Kamala Up, Lovett Down

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Speaker 3 Hey, this is Jeff Lewis from Radio Andy. Live and uncensored.
Catch me talking with my friends about my latest obsessions, relationship issues, and bodily ailments.

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

Speaker 2 On today's show, Kamala Harris's campaign drives a message on reproductive freedom with a searing new ad in a live-streamed event with Oprah Winfrey.

Speaker 2 Donald Trump tries to win over swing voters in New York, D.C., and the Fox News audience.

Speaker 2 And speaking of former reality TV stars, Dan Tommy and I hold our own tribal council with a survivor contestant who was voted off early but can still win if Jeff Probst has the courage.

Speaker 2 Our very own John Lovett.

Speaker 5 Cannot wait.

Speaker 2 I cannot wait for this.

Speaker 5 Let's get through this politics and let's get to survivor fast.

Speaker 2 Oh yeah, we're also going to talk about the Republican nominee for governor in North Carolina

Speaker 2 has called himself a black Nazi and posted on porn message boards. So

Speaker 2 we're going to get to that, too.

Speaker 2 It's quite a day here.

Speaker 2 All right, but first, we have had a polling tsunami in the 24 hours since, Dan, you recorded Wednesday's pod with the D Sou,

Speaker 2 including the post-debate New York Times Sienna poll that us sickos have been checking our phones for at 4 a.m. every morning.

Speaker 2 I won't bore all you non-sickos with every top line and crosstab, but when you take all the high-quality polling and averages together, here's what you get.

Speaker 2 Kamala Harris has about a three-point lead nationally, a one-point lead in Pennsylvania, a two-point lead.

Speaker 2 in Wisconsin and Michigan, and every other swing state basically tied under a point, either under a point with a Harris lead or a Trump lead.

Speaker 2 The Times had an especially interesting sort of head-scratching result.

Speaker 2 They have Trump and Harris tied at 47 nationally, which is a statistically meaningless one-point improvement from their pre-debate poll.

Speaker 2 But they also did a separate Pennsylvania poll that has Harris up 50 to 46, which is the exact same result as their last Pennsylvania poll a couple months ago.

Speaker 2 Altogether, there were eight eight Pennsylvania polls that dropped this week, most of them in the last 24 hours, many from high-quality pollsters, and they did, most of them did show movement to Harris from their previous polls, but still one-point race in the most important swing state in the country.

Speaker 2 So I know you and Adisu talked about the state of the race on Wednesday, but because I am a sicko, I had to talk to you about the pole apocalypse, the polling tsunami. I'm trying out different.

Speaker 5 It's not even a poll apocalypse because the polls are actually kind of good.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I know.

Speaker 2 It's kind of like

Speaker 2 snowpocalypse. Remember that in D.C.
when there's a lot of people? I do remember snowpocalypse, yes. Anyway, what's your take from Time Sienna? And

Speaker 2 how can they have the race tied nationally, but Harris ahead in Pennsylvania? Shouldn't it be the other way around?

Speaker 5 It doesn't make a ton of sense, right? Biden won the popular vote in 2020 by four and a half points. He won Pennsylvania by 1.2 points.

Speaker 5 So if these two Times polls are correct and Kamala Harris is tied nationally with Trump, but up by four in Pennsylvania, that's a seven-point swing over the course of four years, which seems just impossible to imagine.

Speaker 5 And it is different than the polling averages, right? Which have Harris, as you mentioned, up three, up one in Pennsylvania. That makes a little more sense.
That's sort of consistent with 2020.

Speaker 5 Now, I will say, and Nate Cohn, to his credit, Nate Cohn, the

Speaker 5 the person in charge of the New York Times CNN of polling wrote a column where he wrestled with this conflicting result.

Speaker 5 And I think, to his credit, is more willing to address the possible fallibility of the polls they do than any other media poll star. So he's willing to say, like, maybe it's, maybe it's not right.

Speaker 5 Here's some reasons it might be right.

Speaker 5 And one of the things within the poll that I think is interesting, which could suggest that maybe the Electoral College Republican bias may be shrinking, is in the Pennsylvania poll,

Speaker 5 Trump has a four-point lead on the economy. Nationally, he has a 13-point lead.
And the reason why I think that's interesting is maybe it is noise.

Speaker 5 Maybe it's just an overly friendly Pennsylvania sample, but it's also true that Pennsylvania has seen more messaging than any state. It's where Kamala Harris campaigns the most.

Speaker 5 It's where the most money is spent on ads.

Speaker 5 And so it would make sense that if she is making progress in defining herself, particularly on the economy where they're spending the most money, that it would be, you would see those results in Pennsylvania first.

Speaker 5 Because in the vast majority of the country, these people are seeing no Kamala Harris communications at all, no Trump communications. They are bystanders to the race.

Speaker 5 And then the one other point here, and I just, like I said, it could all be noise, it could be wrong, but Jacob Rubashkin of Inside Elections pointed out that just a decent sized drop in the Democratic margin in big states like New York and California would shrink the national popular vote margin by at least a point.

Speaker 5 And there is a separate CNN college poll, which shows uh Harris underperforming Biden's 2020 numbers in New York, although still winning by a lot.

Speaker 5 So a lot to unpack here, but it seems unlikely, but it is possible.

Speaker 5 There's a where in which it is true that you could be essentially tie nationally or up a point or down a point because it's all in the margin of error and have a little lead to Pennsylvania.

Speaker 2 The scenario where Democrats are doing slightly worse in non-swing states, and that's what shrinks the Electoral College advantage for Republicans is similar to what happened in 2022 in the midterms, where all these national polls showed it closer.

Speaker 2 People still thought maybe a red wave was coming. Some of that was just, you know, Republican pollsters putting out garbage polls.

Speaker 2 But in these swing states where Democrats were running races and pouring all money and time and energy and resources and volunteers into, those Democrats just tended to do better than just Democrats in states where we weren't as focused because they weren't as competitive.

Speaker 2 And so, you know, we did see that in the midterm. So it is possible.

Speaker 2 I also think, I mean, you said it initially, like if the national average is three, if she's up by three, then a poll that comes out with her tide fits with a national average of her being ahead by three because these are all, it's still margin of error.

Speaker 2 Even when you do polling averages, it's still margin of error because it's just a larger sample of voters. And so that's not too crazy.

Speaker 2 And then, you know, a poll that shows her up being four in Pennsylvania when the averages show her up one, same thing. It's like, it's, it's not crazy, right?

Speaker 2 Like you just get polls that are going to be, you know, if the average is one, you're going to get some polls that are up four, up five, some polls where she's down three or four.

Speaker 2 Like that's just the way polling works. So we've now had enough polling, though, that I think we can assess the impact of the debate, right? We're more than a week out from the debate.

Speaker 2 We've now had just more polls than we've had in one given period, maybe in the whole race. What would you say is the impact of the debate?

Speaker 5 The impact of the debate is similar to the impact of Donald Trump being convicted of a felony and Donald Trump being shot in the ear, which is about a point.

Speaker 5 And it's just, this is, it's just the other matter that this is a game of inches. And

Speaker 5 you're just not seeing gigantic movement.

Speaker 5 And even within the national, if you look at the Times pre-debate poll and the Times post-debate poll, the two numbers that stick out are the number of people who feel like they need to know more about Kamala Harris is virtually unchanged from.

Speaker 5 the previous poll. And the number of people who think that she is a risky choice or represents more of the same, another number that's worth noting, is basically unchanged.
unchanged. And so, for

Speaker 5 I think she did herself good.

Speaker 5 She's, you know, a lot of the polling shows she's improved her favorability rating and other polling, but it has not been enough to, as of yet, move people who were in the undecided category into her category.

Speaker 5 And that's, I don't think, hugely shocking, but it's just a reminder of like what slow, grinding work this election is.

Speaker 2 Maybe this is a rosier take, but I think if you squint at the polling since the debate, it shows slight movement toward her, right?

