Cap Times Idea Fest | An Evening with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz

(upbeat music) - Good evening and welcome to Civic Media's coverage with the CapTimes 2025 IDFS. Tonight, live from UW-Madison's Memorial Union, we will hear conversations with writer Evan Osnos and Minnesota Governor Tim Walsh, both moderated by David Marinus. At seven o'clock following Osnos' remarks, Todd Alba of the Todd Alba Show will join us for some IDFS to recap and analysis. Then at 7.30, Governor Walsh will take the stage. We go now live to Memorial Union for CapTimes IDFS. (upbeat music) (audience applauding) - Good evening, it's so good to see, so many of you here this early, there's always exciting traffic in Madison on a Friday night and we know how high it is to get here. So we're thrilled you're here early and welcome. This is the fifth day of CapTimes IDFS and we're excited that you're here. As I said all week, attendance is so important to us to support the Capitol Times and the news and opinion journalism we've been doing in this town since 1917 and I just wanna keep repeating that every time I'm out here. (audience applauding) If you're not already, consider becoming a CapTimes member. One of our plans for the future is to do more events and more member only and member first events. So in addition to supporting us, if you're interested in events like this, you might consider membership. Please note our sponsors listed on the banners behind me. They like your tickets make this week all it is. And so I will just point out and thank them for their support. (audience applauding) Our previous speakers this week have felt the topics have seemed really incredibly timely. Not always all optimistic but incredibly timely. Even though I just met Evan Osnil's for the first time backstage, I feel like he's an old friend because I've listened to him so long with his wonderful podcast, the political hour with The New Yorker. And I've been a huge and long time fan. Evan is a celebrated New Yorker, political reporter and author whose latest book was published in June. I got an advanced copy and read it and it's her sale on the lobby and I believe he'll be signing copies after this session and also after the Tim Wall session tonight. It's titled The Have and Have Yots, Dispatches of the Ultra Rich. It's a collection of essays published in New New Yorker that Evan has revised and expanded to tell the story of how the ultra rich now hold more of America's wealth than even in the heyday of the carnigies and the Rockefellers. In it, Evan recalls Donald Trump's denigration last January and in a scene he described as instantly indelible. The world watched American politics and embrace plutocracy without shame or pretense, he wrote. Before joining The New Yorker, Evan worked as the Beijing Bureau Chief for the Chicago Tribune and was part of teams that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2001 in 2008. Prior to his China assignment, he reported from the Middle East, mostly from Iraq. Among his other books was a 2020 biography of former president Joe Biden. In 2021, and we are talking about this in the green room, he published a bestselling book titled Wildland, the Making of America's Fury, in which he wrote about how the United States seemed to have changed in the many years he spent abroad, no longer appearing to be as committed to the rule of law, the sanctity of truth and equal opportunity as when he left that resonates with all of us now. As I said, Evan is a regular, by mispronounced earlier, on the New Yorker podcast titled A Political Scene. It's one of my favorites. His New York podcast partners, Jane Mayer, who was here in 2021, and Susan Glasser, who was here with her husband Peter Baker last year, we were joking downstairs that we've completed our match set of podcasters, and now our goal will be to get them to Madison at the same time, maybe on the stage next year or sometimes soon. I just wanted to give one more pitch for the podcast. I just find it to be fascinating and absent of the kind of off-putting hyperbole, so common on podcasts. So David Marinus, who's been here all week, and played a huge part, invited Evan to Madison, and he'll be the moderator tonight. So with that, would you please welcome Evan and David to the stage. Thank you. (audience applauding) Hello again, and again, and again, and again. I'm sick of my own voice by now, but I'm delighted to be with Anas Nose. I've known As Noses since Evan was an infant. When I got to the Washington Post in 1977, his dad Peter was already a legend there, and he was in Moscow at that point, but I got to know him as an editor on the national staff. And my favorite As Nose story of all time is when I was the Southwest Bureau Chief for the Washington Post in Austin, and I went up to Dallas because Prince Charles was there. So I'm doing the story about Prince Charles, and he's meeting various people, and then he looks over and sees me. It says, "Are you the Washington Post correspondent?" And I said, "Yes," he said, "Well, I want to tell you that Peter As Nose, people come up to him and call him Prince Charles because he looks so much like Prince Charles." It's uncanny actually. It truly is. And would Peter, when they told him that story, boy, was he happy? He remains pleased. He doesn't even know you're telling it, but somewhere a warm glow is passing over him, and he doesn't know what. - So now that he's King Charles, I guess your dad is King Peter. - Oh, he's so pleased right now. My dad is so thrilled by that, so thank you. - Which means we have to call you, Prince Evans? - Well, well, dad. I have to say, I can take to that, actually. I have to say, it is, as the other half of this prenatal friendship with David Marinas, when David Marinas sends you an email, even before you read it, you say, yes, whatever it is, I want to do it, I want to see you, I want to chat. So it is a great thrill to be here with you. - Thank you, Evan. - And thank you all for coming on a beautiful night outside. - Great. - So Evan is one of the many guests we've had who came in from Washington, and each one of them, I have asked what it's been like there the last three weeks with sort of this mall cops police state. What have you seen, and how would you describe it? - Do I have to go back? I mean, really? You see, I'm beaming at the experience of being out of Washington. It has been a very curious occasion because let's be honest, the site of the National Guard, patrolling downtown, and I will point out, they are strangely patrolling around the monuments and some of the safest places. I think they're keeping the monuments safe from the tourists or the tourists safe from the monuments. It's not clear. The subtext, of course, is a horror. The subtext is something that will be a subject for us to talk about tonight and for weeks beyond, which is that this is not how it's supposed to work. And we're getting used to what this has meant and what it will mean. But for the moment, I have to say, Washington has a way of registering its disapproval. And when JD Vance went to Union Station and thought that he would be greeted by rapturous crowds, it was a little bit like walking into hostile territory. And I think that was eye-opening. There is a way in which it feels a little bit, to me at least, having worked in Iraq, that the Trump administration operates in Washington a little bit like the green zone in Baghdad, where they kind of stay within the palace walls as much as possible. And we know from history that when you reside in the land of Oz and you begin to believe your own mythology and you don't step out in counter reality, that can lead you into some disastrous choices. Yes. And since we'll get to China later, but I was struck by the-- the protestor who threw the submarine sandwich. And the way that the silhouette of that almost became symbolic like the standing in front of the tank in Tiananmen Square. - Yeah, I do think the guy in front of the tank would like a word on that analogy. (laughing) - Exactly. - But it is true that the sandwich has been immortalized with Banksy style protests. And I sometimes try to think about what would Gandhi make of this? If you'd explained to him that this was the nature of civil disobedience in our day and age. But look, it is a sign of how people are figuring out ways to register their discontent. And I think we're at the beginning of a process. One of the patterns that I look for is the way that citizen power marshals itself. How does it organize itself? It takes time. We sometimes forget that it took 20, 30, 40 years, in some cases, for great movements to achieve their definition of success. If you're talking about the suffragettes, if you're talking about achieving the first legislation during the gilded age to try to bring in that period, the trusts under control. It took 17 years between the time that Mark Twain named it a gilded age and you had the passage of the Sherman Antitrust Act. So my message is settle in. This is a marathon, not a sprint. As a citizen, this takes attention and it takes persistence. It's not a problem that gets solved overnight. - That's another translation of what Stacey Abrams said the other night. - Oh, is that right? - No, no, I mean, it was different, but it got to the same place. And it was a measure of optimism that I think people were looking for in that sense. - Well, I mean, it is, I think we're all at this point in some ways looking for what history can tell us. There's a seductive comfort, which can be misleading too to say, oh, we've been through this. We've had moments like this before. That means we'll get through it. No, as Robert Putnam likes to say, you pendulum happens in history, but you sometimes have to push the pendulum. And I think the message there is that this is a set of values and a set of relationships that often happen face to face. One of the great lessons of the progressive era, how we went from the gilded age to a progressive era was that it took first a change of culture, in effect, a moral awakening of a certain kind, and then it led to civic action, people getting together, meeting in organizations, meeting to have talks and to exchange ideas and to throw out proposals to one another. And then the third step is actually policy. So in a way, the power begins in the hands of people who are interested in seeing an alternative way of living. - When you said the pendulum needs to be pushed, you started your career at the Chicago Tribune in Chicago, and JB Pritzker, the governor, will be here tomorrow night. And he's done some pushing and it seems that that hadn't effected in Chicago. How would you interpret what's happened? - Yeah, it's very interesting. - Because part of the Trump strategy is a bit of the old probe. You push until you see if you hit bone. And I think he began to get a sense that Chicago might not be such an easy place to invade. (audience laughs) - Because Trump always mentions these friends of his, like he's got this guy in Paris named Jim, who tells him about things that are happening. I'm always tempted to know if he had a guy in Chicago who called him up and said, "This isn't gonna work." You're gonna get, you're gonna, you're essentially gonna organize the city and response to you. I mean, look, I think there is, there, it matters the sequence. He started in Washington. Washington is, as you know, David, a kind of municipal, it's a very strange political creature. It doesn't have any of the ordinary powers that a city has. Chicago, where I came up, starting on the Metro Desk, wrote a profile in the New Yorker of Mayor Daily, Richard M. Daily, the son of Richard J. Daily, who I, in an immortal phrase, used to refer to the rest of the country as the New York's, the LAs and all that. (laughing) And Chicago, as you know, has a kind of steel in its spine. And the idea that people were gonna come in and tell this city that it was overrun, as Trump would say, by immigrants, by crime. Chicagoans will tell you, we're the only ones who get to criticize Chicago. - Right. That's great. So, night after night, the guests from Normaisen to Stacey Abrams to Garrett Graf, to Eugene Robinson, have talked about where we are on the road to tradition to autocracy. And two out of the four, say we're already there, I've sort of listed to you about this, but I'd be interested in your perspective on how close we are to a total totalitarian state. - Well, I mean, having actually lived in something close to a totalitarian state, China under Xi Jinping, I can give you some points of reference. I visited North Korea. Look, I think the reason I don't mean to be joky about it, is that when we use our level of alarm, we have to be sure that this is the moment that we're mobilizing people for, meaning that if we actually say that Trump has reached the maximalist position of what he can take, that there is nothing left to be done within democratic politics, then what you're doing is essentially telling people that the democratic system is unavailable to you. It's failed. And that's not actually the point where we are. The point where we are is that we're in the run up to a midterm election in which we could have some reasonable effect, some ability to contain his powers, some ability at least to begin to make the Congress function again. We could also, let's remember, begin to talk more seriously about how this country could say, revive the tradition of amending the Constitution. We used to do that on average every 10 years. The last time we really amended the Constitution was 1971. We've lost the tradition. We've lost the memory of our founding system, our founding documents being a malleable document. I'm not suggesting that we're in any political position to begin amending the Constitution, but I think you have to begin to tell people to shift the over 10 window, as we used to say a few years ago, an idea that's almost been exhausted. To tell people that politics is still an arena in which we have our best chance of peacefully bringing about the pushing of the pendulum. You brought it up, amend the Constitution. What would you think, what would that amendment be? What would the first one come to your mind? Well, I suppose there's a few things that one could imagine. I don't know if it would take an amendment of the Constitution to make DC a state, but this is an idea that has-- That's for sure. --has been rattling around. I will-- I will secretly admit here that there is a fantastic book just coming out right now by my colleague at the New Yorker Jill LaPore on the subject of the Constitution and the power of amendment and relearning the muscle memory of what it means to make this a living breathing document again. So I commend to you all that book. I'm going to be talking to her in Washington next week. Great. Yeah, well, Jill LaPore is a national treasure. She is an absolute national treasure. And by the way, she somehow, in her spare time, manages to write 700 pages on the history of the Constitution, while raising nice children and gardening. And teaching at Harvard. Teaching, yes. So we're going to get into what's happened the last few days. But I want to set some context for that first. And I think it was 2015. You wrote a piece, "The Fearful and the Frustrated About the Alt-Right." You sort of saw it coming. Did you know the way that would attach to Trump over the years? Yeah, that was an experience of the value of going away and coming home. I'm an American. I'm a reporter who had come up here not gone overseas for a decade. And I came back. And as we all remember, Trump announced his candidacy for president in 2015. It happened to be that I was working on a piece at the time that had been inspired by this horrific shooting by Dylan Roof, who was a white supremacist, who walked into a mother manual church and slaughtered parishioners. And that story was about this in co-8 group of people. who imagined themselves as white nationalists. Who was this group? What was this, what was the origins of this crime? So I was working on that piece, and I got a call from my editors at the New Yorker, and they said, you know, Trump has announced that he's running for president, and it was being treated as a great big joke, you remember? He was a, because in New York, of course, he's a piece of the kind of permanent media clownish furniture. That's the way that he was regarded. And so it was assumed he'll be out in a few weeks. This is all a publicity stunt. And they said, would you quickly pivot from the white supremacist story and do a profile of Trump, the candidate? And you better move fast, 'cause he's probably gonna be out in a couple weeks. And I said, okay, so I went out and stopped meeting with these white supremacists and started going to Trump rallies. And I wrote to my editors after about a week of this, I said, this is one story. And we need to merge these two into one story. Because what this is about, it turned out, was a set of ideas that had been hatched. Really, I would argue around the idea of, around 9/11, and the beginning of the war in Iraq, the idea of Twilight war, the idea that we are beset from enemies. In that case, after 9/11, it was such a shock to our system. The idea that we would be attacked in a way we hadn't been since Pearl Harbor. And then gradually over time, you began to see that they said, okay, it's not just, it's not just jihadists that were fighting in Afghanistan. It's also, jihadists coming over the border. You remember that moment, there was even a congressman long since