Phil Harriman

So it is the end of the year, though, Phil Harriman. And for much of the day today, I have been reflecting on 2025 the year there was. And just thinking through some of the things that we're going to remember from the year. I mean, you think through to the future a bit, like five, ten years in the future. When you think back on this year, you know, what are the couple things, like the two or three things that are really going to stick with you? The things that you will remember having happened this year. Oh, that's the thing that defined 2025. What is that for you? Because I don't know, to me, a lot of the things you might pick, I'm not sure you're going to stick with me. You know, like the Epstein files I brought up, right? There's nothing in them. I mean, there's a controversy over and stuff like that, but I'm not going to remember this stuff being 2025, right? So what will I? What will I remember 10 years from now? A couple of things. Outside of public policy, politics and the things that you and I like to talk about on Tuesday mornings, I have to say... An 18-year-old high school graduate from Newport, Maine, becoming one of the stars in the National Basketball Association. Isn't that the cool story of the year? It's heartwarming, and it puts Maine in a whole different light. I'm just so impressed with how well he's handled. He's the boy playing amongst men's. And he's got the national, some might say, international spotlight on his every move. And he's handling it with grace and class and maturity. And you know, he's been doing it, too. I mean, when he was at Duke, he was handling it, I think, very maturely for his age. Yeah. Because I know that when I was his age, I would not have probably handled it the way it is. That's for sure. No, I think it's a great story. It's great for, I think, main athletics, too. I mean, if you're a kid who grows up now and you're halfway decent at a sport, you might actually say a... Well, I might be able to make something to this. Maybe I'll keep practicing. Well, your son could say the same thing. I think back to your son, what was it, two outs, bottom of the ninth, behind by one run, one runner on base. Yeah. And hits a home run? A triple. A triple. Yeah, it was a triple. To win it. Scored two on that one. Top of the seventh because high school baseball. Oh, right. But yeah. Pretty close to the right story. Yeah. That's exactly right. Yeah. And inside politics in Maine, Laurel Libby, I served in the Maine Senate during the time of John Martin being dethrone for ballot gate. A lot of controversy. Jonathan Carter was pushing out one referendum after another on.

environmental things, the utility companies were forced to separate their generation assets from their transmission assets. Toxic time. Never did I think there would be a time where one party would basically say to a representative, because you posted a picture, we don't like, you are not able to speak or vote. on behalf of your constituents. It's a hell of a precedent, too. I mean... Wow. Yeah. You think that, I mean, I'm skipping ahead a bit here, you know, to looking forward to 2026 a bit, but do you think that that kind of story and decision will have like eternal repercussions? Because I kind of do. I feel like that now is... Pandora's box being opened. You know, it's, it's now established a new precedent. And if you're the Republicans and you are eventually taking power, which, you know, someday will happen, whether it's next year or 10 years from now, it'll take, you know, it'll happen at some point. You know, do you not like remember names? Didn't you keep notes? Don't you kind of do the same thing back? And then when they howl and whine about it, you say, well, you know, this is what you did. Yeah. Yeah, we're just following your precedent. But, you know, I think, Matt, the distinction is that the closer you get to the State House, the more that matters. The further away you are from the State House, people are like, what? Who is that? They don't remember. But I have to, from a national perspective, what, you know, Donald Trump. has done in 12 months is shockingly amazing. It's just tally all up? Yeah, but he does it with, you know, he takes two steps forward and then he says something inappropriate or label someone in a way that's unprecedented and people go, oh, you know, vulgar guy he is, but if you put all that personality stuff aside, what he's done in 12 months. On all fronts is like a NASCAR race. Amazing what he's been able to accomplish. The big one that has to stick out for you, though, is the immigration enforcement stuff. I mean, to have the numbers at the border, you know, just encounters, gotaways, I mean, you know, all the various statistics that they collect, to have them be at this gigantic inflated number one day. And then almost like a light switch has been flipped. Yeah. Virtually zero is remarkable. And you know, I'm thinking back to a lot of those debates that when Biden was president in that last year, you know, they were pushing immigration legislation through Congress. And they were trying to bully the Republicans into, you know, going on board with it or whatever so that, you know, so that Biden could basically campaign on, I fixed immigration. I look at this bill. You know, this stuff that they were saying back then, though, was that. You know, we can't do this without this bill. Like, it's, you know, we're doing everything we can. Nothing, you know, we're all the executive orders that we could, you know, come up with, this is as good as it gets. Unless we do this bill, this immigration fixed bill, whatever. That's what they sold to us. And of course, they didn't pass the bill and nothing happened. And then a new administration comes into office and like a switch.

