Speaker 1: So, Michael, look, you and I have been shouting from
Speaker 1: the rooftops for months about literally the exact same thing.
Speaker 1: The Republicans are not beating the Democrats. The Democrats are
Speaker 1: beating themselves. And just as momentum should be building for
Speaker 1: the midterms, the rise and dominance of the Democratic Socialists
Speaker 1: of America the DSA, they have handed the GOP literally
Speaker 1: the greatest political gift imaginable on a silver platter. Question
Speaker 1: I need to ask you, why is the party allowing
Speaker 1: its loudest, most polarizing fringe to hijack the steering wheel
Speaker 1: when the stakes could not be higher.
Speaker 2: I think part of the reason is a CNN poll
Speaker 2: which came out this past weekend and showed that a
Speaker 2: third of Democrats regard themselves as Democratic Socialists. So you
Speaker 2: can't say it's this really tiny group that ought to
Speaker 2: be stomped out by the remainder of the party. It's
Speaker 2: a significant number of Rats who are now regarding themselves
Speaker 2: as such. I've been waiting for a Sister Soldija kind
Speaker 2: of moment to take place where Aram Emmanuel or a
Speaker 2: Josh Shapiro lays down the law and says, much like
Speaker 2: James Carvo and much like Bill Maher just did you
Speaker 2: know mar saying he'd sooner vote for Sarah Palin. I've
Speaker 2: been waiting for one of the presidential prospects for twenty
Speaker 2: twenty eight to do that, and they haven't. They haven't,
Speaker 2: And I think that they're concerned frankly a about the size
Speaker 2: and B that this is where passion resides and in
Speaker 2: the nominating contest. These are the people who are going
Speaker 2: to come out, So why piss them off at this stage?
Speaker 1: Right, except for the fact that during general elections you
Speaker 1: tend not to see these far left or the far
Speaker 1: right fringes. Yes, they may show up, but the majority,
Speaker 1: and I call us the tired majority. We constitute now
Speaker 1: like fifty six fifty seven percent of the country. They're
Speaker 1: not going on these fringe.
Speaker 2: We're gonna find out a lot tomorrow, right, because tomorrow
Speaker 2: you've got this Michigan race. It looks like Abdul l
Speaker 2: Sayed is going to win the race for the Democratic
Speaker 2: nod at a time when he's polling double digits ahead
Speaker 2: of his Democratic opponent, but he's also behind by double
Speaker 2: digits against Mike Rodgers.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of time on the clock.
Speaker 2: You know who knows what happens that that ball bounces
Speaker 2: like a football in different directions. It seemingly is going
Speaker 2: to be an example of winning the battle and losing
Speaker 2: the war. And there are a number of instances like this.
Speaker 2: But you know, the odds are also nevertheless on the
Speaker 2: side of Democrats to retake the House, the Senate. I
Speaker 2: don't know, it comes down to Michigan, it comes down
Speaker 2: to Maine. It seems unlikely to me. But assuming Democrats
Speaker 2: have a big year, and assuming that there are a
Speaker 2: handful of Democratic socialists who win, I think a sense
Speaker 2: of false bravado could come out of the midterms for Democrats.
Speaker 2: And now they'll say, hey, let's roll with all this
Speaker 2: passion and go even further left for the twenty twenty
Speaker 2: eight presidential.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's gonna be a big failure. Look, you know what,
Speaker 1: you brought up his name, and I want to talk
Speaker 1: about him for a second, James Carville, because he just
Speaker 1: said that he's openly threatening to walk away from the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party entirely as I did. It figures like Hassan
Speaker 1: Piker become its defining voice, and I'm seeing it firsthand,
Speaker 1: literally right here in New York City, with Democratic socialists
Speaker 1: like Zoron Mamdani. When these lifelong, battle tested party loyalists
Speaker 1: like a James Carville are ready to turn in their
Speaker 1: key cards, isn't that proof that the brand has hit
Speaker 1: a tipping point? And where does the mainstream majority actually
Speaker 1: draw the line?
