Trump Threatens An Apocalypse…To Maybe Get A Ceasefire?

All right, it's time for another Left, Right and Center, everybody. Thanks for being here. I'm David Green. Now, if you follow politics, or I don't know, just the state of the world in general, this past week has been nerve-wracking, right? The clock was ticking on Iran. After six weeks of fighting President Trump, wanted it all to be over quickly, so he issued a threat that if Iran did not agree to a deal by end of day Tuesday, quote, a whole civilization will die. Here's the president. We have a plan because of the power of our military, where every bridge in Iran will be decimated by 12 o'clock tomorrow night, where every power plant in Iran will be out of business, burning, exploding, and never to be used again. But with 90 minutes to go before his deadline, a breakthrough was announced. Both sides had agreed to a ceasefire. And so it seemed at least briefly like there was progress, but this ceasefire only does last for two weeks while negotiations take place. And while there is a multi-point plan that is the foundation of these peace talks, there was immediate disagreement and tension over several points. That includes attacks on Lebanon by Israel, also the fate of Iran's nuclear enrichment program, and control over the all-important Strait of Hormuz. Meanwhile, safe passage through the Strait remains uncertain at this point. Nevertheless, the White House has been self-congratulatory, saying the president's over-the-top threats were absolutely necessary just to get us here. His very tough rhetoric and his tough negotiating style is what has led to the result that you are all witnessing today. White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt speaking there. So was this brinksmanship worthwhile? And if strategy lead to a real off-ramp calming a crisis that, to be fair, was largely this president's own making. Moalethi is here to talk about this. On the left, on the right, we have Mike Dupkeback. He's a veteran GOP communications strategist. And Mike was the director of communications at the White House under President Trump in 2017. Guys, did you think we were going to... I mean, this was going to get real ugly this past week because, I don't know, it was the talk of all of my friends, colleagues. I didn't really know what was going to happen with the president making these threats, even though he is a person who's known for bluster. Mike, I'll start with you. By the standards of the American presidency, that took a new turn, even for President Trump. What I will say is this, if I had to put my cap on and having worked with the president, you've got an adversary whose official foreign policy is death to America, which is pretty nasty in and of itself. Now, to match that rhetoric with similar rhetoric, I understand what I think he was thinking of in terms of bringing them to the negotiating table. But the problem is, they're not the only ones that are hearing those words when you put them out in true social. And so what it does to the moral authority of the presidency, what it does to the moral authority of the United States, what it does to our allies who we are also trying to cajole and convince to be part, at least some part of this military action, even if it is so small to allow us to fly over their airspace. I think it was detrimental on that side. So those words, while I understand what he was trying to do to bring the Iranian regime to the table, I think had some detrimental effects and side effects that the White House was not counting on and probably led to you and your friends thinking that there was ugly language. The world was going to a much darker place. Mo, I listened to Mike mentioning that when the president conducts a war on truth social, everyone can obviously read it. That language was not just for Iran. We are hearing that there are sensitive talks taking place right now. We don't know any of the details of what's happening. I don't even fully understand what exactly the different points of this negotiating deal may be. Do we need and deserve more transparency or is there some argument that we should let this process play out for a couple of weeks and hope for the best? We can let it play out and hope for the best. I have very little confidence we're going to get the best. A brilliant strategist, I know, once said that Trump 2.0 would be like Trump 1.0 but with more confidence, more swagger. Was that Mike Dubke? Strategist Mike Dubke. That's absolutely right. We're Trump 2.0 is Trump 1.0 but without the guardrails is how I would slightly amend it. This week was such a great example of it. Mike talked about the moral authority of the United States and the presidency being eroded this week. I feel like every week since January 20th, 2025, we have seen a slow erosion in that moral authority and this week we had the president of the United States threaten a genocide while once again attacking our allies. At some point, the rest of the world isn't going to stop trusting this president. They're going to stop trusting the United States and that's a dangerous place for us to be. Maybe this was all a negotiating tactic a lot of his supporters say. I don't understand the victory lap they took though because I don't know what we negotiated. I don't know what we got out of this. Within hours after the ceasefire, we saw missiles flying. It was supposed to be a two week pause in hostilities and the hostilities didn't stop. You've got the different parties arguing over who was a party to this ceasefire. They can't even agree whether or not Lebanon was part of it. One of the big conditions was supposed to be that Iran was going to reopen the strait. It's not reopen. They're now talking about how they're going to put a toll on the strait, which they