What a Weekday: See You on the Other Side

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I started my Deadwood rewatch this weekend.

Okay.

I love Deadwood.

I haven't watched him like a decade, and I just finished Justified,

so I just decided to go straight into another Timothy Oliphant.

Had you watched it before?

Yeah.

What was your feeling about it?

I loved it. I love the way that Al Swearegen speaks.
It really influenced me probably as much as like aaron sorkin writing um i think it's so funny that's such a funny place for your venn diagram to overlap surprised no no no it's it feels right for this side i have to assume sarah and hallie you've never seen deadwood that you can't possibly oh it's it's so good it's really worthwhile it is so good

I know people love it yeah

I am quite confident

that they will hate it

that's

yeah that's fair

don't you agree

yeah

there's a lot of

full frontal nudity

uh

like male nudity

a lot of

and that's really

and that's why I thought

and that's why I thought

you wouldn't like it

and that's the plot

of HBO's Deadwood.

And we're back.

I'm here with Sarah Lazarus, Hallie Kiefer,

and Kendra James. We are one day away

from Election

Day. The polls close in

a little over 24 hours.

From now,

Hush falls over the studio.

We were in, John, Tommy, Dan, and I

with Nina from the Vote Save America team.

We were in Arizona and Nevada,

out on the doors. How'd it go? I would say that leaving those two places, I could see the experience would justify either outcome.
We were knocking on doors. One thing is you realize, oh, people have been to these these doors before and we're on to the last few.
So you're like not going to door walking a few knocking on another door. A lot of people aren't home.
A lot of people aren't answering. A lot of people are sick of answering.
We did get a couple doors where somebody saying, oh, yeah, I was going to vote sometime next week. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
You can only vote on Tuesday now. Do you have your ballot? You can drop it off in person on Tuesday or you can vote in person.
Do you know where your polling site is? Let's find you your polling site. There were undecided voters.
There were people that answered the door saying that they weren't planning to vote and weren't registered and it's too late to register. So there's no reason to try to persuade them.
But there are people in the house that might be persuadable. So arming those people with the information to give the people in their house.
You realize also when you're talking to people that aren't paying attention closely to politics, how simple and clean you want to make the final conversation. And like, you know, you're this is a person who's answering the door, does not feel it's a Sunday morning or a Saturday afternoon.
They do not feel like talking about politics with a stranger. And they're like, oh, Angela is not home right now.
And we're like, wait, when Angela gets home, just tell her. And then you got to decide what you wanted.
And you're like, Kamala Harris will bring down the cost of prescriptions. And Donald Trump wants a national sales tax.
You can't have a national sales tax. Nevada can't afford a national sales tax.
OK, on to the next door. And you realize, like, man, there are, you know, John Ralston, the famed Nevada reporter, always does a prediction, knows the Nevada electorate better than anybody.

His prediction for the race came out and he had it 48.5 to 48.2 percent. That's a 4,000 vote margin.
And now who knows if that's going to be right or not? He doesn't know if it's going to be right or not. But it tells you that we are fighting house to house, street to street, ballot to ballot

in this final stretch.

And we will lament forever why it was so close.

But it is.

And it's hard.

And it will not get easier tomorrow.

And then we will start to find out what happened.

And so let's get into it.

What an election.

On Saturday, the famed Seltzer poll conducted by the Des Moines Register showed Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump by a shocking 47 percent to 44 percent in Iowa.

This was a shocking result.

When I first saw it on my phone, I thought, wow, Trump's only winning by 3 percent in Iowa. This was a shocking result.
When I first saw it on my phone, I thought, wow, Trump's only winning by 3% in Iowa. Now, just so people understand, this is a poll by Ann Seltzer.
She is considered one of the greatest pollsters in the U.S. Her polls of Iowa are the gold standard.
They have often in the past been outliers that, in hindsight, caught a trend that other people were missing. The last time her presidential poll was off, it was 20 years ago when she had John Kerry beating George W.
Bush. But even if you apply that error to this race, it still shows Trump winning Iowa pretty narrowly, which would suggest that there is a broader polling error now.
And Seltzer could be wrong. She in an interview with Tim Miller, friend of the show, said that, you know, one day her polling method will be wrong and then she'll be scattered across Des Moines in little pieces.
And she's prepared for that. But it was a reason to be hopeful, especially when you dig into what the numbers tell us, which is basically women are fucking pissed about Dobbs.
And in a state like Iowa, where they have snapped to a pretty draconian abortion law, women, including older women, are saying they want something different. And it seems and this, again, a strange result, that older women are bringing their husbands along.

That would be nice because I'll tell you

what's been making me sick the last few days.

The TikTok trend of women being like,

I'm going to the ballot to cancel out my husband's vote.

Oh boy.

It's, I hate it.

I hate it so much.

I know it's hard to get excited, but also I want to.

Yeah.

I don't think it speaks to like my algorithm

is now queer enough that I don't see that anymore.

