Billionaire Personality Disorder

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Speaker 5 What's up, Philly?

Speaker 5 Welcome to Pod Safe America. I'm John Papra.

Speaker 6 I'm Simone Sanders-Townsend.

Speaker 7 I'm John Lovett.

Speaker 8 I'm Tommy Vitor.

Speaker 9 I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

Speaker 5 We've got a great show for you tonight. Your senator, Bob Casey, is here.

Speaker 5 And we are so lucky to have our friend Simone, co-host of MSNBC's The Weekend.

Speaker 5 And in a past life, senior advisor to Vice President Kamala Harris.

Speaker 5 All right, so with less than 30 days left of the 2024 campaign, Donald Trump was here in Pennsylvania over the weekend.

Speaker 10 for

Speaker 12 yeah, well, what are you going to do?

Speaker 15 are we booing Pennsylvania

Speaker 5 just check he was here for your typical October campaign event a rally in Butler at the site where he was shot that included church bells parachute divers an opera singer doing a rendition of Ave Maria

Speaker 5 and the world's richest man jumping up and down

Speaker 5 In an Occupy Mars t-shirt and a MAGA hat.

Speaker 5 Looks like he's having fun, huh? Which is what's important. Let's hear what new Trump surrogate Elon Musk had to say.

Speaker 19 As you can see, I'm not just MAGA, I'm dark MAGA. You know, the true test of someone's character is how they behave under fire.

Speaker 19 And we had one president who couldn't climb a flight of stairs,

Speaker 22 and another who was fist pumping after getting shot.

Speaker 23 Fight, fight, fight.

Speaker 19 Blood coming down the face. President Trump must win to preserve the Constitution.
He must win to preserve democracy in America. Text people now.

Speaker 22 Now.

Speaker 19 And then make sure they actually do vote.

Speaker 5 If they don't,

Speaker 19 that's my prediction.

Speaker 10 Riveting.

Speaker 5 So, Tommy, Elon's already been helping Trump's campaign by turning Twitter into a MAGA-friendly social media platform and amplifying right-wing conspiracies to his 200 million followers.

Speaker 5 He's also funding a super PAC that's now apparently in charge of Trump's ground game. But how much value do you think he adds as an actual surrogate?

Speaker 17 So, as we saw, Elon's not a great speaker.

Speaker 17 Wasn't a great speech. It wasn't polished.
He's so online. He tried to make this dark MAGA joke, which I assume was like a dark Brandon takeoff.

Speaker 26 I still don't understand why.

Speaker 17 No one got it in the crowd. You're not alone.
He also kind of hopped up and down. It looked like he was kind of getting taken up with the rapture or maybe

Speaker 7 like he was also telling the story about the blood.

Speaker 17 He sort of sounded like a 13-year-old telling you about a movie they just watched.

Speaker 22 But

Speaker 5 the message overall, I thought, was okay.

Speaker 17 I mean, he's obviously incredibly enamored of the story of Trump's experience at Butler and the shooting. He talked about freedom of speech.
He talked about the Second Amendment.

Speaker 17 He talked about voter ID laws. So things I think that connected with the audience.

Speaker 17 He also, though, was like really focused on voter registration and telling people to get registered and to bug their friends and was talking about registration deadlines in Arizona and Georgia.

Speaker 17 So I think, would I send Elon on a solo speaking tour?

Speaker 10 No.

Speaker 17 He's a weirdo. He's not good in front of a crowd.

Speaker 28 It didn't go well.

Speaker 7 But I think he kind of served the role that

Speaker 17 you might imagine a field organizer serving at

Speaker 5 a Harris event, being like, register to vote, tell five friends, bug them, be really annoying about it, right?

Speaker 12 So he was like, he was okay.

Speaker 5 Simone, what did you think? And what's your reaction to Musk saying this will be the last election unless Trump wins?

Speaker 10 I thought that was our line.

Speaker 6 Well, you know, they're telling us out loud what they're going to do. He's like, this will be the last election.
We will be sure of it. Me and Starlink are going to make sure it all goes down.

Speaker 6 I just, I thought, I think Elon Musk is strange. Yeah.
I really do. I think he's strange, and I think he is.
And I think he is actually

Speaker 6 the physical embodiment of when you just have so much money, people will literally let you do anything. Like the federal government is still putting lots of chips in Elon Musk's basket.

Speaker 6 Yet here he is helping, you know, dismantle democracy as we speak.

Speaker 6 And sowing so much misinformation about what's happening in North Carolina and Tennessee and Georgia in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene so I was just kind of like why Elon but maybe Elon Musk was like I'll give you an extra bill if you let me get on stage let me out there so I don't know I just really feel like Donald Trump is not doing

Speaker 6 this is not a this is not a campaign that's running an operation like they are trying to win where is your infrastructure Where are your doorknocks?

Speaker 6 And what the hell does Elon Musk know about running field operations? who has he ever elected I was I'm very confused by the entire situation yeah

Speaker 7 it's confused and I think because

Speaker 7 I think it doesn't make any sense I think it's confusing you know

Speaker 7 you wouldn't you just think oh he's a who's speaking at your rally

Speaker 7 a kind of

Speaker 7 a deeply discomforting billionaire

Speaker 7 corrupt with interest before the federal government,

Speaker 7 spreading misinformation wherever he goes. A man with a personality so bad, it causes people to sell their cars.

Speaker 15 I'm not going to lie.

Speaker 6 I went to the Tesla place the other day and I was like, I just can't do it.

Speaker 22 No.

Speaker 7 Just a wash and ketamine, you know? Well, it isn't.

Speaker 7 Yeah,

Speaker 7 allegedly.

Speaker 7 And it is just sort of like a microcosm. Like,

Speaker 7 one of the many reasons this race race is close is because other billionaires are dumping money in this state, billionaires who would surely be quite happy to have Donald Trump protect their

Speaker 7 interests if Donald Trump were to become president.

Speaker 7 Donald Trump posted himself. If Elon would come begging,

Speaker 7 because he needs the federal government to do what he wants it to do. Like the corruption.

Speaker 13 He posted that when he was angry with Elon.

Speaker 5 When Elon wasn't kissing the ring, he was like, oh, this guy would come to me and beg for stuff. And now he's jumping up to the ton of trees.

Speaker 7 Trump said how high. No, Elon said how high fuck shut up

Speaker 9 I mean I don't want to be the skunk of the garden party here like he was a terrible speaker and he's a weird individual but he also has appeal to the exact voters we've talked about who are the overly online young men right there are Elon fanboys all over the internet and that is the upside of this for Trump now what we have to do that there are I always I was wondering about this like do you think there are Elon fanboys who are not already Trump

Speaker 15 fanboys 100%.

Speaker 9 It is.

Speaker 9 This is Rogan world, right? Is where Elon lives. And so he is a gateway drug to that.
And now,

Speaker 9 doesn't mean we have to sit by and take it. Like, there's arguments to be made here, right? Like, he is thoroughly corrupt.

Speaker 9 You do a pretty easy calculation of the billions of dollars in tax cuts that Elon Musk would get from Donald Trump and a way to push back on it.

Speaker 9 But they used him poorly here, and he performed even more poorly than that. But there is among like deep down in in all the weird shit that Trump does, there is a strategic purpose to it.

Speaker 9 And this one does have one.

Speaker 6 I just feel like, I just think about Ron DeSantis and how he put his eggs in the super online Elon basket. Yes.
And that did not work out well for him. And so I don't know.

Speaker 6 I just kind of feel like Elon Musk get the clips coming out of it aren't good. The reason you do this is because you want the clips because the clips will go viral online.
But

Speaker 6 he looks underwhelming in the clips. Underwhelming, kind of off, kind of weird, a little like, oh, socially awkward, not strong.

Speaker 31 He's underwhelming.

Speaker 6 Joe Rogan-ish, who is also like very problematic.

Speaker 17 You're right. He's underwhelming and a weirdo, but he's also like, his ego is very fragile and easily stroked.

Speaker 17 And there's all this reporting that he was deeply hurt by the fact that the Biden administration never gave Tesla any love, never invited him to things, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 17 And Trump like smells that. He senses it.
And he thinks, like, all right, I'm going to put this nerd on stage for three minutes and he'll cut me another $100 million check. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Billionaire personality disorders have done a lot of damage.

Speaker 5 continue to do a lot of damage to all of us.

Speaker 10 We all have to deal with it.

Speaker 7 Tell your friends and family about BPD.

Speaker 7 Watch for the symptoms.

Speaker 7 If you caught early, billionaire personality disorder is treatable.

Speaker 5 So after a few hours of warm-up speakers, a few hours, included J.D.

Speaker 5 Vance, Larry Trump, some QAnon weirdos, Trump took the stage and he opened with an admittedly good line about starting the rally right where he left off last time he was in Butler.

Speaker 23 Let's listen.

Speaker 34 And as I was saying.

Speaker 34 Oh, I love that. I love that chart.
I love that graph.

Speaker 34 Over the past eight years, those who want to stop us from achieving this future have slandered me, impeached me, indicted me, tried to throw me off the ballot, and who knows, maybe even tried to kill me.

Speaker 34 We can't take another four years like this. We won't have a country left.
We're not going to have a country left.

Speaker 34 You leave from the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, you go drive down to Washington, D.C., and you drive down and you end up getting murdered. You end up getting hurt.
You get mugged.

Speaker 34 These people are crazy.

Speaker 5 These people are crazy.

Speaker 5 You end up getting murdered. You just drive down to D.C., you get murdered.

Speaker 7 Trump loves an evocative second-person fake anecdote.

Speaker 15 Completely made up.

Speaker 6 Corey Compatori died.

Speaker 16 I know.

Speaker 5 They did a lot of memorializing of.

Speaker 6 What about what did Donald Trump do?

Speaker 5 Oh, no. Well, no, there was.

Speaker 15 He didn't do nothing, John.

Speaker 22 He didn't do nothing. He did nothing.

Speaker 15 That's the damn point. I was going to say, there was also...

Speaker 9 You are leaving out the awkward hug of his fireman's uniform at the convention.

Speaker 14 I was touched.

Speaker 10 was a wait.

Speaker 5 There was a apparently there was a live painting of Corey Compator. Like someone was painting him on the stage earlier.

Speaker 15 Donald Trump

Speaker 7 could give a beautiful eulogy to this person who died at the hands of somebody inflicting political violence. If you get up there and lie

Speaker 7 about your political opponents to attribute a murder to them, you are dishonoring that person's memory. I don't care how many ave marias there are.
It's despicable.

Speaker 7 You're dishonoring the Secret Service agents who put their lives on the line for you. Like that, yes, it was a debacle, but they did save your life.

Speaker 7 And you're dishonoring those people and their service. So it's fucking, it doesn't matter.
I don't care what they do to pretend they give a shit about this guy who lost their lives.

Speaker 7 They're dishonoring him every day. They get out there and hint or imply that Democrats are responsible.

Speaker 17 And Eric, well, Eric Trump didn't just hint or imply. He was like, they tried to kill my dad.

Speaker 6 And who is they? Like, I mean, if we want to be factually correct, the first person that attempted to assassinate the former president was a registered Republican. Yeah.

Speaker 6 And the second person was a supporter that then turned his support because of Ukraine.

Speaker 30 So

Speaker 6 they also might need to be specific. But also, this is like

Speaker 6 J.D. Vance was one of the most concerning comments for me from that rally because he said Trump took a bullet for democracy.