never did before. We've essentially actually strengthened their hand by allowing them to take more control over the strait. It was a devastating week for US foreign policy. Mike, you mentioned that you once worked for this president helping to shape his message. I know we're close to a decade out of when you are on the inside, but as you look at this and know people in circles who might be close to him, are there people on the inside who are saying, good job, Mr. President, that social post was great. That's exactly what you needed to say in that moment. Let me help you shape that line about death of a civilization. Let's workshop that a little bit. This guy just totally rogue and he says and writes whatever the hell he wants. I think in Trump 1.0, I believe the president surrounded himself with individuals that had expertise and outside influence and places to go after the Trump administration. I know I'm going to get a lot of flak for saying this, but I feel in Trump 2.0, what the president has done. He has taken the lessons learned in the first presidency. He has taken the lessons learned in being in the wilderness for four years in between the presidencies and decided and determined and chose the people that he wanted to walk into Trump 2.0 presidency with because he didn't want the level of resistance that he probably experienced and that I know that he experienced in Trump 1.0. It's not that the president is hell bent on doing things only his way. I know that's not true, but I do fear that because he wanted less friction in the second term in the White House that he is getting less friction, but that also means he's getting less wise counsel and some of his tendencies when he really sits down and thinks about it, I think sometimes it comes to a conclusion that I could go a different direction. I'm being too kind and I should modify my earlier statement that Moe quoted, but this is a frictionless presidency in terms of what the president wants and what the president says in the direction that it goes. What it's so interesting is a frictionless presidency, but one that is still carrying out policy goals that there are many smart people who would say that the larger goals are the right thing. Of course. You raised this when we first started talking. This is a regime in Iran that wants death to America. If we take a step back and ask the question, is America safer or better after the start of this war, it's an interesting one to explore. I think about someone like John Bolton, Trump's former national security advisor. He has said for weeks that the regime in Iran needed to be taken out, but he has a lot of concerns about the way this president is executing on this strategy to reach a goal that he ultimately does agree with. This is Bolton talking to Sky News. I have long favored regime change in Iran because without regime change, the nuclear threat will continue, the terrorist threat will continue, and as we can now see palpably, the economic threat of dominance over the Gulf's total oil supply by blocking the Strait of Hormuz will continue. I'm not a supporter of any particular method. If I could find a better way to overthrow the regime, I'd be happy to try it. I don't know what Trump's objective was when he began the attacks. I don't know what his objective is today. Other than he sees the price of oil rising, he sees stock markets falling, he worries about the political impact on him, and that's why he agreed to this ceasefire. Moe, that's what's so scary to me. There's a world where a president could have made a case and said, this is why this war is necessary and brought the public along and brought even maybe many Democrats along who didn't necessarily agree with that this is the time, but that this is a dangerous regime. In the wake of all of that, that's the destabilizing feeling I think we're all having. As Bolton said, Trump is thinking about moment by moment and what the politics are saying and what he should do next to look strong on the world stage. That's where the real worry is. That's a separate conversation I feel like then. Are we safer or not with this regime out of power? Yeah. I feel like we've said this so many times. There has been not just a terrible lack of communications to the American people about what's driving this. It does not appear to be a strategy behind what's driving this. There was reporting this week that the president and BB Netanyahu were in the situation room and Netanyahu gave him the intelligence to make the argument for going to war. This was a great New York Times piece you're talking about. Yeah, they're really dug into the buildup to this. Secretary Rubio and other respected voices in the administration said to the president, this intel isn't real and yet he moved forward anyway. There doesn't appear to be a strategy. This president does like to flex. When he's given an opportunity to and someone gives him a reason to, he'll do it. If it was backed by a sound strategy with clear objectives, okay, but when it's done without a strategic objective, we run the risk of making the world less safe. I need to jump in and just take an issue with a couple of things here. One, I think that the president seeing the success that he had with the military operation in Venezuela gave him a false sense of confidence where and how fast this operation in Iran could be. And people were warning him in Venezuela, don't do this, it's going to be messy. And he's like, oh, that worked. Wow, did that work? We get on a Monday, the day before he delivers his joint message to Congress with Prime Minister Netanyahu giving him intel that there are going to be the supreme leader and all these other pieces of the Revolutionary Guard and Iranian leadership together on a Saturday above ground, something that