 Welcome back to Talk Story with John Wahe'i. We got another interesting show for all of you. Our guests this afternoon are Colin Moore from the University of Hawaii. As his reputation grows and grows and grows, we want him more and more on the show. And of course Chad Blair from Civil Beat, where they break the most interesting stories in Hawaii. If you don't do it already, read Civil Beat before you read the Bible at night. It works. And the third guest, the third guest this afternoon is John Wahe'i, former governor of the state of Hawaii. I have decided to change my position in this conversation. I said, why should all the guests have fun? I'd like to be on that side. So I have asked, and he has kindly agreed, that J. Fidel, the heartbeat of think tech Hawaii would be our host this afternoon. And so I hope we have a great show for all of you. And I'm sure looking forward to being on the side when you can say anything you like. All right, go ahead, Jake, take it away. All right, if you're talking about politics these days, it's all cutting edge. One never knows from day to day what's going to happen. All your training, Colin, it doesn't help to determine what's going to happen tomorrow. You too, Chad. But Chad, you had a piece in Civil Beat about the Republican Party of Hawaii that is so interesting. Can you talk about it? Yeah, thanks, Jay. So the story initially started out about Gene Ward and Valoki Motoh. They're having a standoff at the state house. They can't decide who'll be the minority leader. So that was the story, the column, and it was all set to run. And then over the weekend, Shirley Nostrov, the chair, now former chair of the Hawaii Republican Party, told the executive committee that she's leaving. She's stepping down. If you're following the news at all in the last few days on the official Twitter account of the Hawaii GLP, the person in charge of that account set out tweets that were very controversial. One of them essentially praised QAnon, the conspiracy-minded organization that helped storm the Capitol January 6th. And the other one appeared to praise a Holocaust denier. Shirley Nostrov took responsibility for that, apologized. And has stepped down. They have an interim chair right now. But this is a pretty dramatic development. Not only has the party lost its head, but they can't find out who's going to lead the minority at the state house. And so that's the latest news, just a breaking. We were first, thank you, but others are picking it up, too. You know, people should join the Republican Party just so that they can say they have a few members. I don't know how to do it. Well, it sounds like the virus in Washington is ubiquitous. And it reaches all the states, including a predominantly Democratic state. You would think the Republicans would be distant from what's going on in Washington. But it looks like they're following the same pattern. What is this? How come, Chad, we are having this virus all over the country? It spreads. It's contagious. Well, I think it has a lot to do with the former occupant at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. But I did also want to add, we also know that a Hawaii proud boy, the founder of that white supremacist organization, white nationalist, was storming the capital, was arrested, is under federal charges for that. So this is concerning, because we like to think here in Hawaii with the lo-ha that somehow we're immune to the things that are going on. But when former President Trump continually repeats what is a big lie, the big lie, that the election was stolen, that he won by millions of vote, even though Republican secretaries of state, the Republican and dirty general, the Supreme Court, which is dominated by his appointments, or at least now a conservative majority, all said no. That's not true at all. And yet, his supporters believe it wholesale. And they're not giving up. And we heard recently about reports from the Department of Justice that there's concern about a rising wave, particularly of domestic terrorism from really groups that are extreme right wing. And if I could just add to what Chad says, I know he mentioned Nick Oakes. Not only was Nick Oakes from Hawaii, he was the Republican nominee for a house seat in Waikiki. So he was quite politically active in the party prior to his arrest and participation in the insurrection. And this is happening in such a dramatic way in so many of these states. I mean, all of the Republican parties seem to be in the middle of a civil war in Arizona, where there was a very controversial election for the new head of the Arizona Republican Party. They have censured some of the most famous Arizona Republicans, their former Senator Cindy McCain, the wife of Senator John McCain. It's a pretty shocking thing to see, maybe not surprising after the insurrection, but this is clearly a party in the middle of a war between the more business oriented Mitt Romney types. And the folks who are charged up from Donald Trump who go everything, I think, all the way from more traditional kind of mag enthusiasts all the way up to Marjorie Taylor Green's style QAnon conspiracy theorists. I heard that Mitch McConnell today, I guess, censured me in the wrong word, but he took on Marjorie Green and said that she was essentially crazy or something. And so it's going to be really interesting to see where McConnell goes in any of this situation. He does seem to circle back. I really thought it was cute where immediately after the insurrection, he said, oh, we're going to have to have, I'm going to vote