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 even digging into that Times poll, it's true that the percentage of people who said they need to know more about her hasn't really changed. It's down two points.

Speaker 5 Down two points. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And when you, they asked a question, did

Speaker 2 you learn a lot,

Speaker 2 a little, nothing at all about Kamala Harris and Donald Trump? because of the debate.

Speaker 2 Like the percentage of people who said they learned a lot or some about her that was new was much higher than Donald Trump, which is not surprising.

Speaker 2 But and it was also like a, it was like in the 30s, 40s. And that's a pretty, especially for some subgroups, right?

Speaker 2 And that's a pretty good number, I think. And the fact that she has rising favorability, remember, she has a different

Speaker 2 trajectory here, different task ahead of her than Donald Trump does. Everyone knows who Donald Trump is.
And Donald Trump's trying to disqualify Kamala Harris.

Speaker 2 Everyone knew who Joe Biden was, too. With Kamala Harris, there's just, we've said she has so much more room to grow.

Speaker 2 And as you see her favorability creeping up, even as all this money is being spent against her by Donald Trump on ads, especially in a state like Pennsylvania, and her favorability is going up anyway.

Speaker 2 And I think the debate for the people who watch the debate, and again, the poll shows this too, the Times poll, if you watch the debate, you are much more likely to support.

Speaker 2 Kamala Harris than if you didn't watch the debate or if you had just heard about the debate.

Speaker 2 And so I think for people who watch that debate, they tended to come away with a more favorable impression of her. They got to know more about what she stands for.

Speaker 2 For a lot of people, for a lot of undecided voters, not enough still, but they learned some and they were reminded what a jackass Donald Trump is.

Speaker 2 And so I think that like, she did some, she did some good work. Oh, for sure.
You know, what would you say she has left to do? Like, what are her big, what's her to-do list for the next six weeks?

Speaker 5 It's to fill in the rest of the the picture on everything, in particular the economy. Like that is the one thing that stands out.

Speaker 5 Even though there were those, I think there's very good numbers in Pennsylvania, when you go back and you watch that debate, the economy is an afterthought. It was the first couple questions.

Speaker 5 Her answers were good in that question.

Speaker 5 The message testing we've seen afterwards showed that those are some of her best, most popular answers with swing voters, but they're not the things that are being sent around on TikTok and Instagram and getting covered in the media.

Speaker 5 And so... you know, her biggest task was to educate people about her approach to the economy.
And she didn't get as much of an opportunity to do that as I think she would like.

Speaker 5 So that stands out as a huge task for her. And it's just, I think you have it exactly right.
People learned a lot about her, but they still want to know more.

Speaker 5 So she made progress, but she hasn't closed the sale.

Speaker 5 And so it's to spend the next seven weeks continuing to fill in that picture for this very critical, very small slice of voters that she needs to put her over the top.

Speaker 2 I think she could use an answer on the economy for whatever interviews she does that is a little tighter, a little more focused, and a little broader in who her plans will help.

Speaker 2 I think that, and I think this was the right thing to do, but during the debate and maybe in the couple interviews she's done since then, there's a lot of talk about her values.

Speaker 2 She's a middle-class kid. She cares about the middle class.
And, you know, that's great. That's probably what.
every consultant told her to do as they should.

Speaker 2 And you want, and especially with someone who's not as defined as her, you want to ground your plans in your values. So I totally think that's right.

Speaker 2 But then she sort of, it's like a lot of words to get to. She gets to the housing stuff at some point.
She then gets to the child care tax credit.

Speaker 2 But listening to focus groups since the debate, Sarah Longwell's focus groups, reading some of the New York Times focus groups of undecided voters, what you get from some people is, it was nice to hear that stuff.

Speaker 2 I don't necessarily know that it was going to apply to me. Like, how am I going to be helped under a Harris presidency? What's she going to do for me? And also,

Speaker 2 you know, she didn't give a straight answer on the economy and it took her too long and I couldn't quite get what she was saying.

Speaker 2 So I think like, I mean, she's got a tax cut, a middle-class tax cut that's going to go to 100 million Americans, right? Like I would go right to that.

Speaker 2 And then with every policy that she has proposal, I would have a contrast with Donald Trump, right?

Speaker 2 So like, what do you want to do in the economy? Well, you know, Donald Trump wants to give a tax cut to billionaires. I want to give a tax cut to 100 million middle-class Americans, right?

Speaker 2 I want to make sure, I want to lower the cost of health care even more. I want to lower the cost of drugs even more.
Here's how I do that,

Speaker 2 I think whatever the list is, just pick like five things and have that be your thing that you say everywhere and all your surrogates say and it's in ads and everything else.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I think that she needs, she needs a five.

Speaker 5 I don't want to say a five-point plan, like you don't have to put it on the card or anything, but it is, I'm going to lower prices for you by stopping price gouging.

Speaker 5 I'm going to lower housing costs by capping rent costs and

Speaker 5 making sure we build more homes. I'm going to lower the cost of health care while Donald Trump's going to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Speaker 5 And I'm going to give the largest middle-class tax cut in history or whatever the right way to say it, the fact, the fact check, appropriate way of saying that is,

Speaker 5 paid for by asking the wealthy incorporations to pay a little bit more. Boom.

Speaker 2 Done.

Speaker 2 I'm glad you mentioned the price gouging because I know all the fucking nerds out there, the policy nerds are a little so-so on the price gouging proposals. It's like, you know what?

Speaker 2 Kamala Harris, she has a record on this. When she was attorney general, went after the big banks on behalf of homeowners succeeded, went after for-profit colleges screwing over students succeeded.

Speaker 2 She can go after, she can talk about her record and then talk about how she's going to go after companies that are just gouging consumers and jacking up prices for no good reason.

Speaker 2 And I think it's an extremely popular proposal. It's something that she's going to feel comfortable saying because she has a record on it.
And it suddenly just sort of fell out of her answers

Speaker 2 after the convention. And I'm not sure why.

Speaker 5 I'm glad you have reignited one of the great rivalries in American life, policy nerds versus polling nerds.

Speaker 2 Or, you know, people who want to win elections. I don't know.
Or people who are pissed about rising prices and would like someone to like go after corporations and hold them accountable. I don't know.

Speaker 2 Anyway, all right, let's talk about what the two campaigns are doing to win over the potential swing state voters who are still undecided with six weeks to go.

Speaker 2 Donald Trump is busy storming the battlegrounds of New York and D.C.

Speaker 2 On Wednesday night, Trump held a rally at the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island before heading to Manhattan to appear on Greg Guttfeld's primetime show, a real surgical targeted approach to campaigning with a message to match.

Speaker 2 Here's some of what he said.

Speaker 6 Patriotic New Yorkers must get your asses out to vote.

Speaker 2 Gotta get up.

Speaker 6 Get to get up. Harry, get up, Harry.
Harry, get your fat ass out of the couch. You're going to vote for Trump today, Harry.
But I'd say, baby, who could do it like me? Nobody could do it like me.

Speaker 6 How great am I in the next two weeks? I'm going to Springfield and I'm going to Aurora.

Speaker 6 You may never see me again, but that's okay. Got to do what I got to do.
Whatever happened to Trump? Well, he never got out of Springfield. Americans deserve a campaign based on the issues.

Speaker 3 We try and keep it on the issues.

Speaker 8 You know, they said, I'm the goat in debates, because I had a lot of debates and I became president. And the goat means greatest of all time.

Speaker 8 And they didn't correct her once, and they corrected me everything I said practically.

Speaker 8 I think nine times or 11 times. And the audience was absolutely, they went crazy.
They said, Joe, it's over.

Speaker 2 You're getting out.

Speaker 8 And he said, I'm not getting out. You're getting out.

Speaker 2 And they put her in.

Speaker 8 And she's somehow a woman. Somehow she's doing better than he did.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 8 But I can't imagine it can last.

Speaker 2 What the fuck?

