorithm, but these tech platforms amplify, and you know, I you know they I think they have a responsibility to make sure that what they're doing is not putting more people in harm's way.

And their amplification, their algorithms, are doing just that, they deserve no protection on Section two thirty, the part of the law that supposedly says, hey, we're just you know, we're not doing the minute they put an algorithm on these things, the minute they amplify, the minute they allow for the connection.

Look, our First Amendment guarantees free speech.

It doesn't guarantee of bullhorn, it doesn't guarantee a right to be the loudest voice in the room.

It just simply guarantees that you have a right to free speech.

So you have a right to be a hateful anti semi okay, But you don't have the right to have your extreme, hateful and hurtful political views be the dominant piece of conversation and be mainstreamed into America.

No, because, by the way, we don't want it mainstreamed.

And the tech companies do not have to protect you and do not have to amplify your speech.

In fact, they can dial it down.

In fact, there's plenty of academic studies that show if you dial down hateful content, you're not getting rid of it, you're just prioritizing it less than these algorithms.

It's shocking how much turning that temperature down actually helps the conversation.

So it's troubling, but I really, you know, you look at the situation we're in, and there's no doubt we have bad leaders around the world that are exploiting hate and anger to try to make a political argument.

You have people on both sides of the aisle attempting to weaponize anger at Israel or anger at the economy and trying to somehow connect that to Jewish folks.

The left does it with bb at times.

The right does it with George Soros.

I mean, George Soros.

There is no greater victim, there's no greater victim of anti Semitic mythology, h and gross mischaracterizations than George Soros.

And I don't know where he gets to go to get his reputation back considering the character assassinations that have taken place through the prism of his faith.

There's there's no no, no doubt in my mind on that front.

But ultimately, why do we have more collective conversation about this?

Why is there more collective talk about this?

Why is there frankly more insecurity for many Jewish Jewish people around the world.

Why do we feel so less secure today than we ever have before?

I think we can thank social media.

I think the tech companies have not only not gotten the focus of this, they've not taken responsibility, but I think they need They need to be the focal Which brings me to that column that my friend Jonathan Martin wrote, which he says, you know, perhaps Spencer Cox needs to be the anti tech candidate.

Somebody needs to take it to the tech community, right.

The tech community has brought us a lot of positives.

Okay, there's a ton of positives, and there's a ton of tools that have been invented that have helped me create a better communications system with you guys.

Right, there's no doubt there's plenty of upsides from the tech community, but what they have done with social media, and this is why I don't think the public is going to be supportive at all of this light touch, non regulatory process that the President's trying to do an artificial intelligence.

The same industry, the same industry that gave us social media without regulation, now wants to give us artificial intelligence without regulation.

Considering how well social media went, how the hell are we doing this, right, This is the most illogical thing you could come up with.

I can't believe the president is doing this.

I think this is you want to talk about convincing more mainstream Americans to go get a pitch for it and start sharpening up, sharpening that sucker up.

It is just crazy that we don't want to put any guardrails on the growth and expansion of the AI industry.

It is absolute insanity.

Okay, if you think social media created more toxicity in our culture and more violence in our culture thanks to the lack of regulation, what do you think is going to happen with artificial intelligence if we don't have some attempt at making sure there are constant guardrails being erected as we build this super highway.

It is it is something that I think is I've talked about this before.

I think it is politically absolutely going to be frankly an easy thing to exploit potentially, And that's why the tech community is really making a mistake here that they are not grasping just in what kind of precarious position that they're in.

And maybe they think we don't need America and if America shuts us down, we'll just go somewhere else where we will be treated with lot.

We can just buy our way into a policy that we want.

And obviously, right now we have a situation where they can get whatever the hell they want from this administration if they just write a check.

And that's disturbing, but that's why we still have a competitive democracy, although I'm going to get to that in a minute, where the voters can sort of have a say in this, because right now we have zero say in what social media has done to us, and we don't seem to have the collective will.

It's growing.

I mean, look, I think it's a huge start that you've got.

I mean, look, Australia is trying to ban social media for people under the age of sixteen.

Spencer Cock made this.

Cox made this mention that we wait to hand the keys to a car to a kid until sixteen, yet we give them an algorithmic driven phone at twelve.

You know, perhaps we can give them a phone at twelve with no social media on it.

Right, maybe it's.

Flip phones from twelve to sixteen, because plenty of parents want to have some access to their kids and all that.

I think that that's a legitimate concern.

But you know, we can essentially say, you know, no, just you can't have a you know, because I don't know how else you're going to be able to monitor this.

But if you actually just make the device itself against the law for somebody under the age of sixteen to have that, that might be a start.

It is the one area where we're starting to see some bipartisan consensus, which is about access to screens and social media for people under sixteen.

And we've decided this is a problem.

Well, guess what do you think that our minds are only fragile from sixteen and younger, or that we've got these fragile minds that are much older too, and that social media warps those warps those over the age of sixteen almost as badly as they could warp those under the age of twelve.

One other point in the social media front, Jonathan mentioned an interesting new report that noted about.

It was a pole about the manosphere, if you will, what do Men Want?

And it revealed that a majority of males sampled in that survey said social media feeds have gotten a lot more extreme.

I mean, most of this is thanks to Elon Musk and his insanity and what he's done to acts and taking away all guardrails on acts, And of course every other social media company followed because they didn't want to get left behind.

But what's interesting is that men themselves revealed in this pole that most controversial content reaches the men who are online the most, especially younger men, white men, black men, Hispanic men across the board.

And we're seeing a more radical youth thanks to warped social media algorithms.

So when we see this rise of hate, we see this rise of violence, and we're looking, you know, the easy thing is to try to point left, point right point at Israel point, Gad's a point, at Hama's point of protesters, people want to point at a whole bunch of figures except for the culprit that is in charge of the information ecosystem that destroyed the information ecosystem.

