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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. You're listening to American Power. I'm your host, Nat Town, stand up comedian, speechwriter, many other kinds of writer, and most likely to get me written up by the IRS podcast host, I'm joined as always by my favorite panel of experts. Our expert on foreign policy and the military, it is Chad Scott.
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B
Yeah, thanks. Glad to be here. This is. This is going to be a pretty nebulous in depth discussion. We got a lot here.
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A
I can't wait to get into the nebulous depth. Depth now let me take that one again. I cannot wait to get into the nebulous depths with you. Nebulous depths with you. Hey, could you make a easier to pronounce comparison?
- [00:55]
B
Yeah, let me. It's kind of funny because those are like oxymorons, like the nebula.
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A
I'd love to get into the sort of unknown deep of this issue with you.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Wow, that's so much phonetically simpler. And speaking of my personal favorite amount of enunciation, our expert on energy, renewable oil and all other forms, you know him as Mr. Global. Please welcome to the podcast, by which I mean. How are you doing, Matt Randolph. How's it going, Matt?
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C
I'm great. How are you?
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A
I am excited to get into the unknown deep with you.
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C
Awesome. I'm googling.
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A
I'm googling the gurgling nebulous depths of this issue. Oh, I really nailed it that time.
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C
You did.
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B
There you go.
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C
I got my.
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A
We're recording this on Monday, May 25th. We're recording this Monday, May 25th. It is the evening and we're coming to you. Obviously there's a lot of big news coming over Memorial Day weekend. Top of line is, of course, that the New York Knicks are undefeated for 10 games in the playoffs and are about to sweep and I will hopefully not be proven wrong by the time this episode comes out. No, I'm sorry. The top of line news is that the New York Mets were briefly not in last place and are now in last place again. No, I'm sorry. The top of line news is that we have either a peace deal with Iran or. Or not a peace deal with Iran. Pretty important. Matt, I want to kick it off to you initially. Can you tell me what actually happened over this weekend? The reporting is confusing to me.
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C
Okay, so Trump came out and said, we've about reached a deal and then details of the deal leaked and then a bunch of Republicans got very angry like Ted Cruz, Mike Pompeo. What's Lady Lindsay or whatever.
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B
That guy, Lindsay Graham.
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C
Yeah, Lindsey Graham. Because it's a, it's, to me, it's like a surrender, like we're surrendering to Iran. We're going to give them money, they're going to charge tolls. We're not, we're not meeting any of our objectives. But still, I support the deal because I believe we just need to get the hell out of there regardless of the deal. That's. I will support any deal that ends it. I don't care. Because they didn't have anything before we went, they don't have anything now. We're square. But after all the push back from Cruz and Pompeo and Lindsay Graham, now they're simply rewording the deal. And it's going to be the exact same deal, but instead of us unfreezing Iran's assets as a form of payment to them, Qatar is going to just loan them that money and then Qatar will get their unfrozen assets. So it's, it's the same deal. They're just changing the words to try to fool Republicans into agreeing with it. Just like instead of Iran charging tolls, now they're going to charge an environmental fee to pass through the straight of. So they're, that's literally what they're doing. And I talked about this in my YouTube video. I said, let's just change all the words and it can be the same deal and maybe someone will agree to it, but that's what it really looks like is happening. And, and all this, did we get
- [04:18]
A
anything that we didn't have before this all started?
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C
No, this is all just to get the straight open, which would happen 30 days after the deal and then 30 days after that, negotiations on nuclear material, which are going to go nowhere, that I, I can assure you. I'm sure Chad would back me up on that. No, Iran's not giving us any of their nuclear material. That's never going to happen. Iran knows that once we leave, there's no way in hell we're going back. So I think they're going to get the best deal they can. And it's going to be bad. It's going to be bad for the United States. But I personally don't care, like I said, and I don't think we'll ever hear about nuclear material again if this is finalized. I really don't. I think it'll be forgotten about in
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B
the analysis will we have at this point.
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A
If this is what negotiations got us this far or if this is what brute force threat got us this far,
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C
I should say, I think we're Just trying to do something where we can leave and know the street's going to be open. Like we could just leave and maybe the straight opens, maybe it doesn't like. So I think they're just trying to ensure it gets open before we leave and, and we're getting out of there. That's what I think.
- [05:34]
A
And it comes to an end at least. But like you said, a 30, a 30 day delay into opening the straight. We've talked about this on the show before, but that's a, that's not something that we're going to suddenly contract from. That's an additional 30 days before things before oil starts moving again. Right. So we're all, we're all, we're not making up. We can't speed up the rate at which the ships are moving once the strait is open. Right. So another 30 delay is still going to affect us down the line.
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C
Oh yeah, yeah. Even if it opened today, we're going to be impacted for months and months and months. So. And it's like we get to feel
- [06:10]
A
the impact of months ago, of trade being blocked months ago at this point.
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C
Yeah, I, I would guess it's likely a gradual reopening over that 30 days there. That's not what they're saying, but that's just what I think it's going to be.
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A
It feels like the US Took a Frisbee and was like, check this out. Hurled it into the distance trying to do a cool trick and then we're like, oh shit, I'm not going to get the Frisbee back. I'm not going to get the Frisbee back. And then the Frisbee came all the way back and forgive me for gendering the US for a moment, hit us in the penis and then we were like, haha. Got the Frisbee back.
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B
Yeah, I mean I'm a bit.
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A
Huh, yeah.
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B
I'm a bit pessimistic on this deal, quite frankly. And I don't think, I don't think we're going to get our Frisbee back. So I think it's, it was a
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A
promotional Trump Tower Frisbee in the first place.
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B
Yeah, there you go. Yeah.
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A
Very lightweight material.
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B
But, but the. So the reason I say that is because right now, well, for like the last two months, the Trump administration has been hammering the nuke thing. If you remember, he talked about how he doesn't care about affordability, even for Americans, so long as they don't have nuclear weapons. They have backed away from that nuclear commitment and are now prioritizing the Strait of Hormuz. It was one of those situations where they had to make a decision. They had to say, well, we can't get both, so what do we do? Let's do the Strait of Hormuz. And then in that 60 days, as Matt was saying, we're, we would negotiate the, the, the nuclear commitments. The what that, what Iran would be willing to do. The problem is, is Iran is held firm, they're there. And, and what we're getting out of this is no inspection regime, which is what would be necessary. We would need and then some sort of inspectors, whether they're the International Atomic Energy Agency or some other third party countries. There's no requirements to dismantle anything. I know we've destroyed things like Natanz and Fordo and Isfahan. There's, there's no centrifuge reductions, no enrichment caps and basically Iran retains its full nuclear infrastructure post what we've destroyed obviously from Midnight Hammer. But from my seat, Trump is now starting to add things on. Like we just saw this, this Abraham Accord, this came out today where Trump kind of blindsided everyone by declaring it is mandatory for Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt and Jordan to join the Abraham Accords, which come from Trump' first administrator, first administration, where he's like, that was the, the normalization of relations with Israel. That's what it was kind of a big deal. And to his credit, it was somewhat, it was a move in the right direction to try to normalize relations in the Middle East. Since then, everything's obviously gone to largely because of second term Trump policies. But no country is going to sign onto that. Saudi Arabia reiterated it will not normalize relations with Israel without an irreversible path to Palestinian statehood. The, the situation with not just Gaza, but West bank and asking majority Muslim nations to normalize with Israel right now is just frankly a political impossibility. There's just no way that any of these countries, except for maybe Qatar and maybe the United Arab Emirates moving forward, but they're already a part of the Abraham Accord, so that's not really much much of a problem. Problem. They may want to pressure Iran, but that's, that's a step too far. And I frankly read this as Trump sees that a deal, even though there's a, there's a deal being negotiated where he said we were basically done and then backtracked. I don't know why he lied about that, but then backtracked on the deal. I think what he sees and the administration sees is that this is likely going to fail because of the Lebanon situation, the nuclear situation, and the verbiage that Matt was talking about over the Strait of Hormuz. And rather than Trump taking the Frisbee to the dick like you said, he's going to say, oh, well, the deal collapsed because no one else wanted to be a part of this new Abraham Accords. It's everyone else's fault. And the reason I think this is real is because the military buildup for the US Is still ongoing. It's continuing right now. We are still sending assets, growing our military footprint in case things fall apart. And I think we're just setting conditions for that. And then Lebanon is another part of that whole thing. Israel has flat out said no deal. I, I just don't think what we're going to see is going to be meaningful and Trump's going to need someone else to blame it on. And that's what this Abraham Cord's nonsense is.