Speaker 2: It has hit a tipping point at least with Carville's
Speaker 2: demo of the Democratic Party. But as you know, the
Speaker 2: younger you slide on that scale, the more acceptance there
Speaker 2: is of demoocratic socialism. We could be witnessing a generational
Speaker 2: change on these issues. And you know what I see
Speaker 2: unifying many of the Democratic Socialists is a run against
Speaker 2: the status quo. Frankly, in the same way that the
Speaker 2: Tea Party activists gained their traction.
Speaker 3: Which gave rise.
Speaker 2: I think to Maga, there's actually a lot of discontent
Speaker 2: with the establishment that they have in common.
Speaker 1: Yeah, except look what happened with the Tea Party. They failed.
Speaker 1: They failed miserably. Yeah, they were a force for a
Speaker 1: very short period of time. Because when you start talking
Speaker 1: about free this and free that, free grothery, free transportation,
Speaker 1: and then they can't deliver on it, well, that brings
Speaker 1: people to a reckoning that I don't know maybe their
Speaker 1: ideology just doesn't work.
Speaker 3: Michael.
Speaker 2: The Democratic Socialists had a gathering in Chicago last week,
Speaker 2: and to the extent the sessions and information about them
Speaker 2: were publicly available, I read the agenda items. What jumped
Speaker 2: out for me was a conversation that they were planning
Speaker 2: on organizing in which they were using the word You couldn't.
Speaker 3: Make this stuff up.
Speaker 2: They were using the word comrade to refer to one another.
Speaker 2: It's written for, you know, a Republican campaign commercial. It's
Speaker 2: got to be music to the ears of the Trump
Speaker 2: white House. And with a literally one billion dollar advantage
Speaker 2: over Democrats for the midterm, I suspect you're going to
Speaker 2: be hearing a lot of that comrade talk now, by
Speaker 2: the way, you always do every two or four years,
Speaker 2: you hear the opponents paint one another as far left,
Speaker 2: far right.
Speaker 3: But this time the word.
Speaker 2: Socialist is being accepted by a number of the Democrats,
Speaker 2: and I just don't think that a majority of Americans
Speaker 2: are ready.
Speaker 3: To be accepting of that.
Speaker 2: They need a Frank Lunz, They need someone on the
Speaker 2: Democratic side of the aisle to come up with an
Speaker 2: you know, it's like death tax instead of estate tax.
Speaker 2: You need a different way to brand this, and you've
Speaker 2: got to cut loose the defund elements.
Speaker 3: You've got to.
Speaker 2: Cut loose the idea of abolishing the Senate. There are
Speaker 2: aspects of it I think you can sell as a
Speaker 2: throwback to the New Deal, but not not calling it socialism.
Speaker 1: Yeah not. Meanwhile, that sort of brings me to what
Speaker 1: I was saying before. Where I stand today because I
Speaker 1: myself have officially shed the party label and I identify
Speaker 1: as an independent. You know, and we've been on the
Speaker 1: shows together. As a son of a Holocaust survivor, I
Speaker 1: could not stay anchored to a ship that keeps steering
Speaker 1: toward the extreme margins social mar Conash Listen, you and
Speaker 1: yourself have carved out a career evaluating the political landscape
Speaker 1: from a postpartisan vantage point. Where do you sit in
Speaker 1: this current realignment? And do you think that moderate, common
Speaker 1: sense voters are being forced into political homelessness? Oh?
Speaker 3: Come on, you're preaching to the choir.
Speaker 2: You are speaking to the lead plaintiff in a currently
Speaker 2: pending legal action in the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania seeking
Speaker 2: to open Pennsylvania's closed primaries. My state, your state, and
Speaker 2: Florida are the big three among about sixteen. It depends
Speaker 2: on your definition. But we are pure closed primary states.