And trust me, I'm aware of the irony that I am speaking to you in that ecosystem, and hopefully it gets to you.

It doesn't get shut down by the algorithms of these big tech companies.

But they're the culprits here.

They've created this environment that has made it a lot easier for these hateful, awful, mentally ill people to find comfort in their bubbles because it looks like they're not alone and that they're somehow namestream.

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I want to pivot quickly to my Newsphere interview this week because some alarming new facts that I had not seen anywhere else from Mark.

He's the vice chair of the Senate Intel Committee.

Mark Warner has seen the second He has seen the video of both the September second second strike on those survivors from the first strike of the boats off the coast of Venezuela, and he revealed two facts that I had not seen anywhere.

Fact number one is that the time that elapsed between the first strike and the second strike was somewhere between thirty and forty minutes because of cloud cover, so thirty to forty minutes.

And then the clouds come up, and then apparently what is revealed, according to Senator Warner, was not fully clothed survivors clinging to their life.

And then the second strike.

Let's just say this is what look.

He believes that if Americans see this video, they will be appalled.

There will be and there's a reason why the Pentagon is fighting the release of this video.

There is no defense there apparently is going to be no defense of what this video looks like.

This is appalling, and there are probably going to be concerns that there are people that might have legal jeopardy here, but realistically, I don't know where you get the legal jeopardy when the president will likely just pardon anybody that is investigated.

But there's a reason people are fighting very hard not to release this second video because if what is what Warner described to me a delayed thirty to forty minutes and they were not fully clothed, Essentially, just put yourself for the situation.

Your boat explode, You're alive, you're swimming, You're clinging to the remnants of a boat in order to stay afloat not drown.

Half your clothes are gone been blown off.

Maybe you're just sort of trying to use and we decide to use the second shot.

No wonder there are questions why the phrase war crime is being tossed around although we're not at war, because you know, as many a person has pointed out, the question is whether there is not whether this second strike was legal, But we still have real doubts about whether the first strike is legal, and it is worth noting that earlier this week.

Earlier last week, Trump offered a veiled threat at Columbia because the president of Columbia has been critical of this, saying that he might not be out of the crosshairs.

And then the President has said that they might target some of these folks on land.

Whose land is it?

Venezuela is a Colombia.

Where's this headed?

And again there is no Senator Warner could not give me the authority that he could not explain very well the authority that the White House was using that they claim these strikes were legal.

I mean, they've cited an authority.

It's not the if you're wondering what Senator Warner said, it is not the au MF that was passed by Congress that allowed for the invasion of Iraq, but and which has been used, which was used by Obama as justification for strikes, and I believe Yemen in some other places, So that is not there.

So we still don't have a clear picture of the legal authority the White House is claiming to go after these folks.

But he has threatened land strikes without asking for any authority from Congress and additional authority from Congress, nor has he made his case to the American public.

And by the way.

The decision to essentially commandeer an oil tanker rather than just blow it up, although blowing up an oil tanker would have been catastrophic, you know, essentially starting a fire on the Pacific Ocean potentially or the Caribbean Sea depending on where they were hitting this tanker.

But if we can board a tanker, we could have boarded these boats.

And I think the decision not to attack that tanker and simply to just commandeer it under totally undermines the rationale and justification of the strikes themselves.

Why there is no good explanation for why we're not just essentially stopping these boats, grabbing these people and getting some intelligence so that we can actually learn something.

And I want to just keep one thing in mind here, just one more thing in mind, which is the president's political standing is not great.

He has had a terrible month.

He had a terrible Friday, excuse me, Thursday last week when his retribution campaign.

You know, basically he's the Emperor with no clothes.

As far as Indiana Republicans are concerned, Grand Juries in Virginia are not might want to indict at Ham Sanders, but they won't indict Leticia James.

When he's not feeling.

When he feels as if things are going bad, that's just when he might do crazier stuff and might attempt crazier stuff to either change the subject or change the picture.

One more thing before I get to an important essay that I think you guys have to make note of the president.

It is notable to me that the President did.

An interview with the Wall Street Journal over the weekend, and the most fascinating aspect of it was his tone change.

He essentially is admitting that he's going to lose the mid terms.

He said, you know, he basically said, we're going to try our best to win.

We'll see what happens.

We should win, but you know, statistically it's very tough to win.

Yeah, I know, it doesn't make sense.

So it's the beginning of the excuse making.

It's the beginning of his way of admitting this economy, that the public doesn't like this economy.

This was the interview saying, Oh, it's going to take time, my investments haven't gone through.

It will happen.

Just be patient, and as he said, hopefully it happens before the election, but it's notable, right.

He went from this is a hoax two weeks ago to at least in this interview with the Wall Street Journal, sort of accepting the premise.

Yes, we realized the public doesn't feel it or see it yet, but they will.

But they will, he promises.

He swears.

These are these stages.

We should call it stages of political It's not quite political grief, but it's sort of like, you know, first there's a dial right, then there's you know, somehow your argumentative.

Then there's a form of acceptance.

He's getting into the form of acceptance, but he's not accepting the premise that his policies are a problem.

He's just simply saying his policies haven't.

Kicked in yet.

In that sense, he's no different than any other president trying to defend a bad economy.

No, no, no, no.

My policies haven't kicked in yet.

It's always my policies haven't kicked in yet.

I'm dealing with the predecessor's policies.

So that says it's a familiar pattern.

Perhaps the best part of that Wall Street Journal interview was the fact that you know he's doing the interview with the Wall Street Turnal reporters.

But he's taking calls and doing all sorts of stuff at the same time.

Right, And here's the I'm going to read directly from the article.

At one point, the President, sitting at the resolute desk with a glittering Christmas tree at its side, asked an aid to show him the latest market data.

He took calls from friends and allies multiple times during the interview, including from Interior Secretary Doug Bergham, who joined by speakerphone to discuss the administration's plans for Washington, d C.

