← To The Contrary with Charlie Sykes
To The Contrary with Charlie Sykes
Reed Galen: The Disconnect Between Voters and the Establishment
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- [00:00]
Charlie Sykes
Foreign. Welcome to the to the Contrary podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. It is Monday. Welcome to shutdown week. Apparently the, the markets don't necessarily like government by whim. They don't like the confusion over the tariffs. Who knew that that would, that uncertainty would actually not be great? So the economy is going to be flat front and center in a lot of the discussions this week. Watch the markets, watch what happens if we shut the government down. And by the way, if we shut the government down. Once again, I was going to say that it would make our. It will, it will highlight the degree of our political dysfunction, but we really don't need to highlight that, do we? It is a real and present reality for us every minute of the day. Now joining me on our podcast today, my good friend Reid Galen, president of Join the Union Dot us and the host of the Homefront substack, which includes a podcast, Reed. Thanks for coming on the podcast today. I appreciate it.
- [01:11]
Reid Galen
Thanks for having me, Charlie.
- [01:13]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, before we get into the meat of the day, can I, can I just. My favorite story, I just, I just, I want to wallow in it just, just a little bit. This is from cnn. Deleted tweet show. Top State Department officials spread false rumor about Rubio's sexuality. Called him low iq. Now, normally I'm not interested in deleted tweets, but this is Darren Beatty. This is. And I wrote about him as Marco Rubio's in house bigot. This guy was so bad that he was fired from the first Trump White House for cavorting with white supremacists. I mean, he is off the charts in terms of his racism and just overall bullshit and just very puzzling when he ended up being like the public face of U.S. diplomacy. And I thought it would be a bigger story, but again, we' just, we are just inundated with all of the shit and everything. So it kind of got lost in the news cycle. But how ironic that it turns out that Darren Beatty, who Marco Rubio had to swallow, and he's had to swallow so much, right, A lot, that Darren Beatty deleted at least a half dozen tweets that, that ridiculed his now boss, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, including ones calling him low IQ and repeating a false rumor about Rubio's sexuality with a staff meeting is going to be lit over at the State Department. The deleted tweets from Darren Beatty, the acting Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy. I mean, Reed, get your head around that. I just, I'm sorry. They were uncovered as part of a CNN review. Beatty, who was fired from his role as a speechwriter during the first Trump administration after he attended a conference featuring white nationalists, made a series of attacks over the years against other Republicans, including a number of offensive, homophobic and racist comments. You know, Reid, why does this keep happening? It just keeps happening that you keep, you know, pulling up one rock after another. And whether it's the spokesman for the State Department or the spokesman for the Defense Department, I mean, these people are. How would you describe them?
- [03:26]
Reid Galen
Well, I, I think it's, it's a couple of things, Charlie. One is that this is who these people are, I think, as a movement at the, at the very leadership level. But also, you know, in a normal administration, any other administration, these people wouldn't have any opportunity to get jobs because no one would go anywhere near them. And I think this is very, this is a very telling part of most authoritarian regimes is that the worst people rise to the top because they're willing to do anything. And frankly, I put Rubio on that list, too. Right? Rubio. I mean, you saw that picture of, of the, the now infamous end of the post war era meeting in the Oval Office where clearly Rubio is not in on the joke, right? They didn't tell him the ambush was coming. And, you know, so, so many memes. He is the joke, right? If you write if you don't know the, the, the if. Who's the mark at the table? It's you. And, you know, all those memes about his, you know, his soul leaving his body, like his soul left his body a long time ago. You know, he has been, he has been, to use an old Jack Nicholson line, right? Dancing with the devil in the pale moonlight. And he thought it would work out, and it hasn't. And so it just goes to show you what a joke Rubio is and that this guy Beatty sitting in those senior staff meetings at the State Department at Foggy Bottom, everybody knows that Marco's the loser and he's the one who's going to have his portrait on the wall. And to me, it's just part and parcel for everything. As I said to you right before we went on, like, if you expect the worst from these people, you'll never be disappointed.
- [04:55]
Charlie Sykes
Oh, I think that's absolutely true. But the Marco Rubio story, that one picture really is stuck in my mind because, as you know, there's that philosophy out there among Republicans that you have to stay relevant in order to be in the room. And you have to be in the room, right, because you want to be there when the big decisions are made. And in the past, a lot of Republicans, mainstream Republicans, traditional Republicans, rationalized being in the room because they could be in the room and stop the really bad stuff from happening. And the interesting thing about Trump 2.0 is that that whole rationalization has been blown to hell. And that picture of Marco Rubio is iconic because he's in the room. Right. He wanted to be relevant. And to be relevant, of course, you have to kiss Donald Trump's ring and various other things, but he's not able to stop any of these things. He's not able to stop the humiliation of President Zelensky. He's not able to stop the abandonment of Ukraine. He's not able to stop the embrace of Vladimir Putin. And you kind of wonder, what is the red line for him, you know, Marco Rubio. Well, apparently, there is no red line for Marco Rubio, is there? He just wants his portrait on the wall.
