Episode 1013: American Fairytales

Zain 0:01

This is a strategist episode 1013. My name is Zain Velji. With me as always, Stephen Carter, Corey Hogan. Guys, what is going on? How are you?

Carter 0:11

I was just reflecting that I have never been so well trained as Corey has trained me prior to the start of the music. So

Carter 0:17

So just sit there and be quiet.

Carter 0:20

have trained me better than my wife has trained me, better than my employers have trained me. You've done a great job. That's really quite something. something yeah

Corey 0:29

they passed employers and and i think this is all actually part of one story so yeah well

Corey 0:36

what's the story why

Carter 0:36

why you gotta be like that why

Carter 0:39

why you gotta be like this where i don't you know like i thought we were i thought

Zain 0:42

thought he's gonna be story time that's where am i missing hi

Corey 0:44

hi guys how are

Zain 0:45

are you doing how are you doing hey carter um high praise for you in the last episode their patreon special uh for those who missed it steven carter did a 90 minute um interrogation by the board of the strategist media corporation which includes cory and i yeah

Zain 1:00

on his uh surrey electoral loss uh we also have a document that stephen carter wrote we interrogated him on the loss what he learned why

Zain 1:09

why he lost why the campaign lost it was fascinating carter and people seem to love it yeah

Carter 1:13

yeah i mean that's a reason to become a patron right there is to watch me shed my ego uh in front of thousands of people um that's

Carter 1:23

that's what i was told was so good and we you know People always said that that was

Corey 1:25

was the best part. We really appreciate it because the Deputy Prime Minister is trying to get people to cut expenses everywhere. This

Zain 1:35

Shall we? Shall we do it? Shall we do it? Let's move it on to our first segment. Our first segment, not a fairy tale ending.

Zain 1:43

Corey, you've mentioned it.

Zain 1:47

Yeah. And Krista Freeland are splitting up. Play the clip, Corey. Play the clip. And

SPEAKER_00 1:52

And I think Canadian families are looking really closely at all of their expenses. I personally, as a mother and wife, look carefully at my credit card bill once a month. And last Sunday, I said to the kids, you're older now. You don't want to watch Disney anymore. Let's cut that Disney Plus subscription. So we cut it. It's only $13.99 a month that we're saving, but every little bit helps. and i think every mother in canada is doing that right now okay

Corey 2:23

okay there's many reasons why this is so upset there's like eight things i'm mad about in that yeah

Zain 2:27

yeah okay so so first of all can i just say let me just let me just knock off a few things here um yeah

Corey 2:33

only murders in the building oh

Zain 2:35

good we just watched it last night another

Zain 2:37

uh the bear okay yeah

Zain 2:39

yeah every single disney movie ever uh

Zain 2:43

uh the mandalorian okay that's not your speed don't worry because you're disney plus subscription, Christopher Freeland, also comes with Star, which includes Damages. Have you guys seen Damages? Exceptional show. Oh, yeah. Is Bollywood

Zain 2:56

Bollywood your speed? Don't worry. We've got some classic Ranveer Singh movies on there as well. I know you can go for some Ranveer Singh movies. Every Wes Anderson movie.

Zain 3:06

You don't want to watch that? Don't worry. Matt Damon in The Martian. I'm just reading up. Disney Plus is not for kids. I feel Christopher Freeland has made a grave mistake. Can I also add one more title? jojo rabbit steven carter have you seen jojo rabbit this is exceptional i

Carter 3:21

i love you it's one of my favorite movies but you're just pissing me off now because i also cut disney disney plus about three months ago go fuck yourself what's wrong with you i'm missing well because we we actually had the same conversation i lost prime and i lost disney plus and

Carter 3:37

and now i'm pretty angry okay

Zain 3:38

okay cory leo what you're mad with i'm if it's not clear disney

Zain 3:42

disney plus uh disney plus is is not not tricks, cereal, okay? It's more than just for kids. There's a lot going on on Disney+, and I think she's made a grave mistake by cutting Disney+. I think I'm just livid about this.

Carter 3:57

am. Hey, guys, can I get one

Zain 3:58

one of your passwords?

Corey 4:01

is so far into the darkness by the fact that you cut Disney+. Listen, of all of the streaming services...

Zain 4:06

services... Everything before it is Tesla. We'll get to that in a second, too. Yes, go ahead,

Corey 4:10

Of all of the streaming services, Disney+, is the last one standing. This is not Disney as in Disney cartoons Disney. This is conglomerate Disney that owns everything from ESPN to Fox to Lucasfilms and

Zain 4:24

and everything in between.

Corey 4:24

between. It's the maddest thing I've ever heard. You want to watch Is It Cake on Netflix before you watch literally every great movie and every great television. The Simpsons is on Disney+. Family Guy is on Disney+. I mean, all

Carter 4:38

all of it's on Disney+. Listen, guys. This

Carter 4:41

This has been so revelatory

Zain 4:43

that i'm watching political attack ads being made out of this carter i feel like this is raw

Corey 4:49

raw ingredients for a political

Zain 4:50

political attack ad whatever she wants for leadership of this country because i mean this speaks to temperament this speaks to judgment carter i don't know you kept netflix and you dropped disney plus what

Zain 4:59

what is wrong with

Carter 5:00

with you well i got the whole family on netflix you know so if i dropped netflix for me i'd drop it for everyone uh

Carter 5:07

uh and the kids the kids have found ways to get disney plus right so they you

Carter 5:12

why they've all gone everybody has it

Corey 5:13

it because it's the greatest

Carter 5:16

made a mistake that's what i'm trying to get across heather if you're listening

Corey 5:20

yeah she she is because there's nothing else to do because you got rid of disney plus you know

Zain 5:25

know you know what you what what christopher phelan should probably do tonight it's a sunday evening she could probably go home and and watch that uh exceptional peter jackson documentary on Oh no, she can't watch it because she cut Disney Plus. Oh no, that

Zain 5:41

that sucks for her. You

Carter 5:42

You guys are really upsetting me because I literally have done this. No,

Zain 5:47

in a very different boat. You are trying to consolidate all resources to justify your Tesla. Okay, that is what's happened at your household. That's

Zain 5:54

That's very different than what I think is happening at Krista Freeland's household, which is Krista Freeland, understandably,

Zain 6:01

understandably, doesn't have time to watch Disney Plus, but is making everyone else in her family suffer. And I feel like that is a grave, grave mistake. Let

Corey 6:09

Let me tell you

Corey 6:10

the list. It goes insulin, Disney Plus, food. That's the new

Zain 6:16

Maslow hierarchy of needs. Yeah.

Carter 6:20

Signing up for it again. You should do it right now. I'm going to sign up

Zain 6:22

up for it again. In fact, Corey, I'm going to call an audible on this, a Peyton Manning-style audible. I am happy to create a side fund from some of our patron funds for Krista Freeland for that $13.99 a month. if she needs it

Carter 6:36

it what about me she

Zain 6:37

she needs it a bit more so you know that creativity that comes from jojo rabbit right where a young nazi soldier can have an imaginary best friend as hitler i mean that's the creativity we will need for my finance minister to get out of the current situation that we find ourselves in on the cost of living carter so i think she needs it more than you i feel like your situation is slightly different yeah

Corey 6:58

yeah so the other things i'm kind of irritated about is

Corey 7:01

is well that was

Zain 7:02

was the main thing i don't think yeah

Corey 7:03

yeah i mean that is the main thing that's the main thing talk

Corey 7:06

talk about a political own goal this is a classic gaffe this is can

Zain 7:10

can we can we actually talk about why

Zain 7:11

why is this a known goal because on

Zain 7:13

on the surface like let's so let's be serious on the surface it

Zain 7:18

it seems like a very logical thing to say hey we should all review our budgets here's one thing i cut right yeah yeah

Corey 7:24

yeah okay hey we should all review our budgets it's even that you're in some pretty dangerous ground because it's, well, fuck you very much, Chris. Yeah. Maybe you could do something about inflation

Corey 7:33

is what a lot of people are going to feel. But the minute she gives an example that costs $13.99 a month, I mean, my mortgage is up for renewal this month and it's, you know, it's not a significant deal for me that, you know, part of the house is paid down or whatnot, but it's, you

Corey 7:46

you know, it's, it's almost a thousand dollars more a month I'll be paying as a result of all of this. Right. Well,

Carter 7:52

thank God for that That's sweet, sweet patron money. He's right on,

Corey 7:56

on, right? No, but like this is the real conversation happening at dinner tables. And while I do think it's generally a good idea, and I do this, by the way, once a year, go through and say, what kind of monthly subscriptions have I incurred that I actually don't use? And then I start chopping them off.

