Trump Mocks Israel, Speaker Race in Chaos

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Speaker 6 Welcome to Pod Save America.

Speaker 7 I'm John Favreau.

Speaker 8 I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

Speaker 11 On today's show, Republicans nominate Steve Scalise as Speaker, but it's still not clear he has the votes to get the job.

Speaker 15 Trump protege Kerry Lake jumps into the pivotal Arizona Senate race, and Congressman George Santos is hit with 10 more felony charges and is somehow still in Congress.

Speaker 13 But first, the biggest story in the world and in U.S.

Speaker 20 politics continues to be Israel's response to the horrific terrorist attack by Hamas.

Speaker 18 This is now a war that's so far left thousands dead, including at least 27 American citizens.

Speaker 24 There are still at least 150 hostages in Gaza.

Speaker 9 That also includes some Americans.

Speaker 16 And there's a real fear that other Middle Eastern countries could join the conflict.

Speaker 19 As usual, Tommy and Ben have been doing an outstanding job covering this for Pod Save the World. So make sure you're up to speed on that show.

Speaker 12 We're going to start the show by talking about how the war is affecting American politics.

Speaker 17 Here's President Biden during a roundtable with Jewish leaders at the White House on Wednesday, where he again offered his full support for Israel.

Speaker 36 That's why I took my kids, everyone when they turned 14 years old, one at a time, put them on a plane and took them to Dachau. I wanted them to see.

Speaker 36 that you could not not know what was going on walking through those gates. You could not fail to understand

Speaker 36 as a country what was going on.

Speaker 3 And that's a fact.

Speaker 36 It had a profound impact on my children and my grandchildren. Some thought taking a 14-year-old grandchild and not make a steak, but I took them one at a time.
I got three more to go.

Speaker 36 And folks, it's important.

Speaker 36 In the days ahead, we're going to continue to work closely with our partners in Israel and around the world.

Speaker 36 to ensure Israel has what it needs to defend its citizens and cities and to respond to these attacks. The United States has Israel's back, and I have yours as well, both at home and abroad.

Speaker 39 So the president also gave a pretty big speech on Tuesday, Address the Nation, that was widely praised by Jewish and Israeli leaders.

Speaker 19 The Israeli ambassador to the U.S. called it the most pro-Israel speech from a president in history.
How do you think most Americans will react to Biden's response so far?

Speaker 3 This is clearly, and for obvious reasons, one of those stories that happens abroad that's captured the nation's imagination. It is dominating news coverage, conversations.

Speaker 3 People are heartbroken and horrified at the images and the stories they're seeing. Obviously, our country has a very close relations with Israel, a very special relationship.

Speaker 3 As I'm sure you do, I have friends who have family who still live in Israel, people who have been called up into the reserves as part of this, who are living in fear of their lives.

Speaker 3 People are horrified by what is happening to innocent civilians in Gaza.

Speaker 3 And I think President Biden has addressed this in a way that people will appropriately see as strong, resolute, as a commander-in-chief.

Speaker 3 You're seeing both in the roundtable that we played the clip of and then the speech, you're seeing where I think Biden is at his best, which is delivering a clear, strong message as commander-in-chief and empathy and understanding for what is happening in the world.

Speaker 3 And I think his response thus far is being rightly praised.

Speaker 45 Yeah, I mean, one thing you can say for sure is it is easy to tell when Biden is delivering a speech or making remarks that he truly, deeply believes in and feels passionate about.

Speaker 18 And that I think that's been the case with almost all of his remarks since the attack.

Speaker 49 I think, you know, right now, most people in this country are seeing images and hearing horrific stories of, you know, horrific, gruesome terrorist attacks that have claimed the lives of innocent civilians, including young children and babies, and including some Americans.

Speaker 50 And

Speaker 21 I would guess that there will be overwhelming support for Biden's passionate condemnation of those attacks and

Speaker 40 for his support for the people who were attacked.

Speaker 35 Second question, do you think Biden faces any political risk by offering unconditional support for Israel at this point?

Speaker 3 Aaron Ross Powell, the way this has been discussed

Speaker 3 on Twitter, on cable, is this idea that the Democratic Party has moved left on Israel in recent years. And you do see this in polling, that there is less

Speaker 3 sort of reflexive support for Israel. But I think that that is an overly simplistic understanding of what has happened.
For

Speaker 3 most of the lives, adult lives of a lot of Democratic voters, they've only really seen Israel under Netanyahu. And it's not so much the Democrats per se have moved left, although certainly some have.

Speaker 3 It is also that the Israeli government and how they have handled Palestinians, their efforts for peace, have moved to the right, and that there is much more open criticism of that, both among voters and certainly among elected Democrats.

Speaker 3 There is no doubt in my mind that President Biden is deeply concerned about civilian casualties in Gaza from innocent Palestinians who do not support Hamas.

Speaker 3 do not support certainly what Hamas did over the weekend and would leave if they could, but they can't.

Speaker 3 he's made a decision, the best way to influence Israeli conduct is not to publicly or even privately pressure Bibi himself. It's to do it through other channels in the government.

Speaker 3 There may be a point in time in the coming days and weeks where President Biden will be under pressure to say something publicly about how Israel is responding in Gaza. We are not at that point yet.

Speaker 3 And so we'll have to see what happens then. But as of right now, I think he's approaching this in a way that

Speaker 3 sounds right and feels right to most people, but there are certainly risks down the line.

Speaker 12 Yeah, I mean, the poll you said, it's a pew poll from March.

Speaker 18 It's been going around.

Speaker 34 Democratic voters said their sympathies in the Middle East lie more with the Palestinians than the Israelis, 49% to 38%.

Speaker 20 But again, that was in March, and that was before this horrific terrorist attack.

Speaker 17 I would not expect to see the same

Speaker 46 polling results

Speaker 23 today.

Speaker 46 But then, of course, who knows, a week from now, a month from now, six months from now, I do think one thing that we have learned in this country from the aftermath of 9-11 is that what's most important and often difficult to do is to go after terrorists and terrorist organizations like Hamas without making policy decisions that lead to more war, death, and suffering.

Speaker 34 for everyone involved.

Speaker 45 And I think if several weeks from now we're seeing more Palestinian deaths, more Israeli deaths, a war that has spread to other Middle Eastern countries.

Speaker 34 The political dynamics could change very quickly.

Speaker 49 But, you know, as you said, Biden has made the decision, and there's some reporting on this in Playbook today, that, you know, back in the last Israel-Gaza conflict in 2021, Biden's view then was that only by unequivocally backing Israel did he have any chance of influencing Netanyahu if the conflict escalated to a point that the American president needed to urge restraint.

Speaker 33 And so it seems like he's doing that again now.

