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- [00:00]
A
What will it take to win the midterms for the Democrats? What is their best strategy sense? What are the people who are making the decisions relying on? These are all really interesting questions, no matter what side you're on or whether you're just an independent. And I have answers for you. For someone who is every bit of in the game, I am Chris Cuomo. Welcome to the Chris Cuomo Project. Chuck Rocha, he is part of the elite of the elite. What does that mean? He is one of a handful of political scientists, operatives, analysts, strategists, who is hired and has been for years to run the campaigns that you and I watch and in my case, cover. He also has a podcast called the Chuck Rocha Revolution. And he's got a deal with CBS News. He's on msnbc, he's on cnn, he's on News Nation. He's all over the why. He's a different kind of Democrat. You want to see why and understand why. He gets paid to tell people what he knows. Here you go. Chuck Rocha, the Rocha Revolution. Man, it is good to see you. Thank you for being with me.
- [01:19]
B
Good to be with you, brother.
- [01:20]
A
So I've always been fascinated by you because you remind me of the kinds of Democrats that there were when I grew up in the party. But when I look at you now, not just the hat, not just the East Texas accent, but do you ever feel like, is the party still your home or are they trying to recruit different kinds of people now?
- [01:45]
B
Every day. And it's not the recruitment. I am in a really small sliver of the party which are the operatives that actually run all the races. So think about this, Chris, you're a political animal. That there is a small finite group of people who actually have the power to run the campaigns. And for those of you listening, make the tv, make the digital, come up with a strategy, figure out the polling questions. Well, that group of people are even more elite than the candidates. We recruit lots of working class candidates who are great people to run. A lot of times if they can raise money, they can be competitive. A little underbelly here. Side note, the only reason Bernie Sanders became Bernie Sanders is because he actually could raise enough money to go out and tell enough people. And that's how it all happened. It was the phenomenon of this small money don't. Cause he never got any money from anybody. But when you think about the people who run campaigns, I'm even in a smaller minority because my mom and daddy didn't come from any money. I never went to college. I talk like this. I actually talk a lot of shit. So there's a whole lot of people in my party who don't like me, but they also know that I've been very effective in what we're doing, so I'll become more acceptable over time. And I'm trying to drag the party back to the reason I actually joined the party. I remember sitting at the kitchen table with my mama. My mama was just 15 years old when I was born. She likes to say she had two kids and was divorced or wasn't old enough to get in nightclub. I remember I was like 17, and we were having dinner and the stuff about Ford getting appointed was on the news. And back when I was a young man, I'm 57, there was only three channels. And I remember asking mama, I said, mama, are we Democrats or Republicans? And she said, well, we've all lived through the Great Depression over here, and we are stalwart Democrats, but we all hope that we can make enough money one day to become a Republican.
- [03:33]
A
I remember that. I remember it like it was yesterday in my own neighborhood in Hollis. And I think it's a very common ethnic now you get to maintain the ethnic label. I don't. I'm white. My father was like you, though, Chuck. And he was one generation removed from a struggle in a different place. And if you had money, you were Republican, and if you wanted it, you were a Democrat. But now it seems that it has changed. And I do find a lot of Democrats coming at me for two reasons, both of which I find a mistake on their part. One is I don't attack Trump enough. I'm not a real one. And two, I don't get what the Democratic Party is and what it's about. I reject both of those ideas, but doesn't matter if that's a prevailing opinion. And what do you make of that? That the Democrats have changed and you got to be a muscular anti fascist and Trump is a fascist Nazi and you got to crush him every chance you get or you're not a real one. And we as a party, the Democrats, I'm told, are now about different things that don't involve compromise.
