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Speaker 1 Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Fabrea.

Speaker 4 I'm John Lovett, and I never think about the Roman Empire.

Speaker 1 I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's pod, Trump gets hit from the right.
Republicans inch closer to a government shutdown.

Speaker 1 Congresswoman Alyssa Slotkin joins to talk about the politics of the UAW strike and a race for Senate. Mitt Romney says goodbye to the Senate and good writtens to the Republican Party.

Speaker 1 And local theater enthusiast Lauren Bobert apologizes for the lewd behavior that got her kicked out of Betelgeuse.

Speaker 1 What a sentence. What a sentence.
But first, Jack Smith is now asking Judge Chukin to impose a gag order on Donald Trump to protect witnesses from his attacks.

Speaker 1 But that unsurprisingly hasn't stopped the Republican frontrunner from saying all kinds of crazy shit over the last few days, including during his first network television interview since his attempted coup.

Speaker 1 What a milestone. What a milestone.

Speaker 1 In Trump's Meet the Press sit-down with new host Kristen Welker, he talked about banning abortion, pardoning insurrectionists, and his criminal charges in a way that will certainly make life more difficult for him and his lawyers.

Speaker 1 Let's listen.

Speaker 5 I mean, DeSanctus is willing to sign a five-week and six-week ban.

Speaker 6 Do you support that? You think that's a good question?

Speaker 5 I think what he did is a terrible thing and a terrible mistake. And Republicans should go out and say the following.
Because I think the Republicans speak very

Speaker 5 inarticulately about this subject.

Speaker 7 Proud Boys leader Enrique Tario was sentenced to 22 years in jail. Now that you know what the sentence is, 22 years in jail.
Will you give him a pardon?

Speaker 6 Will you give other Proud Boys a pardon?

Speaker 5 Will you pardon him? In Minneapolis, I'd certainly look at it. I'd look at that, and I'd look at all the other people that have suffered, the J6 people.

Speaker 7 Were you calling the shots, though, Mr. President, ultimately?

Speaker 5 As to whether or not I believed it was rigged? Oh, sure.

Speaker 5 It was my decision.

Speaker 7 Are you saying you needed those votes in order to win? Are you acknowledging you didn't win?

Speaker 5 I'm not acknowledging. No, I say I won the election.

Speaker 1 That's what I say. Why do you think so many legal experts are saying that Trump's comments may have made his case harder to win? What kind of trouble might he have gotten himself in there?

Speaker 1 I think they want retweets.

Speaker 1 I think part of it. That's a very good point.
Yeah. You did talk to Larry Tribe last week, though.
Reposts. Reposts.

Speaker 4 Oh, they're sorry. They're reposts.
They're what re-threads. Oh, back to your question.
Do you want to answer it? I can say two things.

Speaker 1 That's my question.

Speaker 4 No, I was putting it to answer your question. Sure, sure.

Speaker 1 Listen.

Speaker 4 The point is, people like Lawrence Tribe, Neil Katyal, are pointing out that basically one of Trump's big defenses is going to be like, my lawyers were giving me advice.

Speaker 4 He's saying I wasn't taking that advice. Then Andrew Weissman, friend of the show.

Speaker 4 So then on top of that, he says also during the interview, basically something like at 10 p.m., I said, stop counting the votes.

Speaker 4 And that's a no-no.

Speaker 1 Which he has said before, but you know, reiterating it after you've been charged. It's an election.
No, no. You're right.

Speaker 4 Look, I'm famously not a lawyer. I will say, if you go back, you look at the, like, it's clear what Trump is trying to kind of like say to her, and not in like a snide way, but in like a kind of like

Speaker 4 Smarty Pants way is,

Speaker 4 well, the thing that I thought, yeah, I was in charge of thinking that. It seems to be, if you actually look at it, what he was doing.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he's just... The other thing that's interesting is, you know, the judge is looking at whether there should be a gag order.
I'd imagine saying that I hope Mark Meadows is still loyal.

