Loading summary
Transcript120 lines
- [00:00]
LifeLock Advertiser
Lots of places can expose you to identity theft.
- [00:03]
Mike Pesca
Oh, no.
- [00:04]
LifeLock Advertiser
That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity, which is way more than anyone can do on their own. If we find anything suspicious, like new loans or changes to your financial accounts, we alert you right away. All through text, phone, email, or the LifeLock app. Get the alerts that could make all the difference. Save up to 30% your first year@lifelock.com specialoffer terms apply.
- [00:30]
Bradley Tusk
Foreign.
- [00:35]
Mike Pesca
June 11, 2026 from Pete Fish Productions, it's the gist. I'm Mike Pesca. Today is a not even mad day. And we're not even mad. Especially if, like me, you support the local basketball club, the Knickerbockers. They. Well, anyway, you probably heard about it, we have two great guests. One was at the game yesterday, this guy, Bradley Tusk. During the show, he's going to drop a couple of municipal agencies and federal agencies and candidates he's worked for. It's kind of amazing. You'll probably think he's lying. I vetted his resume. It's all true. He worked for the City Parks Department. He worked for Chuck Schumer, which he talks about. Chuck. Chuck. He talks about Chuck. Can't see things the way other people do. I love the first name basis. He worked for a guy named Blagojevich. Less said about that the better, though. He while he didn't turn states, he did recognize some chicanery that was going on and said he wanted no part of it. And then he sort of fell into Mike Bloomberg's lap like a Jose Alvarado with a law degree. Great reference, huh? I'm on top of things. So Brad is fantastic. CFL is our other guest. No, not the Canadian Football League. We didn't get these Saskatchewan Rough Riders or the Hamilton Tiger Cats to join the show. What a pairing that would be. Canadian Football League teams against an entrepreneur and bookstore owner? No, this CFL is Charles Fain Lehman, and one of his areas of expertise is antisocial behav, though he's a fine fellow in his own right. So what we've done, what I like to do, is we threw an extra topic at him that will only be in the Not Even Mad specific feed. It occurs during the segment when we're taught we talk mostly about gambling on apps and how that's hurting young men and the country as a whole. And then I talk to him about fertility rates and cell phones. There are some studies out that's only in the not even mad feed. I also want to add some clarification or an update since we record yesterday and air today in that time, as the time has passed. Spencer Pratt in the L A Mayor's race. I say during the show, it's almost certain he is going to lose. He has only an infinitesimal chance of getting through. It is no, he's not one. Nithya Raymond has won. Spencer Pratt is through, but also Nithya Raymond is through. Funny how those two words work. A sanction and sanction sort of deal. Or when the business blows up. Could be a good thing, could be a bad thing. It's really not how language is supposed to work, but how not even mad is supposed to work is exactly like this episode you're supposed to hear. Enjoy Charles Fate, Lehman, Bradley Tusk.
- [03:11]
Bradley Tusk
Up next.
- [03:18]
Mike Pesca
Ever notice how the second you google something, suddenly every ad you see is about that thing? Or when you're traveling and just want to watch the show you always wanted to watch, it's blocked. Yeah, the Internet isn't really open. They call it the open Internet. No, you have to start using a product like ProtonVPN. I use Proton VPN, the traveling part. I mean, I'm paying for my subscription. It doesn't matter if I'm overseas. The way I see it, I want to see what I'm paying for on occasion. And also the security is really important. So ProtonVPN is a secure VPN service designed for people who want to prioritize their digital privacy and security. Haven't hit that point as hard. There's the convenience aspect and there's the privacy aspect. It keeps what you do online private and lets you access the Internet like it should work. Open, secure and on your terms. They have strict no logs policy that's independently verified and it works seamlessly. So whether you want to watch content from anywhere, get around block sites or just keep your activity private on public WI fi, protect yourself. Proton VPN has you covered. It's easy to get started. Right now Proton VPN is offering our listeners 70% off a two year plan. When you go to protonvpn.com/gist, that's P R O T O N V- dot com gist for 70% off your two year plan, that's protonvpn.com gist. Hello and welcome back to the show that had to cover up its tramp stamp as soon as someone told me it was also a hate symbol. Not even mad. Today we speak of California elections. A famous Maine harbor master named Graham and the Kids and their disastrous tech. As we do so, we promise to uphold our reputation for refutation while at the same time vowing to be not even mad. I say we. But who are we this week? We are Bradley Tusk, a bookstore owner, venture capitalist, put political consultant, and host of the excellent Firewall podcast. I mean, was that. Is that the right order, Bradley?
- [05:45]
Bradley Tusk
Yeah, I mean, I kind of think the stuff we're doing on mobile voting at school meals is worth. Worth mentioning. But what do I have to do the most unsuccessful thing I do, which is bookstore. I am proud to own an indie bookstore. It is. And by the way, for any listener, if you're looking to lose a lot of money, I highly recommend opening an indie bookstore, especially in New York City.
- [06:05]
Mike Pesca
Yeah. Although if I led with venture capitalist and political consultant. Well, boring like dealer, I don't think.
- [06:14]
Bradley Tusk
Yeah. But you know, mobile voting with the largest force behind school meals in America, you know, that kind of shit, that's not bad.
- [06:21]
Mike Pesca
Charles Fain Lehman once ate lemon. Right, Lehman, Yeah, of course. Charles Fein. Charles Fain Lehman once ate a school in lunch. But more to the point, he is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, the senior editor of City Journal, and I always love reading this. And this comes right next in his bio. He focuses primarily on the public policy of antisocial behavior, including issues of crime, drugs and public disorder. Is there more succinct way to describe that? Beat, vice, badness, evil?
- [06:50]
Charles Fain Lehman
Yeah, yeah. It's like, what are bad things people do and how do we get them to stop doing it? That's what I'm interested in.
- [06:55]
Mike Pesca
Let's get, let's get CFL on that.
- [06:58]
Bradley Tusk
Charles, how much of that is now digitally focused as opposed to physically?
- [07:03]
Charles Fain Lehman
An increasing share. I can, I can, I can talk you off. I do a whole bunch of different things, whether it's, you know, you're talking about gambling, pornography, but also just like I crime. You know, guys who are doing. Guys are doing theft online whole.
- [07:18]
Bradley Tusk
You know, we should talk about. I've been working on biometric screening to log into the sports betting apps.
- [07:22]
Mike Pesca
We are going to talk about that. I probably talk about that.
