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Smerconish

A Fight For The Democratic Party's Identity; TMZ Says It Got New Unverified Note On Nancy Guthrie. Is The iPhone Birth Control?. Aired 9-10a ET

Aired June 27, 2026 - 09:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

And in terms of the queer space, that means the assumption that we're all straight heterosexual, it establishes we do exist. And not only that, we contribute so much to all of our communities, including in the arts and culture space.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: For more information, you can head to outmuseum.org reservations to visit R Encouraged (ph).

Thanks for joining me today. Tune in next weekend for CNN special coverage of the Fourth of July. Smerconish is up next.

[09:00:39]

MICHAEL SMERCONISH, CNN ANCHOR: A Democratic divide. I'm Michael Smerconish in the Philly burbs.

Tuesday wasn't just about a handful of congressional primaries in New York. It may be our first real look at the Democratic Party's directional challenge headed toward 2028. Not whether the party has energy, it does, the question is whether that energy can win a national election.

Let's lay out what just happened. A year after winning New York City's mayoral primary, Zohran Mamdani wanted to see whether his movement could travel. He endorsed three candidates for Congress. All three won. Claire Valdez, a Democratic socialist, won in an open Brooklyn and Queens seat, beating borough President Antonio Reynoso.

Brad Lander defeated incumbent Congressman Dan Goldman. And Darializa Avila Chevalier unseated five turn Congressman Adriano Espaillat, chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

That two were incumbents, backed by House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, still didn't save them. The next morning, Mamdani told CNN that in his words, new Yorkers are hungry for a new kind of politics that puts working people first. But this wasn't just a good night for the mayor. It was a show of force for a movement. The philosophy that Bernie Sanders has pushed for 40 years and the one that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrote into Congress.

And there's a reason this doesn't look like just a one off. CNN's Harry Enten recently flagged remarkable polling, a trend in CNN's data, today about two thirds of Democrats view socialism favorably, 2/3. In 2010, it was closer to half. Over that same period, favorable views of capitalism among Democrats fell from 51 percent to 42 percent. That doesn't mean that most Democrats want a Democratic socialist for president. But it does suggest that the party's center of gravity, especially among its youngest members, has been moving for years.

Mamdani didn't create the shift, but he's certainly a beneficiary of it, which helps explain why this movement isn't waiting. Politico reported that the morning right after the primaries, the Democratic Socialists of America had already started organizing for the 2028 presidential primary. The group is sending surveys to all 250 of its chapters, asking who members want for president, with an eye towards shaping the party's next nominee. In other words, the race for 2028, it's already started.

But before anybody decides the party has been remade, let's look at the totality of the map, because the party is really trying to satisfy two very different electorates. The same week that progressives dominated safe Democratic districts in New York, Democrats elsewhere nominated candidates who look very different. In New York, 17th, about 30 miles from New York City, a swing seat, the swing district held by Republican Mike Lawler, Democrats there chose Cait Conley, a West Point graduate, Army veteran and former National Security Council official.

And in Utah, Democrats went the other direction as well. Former Congressman Ben McAdams, the more moderate candidate in the field, won his primary after campaigning on working across the aisle and promising a new kind of politics. Which reminds us that outside deep blue districts, Democrats are often rewarding a very different type of candidate. Last fall, Virginia elected former CIA officer Abigail Spanberger as governor. New Jersey elected former Navy helicopter pilot Mikie Sherrill.

Safe blue districts, rewarding ideological passion. Competitive states rewarding pragmatism. Still, it hands Republicans plenty of fodder. Casting Democrats as socialists, that's an age old attack. Just listen to what President Trump said last night to a crowd at the Faith and Freedom Coalition's policy conference.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: These are not social Democrats. These are hardcore godless communists. They're godless communists. All communists are godless. They don't believe in God.

This is the most serious threat to our country since its existence, in my opinion, 250 years ago. This is a major threat to our country.

