Chris Cillizza on the Media's - and the Democrats'? - Parasitic Relationship with Trump

[00:00:10] Hello and welcome to the latest edition of Blue City Blues, a podcast featuring smart guests talking about the problems facing blue cities and how to fix them. I'm David Hyde with Sandeep Kaushik. Hello, Sandeep. Hey, David. How are you? I'm good. Our guest today is journalist and political analyst Chris Cillizza. You know him from CNN, where he worked from 2017 to 2022. Before that, he wrote The Fix for The Washington Post for over a decade. And these days you can find him on Substack. It's called So What?

[00:00:40] We should ask him about that, Sandeep. It's also the name of his YouTube channel. There's also a podcast with Chuck Todd called Super Tuesdays, which is also great. Chris Cillizza, thanks so much for joining us. Yeah. I mean, you guys are going to ask me to promote myself. I feel like I feel like I'm uniquely positioned to do that. I've spent years. This is why I lift all the weights. I was gonna say, so what? Oh, that's a whole other thing. So what means, like, that's like a newsroom discussion kind of thing.

[00:01:09] Yeah. Like, why does it matter? I mean, there's, I'll tell you, I may just get rid of the, I feel like nowadays in the way content is consumed, people, if I said to people who subscribed on the first day of my YouTube channel or the first day of my Substack, what's the name of the Substack? They'd be like, oh, it's the Chris Cillizza's thing, right? Like, names are so kind of weirdly passe, like naming it something.

[00:01:33] But I would say the genesis of it is this guy named Eric Rideholm, who is the creator and executive producer of Pardon the Interruption on ESPN, as well as the finder of Pablo Torre and just a great mind and a really smart guy. And he explained to me one time, he's like, look, you know, there are three buckets of news. The what, the now what, and the so what. He's like most, and you know, the what is obvious, right? The what is, this is, you know, this happened.

[00:02:02] Florida voted on Tuesday, August 18th. The now what is, okay, like, what can we expect? Like, what's coming around the next corner? And the so what is, why does it matter? Like, what, put this all in context, and I've really tried, I've thought about it a ton and talked to Eric many, over many years about it. And like, I really try to live in that so what space of like, there's a lot of great people who can bring you the what.

[00:02:30] Now what and so what I feel like are even more of value now. And so that's why I named it that. Although, again, I think that there's like, literally five people, not including my wife and my mom who know that that's like what it's actually called. But there is a real story behind it. There's an actual, there's an actual, yeah. I put some thinking behind it, which I don't do for everything I do. But in this case, I do.

[00:02:55] All right, let's, let's, we want to ask about these recent Florida election results and some other current events. But we wanted to go back to the fairly recent White House Correspondents Dinner last month, where Donald Trump said something that you actually thought wasn't a lie, that was even true, which was, you people have no idea how lucky you are. I'm not even going to try to pretend to be Trump here. Yeah, don't try to do it. When I'm gone, you're all going to be broke. Your business model is going to be finished.

[00:03:24] And you say he could not be more right. Right. The simple fact, this is you, is that Donald Trump almost single-handedly saved legacy media from total and complete collapse. It's a terrible thing to say, Chris. What are you getting at? Yeah, I mean, look, Trump is, of course, because he's Trump, like, over-exaggerating. Like, when he leaves office, mainstream media is not going to be, like, broke and destitute.

[00:03:48] But I do think he is right in the – he's directionally right in that point, which is, you know, if you go back to pre-Donald Trump, which now feels like a – you know, it feels like Mad Men. Like, everything's in black and white and, you know, like everything was different then. But, like, if you go back to pre-Donald Trump, I was in journalism.

[00:04:07] And we knew that the kind of model that we had relied on, which at that point was still mostly print subscriptions with, you know, some classifieds, some advertising. But, like, we knew that model was fading. Now, we didn't know when exactly it would die. We didn't know what would replace it. But we knew the internet was obviously a big thing, but print revenue and digital revenue – print revenue was declining.

[00:04:36] Digital revenue was not rising at the same rate or higher. So it was like, okay, we have a business problem. And just when I think there was about to be, like, a reckoning there among media executives, Donald Trump comes down the gold escalator at Trump Tower, announces for president. Now, I'm not sure we knew – excuse me – I'm not sure we knew at that second, like, aha, this will solve our problems or this will be a Band-Aid over our problems.

[00:05:03] But it became clear pretty quickly that, like, in an attention economy, which we in the content business are constantly grappling with, like, Donald Trump is, like, the perfect candidate, right? Because he says – number one, he says and does tons of stuff every day. There's no holidays. There's no weekends. But he's constantly creating content. Used to be on Twitter. Now it's on True Social. Whatever. He's constantly creating content.

[00:05:31] Number two, and as important, no one feels so-so about Donald Trump, right? Like, there are very few people who are like, ah, I like some things he does. I don't like some things he does. Almost everyone is like, I love him or I hate him. And in the world of content, that's really important because I know – I was at the Washington Post until the end of 2016.

[00:05:56] Look, obviously, if you look at the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, ratings on CNN, ratings on MSNBC, they all shoot through the roof during the 2016 campaign and then even higher after when he wins. And that's not primarily powered by people who love Donald Trump, who are reading and watching. It's primarily powered by people who hate Donald Trump and are watching and reading out of abject horror.

[00:06:21] Like, you know, it's the slowing down at a car wreck kind of viewing. And I think that all these media executives who, remember, a year before knew we were at this existential crisis, start patting themselves on the back like, ha-ha, well, we figured that out. Problem solved. And, you know, it was always a sugar high. But it made them feel like they had done something when, in fact, Trump had just kind of emerged out of nowhere.

[00:06:48] And that sugar high has worn off. Look, Trump being president still keeps a lot of these places at higher levels than they might be if Kamala Harris was president or if J.D. Vance was president. But the Trump bump is less bumpy. It bumps less high than it once did. And I think in the next couple of years, you're going to see it fall off even more as he becomes a lame duck as the conversation moves beyond him.

[00:07:14] And the same problems that started back before he came down the golden escalator still exist in media. Only maybe worse so. And, yeah, I mean, in that July 27th piece that you wrote, and I should just say we'll put it in the show notes, but it's titled Donald Trump was right about the media. And it should terrify journalists. So good, scary headline there. But, yeah, I mean, some of the stats you present in that piece are pretty, you know, eye-opening, right?

