Cornell and the Age of Impunity

I'm Michelle Cottle, I cover national politics for New York Times' opinion, and this week we are going to talk about the midterms, which praise Jesus are now just a month out, but first I feel like we need to discuss the Cornell Rape investigation, which captured national attention this week after a former student filed a lawsuit against the university and seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity. The woman who is identified as Jane Doe in the filings says that "Frat members drugged and raped her in October of 2024." According to the legal filings, after the initial investigation, the university expelled only two of the accused students and the local district attorney declined to prosecute. So, for all this and more, I am joined by my brilliant colleagues, columnists, Jamel Bowie, and David French. Guys, good to see you, as always. Good to see you all as well. Hi, Michelle. Before we get into the details of this horrible case, and the legal issues that are at play, I was thinking about why the story struck such a nerve. I mean, obviously the allegations are terrible, just terrific, and it took place at an elite institution, one that parents are always fighting to get their kids into. But I'm wondering if maybe there's also something to the fact that we are now almost a decade past, the Me Too viral movement, and some days it feels as though vanishingly little progress was made. So, Jamel, what struck you about this case and kind of how it fits into our cultural moment? I think that you can't separate the interest and outrage with regards to this case from the fact that at the highest reaches of government, it appears that many key figures are at the very least people have been accused of sexual assault, accused of mistreating women. And at least one case, namely, the president of the United States has been found at least civilly liable for sexual assault. They're not even appears. It is simply the case that this administration is indifferent to concerns around sexual violence against women, that the movement around it glorifies a kind of aggressive and predatory and domineering masculinity. Last year, an administration figure, whose name I cannot recall, intervened to help Andrew Tate and his brother out, Andrew Tate, being the "manosphere influencer" who is currently being prosecuted, charged with basically pimping out women. I mean, a really awful and terrible and degenerate human being if I'm going to really say how I feel about it. And that's the, not just the cultural context, but the political context, in which all this is happening. Simply a powerful political movement, which doesn't just seem to hold the notion that there's pervasive sexual violence and contempt. But in some cases, it celebrates the people who abuse women for entertainment and profit. And so then when you have an example like this, in a case like this, where it really does appear at this elite university, these young men who are, you know, who may go on into the elite spaces and who may have escaped any kind of real accountability for engaging in sexual violence. You know, many people are angry and upset and do feel as if there hasn't been any meaningful progress since the Me Too movement. And I don't blame them for feeling that way because it feels to me as well that it doesn't really seem like there's been much meaningful progress since Me Too. David. I agree with that. And I think I might even, I mean, even me more bleak than Jamel, if that's possible. Because I actually think it's like, it's not that there's been no progress since Me Too. I think there's been regress since Me Too. And I think the, the arc of events is kind of like this that if you go back to when, you know, Jody and Megan are remarkable newsroom colleagues broke the Harvey Weinstein story and really launched this Me Too wave. And we began to see story after story that was genuinely appalling. And especially in the media world, just genuinely appalling. And many of these stories were very well documented with multiple people coming forward with dates, times, details. And you also had some stories that were too much that it was too far. There was an excess where, where people went too far in the, in the height of the Me Too movement. So you were, you went from a age of accountability where sometimes accountability went too far to using the excesses of the age of accountability to justify what we're in now, which is an age of impunity. And, and it's that age of impunity that, you know, when, when Jamel talks about Trump and the civil judgment, what's so notable about the way in which the entire sort of right side of the spectrum ignored that civil judgment is that for years, the writer constantly said, we hate sexual assault, we hate sexual abuse, but we also really love due process. And what, what needs to happen is more due process on campus. And, and I agreed with that, we cannot skip due process to sleep to liability. Well, Trump got due process. He got a jury trial. He got appeals. He got all of the process that could potentially conceivably be due. And he was still found liable. And it didn't matter. It didn't matter. And so, you know, you now begin to see this world in which people glory in their transgression. And I want to just say, by condemning what these guys did, which I think is reprehensible the way they behaved, that's not reaching a legal conclusion about the criminality. That's, we'll get into that. But I think it's really important that we at least be able to say, at the very least, that this is not how a human being should have been treated under any circumstances. And that to say that loudly and clearly, before we get into the legal situation, which Michelle and Jamel is complicated and also betrays, I think, some fundamental problems the way we approach the issue generally. That does not surprise me. The thing that I found unusual