Speaker 2 Look, he's just trying to have a campaign on the issues. We should note that, of course, there was no audience at the debate.

Speaker 5 Can you imagine? I hate. I don't love this one about Austin, but can you just imagine if Joe Biden,

Speaker 5 there would be 700 news cycles about it. He imagined a debate audience.
He imagined. We're like, that's fine.
He's just what Wacky Trump. He's not, this fucking brain is melting before our eyes.

Speaker 2 I think it's more like

Speaker 2 he lies.

Speaker 2 so easily, right? And like all the only thing that's going on in his brain is like, how can I talk about how wonderful I am? How great I am, how many people love me, right? People love me everywhere.

Speaker 2 There's audiences everywhere I go. There's crowds, they're screaming.
People are coming up to me, grown men, they're crying, Mr. Trump, you're wonderful.

Speaker 2 Right. It's, it's sort of that part of his brain that's just like, no matter what he's talking about, doesn't matter what actually happened.
He just needs to talk about how the crowds loved him.

Speaker 2 Whatever he did, the crowds loved him. And then other people who are running against him and don't like him are treating him unfairly.
That's it.

Speaker 2 When you have that in your mind, everything else is pretty easy to talk about.

Speaker 5 Well, I would just say that 70-year-old Trump could keep all the shameless lies

Speaker 5 together a little bit better. And at this age, it's just like he can't even figure it out.

Speaker 2 Also, what was he doing there with the Kamala Harris? A woman.

Speaker 5 Well, he's legitimately shocked. He got his ass kicked in a debate by a woman.
Like, he's never going to get over that.

Speaker 2 It's just, I kept listening to that clip because I'm like, is this one of those where liberals are like, oh, look how sexist he was, just blatantly and openly and misogynist?

Speaker 2 But like, no, that, I, I don't know what else he was trying to do there, but just say, a woman. I don't know how long that can last.

Speaker 2 What is he doing in New York? I've tried to think about this and figured this out. Like, what was he doing on Long Island?

Speaker 5 I think he needed, after several tough weeks in the most boring town hall that Trump could ever do with Sarah Huckabee Sanders in Michigan on Tuesday, he needed his people.

Speaker 5 He needed just a confidence boost from a bunch of Long Islanders screaming his name in cheer. I really think that's what it was.
He's in a funk.

Speaker 5 I think he is in a funk, and they're trying, and the campaign is trying to pick him up.

Speaker 5 I do not believe he's there to win the house. I do not think Donald Trump is spanning his family.

Speaker 2 I know I saw that somewhere. I'm like, I don't think that makes a lot of sense.
I know that he's

Speaker 2 part of it is like his message is, you know, like liberal blue America is a hellhole and it's crime-ridden and immigrant invasion and all that kind of stuff. But like, I don't know.

Speaker 2 You could do that in a swing state. Yeah.
Maybe.

Speaker 2 You could,

Speaker 2 I don't know. It's very weird.
You and I have talked before about how Trump's strategy is more about disqualifying Harris in the eyes of undecided voters than trying to win over new Trump voters.

Speaker 2 Do you think he's even making progress on that, on tearing down Harris?

Speaker 2 Because this poll in Pennsylvania, her favorability keeps going up, even where they're running out millions of dollars of ads, super PAC ads. All these ads are out.
He says crazy shit all the time.

Speaker 2 He's taking up news cycles. He's talking about eating the pets in Springfield.
He's doing all this shit, but it doesn't seem to be making a dent in her favorability or her poll numbers.

Speaker 2 I guess it is depriving her of breaking through with her message, but I don't know. What do you think?

Speaker 5 It seems to be an abject failure on all fronts. We've talked from the moment Kamala Harris got in this race, there was now a race to define her.
Who was going to win? Kamala Harris or Trump?

Speaker 5 Her favorability rating is up a net 15 points since she got the race. That's an astonishing increase over a short period of time for someone who was not unknown.

Speaker 5 She was the vice president of the United States at the time. And so it is, it is failing.
Now,

Speaker 5 there's still another segment of voters, like a slice of persuadable voters that they are both fighting over.

Speaker 5 There's no evidence that he has damaged her with them yet, but there's not evidence that she has fully won them over yet.

Speaker 5 So in terms of defining her, he has lost that battle, but now we are down to the last group of voters in a small handful of states.

Speaker 5 Most of those people have honestly not really checked into this election yet.

Speaker 5 So we haven't even really contested them. So that, you know, that's what we'll sort of see.

Speaker 5 And that's that's who these ads that are running, like, for instance, the Kamala Harris abortion ad, which ran during Survivor, for instance,

Speaker 5 which we watched last night, obviously.

Speaker 5 Or, you know, the Trump folks have a new ad about with Kamala Harris talking about Bidenomics that is running all over the swing states. Like that, they're trying to get to those voters by osmosis.

Speaker 5 But as a campaign strategy, he has failed to put a debt in her numbers. Yeah.

Speaker 2 One strategy Trump seems to be flirting with is an old favorite of his, trying to shut down the federal government.

Speaker 2 Mike Johnson's once again having trouble getting all his goofballs in line before the looming deadline of October 1st.

Speaker 2 And even though Mitch McConnell just said, quote, it would be politically beyond stupid for us to do that right before the election because certainly we get the blame. Donald Trump begs to differ.

Speaker 2 He wrote on Truth Social that Republicans should only vote for a spending package that includes the SAVE Act, which imposes more requirements on states to make sure that non-citizens aren't registering to vote, which of course doesn't really ever happen and is already illegal.

Speaker 2 It also, by the way, doesn't have the votes to pass Congress.

Speaker 2 Clearly, Trump and Vance want to be able to say that the government shut down because Democrats refuse to require proof of citizenship to vote. What do you think of that strategy?

Speaker 5 That is a stupid person's idea of a smart plan.

Speaker 5 Like it seems good on paper, but it would definitely not play out that way. It's an absurd provision that is unnecessary, makes no sense.
They'd be left out of town.

Speaker 5 And we just know from history that the side that initiates the shutdown gets the blame for the shutdown.

Speaker 5 And that would be the House Republicans who just happen to have 13 seats they are trying to defend. They're either toss up or lean Republican.
And so it seems like a terrible idea across the board.

Speaker 5 And would obviously hurt people because when the government shuts down, people are denied needed services and money, et cetera. But pure idiocy from them.

Speaker 2 Also, you heard Mitch McConnell, and there's a bunch of Senate Republicans that don't.

Speaker 2 And every House Republican is up, has a campaign.

Speaker 2 And everyone that's in a competitive race, every House Republican, every Senate Republican, like they're not, they're not going to be too happy with a government shutdown just like five weeks before the election that they're held responsible for because they wanted to pass something that no one really is clamoring for.

Speaker 5 Something that no one wants or needs. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, right, right. So I don't know.
I don't know.

Speaker 2 I would guess that when push comes to shove, Mike Johnson does what he always does and has to end up like passing something with the help of Democrats and drops the Save Act. And that's that.

Speaker 5 Yeah. They just kick the can down the road after the election.

Speaker 2 That's what happens. That's what it feels like.
But nice to see Trump getting involved there.

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Speaker 2 We got some absolutely bonkers news in North Carolina to talk about.

Speaker 2 Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson, currently the Republican nominee for governor, is a well-known whack job who's flirted with Holocaust denial, called LGBTQ people filth and maggots, called Beyoncé satanic, and called Michelle Obama a man.

Speaker 2 He also frequented the video booths of a porn shop five nights a week back in the early 2000s.

Speaker 2 And yet, somehow, Andrew Kaczynski at CNN broke a story about him today that was so bad that it led North Carolina Republicans to try to get him off the ballot to get him to drop out last minute.

Speaker 2 The deadline is Thursday midnight. We're recording this before.
You'll listen to this after. So we'll see what happens.
So, what's the story?

