How To Take Back America From Out Of Touch Elites

And we are back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle's senior elections correspondent at The Federalist. And as always, your experience Sherpa on today's. quest for knowledge. And as always, you can email the show at Radio at thefederalist.com. Follow us on X at FDRLST. Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast, and of course, the premium version of our website as well. Our guest today is ESPN co-founder and longtime independent pollster. You know the name, Scott Rasmussen, author of the new book, out of touch, the elite 1% and the battle for America's soul.

Scott, welcome to this edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. It's great to be with you. And as we were saying ahead of time, you know, it's hard to find interesting things to talk about in these boring political days we're living through. I know. Isn't Trump 2.0 just a big yawner? Like drinking from a fire hose, my man.

Every day there's something, something going on, something definitely to talk about. And I think your book really covers what's central to these times. You argue this. And I think it's an interesting argument. We think about red states and blue states and Trump derangement syndrome and, you know, the left, the radical left and the far right and all of these sorts of things. but your proposition here is that America is not a 50-50 nation.

It's a 10-10-80 nation, and the elite class running our institutions has drifted dangerously from the 80% of Americans who still hold to the founding ideals. What do you mean when you say 10-10-80 nation? Well, there are 10% of voters who are on the political left and they're active warriors, and they are engaged in a bitter war with 10% on the right. And they are fighting for their teams.

And at some point, they've become so wrapped up in beating the other team that they've lost sight of the need to represent the 80%. And they've created a very toxic, polarized environment where the 80%ers, they just want to keep their heads down, stay out of the crossfire. they want to raise their families, do their jobs, build their communities. These 80% are the reason that I'm optimistic about America's future because they still do embrace our ideals. But the 10%ers have gotten really caught up on the political wars, and they're driving so much of our political narrative today. Who's to blame for that? Where does all of the blame go to? Is it one central area?

Or, you know, because the left certainly blames Donald Trump for that. The right blames, you know, a Democratic Party that has been in the wilderness for a while now. Who is to blame for this great divide, the 10-10-80? You know, when you ask that question, I think back to an editorial cartoon I saw a while back, would show the president blaming his predecessor, and he was blaming his predecessor all the way back to George Washington, who blamed King George. And it kept going all the way back to Eve, who blamed Adam.

And then Adam turned around and you hear this voice from heaven, say, be careful. You know, it is difficult to say when all of this began. As far back as the constitutional convention, there were people who said we had to get rid of this. crazy idea that government should derive its authority from the consent to the governed, and that these ideals of freedom and equality and self-governance should rule the nation. The biggest push in this direction came after the Civil War. Woodrow Wilson, who would go on to become what I believe is the worst president in our nation's history, wrote a very

influential column about or article about this the administrative state he this the article was the science of administration he argued for a prussian form of government to replace america's founding ideals later he talked about how the problem with the american people is they've never gotten over the declaration of independence and just to be clear i haven't gotten over it at this point in the 21st century, Wilson began a movement towards this idea that we should have government by the unelected, government by experts. And it really began to take off in a different direction, starting about the 1960s. And I can give you all kinds of reasons as to why it was the progressive woke left that started this assault on America's founding ideals. Aaron Waldowski wrote about it in the

late 60s, and now we've reached a point where they're being matched by an equal and opposite force. Yeah, well, it is interesting. Woodrow Wilson, the really, the founder of the administrative state, the swamp, if you will, that President Trump campaigned against, who is still in progress of trying to drain the swamp, as he likes to say, and the conservatives in the MAGA movement like to say. But, you know, Woodrow Wilson basically turned a new phrase for Marxism or communism. I mean, isn't that what the administrative state really is, if you take a look back at the history of Lenin and Stalin and what they created? You know, I could argue different nuances as to why it's not quite the same, but the driving force behind all of it is that government knows best, experts know best, the populace would be better off if they just do as they're told.