Corey 8:12

A, that's not what people want to hear from the finance minister because it's like people sitting at home are like, this is a YP, Christian. This is your problem. Fix inflation. And she said, no, no, this

Corey 8:25

this is actually your problem. You've got to go through your

Carter 8:28

your bill and you've

Corey 8:28

you've got to cut the things that you like. You've got to take the good stuff out of life because inflation's big. And what are you going to do? But you're the finance minister. uh

Corey 8:36

but then to use an example of something that is so so not in the scale of what a lot of canadian families are dealing with as they're looking at these cost pressures i think is very insulting to people

Corey 8:48

and so i'm not sure what she was thinking and it really did have the the same energy as suggesting millennials can't buy houses because of avocado toast it's like talk about you know you're here you're looking at this tiny thing the big picture is what's fucked right and

Corey 9:03

and um and that's not going to help her well as finance minister she better hope she gets that nato uh secretary general role and can get the hell out of dodge because this one will haunt her carter

Zain 9:14

carter do you think do you agree with cory do you feel like this wasn't an own goal and even to the extent that cory thinks it was i

Carter 9:21

mean people are stopping buying fresh fruits and vegetables people are buying frozen you know frozen more frozen foods than they ever have there's more people using food banks. This isn't something, yes, the upper middle class may have had to go back through and cut their subscriptions down from six subscriptions to four subscriptions. But there are lots of other people who don't have basic internet. So the problem that you find is whenever you pull the example out from your privileged life, you're going to be way above a lot of people whose lives aren't that privileged. And so you wind up in two categories. One, as Corey has said, um, don't make, don't tell me I have to cut, tell me what you're going to do to make my life better. Cause that's the role of government in many people's minds.

Carter 10:08

And then, um, the second piece is the

Carter 10:11

the group of people who really are suffering

Carter 10:14

suffering through this. I mean, to

Carter 10:16

to be honest, the upper middle class and the, and the middle class usually do fairly well through these things. It's

Carter 10:21

It's the, it's the poor, um, the lower socioeconomic stratas that really struggle. And they're not, believe me, if fixing their household bills could be done by simply cutting the subscription to Disney

Carter 10:35

Disney+, they'd have done it long ago.

Zain 10:38

Corey, Carter does mention something quite interesting about like plucking

Zain 10:42

plucking an example out of your perverse life. What's interesting about it is that this is, subscriptions, I think it's fair to say, and maybe it isn't fair to say, as we kind of, you know, perhaps go through the same meta-analysis ourselves, that it's something relatable though. though. But perhaps is that part of the problem, that it was a relatable expense? Or was the majority of the problem that this was our finance minister, the person that could do so much more than give a 30-second sort of, even if it was inadvertent, lecture on one's household budget?

Corey 11:10

Yeah. The thing that continually sprung to mind was somebody who I assume is related to Stephen because he said equally ridiculous things like, I'm going to cancel Disney Plus. Jimmy Carter in

Corey 11:21

in In 1977, made a famous speech known as the sweater speech, where he said, well, you know, in this energy crisis, and I'm paraphrasing here, but what you got to do is turn down the thermostat and put on a sweater. And it became like so indicative of this era of malaise that the United States was going through, right? Like this is how America solves problems now. We turn

Corey 11:44

turn down the thermostat

Zain 11:44

thermostat and put on a sweater. It also reminds me of, Corey, I might just throw in another example. Do you remember 2008 Obama, where fuel prices were high, and his suggestion was to check your tire pressure?

Corey 11:56

Remember that? Yes. Yes,

Zain 11:58

Yes, I do. He wasn't wrong. Do

Corey 11:59

Do you remember that? Jimmy Carter wasn't wrong. By the way, Zane, you and I sitting here in sweaters, right? You got a hat on?

Corey 12:06

Because our thermostats are at like 16 and 17, respectively, because this is how we do. How we do, how we live. Yeah, in the immortal words of Catherine Elizabeth Hudson. listen, this is how we do. And, um, you know, but it's not bad advice, but it's not the advice people want to hear from their leaders. They want to hear what their leaders are going to do. Not their great tips, like, you know, put your change in a jar. And at the end of the year, you'll be surprised how much it adds up to like, nobody wants to hear that from their, from their leaders.

Carter 12:35

Carter. Yeah. But let's be clear though, that that's sometimes what, what, you know, like that's sometimes all that's available. And I think that the instinct to provide, you know, advice like that is actually what the problem is, right?

Carter 12:48

right? Christopher Freeland doesn't need to step on this rail. No one is taking her to this place. And she went there on her own just so she can show that she's part of the regular people.

Carter 12:57

Well, I'll tell you something. As soon as you get elected, you're no longer part of the regular people. You're part of them. And them don't bring solutions like this.

Carter 13:05

Them bring solutions, not actual, you know, like Like, this isn't the thing that we're looking for them to bring to us. What them should be bringing is something that's going to make me happy, something that's going to make me more successful. Ideally, I'm going to look better. You know, those are the types of things that we want, you know, like, and maybe this is the great problem of politics, where

Carter 13:26

where we're asking our leaders to do things for us that we can't get done ourselves. But whether it's the problem of politics or the opportunity of politics, it really doesn't matter to the strategist. What matters to the strategist is how do I get my candidate reelected? How do I get my finance minister to the prime minister's chair? And this certainly didn't help. Yeah. Go

Corey 13:44

Go ahead, Corey. Yeah. I mean, ultimately, you're

Corey 13:48

you're sitting there. You're definitely thinking, regardless of who you are in Canada,

Corey 13:52

Christian, this is your problem, not mine. Don't make it my problem. And if you're of middle income or higher, it's just not on the scale to be helpful. And if you're lower income, you've probably already cut that. you don't need like to hear about the frivolities

Corey 14:05

frivolities of streaming services yeah

Zain 14:07

i'd also say it kind of requires this like political sixth sense as well to to know when your examples or your outreach to folks is is gonna fall on deaf ears and in in the moment as well and by the way six cents also available on disney plus uh to the finance business if you don't want to watch it yeah it is available uh fantastic movie um worth re-watching i

Corey 14:28

i really would say it's a re

Zain 14:28

re-watching Corey, I've never seen it. I cut my subscription drill. Yeah, I figured, Carter, you're losing a lot. By the way, the way Christopher Freeland's speech should have gone is, listen, I review my credit card every month. What I've noticed is on my personal travel expenses, I'm using Air Canada and WestJet too often. And what I'm going to now do going forward is switch to Flair Airlines. That budget airline will get me in the same place. Yeah, sure, later or never, but it will try. and that's what's worth it. That's just more time to be working for Canadians on the tarmac. It's great. Absolutely.

Corey 15:02

But you know, actually, Zane, where I thought you were going with this and what actually is a example that she could use to say, I'm a regular person too. Now, here's what I'm going to do with my deeply irregular powers is I was reviewing my credit card bill and I couldn't help but notice that credit card interest has gone up, I think more than could be defensible given this environment here. So I'm going to be using my powers as finance minister to bring the banks together and I'm going to say, what are we doing to keep credit card interest rates at 18.99, not shooting up to 22.99.

Corey 15:30

That's the kind of decision people want from their finance minister.

Carter 15:33

Oh, that would have been so good. That would have been fantastic. I'm

Zain 15:37

I'm glad you kind of proposed that, Corey. Corey, what would you have suggested? Like, you like Corey's...

Zain 15:42

If she wanted to... Oh, yeah. Let's just even whiteboard it. Christopher Freeland, she wanted to make a humanizing statement. What advice would you have given her? Even as a bullet point on her briefing note out as she was walking into that statement

Zain 15:55

statement or that press conference?

Carter 15:57

Well, it would be one of the briefing points I'd give to any politician. No one ever wants to hear about you. They want to hear about them.

Carter 16:03

They want to hear about what you're going to do for them, not what you've done for yourself. And I think that that's probably where she went off the rails. She thought, well, I'll use an experience from my own life to illustrate how people, you know, we're all in this together. And once we're all in this together, everybody's going to see that I'm working hard and And Prime Minister is working hard to make sure that everybody's managing their expenses the best way possible. But Corey's example had actual real teeth to it. Corey says, you know, we're going to we're going to actually take an action to prevent credit card companies from from massive windfalls at a time when credit card debt is growing. Right.

Carter 16:42

Right. That actually had something to say. Joe Biden said this week, finally this week, that they're going to take action on excessive profits with oil and gas companies. to prevent gouging at the pumps that's that's the example of the actual action that people are looking for they aren't looking for well i went through you know i too have stopped buying um you know fresh

Carter 17:08

fresh vegetables and i found myself more in the frozen fruit aisle or more in the frozen vegetable aisle they're not looking for you to say that either that's you know if you're you're not in the frozen vegetable aisle, now you're afraid that you're going to be, right? And all of this is, you can't use your own personal, there's nothing personal left in your life, except

Carter 17:29

except what can I do for you?

Carter 17:31

That's the talking point that I would have given Dirk.

