442: Salena Zito—America's Journalist

Salena Zito is a prolific author, award-winning reporter, and our great friend. No one knows the heartland like Salena, and she's here to discuss the future of AI and the energy needed to pursue it, the sudden resurgence of interest in the skilled trades and how Pennsylvania is helping lead the way, and her brand-new book, Butler: The Untold Story of the Near Assassination of Donald Trump and the Fight for America's Heartland https://www.amazon.com/Butler-Untold-Assassination-Americas-Heartland/dp/1546009140/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.1D_He0a77ZBKem3H_PCT0X_zVCje__ZDDz6eifkqpYrtz_O8Y-buOhZULKoPq8a8uZkuWZP8eJqejjEo5elfGbbPUXyDFN8nIDLwq9w1W0HBy-rAqPiFessPzpVCxfTbvf7UhJaTfoo2-2uZqcumJX4DEiV_-dt_rJrzb8CUDUo7ExAKRT1Z2RjR5xaVA_2sEC-C_00TEfn3HqZggmsQQ3-a7EVldEheGgTuJwoF7ro.2CyeJIxOfXPRoVRmFEzA7NxIAp6KeqI-E7jLbSYiGFk&qid=1751936485&sr=8-1. Salena gives a firsthand account since she was just four feet away from Trump when it happened.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Mike Rowe?

  Well, hello friends, it's Mike Rowe, it's The Way I Heard It, and um, we don't do the episode thing anymore, do we?

• 0:10Speaker 01

  Well, you can in this case, because I know it's gonna be episode 442.

• 0:13Mike Rowe?

  Alright, so it's episode 442. Some old habits are coming back, because I'm not in person today, we're doing this long distance, because our guest is a very big deal.

• 0:24Speaker 01

  Big deal.

• 0:25Mike Rowe?

  Big, busy, deal?

• 0:28Speaker 01

  Some might say, "huge."

• 0:30Mike Rowe?

  Now, careful, you may be creating an expectation. Not that big.

• 0:36Speaker 01

  Not that big.

• 0:38Mike Rowe?

  But, uh, pretty big. Selena Zito is back with us for, I don't know, maybe the fourth time, third, fourth, fifth time?

• 0:44Speaker 01

  Fourth, I think it's fourth, yeah.

• 0:45Mike Rowe?

  Fourth. You'll hear me say this to her momentarily, face to virtual face, but I'm just so proud of my friend, for the career she's led, and for what's happened to her, and around her, in this last year. Her new book is called Butler, because she was four feet from President Trump, when he was very nearly assassinated. And she's written a book, in part, about that day, but about some other things, too, that are relevant and adjacent, and I think really interesting. Have you had a chance to read it yet?

• 1:21Speaker 01

  No, I've pre-ordered it, it comes out today, but I got the audible version, because I wanna hear it, uh, to me.

• 1:27Mike Rowe?

  It's a great read, and I honestly say that, regardless of what you think about the 45th and 47th president, it's not about that, but, full disclosure, these two have formed a bond, there's an article in The Times, very recently, I mean, Trump hates the media, he's crystal clear about it, with one exception, Selena Zito.

• 1:49Speaker 01

  Selena Zito, yes, he calls her "my Selena."

• 1:52Mike Rowe?

  And he called her no less than seven times, 24 hours after the assassination attempt, because she saw it all, and he saw it all, and they saw each other, and she was there to interview him, after the event, an occasion that was obviously postponed, but has since been made good on many times. So here we have a guest on my little podcast, uh, who's been coming on for the last couple of years, who now has a direct line to the White House, who has now written a book. About this event, which I think is only going to grow in relevance as time goes on. It's going to be a historical day.

• 2:33Mike Rowe?

  And I think it's fair to say that who knows what the outcome of the election would have been but for this day? We don't know. Yeah. But we do spend some time talking about these moments in history. Some feel consequential, some not. But they all have brought us to wherever it is we are today. We're calling this episode America's Journalist. Not because there aren't many fine journalists in this country, but I don't know of any who love the country more or the people in it than Selina Zito. She shows up, Chuck. The woman keeps showing up. Yeah. Well, she showed up here. Exactly. And I'm grateful.

• 3:17Mike Rowe?

  Otherwise, what a short episode this would be. You know her, you love her, and in moments, you're going to know her even better and love her even more, right after this.

• 3:30Mike Rowe?

  I'd like to talk about initiative, if I could, for just a moment. Here at MicroWorks, we value it a great deal. In fact, it's the most important quality we look for in our work ethic scholarship applicants. But everybody wants it. I'm talking about the quality in a lift driver that inspires him or her to carry your bags to the door without even asking, or the grocery clerk who shows you where an item is on the shelves, or a doctor who personally calls you to explain your test results. If you're hiring, you want to encourage initiative because it's invaluable. And ZipRecruiter has a way to allow a candidate to tell you, in their own words, why they're interested in your job. Not just why they're qualified, but why they're interested.

• 4:15Mike Rowe?

  This is a way that allows the best candidates to distinguish themselves from the competition and a great way for you to separate the wheat from the chaff, as it were. Right now, you can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com/row. ZipRecruiter is the number one hiring site, in large part because of this new initiative that shows you the most interested, qualified candidates first. So you meet the right people faster. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within one day. Try it for free. ZipRecruiter.com/row. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter.

• 4:52Speaker 02

  Build your team, build it sooner. Meet your match at ZipRecruiter. Try it free.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  And you know, we're rolling.

• 5:09Mike Rowe?

  Now we're rolling. Hi, Selena.

• 5:12Speaker 03

  Hi, Mr. Rowe. How are you today?

• 5:15Mike Rowe?

  It's Mr. Mike Rowe. I think I've earned it.

• 5:17Speaker 03

  Is it Mike Rowe or Mr. Michael Rowe?

• 5:20Mike Rowe?

  It depends. A, are you my mother? And B, are you angry?

• 5:24Speaker 03

  Well, I feel like middle name is anger. What's your middle name?

• 5:30Mike Rowe?

  My middle name's Gregory.

• 5:32Speaker 03

  Michael Gregory. Does he feel like you're in trouble now?

• 5:35Mike Rowe?

  I did, yeah. You're actually frightened.

• 5:36Speaker 03

  I scared you.

• 5:38Mike Rowe?

  Well, you know, you've got a lot of experience. I'm sure you've put the fear of God into your... How many grandkids now are we talking about?

• 5:43Speaker 03

  Four grandchildren, yeah. Yeah, they've gotten the middle name treatment. Mostly to get them out of danger.

• 5:51Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 5:52Speaker 03

  Like, "Oh, my goodness, Eleanor, Anne, get out of the street." Yeah.

• 5:57Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 5:58Speaker 03

  "Rocco, Michael, don't touch the stove. What are you thinking?" Yeah, it's like that.

• 6:03Mike Rowe?

  Or Donald John. Duck. I bet.

• 6:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:10Mike Rowe?

  Right?

• 6:11Speaker 01

  Hang on one second, Mike. Before you go any further, I'm hearing you, but you sound a little muffled. Does he sound muffled to you, Selena? No, he's coming in crystal clear?

• 6:20Speaker 03

  He's coming in crystal clear. You need to get a haircut right here.

• 6:23Mike Rowe?

  Me?

• 6:24Speaker 03

  No, him.

• 6:25Speaker 01

  I got it scheduled for Monday, sadly.

• 6:27Speaker 03

  I'm thinking it's the haircut that you can't hear.

• 6:30Mike Rowe?

  What kind of world are we in, man? Where men, full-grown men, have to schedule haircuts?

• 6:35Speaker 03

  I know. Didn't you just, like, walk into the barber shop and, like, "Give me a trim"?

• 6:40Mike Rowe?

  I mean, I did. I get it. If I'm looking at your mop, you need a team of people to come in. You gotta put down a drop cloth. There's probably spotters and all kinds of... All kinds of additives. I used to go to a guy named Frank in Baltimore, who flew a bomber in the Korean War, and just had a stack of, like, vintage Playboys. You know, and like all that stuff like I can like Vitalis and all these old ads and these dudes would just sit around and tell stories and I would.

• 7:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:10Mike Rowe?

  You know, like.

• 7:11Speaker 03

  There's a lot of barber shops like that still around the country.

• 7:15Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 7:16Speaker 03

  I almost always stop in a barber shop or a beauty salon when I'm out reporting. Best stories, best little, they're like the country clubs for the um, for the small towns.

• 7:28Mike Rowe?

  That's awesome. What else? Like what other places have you found in your vast resume of reportage where you can actually hear the truth?

• 7:38Speaker 03

  Well, as you know, a big diner person, I love diners mainly mainly because I like dippy eggs, rye toast, dry with butter on the side. That's my jam. I have never been in a diner where I haven't had a really good conversation with someone. Even if it, you know, it doesn't have to be about politics, just about life. Where have you been? What have you done? What, you know, what are your grandkids doing? Those kinds of things. Uh, church basements, always good, especially with the Lutherans. Yeah. Their casserole dish dinners are beyond the pale.

• 8:16Mike Rowe?

  Now, we were Presbyterian, so we were dealing with a whole list of issues, obviously. But um, we had in the church basement, a small stage, maybe two feet off the floor with a curtain. And this is the place where we would have uh, Lenten dinners, of course, and then every so often, some act would come in. And I just, I think the first time I remember seeing people on stage was on that tiny little stage after a Lenten dinner. And the curtain opened and there was some sort of trio singing some sort of song I had never heard.

• 8:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:51Mike Rowe?

  Seared now in what's left of my memory. Crazy, isn't it? How those little slices of Americana and connection stick with you?

• 8:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, they're really special. They still go on. My little grandchildren just had a recital in a basement of a Lutheran church. And there was a little stage, they're not learning, we're Catholic, we're really Catholic. But you know, that's where their recital was. Like, we're extra Catholic.

• 9:17Mike Rowe?