Speaker 2: And you know, Mayor Mondani I see says that he's
Speaker 2: quite content. I think those were his words with keeping
Speaker 2: New York a closed primary system. The way to water
Speaker 2: down the fringes is to accentuate the middle and let
Speaker 2: more people vote.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, look, Mamdani, by the way, his favorability numbers
Speaker 1: right now are well below fifty percent. And I have
Speaker 1: a funny feeling that the more that this stupidity that
Speaker 1: comes out of his mouth, the more that I'm telling
Speaker 1: you he's going to be and find himself less and
Speaker 1: less favorable on a daily basis because the things that
Speaker 1: he says they're just not possible to be done.
Speaker 2: You know the thing there, there's the category of the
Speaker 2: things that he says that Frankly, I never thought we're
Speaker 2: going to take flight. But some of the actions, I'm
Speaker 2: ninety miles away, you're there and you're caught up in it.
Speaker 2: But the idea of doxing wealthy people docs who you think,
Speaker 2: who you think have a pieeditare, I think that's just outrageous.
Speaker 3: I mean, that might really some hardcore eat rich stuff.
Speaker 1: When I called you the other day, and I said
Speaker 1: to you, I was one of the first people to
Speaker 1: get that letter from the Department of Finance telling me
Speaker 1: that I'm going to owe an additional like fifty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars because my primary residence is a piere de taire, right,
Speaker 1: because you got to say, it's snooty when you're paying
Speaker 1: that kind of money. I don't have a second home.
Speaker 1: It is the place that I have lived. I have
Speaker 1: filed my IT two one, that's the city resident tax
Speaker 1: for that at that apartment address for thirty years. Give
Speaker 1: her take write something like that twenty seven years. But
Speaker 1: I've been living in New York City paying that IT
Speaker 1: to A one tax since nineteen ninety two, and yet
Speaker 1: they don't even cross reference. This is called sloppiness. This
Speaker 1: is called mamdani. And you know what it's really They're
Speaker 1: asking me. In order to prove, to prove to them
Speaker 1: that it's not a pied deterre, I have to give
Speaker 1: them my name, my address, my cell number, my email,
Speaker 1: my social Security number. They want my driver's license, my
Speaker 1: tax return, and if I own the property in an
Speaker 1: LLC or a trust, they want those documents too.
Speaker 2: That's some pretty authoritarian stuff. For a democratic socialist. It
Speaker 2: makes no sense from a financial standpoint either, because you're
Speaker 2: going to drive people right out of that city.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they don't believe. So, you know, I want
Speaker 1: to ask you this as well. When you take a
Speaker 1: stand against the fall left, the mob doesn't offer debate,
Speaker 1: They come for your throat. Now me, I get targeted constantly,
Speaker 1: especially now by the far left activists who act like
Speaker 1: screaming into their social media void is an actual political strategy.
Speaker 1: Are you taking the same heat from the radical wing
Speaker 1: on your end? And why has noisy online rage replaced
Speaker 1: genuine coalition building in modern politics?
Speaker 2: Well, I get it from both ends, and that's what
Speaker 2: that's the metric by which I evaluate having had a
Speaker 2: pretty good show. I'm not deliberately, I'm not deliberately looking
Speaker 2: to antagonize anybody.
Speaker 3: But I think the answer is this.
Speaker 2: I think that the audience has become so accustomed to
Speaker 2: people who speak for a living or right for a living,
Speaker 2: the pundit class being all doctrinaire left, all doctrinaire right,
Speaker 2: that when there's someone with nuance, which frankly is reflective
Speaker 2: of a majority of Americans, I happen to think most
Speaker 2: Americans are a mixed bag. Maybe they're fiscally conservative and
Speaker 2: socially more progressive or liberal, but that's not the way
Speaker 2: it gets portrayed on TV. And the moment that you
Speaker 2: step out of one of those ideological silos, you become roadkill.
Speaker 2: The only part that offends me is the part that
Speaker 2: they tag someone who's not doctrinaire as lacking opinions or lacking,
Speaker 2: you know, some type of a stake in this game.
Speaker 2: I have plenty of opinions, they're just not fake opinions
Speaker 2: to get me on TV.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: You know, I've been this left of center my entire life.