- [10:52]
A
And it seems like right now, correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like right now there's pretty clear evidence for a lot of those countries that Israel is behaving, I don't say uncommonly, but like acceleratingly aggressive in the region. Right. Like they're using, they're taking advantage of US Military force testing. I mean, you know, we saw them test in Gaza what they could get away with and still have support from the US Military and from US Congress, and turns out it's almost anything. And then based on that information, have drastically expanded their military campaign. I have to say, you know, if you are a country being asked to, to, to normalize in quotes, relationships with Israel, I feel like you have a lot of recent evidence to point to or also a lot of, a lot of claim to be staked among one another for solidarity against that sort of accord and against, like playing, you know, politics with Trump over it.
- [11:47]
B
Well, yeah, and it's not only these. So the countries that are, that I discussed are generally friendly. I mean, obviously there's some things with Pakistan that we have some, some potential issue, Saudis another one. The, but the, the bottom line is because of the, the Gaza situation, it's the broad humanitarian effort that looks very politically toxic for these countries, especially when it comes to a country like Lebanon. And that's, I think, at this point becoming the hardest phase to get over because the Iranians are demanding that the war end everywhere, including Lebanon, which includes Israel, who has moved into southern Lebanon under the guise of, we were, we were attacking and taking out Hezbollah. That is legitimate. They, Hezbollah. But they are now invading a sovereign nation in Lebanon who also is themselves fighting Hezbollah as well. So Lebanon is not some outsider saying, we can't do anything. They have been helpful in that regard of trying to eliminate Hezbollah as well. But now Israel's taken some Lebanese territory and they're saying they're not giving it back. And they're saying that the, that Israel is saying, we have a right to continue fighting this fight. And Iran says, no, you don't. But now Trump is waffling back and forth saying, wait, when he talks to Iran, he's like, oh, I'll talk to Israel and we'll get this sorted out. But then when he goes. And Netanyahu picks up the phone and says, hey, we're going to continue fighting, whether you like it or not. Trump says, absolutely. Gotcha. And so I think this Lebanon issue is going to be yet another situation where they're not going to find common ground. And Hezbollah has already said that so long as Israel, the Israeli Defense Forces are in Lebanon, they're going to continue fighting. They don't care what any other ceasefire says. And that's going to cause a, a collapse in the future. And I think the Trump administration needed a backup excuse for why this isn't working. And that's why he just through the Hail Mary of the Abraham Accords out there. And so it's, it's all very amateurish and very frustrating.
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C
So they are bombing Lebanon as we speak.
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B
Yep.
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C
Like, and the Lebanon piece of these negotiations are supposed to be significant for Iran. Like, Iran is insisting that Lebanon be left alone, basically, and they're bombing them as we speak, as they're saying they have a deal. Right now, Israel is launching one of its largest attacks against. So I don't disagree with Chad at all that, that these negotiations have a slim chance of actually, you know, culminating in anything positive. But I am really fascinated with how I said jokingly, just change the words. And they're literally doing it, like, I was joking, like, and I know they didn't hear me say that. I was just. It was funny that I said something. Being funny just being ultimately, like, ridiculous. And they're actually doing that. They're doing the thing that I was mocking ridiculously on my YouTube channel. Like, they're just.
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A
A lot of the time, and it might work.
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B
It might work on Trump.
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A
A lot of time people look at Onion headlines from not all that recently, and they. And they go, wow, the Onion is just news. Or the Onion's not even satire. Or like, the Onion and the thing I say over and over again to people, like, that is like, no, it is satire. Satire is a warning. Like, if satire doesn't feel that way in six months, it's because we didn't listen. Like, yeah, yeah, you said something as a joke because it was a predictably absurd thing to say, right? Like, you didn't say it at random. And it's like, I'm not saying it wasn't funny, but it's like, of course, yeah, this is like, I don't think they were listening to you, but I think you were tapping into, like, well, at this rate, this is where things are going. And it's. I mean, I think the real takeaway is that they should listen to our podcast. But, yeah, most importantly, we're devolving to
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C
the satire, basically, is what you're saying just like, yeah, I'm saying.
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A
I'm saying the warning. Well, it's also like, perpetually new satire. Oh, it's gonna be bad next year. Okay, well, we didn't take that warning. So we're sort of constantly. When people say satire is dead, it's like, no, there's. There's plenty more warnings to come around the end. We're just not taking the right fork in the road every time. It's like the.
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B
You talk. I mean, you're talking about this. The absurdity of what we see and. And we joke because it's. It's great for podcasters like us and it's great for comedians because it's just an endless stream of just absurd material. But, like, one of the most absurd things that I saw was. I don't know if anyone remembers, during the Bush administration, later into the Obama administration, Iran had their president, who was kind of their lightning rod feature or figurehead was Mahmoud Ahmadinejadjad. He was. He's an avid hardline Islamic republic. He was a Holocaust denier. But there are reports and there was chatter that the Trump administration, the plan was with the Israelis. And this. Apparently the word is this was an Israeli plan that was fed to the Trump administration that when the Ayatollah was eliminated, that they would put ahmedijad into power. But the United States military somehow didn't get the memo and struck his home, killing his2. His two IRGC guards and then somewhat like moderately wounding him. And when that happened, he was like, nah, I'm not doing this, and backed out. And it's just. It's like the. I am an afraid, absolute advocate for our military and how good they are. But this is one of those scenarios where I think the memo didn't get down to the people like, hey, this guy might be the replacement. It would have been an atrocious replacement. I don't know who thought that the Holocaust denying hardliner is going to be a, a good idea to replace the somewhat, and I use the term loosely in Iranian terms, moderate former Ayatollah. He was, when you look at the current Islamic Republic administration and regime, he was more moderate than what we've got. He was more moderate than his son Mashtaba. We're dealing with more hardliners, but for some reason, instead of working that plan to the end, we just accidentally struck him, killed his guards, and now he's like, I'm not dealing with the Americans. That was a, that's a mistake. It's just absurd.
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A
Someone didn't read the whole, like the note was folded over. It was like, kill this guy. And then they unfolded. It's like, don't kill this guy.
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C
Oh my God.
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A
Thank God we didn't get, we just, we kind of missed. We killed the guards.
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B
Exactly.
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A
Egg on my face. Well, also, wasn't he constantly, why would Israel go along? Wasn't he constantly calling for the destruction of Israel?
- [18:39]
B
Precisely. I have no idea. I have no idea.
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A
Why not only a Holocaust denier, but he was like an Israel shouldn't exist 100%.
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B
I, I truly don't know why that decision was being made and being pushed. I think maybe he, he had a falling out with the, the Ayatollah and they thought maybe he could have been molded. I don't know. This dude was a stone cold Islamic republic killer.
- [19:00]
A
And I also want to be clear. He wasn't like Israel shouldn't exist because it's a colonizer state that was like, you know, set up by people who didn't like, he wasn't like denying Israel's right to exist in terms of geopolitical implications. He was a anti Semitic.
- [19:16]
B
He says it wasn't just Israel. He said Jews as a people shouldn't exist.
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A
Yeah, yeah. So this is, this is a, I just wanted to be, be very clear
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B
about what we're talking about.
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A
He, he, he didn't have anti colonial or, or geopolitical oppositions to the nature of the state of Israel. He was a, you know, one, he, he was a Holocaust denier and somehow supporter. If we can back up for a second to something else you're talking about, you know, obviously you're saying for, you're saying for Iran, Lebanon is a hard line. And it sounds like the justification that Israel is going about in Lebanon is, is not identical, but similar to what happened in Gaza, which is of course it's about, it's not about the people. It's about this evil terrorist organization in their branding of it. And we're here to remove that. And if civilians get hurt in the process, well, that, that's just what had to happen. That's their tack generally. But this is Israel seizing territory in another country and like you said, not, not returning it. Obviously they've been seizing territory from Palestine for a long time. But is this the first time that Israel has expanded beyond that area and tried to move into other neighboring territories without, you know, like actually occupying the territory?
