Speaker 1: And Hi, how are you busy day today? Welcome to
the Big Podcast. It is Tuesday, November fourth, the fourth
day of November, Year of Our Lord, twenty twenty five.
My name is Tom Sullivan, and I were busy in
only a few places around the country, but they're very
prominently covered. We're talking course about the race's election races
in Virginia and New Jersey, the marriage race in New
York City, and the Proposition fifty about redistricting out in California.
So we'll go over all of that. Plus we got
word this morning that former Vice President Dick Cheney passed
away at his home at the age of eighty four,
complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease. And if
you know anything about Dick Cheney, controversial, probably the most
powerful vice president in our nation's history. He was the
vice president to George W. Bush. But he was also,
like I said, a lightning row. There was no question
about that. People. He actually he knew about it, and
he actually kind of laughed about it. The fact that
people called him Darth Vader. And there were a lot
back in those days, the early two thousands, there was
memes weren't as good as they are today, but they
came up with Darth Vader memes for him. He started
off working in the Nixon administration. He went back that far,
so he was but he was chief of staff to
Gerald Ford nineteen seventy five. Gerald Ford was the brand
new appointed president. Dick Cheney was thirty four years of age,
and that made him the youngest chief of staffever. He
was there to drive the White House and Gerald Ford
I looked back and I said this at the time,
and I still believe it to this day. A lot
of people made fun of him, that he was some
sort of buffoon. He was anything, but he was.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 1: They made fun of him on Saturday Night Live of
him not playing football with a proper helmet. He was
an athletics star in Michigan. He did everything he could,
ski like a pro. But he was also for many
years a congressman and became the minority leader in the
House of Representatives. So you've got a president who probably
was the most qualified person to fill that office, Gerald Ford.
And who did he pick to be his chief of staff?
He picked Richard B. Cheney. And Cheney, so he starts
off as chief of staff at thirty four he had
his first heart attack as first of five heart attacks
by the time he was thirty seven, he had stents
put in his heart, he had a heart transplant. I mean,
this guy was anything but healthy. But that transplant was
thirteen years ago and he has lived thirteen years with
a borrowed heart. His doctor, Jonathan Reiner, talked about the
treatment for Dick Cheney as his patient.
Speaker 3: So he was simultaneously the most complicated patient from a
medical standpoint of ever taken care of, and also one
of the easiest patients to take care of, A very
gracious and grateful patient, incredibly compliant, and he was He
was easy to.
Speaker 2: Take care of because he did what you said he
should do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he asked good questions, made I think good decisions,
followed recommendations, scrupulously, came back to follow up, listened to
his body and his heart.
Speaker 1: He was in a meeting.
Speaker 3: In March of twenty twenty and he had some chest
pain and he just called me and said, you know,
I'm having some chest pain. What do you think I
should do? And I said, well, I think you probably
need another heart catheterization. He said, Okay, I'll be there
in a few minutes and he just handed his portfolio
to in Aid and said we're going to GW and
Whorreders of Washington University. Yeah, and he he put his
his health before before politics, and I think that's one
of the reasons why why he lived so long. Well,
he the vice president, had his first heart attack in
nineteen seventy eight when he was thirty seven years old,
at a time when medicine and cardiology could do nothing
to basically stop the heart attack. It was just all
watchful waiting, and he had a big heart attack then.
And over the ensuing almost fifty years, medical advances basically
caught up to his caught up to his disease just
the right moment, and he had athrosclerosis, which is a
systemic disease. And you know, finally after after fifty years,
you know, he reached a point in his life where
he just didn't have any more resilience. It did, so
he lived for about thirteen years after the heart transport.
I want to say that as his doctor, I had
an opportunity to see him in very private moments, and
what struck me on many occasions was his personal courage.
He was in trouble in twenty ten, really dying of
heart failure, and really late at night, we told him
that he needed emergency surgery to put this mechanical ventricular
assist device in. He asked a couple of questions and said,
let's do it. And you know, the same thing for
his transplants. So he faced personal peril with a remarkable calmness,
a preternatural calmness, which was really remarkable, remarkable to see.
