The Jim Acosta Show - Road Trip to UVA

Summary

Summary of "The Jim Acosta Show - Road Trip to UVA"

Release Date: March 25, 2025
Host: Jim Acosta
Guests: Larry Sabato, Mark Short, Tara Setmayer

---

Introduction

In the episode titled "Road Trip to UVA," host Jim Acosta moderates a dynamic and fervent discussion alongside esteemed panelists Larry Sabato, Mark Short, and Tara Setmayer. The conversation delves deep into the political landscape, focusing primarily on the tumultuous second term of President Donald Trump, the internal dynamics of the Republican Party, threats to American democracy, and the future of conservatism in the United States.

Assessment of President Trump's Early Second Term

The panelists commence by evaluating President Trump's initial months in his second term, dissecting his policies and their implications.

• Mark Short offers a nuanced grading of Trump's performance:

  • Border Policy: *"On the border, whether you agree with his policies or not, the results, I think for a lot of Americans are what they wanted." (08:18)
  • Economy: Raises concerns about a shift towards protectionism, expressing uncertainty: *"I grade them high on the border. I'm uncertain on the economy right now because I think it's veering away from the successful policies of the first administration." (09:28)
  • Foreign Policy: Highlights inconsistencies, particularly with Russia and Ukraine: *"On foreign policy, I think it's been a stark contrast... I have a lot of concerns of where this team's headed." (12:21)

• Larry Sabato adds:

  • Pace of Governance: "He moves faster than Biden did. He's cut the time in half that it takes to go to the podium, say something." (09:39)
  • Internal Critique: Points out the lack of pushback within Trump's administration compared to his first term: "He actually had a team of rivals... Now he's just surrounded by cheerleaders who grovel before him." (12:51)

Internal Dynamics of the Republican Party

A significant portion of the discussion centers on the Republican Party's cohesion and willingness to oppose Trump's more controversial policies.

• Mark Short reflects on the absence of dissent:

  • "In the first administration, there was... pushback. Now, he pretty much owns the Republican Party... There's no pushback." (13:58)

• Tara Setmayer expresses disillusionment:

  • "I'm sad to say that they’re allowing that [Trump's actions] to happen." (15:55)
  • Criticizes party members for prioritizing personal gain over principles: "They don't want to go against that [Trump's agenda]." (53:01)

• Jim Acosta underscores the fear among Republicans of primary challenges:

  • "They’re worried about being primaried... It's a big lever to apply pressure." (54:30)

Democracy and Rule of Law

The panelists voice grave concerns about the erosion of democratic norms and the rule of law under Trump's administration.

• Jim Acosta condemns Trump's actions post-January 6th:

  • "Pardoning all January 6th rioters... is a betrayal of this country of the highest order." (22:06)

• Tara Setmayer warns of potential constitutional crises:

  • "We don't have the rule of law... Donald Trump is itching to invoke the Insurrection act, itching to do it." (71:14)

• Mark Short acknowledges the unprecedented nature of such a crisis:

  • "We haven't been to a point where the Supreme Court has to decide what do we do about the president not following our orders." (69:03)

Future of Conservatism and the Republican Party

The discussion transitions to the broader implications for American conservatism and the Republican Party's future trajectory.

• Mark Short laments the shift from conservative principles to populism:

  • "I feel that the conservative principles that I believed in have been abandoned by our party in pursuit of a more populist agenda." (52:59)

• Tara Setmayer emphasizes the need for the Democratic Party to adopt effective messaging:

  • "The Democrats need to learn how to take the playbook that Republicans used... because this time around, the American people actually agree with a lot of the Democrats' policies when they explain them simply." (35:48)

• Jim Acosta introduces a dichotomy within the Republican movement:

  • "One is pro-democracy. The other is pro-authoritarianism." (60:30)

Foreign Policy Concerns

A pressing topic is the administration's approach to foreign policy, particularly relations with NATO allies and adversaries like Russia and China.

• Jim Acosta critiques the administration's stance:

  • "If we give up on Zelensky, we give up on NATO, and then you're going to have major consequences." (64:08)

• Mark Short contrasts Trump's policies with previous administrations:

  • "What Russia's doing in Ukraine is... something very different to your question about Zach, how quickly I think America can restore its dominance." (77:59)

Audience Questions and Panel Responses

The episode features interactive segments where audience members pose critical questions, which the panelists address thoughtfully.

1. Ellie Tucker (Charlottesville, VA):
   Question: Concerns about Republicans neglecting farmers' suffering under current policies.
   Response:

   • Mark Short: "I think it's whenever Trump's numbers fall... Americans begin to see that prices aren't being fixed, the tariffs driving prices up..." (51:58)
   • Tara Setmayer: "I'm very worried about a cold civil war... What do you do now?" (56:14)

2. Thomas (Williamsburg, VA):
   Question: Future of the rule of law amid potential constitutional crises.
   Response:

   • Larry Sabato: "Could have happened with Nixon." (70:00)
   • Jim Acosta: "We don't know the answer to that." (69:58)
   • Tara Setmayer: "I'm very worried about a cold civil war... That is the worst case scenario." (56:14)

3. Zach (Austin, TX):
   Question: Restoration of America's global leadership and foreign policy direction.
   Response:

   • Jim Acosta: Discusses the danger of alienating NATO allies and emboldening adversaries.
   • Mark Short: Emphasizes the urgency of restoring dominance to counter global threats. (77:59)

4. Isabel Mitchell (First Year Student):
   Question: Prospects for governmental reforms to prevent power abuse.
   Response:

   • Jim Acosta: Advocates for constitutional conventions and term limits for Supreme Court justices.
   • Tara Setmayer: Highlights the catastrophic damage and the need for generational change. (85:25, 87:52)

Conclusion

As the episode draws to a close, panelists reiterate their concerns about the current state of American politics. Larry Sabato encapsulates the urgency: "We need to understand that [the republic] continues because some days it's hanging by a thread." (33:04) The discussion underscores a critical juncture in U.S. politics, emphasizing the necessity for vigilance, internal party accountability, and a recommitment to democratic principles to safeguard the nation's future.

---

Notable Quotes

• Mark Short (08:18): "I think that Americans in many cases elected him, I think on two principal issues, the border and the economy."

• Larry Sabato (09:39): "He moves faster than Biden did. He's cut the time in half that it takes to go to the podium, say something."

• Tara Setmayer (15:55): "I think to a lot of people who thought they would give Donald Trump a shot because of the economy, they're going, wait, wait, wait."

• Jim Acosta (22:06): "It's a betrayal of this country of the highest order."

• Tara Setmayer (35:48): "The Democrats need to learn how to take the playbook that Republicans used... put Republicans on defense."

• Larry Sabato (33:04): "We need to understand that [the republic] continues because some days it's hanging by a thread."

---

Note: Timestamps are indicative and correspond to the points within the transcript where the quotes were made.

Transcript

[Larry Sabato]

I think we're ready to get rolling here. And again, thank you all for coming to what I'm sure is going to be a lively and fun and interesting and enlightening panel on the last. The first really thousand days of the trial. Oh, that's right. It's only been. We're not even at 100. It seems like a thousand. Yeah, it really does, that's for sure. You have to count. Each day is one and each night is two. You know, keep going. I mean, when the guy sleeps, I don't know, I feel like sending him a big package of sleeping pills. That would help give us a break. Anyway, we were a little bit late. You probably were doing the same thing. I was listening into a strategy meeting at Cracker Barrel of all of our senior administration officials as they were plotting how to take over Greenland. It's almost ours. It's in our grasp.

[Jim Acosta]

They just texted me the codes. I got the codes just a few moments ago.

[Tara Setmayer]

Jim, don't tell them about the signal chat.

[Jim Acosta]

Yeah, sorry about that. Sorry. We'll keep that in the chat.

[Larry Sabato]

Are we going to invade all of Canada at once or do we go province by province?

[Jim Acosta]

Can we start with Toronto? They've got a good hockey team.

[Larry Sabato]

Okay, all right. Well, you got it. But you have been listening. That's great. Okay, anyway, enough. Enough joking until the next joke. Anyway, I'm so thrilled to have these three people. They have different points of view and that's what makes a good panel. And I'm also happy to say Otera has been one of our center for Politics scholars for years now. We're thrilled to have her back. And I'll be introducing them separately in a moment, but I'm also very happy to announce that Jim Acosta and Mark Short will both be center for Politics Scholarship. See, we go from left to right or right to left. It's fantastic. We represent everybody at the. At the center for Politics, but we're thrilled to have them. They're thrilled because there's a massive amount of money involved. It reaches into annually, into the low four digits for each one. Now that includes expenses.

[Mark Short]

I was a student of Larry's long ago, and he never considered me a scholar then, so it's nice to get the title now.

[Larry Sabato]

Well, that's going to give these students hope right there. They're scholars. I'm sorry, you all are scholars. I've been insulting them and that's awful. Okay. Anyway, there's so much to discuss, for some of you are Democrats and others are Republicans. For Republicans, I Guess this is like the second coming. And for Democrats, it's the apocalypse. And both depending on the day, I guess. In any event, I think we, we need to analyze it as thoroughly as we can and we will see what happens. Let me, let me go right to. I'm not going to talk about the fact that I've been called a British newspaper called mia Double agent. I worked for the Soviet Union and then switched to the, to the West.

[Tara Setmayer]

Where did you find time to make the Pillow?

[Larry Sabato]

Died in 2008. So that explains a lot to me, actually. But.

[Tara Setmayer]

And in between, you had time to build a pillow empire.

[Larry Sabato]

I built a pillow empire.

[Jim Acosta]

That's.