(END VIDEO CLIP) SMERCONISH: For years, Democrats have argued that type of rhetoric was an exaggeration. The difference now is that some candidates are openly running as Democratic socialists. They embrace the label and certain of them won. But not every Democrat sees that as a win for the party.

[09:05:02]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAMES CARVILLE, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: All of these people hate Democrats. Why do you want to run as a Democrat? Start your own movement if it's such a powerful, sweeping movement that's got momentum everywhere, then go ahead and be at the head of it. Don't use the Democrat Party to advance it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SMERCONISH: So that's the debate that's now playing itself out within the party. The left just proved it can win primaries. It hasn't proven that it can win elections in swing states. Two races this year, they're going to be sliced and diced for signs of what's to come, Maine and Michigan.

In Maine, Democrat Senate nominee Graham Platner has embraced Medicare for all and dismantling ICE. That his Nazi tattoo wasn't a deal breaker for Dems only heightens the Israel issue. And in Michigan, if Abdul El-Sayed wins the Democrat Senate primary, Democrat face a similar test in one of the nation's most important battleground states.

Winning a primary is about enthusiasm. Winning the White House, more about building a coalition. Between now and 2028, Democrats have to figure out whether those are the same thing.

It all leads me to today's poll question at smerconish.com. I want to know if you agree with the Ragin Cajun. Is James Carville right? Should Democrat socialists start their own party instead of running as Democrats?

Joining me now, Ashik Siddique is the national co-chair of the Democrat Socialists of America. Matt Bennett is founder of Third Way. That's a moderate Democrat think tank. He worked on five presidential campaigns and was a White House adviser to President Clinton.

Ashik, help me understand. I'm trying to wrap my head around what the movement actually represents. So I've spent some time on the website of the Democrat Socialists of America. I'm just going to run through a couple of pages that caught my eye. The first of them is this, it speaks of Medicare for all, ending the war on drugs, fighting mass incarceration and police brutality, college for all, housing for all and support for working families.

And then when I go deeper, I see this. Public ownership of large corporations, free everything, debt cancellation, Medicare for all with zero cost sharing, tuition free college plus free room and board, full student debt cancellation, universal childcare and universal rent control. Voting rights for non-citizens. Universal suffrage, it says, would extend full voting rights to non-citizens and open borders immigration, freedom of movement, let workers migrate freely without restrictive immigration controls, et cetera. Convince me, try to convince me that you can sell this outside of very blue New York congressional districts.

Meaning in Middle America.

ASHIK SIDDIQUE, NATIONAL CO-CHAIR, DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST OF AMERICA: Yes. So all over this country today, people are feeling like they have to work way harder to get by. People can't pay rent, they can't afford groceries. They see the billionaires getting richer while their own lives are getting worse.

They're seeing Elon Musk become the world's first trillionaire and he was responsible for overseeing so called reducing government inefficiencies while actually stripping public services for millions of Americans. So while the Trump administration, with the support of Democrat, has been increasing a military budget to $1 trillion and giving trillions of dollars in tax cuts to the already wealthiest, there's a huge disparity in what -- in what people are feeling in their day to day lives. People are feeling like neither political party is serving them in power. So when we talk about these expansive public services like universal health care, free college, affordable child care, and having higher taxes on the wealthy and shifting resources away from this extreme militarism, that's overwhelmingly people all over the country. So this is not isolated to New York City.

And by the way, New York City is America's city. It's the largest city in the world and the wealthiest city in the world. And Donald Trump comes out of New York City. Rudy Giuliani was mayor when I was growing up in New York City.

SMERCONISH: Well, I --

SIDDIQUE: So (inaudible) --

SMERCONISH: I hear you, but I'm mindful -- but I'm -- Ashik, Ashik, but I'm also -- I'm also mindful of the fact, and you'll correct me if I'm wrong, that only one in six Democrats made these determinations. I mean, there's a lot being made out of what just transpired in New York City. And I'm not seeking to undervalue it, but by the same token, actually, I'll make this a question to Matt Bennett.