When Wilson wrote his initial article, he cited the U.S. post office as a great example of how the government could do things better than the private sector. So he was insane then. He was clinically insane. Thomas Woodrow. Either that or he was the only president to ever have a PhD. So, you know, I think there's something that we just have to put this in the context of the world he was growing up in. Prior to Wilson writing this article, colleges and universities were largely like seminaries. Nine out of ten college presidents at that point were members of the clergy.

In the post-Civil War era, there was a desire to create a new kind of university. in America modeled after what was going on in Europe. And when Wilson was getting his doctorate, one of his advisors, was the founder of the American Economic Association. And it's hard to believe what I'm about to say next, but when that association was founded in America in the late 19th century to join, you had to acknowledge that free market economics didn't work. That was the environment.

So Wilson wrote the article. He was a driving force in it, but there was a strong movement growing around Wilson. And it was reinforced by the fact that as the 20th century arrived, we began to have bigger communications networks. We had national newspaper chains. We eventually had radio and TV. And that gave great power to these influencers. You know, I'm old enough to remember the 60s and 70s when three television networks controlled 94% of the television audience. If your story didn't make the 22 minutes of the evening news, it didn't exist.

And by the way, the three competing evening news were pretty much the same. They all got their headlines by reading the New York Times. It was a dream world for gatekeepers. and that helped Wilson's idea grow from just an academic idea into a real fact of life. It was a rebellion against that the administrative state, or at least the portion of it, that preached globalism after a world war. The Warren G. Harding years and the silent Cal years. But it seems that we have been going through that movie ever since. So where do we stand today in the battle against these elitist gatekeepers?

Well, let's be clear what the fight is really about. The gatekeepers, the elite 1%, the battle for America's soul, on one side, it's a group of elitists who do not believe in America's founding ideals. They think that America's founding ideals of freedom, equality, and self-governance are a source of weakness, not strength. They're on one side. The vast majority of Americans, the 80% are on the other side. They still embrace those ideals. They still want to do things in what we would consider the traditional American way. And in between the political activists who've taken up one side or the other of political arguments. So the war itself has been going on for a long time.

it's reached a really critical point, and one of the reasons for it is that since the 1970s, centralized communication has been falling apart. Jimmy Carter, in the end of his administration, convened a commission of business and political and labor leaders and academics to write a national agenda for the 1980s. There were two things that I find humorous about it, one of which I talk in the book, one that I don't really mention is that these elitists, this group of national leaders saw that the biggest problem of America was that they were going to lose centralized control. There was a belief that the country was somehow going to let other voices be heard and be fragmented. The point that I do talk about in the book is that these leaders wrote a book-length report

and never once, this is 1979, 80, never once mentioned the word computer. They had no idea that Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were about to change the world. And that's a really important fact. Change back then came from people who were not our political leadership. Change in America almost always begins from outside the political realm. And that's something that frustrates these elitists who think they should be the ones in charge. Yeah, that is funny that Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were in garages at this time as this big book was written. By the way, can you not find that big book online on the Internet right now?

You can. Yes. And it's fascinating to go back through it because it just gives you a peek into a different world. And, you know, I think that's something innovation takes place and changes the world faster than we can imagine it. And when that happens, we don't recognize it because we forget. I mean, how many of us today can truly remember what it was like before we had smartphones? If you watch a movie today and it was created before the smartphone area, it just looks ancient. And that's because we adapt as humans to change very, very quickly.

And again, all the way through American history, it has been innovation from outside the political process that moved our nation forward. I would argue that the smartphone has had a bigger impact on America and the world than any of the four men who have served as president in the 21st century. And it is a Pandora's box, to be sure, at least in my opinion, you're right. I mean, the diffusion of media. You are a living, breathing example of the diffusion of media on the sports side of things. You know, the creation of ESPN was in rebellion in many ways. And I don't want to overstate it, but it certainly seemed to me it was rebellion to central planning. You know, if you wanted sports for the longest time, you got it from three major networks.

And, you know, ABC had the wide world of. sports and you could get the, you know, the weekend baseball game, the game of the week, but that was it. And then all of a sudden ESPN comes along and we're watching strongman competitions at two in the morning. All that that came from it. Well, that's another example of how change just makes you forget. There was only one college football game played on television every weekend in the 7th.