about this, and, you know, I can remember, you know, 100 years ago, when I was in college, these types of situations would arise, you know, you just way too much drinking, way too many hormones, way too much entitlement among a certain corners of the university community. But what is seem to be new with this is the part about how in the middle of the alleged assault, these guys sent out like a group message to other people to come get some free sex from this poor woman. And this to me seems to be, you know, like social media on steroids, where it extends the circle of culpability and raises questions about kind of responsibility that, you know, even if they're not legal questions, there are like certainly moral questions. And it just makes this whole thing that much more horrific and complicated. But, but I guess we should go back and look at like how, like one of the big questions here is how the university responded and how the fraternity responded. So David, why don't you walk us through some of the specifics about how it was originally handled? Well, so, and we're still learning a lot and our newsroom folks did a really excellent job on this. Whenever something like this occurs, there's sort of multiple processes that can unfold simultaneously. So you have really, for lack of a better term, three legal systems that are potentially involved. One is the criminal justice system. This is the district attorney who investigates. Another one is the civil litigation system. This is where when she ultimately filed a lawsuit seeking damages and that's the civil justice system is liability in its preponderance of the evidence. And then you have a university system that is a title nine system involving sex discrimination investigations and sex abuse is a form of sex discrimination. And that is much more informal and also has that lower standard of proof usually proof beyond a reasonable doubt. So you had unfolding pretty soon after the alleged assault. You had unfolding a criminal investigation and a university title nine investigation. And these university investigations tend to happen behind closed doors. The participants are protected by privacy laws, for example. But the They resulted in a degree of punishment for the young men involved. The district attorney took a look at the case and at least as of the initial investigation declined to prosecute. Now, a number of people are questioning that, questioning that decision and questioning whether the district attorney's investigation was comprehensive enough, whether he dotted all the eyes across all the T's, did not appear, for example, that the district attorney had the Snapchat messages, had the free access message, which really doesn't exactly communicate a whole lot of consent to say, essentially, free, you know, what. So the DA has since reopened the investigation, and also the individual has the way this hit the media is the young woman file the lawsuit, so civil justice. So all three of the systems have been now activated to some extent. And so there is no such thing here, so far as we were able to know or see, as anything that looks like a comprehensive, adjudicated outcome that creates at least a bot that provides us with a body of facts that we can sort of sit and clearly analyze. We're right now in this process of basically learning something new almost every day. So combining Chamele's observation with your legal observations here, do you think on any level Cornell is being or has been extra cautious about this, in part because the Trump administration has been hammering schools on anything that, you know, smells of airing on the side of, you know, that would be seen as unfair to men or, you know, wokeness or this sort of thing. Or do you think that this is just what happens in these cases, period? It's really tough to say these cases are extremely difficult, especially for universities to adjudicate. I mean, we've been going through years and years and years of litigation over Title IX. We are in a period, we've kind of the pendulum is sort of swung back and forth. If you go back to the Obama years, there was a dear colleague letter sent out to universities that unfortunately paid short shrift to do process in some ways. And there were a lot of campus tribunals and campus disciplinary proceedings against accused students without very much due process at all, like no ability to cross examine a witness often, not really able to see the evidence against them. And there were tons of lawsuits filed and many, many of them came out against the universities. So now the pendulum has come around to in a different direction, we need lots of due process here, which I think is completely fair and correct to see there has to be due process and a government mandated disciplinary proceeding. So Jamal, here's a kind of non-legal question, but from what you've read and what you've looked at, like how do you find the balance between not railroading the accused men, but also making sure you're not putting undue burdens on the woman who's the victim, like she's, where do you go with this? I suppose my starting premise here, where I begin, is that we don't live in a society where sexual violence is prosecuted to the fullest except to the law and investigated to the fullest extent, taken seriously to the fullest extent. We don't live in that society, we just don't. And the evidence suggests that the rate of sexual violence against women is considerably, you know, it's more pervasive than what is charged and prosecuted. In fact, these young men engage in this behavior, talked about it the way they did, treated it as some big fun game, is to my mind like evidence enough, like these aren't exceptional young men, right? In a lot of ways, ordinary young men. And the fact that this, this was not, didn't seem to be remarkable to these ordinary young men, is, I think, evidence of the actual state of American culture, as