[Larry Sabato]

That's absolutely true.

[Jim Acosta]

They're great pillows. They're great pillows.

[Larry Sabato]

Yes, well, they are. They're great pillows if you, if you don't need a good pillow. Okay. Anyway, this White House obviously thrives on chaos, but some things have gotten done, others haven't. Some are good, some are bad, some are in between. And we're going to wade through this. Let me start with one of our newest scholars, Jim Acosta. Jim is an award winning broadcast journalist who spent 25 years at CBS News, which is when I first saw you, I believe, and of course at cnn. Most notably, we will never forget your service as chief White House correspondent during Trump's first term. And I still remember you successfully fighting off that young lady who's trying to grab the mic from. That's right, one of Trump's first press conferences. That is a piece of video that must always be.

[Jim Acosta]

Never forget never.

[Larry Sabato]

Yes, it was. It was.

[Tara Setmayer]

And you may recreate that. That's why I have a mic right now.

[Larry Sabato]

You got it early. He's covered six straight program presidential elections. He wrote the New York Times bestseller the Enemy of the People, A Dangerous Time to Tell the Truth in America. He currently hosts a podcast on Substack with more to come. So I'll let you tell whatever you want to tell, but I've done your podcast a couple times. We always have fun.

[Jim Acosta]

It's great.

[Larry Sabato]

We go back and forth. Yeah, it's free. I don't, I don't charge and you don't charge.

[Jim Acosta]

That's right.

[Larry Sabato]

Great.

[Jim Acosta]

It's a good thing.

[Larry Sabato]

It's a good thing. Well, for right now that you're running out of free ones. Free.

[Jim Acosta]

Okay.

[Larry Sabato]

You only give a certain number. Okay. Now, second, please welcome Tara Settmeier, co founder and CEO of the Seneca Project. I love that title. Oh, they know the Seneca Project. It's a bipartisan, women led super PAC dedicated to galvanizing moderate women voters, safeguarding women's rights and protecting democracy. Well, that's not very much. What else do you do?

[Tara Setmayer]

Well, you know, women are always going to step up. She doesn't love us back.

[Larry Sabato]

They always do. That's a big agenda. And I've already said she's serving as a politics scholar and has for years now. And before uva, she was a resident fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics, and now she stepped up to the center for Politics. That's what Harvard is good for. They prepare, they do the training, and then when they're properly trained, we take them at the center for Politics. You're laughing. I'm serious.

[Tara Setmayer]

Harvard doesn't have Larry Sapito.

[Larry Sabato]

Well, yeah, they never called either. Finally, we have a good friend, Mark Short and way, way back. We don't remember when. It was decades ago when you were a student. And I've had his son as a student since who's in flight school down at Pensacola now, but he graduated from the university and was active in the center for Florida Politics. Now, Mark served as chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, who I think has become kind of generalized, a hero. You know, he's. That's a very different situation than in the first term. And Mark was assistant to the president, meaning Trump, and Director of Legislative affairs under President Trump. I think it's fair to say he was just visiting Vice President Pence in Indiana. And he is very much a Pence person now. In the role with Trump and Pence, he helped to pass the Tax Cuts and Jobs act and oversaw hundreds of nominee confirmations. He's now a founding partner at Advanced Strategies Consulting. Advanced Strategies Consulting. And you see him all the time on Meet the Press, and he manages not to get into an argument with the other panelists. I don't know how that is, because they all pick a fight. This is really important, though. He also serves on the Board of Advisors at David Axelrod's University of Chicago Institute of Politics, again preparing the way for an elevation to the center for Politics board. I would like to see more reaction than I do. Anyway, let's welcome them all. Thank you. Okay, I'm going to ask just a few questions, then we're going to turn to all of you. So it's critical that you be thinking about what you want to ask and that you do a very good job of it, because we will grade you after you ask your question. We will out loud grade you, all of us, so not to intimidate you. Now, the first, the Assessment of the first months. I hesitate to ask this. How would each of you grade President Trump's first couple of months? You can simply assess the pluses and the minuses. What seems to be working well, signals working, what isn't, and what's coming next. Can we start with Mark or not?

[Mark Short]

Sure, sure. Happy to. I'd probably break the grading down, if I could, into a couple of areas, because even as Larry introduces us and talks about the chaos of the first roughly 50 days at this point, I do think that part of the president's ability to continue to have relatively high approval ratings for him relative to the first term is, I think, the contrast to his predecessor. And I think the reality is that for a lot of Americans, they were looking for a more energetic president. And I think that's benefited Trump. I think that Americans in many cases elected him, I think on two principal issues, the border and the economy. And I think on the border, I would grade him very generously. I would adopt a Larry Sabato grading scale. And I think on the border, whether you agree with his policies or not, the results, I think for a lot of Americans are what they wanted. And I think basically, a lot of Americans, that's an A, that they were concerned about the chaos the previous administration, and they wanted somebody who would come in and clean it up. And I think he's doing that.

[Larry Sabato]

Well, one thing I think you can say for sure, he moves faster than Biden did. And I don't just mean in terms of getting things done. He's cut the time in half that it takes to go to the podium, say something.

[Mark Short]

So that is all true.

[Larry Sabato]

Remember that. See, you've already forgotten how quickly you forget what. What happened. But don't worry, President Biden's coming back. Apparently he wants to get active again. And so far, the phone hasn't rung in his office. But you know, from Democrats, I guess that mainly a Democratic audience. So I take that back, and I apologize for all of you who are offended.

[Mark Short]

So I give them a high mark on the border, but I think on the economy, I think there's a big contrast to the first administration. I think that the first administration was marked by a deregulatory agenda and significant tax relief for Americans. And I think that that's what a lot of markets expected. And I think much of that is still anticipated to be continued, but I think it's being offset by a trade agenda that is far more protectionist. And it's clear the president has always had that as part of his rhetoric. But if you go to the actual first administration, there was a lot of threats of tariffs that were used for negotiation. He surrounded himself this time with a team of economic advisors who are all true disciples in believing that protectionism is the pathway forward, who believe sincerely in high tariffs, not just as a threat, but as true economic policy. And the first administration, you also had a national security team that viewed relationships with our friends and allies as important and therefore were not champions of the tariffs, and in many cases would advocate that that's not the right course and whether or not that's just your allies in Europe or even neutral countries. And I'll give you a perfect example. In the first administration, you might recall there was a big controversy that Canada was looking to work with China, with Huawei. And we went to Canada and said, we really leaned on him and said, we're trying to isolate China. I fear that this trade policy is driving countries toward China. You're not driving away from China, but you're basically, if you're going to have broad tariffs across the whole globe on friends and allies alike, you're going to chase people toward China. And I think that the uncertainty is causing a lot of concerns. Already. You saw consumer sentiment down today. Then lastly, I would say on foreign policy, I think it's been a stark contrast to the first Trump administration, the way that this administration has dealt with Russia and Ukraine. I think on the foreign policy, there's a lot of concerns and a lot of clouds on the horizon, too. I grade them high on the border. I'm uncertain on the economy right now because I think it's veering away from the successful policies of the first administration. And I think on foreign policy, I have a lot of concerns of where this team's headed.

[Larry Sabato]

And wouldn't you agree, having been in the first term, maybe it's because Trump didn't know that much about governing, frankly. And so he relied on people in the Republican Party who'd been around for a long time, and he hired people with real experience in their fields, and they would push back. He actually had a team of rivals, to borrow a phrase about Lincoln's Cabinet. And now he's just surrounded by cheerleaders who grovel before him.

[Mark Short]

I think that one of the biggest differences in the first administration, when Trump was elected, if you all recall, in the summer of 2016, Ted Cruz finished second in the primaries, went to the convention, and did not endorse Donald Trump. Donald Trump survived about 46% of the vote. He still needed to win over parts of the Republican party. And when you had John McCain fall ill and yet a Senate majority of 51 members, you had relationships with Corker and Collins and Murkowski and Flake, and he was still trying to win over Republicans to surpass his agenda. Today, he pretty much owns the Republican Party and particularly in Congress. And so to your point, Larry, I think that's the biggest contrast, is that he was looking still to say I have bigger parts of my agenda that I want accomplished and I don't want to sacrifice that. So I want to make sure I don't lose support inside our party today. There is no pushback. And so I think he feels very comfortable advancing a tariff policy, advancing a whole different posture toward Russia, because he doesn't feel like there's going to be pushback within the Republican Party the way there was the first administration.

[Larry Sabato]

Well, you're certainly right. There's been very, very little. I mean, Lisa Murkowski, occasionally, even Susan Collins has been quiet. She's not even concerned anymore. That was the joke for insiders. Always concerned about everything that's going on. You know, I just thought the best way educate Donald Trump about tariffs is to make him watch Ferris Bueller's Day off, because you've got Ben Stein, who's pretty hard, right? I took an economics course from his father, Herb Stein, who was here back in the heaves off the Nixon Economics Council and taught economics here. And anyway, Ben, as you remember, explained the Great Depression in terms of the Smoot Hawley Tariff act and why it was a disaster. And he made a very, very good case of it. Everybody was asleep in the class. They didn't really learn the lesson, but those was watching did. I guess you haven't seen it, but.

[Mark Short]

You don't even have to go that far back, Larry. It was just, well, honestly, just a few days ago, y'all might have seen that the agriculture secretary was on TV saying, you know, we got a great plan to lower egg prices. We're going to start importing eggs. I mean, if you had had any question about the benefit of trade across international lines to actually, they're basically advertising the way we're going to reduce egg price for Americans is we're going to import eggs. And yet at the same time, they're messaging that we're going to build a moat around America and have no trade and that's to be good for our economy.