Speaker 1: I am as you just described. I am a fiscal
Speaker 1: conservative and a social moderate. I've always been that. All
Speaker 1: of a sudden now because I'm not saying vile things
Speaker 1: about the president, because I have now ended this eight
Speaker 1: year feud with the president that we're I don't know,
Speaker 1: we call each other back as friends. Now that all
Speaker 1: of a sudden I'm a trader. The attacks on my religion,
Speaker 1: the attacks on me personally, the vile manner that they
Speaker 1: text me, they email, meet, they make phone calls to me.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it to me. I don't I've never
Speaker 1: seen this sort of vitriolic hatred directed at an individual.
Speaker 1: Again from both sides. The far magna, they'll never like me.
Speaker 1: The far left now absolutely despises me, and they refuse
Speaker 1: to acknowledge that my political positions have not changed.
Speaker 2: So on both my CNN show and my Serious XM program,
Speaker 2: I've talked at length about Anthony Fauci, the testimony Doctor
Speaker 2: Fauci before that Senate committee last week. The short version
Speaker 2: of my view is that I see law fair having
Speaker 2: been used against now President Trump during the course of
Speaker 2: the campaign. The four indictments, the Alvin Bragg conviction in particular,
Speaker 2: I think all were to the benefit of President Trump
Speaker 2: because it looked like and I think it made him,
Speaker 2: in some quarters, a sympathetic figure. Having said that, Having
Speaker 2: said that, in the same commentary, I put together this
Speaker 2: laundry list of all of those Trump opponents who've now
Speaker 2: been subject to some type of legal action from DJ
Speaker 2: or law enforcement at a different level. You know, James
Speaker 2: Comy and Jack Smith and Fannie Willis and Letitia James
Speaker 2: and Eric Swalwell and Adam Schiff, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And
Speaker 2: so I don't embrace the law being used in either
Speaker 2: of those cases. But to your point, for laying it
Speaker 2: out both for and against Trump, forur and against all
Speaker 2: of those opponents, people went, you know, batshit on Saturday
Speaker 2: and then on radio because they just don't understand that
Speaker 2: someone is willing to be critical of both.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's that's what happened. Look, I was one
Speaker 1: of those people that law fair was not just instituted
Speaker 1: against once, but actually twice and ended up doing prison
Speaker 1: time for it. I actually wanted to talk about for
Speaker 1: a second party stewardship, or let's just say the lack thereof.
Speaker 1: I myself have been extremely critical of Ken Martin for
Speaker 1: a long time when he took over the DNC, which
Speaker 1: felt to me like swapping out I don't know one
Speaker 1: bumbling visionalist idiot in Jamie Harrison for another. How is
Speaker 1: it possible that a party that represents almost fifty million
Speaker 1: Americans cannot produce a single transformational leader with a clear,
Speaker 1: compelling vision to literally pull them out of the tailspin?
Speaker 3: I thought you were going to say something else.
Speaker 2: I thought you were going to say, how can a
Speaker 2: party in a midterm election where historically, I think only
Speaker 2: twice since World War Two and the midterms come every
Speaker 2: two years, every four years.
Speaker 3: Pardon me?
Speaker 2: How could they be so underwater financially? And what happened
Speaker 2: to the odutopsy. There's an interesting story today about how
Speaker 2: maybe there was and maybe there wasn't. The New York
Speaker 2: Post has it a missing chapter that talked about some
Speaker 2: of President Biden's issues. I think they're trying to hurd
Speaker 2: too many cats, you know, and parties don't strive to
Speaker 2: be the party of the big tent anymore. Maybe that's
Speaker 2: what the Democratic Party is.
Speaker 3: Is seeking to do.
Speaker 2: I just I see a situation where they could shoot
Speaker 2: themselves in the political foot because they yield too much
Speaker 2: power to individuals at too far and extreme. But time's
Speaker 2: gonna tell. We're gonna find out something tomorrow in Michigan.
