Transcript
Annalise
0:02
Welcome to The Strategist, episode 1054. I'm your host, Annalise Klingbeil, and with you, as always, Stephen Carter and Corey Hogan. Hey,
Carter
0:12
Annalise. You sounded really good on that one, but I kept giving you hand signals.
Annalise
0:16
It's because Corey gave
Annalise
0:17
me the hand signal.
Carter
0:18
And you were ignoring
Annalise
0:18
ignoring my hand signal.
Annalise
0:19
There was no confusion. I think we should cut you out of that
Corey
0:22
that opening, Stephen Carter. My hand signal had the right energy. I think it's fair to say. Yeah,
Annalise
0:26
Yeah, it pepped me up, you know?
Annalise
0:29
are you guys doing nine
Carter
0:30
nine in afl this weekend oh
Corey
0:32
oh lord and zach and
Corey
0:37
you are so old you
Corey
0:39
you make me so mad all right uh
Corey
0:44
know what i'm just on edge it's been a weird day it's been a weird news day we've got this fucking arena why are you so hey listen
Carter
0:49
listen no one cares uh this is a provincial show
Corey
0:53
it's not even a provincial show it's a national show
Carter
0:56
it's a a national show for the patreons today okay
Corey
0:59
okay following along on
Corey
1:01
we don't even agree if it's a provincial or a national show i'm beginning to see some problems here
Carter
1:06
annalise goes on the discord did you know that but
Carter
1:09
never seen her comment on anything i've seen
Annalise
1:12
seen her i occasionally glance at
Annalise
1:14
at the at the discord did you find your password i did
Carter
1:19
did i've been on it and it's on my phone um do
Annalise
1:21
do you know what i actually noticed since i i plug the discord a lot more people have gotten on the discourse that's
Corey
1:27
that's that's actually true it's a real thing there's conversations on it every day about these things going on uh basically they're just with me because steven loses his password uh zane would never possibly go on a discord and uh i think he showed up once and said what's up nerds and then never showed up again
Corey
1:46
and uh and elise is a lurker yeah
Corey
1:50
that brings you up to speed it's
Annalise
1:51
it's a good place though it's better it's better than it's not that good
Corey
1:54
it is a good place it's better
Annalise
1:56
do you know what i actually realized today would make my twitter better is if there was a button that showed who
Annalise
2:02
who was now verified you know how you used to be able to do that like if i could now filter out anyone who's verified and i never have to hear from them that would make my
Annalise
2:13
interesting much better okay
Corey
2:15
okay well everybody out there who's bought a blue check Jack, you just heard that Annalise hates you. Okay. Yeah.
Carter
2:20
You can email her at...
Corey
2:27
Whatever. It's fine. Thanks for being a patron, though.
Annalise
2:30
Okay, should we jump into our first segment?
Carter
2:35
Well, I don't know, Annalise. What do you think?
Annalise
2:36
Yeah, it's been two
Annalise
2:37
minutes. We haven't talked at all about
Carter
2:38
about it. Two minutes is a small talk. Yeah,
Annalise
2:39
perfect timing to jump into our
Carter
2:42
our first segment. And I still went down by two.
Carter
2:45
That's just how the cookie crumbles in the AFL. I mean,
Corey
2:48
mean, you don't even need to put numbers there. Like, it's irrelevant to us. It's irrelevant to everyone. Yeah, it doesn't
Carter
2:54
doesn't matter. They tune in for my AFL updates. In fact, I think we're pretty close to being sponsored by the AFL. You
Corey
3:00
You know what? Can we just dwell on this for one second? Sure. I'm going to go down this rabbit hole. You don't even say who you picked. You don't even talk about your lineups, or I don't even know if it's lineups. You literally just give us two numbers, a numerator and a denominator, every week during AFL season. and well
Carter
3:17
well do you want me to start giving you a little bit more detail i always thought you
Corey
3:20
you were a little reticent
Carter
3:23
i can do it no i mean i'll start going through i mean obviously you start with my brisbane lions you're gonna
Corey
3:28
gonna go there uh
Carter
3:32
saint kilda was spectacular um first place in the whole league saint kilda no no one expected that you're
Annalise
3:38
you're just making carter's night even worse cory like why are you doing this that's
Carter
3:43
night's going great oh i was shit yeah
Corey
3:46
there's a good chance that you made up both of those names but that's fine we'll never know because we're never gonna look it up what was the last
Annalise
3:53
time we don't care that
Corey
3:56
dairy queen's gone man don't don't open a wound so upsetting okay
Carter
4:00
okay let's do a show okay
Annalise
4:01
okay first segment welfare for billionaires guys big announcement in calgary um late this afternoon years in the making we're gonna set the scene a little we're a few days before RIT drop.
Annalise
4:13
Calgary's mayor, Alberta's premier, they announced an arena deal. It's been reached after months, years of negotiations. So the deal in principle, I guess it's like an agreement in principle, costs $1.22 billion, which is more than double the previous deal.
Annalise
4:32
And instead of a cost split between the Flames ownership group and the city, which is what there there was before the new deal sees most of the cost covered by the city and the province again there's an election that will be called in a few days um so the city's share is 537 million which is nearly the entire cost of the deal that was struck um a few years ago the city is covering 44 percent of the new deal the flames will pay 356 million and then the province is putting up have 330 million. I don't even know where to start with this.
Annalise
5:07
I'm angry. It's an amazing deal for the Flames ownership group. The terrible deal for the city. Why don't we start with a question, guys, that I tweeted that was getting a lot of response. Maybe you have an answer. That question is, why
Annalise
5:22
why is giving away hundreds of millions of public dollars to a team owned by a billionaire so people can pay $200 a pop to watch millionaires play hockey while drinking $17 beers in the midst of an affordable housing crisis a good idea? That's the question. What's your answer?
Carter
5:38
Corey, now I'm not a trained professional, Corey, so I want to make sure that you and I are on the same page. Did you feel a little spin on the ball on that question? It's also a little
Carter
5:47
That's where we're going to start. I
Annalise
5:49
I can't hide my feelings here, guys. I'm no longer a journalist. I can say what I think, and this is crazy. Can
Carter
5:55
Can I take it back a step? Can I take it up a little bit of a level? I think that what you said in the preamble, something that was just essential, and that is that this is a framework for a deal. It's not actually a deal yet because Premier Smith has said, if you return me with a mandate, I will, in fact, at that point, approve
Carter
6:14
approve this deal. Corey,
Carter
6:17
I'm going to ask you a couple of questions. I mean, I'm hoping for honest answers. Has an election been called in the province of Alberta?