doesn't happen very often. The CIA, at least this is the reporting that I know of, Mossad has their reports. The president, the administration asked the CIA to look into it. They confirmed the reports from before. They had an opportunity to cut the head off the snake if we're going to use that language, and they took it on that Saturday. So do I see a reason why they didn't consult with other leaders, with NATO and other leaders? Yes, operational security. Now, at that point in this operation, you've had a very successful elimination of the top ranks of 47 years of terrorism. You've got an opportunity now to explain to the American people what you're doing. At that point, I'm in some agreement with you that we really then have fumbled the rest of the story, the rest of the operation. But by day four, we had decimated their air force. We had decimated their Navy. We had taken out several of their production facilities for missiles, and we hadn't yet had the straits of Hormuz cut off. We hadn't yet had all the retaliation against Iranian neighbors and our friends. And we probably had an opportunity to get out of this at that point and leaving a regime a bit decimated, ready for the people to stand up. We have now gotten into some mud, some quick stand. We might not have boots on the ground, but we definitely have gotten bogged down in Iran. And how we get out of there to me is the next question. But I do get a little upset when I hear people say, especially after 47 years of terror by this regime in Iran. And if you listen to John Bolton, what he's saying is we needed to take these people out. I do get upset saying, oh, this whole thing was a mess. I think we've turned it into a mess. And maybe we learned the wrong lessons in Venezuela. But I think there is an argument to be made that the president took decisive action in a way that other presidents wouldn't have and maybe didn't pull back at a time that he should have and were there too long. Yeah, I mean, I appreciate everything that Mike said. I just I have a hard time anybody saying that any part of this has been successful yet because the ever shifting and changing objectives we haven't met. We took out their leadership, but we did not take out the regime. The people who took over are more extremist elements of the same exact regime. They are still promoting terror in the streets of Tehran. The Revolutionary Guard is still walking around terrorizing the people there. They have proven that even with the decimation of their air force that they can still be very, very effective at launching attacks against other nations. And they have proven that they can cripple the global economy by closing down the strait. And they are coming away in an even stronger position vis-à-vis the strait because now they can monetize it. The United States is giving them, President Trump is giving them the ability to monetize it. So tell me what the objectives are before you tell me it's a success because so far we have they have not met their objectives. All right, we're going to take a quick break. But I do want to let all of you know that you can join this conversation. Join us on the left, right and center. Substack, it's a community conversation. You can gauge one another. You can sign up for a weekly inbox reminder to hone up on the show and get to talking to one another. Join us at kcrwlrc.substack.com. That's kcrwlrc.substack.com. When we come back, Mo and Mike and I are going to keep talking about Iran, also the Department of Homeland Security, and the fact that Congress is back in town. You're listening to Left, Right and Center. You know, I hosted an early morning radio show for a decade, so I know better than anyone what it's like to obsess over just getting a good night's sleep. Improving your sleep, it can feel so overwhelming. Do you get a new mattress, sleep trackers? Do you use supplements, blackout curtains? I mean, it just becomes this huge project. But the truth is, most people aren't sleeping poorly because of their mattress. They're sleeping on old bedding. The fastest, simplest way to upgrade your sleep is to upgrade what touches you all night. Your bedding. Bowlen Branch makes the entire bed. Signature satin sheets, breathable pillows, cozy waffle bed blankets, and beautifully crafted comforters all designed to work together for comfort and temperature regulation. It's a simple swap that transforms how your bed feels instantly. 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I think we can all agree that the legislative branch has been really active and engaged in thinking about and passing legislation and compromising and coming up with all sorts of great ideas for how our country can be better. Anyway, my sarcasm aside, lawmakers are back from their two-week break. Now, when they left, they were in a standoff over Homeland Security funding. This partial government shutdown continues. Not only are they returning this week to that fight, but now they have Iran on their laps as well and what to do in that conversation with this negotiating period happening that we just talked about. The pressure is really on to see lawmakers do something in a midterm election year. Before we get to specifics, Mike, how do you read the overall temperature in Congress right now? What signs are you looking for from Republicans that might tell you where they're digging in their heels and where they might be willing to be in a negotiating mood? To continue your theme, thank goodness the olive branch from the Democrats has been extended with their initial votes on the 25th Amendment and talk of impeachment of Trump because that's going to get them off to a rising start of crossing the aisle and legislating. I think everyone has decided that with the midterms coming up, we're going to go to