Speaker 2: We're gonna find out more in Wisconsin. We'll see what
Speaker 2: happens in the midterm, and then what do what do
Speaker 2: the Rama Manuels and the Josh Shapiroes do as compared
Speaker 2: to the AOC and Rocanna and Bernie end of the party.
Speaker 2: I'm really interested to see how that plays out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you and me both, So Michael, answer me this
Speaker 1: double standard. If you go on television and you blast
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, You get showered with praise, viral clips, subscriber counts,
Speaker 1: media applause, yay, Smarcanish right. But the second you agree
Speaker 1: with him on even one logical policy, the cancel culture
Speaker 1: machine they ramp up to destroy you. How did we
Speaker 1: get to a point where agreeing on basic facts across
Speaker 1: the aisle is treated as treason? And more importantly, how
Speaker 1: does this atmosphere do anything but strangle free thought and
Speaker 1: damage the American democracy?
Speaker 2: Okay, methinks you're getting blasted from the left these days,
Speaker 2: which is why, which is why you're.
Speaker 3: Asking this question?
Speaker 2: And I guess I guess it's because they viewed you
Speaker 2: as being a kindred spirit and didn't recognize that you
Speaker 2: choose to be more independently minded. And there's sort of
Speaker 2: a blind trust that's anticipated these days. You've got to
Speaker 2: be one hundred percent on our team or you're not
Speaker 2: on our team.
Speaker 3: I reject that. I'll tell you something.
Speaker 2: One of the highest compliments ever paid to me was
Speaker 2: by Bill Maher, who when we were together when I
Speaker 2: did his show, said to me, you have no team,
Speaker 2: and I knew exactly how he meant it as a
Speaker 2: compliment that you.
Speaker 3: Don't feel the need to suit up in one.
Speaker 2: Jersey red or blue, and that's just not what the
Speaker 2: norm is in the media, and people have grown accustomed to,
Speaker 2: you know, it's like Pavlov's dog, always getting their reward
Speaker 2: on both ends of the spectrum, and the minute that
Speaker 2: they don't, they you know, they they want to toss
Speaker 2: you out as being a turncoat.
Speaker 3: That's the best I can do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I get cold. If I just got
Speaker 1: called a turncoat. I'm f static because that's not the
Speaker 1: terms that they use. Now I hear question, Mike, last question,
Speaker 1: because finally I want to throw out the talking points
Speaker 1: and I want to get right to the raw, uncomfortable
Speaker 1: core of this entire political circus. So, Mike again, look
Speaker 1: at my track record when Congress called. I didn't hide
Speaker 1: behind legal contortions or plead the fifth one hundred and
Speaker 1: eleven times like doctor FOUCHI did. I showed up. I
Speaker 1: honored my legal subpoenas, and I gave direct answers under
Speaker 1: oath to every single question. And remember I did seven
Speaker 1: of those congressional hearings like thousands of questions. And recently,
Speaker 1: after an eight year feud, what I do, I reconciled
Speaker 1: with a friend of fifteen years. Mind you, again, as
Speaker 1: I said before, I have not changed a single one
Speaker 1: of my core principles. Where I agree, I agree. Where
Speaker 1: I disagree, I disagree just like you do. That's called
Speaker 1: being an adult. And yet again, the second that you
Speaker 1: step outside that partisan script, the media, the medium machine
Speaker 1: turns on you. So here's my final most explosive question
Speaker 1: and feel have we both been useful idiots in a
Speaker 1: rigged game where not the party actually wants resolution because
Speaker 1: keeping Americans terrified, furious, and forced into these I don't know,
Speaker 1: rigid partisan camps is the only way that both sides
Speaker 1: maintain their ratings, their money, and their control.
Speaker 2: I don't believe that the American people and I have dated.
Speaker 2: To back this up, I'll give you one citation. It's
Speaker 2: Morris Fiorina's book which is called Unstable Majorities, which he
Speaker 2: recently updated. There has not been a shift in the
Speaker 2: last fifty seventy five years in terms of where the
Speaker 2: American people stand. People are pretty much where they were
Speaker 2: on the size of the societal safety net, how we
Speaker 2: should defend the country, abortion or guns, just hasn't been
Speaker 2: a significant shift. More accepting, perhaps of same sex marriage.