Speaker 6 And I just had to pause because like, maybe we have different definitions of democracy, but democracy doesn't require Donald Trump to get shot. No.
That's not like that.

Speaker 6 He didn't take a bullet for democracy. And

Speaker 6 it's just making a mockery of all of us every single time. But they say it so much and it's become so regular, some people just like gloss over it as though it's just part of the shit.

Speaker 5 The Trump campaign told the New York Times they envisioned this event as a show of strength and as a way to recapture.

Speaker 5 the good political vibes that they felt a few days after he was shot at the RNC in Milwaukee. You guys think this is recapturing those vibes?

Speaker 5 Because then his whole plan was ruined when Joe Biden stepped aside and Kamala Harris was the new nominee and then she gained in the polls and so now he wants to

Speaker 10 go back.

Speaker 15 Yeah,

Speaker 31 I think like

Speaker 7 to Dan's point earlier, like I don't think we should like, I think there's

Speaker 7 in a state that's going to be, it's a close election, He's got a lot of voters in Butler.

Speaker 7 I think trying to create a pride of place in Butler, like you were there, you came here, this is where it happened, you saw it, you're a part of it, you're a part of this incredible, important story.

Speaker 7 Like, I don't think we should undercount that. Like, that could be important to people that were there.
Do I think it's persuasive to people outside of it? Probably not.

Speaker 7 But to people that are there, do I think it could really make sure they turn out, they turn their friends out?

Speaker 10 Like, absolutely.

Speaker 7 But we're also, I think, in some ways fortunate that, like,

Speaker 7 this moment, the idea that it could be about strength or kind of recapture that feeling, it would be far more potent if Donald Trump had the capacity to transmute the experience of political violence into empathy and a distaste for political violence when it's directed at people that are not him.

Speaker 7 But, like

Speaker 5 let a means in that question.

Speaker 7 I think it's a sort of like Don Jr.'s therapist says to him all the time: you can't go to the hardware store for milk.

Speaker 7 And that does. And Donald Trump is not capable of providing that kind of empathy.

Speaker 15 Dan.

Speaker 11 So.

Speaker 17 You got applause for Dan.

Speaker 14 I think they did

Speaker 9 a change in subject.

Speaker 5 So, you know, Trump did get tens of thousands of people

Speaker 5 out to Butler

Speaker 5 in arguably the most important swing state where the race is basically tied.

Speaker 10 Started clapping, basically tied.

Speaker 5 What can you tell us about how the Trump campaign sees Pennsylvania and their path to victory here?

Speaker 9 They are spending more money here than any other state because they believe, with good reason.

Speaker 9 Is there someone who owns a local television station here?

Speaker 2 What was that?

Speaker 15 There's a bad makers in the audience.

Speaker 9 Because if they can win Pennsylvania, it makes Kamala Harris' path to 270 so much harder. She now has to win two other states, right? In Georgia or North Carolina in one other one to get to 270.

Speaker 9 So that's why they spend the most money here. They spend the most time here.
And their strategy is pretty simple.

Speaker 9 So it includes driving up turnout and margins in the rural parts of Pennsylvania between Allegheny County and Philadelphia. It is holding down...

Speaker 9 Kamala Harris's margins, particularly in the suburbs in Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery County, right here outside of Philadelphia.

Speaker 9 And the last part is to cut into Kamala Harris's vote totals and vote share among black voters, particularly here in Philadelphia.

Speaker 9 In the exit polls, Biden won black voters 92 to 7. And if you can just cut a few points from that in a state that Biden won by less than two points last time, you can get there.

Speaker 9 So this is right on the margins. And we know that's her strategy because the Harris strategy for winning is the exact inverse of that.

Speaker 9 Hold down its margins in rural areas, Jack Up Turnot here, and try to hit those Biden numbers in Philly with black voters.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 she's got to figure out how to hold his margins down here.

Speaker 5 The Times had another great story Sunday morning that a lot of Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans have been eagerly awaiting for a long time now.

Speaker 5 The headline: Trump's speeches, increasingly angry and rambling, reignite the question of age.

Speaker 7 Yeah, a lot of resistance Democrats opening that in an incognito window.

Speaker 5 So the piece goes on to analyze Trump's 2024 speeches compared to his earlier campaigns, and they got experts and former staffers to say that he has lost a step, that he's more forgetful, more rambling, longer tangents, all signs of cognitive decline.

Speaker 5 What did you guys think of the piece, and

Speaker 5 should this be in some way part of the closing argument for Kamala Harris and the Democrats?

Speaker 17 I just love the way they tried to apply data science to this story. Well, this is the hard thing about being a reporter.
It's like you can watch this man declining before your very eyes.

Speaker 7 You can watch him losing it at events. And then they're like, carry the one.

Speaker 10 And you have to go to some AI. Yeah, it's like

Speaker 7 when you do the regression analysis, he sounds like a fucking moron.

Speaker 17 They literally reported that he's using 69% nice more profanity in speeches, which is some sort of element of decline, which in that case, like, God help us.

Speaker 9 He speaks at a fourth grade level.

Speaker 6 that's what the story says yeah yeah as opposed to ron de sanchez who spoke at an eighth grade level and other candidates as the new york times analysis showed honestly it's 2024 eighth grade great

Speaker 6 fourth grade great yeah honestly second grade fine whatever it takes look i think the reality though is is that unfortunately this is especially for the again trump supporters is baked in right they don't donald trump could literally get on stage and go goobly gobly moobly mash, fight, fight, fight.

Speaker 6 And they'd be like, he is brilliant. Honestly, like, that is my president.
And so it's baked in for that, but that those people have a ceiling. I think for some folks who are like,

Speaker 6 I don't really know about Donald Trump. I don't like some of the things he's doing, but I think the economy was really good.

Speaker 6 You know, the Jamie Dimons of the world who say he hasn't made a decision yet.

Speaker 4 Sorry, Jamie Dimon.

Speaker 6 Folks like that, they'll read this coupled with his googly gop answer on childcare and say, Well, maybe

Speaker 24 he's not all the way there.

Speaker 6 Maybe he doesn't have it. Maybe this isn't right.
Maybe he doesn't understand. And now he's surrounding himself with some of the fanatics.
And maybe people will say,

Speaker 6 Okay, maybe I don't want to vote for him. I don't know if I want to vote for her yet.
Maybe I will vote for her. Maybe I will just leave the top of the ticket blank.

Speaker 6 So I think that this matters for that, but I do not think that the, I think sometimes the

Speaker 6 resistance dims put a little too much stock in the this is what she should be doing she should be leaning in on this

Speaker 24 people

Speaker 6 people care about her what she is going to do they know Donald Trump is like

Speaker 6 yes yes what she said

Speaker 6 and they I just don't think juxtaposing the like oh he's old and he can't talk like just play the clip yeah and let the people deduce for themselves I think that's right I think the Smartest thing Kamala Harris did in that debate was invite people to watch the rallies.

Speaker 5 She said, go. She's a go.

Speaker 13 Yeah, go to the rallies. That's right.

Speaker 5 But I think it's useful in one way, which is there is a voter who thinks, I don't love Donald Trump that much, but we survived four years of Donald Trump as president, and I think I liked the economy better then.

Speaker 5 So aren't we going to be able to just survive another four years? And I think the answer to that is... If you thought that Donald Trump was bad but okay, this Donald Trump is much worse.

Speaker 5 He has declined significantly since then, and he's a little bit crazier, and he's deteriorated, and he's surrounded with crazier people. And so this is not the Donald Trump that you had back in 2016.

Speaker 5 I think

Speaker 13 that is one way it could be useful.

Speaker 6 Is Dan about to throw cold water on this analysis?

Speaker 9 There are two different arguments here that are sort of interrelated.

Speaker 9 One is, and this is the one the Biden campaign was trying to do before the debate, which is Donald Trump changed after he lost election.

Speaker 9 He got radicalized January 6th, and he's now worse than he was before. And the other argument is he's really old, his brain is pickled, and he's melting before your eyes.

Speaker 9 And I don't think, I agree with Simone, that should not be the main thrust of the message.

Speaker 9 Trump gives off vigorous energy. He gives off crazy energy, right? He seems like an insane person.
And so he doesn't seem, he doesn't, he doesn't seem feeble. He's nuts.
He seems nuts.

Speaker 25 Especially after Buck.

Speaker 7 And especially in clips, by the way, because you have to watch a good length of it to really get the sense that this man's losing it.

Speaker 9 Because if you just watch the clips on your local news, they are often sanitized. They're trying to stitch together 91 minutes, I think was the estimate of how long his rallies are now,

Speaker 9 of insanity into

Speaker 9 30 to 60 seconds of something coherent you could put in the news. And so most people aren't seeing it.

Speaker 9 It is just worth noting, and I know this isn't constructive, but it is fucking wild that we had a three-year conversation about Joe Biden's age and mental capacity.

Speaker 9 And we're just like, Donald Trump, who at the end of his second term will be older than Joe Biden is. We're just like, that's fine.
We're not going to worry about it.

Speaker 9 And Joe Biden was starting at a much higher baseline than Donald Trump here, right? So he wasn't fucking Cicero in 2016, but now he is incoherent.

Speaker 5 Not Cicero.

Speaker 29 Not Cicero.

Speaker 5 Something to tell undecided voters.

Speaker 7 That is not a good campaign message.

Speaker 7 We do not need to introduce Cicero.

Speaker 9 If you have someone, a philosophy major, perhaps, that you're trying to persuade, maybe that's going to be a bit more.

Speaker 5 Perhaps an Elon fanboy, philosophy major. That's how you got there.

Speaker 15 That's right.

Speaker 29 Talking about me?

Speaker 5 We will be back with more news.

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Speaker 7 This week, Donald Trump started several new conspiracies, and wouldn't you know it, Laura Ingram was standing by to help spread the bad word. So now it's time for a segment we call Okay, Stop.

Speaker 7 Let's see how Fox News handled its duty to viewers during a natural disaster.

Speaker 20 Former director of speechwriting for President Obama and co-host of Pod Save America, Jon Fravreau. As a speechwriter, how impressed are you with my co-pilot analogy?

Speaker 3 It was a little hard to follow.

Speaker 29 How did I get here?

Speaker 15 Okay, song.

Speaker 7 I was going to say, it's a little hard to follow.

Speaker 7 You got him. And he went right to, how did I get here?

Speaker 5 Well, he was very proud of his intro. He was talking about like, Joe Biden was flying the plane, and then he passed out, and Kamala Harris took it, and now she's crashing it.

Speaker 5 And he was like, wasn't that a good analogy? And I'm like, no, weirdo.

Speaker 25 Let's back up one step here.

Speaker 9 Yeah, we're just going to be.

Speaker 9 Let's have some context. Last night we were in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
We were going to do an okay stop. And we surprised Lovett with scenes from his brief fleeting moment on Survivor.

Speaker 9 Were you out?

Speaker 2 Are you out?

Speaker 25 Yes, I'm on. I'm not quite out.

Speaker 15 Didn't it just start? He's been out for a while.

Speaker 24 It just started. Were you the first?

Speaker 23 Oh, oh, Simone.

Speaker 37 Oh, this is better. Forget this.
Yeah.

Speaker 9 And so,

Speaker 9 because Payback's a bitch, Love It put John's interview with Jesse Waters as a surprise for Vavreau, which he didn't really, he didn't know was coming.

Speaker 13 I did not know this was coming.

Speaker 9 He was so stunned no one in the audience got the notice.