[Larry Sabato]

Well, there are a lot of, there are a lot of eggs in Canada. So, yeah, I think we can solve it that way, too. But no, you make, you make A lot of very good points. And we're going to get to this in a minute. But I really would like to know the point at which you all think the Republicans in Congress will come to life. Not most of them, but at least a decent portion of them to start pushing back. But let's wait on that one. I want to get Tara's view on the grade, the good things and the bad things, and you can skip one of the categories if you wish.

[Tara Setmayer]

Well, I think I would give him a Schedule F as a grade, or let's say R was a grade for retribution, because his entire agenda since day one has been exacting retribution as he promised. He kept that promise. Also, the Project 2025 and Schedule F agenda that they had been talking about, that a lot of people tried to deny that it was real. Trump tried to act like he didn't know what it was, even though 100 people in his orbit were authors of this thing. We're watching this play out. That's the playbook to the horror of a lot of people like me who warned about it. But I think to a lot of people who thought they would give Donald Trump a shot because of the economy, they're going, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. This was supposed to be about the price of eggs. This wasn't supposed to be about decapitating our federal government, putting hundreds of thousands of good people who work as public servants in our federal government out of work, destroying the va, destroying and dismantling the Department of Education, taking away our soft power and our position in the world through gutting and dismantling usaid, which, oh, by the way, the farmer in Iowa or Kansas or, you know, middle America who voted for Donald Trump and may lose their family farms because, oh, guess what, USAID money also helps pay for our farmers. Like these are things that had nothing to do with helping the economy, which was actually quite good and solid with inflation down from 9 over 9% when President Biden was in office after Covid, down to 2, 2 and a half, 2.3 at one point, round three, still not low enough, but pretty good compared to where we were coming out of COVID So I think what's happening right now, the shock and awe, or as Steve Bannon calls it, muzzle velocity of what they're doing, has really disoriented a lot of Americans who had no idea that this was what it was really about. Donald Trump has no guardrails. To Mark's point, in the first term. There were some people who were around him. Actually, we look now Quite a few people who are around him that had a protective layer that knew what they were doing. They were more establishment experienced people that were in positions no one was worrying about. The amount of recklessness that we're seeing now in positions like the Department of Defense or in our national security space with Tulsi Gabbard or, God help us, Cash Patel as FBI director and Dan Bongino as his number two, there weren't people like that. Those people were still pushed out on the fringes. So when you look at what's happening with our government and the story, of course, of the week with the signal chats, I mean, we're making fun of it because we have to. Laughter does good, like medicine, but in order to stay sane. But this is incredibly damaging. Incredibly. As a matter of fact, I remember a certain presidential candidate who wanted to lock someone up because of her emails. And yet here we are. Everyone's just, well, you know, it wasn't classified. Maybe it was or wasn't. And, oh, you know what I mean, it's the world turned upside down. But when we look at this, we're only. I think it's like 63 days now, give or take, where we are, it feels like a lifetime. But I think the American people, even though Donald Trump's approval rating is still in the mid-40s or so, we're seeing that the, the, you know, invading Greenland and Panama and why we're picking a fight with Canada, people are going, wait, wait, wait. We're not. What, where is this coming from? We're supposed to be lowering the price of eggs, which Trump's own FDA said they're probably going to be about 40% higher this entire year for one reason or another, but that's still not lowering the price of eggs. I don't know how dismantling the Department of Education is supposed to improve our economy. I don't know how taking services away from our veterans and firing tens of thousands of veterans who've already served this country is supposed to make America great again. I don't know. As we see, maybe the issue of immigration. Yes, immigration is down, but at what cost? We're violating the Constitution to disappear people. I worked on Capitol Hill for seven years. Immigration reform and federal law enforcement was in my portfolio as a. In addition to my communications responsibilities, I am a border hawk. I advocated for border agents. I've been down on the border. I worked very hard on those issues back then, but not like this. Not like this. And the more the American people accept the way this is happening, Just because they said, well, we want them out of here. Well, he picked the worst of the worst because it makes it easier to say, well, we got to get these guys out of here, but at what cost? We need to be very careful. So, yes, people might be happy about that immigration, but just wait in a couple months when there's no one there to pick the crops, and our American farmers are suffering not only from the loss of income, from the canceling and the recklessness of Elon Musk and Doge, and then now we have a labor shortage, then what? So I think that right now we're failing as a, as a country under Donald Trump's leadership rapidly, and so is our democracy, and that should matter to everyone. And we're only 60 plus days in.

[Larry Sabato]

Well, that was depressing.

[Tara Setmayer]

I didn't vote for him.

[Larry Sabato]

It's fine. We need that perspective now. Jim. Yeah, you've been there. You've been in a lot of different positions to watch a lot of different presidents do whatever they're going to do. And by the way, thank you for just standing up the way people are supposed to who are in the media. You're there to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted, at least in part. And so many people in media, and for that matter, the academy, are more dedicated to the opposite. And I think that is one of the problems we have today, one of many. But, Jim, I want to see what, what do you think are the upsides and the downsides and maybe even a grade, if you wish, for President Trump?

[Jim Acosta]

You know, I understand Trump has a. Has an issue with water pressure. He would like the showers to have better water pressure. I'm on board with that. And then that's about it. That's about it. Okay, listen, I. All kidding aside, I do think, to be serious about this, I do think the soul of this country is in danger when the President of the United States comes into office and immediately pardons and commutes the sentences of all of those January 6th rioters and insurrectionists. That is a betrayal of this country of the highest order. And you can be a Republican, you can be a Democrat. It's a betrayal. And by the way, it was a slap in the face of this country that almost cost the life of Mark's boss, the Vice President of the United States, Mike Pence, who you rightly called a hero for his actions. From that day, I will say that I have to echo what Tara is saying, because by and large, what Donald Trump has decided to do is make his second term in office about revenge and retribution. That's why he's put people like Kash Patel in charge of the FBI. And as Mark said, you know, Trump was elected by and large because of the idea that he might bring down the cost of eggs and bring down prices at the grocery store, bring down the price of gas. How is all of that going so far? I mean, and to give him high marks on the issue of immigration, I mean, I've seen some studies that suggest that the amount of deportations that are happening right now in this country are roughly where the deportations were when Joe Biden was president. I covered the second term of Barack Obama. The immigrant advocate community was hopping mad at him. Back in those days, they used to call him the deporter in chief. So one way you can score cheap points with the American people is by deporting people. One thing we can't get into the business of, as far as I, you know, I'm concerned, is you can't just scoop people up off the street because they look like they might be illegally in the country because of their tattoos or the way they dress or their skin color or the way they speak, and then put them on airplanes and defy a judge's order, which is what just took place with these Venezuelan migrants. The judge said, turn those planes around. The President of the United States and his team did not do that. And so we are, I think, facing potentially a constitutional crisis that's coming down the pike. And we can hardy har har all we want about signal chats and national security information being divulged on an encrypted messaging app. But I'm far more concerned about what is going to take place when a judge or even the supreme court says, no, Mr. President, you can't do these things, and he does it anyway. And so I think that is why you're starting to see these town halls that are cropping up all over the country with AOC and Bernie drawing thousands of people. People are kind of coming out of the slumber, the state of depression, the fetal position that they were in during the period between the election and Trump's inauguration. And they're starting to rise up and say, we're not going to tolerate this. And one other quick point that I'll make so we can get into the discussion. Nobody elected Elon Musk to be the shadow president. The idea that we could have a country where the world's richest man can buy his way into the halls of power, power, and then take a bunch of ass wiped 20 year olds and go through the agencies of the federal government and vacuum up our personal data and then go around calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme, which is something our senior citizens rely on. That, to me, is outrageous and it speaks to the danger that I think, Larry, you and I have talked about before, Tara and I have talked about before of the Citizens United decision when you allow a dark money, corporate money, richest man in the world money to flood into our system. So we've got a lot of problems that we're dealing with. We're sort of like the little boy in front of the dike, putting all of our fingers and toes into the dam right now to keep it from breaking. And Trump is going to do everything that he can to break that dam, and the American people are going to have to live with the consequences. I saw it the first time around with January 6th and Covid, he thinks about his own self interest first, the interests of the American people second.

[Larry Sabato]

I want to follow up with that and ask Mark something, because, Mark, you work with him. You were there in the Oval Office. I remember seeing you many times there. So you've watched him work. You've gotten somewhat used to his decision making process. If it comes down to violating court orders, whether it's a district judge or an appellate judge, I can't imagine that he would violate the Supreme Court. But he might. But a district court judge, do you think he would really do that? Would he ignore a district judge's orders and then essentially cause a constitutional crisis that could potentially spark violence?

[Mark Short]

I think I'm not going to try to evade your question, Larry, but I think it depends. Honestly, I'm not going to sit here and tell you clearly. No, I think it would depend upon what the circumstances were. And I think he'll push the envelope as far as he can. And I think that he often uses the courts for that purpose leading up to the events that transpired on January 6, when we would articulate the reasons why no vice president in the history of our country has had the authority to change the results of the election. And that's not a constitutional authority granted the Electoral Count act or anywhere else the president would say, but why not just try? Let's let the courts decide. And so I think he has a desire to push things as far as they'll go. I don't think he would violate a Supreme Court order, but I think if it's a district court order, as you've seen with what's happened with the Venezuelan migrants, I think if he feels that the 1798 Alien Insurrection act gives him that authority to. To deport. Then I think he'll say, well, let's see what a higher court says.