for, I'm going to put it on the floor of the Senate in a trial. A trial, he said, we're going to have a trial. And then he said, but you know what? It's better if we have it in a couple of weeks. Let's things settle down. And I said, this is very smart on his part because we all know how much happens these days in the course of a couple of weeks. Everything changes, all the distractions. And I think he was thinking that this would help Trump. What do you think about that, Colin? Didn't it help Trump to push off the trial? To push off his impeachment trial? You know, I don't know if it helped. Well, it probably did. I mean, I think that it's hard for me to say, actually. What would have happened if you just think about that counterfactual if it had run its course? Maybe Trump would have been impeached, but now this is being dragged out for much longer. The Republicans are going to have to go on the record of deciding whether or not they still back the president, which it seems pretty clearly that they do, but you're probably right, Jay. I mean, McConnell was probably smart to try to push that off. I think my sense is that McConnell thought he could get a handle on this in a way that he hasn't been able to do. I think that to me is the lesson to take from this is that he thought he would be able to regain control of the party. Let's just get rid of Trump. Let's move on from this and then I can get my people back together. And I think he's finding that that is more of a challenge than he anticipated. Yeah, I'm not sure that he was actually that he helped Trump as much as he was looking for a way to help himself, which was sort of what I think where you were heading, calling, he was looking for a way to find a solution to all of this, because one of the first things that he did was to suggest that the Senate censor Trump immediately and censor him, knowing I think that they could get the votes to do that. And I'm not sure that he knew or thought that there would be enough votes. The problem with even going forward with the impeachment is that if Trump wins again, because not enough Republicans vote to impeach him, it'll be like he was just exonerated again. And for people like Mitch McConnell, the first time that was okay, because he was president, the second time around, he's a pain in the abdomen. So I'm not so sure that that's really what Mitch wants to do. I think Mitch wants to get rid of him, Frank. What does Mitch want to do, Chad? Well, I think what he initially wanted to do is he thought there could actually be grounds for convicting him in the Senate. Of course, he has been impeached in the House and the Senate tries him and will either convict him or quit him like they did the first time. I think McConnell thought maybe he could actually get the votes. You just need 17 out of the 50 Republicans. It seems like a lot, but given all the evidence that was coming out, it looked like it could happen. And remember this, it takes 60 votes. Is that right, Colin? Do I have the number right in the Senate? I always forget whether it's two thirds or three fifths and so forth. But now they're looking at that only have five. But here's the thing, if he could have done that and convicted him, the second vote would have been to prevent him from running in 2024. And that only required, I believe, a simple majority. The last thing Mitch McConnell wants, Jay, is for Donald Trump to continue to run his party. McConnell is the top-ranking Republican in the country right now. And this is backfiring. That time that has been delayed has bought Trump some time. And you're already seeing Kevin McCarthy flying down to Mar-a-Lago to get the photo up. And Trump knows this and that's as dangerous as it could possibly be. Well, can we have two popes, Colin? Or do we already have two popes? Well, I think we have one pope, which is Donald Trump. And I think there's no clear second pope. But Mitch McConnell is a master of inside. It could be Joe Biden. Well, I think you got, in a sense, you got two popes. I was thinking of the Republicans. You got two presidents. I mean, this is, you know, I love history and this is such an unusual situation in the entire history of, you know, mankind. The only time this has ever happened where you have two leaders, one that was the former leader and that insists that he could never been taken out of his office in the same location was when there were two popes, one in France and one in, I think it was Gregory 13th or something in France who kept saying, I don't care what you guys do in Rome, I'm still pope. And people believed it. People believed it. Now we got a president for the first time in the history of the United States, in the history of the world, two leaders existing in the same space saying that they both are presidents of the United States. Well, the trouble with that is that the, I don't think, see if you guys agree, I don't think the Republican party would be going through the same machinations where Trump not around. If he conceded the election, if he'd left the scene, if he wasn't meeting with McCarthy in Florida and all that, he wouldn't have the same control over the Republican party and they wouldn't be doing these bizarre things. Do you agree with me on that? If Trump were gone, we'd have a different situation, but he's here and therefore he's part of it. He's generating all this craziness. I'd like to jump in here, Jay, a couple of things. Joe Biden actually is Catholic. That's what I would say. That's why I, that's why I. The second thing I would add is Mitch McConnell