whose left politics named Tom Tancredo, who for the power user, that is a name. If you recognize that name, you deserve a door prize. But he made this leap from saying, this is not just about fighting for Western values overseas. It's about defending us from the enemies within. And that over time animated the birth of the anti-immigration movement. And Trump, of course, saw that and latched onto it and seized it, not as some authentic issue for him, particularly, it was congenial to some of his pre-existing attitudes, but he picked it up. And you had this fusion of these two movements. And that was, it was a piece called the Fearful and the Frustrated. And it was about he had awakened a gene within us that's been in our national soul from the beginning. And it comes and it goes. And he turned it into the politics that we inhabit today. - And that was 2015 when Charlie Kirk was what, like 20 or something. - Yeah. - But he took that whole, I don't even know if you've called it ideology, but whatever the movement would do in those 10 years. - Yeah, I think that Trump, as a phenomenon, meant a lot of different things to people in the beginning. I mean, there were some people who thought he is the manifestation of what I don't dare say out loud, but what I feel, which is perhaps this fear of the country changing, particularly for white men. There was also a piece of that caucus who felt like they were actually reenacting some vision of a 1980s era Reagan style individualist ethic. That's what they thought that they were signing onto. And it was this conglomeration of different ideas. And then over time, as we know, Charlie Kirk started talking about young people. And I was reminded of this today, actually, we were taping the podcast this morning and Jane Mayer, our friend who has done a lot of work over the years. She'd interviewed Charlie Kirk and the thing that had started him down this path was that in his mind, this is what he would tell people, he thought he could go to West Point, he applied, and in his mind, his seat was taken by a woman, and a woman of color. And he began to tell himself that this was a grand injustice. And he took this idea and he went out into the world and he found people who felt that they had been treated unjustly. And he was able to tap into this. In a way, he sort of picked a lock of something that was out there in the world. And it was very, very powerful. And he looked at the other reason, I don't know if you ever interviewed him, but part of the reason it worked was that he was masterful at code switching. He could figure out who he was talking to at one moment or another. And I think we don't need to-- you've been talking about it all week, but we're at a very dangerous moment in this country. We're at a threshold moment. And the idea that the small-deed democratic method of change, which is that we can get into a room and disagree with one another-- perhaps even violently disagree with one another-- but do it without taking up arms. That idea is fundamentally imperiled right now. And it has been growing steadily since 2015. And we're at a point where, as a political class in Washington, the people who serve in our name, the only way we know from history-- and this is very well documented by the scholars who fight against this-- is they have to repeatedly, emphatically, creatively, and authentically renounce violence. They have to say there is no place for this in our politics. There is no place for this in our country. And if they don't do that, then this process builds over time. And Trump renounces certain violence, but only the violence that suits his political needs. Yeah, that's where we are right now. That's where we are. So is this the sunny turn in the conversation where we begin to talk about hope and light? No. No. But we're sort of easy getting to China a little bit more. Carontelian-- If the authoritarian communist regime-- You know, it's sort of, but it gets to not to Charlie Kirk, but to young people, which was Carontelmeltese cited a study or a poll or something the other day that really fascinated me about the sort of the young people's perspectives on autocracy. And that part of why they're more less disturbed about it has to do with China and all of the things they get from China, from their cell phones to TikTok. Yeah, I think there's also a way that they've grown up in a period when they look across the Pacific. And what do they see when they watch the Olympics a couple of years ago or in 2008? They see a place that is growing, that is building, that is putting up skyscrapers, that is laying down railroad track at a pace that was like us at the end of the 19th century. Now what they don't get, of course, is the other side of the story, which is the people's voices who are silenced as a result of being in an oppressive autocratic regime, of being in essentially a life in a one-party state. So if you look at China from over here and what you're experiencing is TikTok and inexpensive house wares and the site of spectacular infrastructure on TV, you can begin to say, you know, it seems like they're doing what we used to do only bigger and better. But I think there's something else going on. And I actually think this begins to get to why inequality is a piece of the puzzle, is that I think what young people who are attracted to the seductive idea of a strong man, what they're really responding to, it's almost like a kind of referred pain. It's not exactly that strong man rule is so attractive. It's that they're looking at the present conditions in our politics, and they're saying this system is not in any way reflecting the needs and the plaintive cries of people out in the country who are saying, what happened to the promise of what the mythology of this country is, which is, after all, that you can, let's say, out-earn your parents. If you were born in 1940, you stood a 90% chance about earning your parents. Young people today stand less than half that chance. There are a lot of young people out there who say, if only we had a CEO. Now, it is, in my view, a radical misjudgment of how you actually achieve meaningful, productive, political reform, but it is an expression of, in a way, a kind of politics of despair. That's true. And this might not be true of the last few months, but in my experience of reporting, I've always found that the people who are most optimistic about America are the ones who have the least reason to be. Black women, Hispanics, and it's-- I don't know. And I also have-- And immigrants. And immigrants. I mean, I think to myself, look, you're kind of mentioned my dad at the outset of this conversation. He came to this country as a refugee. He was a Polish, Jewish family that they left Poland. went on the. Odyssey as so many families did families here. I'm sure he was eventually born in India of all places my dad's birth certificate says cast Polish true story And he was given Well, he's out they look they kicked him right out of India. That's where you were on the cast list of if you were Polish And his parents had lost everything my grandfather was one of seven siblings. He was the only one to survive the war My father was given the middle name Winston after Winston Churchill because of a just the idea that in indeed in word You will put the idea of vanquishing Fascism on a page on a birth certificate right there next to cast Polish and They came to this country and As you know, he says I started here in this country in a basket and The people who come here who fight and we know all of us know people who have thought incredibly hard to get here Those are the people who still believe in the American idea and I know Chinese immigrants for instance who have Tracked from China through the Darian gap all the way up through Central America to get to the southern border with the United States Because they want to get out of the Chinese system so when we look across the Pacific and we say, God It is nice how they're able to generate to you know build the new airports Let's remember that actually what we're what we're fighting for here. It's a word. I don't use as much anymore because I think it's it's layered but Fighting Yeah, I've become a little bit more self-editing about the language of The language of combat. I'm not sure it's necessarily the kind of language that is on my mind right now I'm thinking more about the language of putting a shoulder to the wheel You know people sometimes ask these days, you know what what gives you hope and I keep thinking to myself I don't say it very often but I I Think that I it's the wrong word. I use a different four-letter word It's a family friendly word, but it but it's work. It's work. Honestly. It's the idea of Actually getting together with people who are concerned getting together with people who believe that there is something to be done And it's not there's only wrong with saying we're gonna fight but I work is right I mean Marty Baron my editor at the post, you know, you'd say we're not at war. We're at work Yeah, it's very good. That's pretty good. Yeah, I want to have an aside here What you know Peter was I've been was talking about his father Peter One among many notable things of Peter Osnott's was that he was the publisher of Barack Obama before anyone knew it was Barack Obama He published dreams for my father. It's first edition when it I don't know what it sold but it's it's sold in the high two figures I think And you know this they they got that book because Obama had signed with a bigger publisher and he'd gotten an advance And then he missed his deadline the bane of every author and so the book was basically put back out on the market like a Tired old, you know mule or something or somebody will pick I mean at that point he hadn't really he wasn't yet Barack Obama and so but I to my dad's credit he He bought this book and I remember him saying well, I've never said this but I remember him saying at home I think this guy could be president of the United States Yeah, I encountered many people who said that but if you if you if you if you read the humanism and the Americanness of that story in all of its complexity and its flaws and its rupture and its repair in all of those elements It's candor it's it's all of that you said to yourself that's sort of what that's sort of what we aspire to be and that in the end It was kind of the you know, I think about this as an author and that Having a literate president is a is a powerful tool Yeah, they're a few and far between but they're there's some good ones there I'm gonna go back to China a little bit just to get to know you a little better Did you know Chinese before you went there when did you learn it? It's a very difficult language you must be graded linguistically I started in college. I got the bug as a college freshman Really it was a great professor who had a whole class on Tiananmen Square and the uprising at Tiananmen Square in 1989 and he was a kind of Oxford Don type he was teaching here in the US, but he he said it was a wonderful approach He said if you want to understand what happened on a single night June 3rd in Beijing in 1989 we have to go back a thousand years And it was such a seductive way to teach because he said and if you really want to understand it You should probably learn the language and that was the beginning of a process and I started studying it as a college freshman and it became a In some ways the guiding line of my life. I met my wife in China. She's an American. We happened to meet over in The only reason she would call me back is because there weren't very many Americans And you got there in Five and what's your name in Chinese I saw even oh even? Yeah, yeah, my last name is essentially it means European which is a generous way of just saying big nose It's kind of big gave me that and then you in yeah and How what was the daily life like there for you? it was a Golden age of journalism of foreign correspondence in China and I say that because It was this period when we were you remember China had embarked on this grand experiment in 1979 which Deng Xiaoping said we're going to Emancipate our minds that was the quote and what they meant was of course not give up political power But try to create a much space in society where you could live a life without Giving up the monopoly on Force and power that the Communist Party had and so what that meant was they said we're going to allow foreign Correspondence to come in and so I came in as one of these foreign correspondents They'd started doing it in the late 70s early 80s and you could Travel all over the country. I had these kind of magnificent experiences like For a month I decided to just walk in Sichuan province and kind of see what would happen and the cops would come pretty much every day And they would say I just love the image of what they were getting some calls from somebody people would say there seems to be some Lunatic Westerner walking in town. Can you come check them out? And they would come and but you could you could work Mm-hmm. I did at one point a story where I said I wanted to Understand what it felt like to be Chinese going out into the world for the first time and so I joined a Chinese bus tour of Europe 30 better than a Japanese tour I guess I wouldn't have understood a word on the Japanese bus trip But it was 39 Chinese tourists and and me and most of them had never been out of Asia before it was all kinds of small town folks and You know we covered five countries in ten days we were moving fast and I could tell you we went to Marx's birthplace little known place not a place many of you have been perhaps in Germany But we were only there for 11 minutes because we wanted to get to Paris in time for Louis Vuitton before So we had that's perfect repeating it and I And I will say that the reason I call it a golden age for foreign correspondence was I was able to live in a little house in the middle of town in a very Chinese neighborhood You didn't have to live anymore in these old compounds where they had already installed the bugs into every light fixture They were really bothered that they had to come and install new new listening devices in my little house But it was right before the advent of a new piece of technology of new of a whole new world of technology things like Cell phones that everybody had with them that they could monitor your text messages that they could see where you were at any moment We was just at the tail end in effect of the analog era and so you were able to go ever I would leave my cell phone at home So that if they were monitoring my cell phone they would think this lazy guy is just at home another day And I could go out to all kinds of places in the country today. That is simply not possible I was there most recently reporting in 2023 for the New Yorker and It is very very hard now because you worry about the effect on your sources because people who agree to talk with you You have to be thinking foremost about what's gonna happen after I walk out the door You don't worry as much about yourself But what will the police and the and the state do and so it's become incredibly difficult to do a lot of work on the ground now My hat is off to the correspondence who are based there who are figuring it out because it is almost like It's a little bit like a There's very few there's very few and you are actually quite literally in some cases Aware of the fact I had this experience and in recent years and reporting there where you Contact somebody about an interview and then they get a phone call from the state security saying you shouldn't go to that interview. And even if that person is very brave and says, "I want to do this," as a reporter, there's a level of almost informed consent you need from that person. You said to yourself, "Do they really know the full implications of talking to me?" Because if they talk to me, and that story is instantly available everywhere around the world, what will happen to them? So it's made it a lot more complicated. And as a result, we know a lot less about what's happening. But that's another reminder that for whatever's going on here, we're not there yet. You're absolutely right. And I think that's an important point to mention. I mean, I think that in the press these days are, you know, we have an allergy to being pushed around. That's kind of how what people who go into this business are a little bit ornary by disposition. I think you would agree with that, right? My wife might. Yeah. She's been doing a longitudinal study for some decades. And we're now in a position where we're being called every day by this government, the enemy of the state or whatever the latest version of that is. And I think that people are using the muscles that they have in all the right ways right now. So let's turn now to have and have yachts, which is one of my favorite titles of all time. I'm all hesitant to ask you this, but how did that title come about? I was working on this topic and I heard that expression in the UK. Oh, really? Yeah, and I thought, boy, that is a wonderful little bit of language. And I said, I wonder if there's ever been a book by that title and there hadn't been. And I said, you know, I really need to do this. And you'll appreciate this being both a reporter and an editor at various points. Editors are convinced that writers never know how to title their own pieces. I just want you to. It's true. And so I submitted this title for the as the title of a piece in the New Yorker and my editors said, I don't know. You