[00:07:42] And you point out how much of a bump, how huge the bump was that the media got post-Trump's 2016, during Trump's 2016 campaign and then post the campaign during that Trump 1.0 era. It was a ratings bonanza, right, for the cable nets. And basically what happened is they just fixated on covering Trump, as you say, the attention economy thing that he just sort of took over.

[00:08:09] And you don't say this, but I would take it even a step farther in that they kind of fed off the never-ending daily fight with Trump, at least if you weren't right-wing media. Your right-wing media was all about sort of, you know, hagiography and, like, kissing up to him. But if you were CNN or MSNBC or The Washington Post or The New York Times, I mean, going to the very, you know, the gray lady wasn't super, you know, gray about Trump, right?

[00:08:38] No, and what's fascinating about it is, like, it made – he was such a big story and he created so much content all the time that it allowed, I think, the mainstream media to pretend as though this wasn't all just a business decision.

[00:09:02] But what happened in that 2013 to 2015, like, pre-Trump period was the realization that mainstream media on the editorial side, not on the business side, but on the editorial side, we had been allowed to be convinced that we were basically a not-for-profit, that it was just for the public good. Don't ever have to worry about money because the money was so easily coming in.

[00:09:25] In that time before Trump, those last few years, it became clear that there were real financial imperatives, that, like, this gravy train that had existed for 40 or 50 years in print journalism was coming to an end.

[00:09:39] And while television has always been focused on ratings, always and forever, and Donald Trump rated and that's why he was on, you saw that mentality, I think, become much more real on the New York Times, Washington Post, like, all the digital – and the digital side of CNN and all these places because you could chart, like, holy cow, if we write about Donald Trump, we get 20,000 people on the story.

[00:10:05] If we write about, you know, Ted Cruz, we get 200 people on the story. And so, you know, you had these measurables, so you had more measurables, more ways to keep track of it, and it had become clear that the business end of journalism wasn't something that you, if you were an editorial, could just ignore. And so, yeah, look, it was a parasitic relationship.

[00:10:31] Trump knew how to manipulate the media for it to get attention, and he knew he needed the media. The media, although they never would acknowledge it, understood that writing – talking about Donald Trump endlessly shot ratings and page views to the roof, and talking about Hillary Clinton, you know, pretty big figure endlessly, did not. So what did they do?

[00:10:53] They talked about the one that made them money, got them clicks, got – you know, I mean, people think that journalism is just a public good, but it's not. These are businesses, right? And it became very clear that these are businesses when these businesses stopped basically printing money. Even the not-businesses, the nonprofits like NPR stations where I worked, you know, they're concerned about numbers.

[00:11:20] They're concerned about audience because they rely on not just some radio spot slash advertising dollars. They also have to get member contributions. And it was the exact same story at my NPR affiliate. The popularity of NPR is in inverse proportion to, you know, the Democratic candidates. And when Republicans, especially Trump, win, boy, the numbers go through the roof.

[00:11:44] And then you have a bunch of program directors and the top brass folks acting like they did something to cause this. Exactly. Genius programming decision that led to these changes when you can just see how closely it tracks. And when you get around to those fundraising events, you know, when people are saying kind of pledge to public radio right now, we're not the hype monsters that – you know, we're going to be this oasis of sanity in a sea of insanity.

[00:12:13] Everybody knows what you're talking about. Of course. You're not really talking about MAGA news, but you're also talking about the Trump administration and all the bullshit coming out of – you know, so it has been incredibly good for business. And, yeah, it's going to be the same question again. Who knows what's going to happen when Trump is out of office? And if anything, he in some ways did NPR affiliates a big favor by defunding them. I'm sure it's been a real boon. He turned it into a cause celeb on the left, right?

[00:12:42] Like, I mean, look, one thing I've learned – I've been doing kind of like the independent media thing for, you know, a little more than three years now. And one thing I've learned is the easiest way to get people to give you money is present what you're doing as a cause. Like, we're fighting back against the fact-free blah, blah, blah. Or where do – like, that's the way people don't – people – as much as people like to tell you, like, I just want to support journalism. It's not that it has to agree with me.

[00:13:10] People tend to want to support journalism that affirms their views. And so, like, I don't think any media entity is free of that. I mean, democracy dies in darkness. I worked at the Washington Post when that happened. We had no idea about it. Just all of a sudden it was just on the website and on the paper. A very modest slogan for – Right. CNN, when I was there, ran a whole campaign about – do you remember those ads? It was an apple. And it said, like, this is an apple.

[00:13:39] Some people, wink, wink, Donald Trump, want to tell you it's not. But we are – and again, like, I didn't disagree with that. But you knew who it was targeted at, right? The kind of people – it was people who hated Donald Trump, who thought he was destroying democracy. And there was a level of, like, fan service to the coverage. And candidly, especially with the growth of independent media now, there's a massive amount of fan service.

[00:14:06] It's like some of these sites, every day, literally, they have a video saying, Donald Trump's health continues to deteriorate. I'm like, well, how long can his health deteriorate until something bad – You know, it's like Donald Trump on desk doorstep six months ago. Donald Trump's on desk doorstep three months ago. Donald Trump's – like, the reason they do it is because there's audience for it, right? And it's wish casting. One of the things I really loved about that particular piece you wrote about this sort of parasitic relationship

[00:14:32] between the traditional media and Trump, other than the fact that, you know, it just seems self-evidently true, especially the way you lay it out in that case, is that part of what makes it sort of negative and parasitic in my mind is something you were just getting at, Chris, which is that at a time, especially in that first term, when there's this huge bump, New York Times subscriptions are tripling or whatever the numbers were. You know, Washington Post is getting this huge boost.

[00:15:01] I'm subscribing to all these things. All these people are to get their daily, you know, fix of Trump resistance or whatever, you know, stuff. It's also true that the credibility of the media is crashing, right? You know, when you look at the Pew numbers about trust in the media and not just on the Republican side, right? But – and I will say even people like me, I started like kind of scratching my head going like, you know,

[00:15:26] some of this stuff in the New York Times seems a little like, you know, like you get the feeling like Trump could cure cancer tomorrow and they would talk about, you know, how – Yep, yep. You know, why hasn't he, you know, solved, you know, Ebola or whatever. Yeah, I – you know, so Trump always talks. It annoys me to no end. He always says basically – and the people around him. Like if you're at all critical of him over anything, he's like, Chris Elizabeth's got a real case of Trump derangement syndrome, right? Yeah, yeah.