- [04:59]
B
I think there's several things going on in that question, and it's an intriguing question. The first is the raw emotion of politics and campaigns. Now, there are folks on Twitter and on social media and in the hierarchy of party apparatuses who feel very slighted that Donald Trump had the audacity to win. And I was one of the few Democrats who gave him and his campaign credit. They won. They should get credit for winning and coming up with a strategy. Democrats should do some soul searching and figure out a while we lost. I can at the same time disagree with him on policy, policy or going after Rob Reiner or any of the crazy things that he does on a daily basis while still saying we can learn things from the way that he connected with working class people around their grievance politics because they feel like their government, their whatever has left them, everything gets higher. Things are harder. But we keep to your point about what Democrats are doing to make their lives better. Forgot about that. We get sidetracked because we have a lot of well intentioned, educated people whose mom and dad, like yours immigrated here were working class folks who gave privilege to their kids, like me, like you to go to college, maybe to make a success of yourself, make some money, move to the suburbs. So they became disconnected with those folks who were really struggling. And when they lost that disconnection, they lost some of the messaging fervor that Donald Trump then picked up and said, ah, this is a way I can get some of these working class stiffs to vote for me is I'll make them think I'll be their retribution against the Democrats who want to talk about trans or immigration or crime or whatever their thing is. They want them to forget about their pocketbooks and how bad their lives sucked and blame it on the Democrats. So we have a long way to go to pull those folks back. But we can do it because he's such an idiot, in my opinion, that we could do. And how would I say it, I would. You would maximize on what he's already doing. The economy's in the drinks, things aren't going that well. While saying, here's our plan to reinvigorate the working middle class. And I think that's where you're going to see this Great debate in 28.
- [06:58]
A
I think that what is flipped. I accept your analysis and it's cogent. One is the positive to negative ratio that Democrats have decided they got beat by going high when they go low and you got to go exactly where they go and fight them right there. You're not angry. I'm angry. We're the angry ones now. Maga's not angry. They're in power. You want to see angry? You look at us because we have a fascist who's having ICE run around the country and destroy communities and destroy the fabric of this country. I see a point for point, mirror image of everything MAGA was about. That's why I say it's maga. And now being replaced by an either even bigger and in some ways more hostile, more angry populist movement that I call mega. Because it's bigger in every way. I'm not saying it's that it carries the same poor attributes that I saw as part of the MAGA movement. I'm just saying it's in reaction formation to it, that you are now the angry guys and you are going to fight bare knuckle and you are going to call Trump. Exactly. You want to use crude language. We are here for it. And we're going to curse and we're going to be angry and we're going to threaten because that's what beat us. But now, now we're the angry ones. And on social media it's working. But do you believe that's what sustains and gains in the midterms?
- [08:32]
B
I don't. I think that you get people's attention with the anger. I get that. And the Internet has turned that on its head. But we've had our biggest gains in the last 10 years being the anti Trump party. But that's only going to get us so far. And Trump's not only always going to be there, because what I found in doing campaigns for 36 years, going back to working for Ann Richards when I was 20 years old, is that most of America, most of America don't give a shit about politics. Now, there's a bunch on the far right and there's a bunch on the far left and they fight with each other on Twitter every day. But that's not where most of America is. Most of America just wants a government that's going to work for them, that's going to get out of their way. They want to live the American dream. They want to take their wife or husband on vacation maybe once a year, have a big ass truck, maybe get to go fishing every now and then, get their wife. And I stress, whatever that thing is of Americana, we've lost that piece because the algorithms feeds us things that make us so angry about who we're supposed to hate, not about who we're supposed to love. Then you couple that, Chris, with the political system in Congress that has 435 congressmen and 400 of them could never, ever be beat except in their own party in a primary. So they're rewarded by running to their corners and doing what you said, fighting and giving the most red meat to the base, because the base is where that primary opposition would come from. And there's incentive, like there was when we were younger for Democrats to sit in a smoke filled room with Republicans and go, look, I'll give you some. You give me some. Well, I'll get this done at the end of the day, working people will get helped a little bit on both sides. That's the biggest piece missing.
- [10:08]
A
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- [10:56]
B
Right?
- [10:56]
A
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- [11:00]
B
Right?