Speaker 50 And he did, you know, on Wednesday at that same event,

Speaker 45 he said that he told Bibi: quote, with all the anger and frustration, it is important that Israel operates in Gaza according to the rules of war.

Speaker 19 And I think that is very important to emphasize first and foremost for moral reasons, but also because not following the rules of war is one way that a justified response devolves into a larger war that leads to a lot more people dying, Palestinians, Israelis, and

Speaker 23 maybe a lot of other people.

Speaker 17 So it is something to keep in mind.

Speaker 19 One group of Americans, decidedly unimpressed with Biden's response, Republican politicians.

Speaker 9 As always, they seem to be competing to see who can make the most unhinged comments about the president.

Speaker 28 And leading the pack right now is self-professed, nice guy Tim Scott, the guy who says conservatives are, quote, starved for hope.

Speaker 46 Let's listen.

Speaker 54 So while Hamas carried out these attacks, Joe Biden

Speaker 2 has blood on his hands.

Speaker 54 His weakness invited the attack. His cash giveaways to Iran helped fund terrorism.
And after the attack, his administration suggested that Israel just stand down.

Speaker 33 I don't know.

Speaker 30 I think Lovett's got to start writing better speeches for his favorite candidate.

Speaker 16 That was Tim Scott's second comment about this, second set of comments about this.

Speaker 27 So he did a first set of comments, which no one remembers because he didn't say something completely fucking crazy.

Speaker 19 And he's like, oh, I got to up the crazy so that I can get more attention.

Speaker 18 And there it is.

Speaker 17 You know, so now he's accusing Joe Biden of having blood on his hands.

Speaker 19 What is going on there?

Speaker 17 And do you think anyone believes that shit who doesn't already despise Joe Biden?

Speaker 3 No one believes that who doesn't despise Joe Biden. And Tim Scott's not trying to appeal to anyone who doesn't despise Joe Biden.
Tim Scott's problem is he is losing. And he is losing badly.

Speaker 3 And he's not in in one of these situations, a little bit like Nikki Haley, where voters just aren't seeing him.

Speaker 3 Tim Scott has a bunch of billionaires like Larry Ellison who are pouring tens of million dollars of money into ads for his campaign through a super PAC.

Speaker 3 He's had as many ads, if not more, run on his behalf than any other person running, including Donald Trump. And voters aren't buying what he's selling.

Speaker 3 So he's decided to make a desperate ploy to go from being the nice guy anti-Trump to being just a low-rent version of Trump. It's,

Speaker 3 I have no concerns about this on for politically for Joe Biden. Everyone watches, you can just see how Tim Scott even read the lines.
Like he didn't believe them.

Speaker 3 It was just pure, like he practiced them in a mirror to try to sound like someone who thought they might sound sincere.

Speaker 3 It's totally ridiculous, totally embarrassing, and pretty gross on Tim Scott's behalf.

Speaker 28 Very gross.

Speaker 26 It's just, it's like, you know better, and you're just, you're doing this because you're 50 points down to a guy that you're too chicken shit to attack, that you're actually running against in the primary.

Speaker 19 So you're out there saying something like you have a right-wing government in Israel, the place that was attacked, praising Joe Biden,

Speaker 33 but an American politician, a right-wing politician in America, is saying that Joe Biden has blood on his hands.

Speaker 56 Like, it's fucking absurd.

Speaker 34 So, speaking of the guy who's 50 points ahead, Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, and a few others have moved on to another line of attack.

Speaker 19 I'm pretty sure I jokingly predicted this on our text chain, and then it actually happened.

Speaker 59 Let's listen.

Speaker 60 Instead of keeping terrorists and terrorist sympathizers out of America, the Biden administration is inviting them in. You know why? Because he's got a boss.
Who's his boss? Barack Hussein, Obama.

Speaker 61 Do you think our enemies, knowing that we have an open border, are not taking advantage of that?

Speaker 61 There's going to be a terrorist attack in this country that we're going to be able to trace back to the southern border.

Speaker 52 On one hand, it seems like it'd be a bit of a challenge for Hamas to hop on a plane from Gaza to Mexico.

Speaker 18 I'm not sure if they have direct flights right now.

Speaker 29 But on the other, there are plenty of polls that consistently show that Biden's weakest approval ratings are on immigration and border issues.

Speaker 19 Even some Democratic governors and mayors have been criticizing him recently.

Speaker 26 So does this attack worry you or is it just too nutty to stick and too many too many steps?

Speaker 3 Your prediction that this would happen was so good because it had already happened.

Speaker 3 Because that morning, I accidentally stumbled on meet the press while trying to find the London football game and I saw Mickey Haley make this exact attack.

Speaker 3 And it took me back to 2014 when Tom Cotton was running for the Senate and he said that ISIS was going to cross the border during a previous surge in migrant crossings of the border.

Speaker 3 This is...

Speaker 3 Republicans can't help themselves here.

Speaker 3 There is a very legitimate political vulnerability around border issues and immigration, for sure.

Speaker 3 It seems they've done a very good job of weaponizing it, making it seem worse than it is, taking the worst parts of it. They even attacked Joe Biden for when he does a good job.

Speaker 3 You constantly see them tweeting out, you know, X number of kilos of fentanyl were caught at the border today. It's like, yes, that's the point.

Speaker 3 They caught the people or X number of people detained at the border. Yes, they got them.
And,

Speaker 3 but this is, once again, a bunch of people who are trying to, they're not trying to appeal to swing voters or Democrats or anyone else.

Speaker 3 They're trying to show how ridiculous or MAGA-friendly they are to MAGA voters.

Speaker 19 Yeah, like I don't, I don't, I don't think many people are dumb enough to think Hamas is coming over the border, but people aren't happy with the situation at the border.

Speaker 20 It could make them think that some people crossing the border may want to cause us harm, right?

Speaker 50 But

Speaker 18 the idea that, you know, there's like civilians in Gaza Strip right now are struggling to get out.

Speaker 19 They can't get out. They can't escape.

Speaker 23 But like, yeah, Hamas is getting on planes and they're going to Mexico.

Speaker 11 It's just fucking absurd.

Speaker 32 And it's, again, it's crass and it's just, it's another example of Republican politicians taking a crisis and just trying to figure out what political opportunity

Speaker 48 they can, what political advantage they can get out of the crisis by attacking Joe Biden.

Speaker 62 So pretty gross.

Speaker 19 Donald Trump, who is always as shrewd as he is thoughtful in these situations, gave a speech in West Palm Beach yesterday that may have created a bit of a problem for him among supporters of Israel and his fellow Republicans.

Speaker 34 Let's listen.

Speaker 60 But Hezbollah, they're very smart. And they have a national defense minister or somebody saying, I hope Hezbollah doesn't attack us from the north.
So the following morning they attacked.

