Preet Bharara:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, welcome to Stay Tuned. I’m Preet Bharara.

Frank Bruni:

Infirmity is a part of life and once you kind of realize that and stop judging where you are by the lakrid images you get over people’s Instagram and Facebook feeds, you are able, I think, to adjust toward the blessings and to see yourself in a more truthful fashion and to kind of find the sort of gratitude you should have for those aspects of your life that have gone well.

Preet Bharara:

That’s Frank Bruni. He’s held a variety of roles of the New York Times over the last 25 years, including White House Correspondent, chief restaurant critic and op-ed columnist. He’s currently a contributing opinion writer at the Times where he has a weekly newsletter reflecting on politics, culture, food, the use of language and other topics that strike his interest.

Bruni joins me to discuss the political future of Ron DeSantis, how AI tools like ChatGPT will impact writing and writers, and how an unusual medical ailment he experienced in 2017 helped change Bruni’s outlook on life. That’s coming up. Stay tuned.

 

QUESTION AND ANSWER:

Now let’s get to your questions.

This question comes in an email from Nora who asks, “What do you think the new revelations about the classified documents found at Pence’s home will do to the public perception about the Trump and Biden cases?” Well, so this is very interesting, right? The plot thickens again, or the worm turns or whatever other metaphor you want to use.

Of course, Nora is talking about the revelation in the last couple of days that now we have a third former White House official, Vice President Mike Pence, who looks like he was keeping about a dozen documents marked as classified at his Indiana home that was found by officials and handed over to the FBI in the wake of all the saga surrounding the Trump documents at Mar-a-Lago and the Biden documents in Delaware and other places. What does this all mean?

How do we think about this? What’s the public going to perceive about it? And more importantly, what is the Justice Department going to think about it? What’s the Justice Department going to do about it? The first conf take is a lot of people speak too soon and mouth off a little bit too soon. When the Trump document situation was unfolding, Joe Biden understandably mouthed off a little bit.

Then when the Biden document drama was unfolding, Mike Pence mouthed off a little bit and actually said in the interview, he did not have any such classified documents at any of his properties. Well, turned out that was wrong, and it turns out we might see more of this both in the Biden residences, the Pence residences, and we’ll talk about some of the other former living presidents as well.

One question I have is the president that was set of appointing a special counsel in such cases, will that extend to Mike Pence? Merrick Garland went out of his way to appoint separate and distinct special counsels for the Mar-a-Lago documents and for the Biden documents.

And here you have an example that looks so far like it was unintended, unintentional, maybe incidental. As with the Biden documents, it doesn’t look like Mike Pence so far had any intent to obstruct or mishandle classified documents, and I think that’s incredibly important and critical to a decision about criminal violations or no criminal violations.

But if the Mike Pence situation is similar to Biden’s and the interest of the government and the Department of Justice in particular is to get to the bottom of all the facts and find out what the events were and how these documents came to land in places they shouldn’t be long after people were out of office, then it kind of behooves him to a point of special counsel here too.

And I guess another one, if we find documents in Obama’s residence and another one in Bush’s and so on and so on. So let’s go back and think about how these things unfolded.

You had the Trump situation, which we’ve talked about a lot on this show and on the CAFE Insider, where the FBI and the government and the National Archives were being very, very accommodating and very patient, and only after issuing a subpoena and having evidence that there remained classified documents in Trump’s possession, do they go and take the extraordinary step of getting a federal search warrant and rendering the prior certification of everything had been turned over false.

That’s a kind of extreme case. That’s a case where criminal liability comes into play. Then we find out about the Biden documents and there was a drip, drip, drip more documents found every few days in multiple locations.

And I think the consensus has been, though it’s not dispositive, I think it arguably complicates the decision by Merrick Garland and his special counsels with respect to what to do.

The cases are distinguishable, but in a lot of the public mind they look similar enough that it will appear to many, many people, including some people of good faith, that there’s a double standard if you charge Trump and don’t charge Biden.

Now you have a third person, this time a Republican, someone who used to be associated closely with Donald Trump, his vice president with classified documents inappropriately housed at his personal residence long after he left office. I guess one could argue this uncomplicates things a little bit because at the end of the day, and I’m not making this argument, but I’m saying some people might pose this argument.

At the end of the day, if Trump is charged and Biden isn’t charged, though that looks terrible, but if Trump is charged, Biden isn’t charged and also Pence is not charged, I guess you could make the argument that it was an even-handed decision because in one case, a Republican was charged, another case, a Republican was not charged, and incidentally, a Democratic president also wasn’t charged.

Even to saying that aloud kind of trips me up as I talk about. It for the record, I don’t think that’s how the Justice Department will think about it. I don’t think that’s how the individual special counsels will think about it.

They will try as best as they can to look at the individual facts and circumstances and legal principles in their particular cases and try as best as they can and make independent decisions without any gravitational pull coming from another case.

But overall, I think the public perception, going back to your original question, Nora, is that everyone does it. Maybe it’s not that big a deal if it’s so common. And the best solution some people will say is not a criminal prosecution looking backward, but a change in policy and in practices at the end of an administration.

Now I’m not saying that Donald Trump shouldn’t be charged, and I’m not saying there’s not enough evidence to charge Donald Trump, but when you have a third person like Mike Pence having engaged in this conduct and we don’t have all the facts yet, I think it does complicate the decision.

Now I said before, we don’t know if there are other shoes left to drop. Those could further complicate the decision about Donald Trump. I’m guessing that the other former presidents are, as we speak, having people conduct searches of their premises and crossing their fingers and hoping against hope that they don’t have the same situation as well.

At this point, it would not be shocking to learn their documents with classified markings in Obama’s possession, in Bush’s possession, in Clinton’s possession. But I will say the funniest thing I’ve seen about this whole series of events is a tweet posted by someone named Jarvis Best and the tweet is this, “And Jimmy Carter tearfully confesses that he has classified documents in his heart.”

This question comes in an email from Raul who asks, “Why do you think the Fulton County DA wants to keep under seal the grand jury report from its Trump investigation?” Well, Raul’s a good question. We have the answer because there was a hearing this week to discuss and decide the issue of whether or not the Fulton County special grand jury report would be made public.

Now as Joyce Vance and I have discussed more than once on the CAFE Insider Podcast, in the federal system and in most other systems, you don’t have a special grand jury issuer report or make a report for that matter. They have one duty principally, and that’s to decide whether or not to issue an indictment or not issue an indictment and then the indictment speaks for itself.

And in all matters relating to the grand jury, unless and until there’s a publicly filed indictment, it’s not kept under seal. Everything that happens in the grand jury remains secret, and that’s to protect the integrity of the investigation. It’s to protect witnesses.

