Speaker 1:          00:00:00       

Jay:                00:00:18       all right. It is time for another episode of the fifth estate. My name is Jay Caruso. I'm here at my cohost. Mr Ben Howe. How are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm doing good. Doing good. Uh, also, uh, uh, clear across from uh, uh, Uzbekistan. Andrea route the news gal. Yeah, you guys sound really thrilled to be here. You might want to like punch it up a little bit in the, in the go a buddy. It's good to see you. Hey, it's good to be here, Ben. Hey, I where is that better? Yeah, yeah, we punch it up enough. The cost. You don't mean that you guys both definitely sounded like you did not want to be fair. We just don't like the creditor. That makes sense. Like from bed was the sequel to uh, you know, what's his name? Tommy Lee Jones. I don't even like you man.

Jay:                00:01:12       Yeah, it all right. So, uh, anyway, um, so welcome to The Fifth Estate. If a, just so, just before we get started, if you liked this show, go out there and leave a review. Subscribe on, you know, you can go to the fittest, state. Dot Us slash subscribe and you could subscribe on iTunes. You can subscribe on Google play, stitcher, uh, overcast, the whole bunch of other ones. Uh, so there's no excuse not to subscribe to this podcast. And you know, if you're on iTunes, then go out, leave us a review, give us a five star rating. If you don't want to give us anything, you know, if you want to give us less than five stars and no bother, don't we, we time anyway. All right, so a lot of things happening now. Last, last week we spent, you know, a good portion of the show talking to, uh, talking to, uh, to, I just totally lost my train of thought here.

Jay:                00:02:07       Tim Carney, I only work with the guys see them like every other day. Um, yeah, talking to Tim Carney, so we didn't get, we didn't have a chance to get too much into, uh, the, the Mueller report. It would, which really there is no Mueller report yet. We had Bob, uh, Bob Bars, William bars, um, four page summary, and then he wrote another leather letter kind of explaining it further. And you know, so essentially what we've seen is nothing and yet there's tons of speculation about what's going to be in there, what's not going to be in there. We've got fights already between Congress. Cause bar is saying that he is going to redact certain portions of the, of the report even, uh, he's saying members of Congress aren't going to get see the entire report. Unredacted um, and you know, Jerry Nadler who is the chairman of the judiciary committee saying that's unacceptable.

Jay:                00:02:58       They, the entire report unredacted and, uh, there's the question of whether or not the public should see the whole thing and there's all this kind of organizing and fighting going on. Meanwhile, you have president Trump over there just continuing to attack the investigation even though, uh, you know, William Barr summary said that there they're really what the, there was no evidence that the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russians in an effort to, um, you know, an effort to, to, to sway the 2016 election. Of course I have people in my, my Twitter feeds and they're saying, but that doesn't mean there was no collusion cause he didn't use the word collusion.

Ben:                00:03:36       Sometimes I buy like it's hard not to buy into this 12 d chest stuff because you've got years of him acting like the guilty as the guy on earth battling the investigation. And then it turned out there was no evidence of collusion, which gave him a big boost with his base. But we're then able to say, see they're coming after him, blah, blah blah. And so then at right after that victory and he starts acting guilty again, even though like immediately they're, they're acting guilty again about it using the same tactics they had been using while the investigation was ongoing. And it's like, it's a setup again to have it end up coming out and actually come up smelling like roses and then he gets another boost from the base who says, wow, this guy was just being attacked for no reason. Like I don't actually think any of those things I just said, but it is amazing to me that he's, why wouldn't they want the report out? Why wouldn't they? Right. I don't get why it would be a bad thing.

Jay:                00:04:39       No, no. If, if he's truly exonerated, why not let the whole thing out. I mean, a minute. And that of course, you know, the, the rhetoric from Trump and his supporters ramps up the Trump, uh, the, the, the Trump, the rhetoric from the resistance. People who are all like, yeah, there's must be something in there that's really freaking them out. And He, when it holding comes out, we're really going to see it. It's going to be laid out. It's going to be there. And just because there wasn't a criminal conspiracy, it doesn't mean there wasn't collusion and blah, blah. It's the same. I mean nothing has changed from the time that the investigation began till the time that it ended.

Ben:                00:05:13       My guess, my guess is it's not that there's evidence of non criminal collusion or anything like anything we're looking at regarding Russia. I think it's like other things that that might be embarrassing. My makeup look bad or might make them look dumb, but that he doesn't want out there. That's the only thing I can think is that it's not that there's going to be a smoking gun, it's just that we're dealing with a president who has an enormous ego and doesn't like things that are embarrassing.

Jay:                00:05:43       Oh, certainly. I mean there's, there's going to be information. I have no doubt there's going to be information in there that he's not going to like. I mean, again, it may, there may not be, there may be something that says, Hey, you know, we can't make the determination about whether or not there was a crime of obstruction of justice, but he, you know, Muller could very well laid out a case that if he could prosecute Trump for obstruction of justice, he could have, like he, some of the things that he did rise to the level of obstruction of justice or you know, or very close on the, on the border of it or, you know, there'll be some other information in there about money or something in there, something that's not going to make him look good. And, and I, I, I get the feeling that he may know that.

Ben:                00:06:27       Yeah. It's like it's going to, the report will come out and then people will go, okay, he's a shitty person.

Jay:                00:06:35       Right? Yeah, of course. It'll, it'll wind up, all it's gonna do is sit there and do it, will do nothing. But basically confirm the expectations of everybody who's either pro Trump or anti-Trump. Okay.

Ben:                00:06:48       Well, that's what's the most amazing about all of all of the things that were guarding Trump. Every scandal. Um, whether it turns out that it was something that was actually illegal or whether it was just showing that he was a shitty person. No one really disagrees on those things. I mean, when [inaudible] was giving his testimony is that like anybody was there to contest that he's a dick. Right? They all know who he is. Right. And so when, when something like this report comes out and that's why nothing will change, it will just confirm what both of the people who support him and the people who oppose him already think of him. And the reason that both sides already think of them that way is because it's true.

Jay:                00:07:26       Well, yeah, you're right. I mean there's nothing in the report and it's going to sit there and be like, unless like, you know, it goes, uh, I don't remember who it was that, that old senator or somebody or governor who said, you know, the, you know, I'm, I'm, unless they, unless they catch me in bed with a, with a, with a dead girl are alive, boy, I'm going to be okay. And I think that's what it is with it's, there's nothing that's going to be in there where people are going to sit there and say, well that doesn't sound like him. I can't imagine he would do something like that.

Ben:                00:07:54       Right. Let's face it, if he was going to bed with the dead goal and alive boy, they'd still support him. That's true. That's true.

Jay:                00:08:01       And if you cure cancer tomorrow, there would be people that would still say he was an evil person.

Ben:                00:08:06       Well, you know, his uncle was a scientist or something, so he knows what he's doing. No, I really do find the whole thing. At this point I'm like, I've never been happier that I sat back for the whole investigation. I mean, I sometimes I feel like people just did not learn from 2016 in 2016 I was looking at the polls, I was looking at everything that was indicating that Trump would lose the election and I would like everyone else, even the people today who said that they were sure that he would win. Everybody thought he was going to lose. Even Trump did. And after 2016 I was like, you know what, this guy, and there's something about him that makes everything go a different way than what you might imagine. So when it comes to this investigation from very early on, I bought, I don't know if there's collusion. I do think that he might have made mistakes, uh, or he might have done things that he didn't know. He couldn't do a, or things that didn't rise to the level of criminal, but we're very amateurish. Um, and that, that's what this was all about. And I think that's really what it's going to end up being.

Jay:                00:09:20       Yeah. And you know, the whole idea of the investigation is what always made him upset because he just assumed that anything related to Russian interference was going to be blamed on him. Are pegged on him like, you know, if he admitted yes, Russia tried to interfere in our election. Absolutely. Without question, I have no doubt that that's what they did then that would reflect poorly on him. It really doesn't. I mean it's like you don't have to, just because Putin tried, you know, to, to engage in tactics that would help Trump doesn't necessarily mean that he was involved. If he admits that that's the case. I mean, so that's why there's like all of this evidence that's there and bar, excuse me, a Mauler in his eye. Maybe that's another reason why Trump was still upset because, because Muller did say, look, I've gotten Dyson diamond, sir, I instruct, I secured indictments, not just the, you know, people who are allying but for actively trying to, you know, involve themselves in our investigation, including hacking and everything else. You know, now I don't feel too sorry for the Democrats because they were, they left herself vulnerable, but that doesn't change the fact that Russia's still did those things.