Speaker 1 Oh, I can't help. Don't forget about that.
Yeah, that was not good. And also, I think he also called Jack Smith deranged again.

Speaker 1 Because the gag order is supposed to protect, first and foremost, the witnesses, supposed to prevent the jury pool from being tainted, but it's also supposed to protect the prosecutors and the judge from attacks, which he's been leveling.

Speaker 4 There was something funny about the way Welker asked the questions.

Speaker 4 Not actually a criticism of the questions, but just it's just sort of the world we live in when people interview Trump, which is a lot of the questions were like that experiment where you put one marshmallow in front of a kid and say, if you don't eat it, you get two later.

Speaker 4 Because they're like, hey,

Speaker 4 you think Mark Meadows loyal? Hey, would you interfere with the Fed? Hey, would you tell the DOJ what to do? Come on, would you? You know, like there's like a little like,

Speaker 4 he's being tempted by the Fed.

Speaker 1 Yeah, which is where she was getting at when she got him to say, I listened to myself. It was my choice.

Speaker 1 She put the word loyal in his mouth, too. Oh, for the Mark Meadows.
Do you think he was loyal? Yes. And also, I do think, though, he's, the whole context of the remarks, right?

Speaker 1 The full set of the remarks, he's like, he basically said that she's like, oh, you listen, you called some of these people crazy, some of their theories, like Sidney Powell, like, why'd you listen to them?

Speaker 1 And he's like, well, why didn't you listen to your campaign lawyers and your White House lawyers? He's like, well, every lawyer who told me it wasn't rigged is a rhino.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he called them all rhinos. Which doesn't really, that doesn't help your defense of counsel.

Speaker 1 It doesn't seem like it does. Your advice of counsel's defense.
He also said he'd testify in the classified documents case, which he always says he's going to testify and then doesn't.

Speaker 1 He told Megan Kelly in his interview with her last week that he was allowed to steal the classified documents and that he doesn't think he had to comply with the federal subpoena.

Speaker 1 She's like, well,

Speaker 1 but you get a subpoena for the documents and then, of course, you have to. He goes, no, I don't know that's true because I had a right to have those documents, which is also not a great,

Speaker 1 not going to help his defense either.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I felt on the whole, I see the point that he's sort of, I found this all to be quite incremental. Like a lot of what he is saying is

Speaker 4 a different phrasing or reiteration of the kinds of things that were already in some of the indictment documents anyway. But yeah.

Speaker 1 The classified documents discussion is was frustrating, but interesting on Megan Kelly's show because he repeatedly says that the Presidential Record Acts governs his stealing classified documents.

Speaker 1 It absolutely doesn't. It doesn't.
It just doesn't.

Speaker 1 It's one of those things where he says it so often and he says it with such conviction and he just steamrolls over anyway that if you stop to think about it for even one second you realize how stupid and inane it is the way the law works isn't uh if you don't break one law you can't break the others you know it's all it's not like right you know it doesn't really make sense at all no sense and megan didn't push back on that at all but she was like look i was a lawyer for a very long time if you get a subpoena you have to turn over the stuff and he's like i know that i don't know that he like he contradicted himself in the same sentence because his little legal brain turned on yeah i don't i think that was very damaging because remember the defense on the subpoena is oh no no we gave you everything.

Speaker 1 What are you talking about? We didn't, it wasn't, it wasn't, oh, you sent me a subpoena and I said, fuck you, which is basically what he just said to Megan Kelly.

Speaker 4 But he said, no, because, well, he's saying I didn't have to do.

Speaker 4 What he's saying both about the, he's, I don't know if he's confusing it.

Speaker 4 Or I'm confusing it or there's no way to not confuse it, but he talks about the documents the same way he talks about the footage, which is, I didn't have to give you anything. I did it to be nice.

Speaker 4 I gave you everything you asked for, and I didn't even have to.

Speaker 1 He's sort of taking that free position. He's saying they're my documents.
I didn't didn't have to give them to you, but I gave them all to you.

