The Karol Markowicz Show: California Corruption, Media Decline & the Fight for Accountability with Susan Crabtree
4/3/202626 mincomplete
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0:17Call 844 -844 -iHeart. Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeart
0:28Radio. My guest today is Susan Crabtree.
0:32Susan is the national political correspondent for Real Clear Politics, author of the book Fool's
0:37Gold on California Corruption, and a contributor to the California Post and City Journal.
0:42Hi, Susan. So nice to have you on.
0:45It's great to be with you, Carol.
0:46Thanks for having me. So I've been on a little bit of a California run
0:50on this show. I had Joel Pollack on.
0:53He's the opinion editor at California Post.
0:55I had Jennifer Van Laar from Red State on.
0:59And so the question I ask my California buddies is, are you hopeful about California?
1:06Oh, no, I'm actually not hopeful.
1:09I'd have to be brutally honest.
1:11That's the bluntest answer I've gotten.
1:14California Post is actually a bright light.
1:16I think things are changing a little bit in the media landscape because of the
1:21California Post. And now there's a new venture within the Manhattan Institute is launching their
1:27California anti -fraud venture. I didn't know that.
1:30That's great. Yes. Everybody, you know, fraud is suddenly sexy in California.
1:35Um, we've been dealing with it, people who live here for, uh, you know, decades
1:40and it's only gotten worse and worse, but, uh, at least there's some, there's some
1:46signs of hope flickering. But the problem is that the politics aren't changing.
1:52Uh, we have, you know, if I were to predict at this point, who's going
1:56to win the governorship, we're going to go from Gavin Newsom, possibly most likely to
2:02Eric Swalwell. Wow. And that is someone, as you know, Carol, who's had a very
2:09dodgy record in, in Congress about his own personal ethics and, you know, caught with
2:16a relationship Chinese spy. And this is who I'm complaining about Gavin Newsom's connection, Ina.
2:24Yeah. Suddenly we're like, maybe we'll keep Gavin.
2:26It's on the horizon here.
2:29Um, as we look to the actual politics of California, I don't think it's going
2:33to change. I do think that there's more accountability happening now.
2:38I hope that lasts. I hope it's not a flash in the pan just because
2:42the national media outlets on the conservative side are wanting to take Gavin Newsom out.
2:48And I think, I hope it's not short -lived.
2:51Right. So your book is, uh, subtitled The Radicals, Con Artists, and Traitors Who Killed
2:57the California Dream and Now Threaten Us All.
3:00What's the common thread there between the radicals, the con artists, and the traitors?
3:05Well, we do have a lovely, uh, list of characters underneath the book, uh, title,
3:11Gavin Newsom, Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris, and Adam Schiff.
3:15And the common theme is that, uh, what I just mentioned, uh, a lack of
3:19accountability in California. I grew up here and it wasn't the case.
3:24Right. It's a one -party system.
3:27And so the corruption just feeds upon itself because no one's watching.
3:32And we've lost that, the media, these smaller media outlets that everybody, these newspapers, that
3:40sometimes were family -run, locally focused, and really held these people accountable.
3:46Has, uh, everybody's reading habits have changed, where we get our information has changed.
3:52You have the death of these local news outlets, and even the Los Angeles Times,
3:59um, has seen its staff decimated, and they've gone in a much more openly liberal
4:06direction because it's access journalism in California.
4:10So the common theme is these, you know, I just did a story on behested
4:16payments. This is a common, this is a unique phenomenon to California, and now the
4:22national media is getting wind of it, and they can't believe that you can just,
4:26that Newsom and other politicians can direct hundreds of millions of dollars from their, from
4:34corporations with business before the state to a charitable cause of their choice, even their
4:40wife's charity, um, that she takes a salary from.
4:44Yeah, it sounds questionable. Yeah, but this is common practice in California.
4:49So how did you get into this world?
4:51How did you get into writing about California specifically, or just being a writer in
4:56general? I think my mom encouraged me, uh, to be a writer.
5:00I gave credit to my mom.
5:01Um, she said, uh, she was a teacher, she's a kindergarten teacher, and she always,
5:06in a stressed reading, um, we couldn't watch too much TV, and we were, she
5:11liked, she thought that I was talented at a young age.