Speaker 2: But with very few exceptions, we haven't had a dramatic shift.
Speaker 2: What we have had is party sorted. The parties have
Speaker 2: become much more doctrinaire in their leadership and so to
Speaker 2: the media, and they have this symbiotic relationship where they
Speaker 2: keep one another in power, largely in closed primary states
Speaker 2: like yours and mine, where they get to determine who
Speaker 2: will win by determining who's going to win the primary.
Speaker 2: So there's a financial incentive baked in to preclude the
Speaker 2: type of independence that you are now showing.
Speaker 1: That's the answer, you know, because again going back to
Speaker 1: now Ken Martin, and it was the same thing under
Speaker 1: Jamie Harrison. Yes, I heard from them almost on a
Speaker 1: daily basis. Actually, let me rephrase that I heard from
Speaker 1: them multiple times a day. But not with ads that
Speaker 1: would show a political point. Not with an ad that
Speaker 1: would talk about something that all Americans right now except
Speaker 1: for the uber wealthy, of concern about paying mortgages, groceries,
Speaker 1: gasoline affordability, etc. Now I would get the text message,
Speaker 1: and I know you get them to the text messages,
Speaker 1: the emails, Hey, Michael Smerconish just raised a million dollars
Speaker 1: wear behind him. Send eighteen dollars, twenty five dollars fifty
Speaker 1: I would get those three four times a day. That's
Speaker 1: all that. Like Ken Martins, you don't win elections off
Speaker 1: of how much money you raise. I tell you that
Speaker 1: there are people that make a ton of money off
Speaker 1: of it. But that's not where elections are won and lost.
Speaker 1: It's with an ideology and standing to principle. And you
Speaker 1: know what, I don't see that coming out of the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party. And I do truly believe that they are
Speaker 1: handing Republicans the greatest gift that any Republican can ask for,
Speaker 1: and that is to keep doing what they're doing, keep
Speaker 1: backing these Democratic socials like Graham Platner away from the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party as again, the son of a Holocaust survivor.
Speaker 1: I could not, I could not stomach watching people like
Speaker 1: Bernie Sanders, AOC or even like the Chuck Schmuck Schumers.
Speaker 1: Go ahead, raise this guy's hand as if he is
Speaker 1: the next coming of the Democratic Party.
Speaker 2: God, he should have been done. He should have been
Speaker 2: done with the tattoo. But you know, there are the
Speaker 2: antipathy and hatred of President Trump in some quarters. They're blind,
Speaker 2: They're just blind. They want a fighter. They want someone
Speaker 2: they perceive as being willing to knee him in the groin,
Speaker 2: and consequently they hung in for far too long with him,
Speaker 2: and I think cemented Susan Collins's position.
Speaker 3: That's what I think in that case.
Speaker 1: You know, we've actually watched them try to kick Trump
Speaker 1: many many times. They've tried to kneecap them, kick them
Speaker 1: in the nuts, whatever it might be. They've tried it.
Speaker 1: It hasn't worked. Maybe maybe it's time for them to
Speaker 1: take a different strategy. Maybe they should start concentrating again
Speaker 1: on the kitchen table issues that Americans are concerned about,
Speaker 1: instead of their platform being I hate Trump, Let's go
Speaker 1: after Trump. Let's win by being the anti Trump party.
Speaker 3: Well, I think work. It might work in the midterms.
Speaker 2: It might work in the midterms because passion is going
Speaker 2: to drive who comes out in an off presidential year election.
Speaker 2: It won't work in twenty twenty eight. There's going to
Speaker 2: be a lot to parse and analyze when this midterm
Speaker 2: is over.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I plan on having you back at that
Speaker 1: point in time. We have a lot more to talk about.
Speaker 3: My friend.
Speaker 1: I thank you for joining me. Okay, you might know,
Speaker 1: you know Unleashed appreciate your brother. I will see you soon.