Speaker 1 And I didn't try to delete the footage, but we didn't delete the footage. So everyone just be happy.
He's saying he didn't have to comply with a federal subpoena, which you just can't say. Sure, yeah.

Speaker 1 If you're

Speaker 1 if you're if you've been charged with obstruction of justice for not complying with a federal subpoena, can't say it. Well, okay.

Speaker 4 I'll tell you something. I'll tell you, for someone who can't say something, he didn't.

Speaker 1 He certainly was,

Speaker 1 but that's why he got in trouble. No, no gag order for my president.
That's why I think Jack Smith's probably pretty happy. So let's talk about the abortion comments.

Speaker 1 He certainly seemed like there and other places. He's pivoting to a general election message on abortion.

Speaker 1 Can that work for the guy who also takes credit for eliminating the constitutional right to an abortion, Tommy? I don't think so. I mean, let's just talk about the polling.

Speaker 1 So he was criticizing Ron DeSantis in the clip we heard for signing into law's six-week abortion ban. 73% of all U.S.
adults believe abortion should be allowed up to six weeks of pregnancy.

Speaker 1 56% of Republicans say abortion should be allowed in their state up to six weeks. So, this is the DeSantis position is wildly unpopular in the Republican Party.

Speaker 1 I don't think, though, that Trump is going to be able to fool anybody on abortion. He's wisely, I think, not taking the bait

Speaker 1 in the primary. But everyone knows his judges are the ones who overturned Roe versus Wade.
He brags about it in front of evangelical audiences.

Speaker 1 In the past, he said that women should be punished for getting an abortion. Like, I just don't buy that anyone's going to be fooled by this.
Yeah, he kind of

Speaker 4 of lumbers into this issue and he treats it like negotiating over the price of marble. You know, it's like six weeks is crazy, seven months is crazy.

Speaker 4 We'll get together, we'll find a number where everybody walks away happy, which is, of course,

Speaker 4 not the way this issue works. No.

Speaker 1 Well, it's in response to the polling that a lot of Republicans will hang on to forever, even though I don't really agree with this,

Speaker 1 is that, you know, if you ask people late term, right, and, you know, we've all said a million times, abortions late in pregnancy are extremely rare.

Speaker 1 Usually they're because of medical complications, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 1 But if you just poll the question without people having a base of knowledge, you'll have people say, oh, well, we don't want late term abortion.

Speaker 1 So he's heard that from Republican pollsters, and he thinks he's going to get some kind of middle position here.

Speaker 1 I worry a little bit that it could work unless Democrats constantly remind people about what Tommy just said, which is that he said that women should be punished for having abortions.

Speaker 1 And then, of course, that he's out there bragging about appointing the three justices that overturned Roe v. Wade and Dobbs.

Speaker 1 And I think that's why the Biden campaign and one of their first ads basically has him saying both of those things in an ad they have with the rest of the Republicans too.

Speaker 1 But like Democrats, Joe Biden, with ads, with speeches, have to keep hammering it because no one remembers anything in this fucking country. That's the problem.

Speaker 1 Like, I do think he, and he's trying to like, you know, it was the same thing in 2016 when he sort of danced around and tried to make himself seem moderate on LGBTQ issues, which of course he was not.

Speaker 1 Same thing on like, I'm not going to be a warmonger, right? Like, he tried. We have the collective memory of a goldfish in this country.
That is absolutely true.

Speaker 1 I just think that the people who have been turning out in record numbers at the midterms know exactly where he stands on abortion rights are not going to be fooled by this at all.

Speaker 1 And I think the challenge, you know, the thing that people are frustrated about in this interview is him saying Democrats want to abort babies after they're born, which is not a thing that ever happens in the world, or acting like late-term abortions are something that Democrats want, or it's, you know, just sort of a decision that's made by choice when in reality, you hear the specifics, and it's people are like, I had twins.

Speaker 1 One of the twins died. The other wasn't viable because their organs were growing outside of their body.
The baby would have died the minute they were born. That's why I had a late-term abortion.