our own team and any compromise be damned. I don't expect a lot of legislation or progress on a whole host of issues coming out of this Congress. Any time soon. We've got some serious issues that need to be addressed. Permitting reform is one big one that doesn't just cover the oil and gas industry. It covers renewable resources, economic development. You name it, it's a very unsexy issue that actually means a lot for the economy of the United States. There is some bipartisan support for that. That is one area there should be. Yes, but it's going to die on the vine because once again, we've got the Democrats believing that the only way that they will be accepted by their constituents, the other Democrats, is by being as anti-Trump as they possibly can. They're probably not wrong about that. I mean, Schumer's got to feel the pressure of the compromise he made in March of 2025. He's never really recovered from that. Jeffries has finally stepped up to the plate and said, all right, guys, you want to go after them, go after them. We've got that on the one side. On the Republican side, we're not innocent either. There hasn't been a lot of reaching across the aisle from Republicans, but we've got real issues to address. That's one, permitting reform. The other thing is actually cleaning up this DHS mess, the Department of Homeland Security. I think people forget because the president signed the executive order to pay TSA that FEMA's still not getting paid, the Coast Guard still not getting paid, other members within DHS are not getting monies. Ironically, ICE and Border Patrol are because that funding had already been approved in the last reconciliation and they had budgeted it out. The groups that the Democrats are really pushing against not getting funded are the only ones that are actually getting a paycheck, which the irony there is Earthshatter. Isn't this the truth? The thing that created this partial government shutdown from the beginning, a conversation about policies regarding ICE and how they act after we saw two people killed in horrific events, the conversation that should be happening is what to do about ICE and how they operate. That's not happening. Or maybe it is some, but I feel like we're getting into this whole blame game. You're causing the lines of airports or you're causing the lines of airports or we can't just fund part of an agency or we can. Or as you said, Mike, the fact that ICE is actually getting funding when Democrats wanted to hold up that funding in order to have leverage to change the way they operate, this is Congress in 2026. That's right. That's Washington, DC, baby. I mean, Mo, is there a way to get back to this substantive conversation about ICE or do Democrats, and we should say Democrats feel, based on polling, that they kind of, in terms of public perception, are in a winning position right now. So I guess another way to ask this is, do Democrats have any incentive to do anything differently right now? Can we get back to a point where we have constructive conversations? Sure. In the lame duck session after the election, that's when they'll start having conversations again. So cover unsexy issues, that can happen, but nothing that has any sort of political context is going to happen before November. Mike's absolutely right that neither side has a lot of incentive to compromise. He talked about examples where Democrats have rejected compromise. I think DHS is an example of Republicans rejecting compromise, right? The Democrats said, let us just focus only on ICE. We will fund everything else. And Republicans said, no to that. John Doon, to his credit, eventually came around, and Republicans in the Senate eventually came around to that position. They dragged to their credit the president who was against it, but they at least got him to begrudgingly agree to it. And Speaker Johnson, whose sole job is to herd a bunch of very unruly cats in the House, wasn't able to do it, right? The House Republicans blocked it. And it's for the same exact reason that Mike identified in a midterm year, especially in the Republicans case, where they are seeing some really ugly poll numbers, they cannot weaken their standing with their base, or else turnout takes a big hit. So that's going to be the underlying dynamic. I think Democrats are right to keep fighting on ICE, both from a political and a moral high ground. It is an agency that was run amok. It was an agency that whose overreach was tragically captured on video that the American people expect and want, reform of ICE. So they have, in this case, both the political and the moral high ground on this. And I think they're right to keep fighting on ICE, but that doesn't mean the rest of the DHS needs to be shut down. And I'm glad that Senate Republicans eventually came around to agree with the Democrats on that. All right, you're listening to Left, Right and Center from KCRW. We're talking about Congress coming back to town in Washington after a two-week recess and sort of what's going to be on their mind and what they may or may not get done. I was interested that you guys said, like, unsexy issues that few people ever pay attention to might be where you see compromise, which is, I guess, sad. But Mike talked about permitting reform, which I agree could not be less sexy. I find it so sexy, though. I don't really think you guys- I'm going to speak for yourself. Yeah, you would. You would. It's not going to capture a ton of headlines, but there is some bipartisan agreement on it. One other area to watch, I don't know that it's going to get done, but maybe not for the pure partisan purposes we're talking about. One area to watch is the potential of AI regulation. That is an issue that is emerging more and more as a political challenge for people around the