Speaker 60 They might not have been doing it, but if you listen to this jerk,

Speaker 60 you would attack from the north because he said that's our weak spot. I'll never forget that B.B., Net, and Yahoo let us down.
That was a very terrible thing. I will say that.

Speaker 60 And so when I see sometimes the intelligence, you talk about the intelligence or you talk about some of the things that went wrong over the last week.

Speaker 60 They've got to straighten it out because they're fighting potentially a very big force. They're fighting potentially Iran.

Speaker 60 And when they have

Speaker 60 people saying the wrong things, everything they say is being digested by these people because they're vicious and they're smart.

Speaker 62 So Ron DeSantis, remember him?

Speaker 23 He's

Speaker 23 still around.

Speaker 34 Barely.

Speaker 16 He immediately tweeted that Trump's comments were absurd.

Speaker 34 Hate to say it, agree with Ron DeSantis.

Speaker 63 What was going on there?

Speaker 13 What was Trump thinking?

Speaker 63 Like, where did that come from?

Speaker 10 Is that just like him being a pundit? Him just freelancing, him just trying to take credit for everything.

Speaker 19 Because he also was talking about, yeah, when BB let us down and

Speaker 41 they killed the

Speaker 42 IRGC guy,

Speaker 18 Solimani,

Speaker 33 and uh, and he's like, I got it done, and then Bibi tried to take credit for it, but it's just like,

Speaker 55 like, what was he doing? What was that?

Speaker 3 You asking after playing at Trump Clip, what was he thinking? It's such a funny way to do it.

Speaker 3 Of course, like, he was thinking about,

Speaker 55 but like, you think in a situation like this, he's like, all right, I'm going to follow the other Republican play.

Speaker 47 Like, there's a playbook out there that the party is using, right?

Speaker 66 Joe Biden has blood on his hands.

Speaker 40 We all love Israel.

Speaker 47 right?

Speaker 8 Like there's even if he was being crass and

Speaker 16 it would be an easy playbook to follow.

Speaker 28 Instead,

Speaker 57 he's just got to insert himself in there and be like, you know what, Bibi, I had some problems.

Speaker 52 I'm much stronger, much stronger with Iran.

Speaker 34 You wouldn't believe how strong I am.

Speaker 3 We have talked in recent months on this podcast about how Trump has been more disciplined. You see him reading the prompter more.

Speaker 3 He's clearly being prepped for his interviews, particularly the ones with mainstream media in ways in which he never was at any previous point in his political career. This is not one of those times.

Speaker 3 This is where he has defaulted back to cable news viewer candidate. He's just, he saw that he saw some clip from the Israeli minister online.

Speaker 3 Maybe he heard someone talk about it and he just decided to start open his mouth and let it all come out without any.

Speaker 3 He's just telling you what's on his mind, just telling you what he's thinking. He hasn't really formulated the thoughts yet.

Speaker 67 He's obviously... I'll tell you, it gives me, it gives me a little hope.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it is honestly one of the more hopeful moments we've had as it comes to the 2024 election is that he has not changed that much. And he still will,

Speaker 3 in high-leverage moments, moments, default to being the general Dunderhead candidate that he is.

Speaker 19 I mean, I know this is a bit of a tired and unproductive game, but imagine if it was a problem.

Speaker 65 Let's play it.

Speaker 62 But imagine if Joe Biden in the last week had said in a speech that Bibi let him down, the Israeli defense minister is a jerk, Hezbollah is smart, and Israel needs to strengthen themselves up.

Speaker 14 Imagine that.

Speaker 8 Also, like last month, last month, during Rosh Hashanah, Trump said that Jewish Americans who didn't support him, quote, voted to destroy America and Israel, which was not the first time that he had peddled the dual loyalty trope in his career.

Speaker 13 He had dinner with Nick Fuentes, the white nationalist, neo-Nazi, anti-Semitic fucking goon who just said over the weekend that Israel's intelligence failure was suspicious in light of how Bibi's government would benefit politically from the attack.

Speaker 18 That was Trump's dinner date.

Speaker 3 I mean, I just, you're right. It's an unproductive game, but it has to be said all the time.

Speaker 3 I don't under, I don't really, I guess we could do some sort of exegesis of modern media culture, but it's mind-boggling that Trump's comments are not, they are a bigger deal in Israel than they are in the United States.

Speaker 3 And understandably, I understand why people in Israel will be upset at Donald Trump attacking Israel at this moment, but Donald Trump's trying to be president of the United States.

Speaker 3 He's leading the Republican. He's the leader of the Republican primary.
He's up by 50 points.

Speaker 3 He makes absurd comments that if they had come from a, which we will get to in a second, from a member of Congress in the Democratic caucus

Speaker 3 are treated as a bigger deal than Donald Trump saying it. We're just like, ha, ha, ha, what a knucklehead.
Who cares? And it's part of a pattern of behavior.

Speaker 3 It's a demonstration of how he's unfit for office.

Speaker 3 It does speak to an asymmetry in the media environment that Democrats do not have the capacity and maybe the willingness to lift these things up and make Republicans respond to them.

Speaker 48 I mean, it's

Speaker 46 fucking wild.

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Speaker 18 All right, so as you were just alluding to, there's also this Axios headline that seems like it was designed to trigger just about everyone. Squad comments on Hamas reignite Dems-Israel tensions.

Speaker 19 So this is a story about how some of the most progressive House Democrats initially reacted to the Hamas attack, especially Corey Bush, who called for ending U.S.

Speaker 19 aid to Israel, and Rashida Tlaib, who declined to criticize Hamas and blamed, quote, the apartheid system that creates the dehumanizing conditions that can lead to resistance.

Speaker 43 When White House Press Secretary Corinne John Pierre was asked about these comments, she called them, quote, wrong, repugnant, and disgraceful.

Speaker 30 And now now Republicans are hammering every Democrat who hasn't condemned these comments.

Speaker 41 What's your take on this

Speaker 52 drama?

Speaker 3 That you and I have made a series of very poor life choices that require us to A, read that story and then B, sit in front of a microphone and talk about it.

Speaker 51 Yeah,

Speaker 6 that's our decision.

Speaker 77 The lack of foresight there on our part.

Speaker 3 It is an example of how the political media culture, in the most consequential, important moments, drags us to the least consequential, consequential, least important parts of any one story.

Speaker 3 A small percentage of Democrats said something that a lot of Democrats disagree with, and now every other Democrat has to publicly come out and condemn that. To what end? What does that accomplish?

Speaker 3 What is the politics of that? As we were saying earlier, why aren't Republicans forced to condemn what Donald Trump has said? Like, why are Republicans forced to?