Corey
6:24
I mean, no. You thought I was going to lie about that?
Carter
6:27
I'm going to get to question number two.
Carter
6:30
Does this government have the ability to pass an order in council right now that would approve this deal?
Corey
6:35
Yes, absolutely they do. In fact, they have to pass an order in council to call the election. So cabinet does need to get together between now and the election. Cabinet
Carter
6:43
Cabinet needs to meet. There is absolutely no... I mean, the government continues to function even during an election, right?
Carter
6:49
right? I mean, you only are supposed to do... I
Corey
6:51
I mean, you're not going to... You're not going to do this type of thing. But
Carter
6:53
But right now, as of today, this deal could be done. And this beginning premise that Danielle Smith has put forward, you must return me with a mandate for this to actually happen, is the first of many lies that are going to be told about this stupid deal that's been constructed. A little bit of spin on the ball right there for you, Annalise. Stupid deal.
Annalise
7:19
Corey, what do you think? what's your assessment of this deal, this agreement, whatever we're calling it? What do you think?
Corey
7:27
Look, okay. I feel many things about this, but let's start with kind of the general and then the specific, because they might not necessarily be what everybody out there is expecting. In
Corey
7:40
I don't love public money going to private enterprises. I think that if there's going to be public risk, there should be public benefit. There's got to be some way that that the upside is shared with the city too, but I'm not like viciously opposed to it. I do think there's a place for the public in supporting arts and culture. I do think sports is part of culture and I do think that at the end of the day, arena deals historically about 80% of the spending or so does manage to stay in the city, largely goes to construction, largely keeps in the pool and the money leaving is fairly minimal. It's, you know, it's like digging a ditch. It's going to have of economic value for some people doesn't mean that over the long run it makes an awful lot of sense to dig ditches for no good reason right so
Corey
8:23
so you know like i don't like wasting money but i think that there is an argument to be made for public investment as long as there can be public return and public return can be in dollars it can be in like social good it can be in a lot of things
Corey
8:36
all that fucking said all
Corey
8:38
all of that said the numbers that you provided at the top in terms of the scale scale a public investment, it's
Corey
8:44
it's kind of unconscionable, right? And look, with all of these deals, and I speak with some knowledge of this because I was on the 2026 Olympic bid committee, there's always a question about what's in the deal, what's not, what's building a road next to the deal, is that included in the deal, right? I get that. All that said, this
Corey
9:04
this may literally be the most expensive NHL arena deal in history. And when you compare it on a per capita basis for our relatively small market it
Corey
9:13
it for sure is because the only one i can think of that comes even close is probably in you know new york city if you want barclays to be all nhl which it's not it was much more an nba arena or you know little caesar's arena in in michigan in detroit which
Corey
9:28
which was roughly the same amount of public money uh but even that i think you're kind of you're
Corey
9:35
you're you're being charitable and you're giving them a lot of you know credit for certain things there it is crazy to me we're spending this kind of money and i you know i'll hand it over to other people to continue on rants it seems like we've all got a good head of steam here but the deal that fell apart in 2021 when a you know a a meddling chief of staff of a mayor got involved there that
Corey
10:03
publicly fell apart over 10 million dollars behind the scenes reporting around it it suggests it was maybe 30 million with some of the inflationary costs 30 million and
Corey
10:12
now we are talking about half
Corey
10:15
half a billion dollars more public funding now 18 months later that that's fucking crazy i don't care how much the scale has changed and how did the province need to come to the table to rescue a deal how how
Corey
10:28
how do we look at a province and say you rescued a deal that was 30 million dollars apart with 330 million dollars and not just say that's that's like the worst negotiating i've ever possibly heard of i
Annalise
10:41
mean in terms of the strategy and the politics of it and there's different players here but like what is city council doing what is gondek doing how is like how is this at all a good deal for the city and i'm asking that very sincerely okay
Carter
10:55
okay but so so move away from the idea that there's ever going to be a good deal right they're all going to be bad deals um the the problem is that politicians do not want to be the ones saying no uh to a deal and putting themselves in a position keep in mind i mean the public reporting out of the mayor's office in 20 uh 22 when the deal fell apart in early january of 2022 was that the flames walked away from the deal and that's what happened you know why the flames walked away from the deal because they had to put a ticket tax on the generated revenue to pay back the city of calgary for its investment the city of calgary you know they'd They'd lost their their practice arena. They'd lost a whole bunch of additional pieces that were falling off and they were responsible for cost overruns. Their deal was so monumentally bad in
Carter
11:45
in 2022 that they walked away from the deal and they walked away from the millions of dollars that they'd invested. Now we come to this deal. There's no ticket tax. There's no revenue paying back the city of Calgary. The city of Calgary has made a far worse deal by any economic measure and any social measure. But for some reason, city council, and I think this comes back just basically to elect a lot of people without much in the way of numeric literacy. I think that they struggle with understanding the
Carter
12:17
big numbers that are at play, the dollar values that are being discussed. and because of that they
Carter
12:23
come out and i i see counselors defending this deal saying it's a better deal for the city when it's not a better deal at best it's a better building that's
Carter
12:33
that's it that's the only thing that you can say about this that's actually better but
Corey
12:38
but i think that's that's actually almost the point steven um i don't think it's that they lack the ability to do basic math i don't even think it's they lack the ability to calculate net present value or you know you know basic financial calculations. I think it's their ambition, right? I do this thing where
Corey
12:56
where like I'm a total mark. I tend to go to a store and if it was like the choice between the $400 vacuum or the $500 vacuum that was a thousand dollar vacuum and it's 50% off, I'm like, I'm getting that $500 vacuum. You know, I only needed the $400 one. I think city council is kind of playing the same game here they're saying well
Corey
13:18
well okay you know we were willing to put 300 million dollars in to get this 800 million dollar arena but
Corey
13:25
now with the province in like we can put in like how
Corey
13:28
how much is it 550 million from the city roughly and we can get this yeah we can get this 1.2 billion dollar arena holy shit guys that's a hell of a bargain like look at our return on investment there relative to the deal we were okay with in 2021 but that's fundamentally flawed thinking right because you're thinking about the kind of like the return in the sense of like i was willing to put in a dollar to your dollar to get out two dollars and now i can put in a dollar to get out 250 but the problem is you're not putting a dollar to get 250 you're putting two dollars to get five dollars and and that fundamentally should change our view as to whether something is worth it is is this arena worth as much money as we're now talking about? And this project has gotten so big and so grand, you
Corey
14:14
you really seriously have to consider whether we are just, we've lost our bloody minds. If you
Annalise
14:20
you want to talk about a big and grand project, and I get that 2015 was eight years ago, but do you guys remember Calgary Next? Oh,
Annalise
14:28
I was a City Hall reporter at the time, and Calgary Next was an arena and a field house in a covered football stadium for less than what we're talking about now
Corey
14:41
Yeah, but I mean, that was a little more It was never going to be real.