Ben:                00:10:30       Yeah. You know, you know, uh, Jonah was saying on the remnant the other day or last week's episode, um, you know, he'd kind of stayed on, invested in the whole thing as well. But yeah, there's no, there's no changing that press conference that Trump gave where he said he wanted Putin to hack the emails. Right. You know, like, I mean, people can spin that however they want or just say it was an amateur move or just say, oh, come on. He was just being snarky or whatever you want. But it's clear that even if he didn't criminally collude, like he didn't have a problem with it.

Jay:                00:11:10       No, I need the, I love Wiki leaks thing too. You know, he was holding up emails a day and hacked and he, I Lou, what about weekly? Cause I love wikileaks.

Ben:                00:11:20       Yeah. I think a lot of those kinds of things, including the Trump tower meeting and everything else, uh, you know, it may not have risen to the level of criminal, but it was just like stupid amateur moves by people who did not consult the right attorneys or professionals to know what not to do when running a presidential campaign. Right?

Jay:                00:11:43       If you can't find people in the United States that have information on Hillary Clinton and you're relying on, on, on Russian nationals for that kind of more information, that's just ridiculous. You just said,

Ben:                00:11:54       can I say, no, no, forget it. It is just so ballsy like when you think back on, it just is a presidential candidate giving a press carb roots asking our greatest international adversary to hack the emails of his opponent. You know, like what, what stones be constantly about him and maybe this is like a magic about him that I just don't get and that that's why people love him. What stuns me is that he, he so constantly does stuff like that, but that's why he gets away with it. I mean, let him asking our greatest international adversary to hack the emails of his political opponent is like 15th on his list of insane shit. He's done barely even. It doesn't even crack the top 10.

Jay:                00:12:46       Yeah, no, it's true. And it's, it's just, you know, this whole, this whole thing is just, is just driving me crazy because it's like, um, it's like, once again, you have the, you know, the, the fringes that are controlling the entire debate, you know, because you just want to have people like, you know, hey, we can, we can beat our chest a little bit of, hear me, you, Andrea, Jonah, Charlie Cook. A lot of people sat there just kind of, we were the ones that were saying, let's wait and see. Let the investigation play out. Let's see what happens. Let's, you know, stop smearing him. The investigation hasn't taken that long. This is, you know, this is a counterintelligence investigation. It's going to take longer. There's so much that has to be done. It's, you know, but it's, it's like, you know, doing that and having that kind of viewpoint was considered, you know, traitorous regardless

Ben:                00:13:39       your side you were on. Yes. Cause you had to pick a side. It's not like I'm a, uh, some kind of wiser person. It's just, I used to do stuff like that where I would jump the gun or I would hear the news and, and, and react to it and then find out there was caught when those kinds of things happen to you enough, given how fast the news cycle has been running for the last 10 years since we all got on social media, do people not learn lessons? You know, I mean like I just got to a point where I was like, you know what? I should probably wait this one out. You know, we used to say, I'm not going to comment on it because there's an ongoing investigation. What happened to that?

Jay:                00:14:19       Yeah, no, that's, that's no good anymore. Everything has to be taken to 11. It's like you'd never think that, you know, a, a, a mockumentary movie. We're going to 11 and turn it up to 11 would become like a defining moment. The defining, uh, you know, state of politics, everything has to be asked to go to the highest level. And you know, it's like only when something, you know, when finally everything is out, it's suddenly settles down. Uh, yes.

Ben:                00:14:48       Well, and what's interesting is, you know, the having been on social media, or excuse me, having been in politics longer than, um, the, the amount of, um, saturation that social media has now, you know, I was in, I was doing stuff politically and interested in politics before everyone was on Twitter. And so back then, this is how politicos spoke. They spun everything, they knew how to spin it, you know, uh, everybody spoke like that kind of language and it was infuriating, but it was mostly just people that were like in the bubble of politics. But now everyone knows the language. You know, every Rancho on Twitter will come to me and say, the kind of crap that somebody working for media matters would've said 10 years ago. Right. You know, and it's, it's just more examples of why social media is destroying the world and I'm glad to participate. Yeah.

Jay:                00:15:49       Yeah. Well, speaking of which, and, and moving into another subject here, you sent me a tweet that you had, uh, that you, you kind of like took a screenshot of, I guess you did a search, a Google search of, you know, people obsessed with Alexandria Ocozzio Cortez, you know, it's like any criticism is met with the response of why are you so obsessed with her?

Ben:                00:16:09       Right? Like, look at what social media has done to talking points. Do you remember back? Wouldn't talking points used to get sent out? Oh yeah. You know, people would write, like if you knew, if you were on the right email lists, there would be, well, you know, here's, here's what's going on and here's what, you know, our communications people are saying about it. And so if anybody asks you, you know, here's, here's what we think. A bottle of wine, you know, talking points and now you know, you can go back. There was a montage, I'll never forget, I'm worth limbo when, um, in 2000 when when Bush chose Dick Cheney and all of, uh, all of the pundits were all saying you had gravitas and it was just like a nonstop, everybody thanks Robert, that cause they all got the talking points but now they don't even have to send them out.

Ben:                00:16:59       Like it just spreads like a virus. I went through just hundreds and hundreds or thousands even, uh, and so many that I had to use a longer sentence to parse the results. Cause originally I had just said AOC and obsessed that was too many results. So I had to change it to why are you obsessed? Which is a very specific phrase and it's still pulled up so many results that I had plenty to choose from. Um, it's a talking point, you know, she says it and then everybody repeats it and then it just grows and hand. By the way, it impacts the right because eventually it goes from them constantly saying, why are you obsessed to the retort of all through the results. Now are people asking AOC why she's obsessed with socialism? Why she's obsessed with it? Like everybody's doing it now.

Jay:                00:17:56       Yeah, yeah. It's, it's it, it is one of those, it's one of the social media phenomenon, but it did it, we'd start it off with say like vox or, or, you know, some kind of liberal Putin or writer saying, you know, why is the right so obsessed with AOC, you know, and it's, you know, and of course it's a, it's a false question because the right is not obsessed, you know, that it, you know, CNN,

Ben:                00:18:23       it's any greater extent than they would be with anyone else who's constantly getting covered in the nude.

Jay:                00:18:28       Right. But that's the whole thing. She's the one constantly getting covered by the mainstream media. And so then the Conservatives respond to that or a pouncer, whatever you want to say. But you know, there, there's a response and there should be a response. She doesn't get to just say whatever the hell she wants and then we're supposed to turn, you know, be, you know, enthralled with her wonderfulness. You know, if she says something stupid, which he says often it's fair to sit there and criticize her.

Ben:                00:18:54       Well, and people revise history when they don't. Somebody would say an immediate yes y'all orb. So let's go over number like this about Nancy Polosi I was like hell, are you talking about? Yeah, we talked about Polosi constantly. We've parsed all of her press conferences like there, there's no doubt that whoever is considered to be influential and empower on the left is going to be targeted, so to speak, by the ride. And that's normal. And the same thing happens in reverse. Of course it does. Why wouldn't it? They, these are people who are championing things that you don't believe in and you think are dangerous and you don't want people to buy into and they're wielding a lot of power. So yeah, you go after those people.

Jay:                00:19:42       Right, right. And you know, the thing is through all of this, you know, Nancy Polosi is one of the ones who's been like shooting down. A lot of the things that AOC has been saying. You know, when, when the green new deal came out, she called it the green dream or whatever they call it. That's how she referred to it as, you know. But the thing is, again, it goes back to, you know, a Casio Cortez has this platform now, you know, she, she's, she's taking social media and then moved it into the, to the mainstream. And so she says all of these different things, you know, and, and I saw, so Friday night she did a town hall with Chris Hayes from Msnbc and I watched it so everybody else didn't have to. Um, thank you for that. Yeah. So I was watching it and I'm watching.

Jay:                00:20:30       I had to get well in the same household. It's, you know, it's unfortunate you have to get stuck with that kind of thing. So, um, I was watching it and you know, there's so many different things or segments that like, you know, at one point it was called the case for the green new deal. And the one thing that she couldn't ever do was make the case for the green new deal. She would say things that didn't make any sense. Like one time she said she was talking about making the head, she said, this is not mean we change our entire structure of government, but what it means is that we need to do something, something. And that's what the solution is all about. And I'm thinking to myself, what, what are you going to do? And, and, and, you know, no criticism. And I, and I wrote in a piece I wrote for the independence.