5:14I had, I did long writing.
5:16I think my boss, Carl Cannon, I'll tell him it began then.
5:20I always write too long.
5:21Uh, but she, she's, my mom saw something.
5:25me. Then I always pursued it in high school.
5:28I was on the newspaper staff.
5:29And then I went to college.
5:32I took journalism courses. I honestly don't think it was a great decision, but I
5:38wanted to pursue journalism instead of a wider major.
5:42So I bypassed all the UCs and only chose schools that had journalism as a
5:49major. Then I went immediately to DC and started there with the American Society of
5:55Magazine Editors. I got a internship at National Geographic and I got the bug for
6:02Washington, DC. I thought I was going to be there for three months.
6:05It turned out 23 years and lots of ups and downs.
6:10It happens. DC catches people, you know.
6:14Yeah, it was sort of addictive.
6:15The climate there is great for young people in journalism and politics in general.
6:22It's like, you know, going to a graduate school for, it's like another college atmosphere,
6:29an extension of college. But I loved it for so long.
6:33I had great experiences at the Washington Times, then Roll Call Newspaper is where I
6:40did a lot of my, cutting my teeth with other journalists that have gone on
6:44to bigger and better places.
6:48Like, I was there with Jim Van Hyatt, someone laughing with him, founder of Politico
6:55and Axios. Paul Kane was the political editor, sorry, the congressional reporter, senior one at
7:02the Washington Post. Chris Eliza and Mark Preston at CNN and a lot of others
7:09that I'm not going to mention.
7:10But so that was the group that I, you know, quit.
7:13Like, cut your teeth with, yeah.
7:15Then I kind of went to the trader side of the, I decided to go
7:19to the Hill newspaper and work for them.
7:23It had a great run there.
7:25Did a lot of ethics reporting and corruption cases that launched FBI investigations.
7:31I really loved it. I think I should have been a prosecutor if I wasn't
7:35in journalism. I just, I love it.
7:37I can see it. Yeah.
7:39Would you say that investigative journalism is your passion?
7:43Oh, yeah, absolutely. It really is.
7:47And I've been so lucky to have the opportunity to do it because it's sort
7:51of a rare thing these days.
7:53But I keep getting new opportunities.
7:55It's amazing. I'm so thankful for them.
7:58What do you love about investigative journalism?
8:00Is it the discovery or is it the process?
8:03What do you enjoy? I think it's sort of like, you know, a mystery of,
8:09you know, you see something that is, you think is bizarre or not right in
8:16some kind of filing looking at.
8:18And that roll call, we were trained to look at these federal election records on
8:23a quarterly basis for all the big politicians, all the big senators and members, leaders
8:29in Congress, as well as the party committees.
8:31So you see something and then you thought, okay, you talk to your editor about
8:36it and see if you can get some time to pursue it.
8:38And sure enough, I did a lot of earmark reporting that was corruption.
8:43I got a little stuck with it.
8:45We're plotting out the earmarks for local in California, actually, a lot of work in
8:50California, where they would get like a beautification, $1 million or $2 million for beautification,
8:56right near the Target store that they owned.
9:00Right, right. Yeah. And, you know, the Bridge to Nowhere was a great one.
9:05We followed that. Senator Stevens and in Alaska, that those pet projects, you know, just
9:13were, there was an abundance of material.
9:16There always is in Congress.
9:17Yeah, of course. Right. But I feel like we're in a particularly like corrupt time
9:24right now. I don't mean that more people are corrupt.
9:27I'm sure it's been the same amount of people throughout history, but I feel like
9:30a lot of these stories are surfacing.
9:32Like on my other podcast that I do with Mary Catherine Hamm, we've had, we've
9:35just covered a lot of corruption stories in the last few months where it just
9:39seems to be everywhere and maybe coming to the surface more.
9:42Is that just because of reporters making these discoveries that they didn't make before?
9:48Or has it always been here?
9:51I think the corruption is part of human nature.
9:54So it's always going to be there.
9:55And, but I do think because of X, there's an excitement for even citizen journalists
10:02to get involved. You know, you have Nick Shirley tugging at something and going and
10:07confronting these daycare centers, these ghost daycare centers in Minnesota.
