Meritocracy Vs DEI

DEI has become a political litmus test, but the real fight is over something more basic: what a fair workplace actually looks like when you strip away slogans. We sit down with voices who’ve been inside the machine a former Fortune 500 Chief Diversity Officer and a skeptic who once championed the work and now calls parts of it harmful to debate whether diversity, equity, and inclusion can strengthen meritocracy or whether it inevitably slides into quotas, identity politics, and distrust.

We get specific about what “equity” should mean in practice: access to opportunity, access to information, and removing hidden barriers in hiring and promotion systems. We also talk through civil rights law and protected classes, the unintended damage caused by diversity targets tied to executive pay, and why the “diversity hire” label can undercut the very people DEI is supposed to support. From land acknowledgments to microaggressions to psychological safety, we draw a hard line between real anti-discrimination work and performative rituals that feel good but change nothing.

Then we pivot from workplace culture to raw politics: Janet Mills exits the Maine Senate primary, Graham Plattner’s insurgent campaign gains steam, and we map how negative ads and culture war messaging are landing with Democrats, independents, and Republicans. We close with the Democratic Party’s decision to keep its 2024 after action review locked up, and why that secrecy only fuels suspicion about Gaza politics, consultant money, and institutional self-protection.

If you found yourself nodding along or getting annoyed, share the episode, subscribe, and leave a review. What’s your definition of a fair system: equal rules, equal access, or something else entirely?

Transcript

Opening Question On DEI

SPEAKER_05 0:50

I want our workplaces to look like the societies that we live in. Racial balancing is what a lot of people would call that. It is harming society. But you don't think that the previous system was also socially engineered?

SPEAKER_08 1:01

Let's say we can crush the whole thing right now and build it from scratch. What would good DEI look like to you?

SPEAKER_05 1:19

I've been the Chief Diversity Officer of Fortune 500 companies. I served for five years as a diversity officer.

SPEAKER_08 1:26

I was a DEI officer.

SPEAKER_03 1:27

I was the Chief Sustainability Officer, and DEI was a component of what I was doing.

Is DEI Discriminatory

SPEAKER_05 1:34

Okay, first question. Is DEI discriminatory?

SPEAKER_00 1:38

The tyranny of so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion. Diversity, equity, and inclusion.

SPEAKER_10 1:44

See the values of diversity.

SPEAKER_18 1:46

Equality, inclusion, our core strengths of America. DEI. DEI innately means that people who are unqualified are going to advance in life by dint of the fact that they are considered a part of a victimized group.

SPEAKER_00 1:58

You should be hired and promoted based on skill and competence, not race or gender.

SPEAKER_13 2:07

Well, it depends on the DEI you're talking about. Um I think contemporary DEI, a lot of the manifestations are discriminatory by nature, but they don't have to be. The discriminatory kind is the kind that is really about oppressor versus oppressed. So it's inherently discriminatory. And in that you're you're you're pitting people in each category uh just by looks or identity or something like that. But when I think of diversity, equity, and inclusion, I think of no discrimination whatsoever. It's more it's more like the uh 60 civil rights kind of classical liberal take on diversity, equity, and inclusion.

SPEAKER_03 2:46

Um so I I think it's completely discriminatory. I think it institutionalizes racism, like it's a direct attack on meritocracy. Um everything becomes you, you know, it's about your identity. Um all for equal opportunity, not equal outcome, and there's no place in the workplace for identity politics.

SPEAKER_08 3:10

So when I think about DEI, I think about the conceptual ideals behind it, and then there's the interpretation and the implementation. And I think conceptually speaking, no one would disagree that DEI in principle would be a set of good things to have. As you mentioned, equality is a good thing to have. But I think the implementation is what makes it very difficult. And you mentioned equality of outcome, and I think that may be a myth around what equity is intended to mean. So when we talk about equity, it's not really equity of outcomes, it's equity of opportunity, equity of access, equity of information. The the key is not to equate everyone at the outcome level, and I would agree if that were the case, that would be discriminatory. But I think the key is to make sure that everybody has a level playing field, and that's just not the reality that we have, and that's where I can.

SPEAKER_03 3:55

Who decides that though? Someone has to be in charge.

SPEAKER_05 3:57

Why can't you just let the market do it? Well, here's the thing, right? We can assume that the market will drive it, but women have been graduating at the top, uh, have been graduating with the majority of undergraduate degrees and graduate degrees since 1983, so over 40 years. Yet women still make up a tiny small percentage of senior leaders within organizations. Do we assume that that is because women are simply not as meritous of success and they somehow going from undergraduate and graduate school to the corporate world, they somehow lose their capabilities? Or can we say there's a system in place within corporations that favor certain characteristics that are very gendered and biased? I actually don't think that any of us are necessarily disagreeing. Like my goal is to create more perfect meritocratic organizational systems. Right now, we have systems in place that favor certain characteristics over another, and the goal is removing those discriminatory biased systems.

SPEAKER_03 4:53

But how are you doing that? You're imposing bureaucracy.

SPEAKER_05 4:56

Actually, not. It is. I have never instituted in in my 25 years of doing this work, I have never set a quota. I'm looking at system, and the way that you look at system is through deep, boring statistical analysis to see if we hold all things equal, what is the degree to which various different protected classes impact? So for example, what is a protected class? I don't even know what to do. Protected class is what isn't, yeah. So that's the problem. A lot of people, these no, it's not you, but the problem is that a lot of people who have become practitioners in the last couple of years don't know the legacy. What is a protected class? It's what is articulated in the civil rights laws of 1960s and 70s. And a protected class is gender. It's not women, it's gender. A protected class is race. So I'll give you a really good example. If a white man came to me and said, I am being discriminated based on my my race as a white man, and there's data and there's proven documentation of that discrimination, that is a case that DEI would advocate for because race is a protected class.

SPEAKER_13 6:03

I think in academia, um that white person would get laughed out of the room.

SPEAKER_08 6:08

And that's the problem. I would agree with this premise in academia as well. It's not something that would be considered a case that could be taken, for example, to an office of DEI. I agree with you that in principle that should be the case. But that's not the implementation. That's not what's happening. I just want to mention one other thing about the meritocracy issue that you mentioned. I think that we're under the impression that there is this meritocracy that we need to be able to preserve it. But the rules that we apply, if somebody's applying for a job or somebody is um uh going up for a promotion, are ingrained in discriminatory behavior. In general, you have a system that is not actually promoting meritocracy the way that we want.

Equity Means Access Not Outcomes

SPEAKER_03 6:44

I I think that we have made the world um much more discriminatory and we've moved further from meritocracy. Every corporation I've worked at, and I worked at some of the biggest ones, there was always a quota system. I had a regular, you know, kind of mainstream industrial banking um career. Uh, and then, you know, I fell for this ideology. I thought that the quota system would create, you know, equal opportunities.

SPEAKER_11 7:13

Harvard has, we believe, a hard, specific quota. Other boards needed to conform with certain gender, race, and sexual orientation quotas. Quotas.

SPEAKER_03 7:22

A few spots would be reserved for minority applicants. But actually the result was that it actually institutionalized more discrimination, more racism. And everyone's kind of looking around. It's like, holy, like, I'm working so hard, but my identity is going to determine whether or not I get that that board seat. That's when I I I the penny dropped for me. Nobody should be imposing a social construct and choosing who, you know, isn't a seat of power. It should be merit-based.

unknown 7:53

Sure.