is not popular, never has been popular. Donald Trump is popular. He did get 74 million votes to Joe Biden's 81 million. Remember, there's a reason why Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley stood up and tried to delay, if not actually stop the counting of the electoral ballots because they are considering running in 2024 and they want Trump's people. And I think this is a very potentially volatile situation. I think most Republicans, not Jim Jordan from Ohio, not Marjorie Taylor Greene from Georgia, and I can name any number of them, but most of them do not want Trump around. That's why guys like Rob Portman from Ohio, a reasonable moderate is stepping down in 2022. You actually need guys like that to get into the Republican Party and he's leaving and that's a disaster. One of the reasons Portman gave for his departure was that Congress wasn't getting anything done and he felt he was not wasting his time. But here we have a situation and I find this the most, from a legal point of view, John Reihay, this is a negotiation between 1.9 trillion and 618 billion. It's a strangest negotiation. And how is this gonna play out, Colin? What do you think is gonna happen here? Will the Democrats cave and reduce their expectation by two thirds or will there be something in the middle? Will the Republicans ever, so do some Collins ever agree to go to 1.9? Well, you're right that this is strange because the opening offer for the Republicans is nowhere near what the Democrats want and they have, well, at least through a very complicated legislative procedure, the votes to pass something. So I think that if this were an opening offer of 1.4 trillion, which might be something the Democrats would be willing to compromise on, remember that two Democratic senators have indicated that they're not going to support blowing up the filibuster, that they're more moderate. And so that number will probably go down from the Democratic side, but the 600 billion isn't anywhere close. And remember, one of the key lessons the Democrats took from the last recession when Obama was president was that there wasn't enough money in the stimulus package. They were too quick to compromise with Republicans. And I think that message really is a core belief of the party right now. And so there might be ways for this Republican offer to shift, although I think really the debate for the Democrats is how much compromise do you want to be able to say that you have some Republicans on board and this is bipartisan, or do you just wanna say, forget about it, we don't care that we're going to be demonized by the Republicans for not working across the aisle. We're gonna use this very, very complicated parliamentary move known as reconciliation to push through a big chunk of what we want. You think they'll do that? They're gonna look too tough maybe. And also it's a one-shot deal. You can do it once a year. And that sort of leaves, it reduces their options going forward. So there are people who think you can do it more than once a year. I think that it ends up being a really complicated question that the Senate parliamentarian will need to decide. But you can't do some things that Democrats wanted to. You couldn't work, for example, on voting rights issues through a process like this because it has to have to do with taxation, spending, deficit issues. But I think they're gonna go forward with it. They're probably gonna be a compromise on their side because some of their people, particularly Senator from Arizona and West Virginia want a few changes here. But I think it's gonna go through reconciliation. That incidentally is where the way most really important taxation and spending legislation has been passed in recent times. Yeah, all this suggests, Chad, that we just had a show last hour with a young lawyer from Bogota, Columbia, which actually is doing pretty well in terms of knitting the sleeve of care and finding constitutional government there. That's kind of remarkable. And he had a lot of advice for the U.S. I thought that was interesting. But, you know, Portman has a point, Congress isn't getting anything done in the time of crisis. We're fragile. And if we can't do anything, what good is this government? And what's gonna happen without a government that can do anything? Do you agree with me that we are finding the fragility of democracy that we are looking down into a chasm here and there's no immediate resolution or solution of it? Oh, yeah, look at the Tim and the Snyder essay that was in the New York Times Magazine a couple of weeks back. And by that way, that guy's expertise is Eastern Europe and the bloodlands between Germany and Russia and the slaughter. You know, it just occurred to me the math, the brain keeps working while everyone's talking. It takes 67 votes in the Senate too. So that's where the magic number comes. 