Matt, we're paying far less attention to New York 17th or the congressional district in Utah or the election in Virginia or the election in New Jersey. This is where all the media attention is concentrated. What's your response?

MATT BENNETT, CO-FOUNDER, THIRD WAY: That's exactly right. I mean, look, first of all, as you were just noting, very few people voted in those three elections. Only 66,000 people voted in the Chevalier race. Compare that to Nikema Williams, a member of Congress from Georgia, 118,000 people voted in her primary despite the fact that she had basically no opponents. So very low turnout. And also the districts that just elected those three very liberal folks have a partisan voter index of D plus 36, which is to say there's 36 points more Democrats in those districts. By contrast, the districts we have to win to get the House back, to give Hakeem Jeffries the speakership, those districts went for Trump by eight points. That's a 44 point difference.

[09:10:26]

The places we have to win, places like Cait Conley just won where she has to beat Mike Lawler, those are very, very centrist, very purple or red places. And the kinds of things that you just read out in the DSA platform are wildly unpopular in those places. And we have just handed Republicans a very potent weapon to fire at those kinds of Democrats.

And it's not just like free stuff. We're talking about closing prisons and releasing prisoners. I mean, we now have people that are going to be members of Congress who don't think murderers should be in prison. You don't have to be a political genius to figure out how to weaponize that against other Democrats.

SMERCONISH: Ashik, will you respond to James Carville? The Raging Cajun says, well, why don't the folks behind this movement form their own party, because they're really not Democrats. They seem to hate traditional Democrats.

SIDDIQUE: Well, we're running as Democrats. We really believe in small D democracy. We want to expand democracy in every part of our lives. We want our government to be more democratic and we want elections to be way more accessible for so many people in this country who feel checked out of the political system. Something like a third of Americans were eligible to vote, just don't vote because they don't see either party supporting what -- like anything that would change their lives for the better.

So many Democrats who have been reliably voting for the Democratic Party for president just checked out of the last election. So there are millions of working people kind of falling out from the bottom of the Democratic Party because they don't feel served by politicians at the national level. So our goal is to activate core segments of the Democratic Party's traditional voting base, but also to expand the electorate.

So if we want to do that, there are clear choices to make and we're leaning into class politics. We think that the real divides in this country are not about identity or race or ethnicity, like Republicans. And sometimes Democrats have played into dividing people this way. And some of the races that you mentioned in New York were really ugly, where establishment Democrats were trying to use very divisive racial and ethnic politics against candidates that we were backing to support these universal policies.

We want to bring people together --

SMERCONISH: May I --

SIDDIQUE: -- across different (inaudible), around shared interests. And that can apply to the country.

SMERCONISH: May I -- may I say -- may I say to Matt Bennett, the passion clearly, in my opinion, rests with this portion of the Democratic Party. And I don't know that there'll be a candidate, unless Bernie decides at age 84 to take another shot who embodies their goals. But I envision a scene. It's 2028. You know, Dana Bash is the moderator.

There are 10 people on stage. Maybe they don't fit this mold mat, but they're going to be pulled leftward. And I think that's a real problem for the Democratic Party. You know what Republicans will say? Donald Trump is saying it already.

Take the final word Matt Bennett.

BENNETT: Couldn't agree more. That's what happened in 2020. I mean, who could forget the image of all the guys standing on stage raising their hands. The question they were responding to was --

SMERCONISH: Right.

BENNETT: -- should the border be decriminalized? I mean, this happened in 2020 when Sanders ran pretty strong. Thankfully, Biden was able to, you know, come from behind and eventually beat him badly. We need that to happen again. This country is fundamentally a 50-50 country.

If we run a radical, we will lose for sure. The only way to win is to appeal to the 60 per -- to the -- to the plurality of voters in the swing states that want a normie mainstream candidate. Radicals are deeply, deeply unpopular, and we cannot afford to nominate one.