Oh God bless. But that's depressing.
So the Seltzer poll becomes a choose your own adventure. You can decide that one poll is wrong or every poll but one is wrong.
This is either an outlier or the other polls are out and outliers. Huh? Either way, let's make a note to circle back after the election to figure out what the fuck happened.
As for why Harris is polling so strongly, Seltzer said this on MSNBC. The reason she is leading is because of her strength with women, generally, even stronger with women age 65 and over.
Her margin is more than two to one. And this is an age group that shows up to vote or votes early in disproportionately large numbers.
Women can get that old, asked Donald Trump. Hey, J.D.
Vance, I guess post-menopausal females have a second purpose. You stupid fuck.
Hey, why don't they just make the whole plane out of Ann Seltzer?

Yay.

But also, as a woman over 40, it's like, well, you get up at five in the morning anyways,

you're not going to get out and vote?

Yeah.

My God.

The hours.

My mom's walking the mall.

If we had a mall.

What time do we get up these days, Hallie?

Literally today, 445. Wow.
And I feel great. Biologically, it's just happening.
Daylight savings time. Oh, you know what? That makes sense.
But then I, 530 usually. Seltzer also noted that Iowa's six-week abortion ban was put into action in July.
Said the pollster, our consensus from the reporters who worked this beat is that the abortion ban went into effect this past summer. It has gotten people interested in voting, interested in voting, interested in hastily planned weekend trips to Minnesota, all kinds of new interesting hobbies.
This weekend, Kamala Harris came face to face with her doppelganger, Maya Rudolph, on Saturday Night Live. I don't really laugh like that, do I? A little bit.
Not to be outdone, Donald Trump also spoke to his doppelganger, a friggin' melty jack-o'-lantern. Got him.
Got him. Cardi B joined Kamala Harris on the campaign trail in Wisconsin.
I can't stand a bully. But just like Kamala, I always stand up to one.
All the time, I'm ready for them. Yeah.
And I'm gonna be real with y'all. I wasn't gonna vote this year.
I wasn't. But Kamala Harris joining the race, she changed my mind completely.
I'm just glad Joe Biden isn't alive to hear this. Elon Musk attacked the singer on X after Cardi's teleprompter went down during the rally and a staff member had to bring her phone so she could read her speech, said Elon, another puppet who can't even talk without being fed the words.
The Kamala campaign has no authenticity or true empathy. Sorry, not all of us can come up with gems like this right off the cuff, Elon.
I hate that guy. She's Cardi B replied to Elon.
I'm not a puppet. I'm a daughter of two immigrant parents that had to work their asses off to provide for me.
I'm a product of welfare. I'm a product of Section Eight.
I'm a product of poverty and I'm a product of what happens when the system is set up against you. But you don't know nothing about that.
You don't know one thing about the American struggle. P.S.
Fix my algorithm. Cardi, get off of fucking Twitter.
Now, to be fair, Cardi, Elon is also the child of immigrant parents. Here is one of them now trying to insult Kamala Harris's speaking ability.
They can put sentences together and you know who can't. The absurdity of the absurd in the absurdity is absurd.

I mean.

Of course.

Really.

What the fuck?

Oh, my God.

Please Google Mae Musk and Errol Musk.

Please read everything you can about this man's parents.

Deeply, deeply troubling clip.

More importantly, if you're not watching this on YouTube,

actually go look at that clip.

That is absolutely a chilling clip. She fritzes out completely.
I mean, she looks good doing it, but I feel like South African is an underrated evil accent. It just really lends itself.
I got in trouble with CBS HR for saying that. Not here.
Not here. Say it all you want.
Yeah, you could say it all you want. Anybody who's seen Lethal Weapon 2 can tell you that the South African diplomatic immunity.
Has anyone but me seen Lethal Weapon 2? Is that Lethal Weapon 2? Yes, it's Lethal Weapon 2. I mean, probably as a child.
Yeah. Well, a lot of South African accents figure pretty prominently in that film.
LeBron James also endorsed Kamala Harris. I have a daughter, a wife, a mother, and things of that nature.
She believes in the country's rights and helps the future of my kids and where I see our country should be. I feel like that's what's only right.
It means a lot that LeBron would endorse Kamala, given how much Trump physically resembles a basketball. Got him! Got him.
Got him. Donald Trump really went for it during this last weekend on the campaign trail.
So for those listening, I don't know. He seemed to be pantomiming, giving a hand in blowjob to the microphone.
And obviously that seems like a strange thing for Donald Trump to do because it was in the context of him being mad at his advance staff or whoever was putting this event together for the microphone, either not working or not being loud enough. And it just doesn't seem like him pantomiming, giving a blowy is like in his kind of, I don't repertoire repertoire it doesn't seem to be it's not something that he would seem to want to be saying he'd do it's just strange well the thing about donald trump is that he's growing and evolving every day constantly becoming a new person um so we have to take that into account it is like we just like you see like a untowled comedian Like he uses the same material all the time.
He's probably getting diminishing returns. So he's like, I got it.
I got to get him. I got it.
Well, I got new material. This is what he came up with.
Yeah, I watched some of this speech and he does. It's his riffing on the microphone not working properly goes on for eons.
I mean, he spends a whole lot of time on it. And there's really anger.
He's very angry and not in his. He's always angry.
He's an angry man. But there's a kind of quiet anger.
He's very angry that he's having to do this. He's mad at his team.
He's definitely coming seeming like someone who's coming off stage and yelling at a bunch of people. He at some point smacks the the the microphone away in a very kind of menacing and strange way.
And then he does this. He's just losing it up there.
He really is. And it is just a reminder, given what he did to that microphone standard, that no Mike is safe around this guy because of what he tried to do to Mike Pence.
Give him a blowjob.

