Anthony Weiner (4:58)

Can say to my new Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra hey, find a keto friendly.

Mike Pesca (5:03)

Restaurant nearby and text it to Beth and Steve. And it does without me lifting a.

Anthony Weiner (5:07)

Finger so I can get in more squats anywhere I can. 1, 2, 3 will that be cash or credit? Credit. 4. Galaxy S25 Ultra the AI companion that does the heavy lifting so you can do you get yours@samsung.com compatible with select apps. Requires Google Gemini account. Results may vary based on input. Check responses for accuracy.

Mike Pesca (5:32)

Hello and welcome to Not Even Mad, the talk show where we unite people with disparate political passions. They don't have to be right or left. They just have to disagree with each other, come from. From different points of view, but love talking to each other more than they love hating each other or the other side, whatever side that may be. Today we talk about the fact that the government is open. Yay. But that also means it's open season on Chuck Schumer. This leads to a lot of questions like what are the Democrats doing? What can the Democrats do? What do the Democrats stand for? We will discuss it. And while upholding our reputation for refutation, and yet at the same time always showing that we are not even mad. So who are we when I say we? What a panel we have today. The editor at large of Reason magazine, Nick Gillespie, is here. Hello, Nick. And also the host of the Reason Interview podcast. I believe I got that right.

Nick Gillespie (6:44)

You did, Mike. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure.

Mike Pesca (6:47)

A former guest. Now I've not been a guest on Anthony Wieners New York Radio Show. It's on pause because Mr. Weiner is running for New York City Council District 2. But he joins me now. Hi. Welcome to not even mad. Where is, where is District Council 2?

Anthony Weiner (7:05)

It's lower Manhattan from about Houston street to the 30s, from the water to about 6th Avenue. It's all the iconic parks. Tompkins Square Park, Union Square Park, Washington Square Park. It's nice to be with you, Nick and Ike.

Mike Pesca (7:17)

Great to have you. How's the polling? Can you even poll in a district that small?

Anthony Weiner (7:21)

It's not prudent to do so. It's probably more expensive to poll. And polling in my case is hard to do because I'm like a sui generous candidate. You'd have to do like four, four pages of Wikipedia entries before you ask them the question. But. But there isn't any polling.

Mike Pesca (7:37)

Name recognition, not a problem, though I apparently not now. So name recognition or the recognition of the fact that we have a government, it is being funded. And that was not always a certain thing because Chuck Schumer, as a Senate Democrat, did have the option to filibuster what was called a continuing resolution. And many members of his party, many members on the left, urged him, pleaded with him to do it, but he made the case that it would be hurting his constituency and the American people more than it would help, even if it was, quote unquote, standing up to the Trump administration. Now Schumer is taking the brick bats, but I guess we could all Go to Yellowstone park if we need it. Now, Anthony, you've run for many, many a position. I'm forgetting. Do you ever run for New York Senate?

Anthony Weiner (8:32)

No. Many, many positions. I said I got elected to the council, then elected to Congress. I ran for mayor twice. That's the only thing I ran for. I didn't win.

Mike Pesca (8:38)

But, you know, your name was always.

Nick Gillespie (8:40)

That's four more than I have. So, Mike, I know you. You are a perennial candidate for every office.

Mike Pesca (8:46)

I was. Yes. I was the vice president of the Inter Fraternity Council in college. But here's my question. If you were the senior senator, junior senator from New York, and both New York senators actually voted to fund the government, what would you have done? Would you have been a yes vote on the continuing resolution?

Anthony Weiner (9:03)

Well, it's important to understand that in a way, everyone in this transaction played their part. I mean, members of the House of Representatives and I was a member of Congress for some time. You're not really accountable for anything, right? I mean, you're very rarely the person that means something is going to get passed. And you can always rationalize a reason. You didn't vote for something. It didn't have enough of funding for something, or it had too much funding or it had this rider or not. Being a member of Congress is the opposite of really being accountable, except to the idea that you've got to know where your constituents are. You don't want to make them too bad. And to a large degree, that's true in the Senate as well, except for rare moments when you have these kind of precipices that we face continuing resolutions, which are fancy ways of saying, are we gonna keep the government open even though we haven't passed all the appropriation bills, raising the debt limit, These things that kind of really do need adults to try to figure out, well, Chuck Schumer was put in the position of kind of being the last remaining adult that had to not figure out the way to perform what he felt, but try to think what was in the best interest. And as I've kind of watched.

Mike Pesca (10:14)

Best interests of who?

Anthony Weiner (10:15)

Well, as I've been trying to figure out this question, like, you know, what would I have done? One of the ways I'm looking at it is I'm listening to Chuck's explanation of his view, and I don't hear anyone on the other side really disputing it on the substance. There's a lot of disputing it on the performative value of what Democrats want to see right now. And I am a perfect barometer of this, I've been knocking on doors for the last couple of months here in a deep blue, very Democratic area. And the vibe changed from everyone being under their table, kind of like shell shocked to being why aren't we doing more to fight? But when Chuck Schumer says, well yes, we could have helped shut down the government, that would have been a way to fight and way to demonstrate to our base we were fighting. The question he raises, I haven't seen any of those advocates really answer, would we have been in a better place as Democrats and as a country if the government did shut down? And what's unusual about this, and I'd be interested to hear what Nick's take has, is usually when you reach these precipices, there is usually some incentive, a lot of incentive on the in party, particularly the president, to try not to shut down the government. Well, what if you have this Alice in Wonderland dynamic that actually the president, he doesn't give a shit. He's like, yeah, let's go ahead and shut this down because he's just the guy at the end of the bar shouting at his TV is now the president. And I do think that Chuck Schumer might have made the right calculation that stopping Donald Trump from having a shutdown government was the right play in the end of the day.

Mike Pesca (11:45)

I too am interested in Nick's opinion now, Alice in Wonderland because of the Red Queen. Off with their heads or because of.

Nick Gillespie (11:53)

You know, because of the, the heavy drug references and illusions of that Mike. Well, even the portion of the thing.

Mike Pesca (12:01)

Is what I want it to mean and telling ravens from a writing desk.

Nick Gillespie (12:04)

Talk about this like I'm pissed that there was a continuing resolution which wasn't Donald Trump in the Republicans interests because Trump understands from his own previous experience that like he's going to get tagged with any kind of government shutdown. But I don't care. I'm not a Republican, I'm not a Democrat. And the only two people I think who acquitted themselves with honor this time around were Rand Paul and Thomas Massie. They were the lone Republicans who voted against in the Senate and the House. The continuing resolution. If there were actual adults in the room, we would not be debating the budget for this fiscal year with what, like six months to go in the Senate or the federal government has not passed a budget according to the processes that they put into law in the 70s. They have not managed to pass a year before the fiscal year. It Governs since the 1990s. That is a sign that the, you know, the Classroom doesn't have a teacher in it. There's no adults here. Regardless of, you know, then you get to the question, okay, well, what should Chuck Schumer have done or not? You know, from a viewpoint, whether or not you want to spend a lot of money or a little money, you know, what, whatever your scope of government is like, there needs to be a serious, there needs to be a serious discussion of, okay, what is the framework for how we're going to spend, how we're going to spend money, what we're going to spend it on, and how do we talk about that so that we're not just constantly doing more of the same. And the only alternative to this is looking up in 2019, right. The last year before COVID the federal government spent $4.4 trillion. In 2025, it's estimated that we're going to spend $7.2 trillion. Okay? There's a massive jack up during COVID It has gotten even higher than we were spending at peak Covid. This is a real problem. And what. I fault Chuck Schumer for many, many things. I'm not a fan of him as a, as a politician, whatnot, but he is the opposition in the Senate. He could have at least extracted some agreement to have an actual discussion of what, you know, what do we spend money on and why?

Mike Pesca (14:21)

Well, he was your political mentor, as I understand it, Anthony. So two questions. One, could he have really done that? I saw that in the couple days that he was considering what to do. There was some talk of that, but it became clear that the Republicans were not going to move and concessions were not to be extracted. But if you could just take me through the politics of outrage, because I know that at this moment Democrats are saying do something, but is that always the smartest thing to do? If this something that you do is either ineffective or hurts people, then again, it has to be weighed against the popular opinion that you're doing nothing. And that too has costs, even if it's a perception. But go ahead.

Anthony Weiner (15:04)

Yeah, that's basically. You said it similar to the way I said it. Look, there are a lot of people in Washington right now. One of the impressions that I got when I first got there in the 1980s was that a relatively few number of members of Congress are actually doing the job of running the government. Everyone else is doing some version of trying to get reelected, performing the minimal amounts so that their constituents are providing good services back home. But in terms of running the government, a relatively small number of people, the committee chairman, the leadership and things like that. In today's Congress, it's even fewer because you now have the entire Republican Party, which has said, we're not even going to insist on our prerogatives. We're going to let the president do whatever he wants. And when Nick says he should have extracted something, well, that's a common refrain I've heard the last few days. Using what leverage? If the precipice doesn't exist for Elon Musk, do you think Elon Musk. I mean, here's a simple way to put this. Do you think Elon Musk was rooting for a shutdown or rooting for not a shutdown? You know, the fact is that if, you know, we hadn't really ever contemplated.

