We’re thrilled to share our holiday WITHpod mailbag, which was originally hosted on Instagram Live. Does Chris have a doppelganger? What did he want to be when he grew up? What’s his pitch for President Biden over Trump? Join as Chris and producer Doni Holloway reflect on the WITHpod national tour, go through your questions and discuss feedback you’ve sent.
Note: This is a rough transcript — please excuse any typos.
Chris Hayes: Hello
Chris Hayes: Hello, and welcome to “Why Is This Happening?” with me, your host, Chris Hayes. Well, it is that time of year again as we hit towards the holidays is when we do our semi-annual mailbag with the number one WITHpod producer, the one and only Doni Holloway joining me on the mic. Welcome, Doni.
Doni Holloway: Thank you so much, Chris. I’m so glad to be here. I’m so excited for our mailbag. We always look forward to these. This is our second time doing the mailbag on Instagram live. We love the live interaction part of it and interacting with so many people. So just really thrilled to be doing this again as we reflect on the year that it was and think about the year that’s ahead.
Chris Hayes: Yeah. It’s great. We had a very busy year on WITHpod.
Doni Holloway: It was such a busy year. I mean, and personally, I feel like WITHpod continues to be such a professional thrill. So gratifying. Chris, we have so much to talk about the past year. We’re going to switch it up a little bit this time, too. Got a surprise, some questions from former guests actually from our live tour. So, we’ll get into some of those, including a question from this up and coming talent that you scouted out.
Chris Hayes: Oh, nice.
Doni Holloway: The one and only Rachel Maddow. So we’ll get into questions from her actually because in true form, Rachel sent over a few different options. So, really looking forward to it. Chris, you know, we’ve been doing this podcast for a few years now. In terms of where people can find us, people definitely found us out on the road this year, as we were on the national tour. It was great meeting so many people from across the country from our live tour.
Chris Hayes: Yeah. It was amazing. And some of you that I met are actually here in the comments. I see a few people that traveled long distances to come see the New York show we did at the town hall with Rachel Maddow where I met people from Toronto and Puerto Rico.
Doni Holloway: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: And all over.
Doni Holloway: Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I got to give shout out for my Tar Heels
Chris Hayes: So, yeah, no. It was great and I love meeting people and it’s very rewarding. The work we get to do is a real privilege. And it’s a reminder of what a privilege it is to meet all of you.
Doni Holloway: Definitely. And you know, there’s so many different considerations for live events in terms of the production. I mean, you know, we fly there a few days ahead of the event, making sure we’re getting, you know, getting people hyped, which isn’t hard to do because people are already super excited. We heard of course, people saying that they got tickets as a holiday present, as a birthday present, all the different things. We got to meet people at the VIP reception, had book signings.
From a producer standpoint. It’s always really interesting to me all the extra considerations for a live event, like what direction we enter the stage, the playlist that we use before the event. Chris, it was fun hearing some of the songs that are top of mind for you that we play before the events get started. Just really happy about all of the success I was just saying earlier. I feel like each day of our event, it kind of felt like the calm before the calm.
And so it was just a testament to our teams and everything that goes into making a live event happen. And you also had to do additional things like doing hits with affiliates. You were on late night with Seth Meyers. You’ve been on that show a lot.
Chris Hayes: Funny you ask. I am the all-time record holder as a guest on Seth Meyers.
Doni Holloway: I thought that was it. Yeah.
Chris Hayes: I am number one baby.
Doni Holloway: There you go.
Chris Hayes: I wanted just interrupt you for one second because we have a comment here.
Doni Holloway: Yep.
Chris Hayes: That Chris seemed as tall or taller than Rachel. I was shocked. LOL. Chris is tall. I just want to set the record straight here because this has been probably, I would say the number one piece of feedback.
Doni Holloway: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: I am six foot, half an inch, six foot, one inch around there, 225 pounds. I’m a big dude. I think that, I don’t know, TV is shrinking or people think I’m small, but I’m a big dude. And every time we do this, when I come into, like, when I come into the audience or when I do these little VIP receptions beforehand, I’m coming in, people are like, whoa. Yeah. It’s really me.
Doni Holloway: That is so true. I heard that from people as well. They were like, he’s so much taller than I expected. And in fact, in the intro to the New York live event, I know Rachel mentioned that when she was bringing you in, she’s like, you got to know that (ph) —
Chris Hayes: Oh, yeah.
Doni Holloway: He’s taller than you expect.
Chris Hayes: That was part of the intro.
Doni Holloway: Exactly. So, it’s been so thrilling and for our listeners who said, you know, hey, we want you. They want us to come to the West Coast or, you know, different parts of the country. We’ve heard them. It is something that we’re keeping in mind. My friend, Viviane (ph), who lives in San Francisco, actually, she was like, you guys got to do a live WITHpod in San Francisco. So that could be fun.
Chris Hayes: Yeah. We’re definitely going to do more of them. It’s a question of when. I mean, you know, the complicated –
Doni Holloway: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: — thing is just like, there’s a bunch of logistics. We’ve heard from a bunch of people who said like, hey, come to this place or that place. Portland, Oregon, someone is saying. Kansas City, Missouri.
Doni Holloway: There we go. Yes.
Chris Hayes: And I would love to go to all those places. It just, you know, I got three kids, first of all, and I got —
Doni Holloway: That part.
Chris Hayes: — a nightly show to do. And then we got to get guests and we got a venue. So it’s just complicated. But the other thing I would say is like, for those of you who really want to see me in person, I would just bookmark the fact I just yesterday turned in the very first draft of a manuscript of my latest book.
Doni Holloway: That’s incredible.
Chris Hayes: And I’ve been working very hard on that. And it’s not quite clear when that book is going to come out. It might be in the fall of 2024. It might be in early 2025, probably one of those two. But when that book comes out, I will probably tour pretty heavily and I think I’ll probably go to a bunch of places. So, just Cleveland is another place. Maybe I’ll come there. But yes, if you’re one of those people saying like, please come to my city, I would just say like that book tour’s going to be fairly substantial. So just, you know, put that in the back of your mind.
Doni Holloway: Chris, I’m so excited about the book tour and I know you’ve been thinking a lot about the attention economy and that being what the book is about.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Doni Holloway: So it’ll be interesting. A lot of things competing for our attention.
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Doni Holloway: I know you’re ahead, for sure. One other place that we heard from that people want us to come to is North Carolina. One of my friends, Sonja (ph), who I affectionately call her one of the presidents of our WITHpod North Carolina fan club. She brought the idea. Maybe I’m just going to put in a request maybe for UNC Chapel Hill. A Tar Heel situation could be nice.
Chris Hayes: This is an example. One of my favorite expressions, you know, this expression talking your book. Do you know this expression?
Doni Holloway: Yes.