50 Democrats, 17 Republicans. But here's the other magic number, 60. And that's to prevent a filibuster. Well, guess what? 10 Republicans, 10 visited the White House today to speak with Joe Biden. And it is those moderates, the Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney. And you could, if I had to guess here, although I think the reconciliation is a possibility, I think Joe Biden's going to try and strike a deal. That's what he likes to do. Yeah, and I'll defer to the governor on this because this is Kulianna, but I think that's what Washington needs more than anything is, look, we may not get 618 billion or 1.9 trillion, but we'll cut something that's going to work out. And by the way, we'll come back later, but I want this body, these two bodies, the White House and the legislature, the Congress in this case to work together. Yeah, I think that we hear a lot about the Republicans' problems because they got all these crazies and so forth and Mitch McConnell is there, but Biden's also got his left. And they're not necessarily talking about unity. They're mounting the president's words, but what the words that they're saying, the message that they're sending when you say no unity, unity cannot exist without justice is that they want some blood. They want some blood. And so if you're in the middle and you are thinking about governing, which by the way, whether we like Mitch McConnell or not, he does come from a time when the Senate and so does Schumer and so does Biden from a time when the Senate was the great American middle and when the moderates on both sides or the people on both sides were able to pull together and leave the fringes on the fringe. Now that hasn't happened for a long time in recent years because of the Tea Party and the rest on the Republican side, who started to dominate the party. But the Democrats have learned how to do that. And so if I was Biden and I believe, you know, people like that, he's talking to McConnell. He's talking to Schumer. They are trying to work something out where there can be discipline. See what the party has does not have the ability to do right now in my opinion is discipline people who don't come along. They could when Trump was there on the Republican side because he could wipe them out in an election. But now they need something. They need a way to tell people that, you know, if you don't play, you're not gonna go anywhere. And right now between the fact that the fringes are taking over, plus the fact that outside money is more important than party money, we never know. But the outside money is starting to flow to the center. See, I think Mitch McConnell goes where the money goes. That's my bet, he'll go where the money goes. And the money right now is going to the middle, not to the fringes. It's not going to Trump. It's not, well, you see, but what Trump's got is that people go down and kiss his ring because they don't want, see, the Republicans, this whole thing, you know, if we could be Machiavellian for a second, this whole thing might actually work out in the long run. I hate to do this because I can't stand what the process that'll happen, but work out for the long run in turning states blue, turning the Congress more blue than normal in this, and this is a theory I have. The normal process, political process is the election after the presidential election usually goes to the other party. They get a chance to come back in and Americans have traditionally made this balance. Now you've got a situation where the Republican primaries may be actually influenced or controlled by Trump in Miami. But the general elections may be full of people who are not happy with Trump. I mean, he's got two years to keep messing up. I mean, you know, and so the nice moderates in the suburbs may decide that I don't want to vote for them. I want to vote for a Clinton Democrat, you know, again. And who knows? And I think this is the kind of thinking that Mitch McConnell's doing, you know, how do I get past all of this? You know, it's funny that if I'm John Q. Everyman and I see immediately after this horrendous election process, the start of campaigns for two years hence, and everybody focused on positioning himself or herself for a campaign two years hence, I say, wait a minute, don't you think they should spend a little time improving the country, you know, making affirmative steps to improve the country in a series of crises? How does the public react to that, Colin? The public, if it was me, I would be pretty ticked off that the Republicans are not addressing the problems of the country. Only the problems of trying to get reelected two years from now. I think that's right, Jay. I mean, I actually think they're gonna do this with reconciliation. And I think it's not just because of, because the Republican opening offer was terrible, but because the Democrats need to show that they can lead and take some credit for policies that will actually make a difference in people's lives. And I think that going big, that seemed to be the lesson from the last recession that this will help and this will show people that the government can solve their problems. I mean, or at least help to address some of these problems. You know, I don't actually think people care that much about bipartisanship. I don't think they care that much. They certainly don't care that much about deficits anymore. I mean, I think that talking point is something that no longer is powerful in a way that it used to. I think of the Democrats go big, what people will see is I got my 1200 bucks from Joe Biden. I, my job was protected. I mean, this just may be me moving from, political analysts to advocate here, but I think that, I do think that there is a danger in trying to compromise for compromise's sake, ending up with something that doesn't really satisfy anybody, and then the Republicans are able to run against the government again. I think this is why the Democrats spent so much time before Biden was inaugurating, reading books about FDR in his first 100 days and no one went bigger than FDR, right? What did he say to Republicans and bankers at the time? I welcome your hatred. And that's not Joe Biden's personality. I recognize that. But I do think that there are people in the party, even