Carter
14:44
Those were never real numbers. And that's part of the problem right now. Let's flip this around. Let's pretend that we're the flames. Right now, the city of Calgary has to put So this arena, the whole package is going to cost about $1.2 billion. When you look at the numbers, $880 million is going to come in right away from the provincial government. and the and the so about 900 million dollars comes in because you've got the provincial government putting in like 300 and whatever 330 million you got the municipal government putting in 560 and then you've got the flames and you have to ask yourself what are the flames putting in right now and
Carter
15:18
and the answer is 40 million dollars four
Carter
15:20
four zero not 400 million 40
Carter
15:25
and that That $40 million is then added
Carter
15:27
added to every year by $17 million, right?
Carter
15:31
right? This is the best deal ever. So Corey, I'd like you to build me a house. I'm going to pay you $5,000 a month, plus I'm going to pay you $50,000 up front to build me my house. How much house should I get?
Carter
15:49
Because if this deal is an example, you know how much house I should get? million dollar houses multi-million dollar houses this thing is a return on investment of like 20 times what they're actually putting in right off the bat because
Carter
16:04
because the the 17 million dollars that's just a simple operating expense for rent this thing is this is such a fucked up deal for the citizens of calgary and this is where you know if we're to broaden this and we're to take this to ottawa we're to take it to edmonton the the you know vancouver wherever else do we have a a franchise what you're looking at is how do these how do
Carter
16:28
do these deals get sold to us and this deal is being sold to us on a net present value of 330 million dollars from the flames or whatever the number is 356 million dollars as a net present value of all of the money that they'll put in in over the next 35 years except it's kind of backwards because the money that they're going to put in over the course of the years actually goes down in value right
Carter
16:51
right that 17 million dollars 35 years from now is like worth one fifth
Carter
16:56
fifth tier defenseman in
Carter
16:59
in 35 years this is such a fucking horrible deal for the city i can't even begin to express it and it's not just for this city when
Carter
17:07
when edmonton got its arena the land around the arena was given right of first refusal at bargain basement prices to daryl cates and he built all those beautiful buildings he doesn't need to make any fucking money off of the arena he made so much money on the property around the arena and
Carter
17:24
and and we haven't been told because they didn't answer the question how much property is going to be included in this particular deal no
Carter
17:32
no one knows and yet all these counselors are out there are defending this fucking deal as though it's real someone needs to ask them because every councillor every mla the premier candidates everybody needs to be asked how much is this deal really costing and how much do the flames get for their 40 million dollars i'm
Carter
17:52
i'm done okay yeah
Corey
17:54
yeah it's good stuff before we before we hit we hit record and i'm like hey man don't go into the weeds no like i'm not in the weeds i
Carter
18:03
first of all i expanded it to include other cities. Do you remember that? That
Corey
18:07
bit of a bolt on at the end, though. It kind of felt like.
Carter
18:11
wasn't. It was before
Carter
18:11
before I even got the conclusion. You're
Carter
18:13
Write it to strategistcorporate.ca. I don't know. What's
Corey
18:17
What's our email? That wasn't
Corey
18:21
wasn't even an email. There was no ad. It's fine. Look, here's
Corey
18:25
here's the thing. I think it's all fair to say we don't think it's a particularly good deal. It seems pretty universal. Zane might think it's a good deal but zane's not here so the strategists unanimously say not not a good deal three of us don't like the deal good
Carter
18:40
good for us but
Corey
18:43
there's some political considerations here you threw one on the table at the start steven when you talked about the fact that yeah the province could actually ink this deal today but they're not going to right and instead they're going to kind of hold it hostage over the election which to me suggests they think it's a winner and
Corey
18:58
and or they think that That the NDP might oppose it and then they can have a bit of a wedge here.
Annalise
19:03
here. So is it a winner? Like, have either of you seen recent polling on what subsidizing an arena with taxpayer money? Like, how does that poll?
Carter
19:12
It's never polled over 35 percent.
Corey
19:14
Well, it's so, so dependent on the phrasing of the question. So dependent on the phrasing of the question. But there are a couple of things that make me think that the majority of Calgarians would actually oppose this deal.
Corey
19:26
One is, Stephen's right, in the polling that does exist. like, do you want the city to pay X number of dollars? Majority oppose, right? Of course, that's not how the flames, that's not how Mayor Gondek, that's not how they're going to frame it. They're going to talk about an investment in downtown. They're going to talk about a world-class facility that's going to bring the great cultural events to Calgary. And if you phrase the question as, do you think the city of Calgary needs a world-class cultural venue? You're going to find higher support, right? So like the arguing over the frame is going to be an important part of what happens next year. There's no question about that in my mind.
Corey
19:59
But the other thing is, people
Corey
20:02
people just don't like hockey as much as they used to. I was looking at some polling from like a year ago, and the number of adult males, and I don't know why this poll was specifically adult males, but like that watched hockey regularly had dropped 14 points. It was still the most popular sport in the country, but it was like 30% of adult males as opposed to like 45 in a relatively short period of time. and there is going to be a point if we haven't already hit it where it's like you think you are playing to this kind of big populist mass by talking about how much you love hockey and how it's just not calgary without the flames it's just not alberta without the battle of alberta and the majority like let's say it's two-thirds right now let's say men and women are watching hockey the same i have no reason to believe otherwise besides just stereotypes well two-thirds don't give a shit to begin with right and and maybe they're swayed by kind of arguments around the sides like oh maybe the other third will be really mad or something but you
Corey
21:00
you know it really matters where the supporters of this arena are um and
Corey
21:06
and it's really unclear whether this is even a polling win for the ucp so
Annalise
21:10
so politically do you i guess do you want to talk about that strategy like why do you think the ucp is doing this because
Carter
21:17
because i really think they have no clue what they're playing with i think this is the biggest fire that they've touched during the election including health care right we've been wondering why are they on
Corey
21:26
on this health care
Carter
21:27
care land come on i'm telling you this is a big deal and this is something when if you're defining the election question around this it is a huge mistake an absolutely huge mistake um because it can be spun in a couple of different ways you've already articulated about a couple different ways that this question could be asked but keep in mind this is a provincial election right
Carter
21:47
right we already know know that they're not going to win any seats in rural Alberta, or
Carter
21:52
or that the NDP don't win anything in rural Alberta, and that the UCP aren't going to win anything in Edmonton. But the donut's going to be pissed about this. You think the donut's going to sit there and go, oh, this is- You're
Corey
22:02
You're talking about the area around Edmonton. Around
Carter
22:04
Around Edmonton. You don't think the area around Edmonton is going to sit there and go, you know what?
