Well That Was a Disaster…

Well, that was a disaster. And not just a metaphorical disaster, but a real disaster. More like the Lucatania sinking than rain at the wedding reception. Like an actual disaster. And we go through all kinds of numbers to prove that point. You already know it, of course. But a couple of examples tell the story poignantly. So, it wasn't just that Republicans lost Ohio. Ohio, the vice president's home state, or that Texas is now completely Democratic. every statewide office held by a Democrat, including the governor, lieutenant governor. Pretty amazing. Down to land commissioner, railroad commissioner. It's that Mississippi, as of right now, and it could change because there's been no official winner declared, but as of right now, it looks like Mississippi could get a Democrat in the Senate. Mississippi, when was the last time Mississippi elected a Democrat to the United States Senate? the last time was like a multi-term incumbent segregationist white Democrat. This is a black Democrat, right? And he is winning as of right now. How badly did it go for Republicans last night? In Alabama, a transgendered Democrat beat a Republican incumbent in the state house. So, the state of Alabama, which has got to be pound-forpound, like the most conser conservative state out of 50, just elected a transgender Democrat ousting a Republican. So, and it's not like there was an outcry in Alabama. Hey, you know, the one thing we lack is we don't have enough transgender representation in the state house. Let's kick out the Republican and put in a student address and we'll the state will be better. People will want to come here. That's not what happened at all. That's not what happened in Mississippi and it's not what happened in Ohio and it's not what happened in Texas. It's not what happened anywhere. All of this was a response to the first two years of the Trump administration. This was kind of a collective howl of pain. This was a reaction to what the country's been going through for the last two years. And if you call around to people today, and maybe you have to get reactions like what do you think of this? This is unbelievable. I think it's the biggest blowout of our lifetimes, which it is. You will likely find that the more conservative the person you call, the more proTrump this person was two years ago, the more this person is likely to say, "Well, this is a disaster, of course, but I'm not entirely sad about it." In other words, this may not be what we deserve, but it's definitely what the Republican party deserves. And that is true. That is absolutely true. True. And if you're a fair person, if you believe in justice, if you think the guilty should be punished, it's kind of hard to look at the election results and say they're wrong. I mean, you could say they're not preferable. We don't want actually a transgender state legislator in Alabama. Like, it's probably not going to help in any way. And at the very least, we're have to read a lot of stories about breaking the transgender ceiling or whatever. It's going to be more lecturing about transgenderism. But you can't say that the Republicans had it stolen cuz they didn't. They got exactly what they deserved. And what they deserved was to be humiliated because of what they did to the rest of us. They literally tried to appoint Lindsey Graham's sister, who maybe a nice person or who knows, but knows nothing about anything by her own admission, tried to give her the Senate seat. And not just by appointment, but like they stood her for election in South Carolina and she lost. Well, there's another state. When was the last time a Democrat was elected to the Senate in South Carolina? Probably should have checked before the show, didn't it's been a while. You think of that as like core Republican. I mean, that's that's the base. I mean, that would be like a Bethesda Maryland going for Trump. It's just it's not going to happen. Oh, but it just did. And again, it did because that's insulting. Like, who do you think we are? Lindsey Graham's sister? I don't know. I mean, no one's perfect, but Lindsey Graham was, of course, the problem. It was Lindsey Graham's program, this war, that destroyed the Republican party. And he died, unfortunately. Not gloating over his death or anything, but he died. And that might have been the perfect moment to say, well, you know, good guy. You shouldn't attack people after they're dead. You really shouldn't. show some restraint, but like maybe we just never talk about it again. Maybe we don't try and resurrect the failed and frankly repulsive and antihuman policies of Lindsey Graham through his sister, his hapless sister. It did feel like, this is an overused phrase, but it's a real one, a humiliation ritual. Just give them Lindsey Graham's sister. They'll vote for anything. I could shoot a man in Fifth Avenue and they'd still vote for me. That's the spirit that conveyed to the rest of us. We just don't care what you think. Hey, how about some Lindsey Graham's sister? You'll eat it. How about Vive Rama Swami? No, we'd rather take the drunk lady, which they did. You had in state after state after estate Republicans voting for Democrats, not because we don't think they agree with the program. In fact, they just voted against the program two years ago this week, but because they have some self-respect and they're not going to be treated like that. It's just so obvious the contempt. Trump and his cabinet and a bunch of consultants got together and decided we don't care at all about the people who elected us. We think