Speaker 1: Everybody knew that he had a bad heart. We'll play
a story from Carl Role here in just a minute.
But I had the pleasure of getting to know the
Vice president decently. I wasn't close friends with the man,
but it was many years ago when President George W.
Bush was elected president. His first trip out of Washington,
d c. After nine to eleven was an APEX conference
in I think it was in Tokyo. It was in Asia,
and he stopped in Sacramento and the White House called
and asked if I would introduce him, and I of course,
and I actually went on to kind of be the
introducer of George W. Bush in California. I think on
three different account I know two for sure, there may
have been a third vaguely anyway, with Cheney's office found
out that that I was the guy to call for
that stuff. So Cheney was coming to California for something,
and I think it was four maybe five times they
called and I would meet with Vice President Cheney and
do the introductions and all that. But you met him
backstage and you'd talk to him a little bit. He
was a very I don't know, a lot of people
think that he was a tough guy to get along
with because he was very serious. You never saw him smile.
I got along with the guy great. I thought he
had a very dry sense of humor. But he was
a very committed Republicans conservative and that there's an article
in National Review today. Jim Garrity wrote it about he
did not change, the Republican Party changed. And of course
he was controversial about the Iraq War and all of that.
He was kind of the designer behind all of that.
But when it came to when it came to business,
the business of being the vice president, he was a
partner with George W. Bush. He was the most influential
vice president ever, no question about it. Pete Williams, I
was surprised to learn this this morning. Pete Williams, who
retired from NBC. I don't know a year or two ago.
He was Pentagon correspondent for NBC. He started off working
as an aid in Congressman Dick Cheney's office. Here's his
story his journalism career.
Speaker 4: He worked for Dick Cheney, were his press secretary when
Dick Cheney was a congressman, and then you did public
affairs for him when Cheney became the assistant Defense secretary.
Give us some sense of what it was like working
for him in those early days before he became a
household name.
Speaker 1: It was a total joy.
Speaker 2: You know. I think people don't realize what a great
sense of humor he had and how intensely loyal he
was to the people who worked for him. He's in
a very early point in my career with him. At
the Pentagon, I and another senior official did something that
alarmed the president, and the President George H. W. Bush,
called Dick Cheney and said he was very upset, and
mister Cheney said, you know, mister President, that was my idea.
Well it wasn't his idea, but there he was taking
the bullet for his rookie staffers. That's kind of an
exceptional thing in Washington, and I can assure you that
that inspires loyalty. We both grew up in the same place, Casper, Wyoming.
Mister Cheney was born in Nebraska but moved to Casper,
became the captain of the football team, married the high
school cheerleader Lynn. Cheney had two great daughters. So I
felt very close to him, and I was really honored
to work for him. Every day was a learning experience
with him.
Speaker 5: Did you do.
Speaker 6: Well well?
Speaker 2: So this was early on in mister Chenie's tenure and
the New York Times was looking for some background information
about a forthcoming round of arms control discussions with the Soviets,
and they asked if a senior official at the Pentagon,
someone that really hadn't worked much with Cheney, could do
some backgrounding. Chanie said yes, but be sure to talk
to the National Curity Council in the State Department to
make sure we're all lashed together. Well, this official revealed
something in the background or that the President had intended
to announce himself, so he wasn't very happy about it.
But as I say, mister Cheney said, well, mister President,
that was my idea. That was pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: I think that story typifies.
Speaker 7: Though.
Speaker 1: What I knew about Dick Cheney and anybody who ever
met him or worked with him, was that he was
rigid in his beliefs and in his dedication as a
conservative politician. And that I think is what is so
frustrating to me over the years, is the fact that
people turned on Dick Cheney and his daughter, who is
the same sort of person, is absolutely she puts her
principles over politics, and a lot of maga went to
take her down, which her house seat because of that.
But she was principled and so was her father. Was
so dedicated to principal his principles and would not bend.
And that's why was the Republican Party changed into a
party of mega. Dick Cheney really was a Republican back
in the day, a Reagan Republican. That's kind of the
stripe that I am so. I am sad to see
that Dick Chenney has passed away. I actually quite surprised
he lived to a ripe oled eighty four years old.