- [11:00]
A
Pretty simple. But it is safe to use anywhere on your body. Your pits, your balls, your thighs, wherever you want to use it. That's the beautiful thing. This was created by a doctor who saw firsthand how BO was being diagnosed and misdiagnosed and mistreated. So it works. It works for a long time, and it doesn't hurt you. All right? You got the solid deodorant stick, you got the spray deodorant. Everything works, okay? And it all works the right way. Some men just want to mask BO and put any poison on their bodies that you can. You're not that guy. All right? Mando men get the job done the right way. Don't mask it. Men do it. I use it. It works for me. It'll work for you. Head to shopmando.com limited time. New customers 20 off site wide. Use your exclusive Cuomo code. All right? Just use the code cuomo@shopmando.com and you can get 20 off site wide and free shipping. Shopmandocop.com shopmando.com S-H-O-P-M-A-N-O.com okay? Please. They're gonna ask where you heard about them. Give me some love. Tell them Cuomo sent me. You know, what we used to hate about the primary system has now been replaced full time by social media. It is all about trading the few for the many. And what has happened that I didn't expect is the media has done the easy thing. It has done what everybody else was gonna do. Cuz it's easier, it's easier to be on social media than out on the hustings. It's easier, it's easier to fake man on the street interviews than actually understand what's happening anywhere in the country. But the media picks up off of social media because it's easier. So now that's the game in politics. We talk about the majority, we point out the disconnect every once in a while. How what you see on social media is not what is felt the country. But more and more the many are falling in to the world of the few and they are getting their opinions from social media. So even if they're not on there fighting with somebody who looks different than they are and trading nasty things because they're afraid their boss or someone in their family is going to see it, so they don't want to risk anything but it's consuming our politics. So that now look, the take on Rob Reiner president said stupid ugly things that that are a reflection of our worst selves. And MAGA said that a lot of the comments on that were bad from MAGA people. The media who got the attention though were who picked up by other media for what cursing at the President. You know, not the smartest take, not the person who pointed out first that Rob Reiner was so gracious after Charlie Kirk but the president couldn't be that. Those aren't the people who got the wattage. It's people who said you Trump. I can't believe you said that. That's a bad sign in my mind because it proves we are losing to what makes us less, not more.
- [14:22]
B
People ask me all the time because I have evolved, Chris, as a guy that was born in the 60s, raised in the 70s and 80s when we there was no Internet. When I grew up, I did my homework on the world book at my grandmother's house. I'm gonna make you smile because you were the is that I've got to go through all these evolutions of working off a paper list, going to a pay phone with a quarter to call the organizer, calling in my names and then evolving to having a beeper. And when I got a beeper I thought I had my mama could beat me, my grandmama could beat me, they could tell me to call home. I thought that was great. And then all of a sudden I got a bag phone, I got a mobile phone that was in a bag that I could Put in my vehicle. Then I thought I really had made it. And then all the other evolutions, I say that not to be cute, but to say that as we've evolved, you've watched people start getting their information to your point. This is the point you're making that is really important for people to understand. When the Internet first started with aol, we had these chats, and then we were trying to search for information. There was real news there to be had. You could connect to Fox News or NBC or CNN and go get an article. The biggest single change that was the Chuck Rocha wind up. The biggest single change in American politics today with con, with people, is Chris. They never will get out of a platform to search for something they want to know about four, eight years ago, they would leave Facebook, they would leave Twitter, and they would leave where they're at, and they would go look at Google and Google, Chris Como, whatever this thing is. I heard about Chris Como. Well, now, wherever they're at, Tick Tock, tons of people, they are searching in the search engine in TikTok to tell me about Chris Cuomo. And so whatever somebody has put in there about Chris Cuomo or Chuck Rocha, that's what they're consuming as news and as fact. And that's real. Where the real rubber meets the road with what you're saying, brother, you know.
- [16:17]
A
I agree so much. Now, here's the problem is I've been finding this lately. It's not just frustrating as I'm looking around, see, because I gotta. I gotta be careful because I want to be a fair broker. And that's not the success model. The success model is Quit News Nation. Go full independent and remind people this is even bigger on the inside. I am the lion of the left. I am the Cuomo scion, and I will literally and rhetorically beat your ass on the right. That's who I am. I'm a different kind of D. Because I am not some snowflake. I am not some pussy. I will fuck you up any way you want it. That would kill it on social media. My following would explode. The ladies would love it. Even the ones all the way on the me too side. Not because of some bullshit machismo, the desperation for strength. Because you are so tired of being victimized and seeing things that matter to you. Taken and destroyed and spoiled by this administration and the political movement around it as you perceive it in that quadrant of the left. And I would get big numbers and I would push all these lesser men out of the way because they're not. They can't be as, as, as, as assertive and aggressive as I can, because I can do it. I can do it with the rhetoric and the words. As Trump said, I know all the words. And I can be the kind of basic person on the street that seems to be getting more and more receptivity and my numbers would go up, up, up, and I would soon match and increase my revenue. My problem with that is I find it personally unacceptable to me because I know I'm just driving division. I'm just driving the division and I'm making my mark on it. And I would post little clips of Chuck Rocha saying, I believe the Democrats. And I would stand in the background like this behind his cliff, go like this, and, you know, do some kind of mocking thing of you. And then I'd come on and be like, man, what are these people talking about, man, take that hat off and put on some gloves, man. We gotta start knocking these people out. That's how you make it on social media and in politics today. I know. And because one is the same, right? It is the path of least resistance. Ironic, right? Cause there's so much resistance on social media, but that's noise, not signal. And, and this is how you get known. Look at aoc. Her name is not on a single piece of meaningful legislation. Not one. She has changed nothing in terms of policy in this country. Nothing. However, she means everything in terms of the identity and the wattage and the Persona and the oppositional attitude. She is more powerful in that regard than Hakeem Jeffries ever will be. But is that what wins you races or is it going to become what wins races?