Chris Hayes: I use it a lot. Talking your book is when someone who has got a book of trades is like trying to give you objective analysis about financial conditions. And what they’re really doing is arguing in favor of their trades. It’s called talking your book. Doni Holloway is talking his book on North Carolina. He’s like, yeah.
Doni Holloway: You know.
Chris Hayes: Let’s go to my home state.
Doni Holloway: Yeah. Got to represent. But in terms of the cities that we did go to, of course, we kicked off the tour in Austin, Texas. So it was really, really great to be there. Um, it was my first time in Austin, Chris. You’ve been there before.
Chris Hayes: Yeah. Great town.
Doni Holloway: Austin, Texas. Yeah. Great vibes there. We talked about a really important story that I’m sure everyone is aware of, prosecuting Donald Trump. We had Andrew Weismann and Mary McCord. Andrew Weismann, of course, former federal prosecutor and Mary McCord, a former federal prosecutor for nearly 20 years as well. Really got into Trump’s growing legal issues as we prepare for a really consequential presidential election in 2024. And Chris, I love the thought experiment that you started off with in the monologue for that where you talked about really the differences between criminal law and civil law and kind of the factors at play with former President Trump.
Chris Hayes: Yeah. I mean the basic idea is just that there’s a whole bunch of conceptual historical and philosophical architecture that distinguishes between the spheres of criminal and civil law. But the sort of provocation I gave at the beginning is that as a sociological fact, one way you could think about them if you were visiting from another planet is like criminal law is largely for people without money and power. Civil law is largely to do with some sort of degree of money and power. And that’s how those two regimes work.
And the reason I brought it up is because Donald Trump has spent a lot of time, you know, in court, through civil, in the civil legal system. He’s probably one of the, you know, the most litigation involved humans on the planet.
Doni Holloway: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: And so, we went to an interesting place in that conversation.
Doni Holloway: Exactly. Yeah. I mean, Trump falling into that category of rich people, although, of course, his actual net worth continues to be heavily disputed, there was just so many quotable and sound bites from that conversation from Andrew Weismann and Mary McCord after your questions, Chris, and this one just really stood out to me. I just want to play a little bit of it.
Andrew Weismann: He is like the leader of the free world. One of the things he recently said on TV was that he wasn’t even sure what a subpoena required. I mean, of all people to do your opening, I mean, somebody who has his litigation experience, I think he would know what a subpoena is even if he weren’t the leader of the free world. So that’s like, you want to say that you’re completely delusional, have at it. See if a juror agrees with you.
Mary McCord: I think he will be convicted. I think if he is, and if it’s on, you know, all three or even just one count, I think that imprisonment will be part of the sentence, but how that gets carried out will be, I think, where a lot of the debate occurs.
Doni Holloway: Yeah. So that one was just really interesting. I mean, Trump’s courtroom calendar, of course, clashing with the 2024 election as he’s a criminal defendant.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Doni Holloway: And on “All In” last night, I know you talked about March being an especially busy month for Trump.
Chris Hayes: Yeah. I mean the big question I think is just sort of about whether he can continue to outrun the law, I mean, you know —
Doni Holloway: Right.
Chris Hayes: — and put off the day of reckoning, which he’s been doing his entire life. And I think, you know, we’ll see whether he’s able to do that. It’s sort of an open question. I mean, he clearly thinks, look, I’ve gotten away with it for my entire life.
Doni Holloway: Right.
Chris Hayes: And the thing is that you would think like it’s a little like Wiley Coyote’s legs still going, you know, after being off the cliff where —
Doni Holloway: Right.
Chris Hayes: — it feels like he’s got to fall, but then I don’t know. He might just make it. Maybe he thinks that the Supreme Court bails him out. I don’t know. We’ll see.
Doni Holloway: We’ll see. We know they keep trying to push things off, but yeah. And as you put it, a lot of perilous dates for sure, for him in 2024.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Doni Holloway: And I know you were just talking about unique considerations for 2024 in terms of family vacation planning when we were on our planning call the other day. So I know that’s a lot to who knows what exactly is ahead.
Chris Hayes: Well, yeah. I mean, you just can’t plan anything in 2024 —
Doni Holloway: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: — from our perspective because all of those trial dates can slide around. Trial dates can go three weeks or go nine weeks. And jury deliberations go two days or they can go four weeks. Everything is, who knows. I mean, usually, what makes an added variable here about 2024 for the calendar is that the election calendar is set. Like I can tell you when every primary is.
Doni Holloway: Yes.
Chris Hayes: I can tell you, you know, when the conventions are and we’ll find out when the debates are, but the legal calendar is just all over the place.
Doni Holloway: All over the place, for sure. That’s definitely the case. I’m curious, Chris, as you think about family vacation, potentially, maybe, maybe not. Maybe it doesn’t happen depending on what happens in 2024, but what’s the place that’s always been on your bucket list that you’re like, you still want to visit?
Chris Hayes: Oh, wow. You know, I just recently have been thinking more and more about how much I want to go to Japan, which I’ve never been to.
Doni Holloway: It’s worth it just for the ramen I feel like.
Chris Hayes: Yeah. Actually it’s funny. Yes. I definitely had the thought of like an eating vacation in Japan would be amazing. My oldest daughter is really interested in Japan, too, so I’m —
Doni Holloway: Oh, cool.
Chris Hayes: Yeah. I know that and Southeast Asia, which if I had enough time, I’d try to maybe combine, but those are two parts of the world that I’ve never been to. I really would love to go.
Doni Holloway: Yeah. I loved my time in Asia. Asia is great. I was in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. So it got like more Western as we went along. But, yeah, I definitely remember the food from that trip.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Doni Holloway: It was so good. It almost made some American Chinese restaurants seem like a TV dinner or something just cause like the level of spices and things like that. It takes it up to a whole other level. All right. We talked about the Texas event, the Texas live tour stop. Then the next place that we went to was Chicago to talk about the 50th anniversary of hip hop, talking all about hip hop, growing as a global phenomenon and the genre really how it was born of a specific set of cultural and sociological conditions and how it continues to shape so many facets of international culture.
For that we, of course, had an all-star lineup. We had music artist, actor, and activist, Vic Mensa, Trymaine Lee, MSNBC correspondent and host of MSNBC’s “Into America” podcast, which is an amazing, incredible podcast. If you haven’t heard of it, if you haven’t listened to it yet, check it out. And also Imani Perry, we had her, Harvard professor and “New York Times” bestselling author.
Chris Hayes: MacArthur Genius as well.
Doni Holloway: Exactly. Yes. Big congratulations for that. Recent honor among her many honors. And you know, she wrote that seminal book, “Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop.” So, each of them really contributed a lot to the conversation from different angles as we broke it all down. I’m curious, Chris, some of your biggest takeaways from that conversation?