Speaker 5 I will say that the good news is I do last to the end of this interview.

Speaker 7 Honestly, I wasn't sure this was a good idea because I thought you did well in this.

Speaker 11 This is going great.

Speaker 7 I knew this would work.

Speaker 2 All right.

Speaker 20 You know, you're on Fox right now?

Speaker 29 No, I don't know.

Speaker 13 I was just sitting around in our studio and suddenly I ended up hearing.

Speaker 3 Okay, stop. I think we...

Speaker 17 John did drop acid at the DNC.

Speaker 7 I did. I did.
It's midway through an ayahuasca journey.

Speaker 9 And we were in our studio at the convention, getting ready to record one of the 7,000 podcasts we recorded during the convention. And someone bangs on the door.

Speaker 9 And who is it but Jesse Waters' producers trying to do it?

Speaker 10 They look exactly how you think they look.

Speaker 9 And they invited John to do it. And despite the advice of many people on the stage, myself primarily, of Kenido.

Speaker 5 Dan was so opposed to it when they knocked on the door and started talking to us. He immediately excused himself to go to the bathroom.

Speaker 5 And then when he came back, and I was like, should I go do Jesse Waters' show?

Speaker 44 They want me to do it. And he was like, no.

Speaker 20 Muscled you up here against your will, but now you're here, you have to answer some of our questions.

Speaker 3 Go for it.

Speaker 20 Were you at the RNC in Milwaukee? That was pretty cool.

Speaker 29 I was at the RNC in Milwaukee.

Speaker 3 A little cocky. A little cocky.
A little cocky there. Well, that's because we didn't really know who we were running against.
Yeah, you guys had our head wrapped up.

Speaker 45 Yeah, we thought we were running against Biden.

Speaker 3 You were figuring out, like, you know, okay,

Speaker 7 it is very interesting that he says we.

Speaker 36 We, yeah, we,

Speaker 36 we, we didn't we.

Speaker 10 Completely, I know.

Speaker 9 Aren't they supposed to pretend not to do that? No.

Speaker 7 Not Jesse. Not our Jesse.

Speaker 17 Not our Jesse, not our sweet Jesse.

Speaker 6 Jesse Waters said, I am on the payroll.

Speaker 7 I like this part. Let's finish this part.

Speaker 29 Landslide was going to be.

Speaker 3 Yeah, everyone's getting a little nervous.

Speaker 45 Yeah, no one's nervous.

Speaker 3 Everybody knows it's going to be

Speaker 29 Trump seems a little nervous.

Speaker 20 I don't think you know anything about Trump.

Speaker 29 Okay, stop.

Speaker 7 The way that is like

Speaker 7 two people who fucking hate each other

Speaker 7 but trying to keep, like, like they're at a PTA meeting, or like or like they're at the kids drop-offs and the kids are there but they want to fight but they're like how are you

Speaker 5 saying they're like I don't think you know anything about Trump it's like I don't know about much these days but for the last nine years the one thing I know about is Donald Trump yeah yeah we're one rubber rubber glove away from knowing everything about

Speaker 29 yeah

Speaker 13 for economically like you know Trump gets

Speaker 13 another tax cut that goes mostly to rich people to billionaires like Donald Trump okay and like she doesn't want to do that they don't I know.

Speaker 3 You guys are going to be able to do it. You don't need another tax cut.

Speaker 45 I don't need another tax cut. I definitely need to cut.

Speaker 3 Why do we need a tax cut? I definitely need a tax cut.

Speaker 29 Come on.

Speaker 18 Hey, it's my money.

Speaker 3 I earned it. You look good.
I earned it.

Speaker 2 You don't need another cut.

Speaker 3 Not as good as you.

Speaker 25 Not as good as you. We agree to disagree.

Speaker 20 Jon Favreau, my mother loves you. Thanks for coming on.

Speaker 3 Tell your mom I said hi to her.

Speaker 2 Listen to Black Save America. I will.

Speaker 8 Blood Save America, John Favreau.

Speaker 7 I think that's French.

Speaker 3 It is.

Speaker 7 You know, sometimes we can play a clip and not just make fun of each other. Sometimes we can enjoy the successes we have.

Speaker 7 Like getting on a show to begin with.

Speaker 9 I would just.

Speaker 6 But it did just start.

Speaker 7 It did start and end for some people.

Speaker 7 Someone has to go home first. You don't want it to be you, but you know it could be you when you sign the NDA.

Speaker 9 So I will admit that I was wrong. You did an excellent job.
You did an excellent job. I would say the sexual tension could have been cut with a knife between you and Jesse Waters.

Speaker 32 Well,

Speaker 7 it was a little horny.

Speaker 15 No, it's a little section.

Speaker 7 No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 7 You're saying it's not horny, Tommy? The implication at the end was clearly John saying, Jesse, I banged your mom.

Speaker 23 Right, right, right, right.

Speaker 5 Say hi. Shout out to your mother for me.

Speaker 29 That was my take on that.

Speaker 29 You don't have the accent.

Speaker 9 You don't have the accent. That's as bossing as you've ever been.

Speaker 15 I was going to say, say hiding your mother for me.

Speaker 36 He did a little dig on.

Speaker 10 I've got a drinker, too. It's fine.

Speaker 7 He did a little dig on your name being French.

Speaker 12 Yeah, he did. He did.

Speaker 7 And he got one in there at the end.

Speaker 29 But it was good.

Speaker 5 Anyway, that's my friend Jesse Waters.

Speaker 9 And that's okay, stuff.

Speaker 36 All right.

Speaker 5 Let's get back to the news.

Speaker 5 The Kamala Harris-Tim Walz media blitz has begun.

Speaker 5 After a few weeks of griping from reporters and some Democrats, the vice president and governor are in the middle of a jam-packed schedule of big interviews.

Speaker 5 Walls was on Fox News Sunday, my favorite channel, with

Speaker 5 Shannon Bream this morning. He'll be on 60 Minutes, Jimmy Kimmel, and he's going to do a bunch of local press, Hispanic press, and a big podcast or two.

Speaker 5 Harris will also be on 60 Minutes with Walls, but they're also both by themselves in the interview.

Speaker 5 And she'll also, she's going to be on The View on Colbert, Howard Stern.

Speaker 46 This is all this week, by the way.

Speaker 5 And she's going to do a Univision Town Hall on Thursday.

Speaker 5 And as we mentioned last show, she also recorded an episode of the massively popular Call Her Daddy podcast with Alex Cooper,

Speaker 5 where they discussed reproductive rights and other women's issues. issues.

Speaker 5 Here is a clip.

Speaker 47 I do want to clarify something. In the debate, former President Trump claimed that

Speaker 48 some states are executing babies after

Speaker 18 birth.

Speaker 48 Can you just clarify?

Speaker 50 That is not happening anywhere in the United States.

Speaker 50 It is not happening, and it's a lie.

Speaker 49 Just, it's a bold-faced lie that he is suggesting that, can you imagine?

Speaker 50 Can you imagine? He is suggesting that women in their ninth month of pregnancy are electing to have an abortion.

Speaker 49 Are you kidding?

Speaker 49 That is

Speaker 50 so outrageously inaccurate and it's so insulting

Speaker 49 to suggest.

Speaker 50 That that would be happening and that women would be doing that.

Speaker 50 It's not happening anywhere.

Speaker 50 This guy is full of lies. I mean, I just have to be very candid with you.
The idea that someone is not only so careless and irresponsible and reckless, but out and out

Speaker 50 lies

Speaker 50 to create fear and division in our country

Speaker 50 and thinks he should be President of the United States standing behind the seal of the President of the United States using the microphone that comes with that

Speaker 50 and using that voice and those words in such an irresponsible

Speaker 50 and that's mild

Speaker 48 way

Speaker 50 and this is why this election matters

Speaker 22 she's good

Speaker 5 it's a good podcast really good interview really good interview

Speaker 5 Simone you were a senior advisor to the VP in the White House so she started off the first term with a few rough interviews. She got a lot better.
She now seems pretty comfortable.

Speaker 5 Can you talk about how she sees interviews, how she prepares, and what you think the strategy is behind this latest media blitz?

Speaker 6 I mean, I would argue that what we are seeing now is the product of decisions that the vice president made

Speaker 6 mid through the end of her first year in the vice presidency. There was a time where she wasn't doing many interviews within the first year.

Speaker 6 And I remember one day we were in our office and, you know, we're giving the news. And, you know, I believe in giving all the news, even the bad news.
I just hold that back to the end.

Speaker 6 You know, we don't want you getting that one on the emails.

Speaker 9 You don't make it in a sandwich?

Speaker 6 Yeah, I just, you know, I say the good parts and I'm like, and if I may, ma'am.

Speaker 6 And then I grab my folder.

Speaker 31 But,

Speaker 6 you know, she wanted, there were particularly this, we don't see the vice president. There are people who are online and even in real life saying, well, I don't really know what she does.

Speaker 6 Well, that's the function of the vice presidency first. But also, she was quite very active.
But we made the case.

Speaker 6 You know, she's just asked, you know, what our thoughts were and the analysis of it all.

Speaker 6 And we're like, look, you are doing a lot, but we have to go the extra mile and do all the things, go the places that the people read, watch, and listen to.

Speaker 6 So yes, the local press, but the nationals need to do some sit-downs with the columnists because, you know, they think they know all. And if you're not talking to them, they're mean.

Speaker 6 But we still have to talk to them. And so she herself decided that she wanted to do more.
She

Speaker 6 had more off the records with reporters. She did a number of, now she does an end-of-the-year interview every year, a bunch of them.
That's something that she herself decided she wanted to do.

Speaker 6 And so the way she approaches an interview is she wants to come with what, how can I, if abortion is a thing we're going to talk about, how can I make this as plainly relatable as possible?

Speaker 6 She doesn't want a bunch of random facts and figures.

Speaker 6 When we used to travel with her, she would ask for, when we were on the campaign trail, in 2020, she would ask for like three figures about housing, gas, and there was one other thing.

Speaker 6 And it's everywhere we went. She wants these three figures for this specific place.
And it's like, dang, why? I mean, we were in France once doing a press conference at the end of this long trip.

Speaker 6 And she's like, well, what is the price of gas?

Speaker 15 And I'm like,

Speaker 6 well, ma'am, I drive an SUV. So you want the average price? She was like, I don't see it in the documents.
And I'm like.

Speaker 6 And I'm like, people ain't going to, the French don't care about the price of gas, but you know what? The people who will watch the clips at home in America, they do.

Speaker 6 And that's who she was thinking about. And so I think, frankly, she is excellent in an interview.
She wants to break it down and make it relatable.

Speaker 6 But sometimes I think the right has taken, my conservative friends will take some of the clips and they want to make fun of

Speaker 6 the relatability that she herself has been intentional about. And I believe what we've been seeing now is in fact that they have misread the room.

Speaker 6 Everything from the coconuts to the see what can be unburdened by what has been, that resonates with people because they relate like they feel that viscerally.

Speaker 6 So I think the strategy that the campaign has employed here is smart.

Speaker 6 I have been critical in the last three weeks, I would argue, because I feel like that the Democratic Party writ large, but specifically the Harris Walls campaign, not the vice president herself, but some of the people that work up in there.

Speaker 6 were kind of taking the base vote for granted a little bit, thought that they could just maybe earn media their way to the base vote or just, you know, they did that already.

