Episode 1024: Everylie Everywhere All at Once

Zain 0:01

This is a strategist episode 1024. My name is Zain Velji. With me as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, I lied to the audience. I said see you next year. But guess what, Carter? It's still this year.

Zain 0:14

Because I pulled you together for a very special episode, Stephen.

Carter 0:18

Yeah, I mean, lying to the audience is one of the things that we're most proud of. So that's

Carter 0:23

that's what we do. Yeah, you

Corey 0:23

you know what? I actually

Corey 0:24

lied to the audience too. What did you say? I was in Hawaii for the last two weeks. What?

Corey 0:30

That's amazing. So when I was talking about the cold, cold weather, that

Corey 0:34

that wasn't true. I kind of Santos-ed you all. You

Carter 0:37

You mean that time when you were in the bathtub recording the episode? Yeah,

Corey 0:43

Yeah, yeah. I was not actually in Calgary. Can you believe that? Wow. Or the other time where there was like the Hawaiian prince behind me. Yeah. You could see the beach and hear kind of like soft tropical music. Yeah.

Zain 0:54

Yeah, I was in Hawaii. Personally, I couldn't put it together.

Zain 0:57

It's almost like I'm a part of the Democratic Party. I just couldn't put it together. I have brought you here for a very special reason. I have brought you here, no, not to do a live reaction episode, Stephen, to our Holiday Spectacular, which is available if you haven't listened to it. Rave reviews, by the way. Rave reviews on the Holiday Spectacular. Yeah.

Zain 1:16

Getting a lot of good reviews. Yeah, people love this. People love the eulogies every year. I mean, they love it every year because it's a tradition. But I have brought you together because there is a story, Carter, as they say in our political zeitgeist, not one of our own here in Canada, but a story out of the United States that has opened up a line of inquiry that is only suited by the capable hands of the strategist podcast, Carter. I'm talking about one George Santos. You see, that's a name that Corey referred to earlier. We don't even know if that is his name. But Carter, this has become quite the story because George Santos is a newly elected congressman in new york if i'm not mistaken long island baby long island um but carter he's a young man who apparently um does

Zain 2:08

does not or did not have the college degree he said he did no

Zain 2:11

no claim he held jobs that he did not hold at goldman sachs and others he claimed to own property that he did not uh he claims to have never committed check fraud which seems a very interesting thing to overtly claim you have never done, but he has. He claims to have been Jewish, but he said that he's actually Jew hyphen ish.

Zain 2:31

He's also hilarious. That's one thing he claims to be. Has not claimed to be, but I agree. He's also described to be a self-described gay man, but he had a year-long heterosexual marriage that ended in 2019. Carter, this has been all the rage politically. He also did an interview on Fox News with Tulsi Gabbard, who, by the way, was a Democratic presidential candidate, now on Fox News. Welcome to 2022, 22 fucking people. This is insane. Anyways, he did an interview where he tried to apologize for all this stuff, tried to give a wide-ranging interview. It did not happen. All

Zain 3:00

All of this is put into question, A, his fitness to lead and be a congressperson. But Carter, this is not about that, because we are not in the United States. We really don't care much about George Santos. We really don't care about him as an individual. I mean, he's interesting in the sense of why he's created a different life for himself and what that might mean psychologically. ideologically, but there's a political element to this, of course, as it relates to Carter, vetting, opera research, the mechanics of that, why this happened, do the Republicans know about it, why the Democrats not catch it, the implications of, wait, could this happen here? That is why I've brought you all together, because I want to discuss and use George Santos as a springboard, because, you know, he has opened up a question that I think many of us are wondering, which is, what the fuck? And can this happen here, Carter? So with

Zain 3:51

with that being said, I want to actually get started on the what the fuck element of it, Carter. When you read and have seen this story play out over the last week, I'd say it's been roughly a week, right? Where the initial claims by the New York, by a smaller newspaper, and then the New York Times, and then the Washington Post started poking and prodding. And then he said, listen, guys, I'm going to make a statement. And then he admitted kind of to having some falsehoods in his resume, and then ultimately to that series of interviews. Carter, when you saw all of this, I have a question for you that's perhaps a little bit more specific than what the fuck. It's, did you feel like what you were seeing was something that could

Zain 4:32

could happen here? Let me start with that. When you saw the drips and the drabs of what you witnessed with George George Santos, did you say, fuck, I know that story because there's one of them here? Or did you think, holy shit, this is crazy, like the rest of the internet reacted? From your strategist perspective, let's start there.

Carter 4:52

I totally thought this is something that could happen here. And I totally thought this is something maybe that should happen here. Lord knows there's a lot of candidates I'd like to make up rather than actually have to work with.

Zain 5:04

name names? It's just before the holidays. Do you want to just commit all your sins right now? No, I'm fine. I'll

Carter 5:08

I'll let people draw their own conclusions. Um, but it

Carter 5:12

it not only has it happened or not only could it happen, it has happened here where we've had candidates who, uh, have a history that they try and get away from, um, that are able to get elected and then things are found out afterwards. Uh, maybe not to the same degree, maybe not to the same, you know, everything is happening all at once, but even you think of Andrew Scheer and his, his, uh, his claims of his history of, of work experience that he had. And I mean, essentially, the guy's an insurance salesman, but he was able to to puff that up. You know, there was there was elements of truth combined with some stylistic opportunism to to take him to a different level. And I think that that's relatively common. common um i also think that that some of what happened in the united states with the uh opposition trying to raise concerns or missing other concerns and trying to take things to the media i know we'll talk about that a little bit later or at least i hope we will um

Carter 6:12

know that that happens here i know that that if the opposition you know if if the other side says that this is a problem in the media can be very reluctant to pick it up and cover it.

Zain 6:24

So, Corey, you know, when I say, can this happen here, let me get a little bit deeper, because Carter's actually hit on it. And I think, what was the term you used? Everything all at once, Carter? That's just it. That's what's really interesting about the Santos story, right? And Carter, just to be clear, this is not President Santos from the West Wing. Corey would not

Carter 6:39

not understand. No, I had that sense. Yeah, thank

Zain 6:41

His resume, impeccable. His resume, completely impeccable.

Carter 6:45

But as made up as George Santos. Yeah,

Zain 6:47

Yeah, that's true. It's true. But made up. So, you know, that should have been a warning. Corey,

Zain 6:52

everything all at once is what's interesting here, right? It's almost like a net new creation of self. Like there's almost like a psychological element to this, that when you put all of this together, identity, education, employment, history, religion, faith, everything had either a fabrication or an outright lie. It's almost like the only thing that was real was the physical manifestation of this guy. And then everything else scaffolding it was either, like I said, a fabrication or an outright fiction that he either internally believed or knew he was sort of and kind of convinced himself of or knew he was explicitly lying about. So when I asked that question, could this happen here with the frame I've just given you? Corey, could this happen here?

Corey 7:36

Yeah. I have not seen it at the level of like a federal elected official, but we have seen it. There was a person who was going

Corey 7:45

going to run for mayor of Calgary. I won't bother naming him because he's not the person in the story. And he hired a campaign manager. And that campaign manager said, I have all this money for you. I have all of these endorsements.

Corey 7:55

And it wasn't true. None of it was true. The person who was supposedly a legitimate candidate for office had to drop out because he didn't have the hundreds of thousands of dollars that his campaign manager said he had. And when they started digging into the campaign manager's background, not only was he using different names along the way, you know, Josh Baba, Josh Bredo. You know, it turned out he had made similar fabrications up in other roles, you know, about massive donations that were coming, I think, to like, you

Corey 8:28

you know, widows of like war veterans and, you know, like really dramatic stuff. And it

Carter 8:32

it was all fake.

