Jeff Nussbaum (10:22)

Oh boy. On the spot. I remember a time in his office we would keep on a whiteboard things that he had said that he didn't sort of mean to say, so kind of embarrassing phrases, expecting he would never visit our office. And then he did. And as the junior person in the office, it was my job to back up to the whiteboard and shimmy back and forth with my suit coat to erase the whiteboard before he could notice.

Mike Pesca (10:53)

And so somewhere you have the mirror image words, I invented the Internet on the back of your suit coat. No, I know he never said that. And in fact, he does get credit for funding what became the Internet. But that's an awesome story. We're also joined by Dan Rothschild, who is the director of the center for Civics Education and Opportunity at the Reagan Center. This would be Ronald Reagan. I don't know if you have a funny story about Ronald Reagan, Dan.

Dan Rothschild (11:19)

Well, the only funny story that I can have, and I don't truly remember it is I come from a family whose politics don't necessarily align with mine. And my mother's memory of watching President Reagan's first inauguration in 1981 are sitting on the couch and crying because she thinks that this is the end of America as she had known it and looking over and noticing that her only child was standing up and taking his first steps. So I got up off the ground and took my first steps when I heard President Reagan's voice on January 20, 1981. So I guess that's how I ended up here today.

Mike Pesca (11:56)

Wow.

Jeff Nussbaum (11:56)

I go like old school and say, right, like that is in keeping with the famous quote, when Demosthenes speaks, the people say let us march.

Mike Pesca (12:03)

Yes, that, you know, some people have to visit lords for that sort of intervention. But for you it was Ronald Wilson Reagan. Well, if you look at the polling about Iran and our intervention thereof, 56% of Americans oppose or strongly oppose military action. That was from a fairly early poll. A later CNN poll found that 41% were in favor of this war. Not too different. You can find polling that touches 50% of the public being on board for this war in Iran. But I am not too surprised that it's not that popular for a couple of reasons, and one is it's just not that well explained. Forget the Kazis belli. There wasn't the usual laying out of the reasons why our boys and women have been put in harm's way. $1 billion a day, almost a billion dollars a day will be spent on this military intervention, its necessity and its goal. Now Jeff, you wrote a great book called Undelivered the never heard speeches that would have rewritten history. Do you think a better speech or maybe a speech to come, some sort of cogent explanation could get those numbers up appreciably?

Jeff Nussbaum (13:25)

Sure. And I should start this by saying like, you know, wisdom from the mouths of babes. I was driving one of my daughters to school and you know, the discussion was around gas prices and she got really offended and she said people are dying. And it was useful for me to even hear that and say like, oh right, this is the cost of war. This is the cost of war. So to. But to come back to your question, I think the answer is yes, a clearer argument, a timeline argument and an argument not delivered at 4 in the morning. I mean, I think these things matter. I think the American people want to be treated like intelligent participants in their own government. And so the shifting justifications, the shifting timelines, maybe we have a chance to talk about the terrible accident of the missile hitting the school, but it just, it just seems like if you don't know where you're going, any path will get you there. But this is a case where you need to know where you're going because you have a population. And ultimately, if they grow a spine, a Congress that needs to be brought along. And I just don't think that work has been done.

Mike Pesca (14:37)

Dan, do you think that one of the reasons that there hasn't been. You could also dispute this if you want to, but one of the reasons there hasn't been this clear case for war laid out is that in the minds of the warmakers, there isn't one.

Dan Rothschild (14:52)

Well, I would agree with a lot of what Jeff said. The White House has in many ways here been their own worst enemy in getting out a message on this and getting it to the American people. But a couple of caveats on that. So first, just from a strategic perspective, if what people want is to be told that this is a two week war, a six week war or whatever, there's no strategic value, there's a ton of negative value in the President or the Secretary of War coming out with any kind of timeline like that. There's kind of no upside for that over the medium term. But the second, and I think the more important underlying issue is that when the American people have something explained to them about the cause for this war and the cause just generally of America being a force for the good in the world, we've traditionally come along for that. Not uniformly and not without caveats, but in general, I think that our cause here is just the White House could do a much better job of selling it. But there are strategic and tactical concerns as to why they're probably not. But I think six months into the future, this will look like a success for the administration.

Jeff Nussbaum (15:54)

Yeah. And let me say I agree with Dan and I can go back a little bit on the timeline because I completely agree with Dan that giving people a timeline either leaves them disappointed or tells your adversaries that they only have to wait it out. But I do think a stronger argument behind the rationale buys you the time to take the time you need to do whatever the mission is.

Dan Rothschild (16:15)

But.

Jeff Nussbaum (16:15)

But you still need to be clear about what the mission is.

Mike Pesca (16:18)

Right. And George W. Bush used to always say, we'll be there for as long as we need to be and not one day longer. And that's not a great answer. But at least when the war was going well for the first few years, he got away with it. Ronald, Ronald Reagan, as you may know, as you may well know, Dan, he, during the invasion of grenade, Grenada, when that invasion was first launched, it wasn't popular. It was, there were a couple, really two polls, and it was more unpopular than not. And then he did an address to the nation, as he did. He also held a press conference with the leader of Dominica. And this was also at the same time as the Beirut bombing. And maybe there was a conflation of national interest in those two things. But I went back and I listened to that Sunday radio address and it was fantastic. And he met the American, as many of his speeches were, and he met the American people where they were. And he defined, first of all, he talked about Lebanon. It's a four country, it's a small country, more than five and a half thousand miles from our shores, on the edge of what we call the Middle East. But as he talked about the Middle east and the importance of the reasons to be involved, that we have another reason to be involved. Since 1948, our nation has recognized and accepted a moral obligation to assure the continued existence of, of Israel as a nation. As he laid it out, you saw, the next time they did a poll, it went up 10% for two reasons. He was a good communicator and he had something good to communicate. So about Lebanon, we had just been attacked. That's going to be natural. But about Grenada, he talked about the other countries in the region, some of them without armies, turning to the United States, this big, very big brother in their hemisphere, saying, please come in and help us. And it does strike me that this was, again, masterful communication. But those facts aren't there with Iran. So what's the most masterful thing that Donald Trump could communicate about this war?