it relates to, you know, the treatment and dignity of women and as it relates to how serious we take sexual assault and sexual violence. And so for, I guess from my view, my starting point would be I would want the criminal legal system and our universities to take this extremely seriously to really dedicate themselves to serious investigations. My sense of reading, you know, reading the various accounts of how this is unfolded is that there was a real reluctance on part of the various authorities to really want to press further. And that seems to be generally the case when it comes to these incidents, a real unwillingness to want to press further, investigate further take, you know, serious action in response. And so that's, I mean, for me, it's like, it's, it's really treating this like the incredibly serious problem that it is. You know, I was in college 20 years ago and I was involved somewhat in, you know, sexual assault education for other men. And we were having this conversation then about the importance of respecting consent of understanding that consent is a process, not just a binary thing, that women face, especially in the context of say, fraternity is an alcohol and drinking drugs, they're, they're, they're real and serious safety concerns and that it's the responsibility of men in these situations to police each other, police each other, keep people safe. I mean, these were the conversations that we were having 20 years ago and these are the conversations that were happening 10 years ago and happening. I want to jump, let me grab that piece because I think one of the people named in this suit is the then president of the fraternity named because he didn't appropriately oversee his members. Now, that's, that sounds great, but that from my experience of college fraternity parties is a really unrealistic idea. It's a tough case to make. I mean, when you're talking about facts on the ground, and I'm wondering if this is part of what throws institutions like Cornell into a swibbit is just like they don't really want people looking into how much partying goes on in these schools. It's like so much insanity that I have a hard time wondering how you expect anybody to police other members in that situation. There's a couple of things I want to, a two huge problems I want to emphasize, cultural and legal. So here's the cultural problem, and I think we have confused the minimum legal standard which is consent for the moral standard. And I do not agree that the moral standard for sexual activity should be consent. I think it should be care. Now, I'm not going to ask that people agree with my conservative evangelical Christian sexual ethics that sex is for marriage between men and women. Look, I know lots of people disagree with that. And obviously, but at the minimum, at the minimum, is this the kind of thing if these young men actually cared for her rather than just asked if she agreed with it in the moment? Or if they actually cared for her, is this how they would treat her? And that's the problem I have with a lot of these arguments culturally as we almost treat it like, well, you know, everybody was consenting and then that makes it morally okay. I want everyone to be caring, and if you're caring, you're going to be preventing an awful lot of this stuff that we're years later, people, and even days later or hours later, people look back at what they did when Michelle is you're talking about the combination of alcohol and hormones does not always make us our best selves. And then we look back at that and go, I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to be that. Now, legally, what we have done is legally, we have privileged getting wasted overtaking care of people. And here's what I mean. If you look at New York law, the crime, secondary, second degree rape, where someone is incapacitated, say, through intoxication, if you are voluntarily intoxicated, that's not going to count. It has to be the involuntary intox, in other words, being drugged. But Michelle and Jamel, whether you're voluntarily or involuntarily intoxicated, what are you? You're still intoxicated. The level of intoxication doesn't depend on the voluntary or involuntaryness of it. And then you start to get into the really difficult question of, okay, which line of ketamine that was snorted was coerced versus which line of ketamine that was snorted was voluntary. And you begin to see why. why these prosecutions get really difficult. So here's what I would think morally and legally. We need to flip the ethic here towards the ethic of care over consent morally and legally we need to privilege when people are intoxicated to the point of incapacitation. We need to privilege safety and bodily security over, well, this is college. People are gonna get wasted, right? That's not the way the law should be operating. - Well, I wanna ask about the cultural guardrails that we have put up, 'cause I do think I agree that in recent years, we've fetishized consent just by itself, like whatever, like that's the only question people ask. So, so Chimell, this has been, I think, my theory is that especially with progressives and the whole kind of sex positive, you know, women shouldn't, you know, it's like the extreme version of no slutshaming. You're not supposed to call anything out of bounds as long as everybody has said, oh no, I'm okay with this. It's like, I mean, Chimell, kind of where do you stand on this? Should there be another piece to this or is that just kind of what we have to work with? - My own inclination is not far from David's frankly. It is that consent is fine. As far as kind of a, you know, broad minimum, but that when it comes to having sex, engaging in sexual activity, I'm not sure that minimums are what you should be aiming for or I'll put it this way, you know, my kids are quite young. But my, both my children, but my son, especially, I'm not gonna, when we have