country. You're beginning to see some Republican members that had championed deregulating AI start to speak up a little bit more forcefully for regulating AI. The president looked like it was sort of a last-minute insertion into his state of the union, but he started talking about some AI stuff. It's interesting, and it scrambles the left versus right dynamic that too often cripples our politics. It's just something to watch. I don't know that we're going to get there, but it is something to watch where you could see some bipartisan maneuvering. I'm with you except for this, and it really- so AI reform or regulation, sorry. What the White House has put out and what others pro-development of AI on a national security basis or whatever have put out is that we need a national framework. This is where Washington fails because you're going to hear this word again, preemption. What I'm hearing on Capitol Hill is that you've got some reasons on the right, and it mostly has to do with safety of kids online. For some folks on the left, it has mostly to do with we can't do anything California doesn't want us to do. You're not wanting to preempt states from having their own AI regulations. Well, the problem with that is you're now going to create 50 different rule sets, and we do need one set of federal guidelines for AI. I don't know how you navigate around that. Even an issue that is as potent as AI, and I think Moe is spot on here. We don't- these policyholders, I don't think, understand the revolution that is coming that is going to affect livelihoods, that's going to affect the way that we interact with each other. It's going to affect media, it's going to affect politics, all these things that AI is going to affect. I don't think they have a good grasp on it, but it comes down to these basic things of, is Washington going to regulate, or are we going to let it to the states? We've got these weird camps of preemption that goes down to the base of what we've had before. I'm not explaining this very well, but I'm basically saying the old politics is the new politics, and it's going to affect this politics. I think you're making another point, Mike, which is it is so potent in people's lives. I wonder if people are beginning to think about it so much, and it's getting so much attention that actually that means Congress won't compromise on it. It can't be one of those under-the-radar issues that there can be some- The parties don't think that voters want them to compromise. Mo, you bring this up all the time. It's like these polls that say that everyone wants people to work together, and everyone wants their politicians to take a stand and not work together. It's great, very helpful polling. Once an issue becomes way out there, then the conversations in campaigns and in congressional offices is like, how can we make hay on this because people are talking about AI and you actually don't ever see compromise that's meaningful get done. It's interesting, right? Mike's a thousand percent right. There's about 20 different reasons people should care about this, many of which are just not even on their radars yet. One is, if this is actually going to be another affordability election, all these AI data centers around the country that are jacking up people's utility bills suddenly put it front and center. That's why you're seeing so much backlash at a grassroots level around the country, around these data centers, and why everyone from Bernie Sanders to Donald Trump have started talking about these data centers. That may be the entry point into the conversation that gets people to actually pay attention because it's affecting their pocketbooks. Some of the rest of it is still way up in the clouds, too much for people to focus on with everything else that's going on in their lives right now. I'm as skeptical as Mike that anything gets done, but I do think you might start seeing some bipartisan, interesting alignments. Moe, I'm sitting here smiling because one of the ways that you can mitigate the cost of data centers and the energy usage and how they're connected to the grid is by allowing them to generate their own electricity, their own power, which they almost all want to do and have said we will pay for it, we'll do it, but they can't because of the regulations on energy. You know what would solve that? Permitting reform. Let's make t-shirts. Permitting reform is my number one issue. I do want to ask about one thing that I've been picking up from the Trump administration recently. The Trump administration quietly, maybe not so quietly now, seems to be bringing social issues back to the four, particularly conversations around protections for trans students. I mean, the Trump administration has now launched an investigation into public schools in Los Angeles for a policy that has been around for six, seven years now that has protections for transgender students if they don't necessarily have support from their parents at home, which has been very controversial. There have been some civil rights settlements around these issues that the Trump administration has canceled. Mike, I guess the first question that comes to mind for me is, are Republicans in this White House in a scary political moment where a lot of things don't feel like they're going their way and they're trying to bring back a policy discussion and an issue and the culture war stuff that they feel like they do have strength around? We've got the midterms coming up as we've discussed and we've got economic issues that are affecting all Americans and the one thing that was keeping everybody at least mitigating some of those economic inflationary items and the cost of living and all of that was the fact that gas prices were fairly low. Now, in certain parts of the country, over $4 a