For any potential female Trump voters concerned about women's reproductive health,

don't worry, the man has a plan.

And I told a great guy, RFK Jr., Bobby,

I said, Bobby, you work on women's health,

you work on health, you work on what we eat,

you work on pesticides, you work on everything.

The first thing on Kennedy's to-do list

Thank you. You work on women's health.
You work on health. You work on what we eat.
You work on pesticides. You work on everything.
The first thing on Kennedy's to do list is to take all the fluoride out of the water. But don't worry.
The second thing is putting it in all the women. Oh, no.
So this is a deeply strange thing that Donald Trump is doing here. Like Kamala Harris, they put out she put out the campaign, put out to two minute ads today, both a very clean closing message about being a president for all Americans.
Common sense solution taking on the high cost of goods, a kind of patriotic, optimistic homestretch message. One of them includes a country that's no longer beholden to to to the corrupt and the billionaires includes a shot of Trump and a shot of Elon, just sort of a clean closing message that makes sense.
For whatever reason, Donald Trump is just unleashing RFK Jr. here in the home stretch, who is saying they're going to take fluoride out of the water, that they're going to come after vaccines.
He's echoing it. And we were talking about this a bit on Pod Save America, that there's some theory to it, if you're going to try to lay a theory on it, which is that RFK Jr.
is still on the ballot in Michigan, for example. Basically, they're worried that low-information voters that are going to vote for RFK don't know that he endorsed Trump, so they're trying to kind of get those people together.
I have to think. Like, so much of this campaign, so much of the reason we were so hopeful that Joe Biden would step aside to make room for Kamala Harris was just our belief that even in a polarized electorate, a fractured media environment, an angry populace, that politics matters.
And we just needed a candidate who could do politics that Kamala Harris would be a new voice and she could do politics, deliver messages, do hits, do press, release great ads, inspire people, do the basics. And she's done more than that.
She's been an extraordinary candidate. But here we are.
We know the polls have been tied for weeks. And in the final two weeks, Donald Trump, basically ever since Madison Square Garden, has been seemingly astrategic, rambling, unable to deliver a closing message.
He has been making deranged comments about reporters, about Liz Cheney. He's been he was asked about RFK Jr.
talking about vaccines. He said he's open to it.
And we went into this supposedly tied. New polls come out showing it is still tied.
But if this really was a tied race on the day the MSG rally happened,

you're going to tell me 10 days,

the closing 10 days,

having Kamala Harris hitting her marks

at every fucking turn

and Donald Trump making a mess of it

and saying the most unhelpful, toxic things

a candidate could say in the homestead

that that's not going to have an influence?

Like, if we believe politics matters,

I have to believe this matters.

That's sort of where I'm at.

Yeah, it's just crazy

that it's like that's not going to have an influence. Like, if we believe politics matters, I have to believe this matters.
That's sort of where I'm at. Yeah, it's just crazy that it's like RFK must have visited him during this week.
And that was it. Like, he is just they had one conversation and that's all he can think about.
Or they really like, hey, we need to make sure that the RFK people come along. And so you got to go out and get the RFK people under maybe some assumption, which has been baked into a lot of what the Trump campaign has done, which is that when Donald Trump says this terrible shit on the trail, it reaches either people who like it or nobody or people who have already made up their minds that are supporting Kamala.
And so they're trying to get a message directly to the RFK people who might hear it just because it's in their kind of information ecosystem. And it won't alienate the last group of undecided people that are making up their minds.
But as we heard from David Plouffe, that late deciders are breaking towards Kamala. We saw that in the Times-Siena poll that came out over the weekend, that especially in the Sun Belt, late-breaking voters are breaking towards Kamala.
That poll had a strange result that showed in some of the northern battlegrounds, the Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, that together late deciders are breaking towards Trump. But that could be for a variety of different reasons.
And it doesn't totally comport with what Plouffe is saying. Who knows? But I just my my hope and belief is that for this last group of people that are just making up their mind, they have told pollsters again and again that they're upset about the economy.
They believe the economy was better under Donald Trump,

but they have deep concerns about him as a human being. And none of this is helping him.
And I have

to hope, I just have to hope that parents seeing in the home stretch, like, wait a second, they're