But what people miss, perhaps, about the ESPN story is it was a tech story, even more than it was a sports story. What happened is we learned that there was this new technology called satellite communication, satellite broadcasting. And the magic of it was we'd had this idea for a Connecticut area cable network. And we learned that if we use the satellite, we could reach the entire country for less money. then it cost to send the same signal around Connecticut via traditional landlines. Wow, that opened up new worlds. And that's what got us thinking down the path that a few months after we learned that, we came up with the idea, all sports, all day, every day.

And within the next couple of years, you had CNN come on and MTV and lots of other channels. And that began to have a huge, huge impact in, you know, we didn't think of it as challenging the networks. But it sure was fun to be able to watch sports all day rather than a three-minute newscast or a three-minute segment on the evening news.

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Well, as a fellow who grew up during that time beard, I can tell you it was fun to watch ESPN and CNN try to fill 24 hours of programming. And it's opening days. I mean, you guys had some very interesting things on there that you obviously will not find on ESPN today. CNN was the same kind of thing. And that was the ideas. Okay, so how do we become Walter Cronkite in the case of CNN? for 23 and a half more hours a day. And it was interesting.

But to the point, you mentioned disruption. Disruption is the enemy of central state. And I think of no one more disruptive, bowl in the China closet kind of disruption. And in so many ways, in my humble opinion, for the good to go up against central control. and the administrative state. That is, of course, Donald Trump. But he and his allies have paid a pretty hefty price for disruption. What do you think of the modern day disruption going on?

Well, I think, first of all, that's a good comparison. He has certainly been the bull in the China shop, and it was certainly something that was needed. but going back to your comment about trying to fill those 24 hours a day or the way we thought of it was there's 8,760 hours in a year. What are we going to do with all that time? And sometimes there were things that really clicked well, and sometimes there were things that you probably wish had never aired because that's part of a disruptive process. You're growing and you're learning. The Trump administration, well, I'll go back, the reason Donald Trump was elected first was because of a strong, strong pushback against the establishment politics from both parties.

I trace the rise of the movement that now supports Donald Trump to when the first President Bush broke his read my lips, no new taxes pledge. At that point, the Reagan coalition split. And it's hard to remember. But before Bush did that, Republicans had won four of the previous five presidential elections. Oh, yes. There was open discussion. Could the Democrats ever win again? But Bush shattered that coalition.

And there was that angry base that was just being ignored by the Bob Dolls of the world and the more establishment Republicans. Republicans. And it kept building until 2016. There were a couple of things very significant about that that fit into your disruptive thesis. Number one, Donald Trump talked about we need to stop illegal immigration. The Republican leadership and their autopsy from the prior election had said, we need to moderate on this. We need to stop talking about it. We need to be more welcoming. Trump went in the exact opposite direction, and without that, he would not have become president. The other thing from that election, on election day, the exit polls showed that only 38% of voters thought he was qualified to serve as president, but 46% voted for him. There were about 11 million people who said, this guy's not qualified, but he's still better than what we've got. We want disruption.

We want a little chaos. And again, like those early days of ESPN and CNN, not all of it has been smooth. It's going to take some time before you put things back together in a different manner. But the disruption was very much a part of the plan. Indeed. And that is what we have seen. We're going to go back to that in just a moment because I think it's extremely important as we look ahead what's to come. Our guest today is ESPN co-founder and longtime independent pollster, Scott Rasmussen, author of the new book, Out of Touch, The Elite 1%, and the Battle for America's Soul.

happened to come out, much more engaged than others in the primary process. Where do you think the establishment in the Republican Party is now after we've seen victory after victory for Donald Trump's endorsed candidates? You know, the important thing to recognize in all of this is we're talking about an activist base that decides these primaries. Donald Trump right now, his endorsement is pure gold in a Republican primary process. Not just yesterday with Ken Paxton over Cornym, you can go back to Indiana. I mean, if you are endorsed by President Trump or if you are actively opposed by President Trump, that determines the outcome of a primary.