SPEAKER_03 7:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_13 7:59

My work as a DEI officer accomplished nothing. Um, it initially it accomplished some things. Uh people filled up for workshops that were informative, but um, then things started to happen. Um, like uh fewer people would show up, or the same five people would show up. So it it wasn't a great experience. It didn't accomplish much at all, and that's my story.

SPEAKER_03 8:22

We rigged everything. Um, so that was my story. So I was supposed to set diversity targets, and I reported directly to the CEO in an award meeting. Um I'm actually given a script that says, like, you know, the top, like main management, there should be a gender ratio of 27%. So looking down, I'm like, 27%. Why 27%? I didn't give that number. I mean, aren't we supposed to be shooting for like 50-50 or something like that? And goal head of HR said, well, right now at 27%. And I'm like, holy, you're rigging the target. And they rigged the target because guess what? The CEO's comp was linked to DEI.

SPEAKER_05 9:09

And this goes back to something that Michael said. There is like what DEI is and then like what it has become in recent years. I think that what you did the situation you described is horrible. And I would have been the first person to be like, this is ridiculous. We're rigging the system. I mean, I wouldn't have done the work for as long as I did if I didn't think that I was having some kind of impact because my whole goal is to make things better. I was the first C-suite level chief diversity officer at Uber Technologies, and I was hired during a particularly intense uh period of crisis.

SPEAKER_04 9:40

More than 200 claims of sexual harassment, bullying, and inappropriate behavior. Unfair pay and other workplace discrimination. And I think we did a pretty good job.

Protected Classes And Civil Rights Law

SPEAKER_05 9:51

I brought a very rigorous approach to diversity, equity, inclusion. For the first 30 years of its existence as a career, as a profession, was a very niche field. You know, there were maybe a few hundred practitioners in all the United States, and frankly, we pretty much knew all each other. And then in the last five to six years, that number of practitioners like quadrupled in size, quintupled in size. That's when you got into a lot of the more performative, more symbolic gestures. And I think that's when the work became far less impactful. I've been doing the work since before it was called DEI, before it was called DI. It was mostly just called women in the workplace. That's actually how the lot of the work began. I implemented the very first parental leave policy. I implemented the first accessibility, disability, ADA compliance roles, right? The most successful elements of a DEI program have become so interwoven into the norms of what we think this is just what a good workplace looks like, that people have forgotten these are the things that DEI does.

SPEAKER_08 10:52

So I became chief diversity officer in a school affiliated with a major university in 2020. So this was just after George Floyd. And initially, my mandate was based on statistics. There's fundamentally a problem with the numbers that we're seeing right now with our faculty, with our graduate students, with our undergraduate students, and we need these numbers to really reflect the communities that we serve. And when I stepped into that role, I realized that this is not something that a quota system can fix. This is not something where we can say we just need to hire more black people or more Hispanic people. That is not the solution. The solution is to figure out if there are systemic inequities that are preventing this from happening. So we found out very quickly that jobs were being advertised through a few venues that were only accessible to certain groups of individuals and not others, that were not visible to certain individuals. And by fixing that problem, we start to get a lot more applications from other groups. But but again, my views on this are nuanced. So the reason I want to go back to what Eric said earlier, accomplish nothing. I actually align with that view. If DEI efforts are actually successful, then you should not need a DEI officer. You should not need a DEI officer. You should not need an independent thing. Yes, I should be ingrained into the culture of the organization that you're serving. And as soon as I stepped out of that role, everything that we've done disappeared, all of the initiatives disappeared, the funding for it disappeared, and and nobody cared anymore. It just went away, which tells me it was fragile to begin with. It was not set up as a foundational set of elements.

SPEAKER_10 12:22

And that's performative.

When DEI Becomes Performative

SPEAKER_08 12:24

So I uh wrote an op-ed for Inside Higher Education titled Confessions of a Reformed DEI Officer. I talked about some of our successful experiences when it came to hiring initiatives, when it came to improving uh outcomes for students, but I also spoke out against things that I thought were very performative.

SPEAKER_03 14:36

We acknowledge this lamb, which is named for the Ute Tribe. Stanford sits on the ancestral lands of the Alechma Ollone tribe.

SPEAKER_16 14:43

Do you want to acknowledge that the land where the Microsoft campus is situated was traditionally occupied by the Samamis?

SPEAKER_08 14:51

I basically said that I don't believe in land acknowledgments because I think that they are used as a band-aid, as a way to be able to say, hey, we did something, we gestured in some way, but there's no real substance behind it. So what's the point of all this aside from just making ourselves feel good about saying it and putting it on a website? Agree or disagree, I value diversity in my workplace.

SPEAKER_13 15:16

I agree with you. I I value it. Yes, I value it. I don't always value the way it's achieved, right? I mean, we did talk about quota systems already. They do exist. Um I'm glad they don't exist in your world. I'm very happy about that. Uh, but they do exist in other people's worlds. And uh that is something that I don't value um for various reasons. A reason that doesn't come up very much is how the minority person feels knowing that there was some kind of quota or something like that. And how other people may treat him or her based on that. We don't talk about that enough. That is a thing.

SPEAKER_02 15:56

I don't want to be seen as being the diversity hire.

SPEAKER_07 16:00

I just graduated from Columbia University. I suspect that I would have gotten in if I were white or Asian, but I don't actually know that.

SPEAKER_12 16:07

If you have a black female surgeon, my first assumption will be this person had to meet lower standards.

Quotas And The Diversity Hire Stigma

SPEAKER_05 16:12

That has come up so much in my career where a lot of women who got promoted to partner or who got promoted to managing director, people would come up to them and literally be like, It must be nice that you got promoted because you're a woman. Or it must be nice that you got promoted because you're black. It did create that idea that they got there out of special treatment. And so a lot of the work that you have to do is actually transparency of the systematic changes that you made. The single most uh impactful thing that I've ever done to transform how people looked at talent during promotion processes wasn't to set a quota. It was to simply give every manager on a team, here's a list of people who are eligible for promotion, here's the criteria, here's how long they've been enrolled, here's how long, um, here's their performance history. That little mental trick gives people going, oh, I didn't even realize that Sally was eligible for promotion. And I appreciate a workplace that looks like the community that I live in. And we live in a diverse society, and I want our workplaces to look like the societies that we live in.

SPEAKER_13 17:12

Uh racial balancing is what a lot of people would call that. You know, I would not.

SPEAKER_03 17:17

Okay. Oh my god, I have the big one. Hypothetical scenario. Two equally qualified candidates are applying for the same role. One is a racial minority, the other is not. Should their identities be factors in who gets the job?

SPEAKER_13 17:37

Equally qualified.

SPEAKER_03 17:38

There's no such thing as well.

SPEAKER_13 17:40

Right. There's no such thing. Are they clones?

unknown 17:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 17:44

That's why hypothetical. Yeah, I personally could not respond to that hypothetical because I've never seen that hypothetical exist in the real world.

SPEAKER_03 17:51

How about we take this and we turn this? Because I think we're all gonna agree here. But let's flip this hypothetical scenario to this. Let's just say you have this great visionary CEO, right, who's not like a biased at all. Just like the policy is hire the best. How would you guys feel if in hiring the best, there is a room with like 10 executives, they're all white, they're all named bill, but there's like true debate. Would that be okay at your organization?

