Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman welcome onto the show Michael Leon of the Can We Please Talk podcast to discuss the Iowa appearance of Ron DeSantis and the cancelation of the Trump rally in the same state. They move on Kristen Sinema's marathon scandal before they pull apart what it means now that the Baby Boomers are passing on an incredible amount of wealth to their heirs.
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Turns out Kirsten Sinema is using her fundraising for some interesting purchases.
We've also got historic transfers of wealth.
We've got GOP action in Iowa.
I feel like this topic is so much I feel like this show is so jam-packed that I'm not so sure the two of us could possibly handle it alone.
I agree.
We definitely need a little help.
If we could reach into the distant past and find one of our most beloved Muckrake podcast guest hosts, I think that that could do it.
Oh my God, it's Mike Leone of Can We Please Talk.
How are you doing, Mike?
Oh my God.
Well, first off, I mean, my ego and my halo now that needs to be Simonized.
Listen, I brought a present for you guys real quick because I listen to you guys all the time and I'm not sure if it's part of the show intro, but if I may, for a second.
Just crack open here.
What a Monday it's been.
Oh, this is a delicious Bud Light.
Has Bud Light been in the news lately?
You guys know anything?
Oh, we love our trans beer, folks.
Yes, and that's right.
That's right.
I'm a Heineken guy myself, but first off.
So it took me a while to like actually go buy this at the register.
This guy watching me buy one can of beer and I was like, I got to do it.
It's for it's for a bit.
So thank you guys.
I saw I was grabbing some food at a bar this weekend and I saw these two guys buy two bottles of Bud Light and another table just bulldogged them.
Just gave them a look.
It was like the biggest like political statement ever, Nick.
Wow, it's terrible.
I mean, listen, the things that you'll sacrifice for the show, like drinking a Bud Light, is really worthy of some praise, for a lot of reasons.
But yes, thank you.
I think I've stepped right in it, right?
I've made it known where I lead politically.
We are already controversial, folks, with the host of Can We Please Talk, one of my favorite podcasts of the moment.
Mike, Nick, we gotta start in the land of Iowa.
And before we get started, a quick note.
I've been to Iowa a few times now for the past two election cycles in order to be there for the caucuses.
Infamously, I was in Iowa in 2020.
I got COVID before anybody knew what COVID was.
Thought I was going to die in a Des Moines hotel.
Nick, Mike, have either of you ventured to the land of Iowa?
I mean, I've driven through lots of times, sure.
I have flown over it, as affectionately known, right, as the flyover states.
I've waved to it before on my way to Vegas.
I think that's the way, from New York, yeah, I think it takes that flight path.
The beautiful people of Iowa, I will tell you this, I had Reggie Love, and he's become a friend now, former Obama aide, and he was telling me some stories about Iowa and, like, the good people there.
And after I came on you guys' show a few months back, I got tweets, DMs from people that live in some of these southern states that are democratically in.
They're like, Hey, there's actual people here.
Like don't bash Georgia at the time we were talking about Georgia.
So to the good people of Iowa out there, I will go visit you one day.
Maybe I'll make it into a big 10 trip as a, as a big 10 guy, I'm taking an Iowa basketball game.
Listen, Iowa is full of good people, and it is also one of the most conservative batshit states.
And listen, it is a really strange thing whenever it comes around.
When the Democrats used to have their first contest there, you know, this is of course the state that sent Barack Obama on his way, which shocked everybody.
For the Republican contest, it turns into who is the most conservative, particularly who is the most evangelical conservative, It's a really, really strange state, and it is still up there for the Republicans.
So we have now seen Ron DeSantis, Florida governor, who, according to reports, everybody is a couple of weeks out from starting his exploratory committee for his presidential run.
He went out to Iowa, hung out in Des Moines, spoke to a couple hundred people, was out there shaking hands.
It was not the greatest time that anybody has ever had in Iowa.
It's not so sure that he necessarily plays to the audience.
Mike, Nick and I have been covering for the last month, month and a half or so, the fact that Ron DeSantis' attempt to run for the presidency not gotten off to the best start.
What are your takeaways so far?
Well, I mean, DeSantis is a personal subject because I live in Miami, Florida, for those of you who don't know.
So I'm in DeSantis State.
I wouldn't say county because this is one of the blue dots of Florida, obviously with Broward and Palm Beach as you go a little further up.
And then as you get really further up, That's where the crazies kind of live, right?
Shout out to everybody up there that lives in Orlando and North.
But it's funny because I've been talking about this not only with family members.
Last year on the show, right before the midterm elections, we did some focus group stuff at a couple of the different universities.
I know you guys may have seen, as we're recording this today, the new There's a law that he put into effect about diversity, equity, and inclusion being taught at the universities in Florida, so now the state won't pay for that.
They're not gonna be spending money on these programs.
There's limits on how race can be discussed.
And I just think that DeSantis has mentioned about different things with respect to what he's done Florida-wise, and I don't think it translates nationally.
First off, as somebody who's now been on television, also worked on television, there's a character element to this.
You have to play a character.
The fact that the 2018 debates when he was prepping with Matt Gaetz and the fact that it came out that he wrote the word likable on one of his cards in this debate prep, it just shows you that he is not likable.
He knows he's not likable.
They know it's a trait that doesn't translate and that may work In Port St.
Lucie, and that may work in Clearwater, in Tampa, we've all been there, right?
We've all talked to people that are so far right, they're off the cliff, and they just don't, they live in disbelief.
So I believe, I believe, as opposed to fact, right?
I believe I'm a millionaire, but my accountant tells me I'm not.
So we have to get back to right, wrong, fact, fiction at some point.
These people don't believe that.
That works for DeSantis, that's great.
That doesn't translate nationally, because there's already somebody like him that has already done this before, and he's carrying 40%.
So I'm curious to see how he thinks that this exploratory committee, how they go back to him and tell him where he's weak and where he can actually attack Trump if he wants to become the eventual nominee.
Because there are some things – I can't believe I'm saying this sentence, folks – There are some things that DeSantis has actually done in Florida.
He's increased teacher pay and has added a billion dollars in teacher pay budget.
Then he does something like this where he's like, yes, but also you can't teach history.
You can't teach diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Like, so it's like he takes one step forward, 11 steps backwards.
And I don't think that that stuff translates.
I've talked to people With this new immigration bill that he's passed down here.
Construction businesses that are affected by this because a lot of their workers come from undocumented folks that are just looking for jobs and they pay them a good wage and then they work for them and now these folks are subject to be arrested for having undocumented workers and they're moving to other states.
The permitless carry stuff that he put into effect with respect to the gun law.
Sensible gun owners are like, what is this?
This is this is this is the actual talking point that Democrats will take nationally and say, look, you want this guy being in charge of the entire thing?
So I don't think Ron DeSantis translates to the GOP front runner in 2024.