When he started having heart attacks when he was thirty seven.
Scott Jennings, who is a younger voice for conservatives, this
is his reaction to Dick Cheney's passing. Yeah, well, thanks
for asking. He will be missed.
Speaker 7: He was a legend of the Republican Party. I mean
you look at his resume, youngest White House chief of
staff ever. His time in the House was extremely consequential,
rose up in the leadership ranks. He was the most
powerful vice president. He was a good campaigner. You know,
he wasn't known for being the big, gregarious personality that
George W. Bush was, but he was an excellent campaigner.
I worked on both Bush Cheney campaigns, and having him
out on the campaign trail, you know, he was witty,
he was wry, and he was a really good campaigner.
And when I worked in the White House in the
second term, we would often go up to his office
and brief him on the political races of the day,
and those were special moments for me. I have some
great photos from those times. And he will be missed.
He was a legend of the Republican Party. And the
thing I remember most about him is that he and
his people knew how to get things done inside of government.
These people knew how to turn the bureaucracy towards outcomes
and sometimes outcomes and politics these days are hard to find,
so he'll be missed, you know. Regarding his stand in
the Republican Party today, obviously he's been at odds from
the current president. And that's okay. You know, not everybody
has to get along or agree all the time. For
us to all more in the loss of Dick Cheney
and understand what a consequential legend that he was inside
the Republican Party.
Speaker 1: I couldn't agree more. And so for all of you
that are big devotees of President Trump and therefore you
don't like Dick Cheney or his daughter Liz, take Scott
Jennings's word to heart that it's okay if you don't agree.
But he was a very very good conservative Republican, probably
the best vice president that we've ever had in this country.
Daniel Perino was the press secretary in the Bush Cheney
White House. Is a little reaction from her.
Speaker 5: That, you know, this one hit me pretty hard. We
had amazing ability, an opportunity to work together as a
team an administration in Washington, d C. We had a wonderful,
wyoming connection. Is a great father, a wonderful vice president,
a great grandfather, grandfather. Did you know that in the
recent years his granddaughter who she wrote, I believe she
did either for Laramie or down in Colorado Springs. He
drove with the horse to every single one of those competitions.
Speaker 3: It's really terrific.
Speaker 1: Yeah, most people only saw him in a suit and tie,
a very Washington politician type guy. But instead he was
a cowboy. He was a cowboy from Wyoming, and I
think he liked that much better than being a politician.
Karl Rove has some funny stories about his dealings with
the Vice President when he was George Bush's political chief
of staff.
Speaker 6: Well, he was a great and good man and served
our country with a great dedication for years. Youngest White
House chief of staff served in the served first in
the next administration chief of staff to Gerald Ford.
Speaker 1: Not a real tough time for the country.
Speaker 6: Yeah, really tough time for the country, and it was
a young man to help steer the White House during
these critical years. Ten years in the Congress, he was
made a member of the republic Can House leadership as
a freshman Republican. There was such enormous respect for him.
Speaker 3: Did you want George Bush to pick him as his
vice president?
Speaker 1: No? No.
Speaker 6: In fact, in fact, the President then governor called me
and said he was coming back to town for campaign
and he knew I was against the idea. He said,
I want you to come to the Governor's mansion ten
o'clock tomorrow morning. I want you to make the case
to me why I shouldn't go with Cheney. So I
show up to should not So I have my list.
I still have the piece of paper. Eight reasons that
don't need to worry about Wyoming guy. The guy has
his first heart attack at thirty seven. People think he's
not going to last. You know, we've worked really hard
to develop the image of you as your own man,
not mini me to your dad. Let's pick the guy
who's you know, secretary of the defense during the time
of war for your dad. You know your people are
worried about you being in Texas. Ohlman, what the heck.
Let's get the guy who is the leader of the
you know, of the largest oil service company and field
service company in the world. You know, very conservative congressman
cast really bad votes, like vote with one of the
three members of the House to vote against the resolution.
Speaker 1: Call it sais oh. I had him. I had him.