  You're stigmata Catholic.

• 9:18Speaker 03

  We do like guilt like a profession, right? Like we have PhDs in guilt. And other stuff too, but mostly guilt. You know, there was the little reception afterwards, after they were on the little stage with their piano and then we had like covered dish, you know, that Jell-O salad with like the pretzels and the cream cheese.

• 9:40Mike Rowe?

  Yes, yes, the stuff that used to appear in like those Betty Crocker books like.

• 9:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:47Mike Rowe?

  I had a show in mind, I actually pitched it once, I think you would have enjoyed it, but the idea was I'd go around the country and meet the, like the great, great granddaughters or great granddaughters of women who had these, like a meatloaf casserole or something deeply gelatinous and suspicious, right? And we would cook that recipe together and I would join them for dinner.

• 10:11Speaker 03

  That would be amazing. So I collect old cookbooks. You know how they would be in the communities where, you know, they fundraised off of the cookbooks and each is to your point, like a woman was famous for her meatloaf gelatin casserole that had peas like stuffed in the middle like a bundt cake. Um, I collect those and they're joyful, just not even for the recipes because they're a little bit scary, but um, the stories are awesome. Like you can just imagine the person, right? And she, yeah.

• 10:47Mike Rowe?

  Well, you know, I nearly sold it in the room and might very well have if I hadn't insisted on calling it Eat Me, uh, but that was the deal killer. So I never, you know, I couldn't get it out of development, but I came close to Lena.

• 11:01Speaker 03

  I'm really sorry that didn't happen because it would have been joyful and awesome.

• 11:06Mike Rowe?

  I'm spending some time talking to you about the utter minutia of things because I know we're going to get to some very big things very quickly. Let me first just say I'm so proud of you to watch what has happened. I hope that doesn't sound at all patronizing, you know, but I've just, and I know I speak for Chuck too, when I say we're just so delighted. To have met you when we did, so ran, I was literally sitting here waiting to do a live hit on Fox News.

• 11:37Speaker 03

  Tucker.

• 11:38Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, and you were on right before me.

• 11:40Speaker 03

  In South Dakota, covering the oil field workers, the pipeline workers.

• 11:46Mike Rowe?

  Yes, I had no idea who you were, but I said when I came up, I'm like, that woman has got her big hairy head screwed on great. I really, I just love the way you were reporting and I've since dug into a lot of what you wrote in the past and obviously the book that's coming out now, I guess it'll be out now by the time this drops, right?

• 12:10Speaker 01

  It drops, this is gonna go live the day it drops, so.

• 12:13Speaker 03

  Happy book day.

• 12:16Mike Rowe?

  Oh, this is a big day, it's a big book, it's called Butler. Happy book day. And look, I'm sorry I'm not with you in person, we talked a couple of months ago about coming to Butler and sitting down and recording a conversation face to face, but I swear to God, woman, you're busy, I'm busy, and thanks to you, not to get bogged down with too much inside baseball, but Selena has connected us, my foundation, to some of her many contacts in the world, and I don't know what's going on, hon, but it's like a memo went out.

• 12:52Speaker 03

  It did.

• 12:53Mike Rowe?

  To every CEO, to every governor, I mean, I'm not doing anything different than I've done in 17 years, but our little foundation is exploding and the people you've connected me to, they have means, they have resources, they want to help. I think, thanks to you, I'll just say it now, I'm not, I'm 99-

• 13:17Speaker 03

  You're gonna make me cry.

• 13:18Mike Rowe?

  Okay, well, I'm gonna make you cry right now, I'm 99% sure that this year, we're going to award $5 million in work ethic scholarships.

• 13:29Mike Rowe?

  And I've never come close to that. And you are the proximate cause of it.

• 13:35Speaker 03

  Oh, you do everything. I just, I'm really good at connecting people when seeing what something matches up. And we are about to have an explosion of jobs needed in the trade industry. AI is a game changer, and it's a game changer in places like all across the West, Oklahoma, Texas, but also Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, because of the energy resources. We are going to need thousand, tens of thousands of jobs. And if you hadn't sparked that idea that we need to start educating our children in

• 14:15Speaker 03

  a meaningful way that gives them scale to, to, you know, I mean, these kids are artisans. They're not welders, they're artisans, right? They're not carpenters, they're artisans. They make things. And they're such an important fabric of the engine of this country. And that you guys recognize that and, um, and made a difference. It's an obligation to continue to pay that forward with any way you can.

• 14:41Mike Rowe?

  Well, it's a privilege and a unique thrill to see the headlines catch up to your own smack years later. You know, I mean, I haven't been wrong about the big ideas around this, but I haven't been proven right, and I'm certainly not ready to take a victory lap. But things are trending in that direction.

• 15:02Speaker 03

  Well, 20,000 jobs just, just announced in Pennsylvania in the last month. And $20 billion in investment, that's just in AI. And the infrastructure to build the data processing centers, but also for the natural gas fired power plants. That's not even counting what's, what's happening with this US Steel nip on deal, where that's another thousands and thousands of jobs.

• 15:31Mike Rowe?

  Explain to people what's happened. You're really talking about US Steel. A couple of years ago, it was just. And I think I speak for a lot of people who don't even really understand the industry, but just the thought of losing US Steel was such a gut punch.

• 15:51Speaker 03

  It really was.

• 15:52Mike Rowe?

  I was so surprised, like, without even really understanding a lot of the relevant facts that led up to that deal, it just felt so horrible to see the US lose US Steel.

• 16:05Speaker 03

  You know, US Steel is the country's and the world's first billion-dollar company. It was the first mega-company in the world, right? And it was a symbol of grit and making things and ushering in the Industrial Revolution.

• 16:23Mike Rowe?

  Yes.

• 16:23Speaker 03

  And it is the reason we have, you look at the infrastructure, whether it's a small town or a large city, if you look at the infrastructure, it's more than likely that US Steel was at the heart of it. And during the 70s, and because I'm elderly, I have lived through the experience of watching everything gutted, beginning in September of 1977 in Youngstown, where tens of thousands of men and women lost their jobs in the mill and changed lives, changed families. The communities were just eviscerated. You know, churches closed, schools closed, tax base gone.

• 17:06Speaker 03

  There are 4,732 steeler bars across the country and including in Rome. Why? Because so many people were fractured and had to move away, but they longed for that cultural touchstone, that chunk of home that they didn't have anymore. People opened steeler bars across the world. And so that just shows you that connective tissue that was torn apart. To see US Steel being not only saved, right? The jobs that are there are saved, but also the reinvestment in these big hulking mills. And there's some great photos of me, if you go on Instagram, of me working in the mills,

• 17:50Speaker 03

  like, the highlight of my career. They need to be upgraded, but those cost millions of dollars to upgrade. So there'll be an infusion of cash, not only in those mills, but there. I was just talking to the plant manager today at U.S. Steel. Yeah, we're hired a whole bunch of people. I just interviewed a whole stack of people today. That brings the Rust Belt back. All right, that keeps those communities intact and expands them. So people can not only stay living by their parents or their grandparents, but generations going forward will also be able to have that ability. You walk into U.S. Steel today with a high school education and the ability to,

• 18:32Speaker 03

  willing to learn a trade, you're walking in making 120,000 a year.

• 18:40Speaker 03

  And that's just U.S. Steel. That's not even the AI and the data processing plants.

• 18:45Mike Rowe?

  Now that, these things are adjacent.

• 18:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:48Mike Rowe?

  Chuck was with me, actually. I was at an energy conference a couple of months ago down in Newport. Rick Perry was there.

• 18:55Speaker 03

  He texted me a picture at the same time you guys texted me a picture. I'm like, what's you, what's going on, guys?

• 19:02Mike Rowe?

  Well, this is when I started to think that something had really tipped for two things. He said two things that I'll never forget. The first was these data centers. All right, we got to start thinking about calling them something else because they've already got a bad rap in terms of just those words, right?

• 19:23Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 19:23Mike Rowe?

  People are like, oh, God, a data center is coming and now my whole town is going to go to hell or whatever.

• 19:28Speaker 03

  Right.

• 19:29Mike Rowe?

  It's like, no, no, no, no. AI is electricity. Electricity will drive the data centers. And the guy that was there, Raj, who works at Aligned, he's built 50 of these things.

• 19:42Speaker 03

  Oh, I know him, yeah.

• 19:43Mike Rowe?

  All north of a billion dollars, Selena.

• 19:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:45Mike Rowe?

  He's got contracts for twice that number.

• 19:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:49Mike Rowe?

  And they can't build them for the lack of skilled labor.

• 19:52Speaker 03

  Right.

• 19:53Mike Rowe?

  So when Rick Perry starts talking about this whole thing, he likens it to the Manhattan Project.

• 20:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:01Mike Rowe?

  A modern day Manhattan Project. And he is ringing the alarm.

• 20:06Speaker 03

  He's not wrong.

• 20:06Mike Rowe?

  And then he said the craziest thing, and this sounds like the worst humble brag and so vainglorious, but I'll tell you anyway because I can tell you anything.

• 20:15Speaker 03

  It's just you and I. It's just the three of us here. We're fine. We're just, we're fine.

• 20:20Mike Rowe?

  He looks out from the stage across the audience and like, there's the CEO of EQT and some of the biggest energy companies.

• 20:28Speaker 03

  Toby Rice.

• 20:28Mike Rowe?

  Toby Rice, who you also introduced me to. Thank you very much.

• 20:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:32Mike Rowe?

  Palmer Lucky. Palmer Lucky. All the cats are there. And Rick looks over at me, and this is kind of in the morning. I'm not going to talk till later in the day, and I'm just sitting there eating my eggs, waking up, sipping coffee. And he points it right at me and he goes, "That guy sitting right there is the most important guy in the room. And let me tell you why." I don't blush much, but I sat there and I was like looking at my shoes going, "Where in the world is he going?" You know, so.