They already got a crazy guy in the former president.
Well, you know, we keep talking about likability, and my response tends to be, well, Trump is not likable, and look how well he did.
But I think that might be the point.
So I think, and also to get into DeSantis' brain for a second, which I really don't want to do, but I have to imagine he's saying that to them, saying, What's the big deal?
Look at Trump.
Look what he was able to do.
He's not that likable either, and yet he can do that.
Why can't I just be the same kind of person and not have to do all that stuff that I'm obviously not good at in terms of people skills?
I think the difference is that Trump, as unlikable as he is, has fun being unlikable.
Do you know what I mean?
He's out there hooting and hollering and doing what he wants to do, and I think it gives people an attempt to live vicariously through a guy who just goes up there and doesn't give a shit.
By the way, if you have to write likable on a card, that's a problem.
You know what I mean?
Like if you have to remind yourself to be that.
And we have seen one thing after another with DeSantis how uncomfortable he is.
Like how he doesn't want to be around people.
He doesn't want to talk to people.
He can provide the cruelty and actually can provide more cruelty than Trump through what he achieves.
You know what I mean?
But he's not, you're not having a good time with Ron DeSantis.
It's like sharing a room with like a cold-blooded person.
And by the way, Mike brought up this idea of what got passed down there with education reform.
All of this has been, like, on the books for forever, right?
Like, going after, you know, quote-unquote CRT, inclusivity, diversity, all of that.
What is at the bottom of it?
It is the State Bill 240, which is making Florida, quote, the number one for workforce education.
What does that mean?
It's not about giving people a well-rounded education.
It's about turning your educational system into a pipeline for people to be employable and to not get paid all that much money and not necessarily, you know, be able to make their own way and be creative and move outside the system.
That's bloodless!
Do you know what I mean?
Like, at least Trump can go out and say some stuff and insult some people.
This hardcore stuff that is being done on behalf of billionaire donors and all these libertarians at these think tanks It's not easy to sell that to people because I think politics have changed.
And Mike, maybe you can speak to this.
Like politics right now is not about actually getting anything done.
It's about like stamping your feet as you pretend to get things done and tell people you've got things done that haven't actually gotten done.
And in this case, like the DeSantis experience is just like it's pretty joyless where I think people are looking for some sort of an expression of anger or at least like agreement that Trump gives them.
Yeah, you know, I mean, as you were saying that I was thinking because Florida, Texas, right?
My sister lives in Texas.
I'm here in Florida.
So like it's it's the two states that are probably the most in the news cycle with respect to not only the mass shootings that have happened, but the gun laws of both governors have done similar stunts in terms of sending migrants and busing them to or flying them to Martha's Vineyard.
In DeSantis's case, obviously, the governor of Texas sending them to buses in D.C. to Kamala Harris's house.
Like they're following the same playbook.
But the problem is, is that these are the audiences that want to keep coming back to the show.
Right.
Like these are the audiences that are going to keep watching this.
I don't know if that plays in Kansas.
Right.
They Kansas just had something on the in terms of abortion.
And we saw how that turned out.
Right.
And that didn't play well for the GOP back in November of twenty twenty two.
So other states, I don't think that these guys translate into, you know, beating somebody like Donald Trump.
Donald Trump already has gone down in those states.
If he's already polling, and I saw something about that Trump has taken the biggest lead in the GOP field so far, like three in five potential Republican primary voters are already backing him.
Where is DeSantis going to pull in those other primary voters from the GOP side in some of these others?
Where is he going to do it?
I just don't know where he's going to do it.
Yeah, of course in Florida, but he's not going to be able to win certain states.
And you mentioned something about Trump, it's so funny.
In 2016, during the Republican primaries, and as you guys have known, or for the people that don't know, that listen to this great show, I worked at Fox News once upon a time, right?
I worked there for three years or two and a half years.
And I also worked in a little bit of conservative politics, radio stations, stuff like that.
And I still have friends that are on Fox News, on Air Talent, things like that.
In 2016, when the primaries were happening, And Kasich was kind of making sense a little bit in terms of the GOP face and message.
Trump was doing all of the jokes, right?
Little Marco, Rand Paul, I hope you're having, you know, having a little trouble hearing tonight, right?
So everyone was laughing at the comedian on stage and not really listening to the guy giving the PSA right after him.
And that's what my hugest takeaway was from talking to Republican voters at the time in different states.
Trump gets it.
He's funny.
Forget about the drain the swamp and all the messaging that came after it.
It was this guy's funny and he's not part of the establishment.
And the people behind him that were actually giving The Republican message at the time that is now, see you later, that's that's gone and long gone.
Seven years, eight years now, that's gone.
But like, it's so funny.
Where is DeSantis going to pick that up?
Because the party is fractioned.
People know that he could get the Mitch McConnell's and those folks in line, but those folks are not carrying the water for this party anymore.
And I just don't see how I would think that he doesn't run based on current polling.
But again, we're so far away from 2024.
We'll see.
Nick, I want to share something with you before I do real fast like DeSantis is in a corner.
He can't run for governor of Florida again.
If he doesn't go now, he is out of the spotlight.
And I don't think he's going to become a senator from Florida.
I like that.
Then you've got four years of dead air.
And if Trump wins, my God, what do you do then?
Nick, based on what Mike just said, I want to read a quick quote and I want to get your reaction to it because this struck me.
DeSantis obviously, and again, like Nick and I, Mike I don't know if you've heard this, we've been offering DeSantis free advice just because of how bad that campaign has been.
We don't want either of these guys to win by any stretch of the imagination.
It's just shocking when you watch how bad this has gone.
This obviously is a new attempt at something.
This is what he said in front of 400-500 people.
Quote, if we make the 2024 election a referendum on Joe Biden and his failures, and if we provide a positive alternative for the future of this country, Republicans will win across the board.
If we do not do that, if we get distracted, if we focus the election on the past or on other side issues, then I think the Democrats are going to beat us again.
Nick, this idea of a positive alternative, to me, and I want to hear what you have to say on this, If you chop up the GOP electorate, there's not a lot of people who want you to pay hat service to Donald Trump.
They want you to call him a loser.
They're tired of him.
They want to move beyond him.
But you also have to serve the people who worship him like a living god.
You don't go out there and call for a positive alternative.
It doesn't feel, in old parlance, it doesn't feel like that dog will hunt.
Nick, how does it feel to you?
That was DeSantis who said that?
That was DeSantis, yeah.
That is lame.
Well, it's bizarre, you know, because he's so negative with everything.
How is he trying to paint this thing that he's actually trying to do a positive The other thing I think is the issue here is that, first of all, he might not be running for 2024.
I mean, he'll run for 24, but it's for 28.
A lot of times you'll see that, right?
They'll kind of throw their hat in, get their name going, get on the stage the first time, knowing they're going to take their lumps and lose, and then they can be ready for the next elections.
