BONUS: Could Trump Still Lose the Nomination? (Live from New Orleans!)

Speaker 1 The Kia Sportage Turbo Hybrid has a full design, a spacious interior with 232 horsepower, and a 12.3-inch panoramic display to keep the adventure going and fit with the way you live.

Speaker 1 And with SiriusXM, every drive comes alive, bringing you closer to the music, sports, talk, and podcasts you love, right in your vehicle or on the Sirius XM app.

Speaker 1 Every Sirius XM-equipped Kia Sportage Turbo Hybrid includes a three-month trial subscription to SiriusXM, so the experience begins the moment you drive.

Speaker 1 Learn more at kia.com/slash fortage dash hybrid, Kia movement that inspires.

Speaker 3 What's poppin' listeners?

Speaker 5 I'm Lacey Mosley, host of the podcast Scam Goddess, the show that's an ode to fraud and all those who practice it. Each week, I talk with very special guests about the scammiest scammers of all time.

Speaker 8 Want to know about the fake heirs?

Speaker 9 We got them. What about a career con man?

Speaker 11 We've got them too.

Speaker 12 Guys that will wine and dine you and then steal all your coins.

Speaker 14 Oh, you know they are represented because representation matters.

Speaker 8 I'm joined by guests like Nicole Beyer, Ira Madison III, Conan O'Brien, and more.

Speaker 18 Join the congregation and listen to Scam Goddess wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 18 What's up, New Orleans?

Speaker 19 Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Pfeffer.

Speaker 19 I'm Tim Miller.

Speaker 20 I'm John Lovitt.

Speaker 20 Tommy Vitor.

Speaker 21 I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

Speaker 19 We have an outstanding show for you tonight. Your state representative for right here in New Orleans, Mandy Landry, is here.

Speaker 19 Louisiana Public Service Commissioner Devontae Lewis is here.

Speaker 19 And we're so lucky to be joined by our pal, author, Bulwark Extraordinaire. Local.
Local.

Speaker 19 Local Tim Miller.

Speaker 19 Yeah, that's good stuff.

Speaker 19 All right, let's get to the news. Fresh off a very good election day for Democrats this week.

Speaker 19 Yeah, clap for that.

Speaker 19 Joe Biden held a rally at a car plant with United Auto Workers after he became the first president to join a picket line for a strike that led to historic wage increases.

Speaker 19 I thought Biden had a little extra pep in his step at this rally.

Speaker 19 He made a few jokes about his age and then went directly after Donald Trump. Let's take a listen.

Speaker 22 I've never been more optimistic about America's future than I am today. And I know I only look like I'm 30, but I've been around a long time.

Speaker 22 That's not too much to ask.

Speaker 19 You okay?

Speaker 22 I want the press to know that wasn't me.

Speaker 22 When my predecessor, the distinguished, anyway.

Speaker 22 When my predecessor was in office, six factories closed across the country. Tens of thousands of auto jobs were lost nationwide.

Speaker 22 And on top of that, He was willing to cede the future of electric vehicles to China.

Speaker 22 He said if America invested in electric vehicles, it would drive down wages. It would destroy jobs.
It would spell the end of the American automobile industry.

Speaker 22 Well, like almost everything else, he said he's wrong.

Speaker 19 Tim, what'd you think? Good way to handle the age thing? Right way to go after Trump? What do you think? I thought it was pretty good. I noticed you guys didn't show the dance that he tried to do.

Speaker 19 I just didn't see the dance. What dance?

Speaker 19 A little stiff. It was a little stiff on the dance.
I don't know about the dance.

Speaker 19 I was just happy when when I thought that that was a UAW t-shirt because at first I was like, is that like a red Jimmy Carter sweater? And then

Speaker 19 I realized he was wearing a t-shirt. I was like, this is good.

Speaker 20 They got him on the Primo Adrenochrome now.

Speaker 19 That's the good stuff.

Speaker 20 It's working.

Speaker 19 Right in the veins. Right in that eye vein.
I thought it was pretty good. Look, I like all of the manufacturing messaging.
Here's the thing. This guy, the college-educated whites,

Speaker 19 hopefully Donald Trump's going to do the job for him

Speaker 19 on that demo.

Speaker 19 And so he's got to lean into this.

Speaker 19 Right. He's got to to lean into this, right? And he has to try to

Speaker 19 minimize the gap with working class voters. You know, he's struggling with that across races.
And so he just got, he should do this. He needs to live in manufacturing plants.
He's got to do it.

Speaker 19 You know that picture of him with

Speaker 19 Ron DeSantis where he's hugging the biker and DeSantis is like in the big boots and he looks sad.

Speaker 19 That's got to be the whole campaign. Just like hang out with bikers and manufacturing dudes.
And that's the deal. Yeah.

Speaker 19 I mean,

Speaker 19 later he said,

Speaker 19 you know, when you guys were in the fight, I was here. Trump went to a non-union shop and attacked you.

Speaker 19 Like, I think it's in addition to a good economic message, it's also him getting on the side of people. Like, I'm for you.

Speaker 19 Donald Trump doesn't give a shit about you, which I think is a good message, good contrast with Donald Trump, because I think one thing people do believe about Donald Trump is that he only cares about himself.

Speaker 21 The thing that I found most interesting about this was when he talked about the plants closing under Trump.

Speaker 21 There's been this big debate in our party, like, how do we narrow the historic gap on the economy that Biden and Democrats face with Trump? Is it highlighting Biden's accomplishments?

Speaker 21 Is it highlighting the Trump tax cuts for corporations? Is it talking about Republicans cutting Social Security and Medicare?

Speaker 21 And there was sort of a private Democratic poll circulating earlier this summer that said, that showed that the most effective way to do it was to talk about the plant closings under Trump, and especially the ones where Trump said, I'm going to keep them open, like the Lordstown plant in Ohio, and that it closed anyway.

Speaker 21 And so it is very notable to me that that polling has clearly made it to the White House and that Biden Biden is saying that because that does sort of get at

Speaker 21 what people do have concerns about Trump, that he's kind of full of shit, that he was focused on all the wrong things while he was in there.

Speaker 21 And so that's where the plant closing works better because you're really trying to navigate this sort of like pseudo-businessman image he has.

Speaker 21 And this gets this gets at what people would people have actual concerns about him about.

Speaker 19 Yeah.

Speaker 19 Unfortunately for the president, his party's electoral and policy successes haven't prevented a growing list of potential potential candidates from weighing primary or independent challenges against Biden.

Speaker 19 Dean Phillips just hired former advisors to Bernie Sanders and Andrew Yang.

Speaker 19 And Sarah Palin. And Sarah Palin.
Oh, and see if she went, yeah, of course.

Speaker 19 I forgot about that, yeah. The latest New York Times poll has RFK Jr.
polling at 25% in a three-way race against Biden and Trump.

Speaker 19 Now that Cornell West is running as an independent, Jill Stein just announced that she's going to be running for the Green Party nomination.

Speaker 19 Who said her name three times?

Speaker 19 Shame on you.

Speaker 19 And

Speaker 19 Joe Manchin has now decided he won't be running for re-election to the Senate, but intends to travel the country, quote, to see if there's an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle and bring Americans together.

Speaker 19 Tommy, what the hell does that mean? And will you be joining that movement?

Speaker 24 I watched that video.

Speaker 23 It was sort of like a folksy centrist mad libs. It was very, very hard to follow.

Speaker 23 Here's what I think about Joe Manchin. He definitely drove us all crazy for a year, a year and a half.
Forever. When Joe Biden was trying to...

Speaker 19 Speak for yourself, Tommy. He was trying to pass

Speaker 24 the infrastructure bill.

Speaker 23 He was trying to pass the Build Back Better bill. Joe Manchin made it very hard.

Speaker 23 I think that when you look back on that, his opposition to the child tax credit extension is indefensible and borderline unforgivable. That policy lifted 3 million kids out of poverty.

Speaker 23 And Joe Manchin somehow got it in his head that if the child tax credit funding would be used by the parents to buy drugs, which is based on nothing and is, you know, I'll leave it to you to interpret that kind of comment.

Speaker 23 But his vote did help deliver the IRA, the biggest investment in clean energy ever.

Speaker 23 I think if we're being honest in hindsight, some of his concerns about the most expansive versions of Build Back Better and the potential to cause inflation.

Speaker 19 You might have had a point. Ooh, Tommy.
You might have had a point. I'm going a little bulwark.
I'm going to put Paul Ryan periled over there.

Speaker 19 That's all.

Speaker 23 But at the end of the day, like, that's, you know, West Virginia is what, plus 39 Trump State? Like, that seat's probably toast. So we're going to miss him.

Speaker 23 Now, I don't know what he's going to do on his centrist no-labels, rump Springer. I hope he has a good time.

Speaker 23 I hope, you know, I hope he meets some good people.

Speaker 23 My guess is that he ultimately realizes, oh yeah, I prefer decrying partisanship in green rooms rather than actually party building and running for president in a bunch of states.

Speaker 23 Also, it's worth remembering that no label says they want a Republican at the top of the ticket. So he'd have to be the VP.

Speaker 23 And also, he's 76 years old, which makes him young for this field.

Speaker 19 Young guests can in the field. And not young generally.

Speaker 23 So I don't know. I will miss him in the Senate, but not that much.

Speaker 21 I think only Joe Manchin can come up with a plan to simultaneously cost the Democrats the Senate and the White House.

Speaker 19 Yeah, that is true.

Speaker 19 Does anyone think that Joe Manchin is going to be polling well as a third-party candidate for no labels? Does anyone?

Speaker 20 Well, I mean, we've seen there's like the first poll, and they're showing them getting what, like, you know, he was getting 10%, 10%, which is enough to...

Speaker 20 destroy the country, but probably

Speaker 20 not enough to make him happy. But if I knew how to make Joe Manchin happy,

Speaker 19 Lovett, we should talk about the...

Speaker 24 You'd be on a houseboat.

Speaker 19 We should talk about the Senate implications for the Democrats, because I do think that's a big deal with Manchin.

Speaker 20 So this is a stone-cold bummer.

Speaker 20 We have a 51-seat majority with Joe Manchin. There are seven competitive seats.

Speaker 20 We now need to keep all of them. So if Joe Manchin is out, we go from 51 seats to 50 with Kamal Harris breaking a lot of ties.

Speaker 19 I was told by the DSA that he'll be replaced by a far-left. the real true progressive in West Virginia.
Is that not going to happen?

Speaker 20 And no bad ideas in a brainstorm.

Speaker 19 I wrote them.

Speaker 19 But

Speaker 20 so in order to now for Democrats to keep

Speaker 20 the Senate majority, John Tester has to win in Montana. Sherrod Brown has to hold his seat in Ohio.
Ruben Gallego has to win in Arizona.

Speaker 20 And we need to win in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Michigan. Before this, we could have lost one.
Now we need to win them all.

Speaker 20 If we do lose one and want to retain the Senate, that requires a pickup either by defeating Ted Cruz in Texas or Rick Scott in Florida, both of which are very difficult to do because they're both so charming and charismatic.

Speaker 20 The other piece of this that

Speaker 20 sucks is Joe Manchin was going to be someone Republicans are going to have to fight to beat, and now they don't have to do that anymore.

Speaker 20 They go from a place where they would have to spend money to a place where they probably don't. That's money that they can dump on John Tester or Sherrod or in Nevada or elsewhere.

Speaker 20 So it just made our job of retaining the Senate harder. That being said,

Speaker 20 these things are going to move together. And if we were in a, you know, being in a position to win six and being in a position to win seven look a lot alike, it's just, it's harder.

Speaker 19 Yeah, I think the way to think about it is if Democrats hold all the Senate seats now that we are defending, if Donald Trump wins, Republicans control the Senate. Because at best now, it's 50-50.