really seem, I don't know. And I said, no, I'm going to die on this hill. Like, this is the hill. I'm going out on this one. And so they said, let me let the guy have his title. The only time is that the editors, the publishers won on a title or the ones I regret. Right. Well, that's true. Yeah. So good for you to get it. But I also want to say, you know, I read this book twice. And the first time I turned into a socialist, and the next time I turned it to something even more to the left. I mean, you can't read this book and not just react. And that's, I mean, that I'm exaggerating. But you know what I mean. So let's go through some of that. And start actually with what's in the title, the culture of yachts. First, you go down to Florida and describe sort of the, I mean, it's a fascinating and disgusting subculture. Well, I got this. It was actually the idea of my editor, David Remnik at the New Yorker, who said, you know, and this is the best kind of story as a story that can be suggested with just a single word. He said, what's the deal with these yachts? I said, say no more. I'll be reachable in six months in Italy, I assume. But I had a real puzzle, which is, you know, I said, I don't really know the first thing about these things. And, but this is where being a correspondent, your training is basically you just go. You just go. And you start chatting with people. And I went down to the Palm Beach International Boat Show. I, first I looked in my closet and I said, do I have anything that would be plausibly recognizable as a yacht? Come on, this guy. Well, to be perfectly honest, I got down there and somebody asked me for directions. I was like, well, all right. Guilty. But what you quickly discover and the reason why this became of interest to somebody who covers politics and foreign affairs is that these objects, these machines are in a way, they are floating symbols of so much of what we've been talking about in this conversation, about politics and about economics. I mean, this is a practical matter. The biggest yachts in the world will cost you about the better part of a billion dollars. There is long as a football field, as long as a city block. They are, in fact, the most expensive objects that the human species has ever figured out how to own. More expensive than any real estate we've bought or sold in this country. More expensive even than the most valuable work of art, which was Salvador Mundi by Leonardo, which not incidentally now hangs on the wall of a yacht owned by the Saudi crown prince. So there, we're all socialists now, I think. But yeah, the truth is that I just decided these objects, look, there is a great tradition of a kind of writing at the New Yorker that appeals to me, which John McFee in the 1960s wrote a magnificent book about frozen orange juice. And the reason it was frozen orange juice that he wrote about was this was a new thing in the United States of America that you could wake up on a January morning in Madison, Wisconsin and have a spectacular glass of sunshine in a bottle. And it was partly because we developed the technology during World War II that we used for processing blood plasma and was able to apply it then to processing foreign frozen orange juice. And it also tapped into all of the new marketing power and the new ideas we had about publicity or propaganda and this kind of ascendant moment of American optimism. And he said, I'm just writing a book about orange juice. Orange juice. Orange juice. And in a way, I said, I'm just writing a book about boats. But you can within that begin to tell a story about how some of the most powerful people in our society imagine their responsibilities, their opportunities, their luxuries, and ultimately in some cases their seclusion. I was fascinated by the caste system within that elite group. You know, you're in Florida, you're at what you think are the mega yachts and then what happens? Yeah. I was I was sitting there slack job standing in front of this enormous, yeah, thinking, wow, I have gotten to the belly of the beast. And a guy taps me on the shoulder, one of the tendons and he says, if you want to see the really big hardware, you got to go down to the other marina. And so I went down to see I made a date to go meet some of the brokers who were buying and selling these. And I will tell you, if this hasn't touched your life personally, you may not know that we are living through the golden age of super yachts in the world. There has frankly never been as many of these things or as big as they are selling for the prices they are. And I went to see a broker who I was later trying to describe his mood. And I just I decided to describe him in the book as exhibiting an almost post-coidal level of of satisfaction. He had sold one yacht the day before he was selling one that particular evening and he was levitating into a kind of blissful stratosphere that I said, I'm going to need to try to contain this for the purposes of getting it on the page. But these objects, these machines are, as you say, part of a cast system. And one of the things that's always the goal, if you're a writer, if you're trying to get inside a nonfiction world of some kind is not to look at it from the outside like, you know, me and just saying, gee, these things are awfully big. But to try to get in and say, what does it feel like to be one of these owners? Yeah, well, you almost did. Well, I had this experience. In Monte Carlo, right? I had a moment. I had a moment. I went to Monaco. And by the way, Hazard Pay was not forthcoming here. I've been asking about it ever since. But so I'm at the Royal Yacht Club of Monaco. And I check into my room there at the Yacht Club. And the Yacht Club is styled like a giant yacht. And I realized in that instant that I would never be fully satisfied anywhere else again. And the next morning, I'm out on my terrace. And I look down and I see a guy on a yacht. And I was there. I was eating an omelette. And I had this glass of like preter naturally fresh orange juice. An ode to McFee, I guess. I didn't even know it. And I'm looking at this guy down on this kind of mid-tier yacht. And he's looking up at me on my perfect terrace. And there he was. He was juiceless. And I had this feeling that just started somewhere in my chest. It was a strange sensation. And it kind of worked its way out. And I realized this is what superiority feels like. There was a moment that really brought this home for me. The owner of one of the world's fanciest yachts told a guest, one of his friends, who told me that this owner had said to him, in the end, why do I have this thing? He said, because he said, you and I both fly on private jets. He said to his friend, the guest, you and I both have chefs. He said, so the only way I can tell the world that I am in a different, effing category than you is the boat. And I thought when I heard that, I said, that really does capture the heart of this matter, which is about a kind of insatiability, a sort of hole within that people are trying to fill. And I think all of us now can look out into our public culture in this country at this moment. I don't need to name any names, but just maybe a few people whose names rhyme with Elon Musk. And imagine why it is that a person does what they-- why do they keep acquiring? Why do they keep exerting their control or their ability to shape the world in the way they do? And on some level, it is about insatiability. So since you visited Mark's birthplace for 11 minutes, are these the excesses of capitalism or the inevitable ends of capitalism? I think that we have lived through moments in our history that rhyme with this. Sometimes people will say, well, the gilded age was pretty bad. We had-- I mean, this is true that during the gilded age, there were parties in New York City in the 1890s where people would arrive at a ballroom and be shown their way to a horse. And they would get on the horse and eat dinner in black tie on a horse with champagne in the saddlebags just because they could. There was another party, a memorable one that made the papers where people arrived and were given a little golden trowel. And we're told to go and dig rubies and gems out of a giant pile of sand. And they could take home what they wanted. Now, that process had it been allowed to continue. Had that period in American life continued. There was a pretty deep belief, a growing belief among a lot of Americans that this country was cooked. That there was no way that you could continue on that way. You had vast inequality. You had life expectancy among the working poor that was declining. You had acts of abuse in minds out in Colorado, out in West Virginia. You had examples of grotesque abuses in the slaughterhouses in Chicago and on and on and on. And there was a kind of awakening among some people that this can't go on. And it sounds perverse, perhaps. But it was Teddy Roosevelt and later Franklin Roosevelt, who believed that in order to save capitalism, that what you had to do was reign it in from its most egregious excesses and abuses. I think it's worth saying. Look, we're at a moment right now where the United States is capable of producing enormous wealth and capital, enormous opportunity through technology in many cases. But that doesn't necessarily mean that it needs to settle in the hands of a group so small that half of all American adults will tell you that they don't have $1,000 to spend in the event of an emergency expense. That is not how you build a country that is a muscular, thriving, stable, admirable model for the rest of the world. That's how you build a society that is something closer to oligarchy. So I guess we're waiting for our next Teddy Roosevelt or FDR. It's not as crazy as it sounds. Here's why. What did Teddy Roosevelt-- what did he represent? Here was a guy who was a privileged son of the country. They both were. They came out of tremendous advantage. Teddy Roosevelt had also lived the life. He'd gone around the country. He had been a rough rider. He had real jobs. He'd done things. He contained multitudes to borrow the expression. And so when he came back and he said, look, all I'm saying is that we owe people a square deal, which is essentially the offer that he was making to people. They took him seriously on that idea. And they said, in a way, maybe he has some credibility because he's coming from the top of society. Why would a man with so many advantages bother to metal in this question? I mean, later, of course, FDR was, as he said, proud to be a traitor to his class. I'm not saying that we need to rely or wait on the most powerful people in society to decide that they're going to give up some of that privilege in order to make changes. But they are a part of the process. Right now, you see in clear, unambiguous terms, in New York City, the choice of Mamdani as a candidate, his success in that race is a blaring alarm about affordability in this country. [APPLAUSE] About people who say, this is not the bargain I was promised in this country. And we do know from history that there are people who are at the top who begin to say, this doesn't work. I mean, already, curiously enough, I quote some in the book, people who are the titans of the hedge fund industry, guys like Paul Tutor Jones, who say, look, if you look back historically in equality of this scale, only ends with war or revolution or his particular concern very high taxes. But clearly, that little cabal of Manhattan landlords and developers doesn't feel that way. But they're-- Defeat Mamdani. I think that's right. It's backfiring, I think. It totally is. They're discovering that there's no market for what they're pushing as an alternative. You know what? It's an amazing statistic to me, David. I've spent a fair bit of time over the years reporting from West Virginia. It was where I worked. My first job out of college was at a little paper called the Clarksburg Exponent Telegram. I was a photographer there. I was a very bad photographer. How did you end up there? It was my first time as well. I got a job. I sent out applications to a bunch of places. Did you ever heard of it? I hadn't until I applied, but I expressed rapturous affection. And most importantly, they said, yeah, we'll give you a job. 230 bucks a week. And so I came down. One of the things that is very notable to me is West Virginia, we think of now in shorthand in journalism as Trump country, right? Like the reddest place you can go. But in the 2016 Democratic primary, Bernie Sanders won all 55 counties of West Virginia. An amazing fact. And when he became unavailable as a candidate, and in fact, this data suggests that in a one-on-one contest, he would have beaten Trump. I mentioned it to say there are people all over the country who, if given the right opportunity, the right kind of candidate, the right combination of qualities, which we can't always predict in advance, they might be responsive in a way that would surprise us. Another book that you wrote has to do with Joe Biden. And I'm curious about your perspective about Biden going in, coming out of the book, and then what happened after that? Yeah, I got interested in Joe Biden strangely through the side door back in 2014 when I first moved back to the United States. I'd come back. I moved to Washington, David. I didn't know anything. I didn't know anybody. And all I knew was foreign policy. I knew foreign affairs. And I knew that Joe Biden was working on a whole lot of foreign affairs. He would get a lot of-- as he would sometimes say, I go to the places that Obama doesn't want to go. So he was in charge of a whole lot of tough patches, places like Iraq and things like that. And so I-- and look, Biden in Washington was a little bit of kind of, again, a piece of people that sort of stopped noticing he was there. He was in the most maligned office in the land, the vice presidency. But I kind of-- I said, oh, maybe I can get an interview. So I called up. I'd like to request an interview with Vice President Biden. And they said, sure. Yeah, how about tomorrow? [LAUGHTER] I said, oh, OK, OK. I guess we can-- and what I discovered was that, as you already knew, the man could talk. And he would talk and talk and talk. And you watched the faces of his PR people, and they would just be ash. Because he would say things-- he would say things like, I shouldn't be telling you this, which is the sweetest expression I've ever heard. Ever heard. And so I'd start-- and I'd go back. And I'd go back. And I'd go back. And I'd go back. And I'll tell you the reason why, in that period in 2014, when I started writing about-- I wrote a profile of him in the New Yorker, essentially, what seemed like the end of his political career was a kind of swan song story about this guy who'd been in public life all these years, never really grasped the brass ring, and that kind of thing. What was interesting to me was that he had lived a real life. He had lost terrible things. He had lost his, as we all know, he had lost. his wife and his daughter. He had bombed out of the presidency for plagiarism in 1987. Didn't even make it to '88. We sometimes say the '88 race, but he was out even before then. He then had two aneurysms right afterwards. They said you might not ever speak again. That's what the doctors told him. He was read his last--and by the way, when they told him that it was after the plagiarism scandal and he said, "You know, they could have helped me actually a few months ago." So all of this stuff that happened--and the reason why it was interesting to me is Washington is a place where usually people have led lives. The reason they got there is because they had the road scholarship and then they cruised into Washington and started measuring the drapes. So they haven't lived all that much. Joe Biden was a--he had a sort of silver medalist's mindset, like he was constantly aggrieved. He had a chip on his shoulder and that was this engine that powered him. And eventually through the strangest turn of events, you know, in 2016, of course, he didn't really get the nod from Obama. Obama supported Hillary and at that point, Biden had lost his son Bo, a kind of one more piece in this puzzle of of loss. And when he ran in 2020, it was almost like his life was this strange, perfect opposite of Donald Trump's life. You know, Donald Trump had started life with, as you'll recall, as he said, a small loan of $100 million from his father. And words to that effect. And had lived this life of gilded opportunity and had declared bankruptcy over and over again. All that's to say, and Biden just by being a decent guy was in his own way kind of an alternative. Already in 2020, there was concern about his age. It was clear at that point, he would be the oldest president we'd ever had. And he said, he made--and we all remember this, he made a promise in effect. He said, I will be a bridge. I'll be a transition candidate. And you know, he tried to kind of weasel out of it a little bit. People tell, are you saying you're only going to one for one term? And he'd say, no, I'm not saying that, but I'll be a bridge. And everybody interpreted it for what he was hoping they would take him to me. And I think in a way, what happened in that story is that he lost sight of that promise. And he broke that promise. To Americans. On a level that offended them more than he understood. You know, he thought, well, they're going to reward me for my performance. They're not going to want to usher me out, particularly when the alternative is this guy who I drove out