- [19:34]
B
I think what you see around the country is you kind of see a little bit of a combination of both. Folks are looking at how they can be known like aoc, but then also have a lot of, like, ideas. To your original question of what is a Democrat going to do to help your life? Make things cheaper, get government out of your way, Help when you need some help. If you follow in hard times, like, we've always been the party that was there to be helpful to people. And I think right now it's a real turning point because you see folks really moving around in the electoral space. A bunch of folks voted for Donald Trump in the presidency, but then a whole bunch of folks stayed home. Just a year later in New Jersey, some of them switched, about 18% of them from Republican to vote for somebody like a Mikey Sheryl, a Navy veteran fighter pilot. Like, then we were like, well, Maybe that's the formula. Democrats, we have a strong woman who was Navy and to your point, knows how to fight and has been in the trenches. Like, I think right now we're looking for that identity that can be the fit to where America can align with you. You're not going to stop people from fighting on the Internet. And that's always been the case of, if it wasn't the Internet, we would find other ways. Folks told me the one time they were like, well, Chuck, there's so much false information around these campaigns. I said, 35 years ago, I printed up a fake newspaper in a congressional race and put a bunch of oppo research about the Republican I was running against and threw it in everybody's yard on Sunday morning to act like it was a regular Sunday newspaper. I'm not proud of that, but that was me spreading fake news in a very elementary level to win an election. A long time ago when I was in my twenties, stupid, probably had drank too much the night before and all the things because I thought I was really doing something because I was helping America again. Put that on steroids right now and think about that on the Internet. That's what people are doing. It doesn't mean that they're wrong or right. It's that we have to figure out how to move with this thing that's not going away. The Internet to give people real facts and things that are going to help their life, whether it's public policy or popularity. It's an information, not information. It's attention. The Internet wants your attention because it's making money off your attention. There's something that's got to really change there. Donald Trump came in and took all the oxygen out of the room. There's this big debate about who's going to be the next Republican and who's going to be the next Democrat is really going to play the biggest piece in where our politics are going for the future.
- [21:51]
A
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- [23:31]
B
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- [23:32]
A
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- [23:48]
C
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- [24:22]
A
You know, I like the operative understanding that you gotta tell me what you're gonna do for me. I don't know that you beat me if I run against you by saying, I'll tell you what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna stop Rocha. That's what I'm gonna do. And that was absolutely the operating understanding of maga. Put us in there to stop these whack jobs with them trying to get rid of gender and everything else. But I think that it has met its match on the left. Now, I think Democrats believe they want to be what beat them. They won't articulate it that way, but I don't want you to be nice. I don't want you to be better. I don't want you to go high when they go low. I don't want you to work with them. I don't want you to compromise. I don't. I want you to fight them. I want you to stop Them, because what they are isn't just wrong, they're evil. These are bad people. This guy's a fascist and a Nazi and he's putting together his own private army. Ice. These aren't men and women doing their job. They're not enforcing the law. They are just grabbing people off the street that they think are Democrats. And I see that there is a matching. It's like a matching column game. They say you wanted lots of Latinos in the country because you were gonna do the brown replacement theory, right? You're replacing the whiteies with the browns. Now they say you're trying to get rid of all the browns because you want to keep it all white. They have found their matching in this enter in this attention economy that you're talking about. And the lefties that are resonating, look at the I've had it podcast. Those are two angry individuals on that show. They say mean all the time by design. Why? Because, as you just said, I said.
- [26:12]
B
A while ago, because it sells.