Speaker 19 And so then if Biden wins re-election, then great, Kamala Harris breaks the ties.

Speaker 19 But if Donald Trump wins, Donald Trump wins re-election, the best we can do now is going to be a Donald Trump presidency and a Republican Senate.

Speaker 21 And Tucker Carlson breaks the ties.

Speaker 19 And Tucker Carlson breaks the ties. And that means that Republicans in the Senate will start getting to appoint judges.

Speaker 19 That means if there are Supreme Court vacancies, Donald Trump wins, there's a Republican Senate. Clarence Thomas retires.
Alito retires. Suddenly they get two more Supreme Court justices.

Speaker 19 So the importance of making sure that Joe Biden and a Democrat win the presidency and making sure that Donald Trump loses is even more important now that Joe Manchin has decided to retire.

Speaker 20 I want to make one, yes, one more just note on Joe Manchin.

Speaker 20 I think it's worth noting that when Joe Biden put out a statement, and his statement was extremely kind to Joe Manchin, and that's been his tack whenever Joe Lieberman comes up.

Speaker 20 That's his tack when Joe Manchin comes up. He talks about how Manchin not only supported IRA, but also

Speaker 20 a veterans bill,

Speaker 20 a gun safety bill, a few other things, and voted for

Speaker 20 Katanji Brown Jackson. And I think one lesson of the last couple of years is that Joe Manchin, booing him is ineffective.
He's clearly just extremely ego-motivated.

Speaker 20 And we've got to, like, we've got to fucking figure out a way to praise this guy into getting out of this thing. It's just, we've got to hug Joe Manchin.

Speaker 20 Joe Manchin loves this fucking country, and he will do anything to protect her. And we all know that.

Speaker 20 And that's why we know ultimately, for the sake of the middle, he will do everything everything he can to help Joe Biden. And we all know that, right?

Speaker 20 Because booing him at his house vote seems to radicalize him.

Speaker 19 Somebody clip that. Beautiful house vote.
Beautiful house vote. Beautiful house vote.

Speaker 19 I think the Wall Street Journal reported this, that there's now an effort. It's not an effort led by no labels, but it's a different group.
They're leading a draft Manchin-Romney movement.

Speaker 19 I think Manchin will be president and Romney VP vice versa. Romney VP.
Vice versa, yeah. Yeah.
Tim, are you leading that effort? Did you want to make that announcement? I'm asking.

Speaker 19 I actually,

Speaker 19 just for the sake of the content, I have something prepared right now. Underneath this Beyonce shirt

Speaker 19 is Romney Manchin 2024, and I'm going to do it in the hopes that John Lovett gives me a pile driver.

Speaker 19 No,

Speaker 19 no. I'd love to.

Speaker 19 I mean, Joe Manchin actually is pretty good. I mean, he's been a West Virginia senator.
He's been all right.

Speaker 19 I know, not a lot of cheers for Joe Manchin, being pretty good, but he has him pretty good. He's bad at the alternative.
Cletus Van Ivermecton is going to replace him.

Speaker 19 Joe Manchin is a pain in the ass.

Speaker 19 Sad is leaving the Senate. He did the gay marriage.
He did pretty good. Without Joe Manchin, we would not have saved the ACA.
We would not have had that vote.

Speaker 19 We would not have had the Inflation Reduction Act, the largest government investment in climate in history.

Speaker 19 We wouldn't have had all these judges, right? He is a pain in the ass. He has infuriated us.
I get that, but we needed him. Yeah.
And here's the thing.

Speaker 19 If these rich people that have these fucking delusions that Mitt Romney and Joe Manchin might be there, it's because they look at the race and they're like, people aren't happy.

Speaker 19 People don't like Trump and Biden.

Speaker 19 But the thing is, what they don't understand is that this election between Joe Biden, a normal center-left Democrat, mainstream Democrats, and a racist lunatic who is a game show host, who wants to end the country, like does not call for somebody in the middle ground, right?

Speaker 19 Like if the election was between like two far ideologues, like if it was like Rashida Tlaib versus Mega Mike Johnson, right?

Speaker 19 Then maybe like Romney and Manchin could work if one of them had a personality transplant and

Speaker 19 then they could like bring together like Bulwark Republicans with Biden Democrats with like independents who don't want who like voted for Trump but don't like Mike Johnson's like Bible salesman vibe that he gives off.

Speaker 19 Like that could like work in like that alternate world. Like that's not the world we're in.

Speaker 19 Like so the only people that would that would go for like some normal alternative third party are people that already have a normal candidate, Joe Biden.

Speaker 19 And so it's a big fucking problem if Joe Manchin gets in. Big, big problem.

Speaker 19 Dan, I think polling third-party and independent candidates seems relatively useless until we know who's going to be on the ballot in which state.

Speaker 19 From that perspective, which of these potential candidacies do you think poses the biggest threat to Biden?

Speaker 21 It is both the No Labels candidacy and the Green Party candidacy of most likely Jill Stein. No labels is already on the ballot in 12 states.

Speaker 21 Most of those are states that are not consequential in a presidential election, but they are on the ballot in Arizona and Nevada.

Speaker 21 The Green Party, because Jill Stein, because the 2016 election never stops leaving us, did so well in 2016, they have guaranteed ballot access in a number of states, including the not so consequential states of Michigan and Wisconsin.

Speaker 21 And then they are both on the ballot in Oregon, which is a state which should not be competitive, but has a very weird history with third-party candidates and could possibly become competitive.

Speaker 21 They're both there. RFK Jr.
and Cornell West are on the ballot as of right now, nowhere. Getting on the ballot is quite expensive and arduous.
Let's not cheer yet.

Speaker 21 It requires, you know, in some states getting valid signatures from up to one to one and a half percent of the electorate.

Speaker 21 And that and in order to do that, you have to get sometimes like two to three times that number because valid signature means you have to have the correct signature, the correct name, the correct address that matches the voter file.

Speaker 21 It's very challenging.

Speaker 21 You would think that would be impossible for RFK Jr., but within hours of announcing his independent candidate, his super PAC, which could do ballot access for him, raised $11 million, which is definitely not suspicious at all.

Speaker 21 And so we're going to have to keep watching this, but we already know that if there's a Green Party candidate and a no-labels candidate on the ballot, four of the six battlegrounds.

Speaker 19 Does RFK kind of help us, though? Aren't we going for RFK? We hope.

Speaker 21 I think that that is

Speaker 19 a proposition.

Speaker 21 Yeah, I'd rather not know.

Speaker 20 And I just want to say to everyone here, you could have been at a strip club.

Speaker 19 But we're going to talk about ballot access.

Speaker 19 Ricks. I hear good things about Ricks.
Not my cup of tea, but just something to think about for after the show.

Speaker 19 This is just for anyone. What's going on with Dean Phillips?

Speaker 19 He's now got former advisors to Sarah Palin, Bernie Sanders, and Andrew Yang on his team. Does everyone still think this is going nowhere? Or is anyone...

Speaker 23 You either die a Bernie Bro or you live long enough to work for Dean Phillips.

Speaker 24 That's the deal, right?

Speaker 24 It's this guy, Jeff Weaver, who worked for Bernie.

Speaker 23 He was pretty controversial at the time, so I don't know that I'm worried about.

Speaker 23 I mean, hiring Andrew Yang's top guy, Andrew Yang's candidacy was kind of based around universal basic income. Has Dean Phillips supported that? I don't know.
Did any of these staffers matter?

Speaker 23 Do any of us matter?

Speaker 21 Let's not get at the premise of the entire podcast.

Speaker 19 I don't know. I'm like, me and Dean didn't do much for me beforehand.

Speaker 19 It's not a good sign when

Speaker 19 your top advisor has a higher name ID than you do because of his fucking wheels off YouTube rants that he gives.

Speaker 19 That's not a great idea, right?

Speaker 20 I feel like

Speaker 20 it's a lot of people who wish the world wasn't as it was for different reasons. I think there are a lot of people that,

Speaker 20 when push comes to shove, want Biden but younger, but that has not been on offer. And then there are people that want a Democrat.

Speaker 20 They want center-left Democratic policies, but but from politicians who haven't been attacked and maligned for years by Republicans.

Speaker 20 They want someone who has not been rendered unappealing to a swath of the country, not because of anything they did, but because of a vast apparatus that makes those people seem unappealing.

Speaker 20 That's the Andrew Yang thing, right? Like basically, you look at what Andrew Yang wants. He wants a center-left figure, but not somebody that the Joe Rogan types don't like.

Speaker 20 Well, why don't the Joe Rogan types like them? It's not because of anything they did. It's because there's a whole machine that exists to destroy them.
And that's not the world we live in.

Speaker 20 And so basically, we're fighting these kind of fantasies and narcissism and like ego trips. You know, Joe Manchin wants to fight for the middle.

Speaker 20 He's personally responsible for the most progressive thing Joe Biden ever did, as you said. So it's all just a bunch of people kind of, I think, like venting anxiety and spleen and egotism.

Speaker 21 And cashing checks.

Speaker 19 And cashing checks.

Speaker 19 I look at that group of people and I think it only matters if he starts... If Dean Phillips starts adopting policy positions that you can see from that group of people.

Speaker 19 Like, it's not really a left-right thing. It's like a top-bottom thing.
And if, like, Dean Phillips starts being like, okay, all right.

Speaker 19 I fucking challenge you to walk down Bourbon Street right now and find a single person who knows who the fuck Dean Phillips is. Oh, that's true.
This is all Tim and I. This is all ridiculous.

Speaker 19 That's true. This is all a preposterous part.

Speaker 20 Tim and I during a podcast called Top Bottom.

Speaker 19 Yeah, there it is. There it is.
That's what I was thinking. When Tim said that, I was like,

Speaker 19 I'm thinking, like, if he went like anti-establishment, you know, anti-war, right? Like, populist, anti-DC. But, like, I don't think Dean Phillips has it in him to do that.

Speaker 19 Gelato magnate, Dean Phillips. But it's also, you know, it's 2023.
People reinvent themselves all the time.

Speaker 19 And if you see like Jeff Weaver there and an Andrew Yang person, you kind of think maybe that's where they're going. Sure.
That's all I'm thinking.

Speaker 19 Tim, it's also possible that just to just to close this out, a lot of voters just might stay home, right?

Speaker 19 They might not go for a third party, they might not go for a third-party candidate, independent candidate. They might just say, I'm not voting at all.
Any thoughts on that? I am concerned about this.

Speaker 19 So

Speaker 19 young progressives don't listen to the bulwarks. I asked you if I could talk about this here in the hopes that I could reach some of them.
Some.

Speaker 19 Because I was having trouble sleeping the other night and I was on TikTok and I had these like several angry people in their dorm room talking about the moral obligation to vote for Cornell West.

Speaker 19 It was served to me by the Chinese and this was giving me some concerns. And I started like hypoventilating into a paper bag and I was like, is this really happening?

Speaker 19 And so I just, do we have a camera I can look into? No. Hopefully not.

Speaker 19 You're getting points. There you go.
You're getting points. Hey.
Hey, so I've been spending the week with Steve Bannon,

Speaker 19 young progressives who don't think that there's a difference between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. And here was his plan for the next term.

Speaker 19 He wants to release all of the January 6th prisoners and let every MAGA domestic terrorist know that they will get pardoned no matter what they do. So that's a little concerning.

Speaker 19 He wants to deport 10 million people and bring back the kids in cages. He wants to restart putting people back into Guantanamo.
He wants to indict his political opponents.

Speaker 19 And he wants to do mass firings of the federal government. So that's not a great policy agenda.
No.

Speaker 20 You know what? You know what he's calling it?

Speaker 20 The MAGA policy agenda. It's from the river to the CPAP machine.

Speaker 19 Jesus Christ.