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B
Well, I mean historically, a lot of times Israel would be doing it. For instance, the Golan Heights when it came to Egypt, that was in response to an invasion into Israel. So they did take that back and then that was negotiated. U S negotiated. So there is, there are times where Israel has, has pushed into other countries taking that territory. But the difference is the United States previously wasn't as. So I, I don't know how to put it more like so rah, rah Israel back, back in the day, like in the 80s 90s, we actually had a pretty tight leash on what Israel was, it was doing. Now we kind of get free reign. And that's the problem is we, we are providing this top cover for things like Lebanon. And unfortunately, unlike when we had previous wars, even when the, the Arab nations were the, were the aggressors like Yom Kippur and things like that, those the US Would come in and say, okay, Israel came in, kind of beat your ass, let's bring it back down, simmer down and tell. We told both Israel and Egypt or whoever to play nice and work it out. We're the big power. The US Is the big dog on the street. You're going to listen to us and we, we kind of remove, return back to a status quo situation that we're not doing that anymore. We're now just very much gung ho Israel. Do whatever you want, we don't care. And Israel is taking full advantage of that in Lebanon.
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A
And meanwhile the US Populace, I feel like support for Israel, even among Democrats was a lot more, more not unanimous, but a lot more common, a lot more ubiquitous in, you know, previous administrations. And I think you're seeing a lot more Americans question, you know, this idea that this is such a complex issue that you can't possibly comment on Israel policy unless you know the history of the region. That kind of narrative seems to be devolved. I mean, you know, I'm not making this up. More Americans than ever support ending military support to Israel. But now we're, but we're seeing somehow a sort of a inverse relationship or inverse proportion between that and the way that the US Is actually allowing Israel to behave.
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B
Yeah, I mean, precise. And I just want to say real quick, I think I said Egypt was Golan Heights, that's Syria. I just want to correct that. It's not anyways. But yeah. And it, and Matt, I, I, this was a, something that we're going to talk about here in a bit. Is this what we've turned into, this acceptance and from the, what is the right and Republicans, this acceptance of allowing Israel to do whatever they want, but almost this tacit acceptance of allowing Israel to do whatever they want because the Democrats don't even have a policy on it. They don't even care. And it's one of those scenarios where I worry that we just keep giving ground to allow Israel to keep doing these things. And they keep taking and taking because the US who was traditionally the, the you, the Western order, the leader of the Western order, we used to, not only we would enable our allies to do things to protect them, but we would constrain them. And now we are, are not. And so that's, that's the, it's a big problem where we found this Democrat autopsy was just absolute garbage policy on things like Gaza and such.
- [23:54]
A
Well, you know, according to the Pew Center a couple months ago, 8 in 10 Democrats and Dem leading independents have unfavorable views of Israel. And 60% of US adults overall have an unfavorable view of Israel, up from 43% last year. And I think that would be a really perfect issue for an opposition party to seize on and recognize as perhaps relevant to their politics and their electoral wins and losses. Which brings me to another topic that I'd love to discuss on today's episode, which is the DNC's autopsy report. As you mentioned, on the 2024 presidential election, it has a little bit of a weird path towards the public. I don't want to get too deep into the weeds about it, but essentially this is a report on why Kamala Harris and the Harris campaign lost the presidential election. Commissioned by the DNC chair Ken Martin. It was put together by this Democratic strategist named Paul Rivera. And then when they received it back, they said it was not up to their standards. It's entirely unsourced. Elements of it apparently conflict. Other elements of it I have not specifically analyzed the parts that reporting is saying is contradictory. So I don't, I don't want to repeat that without doing that exact reading myself. But even according to the dnc, they didn't. Martin says he doesn't want to release it, didn't want to release it because it wasn't up to their standards. And then part of it leaked, and then they didn't want to release it because it was around November 2025, and they didn't want to have negative press hurting people in the election cycle, which is fair, but also a pretty protracted timeline since then of releasing anything to the public. And now it's finally come out. Paul Rivera, who wrote it, is no longer working for the dnc, apparently. And so it's sort of been fully released, but with this caveat of we don't think this, this isn't what we believe. So I don't know if this is the DNC trying to have their cake and eat it, too. It does feel a little bit of like here's a shoddy report, but if you do believe any of it, we're listening. It kind of is a way of throwing out ideas without taking accountability for them. And the other thing I will say is if this is not your correct and fully sourced and accountable report of what happened in 2024, I would like to see that report. And I would wonder why that hasn't been commissioned and why we're having so many news stories about a single faulty report commissioned by one person from one person. So it's an interesting path towards the public, but it's been pretty thoroughly panned already. We're talking about this on Today, Memorial Day, our podcast impresario. An editor in chief, podfather Tim Fullerton, wrote a little piece about it for Find Out Social on his substack as well, referring to it as anemic. And there's a lot of different parts about this that we can chop up and talk about. I obviously want to talk about the military angle, the Gaza angle of it all. I want to talk about the energy angle of it all. Since we were just on the topic of Israel, Chad, how, according to this autopsy, did the Democratic Party's policy in Israel, in Gaza affect the presidential election?
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B
Well, I mean, it's, it's. Before I jump into that, I just want to say it's funny because we're both Matt. We have Matt as the energy expert and then myself as foreign policy, military, and this, this. And I want Matt's views on the energy side here. In a bit. But it's interesting because there was nothing on either really substantive, on energy that I saw that was, I mean they had, they kind of, kind of had the clean energy transition and stuff, but then also on the foreign policy there was, it was essentially zero. They didn't not kind of not gloss over Israel, Gaza, things like that. They didn't even say the words. There was no mention of Gaza, Palestine, Israel, no discussion of whatever side of the fence you're on. On the, the genocide issue, if it, whether it is a genocide, you agree with it or whether it's not, you don't agree with it. They didn't even take a stance either way. They just didn't, they were like, we're not even going to mention it. And so one of the biggest problems is I, I think Michigan was lost because of Gaza and they didn't, they weren't willing to discuss it.
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A
Don't mention Michigan. Feels like huge omission because that's a, that was a, an electoral, like a ballot based camp.
- [28:31]
B
Yeah, exactly.
- [28:32]
A
Blank ballots. That's, you could say, oh, indirectly it hurt us in other ways. But we're literally talking about people casting blank ballots. To not mention that there was a voting phenomenon going on in your electoral autopsy feels like a complete negligence.
- [28:47]
B
One, something like 100,000 uncommitted voters in Dearborn's Arab American and Muslim American community did not vote and Trump flipped Michigan by 80,000 votes. That is by all standards a complete failure in that election. But also to not recognize that, that I cannot fathom why they, they decided to just omit that other than, and to be harsh to the Democratic Party. Cowardice. They are scared of saying the words Israel, Gaza, genocide, Palestine, whatever. And again, I say this, if you, if the Democrats want to come out on a stance that it is not a genocide, okay, we can have that debate, but at least come out somewhere. They're not coming out anywhere. They're just avoiding the issue. And that's how they ended up losing Michigan.
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A
Yeah, I mean to not even mention it feels deliberately. There's this sort of strategy, you know, I want to make sure as we frame this, okay. The issue in Michigan. Right. I feel like sometimes liberals, often liberals more towards the center will look at something like that and go, okay, so those people in Michigan cost us the election because they could have voted for a Democrat, right. And they could have flipped Michigan. Right. And I think I understand the tendency to try to find a scapegoat to go, oh, these non voters, these third party voters, these. It's these people who didn't will themselves to do the right thing. Those citizens are the problem. But ultimately, when it comes down to it, it's a party issue. These people did not convince voters, they did not provide the confidence in voters that they cared about the issues that were important to them to the point where there was a statewide boycott effectively. And they chose not to respond to that. They chose not to change their policy even after that. And, you know, you can say, yeah, those people should have voted for Kamala. Do I wish they had? Maybe she did promise no change in Gaza. I would rather we didn't have Trump and ICE and you know, he's doing far more authoritarian things than she would have. But, you know, do I wish they had they had voted Democrat? Sure. But do I blame them? No. I think those people were making their voices heard in effectively the only way the system has made possible. And unfortunately, I think a lot of people who are consistent Dem voters are just not, not hearing their voices represented. And then you look at this autopsy and like, you know, the, the issue we've been screaming out for, you know, in some cases two and a half years, and for, for many people, for many years before that, who were aware of it before October 7th, it's not mentioned. And so it's a, it's, it's a very clear we are not hearing you message.