[Tara Setmayer]

But here's the thing, though. When you're President of the United States, in a democracy, you answer to the people and the guiding principles of the Constitution, not how you feel. That day, Donald Trump on Air Force One, when he was asked about the application of the Alien act, he was like, I feel we're at war. Well, the Congress has something to say about that, because last time I checked, Congress has to give you the authority to declare war. You don't get to wake up. Like, you know, this isn't him on the Celebrity Apprentice where he can say he feels like he's a billionaire today. This is real. And these types of norms, I mean, we've busted through lots of norms, but when we're talking about statutes and laws that have meaning and implications if you violate them, like whether we're at war or not and trying to gaslight the American people into believing that just because he says it means it's so, this is a problem. And then he's surrounded by Republicans who know better. It's why I left the party. I tried for years from inside the party to be the conscience, because I'm like, guys, you know better than this. You know this isn't true. You, Ted Cruz, being one of them, used to walk around sanctimoniously with his pocket Constitution, talking about originalism, and yet he's over here making excuses for things that are constitutionally dubious that Donald Trump is doing. And Mike Lee and all these other guys, they're more than enablers at this point. They're collaborators. And we are where we are because they're allowing that. So when we see these types of things where he's pushing the envelope, pushing the envelope, where's the enforcement? Pam Bondi, she just set up a. She set up a task force because Teslas are getting scorched because people are upset with Elon. Not justifying it, just saying. But. But, you know, January 6th is all right. It's. I don't know. My. My fear here is I don't know who enforces it. When it does come, when the showdown does come with the Supreme Court, who enforces it. Donald Trump is prepping himself to be a king. The pictures, you know, it's not a joke. The. Everybody laughs. He puts the AI photos of him with a crown and all of this, and retweets things from the White House official account about being A king. This is real in his mind. And the people around him are treating him as such. And so why should he have to listen to the Supreme Court? We should just impeach them. Elon Musk thinks so. So I guess we should just impeach them. There's a reason why Elon Musk is spending tens of millions of dollars for a Wisconsin state Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin and paying people $100 to vote a certain way and injecting himself into these things. It is laying the foundation. And that's my biggest concern. When, who, how are people finally going to stand up and say no to this? I pray to God we don't come to the point where we have a Supreme Court decision and he violates it. And then we have to see what that looks like.

[Larry Sabato]

Well, you could go ahead. Well, go ahead.

[Mark Short]

I mean, I, I feel that obviously have experience on this because we made the case about what the vice president's authority was, and I was part of the group that was evacuated by the Secret Service on January 6th away from the. We're down to the basement of the Capitol. So I respect your point of view, and I think it's, it's, we swear an oath to uphold the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. And that is what all of us take when you become an employee in the White House. And I in no way want to excuse where I feel like Donald Trump has walked away from that. And I've said publicly many times he did on January 6th. And I don't want to excuse any future potential battle with Supreme Court. It's a different scale. But last administration, Supreme Court ruled that the White House cannot forgive student loans.

[Larry Sabato]

Supreme Court ruled it.

[Mark Short]

Biden did it. The next week, President Obama, Supreme Court said, you know, he said, he said, I acknowledge the court say, I can't just automatically legalize daca. It has to be legislated. Couldn't get the way he wanted Congress, so he just did it. Where was the outrage? Obama did it. Biden did it.

[Larry Sabato]

Well, they're different. They're different. They are.

[Mark Short]

Obviously they are, Larry. But at the same time, it seems like there's, there's a different standard.

[Larry Sabato]

A lot of. It's like, it's like, it's absolutely untrue. Nothing I've ever seen in my life suggests that there's ever, ever a double standard on anything. I want to make that very, very clear.

[Jim Acosta]

But there's a difference between student loan debt and overturning an election.

[Mark Short]

I said that.

[Jim Acosta]

I got that.

[Mark Short]

Where was the media complaining that he's violating the constitutional.

[Jim Acosta]

Well, those stories, Mark, we covered Those stories, covered Jan. 6 with a bit more ferocity because perhaps that was a bit more critical to the future of American democracy.

[Mark Short]

There is a different standard. There's a difference in the way all.

[Jim Acosta]

Of that was covered. The student loan stuff under Biden was covered. It was covered time and again. And when Republicans complained about it, it was on all the news networks all the time.

[Larry Sabato]

Well, this, though, is a good point that Mark is making. We have to be careful in the future, assuming we continue to have a republic, something I don't think is guaranteed, we have to really work to make sure it continues because some days it's hanging by a thread. So we need to understand that. But we need to do better in the future in making sure that there isn't so much hypocrisy. And frankly, I agree there was a lot of coverage of it, but there wasn't the kind of outrage. In fact, there was a lot of support for what Biden and Obama did on those respective issues. A lot of the students that I've had were thrilled.

[Mark Short]

In fact, I got a lot of.

[Larry Sabato]

Emails about, how can I get included on this? Can you write me a letter? Like they're going to pay any attention.

[Tara Setmayer]

But here's the difference, though. Here's the difference. The difference between those things and the level of outrage is because, you know, student loan debt forgiveness and things like that are not constitutionally guaranteed rights. And I think that, you know, people can there were academic arguments about whether it was right or not, but we need to be careful about the whataboutism to try to tamp down the seriousness of what Trump is doing right now. And so, you know, unfortunately, this time around, there aren't a lot of Mark shorts, actually, there's none in this Trump administration. There are no people that would stand up the way you did or the way Vice President Pence did, or the way that the people in the Justice Department did, or the way the people on the intelligence community did, or the way that the people in the Joint Chiefs of Staff did. All those people are not there this time. That's the difference. And I even up until Trump was inaugurated, until he actually announced later that Evening after the two sig heils by Elon and then the January 6 thing, people were still trying to tell me, oh, he'll have people around him that won't let him do all that crazy stuff. I said, oh, yeah, okay. And then the January 6th pardons and then Elon, and then you know all of the, what was happening, shutting down USAID and all of this in the first week. And people are like, oh, but they'll, somebody will stop. Okay, here we are, we're in March. No one stopped him yet. So I think we need to dispense with the idea that there are, that it's any, there's any resemblance to the first time around, because there aren't people like you that were willing to stand up anywhere.

[Larry Sabato]

There's one. You have to be fair. And his name, surprisingly, is John Roberts. Well, for now, he did something I would never expected him to do because he does not, he does not step out. That's just not him at all. But those paragraphs, and they were so effective because he didn't mention Trump. It was obvious what he was saying. Now Trump can ignore him, too, but I think it's much more difficult to ignore the Chief justice of the Supreme Court, especially after you just thanked him and saying you won't forget about the things he's done. Right after the State of the Union address, I'm sure you saw that as Trump was exiting, he took John Roberts hands in his and said, thank you. I won't forget what you. I don't know what it was they were talking about. I could guess.

[Jim Acosta]

But wasn't there some issue where Trump didn't exactly put his hand on the Bible or something like that this last.

[Larry Sabato]

Yeah, that's what it was.

[Tara Setmayer]

Where he was going to blow off.

[Larry Sabato]

He redid Obama's swearing. And remember when he lost the. He got.

[Jim Acosta]

Or maybe it was batting average or.

[Tara Setmayer]

Maybe it was for the immunity case.

[Jim Acosta]

Yeah, well, I was that, Larry. I was going to say, I mean, go ahead, Justice John Roberts can put out a statement and say, you know, you shouldn't impeach judges because you don't like what they have to say. He can do that until the cows come home. But to some extent, doesn't he have a little bit of blame for himself when the Supreme Court put out that immunity decision? And I know, Larry, you and I have talked about this, that immunity decision essentially sent Donald Trump the green light to do all of the, you know, ignoring of federal judges that he wants to do. And, you know, my sense of it is, is Mark and I and Tara, we can all, Larry, we can all check what the scoreboard is after these four years are over and see how many times Donald Trump has violated the Constitution or violated a judge's order and compare that to previous presidents. I don't know. I don't know.

[Tara Setmayer]

Do they have WI FI in Gitmo.

[Jim Acosta]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, sorry about that. I mean, to some extent, you know this. The Supreme Court has, as my mother used to say, you make your bed, you lie in it. And that's what we're all. We're all going to have to go through this collective lived experience over these next four years. And I mean, I was at the White House on January 6th. I wasn't over at the Capitol like Mark was. And I remember going back to the press secretary's office and the communication director's office, and nobody was there. They had all fled. Nobody was around. You couldn't get in touch with anybody. I think Rudy Giuliani's son was the only person I could find in upper press, Andrew. And it just turned into a ghost town. But, you know, flash forward a couple of weeks later, I was with Donald Trump on Air Force One when we dropped him off in West Palm on Inauguration Day. And the thought that was going through my mind all day long was, thank goodness he got on that plane. Thank goodness he got on. And he finally didn't respect the peaceful transfer of power, but he went along with it after he was basically pushed and shoved in that direction. And my concern is what happens this next time around? We just don't know the answer.

[Larry Sabato]

Absolutely.

[Jim Acosta]

We don't know the answer.

[Larry Sabato]

Really. No one, no one knows if there's a party, if he voluntarily retires. Right. And, you know, he will be 82. He'll be older than Biden was when he left. It's possible that he will simply pass along the presidency to J.D. vance or somebody else, I don't know. And that may satisfy him. But suppose the Democrats win the election? I think the election automatically becomes illegitimate, full of voter fraud. And then he's got between early November and January 20th. And he will have planned for this carefully because he learned from his mistakes, if you can call it that, is obeying the law and Constitution when he was forced to. I mean, there's a possibility of that happening. We have to think about that possibility while hoping, maybe believing, if you are so inclined, that it won't happen. We still have to plan for it. All right, let me switch focus.