Area public golf courses.

That is right, the President seems to not be worried about the price of groceries as much as he's worried about the designs and who's in charge of redesigning Washington D C's three public golf courses, Rock Creek Park, Haynes Point in Langston.

I mean, if you're.

Trying to hand democrats, it's easier fodder to say, you know, he promised this, to focus, laser focus on this and this, and instead he cares about building a ballroom, changing the name of the Kennedy Center, singing YMCA, and redesigning Washington, d C's golf courses, all of course extraordinarily important priorities to bringing down the costs of electricity and groceries in your home.

Anyway, just not the smartest politician, but Donald Trump's never been the smartest about messaging in that front.

But that brings me to I think a very important essay from a quarterly journal.

I'm a politically like I say, I'm a want to be political scientist, I call myself a political anthropologist.

That means I actually read political science quarterlies.

And there's an extraordinarily important one that's out this week.

It's an essay in Foreign Affairs, which is the flagship journal of the Council Foreign Relations.

This isn't a partisan outlet, it's not a resistance blog.

It's the magazine where American presidents, Secretary of States, national security advisors have gone for generations debate how the world works and how the United States role it should be.

So three of the most respected democracy scholars in the world from Harvard Toronto and the Council on Foreign Relations, Steven Levitsky Luke and Way and Daniel Ziblat.

They're not cable pundits, they're not people you're going to see in the round tables of Sunday shows.

They're not political activists.

They're simply political scientists who spent their career studying how democracies erode around the world, how they fail, and occasionally how they recover.

Well.

They have an essay called.

With about competitive authoritarianism, and in fact, this is what they write.

And this is why I took up very seriously.

This was not something I read, no offense to my friends at the Bulwark.

It's not something I read in the Bulwark, not something you're going to see it here in pod Save of America.

Certainly not you might.

I doubt you'll hear this from my friend Eric Ericson either.

But here's this essay twenty twenty five.

The United States ceased to be a full democracy in the way that Canada, Germany or even Argentina are democracies.

Okay, they're just making a classification.

And then comes the line the game, however, is far from up.

They're not saying all is lost, okay.

It is an important essay because they deal with this tension of yes we have had erosion and no, this isn't permanent.

Okay, So they argue that Donald Trump's second term, the United States crossed a definitional line into something political scientists call competitive authoritarianism.

Here's how they define it.

A system in which parties compete and elections, but incumbents routinely abuse their power to punish critics untilt the playing field against their opposition.

So elections still happen, but perhaps you threaten lawmakers to redraw the maps to make more favorable elections.

Opposition parties still exist, but perhaps you raise the threshold for petition signatures to get on a referendum, or you change the dates and stuff see Missouri.

But the referee is no longer neutral, right, and the House rules keep changing.

And importantly, they're not saying this might happen, because it's already happened in this country.

A year ago, this group predicted that this would be Trump's trajectory, that he'd weaponized state institutions the way elected autocrats have done in Hungry, Turkey, Venezuela, and India.

And those are the four most important examples to follow here, because Venezuela obviously the helm election, the leader loss, and he wouldn't leave Turkey, Hungary and India have are what are considered fairsh elections.

But we'll find out when the ruling party loses one day just how fair they are.

But they write this, Indeed, the Trump administration has done exactly that.

But here's what the authors say.

They didn't anticipate.

What's surprised even them wasn't the speed, but it was the scope.

And they write this, one form of authoritarian behavior that we did not anticipate a year ago was the Trump administration's routine subversion of the law and even the US Constitution.

Well, we've seen that with the strikes within as well.

I mean, there is very little, very little doubt here that this is not yet not constitutional.

The question is whether they'll even try to give some congressional authority on that.

So let me outline a few more things that they write here, weaponizing the state.

They call it the blueprint.

Every competitive authoritarian regime follows a familiar playbook.

Purge, then pack, so removing professional civil servants who see their job as the law and replace them with loyalists who see their job as the leader.

Just to look at the FBI, that's exactly what they document happening inside the Justice Department, the FBI and other key agencies.

When officials resisted, they were just simply removed.

We've seen US attorneys, deputy US attorneys just summarily fired.

When replacements were chosen, they weren't selected for experience, but for loyalty, including, as the author's note, Trump's own personal lawyers installed as senior Justice Department officials.

It's just right out of, right, out of sort of.

There's a fun parody about authoritarianism called Moon over Parador, with Richard Dreyfus to write that what seemed like parody is now real.

Right, And then even when prosecutions don't lead to convictions, the authors explain why that doesn't matter.

Such investigations themselves are the powerful form of harassment, right, making Adam Shift hire a lawyer, making Letitia James deal with this, making James Comy deal with this, legal fees, time, reputational damage, career disrupt eruption.

The punishment is often the process itself.

They don't care if they get convictions.

They just want them constantly made to be, you know, unhireable.

Don't get them on corporate boards, make them seem as if they're controversial figures.

Then of course you got to follow the money.

Because this is what's happened with their next move, going after civil society.

How's the Trump administration done this.

They've ordered investigations into Act Blue, the primary arm of the Democratic Party, Open Society Foundations, the George Soros founded organization.

The Wall Street Journal reported that that there are plans to target Democratic donors through the IRS.

That's right out of the competitive authoritarian handbook that these political scientists know.

Then there's the pressure campaign against the media.

Trump sued the New York Times.

On the Wall Street Journal, the FCC opened silly investigations into ABC, CBS, PBS, NPR, Comcast, which owns NBC.

We've seen the FCC chair act like a thug in threatening Jimmy Kimmel, Disney and NBC.

It is it is, and what makes this so dangerous and so effective is is not just what happened, but because of what didn't happen.

In fact, the our authors are arguing that the most insidious change isn't the repression, it's been the self censorship.

They point that outlets I've become realigning and pull back, like the Washington Post, like the editorial page is kind of a clown show.