Mike Pesca (16:04)

This, and the answer, obviously, he was. Because he could go nuts with his cuts.

Anthony Weiner (16:08)

Well, here's.

Nick Gillespie (16:09)

No, no, no, he's not. He wasn't. I mean, the Republican Party was in favor of a continuing resolution. I mean, that's what Mike Johnson did.

Anthony Weiner (16:17)

No, but I'm saying that. Listen, forgive me, Nick. I'm just saying that the two options that were available, neither one of them were good for Democrats. They were what Chuck Schumer chose, a continuing resolution or a shutdown. And you said he should have used his leverage. Well, what do you do when the leverage is. You don't want either one of those two things. There's nothing to really bargain with. But in terms of Mike, you put the question correctly, because this is what's going on in Washington in full display. Citizens who are in the Democratic Party are furious at their leaders for not doing something right. And so there is no shortage in today's world of people who perform outrage, being mad a lot better than Chuck Schumer does. But when you're reached at the point where you have to say, all right, what if we do have a situation where the guy that wrote the Project 2025 book is in charge of OMB and that guy is empowered by present law to say what opens and when what, you know, I mean, that's a pretty bad scenario that we haven't confronted before. And that's why I think Chuck Schumer. I haven't heard anyone dispute this, why Chuck Schumer might have chose the least bad of two bad options.

Nick Gillespie (17:26)

I just want to stress that we're acting as if all of this is a surprise. Like, who knew that the budget resolution, the past continuing resolutions that hadn't been passed, oh, they're coming due, and nobody knew. I mean, this is not. It's not going to be about showdowns, but nothing is going to change. And again, I actually think, Anthony, I get your point about Democrats being outraged because they want, they want to know that there's some kind of resistance to Trump going on. But by the same token, it's like if we're spending, you know, $7.2 trillion this year, it's like, there's going to be a lot of money, and it's good. There's going to be a lot of money for everybody because the, you know, Doge is not actually cutting spending and, you know, the spigot is still flowing. And for me, as somebody who's not, not a partisan of either group, you know, that's what's outraging me, is that we are not discussing the fact that, you know, whatever you want to say, how much more the government should have been spending under Covid. It's like Covid is over and there is no reason for us to be spending, you know, three, you know, basically $3 trillion more a year.

Anthony Weiner (18:34)

Yeah, but, Nick, I have to tell you, man, 2012 called. They want their debate back. We're not having these kinds of.

Nick Gillespie (18:39)

Yeah, but then, but then where's the leadership in the sense of, like, if you're saying that Schumer couldn't have worked with, there are no Republicans in the Senate and there's enough people in the Senate, you know, there's, you know, like. And other people that you could tease into something.

Anthony Weiner (18:57)

Go ahead.

Nick Gillespie (18:58)

You know, it's.

Anthony Weiner (18:59)

Go ahead. I'll do the math with you. You tell me who these Republicans that are magically gonna start saying to the bill that Donald Trump said he wants to get passed and the House of Representatives passes and goes home, I don't see a heck of a lot of leverage. But I just want to say to this, but hold on, let me just finish. I thought, listen, I will say this. You know, this whole idea, we're passing continuing resolutions, we're not doing appropriation bills. I love conversations like this because it reminds me about what Washington used to be like. We had rational conversations about process, dollars and cents, whether we're, we didn't have, whether we're going to allow the executive branch, we're going to write into a CR Giving the executive branch legislative authority over. I mean, this is madness. So you say, oh, I wish you would listen. Nobody knows more about exerting leverage than Chuck Schumer does. If he had five or six Republicans to work with, we would not be doing the podcast about this right now. We do want March Madness or something else. He didn't, let's assume for a moment, for the purpose of this conversation, he didn't have five or six Republicans. Okay, then what do you do? And I think your answer, Nick, is he'd probably do. You'd probably do what he did.

Nick Gillespie (20:03)

Well, yeah, I don't know that he would have done otherwise.

Mike Pesca (20:06)

So let me say, let me say a couple things. He couldn't extract concessions, but one of the most poisonous of the pills in the original proposal was to take $1 billion worth of funding out of D.C. now, we're new Yorkers. If we were Washingtonians, we would be outraged at that. And it does seem, thanks to the efforts of Susan Collins and others, it does seem that that has been taken off the table. I don't know if you credit Schumer, but the direness of this particular proposal has been made a bit less dire also. I do want to ask you this, Anthony. When you said 2012 called, they want their debate back. 2012 called. I would take and sign up for the debt of 2012, which was $16 trillion and it's now $36 trillion. So of the serious adults who actually care about running the government, does the debt matter to them? Does it matter to you? It matters to Nick a lot. It matters to me. I think it's a big problem, actually. Just servicing the debt robs us of other ability to pay for thing things. But where are we on the seriousness of the debt as an issue?

Anthony Weiner (21:15)

Well, I think it's seriousness that we've had a wealth transfer from government to rich people. And I think that's a serious problem. I think that is a problem. And I do think that eventually the mat stops working forever. Repaying the debt. I think it's reasonable. But I do think that we also have a scenario, and we're learning this now as Doge and Trump does this somewhat valuable exercise of kind of making us rethink all of these different levels of government and kind of what they're all doing. I think there's actually some rhetorical value of that in making Democrats stand up and say, yeah, one of the reasons we have USAID is so we don't have more immigration like, stuff like that. It's good for us to have African babies not die. That's actually good for us. But in terms of your concern about the debt, you know, I am relatively concerned about the debt, but I am more concerned about where is that transfer of wealth from the government going to. It ain't going to my constituents. It's going to very, very, very wealthy people. And I am perfectly down for a debate about how we tackle that problem.

Mike Pesca (22:17)

Well, everyone's always more concerned about even if they're concerned about the debt or concerned about waste, fraud and abuse, they're always concerned more about something that takes precedence, that dictates we'll never really tackle waste, fraud and.

Anthony Weiner (22:30)

Wait, well, hold on a second. You're conflating debt with waste, fraud and abuse.

Mike Pesca (22:34)

It is not. I'm making the point that these are analogous situations insofar as even fair minded Democrats could say, well yeah, the situation isn't perfect, but they'll never given the incentives and given short termism over long termism, they'll never do anything to stop it.

Anthony Weiner (22:50)

I don't think is the answer.

Nick Gillespie (22:52)

That's bullshit.

Anthony Weiner (22:53)

No, wait a minute. We Democrats believe in giving people resources in order to take care of their health, take care of their housing and to feed their children.

Nick Gillespie (23:01)

Yes, we do believe Obamacare paid for. No, I mean like both Obamacare was.

Anthony Weiner (23:07)

A planet Care was to the death. Obamacare was a plan that took something that was growing by 30% and changed it to something growing by 8%. Yes, that's a success.

Nick Gillespie (23:17)

Also didn't pay for itself as rosiest and error.

Anthony Weiner (23:21)

Your sanitation collection doesn't pay for itself either, knucklehead. Yes, of course. Didn't pay for my. Let's say that on a show called I don't hate you or whatever it's called.

Mike Pesca (23:29)

We seek to have comics.

Anthony Weiner (23:30)

Forgive me.

Nick Gillespie (23:31)

Yeah.

Anthony Weiner (23:31)

By the way.

Nick Gillespie (23:32)

Knucklehead away. But what I'm saying is the debt is a bipartisan problem, you know, and Trump is Trump. Mike, to go back to your original question, Trump doesn't care about debt. I mean this is, he thrives on it. He even, he added something like $7.8 trillion in his first term. A majority of that came before COVID spending. He does not care about debt. At this point, nobody in the Democratic Party is saying, you know what we need to have a balanced budget. It nobody, nobody is saying that. They'll say we need to sock it to wealthy people, many of whom live in Anthony's. You know, possibly you're the district, you'll be representing in city council because New Yorkers are generally wealthier than most people in the country anyway and there's a lot of rich people in the East Village. But, you know, neither party cares. And we're not probably not going to visit this issue until the early 2000-30s when Social Security and Medicare really.

Anthony Weiner (24:29)

No, we're going to Visit it immediately because he wants to extend the tax cut. That's one of the thing that's in the cr, is they gave him, they authorized him to blow another $4 trillion in the debt. And you say it's, it's a bipartisan thing. Not so much. I mean, yes, there are people that are getting. All right, let me finish my. All right, let me, let me just kind of rebut the point. I heard what your point was. You. Yes, you have people getting services that cost money. Health care, by and large, is not a profit making industry. When someone gets a ruptured kidney, they're not shopping around to see if they can get a spleen. They go get their kidney taken care of. However, when we decide to take money from the government, from the resources government, and give it more and more and more to very wealthy people, that is, I'm sorry to say it, a Republican problem.

