Trump's Spank America Tour

58m
Donald Trump tries to win over the last few undecided voters by calling immigrants "garbage" and campaigning with Tucker Carlson, who says America is a "bad little girl" who needs a spanking. Harris strikes a different note, contrasting Trump's "enemies list" with her "to do list," and rallying with Beyoncé, Bruce Springsteen, and the Obamas. Jon and Dan break down all the latest moves, including the strategy behind the big closing argument speech Harris will deliver on Tuesday. Then, Texas Congressman Colin Allred joins the show to discuss Harris's rally in Houston, and his plans for beating Ted Cruz.

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Runtime: 58m

Transcript

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Speaker 2 Welcome to Pod Tave America. I'm John Favreau.
I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

Speaker 2 On today's show, with a little over one week until Election Day, both candidates are trying to close the deal with the remaining undecided voters.

Speaker 2 Kamala Harris has the Obama's Beyoncé in a big speech in D.C.

Speaker 2 at the scene of the January 6th attack, while Donald Trump has Elon Musk an interview with Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson calling him a daddy who's ready to spank America.

Speaker 2 Just wild stuff.

Speaker 2 Not making it up. Not a joke, folks.

Speaker 2 And later, Texas Congressman Colin Allred stops by to talk about Kamala's last-minute visit to his home state and the latest in his critical race to unseat Ted Cruz. But first,

Speaker 2 not one but two four-star generals who worked for Donald Trump have now called him a fascist who praised Hitler. And so the big debate is, will it hurt Kamala Harris?

Speaker 4 God, I hate everything.

Speaker 2 I'm kidding, kind of. You're not.
You're not really kidding.

Speaker 2 But the vice president was asked about John Kelly's comments during a CNN town hall with undecided Pennsylvania voters on Wednesday night.

Speaker 2 In a possible preview of the closing argument speech she'll give next Tuesday, here's what she said. You've quoted General Milley calling Donald Trump a fascist.

Speaker 2 You yourself have not used that word to describe him. Let me ask you tonight: do you think Donald Trump is a fascist? Yes, I do.
Yes, I do.

Speaker 7 And I also believe that the people who know him best on this subject should be trusted. And he's going to sit there unstable, unhinged, plotting his revenge, plotting his retribution,

Speaker 7 creating an enemy's list.

Speaker 7 I'm going to tell you, my list will be a list of how I address and continue to address the issues that you all are raising this afternoon and evening.

Speaker 7 It will be a to-do list about how we can impact the American people.

Speaker 2 All right, she used the F-word, Dan.

Speaker 2 I didn't see too many pearls clutched over this.

Speaker 2 But what did you think of that answer on John Kelly?

Speaker 4 I think if the retired four-star general responsible for implementing Donald Trump's Dracodian immigration policies and then became his chief of staff, thinks he's a fascist, who is Kamala Harris to disagree with that?

Speaker 4 I mean, she had to say yes to it.

Speaker 4 It is sort of like a dumb DC trap. Like, are you going to use the word? Are you going to use the word? I know you've described him in the following ways, but are you going to use the actual word?

Speaker 4 You can use the word and his name in the same sentence. Are you going to do it? Are you going to do it?

Speaker 4 And it's kind of a dumb conversation. We can talk about the political discourse around whether it hurts or anything else.
But what I do like is

Speaker 4 the construction that came after that that about an enemies list and a to-do list.

Speaker 4 Donald Trump's going to be seeking vengeance to satisfy his own needs, and Kamal Harris is going to be out there doing things for you.

Speaker 4 Like that's the right framework because you have to make it matter to people's lives. Because the idea whether he's a fascist is an esoteric concept to a lot of people.

Speaker 4 And a lot of people probably don't even know what the word means or can't really define it.

Speaker 2 I was going to say, if you asked a sample of people in this country to define fascism, I think you'd be bewildered by what you find.

Speaker 2 They do know Hitler, though. Maybe a little Hitler.
Maybe a bit disappointed. They do know Hitler.

Speaker 2 I mean, you're right. Like there's three different answers you can give to that question.
No, he's not a fascist, which obviously she's not going to say.

Speaker 2 She said yes. Or she could have done something like...

Speaker 2 Let me tell you what I think he is and then defined him herself. But that's sort of like a squirrely answer.
And then Anderson Cooper would have said, okay, so yes or no, fascist, right?

Speaker 2 And then suddenly it's a whole thing. And if she doesn't say yes, then it's out of the headlines.

Speaker 2 And again, I'm sure the Harris campaign probably thinks it's a good day for them when their opponent is in the headlines because four-star generals who worked for him think he's a fascist and said that he praised Hitler.

Speaker 2 I'm new in politics, but I don't know. I feel like

Speaker 2 it's bad for you when people who used to work for you, who are in the military, say that you're a fascist who praise Hitler.

Speaker 4 We think.

Speaker 2 Everything is so stupid, Dan.

Speaker 4 The whole thing is so it just there is like a very serious thing here, which is put aside the use of whether Millie and Kelly and all these rest of these people use the term fascist.

Speaker 4 What they're telling us is that he is a dangerous man who has tried on multiple occasions to use military force against American citizens and believes that the people who work for him, including the members of the military, should be personally loyal to Trump over their loyalty to the Constitution of the nation.

Speaker 4 That is the thing here. Whether we use the word or not is an idiotic Washington, D.C.
debate.

Speaker 4 It just speaks to the ability of politics, political discourse in the media in this country to pull every important issue to its dumbest possible formulation.

Speaker 4 Okay, I feel a little bit better for saying that.

Speaker 2 He wanted the Department of Justice to investigate his political opponents. He wanted the IRS to audit his political opponents.

Speaker 2 He wanted to withhold federal aid to places in the country that needed it but didn't vote for him.

Speaker 2 He asked his defense secretary why the military couldn't shoot unarmed protesters, Black Lives Matter's protesters. He's asked multiple times why he couldn't use the military against protesters.

Speaker 2 He has been threatening to take away CBS's broadcast license because Kamala Harris did an interview with him that made him mad.

Speaker 2 Right as we're recording, he just once again said that the press are bad people, that they are the enemy of the people and he doesn't like them. Like, what?

Speaker 2 Okay, call it, whatever you want to call that.

Speaker 2 You can call it, you can call him a fascist, you can call him a strongman, you can call him a demagogue, a tyrant, whatever the fuck you want, you can call him an asshole if you want. But

Speaker 2 the guy wants to take away people's freedoms. He's already taken reproductive freedom away from the women of this country.

Speaker 2 He wants to come after freedom of the press, freedom to protest and criticize him, freedom to join a union, freedom to see a doctor when you're sick, go on and on and on. That's what he wants to do.

Speaker 2 So I think you're right.

Speaker 2 Like talking about what Trump will do, the threat of a fascist like Trump, is probably going to be more important to voters than just a definition or a debate over the definition of the word fascist.

Speaker 2 Harris also answered questions about the economy, abortion, immigration, mistakes she's made in the past.

Speaker 2 Overall, it seems as though some of the undecided voters CNN spoke to afterwards approved. Let's listen.

Speaker 8 I think if I had to pick right now,

Speaker 8 I would pick her.

Speaker 3 I think she is a better candidate.

Speaker 9 And you're a registered Republican.