- [31:33]
B
Well, that's why I wanted to ask, Matt, because it's one of the biggest things that we're dealing with Even back in 2024 was clean energy policy. There's nothing in that. What do you, what do you take from that, Matt, that they just flat out ignored energy policy in this, in this document? It just blows my mind.
- [31:51]
C
They don't, I don't know if they even know they did anything wrong with energy. Now there's, there's something that, as an independent, what I see from the Democratic Party is they believe that they can win elections by telling people what they believe. And that's not how you win elections. You win elections by telling people what you're going to do for them. But Democrats love to tell people what they believe. And that's great, and you can get a lot of votes that way, but you need to get enough votes to win elections. And, you know, whether you like it or not, there's a lot of people that you need to vote for you that don't give two shits how you feel about certain issues and what you believe. They want to know specifically, what are you going to do for them personally? You need all of those voters, too. And the first job of any party is to win an election. It's like you can't do any of the things that you believe in if you can't first win the election. So that is my. Has long been my biggest sort of criticism of Democrats. Quit telling me what you believe. We all know what you believe. We've been hearing it for 20 years. Tell us what you're going to do for us. Right, because that's what those swing voters and those moderates, all those people that you need. Right. But when it comes to energy, not a single mention during the entire Biden administration of the OPEC 2020 deal. I felt like the Democratic Party took all of the, allowed the Republican Party to lay all of the responsibility for high gas prices and inflation and other things at Joe Biden's feet. And they did nothing to fight back that narrative. They blamed it all on oil companies. Right. And look, I get it. A lot of Democrats, probably the vast majority of Democrats hate oil companies. That's fine. But guess what? There's not an oil company on the ballot. And if you're wasting any of your breath talking about someone that's not on the ballot, then you're wasting your time. So if you want to say, you know, oil companies are making record profits, that's fine, but follow that up with the specific thing that a Republican did or your opponent did to highlight their culpability in that. And Democrats are really bad at that. Like, they target different things that aren't on ballots. And if you're targeting, if you're not at least targeting someone that's on a ballot every single day, then you're failing because that is what the Republican Party is so good at. Every day we hear Biden, Biden, Biden. Right now, Biden did this. And people are sick of hearing it. But you know what? It works. They've been doing it for 10 years and it's been working. It was Obama, Obama, Obama, now it's Biden. It works. And Democrats are not great at that. I don't know why, but no mention of the OPEC 2020 deal. No defense of, you know, why gas prices were high under the Biden administration. They blamed oil companies and then they blame. Go ahead.
- [34:56]
A
No, I was just going to say you're right that Democrats are strangely bad at negative reinforcement where they have this, they have this language of civility thing that they only imply in certain situations. And it feels like, look, personally, there's a lot of things that the Republicans do where we Say we're going to rise above. Oh, we're not going to. We're not going to expand the Supreme Court, because what if they did that? Well, we should have. We had the power. They're going to. There are a lot of things where we just have to accept that that's reality, and it's what Republicans are doing, and liberals, leftists, they need to do that, too, because those are the tools. Those are the playing cards right now. I do also believe that the MAGA movement and Trump's presidency has done some pretty serious damage to our national discourse. And, like, you know, just the level of, you know, I'm not. I'm not a. I believe high diction has a point because you should be able to articulate what you believe in specifically. And that's really important in politics. Someone who speaks in high diction is not, to me, automatically untrustworthy, but I am glad that we've broken some of that down. It is important that politics is more accessible. But it feels like the amount. The thing that the Democrats are, in terms of discourse imitating from the right is not losing the pretense of civility or not losing the sort of Ivy League diction that keeps people out of politics, but it's losing. It's. They're doing, you know, IQ tests and race science, and they're letting in faulty reasoning to support their release rather than bringing in actual, you know, like, like, like. Rather than having an actual broader conversation that allows more people at the table. It's this sort of civility only when it's for feedback we don't want. I agree with what you're saying about meeting people's needs versus saying what you believe. And I think part of that is sometimes those beliefs are empty because it's like saying, we support these marginalized groups. It's like, well, are you going to support them when the police beat them up disproportionately? Are you going to support them socioeconomically so they can have prosperity? Because, you know, they all think it's. There's this issue of, like, oh, we overcorrected. We corrected people about their pronouns too much. And I think I said this on another episode, but people don't care about that nearly as much when they're not poor and starving. People whose material needs have been met. People who feel heard are more willing to take part in social change. And there's also this weird sense of, like, you know, if you say your voters don't want to get yelled at about pronouns, you're saying, that trans people aren't your voters. And I feel like the Democrats are very like, they are like, this is what I believe in more often than material change. But the real problem is there is not stating your beliefs isn't bad. It's empty beliefs. It's beliefs without policy. And so using identity politics, using groups to be like, I am the champion of the little people when it matters. For rhetoric is hollow if you don't support policies that help those people or if you don't listen to a massive group of people sticking up for a marginalized group in another country. And, you know, it's a messaging problem there.
- [38:02]
B
Yeah, it's a huge messaging problem. And it's like, and I, I, the example I use is the Democrat, and we kind of alluded to this. The Democratic Party loves to talk about foreign policy as if they're on a stage at the Council of Foreign Relations. It's a panel. They don't need to do that. They need to talk to the voters. And Matt was kind of, it's a perfect example when you kind of were alluding to this, the just say why energy was so high. It was because of the post Covid boom and because of Russia. I mean, isn't, I mean, am I incorrect? That's. Can we just get to the heart of it instead of being like, well, if you look at the charts in the book, just, hey, guy in Iowa, your gas is high because of Putin and post Covid. Yeah.
- [38:48]
C
And you can do that and be civil and not get down in the mud like Donald Trump. You don't have to call people names. And, you know, you're fat, you're ugly, all that stupid, childish. Just a mention of the OPEC 2020 deal. You know, just mention it. And this is the year 2026. And the moment you mention it, everybody with a phone that doesn't know what it is is going to look it up and it's going to go across the social media landscape like wildfire. Like, you don't have to get down and dirty and ugly. You can hold some civility and, and keep some tradition. Like, you know, Democrats are big on, you know, like, old traditions. You ever notice that? Like, how dare he do. How dare he? And that's perfectly fine. Right? But you can mention it. You can say, well, you know, it's because of this. And people will go find it and they will research it themselves. They don't need you to explain it to them step by step. Even though I did it a thousand times in 2022, they'll go figure out what it is. And so I think they often miss that. Like just mentions of things catch fire on the Internet and your, your words are spread, you don't have to.
- [40:02]
A
It doesn't need to be toxic to have negative reinforcement. Right? Like, like that's, they've taken the wrong lesson from maga, which is like Trump is toxic, but negative reinforcement in the right with the right ethical backing works. I mean, you know, I can, you can't compare everything to Zora and Mamdani because New York is not the world. But it's definitely a different strategy towards Democrats getting elected. They went pretty negative against his multiple opponents, Andrew Cuomo and Eric Adams, when he was still in the race. I mean, much less so among the solidarity of the lower of the other candidates when there were still a lot in the race. But they went hard for Andrew Cuomo. They said this, this guy is the reason these things happen. This person did these things negatively. He used your tax dollars, literally used your tax dollars to pay for his sexual harassment lawsuits. They named those things and they kept naming them. And it feels like Democrats are afraid to do that on a national scale where it's like if, if you're naming real problems, you don't just want to be scapegoating, of course. But yeah, you can talk about what Republicans are doing wrong and you are going to do differently. And like you said, not just what you believe in, but policy wise, how you differentiate yourself from that.