Chris Hayes: Well, I loved that conversation. It was an electric crowd. I was really nervous going into it. One thing that’s funny, I’ll take you guys, you guys who are watching right now. I’m taking you behind the scenes.
Doni Holloway: Yes.
Chris Hayes: We announced the event before we announced the guests in the topic.
Doni Holloway: Yes.
Chris Hayes: And the show, basically it was not an enormous venue and the show more or less sold out pretty quickly. So people bought —
Doni Holloway: Right.
Chris Hayes: — being like, I’m going to go see “Why Is This Happening?” but they didn’t know what guests they would see.
Doni Holloway: Exactly.
Chris Hayes: And like, I wouldn’t say that it was like hardcore hip hop heads who purchased their tickets.
Doni Holloway: Right.
Chris Hayes: I don’t think, you know, but people were hardcore WITHpod heads and I was a little nervous, but what became very clear early on is that I had no reason to be nervous because “Why Is This Happening?” Listeners are curious and open minded. It’s why they listen to the podcast. You know, I always say this about The New Yorker, you know, that I’ve always felt this way and particularly I think when I was younger where like you would open a New Yorker and you’d maybe go to the articles first where you’re like, oh, I’m interested in that. And then you’d work your way to be like, here’s a profile of the new conductor of the Berlin orchestra. And you’d be like that’s not a thing I’m interested in, but I bet you all this’ll be interesting. And then you read it and you’re like, oh, this is fascinating.
Doni Holloway: Exactly.
Chris Hayes: So, I was a little nervous about it for that reason. The audience was great. Imani and Trymaine were fantastic and set the table so well. And then I just was completely transfixed and blown away by Vic Mensa who was just like an utterly unique and compelling figure.
Doni Holloway: Totally.
Chris Hayes: Brilliant. Self-aware and self-analytical in a way that I think is very rare and very hard to be, particularly as an artist.
Doni Holloway: Yes.
Chris Hayes: Able to sort of articulate his process and the way he goes about it. It’s really worth listening to. I knew him a bit. I knew a bit of his music, but I didn’t have like, I know that he’s an actor. He was on “the Chi”.
Doni Holloway: Right.
Chris Hayes: So I knew that he was a really impressive dude and I knew his bio, which was pretty interesting, but I just had no idea what a remarkable person he is and was totally blown away.
Doni Holloway: So thoughtful. And his new album, “Victor”, is just great.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Doni Holloway: So, recommend checking that out, which going back to the production piece, when he did his walkout, his song “$outhside” was the one that we used for the walkout song, which is a really good one from the album. And Chris, to your point about him being so thoughtful, I really appreciated especially his points on the commercialization of artists in contemporary times. I have a bite that I want to play from that.
Vic Mensa: It’s got its moments and you have a select few people that are razor sharp, focused on, you know, uplifting, empowering, breaking free from oppressing, but hip hop, like many things in our community, has been so brainwashed and programmed that it actually carries on the role of our oppressors for them like a toy with a wound up motor in it.
Doni Holloway: I thought that was really deep.
Chris Hayes: Yeah. Really deep. And him talking a little bit, I mean the music industry is such a intense one because it is notoriously and historically so exploitative.
Doni Holloway: Right.
Chris Hayes: And he sort of talked about navigating the business in a way that was really interesting and really compelling.
Doni Holloway: For sure. And to be able to remain humble and so thoughtful throughout all of that is pretty great. Chris, I know you also liked just being in Chicago in general. Like it’s a really special city for you.
Chris Hayes: Yeah. It’s a very special place for me. It’s where my wife, Kate, who some of you know, because she’s also the co-host of the “Strict Scrutiny” podcast, which –
Doni Holloway: Which is great.
Chris Hayes: — is a fantastic podcast, very popular. We’ve done some crossover episodes.
Doni Holloway: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: Kate’s from Chicago right in the city, in the neighborhood of Old Town is where she grew up. My dad is from Chicago. My dad’s got siblings in Chicago. I’ve got cousins there. So I’ve had a long time connection to the city. And then when we graduated college in 2001, Kate and I moved Chicago. We lived there for six years and that’s also where I got my start as a reporter.
Doni Holloway: Yeah. That’s incredible. And I know while you were there, you got to explore a little bit and go on to 606 and go for a run and —
Chris Hayes: Dude, the 606 is fantastic.
Doni Holloway: Yeah. And, of course, you’re a Cubs fan, right?
Chris Hayes: Cubs fan. Diehard Cubs fan, and a Bulls fan, which woof, and a Bears fan, which woo.
Doni Holloway: What a season. That venue in Chicago also was just really cool, The House of Blues Chicago.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Doni Holloway: It’s actually, yeah, just amazing. So much history there. I remember before the show and one of the stage managers as we were walking up to the stage, like this is where Aretha Franklin would be and she’d have her bag of cash and I’m like, oh wow, that’s so cool that we were on the same stage. That was really fun. Okay. So then, after that, we went to Philly. We were at the Fillmore in Philly.
Chris Hayes: Philly, Fillmore, double header.
Doni Holloway: Right. Exactly. With Naomi Klein, the award-winning journalist and “New York Times” bestselling author of numerous books, including the one that was the focus of that Philly conversation, “Doppelganger: A Trip Into The Mirror World.” So we took a trip into the mirror world with her talking all about conspiracy culture, how social media and AI can shape our identities, both public and private. And you know, just her whole trajectory to how she wrote that book and the impetus for it, I thought was really interesting. We can play a quick bite from that conversation.
Naomi Klein: I was experiencing this deluge of identity confusion online where people kept mistaking me for the non-fiction writer, Naomi Wolf, who became one of those people who fell down the rabbit hole of misinformation during COVID and became a vector for medical misinformation. It was just sort of tugging at me like just a distraction. And then I thought, actually, this might be a kind of a literary technique to get at the way I think a lot of us are confused about who we are right now and who other people are and to kind of map the weirdness of now.
Doni Holloway: I thought that was so spot on when she said the weirdness of now, mapping the weirdness of now.
Chris Hayes: Yes. A very good phrase.
Doni Holloway: Right. And in fact, we did an episode on WITHpod called “Why People Are Acting So Weird?” So if you haven’t heard that one, it’s still relevant, probably even more so now.
Chris Hayes: Yeah. So, don’t you think people have gotten a little less weird?
Doni Holloway: That’s a good point. Yeah. I feel like, I will say definitely with traveling, like being in airports and stuff, people haven’t been quite as like reactionary as —
Chris Hayes: Yeah. There was a period where everyone was just acting out of pocket, like all the time. I saw more like screaming confrontations on the street than I’d seen like in my life.
Doni Holloway: Right.
Chris Hayes: And I do feel like that’s settled down. Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s my perception.