Speaker 4 I'm an independent. You're an independent now?

Speaker 9 Yes. Who'd you vote for in 2020?

Speaker 8 I voted for Trump.

Speaker 10 I came out of this feeling,

Speaker 10 just kind of a feeling of adoration of her personally. I think personally, she is a good person.
There are a lot of things that I connect with her as a woman.

Speaker 11 I believe it was you that asked the weakness question. You know, what is your biggest weakness? And she brought up that she has people around her that she can trust, that she can get the answer from.

Speaker 11 In my line of work in IT, I don't expect everybody to know the answer. I expect them to know how to get the answer.
And her specifically, that resonated with me.

Speaker 4 Do you know how you get the answer in IT?

Speaker 2 You call the IT guy.

Speaker 2 That's a subject where I definitely don't know the answer.

Speaker 2 So it always feels like there's a bit of a gap between pundit reaction and voter reaction.

Speaker 2 I can tell you the CNN panel did not have a similar reaction to those undecided voters in Pennsylvania who are actually going to decide the election. What do you make of the gap there?

Speaker 4 Well, over the long sweep of history, this is not the first time there's been a gap between how pundits have interpreted a candidate's performance and how voters have done it.

Speaker 4 But let's just say a couple of things here. One, typically in these sorts of things, pundits are looking at this from a very different perspective, right?

Speaker 4 They are judging it like a judge at a figure skating event at the Olympics, right?

Speaker 2 What Pluff would always say. Yeah, it's like what are the figure skating judges?

Speaker 4 Yes, the Russian judges, he would call it, because

Speaker 4 you can't get a fair

Speaker 4 score.

Speaker 4 And it's just like, she misses opportunity. Like, there was this question about mistakes, and she missed an opportunity to separate herself from Biden.

Speaker 4 That's like, just not how normal people think about this stuff. So that's one.

Speaker 4 Two is, and we've seen in all of the research I've seen, all the message testing I've seen, there's like a very simple truth here, which is that when people see Kamala Harris, they're more likely to vote for her.

Speaker 4 Just she, and you just think about it.

Speaker 4 It's sort of mind-blocking listening to people that they were undecided before this moment, but the fact that they were, they probably actually had not seen very much of her.

Speaker 4 Maybe they saw TV commercials of her, but not her actually speaking. And there she's up there.
She's answering tough questions from reporters and citizens.

Speaker 4 She is doing her best to answer them earnestly and truthfully. And she is a serious person who seems to care about people, is in it for the right reasons, and knows something about policy.

Speaker 4 The other side, you've got this other fucking Yahoo yapping around about Arnold Palmer's putter and all this other shit that's happening.

Speaker 4 And so it's just like, if you're like, you can see why, this is why she's doing these things because when people see her, they like her.

Speaker 4 And that is, if you're looking for reasons to be optimistic down the stretch here, that is the reason to be optimistic because the more people see Kamala Harris, the more likely they are to vote for her because she is better liked than Trump.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, look,

Speaker 2 a lot of these pundits, some of them are Democratic strategists, some of them are journalists. We've done this too.

Speaker 2 Like, part of this is born out of a desire for Kamala Harris to win because a lot of these people know what a threat Donald Trump is, right? And, you know, Democratic strategists can be open about it.

Speaker 2 Some of the journalists maybe not, but they all, people, a lot of these people want Kamala Harris to win. And they're so nervous, as we are, because it's so fucking close.

Speaker 2 And so we're scrutinizing every performance and everything she says and want it to be perfect so badly because we want her to win, right?

Speaker 2 Because we're worried about how it's going to play with some voter if she says something wrong. And guess what? She's going to make mistakes and she's going to say things that are wrong.

Speaker 2 And also, she's got the weight of the world on her shoulders right now. She has been the nominee for 90 days.
This is her whole campaign. She was thrust into this.
Is that what it is?

Speaker 2 Yeah, 90-day campaign, basically.

Speaker 4 Jesus Christ.

Speaker 2 I know. And so, like, I, and look, you can see some of her answers where I thought were like crisp, great, whatever.

Speaker 2 Some of them were, you know, when she doesn't want to answer a question because she's worried about sort of like the political implications of saying X or Y, she sort of like devolves into a little bit of word salad.

Speaker 2 Like, that's just what she does. And every politician has that kind of dodge.
And by the way, almost every other presidential candidate has like a whole year to

Speaker 2 practice, practice giving bad answers to questions because they all do it. And you usually practice like off Broadway for a while before you are thrust into the spotlight.

Speaker 2 She did not have that opportunity and she has run a near flawless campaign.

Speaker 2 And so like, yeah, once in a while when she gets a question that's like sort of politically tricky, she does, you know, she's just going to say a bunch of words to avoid actually answering it.

Speaker 2 But you got to think, A, the other guy wants to shoot the protesters.

Speaker 2 And B,

Speaker 2 voters don't actually judge these candidates as harshly as the pundits do. And like I sort of learned this with the Vance Walls debate.
Like Vance was very polished. Walls stumbled a few times.

Speaker 2 And then after the debate, voters were like, oh, JD Vance might have won the debate, but I liked Tim Walls better.

Speaker 2 He's just a better guy. because they can see through the bullshit, right?

Speaker 2 And so I think sometimes we treat voters, even that we are frustrated with them for being undecided, but therefore we treat them as stupid. And they're not stupid.
They kind of get it.

Speaker 2 And they get that sometimes people don't answer a question or something they do, whatever.

Speaker 2 But like the overall impression of Kamala Harris that was left with these voters was a real favorable one and that is that was true at the debate that was true at the convention it's every time i've seen a dial test about one of her appearances whether it's the podcasts she's been doing at the interviews is she leaves every interaction with the voters who see her and there it's hard to get the people to see her but with the voters who see her liking her more and being more open to vote for her yeah doesn't mean she's going to win but for the voters who are seeing her and that's that's the challenge yeah exactly so as i mentioned earlier the harris campaign has announced that the vice president will be giving a closing argument speech on Tuesday evening on the ellipse.

Speaker 2 That's part of the National Mall just beyond the White House South Fence, where Donald Trump appeared at the Stop the Steel rally on January 6th and, of course, urged his followers to march to the Capitol.

Speaker 2 We all know what happened next. What is the strategy behind doing a speech like this in general? And then what do you think about this location?

Speaker 4 I mean, you've written a bunch of these, so you'd probably have some really smart things to say about it.

Speaker 4 But the ultimate idea here is there's like a handful of events during a campaign where the press will cover you and give you pretty straight coverage, right?

Speaker 4 They'll just say, here's what our candidate had to say today. This is their message.

Speaker 4 And one of them is that whatever speech it is, you label, it's basically your announcement speech, your convention speech, and your closing argument speech. We label it my closing argument speech.

Speaker 4 And what you're trying to do there is you're trying to set the terms of the debate for the last seven days of the race.

Speaker 4 You to let the press know and your supporters know and everyone out there know what is your focus on, what you think the major issues are. And here's your final message.

Speaker 4 And when you set up like a big signal of here's my final message, the next time they go cover your rally, they're going to cover the part you've said is my final message, as opposed to all the other stuff.

Speaker 4 And so it works that way. And the choice of the location, I think, here is very smart.
This is, as far as I understand it, it's not going to be a speech about January 6th or democracy or fascism.