- [41:09]
B
Well, and the problem is, is it's that that's a great strategy. If you have a strategy. They have no foreign policy strategy according to this document. They have no energy policy strategy. Just kind of broadly, once around the world. They didn't say anything, not a word about Ukraine, didn't talk about Zelensky, didn't talk about NATO posture, didn't talk about the global security, didn't talk about China. Got one mention and its mention was the campaign of Sherrod Brown in Ohio where they lost that campaign, Democrats lost that campaign. And they tried to say, well, Brown was hard, tough on China. Okay, good, great job. Yeah, so what? That's the problem. There's no unified Democratic foreign policy right now. And it comes from the leadership. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Ken Martin, the DNC Chair. They have produced no unified policy. The only person in the party that has any mention of any kind of foreign policy was AOC Alexandria Ocasio Cortez when she went to the Munich Security Conference and said we need to understand the realities of the world. She articulated an anti authoritarian democracy forward policy, but also acknowledged the fact that the policies of the last 70 years, the post World War II policies, they have not actually been the greatest for the working class. And there needs to be some way to ensure that the working class people, the marginalized people, as you were talking about, in that they're included in this uplift and not just, not just having these broad nebulous discussions of like how we, how we have to frame the fight when it comes to Ukraine. And so it becomes a messaging problem. And I tell, when I tell people, when I, on the occasion I get asked, I was like, you need to start with why it impacts Americans. That, and it's all abroad Americans, it's whether it's the soft power, whether it's South America, Africa, Iran, doesn't matter. They need to understand how, why should a family in suburban Cincinnati care? And if you cannot do that in a couple sentences, you're going to lose them. I mean, Iran is a prime example. This is a war nobody voted for and it's now causing gas prices. If we end it, oil goes back down, we stop spending trillions of dollars in the Middle east and instead maybe we can spend it on our roads so that you have better roads, better schools. Israel, Gaza, Americans are paying for this. We send $20 billion in military aid abroad while school districts lose teachers because they can't be a. Can't pay. Everything foreign has a domestic counterpart that we can lean on. China takes our jobs and Wall street doesn't care. They make money off of it. Trump's tariffs were a part of that. That absolutely hurt us. But we can't seem to on the left, we can't seem to articulate that to someone here in Boise, Idaho, so that they understand. I don't care. I can tell you probably 90 of the people here in Boise don't care about what's going on in Iran other than the fact that they're at the pump. It, it's a problem. And Taiwan, that's a huge one. That will be a huge problem for everyone if that. Maybe you don't know, but every car phone, laptop has Taiwanese chips in it. And if we don't keep that safe and secure as a foreign policy matter, that's going to be like a collapsing event for us. So everything the Republicans owned the Ukraine narrative. Stop spending money. Stop. We should stop spending money. My counter was, well, the last time we let a European dictator go unchecked, it took 60 million lives and hundreds of Thousands of Americans to stop it. And it was a world altering event. And then when you present it as well, we are degrading the Russian military for less than 5% of our own defense budget without losing a single American life. That means that you can project in the future saying hey, we will not have to deal with World War Three if we can support Ukraine now. And the problem is I just don't think we have that messaging. The Republicans are very good at that lowest common denominator. Whereas Democrats, I worry, have this mentality where they need to sound the smartest and they need to sound like, well, based on these studies from the Council of Foreign Relations. Yeah, absolutely, use those studies but get it to two sentence and tell it how it affects someone in middle America.
- [45:58]
A
I don't want this analysis I'm about to say to be true. But if you want a very basic working model of why party line Dems don't care about energy policy or Gaza policy enough to bring it up in their own autopsy or to address it in the election season as they should all be doing, it's because they take an enormous amount of oil and energy money and money from aipac and if not oil money, then massive corporate spending. And I don't want to believe that this is the reason. But when you intellectualize things and people tell people oh, the issues are actually more complex than you realize and that's why we can't make material change that helps you and you don't focus on material change. And the practical impact of these issues in people's lives could be a strategy of distracting from the fact that you don't actually care about those issues because you accept massive six to seven figure donations from the industries that are propped up by your policies that hurt people but help corporations. I don't want that to be the way that all Democrats are behaving and I don't think it's all Democrats. But when you filter a lot of this behavior through that framework, it makes a lot more sense. And I just don't think there's a future for a Democratic Party where, you know, you're talking about my Senator Schumer, you're talking about Jeffries. These guys have taken upwards of $2 million from AIPAC and the vast majority of their constituents are in supportive ending that support. So it's, you know, I hate to say it, but some of this is just corporatism. Some of it's a performance of caring about your voters. And we got to get those, the, the corporatists out of the party. That's really what it comes down to. I want to believe that these guys are all trying to do the best thing or are out of touch or we are siloed off from the people, and activists and DNC strategists are in two totally different silos and we don't know how to communicate. I want to believe that all of that is the reason that this is breaking down. But when you run it through the model of people are just making a lot of money and you just don't care, it makes a lot of sense. And I'm not the only American who thinks that. I mean, I'm not saying, I'm not saying, I'm not making this declaration, no one cares. But it's very easy to get voters burnt out with that kind of thinking, if that makes sense. If you're, if your party, if your opposition party's actions can be filtered most easily through, well, they don't actually care about you until they need to win elections, then you're going to lose. Even if that's not true. Like, they need, it's like you're saying, Chad, they need to not only talk about what, who, who caused their problems, but like, what have we done and how are we going to do that more to improve your lives? Not just like, oh, promises, but like, talking about how we build literal and social infrastructure for a better future and things that just can't be, you know, rolled back if a Republican's in office. But it doesn't seem, based on this autopsy or based on the direction of a lot of campaigns right now that they're terribly interested in changing that strategy.
- [48:58]
C
Yeah.
- [48:58]
B
Hey, Matt, I got a question for you. What, what would you like to see in, like, what would you have liked to see as Democrats? Energy policy? Because I kind of just gave my quick rundown of what I think foreign policy should look like, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna push out a big video later on that talks way in depth of that. But what would you like to see the Democrats talk about from an energy side that, because like you said, they didn't have anything in here. It was, It's. They need something.
- [49:25]
C
Here's the thing. It's not really, I'll say this. They didn't have a comprehensive energy policy. Now, I didn't have a problem with the things they were doing energy wise. I had a problem with how they presented what they were doing energy wise. They, they did a lot of really useless stuff in the name of knocking down oil and gas and, and presented that as being clean energy. All of the things they did that were anti oil and gas during the Biden administration were like it was an empty suit, it was nothing. But it was like they were doing these things to convince their base that they were fighting back against oil and gas when they weren't. It was, it was a game they were playing. So it's not really the policy. If you look at what they achieved energy wise, record oil production, record natural gas production, record renewable energy production, like set records in everything except for nuclear, which takes a million years to do anything with nuclear. So energy actually did really well under the Biden administration. It was their narrative through the whole thing where they were pretending like they were sort of. I wouldn't say they were anti oil and gas, but it was like every single time they did anything that was supposed to be against oil and gas, it was like fake, didn't amount to a hill of beans. It's like they were selling something, you know. And that was the part that really bothered me with the Democrat. The Biden administration and energy was if they did anything for oil and gas, they immediately, the next day or the day before would do something for renewable energy. If you go back and look at all their announcements regarding energy during the Biden administration, one day there would be an announcement about like the Willow project, the next day there would be an announcement about some renewable energy project. They always paired those announcements together, like hedging negative press or maybe trying to keep people happy. I just, just be honest about it, you know, just, just say this is what we're doing. And I felt like they were gearing a lot of their messaging towards a particular portion of their voter base. Instead of, like I said, you got to win elections, you know, you got to win independents and moderates. And, and so just more honesty about their energy policy would have been better. Their energy policy was actually pretty good. Even though they didn't have a comprehensive policy, they actually did a good job as far as I'm concerned.