It's probably part of it.
The irony, I want to get your guys' take on it, is that Trump is now attacking him from the left on abortion, for instance.
So suddenly, DeSantis' abortion ban is, like, too extreme for Trump.
And they're kind of sniping at each other.
I find that fascinating, that somehow he's probably going to try and carve out an even farther right-wing platform, as if that might be the solution here, to try and capture some extra votes in here.
But I'm wondering what you guys think about that.
Well, to go ahead and bring Trump into this thing, because one of the things that happened here is, and we just need to reiterate, how much Donald Trump actually hates his base.
Like, how many times has Donald Trump absolutely left his supporters, like, out in the freezing cold, you know, to get, like, hypothermia, and just been like, Hey, Mr. President, can you hear us?
in his own jet.
In this case, that's exactly what he did in Iowa.
He canceled an event for severe weather, which didn't materialize.
Turns out it wasn't going to be very well attended, so it got canceled.
But what does he do, Nick?
He goes ahead and he takes that time and he calls in to, we have the audio from this, Mike Flynn's Reawaken America Tour, which is just a rebranding of QAnon.
Nick, can you play this real fast?
Hey, Mr. President, can you hear us?
I can.
This place is going crazy.
I want to thank you all for being here.
It's a wonderful hotel, but you're there for an even more important purpose.
And I I will say General Flynn, he's some general, he's some man.
He took abuse like nobody could have handled that.
He came out bigger, better, stronger than ever before.
We love him.
He's a leader.
And you just stay wealthy and healthy and well and everything.
I want you to have great lives in general.
You just have to stay healthy because we're bringing you back.
We're going to bring you back.
That's right.
That is Mike Flynn, who more or less committed treason against the United States of America, being promised a position within a new Trump government, which is not doubling down.
It's a tripling down on all of the hurtful elements.
But I do want to point out off of what Nick just said, and Mike, I want to hear what you have to say, too.
Trump doesn't have to be anywhere on the political spectrum.
Because none of it matters!
You can be left, you can be right, you can be center, you can be all things at once, because he doesn't actually mean anything that he says.
And so as a result, he can go left of a Democrat, he can go right of a Republican, and it really doesn't matter at any given time, because he's not being serious about any of this shit.
You know, oh my God, I'm dealing with this in Florida in real time, guys, with so many different family members.
And Jared, you and I talked about this on my show about, you know, if you talk to these people and you get, you unearth a little bit of what they're going through, they tend to break down and that's why they've gotten into the conspiracy rabbit hole stuff, like what Flynn, you know, obviously a lot of people have accused him of being actual Q of QAnon fame.
And so I'm dealing with that in real time, but There's gotta be, there's been so many books written about the former president and there's been so many documentaries and things like that, but no one has ever gotten into the ethos of like, how his people, how that quote that he said of, I could go on 5th Ave and shoot somebody and not lose somebody.
There was a CNN segment, maybe a year or two ago, where they played that clip for somebody.
The lady had never seen it before.
She was a Trump voter.
And she said, literally right after, you can YouTube this, this was on CNN, Alison Camerota, who's a friend of mine, former Fox News and CNN host, she was doing this moderation with these like four or five people.
And the lady said, well, I gotta be honest, I really need to know why he did shoot somebody because he's never shot anybody before.
And in my takeaway, I was like, that is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard, mainly on the principle of, he shot somebody.
The action is, he admitted, I'm going to shoot somebody.
He ends up doing it, her response is, I need to know the reason?
Man, this is the problem we're having in America right now and I know I've said this before and Nick's gotten mad at me, this Nick and my Nick too, like we got to get out of the R&D and get back to right wrong.
How do I do that America?
Muckrakers, I'm gonna do it.
I'm gonna single-handedly do it with some help of course.
I'm gonna get us back to right wrong, like we need to get back to right wrong.
The man just admitted he's going to shoot somebody, and then he does it, and you're telling me you're still going to support him?
I don't care what he did.
He should be disqualified from that.
Like, what are we doing?
We've got to change the entire system, the laws around this.
He's indicted already in one state.
He could get indicted in another state.
He could get arrested.
He could go to jail, talk to legal analysts.
He could still be the president of the United States.
How?
How is that possible?
That's a right-wrong thing.
Forget about R&D for a second.
So the Trump Hypnosis that he has on people.
And I've seen it in my family.
A friend of mine works for Eric Trump.
He works for the Trump properties in my family.
We stopped talking because all of a sudden the election's stolen.
I can't deal with that.
You think the election's stolen?
Please live over there.
I will live over here.
But my big issue is I've seen it consume family members of mine, and I've seen it play out obviously through the different outlets.
And the issue I have is that when I go back to them, My argument is right, wrong.
The shirt I'm wearing for the people who can't see it is blue.
Whether or not it makes me look stupid is an opinion.
The first one's a fact.
We can't debate the first one.
We got people debating the first one.
They're debating it like as if their life depends on it because Trump has told them, don't believe what Mike Leon or other people are telling you about this shirt being blue.
This is wild to me.
I don't know.
I'm going to try my hardest with the platform I have to continue to break down things like that and get us back to right wrong.
But we've got some mentalities to change.
And I don't know how the Democrats message to that mentality when that woman's admitting she heard the guy say he's going to commit a crime.
He commits it.
I still need to know more.
I don't know how we break through that.
Maybe you guys can answer that better.
But the Trump phenomenon, to me, is wild.
It's fizzled.
It's fizzled.
I don't think DeSantis can catch the wave of the fizzle.
Tim Scott's not going to catch it.
Nikki Haley's not going to catch it.
Vivek Ramaswamy, I don't know how to pronounce his last name.
I apologize to him.
He's not going to catch it either.
Sorry, Vivek.
Aza Hutchinson, though.
Aza Hutchinson.
But Asa Hutchinson is the John Kasich.
Asa Hutchinson is the John Kasich.
It's a moderate leaning sort of Republican governor in a state where they balanced the budget, not too much uproar in that state.
I mean, there's a few things now that Sarah Huckabee Sanders has taken over, but He's trying to play the Kasich role.
And like I said before, it's the same thing.
The comedian's on.
The comedian's on for 40 minutes.
How are you going to follow that act?
And nobody right now from those folks are going to be able to follow that act, unfortunately.
Yeah, I think that the Trump thing is hard.
I think there's a lot of people in that in this generation of voters that you're not going to get back.
And, you know, I try and say that, like, there's not a whole lot that you can do.
You're not going to find a Democrat who is going to out Trump Trump.
You shouldn't even try and do that.
I think that's absurd.
You can speak to a certain amount of them if there is, like, you know, sort of a self-serving motive underneath, which is a large part of it, you know?
It's Trump comes out and tells people, hey, all of your wildest dreams are going to come true, and by that I mean I'm going to make everyone that you hate upset.
I can't do anything else for you.