Corey 8:33

fake. And, you know, at the time, I remember thinking like, what in the actual fuck? Because it was somewhat tangentially related to things I was doing at the time because he almost ran in 2009 to be a candidate in a by-election in Calgary Glenmore for the liberals. and ultimately decided to run for mayor instead because his campaign manager said there was all this money. And then he launched a website and had to drop out when it learned that he didn't have the money that his campaign manager said he did.

Corey 9:00

But ultimately, my feeling about the person was he's not well, right? If you're fabricating these things and you're moving from lie to lie and you're just addicted to the endorphin rush of that one moment in the story or something, there's something unwell about that, right? I'd like to start there. But I would also say that he is a logical conclusion of our nihilistic times. You're right. It's everything all at once. But we have seen versions of this. We've seen embellishments that people brush off and say, oh, I don't care, right? Here in Canada, Stephen already mentioned, Andrew Scheer said he was an insurance broker. But Scheer had one of the four things required to be an insurance broker, had worked in an insurance office for six months, I think is what was finally there. I can also think of a liberal candidate who claimed to have a PhD. And while he'd done most of the work to do that, he didn't. I was on the Greenlight Committee that should have caught that, which is probably why it sticks with me. I can think about candidates talking about being small business owners or consultants who were, in fact, basically functionally unemployed. I can think about times people have strongly implied degrees using language on their bios like attended University X, but did not have it. I can think about times where they did say they had degrees and implied they got them when they were younger, but in fact, maybe just finished them up a year ago before they were going on for a major job. And, you know, I've certainly seen a ton of cultural connections implied, you know, we've seen this in Alberta as recently as this month or last month, where our premier implied indigenous ancestry, and there's no evidence of that. We see this all of the time. And it used to be parties would hold their own to account for those things, because it was so damaging to the reputation of the party. And ultimately, parties held their own to account because the public would hold them to account if they didn't. And over time, we're seeing people care less and less. And as a result, we're seeing parties care less and less. And one of the things that really floors me, you asked like, what was the what the fuck? The what the fuck for me is the

Corey 10:54

the Republican response, which is like watching with concern. I'm not so

Corey 10:59

They seem much more concerned about the one seat than they do about the fact that somebody has absolutely fabricated a resume at this point. But that to me is the telling concerning thing, because it tells us exactly where we are. They are just one vote on a whip count. That's all they care about. It's their sports team. They don't care about anything else, because the fact that they don't have literally every other member of Congress calling for this person's resignation

Zain 11:27

Carter? Respond to that. Corey, I don't want to boil it too sort of simplistically, but Carter, is this a bit of a sign of the times in that sense, that nihilistic sort of sign of the times that Corey's been referencing? I

Carter 11:40

I mean, Matt Gaetz currently faces charges. I mean, he's been unelected, I believe. Or is he still back in? I can't even remember. Lauren Boebert is an absolute disaster. Marjorie Taylor Greene, you know, is a QAnon supporter. order uh sure they didn't lie about necessarily any of those things but they by any measure aren't suited for public life and uh the republicans embrace and hold on to them um that's that is as as cory said the sign of the times the price of admission is not now to be an honorable member or you know like that's what we call the the members of the house of commons and such as an honorable member um instead

Carter 12:19

instead the expectation is to be a loyal member and that's where the republicans are off track on on things like this the other is a false sense of false equivalency right

Carter 12:30

right there's a tremendous number of people who are supporting um you

Carter 12:34

you know santos saying well biden lies uh or you know you

Carter 12:39

know you can even see fact checkers right like the cnn fact checker whose name escapes me, Dale something or something, Dale.

Carter 12:48

Yeah, Canadian. Great. He

Carter 12:50

fact-checks Biden as hard as he fact-checks Trump. And I think that there's a fundamental difference in the type of lies that are being told or mistruths that are being told. One is an active type of lie where a person is lying knowingly, and I think that's Trump. and another is more a a spin or something that is a little bit different um now those two things may be seen by the by others as as the exact same issue but i don't see them as the same and i don't see um this this santos thing is the same as uh you know someone

Carter 13:30

someone just taking a different spin on their experience uh cory listed off a number of things that he's seen in the past i think that that small business owner one is really the best example when he said the small business owner who's functionally unemployed that is uh so often a person who is running for office they can't find another job um or they can't find the income through their self-employment so they actually put themselves up to be the candidate to be the person who's running because they fundamentally need the job uh and i don't begrudge

Carter 14:01

begrudge them that i think that there's lots of good people who uh who need jobs in public life.

Zain 14:07

Let me open that bracket for a second, because I do want to go back to this Corey's mention of this is a sign of the times. And I'll talk about whether that he believes that that exists here in parallel to how it exists in the United States. And we'll get back to that. But let's open this bracket on the why we have seen candidates in the past, either with a compounding effect of multiple fabrications or lies or singular ones, why we have seen them effectively

Zain 14:33

effectively make these stories up. Corey mentioned one that I want to revisit for a second. You said in your case, you thought someone was unwell. It's a sensitive topic. I don't want to dig deeper into it. I don't even know who you're referring to. But you mentioned that you think this person's unwell. So there's maybe a chronic sort of mental health issue or something. Carter kind of said there's that person who's kind of chronically unemployed, that politics is their way to earn an income. And they were hoping that they can maybe say small business owner, and then politics would effectively, you know, and that looks good on a resume. It's not very much tested. Corey, maybe I'll start with you on this. Any other reasons why you've seen people lying? It could be about, you know, they feel like, A, they're not going to get caught, like other people don't call it out. It's kind of accepted. Give me the broader structure when you've met with someone either as a political candidate or you've seen them be elected and you're like, you know, I knew them. They really didn't do that. What do you think kind of leads to this particular moment from your experience yeah

Corey 15:24

yeah you know it's it's some sort of mix of need compulsion and desire right they're they're tempted in some cases by the opportunity that presents it uh often it starts as an embellishment or it starts with very specific language uh that over time just becomes very uh you know oh it just expands right so let's use the example of attended university x well Well, it was attended University X and then a campaign staffer gets their hands on it and says, graduated from University X and they don't correct it, right?

Corey 15:56

right? And then all of a sudden it's there in a different way. So it can also just happen through a game of telephone that they don't correct because the embellishment is of value to them. But ultimately, I think the reason they don't correct it, the reason they make the embellishment in the first place is because they've done a risk benefit analysis and they have decided either to take a gamble or that the risk benefit analysis makes sense for them to go out on that side and so here we are we're in a world where politicians are legally allowed to lie right you know there's no there's no contract with a politician when you quote-unquote hire them you know you're not getting what they promised there is no truth in advertising for politicians as we've already talked about and the only kind of break on all of that was the public the public stepping in and saying unacceptable you are you are dead to us and And if your party stands by you, they are dead to us too. By extension, yeah. Yeah, over time, we have seen that that risk-benefit analysis has changed a lot as times have become more partisan. And so, yeah, this is a really nuts example. Like, this is an extreme manifestation, as we've talked about. But we have also seen people brush off an awful lot. You're looking at the United States, Donald Trump's resume. Do we want to talk about Donald Trump? Like, all of the fraud allegations in the past. You know, that's, that was brushed away. So why wouldn't a Republican candidate think that was okay? We're willing to forgive most anything if they're on our sports team, it seems. So yeah, if that's the case, you've got your Republican base locked up. The risk benefit analysis becomes, if I make this lie, my team will stand by me and maybe I'll convince some people in the middle. That totally changes the math. path.