Speaker 4 It's going to be a broader argument that probably fits more with what we're seeing in her paid advertising than what you're seeing in some of the press interactions recently that gets in the economy and continues to define her and cutting costs and all of those things.

Speaker 4 But by doing it on this location, the site of Donald Trump's Day of Love is a opportunity to remind people of the danger of Donald Trump. It's a way to get attention from the press.

Speaker 4 And I think also, and I'm sure this is not their main reason for doing it, but it's going to trigger the living shit out of him. Like, you know what he's going to do.

Speaker 4 He's going to say he had a bigger crowd. Of course he's going to say, which is going to be very funny.

Speaker 2 And not good for him. I'm going to say it was a wonderful crowd and it was a peaceful day and I don't know what she's doing and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2 Look, I think the closing argument speech is an opportunity to take your announcement speech, take your convention speech and slim it down to one tight argument.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 that speech in your final week, right, where you're going to have, you know, presumably be in front of really big rallies is like a pump-up speech for everyone, right?

Speaker 2 Like it is a signal to the press, as you said, that the press is going to cover it, but it's also like you are literally making your final argument to voters who are tuning in, some of them, some of them for the first time in the last week to see both candidates.

Speaker 2 So it is a distillation of your message in the tightest way possible.

Speaker 2 You know, there's been this debate among Democratic strategists, pundits, about the wisdom of closing on Trump's threat versus Kamala's vision.

Speaker 2 And you and I have talked about this on the pod, off the pod.

Speaker 4 Every day.

Speaker 2 Every single day. I have struggled with this in my head.
I think it's a tough debate. Persuadable voters keep saying they want to know more about Kamala and what kind of president she'll be.

Speaker 2 I get that. I've been in focus groups for several years where they say they want to know more about the candidates.
They want to know more about the economy. What are you going to do for me?

Speaker 2 Kitchen table issues. You hear it from voters everywhere, especially swing voters, especially persuadable voters in the swing states.

Speaker 2 But the Harris campaign, Pluff said this to Puck the other day, their research shows that they need to elevate the risk.

Speaker 2 of a second Trump term in the minds of voters and that that is an important piece of business to get done as well as making sure people know who Kamala is, what she stands for, what she'll do as president.

Speaker 2 What do you think about this whole debate?

Speaker 4 I think it's a little bit of a false debate. You have to do both, and the Harris campaign is doing both.

Speaker 4 I took the opportunity this afternoon while we were waiting for Donald Trump to have a rally to go and look at all the ads that the Harris campaign has on the air. Do you know what they are?

Speaker 4 They do both things.

Speaker 2 Contrast ads, yeah.

Speaker 4 Well, they're contrast ads, but there's a lot of economy in there.

Speaker 4 There is a lot of her, there's a bunch of ads, and if you've been watching sports the last couple of weeks, you'll see a bunch of ads of her to camera laying out her vision and her story and then tying it to her economic policies.

Speaker 4 I think only one totally negative ad about Trump up, and it's about Project 2025. And the rest are, here's who I am, here's what I'm going to do, here's what this guy's going to do.

Speaker 4 And so you have to do both. And I do think it's important to

Speaker 4 understand the media environment in which she's operating in.

Speaker 4 It would be great if a campaign, if the press and the social media conversation could ever be about her plan to cut costs.

Speaker 2 I'm almost laughing about it.

Speaker 2 Imagine her closing argument speech just like at a, outside a factory in Pennsylvania.

Speaker 4 At a grocery store.

Speaker 2 She'd give it fart in the wind. Yeah.
Like it would not, they would say like, oh yeah, she's giving a speech, whatever.

Speaker 2 And she'd be like, they said something about Donald Trump's going to cut taxes for rich people and she's going to cut taxes for the middle class. And then no one would fucking hear it.

Speaker 2 And I bet it would test off the charts. Would test off the charts.

Speaker 4 This actually, this fact explains

Speaker 4 almost everything you need to know about politics and media today, which is the issues that are most persuasive to voters generate the least engagement for political media.

Speaker 4 Because there's this giant divide between the political junkies and partisans who consume political media and the rest of the world.

Speaker 4 So, what drives traffic and drives ratings, and it is a legitimate story.

Speaker 4 I'm not criticizing it from a journalistic perspective, is Donald Trump's chief of staff calling him a fascist and then a big debate about whether we use the word fascist and who's a fascist and how we talk about that.

Speaker 4 What gets swing voters interested is your plan to protect Social Security and Medicare, to protect the Affordable Care Act, to cut taxes to cut costs and you just can't get press coverage of that and so her choice is talk about the things the press will cover to try and be on offense because if she's not on offense donald trump's going to be on offense or

Speaker 4 just do a bunch of things on the issues that poll best and get no coverage for it and let donald trump dominate the conversation with migrants eating pets bullshit stories about gangs taking over the border or condominiums in Denver or whatever else is going on there.

Speaker 4 So it's just, I think the conversation is missing the broader context of politics and media right now.

Speaker 2 I mean, sometimes you just have to like put all the polls down and just like use fucking common sense. And when your opponent's

Speaker 2 former administration officials are saying that he's a fascist, you know, you don't, you don't respond to that by being like, you know what's fascist?

Speaker 2 These high prices, these corporations that are gouging consumers. That's what's fascist.
Like, what, what the fuck are we doing?

Speaker 2 It's so insane.

Speaker 2 And like, again, I am someone who like is obsessed with the data and the polls and the focus groups, but like at some point, you gotta, you just, you gotta say what's real to people, what people are seeing in their own lives, which is when it comes to choosing between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, who is promising to do all these things.

Speaker 2 Mike Podhorser, who has been on the wilderness a lot, he's a Democratic strategist, is very steeped in the research and focus groups and all that.

Speaker 2 He made a really good point in one of his newsletters, which is, everyone always says, well, the reason you don't talk about Trump is because everyone's already made up up their mind about Trump.

Speaker 2 People know everything there is to know about Donald Trump. And he argues that may be true about Trump, the person, and Trump's character.

Speaker 2 He goes, but what people don't know is the sort of threat level,

Speaker 2 their consciousness about the threat that Trump poses sort of changes from time to time because not everyone's paying attention to everything he says because he says so much bullshit all the time.

Speaker 2 He, you know, there's chaos and drama around him all the time.

Speaker 2 And so what you need to do is sort of elevate the risk of a Trump second term with new information about Donald Trump and what he's going to do.

Speaker 2 That doesn't mean you just yell about Trump orange man bad, right? Like that's, we get it.

Speaker 2 People have made up their mind about Donald Trump, the person, but what Donald Trump might do is still very much up for grabs.

Speaker 2 And he also makes the point, when you look back at the last couple of elections, if only the people who voted in 2016, voted in 2020,

Speaker 2 some of them switched from Trump to Biden, but Biden would still lose the Electoral College if that was the only electorate you had.

Speaker 2 Biden wins in 2020 because of irregular voters, you know, low propensity, sporadic voters, whatever you want to call them, who sat out in 2016 and then came back into the electorate in 2020.

Speaker 2 And those voters were far more likely to say that the reason they came out in 2020 was to stop Trump, not to support Biden. Right.
And so there are these, he calls these like an anti-maga coalition.