Speaker 3 Imagine, let's just take an example here. Imagine if during the Democratic primary,

Speaker 3 Eric Swalwell or Julian Castro or some other person who was not going to win the primary said Donald Trump had blood on his hands for an attack against Israel. Every single Democrat would have to.

Speaker 3 Every single Democrat would have to condemn that. And that did not happen here.

Speaker 3 And Republicans, with some enabling of the media, are putting Democrats in a position where the focus is on our division instead of the fact that 98% or 99% of Democrats are unified in what the response should be in their comments in support of Israel.

Speaker 3 And we're worrying about the statements of a small handful of Democrats, which

Speaker 3 just it makes no sense. It's just not, it's annoying.

Speaker 16 Yeah, I mean, look, it's the incentive structure for Republican politicians, it's who they are.

Speaker 41 It's but it's also

Speaker 18 the media environment, it's social media.

Speaker 49 A little preview, you know, of offline this week.

Speaker 33 Max and I are going to be talking about this, but like we have all been hit with the most extreme, or dumbest, or most inappropriate

Speaker 30 comments, or conspiracies, or lies from all over over the place over the last week if you are trying to follow along on social media.

Speaker 48 And then, of course, things from social media can jump to cable, and then they can actually, you know, affect actual politician statements and responses.

Speaker 19 And so it's a complete fucking mess.

Speaker 16 I mean, look, I think to the to the statements themselves, like, I think it is entirely valid.

Speaker 15 to criticize the Israeli government, to urge restraint, to call for peace, to express sympathy for Palestinians and concern for the loss of life on both sides.

Speaker 19 But I also think you can only do those things if you start with a clear and unequivocal statement that places the blame for these attacks on the Hamas terrorists who committed them.

Speaker 17 And I also think the reason that you have to do that is not necessarily just like performative or political.

Speaker 27 It's because you can't let people think that you might believe that terrorism is a legitimate or even understandable form of resistance.

Speaker 26 Israeli occupation of Gaza does not justify or even explain someone deciding to murder children and babies, even though that occupation has led to suffering and death.

Speaker 15 And if you release a statement that isn't crystal clear on that point, it's not just that you're going to be criticized or shamed or whatever.

Speaker 27 You will lose the ability to have your more legitimate criticisms heard by people.

Speaker 6 And I think that is the problem.

Speaker 47 And look, you know, AOC, who's also been very critical of the Israeli government, she did it right.

Speaker 19 Like she released a statement that said, I condemn Hamas's attack in the strongest possible terms.

Speaker 19 No child and family should ever endure this kind of violence and fear, and this violence will not solve the ongoing oppression and occupation in the region.

Speaker 47 There you go.

Speaker 51 You did it.

Speaker 29 Look, like you said, it is a couple Democrats in Congress.

Speaker 18 It's also been like a lot of student organizations and a lot of other organizations here and there.

Speaker 33 And again, it gets blown way out of proportion because we do not know how many people these organizations actually represent.

Speaker 26 They are kids oftentimes being dumb.

Speaker 18 And so it gets blown out of proportion.

Speaker 43 And the whole left gets painted like this.

Speaker 50 But if you're someone who wants to persuade people about what you believe is terrible policy by a terrible government in Israel, then

Speaker 20 you have to at least condemn terrorist attacks when they happen.

Speaker 3 I mean, you're exactly right that you have to be able to hold several independent but related ideas in your head at the same time.

Speaker 3 That what Hamas did was horrendous, inhumane, inexcusable, and a response is 100% necessary.

Speaker 3 You also can believe and should believe correctly, I think, that the Netanyahu government's policy in Gaza and the West Bank is

Speaker 3 substantively wrong, morally wrong, has made the situation worse, but does not

Speaker 3 in no way explain, justify what happened. And also believe that the Israel government should do everything they possibly can to avoid civilian casualties in their response.

Speaker 3 All of those things can be true at the same time and understand that. What bothers me about this is that we are defaulting again.

Speaker 3 to this sort of post-9-11 Iraq war performative politics of we're going to take the comments of a small handful of people, either a couple members of Congress, student organizations, and we are going to use them as an avatar for the entire Democratic Party, the entire left, the entire world of people who have real substantive moral criticisms of how the Israeli government under Netanyahu was conducted itself.

Speaker 3 And, you know, I was trying to, I was talking to some people over the weekend who were not involved in politics in those days about the, you know, Congress renaming

Speaker 3 French fries, freedom fries, because we were mad at France.

Speaker 3 The fact that the Dixie chicks got essentially cancel cultured out of American life, couldn't perform in public because they were critical of Bush.

Speaker 3 I worked for a Democratic politician who criticized Bush while Bush was abroad after 9-11 and was basically destroyed at home politically. And that part is

Speaker 3 there is a very real conversation about. policy here, the response here, what happens next.
And we're focusing on the least relevant parts of it.

Speaker 3 The amount of time and energy dedicated to a small handful of statements from a small handful of students representing a small handful of student associations is so counterproductive and dumb against what is a very real ongoing tragedy with huge implications for the region and the world.

Speaker 79 Yeah.

Speaker 35 I just, it's, it is the fucked up world, political environment, media environment we live in.

Speaker 52 And so for those of us who, you know, condemn the attacks, but also want a lasting peace in the Middle East and

Speaker 18 believe that there should be a two-state solution and all the other things that we all believe, like it is incumbent upon all of us who are working towards that future to be as disciplined as possible in our statements,

Speaker 57 knowing that the world is as fucked up as you say it is and that that's out there.

Speaker 18 You know, it's just, I don't, and I, and I think that's a lesson for like a lot of student activists too, that if you're like part of resistance and part of activism is some measure of discipline in what you say and how you say it.

Speaker 19 And that's not just performative, but it's to make sure that you retain the moral authority to fight for the cause that you believe is just.

Speaker 3 Your goal is to persuade, not perform.

Speaker 22 That's right.

Speaker 51 All right.

Speaker 15 Believe it or not, Republicans found the time to focus on other issues this week, especially in the House.

Speaker 27 In a behind closed doors, secret ballot vote on Wednesday.

Speaker 19 Steve Scalise won the nomination to be Speaker of the House, edging out Jim Jordan 113 to 99. But that's just Republicans.

Speaker 15 As we know, you need a majority of all House members to become Speaker.

Speaker 53 All the Democrats will vote for Hakeem Jeffries, which means Republicans can only afford to lose a few votes.

Speaker 19 Exact number, depending on who's in attendance.

Speaker 26 And already, some of the party's biggest attention seekers are saying they intend to vote for Jim Jordan on the floor.

Speaker 31 Let's listen.

Speaker 80 I'm not supporting Steve Scalise. I'll be voting for Jim Jordan.
Unfortunately, Steve is going through

Speaker 80 a cancer battle of his own. And, you know, I like Steve Scalise a lot.
And I like him so much. I would like to see him put his full efforts into defeating that.