Now it is just outside of George, Well, there's not a readable columnists left in that place.

It is just a joke.

The editorial page itself is sort of it's like they have one thing they do every time if there's some economic controversy, they write some convoluted editorial attacking Elizabeth Warren.

I guess that makes Cheff Bezos feel better, but it has nothing to do with the point itself or any of the actual rational debate that's gone on.

You've had the teen Vogue has sort of gotten rid of their political coverage.

CBS clearly just has a new owner and they just wiped out, you know, brought in virtue signaling new editors to run thing.

We've seen Disney cave in, We've seen plenty of again, all of these legacy media, these corporate owned, shareholder driven media organizations that all fall under Donald Trump's potential influence.

Due to government.

Regulation, they've all capitulated, which is why frankly, we're doing so well here the podcast, so in some ways, thank you, but unfortunately this is why we've all gone down this independent road.

Because if you want to be honest and if you want to tell the truth, you're gonna have to find a different outlet, because you're not gonna be able to do it at the Washington Post, You're not gonna be able to do it at the major legacy TV.

Networks that are left.

I'm not saying individuals aren't trying, but collectively they're not even giving a chance.

And here's the other thing.

Here's the part we don't know.

What makes self censorship so insidious is that it is virtually impossible to ascertain its full impact.

So wrote these authors, right, we can see a firing, we can see a cancelation.

What we can't see are the stories that are never pitched, the investigations that get quietly abandoned, or the headlines that are softened out of fear, or the questions that don't get asked stunt camera because executives in New York tell their correspondence please don't do it.

Because our corporate overlords are afraid of blowback from the president.

That is happening.

You can guess where that's coming from.

That's how democracies hollow out.

And this is where the essay draws a crucial historical line.

America has had its dark chapters.

Jim Crow red Scared, Japanese Internment mccarthyis and Nixon.

But the authors also argue that after Watergate, the overt authoritarian abuse largely disappeared.

Since nineteen seventy four, no democratic or Republican administration had systematically politicized law enforcement or targeted political rivals the way Donald Trump is doing.

George W.

Bush, his Justice Department investigator Republicans and Democrats.

Barack Obama appointed James Comey, a Republican, to be the head of the FBI.

Joe Biden kept Christopher Ray as head of the FBI and appointee of Donald Trump.

Mind you, Meyrick Garland bent over backwards as Attorney General, sometimes to a fault, to avoid the appearance of political interference.

So the conclusion is one in each of those critical areas that Trump administration stands alone in its authoritarianism.

Now, none of this is inevitable.

And here's where the essay shifts from diagnosis to prognosis.

He says, the.

US still has advantages that most competitive authoritarian regimes do not.

There's still an independent judiciary, there's still a professional military, though Pete haik Seth is trying to erode it.

There's still strong federalism.

I mean, look at the way Ron DeSantis is pushed back on the AI issue.

In the AI moratorium that Trump has done, there's still a vibrant civil society hello, and there's a unified opposition party.

And Trump himself lacks the single most important asset the author's note for authoritarian consolidation overwhelming popularity.

Successful autocrats often rule with approval ratings over eighty percent.

Trump is stuck in the low forties.

And it's actually trending downward that matters.

So that brings us to what they are.

Thank you, is the greatest.

Danger of them all.

The greatest danger is not repression, but demobilization.

It's not tanks, it's not mass arrests, its acceptance and resignation.

It's people deciding not to run, not to donate, not to sue, not to vote.

And then this line, which is really the thesis of the piece, The outcome of this struggle remains open.

It will turn less than the strength of the authoritarian government than on whether enough citizens act as though their efforts still matter, because for now they still do.

So there you go, Levitzky, Way and Ziblat.

They aren't telling Americans to panic, They're just telling you what is Okay, this is what has happened to America the first year of Trump's second term.

We have slipped into something called competitive authoritarianism.

He is trying to create an authoritarian regime.

There is democracy still, there is still competition, okay.

And our future is not set in stone or the cement is still wet.

Okay.

They're warning against two equally dangerous instincts, complacency and fatalism.

The future is going to be unstable.

Okay.

Neither full democracy nor entrenched dictatorship is going to happen.

It's going to be a struggle.

It is going to be a fight.

The next elections may be fought in theory over policy differences, but they're really going to be about the larger issue of what kind of system are we choosing to live under?

And that danger isn't that democracy disappears overnight.

It's the danger is people stop believing that they can defend it.

So please go read this piece.

It's extraordinarily important.

It's well argued, it is you know, evidence based, it is data driven.

Is it is not just alarmist cable commentary.

And that's the most important thing.

And it comes from a place in the Council on Foreign Relations where important ideas sort of get launched for debate.

And this is one that more and more mainstream Americans need to understand.

What is happening as Tipping Place.

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All right, it's time to jump into the time machine.

We're going to go back to December seventeenth, nineteen eighty nine.

A young Chuck Todd was a senior in high school.

In case you were wondering what I was doing, December seventeenth, nineteen eighty nine, it was the debut of an animated series for adults called The Simpsons.

And who knew what kind of impact this?

I would argue, bigger than Saturday Night Live, bigger than Meet the Press, right sort of, the launched Sunday Affairs Conversations right in some ways before it was the first place you ever had back and forth on politics in a first radio and televised arena.

We had Saturday Night Live, sort of the king of parody.

And then there's The Simpsons, And in some ways the Simpsons are probably is important of a participant into the changing ways that we satirized politics than any other program that has been launched in the last in the history of television.

So that's the subject of my time machine history lesson of the day.

How the Simpsons rewired politics, media and animation.

And it all started December seventeen, nineteen eighty nine.

It was a Christmas special.

I remember it was a short on The Tracy Ollman Show back in the day, but this Christmas special aired on Fox and it looked loud, rough and kind of disposable.

Right, thirty five years later, that cartoon hasn't just outlasted its peers, it's outlasted entire media eras.

