WEBVTT

1
00:00:04.640 --> 00:00:08.320
Welcome to the Hot Dish, comfort food for rural America. I'm Heidi

2
00:00:08.320 --> 00:00:12.040
Heitkamp. And I'm Joel Heitkamp. Today we're going to focus on what voters

3
00:00:12.040 --> 00:00:15.800
are thinking in rural America. You know, a lot's happening in our country, so I

4
00:00:15.800 --> 00:00:19.360
think it's good to check in with what folks are thinking and

5
00:00:19.520 --> 00:00:22.800
saying. You think there's a lot going on there, Joel, you think?

6
00:00:24.000 --> 00:00:27.480
I think it's like every day is just an incredible

7
00:00:27.480 --> 00:00:31.150
rush of information. But, you know, the question is, how are

8
00:00:31.150 --> 00:00:34.990
people consuming it? What are people thinking about it? And that's why I think

9
00:00:34.990 --> 00:00:38.470
we have some great people for our show today. I spoke with Sarah

10
00:00:38.470 --> 00:00:42.110
Longwell of the Bulwark. She had a lot of insights about

11
00:00:42.110 --> 00:00:45.910
what's happening with the Democratic Party. Also, what she has learned

12
00:00:45.910 --> 00:00:49.670
dealing with focus groups that she does almost on a regular basis,

13
00:00:49.670 --> 00:00:53.070
Joel. I'm jealous that you were the one that got to do that interview, Hyde,

14
00:00:53.070 --> 00:00:56.630
but I was pretty lucky, too, because I got to speak with Phil

15
00:00:56.790 --> 00:01:00.470
Snape of Impact Social, an online analysis

16
00:01:00.470 --> 00:01:04.050
company that recently partnered with us here at One Country

17
00:01:04.050 --> 00:01:07.810
Project to learn what voters are feeling based on their social

18
00:01:07.970 --> 00:01:11.810
media posts. It's going to be so cool. We have two journalists

19
00:01:11.810 --> 00:01:15.490
joining us today, Heidi Marttila-Losure and Christopher

20
00:01:15.490 --> 00:01:19.250
Vondracek. They're going to tell us about their experiences living and

21
00:01:19.490 --> 00:01:23.290
reporting about rural spaces. You know, it's going to be a great episode

22
00:01:23.290 --> 00:01:27.010
with lots of insight into how rural people are feeling right now.

23
00:01:27.090 --> 00:01:29.330
So you know what, Hyde? Let's get to it. Yep.

24
00:01:34.680 --> 00:01:38.360
I'm very honored to be with Sarah Longwell today. She is the founder

25
00:01:38.360 --> 00:01:42.000
and publisher of the Bulwark, an independent media company that

26
00:01:42.000 --> 00:01:45.840
reaches millions of subscribers every day. I have followed

27
00:01:45.840 --> 00:01:48.920
her career for a long, long time, and she has really

28
00:01:49.400 --> 00:01:53.120
found a spot in the dialogue of American politics

29
00:01:53.120 --> 00:01:56.970
today, conducting focus groups and highlighting some

30
00:01:56.970 --> 00:02:00.810
of those results for her podcast, the Focus Group. So

31
00:02:00.810 --> 00:02:03.930
she's here to talk about the Focus Group. But before we get there, I want

32
00:02:03.930 --> 00:02:07.730
to talk a little bit politics because this has been an

33
00:02:07.730 --> 00:02:11.330
extraordinary couple days. Basically, looking at

34
00:02:11.570 --> 00:02:14.890
the deployment of troops and National Guard in

35
00:02:14.890 --> 00:02:18.450
California being nationalized against the wishes of the Governor.

36
00:02:18.690 --> 00:02:22.520
You see active duty military on the streets. You

37
00:02:22.520 --> 00:02:26.120
saw the largest protest in the history of the country over the

38
00:02:26.120 --> 00:02:29.680
weekend in the No Kings Protest. You saw a horrific,

39
00:02:30.000 --> 00:02:33.840
absolutely horrific act of political violence in our neighboring

40
00:02:33.840 --> 00:02:37.600
state and with our friends in Minnesota. And then you're also

41
00:02:37.600 --> 00:02:41.440
seeing that we may be on the verge of engaging in a war. And

42
00:02:41.440 --> 00:02:44.720
that's all what's happened in the last five days.

43
00:02:45.120 --> 00:02:48.760
And so the news moves really fast, Sarah. And so when

44
00:02:48.760 --> 00:02:52.560
you're looking at all of these kinds of trends, how do you stay

45
00:02:52.560 --> 00:02:56.180
ahead of it? As somebody who is asked repeatedly

46
00:02:56.180 --> 00:02:59.700
to tell us, what does the public think? What are you hearing? How do you

47
00:02:59.700 --> 00:03:03.380
stay ahead of this? I mean, I think fundamentally by having an

48
00:03:03.380 --> 00:03:06.940
orientation about Donald Trump, I think we understand

49
00:03:07.740 --> 00:03:11.180
that he is unqualified to be the president, that he is not a good person,

50
00:03:11.340 --> 00:03:14.140
and he is not going to act like a normal politician. And so I often

51
00:03:14.140 --> 00:03:17.860
think that just our ability to understand, because we are all

52
00:03:17.860 --> 00:03:21.390
former Republicans and, and so we understand the tension that

53
00:03:21.390 --> 00:03:25.190
exists between how a normal Republican would behave in this environment

54
00:03:25.190 --> 00:03:28.990
and how Donald Trump would behave, because we've seen him before. And I think

55
00:03:28.990 --> 00:03:32.750
as 'Never Trumpers,' as people who from the jump said, if you take

56
00:03:32.750 --> 00:03:36.510
somebody who's fundamentally a bad person and put them in

57
00:03:36.510 --> 00:03:40.350
charge of a country, the outcomes are going to be inevitably

58
00:03:40.350 --> 00:03:44.110
bad. And so I think a lot of times, because we

59
00:03:44.110 --> 00:03:47.270
have unfortunately, a bit of a darker outlook,

60
00:03:47.900 --> 00:03:51.580
we are too often vindicated in our worldview because Donald Trump

61
00:03:51.740 --> 00:03:55.540
behaves in ways we think he might. We thought going into 2020 that he wouldn't

62
00:03:55.540 --> 00:03:58.860
accept the results of the election, and he didn't. And so, like, when you

63
00:03:59.340 --> 00:04:03.180
understand that we don't live in normal times, when you believe

64
00:04:03.820 --> 00:04:07.340
that actually we are underreacting as a country to what

65
00:04:07.500 --> 00:04:11.060
the threat Donald Trump presents, I think that that has allowed us

66
00:04:11.060 --> 00:04:14.710
to know that a lot of the like right

67
00:04:14.710 --> 00:04:17.350
now, just take the situation with Israel and Iran.

68
00:04:18.070 --> 00:04:21.870
Normally this is a time you really want grownups to be in charge. And

69
00:04:21.870 --> 00:04:25.510
what you don't want happening is somebody sort of tweeting

70
00:04:25.510 --> 00:04:29.350
through it their own evolving impulses.

71
00:04:29.670 --> 00:04:33.390
That is an incredibly dangerous place to be. And I think

72
00:04:33.390 --> 00:04:36.950
that there's a lot of people in the media or in the

73
00:04:36.950 --> 00:04:40.760
Republican Party or maybe even in the Democratic Party who still, they, they

74
00:04:40.760 --> 00:04:44.240
try to make these things normal, right? They, they don't, it's people - we talk

75
00:04:44.240 --> 00:04:47.560
a lot about normalizing, but part of it is like, because our nervous systems

76
00:04:47.560 --> 00:04:51.400
can't take the chaos, like, we can't live that way. There's

77
00:04:51.400 --> 00:04:54.680
this constant desire to put it in a framework we understand. And

78
00:04:55.240 --> 00:04:59.000
so people are always doing that with Trump. And if you take that off

79
00:04:59.000 --> 00:05:01.880
and you say, no, guys, he might do something completely

80
00:05:02.760 --> 00:05:06.600
outside of anything we've ever seen before, and you should be ready

81
00:05:06.600 --> 00:05:10.360
for that. And you shouldn't treat this like, well, he'll probably do a normal thing

82
00:05:10.360 --> 00:05:13.960
because the situation's so serious. No, no,

83
00:05:14.040 --> 00:05:17.600
he very well may not. You know, I've been following, as I know you

84
00:05:17.600 --> 00:05:21.280
have, kind of the MAGA faction that

85
00:05:21.280 --> 00:05:25.039
is really, I think, headed up by Steve Bannon, who is really the populist in

86
00:05:25.039 --> 00:05:28.760
the group, the architect of 'Let's Get Rid of Forever Wars.'

87
00:05:29.080 --> 00:05:32.800
Those people are hot right now because they think that this president is

88
00:05:32.800 --> 00:05:36.040
going to engage militarily in the Mideast on

89
00:05:36.600 --> 00:05:40.440
behalf of Israel. How serious do you think that division

90
00:05:40.900 --> 00:05:44.460
is when you see people who were instrumental in

91
00:05:44.460 --> 00:05:48.260
legitimizing him in the last election saying, I'm sorry

92
00:05:48.260 --> 00:05:51.220
I misled you, that's not the guy that I endorsed.

93
00:05:51.780 --> 00:05:55.380
Look, understanding the origins of Donald Trump, and this is what I mean where,

94
00:05:55.700 --> 00:05:59.460
look, the Republican Party that I came up in was a hawkish party.

95
00:05:59.460 --> 00:06:02.460
We believed in American leadership in the world. But one of the reasons that Donald

96
00:06:02.460 --> 00:06:05.780
Trump resonated with a new kind of base voter in the Republican Party

97
00:06:06.020 --> 00:06:09.740
and outside of the Republican Party, Independents, is because he didn't vote for the Iraq

98
00:06:09.740 --> 00:06:13.040
war. Now, he wasn't in office then, but he was able to sort of run

99
00:06:13.040 --> 00:06:16.680
against Jeb Bush on his brother's reputation

100
00:06:16.680 --> 00:06:19.720
as, as having failed in the Iraq war. So Trump

101
00:06:20.200 --> 00:06:23.920
really fashions himself and his followers fashion themselves about a guy who is

102
00:06:23.920 --> 00:06:27.280
against Forever Wars. He's not going to get us into that. But Donald Trump is

103
00:06:27.280 --> 00:06:31.080
also pulled by his impulse to be a tough guy, to bring the might

104
00:06:31.080 --> 00:06:34.600
of the American people in some, like, impulsive way.

105
00:06:34.680 --> 00:06:38.430
Right? And so those things right now are intentional and they also

106
00:06:38.430 --> 00:06:41.630
represent a tension within the Republican Party itself, meaning

107
00:06:41.710 --> 00:06:45.430
whatever's left of the responsible sort of Republican Party that

108
00:06:45.430 --> 00:06:49.030
says American leadership is needed here. That is very much

109
00:06:49.030 --> 00:06:52.790
opposed by the Bannon Wing and the Laura Loomer Wing and the more Populist Wing.

110
00:06:52.790 --> 00:06:55.950
And so those things are going to come into conflict, both in Trump

111
00:06:55.950 --> 00:06:59.670
internally, because he'll say whatever when he's running, but when push comes

112
00:06:59.670 --> 00:07:03.390
to shove, this is what being a leader is about. And so Donald Trump's empty.

113
00:07:04.040 --> 00:07:07.880
His emptiness, his inability to have, like a real view of how the world should

114
00:07:07.880 --> 00:07:11.680
be, ends up being pulled between what his most fervent

115
00:07:11.680 --> 00:07:15.440
followers want him to be and then what he thinks he's got the opportunity to

116
00:07:15.440 --> 00:07:18.920
do as a, as a tough guy. Yeah and if you're looking for

117
00:07:19.240 --> 00:07:22.960
an informed decision making structure, I don't think that's what we've

118
00:07:22.960 --> 00:07:26.640
seen historically with this president. In fact, as recently as

119
00:07:26.640 --> 00:07:30.280
his attendance at the economic summit with our allies,

120
00:07:30.440 --> 00:07:34.190
he confused European Union with the UK

121
00:07:34.430 --> 00:07:37.910
So I don't know. He's not a smart man. No, I mean, honest to God,

122
00:07:37.910 --> 00:07:41.430
Sarah, the thing that is fingernails on a chalkboard for me is when people say

123
00:07:41.430 --> 00:07:45.110
he's smart. I said, he's clever, he's cunning, he's sly,

124
00:07:45.110 --> 00:07:48.950
but he is not smart because he's not curious about the world. He doesn't

125
00:07:48.950 --> 00:07:52.630
understand kind of all the history that goes into a lot of these

126
00:07:52.630 --> 00:07:56.390
decisions. I want to just kind of pivot before we talk about the

127
00:07:56.390 --> 00:07:59.630
work that you do in Focus Groups, I want to talk about something that's really

128
00:07:59.630 --> 00:08:03.130
been bothering me, which is, you know, in the past, when, when

129
00:08:03.130 --> 00:08:06.890
politicians say stupid stuff or they make bad decisions

130
00:08:06.890 --> 00:08:10.650
on their public statements, there was always this moment where

131
00:08:10.890 --> 00:08:14.570
they'll walk it back, they'll say they're sorry. Maybe it would be a

132
00:08:14.570 --> 00:08:18.170
little disingenuous, but they'll acknowledge that this was a problem.

133
00:08:18.410 --> 00:08:22.090
We have seen three events now where that hasn't happened.

134
00:08:22.090 --> 00:08:25.810
Joni Ernst basically saying people are gonna die and then doubling

135
00:08:25.810 --> 00:08:29.570
down with a march through the cemetery and talking about

136
00:08:29.570 --> 00:08:33.220
the Tooth Fairy. And you've got the Senator from California,

137
00:08:33.220 --> 00:08:37.060
Alex Padilla, basically be taken to the floor as he

138
00:08:37.060 --> 00:08:40.660
is basically telling them who he is. No apology. In

139
00:08:40.660 --> 00:08:44.260
fact, the best defense is a good offense. And now you have this

140
00:08:44.260 --> 00:08:47.820
situation with Senator Lee, who tweeted really

141
00:08:47.820 --> 00:08:51.660
insensitive things about what happened in the state of

142
00:08:51.660 --> 00:08:55.180
Minnesota, doubling down and not saying they're sorry.

143
00:08:55.580 --> 00:08:59.420
So where does that trend come from? Is that because of Donald Trump

144
00:08:59.420 --> 00:09:03.030
or, or is that just everybody realizes, no, Donald Trump

145
00:09:03.030 --> 00:09:06.830
never says he's sorry, so they're not gonna say they're sorry? Yeah, well, it's

146
00:09:06.830 --> 00:09:10.590
both those things, right? So Donald Trump's his doubling down strategy,

147
00:09:10.590 --> 00:09:14.430
right? Republicans have basically allowed Trump

148
00:09:14.510 --> 00:09:18.270
to show them a path that overwhelms their decency but

149
00:09:18.270 --> 00:09:21.910
that works kind of in our social media era. And they've

150
00:09:21.910 --> 00:09:25.630
convinced themselves that this is okay because the mobs,

151
00:09:25.630 --> 00:09:28.910
right, the online mobs that came for them, that was

152
00:09:28.910 --> 00:09:32.730
censorship, that was, you know, curbing free speech, speech. And so the

153
00:09:32.730 --> 00:09:36.290
way to handle this is just to push through it, to never say you're

154
00:09:36.290 --> 00:09:40.130
sorry, to never let them see you retreat

155
00:09:40.130 --> 00:09:43.850
from your position. And Donald Trump really pioneered that in politics.

156
00:09:44.170 --> 00:09:47.970
But people sort of forget that Donald Trump did that, in part because he

157
00:09:47.970 --> 00:09:51.450
does have, like, he's not smart, but he has a reptilian sense

158
00:09:51.690 --> 00:09:55.370
for how to dominate space, almost like a wrestling sense,

159
00:09:55.370 --> 00:09:58.790
like a kayfabe. And I think that, that people

160
00:09:58.950 --> 00:10:02.750
have lost in that what it means to be a decent person because Donald Trump

161
00:10:02.750 --> 00:10:06.470
doesn't have any decency. And so I know that Joni Ernst

162
00:10:06.790 --> 00:10:10.550
probably is a human. And what I've seen, what I saw her as, you know,

163
00:10:10.550 --> 00:10:13.950
eight years ago or something, she doesn't think this is a good idea. I mean,

164
00:10:13.950 --> 00:10:17.590
Mike Lee, the things that Mike Lee tweeted where

165
00:10:17.590 --> 00:10:21.390
he's blaming Tim Walz for these murders,

166
00:10:21.390 --> 00:10:24.820
but he does it in sort of a joking way the day after the

167
00:10:24.820 --> 00:10:27.900
murders happened. It is...it's the kind of

168
00:10:27.900 --> 00:10:31.620
grossness that says, like, your - I don't

169
00:10:31.620 --> 00:10:34.060
know if I'm allowed to swear on this podcast, but, like, your need for shitposting

170
00:10:34.060 --> 00:10:37.740
is overwhelming your human sense of decency.

171
00:10:37.740 --> 00:10:41.580
And a lot of that is because Donald Trump has both convinced

172
00:10:41.580 --> 00:10:45.420
you that they have so dehumanized their other side.

173
00:10:45.420 --> 00:10:48.780
Like the idea of Nancy Pelosi and her husband's another great example where people were

174
00:10:48.780 --> 00:10:52.480
then dressing up as Paul Pelosi for Halloween as somebody who got

175
00:10:52.480 --> 00:10:56.200
hit with a hammer. Like, this is a political movement that

176
00:10:56.440 --> 00:11:00.280
is steeped in indecency. They've told themselves a story in

177
00:11:00.280 --> 00:11:03.720
which they are the victims. And so they, they have this grievance-based politics,

178
00:11:03.720 --> 00:11:07.240
but then that allows them to feel like they can be just

179
00:11:07.400 --> 00:11:10.760
disgusting, despicable human beings to people who are not.

180
00:11:11.080 --> 00:11:14.760
See, this is the thing. Mike Lee thinks that those people are his enemies.

181
00:11:14.760 --> 00:11:18.510
Not his colleagues, but his enemies. And I

182
00:11:18.830 --> 00:11:22.670
think that is a grave loss for our politics when people start

183
00:11:22.830 --> 00:11:25.830
seeing each other as an enemy. It's like Barack Obama. I mean, everybody sort of

184
00:11:25.830 --> 00:11:29.310
understood, like, politics in America, it's an intramural sport. You know, like, if you're a

185
00:11:29.310 --> 00:11:32.990
Senator, like, this is the thing, this just shocks me. Padilla, Senator

186
00:11:33.150 --> 00:11:36.910
Padilla, when he was - obviously that was, it went way too

187
00:11:36.910 --> 00:11:39.950
far in terms of what they did to him. And I think most Senators agree

188
00:11:39.950 --> 00:11:43.750
with that. Yeah. Where are his colleagues who know him as

189
00:11:43.750 --> 00:11:47.510
a human and say, 'hey, look, maybe he shouldn't have

190
00:11:47.510 --> 00:11:50.990
been at the, maybe he shouldn't have interrupted,' like, whatever throat clearing they need to

191
00:11:50.990 --> 00:11:54.310
do. 'But you can't treat Senators like this. I watched the video. Guy identified himself.

192
00:11:54.310 --> 00:11:57.790
You cannot do this.' Like, where's the collegial respect? That erosion

193
00:11:58.430 --> 00:12:02.070
is the gut-coarsening of our politics is really harming us

194
00:12:02.070 --> 00:12:05.790
as humans. And in the category of you

195
00:12:05.790 --> 00:12:09.430
can't make this up, when Corey Lewandowski is the

196
00:12:09.430 --> 00:12:13.230
same person in the room telling people, 'you can't do this to a United States

197
00:12:13.230 --> 00:12:16.470
Senator,' you know that whatever that center is, that normalcy

198
00:12:16.470 --> 00:12:20.190
has moved so far. Well, that's before they get their story

199
00:12:20.190 --> 00:12:23.910
straight. Right? So Corey Lewandowski knows it's bad. It's like when January 6th

200
00:12:23.910 --> 00:12:26.670
happened, everybody knew it was bad. But then like people get their story straight and

201
00:12:26.670 --> 00:12:29.470
they're like, no, no, no, we're not going to act like this is wrong. We're

202
00:12:29.470 --> 00:12:32.790
going to act like it's Padilla who should be censured. That's what I'm saying is

203
00:12:32.790 --> 00:12:36.230
that there isn't an apology anymore. There isn't a sense of, oh,

204
00:12:36.390 --> 00:12:40.190
and this is a good jumping off spot because for us to talk about the

205
00:12:40.190 --> 00:12:44.010
work that you're doing on Focus Groups. I hear so

206
00:12:44.010 --> 00:12:47.730
many people saying Senators and the people in public life

207
00:12:47.890 --> 00:12:51.290
are reflecting their constituencies. They're

208
00:12:51.290 --> 00:12:54.610
reflecting the anger and the desire of their

209
00:12:54.610 --> 00:12:58.370
constituencies to go out there, just punch, punch, punch, and

210
00:12:58.370 --> 00:13:01.330
don't ever retreat, don't ever sit down, don't ever

211
00:13:01.730 --> 00:13:05.330
compromise. Is that what you're seeing in your focus group,

212
00:13:05.330 --> 00:13:09.010
Sarah? So there's a phenomenon that I have that I call the 'Republican Triangle

213
00:13:09.010 --> 00:13:12.630
of Doom,' and it is the toxic and

214
00:13:12.630 --> 00:13:16.350
symbiotic relationship between Republican elected

215
00:13:16.350 --> 00:13:19.470
officials, the voters and the right wing info-tainment

216
00:13:19.470 --> 00:13:23.230
media. And if you think about it as sort of three points,

217
00:13:23.230 --> 00:13:26.510
right, and leave Donald Trump out of it for a second. But like you can

218
00:13:26.510 --> 00:13:30.230
see how it is mutually reinforcing and radicalizing because

219
00:13:30.230 --> 00:13:33.710
there is some, and let's just, I'll use as an example something like the election

220
00:13:33.710 --> 00:13:37.430
being stolen. So Trump says the election stolen. And

221
00:13:37.680 --> 00:13:41.480
now most of the country after the election, they don't

222
00:13:41.480 --> 00:13:44.600
think it was stolen. Most Republicans don't think it was stolen. Trump's sort of saying

223
00:13:44.600 --> 00:13:48.400
it and everyone's like, okay, but there's some segment of Trump voters

224
00:13:48.400 --> 00:13:52.240
who are like, yeah, it was stolen. And so Newsmax

225
00:13:52.240 --> 00:13:55.920
says, okay, well, we're going to put people on that says, yes, this

226
00:13:55.920 --> 00:13:59.760
was stolen. And then Kevin McCarthy says, oh, well now

227
00:14:00.160 --> 00:14:03.483
if the, you know, right wing info-tainment media and some of these voters are saying

228
00:14:03.484 --> 00:14:06.750
it was stolen, I better go on Newsmax and say, yes, something fishy is going

229
00:14:06.750 --> 00:14:10.590
on here. And then pretty soon some other, you know, Fox News say, well, if

230
00:14:10.590 --> 00:14:14.430
Kevin McCarthy is saying that it's stolen, maybe there's something to

231
00:14:14.430 --> 00:14:18.110
it. And then another segment of voters say, I don't know, if Fox News

232
00:14:18.110 --> 00:14:21.550
and Kevin McCarthy are saying that it was stolen, maybe something was going on. And

233
00:14:21.550 --> 00:14:25.190
pretty soon the entire right wing ecosystem has told itself

234
00:14:25.190 --> 00:14:28.950
a story and convinced itself because more and more people buy into

235
00:14:28.950 --> 00:14:32.760
it over time. And it becomes fact then in this ecosystem.

236
00:14:32.760 --> 00:14:36.360
And so in some ways it's not, some people are chicken and

237
00:14:36.360 --> 00:14:39.160
egging this in a way of like, is it the voters or is it the

238
00:14:39.160 --> 00:14:42.800
politicians? And I'm saying these things are all working together in this

239
00:14:43.120 --> 00:14:46.400
very toxic and symbiotic way that creates this almost

240
00:14:46.720 --> 00:14:50.520
contained bubble of falsehoods where when I'm in the focus groups,

241
00:14:50.520 --> 00:14:54.000
you can tell who lives in these bubbles and who doesn't really

242
00:14:54.000 --> 00:14:57.710
quickly. And it tends to

243
00:14:57.710 --> 00:15:01.430
be the more devoted you are to Trump, the deeper you are in

244
00:15:01.430 --> 00:15:04.950
that bubble. One thing that I would ask you is

245
00:15:05.270 --> 00:15:09.110
when you're doing focus groups, is there any sense of, you may

246
00:15:09.110 --> 00:15:12.910
believe that, but here are some facts that would maybe

247
00:15:12.910 --> 00:15:16.470
help you recalibrate or rethink kind of where you're at

248
00:15:16.550 --> 00:15:19.830
politically or where you're at in understanding this issue?

249
00:15:20.230 --> 00:15:23.790
Yeah. So here's what happens is that it's not that people are all

250
00:15:23.790 --> 00:15:27.590
nuts, but for a lot of them, they're so, they're either pretty deep in

251
00:15:27.590 --> 00:15:30.910
the ecosystem or they're difficult to even get to with

252
00:15:31.070 --> 00:15:34.830
alternative information, right? Like the real information isn't even

253
00:15:34.830 --> 00:15:38.350
penetrating. It's not getting to them. But then when it does,

254
00:15:38.510 --> 00:15:42.110
part of what happens is in that 70% of people,

255
00:15:42.350 --> 00:15:46.110
70% of Republicans who said the election was stolen is that there are gradations

256
00:15:46.190 --> 00:15:49.230
of how they think about it. There are people who are like,

257
00:15:49.710 --> 00:15:53.390
the voting machines were rigged and they switched people's votes.

258
00:15:53.390 --> 00:15:57.090
And that's what happened. And even after Fox News had to pay an

259
00:15:57.090 --> 00:16:00.810
enormous defin- defamation suit, like, they still believe that. They believe

260
00:16:00.810 --> 00:16:04.650
it to this day, then there are other people who say, well, I don't

261
00:16:04.650 --> 00:16:07.850
think it was that. I think it was more, and there's, there's been, there's a

262
00:16:07.850 --> 00:16:11.290
whole media ecosystem for that. Mollie Hemingway wrote a book called "Rigged," where it was

263
00:16:11.290 --> 00:16:15.090
a much subtler type of what they would call rigging, where it was the changes

264
00:16:15.090 --> 00:16:18.810
that happened during the Pandemic to some of the voting, the way that people

265
00:16:18.810 --> 00:16:21.930
are allowed to vote earlier, the way that they were allowed to vote by mail

266
00:16:21.930 --> 00:16:25.650
when they previously hadn't been able to because of the Pandemic. That's how

267
00:16:25.650 --> 00:16:29.270
it happened. It was because of the rules changes, which doesn't mean it was what

268
00:16:29.590 --> 00:16:32.470
- didn't mean those votes weren't real. It just means that the election was rigged

269
00:16:32.470 --> 00:16:35.910
in some way by the people who were in charge. And so there's gradations to

270
00:16:36.070 --> 00:16:39.510
these stories that although layer up to a

271
00:16:39.670 --> 00:16:42.710
large part believing that there was something unfair about it. Well,

272
00:16:43.590 --> 00:16:47.190
I mean, it's just interesting because you have that insight to

273
00:16:47.430 --> 00:16:51.270
voters every day as you look at the work that you do and

274
00:16:51.430 --> 00:16:54.870
the work that we do at One Country. And I've said all

275
00:16:55.270 --> 00:16:59.030
along, I started this One Country Project because I

276
00:16:59.430 --> 00:17:02.710
could see this trend, and I could see this trend moving outside

277
00:17:03.110 --> 00:17:05.990
of rural America and moving into suburban

278
00:17:06.310 --> 00:17:09.950
America or even urban America. The same messages

279
00:17:09.950 --> 00:17:13.750
that will develop a sense of grievance, a sense of this

280
00:17:13.750 --> 00:17:17.470
guy is on our side and the other guy or the other woman isn't on

281
00:17:17.470 --> 00:17:20.830
our side. That same sense and that same cultural

282
00:17:20.830 --> 00:17:24.560
attack, you could see migrate. And, you know, the

283
00:17:24.560 --> 00:17:27.960
Democratic Party has been woefully inadequate at cauterizing

284
00:17:27.960 --> 00:17:31.440
that wound and basically pushing back on that message.

285
00:17:31.440 --> 00:17:34.640
And I'm curious about how you see, number

286
00:17:35.120 --> 00:17:38.760
one in your work, the difference between urban and rural and how people

287
00:17:38.760 --> 00:17:42.480
perceive these issues? But basically also, what

288
00:17:43.520 --> 00:17:47.080
do you think are the messages or the methods that could persuade

289
00:17:47.080 --> 00:17:50.400
people that they need to, you know, not change their mind necessarily,

290
00:17:50.400 --> 00:17:54.070
but at least open their mind to a different way of thinking? I've

291
00:17:54.780 --> 00:17:58.060
been doing the focus groups now for about seven

292
00:17:58.700 --> 00:18:02.060
years, really consistently. And since 2020, when

293
00:18:02.380 --> 00:18:05.180
the Pandemic hit and we started doing a lot more of them online, we

294
00:18:06.220 --> 00:18:09.100
were just able to do, you know, three or four a week. And so I'm

295
00:18:09.100 --> 00:18:12.940
constantly able to sort of get feedback from voters. And

296
00:18:12.940 --> 00:18:16.540
there's a ton of things in there that I have learned, much of which is

297
00:18:16.540 --> 00:18:20.260
about information flow and what people hear and what they don't and

298
00:18:20.260 --> 00:18:23.380
what gets through and what doesn't. And you can see the results of this in

299
00:18:23.380 --> 00:18:27.150
an election like we just had in '20. The people who voted

300
00:18:27.150 --> 00:18:30.950
for Kamala Harris, like, the vast majority of them

301
00:18:30.950 --> 00:18:34.750
read mainstream media. Like they were, they were following the news. They read

302
00:18:34.910 --> 00:18:38.750
regular news. People who vote for Donald Trump live in an entirely different media

303
00:18:38.750 --> 00:18:42.590
ecosystem. Or - or it's not, and this is, this is

304
00:18:42.590 --> 00:18:46.390
to your point about rural divides. One of them is, you

305
00:18:46.390 --> 00:18:50.230
might be somebody who doesn't follow politics very closely, and this is something

306
00:18:50.230 --> 00:18:53.710
that's Donald Trump and the Republicans now, they, they count on a what, what somebody

307
00:18:53.710 --> 00:18:57.060
might call "Lower Information Voter," which just

308
00:18:57.540 --> 00:19:00.340
means somebody doesn't pay a ton of attention to politics. I think this is a

309
00:19:00.340 --> 00:19:03.140
perfectly rational thing to do, not pay a ton of attention to politics. However, you

310
00:19:03.140 --> 00:19:06.540
swim in a cultural soup of Trumpism

311
00:19:06.540 --> 00:19:10.219
when you're in these rural areas, meaning the people that you know

312
00:19:10.219 --> 00:19:13.700
that you're friends with on Facebook or that you're friends with on social media who

313
00:19:13.700 --> 00:19:17.140
share posts and share things about politics then tend to come

314
00:19:17.460 --> 00:19:21.260
from a political persuasion that is MAGA, that is Trumpy. And so

315
00:19:21.260 --> 00:19:24.700
the stuff that you are seeing from your trusted sources, which is

316
00:19:24.700 --> 00:19:28.420
not a media source, not the Wall Street Journal, it's not

317
00:19:28.420 --> 00:19:30.900
even, might, might not even be Fox News. A lot of times people are like,

318
00:19:30.900 --> 00:19:33.820
oh, it's Fox News. I'm like, half these people who vote for Trump, it's not

319
00:19:33.820 --> 00:19:37.060
Fox News, it's not news. It's not even, it's just they swim now in a

320
00:19:37.140 --> 00:19:40.860
cultural soup of Trumpism that, that sort of permeates on social

321
00:19:40.860 --> 00:19:44.660
media and in other ways in which we're now so hyper, hyper segmented. Oftentimes,

322
00:19:44.660 --> 00:19:48.500
like the redder places are getting

323
00:19:48.500 --> 00:19:52.300
redder. Sarah, you're just depressing me. I

324
00:19:52.300 --> 00:19:55.780
just, I want you to give me some, some hope that this is

325
00:19:55.780 --> 00:19:59.500
reachable. So here's the thing that I'll say that gives me hope, although it makes,

326
00:19:59.500 --> 00:20:02.820
it makes a lot of people mad when I say it, which is the vast

327
00:20:02.820 --> 00:20:05.620
majority of people who vote for Donald Trump. I think there's a lot of people

328
00:20:05.620 --> 00:20:08.740
who are like, well, these must be awful people because Donald Trump is an awful

329
00:20:08.740 --> 00:20:12.390
person and how could somebody vote for him and not be a terrible person?

330
00:20:12.870 --> 00:20:16.470
And I gotta tell you, I don't see that at all. Like, I just see

331
00:20:16.470 --> 00:20:20.270
a lot of people who, where they get their information now

332
00:20:20.270 --> 00:20:23.910
has changed. People are living through an enormous amount of disruption.

333
00:20:24.070 --> 00:20:27.870
You know, I just said the thing about Low Info. What I'm saying is

334
00:20:27.870 --> 00:20:31.030
people, these are people who don't follow news clearly, but, like, they're awash in information,

335
00:20:31.270 --> 00:20:34.870
information is coming out of their pores. They can't, they can't avoid information.

336
00:20:35.030 --> 00:20:38.620
And people are confused about what to believe and what to trust. And

337
00:20:38.620 --> 00:20:42.060
so I just still see a lot of people every day who are working at

338
00:20:42.060 --> 00:20:45.500
pet shelters and taking care of their sick parents and who love their country.

339
00:20:45.900 --> 00:20:49.420
And they're not bad people. They just

340
00:20:49.500 --> 00:20:52.940
believe, based on what they're hearing, that Donald Trump was being

341
00:20:52.940 --> 00:20:56.660
unfairly prosecuted by his political enemies. And they

342
00:20:56.660 --> 00:20:59.980
think that's wrong. And so, like, it's funny because sometimes you're like,

343
00:20:59.980 --> 00:21:03.040
Democrats talk a lot about, well, we're losing democracy, but

344
00:21:03.430 --> 00:21:06.710
Republicans think that they're defending democracy.

345
00:21:06.950 --> 00:21:10.390
Oftentimes, I have to tell you, on Election Night, I was

346
00:21:10.630 --> 00:21:14.470
on television at ABC and CNBC and

347
00:21:14.630 --> 00:21:18.350
I saw the early exit polls and they listed defending

348
00:21:18.350 --> 00:21:21.670
democracy was high on the list. And I automatically assumed, oh,

349
00:21:22.070 --> 00:21:25.830
those are Democrat votes. No, no, no, no, they were not. And so

350
00:21:25.830 --> 00:21:29.510
I think, you know, this argument about, well, we are the Defenders of Democracy.

351
00:21:29.510 --> 00:21:33.130
If you're a Democrat, that's not how people see it. They see democracy

352
00:21:33.130 --> 00:21:36.290
being threatened on both sides. Yeah, democracy's been

353
00:21:36.290 --> 00:21:39.770
polarized just like everything else has. Because, you know,

354
00:21:40.090 --> 00:21:43.890
Democrats think Republicans are a threat to democracy because they, you know, lied

355
00:21:43.890 --> 00:21:47.450
about the election being stolen and attacked the Capitol on January 6th. But

356
00:21:47.610 --> 00:21:51.290
Republicans think Democrats are a threat to democracy because they think a) either they

357
00:21:51.290 --> 00:21:54.970
stole the election in 2020 or in 2024 didn't hold

358
00:21:55.210 --> 00:21:58.800
a real election. Or ironically, that they

359
00:21:58.880 --> 00:22:02.640
politically persecuted the president, therefore - Or that they politically prosecuted

360
00:22:02.640 --> 00:22:05.760
Donald Trump. Yeah. And so this is where, this is where I go back to

361
00:22:05.760 --> 00:22:09.400
the Republicans right now who are feeding this

362
00:22:09.400 --> 00:22:13.040
garbage to, like, this is where I would turn it around for people who are

363
00:22:13.040 --> 00:22:16.440
like, well, these elected officials are doing what their voters demand. And I'm like, but

364
00:22:16.440 --> 00:22:19.880
these elected officials know what they're doing is wrong. They 100% and

365
00:22:19.880 --> 00:22:23.240
leading - if they cared about this country, they would explain to their

366
00:22:23.240 --> 00:22:27.010
constituents why what Donald Trump did on January 6th was wrong. Like,

367
00:22:27.010 --> 00:22:30.570
instead, they have, they have decided to abdicate. And they tried at first,

368
00:22:30.570 --> 00:22:34.050
or some of, many of them did at first. And because they lost their jobs

369
00:22:34.050 --> 00:22:37.650
or saw that it wasn't as politically popular, they just gave up on leading.

370
00:22:38.050 --> 00:22:41.170
And now they just go in for - I mean, Mike Lee is a great

371
00:22:41.170 --> 00:22:44.410
example of somebody who used to be, he, he was a Never Trumper like me.

372
00:22:44.410 --> 00:22:47.890
He really didn't want Trump to be the nominee in 2016. And now you fast

373
00:22:47.890 --> 00:22:50.770
forward to 2025, and he is like the lead shitposting

374
00:22:51.410 --> 00:22:55.050
conspiracy theorist guy out there. And

375
00:22:55.050 --> 00:22:58.570
so, like, Trump has changed. He both tapped into something that existed

376
00:22:58.570 --> 00:23:02.410
and then accelerated it and has changed the party in all kinds

377
00:23:02.410 --> 00:23:06.050
of ways that are deleterious not just to the Republican Party, but to the country.

378
00:23:06.050 --> 00:23:09.410
And a lot of it is just an absence of fidelity to the truth, to

379
00:23:09.490 --> 00:23:13.050
decency and all the things we've been discussing here. So I want to ask you

380
00:23:13.050 --> 00:23:16.610
this, because the Democrats had four years of Biden and, you

381
00:23:17.000 --> 00:23:20.640
know, had had workable majorities, the ability to make

382
00:23:20.640 --> 00:23:24.200
decisions. Why couldn't they turn this around? I think

383
00:23:24.680 --> 00:23:27.240
it didn't work cause I think Biden's theory of the case was just 100% wrong.

384
00:23:27.240 --> 00:23:30.160
And this is when I say I feel like people are often underreacting. I

385
00:23:30.160 --> 00:23:33.720
think Joe Biden thought, hey, I'm gonna

386
00:23:33.960 --> 00:23:37.800
just restore normality. We're gonna come in and we're gonna go

387
00:23:37.800 --> 00:23:41.480
do politics. We're gonna bring it back to normal. And they didn't realize how

388
00:23:41.480 --> 00:23:45.000
much people had changed. And I'll just give you one example. In our

389
00:23:45.080 --> 00:23:48.820
communications environment now, Donald Trump changed the way voters are

390
00:23:49.140 --> 00:23:52.940
used to hearing from their president. Like Donald Trump sets the news

391
00:23:52.940 --> 00:23:56.220
every day. He was tweeting, he was in people's faces. And there were plenty of

392
00:23:56.220 --> 00:23:59.100
people who didn't like that, but there were lots of people who also just got

393
00:23:59.100 --> 00:24:02.020
used to it. And when Joe Biden came in and was like, I'm not going

394
00:24:02.020 --> 00:24:04.140
to hold very many press conferences, I'm not going to be out there talking, voters

395
00:24:04.140 --> 00:24:07.540
were like, is he dead? Where is he? I don't hear from him. He thought,

396
00:24:07.620 --> 00:24:11.460
hey, I'll pass big bipartisan legislation and people will like that. We're going to do

397
00:24:11.460 --> 00:24:15.310
infrastructure. People did not like that. They thought they knew the price tags

398
00:24:15.310 --> 00:24:18.990
of the bills. But this idea that people were gonna reward him for sort

399
00:24:18.990 --> 00:24:22.710
of politics as usual and being normal just wasn't the case.

400
00:24:22.710 --> 00:24:26.070
And so you do have to, one of the ways in which our politics has

401
00:24:26.070 --> 00:24:29.830
really changed over the last decade is you have to communicate to people all

402
00:24:29.830 --> 00:24:33.270
the time. You cannot just give a State of the Union. That's not the thing

403
00:24:33.270 --> 00:24:36.870
anymore. People, the Left right now is deciding they've got to build their own sort

404
00:24:36.870 --> 00:24:40.390
of Left Wing media ecosystem. And I'm not against the Left building more of that,

405
00:24:40.390 --> 00:24:43.670
but it's also about being able to go into the existing media ecosystems. It's not

406
00:24:43.670 --> 00:24:47.010
that many of the, the Joe Rogans or the influencers, they're not Republicans, they're

407
00:24:47.010 --> 00:24:50.810
kind of Red Pilled, they don't like a lot of the stuff happening on

408
00:24:50.810 --> 00:24:53.490
the Left. But they're not Republicans in any stretch of the word or even MAGA.

409
00:24:53.490 --> 00:24:57.010
But the MAGA guys go on and talk to them, they can sit down and

410
00:24:57.010 --> 00:25:00.410
be normal. And Democrats are gonna have to realize they're now in a culture war

411
00:25:00.489 --> 00:25:04.210
as much of a political war. There used to be axiomatic that, that culture

412
00:25:04.210 --> 00:25:08.050
was downstream from politics. But they're really fused together right now. And so

413
00:25:08.050 --> 00:25:11.250
this idea that Joe Biden, Joe Biden did need to be a bridge, he needed

414
00:25:11.250 --> 00:25:15.060
to be a bridge to a next generation that they were building while he

415
00:25:15.060 --> 00:25:18.780
was in office. And the fact that they didn't do that and they

416
00:25:18.780 --> 00:25:22.620
decided to go again with somebody who was in their 80s and was going

417
00:25:22.620 --> 00:25:26.100
to be closer to 90. I mean, voters were telling me all day long they

418
00:25:26.100 --> 00:25:29.740
didn't want it. They didn't, Democrats didn't want it, Independents didn't want it.

419
00:25:29.740 --> 00:25:32.900
And the fact that it was, it was a massive. So, like, I think there

420
00:25:32.900 --> 00:25:36.740
were, there were obviously two tactical errors there. The first was they didn't understand what

421
00:25:36.740 --> 00:25:39.940
was happening to the country when they got back in and what people really craved.

422
00:25:39.940 --> 00:25:43.530
And then the idea that Biden needed to run again was insane. I

423
00:25:44.010 --> 00:25:47.610
mean, just - and, like, the fact that they're out there now saying, oh, Biden's

424
00:25:47.610 --> 00:25:50.890
like, why I would have won, like, absolutely not. Not

425
00:25:51.130 --> 00:25:54.730
even close. And I think that, thank goodness

426
00:25:54.730 --> 00:25:58.570
Kamala Harris actually got in there and, and took a run at it and stopped

427
00:25:58.570 --> 00:26:01.970
just the bottom from absolutely falling out of Democratic politics. And

428
00:26:01.970 --> 00:26:05.610
the reason people are mad at Democrats right now isn't because they hate

429
00:26:05.610 --> 00:26:09.370
everything Democrats do. It's because they are so angry that Democrats won't do anything

430
00:26:09.800 --> 00:26:13.640
to push back. They feel like they're weak and they can't stand

431
00:26:13.880 --> 00:26:16.920
up to this party. And that's what they want. They want someone to stand up.

432
00:26:17.960 --> 00:26:21.160
The question now is, if you were advising,

433
00:26:21.720 --> 00:26:25.359
let's say, Gretchen Whitmer or Pritzker here

434
00:26:25.359 --> 00:26:29.160
in Illinois, what would you tell them right now? What's the three bits

435
00:26:29.160 --> 00:26:32.760
of advice that you think they need to hear? Okay, top

436
00:26:32.760 --> 00:26:36.040
thing is an "Everything, Everywhere, All At Once"

437
00:26:36.040 --> 00:26:39.880
communication strategy. So it's a movie I didn't like, but

438
00:26:39.880 --> 00:26:42.980
it's a good communications philosophy, philosophy. So you have to be comfortable. And I'll tell

439
00:26:42.980 --> 00:26:46.340
you, like, somebody like Josh Shapiro is doing a good job of this right now.

440
00:26:46.340 --> 00:26:50.140
He's going on all these sports talk radio shows in his state, and he's getting

441
00:26:50.140 --> 00:26:53.020
out there. You've got to be out there. You are - And, and then that's

442
00:26:53.020 --> 00:26:55.340
my first piece. But you got to get out there, and it's on you. It's

443
00:26:55.340 --> 00:26:58.180
on you. Second piece of advice: ignore consultants, consultants.

444
00:26:58.420 --> 00:27:02.140
And, and so it's funny because, you know, I do focus groups.

445
00:27:02.140 --> 00:27:05.620
And so people are like, weren't you kind of a consultant? And I'm like, actually,

446
00:27:05.620 --> 00:27:09.060
my main thing when I listen to focus groups is I

447
00:27:09.450 --> 00:27:13.170
want to go grab politicians by the lapels and say, I know you spent a

448
00:27:13.170 --> 00:27:15.570
long time learning how to be a politician, but I'm going to need you to

449
00:27:15.570 --> 00:27:17.890
unlearn all that right now and just figure out how to be a human. And

450
00:27:17.890 --> 00:27:21.290
when somebody asks me, hey, what should I say when someone

451
00:27:21.770 --> 00:27:25.369
asks me about trans women playing sports? And my

452
00:27:25.369 --> 00:27:28.810
response to that would be like, what do you think? Like, what do you think?

453
00:27:28.810 --> 00:27:31.930
Tell me what you think right now. Because I bet your answer is something like,

454
00:27:31.930 --> 00:27:34.610
I don't think they should be able to do it. But I really want people

455
00:27:34.610 --> 00:27:37.610
to stop bullying trans kids. I don't want to pick on trans kids. I don't

456
00:27:37.610 --> 00:27:39.810
want to throw trans people under the bus, but I don't think they should be

457
00:27:39.810 --> 00:27:42.760
playing sports. And I'll be like, because I don't think that's fair to women. And

458
00:27:42.760 --> 00:27:46.160
I'll be like, go say that. That makes perfect sense.

459
00:27:46.160 --> 00:27:49.640
Like, the idea that everybody needs a consultant that

460
00:27:49.640 --> 00:27:53.360
has perfectly focused grouped something before you have a policy position is like,

461
00:27:53.920 --> 00:27:57.360
the Democrats have got to shake that off. Their, their addiction to testing. They're

462
00:27:57.360 --> 00:28:01.080
losing their heart. They're losing the part where it's like, this is what I believe.

463
00:28:01.080 --> 00:28:03.320
This is what I'm passionate about. This is what I'm going to go talk to.

464
00:28:03.320 --> 00:28:07.080
People like that. Everybody, like, has this buzzword "authenticity" right now, which is like, true,

465
00:28:07.080 --> 00:28:10.760
but also it makes people be like, boy, how do I be more authentic? And

466
00:28:10.760 --> 00:28:14.000
I'm like, don't ask yourself that. You've just gotta learn how to talk to people

467
00:28:14.000 --> 00:28:16.920
like a person, for the love of God. And then my third piece of advice

468
00:28:16.920 --> 00:28:20.680
is do popular stuff. And you know what's popular? Saying that

469
00:28:20.680 --> 00:28:24.240
you want the border secure. Like, there's just a couple of policy things that Democrats

470
00:28:24.320 --> 00:28:28.080
are gonna have to take the L on. Well, I don't know that it's even

471
00:28:28.080 --> 00:28:31.120
a loss. I was endorsed by Border Patrol because

472
00:28:31.600 --> 00:28:35.040
I spent a lot of time down on the border. I understood the complications

473
00:28:35.280 --> 00:28:38.960
and basically understood that those guys were doing a tough job

474
00:28:38.960 --> 00:28:42.060
and they needed some additional help. Did I say we should build a wall? Hell,

475
00:28:42.060 --> 00:28:45.740
no. That was really a dumb idea. And, you know, I think that we have

476
00:28:45.740 --> 00:28:49.380
a habit in Democratic politics to endorse people

477
00:28:49.380 --> 00:28:53.220
who've never been in a tough fight, who've never had to

478
00:28:53.220 --> 00:28:57.060
walk into the VFW or go to a focus group where

479
00:28:57.060 --> 00:28:59.780
people disagree with them and try and figure out how you're going to persuade them

480
00:28:59.780 --> 00:29:03.580
without losing who you are and what you believe. And when we

481
00:29:03.580 --> 00:29:07.380
nominate people who only want message testing, will only

482
00:29:07.380 --> 00:29:11.010
want to, I mean, I agree with you. Throw all of

483
00:29:11.010 --> 00:29:14.650
that out and start figuring out how you're going to govern this country and

484
00:29:14.650 --> 00:29:18.490
persuade people. I've done this thing when people say, well, why is it

485
00:29:18.490 --> 00:29:22.250
so bad? I said, because politicians are so lazy. Yeah. And risk

486
00:29:22.250 --> 00:29:25.970
averse. Yeah. Like, I just take some big swings, guys, and, like, maybe

487
00:29:25.970 --> 00:29:29.530
you'll get some things wrong, but, like, everyone's going to have to start trying a

488
00:29:29.530 --> 00:29:33.170
lot harder. If there is a lesson of Donald Trump, isn't that the lesson?

489
00:29:33.170 --> 00:29:36.090
Yeah. I don't like what he says. I don't like what he does. I don't

490
00:29:36.090 --> 00:29:39.920
like everything. But damn it, he's doing it. He ignored 100% of

491
00:29:39.920 --> 00:29:43.360
the Autopsy Report that Republicans had put together about how they could win

492
00:29:43.600 --> 00:29:46.720
places. He threw it out and he said, this is what I think. I've thought

493
00:29:46.720 --> 00:29:50.400
it for a long time. He made, he, you know, compromised on a couple things

494
00:29:50.400 --> 00:29:53.080
that people - But, like, basically, he ignored all the consultants, went with his gut,

495
00:29:53.080 --> 00:29:56.800
and like it was, I disagree with most of it, and

496
00:29:56.800 --> 00:29:59.840
I don't think that Democrats need their own demagogue or need their own Donald Trump,

497
00:29:59.840 --> 00:30:02.960
I do think they need to take the lesson of say what you believe, make

498
00:30:03.530 --> 00:30:05.970
a pitch that you believe in, and - Because then, you know what? If you

499
00:30:05.970 --> 00:30:09.690
believe it, you'll be consistent whenever you talk about it anywhere. And you don't have

500
00:30:09.690 --> 00:30:12.730
to be so afraid to go on everything because you're so afraid you'll say something

501
00:30:12.730 --> 00:30:15.490
wrong. Not if you really believe it. And it's just a thing you say all

502
00:30:15.490 --> 00:30:19.209
the time. It's easy then. Well, Sarah, it's, you and I could go on and

503
00:30:19.209 --> 00:30:22.850
on and on, and you've offered some, I think, really great suggestions. I

504
00:30:22.850 --> 00:30:26.610
don't, I think that people keep waiting for the Democratic savior

505
00:30:26.610 --> 00:30:30.170
to show up. And, you know, right now, the hero

506
00:30:30.640 --> 00:30:33.840
of the Democratic Party is in every community like Fargo,

507
00:30:34.240 --> 00:30:37.840
North Dakota, where 3,000 people showed up and said, we don't like the direction of

508
00:30:37.840 --> 00:30:40.600
the country. Because I think that's sending a message.

509
00:30:41.600 --> 00:30:45.320
Well, I do think we are the ones we're waiting for. I

510
00:30:45.320 --> 00:30:48.840
think that you're right. Like, there is no knight in shining armors coming. And

511
00:30:48.840 --> 00:30:52.040
there's, I think that the chances that the

512
00:30:52.040 --> 00:30:55.760
2028 Democratic Nominee is somebody who's not officially in politics

513
00:30:55.760 --> 00:30:59.600
right at this moment is pretty, pretty good. Because I think that,

514
00:30:59.680 --> 00:31:02.920
and the good thing about this kind of opposition is it does give birth

515
00:31:02.920 --> 00:31:06.600
oftentimes to new voices. And I think, I think the

516
00:31:06.600 --> 00:31:09.360
Democratic Party could stand for a big,

517
00:31:09.760 --> 00:31:12.560
rowdy primary with lots of new voices.

518
00:31:13.040 --> 00:31:16.760
Absolutely. Because it's gotta find its way. It's gotta find out who

519
00:31:16.760 --> 00:31:20.480
it is. Yeah. And people have to be tested, Sarah. I mean, you

520
00:31:20.480 --> 00:31:24.160
know! And in the meantime, you'll continue talking to voters, and I hope

521
00:31:24.320 --> 00:31:27.910
at some point you'll come back. Of course. This is so fun. Okay,

522
00:31:27.910 --> 00:31:30.630
thanks so much, Sarah Longwell. Thanks for having me.

523
00:31:35.350 --> 00:31:39.190
Next, Joel will be getting into some data analytics with Phil from Impact

524
00:31:39.270 --> 00:31:42.910
Social. Thanks, Heidi. I'm Here with Phil Snape from the

525
00:31:42.910 --> 00:31:46.670
Impact Social team. Impact Social uses data software to

526
00:31:46.670 --> 00:31:50.150
track over - ready for it - 60 million online sites!

527
00:31:50.310 --> 00:31:53.920
One Country Project has recently partnered with Impact

528
00:31:54.470 --> 00:31:58.150
Social and Phil is with us here to give

529
00:31:58.150 --> 00:32:01.830
some specifics. Phil, welcome to the Hot Dish. Thanks for

530
00:32:01.830 --> 00:32:05.510
joining us. Delighted to be here. I think it's best if you just

531
00:32:05.510 --> 00:32:08.790
explain the methodology, explain how this works.

532
00:32:09.110 --> 00:32:12.710
So we're a social media analysis company, and what we do is we use social

533
00:32:12.710 --> 00:32:16.470
media conversations to understand what's happening. It could be in politics, could be in brand,

534
00:32:16.470 --> 00:32:20.190
could be in anything. The way the methodology works is kind of crucial to

535
00:32:20.190 --> 00:32:23.930
understanding our accuracy. What we do, first of all, is we

536
00:32:23.930 --> 00:32:27.730
go and create massive focus groups, right? So these aren't focus groups that

537
00:32:27.730 --> 00:32:31.450
people would know, like 20 people in a room. We're talking about thousands, hundreds of

538
00:32:31.450 --> 00:32:35.170
thousands of potentially millions of people. For this specific project, we have

539
00:32:35.170 --> 00:32:38.690
five different focus groups which are basically taken America into five

540
00:32:38.690 --> 00:32:42.210
different zones, as you were, sort of Frontier, Midwest,

541
00:32:42.210 --> 00:32:45.890
Northwest, Pacific and the South. Then what we do, if you

542
00:32:45.890 --> 00:32:49.530
write some code, and this particular instance, we're writing code about the cost of living,

543
00:32:49.530 --> 00:32:52.650
people understanding the thing about inflation, eggs,

544
00:32:53.050 --> 00:32:56.730
housing, et cetera, et cetera. And another biggest analysis we're doing is in terms of

545
00:32:56.730 --> 00:33:00.450
the job security. How do people feel about their jobs? So we write a lot

546
00:33:00.450 --> 00:33:04.130
of code where we're trying to understand. We then press go, all the

547
00:33:04.130 --> 00:33:07.930
information comes in and we're talking about, in this case, millions of social

548
00:33:07.930 --> 00:33:11.490
media posts. We then take all the bots, so we take all the

549
00:33:11.490 --> 00:33:14.870
marketing and things like that out of it. We then randomize the

550
00:33:14.870 --> 00:33:18.590
entire data set and pull out a statistically representative

551
00:33:18.590 --> 00:33:22.390
sample. And we physically read the sample. Okay? And this is

552
00:33:22.390 --> 00:33:25.470
really important to what we do and the reason we have to physically read the

553
00:33:25.470 --> 00:33:29.229
sample, and I'm talking about thousands of social media posts here. And just to let

554
00:33:29.229 --> 00:33:32.590
everyone know, these are all publicly available, right? So there's nothing - if I can

555
00:33:32.590 --> 00:33:36.350
read it, anyone can read it. The reason why we read these particular posts

556
00:33:36.350 --> 00:33:39.990
is because algorithms can't pick up sarcasm. They can't pick up cynicism,

557
00:33:40.310 --> 00:33:43.950
they can't pick up context. So, for example, if my parents said something is sick,

558
00:33:43.950 --> 00:33:46.910
it means it's bad. If my daughter said something was sick, it would mean it's

559
00:33:46.910 --> 00:33:50.630
good. Okay? So context is really important and tone is very important. How are people

560
00:33:50.630 --> 00:33:54.390
feeling? How are people thinking about things? So what we do is we'll read all

561
00:33:54.550 --> 00:33:58.350
these particular posts. We'll read it. In this particular instance, we're reading it from

562
00:33:58.350 --> 00:34:02.030
the Trump administration's perspective, are they feeling positive or are they feeling

563
00:34:02.030 --> 00:34:05.710
negative about these particular subjects? And then we'll effectively,

564
00:34:05.710 --> 00:34:09.320
we'll take the positive conversation from the negative conversation, and

565
00:34:09.320 --> 00:34:13.040
we get what we call the net sentiment. And the net sentiment is then tracked

566
00:34:13.040 --> 00:34:16.360
over time. And from the net sentiment, what we can see is why

567
00:34:16.600 --> 00:34:20.440
people are thinking more positively about cost of living or job security and

568
00:34:20.600 --> 00:34:24.320
why people might be feeling more negative. And we see what the overall trend

569
00:34:24.320 --> 00:34:28.160
is, therefore, over time. And because we're taking it across the entire

570
00:34:28.160 --> 00:34:32.000
country in five different segments, and because of the fact that we're looking at

571
00:34:32.000 --> 00:34:35.810
such a massive data set, we're very confident that, effectively, this is a lot

572
00:34:35.810 --> 00:34:39.490
of the voice of America. This is what Americans are thinking and feeling and why,

573
00:34:39.490 --> 00:34:42.530
about their cost of living and also their job security. You

574
00:34:43.090 --> 00:34:46.250
know, when it comes to job security, there's been a change, there's been a rebound

575
00:34:46.250 --> 00:34:49.410
in May after those numbers were dropping

576
00:34:49.730 --> 00:34:53.170
significantly in previous months. Why have

577
00:34:53.810 --> 00:34:57.010
you found out why people's attitude has changed?

578
00:34:57.570 --> 00:35:01.010
Initially at the start of the year, this wasn't the case. The first quarter, which

579
00:35:01.010 --> 00:35:04.740
we looked at, what happened was people started off being optimistic. There was a new

580
00:35:04.740 --> 00:35:08.180
president, he was talking a good game, and people were sort of thinking, well, you

581
00:35:08.180 --> 00:35:10.460
know, this is going to be fine. Let's give this guy a go. But what

582
00:35:10.460 --> 00:35:13.940
happened was, is that I think in January, February and then March,

583
00:35:14.260 --> 00:35:17.980
increasingly because of the tariffs, people were concerned about the impact of the

584
00:35:17.980 --> 00:35:21.660
tariffs, in particular, what that meant for their job going forward, especially

585
00:35:21.660 --> 00:35:25.060
then, which went into April. Also, very importantly as well,

586
00:35:25.060 --> 00:35:28.100
DOGE. What happened with DOGE was people aren't necessarily

587
00:35:29.080 --> 00:35:32.920
specifically against DOGE. They're not against there being cuts in the federal

588
00:35:32.920 --> 00:35:36.640
workforce, and they think that obviously America's spending too much. But it's the

589
00:35:36.640 --> 00:35:40.480
haphazard way of the cutting, the feeling that there's no plan, the feeling as

590
00:35:40.480 --> 00:35:44.159
if they're just basically making it up. And so what happened was, on the one

591
00:35:44.159 --> 00:35:47.520
hand, you're very concerned about the fact that the terrorists might come in and they

592
00:35:47.520 --> 00:35:50.960
might lose their jobs. And also they're very concerned, and I can't

593
00:35:50.960 --> 00:35:54.440
emphasize this enough, there's a lack of feeling that there's a competence

594
00:35:54.760 --> 00:35:58.280
within the administration that people feel secure about that.

595
00:35:58.830 --> 00:36:02.510
It just gives a feel of huge amounts of anxiety. And then,

596
00:36:02.670 --> 00:36:06.270
as the tariffs are not being spoken of as much, and DOGE hasn't been spoken

597
00:36:06.270 --> 00:36:09.830
of as much, what's happened is the amount of conversation in

598
00:36:09.830 --> 00:36:13.510
May online in relation to these has dropped in terms of the

599
00:36:13.510 --> 00:36:17.190
job security by 39%. This is the tone

600
00:36:17.190 --> 00:36:20.990
coming away from, this is the anxiety coming away as the tariffs are being

601
00:36:20.990 --> 00:36:24.350
spoken of less. However, there's a legacy.

602
00:36:25.110 --> 00:36:28.750
And the legacy is, although people feel a little bit more secure about their

603
00:36:28.750 --> 00:36:32.350
job than they did, say, maybe a month or so ago, people are still

604
00:36:32.350 --> 00:36:35.230
talking about how they, they're not going to ask for that job raise, they're perhaps

605
00:36:35.230 --> 00:36:37.670
not going to look for that job that they thought they're going to get, that

606
00:36:37.750 --> 00:36:41.350
the employers are saying that they're still concerned about taking other people

607
00:36:41.350 --> 00:36:45.070
on. So the real legacy here of people basically saying,

608
00:36:45.070 --> 00:36:48.830
let's just wait and see, let's wait and see what happens here. Because at the

609
00:36:48.830 --> 00:36:51.870
moment, I'm not sure what's going to happen from day to day. And the Trump

610
00:36:51.870 --> 00:36:55.230
administration would be looking at our data and thinking, well, we've got people's confidence back,

611
00:36:55.230 --> 00:36:59.070
et cetera. They should be aware that that confidence isn't too deep because

612
00:36:59.150 --> 00:37:02.510
of the fact there's an anxiety and there's concern in there. Do

613
00:37:03.070 --> 00:37:06.910
people seem to understand the tariffs, or is it just

614
00:37:06.910 --> 00:37:10.750
the word that scares them? You know, a lot of people using the phrase TACO,

615
00:37:10.750 --> 00:37:14.070
a lot of people talking about things in a presidential

616
00:37:14.070 --> 00:37:17.620
way in regards to how he always backs down. And is

617
00:37:18.170 --> 00:37:21.890
that the reason that they've quit worrying about tariffs? They do

618
00:37:21.890 --> 00:37:25.570
understand tariffs, for sure. They don't understand the real impact of the tariffs

619
00:37:25.570 --> 00:37:29.370
because it wasn't explained to them. That 120% tariff does not mean

620
00:37:29.370 --> 00:37:33.130
that your stuff goes up by 120%, right? But they are very,

621
00:37:33.130 --> 00:37:36.970
very aware this means something which is bad for them. And it means

622
00:37:36.970 --> 00:37:40.450
that it could be bad for their jobs, it could be bad for their local

623
00:37:40.450 --> 00:37:44.020
area. When Trump then comes back away from the tariffs and

624
00:37:44.330 --> 00:37:47.370
all of a sudden the tariffs aren't being spoken about anywhere near as much, there's

625
00:37:47.370 --> 00:37:50.890
a sense of relief. But that's not to say the bad feeling

626
00:37:50.890 --> 00:37:54.690
that was caused, it still exists, because it very much do. And you can see

627
00:37:54.690 --> 00:37:57.690
it in the data, the way people are speaking about things to each other online.

628
00:37:57.690 --> 00:38:00.810
They're basically saying to each other, you know, that job is going to go for,

629
00:38:00.810 --> 00:38:02.850
I'm just going to leave it. We need to wait til this whole thing settles

630
00:38:02.850 --> 00:38:06.130
down, and then I'll make my move. And the same with an employer, too.

631
00:38:06.970 --> 00:38:10.570
Do you have a way of monitoring the small business owners? Because

632
00:38:11.410 --> 00:38:14.730
in my job as a talk show host, one of the things that a lot

633
00:38:14.730 --> 00:38:17.570
of the small business owners are saying is that

634
00:38:18.370 --> 00:38:22.170
as they fear the tariffs and what this might mean to them more

635
00:38:22.170 --> 00:38:25.970
than anything, they fear the opportunity to expand.

636
00:38:26.290 --> 00:38:30.050
We don't look at small businesses specifically, but there's enough

637
00:38:30.050 --> 00:38:33.810
people in the data who are small business owners who are talking about,

638
00:38:33.810 --> 00:38:37.590
exactly as you say, Joel, exactly that point. I'm just going to sit this

639
00:38:37.590 --> 00:38:40.950
one out. So what concerns me is that what this is going to do to

640
00:38:40.950 --> 00:38:44.790
the American economy. Obviously you won't come to an abrupt end, but nevertheless,

641
00:38:44.790 --> 00:38:48.590
people would be less reluctant to change jobs, to employ

642
00:38:48.590 --> 00:38:52.230
people, or to go and buy something, you know, like a house or a

643
00:38:52.230 --> 00:38:55.710
car or something, those kind of bigger spends. So your

644
00:38:55.710 --> 00:38:59.390
groups that you've put together by region, you can determine

645
00:38:59.550 --> 00:39:03.400
whether or not they've made up their mind to spend money? And let

646
00:39:03.400 --> 00:39:07.120
me give you an example. I'm sitting here looking at a pickup

647
00:39:07.120 --> 00:39:10.960
with 90,000 miles on it, right? So I was looking at potentially a different

648
00:39:10.960 --> 00:39:14.680
pickup and I found myself getting into

649
00:39:14.680 --> 00:39:18.040
more of a hurry to buy a pickup. If I was going to buy one

650
00:39:18.040 --> 00:39:21.800
anyway, I better hurry the hell up and buy one, If steel prices go up.

651
00:39:21.880 --> 00:39:25.400
Yeah. Can you tell that in your survey? Very much so,

652
00:39:25.400 --> 00:39:29.200
yeah. Yeah. You could see that decision making process. So

653
00:39:29.200 --> 00:39:32.520
the decision making process being I'm going to buy this now because I know it's

654
00:39:32.520 --> 00:39:35.240
going to go up in a month's time. When you're talking about a truck, when

655
00:39:35.240 --> 00:39:38.960
you're talking about a car, when you talk about bigger spends like that, these are

656
00:39:38.960 --> 00:39:42.640
always big decisions for any household. But when they are matched with such

657
00:39:42.640 --> 00:39:46.480
uncertainty, they're much less likely to happen. And that's what

658
00:39:46.480 --> 00:39:50.000
we're seeing in the data. That's what we're seeing in the conversations of saying, you

659
00:39:50.000 --> 00:39:52.720
know, I was, you know, I was going to move house, I'm just going to

660
00:39:52.720 --> 00:39:56.490
leave it for a while. I live in a farm community. The area I'm at,

661
00:39:56.810 --> 00:40:00.250
a lot of farmers. And one of the concerns they have

662
00:40:00.410 --> 00:40:04.170
is trading, shipping. The fact that, will

663
00:40:04.170 --> 00:40:07.770
China even want their product anymore is, does your survey

664
00:40:07.770 --> 00:40:11.369
get that defined in regards to what happens per

665
00:40:11.369 --> 00:40:15.130
region? In this particular case, in the Ag region? Yeah, so

666
00:40:15.210 --> 00:40:18.930
soybeans, for example, right? That's exactly what

667
00:40:18.930 --> 00:40:22.370
I'm getting at, Philip. Yeah, this is what we have in the data. People saying,

668
00:40:22.450 --> 00:40:25.410
if there's a tariffs there, how on earth can I sell my soybeans to China?

669
00:40:25.730 --> 00:40:28.850
And I'm a soybean farmer and so what can I do about this? This is

670
00:40:28.850 --> 00:40:31.930
the end of my business. But then, of course, what happens is it's not just

671
00:40:31.930 --> 00:40:35.570
the end of that person's business, it's the community, it's the shop,

672
00:40:35.650 --> 00:40:39.290
it's the everything in that particular area then starts, starts to be

673
00:40:39.290 --> 00:40:43.010
concerned. Because the other thing to remember as well is that people didn't go

674
00:40:43.010 --> 00:40:46.610
into this particular administration feeling like they had a lot of money,

675
00:40:47.090 --> 00:40:50.750
right? They didn't go in there thinking, oh, it's fantastic already, and

676
00:40:50.750 --> 00:40:54.350
Trump's going to make it even better. They're going in there, hanging on, a lot

677
00:40:54.350 --> 00:40:57.270
of people are sitting there and they're counting their cents on the dollars every single

678
00:40:57.270 --> 00:41:00.950
week, and they're living paycheck to paycheck. Or the businesses also, you know,

679
00:41:00.950 --> 00:41:04.190
they're looking at their tractor, they're looking at their combine harvester, et cetera, and thinking,

680
00:41:04.190 --> 00:41:07.790
that's going to have to go another year, right? They were already in that

681
00:41:07.790 --> 00:41:11.190
spot. And then all of a sudden, you can imagine them sitting there and Trump

682
00:41:11.190 --> 00:41:13.590
turns around and says, this is what we're going to do in China, et cetera.

683
00:41:13.590 --> 00:41:16.990
And you're thinking, this is my entire livelihood, right? So this is what, this is

684
00:41:16.990 --> 00:41:20.730
what we're getting from, particularly from farmers. Farmers saying, you know, we're about

685
00:41:20.730 --> 00:41:23.970
to get turned over. Do they trust him more? Do

686
00:41:23.970 --> 00:41:27.770
they...is their perception that Donald Trump is actually

687
00:41:27.850 --> 00:41:31.530
winning when it comes to these tariffs? It depends where you go.

688
00:41:31.770 --> 00:41:35.610
So there's still plenty of people out there who are effectively saying, you need to

689
00:41:35.610 --> 00:41:39.250
give Trump time, right? These tariffs are going to work. These tariffs are going to

690
00:41:39.250 --> 00:41:43.010
bring jobs back to America. But I suspect that even a lot

691
00:41:43.010 --> 00:41:45.380
of these people, and we can see it in the data, if you look at

692
00:41:45.380 --> 00:41:48.860
the amount of positive discussion which is in there, the bands of positive discussion

693
00:41:48.860 --> 00:41:52.580
drops. And that tells you one of two things. Either less people feel positive

694
00:41:52.580 --> 00:41:56.140
about it and are prepared to express this to one another online, or it means

695
00:41:56.140 --> 00:41:59.859
they just don't want to talk, which effectively means the same thing. So

696
00:41:59.859 --> 00:42:03.700
you kind of feel that even amongst Trump's base, some of them are thinking,

697
00:42:04.340 --> 00:42:07.060
you know what? I don't want to wait and see whether this works or not.

698
00:42:07.060 --> 00:42:10.350
This just seems a little bit out of control to me. So he still has

699
00:42:10.350 --> 00:42:14.110
lots of support, he still have lots of people who have his back. There's no

700
00:42:14.110 --> 00:42:17.670
question about that. But the fact that the amount of positive

701
00:42:17.670 --> 00:42:21.390
discussion has dwindled, both in terms of the tone and content, and

702
00:42:21.390 --> 00:42:25.150
also the numbers tells me there are less people supporting him now

703
00:42:25.150 --> 00:42:28.510
than they were back in January. So what the data's telling us is they're Trump

704
00:42:28.510 --> 00:42:32.230
and people, they're MAGA people, and they love all Things Trump. And yet there's

705
00:42:32.230 --> 00:42:36.070
another reality which effectively says, well, you know, he did say he was

706
00:42:36.070 --> 00:42:39.230
going to lower the gas prices, and that's not happened. I'm still waiting for that.

707
00:42:39.230 --> 00:42:42.750
He did say the prices were going to come down on day one. In actual

708
00:42:42.750 --> 00:42:46.470
fact, I thought they were about to double. So, as a consequence, some of

709
00:42:46.470 --> 00:42:49.870
his most loyal supporters have been disappointed. They're still there,

710
00:42:50.270 --> 00:42:53.990
but nevertheless, they've been promised things. It's all going to be fine

711
00:42:53.990 --> 00:42:56.070
once we get rid of Biden, and it's going to be great when we get

712
00:42:56.070 --> 00:42:59.630
Trump. And here we are in June and prices haven't come

713
00:42:59.630 --> 00:43:03.400
down, right? So there's a feeling of disappointment, which is there. I could

714
00:43:03.400 --> 00:43:06.000
do this all day, I'm not going to lie to you. Like, for me, as

715
00:43:06.000 --> 00:43:09.760
a talk show host, the example I use, Philip, is this one got the phone

716
00:43:09.760 --> 00:43:13.480
lines going. Yeah. You know, that one didn't get the phone lines going. And

717
00:43:13.480 --> 00:43:17.039
data like you talked about here is, you know, if you know what

718
00:43:17.039 --> 00:43:20.800
they're talking about on social media, you're already to there.

719
00:43:20.800 --> 00:43:24.640
I mean, you really are. Yeah. Thank you. I think the thing that we're doing,

720
00:43:24.640 --> 00:43:28.380
which nobody else is doing, is we're physically reading the data. You have to physically

721
00:43:28.380 --> 00:43:31.940
read it. The algorithms can't tell you - and we've looked at AI many times,

722
00:43:31.940 --> 00:43:35.380
and it's nowhere near. It doesn't understand sarcasm, it doesn't understand

723
00:43:35.380 --> 00:43:39.100
cynicism. It doesn't understand tone and context. It just doesn't

724
00:43:39.100 --> 00:43:42.700
know, it just sees things. If somebody says Trump is great, well, then they think

725
00:43:42.700 --> 00:43:46.340
it's a positive, Trump's great. But the person's being sarcastic, right? And so therefore,

726
00:43:46.340 --> 00:43:50.140
that's what we get down to. That's where we can get into the emotion. And

727
00:43:50.380 --> 00:43:53.540
when we talk about sentiment, it's not just a topic of positive and negative. How

728
00:43:53.540 --> 00:43:57.380
are people feeling about this? Because that's what's important, right? That's what's important in

729
00:43:57.380 --> 00:44:00.780
your community. It's what's important in mine. How are people feeling about it? Not just

730
00:44:00.780 --> 00:44:03.700
what they're saying, the way that they're saying it. And I think that's the thing

731
00:44:03.700 --> 00:44:06.620
I think people really like about what we do. Philip, good to have you on

732
00:44:06.620 --> 00:44:09.820
Hot Dish. It's a pleasure. I look forward to many more of these

733
00:44:09.820 --> 00:44:12.460
conversations. Good to speak to you. Thank you for having me.

734
00:44:15.260 --> 00:44:18.780
Now let's hear from Heidi Marttila-Losure and Christopher

735
00:44:18.780 --> 00:44:19.740
Vondracek.

736
00:44:24.400 --> 00:44:27.600
Hello, Hot Dish listeners. I'm Heidi Martilla-Losure.

737
00:44:27.920 --> 00:44:31.440
I'm recording this from my family's farm near Frederick, South

738
00:44:31.440 --> 00:44:35.240
Dakota, where I grew up. I was away for 12 years

739
00:44:35.240 --> 00:44:38.280
and moved back, which is kind of a lot of the story of a lot

740
00:44:38.280 --> 00:44:41.840
of people who live in rural places. They leave and then, you know, something pulls

741
00:44:41.840 --> 00:44:45.600
them back home. And I have a background as a reporter,

742
00:44:45.600 --> 00:44:49.260
writer and designer in journalism, and I'm still using

743
00:44:49.260 --> 00:44:52.780
those skills, but kind of in a different way. I'm Director of Communications

744
00:44:52.780 --> 00:44:56.500
for a suicide prevention nonprofit. So I'm very excited

745
00:44:56.500 --> 00:44:59.700
today to be on the Hot Dish. And I'm especially excited

746
00:44:59.860 --> 00:45:03.580
to be speaking with Christopher Vondracek, an esteemed

747
00:45:03.580 --> 00:45:07.060
former agriculture reporter from the Minnesota Star Tribune. Thanks

748
00:45:07.220 --> 00:45:10.900
so much for joining me today, Christopher. Yeah, thanks, Heidi.

749
00:45:10.980 --> 00:45:14.820
It's wild still to hear myself referred to as a former agriculture reporter because I

750
00:45:14.820 --> 00:45:18.410
think it's like, like in my soul now. But yeah. Christopher is the

751
00:45:18.410 --> 00:45:22.010
Washington correspondent for the Minnesota Star Tribune, but prior to that

752
00:45:22.010 --> 00:45:25.730
recent assignment, he covered agriculture for the Star Tribune and has

753
00:45:25.730 --> 00:45:29.450
covered legal affairs, education, religion and politics

754
00:45:29.450 --> 00:45:33.050
at different times in his career. In 2020, he published a book of poetry

755
00:45:33.050 --> 00:45:36.730
entitled Rattlesnake Summer, which is a collection of 66 poems

756
00:45:36.730 --> 00:45:40.530
for 66 South Dakota counties, which is very cool. I'll have to look up

757
00:45:40.530 --> 00:45:44.250
what the poem is for Brown County. It's about baseball, naturally,

758
00:45:44.250 --> 00:45:47.730
the minor league team that used to be there, the Pheasants. Yeah. Well, we're just

759
00:45:47.730 --> 00:45:50.810
going to have a little conversation about rural. Excited to dive in.

760
00:45:51.290 --> 00:45:54.730
June is Men's Mental Health Month, and I know that

761
00:45:54.890 --> 00:45:58.010
that is a topic that has come up in rural places

762
00:45:58.490 --> 00:46:02.330
among the farm community especially. So, you know, in

763
00:46:02.330 --> 00:46:05.770
your reporting and your experience, what have you heard about

764
00:46:05.850 --> 00:46:09.650
men's mental health especially? What would you say is the state of men's

765
00:46:09.650 --> 00:46:13.480
mental health right now? Sure, I think it's improving in terms of

766
00:46:13.480 --> 00:46:16.600
people are carrying away kind of the taboo that used to be around, sort of

767
00:46:16.600 --> 00:46:20.320
surround the conversation around mental health for men and particularly I

768
00:46:20.320 --> 00:46:23.640
think rural men. In my farm beat, when I was out in

769
00:46:23.640 --> 00:46:27.240
Minnesota, I vividly remember a number of conversations

770
00:46:27.240 --> 00:46:30.600
with farmers that would be about one

771
00:46:30.600 --> 00:46:34.120
topic. Say, for example, I went up in the fall of

772
00:46:34.120 --> 00:46:37.560
2023 to interview a turkey farmer in central

773
00:46:37.560 --> 00:46:40.960
Minnesota and he and his brother in law had to

774
00:46:40.960 --> 00:46:44.640
depopulate their farm because of bird flu, right? We

775
00:46:44.640 --> 00:46:48.480
were talking about sort of bird flu but then quite quickly the

776
00:46:48.480 --> 00:46:52.240
conversation turned into sort of discussing what, what that

777
00:46:52.240 --> 00:46:55.480
personal impact was on him and his and his brother in law in terms of

778
00:46:55.480 --> 00:46:58.880
what that tough process, you know, did to them in some

779
00:46:58.880 --> 00:47:02.600
respects. And so I know that whether it's

780
00:47:02.600 --> 00:47:06.010
financial or whether it's sometimes the lack of

781
00:47:06.480 --> 00:47:10.120
access to mental health services in rural

782
00:47:10.120 --> 00:47:13.800
places. I oftentimes had an ear for being able to pick

783
00:47:13.800 --> 00:47:17.120
up when I'd be out on the road and talking to farmers.

784
00:47:17.440 --> 00:47:20.800
And there was just a longing, a hurt, a kind of

785
00:47:20.880 --> 00:47:24.600
quietness. And I actually think a lot of agricultural groups

786
00:47:24.600 --> 00:47:28.040
are doing a really good job of trying to change the

787
00:47:28.040 --> 00:47:30.560
narrative and make that a topic that is

788
00:47:31.040 --> 00:47:34.720
discussable and not to be sort of shied away from.

789
00:47:35.240 --> 00:47:39.000
I know that Farm Bureau in Minnesota particularly had reached out to me

790
00:47:39.000 --> 00:47:42.680
to do some stories when I first started on the agriculture beat.

791
00:47:43.000 --> 00:47:46.600
And I think that organizations know this is definitely

792
00:47:46.680 --> 00:47:50.280
a critical need for the community. You know, just thinking about

793
00:47:50.360 --> 00:47:53.640
my day job, you know, I come across a number of statistics on

794
00:47:54.040 --> 00:47:57.880
mental health and suicide. And one of the statistics that stands

795
00:47:57.880 --> 00:48:01.560
out is that the highest percentage of suicide deaths are among

796
00:48:02.360 --> 00:48:06.120
men, certainly way more than women, but then also ages 20

797
00:48:06.120 --> 00:48:09.880
to 29. And that's a really tricky age group to

798
00:48:09.880 --> 00:48:13.680
try to target, you know, so it's just tricky to think about, like,

799
00:48:13.680 --> 00:48:17.400
what kind of programming, you know, how do you actually try to

800
00:48:17.400 --> 00:48:21.160
get to those people? I think that, that the conversation's

801
00:48:21.160 --> 00:48:24.760
moving in that direction is, you know, how do we work with workplaces or

802
00:48:24.920 --> 00:48:28.200
other ways to reach people who might need mental health services?

803
00:48:28.800 --> 00:48:32.440
When I talk to these farm groups, they oftentimes emphasize also a

804
00:48:32.440 --> 00:48:36.080
sense of community and the ability to

805
00:48:36.240 --> 00:48:39.960
create strong towns and sort of bonds within these communities as a way

806
00:48:39.960 --> 00:48:43.720
to sort of also build a sense of togetherness for folks. And I think

807
00:48:43.720 --> 00:48:47.360
that may also have a kind of a mental health impact. I think it's really,

808
00:48:47.360 --> 00:48:51.160
truly easy to get lost instead, post-COVID to get lost in your phone or

809
00:48:51.160 --> 00:48:54.880
to kind of isolate yourself in certain ways. We've seen that happen in

810
00:48:54.880 --> 00:48:58.720
a lot of unsettling ways, but I think that that can have a mental health

811
00:48:58.720 --> 00:49:02.320
impact. And the ways in which you can talk

812
00:49:02.320 --> 00:49:06.120
about building strong main streets, you can build, I think

813
00:49:06.280 --> 00:49:09.800
it's been sort of much discussed the idea of like, a third place in town.

814
00:49:09.800 --> 00:49:13.480
Like in my hometown of Wells, Minnesota, they now have a coffee shop. And I

815
00:49:13.480 --> 00:49:17.120
kid you not like my brother and I, my

816
00:49:17.120 --> 00:49:20.680
mom helped organize, like, a little Christmas musical, like Sing Along

817
00:49:20.760 --> 00:49:24.480
last Christmas for the town at this coffee shop. And,

818
00:49:24.480 --> 00:49:28.030
like, way more people showed up than we ever imagined were going to show up.

819
00:49:28.740 --> 00:49:32.500
And it was really great. And it felt like kind of, you know, something

820
00:49:32.500 --> 00:49:35.980
you would see out of a small town of Yore, in a way. But I

821
00:49:35.980 --> 00:49:39.620
think people were kind of hungry for that, you know. Yeah, I definitely think

822
00:49:39.620 --> 00:49:43.380
so. We can kind of maybe swing into that, that our next topic, which

823
00:49:43.380 --> 00:49:46.940
is news deserts. And I think that that is one of the

824
00:49:46.940 --> 00:49:50.540
reasons why people are feeling a little bit more isolated, is that they don't

825
00:49:50.540 --> 00:49:54.230
have this news source that is telling

826
00:49:54.230 --> 00:49:57.950
them when your Sing Along is, you know, bringing people together

827
00:49:58.110 --> 00:50:01.910
around, you know, a common source of news, a common understanding of

828
00:50:01.910 --> 00:50:05.750
what's going on in their community. So if we talk about, you know, just what

829
00:50:05.750 --> 00:50:09.590
are some of the challenges you've seen as far as, you know, not having that

830
00:50:09.590 --> 00:50:13.310
common news source in rural places? You know, I mean, I started as a journalist

831
00:50:13.310 --> 00:50:16.830
working in a small town. Like, I wrote in the ninth grade for the Kiester

832
00:50:16.830 --> 00:50:20.590
Courier-Sentinel, which is like a softball throw from the Iowa border. I was writing,

833
00:50:20.590 --> 00:50:23.990
like, football stories, you know, and it really felt like everybody would read them, but

834
00:50:24.310 --> 00:50:28.070
I appreciated that, like, everybody was reading the paper, right? Right. And to your point

835
00:50:28.070 --> 00:50:31.830
about news deserts, you know, we've seen so many papers fold, understandably,

836
00:50:32.150 --> 00:50:35.870
because they've done it for 50 years, and there's no one to hand

837
00:50:35.870 --> 00:50:39.390
it on to. Right? I think what happens is when you lose that common

838
00:50:39.390 --> 00:50:42.990
thread, there can be a, a cynicism or a distrust

839
00:50:42.990 --> 00:50:46.680
that develops. And I had had the wonderful

840
00:50:46.680 --> 00:50:50.400
experience of interviewing the radio programmer from an independent radio

841
00:50:50.400 --> 00:50:54.200
station in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, about a week ago, and she actually

842
00:50:54.200 --> 00:50:58.040
told me that, for example, during the recent fires in northeastern Minnesota,

843
00:50:58.040 --> 00:51:01.440
that their traffic digitally, like, skyrocketed,

844
00:51:01.440 --> 00:51:05.160
because in that kind of kinetic event, people needed to have the news.

845
00:51:05.160 --> 00:51:08.800
And the ones that are standing, like, they're not coming to the paper from Minneapolis

846
00:51:08.800 --> 00:51:12.520
for that. They're going to the local radio station to hear from people who live

847
00:51:12.520 --> 00:51:16.240
and work with them what's going on. Yeah, definitely. To give

848
00:51:16.240 --> 00:51:19.560
one example of a positive development right around here, the

849
00:51:20.120 --> 00:51:23.320
Aberdeen American News, which was the paper for

850
00:51:23.800 --> 00:51:27.440
many, many years, has kind of shrunk to a

851
00:51:27.440 --> 00:51:31.120
former husk of itself. People really like to, you know, mock

852
00:51:31.120 --> 00:51:34.960
it right now. But in its place, one of my colleagues

853
00:51:34.960 --> 00:51:38.440
and a friend, Troy McQuillan, started another newspaper

854
00:51:38.440 --> 00:51:42.080
and that has started up with, he has hired

855
00:51:42.080 --> 00:51:45.240
some of the former journalists from the Aberdeen American News, working

856
00:51:45.800 --> 00:51:49.640
at the Aberdeen Insider now, including local sports, which

857
00:51:49.640 --> 00:51:53.480
I think that, that I don't understand why any newspaper would give that up, because

858
00:51:53.480 --> 00:51:56.960
that's one of the things that would absolutely bring people to a newspaper.