- [07:25]
Bradley Tusk
And Hochul is, Is doing it in New York, but we should talk about ways to spread that. That and Mike, that would be another thing out of my.
- [07:32]
Mike Pesca
Correct.
- [07:33]
Bradley Tusk
Better thing than venture capital.
- [07:36]
Mike Pesca
Well, what I've done is I've looked at each of your bios and looked at the Pandora's box that you've opened and also tried to cure Bradley and the rattling.
- [07:46]
Bradley Tusk
Yes. This is one of the when you say venture capitalist, arguably the worst thing I've done societally was legalize fanduel. I love fanduel as a company, but like, yes. And I'm trying to make a mess.
- [07:58]
Mike Pesca
All right, so that's a tease. And by the way, worst thing he's done and he's also once killed a hobo. Okay, votes are in. In places like Maine and California. Graham Platner will be the Democratic candidate for senator in Maine. In California, there's going to be a runoff for Governor Xavier Xavier Bashara and Steve Hilton. The mayor's race will pit Karen Bass against Nithya Raymond. We're like 99.4% sure. Main first. The Democrats definitely got who they wanted. Maine is now. Wasn't always, but it's now. I have read a Democrat plus 14 state and Susan Collins, who is the incumbent senator, is a lot of things. She's 71, which is a negative these days. She has a long record as a record setting, it turns out, never missed a vote in the Senate, just cast her 10,000th vote. So she's a senator of longstanding. But the huge knock against long serving Maine senator Republican Susan Collins is that she's Republican. That's that for Trump's first term. Specifically, CQ found that Congressional Quarterly found that Collins voted with Trump 94% of the time. Is there any specific. We're going to get to Platner in a second. But other than those two things, that she's 71 and that she is a Republican in a non Republican state, are there any real strong knocks against Collins? Bradley, has she done things wrong?
- [09:27]
Bradley Tusk
No. Unless. Other than there are votes of hers that I might not agree with per se. But I think the, the reason why she draws more ire in many ways than a lot of others is there's always this sort of will she, won't she. On every bill where she sort of signals that she might vote against Trump, might vote against the Republicans and then she never really does.
- [09:49]
Mike Pesca
Yeah.
- [09:49]
Bradley Tusk
So there's always this sort of Hubbub and that's 1 and 2. Where Trump is probably right is the national media is very left leaning and Democratic and partisan. And so they always feel like she should vote the way they want her to and they always feel like her seat is more up for grabs than it ever actually seems to be. And so therefore she draws a disproportionate amount of attention. But I think the reality is she's a standard Republican senator.
- [10:16]
Mike Pesca
Yeah, that would she. That will sure. Won't she? I Think she's probably disappointed with the actual result more than Lisa Murkowski has, for example. And her votes to confirm not every Republican Supreme Court nominee, but enough, including Brett Kavanaugh, are things that Democrats who probably weren't going to vote for her anyway, definitely hate.
- [10:36]
Bradley Tusk
Why do they have a right to expect anything of her?
- [10:39]
Mike Pesca
Right, Right. And so maybe they're getting a little more than they could from any other Republican. But this is why we vote. They say, well, why do I have to live with a Republican? And so it does look like they're doing. Tending towards voting for the Democrat. Except this Democrat, Graham Platner, has a few. What did they say? Skeletons in the closet. Now it's on his chest in the form of a Totenkoff. What do you think? What do you think, Charles, of him? Has he made mistakes or was the mistake. If you do think he's made mistakes, was the mistake in the political insiders who thrust him into the four?
- [11:14]
Charles Fain Lehman
It does sort of seem like they knew there was some stuff coming down the pike, although there's been reporting that the couple who dug him up said they had a different proposal, sort of in a similar vein, who they backed out on their first candidate at the last minute because of skeletons in his closet. So that hasn't worked out fantastically. I mean, you know, like, there is sort of this line about Platner where it's like he made these bad decisions in the past that's all behind him. And in some senses that's true. Right. Like, there was this initial story about he got the Nazi tattoo while he was in the service. And, you know, it's been years and he didn't know anything about it. And now we can say really pretty definitively he really did know that it was a Nazi tattoo the whole time. And there are other things. Like, it was so long ago when the guy was texting an indeterminately large number of women who weren't his wife in an inappropriate way. So, I mean, I think that the question with this race is just like, does any of that stuff matter anymore? Right. Like, you compare this to Texas, where Ken Paxton. I don't actually know if Ken Paxton was under indictment at the same time that he was cheating on his wife. But both of those things have happened to Ken Paxton.
- [12:22]
Bradley Tusk
I like to sequence the map. Right.
- [12:24]
Mike Pesca
It's like, well, you know, stress. Stress shows up in a lot of ways.
- [12:28]
Charles Fain Lehman
Yeah, but so, like, you know, the question is like, do voters care about any of this versus, you know, Collins is Collins? I think I Think. I agree. I agree. Collins is like a pretty generic Republican, but there's, there are times, you know, someone's talking about the SAVE act, which is the big voter. Whatever package that Trump wants to push, it's dead on arrival in the Senate because somebody like Collins isn't going to vote for it.
- [12:49]
Mike Pesca
Right?
- [12:50]
Charles Fain Lehman
There are lots of votes they don't take because of her. So she's like, you know, she's a median. She's a median style close to the median voter Republican. And it's like, that's okay. But do domain voters hate the GOP brand and hate Trump enough and not care about the fact that this guy is clearly a scumbag to, you know, that's the equation. That's the big question. Is like the pretty anodyne Susan Collins so evil because of the Trump alignment versus this guy who is, you know, I don't think he's committed any actual crimes that we've heard about yet, but he clearly has terrible judgment pretty consistently, which is a problem.