going to ban vaccines, like the vaccines that keep our kids safe. That's just my I got my candle lit for basic politics.
Just and we'll find out, I suppose. While voters were already at the polls, Trump took a moment to point out that he could be on fucking vacation right now.
That white, beautiful white skin that I have would be nice and tan. I got the whiter skin because I never have time to go out in the sun, but I have that beautiful white.
And you know what? It could have been beautiful tan. So this seems to be something of a self-deprecating response to the photos he must have not liked of him doing the garbage truck thing where he looked bronzed and people are making fun of him which he must be seeing um but very strange because he's not he doesn't look pale because he gets bronze he's kind of admitting that he uses the bronzer because he's nor he's he's so deathly pale under there you went there i went to like That was like a huge it's like not even a dog whistle that's him reminding his people that this is black versus white this is white versus like both woman and uh miscegenation like that is that to me is'm all white under here? Yeah.
Yeah, I wonder that because he has done riffs on this skin before and it is strange how much he says beautifully white skin, beautifully white skin. Yeah, maybe you're right.
Kendra, how are you feeling right now? Because we were talking before we recorded. You're, look, sometimes you're hard to pin down and I can't tell how anxious you are going into tomorrow.

My whole thing with that is that I, and it's very genuine, I feel like specifically with Kamala as the nominee, I live in a world where people consciously or not don't love black women.

And so I have taken that with me since June and i've just kind of been living with that reality um and it has not allowed me to get my hopes up super high just because that is a reality that i see all the time okay i'm i will say i went to um my husband and I started going to Kirk Franklin concerts.

Ironically, you can't go to a concert ironically. Kirk Franklin is a he's you know, the song Stomp makes me clap my hands.
OK. Yeah.
So he's a gospel singer and he's been doing a tour with Yolanda Adams, Marvin Sapp, a whole bunch of other the Clark sisters sisters and the get out the vote messaging was really

really strong at this concert which did in a very anecdotal way make me feel a lot better about like that sort of missing male black vote okay okay yeah i uh i don't know i just I haven't been able to shake this feeling since the Joe Rogan interview side by side with the Michelle Obama speech that we are telling a story that is not just meant to bring out the people that we already have, but arm them with a story to tell their friends and their neighbors and their husbands and their brothers and their sisters and their colleagues. And Trump just isn't doing that.
He's just not doing that. And I just, if we end up losing and we could lose, it will, it almost leaves me feeling kind of, I don't know, not at peace because I'm quite anxious, but more resolved and sort of not accepting either.

But I suppose just believing that whatever happens, we did what we were all supposed to do. That the Kamala Harris campaign did what it was supposed to do.
That the volunteers did what they were supposed to do. The surrogates did what they were supposed to do.
The story is out there. It has been told.
And if we lose, it will be cut because voters chose it with open eyes. And that will be quite revealing and terrible and instructive.

But the choice has now been laid bare.

Meanwhile, here's a Trump supporter after Donald Trump repeated his claim

that Kamala Harris never worked at McDonald's.

She never worked there, but I did, I did a little bit. This place is amazing.
Just for this, somebody shouted, she worked on The Corner. And that got a great response from this crowd.
Everybody's a comedian these days, except for Tony Hinchcliffe, who is history's greatest Democratic operative. The man went undercover as a roast comedian, worked his way into the Austin comedy scene slowly, but surely building trust until he was activated nine days ago by a text from Nancy Pelosi with the go order.
Operation Basura had begun. Operation Basura.
While in North Carolina, Trump seemed to think he was in Pennsylvania calling for Pennsylvania's Republican Senate contender to join him on stage. And you have one of the best of all right here, David McCormick.
You know that. Where's David? Is he around someplace? Just going to throw it out there that Donald Trump is the oldest candidate to ever run for president.
Trump continued, is that him in the back?

Standing next to those translucent figures who resemble my dead parents? No, don't beckon to me. I'm busy right now.
I can't step into that beautiful light. Trump also joked about reporters getting shot at his rallies.
And I have this piece of glass here. But all we have really over here is the fake news, right? And to get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news.
And I don't mind that so much. So at a rally like this, someone shot through the crowd to shoot Donald Trump and killed someone.
Someone died. One of his biggest supporters died, which he surely knows.
And he's fantasizing is a presidential candidate, former president, fantasizing about journalists dying in a hail of gunfire while this group of people laughs all around him. And, you know, we may beat Trump tomorrow and I hope you do.
I think it would be a good outcome. But we should also remember, no matter what happens, that Trump has revealed how many people want to get into their Toyota Highlanders and drive to a field somewhere and fantasize about TV reporters dying in a hail of gunfire, that there's just they are laughing and enjoying it and finding this hilarious.
Trump's spokesperson, Steve Chung, denied he was joking about the press being assassinated, saying in a statement, in fact, President Trump was stating that the media was in danger in that they were protecting him and therefore were in great danger themselves and should have had a glass protective shield. Also, there can be no other interpretation of what was said.
He was actually looking out for their welfare far more than his own. I know this gets this has been pointed out constantly for a decade.
But if any previous politician had said nothing else that Trump has

said and just said this one thing 24 hours before the election, landslide election over completely

disqualifying. If Kamala said one sentence, this man has said in the last 16 years, like she wouldn't