Corey 17:34

So Carter underlines it. She used experience from her own life to give them great tips about how they can be more like her. And that was a mistake. That comes off very badly. She should have been been looking for ways she could use experience in her own life to inform tough action by government that helps me. And

Corey 17:51

And that's the difference. And that's the line that she failed to be on the right side of in this particular instance.

Zain 17:57

I would suggest weekly press conferences where she just gives out coupon codes that her own team sourced out.

Corey 18:02

out. Have you tried Honey? You can save up to 15% without doing a thing,

Zain 18:06

I'm told. Harvey's coupon code HAR003 gets you an Angus burger for two for $14.99. If they would do that every week, I feel like people would do it. Hang on a second.

Zain 18:16

I don't think it's

Carter 18:16

it's a terrible idea. Did

Zain 18:16

Did we just get two new sponsors?

Carter 18:19

we didn't. Because things

Carter 18:20

things are really looking up for us. We

Zain 18:22

We didn't get new sponsors. By the way, we'll leave that segment there. This segment, of course, brought to us by Flair Airlines. Flair Airlines and Netflix.

Zain 18:28

The Netflix with commercials of the CBC Gem of the Sky. Carter, let's move on to our next segment. Our next segment, Superstar Loserdom. I want to focus on the United... Are

Carter 18:39

Are we talking about me again?

Zain 18:40

We are indeed talking about... I want to focus back on your sprawl piece. And the 90 minutes. Oh, good. The 90 minutes that we did with you last episode, which I do highly suggest people cut their Disney Plus and subscribe to Patreon to listen to.

Zain 18:56

let's talk about the United States.

Zain 18:59

The U.S. midterms are happening on Tuesday. We record today on Sunday the 6th in the evening. By the time most people listen to it, they'll only be a day away from the U.S. midterms. And there's a lot to talk about, right? Right. The fact is that the economy seems to be overriding all other issues in the United States. Joe Biden's approval rating in the 40s. Every time we've had a sitting president whose approval rating has been in the 40s, they've lost big on seat count. The Democrats are certainly expecting that on the House side where the House might go to the Republicans with Speaker Kevin McCarthy soon taking over. There's also very competitive Senate races in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Zain 19:39

to name a few. But I want to focus on the Democrats and I want to focus on something that I think could be a starting point of conversation. But let's expand beyond that, because while we could certainly get into the weeds of American politics, we won't be able to do it in one episode and we won't be able to catch up on all the backstory that's gone on in the insanity of the last number of weeks and months, including several election deniers on the ballot, it, including one that might become next governor of Arizona. So many storylines. But here's the one I'll hone in on.

Zain 20:13

Stacey Abrams and Beto O'Rourke, Corey, two

Zain 20:16

two individuals who are running for governor, Stacey Abrams in Georgia, again, Beto O'Rourke running for governor for the first time, but this is after he ran for Senate. This is after he ran for president, now running for governor. Both are expected to lose, Beto perhaps by double digit points after a close-ish race against Ted Cruz for Senate the last time he ran in 2018.

Zain 20:39

These are superstars, Corey, in the Democratic Party. They've built infrastructure. They kind of have outside social media presence.

Zain 20:48

But in the case of Beto O'Rourke, he's going to lose for the third time, and in the case without successfully reaching his political goal. Of course, he's been a congressman before. And if you're Stacey Abrams, yeah, you were credited for the Warnock and Ossoff seats and helping Joe Biden turn Georgia blue. But

Zain 21:04

But you're going to more than likely lose as well. So I want to talk about these superstars in the Democratic Party, these all-stars that have disproportionate amount of weight outside of elected office, but continually seem to lose. And Corey, is this just a problem in your mind as I kind of walk through at least my analysis of these folks? Is this just a problem in the Democratic Party? Is this a changing nature nature of politics, that you don't need to be in elected office. When you hear of someone like Abrams and Beto, where does your mind go to first? We'll start off with some general thoughts from you.

Corey 21:36

Yeah. So in 1832, Abraham Lincoln ran

Corey 21:40

ran for the state legislature in Illinois and lost. And

Corey 21:44

And ever since then, ever since he became a president, I guess after that, Americans

Corey 21:48

Americans have deluded themselves into thinking that failure is a great path to victory.

Corey 21:53

And unfortunately for the the democratic party they have really sold themselves this myth that you can well zane you use the word superstar and my head almost flew off of my shoulders now in the case of abrams maybe because she did do some remarkable work of organizing communities and and really just overhauling the way georgia approaches the vote in

Corey 22:12

last election right delivered georgia for the democrats in

Corey 22:16

in the case of beto o'rourke what what evidence do we have that beto o'rourke is is a superstar. What evidence do we have that Beto O'Rourke is a superstar?

Carter 22:24

He rolled up his shirt sleeves. How dare you? How

Carter 22:27

How dare you? He holds his mic like a rapper.

Zain 22:29

I like that. At the top of the mic. All right. You might be making my

Corey 22:34

my point for me here. Yes,

Corey 22:38

popular with a certain subset of Democrats.

Zain 22:40

Democrats. No, no, no. Let me tell you something. Why do I say superstar? Disproportionate public profile. If you were to ask people The top 10 most notable Democrats, top 20, I think he makes that list, Corey, without holding elected office.

Corey 22:55

Great. And then building

Zain 22:57

building that organization in a state like Texas, which I think the Democrats may have also deluded themselves that it is indeed purple, when it clearly is not in many, many ways.

Zain 23:08

he's made some inroads there, built an infrastructure there.

Corey 23:11

Right, Zane. And in that same 1977, where Jimmy Carter told us to put on a sweater, the son of Sam would have had great name recognition. Doesn't mean you want to put him on the ballot.

Zain 23:22

I'm not defending him. I'm just trying.

Zain 23:25

Despite the fact that I probably have a better percentage of running him.

Corey 23:28

him. It's not enough. It's not enough.

Corey 23:29

And Democrats have managed to delude themselves that just because somebody can get some swing and be popular on social media, oh my God, you've got a better O'Rourke for Senate sticker. I just hate your guts right now. I

Zain 23:43

Just casually looking in your drawer.

Zain 23:45

No, no, no. I've got other political sticker collections in there, Corey. All right.

Corey 23:50

my point is this. This is actually, I think, indicative of the problem the Democrats have, which is that they're more interested in a certain type of celebrity and a certain type, I mean, appeals to their base than they are actually in contesting elections in ways that the people in those communities want to see them contested. And I'm going to focus on Beto because Beto is really a bad offender on this one. We talked about this when uh you know there was that heckler uh that came up right after evolved which by the way is just still a story i cannot read the news on what a tragedy how awful all of that was what the fuck are you doing america uh so i don't want to be misunderstood on what i say next but like he was heckled and beto o'rourke said might be funny to you fucker or something like that but it's not funny to me yeah

Corey 24:34

yeah well and then the polls if anything moved against

Zain 24:37

against we talked about in our swearing in politics episode i remember that yeah that's

Corey 24:40

that's right and and well it was very cathartic for people who share the same worldview that he does and i would include myself on this being like you are so offside if you think it's appropriate to to make comments like that after a tragedy like this it

Corey 24:54

it didn't move the meter in texas and unless democrats start getting serious about that they're gonna they're gonna go like listen the republicans are doing a version of this too they've got all of these lunatics Donald Trump has managed to get into nominations,

Corey 25:11

just because they're scoring on themselves doesn't mean you've got to match your own goals here. And I don't know. It's very frustrating to me when

Corey 25:18

when I think about how often the Democrats have sort of championed somebody because they want them to be popular rather than the fact that they are popular.

Zain 25:26

That is such an interesting point, Carter. And do you feel like that's a new new

Zain 25:35

reality in our politics that this person needs to get elected office. They have to. Everything about it, we love. Let's do whatever we can to will it into existence. That coupled with Corey's point about maybe parties deluding themselves that failure or losing is a great sort of stepping stone towards victory, or as we call it in politics, Moral victories can be a great stepping stone to actual victories. Do you feel like there's like no cost of losing? And then this combined with like celebrity will and the will of the party, Carter, to just force things by brute force to perhaps happen. Do you think that's perhaps diluted them and set them a step backwards? And especially with the two examples that I kind of point out there with, you know, greatest of respect, especially to Abrams in terms of what she's able to do in that last election.

Carter 26:26

Sure. She's great. Love her. fantastic she's fantastic um here

Carter 26:31

comes you know i think that the problem the problem is i think that there's a lot of people who say you know what i would love stacy aprams to represent me in my district of course i would love for her to be the governor of new york i would love for you know beto o'rourke to be the the governor of of connecticut he'd be amazing and you know what he might win in connecticut in fact i think he would win in connecticut but because of social Because we now see local stories as national stories.

Carter 26:56

And because there were these weird little bumps and people got more attention than they probably deserved, we're

Carter 27:03

we're now seeing a shift, right? And people say, well, we're going to put him back because how could he have lost? He was the best

Carter 27:13

best candidate we had in the cycle. No, he wasn't. He lost, right? right? Well, he was the best loser we had in this cycle. We showed that by running him for... We ran him for president. Remember we ran him for president where he... Oh, fuck. Well, he lost as well there, but I think he could do it again. And I think that this is bigger than just the Democrats or the Republicans in the United States because I think that this is...