10:12And then you have the follow -up and you have people like CVS News going
10:17in and really, you know, nailing it down and making sure that everybody's interviewed, that
10:23should be interviewed. And so it seems to be starting at the grassroots level and
10:27then percolating up. And then you get some really solid journalism, um, where it's confirmed.
10:35Absolutely. This is happening. Um, so I honestly think I credit X, even though I
10:42don't love X at times.
10:44I understand that feeling. We all have a very love it or hated situation over
10:50there. Yeah. I mean, you could get sucked in.
10:52and your whole day is gone on X.
10:54Happens to the best of us.
10:56As journalists, we have to actually do the work that it takes to produce these
11:01stories and really nail them down.
11:03Whereas like a citizen journalist, they can just put something out there and their reputation
11:07is not, and their job is not tied to it.
11:11So - Yeah, if they make a mistake, they make a mistake and kind of
11:14their audience is more forgiving.
11:16But when you work for an established news brand and you make a mistake, it's
11:20a lot harder. I even typos make me feel so terrible.
11:25When I have a typo in one of my columns, I stress out about it.
11:29I'm like, oh, it's in the newspaper.
11:31It's in the actual newspaper that you're gonna be holding in your hand and I
11:34can't fix that. It's tough.
11:36I'm just mad about the ones that I constantly have typos in mind.
11:40I have a, I'm doing, I'm juggling so much as we all are as parents
11:46and journalists and trying to break stories and trying to dig deep.
11:52It's a lot and follow the news that's breaking, you know, constantly on a variety
11:56of topics, you know, international news and local news here because I'm a national reporter.
12:02So I feel like, you know, I am covering it all, but, you know, sometimes
12:08very interesting. But, you know, I will have, I use that mechanism on X to
12:14try to edit my tweets and when it's not working, I'm screaming at Elon Musk,
12:20why does it work? Yeah, sometimes they just don't have the edit button.
12:24Sometimes it just does not exist.
12:25I don't know, it's random though.
12:26Yeah. And I think that, I mean, we're at a stage with AI and stuff
12:31where we could use, you should be able to use the edit button to fix
12:35a typo and not have it be like a whole new tweet.
12:39Like, it should just be the old tweet.
12:41If, you know, if it's one word, it's okay to change it and move on
12:46with our lives instead of being like, it's a whole new tweet now.
12:49Yeah, you have to take it down.
12:51Yeah, you have to take it down and redo it.
12:53That's basically what I do.
12:54I almost never use that.
12:55If it's already doing, I just go, you know what?
12:57Yeah, exactly. You know, me and Donald Trump, we have big thumbs, so it's all
13:01good. Same, same. We're going to take a quick break and be right back on
13:05the Carol Markowitz Show. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting?
13:11Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad -supported streaming music from Spotify and
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13:20combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message.
13:23Plus, only iHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio.
13:28Think podcasting can help your business?
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13:36That's 844 -844 -IHEART. What are you most proud of in your life?
13:42I'm most proud of, and when you were getting at this in the previous question,
13:46that I decided in 2017, as a new mom and someone who had been in
13:54D .C. for 23 years, that I needed to do something different with my life.
13:59And I needed a change of scenery and a new job.
14:04And it was a little scary for me.
14:08More than a little scary.
14:09In my early 40s, I'll date myself here, I'll age myself, to be doing that.
14:15But I was 43 and just had my only child.
14:19And I wanted to really experience it with her.
14:22And it was clear to me, I was, there were four days went by where
14:26I was not seeing her at night or in the morning.
14:30It's so hard. Yeah. Donald Trump's first term.
14:32And I still wanted to do journalism, which was hard for me.
14:36But I had the opportunity with my husband who could work from anywhere.
14:40And we decided we would move.
14:42And I decided to take sort of like, I was a White House correspondent for
14:47the Washington Examiner. And I was moved over to the Senate.
14:52At the time, I didn't really want the Senate because you have to be there
14:55at all hours of the night, depending on, the White House is actually a little
15:00bit more normal than with Donald Trump.
15:03The hours are slightly more normal.