Doni Holloway: Also part of it that I think helps, too, is that there’s more people out and about now. So if you do have those —
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Doni Holloway: — encounters where it’s like, oh, this is a little sketchy. At least we’re like kind of back to being outside.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Doni Holloway: And in terms of the conspiracy theory stuff, Chris, I’m curious for you what maybe some of the most enraging conspiracies are. I mean, we still think about there’s COVID ones. There’s vax ones.
Chris Hayes: Yeah. I mean the two big ones I think that have had the most destructive force in our time is the COVID vaccine conspiracies, which have cost hundreds, literally hundreds of thousands people their lives. And then the big lie of the stolen election, which is imperiled American democracy to a degree unprecedented since the civil war. I mean, those are two big ones.
Doni Holloway: Right.
Chris Hayes: And they, they share lots of features with a lot of other conspiracy theories. But because people at the highest levels of power have also ceded them, they have had a particular sort of destructive force.
Doni Holloway: That is so true. I so, so agree with that. And you know, with the Naomi Klein conversation, when she talked about her doppelganger, Naomi Wolf, it made me wonder Chris, if you have a doppelganger. I’ve never heard you mention what.
Chris Hayes: I don’t know. It’s funny. People at pick-up basketball games used to call me Harry Potter sometimes.
Doni Holloway: There’s this one picture of you. It’s like a throwback photo on your IG —
Chris Hayes: I got Harry Potter over there. I got Harry Potter over there, like yeah. Okay. There is someone in Sin City that someone just compared me to. Someone literally in the comments said. A tall Harry Potter. Thank you. Yes. We stan a tall Harry Potter king.
Doni Holloway: Love that.
Chris Hayes: And then, yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know if I have a doppelganger.
Doni Holloway: We’ll see. Maybe that’ll be a —
Chris Hayes: Keep our eyes up.
Doni Holloway: — future book some day —
Chris Hayes: You can nominate the doppelgangers in the comments.
Doni Holloway: Yes. Let us know. Let us know in the comments.
Chris Hayes: Be kind. Don’t be mean.
Doni Holloway: Exactly.
Chris Hayes: I’m very sensitive.
Doni Holloway: The other part of the double header in Philly was Joy Reid. The one and only Joy Reid, of course, anchor of “The ReidOut” on MSNBC. I just thought her trajectory and the story —
Chris Hayes: So fascinating.
Doni Holloway: So amazing. That’s why, I mean, you know, we called the episode, “The Making of Joy Reid”, literally. How did she become the person who we all know, such a big portion of the conversation. And we have a bite from that one as well because, I mean, when I was picking in producing terms, or like the pull quote or the sound bite or whatever, it’s a good problem to have when you have so many good options to choose from. But this one was one that stood out.
Joy Reid: I came in through the pundit world and I came in through talk radio and I’m now actually getting to talk about the thing I was passionate about, which is politics, voting, things I cared about. And so, this job has allowed me to take my passion for politics and for world affairs, take it through a collaborative process and then output something that hopefully is helpful for people to understand what’s happening.
Doni Holloway: I thought that one really like, literally, she helps people to also understand why is this happening?
Chris Hayes: Yeah. I love that conversation. I love learning all about her trajectory as well.
Doni Holloway: Sure.
Chris Hayes: She’s just a really special person.
Doni Holloway: And I know you called Joy a DeSantis-ologist. This wasn’t in the interview, but like just her experience in Florida and just being able to speak from that and like the weirdness of what’s going on there was really fascinating.
Chris Hayes: Yeah. And it’s just so funny because DeSantis-ology is a declining profession because of how terribly he has done.
Doni Holloway: I know that part. She’s like, he has zero charisma. I remember that. Okay. So then we did our culminating event, which we really couldn’t think of a better way to culminate the tour than to have that talent you scouted out, Rachel Maddow, on to talk all about the fight to preserve American democracy, the rise of authoritarianism and really the historical events that have led to this moment that we’re in as told in her amazing and incredible new book, “Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism“. I couldn’t put the book down while I was reading it, which I think really just says a lot for history book, but in the way that Rachel writes and tells stories true to the show, it felt like a novel in a way.
Chris Hayes: It’s so well done. It’s so gripping. It’s so vivid. It’s an incredible book. It’s a really incredible book.
Doni Holloway: It is. And, you know, part of what comes up in that book is, you know, it’s kind of heavy in many ways, talking about dark things, but also I love her focus and a lot of the talks that she’s done around the book and in the interview that we had her on for the live event where she focused on the optimistic side of what we can learn from the good guys and women in history who have done things right, and what are the options that we can turn to for when ultra-right forces continue to try to overturn our government.
Chris Hayes: Yeah. And I think that’s what makes the book both inspiring and also just so both relevant and kind of practically useful in so far as the idea that democracy wins not because it’s faded to or not because it’s the best system, but because people put their work in defending it, you know, as an almost sacred duty. And that’s the real takeaway from that book. And I think, you know, pretty important thing to be thinking about at this moment.
Doni Holloway: It is such an important thing to be thinking about. And one of the things that came up in the conversation with her at the town hall in New York, was she talking about what everyday people can do as we, you know, prepare for 2024. And as she points out, it’ll be a really tough year, but she had some really actionable things and we can play some sound from that.
Rachel Maddow: There is, I believe, something really important that you can do in your non-political life that will improve your political life, which is have personal relationships with people face to face that are about everything besides politics, too. You want to maybe start a book club. Do you have a neighbor who lives alone who wants to come to Thanksgiving? Something that connects you to the people in your immediate area that isn’t about finding consensus about what’s going to happen in the 2024 election, It is good for your community. It is good for your soul. And when things get very hard, being able to look at other people in the eye, recognize each other as humans can save a life.
Doni Holloway: I have a feeling we’re really going to need that in 2024.
Chris Hayes: Yeah. I couldn’t agree more. I love that. I’m just sitting here thinking about it, but yeah, it’s really good.
Doni Holloway: Right. I know. It’s kind of like, as you’re sitting on the edge of your seat with so many things that she mentioned, you know, as we work to try to save democracy. And that other point that she mentioned about what we do now is what descendants in the future will look to. That was just so powerful, I thought.
Chris Hayes: Totally agree.
Doni Holloway: And you can hear that full conversation with Rachel Maddow on our WITHpod “Why Is This Happening?” feed or you can also stream it on Peacock. We’ve forgotten a lot of good responses from people who have listened and watched, listened and watch multiple times. And that conversation was aired on MSNBC as well. But there’s still several ways, as I just mentioned, that you can get a hold of it and really employ you to take a listen and or watch. And if you missed any of our live tour events, there’s over five hours of holiday and beyond really binge worthy tour content available from our national tour wherever you get your podcast.
Chris Hayes: Wow. Someone said they’ve watched it like four times already.
Doni Holloway: That’s a record. I haven’t seen that many times yet.