they owe us somehow. We don't owe them anything. They owe us. And let's see how far we can push them. Let's see if we can run Greg Abbott for a fourth term. Or Dan Patrick, the Lieutenant Governor of Texas, a true mediocrity. Let's give him four terms. And by the way, the things that they argue in favor of, the policies they espouse will be super unpopular. So in the case of Greg Abbott, who's the governor was the governor of Texas for three terms, he's facing off against a Democrat. You know what the main issue? One of the main issues in that race was data centers. And across the country, when put to a vote of actual American citizens, people say resoundingly, uh, we're not for data centers. Like why would we be for data centers? I mean, this sounds kind of dystopian. First of all, they're ugly. Second, they gobble up the power in the water. Third, what's the point of data centers? Probably not to help me. Probably to surveil me. This feels a lot like a digital prison. That is the view of a lot of people in this country, the majority, actually. And so, here you had the three-term governor of Texas basically taking the side of data centers, and the Democrat was just like awake enough, or maybe she really meant it. Who knows? She's now going to be the governor, so we'll find out. She ran against data centers. And guess what? Most people agreed with her. So, not surprisingly, she won. That's not hard. That's called democracy. But Republicans refused to practice it. And so, once again, they lost in a way that is generational. In fact, almost kind of no matter what they do, given the numbers of it, if you game it out, there's kind of no coming back for a generation. If a Republican somehow were to win in 2028, two years from now, and blow it out like biggest, this is of course likely not going to happen, though, who knows, but can't imagine it. But let's just say that did happen and the Republican who wins in 2028 wins by say the same margin Richard Nixon won in 1972, which is the biggest margin in American history. They still would not control the Senate. They can't. So, what could they do? Could they get any of their nominees confirmed? Like you can kind of see what a huge deal this is assuming that the current system continues. And you know I wouldn't really assume anything right now because we're in a we're in a change moment but we hope it continues. Anyway, the repudiation of the Republicans was complete. That repudiation of course was a repudiation of Trump. And so we can say without hyperbole or gloating, this is the end of the Trump era last night. We're done. It's also the end, by the way, of the Fox News era. A former White House staffer called today and described Fox News as the president's real PDB, his real presidential daily brief, the place where he gets his information. And there's some truth in that. And it's hard to imagine that we would have gone to war in Iran if Fox News hadn't broadcast specifically to the president who they knew was watching specific shows, the Mark Leavin show, the morning show. He watches those. They know that the anchors talked to him and they spoke directly to him and they helped persuade him maybe more than anybody else in this country. Of course, there was Netanyahu pushing from the outside of this country, but within the country, the main lobby for this war was Fox News. And it's been systematic. And it's not an attack made out of bitterness. It's just an observable reality. And you can check it if you want because clips reside forever. They're there. and Fox News anchors spoke as one really with only one exception in the entire lineup. There's only one person who's even mildly skeptical of the Iran war. That person, of course, has been denounced, needless to say, is an anti-semite. Hitler adjacent. But everybody else, whether through fear or foolishness, got on board and and this is what they got. A total destruction of the Republican party. So that that's over. I mean, it'll continue. They've got cable subscriptions and everything, but like this is we're done here with Fox News. were done here with Trump. Now, that doesn't mean Trump himself is done. He could conceivably serve out the rest of his term. And we should just pause now and say simply because the president and his party have been repudiated doesn't mean he's without power because the president acts outside the country completely unrestrained by the Constitution. There's no check andor balance on what Trump does in the realm of foreign policy. And that is absolutely true until mid January when the new Congress comes in. Even if the new Congress were to exercise its constitutional authority to demand consent before starting a war, which they haven't done in well, probably since the Korean War 75 years ago. Um, but even if they were going to do that, there's no one to do that until January. So, at least until January, Trump could do literally whatever he wants and nobody can stop him. It doesn't matter how unpopular he is. It doesn't matter how loudly voters have shouted their disapproval. Absolutely doesn't matter. Our system gives him total unrestrained power. And of course, the rest of the world is watching this. And now seems like a good time just to add something that is true, which is our rivals in this world, and that would include Russia and Iran. Whether they should be or not is another question, but they are in practical terms are rivals. We're at war with both of them. Both understand exactly what has happened. Trump is weak. He has no support domestically, but he still retains these