On the other hand, fewer than 10% of Texas voters actually took part in yesterday's runoff between Ken Paxton and the Cornet. So you've got this 10% group, this activist group, among those who talk politics on a daily basis, these activists, they prefer Trump policies over traditional Republicans by a four to one margin. There is no doubt. the Republican Party base is now Trump's party. The challenge they face heading into November is that among the vast majority of voters who don't talk politics any more than once a week, the party's kind of split between Trump policies and traditional policies and people aren't as hard-edged. The challenge is how do you get them to show up and vote in a general election? But I would say that going back to your disruption point, the Trump

base was fed up, or the movement actually grew out of a betrayal by the first President Bush. That distrust of the establishment never went away. And I actually think that a lot of the problems came because the people on charge of the Republican Party were embarrassed by their base. I have some quotes in the book from different people talking about the elites in the Republican party thought that their job was from really reining in their base and making sure that you didn't give them too much of what they wanted because it would be bad for the country, whereas Donald Trump said, you're the voters. If that's what you want, that's what you'll get.

Sounds like the Republican Party became kind of Woodrow Wilson-like in their perspective on the people. The people couldn't be trusted with their liberties. And as you mentioned, Scott, that goes back. John Adams felt to a degree that way, even though he was a founding father and a true dedicated believer in the inherent rights of the people. It is that battle that goes on. So let me ask you this. Donald Trump campaigned in 2024 in keeping America. out of wars, out of policing of, you know, the world, so to speak.

That has dramatically changed. I mean, you could take a look at Venezuela. That was such a quick operation that everybody, I think, thought, well, this is going to, we got this thing down. We'll try this model over here in Iran. It hasn't worked out. No matter what is being said at the White. House. It has not worked out the way they either foresaw it would or the way they wanted it to.

So what does that do? Is that in your estimation for a lot of conservatives who voted for Donald Trump to keep America out of these wars, is that a read my lips moment? And how will that, if so, how will that impact 2006 midterms? You know, when you make the Wilson comparison, just Just a little history note, he campaigned in 1916 against getting America into World War I. He promised he would not do it. Indeed. In fact, the slogan was he kept us out of war. Right.

And then he betrayed that. You know, with President Trump right now, what the data tells us, his base still supports the operation in Iran, at least as much as they did on the day the attacks began. among the rest of the Republican Party's support is waning. The reason for that has little to do with the policy and a lot to do with how much do you trust the president. And the Trump base believes that Donald Trump is the antidote to the establishment politics.

They think he knows what he's doing. And I would say at this moment in time, they still believe that he is not committing us to an endless war in Iran. about two-thirds of them think we will have a peace deal in a couple of weeks. Most of them think that Iran will be forced to give up at uranium. So if those things play out in the short term, it won't be seen in the same way as Bush's pledge. But if we're still talking about Iran in November, it's going to be very, very difficult for the Republicans and the president.

that will have lost a lot of support. On your larger point about perhaps President Trump becoming a little more like Woodrow Wilson, I do make the case in the book. I talk a little bit about how America today has resemblance to the hunger games, where the capital was living large off people in the outlying districts. And there was a lot of resentment against the capital, but nobody knew what to do about it. and we later found out there was a hidden District 13 that had a military power,

and they rose up and fought the Capitol and won. But when all was said and done, they didn't really want to get rid of the capital system. The leadership of District 13 just thought it would be better under new management. And to some degree, you can make that case about Donald Trump today. He wanted to drain the swamp. He wanted to fix the system. But a lot of his actions today are using the very tools of the administrative state in ways that would have horrified him as an outsider. In fact, one of the more humorous aspects of my world in terms of polling is to look at data that, say, when Joe Biden is president and you ask about some of the same questions about executive orders or following a

Supreme Court ruling. And then you look at answers in comparable situations today. It is a pure partisan flip. You know, when Joe Biden did it, Democrats thought it was great. Republicans thought there was way too much being done by executive order. Now with Donald Trump and the White House, the numbers have flipped. Yeah. I suppose that the argument could be with the Biden administration, what I like to call the Autopin presidency as the president who was elected was not, you know, was not really involved in the executive orders, at least there seems to be a good deal of evidence that that is the case. But, well, it's like Pete Townsend and Roger Daltrey once said. I think they said it all very succinctly, very nicely.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. And that's the battle that Trump has. And I know that that is the conflict that I think he sees and he is he is trying to address in real time, but it ain't easy. And that is, you do not want to be seen as just a change in management over the swamp. And so I think that's the battle that is going on inside the Trump administration. I think that explains some of what is happening certainly in Iran or what has happened.