Right.

The Simpsons didn't just mock American politics, that's easy.

What they did is they reshaped on Americans understand power, persuasion, and performance, and in the process they changed what animation itself can be.

And what I loved about what the Simpsons did is they did it.

Look.

Was there a social socially liberal lean to the show, sure, but it was not necessarily a liberal show or a conservative show.

In many ways really mocked process and it was really good at surfacing hypocrisy and surfacing the absurdity of the professionalization of politics.

And in fact, one of the early ways they did it.

And I want to.

Pop through a few shows that I think where they really were brilliant and what they did.

And when you watch these shows today, you're think, oh, I've seen this in other places, But at the time, nobody had ever done this before.

So Burns for Governor.

When Moni Burns ran for governor, the Simpsons showcased in the pop culture area that something that we political reporters already knew, we political junkies already knew that campaigns were a business.

The episode two cars in every garage and three eyes on every fish.

Mister Burns he doesn't just run for governor because he believes in anything.

He runs because regulation threatens him.

That's why he decides he wants to run for office.

The telling moment isn't the mutant fish.

It's when Burns instructs Smithers to assemble a campaign operation the way a CEO would assemble a management team.

And so for the wider world, they understood give me a pollster, a media handler, speech writer, an image consultant.

And the episode showcased that Burns understood something essential.

Campaigns aren't moral arguments, they're simply logistical ones.

Now he loses not because voters rejected his policies, but because he fails to convincingly perform as a relatable figure.

Right, he won't eat the fish.

It's a lesson that campaigns still learn relearn every cycle.

Another episode that I thought did a good job at sort of mocking government and politics the monorail episode and the use of Broadway to explain infrastructure failure.

The episode Marge versus the Monorail endures because it understands persuasion better than most policy memos do.

The episode is a deliberate homage to the music band Monoreil Monoreel.

Sorry Lyle Lanley is Harold Hill selling civic fantasy through charming song.

Well, the Monorail isn't about transportation, it was simply about identity.

Springfield doesn't choose the monorail because it's efficient.

I don't think they really needed one.

They choose it because it made them feel important.

That's how it was sold to them.

In some ways, what it was mocking were all the smaller cities that were getting talked into debt financing arenas and other sort of supposedly public arenas or entertainment complexes or concert halls, but they were really about just helping them private entity make money.

The episode's genius in some ways was showing that democracy can be overwhelmed by spectacle, not ignorance.

In Mister Lisa Goes to Washington, it remained one of the smarter portrayals of civic education that we've had on television.

Lisa's faith in democracy is shaken, but it's not destroyed.

The system works barely because exposure still has power.

Sometimes.

The episode frequently is cited in academic work, believe it or not, because it models critical citizenship skepticism without disengagement.

It goes back to the essay I had at the beginning of this episode, right, don't give up.

Even when you think the system is rigged and it's messy and it's ugly, there are still ways that you can make the system work.

Then, of course, there was sideshow Bob Roberts.

Good homage to that mockumentary back in the day that show went further side show Bob riggs an election.

It's revealed and he wins anyway, sound familiar.

Episode predicts scandal fatigue, the idea that information alone no longer guarantees accountability.

Unfortunately, that was something that I think when people watched it at the time.

Oh no, that wouldn't really happen.

Let's just say the episode has aged uncomfortably well.

Trash of the Titans populism, deferred costs, and moral hatcher.

Trash of the Titans is local politics.

Done brutally right.

Homer runs for sanitation commissioner, promising more services, less effort, and no responsibility.

His slogan, can't someone else do it?

It isn't laziness, it is actually resentment.

Once elected, Homer delivers exactly what he promised, and the system collapses under the weight of deferred costs.

Right.

The most revealing moment isn't the failure, it's the response.

Springfield exports its garbage to another town.

The episode captures a timeless political truth.

When costs are delayed or displaced, accountability totally evaporates.

Look it was.

One thing about the Simpsons is after a while their success at mocking actually made it where politicians wanted to be seen as on the side of the Simpsons, that on the side of the reasonable people, that they weren't the crazy runs.

And you've had all sorts of people who have participated.

Let their voice.

Barack Obama, I think Joe Biden did once outcore Rush Limbaugh.

Did.

I believe you've had the George hw Bush episode when he moves across the street from Homer is really well done and it is almost in some ways an homage hw Bush.

So it was proof and certainly plenty of media figures participated over the years Springfield became a legitimate public square.

Then, of course there's the impact that the Simpsons had on what we all watched today, right.

I know, I'm a fan of a lot of adult animation these days, and we have the Simpsons to think, right, think about it.

Before the Simpsons animation in America simply meant kids.

After the Simpsons animation meant tone and not age, right, And what we all figured out was it was easier to see an animated figure tell us an uncomfortable truth that a real person telling us an uncomfortable truth.

Right.

Without the Simpsons, we wouldn't have had King of the Hill, South Park Family, Guy, Futurama, Archer, BoJack, Horseman, Rick and Morty.

I know I'm leaving a bunch out.

You want to tell me your favorite You want to tell me you know what you think the Simpsons did to impact political culture.

I'd love to hear from you.

And then, of course there's one of my favorite homages to the Simpsons.

Two thousand and two, South Park aired an entire episode that might be the most honest tribute of them all.

It was called Simpsons Did It, and the premise was simple.

Every idea of the South Park writers were trying to come up with had already been done by the Simpsons.

And the whole punchline of the episode is.

Over and over again character shout out, Simpsons did It.

It wasn't being a mockery, it was simply acknowledgment.

It was clear our friends at south Park probably had writer's block that week, and it may be why they went to decide to just stick to parroting in the moment stuff on that front.

But that episode captured something every creator understands.

The Simpsons didn't just open the door.

They mapped the room right, and they they allowed so many other creators to come in and have their own version of this in their own take an entire generation of writers to find the boundaries of what animated storytelling could do politically, culturally, and emotionally.