Jay:                00:21:17       There's no criticism of the green new deal that invokes the argument that we're going to change the structure of government. Nobody said that, but we haven't. But people have argued it's going to change the structure of the economy in a way that we've never seen before. And if you're going to do that, they need to make the case for why. But that's the only thing she doesn't do. She'll sit there, she'll take off a list of things that happen. Like she said, insulin prices are going up and children are going to schools with lead in the water and it's in reference obviously to Flint. And the question then is, well why does the federal government have to be involved in that? Well, what is the, where are they going to do? How are you going to lower the price of insulin if it's up? You know, it's like there's all these problems that she just lists and then pretends the green new deal is going to solve that. But there's never the how portion.

Ben:                00:22:05       No, because she's a, and I said this on Twitter and, and, and, and some of what some of the requires I got were amusing because I expected them, but I said that she's, what happens when a Twitter account gets elected, you know, because of that she handles things like Twitter, like a popular Twitter. Right. But that, you know, only needs to summarize what they think about a complex issue in 280 characters. Right. And we'll feel confident that they've made their case as long as enough people like it and retweet it. And I think that's how she is.

Andrea:             00:22:45       But if you, if you go back to the fundamental issue that's at play here, I, and I've, I've, I've said this before, that not on here, but I've said just in life in general, is that there is a vast misunderstanding of a certain age of American who has been brought up to think that problems are solved at the national level and the things that AOC and other, you know, people her age are talking about, those are not things that are settled at your national level. That's the last place that you want to go to for getting your water fixed. Do you want to be going to your, you know, getting involved on a, on a local level in your town and you know, just going to your local, um, a town council meetings and things like that. Your, your school, you know, board meetings, your parent teacher conferences, you're anything other than counting on the federal government to be handling these issues.

Andrea:             00:23:41       And I think that that is where so much dissatisfaction with government also comes from is what, when you are counting on a governmental body that is overseeing over 330 million people, you are going to be dissatisfied with that on every level, top to bottom, other than taxes, national security and the other small amount of things that the federal government is supposed to take care of. The rest of these things. AOC would be great on, like I told 'em I was telling somebody the other day, she would have been great going first for a borough, you know, going to her borough and, and being on the council for each, you know, her borough. But that's not what she did. She went, she went instead she, they think that Congress is the be all and end all of getting things done. And that's not the case.

Ben:                00:24:32       Oh yeah. They, they think that they think the purpose of congress is not to represent their constituents from where they're from. Right. At the national level. They think it's a place where you can get to go vote on what the president does. Right. You know, like that's, that's sort of how they look at it. What is, what is Washington going to do? That's why they're there. Right. The only thing that I know of that she's done so far is prevent 25,000 jobs from coming to New York. Like that's the only thing that I'm aware of that she's actually done that's impacted her community.

Jay:                00:25:02       Well, and it goes back to what Tim was saying last week about, you know, getting involved in, you know, he was talking more about civic organizations and everything like that, but politics at the local level is important. You know, I, you know, when I was at, was it the Dallas Morning News, it was a stunning, it's a city of 1.3 million people over 1.3 million people. Yet you could win a race for the City Council of Dallas with about 2000 votes. Now I kid you not, there are people that were elected to the city council in Dallas, people with a lot of power, with less than, you know, 5,000 votes. Uh, that, that's how disinterested people are a lot of times at the local level. Now, you know, when, when Beto Ran, all of the sudden it was like all of these races had 600, 700,000 votes are people voting like crazy because of the state race.

Jay:                00:25:51       But yet when you have the, the May oral race or city council race or these kind of local races, you're lucky if you can get a few thousand people out to vote in total in total. And then, you know, and so then you wonder why it's like the same people keep getting elected over and over and over again, even at the local level. And you say, well, nobody gets involved, you know, talked about, um, you know, he keeps saying that, you know, if, if we, if we eliminate the electoral college or if we, you know, why do we keep, you know, doing these types of things. There was an interesting conversation that Jonah was having on the remnant this week with, with David French. He was talking about how the parties no longer have the kind of power that they used to, to pick nominees for particular races and, and eat, including the presidential race.

Jay:                00:26:37       And he's right. And, and Jay costs are to avert a feature story for us last week talking about how to give the parties some more that power back the other that the primary is basically took the, took the power out of the, away from the parties and handed it to anyone. So you have people like Bernie Sanders who, he was not a Democrat, but he used the democratic infrastructure to nearly get the nomination. Donald Trump is not a traditional republican, but he used the republican infrastructure to get the Republican nomination. And if you look at, um, who is like, you know, if you look at it, here's the perfect example, smaller race, but it was the congressional special congressional race in, in Pennsylvania. It was the Democratic Party that chose Conor lamb to be in that race because if it was left to a primary, it would have been some far left guy who probably would have lost that.

Jay:                00:27:29       True. Is that true? That is it. Is it, is it the party infrastructure or the states undermining the party infrastructure? Because if the party infrastructure had determined that for Republicans in 2016 you would have had ted Cruz who did all of the groundwork states like Washington state had ted Cruz, the he, he went in there, it Colorado, the other places he, Ted Cruz had people on the ground working the, the actual, you know, Republican parties within those states on the individual level. But the state governments have come in and undermine the states by saying, no, you were going to have open primaries. Right. Well, but, but I mean it's still, it's not, again, it's it, that's the whole thing. No, it's, it's like the parties have, it's almost like not like the partner. The power was taken away from the parties as the parties have kind of abdicated that power, you know, because everything has to be democracy, democracy, democracy, and if, you know, if you have a situation where a party, I mean that's why you see these things where they talk about conventions, like conventions in certain states where they nominate people. People like freak out at this idea. How dare you know the voice of the people be taken away by, by the power part, uh, by the party structure, who's then going to choose our nominee.

Ben:                00:28:41       And it's always fascinating to me, honestly. Like when, when, whenever I've talked about how I think we were better off when the state legislatures voted for senators. Sure. Of course people, people would push back. No, so you just want to take votes away from the people. I was like, you know, we don't vote on the UN ambassador either. I mean like we don't vote on everything. We vote on people. And then the way that it was designed was that yeah, we do. Ultimately the people will do ultimately have control because they say, well, who vote for the people?

Jay:                00:29:13       Right, exactly. When we took away that element of federalism, when we had the 17th amendment, which is why I have our long advocated for the overturning of the 17 well the structure of the government was supposed to be that your representatives, your, your members of the house were represented the people, whereas the senators were there to represent the individual states, you know, so that you are representing the states. And that was that kind of power, dynamic

Ben:                00:29:39       cool lies the power or, or you know, prevent the, the tyranny of the majority and all that other stuff. And you know, the, the, and by the way, if you say the curating of the majority now people, people also attack you and say that you know, you, you're an elitist who just wants black people to be slaves and so on. You know, uh, what, what, what gets me most cynical is talking about these aspects of things because I don't see this train reversing course, you know, like the, the, the primary objective of most politicians these days is really just related to the next election. Um, and, and really just the midterms matter, but really just the presidential elections because that's where all the Hoopla is around and the midterms, you know, they're important, but everything could change in a presidential election. That's where they put most of their energy and if they're going to win, they all have to kind of talk populous.

Ben:                00:30:41       And populism is centralized government at this point. I mean, even on the right, that is what people want. They want solutions from Washington. So I just feel like we always talk about, and have ever since I've been in politics, have talked about like, you know, we need to get people into committeemen positions and we need to get people at the party level, at the local level. And then somebody will get on a city council and find out that these Jack Wads aren't going to do anything they're supposed to do. And they have very little ability to influence that group who got incumbents that have been there for 40 years and they just give up and everybody just keeps moving forward with more and more centralization. Tim was talking about that last week about how the right is there. You know, they, there are plenty of things that they want Trump to do that are conservative, but it's like, why are they thinking of it that way? Why are they thinking we want Trump to do blank for us? How we're supposed to be?

Jay:                00:31:42       No. And, and, and you know, people are probably like bristle at the notion of Tom Nichols with Tom Nichols has made good points on Twitter before saying that many conservatives have now become the opposite of what they were 20 years ago when, when minorities, you know, Democrats and you know, we'd sit there and say, you know, you know, minorities, you know, would say, hey, we need the government to do this or need the government to that. And, you know, and it was the people who are now saying, we need the government to do, who would be the ones that sit there and say, why do you need the government to that pull yourself up by your bootstraps. You know, you don't need the government to help you. I'm doing this all on my own and now we've seen this kind of shift where they're saying, yeah, I want the government to do that.