SPEAKER_05 18:24

So there's actually research that shows I could have eight Asian women around here. Even if there's ideological differences, we will find the things that we share in common and we'll build a bond based on that. Where diversity of thought really comes up is when you are reminded on a daily basis this person is somehow different from me, right? This person is probably not gonna have the same life experience as me. I have to screw it. But it's research, it's not a research.

SPEAKER_03 18:56

It's academic. It's epidemic. Why can't we just judge people on their performance, their merit, their mind?

SPEAKER_13 19:04

I want you to talk to me before you know who I am. You know what I mean? And and that doesn't happen a lot. People are saying, oh, you're you're different, and I have to take that into consideration. I didn't tell you that. Have a model here to say how you treat me.

SPEAKER_08 19:15

But going back to your point, Desiree, if you do have a room that is that is filled with, you know, white men named Bill in academic circles as well, when you have a group that is very homogeneous, they tend to produce lesser quality research, they tend to produce uh far less technologically innovative products, all of those things tend to go down when you have homogeneity. A lot of this stuff is bent upon. I think a lot of the racial equity stuff you're talking about, yes, there's data for and against, but the idea that diversity actually enhances the quality of a workplace when we talk about diversity, broadly construed, when it's really perspective diversity, that has been reproduced thousands of times in this respect across so many different but exactly perspective diversity. So you're going beyond just race, ethnicity, gender. You're you're really talking about diversity.

SPEAKER_03 20:00

And it doesn't matter what they look like or what their name is. But that's where we don't disagree. I think my experience is very different.

SPEAKER_05 20:07

I don't think any of us disagree with that opinion that, like, you know, our experiences, you know, our ideologies, our perspectives are the most important thing. But someone's gonna look at me, and I I'll tell you, people look at me, they look at my name, and they're like, she's a first-generation immigrant, she's gonna be quiet and docile. I have been treated like a stereotypical Asian woman a countless times in my life. And I reject that because I'm not why are you enforcing it? A lot of people are not. I'm not enforcing any of it.

SPEAKER_13 20:37

I don't think she is.

SPEAKER_05 20:38

I'm not enforcing any of it. You're projecting how the work gets done, not listening to how I do the work.

SPEAKER_03 20:44

But if this is the case, it doesn't matter if everyone in the room kind of looks like each other. You just made the point. We all have different experiences. It's not based on you know your image. And that is my point. We should not, no one should be socially engineering any organization. I agree.

SPEAKER_08 21:05

I agree. Can we go back to the question, the hypothetical for a second? Because I think it is actually a good hypothetical, even though you may not, that's why it's a hypothetical, we may not see it out in the real world, right? But given to similarly or identically qualified individuals, but uh, you know, different races or maybe even different genders, which one would you hire? If they're bringing different perspectives, let's say they're doing bringing a perspective that I don't have enriched around that table right now, that might make them more qualified. So it's in context. It's not just the individual is not diverse. Diversity is a quality of the collective, right?

SPEAKER_13 21:40

So a common misconception about DEI is that it's all about race. I totally agree with that that it's all about race, yeah. Um, that everyone involved wants to tear down Western civilization.

unknown 21:56

Yes.

SPEAKER_13 21:57

See, and here's the thing. Uh in academia, the people I know who are in charge of DEI initiatives and things like that do want to tear down the world and do hate capitalism. Yes, you know, and and and it's not even a question. You can't even well, here the marriage of capitalism, you can't even do that.

SPEAKER_05 22:12

I used to do this uh little exercise with all the teams that I would run, and I'd I'd periodically do it, and I'd always during a team meeting go, why do why does our team exist here at the company? And my teams would give me these high-falutent answers. And I'm like, no. Our team exists to help our organization increase revenue. If you don't believe our goal is to help increase shareholder value, I said you're on the wrong team. Go do this work in a in a nonprofit. Like I always said, we can show that there is a better way to make revenue than simply allowing for like a singular identity of talent to like flow through an organization.

SPEAKER_13 22:45

That level of pragmatism is missing from so much DEI. I agree.

SPEAKER_03 22:49

I agree a hundred percent. Yes. Okay, but McKinsey did a study and linked DEI. So the most diversified companies, you know, looking at you know, board level or management, uh, is more profitable. And that McKinsey study has been demonstrated, right? It was flawed, it cherry-picked data. There is no linkage between DEI and profitability. Like it or not, all of the propaganda about how diversified the the company looks, it actually takes away from the company. I think that the world would be much better, we would have much more debate and we'd have a greater speaking up culture if DEI.

SPEAKER_05 23:33

I think there is way too much to DEI here.

SPEAKER_13 23:36

Something has changed uh in academia because 15 years ago I was considered a bleeding heart liberal and now I'm a Nazi by the same people. Right? Something's changed. Yeah. I don't know how the overton window has shifted that far, but it has shifted. In 2019, I heard a keynote address at a conference for rhetoric that teaching standard English to uh students of color, particularly black students, was inherently racist. I spoke out against uh the keynote address. Uh I said uh we should not be demonizing standardized English like this. Um, it's a valuable tool. I was um attacked and called a white supremacist. Um I realized what this ideology really was. It wasn't about um, you know, uh equality regardless of skin color or or or sex or ethnicity or whatever. It wasn't about having everybody get the resources they need to fulfill their dreams. I still want the world to be a diverse. An equal place, but um the way it's being done in too many institutions is not to my liking.

Equity Equality Barriers And Rigor

SPEAKER_08 24:47

Okay. Agree or disagree, equity is more important than equality. Maybe I'll I'll start with this one. I'm sure all of you have seen like these these um caricatures that show equity versus equality over the fence and all that. There's a caricature of equity to try to paint a picture whereby it's different from equality. And it depicts three individuals at varying heights, and they're all trying to watch the ballgame, but behind a barrier. And the barrier, of course, obscures the view from the shortest individual, makes the sort of the tallest individual has access directly and to have equality. You provide the same kind of stool for everyone, but you still have an inability of the shortest individual to be able to see the game. And with equity, what you do is you provide additional stools to allow even the shortest person to see it. When we think about the ways that equity has been implemented, in terms of um if somebody is coming from a different background or has not had access, providing them with a differential level of resources, they can get up to that level playing field. That's a band-aid. That is a temporary fix. If we don't actually work to resolve whatever systemic inequity there is, then that's always going to fail. So I like to see that whole wall just coming down. So that there's nothing that's preventing anyone from succeeding. But if there's this wall and we're trying to figure out how do we get the right level of access to be able to overcome that wall, the problem is we still have a wall.

SPEAKER_13 26:10

Okay, I think there's a difference between a barrier and an obstacle. Barrier is something that shouldn't be there, right? Right. Um, it we shouldn't have to overcome it. It should go away. But people look at obstacles and see barriers. AP English isn't a barrier. Yes, I agree. Don't get rid of it because people aren't overcoming it. Right. Right? I think that's the issue. I think a lot of obstacles are being called barriers.

SPEAKER_05 26:38

I would agree with that. Like I think that people sometimes see rigor and inclusion as being oppositional forces. Yeah. Right? Like they're like, oh, we have to remove rigor in order to be inclusive. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. We keep the rigor there. But to your point, what are the systematic barriers that prevent certain populations of people from getting access to AP classes? And one of them is they don't offer AP classes in lower income schools. How do we change that? But you don't change the standards of the AP classes once you introduce them into the school. You shouldn't. You shouldn't change them at all. And I believe that's why DEI exists, because there are those barriers.