Speaker 2 There are these voters who don't tend to vote in every election, but they have come out in 18 and 20 and 22 to vote against Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 Some of them might be Independent, some of them might be Republicans, some of them might be just Democrats who don't vote all the time. And those people right now

Speaker 2 are like, a lot of them are maybe Harris voters, right?

Speaker 2 She hasn't locked in that whole coalition yet, but what they'll need is a reminder that the threat of a Trump second term is very real and very dangerous.

Speaker 2 And I think that's what the campaign is doing, even as they're also having a bunch of ads and having her say like what, who she is and what she's for, right?

Speaker 2 Like they have to define her too, but you got to walk and chew gum at the same time. You got to do both.

Speaker 4 The only campaign in recent history that only does one thing is the 2024 Trump campaign, which only runs negative ads about Kamala Harris.

Speaker 4 Almost every other campaign, like we've, we just have such short fucking memories in this country. Every campaign has a positive message and a negative message at the end.

Speaker 4 It's not, it's not bizarre they're doing both. You don't have to pick between them, especially when you have all the money they have.
You can run all the ads you want. You can do the things you want.

Speaker 4 And so it's like, I get all the concerns about this, the debate about it. You know, what she emphasizes in her speech will be interesting,

Speaker 4 but you have to do both.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And look, the real challenge, too, is coming up with a story that kind of connects everything, because when you go from the threat of a second Trump term and you're talking about him like wanting to like shoot protesters and,

Speaker 2 you know, shred the Constitution. And then you're like, but he also wants to to give a big tax cut to rich people.

Speaker 2 It's hard to fit it all into a story, but I do think to your earlier point, though, like, he's going to be sitting in the Oval Office focused on his enemies list, and I'm going to be focused on a to-do list of things to get done for the American people.

Speaker 2 I think that is the best contrast that sort of brings it all together. Another possible side effect of focusing on how dangerous Trump is is that it's a pretty serious tone.

Speaker 2 It's certainly different from the joy

Speaker 2 from Brat Summer.

Speaker 2 Ah, the days. Not Not so long ago, I know, right? Do you think, is there a way, is there a need to revive that feeling in the final two weeks? Or is it,

Speaker 2 can you do both? What do you think?

Speaker 4 You can absolutely do both because you can paint a picture. Because the flip side, another way of thinking about the message of joy is hope.

Speaker 4 And like, this is a righteous cause that Kamala Harris, this campaign, and the entire movement of people working to defeat Donald Trump are on.

Speaker 4 And it is to turn the page on a very dark era personified by this very dark and dangerous person and to paint the picture of what that looks like, right? What the new way forward looks like.

Speaker 4 Imagine what it would be like if Kamala Harris is sitting in the Oval Office, right? And Donald Trump has lost the election.

Speaker 4 And then a few weeks after losing the election, has to show up in Manhattan for his criminal sentencing.

Speaker 4 So I think you can be hopeful.

Speaker 2 You can be. And to me, that is an even easier turn to make, right? Because after you talk about the, it's like, she can say we don't have to live this way.
Yeah. Right.

Speaker 2 Like we do not have to let politicians like Donald Trump divide us and make us afraid of each other all the time and make us angry at each other all the time, just so he can take power for himself and help himself and his rich friends.

Speaker 2 And like we, we can turn the page on all that. In one week, we can turn the page on all that.

Speaker 2 We can defend our freedoms. We can defend opportunity and equal treatment under the law.

Speaker 2 And we can get back to the business of like working together and reaching out to actually do things for people to make their lives better, which is what he and MAGA politicians have prevented us from doing for even when Joe Biden was president for the last four years, right?

Speaker 2 And so like, I think you can definitely end on a note of hope there. And it's, I don't think it's discordant at all.

Speaker 12 What's poppin' listeners?

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Speaker 2 Speaking of joy, we got Beyonce headlining a Harris rally in her hometown of Houston tonight.

Speaker 2 We also had Bruce Springsteen and Tyler Perry appearing with Harris and Barack Obama on Thursday night in Atlanta. Usher did a Harris rally in Atlanta as well.

Speaker 2 James Taylor played a set at a Tim Walls rally in North Carolina. Leaving Obama aside, who's having the time of his life out there,

Speaker 2 just

Speaker 2 rapping, lose yourself.

Speaker 2 What's the value do you think of these big celebrity events? It's attention, right?

Speaker 4 Like it is impossible to get attention in this totally fucked up media environment, particularly when you're running against someone like Donald Trump, who is a reality star attention monger.

Speaker 4 And so the fact that Beyonce, plus, because of all the anticipation that Beyonce was going to make a surprise appearance at the convention, like this is the one people have been waiting for.

Speaker 4 More people pay attention. The clips will go more viral on TikTok.
People will see it.

Speaker 4 You'll get a bigger crowd, which matters a lot in these Battleground states, because you might, especially with these musicians, you might get people who wouldn't otherwise come to to a rally because they want to hear Beyonce play a song or hear Bruce Bringstein play a song.

Speaker 4 And those are people who maybe

Speaker 4 aren't going to vote necessarily, but they might come or show up or at least be prophesied to. And so, yeah,

Speaker 4 it's not the end-all-be-all. It's not that Beyonce's endorsement is going to win the election for her, but appearing with Beyonce will get Kamala Harris more attention.

Speaker 4 And then you just hope in the 15 seconds you have of voters' attention, you can deliver a message that will persuade them.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I feel like it's got to be an organizing tool as well, right? Because if those extra people come, then you can get more volunteers, you can sign people up.

Speaker 2 I will note that the ARIS tour is back in the United States after it was overseas, and there is a gap in Taylor Swift's schedule between October 27th and November 1st when she's in Indianapolis.

Speaker 2 So next week, who knows? Be nice if Taylor showed up at a Kamala Harris rally.

Speaker 2 I don't know anything. I'm just wishing that into it.
I would be honest with you. I'm manifesting that into existence.

Speaker 4 No one assumed you did.

Speaker 2 Well, the way I said it, I was sort of like, get ready, everyone.

Speaker 2 I don't want to be accused.

Speaker 4 You sounded like RFK talking about vaccines.

Speaker 4 I'm just online. I'm looking at the schedule.
I'm doing some research.

Speaker 2 Our new healthy human services secretary.

Speaker 2 Maha. There's something for you.
Yeah, there's something for you.

Speaker 2 Worried about your kids' vaccines. RFK Jr.
in charge. All right.
So Harris has Beyonce and Trump has Tucker Carlson.

Speaker 2 The man who nearly brought down Fox News over alleged sexism and harassment introduced Trump Trump at a rally in Georgia on Wednesday where he reached for this metaphor to describe the relationship between Donald Trump and America.

Speaker 12 There has to be a point at which dad comes home and he's pissed.

Speaker 12 Dad is pissed.

Speaker 12 He's not vengeful.

Speaker 12 He loves his children. Disobedient as they may be, he loves them because they're his children.
They live in his house.

Speaker 12 But he's very disappointed in their behavior and he's going to have to let them know. And when dad gets home, you know what he says?

Speaker 12 You've been a bad girl.

Speaker 12 You've been a bad little girl and you're getting a vigorous spanking right now.