Speaker 1 Like, those are, that's the reality of why these exceptions exist that people have to better understand or bit. Oh, and he, and yes, he's just, we've got to make that case because you.

Speaker 1 Of course we do. I I just think it's the easiest ad ever.
Like he bragged about all of this. He's talked about women getting punished.

Speaker 1 And I also think the people who I think the people who turned out in the midterms are turned out, especially around this issue, when it was on the ballot, when it was, it was fresh, it was in those states.

Speaker 1 Also, these were like more highly college educated people. I think those people are certainly not going to forget Trump's position on this.

Speaker 1 But you have a general electorate, people who didn't vote in the midterm, and they are. potentially pro-choice and Trump's up there in a debate with Biden or whatever and says, you know what?

Speaker 1 Yeah, we returned it to the states and now the states get to do what they will and stuff like that. Well, let's just put, I'm not going to do anything.
Let's just put this behind us.

Speaker 1 I'm not going to do anything.

Speaker 1 Like, you can just see the bullshit.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 4 This, he is benefiting from the fact that a bunch that these guys, that every other person in the field has taken an extreme and

Speaker 4 radical and deeply unpopular position on abortion. And just by dint of that, he, we should just like, if you were just paying attention, he is trying to and seeming reasonable on the issue.

Speaker 4 Across this whole interview, he is trying to seem reasonable on a number of issues. And because Ron DeSantis signed a six-week ban, because Mike Pence is calling for a national ban,

Speaker 4 he gets to sound like this. I think

Speaker 4 the part of it where he's dodging, right? He's like, oh, you know, we're going to come together and make a great deal.

Speaker 4 The reality is that if whatever, if there was a Republican Congress, they will pass a ban and Trump would sign that.

Speaker 1 Yes. And that's the Democrats just have to keep saying over and over.
And he's like, state ban, federal ban. I don't know.
We'll hear it.

Speaker 4 He won't tell. Yes,

Speaker 4 he's talking about it like he's negotiating over

Speaker 4 a price.

Speaker 1 And look, the upside of this is he's doing this and he's trying to wriggle out of this position because he knows how politically damaging it is.

Speaker 4 And because he's acting like a general election candidate. He's not afraid of any of these people.
Well, clearly. And he believes

Speaker 4 probably correctly that this will have no impact on the fact that he is winning amongst the furthest right, most religiously conservative Republicans that will vote in Iowa.

Speaker 1 Trump's been getting more criticism than usual from right-wing pundits and his Republican opponents.

Speaker 1 The DeSantis campaign just attacked him in a tweet for a long list of what they see as gaffes, including denouncing the six-week abortion ban, promising to compromise with Democrats on abortion, struggling to answer Megan Kelly's questions about, as she put it, whether a man can become a woman.

Speaker 1 And she asked him why he gave an award to Dr. Fauci right before he left office.
And the DeSantis campaign also criticized him for sounding a bit senile during his Saturday speech in D.C.

Speaker 1 Let's listen.

Speaker 5 As you know, crooked Joe Biden and the radical left thugs who have weaponized law enforcement to arrest their leading political opponent, leading by a lot, including Obama.

Speaker 5 I'll tell you what, you take a look at Obama and take a look at some of the things that he's done. This is the same thing.
The country is very divided. And we did with Obama.

Speaker 5 We won an election that everyone said couldn't be won.

Speaker 5 We have a man who is totally corrupt and the worst president in the history of our country who is cognitively impaired, in no condition to lead, and is now in charge of dealing with Russia and possible nuclear war.

Speaker 1 Just think of it.

Speaker 5 We would be

Speaker 1 in World War II very quickly.

Speaker 1 Yes, World War II.

Speaker 1 World War II.

Speaker 1 Put that in an ad. Let's get it out.
Come on. Let's get it out there.

Speaker 1 He's old, too. Enough with the issues.
Put that in an ad. Sick of the issues.

Speaker 4 Sick of them. He's a crazy old man.