Speaker 81 I plan on voting for Jim Jordan on the floor. I personally cannot, in good conscience, vote for someone who attended a white supremac conference and compared himself to David Duke.

Speaker 18 So that was Marjorie Taylor Greene saying you can't have cancer and be speaker.

Speaker 3 No, she just loves him so much.

Speaker 18 She loves him so much that she wants him to

Speaker 18 all his energy on fighting cancer and not being speaker.

Speaker 47 It's really classy.

Speaker 18 And then Nancy Mace, who's just

Speaker 26 really trying to get attention every way she can, wearing an A on her shirt because she's like a scarlet letter the other day because she said she's been silenced, which is funny because

Speaker 18 everywhere you look, there's a lot of Nancy Mace.

Speaker 38 Also,

Speaker 3 she should read the book.

Speaker 37 Maybe not the method she's coming for.

Speaker 16 So as of this recording, Scalise doesn't have the votes.

Speaker 27 There's still no speaker.

Speaker 31 It's not clear what the holdouts actually want.

Speaker 40 Punch Bowl estimates that Scalise needs 107 more votes and that there are probably 20 to 30 never Scalise votes.

Speaker 15 We used to have Never McCarthy.

Speaker 26 Now we got Never Scalese.

Speaker 67 Though I got Matt Gates is for him.

Speaker 62 Matt Gates was out there saying, long live Speaker Scalise.

Speaker 16 So they got Gates on board, but now they've lost a whole bunch of others.

Speaker 63 What the hell is wrong with these people?

Speaker 57 And how do you think this gets resolved?

Speaker 21 Like, what is this?

Speaker 3 I have no idea how it gets resolved.

Speaker 3 I thought yesterday when we were working on the outline after Scalise won the nomination and then Jim Jordan came out and said that he was going to vote for Scalise and he offered to give the nominating speech.

Speaker 3 I thought we were on the glide path to Scalise becoming Speaker, the Republicans just realizing.

Speaker 3 They don't have the energy to go through what they went through both in January and then last week with a thousand votes to try to get to 217 217 and not getting there, they would all just go with the path of least resistance.

Speaker 3 But alas, these people remain poorly acquainted with their own self-interest.

Speaker 3 And there's no idea how this, there is, you know, Dave Wasserman of Click Political Report tweeted something that made a lot of sense to me. He says, there may be no Republican who can get 217.

Speaker 3 And the most interesting thing I've seen, and this is obviously going to change a thousand times after we've published this podcast, but.

Speaker 3 is that there are some Republicans are thinking about how they can give Speaker pro tempore Patrick McHenry, who's just sitting there in the seat holding the gavel and just kicking Democrats out of their offices, how they can give him more power so the House can start operating without having as a temporary fill-in, which may be the only thing they can do in the short term because it doesn't seem like Steve Scalise is getting there.

Speaker 3 The worm seems to have turned against him. Jim Jordan Klee doesn't have the votes.

Speaker 50 Again, I know

Speaker 18 this is fantasy politics in this day and age, but give it to me, Sorkin.

Speaker 47 There's also, yeah, there's also some reports.

Speaker 12 Hakeem Jeffries has been very clear that he's looking for ways to work with Republicans to elect a Republican speaker if they are willing to work with Democrats on a few issues, raising the threshold for the motion to vacate, a plan to fund the government beyond November 17th so we don't have a government shutdown, promise to bring legislation to the floor providing aid to Israel and Ukraine.

Speaker 18 Of course, Republicans are not taking Jeffries up on this yet, though there's been some scuttlebutt that like maybe some moderate, more moderate Republicans, if this floor fight now goes on forever, we go with another 15 votes or 17 votes or 100 votes on the floor and everyone's screaming on TV all day, maybe some Republicans will be like, Yeah, let's give the Democrats some wins so that we can have a functioning house and still have a Republican speaker.

Speaker 43 I will not be holding my breath for that, but that is

Speaker 13 they could do that, right?

Speaker 62 If you were if you wanna if you wanna have a be a responsible governing party, you're all out there screaming at the TV about how it's embarrassing and the world is watching.

Speaker 41 This is what the Ayatollah wants.

Speaker 31 I heard that from, I think, Mike McCall at the Foreign Relations Committee.

Speaker 65 As in Punchbowl Reader of the Ayatollah.

Speaker 62 Yeah, no, Hamas, this is what Hamas wants.

Speaker 62 They're watching cable.

Speaker 28 They're seeing Nancy Mace and they're cheering.

Speaker 8 Here's the thing.

Speaker 33 Of course, this was not going to be resolved behind closed doors among Republicans because there were no television cameras there.

Speaker 57 The whole thing now is about getting attention.

Speaker 63 These people want to have a floor fight.

Speaker 17 They want to have roadblocked coverage of them all yelling on the floor of the house and talking about why Steve Scalise sucks because he's, you know, establishment and a rhino and all the bullshit.

Speaker 34 And then they're going to talk about how great Jim Jordan is.

Speaker 19 And then they can all get on TV and that gets them grassroots fundraising and that gets them more fame.

Speaker 18 And that's why Nancy Mace is on like every side of every issue.

Speaker 52 You know, she's attacking her party on their abortion stance, but then she's with Jim Jordan.

Speaker 26 She's on Steve Bannon's podcast, even though she voted to hold Steve Bannon in contempt of Congress and sent him to jail.

Speaker 55 Like, it's the whole thing is fucking nuts.

Speaker 66 There's no ideology.

Speaker 79 There's no nothing at this party.

Speaker 10 They're just attention-seeking.

Speaker 12 Fucking, it's, it's wild. I don't know.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, what is happening here is the direct result of a Republican party that is incapable of governing.

Speaker 3 If you hate government and your reason for existence as a political entity, the only thing that patches over all of your various ideological disputes is a desire to destroy government at every level.

Speaker 3 This is what you end up with. It's how you end up with Donald Trump as your president.
It's how you end up without a speaker. It's how you end up with debt ceiling crisis, shutdowns.

Speaker 3 It's frankly how you end up with George Bush in Iraq and Katrina. It is an argument about why Republicans cannot be allowed near the levers of power for the rest of time.
Like this, this is it.

Speaker 3 This is what a Trump administration will be like again. This is what a Republican Senate will be like.
This is the Republican Party. This is who they are.
This is what they do.

Speaker 3 And it is dangerously dysfunctional.

Speaker 18 And it is just, it is a, it is a desperation for fame at any cost, right? And it's like these people would either, they'd be fine being on a reality television show,

Speaker 27 an influencer, or a job in politics, because then they can maybe get a, get a show on Fox, or they can go do a couple of cable hits while they have a nice office in Congress.