gallon and other parts of the country were over $5 a gallon. Come to California. We're even higher. Exactly. I'm saying all of this not to avoid your question, but what I'm trying to do is circle it back around that when you are a political party and you are looking at the midterms and you're trying to figure out what are those things that are going to allow me to connect with voters and what I thought was going to be helpful has now been removed from my from that arrow has been removed from my quiver. I'm going to go back to some tried and true items that worked before. The ad of she's with them and I'm with you, that was a very effective ad. Might have won the election for Trump over Donald Harris. Might have won the election for Trump. So why wouldn't you go back to the messaging when you're looking at immigration, you're looking at the economy and you're looking at social issues? If those were the three big issues that got Trump over the finish line in 2024, immigration basically has been solved at the southern border and now is a debate about ICE and DHS. The economy, some prices have come down, but now with gas prices rising, that's now becoming more of a detriment. So what's the third item there? And that's on some social issues. And go back to what worked for you before. All right. I want to pick up this conversation after we break because it's an important one. And we're also going to talk about Artemis too, and those unbelievable images we've been seeing coming from space. Mike and Moa, and I will be right back. You're listening to Left, Right and Center. All right. We're back with more Left, Right and Center. I'm David Green. We have Mike Dupke on the right and Moa Lathi on the left. Moe, Mike was just talking about always answering the question I had whether Republicans in the White House might be turning to some tried and true issues that they feel like can benefit them politically in this election year. And some of the things that we've been seeing around protections for trans students, they canceled some civil rights settlements. They've launched an investigation into public schools here in Los Angeles. Mike was just saying, of course, that's what Republicans would do in this moment when they feel like they've been faltering in some areas politically and you were going to jump in. Yeah. I mean, Mike's not wrong when he says that the three components of the Republican winning message in 2024 was immigration, cost of living, and social issues. Different way to think about it is they won on those three pillars, but really connecting the third to the first two. Their message was instead of focusing on the border and instead of focusing on affordability, Democrats are talking about all these culture war issues. She's for them. I'm for you. Republicans, one, they have total control of government. The president's numbers are now upside down. He's more unpopular on immigration. He's less popular on the economy. Gas prices have gone up since he took office. And instead of focusing on those two things, Republicans are now focusing on culture war issues. They have completely fallen for the same trap that they ran against last time. And the response from Democrats will likely be just as powerful in this midterm. People want their government to focus on their pocketbooks, to focus on the cost of living. And it has gotten more difficult since this president took office, and he is focusing on everything. But there's the election in a nutshell. But Mo, how do you know that Democrats won't take the bait here? Oh, I don't. I don't. Oh, they will. House Speaker Mike Johnson already has tweeted cheering on the Olympics for restricting trans athletes from women's sports. The Olympics are a thing that is going to be a big deal for a lot of people. If that conversation becomes front and center, I mean, are Democrats really going to keep their eye on the ball and avoid something that will cause the ad that Mike just talked about that helped sink Kamala Harris? I never underestimate my party's ability to take a good thing and screw it up. But I will say so far there has been a tremendous amount of discipline from Democrats on this. Mike Johnson sent that tweet about an hour before we found out whether or not Donald Trump was about to eliminate an entire civilization in Iran. He said that out just before. Democrats didn't take the bait then in any real way. I think what I keep hearing from Democrats is a laser-like focus on the fact that this president is making life harder for you. He's off doing all these other things instead of making life easier for you. And all these other things are making life harder for you. This war in Iran has jacked up your gas prices. I'm bracing myself for them to take the bait at some point, but they haven't yet. And that gives me some hope heading into the election season. Mike, should Mo have hope? No, no, he shouldn't. Everything will align back to center and they can't help themselves. We shall see. We shall see. Well, I want to move on to this rare moment of unity over this past week when it felt like all of America was looking upwards to share one dream, leaving Earth. Four, three, two, one, booster ignition and lift off. I have lived 50 years now in my life. This was really a moment I could not stop following a lot of the images coming back from this mission, seeing our planet in an entirely different way and seeing close-up images of the moon like we've never seen before and seeing the unearth rise from the moon, which was really just incredibly emotional and powerful. And of course, this mission around the moon is part of this larger goal for a human lunar landing by 2028. Did this hit you guys in a similar way this best week, Mo? This was a bright spot, I think, for all of us this week, to see