Chris Hayes: We love to see it.
Doni Holloway: We love that. That is so cool.
Chris Hayes: More of our conversation after this quick break.
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Doni Holloway: All right. So Chris, I think we got to get into the opening the mailbag part.
Chris Hayes: Let’s do it.
Doni Holloway: I was thinking like we could reflect on some episodes that we did this year, but people know where to find them.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Doni Holloway: This hour is really flying by so, I think we can skip over that and really get some of the feedback.
Chris Hayes: Let’s get into it.
Doni Holloway: Yeah. And as we go throughout the conversation, remember you can keep sharing comments and questions in the comment section of this Instagram live. We’re going to get to the questions in just a moment. But in terms of feedback, one of the things that we got from a listener named Janine who has actually written to us before, she says, this is not a list of erudite things because like whatever, everyone will write you about this kinds of stuff.
But she says, as her then 8-year-old once said, Rachel’s an American hero. I enjoyed the following silly superficial things and no particular order. Maddow and Chris’s genuine nerdy excitement at being nerds, doing nerdy things. When Chris called Maddow a talent he’s recently spotted, when she did her bit about how all of her A-blocks begin with the extinction of dinosaurs.
Chris Hayes: That’s pretty funny. Yeah.
Doni Holloway: And she says this episode was WITHpod gold. Thank you. So we love hearing that feedback.
Chris Hayes: I love it, too. Yeah. Part of what made it so fun is that Rachel and I love each other and are very close and we don’t get to do stuff like that that often. So I think we were both pretty excited to do it.
Doni Holloway: For sure. Yeah. That really showed. I was just talking with a friend last night who said like, they were like, I can really tell how close Chris and Rachel are. And so that shined throughout the conversation for sure. And a feedback thing that we got on the Joy Reid episode, a comment someone said, “Joy Reid excellent interview. You are both gifts to the world.” Another person writing, “Joy Reid, wow. What an interview. Thanks for this as I learned so much about Joy. Her show is on when I’m cooking. So I listen frequently. I was so impressed with her knowledge of history, which we never learned in high school, circa the early 1960s.”
And then Chris, one other one. And I know you’ve seen this one already, but I just thought it was worth sharing with the audience, the person who wrote in and said, “Chris, after watching you wax poetic, read your podcast interview with Joy, I listened to my first podcast ever. I’m 76 and agree with you. It was revelatory. I’m a loyal Chris Hayes fan. Really appreciate your passion and perspective and very happy that I heeded your advice.”
Chris Hayes: I’m so glad. We love when people come to podcasting at any age and at any time. So, welcome to people for anyone watching on Instagram live, where maybe Instagram people and Instagram live people, you can get our podcast wherever you get podcasts. The Apple Podcast app, Spotify, TuneIn. What are the other ones? There’s like a million.
Doni Holloway: Yeah. There’s Google. I mean there’s —
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Doni Holloway: We’re all over.
Chris Hayes: So, yeah. Definitely come check us out. I think podcasting has been probably the single most beneficial new form of media of the last like decade or, well, it’s probably more than decade old. It’s 20-years-old. But just speaking of podcast, I’m sitting in. Here, I’m going to get a visual prop. Ready for this?
Doni Holloway: Yes.
Chris Hayes: So I’m sitting in this office, in my new house and we had just moved and we have boxes of stuff I’m going through. And one of the things I went through is a box that contain old electronics that have never been thrown out, including this iPod Mini.
Doni Holloway: That feels like an antique almost now.
Chris Hayes: Which, for you kids out there, that’s where the pod in podcast comes from.
Doni Holloway: Chris is holding up his gray iPod.
Chris Hayes: Yes. For those listening, I’m holding up a silver mini with a little belt buckle clip that used to be like what I listened to. Someone saying it’s a pro. Maybe a pro.
Doni Holloway: That’s a throwback. I wonder if it still works.
Chris Hayes: By the way, disposing electronics is an enormous pain. I have this like box.
Doni Holloway: Right.
Chris Hayes: And it’s got old laptops. There’s like all this old stuff and I’m just like, I’ve been trucking it around for years or just throwing in and stuff like, what do I do with this? Anyway, okay. We’ve now gotten to the very banal part of this show.
Doni Holloway: No, I love it. We all have that box. All right. So in terms of some questions that we got from listeners, we received this one from Kurt (ph). Brace yourself, Chris. It has multiple parts. You’ll see what I mean. He says, “Which of the following best matches your opinion of AI as in existential threat to humans?” And Chris, you don’t have to. You totally remember all of these parts, but you can summarize.
He says, “A, the AI doom arguments are so obviously wrong. There is no need to engage them. B, it’s all a distraction from the real immediate problems posed by AI. C, it’s a Pascal’s mugging. D, the orthogonality thesis is false. E, nothing could be much smarter than people. F, someone needs to explain the exact strategy in artificial super intelligence were used before I worry. G, if it was a really serious danger, humans would be putting plenty of effort towards solving it. And then H, humans already have other existential threats to worry about so we’re safe from this one, or I other.” It might be the other one.
Chris Hayes: Well, I think he doesn’t include like something actually to worry about, right? I mean, I don’t think, A, is it’s too silly to even spend any time.
I personally, I think a little bit in triaging my own anxiety. I’ve decided that AI leading to the end of the world is a thing that I’m just going to put somewhere else for a things –
Doni Holloway: Yes.
Chris Hayes: — that I’m not going to actively worry about.
Doni Holloway: We’ve got a lot of stuff going on in the meantime.
Chris Hayes: That’s as much an emotional choice as an intellectual one. Although I think the two –
Doni Holloway: Yes.
Chris Hayes: — are probably related in so far as if I was intellectually convinced it was oppressing an urgent current problem, I would not be able to put it in the back of my head.
So, I think it’s probably something worth worrying. Here’s what I’ll say about AI. There’s been a kind of like there’s AI hype, and then there’s kind of AI anti-hype. And there’s a degree to which the anti-hype, I think, has gotten way out ahead of itself, too. Like, it’s very clearly the case that what is doing is wild and —
Doni Holloway: Yes.
Chris Hayes: — pretty transformative and pretty clearly has a whole bunch of obvious use cases. It’s not like crypto.
Doni Holloway: Right. Yeah.
Chris Hayes: So I thought, you know, I think there’s stuff to dig into and worry about, for sure. I’m not sold on the doomerism. I’m not sold on the everything is fine. I do think the intellectual property questions and the sort of near term. Like, I mean, I’ve already seen it.
Doni Holloway: Right,
Chris Hayes: I don’t know about you. Like, I’ve seen it start popping up in ads.
Doni Holloway: Oh yeah.
Chris Hayes: Like of, you know, a clothing company or people generating images that someone, an actual artist would have to generate or a photographer. And it’s like —
Doni Holloway: Right.