Speaker 15 That's all they want.

Speaker 35 That is all they want.

Speaker 78 And guess what?

Speaker 19 And one of them, one of them who went that route became president of the United States and is still their fucking, you know, cult leader.

Speaker 3 I think it's actually a little different than just a desire for fame,

Speaker 3 pure, you know, fame full stop. It is that they understand, and Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert and frankly Donald Trump have shown them that attention is power.

Speaker 3 You don't have influenced Republican Party be able to raise online money by rising to be the ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee. It's by being a MAGA media superstar.

Speaker 9 Yeah.

Speaker 18 Well, some of them certainly want power, but some of them, because, you know, like Steve Scalise is called in the holdouts and he's like, What do you want? What can I give you for your vote?

Speaker 18 And they're like, Nothing.

Speaker 14 I just don't like you.

Speaker 78 I just want to yell about you on TV.

Speaker 4 It doesn't seem likable.

Speaker 59 It's not like they're like, I have this secret legislation that's going to hurt people that I want you to pass.

Speaker 34 They're just like, well, I don't know. I just, I don't know.
I want to get more airtime.

Speaker 72 When you fill up with Philips 66 and Conoco, you're ready to go ice skating and see if you still got it.

Speaker 74 And you're ready to go holiday shopping on the day with the biggest deals.

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Speaker 75 And go.

Speaker 76 Spread some cheer and try not to sound totally tone deaf.

Speaker 75 Go here, go there, go anywhere with Philips66 and Conoco.

Speaker 69 Hi, I'm Chef Franklin Becker. You know the jingle.
Now discover the facts about Ozempic, a GLP-1. There's only one FDA-approved Ozempic made by Novo Nordisk.
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Speaker 70 Talk to your healthcare professional today.

Speaker 71 Call 1-833-OZEMPIC or visit ozempic.com to view the medication guide and to learn more about Ozempic. Semaglatide injection: 0.5 milligram, 1 milligram, and 2 milligrams.

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Speaker 19 Let's turn to the Senate, which Republicans are trying their hardest to fill with as many kooks as the House.

Speaker 31 Starting with Arizona's most telegenic election denier and self-described MAGA mama bear Carrie Lake, the former news anchor who lost her bid for governor in 2022, officially launched her 2024 Senate campaign this week, complete with an endorsement endorsement from Donald Trump.

Speaker 15 Let's listen to her a little bit from her announcement speech.

Speaker 84 Well, let me tell you, this mama bear has a whole lot of fight left in her.

Speaker 84 And I'm really tired of watching our politicians retreat. They have surrendered far too many hills.
We are on the final hill right now. And I'm not surrendering this hill.
I am not going to retreat.

Speaker 84 I'm going to stand on top of this hill with every single one of you. And I know you're by my side as I formally announce my candidacy for the United States Senate.

Speaker 47 What is the hill in the what hill?

Speaker 49 Is the hill an issue? Again,

Speaker 51 there's no real ideology here.

Speaker 18 There's no issue.

Speaker 49 She's just on a hill somewhere.

Speaker 3 It's a little more like a grassy knoll than a hill, frankly.

Speaker 32 So a lot of Republicans and Democrats, including me, thought Lake would be a tough candidate to beat in 2022.

Speaker 43 Fortunately, we were all wrong.

Speaker 16 Now that she lost, there are some Democrats who've been hoping she'd get in the race.

Speaker 47 What do you think?

Speaker 3 I think you're not giving yourself enough credit. She was a hard candidate to beat.

Speaker 13 Yeah, she was. She was.

Speaker 7 But I was like, I thought that if there was going to be a MAGA election-denying candidate that won besides him back then, I thought she'd be one of the ones at the top of the list.

Speaker 3 She came the closest. She won back.

Speaker 3 She was 610 of a percent on the same day that Mark Kelly beat Blake Masters by 6%.

Speaker 33 Blake Masters is just a historically bad candidate, which is why, and he's also running, by the way, in this race, and he's in single digits.

Speaker 3 I thought he had dropped out.

Speaker 47 He did?

Speaker 16 I just saw a poll with him at like, maybe he is.

Speaker 59 He's at like, he's like four or five percent, and she's at like 40%.

Speaker 3 I guess whether Blake Masters is running in this race is an existential question because he's not winning.

Speaker 65 So it's like, yeah, right.

Speaker 14 So what do you, what do you think about her entrance into this race?

Speaker 3 I don't think we should take her lightly.

Speaker 3 I mean, there is a reason she did better than all the other mega extremist Trump facsimile candidates in 2022. She does the Trump act better than anyone else.

Speaker 3 She is, I mean, tortured Hill metaphor aside, she has on stage charisma and appeal. She gets the entertainment part of the Trump show in ways that others don't.

Speaker 3 I would imagine, and we'll get to this in a sec, that the Democrat, that Ruben Gaga will be favored against her, but you would rather run against Blake Masters Carrie Lake.

Speaker 3 Like, she has a shot, she certainly can win the race, and we shouldn't take it for granted.

Speaker 16 Yeah, so now let's talk about the full race, assuming that she wins the primary, which is just an assumption right now, but again, she's leading by a lot in the Republican primary.

Speaker 19 Kirsten Cinema hasn't officially announced that she's running for re-election. If she does, it'll be a three-way race with Democrat Ruben Gallego and, again, most likely Carrie Lake.

Speaker 38 Do you think cinema being in the race hurts Gallego, helps Gallego, or too soon to say.

Speaker 3 All of the polling that I have seen, both public and private, shows that Gallego can win a three-way race.

Speaker 3 I think the dynamics here, as it relates to what relates with cinema, is similar to the way we're analyzing a three-way race with Robert Kennedy Jr.

Speaker 3 in it at the presidential level, which is cinema like RFK Jr. is much more liked by Republicans than Democrats.
Democrats actually hate Kirsten Cinema.

Speaker 3 She has very low appropriate ratings among Democrats. But if you think that a

Speaker 3 no labels candidate hurts Joe Biden against Trump, then you have to imagine that

Speaker 3 cinema makes life harder for Gallego because there are going to be people who don't love Gallego, don't love Democrats, but do not like Kerry Lake.

Speaker 3 So Kirsten Cinema gives them a place to go other than Gallego.

Speaker 3 So two-way race between Gallego and Kerry Lake, I imagine, is much better for Gallego, but he can still win a three-way race if Kirsten Sinema decides to run.

Speaker 3 The truth is, she has not said she's not running, but she also has done nothing to prepare for a race.

Speaker 3 She is a prodigious fundraiser when she's running, and she's done almost nothing in terms of fundraising over the last couple of cycles. So there's some indications she may not run.

Speaker 27 It's a good point about the your no-labels comparison, but there is.