Nick Gillespie (25:14)

The way that the tax code has been written as it's developed over the past 20 years. And I recommend people check out Jessica Riedel's work on this. We have the most progressive tax system in the OECD among advanced economies where the wealthiest people pay by far the largest amount of taxes that go into the thing. But I don't, I'm not even talking about that. Just, you know, start from, you know, start from Bush, George W. Bush, and go through this. Republicans and Democratic administrations, Republican and Democratic Congresses. The debt keeps growing. It's a bipartisan problem. And it's because government politicians don't want to force their, their constituents to pay for the government that they say we are. We have a government by Groupon where we're lucky if we're covering $0.70 on the dollar that government's spending. And so people are like, yeah, you know what, if I can get a dollar's worth of government stuff for like 70 cents, yeah, I'll take more. I'll buy more.

Anthony Weiner (26:14)

Yeah, I mean, you can listen, by the way, and I mean this seriously. I enjoy having conversation like this because they're so rare. They don't go on anymore. This is a little bit of a relic of what may be a CR debate, which is continuing resolution. I wish Chuck Schumer wouldn't keep saying CRCR would. A continuum. This is what a debate might be looking like, but it's not looking like this. We have this, Nick, you know, the Republican Party is a wholly owned subsidiary of these moneyed interests that are taking more and more of the money. If you want to start with Bush, you can go even further. Back than that. And we had a. Far more progressive, about twice as more progressive a tax code during the Eisenhower administrations. And we had a middle class.

Nick Gillespie (26:53)

Really true. If you, if you think that anybody during the Eisenhower administration were paying the top marginal rates as listed. But I think this is beside the point. I mean, we have, we have a budgeting problem. And fundamentally, you know, I realize you want to say, well, we can't do anything, Anthony, because, you know, Trump, Trump is running everything and he has the Republican Party in tow and, you know, what can the Democrats do? But I don't know, maybe this is what leadership and opposition is about. Build a coalition. You know, I think, like, people are like, oh, we can't work across the aisles anymore because we're so polarized, it doesn't even appear to happen. I mean, if you, you would have had, you know, Collins, Murkowski and Rand Paul, that's three. If you needed five senators, that's three Republicans who would have voted for something other than just a blank CR with a little bit of coddling. I'm sure you can find two more people in the Republican coalition that would have stood up.

Anthony Weiner (27:52)

Let me just put a cherry on top of the debt discussion. I apologize, Mike. Look, debt and the danger that it creates and the pressure it puts on interest rates or whatever else notwithstanding, Mrs. Crapalucci in my district, who stops me on the street is generally not saying, you know, here's the thing I want government to do, it's real in that debt. No, generally what they're saying is I want government to do certain things for me, provide for my healthcare, make sure I'm safe on the streets and things like that. So I am with you. I just believe that we've always had this problem, that debt in and of itself is not an animating issue. And maybe that is true. And I think that that's both structural and also a reflection of the idea that there are people who believe there, even people who are pretty smart, not like the three of us who say, you know what? This is an imaginary problem. We're going to keep printing the paper, the Chinese are going to keep buying it, and we all go on our merry way.

Nick Gillespie (28:44)

Yeah, the Chinese stopped buying our debt and they're not even the largest foreign owner of our debt. So. No. And to your point, one of the things that was amazing about the 90s is that in the wake of the end of the Cold War in particular, both leaders in the Republican and Democratic Party talked seriously about changing what government spent money on. And there was a peace Dividend as, as a percentage of gdp, Defense spending came way down and things like that. And we actually managed despite you know, real enmity between the Republicans and the Democrats, Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton. You know, we actually approached, you know, a basic budget surplus or equality.

Mike Pesca (29:29)

Yes.

Nick Gillespie (29:29)

And that was an ideological decision because people were talking about this stuff and building a consensus for the idea that this mattered and it needed to be addressed. And that's completely gone out the window.

Mike Pesca (29:41)

And I don't know if Mr. Mrs. Crapolucci or even the little crap of Lucci give a crap about the debt, but I do know that right now we pay about $870 billion on interest. We pay more to service the debt than we do on the military. I don't know how many people know that the military might not be popular. It usually comes in as a hobby horse for many a left leaning Democrat to say we're spending too much on the military. Well, at least the military gives us planes and jobs for servicemen. Servicing the debt doesn't do that.

Nick Gillespie (30:15)

And when it is horrifying, Mike, that you said that what the military really does is a jobs program. The military, it's a defense department, it should be here to defend. This is if we spend too much on defense, we spend too much on death.

Mike Pesca (30:28)

Listen, I like 22, I think it costs way too much. But I'm just trying to articulate. Even a big critic of the military would say, well, we get something for that. Many people have a living based on the military. I think we also have defense based on the military. We get nothing for servicing the debt. I don't know when the conception is going to change, but as the numbers change and we're headed towards something of a cliff with people paying into Social Security and not getting something out, I think in about eight years that's going to be up.

Anthony Weiner (30:56)

Now, Mike, now you're starting to swerve here. First of all, let me just say, when you say that we don't get anything for paying interest on the debt. Yes, it's government tax dollars that go to wealthy people that bought T bills. So for one thing, yes, that's a form of.

Mike Pesca (31:08)

Well, it also goes to retirement.

Anthony Weiner (31:10)

Not so many. I know I've heard that line before.

Mike Pesca (31:12)

Every other.

Anthony Weiner (31:14)

No, for the most part, the American people are less and less invested in equities and bonds and things like that than everybody. It's more and more concentrated than it's ever before. Next, this whole idea that Social Security is not gonna have money to pay out. No, it's At a certain point, it's gonna stop having its surplus. And that some of us. The money that it's gonna. From workers, it's going to go. And I got to tell you something we've been hearing forever. I know, but that number keeps moving outwards because guess what's happening? We are having babies, and they're going into the workforce. So more people are producing.

Nick Gillespie (31:46)

Well, it's not going outward. It's somewhere in the range in the early2030s. And when the.

Anthony Weiner (31:53)

What happened?

Nick Gillespie (31:53)

Social Security. The Social Security surplus is gone. By legislative decree, Social Security can't pay out more than it brings in, which is 75%. Benefits will be cut by 25%.

Anthony Weiner (32:06)

That's not true. What'll happen is they'll tweak the program. I understand.

Nick Gillespie (32:08)

Okay, so they'll tweak it is true.

Mike Pesca (32:10)

Unless they change it. Just like everything's true. Unless they change the rules.

Anthony Weiner (32:14)

No, Mike made the mistake of saying that we're out of money in 30, 32. No, we're going to take in 75% instead of having 100% of it come from the trust fund. Yeah, this is Connie. The way Social Security has worked, exactly how it was designed since it was designed in the 1930s. And since the 1930s, people like Nick and Mike have been, oh, my God, the sky is going to fall on this. There's no way we're going to keep having babies going into the workforce. It's funny how whenever there's something, a success.

Nick Gillespie (32:38)

What's the. What's the total fertility rate in the United States?

Anthony Weiner (32:41)

Yes.

Nick Gillespie (32:42)

How many. How many contributors to Social Security are there now per worker, per beneficiary?

Anthony Weiner (32:50)

Fewer than any time. Fewer than any time in American history. But. Yeah, but so is. Our productivity is way higher.

Nick Gillespie (32:56)

It's.

Anthony Weiner (32:57)

It's way higher.

Mike Pesca (32:58)

This is good.

Nick Gillespie (32:58)

This. This is part of the problem. No, this is like. Yeah, yeah. Though let's not deal with all of these things that are drivers of debt.

Anthony Weiner (33:05)

This is 2011.

Nick Gillespie (33:06)

Because it's all gonna come. It's all gonna. It's all gonna come out. No, because we're gonna keep printing money until our debt becomes so useless that even, you know, dumb foreign countries, much less Americans, won't buy it anymore.

Anthony Weiner (33:20)

Do you know the single most successful program for lifting seniors out of poverty is Social Security? It was about 30%. When Social Security is re. It's in the single digits today. What did that. A government program where we transfer wealth from people who are working to people who are retired. It's worked I know you should. And by the way, what will happen when that day comes? Do we have to adjust it? We've had to adjust it nine times already. We'll adjust it again. Maybe make people making over $170,000 to start getting taxed on that income for Social Security. Just an idea.

Nick Gillespie (33:47)

Yeah. It's a bad idea. And it's also the main reason America became richer. People in their. People who are retired are among the wealthiest part of American society. They should not be picking the pockets of younger workers who are relatively poor, who have their payroll taxes through the teeth to pay for any of us on this podcast when we retire. We should not be getting taxpayer every generation.

Anthony Weiner (34:11)

No. It's the money they put in.

Nick Gillespie (34:13)

If you can afford to pay for your retirement, you should be able to.

Anthony Weiner (34:16)

It's the money they put in, though. That's the way the program works. Nick, you're a young man. You're a young man. You've been paying.

Nick Gillespie (34:24)

You've been paid. I think I'm closer to retirement than you are, sir. And I can tell you right now that there is no tracked account like, oh, this is Nick Gillespie. You know, ever since he fucking cleaned dog shit at a park in Middletown, New Jersey, that money, you know, those payroll taxes are being saved just for you.