SMERCONISH: Ashik Siddique and Matt Bennett, thank you. I love the conversation. Wish we had more time. I could talk about this for hours.

What are your thoughts at home? Hit me up on social media. I'll read some responses throughout the course of this program. Follow me on X. Follow me on YouTube.

What a dumb thing to say. Third parties can't win until the system is changed to proportional representation. Just trying to split -- this is in response to James Carville. just trying to split the Democratic vote and give your Republicans a chance.

Is that directed toward me or toward Carville? Look, here's the bottom line. This is where the passion rests within the party and on the Democratic side of the aisle. This is a problem Republicans don't have as much. They used to, but it's like herding cats.

So you want Ashik's passion, but in the end you want a Matt Bennett candidate, meaning someone who's more mainstream and can reach more voters than just the hardened left. And how they keep that all together remains to be seen.

I've got to believe that, you know, Bernie Sanders woke up happy on Wednesday morning. AOC woke up happy on Wednesday morning seeing these results. If I'm Rahm Emanuel, if I'm Josh Shapiro, if I'm one of the more centrist of the Democrats, I'm thinking, wow, how am I going to appease these folks and win the nomination?

[09:15:18]

I want to know what you think. Please go to my website at smerconish.com. Answer today's poll question. Is James Carville right? Should Democratic Socialists start their own party instead of running as Democrats?

Coming up, nearly five months after Nancy Guthrie was taken from her Arizona home, TMZ has received a new note from someone claiming to have video of Nancy. TMZ's Harvey Levin is here.

Please sign up for my newsletter. When you're voting at smerconish.com, you'll get the work of illustrators like Jack Ohman.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:20:02]

SMERCONISH: The Nancy Guthrie case has taken another unusual turn. The anonymous person who's been e-mailing TMZ claiming to have inside knowledge now wants a Bitcoin in exchange for what they say is video evidence that could identify Guthrie's alleged kidnappers. The claims remain unverified, raising obvious questions about credibility, motive, and whether there's anything of value there at all. Harvey Levin breaks it all down with me now.

Harvey, nice to see you again. I get confused. Initially, how many communications did you receive related to this case?

HARVEY LEVIN, FOUNDER & EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, TMZ: Well, we received the first ransom note, and then we received around a dozen e-mails from a man who claims to know who the kidnappers are and at least back then, knew where Nancy Guthrie was.

SMERCONISH: OK, but never have you received a communication from someone who said, like, I'm the man. I'm the one who did it.

LEVIN: No. We received a ransom note initially saying they had Nancy got Guthrie. She was safe but scared. They wanted $4 million that ballooned to 6 million by not meeting the deadline. And they said if they didn't meet the second deadline, they would kill her.

SMERCONISH: OK, now this new missive, what's the gist of it?

LEVIN: So this man has been sending us e-mails over the last four months. He stopped a couple of months ago because he wanted a Bitcoin in return for telling the FBI who the kidnappers were. He said he knew them and where Nancy Guthrie was. So we hadn't heard from him for a while. When the story came out this week that the second ransom note said that Nancy Guthrie had died.

And then it created a lot of media attention. Today, he sent us another note, and he says a variety of things. He says that, number one, that he is not, as he puts it, the idiot who recently called in a tip about her burial site in Mexico. Now, what's interesting about that is there was a report about somebody saying, we know where she's buried in Mexico. But he goes on to say, only two are directly involved, and I doubt they would be the ones calling to snitch on themselves.

So he is saying that there are two kidnappers, and he had told us in previous e-mails that there were multiple kidnappers, there was a main person and at least one other. Now he's saying there are two.

Now, I want to just say, Michael, real quickly, I am not vouching for this guy, because, look, he well could be a fraudster, but I know the FBI, because we're in touch with them, that they have been trying to figure out who this guy is, and they've been spending a lot of time on it. And they think that they're making headway. They told me that this week. So I'm trying to think on the one hand, if they think this guy is just a jerk who's trying to scam money, why are they spending all this time?