- [26:13]
A
That's right, the algorithms. This is the most fucked up thing I've ever seen in our society. By the way, you have never heard a publisher or a news director or a CEO say, yeah, I designed Fox News so that we could make conservatives as angry and ignorant as we could so that they would then listen to us and we would then weaponize the left. You would have never heard Roger Ailes say that. That never. He didn't believe it, but he would also never say it. These people on social media tell you, chuck, hey, yeah, you should put your ads here, here, and here. Because our algorithm is designed for provocation. So the more anger and outrage and these types of. Of terms, you don't even need hashtags anymore because our AI is better than that. So we'll grab the words. Don't worry about that. You don't need a hashtag, no need for hashtags anymore. You don't have to signpost. We'll find the words and more violent and aggressive the words, the more resonance you'll get. And we're going to take that content and put it into people's feeds. If they're looking for anything like that, or maybe not even at all. We're going to put it in because that's the best way to get ad placement attention. So even if you're not in the algorithm game, you want your ads in places that are benefiting from the algorithm game and they're telling you it's it to your face. It is by design. That's the Only time in the media we've ever seen this before where I'm telling you, I've designed this so that you gotta be outraged if you don't say, if you don't say fu, Trump and I do, you'll lose no matter what follows your point. It doesn't matter how right it is, how clever, how insightful, how mean. If I'm using the right kind of invective, I'm going to get the reach, not you. And they told you they're doing it. And then we keep seeing all these horrible things happening and we know that this is why this is feeding it and we don't do anything about it. It's really weird. I've never seen anything like it before.
- [28:30]
B
Yeah. And I separate now when I think about Trump and I think about all the gains that Democrats make when we attack Trump and we fight Trump and they're. There's. You're definitely onto something when you talk about the Democrats were hungry to see somebody fight back. You can see in the algorithms, you can see it in who. To your point about the media that's making money out here being that far left or whoever going crazy on the Internet about what he's done. And I think that that's the point. I separate that now in my mind and I'm trying to get campaigns to think about this, is that these voters act differently when Trump's not on the ticket and that this will not always be this way because Trump is a one time thing. But you know, there's Trumpisms in the thought philosophy of Trump, but regular voters, regular working class people, sure, there's a group of far right folks you're never going to make happen. They stayed under the blanket for a long time. Trump's giving them cover to come out. Just like there's folks on the far left that want to burn things down or do whatever they're going to do. But that's the real minorities of the party. There's a lot of. And Democrats hate when I say this, but there are a lot of good Republicans that I grew up with in East Texas, who I played football with, with, and when I go home to homecoming, who I used to lift weights with when we had a weightlifting club, and all of those boys are Republican and a bunch of them are true maga. They like to give me on the Internet. They're like, oh my God, you're on TV doing this. Where's your wig at? Come on, son. You can only put on lift weights. All this grab assing that we did as boys. But I know in their heart, and I know if I was in a bind, Chris, if I needed to call one of them, they'd come get me out of jail tomorrow or they'd come get me out of a ditch, right? They're not bad people. They've been sold a bit of goods that make them think that they're doing something rebellious and good for their country because they're fighting back on a system that they feel like has forgotten about them. I'm really interested in talking to those people who thought Trump was their redemption, who just want some common sense shit in their politics. And I think there's a door opening for that, especially with the unpopular popularity of his policy positions. Not the Persona, not the crazy shit he says on the Internet. But that piece is what I really want to tap into.
- [30:31]
A
But how do you get to them? How do you get the noise on the Internet? Because everybody, you know, I know now, you know, just from my brother's campaigns. Everybody's feeding you social media samples now, right? It's hard to even get focus groups with real people in a room right now because it's so more, much more cost effective to just do it digitally. But automatically, as soon as you do that, you're getting them in a space. It's like, you know, if you talk to me here like this, it's one context. You're getting one version of me. If you were to talk to me while I'm actively in a self defense session where I'm, I'm fighting against one or two guys who are putting me through scenarios, you're going to get a different version of me because I'll be like, look, Chuck, I want to have this conversation, but right now I got a guy throwing haymakers at my head. So I'm going to speak to you a little differently than I would. They're on social media, these guys, you know, and look, I live out on Long Island. I'm a fisherman, I'm a coast guard captain, I'm a firefighter, you know, and I'm a self defense student and instructor. You know, you can imagine what kind of guys I spend a lot of time around, okay? And they all know that the proudest thing in my life is my name and the name that I've been able to give my kids and what it means so they know who I am and they'll talk politics with me, but not that much because they know me. You know, it's like, yeah, if you tried to come into my house and hurt one of my Kids, I put a big hole in your chest. That's why I have the weapon and that's why it's ready and ready to go. They know me, but on the Internet they'd hate me. They would hate me on social media because of how things are taken. You know, that's the. I was doing it for a while, Chuck. I would go on to any podcast on the Right. And it wasn't just that guys would be different to me because, you know, most guys are impressed by size and they're just talking tough, but they're not tough guys. And as we both know, the most dangerous men are usually the quietest. Right? And I would go on and I'd say, so what do we disagree with? What makes me such a crazy lefty? Why do I hate Trump? Tell me what, what is it? And it would fall away real fast, right? And unless they were just, you know, playing stupid games about like the vaccine or whatever it was, it falls away. But on social media you can't do that. And I feel like we're so dominated by social media now that I don't know that in politics you can still get to the majority and talk to people like normal people anymore. What gives you hope?