It’s to protect defendants. It’s to protect people who may not ultimately charge but who may have been implicated in connection with the investigation. And all of those principles apply here and are the things that are in the mind of the district attorney.

In fact, she and her team said in court, “We think for future defendants to be treated fairly, it’s not appropriate at this time for the report to be released.” Now the problem is there’s a peculiarity of the law in Georgia with respect to grand juries and the kinds of things that they do.

There’s a Georgia code provision that says grand juries are authorized to recommend to the court the publication of the whole or any part of their general presentments, and to prescribe the manner of publication. Here, by the way, the grand jury voted for their report to be made public.

And the statute says when the recommendation is made, and here it was made, the judge shall order the publication as recommended. So it looks like a mandatory statute. The grand jury decided to make it public. The judge shall order the publication thereof. Case closed. Well, I guess it’s not so easy.

There’s a question, I won’t get into the weeds on this, of whether or not this special report prepared by the special grand jury is in fact a “general presentment.” There’s some arguments back and forth that it may not be a general presentment, it’s not in the nature of a grand jury indictment.

And you can make some argument that it falls out of the definition of the statute, but I think the balance of expertise and the consensus among legal observers is that it very much is a general presentment and by the terms of the statute must be released.

At least that’s the argument also being made by a consortium of media outlets who want this information to be made public, but against that is I think the reasonable and understandable and ethical objection by the District Attorney. The judge has taken the matter under advisement, showed some skepticism over the District Attorney’s desire to have this stuff remain under seal for a period of time.

I guess the most important thing, however, to come out of that proceeding, not necessarily the arguments relating to whether or not the grand jury report should be made public or not made public or when it should be public or not made public, but perhaps most importantly, the DA made clear we’re not going to have to wait long to find out what her decision is.

She said that decisions about indictments with respect to numerous people would be imminent. I guess kind of making the argument that we can hold off on the grand jury report at least briefly because soon enough we’ll have indictments that will be made public for the world to see.

And finally, I got from a number of listeners questions about the quality of my voice in the last episode of Stay Tuned. This is from Meredith. “Did you get a new microphone?” I had to stop and listen closely because it sounded like you but not quite you. This is another tweet.

“Am I crazy, or was your voice at a different register on this episode?” And another one, “I thought it was a completely different person before the interview started.” And then finally, another Twitter user at Slightly Cosmo wrote, “Why was your voice different in the intro, outro of the last episode? #AskPreet.”

Well, I thank you all for listening so carefully and for being so concerned. I had a cold, a very bad cold, and I woke up on Wednesday morning and told the team that I was bit throaty and I had a cough and I was sneezy, but the show must go on.

So I drank some tea and tried to soldier on. The reason for the back and forth with respect to how my voice sounded was that the interview with Tim Heaphy, that was the featured interview last week, was recorded on Tuesday, and apparently between Tuesday and Wednesday my condition got worse, my voice got worse, and the intro and the outro generally I record on Wednesdays.

So thanks for your concern. My dad also noticed the change in my voice and as a lifelong pediatrician recommended that I drink plenty of fluids. I’m now pleased to report, back to good health and sounding normal once again. We’ll be right back with my conversation with Frank Bruni.

 

THE INTERVIEW:

Frank Bruni’s distinguished career at the New York Times has seen him navigate from metro reporter to Rome bureau chief to chief restaurant critic, all before landing at the paper’s opinion page as a columnist.

In 2021, Bruni became a professor at Duke University, where he teaches journalism and public policy. His 2022 memoir, The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found will be out in paperback next month. Frank Bruni, welcome to the show.

Frank Bruni:

Thanks for having me.

Preet Bharara:

It’s a great honor to have you way overdue. I’ve been a fan for a very long time and I like everything that you put out.

My first question to you is, given what’s going on in our politics and that you write about politics and public policy, you teach public policy at Duke, do you long for the simpler days of being a restaurant critic? I didn’t mean to presume that those were simpler days, but it just-

Frank Bruni:

No, no.

Preet Bharara:

… strikes me that if you could luxuriate in a bisque, maybe that’s just nicer and more pleasant than what you have to figure out now.

Frank Bruni:

The thoughts are certainly kind of prettier, if prettier is a word we can use as relates to food. Yeah, I guess I long for them in that sense.

But I tell you, what people I don’t think appreciate unless they’ve been in the hot seat of restaurant critic for an influential newspaper is as angry as politicians get at you Preet or as angry as politicians get at me, nothing compared to restaurateur who just received a bad review. Nothing.

Preet Bharara:

Did you wear disguises? How did that work?

Frank Bruni:

I reserved in fake names. I had credit cards in fake names. The Times actually had to have a kind of personal conversation with an agreement with American Express because I changed my fake credit cards about every six months, but I didn’t wear disguises because A, it’s really hard to pull off a good disguise, and so they’re not always successful.

But on top of that, it takes an enormous amount of work. The one time I did disguise myself a restaurateur had made a public proclamation that he so hated my reviews of his restaurants that he was not going to let me review the next one. And he had offered a reward to any staff member who saw me come through the door and correctly spotted me and threw me out.

And so for that restaurant, for the three visits I made there, I wore elaborate disguises. I had wigs that were styled from my head, and it convinced me of something I knew already, which is you cannot disguise yourself night after night and get the job done and not be distracted by it and not spend your entire life in hair and makeup essentially.

Preet Bharara:

So what percentage of the time, when you were not disguised, did the folks at the restaurant know who you were?

Frank Bruni:

I would say in the first year of the job, maybe 40% of the time. By the fifth year, probably 85% of the time. It’s just unavoidable.

Preet Bharara:

And so what distortions does that introduce into the review process? In other words, are they lavishing more love and flavor on your food? Are they serving you better? Do they seem nervous? How do you account for whatever distortion your presence creates?

Frank Bruni:

Well, I mean, you notice certain things and you temper the amount of weight you give them in a review. The good news is there are things that can’t change. They can’t go out and find a new supplier. They can’t go out and find a new line cook.

They can’t remake the recipes. What they can do and what they do do, and I learned all about this later, is really, really nervous self regarding restaurants would, to use kitchen lingo, they would fire two versions of your entire table’s order. And then they would look and see-

Preet Bharara:

See which one-

Frank Bruni:

Yeah, which duck came out better, which steak looks better, and they would bring you that. So you know that that’s happening and you have to kind of account for that. And yeah, it would be hilarious.

I mean, I would walk in, and they often didn’t spot you until minute 10 or minute 25. And one of the ways I could always tell is if I had a female server and they figured out 25 minutes in that it was me because they also knew I was gay, all of a sudden, the best looking male server in the place had taken over the table.