Ben:                00:32:20       I think part of the reason for that is we, we've fallen into this, um, equal reaction situation where things are based on what they're not based on the principles so much as they are filling in the opposite wall of the other party. So like a good example would be identity politics. Um, I said the other day, um, the, the right opposes or no, any type of identity politics is instructive. White men hardest hit, you know, because that's how it works now is they, there's like a filling in of the gaps. We hate identity politics. And the way we talk about how we hate identity politics is to constantly talk about how it's unfair to white people. Which is identity politics. So you know, and, and nobody can see their own hypocrisy on those issues because there are so enraged by the other side's position, right. That they're mostly just interested in punching back in an equal and measured way. Right. You know what I mean? So when it comes to like this federal, you know, w when it comes to centralization, it's the same thing. You know, it used to be we want, um, you know, we want federalism and so on. But like the, the, the, what was coming out of Washington are being proposed that I'm watching to put the left was so huge that it eventually became, we will propose equally huge things just on the opposite end of the SPEC.

Jay:                00:33:47       Right. It was, it was a situation where we used to be, we're conservatives were saying, keep the cup. I want the government off my back. I want the government as much as they can to be out of my life. Now it is with a large segment, which is the month to Trump supporters is, well, I want mine now and what is the government going to do for me? Not necessarily. What is the government going to do? What's best for say like everybody, it's what is the government going to do as best for me?

Ben:                00:34:14       You know what's interesting is how could they have influence? Like there may have been ways, way dangerous or risky ways to, to to stop that from happening. Like you know, when Bush was in office, we talked about health care reform as much as anyone, you know, it's always a topic. But you know what if we had said, look, we don't care if people want to have socialized medicine, it's just gotta be in their state. So what we're going to do is we're gonna change the rules to allow you to do that if you want to and allow the states like Massachusetts and whoever do whatever they wanted and let the states who didn't want to do that, not do that. And then let those people fail. Let the other ones succeed. And maybe we could have ended up winning the argument and used federalism to do it. But instead we tried to figure out at the national level how to solve the problem, which just left it open for the left and say we've got a different national solution.

Jay:                00:35:06       Right. And, and, and in fairness to a lot of people who have criticized George W. Bush, that is one of the areas where I think Bush did kind of kick this off because it was like, okay, government solving problems. If we do it in a conservative way, it may actually work. You know, it's not, it's, it's not so much a government can't solve these issues is that it can't do it the way Democrats want to do it. If we have our chance and we get the government more involved, then things will be better. Um, you know, and that was just a small part of it now, but now we've reached over to the point, you know, where we have somebody like

Ben:                00:35:42       Aiden anymore. Like they don't even debate it on the writing.

Jay:                00:35:45       No, they're just flat out ask me. Yeah, exactly. And then plus the input. But now we also have bad policy that people think is going to help, you know, for example, Trump's trade policies, trade policies are horrendous. You know, and I heard Joan, I was laughing today, he says, cause now all of a sudden Democrats are like free trade proponents. And he goes, it's not like they started going out and just consuming volumes of Adam Smith books. Uh, it's just, you know, it's the same filling in the gap. It's so saying, yeah, Trump is opposed to free trade. So Democrats are now going to support areas of free trade. You know, were, were, were, were in fact people like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are quietly sitting by, you know, applauding Trump in implementing tariffs and doing all this other kind of the immune though, you know, in Trump saying we're getting billions in revenue from the terrorist. And it's like, well, no, you're not because China's not paying the tariffs. We are, consumers are paying upstairs.

Ben:                00:36:43       I guess that's why it doesn't bother me. Um, but the party infrastructures are being used against them and they're losing power in certain ways. And so on is because I want the parties destroyed. I mean I just do, I, I wasn't always that way. I understand why parties exist but they have the tribalism of it all has gotten so out of control that we're just living in a giant west side story all the time and I don't see how that changes unless there was like a giant independent movement where people start just saying, you know what, I'm not going to be with either you guys and actually win. So the like the issue with they never win.

Jay:                00:37:21       Well or or we're, if we get back to, you know, or if we get back to a situation like Jay costs was talking about when the parties have more power, especially over their own members like 20 years ago even, I'm not sure what, do you guys have more power? They no, no, no. I mean more power. I don't mean, no, no, no. I mean more power within their own with them within their, within their own like

Andrea:             00:37:43       Alexandria. That's the only way. That's the only way you get them to basically self destruct is if is if they do have more power over their own party than they will lose membership and they will lose lose, you know, large swath. Well, right. That's why you want that because basically will eat themselves. I mean that's, that's what we're basically seeing, you know?

Jay:                00:38:03       No, but my fear is I don't want to get into a parliamentary type system. Yeah. That's the last thing that, that this country needs, you know, in, you know, it, it, it would be, it would be terrible, but, but if we, if there were,

Andrea:             00:38:16       you don't need, you don't need to worry about that because we are set up as a two party system that we're not ever going to be a parliamentary system where we have coalitions of, of multiple parties.

Jay:                00:38:25       Right. Well, okay, well if the parties destroy themselves, who takes over?

Ben:                00:38:29       Oh, all you need to do is to change. Like it has to start at the top and trickled down. You don't like, you don't, when I say destroy the parties, I mean destroy them as they are. I don't mean to destroy the idea of a party system, two party system. I'm saying destroy the power that the strangle hold that they have on forcing everything to be a binary choice between two pieces of shit. You know, and I think the way that you do that is by eventually actually getting a real independent candidate to win the presidency. I don't think, I don't, I don't think I'm smart enough to do that. I don't know if it will ever happen, but I think that that's the way to do it because you would, you, you don't have to destroy the parties in the sense that they wouldn't still hold the most of the positions in elected government, but you do need to have enough independence who wield enough personal political capital to be able to force issues to not be so tribal. And I think you started with the presidency. I just don't know that the American people are ever going to go backwards from how tribal they've become.

Jay:                00:39:36       Right. But I mean, but it's not even so much tribalism and this is why I think you guys really should read Jay cost piece because he even says, I'm, I'm, I'm reading from where he says, here. He goes, he goes, for this to happen. He's talking about this requires institution. When the United States or the political parties are Republican, democratic parties are at least to some degree, organize around big ideas, generally speaking, Republican, Sanford, lower taxes and Shermer national defense. While Democrats stand for more generous social welfare benefits and more dovish foreign policy, this means electing more Republicans will usually result in lower taxes and electing Democrats yields more social welfare. The parties, in other words, elevate our vote choices from decisions just about candidates to preferences about public policy. For this to happen, members of a party have to agree beforehand on how they will behave once they are in government if they break this agreement or otherwise act and erratic and unpredictable ways.

Jay:                00:40:27       Democratic accountability is lost since candidate support becomes divorced from policy implications keeping party members loyal in turn requires a series of institutional checks, carrots and sticks to reward those who stick to the plan and punish those who do not. And that is where, you know, I remember when people freaked out when John Bayner, who's old school institutional government guy basically punished a bunch of people, bunch of the tea party people, candidates kick them off committees when they decided to break ranks and they, I think they were, yeah, I think this was the, the speech the speaker vote who they were going to vote for for speaker rather than presenting United front. A bunch of them went and voted for like, I dunno for uh, for Justin Amash or something like that. And you know, Bayner said, you know what, now you're going to pay the price. And he kicked them off some committees at the end people were outraged and it's Kinda like, well that's exactly the kind of party power. I totally

Ben:                00:41:24       disagree with him and the, and the, and the proof of it is [inaudible] or doing stuff like that created the conditions of Trump because his entire election was based on battling the various establishment that would do those sorts of things and command that kind of party loyalty. I think his, his ideas completely dismiss just how pervasive social media has made it. So everyone is sharing power at this point in terms of influencing candidates even more than their own party members.

Andrea:             00:41:53       Right. But I also, I also don't think, I also don't think, you know Jay Jay was saying that Jay costs mentions that, you know that Republicans generally believe in lower taxes or whatever and and, and smaller government funding. But you're never putting these kinds of, you know, social welfare programs back in the bottle. And I'm sorry, Republicans no longer stand for lower, lower, lower taxes in any or or, or, or lower spending. And that's the thing, you can't have lower taxes without, without cutting spending. And they want to have their cake and eat it too. And I think that that is where Republicans are really getting themselves into something. And you can't sell, you can't sell cutting social welfare benefits anymore. No, no, no. Hold on, let me, let me go.