On the other hand, if he's legit, why didn't they pay the one Bitcoin he's asking, which is around $60,000 to lead them to the kidnappers and possibly Nancy Guthrie? So I just want to add one other thing, because this is where it gets interesting. He says, and he has not said this to us before, he says that he will hand them basically on a silver platter, evidence. He specifically says that he has, quote, "a short video of the main guy with Nancy the day that was probably her last."

And then he goes on to say that he has the phone with that video in a safe location. The phone is turned off. In return for the Bitcoin he will lead them to the phone, give them the password, that will then let them look at the video as well as the addresses of the two people he says are the kidnappers.

SMERCONISH: Harvey, it doesn't pass the smell test here in Philly. It sounds to me like extortion. Because if I'm this guy and I have this information, I'm going to give it to Harvey Levin and let you be the go between, because, correct me if I'm wrong, there's a reward out there.

LEVIN: There's a reward out there. But he seems more focused, Michael, reward -- on the Bitcoin than he does on the reward. He's really not mentioning the reward. He's really focused on this Bitcoin to a point where he says he is somehow close to these kidnappers, he says. And he's said this all, all the way along, and that he will look at the Bitcoin address which he provided here, but he would not actually access the Bitcoin until the kidnappers were caught because he really fears revenge by them.

[09:25:13]

So, look, I can't tell you this is real, but frankly, I'm just confused by the reaction that authorities have gotten here, which is if he's a fraudster, just ignore him. But they're spending time trying to figure out who this guy is. SMERCONISH: Yes, that kind of bums me out because it makes me wonder if they've got nothing else. You anticipated a question that I wanted to ask you, which is you're treating this as if it's the same individual that you've heard from all along. I take it the IP address, the language, something causes you to believe it's the same individual.

LEVIN: It's the Bitcoin address. So he had been giving us a Bitcoin address on all of the previous e-mails. In the last one, he said, I am deactivating the Bitcoin address. But each time he sent that Bitcoin address, nobody knows that. We haven't publicized it.

So we know it's the same guy. In this letter, he says, I've now created a new Bitcoin address and he gives it to us. But he also references the old one to authenticate he's the same guy.

SMERCONISH: Harvey, is there repartee, like back and forth? Are you saying things and drawing him in or is it a one way street?

LEVIN: It's a one way street. In terms of e-mails, we can't get in touch with him, but we have gotten on our television shows, on our website and on social media. And we went out today and said, look, we don't know if you're real or a fraudster. And send us some proof. Give us a screen grab of Nancy Guthrie and we will forward it on to the FBI.

And if you want that Bitcoin, maybe that's what will do it. And by the way, we forwarded the e-mail to the -- all of the e-mails to the FBI. But he just sent us another one a couple hours ago and said, I'm not going to do that because there's metadata and it will lead them right to me. So he's unwilling to provide what we had asked on social media, but in terms of repartee, he seems to be looking and if we say something, he tends to respond.

SMERCONISH: Is the FBI advising TMZ how you should be handling this situation?

LEVIN: Yes, about a month ago -- look, I don't want to seem totally naive and dumb here, but there is something that made me think, maybe this guy is real. So I called one of our contacts at the FBI and said, look, what if we do a documentary and we end up paying the Bitcoin address and see where it leads, and obviously, we let you know every step of the way? And they said -- and I said we would do nothing unless you say, OK, because we don't want to interfere. And so they kind of ghosted us after that. They said it was interesting.

And then they just didn't return our calls. This week, they called me back, and it's been almost a month. And they said, look, we are looking at this guy. We're getting closer, we think, to finding out who it is. And they asked us no stand down on this whole documentary idea.

So we did.

SMERCONISH: A final thought. The revelation this week that ransom note number two, not that you received, but that media outlets received, that suggested that she had past and was with nature, caused me to go back and rewatch the 26 second Savannah Guthrie video that followed that note being received to see, does this look to me like the daughter of a person that she's just learned is dead? And it did, sadly.