Zain 17:40

want to come back to the sports team analogy you've made, because it's a good one. Carter, I want to give you an opportunity on this to expand on the list of the whys from your strategist and political operative experience. Why have you seen candidates embellish the truth? And it might just be the blindingly obvious. No one's called them out on it, so they expand it a bit. They add another degree to it. I mean that in both terms. They may add a degree in terms of what they graduate, but they go an extra degree in terms of the fabrication. But I'm curious, what have you seen, and have you had to call candidates out to say, hey, reign this in, or I know this did not be true, or have you had to contour certain things? Curious about your experience and your thoughts. I'm not sure

Carter 18:15

sure that I've ever run into something like this. But keep in mind, they're not crafting their resume for the day that they declare office. They start crafting their resume years in advance, years and years in advance. And that crafting of the resume may be to get a job, or it may be to get an appointment to a board, or it may be... So it just continues to add up. That's

Corey 18:37

That's a great point. That is a great point,

Corey 18:39

point, right? Like, it might be their public bio from their volunteer work, and they really wanted

Carter 18:43

wanted to be on that. And they really wanted to get this position.

Zain 18:46

Where it would not have been, just to be clear, where it would have not been met with that level of scrutiny, or that

Zain 18:52

that level where embellishing actually would actually be totally fine, because it would get them that board gig, it would get them that job, it would get them that whatever

Corey 19:00

whatever they needed. fine but yeah it would have worked sure the risk benefit analysis sorry they're in fine is not the right word in many cases carter is a hundred percent correct that's a that's a brilliant i worked

Carter 19:09

worked with a young woman who who put forward that she was a graduate of the university of calgary faculty of management in the same year that i graduated now you

Carter 19:18

you know we would have bumped into each other um the dean of the faculty of management was on the board of the place where I worked. Um,

Carter 19:25

Um, you know, like it wasn't exactly a clever con and she was, she was gone. Um, you know, the, the moment she found there was found out she, she just left because at the end of the day, um, she needed the degree to get the job. She did not need the degree to keep the job.

Carter 19:44

Do you know what I mean? Like these, these, these pieces of paper also, this is one of the foundational problems in our society. I think we get our degrees, we get our, and we get into doing the work. And the degree, the

Carter 19:55

the degree is just a symbol to get you into the work. And then after that, it is about your skill, your ability, your drive. And, and those things are often unrelated to the degree. So, you

Carter 20:05

you know, I can see a person putting down that they have a degree when they, when they got a third of the way through, I can see people who've, who've, who've embellished their resumes and said, yeah, I worked for Goldman Sachs when really, you know, they were a consultant at xyz who had a contract with goldman sachs right um i've i've worked with x and z and y and those are all just embellishments they just take it half a step and then by the time they're running for political office it's not that they believe the lies i

Carter 20:34

don't want to give them this kind of this ability to rise themselves up or to eliminate themselves from falsehood it um but they the

Carter 20:43

the the lies are now part of who they are right

Carter 20:45

right so they're just there yeah one more one more level in and you

Carter 20:51

know in the in the republicans and the democrats and they don't have the same uh vetting

Carter 20:57

vetting to allow a person to run so a person gets nominated they they wind up up winning the nomination um you

Carter 21:05

you know i'm not sure that long island in was

Carter 21:09

was expected to be competitive and george santos probably wasn't even someone who was considered legitimate when the reading that i'm reading so he

Carter 21:16

he they probably didn't give a shit they were probably happy to have a warm body there and then all of a sudden he wins and i think that that's also where you You saw some NDP challenges in 2015, right? Candidates that had bio issues. I don't want to put it on the same equal level,

Carter 21:34

level, but people who were

Carter 21:38

were thought of to be kind of better candidates that weren't necessarily the best because their resume had been embellished as opposed to represented perfectly.

Zain 21:50

Corey, I'll let you respond to this. And I want to then start with you as well on this, getting back to the core of this, the could this happen here question with a bit more texture to it. But respond to Carter. And then let me come back to you because I've got a framework I want to throw your way and see where you stand with it.

Corey 22:05

Well, I think Carter's point was brilliant. We often think of politicians as just political constructs making decisions for the first time, but they're humans who are taking in their experiences forward. And I'll think about about the example of that liberal candidate i alluded to who claimed to have a phd and it was reported in the media later that he did not uh probably we were not the first people he told he had a phd too right yeah

Corey 22:28

you know uh and and so the minute you're running for office and you're putting those bios together the not putting it would be interesting

Corey 22:37

interesting right that would be in a lot of various contexts and it would probably call into question other parts of his life so in some ways the

Corey 22:43

politicians get in too deep and i do think that there is this risk-seeking behavior that politicians have at a higher degree than the average population as well yeah right and so the same that's the same very interesting point as well it compulsions that would move you to make those uh claims in the first place will also lead you into taking gambles like running for public office at higher degrees i'm not saying all politicians are liars i'm not i'm not going to take that nihilist approach but i'm saying you often see these behaviors cluster together i

Carter 23:10

i often I often say, I think that all politicians have a vice, like a significant vice that needs to be hidden.

Corey 23:16

Me too. I have the same theory.

Carter 23:18

theory. Because normal people, and this is the same thing when you meet billionaires, right? You meet a billionaire and you find out that they're just fundamentally flawed. Well, why are they fundamentally flawed? You don't get to be a billionaire by not being psychologically off a little bit. You know, like it's just, it is what it is. And the same type of thing holds true with a politician. they are fundamentally flawed people as we all are as we all are but those flaws tend to be amped up a smidge right so they don't just gamble a little bit they gamble a lot they don't just drink a little bit they drink a lot they don't just have sex with one other person other than their wife they have sex with all the other people other than their wife that

Zain 24:02

feels like you're feels like you're targeting a specific person with at least a few of those examples well

Corey 24:06

well but there's a reality here i mean he's totally right but let's also give it a more charitable read as well which is for all of us our vices and virtues are tend to be the same things right they're just you know the extreme manifestation of like think about elon musk like his compulsions led him to success in certain areas and they've led him to total chaos in other areas but but you don't get to be great generally speaking as as a well-rounded individual You get to be great by being really

Corey 24:35

really overabundant in one thing, and that overabundance can cause you problems as well if it's applied in a different context. And so you see a lot of that. You certainly do. This to me is interesting because, you know, it was across the board. It was across the board, which to me, again, speaks to kind of a more foundational compulsion that he

Corey 24:54

he must have had.

Zain 24:57

But I want to come back to this question. question. I'll get back to George Santos in a second about the Democrats and the Republicans and how could this have happened. But I want to come back to that core question I started with Carter. And I want to throw your framework back at you, Corey, which is the

Zain 25:10

the fundamental question here is, is there any safeguards in Canada that

Zain 25:14

that you feel like the George Santos story, the everything, everywhere? Yeah, I'm gonna start with you on this one, Corey. All at once could not happen. Because in some ways, we might say that we might have more safeguards. In other ways, you might argue that your sports team analogy that we're willing to defend any behavior, as long as it's part of our sports team, and to what you and Carter have said about loyalty, that that might exist even stronger in Canada, with party discipline and with how we conduct our business, than it does in the United States. So I'm not asking you to reconcile that, but give me what you think the Canadian take is. Do we have added safeguards? Do we have removed safeguards? And then when we talk about loyalty, doesn't it exist to a greater degree here than it does on the other side of the border?