Ben:                00:42:39       Big Ideas, big ideas. They're centered around big slogans. That's it. It just, it happens to involve tax cuts, but there's no big school concept involved about this. It's just whatever they think they can pass that is going to make them be able to say the words we cut taxes. They don't have any underlying um, rules amongst themselves as to how they're going to make sure that we don't create deficits as a result of allowing spending to continue to go out of control. There's no principals involved. It's just being able to say, we cut

Jay:                00:43:12       and, and, and hold on, let me step back for a second because what about Jay costs works. She said, I just totally disagree with them, but this is not something that culminated, is it not something that started in 2010, you know, costs as this goes back 30, 40 years and 30 or 40 years ago at somebody had people stepped out of the line like that, the party would have been able to punish them. It also that Mccain, he's talks about how Mccain Feingold, uh, has, has, you know, taken control away from uh, you know, outlawing unlimited soft money donations. It, it, it, it hampers the ability of state parties to manage and fun campaigns on the ground. You know, that's why you get someone like Trump winning the nomination with at the time that he crossed the threshold of having enough delegates. I think he wanted me to like 30 fights that same 30 something percent that continues to support you until this day is how many votes is as a percentage that the one you ended wound up winning like 40 something percent. But after that everybody had dropped out so it didn't matter. But he was like at 32 33% when he crossed that threshold. And so you know when you talk about, you know, the, the, the parties aren't dark, don't have enough power. I think that there is a, there is an element of what Jay costs is talking about saying that the structure is not there anymore. Everything is kind of like open.

Ben:                00:44:29       Yeah. But I think what he's missing is that he's, you know, you go back to when you were talking about, you know, in the fifties and sixties and they have that kind of ability to keep the ball line and so on. The evolution of getting to this point is because that's how it was. It was destined to become this because people don't like feeling like they don't have power over their party or the party has too much power and eventually they revolt against the establishment. So I don't see a reversal of that trend. If you go back and make it how it was, maybe you start over by down it, but you may start over. But I think it's those very things that he's talking about but eventually evolved into what we have now, which is a bunch of pissed off people who think the party doesn't listen to them. We're destined to keep coming to this point.

Speaker 1:          00:45:22       Okay.

Ben:                00:45:23       I hate parties. I'm sorry.

Jay:                00:45:26       I see now. I am. I am

Ben:                00:45:29       the idea of party loyalty being the like party loyalties fricking problem right now.

Jay:                00:45:35       Yeah. I don't think it is the problem.

Ben:                00:45:39       Create more party loyalty.

Jay:                00:45:41       No, I I disagree with that because, because if you look at, and you know if you're a Democrat right now, if you're a Democrat that wants to win the presidency, you're pulling your hair out of your head because you see Alexandria Kazuyo Cortez and you see, you know, ill and Omar and you see these who are, you know, who are doing what they want without ramification. Yeah. They could say whatever they want. I mean, AOC said during that, during that she sent, you know, she tried to reject the notion of this is the tea party of the left because she tried to sit there and say, oh well the tea party was rooted in xenophobia and white supremacy and you know, it was funded by the Koch brothers and this is about, you know, return to democracy. And it's not sense because one of the things that she did was talk about how Democrats are going to get in the way of what they wanted to do, you know, which is precisely how tea party Republicans when they first got elected. Yeah. Everyone was like, you know, we're totally against the, the, you know, the establishment. It was, everything was the establishment at first. You don't hear that now. Now it's replaced by elites. You know, if you're not, if you're somebody who isn't with Trump, you're an elitist. You're not an establishment, you're an elitist. And, and so I, you know, again, it's like I don't if you, if you go back,

Speaker 1:          00:46:49       okay,

Jay:                00:46:50       again, certain amount of time, Alexandria Qosmio Cortez would not be out there flaunting, you know, being as boisterous and loud and build and she,

Ben:                00:47:00       but that's, that's like saying that this 40 year old serial murderer, if you went back to when he was 10 and not a serial murderer, but still being beaten everyday by his father, then he wouldn't be a serial murderer at that time. Well, that's absolutely true. But he is absolutely on the track to become one because of the conditions of his life didn't change at all. So we could go all the way back and make everything the way it was four years ago and we will end up at this exact same spot because people do not like the idea of the party having the control and the rains over this stuff. It, Nancy Pelosi had the controls to keep AOC under control. There would be a revolt just like you saw with Trump.

Jay:                00:47:35       All right. But now, but the problem is it's completely flipped over. I mean the tea party's origins were in Baga is the tea party I had to buy, but the whole, but, but we're talking about the underlying principles of what form of, of what caused the tea party to spring up was the continuing government intervention into what they felt. It's like private stuff. Like you shouldn't have bailed out the banks, you shouldn't have bailed out the insurance companies. You shouldn't have done those things. Now we're full throw to the other way. What is the government going to do for me? When is the government going to stop this one? Is the government going to stop that?

Ben:                00:48:10       And what I would argue is that they always wanted those things that they're asking for now. Back then, the things that they were arguing against, the same things that I was arguing against, those were things that did that affect their specific lives and their specific interests. But the moment that they're specific lives and specific interests became on the table, or if they could be convinced that they were on the table, this suddenly a blip, not because they didn't always feel that way, but because they just weren't on the table at that time. So when the left comes out and they have a bunch of ideas that the people on the right didn't like, it was easy for them to come out and sound principle, none of this stuff that they cared about was on the table yet, but then the moment they got back in power, they were like, all right, now it's time for our big government ideas. People, uh, like they, they, they always felt that,

Jay:                00:48:53       well then the whole idea, okay, so then the whole idea of saying that, you know, this came as a result of people saying the government, you know, the people who were reelected don't listen to us while they were doing, they didn't do what you wanted them to do. So I don't understand what you mean. They weren't listening. So you wanted them to cut this and cut that until they're in power. Then you don't want them to cut it.

Ben:                00:49:13       They just want them to cut it. No, they still want them to cut those things. They just also want them to do other things.

Jay:                00:49:18       No, no. In right now. Right now, if, if, if, if Donald Trump came out tomorrow and said, I'm, you know, I'm going to sit there and I'm going to propose a plan that's going to, sorry, we have to say social security and Medicare and that's going to require raising the retirement age, cutting benefits. The very people who support him would be outraged about it.

Ben:                00:49:38       That would be an interesting experiment because one of the unique things about Trump is that he upsets it a little bit with how Coulter she is.

Jay:                00:49:45       Now. That's true too. That's true. So maybe, maybe not, but I'm, yeah, but I mean there are people who are on the edge who would support him in certain ways that would freak out.

Ben:                00:49:53       I remember on future Rama when there was time was kept slipping and people kept going like forward in time or aging really fast. And it showed these, uh, you know, two kids, two kids on the street complaining about, you know, not kids, young adults complaining about social security and then the timelapse happen and suddenly they were 80 years old and screening for their social security. You know, and, and like, I think that that's to a degree how it works. The people want a physically restrained, conservatives won in a fiscally constrained government, but they still want their medicare and they still want their social.

Jay:                00:50:27       Yeah. Because there's people who still think that foreign aid, you know, cost $1 trillion a year. You know, when it, when it's, when it's minute, you know, the bulk of the spending that we do is interest on the national debt, Medicare, social security and national defense. Those are your four biggest drivers of expenditures,

Ben:                00:50:44       right? Look, because of party loyalty, the guys who might, um, say those more risky things like foreign aid isn't the issue where we need to cut Medicare or whatever. If it doesn't comport with what party leadership is saying, there'll be ostracized. Is All, is Justin Amash a very popular guy in the Republican Party? You know, is he, is he given power or a raised up as an influencer? Like I think he's right.

Andrea:             00:51:13       No, but, but, but you had Paul Ryan be vilified after, after over a decade of being a wank on government spending and tax policy. Uh, he was forced into the speakership position, forced and, and because they had nobody else, and he was basically vilified for the last three years of, of, of his time in Congress and made into this big government guy. And Oh my gosh. Even though Paul Ryan Sat back during the 2016 election, is that, look, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna, you know, hold anything back, but I'm also not gonna, you know, hamstring you guys from saying things just to, you know, for, for Donald Trump's benefit. And then he, he was basically, but he was one of those guys that was trying to, he was elevated to a vaunted position in the Republican Party in 2012 when he was re Romney's. Um, running mate. So I mean, I guess you can, you can do those things. I have a short thing to say, but Ben, and not to take over this podcast cause it's not my pockets. I'm just the news girl. But Ben, uh, I do have something that I want to point out before we wrap things up. But Ben, you were gonna say something.

Ben:                00:52:23       Oh, I was just going to say, uh, you know, even the, Paul Ryan's in this world where I do, I do have a lot of respect for him, but you know what Jay was just talking about and called it. Brian did it too. When we're during the bailouts and during tarp. Yeah. When people ask them, how does this work, how does this work with your view of things? He basically made the case that you're like, yeah, it's not preferable, but we've got to put a bandaid on this so that we can figure out the real solution, knowing full well that they're were never going to figure out the real solution. And you just bought into the idea that the only way to rescue everything was the having big government come in and solve it for everyone. Just like Bush when he said he had to save the free market by abandoning it, they all will.