[00:15:56] Which I think is stupid, right? Because, I mean, candidly, like part of the job of any citizen is to be like, okay, I'm going to educate myself about this and I'm going to make my own decision. Sometimes they'll be supportive, sometimes they won't. But I do think that there does exist definitely within the Democratic base and with some journalists, particularly during his first term, but still some in his second term, what I would describe as kind of like a Trump blindness, which is they hate him so much, right,

[00:16:25] for what he represents, you know, the kind of the bullying and the amorality. And they hate him so much that they're incapable of separating anything he does from who he is, which is, you know, Sandeep, I think exactly to your point. It's like some of the things I think he's done, to be honest, like I'm in favor of. He has made it – I'll give you two small examples. Is TrumpRx.com everything that Donald Trump says it is? No.

[00:16:53] It does not have low prices on every single drug, right? He, of course, is overselling it. Does it have lower prices on GOP-1s and fertility drugs? It does. How did he do that? He basically strong-armed the pharmaceutical industry. I mean, like, let's be honest. Like, that's what he did. And I'm okay with that. You know, if Barack Obama had done that, there are a lot of Democrats would be like, this is great, right? Another thing.

[00:17:19] I am a big believer in hallucinogenics as a way to deal with anxiety, depression, addiction, traumatic instance. Podcasting. Podcasting. In your past. But hallucinogenics obviously have this, you know, Timothy Leary, you know, tune in, drop out, all that stuff.

[00:17:42] Like, I grew up with my dad basically being like acid and hallucinogenics, like the worst thing in the world, right? So it has this negative connotation. Well, Trump, to his credit, lowered the bar of what you need to qualify for this because there's a ton of science that suggests that this in micro doses, this helps lots and lots of people. And again, like, I'm pro that.

[00:18:06] Like, but I think there are people who it's like, no matter what, they have to believe that he can't do anything. You know, it's that great meme of the worst person, you know, makes a really good point. You know what I mean? Yes, right. Sometimes he, look, do I think. Stop clock, right? Right. Do I think that he's like an amazing president? No, I don't. I think I've said this many times. He's fundamentally amoral, which is like a dangerous thing in any leader, particularly someone who's the president of the United States.

[00:18:34] But I also do think there was, and you saw this a lot, 2016 to 2020, and you still see it some in the second term. But a lot of this coverage is Donald Trump is doing this thing. Therefore, it must be bad. Let's find a way to make it bad. And I think that, unfortunately, what that does is it allows people who support him to gloss over things that he is actually like.

[00:18:57] There's no defense for negotiating with yourself for a $1.8 billion taxpayer funded anti-weaponization fund to pay out people. It's a slush fund, period. But it's harder to have moral authority on that if you're in the media, if you also freak out over every other thing that he does. Because not everything can be a mountain. There are molehills, even in Donald Trump's world. Yeah. So there's kind of two points that you're making here.

[00:19:25] One is that the coverage of Trump should be better. The other is the media is not really thinking about its underlying business model in the same way that maybe the Democratic Party isn't thinking about its underlying business model sometimes. Or at least some voters aren't thinking about the underlying business model. I would say the media may be thinking about their underlying business model too much in that.

[00:19:49] There is no question that if I wrote something every single day or made a video every single day that literally just said, like, Donald Trump sucks. Am I right? He crapped himself. And look at his big old ass or all that stuff that's going around. Like, oh, there's something going on with his ass. That would do better for me. And by better, I mean financially better. It would get me more subscribers, more attention, more page views, more money than me doing a breakdown of the Senate map.

[00:20:19] I mean, it just would. So I don't do that. But also I'm one person and I can kind of figure it out. If you're a big company and you have all this data, it's like, hey, when we write about Donald Trump smelling bad, we get a million page views. And we write about Donald Trump's policies on the environment. We get 500 page views. There's a perverse incentive there.

[00:20:48] So I actually think they may be paying too much attention to it because it's like, all right, well, let's just get the money we can now get the subscribers we can now. We'll worry about post Trump, post Trump. And it's like that's a little bit of short term gain for at least it's not necessarily medium or long term pain, but medium and long term uncertainty. If you're enjoying this podcast, can you please do us a favor? Spread the word.

[00:21:16] Tell your friends, your family, your coworkers, anyone who's interested in the future of blue cities and better governance. Basically, anyone who thinks that the conversation in blue cities is kind of stagnated and thinks we need to be hearing from more smart people, even people that we might disagree with about many things. And one more favor to ask. If you want this podcast to continue, can you take a minute right now to give us a five star review on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts?

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[00:22:15] Well, let's bring this back to because you've obviously made a transition, right? A big transition. You were, you know, and I first discovered your stuff when you were writing the fix at the Washington Post. Must read. Those are the glory days, man. That was so fun. Yeah. You know, I'm a political, you know, guy, Democratic political consultant. And, you know, and it was just must read like coverage of campaigns and politics and all of that stuff that you were producing there on a kind of daily basis for the Washington Post.

[00:22:42] And then at CNN, but then you abruptly get laid off at CNN. Yes. And it's a traumatic kind of moment for you. You've written about this a bit. And just to quote you on a piece you wrote, I think a year after you had left CNN and we're doing, you know, the Substack thing. Um, you said the immediate reaction to being let go is that this is definitional.

[00:23:12] That you will forever be known as quote fired political journalist Chris Cillizza. That this is your last chapter. The end. Yep. Right. So, so, so obviously it wasn't the last chapter and it wasn't the end and you're not fired. You know, journalist Chris Saliza. You're like as relevant as ever, but talk about a, the psychology of that transition for you and how you made that happen. Yeah. Um, it was abrupt for me too.

[00:23:41] I will say I, I, maybe I should have been expecting it, but wasn't expecting it. Um, yeah. So what I realized is first of all, in some way I, um, my hand was a little bit forced in that. Let's say you're a traveling salesman and your company is like, Hey, you know, we got 20 of these guys. We got to get, we pay you a bunch. We got to get down to 15. We're going to let you go. You can like go on LinkedIn and be like, I'm super excited for my next chapter.

[00:24:10] Like you can frame it. However you want to frame it. Like you left because there's so many more cool things than selling diet Coke or whatever. I didn't really have that luxury. Not that I'm a celebrity, but in Washington, when CNN cuts people who are on TV, it gets covered. So like playbook, it was like, so was a fired or whatever. So it was like people in my world knew it. So it wasn't like I could pretend like I was making time for my next chapter.

[00:24:37] So I, what I realized is, um, I kind of, I, I, I mean, I, I always say this. It is true. It happened the week after Thanksgiving, 2022. I, I kind of just made it through the holidays. Didn't really have to think that much about it. We were traveling, stuff like that. It's like, yeah, we'll worry about that down the road. But you know, January came and, and, and I, I just started like meeting with people. Cause I really had nothing going on.