Corey 25:56

Ah, yes, but you're forgetting one thing. and we talk about this a lot, in the United States, candidates pick their parties. In Canada, party picks their candidates, right? And so our big safeguard to avoid that happening here that the Americans don't have to the same degree is the green light process, the idea that candidates need to be approved by their political parties in order to even run for the nomination. So I mentioned that liberal candidate. And I mentioned that I was on the green light committee that should have caught that. One of the things that happens here is when somebody says, I would like like to be a candidate for a political party, to try to avoid this messiness, you fill out like a 50-page questionnaire about all these elements of your life. And then you are vetted by the party before you even get a chance to put your hand up and say, I'm running for the nomination, right? You don't even get to say you're a candidate for the nomination until you've gone through this particular process. And that process is quite thorough. I mean, it was very thorough when I I was doing it a decade ago. It could only be more thorough now. It involves you having to do kind of proof of your educational attainment. You've got to do criminal checks. You've got to do credit checks. So, for example, George Santos and his bad checks would not have gotten past a Canadian, even a basic Canadian vetting process. You need to write a list of all of the things that you've written. You've got to write out a list of all of the things that you have kind of participated panels. panels, it would just be a total nightmare for a lot of people to

Corey 27:23

The idea is not that it has to be 100% complete. It's that if there are any significant omissions, that's a problem. And the last sort of question on everyone that I've seen is, is there anything else you know, that might be material to this process, right?

Corey 27:38

And, and what you're looking for, and I've mentioned this on this show, too, but I'll say it again, in this context is not, there's nothing that is is disqualifying you know inherently immediately automatically although there's a lot of things that come very close but you could imagine for example even a criminal record it's somebody perhaps who went

Corey 27:55

went to jail when they were younger and they rehabilitated themselves and that rehabilitation was a big part of their story their story and they right yeah

Corey 28:02

what you're looking for are things that are not in the public record that you now have or things that they're not even putting on the private record to you and

Corey 28:09

and that begins a conversation that begins a conversation with them it begins a conversation potentially with the leader uh and that's and that's what you determine um in terms of like is loud or not then the other thing though zane which makes us very different from the united states is if it then came out you

Corey 28:27

you drop that candidate that candidate loses their nomination and you saw that uh well you've seen that in almost every election we've had where they sort

Corey 28:34

sort of pull a coffee

Carter 28:35

coffee cup guy and

Corey 28:37

yeah so that's the major significant difference. Parties have more power over whether you're allowed to be a nominee of them here. Whereas if you're George Santos, you can just say, yeah, I'm going to run for the Republicans, and then you might win for the Republicans, and then the Republicans have to decide what to do with you. So

Zain 28:53

So Carter, with the context of the oppo in Canada being not just opposition research that your principal opponents do against you, but also the vetting that your party does, which in many ways, if I'm not incorrect, is functionally opposition research, research, right? Like they are, you are listing it, but they're also going out. They're saying, we're not going to take your word for it, Corey Hogan. Thank you for listing three panels. I know you've been on 50 more. I'm going to try to find the video or the audio on YouTube of all of them. I'm going to scrub your social media. They're doing oppo on you, Carter. So with that being said, George Santos, more likely or less likely?

Carter 29:26

likely? Well, there's two exceptions to what Corey is describing. Two pretty glaring exceptions.

Corey 29:31

Oh, I know what you're going to say.

Carter 29:32

The first exception is that you've come from a different level of office, right so you're a counselor and you've been elected 15 times in your council state and then you get recruited by the federal liberals and then at that point you find out that the things that you've done um aren't

Carter 29:49

aren't necessarily very ethical that's a possibility where someone comes in as a quote-unquote star candidate because of their election at other levels um brings them in so you You avoid the vetting

Zain 30:05

I'm sorry, just so I'm clear, you're saying that what they may have done at a different order of government may actually be disqualifying to seeking another order? No, no, no. Are

Corey 30:13

Are you saying that they've dragged in... They may waive huge swaths of the green light process because they'll say, this would have come out. There's this assumption that... You're the former chief

Zain 30:23

chief of police. If

Zain 30:23

If you were problematic, we

Carter 30:26

have known it by now. Of course, you've been in the public eye for 10 years. you know if there was an issue we would have found it oh

Corey 30:31

oh my god the number of times i've heard that exact phrase well they've been in the public eye for x i'm sure i'm sure it's fine right and now in theory they still have to go through the same green light process in practice they most assuredly do not so

Carter 30:43

so they they get they get they skip some of what cory's describing and then of course like

Carter 30:48

some of the rigor to

Carter 30:50

process and through skipping that process things that they've forgotten about in their own lives probably starting suddenly start coming back right um i don't know a guy named justin trudeau once had wore blackface um you know that got skipped that got that got missed because he was a trudeau i mean imagine imagine if that photograph existed for someone who had to go through the real vetting process they

Carter 31:14

they never get in right

Carter 31:16

right they never get into the process justin trudeau skipped that step because he's a trudeau well

Corey 31:23

well i'll say this the odds of them finding a school yearbook like during the green light it's not that thorough unless it was digital and online in which case it would be tied to his name but

Carter 31:32

but you know in theory a person should declare that right

Carter 31:36

by the way there's a photograph of me in blackface uh or six of them i don't know i can't keep track um and

Carter 31:44

and the second way they get that they get past that is that they're recruited for one of the dead ridings right you are going into a riding where you're going to die and we just need we have promised that they could you're

Zain 31:57

you're a martyr you're a martyr for the party thank you

Carter 31:59

you for your service ridings uh two you know 87 in alberta 87 in british columbia 130 was it 738 in ontario you are trying to fill the last 12 12 ridings in these areas. And you just, you know, again, you're pulling someone from your existing base, you know, he's been there, you know, she's, she's been the constituency president for 26 years, we're going to just put her in. And then it finds out that, you know, she's

Carter 32:29

worshipping Nazis on on Tuesdays, you know, and you, you didn't know that on Wednesday, she's working for the NDP. On Tuesday, she's working for the Nazis. You just don't know these things nazis isn't it's hyperbole it's not a real it's hyperbole it's hyper

Carter 32:46

these times get more hyperbolic

Zain 32:46

hyperbolic than nazis but yes carter okay thank you um

Carter 32:50

example or or maybe she was on a podcast and she kept bringing up nazis

Zain 32:57

you do know we have a shorthand for that it's the velge rule and uh it has been it is a banner year for the velge rule as we

Zain 33:04

we close out 2022 22 uh

Zain 33:08

cory talk to me about this because you carter's kind of giving you the two two exceptions to have the canadian vetting system i want to ask the question there's

Corey 33:15

there's a big one he's missing it's the one i thought oh

Zain 33:17

oh okay so you said you you were about to say you know i think i know where you're going talk to me about that and then i'll ask you the same question i did him yeah

Corey 33:23

yeah running for leader oh yeah um the vetting process is significantly different for that now they've tightened them up up a lot over the past bit but you run for leader and you skip a lot of those steps a lot of those steps

Corey 33:36

why why why why good question and and that's part of why they're tightening up a lot but the main reason that the honest answer is zane is because one

Corey 33:44

one of the things i mentioned is nothing is immediately disqualifying it's a conversation with the voters it's a conversation with the leader if if there is no leader there's no conversation so you don't want unelected you you know, appointed by party apparatchik people saying, okay, we're not going to allow this candidate in these ways. And the assumption parties have often made is the process of running for leader is a bright light. And that will bring these things forward. Is

Zain 34:09

Is it fair to say that that's perhaps the rare time in Canadian politics where people choose their party versus

Zain 34:14

other way around, right? Like, it's the rare time

Corey 34:16

time where the American

Zain 34:17

American style of like, I'm going for this nomination, I'm running in this primary.