So the Simpsons still kicking.

They didn't just survive history.

They've explained it.

They taught audiences how to spot performative leadership, civic spectacle, deferred accountability, media driven politics, and they did it while teaching animation how to grow up.

So that's why the show still matters.

And somewhere a creator is still pitching an idea only to hear a familiar voice in the room say, Simpsons did it all right, let's get into a little ass chuck ass chuck to do.

Here's my promise to you.

Some of you probably been wondering, Hey, I threw a question in here a while ago.

How come you haven't dealt with it?

I thought it was a pretty good question.

Well, I'm going to have an entire episode where I'm just answering questions and trying to play catch up a little bit.

That'll happen in a couple of weeks and yes, if you want to chalk it up to oh, it's the holidays, but yes, okay, but it's going to be new content.

I promise it is not.

It is not me just trying to well.

It is me trying to have a couple of days off.

I'm not going to lie about that.

But it will be timely and it will be useful, I promise.

But let me get in here.

Get three or four questions in here.

First one comes from Tiffany and she writes, did Adam Schiff hurt or help Mandela Barnes by endorsing him for Wisconsin Governor?

I live in Wisconsin.

I have voted Republican until twenty eighteen.

I think there are a lot of people like me politically in Wisconsin.

I don't know that anyone in Wisconsin will appreciate endorsement from California.

Also, recent history shows that big endorsements from the Republican Party fail in Wisconsin.

It seems a little out of touch for the Democrats big endorsements like this, thoughts.

Thank you Tiffany.

Well, Tiffany, there's one simple reason why an Adam Shi, why a Mandela Barnes would consider an Adam shift endorsement meaningful or helpful to him, and that is that Adam Shift has one of the most lucrative emailress of fundraising lists in the country.

One he's from the largest state, particularly the largest liberal state in California.

Two by being the face of impeachment, he build a massive donor list.

Then being attacked by Donald Trump constantly has only served to make that donor list more active, more viable.

So you are right.

I don't think anybody, any Wisconsin voter is going to be moved by the endorsement.

And if Mandela Barnes actually puts uses Adam Shift's endorsement and paid media, he'd be a fool.

No offense to Adam Shift.

But I don't think any make cares.

I think you're absolutely right.

But if you're wondering why is that, why does this endorsement mean something to Mandela Barnes to Chang to ching, to ching to ching.

It is access to that email list, That's what it is.

And Adam Shift probably only only president presidential nominees probably have bigger and more interesting level like Kamala Harris's list that she controls was going to be a good one.

But Adam Shift is probably the single best left leaning fundraising list in America.

That is not that for somebody who never ran for president.

He's just all the ingredients are there, the impeachment, the attacks from Trump's and being from California.

You throw all that in there.

That was why Mandela Barnes wanted that endorsement, and why the endorsement matters to him.

It is not intended to try to persuade you, and in fact, it sounds like that that stuff might actually dissuade you.

And I think in some ways some of these endorsement I don't think.

I don't think endorsem Smith's matter unless they bring you something else.

And in this case, what he's looking for is just access to grassroots dollars, and Adam Schiff probably has the single best fundraising.

Lists there is.

All right, let me go to next question comes from Max w Hey, Chuck and Chris ah Hey, Solissa, you're not answering your mail bag, so I'm gonna have to answer your leftovers here.

Max W.

Wrights, I posted this as a comment for Chris Silia's mail bag already, but I want to suggest again what I think is a great wager.

Oh on the Aggies versus Kane's matchup, loser shaves his head.

Why are we doing this?

No shaving of heads or goatee's or anything like this, but okay, let me listen.

He goes.

It's don monetary, demonstrates actual commitment to the schools you both support.

I've made a few loser shaves bets in my day, and I'll be honest, I've never felt more invested in a result.

Maybe Reginald could handle the Clippers well if you know, you know, but you'd better get them to him before he hits the Johnny Walker blue things.

I will I have.

I'm one time, let Tapper, Jake Tapper talk me into a This was back Phillies Dodgers Sarah twenty thirteen, twenty twelve NLCS, maybe twenty fourteen NLCS.

I'm just trying to remember when the Dodgers were, you know, still hadn't quite gotten broken through.

They were still still you know, thinking, you know, they were still believing Matt Kemp was the best player they could sign.

Right, They weren't quite the Dodgers yet, they hadn't been become the juggernaut that they had become.

And the Phillies were prett Good Juggernaut, that team that was the sort of the last gasp of Ryan Howard and that crowd, and Tapper wanted to create some social media fun and he wanted to make it.

He was going to grow and I was going to shave one.

I never agreed to the bet, but he tried to social media bully me about it anyway, So no I I lost and made a nice sizeable contribution to the charity of his choice.

Look now, I will say this, I'm probably more comfortable trying to shave my head now that I would have been ten years ago, because, as you could say, it is thinning, and maybe you know, my only fear is if I totally do it, what happens if it, even this doesn't come back, right the fear us middle aged men have about what what if it doesn't come back.

I was watching a basketball.

Game over the weekend.

The GWA Revolutionaries were in the in the Orange Bowl, this Orange Bowl tournament down in Fort Lauderdale.

We were playing GW was playing Florida.

I think they hung that held pretty well.

They'd hit their free throws, they might have won that game.

I think it was a pretty good test that you know, GW I think is a mid major that may make a strong case to get into the NCAA tournament.

But the other game was you Mass versus Florida State, and UMass is coached by a Miami native named Frank Martin.

He was the guy that took South Carolina.

Well, he's gone full a head shave and he looks great.

I mean, kudos to m I would not have thought that he would have done the cuball thing very well.

He does it well.

He looks good, just as menacing.

I'd still be afraid of him coaching a team on the other side, but it looked like there's nothing that'll grow back, you know.

So that's my fear of playing the head shave game.

We'll see.