Chris Hayes: — and the fundamental issue here, which is like these large language models, which is what we’re talking about. We’re talking about AI. We’re talking about specific form through LLMs, have gone out into the world without compensation or they’ve taken public domain images, hundreds of millions of them. Trained the model so the model can then replace the actual paid work. But for the paid work, the model wouldn’t exist.
Doni Holloway: Right.
Chris Hayes: So there’s a bunch of really interesting legal questions now, including a number of lawsuits on precisely this question that are going to work their way through the courts. So that’s a very like specific in the now question I’m sort of concerned with. The other stuff I’m more agnostic on.
Doni Holloway: Yeah. And we think about like, I mean, this came up in the Kate Crawford conversation about how like the Kenyan workers who are just being so exploited and, you know, very monotonous entering data sets into systems. So it begs the question of how smart is AI really? Like it’s based off of so much —
Chris Hayes: There’s lots of training. Yeah, exactly.
Doni Holloway: Yeah. And Kate Crawford also mentioned in terms of the impact that it’s having on just society in general, OpenAI’s prediction about 80% of jobs are going to be automated in some ways by these AI systems. So, I thought it was a really staggering prediction, 80% by open AI.
Chris Hayes: Yeah. I mean, again, to go back to the phrase, talking their book, that is like the definition of talking your book when you say that —
Doni Holloway: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: — my technology is going to transform 80% of jobs. It’s like, I’m going to take that a little bit with a bit of salt.
Doni Holloway: That’s a good point.
Chris Hayes: So, you know, that I think is still a little underchurned (ph), but I find it sort of both unsettling and sort of invigorating and fascinating all at the same time. And I’m withholding some judgment. I have strong feelings about some of the stuff I just talked about, about this sort of intellectual property question, which seems at the core of the whole thing.
Doni Holloway: Yes.
Chris Hayes: That from a just sort of justice and just compensation perspective seems like, obviously not okay.
Doni Holloway: Yeah. When you mentioned the intellectual property thing, it reminded me there was this piece in Time written by Ray Nayler and it was all about the rise of AI and mediocrity. And so just like the impact that it’s having on creativity or lack thereof.
Chris Hayes: Yeah. I mean, one place where I’m really curious to see what happens is schooling. This is not a novel observation. Everyone has been making this point, but yeah, what it will mean for schooling and how students will or won’t use it or how good it’ll be at detecting. And, you know, the median level of American writing is not great has been my feeling for a long time.
Doni Holloway: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: And I think that’s just about our educational system and how it functions –
Doni Holloway: Right.
Chris Hayes: or maybe, I don’t know, maybe I’m a snob. I don’t know. It’s possible.
Doni Holloway: No, I agree. It’s hard to write a paper and like texting lingo or whatever.
Chris Hayes: Yeah. Like written communication. I think written communication is really hard and to get good at it takes high-resource, sustained durable work on it that most schools don’t do.
Doni Holloway: Right.
Chris Hayes: Partly because it’s very labor intensive to teach someone how to write well because you have to do a lot of reading and a lot of editing and a lot of revising. And that is just a very labor intensive undertaking. And I just wonder, like, what does it mean? This is the other thing about when I say about like the anti-AI hype. It’s like, people are like this is mediocre and it’s like, well, a mediocre paragraph is actually better than like a lot of people can generate.
Doni Holloway: Yes. Exactly.
Chris Hayes: And then there becomes a question of like —
Doni Holloway: Yes?
Chris Hayes: — do I have some vestigial luddite, like nose wrinkling at the thought of someone generating a paragraph through AI as opposed to writing it themselves. When, like, I wouldn’t ask someone to multiply two numbers with paper and pencil for their spreadsheet. Like, that’s what the computer does. Like, it’s important to know how to multiply a bunch, you know, two four-digit numbers. I can do that if you force me to right now. But like, I don’t do it because there’s a machine that does that reliably every time. So like, I don’t know.
Doni Holloway: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: There’s a bunch of interesting questions here that I don’t feel like I have super clear answers to.
Doni Holloway: We got another question from Jazz (ph). I like the name Jazz (ph).
Chris Hayes: What’s up, Jazz (ph).
Doni Holloway: Jazz (ph) says, “Hi. Longtime listener. First time e-mailer. I’d like to know your thoughts about something I struggle with in my personal life. I consider Donald Trump a uniquely existential threat to American democracy, but seem to have a hard time convincing others to vote for Joe Biden. I admittedly do not have any passion or enthusiasm for Biden and my argument isn’t all that persuasive to others. What would your pitch to the American people for Biden over Trump be?”
Chris Hayes: Well, I mean, I think it’s twofold. One is that America has been a constitutional Republic since its was born.
Doni Holloway: Right.
Chris Hayes: And the closest it came, the civil war was one time when it came very close ending. And January 6th was probably the nearest death experience. So there’s one question of like he is saying out loud, he wants to end the constitutional Republic. There’s no reason to think that that’s a braggadocio or abstraction. I think there’s a very good chance that if reelected again, he will do that.
Now, you could say democracy’s abstraction. Well, like, you know, getting fired from your job because you’re not like putting your Trump sign out and having the government start going after people and creating conditions in which we’re less and less free to be ourselves, whichever way you want to be is a terrifying prospect. It’ll also make the country worse and poorer. So there’s that.
He also had a terrible record as president. People for some reason have decided that Donald Trump’s presidency ended in 2019. Like he did oversee the largest job loss in American history since the Depression.
Doni Holloway: That part, yeah. Important to remind people.
Chris Hayes: An enormous amount of dislocation. Did a terrible job through global pandemic, tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths. And then there’s also the affirmative case, which is that I think in an era, particularly on domestic policy of unrivaled challenges, Joe Biden’s domestic policy economic stewardship has been the best in the world, basically bar none. I think that’s borne out by all of the data. We have the lowest inflation rate and the highest growth rate and the lowest unemployment. We have real wages growing.
We’ve got an actual economic agenda that has really centered working people and labor unions. We’ve got an NLRB that has been working for working people. We’ve seen the strongest labor market at the bottom of the income distribution in my entire lifetime, the largest gains for the bottom 40% of workers. All this has happened. Now people then say, well, but there’s been all these bad things about the economy. That’s true. But those have come from outside Joe Biden, like the supply chain problem isn’t because of Joe Biden. This supply chain problem is because of after COVID.
Doni Holloway: Right.
Chris Hayes: The inflation isn’t because of Joe Biden.
Doni Holloway: Yes.
Chris Hayes: The inflation is because post COVID. Every single nation of the world had it. High interest rates right now.
Doni Holloway: All of that stuff was inherited.
Chris Hayes: High interest rates right now. Joe Biden didn’t make the high interest rates. The Fed did to bring inflation down.