Carter 27:36

is... I think you see this even in the New Democrats here in Alberta or the conservatives here in Alberta where they... Now, the conservatives may choose a candidate that's really far to the right in an urban riding thinking, man, this is someone who really, or a leader like Danielle Smith. She really appeals to rural Alberta. I'm sure we can make Calgary understand her and like her. Well, that doesn't work like that. You know, you have to have the candidate that works on the ground in the place that you are, not the candidate that works on the ground in a place that you wish they were, right? Right. So you can't just drop in this candidate and say, I love this person. She or he is a fantastic person and we're going to elect them in Texas.

Carter 28:21

You can't. Stacey Abrams, you decide to run somewhere else. Like if Stacey Abrams had chosen to run for one of those two Senate seats, she would have won. But she wanted to be governor. And you know what? The good people of Georgia don't want her to be governor.

Carter 28:37

That's how we choose people. That's

Zain 28:38

That's interesting to me, Carter, saying that these are perhaps not

Zain 28:46

viable in the areas that they want to represent, but their national profile outstrips all of that. And then we kind of forget the local, domestic, regional reality, which I think is great. Right, because maybe I'll kind of contrast that with an example where the Democrats haven't funded a single dollar into Tim Ryan, and this guy might take out J.D. Vance in Ohio for that Senate seat. This is a guy who's telling Biden to not show up, running of the place as a Northwestern, I believe Northwestern Ohio former congressman, and giving J.D. Vance, a Trump-endorsed candidate, a real run for his money, which maybe is a contrary example. It doesn't really have the star power or the national brand, but has the local and regional viability in that sense. Corey, you want to jump in on this? Well, your point

Corey 29:33

point is well taken here. One of the things that's happened as these campaigns have been nationalized, as Carter was talking about, is money

Corey 29:41

money from other parts of the country, applause from other parts of the country, volunteerism from other parts of the country, prop up candidates in ways they wouldn't be propped up before. In a wild

Zain 29:51

wild way, for sure. Yeah.

Corey 29:53

And in like this hyper actualized way where all of a sudden, you know, you think about a race like Texas, Texas is a huge state, right? But Texas is less than 10% of the population of the United States. And so

Corey 30:04

all of a sudden you're a celebrity on a national scale, that's great. And that puts you in the game, I think in a certain way. But one of the ironies here is that that putting you in like that external money and that external audience you're playing to inevitably means you're not playing the same way to your internal audience. And that's the ones that are actually going to get you at the end of the day. And so the line that people have to walk is they want to get that money. They want to get that shine. In fact, they even want to pull some of that credibility into their state, but they can't lose focus on their state and the contest that's in front of them and the people that are actually voting for them or not voting for them here.

Corey 30:40

And it's almost impossible to do, right? You're playing for such wildly different audiences in a place like the United States when you're running in a state like Texas and you're talking to New York donors.

Zain 30:51

isn't that isn't that quite something carter you know i i this is from memory but i remember that

Zain 30:56

beto when he ran for senate i think he may have raised the most amount of money in a quarter than any senate candidate ever had it was something like 40 million and

Zain 31:06

and it still didn't matter like it still didn't matter in the sense because and to cory's point a lot of that was probably and i'm gonna this is where i actually don't have the facts but i'm gonna make an assumption may have been coastal money there may have been money from the sfs and the dcs and the the New Yorks to be like, we love this guy. And whatever we can do to ensure his viability in Texas, we will. Here's a bunch of checks. And so this conversation of nationalizing some of these figures without giving them the infrastructure regionally, outside of clearly the dollars and perhaps the money, to really actually push through the viability is actually quite an interesting dynamic. And I want to get into whether we might experience

Zain 31:46

experience that here in Canada, or we already are, but Carter jump in on this before, before we get into that part of the conversation.

Carter 31:52

and that's where Stacey Abrams is so interesting. Stacey Abrams built the infrastructure that enabled, um, Warnock and, uh, Ossoff,

Carter 32:01

forgetting the other guys, Ossoff to,

Carter 32:03

to, yeah, to, to win the, uh, their

Carter 32:05

their seats in the Senate. Um, but that infrastructure then, but never coalesced behind her. Right. And we talked a little bit about what happens to candidates, why sometimes candidates aren't as popular as we think they might be in the episode of the last Patreon, where we were talking about Surrey. And I think that this is part of that, right? Stacey Abrams is clearly an effective organizer.

Carter 32:30

She is well known to her communities. She's able to get more people registered to vote, more people actually out voting than ever before. And yet she's unable to get herself elected. And at

Carter 32:43

at some point, we have to point to the candidate because

Carter 32:47

Beto may not have had the organization behind him. Maybe he just had the star appeal that he kind of got from being that reasonable Texan that everybody wishes that they could see. But that's

Carter 33:03

that's different than Stacey Abrams. Stacey Abrams had

Carter 33:06

built the infrastructure to get two other people elected, and it's never been applied to herself. herself. And I think that that has something more to do with the candidate than the actual circumstances.

Carter 33:17

a lot of it

Zain 33:18

Jump in. And then I've got a question for you about these three and these two, sorry, and their future in particular. Go ahead, though.

Corey 33:24

Well, a lot of it has to do with your point, Stephen, about how

Corey 33:28

how sometimes the party wants something and then the public wants something else, you know, and then they try to will it into, move it into a riding or in this case, a district or a state.

Corey 33:38

One of the things that that Stacey Abrams was brilliant about was organizing and galvanizing people who already agreed, right? Or, you know, it's like, now you got to go and vote. We got to organize, we can do this. And that takes a certain set of skills. And then there's another set of skills that is convincing the swing voter that they should vote for you. And they are not necessarily

Corey 33:59

like they rely on the same kind of oratory base, but they're not necessarily the same. And you're not necessarily going to come off the same to both audiences. And I don't actually, I don't follow the georgia race enough to know whether that's the case or not i just want to throw that out there like i'm not following stacy abrams speeches but

Corey 34:16

just because you are a phenomenal organizer and just because you are phenomenal at speaking to your party and um you know speaking to a a you know um like

Corey 34:27

like the city of atlanta right does

Corey 34:30

does not mean you are necessarily uh going to be able to transfer that skill to different audiences right to republicans to swing voters and And

Corey 34:38

maybe that's something to keep in mind, too, as we're having this conversation.

Zain 34:43

Carter, you know, I

Zain 34:44

will talk about their future, but Corey's kind of brought something up for me with his most recent comments, which is we've talked in the past about like the diminishing returns on the dollar, right? Like at a certain point, you know, Beto, these

Zain 34:57

these two are going to be incredibly well funded. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but let's just assume they absolutely were and are.

Zain 35:06

But there's a diminishing return there.

Zain 35:08

Carter, there also seems to be a diminishing, if not no return, and I don't know where it is, and I'm sure it's fluid, on when you become a national brand, the value that that brings to you on a regional level might

Zain 35:22

might be negligible. And I find this is quite interesting. This is a lesson learned in some ways. The more national your brand in some ways, to Corey's point, not only are you trying to straddle by keeping the flame going for the broader party and your star appeal and the the gloss that you might mean to the rest of the country while being laser focused on how to actually win this thing.

Zain 35:41

But it may actually be a hindrance in some ways that you've got national star power or profile. Let me use profile so Corey doesn't have an aneurysm. Right. So in some ways, I think that's a really interesting lesson learned, not just in U.S. politics, but maybe overall. I just wanted to get your thoughts on that particular point.

Carter 35:59

Well, look at Herschel Walker. I mean, Herschel Walker was a national brand, but all he's done with that national brand is bring more attention to himself. And it turns out that bringing more attention to yourself isn't necessarily good. In politics, I've talked often about the curse of the celebrity leader. We've talked about Justin Trudeau. We're very critical, I think, of Justin Trudeau. And part of that criticism

Carter 36:21

criticism comes from him being mostly a celebrity leader. Celebrities rise high. They rise perhaps perhaps higher than anybody else. Um, but they crash fast and that's part of the normal celebrity cycle, right? All of a sudden, one day you're Kim Kardashian and the next day you're Kim Kardashian, you know, you're up, you're down, you're all over the place. You know, who remembers, uh, you know, the celebrities from the, from the early eighties, you know, they show you these pictures now, where, where, where are they now? You know, the, the, the TikTok time-lapses of these really ugly people that turn out to be the people I had crushes on in the eighties, You know, that that's kind of how celebrity works. Celebrity goes up and celebrity goes down. And when you put politics into a celebrity cycle, it may not work. I was, you know, when I was working with Nenshi, I was very worried about the celebrity cycle that he was on. I thought that it was potentially very damaging. He managed it very, very well and turned himself into

Carter 37:22

into a very capable politician, but not every politician is able to manage, especially in the glare of the United States, the celebrity cycle that grinds you up and spits you out as part of that structure. And so if you court, if you're AOC and you're courting the celebrity lifestyle for your politics, all that extra attention probably means that AOC, you know, big prediction here. But I don't think AOC, I think AOC would really struggle to become the president of the United States because she has got so much attention and she is such a focal point for so many.