Speaker 2 Apparently, someone using an online alias that Robinson often used himself with his same birthday and email address was a frequent poster on the message board of a porn site called nude africa from 2008 to 2012

Speaker 2 among the highlights

Speaker 2 he told the message board that he loves porn featuring trans people i'm quoting him here quote i like watching tranny on girl porn that's fucking hot it takes the man out while leaving the man in and yeah i'm a perv too

Speaker 2 uh it got more graphic and cnn actually declined to print all of the details because they were too graphic. So, what I just said was not the too graphic part.

Speaker 2 Robinson also talked about being a kid and stumbling into a spot at a local university where he could spy on women showering through a grate in the wall.

Speaker 2 Robinson proudly referred to himself as a, quote, black Nazi in another post and quote, said, Slavery is not bad. Some people need to be slaves.
I wish they would bring it back.

Speaker 2 I would certainly buy a few.

Speaker 2 And he called Martin Luther King Jr., quote, worse than a maggot, and quote, a hoe fucking phony.

Speaker 2 So this is as good a place as any to remind you all that Donald Trump has endorsed Robinson and often praises him. Here's a helpful highlight reel that the Harris campaign put together.

Speaker 6 Mark Robinson, he's out there, he's fighting.

Speaker 5 A very good man.

Speaker 8 This is Martin Luther King on steroids. I think you're better than Martin Luther King.
I think you are Martin Luther King times two.

Speaker 7 I I think he's going to go down as one of the great leaders in our country.

Speaker 7 I've been with him a lot. I've gotten to know him, and he's outstanding.
He's outstanding in presentation, but he's probably even more outstanding in heart.

Speaker 7 Somebody that we have to be very, very careful. We have to cherish.
We have to cherish Mark. He's a star.
You have to cherish him. It's like a fine wine because that's what you have.

Speaker 7 You have a fine wine. He's an outstanding person.
I've gotten to know him so well and fairly quickly.

Speaker 2 He's a fine wine. Martin Luther King times two, fine wine.
Gotten to know him really well. Before we get to Trump, I want to put you on the record here.
Do you regret your posts on New Delaware?

Speaker 5 Do not besmirch the state of Delaware like that.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 We've done enough to deliver this.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Back off my home state. Place I'd love to return to one day.

Speaker 2 Robinson was already down in the polls to Josh Stein, the Democrat running for governor. I'd imagine he'll fall even further behind now unless he.

Speaker 5 Because he called himself a Nazi on a porn site?

Speaker 2 Black Nazi? Because he said he wants to bring back slavery and he'd buy it.

Speaker 5 On a porn site. That's the thing.
These aren't things he posted on Facebook. These are things he posted on Facebook.
I don't know what to kinksham, you know?

Speaker 2 So, first of all, I guess by the time, again, by the time you all listen to this, we'll know what happened.

Speaker 2 It doesn't seem like the Republicans who want him out of the race are going to succeed at pushing him out of the race. He and his campaign have said they're not going anywhere.

Speaker 2 He said, you know, you can do strange things with the internet now.

Speaker 2 He just thinks, they're just denying it. They're saying that it was made up.
Donald Trump's campaign apparently told NBC News, well, we're not trying to push him out, which is amazing to say.

Speaker 2 So it seems like he's staying in unless something dramatically changes in the next, I don't know, a couple hours.

Speaker 5 I mean, you can't force him out. You have to, he has to decide to stay in the race.

Speaker 5 I am not fully convinced that at least some people around Trump are not trying to get him out because North Carolina is polling better than Georgia, which doesn't make a ton of sense demographically.

Speaker 5 One of the main reasons that's the case is Mark Robinson's on the ballot.

Speaker 5 So if you get Mark Robinson off the ballot, theoretically, North Carolina becomes a little bit easier for Trump. And so I don't know.
It'll be interesting to see what happens here.

Speaker 5 And if he stays in the race, it's going to, he is a zombie candidate, right? All the money dries up. People stop campaigning for him.
He won't be seen with people. It'll be interesting.

Speaker 5 It'll be very interesting to see what happens when Trump comes to the state. Will he be with Mark Robinson or not?

Speaker 2 Also, Mark Robinson at the Republican convention was the one in the North Carolina delegation that

Speaker 2 announced the delegates for Trump.

Speaker 2 Here's what I'm trying to figure out. Like, you could imagine a bunch of Trump Stein voters, right?

Speaker 2 They vote for the Democrat for governor because for these Republicans, Mark Robinson's a bridge too far, and then they vote for Donald Trump. But like,

Speaker 2 if Robinson stays in the race in your, the Harris campaign, like, do you run some ads like the one we just heard or just like the video we just heard or put some ads together with Donald Trump and Mark Robinson together and try to

Speaker 2 make this hurt Trump a little bit in the state? Yeah, I think you do.

Speaker 5 I think you tie Trump to Mark Robinson's extremism and make them all extreme.

Speaker 5 There's a, we just did this in a forthcoming episode of Political Experts React that I did with Chris Hayes, where we looked at Josh Stein's first ad about Mark Robinson, just using Mark Robinson's words.

Speaker 5 So you can put the two of them together and you make it really about MAGA extremism. Not just that he, it's not that he called him one of those or king times two or all of that.

Speaker 5 It's that they are birds of a feather in terms of the extremism. It's less the porn site and the and the porn booths and all the other porn.

Speaker 5 It's more the things he said about like threatening death to people and shooting people and all of the political violence.

Speaker 2 Black Nazis, slavery.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Go on whatever porn site you want to go on, Mark Robinson.
But that's not a problem. That's the pitch too far for us.

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 2 Yeah, right. Okay.
Well, we're going from North Carolina, one swing state, to the other swing state of Nebraska, actually just the second congressional district.

Speaker 2 If you're looking for reasons to worry about the race, here's one. You may know that Harris's most likely path to 270 runs through the second district of Nebraska.

Speaker 2 It's one of only two states that splits its electoral votes. If Harris wins Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, loses all the other battlegrounds, but wins.

Speaker 2 the Nebraska 2nd District, she gets exactly 270.

Speaker 2 But Nebraska Republicans appear to be reviving their efforts to change the state law and make Nebraska winner-take-all, which would deprive Kamala Harris of that electoral vote.

Speaker 2 And then if she wins the blue wall, it would be 269, 269, and Trump wins. an electoral college tie because Republicans have more state delegations in the House.

Speaker 2 So Lindsey Graham, of all people, is helping to whip the votes there to make the change. Unclear whether it's going to happen.

Speaker 2 Also unclear whether Maine, Maine, the other state that splits its votes, could respond to deny Trump the one electoral vote he's likely to get in the Maine second congressional district, though it does seem like they will not have time to do that in Maine, because apparently when you pass a law in Maine, it takes 90 days to take effect.

Speaker 2 90 days from now, whoop, pass the election.

Speaker 2 So...

Speaker 2 Trouble in Maine, and it makes you wonder if the Nebraska Republicans waited this long just to sort of jam Maine and make sure that didn't happen. But what do you think?

Speaker 2 What's the latest on all this and how worried are you about this?

Speaker 5 I'm quite worried about this. As you know, I've been worried about this for a long time.
I've just been under the,

Speaker 5 my view has just been this was, particularly when it was Biden-Trump, that this was potentially a game set match for Trump if they were able to make this change.

Speaker 5 What the governor has said is he's willing to call a special session, meaning he needs the 33 Republican senators necessary to pass it to be publicly in support of doing it.

Speaker 5 They do not have the votes yet, as far as we can tell. Some of the people who are in the meeting with Graham and the governor say that there was some progress in the meeting, but so we will see.

Speaker 5 Like they have to do this quickly too, because they still have to print ballots, et cetera, in

Speaker 5 Nebraska. But this is one thing that will keep me up at night until it is fully resolved in a good way.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so Dave Weigel had reported this at Semaphore that one of the Republicans that they would need is a former Democrat, left the party because he's anti-choice, but wants to run to be mayor of Omaha, which would be pretty hard to do if you piss off everyone who's ever been a Democrat by deciding to do this.