[Tara Setmayer]

Can I just say one thing about. Steve Bannon's already planning for that.

[Larry Sabato]

Yeah.

[Tara Setmayer]

There's already a movement.

[Larry Sabato]

Well, he's my age. He may be dead worried about it.

[Tara Setmayer]

There is a movement for this third term. They talked about it at cpac. They've been talking about. This is one of Steve Bannon's crusades. So do not ignore that. Yeah, do not ignore it.

[Larry Sabato]

I'm not sure that everything Steve Bannon wants to do will ever happen. At least I hope so if we're.

[Tara Setmayer]

Going to remain Evil genius.

[Larry Sabato]

A Republican. All right, look, a Republican, not a Republican. Let me switch focus briefly till we get to their questions, the Democrats. It's been embarrassing, let's be honest. Just absolutely embarrassing. Yes. They don't control anything. We know that. Although they do have, they have to supply potentially seven votes, maybe more if you've got, you know, Lisa Murkowski on the other side, when there's a 60 vote threshold, they, they do have some power, but they're just not in some boats. Not a reconciliation where you stuff as many things as you can into that, but that's it. They don't have any other power. So maybe we're just simply expecting too much. But what can they do to do better? Because they can hardly do worse than they've done so far. I mean, really, you wouldn't believe. I hear this from everybody, no matter what their positions are. You need an opposition party that, that has a heartbeat, you know, you really do.

[Jim Acosta]

So I think one of the issues is that they're all moving in different directions. Nancy Pelosi was terrific at cracking the whip. I mean, she kept that, that house in order when it was under her control. These days you have sort of a live and let live philosophy inside the Democratic Party. You have Congressman Green waving the cane at that joint session of Congress, Congress speech. You had the others holding up the paddles and I think the ping pong, ping pong paddles. And Stansberry had the sign that said this is not normal. They were all over the place. But one thing that I think has occurred, and if you're a Democrat, you're encouraged by this, are these town halls. And even in, in these ruby red Republican districts, you're seeing Republicans stand up and say, you know, what about my Social Security? Or you have veterans saying, what about this job that I had? Until a couple of weeks ago, I talked to an Air Force veteran who's disabled, was working at fema, had a guest, had her as a guest on my show. And she was saying, you know, I got all of these emails saying that I was being promoted, that I was doing great job, well done, and so on. And then she got tossed by the wayside. And so that's why you're seeing these town halls erupt. And on the Democratic side, people like AOC and Bernie are having these, these rallies where thousands of people are showing up. So they're kind of getting their act together, I think, as we speak. But Mark knows when the party's in the wilderness, a lot of weird stuff happens.

[Mark Short]

Well, yeah, I think it's a good historical analogy that Jim gives. When I first started working for Mike Pence, it was right after the 2008 election. And so, you know, feels like it was a long time ago. But Obama came in not just with a giant mandate, but The Senate was 59, 41. The House majority, the House majority was huge. And Mike Pence had just been elected into House leadership, and I was working on the Senate and he hired me to be his chief of staff at that point, chair. Then he was conference.

[Tara Setmayer]

Yeah, I was on the Hill then. I remember that.

[Mark Short]

And, and to be honest, yeah, there was like a first 100 day period of feeling like you're in the wilderness, but you began to feel more and more momentum as people at that time, perhaps not in this audience, but at that time, people became more concerned about Obamacare, People came more concerned about government spending, more concerned about where the Obama administration was going. And you felt more and more encouragement each and every day. And at that time, Democrats were telling their House members, don't have town halls. Don't have town halls because it's Republican plants going to your town halls is what they were saying at that time. And so, you know, the American people have a way of making sure their voices are heard. And there's a, again, I'm sitting here, I think, perhaps on the right here, and there's a lot of parts of the Trump administration policies that I still support. And I'm excited just to see. But, you know, there's a lot of conversation. Tara's raised Elon Musk a couple times. You know, I actually support a lot of what's happening on Doge. I don't think we're being honest with the American people that we're $36 trillion in debt, that for the first time in American history, if you add up your entitlement spending and interest on the debt, it's more than 100% of our discretionary spending. That's never happened, folks. We're like in a total fiscal disaster as our country and our elected leaders are not being honest with them about what's going on. But Elon's personal numbers are way down. And Elon's plan to go to Wisconsin this week to campaign in that race. And I think it'll be counterproductive. And I think if you see the Wisconsin Supreme Court race go the Democrats way. You're going to start to see more and more of Democrats speaking out into this moment, just like that happened in 2009 for Republicans.

[Jim Acosta]

But the debt did go up by trillions of dollars. It did when Donald Trump was in office the first time around. Yeah.

[Mark Short]

Both parties have had way too much.

[Jim Acosta]

Spending, and they are trying to push through a tax package this time around that will continue. Continue those tax cuts for the billionaires, the wealthy, the big corporations. And they're talking about making the numbers work to some extent by cutting programs like Medicaid to the tune of, what, $800 billion or something along those lines, which will blow holes in rural hospitals all around the country.

[Mark Short]

We passed tax reform in 2017. There were 51 million Americans on Medicaid. Today, there's 78 million Americans on Medicaid. We can't be blind here and say we're not going to touch entitlements and we're not going to have any reforms. It's just not being honest with American people.

[Tara Setmayer]

There's a difference between reform and recklessly destroying agencies and programs. I was on the Hill at the time in 2008. I was part of the Tea Party efforts in 2009 and 2010. I was there firsthand at rallies all over the country for, you know, we started off really about the fiscal stuff, and then Obamacare became the focal point and Nancy Pelosi became the focal point. My good friend Michael Steele was the one that came up with the bus idea to go to 50 states with Nancy Pelosi's face plastered on the side and making her the villain. And the Republicans. One thing I can tell you about Republicans, as someone who spent almost 30 years in the Republican Party, as a communicator, we know how to message and we know how to communicate that message very simply. Now, there were times when that message was dishonest, unfortunately. And the demagoguery and all of those things that were happening with some of these messages is problematic. But the Democrats need to learn how to take the playbook that Republicans used in 2009 and 2010 through 2014, really, and use the same tactics. Because this time around, policy, to a certain degree, the American people actually agree with a lot of the Democrats policies when they explain them simply. What Donald Trump is doing right now is so counterproductive. And the idea that you could fire every single person in the federal government and it wouldn't put a dent in the $36 trillion debt situation. So I would like them to. They need to go on offense. I Say this all the time. People who follow me or have seen me speak before, I say this because I'm a sports fan. Defense may win championships. Offense wins elections. The Democrats need to go on offense and put Republicans on defense to defend what they're doing right now. How that is making America great again? How is dismantling agencies and putting hundreds of thousands of people out of work like this, how is that making America great again? How is firing 86,000 people at the VA and veterans losing their benefits and their jobs and their families and all of what's happening? Because I don't know where in the private sector they're going to absorb all of these people and their jobs. Where are those private sector jobs where these folks are going to get absorbed? How do you explain to the communities that depend on federal resources to supplement what's happening there? How are they going to. When these people, all these people lose their jobs? Explain that to the diner waitress whose diner is now closed because there's no people to go in there anymore because they've all lost their jobs. How do you explain how they're supposed to pay their mortgages? How are they supposed to spend money in their local communities and their shops if they don't have jobs? Like this is insanity. It's not how you fix the problem. I agree. Entitlements are a problem. We need to try to reform them. You don't dismantle them without a plan, and that's what's happening. You don't throw hundreds of thousands of people out of work. You don't cancel tens of billions of dollars, which is a splash in the pan of our federal budget every year. You'll destroy those programs and destroy America's national standing within our relationships with our allies. For what? So Elon Musk can have Starlink in the FAA and in the White House and so he can have easier conversations with his buddy Putin and sell out the American people. Democrats need to seize on this right now. The Republicans are doing this to you. The Republicans are responsible for why your, your, your grandmother or your mom doesn't have her Social Security check. Republicans are responsible for why veterans are getting fired and don't have their services. Why are they doing this? They're not for you. They're for them. The billionaires are our foreign adversaries. That's the messaging. And the sooner that Democrats get, get on board with that, the better because. Make Republicans defend what they're doing to this country. Put them on defense. Because when you're explaining, you're losing.

[Larry Sabato]

Well, don't ever underestimate the ability of Big Balls. Yeah. One of the 19 year olds that Good God Musk has brought in. That's his nickname for himself.

[Mark Short]

Yeah.

[Tara Setmayer]

No security clearance, by the way.

[Larry Sabato]

Yeah, he's 19 and he's brilliant. Could be making millions of dollars a year doing something else.

[Jim Acosta]

So if a student puts that in one of their papers, that's okay?

[Larry Sabato]

Oh, absolutely.

[Jim Acosta]

They put that.

[Larry Sabato]

There you go.

[Jim Acosta]

The students need to know that this.

[Larry Sabato]

Is written by Big Balls. A automatic A. All right, look, I. I've got more questions for him, but I want to go to your questions and see what you got. Do we have mics? Who's. Who's got the mic? Good. Two mics. Tyler and Glenn. You have to wave at them. I have no power. None whatsoever. Please tell us who you are, where you're from, that kind of thing.

[E]

My name's Ellie Tucker. I'm from Charlottesville, Virginia, and I'm very disappointed Duke is not here today.

[Jim Acosta]

Oh, I'm sorry. That's my dog.

[E]

I think everybody knows that Duke is not popular here.

[Larry Sabato]

That is the school.

[Jim Acosta]

I know, I know, I get it.

[E]

And Mark, you must be borrowing one of Trump's ties, because that's very long.