Speaker 19 Oh my God.

Speaker 19 So it is very

Speaker 19 something that you should be alarmed about.

Speaker 19 Young progressive.

Speaker 19 I can't even. Welcome to the bulwark, John Lovett.

Speaker 19 So anyway, young TikTokers,

Speaker 19 if you want to protest Joe Biden, that's fine. If you want to vape, if you want to be pansexual, all that's great.

Speaker 19 But like, please, for the love of God, do not put these fucking lunatics back in there. I'm very concerned about it.
Yeah.

Speaker 20 I'm very concerned.

Speaker 19 But it's really like,

Speaker 19 it's not about sticking it to Joe Biden. He's not going to care that.

Speaker 19 It's about hurting yourself. It's about hurting the country.

Speaker 19 Yeah, I mean, you're going to be a little bit more than that.

Speaker 19 Every one of us is going to have to live with the consequences of

Speaker 19 stated policies.

Speaker 19 Like, we're going after trans people, we're going after immigrants we're going after political opponents i think the five of us would count despite us being cis white guys yeah and it's like so we're maybe not at the top of the list and and then we're gonna let the kind of mega domestic terrorists roam free yeah that's a concerning kind of combination that's a concerning combination this is not the most important part but far be it from me to give communications advice to the one-time top message guy in the Republican Party.

Speaker 19 But I would refer to it like

Speaker 19 Donald Trump only beat us by 46 points.

Speaker 19 I just feel like I would have offered some real context to I spent the week with Steve Bannon before telling that story.

Speaker 19 Was it Palm Springs or was it a cruise? Yeah, well, I was in the basement of the Breitbart Embassy and then they went to Vegas together. Going to Vegas together.
Yeah, it was interesting.

Speaker 19 There's a single MAGA Vegas hotel now. We'll talk about it back.
The Trump Hotel?

Speaker 21 The Trump Hotel?

Speaker 19 Yeah, no, not the Trump Hotel. I mean, Tommy's a big war room listener, but

Speaker 19 he was live.

Speaker 23 You didn't see me? No, I didn't see you. Sorry.

Speaker 19 Okay. Well, we don't want a second Trump turn.
That's the moral of the story. When we come back, Devontae Lewis.
He's awesome.

Speaker 23 Joining us now is Louisiana Public Service Commissioner and a rising star in Louisiana politics, Devontae Lewis.

Speaker 23 Nice to meet you. We've been hanging out for about an hour backstage, so we actually know each other now.

Speaker 25 We're friends. We're best friends.

Speaker 23 So the thing about Devontae is he's a young elected official, very impressive person

Speaker 23 to be doing this job at his age. But he got into politics like 20 years ago.

Speaker 23 He was organizing for Barack Obama in high school. You ran for

Speaker 24 school board at age 18.

Speaker 23 What got you at like 17 years old to think like, I got to get involved in politics.

Speaker 21 What started all this?

Speaker 25 Well, the craziest thing is my grandfather forced me when I was like 15 to watch one hour of the news every day.

Speaker 25 And so one day, it was 2004, was Barack's keynote address to the Democratic National Convention in Boston. And something after that, I was like, oh, I got to get involved.

Speaker 25 And so after that, I just felt like I needed to do something in my community. So I got involved, did a lot of stuff.

Speaker 25 And then like running for office, a lot of people thought I would do, but it was something never I wanted to do.

Speaker 25 But

Speaker 25 like when I ran for school board at 18, the school board president dared me to do it. He came to my AP government course and we were debating policy.

Speaker 25 And then he stopped me and he said, well, Devontae, if you think you can do this job so well, why don't you run for office?

Speaker 25 So on graduation day, when I walked across the stage, got my high school diploma, I gave him an index card and I said, I'll see you on the campaign trail. And

Speaker 25 that's,

Speaker 25 that's how I ran for office the first time.

Speaker 23 I love that. So I did not know that you, so you watched the 04 convention speech and that gave you like the bug.

Speaker 19 That gave me the bug.

Speaker 23 Everything was very cool. Very cool.
We were all just in Chicago last weekend with sort of an Obama campaign reunion.

Speaker 23 And the way that that community is like rippled into politics is very inspiring and cool. So You are now a Louisiana Public Service Commissioner.

Speaker 23 He's one of five elected officials tasked with overseeing all the utility companies in your state. What does that job entail?

Speaker 23 And then what kind of added responsibility do you feel serving in this role in a state that has such a terrible record on environmental justice to the point where there is a region called Cancer Alley?

Speaker 25 Yeah, so the Public Service Commission, we regulate all of the public utilities. So water, wastewater, electric, gas, sewage, pipeline, waste haulers, common carriers.

Speaker 25 We We also have prison phone call rates, moving truck companies, tow truck companies. And so my district encompasses, of course, here in New Orleans, but all through the river parishes in Baton Root.

Speaker 25 So I have Cancer Alley. This is the district that I represent, 971,000 people here in the state of Louisiana.

Speaker 25 And when we talk about environmental injustice, this is the area that you have to focus on in the country.

Speaker 25 Black and brown people are 21 times more likely to be exposed to air pollution in my district. When you think about Shell, Shell is a multinational corporation.

Speaker 25 They only have four petrochemical refinery plants in the United States. Three of them are in my district.

Speaker 19 Wow.

Speaker 25 So when you think about environmental injustice, my district is one of the poorest in the nation, has the highest rate of industry users, but also

Speaker 25 hurricane, natural disaster prone.

Speaker 25 And so the message that I said when I was running is that if we invest in climate justice here, not only in my district, we do it in the country because I strongly believe that we can turn America's cancer alley into America's climate answer alley if we do everything right.

Speaker 23 I like that.

Speaker 27 So I mean you alluded to this.

Speaker 23 I mean New Orleans is on the front lines when it comes to the impact from climate change. No one in this room needs to be reminded what a hurricane can do to a city.

Speaker 23 Your neighbors in Texas went through a terrible winter storm and a subsequent power outage that killed hundreds of people and tragically ruined Ted Cruz's vacation.

Speaker 23 Sorry, Ted.

Speaker 24 What do you think?

Speaker 23 I mean, you're an expert in this stuff. What do you think this

Speaker 23 city in this country needs to do to prepare our utilities both to transition from where we are now to this green energy future we want to be at, but also to become more resilient in the near term, knowing that weather is getting more extreme, higher, like hotter hots, colder colds, etc.

Speaker 25 I mean, I think the first thing we have to do is put people over profits. I mean, let's be very clear.

Speaker 25 Entergy has never cared about the people of Louisiana. So, I mean,

Speaker 20 but that's the important role about commissioners.

Speaker 25 I think when we talk about the decarbonization of the United States, oftentimes we have failed to look at utilities as on the front line. We've rewarded utilities by basically making investments that

Speaker 25 profited their shareholders, their dividend owners, but not actually making our system more resilient, sustainable, reliable, and affordable.

Speaker 25 And so I think when in this moment, especially here in Louisiana, what we have to do is finally say that climate change one is real.

Speaker 25 So I hope Governor Landry hears that message and knows that, that I'm going to fight him every day to tell him climate change is real.

Speaker 25 But it's also actually good for business. I mean, when you think about this,

Speaker 25 the people that are screaming for renewable energy because they're trying to showcase these actual the industrial users. And so like in Louisiana, I think it's an unknown fact that 60%

Speaker 25 of all the energy consumed in the state of Louisiana comes from an industry user. Not from a commercial user, not from a small business, not from a residential, but from these big refineries.

Speaker 25 And so if we're going to actually talk about the future of Louisiana, we have to talk about energy policy. And that's why I ran and that's what I'm trying to do.

Speaker 19 Right on.

Speaker 23 Another issue that I know you focus on a lot in your campaign is the price of phone calls for folks in jails and prisons. And maybe there's people listening to me right now saying,

Speaker 23 What are you talking about, Tommy? And why are you asking like the utility commissioner guy about this?

Speaker 25 But can you explain the problem here and and why how it falls under your purview and what you're doing to kind of address this yeah so the Louisiana Public Service Commission we regulate the rates uh that it costs for an intra-state phone call between

Speaker 19 uh

Speaker 25 for those who are calling people who are incarcerated. And so when we think about this question, I mean, like Louisiana used to be the incarceration capital of the world.

Speaker 25 We are now battling Oklahoma to be second.

Speaker 19 I don't know if that's a great task.

Speaker 25 I mean, I don't know if I want to follow Oklahoma in anything, but I guess if we're going to beat Oklahoma at something, at least we can beat them in prison phone call rates.

Speaker 25 But when we think about this, I just want to remind people that the average income of a person

Speaker 25 incarcerated prior to being incarcerated is around $20,000 a year.

Speaker 25 So when we talk about our average phone call rate for incarcerated families, the data showcases that a person incarcerated would spend over half of their yearly income just to communicate with their loved ones.

Speaker 19 Who's getting paid off that?

Speaker 25 Oh, these are the sheriffs and these are the telecommunication companies.

Speaker 24 So it's profitable for them.

Speaker 19 Oh, absolutely.

Speaker 25 The sheriffs get a big kickback. And so the sheriffs have been the biggest opponents.

Speaker 25 I tried to just do a study review of our prison phone call rates about four months ago, and the sheriffs called every one of my opponents, excuse me, one of my

Speaker 25 to talk about this issue. And so what we see is that the sheriffs get a kickback from ensuring that people cannot communicate with their loved ones, but then they want to go and talk about recidivism.

Speaker 25 And they want to talk about the rising effects of crime when we know the biggest reduction of crime is simply allowing people to talk. I think it's a human right to have human interaction.

Speaker 25 Why are we charging you to talk to your daughter or your son or your mother or your family when when we incarcerate you.

Speaker 25 And so my goal and my quest is to make prison phone calls free, and we're going to keep doing that.

Speaker 23 I mean, I imagine when you're talking to folks about this, like anyone who's had a loved one or a friend in prison gets it.

Speaker 23 But like there's, look, fighting for incarcerated people is not great politics, right? As we look around, right? There's a lot of people demagoguing crime and other issues.

Speaker 23 I mean, when you talk to folks about this goal and this plan, are they

Speaker 23 like, do you think they support what you're doing?

Speaker 25 I think some do. I mean, what I would like to remind people is that we actually need to put humanity back into society and actually care about one another.

Speaker 25 So you cannot talk to me about the crime in New Orleans if you don't want to talk about

Speaker 25 the effects of what Louisiana does to incarcerated people or how often we try to incarcerate somebody.

Speaker 25 And so what I like to do, and the way I talk about it, is ensuring that we recognize that the same way that you want to call your mother when something happens, someone incarcerated wants to do the exact same thing.

Speaker 25 And so, why should they not only be incarcerated, but also suffer from the lack of seeing if their child got a great grade on their report card or if their mother had an issue or what's going on in their family?

Speaker 25 And we are literally pushing people into poverty simply to communicate with their loved ones on the outside world. So, when they are released, that they have that connection to their family.

Speaker 25 I find it baffling that we're fighting this, but oftentimes it's just that the Louisiana sheriffs think they have a lot of power and it's time to break it.

Speaker 23 Yeah.

Speaker 23 Yeah, it seems like keeping people kind of connected and tethered to the outside world is a big part of rehabilitation.

Speaker 21 Oh, absolutely.

Speaker 25 I mean, I think it is, it's extremely important, but the reason why we do it here in Louisiana is because we give our sheriffs a big pay cut for taking state prisoners.

Speaker 25 So anytime someone is incarcerated, we do not not have enough beds in the state penitentiaries. So, what do we do? We send them to local jails.
They make profit off of it.

Speaker 25 So, they want to keep people incarcerated because that's the way they make their money.

Speaker 23 Terrible system.

Speaker 19 Yeah, boo that. That's for good.
Boo it.