Speaker 2 So again, they still don't have the votes yet, but yeah, when it comes down to

Speaker 2 everything depending on pressuring a few Republicans in Nebraska, it doesn't feel great.

Speaker 2 So Trump and Harris were both hoping this week for an endorsement from the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

Speaker 2 The union's president, Sean O'Brien, had appeared at at the Republican National Convention and his meeting with Kamala on Monday was described as tense at times.

Speaker 2 But on Wednesday, the union announced it wouldn't be endorsing either candidate.

Speaker 2 As part of the announcement, the Teamsters released the results of internal straw polls showing that members favored Trump by more than 20 points.

Speaker 2 After the announcement, a handful of local Teamsters chapters endorsed Harris, about a million, representing a million members altogether, including in some of the key swing states.

Speaker 2 How big of a deal do you think this is? What do you make of that internal straw poll showing that more Teamsters favored Trump than Harris? Is it a big deal? What do you think?

Speaker 5 I don't think it's as big a deal as people think.

Speaker 5 Back in the day, when you would get a labor union endorsement, it would open up a spigot of money and organizing muscle that was truly mattered a lot in the Battleground States.

Speaker 5 That's not really the case anymore. The Harris campaign has all the money they need.
They have a ton of organizing muscle. The unions are not as powerful and flush with money as they used to be.

Speaker 5 And having the endorsement of the Michigan and the Western Pennsylvania and these local Teamsters unions matter more, it is a little bit of a win for Trump because he can continue to sort of live by this false bullshit story that he is a you know the working class populist and he can win over these working class voters in ways that Democrats can't.

Speaker 5 But

Speaker 5 I think it's probably there's probably little more is being made of it necessarily needs to be.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I don't think we'll hear about this story ever again.

Speaker 2 And to our point earlier about like the voters who haven't decided yet, they barely pay attention to politics. Like I just don't know that this is going to matter that much either way to them.

Speaker 2 It's going to matter on the ground for like resources and people, but like, if she has some of these Teamsters in these key swing states, that's very helpful in terms of organization and volunteers on the ground.

Speaker 2 Speaking of labor strongholds, Kamala is in Michigan, where she's about to do a live-streamed event with Oprah Winfrey. That's unfortunately happening a few hours after we record this.

Speaker 2 The two are set to appear with a small live audience somewhere outside Detroit, though the campaign isn't saying where, and it's being hosted in conjunction with a bunch of those affinity groups that have held massive Zoom calls for Harris already: Win with Black Women, White Dudes for Harris, Cat Ladies for Kamala, and others.

Speaker 2 The New York Times says Governor Gretchen Whitmer will also be there. What's the upside of an event like this?

Speaker 2 What does it tell us about how the campaign is thinking about using this Oprah endorsement, which we first saw at the convention?

Speaker 5 I think what's interesting is it says the value that the Harris campaign puts on organizing. and person-to-person contact.

Speaker 5 And so there's a way once you do this where it's like a big rally in Detroit or Atlanta or something like that.

Speaker 5 And then there, and then there's this version, which is it's a smaller event, it's live, but you're finding a way to reach out to people who you know will be talking to their friends and family about this election.

Speaker 5 You've already given money, sign up to volunteer, and you're energizing those people. And General Mally Dylan, who's the campaign chair, our friend David Pluff, these are organizers at heart.

Speaker 5 And this is a campaign that's thinking organizer first, field first. And using Oprah for that is pretty smart.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and getting people all excited and giving them sort of marching orders who are going to go like knock on the doors and stuff, I think is very useful.

Speaker 2 One of the guests slated to be at the Michigan event is Hadley Duvall, the incredibly brave Kentucky woman who's currently in a powerful Harris campaign ad telling her story about being raped and impregnated by her stepfather.

Speaker 2 In the ad, which is set to music by Billie Eilish, Duvall says she was able to have an abortion, but quote, because Donald Trump overturned Roe v.

Speaker 2 Wade, girls and women all over the world the country have lost the right to choose, even for rape or incest. Donald Trump did this.
He took away our freedom.

Speaker 2 Harris is also heading to Atlanta on Friday to give a speech about two mothers in Georgia, Amber Thurman and Candy Miller, who died after being denied abortion care after the state passed its six-week ban.

Speaker 2 Tommy was talking about this on Tuesday's pod. It's this ProPublica story you should read.
It's just awful, heartbreaking. Amber Thurman leaves behind a six-year-old boy.
It's just really, really sad.

Speaker 2 Thoughts on this very powerful messaging push around reproductive freedom?

Speaker 5 It was one of the most powerful and, frankly, best testing messages from the debate was when she took Trump on on abortion and went through his record and what he would do.

Speaker 5 And the target here is very clear. It is

Speaker 5 women, particularly working-class women.

Speaker 5 The folks at Blueprint, the center-left. research organization, have a poll out of swing state non-college educated women today, which shows that this is a group that is favorable to Kamala Harris.

Speaker 5 And one of the ways in which you can persuade these voters is on abortion. They oppose Dobbs.
They oppose these abortion bans. They trust her on abortion by seven points.

Speaker 5 And more than 40% of them actually believe that if elected, she would not just try, but pass a law restoring Roe. And so this is really what you're trying to find.

Speaker 5 In a close election, there are all these groups you have to get, but one targeted group where she can actually do better than Biden is working class white women.

Speaker 5 And that's exactly who this is targeted to.

Speaker 2 I don't know if you saw this in the Times poll, too, but there's now a plurality of voters who believe that Donald Trump will pass a national abortion ban.

Speaker 2 So we had talked before about all the work the Harris campaign, first the Biden campaign, then the Harris campaign needed to do in making voters understand that Donald Trump would actually go forward with this because they didn't necessarily believe that or didn't necessarily hold him responsible for Dobbs.

Speaker 2 And that has started to change, I think, over the last couple of months.

Speaker 2 And now the question is: if you're undecided, if you think Trump's better on the economy, but you see ads like this, you hear testimonials like that, you read stories about like those mothers in Georgia.

Speaker 2 If you do, if you if you see all that, do you think, okay, well, maybe Trump's a little better in the economy, or I think he's better in the economy, but this just seems so extreme, so scary.

Speaker 2 I don't want to live in this country. I don't want my kids to live in this country.
I'll vote for Kamala Harris, even though I'm not sure. That seems to be the bet.

Speaker 2 And you could see that moving voters.

Speaker 5 Absolutely.

Speaker 2 Okay, when we come back back from the break, Tommy and Dan and I are going to talk to Lovett about his short but absolutely perfect run on Survivor.

Speaker 2 I'm so excited. Before we do that, though, a reminder that Pod Save America is back on tour in October with stops in Ann Arbor and Philly.

Speaker 2 We'll be at Ann Arbor's Michigan Theater on October 5th with strict scrutiny's Leah Lippmann as our co-host, and our guest is going to be the Senate candidate Alyssa Slotkin.

Speaker 2 On October 6th, we'll be at the Met Philadelphia with co-host Simone Sanders Townsend, and we will have Bob Bob Casey, Senator Bob Casey, as our guest.

Speaker 2 Get your tickets at crooked.com/slash events now.

Speaker 2 And dear God, Pennsylvanians and Michiganders, talk to your undecided relatives.

Speaker 2 Also, if you are following the insane story of the exploding pagers and walkie-talkies that Israel allegedly sent to Lebanon and what it means for the prospect of a wider conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, you've got to check out this week's pod save the world, Dan.

Speaker 5 I listened to it.

Speaker 2 What are you talking about? I'm just bringing you back. Have you listened to it? I I have listened to it.
Yeah. I did listen to it immediately.

Speaker 5 As soon as I heard it.

Speaker 2 We'll ask Love it.

Speaker 5 We'll grill Love it on the Pedro story when he gets here.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I'm sure he was listening to it at his fucking hotel in Fiji when he was on vacation. Anyway,

Speaker 2 anyway,

Speaker 2 Tommy and Ben talk about what happens, what it means, and what we know about Kamala Harris's leadership style on national security and foreign policy.