- [06:09]
Reid Galen
Right. I mean, I remember, gosh, going back to. Must have been 2015 or early 20, early 2016, before the South Carolina primary. It happened to be, I think it was in Charleston, and he was doing a rally with then Governor Nikki Haley, and they are just going off on Trump, one thing after another after another. And then I remember being at another conference, I think maybe in Atlanta, standing in the back of the room with a, like a very senior CNN person as Rubio's giving what I thought was a pretty good speech. He's like, there's the future of the Republican Party. Who knew, Charlie, that the guy would be right? We just didn't know in what context or what prism he was looking through when he said it, which is that that part of the, quote, establishment piece that still considers themselves part of the party, part of the, you know, organization, part of the movement, would have had to basically agree to a spinectomy. Not once, but every time, every time they ask for something else. Is there a red line? There isn't a red line. Because for Rubio, he just. To your point, he. It's what Chris Christie once said, right? He wants to be in the game. To him, being part of the game is more important than anything else he could be doing. So is he in charge of anything? He's not. But he's on tv. He gets to go on Fox, and for him, that's enough.
- [07:24]
Charlie Sykes
Well, but the price of it is these serial humiliations. I mean, that picture was a man humiliated. Making him have Darren Beatty as the public face of diplomacy is an act of humiliation. And there are so many and of course, we did get that one report from last Friday that he can, that he's been really furious about Elon Musk, and he confronted Elon Musk at this, at this Cabinet meeting. So he was in the room for that. But you can just sense that, you know, we're only a little more than a month into this. And, you know, Marco Rubio has to understand that he is the joke. But again, it is, it is not a joke. And I find it really difficult, I'll be honest with you, to talk about what we are doing to Ukraine, the abandonment of Ukraine, the betrayal of Ukraine. Every single day, we learn some new act of petty vengeance from the Trump administration. And I try to avoid hyperbole, but not only have we switched sides, but this is really one of the ugliest moments in American history as we pull back the support that Ukraine needs to fight for its freedom. It is, it is so shocking and yet so much on brand for Donald Trump.
- [08:52]
Reid Galen
Well, it is. You know, we go through all of the things, the first major land war in Europe since World War II, and Zelensky popularly elected and popular leader. But here's, I think the bigger part of what you're talking about, Charlie, is that as we pull back, the world becomes multipolar. It becomes all sorts of people now competing. And, you know, Europe's going to now do what's best for Europe. Canada and Mexico are now going to do what's best for Canada and Mexico. Russia is a gas station with nuclear weapons, right? Like that's the only thing it has going for it. But now China sits there and says, okay, what do we want to do? Because we've been planning for something like this, or they've been planning for a million things, right? The Chinese looking decades, right, not in, not in quarters like we do. And now this is a much more dangerous world for the United States and for its citizens. I saw, I saw, maybe I was listening to a radio interview and a woman said, is my son going to get drafted? And this is the kind of thing that happens when you have feckless people running the government. But also, they're very bad actors, to your point, like Trump and co are bad actors. They are happy to do this. And now you're going to be, you know, the equals of Russia and China and the Iranians and the Saudis and everybody else. And some of these people, right, like the Panamanians, maybe they look to China. The Ukrainians, maybe they look to China, right? China's got plenty of bullets. They got plenty of missiles. Right. I assume the Ukrainians would be happy to trade some grain to China for some more guns and some more tanks. And so now it's just one of those where somebody said to me, very senior in the intelligence community, if you were sitting in Beijing or the Kremlin, you couldn't decide how to dismantle America and the post war era better than they're doing it all by themselves.
- [10:41]
Charlie Sykes
No. If you worked up a blueprint, what could you do to destabilize America, to destroy America's role as leader of the free world? It wouldn't feel much different than this. But to your point, the world is getting more dangerous. Does anyone credibly think that we would defend Taiwan if China decided to seize it? I don't think so any longer. The polls are beginning to realize that they may be next, that Europe is, I think, justifiably alarmed. We are going to see, and I think maybe this is positive, that the Germans are going to be rearmed. But imagine being on the border of Russia right now and what the world would look like if in fact Ukraine would fall. If you're in Moldova or you're in Estonia or Latvia or Lithuania or Finland or Poland, what must the mood be like right now knowing that you can no longer count on or trust the United States of America?
- [11:43]
Reid Galen
Well, that's a couple. There's a couple of good things there. Well, good things to bring, to expand on. One is, to your point about the polls or the Baltic states, like, or the Finns, right. They have lived through this. My guess is they're not going back. Right. Like, and we should also just note that, like, the Russian military has not acquired, acquitted itself at all well in Ukraine. And that's not just simply because of the Western aid that has poured in, but because the Russian military has been denuded by incompetence, corruption and all the other things. They're not importing North Korean cannon fodder because things are going well. And so those Eastern European countries, like, they're not going back. And I think seeing the Germans and seeing the British and seeing the French saying, I mean, even when was it Maloney, the PM of Italy, right. Is taking the side of Ukraine. Right. When everybody says, oh, maybe she's sort of maga light or whatever. Yeah, yeah, she's very much like this. I think the other part too, talking to another friend of mine in the national security spaces, what's to say that the Swedes and the Norwegians and the Finns and the Poles are like, you know what, maybe it's time to have two or three of our own nuclear warheads. Maybe it's time for us to do that. Because they don't need ICBMs, Charlie, right? They just need like, the equivalent of a, of a better Scud missile right there. We're not talking, you know, suborbital or orbital. We're talking 2, 3, 400 kilometers that they need to lob something. And so now you get into a very nasty world where, like, if the, if the Indians and the Pakistanis can do it, right, then you don't think that highly technologically advanced northern European countries could figure out how to do that with nuclear reactors and uranium and everything else.