- [13:26]
Mike Pesca
You may have done, you may have done coke in the military, but let me also say, I don't know if we could definitely say that he knew it was a Totenkopf or just a Nazi tattoo when he got it in Croatia in 2007, but there is strong evidence that he knew what it was before he says he knew what it was. And usually we say the COVID up is the crime. But I made this joke on the show, but I cannot make it to you. This was a crime where the solution was to cover it up. And he did. And he said that that should be enough, but it hasn't been enough. But Bradley, you were going to say,
- [13:59]
Bradley Tusk
I mean, it seems to me that there's two sort of fundamental questions here, right? Because we could debate all day. The tattoo. Who gives a fuck? It's a tattoo. Right? One, should we be surprised that the kind of people who run for office are the kind of people who frequently do things that we deem to be otherwise bad? No. I've worked in the US Senate, I've worked at every level of government. I've run campaigns. By definition, the vast, vast majority of elected officials are people who are desperately self loathing, desperately insecure, can't live without the external affirmation that comes with holding office. And that's why they run and put themselves through this horrific process in the first place. So the fact that that's who we attract should not be much of a surprise. So then the next question becomes, well, how much are we willing to Accept and tolerate. Given that trumps are present, the answer is quite a bit. But ultimately, for Democrats who are now wringing their hands about Platner, the question is how important is it to have control of the Senate in the first place? So I'm an independent. I don't like or trust or care about either party. I certainly want the Democrats to take the House because I don't like the legislation that has come through this Congress. I'm not sure how much it matters that the Senate goes Democrat in the sense that if there's legislation like that tax bill that I didn't like, it's not passing. If you had a Democratic House. So the only thing that I can tell that would really be meaningful on the Senate would be confirmations of which, yes, people will leave and there will be new people proposed, but a lot of them are going to stay and there's acting appointments and things like that. And so the practical, real world impact of the Democrats taking the Senate, I think maybe a lot less than the symbolism and partisan fervor of the people who desperately want them to take the Senate.
- [15:45]
Charles Fain Lehman
Yeah.
- [15:45]
Mike Pesca
Now you talk about how desperately insecure politicians are. That is true when you see someone who's pursued politics their whole life. Platner is just into politics. He was, you know, talking about it on Reddit for years. He's a fairly young person, 41. But this is his, I'm not counting harbor master. This is his first run for office.
- [16:04]
Bradley Tusk
Harbor bass. Don't underestimate how political. Harbor master.
- [16:07]
Mike Pesca
You can't really master a harbor master. Let's be clear questions.
- [16:10]
Bradley Tusk
Well, you can't. How many cycles can you survive?
- [16:13]
Charles Fain Lehman
Oh, no, but this, this was the, this is something my friends, the Washington Free Beacon dug up. He claims to currently be the harbor master, and then they pointed out that he's actually the ex harbor master of his town and they had to revise their claims and his, you know, resume about our harbor.
- [16:27]
Mike Pesca
He's harbor. Harbor master emeritus. But Charles also references the two people who found him or dug him up. Now, these are the activists, Daniel Morath and Leanne Fan. There are some interesting interviews with these people, and they're DSA members who had a theory of the case. And Moraf was writing about this years ago, although some, for some reason it's taken down, which was our primaries are. The structure of our primaries are such that so few people vote. If dedicated DSA officials get in there, we can change politics by changing the Democratic Party. There are other theories of how to do that. I want to ask you a couple of questions since you're a real. Since what drives you, Bradley, is to reform our primary system. And I agree with you, it's just about the worst thing in politics. It's not money in politics, it's how the primaries work. And they're all interactive. But first of all, is that really how it works, that one or two people reach out as if they were finding pitching prospect like Steve Nebraska in the scout and they could just create a phenomenon like this?
- [17:32]
Bradley Tusk
I mean, it does happen occasionally, but it doesn't work. I've only ever tried to do that once with Andrew Yang. We ran it for mayor of New York in 2021.
- [17:39]
Mike Pesca
Yeah, but we heard of Yang beforehand.
- [17:42]
Bradley Tusk
Correct. So look, I mean, you can try to look at archetypes of politicians and the mood of the voters and a bunch of other factors and come up with a formula. But kind of a lot like sports in many ways. There's, you know, what you have on paper and there's the reality of it. And in some ways, if the greatest thing that matters most these days to voters is a feeling of real authenticity from their politicians, when someone is drawn up in a lab, they're almost not going to be there. Now, Platner is certainly not like a Mitt Romney super corporate robotic type, but maybe their research is such that it did not unveil a lot of obvious problems. When people who come to me who are not politicians and say, I want to run for whatever, what should I do? One of the things that I always say to them is you have to hire someone to do Rio apo into you. And they always say, no, no, no, it's not necessary. I know myself, I know what I've done. It's fine. I said, everyone says that and yet everyone has a scandal. So clearly it's not fine. And you might be able to live with the things they find going public, that's okay. You might be able to win with it. But you would be idiotic to not know what people can find out about you and weigh both the risk to your life and your family and to the impact on the election. And these people clearly didn't do that well.
- [18:57]
Mike Pesca
But that exact process is what allowed the allegations and since confirmed allegations, or at least not disputed allegations in total of the women that he was sexting with. This was a result of oppo research
- [19:13]
Charles Fain Lehman
that scrunched his own wife telling his campaign manager, right? It was like they didn't dig it up. The wife had to come forward with it.
- [19:22]
Mike Pesca
But. But it was because she was asked about it was because of this process. That's a violation.
- [19:27]
Bradley Tusk
They might have concluded and Platner might have concluded. You could reasonably choose to say there's a lot of bad shit out there, but the good stuff politically outweighs the bad stuff and we can win anyway. And someone like Platner might say, I'll take all of the bad stuff because I so desperately want to be a senator. I so desperately want the attention that comes with all of it. Look, Trump came to the Knicks game on Monday, was booed heavily. He knew that, but he chose to do right away because for him, attention is better than no attention, even if it's negative attention. So they're all formulas. But, you know, in terms of trade offs would be the better answer. But you have to at least if you don't go into the process knowing what those trade offs are and how they might play out, then you haven't done your work.
- [20:12]
Mike Pesca
Yeah. And Charles, to answer one of your questions, I do think voters care. The question is, do they care enough to affect the result in a state that, as I've been saying, probably Too much, is +14 Democrat right now? I mean, Maine, obviously, Maine, 2nd District, often goes for the Republican in national elections, but then the first district, which is the coastal district, swamps that result. So I do think it does matter. I have no strong predictions about how it will play out. I just know for myself. And Jake Ochin Kloss, who's a member of Congress, is so far the only one who has taken the stance, which is if I lived in Maine, I just can't, like, even if I kind of disagree a little bit with you, Bradley, I think it's important to have a Senate that, especially now with Trump as president, is some sort of bulwark against that. But no, you're right. It's not the most dire thing in the world. But I'd have a strong political preference for that. The thing is, I'd have to compromise so many of my values to vote for him. And it's not just that sexting, and it's not just the tattoo itself, it's the lying about it. Yeah, I don't think the guy's an anti Semite. I know he has Jewish family members or whatever. I also know he's, you know, extremely anti Zionist. But put all that aside, I heard Yasha Monk, my friend, talking about this on his podcast when Barack Obama had a similar type skeleton in the closet, which is an association with something that most Americans loathe. In this case, A preacher who said, God damn America. He gave the best speech of his political career. But even if the words weren't great, the sentiment was, which was meeting people who might be very, very offended by it and trying to find some sort of common ground and talk about going forward. And what Platner does, as Yasha points out, is just to say the people raising this are Democrats. Now that might be good politics. It's just not what I want out of politics. And I just can't.