SPEAKER_03 27:13

I I think this whole equity thing is communist propaganda. Life is unfair. There will always be differences and barriers and obstacles. Whatever. And through freedom, as Milton Friedman said, we will get more equality.

SPEAKER_01 27:30

In my opinion, a society that aims for equality before liberty will end up with neither equality nor liberty. You can only aim at equality by giving some people the right to take things from others.

SPEAKER_03 27:43

We just need to work as hard as we can, and things kind of just shake out.

SPEAKER_08 27:47

Can I just ask? So it it seems like you're taking a real hardline view on this. And I'm just curious, was there ever a time where you believed that there was some measure of equity was appropriate? And what did that look like for you?

SPEAKER_03 28:00

So I was one of the biggest champions of DEI, and then I read build in 2020, 2021, because I saw the out adverse outcomes. The intentions were good. They were, right? But it wasn't that we just practice it badly. It was that it is bad. It is harming society.

SPEAKER_13 28:26

That that is influenced by Marxism. But I don't think they're doing that.

SPEAKER_03 28:31

Yeah, I mean, but it's all the same. It doesn't matter when it's not.

SPEAKER_05 28:35

You can't consolidate something that is very complex into these like like sound bites of like you're saying like freedom was better than DEI. And I'm like, and social and and that DEI is social engineering. But you don't think that the previous system was also socially engineered? You don't think that there was ideology? There was absolutely ideology in those previous.

SPEAKER_03 28:53

No, I don't think there's ideology. There was cronyism and lack of accountability.

SPEAKER_05 28:57

That in and of itself is a system.

Microaggressions Language And Psychological Safety

SPEAKER_03 29:00

We haven't fixed it. We've gone to the wrong problem. We've gone to identity politics. And now having a bigger HR system and more consultants coming in, there's less accountability, there's less transparency. Here we go. Agree or disagree. A company should prevent employees from using language that might be offensive to people of certain backgrounds.

SPEAKER_20 29:23

An initiative to eliminate harmful language like beating a dead horse, turning a blind eye. And that, my friend, is an example of a microaggression.

SPEAKER_13 29:34

This is the whole microaggression thing, which is really tricky. Because a microaggression can be anything, really. You can ask somebody what time it is, and they will be like, Are you testing my ability to tell time to come on? Yeah, yeah. Anything can be a microaggression. So that is a mindfield right there. That said, there are some things I don't want to hear. I don't want to be called the in-worder.

SPEAKER_14 29:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_13 29:55

You know? So so there is a line.

SPEAKER_05 29:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_13 29:57

But that line has been moved substantially too far to the other side.

SPEAKER_05 30:02

Yeah, I I agree. It's it's one of the reasons why I have always rejected this idea of including psychological safety into the work that I did. Like for for years, my team was like, Bo, we have to start addressing psychological safety. And I go, no, because how psychologically safe a person feels has much more to do with like their entire life and the trauma and the and their own like self-confidence than anything that I can possibly do. And I'm not going to take responsibility for whether somebody goes to therapy or not.

SPEAKER_13 30:30

I I know DEI officers who would call you a white supremacist. I'm saying that.

SPEAKER_05 30:34

Well, I there are people, yes, same thing happens with me, right? You said at one point you were like bleeding heart, and and now you're like considered like a Nazi. Like I would say that some people will look at me calling me a capitalist pig. But I agree with you. There is too much over policing of language, but there is a line wherein we know the N-word is problematic. That should not be in the workplace. Using any kind of racial slur or any gender dyed, like the B word or the R word, that's like you can't have that in the workplace.

SPEAKER_08 31:03

I do agree. I think that there's lines that should not be crossed, but we've always had those lines. That's not a nuance of DEI, that's not a new thing. So I want to go back to the idea of psychological safety because I think that's really at the core of this question. So one interpretation is that you want to be in an environment where nothing will ever be said that harms you, even given your background, which is ludicrous, right? I mean, nobody could ever expect to do that. But the other way to think about psychological safety is the idea that you should be free to challenge others. It should be about being able to have a free exchange of ideas, as long as you're not directly attacking one another, but be able to challenge ideas from the other.

SPEAKER_03 31:37

But has DEI promoted um a speak up culture?

SPEAKER_08 31:42

As I would argue, what I'm trying to do is dominate the CE officer is exactly done.

SPEAKER_03 31:47

But it hasn't, but and and but the result is that not everywhere. Not not everywhere.

SPEAKER_05 31:53

Like you know, like you're hearing two people who have done this work for an extremely long time, and we're giving you examples of how we've done the work. And I'm saying that in the boardroom, right?

SPEAKER_03 32:02

When I've been in the boardroom, there is there is an echo chamber. In the past, you could do this. You can say, you know, line item 27 is wrong. The calculation is wrong, right? You see this horrible mistake. Uh, today's world you have to say, like, oh, so sorry. And it's not happening. Can you please walk through line item 27 and explain to me how you calculated that number?

SPEAKER_05 32:27

I literally had my board meeting two weeks ago. And I will tell you, that kind of rigor that you're talking about still exists.

SPEAKER_03 32:34

I've never seen it. Never. It's gotten worse and worse and worse. I do not see that. I see much more of a council culture. There is very little speaking up.

SPEAKER_05 32:42

That's not what I'm seeing in boardrooms.

unknown 32:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 32:47

Agree or disagree. Companies should make statements about social issues and global affairs. Disagree. Disagree. Disagree.

SPEAKER_20 32:55

Delta CEO Ed Bastion is now strongly condemning Georgia's controversial new voting law. Hundreds of multinational brands came out in support of Israel.

SPEAKER_09 33:02

Apple, PayPal, and Salesforce have criticized, strongly criticized the law.

SPEAKER_05 33:09

I'm gonna give a more nuanced reason about that. Especially since 2020. I had employees come to me and say, we need to talk about this earthquake and we need to talk about this conflict in the Middle East. Eventually, the number of requests coming in saying this company should say something became so great that I created a rubric. And I said, one, does this issue impact our business? Yes or no? If it's no, we don't say anything. If it's yes, then do we have expertise to comment on this issue? If we don't, if the answer is no, we don't comment on it. And I would say most companies, 95% of the time, don't have the impact of the business and the expertise. But in five percent of the time, I think that there is an opportunity to say something as relevant to the people.

SPEAKER_13 33:51

Academia is a very different space because I know people who would uh say a rubric is a white way of knowing. So when it comes to mentioning things like this, talking about social events and things like that, if they're no-brainer, you talk about it, especially if it involves a downtrodden group. And I think campuses should be neutral.

SPEAKER_08 34:09

Yeah, I agree. I think in general they should remain neutral because their communities are very diverse and they're gonna have many, many different opinions, and they're gonna be representing only one segment of that and not the others. The only exception, it's not truly an exception, it's just in terms of supporting communities that are impacted by a life, be a global event or something that happens to affect a certain group, being able to send a message to those individuals or a message of support to say, we're here for you, we realize your families have been impacted by this, whatever it is.