• 21:04Speaker 03

  He's not wrong. We're having this big energy conference coming up in Pennsylvania in July 15th. AI energy, first one ever. Pencil Pittsburgh is like the center of AI because of CMU, which by the way, made the first AI computer in 1953. So we are in the center of all this intellect and intelligence and engineers, but also this workforce that's ready to go. So it's just a really, really exciting time. And I just think back to a year ago and there was, there wasn't this hope and purpose that we have right now.

• 21:46Mike Rowe?

  Ever since Chapter started advertising on this podcast, I've been getting letters and emails from satisfied customers all over the country. Last week, I got one from Joseph, a retired veterinarian in Texas, who just learned his Medicare plan was shutting down. I can't tell you Joseph's last name because his medical history is complicated and personal, but his situation is not uncommon at all. Given his medical history, Joseph was unable to find a local provider that would include the doctors he'd come to rely on. Happily, Joseph listens to this podcast and Joseph heard me talking about Chapter just last week. And Chapter exists for one reason, to help people on Medicare find the plan that's right for them.

• 22:32Mike Rowe?

  It's a free service. Anyhow, Joseph called Chapter. He connected with an advisor named Heidi. And Heidi caught something that most people miss. Because his current plan was about to close. Joseph had a limited window to continue with his current coverage through a new plan without any additional medical underwriting. In other words, Heidi found a way to get Joseph the coverage he needed with the doctors he preferred. Then she found great coverage for his wife, too. Moral of the story? Medicare plans are constantly evolving. You are too. Call Chapter. Make sure you're on the best plan for you. Also, people who switch plans after calling Chapter

• 23:14Mike Rowe?

  save an average of $1,100 a year. 804-Chapter. That's the number. Call it today. It's free. Whole thing takes about 20 minutes. 804-Chapter. Again, this is for me. We have, as of the end of this last enrollment period, 10 times the number of applicants than we did a year ago today. 10 times. It's amazing. So, like, on the one hand, I look at that and I'm thinking, this is extraordinary and it's good news. On the other hand, we get calls every week, whether it's from the submarine base or from the automotive agency. I mean, 80,000 employees there, 20,000 new ones in Pennsylvania, the submarines need 140,000.

• 23:59Mike Rowe?

  Energy is what? Somewhere between 300,000 and 500,000. Yeah. So, like, how are your... I mean, because you're... I mean, I think you've got a direct line to the White House at this point. I know you're talking with people who are making key decisions every single day. Do you think that the memo has truly gone out? Are these guys really ready to ring the alarm bell and get behind some kind of national effort to reinvigorate the trades?

• 24:28Speaker 03

  Absolutely. The president is 100% behind us. This is a big agenda item for him, something that he wants to be very supportive of. But not just supportive of, but to your point, sound the alarm bell. Tell young people that here is a pathway for you, that is a pathway to prosperity and success, but also is patriotic because you are making the country go. You are part of something bigger than self. You're going to hear in his speech on July 15th, that moment happen. And it's going to be a really big moment. And I think it's going to be really, really important.

• 25:09Mike Rowe?

  Wow. Well, I'm glad because I'll tell you, there's still a ton of work to do. I just got off a plane. I was in Aspen for this thing. I'm sure you've heard of the Aspen Ideas Festival.

• 25:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:23Mike Rowe?

  Well, look, as a rule, I'm leery of events that are festivals or gatherings or symposiums like.

• 25:33Speaker 03

  Right.

• 25:33Mike Rowe?

  And I learned a lot at this and I'm really glad I went. But the opening conversation is one that I want to just bounce off you real quick. You've got Fareed Zakaria talking to Walter Isaacson. And so for those who don't know, Fareed's been at CNN for close to 30 years, I think.

• 25:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:55Mike Rowe?

  Walter used to run CNN. He also used to run Time. And he's written Benjamin Franklin and so many great books.

• 26:04Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 26:04Mike Rowe?

  Well, these two have a conversation in front of 500 or 600 enlightened folks. And Fareed actually says with a straight face, "Our economy is broken into two different halves. The wealthy half deals with assets that are ephemeral, bits and bytes and ideas, right, and thoughts. And the other half work with their hands and they're doomed." He says, "They can't make a living working like that. So we have to," and this opens up the whole, I'm literally biting through my lip, Selena. I want to just stand up and scream.

• 26:46Speaker 03

  That's not true.

• 26:48Mike Rowe?

  It's insane. But he's smart.

• 26:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:52Mike Rowe?

  I don't think he's wise and I don't think he's correct on this point, but. Looking around the room, the vast majority of those people were nodding in agreement. We are still beset and burdened with some basic misconceptions. And again, I just want to thank you for writing about this as much as you do because

• 27:15Speaker 03

  All the time.

• 27:15Mike Rowe?

  Because, look, it's the reason I don't want to take a victory lap is because I it's hard to know when I'm preaching to the choir. But I was not among the congregants yesterday. I was among a lot of people who saw the world differently. And ironically, they're trapped in the past. They're trapped in these their own stereotypes.

• 27:35Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 27:35Mike Rowe?

  So how in the world do we cut through at that level?

• 27:40Speaker 03

  You know, the problem at that level, the solution is very simple. Unfortunately, having them exercise that solution is the challenge, right? You know, if I had a wish list, the things I wanted to accomplish, I would take Fareed across Pennsylvania for for a couple of days, not in a limo, not on a plane, not on a Greyhound either, but like in the car and see and look at the places that are pops of prosperity, like Luzerne County and Bucks County, where $10 billion was just announced in AI, right? These are huge.

• 28:22Speaker 03

  These are absolutely huge, and these are six-figure jobs. And six figures goes a lot away in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, as opposed to if you lived in Connecticut or any of the surrounding counties of Washington DC. But they don't know anybody like that. They don't communicate with someone like that. Our cultural curators, people like Fareed, people that run that are sort of in the boardrooms or share taker, not share taker, shareholders in large companies, all operate out of these super zip codes. And so they see this world very, very differently. And their world exists, but so does my world.

• 29:06Speaker 03

  As I look down my street. I would say half the people work with their hands. The other half of the people are engineers or work in energy. And they all make good livings. They all have nice tidy homes, nothing extravagant, but they're living a good life. They go on vacation every year. And so the idea that that is dying is sort of part of what was the problem with the last administration. And they looked through it in that very, very narrow view. And they tried to push the country in that direction. But the country pushed, pulled back because they said, no, we have these lives that are based on these,

• 29:48Speaker 03

  are working with their hands and we're doing okay. I don't know why you don't see that, meaning them, not you.

• 29:56Mike Rowe?

  No, well, I mean, I, I think you do know why they don't see it. They're not looking at it, but I think.

• 30:02Speaker 03

  They're not there. They don't come to places like where I live.

• 30:06Mike Rowe?

  Correct, because if he's a curator, you're a connector. Connectors talk about their great-grandmothers' recipes. They put the peas in the meatloaf gelatinous casserole.

• 30:17Speaker 03

  In a bundt pan.

• 30:19Mike Rowe?

  In a bundt pan, right. They talk about the little stage and they talk about Lenten dinners and they talk about diners and they talk about, you know, two ears and one mouth and listening to people. What do they call you?

• 30:29Speaker 03

  The bully gals.

• 30:30Mike Rowe?

  The guy yesterday in the Times article, it's unbelievable. You've got to read the article in the Times about Selena, the Trump whisperer, the woman.

• 30:39Speaker 03

  That was really, really embarrassing.

• 30:41Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, but come on, maybe you liked it a little?

• 30:45Speaker 03

  I don't know. It was up for six hours before I would even look at it. I made everyone in my family read it before I read it. Yeah, because I'm like, I'm so uncomfortable with the tension. You know, when I went into journalism, nobody knew who the journalist was, right? You were behind the scenes, working your butt off, you know, asking questions at a crime scene, whatever it may be, a political rally. And now all of a sudden, you're sort of thrust out there. I still have not, even in my elderly years, gotten used to that.

• 31:22Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, but you better, because not only have you written this book, they're going to make a movie about you. They're making a movie about you. In part because you are still taking the backroads. You are still interviewing people in diners and barber shops. You are still out there in a way that I think makes a lot of people both nostalgic and comfortable at the same time. And for whatever reason, you have certainly captured the affection of the President of the United States.

• 32:01Mike Rowe?

  And so I guess maybe the question is, if you're embarrassed by a love letter in The New York Times, simply because it's all about you, what the hell is going to happen to you when you see yourself up on the big screen, brought to life by, I don't know, who's going to play you? Do you know?

• 32:20Speaker 03

  I mean, I feel like it should be Marisa Tomei, but because of the hair, right? And being a little cheeky, but, and we're about the same age, but I suspect, you know, people are going to misread that Butler is just about President Trump. It mostly is. It's mostly about that day. But it's also a lot about what was happening on the ground in the country. But it's also about journalism. It's about preserving what's sacred and important about journalism and how we've lost our way in so many ways.

• 32:55Mike Rowe?

  It's also about history. I love the way you start this book. And just, I imagine the overwhelming majority of people, both listening to this and just walking around the country, have no idea of the historical significance of the very acres on which you guys were standing a year ago this month. Riff, for a moment, if you'd be so kind on all that.

• 33:22Speaker 03

  So in 1754.

• 33:26Speaker 03

  George Washington, who was a member of the colonial army, right? Was part of Britain. He was on a survey, not on a survey, I'm sorry. He was on a mission to go to Fort LeBeuf, which is basically Erie, Pennsylvania today. At that time, there were the colonies, and then there was New France, which went all the way from Louisiana all the way up into Canada. And the French were taking over the part of the colonies where places like Pittsburgh were. And King George, with a letter, sent little George, George Washington, up there to tell them to go away. And George boldly does that.