Dan Rothschild (18:18)

I mean, there's a lot that he could go through or that his proxies could go through. So the reality is Iran has been at a state of war with the United states for what, 47 years now. They've attacked our military bases in the Middle East. They have had proxies that until very recently were operating in the Western Hemisphere. They are part of what you might call an axis of evil with some of America's adversaries, both in the Western Hemisphere and around the world. So there's a great case to be made here for any range of potential options between what we've already done taking out Iranian leadership to seeing through a complete regime change in the Islamic Republic. Unfortunately, they've not done a good enough job of making those cases. And I think probably it's because there are so many different casus belli for this. There are a lot of different reasons for the United States to be at war with Iran. And frankly, there's a lot of good potential outcomes to come out of this. I don't have any insight into how they're talking about this in the Situation Room, but they could, you know, they could say we have achieved our aims tomorrow and that would be true, or they can set much higher aims and we can achieve them over a series of weeks or months. So I think that there's plenty of reasons for this strike to have been launched. They're in the national interest of the United States. It's a question of which story do you want to tell and how do you bring along the American people with that?

Mike Pesca (19:40)

Jeff, this is what you do. What's the best story? A thousand US Servicemen dead over the years. The innocence that Iran has killed. The specter of Iran consistently calling the United States the Great Satan, vowing our destruction and getting closer and closer to nuclear material.

Jeff Nussbaum (19:59)

I think Dan just made a better case than the President has, simply reminding.

Mike Pesca (20:04)

And he wasn't wearing a MAGA hat at the time.

Jeff Nussbaum (20:05)

Right. Yeah, right, Right. And perhaps that's why, I mean, I think the President has probably over indexed and created sort of intellectual slash, rhetorical whiplash. Because if, because when I listen, right. From an interested, you know, attentive position, it's about nuclear. Right. And so the whiplash comes from, we've decimated their nuclear capabilities, we've decimated their ambitions. A couple months ago to we need to go in for that same reason now. And so they've indexed on one. That is clearly a part of an argument. But I think Dan makes the case, which is you need to tell people a larger story and remind them of the larger story. And there is a larger, longer story and there's much more recent history, you know, that Israel has experienced. But that I think would resonate with an American audience, which is when people tell you they want to kill, you believe them. Because a. Because they have and because they are constantly looking for another way. I think that's probably not widely known to the American people and it's certainly not been clearly explained by this president.

Mike Pesca (21:15)

Yeah. And there seems to be something about Donald Trump that he loves to keep his options open. And he looks at everything as a potential negotiation, even the actual negotiation with the Iranians that were. That was going so poorly that he decided to inject a few bombs to spur things along, but because he wants to keep his options so open, he won't commit to, yes, we want regime change. No, we don't, yes, we actually insist on it. Or he won't say, clearly we have to stop their nuclear program. And not just rhetorically, by me using the word obliterated when I should have used the word significantly set back, but I can because I'm Donald Trump and we don't use modifiers. He should have, could have said something along those lines, but he is obviously of the opinion that, well, we don't want boots in the ground until maybe we do, but I'm not going to talk about that now. And we're not going to explicitly say regime change, but it'll be crazy for us not to be open to regime change. So because of his self identified wheeler dealer nature, he just hasn't been clear enough. And I think this also is showing up. And let's talk about oil prices. You don't want to be totally insensitive to them, but elections are eight months away. If this thing goes on any reasonable timetable, oil prices will have a chance to come down. So how should he talk about or even think about or allow to dictate the timetable, this very real concern about oil prices, Prices down?

Dan Rothschild (22:46)

Yeah, that's going to be a tough thing to message, especially because he's put so much of his presidency on prices, on the market going up and on prices going down. I think that in order to explain the rising oil prices that we're all seeing at the pump, he's got to make the underlying case. And this was something that President Reagan, I think, to go back to what you were saying, Mike, this is something that he was really good at. He was able to make the moral case, then from the moral case, make the strategic case, then the strategic case built to the tactical case. And then you can explain why it is that we're all of a sudden paying 50, 60, 70 cents more a gallon at the pump. But what we see is that Americans will accept some level of sacrifice like that, but they have to be told what the sacrifice is for. And so in order to understand what's happening with prices, we've got to make the case that this is in America's national interest and that there is a moral case behind it as well, that the Iranian regime is, you know, killing protesters in the streets by the tens of thousands and a little pain at the pump is, is something that we should be willing, a sacrifice we should be willing to make.

Mike Pesca (23:51)

Right. And if it's not an existential threat to the United States. It is to our ally Israel, which isn't a popular ally these days. But there is something to keeping a commitment to alliances. And if the same threat were to Taiwan, and if the same threat were to Korea, as acutely as it is with Israel and Iran, maybe we would be able to rouse the public or at least make the case that some intervention was necessary. You could even make the case with Iran that we don't want to get to a point where Iran is North Korea and the entire populace of the Korean continent has to live in total fear of the vagaries of a madman. I don't know if you could sell that, though. Maybe some of these other things we're talking about, Jeff, would resonate more with everyday Americans.