Corey 34:21

primary. And if I become

Zain 34:22

become your your leader, you're going to just have to fucking deal with me, known and unknown. Yeah,

Corey 34:27

Yeah, which is why the only really, really strongly

Corey 34:31

strongly adhered to rule in these leaderships tends to be like the membership eligibility requirements. And even those often get waived, right? Because people forget to renew their membership.

Zain 34:40

Well, Carter, talk to me about this then.

Zain 34:43

The opposition research. Does vetting in Canada fundamentally change what opposition research is here and how it's done? Because we have seen in Canadian politics, the Bozo eruption style, as soon as the election is triggered, look what we found on this person. They tweeted this, they said that, we found some resume embellishments. But talk to me about the structure of opposition research, or even versus what you see in the United States, where we kind of have an understanding of the process where, you

Zain 35:12

you know, it's either done by lawyers or researchers, it's done by the National Committee or a state committee that goes through every candidate. They produce a book. Talk to me about the process here and how you see it. Has vetting and the process of vetting fundamentally changed opposition research in Canada? Not

Carter 35:28

Not really. I mean, we still do a tremendous amount of opposition research, because in part, what is acceptable to one group? For example, the Wild Rose in 2012, 12, what was acceptable to them, you know, they were able to, you know, if someone was a pastor, um, that pastor was allowed to have said a lot of different things, uh, to have written a lot of different things and to be given certain frameworks for passing through because they were very pro Christian or very pro, um, that type of ideology. So the society can have different values, you know, and so things that were acceptable in the vetting process may not be acceptable to the society um the the uh

Carter 36:14

you know danielle smith very well known what she's been saying what she's been doing she ran for leader and

Carter 36:20

and because she ran for leader as cory's as as has indicated she skipped the vetting process i mean i'm pretty sure that had danielle smith just rocked up to a nomination meeting for the ucp whereas jason and kenny as leader she would not have been green lit but

Carter 36:34

but now she's the leader of the party right

Carter 36:36

right so um the oppo research there's

Zain 36:39

there's a there's a rich irony in that in some ways you you set up this unbelievable infrastructure to prevent these eruptions or these falsehoods or these sort of types of candidates dragging you through the mud taking you off message or being a distraction but

Zain 36:56

but then this massive hole as cory has mentioned and now you've elaborated on for

Carter 36:59

Zane, this is an amazing thing. I mean, the two people who were responsible for the Bozo eruption, it weren't the people who were the candidates. They weren't the people who made the mistake. It was Rob Anderson and Danielle Smith. And Rob Anderson and Danielle Smith are now firmly back in control of the UCP, right?

Carter 37:18

right? So they're the two people who cost the Wild Rose Party the election in 2012, and now they're running the UCP. It's amazing to me.

Zain 37:29

yeah that that's absolutely it's it's wild in some ways and cory i want to i want to go back to some of the fundamental questions that the media is asking about santos and we can bring this back to canada in some ways but what's your take on this how do the democrats miss this in your mind like how do you feel like this was not just the one sliver this was the everything all at once the complete package how do they miss this was it a research failure in your mind was Was it a failure of contouring it like the New York Times did and said, look at these six pieces and how they fit together about this guy who's just created a net new version of himself? What do you think it was that either didn't resonate or had the Democrats perhaps glare over this in one way, shape, or form?

Corey 38:12

Well, so based on the reporting, the Democrats didn't miss it,

Corey 38:16

right? Yes. They had, but listen, here's the thing. I want

Zain 38:21

want to describe what miss means, but

Corey 38:22

but keep going. Yeah, they identified a number of holes. They couldn't confirm the degree. That doesn't necessarily mean – actually, let me get through the list. They couldn't necessarily confirm the degree. They couldn't confirm the employment. They could not confirm the ownership of properties in – I think it was Nassau County. And

Corey 38:42

so here's the thing. It's not that they missed it on the research. It's that they missed it on the follow-through because none of these things immediately – People have this assumption, I think, that when we're doing this kind of research, either as oppo or for green lighting, we get clear black and white answers. We don't. We do not get clear black and white answers. We get very gray answers and we have to decide how much follow through to do and is it worth it. So we talked about risk benefit. Let's also talk about cost benefit. And one of the challenges the Democrats had here was that this was at one point not supposed to be a competitive riding. So they did the initial research. They found a bunch of things. But they were not necessarily definitive, and to make them definitive would have incurred costs. And there were probably other races they thought it was better to use the resources that would be required to do that. And so what do I mean by cost? So, like, you hear we

Corey 39:35

we can't confirm the degree. That's not saying he doesn't have a degree.

Corey 39:38

Maybe he has a different legal name.

Corey 39:40

Maybe this is a university that doesn't tell you off the street whether somebody's got a degree. You don't know. No. And the last

Corey 39:47

thing you want to do as a political party is to make that claim loudly and just look like total fools, because then you're going to have a boy who cried wolf challenge. Right. So instead, what you do is you have to shop it to the media. You have to encourage the media to follow up on these things. You have to say, we've identified this. You should follow up on it. When you think about things like Citibank, Carter

Corey 40:06

Carter made a great example. Maybe he didn't work for Citibank. Maybe he worked for a contractor, but like a deeply embedded one that's effectively Citibank. And you don't want to be the person who's parsing that and say, no, I didn't work for Citibank, but he sat in a Citibank office working for Citibank, but not for Citibank. So, again, you don't know. You need follow-up. You need follow-through. You need to start talking to other employees he would have worked with or not. You need to start talking to individuals who would be in the know as to the actual operations of that place. That takes time. That takes effort. And you might not think it's worth that effort. So it's the follow-through that becomes a challenge here. When you read the reporting, it sounds like the DCCC, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, they had like the start of each of these stories.

Corey 40:50

They just didn't do the follow through that's required to make these real stories. And there's no guarantee when you do the follow through, A, you're going to find out that you were right, or B, anybody's going to care.

Zain 41:03

Carter, and this is where I think miss comes in, because Corey talks about resource allocation very smartly here around cost and risk benefit here. In your shoes, Carter, if you were the Democrats, right, the miss, I think, is did they miss an opportunity to execute on this and take it further? This was, to both of your points, a fringe riding in Long Island that they did not envision a Democratic meltdown, right, where the chair of the GCCC would actually lose a seat in New York, right, which he did.

Zain 41:31

so so in some ways if you were assessing this pre-november like the democrats did carter i know hindsight is 2020 but give me your honest take would you have gone further than them as a strategist would you said there's like nine things here and they're all open and there could be like this could blow up the party even more and and i guess the inherent question to for me Carter, is at what point does one candidate, like a Santos, start speaking to the character of a party, start speaking to the character of the Republicans? Do you feel like if you had executed on this, you may have gotten rid of him or you may have, you know, had him lose his seat, but you could have felt like the bigger win was to go after the Republicans in terms of the types of candidates they court? Or is it so easy to sever candidates these days that that's not worth it, that the only gain you get is ensuring that Santos is going to lose or off the ticket or drop by his party? Talk to me about how you would have approached this, given all the preconditions, Corey Layton.