Carter
22:08
I'm really glad that we didn't get $330 million for our arena here,
Carter
22:12
here, because I sometimes get to go to Rogers Center. but
Carter
22:15
i am never going to get that to go down to whatever
Carter
22:17
whatever this new branded thing is going to be yeah
Corey
22:19
yeah strategist arena yeah you know strategist
Carter
22:21
strategist arena um i'm never going to see the inside of strategist arena but i'm putting you
Carter
22:26
you know um a couple hundred million dollars into it like give me a break like this may pull a little bit better there but in calgary but i still don't even think it it does i think that it's going to look like i got my haircut today as you guys can and see i got my hair cut today at the exact same time that this announcement was being met the
Carter
22:45
the guy cutting my hair mo is
Carter
22:47
exactly the guy that you'd expect would support the ucp
Carter
22:52
and would you know he's a hockey fan he's got hockey stuff all through the the shop he hates the fucking deal why do billionaires get supported but i get nothing for my barber shop
Carter
23:02
and i think there's going to be a lot of questions like that so
Annalise
23:04
so on that question and i guess to get get out of the weeds a bit and talk more about like the narrative and the storytelling as you folks have been saying in previous episodes i saw a tweet about like hey i i have to fundraise using tomato plants for my kids school and yet look what billionaires like is this not an easy
Annalise
23:23
storytelling narrative opportunity when it involves subsidizing billionaires well
Carter
23:27
well i mean go back to what i you know what was the branding that i wanted to do for the ndp versus the ucp the branding i wanted for the ucp was i you know they're there for us you know the ndp is here for us might for me my family they
Carter
23:40
they the ucp is here for them is
Carter
23:44
is there a better example yeah
Carter
23:46
is there a better example of the ucb being here for them than this particular deal what
Annalise
23:51
what about fucking murray edwards what
Annalise
23:53
about smith's previous comments um about
Annalise
23:56
about i think it was the edmonton deal that was going around like in the past she said we shouldn't be we shouldn't be doing this sort of thing does that not feed into this like flip-flop she can't be trusted she says different things all the time cory so
Corey
24:09
so i if i were the ndp i wouldn't touch that particular comment i would let kind of the canadian taxpayer federations and the conservatives who are pissed off about it throw that in her face but the line the ndp has that they can walk at this point and i think we saw them actually starting to walk that line today pretty much in real time with their you know know statement is they cannot be they can say like we're sort of okay with public money going into these things but this looks like a bad deal in a way sort of what i was saying along here right like maybe i'm not wild about public money going into it i can get there you can convince me you can drag me there because of some of the benefits but this looks like a bad deal and so the ndp have the ability to say this just looks like a bad deal the problem with them putting those smith comments out there and saying, well, see, can you trust her judgment? All of that is then it starts to look more like you're opposed to any deal. And that is a dangerous place, I think, for the NDP to be. Because, again, like this is a relatively novel concept. I'm sure polling is not going to be 100% illuminating. And if the NDP get, you know, if it gets the sense like the NDP would kill the flames, I don't think that's helpful for the NDP. Now, is it possible kill the flames would be more popular than spend the money? That's not inconceivable to me. But that's not not a trade-off you even need to make because the deal is so wildly out there you can say things like most public money ever to a deal like maybe that's true maybe that's not someone's gonna have to run the numbers but you can say things like that and the um you know the ucp are gonna have to sit there and take it like you can say like look we love a deal but they had a deal for 50 50 before what is going on here how did you manage to negotiate from a position of we've got a gap of $30 million to, we'll spend $330 million. Holy cow, do we want you negotiating with Justin Trudeau if that's kind of your walk-in position? That's victory to you? That seems like you were raked over the coals. You were put over a barrel. That's not victory. And I think that's an opportunity for the NDP. But to outright suggest, like, Daniel Smith's position that you shouldn't fund public arenas is in some way valid would be dangerous for the NDP. Yeah,
Carter
26:16
Yeah, I mean, there's going going to be public money into stuff like this and the ndp is just as susceptible as any government on this you don't want to put yourself into that solid but but when you're attacking this deal this there's so much to attack on this deal um there's so much secrecy there's so much you know flipping around you don't have to attack public money you just have to attack this deal and in so doing you put yourself in a fantastic position because again you're framing uh
Carter
26:42
uh we're gonna we We would find a way to do this for less money for you. You know, again,
Carter
26:48
the brand matters more than anything. The story is that we're here to protect. We're here for you. The
Carter
26:54
The UCP is here for Murray, right?