Like, you know, no, by the way, I'll go and tell you your jobs are coming back.
They're not going to come back except for they're going to come back and you're going to get paid less for them.
You're going to have less guarantees.
You're probably going to lose your 40 hour work week.
It'll go up to 60 to 70, maybe 80 hours a week.
But it is it.
We've talked about it on the show.
It is a very ugly, weird, post-postmodern campaign that has absolutely nothing to do with any sort of promise towards construction, any sort of promise towards goals.
I think you have to, and this is one of the Democratic Party's problems, you have to promise something.
And right now they're not necessarily promising anything, right, Nick?
I mean, it feels like maybe right now people want to look at this and they say, ah, at least he entertains me.
At least he pisses off who I hate.
Well, I think the fear also is that four years is a long time and a lot of time for people to forget January 6th or just forget the general overall destruction of the country he did, he committed.
So they might be thinking, well, you know, this is round two.
Uh, Biden won the first time.
Then, you know, Trump, Trump can win the next one.
You know, let's keep this balance.
I mean, listen, if you look at the NBA MVP voting, uh, the guy that had the best MVP case this year was a guy who already won twice in a row and he lost because just because of that.
Well, in that line of thinking, it's like Biden could have a great four-year run and really do some great things.
But like, oh, he's already done it.
He's won it.
It's time.
Let's just have the other guy win it since it's the same race.
It is frightening that that easily could be part of the thing here.
And remember, Trump can't win with just the cults behind him.
Right.
He wins.
He gets those 71 million votes in 2020 because a huge portion of those are these moderate Republicans who are willing to just sort of deal with him because they like the fact that they can pay a little bit less in taxes, I suppose.
And that's that's really where we are.
And that that probably is the most.
That's the worst part of what we are in right now is that we can't enough of these sort of what, you know, educated college Republicans to see that it turns out when you have a government and electoral system that is based on minoritarian power, it turns out that stuff like this can happen and it gets really, really ugly.
Real fast before we move on, Mike, right now from where you're sitting, how you're looking at all this, it sounds like you're pretty convinced that Trump's going to win this nomination.
Is that where you're at?
And I certainly think that that is the odds-on favorite at this moment.
I think there's still an opportunity for him to win the presidency.
I hate saying that out loud, but what's your gut telling you right now?
Well, I mean, we were talking about this the other day on the show because I know you guys covered the Trump Town Hall last week.
It was the talk of everybody and whether or not it should have aired on CNN is a different debate.
But I just feel right now, to Nick's point before about you can't win with just a cult.
I've gotten a few texts, now that people know I have this platform, right, and I have this show, and you know, members of Congress come on the program and stuff like that.
I've gotten texts from people, conservative, have Republican leanings, they live in New York, they live in Michigan, they live in Florida, and I get text messages now, it's time to move off Trump.
It's time to do the DeSantis 24, let's try something new, right?
I just don't know If that, again, we didn't think Biden would win the Democratic nomination, okay, during the primaries.
Nobody thought Biden, he was the golden savior two years before the primary, then whether or not Biden was gonna run, who knows, who knows, then all of a sudden you got Buttigieg was doing pretty decent, and you got Bernie, and then all of a sudden Biden was dead in the water.
Dead in the water, right?
And so right now DeSantis, to me, is dead in the water.
And I just, I think that Trump, There, for some reason, there is nobody that is more oversaturated than Donald Trump, yet we're not sick of him.
You know, I worked in radio for forever and playlists, we would talk about saturation with respect to music, like Donald Trump's song is on repeat all the time.
And these people love it and they want to hear it all the time.
Even my favorite song, I don't want to hear it all the time.
My favorite movie, A Few Good Men, I don't want to watch it all the time.
These people want to watch the Trump rallies.
They want to hear the stuff all the time.
That momentum is really tough to break.
DeSantis doesn't have that.
And these other jabronis, to use a wrestling term there, Jared, they don't got it either.
They don't.
And the bigger question, and by the way, Biden would not have got the nomination if Barack Obama hadn't gotten on the phone with the Democratic field and said, hey, let's all unite in South Carolina around Joe Biden.
I don't know who that person is in the Republican Party.
I really, truly don't at this point because it's such a fractured party that there's so many different elements that are going to war.
All right.
We got to talk about this.
Nick, the Daily Beast, which by the way has suddenly turned into an incredible publication for going after corruption and the misuse of funds by politicians.
Hats off to everybody over there.
You are killing it right now.
Sam Brody has found that independent senator from Arizona, Kirsten Sinema, it seems Has been holding quote-unquote fundraisers in cities where it just so happens she's wanting to run in marathons.
This has happened already a half dozen times.
It appears as over $100,000 worth of campaign finances have been used for her to stay in luxury hotels.
At least $105,000 spent on hotels.
It seems that at least $18,000 have been used specifically for these races.
Apparently, she goes, holds a fundraiser, doesn't make any money from them whatsoever, then goes and runs in these marathons.
Apparently, she has a marathon addiction.
Nick, this is really gross.
There's a lot that we can get into here and a lot of numbers that we need to look at and a lot of things that we need to take a glance at.
But Kirsten Sinema, right up there with your George Santos and your Hershel Walkers in terms of just like open, like completely undeniable corruption.
Well, I love the image of, like, a beautiful mind.
They've got all of her campaign stops on a map with, like, a red pin, and they're staring at it for a while, and they're like, wait... The Rock and Roll Marathon Hall of Fame run!
Now, here's the bigger problem, because independent of the actual corruption, because you know what?
At this point, this is what they do, right?
This is why they do this, or a lot of them do.
Um, you know, Jared, you're a runner.
I don't know, Mike, if you run, but if you were going to be training to run, and she finishes these marathons, right?
I think she finishes them, right?
So, you know, in order to do that, the training required to be able to finish a marathon is very substantial, and it would take so much time away from her actual job That's what's... Now listen, I'm not saying don't be fit when you work for the government or whatever.
That's great.
But, you know, if you want to run like a couple miles a day, great.
You're talking about 10-15 miles at a time you have to run.
That's hours every day that you'd have to try and do something to do that.
That is probably more galling to me than anything.
And I don't understand how she can get away with this as long as she has.
And I suspect it won't last much longer.
Nick, this is why you were one of the greatest co-hosts in the history of anything, is that you latched on to the time necessary to train for the running.
That's fantastic!
And by the way, for the record, for anybody listening to this, she has missed a lot of her Senate business going on these trips and running, including, like, big giant votes on, like, cabinet-level positions.
Like, she has missed tons and tons of votes and time.
Luckily, if you're in Congress, you don't work that much.
That's the good news in all of this.
Do you think that when she shows up the first day, they kind of give her the lay of the land that way?
Because it was a lot like Trump's cabinet.
It was so corrupt from day one that somebody had to have said, hey, don't worry about it.