Jeff Nussbaum (24:40)

Well, it's hard enough to sell checkers and you're sort of trying to sell chess. However, I think chess is important here in more ways than even you just described. Right. Which is, you know, we're talking about missile depletion. These missiles depend on chips. You know, these missiles are needed, you know, to potentially thwart China's ambitions in Taiwan, but also to do so using chips made in Taiwan. Right. It's like you run some real risks here. If indeed this is not this, this war is not the war you really wanted or needed to fight again.

Mike Pesca (25:18)

Right?

Jeff Nussbaum (25:18)

That's where the argument comes in.

Mike Pesca (25:20)

Right. There are trade offs and there are costs of, of course, literally during this war. And you know, the fact that I know that our interceptor production has been quadrupled lately, but why has that taken so long? Same thing with our replenishing the Strategic Petroleum Reserves. These all raise really excellent questions. I do wonder, Jeff, what's your instinct since you're a Democrat and work for Democrats? What's their hand? Are they playing their hand? Right? What should they be doing?

Jeff Nussbaum (25:54)

You know, I wish I had a more immediate declarative answer for you there. I think they are taking the one thing that our current conversation doesn't allow for, which is taking a little time to sort of ask questions and assess. This is a tricky one. Like a. There is certainly part of the party that is knee jerk, you know, dovish, no war at any cost at any time. But those aren't the voices that are predominant right now. And I think for good reason and for some of the reasons that Dan spelled out, which is there are some legitimate progressive, humanistic aims that could be achieved if this is well executed. And so I think they are biding their time. I think they will absolutely make hay with Gas prices. Going back to your original question about how would Democrats message prices and cost and jobs and all that, or how would Trump Republicans do it? Well, the answer is clear. They would take the highest point that gas reaches and then as we get closer to the election, use that as your baseline to say you brought it down from there. But I do think that Democrats are a little bit, as they have been on so many issues recently, divided and a little bit in knots because they're torn between, candidly, just the disdain for the person executing the policies and the reality that there is sometimes a kernel of common cause in why those policies have been taken on.

Dan Rothschild (27:28)

Yeah, yeah. I just build on what Jeff said there. So just as the White House and the Republicans haven't been as consistent and clear in their messaging, neither have the Democrats. And it doesn't help when you've got a senator going on television and saying that we launched this war because Israel told. I don't think anyone actually believes that to be the case. I certainly don't think that the Democrats want that to be the message. So it's not helpful when that's the thing at least that breaks through into the conservative and right wing ecosystem. But the other thing is I think we have to define what we mean by regime change a little bit. And I think that the whole question of regime change looks a lot different than it did maybe 20 years ago. We're able to execute regime change now like we did in Venezuela, and not to put too fine a point on it, put the next leader under the thumb of the United States in a pretty significant way without changing the underlying structures. So we seem to be able to execute, at least in some situations, a regime change. Now that doesn't rely on changing a system. It relies on changing an individual and sometimes just replacing that individual with his or her deputy. And so those are very different messaging challenges, I think, for both the party arguing in favor of it and the party arguing against it.

Mike Pesca (28:43)

Wait, just to be clear, are you saying the Venezuela example does or doesn't apply to Iran? Because I think it very much doesn't apply.

Dan Rothschild (28:51)

I don't know the answer to whether or not it applies to Iran, but six months ago, if you had said what is regime change? I would have said it requires changing an entire governing structure, bringing in new governors or new new leaders from the outside or from some group within the system. We've been far more successful replacing the president with his vice president in terms of bringing Venezuela to heel and pulling it away from its supporters in Beijing and in Tehran than I would have thought would have been possible. So I think regime change is something that exists on a spectrum now.

Mike Pesca (29:27)

Right. But I would point to the fact that in Venezuela, you're essentially dealing with a mafia family, and so new dons might have different incentives. In Iran, you're dealing with as committed a theocracy and, you know, country of 90 million people with deep, deep roots and 40% of the economy is based on just the Iranian National Guard Corps stealing essentially from the people. So it's such a different dynamic. Or in a sentence, maybe I babbled, replacing one Kameny with the next. Kameny cannot be the regime change we're looking for.

Dan Rothschild (30:01)

Possibly. I think we'll find out. And at some point, you go enough communities down the list and you find someone who's willing to deal.

Mike Pesca (30:07)

Jimmy Comedy. That guy's the greatest. He'll buy you a drink. So at what point?

Jeff Nussbaum (30:14)

Don Kameny Jr.

Mike Pesca (30:17)

Right. He's on the board of a crypto company. He's a great guy. You're going to love him. At what point? And I have an answer for this, but I'll ask you, at what point? Yeah. We could define a success, which is something like the people rise up or there's no vestiges of the Islamic Republic. But at what reasonable point would you, Dan, say that this was a failure, this was not worth it? What do we need to get. What does the United States need to get such that you would say this was worth it?

Dan Rothschild (30:52)

I think we need to have significantly depleted Iran's munitions and military capabilities. We don't necessarily need to deplete their desire to harm our allies, to harm American interests, to harm American people. We need to deplete their ability to do it at a scale that they've indicated that they would and that they've tried to over the first couple of weeks of this war. It's always hard to figure out exactly what level that you're at, but I think the US has destroyed something like 43 of their ships at this point. We've significantly degraded their ability to manufacture and deliver missiles. So they're already looking pretty significantly diminished compared to where they were a couple of weeks ago. I think that, look, the reality is the United States can walk away right now and we can call this a successful operation. And if in six months we need to come back in and cut back the jungle a little bit, so be it.