I'd say that I think solicit fears he can't grow beer.

We'll see.

I'll ask him about this on our next episode.

All right, next question comes from Andre from Los Angeles, and he writes, Hey, Chuck, why is it that when someone announces a run for office, the first focus is always on who their donors are and whether these donors will approve It feels like candidates are vetted by donors, consultants, and party brass long before they ever reach voters, which makes them seem inta authentic.

Voters want real, opinionated leaders who feel genuine, not prepackaged for donor approval.

Why has the donor class become the priority over the general public?

Andre la go bruins hashtag UCLA because of how expensive campaigns have become.

I'm not saying that's a good answer, in just telling you it is the answer, And there is a perception of viability has to do with access to money, whether you have it yourself, you have the donor.

You know, it's sort of this dovetails pretty well with the question about Adam Schiff.

Look, there's no doubt we have made money in politics.

The fact that there is no regulation of money in politics, right, we have essentially have unregulated money in politics.

They're okay, so you have to follow a couple, You have to jump a very small hurdle or two to maybe spend money that raised a certain way on these few logistics things for a campaign.

But then you spend money over here there is no we have.

This is why I'm a huge fan of a constitutional you know, we need a constitutional amendment to deal with this.

We're going to have to I think there's some common sense campaign finance regulations that people could agree on.

I think the idea of keeping corporations out of politics makes a hell of a lot sense.

Figuring out how to have complete transparency.

I mean, anonymous donors dark money are terrible.

We basically have one or two people that are representing somewhere between thirty and thirty percent of all money spent is probably among a group of people that's less than ten.

That is not a democracy, right, That is a plutocracy or an oligarchy, if to borrow some language that are out there.

I hate saying oligarchy because it sounds like I'm taking a political side, but we have The fact of the matter is the richer you are, the more access you have to political leaders hard stop.

And that's a maybe that's never going to change.

But we could put some more transparency and some more limits on how that works.

But I'm not saying it should be this way.

But you're asking why does this happen?

Because my ability goes through money.

Now, the good news is the Internet has been a bit of a leveler there.

Act Blue and When Red both have found a way to take to allow at least grassroots donors to power candidacies.

And you can now do that, right, Marjorie Taylor Green can do it.

AOC can do it, and they've figured out how to tap into that.

So the power of the small donor is not totally.

In fact, in some ways, small donor, because of the collective nature of it, have become a more powerful as powerful of an entity at times that some of these corporate super PACs can be.

So.

But look, we do this in this case the system has broken.

We have unregulated amount of money.

I'm sort of a NASCAR person in this respect.

Let's go full transparency, but you have to actually identify your major donors.

If you made every person have to spell out the aims of donors who have given them, say more than one hundred thousand dollars or more, I promise you they'd never take a donation more than nine nine d and ninety nine dollars, right, whatever threshold we create, you know, like I'm all for you want to have unlimited funding in your elections, fine, but anybody that gives you more than ninety nine hundred dollars, you have to name them in every single app, and you've got to where their logos on your on your paraphernalia, if you will, right, That's what I mean by the nascarization of it.

I think that if as long as people know who's behind things, then at least you're giving the voters a fighting.

Chance to make their decision.

All right, I'm mistaking one more question here, so I can say that at least knock out four today.

This one comes from Sean McElroy Byfield, Massachusetts.

Any writs, Hey, Chuck, why is it that corporation's going to absorb tariff costs for months but push back immediately when asked to raise wages?

After COVID, we sow quick inflation tied to wage increases, but terror related price hikes seemed delayed.

I've read that Costco expects tar free funds, that is, offering credit now to investors to soften consumer impacts while boosting future profits.

Curiously, if you've heard more about that, Any thoughts on the disconnect between political focus and stagnant worker incomes?

Well, look, I think.

On the tariff, the reason some of this is you had a lot of companies stockpile, right.

You know, Trump made it clear what he was going to do with this tariff, so you did have plenty of company stockpile inventory where you could, right you couldn't do it and food and fresh food and produce and things like that, but you could stock up on certain goods in your and essentially warehouse them.

And a place like Costco is something that has the has the ability to do that, And so I think that's why they could quote unquote absorb some of it early because they had still had a majority of their inventory out there that they had perched without having to pay, without having to deal with extra tariffs.

But look, you're you're you know, why do corporations constantly look for ways to show that they're saving money?

Right?

That might be another way that you ask that question, right, They they constantly It's why why are companies not hiring at the moment?

They all want to see how many jobs can they replace with AI.

They're not going to they know they can't replace all jobs with AI, but they want to know which ones they can, and before they replace anybody, they want to try to see if they can replace them with AI.

Corp A publicly traded companies simply have a fudial responsibility for their shareholders, and their shareholders only reward cost efficiencies.

That is, that is not good for rising you know, for the hopes of rising wages, and it is certainly makes UH stockpiling expensive inventory difficult as well if you're going to load.

Them up with tariffs.

So you know, this is why what Trump has done to this economy that the rise of terror costs also in it inadvertently end up costing working class people a chance at a raise.

Right, If goods were cheaper, more people might buy them, and you might need more people to actually delve out that inventory.

So you know, this is why this tariff policy of the presidents is so bad for the economy.

It just simply shrinks our GDP shrinks in a way that will just hurt everything.

Fewer people buy items, which means you'll have fewer employees, fewer wage, fewer people gaining a wage as it is, and fewer people getting higher wages.

Bottom line is, tariffs are bad for everybody.

There is no good that comes from these tariffs, hard stop.

I don't know how many thousands of different ways we can vote that.

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Before we go a little uh, A few things in college football, and look, I don't want to I got a few emails about the mess in Michigan.

And what's uncomfortable about the mess in Michigan is Sharon Moore and some in what happened, there is this uncomfortable truth there seem to be, you know, in the world of college sports right now, if you win, your behavior will get They'll find a way to bury your behavior, overlook it, or just suspend you a game or two, slap you on the wrist.