You know, $20,000 skiff, no problem.
And you know, flights, right?
Someone had to have sort of made that clear to everybody or they just sort of assumed and then nothing happened.
I can't wrap my head around that boldface corruption that happens like that.
I'm still wrapping my head around Nick thinking about all the training that she had to do.
And now, now I'm sitting here going, if tomorrow somebody told me I could be corrupt, but all I got to do is go outside and run into Miami heat and get 105.
Got to make choices.
I gotta make choices.
I gotta drink water.
I gotta hydrate, right?
I gotta train.
But it is true, though.
You sent me this article, Jared, and I was cracking up because some of the quotes in here about the FEC violations and using the campaign funds.
I remember I was talking recently on some panel about Justice Clarence Thomas in the report from ProPublica, right?
And it's like, when's the last time you spent 500k on one of your friends?
I mean, you guys are friends.
None of you have spent 500k.
I wouldn't spend that on my Nick on my show.
So it's wild to me that she's doing this and The biggest thing that has come out of politics over the last eight years, in my opinion, has been accountability.
It's been consequences.
Maybe we could point to one or two examples from the Senate and House of different members.
George Santos now is under indictment for some stuff.
And one or two people or examples that we could point to of like clear violations this person either resigned or now they're in jail right like and either I'm talking about across state legislatures I'm talking about at the federal level right now but we just see more and more examples of this and Nobody follows the trail afterwards.
Like, what's gonna come of this?
What do we think's gonna come of this?
That now good journalism has uncovered this?
You think anything's gonna happen to Kyrsten Sinema?
No, it's more likely that Ruben Gallego takes her seat and wins that in 24, as opposed to anything happening to her on this.
And that, therein lies the problem, my friends.
That is a huge problem, that you could just get this money and set up this extravagant plan of running marathons to get money.
Like, listen to this sentence, to this paragraph.
Well, and I want to point something out.
Her losing that seat is not going to be the worst thing that ever happened to her.
In fact, that might even be better for her.
Because in her time as senator, she has absolutely cuddled up to every single corporate special interest donor imaginable.
And she went out there and she was the deciding vote on one thing after another.
Her and Joe Manchin were the deciding votes on holding back a more robust agenda from Joe Biden.
She has just absolutely made one friend after another in all this.
She's going to fight to get re-elected, but if she loses, she's going to end up on a board or be a chief lobbyist like that.
The whole point of this, and by the way, going back to George Santos, The details that have come out, that dude was stealing campaign funds not necessarily to buy himself a house, to go on lavish vacations.
He was paying his credit card bill.
He was paying for a car payment.
Like, what we're looking at here with Kirsten Sinema, it's not just corruption.
It's low rent corruption.
You know what I mean?
And Nick, you and I have talked about shame and we've talked about how this stuff works.
If I was a United States Senator, which by the way is an incredible amount of trust being put into you by a state, you know what I mean?
If I was going to face a choice whether or not to be corrupted, I think about, oh my god, like 1950s style anguish in the movies, going on long walks, kicking rocks, you know, self soul-searching.
Like, you would think that it would have to be for something huge.
She's doing this to run in a marathon.
You know what I mean?
Like, she is literally betraying her office and the trust of the people in order to, like, just, like, jet set around with her friends.
Nick, it is, like, this is lame shit.
And I think it represents, going back to Thomas, like, it's not like Thomas has gotten millions of dollars from Harlan Crowe.
Do not get me wrong, but it's also low-rent shit like getting free polos on a group trip, you know?
It's like it shows how much these people do not respect their office or their responsibilities.
I mean, I think in another era that this would have been a disgrace and she would have had to step down on her own, like it wouldn't have stood.
She would have probably been hounded every day by multiple reporters in and out of the Capitol.
You know what I mean?
Until the point where the American public My opinion changed as well.
I think that's probably one of the biggest problems that we ended up developing out of the Trump era was that there is no shame.
The worst part about coming out of the Trump era and what he did was that there is no shame.
There's no disgrace.
I mean, think about Al Franken having to step down for what he did there.
Like that would never happen in a million years now on either side.
And that's that's the effect that this has happened.
There isn't any sort of self-governance on this.
And then it falls in on the Supreme Court and all those things as well.
If we've already, if we kiss that whole notion goodbye, right, and it could be a lot of propaganda, Jared, you know, the historical aspect, I've always said, it seemed like the Supreme Court justices back in the day really took their, you know, took it seriously in ethics.
Like, they probably didn't, right?
Like, Justice Kaye was carrying on the whole time and we didn't, you know, we just assumed he was an upstanding, you know, nice person and a good father, a good husband.
And yet we realize now that that's never really been the case.
No, and here's the thing.
Supreme Court has been corrupted since the moment that it was given, well, I'm sorry, that it gave itself the powers that it has.
But second of all, the golden age of corruption was a spoiled system in which they were building things.
You looked up and suddenly there was a bridge, you know?
Suddenly there was like an interstate system.
Things were getting done and people were getting rich off of it.
I'm not sitting here defending it, but at least there was like something you could say, hey look at this, as opposed to here is my medal of participation from the Boston Marathon.
Wait, so you know what you're describing is pork, right?
Everyone is against pork barrel politics.
In reality, you're right.
We would actually benefit, somebody would benefit.
A bridge is helpful and jobs and whatnot.
I'm not saying we should go back to it, but it's better than this system that we have.
Yeah, you're right.
I mean, I know I've said in my house before, it would be better to go back to that versus what they're doing, pocketing it directly in their pockets and not doing any work.
Look, last thing I would leave you guys on, if Nick was alluding to this about time periods and eras, great show right now on HBO Max, shout out to my former employer, The White House Plumbers, that talks about all of the stuff that happened in the 70s with the Watergate scandal.
Like, there was a time when people were like, hey, you did something improper here, I'm gonna go ahead and need you to resign.
No questions asked, go ahead, she resigned.
And we don't have that anymore.
And back to your Al Franken point,
Al Franken shouldn't have resigned back then because again the photo that came out and the evidence even I think even the woman in the photo was like he's been a friend for like decades like don't don't do that don't you know again again not defending the photo but he would not have resigned now and and that was the I heard him recently on Conan O'Brien talking about that's his biggest misstep he's like in today's politics I shouldn't have resigned and the fact that Democrats held me a little bit more to the fire on that
And what we're seeing now, I mean, we're talking about a woman that's pretending to do these lavish races just to get money, campaign money, and using it in the most, the dumbest of ways possible.
So, like, I'm with you on that, Nick.
Like, in a different era, we, well, first off, in a different era, we're not on StreamYard doing this, but, like, right now, we would, whatchamacallit, we'd have to go on traditional television and be clamoring for Kristen Sinema, but she already would have been alluded to the fact she would have already resigned.
I want to say real fast on the Democratic Party side, this is something that it's really important to bring up when it comes to something like the Franken thing.