Mike Pesca (31:53)

Yeah. So this would get us into a mowing the grass or mowing the lawn situation, which is the concept that the Israelis use or use before the attacks of October 7th of suppressing Hamas activity. And I don't think the United States should be in the lawn care business. But, Jeff, I want to ask you the question.

Jeff Nussbaum (32:11)

Well, and I was. Before you get to the ask, I just want to say there's. I'm sort of doing into a little bit of a thought experiment here too, which is if this thing goes on for 20 weeks, it will have cost the entirety of what it would have cost to run USAID for a year. Right. And it's like.

Mike Pesca (32:26)

So it's costing maybe, you know, 800 to $1 billion a day.

Jeff Nussbaum (32:31)

Yeah, yeah, right. So. So sorry. Not 20 weeks. 20 days. Right. 20 days is the USAID budget. So, like, if you're. If you're mowing the lawn. Is. Is mowing the lawn sustainable to your point? And I think the answer is not really. But if you're doing that at the expense of actually planting some good seeds, like, I. I just think it brings everything into sharp relief. But. Sorry, Mike, you were going to ask.

Mike Pesca (32:55)

Yeah, I think if we. The United States doesn't come out there in control of their uranium, in control of their 400 kilos of fissile material, it was not worth it. And I don't know how we're going to do that without some boots on the ground. Maybe those boots will be Israeli boots, Israeli commandos. But I think we. We. The United States. The United States and Israel has to have that to show for their efforts. Otherwise, you know, the breakout time. With something like gas centrifuges, you don't need the extremely advanced ones that probably were destroyed because they're very sensitive in the attacks on Fordo. This can be weaponized in a short amount of time. That would be my criteria, and I don't even know if that is sufficient, but I would say that is necessary. But you. I mean, Dan, since you didn't say that in your answer, I don't want to assume you don't think that. But you disagree with me on that point.

Dan Rothschild (33:53)

I don't know if I disagree with you. Disagree with you on the specifics, but I do think that we have consistently overestimated how difficult for a quarter century now it is to keep Iran at bay. We've tried a bunch of different things. The Israelis from Stuxnet onward have done an incredible job of keeping tabs. They have just incredible human source and signal intelligence on what's happening in that country.

Jeff Nussbaum (34:21)

We.

Dan Rothschild (34:22)

We don't really have a good mental model, or most of the American people don't have a good mental model of how Iran works, what makes it tick, what makes its ayatollahs tick. I think the Israelis do. I think that they understand it far better than we do. So I'm likely to I'm likely to think that our best course is to defer to them onto the on the specifics of what the situation is on the ground and what needs to be done to contain it.

Mike Pesca (34:44)

All right, back in a minute with domestic policies and and I don't know what makes Virginia tick. I will admit before we come back on not even mad. This 24, 7, 365 cycle of news might be burning out your soul. So here's a pick me up for your ears. Love Letters from our friends at the Boston Globe In Love Letters, host and longtime reporter Meredith Goldstein explores how real people navigate their lives in this crazy, cuckoo world. She tells stories like the husband who turned 40 and decided to build an adult sized ball pit for himself in his basement. And Meredith, as the good reporter, asks, how might that affect one's marriage and does that count as a midlife crisis? They have lessons for everyone and just make the world feel like a better place, a more human place. So find the Boston Globes Love Letters where wherever you get your podcast, maybe you'll find you have a story to tell too.

Dan Rothschild (35:45)

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Mike Pesca (35:50)

Light a candle, pour some wine, grab a roll the soft kind for a little me time Charmin Ultra Soft Smooth tear wavy edges for my rear so let the softness caress your soul. Just relax, you're on a roll Let her rip.

Dan Rothschild (36:06)

Shaman Ultrasound Smooth Charmin Ultra Soft Smooth hair has the same softness you love now with wavy edges that tear better than the leading one. Ply Brand. Enjoy the go with Charmin.

Mike Pesca (36:18)

We're back with Not Even Mad. Our guests are Jeff Nussbaum, senior speechwriter for President Joe Biden, and Dan Rothschild, who is the director of the center for Civics Education Opportunity at the Ronald Reagan Institute. Yes, he does. CEO Dan, has anyone ever accused you of DEI just mixing up the acronyms and threatened to defund you?

Dan Rothschild (36:42)

Not yet, but I suppose there's a first time for everything.

Mike Pesca (36:44)

You never know, you know? Different letters. Some of those letters even rhyme well. I have noticed that Democratic winners in 2025, the off year elections that took place in New Jersey, Virginia and New York, they've diverged to some extent, but when they were elected, the message was affordability. We are going to focus on Affordability. That is still the message because things are expensive in the United States and, and wages haven't increased appreciably along with goods. But let's look at what especially Governor Abigail Spanberger has been doing in Virginia. Then I'll talk about my neck of the woods and Zoran Mamdani in New York. But Dan, Jeff, you are one of, Jeff, you are Maryland and Dan, you are in Virginia. But Jeff, I will let you take it away and tell me a little bit about some of the major goings on in your state or in the state of Virginia.