Biden himself, right? Who was a classic moderate and seems to have made this significant shift to the left since he got elected. Well, you know, the New York Times had an editorial, it was by the editorial board in general, three or four days ago, that Biden was using too much proclamation, and he was trying to rule by proclamation. But you know, if you look at the list of his critical points, his critical initiatives, they all require legislation. So even if we strike a bargain on 1.9 versus 618 billion, even if we find, say, 1.4 is a solution and that's very good. But then you still have to go back to the well and you have to get legislation on all of Biden's other major objectives. And I suggest that that may not be so easy because there's a lot of ideological difference on his other major objectives. And then the question is whether the New York Times is correct. To say that he's doing this proclamation thing too much. Remember that we still have, we have the proud boys, we still have people with assault rifles all over their homes. We still have people that it suits them to do violence in the streets. And we still have people that are starving. What 18% of the children in this country can't eat. We're in terrible shape and we have the COVID. And Biden is doing some very smart things, the best things you could expect. But we have crises all over the place. Some of those crises, and I'm thinking specifically of the people who have their guns. I'm thinking of the immigrant situation. I'm thinking of the infrastructure and jobs and reopening require legislation beyond the 1.9 trillion bill. So query Chad, what's gonna happen here? It could all get stuck even if there is consensus on that 1.9 trillion. Colin, and I know the governor is a fond fan of history. I believe it was FDR that also said when he was crafting the New Deal in the early couple of 1930s. I think one of his aides said, Mr. President, if you fail, you'll no longer be president. And FDR, I think turned to him and said, if I fail, there will be no, I'll be the last US president because I'm paraphrasing. I don't have to quote exactly right, but that's how dire the situation is. Jay, you're absolutely right. There are new variants of the COVID-19. The vaccine is not rolling out as successfully, although we've seen that bump up recently, but that's a big concern. We haven't heard from foreign powers. There could be a revolution in Russia. Anything can happen. I was thinking to Colin's point about the reconciliation. Yeah, why not go big? Why not? Strength wins and victory success breeds more success. It's stunning how quickly his nominations, for the most part, on all of them, have been going through. And Janet Yellen, perhaps one of the most respected, the former Fed chair now, the Treasury Secretary is saying, we do need the 1.9 trillion. And I think if he succeeds, even if it's with 50% plus Kamala Harris, that sends a signal. He's in charge, he's winning, and he can then build on that success. I believe Colin, it's the first two years of a presidency that are the most critical, and the most time to push things through. I agree. I think I agree with Chad and Colin. I think that what Biden needs to do is get the economic message out there. Get the, you know, as big as he can get it and push it through. And I think if I was a Republican now that wanted to actually help this country, I would be worried because my belief is the proud boys and a lot of these crazy types are the first, the people they're gonna be picking on for the next two years are gonna be Republicans. They might continue to send out messages about the squad and the rest of the Democratic progressives. They might use them as boogeyman, but that's people who know how to market and run campaigns. The people that run around with guns and attack capitals and stuff, they wanna know whether you're on my side or you're selling us out. And so if I was a Republican, I'm in a terrible situation. I would be like Portland, trying to, I know I'd lose my primary because nobody else would be there. And then, you know, what good is it? And you got Trump. But Trump, he is going to, I predict, well, I don't know, there's a 50% chance that he'll pick up with Stephen Manion and defend himself at the impeachment trial. I mean, his legal team left because they wouldn't raise the issues he wanted them to raise, which was election fraud. I think the Republicans actually have a decent argument about whether or not it's constitutional. You can make an argument that, but, you know, so he's gonna go there. He got rid of his team and who knows what they'll say. Maybe Giuliani will come back. Right after he's disbarred in a number of states. So John, you know, what is gonna happen to Trump? You know, my theory has been that when he is out of office and now with the loss of the corporate funding that he lost over the capital insurrection, he's not in the same position. And he's out of it. And, you know, the loss of Twitter, that was a huge loss for him. Query is the power gonna shed right off him. Can he remain as powerful as he has been? Can he be, you know, the binding synergy for the proud boys and all that? Or is he just gonna gradually go away and not have any, any mojo left by 2022? And conventional wisdom is that is, that is what should happen, should happen. I don't think that will happen to Trump in the sense that as long as he is in this country, he is in Miami, set up as a place to go for every crazy theorist conspiracy grouped out there, he becomes maybe in a way stronger on one level, not