- [33:09]
B
I think that there's a way, I think you're exactly right about the social media piece of this. But folks find ways to find entertainment that makes them happy. There's a certain class of people, I am one of them. So I'm not talking down to people who get on the Internet, who troll on, not troll, but you know, scroll. That's what my word is on Twitter, whatever. Because I got to know everything that everybody's saying because I got to talk about it on tv.
- [33:30]
A
Tv.
- [33:31]
B
But now we've moved from there's a section of people that are older, that are on Facebook, that are over 50, who still watch network TV. And there's a way to communicate to them. And when Democrats communicate with them, the message lands about half the time. But there's this group of people between 30 and 50 who don't have cable TV no more. Part of them are on scrolling on the things, but a big chunk of them are living a shitty mid management life, going home, trying to make their husband or wife halfway happy. They're trying to figure out how they can raise enough money to do just some basic shit. And maybe, maybe if they're not fighting with their wife, they get a little Netflix in the evening or a little whatever their, their, their streaming package is. It's a layered communication approach of a Showing up where you need to show up with a message that resonates. And Democrats who are like a bunch of six year olds, a lot of time at a soccer field know how to chase one ball at a time time. And they're all chasing that damn ball. It could be let's be the gruff men or it could be let's talk about abortion for two cycles because this is making men women angry and they're right. But you, while you have Republicans talking about all of these different things and the common denominator is nobody cares about you. It's the immigrants fault, it's the trans people's fault, it's all these people fault that your life sucks, but they're acknowledging your life sucks. So you need to have a message. And it don't have to be Democrats or immigrants are bad or none of that. I'm just using. These are hypothetical examples of how you move people. I'm a professional person who has to figure out how to move people. And this is the part we've been getting wrong. We need to make our message way more simple. We have too many well intentioned folks with master's degrees trying to policy nuance all of us and we bring a policy book to a boxing match and we get our ass whooped every time. Cause the boxing match is always going to win. So I think we have to do a combination. It's not going to change overnight. But I do think there's a pathway if we get smarter about the way we do things and show up in the right ways with messages that people can relate with. This ain't rocket science or I wouldn't get paid to do it.
- [35:31]
A
Support comes from Cowboy Colostrum. All right. I was not a quick adapter when it came to Colostrum. I know what it is. I've always known what it was. But my wife is an integrative nutritionist and I watched that she had upped colostrum intake for her and my son who's one of those body beautiful guys lifting weights all the time. And I got a little curious and I realized that this wasn't like return to baby status. It was about fixing your gut and hair health and skin health. And I looked more into it and realized that today's sponsor, Cowboy Colostrum is really ahead of the game, offering the highest quality bovine a cow, right? Colostrum. It's the best you can get in the US it's 100% made in America, 100% from American grass fed cows. Now it is whole colostrum which means it's rich in bioactives and immunoglobulins. Look those up. Immunoglobulins, okay? What they do is they help your immune system. They're called your ignition levels. All right? Cowboy Colostrum collects the surplus colostrum after baby calves have had their fill. Don't worry, no baby cows were deprived. All right? And the beautiful thing about Cowboy Colostrum is it's not processed, it's not stripped down, it's not made with a lot of other fake stuff. It's easy to drink. It's made with natural ingredients. The flavors are great. Chocolate, vanilla matcha with whatever you want. And not only will it help stabilize your gut, but the peptides and growth factors will help with skin and hair. So I'm in. How about you? For a limited time, you can get 25% off the entire order. Just head to cowboy colostrum.com. c o w b o y c o L-O-S-T-R-U m.com use my name, tell them Cuomo sent you and you will get 25% off when you use the code. Welcome to our ugly home. Reddit is back for a historically hideous season. It's our 100th ugly house. This place is mayhem. That is impressive. And if these walls could talk. Do you cry a lot?