Jeff Nussbaum (37:38)

Yeah, I was going to say across the river as I, as I, as I stare across the river, I think it's important to just level set here on what Spamberger accomplished. For starters, Youngkin had won Virginia by two points. Spamberger won by 15. That is a 17 point swing. That's really substantial even given a weak opponent. She won places that had been won by President Trump in 2016, 2020, 2024. And she did so as we said at the beginning here on really a three part platform around cost, right. Healthcare, energy, housing. She has a legislature that wants to support her, but also, you know, has their own agendas and so they're in the middle of a budget fight right now. She's been put forward as immediately. Democrats tend to be a little premature in their excitement, but immediately as a national leader getting a chance to deliver the State of the Union response, which I think she did a fantastic job of. And we can talk a little bit more about what I think the most important three words of that speech were. But by and large, she is governing from the center, really trying to remain focused on those things that she pledged that she ran on and won convincingly on. But you know, as always with Democrats, you know, there are going to be pressures pulling in both directions. And I think, Dan, maybe this is where you pick up because I think we're starting to see those a little bit.

Dan Rothschild (39:13)

Yeah. So I don't want to take away anything from the significant win that she had, but I want to stress a couple of points. So first, she did have a Republican opponent. That Republican opponent was a really weak opponent. It was a very different situation than when Governor Youngkin ran against one of the most successful political operatives and Democratic fundraisers in that party's history. So that was just a very different kind of fight that we had four years ago than the one we had in 2025. But ultimately, now Governor Spanberger ran against Donald Trump and that was very popular because this was at the height of Doge, people across Northern Virginia who were either working for the federal government or more likely were federal contractors were terrified about what this meant for their lives, for their livelihoods, would they be able to afford their mortgage payments. So there was kind of no question that any Democrat was going to come in and was going to be able to make political hay with this. So she definitely did, though run as a moderate and she ran on affordability, protecting Virginia's jobs. What I've seen coming out of Richmond, Jeff, I think diverges a little bit from what you've seen. I've not seen a lot of focus on affordability. What I've seen is a party that wants to tack hard to the left on guns, for instance, which weren't even really a significant source of the election, but they've run through somewhere around a dozen different gun related bills over the course of this legislative session. Gerrymandering to an extent that would put Elbridge Gerry to shame. Will be voting next month on whether or not to adopt a map in this state that would have 10 Democratic leaning districts to one Republican leaning district. They fit all of the Republicans basically into an R +50 district. So not seeing a lot on affordability, not seeing a lot on AI, on data centers, on the kind of bread and butter stuff that you would expect a moderate party to be legislating on.

Mike Pesca (40:58)

And what about guns?

Dan Rothschild (41:00)

Yeah. So I'll be honest, I don't understand what the Democrats in Richmond, what their obsession is with so called assault weapons bans. It's not something that is, it's widely popular. It's not something that was a big issue in Virginia. But effectively banning AR15s is the kind of thing that I know that's good for fundraising. It just will have negligible, it will have zero impact on safety in Virginia. It's a kind of culture war thing that I think they feel good about, but it doesn't actually address any of the underlying crime concerns that people have. So I'm not sure why they've put it at the top of their agenda, but it absolutely has been what we've seen coming out of Richmond.

Jeff Nussbaum (41:42)

Well, I think they would argue in that case specifically that it's not political, partisan, woke far left or anything to, you know, to tell families that we are working hard to make sure your children don't get shot in school. Right. Like, I mean, I think that is really, really what that is about, but point taken.

Mike Pesca (42:01)

Well, also when you elect a Democrat, that Democrat might campaign on issues A, B and C. But unless you could point to, oh, they contradict themselves. And Spamberger was touting her endorsement from the nra. What I'm saying is it was pretty clear that when you elect a Democrat and Democrats are able to pass laws like this, unless we're in a state like Montana, they're going to try to. And I think they also correctly perceive what they're doing is not explicitly with this action alone hurting themselves politically. It's just the issue was, why are you taking your eyes off the ball to enact these other things that are central to your agenda, but not central to what you campaigned on? And then I would say the proof is in the price of the pudding. So if costs don't come down, that could be a bit of an albatross around their neck. But if there are some real things that the Virginia Democrats can point to, which gets us to another issue. How much? A little bit. But how much can a governor or mayor really affect the price of these, you know, multinationally traded commodities? But if you can bring the prices down, I think the gun laws actually can at least not be to your detriment when politics becomes normal and the state becomes more of a purple state.

Dan Rothschild (43:17)

I mean, I think you're right that we now expect Democrats to pass gun laws when they get elected on the state level. But I don't think that that was the case 10 or 15 years ago. So I see this as the further nationalization of our politics. And this is something that is very new to Virginia. You know, I've lived here for 20 years. Virginia's typically had a kind of moderate bipartisan consensus. I don't want to oversell it, but generally, Virginia has been a place that's wanted to attract people, wanted to attract capital, recognized that there is a lot of diversity in the state between the southwest of the state and the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. and tried to push a lot of these questions down to the local level and tried to lower the temperature on politics. I think that that's off now. I think that that's off from both parties. And it will increasingly see the Republican Party in Virginia operating like the national Republican Party and the Democratic Party operating like the national Democratic Party. And I think that that's a shame. I think we lose something as a result.

Mike Pesca (44:12)

Well, nationalization of politics, but the nationalization of Virginia. Virginia looks a lot like the nation as a whole. There are bifurcations according to education. There are bifurcations according to the north and the South. Virginia has, I think, 18% black population, the country is around 14, but it's not too far off. It's diverse, maybe a little more diverse than the rest of the country. But, you know, Virginia does look like America. And so I'm not too surprised that the legislative priorities of the two parties would look like those of the. What would happen in the federal government.