- [13:27]
Charlie Sykes
I think this is inevitable. And, you know, unfortunately, this is almost like a, an answer to a Trivial Pursuit question, but I don't know why we don't talk about it on a regular basis that Ukraine agreed to give up its nukes in return for security guarantees. It understood that if it gave up its nukes that, you know, that it would be vulnerable. And we made guarantees that are just, totally. Just dropped into the memory hole. So, yes, the polls, the Swede, they're all going to learn the lesson of this, that, you know, Ukraine would not be under attack from Russia if it had a nuclear deterrent. And unfortunately, I mean, they will learn the lesson. So. All right, I want to talk a little bit about politics with you because you've had a couple of very interesting things to say about the fact that many of our, many of the opponents of what's happening in Washington don't seem to understand the way that the fight has changed, that the rules are different. Talk to me about what you mean about that, because I think that there's. I'm constantly struck by how many of the opponents of Trump are in the wrong movie or in their wrong game, that they've showed up, you know, wearing all the cricket gear to the Thunderdome, or they, they think, they think that, you know, It's. It's like 1996 with a little bit of fur on it, when, in fact, it is a category shift, a completely different game. And I think that's your point as well. So talk to me about that.
- [15:09]
Reid Galen
Right. So I think some of it goes back to, you know, even our earlier days in what we would have called the. The old Republican Party, Charlie, the old conservative movement. Look, yeah, I mean, I was lucky enough. I started in American politics up here, right, Because I started working for George W. Bush when he was the governor of Texas, right? So, like, I didn't have to come through a lot of, you know, sort of activist ranks. I mean, I went back down into different campaigns, but a lot of the stuff that, that we just sort of took for granted, whether or not it was Rush, whether or not it was, you know, the Moral Majority and Jerry Falwell and all the other stuff. Right. What, what I didn't understand until I left the GOP was that. And we've just seen this now, there's a story in Axios this morning that, that Trump and his people are already raising $500 million for the midterms. Right. Which, of course, Elon could just wire the money on that. But the point is, is that they see politics not as by election cycle. They see it 24, 7, 365, just like, you know, the old, you know, Nick Saban, Alabama football teams, they just reload, right. Every time it's like, okay, that election's over, but like, we were doing stuff before election Day and we're still doing stuff after. And it includes not just campaign money, but all of the front groups and all of the Charlie Kirks and all of that stuff that goes to continually pushing forward. And remember that they've spent 50 years doing this to just barely win last year, but now they're in charge. And so they're going to. You know, Steve Bannon said this all the time, right? If you have your foot on your opponent's neck, you don't let them up. You push down. Right? And that's what they're going to start doing over the course of the next 16, 18, 19 months. And so what our friends, I think, unfortunately, don't understand is, like they're holding up signs, you know, during the State of the Union address. Like, they're still arguing about, like, this or that.
- [16:57]
Charlie Sykes
What was that?
- [16:58]
Reid Galen
Right. And my point is, is like, the fight is not in Washington, D.C. guys. We lost that battle right now, do you have to highlight the things that are going on? Do you have to point out the worst that's going on so that it hopefully gets down to the American people? Absolutely. But we should understand a couple of things when Charlie, like the 20, 26 midterms, we should not have any assumption that it's going to go any way we think it's going to, between what they're going to do with, you know, screwing with voter laws and reducing the amount of money that states are getting from the feds to help run elections. As you know, elections are local things. They're run by oftentimes volunteers. Trump has gutted Cisa the, the part of DHS that was responsible for pushing back against misinformation and disinformation coming from places like Russia, Hegseth has gutted all proactive cyber operations against Russia. So, like, and then you go back to that, you know, 24 7, 365 media operation which, you know, Fox gets the most attention, but it's all of these podcasts and all of these people, and they all go down to the local level. And so if we as people who care about the Constitution, don't get back to where we need to be, which is talking to individuals and figuring out for our democratic friends why 3 or 4 or 5 million of your people stayed home right when they knew what their options were, and they said, my option is not to even choose. I think we really have to get in the game where we are. And look, I understand that there's a lot of. There's a lot of purchase with a lot of angry people about, like, you know, they're fleeing MSNBC and they're fleeing cnn. They're looking for someplace to get that dopamine rush to say, like, you're angry and it's okay to be angry, but that's sort of a mirror image of the right. And the question is, like, how do you encourage people? How do you get people who are already disconnected or disengaged, who aren't listening to you and me, who aren't listening to the podcasts of whoever's rising through the ranks? And for me, it's just again, a fundamental, fundamental mis. Appropriation of time, a misallocation of resources, and a misunderstanding of the world in which we live.