Carter 42:25

Well, first of all, keep in mind, this is supposed to be a nice, easy win. It was plus 12 last time. You know, it should be a very easy

Carter 42:36

easy victory. So what you don't necessarily want to do is call out those easy victories. You don't necessarily want to attack a

Carter 42:45

candidate that isn't going to represent the Republican Party.

Carter 42:55

him winning and now representing the Republican Party is creating significant headaches for the Republicans. Maybe that's a better outcome in the scheme of things. I mean, when you've got, you

Zain 43:08

You mean this week's long distraction and media hullabaloo around it would have been better than severing him and winning that seat in some way? Yeah, I mean, keeping in mind, you don't... That's an interesting cost-benefit analysis. I think it's fascinating.

Carter 43:20

fascinating. Well, because you're

Carter 43:21

you're not sure, you know, it's very easy in hindsight to say they should have nuked him, right? Why didn't they nuke them? Well, in part because Democrats don't, you know, already you've got a media environment in the United States that's coming up to Canada, and this may be relevant, where we run ads that just fucking destroy the other people, right? The negatives are very big negatives. The attacks are very big attacks. And in the United States, I mean, they destroy the person who's running against them. They attack on every level. They use spurious correlation to bring

Carter 43:58

bring them in, to make them into the worst people ever and

Carter 44:03

you know all the you're already attacking this guy you

Carter 44:07

you know what you attack you probably did the attacks what you really wanted to do is you really wanted the new york times to do the expose before the election and this is the exact same problem we ran into with with sean chu in calgary in ward four you know when the when the media finally got got around, finally got around to reporting what had been given to the media months in advance. You

Carter 44:31

You know, the media had the stories months in advance, and they reported it the week before the final election, because it takes them so long to get confirmation to do the work.

Carter 44:45

And then, you know, the media often don't want to be seen as the people influencing the outcome of the election which is hilarious you know by reporting the truth you know i mean

Carter 44:54

mean jesus before the 2012 lake of fire thing we pitched like 15 different lake of fire things um to the media not one of them was picked up cory had a whole fucking website that attacked both our our ridiculous candidates and their ridiculous candidates and it didn't get any media hit at all and all of a sudden in 20 you know all of a sudden some guy tweets it out of winnipeg uh blake roberts and it gets picked up by paula by paula simons and all hell breaks loose um until like

Carter 45:29

like the media is a fickle beast and you know they were probably pitching and they and the media wanted to find it on their own and wanted to confirm it all on their own and it It takes an inordinate amount of time to do this type of work.

Zain 45:45

Corey, follow up on this. And I want to just, you know, as we close out this conversation, start by asking you this as well to consider. Your rules for opposition research in a riding where you're

Zain 45:58

you're going to slam dunk it, perhaps. You're supposed to win. I'm just trying to mimic the Santos case. You're D plus 12. You're, let's just say, you insert Canadian political party plus double digits. You're going to win this thing.

Zain 46:11

but you've got a candidate that there's a lot of holes that you've poked. I'm mimicking the scenario, right? We're back on our shores, same scenario. What would your rules be of engagement? How would you think about this? Would you have gone further? Would you have gone for the kill? Would you have invested the resources? Knowing it's a riding you're supposed to win by double digits, how would you have approached it? I guess what I'm trying to understand is, do the Democrats make any mistakes here, or do they actually play flawless ball and are now kind of getting um a rep or a reaction that they perhaps don't deserve i want to kind of think about it from rules of engagement perspective well

Corey 46:45

well they obviously didn't play flawless ball um there is a scenario that is totally different if they had acted differently and acting differently in this case would have been acting sort of with best practice and applying it on almost that case by case basis rather than rather than looking at it in that global lens you're looking at it right So if you think about this race as this race and you are resourcing this race, I don't know that they would have had the same follow through challenges that they did. But instead, in kind of this resource allocation, super frenzy that they do across

Corey 47:16

across the region, they look at it and they said, this is not where we're going to allocate the resources. And I suspect one of the corrections and it will probably be an overcorrection we'll see is there'll be a lot more focus on those individual races. But, you know, in Canada, it is different. In Canada, you sign off on a candidate in a way that you do not in the United States. Yes, you've got groups that, you know, congressional groups that will donate the money and super PACs who put it in. And you can say, look, you supported this guy. But it's easier to say, well, that's who they chose in a primary or whatever the case may be, Zane. So it's a little harder, right? But, you know, one of the things that Carter said that is really worth underlining is the media's response to these things when you come to them with them, right? Yes. And in a way, it's

Corey 48:01

it's because everything's an 11. It's because everything's this vicious, crazy attack, absolutely torqued to make them look as horrible as possible. So to give the media a little bit of credit here, they rightly look at these attacks with jaundiced eyes. When you bring them forward and you say, hey, look at this other campaign. Look at how bad they are. Look at what we found. And they don't want to chase down every single one of the things that you bring them because you're

Corey 48:25

you're not very discriminant as a political party. You throw a lot at the media, either directly by calling them and handing it to them or indirectly through your campaign attacks. And it gives – this is the second time we've talked about the boy who cries wolf, but this is a problem campaigns have. Think about that campaign. Think about the attacks they were already leveling at George Santos, about his involvement with January 6th and that he was an insurrectionist and all of this, these very breathless attacks about George Santos. They picked things and they attacked him based on them. So when you bring these other breathless things forward and

Corey 49:01

and you don't have perfect knowledge, you know, you're just asking questions and you're asking media to ask questions. They're like, all right, like we're not that interested in being manipulated by you to be your oppo research, you know, to go out and to attack these people based on the lines that you think will be the most relevant to you.

Corey 49:20

you can't 100% blame the media for that approach. Sure

Carter 49:23

Sure you can. Right?

Corey 49:23

Right? If the media was supposed to follow up on every campaign attack and write pieces about every campaign attack, that

Corey 49:30

that wouldn't be serving very well either. So while I don't think that the media gets a total pass on avoiding this, you can't give them a total fail either.

Carter 49:40

to this. This is so frustrating because in Surrey, we had the existing Surrey mayor who was already facing a criminal charge. He had renovated his house. We knew that. That was evident to see. There was two different pictures. um we could show that he had actually physically renovated his house and then we could also show that he did not have a building permit and because he did not have a building permit he shouldn't have renovated his house if

Carter 50:05

if you're the sitting mayor and you're not following your city your city's processes that should be a story right

Carter 50:11

right for love nor money could we make that a story right for love nor money um there's

Carter 50:17

there's so and people would say well that's not an important issue i don't

Carter 50:21

don't know how that's not if someone builds something like that if they're gen pop and they do a renovation on their house the city comes knocks on the door and tells them to tear it down so

Corey 50:33

mean sometimes maybe very context dependent but you know what carter the thing is if a reporter if a if a columnist had noticed that themselves it would have been a huge

Carter 50:44

huge deal exactly but

Corey 50:45

but you know exactly when you when you hand it to a reporter they really consider the source as they always would and always should right and so one of the challenges we have is that when you find really great oppo one of the things you then have to figure out what to do is how to release it carter

Zain 51:02

carter have you talked to talk to me about that if we could fucking do a whole episode on this and you've talked about

Zain 51:05

about this a bit in the past give me your top three if you have it and you you know they're skeptical of you because you clearly benefit from the results of their reporting. How have you done it in the past? Go. I'm going to make a whole podcast three minutes with your advice.