Zain 38:07

Corey, here's how I see their futures. Let me give you a few multiple choice options. And I'm kind of curious to hear what strategic advice or political advice you'd give to Abrams and Beto. And it might be different for each. I almost see three distinct lanes. Number one, thank you for continuing to be the martyr in Texas slash Atlanta. These places are either red or purple, and you have to fight the uphill battle. So thank you for chipping away this time. We expect to see you in the ballot in four years, next Senate race, whatever. Thank you for the fight. your gloss still remains. We'll still support you at the national level. We can't even come close in these regions if it's not for you. Thanks for this round. We'll see you next cycle. Keep going.

Zain 38:48

lane number two. You know what? Maybe elected office isn't for me. I've got this national brand. I've got this profile. I've got this social following. I've got this cultural following, this quasi-cultural following. flowing maybe i try to influence the outcome of these places um using my voice on the outside number three national

Zain 39:08

national office screw this fucking place right like yes i'm always gonna be from this place georgia or texas but national office that's where my brand is that's where my profile is that's where i'm gonna go through next beto's tried that already abrams hasn't if you're giving him advice cory is it any in any of those three lanes or is it a fourth lane is it a distinct saying, Glenn, what were you telling him after a, let's just assume loss on Tuesday evening?

Corey 39:32

Well, one of the national offices available to you in the United States is you don't need to be elected in

Corey 39:37

in your home state in order to be a secretary in

Corey 39:42

And so that's a possibility. And I think that's probably something that Abrams, I seem to recall there was some reporting that she was offered a cabinet posting. There

Zain 39:51

There was some scuttlebutt about that. I don't remember where it landed. I don't know. Well,

Corey 39:53

Well, obviously, it didn't land in her taking it, but there was some scuttlebutt about it, I believe. So, I mean, in

Corey 40:00

in some ways, I think that's the most natural fit to them. You

Corey 40:03

You know, in some way, maybe, especially,

Corey 40:05

especially, well, certainly in Abrams' case, maybe Beto, I'm being too hard on here. But the reality is part of why people go back to them is because they did represent high watermarks kind of morally or, you know, again, like Ann Richards won in the 90s. It's not like a Democrat can't win in Texas. Right. But the point.

Corey 40:26

But seen as kind of a local high watermark. And that's

Zain 40:30

that's true because their performance in 22 will be less than what they probably both did in 18 respectively. Yeah,

Corey 40:54

through most of them at this point that you could potentially run for. He's not going to run for president again. That's not likely. He's not more likely to win. Now, I would actually argue he's less likely to win Texas governor because he ran for president in 2020 and

Zain 41:20

he should have kept

Corey 41:20

kept his powder dry.

Corey 41:22

But I think that probably because

Corey 41:24

because of the way they've run their races and because of the way that they have been elevated in the national conversation, there is a national role for them. I just don't think it's elected office. I think it's more likely to be pundit, consultant organizer, you know, more of a James Carville style for both of them that they could morph into rather than thinking that they're actually going to run for president at some point. Stacey Abrams, I think still has a path. Stacey Abrams could easily end up being, you

Corey 41:50

you know, a cabinet secretary. I don't think Beto O'Rourke is on that path. That's my view at least. And so for him, I think the pundit organizer approach, galvanize the base is the right approach. And, And, you know, one of the things I've been sitting here mulling about is we,

Corey 42:05

we, Tip O'Neill famously said all politics is local, but well, with apologies to him in 2022, it kind of feels like all politics is national and everybody's trying to get that into

Corey 42:14

into the big conversation, into the poll. And even locally, it's how much are you, your base is trying to see you as a champion for your cause more, more, you know, nationally. And it's the world we live in now where the markets are not so small, they're, they're big and they're segmented, but they're big. and um maybe they should be aligning their skill sets to that rather than trying to win

Corey 42:37

win locally which they they seem to be getting further away from

Zain 42:41

you know carter that's such a good point cory makes because in the past when we used to have politicians emerge i'm going to put emerge in air quotes it used to be on the back end of them winning right they'd win their local race and we'd be like what the fuck happened here who is this person that just surprised us with with a victory and then would be the national profile right now i challenge you on either side of the the ticket to be like is there someone who is a emerging star or someone's profile or someone to promise that we don't know about a national level already that's just doing the work and is going to win it seems like even in the most you know um hard-fought races where and i forget it was a jamie harrison running against lindsey graham people knew about him because he needed like a hundred million dollars to go against lindsey graham it wasn't look at the success story that just came out of, you know, this state. We should learn about this guy. It's more so, let's learn about him. He's already got gloss. He's already got, you know, star power. We're going to usher him with and bless him with all this sort of cash and volunteer and resources. Let's see if he can make a go of the inflated sort of sense of worth that we've given him on the front end rather than reward that with on the back end or in the end game sort of thing. I think it's such an interesting dynamic.

Carter 43:55

You're describing AOC. You're describing AOC versus – it's hard to be under the radar in a Senate race. Good point. Maybe Fetterman, maybe Tim Ryan, if they're successful, will take on this national role. But realistically, a congressperson who defies the odds would probably be the closest we will get to. But they will have to win for us to care. And that's the difference between these folks, you know, the Stacey Abrams and the Beto O'Rourke. Both of them lost and suddenly we care. But both of them also missed the biggest lesson I think that Hillary Clinton can teach. And that is figure out where your money comes from and then go to that place. place. She didn't try and become the next senator from Arkansas.

Carter 44:43

She went to New York and became the next senator from New York. Because you know where Hillary Clinton's money came from?

Carter 44:50

New York. And she was much more suited to being the senator of New York. So

Zain 44:55

So you're giving me your answer in terms of what these two should do next, right? You're actually choosing Langford. No, these two are done.

Zain 45:02

These two are done? Oh, interesting. These two

Carter 45:03

two are done. Really? In

Zain 45:04

any way? These two are are done i don't know about this i don't know why why are they done explain that because the lanes are giving you our national office run again and use your clout um to to keep driving home uh no carter is

Corey 45:18

is dismissing no carter is dismissing one that i think you should have put on the table there zane which is which is what to a different state move move

Carter 45:26

that's the one i think they could have they go

Carter 45:29

go to california done that new york before now two

Carter 45:32

two-time losers don't get get put on the ticket in california new york connecticut delaware they don't get put on the ticket now because they're two-time losers if they'd lost the first time and stacy abrams decided to run uh in um uh you know another state but carter this is where i could have won this is where

Zain 45:49

where i think it's it's different i think them losing

Zain 45:52

losing on tuesday will actually not make a lick of difference to their national profile i don't think i don't even i think there'll be some people They're going to get a

Carter 46:00

a People obituary. I

Carter 46:03

don't think that's going to matter. People obituary. Oh,

Zain 46:04

Oh, my God. It's

Carter 46:05

It's going to be a People magazine obituary. Well,

Zain 46:08

Well, let me ask you this, Carter. Could this happen? Tell me I'm

Carter 46:09

I'm wrong. Oh, yeah, you are. Tell me I'm wrong. Could

Zain 46:12

here, Carter? Yeah, I'm right. Could this happen here, Carter? No. Where we get these superstars that are just constant losers? And you might say we already have one, and someone like Chugmeet Singh. But tell me what you think of something like this happening in the States. All races are national, to Corey's point.

Zain 46:28

And what happens here?