• 34:10Speaker 03

  And his travel up there was insane. It was, I mean, even the terrain today is crazy. You know, this is Appalachia, right? Deep gullies, hollows, mountains. And he goes up there in December, and he tells the commander, the French commander, you know, "Y'all gotta leave." And I'm shortening it. But he's also really smart. There's this sort of back and forth with the commander, the French commander, you know, this little game that they played, where he, you know, he led Washington on, like he's paying attention. But Washington's a really smart young guy. He has his diary there.

• 34:52Speaker 03

  He notes that they're stocking up on canoes and guns and, you know, something is happening, right? They're building an arsenal. And so he sends Washington on his way and says, "Yeah, no, we're not doing that." And Washington leaves, and he leaves with Christopher Guest, who is his, or Gis, not Guest, that's the guy who, you know...

• 35:15Mike Rowe?

  Waiting for government. Fine actor. Spinal tap.

• 35:18Speaker 03

  Great actor. Spinal tap, exactly. But they get to Butler.

• 35:25Speaker 03

  And all of a sudden, there are these two French Indians, because the Indians were aligned with either the French or the English. These two French Indians are like, "Hey, George, we'll carry your bags for you." I'm doing this like drunk, like drunk history, right? And I'm not drinking, except for a espresso. But they're like, "Hey, George." And, and so Washington, who's exhausted, it's been snowing, it's freezing, he's pissed off, and he's like, "Yeah, here, take my bags." Well, the, one of the scouts takes his bags, goes 15 steps, turns around and shoots point blank at him. Nearly misses him, in the way that President Trump was, was nearly missed.

• 36:10Speaker 03

  And I think it's significant to point that out, first of all, two presidents shot in Butler. But think about how different the country would be if George Washington had died there at 24. There's, there are, who else? I, I mean, I am a student of history, and I can't imagine who of all the men that served under Washington would have the comportment and the tactical understanding, but also that political finesse that Washington had to have been able to accomplish what he did in the American Revolution. That wouldn't have happened. How different would we be? How completely different would we be?

• 36:52Speaker 03

  And you have to think about the same thing with President Trump. There would be no U.S. Steel deal. Those jobs wouldn't have been safe. There would have been no AI energy hubs, because they were against it. You know, there wouldn't have been him giving people the, in East Liverpool, the money to have their, their health tracked for the next 20 years. That wouldn't have happened. There wouldn't have been what happened, a 12-day war that maybe essentially changed how things happened in the Middle East. There would have been no end in Iran's nuclear proliferation.

• 37:33Speaker 03

  And so, it really makes you think how significant what happened in Butler on that day in 2024, had he just not turned his head? Had he not put that chart down like Ross Perot? Like, what was that? I know. You know? It's mind-blowing to consider.

• 37:53Mike Rowe?

  Well, the whole notion of sliding doors has always interested me and life is a game of inches, millimeters, last-minute decisions just seemingly completely inconsequential. And yet, I don't know that there is an inconsequential decision that anybody has ever made from, you know, running a red light to not running a red light. But the crazy thing about your comparison, and by crazy, I mean only to say that it's barely been a year. Yeah. And you just went down a laundry list of things that are, I don't care how you voted, undeniably consequential. Yeah.

• 38:38Mike Rowe?

  It's easy to look back over 270 years or whatever and say, "Good grief, what if that Indian would have hit the father of their country?" But, I mean, this is happening so fast. And maybe that's a good way to kind of pivot into the speed of the news cycle and the speed of your own life and the speed that everything that's happened has happened. And just like on a micro level, how are you keeping pace? And on a macro level, you know, where are we headed? No pressure, but if you called it right in 2016, what is Selena Zito seeing now that her compatriots are missing?

• 39:22Mike Rowe?

  Here's a crazy idea. What if there was an academy out there that paid students to learn instead of the other way around? Specifically, men and women who want to work in the skilled trades. And what if this academy not only paid for your training, but also covered all the expenses associated with your training, like travel and food and lodging? And finally, what if this academy guaranteed you a job at the end of the training period? Well, that's exactly what's happening at America's Workforce Academy by Meta. This is a five-week, highly immersive, pre-apprenticeship program that gets you all

• 40:03Mike Rowe?

  All the necessary certifications you'll need to start a career in the skilled trades immediately. I'm talking about AI-proof, six-figure jobs, helping to build out the new infrastructure that our economy is depending on. Electricians, plumbers, HVAC techs, welders, fiber optic technicians, these jobs, they are all in demand like never before. And again, every graduate of America's Workforce Academy is guaranteed a job on a Meta website. I first announced this program a few months ago, and I have been watching the response ever since. It's extraordinary. This is a nationwide, unprecedented fast track to a long-term career in a skilled trade.

• 40:48Mike Rowe?

  If you, or your spouse, or your kid, or your grandkid are looking for a straight path into a career with no cost at all, check out the opportunities for yourself at meta.com/america'sworkforceacademy. That's meta.com/america'sworkforceacademy.

• 41:06Speaker 03

  Whether you like President Trump or not, you cannot deny, in the same way you could not deny about FDR and the New Deal Democrats, that he has fundamentally changed American politics.

• 41:21Speaker 03

  He has occupied a space that will, 15 years, that will have been larger than what Roosevelt occupied when he was president.

• 41:31Mike Rowe?

  You know what else I think he's done too? And I think it's safe to say this in a completely nonpartisan way. Future presidents are going to be weighed and measured by the speed with which they act. And until now, that speed has all lived pretty much in a lane. Some slightly faster than others, but by and large, right? By and large, the pace is ponderous.

• 42:06Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 42:07Mike Rowe?

  It's by design. But this, you're right, I think he's changed politics in a lot of different ways, but the way we can't possibly know yet is how this is going to impact future presidents. And what's the next man or woman in that office going to think when they look at their first 100 days and go, "Well, where's the benchmark?" I think we know.

• 42:29Speaker 03

  Yeah. You know...

• 42:32Speaker 03

  Men or women, we haven't had a woman yet, do not become president without the working class, without the middle class. You just don't. And he has broken the new, the long line of the New Deal Democrat coalition. You know, people often say that Barack, I've said Barack Obama did that. And not 2008. New Deal Democrats, they were with Barack Obama in 2008. By 2012, that changed because he went, he went through a more social justice program, right, and climate justice. So that gave no room for the working class to be

• 43:14Speaker 03

  in there because climate justice eliminates their jobs. So Barack Obama in 2012, people forget this, he's the first president to ever earn less votes in his reelection to office the second time than he did the first time. In Pennsylvania alone, and I think, always think that Pennsylvania is just such a microcosm of understanding where American voters are, because we sort of have everything here, right? In Pennsylvania alone, he went from winning 10%, almost 11% of the vote, to under 5% in 2012. They didn't go to Mitt

• 43:56Speaker 03

  Romney. They thought he was a nice guy, but they also thought he looked like the guy that would like bring a box to your desk and escort you out, right? They didn't see a guy that was like, I have your back. I'm gonna break stuff and I have your back. So Trump comes along and he breaks all of that in 2016. I have long argued in 2020, to the 2020, everyone, you know, said in that election cycle when Joe Biden won, that, see, Donald Trump was a fluke and the Republicans are gonna go back to being Republicans and the Democrats are gonna go back to being Democrats. And I'm like, no, y'all are reading it wrong. Joe Biden will end up being the fluke.

• 44:39Speaker 03

  And he will be the fluke mostly because of COVID. We were all sort of a mess, right?

• 44:46Mike Rowe?

  Sure.

• 44:46Speaker 03

  Everything was just not where we were used to it. And, and so I, I think that in history, Joe Biden will go down as the fluke. And, and Donald Trump will own the, the space in our history between 2015. And if JD Vance or Marco Rubio become our next president after him, he will own then an additional four years. He will own till, I can't add, 32. So, yeah, oh, yeah.

• 45:16Mike Rowe?

  What a missed opportunity for Joe Biden to simply do what he said he was gonna do.

• 45:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:22Mike Rowe?

  To be a transitional figure. You know, I mean, I, I don't wanna, it's, it's just too easy a target at this point. But

• 45:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:30Mike Rowe?

  Back in, I guess it was 2012, through very weird set of circumstances, I wound up in Mitt Romney's trailer. I had shown up to participate in a manufacturing roundtable and it turned into this rally.

• 45:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:45Mike Rowe?

  And I should not have been there. I didn't want to be a part of that, but the press was there and the photo op was done. And it was me and Mitt on stage together. And, you know, that sent an unfortunate message. But point is afterwards, he, he apologized. He was very gracious and he told

• 46:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, oh, nicest guy.

• 46:07Mike Rowe?

  He was, I mean, he, he said, look, this guy, Mike Rowe, was invited for this. Now he's here. And when I told him, and when he saw that it turned into a rally, I fully expected him to leave because he was very clear that he's running an apolitical foundation and didn't want to be a part of that. But he said, no, I'm here. I said I'd be here. And so he thanked me and I thanked him. Again, none of it matters because a photo is a gajillion words. But afterwards, he literally looked at me, Selena, and said, well, Any advice? What would you do? And I said, seriously? You're asking me? And he said, yeah, I'm curious. What would you do if you were me? How do I reach these people? He said, look, I'm a gajillionaire. Everybody knows it.

• 46:52Mike Rowe?

  And I'm talking to regular working people, the people you profile on Dirty Jobs all the time.

• 46:58Mike Rowe?

  And I said, well, if you really want to win, I'd go on TV and I'd have a flip chart right next to me. And I would embrace my inner geek, because you are. You're a wonk, right?

• 47:08Speaker 03

  Right.

• 47:08Mike Rowe?

  You're a numbers guy. You're a, right? You're a Bane Cat, like, just explain to the country like a businessman what you're gonna do. Walk them through the whole thing and then promise one term and out. We are desperate for somebody to say, even back then, somebody who didn't want the job so damn badly, they would do or say whatever their focus groups told them to do and say. I said, just promise for, just say, look, I can get it done in four years. I'm good at this, and then I'll be done.