Preet Bharara:

What you’re talking about reminds me of a podcast I did a few years ago with my friend David Chang, and he talked about something that I thought was fascinating, and I wonder if you experienced this. Obviously he’s an owner of restaurants and a chef of great repute.

And he said people that he knows and restaurants that he’s run, sometimes when a reviewer or a VIP person was coming in, the inclination of, sometimes, of the chef or the head chef would be, “I need to personally prepare the meal and chop the vegetables and do all the preparatory work because I’m the chef,” when as Dave points out, it’s been a while since the chef has done that.

And the line cooks are actually very, very good at that and they shouldn’t be replaced just because you have a reviewer or a VIP, does that scenario make any sense to you?

Frank Bruni:

Oh, it makes total sense. A restaurant is really about systems. What someone like David Chang, who is a great chef, great restaurateur, what someone like him does is they put systems in place, they put people in place. It’s a managerial role as much as it is the role of an artist.

And I agree with him, I think a chef can actually make the mistake of showing up and getting involved and disrupting what has become a sort of spontaneous, effortless system after exacting setup. So yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

I mean, another way I could often tell I’d been made was if a restaurant hadn’t open kitchen often halfway through the meal, but not before. I would notice, oh, there’s Jean-Georges Vongerichten.

He wasn’t here at the beginning of the meal, but he has taxied over from whichever other restaurant he was at to make sure that the restaurant could exceed him standing in the kitchen and gets the sense that he’s never neglecting this particular restaurant in his empire.

Preet Bharara:

A couple more questions about restaurants and food, and we’ll come back to it after we do some politics, some language, and there are a few things I want to ask you about your yourself. Have restaurants in America gotten appreciably better over the last 20 years Overall?

Frank Bruni:

Absolutely.

Preet Bharara:

Why is that?

Frank Bruni:

Well, because more and more Americans have become, I hate the word, but it’s a convenient one, foodies. I mean, this tracks exactly with the expansion of food coverage in our magazines and in our newspapers. It tracks exactly with the explosion of the food network and all the food television.

In the last 20, 30 years, Americans became much more interested in food. Many Americans became much more sophisticated about food, and that created a market for restaurants and a set of standards for restaurants that was different from 25, 40 years ago.

Preet Bharara:

Last question about restaurants at this moment. Do you agree with me that restaurants should go back, all of them, should go back to the actual paper menu?

Frank Bruni:

I do. I agree with you. First of all, I don’t know about you, Preet, but every time they have one of those camera codes and you hold your phone over it, I would say-

Preet Bharara:

I can’t get it open.

Frank Bruni:

40% of the time it doesn’t work. And then the spell of the meal’s been broken because your first 10 minutes are one of the servers trying to see if it works on their phone, trying to handle your phone. I mean, it’s like a ballet that begins with a bunch of crap-

Preet Bharara:

You try not to pull your phone out for a nice meal with your family or with colleagues or friends, then you get a Twitter notification and you’re down a bad path right from the onset. Okay.

Frank Bruni:

I also enjoy the aesthetics of looking at a menu. I mean, before menu started to go away, you could kind of get some of your first accurate impressions of a restaurant and what it was trying to do and what its style and sensibility were from looking at the way they’d put together the menu, everything about it.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. Some menus are, well, actually scratch that. I want to move on to something else. So Frank, let’s talk about politics, which I know you’re a keen observer of.

Frank Bruni:

Is this the part of the podcast that’s uplifting?

Preet Bharara:

Well, no.

Frank Bruni:

I’m joking.

Preet Bharara:

That’s why I thought we’d begin with food. Maybe we’ll periodically come back.

Frank Bruni:

We might need to come back to food after-

Preet Bharara:

[inaudible 00:20:39] random food because I have a lot of questions about that. We could do a whole episode just on that experience. But there’s a person I want to ask you about that some people might say, “Preet, you talk about him too much,” but 2024 is not far away.

He’s a credible, and some people would say really potentially likely Republican nominee and by virtue of being a likely Republican nominee, very likely potentially Republican president, that’s Ron DeSantis.

And so I’ll ask various guests about Ron DeSantis because I don’t really know what to make of the guy. I don’t know if he has a glass jaw or not. I’ve mentioned that before.

But you’ve written, colorfully as you write about a lot of things, about Ron DeSantis and you describe him as, what’s the phrase you use? You say he’s the seething protagonist of a revenge thriller. What does that mean?

Frank Bruni:

What I find fascinating about Ron DeSantis, and I do not mean fascinating in the positive sense, is we live in this era where so much of politics is negative. So much of the appeal that politicians make to the partisans whom they want to have voting for them, so much of the appeals negative.

These are our enemies. This is how I will torture our enemies. And Ron DeSantis is the poster boy for that. Everything that he does that makes news, if you think about it, it’s not about constructive stuff, it’s not about a positive policy vision.

It’s all about defining and naming enemies and torturing them. Walt Disney, I’m going to remove your special status. Gay teachers, I’m going to shut you up. Vaccine makers, I’m going to take you to court. He kind of has tried to figure out whom his base is most hateful towards, whom they hate the most, and he goes after them.

And his pitch is essentially, no one tortures our enemies like I torture our enemies. And it’s a very scary spectacle because if that’s what politics becomes about, I don’t know how we ever find any common ground again. I don’t know how we ever reclaim any civility.

Preet Bharara:

Well, isn’t a lot of politics about defining yourself in terms of your enemies? I mean, I do it sort of good naturedly and in good humor, even in my Twitter bio. In my Twitter bio, I have fired by Trump, banned by Putin.

And I have said on occasion, I’m not running for office and it’s not a platform of mine, but I’m a little bit proud of who my enemies are, including some crazy people on Twitter and on social media.

And people on the left do it, maybe it’s dessert, maybe it’s not, but they identify their enemies as Wall Street and sometimes they’re rich, sometimes the powerful. Is there something inherently wrong with the idea of delineating yourself in terms of who your enemies are?

Frank Bruni:

I think there’s something inherently dangerous about it, and I think it’s a matter of proportion. Yes, we all do it. It’s part of human nature and it is one way to define yourself, but I think you have to define yourself in numerous ways. And Joe Biden’s a good example of that.

There was a kind of freak out when he started giving speeches and started denouncing MAGA Republicans. And the reason people freaked out and were so struck by it is because Joe Biden had actually taken a much different tack to get to the presidency. His whole pitch to Americans was, I’m not going to speak in that way.

I’m going to turn down the temperature on everything. And that was his pitch because he understood how important it is and was, I mean, how important it was and is.