Anthony Weiner (34:42)

No, that's not the way it works. Literally upon Nick, you, you know, you know better. You know, that's not the way it works. I'm paying in now so that retirees can retire without being in poverty. And then the next generation comes and does it for me, like every generation has done it in the golden age. I keep hearing your. I don't mean you're a guy. I keep hearing Trump said, make America great again. It's like, okay, we want to go back to when this program was created, was a success, and lifted people out of poverty. Look, there's no doubt that we can have arguments over which programs to fund. And I believe that you're on the precipice of revealing the idea that I think Trump and Doge are gonna get around to Social Security and Medicare. And then it becomes the question, is Chuck Schumer's strategy, right, not to kind of steer the program here? Is he right that just making people pissed off enough at Donald Trump's things that he does Trump. And then we basically wait for the Republicans to lose in a couple of years.

Nick Gillespie (35:39)

You know, Trump has been emphatic and this, you know, that he is not going to touch a penny of Social Security and Medicare. And he means it because he doesn't. He doesn't. He wants those programs to be protected because and this is a horseshoe theory thing now where figuring out like where you know, the Republicans and Democrats ultimately, they're going to fight over all of these little things they ultimately agree on spending lots more money and paying for that with debt, not with taxes.

Anthony Weiner (36:09)

Fair enough. I would just say that to say that Donald Trump believes in anything and I put in air quotes is bullshit.

Nick Gillespie (36:15)

He has emphatically stated what is Donald.

Anthony Weiner (36:18)

Trump emphatically saying Anything mean, meant anything to anyone, including this. Whoever talks to him last. It doesn't say I look. And the same goes for all this Project 25 stuff. I don't believe he knows any of this stuff that's going on. He's just like fine, go wreck havoc, I don't care. He doesn't have a philosophical governing.

Mike Pesca (36:34)

No, he has consist. He has, he has sometimes a reptilian consistency. He really does like tariffs. And on this one I'm willing to believe that he sees the wisdom of not touching these popular programs. Doesn't mean he doesn't lie about other things. We're going to take a break for a second. We're going to come back. I perhaps will call an audible because I've been liking what we are talking about and I want to follow up on some things. Back in a minute with more. Not even mad.

Anthony Weiner (37:09)

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Mike Pesca (38:11)

We'Re back with not even matter. Guests are Anthony Weiner and Nick Gillespie. Before went to the break. Anthony, you made a point about how the cataclysm of Social Security has always been predicted. And therefore, and I understand this way of thinking, it will never happen. There will never be a cataclysm or what's really going to happen is an impingement on the amount of money that people have been paying into the system. Get I disagree with that. I think that it's quite possible and there's been history shows a lot of instances where terrible outcomes have been predicted and hadn't happened until they do. That aside, it's interesting to me because I've always viewed you as a more moderate Democrat and someone who understands economics but also a good rhetorician. So I did think you moved the debate around a little bit. And what I was talking about was servicing the debt and the trillions soon to be a trillion dollars it will take to service the debt. And this isn't good for anyone. I'm surprised that you also said that a lot of smart people smarter than us have said that all we could do is continue printing money. This is the MMT, modern monetary theory. And I think it took a while to be disproved because we were in an era of low interest rates. But now it has more or less been disproved. But if you're still citing it, well, you tell me, do you think that this theory has some credence? Do you think the Democratic Party, does some portion of the Democratic Party or some portion of the mind of every elected Democrat really question whether we can print money and get our way out of the debt? Well, no.

Anthony Weiner (39:44)

I was making the point in the context of why it's not a resonant issue for citizens to stop their politicians and say don't provide me with this service, instead go ahead and take these resources and put them to a debt retirement. That is not what I'm suggesting is that for decades, a long time we've been talking about and hearing about the folly of running up too much debt and how that can ultimately collapse the economy in some way. And I think when Mrs. Not to recite her again, but Mrs. Jones, let's say, says to me, when has that ever been? When has that ever happened? Combined with the idea that there's a certain commonsensical thing here. The one thing we know is that the moneyed interests in the economy who protect their own interests pretty well, don't really have it in their interest to pull the rug out of this current thing of printing, of giving away money for zero, making 2% on it and getting increasingly Wealthy. So I wasn't making the point on some economic theory point. I was making kind of a political point to why Nick is absolutely correct that it's never really been a resonant it a political issue or at least it's not today if it ever was.

Mike Pesca (40:52)

But I think it should be. And I'm hearing you don't think it should like I understand why it's not a resident political issue. The Democrats have a theory like yours. Some Republicans might say no, the debt is real. But then ever asked to pass a tax cut, they always will. And the immediate always takes precedent, precedence over the future. But. But I think that what good leadership should do and they've done this with many other issues that don't seem like issues. But you could create something as an issue. You can educate the public, you can talk about, pull out some statistics, talk about Cliffs branded as something that they should pay attention to. I think that would be good and necessary civically. I don't know. I mean just talking to you. Not that you stand in for every Democrat. I now am unsure that even half of the political parties in this country.

Anthony Weiner (41:42)

Well, let me make it simpler. We recently had a test of this case in Stark Contrast in 2017 when the largest, most irresponsible tax cut you heard every Democrat under the sun talking about. This is ridiculous. How much debt that we're adding then during COVID we add a lot more to the debt but we were providing support assistance to people who were hungry and didn't have jobs and we raised people out of poverty.

Mike Pesca (42:04)

That's acceptable, especially early on, right?

Anthony Weiner (42:06)

No, but I'm saying that the poverty.

Mike Pesca (42:07)

We did something a gap in circles.

Anthony Weiner (42:10)

We did something that Democrats not only supported but I would argue we should still be doing today, which is support.

Nick Gillespie (42:15)

Wait, why should we be? What we should be paying people extra money? Not to work. No, like we were during COVID or whatever. And by the way, Trump signed this, these the bills that like maximize federal, you know, federal checks going out to people during COVID are. You want to talk about waste, fraud and abuse. Everybody agrees that these were rife with bad payments and things like that. You have to pull that back. One of the reasons why you keep a tight budget is so that when you absolutely need to like blow out the budget because of some kind of massive, you know, black swan event like Covid, you have the wherewithal to do that. But in the end what we got was, you know, too much money being spent too fast. That was the main cause of inflation. And we've kind of. It seems like we're back in a place. Now, when you look at the, you know, the Federal reserve bank in St. Louis has something called the uncertainty index, and uncertainty is the killer of economic growth. This is one of the big problems with debt, is not only do you have to service it, but it injects a ton of uncertainty into economic planning and economic. And it reduces economic growth.

Mike Pesca (43:23)

So do the tariffs. I mean.

Nick Gillespie (43:24)

Yeah, no, of course. Well, and also that the fact that the tariffs are like, oh, well, they're on and they're off. And they're on and they're off. Uncertainty is a real killer here. But what I'm saying is, like, we shouldn't be spending money as if Covid is still around. We. You know, you need to go back. After World War II. You know, World War II, federal spending jacked through the roof, like, in a way that was completely unbelievable. And within two years of ending World War II, it was that back down to pre war levels. You know, that's what we should be shooting at.

Anthony Weiner (43:55)

Snap. Food stamps, 75% of it goes to kids who are hungry. It hadn't been adjusted for inflation. Okay, well, we want to talk about the Federal Reserve of St. Louis, but we don't want to talk about hungry kids. And in terms about the abuse of snap, when the inspector general looked at the SNAP program, they found a waste level of 0.1% because it goes for food to children that hadn't been. Let me just finish my thoughts. Let me just finish my thought, if I could. Is it so if you believe that the fact that fewer people were hungry as a result of those payments and the moment we stopped them, more people became hungry and you can say, ah, hungry kids. Federal Reserve of St. Louis is a more important barometer. No, I don't believe that. Now, you can say a program worked better or worked worse, but when we support poorer families, we reduce the amount of homelessness, we reduce the amount of hunger, and those are good things. When we invest more in Medicare and Medicaid, we get better outcomes. These are the things. Now you can say we don't want to spend on those things. That's fine. I got news for you, brother. We're going to spend money on health care. The only way is. The only question is, do we spend it wisely or not wisely? When someone gets hit by a bus outside here on Avenue A, we're going to take care of them. The only question is whether.

Nick Gillespie (45:06)

So how do you pay for that? Do you just keep borrowing or do you actually fully, you know, if you said to the American people and said like, okay, we're spending $7.2 trillion, here's what your portion of the bill is going to be. I'm willing to bet that a lot of people would be like, you know what? This, this, this, we don't need that. I don't need that. I don't want that. You talk about SNAP benefits. Hold it, Anthony. In the. When Bush took office in the early 2000s, he came in during a recession, they expanded SNAP benefits. And the number of people that could participate in that program, they never reduced those. The requirements after the recession ended. SNAP benefits shouldn't constantly be growing. More and more people shouldn't be getting them. We're in a full employment economy. The government is not there to solve every problem of every person all of the time.