be able to run. Like, imagine her saying

Thank you. He also, you know, there was a news cycle.
but i don't think we were able to cover it because i think it happened in between our two previous recordings where he he he said uh that um imagine what would happen if you put a gun in liz cheney's hand and and all the guns were pointed on liz cheney and he claimed that in the context it's obvious what he means he's saying that she's a chicken hawk and has sent people and wants to send people into harm's way, but actually wouldn't face it herself. The that so that's why he is having a bloody fantasy about what it would like be like to watch Liz Cheney be murdered.
It is a is a bloody fantasy that he's having for this for the amusement of his biggest fans. And not only for their amusement, to also just signal to them that this is a funny, cool thing to joke about.
We all think it's funny to imagine reporters being murdered. We all think it's funny to imagine Liz Cheney being assassinated.
These are funny, jokey things. There was a failed assassination type he was shot at.
That was one of the centerpieces of his convention before Joe Biden dropped out. It's ironic, but this person who has to never admit any kind of weakness whatsoever has clearly carried some kind of trauma from having this experience happen.
He can't stop bringing it up. He is he has on his mind people being shot and murdered in front of him all the time.
But like the sickness that he has kind of taken advantage of and made worse, like regardless of what happens tomorrow, we just can't forget Trump wins. We are fighting this authoritarian, bloodthirsty version of the Republican Party.
Trump loses. We're fighting that same group of people.
And they're not going anywhere. This isn't going anywhere.
The next person to be the Republican nominee, whoever that may be, whenever that may be, is not going to be Mitt Romney. It's going to be somebody who learned from this and realized that there were millions of people who were excited by this kind of politics.
Hey, don't go anywhere. There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up.
If you share a fridge with someone, Instacart can make grocery shopping so much easier. With Family Carts, you'll share a cart and each add what you need.
But instead of feeling paralyzed, our job now is to pool what we've got and see what we can make happen. Here at Assembly Required, we will continue to face each executive order, legislative policy, and news cycle, no matter how terrifying or absurd, by asking, what can we do to learn more about what's happening? What can we do to solve problems, however small?

And how can we find the kind of hope that can sustain our work in difficult times?

Listen to new episodes of Assembly Required every Thursday on Amazon Music. As Trump was fantasizing about his political enemies being killed,

Trump fans were riffing off President Biden's garbage supporter comment last week,

dressing as trash bags for Halloween.

Here's Megyn Kelly all bagged up with the caption,

Happy Halloween, garbage people.

It's nice to see she got to use

her wedding dress again.

This picture to me is like,

I don't know, put it in the time capsule.

No one was more excited

than Megyn Kelly to have a reason

to be offended,

to finally be back in the chair

saying the things she wants to say

more than anything else,

which is how dare they? How could they? Oh my goodness. Can you believe what they said about us? This entirely fake and performative grievance and offense to justify doing something that she knows to be despicable, which is supporting Donald Trump.
I really like it is Monday. The election is tomorrow.
We cannot forget what these people did. No matter what happens, we have to remember what these people did and who was tough and who was honest and who was full of fucking shit and willing to embrace someone as manifestly and fit as Donald Trump.
Nobody, nobody who went out there and decided to ignore their their morals, their ethics, their values to embrace Donald Trump is someone we ever should listen to again. Ever.
Barf. All right.
As it turns out, not every voter is as mentally chained to the news as we are, with some people missing Biden's slip of the tongue entirely and interpreting Trump's recent garbage truck photo op as the former president doubling down on the Puerto Rico is a floating island of garbage joke from his MSG rally. As a Puerto Rican voter in Pennsylvania told The Huffington Post Sunday, if he didn't have anything to do with it, what's he doing in the garbage truck? The answer is, of course, just being stupid.
But they don't have to know that till Friday. It is like when I saw that he was doing this thing of getting in the garbage truck and riding on the garbage truck, I was like, why are you highlighting this? Joe Biden is not on the ballot.
And it's a conversation around a joke at your rally that is costing you votes. And and yet he did it anyway.
And also not that it was the most important part of it. The metaphor doesn't make sense, because if you're taking out the garbage, what's the garbage? You should be saying there is no garbage.
The garbage man is anti-garbage. Right.
The garbage man is anti-garbage. The garbage man is saying there's no garbage here.
Yeah. That doesn't make any sense.
You should have stuck to the whole swamp thing. If he's getting in a garbage truck, it suggests that there's some garbage somewhere.
Maybe it's the supporter who said there's garbage in Puerto Rico. If anything, you should be getting in the back of the garbage truck.
He is garbage. Right.
He is garbage. And Joe Biden is the garbage man.
Yes. Seems so obvious.
Sources close to Biden say that after he shuffled out of that press conference where he made the gaff, he stood upright, smirked, lit a cigarette and said the greatest trick dark Brandon ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn't exist. Before cracking a pineapple in half with his bare hands.
He's pretending to be old. He's all good.
It was a good gaffe. It was 3D chess.
Playing 3D chess over here. I always like when people say that oh that's Donald Trump playing 3D chess.
I think it's 4D chess. 3D chess is just regular chess.
4D chess. With the different boards.
No, 3D chess is 2D. No.
No, it's not. Whoa.
In my mind, it's 3D. You can play chess on a screen.
Is that what we're talking about? We're talking real chess. I agree that we, the players of chess, exist in chess exist in three dimensions all right chess board exists in three dimensions it is a two-dimensional game you do not need the third you do not need the third dimension to convey one plane right they move in they can move it they move along the plane and you can convey 100 of the information of chess in two dimensions it is a two-dimensional game but for d i think I think the one with the different boards on the different level.
Well, we can make it's like, ah, it's so impressive. It's 4D.
I understand. 3D is the D we live in.
No, we live in three dimensions. Thank you.
Well, at least. But the chess board is two dimensions.
Chess as a game is a two dimension. This is why I'm going to win.
We're tearing apart the left. No, but the point I was going to make is only,