- [22:04]
Charles Fain Lehman
Part of what's going on in Maine.
- [22:05]
Bradley Tusk
Right.
- [22:05]
Charles Fain Lehman
It's just like a comprehensive failure of recruitment. And I think, you know, really on multiple levels, it raises questions about the Institutional Democratic Party. Right. And what I mean by this is a. There were a bunch of other people who could have run for this seat in the sort of like moderate lane. Right. Jared golden, who's the very moderate Democrat who's actually getting primaried. He's not running again, but he's main one. Main two, I forget main two. Yeah. Could have been an obvious fit. There were a bunch of people who are running for governor who didn't get into the Senate primary and instead they left the current governor, Janet Mills, who turned out to be a total non entity who's subject to exactly the same attacks that Collins is about her age, run as the sort of establishment candidate. They comprehensively failed there. But I think certainly people in the know, probably even voters, look at what happened in 2020 where Collins was supposed to lose to Sarah Gideon, this sort of very respectable candidate. All the polls had Gideon winning and then Collins decisively wins in 2020 and they go like, is the Institutional Democratic Party able to deliver on this stuff? Maybe we should try the guy with the Nazi tattoo who has a bunch of skeletons in his closet and is texting random women.
- [23:21]
Bradley Tusk
And he's very good at sexter.
- [23:24]
Mike Pesca
That's the one thing. Is he a good sexter? How's his sense?
- [23:29]
Charles Fain Lehman
You know, like, like, like in some senses that's a high variance strategy. But then the trade off there is. And Josh Barrow made this point, I think he was accurate, is like, you know, why do you keep selecting these lunatics? Like, and the answer is, in some sense is either you have the high variant strategy that tends to select lunatics, or you have the like, very moderate, safe strategy that just doesn't seem to be working. So it's like kind of a rock and hard place.
- [23:52]
Mike Pesca
Interesting. So Charles Schumer, your old boss, Bradley, he was the main driver to pick Janet Mills, although she's obvious she's the governor, not a popular governor, but she's the governor. She's also even older than Susan Collins. A couple of questions there. I mean, I don't know how well, you know everything that's going on in Maine. Do you think that Schumer didn't think it out long enough? He just stopped it. We'll go with the governor. And the other question is, do you think we're ever going to get past this anger at the Gerontocracy moment where being younger is such a strong argument? Because there's a counter argument which is experience versus inexperience, which seems to have no sway these days.
- [24:29]
Bradley Tusk
Right. I think that Chuck is not capable about thinking things in other than the way that he thinks about things. Right. So Chuck is an incredibly conventional politician. He has literally been in elected office. He's never had an actual job. His first job out of school was as a New York State Assemblymember and he's been in office ever since. And that's how he sees the world. And in his mind, a several time governor compared to some harbor master or ex harbor master, even if he didn't know about the tattoos, to him was a clear call. And to be clear, Chuck is making his choices based on what he thinks will win elections. Right. So the only way that Chuck even has a shot at winning in 2028 in New York is if he won back the Senate in 2026. Right. If he doesn't, he's pretty much done for. He's done for either way if AOC chooses to run for Senate. But if he doesn't win the Senate, I think the there's a bunch of other members from the delegation and others who probably could take him out. And whether he chooses to not run or he loses in a primary, we'll see. Yeah, I just think that Chuck is not capable of change and he's only ever lived in a bubble and that is not a great place to sort of get a dose of reality.
- [25:45]
Mike Pesca
And do you think experience will ever come back as something that the voters select for?
- [25:52]
Charles Fain Lehman
Sure.
- [25:52]
Bradley Tusk
Although experience and age don't necessarily correlate. Right. So Trump is really old. I think he turns 80 in a week or something like that. And, you know, had no experience in government and is doing, in my view, a horrifically bad job at running the country. So, you know, there's a lot of different factors. And look, sometimes I will say so. I was deputy governor of Illinois when I was 29 and I worked for a governor who genuinely believed that his job was to Run for office, not to hold office. And so. So I got to make pretty much all the decisions. Sometimes I will say that my agent experience was helpful because one, I worked 90 hours a week consistently and two, I didn't know what I couldn't accomplish. So sometimes we tried things that had I known better, I would have said no. That actually then got done.
- [26:36]
Mike Pesca
All right, this has been an excellent on that election. Here's what I want to ask about the California election. And it's just the mayor race. So like I said right now, Cal, she says that Spencer Pratt has a.6% chance of getting through. And I think that's just the dead enders and members of Pratt's family. But where the debate, if you want to call it that, has gone is over. These, I'm going to say, tell me if either of you disagree, but also have evidence to disagree that these conspiracy theories that Pratt's falling in the. The standings is falling in the vote count is a function of a conspiracy. And some of the evidence is that one vote count was released and it had a lot of votes for Raymond and Bass and Pratt had zero. How could this be? Just wait a minute. Literally a minute. Then the Pratt totals came in anyway. There was this big conspiracy theory which doesn't even make sense. Who's running the conspiracy? Bass would certainly rather have Pratt as an opponent than Raymond. But here's where I want to take it. So what happens is, you know, there is a. There is a fairly reasonable, reasonable, I'm going to say, argument that goes like this. Even if these conspiracies are wrong, the thing that gives rise to the conspiracies, beyond the bad faith of the people submitting them, is the fact that California's elections are run so poorly. And the fundamental flaw of the election is they allow voting until the day of the election. And then the US Males being what they are, it's going to take at least a week and up to statutorily 13 days to count those envelopes. So what are you doing, California? You're screwing it up so bad. Of course you're going to get these conspiracy theories on the show. I have said you shouldn't let that dissuade you from a good election rule, which is to allow as much voting as you can in the easiest way possible. Although I will say I'm willing to be dissuaded from that argument. Charles, what do you think?