The Democratic Party's ethos and operating system for a long time has been, we may not get things done and we may not win elections, but we're on the right side of history.
We'll be the ones who go ahead and do the thing that we would want the Republican Party to do.
And in all of that, like the Republican Party is like, no, we are in this for power.
You know, we have an agenda that we are following, and we're going to do it, and we're going to be as absolutely relentless as possible.
Which, by the way, Kirsten Sinema fit right in with them.
And I don't know what's going to happen to her, but I'm glad this is being exposed.
It's really, really important.
Speaking of being glad that things are being exposed, I'm going to say something that you don't hear very much on the Muckrake Podcast.
The New York Times ran a pretty good article That I wanted to get into for a minute just in order to get these numbers down and have a quick discussion about it.
They started talking about the fact that the boom generation is not just moving towards retirement, but again, a lot of them are passing away.
We have now reached a point because of, and we'll get into the specifics of it and I'll detail it in a minute, where the boom generation has way more in assets than every other generation.
Here are the numbers.
It is estimated right now that the Boomer Generation has $78.3 trillion in assets.
The Silent Generation, which of course came before them, has $18.1 trillion.
Gen X, poor Gen X. Poor Gen X!
Fellas, I'm looking at you, I'm thinking about you, I'm sending my thoughts.
The Generation X has $47.8 trillion, and of course the Millennials are trailing behind at $14.2.
As the boomer generation passes away and retires, we're going to see one of the largest transfers of wealth in the history of humanity.
The question is, what do you do about it?
Is there anything you do do about it?
Statistics have shown that it's going to lead to the rich becoming richer and greater inequality.
Mike, how do you find this?
What do you think about it?
How do you even start to address something like this?
Well, first off, let me start off with a joke, as I always do.
What generation am I in?
I'm 41 years old.
Can somebody tell me which one I'm in?
We are geriatric millennials.
That's what we are.
Okay.
Is that a real coin term?
Geriatric millennials?
That's an actual term.
We're geriatric millennials.
You know, I wanted to get on that wealth inequality part of this.
First off, shout out to the New York Times for actually writing a good piece and follow the New York Times PitchBot that makes fun of all these ridiculous headlines that they put out there.
But when you realize that you think about some of the older folks in politics, specifically from a donor perspective, Right, just look at the Harlan Crowe story that we were talking about.
Both of those men are late in their age, right?
They're in that baby boomer generation.
And when you start to think about where that money comes under, right?
And like when that gets transferred over to people, what are the political leanings of those folks?
That's the first thing that kind of came up to me, right?
Because when I start thinking about Uh, Trump and different people that are in the Trump orbit right now that do have money from a donor perspective.
And when I think about the younger generation, you know, I've talked to different reporters that have covered different states, battlegrounds, and it's always, you tend to lean politically where your parents lean politically.
And then as you start getting older, when you're younger, right?
You don't have as many responsibilities.
You're a little bit more careless with money.
You tend to lean more democratic because your friends are going through social issues.
And then as you get older and you start a family and a house, everybody, the old adage is, you know, you start to lean more Republican.
I'm just curious to see where that vacuum is going to get filled because as we start to see the money transfer in politics to continue with our overall theme and conversation, like that's where my focus is right now.
Where is that money and where are the ideological beliefs of the people that are going to inherit that money?
Right, because I'm not there yet.
My daughters are too young to know ideological beliefs because I don't think that's talked about on Peppa Pig.
But as they start to get a little bit older, right, and what their dad believes in, I'm curious as where that money is going to go and where the people are going to spend in terms of getting people to vote on these specific issues.
That's the first thing that came to mind as I started reading about this wealth transfer thing.
And then the other part of this is Oh man, there's a huge inequality gap, right?
In terms of just how many billionaires there are and millionaires here in society, over 700 or so.
And then like you think about people that are in those other generations that don't have the money.
I remember talking to representative Jamal Bowman about what are some things we could do from a wealth inequality standpoint.
I know he's introducing some legislation on that babies over billionaires act and what that does in terms of unrealized gains and taxing people and stuff like that.
That's the second part of this, right?
Like, how do we start to distribute some of the wealth inequality that we have in this country?
But the first part is, for me, where's that money going to and what do those people believe?
We all watch Succession, right?
Logan Roy, we saw it.
No spoiler alerts here on The Muckrake, but if you didn't see the latest episode, there's a key divide and that stuff is playing out at Fox News with respect to what you see with Rupert and where his sons lean politically.
I've seen it as a person who's received a paycheck.
With Rupert's name on it.
Where the sons feel that they should not only take the company, but ideological beliefs, both of them have different ones.
Where that money is going to start to funnel into that next generation is something I'm going to be watching for sure.
You know, also, just talking about the article talking about the tax code, because that was the thing I wanted to bring up as soon as I saw the headline, is, you know, there are things in place that are supposed to, you know, tax estates, the estate tax, to make sure that, you know, really wealthy people can contribute that way after they pass away, before they get to their heirs.
However, it's just like the tax code for the living people.
Where you'll see what the marginal rates are for someone who's wealthy, but then when you see the actual rate they pay because they understand how to game the system.
And by the way, we saw Trump talk about this during the, you know, the debates.
Gaming system might be too harsh.
It just simply is good tax, you know, filing.
You never pay anywhere near what that number is.
And I can remember hearing people even in college and growing up, people I knew and wealthy people who were railing against these tax codes, knowing full well that you weren't paying that.
It's the same thing with the tax code and you look at like what Donald Trump's father did for him.
He passed on his wealth before he died in a way that was untraceable from taxes.
That is really the big corruption scandal on that end as well because, you know, that is where you could transfer a lot of this wealth.
We're talking about the really wealthy people who are smart and have a lot of people working for them to help them figure this thing out.
That's where all that gets passed through and it doesn't get substituted taxes and it doesn't benefit the overall society.
You know, listen, if I had, you know, if you're someone who came here from another country and you had kids and they earned enormous wealth and they want to be able to pass it down to their children, like I could totally get it why they wouldn't want to have to spend a lot of money on taxes for that.
That was something they built up on their own through, you know, their own hard work.
So it's a it's a really valuable football for the political side who can make it sound like that the government is trying to steal your family's wealth and whatever.
But the bottom line is that the people who really have the money above 22, 23 million dollars that where the tax kicks in end up getting around so much of it doesn't even matter.
So this is a crime against the people, is what this is.
And it has been a crime against the people for generations.
And this is how this entire thing has played out.
Did the boomers have historic wealth because they were better and more talented than anybody else?
No.
They were born at the exact right time in the exact right country.
And most of them, by the way, were born white.
I know that's going to shock everybody.
Please don't get in a wreck.
Don't fly off a bridge.
Don't, like, you know, go into fits.