Jay:                00:53:00       Yeah. But the thing is too, and I remember and I found that I dug it up here because one of the things I remember I wrote that even before Trump was elected, uh, was, you know, one of the things that they can do, you know, what has brought Trump about, okay, so I'm, and I'm going to disagree with you, Ben, where you talked about it was, you know, the tea party that brought about travel. I, I said it was Republican and I think it was, yeah, I do think it was a tea party, but it was their intransigence the idea that small victories weren't victories, that you were caving to Obama. Paul Ryan's perfect example, first budget that he oversaw, first omnibus budget. He oversaw, when he became speaker, everybody was screaming that he gave Obama everything that he wanted. And I detailed, he's, you know, Obama was the president.

Jay:                00:53:50       He's going to control for the most part, what's going to go through and unless you have the votes to override a veto, you've got to work with him. And I said that there were small wins in there and people were like, yeah, what wins? What wins? And I said, one of the biggest wins that he put through that Paul Ryan got through in that budget was the lifting of the ban on exporting crude oil from the United States. And now we're seeing Trump bragging about not only the production of oil in the United States, but the amount that we're exporting. In fact, by 2021 I think they said that the United States will be in the top five countries of exporting oil, whereas just a few years ago we weren't, we couldn't do it legally. And Charlie Cook Road for the Export Import Bank.

Jay:                00:54:35       Yeah. And most people who freak out about the export import bank don't even know what the hell it does. Um, but Charlie Cook had written something where he said, he goes, the dangerous myth that the GOP has given Obama everything he wanted and he goes, he said, this is, I'm afraid, is flat out wrong. Disastrously wrong. Apocalyptically wrong. He said the Republican Party is in perfect vehicle and has of course made mistakes with the idea that it has an effectively and consistently opposed President Obama's agenda is a little more than a dangerous and ignorant fiction and I think that that's where I, I've always talked about this, it's like you don't, you sometimes win big. You sometimes get the big huge wins and when you have the entire Party structure on your side, you can go ahead and you can do that, but other times there are things that you have to do where you have to win incrementally.

Jay:                00:55:18       It's like we don't look for years down the road. We're always looking for months down the road and if something happens that doesn't affect anything right at the moment we call it a loss. And so that's what they kept talking about all the time. We'll do the GOP just kept losing and keep losing and kept losing. And it's like, how exactly were we losing during Obama's era? You know, when we control so many more state governments when the GOP was in control of Congress and held back a lot on what Obamacare, what you disagree with me on? Well you, Huh? You don't disagree with me. Well, yeah. All right. Well anyway, you know what, we've, we've, we've this long civics conversation, which was a hell of a lot of fun, has stretched to, uh, almost to an hour already. So, uh, why don't we shift back to Andrea and the news and, uh, I didn't see, I was, we were so talking so much, I didn't even like cue up her, her knew her news music. Oh, that's fine. I'll, I'll, I'll

Andrea:             00:56:24       like talk over the news music because I actually did have, you know, not knowing that this conversation was coming up. What are the news articles that I had picked up on was this joke of a, uh, article about no matter what you do in government, even when you do have a big win, like the, you know, Republican tax cuts that they did a year ago, which, you know, everybody's, oh, sorry, are you going to, it's going to be like, uh, okay. You gotta do this, right? I mean, okay, so the Daily Mail, which obviously is a, you know, British, but they have, uh, they have, uh, you know, us wing or whatever. Um, but it says the headline is tax woes. Nearly a third of Americans who received a refund last year, we'll have to pay the IRS for 2018. [inaudible] dot.dot. Guess how many people this is affecting? Nearly 8 million people will be effected.

Andrea:             00:57:30       Now in a country of 320 plus million people, 330 million people. Guess how many 8 million people having to pay taxes as compared to last year is 2.5% of Americans that will be affected and have to actually pay something into the federal government out beyond their withholding. And most of them are oh zero. It says millennials are expected to get the largest refund and a little bit over $3,000 average and genexers are expected to get around just under three at just under 3000, at 2,900. Um, but still roughly 60% of Americans will get a refund amounting to an average of 26 97 and it is like $22,697. But they are having this huge headline that nearly a third of Americans who received a refund last year, we'll have to pay the IRS for 2018 basically because they got the, you know, there was an issue with the tax tables last year because they, they kind of like, um, they got them rolled out so quickly and they kind of overestimated a little bit or underestimated some people's tax.

Andrea:             00:58:41       Um, the plus the state at the salt, right, the state and local taxes. But anyways, but this, it just, so this kind of like feeds into this idea that no matter what you do on a, on a federal level, you will end up the, and, and this, this goes to media and even Democrats nowadays, you can't do, you can't take away and they haven't taken away a bunch of, you know, you've got the, the, the president, you know, coming out with a budget proposal of, of certain things, which every president does have, you know, kind of policy goals and people are reporting it. You know, Joe, Joe Scarborough and NBC was out there scandalized about, oh my gosh, they're cutting this. It's like they're not cutting anything. This is a proposal. And like Joe, like Joe, we'll remind you every single day he was in Congress, he was in Congress. He knows that this isn't actually happening. It's a budget proposal, but he will be on the frontlines lying about what's actually happening. And this is exactly what's happening. What I just clicked off this story. Yes. Yes.

Ben:                00:59:46       That's just how Americans are. Yeah. I mean, uh, you know, when it reminds me of a bid from disgraced comedian Louis C k, uh, where he was talking about how he was on an airplane and it was like the first time that they had been trying our wifi and the Wifi went down and had for a few minutes and this guy next to him was like, this is bullshit. Yeah. He was like, how does the world owe you something that you didn't even know existed five minutes ago? Right. But that, that is how, I mean, look at the, you know, whenever a, um, a online anything, anything costs something, people are like, what the hell? Why isn't this free?

Andrea:             01:00:27       Oh. And this is where you come down to like, you know, when they get so upset, you know, Jay, you tweeted about this earlier, people get so upset when, when you know, newsrooms, local newsrooms and even national newsrooms cut staff, but yet they will get so upset when you know, they, they vilify billionaires. It's like, yeah, but billionaires are the ones who are able to take the losses to keep newsrooms going, right? Yeah,

Jay:                01:00:50       yeah, yeah. Essentially know people who have been this whole thing about the morality of, of billionaires. Can you be a moral person if you're a billionaire? And it's like you see these stories where like the, I think it was the Cleveland plain dealer laid off a third of their newsroom and they said if you went back 10 years ago or 15 years ago, they had 340 people. Now they've got 35 or something like that. And then somebody had had tweeted about some person who said that this woman who had a whole bunch of money and we lived in Ohio, didn't even know what to do with it and that she couldn't spend it all said, oh, I have an idea. And it's like, oh well you know, you, you always complaining about the morality of billionaires, but then you sit there and you say to billionaires, well, why don't you do this?

Jay:                01:01:30       Why don't you take your money and do this? And it's like, well that wouldn't even be able to happen. We're not for billionaires. I mean, look, you know, and I say this and I, there's some self interest here. I worked for the Washington examiner, which is owned by media DC, which has all been filled. The ranches who is a billionaire, we do not rely on, we're not a public company, so we're not really, we're not having to cater to stockholders the way an organization say like the New York Times stuff. Uh, but now even the Atlantic, the Atlantic is owned by, in part by a billionaire Steve jobs widow. I can't remember her first name, Christine, I think. I can't remember. But you know, she owns the Atlantic. Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post. I mean, so yeah. And, and of course the resources that he's put into the Washington Post, I mean, pretty amazing.

Jay:                01:02:16       They, they're hiring constantly. And so, you know, I think that that is, you know, again, it's like when, when people are confronted with something that all of a sudden they don't like, you know, they're like, what was it Dana Carvey, uh, you know, when you said he was, he was like said something to his kid or something like that. And His kid walked away. Bullshit, man. And he said, I wish as an adult we could do that. You know, it's like somebody tells you, gives you bad news or something like that. You just walk. Right. It's bullshit man. You know? And that's the thing with the taxes.