Speaker 12 And no, it's not going to hurt me more than it hurts you. No, it's not.
I'm not going to lie. It's going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts me.
And you earned this.

Speaker 12 You're getting a vigorous spanking because you've been a bad girl.

Speaker 2 I knew that happened. I don't think I'd heard the whole clip.
I was not quite prepared for that vigorous spanking that Tucker Carlson is very, very excited about.

Speaker 4 Enthusiastic about this.

Speaker 2 He's thought about that one for a while.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Call him daddy. That's.

Speaker 2 Tucker.

Speaker 2 Literally.

Speaker 2 He wants America to call Donald Trump daddy. What was was that? What was that just to trigger Libs?

Speaker 2 Was that to just play out his weird fantasy? What the fuck was that?

Speaker 4 I think his brain is broken. I don't know what else to say.
I don't think there's a strategy. I don't think there's a message.
I don't think it's just to trigger Libs. There are many ways to do that.

Speaker 4 That's less fucking weird than that was. Like

Speaker 4 Tim Wallace needed more evidence for his Republicans are weird message. Just there you go.

Speaker 2 I mean, what a closing argument. Trump, daddy's home.
Now we're all getting to spank.

Speaker 4 Daddy will.

Speaker 2 That was smart. Dan was like, I'm not going to say it because they're going to clip me out of Gond.

Speaker 2 I can't see a lot of noise in his head.

Speaker 2 All right. We just had to play that one.
Trump himself was in Arizona on Thursday where his campaign said he'd be previewing his closing message with voters.

Speaker 2 They describe that closing message as Harris broke it. Trump will fix it.

Speaker 2 His His campaign sent out excerpts that say, my message today is simple. Kamala's migrant invasion disqualifies her from the presidency.

Speaker 2 He started speaking right before we were recording. He did say that.
He looks like he's like staying on prompter

Speaker 2 more than usual, but

Speaker 2 we did get some of this.

Speaker 15 A lot of people coming out of the Congo, not just South America. They're coming from 181 countries as of yesterday.
Right? And we're a dumping ground.

Speaker 15 We're like a garbage can for the world.

Speaker 15 That's what's happened. That's what's happened to.

Speaker 15 We're like a garbage can.

Speaker 15 You know, it's the first time I've ever said that. And every time I come up and talk about what they've done to a country, I get angrier and angrier.

Speaker 15 First time I've ever said garbage can, but you know what? It's a very accurate description.

Speaker 2 Speaking of hope and joy,

Speaker 2 what do we think of

Speaker 2 Donald Trump trying to have a closing argument and a closing message, which is Harris broke it, Trump will fix it? They say, we're offering people something to vote for, not just vote against.

Speaker 2 That's what the campaign has been saying.

Speaker 4 I think that's probably a little bit of a stretch there. I mean, it's not, it's not, the basic framework

Speaker 4 is

Speaker 4 fine, I guess. I just don't think that people believe that Kamala Harris broke it.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 That's just not, we've seen none of that in the research that they hold her personally accountable for things they don't like in American policy right now, whether it's inflation or immigration.

Speaker 4 Now, they have had some traction making the case that she's not the best person to change it because she's so closely associated with the Biden administration.

Speaker 4 But this idea that she personally opened the doors to make America a trash can is, that's not people doing that.

Speaker 2 I know. And it's like...
You're right.

Speaker 2 Like with just a little, not that they do subtlety or nuance well, but with just a little subtlety and nuance, you could make the argument like, well, you say that Biden did this.

Speaker 2 Well, you were right there as vice president. Why didn't you tell him not to? Like they, they did, they just skipped right over that.

Speaker 2 They were like, she was president for the last four years and she did all these things, which I think is just, I don't know, it's sort of a sort of a lazier version of it, but they can't help themselves.

Speaker 4 You know, for

Speaker 4 my YouTube show, Political Experts React, I watch all these Trump ads, right? And this has been true, and I've been doing this show for four years now.

Speaker 4 And this is true of all the Trump, mostly Republican ads now, just because everyone's been Trump pilled. It's just they can't ever use a scalpel.
It's always just a giant sledgehammer.

Speaker 4 So there's like a good, effective, worrisome message buried in there, but they're just like too broken-brained or want to be testosterone-filled to actually do that.

Speaker 4 And so they just like way overshoot the runway every single time. And this is emblematic of that trend.

Speaker 2 Well, I'm just thinking that their strategy in the home stretch and over the last month has just been to drive Kamala Harris's negatives up as much as they possibly can to just try to disqualify her so that Trump becomes the better choice on, you know, an issue like the economy or immigration.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's what they did with Hillary.

Speaker 2 Yeah, they were, Mark Caputo at the Bullwork had a piece today on

Speaker 2 how much the Trump campaign has spent on these anti-trans ads.

Speaker 4 26 million,

Speaker 4 I think.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And then the next, like 5 million was the next issue, and that was the economy.
5 million versus 26, 29 million on anti-trans ads.

Speaker 2 And, you know, I do think part of those ads, you know, which is about about like

Speaker 2 her saying that she, you know, that

Speaker 2 inmates should be able to get transition surgery,

Speaker 2 even if they're undocumented or whatever bullshit thing there is, is, you know, they end that ad with Trump is for you, Kamala is for they, them. Kamala is not for you, she's for they, them, right?

Speaker 2 Which I think is not, you know,

Speaker 2 in the immediate instance, is it about. trans issues, but more broadly, what they're trying to do there is just say like, she's not for you.
She's for someone else. She's too rich.

Speaker 2 Which is a message that Trump and Republicans have used about Democrats and Republicans used about Democrats for decades, right? Like, they're always trying to tell you, Democrats,

Speaker 2 they're not for you. They're for just the poor, or they're for black Americans, or Latino Americans, or immigrants, or gay people, or trans people, right?

Speaker 2 Like, and so you're hardworking, you're a hardworking person, and you pay your taxes, and you're trying to get ahead, and the Democrats just want to give all that to someone else.

Speaker 2 And they have just been, and basically they told Mark Peter their strategy is to just tear her down, make people think that she's not for them and that she's weak and that Trump will be the best alternative.

Speaker 2 And like, who knows? You know, I guess if he wins, we'll see that it works.

Speaker 2 But that's clearly the strategy there.

Speaker 4 I mean, this question right here is the hinge point of every American election since the 80s, with the possible exception of 2004, which is Democrat.

Speaker 4 It's all a question about who's fighting for who, right? And Republicans Republicans want to make Democrats look like they're fighting for poor people,

Speaker 4 immigrants, people on welfare, the 47% in Mitt Romney's parlance. And Democrats want to show Republicans to be fighting for rich people and corporations.

Speaker 4 And whoever wins that argument tends to win the election.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So after a lot of will he or won't he speculation, Trump's also sitting down with Joe Rogan for an interview in Texas on Friday. Obviously, Trump's been doing a tour of the Manosphere podcasts.

Speaker 2 So in some ways, obvious move, but Rogan's also criticized Trump in the past. Any risks here?

Speaker 4 I mean, it is funny that Trump has finally made himself to the final boss of the Manosphere podcast.

Speaker 4 You got to defeat Theo Vaughan and Andrew Schultz and the Nilk Boys, and then you can finally get to Joe Rogan. Yeah, I think there's tons of risk here.
I mean, Rogan is.