these conversations, it's not going to be, oh, you know, as long as you get the minimum approval than everything's cool, it's gonna be, you know, take this person seriously as a full person. They're not merely an object for your own satisfaction. They are a full human being who feels and thinks just the way you do and think about how you would want to be treated in this situation. Think about how you would want someone to take account of your feelings and think about how you would feel if you felt that you were being violated in some way. Like that's the minimum, right? The absolute minimum is to put yourself on that other person's place and make your decision and make your choices with that in mind. I don't know, you know, as far as thinking of cultural standards, I don't know how you make that a cultural standard, but I do think that part of what we're witnessing is the extent to which many young men have both internalized the consent requirement and also the quite vicious and aggressive misogyny that has, I think, you know, maybe not reemerged, really kind of like taken a more prominent place in American cultural life. You put those things together and you get a situation where young men basically think that they look at someone basically incapacitated saying, yes, we'll put quotes over that, yes, and go forward with it as if that's the only thing they need to account for. And the idea that, no, you need to account for the fact this isn't another human being, that women are people and you need to take that seriously. That doesn't enter the picture. - Yeah, I spend my days, as you know, dealing with political candidates and politicians and it is depressing to me that what we're talking about on college campus is also what we've seen. Certainly this last year reemerged with a vengeance among members of Congress. I mean, we've had members have to resign. We have members who have declined to resign over accusations of mistreating spouses or, you know, in some cases taking sexual advantage of young staffers. So I have to think that this just, you know, as role models go or as cultural signifiers, it's just a terrible swamp that people are being subjected to. And so I am worried about where this goes. Where do we think this case is going? I mean, is there any chance that we think it's gonna lead to reforms, either how schools handle these things or one piece that we haven't gotten into a lot and David, you probably know more about this than I could ever imagine. And it's just like fraternities are big players in these situations, like there have been, I know, Kaelin Flanagan years ago for the Atlantic did a big piece about when members get into trouble, like fraternities will, their national organizations have a lot of power and then they sometimes come marching in to make sure their members get handled delicately. But like, where does this go? Do we think? Can I be, well, I don't wanna say bleakly realistic. I do think that, I do think that there will be and has been a renewed burst of concern and not just a burst of concern about the state of the law and should the law sort of say that voluntary intoxication is this sort of zone of privilege versus reforming it to where intoxication is intoxication. Okay, that's sort of a low-hanging fruit kind of legal reform that I think could be undertaken. Is there a burst of interest in maybe the reforming and rethinking the moral norms? Yeah, but what we've seen is just relentless impunity. And we haven't even raised the name Epstein yet, right? And Michelle Yunai had, we had both been watching this show called Furious on Hulu. And what was so powerful about that was how it really accurately portrayed how so very difficult it is to bring powerful people to account, hold powerful people accountable especially when it comes to sexual misconduct. And then you also have a dynamic where sometimes prosecutors, you know, look, we've had some cases where prosecutors and sort of the public went crazy like the Duke LaCrosse situation where people leaned way in ahead of the evidence. And so, you know, we shouldn't be doing that. We shouldn't be leaning in and making judgments on evidence before adjudication. So it's hard, but one thing that I also think as in play here is that, you know, prosecutors don't like hard cases. They want a case that's going to be like, I walk in and they're going to plead it out because it's so open and shut or if they are stupid enough to take it to jury, it's going to be a quick jury deliberation because it's open and shut. And this is a case where there's a lot of different text messages. Some of them are really, really bad. Some of them clutter the picture and cloud the picture. And that's the classic kind of case that a lot of prosecutors will try to kind of lean away from or do what this prosecutor said they're going to do essentially punt it to the grand jury, sort of say, we're going to see what the grand jury says. But that's not really the role that if they believe the case is prosecutable, tell that to the grand jury. - Jamal, are you feeling bleakly realistic as well? - Yeah, I mean, I think my going just on based on what I said earlier, we shouldn't be stuck in a bit of an eternal recurrence. I am afraid that I'm quite pessimistic about all of this and that my hope is that some accountability is found that the young woman finds some peace and justice in her life, and that I hope that we can use this to build better systems. But I'm really not going to hold my breath about that. - Quick PSA, whatever you are feeling curious or concerned about, whether it is politics, AI or what fantastic shows you'll want to stream this weekend, you can search for it in the New York Times. And you can do it without paywalls for a full month when you download the Times app. Better still, you'll get access to the back catalog of our Fantastic Show and all of the Times' fantastic shows. So run, do