Speaker 2 Listen to the latest episode of Pod Save the World, available now on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back, love it.

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Speaker 2 All right, we're back. And we're doing a segment here.
This is going to be our first and last survivor recap.

Speaker 2 We got John Lovett here, former contestant. Also, just so people know who weren't paying attention, spoiler.
This is a spoiler. There's a huge survivor spoiler.

Speaker 2 John Lovett, contestant on Survivor, season 47. That's right.
Last night was the premiere. That's right.
Two-hour premiere.

Speaker 2 First person voted off the island. That's me.
That's John Lovett. We should have brought in a vote of candle.
Here's the thing.

Speaker 2 Here's the thing.

Speaker 2 If,

Speaker 2 first of all,

Speaker 2 this wouldn't have happened if Jeff Tropes had just shown a little bit of courage.

Speaker 2 That's my joke at the beginning. I was.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, fuck.

Speaker 2 Not the most embarrassing thing to happen to me in the media this week.

Speaker 2 You want just reactions?

Speaker 2 I'm going to start with a compliment because there's going to be a lot of jokes. You did such a good job not revealing at all.
You have a great poker face. Because everyone's like, you guys.

Speaker 2 Genuinely shocked. People were like, you must have known.
I thought you won because you were so cocky about it. Me, too.

Speaker 5 I thought the same thing.

Speaker 2 My guess was that not that you won, because then I think you would have been intolerable. Right.
Right.

Speaker 2 Not that you won, but also like you seemed so happy that I'm like, I bet he just did, like, he feels so good about how he did, which now makes sense because

Speaker 2 you did great.

Speaker 2 Sure. I think you were not embarrassed.
I was not. So that was the thing that was hard.

Speaker 2 Like, if I had come back and I had felt like what had happened was I blew my chance at Survivor, that like I was there and I was in it and I screwed it up.

Speaker 2 I think I would have been a little bit more reserved about the whole experience.

Speaker 2 I mean, your taste in friends wasn't great. Sure.
But

Speaker 2 all of that, like I've got some questions about that. Yeah, no, and we should, we can get into it.
But like, it's also like this is a

Speaker 2 two-hour representation of 72 hours of what happens. And so like, there's a lot that

Speaker 2 of other comments. A lot we didn't see, right? There is a lot you didn't see.

Speaker 5 You don't even know the real story.

Speaker 2 Yeah. But no, no, it's a fair edit.
It's a fair edit. It's a very, I feel very comfortable with the edit.
But

Speaker 2 I don't feel like I like,

Speaker 2 like, having now had the experience of watching an episode of reality TV in which you are on having no idea how they edit you, holy shit, that's nerve-wracking.

Speaker 2 I'm a little bit relieved I don't have to. I would, I wish I had gone further, but I feel like if you're going to go out first,

Speaker 2 this is a pretty reasonable way to do it. I just have two more things to say, and then we, I want to play a clip here.

Speaker 2 Uh, number one, uh, Emily and I watched this last night live, and I just want to say it was like an out-of-body experience watching it.

Speaker 2 And then by the end, because of the edible, I was in because of the edible, which I'm glad I was for me at least.

Speaker 2 And I was in tears laughing so hard that i i feel like i missed so many good parts i'm gonna go i'm tonight i'm gonna go home tonight and i'm gonna re-watch especially like the end because two hours is first of all a lot the funniest part was watching you interact with a bunch of uh gen z bozos was my absolute favorite part at what point did the gen z-ers frighten you the uh

Speaker 2 yeah no it was um

Speaker 2 there it's also like every it's such a uh

Speaker 2 yeah like the the the realization that like oh, I'm the oldest person in this group of people like which you discussed on the show. Yeah, I remember a clip of that.
Okay.

Speaker 2 Yeah, let's let's play let's play a before we go any further. Let's play a supercut of Love Its Best Moments.

Speaker 5 Uh, okay.

Speaker 2 I'm not that old. Oh my god.
I'm just one nine. I know I love Vine.
I remember Vine was 30 when Vine was popping. That's right.
I was still a young person.

Speaker 2 Looking at my tribe, I'm realizing I'm not getting to know a group of people. I'm getting to know a group of young people.

Speaker 3 I am 41 years old.

Speaker 2 Like, Okay, so I'm old now. No, I realize

Speaker 2 there's so much back in my day stuff coming out of my mouth in Los Angeles.

Speaker 2 No, I started in Weho, where all the gays go.

Speaker 2 I was a speechwriter for a while. Okay.

Speaker 2 And then I started a podcast called Pod Save America.

Speaker 2 I heard it was the name. Well, how many of you listened to it? I haven't listened to it.

Speaker 2 How many of you? How many of you?

Speaker 2 I feel like your podcast is great.

Speaker 2 You're right.

Speaker 2 What are you supposed to say? Do you not feel like your podcast is huge?

Speaker 2 We do all right.

Speaker 2 I fucking lost it.

Speaker 2 And we were like, Pod Save America. Has anyone listened? And everyone's like, no, no.

Speaker 2 One person said, maybe, maybe. And the other kid's like, I love TikTok, fellow dude.
I think they did listen to it. I think they did.
I think they did. Keep in mind, there was another podcast host.

Speaker 2 This is the best part. Had a podcast that was about survivor.
But there's a scene

Speaker 2 after Lovett gets, I don't know, maybe, maybe, someone goes up to this podcaster and is like, I'm a huge fan of it. She's a celebrity.
She's a celebrity. She was great.
Love it, not the most famous.

Speaker 2 Good for Asia. Good for Asia.

Speaker 2 I'm glad Asia got her flowers.

Speaker 2 Just a basic question. Why do you think you lost to the guy who had a physical and emotional meltdown? That's such an important question, Tommy.
Thank you. This guy's name is Andy.
Andy's.

Speaker 2 He also described Lovett as his best friend. Yeah.
Out magazine called your bond with him sweet and chaotic.

Speaker 2 That's a real thing. That's a real thing I saw on the internet today.

Speaker 2 You know, with friends like these. So

Speaker 2 once Andy had his breakdown, I think basically like it wasn't really about like who was friends or who wasn't friends.

Speaker 2 Like Andy had basically kind of imploded in front of 18 people, all of whom now didn't need to worry about him as a threat. And I had been kind of funny and charming in front of everybody.

Speaker 2 And so I was.

Speaker 2 Those were in the other scenes. Yeah, in the other scenes.

Speaker 2 You got a lot of laughs. Wow.
A lot of laughs out of that. Wow.
And so.

Speaker 2 Bill is famously Andy bitching about how everyone clapped you opened a coconut. I opened a coconut and so opened one fucking coconut.

Speaker 2 Hey, I missed. That's two coconuts you opened this morning over there.

Speaker 2 Hey, hey, listen, you go to Fiji and miss three dinners.

Speaker 2 But I do think that basically... Andy was no longer seen as a threat.
I was still seen as a threat.

Speaker 2 And basically, like, because of the natural way it just broke down, like there were no real alliances that early, kind of very like kind of softly there were, but like Andy and I had walked off one time.

Speaker 2 So suddenly we're together. Sam and Sierra had walked off.
Now they're together. Rachel and Annika were in the middle.
And so

Speaker 2 once Andy breaks down, it just like put me in a really difficult position. If that hadn't happened, there was a bunch of different ways it could go.

Speaker 2 One thing you don't see in the episode because it just has to be condensed is I also had talked a lot with Annika. Like she and I really did want to work together.

Speaker 2 And then that was sort of why Andy pitched to me that we turn the vote on to her. It was complicated, but like

Speaker 2 there were a lot of different conversations. There's like a swirl, like there's hours of swirling conversation that happens before you go to the vote that they condense into one storyline.

Speaker 2 I don't think it's an unfaithful storyline that they showed, but it is like more complicated than that. Dane, you're a reality TV savant.
What was your reaction watching?