Ben:                01:02:45       What's funny to me too, because you know, I get annoyed if I come across a smaller website and they've got like a pay wall and an article I want to read. But at the same time I try not to get too mad about it. Like if they're not going to have a billionaire, and if you hate billionaires, right? You expect these people to do right. They're providing a service and they have to pay people to live. If you were really interested in supporting that type of media and having it not be billionaire funded, you might have to fork out five bucks a month. Right. You know? So even when I do get annoyed when that happens, I get it. I expect to be paid for things. I do. And I'm certainly not going to go out there as somebody who's not a billionaire. And try to manage and handle all the expenses associated with something that's going to have tons of people hitting my servers and do it for free. How I can't.

Jay:                01:03:41       Right. And, and, and you know, and people know that Facebook and Google have basically eaten up the, the ad generated revenue that so many websites are light on for so long. It was very easy to sit there and get revenue from, from ads and Facebook and Google kind of did away with that. I mean, and so people had to go into different models and you see the reiterate, you see this kind of like being rolled out, you know, there is, you know, I mean, hey look, I'll be honest with you tomorrow I have a uh, uh, a thing with Slade. It's called their slate is putting out some thing that will allow podcast to generate some revenue. Uh, right now your only option is patrion. Like if you have additional like premium content or like after hours stuff or if we have a guest on, we do an additional 15 or 20 minutes after the show and we want to put that out as a premium a thing.

Jay:                01:04:34       The only thing you have right now is patriot. Basically if they're a patriot and then you have to go to patriots website to be able to listen to it. A will, this new thing called supporting casts that slate has put together will allow you to use, you know, you, you, you'll be able to listen to any of the premium content within your same podcast app that you love. So you won't have to switch over anything. But if you choose to, and I don't even know if I'm going to do this, if we're going to do this, we're, we're all going to talk about it and see if it's something we want to try. And if they say, yeah, you know what, I'd like to chip in a few bucks because there are associated costs with this. We have to pay. You know, we, we were hosting our podcast on fireside right now. Uh, you know, we, you know, there's, there's costs for that. There's costs for storage space, there's costs for Internet, there's costs for microphones, microphone stands, computers, all that stuff. Costs money,

Ben:                01:05:21       charge $500 an hour. You do. I do. That's true

Jay:                01:05:28       now. Okay, well then we're going to start sending the bill for fireside to your house since you make it heavy. Now I'm just kidding. But, but I mean, you know, and, and this is a smaller operations. So when you have something that is getting, like you said, a website that's getting millions of visitors every day those servers are getting hit. There's, there's content being fed, there's videos being streamed that there's bandwidth, there's all these associated costs and you just got to start paying for it. And if you liked the content enough,

Ben:                01:05:56       it used to be a problem he will use to buy a subscription to a newspaper. Right? Like that's what they did at that was a pay wall, you know, and now people are like freaking out. Like, well, I'm going to have that subscription. I didn't like, Ooh. Yeah. Like why does everything have to be for your older son?

Jay:                01:06:13       Right. And it depends on the pay. I mean, and yeah, I'm, you know what, I'm not going to get a subscription to the Boston Globe because the Boston Globe is a very local newspaper. I don't live in Boston, so I'm not it tuned to, so I'm good with you get three articles a month before there's a pay before you hit the pay wall. I'm fine with that. I know

Ben:                01:06:29       description, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post.

Jay:                01:06:32       Right. I have a, and the New York Times, you know, I subscribe to that,

Ben:                01:06:37       the New York Times, but I do have those two. Go ahead.

Andrea:             01:06:41       What are the, what are the things that I have been discussing even even like, because Jay lived in Atlanta for so long and that I have been listening to a podcast that is so, it's so like, um, focused. It is the court. It was the court reporter for the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Um, he does a podcast. He's done six seasons as fuck. He just goes through one, one, one case that he's covering and he, he, he blaze it out over several weeks while the while and goes through the story of what's happening, what he's following. It's the it, you know, it's kind of the big story that's happening in the, in the courts in Atlanta, in the Atlanta area. It's interesting to him. He does this podcast, Brett, I'm sure that that podcast brings in more money to the Atlanta journal Constitution. Then then the Atlanta journal Constitution puts out to create this podcast because he is, he's doing this research anyway as a part of his job for the paper, for the AJC.

Andrea:             01:07:42       So it's one of those things that I think that there's, there is a lot of room for, if we're talking about podcasts and traditional media, there is a lot of room and Jay, I think you said that the new, that the New York Times is planning on put taking their, their daily podcast and kind of like they built this kind of, you know, follower base on, on podcasts, but they're going to put, start putting some of their stuff behind the pay wall that you have to have a subscription in order to listen to certain things. And I think that the AJC has kind of gotten into this a little bit and I think that smaller, more local newspapers could actually put some resources and start getting ad revenue that way and you know, kind of subscription based type things. And every time that the AJC has this podcast they suggest, they say they don't say, they don't say you need to subscribe. They say, could you just think about subscribing? If you're in our area and you're interested in this, could you please think about subscribing? But it's a great podcast. It's very interesting for true crime type people or people who are just interested in the court process.

Jay:                01:08:42       Right. And, and, and, you know, just give everybody a sense of the Atlanta journal Constitution. Just so you know, when, when I started as the Dallas Morning News, uh, Kevin and willy was, was leaving. And so we were doing a search for a new, uh, editor of the editorial page and there were six or seven candidates and one of them was the editorial page editor of the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Just, just give me an idea of that. The discrepancy in terms of the size of the operations. At the time when we did that, when we were looking for that person, we had five editorial writers, a deputy editorial page editor, and an op Ed editor as well as a, uh, as well as, uh, you know, an editorial assistant. Uh, and you know, several board members, the editor, I can't remember his name, was the editorial page editor of the Atlanta Journal Constitution came in and we were running at that time.

Jay:                01:09:36       This has since been reduced, but we were running at that time. Uh, you know what, two editorials a day, so seven days a week. So 14 editorials a week. The Guy from Atlanta Journal constitution came in, he was the editorial staff at the Atlanta Journal Constitution alone. They, they did one editorial a week. Uh, so that is how much they had been constricted in terms of their size that their editorial staff was limited to one person. And so what Andrea's talking about, and I think it's, it's, it's a good idea, is that there's going to have to be innovative ways for these organizations to, to make money. And it may require people to sit there and say, you know what? I'm going to have to pay for this content. And if you like it good enough, if you really enjoy it, then what is that? I mean you, you know, you're, you're going to have to become more judicious about where you spend your money because if you sit there and start adding up all these subscriptions that could wind up being hundreds of dollars a month. So you say, I'm going to get the stuff that I really want.

Ben:                01:10:34       It always seems so obvious to me, and maybe you know, I don't know all the infrastructure of these companies or these organizations, but like the most obvious thing to me it would be everybody does everything on their phones now, every, everything and you know, if, if, if you assume for a moment that is a description that would've cost 1999 per year to get in paper form doesn't cost as much because of the bill. There's not all of those physical, um, uh, manufacturing needs involved. And you could a Washington Post app where it's instead of just giving it away for free, you're downloading it for $3 and 99 cents, which people do all the time for a game. They just want to try one time and have that renew every year. Boom, you've got your subscription login on Facebook in the Washington Post to happen. Then when you go in line, you use the same Facebook log in and it knows you have the APP and you're done. I don't get why that's such a difficult business model to figure out.

Jay:                01:11:41       Yeah. The Atlantic does this thing where you can subscribe to the magazine and you'll get the digital versions. You get access to the, to the digital and the print edition. But if you don't want to do that, I did this for a while was I would pay three 99 a month just so I can read the articles online without any ads. So you're paying, you know, I mean that $4 $50 a year just to cut out the end.

Ben:                01:12:07       All of these magazines, all of these old world newspapers that are trying to figure out how to become part of this new world, it's like, I don't understand who's in the room figuring these things out because I know a billion people who paid $2 and 99 cents to not have ads on a game called flappy bird. You think they're really not willing to like the entire business model associated with all of the androids and iPhones and iPads and all of them. Is that microtransactions are impulse purchases that people feel okay doing because they're so small. It's like buying a coke at the gas station, right? So if you busy, if you create your business model around it, these organizations will create their business model around that impulse that people are already perfectly used to. Then they would probably have a boatload of subscribers. They would,

Jay:                01:13:09       yeah. The threshold, your social is probably around three to $4. You know, if you get, if you get, if you get, you know, 2000 people at that $4, I mean you're making $8,000 a month. Right. I mean, and that was, and that was like

Ben:                01:13:24       just seems so obvious to me that I must be missing. Yeah,

Jay:                01:13:27       well you know, but it takes a while. National Review's a perfect example. It took him forever to come up with NR plus, which says, okay, we've got free articles. But then we've also got ones with these little keys where you'll be able to read about three of those a month before you hit the paywall. But

Ben:                01:13:42       exactly. That's a, that's like a good idea. But it seems to me that like there were places run into trouble or letting out where they run into trouble where they don't get as much as they could out of it is when they try to sort of divide the content that way. Um, I think people just want to have access.