15:05And I didn't want to get a night nanny and a day nanny and do
15:09all of that. It was a lot.
15:10Yeah. It was a lot.
15:12So I did. And also, I think, just challenging in my job.
15:16I wanted, I didn't need to cover the Senate again.
15:19I had already done that many years.
15:22So I decided to just go throw.
15:25I wanted to do a freelance story for the free weekend.
15:29I decided I was going to move no matter what.
15:30We're going to go back to my home state of California where I grew up.
15:34I love the landscapes here.
15:36I missed the recreation, being able to just, you know, jump in your car and
15:41go to the beach. If you wanted to go to the mountains, all of those
15:44things that were part of my, my upbringing, my childhood.
15:48And so I just, I, I freelance, I decided I was going to freelance a
15:53story or try to pitch the free beacon.
15:56And they actually said, well, we have a position that's opened up, an investigative reporter
16:00position. And honestly, I love the Washington Free Beacon.
16:03I love how scrapped. They did great work.
16:05Yeah. Just a really great place because they give you a lot of freedom.
16:10And if you're performing, they let you run with it.
16:13So they said, we have a position.
16:14I'm going to California. And they thought about it for a second.
16:17And I said, well, we'll try you out and we'll see how it goes.
16:20A lot to investigate in California.
16:23Yeah, and actually they loved having me out here.
16:25And that was when Newsom was first on the rise and he was leading his
16:29first resistance to Trump. So it's been great fun.
16:34And I've had lots of material to work with.
16:37It is difficult to live in California at this time if you're a multimillionaire, to
16:42be quite honest, especially because the coast, we live at the coastal area of San
16:46Diego. I grew up more inland where it's cheaper.
16:50So, you know, there's challenges for sure.
16:52But for me, it's a passion and I'm learning so much more than if I
16:58were just circling in the same hallways and actually learning how policy affects people's lives.
17:06We're going to take a quick break and be right back on The Carol Markowitz
17:09Show. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting?
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17:18Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two
17:23combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message.
17:26Plus, only iHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio.
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17:32Think iHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting.
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18:09Anyone, anywhere. So you love California, but you're pessimistic about the future of California, but
18:17you stay. Yeah, stay to fight.
18:21I think that you've, as long as you can stay, as you have the resources,
18:26because like I said, it's becoming quite...
18:28Harder and harder all the time, right?
18:30The elites can stay, and then we have poverty rate.
18:33So the middle class is shrinking.
18:36I'm talking, when I talk about middle class, I'm talking to anybody who's making under
18:39$300 ,000 for your household income.
18:42Wow. And that's middle class out here.
18:46It is, unless you live in the Central Valley or inland areas, but it is
18:52something I feel like I'm, I shouldn't be, this is my home state.
18:56I grew up. I had wonderful, wonderful memories.
18:59I want my daughter to experience it.
19:01I don't know if she'll be able to.
19:03We, I go back and forth with my husband all the time, because he's from,
19:07he's from Boston, and he has a lot of family in Florida.
19:10And, and we do evaluate it on a regular basis.
19:13Yeah. But now we're staying to fight, and I love the fact that there's a
19:18new arsenal, there's a new group of reporters out there with a big masthead to,
19:26to bring in some true accountability to this, to the state.
19:32It's really great. And I'm rooting for California.
19:35I mean, I always loved California, and I always saw it as like, you know,
19:39just, I would say like a promised land in America, but it was, it was
19:43the, the new frontier. You guys were supposed to be the, the leaders of, of
19:47what came next. And I always wanted California to be that.
19:51And of course, the, the politics over the last decade plus have just done so
19:55much damage, but I root for California to pick itself back up.
19:59And I hope you're all successful with that.
20:02Well, thank you. We need it.
20:05The more accountability, the better.
20:07Yeah. That's, that's the way to go about it.
20:09The more accountability, the better.
20:11Give us a five year out prediction.
20:13It could be about anything at all.
20:15Well, what I'm worried about in five years is our information flow of information, how
20:21we're receiving it. I feel like I have so lucky to work for Carl Kammen.
20:26He's one of the best editors I've ever known and worked for the best actually.