[Larry Sabato]

He's in good shape.

[Jim Acosta]

Old habits die.

[Tara Setmayer]

Hardly made in America.

[Mark Short]

Unlike Trump's, he doesn't.

[E]

But my question is for the three panelists. There are Republicans that are being really badly hurt over some of the policies now. And I know that the Republicans in Congress have lost their voices about this, but don't they see that their future is also wrapped up in the fact that farmers are suffering, are going to be suffering even more, and that the Republicans that have been loyal to them are going to be hurt? They're hurt. Now, my father was a Republican from Ohio. He was an elector for Bush. He's rolling over in his grave right now over what's happened to his party. What is the future with Republicans not saying anything when they see their people suffering? They don't care about the Democrats in the country, but they see their people suffering.

[Larry Sabato]

Are they going to wake up at some point and say, this far and no further, Mr. Trump, are they going to do it or not?

[Mark Short]

Yeah, well, first off, I mean, I look at the first administration and there's a lot of. There's certainly a lot of chaos around it and a lot of Trump's Persona that carried through, but I think most of the policies were pretty conservative. I don't think that's the case this time. And that's what worries me. In many ways is I feel that the conservative principles that I believed in have been abandoned by our party in pursuit of a more populist agenda. And I think that many of the members that I still speak to in private will say one thing, appreciate stances that we're still taking, but in public, they say something very different. And I think their concern is they have an enormous fear that President Trump has been very effective at playing in primaries, and they fear their own personal.

[Tara Setmayer]

Outcome in a primary.

[Mark Short]

So your question is more or less the same as Larry's question that he asked in the beginning about at what point is there opposition inside our party? I think it's whenever Trump's numbers fall. And so is that going to be that Americans wanted the border cleaned up and wanted the economy fixed, and they begin to see that prices aren't being fixed, the tariffs are driving prices up, that consumer sentiment continues to go down, the economy is not good, and his numbers are cratering, then I think you will see them stand up. I wish that there would be. I'm not one of these people. I wish he'd stand up to Trump. That's not my viewpoint. I wish they'd stand up for the principles that made what our party was. And that's what I miss, seeing Republicans and conservatives actually standing firm on true free market principles that we once stood for. And I don't think they will until they actually believe it's going to be in their own personal interest to do so. It'll be in their own personal interest when Trump's numbers fall. They're no longer fearful of the primary challenge.

[Jim Acosta]

And the other thing that's going on, you have to keep in mind, is a lot of these representatives in the House, senators over in the Senate, they're worried about being primaried. And the message has been sent from Trump's political team that if you get in his way, and this was being reported during the confirmation hearing process, people like Pete Hegseth and RFK Jr over at HHS, if you get in the way of these nominees, we're going to come after you. And so, you know, that's a big lever that they can, you know, turn up and up and down to apply pressure, and they've been doing that.

[Tara Setmayer]

Two words, Elon Musk. Once again, the primary challenge. Elon said he would personally finance the primaries against these people. You know, one of the things that has been so disappointing for me and another reason why I left the party was because there were not enough Republicans who stood up and said no. Bill Buckley was A conservative hero of mine as I was a young, wide eyed, bushy tailed Republican. I was vice chairman of the College Republicans at GW when I went there in 1993 and he said part of the role of conservatives was to yell stop athwart history when no one else would. I actually believed that. I thought that they meant that those principles. Speaking of going back to the principles of the party, where the hell are those people? No one has yelled stop athwart history at this point. Now that's how we got here. If the party had done that, we wouldn't be here now. I have zero faith in the Republicans to stand up to Trump. They didn't stand up to him after a violent insurrection where he should never have had the ability to run again. Mitch McConnell gave the speech of his life on the Senate floor and caved. I blame him because if Mitch McConnell had stood up behind those words that he, that he gave on that Senate floor, we wouldn't be here today because Donald Trump would have been removed and ineligible to run again.

[Jim Acosta]

And don't forget Kevin McCarthy going down.

[Tara Setmayer]

To Mar a Lago getting his little participation trophy. I know. Kevin McCarthy.

[Jim Acosta]

Yeah.

[Tara Setmayer]

And where is he now?

[Jim Acosta]

Right, where is he now?

[Larry Sabato]

Yeah, where is he?

[Tara Setmayer]

Yeah.

[Jim Acosta]

Well, I don't know actually. That's a good question.

[Tara Setmayer]

We don't know question. That's the other thing too. All these Republicans who think if they kiss Trump's ass that they're going to be spared. No, they're not. No, they're not. He will come for them too. And that's the part that's frustrating about the Democrats like Chuck Schumer who are living in a lot la la land and still applying tactics of yesteryear. This is not the same. This isn't the Republican party of even 15 years ago. There is no good faith actor on the other side. You have to be an opposition party. Mitch McConnell and those guys knew how to do that in 2009 with a larger majority and with the, with the Senators. You can't give them anything. You give them an inch, they take a mile. You can't. You give them Hegseth and RFK Jr and Cash Patel and Tulsi Gabbard, people who are direct threats to our everyday lives in our national security. Borderline Russian assets, giving them the keys to our kingdom here, national security. Because you think what they're going to negotiate with you on a reconciliation bill. They were making fun of Chuck Schumer for doing that. And then you cut off the morale of your people who are Just starting to mount the opposition. How about Churchill? More Churchill, less Chamberlain. That's the. That's the advice I give to the Democrats. Never surrender.

[Larry Sabato]

All right, blood, sweat and tears. Who's next? You pick them and just give them.

[F]

So to what extent is American conservatism itself responsible for the predicament we're in? Is it possible there could be a true conservative party in America, or is it just independence from now on? But in conservative movements, the Republican Party.

[Larry Sabato]

Turning back to a different.

[F]

The Republican Party had this groundswell of opinion of belief that the problem was revenues. I mean, the problem was spending, right? Not that we couldn't figure out what we needed to pay for. So how can we get a polity that wants to figure out what it can pay for?

[Larry Sabato]

All right, quick answers to that. Because otherwise we'll spend the next week on that one.

[Mark Short]

Look, I've been more discouraged about our conservative movement than our elected officials. I think to the root of your question, I think my expectation for elected officials is usually pretty low, and I think they're usually incented as to what I need to do to get reelected. For a lot of our conservative movement leaders, I believe that there was conviction in what many of them fought for. And I think what I've witnessed is for a lot of them, they've enjoyed access that President Trump gives them, and their donor bases are very much supportive of Donald Trump, and they don't want to go against that. And so, again, it's in private, they'll say one thing to you in public, something very different. And until we change that kind of incentive structure, I wish that there would be more people standing on those conservative principles. But, you know, I think that as this administration goes more and more populist, I do see more and more conservatives questioning some of the policy that are happening. And again, my hope is that the administration shifts back to being conservative. But I think that the team he has around him is simply going to be more populist. And so my hope is that you'll see that. But I confess to you, I've been disappointed in not seeing more of the conservative movement leaders and sometimes single issues. There are certain groups that were founded on free trade principles. They're just quiet. In the midst of having the biggest tariffs ever proposed on the United States, groups that were committed to the cause of life, they got on board with rfk. And no matter where you guys are on the position of life on rfk, how can Republicans oppose the next Democrat appointment to HHS on the grounds of abortion? You've just confirmed the most pro abortion candidate ever to be in charge of hhs. And so we've seen basically a lot of the conservative movement groups that were even single issue based basically go along with the agenda that is, that is being put forward now.

[Jim Acosta]

And the one thing I would add is I'm not even sure we're living in a right left world anymore where, you know, the future of the conservative movement is all that critical to where we're going as a country. You may be right, sir. You may be right to ask that question. Question. But I, I look at as you have two movements right now in the United States. One is pro democracy. The other is pro authoritarianism and pro autocracy. And there are members of the Republican Party who are on the pro democracy side. One of the things I get asked about when I do my show on Substack is how come you don't have any Republicans on? I say I have Tara set, Meyer on, I have Olivia Troy on, I have Steve Schmidt on. I have lots of Republicans on my show. They just happen to be pro democracy Republicans. And one of the issues that I think we're going to be running into, and some of this applies to what Mark was saying a few moments ago. You have the Republican Party right now chasing after populism and chasing after things like tariffs because they think it helps them get to the goal of more autocracy and more authoritarianism in the United States. And that is the thing that I get concerned about because, you know, to me it's about the American way of life. And Larry mentioned my book that I wrote several years ago. Well, it's called the Enemy of the People, which is what Trump called me, not to plug too many. I remember once here, but several times.

[Tara Setmayer]

Didn'T someone else use that term?

[Larry Sabato]

Yes, Donald Trump.

[Jim Acosta]

And, and there were some, there were some people that, there were some people who used that term before him. But the reason why I bring that up is because, you know, listen, the American way of life, Mark, Tara and I are about the same age, Larry. A couple years older than.

[Tara Setmayer]

What are you talking about? I am 30 years old.

[Jim Acosta]

A couple years older than that. Tara's 10 years younger than Mark.

[Mark Short]

We thought you were until you outed yourself as a 1993 student.

[Jim Acosta]

I know, I know. I was kidding in 1993. But the American way of life is something that we grew up with. And you know, in the way I describe it is we take for granted the fact that you can elect everybody from dogcatcher all the way up to President of the United States that you can get good information from brand name television news networks, newspapers in this country, places like the Associated Press. Much of what I think of and what we all think of as the American way of life is very much threatened right now. If you have a President of the United States who is not going to adhere to the Constitution, who is going to throw his policy positions and his foreign policy goals in league with people like Vladimir Putin. I mean, we haven't even touched on foreign policy. Larry, can you ever believe, can you ever remember a time in our history, in our lives when the President United States sided against democracy in Europe?