Speaker 4 The kind of interviewer where Trump could get himself in a lot of trouble because it's really, he doesn't, he doesn't ask, it's not that he asks hard questions. It's really a very

Speaker 4 meandering conversation about what's going through Joe Rogan's mind at the time. It's a lot of runway for Trump to run into something or make mistakes.

Speaker 4 I'll be very interested to see how Rogan handles this because he has been critical of Trump.

Speaker 2 He

Speaker 2 has,

Speaker 4 he has pushed back on the idea that he's supporting Trump. He's obviously not a fan of Kamala Harris or Joe Biden.

Speaker 4 So I'm just, I'll be very interested to see this is a bit, this is a, it's, this is high, high risk, high reward for Trump, no question.

Speaker 2 There was a report a couple weeks ago that Kamala Harris might do Rogan. What do you think happened there?

Speaker 4 It's a great question, and there was a lot of speculation when she was coming to Texas to do this event

Speaker 4 on Friday, both the event with Beyoncé and now the in the abortion speech, was that she would do Rogan while you're there because Trump is going to Austin to do this.

Speaker 4 I don't think Rogan Rogan doesn't do road games. You come to his house to do it when you have the largest podcast in the world.
Do you do that?

Speaker 4 We would get on a fucking Greyhound bus to interview someone, but

Speaker 4 not if you're Joe Rogan.

Speaker 2 I don't know.

Speaker 4 I don't know whether he was unwilling to do it or they couldn't come to an agreement on timing or what it would look like.

Speaker 4 Maybe the campaign didn't want to spend, you know, it's an to go to Austin specifically to spend hours and hours doing this interview. I mean, for her, it's...

Speaker 2 Maybe she's going to surprise Trump

Speaker 2 to show up. That would be very,

Speaker 4 Joe Rogan loves professional wrestling. And so her coming in, like busting through the door like Macho Man Savage.

Speaker 2 Let's do the debate right now. Debate me.
Debate me, me, Kyle.

Speaker 4 She is in Texas at the same time.

Speaker 2 I mean that would be

Speaker 4 an October surprise, people.

Speaker 2 And also it's like, this is the final week. Do the big rallies, get everyone excited.
Let's just like, you know, drive it home here. Okay.

Speaker 2 When we come back from the break, Texas Congressman Colin Allred talks with Tommy about beating Ted Cruz and Kamala Harris's big visit to Houston tonight.

Speaker 2 Before we do that, look, Friend of the Pod subscription, 25% off new annual subscriptions right now through Election Day. So take advantage of that.
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Speaker 2 If you're already a monthly subscriber, you can easily upgrade to an annual plan, and new subscribers can join in less than a minute. But enough about us.
This is much more important.

Speaker 2 We got two weekends left before Election Day. Are you helping out this weekend? Ask yourself, are you? Have you signed up? The time is now.

Speaker 2 It's easy to figure out how to get to where you're needed for the day, for the weekend, for the final few days. Just go to votesaveamerica.com slash travel.

Speaker 2 Also, we are asking you to reach out to three people you know in the Battleground states to make sure they're voting. VSA has tools for that too.
Three people. Do it.
Go through your contacts.

Speaker 2 If you want to do more than three, do more than three and tell us all about it. Post it.
Tell your friends you're doing it and get them to do it.

Speaker 2 If everyone gets three friends, three people they know in Battleground States to vote, Kamala Harris wins.

Speaker 2 We can all rest easy. Early voting's underway.
As you get ready to vote, you can also

Speaker 2 use VSA's Build Your Own Ballot tool. It's going to help you figure out how you want to vote on every line of your ballot.

Speaker 2 We all get those texts from our friends on Election Day morning asking about the ballot initiatives here in California. Do everyone a favor and get informed at votesaveamerica.com/slash vote.

Speaker 2 Just plug in your address and it's all right there. When we come back, call in all red.

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Speaker 5 Joining us today is the man we all believe is going to finally defeat Ted Cruz and become the next U.S. Senator from Texas, Representative Colin Allred.
Congressman, it's great to see you.

Speaker 5 Welcome back.

Speaker 2 Yeah, thanks for having me on, Tommy. I appreciate you.

Speaker 5 It's great to talk to you, as always. So we're just a couple weeks out from the election.
The polls have you within single digits of Ted Cruz. It's very close this year.

Speaker 5 How does a Democrat win in Texas in a presidential year? Are you focused on sort of base turnout at this point?

Speaker 5 Are you thinking about getting voters to split their ticket and go, you know, Trump all red? How are you thinking about winning?

Speaker 2 Yeah, well, you know, it's just a different race than the presidential ticket. And I think Texans see it that way.
And I'm a different candidate, obviously. And Ted Cruz is too.

Speaker 2 You know, this is somebody who went to Cancun when we needed him most,

Speaker 2 who is responsible for taking down a border bill, who's responsible for the abortion ban that we have here in Texas, and who has spent his time for 12 years pitting Texans against each other.

Speaker 2 And so, you know, as a fourth generation Texan, somebody who was raised by a single mom in Dallas, captain the football team at Baylor, trained for the draft in Houston, whose family's from Brownsville, I think I have a pretty good take on who we are as Texans.

Speaker 2 And the thing is, is that Ted Cruz is just too small for our state. And his vision is too small.
His view for what we can be is too small. We're a state of big ideas, of getting big things done.

Speaker 2 That's what I've done in my time in Congress. And, you know, I know know that obviously the presidential race is going at the same time, but they are two very distinct decisions.

Speaker 2 And I think that's what we're going to see on November 5th.

Speaker 5 You recently had the joy of debating Ted Cruz. I just watched it.
You worked him over pretty hard. Here's just a little taste of that debate for the listeners.
We did a supercut.

Speaker 17 But time and again, Senator Cruz treats our border communities like he's going on some kind of a safari.

Speaker 17 He comes down, he puts on his outdoor clothes, he tries to look tough, and he goes back to Washington and does nothing to help.

Speaker 17 Because IVF didn't need protecting until he got his way of going after it. No one was thinking that we needed to protect IVF.

Speaker 17 So to every Texas woman at home and every Texas family watching this, understand that when Ted Cruz says he's pro-life, he doesn't mean yours.

Speaker 17 You can't be for the mob on January 6th and for the officers. You can't.
And it's not funny. Because you're a threat to democracy.

Speaker 5 That was satisfying for me to listen to. Was it satisfying for you on stage, or did you secretely want to line him up and do a little Oklahoma drill for old-time sake?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I've had a lot of Texans who've told me that they thought they wish that I had done that.

Speaker 2 But, you know, listen, he's supposed to be the champion debater, right? He was the Princeton debate team. I was just

Speaker 2 a football player.

Speaker 2 But, you know, I think we roughed him up pretty good there. And, you know, honestly, it's just stuff that he's done, you know, and his record is indefensible.

Speaker 2 And that he's tried to now in an election year, completely change his entire personality for 12 years. He's been like this proud extremist.

Speaker 2 And, you know, you almost would respect it more if you just ran on that. Right.

Speaker 2 But instead, to try and

Speaker 2 pretend like, as he was in the debate, you know, for example, that he wants to defend IVF, no, you're responsible for why IVF is at risk. Right.