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Check out the Watchdog on Wall Street podcast with Chris Lisa Murkowski on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. But let us talk about the other side of the political spectrum. Because I'm hoping that that 80% sees what is happening with the far left, which is, you know, basically taken over much of the Democratic government. party, if not the whole machinery. And they look at them and say, no, thank you. We have seen that before. But then I look at guys like Zohran Mamdani in New York. And obviously, somebody had to support him because the socialist slash communist is now in control and now he's

talking about taking over property. Where do we go with all that, Scott? And what is what does your book have to say about this side? Well, there are some issues on the far left that are just disqualifying. The idea that boys should be allowed to play girls' sports is seen as absurd by the vast majority of Americans. The idea that we should have racially based academic criteria or quota systems is rejected. There are a whole series of extreme positions. And actually, a Democrat really to Chera, has written extensively about what he calls

the Democrats' common sense problem. They've picked a whole series of issues that their base believes strongly in that are supported by less than 20% of Americans, opposition to school choice and others being among them. The challenge, if you're trying to think of how to address this, is that the Republican base all knows all about these issues. Most voters are not aware of just how deeply influential these elitists are in the Democratic Party. If you ask most Democrats, they do not think most Democrats in Congress support letting boys play girls' sports.

but they're on the record voting for. And the reason they don't believe it is because it seems crazy. Because it is. Yeah. So the challenge, though, is how do you get to them? How do you begin to think about that? Because if they hear a Fox News were to say something or a conservative news outlet, they just dismiss it. you know, we're in a situation where we don't know how to talk to people from the other political team.

25% of voters have lost a friend because of political differences, and only 21% have somebody from the other team they can talk to about politics. So what do you do in this situation? I think what we need to do is shift the terms of the conversation. One of the things I advocate in my book is that we should, begin every political conversation by asking the question who decides. An example I give in the book that is not nearly as controversial as some of the things we just mentioned is cell phones in classrooms, cell phones in schools. Well, about seven out of ten voters think they should be banned,

but a majority of parents said they'd like their kids to have a cell phone at school. Who should decide that? Should it be the federal government, the state government, or how can you move it closer to home so that individual families have as much control as possible. And when you begin to have a question asked about who decides, you can engage somebody and begin to think about it. It's not arguing whether Democrats are pure and noble or pure and evil. It's not about arguing whether Republicans are pure and noble or pure and evil. You're talking about how do we get decision-making closer to the voters. And the more that we do that, the better off we're going to be. Yeah, I agree with you. I think really what it comes down to in modern day politics is really fundamental, but it's always been stupid policy versus reasonable policy, insane policy versus rational policy, all of those sorts of things. And, you know, it is, it is happening all around us. Let me, you've done the polling on this. You've seen it. There's a huge issue on a election.

election and integrity, that the U.S. Senate, the establishment Republicans have decided it's not worth fighting for. But the vast majority of Americans, Republican, independent, and Democrats support the Save Act or its successor, the Save America Act, which at its course as you cannot be a non-citizen of this country and vote in federal elections. Americans very much support that principle. That is your basic 80-20. And yet you have Democrats who are fighting like crazy to stop this. And you have Republicans who have given up and, you know,

thrown their hands in the air. Is it any wonder, Scott, that so many Americans are frustrated with our system of government? Not at all. In fact, I began. Early in the book I talked about. I started polling for the term limits movement, an 80% issue forever. And it's never going to happen because it's controversial in official circles. But, you know, I want to pick up on something you said about the SAVE Act.