Anthony Weiner (45:56)

Hungry kids.

Nick Gillespie (45:56)

Hungry kids. Yeah, hungry kids. That's what SNAP is. No, it's not just hungry.

Anthony Weiner (46:02)

75% is hungry and 80% is single parents a month.

Nick Gillespie (46:06)

Look, then why does it keep going up? Are people more hungry now?

Anthony Weiner (46:09)

No, people isn't inflation. Nick, I'm going to tell you something. This is, and this is a common misconception. I got news for you. If someone gets hit by that bus on Avenue A right now, and we don't provide any Medicaid for them, let's assume you get your wish and we slash.

Nick Gillespie (46:23)

Why are we talking about Medicaid right now?

Anthony Weiner (46:25)

Because that's. My mouth is moving and I have a thought.

Mike Pesca (46:30)

Is that the order?

Anthony Weiner (46:31)

Usually the guy gets hit by a bus and we said we're not gonna pay for Medicaid. Do you think the bill ferry pays to take care of that guy? Do you think some kind of magical thing. No. It gets unreimbursed care to hospitals and my taxes go up. It's just a matter of how we provide these services. You talked about the garbage collection report not making a profit. I'm sorry, buddy, that's not a profitable thing. Government does it.

Nick Gillespie (46:53)

What are you talking about? Garbage collection's not profitable. I grew up in New Jersey. I was born in Brooklyn, but I grew up in New Jersey. And let me tell you, there's a lot of trash hauling companies in New Jersey that make a profit by picking up garbage.

Anthony Weiner (47:04)

Residential. Really? Let me know where that is.

Nick Gillespie (47:06)

You were all your entire wall world is Avenue way where kids are being knocked over by buses all the time.

Anthony Weiner (47:12)

To make that into an ad, your entire world is out of way.

Nick Gillespie (47:15)

It is. Yeah. That's not bad. But, but that Isn't, you know, that isn't reality. And you can't every, every time, I mean, it's telling that anytime somebody said, you know what, we should reduce spending, you're like, but there's hungry kids, you know, there's old ladies eating cat food somewhere. You know, Al Gore, to bring back like real memories. This is like from, you know, like ancient history. When he ran for president in 2000, both he and George W. Bush said seniors need to have prescription drugs paid for them because they're so poor. He invoked his mother choosing between eating and getting her prescription drugs. Al Gore's mother, the widow of a senator, the mother of a senator and a bestselling author. You know, this is bullshit. And it turned out that when you look at the amount of money that seniors pay for prescription drugs, on average it was 1 to 2% of their income in a given year. But both the Republican and the Democratic candidates said we need Medicare prescription drugs Part D because otherwise seniors are hurting. You're selling, you're buying votes and you're buying votes borrowed dollars. And that means you're buying it on the future income of young.

Anthony Weiner (48:24)

But who are we paying?

Nick Gillespie (48:25)

We're going to have to fucking pay.

Mike Pesca (48:26)

Can I just say, Can I just say. And I can, because my share. Can I just say, and just ask if you agree with the opinion, the vast opinion of economists and you know, Democrats are the story, are the party that yields to expertise. And I think that's why for most of my life I've been a Democrat, they look at especially the second stimulus, the second spending package that Biden passed, the one that would have been bigger if it not if it weren't for the devilish Joe Manchin saying don't cause inflation. Would you agree with most economists that this caused a lot of inflation and inflation just robs middle class people and it robs poor people. It just makes them poorer in real terms. So the question isn't necessarily, I would say if you're to frame it fairly, not between a kid eating or a kid not eating, but the median American voter during doing better. And that spending has costs because there are always trade offs. And at this point I don't see how a fair minded person could say the trade offs were worth it. But do you say that?

Anthony Weiner (49:26)

Well, first I dispute the premise, this whole idea that there's consensus on what led to inflation. We had a war, we had Covid. We're seeing all throughout the economy the ramification of this.

Mike Pesca (49:36)

Sure. But a certain percentage, I don't think.

Anthony Weiner (49:39)

A Substantial percentage, I don't think a.

Mike Pesca (49:40)

Substantial more money chasing the same amount.

Anthony Weiner (49:43)

I know. But where fewer goods, which is inflation probably. Right. It's hard, it's really hard to tell. It was such a weird phenomenon of what, of what wound up happening after Covid. To say that there's consensus is really putting your finger on, on the scale, Mike. I mean, look, I will say this, that if it contributed to inflation, it could be, it could be, you can say government spending. But I want to tell you this. What also probably contributed to inflation was the fact that we did trillions and trillions of dollars of tax cuts for very wealthy people. And the concentration of wealth going into the economy that are benefiting the very, very well to do has never been as stark as it is today. The money is moving increasingly from middle class families and those struggling to make it into the middle class into the hands of the very wealthy. And if the solution is, well, let's do less with government, well, what is government doing? It's providing health care, it's providing retirement support and we like a couple of pennies goes to make sure that people in Africa are protected from aids. I guess so. I mean, yes, I believe that inflation is a bad thing and it was a bad thing. But to say that it was because of government spending when we were figuring out how to deal with this sui generis phenomenon of, of everyone not working for a, for a few months or a year, I'm not really sure.

Mike Pesca (50:58)

Well, by the time this stimulus was passed, that was being corrected. And yeah, a raft of experts.

Nick Gillespie (51:04)

How is it that we get to a point where the minute a government program is, is created or grows a little bit, then we're like, that's the new baseline. We can't go, we can never go back below that.

Anthony Weiner (51:16)

That's a fair question.

Nick Gillespie (51:17)

And that's why, and that's why we went from spending $4.4 trillion in 2019 to $7.2 trillion in.

Anthony Weiner (51:25)

That's a fair question. And listen, I want to say if this, look, I mean to some degree I'm playing my, my, my part here. I, I just read that they, they want to close down the Institute of Peace. When I was in Congress, I worked with Republicans try to close that place down too. Woolen mayor, mohair subsidies. I led the charge to do it like I was out there trying to do this.

Nick Gillespie (51:43)

Well, there you're all wrong. Mohair is very important to the national. And helium. We need the helium.

Anthony Weiner (51:50)

And I think, Nick and I think, and this is a place that I think you and I can agree. I think having a conversation about justifying things from zero rather than justifying what we did last year is totally within the realm of fair. And I think that if Donald Trump and Musk were really doing that in an intellectually honest way, we would really benefit as a country.

Nick Gillespie (52:10)

Then why doesn't Schumer force that conversation and he can't do it on the floor of the Senate. But then in the bully poll, I mean this for me, and again, I say this as somebody you know, I end up paying the. I've never voted for a candidate at any level who has won office, but I always end up paying the bill. I would love to see the Democrats actually start that conversation and force the Republicans to do that.

Anthony Weiner (52:35)

Would you stop with folks that you don't understand? If you not opened up the. I was gonna say a newspaper, but that would beat me. That's not the dynamic that we're in now. The Democrats don't control the House. The Democrats control the, don't control the Senate or the Judiciary.

Nick Gillespie (52:47)

The Republicans, how are they gonna get control back? How are they gonna get control back?

Anthony Weiner (52:51)

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. That's the question. And you're saying, well, let's. Hold on, let me just finish my thought. You're saying let's have this conversation about. Funny. Here's if I have a critique of Schumer and this decision and I've tried to give one, I would also say I would have at least spent a little time in my speech not talking about Cs and Rs but saying, okay, the people who are in favor of this, here's what they're gonna get. And I'm gonna be with this group because here's the other group, here's the other things that are gonna happen if we don't do it. To try to explain this a little bit, we have a little bit of a fire hose. Now that is very hard for people to figure out what their spots. But if you think there's a appetite in the United States Capitol right now to have some high minded conversation about zero based budgeting, that ain't where we are. This is a fire hose of crazy that's going on. And Chuck Schumer and all Democrats are trying to figure out how to manage.

Nick Gillespie (53:39)

So sad. You know, the Democrats were in charge of stuff until recently and then I don't think things just.

Anthony Weiner (53:45)

Welcome. Yeah, welcome to Biden nomics, my man.

Nick Gillespie (53:48)

Yeah, I know Bidenomics. That's, that's why, that is why Kamala Harris sailed into office. Right. You know, because she inherited a great legacy. But my point is, Anthony, like the passivity on the, on the part of the Democrats, and I say this as, you know, I'm not a Democrat, but like, like, you know, oh, well, you know, we can't have these conversations because it's too crazy.

Anthony Weiner (54:08)

I'm not gonna have your conversation.

Nick Gillespie (54:10)

That conversation doesn't animate anybody that is deeply, deeply cynical. And like Elon Musk. Elon Musk and Donald Trump said, you know, we're talking about zero based budgeting. Schumer could, he could be doing all sorts of stunts in order to make them.

Anthony Weiner (54:26)

No one cares about zero based governing. Nick. It's an interesting conversation for you and me and the three remaining podcast listeners who are still tuned into this conversation. That's not what's going on there. We have people getting deported. We have people getting wrong.