Speaker 5 I would say this is the first two hours of survivor ever watched in my life. Same.
It's really an hour and 45 minutes because I started 15 minutes late.

Speaker 5 I turned my TV on to a mud-covered love it trying to do a puzzle,

Speaker 5 which is when I started laughing, I didn't stop.

Speaker 2 I would say a couple things.

Speaker 5 One,

Speaker 5 this is something you care about, like you obviously care about survivor a lot, and you did put yourself out there. So I think you get credit for that.
And that's good.

Speaker 2 I think it's

Speaker 2 impressive. This is how you talk about Joe Biden's speeches.

Speaker 2 He lasted longer than you did, for the record.

Speaker 2 That's right. No one's talking about the Secret Service guy's commander didn't bite.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 5 Two,

Speaker 5 you definitely got fucked by Andy. Like,

Speaker 5 you would have not been, you would have made it past the first episode.

Speaker 5 And I saw someone say in the Discord, which was an amusing conversation to follow along, that you were either going to win or go out on the first episode.

Speaker 5 I think that is the perfect summary of how this was probably going to go.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And that, by the way, that is what I told Jeff when I talked to him for the first time about coming on the show.
I said, I will either go to the end of this game or I will go home first. So

Speaker 2 hosted my own patrol show.

Speaker 5 Here's my question for you.

Speaker 5 And I don't know anything about Swever. Why were you not on the puzzle team?

Speaker 2 What the hell? Yeah, what the hell?

Speaker 2 So there is...

Speaker 2 A. You're just breaststroking out to the...
Yeah, I want to ask why you were doing the breaststroke in the swimming challenge. I should have practiced

Speaker 2 famously as well.

Speaker 2 I should have practiced swimming more. But

Speaker 2 everybody caught me doing the breaststroke. I didn't even realize I was doing the breaststroke.

Speaker 2 emily noticed it immediately she's that was her first question i should have maybe jumped in on the second puzzle but basically uh

Speaker 2 the they didn't they didn't show it but like in the first puzzle i like was call i was helping from the side and we had talked about it because you have a moment to strategize before and we had talked about it and it was like oh the puzzle pieces are big sam is stronger sam should can lift the pieces love it well john you'll help call from the side and they just don't include everything that happens the older more mature brain behind the operation, yeah, yeah, which is the delegator.

Speaker 5 I feel like, as a math major, you would have helped them to do the puzzle much better because they tried to do the puzzle terribly, and therefore you would have shown value

Speaker 2 to your tribe. No, for sure, aside in addition to that, the meathead, of course, reporter guy.
Oh, my God.

Speaker 5 And the charm.

Speaker 2 Don't forget the charter bag, Dana.

Speaker 2 But no, I think the actual fuck up on the puzzle, it wasn't actually our failing to do the puzzle. The completed puzzle was sitting next to us because the red tribe had completed their puzzle.

Speaker 2 Why are we not using?

Speaker 2 We were so focused on what was happening in front of us. We didn't stop.
We were so, it's the first challenge. Everybody is super amped.
That's why the boat's all turned over.

Speaker 2 You're just not fully thinking. You're nervous.
You're already tired. It's hot.
You've never been in this sort of environment before.

Speaker 2 And I think if we had all taken a beat, we would have looked over and been like, wait a second, why are we not using this?

Speaker 2 fully completed puzzle to figure out this puzzle. I was amazed at how physically taxing this looked.

Speaker 2 Like picking up those giant boxes, swimming to a dock with the breaststroke, and then loading those heavy boxes onto a boat that kept capitalizing.

Speaker 2 Meanwhile, you got like a coked up Barry's instructor, Jeff Prost, barking orderly, screaming like, this is a survivor. Like, this is always the worst start we've ever had.
By the way, what you saw,

Speaker 2 we were in the water. for so long.

Speaker 2 Lavo, the red tribe, had completed their puzzle for so long before we had even gotten up there. There was a moment where there were two tribes, all of our boxes floating, all of our boats upside down.

Speaker 2 And I really was like, what happens? Like we made nothing, nothing, nothing has happened. No one could figure out what to do.

Speaker 2 And then because everything is all waterlogged, we get the boat up onto the beach. We get the boat up into the tracks.
We get

Speaker 2 the chest back into the boat. We all go to heave the boat down this path.
And he barely even showed. And it just doesn't move.
Like we all push as hard as we can.

Speaker 2 And it doesn't move like a foot or an inch. It just doesn't move at all.
And there was this moment like, we're just not going to be able to complete this thing.

Speaker 2 and then eventually we fight and we fight and we get it to the end god looks hard it was hard it was hard it was cool uh are you at all annoyed at cbs that they put you in all the early promo materials and jeff probes called you quote one of the greatest storytellers that we will ever have uh knowing full well the outcome uh no i enjoy being part of a bait and switch but also like i like I think that they were pretty disappointed that I went home this early.

Speaker 2 Like, I think he really was. He liked you.
He liked me. I think he was really.
But that's a social connection you made for sure. Yeah.
There's one. The one guy was out of vote.
Powerful. Yeah.

Speaker 2 One guy out of vote because he doesn't step in there and get a slate of delegates. Get a fucking better slate.
I don't trust these people. Did you see the counting of the ballots? Something happened.

Speaker 2 There was a duffel under the table.

Speaker 2 But I do think they were genuinely disappointed that I didn't go further. And I do take that as a compliment.

Speaker 2 Speaking of the counting of the ballots, did it upset you that everyone spelled your name wrong? At the tribal council? Not even one. Look, it upset me.
J-O-H-J-O-H. Here's the thing.

Speaker 2 One of the things, the frowny face. It's not exactly a sign of confidence if you go around to people and explain how to spell your name before tribal council.

Speaker 2 And by the way, if you're going to write my don't write my fucking name down. You don't go around saying there's no H and John.
What kind of signal does that send?

Speaker 2 What can you tell us about where you went after the vote?

Speaker 2 So you go to Ponderosa. This is publicly known.

Speaker 2 It's basically like they take over a hotel and you stay there.

Speaker 2 There is

Speaker 2 the pre-jury time and there's the jury time. I was obviously not pre non-jury.
And you basically are isolated. You don't have your phone.
You don't have anything. And

Speaker 2 you just sort of

Speaker 2 basically like kind of have... Be on vacation.
Be on vacation while you guys are making the pods day in and day out, working to the bone.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 you're in the mindset. It's like three production days for six weeks of work.

Speaker 2 Just wanted to make sure that was one thing that crossed my mind. Well, no,

Speaker 2 and I understand why you might be cross about it.

Speaker 2 And obviously, no one was more disappointed than me, but it's not like I could come back and do the podcast because then everyone would find out that I got out. So there was nothing to be done.

Speaker 2 No, there wasn't a ton going on here, though.

Speaker 2 Okay, great. Can I offer you some spin? Sure.

Speaker 2 Now it would be helpful. I've just completed a day of press about it, but yeah, no, what do you got? But you go on a show like Survivor because it's a great story.

Speaker 2 And getting booted out first is a much better story than than getting booted out second on third to last. Totally agree.
Okay, third to last,

Speaker 2 I think you have a lot of stories. I would actually say second is the worst.

Speaker 2 Second is the second because you don't have the you're not the first boot person, and you're the se like, yes, I would say I am glad.

Speaker 2 I well, now here's the thing that's interesting: is that like, so you go to Ponderosa, and then

Speaker 2 every day or two, a person comes and joins you. Oh, that's cool.
And it's it's it's really interesting, right? So, the first year you're kind of in, you're a little bit shocked, shocked.

Speaker 2 You're there by yourself. And then

Speaker 2 you'll see you. Then you, well, I'm not going to say who comes down.
I know, I know, I know. And then

Speaker 2 you're sitting there. And then you're now kind of gotten over it, based, not over it, but you're like kind of like past the first bit of like, oh, I just got voted out.