Carter 51:20

advice. I mean, there's one option is always like the traditional black, you know, brown envelope. And the brown envelope has now morphed into the anonymous tip line. So

Carter 51:30

So there's an anonymous... Which,

Zain 51:31

Which, by the way, can I just say, I was just in New York at the New York Times visiting visiting my friend there. And they have a little museum in the second floor of the New York Times building just above the cafeteria.

Zain 51:41

cafeteria. In there, there is a museum wall with like some of the best artifacts over their existence. One of them is a brown envelope to Sue Craig, fellow Calgarian, who's one of the lead investigative journalists at the New York Times with Trump's tax returns in them.

Zain 51:59

It's just like, so it kind of speaks to exactly what you're saying. Keep going on. It's But one of the most powerful political oppo stories, one that won our Pulitzer Prize, came from that strategy or that technique. So keep going.

Carter 52:13

going. That's one of them. Brown oppo is a good way. Second good way is to do an exclusive, right? So you offer an exclusive. I've got this stuff. I can give it to you. You alone will have this story, but you only have X number of days to use it before I have to give it to someone else. That's a great way of doing it. the third way of doing it is to use an intermediary right where you're not you you find either a useful idiot or you find someone who's willing to to serve as the as the go-between who takes the information to the media and usually you're doing that we

Carter 52:49

did that with charles rosnell because charles rosnell fucking hated us right like charles rosnell would have would run us over with a car and frankly i'd run him over with a car if i saw him as well But if you want to get something to Charles Rosnell, then you use a willful idiot or a useful idiot, and the useful idiot will then take the information to the media. We did that when I was with the school board. I gave some useful idiot stuff to some parents, and they went running off to the media. Oh, I couldn't possibly get this out from the Calgary Board of Education, but maybe you could. And they would run off to the media, and they'd get coverage that we could never get. it. So those are three, just three ways that we get information out to the media if we try to.

Zain 53:31

Corey, I have some more lightning round questions to kind of round this up. But before I jump to that, I want to ask you this question, which is, and I want to ask it in the most sensitive way possible.

Zain 53:41

Do you know of or have you worked with a George Santos type? And what I mean by that is, is someone in our politics that you've got one degree, two degrees of separation, three degrees of separation, just so we can make it vague and you don't have to reveal names, that you're surprised that they've gotten elected in politics, that they've been elected in politics. They may not have to have everything all at once, but there's been an embellishment that you feel like, you know, that should tank their career, that could have tanked their career. I'm surprised it hasn't tanked their career because it hasn't been exposed. Talk to me about that. And the only reason I ask it is just sheer keen interest. There is There's no strategic value to this question, but I am curious, have they slipped past in your experience? And talk to me about that a bit.

Corey 54:28

Listen, I think we've talked about there's degrees of this, right? There's the embellishment. By the

Corey 54:35

Yeah, ear to ear. The biggest smile I've seen.

Corey 54:39

I don't even want to go to him on this question. You know, there are things, there are fabrications. I have I have worked with leaders even right where it's like well that's not the same as the thing you said before it might not even be the leaders you're thinking of right but

Corey 54:54

but also there's they're humans right and there's some human nature in here too and there's the story that morphs over time and it you know gets better or it gets worse depending on what you're looking for and and so you know you roll your eyes a bit and you maybe give them a bit of a pass or you don't think it's that big of a deal i've

Corey 55:13

seen it on the staff side i again will not name names on this because also because i simply don't know right but there's flags on the field where you know they claim some grand experience but it doesn't really align with you know when you just happen to see them on like the streets of red deer like well how were you in washington dc on that and you're in the streets of right you know like it just doesn't work out um but again they're you're humans.

Corey 55:38

People lie. People lie about all sorts of things. They embellish all sorts of things. Is it more prevalent in politics and government? That's really tough for me to say, because most of my professional career has been in politics and government. So that becomes almost my yardstick, right? Am I shocked that some people's careers have not been totally ended by their fabrications?

Corey 56:02

Yeah, there's a few. But like, if I knew 100% they were fabrications, maybe I would have dealt with them differently. But the reality is, it's like, it's tough to know what's real and what's not sometimes.

Zain 56:12

A masterfully diplomatic answer by Corey Hogan. I suspect your take on this is going to be very different and potentially get us into a lot of legal trouble. So Stephen Carter, do not mention any names. Do not mention any former people. Don't make me,

Zain 56:26

know what? Maybe I'll try to just make this beyond sheer sort of like interest on my part, because it's the end of the year and we've got nothing better to do. Well, most of us don't.

Zain 56:36

Have you been surprised by it, Carter? Like, that's like, as an operative, and how have you dealt with it? Because there's like an ethical question here a bit, and not to test your ethical sort of scruples, but like, you know something, they skate by, like, you know, I'm kind of curious, have you experienced it? Don't name names, and how have you dealt with it?

Carter 56:54

Well, I think right off the top, I can think of ******

Carter 56:59

who had a tremendous sexual addiction. I can think of ******

Carter 57:04

who had totally exaggerated her education levels. I can think of ******

Carter 57:11

who was in a thruple, which was really difficult to manage. Carter, no,

Zain 57:19

I just said don't

Carter 57:20

don't name names. Jesus. I mean, the thruple thing was challenging. and then i can think of um one last person who claimed to be a physician uh which was not true at all and that person's name was

Corey 57:39

no no i don't even know carter

Zain 57:41

carter no carter carter they're they're my family oh fuck

Zain 57:49

awkward uh okay okay but carter how did you deal with it though And I don't mean to question your ethics, but there are times where it's kind of awkward that you know that something's a fabrication.

Zain 58:01

Talk to me about that, and then we'll round this episode out. It's going to be 20 minutes, but here we are. If

Carter 58:04

If it's a fabrication, you pull it.

Carter 58:07

You say, this is not important, and you get them to pull it, right?

Carter 58:10

So sometimes the exaggeration

Carter 58:12

exaggeration that lends itself to fabrication, you just get them to pull. And you say, this is just not relevant right now, right? Right. So you find out and you don't ever attack it head on. Why are you lying about this?

Carter 58:26

Instead, you just say, no, we're not going to we're not going to push this. The second way to do it is just kind of ignore it. Right. Like it's just it's in the bio.

Carter 58:38

You know, I remember John Lord. Do you remember John Lord? He had he was a Mensa member

Carter 58:44

his bio. Oh, yeah. Best bio in the history of best

Carter 58:48

best bio in the history of politics. um who

Carter 58:52

who cares right like no

Carter 58:54

no one's ever going to check and see if he's a member of menza and if he is a member of menza good for him um fantastic

Carter 59:01

fantastic you know that you had to you know

Carter 59:05

know whatever but most of the time um

Carter 59:10

know you just you get them to pull it if you know about it and then if you find out about it in the middle you just pray that no one else does

Zain 59:18

cory finish this off here and then we'll move it to our final segment i

Corey 59:22

think we'd all like to think we'd act better in those situations act more righteous but it does tend to be a bit of a frog in water thing you become aware of these things a bit over time you start to explain them away even to yourself like okay well maybe maybe

Corey 59:35

maybe it doesn't line up the dc and red deer thing but they're pretty good at this and you know i always like that you know there's a general order of truth to it or maybe it's just embellished or maybe we can forgive this and so you you you

Corey 59:47

you let people get away with a lot think about your own lives think about people you know what happened

Zain 59:51

happened to santos with his staff no

Corey 59:53

no i don't know you don't think

Corey 59:54

don't think that and actually this is this is where i i want to make a point before i get there i would say okay everybody listening right now knows somebody that they have not called bullshit on yeah something

Corey 1:00:04

something that they have said about their background right and you do it for a lot of reasons i've known people who have claimed him to be a campaign manager for campaigns that I was campaign manager, and I've not called bullshit on them, right? You just let a lot of things slide because we live in a society. But what I think is particularly interesting about the Santos thing, and just to wrap it here, is I'm not remotely convinced if this New York Times reporting had come out, and if this had been broadly discussed on social media three days before the election, that it would have changed the outcome. I don't think the Republicans would have run from him. I think they would have stood by them. I think they would have said these are just smears and attacks. You know, they're trying to disparage the first openly gay, soon to be first openly gay Republican candidate, because we are in these partisan times. We're in these sports team times. And that's not just true of political operatives. That's true of people. You know, people are not very discerning about the things going on in their supporting candidates' lives. And we should all maybe take this opportunity to reflect on that and say, what are we letting the people we support get away with?