If we only define ourselves in terms of our enemies, if we only rally and rouse support by talking about how we’re going to make sure our enemies can’t enter the public square or don’t have votes or et cetera, et cetera, there’s no way we’re ever going to be able to forge the sorts of compromises that legislation requires.

And there’s no way we’re ever going to find common ground again and this country’s an imperialist place in all of those regards.

Preet Bharara:

It seems to be, not to be cynical, none of that is going to matter so long as defining yourself by virtue of your enemies is effective political strategy. Is there anything to suggest that will in the near future cease to be ineffective political strategy?

Frank Bruni:

Biden’s election. If you look at spread of Democrats who ran, I would say he spoke of all of them and perhaps the softest and not conciliatory, but he spoke in perhaps the softest voice as pertains to naming enemies and venting any sort of disapproval or disgust toward them.

And Americans at that moment in time decided they wanted that. So yeah, I think there’s some hope.

Preet Bharara:

You write about DeSantis, also his vow to make Florida, “Where woke goes to die.” And then you write, woke isn’t meeting any natural end in the sunshine state. It’s crossing paths with an assassin. What do you mean by that?

Frank Bruni:

What I mean by that is, when he says it’s where woke goes to die, he’s promising to exact vengeance on, to put into place whatever. He’s vowing to torment silence. Anyone whom he sees as a proponent, an advocate of wokeness, and he’s promising to do it in a flamboyant and aggressive fashion.

And that’s what I mean by that. It’s a pretty extraordinary thing if you step back from it, Preet. You have a politician who the most famous phrase associated with him is that pledge that Florida is where woke goes to die. The most famous word in his political identity is die, death.

No, but that’s how dark his pitch is. That’s how negative his pitch is. And I think that’s really dangerous because let’s say Ron DeSantis does take office, I don’t think he has room to pivot and say, now I’m going to unite Americans, now I’m the president for all people, because he’s promised the people who have voted for him, that’s not who I am.

I am your avenging angel, or rather you’re avenging. So how does he then become a president who speaks for the entire country and do convinces a majority of Americans that he has their backs and he’s trying to make their lives better?

Preet Bharara:

And he also gets the phrase wrong, Florida’s the place where aging New Yorkers go to die, right?

Frank Bruni:

Florida’s the place where a lot of people go to die, not just New Yorkers.

Preet Bharara:

Live well and then die. But there’s this other phenomenon that you also talk about, and it’s not just the juxtaposition of a particular figure as against his or her enemies, it’s also the comparison of someone in the spectrum of other political figures.

And there is this phenomenon, this dynamic in which DeSantis, people have said this, may appear sensible and centrist. I think that’s Musk’s phrase, and you write, in what universe? He’s sensible and centrist only by the warped yardsticks of Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Carrie Lake, and the like.

But those yardsticks will be used frequently as various Republicans join the 2024 freight. The introduction of people like MTG and others describe how warped that causes the political sort of competition to become.

Frank Bruni:

Well, I mean, in stretching the kind of measuring stick of possibility, you see this happening already and it’s an enormous danger for the media, for journalism as the 2024 race takes shape.

You’re not moderate just because you’re not Marjorie Taylor Greene. I saw this in the coverage of Kevin McCarthy’s constipated ascent to house speaker.

Preet Bharara:

Wait, I’m sorry, his what?

Frank Bruni:

His constipated ascent.

Preet Bharara:

I’m going to ponder that for a minute.

Frank Bruni:

Well, I mean it’s a fair description. It was constipated and I would read stories about it, and after a story had talked about Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert, and in that case Marjorie Taylor Greene was not blocking Kevin McCarthy’s way, but they would talk about those, in my view, whackadoodle Republicans who were staging a tantrum or a snit and trying to block him.

And then they would interview another Republican and say a moderate Republican, but it’s like, whoa, whoa, whoa, there aren’t really many moderate Republicans in the Republican party of at this particular moment.

That party has moved so far to the right that there are very few genuine moderates there anymore, certainly very few genuine moderates who have any say in sway, but we sometimes put that label on people who are not Marjorie Taylor Greene, who are not talking about space rays and QAnon and microchips and vaccines, and that’s a real danger. We have to be careful of that.

Preet Bharara:

Well, the spectrum gets reset as you add people to the end of it. You quote a National Review journalist as saying, “Given the bizarre state of American politics during the Trump era, DeSantis would represent a return to normality.”

And you say, “Given the bizarre state of American politics is doing a lot of work there,” but do you see that changing anytime soon? Or in fact, I worry that you’re going to have an incentive structure in which on the spectrum you’re going to get more people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert and others, and we can talk about the left in a second also, because that’s what gets attention.

That’s what gets influence. So isn’t it going to be even more distorted as we go forward?

Frank Bruni:

It may be or it may not be. I think the jury is very much out on that. When you look at the midterms, when you look at whom was defeated, Kerry Lake, right? We saw in many midterm races, we certainly saw in the state of Arizona in a number of ways, we saw voters saying, “I will only indulge so much crazy.”

A lot of the crazy happened in the primaries and in a lot of cases when the crazy graduated from the primaries and a different type of person votes in the primaries, when the crazy graduated from the primaries to the general election, that’s where sense and some degree of moderation prevailed in terms of which party’s candidate was chosen.

We have a huge problem in terms of who gets media attention, and we have a huge problem in terms of who gets nominated from primaries that are primaries in which most of the participants are hardcore partisans. When it comes to general elections, we’re still seeing plenty of hopeful evidence that moderation can prevail.

Preet Bharara:

Now is Joe Biden a moderate or does he too appear to be a moderate because there are people like Bernie Sanders and AOC and others in the Democratic party?

Frank Bruni:

Joe Biden is a mix. I think it’s a great question, and I think you could get smart people to argue the answer to that either way. If we look at some of the economic solutions coming out of the pandemic, and that’s an important distinction coming out of the pandemic.

If we look at some of his economic prescriptions, they certainly are far more liberal than Joe Biden had previously seen seemed, and they’re pretty far to the left. If you look at the totality of Joe Biden, which includes a whole lot more in terms of the way he speaks about cultural issues, et cetera.

I think it’s hard to paint him as being anywhere near the extreme left, but it’s a mixed bag and it’s a mixed bag that’s harder to analyze and pinpoint because circumstances are so different than they were five years ago. I mean, everybody kind of governs in response to the circumstances of his or her time, and that’s part of what you’re seeing with him.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. I find it interesting that there are people on the right and everything that Joe Biden, like him, not like him, want to vote from him, don’t want to vote for him, think he’s told, think he’s just fine, that there are people who seem to say with sincerity that Joe Biden is a crazy extremist.