- [19:06]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, so everything you have said has been alarming and I think on point, but how do you counter this? Okay, so we agree that holding up paddles in the State of the Union non address is wimpy, but how do you answer all of this? What is the. What is the strategy?
- [19:28]
Reid Galen
Well, it's the right question. And I think this is the other part too, that's so frankly unsatisfying, is that it took us a long, long time to get us in this hole and we're not going to climb out of it quickly. And so it has to start.
- [19:40]
Charlie Sykes
We have to.
- [19:41]
Reid Galen
We have to. So for me, it has. You know, I spent most of the fall on the road in target states talking to voters. I mean, 10 years ago, Charlie, if you told me this is probably the same for you, that I'd have been out canvassing for Kamala Harris, I'd have thought that you'd gone and hung out with Aaron Rodgers someplace, right? Like, I just don't. I would have believed it, but here we are. And what I found was whether or not it was in wealthy neighborhoods, you know, in the Research Triangle in North Carolina, or, you know, tough black neighborhoods in Grand Rapids, Michigan, right? There was a level of, yeah, I'll do what I have to do. You know, I'm not really happy about anything. And the truth is, you know, one gentleman I spoke with on a Saturday, he was just getting home from work, right? That tells you one thing right? There is the parties are two sides of the same coin, and they both got snakes on them. I don't like Trump because, you know, he's all about himself. Harris is the lesser two evils. Like Charlie. That guy didn't vote, right? That guy has no reason to be.
- [20:36]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, so let's talk about this elephant in the room, because we're talking about millions of people who. Who are Democrats who might have voted for Joe Biden, you know, four years ago, five years ago, but they did not. They did not vote. So, I mean, that amazes me on so many different levels because there was nothing about Donald Trump that we did not know, that we did not say, that was not exposed during the campaign. He ran as pure, undiluted Donald Trump, and yet millions of people who would normally vote for Democrats decided it was not worth coming out. Now, was that a Republican success in suppressing the vote or a Democratic failure in inspiring the vote?
- [21:21]
Reid Galen
I would say both. I would say both. So let me. There's a friend of mine who's a very outspoken activist in the African American community, and he said a couple of things to me. He said, one, don't come to me with your democracy because I've never seen it. Two, don't come to me with your boogeyman, because it's all we've ever known, right? The third thing he asked is, what is the unemployment rate for black men in my county? I said, I don't know. He said, 18%. He said, what would happen if the unemployment rate for white men in this country was 18%? I said, we'd call it the Great Depression, right? And so what I think the Democrats, from my perspective, and I'm happy to say this because I'm not a Democrat, is that they have lost the purchase with their own people. You know, I talked to another activist out of Minnesota who said, I felt like we didn't even have standing to be at the door when we were talking to them.
- [22:12]
Charlie Sykes
Them.
- [22:12]
Reid Galen
And so this Is why, you know what I don't understand how, what are.
- [22:17]
Charlie Sykes
We talking about here? Because the unemployment rate was very, very low. What could they have done to address this? Do you think the Democrats should talk more about black unemployment? Is that the point?
- [22:30]
Reid Galen
I think it's less about, I mean, issues matter. But as you know, campaigns are rarely about issues. They're about values. And I think to me, the 2024 strike point, Charlie, was not economics and it was not, it was not necessarily values. I think it was, frankly, elitism. I think there were a lot of people who feel like that the Democratic Party doesn't care about them, doesn't share their values, doesn't share their issues. I would make an argument, Charlie, that the, you know, whether or not it's, it's the Indian American or the East Asian community, the Latino community or the black community, far more culturally conservative than the Democratic elite. Far more culturally conservative, not socially conservative necessarily, but there's a culture. And so I think that's part of it. I think also, you know what we used to say, and we were very cynical when we said it was, you know, as Republicans, like the Democratic Party's taking you for granted. I think that might have actually caught up with them, I think.
- [23:22]
Charlie Sykes
Oh, I, yes, no, it definitely did. But, but I want to just keep, keep pushing at this. I mean, I don't disagree with all this, but. Okay, so we talk about the Democratic elites, but how does it project? What are you talking about? You're talking about these voters who look at Democrats and think, okay, you are an elitist because what, what is the, what is the message that codes as elite?