Speaker 23 All right, happier subject. So, you are the first black LGBTQ person elected to any political office in Louisiana at any level.

Speaker 24 What was it like that night breaking that barrier?

Speaker 23 What did it feel like? And what do you think it says about the future of Louisiana politics?

Speaker 25 Well, that night, I don't really remember because there was a lot of tequila.

Speaker 25 So if anybody was at my victory party, they know exactly what we did.

Speaker 25 But

Speaker 25 for me, it was a moment to showcase that when you center people, right? There's oftentimes in politics, everyone tells you what you should be. How you should run, what you should do.

Speaker 25 And the way that I ran my campaign was: I was going to be Devontae 100%.

Speaker 25 You're going to like me, you're going to love me, you're going to vote for me, or you're not.

Speaker 25 And what I think this moment showcases is when we actually speak to each other, when we speak to our common values, our common goals, our values, people will put aside their preconceived notions about you if they know you care about them.

Speaker 25 And that's what I did. And I think in this moment, it is showcasing that you do not have to

Speaker 25 bend to society's pressures. You can be who you want to be, live your life, and showcase that if you care about each other, we can make the world a better place.
And that's what I'm trying to do.

Speaker 23 You can run as you is my takeaway there, which brings me to my next question. The Democratic Party in Louisiana has had a tough time of late.

Speaker 19 Yeah, very tough.

Speaker 23 Trump won the state by more than 18 points in 2020. The recent governor's race didn't go great.
We thought we might be talking about a runoff tonight when we schedule this.

Speaker 23 How do you think Democrats get back on their feet in Louisiana?

Speaker 25 Well, I think Democrats get back on their feet if they grow a backbone and stand up for what they believe in.

Speaker 25 I mean, too oftentimes, Democrats in this state are afraid of Republican voters. Instead of speaking, when we look at the data analysis, right?

Speaker 25 A governor Landry elect won with less votes than Bobby Jindal did in in his re-election campaign running against a no-name teacher.

Speaker 25 So that tells you there is an apathetic view in the state of Louisiana. And I remind people all the time that the biggest voting bloc in Louisiana is not the Republican voter, it's the non-voter.

Speaker 25 So if Democrats actually talked about the issues that people cared about instead of going and trying to be Republican-light, we can win.

Speaker 25 So I think the message for Democrats is stand up for the poor, stand up for the working poor, stand up for black and brown people and women and LGBTQ people and our families and our children.

Speaker 25 And if we speak truth to power, instead of trying to chase power, we can actually get in power.

Speaker 25 And so I think that's our message to now is to be true to the values that we hold and fight for the people that we care about instead of trying to find every single way to showcase to the Republicans that we will be a good partner to them.

Speaker 25 Because let's be very clear.

Speaker 24 They've made it an assault.

Speaker 25 They are coming after black and and brown people. They're coming after the city of New Orleans.
They're coming after LGBTQIA plus people. They are coming after what we care about.

Speaker 25 And it's a question for the Democratic Party and the state of Louisiana. Will we stand up for the people or will we try to be Jeff Landry's friend? And I'm going to fight for the people of Louisiana.

Speaker 23 I feel like I might have been a little more cynical about the Democratic Party's chances of winning in Louisiana before the last election day where we saw, you know, Ohio voted issue one that enshrined abortion rights into the Constitution.

Speaker 23 You got Governor Bashir in Kentucky running strong, running on abortion access and winning that race.

Speaker 23 Were there takeaways for you guys, the lessons learned about what you want to do next?

Speaker 25 I mean, I think the lessons learned is, one, we have to organize and mobilize people.

Speaker 19 all the time, right?

Speaker 25 I mean, we can't wait till two days before the election to start talking about democratic values. Right.
That we have to start that.

Speaker 25 I think the message that we saw across the country is that when you actually run on the platform that we care about, the people that we care about, we can win.

Speaker 25 And so I think we got to get back to organizing, and organizing is why people care about an issue, what issues they care about.

Speaker 25 And then mobilization is reminding them about the issues that they care about.

Speaker 25 And so I think the takeaway for Louisiana is that now that we are pretty much at rock bottom, is, I mean, I don't know how lower we can go.

Speaker 25 know, I don't know what else this the Republicans can take from us.

Speaker 19 Is

Speaker 25 to finally say, like, what do we have to lose? I mean, I don't like quoting uh 46-1, but I think he's right when he says, What the hell do we have to lose? Let's just fight.

Speaker 23 I like that, I like that,

Speaker 20 Devontae Lewis. Thank you so much for being here.

Speaker 19 Clap it up.

Speaker 20 Thank you.

Speaker 19 Pate America is brought to you by Kariuma.

Speaker 19 Kariumas have been our go-to sneakers for a while now because they're really comfortable, go with everything, and they're made with consciously sourced materials.

Speaker 19 I have tons of Kariuma shoes, sneakers. I love wearing them.
They're super comfy. They look great.
Just some clean, good shoes.

Speaker 19 Last year, we collaborated with Kariuma to create No Steps Back sneakers, and we can't believe they have now designed a second limited edition collaboration with us, the Love It or or Leave It sneaker.

Speaker 19 And guys, right, I have John Lovett right here with me to talk about it. They're great.
All right.

Speaker 20 They're beautifully designed. They're very cool.

Speaker 19 Look, if you like Love or Leave It, you should get them.

Speaker 20 But even if you don't, and look, there are a few people out there that don't, you'll like them too.

Speaker 19 I want to see the Venn diagram of people who don't like Love or Leave It but do buy the sneakers.

Speaker 20 People with great tastes in shoes.

Speaker 19 Maybe they don't know what they're wearing. They just think they're wearing some really good-looking shoes.

Speaker 20 A portion of the proceeds for every pair sold goes to Vote Save America's Every Last Vote Fund. Our first Carama collab sold out super fast.

Speaker 20 So, if you want a pair for yourself, make sure to snag one now.

Speaker 19 They're a good gift. How about that? They're a great gift.
Check them out. Just head to cricket.com/slash store.
That's cricket.com/slash store.

Speaker 3 What's poppin' listeners?

Speaker 5 I'm Lacey Mosley, host of the podcast Scam Goddess, the show that's an ode to fraud and all those who practice it. Each week, I talk with very special guests about the scammiest scammers of all time.

Speaker 8 Want to know about the fake heirs?

Speaker 9 We got them. What about a career con man?

Speaker 11 We've got them too.

Speaker 12 Guys that will wine and dine you and then steal all your coins.

Speaker 14 Oh, you know they are represented because representation matters.

Speaker 8 I'm joined by guests like Nicole Beyer, Ira Madison III, Conan O'Brien, and more.

Speaker 18 Join the congregation and listen to Scam Goddess wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 2 Did you know 39% of teen drivers admit to texting while driving? Even scarier, those who text are more likely to speed and run red lights. Shockingly, 94% know it's dangerous, but do it anyway.

Speaker 2 As a parent, you can't always be in the car, but you can stay connected to their safety with Greenlight Infinity's driving reports.

Speaker 2 Monitor their driving habits, see if they're using their phone, speeding, and more. These reports provide real data for meaningful conversations about safety.

Speaker 2 Plus, with weekly updates, you can track their progress over time. Help keep your teens safe.
Sign up for Greenlight Infinity at greenlight.com slash podcast.

Speaker 28 With TikTok ads, our revenue went up $10 million year over year during back-to-school season. Penn Foster is online education.

Speaker 28 TikTok is great because the reach is incredible for finding a lot of different types of audiences on the platform. Creator content at scale allowed us to easily develop and distribute creator-led ads.

Speaker 28 Our return on ad spend for TikTok is 21% higher than the NextBest channel.

Speaker 29 Start growing your business today. Head over to getstarted.tiktok.com slash TikTok ads.

Speaker 19 So we just had a third Republican primary debate in Miami this week. Sam, I know you almost missed it.
I did, man. I listened to your podcast.

Speaker 19 You didn't even know it was happening.

Speaker 19 Seems like the early consensus among pundits and some polls is that Nikki Haley did well. Ron DeSantis still can't smile.

Speaker 19 The vape Ramaswamy, still an insufferable asshole. So annoying.

Speaker 19 If you didn't catch the debate, don't worry. Neither did the frontrunner, Donald Trump.

Speaker 19 He was a few miles away at a rally where he promised to carry out the biggest deportation of immigrants in history on his first day in office.

Speaker 19 Then he did an interview with Univision where he defended his child separation policy and again threatened to indict people who've pissed him off. Let's listen.

Speaker 27 We have tremendous support from the I call Hispanic, Latino. You have lots of different

Speaker 27 terms, but it all means the same thing as far as I'm concerned. They're just great people, incredible people.
Right now you have coming through Mexico the largest

Speaker 27 group of people, call it caravans. That was the name that I came up with.
I never get credit. I don't think I get credit for fake news.

Speaker 27 I don't think I get credit for any of these names, but I think I came up with most of them. It could certainly happen in reverse.
What they've done is they've released the genie out of the box.

Speaker 27 You understand that. If I happen to be president and I see somebody who's doing well and beating me very badly, I say, go down and indict them.

Speaker 27 Mostly, that would be, you know, they would be out of business. They'd be out.
They'd be out of the election.

Speaker 19 Poor guy comes up with the best nicknames. No one gives him credit.

Speaker 20 Genies come out of a fucking lamp.

Speaker 19 Yes, thank you. Thank you.
At least a bottle or bottle.

Speaker 20 Pandora comes out of a box. No, it's her box.
Evil comes out of the box.

Speaker 19 Trump's campaign. He's running again.
There's a buried lead there. It's like if someone's going to come in and they're going to run against me, he can't run again.

Speaker 19 It's a good point. I was thinking about that.
Like, what?

Speaker 19 Can he? Yeah, I was going to say that.

Speaker 20 I also think he lives in a kind of permanent narcissism present. Like, in his mind, when he thinks thinks about a grievance, it's happening again.
Someone running against me.

Speaker 20 He's always living inside of it. It's a nightmare space.
That's why he was so good on Twitter.

Speaker 19 It is interesting. They, of course, asked the campaign,

Speaker 19 what about the fact that Donald Trump just said he was going to indict people who he doesn't like as president. And they say, oh, he's just throwing out a hypothetical.
That's what the campaign said.

Speaker 19 But they didn't rule out that he would do that. It's a bad hypothetical.
Despite Nikki Haley's blockbuster debate performance,

Speaker 19 the 538 polling average has Trump ahead by 42 points nationally. 42 points.
And the national polls, they don't matter. 28 points in Iowa.

Speaker 19 30 points in New Hampshire. 30 points in South Carolina.
Those are the averages right now. We are just about two months out from Iowa.
Here is the question. Is the Republican primary already over?

Speaker 19 We are going to try something a little different. and have our own debate about this question.

Speaker 19 We're going to split into two teams, make our best case, and hopefully leave the stage without a Nikki Vivek moment.

Speaker 19 So, arguing that for all intents and purposes, the Republican primary is over will be me and Tim. Boo.

Speaker 19 Arguing that polls don't vote, people do, is going to be Dan and Tommy. What was that shit?

Speaker 19 And moderating this debate.

Speaker 20 I'm going to fucking moderate.

Speaker 21 So,

Speaker 20 now before we begin,

Speaker 20 I want to poll the audience, and because we're going to poll again at the end,

Speaker 20 so let's understand where we're at as a team, what we're up against here. If you believe the Republican primary is for all intents and purposes over, please applaud.

Speaker 20 If you believe that this is America and anything can happen,

Speaker 19 applaud.

Speaker 21 Okay, I'd say that was a lot of applause for Trump to start.

Speaker 20 All right, so that's where we're at to begin.

Speaker 20 To make the case that this primary is not yet over, Tommy, why don't you kick us off?

Speaker 23 Thanks, John.