Speaker 6: So this goes on this like world as the data
can tell you that Bush was not a monologue guy.
So we're like the World Wrestling Federation for thirty minutes.
When I finished, I realized I can't can't have my
coat because I've swept through my shirt. That's been so contentious.
So he finished, and Bush says, really good, really good.
He made a good case there, turns to the guy
sitting next to him, says, Dick got any questions for
Carl Cheneyan's had been sitting there for half an hour
while I kicked him around, And as we walked out,
he says, Hi, gresson what you had to say?
Speaker 5: And what was it that President Bush? Why did he
want to pick him?
Speaker 6: Because he wanted somebody who would tell him what he
thought after careful consideration, and whether it was whether he
knew the President would agree with it or not, whether
the President liked her or not, and that he would
help him formulate good decisions. And when Bush made a decision,
even if Cheney, as he often was on the opposite
side of it, would be loyal and executing in the
best way possible. That office is so powerful you need
somebody sitting coming in there, having lunch with you once
a week and sitting in all the meetings. Who's going
to tell you what it's like. And he also knew
how a White House operated, So all these stupid stories
about you know, Cheney ran the White No, Cheney knew
exactly who the President of the United States was and
how that place needed to operate and encourage people. I mean, look,
he could have easily said, you know what, that guy
was against me, and then yet we became close friends.
We hunted together. I was on the secret committee that
he chaired.
Speaker 1: So he forgave you for your mistake.
Speaker 6: That's what one of the messages Bush was sending him was,
I want to surround myself with people who will give
it to me with a bark off.
Speaker 1: One more from Jamie Gangal. She also has been around
Washington as a reporter for a number of different networks.
Speaker 8: You know, I have not spoken to the family this morning,
but I have been speaking to Liz Cheney over the
last couple of weeks, and I think one of the
most important things she would like people to remember about
her father is something that happened actually in the last decade,
and that is she said, you know, the way she
was raised by her father gave her the courage of
her convictions. Liz knows that and the family knows that.
You know, many people will remember her father for being
a powerful and controversial vice president because of the Iraq
War and nine to eleven, but she hopes people will
also remember that, as she says, he chose country over party.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a very principal guy that you won't find many
in politics that have the kind of principles that Dick
Cheney had. So we watch as we move on on day. Well,
by the way, it's shut down day thirty five. How's
that going for you? If you're traveling? Good luck. The
airports are getting to be long lines because TSA. People
are calling in sick. The air traffic controllers there are
problems in air traffic control towers. A lot of people
think air traffic controllers are just in the tower at
the airport. There are three levels of air traffic controllers.
There's the controllers that are at the airport in that
booth you see if they're with the glass windows where
they manage the final approach in landing and the taxing
around on the airport to get on the runway to
take off. They take care of landings and takeoffs. Then
they pass the plane on to another regional air traffic
control center that is not at the airport. They're watching
their computer screens, watching the planes coming into the area
and leaving the area as they climb or descend. And
then finally, the third are called centers, and I think
there's I don't know, twelve of them something like that
in the country, maybe fourteen something like that. They handle
all the planes up at high elevations. So once you
climb out of an airport and you're flying along to
your destination, you're talking to that third set of controllers.
The problem with that is they cover many states, and
some of those are starting to show vacancies people not
coming into work, which could shut down air travel for
a big chunk of the country. So that is a
growing problem. There's more and more buzz about the fact
that behind the scenes, Republicans and Democrats are trying to
figure out a way to get the government back open.
But here we are, day thirty five, and the pressure
is mounting. My theory I told you was wait until
a day or two after election day when all of
the election ramifications won't matter, because whoever's going to get
elected today is going to get elected regardless. So speaking
of election day, so here we are, it's one year
away from the midterms, So this is kind of a
little bit of a peak about the mood of the voters,
at least in Virginia and New Jersey, New York City
and California. And one of the things to watch I
think Carl go back to Carl here. Carl Rove is
he's a technician when it comes to campaigns, and he's
looking to see that in New Jersey and in Virginia.