- [23:48]
Reid Galen
Okay, it's a great question. So college debt forgiveness is a perfect one. Was it? 32% of the country goes to college, 68% of the country doesn't. So if you are sitting in one of those tough neighborhoods, and this is one thing I think it's very important for folks to hear, is that if you live in a tough neighborhood and you didn't go to college, that doesn't make you uninformed, that doesn't make you incapable of understanding what's going on around you. You have to live it every day. But if that's the thing that you are touting right now, look, I don't know why people got into debt. I don't know. I went to a state school, so 30 years ago, so call me lucky. But if you are a guy with a truck and two buddies, right, you got an eight year old F150 and you are doing Pretty well, right? And whatever your trade is, take, take her. And that's what you see. Here's the question you ask yourself, Charlie, if this is all I hear about the economics of that party, do they care about me? And I could make the argument the answer would be no, they don't. Because that's the stuff that gets the most attention. It gets the most noise. You see the most money going to it. You could be the guy with the F150 going, somebody going to help me pay off my F150.
- [25:03]
Charlie Sykes
See, I completely agree with you on this. It is interesting that the Democrats did not hear this. In fact, really kept going back at it and doubling down, doubling down, going back to 2016. Actually, I remember this very, very clearly that there was a, there's a local politician here, Republican politician, whose name you would probably know. And it's gone. Gotten some dark things, but, but had a very savvy connection with what was happening with the electorate and the changing demographics. And remember he told me that he thought that, that Republicans were going to win in 2016 when he was, went to a meeting in a rural area of Wisconsin that had voted for Obama in the past, but it was a rural area in Wisconsin where the Democratic candidate for state senate was really pushing student loan forgiveness. And he said, I looked around the room and these guys were looking at each other, reacting exactly the way you described it and that this was blowing up in their face and this was back in 2016. And somehow that has never gotten through that. Okay, there are a lot of people out there with a lot of economic anxiety. That's real. Lots of debts, lots of credit card debts, lots of car debts, mortgage, all those payments, medical debts. And the only debt that we're talking about forgiving is the college student debt. And I don't know, there are a lot of other issues that, you know, that code that way as well.
- [26:39]
Reid Galen
But let me just, let me just say this. So I brought this up at a, at a meeting of very well heeled Democrats last fall. And I said, how about this? How about you just break the system that created this in the first place, that is driving up the price of college and everything else. And they're like, well, oh, we couldn't do that. I said, why not? They said we'd have to take on the banks and the university. Like two perfect opponents, two perfect opponents who looks at their bank balance every day, goes, you know what? I really love Wells Fargo. God, I love Wells Fargo, right? Nobody, I mean, unless you got a lot of money and they do well for you. But the point is like, very few. It's the same thing with like gasoline, right? Nobody goes to bed going, man, that Exxon gasoline, Charlie, that's the best gasoline. Yeah, right. And so that's, that's part of it. And you know, you get, look, you've been part of these salons and these discussions, they get very like high minded. They get very down the nose very quickly, right? Because you're in someone's beautiful home in Georgetown or whatever it is. And, and it's very easy to lose sight of the fact that, yes, there are tens of millions of people, including members of the community in urban areas. And this is, I'm not just talking about people in, you know, you know, in Viroqua, right. I'm talking about people in Milwaukee and downtown Detroit and downtown Philadelphia, right? Those are the people that stayed home. Right? Those are the people that stayed home. And so when I see something like, you know, Gavin Newsom cavorting, I love that word, cavorting with Charlie Kirk, right? Like, what are you doing? You're trying to make yourself more palatable to these guys. Like, they're going to think you're a joke and they'll do everything they can to knife you. And then on the other front, you know, you see, okay, well, you know, if you voted for Trump, you know, and you're just an individual voter, an average voter, right? You're, you know, I'm happy that your grandmother's Social Security guns is going to get cut off because you're a mouth breathing nitwit. Like, yeah, you're talking to the wrong people. Like the people you need are the millions who stayed home last year, right? You're not going to get the MAGA guys. They're not coming to you ever. Right? And the few that might peel off are not going to peel off to anybody who thinks they're stupid. Because for me, and I don't want to get too like, philosophical on this, Charlie is like, if you have chosen to leave Donald Trump after voting for him for three times because you see what's happening, right? That is a pretty significant psychological journey, right? Because you have been on the inside for so long, what that person is looking for is someplace to go. And if the only other place they have to go are a bunch of people going, you're a moron. You should have known better. What are they going to do? Are they going to go hang out with people who think they're a moron? Are they going to go back?
- [29:16]
Charlie Sykes
So, so this is kind of the, the, the, the, the, the, the story of the prodigal son. You know, how do you, how do you respond to this? And, you know, we, we've wrestled with this for the last 10 years now. Yeah, the, the whole, you know, fuck around and find out meme on, on, on, on, on social media is not terribly welcoming. So, so look, I mean, how should we be reacting to somebody that's. What would they have swallowed everything? All of Trump's insults, all the racism, all of the reactionary politics, the hypocrisy, the graft, the sucking up to Vladimir Putin, and now they're going to come around like, wow, I didn't think the leopard was going to eat my face. I just got laid off from the VA or I just got laid off from the Forest Service. We're supposed to say, what? Welcome. I mean, this is, this is hard. Let's admit this is, this is a little bit fraught here.