executive powers. and they have sent very clear messages that if the president were to act with aggression in Iran at any time in the coming weeks that they would act with no restraint at all against the United States and its allies, particularly against Ukraine, against the six Gulf states, and against Europe. So, just to be clear, the peril is not over. Just because the public has said resoundingly, "We're not into what you're doing," doesn't mean that they'll stop doing it. And in fact, there is some indication that Trump will double down. But in any case, no matter what happens outside the country or within it, this is the end of an era. You could sort of mark it on your calendar. Trumpism gone. So that raises a couple of questions. What comes next is the most obvious, and the answer is we're not exactly sure, but there'll be time to think that through. In the meantime, um it might be worth thinking about two things. One, how do we feel about this? And I think most people who voted for Trump would concede probably that they have mixed feelings about it. They're sad um to see the party they voted for a lot of their lives lose. They think justice was likely done. You can't like allow them to appoint Lindsey Graham's sister, you know, run Mike Rogers, you know, just who's like probably the only man in history who's lost two Senate seats at consecutive elections. Like the voters just rejected him last cycle, but the donors put him back on because he's pro- Israel. So voters are never going to go for that in the end. If they have a choice, they're not going to vote for Mike Rogers. And why would they? So justice was done, but it's sad. But there are also some upsides which are worth remembering. One is that the happiness and the quality of your life is not exclusively determined by politics. That's one lens. It's the lens that social media encourages. Encourages you to think about your life in global terms. And if everything is not working well in the world, then I must be unhappy. But in real life, you've got a constellation of people around you. And probably healthier to judge your happiness by the strength of the relationships with the people around you. So if your wife and kids are happy and your nephews are happy and your college roommates are happy and your employees are happy, your co-workers, like it's kind of hard to say it's a bad day. So it's it's good to be reminded of that once in a while, right? Don't live outside your life. Like once in a while, pull back within it. Look around. How's it going? The second thing uh to think about is that with the end of Trumpism, there will be end of definitely some good things, but there will also, we hope and pray, be an end to the unceasing daily drama, the kind of sitcom pacing of American life for the last 10 years. I mean, it's no surprise that the top rated star on NBC has kind of scripted our national conversation along the lines of a hit TV show for the last decade. And there have been parts of that that are great. And those of us in TV recognize it immediately. We know what that is. Oh, that's a cliffhanger. We'll be right back. Hold on. You know that that's what we've been living through. But it's tiresome and it's hard on you to live like that for too long. It's like following a drunk driver. You know, it's lots of stopping and starting and is he going to go off the road? You know what? WHY IS HE GOING FROM 75 to 25? It's like it can drive you crazy after a while. And there's no time to think clearly. And of course, that's probably not an accident. It's by design. If you keep people totally off balance and distracted, you can do pretty much whatever you want, but it's not good for the people watching at all. Non-stop drama drains your adrenal glands and defeats your spirit. So, it will be nice to have a kind of stasis for a moment, a little bit of breathing room where we can at least assess what's happening and figure out how we feel about it. Slowing the pace a little bit is good for its own sakes. That's the other thing to remember. But above all, we should be grateful to Trump. Even if you voted against him, even if you've come to despise Trump, even if you feel correctly that he sold you out for a foreign country, which he did, and there's no forgiving that. Of course, there's forgiving it, but there's no approving of it. There's always forgiving, but there is not approving. You can't approve. That is immoral. It's wrong for a leader to choose another country over you, just like it would be wrong for a kid to take the neighbors kids to Disney World where his own kids starved. That's just that's immoral. It's exactly what Trump did. He chose Israel over the United States. People lie about it, but everyone can see it. Super super obvious. And that's just wrong. The good news is, as noted, everybody can see it. And that is in the end the lasting contribution of Donald Trump. 20 years from now, we're still trying to figure out what was that? How'd that guy get to be president? And how should we feel about it? I think we're going to have to be honest enough to admit that we should be thankful for the main thing he did for us, which is to reveal the subterranean architecture of power. Trump by his presence, by design or not, it almost doesn't matter, pulled back the curtain. And suddenly we could see how the system actually works. And it's been horrifying. And it is the res main reason that you often hear people say, "All the conspiracy theorists are right." How many times have you heard that? It's a meme. Well, it's a meme because there's some truth in it. Most people, especially over 40, grew up in a country where the overwhelming majority of the population, accepted that the official account of things was probably roughly correct. There was some lying and some secrecy, but the whole system wasn't based on it. And in the end, if you wanted to make a change, you would just vote. And if enough people voted, the change would happen. And if there's one thing we've learned during the last 10 years of Trumpism, it's that that's not true. And we know that because Trump's 2024 coalition was the broadest probably since Nixon, probably in 50 years, and it voted for something very, very specific. And it got the opposite. And so that tells us everything. It tells us that the system they told us was in place may still be in place in name, but it's not actually the system that produces the meaningful decisions in our society at all. And because we've been debating this for the last year and a half, all of a sudden we can see exactly how things work. And it's ugly and it's horrifying and it's making people paranoid and angry. It's dividing the country deeply. All of that is bad and certainly distressing. But it's essential to know if you're going to fix it. You have to know what the problem is. You've got a leak in your ceiling. You have to find out where the pipe broke or else you can't fix it. And now we have a much clearer sense of where the pipes are and where they're leaking. So we should count ourselves lucky to see what previous generations have not seen which is how things or aversion some of the truth about how things actually work. So all of this pressure being applied to our political system and to our society has revealed stuff that is absolutely worth knowing. And so if you think about it in those terms, it's probably not surprising that the Republican party was destroyed, which it just has been. Now, it may be rebuilt. You know, we hope probably could use a second party just for balance in this country. But as of right now, the Republican party has been destroyed. And that shouldn't surprise you. It didn't take long at all. In fact, it took exactly 2 years to the week. Now, why was it destroyed? Well, of course, it had to be because Donald Trump, again, unwittingly or wittingly or who knows, we can only state conclusively what we saw happen. He built a party that was a truly nationalist party. And it was nationalist much more than it was sectarian or partisan. Which is to say Trump was never a very enthusiastic Republican. There were a lot of Democrats who voted for him. Trump, despite, you know, four years of propaganda about how he was a clansman or a racist, wasn't actually much of a racist. No more than most people. And the proof are the election results from just two years ago this week in which Trump got 30% of black men like the most reliably Democratic group of voters in the country voted for Trump at 30%. The majority of Hispanic men. Now that's not racemongering or box checking or DEI. No, it's the antidote to that because actually what you don't want is that you don't want a country where power is aortioned along ethnic lines because then you will wind up as Rwanda. That's inevitable. If you run the country on identity politics, you will have ethnic violence obviously. I mean it's like the story of all history. So try not to do that. And what's the alternative to that? Well, the alternative to that is a politics that's based on things bigger than ethnicity. And there are things, believe it or not, that are bigger than tribe, running it on ideas that actually pull people together who have other core differences, but they're united in this one thing. And Trump did it along the lines of what he called MAGA, make America great again, or more precisely, America first. And it's a really simple idea. It's the core idea behind democracy, behind all government really, which is you put your country first if you run it. The whole point of holding power in a country is to serve the country over which you hold power. It's like not a hard concept. In fact, there's no other legitimate basis upon which to rule. Either you're serving your people or you're a criminal. It's kind of that simple. And in our system, that's literally true because that's articulated in our founding documents. The whole point is self-government. So, it's not like America first was some like radical theory, you know, that Hitler thought up or something. No, it's the only legitimate way to run any country and particularly this one. So, Trump was just bringing us back to center in his kind of crazy and articulate way. And people people understood it even though he could never really explain it. They kind of got it like why wouldn't the point of the US government be to help Americans? We could debate how, but what's the other reason we would have a government? Oh, shut up, Hitler. Okay. And because they were so adamant in denouncing it, you knew that this was probably a threat to someone's income or someone's power. And indeed, it was. In fact, it was such a threat. What was it a threat to? Well, it was a threat to the system we currently have, which is a system that doesn't recognize borders or most ethnicities or sort of any interest other than its own. It's effectively a global government run by well the deepest pools of capital. That's not a conspiracy theory. It's just clearly true. So the US had no sovereignty and Trump was trying to restore that and people loved it. The majority of the Hispanic vote I thought he hated Hispanics and he sort of this is not a defense of Trump. I mean maybe he does hate his I mean you know who knows what he really thinks. Does it really matter? What matters is he assembled the antidote to atomization and violent conflict to disaster the antidote to disaster which is like a way to unite the population against its bad leadership. And that's exactly what we need. I mean that's the main thing that we need is the recognition that most of us have more in common with each other than we do with the people looting and mismanaging the country. That's just objectively true. Sorry they don't like it when you say that but it's not hate. what they're doing is hate. So, don't be intimidated. And Trump wasn't intimidated. But the second he did that, you kind of thought to yourself, can this continue? Can they allow this? I mean, this is really a threat. Now, we're getting toward the actual red line. They're always like, "Oh, racism is a red light. Racism." I mean, like, they don't care at all about racism. Read the read the Jeffrey Epstein emails. Everyone's a schwartza. They don't They don't care about racism. Trust me. What they care about are threats to their own power, obviously. And what Trump managed to pull off two years ago this week was an actual threat. And so like somebody had to destroy this coalition. And the people with the greatest interest in doing this were the neocons. Who are the neocons? Well, they're people who reject outright the core belief of the Trump campaign of 2020 and 20 2016 and 2020 and every Trump campaign, which is why they always hated him. And the core claim was, "No, we're doing this for us first." Like why wouldn't we? We have to. Can't take the neighbors kids to Disney World if ours are starving. And they hated that because of course they don't think that our people should come first. They think that Israel should come first. And they just say that at this point. So they had to kind of destroy it. And they absolutely did. In about 18 months, they took a coalition which had all kinds of components to it. People who didn't even know that they had similar views or could be united were united. And 18 months later, it's just like Mark Leven. Like a couple other people like who's for this? Well, we found out yesterday no one is for it. Why laugh? Cuz it's just so obvious and kind of hilarious. And of course, it can't be allowed to stand. I mean, these people have no right to the Republican party. They just got there. I mean, by the way, these are all people who like reject the entire Republican party platform. They have no interest in anything that happens in this country. Certainly not in the condition of the family or jobs. I mean, these are the same people who who lectured you about your whining about prices was outrageous. You're not patriotic. It's like, you are calling me unpatriotic when you spend your entire life serving a foreign government. I don't think I'm the unpatriotic one here, actually. And by the way, the Mississippi race, you may be wondering like how did a black Democrat in a state that's not majority black. It's got the highest black population, but nowhere near a big enough population to get a statewide victory, like not even close. So, a lot of white people voted for the Democrat in Mississippi. How did that happen? Well, because the incumbent Republican senator was doing a television interview and she was asked like, "Meat prices are kind of high. People are concerned about beef prices." And she goes, "Looks right in the camera and you can look it up. It's amazing." And she goes, "Yeah, find another protein." Find another protein. Oh, lentils. Like, who do you think you're talking to? Who do you think you are? You're like some senator and you're lecturing me about how I should just find another protein. You're back of the handing me. I mean, it's it'll enrage you to watch it. And it enraged the voters of Mississippi to the point where white Republicans voted for the black Democrat, which is sort of a weird kind of inverse of the Trump coalition. of 2024. It's people coming together across partisan lines, across racial lines, in solidarity with each other in the insistence, the very simple not for Medicare for all or whatever the actual program is, but for the theme behind the program, which is like why don't they care about us? They should. You see what's happening here? So in this very specific case, which is the case of the last two years of the Trump administration, we know exactly how this coalition got destroyed and the Republican party was taken with it. We know exactly how because Donald Trump, who made the party all about him, was only about him. Donald Trump chose a foreign country, Israel, its interests over his own country's interests. And like there's no debating that. exop polling shows it and I mean there's really so no other interpretation of it. I mean that's just factually true. But that doesn't mean that your grandchildren will learn that in school assuming there still are schools then. Why? Because history is so often rewritten in real time. So you imagine as you look back and try to understand what happened in ancient Carthage or even I don't know during the French Revolution you imagine that we just don't have the right documents or you know we don't really know you can't interview anyone involved which you never imagine but you should know and anyone in the news business can tell you this because they watch it in real time that events the second they cease occurring are very often maybe most of the time distorted in news accounts in popular histories and ultimately in textboo