Speaker 24 I'm a data-driven guy.

Speaker 23 You know what I mean? People of crooked media, they come to me. They're like, Tommy, can I get some facts? So I got some facts.
Because facts, they don't care about your feelings, Tim.

Speaker 23 And so I want you to think about three numbers. The first is the number 17.

Speaker 23 That is the number of points that Dukakis was ahead of George H.W. Bush in the summer of 1988.
You know who won that race?

Speaker 20 Bush by eight.

Speaker 23 Fact number two, number number two.

Speaker 19 What's 17 plus eight? 16.

Speaker 23 That's how many points John McCain, Tim's old boss, was behind Rudy Giuliani. in 2007.
He was also losing to Fred fucking Thompson. You know who was a Democratic nominee? John McCain.

Speaker 19 My last number for you guys.

Speaker 23 That's what I meant.

Speaker 23 He was the Republican nominee for president. The last number for you all, the number 303.

Speaker 19 That is the number of electoral votes that Harry Truman won in 1948 when people like Tim and John were saying Dewey defeats Truman.

Speaker 23 They were putting it on the front of newspapers. And so here's what I'm trying to tell you guys.
This race is consolidating before our very eyes. Did you watch the debate the other night?

Speaker 23 Tim Scott basically quit the campaign on stage.

Speaker 19 That is

Speaker 24 to go be with his girlfriend.

Speaker 19 Oh my God, we didn't talk about Tim Scott.

Speaker 23 Vaikramaswamy annoyed the 3% of voters he had left. Chris Christie is running out of gas.
Ron DeSantis is a high-heeled joke. So here's what's going to happen.

Speaker 23 Nikki Haley is going to exceed expectations in Iowa.

Speaker 23 Then she's going to go to New Hampshire, get all the never-Trump vote and get the unaffiliated voters because in New Hampshire, it's like a pseudo-open primary and you can get folks from the other side.

Speaker 23 Then she goes to her home state and she's going to seal the deal and win South Carolina. Now, these guys are snarling at me because they...

Speaker 19 Very polite so far.

Speaker 23 You know. Duke Favreau and Lord Miller over here, they love a coronation.
You know what I mean? When Dan and I were watching Rocky and Miracle,

Speaker 19 you were watching the king's speech.

Speaker 20 I'm sorry, but you're gonna have to wrap up. Down to Nabby, sir.

Speaker 23 And so the last time I checked,

Speaker 19 we live in the United States of America. Oh, God.

Speaker 20 And anything is possible, and we can beat Donald Trump.

Speaker 19 All right.

Speaker 20 Audience, audience, audience, audience. We'd like to hear from the candidates.

Speaker 20 John, you want to go next? Or

Speaker 20 Tim's got it. Tim's got his mic on a trigger.

Speaker 19 Yeah, no, no.

Speaker 19 I'll just respond to my neocon friend, Tommy, who's a big Nikki Haley fan. Look.

Speaker 19 You're scum.

Speaker 19 Wow. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.

Speaker 19 Get my name out of your voice.

Speaker 23 Tough. Want that one back.

Speaker 19 Majority of Republican primary voters like Donald Trump. They liked his presidency.

Speaker 19 They believe he won the last election. They don't care about his 91 felony counts.
They think he can easily beat Joe Biden. Why would Republican voters choose someone else at this point?

Speaker 19 Millions of dollars have already been spent on advertisements. Millions of people have watched these boring fuckers across three debates now.

Speaker 19 Huge organizations have been set up in the early states by these campaigns. The race has barely moved.
He is 40-something points ahead, 30 points ahead in the early states.

Speaker 19 A few Republican candidates have made the case to voters that Donald Trump is a threat to democracy. Those candidates are polling in last place.
Mike Pence has dropped out.

Speaker 19 The last candidate with a lead this big was George W. Bush in 2000.

Speaker 19 He went on to win all but seven states. And at the time, George W.
Bush hadn't been president already. Donald Trump has been president already.

Speaker 19 He is beloved by the Republican base, and they think he won the last election. He's still over.
It's over. It's over.
Wow. Powerful words.

Speaker 21 Dan, I want to make three points here.

Speaker 19 Oh, my God.

Speaker 21 First, I don't really appreciate Jon Favreau's Don't Wet the Bed 2016 type messaging here.

Speaker 19 Two,

Speaker 19 is it

Speaker 21 in the world that anything is possible? Donald Trump's a 77-year-old.

Speaker 19 Do you have video of John before the 2016 campaign and what he said? Because if so, if you put that up on screen, I'll switch to you.

Speaker 21 That would have been good. That has been erased from the internet.

Speaker 19 Unfortunately not.

Speaker 21 Point number two, Donald Trump is a 77-year-old obese man with the diet of a college freshman at 2 a.m.

Speaker 21 Anything is possible. Nothing is over with Donald Trump in this race.

Speaker 21 Death is a possibility.

Speaker 24 Point number three. No,

Speaker 19 we don't.

Speaker 20 Shame on. No.

Speaker 20 You're applauding possibilities.

Speaker 19 We're cheering for actuarial tables being accurate. That's it.

Speaker 21 Point number three, and I know this one is close to Tim Miller's heart, is that Donald Trump has been running for the Republican primary for combined between 2016 and 2020 for over two years.

Speaker 21 In that time, he has never once faced a sustained strategic attack. All of the candidates around him have been attacking each other in hopes to be second.
So it is an untested proposition.

Speaker 21 And while I may not share Tommy's enthusiasm for Nikki Haley,

Speaker 24 I do think that

Speaker 21 there is a world where Nikki Haley Surgis, Ron DeSantis, what?

Speaker 20 They're anti-Trump, dude.

Speaker 19 No one knows what they're shared.

Speaker 19 You promoted that I was going to be here. There are going to be at least three neocons out there in the audience.

Speaker 20 Originally, the Neocons only had one seat, and they took a second, and then they took a third.

Speaker 21 So we're Nikki Haley Surges, Ron DeSantis Surgis, which takes some from Trump because most of Trump's second choice voters are Ron DeSantis.

Speaker 21 Nikki Haley, as Tommy said, beats expectations in Iowa. Sure did.
Wins in New Hampshire. Wins in South Carolina.
And there we go.

Speaker 20 So, Tim, your name was mentioned.

Speaker 19 Care to respond?

Speaker 19 I mean, Tommy's first number was 17, and Donald Trump's winning by 42. So that's the first place I'd start.

Speaker 19 The The name that

Speaker 19 the name,

Speaker 19 I have two points. First is the name that Tommy mentioned, which I agree with, which would be the plausible person that could beat him, I guess,

Speaker 19 in a total fantasy world where we're all doing mushrooms together, would be Nikki Haley. And Tommy Vitor just endorsed her, officially ending her campaign.
So that's kind of a big problem.

Speaker 19 The people in this room like Nikki Haley, let me tell you, I don't think that's a good sign for her and the Republican prime.

Speaker 21 That's Chris Christie's problem.

Speaker 19 Okay.

Speaker 19 All right.

Speaker 19 But I'd like to close with telling you about a town called Lafayette. Do we have anybody here from Lafayette?

Speaker 19 What are you fucking Bill Clinton? What is this? Yeah.

Speaker 19 I had to visit Lafayette.

Speaker 19 Oh my God.

Speaker 19 I had to visit Lafayette a couple months ago.

Speaker 20 Get to the sentence about the fucking politics.

Speaker 19 Thank you, Tom Friedman.

Speaker 19 I was in the Cajun Dome, and there was a GOP meeting there, and it was the day after the first debate.

Speaker 19 And a lady, kind of with an accent, comes on stage, and she was like, Y'all, who do you think won the first debate? And two people in the crowd go, Trump. And then everybody goes, Trump, Trump, Trump.

Speaker 19 You guys might not recall that Trump did not attend the first debate.

Speaker 19 And after

Speaker 19 this meeting, I went out into the lobby and I started interviewing people. And I was like, who are you for in the primary? Trump.

Speaker 19 And I found the young person looked like they went to college in Lafayette. And I was like, who are you for? And he looks around and he goes, well, we're a Trump party.
I was like, yeah.

Speaker 19 He's like, so I'm for Trump. Then the girl next to him goes, but I like Nikki Haley.
And she whispers. And I was like, but who are you going to vote for? And she goes, well, Trump.

Speaker 19 And so, in all of your fantasy plans, where Nikki Haley overperforms and finishes fourth in Iowa and then second in New Hampshire and she went to South Carolina. Then she has to come to Louisiana.

Speaker 19 And the vote will go to Lafayette. And the last Louisiana poll had Donald Trump 75,

Speaker 19 Ron DeSantis 8, Nikki Haley, 2.

Speaker 20 Well, that's.

Speaker 23 I got a fourth number.

Speaker 19 It was a powerful

Speaker 24 zero. The number of times you won Iowa, pal.

Speaker 19 It's getting dirty. Okay.
We finished it. Moderator.
Take control.

Speaker 19 We finished a gentleman six.

Speaker 20 I was trying to be one of those moderators that disappears and not make it about myself.

Speaker 19 But by the way,

Speaker 19 you play that role that way. Yeah, not my style.

Speaker 20 It's a huge mistake.

Speaker 20 Back to me. Dan,

Speaker 20 If

Speaker 20 Trump is winning by

Speaker 20 a lot of points, but he always tends to be around 50. Sometimes a little bit over, sometimes a little bit under.

Speaker 20 What is your argument that if, let's say, we lived in a world where a bunch of people dropped out because they've been embarrassing themselves, Tim Scott goes off to just young love,

Speaker 20 picnics and walks in the park,

Speaker 20 merry-go-rounds, and so forth.

Speaker 20 Ron DeSantis goes back into his sort of ooze cave or

Speaker 20 whatever he does at night. But anyway, you end up with just nikki haley uh do you really believe that that it that if that that if the ron de santis' people like trump if ron de santis leaves

Speaker 20 yeah i would like to ask the question to john

Speaker 20 because i know i because i know how you'll answer but uh

Speaker 19 but but you really don't you don't believe that there could be a anti-trump majority that could align behind one alternative because there there is uh all the data suggests there is no anti-trump majority in the republican party there is about 30 percent of Republican voters on a good day who do not like Donald Trump, who are ready to move on.

Speaker 19 Then there's another third who love Donald Trump but are like willing to consider other options. And then there is the Trump base, right?

Speaker 19 That's one of the options that they're willing to consider an Indian woman who

Speaker 19 they think is a neocon DC, even though she hasn't served in D.C., but like served at the UN, right? Like you can actually see this now. Or Donald Trump.
Right.

Speaker 19 You can actually see this now with Vivek, right? Who attacked her at the debate and then after the debate started doing the whole like, she made a bunch of money on the board at Boeing.

Speaker 19 Like, they're going to now do to Haley.

Speaker 19 Vivek, Trump, the MAGA world, what they did to DeSantis, establishment shill, D.C. politician, Rhino, all this bullshit.
Trump is the one true God. Like, they'll just turned it on Nikki.

Speaker 19 And will she, could she consolidate the, like, the bulwark crowd? Absolutely, for sure. But, like, that's not enough to win a Republican primary at this point.
If only.

Speaker 19 If only. Tim,

Speaker 20 isn't there some weakness in the fact that Donald Trump, despite his popularity among Republicans, never can seem to get that much higher than 50% exactly? That's sort of where his ceiling.

Speaker 20 Does that tell you anything?

Speaker 19 No.

Speaker 20 Why not? Why not?

Speaker 19 I mean,

Speaker 19 it's still pretty good. I mean, he's winning by 42.
That's kind of a lot. I don't know if it's a good idea.

Speaker 20 But isn't some share of the people that are in that 50% people that would be open to an alternative?

Speaker 19 Well, sure. Yeah, but they like him.