Carter 46:31

there is no way that a person could run in alberta lose uh you know win a leadership or something like that cross the floor and then lose the next election and then stage some sort of miraculous comeback like eight years later there is there is like no fucking way that that could ever happen in alberta let alone in the united states it's an impossible hey yeah what what we're gonna do go off and be a radio host just

Corey 46:58

just sent you a text you want to

Carter 47:02

hang on i haven't got it yet hang on can't see either um no no

Carter 47:13

did you really send me did you also cancel

Zain 47:15

cancel your cell phone so you can what's going on carter what's going on you know carter is as critical as we were i'm just going to go back about seven minutes as critical as we were about justin trudeau i know that guy still still has the disney plus subscription i

Zain 47:26

i know he keeps it on lock he has it fresh disney

Zain 47:29

disney of course he does yeah

Corey 47:31

yeah that guy is watching the the ewoks day in day out guaranteed cory

Zain 47:36

he's also got superstars

Zain 47:37

superstars that just can't win people

Zain 47:39

people with profile who just can't get the w no

Corey 47:42

no because we don't have we don't have offices the same way right uh we don't have governors we don't have senators uh that are representing these large regions um

Corey 47:52

and and And who are our perennial losers? Like, even the quote-unquote losers are winners in the sense that they're usually like an MP or something. But, you know, now that I've said

Zain 48:02

said that, I'm thinking

Corey 48:02

thinking about John Tory in Toronto, who

Corey 48:06

didn't win and then became mayor. I guess it's possible

Zain 48:08

possible you've just got to find your fit. I mean, this race to

Zain 48:11

mayor we've talked about quite often,

Corey 48:12

often, right? Like, especially,

Zain 48:13

especially, Tory's a good example. Horvath and Del Duc are good examples just because they're recent. yeah um so that seems to be like one sort of like failure's next stop is mayorships right

Carter 48:24

that's a step down like that's a step down no one steps up no one goes you know what i failed at a uh you know uh being a counselor i think i'm going to try and run for leader of the liberal party um that's just not the progression that we go on in this country yet

Zain 48:41

yet well we're going to leave that segment we're going to leave that segment there move it on to our next segment our next segment there's a musky scent coming from that bird cory

Zain 48:53

cory hogan it's an interesting thought yeah is is it is it an interesting thought because i feel like i know how you've spent your entire weekend well

Zain 49:02

can i just can i just let

Zain 49:04

let you give us a summary of what the fuck's happening with twitter we've talked about the democracy angle i just wanted to fucking broach this because i know you're so into it so let's do it and i know you guys are twitter power users more so than i am mainly because i don't have um the um uh

Zain 49:22

mainly because i don't have the blue check yeah

Corey 49:25

yeah well the first thing you learn when you get the check is it's actually a white check on a blue background um

Corey 49:32

you'll you'll see someday probably tomorrow when you can buy it for eight dollars

Carter 49:36

yeah what can you say pushed it off now they pushed it off till after the midterms yeah

Carter 49:40

yeah oh have they

Corey 49:41

they actually okay that's probably i mean

Corey 49:44

mean this is actually part of the story like they're just sort of crashing around here i think elon musk did that stupid bit where he walked into twitter's office with the sink 10 days ago you know the deal barely is closed and i feel like we've all aged 100 lifetimes in twitter years since then uh we we have seen him um you know come in say no i'm gonna be really nice to advertisers lots of reporting about advertisers saying we'll tell us the plans uh there was some today about as musk was giving deeply unsatisfying and clearly not thought out answers in real time people were canceling their twitter advertising purchases here yeah

Corey 50:23

then lashed out at these advertisers concurrently he's creating this twitter blue thing where uh you can just buy a verified check mark now whereas before it used to mean and like steven will know this zane you will not because you're not verified i think

Zain 50:37

think i understand Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, for

Corey 50:40

You have to upload your ID. You have to upload evidence of who you are, links to things about you that prove your role that requires you to be verified in some way, shape, or form. And no, now you just have to give them $8, right? Used to be $20.

Zain 50:52

$20. Thank you, Stephen King.

Corey 50:54

Yeah, well, so it was $20. And then Stephen King said, I'm not paying $20. And Elon Musk replied, how about $8? And I don't know if he was always going to end

Zain 51:02

end up on $8. I don't even think Stephen King responded with, sure, $8 sounds good to you. He just said, And he's just like, let me just fucking move with this.

Corey 51:11

But the whole thing just feels really chaotic. It feels like a guy trying a ton of things and reacting one way in the morning, another way in the evening, depending on any number of different factors here. Like at one point, he's saying that he has to do this $8 thing because advertisers are bailing like crazy. Some right wing shithawk says you should name and shame all of those. And he's like, yeah, I'm going to go thermonuclear on them. That might actually

Corey 51:37

be textbook extortion, the way he described it. But, you know, like like the whole thing is madhouse and there's no way he's happy. Like one of the things that's been hilarious to watch is that Elon Musk, having fired the customer support at Twitter, I suppose, is now customer support for Twitter. He's responding to randoms on the Internet about like what they think of his plan. This is the richest man in the world. He looks like the most miserable sack of shit. Nobody could possibly be having a good time doing what he's doing right now. And meanwhile, we're all in this bus that he's driving. He's driving this bus off a cliff and we're all sitting there going, you're a fuck. You're an asshole from the back seats. The whole exercise is the

Corey 52:18

craziest thing I've ever seen, felt or did. And I don't even know what I think about it. But like, it's just, it does have this stench of death right now on the entire bloody exercise. size and i am so pissed off because two weeks ago i said maybe not even two full weeks ago twitter would die a slow death yeah

Corey 52:36

yeah i don't know he's doing his best to give it a quick death because uh you know these these actions are so deeply erratic it seems like he's going to kill advertising if he doesn't get good pickup on this eight dollar verified scam of his

Corey 52:49

like i don't know where they go from here carter

Zain 52:52

carter we've talked about how the the eight dollar thing is a scam we talked about the democratic implications i don't want to get into all all that. Give me your take, Carter. Let's hone in on this a bit.

Zain 53:00

What would your plan be? Let's just choose one thing that I think we could talk about well, because the chaos is hilarious to watch in some ways. However, the advertising, what does he need to do in order to usher in a sense of confidence on the advertising, strategic comms wise? In your mind, Carter, what would you think? Because he's kind of have two messages here, right? Like Twitter is going to be net new. We're going to be the most freest place on the earth. Today is just like we're going to be the most trusted place for information. And then he's like, everything's going to change. Nothing's going to change. Everyone, especially advertisers, are experiencing a bit of whiplash. What would your advice to him be on securing the revenue base? Let's just have a clear-eyed objective. As it relates to that, Carter, from your strategic comms perspective, what would you suggest to him?

Carter 53:48

and figure out a plan.

Carter 53:50

Because Corey's gone through the numbers. I'm I'm not sure if everybody remembers or saw those numbers, Corey, that you put up on your Twitter, but I've seen it in a number of places and it's about a billion dollars in debt servicing costs that he has to pay on a company that doesn't make that much money, period. So how is he going to find a billion dollars in debt servicing? Fortunately, he is the richest man in the world. So let's assume that he can figure out how to at least live one year without having to pay for it from operations he needs to slow down and figure out what his actual strategy needs to be and he can't tweet it right

Carter 54:31

right you can't put it out in 200 karat you know 280 characters at a time and expect that you're going to uh establish confidence anywhere um

Carter 54:41

um so you know i write strategies for a living cory writes strategies you write strategies for a living all

Carter 54:50

all of us went through and write

Carter 54:53

write the strategy and it's longer than 280 characters so figure it out figure out your strategy and then go and communicate that strategy with the big advertisers um i think that you know the only tweet that made sense today was that we're going to become the air you know the the provider of the most reliable news sources in

Carter 55:12

in the world we're going to provide the most reliable information in the world. Okay. Now

Carter 55:17

Now go write that down in the strategy, figure out how you're going to do it. Because if I'm an advertiser,

Carter 55:23

that sounds pretty freaking great.

Carter 55:25

That sounds fantastic, but you better be able to answer a question that I ask. And it's going to be very simple. How, and

Carter 55:34

and if you can't answer how you're You're done. So go figure out what how, the answer to how.

Zain 55:41

Corey, let's talk about advertisers for a second while we're on. Then we can expand in a sec. But from

Zain 55:46

from your perspective, what strategic advice would you give him to secure the revenue? Because this becomes a Armageddon for him if he can't keep his existing revenue stores as paltry as they are compared to what he paid for them. If he can't keep advertisers, this

Zain 56:02

this thing starts sinking faster rather than slower to your earlier point.

Corey 56:07

Yeah. And some of the napkin math I was tweeting out was really about, so there's a billion dollars additional in debt servicing costs just from Twitter. You've got to keep in mind, he paid

Corey 56:16

paid $44 billion for this thing. Some

Corey 56:19

Some of that came of debt that he loaded onto Twitter, and that's where the billion dollars in debt servicing comes from there. But the rest of it, it's not like him having an investment that makes $0 is a very good use of that money. You would normally want to put that money to work in different ways.

Corey 56:33

Maybe in one of your other two massive companies, SpaceX or Tesla, right? So the whole thing, like the billion dollars in some ways is like that understates how much revenue he needs to get for this deal to make a lick of sense, right? And he's

Zain 56:46

he's just not there.

Corey 56:47

there. You would need to sell so many, so many, like tens of millions of these verified checks in an environment where right now there's 400,000 verified people. So you're clearly opening that to everyone. He's made that very clear. What does that mess mean? What does that do to the verified program? It's all very sloppy. And Stephen said the

Corey 57:09

the advice in this particular matter. I understand why Elon Musk feels the sweat. Right. Like it's

Corey 57:14

it's easy for us to say a simple plebs like, oh, I mean, he's he can spend a billion dollars over a year.