Dan Rothschild (44:47)

Yeah, I think that, look, we're going to see this in more and more states. It's not just going to be Virginia. And I think that that's. That's to all of our detriment, especially those of us who believe that, look, California and Utah and Texas and Virginia and South Carolina and New Jersey are different states. They have different issues that are facing them. They should be run by fundamentally different political parties, even if they've got a lot of overlap and the same name and some same language.

Jeff Nussbaum (45:14)

But I think.

Mike Pesca (45:14)

I think they are. Oh, go ahead, Jeff.

Jeff Nussbaum (45:16)

Oh, no, I was gonna say, I think making the point that you've both conceded at least, is why, in part why the governor was chosen to give the State of the Union response. Right. They felt that her message is the right national message. And I did want to come back to. Because I think it's so fun. The three words I think were the most important, which is when she was sort of doing her attack section on Trump, she didn't say, I believe or. Let me tell you, the three words she used were, we all know. Right. The question was, does Donald Trump care about prices? And I just think it's a really interesting thing, rhetorically, to say, we all know, because people do not trust politicians. They don't trust elected officials. They trust themselves. They trust their friends. So just instinctively. And it's good political instincts. She wasn't asking people to trust her. She was asking them to trust what they've seen, what they feel. And I think that's an interesting thing that. And we'll turn to New York a little bit. Mamdani does that. I mean, they may not share a lot in politics, but they each share a little bit of a gift for persuasion. And one of those pieces of persuasion is asking people to trust their. What they see and what they know as opposed to what a leader is telling them.

Mike Pesca (46:27)

Yeah. And it works because of priming, and it works because of the power of suggestibility. But also, Trump is vulnerable because one of the worst things he. His administration did was not just its. Its aggressive enforcement in the interior, but then lying about it in a way that contradicted everyone's eyes. And so we all know probably evokes we all know that Pareti and Good were domestic terrorists, for instance, and we know what they've been telling you. All right, so I'll touch on New Jersey. It was mentioned Mikey Sherrill, among our three cases, I think, really has been focusing on affordability. She gave just a couple of days ago a budget address. She is New Jersey is not going to be running in the black, but they're cutting the deficit more than they ever have. And my God, the spending in the state since 2019, when I think, I think went from 40 to 60 million. So that's a lot. It's going to increase more, but by less of a percentage than it has. And she's doing she calls it a freeze hike on rising energy prices, but it includes a lot of rebates, and that is central to her agenda. Now, what has Mamdani done in New York? I will say as someone really suspicious of Mandani, he's shown great political instincts for the most part. He hasn't done much. He's done some to talk about affordability. There's really not much you could do, especially in a short amount of time. But also because of who he is and what his commitments are, he got in a little bit of trouble when it was revealed that his wife was posting either, you could say, let's just say, extremely anti Israel sentiment right after October 7th. And he had a decent enough explanation for that, which was, she's a private person. But even, I think more importantly at the time, she wasn't even my wife. I don't know what this crazy chick was doing. No, I joke. That's not what he was saying. They were still very much in love then. But then after trying to lay the case that this woman is private and has nothing to do with what I do as the mayor, he invites Mahmoud Khalil to his house, who is the a Columbia University student who wasn't deported, but is a advocate of this student organization that was also at least not anti Hamas. And there is the wife in the picture, thus, I think, muddying his typically strong case that he made to the cameras about her having nothing to do with my administration. But the point is, I think we promised that the point would be, well, what about affordability? Does this get in the way, Dan, of an affordability message? I mean, is this an own goal? Do you think Mamdani is playing this as best he could, given his hand?

Dan Rothschild (49:13)

I think that through the whole campaign, he's tried to have it both ways. He wanted to say something about affordability and he wanted to wink at Islamists while being able to distance himself enough that he could credibly say that he. That he wasn't on board with this. I think that. Is it a bad optic? Yes. Is it something that was kind of sui generis and something that was unexpected? No, not at all. It's another data point in a long line of data points coming from the mayor and coming from Gracie that he's comfortable with, people that I think the vast majority of Americans are deeply uncomfortable with, including, going back to our earlier conversation, people who are on the payroll of Tehran. And I think that that is a serious problem and we need to take it seriously.

Mike Pesca (50:03)

Yeah. What do you think there, Jeff?

Jeff Nussbaum (50:04)

Yeah, I think you're not going to get much debate among this group on that topic. I do think that if you look at what Mom Donnie has spent the last couple days trying to talk about, pre K, 3K, you know, preschool, these are things that really matter to people. These are costs. But I do think that this is becoming an increasingly difficult needle for him to thread. Right. That you. He was trying to talk about those when instead he ended up talking about his response to the violence that showed up on the doorstep of Gracie Mansion. So I think he is a really fantastic, charming communicator. You know, picking up a shovel during the snowstorm, giving people specific, you know, recommendations at the library. That is part of good politics, and he is really, really good at it. But there. There are times when you don't get to control the narrative or when you make decisions that keep you from at least having the clear narrative you hope to have. And I think now you're starting to see that and see what that looks like. And, yeah, it's. Yeah. And it's.

Mike Pesca (51:09)

And I would say. And I thought for three months, he surprised me on the upside, not that I had any reason to believe he wasn't very skilled as a communicator, but. But he seemed to have all the right political instincts, more or less. It's not that he didn't hire anyone that I objected to. I objected to a couple of them, but that's his right and we'll see what happens. And also, he seemed to emphasize the right things. And when there was an attack on a synagogue, he jumped right in, even though it wasn't really even that serious a thing, was more of a mentally ill guy who's not necessarily anti Semitic, but wanted to join the synagogue. Very, very, very bad application process, if that's the way. But then comes these last couple of days and to Some extent, the story about his wife's Instagram endorsements was thrust upon him and I thought, okay, but then he has this own goal of posting this picture where he has to, he has to focus on it more and the threading the needle. This is my question for you, Jeff. Why, why is it so important for him as a guy who we've established has great instincts and wants to actually achieve his agenda, why is it so important to him to keep emphasizing this one aspect of what you could argue isn't even the job of the mayor? Palestinian relations?