Speaker 19 So it's not as if his popularity rating. This is the thing.
This is what everybody wishes, right? And I wish it.

Speaker 19 I would love for this to be the case. But it's like, if you ask Republican voters, do you have a favorable opinion of Donald Trump? His number is well over 50.
It's like 80 or 80 or 85.

Speaker 19 Yeah, right. So they like him.
So there's a percentage of people that are like, I like him. I like the cut of his jib.
But, you know,

Speaker 19 like the whole whale shtick that he does. But like, maybe I'd consider something.

Speaker 20 But doesn't that tell you that like between the there's there's the people that like him that aren't for him, that the people that love him that will that would bleed and die for him and have

Speaker 19 and then and then there's a chunk of people who are only hostages.

Speaker 20 There's a chunk of people that are worried about hostages, as you call them.

Speaker 20 But there is a chunk of his support, right? That are people who like him, want to be president, but might have electability concerns, might have chaos concerns, right? Is that wrong?

Speaker 20 Am I wrong about that?

Speaker 19 I think they had those concerns at one point,

Speaker 19 but at this point they're consolidating around him. And you just have to look at the numbers.
Yeah, sure.

Speaker 21 Should I have a rebuttal?

Speaker 19 Yeah, sure.

Speaker 21 Okay, first, do you know who's more popular among Republican voters than Donald Trump? No one. Ron DeSantis.
Higher favorability rating in Ohio, in Iowa, and New Hampshire.

Speaker 19 Yes, 2004.

Speaker 20 Why aren't they choosing him then? Can you please stop interrupting?

Speaker 19 That's the vake. Sit over there.

Speaker 25 Two,

Speaker 19 no one has made an argument against Trump. Way higher.

Speaker 21 There has not been negative ads run against Trump. Not in 2016, not in 2020.
So let's at least

Speaker 21 backfire.

Speaker 19 The negative ads backfire.

Speaker 20 These people are in a culture. I'm going to get control.
I will turn off your microphone.

Speaker 19 Dan is speaking.

Speaker 19 This debate should have been moderated by Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk, and Joe Rogan.

Speaker 20 The last time I checked, we live in America, and you don't cut Dan off.

Speaker 20 What are you applauding?

Speaker 20 Shame on all of you for doing this in New Orleans.

Speaker 21 Eventually, you all are going to vote. And I'm going to say you have two choices.
You can vote for Donald Trump or

Speaker 19 the American ideal of possibility.

Speaker 20 Donald Trump is spending a lot of his time, not in Iowa, but in a courtroom. Can you make an argument that

Speaker 20 given that there's

Speaker 20 your belief that nothing is over till election day,

Speaker 20 do you think that there's a possibility that these indictments start to have an impact and start to shift people towards an alternative? Shut up, Tim. Shut the fuck up.

Speaker 23 All I see, all I see is possibility.

Speaker 19 And when you look at,

Speaker 23 that's because we live in America, and the Iowa electorate is a very intensely conservative Christian evangelical community.

Speaker 23 The very popular governor of Iowa, Kim Reynolds, just endorsed Ron DeSantis.

Speaker 24 So yeah, there's a lot of room to run.

Speaker 19 I might make another voice. I didn't see that in New York.
I might make another point.

Speaker 20 I'm laughing at you like he's salt of the earth. Like he's not

Speaker 20 like a gay libertarian from Oakland.

Speaker 20 But, like, he gets what Iowa's all about.

Speaker 19 Shut up, Tim.

Speaker 19 Just look.

Speaker 19 In the realm of population with Cedar Falls, okay?

Speaker 21 Let's not forget that in 2016, Ted Cruz beat Donald Trump in Iowa. And if Ted Cruz can beat someone in Iowa, anyone can beat him.
Fucking Donald Trump in Iowa.

Speaker 19 Yeah.

Speaker 20 Unfortunately,

Speaker 20 we're just about out of time.

Speaker 19 Before we go,

Speaker 20 let's see. Everybody feel good about their arguments.
Any final feelings?

Speaker 19 I'm going to agree. Everybody good? I don't want to say that if Donald Trump did die, I don't think it would be out.
Please.

Speaker 19 I'm just saying, if that happened, I don't think it would be out of the question that the Republican Party would still nominate John Corps

Speaker 19 from the court. Wow.
And I think the voters would go to the city. I think we would say Jr.

Speaker 19 Jr. win-win.
Hold on. Hold on.
No, no, no. If Don died, Jr., Jr.
would clearly be the favorite. If he died.
Clearly. Yeah.
Well, on that note,

Speaker 20 where we've landed at this debate is Donald Trump more powerful than death itself.

Speaker 20 Surprising to us as our final point, obviously.

Speaker 19 But

Speaker 20 Donald Trump moving sands up through the hourglass.

Speaker 20 Listen, it's time to vote.

Speaker 20 If you now believe the Republican primary is over and Trump will win, please applaud.

Speaker 20 If you believe that this is America and nothing is over till it's over,

Speaker 20 I'm prepared to tell you what happened tonight.

Speaker 19 That's why Donald Trump won in 2016. The people cannot be trusted.

Speaker 20 Because as Tim has clocked, this debate has been won by Dan and Tommy.

Speaker 19 Wow.

Speaker 19 It wasn't even close. I'm sorry.
We'll trick it. We admired Sidney Powell.

Speaker 19 We are going to challenge this.

Speaker 20 Two things that aren't dead, Donald Trump and persuasion.

Speaker 19 We'll be right back.

Speaker 19 Oh my gosh.

Speaker 3 What's poppin' listeners?

Speaker 5 I'm Lacey Mosley, host of the podcast Scam Goddess, the show that's an ode to fraud and all those who practice it. Each week, I talk with very special guests about the scammiest scammers of all time.

Speaker 8 Want to know about the fake heirs?

Speaker 9 We got them. What about a career con man?

Speaker 11 We've got them too.

Speaker 12 Guys that will wine and dine you and then steal all your coins.

Speaker 14 Oh, you know they are represented because representation matters.

Speaker 8 I'm joined by guests like Nicole Beyer, Ira Madison III, Conan O'Brien, and more.

Speaker 18 Join the congregation and listen to Scam Goddess wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 2 Did you know 39% of teen drivers admit to texting while driving? Even scarier, those who text are more likely to speed and run red lights. Shockingly, 94% 94% know it's dangerous, but do it anyway.

Speaker 2 As a parent, you can't always be in the car, but you can stay connected to their safety with Greenlight Infinity's driving reports.

Speaker 2 Monitor their driving habits, see if they're using their phone, speeding, and more. These reports provide real data for meaningful conversations about safety.

Speaker 2 Plus, with weekly updates, you can track their progress over time. Help keep your teens safe.
Sign up for Greenlight Infinity at greenlight.com/slash podcast.

Speaker 29 Think advertising on TikTok isn't for your business?

Speaker 19 Think again.

Speaker 28 With TikTok ads, we went from 250,000 downloads to over a million downloads in less than a year.

Speaker 30 I'm Eve, I'm Anam, and we're the co-founders of Alenia. Alinia Advaits is an investing app for Gen Z.
We run 50 new ads per week with three variations thanks to TikTok's Smart Plus campaigns.

Speaker 30 If you're not advertising on TikTok, you're missing out.

Speaker 19 Drive more app downloads only on TikTok.

Speaker 29 Head over to getstarted.tiktok.com/slash TikTok ads.

Speaker 21 Please welcome to the stage your representative, Mandy Landry.

Speaker 21 First, I want to apologize for having you do this interview immediately after, whatever that was.

Speaker 21 And also, this is what happens when you have a show on a Friday night in New Orleans.

Speaker 21 So I want to start, you're obviously very popular in this crowd, about...

Speaker 31 They literally just saw my face all over Uptown for six months.

Speaker 21 Well, it worked. Whatever it was, it worked.

Speaker 21 You are a progressive in a very Republican state.

Speaker 21 What is that like, and what keeps you going fighting for progressive values in this world?

Speaker 31 So, first of all, I have a unicorn district. That's what I call it.
They are fully supportive. We have the same views.

Speaker 31 And part of that reason is when I ran in 2019, I said, I'm going to run as myself. These are my views.
If the district doesn't want it, I'm going to go on with my life.

Speaker 31 And before I did that, I pulled. I knew they were progressive.
90% pro-choice, 90% gun safety, 90% legalized weed, probably 99 by now. And

Speaker 31 the more I do that and talk about that, people come out of the woodwork, especially in the rural areas. A lot of younger LGBT people.
I hear from trans members now because of last year.

Speaker 31 And I know that there are people out there who look to Devontae and me and they said, we need more of you. Keep talking.
You're giving us some hope.

Speaker 31 And this last election, they came out in force for me. Half this audience, probably.

Speaker 21 Tommy asked Devontae about this, but I'm going to ask you as well. 2023 was a great election year for Democrats all across the country.
We re-elected the governor of Kentucky.

Speaker 21 Abortion rights became part of the Constitution in Ohio, expanded the legislatures in Virginia Virginia and New Jersey. Louisiana was a very stark difference, right?

Speaker 21 With most of the statewide candidates not getting the 30%. As Tommy mentioned, we originally scheduled the show thinking it would be happening during a gubernatorial runoff.

Speaker 21 Maybe we were naive, but here we are. And what is your take on what happened in this state that makes it different from what's happening everywhere?

Speaker 21 Even in Mississippi, where we didn't win the gubernatorial race, Brandon Presley, the Democrat, outperformed expectations, came closer than previous Democrats had come.

Speaker 21 So what's happening here in Louisiana?

Speaker 31 So I think there,

Speaker 31 I think, I was thinking about this since we talked about it. I think it's a combination of national and local.

Speaker 31 National being from my point of view, being down here, the National Democratic Party just left red states for dead. Like, there's been no investment.

Speaker 31 They just kind of left us there.

Speaker 31 When I tried both times to get help from national pro-choice organizations, they're like, you're tier four. I said, well, I'm going to continue.
I'm going to be tier seven if you don't help.

Speaker 31 So, I think there's been no investment in Presley's Presley's near win might help us all. But from a local level, our state party is still run by old school people.

Speaker 31 It's a click patronage system. You have to kiss the ring.
You have to be part of the group. And they don't want people who come in through the side door like Devontae and me.

Speaker 31 They want to pick the people so they control you. And if you had told me that existed before I won, I would not have believed you.
There's a deep state here for sure. but they're getting worried.

Speaker 31 They're really getting worried because they see people like this who are so mad about it and we're growing.

Speaker 21 Abortion was the issue that drove Democratic success in 2022, drove Democratic success in 2023. It's a little more complicated here for the Democratic Party.

Speaker 21 I know it's an issue you worked on before you got into politics.

Speaker 21 Can you talk a little bit about how maybe the party has mishandled the issue and what can be done here to sort of galvanize what we know to be a pro-choice majority, not just in blue states, but in red states like Louisiana.

Speaker 31 Yeah.

Speaker 31 So, what you're describing is the larger argument in the state Democratic Party that for a while now they've said we need to go for the moderate or the conservative whites.

Speaker 31 And then some of the rest of us in cities were like, no, your progressives are energized. They want to do stuff.

Speaker 31 Those conservative white voters are gone. They're Trump voters.
The few of us or the few who remain are not going anywhere either.

Speaker 31 And it is difficult here. I mean, our new speaker of the house was one of the architects of the abortion situation here.
We were ground zero for abortion for 40 years. They tested everything here.

Speaker 31 But what we've seen since last year in polling down here is that has started to shift. Even in Louisiana, when it finally happened, people were like, oh, shit.
Like, wait a minute.

Speaker 31 If my wife is dying, I can't bring her to the hospital. They're going to tell us to wait in the parking lot, which has happened.

Speaker 31 People were horrified that there was no rape and incest exception. So we're going to be behind on that, but it is happening everywhere.