Nick Gillespie (54:38)

The Tea Party, the Tea Party movement, which was extremely consequential and it cleared out a bunch of dead wood both on the Republican Party and the Democratic Party before it got captured by the Republican establishment. Its whole point was simply stop spending. That was their message. They weren't, they said, taxed enough already. They didn't even say cut taxes. All it was is, we're spending too much. And that was a massive move.

Anthony Weiner (55:01)

Nick. If Donald Trump, if Donald Trump or Doge or anyone else wanted to have a good faith conversation about the future of government, we would hear them articulating one and then we'd have something to. Now it's just slash and burn. People being.

Nick Gillespie (55:12)

Again, this is your, Let me ask.

Mike Pesca (55:14)

You this, let me, let me ask you this about what you think the Democrats should do. And earlier in our conversation, before our break, you did make a reference to maybe Donald, maybe Chuck Schumer should sit back, allow Trump to make his mistakes, and then the Democrats could capitalize on that. This is a version of the James Carville derided in public, but I'm wondering if it was accepted in private. Idea of. If you want to express the derided part, you could say do nothing. But I think it was more of a rope, a dope strategy, which is given that there is nothing the Democrats really can do or will do, which we just saw, just let Trump make mistakes and let the economy suffer and then people will come and vote for the Democrats. Now, publicly, you have to make speeches publicly, have to bring, and you have to bring cases to the courts, which they have been doing. But essentially it's going to be a referendum on Trump and just Point out that he's doing poorly. So what do you think of Carville's op ed and that strategy in general?

Anthony Weiner (56:13)

Look, I think in 2028 of history is, or 2026 rather, if history is any tell. I mean, the Republicans, they came in unpopular, they're doing unpopular things. They're going to lose. They're going to lose seats. And Donald Trump. And this is kind of what, what Chuck Schumer is falling back on. He says, I, Chuck Schumer, know one thing, and that's how to win seats. And this is a strategy that helps us win seats more than the other strategy. Not that it's great, but more than the other strategy. But in two years or in a year and a half, whatever it is, Donald Trump can do an enormous amount of damage. Particularly if you're gonna have like people like renditions going on and people getting swept up and the things like this. You're saying what the strategy, you know, is it a strategy to sit back and do nothing? No, but the net effect is going to be that the things that Donald Trump are doing are not popular. He was not a majority candidate when he got in. He's not one now. He's declining in popularity. These are things that fundamentally people don't support. So where does that leave us? It leaves us with a lot of people who are like the members of the House of Representatives who are criticizing Chuck Schumer and people in the other grassroots who say, God damn it, do something. But there are not a lot of levers to do things. And to some degree, the Republicans wanted to give Donald Trump the keys to all this is the one surprising thing I am surprised the level to which Republican lawmakers who work really hard to get to that job have completely outsourced their job to Donald Trump. That's the part of this that is that we've never really contemplated before. There was always an institutional check, even if it was minor, an institutional check that existed. And maybe what has to happen is Chuck Schumer's right that he has to start hitting those roadblocks of enough Democratic members that are hearing in their districts that is problematic. Remember, there's only a one or two seat margin in the House. Maybe that's thing. But in terms of is Carville right that Donald Trump would be unpopular in a couple of years? The answer is I agree that that that will be the case. Okay.

Mike Pesca (58:06)

It might not be a strategy to just let Donald Trump ruin the economy. I would articulate the strategy or the tactic as don't do stupid things to get in the way of that bright and shining fact, like paddles at the State of the Union or maybe even, and it will never be known, maybe even a shutdown. But Nick.

Nick Gillespie (58:23)

Yeah, well, I was going to say that, you know, going back to 1992, when Bill Clinton got into office, you know, with the smallest plurality since Richard Nixon, you know, he had like 42, 43% of the vote. He got to do what he wanted for the first two years in 1994, in the midterms, the Democrats got blown out both in the House and the Senate. It, you know, that was a generational swing. Bush was unpopular, but managed to squeak by until 2006 before losing his House majority. Obama got two years of grace where he got to do whatever he wanted and the Democrats were punished for it. You go to Trump in the first term, the Republicans lose big in the midterms. We have been, and Biden is, you know, it's a, a similar story. It's mixed or it's intensified because of COVID But for the past 20 plus years, we've been in this unfortunate situation where the party in power gets to do what it wants. And then people are like, wow, that is horrible. And they go back the other way. From a pure partisan play, it seems inevitable that the Democrats will pick up a lot in the midterms, especially because Trump is at the, you know, he's a lame duck already. You know, he's in his last term. But from a serious point of view about building a better America, this is too much. Because what are the Democrats going to do? The Democrats don't, you know, they don't seem to be unified on anything. And there is not a clear, there, there is no clear mechanism or motivation that is shown. What are they going to propose to do, you know, after they take power in the midterm terms? Is it going to be aoc? Is it going to be some kind of moderate thing? Is it going to be something altogether different? Is it going to be Fetterman, you know, like, who is leading that party? Schumer is older than Trump. Right? He's done.

Mike Pesca (60:18)

Do you mean by what do they propose to do? Do you mean, I'm just saying what is their nominee?

Nick Gillespie (60:23)

Or do you mean what's their governing philosophy? Are they, you know, are they going to, are they going to somehow come back with like a hyper aggressive, youth based, socialized, you know, socialist light agenda coming out of like the AOC quarter of things? Is it going to be Gavin Newsom who's going to be like you know what? I've taken California and made it leak people and businesses to places like Texas and Florida. Make me your standard bearer. Is it going to be Fetterman, who seems to be more, you know, pragmatic and more. Is it going to be Jared Polis, who's a kind of good government, cut taxes and, you know, and balance the budget?

Mike Pesca (61:00)

Low prices, right?

Nick Gillespie (61:01)

Yeah.

Mike Pesca (61:02)

Yeah. Do you know the. Do you know the answer?

Nick Gillespie (61:04)

I don't know. I want to hear that conversation because I can tell you this, that, like, you know, libertarians are not particularly, what, a small L. Libertarians, who, depending on, you know, the ways that you tally it, there's somewhere between like 5 to 15% of the vote. These are people who want you to believe in free minds and free markets. Who want, like, less business, less taxes or less regulation. Less. Less taxes, less government spending. This is a group that's up for grab. There hasn't been an election in our lifetime where if you get most of that vote, you're gonna win. You know, I wanna see what happens.

Mike Pesca (61:38)

Can you articulate a policy platform for your party, Anthony?

Anthony Weiner (61:43)

Oh, yeah, that's. That's what I'm here to do. Yeah, I'm gonna do that.

Mike Pesca (61:46)

Do you have one or two big items?

Anthony Weiner (61:47)

In fairness? The out party never has that. The out party has a lot, has primaries to do that. And the out party has a, you know, has its candidates that run in swing districts that do their own thing. That's what it means to be an output.

Nick Gillespie (62:00)

Wait, no, but that's not true. Because in the 80s, when the Democrats, you know, got kicked a bit into the wilderness, there was the Democratic Leadership Council, you know, that. That really forged a new identity for the Democratic Party, which Bill Clinton embodied and took to, you know, massive success.

Anthony Weiner (62:17)

He won a primary. No one. No one.

Nick Gillespie (62:20)

But you're thinking it's not just the person who appears in a presidential year. It's the infrastructure, the ideological and political infrastructure where you had a bunch of people doing meetings coming up with like, okay, this is.

Mike Pesca (62:33)

I think. I think what Anthony is saying is more or less fair. It is true that the out party, the one who just wants to get back in power. It's very. It would be very hard for the average Mrs. McConkley Jones to tell you what they would want. Sometimes it's quite apparent, like in the 80s, when someone needed to articulate that the era of big government was over from the Democratic side.

Anthony Weiner (62:56)

And also, like, successful candidates will decide that. I mean, remember to 2012, I think it was that they did this whole biopsy, autopsy, those two words.

Nick Gillespie (63:06)

That would be great. They should have done a biopsy. Yeah. Or a vivisection.

Mike Pesca (63:10)

They should have done a necropsy because.

Anthony Weiner (63:12)

They did whatever it is. And they said, we figured it out. There are a lot of, of black and brown people coming into the country. Let's get on that bandwagon. And as a result, they went out and made Donald Trump their next guy.

Nick Gillespie (63:23)

Who now has, by the way, in this election gained with every minority group. The only place where he didn't gain a percentage of votes was among whites. So.

Mike Pesca (63:32)

Yes, but that was probably not because of what the.

Nick Gillespie (63:35)

No. Well, that's what's interesting. It's because of what the Democrats did. Right? Because once they became the party of wokeness uber alles and like insane environmental regulation, so nothing can be built and you know, everything is bad. They push people to voting for Donald Trump and you know, large numbers.