- [30:22]
Reid Galen
Station last week, and I was bringing this up and he said, I get it. He goes, yeah, it's really, really hard. He said, what I try and tell my friends is that if they encounter someone like that, swallow everything you can to be nice and to say, I understand, you're right. Then go home and scream in your pillow, right? Like, it's not. None of this is satisfying. Like, I, this is, I think, a really good point about this. Very little of this is going to be satisfying, right? If, if it makes you feel better in the short term, great. But I think this is the other part too, about, about dealing with authoritarian regimes is they are like Jenga games. You have to pull these people out one at a time. They've been bought in bulk, Charlie. They're going to leave one at a time. And when they leave, we need them to come out because the superstructure is, is tall, but it's, it's brittle, right? And we're seeing it already, as you said. And so I'm not asking you to forgive anybody, right? I'm not asking for you to say, well, mag is okay. That's not, that's not at all the distinction. I'm trying to say. I'm just saying, like, if this person is willing to say, I made a mistake, the answer isn't I told you so, moron, right? Like, would you do that to a friend who, you know, was an addiction, right, and said, you know what, guys, I've been wrong. I need to get help. Would you do that? I don't think you would, right? I don't think you would. Because you wouldn't want that person going back to drugs or alcohol. You would want that person trying to find someplace where they could feel safe enough to figure out where they were going to go from there. And, and here's the other part. Like, if we're going to be the better people, then we got to be the better people, right? One of Trump's most, and I use this word intentionally brilliant maneuvers over the last 10 years is to say, everybody's as bad as I am. You think they're so great, they're not good. And the problem is they, we give them, we who are supposed to be the good guys, give them too many hammers to hit us with. And being assholes, pardon my French, is part of that, right? Which is, yeah, I get it, none of this is going to feel good. But if we're going to find our way out of this, then we've got to figure out how to collect people. People, right? We keep losing elections because we don't have enough people. We need more people and we need to start at the local level. Getting people together, I think even non political and apolitical settings, getting folks involved in their communities, getting them off their couches, getting them off their phones because this disconnectedness feeds on itself, which is, I don't want to be part of what's going on around me because it's too hurtful, it's too ugly, it's too exhausting. So I'll sit on my couch and look at my phone. Like, we got to get humans back together. And I'm not talking about some BS like Heineken ad. Like, we got these two people together who didn't agree on anything and now they found out they love each other. Like, I'm not talking about that. Right. A lot of this stuff is not going to be on television. It's not going to be noteworthy, other than the fact that like last weekend in Pennsylvania, we at the union got 44 people together, right? 40 they had never met. These were all new people. You know, we got them together for pizza. Just a chat, right? And that community building is going to be, to me, the most secure but longest standing way that we get out of this.
- [33:28]
Charlie Sykes
Right. And I think I'm agreeing with you here. You also have to meet people where they are. And, you know, for example, in my newsletter yesterday, I had a very long piece, you know, Trump's attack on Christianity. I understand there are a lot of very, very sincere Christians who believe that somehow that Donald Trump represents some return. And I think that you need to as opposed to just talk about the dangers of Christian nationalism, which is real, you need to say, okay, if Christianity is important to you, let's go through what Donald Trump is actually doing. Let's talk about what he's doing to Christian charities. Let's talk about what he is saying about faith leaders. You have to go to people who are not gonna change all of their values simply because of Donald Trump. And I wanna go to something else. You said people need to think through in terms of political tactics and reaction, the difference between things that make you feel good and things that are actually effective. And I think there's a lot of. I'm going to vent because this is my expression of my emotion. And I just wanna throw stuff against the wall and call people idiots as opposed to, okay, that may satisfy your itch, but does it actually accomplish anything? And I think that a lot of the politics that we see is performative, is like, we're going to do something that makes us look good, the paddles, those kinds of things. But I do think that people need to think through, okay, what is it actually going to take? What do you need to say to that guy from Milwaukee or Detroit who usually votes Democratic but did not think that the 2024 election was worth voting in? I still have a hard time getting my head around that, Reid. So can we just go back to that?
- [35:20]
Reid Galen
Sure.
- [35:21]
Charlie Sykes
These are people who voted for Democrats. They looked at Donald Trump. They know who Donald Trump is. They saw him, they heard about him. And yet, unlike us, they were not alarmed or repelled enough to actually turn out. Why not? What did we. What did they see that we didn't see? Or what did they not see that they should have seen?
- [35:44]
Reid Galen
I think it's very. To me, it's very simple. They are completely disconnected from a political process they believe has nothing for them that it does to them. It does not matter if it's this guy or that lady. My life is not going to change. It's not going to get better. Right. You know, there has been so much fundamental change, economically, socially, from a.
- [36:05]
Charlie Sykes
But what happened in the last four years that convinced them of that? Because we're talking about people who might have voted in 2020, and yet four years later, four years later, they wouldn't turn out to vote for Kamala Harris. So what happened in those four years?