Speaker 6 They had record spending early, so now they need to pivot and get some of these moderate Republicans, so on and so forth. And I think you have to do both.
It's sounding either or.

Speaker 6 And these series of interviews that she has set up to me says that in addition to some of the things that they're doing online and some of the advis that they've done, that they understand that they still have to persuade base voters, i.e.

Speaker 6 there are people who, believe it or not, think that their vote doesn't matter.

Speaker 6 There are people out there who have maybe voted in the past, who say, I just don't know if my vote is going to make a difference.

Speaker 6 And she is going out there talking about the the issues, but also from the candidate's own mouth saying, Your vote can make a difference.

Speaker 6 It made me the first woman, the first woman of color, the first black woman vice president. And your vote can make a difference for all these things in your life.
So I think it's smart.

Speaker 6 Now, some of the media colleagues, they don't like that. They wrote about it today.
They said, oh, why is she? Literally, someone wrote.

Speaker 15 Oh, oh. They wrote it.

Speaker 30 They wrote it. It's coming.
It's coming.

Speaker 5 So. All of these scheduled interviews, they were all out today.
At least the report, the news that she was going to do them all is all out today. And Politico saw all of these scheduled interviews.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 12 the playbook wrote the following.

Speaker 5 Kamala Harris is still largely avoiding the media.

Speaker 5 The VP is set for a series of interviews that likely won't press her on tough issues, even as voters want more specifics.

Speaker 10 Love it, what do you think?

Speaker 5 We were on a plane to Philly

Speaker 5 here, and the plane was a little delayed, and and we were sitting there for a while.

Speaker 10 There were some tweets. There were some tweets flowing in.

Speaker 7 We have made the point that we can't just spend all our time arguing about what Washington media is saying, that we have to get out there, that that's not the most important thing, but sometimes it doesn't have to be the most important thing to be something you really want to do

Speaker 7 for a second, and we've earned it.

Speaker 18 Look.

Speaker 7 She just came off an interview with the National Association of Black Journalists. Tim Walls was on Fox News Sunday today.

Speaker 7 As Playbook publishes this, clips are coming out of Kamala Harris being asked difficult questions about Israel and Gaza by 60 Minutes. You know, those pop culture softies.

Speaker 7 She's on 60 Minutes, the nation's premier tough interview show. A show so famous for its tough interviews that they don't have music.
They have a ticking stopwatch.

Speaker 7 She's doing Univision. She's doing a bunch of local press.

Speaker 7 And what bothers me, in addition to doing The Late Show and Howard Cern, she's doing ostensibly exactly what you would think a political journalist would be excited to see a presidential candidate do, which is talk to all kinds of journalists of all types to try to reach as many people as possible facing difficult questions, personal questions, policy questions, the works.

Speaker 7 And instead, they write that. And look, we can file this away.
It's a problem for another day. In a good relationship, when someone takes out the garbage, their partner says, thank you.

Speaker 7 I appreciate that you do these wonderful things for us. In a bad relationship, when someone takes out the garbage, the partner says, fucking finally.

Speaker 7 When someone is doing the thing you have urged them to do, even if the urging was not totally fair,

Speaker 7 You should be glad they're doing it. You should celebrate it because presumably journalists, I'd like that journalists advocate for journalism.

Speaker 7 I like that they're out there wanting Kamala Harris to do more interviews. We've said Kamala Harris should do more interviews.

Speaker 7 But when someone is doing the thing in a democracy that you believe is important to a democracy, you don't have to go out of your way to kick them in the gnats. Stupid.
It's stupid.

Speaker 7 And it makes, and it's like political journalism is less and less relevant. You have to go around it more and more to reach actual people.
And this is like a little campaign for their own irrelevancy.

Speaker 7 It's like, it's like they don't want the credibility. They don't want to be part of the conversation.
It's like she's doing democracy. You want to do democracy.

Speaker 7 There's another candidate who'd like to destroy it. He backed out of the same 60-minute interview.
Like, maybe that's something worth focusing on.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 6 I frankly think this is indicative of the coverage of the way that the

Speaker 6 political media covered her prior to her becoming, locking down the nomination and becoming the top of the ticket. And I had long since believed, I said, you know, they are going to,

Speaker 6 for lack of a better term, they're going to take a turn. Like, what does this say any more specifics when every interview she's telling you?

Speaker 6 What is like, you can say you don't like the specifics that she's giving.

Speaker 6 You could be critical about the plan that she's put forward, but the idea that there is no plan is just, it's unserious, especially when the man on the other side seems to not know what a tariff is and doesn't understand child care.

Speaker 18 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And he, he,

Speaker 22 he, um,

Speaker 5 he, he's, he spent part of his rally in Wisconsin today demanding an apology from Leslie Stahl in 60 minutes and said, once he gets the apology, he'll go back and do the interview.

Speaker 10 For what?

Speaker 15 The apology is from the traditional case.

Speaker 25 Leslie Stahl knows what Leslie Stahl did.

Speaker 5 I'm sure that will lead Playbook tomorrow. But I do think they confuse a substantive interview with an adversarial interview.

Speaker 5 And if you listen to the interview she did with Alex Cooper on Call Her Daddy, it was extremely substantive. She got into a lot of details about policy.

Speaker 5 Now, did Alex try to ask her a bunch of gotcha questions?

Speaker 13 No, but she also wasn't like, what's your favorite color?

Speaker 15 Like, it was

Speaker 7 like a 538 polling average.

Speaker 17 It wasn't horse race.

Speaker 9 Here's the thing. It's not substantive versus adversarial.

Speaker 9 It's us versus someone else because it drives the Beltway media fucking bananas that someone like Alex Cooper has a platform exponentially larger than they do, listened to by more people, and she can have the interview and not them.

Speaker 9 They are reckoning with declining relevance and decaying platforms in this media environment.

Speaker 7 But by the way, that's not a good thing. That's the thing that's frustrating.

Speaker 7 We live in the wreckage of local news going away, political journalism not reaching enough people, people casting about for information and landing on stuff that's only sometimes true.

Speaker 7 Like that is a bad thing. Like we want, I want those institutions to succeed.
I want them to do the kind of coverage that like people go to because they want news they can trust.

Speaker 7 We're in the middle of an after in the wake of a storm of people grabbing onto bullshit and lies. Like we need institutions that people trust.

Speaker 7 And like this is a very small, ultimately not important example of it. But like I want these institutions to do the kind of journalism that people can rely on.

Speaker 7 And like to be angry that she's only doing 60 Minutes Univision, the National Association of Black Journalists and Fox Fox News Sunday, I think is pretty fucking ridiculous. Yeah.

Speaker 36 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Dan,

Speaker 5 in these final weeks, how do you think about balancing media appearances that introduce the VP to people, interviews that focus on specific topics, more traditional interviews like 60 Minutes, and then how do you weigh all that against the need to continue to do rallies?

Speaker 5 Like, she's obviously, she's got a lot of voters to reach, and she's got a lot of messages to get out there, and there's only four weeks left.

Speaker 9 That's exhausting when you say there are only four weeks left.

Speaker 16 I know.

Speaker 9 Towards the end of my time in the White House as Barack Monster's Communications Director, I kind of realized that much of my job was kind of pointless. And that just that basically the conclusion of

Speaker 9 that so much time was spent

Speaker 9 politicians talking to DC media, D.C. media writing about it, us responding to it, it was all a giant circle jerk.

Speaker 9 Because none of that was reaching real voters, the people people who actually, it was just political junkies talking to each other through the pages of Politico, the New York Times, the Washington Post.

Speaker 9 That's what it was. And the media environment has changed even more dramatically since then because of changes in the internet and social media.

Speaker 9 Now the biggest gap in politics is not between the right and the left, it's between the small minority of Americans who actively seek out political news and everyone else who almost never encounter it.

Speaker 9 Right now, if you want to know what's happening in politics, you have to seek it out. You have to subscribe to Pod State America, read Playbook, read the New York Times, watch watch MSNBC.

Speaker 9 And most people don't do that. And it's no longer delivered to them in their Facebook feed or their Twitter feed or anywhere else.
And so Kamala Harris has a gigantic challenge in this election.

Speaker 9 It is a challenge that no, much harder than any candidate has ever had. And she's having to do it on a compressed timeline.

Speaker 9 And the way I think you do that is to sort of an adopt approach, I like to call sort of everything, everywhere, all at once, is she has to be all over the press, right?

Speaker 9 You have to do 60 Minutes and you have to Call Her Daddy. You have to do Univision Town Hall and Simone Show, right? You got to do Pod Save America and All the Smoke podcasts.
You have to do it all.

Speaker 9 And because you have to recognize that, you have to recognize that

Speaker 9 the voters she needs, the one she needs to persuade, and most of them aren't, when we say persuadable voters, we have in our mind people who are just sitting there like with white stacks of white papers on either side of their dining room table trying to decide between Trump and Kamala Harris.

Speaker 9 And that's not what it is. It's most people deciding between voting for someone and sitting on the couch.
And the way you reach them is by going to where they are, right?

Speaker 9 It's why you do call her daddy, right? Yes, you could see this was in the playbook, like, well, she's already doing so well with young women, so why would she go and call her daddy?

Speaker 9 It's like, what the fuck do you guys know about politics? Because you know what, who does not have a super high turnout rate? Voters under 30.

Speaker 9 And the other thing is, is you think about your interviews, because no individual interview is worth the time of a presidential nominee.

Speaker 9 What it is, is you have the interview and then it has to travel outside of that, right?

Speaker 9 What is not understood by these

Speaker 9 dinosaurs in dc about the media is that they're the people who listen to alex cooper on on spotify or their podcast app or whatever else but those clips travel on tick tock all the time even if you don't listen that podcast you will see clips of kamal harris talking to alex cooper the same thing and trump is doing this and he's doing it quite well right he is all the time we're like where is he he's not doing he's skipping 60 minutes but what he's doing is he's doing theo vaughn's podcast sean ryan's podcast he's doing stuff with with TikTokers like Aiden Ross, and he's out there.

Speaker 9 And we have to have our version of that. And so you got to do it all.

Speaker 9 You got to do university, you got to do 60 minutes, and you got to do this stuff, and you just have to not give a shit about what Politico and the DC media say about it.

Speaker 28 Yeah.

Speaker 5 So, Tommy, CNN had a report on Sunday morning that Harris is contemplating more ways to visibly break with the Biden presidency.

Speaker 5 Didn't really specify any areas where that might happen, but do you think that's smart? Do you think it's feasible?

Speaker 17 I think it's essential.

Speaker 17 I mean, I think this isn't really a criticism of Biden as much as the political reality when you look everywhere in the world and you see people who are pissed off about the pandemic, about

Speaker 17 COVID, the pandemic is COVID, about energy prices,

Speaker 17 inflation, a whole range of things, and they're punishing incumbent parties of all stripes. And so I think Kamala Harris doesn't want to be seen as running for a second Biden term.

Speaker 17 I think there's also, you know, so part of the way you make a break is tonal.

Speaker 17 Joe Biden was very focused on, frustratingly so, candidly, on telling people about the things he had done and trying to get credit for accomplishments.

Speaker 17 Whereas if you watch a Kamala Harris event, she's talking about understanding that people are still frustrated, that they are, you know, feeling the pinch from inflation, but here are the things that I will do to help you.

Speaker 17 And I think that tonal difference has been really important.

Speaker 17 Part of, though, any effort to sort of create some distance is going to involve the Biden-White House playing ball as well.