• 47:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, you're at the Olympics. You could do it.

• 47:39Mike Rowe?

  I was naive. It's impossible. No one, I don't, except the aforementioned George Washington, took a pass on a third term.

• 47:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:51Mike Rowe?

  And Joe Biden promised one term.

• 47:54Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 47:54Mike Rowe?

  And they changed his mind. And so, here we are. What a time. What a time.

• 48:00Speaker 03

  It is extraordinary to be a part of history, don't you think? Because you guys are part of it.

• 48:07Mike Rowe?

  Well.

• 48:07Speaker 03

  And where it's.

• 48:08Mike Rowe?

  You're a part of it. You're a part of it. You're, you're making it. I guess maybe we all are, but I mean.

• 48:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, we all are. If you wouldn't have embraced this. There's this saying that I have hanging up my bedroom. It says, it make it, it makes a difference to eternity with what, whether we choose to do right or wrong today. Meaning, well, no matter the most granular thing that we do, it has an impact.

• 48:36Speaker 03

  Being out in the forefront for the working person, right? Being out there and, and celebrating being a welder, celebrating being a carpenter, a mechanic, whatever it may, a hairdresser, whatever it may be, someone that is in the trades, is something that hasn't been done since I was in high school.

• 48:59Mike Rowe?

  And, and we were in high school pretty much the same time, close to it anyway.

• 49:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:03Mike Rowe?

  You know? Well, look, I want to go back to U.S. Steel for a minute because that's a really important point, and it's one that Isaacson made yesterday to Fareed. At least he tried to. He tried to articulate the importance of work beyond the transactional, just beyond the paycheck. And when you were talking about U.S. Steel, and when you were talking about all those Steelers bars, how many did you say? Over 4,000?

• 49:27Speaker 03

  4,672, I think.

• 49:29Mike Rowe?

  That's amazing, but I get it, because I was in Baltimore when the Colts left in the middle of the night.

• 49:35Speaker 03

  Oh, I'm so sorry. That was so sad. I remember thinking that was so terrible.

• 49:40Mike Rowe?

  It was. I mean, it's an entity that is armed with everything you gave it. They're leaving with your hopes and your dreams and your investment, your time, all those things, right? So whether it's a company, or a sports franchise, or a lover, you know? Whether it's big or small, whether you're just talking about a divorce, or a country ripped in half and, and trying to get itself reconnected, is a very powerful thing. And we don't need curators like Fareed. We need connectors. We need people who are genuinely curious enough to go into the other side.

• 50:25Mike Rowe?

  So, my question, at the end of all that, is to ask you to talk about The Washington Post, and how in the hell did a jagged little pill like you?

• 50:38Mike Rowe?

  Who does not write in a style that that paper would typically embrace, has empowered you to write for them on a regular basis. I was very happy for you when you told me about it. But I was also happy for The Post because I think they could be the ultimate beneficiary of this.

• 51:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, so they came to me, I guess it was September of last year. And they said, would you be interested, like, you know, would you be interested in doing a monthly piece? And I laughed because I'm like, wait, did you call the wrong person?

• 51:18Mike Rowe?

  You know who I am.

• 51:20Speaker 03

  And it wasn't like, don't you know I am? It was like, don't you know I am? And we just started a conversation and we just kept going back and forth. And I said, I don't want to do anything different than the way I do it. You know, I go out there, I report a story and I don't. If you read my stories, even though I'm considered a columnist, there's not really an opinion in them. They're reported columns, right? I get out there and I talk to people and I listen to people. And I try to take all that fabric of what I've learned and try to make sense of it and tell a good story about what's happening in the country.

• 52:03Speaker 03

  So the first one I did was I sat down with for the first time Dave McCormick and John Fetterman. Now it's a regular, it's a regular two man show, right?

• 52:11Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, now McCormick is a senator.

• 52:13Speaker 03

  Yes, David McCormick is a senator from Pennsylvania, Republican. And John Fetterman is also a senator from Pennsylvania, but a Democrat. Then I went to US Steel and spent the day at US Steel. That was, and got to tell, I mean, it was the best day of my career. I really got to get in there and talk to those guys and tell their story. And they let me drive a million dollar truck. They're crazy. But they let, you know, it was awesome. And then the third story was AI and energy.

• 52:48Speaker 03

  About this brand new plant that's being, I mean, when I was talking to my editors about this AI data center, that was $10 billion AI data center that's going to be fueled by natural gas because AI data centers are thirsty, but they just require so much electricity. And it's going to happen on a hill in western Pennsylvania, Indiana County, where Jimmy Stewart was born. And they're like, wait, what? What? Pennsylvania? Doesn't it go in like Silicon Valley? No. And so it's been a joy to introduce new readers to the stories that I write. The

• 53:30Speaker 03

  story that would be out the day this podcast comes out is a sit down with President Trump, but also with Helen Campatore and myself.

• 53:40Mike Rowe?

  Now, that'd be the widow of the fireman who died.

• 53:43Speaker 03

  Yes. And it is a gutting interview with both of them. Just really emotional. And it comes through in the book how much President Trump has been impacted by what happened that day. Not because of himself, but because of the death of Corey. Someone who came to have fun with his family. Like, if you've ever gone to a Trump rally, they're like a Jimmy Buffett concert, right? Except without parrot heads, that people are just in patriotic gear. And they're happy and they're joyful and it's like a lot of fun. And for someone to

• 54:26Speaker 03

  be coming to experience that and then hear him talk and be killed, that's really been rough on President Trump. And it really comes through in the Butler book when we have several interviews. And he talks about that and he talks about God a lot, the hand of God. But so those are the first war stories that I've done for the Washington Post. And the readers really like them, to my great surprise. I don't really get the mean, super mean comments in the comment section. I've also learned not to read them.

• 55:01Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. Avoid the comment section.

• 55:04Speaker 03

  Yes, where souls go to die, isn't it?

• 55:06Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 55:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:07Mike Rowe?

  Well. I mean, you have to ask yourself, why? Like, before you go and start reading comments, you should really be honest with yourself.

• 55:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, why?

• 55:17Mike Rowe?

  What do I hope to learn here? And if the answer is, I hope to read things that make me feel really good, then, then just choose to feel really good.

• 55:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:29Mike Rowe?

  And don't run the risk of falling through the ice, because it's cold down there.

• 55:34Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, go have a popsicle or a shot of whiskey. Don't read the comment section.

• 55:39Speaker 03

  There's not a good place, a very dark place.

• 55:42Mike Rowe?

  You, you were, um, speaking of dark places, you were, what, four feet from him on that day?

• 55:50Speaker 03

  It was four feet, it was four feet from the president.

• 55:53Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, so, look, help me here a little bit. You're a very good interviewer, and I'm trying to ask you questions that I think that I would want to be asked if I were in your place. But I'm also aware that you must be sick to death of answering the same questions.

• 56:07Speaker 03

  No, not at all.

• 56:08Mike Rowe?

  Well-

• 56:08Speaker 03

  I want people to know about this day.

• 56:10Mike Rowe?

  Okay, then tell them. Because, and obviously, tell me whatever story from the book you think matters most. But if you can, do it in service to the idea that we may have moved on from this event a little too quickly.

• 56:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:33Mike Rowe?

  It sure felt like, like something so big happened. And then, I don't know if it's the news site or what, but how in the world did that not dominate?

• 56:48Mike Rowe?

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• 57:28Mike Rowe?

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• 58:11Speaker 03

  it should have dominated for weeks it's still we should still be talking about it I'll give the readers a little bit of insight there's two things you should know about me interviews never freak me out it doesn't matter who I'm interviewing it's just a conversation that's how I approach it the one thing that does freak me out is logistics I hate logistics because you're out of control you know when you're going to a Trump rally it's like I gotta get there like five hours early you know there's gonna be traffic what if I forgot something and I can't get in my ID it's like my I'm a super head case about that the idea

• 58:49Speaker 03

  that day was I was going to interview President Trump five minutes before the rally and I was like it's gonna be longer he loves to talk right like I was I was not gonna I wasn't counting on five minutes but I wrote down on my piece of paper my my four questions I was gonna ask him crumbled it up and stuck it inside my wallet and my daughter was with me and my son-in-law my daughter's a photo journalist my son-in-law we brought with us because we thought he would carry the equipment and we would stay looking very poised in 102 degree weather that didn't happen

• 59:30Speaker 03

  So we all just ended up being hot. We get there, we get on time, we're out in the blazing heat, doing some interviews, talking to people, and about two hours before the president's supposed to get there, I get a text that says, "Hey, we're running late, so..."

• 59:49Mike Rowe?

  Text from who?

• 59:51Speaker 03

  That was the fir-- who was it? Susie Wiles.

• 59:54Mike Rowe?

  Oh, Chief Staff?

• 59:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, which is co-campaign chair.

• 59:59Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, co-campaign-- her and Chris LaCivita, who is from Pittsburgh. He's a yinzzer. He was the other co-campaign chair. And so, I get the text, and I'm like, "Oh, there it is." When you're a journalist, like, 60% of the time, the interview you're supposed to have isn't going to happen, and you have to expect it. I'm like, "There it is, it's not happening." And I get a text, like, right after that, and she says, "We're going to do it after, because we're running late." I'm like, "Okay." And I text Chris LaCivita. "What the heck? Is this-- it's going to get canceled, isn't it?" Like, it's not my usual reaction, but I was really hot, and I was really hungry.

• 1:00:42Mike Rowe?

  And you're getting it slow, no?

• 1:00:43Speaker 03

  And he's like, "No, no, no, no, we're going to-- it's going to be fine. You're fine, Zito, you're fine." By the way, Chris LaCivita is famous for putting me on a horse in my first interview that I did with a candidate that he was running in Virginia. And he thought I wouldn't do it. And I just jumped right up on there, and he's had respect and love for me ever since. So that-- so he says, "It's okay, it's going to happen." And then I get a text from Susie Wiles, and says, "Hey, so, we don't think we have enough time to do the interview." I'm like, "There it is." And then, she does this great pause, right? It's like, you know, leaving me like, "Braa."