Corey 57:21

That is so much money. That is such an insane amount of money for us just to suggest he light on fire. And by the way, he'd probably lose more because the reporting is that the advertisers started getting pretty squeamish the minute he made this bid. And so a lot of the advertising purchases that would be there for next year are not there right now. So the four

Zain 57:40

four and a half,

Corey 57:40

half, five billion dollars that they would have gotten, take

Corey 57:43

take half of that off the top because everybody's taking half of it off the top right now in this economy and then think maybe only half still are getting there. He might be three, four billion dollars in the hole right now that he's got to get out of just to get to where Twitter was economically last year. and so it's very easy for us to say he should take time very hard for him to do it but that is exactly what he needs to do he needs to figure out what the fuck he's doing because this last 10 days has been madness you know he's he doesn't know where he's going that is so very clear and if he thinks he knows he doesn't actually have the information behind it to reinforce and back that up he's saying oh comedy is legal again on twitter and today he's uh saying permaban for any parody accounts unless it says parody

Corey 58:26

parody right he's fucking all over the place and half of this is because a lot of checks were out there changing their name to elon musk and just saying dumb funny things and and it seems like he's taking it very personally one

Corey 58:39

one of the things that i will always tell my my clients or my employers or you know if i'm teaching a course on this on strategy one of my rules for strategy is and he's breaking this so badly i've

Corey 58:50

i've said it on this show but I want to underline it. Never mistake action for direction. He is just doing shit. And he thinks that's a plan, but a plan is about, you know, a focus and clarity and as much not doing things as doing things. And right now I couldn't tell you, and I defy anybody to say with any confidence based on the last 10 days, is this an advertising first plan? Is this going all in on selling the subscriptions for $8? Like what is the actual plan here? He's just trying to do everything at once including layoffs by the way we haven't even talked about the fact that he fired half later

Zain 59:23

later nearly half of half the fucking company

Corey 59:25

company and by the way reporting he's now going back and trying to hire some of them back because he may have like accidentally fired very important people for the features he's trying to create uh

Zain 59:34

mistake yeah that great casey newton reporting is amazing yeah that's never mistake action for direction he

Corey 59:40

he needs to figure out what he's doing before he starts doing it and he's just he's ass backwards on this right now you

Zain 59:47

Corey makes a really interesting point on the business side. I don't let you jump in on any strategy there. I want to shift this maybe a bit.

Zain 59:55

Talk about Elon Musk, the person.

Zain 59:57

Carter, if you as a reputational manager, brand manager, political strategist, operative, were given a call to be like, okay, this

Zain 1:00:05

this is my subject. It's Elon Musk. The task is brand brand preservation. And he has done a number on his brand over the last six months, right? Culminating with the actions of the last 10 days in

Zain 1:00:18

particular, right? So let's summarize the fact that the deal was supposed to be at this number. He wanted to back out of it because it didn't make sense. The Tesla stock started to drop. He finally closed on the deal. But before he did, there was a lawsuit which kind of exposed a lot of his text messages, which also didn't make him look all that great or strategic or the whiz kid billionaire that that we suspected. The moves of the last 10 days, to Corey's point, sloppy, not very thought out, questioning the brand of Elon Musk, the guy that is the richest man in the world and built these two empires in SpaceX and Tesla. If you were advising on the premise of brand, and of course, it's tied to the survival of Twitter because it's his interests, Carter, but what would your advice on Elon Musk's brand be around preserving it, rehabilitating it, on the fact that this guy has kind of built a bit of a brand? If you go back half a decade, the comparison was the Iron Man comparison. The Robert Downey Jr. like this guy, that was what he was seen as. So if that's the angle, Carter, how

Zain 1:01:27

how are you preserving brand? What strategic advice are you giving him on that that front.

Carter 1:01:32

Do you know this guy named Howard Hughes?

Carter 1:01:36

Because that's who we're going to be from now on.

Carter 1:01:39

So celebrity, and I think Jeff Bezos also carries this pretty well. Celebrity is a very difficult thing, right? So the thing with billionaires is that you can be a celebrity billionaire, or you can just be a billionaire. Because if you've got a billion dollars, people are going to know who you are. And

Carter 1:01:57

And it's very easy just to play it up and just to be become that celebrity billionaire and the playboy, the exciting guy that everybody wants to shake your hand. Everybody wants to be around you. Everything is all yours all the time. Except that's not real life. And sure, Howard Hughes took it a little bit too far and became this recluse that was afraid that everybody was trying to kill him and all these things. But there is something to be said about just doing the business and not being seen. Some would argue that I'm really not in a place to give this advice, because I also should probably be seen less. But

Carter 1:02:35

But in Elon Musk's particular situation, he's in real trouble right now. This is going to be his first big public failure. And I'll tell you, the problem with the public failures, everybody wants the blood. They

Carter 1:02:53

They want the blood. And that's what we're doing right now. We're all circling, waiting for the blood and we are even allowed we're even allowing ourselves to use someone like kathy griffin um you know a d-rate celebrity in her own mind uh to to become this cudgel but with which we will beat him about the head because he is he has destroyed uh kathy griffin's spectacular comedy uh by banning her from twitter i

Carter 1:03:22

mean it looks personal it looks stupid it looks looks small, and any actions that he takes right now are going to look that way. So get the fuck out of Dodge. You can go do anything. Give Twitter over to a very competent manager and hope that they don't lose any more of your money than they already have. That's basically what you've done with Tesla.

Carter 1:03:43

He's not involved in Tesla. He owns Tesla. Those are two very different things.

Zain 1:03:48

Corey, just before you jump in on the same question on Elon Musk's brand, Grant, just a PSA for folks, Kathy Griffin's newest special available on Disney+. Corey, if you were helping... Oh, I'm so sorry that Christopher didn't have a chance to watch that. Oh, neither will you, Stephen.

Zain 1:04:05

Oh, that's bad. Fuck!

Zain 1:04:07

Jesus Christ, that really sucks for both of you.

Zain 1:04:12

Brand, Elon, what would your strategic advice be?

Corey 1:04:18

So finding a graceful climb down is going to be job number one here and steven has

Corey 1:04:23

started that work it really is about declaring

Corey 1:04:26

declaring victory after you've made these changes even if they're a fiasco and say i did what it's a private company nobody needs to see it obviously it's going to leak out banks will have that information because they own a chunk of it the saudis own a chunk of it which

Corey 1:04:39

we could get into almost on a separate track here um

Corey 1:04:44

you know ultimately you just need to be able to say i did what i came here to do now i'm returning to my home planet and get the fuck out of there and hope that you can salvage this thing because

Corey 1:04:54

because look i'll tell you if there

Corey 1:04:56

there is a learning curve for anything in life uh talented people can make adjustments and go and do things that are different from the things that they did before elon musk is

Corey 1:05:05

is an idiot but he's not an idiot uh you know and he can he

Corey 1:05:09

probably start to figure out some of this stuff but he's got to ask himself a does he want to does he want to consume his entire life and this because again i'll go back to he cannot be having having a fun time this past 10 days just based on the reporting just based on his own like

Corey 1:05:22

like how he's coming off on twitter right and

Corey 1:05:25

and then b do

Corey 1:05:27

you know your own speed limit i have no evidence that he does nothing he's done in the past makes me think he does and you got to underline just because you're good at something doesn't mean you're good at everything right

Corey 1:05:38

just because you're good at something doesn't mean you're good at everything and he might be materially bad at this. When you think about some of the things that he did at Tesla, that he did at SpaceX, that were seen as bold, that maybe even made a lot of sense. At SpaceX, it was a lot of this bullying attitude kind of got him into the government. He fought with the government. He got those contracts, right? At Tesla,

Corey 1:06:01

fired the PR department, does not have a PR department, says the cars speak for themselves. Well, if that isn't a PR move, move. I don't know what is. But that's

Corey 1:06:11

And by the way, they're getting killed on certain things if you look at their Fremont factory and whatnot. So maybe not even

Corey 1:06:18

When you are Twitter and you are 24-7 in a PR crisis everywhere in the world,

Corey 1:06:24

do you lay off, as has been reported, 98% of your PR department? Does that make sense in this business model? What he's doing is he's taking an approach that worked and maybe not not

Corey 1:06:36

worked because of actions but worked and he's saying i'm going to apply that approach here here and i see no evidence that a job that is ultimately about navigating the bullshit is

Corey 1:06:47

is going to have the same solutions as navigating manufacturing i mean it's just that's my bottom line on this and um and so he's got to get out step one is getting out and that means declaring victory regardless of what happens and finding somebody else to run this thing carter

Zain 1:07:01

carter cory's last point is very similar to what we say in politics. You don't run the same playbook from the last race to the next one. It's

Zain 1:07:08

It's a different set of circumstances, and it seems to apply here as well. We're going to leave that segment there. Moving on to our final segment, our over, under, and our lightning round. Stephen Carter, we do it for you, and we ask you first, because Stephen Carter, are you going to, right after this episode, go upstairs to your home and storm in and make the case that the family, the Carter family, needs disney plus once again are you doing it yes or no uh

Carter 1:07:35

uh no um heather scares the shit out of me most of the time and we are cutting costs right now so uh

Carter 1:07:43

uh i bought some fat bikes in a tesla and i believe i am done my expenditures i'm not going to even risk it for 14 a month i'm going to risk

Zain 1:07:51

sucks for you that you won't be able to watch the entirety

Zain 1:07:54

entirety of ali mcbeal uh

Corey 1:08:00

by the way. I

Zain 1:08:01

I would agree. Corey, Beto O'Rourke, his next political office. I'm just assuming he's losing on Tuesday night. Every poll. If he wins, we'll just bring this episode up. We'll do a director's cut. I'll just eat crow, literally. But I'm assuming he loses on Tuesday night. I'm assuming Abrams loses on Tuesday night. I don't want them to, but it seems like

Zain 1:08:20

What's his next political office, Corey?