Corey 1:01:10

What are we no longer finding disqualifying that we would have found disqualifying 20 years ago or would certainly find disqualifying if the opponents were doing it? We're going to leave that. Oh, go ahead, Corey. Jump in. You have anything to add? That's it. Like, at the end of the day, the check and balance we have on this democratic system is us and what we're willing to put up with and what we're not.

Zain 1:01:33

I'm going to leave that segment there. Moving on to our final segment are over, under, and are lightning round. Stephen, this dovetails off of what Corey said perfectly, because I've only got one question for you, which is, consuming

Zain 1:01:42

consuming all of this over the past week, having this episode put together, if a political party, any political party, could be any jersey color across the country, could be any order of government, were to ask you to write a memo, Stephen Carter, saying what lessons should we adopt based on what we saw in the United States, what would a couple of things on that memo be? be. And then I'm going to get Corey to build on that to kind of finish us off here. Because what are the lessons you would take away, Carter? It could be investment in research. It could be about that. It could be about vetting. It could be about process. It could be about staffing. It could be about candidate quality control. It could be about many things, even derivative to what we've discussed. But start us off here with a bit of a list, Carter. What are a couple of things you'd put in that memo for any political party that wants to take this as a teachable moment, as a political operative what would you want to number

Carter 1:02:33

number one on your side don't lie right do not lie there is no lie you can tell that gets you over the top um people will vote for you because of the policies because of the story that we tell um not because of the lies that we're that we're putting forward that's something that that uh needs to be i think understood across the board is that lying does not help um second thing is um opposition research does matter every riding every constituency should be doing opposition research to try and find out if they're the person they're running against is who they say they are uh and whether that is someone who has never tweeted something horrific or someone who's tweeted something um you know uh

Carter 1:03:15

uh that is uh racist or whatever or embellish their own their own credentials um finding that information out can be very helpful prior to an election so i think that those would be the two big rules number one One, don't give the opposition anything to steal from you or to attack you on. And number two, make sure that you're finding every chink in the armor and going after the other side.

Zain 1:03:39

Corey, you could go deeper on these rules. You can add more to them. What else would you add on the memo? It could even be on things like, I'm just throwing out suggestions here, things on the

Zain 1:03:48

the level of staffing you provide to oppo researchers, junior level researchers, or are you now saying, you know what, we're fully staffed with lawyers because that's who's going to do our oppo for us going forward. expand on this. Talk to me about some other things you would write party agnostic as it relates to the Santos case and lessons to be learned.

Corey 1:04:06

You know, you want to know my real lesson here? Yeah. People are willing to put up with almost anything these days. I'm worried that the lessons that we will take here in Canada are negative ones. People are going to say, oh, sure, he padded it a little bit, but he's no George Santos, right? Like we have moved the bar as to what's acceptable political behavior in ways that are deeply unfortunate over time. And it takes a moment like this to really crystallize that. But if you want to know the true analysis, it's that you can get away with this shit in a way that you couldn't in the past, and that should scare us all. If you're thinking about how you can perhaps be on the lookout for this and how you can defend against it, what we need to say is what was the system failure here? Well, there were a bunch of things that were flags on the field. How do we make sure that we're following up on these things? How are we making sure that we are not so deep in our own spin cycles that we are following up on the things that matter to us and missing the things that would matter a lot to voters? And probably there's some work that needs to be done, even polling, you know, asking people, would you be concerned if candidate A had extreme views, if candidate A lied about a credential, if candidate A lied about a job that they had, and just get that list. Maybe one of the things that needs to happen for all oppo researchers everywhere is to build a better understanding of what matters to movable voters, not just their voters, not just the voters on the other side, but the group in the middle who could be swayed by a good argument. And maybe oppo has gotten really disconnected from that. I would argue here in Alberta, we have seen situations where the NDP have shown not a perfect sense of what's going to land. I would argue federally, for sure. both the liberals and the conservatives have thrown attacks at each other that I don't think are actually moving the middle.

Corey 1:05:54

And maybe they should spend some time reflecting on that and follow up on those things, not the things that titillate them the most.

Zain 1:06:02

You know, that is such a great point, because Carter, it does seem like we are in an era that opposition research is fundamentally changing in its efficacy if we keep going down the same path. Old tweets are less powerful every single day, their half-life is reducing. Even if with the the most controversial statements, to Corey's point, around the society we live in. And so the question is, like, what does effective opposition research fundamentally look like in the next cycle is different. And if you keep running that same playbook, like Carter, Bozo eruptions in 2023, the

Zain 1:06:34

the same one, Lake of Fire in 2023? No impact. Probably

Carter 1:06:38

effective. Right? You have to have different things now.

Zain 1:06:42

Despite the fact society is getting more progressive, more inclusive, more egalitarian, and more uncompromising with those viewpoints, less impactful as a piece of opposition research.

Carter 1:06:52

research. One side of society is becoming more, right? The side that is going to elect the UCP is not going to be the side of people who find you know, the Bozo eruptions of 2012

Carter 1:07:07

2012 to be you know, okay

Carter 1:07:10

okay right? There's a group of people for whom the jersey color is more important and that is becoming more and more apparent that you if you sin with a jersey on you're probably going to be forgiven and i

Carter 1:07:27

think that that's at the the heart of the problems right now that's the the heart of the issues is that that if

Carter 1:07:34

if you're going to be forgiven for any sin just because you happen to be uh

Carter 1:07:38

a ucp or you know a republican or a democrat or an ndp or that's

Carter 1:07:45

that's not That doesn't bode well for our society.

Corey 1:07:50

Corey finishes off here. Yeah, let's talk about George Santos to close because the DCCC did use the oppo, right? They attacked him on his January 6th connection. They thought that was the most salient thing and they didn't follow up on things that were at the end of the day like really fucking fascinating, really interesting. interesting and so i do believe that the lesson here is you've got to get back to thinking about accessible voters not your side what is the orbit of movable voters be data driven what do they care about not what you think they would care about go out and get some polling have some focus groups understand what will actually move them with opposition research and then finally and most importantly not everything can be an 11 people are not able to discern the actual outrages when when you're outraged about absolutely everything. So find yourself a little bit better of a level set. And

Carter 1:08:46

Everything's an 11. Every outrage is number one. And as a result, they're the little boy who cried wolf.

Zain 1:08:54

We're going to leave that segment there. And we're going to leave that episode there. That's a wrap on episode 1024 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, and I hope we meet at this time. We will see you next year.

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