Jeff Nussbaum (52:32)

I think again, at certain point you have to believe people when you tell you, when they tell you who they are and what they care about. This is something that he cares deeply about. I mean, this is. I'm going to over share with your audience. My ex wife was a city New York City Council chief of staff for many, many years. And so I got an education in the city's populations and alliances and how politicians navigated those. I mean, lost in this conversation, which has become a little bit of a Muslim Jewish conversation, is the fact that this is a mayor whose alien alienated a huge part of the black community by not, you know, by not having sort of full city participation in his government. So I do think maybe he's telling us a little bit of who he is and maybe, you know, on the heels of a convincing victory, this is someone who doesn't feel particularly beholden to communities that mayors in New York have traditionally felt beholden to. And this is what, what that looks like in the person of Mayor Mamdani.

Mike Pesca (53:34)

Yeah. And to fill people in, none of his deputy mayors are black. And so that was, that was criticized by the black community and the Latino community. Is this, is he right that this will continue to be a good issue? We know he's young. We know that even in a heavily Jewish city. It's also a heavily Muslim city. Even if more Jewish people vote than Muslim people in New York City. During the depths or worst parts of the war in Gaza, Israel was very unpopular among Mamdani's constituency. Is he right that championing Mahmoud Khalil, who's a hero on the left and seen as a victim of over prosecution and a First Amendment martyr. Is he right that this will continue to be good politics for him, do you think, Dan?

Dan Rothschild (54:25)

I think it'll continue to be good politics for some part of the population, but I think it's a very open question as to whether it's a 20% issue or an 80% issue. I think that most people look at Mahmoud Khalil's track record. And they say he wasn't a victim here, he was a victimizer. He came to America on a student visa. He broke the law. He was harassing Jewish students, taking over buildings. This is not someone who I think the majority of people want to have in their community, much less being feted by the mayor of New York. I don't think the majority of New Yorkers are really on board with this. But at the end of the day, a lot of being mayor of New York is a sales job. And when we think of like the great mayors of New York over the last 40, 50, 60 years, they've been people who make the case for New York, not just in business delegations, but you just generally get the sense that New York is a great place to be, even when you're papering over a lot of cracks in the city. I think the more that he's talking about these kinds of religious, sectarian issues, the more that people outside of New York just get the sense that this is weird. It doesn't represent anything that I kind of want to be a part of.

Jeff Nussbaum (55:36)

That is all true. I completely agree. But I do think. Don't underestimate.

Mike Pesca (55:40)

Well, let me just interrupt and say I don't think Khalil took over a building. I think they, after the building was taken over, they asked him to be a go betweener spokesperson.

Jeff Nussbaum (55:48)

Yeah. But by the way, I do need to say I agree. Khalil was actually a moderating voice as things got sort of heated and out of hand in Colombia. He was the one that the administration was working with. And so I don't want to allow him to be turned into a total caricature here. And that is why I think, I think it's important to also recognize, recognize the power of what Mamdani does offer to the, to his constituency, which is a voice when they haven't felt that they've had one, and a face that represents and reflects them. And it is a large population that has long been overlooked in New York politics. So, you know, is it right for New York? Is it right for his constituency? Yes. I also think increasingly more than maybe we even realize it's right for where young, younger voters are. I mean, I think of, I think of what my, my kids see and learn in, in the news on TikTok. Like they, they very much think that he is, he's right on the issues, even if I disagree with them. And they think that he is a voice for them in many ways, more than More than I am, and I consider myself a progressive Democrat.

Mike Pesca (56:56)

Well, you know, if, you know, your kids and the young people thought that way, you wouldn't be a dad and have all those dad jokes available to you.

Jeff Nussbaum (57:04)

Lots of puns.

Mike Pesca (57:06)

All right, let's go to that section of our show where we talk about, I don't know, things that grind our gears or get our goats. They are the goat grinder. And Dan, do you have a goat to grind?

Dan Rothschild (57:19)

I absolutely do, and it's bad. Conference name badges.

Mike Pesca (57:24)

I love it.

Dan Rothschild (57:25)

I think everyone here, you know what I'm talking about. You go to a conference, you know a few people there, you probably know some of these people from the Internet, and you think that you see Mike Pesca across the room and you look at his name tag, and what you see is Mike in 8 point font, as small as can be. You see the logo of the conference that you're at, as if you were unaware that you were at that conference. But the most important bit of information on that name tag, that person's first name is hard to see or it's down at their stomach level. So what grinds my goat is when I spend time and effort and money to go to a conference. I want to meet people, I want to network, I want to put faces with names. And I can't get that because badges have been put into the position of something that runs against the very teleology of a name badge.