Speaker 1 He's so old. He sounded like a guy who had taken a painkiller and was feeling the effects.
That's what it sounded like to me.

Speaker 4 Hey, when you're going to. You got to get some defeat and training for Tom.

Speaker 1 When you're about to launch attacks.

Speaker 1 You believe.

Speaker 1 Again, that's all you have to say. You believe.
I believe.

Speaker 1 When you're going to launch an attack on your opponent for being senile, you shouldn't sound like that. You shouldn't talk about World War II.
World War II did happen, I believe.

Speaker 1 Confuse him for Barack Obama, then confuse Hillary Clinton for Barack Obama.

Speaker 4 I would say this: look, I know we're in the middle of

Speaker 4 yet another freak out about how old Biden is, and every day it gets a little bit older, and it's a problem.

Speaker 4 But I just would like to point out that nobody is doing a better job saying that Biden isn't too old than Donald Trump.

Speaker 4 Because in that interview with Welker, he says, Welker says, is it time for a new generation? He goes, well, it's always time for a new generation.

Speaker 4 But, you know, some of the greatest world leaders have been in their 80s. I'm not anywhere very near 80, but by the way, and Biden's not too old.
I don't think Biden's too old.

Speaker 1 Put that in the ad, too. Fascinating.

Speaker 4 If he can say it, why can't you say it? Just say it.

Speaker 1 See how it feels. Speechwriters, though, having a dude there like doing some live synth, giving you vibes under your remarks.
I like what's going on there. Fantastic.

Speaker 1 It's an innovation. I want you to know the time is coming.
I would do that during the State of the Union.

Speaker 4 I have been predicting

Speaker 4 music for speeches for a long time. Sam, if you're listening to this, send me a text so I can screenshot it.

Speaker 4 Who's Sam? Who's Sam?

Speaker 1 Someone I went to college with. Uncle Sam?

Speaker 1 He's just a person. I know that guy.
I just figured you'd be. Ryan.

Speaker 1 Call me after this. Oh, that's my friend Ryan.
He's a composer.

Speaker 1 What the fuck are you talking about?

Speaker 4 What do you use this pod for? You don't use it to talk to your friends.

Speaker 1 Sometimes I use it for what?

Speaker 4 That's what I'm using it for today.

Speaker 1 Okay. Minor chords, major chords at the end.
Beautiful.

Speaker 1 I think an innovation would be during the State of the Union, an intermission between the domestic policy section and the foreign policy section. I love that idea.

Speaker 1 You just want to get a picture of it. You take this, get some popcorn, get back.
Yes, come back next. When we come back, I'll take a tour through all seven continents.

Speaker 1 You get a real bar? Do we think any of these attacks have the potential to hurt Trump in the primary?

Speaker 1 And I will say that for any of them to make any difference,

Speaker 1 probably needs to be more than a tweet from a random staffer

Speaker 1 if you're Ron DeSantis. But beyond that, do you think the message is...
Sorry, go ahead, Don. No, no, no.
I mean,

Speaker 1 my take on this is they haven't so far. And, you know, maybe now you could argue, well, it's mid-September.
People are paying more attention.

Speaker 1 The evangelicals in Iowa are waking up to the fact that Donald Trump isn't with them on the six-week abortion ban. But I think they all like Trump and they think that he will implement their agenda.

Speaker 1 And I don't know.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I think they are also, I think these other Republicans are paying for what really is going to be an advantage.

Speaker 4 You know, we were talking before the show that, like the Lauren Boebert clip, not on Fox, right?

Speaker 4 Donald Trump seeming to, well, like, if Joe Biden has a moment like that, it's all over right-wing media. Those are not the moments they take out.

Speaker 4 And I would just say, like, watching Trump with Welker, he was fucking on it. He was sharp.
He was responsive. He like, he just, he was like as strong.
Look, he's obviously fucking cuckoo.

Speaker 4 And you look at the, you look at the transcripts and you can barely make sense. But as a, as like the sharp version of him, the most sharp we've seen, it was there.
So

Speaker 1 I've been noticing this. He was better.