Speaker 2 Or to talk, whenever we're talking about January 6th, that was one where, you know, I really,

Speaker 2 it made me angry when he started laughing.

Speaker 2 during my answer

Speaker 2 because there was a mob on the 6th and it did storm the Capitol.

Speaker 2 And it came there because of folks like Ted Cruz, who lied and said the election was stolen, who objected to the results in Arizona, who was the architect of the plan to overturn that election.

Speaker 2 And when that mob came, and when I took off my suit jacket and was ready to defend my colleagues on the House floor, he was hiding in a supply closet. And so this brings me back to my point.

Speaker 2 He's too small for Texas. And I felt that way in the debate.
He was shouting as he always does. You know, it kind of of looked like he was pretty uncomfortable.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 it was a lot of fun for me.

Speaker 2 And I don't think it was very fun for a lot of Texans though to have to listen to him for an hour.

Speaker 5 No, it's not fun at all.

Speaker 5 One thing about debates, I mean, Michelle Obama famously said, when they go low, we go high. But in football, the low man wins.

Speaker 2 What do you make of that? That's right. Well, listen, I was not going to go in there and not call him out on his nonsense.

Speaker 2 And I don't think that's being negative. It's just what he's been doing.

Speaker 5 No, you just literally talked about his record.

Speaker 5 There's been a lot of concernation among democrats myself included uh about you know losing badly with young men uh you and i talked about this challenge a year ago when you were here in la have you seen that slippage in your race and how have you been trying to convince younger men that the democratic under democratic party understands them and cares about them yeah

Speaker 2 well listen it's been a focus of mine and you know i think it's something that uh we do have to talk about and focus on uh you have to have policies that are you know kind of geared towards young men, which I think is often around opportunity, around making sure that folks will have a chance to take care of their families, that when we're talking about the economy, that we're talking about building an economy where work is respected and rewarded.

Speaker 2 But then also there's, I think, kind of a longing for an authenticity and somebody who understands

Speaker 2 what young men are going through and that can speak to that with some authenticity i think you know coach walls for example does that uh and i think you know for me with my background i try and do that as well to say listen you know i've played um you know football in college in the nfl i spent my career you know

Speaker 2 you know working in these contexts where we have to find a way as men to get things done and to put aside our differences and to work on a team and to accomplish a goal and to show leadership and to show that there's something larger than yourself and to be a part of an effort that is something larger than yourself.

Speaker 2 And that I think is something that has helped. But I also think that there is a very shallow,

Speaker 2 very

Speaker 2 weak version of masculinity that folks like Ted Cruz try to pitch, which is one that's based on fear of women doing well or fear or resentment of someone else doing well and then trying to appeal to these kind of most negative instincts.

Speaker 2 And so we have to compete with that, but I don't think we compete with it by being who they are. I think we compete with it by presenting a more positive vision of what we can be.

Speaker 5 Yeah, agreed. We're recording this on Wednesday, October 23rd.
Vice President Kamal Harris is coming to Texas in two days on Friday for an event focused on abortion and reproductive health care.

Speaker 5 Normally, the

Speaker 5 Democratic presidential nominee doesn't campaign in Texas this close to Election Day. Why do you think she's making this trip now? And what do you expect that you guys will talk about?

Speaker 2 Well, because what's happening in Texas with this abortion ban is nothing short of a tragedy. And it is Ted Cruz's fault.

Speaker 2 And we have all these harrowing stories that folks saw at the DNC, that they see in commercials around the country. But many of them are my friends.
They're Texas women.

Speaker 2 They're these Texas women who come forward and

Speaker 2 used the, as you know, Tommy, one of the most difficult moments in their life.

Speaker 2 They've taken that grief and that anger that they felt about it, and they've turned it into action and they are inspiring They're in they inspire me every single day We did an event last night with Connie Britton and with Lauren Miller who is a friend of mine eighth generation Texan who had to leave the state to get the care she needed and Kate Cox who has been become basically at this point a national figure Kate's a good friend of mine as well.

Speaker 2 We did that last night you know talking about this and so that's what that's what we're going to be doing is talking about on the national stage what has happened in Texas, how folks like Ted Cruz want to do this around the country.

Speaker 2 And I think it's important that Texas women and Texas stories are told on that stage.

Speaker 5 Yeah,

Speaker 5 I think it's really important.

Speaker 5 I commend you and I commend the vice president for talking about this as someone who my wife and I experienced a lot of pregnancy loss, including a stillborn baby at six months.

Speaker 5 And if someone had told us to go home and wait a while and see if she met some threshold for this being a life-threatening illness, I think I would have walked out of that hospital room in handcuffs because

Speaker 5 you don't want to hear someone put your spouse in a position like that. Switching gears, I was just watching Kamala Harris before he came in.

Speaker 5 She was doing a press statement about recent comments by John Kelly, who's the four-star general who later worked as Trump's chief of staff, who said Trump, quote, falls into the definition of a fascist.

Speaker 5 That comes after Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, under Trump and then Biden told Bob Woodward that Trump was, quote, fascist to the core. Now, I understand.

Speaker 5 I mean, I sit in a million focus groups and read a lot of polls, and I know voters care about the basics, paying their bills, access to health care, social security.

Speaker 2 But it's also chilling to your core to hear the people closest to Trump who worked with him day in and day out talk about him this way.

Speaker 5 How do you think Democrats, what do we do with this information? Should it be part of our day-to-day message or is this a distraction from economic issues and abortion? How are you thinking about it?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, certainly with Ted Cruz, I talk about January 6th and and i talk about what his role was in that i talk about how he was hiding when the mob came because he was and i also say that i'm glad he was safe that day and that this election is his accountability right

Speaker 2 uh and to me we have to talk about all of it uh and you know voters are uh you know incredibly complicated i was you know campaigning you know here with liz cheney

Speaker 2 in Dallas.

Speaker 2 And Liz is involved in this race because she knows that Ted Cruz is a threat to democracy.

Speaker 2 And she and I were already friends, but we formed and we really forged a closer relationship on January 6th and the days thereafter because of her clear-eyed view that we had to have a response to this and accountability for it.

Speaker 2 And so to me, this election is about that. It's about a lot of things.
It's about freedom, restoring a woman's right to choose, particularly here in Texas.

Speaker 2 It's about opportunity and who has a better plan to make sure that you and your family can get ahead.

Speaker 2 We know that costs are still too high. Somebody was raised by a single mother who struggled growing up here in Dallas.
I'm laser-focused on that.

Speaker 2 You think the guy who goes to Cancun and Ted Cruz is, who's at the Ritz-Carlton? I don't think so, right?

Speaker 2 And it's also about accountability. And I think it's also about the threat that we face that if we have

Speaker 2 someone who doesn't respect our Constitution in positions of high office. And so I do think that we have to talk about it all.
And I don't think that you can ignore it.

Speaker 2 I also certainly don't think that it can be the only pitch, right? It has to be everything.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Listen, my New England Patriots stink, but that does not stop me from talking about football.

Speaker 5 Football is playing a fun and bigger role in this year's election.

Speaker 5 So, Governor Tim Walls, the vice presidential nominee, was a defensive coordinator for a state champion high school team in Minnesota.