[00:25:06] I mean, to be totally, I mean, I went from like a full-time all the time job to like, what the hell do I do? And the more people I met with, the more people I realized that like a lot of these people had been laid off. Some of them had been fired for cause even, but, but a lot of these people has been laid off. Like I knew a lot of journalists and even back then, this is, you know, early 2023, the cuts had begun in earnest. They've only accelerated obviously in the last couple of years. And it had this like, and I didn't realize this cause I never thought about it before.

[00:25:35] It had this like weird stigma to it that people wouldn't talk about it publicly. They wouldn't sort of say that, but a lot, it had, it had happened to a lot of people because mine had been public. I was like, well, I guess I'll just kind of lean into the skid here. And I did write about it, but it's, it, it, um, I, I'm glad it happened now, but man, did it suck going through it? Like it's, and I think we don't do a good enough job of that about that, about acknowledging

[00:26:03] that everybody is, you know, I always say like Instagram isn't real life because if it was, everyone would be on vacation all the time. Right. And happy all the time. LinkedIn is the same way. Not everyone is excited about the next thing. Sometimes you get laid off and you don't expect it. You got to build back from nothing and figure out what do I like? What can I do? Where can I make a difference? And that's being open about that weirdly grew my following more than any political thing

[00:26:30] that I wrote in those first like 18 months, because I think people identified with it. It was about more than just like guy you've seen on TV or guy who buy whose byline you've read. It's guy who is like actually three dimensional and admits when things suck. That all makes perfect sense to me, Chris. But what's, what's also interesting about this is right. That, yeah, as you say, it does really feel like the sun is setting on this kind of old traditional media world.

[00:26:56] Like, yeah, Trump sort of artificially propping it up with his, like, you know, frankly, his baddiness, you know, which, which is keeping people, yeah. Grabbing their attention. Unpredictability. Yeah. Unpredictability. It's chaos, whatever term you want to use for it. But, but, but there is this whole new world that has risen up in media out of, you know, almost nowhere. And look at like, I mean, there's no dearth of content, right?

[00:27:24] I feel like I'm kind of overwhelmed every morning with the number of emails I'm getting from all these different sub stack. And there's all good stuff and interesting. And I just, you know, who has the time to consume it all right now? So to speak to that, I actually think so. If the, the story of the last 10 to 15, maybe even 20 years of news content is the kind of

[00:27:51] D deconstruction of what we all grew up with, which was like the print newspaper. Like you subscribe. I've been living in DC forever. You subscribe to Washington post. The number of times that I read like Robin Givon on fashion was like zero. I mean, she's a Pulitzer Prize. She's got one more Pulitzer Prize. Together we have one Pulitzer Prize. Let's just say that. Yeah. And I have none. Robin won. Chris zero. Yeah. Correct.

[00:28:17] So my point is, it's like not what I was interested in, but I got that because I paid for the whole thing. It was this, it was this aggregated whole offering. Right. Right. And what we've done with the internet as it relates to content is we've disaggregated that first. We disaggregated it where it was like, okay, I only really want to read Tony Kornheiser. So I'm going to click on Tony Kornheiser's column and I can do that. I get in, I get out, I go to other things. I don't have to like flip to find it. Oh, here are the box scores. Oh, here's this like interesting story about the nationals that I didn't think of.

[00:28:47] Like I just, just in case people don't know, Tony was a long time Washington post, like a sports writer podcast now. Yeah. Yeah. Very, very popular. And so I could, but now it's like a scalpel. I could, I could go in, read it, get out. We disaggregated this. Now we're disaggregating where it's not even the legacy media disaggregating within itself. It's content news, content disaggregating away from the, the mainstream media.

[00:29:16] It's like, yeah, sub stack, Patreon, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, right? It's all over the place. I actually think we're probably in the, there's no new ideas. We're probably starting to move in the next couple of years toward re-aggregation around some of these independent content creators. Cause you know, something to your point, I hear this all the time from people. They're like, look, your newsletter is $6 a month, $60 a year.

[00:29:42] I can afford that, but I like 10 newsletters on sub stack. Well, that's $600. You know, that's, that's a lot. And I, I say to them, all right, get rid of those other six and just subscribe to me. No, I say like, look, I totally understand it. And I have pushed, I have pushed sub stack over and over again. You got to figure out a bundle, right? Where let's say you pay $10 a month and you can pick five sub stacks across anything.

[00:30:12] They could all, excuse me. It could be five political sub stacks. It could be one political sub stack, one on baseball, one on health and wellness, whatever. Because the reality is we, we are all in these little silos and that's, that's okay for the creator. It's not great for the consumer. It's why there was a print newspaper because for the consumer, if you're going to buy every article, it costs too much money. Okay. We put it all together.

[00:30:41] You can buy one thing with all the articles. That's where I think we're weirdly like, what is old, what is old is going to be new again. I think we're headed back toward that in some way, shape or form. You already see it a little bit on YouTube, which all these collaborations on YouTube, that's in some ways kind of like audience sharing and like, Hey, if you like this, you'll like that. Um, the hard thing on that is nerdy point, but the financials, like let's say they do a, uh, you can subscribe to five things.

[00:31:11] It's like, well, did I bring them in or did somebody else bring them in? Do I, should I get 40% of it or should I only get 20% of it? Like it's, so it's not easy on the finances end, but I think it's necessary. I was wondering what kind of a reaction you got to the piece about Donald Trump. Um, it reminded me a little bit thinking about it. Uh, I got this chance to interview the novelist, Carl Hiaasen one time, if you know him. I love him. Florida zone. Florida. Yeah.

[00:31:38] And I asked him this kind of iffy question, uh, saying something like, you know, there's all these horrible developers and evil politicians, et cetera, in your books. And they're just such amazing characters. Like this, the question was like, like, what would you do without them? Do you, do you feel some kind of fondness or affection? You know, I was kind of getting at the parasitic relationship between, between Hiaasen and these characters. And he just looked at me like, you fuckhead. Like, no, I hate them. What are you talking about? So I was thinking like, is that the reaction you've gotten from, uh, mainstream media with this piece insofar as folks have responded to it?

[00:32:07] Or what have you heard? Yeah. I mean, I, I think the people who hate it don't tell me they hate it. They just, it's like, it's, it's like my favorite line from Bridesmaids. Why don't you act like a normal person and just talk bad about me behind my back? You know what I mean? Like, right, right. So I'm sure people have a civilized thing to do. Exactly. I've been doing that for generations. Um, so I would say it's not like, I don't get a lot of people I know in media reaching out to me being like, Hey man, you suck.