our astronauts going further than any human has ever gone before. To live in an age where we can be along for the ride with them so much is extraordinary. Seeing the emotional moment where they announced that they were going to name a crater on the far side of the moon after the wife who had passed away of the commander of the vessel and seeing the emotion, that was remarkable. This is a moment when we can mostly put partisanship aside, maybe not entirely, right? The president taking all the credit for this after trying to slash NASA's budget moving forward was a moment. But putting that aside, we can mostly just celebrate the achievements of humanity and pushing the limits of humanity. I'm here for it. Mike, your feelings? That we can still get big things done, that we can achieve goals that may have seemed out of reach for a whole host of reasons. I mean, I know, I understand that some of this has been done before, not as far as it was. I was only chuckling at the beginning, David, when you introduced this, because you made it sound like we all wanted to leave Earth, but they are coming back, which is good. They're complicated emotions around all this. There were a lot of, I couldn't tell where you were going with that, so I chuckled. Let it land however it wants to land, Mike, however it wants to land. But it is the fact that things do work and that we can pull together. That was a major thing. My memory of the past week, though, was when they were hitting Stride and being on the dark side of the moon or just before, it was also happening at the same time that we were able to find and rescue that downed American pilot at the same time in a remarkable mission. And I'm just, what we can accomplish when we work together and what we can accomplish when we put our minds to it is mind boggling. And I'd love for us to talk about that more and explore that more and celebrate that more. So for me, that's where it comes back to. You know what really hit me to this week? And it was kind of bittersweet. But I have loved politics for my entire life and loved campaigns and loved a lot of the emotional aspects of it. And I think about moments in my life, big moments, and I remember a president being involved in it in some way. I think about the Oklahoma City bombing and President Clinton comforting the nation. I think about 9-11 and George W. Bush capturing that moment and giving me a sense of confidence or the United States can respond to tragedy. This is in our politics today, I wanted politics as far from this as it possibly could be. I didn't want to hear anybody. I didn't want to hear Donald Trump. I also didn't want to hear any Democrat talking about this. It was like, just let me enjoy a powerful moment. And that's just a sideshow. And that makes me sad. I want politics to sort of be embedded in my life and in big events in a way that feels good. Am I alone in that feeling? I don't know that you're alone in that feeling. I just, I don't know that I have shared the same long for the days that politics were wrapped up in my other. You've always been cynical about it. Look, I'm a political geek as well. So is Moe. Let's be honest, we wouldn't be on the show if we weren't. But I don't need politics wrapped up in all the other stuff that I enjoy in life. I think I get what David's saying. President Kennedy's words helped launch us into the moon. His words mobilized us as a nation behind a common goal. And I appreciated that. In moments of tragedy, when the Space Shuttle Challenger blew up or on 9-11, those were moments when the president's words and voice really did unify us and helped console us in those terrible moments. I don't know that it's, I don't want politics in this moment. I think the tragedy for me is I don't trust it in this moment. Right? In the fact that I don't know that there's a voice out there that can rally us together. But what is truly remarkable, and I think Mike and I would both agree with that, is it was nice that we didn't need one. It was nice that you actually did see Americans from across the political spectrum. Mostly, again, not entirely. There was politics injected. But for the most part, most Americans paused for a few moments to see the images of the far side of the moon and felt good about it. So yeah, I miss having political leadership that could give voice to our hopes as well as console us in our dark moments. But it was nice to see that even in this polarized era, in which people are polarized, not just our leaders, that for once we didn't need it. I hear that too. There were just times when I was thinking about a moment that just happened and waiting to hear what my president, Republican or Democrat, said about it and captured the moment, captured the stakes and lifted up. It just feels like we're missing something in all of our politics today. And I do think, Mo, you're right, that trust is a huge part of that. Let me also point to another thing because I was thinking about this crew and I was trying to remember each of their names. And I don't. And I'll admit it for Artemis too. I'll admit it too. I mean, I've heard them obviously mentioned, but yeah, I can't. I've mentioned multiple times. And I think part of the reason that I don't know their names, besides the fact that I have a real problem with remembering anybody's name, is that we are not sharing these visuals and these audio in the same way that we did back in the day. So you've just crossed the Rubicon into the 50s, David. And if that hadn't been mentioned at the beginning of the show, I'm going to mention it now just so people can write in their condolences to you. I'm five years ahead of you. So take that for what it's worth. But my point on that is that at a time when that you're pointing to each of those instances is when we as