• 1:01:26Speaker 03

  And then she said, "So, how would you feel about flying to Bedminster?" I'm like, "Oh, okay, I didn't see that coming." So I asked my daughter and her husband if they could go. They have four little kids. So I didn't, you know, like watching. I watch the four little kids all the time, but there's not a lot of other people that have. There are a lot. But we got someone to watch the kids. And about five minutes before, like Trump lands and everybody's all happy. You know, the buzz goes around. He's behind the stage. He does this thing called a click line where he meets with mostly first responders

• 1:02:06Speaker 03

  and pulls some people out of the, um, of the crowd and just, you know, like meets them, shakes their hand, asks about their life. And so he's back there and all of a sudden this young man, his name was Michelle Picard the third, he comes, he's the campaign, um, press guy and he goes, "It's go time." I'm like, "Wait, what? We're going now?" So we go running through the crowd. We get behind the, um, we got behind the stage. My daughter's like exhausted. We're like soaked. My son-in-law's with us and we get to this click line and I looked at Michelle Picard and I said, "What are we doing this interview?" And he like looks at me very sheepishly. He goes, "I don't know."

• 1:02:51Speaker 03

  So he goes around and he asks President Trump and President Trump says, "Where's my Selena?" And he comes back. Michelle Picard comes back and he goes, "Yeah, you're not interviewing now. He just wants to say hi." So I go around and he's like, "There, look, doesn't she have the best hair in journalism?" And I said, "No, Mike Rowe calls it a mop. So apparently I don't." And we talk about my grandchildren and, you know, he's like, "Do you, um..." Do you know, you okay with coming on the plane? I'm like, yeah, right, like, I wouldn't be okay with that. I mean, I didn't say that. I'm, I get really quiet. I'm like, yes, sir, I'm fine, sir.

• 1:03:35Mike Rowe?

  What kind of plane is he in at this point?

• 1:03:37Speaker 03

  Trump Force One.

• 1:03:38Mike Rowe?

  Trump Force, okay.

• 1:03:39Speaker 03

  Trump Force One. And so, we, um, he goes, you know, we talk about grandchildren, we talk about Pennsylvania. He goes, all right, I'll see you in the plane, right after. So at that point, I can hear the music outside, and there's like, a certain, um, number of certain songs that go in order, and it's time for him to go on stage. Michelle Bicard looks at my, myself and my daughter and Shannon, and it's like, or my son-in-law, Michael, and he says, um, yeah, you're just gonna have to go in the buffer, because you're just gonna have to leave to go in the motorcade.

• 1:04:12Speaker 01

  Explain what the buffer is.

• 1:04:13Speaker 03

  Buffer, yeah, the buffer is this area between the stage, where the president is, and where the audience, where the rally-goers are. And it's probably an eight-foot-wide area, mostly Secret Service is in it, and photojournalists, and that's it. They have the pool spray. So the pool spray will go through and take photos as he goes in and goes out, and just takes shots of the crowd. And so Shannon, Mike, and I are in the pool, or in the buffer. So if you look at the cover of Butler, which I'm gonna show everyone, see? Where's your, oh, you got your copy?

• 1:04:46Mike Rowe?

  I got it right there. Got it, bad copy.

• 1:04:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if you look at that cover, my daughter took that photo. We're following him out.

• 1:04:54Mike Rowe?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:04:55Speaker 03

  In the buffer. And, and you can see, like, that photo illustrates so much that is important, because you see that his relationship with the crowd is very transactional. He feeds off of them, they feed off of him. It's a very emotional connection.

• 1:05:14Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, look at the faith in the crowd.

• 1:05:17Speaker 03

  And, yeah. And, um, and so we're in the buffer, we follow him out, we go in front of the Pia Podia, we have some great shots, and great video, all the way around. We eventually go off to the side, because we're, that's, that's where we'll exit for the, for the, um, motorcade.

• 1:05:35Speaker 03

  It's like, four minutes into his speech, and this chart goes down. I'm like, what is he, Ross Perot? He never has a chart. And the second thing that caught my, just in a flicker, he never turns his neck away, like this. He'll turn his body away, but he never faces away from the crowd. In that moment, he did. He turns his neck, the chart goes down, he turns his neck. Pop, pop, pop, pop. And I see him grab his ear. I see the blood streak across his face. I see a sea of blue come out around him. He doesn't fall down.

• 1:06:17Speaker 03

  That was the first thing I noted. I'm like, okay, he went down on his own. Like, it's really, you know, people say things happen in slow motion. That definitely happened in slow motion. I watched the whole thing in slow motion. I can still replay every second of it, every smell, everything. Um, and he, the sea of blue comes around him. I'm still standing. I've got the recorder on, in my phone. Not because I'm trying, just because I had it on, right? Because I wanted to record his speech. I'm not thinking about that. I hear four more pops. And then Michelle Picaire takes me down, into the ground. And, um, and I can see the whole thing.

• 1:06:59Speaker 03

  I hear the whole conversation he has with the Secret Service. I hear him insist on putting his shoes on before he stands up, which is almost like, it was almost like comic relief in that moment, because he was so insistent that his shoes were on. And some of the things that stand out to me is, there was no panic in that crowd. That panicked, that crowd kept saying, "USA." And I can see Trump, he's almost facing me at this point. And I hear him mouth "USA." He doesn't say it out loud, he's facing the crowd, the crowd that was behind him, not the big crowd in the farm field.

• 1:07:43Speaker 03

  And he turns around, and that's when he says, "Fight, fight, fight."

• 1:07:49Speaker 03

  And they take him past me. His hat got knocked off, but the Secret Service person had it in the crook of their hands, right? There is a guy in camo as they take him past me that has a gun right at my face. And for some reason, I wasn't afraid. I just knew that they were protecting him. And they take him, they walk past me, and his hat just slowly falls right in front of me. I just remember feeling like I heard it land. I didn't. There was something about that moment that felt powerful. People can read the rest of what happened the rest of that day, but I think what's

• 1:08:32Speaker 03

  really important, and this is, you know, the beginning of the rest of the book, is he calls me the next morning. And, am I allowed to swear?

• 1:08:42Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:43Speaker 03

  Okay. He calls me the next morning. I don't usually swear like a truck driver, but only when I'm really like something, whatever. He calls me the next morning and he said, before I could even say hello, he says, "Selena, are you okay? Are Shannon and Michael okay?" And I said, "Are you fucking kidding me? You were just shot, and you're asking how I am?" And it was really quiet. He would go on, and people will read it in the book, he called me seven times that day. Some very, very powerful conversations.

• 1:09:25Speaker 03

  And the one I will share right now that I think people don't understand, because I asked him, just like I asked him last week when I went on Air Force One, can't believe, like, community college, Selena went to Air Force, Air Force One, right?

• 1:09:41Speaker 03

  I asked him that day, and I repeated it last week when we were talking, "Why did you say, 'Fight, fight, fight'?" And he said, "I wasn't Donald Trump in that moment. I was representing the country. I had to show the country that we are going to be okay. We are going to survive this." I could not show weakness. I didn't want people that were there to panic, and I didn't want people at home to panic because I knew they were watching it. So in that moment, I was saying, "Fight, fight, fight for our country, for the office of the presidency, not for myself."

• 1:10:22Speaker 03

  And that really, really got me.

• 1:10:26Mike Rowe?

  I, um... Chokes me up.

• 1:10:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:10:30Mike Rowe?

  Actually, I called Chuck. I watched it happen.

• 1:10:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:10:34Mike Rowe?

  And I think the first thing I said was, "Well, he's gonna win."

• 1:10:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:10:44Mike Rowe?

  And I wonder how long it took you to even triangulate that.

• 1:10:50Speaker 03

  Interesting that you ask that. There are two moments that happened within a year of each other.

• 1:10:58Speaker 03

  First, him showing up in East Palestine, Ohio. That was a big inflection moment for President Trump. At that moment, if you look back at the polling, this is when the primaries, this is February 23, right? He'd been down in the polls, and Ron DeSantis had just taken the lead over him in the New Hampshire primary. And he shows up in East Palestine. And I'm there, but I'm, I don't talk to him. I put a baseball cap on my head and sunglasses on, even though it was like Appalachia gray, right? But I didn't want to be seen. I just really wanted to soak this up. And it was awful that day.

• 1:11:42Speaker 03

  There was sleet, there was snow. If you look at him, he has galoshes. He's got his pants tucked in his galoshes. He's got a big trench coat on. He shows up with a couple 18-wheelers filled with water bottles. Trump water, because he's always the salesman. And he buys all the public safety people, the first responders, McDonald's.

• 1:12:06Speaker 03

  And he walks all the way through town. He walks through those puddles. And you know that my reporting on East Palestine. It was scary there. I reported on that for weeks and I would go home with the worst headaches. It was terrible. You didn't know, we didn't know what we were in those puddles. We still don't. And, and he showed up in that moment and I said, this is, he won this primary. And within two weeks, he pulled ahead in that primary and never looked back. And then Butler happens. And I felt like Butler just reinforced that. Not because he was shot as much as because of how he responded to being shot.

• 1:12:49Speaker 03

  And how he embraced faith in that moment. People make fun of it. You know, people are awkward with faith, you know. You, and, and, and it's because we, you know, a lot of us were taught to be humble about our faith, right? And so, people didn't believe it, but I have seen it repeatedly with him. That this was a big, powerful moment with him, with God. If East Palestine was the beginning, Butler was the defining moment. I couldn't imagine him when, not winning, uh, my state. And if he doesn't win my, if he wins my state of Pennsylvania, then he wins Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, Nevada,

• 1:13:34Speaker 03

  and North Carolina because those states are just a tinge less Democrat than Pennsylvania is.