Speaker 21 And

Speaker 21 what role did

Speaker 21 the outgoing Democratic governor's position on abortion have? And do you think that dampened enthusiasm among Democrats?

Speaker 21 Am I about to get you in trouble with this?

Speaker 31 He endorsed against me in this election, which pissed off everyone in this room. Okay, we're going to get to to that.
It was very frustrating because both times he ran against horrible Republicans.

Speaker 31 And it was very, very frustrating to go all out. I mean, I volunteered for him.
Everyone in here probably helped him because he was a good person. He was smart.

Speaker 31 He was going to do Medicaid expansion, but he loved guns and hated, you know, reproductive rights. So it was very hard.
And we thought maybe he would soften over the time.

Speaker 31 He gave the impression that maybe it was going to be about a personal choice. And instead, he signed the trigger ban last year.
He did not have to sign it. It still would have become law.

Speaker 31 And the letter he put out was full of lies. And yours truly responded to it publicly.

Speaker 31 And he didn't have to do that. He could have been more compassionate about it.

Speaker 21 And you think that dampened enthusiasm among Democratic voters?

Speaker 31 I think it just made people more deflated, even like, oh, this is happening. And he can't even throw us a bone by saying it's too far.
And we knew it was happening.

Speaker 31 I still refused to believe it until the day it happened. But it was a large part of the last session.
We had

Speaker 31 another member who wanted to charge women who had an abortion with murder. And that finally woke up my colleagues and they said, oh my God, we're going to be so embarrassed if we do this.

Speaker 31 That's what they cared about.

Speaker 21 And as you mentioned, the Democratic government endorsed your opponent. You have left the Democratic Party to become an independent, come back.

Speaker 21 What is that? A couple questions on that. One,

Speaker 21 do you think perhaps it was any election where most Democrats and 93% of the vote was a good use of the Democratic governor's time to endorse your opponent?

Speaker 21 And what made you leave as an independent, become an independent, and then come back?

Speaker 31 I mean, those two questions are

Speaker 31 together, almost the same question.

Speaker 31 It was him. It was the congressman.
It was the former senator. And they had this little girl who was in the clique and wanted to join and all this money.

Speaker 31 And I was a pain in the butt and getting popular and saying things publicly. I think part of the reason he did that is I'm mouthy.
I've been responsive to him about abortion.

Speaker 31 I've talked back to him publicly about abortion. He cut pandemic unemployment a month early, a quarter billion dollars he left on the table.

Speaker 31 And it was a month before Hurricane Ida and I was part of the lawsuit that sued him. So a lot of things he did not like.

Speaker 31 And yeah, they spent their time, all of them. I mean, the congressman was on Claiborne waving signs for the 27-year-old running against me.
And because they didn't care.

Speaker 31 They already knew Sean was not going to win. Now I look back on it.
Did they know he wasn't even going to make a runoff? They just left that.

Speaker 31 He's a good man and they just left him with no help, nothing.

Speaker 21 And talk a little bit about the decision to become an independent and then come back. What brought you back?

Speaker 31 My friends and House Democratic leadership, they said, we want you to come back. We're going to help you.
And it's going to be extremely hard if you don't come back.

Speaker 31 And with House Democratic leadership, it was before session and they said, you do a lot. You like, we need you back.
I do a lot of policy. And they wanted me to come back.

Speaker 31 But leaving was similar to everything I've talked about. I mean, my party worked against me last year when I ran.
The state Democratic chair did it. She's a whole other story.

Speaker 21 Will you tell that story here?

Speaker 31 I've said it many times publicly. She's incompetent.

Speaker 19 Everyone in here is very familiar with what's been going on.

Speaker 31 Negligent, she early this year decided she might want to run for governor. And she did this weird commercial.
She didn't even say she was a Democrat. And then she shot a clay pigeon.
It was weird.

Speaker 31 She hasn't raised any money. She didn't recruit any candidates.
Although apparently she helped recruit the person who ran against me. She helped recruit a candidate who ran against.

Speaker 31 someone else she doesn't like. It's just provincial patronage politics.
But that's kind of what happened last year. And I was like, why should there was other things too? They did stuff to Devontae.

Speaker 31 Gary Chambers got screwed.

Speaker 31 Everyone here loves Gary too. There was just a lot that happened.

Speaker 31 We love Gary.

Speaker 21 Is there an effort to try to retake the party apparatus?

Speaker 21 We've seen this happen in other states around the country where there's been sort of this.

Speaker 21 atrophied establishment, ineffective party apparatus being taken over by the sort of younger activists that happened when Barack Obama was elected.

Speaker 21 A lot of people who worked for Bernie Sanders did it in other states. What's happening here?

Speaker 31 Yes, it has started and we have a lot of faith in it.

Speaker 31 After what happened to Sean, and then a lot of your liberals and progressives around the state were watching my race because there were hardly any races around the state and got mad about it and started saying, what can we do?

Speaker 31 What can we do? So our Democratic State Central Committee, which is the, I call it the legislature of the state committee of the state party.

Speaker 31 Those elections are up when our presidential primary is in March, I think. And so we'll be voting on those members.
There's two 10 to two for every house district.

Speaker 31 And and then they vote for the chair and the executive board. So there's been a lot of organizing and talking.
And

Speaker 31 people who've been around for a while say, look, four of you don't run because if the bad guys run one and we run four, you won't win.

Speaker 31 And so it's people who are having to learn campaigns in the process. And I think we'll do pretty well because we came pretty close the last chair election.

Speaker 31 But we need a lot more people organized and focused on it. And I think we can do that.
But it's going to be, this is going to be a decade of growing.

Speaker 21 You know, as Devontae said in his conversation with Tommy, like this is, we've hit rock bottom here, right? Like, that's what this election was.

Speaker 21 Talk a little bit about the path back, right? You say it's a decade, right?

Speaker 21 It's the demographics are not exactly the same, but we've seen progress in states like Georgia, where there was a decade of organizing that brought the Democratic Party back, was able to win statewide elections.

Speaker 21 A lot's changed in politics, but it wasn't that long ago that Louisiana had two Democratic senators. Yep.
Democratic coverage a long time. What do you see as the path back as long as it may be?

Speaker 21 Like, what should the obviously very enthusiastic progressives in this room hold on to for hope as we move forward here? How do we get there?

Speaker 31 Basically, what Republicans did for decades is go into some of these areas, drop $10,000 on a school board race, $40,000 on parish president in the middle of nowhere.

Speaker 31 There's towns, little towns that the mayor is the mayor of 500 people.

Speaker 31 We saw Republicans build their bench for decades, and then those people became congressmen and governors, and they went to the Senate. We can do that.
Races are outside of, well, outside of mine.

Speaker 31 Races in Louisiana, in the rural areas, are totally cheap and affordable. And we can start doing that because there's been none so far.
We have a lot of active people who want to do more.

Speaker 31 We just don't have any sort of structure on the ground. And that is not expensive, but it takes a while.
And I think there's a lot more enthusiasm now after we saw what happened here.

Speaker 31 And we were all looking at Mississippi very closely. And that was amazing, what he did.

Speaker 21 So

Speaker 21 you mentioned the National Party has abandoned Louisiana and a lot of red states, right?

Speaker 21 And even in Mississippi, Brandon Presley, because the governor's race was quasi-competitive, at least for a while, got some assistance from the Democratic Government Association.

Speaker 21 If the DNC folks here, the Democratic money folks were here, what would you say to them just to get them to invest in Louisiana?

Speaker 31 Help us start on the ground with some of these small races. We need to start early for recruiting.
We need organizers, young people, retired people, union members.

Speaker 31 But we need to come up with a plan and we need them to help us come up with a plan. We don't have that many people here, although we have Linda Woollard in the audience, who is

Speaker 31 who is

Speaker 31 has mentored so many of us, but we need 50 Lindas to get on the ground and teach people. And I think they can provide that to us because once they teach a few few of us, we'll have a few more.

Speaker 31 And we really need to go in the far-flung areas and tell people we're here and just tell them what the elected positions even are in those areas.

Speaker 21 And it's largely about motivating the people who do not vote, right?

Speaker 19 Yeah. And we have, what do we have in the state?

Speaker 31 26, 27% who are no party. We still have some Democrats, the legacy ones that basically vote Republican, but that's a lot of it.
Our turnout is always low.

Speaker 31 We have the off-hear state elections, which from what I understand are sort of made that way or

Speaker 31 designed that way on purpose. Yeah.

Speaker 21 I hear both. It's not an accident.
It's here in Mississippi. That's a choice.

Speaker 19 Yeah. But Virginia, too, which is interesting.

Speaker 21 Just final word for the folks here. What would you say to all the people here who are maybe stung by the elections here, but want to keep fighting?

Speaker 19 Well, I have heard from half of you by now.

Speaker 31 A lot of you are interested in the DSCC, but there are other groups you can join. There's Vote, there's Step Up, there's Power Coalition, there's a lot of reproductive rights groups.

Speaker 31 Lift Louisiana is here. There are groups out there that you, but you have to dig a little.

Speaker 19 Like,

Speaker 31 there's not just going to be a show up and Habitat for Humanity and Build a House Day. You have to.

Speaker 31 research and look around and contact people and to see like where you might fit and maybe be willing to go in outside areas.

Speaker 31 This happens around the country though, and it's similar here that California, New York, and the blue states are like, why do you live down there? And I said, well, why don't you move down here?

Speaker 31 Like, we need the help.

Speaker 19 And

Speaker 21 Tim literally did.

Speaker 19 Yeah, I mean,

Speaker 19 he can stay.

Speaker 31 But that's similar here.

Speaker 31 And I understand it. You have someone who doesn't quite fit in in Rustin or Monroe, and they come down to Baton Rouge or New Orleans.

Speaker 31 And it's hard to tell that person, please stay there and change your neighborhood, but that's important too.

Speaker 21 All right. Please give it up for Manning Lantry.
Thank you so much for everything you've been doing.

Speaker 20 New Orleans, you've given us so much. That is good.
Jazz, beignets, the idea of getting drunk while also walking around.

Speaker 20 Unfortunately, the can-all-be-bangers in the Bayou State also spat out the House's new speaker and most boring-looking maniac, Mike Johnson.

Speaker 20 This week, all of us learned against our will that Johnson and his 17-year-old son are each other's so-called accountability partners.

Speaker 20 Using an app called Covenant Eyes to monitor each other's porn intake, to review what else we've learned about Louisiana's lousiest, I've assigned each of my co-hosts their own accountability partner

Speaker 20 in a game we're calling Covenant Eyes Are Watching You.

Speaker 19 Covenant Eyes, they're watching you.

Speaker 19 Perfect.

Speaker 20 Here's how it works:

Speaker 20 John and Dan are one cent of accountability partners. Tommy and Tim are another.
Each teammate must guess the other's responses to facts about Mike Johnson, but here's the twist.

Speaker 20 No matter what, they must not jack off.

Speaker 19 Okay.

Speaker 19 Oh, wow.

Speaker 20 Dan should have the whiteboard to begin.

Speaker 19 Okay.

Speaker 20 All right. Here's how this works.
It's basically a newlywed game.

Speaker 19 Deal with it.

Speaker 20 John.

Speaker 19 Yes.

Speaker 20 Which of Mike Johnson's claims about himself does Dan consider the least believable?

Speaker 19 Least believable.

Speaker 20 Dan, I'm going to read you two claims. You write the one that you believe less.

Speaker 19 Okay?

Speaker 20 Claim A, that he and his wife have no bank accounts

Speaker 20 with more than $5,000 in it.

Speaker 19 What?

Speaker 20 Even though he makes $223,000 a year and she works.

Speaker 19 And lives in Shreveport.