Believe Kamala Harris won those states by six points. So
the question will be if the two women that are
running for governor as Democrats in New Jersey in Virginia,
will they do better than Kamala Harris did in twenty
twenty four a year ago, And if so, that might
be a message to Kamala Harris to not try and
run again. If they don't do as Wallace she did,
that would probably be a message to her to say, well,
I'm better than they are. So let's talk to Carl
Rove and get his take on the elections that are
going on today. These are the things I'm going to
be looking at tonight. First of all, I'm going to
be looking at the numbers, how do they compare to
the twenty twenty four numbers, because remember these two states
were basically six point victories for Kamala Harris. That was
particularly unusual for New Jersey, which been a fifteen point
victory for Joe Biden four years before. I'm going to
be looking at the non white voters in New Jersey,
especially Hispanics Passaic.
Speaker 6: You talked about it earlier. This was a big reason
why the state moved right in the twenty twenty four
general election. And I'm going to be looking at the
suburbs in Virginia. Chesterfield, the big suburban county outside of Richmond,
Stafford County, which is sort of between Washington and Richmond.
I'm going to be looking at how the Republicans are
doing in those counties because again that's where Trump made
some movement in twenty twenty four. I'm going to look
at ticket splitters. Virginia has a history of splitting tickets,
and this is why even though the Republican candidate for
governor is behind in the polls, the Republican Attorney General,
Jason and Airis, is in a dead heat, maybe even
leading slightly I'm going to be looking at that, and
then I'm going to be paying attention to what's happening
down ballot. In New Jersey there are assembly seats that
Republicans look like they could pick up Assembly seats in
South New Jersey. And in Virginia there are eight Republican
members of the House of Delegates whose districts were carried
by Kamala Harris. I'm going to look for any erosion there.
And then finally, Pennsylvania has a retention election for the
Supreme Court. This is a state where the margin, the
registration margin between Democrats and Republicans has gotten very, very thin,
and it's going to be a quick looking at the
results there. If the Democrat Supreme Court justice has win comfortably,
then that's going to show enthusiasm on their side. If
it's a close race, that's going to show that the
two parties are polarized and both energized. So since its election,
they usually we have some information about, you know, the
polling machine problems at something such a precinct. I haven't
really heard any of that today, but we did get
bomb threats today at a school polling location in North Brunswick,
New Jersey. And we're finding out this afternoon that authorities
in New Jersey have announced an arrest in connection with
those bomb threats. They began as a bomb threat at
Livingston Park Elementary School via text messages and they were
quickly deemed to be a hoax. But the person who
was sending those has been has arrested.
Speaker 1: Good. So the debate is going to be interesting again
in California because Proposition fifty gives the drawing of the
congressional districts, which the voters took away fifteen years ago
from the politicians and created an independent committee to draw
those lines. Proposition fifty gives those line drawing authority back
to the politicians. If this wins, this is going to
be a plus for Gavin Newsom because he's the guy
who kind of came up with this in response to
Texas coming up with redrawing their congressional districts to try
to get more Republicans in Congress. So this is a
feather in his cap if it wins, as he's fighting
back against the Republicans and Donald Trump. If it loses,
he's in trouble. It would be a huge setback for
Gavin Newsom. So we'll be keeping an eye on California,
which their polls don't close until eight o'clock if I
remember right, eight o'clock in the evening West Coast time,
so it's going to be late before we find out
here on the East Coast. The East Coast is worried
about well. In Virginia, the Republican is falling behind on
the poll, so we'll see if she can pull it out.
In New Jersey, same thing, the Republican is slightly behind
the Democrat, but it's a much much closer race in
New Jersey than it is in Virginia. We've got the
attorney general race with the guy who threatened to put
bullets into the head of his political opponent in the
Virginia House of Delegates. So we'll see if that has
people actually concerned about this guy's mental behavior. But here
in New York, the mayor's race is it's a it's
a big city, and you're telling me that these are
our choices. Are there's more than three the three are
getting their publicity. There's I don't know, eight or nine
of them on the ballot, a bunch of you know,
nobody knows who they are, and they really aren't campaigning
or anything else. But let me tell you what the
New York City ballot looks like. There's a there's a
line the first there's two lines of all these various names.