Doni Holloway: Right.
Chris Hayes: Like Joe Biden didn’t create the American housing shortage. The years of post-financial crisis under growth did. So like he has, I think dealt with a whole bunch of very significant material challenges to working people in a way that has materially improved their lives that is a real record of achievement. And I think honestly, we could get to a place this economy has not been in my lifetime if we stay the course, which is like an actual bottom up, middle out, growing wages for working people, declining inequality and robust growth, this sort of like thing that we really haven’t seen since the late 1990s, if you keep going. And Donald Trump is promising to destroy all that
Doni Holloway: Right. There you have it, Jazz (ph). That’s Chris’s pitch.
Chris Hayes: That would be my pitch.
Doni Holloway: A lot of good points there, Chris. And we got a question from Eileen (ph). She says, “Hi, I wanted to get Chris’s take on how much to limit or expose children to the news for those of us fortunate enough to be able to exert such control.” She says that she and her husband are both avid consumers of the news, and having had a baby in the last year, they’re thinking about how to bring their child up to be socially aware and politically engaged without compromising the magic and innocence of childhood.
Chris Hayes: Hey, that’s a great question. You know, I don’t think I have any kind of like grandly theorized framework to give you. I mean, I think there’s some certain things that you just instinctually know you’re not going to talk to your kids at a certain age about. Like, I’m not talking to my 5-year-old about the 3-year-old who have been kidnapped by Hamas.
Doni Holloway: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: Or the babies in the hospital. We don’t have to do it. It is hard to pitch things at a level that is age appropriate. That said, I think the way that Kate and I have gone about this is we try to take seriously our kids questions about everything and we try to answer them in good faith basically no matter what in age appropriate terms. We try and that could be a challenge. What we try to avoid is, don’t worry about that. You don’t have to think about that. That’s grown up stuff. Partly because I think it ends up making kids more fixated on it and partly because I think we want to reward curiosity about the world.
Doni Holloway: Right.
Chris Hayes: Now, this could be a real challenge when your kid is like, so what happened? If your 9-yearold son, as mine did said, what happened in Israel and Gaza. You know, try to find the right way to give a age appropriate 9-year-old version of that.
Doni Holloway: Right. Not easy.
Chris Hayes: And maybe we’re on the wrong side of this, but I basically did try to give them a version of that, you know. Some really bad and really angry, vicious and violent people came and did this really terrible thing. Hurt a lot of people, didn’t care who they were hurting. And then in response, the government has been doing a lot of really violent stuff to the people that live in the place that those people came from, and that’s hurt a lot of people, too.
And, you know, does that capture all the nuance of the conflict? No. Is it the way that I would phrase my segments?
Doni Holloway: No.
Chris Hayes: No. It’s something. And I think we try to do our best to communicate in age appropriate ways about the news. We don’t like to make them read the news. You know, we don’t do that, but we talk about it a lot so they just get it a lot, you know, through osmosis.
Doni Holloway: I can only imagine. Yeah. You all are very read in household. So, validating their curiosity while also, you know, breaking it down in a way that, like you said, is age appropriate.
Chris Hayes: We’ll be right back after we take this quick break.
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Doni Holloway: We got a question from Bill. Bill writes and he says, “Anytime the U.S. has found itself in an existential crisis, as we arguably are in today, there has been a tipping point that has brought us back to a more even and sustainable keel. In the 1950s, Joseph McCarthy hearings, before his committee on un-American activities, it was Joseph Welch’s challenge, have you no sense in decency? In the 1970s, it was the Republican leaders going to the White House to tell Richard Nixon that it was time to resign.
While there have been moments in recent years that potentially should have had this effect in today’s political storm, nothing has been big enough or dramatic enough to snap us back to stability. If you look into your crystal ball, where are there possible tipping points that could bring us back from the existential brink to the country of laws and maybe even civility that our for bearers imagined.” That question is from Bill and I love that he pointed out in a signature of the e-mail that his last name is McConnell, but he put in parentheses, “no relation”.
Chris Hayes: That’s very funny. Yeah, I mean, I think I have two answers. One is that I don’t think there’s ever some specific point that ends up being the inflection point. I mean, I think we see them a little bit after the facts that they were that.
Doni Holloway: Yeah, like kind of hindsight.
Chris Hayes: Although, the have you no decency moment was a moment in its time and Goldwater leading the Senators to go to Nixon was a moment in time. So people recognize at the time that those were important inflection points. And it’s true we haven’t had something quite like that. Although I think, you know, we had the 2020 election where —
Doni Holloway: Yeah. What a time.
Chris Hayes: But I think sometimes our desire for those moments, I’m a little suspect of our desire for those moments, because I think that all of this is very dynamic and sort of unending, which can sound really exhausting, but I think is just the way democracy works.
But then my second answer is that I do think there’s an obvious one, which is that the man is going to be tried for attempting to overthrow the government in a federal court, under the laws of evidence in front of a jury of his peers. And I think if he’s convicted, that has the potential to be exactly that kind of moment.
I think that people think everything about Donald Trump is priced in. Everyone knows everything about him and he’s still running neck and neck with Biden and he’s even ahead in some. Nothing can knock him down from that, and I understand that. And I think that might be the case.
I also think it’s possible that like being federally convicted in a court of law of the serious of felony crimes and facing years in prison will be a moment where people are like, oh right, yeah, we can’t do this guy again.
Doni Holloway: Right.
Chris Hayes: And again, you don’t need that many. You need 10% of the population that’s currently considering him to have it. And as people are asking in the comments, you know, do you really think that trial is going to happen before the election? And I think the odds are good that it will. I used to worry about the Supreme Court. The big question, he’s filed a constitutional claim saying that he has absolute immunity.
Doni Holloway: Yes.
Chris Hayes: It’s what’s called an interlocutory appeal, which means that it’s appealable before the trial even starts. If the appellate court and the Supreme Court wanted to delay his trial, they could put a temporary stay while they consider it. They could do all sorts of things.
Doni Holloway: Right.
Chris Hayes: I’ve come to the belief that I think they probably want nothing to do with it and they don’t want to do that. And so, there’s a number of reasons I’ve come around to that, which is for another day. But my current best sense of things is that he will face trial for that one thing. I don’t know if the other ones are more complicated, but I think Chutkan understands the importance of a swift and fair trial.
Now, it’s also possible he’s acquitted or there’s a mistrial or there’s a hung jury, you know?
Doni Holloway: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: Conviction is certainly not a short thing and he’s going to mount a defense as he has every constitutional right to. But I think he’s also guilty of the crimes he’s charged, so I think he’s going to be found guilty. And then, you know, maybe that’s the moment that Bill is talking about.
Doni Holloway: We’ll see. Time will definitely tell for that. Billy just commented. Billy says, “This is a damn good conversation.”