[Tara Setmayer]

No.

[Jim Acosta]

We joke around, but it is a staggering thing. And it is something that everybody, every man, woman and child in this country needs to spend a hell of a lot more time thinking about. Because if we give up on Zelensky, we give up on Ukraine, that basically means we give up on NATO, and then you're going to have major consequences after that. And so to me, it's not so much about conservative versus liberal. I tend to agree that we really are in a fight for the future of democracy in this world, that we have all come to associate with the American experience.

[Larry Sabato]

Just to balance that a little bit, though, you got to remember Vladimir Putin had a portrait done of President Trump and sent it back with Witkoff. And also when Trump was shot, he went to see his local priest and prayed for former President Trump. These are important things.

[Jim Acosta]

And wasn't there a portrait in the Colorado capital that Trump just had? There was a portrait of the Colorado Capitol that Trump.

[Larry Sabato]

No, that's not the Putin.

[Jim Acosta]

Oh, okay. That's.

[Larry Sabato]

This one is very flattering.

[Jim Acosta]

That was a different one.

[Larry Sabato]

Okay. All right, go ahead. Who's next?

[Jim Acosta]

Sorry, I went too long.

[G]

Hi, my name is Thomas. I'm a first year here at uva and I'm Your what?

[Mark Short]

First year.

[G]

First year. And I'm from Williamsburg, Virginia. And so one of my goals after undergrad is to go to law school. And a joke that I have with some of my pre law friends is like, well, if there's laws to study. And so I think we got to it, you know, almost in the beginning of this discussion. But I just want to know, in your personal view, if we have one of those constitutional crisis that we talk about, what is your personal view of the future of the rule of law here in this country?

[Tara Setmayer]

Well, if we don't have the rule of law, we don't have a constitutional republic, we don't have a democracy. The foundation of this is the Rule of law and respecting it. You know, we'd actually joke when we talk about the midterms or whatever we say if we, if we have them, it's the same thing with the rule of law. That's why the argument about what's happening right now with the deportations is really, really important. Because if, you know, if you are okay when they, you know, they deport the bad people, we don't like them. So we don't care how you get them the hell out of here, just get them out. That's a problem, because part of what makes America great, because I believe personally that Donald Trump hates everything that makes America actually great, because he attacks everything that's foundational, that's great about this country, like the fair application of the rule of law. If you let that go and then it's for only those people, what do you do when it comes to you? This country was founded on the idea of protecting minority rights and making sure that you had due process. Now, it's imperfect, obviously, but still no system better in the world when it works. So the implementation, the importance of paying attention to these things and being able to stop, step back and just say, don't cheerlead it just because it's the people you don't like. It will be you one day. Because when authoritarianism comes knocking, it never stops at the first door. And eventually it will come for you. And that is the risk that we take when we start to normalize what Donald Trump is doing. My grandfather, along with a lot of others, crossed oceans to fight against fascism, to fight against what we are up against right now. We're not being asked to storm the beaches of Normandy here. We're asked to speak up, stand up, and make and hold folks accountable for the very basic things from the luxury of still having the freedoms that we have thanks to the courageousness of those who fought for Western style democracy in World War II. To see that legacy be spit on, the way Donald Trump and this administration is spitting on it is enraging. And that should inspire everyone to make sure that those things, those legacies of what makes this country great, particularly the rule of law and standing up for freedom, remain. I don't want to be part of the generation that let democracy die or that the, or that the blood that was shed by my grandfather and my great grandfather, depending on how old you are, that those folks and what they did was in vain. Because as of right now, we're on the verge of that happening.

[Larry Sabato]

All right, we've got so many questions I'm going to have to move along more quickly. And that was an excellent question. You're just first here. That's very impressive. It really is. Yes. Hey, Mike. Mike Miller.

[H]

Yeah. So Larry and I go back over 50 years.

[Larry Sabato]

Thanks, Mike.

[H]

Noting right there. So I'll follow up a little bit with what Thomas was just asking. Something has been commented on a couple times during this panel discussion, and that's if we get to the point where Trump is clearly just refusing to follow the judiciary decisions that might be handed down. We can take it to the top level if you want. Supreme Court comes down with a decision, Trump says he's not going to follow, he's not going to obey. And you've said that would be a constitutional crisis, clearly. But as a practical matter, what does that mean? What happens at that point, in your opinion?

[Jim Acosta]

We don't know the answer to that. Is the answer, sir?

[Tara Setmayer]

I have an opinion, but it's a scary one.

[Jim Acosta]

No, I would just say that this is something I've been covering in recent weeks and I think if you look at various stories that have been printed in the New York Times, Washington Post and elsewhere, they've all explored the subject. And you can talk to a number of constitutional scholars about this, presidential scholars like Larry Sabato. And the answer to that question, Larry, if I'm not mistaken, is we don't know how that would work. Judges have in the past gone after individual cabinet members. I think that happened maybe latter stages of the Bush administration and so on of George W. Bush's administration. It might have happened during the Obama presidency once where judges have gone after individual cabinet members. But we've not been to a point where the Supreme Court has to decide what do we do about the president not following our orders. We don't know the answer to that.

[Larry Sabato]

Could have happened with Nixon.

[Jim Acosta]

Could have happened Nixon, for all you.

[Larry Sabato]

Know, you can say a lot of bad things about Nixon, but in the end he conceded that there was nothing he could do about an 8 to nothing supreme Court decision and he gave the tapes over and that was the end of that. That was the end of his presidency.

[Jim Acosta]

Usually people back down.

[Larry Sabato]

I wonder whether Trump would ever, ever concede and yield to a court decision. You said maybe the Supreme Court. I tend to agree with you, but I can also see how he would try to work around it and would have loads of support in the Republican Party, in the White House among, you know, Republican governors. I mean, really, I don't know who would stop him, short of violence, which none of us want I hope none of us want it concerns me.

[Mark Short]

I understand. I don't see him objecting or violating a Supreme Court decision. I do think on some of the lower court decisions, he'll keep pushing because he thinks there's an appeals process. Process.

[Jim Acosta]

The only thing, though, is that the Supreme Court, I mean, he exhausted all of his legal challenges during the 2020 election. Challenges. And then he incited an insurrection.

[Tara Setmayer]

Yes. To pick up on Jim scenario here.

[Larry Sabato]

That's what could come.

[Tara Setmayer]

I'm just a ray of sunshine today. There is a reason why some of the first acts that Donald Trump took in office was to get rid of the inspector general, was to wipe out the JAG corps at the Pentagon, revamp the Joint Chiefs. Don't believe this DEI bs. Okay. I mean, there's an undercurrent there of a lot of things, but that they're using this as a boogeyman. There's a reason why Cash Patel was installed as the FBI director. There's a reason why Dan Bongino, who is said to defy the judges, who, I don't care, is put in number two. There's a reason why Tom Holman, who's another one who said, I don't give a shit what the judges say, I'm going to do whatever I want, is now a czar. So we take away the legal conscience of the military. We take away. We put in conspiracy theory extremist wackos in charge of the FBI. We have Joint Chiefs that are pretty favorable to Donald Trump's worldview, and we have an attorney general who is more concerned with Teslas than protecting the rule of law objectively. So what does that mean for the enforcement of a president, oh, and a Republican Party that's so feckless and cowardice and craven that they wouldn't stand up to him the first time there was a violent insurrection? So what do you do now? Well, I am very concerned about a violent response because Donald Trump is itching to invoke the Insurrection act, itching to do it. They are laying the foundation. The predicate is this Alien and Sedition act stuff. The next step is the Insurrection act or martial law. Then what? What if the threats against judges right now is at the highest level it's ever been? Physical threats against judges because Trump and Elon Musk are out here and Republicans. Now, you know that Elon Musk has offered donations, campaign donations, to the Republicans that are willing to go along with impeaching judges. Talk about incentive structure. Mark said a lot of these guys aren't Standing up because they're worried about losing their position in office. Well, at some point, where does that, where does protecting democracy and making sure America doesn't go that way become more important than your office? There is life after Congress, I don't know. So I'm very worried about a cold civil war turning hot as the only way to push back against an intransigent president that is surrounded by sycophants that are happy to go along with his authoritarian fever dreams. That is the worst case scenario. And I just pray to God that we can, we can push back against that so we never get to that point.

[Larry Sabato]

All right, guys, break out the liquor for the end, but yeah, yeah, a couple more.

[Jim Acosta]

Bar is open.

[Larry Sabato]

More questions here. Give your name and so on.

[I]

My name is Zach. I'm first year from Austin, Texas.

[Larry Sabato]

You got first years? They're so good. They. And they're not intimidated by all of these people, at least until they ask their question. Go ahead.

[I]

Well, we'll see about that. Looking at foreign policy, there's been an acceleration in the last 60 days or so of this very bullish foreign policy, both in terms of official acts and unofficial statements and stemming from the executive. And that's not to say that this hasn't been a, a trend dating back decades, but the, the US has sort of fallen out of favor with a lot of countries and sort of lost their position as this global leader of, of freedom, of democracy and of cooperation. How, how long do you think it will take for the, the country to regain that status? And is there any possibility that the current administration will, will take steps in that direction in the next few years?

[Larry Sabato]

Good question.