Speaker 17 And that story you mentioned, the CNN story, talked about how some of Kamala Harris's aides were a little bit frustrated that he went out and talked to the press corps after the Liz Cheney endorsement and sort of started singing Dick Cheney's praises because that didn't land well in a lot of progressive circles.

Speaker 17 There was also an incident where President Biden went to the White House briefing room for the first time in his first term.

Speaker 7 It's funny to refer to it as an incident.

Speaker 5 Incidence.

Speaker 17 President Biden went to the briefing room for the first time, and he ended up speaking at the same time as Kamala Harris's event. And I think they felt like it stepped on that a bit.

Speaker 17 The area where I think it's going to be really hard is on policy. Because I know a lot of progressives want Kamala Harris to articulate a different position on Gaza, for example.

Speaker 17 And we're recording this a day before the one-year anniversary of the October 7th Hamas attack on Israel, which is just a horrific day for everyone in Israel.

Speaker 17 It's been a horrific year for Jews in America and around the world who are fearing the rise of anti-Semitism, for Palestinians in Gaza, obviously, for Arab and Muslim Americans who just want the carnage to end, for people with connections to Lebanon now.

Speaker 17 The challenge for Kamala Harris is, you know, she's going to be in the situation room meetings, but Joe Biden is the president and he is going to make the call.

Speaker 17 And there's one president at a time, and that is a sacrosanct thing that you can't change. And Joe Biden has very strong views on this.
So it's going to be a challenge to create that space.

Speaker 17 I think a lot of it is going to be rhetorical, but I do think it's important for her to try.

Speaker 6 Can I just say that

Speaker 15 I

Speaker 6 don't necessarily agree. I think her tone has been different, but different because that is authentic to her.
And I think that it has really been important for her to be authentic to herself.

Speaker 6 And when, as y'all know, when you're the vice president, your name is on the door, but it's number two on the door, okay?

Speaker 6 And nobody's asking you what you think until you're in the room and the president might ask, and y'all can have a conversation, but at the end of the day, it is the president's decision.

Speaker 6 But there is no one more loyal, more, more

Speaker 6 proud to serve with Joe Biden than Vice President Kamala Harris. And I read all the stories about how the AIDS want this and the AIDS want that.

Speaker 6 I can tell you with visceral and aggressive uncertainty, if the time comes and people are like, the only way you'll get it is if you you know step on Joe Biden's back, stab him in the back and step up.

Speaker 6 She will not do that. But I don't think that that is in fact necessary.
To be very clear,

Speaker 6 she is the nominee right now because Joe Biden had her back when there are many other people that want to walk around right about now outside talking about how, yeah, she was always our person.

Speaker 6 They were endorsing an open primary. So an open process at an open convention.
So I would just say what is,

Speaker 6 I think the campaign aides, instead of whining about what the president is doing, because he is still the president,

Speaker 15 okay?

Speaker 16 Okay.

Speaker 6 Maybe his second biggest defender is me, because I just, you know, instead of whining about what the president is doing, maybe they should do the work of reminding people that it's been 30 years since the sitting vice president of the United States has actually run for been the nominee.

Speaker 6 The last person was Al Gore. How about you ask Al?

Speaker 6 Did somebody ask Bill Clinton how he would have felt if Al Gore was out here just Willie YOLO in it?

Speaker 7 Well, I think that did actually.

Speaker 51 And how the hell did that work out for Al Gore?

Speaker 15 Not so good. Okay.

Speaker 15 Well, I mean, listen.

Speaker 6 My only point is that, like, she

Speaker 6 has, I think, differentiated herself. The aides want her to throw Joe Biden.
Some. They want her to throw Joe Biden under the bus.
She's not going to do it.

Speaker 6 And frankly, the people who are seeding the things out there in the press,

Speaker 6 it is showing that they do not know her that well because that is not something that is going to move her. It's actually just going to piss her off.

Speaker 17 You're right. I mean, she's a loyal person.
She's a good person. I would never recommend she throw Joe Biden under the bus.

Speaker 17 But I think Joe Biden should know, or I think he does know, that his legacy depends on her winning. And whatever it takes for her to win, he should do, she should do.

Speaker 17 And that will be based on data and polling and not, you know, sort of personal cruelty or some petty bullshit from staffers, which you had to deal with more than we did. So you understand this.

Speaker 6 I think there are. Jonathan Ben Labold, he is a lovely person.

Speaker 29 I love Ben Lab.

Speaker 25 Ben London's like one of our closest friends, yeah.

Speaker 32 Damn. I was gonna say,

Speaker 9 I don't know that she has to separate herself on policy because I don't think that's necessarily credible.

Speaker 17 I'm not sure it's possible. It is tone.

Speaker 9 It's really funny. The folks at Blueprint, who do they're a polling organization, they're more moderate leading, but they have been arguing that swing voters want her to separate herself from Biden.

Speaker 9 But the most popular testing message they did was the message, I'm not Joe Biden, and then just restated the positions on healthcare and prescription drugs.

Speaker 9 And the takeaway from that is not that, I mean, Joe Biden is less popular than Kamala Harris, but the point here is that the best framework for this election is future versus past.

Speaker 9 It's not present versus recent past. And so the extent that she is charting a path forward and not relitigating the Biden administration is where she's going to be strongest.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I think a number of things can be true here, which is she is clearly, and you could tell this when she was asked the question in the first sit-down interview she did with CNN.

Speaker 5 She is clearly loves Joe Biden and feels loyal to Joe Biden.

Speaker 5 And I thought that that answer, it was admirable that she did not take that opportunity to throw Joe Biden under the bus, even if it might have been more politically advantageous to do so at that time.

Speaker 5 It's just like you could tell that's what she believes. And I think if you're running for office, just say what you believe, right? That's always a good rule of thumb.

Speaker 5 It's also true that Joe Biden is very unpopular, right? And that, I think, is unfair.

Speaker 10 I think we would all guess that that's unfair that he's unpopular.

Speaker 15 Is he unpopular? Yeah, he's pretty unpopular.

Speaker 30 He's

Speaker 6 no, I think people think he's too, he was, I think a lot of people thought he was too old to be president, but is the president himself unpopular?

Speaker 7 Yes. I think that, I mean, he's more popular now that he's not running for re-election.
No, but let's be honest about this. To me, it's less about, I agree with you, actually.

Speaker 7 I think I agree with John. The moment she defended Joe Biden, I think that's great.
I think we do not want to debate about how is Kamal Harris distinguishing herself from Joe Biden enough.

Speaker 7 I think she's doing it on tone. She should keep doing it on tone.

Speaker 7 I think specifically on Israel and Gaza, it is important for her to say there's only one president at a time to signal that she is not Joe Biden while she stands with Israel and wants a two-state solution.

Speaker 7 But I do think what we're also talking about here is how can Joe Biden be the most helpful?

Speaker 7 And I think it's not necessarily going on the view or going to the brewing room it's not it might be Joe Biden saying the most helpful thing I can do is stand back and make sure that the contrast is not between the present and the future but not but between the future and the Trump past yeah as Dan was saying and that is less about what Kamala does actually it's more about Joe Biden understanding what the most important thing is which for his legacy which is Kamala winning yeah I mean like there's what should be true and there's what is true what should be true is that Joe Biden should be popular because he pulled us out of a pandemic and a recession and we have the strongest economy and fastest recovery than we've had, right?

Speaker 44 And then he

Speaker 5 had the best legislative accomplishments, biggest climate bill in history. Like, yeah, that's what should be true.
But it's not because we went through a pandemic and people are cranky.

Speaker 5 And are his approval ratings with

Speaker 5 engaged Democrats really good? Yeah, but like the people that we were all talking about tonight who don't pay a lot of attention, it's not, right?

Speaker 5 And so like, then the question is, all right, we have this new nominee. What's the opportunity for her?

Speaker 5 And you're right, I don't think you can separate on policy that much because she was there for all of it. And by the way, a lot of the policy itself, pretty popular.

Speaker 7 And by the way, if there was a separation on policy, somebody would have challenged Joe Biden on an issue other than his age.

Speaker 7 The reason there was no other nominees, because Joe Biden was a great president. And age was not a factor in his governing.
He did an extraordinary job. And that didn't change when he stepped aside.

Speaker 36 Yeah. I agree with you.

Speaker 5 But that's why I do think it is how you present yourself. It is past, future, right?

Speaker 5 I even think in the debate when she said, I'm not Joe Biden, it's sort of,

Speaker 5 it works for people. It's also sort of funny.

Speaker 10 It's like, obviously, she's like, yeah, no shit.

Speaker 7 There's a lot of people she's not.

Speaker 15 When you think about it.

Speaker 5 I do think, look, the backdrop of the CNN story, the politico stories, all these Democrats, a lot of aides talking on background, all this kind of stuff. Everyone is nervous.

Speaker 5 And they are nervous because we are nervous because the race is super close. And some people are worried about complacency and caution from the Harris-Walls campaign.

Speaker 5 And that's just, it's what happens every campaign. But we are in a race against Donald Trump, four weeks left.
It's been an unconventional campaign, to say the least. And things are extremely close.

Speaker 5 I think there was some hope that some people had that, like, okay, Kamala Harris, new nominee, now she'll be up five or six, and that'll be that. Not the case.

Speaker 5 It's going to be a dogfight right until the end.

Speaker 10 This isn't the good place.

Speaker 7 This is the bad place.

Speaker 5 You guys think any of this is warranted?

Speaker 10 You have similar worries. Simone, how are you feeling?

Speaker 6 Yeah, I feel, um look i feel like i would just want to bold and underline what dan said this idea that when people say when when i said when we say undecided voter i think an image pops into somebody's head a suburban white lady actually is what pops into lots of heads okay maybe a moderate white man a rural working class union guy okay even though the black and brown people are in rural and are union as well and black women live in the suburbs montgomery county actually as well um yes yes yes yes yes it's where our special was black women in america So I do think that there are, people have to rethink what they think about undecided because there are undecided base voters who are like,

Speaker 6 I don't know if my vote matters, or I don't know if I'm going to vote for her. Not that I'm voting for Trump, but I might stay home or I might leave the top of the ticket blank.

Speaker 6 And because of that, I do think that people have to walk and chew gum at the same time. Yes,

Speaker 6 there has to be appeals to moderate Republicans. Continue to roll out the endorsement of people like Liz Cheney and former Senator Jeff Flake.

Speaker 6 And I do think that that matters, but you cannot do that at the expense of your base because Kamala Harris coalition includes base voters.

Speaker 6 She is not the next president of the United States without them. And I think she understands that, but I think pieces of the Democratic Party apparatus sometimes forget that.

Speaker 6 So that's what makes me anxious. And when people say, oh, I'm undecided, some folks out there want to shame these voters.
And I understand, but I come from, you know, campaigns.

Speaker 6 And in campaigns, we just, we understand where the people are. We need to drag them to where we need them to be.
And then we shame them after election day.

Speaker 13 That's it. That's great.

Speaker 44 We'll leave it there. Leave it there.

Speaker 5 All right, before we get to our interview with Senator Bob Casey, we got something we want to update you on. Votesave America's Build Your Own Ballot Tool is back.

Speaker 5 You might be asking, what's Build Your Own Ballot Tool?

Speaker 5 So it lets you fill out your specific practice ballot in just a few clicks.

Speaker 5 It's got digestible candidate bios and ballot measure explainers so you can get up to speed on who and what you want to vote for in a couple minutes.