- [28:36]
Charles Fain Lehman
If there were evidence of fraud, I would be happy to say it's a potentially fraudulent election. But I think often what People are doing is identifying things that are perfectly legal but look like they could be potential sources of fraud and say, I don't like this, therefore it's fraudulent. That's an unmerited jump. You know, like you talked about the vote drop that seemed to Show Pratt getting zero votes. And Bill Assailee, the hard charging U.S. attorney down there, went and looked into it was like, nope, this is all above board. And he's like a real trumpy guy. So if he says it's fine, I'm prone to believe he gets right. But you know, you, you talk about the, the late arriving votes, but you can talk about this practice of allowing people to, they don't have to sign if they are potentially or claim to be illiterate. They don't have to sign their own names on the ballot. They can just sort of draw a line or a smiley face and somebody else can witness the voting that they do or the ever controversial topic of ballot harvesting. You can go, there are people who are living on skid row and voting do those. You know, they're clearly being brought to vote by people with a particular agenda. That is all legal.
- [29:45]
Bradley Tusk
Right?
- [29:45]
Mike Pesca
That's.
- [29:45]
Charles Fain Lehman
And Republicans do the same thing in other states. You know, my, my view is that one of the dumb things that comes out of this is like Republicans should be willing to play those games too, as opposed to throwing a fit about it and saying it's all rigged against us. But that stuff really does, I think, skeeve people out for good reason. It's hard to find evidence that a real voter fraud. But like, we have to care about the public legitimacy of our elections. Right? We have to care that people believe that elections are fair and valid. Does the President United States coming out and saying the election was rigged harm that? Yes, 150%. That's really bad. But other things can harm that too. And I think that, you know, there's, there's this real problem. California takes weeks and weeks. They have all of these measures that are meant to be maximally inclusive. I'm dubious that they actually add that many voters and, and they create this perception of profound dysfunction that doesn't show up in other organized democracies that are perfectly capable of including lots of people without having this like insane process that causes people to go, I don't like how this looks. Even if I can't prove to you that there's fraud here.
- [30:48]
Mike Pesca
Yeah, yeah, we do have to have the populace believe in elections. But if there is one party, one partisan group that is dedicated to undermining that belief, what really can we do?
- [31:00]
Charles Fain Lehman
Well, I mean, I think those are both problems, but, like, I think that there's very little you can do about the problem of the President constantly claiming stuff is rigged other than saying, no, it's not. That's ridiculous. On the other hand, many people are not the president, and how persuaded they are by him is in part going to be a function of, like, what he can point to, what evidence he actually has. Right. I'm able to come out and be like, this isn't reasonable. These objections are not reasonable. Here's my evidence to the contrary. And that's empowering for me as someone who doesn't think the elections are rigged. But if you create a system that's very easy to make look like it's rigged, then at the margins, people are going to be more likely to be persuaded.
- [31:40]
Bradley Tusk
Right.
- [31:41]
Charles Fain Lehman
Again, ideally, the solution is the President. Stop saying that stuff. That's bad. But bracketing that this other stuff is good, too. The people who are, you know, it is perfectly legitimate for citizens in general to be concerned about the integrity of elections. That's not unfair or unreasonable of them. Even if some people are using it for demagoguery and, like, it's reasonable to be concerned about the former's concerns and to engage them. That doesn't mean, like, unduly conceding to the latter.
- [32:07]
Mike Pesca
Bradley does the way California run its elections, especially with that mail feature, is that optimal or even okay, in your opinion?
- [32:16]
Bradley Tusk
First of all, yes. Like, the only conspiracy. I'm generally not a conspiracy theorist. I believe that the NBA draft lottery is rigged and that's about it every year. Yes. And I worked in Chicago politics for four years, and all kinds of bad shit happened. Right. I testified in multiple corruption trials. I got death threats, all kinds of shit. You know what? I never saw one single example of or even allegation of voter fraud. Right. I don't think it's an actual thing, but Trump obviously has brought it into the Zeitgeist. Anyway, look, ultimately, take a half a step back. What do we want? We want as many people voting as possible. We want voting to be as accessible and easy as possible, and we want to be able to get results accurately as quickly as possible so that general elections could then proceed and people know the answers and everything else. So I don't have, you know, where California falls short is the last part, which is, you know, mail in voting is easier than in person voting. And being able to vote, you know, through election day, obviously makes it more accessible than Last. But then that does mean that you have this longer period to determine the winner. Again, that is why I have put so much effort and so much time and so much money into mobile voting, because we have built a system, and this is totally philanthropic, that I think addresses everyone's concerns. So if you were the president, your concern would be that people are voting fraudulently who shouldn't be voting. This system has both multi factor authentication and biometric screening. And the only way that the ballot even comes up on you, your screen is that your facial ID matches up against your driver's license. And just like you do with every financial app and everything else, the code that's texted to you then get put into the app, but it is delivered electronically in an encrypted way so it can be counted immediately. The ballot is printed out. So there is an audit and a paper copy for any kind of recount or anything else. That is a way to ensure that only people who are registered voters are voting, that votes are, can be counted and received all the way through election day and that you can have results immediately. And we are at, you know, in the mid-90s, mid to high 90s now in terms of smartphone penetration among American adults. So kind of it's not a, it's a utility, it's not a luxury in any way. So I know the answer because I have built it. With that said, I ran legislation in five states this year to try to just allow mobile voting as an option if municipalities want it for local elections only as an additional way on top of the ways they currently vote. I ran them in blue states only thinking that because Trump is so in favor of only in person paper ballots, I wouldn't be able to get it through red states. I would try blue states. I lost just as badly as if I had tried five red states. Neither party has any interest whatsoever in making it easier to for people to vote or making others easier for anyone.
- [35:07]
Mike Pesca
The voters always like it, but the parties never do, correct? Yeah. So I have looked into this and even countries where there is no massive allegations of conspiracies that allow for mail in voting and have embraced it. The uk, Switzerland, none of them allow voting up to election day. Also, the people who have looked into how California counts the ballots say that they're underfunded in doing so. I do think that there is something a little too free and easy about how California does it. I don't think that too. I think it was. Charles, your earlier point. I don't think having this rule really gets that Many people who would other be disenfranchised to vote. I mean that's what you want. But I think it's acceptable to say the deadline is three days before election day. And you know what, that would solve some large percentage of our problem. This is.
- [36:02]
Charles Fain Lehman
Yeah, I mean this is like me
- [36:03]
Mike Pesca
being McLaughlin saying, and that's the answer and now we're done.