Carter
26:57
right? I mean, the Flames didn't even make the playoffs. I mean, this is a colossally
Carter
27:02
colossally bad deal. And what I'd like to know is, like,
Carter
27:06
like, did anybody get polled? you know like right now polls
Carter
27:10
polls you know polls used to be really really secretive right like no one would know if a poll was in the field now it feels like we
Carter
27:17
we tend to know if there was a poll in the field and we tend to know what questions were being asked i had no clue that there was any polling in the field i know that there was no polling in the field from the city so
Carter
27:27
so if anybody was going to poll on this it would have come from the the
Carter
27:32
but i'm not i
Carter
27:33
i don't think anybody pulled on it and i don't think i think they're going blind and
Carter
27:37
and if they're going blind if we just accept that as a premise without evidence just for this moment and just discuss that
Corey
27:44
that that would be crazy but i think it's possible i agree with you because
Carter
27:47
because there's a premise without evidence that is nuts because this is one of those things that can become the de facto uh ballot box question and you don't know where you stand on it right
Carter
27:57
right we talked about how we know where they stand on crime we know where they stand on health care we know where they stand on the economy how do people equate where
Carter
28:07
where they are with public money going to the flames so
Annalise
28:10
so let's just run with with that let's say they don't know like why would you do this and why would you do it three days before five days before red drop i
Corey
28:21
mean maybe it's maybe it's gut maybe they do a point like for what it's worth i don't think it's impossible they don't have polling i think it's improbable if i were them I would certainly be polling on this and I can tell you when the Olympic bid was going on at the province we were polling weekly on support for the Calgary Olympics in the lead up to it monthly in the longer term and then weekly as it got closer so like certainly it's within the capacity of government to poll on these things and it's not like the UCP needs to do this polling this would be a legitimate use of government polling as you're trying to figure out what Calgarians want want because you know ultimately you are there to be somewhat responsive to the public opinion
Corey
29:01
but what they might be thinking is this
Corey
29:03
this is this is going to play with you know ham and eggers in in suburban calgary who we think we need to win this election like they might be falling into stereotypes of what they believe a voter wants in calgary and
Corey
29:18
and and i don't know i don't know if there's a lot of evidence of that but i'll tell you something there was the the statement from From the NDP, Rachel Notley's statement on this particular thing, which is like, we know the flames matter, we know downtown revitalization matters, I'm paraphrasing here. Can't help but notice this deal looks pretty bad, and we're going to assess it over the next couple of days. Kind of feels like they are also going to be polling on the specifics of the deal. But I'd also say, let's not give the NDP a pass. They better have some polling on this, too. They better not be going in blind on this, because this has been out there in the public discourse for a while. yeah
Carter
29:52
yeah i i think that uh
Carter
29:55
had a couple points i was going to make there and and i can't remember either of them yeah
Corey
29:58
yeah i ran over them all i'm sick they
Annalise
30:01
they were probably brilliant ask
Carter
30:02
ask another question natalie so come to me well well
Annalise
30:04
well i don't i don't want to spend i do want to move on and have more than just one segment on this episode but just a couple a couple last things is the council aspect right like the fact that this was a i believe unanimous 15 to 0 um vote including from some some people on council that maybe you would think like would be very against something like that? Like, how do you think, what was happening behind the scenes to get this united front?
Corey
30:33
It's a great question. It seems pretty wild to me that it would be unanimous, especially knowing what we now know about this, unless there are some other terms that are more publicly advantageous than we've seen. But sometimes people get whipped up in things. things. And again, I think I firmly believe this is city council saying we are willing to invest this for a good arena. We can invest a little bit more because of all this new money on the table from all these new players to get a great arena. And I ultimately feel like they their eyes got bigger than their stomach and they're forgetting the fact that this is still an incredible amount of money. And ultimately, yeah, we could spend three billion and have the coolest arena ever built for hockey doesn't make it a smart bet even if somebody's like you can have it for 700 million doesn't make it smart like like there is a certain kind of upper threshold of reason for these particular things and it does start to feel like this is well beyond it so
Annalise
31:29
so Carter do you think council got played like by I guess both the flames at ownership group and the UCP well
Carter
31:35
well I mean I've been watching what's going on in council with a keen eye and what I've have been seeing is the continued growth of administration and the strength of administration versus the weakness of counsel. And that balance is way off. And it wouldn't take very much to push them over the edge because, you know, keep in mind, counsel is the only source of real information comes from administration. And if you're not looking for different information, like if you're watching Jeremy Farkas right now, Jeremy Farkas is apoplectic about this deal. Now, he was apoplectic about the first deal but at least he'd come to kind of understand why it was done he wasn't necessarily going public with some of the negativity like the
Carter
32:20
push back know that this was probably a deal that needed to be pushed back on and these councillors in this particular council i i think they're being led by the nose by administration and i take no pleasure in saying that because i think that it really is bad news for any level of government you and this is one of the things that Klein did Klein um and and uh I can't remember the name of the finance minister but they eliminated all the policy people in minister's offices so all the policy was moved into the bureaucracy and now it's a very one-sided you know
Carter
32:55
know situation where all the information all the knowledge lives on the bureaucracy and very little information and analysis lives with the minister and so they're unable to push And I think that that's where council is right now. All the information and expertise lives with administration, and administration may have felt that they had no other choice but to get this deal done. And that's a pretty horrible place for a city to be coming out of.
Corey
33:22
yeah i think you can imagine as a former public servant myself i've got a little more nuanced view of that than steven does but i will say you
Corey
33:31
you know knowing that you might want to jump off this topic here the the ndp made a pretty good statement
Corey
33:37
statement here right they gave themselves the space to figure out exactly where this is going to land and their next moves will be interesting um rachel notley is who the first statement needed to come from but at this point I think the smart strategy would be moving it to a Calgary spokesperson like Joe Ceci, who
Corey
33:52
who would be seen as a prominent. I don't think Ceci, I
Carter
33:55
I think Kathleen, Kathleen Ganley.
Corey
33:58
You know what? I'm not even I'm not even actually focused on the personality so much as like it should be somebody who is seen as, you know, it can't be one of the candidates. It has to be somebody who was there in the cabinet before, I think. Could be Irfan Sabir, could be Kathleen Ganley, could be Joe Ceci. Sure. I don't care. But the point is, you know, you want a Calgary. Let me put it this way. If you support it, by all means, let Rachel Notley be the voice. If you decide that you're opposed even to the specifics of the deal, make it a Calgary voice.
Annalise
34:30
Just last thing on this, and then we will move on, is the threat.