as influential. I don't think he's gonna hold 74 million people. I think though there are at least, what? Maybe 50 million, maybe 40 million people in this country, that is as crazy as he is. That, you know, all of a sudden, that's what I think the two-pulp theory was about. There are going to be a substantial number of people that believe every word that comes out of his mouth and that will follow it. The best thing that can happen for the Republican Party, and they might not agree with this, but the best thing that can happen to the Republican Party would be that Trump decides that he's gonna create a third party called the Patriot Party. It's the minute he does that, that all the moderates can go after independence. They got a playing field that they can actually play in. But, you know, look at Hawaii. In the 1980s, when I first got elected, one of the most, the best politicians to be in Hawaii to ensure election were Asian females who were socially liberal, fiscally conservative Republicans, and Kobayashi, Dona Ikeda, Pat Saiki, all of these people, all of a sudden Robinson in his crowd, the religious white, captures the Republican Party in Hawaii. And those, all of them knew that the minute that happened they would lose the primary, although they would never lose a general, which is the same situation that's facing the Secretary of State, for example, in Georgia. He is, he knows, he's looking at a Republican Party, 45%, 55% of which thinks that he screwed the election up. And on the other hand, Democrats in the same state, I think it's like my two or one think he was, he's a great Secretary of State. So they're gonna vote for him in the general, but he's never gonna be able to make it. Well, with regard to 2022 and voting, there's a Republican initiative around the country to further limit voting rights. I think in nearly every state, there are 50 bills going on these days. Colin, do you think they will succeed? It is really a huge insult that they do that, but if they succeed, they will have a better chance, won't they, in 2022? Well, so do I think they'll succeed? I'll answer both of those questions. I think they'll succeed in the states where the Republicans control the legislatures. I mean, I think that they've whipped up enough concerns about voting security. I mean, voting security generally has been one of these issues that has basically been a pretend issue that has constantly reared its head and now came back in a way that no one ever expected, this idea that there's rampant voter fraud in the United States. I mean, that hasn't been true in probably a hundred years, but if you don't count the cases like Jim Crow where there were actually laws put in place to prevent people from voting, but I do think, I don't know if it's gonna help them. This is the thing about these bills that I think they need to think very carefully about. This was something Republicans were saying when Donald Trump was trying to discourage folks from mail-in voting. The conventional wisdom before for the last election really was that really the parties were evenly divided, maybe even the Republicans had a slight advantage with absentee and mail-in voting. So they might pass these laws to satisfy some emotional part of their electorate, but I don't think it's gonna help them. There's no evidence to indicate that passing these laws is actually gonna help Republican voters. And actually the Republicans actually perfected the mail-in vote. That's the way that, what was his name? Well, Reagan got elected governor of California was on mail-in ballots. They actually perfected the idea of going out and collecting ballots, bundling them and bringing it in. And Lee Adwater, that's what I was thinking about, started that entire strategy for Reagan's presidency. So this whole thing is, you know, it's amazing. One of the, to me, one of the most interesting things and where I guess I have some hope for in all of this is the way that the United States judiciary through all of this has been, in my opinion, has been able to maintain its integrity. I don't mean how they might decide a particular issue of the law, which is obviously there are some conservatives that have different opinions about anything that I, you know, that many things that I might disagree with their interpretation, but to, at least on the federal judiciary, to a person, they have not succumbed to, at least not yet, to any of this political pressure. And I think if we have any hope at all, that is a very important part of it. Thank goodness for that. Yeah, that the judges themselves, no matter whether Trump did it or whether it was the Supreme Court. And, you know, a lot of the Trump judges were considered like-weights when they were being routinely nominated. I mean, approved by the Senate. And yet, when they were faced with these challenges, and you know, and what, when you think about it from a political sense, I don't think that any one of the, I don't think that the lawyers who were actually involved in some of these things, at least not all of them actually believed they were gonna win. A win, a political win would have been a judge who would have said, let me hear it, bringing in these things. I'm gonna conduct, I'm gonna appoint a master to check it out. I'm gonna do something that keeps this running and keeps this storming so that you couldn't get a situation where in January 6th, they could actually be accounting of a vote because a judge, a federal judge in some county or some state was investigating something. But none of that happened. None