Jay:                01:14:04       I don't know. I mean sometimes it does. I mean it's like when you click on, the thing is they shouldn't let anybody know because like commentary is a perfect example. Commentary, you go to their main site, everything looks okay. I could read this, I'll click on that and it'll say, oh, you go halfway down. Sorry. In order to continue reading this particular article, you're going to have to subscribe. Now I really enjoy the content and commentary. I mean, you know, no Rothman is one of my favorite, like, you know, kind of, he's, he's still, he's still kind of considered himself a blogger and you know, so he's, he's one of the, one of my favorites there and Chrissy Rosen, John, all of those people, I love reading their stuff. I went and said, you know what, I liked the content enough. I think it's good enough. I'm going to go out and subscribe. So I subscribed, I paid $30 for the, I get the digital and I get the print magazine, which isn't a lot of money. It's not a lot for a year. You know, if you buy the new, if I every issue on the newsstand, you'd spend 70 bucks. So getting on some, sure.

Ben:                01:14:55       She has a lot of dollars and 99 cents annually for an app that tracks my calories. But I do, I think people underestimate how willing people are to blow money on these. Uh, in the APP world, they may end up getting on their laptop to log into their account, but if you capture people in the APP environment, it's clear that people spend but tons of money in that area.

Jay:                01:15:27       Okay. So you're saying like if national review charge $5 to download their app on

Ben:                01:15:33       probably not five. Say Stacey three 99. Yeah, 29 three 99 for the APP and get all the content. There's no unlocks or anything. Right. Just three 99 you get the content if you don't want, if you don't want the content, uh, through our APP, then go to the website and get whatever articles are available or

Jay:                01:15:51       right. But I also, I also think I also like what Andrea's talking about, the way the Atlanta Journal constitution is using podcasts to drive interest in the newspaper. And I, I, you know, I want to criticize my former colleagues so much, but it was like the Dallas Morning News. There's a report, their local reporter who's been, he's lived in Dallas his entire life, Robert [inaudible], he's like a legend at that newspaper has been there for 20 something years. If he did a podcast and he's a media personality as well. If he did a podcast, I guarantee he alone could increase the number of the newspaper, digital subscriptions that are in that city, you know, by, you know, 25%. You know, it just by himself because people are interested in what he has to say. And he's like, Hey, I'm doing this podcast, but if you want to read what I wrote about x and you want to read what I wrote about this, consider going and subscribing. You know? And, and I also think there's everybody sets this one flat rate, but I also think that there's innovative ways they can do it. Do you live in Dallas? Okay. You know what, we're going to let you subscribe for 10 bucks as opposed to the person who lives out in Austin. You know, you know you want to, if you're gonna, if you're going to look, if you're going to search local then you've got to give incentives to people who are local.

Ben:                01:17:02       Yeah. I don't know. But uh, anyway, uh, all right Andrea, you got more of a news item were like at one business meeting.

Andrea:             01:17:10       Yeah. So everybody out there who has it, who has some kind of website or something, you're listening to us, you know, you get into that three to $5 range in subscription stuff and the people we bought,

Ben:                01:17:22       Jay, obviously it is not by many apps cause he keeps bringing up this number five. And that's like a deadly number.

Andrea:             01:17:27       Oh, I know. I keep thinking of that too. I'm like, I'm like, no, no, you got, you got to get it in the three, three bags. I give it over $4. It's a no gun. No, no, no, no. I've, I haven, I can tell you, wait, hold on, hold on. I can tell you right now that there have been gains with in APP purchases where I've spent nine 99 to get 50,000 coins or so, whatever it is, so I can continue my boxing career or something stupid like that

Ben:                01:17:49       you're talking about if you're talking about, um, if you're talking about in app purchases, absolutely. But when you're in the APP store picking, yeah.

Andrea:             01:17:58       Okay, so you're talking to, all right, so you're talking like the threshold to buy an APP. If that's how you're going to do it, then the threshold has to be like you said, what? Three 99 the high price

Ben:                01:18:05       [inaudible] 99 to three nine [inaudible]

Andrea:             01:18:06       okay. Yeah, yeah. To get people to get people to, to not even tonight, even though

Ben:                01:18:12       when you're in the game and they're in there. Yeah, sure it they'll spend $10 $20 $30 fake pixelated gold coins when, when they're actually picking and they have no investment in it yet. It's the lowest number possible.

Andrea:             01:18:27       Okay. That's the Jay Jay and I just started our a joint account the past week. So you know the, those $30 but in the in APP that the $10 purchase and I think it's going to be, yeah,

Ben:                01:18:38       I can tell you right now like, hey, have you ever in your life had like, you know, billion dollar ideas that you had zero ability to do anything about? Because I invented microtransactions all the way back in like 2000 because I was playing a online role playing game with my ex wife and in, I was making enough money at the time and had no kids and it was kind of a pain in the ass to go out and make it up in game money. And it turned out that people were selling money on Ebay. So I would like go on Ebay and I'd spend $99 or whatever and I, and, and they would meet me in the game and transfer the money to me. And I was telling a friend of mine, I was like, dude, this is brilliant. What somebody needs to do is create a video game like this where you literally sell items and sell money. And so everything, and the response I got was, dude, nobody's ever going to fucking pay pixelated sword. Now every time I see how big candy crushes gotten, I'm just like, oh my God. Like I'd be a gazillionaire right now.

Andrea:             01:19:51       Or even farm though. I mean, people used to harmony the Farmville. I have honestly never pay paid money for in APP purchases. The one time that happened was my daughter was about seven and she just, you know, I mean she, she got ahold of my phone and was a game and

Jay:                01:20:08       that was an accident. But they, they do, and Ben will back me up on this. There are certain games that make it nearly impossible to get beyond a certain level without making one of those purchases.

Ben:                01:20:18       Well, and, and you know, there's an evolution into this that I've, I've sort of watched, which is at first they did this thing that really, and this is why I was saying, I don't know that the split model of some free, some pay as opposed to just paying for everything. Why, why one works better than the other is what they used to do in these games is you would get to a certain point and then you had to pay to get levels. So you literally couldn't play the game any further. Um, you know, you'd have to buy like packages of levels or whatever. And then somebody figured out like, no, no, no, no, no. Give them all the levels but make it so it's difficult enough that they buy power ups. Right. And, and so that they can keep moving forward and you would entice them by giving them all the levels and then you trap them.

Ben:                01:21:02       Do you know how many times I've been playing this board scapes? I think it's called. Um, I mean, I'm totally addicted to it. I don't even know why. I can't remember the name of it, but it's a completely addictive game and I had for a while now decided I didn't want to uh, you know, buy anything in it and I had, and then I gave in and I bought for no ad. Would you like to 99 or something. And every time I'm stuck on a word I'm trying to figure out, he's basically a crossword puzzle. I just keep looking down at that buy coins.

Jay:                01:21:35       I could know the answer right now. All right, well let you know. Normally I would say we'd go to the next news item, but we are at word well over an hour or so we're going to use, okay, good. We're going to wrap it up there. All right then

Ben:                01:21:50       for 99 for these last half hour,

Jay:                01:21:53       289 to 99 three nine can't do for 99. All right, so everyone been, let everyone know where they can find him.

Ben:                01:22:01       Yeah, I'm sorry. I met, I met, you can find me on Twitter at @BenHowe. Someday you will see me writing again. As soon as I'm done with my final edits on the book, which is coming out in August called the moral majority. And um, other than that, that's it.

Jay:                01:22:20       That's it. Andrea, where can everyone find you?

Andrea:             01:22:23       Can you find me on Twitter? @andreanruth, you can subscribe to the, Arc digital newsletter. I curate and produce, get that sent out, um, once or twice a week, depending on how much content has gone up. Usually it's about twice a week. And you can also find me with Kimberly Ross on The Right Side podcasts every Sunday, typically.

Jay:                01:22:43       All right. And I'm am Jay Caruso can find me at jaycaruso on Twitter, writing at the Washington examiner magazines. You also find me from time to time at the independent and a arc digital as well. Um, you know, unlike Ben, I actually, right, right. So that's it. Yeah. I'll give you an acknowledgement in my book. Yes. Author Ben, how you know he's an author. Right? All right, everyone that's going to do it for this episode. We will see you next time here on The Fifth Estate.