Corey
34:34
I want you to know that. It's
Annalise
34:36
It's the last thing. It's the last thing. This is a meaty topic for civic nerds like Carter and I, Corey. um
Annalise
34:43
the threat in previous debates or one of the threats was like the flames are going to leave right like you remember that flames are going to leave and they're going to move to seattle and you two sports fans might know more about this than me but my understanding is that seattle
Annalise
34:58
seattle has now a 1.2 billion dollar arena that was financed with no city money the climate pledge arena so if if seattle can build a 1.2 billion u.s arena financed from the private sector
Annalise
35:12
like why do we need to subsidize oil billion billionaires in calgary to do the same thing well well
Corey
35:18
seattle's a lot bigger and seattle lost the sonics and that's basically all seattle's got right now so you know the economics are a little bit different there i think we have to acknowledge that as a bit of a foundation point no
Carter
35:29
no we don't because there's there's many different ways to get an arena built uh or an entertainment district or entertainment center and illuminate
Carter
35:37
One of them is to go to the sports teams, which don't have the same cash flow. Sports teams don't have the same cash flow. They only have X number of dates. Now, our sports team has the Roughnecks, the Hitmen, the Wranglers, and the Flames. So they have a lot of dates to fill in the Saddle Dome. But most sports teams don't have that many dates. So what they do is they go to an AEG or a Live Nation. AEG and Live Nation are in the business of building their own arenas that they own and control we i don't believe we even went out and discussed it with with a with a party like what like that i don't believe that this had this group had a mandate to chat with anyone outside of the flames to see whether or not anybody else might be interested in building an arena and allowing the flames to pay 17 million dollars in rent to be in that arena um i'll tell you this this these
Carter
36:33
these things are there are different opportunities now because the primary tenants have shifted and if
Carter
36:40
you want to open it up and actually look for a solution there are many many different solutions available look
Corey
36:46
look i think that it's likely i'll say this and i will immediately somebody will throw in my face otherwise but i don't know that there's any market as small as ours that doesn't at least have some component of public money in building an arena that's just a simple reality no
Annalise
37:02
it's on okay in a modern era in
Annalise
37:05
the most expensive one has to be fact-checked yeah somebody fact
Corey
37:08
fact-checked me here people
Annalise
37:09
people do that on the discord yeah it'll
Corey
37:13
Annalise to your point one of the things we haven't talked about is we're acting as though there's like just a couple of parties on the field the provincial government like Danielle Smith specifically I mean the UCP Rachel Notley's opposition and the municipal government plus you You know, the rabble, the public, all of us going, you know, how we feel about it. But there's another part of this playbook that the NHL uses, which is they start to really ratchet up the pressure around the idea of a team leaving, as you've introduced, if a deal doesn't go through. And it's not inconceivable to me that Gary Bettman is making comments during this election about, like, well, geez, if this deal doesn't happen, I think the flames are gone. Right? Do people buy
Carter
37:54
Yeah. If you follow the flames, you buy that. but do people care um you know calgary's
Carter
38:01
calgary's a sports town to be sure um but i'm not sure that there is this deep-seated requirement like everything has its price everything has an upper limit and i don't know where the upper limit is for a sports team well
Corey
38:17
well and there's certainly like the sense of improper meddling that it can occur at a certain point and this what could be interesting here is It's like we actually have rules around third party advertisers during
Corey
38:27
an election that might be triggered by some of the things that might naturally happen in the playbook. But I think it's absolutely possible the Flames become a player in this election. The NHL becomes a player in this election. Gary Bettman, a man who I've thought has been terrible since the 90s, could be a player in this election. It's all possible. OK,
Annalise
38:45
OK, well, I think we will continue to talk about this. And we didn't get two in the weeds, Corey. So we're very good.
Annalise
38:54
We kept it broad just for you. Moving on. Our next segment. Our next segment is called Paying for the Doctor. So on Monday at a news conference, Premier Daniel Smith was asked once again if she stands by a University of Calgary policy paper she wrote recently. It was in 2021 that urges Albertans to pay for services, including visits to a family doctor. so she was asked in front of media she's previously been asked this question by people on her call and radio show um and she will not disavow her previous stance i i guess the simple question here is like what what do you make of this and why is for someone who often will say well my views change and this and that why not just come out and say that you
Corey
39:37
want to do this i mean sure
Corey
39:39
sure but i the simple answer is that's a really good question and i I think people are rightly saying, what is the hang-up here? Why can't you disavow that? And maybe, you know, I'm going to give a charitable read here, right? Maybe Danielle Smith doesn't want to disavow it because she still believes it, but she has no intention of doing it because she knows it would be unpopular and she just doesn't want to go there. But she doesn't want to pretend like she doesn't think that it would ultimately be a good idea if she could do it. Well, and Albertans can do with that information as they see, because four years of a term is a long time, and you might say in year two, you know what i'm still kind of concerned about the health care system fuck it we're going to do it i know i've made commitments but there are something has happened something always happens right either revenue goes down or there is just you know too many people in the hallways or something happens and then you've got to make new decisions based on new information and it's quite possible that armed with her previous and seemingly current views she would make the decision that okay we've got to introduce some co-pays here or do something to that line in
Corey
40:41
in a funny way that's like the most charitable read because the next layer out of charity is that she just doesn't think it's proper or something like that and that's just political malpractice like if she's not intending to do it and she doesn't believe it anymore she should just say it and
Corey
40:56
if she can't say it that
Corey
40:58
that suggests in the least charitable read perhaps she can't say it because she knows she's going to do it carter
Carter
41:04
carter what do you make of it there's
Carter
41:05
there's so many different outs you know these the everybody says things right you know oh i was the that that was in my role as the the leader of uh the alberta enterprise group yeah
Corey
41:17
yeah i was trying to start a conversation you
Carter
41:20
you know i mean and these when you start with a strong position it gives us a much better conversation that conversation has led me to the place where now i know there's no way that i would do the uh health savings accounts for primary care health savings accounts only belong on tertiary care right um or or pharmaceuticals or wherever right like like she could build a boundary and she could say it very very clearly what she wanted to do she's not saying it very clearly and that's by choice recognizing as well the importance of the question right now not clarifying something that's not important you know you can get through it but when you are not clarifying clarifying something that is tracking with you um it just
Carter
42:04
just stays with you it doesn't go away right so you're way better off especially when you got four and a half weeks left on the election bite the fucking bullet i'm
Carter
42:13
i'm in or i'm out but i suspect that she's got donors and she's got people that are close to her that she has to keep on side and
Carter
42:20
and the way that it keep them on side is to push you
Carter
42:23
you know the the potential of private uh people paying for care right that's how she She keeps them on side, but she doesn't want to say that because she knows that it's not tremendously popular with the population. And
Carter
42:35
And if she had,
Carter
42:36
if she had time, then she'd be in a position where she could maybe convince the population. This is something that should happen at some point in the future.
Carter
42:45
you know, she's walking too fine a line.
Annalise
42:48
Do you think it keeps coming up? Like she's, she's been asked about it several times on her call and show, which has stopped. And then she was asked by it, uh, by media on Monday, but it was like one question, no No follow up because of the new policy, like on, I guess, quote unquote, slower days. Do you think media keep asking and it keeps coming up?
Corey
43:07
Yeah, I mean, like this was less than two years ago that that this paper was published. It was in June of 2021. This is not ancient history, right? Like you couldn't even get like a like a diploma from SAIT in that time. You would be halfway through an undergraduate degree. She's not changed as a human being since this. It's not like you can wave this off as like, it's a long time ago, I'm not playing this gotcha politics, I'm not going to answer for everything I've said in the past.
Corey
43:35
That would be an appropriate answer to 10 years ago, 20 years ago, commentary like that.