• 1:13:42Mike Rowe?

  Is that why you think the Post reached out? Do you think they've realized? I know you believe this, but I'll just ask it anyway. Is Pennsylvania truly the hinge in this whole thing?

• 1:13:54Speaker 03

  That's exactly, that's exactly, they reached out because as they believe Pennsylvania is the it state. You know, California used to be the it state. Sorry, sorry guys.

• 1:14:07Speaker 03

  Pennsylvania is where everything happens. It's going to be the center of the 250.

• 1:14:15Mike Rowe?

  Celebration.

• 1:14:16Speaker 03

  Celebration. It is the center of innovation and workforce development. It is the center of politics. It's the center of culture. And because it has a generous mix of everything that the country is.

• 1:14:32Mike Rowe?

  Including that little something, something back in the day in Titusville, I believe. Edmund Drake, as I recall.

• 1:14:44Mike Rowe?

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• 1:15:28Mike Rowe?

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• 1:16:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, Colonel Drake, who wasn't really a Colonel. That's where the first industrial revolution was. That began because of the oil that was discovered in Titusville.

• 1:16:17Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:16:18Speaker 03

  Because at that point, we're talking 1853-ish, 59, 59. Factories couldn't be open after dark, right? If they could, but it was really expensive and we were killing all the whales to do it, right?

• 1:16:38Mike Rowe?

  Down to like half a dozen. I mean, we'd waged a holy war on the right whales, we called them.

• 1:16:43Speaker 03

  Yeah. And so, you know, because of what happened in Titusville, that fed that, just the way natural gas will be feeding the AI revolution, the next industrial revolution, people aren't going to think of AI as an industrial revolution because they don't understand the concept of how workforce is part of AI. They think Silicon Valley. They should think welders. They should think plumbers. That's the AI revolution.

• 1:17:14Mike Rowe?

  Because if I didn't make this point, I think I made it too subtly before, and had I got a word in the other day at the Ideas Festival, I would have said this to Fareed. How ironic that those two sides of the economy, as you've described them, among the perils facing the Work With Your Hands crew was the idea of being outsourced by robots. I couldn't go anywhere for years without somebody asking me, "Mike, do you really think the robots are going to come and completely upend the skilled trades as we understand them?" And, you know, I answered as best I could, not having a crystal ball, but now, which

• 1:17:59Mike Rowe?

  half of the economy is about to be more materially disrupted?

• 1:18:04Mike Rowe?

  By the advent of AI. It's going to be that half that is dealing with the ephemeral thoughts and

• 1:18:12Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:18:12Mike Rowe?

  and bits and bytes. It's going to be the people who have been the highest paid by and large. He's not wrong about that in a, you know, if he's going to paint with that broader brush. But those are the people looking over their shoulders now. And part of the memo that you've helped me put out and that I'm, I hope I can help you double down on is just to completely turn that upside down. Because you're a hundred percent right. The future.

• 1:18:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:18:40Mike Rowe?

  Look, plus, it's a false choice. It's not, oh, my mind or my hands.

• 1:18:44Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:18:45Mike Rowe?

  You've just got to, it's two sides of the same coin, for God's sakes. And I, if Pennsylvania can lead that charge, I'll join you there anytime.

• 1:18:54Speaker 03

  Well, that would be fun. Look, no profession is going to get hit harder than mine with, by AI. AP report, that can be done by AI. But going to a diner, going in a steel mill. Oh, then one, the next story I'm doing for the Washington Post, I am following a piece of coal from a coal wall, a wall, coal wall, I used to be able to talk, all the way up to the top of the mine, onto a dump truck, onto a train, on a barge to a coal-fired power plant. So that can't be done by AI. You can't show that texture, that feeling, those people that you interact with. And those are the people that are going to keep their jobs.

• 1:19:38Speaker 03

  They're not going to be replaced by AI. But my profession, unless you hustle and get out there.

• 1:19:47Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, there's no shortcuts. Somebody sent me a tape not long ago. They asked the AI to narrate a couple of paragraphs for some corporate video in the style of Mike Rowe narrating Deadliest Catch. And so. I listened to it. I clicked on the link. And because I knew what I was listening to, I was able to discern, you know, some moments that weren't quite right. But had you not told me, or had you said, "Hey, Mike, do you remember recording this? It was like 12 years ago and it was for some, you know, some industrial you did." I would have listened to it and said, "No, I don't remember doing it, but obviously I did."

• 1:20:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, oh, that's scary.

• 1:20:32Mike Rowe?

  That is scary.

• 1:20:33Speaker 03

  That is so scary.

• 1:20:35Mike Rowe?

  And it's top of the first inning. So, all those little clicks and little things, that's gonna be gone soon. Screenwriters are just in a flat-out panic. For the same reason, I guess, some journalists are. But you're right. The good ones will continue to show up. I mean, that's the thing. Show up.

• 1:20:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:20:59Mike Rowe?

  I remember talking to you after Palestine. And, um, you know, whenever I talk to Selena folks, I always have a notepad nearby, because I like to jot things down. She always says something smart. But that's what you said that day. You just said, "He showed up, Mike."

• 1:21:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:21:14Mike Rowe?

  It didn't... Never mind the McDonald's, never mind the Galosh's, never mind the Trump-branded water, or all the other things people might look at to say, "Oh, what an opportunist." Right?

• 1:21:25Speaker 03

  That's what everybody wrote about.

• 1:21:26Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:21:27Speaker 03

  I wrote about him showing up.

• 1:21:29Mike Rowe?

  He showed up.

• 1:21:31Speaker 03

  Yes. That was the difference. That's what I saw. And what more people should have... Like, that's what's wrong with my profession. You're writing about, "Oh, he used Trump water." And there's like a, like a think piece about using Trump water. And I'm like, "You idiots." Sorry, Jesus. Um, it's about showing up, because... Do you remember that song by Billy Joel, "Allentown"? I think we've had this discussion before. Okay? And everybody sang along with Allentown, right? But not everybody lived in Allentown. But they felt that. They sold themselves in it. Well, people looked at East Palestine and sold themselves.

• 1:22:13Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:14Speaker 03

  He showed up.

• 1:22:15Mike Rowe?

  That's right. But a whole lot of other people, elected officials, people in positions of power and leadership, they didn't.

• 1:22:25Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:22:25Mike Rowe?

  So, here's an honest question. Did they not show up because they're craven? Because they're indifferent? Or did they simp- did they just look at a thing and see something else?

• 1:22:41Speaker 03

  It's an indifference. It's an indifference. It's an absolute indifference. You know, I talked to a lot of my friends who were strategists and sort of attached to the Biden administration or campaign people, right? And half of them were split. The ones that understand were like, God, show up. What is wrong with you? It took them 398 White House press releases to finally get to it. 398 from the day it happened until they finally acknowledged it in the White House press briefings. And the other half were like, it's, so what? Right?

• 1:23:26Speaker 03

  They're, they're just like, so what? I mean, it's East Palestine. Nobody died. No, so we don't care.

• 1:23:33Mike Rowe?

  The woman that you connected me with, I'm not going to drop her name just yet because we haven't done a press release, but we were talking last night over dinner and I asked her about West North Carolina.

• 1:23:49Speaker 03

  Yeah. Western North Carolina.

• 1:23:51Mike Rowe?

  And she got very emotional. Her company does a lot of business in that part of the country. And there are people there, Selena, now, who left their jobs in, in Charlotte and other neighboring towns and they just moved there to volunteer and help. They're still there.

• 1:24:11Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, I've been there several times.

• 1:24:13Mike Rowe?

  But the volunteers are still, the place is still in ruins. They're building it back. Like, when I look at journalism, I see like two things. It's, it's being ignored geographically and for the same reasons, the same indifference, I think, that led a lot of people to conclude there was really nothing to write about in East Palestine.

• 1:24:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:24:36Mike Rowe?

  But they're also missing one of the greatest stories.

• 1:24:42Mike Rowe?

  The one of the greatest stories, one of the most, I mean, if you're looking for humanity, if you're trying to find the neighbors you wish you had, find the people in western North Carolina who have been volunteering, who have taken indefinite leaves of absences from their companies to be there for their neighbors to help them.

• 1:25:03Speaker 03

  I've written about it several times. I've showcased people that have been doing that. There is a group of Amish from Pennsylvania that have been down there for several weeks that I've highlighted. You know, it's just been wonder, so if you wonder about societal fabric and do we still have it? Yes, you can see it so much in western North Carolina. You can also see it in Wheeling, West Virginia, where two weeks ago, nine people died in a flash flood, including a three-year-old little girl. And the first people to show up are volunteer firemen and neighbors.

• 1:25:42Speaker 03

  And so our connective tissue is there, but oftentimes our government is not. I've talked several times with Russell Voight, who's the OMB, and he's in charge of FEMA, and they've been on top of it down there. The problem is, is that the first two or three months under the last administration, it was just benign to neglect.

• 1:26:09Mike Rowe?

  Do you blame the administration or the media? Or both?

• 1:26:14Speaker 03

  Both. I would say both. I mean, who reports on it? It's Appalachia, right? It's the one part of the country it's still okay to make fun of people that live there. Still okay to call them hillbillies, right? Or hillpeople. It's Appalachia. It's, why am I going to cover this? I'm going to go to LA and cover something. That'll be bigger. It's like when Sandy happened, and it happened in New York, so everyone went to New York. But you don't cover western North Carolina. I mean, I do, but the big legacy media doesn't.

• 1:26:50Mike Rowe?