- [36:09]
Charles Fain Lehman
No, I mean, look, two things. One is that we know from the social science that it's actually quite hard to move people's voting behaviors. We know this from automatic voter registration like motor voter. The research on the balance of the research as I read it, says it doesn't have a meaningful impact on people's voting behaviors. The great argument for voter ID is that as it turns out, voter ID has essentially no effect on people's voting behavior. So if you add it then people get to stop complaining about voter id. But also you don't really change basically if you're going to vote, you vote. And if you're not going to vote, you don't vote. And there are things you can do at the margins but it doesn't make a huge difference. And so any given intervention, that argument should have diminishing persuasiveness. The other thing I would say is, I think I texted you. The analogy I think about is Florida, right? Florida had a disastrous vote count in 2000. Many people still believe that the 2000 election was stolen. It was a huge problem in some senses. You could argue, you can argue that anything gave us Trump, but you could argue that the 2000 election and the distrust in government that it bred gave us Donald Trump and the rise of populism. It is a moment of government incompetence and malpractice that leads to profound social upset and upheaval. And like Florida then went and fixed its system, right? They count votes in an hour in Florida now. They're like best in class. They just did it because they realized that this was such a huge issue. And you know, California deeply entrenched one party bureaucracy like one party state. They don't, they don't care. They're just going to keep doing it this way. And I think that's going to be bad for public trust in at least their elections. And there's no reason they shouldn't just count it faster. There is no reason that they couldn't just build a better system like Florida or Texas or any of these other states.
- [37:52]
Bradley Tusk
They have, they have an independently elected secretary of state in California and she is everything intelligent, a very long time political hack. And so I think part of it is just if you get people who only in the same way how Schumer can't see beyond the institution of. Of what he does. If you are a career political hack who's now in charge of elections and all, you know is shitty government bureaucracy and the people who run the unions of those members are the ones that support your campaign, you know, you have no incentive to change it. And so, yeah, I mean, just they're almost getting what they asked for there.
- [38:29]
Mike Pesca
Yeah. And by the way, my one last comment is that if ballot harvesting weren't called harvesting, which brings to mind organ harvesting, I don't know how many people would be upset by it. All right, I did promise you, and I don't want to tease too much, but I did promise you that Charles Fein Lehman knows a lot about antisocial behavior. We'll see that antisocial behavior, or just at least the knowledge thereof, on display after the break as we talk about the betting markets. Join us as Not Even Mad returns. True Work is a brand that I wear. And every once a while in once in a while, they'll ship me a piece of clothing that really works with me that I didn't think of. Like pants with the knee pads built in. And then I go to the backyard and I lean down, I'm like, my God. My God. They're changing the game. And they're changing the game because of the fabrics, because most workwear is made from cotton blends which restrict movement and get soaked after a few raindrops or, you know, whatever perspiration one's own body emits. Not True Work. Springtime is a perfect season for the T2 work pant. There you go. That's the one. Keeps you comfortable over a wide range of options. I use Tru Work all the time. I would say use it uses the word they want. I just wear it. I will just wear it out. And it's a really good looking pant with a lot of pocket. I guess we're speaking singular pant in pocket. The work doesn't stop just because the weather changes, changes. Upgrade to the T2 work pant and stay comfortable no matter what the day brings. Get 15% off your first order at truework.com with code the gist. That's T R U E W-E-R-K.com code the gist. Tru work. Built like it matters, because it does. We're back with Not Even Mad. I'm joined now again by Charles Fane Lehman and Bradley Tusk. And today, here comes the disclosure part. Kalshee is an advertiser, but I think we've all got a disclosure to make in this segment. A federal commission today, as we tape this, we tape this a day before it airs, formalized rules allowing prediction markets to offer sports betting nationwide. Pretty much some specific types of trade aren't allowed. You'll be happy to know you can't bet on injuries. And also, and this is an improvement, you can't bet on certain specific plays. So we had the specter and in fact, the is yet to be adjudicated even criminally. But we had pitchers throwing the ball pretty much into the dirt so friends of theirs could win a bet. That won't be allowed, but most of the rest of it will be allowed. Thank you, federal agency run by Trump Ally. But I do say thank you because I do like betting on Kalshee. I think it probably should be reined in. I think definitely it should be reined in more than it has been. But maybe Charles, I don't know. Do you think that it just shouldn't be allowed at all? Is it one of those things where the proponents will always say we want perfect rules to govern it and there is no such thing as the perfect rule.
- [41:35]
Charles Fain Lehman
Everybody wants a successful regulator and yet the way that markets work is that they resist regulation. I happen to think, you know, I'm a capitalist. I think that's good in many situations because I think a lot of regulations are very stupid. But in the case of addictive, harmful products, which is what sports gambling is, I often think that you want to design a system of regulation that protects people from those real and measurable harms. We get into all the research, what sports gambling does. We have a lot of it. Now, the challenge with Kalshi and with I don't want to get too into the weeds, but we're in the middle of this is not the end of the discussion because there's a really live fight between the states who have been the traditional prerogative to regulate gambling of all sorts, and the feds and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, cftc, which claims it has preemptive authority to regulate the prediction markets. They're going to go to the Supreme Court in the next year, I'm quite certain, given where the courts are cashing out. But you're in this situation where basically you have what you sometimes talk about as regulatory arbitrage, where if you don't like the regulatory schema that the states provide, you can switch to the Feds. If you don't like the feds, do you switch to the states? So something like two thirds of Kalshi's sports betting contracts are in states where sports gambling is illegal. Another example, I don't know. The CFTC was asked. I don't think they are. If you want to wager on sports in a state legal sports market, you got to be 21. If you want to bet on sports on Kalshi, you have to be 18. So there's a three year gap that the feds, I believe are allowing to stand that kind of situation. A is not great, but B, it gets to this intrinsic problem of once you have a legal authorized industry, that industry has political sway. It's able to say it's able to go and engage with the regulators, it has the money to spend on it versus the people who are opposed to it, who generally don't. It has the subject matter expertise to sound persuasive to regulators and it has the ability in this case to engage in this kind of arbitrage. So once you've permitted something, you're always going to be fighting not just to figure out what the optimal regulation is, but also to figure out if you can actually get there, politically speaking. You know, I'm not a, like, I'm not like a, you know, deeply committed to saying we should never ever have sports gambling. I am just deeply skeptical that we can design a regulatory regime that actually protects people from all of the harms that go with it, given that dynamic. And that's always, you know, that's, that's what I see is going on today is like, it's the same stuff.
- [44:08]
Mike Pesca
Yeah. Bradley, you and I both have teenage sons, teenage sons who are into sports. And one of my teenage sons does gamble or engage in commodities trading on one of these sites. And I guess I can't stop him. I could just keep the bets low and dissuade him from betting on the results of Survivor when they're already known. So what are you thinking about this? What are you doing about this and what have you already done?