- [52:18]
B
Yeah. And I think, I wish one thing that I think the Democratic Party could do to better is the, the, the notion of, and I'm going to say this and I'm going to caveat it, the notion of America first, not America first trademark magas, their, their stealing of that, that term, more of that. America functions best when it leads a coalition of democracies, not when it isolates itself, not when it tries to act alone. And this is a lesson we learned in the post World War II order that the Trump administration is currently Teaching us the alternative of, of our coalition. A US led coalition is chaos and problems. Iran. And I call it pragmatic internationalism. And it kind of sounds weirdly like globalism, which is a four letter word for a lot of people. But what I see when I say this is it's America first as in our foreign policy is American interests focusing on American workers, American security, American long term advantage achieved through international engagement with allies rather than in spite of it. And Trump's version of America first sacrifices our allies and actual American power for this short term. Tweety I goes on true social and has this spectacle. I think a democratic version puts American power on a sustainable footing by treating allies as a force multiplier, meaning we have these diplomatic tools and our military forces an option of absolute last resort under congressional authorization, whether it's a declaration of war or an authorization of use military force. And I think you can sell this American, this kind of America first notion or reclaim that, because Biden actually was quite good at it. The CHIPS act that was huge for American industry. The inflation Reduction act shined, it bolstered industry. And I think if we can tell those stories, kind of like you were saying, tell those stories when it comes to energy, we can retake kind of the narrative that we cannot deter China without our own American working industrial base. We need to focus on that, that we can sustain Ukraine with our equipment and it creates a partnership for drones, for instance, that we could absolutely use. And also I think, and just kind of circling back to the Gaza thing, I really am disappointed once again. And Adam Smith was a problem here where this idea of human rights should not be this luxury we attach to our foreign policy. It needs to be a strategic core value because autocrats are unreliable partners. And these there is when you talk about things like Putin and the North Korea, the Iran, these repressive regimes, and even the repression we see coming out of Israel, it actually creates problems for the US it creates terrorism, it creates refugees, it creates instability that eventually the United States, as let's face it, still pretty much the global hegemon is going to have to deal with. So if we can tell people, hey, we still need to focus on human rights, that is a core principle. And here's why. It's not just human rights. The big word hand wave, we said it so high five. But exactly why it matters, I think we can sell that. And then finally, I think the final pillar is, I know people talk about it and have a bit of a. They're a bit tired of hearing about it, but this, this climate change thing, not talking about that's kind of a problem too, where, because the climate transition into the global economy and put it into money terms. If we can't, if we can't get people to care about the environment enough, put it into economic terms, it's going to be the largest economic transformation since the Industrial Revolution. And if we can tell middle America, hey, the climate is going to cause you problems, as a farmer, we need to focus on that. And the Inflation Reduction act actually started that. But also it helped us build green energy infrastructure. I think that is a. We can get those things like the bilateral and multilateral agreements, like the Paris Agreement. Those things lead to other agreements. Maybe if we weren't such jerks in the Paris Accords and other things, we would be getting more help in Iran. And so it's all interconnected. And I just wanted to, I just want, I wish that we could have articulated that better on the Democratic side here.
- [56:52]
A
I think you. Well, I want to touch on a couple of things you said because, I mean, you've so many, so many valid points there. I think just looping back really quickly, just a thing about nomenclature. I think that America first is a term that came around with, like Charles Lindbergh.
- [57:05]
B
Yeah, we all know who stole it.
- [57:07]
A
I think we would do well to, to divest from that phrasing. But I also don't think. But the reason I'm not being a nitpicker about. I am being a nitpicker about it, but the reason I'm using my powers is because that's a very specific kind of messaging. That kind of nationalist messaging is almost always popularized when an authoritarian government is actually not going to meet people's needs. And they plan on, you know, maybe meeting one small group, one, one cast of people's needs for a while before that dissolves. But they plan on, you know, drastically reducing support to social services and all the other things, you know, and, and
- [57:41]
B
yeah, I want to caveat that. I'm not saying we, we take it back and say we're America first. I'm just saying we can.
- [57:46]
A
Oh, no, I know. I'm.
- [57:47]
B
We own that. Hey, maybe we put Americans as the primary. And then just right behind them we can, because that's what Americans want to hear. Then right behind them we can say
- [57:57]
A
don't as America America in order to fund other countries. Well, I mean, the reason, the only reason I'm drilling down on that is because the nationalist rhetoric is almost always antithetical to actually materially Improving Americans circumstances. So like when you get a bunch of people being like, you know, fuck the rest of the world, America is what matters. That's like one of the most obvious forms of scapegoating of their own. You know, hey, at least you don't have it as bad as those, those guys in that other country. Or at least, hey, hey, we're protect, thank God we're protecting you. Yeah, obviously you can't afford school or food, but we're protecting you from those scary people and those other like, that's very, that's very baked in there. But I think you're right. And again, why I'm drilling down on this is I think they need to find an alternative to that America first narrative that is like not a non nationalistic.
- [58:45]
B
Yeah, I got you.
- [58:46]
A
A non nationalistic narrative, but about supporting Americans about like we really about American prosperity. I mean, you know, and that doesn't mean letting the free market go wild and letting Ezra Klein union bust or whatever. It means like actually supporting a labor movement, actually supporting laborers, the working class, allowing the middle class to grow again or, you know, creating conditions in which it can grow again. I think, I think you're totally right that we do need to have a way to be like, we have the responsibility to help other countries in the world when human rights violations are being, you know, are being committed and our military force is an absolute last resort. We need to use an international coalition. We need to use diplomacy whenever possible in order to maintain American prosperity while preventing human rights abuses nationwide. And I want to point out what you're saying with Adam Smith and with all these people about no mention of Gaza and the human rights abuses in this autopsy. I think part of what's so frustrating about that is you hear him saying, you hear a lot of people saying, well, you can't talk to these people. Your autopsy needs to include that. And I think the reason you can't talk to these people is because you're learning that that's a line in the sand. Like so often we keep hearing like, well, they're not willing to have this conversation. It's like, okay, well, it's been a few years. Maybe take away from that fact that we're not willing to have a conversation about whether or not murdering babies is good. You just, you, you're so far past the line in the sand for so many people. Like, if you say international human rights, a lot of people will be like, oh, I don't care about that. But turns out it cost us votes. Like, it turns out people do actually really care about human rights and it's not, they need to find a way to not make that antithetical to being pro America. Like, I'm not a big patriot, but I want Americans to be able to, like, I want America to be prosperous so that, you know, people who live in the richest country in the history of countries can, you know, afford to eat and live and have at least a good life as their parents did.
- [60:40]
B
I have a, I have a solid. I have a solid. I have a question for Matt because. And this is, here's, here's the thing. So Matt and I have a unique perspective because. And I know I won't say where everyone. I live in Idaho, very red state. I know Matt lives in a red state. I know you live in a blue state. Won't exactly say because I don't know if anyone wants to know where that's out or what I talk about.
- [60:59]
A
Mom, Donnie, enough. I live in New York.
- [61:00]
B
Yeah. So here's a question for you. So this is an easy conversation for us to have to our neighboring state, Washington, Oregon. Adam Smith came out of Washington. Easy conversation. California, how do we have this conversation on climate change, on foreign policy, on energy in Idaho? Texas? We'll say Texas or Oklahoma or these very energy forward places where they're in deeply entrenched red. But that's going to be impacting them. The energy policy that the Democrats didn't talk about or the climate change policy that they kind of glossed over. I mean, how do we deal with that in mine and yours? Matt's red states.
- [61:45]
C
I mean, I just say the same thing no matter what color state I'm in. Yeah, I just, I just tell it. You know, last year I was given a speech and it's amazing to me they were having this mayor's conference here in my state. And so all the mayors of all the cities in the entire state I'm speaking to and when I'm giving them statistics about energy, like their minds were blown because none of them had any idea. And that's when it comes to people in politics, especially state and local levels, most of them don't know 95% of this stuff that we talk about. They have, they, they don't have a good working knowledge of a lot of things that really impact them either on a local or state level. So when I talk about the things I talk about, I just give them the truth, like no matter where I'm at. And it works really well. Conservative mayors, liberal mayors all lined up to ask me Questions, very friendly, no problems. That's how I do it. Because that's, that's the only way you can do it.