Speaker 19 Claim B

Speaker 20 that he can't even remember his many comments about how homosexuality should be criminalized and that he genuinely loves all people regardless of their lifestyle choices.

Speaker 20 Which claim do you find less believable? Don't make sure John can't see.

Speaker 20 Dan is writing it down.

Speaker 20 All right, John, which do you think? What do you think Dan finds less plausible?

Speaker 19 The things he said about gay people.

Speaker 20 That is correct. Correct.

Speaker 19 Bigoted claims.

Speaker 20 Bigoted claims. One point to John and I know my accountability partner.

Speaker 24 Love it.

Speaker 23 Can we hear the song one more time?

Speaker 20 In a game we're calling, Covenant Eyes are watching you.

Speaker 19 Covenant eyes, they're watching you.

Speaker 23 Can we explain the origin of that song?

Speaker 19 Here's what happened.

Speaker 20 Last night, I did what I always do when I have an important show the next day and I'm on an airplane. I had an edible and two drinks.

Speaker 20 And that's where my best ideas happen. And so I sent a note to this wonderful production team saying we should make this game called Covenant Eyes Are Watching You.

Speaker 20 And people need to sing into their iPhone, Private Eyes Are Watching You by Holland Oates, but replace the private with Covenant. Then today I received a phone call.

Speaker 20 And the phone call was, we can't do that because of copyright law. And I said, fuck that.

Speaker 19 And then

Speaker 20 Olivia and Ben, and Ari and Elijah went into a bathroom and Phoebe. And Phoebe was there.

Speaker 20 Phoebe was in the mix. And they formed a chorus.

Speaker 20 And they got on key and they got on pitch and they got on beat. And they made this beautiful work.

Speaker 21 I would just say, as a legal strategy, saying that someone warned you about a legal violation and then announcing to a crowd, fuck that. It's not a good move.

Speaker 19 We'll cut that part. We'll cut that.

Speaker 19 We'll be editing that out of the pod. No lawyers here.

Speaker 20 Hall and Oates are sending me decease and desist letters. What will I ever do if both Hall and Oates are mad at me? Will I get unbelievable?

Speaker 20 Tim and Tom. Yep.

Speaker 20 All right, Tommy, I have before me two.

Speaker 20 Tim should have the whiteboard to begin, sorry.

Speaker 20 Tommy, I have before me two god-awful Mike Johnson quotes from 2004.

Speaker 19 Okay.

Speaker 20 Which one makes Tim want to make out with his husband right in front of him?

Speaker 19 All right. Right in front of Mike? Right in front of Mike.
Okay.

Speaker 20 Which, right.

Speaker 19 Quote A. Did you write this question after the edible?

Speaker 20 This is written by a team.

Speaker 19 Quote A.

Speaker 20 Homosexual relationships are inherently unnatural, and the studies clearly show are ultimately harmful and costly for everyone.

Speaker 20 Or quote B, experts project that homosexual marriage is the dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest republic.

Speaker 19 Okay.

Speaker 23 Let me know when you're done, Tim.

Speaker 25 I'm finished.

Speaker 19 I suspect.

Speaker 23 I suspect Tyler might agree with B, so I'm gonna go with A.

Speaker 19 Oh, see, this is why this is why Tyler is actually my accountability partner.

Speaker 19 And if Tommy had my phone, it would shock the conscience.

Speaker 19 B, Dark Harbinger.

Speaker 19 Dark Harbinger, very sexy. Wow.

Speaker 20 Dan, which of the following real blog posts on the Covenant Eyes website would John be most eager to read?

Speaker 20 Post A, what does the Bible say about masturbation?

Speaker 20 Or post B, when Jesus used technology?

Speaker 20 Which is the, what's getting the click?

Speaker 21 I mean, to be honest.

Speaker 21 Offline, John would never read a blog post, but.

Speaker 20 Yeah, all right.

Speaker 20 He's still on his phone at the urinal. It's not cured quite yet.

Speaker 19 Once in a while, if there's a good tweet.

Speaker 21 I would say

Speaker 21 A masturbation.

Speaker 20 A masturbation.

Speaker 19 That's correct.

Speaker 20 That's the one John wants to know more about.

Speaker 19 The fun fact.

Speaker 20 The technology referenced in the blog post is a towel and a basin full of water. Which seems to go back to post A.

Speaker 19 What the fuck? Tim,

Speaker 20 which item on Mike Johnson's dog diaper of a resume does Tommy find most worrying? Which is more worrying?

Speaker 20 A, the time he played a leading role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election, or B, the time he tried to make Kentucky taxpayers pay for the Ark and Counter creationist theme park, including dinosaurs riding on a life-size Noah Ark?

Speaker 19 That's really hard.

Speaker 19 What does Tommy

Speaker 20 find more worrying?

Speaker 19 Okay. I know about what you find really hard.
We're accountability partners.

Speaker 20 Because they're accountability partners.

Speaker 19 What's your answer, Tim?

Speaker 20 What's your answer, Tim?

Speaker 19 My answer is A. I went with B.

Speaker 19 Wow.

Speaker 19 Hey, listen, if you think there's a fucking dinosaur. The end of democracy.
That's way worse. The end of democracy?

Speaker 23 Dinosaurs on the ark.

Speaker 20 The dinosaurs aren't in the Bible.

Speaker 19 We talked about that.

Speaker 20 Well, you know what that sound means? It's time for the lightning round.

Speaker 19 Oh, boy.

Speaker 20 I'm going to ask a question. The first team to answer correctly wins a point plus a string.
Oh, no, we're not doing that.

Speaker 21 That's it.

Speaker 20 They win a point. There is still no masturbating.

Speaker 19 Here we go.

Speaker 19 Call it out if you know it.

Speaker 20 Johnson is the least experienced House speaker in 140 years because he's only served how many terms? Three. Three.

Speaker 20 Incorrect.

Speaker 20 He's now in his fourth term. Shit.

Speaker 20 Does Mike Johnson blame abortion or the teaching of evolution for school shootings?

Speaker 19 Evolution.

Speaker 20 Abortion. You're both right.
It's both.

Speaker 20 Points in both directions. We're calling that a tie.
I have the quotes here, but who cares?

Speaker 20 What is the name of the podcast that Mike and Kelly Johnson co-host where they present thoughtful analysis of hot topics and current events from a Christian perspective?

Speaker 21 The next level.

Speaker 19 Oh, not enough people clapped for that.

Speaker 20 To my point that you should change the name of that podcast.

Speaker 19 Yeah, we really do need to change the next level.

Speaker 20 What the fuck does the next level mean?

Speaker 19 It doesn't mean a goddamn thing. Next level.

Speaker 20 I can never, I listened to it. I can never remember how to fucking find it in my own goddamn phone.

Speaker 19 Change the name.

Speaker 19 Isn't that much better? It's a super

Speaker 19 podcast. It'd be singing Hall of Notes theme.
It'd be much better. You're right.
JBL cancer.

Speaker 20 The correct answer is truth be told. Bonus point, how many episodes are there?

Speaker 19 There's like 14. Zero.

Speaker 20 They're all been erased. 69.

Speaker 19 Nice. Is that right?

Speaker 19 That's not right.

Speaker 20 What did John?

Speaker 19 It can't be true.

Speaker 20 Mike Johnson, a man who disclosed no assets on his annual financial disclosure report required of federal lawmakers, he had no bank accounts with more than $1,000 personally, and

Speaker 20 his wife have no bank accounts in total of more than $5,000. How much does he make a year?

Speaker 19 $222,000? You got it.

Speaker 19 Point to Tommy.

Speaker 24 Which unfortunately.

Speaker 19 I've been thinking about running for Congress.

Speaker 19 Which level of study

Speaker 19 four minutes ago?

Speaker 20 You got to listen. You got to listen.

Speaker 19 I got to take.

Speaker 20 For the record, he used to make $174, I believe, but made another $30,000 doing what?

Speaker 19 Becoming a speaker. No, no, no.
He got another 30. He was giving people advice in their

Speaker 19 family advice.

Speaker 20 He was teaching online courses for Liberty fucking university.

Speaker 19 He also, his wife gives people like Christian counseling. Yes, yes.
And that's another piece of income that they have.

Speaker 20 Mike Johnson's wife, Kelly, compared homosexuality to which two things on her now-removed website?

Speaker 19 Bestiality. Correct.

Speaker 19 One more.

Speaker 19 And

Speaker 20 no, incest. incest it's incest nice

Speaker 19 yeah

Speaker 19 thanks baby a way to go from the go tigers

Speaker 19 go fucking tigers

Speaker 20 good pander last question what did johnson once suggest was to blame for the fall of rome gay sex gay sex yeah it was gay sex it was gay sex some credit to the fall of rome to not only the deprivation of society and the loss of morals but also to the rampant homosexual behavior that was condoned by the Spanish.

Speaker 19 Seems like he thinks a lot about the Roman Empire and gay sex.

Speaker 20 And who doesn't? I know I do.

Speaker 19 And

Speaker 20 I got to say,

Speaker 20 man,

Speaker 20 you know, you guys, Tommy did great on the debate.

Speaker 23 Thanks.

Speaker 20 As did Dan.

Speaker 20 John and Dan won this game. Yeah, we did.
Tim, you're walking home with the, you shot the moon on the games tonight.

Speaker 20 And that's, Covenant Eyes are watching you.

Speaker 19 Covenant eyes. They're watching you.

Speaker 19 Wow, that's our show for tonight. Thank you, Devontae Lewis.
Thank you, Mandy Landry. Thanks, Tim Miller.
Thanks, Marlon.

Speaker 19 Pot Save America is a crooked media production. Our producers are Olivia Martinez and David Toledo.
Our associate producer is Faris Afari. Writing support from Hallie Kiefer.

Speaker 19 Reed Cherlin is our executive producer. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.
Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglund and Charlotte Landis.

Speaker 19 Madeline Herringer is our head of news and programming. Matt DeGroote is our head of production.
Andy Taft is our executive assistant.

Speaker 19 Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Mia Kelman, David Toles, Kirill Pelaviev, and Molly Lobel.

Speaker 19 Subscribe to Pod Save America on YouTube to catch full episodes and extra video content. Find us at youtube.com slash at PodSave America.

Speaker 19 Finally, you can join our Friends of the Pod subscription community for ad-free episodes exclusive content and a great discussion on discord plus it's a great way to get involved with vote save america sign up at crooked.com slash friends

Speaker 32 As a contractor, I don't pay for materials I don't use. So why would I pay for stuff I don't need in my mobile plan? That's why my biz plan from Verizon Business is so perfect.

Speaker 32 Now I can choose exactly what I want and I only pay for what I need.

Speaker 25 Right now, with my biz plan, get our best price.

Speaker 19 As low as $25 a line.

Speaker 25 Visit Verizon.com slash business to get started today.

Speaker 26 New lines only. Price per month with five plus lines.
Includes auto pay and pay-free billing and promotional discounts.

Speaker 26 Taxes fees, economic adjustment charge, applicable add-ons prices, and terms apply. Guarantee applies to base monthly rated and stated discounts only.
Add-on prices additional.

Speaker 26 Offers in January 5th, 2026.

Speaker 3 What's popping, listeners?

Speaker 5 I'm Lacey Mosley, host of the podcast Scam Goddess, the show that's an ode to fraud and all those who practice it. Each week, I talk with very special guests about the scammiest scammers of all time.

Speaker 8 Want to know about the fake heirs?

Speaker 9 We got them. What about a career con man?

Speaker 11 We've got them too.

Speaker 12 Guys that will wine and dine you and then steal all your coins.

Speaker 14 Oh, you know they are represented because representation matters.

Speaker 8 I'm joined by guests like Nicole Beyer, Ira Madison III, Conan O'Brien, and more.

Speaker 18 Join the congregation and listen to Scam Goddess wherever you get your podcasts.