But as long as you produce a national title, Jim Harball, nothing is going to go wrong.

But when things don't go well then and and maybe your offense isn't going well, then suddenly people have decided that your morals or ethics are a problem.

And we don't know the full story in Michigan, but let's just say I haven't I know enough people in the sports industry world, in the world of agents.

This is not rank speculation, you know, there was there was a concerted effort that that more had to go.

But they needed a reason, in a rationale, and they didn't want to spend on the buyout.

Now that doesn't excuse his behavior.

And he and I you know, for the life of me, you know, to me, if you're if you're going to sleep with an employee at a public institution.

Your consequences any institution, and you know, you get caught, you're going to live with the consequences.

And this has been a very expensive consequence for him.

On that front.

But we need to learn a lot more about when was this first known, how, what would this and when when did this investigation happen?

Why was it cleared once?

Right?

Sounds like there was no they had no cooperating evidence, and then suddenly they did.

Why did this person suddenly provide evidence to the school when they did, and why didn't they do it before?

How is it that it conveniently happened after signing day?

Anyway, The point is is that the corruption of college sports, right, we know, it's there's a a.

It is a mess.

It is ugly, it is scandalous, and even an elite institution like the University of Michigan is not immune from this.

But the problem is we have no entity who's going to investigate the University of Michigan.

Do the NC DOUBLEA have any credibility to do this?

Will they even listen to the NC double A?

Right?

When when Michigan was sign stealing, you know they yeah, okay, they suspended somebody, they find somebody.

But last I checked, the University of Michigan won a national title miraculously after they've suddenly figured out sign stealing seemed to improve.

You know, Jim Harbaugh was having a hard time winning nine or ten games.

Then suddenly they started sign stealing and everything got better.

So it's a I'm singling out Michigan here because I think Michigan is you know, this is sort of like, boy, how many how much rotten fish is in this program on these different things.

But it's really this is not about Michigan.

This is about the entire sport, right, And you know I love it.

I love college football.

You guys know this.

I ache for all this pain.

And look, University Miami, we've been through this.

We've had our own bad apples do some things in the past, don't get me wrong.

So I'm not gonna you know, this is not a case we all the entire world of college football lives in not just a glasshouse.

I would call it water for crystal houses, if you will, right, And there's our broken windows everywhere.

But you know, ultimately the problem is the conferences have too much power, and we need a you need a singular commissioner of college football, a singular commissioner of college basketball, a singular commissioner of of sort of the for profit sports.

Right, we probably have to separate it out a little bit, if you will, But this the.

Amount of.

Influence that agents and boosters now have over and above academic leaders or institutionally athletic directors, you name it.

You know, the athletic directors are not in charge in most of these places.

It's the person that runs the outside nil and raises the hundreds of the tens of millions of dollars at these major college institutions need to make payroll.

They're in charge.

The football coaches do not work for the university presidents.

The football coaches work for the entity that has promised to give the most money.

I saw that at my beloved institution, right some major donors were willing to give more money if a certain person was hired as coach.

That's been true of a lot of institutions.

So it is the system is broken.

It is messed up.

Perhaps you write rules that maybe allow for this in some form, but you've got to have an accepted, shared set of rules, and right now we really don't have any it is it is only media reports that at best create the opportunity for shame to kick in.

But this is you know, Uh, there's the specifics themselves of what happened at Michigan, and then there's the So there really needs to be an investigation of how the initial investigation happened and how.

New evidence popped up.

That's all I'm going to say here.

Okay, I I am, I've got I've got plenty of interesting sources that have that have told me some interesting things about this situation.

But the reason it needs to be rooted out because it's this is again, Michigan is just an example of what is a larger, more broken and uh.

And I don't think any of us would be comfortable finding out what our favorite schools were doing.

I think there would be I imagine there's not a major college football program in America that does things that would make every single alum prout, every single fan proud.

And it is I hate I hate having to defend the system at times as a fan because I'd still love it.

It's still I think college football because of the unpredictability of what kid there's still kids, they're still growing up they're still learning.

There's that unpredictability.

There's the passion of fan bases, which other than the Steelers and the Packers, there's really no you know, maybe Eagles and Cowboys too, but there's really the pro fan bases are not like college fan bases.

They're just different.

Hanging out with drunk twenty year olds is better to watch than hanging out with drunk fifty year olds too, right if you're at an NFL game versus a college game.

But ultimately, we're going to have to have Congress step in.

They're going to have to give an anti trust exemption in some form because they're going to have to create we can't have small d democratic tools attempting to govern college sports.

You're gonna need a commissioner aka some sort of almost authoritarian type of situation, chairman of the board, board of director, CEO, that sort of thing with some accountability because this is this is embarrassing the sport all the time, and there's too much money at stake, and we have that much money at stake, you're gonna have lawsuit, you're gonna have people being libel and all of that stuff.

So you kind of need a structure and some sort of rule of law to govern college sports.

That is fair.

All right.

I will stop with my rant there, but I felt like, as much as I want to celebrate, and I've got a lot, I'm going to celebrate on the later this week, I will share with you my favorite pathways for Miami and the different storylines on different potential matchups that.

They can have in the college football playoff.

Let's just say, boy, for Miami's own reputational sake, they better win one.

They better win one.

Uh, and we'll go from there.

All right, I've gone on a bit now.

This is a pretty thick Monday episode.

We did some dark, some light, and everything in between.

I really appreciate you listening.

Our growth has been amazing.

I know part of the why independent media is growing because you've lost so much trust in what's happened with the intimidated corporate owned media, which is sad.

I have a lot of good friends over there who are fighting a good fight, but the institutions are just trying to trying to prevent them from doing the work that they want to do, which is a huge disappointment.

But guess what, there are always alternatives, including right here, So thank you for listening.

I appreciate it, and I'll see in forty eight hours.