Zain 1:08:22

What's his next move? move his

Corey 1:08:24

his next move is like uh think tank organizer pack uh you know talking head on cnn or msnbc and if

Corey 1:08:33

if he has a move beyond that he

Corey 1:08:36

he should calm down like he's got to stop running for stuff every two years and he should try to wait until his hair is entirely gray instead of mostly gray and uh and that he can say you know i've learned a lot in the intervening 10 years

Zain 1:08:50

it is easy for you to say motherfucker sorry that's my Beto

Zain 1:08:54

Carter what does Beto O'Rourke do next

Carter 1:08:58

we're never going to hear from him again

Zain 1:09:03

Stacey Abrams do next

Carter 1:09:05

who nope she's gone too she's

Zain 1:09:10

people will never hear from her again she's definitely not I think you're wrong about I think

Corey 1:09:14

think both are wrong about that

Zain 1:09:16

Corey what is Stacey Abrams

Corey 1:09:17

Abrams do next no no i'm throwing i'm throwing you onto the the seat here i think

Zain 1:09:21

himself so much i don't see anything i

Zain 1:09:25

i think it's him i think he's got the same branding he'll just use the same branding i'm holding up the sticker yeah you could replace for set over everything for

Zain 1:09:35

for tomorrow for the people for governor you just throw on anything you want at the bottom of this we

Carter 1:09:42

we have that already on your on your zane velgey for the original like what the

Zain 1:09:47

he is he is is actually swerving a lot into my lane this is true he is he multi-purpose he

Zain 1:09:53

he looks to part more so than i do that's well listen when more leader

Zain 1:09:58

anything i think the

Corey 1:09:58

the alberta party needs a new leader beto might be our guy it might be perfect i

Zain 1:10:03

i don't see i don't see particularly see anything in him other than if it were national office then i think there's like there's some opportunity um that

Zain 1:10:12

that being said i just think this is his game he's just like fuck it i'm gonna run When's the next Senate opening? Okay. I don't know. If he actually wants to be elected,

Corey 1:10:19

elected, he should run in a congressional seat that he stands a hope in hell in.

Zain 1:10:24

He was a congressman

Zain 1:10:25

congressman from El Paso. Yeah, I'm aware of this. I'm

Corey 1:10:29

of this. He should run in a congressional seat that he's got a chance in hell in, and he should just keep kind of the fires going a little bit while he figures out what his next move is.

Zain 1:10:38

And we'll make sure he listens to this episode. What is Stacey

Carter 1:10:40

Abrams? You're never going to hear from him again. Thank you, Carter. He's done.

Corey 1:10:43

What does Stacey Abrams do next, Corey?

Corey 1:10:46

i think she finds her way into the biden cabinet oh

Zain 1:10:53

question for you as we round out hang on can

Carter 1:10:54

can you ask me again

Zain 1:10:55

again i did ask you because what she's gonna

Carter 1:10:57

gonna do she's gonna she's gonna follow the same path as dave and open a little employment agency trying to get everybody a job

Zain 1:11:10

fine that worked out

Corey 1:11:13

anyways like we should talk about the ending of that movie because if

Corey 1:11:16

if if someone's like wow she just fell hard for this guy who looked exactly like her husband like that that'd be weird too yeah

Carter 1:11:22

yeah that was weird yeah it was not right yeah there

Zain 1:11:27

there is a show called dave on disney plus which is supposed to be very good so if folks want to check out the show dave which

Zain 1:11:33

which i suspect is very similar to the movie are

Carter 1:11:35

are you back on cbc doing your your you know weekly netflix proposals like How many gigs ago was that for you? I'm literally just

Zain 1:11:42

just looking up to let people know what Christopher Freeland is missing, okay? That's my entire aim. Corey, I'm going to start with you on this final question.

Zain 1:11:52

Do the Democrats retain control of the very important Senate?

Corey 1:11:59

Okay, can we talk a little bit about this? Can we take a moment? Do you want to break it down a bit?

Corey 1:12:04

Yeah, we can. It's not like the most robust analysis that needs to be done, But after Dobbs, there was this real sense, especially in all of the various off-cycle elections that were occurring, that the Democrats were outperforming. Even in states they were losing, right? They were outperforming. They were losing by 10 points fewer than they were supposed to, things like that.

Corey 1:12:27

We seem to have lost that entirely, and I'm not 100% convinced that's based on data. I still think there's a chance that the Democrats seriously outperform on Tuesday night, although it does seem that the consensus has drifted away from that entirely.

Corey 1:12:41

And certainly the polls suggest that it's going to be a coin toss in the Senate, and it's almost a given that the Republicans will get the House.

Corey 1:12:50

course, if the Republicans get the House and the Senate, things are going to get pretty fucky around here. I mean, it's going to get pretty fucky regardless, if the

Corey 1:12:58

the Republicans manage to control one of those chambers, I guess I mean. but um there

Corey 1:13:03

there is in my mind it's not impossible that the democrats somehow outperform by five points and if they outperform by five points they they'll hold the house and they'll win the senate you

Zain 1:13:15

think that's likely though cory no

Carter 1:13:17

yeah and when the easter bunny comes to your house what are you going to do like you

Carter 1:13:22

you know like what other

Carter 1:13:24

other fairy tales should we believe in cory the easter bunny santa claus what do

Corey 1:13:28

do you want to believe why do you think okay so listen the cynic in me the person who's watched america blow itself up too much in the past decade to possibly believe in miracles is saying yeah you know the funny thing is carter i would say that my my heart says they're going to lose but my head says we have this countervailing data that democrats are outperforming they're polling right now and is that not relevant did you even carter

Carter 1:13:54

did you even listen to of last week's, the Patreon episode where I got my ass handed to me in Surrey. Did you even listen to that?

Carter 1:14:03

did I say? I said, I was looking for data.

Carter 1:14:07

I was looking for data that would reinforce my narrative, come hell or high water. And I'll tell you something, worth $20 a month, that episode alone. And the back-to-back Jyoti Gondek episode, plus this one. I mean, I mean, how

Carter 1:14:22

how are we not charging more, Corey? How are we not charging more?

Corey 1:14:26

Especially with inflation where

Corey 1:14:27

where it is, right? I mean, it just feels like...

Carter 1:14:29

like... Let me tell you one more thing, though. Like, this

Carter 1:14:32

this is us just putting wishful thinking on it. I am now, I'm done with wishful thinking because I am watching in real time the end of an American democracy that you and I were walking on the streets of Washington, D.C., not that long long ago talking about could this day ever happen and it's happening cory it's happening we are watching in real time the end of a of a real democracy and it won't happen overnight it won't happen you know by next thursday um but it very well could happen in the well i think it will happen in our lifetimes last

Zain 1:15:10

last year carter you don't you don't you don't think the democrats Democrats take the Senate? Is that what I'm taking? Just so I'm very clear. You don't think? I

Carter 1:15:19

I think it's going to remain. I think it's going to remain 50-50. Oh,

Carter 1:15:22

think it is? And the Democratic control of the Senate, such as it is with Sinema and- Manchin.

Carter 1:15:32

Manchin. Manchin, you know, basically saying, oh, no, we're not going to protect American democracy. fuck that i'm from alabama

Carter 1:15:40

alabama and fucking arizona so fuck

Corey 1:15:42

fuck the rest of the country but keep going

Carter 1:15:46

well it's all the same to me isn't it do

Carter 1:15:48

do i even care anymore no because it's

Corey 1:15:50

it's over this is why it's the

Carter 1:15:51

the end of american democracy 50 50 50 50 in the senate and uh the the democrats lose the house write

Carter 1:15:59

write it down see

Corey 1:16:00

see if larry heather will share that website code with you

Corey 1:16:06

that's a deep cut

Zain 1:16:07

for some that's a joke for seven people some classic midi music

Carter 1:16:11

we're gonna leave it there that's

Zain 1:16:12

that's a wrap on episode 10 13 of the strategist my name is with me as always cory hogan stephen carter and our disney plus membership and we'll see you next time

Transcript