Speaker 18 something different about it to me, which is, you know, first of all, we don't have a no-labels candidate yet.

Speaker 43 So that candidate could theoretically be taking votes from Biden right now.

Speaker 18 We don't know who it is. Kirsten Sinema is a known quantity and a very disliked quantity by, especially Democrats.

Speaker 19 The reason people would maybe defect from Biden

Speaker 18 versus the reasons people would defect from Gallego might be different as well.

Speaker 33 Because, you know, there's the Biden age thing seems to be people's biggest issue and his

Speaker 18 handling, he's an incumbent, handling of the economy, whatever it may be.

Speaker 52 And Gallego doesn't come to the race with any of those problems.

Speaker 40 But again, it's like it's too early to tell.

Speaker 18 You sent me this split ticket analysis on this race.

Speaker 16 Cinema's team thinks she can get 10 to 15% of Democrats, 25 to 35% of Republicans, and 60 to 70% of Independents.

Speaker 35 All three of those numbers seem pretty high.

Speaker 47 Yeah, they seem quite high.

Speaker 16 So to win the race, she'd have to, just on the Republican number,

Speaker 19 she'd have to get 600,000 people in Arizona to vote for her and Donald Trump.

Speaker 18 which also seems like a tall order.

Speaker 3 Or her and a third candidate for president.

Speaker 35 Right.

Speaker 34 Especially if like Carrie Lake is in the race, right?

Speaker 33 Like if you're a Trump voter,

Speaker 16 it's hard to imagine a Trump voter

Speaker 29 who declines to vote for Carrie Lake, but does vote for Kirsten Sinema.

Speaker 3 If you were in a three-way race, I would say Gallego is the most likely to win. Carrie Lake is the second most likely to win.
And Kirsten Sinema is a distant third in that way.

Speaker 47 I would agree with that.

Speaker 3 I also think how Kirsten Sinema runs her race has an impact on Gallego's chances.

Speaker 3 If she gets in the race and all she does is attack Gallego for being too liberal, and he's basically fighting a two-front war against Kerry Lake and Kirsten Sinema, that makes his life harder than if she is attacking equally or attacking no one.

Speaker 3 And so the conduct of the race doesn't matter.

Speaker 3 That's the same analysis I bring to RFK and Jr. in a Biden-Trump race.

Speaker 3 If he's just going to attack Joe Biden from the left on various issues, that makes life harder for Joe Biden, even if he's more popular among Republicans and Democrats.

Speaker 19 Yeah. And then it also matters, of course, what Kerry Lake does.

Speaker 18 And the New York Times piece on this said that she's, and her team are a little bit nervous, though they seem confident, but that she's, they said that she's going to be attacking Kirsten Cinema quite a bit.

Speaker 16 So if she starts attacking Kirsten Cinema as being too liberal, then it's going to be harder for Kerry.

Speaker 59 I mean, it's interesting.

Speaker 18 And it's also a case where, you know, Trump and Biden will get the lion's share of the media coverage.

Speaker 33 But in this race, because cinema is the incumbent, you can imagine all three candidates getting an equal share of the coverage.

Speaker 18 And so then it's going to be a much more even playing field in terms of like people knowing who they are.

Speaker 3 I mean, we joke all the time about three-dimensional chess, but a three-way race like that really is as close as you get to three-dimensional chess in politics because it's very complicated.

Speaker 51 Yeah.

Speaker 16 But again, huge implications because,

Speaker 16 you know, if everything goes well for Democrats and the Senate and we,

Speaker 19 you know, protect most of our incumbents, basically all of them except one.

Speaker 23 And that's an incumbent seat.

Speaker 3 That's a seat.

Speaker 43 And that's an incumbent seat. Right.

Speaker 43 Then, and

Speaker 42 cinema gets replaced with Gallego and Democrats hold the Senate.

Speaker 16 We probably,

Speaker 33 at that point, and if Democrats hold the House and Joe Biden wins, you would have the votes at least to eliminate the filibuster for passing the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and protecting abortion access.

Speaker 30 Since those are the two issues where just about all the Senate Democrats except for cinema and Manchin would be willing to remove the filibuster for.

Speaker 3 I would say there are close to zero scenarios where Democrats hold the Senate and lose Arizona.

Speaker 43 Yeah, no, I think that's right.

Speaker 23 I think that's right.

Speaker 8 All right. Few quick housekeeping notes before we move on.

Speaker 16 Halloween is around the corner, which means it's a great time to start listening to Ruined, our excellent podcast about horror films, hosted by Love It or Leave It head writer, an occasional Pod Save America game host, Hallie Kiefer, as well as her squeamish friend and co-host, Allison Leiby.

Speaker 31 Every week, the two hilariously unpack a different horror movie.

Speaker 30 And for those of you like Allison, who are too scared to watch, also like me, fear not, Hallie will ruin the movie for you.

Speaker 41 Check it out wherever you get your podcast.

Speaker 56 Also, Dan, we're headed to DC next week.

Speaker 39 How exciting.

Speaker 16 We got a live pod save America on October 19th, and we have really out-booked ourselves for this one.

Speaker 57 John Fetterman, Jose Andres, Virginia State Senate candidate, friend of the pod, Jennifer Carroll Foy, and our guest host, Simone Sanders.

Speaker 31 Also, we will be live streaming the show, so if you can't make it, you can watch from home, see where else we're heading in the next couple of months, and get your tickets at crooked.com slash events.

Speaker 62 All right, finally, we are ending with a new segment.

Speaker 35 We're calling the Crook Political Report because we're fucking dorks.

Speaker 3 Actually, if you get that, we're huge dorks for making the joke. If you get the joke, you're also a dork.

Speaker 47 You're also a dork. That's right.

Speaker 16 If you laughed, you're a dork. If you didn't, don't worry about it.

Speaker 51 You're fine.

Speaker 28 All right, Representative George Santos was hit with another 10 criminal charges this week in a superseding indictment that includes conspiracy, aggravated identity theft, wire fraud, and credit card fraud for allegedly charging $45,000 on the card of a donor without their knowledge.

Speaker 19 Tom Swazi, the Democrat who once held the seat in a district that Joe Biden won in 2020, announced this week he'll be running again.

Speaker 9 About six New York House Republicans introduced a resolution to expel Santos.

Speaker 19 Doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Nothing seems to be going anywhere in the House right now.

Speaker 33 They can't find a speaker.

Speaker 15 Certainly they're not going to move a resolution to expel George Santos.

Speaker 18 Here's a question.

Speaker 9 Why do you think Democrats haven't been able to make Republicans pay a political price for protecting a guy who even some Republicans want to expel?

Speaker 3 Well, I think we are, I'm not sure we're not making them pay a political price yet.