SPEAKER_03 34:34

I mean, let's let's take climate change as an example, right? Most companies um in 2020, 2021 um make pledges to go net zero.

SPEAKER_09 34:44

Net zero net zero, net zero emissions by 2050. 100% great by the year 2050.

SPEAKER_03 34:51

Right, so everyone signed up to net zero, right? Save, like go Grand Thunberg, let's save the environment. But really, what did net zero achieve? Net zero achieved it was just image control, it was form over substance. So I'm like absolutely adamant that businesses should just focus on what they do best, make good products and services, and stay completely out of the political arena.

SPEAKER_05 35:18

So I actually agree with you. There was a similar initiative. It was like 300 different CEOs of like large Fortune 1000 companies who are all coming together to like band together to like support DEI. And my CEO of my company at the time said to me, they go, Bo, do you think I should join? And I said, Absolutely not. And they were like, why? And I said, because this is a bunch of some symbolic bull and it's gonna achieve absolutely nothing. I'd rather you spend your time focused on your organization, supporting the things that needed to happen. And like, and you know what? Everybody cares about the shareholder price. So you get that shareholder price out of the 30s, and the CEO did his job, and he did it while also supporting DEI, but not engaging in any of the symbolic stuff. Too much of this work has become about virtue signal. 100%.

SPEAKER_17 36:02

Every day, General Mills serves the world by making food people love, and inclusion is one of our secret ingredients.

SPEAKER_04 36:09

Shop black owned, Mexican-American owned, Korean, and queer owned.

SPEAKER_08 36:16

One common DEI practice we can all agree needs to be eliminated is training.

SPEAKER_09 36:23

Hello, and welcome to training on workplace harassment. Diversity statements.

SPEAKER_19 36:28

Most job applications require, what, a resume, maybe a few references. But at the University of Washington, you'll also need a one-page diversity statement. And we just say there shouldn't be any DEI.

SPEAKER_13 36:40

Is the Civil Rights Act enough?

SPEAKER_03 36:41

Yeah, we have laws, right? And enforcement. So, you know, if you don't we don't have enforcement.

SPEAKER_05 36:47

There's no enforcement anymore. That's been dismantled. The EEOC hasn't been displayed. That's not true.

SPEAKER_13 36:52

It's the last admission. We need to. But that's not true.

SPEAKER_03 36:55

If you work in organizations, you're telling me you've never seen a lawsuit where a woman or said personal cheers and oh, they're not being implemented.

SPEAKER_02 37:04

Oh, I it happens all the time. There are tremendous settlements.

SPEAKER_08 37:07

I would say one thing to eliminate is diversity offices.

SPEAKER_05 37:12

I don't disagree with that.

SPEAKER_13 37:16

Over the course of this conversation, I've changed my mind about. Oh, everybody's looking at me. Well, what did I change my mind about? I mean, I I kind of already knew this, but I know it more now. There are a lot of people out there doing good work. I appreciate what you two are doing in your respective places, and um keep up the good work if you can.

SPEAKER_08 37:45

I would say I learned um that maybe I underappreciated the degree to which DEI has been misconstrued, misused, maybe even abused, and um leading to very, very poor and flawed implementations. And in particular, hearing from Desiree about her experience has been really helpful to think about how these things get implemented across different sectors, different industries. I'm aware of the the flaws and imperfections of it in the academic setting, but but hearing about that in the corporate world is illuminating.

SPEAKER_03 38:21

Do you want to go ahead? Um, well, what I appreciate in this conversation that everyone has been candid, but I do have to unfortunately say I haven't changed my mind about DEI. I just think that it is a floor ideology. We'll never progress and get to the really great stuff, the brilliance. If we're, you know, cleansing everything and socially engineering things. I think we just overall lose lose out on innovation.

Rebuilding DEI From Scratch

SPEAKER_05 38:55

What I think I change my mind about, or not really change my mind about, but recognize something that I have to do more. So I need to play a larger role in helping to demystify what the work should look like, and also helping those who are opposed to the work understand that there is a better way of doing the work that will benefit all people, that will benefit companies, it will build better meritocracy, that will build more constructive conversation. But I think the loudest voices sometimes in the room are not the ones that are portraying the work in the best manner possible. So I think that that is something that I'll take away from here is recognizing the need for uh a more robust about what good versus non-good DEI looks like.

SPEAKER_08 39:42

So can I just ask a question, maybe building on what Bo just said about good versus not good DEI? Is there a world, let's say we can crush the whole thing right now and build it from scratch. Is there such a thing that you would like what would good DEI look like to you?

SPEAKER_13 39:56

Well, I would take the money that is in DEI departments anyway, and use that to fund outreach programs for local high schools, middle schools, things like that. That's what I would like to say.

SPEAKER_03 40:09

So I'm more of a libertarian. I want to see smaller government, less bureaucracy. So the best way that we can improve um opportunity is through economic growth. One billion people were pulled out of abject poverty since 1990 because of the capitalist system, because of access to high.

SPEAKER_13 40:31

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 40:31

Absolutely. Let the market shake it out, let's hire the best with as little intervention as possible.

SPEAKER_05 40:37

I agree with you 100% in that we want to improve the quality of life for everybody. I think the only place, and I think truly where this conversation boils down to is the mechanism by which we get there, right? And I think sometimes these conversations get so polarized that you think you're actually like trying to work towards different things. And if if we could just simply get to the place where we're having difficult conversations, but we're not attacking character, we're talking about the mechanisms by which we get there. I think that's where we'll get to the best solutions. This was a good example of a difficult conversation.

SPEAKER_14 41:16

Okay, but I thought it's the time as well.

SPEAKER_10 41:55

Where big apologies to all of the Janet Mills militia, Mills Mafia, uh, they Janet Mills has dropped out, making Graham Platner the presumptive democratic nominee for Maine Senate. And why don't we start with a little video here?

SPEAKER_22 42:17

The the Mills militias has surrendered to the Nazis.

SPEAKER_10 42:21

They've been routed. They've been routed.

SPEAKER_22 42:24

Yes.

SPEAKER_10 42:25

Yes. Um, but why don't we take a look at our last hope to stop?

SPEAKER_15 42:28

Emily's been spending a lot of time on uh blue sky with those takes.

unknown 42:31

Yes?

SPEAKER_10 42:32

Yes. Maybe I should. That'd be awesome. If Emily was huge on blue sky, we're using it on blue sky. Um there's there's one last chance to stop the Platinum menace um here, which is Susan Collins. Let's take a listen to her reaction uh to these updates in the race.

SPEAKER_23 42:52

Reaction to the Mills news. I'm sure this was a very difficult decision for Governor Mills, and I wish her well. She has devoted her life to public service in the state of many in many different capacities. She has um served the people of our state, and I'm sure this was a hard decision for her. This will planner be easier to be in your view. I'm not going to get into um the November election at this point. Uh, this is the governor's day, and I think the focus should be on her and her wanting to um give her residence to the people of the name.

SPEAKER_10 43:52

Ribbiting stop. And correct me if I'm wrong, Ryan, but did Janet Mills then endorse Graham Plattiner? Say that she's gonna vote for him instead?

SPEAKER_11 44:02

She uh she did not. She's she very explicitly said that she would not be voting for Susan Collins. Um, but she left open the possibility then of what she would be doing.

SPEAKER_10 44:14

She won't vote for the Republican. Okay, great.