Speaker 2 And then this shell-shocked person comes down the stairs. You don't know who it is till they arrive.
And you're like, this is not my job to expend emotional labor helping you.

Speaker 2 No, but what's interesting about it is like, you know, everybody who gets voted out of Survivor, myself included, like, you start telling a story that is the best version that you can tell that's believable, that makes you feel better about what happened.

Speaker 2 You're a part of that right now. But,

Speaker 2 but, but in those first few moments when somebody comes off, they're like raw and they just start talking about what they did wrong, what other people have done, what they feel bad about, what they regret.

Speaker 2 And so you get like you're like, one more poo-poo platter, please.

Speaker 2 Yeah, listen, Jeff, Jeff,

Speaker 2 poo-poo-platter.

Speaker 2 The funny thing, too, is with each passing day, with each passing day, the people that come are skinnier and skinnier

Speaker 2 and hungrier and hungrier, but

Speaker 2 you can't really eat that much because you haven't eaten in days. And so basically, you watch somebody just sit in front of a full cheese pizza and just sort of take a bite of it.

Speaker 2 You're going to eat that? As you're crying?

Speaker 2 Yeah, no, no, no. Yeah, they really fucked you.

Speaker 2 I've been here a week now.

Speaker 2 Just look at it.

Speaker 5 What did you do all day when you were there? You had no internet.

Speaker 2 So did you read books? I read books.

Speaker 2 I read a bunch of books. Basically, I would, yes, I would work out.
There was a PlayStation 5.

Speaker 2 And even though they wouldn't let me log into my PlayStation 5 account because it would connect me to a messaging app,

Speaker 2 I was able to use, yes, I was able to,

Speaker 2 they had a couple of games. And so I played video games for part of the day.
I read by the pool for part of the day.

Speaker 2 Just like ate all the time. It's like being on a cruise.
You're just like, there's just a constant supply of food i haven't had a vacation day in a year and then uh oh okay

Speaker 2 all right you just used it to tweet about joking

Speaker 2 can we get can we get joke i had a that was that was your choice john i had some i had some coconut stove there too this guy this guy over here uh but so yeah so you're just kind of hanging out all day and then as people come people just really want to talk about what happened and then uh so it gets more fun but what's in but anyway you like really get a perspective on the game that you don't normally get from people how they talk about it once they're in interviews they're really kind of honest about what went wrong for them.

Speaker 2 And that was a really cool thing, it didn't, it made me want to point me out.

Speaker 2 Well, I was going to ask, so you said in the exclusive teaser we listened to on Monday for Tuesday show that survivor is an election and experiment in democracy. Is your experiment in democracy over?

Speaker 2 Listen,

Speaker 2 nice job, Oprah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I am not,

Speaker 2 I'm not ready to give up on democracy just yet. All right.
Just like Trump. You know, you win some, you lose some.
You don't walk away from democracy, Tommy, just because you lost an election.

Speaker 2 You storm that. Yeah.
You go, you grab a torch. You grab a torch and you start threatening.

Speaker 2 Meet me at the Ponderosa. We'll be wild.

Speaker 2 Is that all we got?

Speaker 2 In what way was this not worth it? This is so fun. This is so fun.
My text to Love It last night was that was an incredibly enjoyable experience that I shall never forget.

Speaker 2 And I am so grateful to you for giving it to us.

Speaker 2 And I genuinely mean every word of that. And I really wish I had gone further, but the fact that I now, like the nervousness before seeing what they decided to use or not use, I am so relieved.

Speaker 2 If I wasn't going to go far, I'm glad I'm home now. Also, if you did go far, there's so much more footage and so many more things to worry about saying.
I fell out of a boat. You fell out of a boat.

Speaker 2 That could have been in there.

Speaker 2 You gave us a lot. Everyone fell out of the boat.
You gave us the gift. It was very enjoyable and it was fun.

Speaker 5 I'm going to watch it just to root against Andy for the rest of time.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that guy sucks. A critique of the show itself, I will say, I've only watched the first season, so I've missed out on Survivor.

Speaker 2 You kind of, you can't just jump into a season because there's a lot of like

Speaker 2 evolves and things that are happening that you can do. People are running through the wear advances.
You have no idea. Fucking digging up boxes with locks.

Speaker 2 Yeah. By the way, by the way, that's where...

Speaker 2 So that was another thing like when i got back after the immunity challenge i really did think like well my options now are to hustle and try to get the votes off of me and onto somebody else the challenge there though is because there's something called shots in the dark do you guys know what shots in the dark are i googled it today no so a shot in the dark basically everybody starts out with basically um a one in six you have it's like a die it's like a uh and and you put it into a box and you basically have a one in six chance it's a dice it's a it's a it's a roll of a dice and you have a one in six chance of getting to stay if you play your shot in the dark, but you lose your vote.

Speaker 2 The reason it exists is basically so that

Speaker 2 if you're sure you're going home,

Speaker 2 you can play it. But that means people have to persuade you that they're not voting for you, even if they are.

Speaker 2 It's a way to get out of situations that would happen in the past where everybody knew it was Rick and Rick knew it was Rick and there was nothing anybody could do. It sort of made it boring.

Speaker 2 So to make it more interesting, everyone kind of has to lie. But what that means is everyone's telling me it's Andy.
I can tell that they're not telling me the truth.

Speaker 2 But how do you persuade somebody to vote for someone they're already telling you they're voting for?

Speaker 2 Like, it's one thing if somebody comes up to you and says they're voting for Trump, but it's another for them to lie to you and say they're voting for Kamala.

Speaker 2 You can't persuade them because they're telling you, I already agree with you. So there was, so it just made it really hard.
And so I thought about like, should I go chase down a beware advantage?

Speaker 2 But as you all saw, it's so many steps. And I didn't know if I'd be able to complete the steps in time.
Yeah, that one guy was running all over the place. He was climbing up a tree.

Speaker 2 He was dropping boxes down a cliff. Like, what the fuck was going on? He was not subtle.
He was so lost.

Speaker 2 i was in my phone when you were not on the tv i was just like i cannot follow this right now you've been texting with every person you know about every every every group chat i've ever started was exploding good good and also the east coast people fucking

Speaker 2 i called a ruined to spoil it for me oh you did yeah i with tim miller texted us all exclamation points and i'm like oh no and then my high school friends on their text jane i was like oh i watched the i watched the east coast feed so that i could at least know what i was in for amazing Well, congrats.

Speaker 2 Yeah, sure.

Speaker 2 This is content for years.

Speaker 2 And, you know,

Speaker 2 mostly I've been actually,

Speaker 2 I have appreciated the ratio of people angry on my behalf and mocking me.

Speaker 2 I think it's a good ratio with a very small subset of people trying to find a way in which I played poorly, but you guys can eat dicks.

Speaker 2 But I appreciate the jokes and I appreciate

Speaker 2 everybody that was nice. Want to see a really nice tweet about you? Yeah.

Speaker 2 I still can't believe Survivor has almost exclusively been using John Levitical's front season, only for him to get Drew Barrymored. Hey,

Speaker 2 you were competing. I like that.
I like that. You're a big list actor.
That's cool.

Speaker 2 And that was a bait and switch of that movie. That's right.

Speaker 2 Well, that's our show for today. And we will be back in your feeds on Tuesday with a new episode and a new co-host, Andy.

Speaker 2 He joined us joke face for that whole outro. I was like, what's the joke going to be?

Speaker 2 Bye, everyone. Bye.

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Speaker 2 Pod Save America is a crooked media production. Our producer is David Toledo.
Our associate producers are Saul Rubin and Farah Safari.

Speaker 2 Reed Cherlin is our executive editor, and Adrian Hill is our executive producer. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.

Speaker 2 Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer, with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Writing support by Hallie Kiefer.
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Speaker 2 Thanks to our digital team: Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Phoebe Bradford, Joseph Dutra, Ben Hefcote, Mia Kelman, Molly Lobel, Kirill Pelavieve, and David Toles.

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