[00:32:37] Uh, I'm sure a plenty of people who are in mainstream media were like, dude, whatever. Like, you know, you're just doing whatever you can to make a buck. And you know, of course it's, yeah. By the way, now that you're just pissed that, that, you know, you're gone. They got rid of you. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Right. And like, yeah. And I always try to say this, it is self-serving to say that the mainstream media is failing or is, I don't mean failing in its editorial duty, but failing from a business perspective because I'm in independent media. So like, yes, of course it serves me.

[00:33:07] If the mainstream media shrinks a little bit, then I can grow a little bit. Um, so I, I totally acknowledge that at the same time, I think that data is pretty clear on where legacy media is heading. I'll share something with you that I really like this way to think about it. This is someone who works at a very large mainstream media institution that if I named you at 100%, no, I will not share that. But here's what they said.

[00:33:35] Look, the boat, which is the media organization has already hit the iceberg. Okay. The boat of a mainstream media organization of 25 years ago is already sinking. The question is, can you, and their argument was, this is what any smart big media company is doing now. Can you build next to the big boat, a significantly smaller boat that still carries the positive

[00:34:04] traits of the big boat and can sail effectively for the next 15 or 20 years? Like the debate about like, we're not going back to the, I mean, I think of this all the time. I was an only child. Uh, I am an only child. I, I grew up in Connecticut. We, my parents and I would have dinner at the, at the dinner table every single night. Dan rather was on. Okay. We, not my parents were a CBS family. We had the TV that had the 13 channels that you had to get up, no remote control. You had to like get up and click it.

[00:34:31] You know, it was like one through 13 and only like five of them were like actually channels. You know, the other ones didn't come in, but like, we're not going back to then where it was like, you got like five, you got, you got like three networks and like a cut, like no cable. We are going in the opposite direction. Right. And so can you build that boat, that smaller, but still seaworthy boat that maintains the things that sort of people know you for and like you for. So to me, I'm not trying.

[00:35:01] I will say now, and I say all the time, we need mainstream media to survive period. Full stop. I am not going to build a news gathering operation. The likes of CNN or the associated press, there's just no way in hell. It doesn't make any sense for me to do. I can't have a reporter in Seattle and then also one on Bainbridge Island and then one in, you know, all over the place. It doesn't make any sense. I need someone gathering that so that I can do what I do. And that's what mainstream media does. Like I am not a mainstream media hater.

[00:35:30] I don't want it to go away. I just want them to be smart. Acting as though the ship isn't sinking is a surefire way for the ship to sink with no plan. I just want them to be building the boat next to it. We're recording this on a Wednesday, right? Just after the Tuesday primaries in Alaska, Florida. You know, the big headline coming out of last night's primaries, I think, is in Florida.

[00:35:58] You have a DSA candidate significantly. She barely spends any money on her campaign and she wins handily. She is the Democratic nominee for the United States Senate in Florida right now. And obviously we have seen a series of these congressional races, some mayoral races, D.C. And, you know, obviously Mom Donnie and Katie Wilson here in Seattle last year. Right. Yep.

[00:36:23] There seems to be a resurgence of this kind of DSA left within the Democratic Party right now. And that primary is super interesting because like, you know, Alex Vindman is a name a lot of Democrats and Republicans, but certainly a lot of Democrats. No, he became this kind of like quasi celebrity. He testified during Trump's first impeachment trial. This is over the quote unquote perfect phone call with Vladimir Zelensky, who no one had

[00:36:50] heard of when Donald Trump is being in peace the first time and has obviously become a gigantic figure with the Ukraine war. Vindman moves to Boca Raton two years ago and he clearly wants to run for office. His twin brother, Eugene, runs for office in Virginia and is a member of Congress now. They obviously have aspirations to do this. He gets down there because he is this celebrity and this anti-Trump figure. He raises a massive amount of money for a race that like, even if he had been the nominee,

[00:37:21] is not an easy race. It's Florida. It's a long shot to win. Anyway, he raises all this money. Pretty red state at this point. And no one really knows who the hell Angie Nixon is. His state rep, as you say, she became a Democratic Socialist last year, like an African-American woman, but no one outside the state and plenty of people in the state don't know who she is. And she crushes him. It's like 5644 or something, which I think speaks to two things.

[00:37:47] One, Vindman is a dummy because he had $7 million on hand at the end of July and he didn't spend any of it because they were trying to save it for the general election. Well, you got to win the primary before you win the general election. And two, yes, this has been proven again and again. And yes, for every Francesca Hong who loses in Wisconsin as a Democratic Socialist, I can give you five people who won as a Democratic Socialist or a Democratic Socialist aligned candidate in the Democratic primary over this period of time.

[00:38:14] There's no question that there's huge energy in that space in the Democratic Party right now. The question I think and I'm fascinated by is if you watched Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez last weekend, she did her first Sunday show interview in two years. Now, I always say to people, that's not because the Sunday show bookers weren't asking her to be on. It's because she chose not to be on. They probably have a standing request for her to be on every week. And she says no. So she chose to be on that strategic and important. Number one, number two, she says this line in there.

[00:38:44] First of all, she's asked about running for president. She says, I'm considering all possibilities, which is clearly her like publicly opening the door. But she's asked about some of these views that the DSA has abolishing the Senate, abolishing the Supreme Court, et cetera. And she tells this like joking story about like this guy, I know this, you know, legislator in New York. He says, man, woke one was crazy. Right. And then she laughs.

[00:39:07] And like, I think that's super important is what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Bernie Sanders represent. Is it the tenets of democratic socialism, as explained on their website, abolish the Senate, no prisons, don't arrest people at the border, get rid of the Supreme Court? Or is it what she's woke one, for lack of a better word?

[00:39:32] Or is it what she's clearly trying to move toward, which is this isn't really about any of those things. This is really about economic populism, billionaires, you know, it's the millionaires and billionaires like the Bernie Sanders. Like these people are getting rich. The system is unequal. We need to regulate it. I'm an outsider. I'm a fighter. Like the latter message is actually, I think, potentially one that can win. The former message, as I think she's recognized, is not one that can win. So what is it?

[00:40:02] What do people, Democrats and then more broadly the electorate, what do they think of when they think of her, Sanders and democratic socialism? I think it's kind of up in the air. Yeah, it's interesting because I think voters think themselves to be really hopeful in nominating these sorts of candidates when sometimes it seems like an expression of hopelessness to me. Like here in Washington state, Republicans have almost no chance of winning statewide office.