  It's so interesting. I mean, I've said so many times, I know that you and I are kindred spirits. I'm not a journalist, but I do remember, like, really wrestling with, there was a lot of pressure for me to take dirty jobs to New Orleans a month or so after Katrina. And I, I very nearly did, well, because I wanted to, and then if I'm really being honest in kind of a shitty way, I, I would look good down there with my crew, you know? I'm not proud of that, but I remember one evening, watching the coverage, I called my boss at Discovery and said, "Look, I don't think the country needs to see another B-list

• 1:27:31Mike Rowe?

  celebrity striking a heroic pose, or some journalist perched on a pile of rubble, bringing you the absolute latest. I think maybe what they're gonna need is some attention a year from now, or maybe two years." Chuck, you went down there, you did some volunteer down there. How long after did you go?

• 1:27:53Speaker 01

  It was a couple of years after, it was like four years after, and, and I went for five years in a row.

• 1:27:59Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:00Speaker 01

  And helped, uh, in Waveland, Mississippi, that's where, they say the, the levees broke in New Orleans, but Waveland, the storm hit Waveland.

• 1:28:08Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:08Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:28:09Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:10Mike Rowe?

  So the question, Selena, is like, as, as a journalist, and now, you're about to become a very famous person. I, I know you're gonna hate this, you don't wanna hear, "They're, they're making a movie about you," right? You can't just be a journalist, no matter how much you wanna be. You're going to be, God help me, an influencer. You already are, but I mean, you're going to, people are going to look to you as a connector, as an arbiter of common sense. Some are gonna call you the Trump Whisperer. You're going to be seen as a person who was right when everybody else was wrong, and who stuck by her guns, and so forth and so on, and you're gonna have to learn to deal with all of that praise, and all the cheap shots that come with it.

• 1:28:52Speaker 03

  Lots of Jesus.

• 1:28:53Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:28:54Speaker 03

  So much Jesus.

• 1:28:55Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. But, you're going to constantly have to make these calls about what to cover, and what not to cover. And I think maybe the place to land this plane, or at least start to, is to, is to just talk about that for a minute. Partly because I, I wrestle with it all the time. I've got twenty-five-hundred kids who's got, who have great stories. Which one should I write about? I can't write about them all. You know, you've got a thousand towns you can go to, and a million stories you can tell. And, you know, you're going to have to become very circumspect, I think, uh, very discriminating with your time and with your talent.

• 1:29:37Speaker 03

  So, the last two stories that I wrote are probably where my heart is and where the things I'll always be covering. I went to Wheeling, where the flood killed people. This is an historic moment. Nine people, right? That's unbelievable. Four inches, almost five inches of rain fell in 20 minutes, right? And this is West Virginia, so the topography is, and you guys grew up in Maryland, you know what it's like. Deep gullies, as I say, cricks and mountains, and these people's lives are torn apart. These communities are never the same. But it's also the story of richness.

• 1:30:22Speaker 03

  You see Fairmont State University opening up their doors and putting family, an entire apartment building collapsed. You know, dozens of people were put out. Those are the stories I will always cover. The second story I just did is the shocking hollowing out of volunteer firemen across the country. Yep. I mean, in Pennsylvania alone, when I graduated from high school, there were 370,000 volunteer firefighters in Pennsylvania alone. There are now 39,000. That's one-tenth. That is something that I think is really important to show up.

• 1:31:05Speaker 03

  The first people that showed up, first firefighters that showed up in Governor Josh Shapiro's house was firebombed by a madman, was a volunteer fire company. Yeah. You know, the first people that showed up in western North Carolina? Volunteer firemen. And so, we need to educate and call out to get young people and middle-aged people to go out there and do that. You don't have to go in for a fire, but you could be there doing the staging, right? We need to inspire people. And so, those are the kind of stories I will always write. Those are the ones that are closest to my heart. I'm not someone that tends to run to, you know, the flashy story.

• 1:31:50Speaker 03

  You know, even with western North Carolina, I waited two weeks before I went down there because I knew all the celebrity journalists will be down there for the first two weeks, and then they run away. Right, because, but I, I continuously go down there and highlight and write about that.

• 1:32:06Mike Rowe?

  If we weren't so damn busy, you and me, we ought to collaborate at some point.

• 1:32:11Speaker 03

  We do.

• 1:32:12Mike Rowe?

  I can imagine a big, thick book called For Your Consideration and

• 1:32:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:32:18Mike Rowe?

  just photos and profiles of the people that we've met. And

• 1:32:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:32:24Mike Rowe?

  the little things they've done that aren't really so little at all. You're so right about the firemen. We've had a couple on this podcast, specifically because the recruiting, and this is back to the trades too, right?

• 1:32:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:32:38Mike Rowe?

  This is not about just welders and plumbers. There's this whole giant pressure on the labor pool. It's bad, you know, five out, two in. You've talked about it year after year. Five out, two in, five out, two in. So, you know, the submarine makers are competing for the same people the volunteer fire department is desperate to have and so forth and so forth. So, look, I wish I had a crystal ball, but if there's a solution to all of this, you are part of it, my friend.

• 1:33:12Speaker 03

  Well, so are you. And I think the onus is, is to be good examples and shine a light on the people that make a difference and the people that we need to make a difference. I mean, at the end of my book, I thank my parents, my grandchildren, my children. But I also thank every person who let me come in their home and annoy them. Let me come to their church. Let me go bowling with them. Let me work with them. Um, you know, those, and, and President Trump for putting up with me because I am annoying. Um, I, I, I admit it.

• 1:33:47Mike Rowe?

  What is it like? I'm sorry, this is small, but people are probably curious. You're just going through your day. You're sitting there in your house, you know, you got all your, you got all your old recipes, stuff. You're just being yourself and you get a text and it's the president. Did you ever imagine in your wildest fantasies that your penchant, your proclivity for taking the back road would somehow land you here?

• 1:34:17Speaker 03

  I have been a cafeteria worker. I have been a shampoo girl. I have cut people's hair. I went to community college. I have been a daycare worker. I have worked in a sewer treatment plant. These were all jobs that I took. I was not particularly good at any of them. But to think that I am very humbled by the fact that the president will talk to me. And I think it's mutual respect. And that that common thread is a mutual respect because we both see that we both appreciate

• 1:34:57Speaker 03

  and love the people I cover, which just happen to be the same people that have galvanized behind him for the most part. And I think that's where that that thing happens.

• 1:35:11Mike Rowe?

  What a trip you're having. Do me a favor, when you talk to him next, give him my regards. Tell him our paths are destined to cross. Tell him I've had great meetings with Linda McMahon, Governor Abbott.

• 1:35:23Speaker 03

  Oh, she's great.

• 1:35:24Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, I'm sitting down with Governor Abbott very soon. We've got some big things planned in Texas. Just had a great meeting yesterday with Governor Kemp in Georgia.

• 1:35:34Speaker 03

  Oh, great guy.

• 1:35:35Mike Rowe?

  So, I don't know that, for me, and for my little foundation, really, or even for this big macro problem we're talking about, I don't know that the ultimate solution is a .gov. But I think our government has to play a role in turning all of this around. And I made the same offer to President Obama. If I can be of use and still hang on to what's left of my sanity, I'm at their disposal.

• 1:36:05Speaker 03

  Well, President Trump is not a big government guy, but he is a guy that likes to inspire. And inspiring young people to get into the trades is is part of what he wants to accomplish. Yeah, let's just think about this, and I'll leave you on this because you have taken way too much of your time. But we've only gone through, what, 120, 130 days of this presidency? Technically...

• 1:36:30Speaker 03

  It's a lame duck, right? Like, usually, they're like, chilling out, like, "I won the second one, guys, let's go." Um, not this guy. No way, not this guy. Part of that has to do with being spared. And he believes that he has a purpose, a greater purpose. And he wants to get it done. And he says it in the book, he wants to save this country. Whether you agree with him or not, having that near-death experience, I think all of us can wrap our head around.

• 1:37:03Mike Rowe?

  The book is called Butler. It's out today, but it's about a lot more than a... It's a township, right? Yeah?

• 1:37:11Speaker 03

  Um, that is a township, yeah.

• 1:37:14Mike Rowe?

  It's so hard to keep it straight. Pennsylvania is so odd with its... And really...

• 1:37:19Speaker 03

  Oh, we're odd.

• 1:37:20Mike Rowe?

  You really are, man. But, I mean, a township, a village?

• 1:37:23Speaker 03

  We have no town... We only have one town in the entire state. You're either a borough, or municipality, or a township, or a village, or an unincorporated, um, tab... place. Unincorporated place. That means it's like, we don't think you exist.

• 1:37:38Mike Rowe?

  We're not incorporated.

• 1:37:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, we don't like you.

• 1:37:41Mike Rowe?

  Well, look, the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced you're right. And so is The Post. Pennsylvania is about to become a kind of, not just a litmus test, but a reflection of a great many things. I wish I was smart enough to come up with a better metaphor, but the melting pot that we are, and that horrible casserole you described, with peas, meatloaf, gelatin, all of this smashed together, it's such a messy, delicious, un...

• 1:38:09Speaker 03

  Wonderful.

• 1:38:09Mike Rowe?

  Wonderful thing. And you're bearing witness to all of it. Pick up the book, you'll love it. Check out her columns over at, uh, are you still selinazito.com?

• 1:38:20Speaker 03

  Selina Zito. Yeah, just me.

• 1:38:21Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:22Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:38:23Mike Rowe?

  If you have a hard time finding her, I don't know what to tell you, because she's about to be everywhere. She's like stepping in gum, my friend Selina.

• 1:38:30Speaker 03

  With my mop hair.

• 1:38:31Mike Rowe?

  With your mop hair. My god. Still great to see you. Thank you for doing this.

• 1:38:36Speaker 03

  So awesome to see you. Thank you so much.

• 1:38:38Mike Rowe?

  You're welcome.

• 1:38:40Speaker 02

  If you leave some stars, could you make it five? And before you go, could you please subscribe? If you leave some stars, could you make it five? And before you go, could you please subscribe? If you leave some stars, could you make it five? And before you go. Before you go. Could you please subscribe?

• 1:39:14Speaker 04

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