The first line is Mamdani is the first name on
the first line, and then there's a couple of other names,
and then he's also running on some other that you
can have different parties that nominate him, so he's on
two different places on the first line. When voters are
looking to who they're going to vote for, there's no
Cuomo on the first line. You've got to go down
to the second line and go in about eight spaces
and there's Cuomo. So he's just the positioning on the
ballot's going to make it more of an uphill battle.
But there's a difference. The people are arguing about if
Mom Donnie, who's way ahead in the polls, wins, isn't
that going to be terrible for Democrats? I don't know.
Depends upon what he does. Is it going to be
Mark Theeson talks about this is going to be if
he gets elected. There's a lot of young people who
don't have any idea about what socialism is or how
it works. They just like what he's saying about affordability,
and he's going to do all this free stuff and
that it will be a good lesson, real, real time,
costly lesson to show young people what socialism is all about.
Here's Mark Theeson and David Asman from Fox Business.
Speaker 9: I think he's doing his best to sort of unlike
the mayor eal candidate in Minneapolis who's leaning into his
sort of radicalism. He's trying to portray himself as being
a lot more moderate. But when he gets elected, as
Trump says he's a communist, he's not a socialist. I
mean he said, we want to seize the means of
production from each according to his ability, to each according
to his need. That is literally from Karl Marx. Those
are words that Joseph Stalin had written into the nineteen
thirty six Soviet Constitution. And our mayoral candidate in New
York the center of global capitalism is actually.
Speaker 10: And he talks about decommodifying housing, which means take the
asset away from private hands and put it in the
hands of the government. That also has Marxist.
Speaker 9: I think there's a young generation now who did not
live the lived the Cold War, don't remember socialism, and
so they're going to have to get a lesson in
what socialism looks like here in the city of New York.
And I think that Mamdani is going to deliver that lesson.
One of the reasons why his victory is a silver
lining for democratic capitalists around the world is he's going
to give the world a lesson in socialism. And it's
also going to help the Republican Party a lot.
Speaker 10: They didn't They certainly didn't get it in the schools.
We know that, by the way, New York City spends
thirty nine thousand dollars per student educating kids, and they
don't know a damn thing about socialism or the history
of it in the world, let alone in the United States.
Speaker 1: Well put it mildly, there's a lot of people that
are freaking out over the fact that man Donnie is
ahead in the polls and maybe the next mayor of
New York City. But there's a couple there's a movement
in the Democrat Party that is moving toward socialism. The
mayor oral candidate in Minneapolis is a big socialist. He's
a proud socialist. And also in Seattle, where both Seattle
and Minneapolis have Democrat mayors. They're lefties, they act like democrats,
they believe in a lot of what democrats like to do,
tax and spend. But these are people two socialists that
are running against it because they're not far enough left.
So watch not only Virginia and New Jersey in New
York City in California with their Proposition fifty, but also
Seattle and Minneapolis to see how the people really react
to all of these socialist candidates. So on this election day, Tay,
let's take a look at Wall Street because it wasn't pretty.
There were a number of reports out. First of all,
you see the ads for Indeed, the place where you
know for jobs that you can sign up as an
employer and put out jobs that you need to hire people,
and they always say, oh yes I do Indeed. And well,
since they don't have government job data, Indeed came out
with a measure today that says that in October job
opening slump to the lowest level since February of two
thy twenty one. So that's not well received. Plus there's
a lot of people on Wall Street that are thinking, hey,
maybe all this increase in AI stocks, maybe the valuations
are just a little too rich. So the stock market
today went south. Dow Jones Industrials down two hundred and
fifty one points closed at forty seven thousand and eighty five,
SMB down eighty NASDACK down over two percent, down four
hundred and eighty six points. That's where most of the
AI stocks hang out. Price of gold sank as well.
It was down seventy two dollars to thirty nine forty one,
and oil went down almost a dollar to sixty dollars
for one barrel of oil. So that's it for today.
We'll go over all the results tomorrow. Thank you for
coming by, hope to see you then, dont n p