859
00:51:56.960 --> 00:52:00.440
Yes, right? So I had a book talk in

860
00:52:00.440 --> 00:52:04.280
the Dakota Prairie Museum in Aberdeen and Trey came out

861
00:52:04.280 --> 00:52:06.280
to me. I did not know him at the time. He was just someone who

862
00:52:06.280 --> 00:52:09.860
had come to the talk and he told me some of their numbers about in

863
00:52:09.860 --> 00:52:13.540
terms of traffic and I was like, gobsmacked. Yeah, you

864
00:52:13.700 --> 00:52:16.460
know, I kind of didn't believe them at first. And then I started talking to

865
00:52:16.460 --> 00:52:19.820
more folks and being like, oh, no, this is like what's replaced the, the previous

866
00:52:19.820 --> 00:52:23.060
sort of legacy media there. And it's wonderful. And you

867
00:52:23.540 --> 00:52:27.020
know, a comment on sports. Like, I think we've discovered in Minnesota

868
00:52:27.020 --> 00:52:30.340
that like, actually there's a huge appetite for local sports. And it kind of breaks

869
00:52:30.340 --> 00:52:33.940
my heart because, and now what we're discovering 20 years later is that actually, I

870
00:52:34.600 --> 00:52:38.360
mean, you don't have to be a lover of football to appreciate

871
00:52:38.360 --> 00:52:41.320
what a Friday night football game can do for a small town.

872
00:52:42.200 --> 00:52:45.960
Exactly. Yeah. I definitely think that sports is a key. There

873
00:52:45.960 --> 00:52:49.800
are other organizations that have stepped in to do that sports piece.

874
00:52:50.200 --> 00:52:53.600
But I do think that the organizations that have been able to marry the local

875
00:52:53.600 --> 00:52:57.240
sports and the local news are finding a sustainable

876
00:52:57.240 --> 00:53:00.960
business model. And I just think that sports is a key thing

877
00:53:00.960 --> 00:53:04.520
in these rural places. I mean, I've really found it to be

878
00:53:05.000 --> 00:53:08.520
the bridge to my neighbors, you know, whatever.

879
00:53:08.680 --> 00:53:12.320
Because we're not talking politics then, right? We're just. We're cheering on the

880
00:53:12.320 --> 00:53:16.080
local team. We're, you know, we're finding our community pride. You

881
00:53:16.080 --> 00:53:19.720
know, we're all wearing the same colors. There are people that I have been

882
00:53:19.720 --> 00:53:23.440
surprised to find out that I'm completely at odds, odds with politically.

883
00:53:23.440 --> 00:53:27.240
But, you know, we are some of the loudest cheers or it can bring a

884
00:53:27.240 --> 00:53:30.480
community together in a - You know, I think sports is unique and that has

885
00:53:30.480 --> 00:53:34.310
a certain draw. But I think whether we're talking about athletics or academics, I

886
00:53:34.310 --> 00:53:36.710
mean, I was a knowledgeable, you know, like that kind of thing. I think there's

887
00:53:36.710 --> 00:53:40.550
a way in which those sort of activities are really unique and they can

888
00:53:40.550 --> 00:53:44.230
build like generational connections. Like there were people when I was playing basketball who would

889
00:53:44.230 --> 00:53:47.830
be like septuagenarian substitutes who would all of a

890
00:53:47.830 --> 00:53:51.590
sudden would be in the stands and then they would, and they would tell their

891
00:53:51.590 --> 00:53:55.390
friends about you and you'd be at the drugstore getting, you know,

892
00:53:55.390 --> 00:53:58.230
like a Cherry Coke and then see, you know, like, like there was just something

893
00:53:58.230 --> 00:54:02.010
really wonderful about those experiences, those center rituals in

894
00:54:02.010 --> 00:54:05.770
small towns. Absolutely. It does sometimes bring

895
00:54:05.770 --> 00:54:09.450
about the rivalry between towns. But even that is kind of fun, you

896
00:54:09.450 --> 00:54:13.130
know, so gives people something to talk about. So we can move on

897
00:54:13.130 --> 00:54:16.850
to our last topic here, which is some of the highlights of living in rural

898
00:54:16.850 --> 00:54:20.570
America, which we've hit on a few of them already. But what are some of

899
00:54:20.570 --> 00:54:24.370
the just really good things that people who don't

900
00:54:24.370 --> 00:54:27.820
live rurally might be kind of surprised to know are positive

901
00:54:27.820 --> 00:54:31.620
aspects of living in rural places? I think there's a pluralism that actually

902
00:54:31.620 --> 00:54:35.460
really exists in rural America that it often doesn't get credit

903
00:54:35.460 --> 00:54:39.260
for. When I was on the Ag beat, I would go into these

904
00:54:39.260 --> 00:54:42.700
packing towns in western Minnesota, be it Windom or

905
00:54:42.700 --> 00:54:46.380
Worthington, and you would talk to the school officials who'd

906
00:54:46.380 --> 00:54:49.980
say there are, you know, dozens of languages spoken in our school

907
00:54:50.700 --> 00:54:54.260
and there are bustling main streets, oftentimes

908
00:54:54.260 --> 00:54:57.930
immigrant-run businesses because of the, the

909
00:54:57.930 --> 00:55:01.530
work that is here. But you know, it felt like

910
00:55:01.690 --> 00:55:05.290
that didn't match sometimes the simplistic two dimensional

911
00:55:05.370 --> 00:55:09.170
like stereotype about what small towns are, you know, kind of

912
00:55:09.170 --> 00:55:12.770
like Mayberry sort of impulse. And I also

913
00:55:12.770 --> 00:55:16.530
think that I said, I mentioned Wells earlier in south central Minnesota. You

914
00:55:16.530 --> 00:55:20.210
know, my parents and their dear neighbor do not

915
00:55:20.210 --> 00:55:23.550
agree on politics. They fly flags literally

916
00:55:23.550 --> 00:55:27.390
sometimes for the opposing candidates. And yet, you

917
00:55:27.390 --> 00:55:30.670
know, they're out here with me this summer watching our, watching their

918
00:55:30.670 --> 00:55:34.270
grandchildren in Washington D.C. and it's that very neighbor who's

919
00:55:34.270 --> 00:55:37.870
like keeping watch on the house, you know, versus I think it's

920
00:55:37.870 --> 00:55:41.710
sometimes easier to find your sort of bubble. And bubbles can

921
00:55:41.710 --> 00:55:45.470
be nice too. But you can find that bubble more

922
00:55:45.470 --> 00:55:49.230
easily in a larger community than you can in a small town where

923
00:55:49.230 --> 00:55:52.950
you're on the library board and you're singing in the church choir and

924
00:55:53.110 --> 00:55:56.630
you're running in against folks in the grocery store and you, yeah,

925
00:55:56.710 --> 00:56:00.470
you know, politics are so front and center, but I think that small towns have

926
00:56:00.470 --> 00:56:03.830
a way of like in some respects pushing them behind you. Like you said at

927
00:56:03.830 --> 00:56:07.470
the sports game, right? You didn't even know that you were in disagreement with these

928
00:56:07.470 --> 00:56:10.870
folks. Exactly. Yeah. I sometimes like to use the

929
00:56:10.870 --> 00:56:14.390
framing of bridging versus bonding social capital.

930
00:56:14.790 --> 00:56:18.510
The idea is that you can form bonds with other people and they can either

931
00:56:18.510 --> 00:56:21.830
be bonding, which is among people who are like you,

932
00:56:22.150 --> 00:56:25.950
or bridging. Yes. Who is, you know, bridging social capital, which

933
00:56:25.950 --> 00:56:29.710
is between people who are different than you. And so much

934
00:56:29.710 --> 00:56:33.110
in our society is really pushing us to do a lot more

935
00:56:33.110 --> 00:56:36.550
bonding social capital. But in rural places, you're really

936
00:56:36.790 --> 00:56:40.590
much more forced to do that bridging social capital, right? Because you

937
00:56:40.590 --> 00:56:44.190
are, you, you can't pick who's, who your neighbor happens to

938
00:56:44.190 --> 00:56:47.710
be, right? And. But you want to necessarily, you know, keep up

939
00:56:47.710 --> 00:56:51.450
relationships with that neighbor, because you're going to be living in this

940
00:56:51.450 --> 00:56:55.010
place, theoretically, for, you know, many, many years. Right.

941
00:56:55.090 --> 00:56:58.890
Sometimes I hear the adage about, like, shoveling snow, which is maybe a particularly, like,

942
00:56:58.890 --> 00:57:02.690
upper Midwest analogy, but - Or, like, if you

943
00:57:02.690 --> 00:57:06.170
go in the ditch, right? And I've gone in the ditch, I've had complete strangers

944
00:57:06.170 --> 00:57:09.970
help me out. I think for a lot of rural places, it's, it's a

945
00:57:09.970 --> 00:57:13.610
different kind of framing, right? Because it's, we're thinking about what the community

946
00:57:13.610 --> 00:57:17.330
is and how to be a member of a, of a community where

947
00:57:17.490 --> 00:57:21.310
you are a key player in it. They need you in that small town

948
00:57:21.310 --> 00:57:24.990
to bring whatever gifts you have to do the work that that community

949
00:57:24.990 --> 00:57:28.750
needs. Yeah, no, I agree. I often go back to Kathleen

950
00:57:28.750 --> 00:57:32.550
Norris and her book Dakota and the way she talked about community as

951
00:57:32.550 --> 00:57:36.230
kind of my, like, lens on that. You know, I think we have

952
00:57:36.230 --> 00:57:39.230
run through our list of topics and we are close to the end of our

953
00:57:39.230 --> 00:57:42.950
time. So, Christopher, this was a great conversation. I really

954
00:57:42.950 --> 00:57:46.710
enjoyed it. Thanks, Heidi. So nice to hear from you. Same. This will be

955
00:57:46.710 --> 00:57:50.470
really enjoyable to chat. Next time I'm out in Brown County, I will let

956
00:57:50.470 --> 00:57:54.110
you know, it's been a minute. And I'm gonna go

957
00:57:54.110 --> 00:57:57.790
find that poem, see what's up with the Pheasants in baseball.

958
00:57:57.790 --> 00:58:00.670
I'll give you a heads up. It's not just about the baseball team. It's also

959
00:58:00.670 --> 00:58:04.430
about, there's a crime about a century ago, kind of a notorious crime

960
00:58:04.430 --> 00:58:07.470
that happened in Brown County. And so it's, I weave in some of that, too.

961
00:58:08.190 --> 00:58:11.920
Okay. Now I'm even more interested. Just beware. It's got a trigger warning. All

962
00:58:11.920 --> 00:58:14.000
right, wonderful. Thanks so much, Christopher.

963
00:58:16.560 --> 00:58:20.320
I think hearing about all these different issues in rural America is really

964
00:58:20.320 --> 00:58:24.160
important right now, and I think that hearing all the hope that

965
00:58:24.160 --> 00:58:27.920
these guests are bringing is equally important. I truly agree

966
00:58:27.920 --> 00:58:31.720
with you, Heidi. And, you know, we hope you learned something about

967
00:58:31.720 --> 00:58:35.360
what it takes to live rural in this episode. And if there's something

968
00:58:35.840 --> 00:58:39.610
you think we need, need to talk about, you know, you gotta let us know.

969
00:58:39.850 --> 00:58:43.450
Yeah. We like to think that this is a podcast where we can

970
00:58:43.450 --> 00:58:47.050
bring all kinds of discussions to rural America. So please

971
00:58:47.530 --> 00:58:51.050
email us your thoughts. Our email address is

972
00:58:51.050 --> 00:58:54.650
podcast@onecountryproject.org.

973
00:58:55.050 --> 00:58:58.570
And you know, we're also on Bluesky and Substack, so

974
00:58:58.650 --> 00:59:02.350
give us a follow and reach out there too. Thanks for joining us

975
00:59:02.580 --> 00:59:05.940
today on the Hot Dish, which is brought to you by One Country Project,

976
00:59:06.420 --> 00:59:09.780
making sure the voices of the rest of us are heard in Washington.

977
00:59:10.020 --> 00:59:13.860
Learn more at onecountryproject.org. You know what? We're

978
00:59:13.860 --> 00:59:17.620
going to be back in two weeks with more Hot Dish, comfort food for rural

979
00:59:17.620 --> 00:59:18.260
America.