Corey
43:41
22 months ago? I mean, I'm sorry, but you're going to have to answer some questions about that. And it's not as though you were not a public figure at that time either, right? You were not a politician, but you were certainly a public figure. year and so it does seem like it's an absolutely untenable situation and and let me just say i've heard varying versions of how many times she's been asked and how many times she's denied it but i've heard like four times in the past nine days ten days now i guess she's been asked and denied it that
Corey
44:10
that that does not look good and and that ad writes itself and people will take those clips of denial and they will run them and by the way if
Corey
44:18
if you have been spending the last two two weeks, as you have, if you're Danielle Smith, inundating Albertans with ads of you kind of shuffling like a zombie with the rest of your caucus forward, talking about how you'll never hurt public health care. All of that investment is undone by you right now, this commentary. You've got, the most lethal thing in politics is to not know where you stand. You've got to act sure in these moments, and you've got to be emphatic about it. And you can't be emphatic on this ad and waffling over here because the waffling will crush the ad it's just it's a reality of political communication well
Carter
44:53
and you have to have your paid campaign in line with your free campaign right when you announce something big and you put a big announcement out there it has to be then followed by the media right you get media attention and then you've also bought media that's how you get past the fleeting attention of the of the media um you've got these campaigns that are out there contradicting one another um these these no one likes that i mean the the dissonance will create havoc uh for any campaign it doesn't matter what the issue is i mean it's just as likely that at some point uh rachel notley could be in this type of situation and our advice to her would be the exact same as our advice to to danielle smith clean it up and get out of it because you cannot sustain um these things being at odds no campaign can it is too expensive and too uh
Carter
45:50
uh defining for any organization so
Annalise
45:54
so when you do when you do clean it up like let's say in a week she gets asked again and she's been listening to your great advice carter and she cleans it up how what does she say she
Carter
46:05
says like i've always said there's
Carter
46:06
there's no way that anybody's going to be paying for i mean i did say this one time before uh but since i've been in elected office i mean that was then this is now and there's no way that we're going to be doing that i disavow those you know those earlier statements yeah
Corey
46:22
yeah i you know you say you guys just weren't listening to me before i told you at the time actions speak louder than words i've made these investments the most ever in health care i got rid of that 40 a day fee that the NDP had. Shame on them. And obviously these are not my views. They've never, you know, they've not been my views. It was a position paper. It was designed to spark a conversation. I had a very different role at the time. You all know that in the media. This is ridiculous. Of course we're not doing that. Of course I don't believe HSA should be used for primary care. Next question. And you act as though you were always clear because this is the gaslighting that all politicians do these these days, whenever they need to clean up a particular message, but you have to do it because I, you know, the thing I really want to underline is it's, it's not even just that your campaign is working at odds, like, you know, that, that is wrong and it's frustrating. It's confusing when you have your earned strategy over here saying maybe, and your paid strategy over here saying absolutely not, but it's worse than that because it's not just that that they are atomizing
Corey
47:28
atomizing each other and there's nothing there it's that it's actively making you look deceptive it's it's cross purposes that is damaging your brand badly because now you're not even like well i never knew where she stood and it sounds like i still don't it's like
Corey
47:42
she clearly fucking lied to me in that ad is the feeling instead you get when you look at these two pieces of evidence next to each other okay
Annalise
47:50
okay let's leave that one there and move into our lightning round guys um first one i just want to can
Carter
47:56
can we back up a second can
Annalise
47:58
say move into the lightning round no
Annalise
48:00
no you just said it yeah that
Annalise
48:02
good you just said it that was good lightning round
Annalise
48:05
we should just clip that and use that every time that's good oh
Corey
48:09
oh boy yeah that'll
Annalise
48:10
that'll add a little bit of work to course this
Carter
48:14
button people like listening to the podcast for our excitement levels and you
Carter
48:20
know we've we've kind of given up on the intro and the out out but in the in the in the actual you know you can do this okay
Annalise
48:29
i'll i'll pep it up a little bit just for you um i want to talk about kenny's uh jason kenny the constant info that came out this week about the the fact that he financed his leadership review defense campaign um out of his conceded association to the tune of $700,000. Is this normal?
Annalise
48:49
normal? Like, is that what you would have expected? Is that where you would have expected it to come from? Again, it's a lightning round, Carter. So keep it tight. Is
Carter
48:58
Is that normal? Oh, my God. Yeah, I think that that is actually normal. I don't think it's normal to the tune of $800,000. But there's new rules in place. And and some of this unintended consequence can look like a campaign that starts weeks before the campaign actually starts and some of the intended consequence is well we have to have some sort of vehicle that raises money in order to spend money we can't just funnel it through the party or we can't just have the party apparatus spend it or whatever so you know what's the vehicle that's going to raise the money so that we can actually invest in our defense and this may be the only vehicle that was available to him. And
Carter
49:42
And that makes sense. I mean, he has full control essentially over what the CA spends money on. And the rules are written in such a fashion that, you
Carter
49:51
you know, really, they can spend money on anything they want, anything
Corey
49:56
Yeah, I don't know, I feel a little ambivalent about this. And we've talked about this before. But one of the challenges with really itemizing the things you're allowed to do and not do in politics, as we've done in the past 10 years as we've tightened up all these election laws, as we've moved from more of a principles based approach to this to a rules based approach. So Stephen's right. I, you know, I can't think of any rule against this, but
Corey
50:20
but like principles based, it makes me a little uncomfortable because when money is raised through a constituency association or a political party, it, it, it gets a heavy public subsidy. Like we give tax credits for this
Corey
50:32
kind of thing. So, you know, Jason Kenney's leadership review, people
Corey
50:36
people of Alberta, was funded, it looks like a lot of large donations, so I won't overstate it, but it was funded probably 25% by you and me. This is part of the situation we find ourselves in. These
Carter
50:48
These norms, though, these norms that you speak of, I remember a former speaker in the legislature who had raised an extra $200,000, and it was not written, it was in his CA, and he took it with him.
Carter
51:05
left when he when he left he just took it with him he wrote a check to himself essentially and uh you
Carter
51:12
you know i i don't you know that norm that you're speaking of cory i mean yeah i'd like to have some norms um but this guy took a
Carter
51:19
a lot of money put it in his own pocket and i don't think that that was inside the norm either so getting the rules makes sense to me but you have to be really aware of the unintended consequence of these particular choices that we're making And I think that we are just surrounded in a sea of unintended consequence when it comes to election financing. Somehow we've
Corey
51:42
we've got the impression
Carter
51:42
impression that money is bad in politics. And that's just not true.