not walk, download the app today. - Now I'm going to have us do a hard pivot to a topic that has been a repeat favorite among our conversations, but now is getting down to the wire. The very high stakes political midterms, where, you know, I don't want to say the sole of the nation is on the ballot, but we can do that if you like. We're about a month away from election day. Early voting has already started in some places. It has been quite the journey thus far. As we are headed into the home stretch, what is like one isolated story or nugget that has stuck in your head? as telling us like a lot about what's going on and where we're headed. One of you go. So you know our newspaper ran this story about Kansas Senator Roger Marshall not long ago about how he was apparently having people from his practice. Medical practice arrested for basically small bills, $50 here, $200 here, you know relevant opinions relatively but you know seeking the law on them for not having paid up on time. And this has become a big issue in the Kansas Senate race. And Marshall who faces a surprisingly tough challenge from a Democrat blue seems to Adam Hamilton. Marshall appears basically unable to really figure out a deal of this this controversy of these attacks. He really is flailing. He's like well actually you know I had them arrested for not showing up for a court day which you know isn't really doesn't really capture what people are upset about when they come to this story. And you see something similar this sort of flailing about in the face of a strong challenge from Ken Paxton right who although Ken Paxton is I would say like a sub replacement level Republican candidate. He has an experience one at the very least he's run plenty of races but he's never really run a competitive one against a Democrat for a statewide office in this way. And one of the stories I think of these midterms and this is this is how you get waves right is that when national conditions make more seats competitive make more candidate viable and challenging whoever the incumbent party is you find that there are all these incumbents who just have never had to run a truly competitive race and just don't know how to do it. And if they lose it'll be as much because of that of a lack of being able to definitely respond to attacks and criticism like as it will be national conditions right like you can outperform national conditions part of the reason why Susan Collins is still in the Senate is actually has consistently outperform national conditions in part by being a very effective main politician very effective local politician who knows the state who knows its voters and who knows what they want to hear and who knows what she has to do to get ahead of criticism from Democrats. And I think what you're seeing in both House races and Senate races are Republican candidates who have basically if they ever have the ability lost the ability to do that and now they're up against challengers who don't just have the wins at the but the win that they're back but are genuinely hungry to win. All right David. What's it got? So I'm glad you now brought up the Paxton Teller eco race and you know one thing that really stood out to me was if you move past sort of the the grass tips of Maga you know like the somebody who follows Trump and says Ken Pactons are greatest attorney general which is usually entirely related to the fact that he absolutely will carry water for Donald Trump no matter what. I mean but outside of like that core Maga that that upholds him as sort of Trump's a number one water carrier there just isn't a affirmative case for Ken Paxton. And so everything depends on tearing down Teller eco and you know it's funny after spending years hearing from Maga that we're electing a president not a pastor that why are we asking about what Donald Trump's beliefs theologically why are we diving too much into his character because policy is all that matters etc now all of a sudden James Teller eco's theology matters the theology of James Teller eco's pastor matters so wait is it are we electing a president not a pastor but when it comes to the Texas Senate race we're electing a pastor not a senator I mean all of this doesn't make a lot of sense and so it's so muddled and a lot of the attacks on Teller eco are 90% of them don't have anything to do with this conduct in office they're all about this other stuff like how many paths to Jesus are there and you know all of this stuff they can't do the conduct in office and they can't do personal morality because if you open those cans of worms that Ken Paxton goes down I mean the defense that I've been hearing from his supporters in the state is personal morality doesn't matter anymore you know why do we care if he's had affairs or been you know indicted or impeached or whatever and it was just personal morality I mean he members of his own team resigned and blew the whistle on official misconduct including allegations of bribery that got him impeached by the Republican dominated Texas house it really is this interesting microcosm of the moment where it's very hard at this point given the sentiment in the country to make the positive case that we should have united for all Republican government for the two more years it's very hard to make that positive case when public sentiment is this low so what is all that's left all that's left is telefrico this telefrico that and I'm just not sure it's gonna work and and Michelle I'm also kind of not sure it's gonna work because honestly think that people are getting a little bit tired of the constant catastrophism just the constant vote for me or the world in apocalypse apocalypse yeah and so I don't know you know it's gonna be interesting telly goes taking a very different approach he's trying to be that more you know ecumenical welcoming upbeat kind of politician motivation that happens and so it's it is almost like a a