LEVIN: I thought that when it happened, when she first put it out there, because the way she said it was so we can celebrate.

SMERCONISH: Yes. Yes.

LEVIN: And that feels like celebrating her life. I got to tell you. Look, I'm not law enforcement, but, you know, we've been following this from the beginning.

It feels to me like these kidnappers wanted -- obviously, they wanted money. And then Nancy Guthrie dies on their watch, and they freak out because all of a sudden, it's not kidnapping anymore. It's murder. Because it's felony murder. Kidnapping that ends in a murder is -- that ends in death is murder.

And so they freak out and they just go radio silent because nobody has heard from them since that second ransom note, which was just days after she was kidnapped. So why, if they were very clear what they wanted, you know, in the first few days, did they just go off the radar? Because they still could have gotten money if they wanted or leading them to Nancy Guthrie's body or remains, right? But they haven't done that. So it feels to me like whoever this is just flipped out when she died and that they just are trying to stay as far away as possible.

SMERCONISH: Sadly, I think you're right. Harvey Levin, TMZ, thank you so much as always.

LEVIN: Thanks, Michael.

SMERCONISH: Let's see your social media reaction. From the world of Facebook this comes. Follow me on Facebook, X, the usual places.

Probably another hoax. I agree. Harvey agrees. The family is offering a $1 million reward, so why wouldn't this person --

Maria, that's exactly what I said. And Harvey's answer was to say that this individual, probably a crank, is demanding instead payment in -- these cases -- you know, these high profile cases, they bring people out from the fringe. It's sad. They want to be involved in it. They want to have a connection to the fame and the notoriety of this case.

Godspeed to the family. And hopefully the case gets solved. I just can't imagine the pain that they continue to deal with.

Still to come, your social media reaction to today's program. You can get in a comment. Perhaps I'll be responding to you on air.

And then I want to return to this story. I want to return to this story, the smartphone. It may have done what decades of sex education never could do. The most powerful birth control of the 21st century, it wasn't a pill, but apparently it was a phone. We're going to explain why and the role that AT&T played in this case.

I want to remind you, go to Smerconish.com and vote on today's poll question. I have no idea how this one will turn out. The Ragin' Cajun, James Carville, he says, hey, democratic socialists, why don't you start your own party because you're really not Democrats? Do you agree with him?

Sign up for the newsletter while you're there. It's free. It's worthy. You'll get the work of illustrators, speaking of democratic socialists, the work of Eric Allie.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:36:27]

SMERCONISH: Social media reaction to today's program includes this. Is the word socialist -- is it the word socialist that's causing all the uproar? Would caring Democrats be more appetizing?

Carole, good question. Fair question. You know, it all -- it all depends on the definition. And that's why Ashik Siddique I was so eager to have him to try and explain. What does this mean? I mean, here's something I didn't get to. Can we put on the screen the John Fund, National Review, articulation of what this is all about?

There you go. Listen to this now. There's ample evidence of the DSA's radicalism. Earlier this month, its leadership issued an updated platform that calls for abolishing the U.S. Senate, defunding the Pentagon, offering universal amnesty to illegal immigrants, transferring the ownership of major corporations to the public, and replacing the president and the Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress. It also includes the demand that police budgets be cut annually to zero.

In my opinion, with no disrespect to my guest, you can't sell that in middle America. That is a political death sentence. The people cheering for that articulation of a Democratic Party, you know, I'm sure earlier in the show I talked about Democratic reaction to this.

I'm sure Secretary Rubio and Vice President Vance were elated with the outcome of the New York race, because it means that the charge they we're going to use of Democrats anyway now actually has heft to say these people are socialists. And if John Fund is right with what it all means, you can't sell it. You can sell it in New York City in a primary where one of six Democrats vote, you're not selling it anywhere else in my opinion.