a nation came together, but we also were all coming together in the same mediums. We were watching the same feed. We were watching the same programming. And now with the ability for us to get our news, to get our information, to get our entertainment from a plethora of platforms, it makes it, I think, a bit difficult for us to share and remember those Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin. You don't remember the names because you're not hearing them over and over again in the same shared way we did before. I'm not saying that's bad. I'm not saying that's good. I'm just saying it's different. And I might explain a little bit why we can be happy about this. We can share this, but I don't know we're ever going to go back to where we're not going to make American news great again for you. Well, I did not remember their names either, Mike, but I've pulled them up because I feel like we should finish by mentioning the four astronauts who have been on this extraordinary mission. They are Reed Weisman, Victor Glover, Christina Cook, and Jeremy Hansen. Huge thanks to all of them for an incredible mission that we've all been following very closely. Okay, we are going to leave it there and move to our left, right, and center, Rantz and Ravez. Mo, you want to kick us off? Well, we've referenced it a couple of times. Happy birthday, David. Welcome to this side of the half century mark. That was actually my rant rave. So I just want to tell you I was going to rant and rave about turning 50 and I don't know what it means, but do you want to do that now? I mean, you're sorry. No, I just did it. That's it. I have nothing else to say. Nothing. I do not want. He forgot the rest. I don't want the significance of this to mean anything. So carry on with your rant or rave. You sound curmudgeonly, which means you two have crossed that out. I have arrived. And look, the three of us are all within the same half decade. I want to talk about someone else in that club with us. I want to rave about him. Ben Sasse, the former Republican senator from Nebraska, who late last year announced that he had stage four pancreatic cancer. He's 54 years old and he's dying. Did an extraordinary New York Times podcast. And there's a column about it late this week. I encourage everyone to check it out. He's said a lot of really fascinating things on this podcast. But some of it that's really been rattling around in my head. He talked about how we live on these three different time horizons, the daily, the planning horizon, and the eternal. And that the silliest thing we do is let the planning horizon crowd out the other two. We take too many trips, spent too many nights in hotels, missed too many dinners. He talked about how he wished he'd put the phone away on Sundays. Here's a guy who has his own podcast as well. He's facing imminent death with grace and humility and extraordinary candor and humor. That deserves a rave. He talks about how a friend of his said, sure, you're on the clock, but we're all on the clock. And when we think about everything that we've been talking about today, it's worth sitting with that. No, I appreciate you bringing that up. I got to listen to the podcast and hear his words. Mike. Well, thank you for that, Mau. I had a chance to meet that senator who I loved. My favorite story of him is when he was in a group of people and he was introducing himself, he said, I'm Ben, which I think we need a little bit more in our politics today that he's just been. I'm going to go dark and I go negative. What does the Washington Post say? Democracy dies in darkness. Well, I have a dark cloud that's over the Washington Post. Here's my rant and it's about the Washington Post. Last week, I got an email from them saying, on your digital account, you've got too many entrees from your digital account. We've got a phone, an iPad or whatever. And I wrote them back immediately and said, well, please let me know who's in my account. And I'll make sure that it's just for us. My account had been then just systematically turned off. And when I finally two days later got a response from them, the response was, well, for privacy reasons, we can't tell you who was using your account, but you can't share your account. And I wrote them back. I said, listen, I was just sharing it with my wife. It's a family account. We used to get the newspaper. I would share the newspaper with her. And they said, no, under our terms of agreement, you are the only person that can look at this. You cannot have your wife look at this. I wish I had known that years ago when she had picked up the paper that we had delivered to our house, and I would have ripped it out of her hands, just knowing that the Washington Post terms of agreement are that no one can read that paper except for the one person that it was sent to. So damn my children who read it as little kids and maybe learned something. I should have gotten them their own account. So no wonder the Washington Post is dying. No wonder the Washington Post is firing people because they have no income because they treat their customers like crap. And that's my rant. Wow. David, now that you're past 50, expect to sound like that. That is terrifying. Please let me know if I do. Guys, thank you. Thank you for the great welcome into this new decade. And thank you to the incredible group who works very hard to put the show together every single week. Left Right Incenters produced by Leo Durand, our executive producer is Arnie Seiple. The show is recorded by Michael Stark and mixed by Nick Lamponi. Todd M. Simon composed our theme music. Left Right Incenters, a co-production of KCRW and Fearless Media. We're distributed by PRX. I am David Green. Thanks for being here and come back for more Left Right Incenters next week. From PRX.