Speaker 1 He's been, he's been better and sharper with mainstream journalists, with Caitlin Collins during the CNN Town Hall, and now with Kristen Wilker on Meet the Press, than he's been with his pals in the right-wing media.

Speaker 1 Like he sounded like fucking nuts on the Tucker Carlson interview, and he sounded, he was really bad with Megan Kelly. Because he gets to fight them.
He gets to fight the mainstream media.

Speaker 1 And Tucker's over there being like, but again, Epstein killed himself? No? I'm trying to pin you down here. What the fuck are you talking about?

Speaker 1 And I think he wasn't expecting Megan Kelly to be as tough as she was with him. Yeah, she did a pretty good job.

Speaker 1 He made a couple oblique references to the debate question that led to her eventual ouster from Fox. So, you know, I feel like there was a sword hanging over the whole time.
You know, I do think that

Speaker 1 I don't think that he's not conservative enough, works really well. I did notice as I was prepping, like, it has bubbled up.

Speaker 1 Some of these attacks from the right that DeSantis has been doing have bubbled up more in the conservative media.

Speaker 1 Like, Eric Erickson was attacking him for the question on the answer on trans issues with Megan Kelly.

Speaker 1 And he got a couple, he's got a bad New York Post story about it. And, you know, Bob Vanderplatt's out there getting pissed about the abortion stuff.

Speaker 1 The guy, the event, Bob Glitter and I've hated Trump for years. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So it's like, you know, Steve Dees, he's like a right-wing radio guy from Iowa.

Speaker 1 But like, I think that attacking Trump as someone who's lost a step and doesn't know what the hell he's talking about is probably more effective. And I think it could be too late.

Speaker 1 But like, I wonder why DeSantis and others didn't.

Speaker 1 You could start with the like, he was a great president and he served us well and now we're moving on. You could start there.
And then as the primary goes on, you could be like, he's a little crazy.

Speaker 1 Yeah. You know, like, you don't have to be, I just think that's more effective than going issue by issue.
But just suck. sucking.
Because Republican care voters don't really care about issues.

Speaker 4 But then you like, you have, you have, you know, a DeSantis staffer taking a shot at him through a statement.

Speaker 4 And then what is DeSantis' seemingly best swing at news of the day is like going after John Fetterman for not wearing a bow tie.

Speaker 1 What was that?

Speaker 4 And so that's how you're going to beat the Santa Trump.

Speaker 1 That's 40 points behind. That's how you're going to be a fucking dress code in the Senate, you maniac.

Speaker 4 I think you'll beat Fetterman in the primary.

Speaker 4 I think you're going to get a few points more than John Fetterman in the Republican primary in Iowa.

Speaker 1 And he didn't get a question about her. He was like, he went out of his way.
He's a little press conference and he's like, I want to talk about something that's on my mind. And I'm like,

Speaker 1 oh, here comes the Donald Trump hit on the no, no, no, no, no. No, it's like fucking Leno.

Speaker 4 He's like, you hear about this?

Speaker 4 You guys see this? You guys hear about this? Like, what the fuck are you doing? In defense of Searsucker Tuesday. And he sounds like such a goddamn sound.

Speaker 1 We should say, by the way, the hit is, in case people didn't know this news,

Speaker 1 Chuck Schumer changed the dress code in the Senate so that you don't have to wear suit and tie all the time, which John Fetterman has not been doing.

Speaker 1 So that, and this has freaked out some people on the right, including Megan Kelly and Ron DeSantis.

Speaker 4 And I can't think of anything that makes Ron DeSantis seem more like the absolute worst version of himself. That's like, I think you should be wearing a tie when you come to my house.

Speaker 1 This fucking sucks. Also, man, you work in like Tallahassee.
Like, you want to wear a tie down there?

Speaker 1 I do think DeSantis has tried an age hit. I can't remember which one of them.
Either Megan Kelly or Krista Welker was kind of like Ron DeSantis says, you won't be as effective at age 80.