perfect storm kind of case and we'll see how it goes so I'm gonna take Texas as well so I did I did some falling around of Bobby Polito who is the democratic house candidate in Texas 15 which is in the Rio Grande Valley which is one of my favorite places to go report it's just the most fascinating cultural experience and he's running against Monica Delacruz who took this blue district and flipped it uh you know a few years ago and the democrats went it back and of course republicans have redistricted and all of this it's it's a hard it's a hard thing to claw back but while I was down there following around uh Polito this is a hugely Latino district like this is like your it's a it's a good test case for whether or not trumps inroads into the Latino voting community are gonna hold and I was just talking to this woman she she runs a restaurant down there she voted and she and her husband voted for Trump in 2024 because they liked his economic message and they just feel burned and she's like never again she is out she's all in for Polito she's she's she's you know changed her mind and decided that she was sold to bill of goods and if what we've seen from other reporting and other polling this is potentially a real problem for the republicans broadly if they can't hold these Hispanic inroads but especially in places like Texas where they redistricted on the assumption that they would get a certain percentage of the Hispanic vote so it could turn their gerrymandering into dummy mandering one of Jamel's favorite things and so I am just waiting to see how all of that plays out and that will affect them going forward well beyond this particular cycle so no I can't tell you how much I've used the term dummy mandering but I always credit you I always give the right attribution it's a fantastic possibility and it would be the it would be divine justice I really think if after all of the stupid game playing that Trump did pressuring all these states to redistrict if a lot of dummy mandering came back and better on the bottom I would just I would be so pleased about that I'm not gonna lie all right with that I feel like we got a change time for recommendations what's it got for me I saw the new Robert Pattinson movie prime time about to to catch a predator it's a good time it's been been some of a controversial movie because there are a lot of people who quite like to show to catch a predator and the movie is very clearly critical of the television show but I think it's worth watching I still I'm still like myself working through what I think about the film Pattinson gives a great performance Merritt Weaver is excellent also Skyler Gismando like the whole cast is really working at their absolute height of their powers but the most interesting thing to me about the movie is it really feels like a like a moby dick kind of story like a movie about the dangers of fanaticism first but the film is very much about post 9/11 America America. I mean, it begins in 2004. It's very much the height of War on Terror. And it draws the analogy between the kind of fanaticism and, you know, yearning for clarity that characterizes a show like to catch a predator and the War on Terror and the War on Iraq and that the desire to have something clear and black and white where the moral stakes are exactly as they appear. So it's an interesting movie. I'm not going to say it's like the best movie I've seen this year, but it's a very interesting movie and I really recommend it. Okay, David. All right, Michelle. Two words. Last scene. Okay, this is an Apple TV plus drama. Australian, you know, normally I'm British crime. Let's go Australian. Australian crime. You know, these these Anglo countries and their horrific crime problems. And so this one is a 911 or in Australia, triple zero dispatcher. And his daughter had disappeared at age three 11 years ago, written off as deceased, gets a call from somebody he believes is his daughter 11 years later. And so it's hard to watch. I just want you to tell you that, but it is so well done. And at the end of episode four, I think it's only about six episodes at the end of episode four was one of the most gripping and intense 45 minutes of television that I have seen in a long time. And after it's over, like my wife and I just looked at each other and just said, wow, because it went in a way we didn't fully expect. And wow. Okay, so it's that time of the election cycle where I turn into a hideous nag about people getting involved. So I'm going to take this moment one month out from election day to recommend that people figure out a way to get involved. I have, for instance, a lovely friend who has started every Sunday holding postcard writing parties. Now she's not doing it in a particular partisan vein. She actually got voter lists from reclaim our votes that are registered, but not regular voters. And so she has people over to her house every Sunday to sit and just write. I think they're targeting Texas. Just little notes that say, remember, you have the right to this, that the other, you have, you know, make your vote count. And then they send those out every week. And there you have it. They're going to do that through the end of the election. So that may not be your cup of tea. Maybe you want to go knock doors. Maybe you want to call. Maybe you just want to donate. I don't know. But we can sit here and complain all day long about how horrible this administration is, how pathetic the Republican led Congresses in terms of letting Trump run all over everybody. But if you don't get out there and get involved, get your early ballots, whatever, it's all for nothing. Just saying. And with that, we're going to end this and land this plane. Guys, always a pleasure. Yes, despite the despite the grim conversation. Yeah, always a pleasure. It's not really a pleasure this week, but it's always a sensation. So that's a low bar, Michelle. That's a low bar.