Now I’m biased in favor of his policies, but how does that resonate with people who live in the real universe?

Frank Bruni:

I don’t think it resonates at all. I don’t think they experience him that way. I think that that’s a lot of rhetoric that is aimed at getting far right and close to far right Republicans to turn out for primary elections and to flood the Twitter sphere or whatever will come after the Twitter sphere, et cetera.

But I also think we’re falling into a little bit of a trap here, Preet, and I do it all the time in my writing, and then I kind of look back and I catch myself. I think we are too frequently talking in a left-right binary. We’re too often looking at the spectrum of possibilities solely in terms of left.

And I think there’s a kind of different thing that comes into play, and I’m not sure most Americans, outside of the people who are loud on social media, outside of the people who are enormous rabble rousers and primaries, I’m not sure most Americans look at Joe Biden, in particular other politicians, and ask exactly where they are on the left-right spectrum.

I think they ask, is this person solution oriented or destruction oriented? Is this person someone who seems like they’re trying to promote a rational discussion or someone who seems to be throwing a tantrum? I think those are binaries for be lack of a better word, that are every bit as important and relevant to many voters as the right left thing.

Preet Bharara:

Is Biden too old to run in 2024?

Frank Bruni:

I believe so.

Preet Bharara:

And the reason I ask is to get to the next question because you’ve written about and talked about who the other possibilities are, and one of the people you put on that list is a friend of this podcast, has been on a number of times, Pete Buttigieg, the guy’s 40, he’s not too young.

Frank Bruni:

I don’t think he’s too young. I think he was too young in 2020. I think if you look at his poise, if you look at his experience at this point, no. I mean, I think he’s a more appropriate age than Biden. As of course, I mean, age has to be evaluated in terms of the person’s other characteristics.

I don’t feel great gusts of energy coming from Joe Biden. So it’s not simply about numerical age, it’s about that as well. I think when I look at Pete Buttigieg, when I listen to him mean, I mean, you could have a great weekend just kind of stitching back to back his appearances on Fox News and analyzing them. I mean, the way in which he marches-

Preet Bharara:

That’s how I party, Frank.

Frank Bruni:

Yeah. I mean, the way he marches into the lions den time and again, and they seem not to know what to do with him, and they never get the better of him, not once. I mean, that’s a kind of poise that I think suggests that what his numerical ages is less important than that.

But 40 is a decent amount of life experience. He’s a dad now, been married a while, has had an interesting life and interesting background. I have been impressed with him from, I was one of the first national reporters to write about him.

I went to South Bend before he was part of the national conversation when he just won a second term as mayor there and had fairly recently come out as an openly gay man. And back then access to him was super easy because he was just the mayor of South Bend, Indiana.

And we spent hours and hours over several days talking and have kept in loose touch since. And I have not run into that many politicians in my, I hate to say decades of reporting because it makes me feel old, but I am old.

I’ve not run into that many politicians in my career who could speak as thoughtfully across as many fronts as Pete Buttigieg can. He is the real deal. He’s a thoughtful, erudite politician who also I think keeps a foot in the world of common sense.

I’m kind of mixing metaphors madly, and I shutter to think that I must sound like a raving lunatic, and in some regards, probably am, but I share your admiration for Pete Buttigieg. Whether he’s more electable than Joe Biden, I can’t really say. And that’s the problem here.

If you showed me a crystal ball and said, or someone who is an amazing odds’ maker came to us and said, I’ve crunched all the numbers and according to the best science, the best kind of computer algorithm possible, Joe Biden has the best odds of winning the presidency, then I would say, no, he’s not too old.

Because I think where the Republican Party is right now, the stakes of the next election are enormous. I do not want a Republican representing the Republican party of today to be in the White House.

And I say that with all those qualifications because we have had Republicans in recent decades whom I have great respect for, but I don’t think that’s the kind of person that can graduate from a Republican primary system at this moment in time. I don’t think George H.W. Bush could get anywhere near the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 running the way he did in the past.

Preet Bharara:

We’ll be right back with more of my conversation with Frank Bruni after this. You also mentioned, and maybe we should have mentioned her first, because that’s how traditionally works.

There’s a sitting vice president, Kamala Harris, who some people have written off. I haven’t. What do you make of her prospects?

Frank Bruni:

Well, if something happens in the next six months, the next year, and Joe Biden doesn’t run, Kamala Harris begins as the front runner and is going to be a force because she is the heir apparent. She’s in that position. She has gained the experience of that office, which is not insignificant.

And she had enough going for her in the first place, and enough political talent demonstrated in the past that Joe Biden chose her to run with. That’s not nothing. That’s not an accident. All of that said, Kamala Harris has for some reason, and there are many possible explanations and no definitive one, she is for some reason not connected with Americans.

She did not connect with most Americans when she ran for president herself. If you’ll remember, she exited that Democratic primary season before the Iowa caucuses.

Nobody actually ever had a chance to vote for her because her campaign had imploded by then. And to judge by public opinion, polls which aren’t everything, but aren’t nothing, she’s never for whatever reason connected with Americans.

And when I talk as I do very frequently with prominent people in the Democratic party, there is a lack of faith, a crisis of faith in her ability to deliver the White House to Democrats. I don’t know if that’s fair or not, but that’s the state of play.

Preet Bharara:

I want to move on to one more potential candidate in the future. Gretchen Whitmer, she’s a Democrat who just got reelected, as you say, by an impressive margin in Michigan, and you describe her as Pabst Blue Ribbon with just the right measure of Merlot.

And Mike, I thought since Paul Giamatti’s star turn in Sideways, we don’t drink Merlot anymore. So is that a compliment> what did you mean to convey by that?

Frank Bruni:

Well, I was extending and playing with a metaphor from earlier in the piece that you quoted for one of the chief architects of Bernie Sanders’s campaign said that he thinks we can divide Democrats into who the beer candidates are and who the wine candidates are.

And he was saying Bernie Sanders was a beer candidate. Tim Ryan, a beer candidate, Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, wine candidates. Meaning the people who love them best, what do they drink recreationally?

And what I find so intriguing and promising about Gretchen Whitmer is I think she splits the difference. I think she has beer drinking admirers and wine drinking admirers, and I was just picking the nearest grape to extend the wine metaphor.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, because I thought, we can’t drink Merlot anymore.

Frank Bruni:

Well, I mean, you can drink whatever you want, but yeah, I mean, I’m a little bit of a wine snob. I’ll own that. I look down my nose at Merlot and I look down my nose at Pinot Grigio.

Preet Bharara:

Oh, you do. Look at you.