Vote on today's poll question at Smerconish.com. James Carville, tip of the hat to him, is he right? He says, why don't these folks start their own party because they're really not Democrats? Cast your ballot on that. Sign up for the newsletter while you're there.

OK. Still to come, this fascinates me. When the iPhone rolled out, it came with a charger, headphones, and a declining birth rate. A new study and the remarkable evidence. I referenced the newsletter that you can get if you sign up at Smerconish.com. Here's something else you'll receive the work of illustrators including Rob Rogers.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:42:57]

SMERCONISH: Is the iPhone the most effective form of birth control ever invented? It's no secret that smartphones have fundamentally reshaped how people socialize, date, form relationships. Last week, I spoke with contributing opinion writer at The New York Times, Christine Emba, about America's declining birth rate. We spoke of a new study drawing connections between that trend and the rise of smartphones.

The study was published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The authors analyzed the early rollout of the iPhone when it was exclusive to AT&T, that was between 2007 not everyone had an iPhone. You see, in 2007, not everyone had an iPhone.

In fact, the iPhone was initially exclusive to AT&T. So if you had Verizon, if you had T-Mobile, et cetera, you likely still had a flip phone or a Blackberry. I want you to take a close look at this. Check out the map. The darker the blue, the more AT&T coverage as the iPhone was being rolled out.

Now, look on the right side of the chart that shows the counties with the greatest AT&T coverage, and that they also were experiencing the largest declines in birth rates, especially among teenagers and adults in their 20s.

And so the study concluded as follows. Overall, the diffusion of the iPhone explains 33 to 52 percent of the decline in the general fertility rate among women aged 15 to 44. It also points to survey data suggesting shifts in time use and sexual behavior. Less in- person interaction, less mingling, as I say. Increased pornography consumption, lower sexual frequency.

Well, now we have the author behind the study joining us, Middlebury College economics professor Caitlin Myers. Professor, thank you for being here.

So fertility is below the replacement rate. I think everybody gets that now. But you told me on SiriusXM this week, it's also below the number of children people want to have. Will you explain?

[09:45:01]

CAITLIN MYERS, RESEARCH ASSOCIATE AT THE NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH: Sure. Yes. So, fertility is -- births are falling. This is a big concern to a lot of economists like me. And one of the big questions is whether births are falling because people are just choosing to have fewer children, they want to have fewer children, or whether there's something else going on where they're just not as likely to form relationships or get pregnant.

And one of the clues there is that when you actually ask people how many children they would like to have, the number they give is larger than the number they're ending up having. So something is -- some piece of this story is about people not even achieving their desired fertility.

SMERCONISH: Two thousand and seven was a reflection point. Of course, people are going to remember, well, 2008 was the economic collapse. Aren't these all related? And doesn't that explain the diminished birth rate?

MYERS: I love a good skeptical question. I think everybody should be asking that. So, you know, you showed the map and the bar chart from the paper. And what they show is that the places where you could get an iPhone are the places where births went down more.

But I think it would be very reasonable for anybody to worry that these are also places that were potentially hit harder by the great recession that was occurring at the same time. And the reason you should worry about that is that we know that births are what we call procyclical. So they -- when economic times are good, births tend to go up. When economic times are bad, they tend to go down.

And so, you know, maybe what's going on is it's not the iPhone. It's like the housing market was worse in those places. But the joys of statistical analyzes are that we can control for that. We can look at that.

We actually say like, yes, that would be a good skeptical comment. We don't see any evidence that that's the story. Every way we look at the data, it points to an iPhone story and not a big recession story.

SMERCONISH: OK, so everything you say makes intuitive sense and you remind me in a good way of Jean Twenge, because that book, iGen, was just so revelatory. But it's the AT&T data that you bring to the table.

Can we put that map quickly back up on the screen? This is phenomenal. I didn't know that the rollout was exclusive to AT&T initially. And tell me what's going on in what I'm now putting on the screen, the map and the bar graph. Just give me the quick interpretation.