is 2D chess not hard enough?

It's already a hard game.

Trump would not be.

Why do we used to say, oh, Trump is playing chess

and the Democrats are playing checkers or vice versa.

You don't need 3D or 4D or 5D chess.

Chess is hard.

It was already hard enough.

It's already, it's a game that's already too difficult for the human mind to fully comprehend. You know, we call the knights the horse piece.
Yeah. And we call it the horse piece.
But it's not called that. And also, it's not a little castle.
It's a rock. And there's a bishop, which famously only moves it diagonally like, you know, bishops.
And those are the rules of chess. This morning, Senator Jack Reed told reporters that if elected, Donald Trump will act like a fascist and flood the Pentagon with his lackeys.
Said Trump, seize him. Oh, I'm sorry.
That's jumping ahead a little bit. This guy's crazy.
Jack Reed guy, we've got to look into that. Meanwhile, RFK Jr., the man Donald Trump promised to put in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services, vowed to remove fluoride from the nation's drinking water as soon as Trump was inaugurated.
Doctors hate this one weird politician. Kennedy tweeted that they would remove fluoride from America's drinking water.
He then went on to say, instead of fluoride, I think we should add, oh, I'm just spitballing here, a ton of fucking worms. Because it's the worm in charge.
It's the worm pulling the strings now. I knew it.
The fluoridation of water to prevent mass due to decay is considered by the CDC to be one of the 10 great public health achievements of the 20th century. Number nine was not giving RFK Jr.
control of the water supply. But I guess that one's out the goddamn window.
When asked by NBC about RFK Jr.'s plan on Sunday, Trump said, quote, well, I haven't talked to him about it yet, but sounds OK to me. You know, it's possible.
Glad we're approaching America's water with the same casualness as letting your teen nephew cook Thanksgiving dinner. Probably nothing will go wrong, but let me actually sit down and think about it when I get home.
In other conservative news, Tucker Carlson said he was attacked by a demon while in bed with his wife and four dogs. I had a direct experience with it.
In the milieu of journalism or just... Nope, in my bed at night.
And I got attacked while I was asleep with my wife and four dogs in the bed and mauled. Physically mauled.

In a spiritual attack by a demon?

Yeah, by a demon.

Or by something unseen that left... Is that right?

...claw marks on my sides.

Yeah, it's probably a demon,

said a man who sleeps in bed with four dogs.

And look, we can't roll out his wife.

I'd maul him.

How big is the bed? I really thought this was a bit. He also, by the way, in another interview, basically goes on at length about how hurricanes are punishment for a society that is permissive around abortion.
He is going full Christian nationalist. This is somebody, Tucker Carlson, if he has a skill, one of them is knowing where the wind is blowing and knowing where the right is going.
And this is alarming, not because he's some terrifying menace, but because I think he is seeing where a good subset of the right is going. And it is towards this kind of Christian nationalist millenarian, which is like kind of like this apocalyptic version of republicanism, of conservatism.
And Trump loses this guy. I don't know where he falls in the rankings but he's on the list of potential front runners for the republican nomination for sure do the catholics speak in tongues because it feels like we're a year out from speaking in tongues just yeah no we don't got that we got uh like opus dee flat self-flagellation and stuff but the problem the thing about all this is why I always talk about Catholicism is this is all, like America is just sort of blending all the worst parts of all the Christianities, which I think is actually called Christianities.
And there's something to that where it's like, they're just, they're taking the parts that are more terrifying that they can manipulate people. It's not really about any adherence to any particular belief system.
It's like Carl Sagan used to say, uh-oh. Because demon, like the demon thing really, it works for me for Catholicism, for Pentecostal, for a whole bunch of different ones.
So I'm wondering what the weird thing is they can grab next. Yeah, let us know in the comments below what thing from your Christianity you think they're going to take.
Yeah. Presbyterians don't hold any.
We don't do any of this. Yeah.
We just go for a nice hour-long service and leave. I think he should show us the demon scars.
Prove that he has demon scars. How do you tell the devil should be a demon scar and a dog claw marks scar? That's my business.
I'll get to the bottom of this. Thank you for doing that.
Lazarus jumps up. To the tomes.
To the ancient texts. On Sunday, the Daily Beast published audio of Jeffrey Epstein from 2017 in which which the late financier and sexual predator claimed I was Donald Trump's closest friend for 10 years.
Oh, did Jeffrey Epstein thinks Donald Trump was his best friend, but Trump didn't think Epstein was his? So embarrassing. The Trump campaign said the claims constitute false smears and election interference, said the campaign.
Shit like this makes us glad we killed him. And finally, social media star Peanut the Squirrel was euthanized this weekend after he was seized in a raid by state authorities in New York and his body tested for rabies after biting, I believe, an animal control person.
Oh, I had missed the rabies part. That explains it.