Speaker 5 When I interviewed him back in February here in the office, I said, what defense did he run? He told me he ran a 4-4 defense. His guys were focused on reading guards.

Speaker 5 For non-football fans out there, a four-forward defense is a type of alignment where you have four down linemen, like the big boys in the three-point stance, and then four linebackers, which are the slightly less big guys who are faster, the position Colin played in the NFL and in college.

Speaker 5 Max Brown, a former QB for USC and Pittsburgh, turned sports commentator, saw a clip of that interview and he threw down the gauntlet for how he would torch Tim Walls' defense.

Speaker 5 Let's listen to a little clip of that.

Speaker 18 Tim, Tim, Tim, here's how we're going to put you in a blender. In your 4-4 defense, you put your corners in an absolute bind.
You're packing the box. We're going to RPO your ass right from the jump.

Speaker 18 Fake the run here. This linebacker on the outside, he cannot be right.
He plays the run, we'll kick it out to the bubble by the F. He plays the F on the bubble, we'll get a slant right behind him.

Speaker 18 We're going to run this until we get tired, and then from there, we're going four verts.

Speaker 18 So you got two linebackers right here trying to run with my guys vertically in the slot with a single high safety. We are going to work these seams, find the mismatch, and exploit it all day long.

Speaker 5 Okay, that's just part of it.

Speaker 2 It was a great video.

Speaker 5 Colin, you played in the NFL. You know defense.
You're the captain, right, of the Baylor team?

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5 What halftime adjustments would you make to Max's scheme there?

Speaker 2 How are we pushing that? So here's the thing.

Speaker 2 In the NFL, we match personnel, okay?

Speaker 2 So what Max is talking about, you wouldn't have a 4-4 defense on the field when you got three receivers on the offense, right? You wouldn't have four linebackers out there. We'd be in a nickel, right?

Speaker 2 So we got to adjust to go to nickel what's a nickel for everybody listening okay it's four down linemen two linebackers five dbs okay five dbs so the dbs are the fast guys right right so if we and if nickel's not working then we'll get into a dime we'll have one linebacker and six uh dbs but you know what and when we're in that nickel we're going to blitz the heck out of you okay we're not and we're going to we're going to disguise the blitz you're never going to know what we're in and in one side of the field we're going to be in one coverage and the other side of the field we're going to be in a different coverage so you have two different reads and so your young quarterback is not going to know what's happening.

Speaker 2 And by the time he figures it out, we're going to hit him. And that's how we're going to make sure we put you in a blender.

Speaker 5 That's right, Max.

Speaker 2 We're going to blitz your ass all day long, buddy.

Speaker 5 I hope you see this on social media and respond.

Speaker 2 One more football question.

Speaker 5 Dallas Cowboys are 3-3. Is Dak Prescott still the guy?

Speaker 2 Dak's the guy. That's not the issue.
Quite honestly, they got to stop the run. And as a linebacker, I always come back to the trenches.

Speaker 2 Like, if you can't stop the run and run the ball, ultimately, you're going to get exposed. So it's not on Dak.
The quarterbacks get too much credit and they get too much of blame.

Speaker 2 So sometimes you got to have big boys in the trenches who are moving people around.

Speaker 2 And that's really how you win football games.

Speaker 5 And you got some injuries, right? I mean, Micah Parsons has been out.

Speaker 5 He's one of the best athletes on the field.

Speaker 2 I think he might be the second coming of Lawrence Taylor. Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 2 He really is one of those guys.

Speaker 5 Him and Aiden Hutchinson, you look at them and they're motor on the field and they do not slow down for a single second of any snap.

Speaker 19 And they're also so fast.

Speaker 5 I mean, these guys are like 6'4, you know, 280. They're dropping in coverage.
They're doing everything on the field.

Speaker 2 It's unbelievable. TJ Watts out there getting interceptions and taking them back for touchdowns.

Speaker 2 Like, how are you?

Speaker 5 I saw, I was at the Steelers facility once, like last year, two years ago. TJ Watt walked by me, and I was like, that's not a person.
That is not a species of human I've ever seen.

Speaker 5 A last dumb question for you.

Speaker 5 Two questions, one dumb, one not. Do you think you have the fastest 40 time in Congress?

Speaker 2 Huh.

Speaker 2 You know, when my friend Anthony Gonzalez, who was a wide receiver for Ohio State and Indy, was there, I did not because he ran, I think, 4-4

Speaker 2 and he was first-round pick. But he's gone now, so I think I probably do.

Speaker 5 4-4, your feet are not touching the ground. You're basically flying.

Speaker 5 Last question. Listen, if people are listening, they might not be from Texas, but they're like, we got to get rid of Ted Cruz.
Colin seems like a great guy. I want him in the U.S.
Senate.

Speaker 5 What do they do to help you out?

Speaker 2 Oh, thanks, Tommy. Listen, this is incredibly close, and I want everybody to drop all of your scar tissue that you might have around Texas.
This is a race that we're going to win, but we need help.

Speaker 2 And I hope folks will go to colinallred.com and get involved. Ted Cruz is our problem in Texas, but even if you're not in Texas, he's your problem too.
And we can beat him here.

Speaker 2 And when we do, it's going to be a win for our state and for our country. So go to colinallred.com and get involved.

Speaker 5 Beautiful. Donate, volunteer your time, do what you can.
We got a couple weeks left, folks. We have agency here.
We can make a difference in these elections.

Speaker 5 These things are won or lost at the margins, half a percent here, a couple dollars there. So chip in, do what you can.
And thank you for joining the show.

Speaker 2 Yeah, thanks, Tommy. Appreciate you.

Speaker 2 That's our show for today. Dan will be back in the feed with another bonus PSA on Sunday morning.
Dan, what can you tell us about the latest polar coaster?

Speaker 4 Talking to David Binder, who heads up polling and research for the Harris campaign. He is a longtime friend of ours,

Speaker 4 did focus groups on both Obama campaigns, is one of the smartest guys in the business.

Speaker 4 And so I'm very excited to hear what he has to say about how this campaign is going to shape up over the next seven days.

Speaker 4 And because one interview is not enough, we are talking to Ron Brownstein about how

Speaker 4 demographics have shifted in the Battleground States and what that could mean for Election Day.

Speaker 2 I am going to listen to that episode the second it drops, which is, you know, probably like just past midnight when I'll be up because I still, I don't sleep anymore.

Speaker 2 I'll just, I'll be trying to listen to that while some New York Times Santa poll drops and like ruins our, ruins our, I think Nate Cohen's going to ruin next Sunday, not this Sunday.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I was going to, well, and Seltzer's already ready to ruin next Sunday because that's usually when the last Des Moines registry poll comes out.

Speaker 4 Don't even, don't fall for that.

Speaker 2 Don't fall for what? What am I selfish?

Speaker 4 The thing is, you're so worried about this. You brought this up to me three days ago.

Speaker 2 And I was like, oh, the poll's coming out today.

Speaker 4 No, it's hypothetically coming out in four days after you brought it up to me.

Speaker 4 A poll in a non-battleground state.

Speaker 2 Can't wait. Can't wait.
All right, everyone, have a good weekend. Go volunteer.
Go help out.

Speaker 2 Let's win this thing. We'll talk to you.
We'll talk to you next week.

Speaker 4 Bye, everyone.

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