- [62:54]
A
But I mean, I think that it's important that we don't get too caught up in hearing, in trying to say what people want to hear. I think a lot of, you know, the Sanders presidential campaign, one of the things that he was so good at, and obviously he did not become the president for a lot of reasons that you can debate, but one thing he was very good at is, you know, when people would say, is higher, you know, is a universal health care going to increase your taxes? Elizabeth Warren would never say, yes. And Bernie Sanders said, yeah, of course, that's what it's, that's what's paying for it. But you'll pay less money overall, of course. Yes, that's how it works. Yes, you will pay more. Like, yeah, it costs money to spend. Like, Democrats often try to like, half announce their policies and, oh, we're afraid of what we think the audience, we were afraid of what we think the voters want. So we can't say it. And so we have to sort of announce a half version of that. And then the actually marginalized voters or the voters who want change, who are not exclusively liberal or leftist, you know, poor working class right wingers also want change. And then you offer half change, they go, oh, well, you, who gives a shit about you then? You know, you're, you're useless to me too, if you're not. You're not even promising change, you're promising a half measure. So we get lost in that little, like, it's like, I don't know, for me, I likened it to a standup comedian who tries to guess what the. Oh, what this seems like an older crowd. I'll change my references. And then the references don't work. And you don't know why your jokes didn't work because you weren't even yourself. You just tried to guess what the audience wanted instead of like using your abilities to make them have a good time. And I think that's. So that's what it feels like to me, where it's like you're promising them something. You're afraid that they won't like the thing that you believe in. They are afraid. You're afraid that they won't want to build. And I think the Democrats have to come around and be like, this is what we're building. This is how we are different from Republicans. And not just the negative reinforcement of Trump's the bad guy, which he is but the negative reinforcement of like, this is how these policies hurt your wallet. And I mean, I hate how much of it's economic, but there's poor people on all sides of the spectrum. There's work. More and more workers are struggling every day. And like, I personally, I think that's how we reach people is luckily a lot of these interview these issues that are ethical coincide with economic issues now.
- [65:01]
C
Yeah. And in that speech I was giving last year, we were talking about, I live, I'm in Oklahoma and we're a huge oil and gas state. Oil and gas is our number one industry in Oklahoma. And they're trying to figure out ways to bring more oil and gas companies to the state. And you know, I told them last year, like, we've lost one third of all the jobs in the oil and gas industry in Oklahoma in the last five years due to automation, efficiency and AI. So why, why are you like, why are we putting so much energy into this industry when we're losing the jobs faster than we can get them? Like, not that I'm anti oil and gas, obviously I'm not, but people don't understand things like that, you know, and it's our number one employer in the state of Oklahoma is oil and gas. When you've lost a third of your jobs from the number one employing industry in your state, you have a serious problem. And their answer to that is more oil and gas. And I'm like, you will get more oil and gas, but you won't get any more jobs. This, they're not getting that part. Right. And so you just got to lay it on the line with these people. You just got to tell them how it is and be truthful.
- [66:18]
A
Is this a situation where like, the relative surplus value for the workers has just changed because of automation? Like, our oil industry doesn't necessarily create more jobs because of, it's not just that we've moved to clean energy or something. It's that the industry has restructured how it's actually employing people.
- [66:33]
C
Yeah. And, and it'll, of course it'll deliver more production taxes to the state, but it's not going to deliver more jobs. And the income taxes and sales tax and average oil and gas job in Oklahoma is probably starts at $100,000 a year. And when you're losing those jobs, 120 grand in Oklahoma is a lot of money, by the way. It's, it's probably four times more than it is in New York City.
- [66:56]
A
Matt.
- [66:56]
C
Like, the cost of living in Oklahoma is very cheap.
- [67:00]
A
You know, that's like a sandwich here. Yeah, it's a good sandwich.
- [67:04]
C
No, I'm just saying for, for people outside of this part of the world, $120,000 in Oklahoma is a ton of money. Like your upper, upper middle class in Oklahoma with that salary. So when you're, when those are the jobs you're losing and they don't require education, that's a huge problem for your state.
- [67:26]
A
Well, one thing I'd love to discuss in further depth, Matt, and well for both of you, but Matt, on this particular topic is maybe in a future episode we could go more in depth into how do we craft a response to a gradually incurring problem. Obviously this is a, the economic impact of the Strait of Hormuz being closed is the short term, shorter term thing I'm thinking about, which is that, you know, how do we get people to care about this even though it hasn't fully affected us economically yet? But of course, then I liken it to climate change. Right. Like how do, how do we create, craft a long term strategy. How do we craft a long term strategy for a problem that just doesn't make people panic, that doesn't make people reactive? And I think that's a, that's an interesting thing because I think both parties have succeeded and failed in different ways, but it's going to become an increasingly important, you know, alarmism is some ways to get people to vote and get people to react. But a lot of the problems that Democrats need to address are not going to be dealt with in a day and the problems don't present themselves as obviously. So I'd love to in the future talk about like how we can try to affect more long term changes and more gradual changes because it's a, it's a tricky issue and it's in a lot of our issues rely on that kind of strategy.
- [68:42]
B
Yeah, I just, just my final one sense is I just want the Democratic Party to once again stand for things. And that's just what it seems like. We're just trying to be wishy washy waffle back and forth, ride the fence because we want to appeal to everyone. And so you appeal to no one. Stand for things, stand for. And this is, and I have my own personal biases, obviously stand for the Ukraine, stand for American workers, which would naturally push back and counter the, the Chinese, their expansions, stand for the marginalized. And I just, the last time we saw anyone stand for anything meaningfully and it worked really well, was, was Barack Obama. He did not react. He did not React to what? Mitt Romney, what McCain, what Bush? Doesn't matter. He didn't react. And all the Democrats are doing now is reacting. They've become, Trump did this. We're not doing that. It's still the not Trump party. And you know what? They'll win the midterms, probably. They'll win the House, I'm sure. And so my concern is they'll see that as some small victory, that something is working. But if they go into 20, 28 and the Republicans figure out that they can run a solid candidate, I mean, I don't know who it would be, maybe Rubio or something, but if we don't put someone who comes forward, that tells us, this is what I stand for, this is what we need to do. And we bring him up every episode. That was what Mom, Donnie was really good at. He didn't even. He didn't seemingly even care about, like, he didn't go. He didn't go into. He wasn't in Israel's parade or whatever. And he didn't care his first time in, like, 60 years.
- [70:26]
A
He didn't care in 60 years not to march in the parade.
- [70:29]
B
And so that's the thing.
- [70:30]
A
He's not going, oh, do you not like that? I'll change. I'll just be whatever you want me to be. I'll be.
- [70:33]
B
Exactly.
- [70:34]
A
And that, that's, like you said, stand for something. And it's not only that, but, you know, I mean, I, I think of that. You know, that line. There's that line in his, in his inaugural speech where he talked about the language of civility has kept people out of politics and kept them from being heard. But what really struck me so much about that speech was, you know, the specific demographics of workers and people he made. He went, you know, and this is a very diverse city. But he went out of his way to mention all these different kinds of people and just make it very clear, like, we're governing for you, like, no voter is left behind. Because I think we have that messaging problem where it's like, we, we really need to convince people that we're interested in meeting their needs. I mean, that's how you lose workers to the conservatives, right? Is you tell them, no, no, no, your problems aren't as bad as you think they are. Well, they are. You can't tell people that they're. They don't have the problems they already have. Yep. Well, I have great news for all of the fans of our final segment of the show, which is that we're about to do our final segment of the show and it's called the least worst part of the week, where we highlight, if not a great story, a less bad story that we heard this week, either a personal experience, a news story or something else that happened in the world. And we take a little time to talk about it and provide a silver lining to our otherwise very accurate analysis. Not doom saying our very accurately negative analysis of politics. Chad, do you have a story you'd like to start with?