- [36:20]
Reid Galen
Well, I think, you know, that's a great question. So I think that there are a couple things. One is, again, we should go back to this. Who knows how much the MAGA media machine is worth Electorally, if it's worth one or two points, that's enough, right? That's enough. If you are only showing up, and this is, this is both a strategic and a tactical error, Charlie, what I, from what I've seen working with alongside Democrats for five years, if you're only going to show up to someone's door the Tuesday after Labor Day before an election and ask for their vote to tell them that the end of the world is coming if you don't show up, but their world hasn't changed for the better in 10 or 15 years, like, why do they think, why do you think they're going to listen to you now, right? You guys had four years. My life isn't better. And I think that a lot of this too is just this disconnection that people are feeling, which I think is real. Look, if you look at the, you know, the statistics on the economy, right, the top one, top five, top 10% has done better than ever. But why is it then that, you know, well, I don't remember the exact percentage, but let's just call it 40%, to be generous, doesn't have $1,000 in case of an emergency. Or to your point, right, like why is Luigi Mangione seen as a hero, right? Because he is the expression, an awful one, an illegal one, a murderous one, but an expression of frustration that people have. And this is again, I think something that Trump was willing to say, you're getting screwed. Now, he didn't say he was going to do anything about it. He just admitted that and allowed people channel that. Whereas I think with the Democrats, right, look, to their credit, they believe in governance, right? Good. They believe in good governance. The problem is, is that we are in an anti status quo period and we might be for the foreseeable future. And so if Vice President Harris goes on the View and say, what would you do differently? And she just looks blankly at the camera, right? What does that convey? I'm not going to do anything differently.
- [38:16]
Charlie Sykes
Okay. So right now, Donald Trump dominates the news. He dominates the conversation. One of the ways which I think that perhaps some of our friends don't understand the nature of the challenges. Donald Trump understands it is a show. They think it's still about politics and policy. He understands it's about entertainment, it is about programming, and he is going to program the next four years. So here's a loaded question. If you're Chuck Schumer or Akeem Jeffries, how do you counter program against that and are they capable of doing it? I mean, I Just feel as if the casting is completely wrong. And that's why you see some of this disconnect. Because obviously the person who dominates the show has all the eyeballs, can drive the conversation. What can the opposition do? What is the counter programming?
- [39:15]
Reid Galen
Well, I think the first most important thing is for them to get over themselves to think that they're better than this. They're not. They're not better than this. They're not very good at politics. But that's not a new thing. I mean, Charlie, we, I used to joke with my Democratic friends, like, I can't believe we ever lost to y'all. Like after November, I really can't believe we ever lost to them, right? But think about one thing I've noticed what's really interesting about, about Democratic donors or professionals is they're always looking for the next one, right? They're looking for the next Clinton, Bill Clinton, I should say. They're looking for the next Barack Obama. Those two gentlemen very much understood the show. I mean, I could make an argument, I have made this argument that Barack Obama saying hope and change is the other side of the coin of make America great again, just in the major key instead of the minor key, right? No one was upset when Barack Obama was filling arenas with scream throngs of screaming fans when he wins Indiana and North Carolina. Right. Why? Because he went out there and he, he, he made himself the message, much as Trump did. Now the difference is, is that like we don't have anybody, I don't think in the Democratic, at least in Washington D.C. you know, with very few exceptions who can do that.
- [40:25]
Charlie Sykes
It's a big country. There's got to be somebody out there, right?
- [40:28]
Reid Galen
There is, There is somebody. But here's the thing, is this is the other part of why you have to get all these people together. You're going to find leaders of tomorrow, right? Why is it, Charlie, that everybody that I deal with in Democratic politics, I'm almost 50 years old. Why is everybody older than me? Right? Like, I mean, you know, I think of myself, but that's my point, right? And so, you know, where are, where are the youth? Where? I'm not Talking about the 18 year olds, I'm talking about the 35 year olds. Like, where are they?
- [40:56]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, well, where's the next Barack Obama? Next Bill Clinton? Who do you see out there? It's a big country. I mean, is it gonna be somebody outside of politics? Does it have to be George Clooney? Does it have to be Mark Cuban? I mean, seriously, because we need to do everything you're talking about doing. But if it is a show, then the criteria for, you know, for political leadership has changed. You don't work yourself up through Senate committees. You don't become a governor necessarily. What, I mean, where does the next breakthrough showman come from? Or are we in an era of MAGA dominance where they're just going to go from one leader, you know, showman, leader of the cult after another?
- [41:40]
Reid Galen
Well, let me, let me answer the first person. I mean, the. Inside the Beltway, right. And I know this drives establish my establishment Democrat friends. Crazy is that their two best spokespeople are Bernie Sanders and aoc, Right? Because look, they're really good at it, whether you like them or not. They're really, really good at driving a message. The problem is to drive a little bit deeper into the Democratic Party is that for the, for elite Democrats, for the Democratic establishment, many of their economic aims are aligned with basic Republican aims from an economic perspective. So they're not offering enough differently. I mean, I saw this the other, you know, I see all these people, they're like, oh, we're the party of organized labor. Yeah, but under, like your stewardship, organized labor in this country over the course of 50 years went from like 35% to 10.7. So really, like, that's a hard mantle to claim. Right. Why did so many of these, these otherwise upper Midwest states, like you're from. Right. Go from, go from blue to sometimes red to purple? Because when the factory shut down and the unions left, all these guys are like, where am I going to go? And the Republicans were happy to say, look, I don't have anything for you, but I'm as angry as you are. Right. And that was enough. And this whole idea, oh, like, they vote against their own interests, you don't offer them another interest to vote for. And that's what I've said. Like, I don't necessarily agree on every policy thing with Sanders or Ocasio Cortez, but they're out there making a compelling argument.