Frank Bruni:

But that was not why I chose it, but you know, actually I did choose it deliberately for Gretchen Whitmer because in as much as she has a bit of wine candidate in her, she has no wine snob candidate in her.

And that’s why I thought if I’m going to reach for grape Merlot makes a lot more sense than Cabernet Sauvignon or Pinot Noir.

Preet Bharara:

I want to talk about writing and language for a little bit. That relates to politics somehow, but I don’t want to talk about it in that vein.

And my intro to talking about writing is the thing that now we have to talk about on every episode apparently. And that’s ChatGPT. What was that sound? Let the record reflect that Frank Bruni made a weird sound when I mentioned ChatGPT.

Frank Bruni:

That was the sound of someone who is a professor and teaches students, and now on top of plagiarism, which here at Duke I’ve never encountered one of my students, but now on top of worrying about plagiarism and worrying about other sorts of stuff, I have to worry as anybody teaching at, I was going to say at the college level, but it’s true at the high school or middle school level too.

I have to worry about what ChatGPT means in terms of the authorship of a piece of work that is submitted to you for grading.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. So just for people who have not been following, ChatGPT as a particular chat bot by OpenAI, it’s artificial intelligence. You can query it and it will do things for you, including writing papers or doing other kinds of writing assignments in the style that you want.

They’re limitations, but the results of something that’s still pretty nascent are impressive. You have written that ChatGPT is “A surprisingly confident writer and sometimes even a clever one to the point where early users regarded as some mix of software and sorcery.” Have you seen these stories about how ChatGPT lies?

Frank Bruni:

Yes. Yes.

Preet Bharara:

And makes up studies. So it’s quite human after all. Totally wholesale makes up studies, and even when instructed not to lie, it will still lie.

Frank Bruni:

Yeah. Well, I’ve seen those stories and also, I mean, I think all of us are a little bit too focused right now because this is the way things work in kind of media and public discussion. On ChatGPT as a fake author, as an author of things that human beings should be authoring themselves, but I think it’s the kind of tip of the iceberg.

This is when we talk about what sorts of jobs automation will come for and what sorts of things machines and computers can do that once required human beings. This is an example and a metaphor and the kind of front edge of all of that. And that’s what really freaks me out beyond just what sorts of tools my students are using, which is a minor question in the scheme of things.

How many jobs that exist today, how many of us who have what we feel and experience is meaningful labor, that gives us a sense of pride and purpose. What happens to the sense of human purpose as machines do more and more of the things that we used to do? I think that’s a huge spiritual crisis.

Preet Bharara:

Right. But some people would say, and it depends on the exact function that’s being taken over by the machine, it frees you up to engage in higher pursuits.

I mean, some people might say, depending on what kind of writing you do in your profession, that ChatGPT is not going to replace you, but ChatGPT can do the first draft, and then you layer in human personality and cleverness and style and additional substance, and maybe you have more time to do the research, et cetera, et cetera.

So I don’t know. It remains, I mean, do you have some optimism that it can give us greater liberty or not?

Frank Bruni:

Well, it certainly could give us greater free time and greater liberty, but I have questions. So where’s your salary coming from if the machine’s doing that? So now you have more free time and greater liberty, do you have the economic agency to do something with that free time and that liberty?

Also, we’re living in an era where people’s attachment to religion has waned, many people have lost any kind of sense of connection to their communities as they’ve moved online, as life has become fractured in various ways.

Freed up from work, which is often a source of connection, identity, pride, productivity, purpose for people. Freed up and then what takes its place? So many of the things that might take its place are on the decline in modern life.

Preet Bharara:

What makes a good sentence?

Frank Bruni:

Oh, I mean, I don’t know. I’m no expert on that, but I think a good sentence is lucid. It accomplishes whatever task it attends to. I mean, it accomplishes whatever task it intends to accomplish with vigor, with vividness, directly and it stands out from the sentences around it.

I mean, a good sentence is a long sentence if it’s coming after a bunch of staccato sentences. And a good sentence is a short sentence if it is coming on the heels of a lot of Rococo syntax. I’m snob about the written word because I grew up in a family that revered the written word, and because I’ve made a life in words, and I hope that I sometimes write in a competent and even compelling way.

But there are many, many, many other ways to express yourself. And today’s young people may not be as fluent or as fluid with the written word as their kind of analogs 20 or 30 years were, but they’re much, much better with other media, and there are many different ways to communicate.

Preet Bharara:

That’s pretty good. That’s a good silver lining. I’ve taken also, a good sentence doesn’t have what you call words that are worth sidelining. And you have this feature and you talk about words that you think kind of suck or phrases that kind of suck.

And I want to point to one in particular, because I use it a lot and I’ve often thought, I will often say the phrase, it is what it is. We use it all the time. Which language observers and experts and practitioners of writing decry. I just think it’s a pretty good tautology, why do you dislike it?

Frank Bruni:

Well, partly because of its ubiquity. When something becomes as overused as it is what it is, or any number of other phrases, it just kind of sounds like white noise. It sounds like meaningless can’t.

Preet Bharara:

Frank, it is what it is.

Frank Bruni:

Yeah, exactly.

Preet Bharara:

I could say that about the phrase.

Frank Bruni:

And I’ve heard too many people say it is what it is as if they have just scaled the summit of philosophy. And that drives me crazy. But yeah, no, I do. In my weekly New York Times newsletter, which I’d love people to read, I have a occasional feature called Words Worth Sidelining, and it is what it is was one of the most nominated phrases or words.

I say to readers, please write in with words that you think should be words and phrases that should be retired forever. And sometimes what I choose is a reflection of what people write in, because I’m blessed enough to have readers who are very, very engaged and do write in by the scores and hundreds and along with the phrase at the end of the day.

Preet Bharara:

Oh, at the end of the day, that’s a little crazy.

Frank Bruni:

Right. Along with that phrase which I wrote about the most nominated phrase by readers who are like, will you please sound the death knell for fill in the blank, it is what it is was a very popular choice.

The one thing that I also railed against in that feature, I mean railed in a good natured sense, I hope. I try to write that feature in a humorous way. I begged for the retirement of no worries as an answer. Like, thank you. No worries. Or It was nice of you to do that. No worries.

And those syllables still come out of my mouth. Although now it’s like a comedy routine because I start to say no, and then I catch myself and I lash myself on the back and-

Preet Bharara:

So let’s say in an email correspondence, here’s a context in which it’s used. You’re going to meet someone for lunch or a drink or dinner, and they’re running five minutes late. Hey, running five minutes late. What is the appropriate response, and why isn’t it no worries?

Frank Bruni:

I mean, no worries is a perfectly fine response. It’s just again, so thread bear and nauseating with overuse. I mean, you could say, don’t worry about it.