- [72:04]
B
Yeah, it's, we talked about China last episode and I think that was a really great discussion we had. One kind of surprising outcome is we've seen this, this escalating tensions over the tariffs, Taiwan tech restrictions, whatever. But it seems that the United States and China have resumed joint climate and methane talks. And there's two, two sides of the story that I think are good. One, obviously it's always good when the pretty much the two biggest polluters on Earth start talking again and trying to figure out a way to better the whole world. Because if, if China and the United States reduce their emissions, it sets an example for other countries to do so. But also again, we are the biggest polluters. So when we do it, it, it positively impacts the world. But also from a geopolitical standpoint, the fact that even through all of the tensions and all of the, the, the, the problems with the tariffs in Taiwan and stuff, the fact that we can come together over certain things, I think that's a good thing. I think it, it, it is, it shows that human beings can be diplomatic still, even when there's rising tensions over other things. And, and I kind of hearkens back to when the US And Russia were still working together. They're not really, they're not anymore. Obviously that's a, it's, that relationship degraded severely. But when there was still kind of tense relations, we were working with them in the space programs. And so that, that similar or when we were working for nuclear non proliferation when they were the Soviet Union and we came out with like the START and salt treaties and things like that. So even if there is tension, we can find ways to even, and even if it's just, hey, let's try to reduce emissions, that can open up to broader discussions and more friendly talks where, yeah, let's, let's cooperate more on climate change and methane emissions. But then hey, since we're talking about climate change, what's going on with the Strait of Hormuz, what's going on? And so it opens up broader talks and the fact that the. The Chinese and the Americans resumed joint climate methane talks after years of the spiraling relationship. I think that's a very good thing for climate, but also for global stability.
- [74:21]
A
Nothing like a joint existential threat to bring us all together.
- [74:23]
B
Yeah, exactly.
- [74:24]
A
Nothing like a common enemy. Whether it's an annoying uncle or a joint as existential threat to bring people together and realize we have so much more in common than we have apart. Mr. Global.
- [74:36]
C
Yes, not.
- [74:36]
A
Randall, what do you got for me?
- [74:39]
C
This is great news. So, thankfully, we are learning that there are some judges in the United States who aren't just anti American. Because a judge has officially granted Joey Jaws Chestnut permission to leave his state and go compete for his 18th World Championship in hot dog eating at Coney island on July 4th. He has 17 championships. He's going to go defend his mustard belt. He had to plead guilty to assault and battery where he slapped some dude in the face and said it was just a misunderstanding. It didn't really know why it was such a big deal, but Anyway, he's got 180 days probation, but a judge thankfully is going to let him leave the state. So he will be at Coney island on July 4th to defend his Nathan's hot dog eating championship. And I think it's just the greatest thing. What would Coney island be without Joey Jaw's chestnut slamming 140 Nathan's wieners down his pie hole?
- [75:38]
A
Like that man has. Has. He's got to be in the double digits for championships now, too.
- [75:43]
C
17. This is 17.
- [75:45]
A
17.
- [75:46]
C
Yes. He's like the Chicago Bulls of. No, he's like the Celtics of. Yeah, he's like.
- [75:54]
A
It's just got to be like the trunk of a car in there, right? Like, there's just nothing else going on. It's just hot dogs, right? Just filling. Like, how does a body at this point, all the organs have moved to the side. I have to imagine he's just sort of like a big. Like a oil tank for parts. Not.
- [76:09]
B
Not gonna lie. That took a wild turn. I was like, judges, oh, we're gonna talk about some policy. And the hot dogs. I love it. I love. I love that. That's how it goes.
- [76:16]
A
I don't know who appoints the Nathan's hot dog judges, but I'm wondering if there's cronyism involved.
- [76:22]
B
Well, I mean, it's kind of. Have you seen how these dudes eat these things? It's so gross. Like, they dip it in water.
- [76:27]
A
Generous. They consume. Certainly the hot dog ends up inside the water.
- [76:32]
C
That is.
- [76:33]
A
Yeah. It's really, it's, it's like almost medical. Like there's something.
- [76:39]
B
Well, they're, they're elite athletes.
- [76:44]
A
Yeah, they're elite athletes who, who are doing something extremely similar to a coma patient insofar as like sort of a non swallowing trough based.
- [76:54]
C
Well, you know that they have to practice.
- [76:58]
A
Like they have like quite often, you
- [77:00]
C
know you run their system stretched out
- [77:02]
B
like a marathon of hot dogs at
- [77:04]
C
home slamming down 200 hot dogs. Like what are you doing? I'm practicing.
- [77:08]
A
And then he has like a rest day where he has 30 hot dogs. Yeah, like you have like one of those training regimen. You can't, you can't just do it linearly. You gotta, you gotta work up and down a little bit.
- [77:18]
B
High intensity impact hot dog eating.
- [77:20]
A
Yeah. Tofu. Tofu dog day for a rep, for a little bit of rest. Like oh yeah, those nitrates aren't nearly as bad on, on the bloodstream on those days.
- [77:27]
C
Oh my God, he's gonna die.
- [77:29]
A
Training dogs. He's just eating like you know, carrots, foam, something like that.
- [77:32]
C
Yeah. Joey's not going to be a hundred. I'm just saying he's gonna die. I don't know how, but that good news.
- [77:39]
B
Sorry, took a dark.
- [77:40]
A
Know how? I mean I have, I have, I have three good guesses. They all have hot dog in the name. Well, my story is somewhere in between the two in terms of its geopolitical importance. And, and, and I will say as a Brooklyn restaurant, as a Brooklyn resident, I am excited for Joey's. You know what? I don't know who he slapped. I don't want to sign off on that. But I, I hope, I hope it wasn't too bad. Hope it was. Sounds like he got away with it.
- [78:07]
C
Couldn't have been that important.
- [78:09]
A
Or is the only famous person in this sport and we decide to forgive him one way or another. But I'll be down there. It's fourth of July. You know, that's about as patriotic as I get. Is screaming while a man eats hot dogs. But on the 4th, on the 4th of July it's going to be a complicated 250th anniversary for America. And I think if you're looking for something domestic to root for Joey Chestnut is a fair. Is a, is a safe bet. My story, I want to talk about this over the weekend. Pope Leo, Chicago style. Pope himself, he released a 42,300 word encyclical warning of the risks of AI talking about how we do not need to normalize generative AI in society. And I think it's really interesting for a couple things. I'd love to have a war between magic and science. That would be great. Didn't expect to find myself on the side of magic, but here we go. So it seems like one for the ages, but also I think this says, this really settles the argument once and for all. Not just because it's a really well articulated. He's very smart. It's a well articulated argument. He is a spiritual leader and people will hopefully listen to him and take his arguments seriously as he doesn't have an economic stake or government stake in the proliferation of AI but most importantly, I think this proves to anyone who says that they can't write a 10 page essay without AI the Pope wrote a 43,000 word encyclical without AI. You kids can't write your own encyclicals. You can't write a 10,000 word encyclical. And we all know what an encyclical is. So I'm not going to, you know, waste our times defining that. I. All I'm saying is you don't need ChatGPT. You just need to channel the direct voice of God. Okay, so if you're using ChatGPT, if you're using ChatGPT right now, it may be it's just because you don't have God inside of you and you need to let God speak through you. Have you considered that?
- [80:07]
B
Well, it's wild is he's, he's a pretty impressive dude. He's got a mathematics degree from Villanova. It's not like he just came out with this, this dude knows what he's talking about.
- [80:14]
A
Oh, it's a well researched, well written essay. Yeah, he's, he's not, he's not. I mean, I'm joking about a war between science and magic. He's not a Luddite. He has a very well argued. There are, there are applications for this that are good safeguards to ensure, you know, humans make are responsible for the up, you know, top tier decision making. It's a very nuanced take and it's a lot about like protecting, protecting children from violent imagery and helping people. You know, he doesn't say, he doesn't call for abolishing it. He calls for, you know, tech education among students so people know what they're interacting with and know when they're looking at fake media and things like that. It's really smart and again it's very long. So you can write something long without chat GPT. The Pope can do it.
- [80:56]
C
That's a book.
- [80:58]
A
That's a book.
- [80:58]
C
Yeah. I think 40,000 words is the minimum for a novella, I think. Don't quote me on that, Mr.
- [81:07]
A
Global.
- [81:08]
B
Avid.
- [81:08]
C
No, it's literally a book. I've read books that are shorter than 43,000 words.
- [81:14]
B
Oh, yeah, yeah,
- [81:17]
A
yeah.
- [81:19]
B
That's a good one. I like that. We got a smart pope.
- [81:22]
A
We need moral voices that the incentives cannot bend. That's a pretty good line. We should get the Democrats to quote the Pope. That's been our least worst part of the week, and we hope this podcast is the least worst part of your week. For chat, Scott and Matt Randolph, Mr. Global, I'm Nat Town. You're listening to American Power. And remember, power corrupts, but American power corrupts Americanly.