[Jim Acosta]

I mean, we just don't know the answer to that. You know, we're so new into this administration, but, I mean, you can take some hints from things that have been said publicly in recent days. Vice President J.D. vance was making some remarks about Denmark and what have they ever done for us. Denmark stood shoulder to shoulder with the United States after 9 11. People forget, you know, some of the younger people may not even know this, that Article 5 of the NATO charter was invoked for the first time for the collective defense of the United States after the attacks on America on 9 11. And for the United States to thumb its nose at Volodymyr Zelensky, who is basically on the front line of democracy in Ukraine, which is just going to embolden Putin to see what else he can do. He's going to poke and prod and see what else he can go after in Eastern Europe. That Essentially puts NATO on the spot. And you could see, you know, Putin say, and I'd be anxious to hear what Mark says about this. You can see Putin say, well, let me try Estonia. Let's just see what happens. Let's start there first with a little, we'll go with a little one first and then, or Moldova and see what happens. I mean, to me, that's, that's the danger. And you know, they, they talk a big game. I mean, one of the things that came out in those, Those signal chats, J.D. vance and Pete Hegseth were going back and forth about bailing out Europe and stuff like that. Europe has put up almost as much money, I think maybe even more money than the United States has in the fight in Ukraine. So there's a lot of missing, there's a lot of bad information. There are a lot of people on the right who are spreading bad information from a bad faith vantage point. And there are folks that are just soaking in it. They're awash in this bad information. And it's affecting our political culture because our politicians are running scared because they're up against all of this misinformation. But the truth is, I mean, Europe has been, maybe they haven't been doing their fair share of common defense in terms of defense spending in NATO to the degree that the United States would like. I remember when Obama would complain about that, too. It's not just Donald Trump, but when it comes to Ukraine, they have been there.

[Mark Short]

I agree. I mean, I think again, I've said that trade is one of the biggest difference between the first administration and second foreign policy as well. I recall that there were a couple times I had to stand in front of the White House podium and take questions from Jim Costa, which was always frightening.

[Larry Sabato]

Did you call him an enemy of the people? I just want to know.

[Mark Short]

I just call him an enemy in general.

[Jim Acosta]

Called me worse behind closed doors.

[Mark Short]

But, you know, I think that in the first administration, Jim, would, I think, hold the mission accountable for the president's rhetoric on Russia. But if you look at our record, canceled Nord Stream 2, the Biden administration then put back in place, took out hundreds of Russian mercenaries on the ground in Syria. When we said to Putin, if you cross that line, we'll do it. When Obama didn't, when they crossed the red line, a lot of sanctions against Russia, it was a very different foreign policy team. What Russia's doing in Ukraine is not just a brutal war. Putin is authorizing the raping of women and the stealing of children. They've been taken back across lines and scattered across Russia, breaking up families in Ukraine. And the fact that we're walking away from Ukraine is incredibly shocking. And if you're. There's a perspective that I think is prevalent inside our party today that we're tired of a lot of foreign intervention and tired of a lot of foreign wars. I get that. But nobody was talking about sending American troops to Ukraine. We're using basically 5% of our Pentagon budget to eradicated roughly 50% of Russia's military force. Russia's had to now go and get Iran to provide them with drones. China provided them with money, and North Korea to provide them with troops. Do you have any question of what side they should be on? North Korea, Iran, China, are the three coming to Russia's aid in this battle? And Steve Witkoff comes back this week and says he's actually a very nice person. His interview with Tucker Carlson. A very nice person. The guy who's brutally murdered and condoned raping of women, stealing of children is a very nice person. So I think that the foreign policy posture between the first administration, the second one is a stark difference to your question about Zach, how quickly I think America can restore its dominance, and very quickly. And I think that, you know, I think we saw that between the 70s and the 80s from a posture of weakness to strength. And I think that can be repeated. But right now, it concerns me as to where we're headed. And, you know, I think something that's been missing. Sorry, in the signal chat, a lot of people have been focused about how it leaked and how you shouldn't have had a signal chat. Totally agree on that. But something that was in there that's getting a lot less coverage is the fact that if you look at the last piece, Stephen Miller says, look, the present green lit this is going. But prior to that, The Vice President, J.D. vance is saying is expressing his reticence and opposition to taking out the Houthis. After the decision's been made, there's a time and a place to have an argument. Trump was right to take that action. But the vice president, United States, after that action, in a group chat with cabinet members, is disagreeing as well as senior people inside the dni. That's a big story that I think it really hasn't gotten much coverage yet.

[Larry Sabato]

Remember one thing. J.D. vance was, I believe, 16 years old on January, on September 11, 2001. He's 40. He's the same age Nixon was when Nixon became vice president. So, you know, it matters, frankly, those of us who are Older and more senior. We have a greater long distance perspective. It should be listened to a great deal more than we usually are. But no, it matters. It matters how many years you've been watching this and thinking about it as well as obviously the positions that you've had. And he is very, very young. He's going to be with us for one to two generations. So let's hope he learns more along the way.

[Tara Setmayer]

It's going to be a generational fight. This is not going to. The damage that's being done right now is catastrophic. Our allies are scrambling right now with contingency plans in case America becomes a failed state. So every day that we see these things happen and trust is being lost. Where our allies cannot depend on America to come to their aid or for America to be that shining city on a hill is soft power and trust that it took since World War II for us to establish. There was never a question of where America stood until Trump. So this is what happens when you put unqualified people in positions of great consequence. We're not talking about the Department of Interior. The. That's important. We're talking about the Department of Defense. We have a Fox News commentator cosplaying as the Department of Defense SecDef, as our Secretary of Defense. Those implications are huge. We have a woman in Tulsi Gabbard, who has no business, completely unqualified to be the head of our national intelligence, the dni. What is she doing there? These people and their. What the decisions that are being made. The recklessness with this is so consequential when you have our foreign, our, our allies in our intelligence apparatus, like the Five Eyes, that's destroyed. If I'm Canada, New Zealand, Britain, am I still trusting.

[Larry Sabato]

Yeah.

[Tara Setmayer]

The America, the American intelligence apparatus anymore? No way.

[Larry Sabato]

Yeah.

[Tara Setmayer]

When Pete Hegseth decides, or whoever told Pete Hegseth to stop monitoring Russia's cyber attacks against us, how the hell is that making America safer? How the hell do our allies have faith in us? This, these are the problems. And so, I mean, this is. Again, this isn't. Yes. From the 70s to the 80s, there was a shift in America, you know, under Ronald Reagan, who is talking about spinning in his grave. I'm waiting for Reagan to pop up out of that grave and like, run down Pennsylvania Avenue and bust down the Oval Office door and like, go, what are you doing? But I think it's a generational fight. But not all hope is not lost when we have your generation and others paying attention and still wanting to be in this fight. Because that's the only way. No one's going to save us but us.

[Larry Sabato]

Last question. Because we're almost out of time, and then maybe our guests will stay a little longer. If you want to come up and ask a question, what's your name?

[J]

And my name is Isabel Mitchell. I'm a first year as well, and I'm good.

[Tara Setmayer]

Wonderful.

[J]

So I think that this is kind of related to the question that you just answered, but I think that there's a lot of people who think that this administration and recent events have highlighted a lot of holes in the fabric of our government and our government structure. And I was just wondering if you think within these next four years or after, considering there's still a government to reform, do you anticipate that there are going to be reforms in our government structure or there are going to be reforms to ensure that power isn't being abused in the way that it is right now?

[Jim Acosta]

I mean, I think that, you know, it may not be fashionable to praise Joe Biden these days. I mean, but I think the speech that he gave, some of the comments that he was making before he left office were very important when he warned about an open oligarchy rising up in this country. The other thing that he spoke about was, you know, whether we should have term limits for Supreme Court justices. You know, since we're in Thomas Jefferson's university. I mean, I do think that there is some merit to the idea that there needs to be some kind of second or constitutional convention in this country, an additional Constitutional convention in this country where we look at the Constitution.

[Larry Sabato]

It was a great book.

[Jim Acosta]

And I, I'm, I'm sorry to bring up boring stuff.

[Larry Sabato]

It was a great book.

[Jim Acosta]

Classroom stuff. But, Larry, how is it that we, we don't have term limits for Supreme Court justices or term limits for members of Congress? I mean, to me. Well, you would really get to.

[Larry Sabato]

You don't want to take it too far because the next, if you do that, the next week people will be saying there should be term limits for tenured faculty.

[Jim Acosta]

Or how about journalists? Oh, wait a minute. That's a sore subject. Yeah.

[Larry Sabato]

Would destroy, destroyed this country and obviously Colombia collapsed anyway, didn't they?

[Jim Acosta]

Yeah, no, but I, but I think that there's, I think there's some merit to the idea that there needs to be some structural changes. I mean, the idea that you can put people on the supreme court in their 40s and hope that they live for 50 years and stay there until they're in their 90s. You know, we have this sort of arms race. Well, you put Amy Coney Barrett on there. Okay, so now we're going to put like the most left leaning person on the left on the Supreme Court next time around when the Democrats are in there in the way Mitch McConnell was trying to, you know, steal a Supreme Court over here. And just when does it end? And it seems to me that would be one place if you were to have that kind of a reform, you would cut down on some of those shenanigans and maybe bring some sanity back to certain things, like whether you should have this onslaught of corporate money, oligarchical money coming into our political system. I think that is really a huge problem right now. And it's, it is, it's, it's incentivizing polarization in this country to, to a way, to a degree that I think we're going to regret years from now.

[Larry Sabato]

And that is a great comment on which to end. I apologize.

[Jim Acosta]

Sorry about that. Sorry.

[Larry Sabato]

No, that's fine. We promised we would be out of here. There's some other group coming in much less important than we are. But, you know, you have to be nice about it. But look, I hope you will join me. These are busy people and they were willing to make the trip in addition to spending the time here with you. And they will answer a few more questions. If you want to come up, please join me in thanking.