Preet Bharara:

I mean, thank you is overused too, but we don’t say, don’t use thank you because it’s overused.

Frank Bruni:

That’s fair. That’s fair.

Preet Bharara:

It’s a way of letting people off the hook. No worries.

Frank Bruni:

But no worries, we’re not in Australia. No worries comes from Crocodile Dundee in Australia, right? I mean, and how-

Preet Bharara:

Well, what if you’re meeting someone for-

Frank Bruni:

I mean, Preet, you’re here in the United States, not in England. How often do you say cheerio mate? Probably never, right? So why no worries?

Preet Bharara:

But it’s become Americanized. I don’t know.

Frank Bruni:

I don’t know. I kike to-

Preet Bharara:

Do you find yourself using marks in email and text correspondence more than you did before?

Frank Bruni:

I did for a while, and then I realized how mannered and just faddish that had become. So I’ve actually been on an exclamation point diet for about five years now.

Preet Bharara:

And is that being perceived poorly by your colleagues who think you’re being more blunt and not as effusive as they want you to be?

Frank Bruni:

I don’t know. It’s a good question. They may feel I lack passion.

Preet Bharara:

You should ask people that.

Frank Bruni:

They may feel like I’m a milk toast person with no affect and no gusto for anything, because I’ve exiled exclamation points from my life.

Preet Bharara:

I feel like we were talking about, thank you a minute ago, that at the end of a text or an email to colleagues, if you end with a mere thank you, with either no punctuation or a period, maybe that’s dismissive and not thankful enough. Do you think that’s the evolution that we’ve had?

Frank Bruni:

It might be because it’s sort of in a weird way, we’re sort of back to the distorting aspects of having Marjorie Taylor Greenes and Matt Gaetzs in the world. When the standard gets changed, how does everything seem in relation to it? I don’t know.

I mean, I have reached a point where it’s clear to me everybody communicates in a different way when it comes to courtesies and how to end an email. I much prefer a seemingly flacid thank you, without an exclamation point or without all sorts of modifiers.

I prefer that to an XOXOXO from someone who I’m not really in a position to want or get kisses and hugs from, but XOXOXO has become some sort of code that no longer means what it used to mean, which is kisses and hugs, which I would argue are not appropriate in the professional context.

Preet Bharara:

So this is an awkward segue into something much more serious. I said I wanted to talk about you a little bit, and I’d like to spend the last few minutes we have together having you talk about something that you’ve shared with the world about a medical problem you had about five years ago.

Can you tell us what happened, and then I’m going to ask you how that affected you and how it’s changed your life?

Frank Bruni:

Sure. Yeah. About five years ago, I woke up one morning in October on Saturday, and my vision was different, compromised, blurry. And to make a very long story short, I found out in the coming days that I’d had a very rare sort of stroke of my right optic nerve.

That the vision from my right eye was ruined forevermore. And that the science of this, the literature of this suggested that there was a 20% chance in the coming years, or at some point in the future that the same exact thing would happen with my left eye.

So I was in a position where I was suddenly having to learn to operate with compromised vision, learn how to kind of see with one eye and edit my right eye out of the equation and everything that entailed, which was slower reading, more error-prone writing.

And I also had to come to terms with the fact that there was a 20% chance, and there remains, as I talk with you right now, a 20% chance I’ll go blind. And that’s a lot to deal with in one fell swoop. Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. You wrote a book recently, I think the paperback is coming out soon, called The Beauty of Dusk. Explain the title/

Frank Bruni:

After this happened to me, Preet, I had the kind of work ahead of me. I mean, emotional work, that sort of thing, that anybody who has this sort of, there are all sorts of medical traumas, mishaps that happen to us, especially as we age. And part of the book is about aging.

I mean, I had to figure out how to deal with limitations and how to look at the changes in my life in a positive way as opposed to from the framework of kind of loss. And the Beauty of Dusk, which is the name of my book, that is a reference to both lifespan, kind of being closer to the end of the day than the beginning of the day.

But it’s also a reference to how you can take a different kind of inventory and survey of your life and focus on what blessings you still have, focus on the beauty in it as opposed to the hardships and the challenges.

I found that in confronting these new challenges in meeting them head on, and not falling prey to self-pity and not being undone by them, I found sorts of joys and satisfactions and senses of pride that I hadn’t before.

And I know that can sound a little Pollyannaish, but I think it’s true for a lot of people who’ve been through the kind of thing I’ve been through. And so the book is basically about meeting a life challenge in that fashion and trying to come out the other side of it has as whole as positive and as grateful as possible.

Preet Bharara:

I will point out for the record that in your answer you correctly and in a non trite way, use the phrase, at the end of the day.

Frank Bruni:

I noticed that myself, and there are usages-

Preet Bharara:

You know what, Preet, no worries. No worries. Thank you.

Frank Bruni:

The exclamation mark is hard to convey.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. So I just want to ask you a little more about that because not everybody in the face of distress or a physical change like that, or risk of what many would consider quite a debilitating physical limitation would look to the positive.

You have said that you were terrified of the idea that you would lose all of your eyesight and you’re not anymore. You hope you never do, but you’re just not…

How do you get over being terrified about that, and how can you explain it in a way that people who are listening to this, who themselves are experiencing hardship or at risk of greater hardship, lose the fear of it?

Frank Bruni:

For starters, I don’t think everybody can get over the terror of it or the anxiety or the self-pity. I mean, I think we’re all wired in different ways, and one of my great blessings it turned out, one of my great bits of good fortune is that I was able to.

And that’s not a triumph of character. That’s probably the grace of biochemistry or whatever endowment I’ve been given, but I was someone who was often a pessimist. I was someone who, if you told me this was going to happen to me, I would’ve said, well, I’m just going to be undone by that.

I’m just going to live the rest of my life curled into a fearful ball in the fetal position in bed. But if you have this ability and you should certainly test yourself and see if you have this ability, you have to kind of think and realize there is no point to the terror.

What does that get you? There’s no point to self-pity. What does that get you? None of that changes your tomorrows. And if you plan on having and spending those tomorrows, you are going to be in a much better position and you’re going to be much happier within the realm of possible bits of happiness you can have if you move past feeling sorry for yourself to the best extent you can if you move past the terror.

We’re talking about the fact that I still live with this 20% chance that I’ll go blind. I can sit here and focus on that and say, holy crap, that’s going to be so hard, but it’s going to be hard whether I worry about it now or not. And the other thing is it’s not going to take everything away from me. I have lost things already and there is so much left.