[00:40:28] And yet the Republicans that we have, you know, are really red. They're really fired up about MAGA and Trump. And they want to nominate like the craziest of the crazies in some of these races, like the one that Marie Glusenkamp-Perez managed to flip. Even for governor, like the party officials ended up nominating this totally wackadoodle person as opposed to Sheriff Dave Reichert, who caught the Green River Killer. He ended up being the nominee, but the hardcore party faithful wanted to nominate the most

[00:40:57] wackadoodle person they could come up with. And so that's what I sometimes wonder about, because there is this like hopeful possibility of populism. Other than the hand, it's fucking Florida. She's got no chance. Like, what are you thinking? Like, like maybe, maybe somebody has a chance, but it ain't her. I mean, God. A lot of former Cubans in that state are not keen on socialism. It's just kind of like wonderful art and self-expression, but it sure ain't strategic political thinking on the part of the voters.

[00:41:24] Yeah, that's the, you know, that's the thing is like, I, I always, I always think of Carson McCullers, the heart is a lonely hunter and related the heart wants what the heart wants. Like sometimes it's, you know, people, I think people who are in our kind of way of thinking are like always thinking strategically, like, well, why would you nominate a democratic socialist in a state where, you know, because of Cuba and the exile, like it's just never going to sell there.

[00:41:52] Like, oh, and by the way, someone with, with views on Israel and Gaza, that a very Jewish population in the state are not going to be keen on. And I think it's like, yeah, the heart wants what the heart wants. The heart kind of wants, like, I'm sick of nominating these people that I'm told to nominate. Like, I think that if you are, if you do what I do, you cannot conflate how I look at politics

[00:42:20] with how a regular voter Republican or Democrat looks at politics. I spend way too much time with it. I overanalyze it way too much. The average voter is like, I like that person or she stands up for me. They're not like, well, well, we got Ashley Moody and she's an appointed senator and the record of appointed senators isn't great. And maybe we can, they don't think like that. As a result though, what do you get? Christine O'Donnell, I am not a witch in Delaware.

[00:42:47] Todd Akin in, in Missouri, Sharon Engel in Nevada. Those were all in one election cycle, by the way, in 2010, right? Like when the base gets what it wants, it very rarely works out in a general election because breaking news, the very Republican base and the very liberal Democratic base are not reflective of the average swing voter. A couple of comments, first of all, like going back to woke one, because I thought that AOC

[00:43:13] comment was also thought that that was really kind of a meaningful moment. I think you have to put a pin in it. Totally. Yeah. Clearly her trying to redefine stuff she's done and said in the past. Yes. Yes. And she knows, I mean, she knows she has a liability there, right? Because she was, she leaned pretty hard into woke one during, during, you know, the kind of peak woke 2020, you know, circa 2020 period. But, but I also think it's pretty clear even to the, you know, the AOCs of the world that

[00:43:41] woke one does not play politically. Right. And you look at Francesca Hong and like she lost for several reasons and kind of a surprise upset to Crowley. But, but one of the big ones was the last couple of weeks of the campaign turned into a kind of a referendum on her woke one commentary about canceling Thanksgiving. You just can't. Exactly right. Like you gotta, here's the thing. It's like the stupidest thing that happened in the Democratic Party between 2019 and 2023

[00:44:10] was the idea of defunding the police. It's just not a mainstream, even close to a mainstream winnable point. You shouldn't, they should have never said it. They should, no one should have adopted it. And this is the same thing. It's like, yeah, you forget about those times. You know, George Floyd is killed. They rename 16th street, Black Lives Matter Plaza in DC. You know, woke wasn't really a thing then.

[00:44:38] And if it was a thing, it was like a positive rather than pejorative or neutral at best. You had Nancy Pelosi and all the leaders of, of the, of, on the Democrats side, like kneeling, right. In memory of like, it was all, yeah. Yes. In Kente. Right. And then you have like the Francesca Hong's little world who look, she wasn't 25. She was 34 saying we should cancel Thanksgiving. It's like that stuff clearly is not a majoritarian position.

[00:45:08] And Donald Trump, I always thought the most effective message Donald Trump ever had because he's Donald Trump, he's incapable of sticking to it. But I always thought the most effective message he had was in 2024 on and off. He'd say things like, look, I'm not a liberal or a conservative Democrat or Republican. I'm just, I'm a common sense guy. He would say it about trans stuff. And like, whether you like or hate him. And again, I don't think anybody is in between those two. That worked. Like that was true.

[00:45:36] Cause people would be like, wait, why, why do we have, like, I don't, I don't care if someone wants to be trans, but why would we have a, a, someone who was born a boy competing against girls and they're a foot taller. Do you know what I mean? Like it just, yeah. And, and I think some of the stuff like, well, yeah, I mean, I think we've militarized the police too much and, but I don't think we should not have any police like it's. And so I think that he benefited from that. So I think what AOC is doing and she is different than like a Bernie Sanders.

[00:46:06] She is different than a Zora Mamdani. She is different than a Francesca Hong. I think she has these ambitions and is smart enough to see, okay, I said this stuff. I will never win the white house if this is about me saying to fund the police in a general election. So I got to figure out a way to frame this in a way, you know, cause it's simply not a majority position. You can, if you're on the left, you can hate that and say it should be. But again, like politics is about the art of the possible.

[00:46:36] It's not the world you want. It's the world we have. And a lot of lefties, especially like to live in the, well, we won the moral argument. And I always say like, okay, but Donald Trump is president. Do you know what I mean? Like the more your, your moral high ground, he has been able to do a whole hell of a lot with a Republican white house, house and Senate. And you have it. Just cause we have you here. Can I ask about the Alaska Senate race? Sure. And we're in, we're in Washington state here.

[00:47:05] It's close enough that we pay some attention to it here. So, uh, yeah. Mary, uh, Petola versus Dan Sullivan. What's likely to happen there? I guess is, is one of my questions. What, and what, what did you, what do you, what conclusions can we draw? I was going to say Mary Petola versus Dan Sullivan versus Dan Sullivan. Right. Right. As a political nerd. One of my favorite stories is that the incumbent Senator from Alaska is Dan S. Sullivan. And there's a retired teacher who is also ostensibly running as a Republican named Daniel J.