Speaker 5 So then, basically, you you fill out this ballot online and then when you go to fill out your real ballot you have your printed out ballot that you filled in online that you got all the info about and then you can just fill out your real ballot really quickly and you're off.

Speaker 5 So for example, if you live in Harrisburg, Build Your Own Ballot will let you know that your congressman, Scott Perry, had to turn over his phone records to the DOJ because of his role in January 6th and then promoted replacement theory during a congressional hearing on anti-Semitism.

Speaker 5 So that's like good information to have.

Speaker 12 That's good information, yeah.

Speaker 5 And as you're filling out your ball, you're like, oh, that guy.

Speaker 12 Okay, well, that's great.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 you can go to votesaveamerica.com/slash vote and find your build your own ballot tool and also tell a couple friends about it, especially friends who might be some of these undecided voters who aren't sure if they're going to vote at all.

Speaker 5 So there we go. When we come back, your senator, Bob Casey.

Speaker 44 This message has been paid for by Vote Save America.

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Speaker 9 Please welcome to the stage Senator Bob Casey.

Speaker 7 Hey, Dan,

Speaker 7 Good to see you.

Speaker 9 Senator, thank you for joining us.

Speaker 22 Dan, great to be here.

Speaker 9 Good thing the Phillies won.

Speaker 9 I saw some people over there who clearly came directly from the Phillies game.

Speaker 53 Right there.

Speaker 9 All right, Senator, you come from

Speaker 9 a political family in the state. You have a long legacy.
You've been around politics your entire life. You've run for office.
Is this your eighth time running? I think. Something like that.

Speaker 9 You've seen everything there is to see. But I think this election here against Dave McCormick is unique.

Speaker 9 Please tell me what it's like to run for Pennsylvania senator against a dude from Connecticut.

Speaker 22 Dan, it's never happened before.

Speaker 22 Dan, by the way, before I do come bearing gifts, I want to make sure that you have an official yangling

Speaker 22 koozie.

Speaker 22 You can just read the rest of it, but that's for you, Dan. That's

Speaker 9 free. I take it that Mr.
Billionaire from Connecticut did not know how to pronounce Pennsylvania's premier beer.

Speaker 26 Right.

Speaker 10 He got a little wrong.

Speaker 22 You too can have that koozie.

Speaker 22 It costs about 10 bucks.

Speaker 22 If you go to pod51041, you can get one for you.

Speaker 30 That's nice.

Speaker 22 No, but Dan, look,

Speaker 22 this is a unique race in lots of ways, not simply because he lied to the people of our state about where he lives.

Speaker 22 He told them over and over and over again, all throughout 2022, all throughout 2023, even before he was a candidate, that he lived in Pennsylvania. He said it over and over again.

Speaker 22 Then on August, not that I remember, but August the 14th of 2023,

Speaker 22 the Associated Press wrote a story that said, Actually, he lives in Connecticut.

Speaker 22 And

Speaker 22 they had evidence to prove that. So that's become a major issue because if you haven't been here,

Speaker 22 he didn't vote in the state for 15 years, if you haven't been here, you're not going to understand the state. And you should not lie to the people that you seek to represent.

Speaker 22 I think that's a pretty low bar.

Speaker 9 And

Speaker 9 it's not just that he lives in Connecticut now. He's also been a little fuzzy, should we say, about the family farm he grew up on and a bunch of other things, right?

Speaker 23 Yeah.

Speaker 22 He said the New York Times wrote this story where they talked about, where the New York Times recounted what he was saying when he was a candidate for the Senate in 2022.

Speaker 22 He said at one point something to the effect that he came from nothing, he had nothing. His father was a university president.

Speaker 22 And when you literally, it was called Bloomsburg College, then now it's Bloomsburg University. When you're president of a college or university, you usually get a house.
They got a house, right?

Speaker 22 So he had a pretty good upbringing. But then later, he even went further and said, because his family owned a farm and he spent some time on it, he actually said at one point, I'm a farmer, which is,

Speaker 22 I mean, that's really interesting the way he brought that into the conversation.

Speaker 22 But Dan, here's one of the, I think this is what sets it apart from any race in the country. Obviously, my good friend John Tester and Sherrod Brown, we were all elected together.
Montana, go ahead.

Speaker 2 They're

Speaker 22 just

Speaker 22 remarkably capable public officials and decent people in really tough races. John has the toughest race in the country.
Sherrod is second.

Speaker 22 Unfortunately for me, I'm third.

Speaker 22 Congrats.

Speaker 22 But the unique feature about our race, which I think sets it apart from any other, is there's a singular super PAC that's funded by billionaires.

Speaker 22 the leaders of which are all out-of-state billionaires,

Speaker 22 that we thought would grow to 20 or 30, now it's close to 50, and it might grow to 60 or 70 million.

Speaker 22 But that super PAC is supporting him morning, noon, and night, pounding the hell out of me, and that sets it apart from any other Senate race in the country.

Speaker 22 It'll be, we believe, the largest individual super PAC

Speaker 22 ever in American politics for one candidate.

Speaker 22 If you can just go to bobcasey.com tonight.

Speaker 22 But I think that's the unique feature of the race.

Speaker 9 I think it's it's worth just like honing in on that because, in addition to just simply polluting the airwaves during Phillies and Eagles games, like it's worth just noting, like, yes, these guys are friends with these rich billionaire hedge fund guys.

Speaker 9 They're probably part of the same country club or yacht club or whatever else with Dave McCormick, but they have a real interest in electing someone like Dave McCormick and defeating someone like you.

Speaker 9 So maybe talk a little bit about that.

Speaker 22 I'd say bingo.

Speaker 22 Look, they know that when there was a tax bill in 2017, remember what happened? Republicans rammed through a tax bill.

Speaker 22 They did it through reconciliation, that narrow process that allows you to vote with get 51 votes. They got their 51 votes, and that bill alone jacked up the debt by $2 trillion,

Speaker 22 mostly because they gave a huge cut in the corporate rate, the likes of which I'm not sure we've ever seen. And the billionaires and the hundreds of millionaire guys got a big tax break.

Speaker 22 When that happened, they knew that they were going to have to come back to it in 2025.

Speaker 22 McCormick's already committed to voting for a similar version of that, which will jack up the debt not by $2 trillion, not by $3 trillion, but by most estimates more than $4 trillion.

Speaker 22 So they know he's going to vote for it, and they know I'm going to vote against it. That's in their interest to support him because he's going to support them on the tax bill.

Speaker 22 And they also, a lot of these billionaires also have a lot to say about how we have to

Speaker 22 limit spending for Medicare and Social Security and Medicaid.

Speaker 9 You had your first debate earlier this week. Was that an enjoyable experience, would you say?

Speaker 22 I wouldn't go that far.

Speaker 9 One of the big issues in that debate, and it's something that's come up in the campaign repeatedly, is fracking. McCormick has repeatedly tried to portray you as someone who is anti-fracking.

Speaker 9 Can you set the record straight on your position on fracking?

Speaker 22 I've always supported it. And the key to that, I think that the key to that issue in terms of what happens in the state is who is the governor

Speaker 22 and we know that Josh Shapiro is someone who supported gas extraction he's also someone go ahead and clap for Josh

Speaker 22 he's

Speaker 22 governor Shapiro is also someone who will enforce the law because that's that's where most of the regulation occurs at the state level it matters who the governor is to enforce the environmental laws.

Speaker 22 We've got a state constitutional provision. It's Article I, Section 27 of our state's constitution.

Speaker 22 The people have a right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the historic, scenic, and natural values, aesthetics of the environment. So

Speaker 22 because of that constitutional mandate, it's up to the governor and

Speaker 18 those

Speaker 22 who do the oversight of this process of extracting natural gas to enforce those laws.

Speaker 9 So we have a lot of listeners maybe here in Pennsylvania, but also around the country who who want to support your campaign who are very concerned about climate change.

Speaker 9 And they hear someone say that they're here that you support fracking, and maybe they don't understand the role fracking plays in the economy here in Pennsylvania.

Speaker 9 But maybe you could talk a little, for those voters, maybe talk a little bit more about your broader efforts to address climate change and maybe making sure that we keep our water and air as clean as possible.

Speaker 22 Yeah, I think one of the most important moments in

Speaker 22 the recent history of the Senate, at least on our side, was when we passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which

Speaker 22 allowed us, and by the way, with only Democratic votes, not a single Republican supported, that allowed us to say

Speaker 22 by the time that law passed in 2022, I guess August of 22, that we could achieve 40 by 30, a 40% reduction in emissions by 2030, solely because of that law, the most important climate change legislation in human history, if not American history.

Speaker 22 But there's more we have to do.

Speaker 22 20 by 30 is a substantial progress, but there's more we're going to have to do to reduce emissions.

Speaker 9 Dave McCormick recently

Speaker 9 released a very gauzy ad trying to portray himself as a moderate on abortion and calling you an extremist on abortion. Because you maybe,

Speaker 9 I mean,

Speaker 9 we have both equal part booze and laughs in the audience on that, but I'm sure they've seen that ad 100 million times in the last few weeks.

Speaker 9 Maybe you could explain what the differences are between you and McCormick on abortion and why electing you in a Democratic Senate matters so much for reproductive freedom.

Speaker 22 Yeah, here's the moment. It's 2022, and remember the Dobbs decision was leaked.
Remember that, so we had a sense of it. And then, of course, the final decision came out.

Speaker 22 in June of 22. Right around that time, my opponent was a candidate for the United States Senate.
And he was running in that primary and

Speaker 22 he was trying to run to the right of Dr. Roz, who ultimately won the primary.
And in a

Speaker 22 debate among Republican candidates,

Speaker 22 the debate moderator, the same moderator that we had the other night in Harrisburg, Dennis Owen, said, what exceptions would you support?

Speaker 22 if in an abortion ban or some some words to that effect.

Speaker 22 And my opponent said, the rare instance of life of the mother, and he stopped. And then he never corrected the record on that.

Speaker 22 And then when he started running for the Senate, he started saying, oh, no, no, I forgot. I forgot there are two other exceptions that I should have had in there.
So that's one proof point.

Speaker 22 But the second proof point is basic. It's, will you vote to restore the protections of Roe v.
Wade or not? I will and have, he won't. That's the difference.

Speaker 9 And he, we would assume, vote for a federal abortion ban if that's what the MAGA Republicans that Trump wanted right he's denying that well he's he's denying that he's a man who also lies about where he lives so I'm not sure I'd take that one to the bank right

Speaker 12 that's a good line actually well it's all yours

Speaker 9 some folks in the audience or listening this episode may not know this but you love political maps

Speaker 9 some well actually only one map you guys have one map yes you love the political map some people and by some people I largely mean me they call you the Steve Cornacki of the Senate.

Speaker 9 And so in that vein, I think we might have a map coming out here.

Speaker 18 Oh, wow.

Speaker 2 There it is. All right.

Speaker 22 Tommy, thanks so much for your help with that.

Speaker 9 So on election night, this is the state that is going to decide the presidency, the White House, the Senate, and everything else.

Speaker 9 Cheering your Battleground State status. I appreciate that.
And so we're going to be watching the vote totals in Pennsylvania very carefully.

Speaker 9 So maybe you could walk us through what you're going to be looking for on election night.

Speaker 14 Yeah.

Speaker 36 This is...

Speaker 7 This was just...

Speaker 9 It's hard for some of you people to see, so we'll try to explain what the counties are.