of that happened. And yet, to me, that's what Trump was looking for. That's what he was looking for from the, in the final analysis from Pence. What he was looking for is not necessarily to say that he was correct as much as to say, maybe we shouldn't end this. Maybe what we should do is redo the election. Well, you know, social media has played a huge part in elevating Trump during that four year period and in bringing the proud boys together. In fact, social media has had an effect on the stock market over the past few weeks. And, you know, there are those investors who feel that the stock market is ready for a huge big crash, which would have a political effect, of course. I'm not sure how. But, you know what, the problem of social media, aside from the fact that Twitter dropped Trump and hopefully will continue to drop Trump. Social media is still a big problem. It doesn't self-regulate very well. And Congress is not in a position to not, how come I enough to correct that problem? So Chad, you know, what is going to happen? This is going to stay the same, I think, or get worse. Social media has a way of twisting the way the public thinks of encouraging the wrong thoughts of miseducating people about the stakes in an election. Doesn't this go to our democracy? It sounds like a huge threat to me. I know that we're running out of time, but what I can say briefly to that is people are starting to recognize in Congress that there's something wrong with big tech. Big tech is starting to recognize that there's something wrong with big tech. And that's why Jack Dorsey at Twitter did what he did after a lot of pressure. And that's why Zuckerberg at Facebook did what he did. There's gonna have to be some greater regulation. You know, maybe the president had a point about getting rid of 6 and 230 of the law. This is President Trump that wanted to get rid of that so that these big tech companies could take ownership for the stuff that they're doing. At what point does allowing free speech infringe the livelihood of other people? And that's what we saw with the rating of the capital. People showing up wanting to kill Pelosi and Pence. And that's gonna motivate people. So I think we are gonna probably see some cracking down. Remember AT&T when it was all powerful? You know, it's gonna be interesting to see what the conservative court is going to do when it faces the issue of free speech in context of all of this. Because the Constitution actually is a prohibition against government interfering in speech. And you have, what you have here are private, is the private sector starting to, because of technology, starting to influence speech or take it wherever it needs to go. Yeah, we may have to change what is libel, what is slander, what are all these things in context of the private sector as opposed to the government. I don't know, but I think this is a great issue to take on. And I love to see what the courts are gonna start doing with it. So we're about out of time, Colin. I'd like to ask you, I'd like to ask a very opinion, opinion-oriented question, if you don't mind. Colin, are you optimistic about the future of the government, the nation, and the success of the democracy you studied so hard in school? I am optimistic. I think, I mean, I think that Joe Biden is the right person to be in charge at this time. He's a pragmatist at heart, and I think the party learned a lot of hard lessons during the recession, and that's why I think they need to push through this package, because the best way to get government back on track is for people to see government, again, as part of a solution to its problems, to their problems. Chad, can it happen soon enough, or do we run the risk of too little, too late? You know, a year ago at this time, I don't remember exactly what day the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary were being, but yeah, February, right? Biden finished fourth in Iowa, and he finished fifth in New Hampshire. The economy was moving, there was no COVID, and Bernie Sanders was gonna be the nominee. I, too, am optimistic, but you just never know what's gonna happen. And if we learn anything from the last five and a half years, or the last three months, or the last month, what a crazy, crazy world it could be, but I have felt better since January the 20th, since November the 3rd, or November the 7th, I, too, retain optimism. And John, you're the true host to this, but I wonder what your thoughts are. Are you optimistic? And where do you put all this going into the future? Well, I am optimistic in the sense, as I said, because of the judiciary and because of Biden, I'm pretty much the same thing. But I'm also hedging my bets, so I have decided to go and talk to all my friends who are looking for an independent Hawaii, just to see what their alternative might be. I like that, I like that. Yeah, I wanna know, I wanna make sure that an independent Hawaii has a place for Colin and Chad and Jay. We would be very grateful. Let's talk about it. Sovereignty never looked so good. Okay. Yeah, I'm serious, you know, who knows? Who knows? Anyway, yeah, I guess we gotta sign off, right? Yeah, why don't you summarize and close, John? Well, I learned here today. I don't know what we learned, but we sure had fun and that was the purpose for me today and I wanna thank Colin and Chad and Jay, I really wanna thank you because I just, with the type of things that we discussed today, I just felt like playing too and I enjoyed and thank you for hosting and everybody join us again on Talk Story with John Laihei.