of the White House. And he didn't understand that his very presence, he himself, aging so visibly, and in violation of the compact that he had made with the public, became essentially ineligible for the presidency. And he never grasped it. And the more that the data, the more that the evidence became clear that he would not win, the more he dug in and that old chip on his shoulder became a diabolical problem and became in a way a blinding effect. And he and his people around him blinded themselves to the reality of what they were facing. You're listening to W. A. K. Jackson Milwaukee W MDX Columbus Madison WCFW HD2 W228 EP Chibow Falls W F HR Wisconsin Rapids W L. A. K. A. Marie and W LC X lacrosse a part of the civic media radio network. Every day on TV. He had this very clotted voice. He was kind of weakening. That was quite obvious. We all saw that. I remember mentioning in the article that he had these cards that he was using. And it was you know, it was prompting him. It was not particularly strange. He was using it to reel off quotes from Trump that Trump had said, odious things and so on. But what struck me most of all, David, was that he was defiant. He was completely defiant. No matter how many times I ask the question of, but what about the fact that people expected you to run or ask the question of, but what about the fact that the polls show today that you are trailing in a way that you never were in 2020? His answer was always the same, which is I'm the only one who's beaten him. And it was it was a kind of it was a he'd become convinced that there was something special about his moment. I think January 6th had a transformative effect on his imagination of the presidency. That watching it watching this assault not only on democracy, but on the building where he really felt at home in his life. He was always a creature of the Senate. That he felt by the time he got there 14 days later, you know, literally two weeks standing on those steps. That he felt as if it was almost like a calling. And it was a tragic and really a calamitous misunderstanding of his mandate of what the country asked of him and what the country wanted of him. And what what saddens me as a person who found so much decency and humanity in his life before that was that he marred his legacy. He marred his record by staying too long and making that catastrophic decision to run and to stay after the world was telling him that time has passed. That turned into a sort of a tragedy. Absolutely a tragedy. Yeah. It is a tragedy and it is like so much in his life. It is a it's been a life of improbable success and almost incomprehensible staggering losses and some that fate visited upon him and some that he created himself. He's, you know, I think that over time we as we have with some other one term presidents like George H. W. Bush or Jimmy Carter where we will look back on the things they did and begin to say that maybe they were laying in elements of our future that weren't recognized at the time. That's certainly the case with Biden's infrastructure investments, drug prices, climate to the degree it hasn't been unwound under Trump. But that can't compensate for it doesn't erase what was in the end a violation of what he set out to do which was to save us from a second Trump term. And that anybody who pays attention to politics and pays attention to the mind and the psychology as you have of politicians has to find that fascinating. So I know that I'm asking you to mind read but does he understand that now do you think or do you think he's rationalizing it today? I don't think he understands that. I'm not sure he'll ever come to terms with it. I think that he became the presidency is a bizarre thing to want. And you've written about this. At the core of when you write about presidents the question we're always trying to ask is what makes this person get up out of bed in the morning and think not only I can be but I should be the president. I mean that is if it wasn't slightly glamorous it would be pathological. I think it still is. I think it both in a lot of cases. And in Joe Biden's case you know he had the guiding mantra of his life had been that when the world pushes against you that you push back harder and you are a walking icon of resilience. The problem is that there are moments when the right answer they answer for yourself for your legacy and for the country God knows is to say actually I've run my race and it's over. And he missed that cue. In a way he almost became I'm afraid to say he became persuaded of a simplified mythology of his own life that wasn't as complex and real as the actuality was. Since I want all these people to go out and buy your latest book I will go back to that for one more story which is the Florida story. I don't know this is a this is a crowd that might not even know who the Florida is. I will say this this one will stay with me forever. I wanted to write about the phenomenon as part of the Havz and Havots books as part of that book I wanted to write about the phenomenon of pop stars doing private gigs for people at home or in because it used to be if you were the you know if you were the wealthiest guy in town you would buy front row seats at the arena or maybe you would get then later you'd get a sky box. And now as a drummer said to me when I was interviewing about this experience he said you know it used to be that nobody could afford to have the food fighters in their backyard on a Thursday but now you can. And so I faced this reporting puzzle which is nobody wanted to talk about it. The artists didn't want to talk about it because it was kind of embarrassing to be doing these money gigs. The clients didn't want to talk about it because they didn't want to showcase how much they were spending. So I started calling artists after artists and I was getting a whole lot of nose. And then I was talking to an agent. He said I think there's somebody who might say yes. He said do you know flow rider and flow rider not the target audience I think. Flow rider. I'll tell these people that this may not be the hall for him but flow rider is a hip hop star from the state of Florida. Florida, things about Apple Bottom jeans and the boots with the first. Some of the younger people here will know what I'm talking about. Yeah. [LAUGHTER] So I called up flow rider who does a lot of these events. And I said, could I report on this? Could I come along? And he said, yeah. Why don't you come along? And so I ended up embedding with flow rider for a bar mitzvah in Chicago. [LAUGHTER] I tell this during the book, but I can just-- Not quite like I rack, but-- I mean, it was embedment. But it really was. I really did come home and I called my wife. And I just said, I think I can die happy as a journalist. I've done all I can ever want to do. So I'd like to close with honoring our fathers. I do this event because of my dad and the keptimes. And I know you came up in a journalism family as well. Tell me about the lessons you learned from Peter Osnose and your family. I guess what I learned from my dear dad is that we live in this place, this country, that has this tradition of a free press, which is an astonishing right. It is-- I grew up with the idea that being a reporter is just about the greatest job you can have in the world, because it is a passport to go anywhere. You can find yourself sitting on that ridiculous terrace in Monaco, or you can find yourself trying to blend in with flow riders on to Raj in Chicago. Or, frankly, at moments of much greater significance, you can find yourself sitting across from a president in the Oval Office, asking yourself, is he making a catastrophic choice and what will happen to this country? It is-- it feels often, I think, like a tremendous weight, because you say to yourself, my God, I've got to get this right. But having lived in places where people don't have the luxury. They don't have the chance in China or in places like Iraq to go out and ask people in positions of power and privilege to explain themselves. It feels to me like the greatest gift, and I'm just grateful to have the chance to do it every day. And by God, you do get it right. Thank you, Evan, so much. Thank you, David. You're listening to Civic Media's coverage of the Cap Times 2025 IDFS. We'll be back with more right after this. And good evening, everyone. At the Civic Media World Headquarters in Madison, Wisconsin, on a beautiful September evening. I'm Todd Allball, joined by producer engineer Aaron Zommers at 16 minutes now, past the hour of 7 o'clock. As Civic Media is ongoing coverage of the Cap Times IDFS 2025 continues here. Just got done with a fascinating presentation and discussion with Evan Osnos, the panelists there, along with David Merr, is it Mara? Mara? Mara? Mara? Mara. Mara. Thank you very much, Zommers. Mara just there was the moderator. And I thought it was just a fascinating discussion. And we're going to continue here at the bottom of the hour or shortly thereafter with another discussion with Minnesota Governor Tim Walls as the panelist and John Nichols. Great John Nichols, Capitol Times author and independent journalist himself is going to be here. This is all coming to us just down the street on the other end of state street at Shenan Hall, at the University of Wisconsin Memorial Union live. And they're setting things up here for for Governor Tim Walls. And we're also going to take a few minutes to listen to some of the other ideas, fest activities this week, which continues and more of it continues over the weekend. We're going to preview that. But right now, I want to bring on via phone from Memorial Union Hall at the University of Wisconsin Madison campus, the site of this evening's speakers for IDFS 2025, the political editor for civic media and the founder of the recapobulation area. The one you'll need, Dan Schaefer. Dan, thanks for being here. Thanks so much for having me, Todd. It's always a pleasure. Were you in the room for part of the the Evan Osnos presentation? I sure was. And I thought it was a fascinating conversation touched on so much that we talk about all the time on your show and across the civic media network and the reconbibulation area. I'm talking about issues of inequality, talking about the politics of the day, talking about Donald Trump. I thought he had some fascinating insights into Joe Biden there right at the end of the discussion as well. And yeah, just a really compelling conversation. And glad we're able to carry it here on civic media. I couldn't agree with you more that I mean, I know the title of the discussion was the have and the have yachts catchy title, by the way, apparently, as a I do like a good pun. Right. Exactly. But I thought the best part of the entire evening in terms of his discussion was this insight as someone who had followed Joe Biden for many years, I could offer that unique insight into Biden towards the end of his political career. And also just this traveling around as well. So I was I was glad it went off on a tangent as we say around here. Yeah, that's right. It was a good tangent too. I think that's why the conversation format early was great for this type of event instead of just having, you know, somebody to give up and deliver a keynote style speech or something like that. I think the conversation format really allowed for things to go in a variety of different directions. And I don't know if that Joe Biden segment was really planned or anything like that. But he talked about, you know, coming back from working over in China for quite some time and then coming back to the United States in 2014 and having a really easy time getting an interview with the vice president and then a decade later, having another interview with Joe Biden when he was, you know, as he kind of characterized as the as often as characterized, breaking his promise in a lot of ways to to run for a second term, you know, and the decisions that and kind of like all of the different machinations and influences that fuel those types of decisions. I thought it was just absolutely fascinating. That's part of what I DFS cap times, I DFS 2020 is about bringing folks here within Madison and different locations throughout the week, different folks, different voices around the country. I think it's just a great idea. It continues tomorrow, by the way, here in Madison, Dane County Executive Melissa Agard, and Madison Mayor, Stachow Roads Conway, we'll be talking with John Nichols about Madison in this in this political era. Also the afternoon or I yes, in the afternoon as well, Ben Wickler, former Wisconsin Democratic Party chairman is going to be giving a talk as well. The rise of Christian nationalism is going to be on the docket tomorrow, particularly pertinent timely timely indeed. Mike Lucas would say given the events of the Charlie Kirk assassination, and Dan and I, you and I talked about it on our show earlier this afternoon. It appears as more information comes out that this alleged assassin against Charlie Kirk may have been radicalized by the right online and part of this thing they call the Grieper's, which is something that a lot of people as you said earlier today think of magas being right. Well, it made disturb people and others even more far right. So probably couldn't be a more timely discussion of the rise of Christian nationalism, Dan. Yeah, it's an important conversation. It's one that I think is, you know, a little bit flying has been flying under the radar in certain ways. And I think it's good to have a forum to discuss these types of issues. And I think it'll be a good conversation. It's like, you know, the way that this has embedded itself in our politics and it's just kind of intersection of religion and politics in somebody way. I think, you know, now's certainly the right time to be having these types of conversations. The star of the show in terms of idea fest tomorrow ends up back where you're at tonight and Shannon Hall at Memorial Union on campus. It's a one on one with Illinois governor, Democrat, JB Pritzker. And now we're seeing again, ripped right out of the headlines of the day that in part Dan appears that part of governor Pritzker is kind of standing up to Donald Trump on the Trump administration, trying to come into Chicago with more ice agents and possibly keyword possibly National Guard. That has deterred Trump as we hear now. He's moving his attention to Memphis, Tennessee. So be interested to see what governor Pritzker says on that tomorrow. Yeah. And on a host of issues, you know, I think it's Pritzker has become a pretty prominent national figure. And, you know, we've got a we've got a great week of hearing from some Midwestern governors. Tony Evers obviously spoke the other night and walls, speaking minutes away here and JB Pritzker. So we, you know, we've got most of the NFC North coverage here. We absolutely do. Now, if only we get the different quarterbacks in them. And that would be better. You're listening to continuing civic media coverage of I cap times IDFS 2025 live from University of Wisconsin Madison campus here in Madison. I'm joined by a political editor for civic media founder of the Reconbobulation area Dan Schaefer over the phone. Dan speaking of sports uh earlier part one of the cool things about idea fest is not just all of politics and uh Mike Lucas and Tom Oats great sports reporters here in the Madison area they have a podcast Oats of Lucas or Lucas and Oats uh with the cap times and I was there at their uh idea fest presentation earlier this week I want to take a clip they sat down and talked with four men's hockey coach Badger hockey coach Tony Granado and it wasn't just sports so I'm gonna pick it up here uh in the program where they're talking to coach Granado about something that has touched both coach Granado and Mike Lucas the subject that touches far too many people and that's cancer. Tony's involved in a project a document docu series title fight for life can you explain what path you've gone down with this? Sure you know this started about a year and a half ago I had three buddies that were kind of I don't want to say they were they were looking out for me I was going through my chemo treatment I was right here in Madison and and my buddy said hey you can't sit around just waiting for your next treatment we need to keep you busy we've got to find something for you to do and they're in the TV and the sports industry and they said how about you know you think of an idea we'll put a studio down in your basement you can break down plays you can figure out you know how to put something uh that we can get out there so people can watch you describe the game of hockey in some way shape or form and we just started throwing ideas at each other and and you know what it's like going through treatment look uh there's some really tough days and and there were days where I was looking for things to be inspired by and be motivated by and and and fortunately for me I have lots of people including yourself uh that would reach out to me regularly uh and kind of share the journey and the and what I was going through and lots of those people had either dealt with cancer or different things in their lives and they became inspiring to me so we came up with this idea that if things are inspiring to me of hearing of other people's stories in their journeys of beating whether it be cancer whether it be life trauma those were inspirational for me and so we decided to break down Doug McLeod who was professor at the University of the journalism