Anthony Weiner (63:54)

You're like a pyromaniac in a straw factory. Okay, let's do one thing at a time. I was making the point that the in party, the out party, rather may try to come up with a vision, but the voters have their say. And very often the voters need a candidate at, in order to articulate that in terms of what we did wrong. Come on. We lost by a point. You can argue anything happened in terms of these swings. A lot of it was the denominator change. In cities like New York, we had 300,000 fewer Democrats that turned out in 2020, didn't come out in 2000.

Nick Gillespie (64:24)

Why? Why is that?

Anthony Weiner (64:25)

Those are the voters I'm talking. Oh, now you're getting into my wheelhouse.

Nick Gillespie (64:29)

No, no, but I'm saying it's because they did. They were not enthusiastic about, you know, a brain dead candidate and then a complete cyber. Right. And an agenda and an agenda that didn't seem to be doing very well for them.

Anthony Weiner (64:43)

Getting closer. I'll give you the answer. My view of the case is that we in cities like New York, in states like New York, we have a Democratic city council, a Democratic mayor, a Democratic governor, Democratic legislature. A lot of the policy failures that we've had here on things that are far removed from what goes on in Washington, illegalized most marijuana program that went haywire, requiring scaffoldings to be up all over our streets. The fact that when you get into the subways and pay, 293 people jump in behind you and don't pay. Fundamentally Democrats who believe in fairness and believe in that we should be the place that solves Problems. We are not doing it particularly well. It has very little to do with the referendum on Trump and Harris. They just have a sense of ennui kind of that's going on. That's my theory of what's going on in, in urban areas. These are not Trump voters. They have not become Trump voters. However, by staying home, they're letting us know that in places like New York they're dissatisfied. But all of that being said, it does not change the fact that we are gonna have a debate like the one you described, Nick, where there's gonna be some version of. Do more of this and more of that. Yeah, there's gonna be a lot of that. I'm a little bit over the woke thing, frankly. Democrats have not been talking about America, I think. What is that?

Mike Pesca (65:54)

A little over the woke thing?

Anthony Weiner (65:56)

Mike, Mike, do you know why they're over it? Cuz people like Nick and the Republicans won't shut up about it. And we're not talking about it. You guys are just taking the most discreet minority group and kicking the shit out of them. Like why do you keep talking about them? No, they're doing it. And I think it's kind of disgusting to be honest.

Mike Pesca (66:10)

Talking about, for instance, trans girls playing sports. I think it's a popular Democrat.

Anthony Weiner (66:14)

Ever campaigned on that?

Mike Pesca (66:16)

Well, it doesn't matter.

Anthony Weiner (66:17)

They're running ads on that.

Mike Pesca (66:18)

Republicans. That's the policy they're associated with.

Anthony Weiner (66:21)

No, no, they're associated. Cuz the Republicans are running ads saying this point out.

Mike Pesca (66:27)

Anthony, you're a Democrat stance.

Nick Gillespie (66:28)

Yeah, you're.

Anthony Weiner (66:29)

Wait, hold on a second. Mike, Mike, hold on a second. Yeah, when, when this woke thing started, by the way, the candidate of woke, Ron DeSantis, got beaten like a rented mule when this thing started out.

Nick Gillespie (66:39)

Is he still governor of Florida or did he lose?

Anthony Weiner (66:41)

No, he got beaten like a rented mule. Even within the Republican.

Nick Gillespie (66:43)

No, no, no. But that's not within the subset that.

Anthony Weiner (66:46)

He should be making the most. Hey, he's not doing it. So. So he stands up and says, look at that school over there, look at that person over there. Look at that ostracized person over there. And ever since then, the idea being a demagogue is the easiest political game in the book. Making fun of the tiny discrete minority is super easy, but Democrats are not campaigning on it. And to misunderstand that they're demagoguing on it. Did we do a good job responding? No, but that's where you have me on.

Mike Pesca (67:14)

Okay. I think that the easiest thing to do is to take the 80 side of an 8020 issue and to. To point out that your opponents are on the other side.

Anthony Weiner (67:22)

Perfect. Perfect. That's what some people choose to do in public life. They say you're going to kick the shit out of a discreet minority. I'm going to get out of the way. Some people say you know what, I don't like bullies.

Mike Pesca (67:32)

And we stand talking about distinct issue of trans girls in sports. Not overall where it's like a 5644 and trans. Trans women in the military is popular. The American.

Anthony Weiner (67:44)

Mike, you're trying to slice this issue too final when it comes down to.

Mike Pesca (67:48)

Voters look at stop with the most.

Anthony Weiner (67:50)

Voted why don't you you are making the argument and I just want to. I want to make sure my point is clear. You were making the argument that Democrats have to stop being the party of woke. It's Republicans took a discrete issue and they tried to hang it on Democratics next if you want to say oh they did it successfully or the people.

Mike Pesca (68:08)

Like Anthony Weiner delusional in many cases.

Nick Gillespie (68:10)

Anthony, what based on lies. You know if what, what. What is. What do you say about the fact that you know New York City, New York state is. It's a Democratic stronghold. Right. And it's not going well for most people here. So is that the Republicans fault too? Have the Republicans faked people out by.

Anthony Weiner (68:32)

No. You just heard my whole rap about this. Do you want me paying attention? I just did this whole rap about why Democrats are displeased. I mean why Democratic primary voters are displeased.

Mike Pesca (68:40)

This is what I wanted to take that very idea. It touches on a lot of things we've been talking about. One Nick saying what's the big Democrat agenda To the theory that there are too many actors in public life who have access to the break Something that you Anthony was saying which echoes the political scientist Juan Lynz. The American system has too many people who could say no. When you were talking about that with Republicans in Congress. Well, there is this idea and I had Mark Dunkleman on and Ezra Klein.

Anthony Weiner (69:07)

Along the work for me. Mark Dunkle did he he was my legislative director.

Mike Pesca (69:12)

Interesting. Love that guy. And now Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson are out with a book and what they're saying is what could be the big Democrat idea but also what right now is the Democrat deficiency is that because there are too many people with access to the brakes progress can't happen. And when you look at the Democrat run places like New York City, it is a bad or California it is a Bad advertisement to Democrats. How good an agenda item and a critique is that, would you say?

Anthony Weiner (69:42)

I think it's. I think it's all very fair. By the way, it's Democratic cities. I don't know why we stopped dropping those last letters of this thing. It's not the Republic Party, it's the Democratic Party. Listen, here's my case and I agree with you and I think maybe Nick and I are going to conclude by agreeing on this stuff. Here's what has happened within Democratic politics and within Republic politics. But the purpose of New York City, let's focus on Democratic that right now. If there's a problem to be solved, take one. There are too many people who live on our streets who are mentally unwell, okay? They can't take care of themselves within Democratic politics. We are trained nowadays to just go to a place and figure out where the interest groups are and if our interest groups are over there. Let's say the ACLU says that homeless person has a right to be on the street. Our primaries encourage everyone to be in that spot instead. The way New Yorkers, the way Americans, the way human beings think is how do we solve that problem? How do we get that person off the street? How do we provide them with care? How do we get our public spaces back? And I think that what's wound up happening is because we are in this environment where there is no friction between the parties. We figured out let's not have any friction even within our own party. And that's why we're not producing ideas anymore. We've become, there's too much in New York City, people getting elected. I'm going to be the values person. I'm running a race that's very different. I've got these very specific things that I'm arguing that we should do to try to solve problems. And if people get pissed off about it, I say, all right, what are your ideas now? Is that a function of being a one party town? I kind of think that it is, but I also think it's a function of a larger problem. We have become a country of two one party parties, one element parties that there is zero friction. In the Republican Party, it's Trump or nothing. And in the Democratic Party, we're quickly becoming the anti Trump or we're nothing. And I am trying to argue in this race that I'm having here in very progressive, very liberal East Village that you know what, hiring police officers, it leads us to a progressive value, which is we're safe. Stopping people from jumping the turnstile leads us to a progressive value of fairness. Taking that homeless person off the street because they're not well enough to take care of themselves is a progressive value. Getting back our public spaces, that's where people like Dunkelman and I are trying to make an argument that, yes, to some degree, if we don't solve these problems, we don't deserve to win.

Nick Gillespie (72:04)

Mike, if I can follow up and definite partial agreement both with Anthony and certainly with you. I listened to the Dunkleman interview because I'm interested in these issues, and I'm very familiar with the Abundance agenda, which is something that Reason has been promoting since 1968. You know, you let people build things. You let people create the worlds that they want to live in, and stuff gets better because we learn from each other's successes or failures. The Democrats now at a kind of national level and at a state level, they have to look. You know, the four most populous states in the country are California, Texas, Florida, and New York. Two are totally Democratic, and two are mostly Republican. And the mostly Republican ones are the destinations. Texas is becoming the new California, which became the new New York. What they do is they let people build stuff. They. They have a horizon, and they say, fill it out with all the different villages you want to live in. It's not perfect. They tax less, they regulate less, and they spend less on government. And then, you know, and they let people figure out how things work. I would love to see something like that in New York. Not simply about homeless people, because there are serious issues there about, you know, taking people in involuntarily. But a lot of the other stuff I'm in agreement with. It is impossible to develop market housing in New York. It's so hard. My wife has a small creative agency. Her accountant told her if she just moved across the river to New Jersey, she would spend. She would pay $8,000 less in taxes. That's insane.