You are right. I've done lots of polling showing how voter ID requirements are popular. And you should have to have ID sent in with your mail-in ballot. And no ballot should be counted if they arrive after Election Day. And you should have to have citizenship to register to vote, prove your citizenship to register. All of those things are true. It did not translate to the SAVE Act for a simple reason. Only 23% of voters know what the SAVE Act is all about. We ask people about issues like this. We asked them to describe what the legislation is.

And answers were all over the lot. The political insiders knew what the SAVE Act meant, and they therefore assume that all these voters who don't follow politics on a daily basis knew what it meant. It was not the Save Act to require photo ID. It didn't really tell them what the issue was. So that was a communications failure at the highest level. I think there has been a lot of that, unfortunately. And all sides are guilty of that. But, you know, it has been extremely troublesome over the last couple of years in this country.

Because, again, these are issues that voters rally around. So I guess the final question with all of that groundwork laid, and you handed at it before, but where do we go from here? You said early on in our conversation that you were optimistic about that 80 percent. I am hopeful, but I am concerned because central planning does not want to give up its plum position in telling Americans what they need. You know, I agree with you on the fact nobody likes to give up power and money. There may be a saint or two along the way, but they're not in the political world.

So that is a problem. That is the battle for America's soul that we must fight. I am confident that the American people still embrace the founding ideals, but I think we must find new ways to bring this about. My book is dedicated to the nation's 519,000 state and local elected officials. I encourage them to do more, not to go to Washington and beg for a little more flexibility. but to take back power on their own. It was written in the Federalist Papers.

Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. I want state and local officials to say, let's get more power here in our state and in our community because that will make our government more responsive to our voters. There are lots of ways you can do that. I outline a few of them in the book, but we cannot simply win by, saying, well, this congressional election is going to decide the fate of the nation. We need to

win decisively in the next presidential election and get rid of the people with bad ideas. That's not going to happen. So what I argue for in the book is a concept of radical incrementalism. It's a crazy term, perhaps, but the idea is we want to begin taking small steps in our behavior. I want state and local officials to begin every meeting, to begin their political discussions by asking who decides, who should decide this issue. And then looking for ways to disrupt the control of the federal government over them. And for that idea, you know, I take inspiration from one of the sadder stories in American history. James Garfield was a new president, 49 years old and healthy. He was shot on the way to a vacation on July 2nd, first term, and the first year in office.

And he died several months later. He did not die because he was shot. He died because the doctors that treated him did not believe in this new theory advanced by Dr. Lister of germs and infections. So a dozen different doctors reached inside his body, tried to put. the bullet out and it was the infection that killed him. Why that matters in political sense, coming out of that, the outcry was so huge that our medical community began a new practice. They began to wash their hands, nurses and doctors, before treating a patient. Doesn't seem like a

big deal, but life expectancy quickly increased from the mid-40s to over 60. A simple change brought about a big change. And in America today, we need to shift power back to state and local communities. We need to have that done on a day in, day out basis. Sometimes it'll be two steps forward, one step back. But the more we can do that, the brighter our future will be. Yeah, and I think it shouldn't be lost on anyone that the guy who killed Garfield was an aspiring bureaucrat. So, yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's, It's a great story in many levels. But, you know, look, this is something, I would say the other thing that we have to do,

other than one of the reasons I wrote the book is because I am optimistic. We have to let people know there is a path forward. And we also have to recognize that the path forward begins outside of the political process. Thomas Jefferson did not inspire a revolution when he wrote the Declaration of independence, the fighting had begun 15 months earlier. By the time he wrote, almost all of the British governors had already fled the colonies. It was important that he did that to give voice to what was going on, but the action came first. And actions outside the political world determine the course of the nation. Indeed. And it really does boil down to the battle

for federalism, the battle for the republic, and its founding values, and the battle for the soul of America. Thanks to my guest today, ESPN co-founder and longtime independent pollster Scott Rasmussen, author of the new book, Out of Touch, The Elite 1%, and the Battle for America's Soul. You've been listening to another edition of The Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle's senior elections correspondent at the Federalist. We'll be back soon with more. Until then, stay lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray.