[00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of The Political Life. This is your host Jim OBrien. I know episodes
[00:00:27] have been a bit sporadic this fall and this will be the last episode for a while. We are coming into our busy time
[00:00:37] with legislative sessions beginning after the new year. So you may not hear back from us until after the legislative sessions are over in
[00:00:46] the spring. Today, however, we have a great guest. I guess that we have had on in the past Bradley Tusk. Bradley is the co founder and
[00:00:56] managing partner of Tusk venture partners, but is probably best known in political circles as the former communications director for Senator Chuck Schumer and Mike Bloomberg's campaign manager for mayor in 2009, I believe.
[00:01:13] Bradley also has two causes. He is very passionate about mobile voting and anti hunger efforts. His fun invest solely in early stage startups and highly regulated industries, one of his early success efforts was Uber.
[00:01:30] Bradley is the author of the book The Fixer, my adventures, saving startups from death by politics. He also writes a column for a fast company. He hosts a podcast his own podcast called Firewall about the intersection of tech and politics. He is a co founder of the Gotham book prize. And he recently opened up a bookstore, a podcast studio and invent space and cafe called PNT.
[00:01:57] Midwear on Manhattan's Lower East side is also an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School. I don't know how he finds time to do all that, but he does.
[00:02:10] The reason we are having him on today, however, is to talk about his latest book, obvious in hindsight. It is a fictional story involving flying cars, highlighting how decisions are really made in the tech regulatory world.
[00:02:28] Bradley, welcome to the show you are a fan favorite as we say here. It's always great to talk to you. How are things in your little cold and gloomy and
[00:02:40] obviously if you want, we can talk about the political situation in New York, which is a little dicey at best. But I know fine.
[00:02:48] Well, let's start with your book and then jump into New York and go politics from there. How did you decide to write a fiction tale instead of using one of your many portfolio companies real life stories.
[00:03:01] Yeah. So as you know, and you were nice enough to have me on when I wrote it a couple years ago, I wrote a book called The Fixer, which was about kind of the work that I've done at the intersection of tech and politics.
[00:03:12] And do you know Steven Soderbergh is a movie director? Yes.
[00:03:16] So Stephen happened to read it. And I knew him and he said we got to make this a scripted TV version of this.
[00:03:23] And so I started thinking about like, okay, what would be a fun way to do this and clearly is you know, like a campaign lends itself really well to some sort of dramatic portrayal because there's two sides and there's an action and whatever else kind of why we all like doing it in real life.
[00:03:38] And so I started thinking of what would be a fun thing that would maybe be a little further out there and different from the might day to day work of investing and trying to legalize all these different disruptive technologies and flying cars was like one step.
[00:03:53] Kind of passed everything else that we were doing. And so came up with this idea about a campaign to legalize flying cars in New York LA in Austin and on one side of the equation is the flying car start up and their vicious political consultants and the other side is Uber, the auto bonds society, the socialist, the trans unions and the Russian mob.
[00:04:17] And Stephen and I worked on the pilot. And then I wrote the next nine episodes and are a big meeting with Apple TV was supposed to be at March 10, 2020 as you can imagine that went nowhere because COVID hit
[00:04:29] And so went away, but I really kind of like the characters and I like the idea and whatever else. And so I've never written novel before but thought let me let me give it a shot.
[00:04:40] It's been a couple of years working on it. It was much harder to write than the fixer because how to structure a novel was totally confusing to me, but eventually got there.
[00:04:52] The pilot, it just it never came back after.
[00:04:57] Well, ironically, it's back now.
[00:04:59] Well, I was going to say white. Yeah, yeah, Stephen and he actually has a blurb in the book itself.
[00:05:05] Red the novel is okay. We got to get back at this. And so working on the pilot right now.
[00:05:10] And once we get a good enough, you know, look, this is his world.
[00:05:17] I kind of liken it to an early stage startup that pitches us, you know, do some of them ultimately make it all the way through an IPO.
[00:05:24] Yes, to most now. So like, you know, the odds that we're going to see this on Netflix or Amazon or whatever.
[00:05:31] Not that high, but I think there's a book that people seem to be enjoying and Stephen's name attached anything.
[00:05:38] I guess gives it a certain amount of firepower. And so, you know, if it could happen, that would be really fun.
[00:05:43] And if not, you know, worth a shot. Yeah, politics is a great backdrop for drama and conflict and all that.
[00:05:51] Now what was your you have you wear many different hats?
[00:05:56] What was your process for writing mainly finding quiet time to sit down and write?
[00:06:02] Yeah, it was a bit difficult. It wasn't it wasn't right?
[00:06:06] It was in that, yes, I run a venture capital fund. I own a consulting firm. I run a foundation and I own a bookstore or a teacher, a podcast, all kinds of stuff.
[00:06:15] So yeah, lot going on.
[00:06:17] But I really love to write. I always have. And I found that, you know, if I'm excited about what I'm writing, whether it's fiction or nonfiction, I want to do it.
[00:06:28] And so then it's just doing something that I enjoy. So yeah, it's a lot of weekends, a lot of nights. But I also found that, you know, the really thorny stuff that I had to think through from a plot standpoint, I couldn't kind of do on the fly.
[00:06:41] But if it was like, okay, I need to write like a chapter of mainly dialogue between these two characters or whatever it is.
[00:06:49] Sometimes like literally if I happen out an hour between meetings, I would just sit at my desk and write. And so, you know, kind of just made it work and squeezed it in.
[00:06:58] And what I also found was that, you know, my subconscious was kind of constantly working through the book and the challenges and the plot structure and the characters and everything else.
[00:07:08] And so oftentimes I'd be doing something totally different and then we're like, oh, this is what the character should say or do or this should be part of their backstory or whatever it is.
[00:07:18] And then you know, quickly as I get to a computer kind of working it back in.
[00:07:22] Well, I'm sure that your new habit of meditating probably helped. I know Ray Dalio has said that it made the biggest difference in his career.
[00:07:34] I was going to say that a lot of those sort of realizations about characters and plot and everything else that did hit me during meditation.
[00:07:43] And then I thought maybe it's not a little too woe, so I kind of backed off on it just said, you know, wherever I am. But yeah, I mean the bad news about me meditating is I am terrible at just sitting there focusing on my breath.
[00:07:55] The bad news is that I do seem to realize stuff that I might not as I'm charging around town doing a million different things. And so, you know, I don't know the meditation has the value for me that it's opposed to have but it has value.
[00:08:09] And not to get into your method and all that how long do you meditate each day?
[00:08:14] 20 minutes of day.
[00:08:16] Wow, that's great.
[00:08:18] The meditation was harder than nonfiction.
[00:08:20] I guess for right.
[00:08:22] Yeah, I mean, so I've written three of a third book coming out next fall on mobile voting, which I'm sure we'll get into and so now I've written a memoir, a novel and like a legit nonfiction, you know, book on a topic.
[00:08:35] And the reason why fiction, I thought was the hardest is, you know, there's no guy there's no guard guardrails. There's no strength.
[00:08:43] Anything you want, right? It could be as crazy as you want.
[00:08:48] And all those possibilities in some ways are incredibly exciting and make it really fun.
[00:08:53] But there's also very little structure, right? So like the fixer, which was a memoir was actually really easier because I did this than I did that.
[00:09:00] And I did this and I did.
[00:09:02] And you know, I might Google something like what was that Uber fight and these hands were right.
[00:09:07] And then I'll remember a few facts and whatever but like.
[00:09:10] And the voting book, you know, writing a series nonfiction book is difficult, but there was a clear structure to it, right?
[00:09:16] And you know, once the publisher and I kind of agreed on the outline and the structure, you know, sticking to it wasn't that complicated.
[00:09:23] Whereas with a novel, it was just much more open ended and also unlike the fixer and vote with your phone.
[00:09:32] I didn't have a publisher for this until after I wrote it.
[00:09:36] So with the first and third books, I had an editor along the way who I could bounce stuff off of and questions and structure.
[00:09:43] Whereas here it was a little more kind of the last.
[00:09:47] Can you explain what you mean by how tech, the tech community uses politics to legalize its products?
[00:09:53] Yeah, sure. I mean so you know, it's funny.
[00:09:57] I was just talking to an Israeli VC who was saying to me like, you know, why should anyone bother a deal with, you know, investing in companies that are regulated and I said at least because in the US,
[00:10:08] I think 90% of the company is saying, what's happening?
[00:10:11] You're not right.
[00:10:12] Right. I mean there are some pure like enterprise companies that sell software to other companies and maybe they avoid it.
[00:10:18] But basically healthcare education, energy, gaming, transportation, you name the industry.
[00:10:25] It's regulated either directly or indirectly by government and by politics.
[00:10:30] And you know, one of the big misconceptions in tech that I've seen over the past decade or so is there's a lot of priority.
[00:10:37] And if it's placed on having the right engineers makes total sense on having the right marketing strategy.
[00:10:42] You know all of that makes total sense.
[00:10:44] But then you know this inherently just like I do.
[00:10:48] If you ignore the regulation of politics around it, that could destroy you just as much as a poor engineer product or a bad marketing plan.
[00:10:56] And frequently when you were disrupting and entrenched interest, you have some new way of doing something.
[00:11:02] The internships doesn't say thank you.
[00:11:04] I appreciate that someone has come along and done it better than me and taken away my business.
[00:11:08] They fight back and because they can't usually fight back with a better product, they have to fight back with politics.
[00:11:13] And so that's campaign donations. That's lobbyist.
[00:11:15] That was, you know, I got started in tech by running the campaigns to legalize Uber and ride sharing around the US.
[00:11:21] And like no one could argue that that taxis product was better than art.
[00:11:25] It was so clearly exponentially better that they just had to say, well, you're a legal. This isn't allowed.
[00:11:31] And there was never even a discussion like, well, it actually good for consumers or riders or anything else which is pure like what the law says this can't happen.
[00:11:39] And then we would eventually have effectively have to sort of mobilize tens of thousands of our customers in a given market.
[00:11:47] Let the politicians see directly like, hey, your constituents want this thing and then use that to back tax the off which we were able to do in every market.
[00:11:55] In the country but fundamentally whether you are a tech startup in a sector disrupting an existing industry, whether it's Airbnb in hotels or a fan doing casinos.
[00:12:06] Or you're in a totally new industry, you know, AI machine learning, you know, cryptocurrency autonomous vehicles, whatever it is.
[00:12:15] Either you're pissing someone off and you're going to have a market share fight through the guys of regulation or you're not doing the world where there is no regulatory framework at all which may sound great in theory.
[00:12:27] And ultimately, you can't build a business in a completely wild west unregulated space. You need some rules.
[00:12:33] You need ways to separate yourselves from the bad actors which means regulatory frameworks have to be created for flying cars delivery drones, you know, small scale nuclear reactors whatever it is.
[00:12:45] And either you're at the table coming up with a structure that works for your business or you're not nods are you're going to find that it destroys your business.
[00:12:53] Well, I just think about your the example that you've talked about in the past, you know, the example with Uber and I think it was in Washington DC.
[00:12:59] Let's imagine that they didn't have any regulatory professionals political people like you.
[00:13:05] You know, they would have been blown out of the water instead.
[00:13:08] You know, it's so interesting that in the past, you know, we'd work hard to get a half a dozen letters grass roots sent to the council people, you know, over the over like a month.
[00:13:19] You turned on this Uber spigot and overnight they had thousands of messages saying what are you doing? I mean, quickly tell that story. It's just yeah, it's incredible.
[00:13:30] And so DC was the first wasn't the first city that we had a regulatory battle and over at regulatory battle and literally every single market that had entered.
[00:13:40] But it was the first city to introduce legislation and city council to outright bad us had all the tax industry wrote it and it had all these different arguments in there.
[00:13:50] You can't use an iPhone to calculate this didn't so fear all this ridiculous shit.
[00:13:55] And this was before we even really had the function out in the app itself to mobilize people because it was so early on.
[00:14:03] We wrote an email to about 50,000 customers from Travis to them saying look.
[00:14:09] If you like our product, they're going to take it away from you.
[00:14:13] We need you to reach out and here is the phone number and email and information for every nine council members, I think for every council member.
[00:14:22] Please let them know and like most of them did it was remarkable.
[00:14:27] And I think look, I mean you and I have both were spend enough time in DC pre Uber to remember how horrible the taxies are there. It's one of the worst taxi cities in the country.
[00:14:38] And so I think everyone in DC was painfully aware of that and really wanted the better alternative.
[00:14:45] And so in the first part, we defeated the bad bill 9 to nothing introduced our own bill past that 9 to nothing.
[00:14:52] And it completely changed the paradigm there and then eventually what we learned how to do was a mobilize people through the app itself.
[00:14:59] And so and ultimately I've been doing that with poor fellow companies for years now.
[00:15:03] So Uber but Fandall and bird and ease. It doesn't work for every company.
[00:15:08] So I think that's a reflection in your listeners. I think we'll understand this and to do it really much better than most, which is.
[00:15:14] I believe that the central rule of politics is that every policy output is the result of a political input.
[00:15:21] Every politician makes every decision solely based on reelection and nothing else.
[00:15:26] And because only election typically matters is the primary because of Jerry mandering 10 to 15% of people who actually bother about the primary have all of the influence and ultimately dictate all the decisions and all of our policy.
[00:15:37] And so the bad news is because there are so few people that's why we have the level of dysfunction and polarization where there's like DC or nothing gets done.
[00:15:46] Or these credits once I did governments whether it's the city of San Francisco on the laughter of the state of Texas on the right.
[00:15:52] But because of that, you know when we're able to show a city council member a state rep whoever it is.
[00:15:59] Look, there are thousands of people in your district who like they don't know who you are.
[00:16:03] They don't care who you are. But they really like Uber or Fandoor or bird or whatever it is.
[00:16:08] If you take it away from them, we're going to make sure they know who you are and we want to make sure they're registered and we're going to make sure they turn out and you're going to lose your next election.
[00:16:16] We changed the underlying input so all of a sudden you're a council member in Tulsa or whatever it is.
[00:16:22] And you get three grand per cycle from the taxi guys you do what they want because you want the three grand for your nice campaign.
[00:16:27] I said 5000 of your constituents email text call tweet telling you to leave this thing alone input shifted output shifted right and I kind of think all politics works that way.
[00:16:39] Well, that's a great segue into mobile voting.
[00:16:42] Sure.
[00:16:43] How how do we stand with mobile voting?
[00:16:45] Yeah, so so if you take the premise of what I just said.
[00:16:50] If primary turnout instead of being 10% 12% or even 30 40% forget about more than half it would radically change our policies right to take for example guns right at this point I'm an independent night kind of hate both parties equally but I'll pick on the Republicans in this case which is.
[00:17:10] Chris Jacobs was a Republican Congressman from upstate New York super Trump were voted you know against certifying the election and peach man I mean couldn't have been more more you know bagga.
[00:17:21] But there was a mass shooting a supermarket and Buffalo couple years ago 10 people died it was right next to his district and he was shaking up and that oppressed conference he said maybe we ought to look at the availability of assault weapons.
[00:17:34] This was September the line was tripped from him so he couldn't run that November they took away their Republican party line and the conservative party line and his career ended why because of the small number of people who actually show up to vote in that election.
[00:17:50] They are NRA members and they are rapidly pro gun and they are not in any way open to any discussions around gun regulation or gun safety.
[00:17:59] But what's interesting is if if turn out were 36% instead of 12% just based on the polling of Republican voters views on assault weapons you would have to be for some sort of reasonable restrictions so that we can't shoot up as many churches in Wal-Mart and schools and things like that.
[00:18:17] And so you know the outputs follow the inputs or here in New York City a couple years ago Amazon wanted to put their second headquarters in Queens and majority of the city wanted it based on polling the majority of the district wanted it based on polling but my generic is a state senator from long out city Queens New York.
[00:18:35] I understood that primary turn out in his district was 9% 10% something like that and who were those people radically far left you know his district on a border is maybe even overlaps local the OCs super progressive DSA hey Amazon HF base those hate business hate technology.
[00:18:55] And if he had supported the deal he was working at for primary from the left and so might pick one job his own over 40,000 jobs which is what would have been created.
[00:19:03] I'm happy to go through and he did it out completely but again turn out my primary were 35% instead of 9% just based on the math of the polling in the district he would have to have been for because he would have lost the next election if he didn't support the deal so the good news about politicians some ways believing in nothing is you know though adapt to everything to adapt to to win the next.
[00:19:24] Election to really unless we were a Jeremy and a rich I would love to see happen with spring court is made it pretty clear it's not going to the only solutions to radically increase primary turn out.
[00:19:36] And you know no matter sort of how many rock the vote concerts we have or whatever else you know your average voters not missing taking their kids to school in a Tuesday morning to vote in a state senate primary right sure people vote in presidential election but like the vast majority of governance who you know happens at the state.
[00:19:53] Local level and it's the state local primaries that really decide effectively who are left to the future is on there for what our policies are.
[00:20:03] And so you know do I think everyone would vote if they could vote on their phone no but millions of people ultimately you know advocated for Uber which is a for profit company simply because we gave them a good reason to do so and we made it really easy.
[00:20:17] So remember the time thinking like wow people could vote this way maybe you could change the whole paradigm and so blockchain and cloud technology both improved over the next couple of years and I started funding different jurisdictions around the country seven states 21 jurisdictions to do actual elections using mobile voting either for deployed military or people with disabilities.
[00:20:39] And each of those states to an hour and average double for those constituencies they were all independently ordered by the natural cyber security center came back clean I covered the cost of the taxpayer expenses administering those elections so it was easy to take away any kind of objections because it's like look on pay for not you.
[00:20:58] But I got so much shit from both the paper ballot community and the cyber security community that I realize that you know I'd have to build something that was so so much better than any other election technology of any kind that we could overcome this sort of easy excuse of like well we can't do this because it's not safe.
[00:21:16] And so three years and 10 million dollars later we're done i will finishing up beta penetration testing right now and we're going to release the tacking q1 and it's going to be free and open source my foundation owns it so it's not a full profit business in any way as you know I both know the election administration businesses not into business to be in any way.
[00:21:36] And you know we're going to try to let anyone use it for free and then the really hard work begins which is you know ironically you want to unite the two parties trying to change the way that that elections function is going to unite the Republicans and the Democrats and lobbyists and unions and trade groups.
[00:21:54] Because if you know how to control them with power and but turn out primaries you don't want to reduce your chances of being able to do that.
[00:22:01] So we're going to need a movement we're going to need Gen Z Gen alpha to demand this thing i'm going to need my kids were 17 and 14 to demand this thing and so we started working with a lot of Gen Z leaders most prominent David hog food who really became famous during the whole parkland shooting in fact the voting book that I have to come next September David Scott worth a forward for it.
[00:22:24] And we need to build movements in every single state that are able to sort of stand up to the status quo and say this thing absolutely works and the reason you want us to do it is not because it isn't secure but because you don't want any potential challenge to your power.
[00:22:38] And I really think that if we don't want the the constant dysfunction that we see in Washington and so many other places or the constant one side of government we see.
[00:22:47] To continue on we need a truly scalable solutions to democracy and I think well I support you know all the other stuff out there you know natural popular vote and open primaries and final five right choice voting I like all of it.
[00:23:01] There's only one solution that already in your pocket and that's mobile voting and I really do think that the future of democracy is dependent on the guy that's happening.
[00:23:10] Yeah it's really a game changer i mean it i'm as you just indicated the arguments against it with security and paper ballots seem somewhat hollow when you think about everything that we do online i mean you deposit checks from your phone you send cash to people on your phone everything we do.
[00:23:29] On our on our phone and on mobile apps and the idea that well you can do all that but you can't vote just doesn't seem to add up.
[00:23:38] The system we built is anti-end encrypted and to end verified it's air gap it's so much more secure than the ways that we vote right now whether it's paper ballots or voting machines that I think what's going to happen is you know.
[00:23:56] Good as good say well this thing could theoretically go wrong and hold us to this impossible standard of perfection when you both know that like the car systems we use a voting are highly flawed and highly vulnerable paper ballots got us George w bush and i got us the Iraq war which killed a million innocent people and so the notion that.
[00:24:16] We should cling to these you know outdated ways of voting simply so that people in power don't risk losing power is crazy to me.
[00:24:23] Yeah yep so you touched on a bunch of different.
[00:24:29] Industries that you are focused on any interesting startups you want to tell us about you're always on the cutting edge i always hear from you first.
[00:24:39] You know i'll mention a couple of recent investments so you i'm a little bit not a skeptic at all but i have a little bit of a different view of a i then i think a lot of the sees in that i think it's less of a category and more of a tool so yes generative a eyes with the chat gpt or don't category but by and large it's really.
[00:25:03] A function that companies in any given industry could use to do their jobs better so two two investments that we've made recently on one is called elaborate elaborate health is a digital health company that takes those totally incomprehensible labor reports you get from your doctor after they take blood from you are googling like.
[00:25:26] Glucose point seven nine is that good or bad and using AI turns into really easy to read reports that are understandable terms with the infographics.
[00:25:36] There's a few things one is makes patients life so out of here because they understand now what their actual results are after they feel the phone call from patients saying what is glucose point seven nine me right to need to be worried or not.
[00:25:50] So do I consider elaborate in AI company no I consider a digital health company but it couldn't do its work without it another one's called the contract network now contract network in my view is illegal tech company not an AI company.
[00:26:04] But if you are writing contract it takes all of the standard clauses and terms and laws and everything else and just populates all that directly into the draft that you're working on.
[00:26:15] And so rather than having to hire a law firm we're going to parallel or anything else you could radically cut both the cost and time of doing at least basic contracts and then you know as more and more people use it the large language model gets smarter and smarter and keeps updating itself and then the content gets better and better and better.
[00:26:33] So is it an AI company absolutely but I see it as a legal tech company so so a lot of the work we're doing now is I think finding companies that are using AI in really innovative ways in our view to sort of advance their work in the specific sector but still with that kind of fun that mental technology.
[00:26:55] Interesting yeah and very interesting to hear when you talk about you know as the the contracts as they get more and more you know it do more and more it's just going to get better and better and better.
[00:27:07] And that's really that's quite interesting so what let's get back where we started on New York politics what's what's going on yeah.
[00:27:20] You know there's been this rumor now i'm sure you've heard it for a couple of weeks that that Eric Adams is about to get indicted in a minute the FBI did approach him on the street and see his phones which seemed like a very aggressive act.
[00:27:35] I have heard that he's telling people isn't getting died which means you assume he's received the target letter from the FBI but it hasn't happened so i'm not really sure that what we know about publicly does not happen.
[00:27:49] I just feel a little white in terms of it's just bad enough to indict the city mayor of New York City but what we know if publicly is he received contributions from.
[00:27:59] Turkish nationals that allegedly were reimbursed by the Turkish government or others so they've had to be strong donations as a result those are legal donations and in New York City because we have a eight to one six one to one campaign matching finance system.
[00:28:15] You know for every dollar that you get that you shouldn't have you're picking up six or eight bucks from the taxpayers on top of that and that's the quid and then as what we least think we know is that the quote is that the Turkish embassy was under construction it was slated to open.
[00:28:32] Erdogan who's the president of turkey was scheduled to come to New York to open the embassy and they had safety problems and they couldn't get certificate occupancy.
[00:28:40] And Adams with the time was the Brooklyn bro president called the fire commissioner in text with the fire commissioner said hey can we push this thing through.
[00:28:48] And it did and and the opening happened is as scheduled leave and happen to schedule.
[00:28:54] You know i don't know if all that he did was push the fire commissioner for a permit like to me that doesn't really seem like that big of a deal or all that different than the normal working so government now arguably conspiring with the foreign government to evade campaign finance laws and and power straw donors.
[00:29:13] And then the governor's is questionable but I still think that there's got to be facts here we don't know because.
[00:29:20] You know they understand how this stuff works as well as anyone and for example when they got its phones i'm sure they could have caused a lawyer and said hey we need these and we have a warrant for them and instead they approached him you know after an event on the street right in public and sees them and to me you know the US attorney doesn't make those kinds of moves unless they really feel like they've got the goods on you.
[00:29:42] And yet the goods as far as we understand them don't feel that strong and so there's still some element here that we just don't know.
[00:29:52] What if he is indicted what does that what impact does that have on things getting done in the city yeah well first what is he died for so let's just say that it is only over this turkey stuff that i just outlined i don't think does anywhere right i think you.
[00:30:12] I was file a solid of Bob and end is in Donald Trump and says like i'm going nowhere at all.
[00:30:20] Any governs while under indictment and a while on criminal trial which is obviously incredibly disruptive to the city if it were maybe something else that was worse and he genuinely did have to step down that's also its own form of chaos because we have a law where the public advocate for the next 60 days servers the mayor but then we have a special election.
[00:30:40] And then the 20 25 election is not that far away, especially since it really has decided in the democratic primary and so you could.
[00:30:48] If that were to take place in a two year span have four different mayors which is incredibly disruptive and look i don't think he's a great mayor to begin with right he's having a hard time learning the city effectively we've got all kinds of.
[00:31:00] budget problems quality of life problems crime problems operational problems and that's with him not under indictment or having to resign and so yeah I mean the city is something of a mess and that kind of gets back to mobile voting right which is you know let's take.
[00:31:16] Take the city council our primaries were last this past summer turn out was 6.5% right there were elections even in November that were one with you know.
[00:31:30] 18,000 votes total has or something like that right so like when you know point all 1% of the population is picking our elected officials like of course we don't get a representative democracy and of course we don't get competent leaders.
[00:31:42] And you know we've created a system both New York City and across the US that has put our ability to govern effectively to extreme risk.
[00:31:52] Boy just incredible and and and wasn't he at the White House or heading to the White House when he received word that he was yeah yeah he was he was heading to the White House were meeting on a migrant crisis.
[00:32:08] And he was when Brianna sucks who was chief fundraiser her home was rated that morning by the FBI he lands at Reagan in terms of how it gets back on a plane back to New York.
[00:32:22] What's interesting is so Adams has claimed that the reason why he's being targeted because he was critical of Biden's handling of the migrant crisis to me that sounds a little crazy because if if the FBI went after everyone that criticized Joe Biden they would literally do nothing but investigate Biden's enemies right there we don't room for anything else.
[00:32:40] And so like you know the guy gets criticized all day every day by people so like the fact that the mayor crypto the Mike crisis I think fucking deal.
[00:32:47] However, and I you know made the Davis advice to sit at home with privately and publicly which is now that you've made this crazy accusation you might as well lean into it right because we already know that Biden's prospects are or if he get best.
[00:33:03] And he has to rely on many African American turnout now Eric Adams couldn't change the outcome in New York terms of that will cause one way or the other.
[00:33:11] But if you know one of the highest profile African American officials in the country became a vocal Biden critic could that lead to an overall decline of black turnout or more black voters vote is supporting Trump instead yet it could.
[00:33:26] And given that the margin of this Wednesday to be so narrow they can't really afford for that to happen and so my view is once he's made this crazy accusation lean into it man like invite Joe mentioned to tour the migrant facilities New York City you know take RFK junior launch technique.
[00:33:41] And then you know the guy who's a very talented dinner scared the shit of them at the very least the 10 billion dollars or so the New York City is asking for from the federal government to pay for all the cost we've incurred from the Mike on crisis are a lot more likely materialized if the White House thinks holy shit this guy can end up really affecting African American turnout and meaning for way.
[00:34:02] So if you're going to have the ball to take on the president of the United States take him on and get something out of it what he's doing right now doesn't make any sense.
[00:34:13] Interesting interesting pivoting in the United States is a very important thing to do is to get the money right somewhere in the couch cushions of the federal budget.
[00:34:20] It's in New York City but if they don't fear you politically you know they're just going to ignore you and laugh at you which is what they're doing right now and so Adams kind of the worst of all world which is he's making all kinds of outlandish political accusations but then not leveraging it to his own political benefit.
[00:34:26] So I'm just saying that what he's doing right now doesn't make any sense.
[00:34:31] Interesting interesting pivoting to Washington you know what are your thoughts on the president being the nominee.
[00:34:41] Well interesting so I was from my podcast doing my predictions yesterday I think came out yesterday came out today and I predicted that one of the two major nominees will not be either Biden or Trump and then one of them will be picked at the convention right and I think there's a lot of things that I'm going to do.
[00:34:56] There's scenarios where that could work in either case but I think in the case of the Democrats you know times I think see on a poll came out today that had Trump ahead among younger voters right that's insane.
[00:35:08] And so it is hard to see how the situation materially improves for Biden right because his biggest weakness which is his age can't get better you can't get younger right so all that can happen next year.
[00:35:20] It gets older and then God forbid he falls down a flat of stairs something like that you know an image that's just seared in everyone's memory completely and you know that's why pictures worth 1000 words but on top of that you know there is he doesn't really have a base right he is losing support from all kinds of traditional democratic constituencies.
[00:35:41] The economy I think he you know the White House and the Fed have done a great job and treasury of soft landing and on the numbers whether it's unemployment or you know stock market or even where inflation is right now they're pretty good but people don't feel that way right and reducing the rate of increase of inflation.
[00:36:02] It doesn't really change voter perception that much and while the Fed may cut interest rates in 2024 and you know it's a venture capital certainly help that they do I don't know that it will happen fast enough to mean easily change consumer perception of the economy by election day.
[00:36:19] And the situation is really I think by this handling incredibly well but nonetheless is politically divisive at best comah Harris is really unpopular and when you're voting for an 81 year old you have to think about who the vice president's going to be because there's a shot that they're going to end up in the job instead.
[00:36:38] And so you know there's a lot of red flags here now looked our Trump will be on trial this summer and maybe a conviction does change things but I kind of think that American voters are very well aware of who Trump is right I don't think you know every one of the far less you think like well if we just have one more good example of how immoral this guy is that everyone will get it no support him like I would argue they get it they know what a piece of shit he is they know how terrible he is.
[00:37:07] And yet they're choosing to make the trade off because they believe that their life was better when Trump was president they believe that it would be better again and you know just continues to screech about how immoral he is I don't think really changes the underlying equation I'm not sure that a kind of conviction even changes the underlying equation and so you know at my fantasy world Biden kind of waits a few more months because what I'd love to see it's just all the filing deadlines.
[00:37:37] I think that's the way that the United States has passed and the nomination get decided to convention instead where Harris and Whitmer and Shapiro and Pritzker and new some and whoever else all fight it out.
[00:37:51] And then the winner emerges and I think one of the reasons why that's an appealing prospect if you're for the Democrats is one Americans level winner.
[00:38:00] When's it a convention the first time in decade that's really exciting right me even now and these totally very exciting great TV yeah can't get a couple of point bomb right so not someone truly wanted to convention.
[00:38:13] And I think a shorter general election is better right if ultimately it's a three month general election because you know the candidate is before that there's less time for the public to get to know and hate whoever the Democrat is.
[00:38:24] And so to me Biden kind of in March saying you know what I just can't take the risk of Trump by way he can then pardon hunter too if he wants to at that point turn off the news.
[00:38:36] And then rather than having a couple of early primary states dictate who are nominee is like South Carolina did for Joe Biden it comes out to all 50 states and I think that would be incredible political theater and actually give the Democrats the best chance one of the election.
[00:38:52] Wow very interesting two more questions what Washington the new speaker down there.
[00:38:59] What are you what are you hearing and what are your thoughts got the whole thing is just yeah I think it's it's beyond we've gone beyond a joke at this point right I mean effectively what will be considered effective government is now by Johnson would be that we don't have a government shutdown right just that the budget is all of us know like that's just the basic block.
[00:39:21] And tackling you know you don't accomplish anything my passion the budget like that's just like keeping the trains right and then that now it's considered like a big accomplishment right you know you got wars in Israel and Ukraine.
[00:39:33] And they can't work out a to either of those countries and it's almost impossible to see legislation passing in either chamber on anything meaningful you know for the next year or so so it's it's an absolute disaster and it kind of gets back to the premise of mobile vote.
[00:39:50] Which is you know my Johnson is speaker because Republican primary turnout and gradual races is so low that people like Matt gates or more to tell our grain or whoever else become highly empowered and they're able to cut deals with like Kevin McCarthy that effectively made him vulnerable the minute that he was confirmed to speaker in January.
[00:40:10] And resulted in him being knocked out of his job and so you have a system that is so sort of weak and debilitated and unstable that the best we can get is maybe just sort of keeping the trains running on time.
[00:40:25] But if in Matt gates it's primary turnout or 37% instead of whatever it is probably 10 to 15 he's probably not the nominee next time right and then all of a sudden you get a lot of the lunatics on from the left and the right.
[00:40:39] Out of office and you're placing with more sensible moderates and those moderates have the political incentive to get something done because they won't be punished the next primary for doing so they'll be rewarded for doing it.
[00:40:50] And that's how you start to get stuff accomplished and I tell you restore people's faith in government and I take it to country back on track I mean right now I think we're heading to a place where we may not even be one country in 25 years if we can fix this.
[00:41:02] Well that's my last question was going to be do you think the coming year is going to be the craziest and toughest year in politics that we've seen possibly in our lifetime.
[00:41:13] I think so because you know if it's Biden Trump that's going to be incredibly crazy and angry and you've got the backdrop of the war in Israel you've got the war in the Ukraine.
[00:41:27] The Supreme Court's going to make another major abortion decision with his FDA case that will probably come out in late summer early fall Trump's criminal trial so there's so many variables there and that assumes that the two standard bearers are the nominees right you know that could change on either side probably more like a democratic side Republican side.
[00:41:47] But but either way so yeah the the amount of chaos that we're going to see an anger and vitriol and potentially even violence is unprecedented and so you know my only hope would be at some point we wake up and say the system we have doesn't work.
[00:42:05] And rather listen keep you know powering small groups of very vocal people who make all the decisions and keep drag this into mess after mass.
[00:42:14] We take back the country and we need to sort of get back to some sort of sensorate moderate like sensible moderate governance and so yeah I mean maybe the one upside of 2024 being an absolute debacle in the making is that people will finally wake up but you know I hope that I'm not sure sure.
[00:42:33] Well let's hope that does happen Bradley as always great to have you on and great to hear about the new book congratulations.
[00:42:43] You've now you've now added fiction writer to your to your your CV or your resume great to hear about it and good luck with the pilot and the TV show and we will have to have you back on after some of that happens or at least maybe.
[00:43:02] After the election.
[00:43:05] Sounds great man. Let's come back on.