school was one of those friends and he started to look into stories and started to bring them to me and said you got to see this story about about uh Clint Marciac you got to see this story you know about Craig Cunningham when we went on and on and we put together a list of hundreds of athletes that have gone through life traumas whether it be cancer whether it be serious injury whether it be mental health struggles whether it be addiction and they've been able to get on the positive side of it and be role models for those that are dealing with their own situation so we did we did a pilot with Clint Marciac he was the goalie if you guys remember Steve Tuttle and old Badger uh Steve Tuttle crashed into the net playing for the St. Louis Blues and Escape came up accidentally and cut Clint Marciac's neck a neck and uh got his jugular and probably should have blood out uh but uh fortunately there was a trainer that was on the bench that knew what to do because of his experiences that he had overseas at war so he was able to slow the bleeding down enough that the doctors could clamp it he lived uh he's had multiple other issues that was associated with that injury including PTSD and so we did the pilot on him he's doing great he's a friend of mine that pilot went on NHL network month of July uh we so we got a good start with that one we got Eddie Olchak Craig Cunningham to other spectacular stories uh that are being edited right now that'll hit the network uh in a actually on November October 1st in November 1st uh and we're planning on doing eight episodes in season one all will be uh in the game hockey and then once we get through season one we're planning on expanded out to other sports and in different different uh ideas so right now it's uh it's on the NHL network is that how the whole network is? It is uh what we're trying to it it'll be on youtube soon it'll be on our website soon this all came about fast with NHL network wanting it in July um we weren't quite up to date with everything we needed to be to have it be distributed in different ways the most important thing for us is is if there is somebody out there that needs to be inspired by a story we want them to see it so we're not trying to sell anything it's a nonprofit we're all doing this all our four partners are doing it uh with the kindness of their heart to try to share a story that you know what stories are Luke I don't have to tell you this you know when you find somebody that's beating something it gives you a little bit extra and our goal is to get it out whether it be on youtube whether it's better website some sort of platform that if somebody needed it and somebody saw or heard about it can give a friend a message hey you got to watch this this is something that might help that is uh four badger men's hockey coach Tony Grenano talking to Mike Lucas and Tom Moetz on their capital times podcast Lucas and Oats part of IDFS 2025 earlier this week and uh bring him Dan Schaefer uh our civic media political editor and founder the recombobulation area back in Dan I wanted to play that because I think it's a great example of what IDFS is it could be as diverse as that a badger coach talking about his fight with cancer and using it for something positive to what we're gonna hear in just a minute which is Governor Tim Walls yeah absolutely a great range of topics and and you know just such a very Madison event here yeah really and I think and I'm excited to hear you know from Governor Walls I don't know if he's made uh many you know public statements or anything like since since the assassination that that occurred this week but you know given his experience on the campaign trail last year and dealing with you know potential threats or things like that I'm interested to see if that you know comes up in this conversation and what he might have to say about that as well and and um you know it's it's and and I think it goes to the spirit of the larger larger festivals just to sit down and have a conversation that conversation is right ahead Dan Schaefer thank you very much Tim Walls is next many thanks to Parker Olson Domley and mr. Aaron Zomeris as well Luke Mathers for all of us I'm Todd all about the civic media world headquarters Tim Walls and John Nichols live from you to be Madison is next across our network and across Wisconsin is coming up on 7 30 and you're listening to the civic media ready to network [Music] I've been backstage and this is going to be a lot of fun this next session you know most of us here in Madison probably feel we've gotten to know Minnesota governor Tim Walls pretty well over the past 15 months or so and I just want to say we are ecstatic to have him at IDFS tonight before our marquee program I do want to take a minute to thank our sponsors who really make this whole thing possible our major sponsors again this year are epic exact sciences and UW Health the Carbone Cancer Center our thank you we so appreciate them thank you our co-sponsors are Madison Gas and Electric the University Research Park the University of Wisconsin Madison the University the the century house the University of the Pensley Spices the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation the Madison Community Foundation cargo coffee the Freedom from Religion Foundation the forward theater company Lea Polz book spark FA and Madison College thank you thank you let's give them a hand our media partners are Hinkley production civic media Wisconsin public radio the Wisconsin State Journal and Madison dot com hand for them as well thank you thanks to all of them backstage tonight visiting with the governor I'm already really charged up for this so Timothy James Walls was born and grew up in a small Nebraska town after high school he worked in a factory enjoying the Army National Guard he later graduated from college and in 1996 moved to Minnesota where he famously taught social studies and coached football the future governor became involved in politics and was elected to Congress five times he was elected governor in 2018 reelected in 2022 just as our own 20 evers governor walls of course became a prominent national figure last year when he when then vice president Kamala Harris selected him as her running mate he has continued to speak out effectively and with passion throughout the country against Donald Trump and Trumpism his state has endured two horrific acts of gun violence this year and he is pushing new gun laws there. We're talking yes indeed. We're talking how this week's shooting and the outrageousness of the reactions of the contrasting reactions only serves to highlight the issue again. I just quick aside the Minnesota governor's appearance continues our success at securing awesome speakers from our neighbor to the northwest in our first idea fest in 2017 we hosted Senator Amy Klobuchar. Two years ago we hosted Attorney General Keith Ellison. Todd Nichols, Associate of the Cap Times and tonight's moderator says the Attorney General told people in Minnesota that the twin cities should have an event like this one. I kind of like that. We're apparently got around and so when John Cock contacted Governor Walts' team he was the first major commitment we had to this year's idea fest. From my standpoint that was really important. I think I can speak for everyone in this theater tonight to say we are deeply grateful to him and him for appearing in Madison tonight. Please give a warm welcome to Governor Tim Walls. Well it looks like you're gonna have to establish yourself with these people. Well I was saying that was incredibly kind. I said I hope you feel the same way when we're done. It's good. It could go bad. Yeah I know it's you know I just to put you at ease. That felt loaded didn't it? Yeah just so you know the the county you're in voted 75% for you and Harris. Highly educated people. Yeah yeah yeah yeah thank you. The city was up in the mid 80s for you and Harris. And some of the precincts around here busted 90%. So just say you know it was good. You might want to share some of that out in other places but yeah yeah they liked you here. As we start out I just want to make note and the lights are down so we can't see it and you know be very honest with you. I deffest attracts an audience that includes many people who have experience in life. But I will tell you having watched what I'm seeing some pretty young. This was gonna say I will tell you. You have been watched every IDFS this week and in the past aside from Bernie Sanders the person who has drawn the largest number of young people to an event is Governor Walls and there's a whole crowd of UW students and other folks around here. You can't see him but they're there. I see him. And I don't know what it is. What is it about Walls that appeals to the young? Man that's a good question. I got asked last week they said you pull much better amongst women than men and I looked at my wife and she said don't ask me. I don't know what I don't know that one. No I do think on this I think it's the teaching. I think spending so many years in the classroom and I would hope what they're getting that vibe is the genuine respect because I always said when those of you are teachers in this room thank you for that but I also but you know when you're a brand new teacher in that first day you go in the classroom and you know everything and then you come back on the second day and you know nothing and you spend 20 years learning it I learned very quickly on I was certainly not the smartest person in that classroom I was usually the most experienced as you said but it was life experiences and I think it was that that connection through teaching which I think is what I was truly born for probably more so than being vice president. The American people gave you a cue on that one. But let me ask you about this is an interesting you're backstage before we came on you were meeting with a bunch of young folks who had staffed rallies and events that you had done and it was a very interesting thing you said to them the first political rally I went to was when I was 41 years old. Yeah look I you know remember the times when we had the luxury that you didn't have to be that engaged in the world didn't burn down around you and you know you wouldn't see the president for like four months and you're like oh I'm glad he's okay and you know you would just kind of move on but look I was teaching school actively engaged in the National Guard and I voted and I was engaged but as a social studies teacher I wasn't at events I didn't do those you know wasn't actively political and and I think it's just life was coming at me and I tell the story I did a deploy-mode National Guard came back and it was the 2004 election and I was kind of a John Kerry guy and I got back sometime that summer and George Bush was coming to Mancato in in August of that year and I had some fellow teachers say Tim we're gonna be out of town would you take these kids to see George Bush and I'm like yeah and look I didn't really care much for the guy at that time I thought man it'll never get worse than Bush and now I'm like yeah now we want to buy his paintings and crap you know I'm like so but but I wasn't really active and I don't think a lot of people knew you know obviously probably leaning pretty progressive the things we did that was clear but anyway I said sure I'll take him we get to this rally and these kids were political active they were young damn so they knew it and one of them pulled out his billfold and had a John Kerry sticker on it you had to have tickets to get in this thing and the people at the event said well I'm sorry you've been deemed a threat to the president you're gonna have to go back because you had to drive a bus to the event and get back and and I said oh no they're fine there with me and they said who are you I said oh I'm their teacher I'm Tim Walls I'll I'll vouch for them they're all good no problem on this and they said you have a ticket I said yeah they said well you two have been deemed a threat to the president and this was my first thing and I'm and I'm this is in my hometown and people are walking by I'm like hey Gary you know saying hi to friends and stuff politics wasn't quite that corrosive but anyway I said no it's fine I said that's that's not true and then it started to get kind of serious they said well you're gonna get on the bus and leave or you're gonna be detained and you know taken out of here and at this point in time I'm like all puffed up I'm like well you know I'm in the military I just got back they didn't care and then to be a football coach yeah and then I gave them this one I said I'm the teacher the year in man Kato they really they really didn't care and then I said okay here's what's gonna happen those kids are gonna get on the bus and I'm going to go in there and then you're gonna decide whether president bushes speeches front page or the local high school teacher and football coach you know National Guardsman gets arrested for wanting to see the president well if you behave we'll take you there you know we'll do it so they stood beside me the kids went back and said Mrs. Walls Mr. Walls got arrested and she's like dammit you know he can't do anything and it's and the whole neighborhood's blowing up or whatever and I come home but I'll tell you the thing was it was more it was more feeling a sense of shame like the privilege of not being engaged actively in politics because of you this and there I was you know saying well I'm this guy I do this or whatever in front of my neighbors and I watch these people look right through me and like it didn't matter and they didn't care and I was just a shame you know a little bit I'm like God dang you know I've we got to do something so I got involved in John Kerry campaign long story he loses somebody says well you should run for Congress you did a good job with that and I'm like okay I don't know you know no one and I'm glad I didn't know it at the time one Democrat since 1892 at one that day's streak and so I didn't realize I was the sucker that they were putting forward so but long story short I got engaged to those young people and people getting engaged in being there I am just in awe of them I'm inspired by them that they know how it is and that campaign by the way for my former students all four young women super talented one graduated from Marquette one from University of Wisconsin two from Minnesota and those four women ran that campaign and then when we started getting hot and it got in October it looked like we were gonna win and I telling this Rahm manual is running the D-triple C he said all right we're gonna give you some money but you got to get new staff I said keep your money I'm keeping them and he gave he gave the money anyway so Rahm gave the money and they were look we were five people who didn't really know what we were doing but we were pretty passionate about and I see that with young people so that's I think that's why but I don't know maybe I wasn't maybe I graded easily that's what they like me so that's a pretty good story and I think the lesson of it is that if the the bush camp and the people around him had just been smart enough to let you in without a question you'd still be teaching in Mancaydo oh this gets better like I will The first quote I get in the paper was the presses there and the announced that I win that night. Remember that 2006 wave? I was some, you know, the last ones getting washed up on the shore when all the Democrats won. And I looked to my wife and I said, "I don't even know what this job is." I had not been in the cap. I took a close-up trip to Washington with kids, but I had never been in the capitol. And all of a sudden, there I was. So before they swear, "Yen, they take you to the White House." And we go in there and it's George Bush. Who, by the way, he and Barbara were so gracious they have you in there. But Carl Rove was in there. And remember that? Again, remember we thought he was the worst it could get. And so Rove walks up and I was going to introduce him because I'm like, "All these people I'd seen on TV." And I'm like, "Oh my God, I'm in the White House. This is so great." And I go and I said, "Mr. Rove, I know who you are. You go, I have one question. Where'd you find all the Norwegians to vote?" And he knew that voting district to the number. And he said, "You increased turnout by 3%, and that was probably enough to help you win." And he knew all those things that were out there. And that one kind of blew me away that one he knew. And secondly, how it just seemed kind of like a game to him. You know, more so. Like he knew the numbers and wasn't, didn't know it. So yeah, and then he did say, "Yeah, it probably been easier just to let you in the event." And so Carl Rove, a very good political analyst, it's sus to your career out. So what you did there is part of why you've been so successful as a political figure. You're self-deprecating, you're witty, you're charming. I should have brought my wife. I knew that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And no, but that's a part of it in politics. This is a nature of politics. But you also, they're told a story of a time in politics that now seems like ancient history. And that's, I find that jarring. It's true. People ask me about this all the time. They say, they'll say, "Well, like most love covering politics." I said, "I did love covering politics for a long time. Now I feel it's more like a duty or responsibility." It's a very different thing. Politics has