MYERS: Yes sure. So Apple gave AT&T a carrier monopoly when the iPhone came out. And where I live in Vermont happens to be a place that at that time didn't have a good AT&T coverage. So like we knew that nobody was getting an iPhone where I was at that time.

So this map shows you where AT&T had cellular broadband coverage. So the darker parts of the map, these are places where AT&T had good coverage. And so if you wanted an iPhone and you could afford an iPhone, you could probably go to the AT&T store and get one on your AT&T plan. But if you're looking at a great place on the map or even like one of the lighter blue places, AT&T didn't have cellular -- wireless coverage, broadband coverage, and you probably weren't getting an iPhone.

So that's what we call the natural experiment, right? Let's compare what's going on in the places where you could get an iPhone to the places where you couldn't get an iPhone during this period. And keep in mind, there's no droid yet. This is pre droid. This is, you know, early days of the iPhone. And we really see that births correlate very strongly with where you can get a phone.

SMERCONISH: Final comment. Your co-author is your 24-year-old stepson. What unique perspective did he offer you on this topic?

MYERS: Yes, he started this whole paper. You know, so he came up with the idea, came up with the like, let's do it. And we were actually, you mentioned Jean Twenge. So I have four kids who are 17 to 24. My co-author is the oldest. And when I read iGen, I was talking about it with my kids. And my kids like, I was so thrilled by this immediately said, well, correlation is not causation. So, how do you figure out when it is?

And my son and I talked a lot about how we could go from the iPhone coincides with the decline in births to figuring out, do we think it's causal? And it's been really interesting working on it with somebody who's 24, because his generation, they aren't so surprised even by the hypothesis. You know, they're thinking about this all the time.

SMERCONISH: We never -- who knew? We didn't need the abstinence sex ed lecture. We all just needed an iPhone. That was great. Professor Myers, thank you so much. I really, really enjoyed your work.

To everybody at home, you still have time to vote on today's poll question at Smerconish.com. Going to find out if people agree with the Ragin' Cajun in just a minute. James Carville says, hey, those democratic socialists let them start their own party. Do you agree with him?

Sign up for the newsletter while you're there. You know, by now you get the work of editorial cartoonist. I'm old school. I love political cartoons, and that's why I promote them. Steve Breen drew this.

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[09:54:09]

SMERCONISH: OK, there are the survey results so far, just a tick under 30,000 votes. That's normal. Is James Carville right? Should Democratic socialists start their own party instead of running as Democrats?

The Ragin' Cajun going to be thrilled to see that he got 61 percent of the vote. To which I say, yes, I get it. My head and heart are in the same place as James. But what do you do -- what do you do to fill the vacuum of the missing passion if they all did go in a different direction, because you need that, but you want to put them under the same tent?

Social media reaction to today's program. Follow me on X, YouTube, Facebook, et cetera. Hey, Smerconish, I'm excited to buy free groceries after I get free gas and purchase the free condo with free taxes. Dems had better get a mainstream candidate to have any chance. That's s my free advice.

Yes, Henry, this is well beyond, I spent my time reading in this week, what actually is meant by democratic socialism.

[09:55:06]

It's not Medicare for all. That I think you could sell to the country. The country is ready to have universal health care go a step beyond the Affordable Care Act. But not, you know, public ownership of a large corporation.

I mean, Steve Jobs and Woz, hell of an American story as we celebrate our semiquincentennial, you know, founding Apple in the garage, yada, yada, yada. And then what today you're going to say no. Now it's a public corporation, public as in -- as in not an IPO but -- no, can't have it and can't sell it.

More social media reaction. Quickly, I can get it done.

If democratic socialists are distinct enough to warrant their own party, should MAGA supporters form a separate party rather than run as Republicans?

Dexter, that's apples and oranges because the Republican Party today is the MAGA party. It is -- it has been completely recast in the image of its leader, President Donald Trump.

If you missed any of today's program, you can always listen anywhere you get your podcasts. Thank you for watching. We'll see you next week for the fourth of July.

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