- [37:54]
B
I do. They'd have a lot to say.
- [37:57]
A
What in the world, God's name is this pit? Don't get too close if you see the show. I'm scared of that.
- [38:03]
B
Ugliest house in America.
- [38:05]
A
Season premiere Wednesday at 8 on HGTV. Womo. Here's the counterfactual. Gavin Newsom. Gavin Newsom is making all the right arguments, all the right ways for a Democrat running the biggest state, beaten back a recall, doing all these things. He's getting killed. The fires come. Not a great job. During the fires, he's getting crushed. He changed his strategy, which right there, you got to give him credit. It is hard to make a change when you've got something to lose. He starts slapping the shit outta Trump every chance he can in a way that is 60 IQ points lower than anything that he had ever been a part of before. The only governmental thing he has anything to do with is is countering a bullshit gerrymandering move in Texas with his own bullshit move. And he has skyrocketed, skyrocketed in popularity within the Democratic Party. What's the lesson?
- [39:19]
B
You made it for me earlier when you said Democrats are so hungry because we've been the wusses in the room for so long. To look at somebody stand up to they think is a bully and a tough guy. Me and you know, Trump and other folks like him are not really tough guys because he may talking that much shit. Ain't never, never. I'll just, you know where I'm going with that. They, they, his popularity has been, oh, maybe he's the fighter. We are so desperate for that that we think that guy. And he may be, but I don't think so. And if you have to run a primary against 20 people and run on your record in California in a primary, that's going to be hard to defend when gas is $7 a gallon and you have the fires like that's a debate for another day. And I'm sure I'll be on a presidential campaign probably against it him. But this is showing you the anxiety in the room of just wanting the fight when we could take the fight, highlight what's wrong with going on and then say, then here's our vision. I've been telling Democrats, not popularly, that we have to recognize that we have not. We've lost our way and we should be honest with voters because I'm living proof that voters and people will forgive you. I believe everybody deserves a second chance. Hell, you deserve a third chance. But if you look at a voter say, look, the Democratic Party was built on the back of working people and we have forgotten about that over the last few cycles. And we have to get back to centering everything we're doing around you, your family, faith and everything that goes on in your community. That's where we want to live at all this other shit matters, the environment matters and stuff. But we that can live from this space, we're going to be in this space first. And Democrats would be wise to listen to that. And I think that you're going to see all the fat get cut off as we get closer to 28.
- [40:47]
A
I hope you're right. Fight. I would love for there to be an additional piece of the man or woman that you're running saying, by the way, I'm someone you want on your team. I'm someone that you want as your friend. I'm that kind of person. I just believe that you're opening yourself up. I mean we're. You're already going to have an army of people like me trying to find everything in your past to destroy you because the easiest kind of reporting to do. But when you try to hold yourself out as a good person, I just feel that people are so hungry for a good person person. You know what I mean? That, like, you know, I don't know what you can get done. I don't know what you can't get done. But I just want to know you're there for the right reasons and you're a good person. And that seems in such short supply right now. Do you believe that Kamala Harris will emerge from the Democratic field in the next presidential cycle?