- [43:06]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, well, I mean, there's going to be a compelling case for, you know, populist politics. And of course, Donald Trump has, you know, seized upon populism and is running a government dominated by billionaires. I get the sense that there is going to be a radicalization when Americans across party lines begin to think, I am sick to death of rich assholes rigging the game for themselves and screwing people like me over. What are we going to do about this? The left has a certain attitude. The right has a certain attitude. But I guess then you have this contest, then who will genuinely be the champion of populism? Donald Trump. You know, with, you know, Elon Musk out there, I think it becomes a little bit more problematic. But he's proven, I mean, he, he has the dominant position. So Democrats have an opportunity, right, to say, you know, this is a government of rich assholes who are screwing you over. We are the party that's gonna do it. He said he was your voice, but he's really the voice of this oligarchic billionaire class. That strikes me as an opportunity. But then again, who is going to carry that message?
- [44:19]
Reid Galen
Well, and you have.
- [44:20]
Charlie Sykes
Bernie Sanders is not going to be the nominee.
- [44:22]
Reid Galen
No. Neither is aoc no, probably not. And neither is Gavin Newsom, frankly. And that's a good thing for Democrats. You don't. I. You just. I mean, I know people think they want him to be the nominee, but first of all, we're so far ahead of ourselves. I mean, Charlie, if you and I are talking in two years, Let me just take a quick step aside here. If you and I are talking on March 10, 2027, what do you think the chances are that the Republican primary for president in 2028 has begun? I'm going to say the answer is zero. The answer is going to be zero percent that that's happened. Unless Donald. Unless Donald Trump shuffles off his mortal coil, there's no way he's going to let that happen the way we've ever thought it was going to happen. You think he's going to let J.D. vance take center stage? No way.
- [45:04]
Charlie Sykes
What's going to happen?
- [45:05]
Reid Galen
I don't know, but that's my point, is like, I'm not going to make any predictions, but we should assume that our biggest issue from, from my, My biggest issue has always been my lack. My imagination is never big enough. I mean, just going back something we talked about at the beginning, I could never have imagined the Oval Office two Fridays ago. I couldn't have. But it happened. Right. And it takes a lot to get me worked up as far as what Donald Trump does anymore. Just because we've seen it so much. I'm not surprised by anything. But that shocked me. Even that. Right. You know, which, because you know what it was, it was a marker, which was the world that you and I grew up in, Charlie, is over. Right? It is over. And we are in a new world. And I think that's another part, too, of, of like playing the game we're in is understanding that everything we knew everything we knew. Call it pre 9 11, pre Hurricane Katrina, pre financial meltdown, you know, pre Covid, pre Trump. All that stuff is gone, right? So now think about it not as a challenge, but an opportunity to say, okay, Trump is wrecking the world we knew, and he's going to wreck the world we're in, because that's who he is. So now what do we want the next world to look like? And I think, to me, that's one of the things that, that I am trying to get out of, right? Which is. And I gave a speech to the, to the south Orange County Democratic women in Orange County, California, 300 incredible women who work their, their, you know, what's off all of 2024. And I gave a speech, I actually wrote a speech, Charlie, which I'd never done before. I called it the end of anti. Which clearly being anti Trump wasn't enough, Right? It wasn't enough for individual voters to say, to your point, I know he's bad, right? Trump's discount rate on bad behavior is 100% because he's been a jerk in public for 60 years. Right. No one's surprised by any of it. So saying, well, you know, can you believe what Donald Trump did? Yeah, I guess I can. So now you. The counter narrative has to be, okay, yeah, he's doing that, calling out the things like you said with Elon and all the oligarchs and everything else. But now you have to provide a proactive message that is different. Not, not different enough, but different from what's on offer now, as there's, you know, that old trope, right? You can't beat something with nothing. Well, what's the something going to be for the good guys and gals?
- [47:16]
Charlie Sykes
No, I. You're making a really interesting point because I do sense that we are in a revolutionary age or about to go into a hyper revolutionary age where all of these institutions, everything is in play, all of these values, all of these issues are going to be in play. So I do think that that's a possibility. And I guess this goes back to what you said earlier, is that people need to understand the rules of the game have changed. And to the extent that people are continuing to use old playbooks, they are not really in this game. Reed Galen, thank you so much for joining me today. I appreciate it very much. You can find Reid's work on Substack, the home front, and thank you all for listening to today's Edition episode of the to the Contrary podcast. We do this three times a week. I think three times a week is a good. Is a good number because it's more important than ever to remain remind ourselves that we are not the crazies. Thanks.