SPEAKER_15 44:16

Yeah, she said something like, I will carefully watch Graham Plattner's race and see, you know, as I do with all races in Maine or some blah blah blah like that.

SPEAKER_23 44:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_15 44:27

Yeah. Um, Schumer did jump in uh, you know, behind Plattner, which is obviously very different from his approach with Azor and Mamdani in his own state. Um pretty remarkable given that they share, you know, some very similar views, especially on Israel, which of course is a problem for Schumer. I do want to just, before we, you know, jump into that aspect of it, just pause and reflect on what an extraordinary, what an extraordinary long shot campaign this was. This man, Graham Ladder, had never run for office before, uh, started his race very early. You know, we interviewed him, of course, here very early. And um, he was up against the sitting governor of Maine, who is not disliked in Maine, by the way. I mean, her approval rating is not like amazing, but it's not terrible either. Um, and you know, Democrats had like sort of, you know, they were they were fine with her, but they really were impressed with Platiner. So when Mills gets in, of course, there's this huge Appo dump, and there was plenty there to work with from the tattoo to all the Reddit posts, to even, you know, his history and his story about his military service and how how long he continued to serve, and then, you know, working with this, um, you know, with this contractor in Afghanistan as well. And so uh there was a real national consensus that this was gonna be the end of him, that you know, people were gonna look at that and say, oh God, we can't have this guy. We need the electable candidate Janet Mills. And that is just not what happened at all. In fact, the polar opposite happened. People became more fervently committed to Graham Platner, and his polls just continued to rise to the place where it was undeniable he was going to emerge victorious. Now, there's all kinds of squabbling right now and pieces being written of this one leaking and that one leaking about how Schumer abandoned her and didn't put enough money behind her, et cetera, et cetera. But truly, whatever the behind the scenes internal machinations were, truly the bottom line here is that you had Graham Platner, compared to Janet Mills, much younger, really forceful on Israel, really forceful on fighting against oligarchs. And this is where the The normie democratic base is at this point. They were not swayed by the electability arguments, which was most of what you know the Mills camp really were offering here. Oh, Susie Collins is going to chew them up and spit them out. I think that is so different from what would have unfolded in previous cycles. And it also makes it very difficult. You know, what we heard from with uh Zora Mamdanis, oh, well, that's New York City, it's blue, it's totally different. Well, here you have Maine, you know, it's very sort of like normy state, a lot of blue-collar workers, a state that in a lot of ways has been uh left behind as well with relatively high poverty. And uh, you know, you can't you can no longer uh just blame the the uh commie corridor types and the DSA types for wanting this type of candidate at this point. That's right. And one last one last point here is that the polls consistently show that Graham Plattiner is a stronger candidate versus Susan Collins than Janet Mills was. And I think that also just completely blows the minds. I mean, they just can't accept, you know, the general national consensus that sort of establishment democratic mindset just can't accept that he actually genuinely is a stronger candidate versus Susan Collins.

SPEAKER_10 47:54

Yeah, and rolling point of go for a run.

SPEAKER_11 47:57

Yeah, in in the interesting, in the in the like caddy backbiting pieces that are emerging with people you know pointing fingers at each other, to me, the most substantial thing that emerged was Schumer's camp saying, okay, here are all the problems with Mills's camp and why it's actually her fault. But on the point of us not spending enough money for her, we couldn't because it would have been too politically toxic. Because Graham Yeah, I got that right here for you. Yeah.

unknown 48:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_11 48:22

So Grap, in other words, Graham had too much support from a a majority of Democrats in the state, and therefore, Schumer coming in would have been going up against a majority of the voters, and there would have been then too much blowback against him and the national party for meddling in Maine.

SPEAKER_15 48:42

Um well, and Schumer is so unpopular himself that it would likely not help Janet Mills too. I mean, she already was seen as the Schumer candidate, and that was part of the problem for her.

Why Culture War Attacks Flop

SPEAKER_11 48:53

And they dropped they dropped the negative ads, they went for it, and the polling um yawned even further. For the after the negative ads from Mills came out, and then Collins super PAC, funded by billionaires who have destroyed Maine, um came out, they were actually not even as good. Like Mills had the fancy like AI voice, uh, which is extremely unethical. Um, but you know, they they were they put they put act they AI Platinum of the Reddit posts, um whereas the Collins posts did the same thing, but they weren't even as well done. Uh, and I I don't I don't see how those are gonna work either. And Emily, really curious for your take on this. He already has center left and the left locked up. Now Collins is gonna run our campaign, and I'm seeing all the Republicans calling him a Nazi. Um making insensitive comments about women who were sexually assaulted. So on what plan on what plan does that work with the right? The the right has spent the last couple decades getting called a not or thinking they're always getting called Nazis, whether they're getting called Nazis or not, they they've in it's part of their identity that they're under siege and always being called Nazis. And now all of a sudden you've got the super PAC calling another guy a Nazi. Isn't that gonna make them be like, well, actually, maybe he's one of us falsely being accused of being a Nazi by the how is this gonna work on the right? Like, are they all of a sudden feminists? Are they all of a sudden just believing accusations that you're a Nazi?

SPEAKER_22 50:37

No, I sent this to you guys yesterday. The first statement that the RNC put out called Graham Plattner a Nazi. Yes, one of the one of the reasons that the Mills campaign obviously did not work is because people, those attacks just don't, they don't work on Democrats, even like let alone Republicans, to your point, Ryan. But obviously what they're going for in this race is going to be like independence. And I will say, uh, Susan Collins is notoriously hard to beat. Uh, she puts up a hell of a fight. Whatever you think of Susan Collins, that woman has shown a wild proclivity to hang on to the seat, or a wild ability to hang on to that seat, uh, despite where the poles seem to look at different points. So, like that was uh, what was her name? Sarah Gideon, right? The last time around. Go back cycle. Yeah, you go back cycle after cycle, and you can bet a lot of money is going to pour in. Um, but it's truly like it reminds me, Ryan, actually, of that John Osoff ad that everyone was talking about on X uh over the course of this week, which I'm sure you guys saw. Um, but it was like Osof running not on any culture war issues. In fact, in the ad he calls the culture war a distraction, which Platner has as well. We don't have to debate that, but uh, it's a really good political line uh because he puts that in the back burner and then deals with these like kitchen table issues of corruption causing average Americans pain. And what Crystal, you can probably speak to this too. What Winston Sears did in Virginia was say that like we can coast on Dems being woke. Like, let's just we're just gonna throw the culture war at Abigail Spanberger over and over again and not really deal with the affordability stuff in a super high profile, or it's we're not gonna make that like a huge thrust or the the only thrust of our campaign. And they've had these examples to learn from over and over again, but right away, right out the gate. It's Platinum is a Nazi. Uh so enjoy how that works out for you guys.