The whites have way more because not only was there a strategic advantage cooked into the entire pie from the beginning of this country, but the laws that happened both during the New Deal and during the New Deal consensus afterwards, ding, ding, ding, were strategized in order to benefit white people.
On top of that, they were born at a time which America was ascending.
This was right after the war.
They were the only economy that hadn't been bombed to shit.
As a result, it became the center of capitalism in the world.
Because of that, they got a heads up on everybody.
Also, by the way, because America was trying to go into an economic cold war with the Soviet Union, they wanted everybody to buy houses!
They wanted everybody to have a stake in the economy.
And guess what?
If you buy a house in the United States of America, you're in!
You are in a club.
Your wealth is going to appreciate.
Turns out, eventually, that all these algorithms, artificial intelligence, and corporate firms decided, hey, that's a pretty smart investment.
We're going to buy up all those houses.
It is almost impossible now to get into that club.
That door got sealed starting in the 1970s.
People started making less.
They started having less to be able to call their own.
And as a result, they have funneled all of that wealth.
The only thing to do at this point, and this goes back to what we were talking about with the Democratic Party, if the Democratic Party had any courage on this thing, we would start talking about not just keeping the inheritance tax alive, we would talk about a progressive inheritance tax.
Because, like you said, Mike, we only have so many billionaires in this country.
There's a small, small few of them.
It is top 10% of Americans hold the majority of the wealth in this country.
That's a small number.
Yes, they pay everything.
Yes, in dark money circles, they're paying all this stuff.
That is an issue to win with.
We have to reignite something approaching a square deal in this country, which we do not have.
It is absolutely a moment in time where we should be talking proactively about that, but the crickets that we're hearing, I think, are incredibly telling, which say that the people who should be taking care of this problem and should be taking a look at this, as opposed to this money just ending up in fewer and fewer hands, it should be redistributed, because it wouldn't be the first time.
It was already redistributed in the first place.
I just want to say something.
There's another solution to this, Jared.
I love it.
You described how they were so lucky in the timing of when they were born, and it's rooted in the fact that there was a war.
And let everyone else decimate it.
So the answer would be, great, let's have another world war where everyone else gets decimated and we're the only power left and then we can do it all over again.
Nick, that right there sounds like the beginnings of a new Cold War.
And it sounds like what neoliberalism needs in order to continue itself, which is more and more tension and authoritarian tactics in order to make sure that people are still going to work even though that square deal doesn't exist.
Yeah, I mean, well, first off, to put a bow on this segment, I was thinking, as Nick was talking, and he said a state tax, I'm thinking about Shawshank Redemption and Andy Dufresne asking that guy, do you trust your wife?
As the guy was coming into some money, and he's handing him over the thing and he goes, do you trust your wife?
Because the government doesn't tax that money if you transfer it over.
And here we are 30 some odd years later, after that movie's been made, Hollywood nominations, awards, he literally outlines what you can do to transfer money to people in your family, and nothing's been done about it.
It's only got worse.
It's only got worse.
Yeah, it's gotten worse.
And I was just going to say, Representative Jamal Bowman, the reason I keep championing him, obviously I'm from New York and he would have been my congressman if I still lived there, but he has talked about this in different interviews, not only on our show, but he's also been on television championing this, not so much the bill, obviously the bill just recently got co-sponsored and stuff like that, and he's out there now championing it, but talking about this wealth inequality, right?
You need more people like that.
Like you said, from the Democratic messaging standpoint, The Republicans love to message on things that could scare you and it feeds into why people hate watch, hate buy from that ecosystem.
Why there's 1.9 million subscribers on Fox station and CNN plus can't even get 10,000 views in a day, right?
Like people want to know that someone's trying to take something from them.
They message like that.
Democrats don't have that in reverse, at least from things that we've seen from different messages.
The one that worked the best, obviously Barack Obama, was change.
Change will come, right?
Change will come.
It's time to change something.
Change will come.
I don't care what we're changing, but we've got to change it, right?
And people like myself went out there and was like, yeah, change is going to come.
It's a rap lyric that Jadakiss said.
Change is going to come, just like Barack said.
And everybody campaigned off of that and changed.
Democrats just don't have that counter messaging right now.
Like you said, Jared, maybe this is one of the ways Democratic strategists who are listening to this podcast, maybe that's one of the ways this wealth inequality and targeting something like that that was talked about in this article.
Well, and that's the thing, as we hear from them, they're all like, my God, I wish that would happen!
Like, let's stop going towards centrism and modernism.
Real fast, we wanted to touch on something for just a moment.
I was really interested in this.
Apparently, with the new satellite radio, which by the way, I'm guilty, I enjoy satellite radio, I travel a lot, drive a lot, I want to listen to it.
We are entering a new era.
We're actually starting to sing an elegy for an unsung hero of American culture, which is AM radio, which is apparently not being installed in a lot of new cars, which is where a lot of people come across AM in the first place.
Also, AM radio has been responsible for some major seismic political movements in this country.
This is where talk radio, of course, sort of, like, got its momentum.
It grew into a conservative staple.
I just wanted to talk about this for a quick moment.
Mike, I know you have some thoughts about this with your background in radio, but this is actually a pretty large thing that we're seeing here change.
Yeah, I mean, I was telling you guys this off air, I'll bring it over here because, you know, I started out first working for a conservative radio station, one of the biggest ones in America, WR Radio, and at the time they were bought by Clear Channel, or they were about to get by Clear Channel when I First started with them.
And they had huge conservative radio talk show hosts, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly show was on there.
And so it was very customary when you look at, you know, the Arbitron numbers and that's that's the measurement for ratings.
That's the radio equivalent to Nielsen.
You would look at these ratings and you would see how conservative radio would perform versus just any other traditional show.
Because remember, For radio, what they tend to do is break it down, not only in the demographics, but they break it down by genre, right?
So Howard Stern's going up against other like-minded shows like that in terms of the genre.
Conservative radio was always blowing out of the water.
Anybody else that was in that lane, at least from the left side of this, there really wasn't a counter.
I think I think there was a there was one that kind of went the funk is Air America or something like that from from a while back.
And so what you're seeing is those folks are pivoting to podcast.
Right.
Great.
I look at the news commentary rankings all the time and I see myself behind Jenna Ellis and I see myself behind Tommy Lahren.
And I'm like, Jesus Christ, what what is going on?
Why can't I pass these folks?
And then I realize why, because what I just mentioned before funnels imperfectly.
There is an audience there.
That Fox News, Newsmax, OAN, and then that these conservative outlets have realized these folks will continue to pay to learn more about somebody potentially taking something away.
I will pay for that.
I want to learn more about why somebody wants to take this liberty or freedom away.
You see it throughout their messaging and they pay for it and they love it.
They soak it up.
Whereas the democratic messaging or at least, you know, uh, uh, left of center, No one wants to pay for that.