Speaker 3 If these six Republicans are who represent districts, Battleground districts in New York are trying to get rid of the guy, probably means there's something in their polling that shows they want to get as far away from from Santos as possible.

Speaker 3 But we can't talk about this without mentioning the indicted elephant in the room.

Speaker 3 We have our own problem, which is New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez, who got another indictment.

Speaker 13 Speaking of superseding indictments,

Speaker 62 tis the day for superseding indictments.

Speaker 13 He was just hit with one, a superseding indictment today, right before we started recording, a first for us, that charges him and his wife with conspiring to act as agents of the the Egyptian government.

Speaker 26 Dan, is that bad?

Speaker 3 I'm generally like to wait for data. I'm not going to wait for data on this one.

Speaker 3 It's a bad crime, politically, very bad. And Bob Menendez's continued presence in the Senate makes is a problem for Democrats.

Speaker 3 It makes it harder, obviously, very awkward to make the case against Republicans for keeping their indicted member in their caucus.

Speaker 3 And you know it's a problem for Democrats because every Democrat in a tough race has called on Menendez to resign. They did it almost in unison a few weeks ago when these indictments came out.

Speaker 3 And he needs to go. It is a huge problem.
He's being primaried by Andy Kim, Representative Andy Kim, maybe others, but this is,

Speaker 3 we talked, you talked about this. I wrote about it when it happened.
It is a very large political problem for Democrats. Even if...

Speaker 3 We're never going to look as bad as the guy standing by the president who, the former president with 91 indictments, it just makes it so much harder to have a conversation about it, to have moral authority to talk about it when we have our own, a person in our own caucus indicted for many of the same crimes as George Santos.

Speaker 29 I just don't get it.

Speaker 28 Like every

Speaker 34 Democrat in a competitive Senate race, plus a whole bunch of, to their credit, a whole bunch of other Senate Democrats who aren't in competitive races, who aren't running for reelection this year, have called on him to resign, with the exception of for competitive races, Joe Manchin.

Speaker 19 So these are the senators who've been asked about it, but declined to call on him to resign and said, oh, we should either let the legal process play out or that's a decision for the voters.

Speaker 18 Joe Manchin, Tim Kaine, Catherine Cortez-Masto, Ben Ray Lujan.

Speaker 14 I don't, what's Chuck Schumer doing?

Speaker 27 What's going on there?

Speaker 16 Al Franken was not charged with anything.

Speaker 18 And whether or not you believe the allegations, a bunch of Democrats came out within weeks, including Chuck Schumer, calling on him to resign. And then he did.

Speaker 19 Now we've got multiple federal indictments against Bob Menendez for, I mean, I just, just, I don't understand it.

Speaker 65 I

Speaker 3 have to imagine that all of these Senate Democrats, strictly the ones in the tough races, don't all come out within a day without Chuck Schumer's involvement in that.

Speaker 3 He obviously understands the huge political problem here. And I imagine he's also working somewhat behind the scenes to try to convince Menendez to resign.

Speaker 3 I cannot explain the rest of these people. I cannot explain.
Joe Manchin seems like a layup for him.

Speaker 3 Like, I don't even know what he's, maybe he thinks because Donald Trump with all of his indictments is up by like 40 points in the general election bulls of West Virginia that it's a pro-indictment statement.

Speaker 3 I think that's misreading the, misreading the political environment. I, I truly don't think.

Speaker 79 He's going to go out and commit a crime.

Speaker 67 Like, this is my only ticket. Yeah.

Speaker 79 This is my only chance.

Speaker 47 I got to get indicted.

Speaker 38 Also, I just want to underscore like the George Santa, the, the absurdity and just brazenness of the George Santos crime, because we talk about a lot of these charges and some of them are tough for voters to understand.

Speaker 19 Here's what George Santos has been most recently charged with.

Speaker 13 So a donor gives him his credit card, which is a don't don't don't text George Santos your credit card number.

Speaker 3 I thought he just donated to the campaign.

Speaker 26 No, he texted George Santos like, here's my credit card number so you can charge something so you can so you can I want to donate to the campaign.

Speaker 13 So George Santos takes his credit card number, racks up all these charges, including $12,000 that was transferred to George Santos' personal bank account. And then on the FEC report, it was like,

Speaker 62 where did all these donations come from?

Speaker 19 Because obviously $45,000 is not supposed to come from one person for any kind of donation.

Speaker 57 And so then George Santos made up the names of a bunch of people, and then took the names of some of his family members and said that they had all donated

Speaker 28 to just make all the donations make sense from this one donor who he just defrauded by just stealing money from him.

Speaker 3 I mean,

Speaker 3 this one donor needs one of those apps that gives you an alert when there's an unusually unusually large charge on your account.

Speaker 35 Truly wild. Truly wild.

Speaker 26 So yeah, that's what's going on with George Santos.

Speaker 15 And Spot Menendez should resign.

Speaker 26 And George Santos should resign. And Donald Trump shouldn't run for president.

Speaker 47 There you go.

Speaker 31 That's just, that's the, that's the, really, it's a difficult moral ground that I'm planting the flag on.

Speaker 3 And thus concludes the first and probably last episode of the Crook Political Report.

Speaker 63 Oh, you think it's going to be the last?

Speaker 3 Well, there'll be a lot of talking about crooks, but it may be the last time we embrace this branding.

Speaker 65 Crook Ploticore Report?

Speaker 51 Yeah, okay.

Speaker 58 Well,

Speaker 64 no one wanted to join us today, so thanks to no one for joining us this engagement.

Speaker 4 Hard to blame him, I'll be honest with you.

Speaker 58 But everyone, have a great weekend, and we will see you next week, and

Speaker 18 hopefully see some of you DC listeners at our show on October 19th.

Speaker 7 So everyone, have a great weekend. We'll talk to you next week.

Speaker 70 Bye, everyone.

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Speaker 72 When you fill up with Philip 66 and Conico, you're ready to go. Ice skating skating and see if you still got it.

Speaker 74 And you're ready to go holiday shopping on the day with the biggest deals.

Speaker 4 Nice.

Speaker 75 And go

Speaker 76 spread some cheer and try not to sound totally tone deaf.

Speaker 75 Go here, go there, go anywhere with Philips66 and Conoco.

Speaker 85 Hi, I'm Michael from the Warren Treaty. You You know the jingle.
Now discover the facts about Ozempic, a GLP-1. Only Noval Nortis makes FDA-approved Ozempic.

Speaker 43 Learn about the real thing.

Speaker 70 Talk to your healthcare professional today.

Speaker 71 Call 1-833-OZEMPIC or visit ozempic.com to view the medication guide and to learn more about Ozempic. Semaglatide injection, 0.5 milligram, 1 milligram, and 2 milligrams.