Today the squirrel.

Tomorrow, Mr. Beast.

When will these demon crats

stop their trompling over our sacred rights

to have squirrels in our homes?

To have rabbit squirrels

where a cowboy has to tap people.

To drum up views on our YouTube.

Rabies is really scary.

Rabies is really scary.

Have you seen that episode

of Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman?

I haven't, but I didn't need to see it

I'm not sure you're going to be talking about it. The drum up views on our YouTube.
Rabies is really scary. Rabies is really scary.

Have you seen that episode of Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman? I haven't, but I didn't need to see it to know that rabies is really scary.

I thought for sure you would have.

I wasn't a Dr. Quinn person.

I wasn't a Dr. Quinn person.

Oh, I watched it all in 2013.

Had never seen an episode before.

Watched all six seasons in three movies.

I'm waiting for a medicine man.

Actually, a movie I did see starring Sean Connery and Lorraine Bronco in the rainforest

finding what?

The cure for cancer.

That's a medicine man. Actually, a movie I did see starring Sean Connery and Lorraine Bronco in the rainforest finding what the cure for cancer.
That sounds great. Yes.
So basically, they find the cure for cancer, but it's in a tree that's about to be bulldozed. No spoilers.
Why? That's just the pot. And I know what happens thereafter.
What? When did this movie come out? 90s? It has to be 90s, but I had to, I think it was, it's like, when did it was in the HBO rotation? I bet that movie came out in 1994. Go home and see it tonight so that it doesn't get spoiled.
I will. Okay.
So I'll do it instead of watching Returns tomorrow. I didn't even make a cowboy hat that small.
I know. It's really cute.
I know. It's really cute.
I do feel bad for it. Yeah.
I didn't know that rabies was part of it. And now I do understand why maybe we had to go that direction.
Well, yeah, it's just sort of you shouldn't keep wild animals like this in your house because it might bite someone and then you have to kill them to test for that. And if you do have a wild animal in your house, don't make a social media account for it.
No one will ever know. Yeah.
Living in Cyahoga county uh really convinced me that there were just any number of animals that i i could and should own i wanted a skunk for so long skunks are cute because they were sold in a pet store in in the elyria mall yeah you in ohio really two pieces of pot when it comes to animals uh so first of all the movie medicine man came out in 19 oh my god can a skunk? Yeah, they can take out the smell glands. And then it's what? It's just a little...
It's a weird cat. But is that like de-kling a cat? Is that like horrible for the skunk? That I don't know.
I think living in a house would probably be bad for a skunk. I think every...
They don't actually want this, any part of this. They don't want to wear a hat.
I don't know. He seems pretty happy.
He does not seem anything. He doesn't seem anything.
This is what the world is to him, so he accepts it.

We are all Peanut the Squirrel this week. Peanut the Squirrel died doing what he loved, having no idea what the fuck was going on.

Republicans seized onto the viral story after the squirrel's owners posted about the raid

with the House Judiciary Committee tweeting in support justice for Peanut.

On Sunday, J.D. Vance told rallygoers in North Carolina this.

Thank you. committee tweeting and support justice for peanut on Sunday.
J.D. Vance told rally goers in North Carolina this.
I know Don's fired up about peanut the squirrel. We were on the way down here from Cincinnati.
He was like, you know, is it really the case that the Democrats murdered the Elon Musk of squirrels? And I said, yeah, it sounds like have you seen the videos of this squirrel? He's, he's a genius. Or he was.
Now I've lost all respect for the squirrel. To quote my favorite Vice President Al Gore, bitch, what? I actually now need to know J.D.
Vance's thoughts on what happened in Zanesville. I like, do you remember that? Yeah, I think he's going to be pro it somehow.
Now I really need to know. Zanesville, in case anyone doesn't remember, is when a bunch of like Bengal tigers, bears, wolves, Zanesville, Ohio, they all got out because their owner just like opened the gate and then I believe committed suicide.
Yes. I'm glad you're bringing this up.
Yeah. And then just let a whole bunch of his wild exotic animals out into the neighboring town.
And we lost several endangered animals because that dude did that. Ohio's a great place for animals.
I think J.D. Vance would be a huge fan of that somehow.
Like, I feel like he would, like, back into that being totally fine. This isn't a, it's just so funny.
It's like, the Democrats. The Democrats have killed peanut.
This is a It's like this is I mean look this is a like how does Donald Trump get so close to becoming president? These people will take a fucking local story about a squirrel By the way, the social media users immediately found an only fans belonging to be that's owner who apparently used the late squirrel in promo video to drive traffic to his site. We did to watch part of it.
I just, we need to do that. Oh, I hadn't seen this.
Okay. I hadn't seen any of this and now I'm voting for Trump.
But anyway, famously, his OnlyFans tagline began.