It's off, which just proved the case that, no, you could have this entire time. Right. You could have been doing this through. Well, just the opposite, right? Your man, Mayorkas, was standing in front of Congress saying the border is secure. Meanwhile, millions of people were shoveled into the country, and what do we do? We put them into the education system, the health care system, economic system, the welfare system. Immigration, you know, America is proud of its immigration history, but it was people coming here for a better life not to come here to go on welfare. And immigration to welfare is very different from immigration to work. And we're seeing the results. It's, well, it's breaking news now. Yeah. Right? I know. You're talking obviously about the stuff going on in Minnesota. By the way, I'm sure you saw the latest with that, right, with the daycare investigation and how these places don't have any children. I saw one. The name of the place was a learning center. Yeah. And they spelled learning wrong. I know. And what's fascinating about that story, too, and this is maybe one of the big, it's not something I'll remember, but it is to me one of the defining things about 2025 is just the failure of media. You won't say that's a 2025 failure. That's kind of a 2020s failure, whatever. But it's just this guy was a YouTuber. This guy is basically just a dude. And he's like, you know, a lot of these companies, a lot of these things are saying they're getting a bunch of money. Or they are getting a bunch of money from the taxpayers for, you know, taking care of kids. I wonder if they are. And then he just grabs a camera, his cell phone camera, whatever, and goes to visit a few of them, discovers there aren't any children there, and then broadcasts it to the world at large for us to talk about and know about. Where was the New York Times? I mean, the Minnesota fraud story is old enough that it might tell a reporter, hey, go sniff around there a little bit. See if you can find anything. No Washington Post, no Chicago Tribune, no, you know, New York Times, obviously. Like, they're just not interested. They don't do this kind of work anymore. Total cataclysmic failure of the media. This, would you say he's in his 20s? Yeah, I think so. He's young, I know that much, yeah. He got more of views of his online reporting. than all of the media in the nation combined. CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, all the newspapers you just mentioned, more people watch his clip than they watch those media outlets combined. Right. What should tell you something? Yeah. So if I'm in the newspaper business, you think maybe you ought to take a different look at how you report things? rather than let me tell you what you should think, which is what my sense of it is with the... You know, it's funny. I'm even more cynical. I don't even think that. Yeah, they do that. But like, I'm looking at Maine. Portland Press Herald, Bangor Daily News, Sun Journal. This is a big three off top of my head, but also the TV stations, too.

You've got Chinese grow criminal enterprises, right? You have our own version of the, you know, non-profit fraud stuff, the gateway community services stuff that you've been hearing and seeing a lot from Steve and the main wire on and whatnot. All this stuff is just sitting there waiting for somebody to report on. And I look at the front page. In fact, I'll do it right now. I'll do it right now. Oh, no, not now. I haven't looked at it and I barely even scanned it this morning because it's that worthless. But right now... Let's see. They're talking about the wharf fire, which is justified sure. Main PFS ban expands to consumer items on January 1st. I am thrilled to know that. That is fascinating. Winter storms bring everything but the kitchen sink to Maine on Monday. No sink? Oh, come on, we need a sink. Yeah, I mean, like, it's just stuff like that. I mean, it's like how to clean off your car in the winter. Like these are the stories that they do. A lot of them are reprints of stuff that they did from prior years. The stuff that's original reporting, if you even want to call it that, is oftentimes just is just kind of like regurgitated press releases. I mean, like when Janet Mills announces a new grant is going to be funding $200,000 to this. company to do some work that came from, you know, her office or whatever. They just take that press release from Janet Mills and they turn it into a story. Like that's what reporting is today. Nobody is going to visit the daycares and saying, hey, are there any kids there? Why? Because you pointed out the clicks and the views and stuff. Like, obviously you're going to get a lot further. Doing real work. Why don't they? If your hidden agenda is to perpetuate the narrative that these are people who just need a helping hand and we're here to provide that for them so they can live the American dream. And when it turns out that none of that is true, they don't know what to do. They've got to go find a story about... Janet Mills granting $200,000 to some company. Yeah, they're giving her credit, by the way, for that $190 million. That is shocking to me. Unbelievable. And she's the one who's out there criticizing Senator Susan Collins for her. But that's exactly the point I'm making. Right. It's like to the press herald and Bangor Daily News, that's Janet Mills announcing all this money. Susan Collins, who is the chair of the Appropriations Committee, secured that money for Maine. Right? And by the way, I don't love the grift. I don't, you know, as much as I like money for Maine or whatever, like, I don't love this system, okay? But if you're going to, like, give credit for money coming to Maine, you should at least give it to who actually got it. It isn't Janet Mills, that's for sure. But to the press air all they have an agenda and they want to do that. I just, to me, it's as much as their agenda matters to them, it's going to cost them their business. It already has. They won't exist anymore.

and readers, because we're informed enough when we have more access to different opinions and information that we're saying, you know what, I'd rather go scroll through X, Twitter, formally, and discern for myself, what, what are the facts and where is the accuracy? Question for you in the three minutes we have left, Phil Harriman. We've talked a lot about 2025 and the year that was and sort of what we take away from it. What do you expect for 2026? Looking ahead a bit. We're going to talk again one year from today in a Tuesday conversation in December. What will we have said about 26? A remarkable change in direction for the state of Maine. I think I do. I think the more that the... State budget becomes unmanageable with the programs and... policies that have been put in place that people around June when the primary elections are being held are going to say we can't keep going in the direction that we've been in for the last eight years and I think you're going to see a Republican elected as governor I would be very very optimistic that the main House of Representatives will end up in the Republican hands, and I think it'll get close in the Senate. And that would be quite a sea change. Yeah. And I think that will be, depending upon who he or she is, it's elected as governor, can collaborate with the legislature to incrementally. You can't do it in one session, but. Putting main people in a position where our economy can flourish and state government lives within its means will make a huge difference in 2020. That's an optimistic view. So you were basically saying then that the expectation of a midterm for a sitting president in the White House may be dashed a bit here. Well, I think the policies that have been put in place are just now. The seeds are germinating, and I think the roots are going to start to spread. And by summer of 2026, I think people are going to say, wow, I feel more secure. Federal government is trimming its spending. We're getting rid of waste, fraud, and abuse. The economy is making it possible for people to find a good job and have a little money left over after paying their bills. And at the end of the day, people vote with their wallet.

Indeed, and that's where we're going to have to end. Happy 2025. Matt, all the best to you in 2026. Happy New Year to you, sir. Happy New Year to you. And we'll talk in 2026. We'll talk next year, Phil Harriman.