SPEAKER_15 52:34

Yeah. Well, and the thing with uh Winsome Sears campaign, too, is then if you're the one running all of the like trans bathroom and trans sports ads, then people go away saying, Y'all are the ones that are obsessed with this issue. You know, Abigail Spamberger is over here actually. She did a lot of like I'm a national security dumb type of thing in Virginia, but she also did a lot of affordability messaging as well. You know, I we'll see what happens in the race, but I do think that things have become so polarized and partisan now, it's hard for me to see how Susan Collins hangs on. And you have such, I mean, the generic ballot like gap in favor of Dems at this point is really quite extraordinary. Um, one thing, Ryan, I wanted to ask you is in terms of the disparate treatment of Plattner versus Mamdani when they share very similar political ideology. Um, if anything, I'd say Platner has been a little more rough around the edges in terms of how he's talked about Israel and Hamas and these sorts of things than Zoran. There's you know more to work with there if you're trying to sort of demonize him. Um, I mean, is this Schumer's different approach in recognition of where the democratic base is, or is it just racism that when he hears it from a white guy, he can stomach it when he hears it from a brown Muslim, it's not acceptable?

SPEAKER_11 53:50

I think some of it's racism, maybe some of it's his backyard, and then some of it is different, you know, tactical environments. I think if Mills dropped out and was like, Maine is a state where independence uh is you know is has elevated is is uh you know, I'm and I am considering running as an independent, you know, just like Angus King is an independent in Maine, uh, then maybe Schumer keeps his powder dry. And so in the in New York, Cuomo like Alaska. Yeah, and and in New York he had Cuomo um as the independent. And so it's embarrassing for a Democrat to not back the Democrat, but um he you know he would rather win with Cuomo than be embarrassed and back Bam Dani. So I think he he was left with no choice in Maine. It's like this is the guy, like he's the nominee, and she's not running as an independent. So I think that distinction played a role too. But I don't know, like so I think some of it's also just yeah, racism and and rooted in kind of who they are.

SPEAKER_15 54:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 55:01

Uh why don't we take a listen uh to the man himself speaking to uh John Stewart uh this week?

SPEAKER_09 55:08

There has been more reach out from kind of like establishment folks. Um however, however, this is the important part. Not from like the not from like the DSEC, not from the DMC. Like the like nobody in the places of power remains interested. But they're lost, dude. Like they're they're lost. And the thing that bothers me the most isn't like I'm not I'm not asking for you to like be my friend. I'm just like you should be curious because I'm pulling 40 points ahead. Right. Like you like at least at least just reach out and be like, hey, uh what are you actually? Because we've never, they've never, they've never spoken, ever. I've never gotten a phone call. Never gotten a phone call.

SPEAKER_15 55:56

I think it was Hassan who said, think look like a Chud, think like a woke. That's flattener. That's the winning model. But you know, Ryan, I think you identified actually the biggest pitfall for him, which is that Tim Wells is about to come campaign for him in the state. And as much as we might get irritated, like, why isn't the party even reaching out to him? On the other hand, it's actually really great for him to be like, see, have some separation from the Democratic Party brand, because we all know the Democratic Party brand is extremely toxic. Like every die in the wool Democrat is going to vote for Graham Platiner. The question is, people who are, you know, more independent and sort of disgusted with national democrats, are they going to be on board with him? And so the more that he's sort of like subsumed now into that standard issue Democratic Party brand, I actually think that that's like uh a more of a peril for him than anything else.

SPEAKER_22 56:44

Like Dan Osborne.

SPEAKER_11 56:46

But yeah, I would have Osborne come out there. If I were in Graham's camp, I'd have Osborne come out. I'd keep having Sean Fain and other union leaders come out, Bernie's Bernie. Um, but Tim Walls, maybe old Tim Walls before he was but he but he's he's tainted by that that VP run. Um it's yeah, that is the risk that he starts to look like a part of the like bog. Um but I I assume that he gets that. But yeah, there's comes Tim Walls, so we'll keep an eye out.

SPEAKER_15 57:19

It's interesting that Tim Walls decided, like of all the candidates, that let me go, let me go campaign with this one. That's kind of an interesting choice to me.

SPEAKER_22 57:27

After Mills drops out, too.

unknown 57:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_11 57:32

Uh before that. Um But the his met his campaign manager and Graham had a press conference yesterday uh afternoon, and one of the things his campaign manager said on there is that they I don't have the exact number, but they had they started doing the math on the number of individuals that he had spoken to directly, and it was something like approaching like a scale. Like they have they have taken like this these one-on-one conversations that he's had at all of these town halls, and they're scaling it up into the tens or even hundreds of thousands. Um and they were saying that that when they did some research and polling, they kept coming across people in their polling, huge, huge numbers, whose dis whose reason that they were supporting Palatiner is that they had met Palatiner personally and were swayed by him. That is an incredible buffer against the negative ads.

SPEAKER_15 58:31

I saw Semaphore had a piece quoting some, I don't know, D, you know, Republican strategists who were like, oh, we're gonna, you know, we're gonna destroy him, we're gonna drop all this money on him, we're gonna do all these negative ads. And it's like, I mean, I'm sure they'll be able to bang up his favorability rating, some, but it's not like the Mills people and the Sherman people didn't try. So um, you know, I think he is go somewhat inoculated from the type of attacks that they've been launching, unless they have something different that we haven't yet seen, you never know. But your point about Maine is an important one, and I don't have any like deep familiarity with the state, but um, from watching, you know, you guys reporter there and um Alex Seitzwald, who also moved back to Maine and has been doing reporting on the ground there. And I also have a close friend who's like uh grew up in Maine. And he, okay, he grew up in Maine, he hasn't lived there in years, and he's still like, what was that guy's name who you said is running? And he like reached out to his buddies and, of course, had some kind of a connection to him because it's a very small state, and it's much more there's there's still my sense is there's still a lot more sort of like community cohesion in Maine than there is in a lot of the country, and that's part of what has allowed Susan Collins to be able to win for so long because she, you know, there are a lot of people there like I know her personally, and she did this, and I saw her there, or whatever. But it's also something that can benefit Graham because he is deeply immersed in, you know, Maine community and has been running a campaign, and even before his campaign, he was a you know grassroots organizer, and this is what he was doing. So I do think that that is a huge advantage for him and will help to inoculate him against some of those negative attacks that are inevitably coming.

SPEAKER_10 1:00:11

Yeah. Well, the negative attack, the negative attacks. I'm gonna give some advice to the Republican Otho for a second. It can't be that he's a Nazi, but maybe the tattoo he has is actually trans somehow. Like maybe it's part of the trans community.

SPEAKER_22 1:00:25

Well, isn't there the trans socialist militia?

SPEAKER_10 1:00:27

Yeah, exactly. There we go. Now we're getting closer to something. Or and it's actually it has its roots in Black Lives Matter. Uh so I I would go that direction with the tattoo.

SPEAKER_22 1:00:37

Um I mean, that there is some like culture stuff that they can make inroads with him on, but what main Democrats just showed, I think, is gonna apply to main voters overall. They have serious affordability concerns, they have kitchen table problems, and they want somebody who is going to address that first and foremost. So they don't trust the political establishment. Susan Collins is the political establishment. The difference in some of these, uh, especially like more rural states, is that Susan Collins comes across as the antithesis. Uh, and to us, that might seem strange, but she comes across as the antithesis to some people of DC politics because she's on the ground, she's a very good grassroots politician, she goes to all of the events. Uh she's she's that's how she's been able to hang on. Um, so and she votes against her own party sometimes and big decisions, not always, but sometimes in these big decisions. So that is what they'll have to contend with. But if it's just going to be culture war attacks, that's obviously not going to work. It didn't work for Andrew Cuomo. Um, it's not gonna work in Maine either.