So if you like seeing those nuts get buried.

You didn't watch Chim Crazy.

There is a connection here. It's the same with Tiger King.
There is a connection between me, like people who own animals like this and, and like conservative, we are going to do whatever we want. Fuck the greater good.
Like mindset. I think the, here's the problem.
Maybe there's nothing to learn from this. Maybe this is just a guy that had a squirrel he was supposed to have in a hamlet of New York on the border of Pennsylvania.
And then animal control. Maybe they did the right thing.
Maybe they shouldn't have gone there. Maybe they should have just ignored it and minded their own business.
But animal control goes there. The squirrel bites somebody.
You got to kill the squirrel. He's got to find out there's rabies up there in the squirrel brain.
But this has no connection to a presidential election.

It has no connection to a presidential election.

Every story doesn't have to be a national story.

A squirrel dies in upstate New York.

And now J.D. Vance, potentially the next vice president, is on stage saying they killed the Elon Musk of the animal kingdom.

This is ridiculous.

We live in a ridiculous, ridiculous society.

You know what it is? It's nuts. It's nuts.
It's nuts. It is Monday.
Please vote. There is still time for you.
You better fucking vote. But there's still time to make calls to your friends into swing districts, into swing states.
Go to votesaveamerica.com. There are shifts that could use your help right now.
We have no idea what's going to happen tomorrow, but we have 24 hours to make sure that we get every single vote we need because we know what J.D. Vance and Donald Trump want to be talking about murdering Liz Cheney and government assassinations of area fucking squirrels.
They want to talk about that shit because they know if people understand the stakes, they're going to lose. But that puts power in our hands to make sure people understand the stakes.
So please, please, please. We got 24 fucking hours left.
We can reach all the people we can reach and then we will find out what happens. And once you've called those three friends in swing states, once you've done one last shift for a Senate race, for a House race, for the presidential, we could use one more favor.
Right now, there are a lot of people who have cast ballots. They have voted, but their vote is not being counted because there's some problem with their ballot.
They forgot to sign it. They didn't have it in the right envelope.
There's a lot of reasons a ballot might have to be what they call cured, which means the vote is cast, but they can't count it yet. We need volunteers to sign up and go and find those voters and make sure they cure their ballots.
During big elections, thousands, thousands of mail-in ballots are often thrown out. These are ballots that could make the difference between winning and losing in battleground states.
So we need you to help reach out to those folks. Go to votesaveamerica.com slash cure and sign up to be a ballot curing volunteer.
With a race this close, it is critical that we count every one of these votes. So please, please, please go to votesaveamerica.com.
So that's sign up for one last shift, that's sign up to be a ballot curing volunteer. And that's also, by the way, just a reminder that once the voting is done, we also have to be vigilant to make sure that whatever shenanigans Donald Trump and the Republicans have planned to try to throw out ballots, throw out elections.
So chaos and disinformation, if they lose, we have to be vigilant over the next couple of weeks. So we're not out yet.
And this message has been paid for by Vote Save America. You can learn more at VoteSaveAmerica.com.
This ad has not been authorized by any candidate or candidates committee. And as we watch the results come in this week, Crooked will be bringing you daily election coverage with the latest on every race.
Every morning, what a day will be fresh in your feeds with Jane Koston breaking down what you need to know in 20 minutes. Pod Save America will release new episodes every single day.
And the host from Hysteria and Strict Scrutiny will stop by shows across the network to unpack breaking news.

Subscribe wherever you get your podcast and on YouTube.

I also just want to say thank you to this incredible team behind Love It or Leave It.

We have been working towards this day for a long time and it is stressful.

But I feel really grateful that I get to process the inanity and anxiety and hope of politics today with these incredibly

talented and funny people and everybody that makes this show happen. It is a joy.
And if it has

meant something to you to keep you energized and engaged and hopeful, even in dark times,

just know that there's a great team behind the show and we're all going through it together.

So thank you all for listening. We'll see you on the other side.

Bye. Bye.
Thank you. The strength of our visuals, which you can't see because this is a podcast.
And to our digital producers, David Toles, Claudia Shang, Mia Kelman, and Matt DeGroat, for filming and editing video each week so you can. It's love it, believe it.
Da, da, da. I'm ready to banter.
Great. What's new with you? I haven't voted yet.
I haven't either. I'm going to vote today.
Yeah, I'm going after work. I don't know.
I'm just going to close my eyes, let my hand do the talking. I'm going to write in that squirrel that everybody likes.
I hope he's good. Is that squirrel alive? Oh, I'm so sorry.
Oh, no, this is how you find out. If you let the squirrel a shot down in Miami, that's like a bit people say when like a famous person gets...
What are you talking about?

Save it for the open mic.

We can't even imagine.

Toadie Hitchcliffe.