Mike Pesca (58:08)

Thank you for saying taliology. As I was going to say, I mean, if you're going to have them, because a lot of conferences just think, we don't need no stinking badges. Use them. Use them correctly. Okay? If you're going to somewhat degrade your fine suit, your fine lapel with a little adhesive, put the first and last name so we could read them. Love it. That's. You know what? I'm putting that in the Go Grinder hall of fame. I will. I will now give you my goat grinder. It's quite personal. I was in a Caribbean island these last couple of days. A Beautiful, wonderful island, St. Lucia. Nothing bad to say about St. Lucia, and this isn't even bad, but they drive on the left, and as you know, we drive on the right. And I'm not saying who's right, I'm not saying who's wrong, but going back and I did a little research on medieval horses. Like to go one way in the wagons. It doesn't matter. Of all the things we as a globe ever needed to get together on, this is definitely One of those things. And think about all the standardization that has been thrust upon us. And all the stand QWERTY keyboards, those don't even make sense. But everywhere you go that uses English, there is a QWERTY keyboard. We couldn't. We have a Bureau of weights and measures. The United Nations. You may hate the United Nations. You love the fact that every air traffic controller in the world speaks English. And you love the fact that a kilogram here is a kilogram there and they keep the kilogram in, under lock and key somewhere in Paris. You like standardization. And the fact that we haven't done this on roads is kind of insane. I don't know who's going to take the first step. Maybe the uk. You know, it all stemmed from the Commonwealth. Maybe they could either get some incentives or, you know, try to negotiate some give backs. I heard Boris Johnson was talking about the price of crisps in Brussels. You could do something where the UK could say it's going to. It's going to cause a few more accidents, but we'll now all drive on the right side, by which I of course mean the correct side. And then international travel, especially with countries that share a border but don't share left side, right side, that will all be solved. And the biggest problem with when you drive on the left side instead of the right side isn't even the driving or making the right turn. It's that every time I try to use the blinkers, I put on the windshield wiper. I don't know why they have to change sides of those two. Jeff, Jeff, do you have a go grind?

Jeff Nussbaum (60:42)

We could. We could go deep on standardization. Goat grinds.

Mike Pesca (60:44)

Because.

Jeff Nussbaum (60:45)

Because I would add to that one parking garage interfaces. It's always a different. It's always so. But. But that's not. But that's not my real go grinder for today.

Mike Pesca (60:53)

You can even go like at the car rental place. Some car rentals are talked to the nice lady in the front and some car rentals of. Yeah, if you put it in reverse, you're going to destroy your tires forever.

Jeff Nussbaum (61:05)

All right, so one Mini and then one major one. So the Mini is the AI generated subtitles on reels and Instagram videos that get wrong homophones and homonyms. I worry they are teaching our distracted children bad grammar and bad spelling. So better AI subtitles on reels. But my real good Dan, since you did conference IDs and I was going to say that my goat to grind was more inside than a pancreas, you may have beat me with conference name badges. But my goat to grind is the next generation Acela trains. I don't know if anyone has ridden the next gen Acela yet.

Mike Pesca (61:42)

Wait a minute. You're a Joe Biden guy. You're ripping into sell.

Jeff Nussbaum (61:45)

So as a Joe Biden guy, this pains me. One of the proudest things I ever. One of the things I'm most proud of having helped write was Joe. Joe Biden's cover story for Arrive magazine on why America needs passenger rail. Okay, so this is my clip I'm most proud of. Put the book to the side, put the others to the side. So you know, we were involved in getting Amtrak. This money I get on the next gen Acela. I'm very excited. Finally they have chargers between the seats. The USB charger is both out of date and doesn't work. The cup holder, which everyone was excited. The old Acela had no cup holders. The cup holder doesn't fit any beverage that is sold on the train. So you watch people drop bottles straight through the cup holder to the floor.

Mike Pesca (62:30)

Oh, it's too big, too small that we could live with.

Jeff Nussbaum (62:34)

It's too small for some of the bottles, too big for a standard 12 ounce can. It is a fail on all levels. And again, I was so disappointed in my first couple rides that with no outlet to deliver this to, I wrote a thousand words on what I thought could be improved. But the one that finally brought it home for me is that above the seats there are little screens that have your seat number and a little video screen and maybe it's supposed to say speed or next stop, but because they haven't figured out how to program them, they all on every seat, on every train say no mission, which seems pain, which seems painfully apt.

Mike Pesca (63:13)

Oh, you know what you need to do? You need to do an Instagram reels on this. And of course all the titles will call it the ass cella which maybe actually will increase volume viewership. So I want to thank both of my guests. Those were great goat grinders. And I just came from a land of goats, a lot of goats. I interacted with many a goat. They, they bleat on the left, left down there in St. Lucia. I want to thank you Dan Rothschild of the Ronald Reagan Institute.

Dan Rothschild (63:41)

That was fun. Thanks very much.

Mike Pesca (63:43)

And I wish to thank you, Jeff Nussbaum, author of Undelivered the never heard speeches that would have rewritten history. Thank you, Jeff.

Jeff Nussbaum (63:51)

Thanks. Great to be back with you.

Mike Pesca (63:53)

And until next time, we're not saying we're right. We're not saying you're right. But we are saying we're not even mad. And that's it for today's show. Corey Warr produces the Gist, Kathleen Sykes runs the Gist list, Ben Astaire is our booking producer and Jeff Craig runs our Socials. Michelle Pesca oversees it all benevolently, and thanks for listening. Safeway and Albertsons have made saving easier than ever, with great savings on family favorites this week at Safeway and Albertsons. USDA Choice beef, boneless, tri tip, whole or flank and style ribs bone in are $6.99 per pound member price and asparagus or $1.99 per pound member price plus 16 ounce strawberries, 6 ounce raspberries or blackberries are $1.97 each limit three member price with digital coupon. Hurry in. These deals won't last. Visit safewayoralbertsons.com for more deals and ways to save.