20:32And people like Victor David Hansen, who have a knowledge of so many things, you
20:38know, you, they can talk about.
20:40Yeah. Or they can talk about, you know, the political, what happened in the Reagan
20:46administration and to science. It's so many different subject matters.
20:52And I feel like the, on X, we will be laughing about what we are
20:56tweeting on X. X is going to probably, it's already exploding with information that you
21:03feel like you have to keep track of the little tidbits.
21:06And I think it's going to be far more siloed.
21:08You're going to have a maybe have like sort of an X for just politics
21:12or California politics versus national politics because people want to be experts in their field
21:18and they love you. But if you lose that, if you lose that wider breadth
21:25of information, you just become sort of siloed and, and sort of just thinking about
21:33things in a very incremental way instead of, you know, I truly worry about that
21:40for my daughter. And I also worry about these new AI.
21:46I, I, I, I, Bye.
21:48Okay. There's a new phenomenon that I just discovered at WhatsApp.
21:53It's so disturbing. It really is.
21:57To one another and how kids are relating to these.
22:02I mean, honestly. Yeah. Nothing creeps me out more than the idea that my kids
22:05are going to have a friend who is an AI bot.
22:09I mean, I had Debra So on the show recently and she has a book
22:13called Sextinction about how Americans aren't having sex.
22:15And she said, you know, in our lifetime, somebody's going to bring like a sex
22:21robot to your party and that's going to be their girlfriend.
22:24And you're going to have to be like, well, that's just how it is.
22:27And I was like, not to my party.
22:28They're not. That is so weird.
22:31No, absolutely not. But it will happen first in California.
22:33Of course. You would not believe what we run into on a daily basis in
22:40our communities and what we have to fight in our schools.
22:43What's going on? I mean, several national news stories came out of our school district,
22:48both the elementary school and the high school.
22:52Now the high school district, it's unbelievable what's going on and what is acceptable.
22:57I do think things not in California, but in the rest of the country are
23:01changing in terms of the transgender ideology.
23:05So hopefully we're on the right track with something, I guess.
23:09Yeah. But I do worry about it.
23:12We'll take the win, right?
23:14Yeah. At least at the Supreme Court and in others.
23:18And certainly even overseas, you know, they're not.
23:23Transgender surgeries are when they're realizing that hormones for kids is not healthy.
23:28Bad idea. Yeah. Well, Susan, I've loved this conversation.
23:32I really enjoyed talking to you and getting to know you a little bit more.
23:36Leave us here with your best tip for my listeners on how they can improve
23:40their lives. I try to.
23:43I'm not always successful. I try to start my day with a few minutes of
23:48just calm. And for me, I read scripture and do a little study for that,
23:53even if it's five minutes, because as a journalist in a rough and tumble world,
23:59you never know what's going to be coming at you throughout the day.
24:01The same as a parent, you know, your kid might, be sick as my kid
24:06is this morning and your day changes.
24:08And so it's sort of like that Rudyard Kipling phrase, that poem, you know, if
24:15you can keep your head about you when all of the rest are losing you.
24:20That to me, like if you center yourself in the beginning of the day and
24:24realize like, I'm, this is what my values are.
24:27This is how I like to handle things.
24:30I'm going to start, I'm not going to just react.
24:32I can only control how I react to something.
24:35I think that if I would have really focused on that as a younger journalist,
24:40I think things would have been smoother.
24:41And I think I would have been let more emotionally regulated.
24:46It is a difficult business, especially when you're in the throes of it on the
24:50front lines in Washington. And so you can then, as you approach these, these either
24:59conflicts with other people, news stories that didn't work out as you wanted to, disappointments,
25:04um, or your, something's going on in your personal life.
25:07You can just go back to that place, um, that of calm and centered.
25:13Um, and for me, it is, um, my, my belief in Christ.
25:17So I truly value that and I try to live it.
25:22I'm not always successful to live out my values, but it has helped.
25:26I love that. Yeah. She is Susan Crabtree.
25:29Read her at Real Clear Politics, California Post and City Journal and pick up her
25:33book, Fool's Gold. Thank you so much for coming on, Susan.
25:37Carol, it's my pleasure. Thanks for having me so much.