- [41:40]
B
She's definitely going to run. I don't think there's almost any way she could win. Metal mean I don't like black women. It don't mean I don't think a woman could win. I just think that voters are tired of her. I don't think all of that is her fault either. I think she ran with a big Joe Biden, you know, weight around her neck and that. That was hard to do. And I think that there'll be so many competing ideas in the 28 primary of the folks that you're talking about somebody that's strong, somebody that's confident, somebody that's showing up and talking about these issues we're talking about. It made me think, as you were talking about a good person who, with relatability. I worked and was a chief strategist for Ruben Gallego in the last election. He overperformed Kamala Harris by a lot, with lots of demographics that Democrats had been losing. And it's easy to say it's because of my great strategy. And as a strategist, I'm going to say that. But the truth is that's not the truth. The truth is Ruben Gallego is a man's man. He was raised by a single mother. He grew up in a house where there was two bedrooms. So he slept on the couch because he was the only man, because his three sisters got the bedroom. He got a bed when he went to college, short order cook worked on construction sites. But we told our Arizona voters this story. So when they came after him, Chris, with everything, he had gotten divorced from his wife. Maybe he does this or he does that, all this. He was running his Carrie Lake. There was no lack of attacks on the Internet. Let me be clear. It was Carrie Lake. Folks trusted him because he felt they could see and we had told a story that they could relate with. I think that's what people are looking for, you know, to be somebody that they could follow because they want somebody that's got their hands dirty a little bit. Somebody that understand when we have a boxing viewing match for and yellow that there's something that the Mexican Americans in Arizona, we stop what we're doing. We're going to the boxing match. And when Reuben wanted to have a actually sponsored by the campaign, I had to have a 30 minute conversation with consultants about what pay per view was and what a boxing match did because at a certain point they thought Reuben was going to fight somebody. And I was like, this is why we lose. Because none of y' all have ever lived a real life to understand what men in Arizona are going to like. And if Ruben is sponsoring a boxing viewing party where they don't have to pay for it and we're paying for it, it's going to be gold.
- [43:52]
A
Yeah, 100% men and women. Although you don't want any part of being in there against Canelo. I've never seen anybody so hard to hit. I guess Mayweather, but I've never. I mean, talk about the sweet science.
- [44:03]
B
Always moving.
- [44:04]
A
That guy will change how you look real fast. I agree with you about Gallego. I agree with you about the authenticity and the humanity. It just gets crowded out by all this artificial stuff and all the hate that's going on. But I hope that your prevailing wisdom or your version of wisdom prevails in terms of what we see in the party because we need a strong opposition to what's there. The one thing I do believe is I can't believe the Democrats are gonna pick somebody who's in the mix right now. Now I think they're so hungry for disruption because again, I think the pendulum swung. They're just like the MAGA folks were. Nobody was more pro institution than conservatives. They were all about our institutions. This whole it all sucks. Burn it all down. That is anathema. It's right up there with like, you know, tariffs for real conservatives. So the pendulum is swung and now on the left. I think that the person who's gonna emerge is gonna be someone we don't know right now. Now or who we don't think is going to emerge right now. Because people are going to be desperate for disruption. And for someone to be to say you're part of all this, you're part of all this. I have nothing to do with this. That's why Roana just backed that businessman in the California governor's race instead of Swalwell or Katie Porter. I mean, you know those two top line Democrats, he didn't pick either of them. He wanted the businessman disruptor from the outside. Interesting. Tell to me, Chuck Roach, you are always welcome anywhere. I am. You are smart and you have that human intelligence that makes you such a valuable commodity in politics and in the media. Thank you for giving me the opportunity.
- [45:51]
B
Thanks for having me.
- [45:57]
A
Chuck Rocha. I want him to be right. But will he be? Well, he gets paid to be right, but he is also trying to do something that is different than the prevailing norm. So much anger, anger, so much hostility. And remember, Democrats have to be remembering what beat them. MAGA was angry. It was direct. It was simple. It was constant. Now they want to be the same thing. Is that the best strategy? Does it get you what you want? Well, the question is, what do you want? Do you want to win elections? Do you want to be in power? Do you want a mandate? Do you want to make things different? Or do you want to win? Do you want to own the other side? Do you want to destroy? Do you want them down so you can point fingers at Ha ha ha? Seems like a simple answer, but maybe it isn't. We'll all watch it together. And Chuck Rocha gave us a little bit of a better sense of which way we're headed. I'm Chris Cuomo. Thank you for subscribing and following. Thank you for checking out the TikTok shop to buy swag that wears your independence that you know the money is going towards us, crowdsourcing contributions that we can give to people and to initiatives that we can all be proud of. Like what? Well, like that Uber driver dad who had to find a way to pay for his kid to go to school because his job as a air traffic controller was suffering because of the shutdown, gave him 10 grand. Inara, my friend's group that helps kids who are affected by the war in Gaza. Hey, if you say you care, show you care. Boom. Gave him 20 grand. Why? Because I could. Because I had the money in the account. I am a free agent. I am a critical thinker. I am different. We got the swag. Great for the gifting season, great for you, and allows us to do great things. I'll see you at News Nation 8p and midnight every weekday night. Okay. I'll see you soon. Yeah. Things are tough. Yeah. Sometimes it seems like the bad guys are winning. Attitude's got to be the same. Let's get get after it.