Anthony Weiner (73:39)

In New Jersey, then.

Nick Gillespie (73:40)

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Mr. Queens, right? You know, it's. No, but. But this is a big problem because New Jersey is one of the highest tax states in the country, along with New York and Connecticut and California, bringing. Bringing a sense of possibility to politics that means getting out of the way. And if New York State, which spends over, on average, over $30,000 a year per K through 12 student, has terrible reading and math scores, you know, increase the possibility for school choice or for some kind of actual reform rather than being in the pocket of traditional Democratic constituencies, that would be a game changer. But I don't see it happening in the. In the national Democratic Party, because that. Nobody is talking about these things.

Mike Pesca (74:27)

All right, let us end the show as we do, as is our tradition, with that little annoyance. And part of the rules is it can't be the preceding hour and 10 minutes. I think we actually got along deep down, and much of this was performative. And also there was an excellent exchange of ideas. But we call these things our goat grinders because they are the things that grind your gears or get your goat. I don't know. Nick, you got one?

Nick Gillespie (74:50)

Goat grinders. Yeah. Well, I have a bunch. And I was going to talk a lot about the new found belief that, you know, if we could only get seed oils out of everything, we would be. We would be a great country again. You know, they don't have seed oils in Putin's Russia or Orban's Hungary or something like that. You know, that drives me nuts. It's. It's insane and it's totally unfounded. Anyway, go try to find the studies that show that seed oils are what's making America fat, stupid, and lazy. But, Mike, particularly for you, the goat grinder that I wanted to talk about was the. The veneration of Walter Cronkite, because I know that he is something of a hero to you or at least a touchstone. And you and I, in our conversation when you were on my podcast, we talked about this a little bit, but the, the.

Mike Pesca (75:43)

And then you recommended a book which debunked it, and I went out and bought it.

Nick Gillespie (75:46)

And it's a phenomenal book by Joseph W. Camp Campbell. And, you know, I just want to point out, among other things, when Walter Cronkite is always referenced as the most trusted man in America. And Campbell did this great debunking of that where it comes from a 1972 poll of about 9,000 people in 18 states, whereas a bunch of political figures like Hubert Humphrey, Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, Kennedy, Ed Busky. And then for some reason, Walter Cronkite was on that. It's like, who do you trust the most? And he eked out a slight victory because 72% of people said he was trustworthy. And then CBS News started promoting him as the most trusted man in America. And then people just start picking that up. And the same thing with the idea that he's the guy who made LBJ give up, you know, realized that he had lost America because of Cronkite special from Vietnam. It's just not true. And I, for me, that's a shorthand for so many kind of benchmarks or touchstones that people genuflect towards or gesture towards. Always check them out, because I would say like half the time, if not more, they're not just a little bit wrong, they're completely wrong. And that's a great way to become.

Mike Pesca (77:02)

That guy at a party, man. When Walter Cronkite has lost Nick Gillespie, he's lost America.

Nick Gillespie (77:09)

That's right.

Mike Pesca (77:10)

Anthony, do you have a goat grinder?

Anthony Weiner (77:13)

Well, when Walter Cronkite gets your goat 30 years after his death, whatever it is, you gotta get out more, man. Come on, man. I might have misunderstood the assignment, but now that it's March Madness and sports is. And baseball season's opening soon and the NHL is finally reaching the relevant part of its season, my goat is. What does goat stand for anyway? Or get my goat? Mine is this notion that announcers always do and commentators always do is he didn't want it enough, or they had one guy gave more effort than the other guy and that's why the curveball didn't break, or that's why that play broke down. And it does kind of, to me, reflect a little bit. And maybe it's my. Because I'm in recovery. Like, we talk about this a lot. You know, none of us does any of this stuff alone. Like, there's so many things that happen in the course of a sporting event or in course of our lives. And it does kind of bleed over into our, in our daily lives, this exaggerated notion that if we just want something really bad that, you know, you can make it happen. And, you know, believe me, these guys playing sporting events, they really want it. I really want my life to have been different, people can want it, but the idea that if you just will something enough, and maybe it's, you know, it goes into the notion that we become less and less of people that believe in a higher power. I don't know what it is, but I do. It does kind of get my goat. When I hear a bunch of 19 year olds who are playing their heart out, someone to say when they're doing a wrap up of a play or the wrap up of something went wrong, he didn't want it enough, that really does get my goat. I'm pretty sure that people playing sporting events, they want it. And I'm pretty sure that people who are struggling, it's not because they want to struggle. It's because you know that none of us is able to do this alone. And I know that you, Mike, could not do this program without people like Nick So, I mean, I feel like.

Nick Gillespie (79:07)

You'Re speaking like a Mets fan.

Anthony Weiner (79:08)

I. I am.

Nick Gillespie (79:09)

You. You got to believe. But sometimes that just ain't enough.

Mike Pesca (79:13)

Didn't. Although I was at a press conference once after a game where Tom Glavin was like, yeah, it's okay. I still love my kids. And that is not. That is not.

Anthony Weiner (79:21)

I totally. I totally get that ethos. And don't get me wrong, there are some. Sometimes I watch people, particularly during the interminable regular season, that all these sports, except for football, has that you do kind of get the sense, you know, when you do see Mike, you're a sports guy. Nick, I don't know if you are. When you see how dramatically different playoff basketball and NCAA tournament basketball and playoff hockey, you know, baseball is a little different because you don't kind of see the intensity quite in the same way. But you see, man, imagine if they played like this. That means. So I'm not saying that there are not times that they're maybe taking a shift off, but. But this whole idea that announcers say, oh, the reason why that curveball didn't break is he didn't want it enough. I'm not buying it.

Mike Pesca (80:01)

Well, I'll tell you someone in the world of sports who definitely wants it, and that's West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrissey wanted the Mountaineers to be in the NCAA tournament, but they were not invited. And, yeah, they probably should have been. North Carolina didn't have as good a quote unquote resume, although they're going to now trounce. They've already beaten San Diego State and they might trounce their next opponent. However, I just want to point out if you've heard any of this, and maybe you have, because across into the political realm and the West Virginia governor is now launching an investigation because everyone has to just behave as big and as an ass as they possibly can during this current era. But, you know, West Virginia's record was 19 and 13. They lost 13 games. And I'm sure many of their opponents, I don't know, maybe some of them wanted it more than they did, but they had 13 chances to only lose 12 games. If they had lost 12 games, they'd be in and we debit be debating some other team who lost way too many games to be given or anointed as the 67th best team in America. If there's anything that gets my goat, it's grousing about not being invited to a tournament based on a subjective standard. When you've had. When you've had 32 chances to win, and you've won 19 of them.

Anthony Weiner (81:27)

But you, I don't buy it, Mike. You love, you love being outraged by the outrage. It's part of what makes the cycle go around.

Nick Gillespie (81:34)

But do you, Mike, also get annoyed with the NCAA when, you know, the same people show up even when they're on the bubble? Like shouldn't, should teams like North Carolina, you know, just be automatically dismissed if they're, if they're not in the, if they're not ranked in the top 10, they should just be kicked out and give something. Give somebody.

Mike Pesca (81:54)

Quite the opposite. All, all these kids are getting paid, The West Virginia kids were getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars. You know, they could have. These are not. Even though they're which. And the money goes very far in western West Virginia. I think that what the tournament should do is say what would be the most interesting and entertaining affair we could put on television and the inclusion of North Carolina.

Anthony Weiner (82:15)

Well, Mike, let me tell you, I know you like to. You're gonna want the last word. Let me just say this. I like any remaining subjectivity into sports. I like, I don't like. I like umpires that get calls wrong. I like drafts that are screwed up. I like that kind of. Because increasingly we want to have error free, scot free things. And that's the fun of sports, is arguing about those types of things.

Mike Pesca (82:42)

Yeah, I agree with you. The worst thing about March Madness is excessive videography because we have to get every out of bounds play right and then they see if it went off the finger or the fingernail, thus grinding. Remember I said that being entertaining is a high, high priority for watching a sporting event. They SAP the entertainment out of it and it's this pursuit of perfection that will never be achieved. We, however, on this show, I think, have come close to the platonic ideal of two guys hashing it out with a third guy sitting there often. But I want to thank my guests, Anthony Winner and Nick Gillespie. Thank you guys so much.

Nick Gillespie (83:20)

Thank you.

Anthony Weiner (83:20)

Thank you guys. And thank you, Nick.

Mike Pesca (83:22)

And until next time, we are not saying we're right. We're not saying you're right, but we're definitely saying we're not even mad. And that's it for today's show. Cory Warra produces the gist solo. Michelle Pesca, CBSO of Peach Fish Productions. Leo Baums, the intern, Umper G. Peru. To Peru. Thanks for listening.