[00:47:33] Sullivan, uh, who both of whom will be on the general election ballot because they came in the top three. Now, Daniel S. Sullivan got like 47% of the vote, the incumbent Senator and Daniel J. Sullivan got 3% of the vote, but they'll both be on the ballot because the top four advance in Alaska. Um, I thought that result was really good for Petola. Um, I, she, I didn't see what she wound up with, but last I looked, she was over 50, like 51.

[00:48:01] That's pretty, it's a 16 way race, by the way, there are 16 candidates. Now, again, most of these candidates get 0.02% of the vote or something, but look, she damn near got reelected in 2024 against Nick Begich in a terrible year for Democrats nationally, right? Biden is, and then Harris kind of tanking. It was bad in Alaska. 26 is going to be a much better year to be a Democrat anywhere. And I think she, uh, a democratic consultant friend of mine noted this.

[00:48:31] They said that the two Democrats who have outperformed the top of the ticket, the most statewide in recent years are John Tester. Now he lost, right? In the race he lost, he drastically overperformed Biden and Harris, but not by enough. And Mary Peltola. So she has this, she definitely has an, a, a trained ability, a demonstrated ability to appeal to voters who are not just Democrats.

[00:48:59] Cause if, if you're just going to win the Democrats in, in Alaska, you're going to get like 40, 38% of the vote. There's a million independents and there's a bunch of Republicans. Um, I think she has a real chance there. Um, and I would say this, like, you know, the, the most fascinating scenario to me is let's say Peltola wins and it's, it's her victory makes the Senate 50, 50, which would again,

[00:49:24] give Republicans control because JD Vance VP, also the president of the Senate tiebreaker. Well, you know, who else represents Alaska? Lisa Murkowski. And you know, who hates Donald Trump? Lisa Murkowski. And you know, who would be like, well, wait a minute. Mary Peltola just won as a Democrat. I'm up in 20. I think she's up in 28. I'm up in 28. I could run as an independent who caucuses with Democrats and potentially win. Well, now it's, she switches parties.

[00:49:53] Now it's, or moves to independent who caucuses with Democrats, which I think is what happened. Now it's 51 D 49 R. Like, don't rule that out. Lisa Murkowski, who is close friends with Mary Peltola personally. She is absolutely watching that race to see her own political future. She's up in 28. I think she wants to stay around. I don't think she wants to leave, but, but she's not really a Trump Republican at all.

[00:50:18] Like that's not super farfetched to me that if Mary Peltola wins, you might see Lisa Murkowski is not going to become a Democrat. I don't think, but I could see her becoming an independent who caucuses with Democrats, which would mean another vote for whoever the democratic leader is, which would mean a 51 49 majority. Or because she's, she hates Trump so much or, or partly just because she sees what's happening in Alaska and how it's kind of becoming a little bit more purple. She's also to some significant extent, a pariah among the MAGA faithful in her own party. Right.

[00:50:48] Yeah, man. Like remember, remember this people forget this, but you know, pre Trump, uh, was the tea party and Joe Miller. Who was like, came out of nowhere. He comes, I think it was 24, let's see, 20, 2014, 2020. No, it must've been 2012, 2018, 2024. I'm trying to think when she would be up maybe 2010. It might've been 2010 regardless pre Trump, this guy named Joe Miller, who literally no one had ever heard of.

[00:51:17] And for people who don't know anything, Lisa Murkowski is Frank Murkowski's daughter. Frank Murkowski was the governor of the state Republican governor, state Republican senator from state, very well known name in the state. She takes his seat. Joe Miller starts running and we're like Joe Miller, but it's in the tea party movement. And Murkowski is very much a moderate Republican, right? There aren't many, but she's one. Joe Miller beats her in the Republican primary.

[00:51:42] She runs a right in independent candidacy in the general election and wins. That's the only reason she's in the Senate. She lost the Republican primary. So my point is her affiliation with the Republican party is already pretty loose. And clearly this last decade of Trump, I mean, she voted against Todd Blanche. She and Susan Collins voted against Todd Blanche for attorney general. She's spoken out many times about how Donald Trump is not her cup of tea.

[00:52:11] Donald Trump, I would assume even going out of office when she's up in 2028, will probably try to recruit someone to primary her. Um, you know, it's an open primary, which is harder, right? Because it's everybody's on one ballot. So Lisa Murkowski, unless they change the rules, would have to finish not in the top four to qualify for the general election, which seems unlikely. But he could make her life and ours already made her life difficult. I just think there will be a huge push on the Democratic side.

[00:52:38] If it is 50-50 and if Mary Peltola wins, she will, she, Lisa Murkowski, will be able to look and say like, okay, well, this is doable. Like I don't have to be a Republican to win. I can be basically, Mary Peltola is not really running as a Democrat in any meaningful way. She's running as like an Alaskan, right? Alaskan independent who happens to have a D after her name. But Mary Peltola is going to basically say that she's a Democrat zero times in her paid advertising between now and the election.

[00:53:08] And I think Murkowski would do basically the same thing if she saw that blueprint work. And the other thing about, just real quick comment, and then I have a different question, but Murkowski too, she's kind of a bring home the bacon sort of politician for, you know, we got to make sure that Alaskans get taken care of and stuff. And she probably, the calculus there, if the Democrats will offer her a lot of bacon. Oh, yes. And by the way, Alaska is a state where you need that.

[00:53:34] I mean, federal funding has to go to Alaska to keep the Alaska economy going. It is why Ted Stevens got elected for 500 years there. It is why Don Young was a member of Congress forever. Because they realized like, okay, the way to keep going is just bring in tons of federal money, name things after myself, and that keeps the economy going. So it's not a state like California, where it's just this massive economy and like, oh, the federal dollars are nice. They are dependent on federal dollars there. They need the bridge to nowhere. They need the bridges to nowhere.

[00:54:03] I was just doing an interview with my friend Jonathan V. Last of the Bulwark, and we were making the case, you know, it's like the most counterintuitive thing ever, that the dumbest thing that Congress ever did in terms of being able to like actually deliver things for people is getting rid of earmarks. Oh, that's real. Because earmarks were the lubricant that allowed deals to get done. And now the party leadership has no power over the rank and file. And the inmates run the asylum in both parties. And it's why we never do anything anymore. You know, people are like earmarks, bridge to nowhere, bare DNA.

[00:54:33] I mean, John McCain ran on this in 2008. And it's like, yeah, like I get it. At the same time, it's like, are we willing to accept a smaller bad for a larger good? Right. There are all these tradeoffs, and I would argue we should bring earmarks back tomorrow. We won't. So I want to bring it back to this kind of DSA phenomenon, Chris, and the rise of it, because this is the one year, I think. Look, I mean, when you I'm a Democratic political consultant, right? I'm looking at the numbers like Trump's approval numbers are in basically in free fall. He's down in the mid 30s.

[00:55:03] I saw a poll yesterday was at 33 or something like that. I mean, these are atrocious numbers. So if there's any year that Abdul El Saeed can win in a swing state like Michigan, it's the 2026, right? And and so as a political consultant, my first thought is this fear, right, that the Democratic electorate is going to take the wrong lessons from a blue wave year in 2026, which is like,

[00:55:31] oh, yeah, we should go all in on, you know, going full, you know, let our freak flag fly right on this stuff. And and and that that could then set them up for a disastrous 2028 of now, on the other hand, right? The argument could be that when you look at Trump, I mean, there's no indication in this Trump 2.0 era that he has any intention of trying to meet the voters where they're at.

[00:56:01] He's absolutely, you know, he's not he's never been, you know, much of an intellect. He's always a kind of appetite and emotion sort of sort of, you know, guy. And he's just letting that all hang out like he doesn't care whether people are mad about the ballroom. He's doing the ball right or all of that kind of stuff. And so. I could see the next two years going really, really badly for Donald Trump and the Republican

[00:56:26] Party to the point that the Democrats could nominate Karl Marx and win the American presidency, maybe. So so where are you on that question? Because and the through line here, I think about about this conversation is so much of whether it's the traditional media and how they exist right now or whether it's our politics, all of this stuff is revolving around Trump and Trump is like all the stuff happening in the Democratic Party is all in some fundamental way of reaction to that. So where do you think it's all headed?

[00:56:56] Short answers? I don't know. I mean, I always remind people like I thought that Hillary Clinton was going to beat Donald Trump in 2016 because every measure polling, money, message organization that we used as a way to monitor suggested she was going to win. It just happened to be all those measures were wrong. Right. He was the exception that to every thing I had been taught about politics. That said, here's what I think.

[00:57:20] It is one of the very few bipartisan things in politics is parties misreading elections. Right. I mean, it's yes. And by misreading, I almost always mean. Conflating winning, picking up seats, winning a majority with people love us. People want Democrats in the House. No. And not just us, but our ideas. Yes.

[00:57:46] I would say I think that's a huge danger for Democrats because, yes, I do 100% think Democrats should win the House. The Senate's a harder lift just because of where the states they have to win are, but it's definitely on the board and possible. I think there are going to be a lot of not just Democratic voters, but Democratic politicians and thought leaders who are like, see, you guys, whoever the hell you guys are, but you guys said after 2024 that the Democratic brand stood for weak and woke and people hated us.

[00:58:15] But people love us more than they even know. Now, that is not what that would tell them if they were being candid. All that this election is, is do you like Donald Trump? No. OK, here's a way to put a check on him. Vote for the other party. This is in no way, shape or form in an affirmation of anything that the Democratic Party believes or will do.

[00:58:40] They are simply option B in a binary choice where most people don't want option A. That's it. Now, will they misread that? Probably. Yeah. You know, I give you Joe Biden in 2022 who said, see, people love me. We didn't lose as bad as we thought. I'm running again when we know how that turned out. I do think presidential elections are different in that you're like they could run Karl Marx thing. I do.

[00:59:06] I don't think in a midterm people really are focused on the other party. You're just the alternative to something they don't want in a presidential. It comes down to you've nominated this one person. And they've nominated this one person. Which person do I like more? Which person do I think relates to me more? Which person's policy speak to me more? It's much more of a choice than it is a referendum.

[00:59:30] And I think that Donald sorry, the current Democratic thinking is way too Donald Trump focused. No matter what. I always say to people, I think he's constitutionally banned from running in 2028. OK, could he start to try to? Sure. But I think ultimately it won't work. He's 80 years old. He doesn't sleep. He doesn't eat well. He doesn't exercise. He's in poor health. Actuarial tables will suggest Donald Trump is not going to be around forever. Democratic Party needs to now start.

[00:59:58] What are we for that has nothing to do with Donald Trump? Yes, I get you're going to be a guest. We're going to change the name of it back to the Kennedy Center. We're going to change the name back to the Gulf of Mexico. Whatever, man. But like, what are you going to do on social media phones and our kids? What are you going to do on our public education system? What are you going to do on immigration? That isn't what Joe Biden did, right? That's somewhere between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. The only person that I see doing that right now, who I think will run in 2028 is Rahm

[01:00:26] Emanuel, former mayor of Chicago, former member of Congress, former Obama chief staff. Now, I don't think Rahm Emanuel is in the top tier. He's not in the second tier. But at least he's talking about ideas of what the Democrats will do on real problems facing the public, as opposed to what I mentioned before. Donald Trump shits himself. You know, or the woman who's like standing next to him. She has a buzzer in her scarf to wake him up when he falls asleep.

[01:00:53] Like, man, I get that people on the left online get off on all that stuff. They're going to vote for whoever the hell Democrats nominate in 2028. No matter what, those are not the voters you need. You need to reach voters who don't hate Donald Trump like the base does, who want to know, like, why the hell is gas $4.20 a gallon here? Probably more in Seattle. Why the hell is why the hell are grocery prices not lower? Why?

[01:01:20] Why are we beating the crap out of people who are American citizens? Like, solve. Why is my kids public education failing and China's getting ahead? Why aren't we addressing AI and the challenges it poses, not just to me and my work, but to my kids? Like, focus on that. Don't get blinded by Donald Trump. And that, to me, is, I think, what Democrats should focus on. They're not yet. We'll see if they do after the election. OK, well, we are at time, in fact, over time. And, you know, I can keep this conversation going forever.

[01:01:49] But but but we've already asked for too much of you, Chris. So Chris Eliza, thank you so much for coming on today and talking the media and politics with Blue City Blues. I mean, it's a dream to talk about politics and media. My kids sometimes ask me what I do for a living. And I say, well, mostly talk. And they're like, people pay you for that. I'm like, look, I'm surprised. I'm as surprised as you are. Yeah, as a Democratic flack, I used to say I lie for a living. But, you know, yeah. Thanks, everybody. Take care.

[01:02:19] Thank you so much. Thanks, Chris. That's it for another edition of Blue City Blues. He's Sandeep Kaushik. I'm David Hyde. Thanks, everyone, so much for listening. And a special thanks for helping us make the jump to video by donating at patreon.com slash bluecityblues. OK, bye. Bye. Bye.