Corey
51:47
OK, but the line is super great. I mean, political parties have often topped up leaders' salaries, especially when they're in opposition, to make the position seem a little bit more palatable. Or covered expenses.
Corey
51:58
Covered expenses. Again, you know, the elections, Alberta doesn't get into those things. election authorities
Corey
52:04
authorities all over the place generally try to avoid that i'm sure you could make a not particularly convincing argument that that former speaker just had their salary topped up and how is that no no he literally took
Carter
52:14
took it when he retired
Corey
52:16
i like i said a not particularly convincing argument could be made yeah
Corey
52:20
right but all that said there
Corey
52:23
there was there was a norm that leadership reviews were done through kind of independent organizations in the past right i I don't think that's disputable. You know, you would get like the friends of Jason
Corey
52:35
Jason Kenney together. And then you would just create an org and you would do it.
Carter
52:40
That's illegal. You can't do friends of Jason Kenney anymore because we created laws that say that if you're going to participate in politics, you need to be a TPA. You
Carter
52:47
You need to have, you know, these are political activities. And as such, they are governed by our political legislation. so
Corey
52:56
so truly nothing would have stopped a tpa from being created it that was the friends of jason kenny so what's the difference this is my point what's
Carter
53:03
what's the difference a tpa gets tax
Corey
53:06
deductibility but tax deduct but
Carter
53:07
allowed under the existing system well
Corey
53:11
don't think anyone's disputing that my entire point was there's nothing in the rules that stops it but principles based i don't love it i just don't love it that's the reality yeah
Annalise
53:21
based i don't like this
Carter
53:22
this all this financing rules they're all terrible we
Annalise
53:25
we can get into the financing rules at a later date this is a lightning round carter that
Carter
53:29
that was a really good lightning round wow that's exciting holy crap
Annalise
53:34
uh next question tucker carlson uh is gone um
Annalise
53:41
uh what is the question here i don't know cory you've been like happy to weigh in on cbc media strategy do you have like fox do you have advice for fox well she's bitter like she's carried this cbc
Carter
53:54
for quite some time cory
Annalise
53:56
cory and i just have like a uh a bet that will run for months if not years it will be it'll be weeks it'll
Corey
54:03
it'll be weeks you'll
Annalise
54:05
no they won't um do you i guess do you have like what's did fox make the right move what what how would you be advising fox like give me your little little short and sweet yeah there's
Corey
54:17
there's some interesting reporting coming out as to why this move was made there's some you know most of the reporting the wall street journal was writing about how uh it you know there were the there were the text threads that were of course part of the dominion lawsuit that ended with the giant settlement but it doesn't even sound like the stuff that was necessarily determinant
Corey
54:40
determinant in that case is what got tucker carlson in trouble but But there was a lot of redacted things where I guess he was incredibly shitty to his colleagues. There were some things like seriously get these people fired. He was disparaging management. And those kinds of things seem to have poisoned the well internally at Fox. I'm sure it didn't help that then there was an almost $800 million settlement. There's also some suggestion that it might be tied to his exposure to some other things going on in terms of lawsuits around, you know, sexual harassment, I believe. And so, you
Corey
55:09
you know, there are there are perhaps all sorts of factors at play here. ultimately a guy who acted in a pretty villainous fashion lost his job and so i think we could celebrate that at least for a moment does not seem like it's enough punishment for somebody who actively supported a coup that he knew was false you know like it was like based on false premises i guess i mean but here we are uh
Corey
55:31
uh what's interesting to me is
Corey
55:35
it does sort of lead to the question is there another shoe to drop like what's going to happen next there are a lot lot of other people on those text threads and uh there are still other lawsuits to happen so i you know i think fox did the right thing for probably not the right reasons or at least not entirely for the right reasons uh so i don't give them a total pass but it's
Corey
55:56
it's a step in the right direction it's progress not perfection carter
Annalise
56:01
carter what are your thoughts uh
Carter
56:02
uh ding dong the witch is dead next
Annalise
56:05
question we're gonna we're gonna keep the lightning round it's
Carter
56:08
it's It's the lightning round,
Carter
56:09
Annalise. You've got to move quick.
Annalise
56:11
We're going to keep it with the American theme. Last question. In our lightning round, Joe Biden announced today his 2024 re-election campaign. Stephen Carter, lightning
Annalise
56:22
lightning round. What does his path to the next election look like?
Carter
56:26
It looks like billions of dollars being spent trying to keep the world from electing Donald Trump again. I think that Trump versus Biden is not anybody's favored election outcome,
Carter
56:41
outcome, but I think that that's where we're headed. And, man, it's going to be really tricky because, you
Carter
56:49
you know, I was so wrong by choosing Jeb Bush that one time. I'm just reluctant to even weigh in on American politics, at least. families um although jeb book bush for president hats are still available at westofcenter.ca
Annalise
57:06
cory hogan what does biden's path to the next election look like
Corey
57:11
uh presidents get less popular if you were to go to an aggregator you would see joe biden's disapproval exceeds his approval by a lot right i think close to 10 points in the last last time i checked on it joe
Corey
57:23
joe biden maybe beats donald trump joe biden definitely loses to ron desantis why
Corey
57:31
why is he running he
Carter
57:32
he shouldn't be running you
Corey
57:32
you know like i actually think his path is narrower than perhaps we hope those of us who hope america doesn't fall to pieces and i have to imagine enough of the democratic establishment knows that that somebody besides fucking bobby kennedy jr is going to run for this nomination uh
Corey
57:50
because it does seem to me that
Corey
57:53
that prudence demands it the other thing is let's just be real yeah he's in great health but he'll be 82 next
Corey
58:00
election he would be 86 at the end of his next term that's
Corey
58:06
that's tough for me to reconcile right i you know america has historically presented itself as this like young vibrant dynamic nation and uh you know the octogenarian president who didn't win by a ton last time against a guy who was literally an authoritarian trying to take force back or maintain force by illegitimate means is um it
Corey
58:33
doesn't make me feel super comfortable let me put it that way doesn't
Carter
58:35
doesn't make me feel great cory not feeling great okay
Annalise
58:40
we're gonna leave it there that is a wrap on episode 1054 of the did you
Carter
58:44
you nail it like right on an hour like that's unbelievable zane
Annalise
58:49
never brought it in under an hour
Annalise
58:51
and with you is always steven
Annalise
58:53
steven carter i am super impressed you've
Carter
58:54
to bring it in under an hour it's very silver carter congratulations