Chris Hayes: Well, thank you, Billy.
Doni Holloway: Thanks, Billy. Chris. I know we talked about a lot of different things. We’d be remiss if we didn’t get to our questions real quick from our tour guests.
Chris Hayes: Oh, yes, please. And then I got to take off.
Doni Holloway: Okay, cool. And we’ll make these quick. The first one is from Andrew Weismann, former federal prosecutor, co-host of the “Prosecuting Donald Trump” podcast. He says, “If the March 4th trial goes forward, Trump will use every day of the trial as a free publicity seeking event, as he has done with the New York civil case. Thus, the questions arises to what is the right way for the media to cover the criminal trial. How does the media not get played and allow appropriate air time of the democratic nominee and the issues given that the trial itself is historic and needs to be covered?”
Chris Hayes: That is a tough one, man, again.
Doni Holloway: We might have to do it. Maybe we do a bonus episode.
Chris Hayes: That’s very hard. It’s very hard. It’s going to be hard balance. We’re going to try to do our best day after day. I don’t know, man. That’s a day-by-day judgment. You’re going to have to sort of swing at the pitches as they come over the plate. But he’s right.
Doni Holloway: Yes.
Chris Hayes: It’s very important. I’ll say one thing quickly. I do think that actually Trump is benefiting right now from the fact he doesn’t get a lot of attention. And I think people who are tend to be our viewers and listeners tend to think of getting attention is his superpower, which is true at a certain level, but they underestimate how much him being the focus of attention hurts his political standing.
Usually when he’s at the center of public attention, he’s actually not that popular. And so, I’m not sure that he’ll be able to. Like, he’ll get a lot of attention, but I think it’s going to be mostly negative attention.
Doni Holloway: It makes me think about media networks who have called for images of him on this screen or the B roll to come down —
Chris Hayes: Right.
Doni Holloway: — as like, okay, we’ve seen enough. All right. So we have a question from the one and only Joy Reid. This one is a little bit of a lighter one. She says, “I’ve always wanted to know this. Chris, growing up, what did you want to be?”
Chris Hayes: When I was very young, I wanted to be an architect.
Doni Holloway: I didn’t know that. Wow.
Chris Hayes: When I was very young. Then at a certain point, I wanted to be a professional basketball player. And then I think I wanted to be like a writer, probably, a writer or a professor or intellectual of some kind. And as I got older, you know, I wanted to be in the world of public discourse and thoughts and ideas and write books and argue about politics for a living and basically ended up doing that.
Doni Holloway: That is exactly what you’ve done. All right. And now save a question from Rachel Maddow, the Rachel Maddow. And as I said, she sent some questions from a few different angles, which the producer in me loved. So we had different options. Let’s do two of them real quick. “And then imagine we are in a hypothetical Rube Goldberg style succession crisis, which Biden cabinet member do you think would do the best job as president? Not as a candidate, but actually doing the job.
Rachel going deep.
Chris Hayes: Wow. Let me think about this. Like running through the cabinet in my head. I mean, I feel like it’s hard for me to answer the question because my knowledge of them is so uneven. I will say the following, which is that from a public communication standpoint, obviously Pete Buttigieg in the Department of Transportation is in —
Doni Holloway: People are commenting Buttigieg, yes.
Chris Hayes: Incredibly gifted, right? And Granholm is someone who I think is a politician, incredibly adept politician. She has executive experience. So those two sort of jump out. I will say for criticisms that I’ve had of him, if there were a real crisis situation, I just know this because I know people have been around him at a personal level and I know the reputation he has, which is that Merrick Garland’s judgment, which is a very important, maybe the single most important ability in a person, is legendarily very good. Again, it’s hard for me to evaluate where that’s the case because I don’t have complete information about his time as A.G. and I have my criticisms.
But I will just say that everyone I’ve ever known who has known Garland, worked with him or for him has come away marveling at the man’s judgment. And yeah, people were saying Ambassador Kerry. I’m not sure. I guess he’s in the cabinet, technically. John Kerry, he’s like the climate ambassador. The cabinet just keeps getting bigger and bigger as time goes on. So, yeah, John Kerry could probably do the job too. So what do you go? Granholm, Kerry, Buttigieg and Garland. Garland is not a politician and he is not a communicator at all.
Doni Holloway: Right. For sure.
Chris Hayes: I don’t know. I also think that in a time, of real crisis, that maybe, I just had been told for years of everyone around him how much they admire, respect him and trust him.
Doni Holloway: Got it. And Chris, we’ve got time for one more for Rachel?
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Doni Holloway: So another question that she asked. She said, “Is your work-life balance better at four shows a week or are you just working more?”
Chris Hayes: Oh, it’s better. I was already working a ton. It gives me a day like work on the pod. I mean, we’ve done live podcast shows. I’ve been, you know, working on this book. She talked about how, you know, she’s just working more.
Doni Holloway: Right. That Susan sees her less now.
Chris Hayes: Yeah, I know. I’m not. It also gives me like one night. There’s one night a week where like the family can like have family dinner during weeknight, see how your Monday went.
Doni Holloway: Nice.
Chris Hayes: Taking my kids to a few basketball games, a few Nets games on 7:30 on a Monday night. My daughter turned 12 and we went out to birthday dinner the night before on Monday night. That is just like completely transformative. So, it’s been amazing.
Doni Holloway: I see the image of like you all getting in the minivan now that you got your –
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Doni Holloway: — goal of your minivan now. All right. Well, Chris, this has flown by and I know we had a lot more questions that we didn’t get to, but maybe that just means maybe –
Chris Hayes: Do it again.
Doni Holloway: — we’ll do a spring mailbag or something.
Chris Hayes: And you’re going to do the outro.
Doni Holloway: Yes, exactly. Yeah.
Chris Hayes: Let’s do it.
Doni Holloway: This was a lot of fun. I got to say that we really enjoyed hearing from all of you. “Why Is This Happening?” is presented by MSNBC and NBC News. It’s produced by me, Doni Holloway and Brendan O’Melia. This episode was engineered by Bob Mallory and Fernando Arruda, and it features music by Eddie Cooper. Aisha Turner is the executive producer of MSNBC Audio. You can be sure to follow us on TikTok, by searching for WITHpod. You can e-mail us at WITHpod@gmail.com. Keep sending those questions. Keep sending that feedback. We love it. You can see more of our work, including links to things we mentioned in this Instagram live conversation by going to nbcnews.com/whyisthishappening.
“Why Is This Happening?” is presented by MSNBC and NBC News, produced by Doni Holloway and Brendan O’Melia, engineered by Bob Mallory and featuring music by Eddie Cooper. Aisha Turner is the executive producer of MSNBC Audio. You can see more of our work, including links to things we mentioned here by going to NBCNews.com/whyisthishappening?