Speaker 18 Yeah, we'll talk about them.

Speaker 22 But Dan, this was retrieved from the Smithsonian.

Speaker 22 As you can see, it's from 2020.

Speaker 22 And there's a lot of scribbling on here. I just want to explain what it is.
Like, for example, in Potter County, before election night, I wrote down minus 46.

Speaker 25 That's not good.

Speaker 22 These are counties we won't win. But

Speaker 22 this was what President Obama lost Potter County by 46, and then what Secretary Clinton lost it by, and then we left a space, and all night long I was filling in. So, for example, that's one example.

Speaker 22 Let's go to some good news, like in Chester County. How manybody from here in Chester County?

Speaker 22 This was a Republican county, the last of the four to

Speaker 22 go Democratic. President Obama actually lost it slightly by 0.2%.

Speaker 22 Secretary Clinton won it by nine points. President Biden won it by 17.

Speaker 22 But here,

Speaker 22 let me just walk through what I hope.

Speaker 7 Go for it.

Speaker 22 Here's what I have to do to win, and here's what Kamala Harris has to do. By the way, she's going to win this race, right?

Speaker 22 This is is the southeast, but it's really the Philadelphia television market, right? So it's eight counties where we are right here. We're here in Philly.
By the way, it's great to be at the Met.

Speaker 22 This is a great place.

Speaker 22 And it used to be a house of worship, so it's sacred, so it's sacred ground we're on. But these eight counties, this media market, President Biden won that media market by plus 27.

Speaker 14 Right?

Speaker 22 He lost every other media market in the state, and he won the state by one, right?

Speaker 22 So we've got to try to get that margin out of there. But also, in Pittsburgh, this is Allegheny County, right?

Speaker 22 But in this media market, which is 22, this is 41% of the vote. This is 22% of the vote.

Speaker 22 If Kamala Harris and I are close to breaking even for this region, it'll be a good night.

Speaker 2 So.

Speaker 9 And

Speaker 9 what's the the specific county that you'll be looking for that you think maybe is a bellwether of what's happening in the state?

Speaker 22 This is hazardous.

Speaker 22 Anybody from Bucks County out there?

Speaker 22 It's not precisely, but you can see

Speaker 22 it wasn't a good indicator of President Obama's margin because it's plus one and he won the state by five. Secretary Clinton won it by one, but

Speaker 22 she was minus one for the state.

Speaker 22 President Biden won Bucs by four, won the state by one. So it's not precise, but that's a pretty good barometer there.

Speaker 22 But the two counties that most people paid attention to last time were flip counties, Obama, and then that other guy in 16, and then President Biden. Northampton and Erie, right?

Speaker 22 So Erie went from minus two to plus one. Northampton went from minus four to plus 0.7.

Speaker 22 So those two counties are indicative. But look, a lot is going to come down to the southeast,

Speaker 22 these eight counties.

Speaker 9 And what about Lackawanna County where Scranton is?

Speaker 9 Which is Casey Country, right? Yep.

Speaker 22 Lackawanna County was plus eight for President Biden. We've got to achieve a number close to that.

Speaker 22 for sure, because this region of the state, the Northeast, used to have a much bigger blue in Luzerne County, but now Lackawanna and Monroe pretty much are the blue counties in this part of the state.

Speaker 9 And how are you feeling about Center County is State College, right?

Speaker 36 Right.

Speaker 9 And how are you feeling about Center County this year?

Speaker 22 I think we're going to win Center County.

Speaker 9 Okay.

Speaker 22 Dan, this is where Altoona is, where you were in a bowling alley in 2008, I think.

Speaker 18 Yes.

Speaker 9 I was going to ask you, Senator Casey, and Senator, well, one people should know that Senator Casey very bravely endorsed President Obama at a very dark time in our campaign.

Speaker 9 And so for anyone to ever work for President Obama, we are eternally loyal to Bob Casey.

Speaker 3 Even though the bowling didn't go out.

Speaker 9 Yes, and so we, Senator Casey and I, 15 years ago now, were on a bus together with your children. And we had President Obama campaigning across Pennsylvania, and we stopped at a bowling alley.

Speaker 9 And I would just say that

Speaker 9 Senator Casey and President Obama bowled in front of the national press together. And Senator Casey, good bowler.

Speaker 9 Barack Obama, not a good bowler.

Speaker 9 I would say...

Speaker 22 I've never met a more confident, bad bowler in my life.

Speaker 9 I said, we were getting off the bus,

Speaker 9 and President Obama just mentioned in passing, he goes, I haven't bowled since I was 19. And I said, sir, you know, you don't have to actually bowl.
We could just shake hands.

Speaker 9 And he's, no, I got this.

Speaker 29 He was practicing.

Speaker 9 He did not get it. I'll tell you that right now.

Speaker 9 Will you be taking Kamala Harris bowling?

Speaker 22 After the election.

Speaker 29 Yes.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 18 Okay. All right.

Speaker 9 There is no path to a Senate majority without re-electing Bob Casey. Okay?

Speaker 9 We absolutely have to do it.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 7 even beyond that,

Speaker 9 we need people like Bob Casey in politics. People who are in it for the right reasons.
And so, Senator Casey,

Speaker 9 just for everyone here in the audience, but also all the people listening at home, can you just tell them where they can go to help your campaign?

Speaker 7 Two places.

Speaker 22 Go to bobcasey.com. And, of course, for tonight's purposes, text pod to 51041.

Speaker 9 Okay.

Speaker 9 Everyone, give it up for Senator Casey.

Speaker 9 Thanks, Dan.

Speaker 20 Appreciate it.

Speaker 2 Thank you, sir.

Speaker 7 When we come back, a game.

Speaker 7 How great is the map?

Speaker 7 We were talking about it backstage that on election night, we should see if we can lock Bob Casey into a room in Scranton and go to him like he's our, like he's

Speaker 37 our Kornaki and John King up here.

Speaker 7 Let's go to Senator Casey with the screen. Bob, what are you seeing out there? A pair of pleated khakis.
That works for me.

Speaker 6 Don't tempt Bob Casey with a good time.

Speaker 5 That was one of the nerdiest things that's ever happened at a Potsave America America live show.

Speaker 32 And that's a tough category. That's a tough category.

Speaker 15 I love it.

Speaker 36 Tough category.

Speaker 9 Tough category. I was really in my natural element right there.

Speaker 5 I was for the real sickos. Yeah.
The county-by-county map of Pennsylvania and what we need out of it.

Speaker 7 It's going to work great in the audio.

Speaker 7 Pate America, now on YouTube. I will say, when we will talk to you, we'll be like, oh,

Speaker 7 I love watching your show. That's a good, so maybe that'll be good for them.
All right.

Speaker 6 Let me tell you, the young people are watching you on YouTube. That's right.
I teach a class. I'm a fellow at Georgetown this semester.

Speaker 6 And they all said, I hear you have a show, but I saw you on Pod Save America. And I was like, well, damn.

Speaker 6 Yes, I do.

Speaker 5 On the TikTok, you know.

Speaker 7 Now it's time to learn a bit more about Senator Casey's Republican challenger, Dave McCormick.

Speaker 7 In a game we're calling,

Speaker 7 There are people who, in a game we're calling, there are people from Connecticut, and then there are people who seem like they invented the idea of Connecticut.

Speaker 2 All right.

Speaker 7 Simone and John are a team. Dan and Tommy are a team.

Speaker 15 Good luck.

Speaker 7 Let's do this. Let's do this.
First question: start with John and Simone. In 2022, Dave McCormick spent this much of his own money to lose a primary to TV doctor and puppy killer Dr.
Oz.

Speaker 7 Is it $2 million, $7 million, $10 million, or $14 million?

Speaker 30 ten fourteen

Speaker 7 incorrect for the seal

Speaker 30 it is fourteen

Speaker 7 Dan and Tommy true or false Dave McCormick lives in Pennsylvania false

Speaker 9 yes we'll accept false

Speaker 7 depends on who you ask, but he owns a house in Pittsburgh, but all records indicate that Dave McCormick lives almost exclusively on Connecticut's Gold Coast, one of the densest concentrations of wealth in the world.

Speaker 7 Fucking Connecticut.

Speaker 29 Connecticut, boo.

Speaker 36 Boo.

Speaker 36 Boo.

Speaker 7 Which of these Philadelphia film icons, John and Simone, would win a fight? This one is an objective question. Rocky from the film Rocky or The Blob from the 1958 film The Blob?

Speaker 7 Who would win in a fight?

Speaker 7 Some of these are not politics, and that's okay.

Speaker 6 We're gonna go with Rocky.

Speaker 51 Yeah.

Speaker 10 Come on, Philly. Yeah.
Come on, Philly.

Speaker 7 I want you to think that fucking through. What is Rocky Balboa gonna do? He's gonna punch the blob to death?

Speaker 7 This is the kind of, you gotta get practical. You gotta get real.
This is how Trump happens. All right? Wishful fucking thinking.
It's a close election. The blob would beat Rocky.
I'm sorry.

Speaker 7 I'm sorry.

Speaker 29 Boomy, I don't care.

Speaker 9 Before we proceed with this game, I think everyone should know that John Levitt was raised a Mets fan.

Speaker 7 Our mascot is just a big baseball.

Speaker 6 I would like you all to know the gentleman in this third row just adjusted his Philly.

Speaker 30 Yeah, I saw that too.

Speaker 23 That's right, that's right, that's right.

Speaker 36 By the way,

Speaker 7 because in any other city, in any other city, I would have played the Mets theme song. But only in this city, am I afraid some of you have batteries on you?

Speaker 7 You absolute animals.

Speaker 7 You fucking freaks.

Speaker 3 I just, I love the...

Speaker 7 I love saying that the Mets have a theme song.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 15 Okay. I know.

Speaker 7 Meet the Mets.

Speaker 7 Greet the Mets.

Speaker 2 There we go.

Speaker 36 There we go.

Speaker 2 There we go.

Speaker 10 Now we're at Philadelphia.

Speaker 11 Now I feel their home.

Speaker 7 Dan and Tommy.

Speaker 14 Yes.

Speaker 8 Which

Speaker 7 of these four positions

Speaker 7 has McCormick taken on abortion in the last two years?

Speaker 7 Is it A, when when asked if there should be exceptions for rape and incest, McCormick said, I believe in the very rare instances there should be exceptions for the life of the mother.

Speaker 7 B, I believe that life begins at conception through natural death and I'll be a starwart defender of life and we have to change the law on life.

Speaker 7 C, I would not favor any abortion ban of any kind, any legislation to support a national abortion ban. Or D, overturning Roe would be a huge step forward and a huge victory for the protection of life.

Speaker 15 Is there an all the above option?

Speaker 7 There's an all-the-above option.

Speaker 7 All the above. Yes, he has taken all those positions in the last like fucking two years.

Speaker 7 The Casey campaign put these two moments side by side. These are his most recent debates.

Speaker 21 And the thing that I said in that debate, I did say, and I had also said before that and after that.

Speaker 19 How about you? Exceptions in your view?

Speaker 21 I believe in the very rare instances there should be exceptions for life of the mother. I would not favor an abortion ban of any kind, legislation to support a national abortion ban.

Speaker 21 I'm a pro-life pro-life candidate on my position on abortion. And it's something that we need to get passed.
If it does, I would embrace it and I would be very, very happy about it.

Speaker 6 Honey, the archives do not lie, but they always tell a story.

Speaker 15 They do.

Speaker 7 What a head's very square.