- [44:32]
Bradley Tusk
Yeah, so. Good question. I think, like Charles, I kind of struggle with what realistically can and can't be achieved through regulation. I would say that I was someone who invested in FanDuel and worked on the campaigns to legalize it. And my thinking from a societal standpoint, which I think might have been wrong, was people have been gambling since the beginning of time and whether it's with bookies or on websites, they're going to do it either way. So why not taxes and regulate it? I'm not sure I was right. I think that the absolute explosion in the volume would argue that perhaps it's six or one half that the other logic was wrong. But I know at least that regulation is not going to change. Human behavior generally will not. What it can change is it can set some parameters that you think are truly important. And to me, one of those is keeping minors off of sports betting apps in different ways. And so in New York, out of my foundation, we worked with Governor Hochul to make New York the first state to require biometric screening to log into sports betting apps. Obviously, a lot of the companies don't like it. I think the staff of the gaming board, and they're probably the epitome of regulatory capture, don't particularly, particularly like it, therefore, as a result. But I think it's going to happen anyway. My hope was that Hokul would spark a national trend. But, you know, the support I thought I would have from sort of the advocates of people who are sort of young men in crisis hasn't really been there. So I'm hopeful that other states will do it. I know that there is at least legislation in Congress that sort of envisions this as one of different ways to regulate prediction markets at the federal level. So. And I don't know that there'll be a ton of opposition from those companies around this. So, you know, it is something that can be done to help. There's no reason not to do it. But in terms of the larger question, I mean, you have this with every. And this is what Charles does for a living. So he knows a lot more than I ever will. But there is a human need, I think, for a relief, right? Human beings have anxiety. We have a negativity bias. It's an evolutionary trait that we need, right? It's how we know to leave the house when we smoke gas. It's how we knew how to walk the other way when we saw a lion. We still have that today. And people have anxiety. People want relief from anxiety. And so that's where things like drug and alcohol tend to come in, because people are looking for relief. People also have boredom and a feeling of irrelevance. And I think where gambling comes in is it creates, in an artificial way way, a form of excitement and engagement that people enjoy. I don't know that you can ever legislate away these human traits or behavior. So the question is just how can you regulate it in the way that makes the most sense? And they're really hard questions. Like, for example, I also believed for a very long time in the legalization of drugs. This was sort of the University of Chicago training in me of that same thing. We could tax and regulate it and do it in a way that we barely than we have now. Now, as a teenage parent, you know, as a parent of teenagers in New York City who have been able to get drugs from illegal weed shops constantly, I kind of see differently. That was a regulatory failure, but at the same time. So I know that these are just really, really hard questions. I don't think you can sort of eliminate human behaviors and desires. I don't think that you can regulate your way to perfect outcomes. And like Church Burrow said, it's a question of trade offs, trying to find the right answer. Right.
- [48:09]
Mike Pesca
Right. You can't regulate human desires. But that would be an argument for therefore heroin should be legal because people have this desire for maybe.
- [48:16]
Bradley Tusk
But at the same time, or maybe the heroin usage would increase so much that it would be worse. I don't know. Yeah.
- [48:22]
Mike Pesca
Are there examples of areas that were once illegal and then became legal with so little regulation that it was such a wild west that society, government, whoever is in charge of these things, said we got to pull back and they did more or less successfully? Has that ever played out to your knowledge, Charles?
- [48:42]
Charles Fain Lehman
Yeah, I mean, so the, the reason that most controlled substances are illegal is because we had a massive disaster with addictive drugs in the late 19th and early 20th century in this country. Right. It's super funny when you look at the history of cocaine. Every 50 years or so, we have the same 60, 70, we have the same conversations about cocaine. We were like, cocaine is great. We did this in the 70s. Cocaine is great. It's so much fun. There are no downsides. And then we discover the downsides. They did that in the 1970s, but they also did it in the 1870s, which is why we banned cocaine. We were like, wow, a lot of people are hooked on cocaine. In the early 20th century, something like 5% of Americans were addicted to more.
- [49:27]
Mike Pesca
This is why I'm hired. I have to say that. Go ahead.
- [49:30]
Charles Fain Lehman
No, like 5% of Americans are addicted to morphine. It starts during the civil war because we get the injection of the advent of the hypodermic needle and morphine. You get heroin over the counter. It's a huge disaster. Alcohol prohibition, super controversial. The prohibition of hard drugs under international treaties. There's no debate in Congress. They're just like, yep, this is bad. Get rid of it. And it Works for the next 40 or 50 years until I can get into what problems start to emerge. But they're much more. What's them looking for? They're much more technological than they are legal. The one thing I wanted to say really briefly in response to Bradley is. That's right.
- [50:08]
Bradley Tusk
You're right.
- [50:09]
Charles Fain Lehman
That you can't get rid of that desire. What I say is, what's the argument for drugs? Drugs are fun. That's the core thing, is that drugs are fun and people should be allowed to have fun. I get that. That's. That's, that's true. The question is not so much can you get rid of that itch? As how easy do you make scratching that itch and how aggressively do you allow people to do the scratching? Right. When sports gambling was illegal federally, 1992 to 2017, it was. You could only do it Nevada, legally. In that time, there were like a thousand arrests a year less than that for all gambling writ large. It's like, not enforced at all. You and I can make bets on sports, right? We can like, like, we can do our little pool. There's like a bookie you can talk to. It's fine. What you can't do is sell me sports gambling on my phone. You can't serve me 50 micro bets during the game. You can't algorithmically identify me as a potential whale and offer me 100 different things to do that I can give you my money more and more and more and more.
- [51:07]
Mike Pesca
Right. And then if you actually beat them, they can't ban you or limit you to a dollar a bet, which is what they are.
- [51:12]
Charles Fain Lehman
They can't.
- [51:12]
Mike Pesca
Right.
- [51:12]
Charles Fain Lehman
They. Yeah. The. The thing that happens when you legalize is innovation happens. The product gets better. But when you're talking about scratching that itch, it means that they give you more to scratch with, even when you turn out bloody and bruised from that experience.
- [51:28]
Mike Pesca
Yeah, yeah. And the Las Vegas analogy, how did the product get better? It got better in ways that weren't exactly talking about the dopamine release of the gambling. So Las Vegas reinvents itself, actually, away from the gambling, Gambling as a destination. And get a massage as you go, see a show as you do all these things that aren't gambling. But when it's in the app, it's the pure. It's the pure unstepped on form. That is an interesting way of looking at it.