SPEAKER_10 1:01:43

Well, we mentioned Tim Walls and the Democratic Party stained by the 2024 race, so I thought we should end this segment with a very interesting interview on Pod Save America between John Favreau and DNC Chair Penn Martin. Now, there has been a 2024 autopsy on the 2024 race, why what happened, why they lost, and it's been kept under lock and key, to which John Favreau has some questions about why Ken has not released it. This is a little long and a little inside baseball, but I think it's worked a listen. Let's take a listen. I want to start with the 2024 autopsy, which you call an after action review. When you won the chairmanship in February of 25, you criticized the DNC's refusal to release their 2016 autopsy as exactly what not to do. You said, quote, was there any utility in doing that? And then promised your 2024 autopsy would be different. Your exact quote was, of course it will be released. Why did you change your mind on that?

SPEAKER_06 1:02:44

Well, look, I mean, what I said all along, even when I ran for this position, is that we were gonna focus on the things that will help us win the upcoming election, right? Making sure that we learn the right lessons that could help inform our victories. And that's what we've done. We said this when we were uh sent out the press release back in November saying we weren't gonna release the report. We were gonna actually keep our focus on those lessons, and we released those lessons. We continue to do that. So it's not completely accurate to say that we didn't release that. Uh where we're keeping our focus is on the lessons that can actually help us win.

SPEAKER_10 1:03:19

On this show in August, you told me this about releasing the review quote We have to do it to give people who invested so much time, energy, and money a sense of what happened and why we lost, especially why we lost. So, what changed between August and December? I understand there are lessons, but those are not the full report. Why not release the full report? What's in the report that you wouldn't want to publicize?

SPEAKER_06 1:03:43

Yeah, there's no smoking gun in the report. And I know that's that's what everyone's so eager to learn. The smoking gun. Guess what, John? But if there's no smoking gun, why wouldn't you just release it then? Because we want to keep the focus on the lessons. Because what ends up happening here is that uh people, of course, want to weaponize the reports in a way to look backwards, point fingers, place blame in a way that actually doesn't keep us focused on the upcoming election. But instead, uh the navel gazing of focusing backwards actually takes us backwards. We're 189 days from this election, John. What we don't need to be focused on is actually relitigating 2024. What we need to do is learn the lessons of 24 in the years preceding that can help us win this upcoming election. I get why people are obsessed with it, because there's various groups and organizations and people who think there's some sort of smoking gun in there. Guess what, John? In the third closest presidential election in the last hundred years, everything mattered. There's nothing that can impact that election.

SPEAKER_10 1:04:42

Why did you spend the money going to 50 states, doing all these interviews, doing all this stuff if and doing this report in the first place if you weren't going to release the full results of it? Like why I don't get why just you and some of the senior DNC people get to see it, but not most of the DNC members who are, you know, state party chairs. I mean, you know, more than a dozen DNC members told NBC just the other week they want it released, including Congresswoman Delia Ramirez and North Carolina Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton. And Anderson said, quote, genuinely, what did you all find that we did not? Um, and just uh the top comment on YouTube for that podsafe interview is we are so fucked. Uh and so uh guys, I'm recruiting sense, man. I'm gonna put the question to you. I think what could the lesson possibly be that is being hidden here?

SPEAKER_15 1:05:35

Yeah, I mean, it's pretty obvious at this point. They just they don't want to put out that the uh funding and supporting of a genocide in Gaza was actually a political problem. It was not only a moral atrocity, but it was also a political problem for them. I think that's pretty clear at this point. But, you know, I Ryan, I'm curious if you have anything on this. The uh first of all, we just have to pause and reflect on what he's trying to sell there, which is he's like, we need to not look backwards, but we do need to learn the lessons so we can win. Well, it's like, but the whole point of this was to learn the lessons so that you could win. It reminds me very much of the Republicans who, whenever they get asked about whether or not 2020 was rigged and whether or not Donald Trump really won and Joe Biden was the rightful president, oh, we shouldn't look backwards, we shouldn't look backwards. Clearly, just trying to dodge all of this. The way he's handled is so foolish because let's say you put out the full report and it did say something that was inconvenient about Gaza, like that would be old news by now. No one would be talking about it anymore. It would be, you know, we'd be 3,000 news cycles later at this point. Um, but because they didn't release it, now it's this whole thing. I did see though, Ryan, some speculation on Twitter that perhaps they didn't even completely finish the report. And that might be part of why they never put it out. So I don't know if if that is possibly part of what's going on here.

SPEAKER_11 1:06:56

Well, I think that's plausible. Um and I also think so. Think think about what it was, what, mid-July? When did when did he finally now when did he finally drop out? It was like August, right before the right before the convention ish.

SPEAKER_15 1:07:10

When did Sagra get married? Because that's when that's when he dropped out. It was July. Sagra played. It was July, right? It was July, yeah.

SPEAKER_11 1:07:17

In any event, so in a period, in a very short period, they raised and spent a billion dollars. A billion, yeah. And these are very there are very specific, it's not they is very broad. There are very specific consultants and factions and people that spent that billion dollars. Who did they how did they spend it? Who did they give it to? What consultants walked away with tens of millions, what firms got paid hundreds of millions? Because we're talking like a billion dollars isn't that's an endless amount of money. It's difficult to spend that amount of money and that amount of time. And so I think that's also they don't want those details necessarily spilled out, um, because A, they will be weaponized by other consultants um who felt like they should have been the ones that got to spend all of this money. And also just generally, it gives uh people like us information that we can talk about and like wow,$190 million doing this that didn't work, like you should be in jail. Um so I think that I think that's a significant part of it, too, that there's so much money involved that it's just better for them to say, Well, we learned some lessons and trust us that these are the Correct lessons that we should learn from this and just follow follow our guidance going forward. Don't worry about it.

SPEAKER_10 1:08:46

What are the current lessons being released that are that are okay for normal's eyes to view? Is it that we need to pivot more to the right? That we need to not talk about trans issues. What are these lessons that have the equity? What even are the lessons they that Ken Martin said? I think the lessons are don't be mean to me and please do my job.

SPEAKER_22 1:09:07

Ren, what's the Barney Frank thing? Didn't Barney Frank come out? Like I actually assume it's probably similar to that. Didn't Barney Frank come out this week?

SPEAKER_15 1:09:15

Crystal, you might know this too, and say Yeah, well, I just saw the headline. He's like dying and decided to, as his last act on earth, to release some book bashing the left, talking about how that's my point, which is which is actually perfect legacy for him, to be honest with you.

SPEAKER_10 1:09:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_11 1:09:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 1:09:33

Love Barney Frank.

SPEAKER_19 1:09:34

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_10 1:09:36

All right. So just, you know, the that pod Save America commenter. I think we are all feeling that way right now.

SPEAKER_15 1:09:45

Shout out to Favra, though. He did a great job in that um interview. You know, very persistent, really good lines of questioning. And it is inside baseball, there's no doubt about it, but it's still, you know, very important to see the way that this apparatus functions or doesn't function, who it protects, um, what messages they find it convenient to put out and what things they want to keep hidden forever. And um also just to me, again, the mind-blowing incompetence of not understanding the way that the media works and that it's going to be such so much more of an interesting story if it remains hidden, versus if you just took the blow, put it out, and then everybody can just move on.

SPEAKER_21 1:10:22

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SPEAKER_15 1:10:27

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