There’s so much that remains. And when I choose to focus on that, so Preet, to give you an example, we’re talking here because I’m a journalist and you’re interested in current affairs and journalism and all of that, it takes me longer to write than it used to because I have to circle back and find and fix all these typos that were never there before because of my compromised vision.

Takes me longer to read the material that I’m consuming in order to write. I can rage about that. I can feel really sorry for myself about that. Or I can say, “Holy shit, the New York Times still runs my stuff. It still wants my work.”

Given the fact that I still have this microphone and given the fact that I still have this invitation to share my thinking and work with the world, I would be some kind of ingrate and moron to focus on the fact that it takes me longer than it used to.

And that’s the kind of thinking that I think it’s important to try to get to, if you’re able to, when you’re in a situation like this.

Preet Bharara:

Does this mean, and at the risk of raising your eye, that you sometimes think about your situation, you accept it and you say to yourself, not out loud, but you say to yourself, it is what it is?

Frank Bruni:

I will never say it in those syllables Preet, but I suppose I say the philosophical equivalent to that in less overused and I hope more poetic language.

Preet Bharara:

You can say it to yourself, you can say it to yourself. Do you see differently now?

Frank Bruni:

Oh, yeah. I mean, I see differently in every which way, and that’s why the subtitle of the book, which is a little bit kind of gimmicky is On Vision Lost and Found.

I see differently in the sense that there are blurry patches of my vision and I don’t have the sort of depth of field. I can’t parallel park anymore, which among the losses in a life is not a terrible one. Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

Well, I have eyesight in both my eyes and I can’t parallel park either.

Frank Bruni:

See, there you go. No, but that’s an important perspective. But I also see differently. When I go through the day, my favorite thing every day is when I go into the woods near my house and explore the trails with my dog, Regan, who’s the love of my life, I see the creek that we cross over differently.

I see the trees ahead of us differently. I am able, in a way I wasn’t before, and it’s a shame that this had to happen for me to get to this place. I see everything with a sort of emotional precision and a gratitude that was absent from my life before.

Because in a very cliched way I realized, by din of what happened to me, how quickly things can change and how fast things can be taken away from you.

Preet Bharara:

Do you worry that that will fade and that you will just become accustomed to the new normal and not feel the same zest for looking at things that you do now?

Frank Bruni:

I don’t. Because I feel that happening to a certain point all the time, and I catch myself. I was always a champion steward, Preet. I was someone who could stew-

Preet Bharara:

Not steward.

Frank Bruni:

Not steward, but stewer. I could stew and marinate and my disappointments and resentments like nobody else. My own kind of emotional piece of beef bourguignon or something, just to bring us back to restaurants and food.

Now when that old tropism comes back, when I feel it happening, time and again I am able this many years into this experience to say, Frank, you’re doing that ridiculous thing and you know better now. And I correct myself over and over again and I have no reason to believe I’ll stop correcting myself.

Preet Bharara:

You said something that I’ve been thinking about since I saw it. As commencement speaker at your alma mater UNC last year, about the choice that people make that will have as much bearing on your decency as a human being and on your happiness as any choice that you will make.

And the choices you describe it is “Whether you’re going to be somebody who counts her blessings or somebody who tallies her slights.”

Frank Bruni:

Exactly.

Preet Bharara:

Can you amplify that?

Frank Bruni:

Well, it’s what I meant when I talked about my slights are it’s harder for me to do the work that I’ve chosen to do in my life, and that has been my purpose in my life, but it’s harder for me to do that than ever before. That’s a slight.

I can focus on that, or I can focus on the blessing of the fact that I still have an invitation to do that work. By focusing on that blessing, I’m a much more contented person, but I’m also a more decent person because that’s the truth of the situation.

The other thing I realized, Preet, and I wish we would all do this in our lives, and I write a whole chapter of the book about this, which I call the sandwich board theory of life.

If we all would pause and do a truly honest and open-eyed inventory of all the people in our immediate circle, of all the people in the circle beyond that, everyone has dealt with or is dealing with some very profound disappointments and challenges in their lives.

Most of them are not visible to the naked eye. Most of them are emotional things they’ve been through, even diseases they’ve battled that we can’t see on the surface. It is struggle is a part of life, setbacks are a part of life, illness, infirmity is a part of life.

And once you kind of realize that and stop judging where you are by the lakrid images you get over people’s Instagram and Facebook feeds, you are able, I think, to adjust toward the blessings and to see yourself in a more truthful fashion and to kind of find the sort of gratitude you should have for those aspects of your life that have gone well.

Preet Bharara:

Frank Bruni, a real delight and treat to have you. Thanks so much.

Frank Bruni:

Totally, my pleasure. Thank you Preet.

Preet Bharara:

My conversation with Frank Bruni continues from members of the CAFE Insider Community. To try out the membership for just $1 for a month, head to cafe.com/insider. Again, that’s cafe.com/insider.

 

THE BUTTON:

Like many of you, I’m attempting to process the horrific multiple mass shootings that have claimed the lives of at least 18 people in California in just a matter of days.

First, on Saturday evening, a shooter opened fire at a lunar New Year celebration in Monterey Park, California, a community outside of Los Angeles. Monterey Park is 65% Asian American, and it’s been called the first suburban Chinatown.

The shooter killed 11 people and injured nine others, all of them Asian American. And then on Monday, a shooter killed at least seven people in Half Moon Bay, California, a seaside town near San Francisco. All of the victims were farm workers and many of them were immigrants.

There’s a lot we still don’t know about the shootings. In the case of Monterey Park, the police have yet to determine a motive. And in the case of Half Moon Bay, the local sheriff called the killings an act of workplace violence.

But here’s what we do know. In both cases, the killers used semi-automatic weapons. And here’s what we also know. In just the first three weeks of 2023, there have been 39 mass shootings in America. That’s the most mass shootings at this point in the year of any year on record.

We know that something is deeply wrong, and we know that there are too many guns and too few barriers to obtaining weapons of war. On Monday, President Biden once again urged Congress to pass a bill that would ban assault weapons and high capacity magazines. He told lawmakers to act quickly. I agree, and frankly, I don’t have much more to say.

Well, that’s it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guest, Frank Bruni. If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show.

Send me your questions about news, politics and justice. Tweet them to me @PreetBharara with the #AskPreet, or you can call and leave me a message at 669-247-7338. That’s 66924 Preet. Or you can send an email to letters@cafe.com. Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network.

The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The technical director is David Tatasciore. The senior producers are Adam Waller and Matthew Billy. The CAFE team is David Kurlander, Sam Ozer-Staton, Noa Azulai, Nat Wiener, Jake Kaplan, Namita Shah and Claudia Hernandez. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m your host, Preet Bharara. Stay Tuned.