become a much harder, cooler experience. And we'll talk about your political career a lot. But I think we should begin tonight, after you've framed us and give us perspective on where we were. This has been one of the most jarring several months in the history of American politics. And this week we had the horrific shooting of Charlie Kirk in Utah. And all the play out of that. And it reminded us, of course, those of us who actually pay attention. And I know that's not always the case in media. But those of us who pay attention that up in Minnesota, not very long before, you had a horrific political assassinate, a pair of political assassinations by someone who had a list of legislators. And I think you were on the list, along with the Attorney General and lots of other folks. And many Wisconsin legislators as well. And so that's the dark side of where we're at right now. Because we have come to a point where political violence is not something we can say is foreign. Obviously, never been foreign. We've had assassinations in the past. But now it seems to be coming at us in some unbelievably unsettling ways. Now I would be remiss if I didn't ask you as somebody who knew several of the people who were killed to talk about this a little bit. And this start moment we're in. >> No, well, I appreciate you bringing it up and look, it's still very visceral. And it is, John. I heard someone on, I don't, let's name PR, why we still can. Listening to someone mentioned and they said they were making a comparison that look we had. President Kennedy's assassination, Martin Luther King Jr. Bobby Kennedy, Meddraver's. We had all these things happening and they said so, and this person was an older person who was engaged in politics. And they said yes. And when those happened, they were horrific. But they felt horrific and not ordinary. What's different now is it feels more ordinary and that's terrifying, that's what this person said. And I don't know, I'm too close to it and too much in that grieving and processing stage of the anger and all of this comes. Because just to let all of you know, the media moves on every single individual. But just a singular force in Minnesota with Melissa Hortman. And I don't think outside there that we know, as I said without a doubt she'd have been a governor. And I think a really good one. And I think in Minnesota we talk about her in the same breath as like a Mondale or Wellstone. And she had that type, she was the most talented. I said there's two people I saw could run a house floor who could manage a caucus, who could message, who could think policy, and who could actually get things done. And it was her Nancy Pelosi. And that was an amazing thing. And she was my closest political ally. And in a big part of your success. Oh, without a doubt. We wouldn't have got it. We had a one vote majority. And I said that majority have fled to free school breakfast, paid family medical leave. Yeah. She understood that the politics was a means to an end. And we were tied at the hip to get it done and to get it call it four in the morning. But what was more jarring about it is it was happening. This guy was on the steps, we're trying to get him all that's happening in real time when we're trying to do that. And then to turn on the TV and see the president of the United States. Like just flippantly saying things to me. Like, you know, he's a mass. He's doing this for whatever. And I'm like, how do you something like this happen? And how does it become about you? Or how does it become about me? And just that, the thing that terrified me and this whole thing, and it still terrifies me, just the lack of basic humanity regardless of the politics of it is really there. So I am. And then as it bleeds into, and then of course we had the annunciation shooting. Last weekend we had a celebration of life for an eight year old for Fletcher. And this Sunday we'll go with the parents and we'll have harpers. That's what Minnesota is living through. And then this comes out this week. And you see the first thing was is to go hard to blaming, to ginning more of this up. And I, I've said this that I don't tend to overreact. I think high school teachers in here know you'd be dead if you overreacted all the time. You just kind of do your stuff. So it's not like it. But look, it's very raw. It's very open. But I am deeply concerned, deeply worried about this. And I've been saying it on the political side of things. And now it's entered this new phase. So I wish I had something profound to tell you. But it really is about people just being decent and recognizing it and saying it. And if, if you're not going to do that, it's very hard to fix it. I mean, that's the thing, this whole thing about how do you fix somebody else on this. If you're not going to go to that space, I have a real hard time is how do we talk about it? How do we bring people back into this conversation in a way that is productive? And I don't have an answer to that. And I don't know if the country does right now. I think the country is wrestling with it. I was struck by the Texas Legislator and U.S. Senate candidate James Tolerico, who is kind of rising up. Yeah, I like that. Getting to let you like that. I like it. You know, all these, and there's other candidates. But I was struck by his response to it because he is a devile Christian. And he, although I don't think if he was, as an individual, if he was Jewish or Hindu or whatever, he would have gone to a spiritual place. But he talked after the murder of Charlie Kirk and said, you know, we, I'm believe, certainly had differences without a doubt. Fundamental. And yet he said, I'm taught that he is my brother and that we are human beings of the same blood, of the same traditions or whatever. And it was this very, it was a very human and I think unexpected response. You know, that someone would go to that place, to go to a spiritual place. And I think I was fascinated by it. I don't know. Well, he's a good person because I'll be honest. That's not necessarily what I went immediately on some of this because I'm sure, and I mean it just because I've said this and I've been very candid. I've said it publicly and I don't like it that it's true. But I said specifically, the president brings out the worst in me and it makes my worst self. We used to have a saying, you lay with dogs, you get fleas, that's the thing. And I just feel it's even deeper than that. And it pushes me in a position like I'm trying to figure out. How do you push back and debate a policy position when it is so visceral, it's so personal and it is so loathsome of how do you get there? So I find myself getting into a place where it goes against my nature. I know it's not as generous a space as I need to be in when I see this and I'm not, I'm trying to hand, I'm trying to figure that out. Look, the outrage of this week. the family and everything that went on and you can disagree with the policies, but it was the response from some people afterwards, the very people who couldn't even call the children of Melissa and couldn't even do that. I don't understand how you can separate that. I don't understand how you can separate. I don't understand how you cannot see the children that lost a father this week and the children who lost a father and mother in June. How in your mind do you separate the humanity on that based on the politics? And yet there's a big chunk of the country is able to do that very easily. So no, I appreciate going there and I think you're trying to find answers. I keep going back to it. I mean, I don't know how we respond as a nation on those types of things happening and then children sitting in church on the first day of school and being shot. And then we're in this thing about the guns or whatever. It is the guns. I'm telling you and let's have the discussion on it. And how do you get there? And then how do you have that debate because it just disintegrates into this and then all of a sudden your disrespectful on this. Like I said, we need to get meaning or politics and they immediately say governor walls is adding to this climate which may be a valid point but I don't know how you push back on the cruelness that's out there without yourself being a little cruel and it's a real dilemma. And I we're going to have to figure it out. >> Just want to tell folks. You just saw a very rare thing in politics which is a prominent political figure former candidate for Vice President of the United States saying I'm wrestling with this. I don't know how to deal with it. And that is often in politics seen as weakness to acknowledge I don't have the perfect answer to every question. But I think that has been a part of your strength in politics. You came in late. You were born in a small town in Nebraska. You went into teaching. That was your career and served in the National Guard and you had a life. And you didn't come into politics until you were a adult. Some people would even say edge and toward middle age. Although in our crowds tonight we say we're still very young. And so but this is a significant thing. Do you think there is some chance that you came into politics having had enough of life that you were willing to acknowledge sometimes that you didn't know all the answers? >> Yeah, I think so. And I don't. This is a new phenomenon that has happened. I think I'm a big early adapter on the internet. We had a T1 line back in the early 90s. Some of the tech people in here know this in Western Nebraska so that we could teach languages to those rural schools. And I taught myself HTML. I created a website and I was like selling trips to Tibet on the internet. And I remember I sold ten of them. I sold ten of them as a teacher. I made a thousand dollars extra on each one so I made ten thousand dollars. I remember this is 1991-92 and I told my wife I said I think there's money to be made on the internet. And then with my political acumen I moved on. >> Just to be clear you didn't invest. >> No, but I think it was the idea of a set of life experiences that were very different. And I was shaped by it that it wasn't through. I didn't look I was a Democrat but I didn't go to the Democrats. The Democrats came to me. It was just natural. It was Social Security survivor benefits from my family. It was the GI bill. It was Pell Grants at college. And becoming a young adult I'm like the Democrats seem to be the people who support us and the Republicans support the businesses and the country clubs. Not even as a majority but it was just known to everybody. And I think I kind of lived my life like that. I was grateful I grew up Catholic but some of you have a certain age like me. The priest in our small was a liberation theologist. And that was a very interesting, yeah, that was a very interesting, we should explain to the -- some of the college students here -- that liberation theology actually very grounded in the social activism of the church, very grounded in helping a lot of these folks were active in the 70s and 80s in Central America and others. It was especially coming out of the nuns who were there too, that they were very active. And we were strong Catholic church every week, Wednesday, CCD, you know. And then during certain times of the year you had to go in the mornings. You know, as a usual kid my mom would drag me in there. I didn't know it in our family. We had had priests in the family and had people actively engaged. And they thought a priest would come out of my mom, Darleen's family. And she's always said she thought it would be me, how wrong could she abandon her when it do? Look where I ended up. But I just think it was that. And I am convinced of this. Like we have this discussion about age and politics and about experience and politics. And I think all of you in different organizations you work for, I especially see it in school. The most successful schools in my opinion are the ones that have that wonderful mix of mid-career teachers who are just, you know, getting her done know how to do it. Those are at the end of their career who are wonderful, beloved, ready for the retirement checks. And which is true because you do this job until you retire, you deserve the damn check. And then like my wife and I, the young teachers who come in, we did everything. We coached everything. We built the set. My wife was doing what we're doing. We're doing up mice and men and she's helping direct the play. I'm doing the set. So I have all my kids in there, you know, with drills and we're fixing stuff. And she said, Mr. Walls, we are almost a joke. I need a door on this. I need a screen door that slams when we go out and shoot the dog. And I need it there. No problem. No problem. Come back after the little break or whatever. There's a screen door on there. And she's like, well, thank you for that. We go home and it was my screen door up my house. But. But. But we didn't have kids. We didn't have anything else. We didn't have anything else to do. So we just did it all. And I would argue the same thing is true in politics. That there's this idea that, you know, we force, you know, we want young people. We do want young people in politics. We want those voices. But we also need the folks who lived other lives and had different experiences. And we need folks who have been there. The older teachers would hold us together when we needed to. And I think in our politics, the ability to get more of a cross section, but look, all of us know why there's not a lot of young people in politics because it's, you know, gerrymandered districting and money in politics. It makes it impossible. The idea of a teacher with no political experience, no name recognition. And I know I repeat myself because I said I was a teacher, no money and no connections to win a congressional seat. We is a testament to Minnesota, to be honest, that the party is there, that you could still do it. But, and when I got there, everybody has that story. You know, everybody's Mr. Smith goes to Washington, except their parents were federal judges or something like this, you know, you're like, oh, I see. But no, I think it's that mix. And I think for me, coming in late was really good. And to be honest with you, I'm pretty agnostic about things and trying to get things done. I'll go back to that internet thing that I got on is where I started on this is, great promise, but it created everybody's got a damn opinion about everything. Where did we lose the thing when you didn't have to have an opinion on everything? So I don't know about that. And I remember you'd go to places and you would like somebody be talking, and then you'd come. And then we would say they knew, they knew this. And I kind of took politics that way. If you didn't know you'd go to these people, they would bring you ideas and we would work it through. Now there's just this idea you have to have an opinion on every single thing. You have to, and you have to express it. And then I made this case backstage. I think we've got a, we've got a White House that sees, that sees every single interaction as a zero sum. Somebody has to win and somebody has to lose in every single situation. And look, there's no such thing as that. There's no such thing in life. And if you want to get a good trade deal, your partners need to get a good trade deal. If you want to get legislation, you've got to compromise with the other side and you both get a little something and it works for everybody. That's not how they see it. They have to pound someone down. Someone has to lose in every single situation. And I think it is incredibly dangerous. And it's bringing us to a point where I don't know how you govern when it's that way because life is not zero sum. Life is not somebody wins and somebody loses. But that's how they see it. And right now, they're winning. The billionaires are winning and they're, they seem okay with that. >> You're listening to W-A-U-K Jackson Milwaukee, W-M-D-X Columbus Madison, W-C-F-W-H-D-2-W-2-2-A-E-P Chibouh Falls. WFHR Wisconsin Rapids, W-L-A-K-A-M-R-E. >> And W-L-C-X La Crosse. >> A part of the Civic Media Radio Network. >> You know the weirdest thing of this whole crazy journey and all this was is I couldn't have been more surprised to wake up my head stapled to the carpet that I would be in a damn fight with the richest man in the world. Like go do something else. God sakes. This guy is fighting with me online and doing these types of things. When is enough for these people? When is enough money? When is enough to have to run everything? I don't -- I'll say this and I've talked to Bernie a lot about this. I think one of the issues that we get -- he's 100 percent right and he's been talking about a long time. But I think we're Democrats get ourselves into a trap. When we message some of this, it looks like we're anti-sick -- we're against success. We don't want somebody to succeed or we don't want -- maybe -- and I know maybe some people don't believe it and fair enough on this with capitalism. Is there a moral capitalism where we can celebrate success? And I said, my beef is not with successful people. My beef is with people who get successful and then don't pay their taxes and act like terrible people and make it more difficult for the rest of us. That's the beef. So I don't think we've messaged that. I think -- like I asked people, how is Donald Trump getting some of these people to vote for him? How is he getting some of these folks thinking that? And they said, look, Donald Trump especially in the 80s with people showed this wealth. It's that