- [51:55]
Charles Fain Lehman
One thing I've said is that so much of the problem, and there are lots of social problems. We get new research every day. On Monday, a Paper came out saying that sports gambling leads should increase in food insecurity, just for one example, divorce, crime around games, et cetera. So many of those results are just about. When you legalize on device betting. If you look just at states where you don't have on device betting but you do have legal betting, the effects are much smaller. They're often not significant. So much of it, just like everything else in our society, so much of it is about the phones. I'm not going to win this one, I suspect, but if I could pull one magic lever, I'd just say take it off the phones. People can bet in. People can bet in person. They can go to the casino, they can go to the bar.
- [52:38]
Bradley Tusk
I don't otb.
- [52:40]
Charles Fain Lehman
Bring it, bring it back. The OTP that I.
- [52:42]
Mike Pesca
Betting shops in England, which aren't exactly clean or not dingy, but if you want to gamble in England, you would for many years go to a betting shop, punt, place a wager, and it wasn't destroying society.
- [52:57]
Bradley Tusk
And Mike, just to give you a maybe end this on a slightly more positive note.
- [53:01]
Charles Fain Lehman
I'm not positive. Really?
- [53:04]
Bradley Tusk
No one's ever told you that before. Lots and lots of societal harms from phones, for sure. Social media, I believe, will end up being worse than cigarettes when it's all said and done. However, to your question of are there things that were legal and then they were bad and we pulled them back all the time? Slavery, I mean, like, like humanity over the big, big picture does advance, right? You know, human rights are exponentially greater than they were 100 years ago, 500 years ago, a thousand years ago. We have all kinds of corrupting influences in society. We have bad people. We have all kinds of stuff that is problematic all the time. But, you know, in general, we do seem to generally evolve more in the direction of good than bad. So that maybe, maybe not be exactly that reassuring. But, you know, a thousand years from now, will things be better than they are today? Assuming humans still exist? Yeah, I would bet yes. Okay, so I'm placing that bet on Kelsey right now without.
- [54:02]
Mike Pesca
Without biometric data being required.
- [54:04]
Bradley Tusk
Yeah, exactly.
- [54:06]
Mike Pesca
And now's the time for that beloved segment of Things we don't love. Maybe someone with a background in studying the antisocial will be good at goat grinders. These are the things that get our goats or grind our gears. Bradley Tusk, are you annoyed by anything ever?
- [54:20]
Bradley Tusk
Yes. Yes. People not letting you work in at the gym. Four times now in the last few months at Equinox, I have said to people, hey, do you have a lot of sets left. Yeah, four. Would it be okay if I work in with you and my entire life until recently? Answer was like, of course. And I've never said anything but of course. And I've now heard no repeatedly. I don't know if that is a manifestation of a zero sum society that is sort of just capturing us. I don't know if it's that rich people. I now work out at Equinox as a bunch of assholes. Rich people are assholes and rich people work out at Equinox. But it has shocked me that somehow people just feel comfortable saying no.
- [54:56]
Mike Pesca
Here's my goat grinder. It's sports or athletics related. My goat grinder is watching a game next to a bar that has the feed of the game before you do. So I was invited to a rooftop party to watch game three of the Knicks versus the spurs. And it would have been not a great experience because the Knicks lost. But for a lot of it, there was drama and fun to be had. Although the drama was cut into when 12 seconds before any shot was taken, a huge cheer could be heard. And then the only question was, who would be nailing the three pointer for the Knicks? It was actually, I have to say, if the Knicks had won that game, it would have been a slightly fun and interesting way to watch the game. But at the end, when there was a huge, huge moan before the play even happened, it was a double letdown. I experienced pain before. I should have experienced the pain, and it didn't make me a better person. So if you ever find yourself in this situation, don't get out of there, say thank you, rooftop, or guy who has to put it on a delay. I'm going to the bar myself. Charles Fain Lehman. What is your goat grinder?
- [56:01]
Charles Fain Lehman
My. I told my wife about this segment at lunch before this, and she was like, everything, everything, everything grinds you out.
- [56:07]
Mike Pesca
That's why you're the anti vice guy. That's why you're Mr. Anti Antisocial.
- [56:12]
Charles Fain Lehman
I'm no fun. But she also told me, and this is how I'm gonna stick with it, that apparently I learned. Do you know what the state sport of Maryland is?
- [56:19]
Mike Pesca
It is jousting.
- [56:21]
Charles Fain Lehman
Okay, I didn't know that until my wife told me the state sport of Maryland was jousting. I was like, what are you talking about? The state sport of Maryland is jousting. Are there people riding around Maryland, like hitting each other with lances? Do you see anyone on horses in this state? Like, I lived in Maryland for years. I think this is just protectionism. How could it not be the jousting industry, Right? Or football. College. College basketball. No, I'm, I'm. We need to change the state sport. They changed the state anthem, the state song, five years ago because it was, you know, Confederate hymn. I think we can change the state sport from jousting to something people actually do.
- [57:03]
Mike Pesca
Wasn't it Maryland? My Maryland, which is played for the winner of the Preakness Stakes, that.
- [57:07]
Charles Fain Lehman
It's Maryland by Maryland, which is a long. It's a song about how Maryland should leave the Union and join the Confederacy. The first line is, the despot's heel is on. Thy door is on the shore where the despot is Abraham Lincoln. Let's be clear.
- [57:23]
Mike Pesca
Good thing they didn't take that advice or take any jousting tips, because even good jousting usually leave someone dead and a horse riderless. And that's very sad. Well, I want to thank both my guests. Charles Fain Lehman of the Manhattan Institute, where he is a senior fellow and senior editor of City Journal. Thank you very much.
- [57:43]
Charles Fain Lehman
Thanks for having me.
- [57:44]
Mike Pesca
And Bradley Tusk does so many things, but I'll also plug his memoirs, the Fixer, My adventures saving startups from death by politics. And he also wrote vote with your phone and a novel about flying cars called Obvious in hindsight. Bradley, thank you.
- [58:00]
Bradley Tusk
Thank you.
- [58:01]
Mike Pesca
And until next time, we are not saying we're right. We're not saying you're right. We're saying we're not even mad. That's it for today's show. The Gist is produced by Cory Wara. Jeff Craig does have how to. Ben Astaire is our booking coordinator. Kathleen Sykes does the Gist list. And Michelle Pesca is extraordinary in her role as COO uproo G Peru Duparu. Thanks for listening.