And look no further example than as we've seen technology and the advancements in audio platforms start to evolve from radio to the YouTube stuff to now podcast format and stuff like that.
Just look no further than Fox Nation.
You know, interest of full disclosure, I've been offered a job A couple years ago to go back to run Fox Nation digitally.
Couldn't do it.
I don't want to be associated with Tucker Carlson Originals.
I just don't.
I'm sorry.
I can't do it.
Diamond and Silk at the time, Rhonda, I can't do this.
I can't do it.
I can't justify the spend.
But Fox Nation is still alive and well right now.
They have 1.9 million subscribers at $5.99 price point.
CNN Plus With probably more host power, and they got Audie Cornish from NPR, they got Chris Wallace over from Fox News, they bring all these people on, Jake Tapper, Anderson Cooper, we're gonna do content, all this stuff, same price point, 50% off for life.
Guess what?
Guess what?
Mike, we get more listens than CNN got.
I'm sure you guys do too.
Listen, I don't know what CNN's number army are.
I get thousands of listeners, so shout out to me first.
But second, in all seriousness, it is wild that people don't want to listen to what is considered the traditional democratic messaging, right?
Trump Clinton News Network, right?
MSDNC, right?
He's coined all these terms, yet people are not watching it on there.
They're getting it from other outlets.
So when you talk about these radio stations leaving, Or at least the conservative angle of it leaving.
They're finding it in other ways.
They're finding it in other forms.
And Sirius has started to a little bit embrace that.
I'm a Sirius power user myself as well.
Have it in the car.
And they have a bunch of channels in the 100s, all filtering different political views, points from Reuters to CNN to MSNBC, a politics show.
I think News Nation has a channel on there.
NPR as well.
You're getting different viewpoints now.
It's not the traditional way of just going and getting it from your car and radio.
There's different ways to listen to it, but the evolving, the way it's evolved has been really interesting to watch.
And again, as somebody who's steeped in it and has worked in it, it's super interesting to see the way it is from when I started in 2003 at W.R.
to where it is now.
I mean, I'm not, there's no, it's nostalgia for me as far as AM going away.
I have sort of like sense memory and negative memory of like working at a parking lot and they would have the AM radio on and then the news, you know, music would come on for the hourly update or the quarter hourly update.
And it was staticky and it didn't sound, it was all tinny, didn't sound good.
You know, and it never sounded good.
That's the thing.
And then FM sounded better, which is why that became more popular.
And here we are.
At the very least, if we're going to talk about AM and pour one out for them, it's time to move on.
And I don't even know if I believe that 82 million Americans still listen to AM radio.
That's what that article says, but it seems hard to believe.
And at the very least, if that's the case, it's got to be all people over a very specific age and older than me.
I'm just going to use a number off of the last segment that we did.
There are 73 million boomers in this country.
So I do not doubt that 80 million people listen to AM radio.
It's every boomer that's still alive.
I'm not saying every boomer.
Listen, I want to say this very quickly.
I have nostalgia for AM radio because of the weird shit on AM radio.
Like there was like a certain time, like I'm a longtime traveler of driving back and forth across the country.
Man, I used to love, in the middle of nowhere, tuning through AM and finding weird stuff.
And I gotta tell you, this is where not just conservative talk got its legs, this is also where conspiracy theory America took off.
Like, in the middle of the night, you were more likely to find somebody talking about aliens and assassinations and vaccinations and all of that than anywhere else.
I think it's really interesting to think, going back to what Mike said, about how all these things have sort of been amalgam, you know, together to create sort of like these new sort of things.
I mean, I don't think anybody has benefited off of this more than somebody like an Alex Jones, really.
I mean, you know, like the way this stuff has been brought together, which is how the market works.
The market wants everybody to conglomerate and make something larger and make more money and bring people over.
But to go back to what you were saying, The left has not been able to do that, largely because it's not particularly interested in profits.
Like, if you're going to go on, I mean, the conversations that we've had just on this podcast today, like, this isn't stuff that we're going to go on CNN and have a conversation about.
We can't!
That's why podcasting is where this has taken off, and why people have started to migrate away from things like cable news.
I don't know about the rest of you, but when I see the numbers of the main shows, they're not that big.
Like, there are, you know, there are Twitch streamers who have, like, ten times the audience that, like, Rachel Maddow has.
You know, and even Tucker Carlson was bringing in 3 million, which is kind of like a paltry number.
That's not that huge, really.
And it feels like we have a lot of regard for these old mediums that don't really hold all that much power anymore.
And AM, Nick, going back to it, AM to me is analogous to a VHS.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, it's a nostalgia for a pastime that sort of set up something else.
But I think it's really important to point out, this is where, like, right-wing conservative talk radio and also Fox News and all the other groups of that, where those things came from.
Yeah.
No, I mean, the last thing I would say about that you were talking about driving through the country.
And that's one thing I used to do all the time wasn't a big flyer.
There's a backstory to that.
But we won't get into that.
Yeah, no, I love I should have been a trucker in a previous life.
I just I used to love getting on the open road and just listening.
And you're right.
That is the birth of it.
But one thing I wanted to mention was When you start thinking about, I was on an MSNBC Saturday night show that does decently well a few weeks back.
It got 616,000 viewers.
A friend of mine is a YouTuber and he's got 900,000 subscribers.
Like, I would have done better going on his YouTube channel than I did going on a major linear network in Saturday night at 8pm when like, well again, people over a certain age are watching it, but I would have done better going on his platform because the demo is probably a different demo and definitely people that will repeat as listeners.
It's changed dramatically.
And again, as somebody that's been in the industry and wanted to work in the industry since I was in college, it's been funny to see like the way technology has evolved.
Us three right now talking on a podcast is something that 2001 Mike would have been like, what the hell are you guys talking about?
Well, Mike, Big Rig, Leon, we do appreciate you coming on here.
As always, it's nice of you to join the show.
Tell the good people where they can find you.
Oh, I appreciate that.
I'm going to start using that nickname, Big Rig.
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Nick, it's funny that Mike brought that up.
I've always had a fantasy of being a long-haul truck driver.
Listening to books on tape, having a cool nickname like Rattle and Hum.
No, Nick can't do it.
I watched the movie Hoffa, and I think that cured me of wanting to be a truck driver.
But I do remember that somewhere in the 70s, talking about AM radios, one of my dad's friends had a car we had to borrow for like a week, and it had a CB radio in it.
Yes.
That might have been the one entry point I could have had.
That or maybe...
Gosh, what's the movie with Burt Reynolds and Sally Field?
Cannonball Run?
I'm a convoy man.
On the road, something like that.
Anyway, but no, I never harbored any kind of illusions.
Well, you know, as soon as I was asking that, I forgot about our trip to Arizona and how ready you were to be out of the car after five hours.
Yeah, like you were you were ready to be done after I think like two.
I'm just I'm just getting started at that point.
All right, everybody.
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