ostentatious show of wealth, the gotty gold and all of that or whatever. But there's a sense of, well, I want to make it. I want to make a difference or whatever. And I think Democrats, because we do a good job of this, we want to be there as, you know, Hubert Humphrey said, those in the shadows of life, those that are having it most difficult. We want to lift up and help our neighbors. But I think there's a whole group of people in America that feel like those programs aren't helping them and nobody's working for their success. And I think Democrats understand the Paul Wellstone thing. We all do better when we all do better. Lift everybody up and make that case. So you're talking about having a beef with certain folks. I got a beef with you. And this pretty serious thing. You're not the richest man in the world, so it's not a scary. You have no idea. He does buy his ink in 50 gallon drives. So that's his. I've been throwing my change into a box every night when I get home and it's getting pretty busy. Now I got to be with you. I'm multi-generational Wisconsin, and I happen to believe this is the greatest state. It is a great state. No, the greatest state. I'm sorry. And I've also always thought that this is the most progressive state. This is the state that Robert M. LaFalle is. You know, all these great traditions. Yeah, they should applaud for that. They should. Yeah, this is the home of labor unions. The home of like this co-ops. Yeah, this is my beef with you. And it's pretty serious. Back in 2010, there was a Republican wave. And your predecessor, Mark Dayton, he won by about 10,000 votes. His very close election back in 2010. And so you guys stayed democratic and you were able to keep Jerry Mandering and the legislature at least to some extent and stuff like that. And we had Scott Walker. Yeah. And this is very important point. This is a divergent point very much. Yes. And this is my beef actually. Yeah. Because like, you know, I don't want Wisconsin to be just, you know, in the garrison, killer tradition, whatever. It's a little bit better than Minnesota. And, and, and it just for the last like 15 years, you guys have been kind of pacing us on a lot of stuff. And, and so explained to me what the difference between Wisconsin and Minnesota is. No, this is, this is important. By the way, as a side note to this, Mark Dayton and those 10,000 votes, some you might in here know this, but it'll, it'll really, you know, who he beat. Tom Emmer. The number three guy in the house, who I was friends with and had gone trap shooting with the know and I feel like he's lost. We did an impromptu, like charity event in DC where we did impromptu theater together. And now I just got subpoenaed to go out there and he just treats me like hell. And any side note to that. Look, we said this. That division, that election was the most important thing that happened. I think in Minnesota history and Mark Dayton went in 2010. I squeaked by kind of with a third party candidate, God, and I won that election in 2010 in my congressional district by, I think I ended up with 47% of the vote because we split it. So you didn't get the majority. You know, I didn't get one for you. Mark Dayton did win by about 10,000 votes. It was very, very intense. Change the entire trajectory of the state. That's exactly right. And we in that same election went another direction that that continues. Although we have a very good Democratic governor now, but it gave Tony. Give Tony. But we sell. Yeah, here's you want. I'll tell you what I first of all, my 2018 kind of non-official campaign. It was one Minnesota was my official campaign theme, but my non-official campaign theme and labor unions were all over this, telling people in 2018 they had to vote. It's Walzor, Wisconsin people. We're going to go right down the way of Wisconsin, Scott Walker. We're going to lose everything. We're going to come right to work. And I will say this. That doesn't make me feel all that good. No, no, but I will say this in full disclosure. All those things are true. And Minnesotans did see Wisconsin as more progressive. Minnesotans understood the history and to be very candid for some of you more experienced people in here will know, but for the younger folks, this might strike you as odd. Iowa was moving with us. Iowa voted for Barack Obama overwhelmingly. And this wasn't that long ago. Now I say that as an optimism. If you remember after 2004 election, it's like we were going to be in the wilderness forever. 2006, I'm in Congress 2008, an unknown center of millenoy is president, and there we go. And then we pass the Affordable Care Act and we're back down the oscillation of this. Now I think it's going to be harder because these guys are cheating and gerrymandering and stopping mail and voting and all that. But once it divided, what Minnesota understood after that election was was a reenergizing of the party. And I will make the case on this is we're winning elections in Minnesota. Not that our demographic or that different. We are strictly a purple state. Our numbers look almost the same as Michigan, as Pennsylvania, as Wisconsin. But we continue to win because of the party organization. And it's down to the county level, it's down to the city level. And there's just such an emphasis that we've been able to pull people over on simply organizing on a broader scale. And we get high voter turnout just like you. So I the way out of this, the way out of this is just going to have to be massive organization. And look, it is crap. Again, I wish I could just go home and not think about the president not being engaged. We don't have that luxury. And it's going to have to be to organize ourselves out of it. I know it sounds like a cliche. And most of it is just grind it out, get people out there. Everybody's looking for what's the message that Democrats can make. I don't know. I thought we were making it, but I'll tell you what didn't didn't work. 70 million people stayed home. I have very little confidence we're going to move a lot of these people. At this point in time, you still think Donald Trump's good. You're there. I mean, that's just where it is. But there's too many people that we can get to. And I think Wisconsin is figuring that out. I think you had in Ben and now in Devon, you have a state party. You proved it to the country. The organizing around the Supreme Court special election was just amazing, inspiring. So it's kind of it's organizing. And man, I'm telling you, these elections matter so much. And just the divergence between Mark Dayton's two terms when I won in 2018, that is the first time in Minnesota history that there were three democratic terms in a row. That's the first time it ever happened, which allowed us to build on that momentum and shift us towards a much more progressive values. And isn't it weird when you do that? We rank near the top in happiness, rank near the top in places to raise kids, rank near the top in personal incomes and all that. And I'm just going to say it. If their policies work so well, Arkansas and Mississippi would not be at the bottom of where they're at because their policies aren't the same. Well, you made me feel a little bit better. And I will just tell you that eventually we're going to do what we have to do. I know here Mississippi's last gubernatorial election, the Democrat lost by three points. Yes. He was Elvis Presley's cousin. That helps. Yeah, I'll give you that. I'll give you that. It's to be clear. So good stuff. And I think soon we'll reestablish our Midwestern dominance. And then you can stop bragging about your 10,000 lakes and we'll get on to some serious business. We do not count mudholes like you do in Wisconsin. So we do not. We do not. All right, I think we better get into some serious business here. And the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City. Zoran Mamdani was asked recently who aside from Bernie Sanders and AOC he thought was really an accomplished person, really kind of a role model in politics or at least showed an example of how to do politics. And he said Tim Walls. And that's good. Yeah. That's good. And as I understand it, I was talking to one of his aides the other day about this. And as I understand it, They said, "Well, why Tim Walls?" He doesn't live in Manhattan. And he said, because as governor, he got a whole bunch of stuff done. And so I'm going to give you the -- just because again, as Wisconsin, I don't want this to get too out of control. But I'm going to give you a couple minutes to tell us a little bit what is referred to as the Minnesota Miracle. Yeah, and this is a key point, too. And this is another thing I would tell Democrats is, is when you win elections and you've got power, you don't bank that political capital to win the next election. You burn it to improve lives. Because then -- (applause) Because not only then did you improve lives, you show the people who work their tails off and gave you money and doorknocked on this, that their lives improved almost immediately. I had a young staffer who got on our campaign and worked for us, and then in 2023, we did pass everything paid family and medical leave. 20 weeks, most generous in the country. We did 2040. We're going to totally decarbonize our electric good by 2040. They told us we couldn't do it. They're right. We're going to finish in 2035. And so we codified first state to codified women's reproductive rights. We had the biggest investment in college education. If you make less than 80,000 a year, you're family, and then on a sliding scale, it's free college at any of our universities in Minnesota. (applause) And just write down the list of things. We made sure that we strengthened labor unions as the core piece of this. You can't have anti-labor work. And we moved all those things as quickly as possible. And then, like we got down to the end, we had a very racist state flag. So we changed the state flag into this new beautiful one. We got rid of some of those things. We passed recreational cannabis, you know, for adult use cannabis. We did all these things. Where's your working on that here? I know. But I had a young volunteer that's like, "Well, that wasn't so hard. We won the election. We got all this stuff done. That's great." But I saw it on that. I'm like, "There's an entire generation of us who were told just be patient. There was no fierce sense of urgency. There was no direct connection between busting my butt for a candidate, electing them, going into a session, "Hey, all my life's a lot better now because of this." So what happens? We win the next election. And we're there. So the good politics follows the good policy. And I think what Mondami's talking about is that also being proud on this. When I first got, was out there and got picked by Vice President Harris, I got put on one of the shows and they said, "Well, Governor, your policies are like way out. These liberal policies." You would have them and I said, "Oh my God, we feed our children and take care of our elderly and we can have health care in college. What a monster I am." And I think our mistake was is don't let them frame us on this because, guess what, our policies are super popular, our party not so much so. And I contest to this is, is because we don't, when we have the opportunity, we don't go big enough, we don't go bold enough, we don't pass the things, we don't stand with it. That's because I'll give you this. The Republicans and Donald Trump are showing us with this. So and somebody and I said, "We will win." And when we win back next time, we better have the same sense of purpose and urgency and project 2025. And instead of crushing the rule of law and scooping people up and deporting or whatever, we're going to go crazy and give people health care and we're going to go crazy and make sure that college is more affordable. And we're going to attack climate change. All these things just have some courage to go after it. And I think we're still so stuck in this. And this is what I go back to the beginning of this conversation, trying to work inside the system, trying to compromise. I will compromise on things, if it's taxation or some of that, I'm not going to compromise on fascism, I'm not going to compromise on reproductive rights, I'm not going to compromise on climate. And I think you said it and I believe this is true. It was Bill Clinton. It's better to be right and weak than wrong and strong type of thing. I think we have to project both on this. I think we have to project that don't mistake our kindness for weakness. But be bold about passing these things. Now all of a sudden, those casual 70 million are like, "You know what? I'm going to go vote for these people because damn, it's really nice that I don't lose my job and my child had to get chemo and I can take them in and I'm not going broke because of this." And all of the things that make a difference. We had a whiteboard when we passed all the things you're talking about, all the way through. And I remember we got about halfway through the session. We had about five or six things passed and people were like, "Wow, what a successful session." And it was Melissa Hortman said, "What the hell are you talking about? We're doing everything. We're passing everything." And we just went right down there. We passed, you know how they turn you into the credit reporting, and just ruin your credit, make it difficult to get insurance in a house because you had a medical bill that was a bunch of crap and you couldn't pay it. So in Minnesota, we said, "You cannot report medical bills to the credit reporting agencies. You can't do that. Can't do it." You wanted to be the Democratic nominee for Vice President. And I'll tell you, I'd say it and you can push back. Yeah, I'm going to give you the story how I ended up getting it. But let me take it back so as there was this very difficult moment with Joe Biden standing down, Kamal Harris stepping up. Kamal Harris was raised in Madison, by the way. Yeah, I know that. Not in Minnesota. No, I know that. Kamal Harris stepping up and she needed to pick a vice presidential candidate. And in that, there was this sort of, it wasn't a campaign, but there was a point where the people who were interested in being Vice President went on TV shows and they kind of, they showed a little bit of their skill. And you did that. And I would argue that you won a campaign for the vice presidential nomination without it actually being any kind of formal campaign because you went out and you did these TV appearances. You spoke in much the way that you were just speaking right now. And an awful lot of people who didn't even know you started to say, I kind of, I like that. And I think, so tell me about that, Journey, you can disagree with me on some elements of it. No. Just this sense that you went from being a Midwestern governor to being suddenly, a lot of people were very excited about it. Well, and it would, I would say this, and in a privilege of a lifetime to be with, with Vice President Harris. And I remind people just, in case people, the humbleness and the words you did, just picture that you go home tonight and you're talking whatever and you wake up tomorrow. Imagine what a Sunday morning would look like with Kamala Harris as president. Just imagine, just imagine, I think about that and that's what she was, but just the humbleness of it and doing that. But look, I would say this, I think it's public service and I don't want to, like, a false sense of humility. I really didn't think that that's what we were trying to do to try and get that. I was chair of the Democratic Governors Association, so as I was pushing there, I was doing, you know, whatever needed to be done and we needed to start messaging all that, it did become kind of this deep-stakes thing or whatever. But when I talked to the Vice President, I said, look, use me however you can. I just want to win. If that means going to Omaha and putting me there to get that one vote, which we did, by the way. And so I went there three times and there was my people, but to try and make the case. But I do think it was and I think this is a debatable piece about it. I was out there proudly espousing progressive things that we had done in Minnesota that improved lives. And I think there are people all across the country say, well, dammit, I want that. I want to get those types of things. I wish we could do that at the national level. And I think that was part of it. And I think the real reason I got picked was I told the Vice President asked about the job and I said, I don't know about the job, but I know what the org chart looks like. It's the president and it's the chief of staff and it's all the people who work for the president and then it's the Vice President down here. So just so you know. But no, I think it was out there. What I said, I think that model, remember how exciting it was during that time though. And Donald Trump was not in the news. And all these incredible governors, JB Pritzker, Josh Shapiro, Tony Hevers is out there. Gretchen Whitmer, Gavin Newsom, great governors in Kentucky, you know, Democrats, and people were like, they're awesome. That is the model that I think we need right now is because Donald Trump sucks up so much oxygen. He got frazzled. He got frazzled. He wasn't in the news. The media was covering Democrats and covering a lot of Democrats doing good work. And all the sudden that whole thing was starting to shift on him. And I remember that's when I said, look, don't these guys are bad, but they're just weird as hell. They're I have spent 61, I have spent 60 years using public restrooms and I have no damn idea who's next to me and what's going on with them. Because I don't, it's not my business. And to think how much they took on that and I knew during that time period, Donald Trump did an interview. It was like a 15, 20 minute interview. 