Speaker 7 It's like if someone was... He's a Mets fan.

Speaker 7 Okay, no, he's there.

Speaker 7 This fucking guy is not a Mets fan. I don't know what he's a fan of, but but it's the Yankees.

Speaker 15 This is a Yankees.

Speaker 29 He looks like I've ever seen a fan.

Speaker 7 We can unite against our common enemy, the Yankees.

Speaker 7 That's... I'm Liz Cheney.

Speaker 7 Trump is the Yankees. All right.

Speaker 7 Jonathan Simone, before he left to run against Dr. Ros in the 2022 Republican Senate primary, Dave McCormick was the CEO of the largest hedge fund in America.

Speaker 7 While on the campaign campaign trail, he's called U.S. investments in Chinese companies an existential threat.

Speaker 7 Which of the following is not a real investment made by Dave McCormick's gigantic hedge fund while he was a CFO?

Speaker 7 Is it A, Chinese fentanyl, fentanyl made by the largest manufacturer of synthetic opiates in China?

Speaker 7 Is it B, the Chinese military-industrial complex, including those that make stealth bombers and missiles, which both the Biden and Trump administration blacklisted for being part of China's surveillance complex?

Speaker 7 C, Iranian weapons manufacturers, including companies that make assault weapons and grenade launchers, companies Pennsylvania's Treasury has specifically divested from, or D, all of the above.

Speaker 5 Gotta be D.

Speaker 15 What do you think? Is it D?

Speaker 7 It's D.

Speaker 16 What? Yeah.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Just lost Simone's vote.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 7 Also, also shorted seven American-owned steel companies. So that's pretty neat.

Speaker 25 Yeah.

Speaker 26 Yeah.

Speaker 31 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Not good.

Speaker 6 Very bad.

Speaker 7 Very bad. Dan and Tommy, you're looking through your calendar and realize you have double booked dates with gritty and the Philly Fanatic.

Speaker 7 Who are you canceling on? Who are you canceling on?

Speaker 7 Can I just say something also? This is not... Actually, you guys answer.

Speaker 9 I don't think we could cancel a date with a Philly Fanatic while the Phillies are in the Major League Baseball Playoffs.

Speaker 17 Yeah, I'm canceling the date with Gritty because that's going to end badly.

Speaker 9 I think, look, I will just say, when I was eight years old, I went to a birthday party where the Philly Fanatic Fanatic was, and it was a highlight of my life.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 7 Unfortunately, and I honestly, I mean this with nothing but love for the Philly Fanatic. That is incorrect, but

Speaker 7 not because you wouldn't prefer to go on a date with a Philly fanatic. It's that if you cancel a date with Gritty, Gritty comes to your house.

Speaker 7 By the way, it is also a testament to

Speaker 7 this city. That in a city filled with symbols of patriotism and democracy, you could have chose anything that's real, that exists, animals,

Speaker 7 objects to be your mascots.

Speaker 25 I have a question for you.

Speaker 7 You chose invented monsters.

Speaker 53 I have a question for the moderator.

Speaker 9 What do you think the name of Philadelphia's NFL team is?

Speaker 7 What? What do you think the name of Philadelphia's NFL team is? I know that that's the Eagles now that you say it.

Speaker 7 But I'm just saying, what the fuck is a fanatic? What's gritty?

Speaker 18 All right.

Speaker 7 John, Simone.

Speaker 7 How did Dave McCormick pronounce the name of this beer, a Pennsylvania era?

Speaker 12 Oh, he did.

Speaker 7 what did he say? Simone, how did he pronounce this beer?

Speaker 9 We're about to do a real reveal if you listen to any of the interview I just did with Senator Casey.

Speaker 9 Were you peeing during the first question, John?

Speaker 10 Did he say

Speaker 6 Le Lager?

Speaker 5 I think he said Yang Ling.

Speaker 29 That's correct. Yeah.
Yang Ling.

Speaker 29 He called it a Yang Ling.

Speaker 21 Thought you guys needed to be introduced to Yang Ling. Yeah.
Yang Ling beer.

Speaker 9 Oh, he did that on the Ruthless podcast?

Speaker 51 Crazy.

Speaker 5 Terrible podcast.

Speaker 7 He did this on a show named after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It is a show.

Speaker 26 That's not a joke.

Speaker 7 It is called Ruthless because it is

Speaker 7 named after the sadness of liberals upon the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And that's like the moderate show.

Speaker 15 That's like the establishment cuff show.

Speaker 7 Yeah, that's why it's called Ruthless. Because we are ruthless.
And they are ruthless. You see? It's a good name.

Speaker 7 I mean, if you think about it, it's clever.

Speaker 46 It's evil.

Speaker 15 Okay.

Speaker 28 Thank you.

Speaker 7 The Phillies, the Phillies jumping out. We got to get out of here.
People have been drinking. The Phillies won.
We got to keep this moving. All right.

Speaker 32 It's getting dangerous.

Speaker 25 It's getting scary in here.

Speaker 7 Grease the light poles.

Speaker 2 All right.

Speaker 7 Anybody can jump. Oh, yes.
Which of the five. Who's up? Dan and Dan and

Speaker 29 Yangling.

Speaker 7 Dan and Tommy. which of the following is not a huge faux pas Dave McCormick committed in public? Is it A calling a drink from Wawa a big gulp?

Speaker 7 B tried to blame Bob Casey for inflation by pointing to Hershey Park ticket prices only for the park to call him out on Twitter for lying?

Speaker 7 C fear-mongered over a video of a shooting in Philadelphia only for everyone to point out the video is from Philadelphia, Mississippi.

Speaker 7 Or D, tried to add caviar to a Philly cheesesteak.

Speaker 7 D. D.
That's correct. That was too much.

Speaker 37 But you can see it.

Speaker 7 But you can see it. And you kind of want to try it.

Speaker 15 All right.

Speaker 7 Yes, the man is a flub machine. He did all those things.

Speaker 13 He called a Wawa big gulp.

Speaker 6 That's crazy.

Speaker 10 How is this close? He's not from here.

Speaker 7 What was that? And you know what that sound means?

Speaker 7 It's time for the lightning round where the points really matter.

Speaker 7 This week it's time for a second. We call, oh no, Dave McCormick screwed up buying sandwiches again.

Speaker 7 Literally on Friday, Max's Stakes, the North Philly site of a Dave McCormick campaign stop to reach black voters, said the Republican Senate candidate is not welcome back.

Speaker 26 Why?

Speaker 7 Because Max's Stakes was not told the event was a Dave McCormick campaign stop. Instead, they were told it was an event to benefit what? Simone and John.

Speaker 7 Was that restaurant told that it was an event for Philly's public schools, autism awareness, awareness, the local ASPCA, or the Philadelphia Spotted Lantern Fly Attack League?

Speaker 5 What do you think? Was the first one, the schools?

Speaker 6 I think we should listen to the crowd.

Speaker 5 Yeah, that's a good idea.

Speaker 12 A?

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 5 You're all saying different things.

Speaker 37 Mixed reviews here.

Speaker 7 This is the problem.

Speaker 5 What was the first one? A?

Speaker 7 Philly Schools, Autism's Awareness, the Local ASPCA.

Speaker 22 A, yeah. A.
A.

Speaker 7 Incorrect. B.
What? It was B.

Speaker 7 They were told it was about autism awareness. Max's stakes was told that the Dave McCormick campaign stopped was an event to benefit autism's awareness.

Speaker 7 In fact, the manager of Max's said he agreed to have the event because his niece and nephew have autism. Said the manager, as McCormick's campaign was wrapping up, we didn't sign up for that at all.

Speaker 7 Zero. I could throw them all out of here, but I'm going to be nice.
Do your thing. When you're done, leave.
You're not welcome back.

Speaker 7 Okay, hold up. No, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 6 How did they say yes to the event thinking it was the autism people? Did they get an email?

Speaker 6 Did they not check the email? Why did we ask follow-up questions?

Speaker 7 Such an important question. Let's get to the bottom of it.

Speaker 7 Organizer Sheila Armstrong,

Speaker 7 who has been a member of Moms for Liberty, reportedly reached out to the venue and told them the event was for her nonprofit cooking for autism. She never mentioned the Dave McCormick part.

Speaker 7 When asked if the Dave McCormick campaign stop qualified as an autism awareness event, how did Armstrong reply? Tommy and Dan.

Speaker 7 A, yes, we apologize for the confusion and we're going to find the person responsible. B, yes, and I'm not going to waste my time explaining it to the woke media.

Speaker 7 C, yes, it's always autism awareness because I am an education advocate. Or D, whoops, what a mistake, S-T-E-A-K.

Speaker 7 I feel like B.

Speaker 9 I feel like B too.

Speaker 7 Oh, if only it were. It's C? It's C.

Speaker 7 It's always autism awareness when I'm a rat.

Speaker 10 That's right.

Speaker 18 Wow.

Speaker 7 Isn't that amazing?

Speaker 6 But why didn't didn't they stop the event when they started putting the signs up?

Speaker 7 Because they were being nice, because it's a strange thing to think you're going to have an autism awareness event, and all of a sudden Dave McCormick's out there being like, vote for me.

Speaker 7 That's a weird thing. Your job is to serve sandwiches.
You're not in the game of kicking out political candidates. It's a strange situation.
They handled it the best they could.

Speaker 31 I'm glad they told the story.

Speaker 6 I was hot in North Omaha, Nebraska, and we would have shut it down.

Speaker 7 All right, this can be for anybody. Final question.
Almost immediately after leaving Max's stakes, Dave McCormick was kicked out of a local church.

Speaker 7 The pastor was concerned conservatives would accuse his congregation of doing what?

Speaker 17 Dogs was the crowd of answer.

Speaker 7 That's right.

Speaker 15 That's right.

Speaker 7 After walking next door to East Bethel Baptist Church, which was having a fundraiser for its food ministry, the Reverend asked the Republican candidate staff to leave because he did not want photos of congregation to be used by the campaign saying, I don't want to be accused, I don't want my parishioners to be accused of eating cats and dogs.

Speaker 45 Shout out to that Reverend, okay?

Speaker 3 Shout out to the Reverend.

Speaker 6 Sad he even had to say that.

Speaker 7 Simone,

Speaker 29 you won the game because you would have kicked them out. I would have put them out, yeah.

Speaker 7 John didn't win.

Speaker 7 Only Simone won.

Speaker 15 Why not?

Speaker 5 I'm still reeling from Dave McCormick's campaign here.

Speaker 26 Guys, come on.

Speaker 7 Don't let Dave McCormick win. Don't let Dave McCormick win.

Speaker 10 That's our game. That's the show for tonight.

Speaker 5 Go out there and like Bob Casey, elect Kamala Harris.

Speaker 7 Thank you to Simone Sanders-Tompse. Thank you to Bob Casey.
Go to BodsaveAmerica.com.

Speaker 5 Let's win this thing.

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Speaker 44 Pod Save America is a crooked media production. Our producer is David Toledo.

Speaker 13 Our associate producers are Saul Rubin and Farah Safari.

Speaker 46 Reed Cherlin is our executive editor and Adrian Hill is our executive producer.

Speaker 44 The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer, with audio support from Kyle Seglund and Charlotte Landis.
Writing support by Hallie Kiefer.

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Speaker 46 Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Phoebe Bradford, Joseph Dutra, Ben Hefcote, Mia Kelman, Molly Lobel, Kirill Pelavive, and David Toles.

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