11 times he's told us he was not weird. pretty self-conscious, pretty self-conscious. And look, I think that whole thing was the model. I'm saying this, whether it's doing podcasts, whether it's doing what let's all just say, the joy that Gavin Newsom has brought us over the last few weeks. (laughter) Fabulous. And that is a serious governor running the fourth or fifth largest economy in the world dealing with everything on that. But what Gavin understood was is to get out there and fill that, or you got Andy Bischier out there talking. Andy Bischier telling us, don't use words that people don't use in their daily lives. Talk the way they talk. And I think all of these different lanes, the more we fill them. I look, I've been a big advocate, and I know it's nothing. Do Europeans do do some things right? I think we need to acknowledge that. And right now, as Americans, we're like, damn, they do do a lot of things, right? (laughter) The one thing they do is, is they have shadow parliament. Do they have a shadow government that makes sure we keep them in check? And I know this is a bit controversial, whatever. But when things are going bad, and the people who do the work, which is most of us, you see what happens when you have a national strike in France, they shut the whole damn thing down until something changes. So I just have to tell you, until America can get unified, especially the working class together, those are the things we should be doing. And I think that's what was happening during that time. That's all I was trying to do. And it was a privilege of a lifetime to run with the virus. Look, you had 107 days to try and change this thing around. We didn't get there. I own that, she owns it. But I think now more than ever, there is still a path forward. Look, they know that the midterms are trouble. They wouldn't be trying to suppress the vote. They wouldn't be trying to gerrymandor Texas. Hell, if your politics are so popular, you're just gonna win everywhere. No, they're not. They're not gonna win everywhere. The problem is going to be they make it more difficult to vote in the gerrymandor, the districts. So we've got to push back every step of the way on that. (audience applauding) - So I'll give you space there, okay? I'll say, you were out there in this mix of folks, and then you just used the word weird at the right time and became the vice presidential nominee. - It was terrifying. - Like some of your destroy, they called and I missed the call, of course, which is me. And then I got another call and said, pick up your damn phone, she called. And it is the most surreal thing I'm setting in my house. 20 minutes later, the helicopters are overhead, the people sweep in, my son is like, "Dad, it's going crazy outside." And I'm a mouse and I, and they said, "Well, we're going to Philadelphia. We're gonna get packed right now." I said, "I'll go get my stuff." They said, "No, you won't pack for you." And I'm like, "You're gonna pack my underwear for me?" And stuff, so it's a little strange. - A little weird. - And it just went like that and hit the ground. And I went from, no one knew, no one knew, that morning I'm setting in Mancato, Governor, Minnesota, that night getting ready to walk out on stage with the vice president of the United States as she's announced me in front of 15,000 people in Philadelphia and then on TV. And I meet up with her and we're standing there in the dark, like coming off Curtin or whatever and she looks at me and she said, "Don't screw this up." And I'm like, "Okay, so I'm scared." I'm like, "The whole thing was there "as I had never used a teleprompter." And I had to use one in this, like this isn't some rinky-dink speech I'm giving, you know, this is like a big deal. So when I got there, we had like 45 minutes. I went back in the shower of the Temple University locker rooms and they had set up a stage with a teleprompter to show me how to use it. And I'm like, "Does this kind of feel like we're on a high wire "with no net here?" And they're like, "Yeah, that's it, all right." So many of the people in the audience have not run for Vice President. (audience laughs) And. Minnesota, we're the home of Vice President. (audience laughs) We're on Dale, you've been hungry. Yeah, it's-- There it's left at one. That's right. And but, but. What was the most incredible thing, the most striking thing you can, we can use whatever we want, that you took away from that experience? What was it about being the nominee of a major party for Vice President, winning 75 million votes or in 75? Tell me about. Well, it was, and I think we all need to remember this, just the deep decency of the American people. And, you know, to be giving it these rallies or to be talking to people and listening to people's stories. A young woman in Ann Arbor, which was one of the most magical nights, it was a beautiful fall day, fall evening. The trees were colored, they'd lift them up, we're doing this big rally on the Ann Arbor campus. Maggie Rogers is gonna sing, "I have my daughter with me." And it just felt so right, it felt so good. And I'm walking down the rope line after speaking and talking, there was a young woman there with her, her child, he was probably about three. And she introduced, and she said he lost his dad last year. And I just wanted to bring him and do these things. And people just sharing their very personal stories. And at a rally believing that there was something we could do together, and I got to see it. And I will tell you, for all the cruelness and all the people who do the bad stuff, whatever, my family got to see it in the most personal and probably the most broadcast moment ever. And as a father, I'll give you this, the greatest day of my life, the greatest moment is when I'm coming out, it would be the nominee for Vice President of the United States. And my son stands up and says, "That's my dad." That's my dad. And I'm like, "Damn right." And this country, this country who stood up and they came after it and some of them, you know who they are. And you know the TV station that did it, wanted to try and mock that or whatever. I'll tell you what, millions of people said, we ride it dawn for Gus. I'll tell you that. They were ready to go. And that basic humanity, that basic decency and for me to see it on a very human, they were there for us as individuals and as people and sharing our stories together. And I have to tell you, leaving Chicago, I've been through enough of these. I kind of get the feel of the flow. I thought we were gonna win. And I think it's for all of it's kind, not arrogantly, but just like decency is gonna win out here is what it felt like. And so, and I still believe that. I still believe that. And I think we just have to do more to convince people that it matters, that going on that day and casting your vote matters. (audience applauding) So, and coming out of Chicago, you thought you were gonna win. I'll tell you probably that most people in this crowd thought you were gonna win. (audience applauding) Were you surprised when you got beat? Yeah, I was and I, like I've been through these. I remember in 2016, Donald Trump won my congressional district by I think is by 17 points. And it was midnight and in 2016 it was midnight and my team was there and I was up by 60 votes. And they said, Congressman, there's one county yet to count. And I said, well, if it's Jackson, we're all looking for work. And they said, it's not Jackson, it's Maurer, which is Austin, the most traditional-- - Great union town. - Great union town. Home of Hormel, it's the heart and soul of that. Many generations of labor or whatever. And we ended up winning, but that was the first time since 1928 maybe that Austin went for Donald Trump and the county, Maurer went for Donald Trump and that's when the switch happened. I won that congressional district to 22 counties of that in 2008 by over 30 percentage points. In 2016, I won it by a few thousand and Donald Trump won by 17. That's the traditional. And you know the story, it's here too. It's in those counties, but-- And we just have to figure that out. And then thing that breaks my heart is is whether it's agriculture or whether it's labor. This is the most anti-agricultural farmer administration and anti-labor that we've seen. So maybe folks aren't voting on their economics. Maybe they're voting on something else. So-- Do you ever think about running for president? - No. I have not, but what I do think we need to and I tell people this, if anybody tells you they're running for president especially right now, that's a bad thing. But like I said, again, I don't think it hurts to have Pete Buttigieg on TV every night. I don't think it hurts to have Gretchen Whitmer. I don't think it hurts to have these members of Congress, these senators out there, that we just have to fill the zone and make the case and be proud of the policies that we care about. And God gets something done. I'll tell you what the American public doesn't want to have with this administration. I don't think that this administration cares about sternly worded letters. I'm just telling you that. I don't think they care. So stand up and do some things. You know, lead on this, be there, make a difference. So-- [APPLAUSE] So as you know, Governor Evers is standing down. There's an open race for Governor of Wisconsin. And our residency laws are pretty flexible. [LAUGHTER] You got plenty of good ones here. We'll get-- I just want to make sure you're not open to coming over and making a run for government. >> You got good ones here. We'll get them elected. But this is going to be big. >> It is a big one here and it's a very important one. You're going to run for re-election in Minnesota? >> We'll make a decision here this coming week. No one's ever got three terms in Minnesota. We don't have term limits. No one's gotten those terms. I will say that I'm not arrogant enough to think I'm the only person who can do this, but I'm also, it sure doesn't feel like now is the time to leave a field with what's going on. I think everybody out there is going to be. [APPLAUSE] >> Some will take that as a newsworthy comment. >> No decision yet, but- >> I understand. Hey, we're coming around the corner, but these people seem to like you so much. I'm going to ask you a couple more questions. Is that okay? >> All right. >> It's not the Minnesota nice, the passive aggressive, like you. I was going to say it's so great to have you all here, so engaged in your community, but then I'm wondering, maybe you just don't have a social life. >> Yeah. >> Like me. >> So. >> You know, my mom is good with scots tonight. We don't have, we're not so braggie, so we don't have a Wisconsin nice thing or something like that. But my mom always says that in my beloved 94 year old mom, she always says that we're always nice to their face. But after they leave. >> Yeah. >> So you know, you better do well here because- >> I would like her, I would like her though. >> Yeah, hey, yeah, you would like my mom. But so my favorite thing you did in the 2024 presidential campaign was kind of like, you know, like fix up your car. And the big thing about it was you had a 1979, I think it was 1979, at vehicle. >> International. >> Yeah, yeah. And I thought this could in fact be BS, right? You know, we don't know, it's guy from Minnesota, you can't I trust him. And- >> And so- >> And so- >> I apparently was a manchurian candidate, you know, that the attorneys were- >> You never know. >> And so there, you're fixing it up. And the thing that sold me on you was that you had a car, the band, the cars, you had a cassette. >> I did. >> And I think- >> A track, even better. >> Columbia House, I never did pay them for it. And so some of you know. >> And- >> Well, for a penny. >> Statue of limitations, but you had the cars with RICO, KASIC, and Ben Orren, all these things. >> Yeah. >> And that was so spot on accurate, right? In fact, if you had a vehicle in 1970, now you're going to have a car. >> I'm pretty impressed by this. This is good deep knowledge here. >> This is real. >> Yeah, we're not fool around anymore. >> Have we agreed that the cars debut album was the best debut album top to bottom? >> I think- >> Who's that? Somebody knows. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. And- But you also held out the band Boston is pretty- >> I did, that was a good old film. >> So anyway, this is the thing. When you're driving around in 1979, listening to the cars in Candio or whatever's playing. You're probably not thinking you're going to be spending a lot of time with rock stars. But when you get to be the nominee for Vice President of the United States, you actually get to hang out with rock stars. >> It's a perk. That is a perk. >> It is, because you're into it. You are into it. >> You are. >> And so what I want to know is your best rock star story from the 2024 campaign. >> Yes. Two. One is, the campaign tells me in its young campaign staffers. So they- I don't blame them, they just didn't know. They said, Governor, you've been using this John Mellon camp music. You know it's your walkout song, but we got a call. And we had a request at the convention. After you get your nomination, if we could play, he asked this artist, asked if you could play his music. And I said, really? Yeah. And this young staffer said, yeah, this guy named Neil Young wants you to play Rockin' in the Free World. I'm like, what'd you say? He said, Neil Young wants you to play Rockin' in the Free World and you get nominated. And I just turned to my wife. I said, I can die now. I am perfectly -- >> It's done. >> But I have achieved it. >> The one where I got it. I didn't get to meet Neil in that case. But we're doing an event down in, I think Atlanta or Savannah. And it was in the whole room. I spent a lot of time back by dumpsters and they issue in. And the secret service. I couldn't see anybody and all this sort of -- But we're going down a hallway. And I looked down the hall. And the door was kind of open. And they're playing music in there. And I looked down there and I'm like, oh my God, I'm going there. And the secret service said, no, I said, I'm going to go down there. And I walked to the door and the individual who was there singing waves me in. And it was Michael Stepp from R.E.M. playing with John Bon Jovi and Parliament. And they were practicing -- they were practicing what they were going to sing. And I sat there and watched them that these musicians as they were doing that. And those of you, again, of a certain age. And R.E.M. was college music beyond anything we could ever imagine. And there was Michael Stepp. And I -- I fan-boiled the crap out of it. I'm like, oh my God. It was a little embarrassing. But I said, and he said, what song do you want to hear? I said, well, it's like your driver 80. He said, I haven't played driver eight in decades. And I said, well, he went out and sang driver eight with John Bon Jovi and Parliament. And so that's my -- Really cool. Really cool. [ Applause ] You get to hang out with the Parliament Funkadelic thing. That's it. That's it. That's it. And now I just name drop. Oh, yeah. When I was with hanging out with Michael Stepp is what we did. I hope he remembers me. So -- We've talked about a lot of stuff tonight. And you've been very generous with your comments on it. As we said earlier, this has been a pretty, pretty tough week. But backstage we were talking about. And you were asking me about the people who had appeared this week. Yeah. And you said, was this person optimistic today? You know, and I said, well, a little bit down there. And the other person a little bit, and stuff like that. And it is a time where a lot of people are really wrestling. And as we circle around to the end here, let me ask you, at the end of the day, do we make it through? Yeah. Do we get to the other side? Are you optimistic about where this country is going? Yes. Supervised the lunchroom for 20 years. I'm an optimist. And so -- no, I am. And I think you need to gather in spaces like this. Look, it's very hard emotionally. I went last weekend from that little boy's funeral to a wedding. And I think this idea of, in this moment, where do we find our joy? Where do we find our purpose? And I'll close this out with another of those great rock poets or whatever. Bruce Springsteen was right. It ain't no sin to be glad you're alive. And we're alive. We got a chance to change this. We have a chance to make a difference. And I think in the midst of this heartache and turmoil, we can do it. There's always reasons to show gratitude. Every morning I wake up, I show express great gratitude that I'm not a Republican for starters. And then, so -- there you go. [ Cheers and applause ] Ladies and gentlemen, the governor of Minnesota -- My vice president at the moment. Tim Walls. Thank you. [ Cheers and applause ] Thank you. [ Cheers and applause ] [ Music ] You've been listening to civic media's coverage of Cap Times 2025 IDFS. Thank you to Luke Mathers, Dominick Lee, Parker Olson, Dan Schaefer, and Todd Olbach for making this broadcast possible. I'm Aaron Zomers, and we now return you to your regularly scheduled civic media programming. [ Music ]