Speaker 1 And Trump's response was, well, he won't be effective because he's a bad candidate. And just like blasted right through it.
So it's good. So, Joe Biden, let's talk about Joe Biden.
He's at the U.N.

Speaker 1 General Assembly this week, though he's dealing with quite a few challenges on the domestic front right now.

Speaker 1 House Republicans are trying to impeach him and shut down the government. His own Justice Department just indicted his son on gun charges.

Speaker 1 And Democrats are freaking out over bad polls that show real concern about his age and the economy, which is still being weighed down by inflation, gas prices, and now potentially the United Auto Workers' Strike.

Speaker 1 Let's start with the strike. I'll get into the details more with Representative Slotkin, but what do you guys think about the politics? Biden and Democrats are obviously supporting the workers.

Speaker 1 The White House is trying to broker a deal, but Republicans are trying to drive a wedge between auto workers and the UAW leadership, car companies, and Biden by blaming the transition to electric vehicles for the strike.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 4 if you step all the way back, The UAW, the big three, the Biden administration are completely aligned, right?

Speaker 4 Like they want want there to be a big electric car industry by unionized workers in America, big union shops making the next generation of cars. Tesla is not unionized.

Speaker 4 The giga plant that makes the batteries, not unionized. I got rid of my Tesla because I'm a good person and it rattled.

Speaker 4 And I got a Volvo, which was made in Belgium, and it's a fucking Volvo. And it was made in Belgium.
It rattled.

Speaker 1 Menchi's on Twitter about Elon Musk. It's out.

Speaker 4 I can't be sitting in a car that is getting me bad replies and has it makes a little noise.

Speaker 1 You know what else is making a noise, those replies. Making a little rattle in your head.

Speaker 4 But the Inflation Reduction Act incentivized a ton of investment in manufacturing in the United States.

Speaker 4 One criticism from the unions is that it didn't do enough to incentivize that that production be done by unionized workers. The Biden administration.

Speaker 1 We know why.

Speaker 1 We know why it didn't include that.

Speaker 1 Like everything else that went bad over the last several years.

Speaker 4 Joe Manchin.

Speaker 4 I think you're talking about Joe Manchin.

Speaker 4 But then right before, you know, a couple of weeks ago, the Biden administration has

Speaker 4 been trying to address this.

Speaker 4 But, you know, GM, Ford, they've been doing these kind of joint ventures to build battery manufacturing facilities. Those facilities haven't been unionized.
So underneath this is a fight about,

Speaker 4 yes, for these workers at these plants right now, but also for the future of the industry. And

Speaker 4 it's not just about Ford and GM and

Speaker 4 Chrysler versus these workers in this negotiation.

Speaker 4 It's them collectively trying to make sure in the same way that the auto industry faced competition from Japanese cars in the 70s and 80s and faced a crisis in 2008.

Speaker 4 It's can they get to the other side of this and work together to make sure that U.S. companies and union workers are the ones that make these cars?

Speaker 1 I'm going to step even further back. Okay.
Hank Ford. Oh, God.

Speaker 4 Jesus. Hank Ford?

Speaker 1 Who's his?

Speaker 1 Henry. He's my friend.
Oh, Hank.

Speaker 4 I forgot that he goes by Hank.

Speaker 4 I just remember that he was an anti-Semite.

Speaker 1 Apparently, you didn't care enough.

Speaker 4 That's why you called him Hank.

Speaker 1 I'm worried about the politics too because you have the Republicans trying to create this wedge issue and their narrative is being reinforced by the UAW leadership and by the car companies who are all kind of complaining about the competitiveness and the EV mandates in the future.

Speaker 1 And I also think

Speaker 1 union workers are particularly susceptible to inflation and gas prices going up because if you're making an hourly wage that's negotiated years ago, that's incredibly challenging.

Speaker 1 And exit polls showed that four in ten voters in union households voted for Trump in 2020.

Speaker 1 So I think there's probably some cultural issues where Trump and Republicans are pushing on an open door and will find ways to split union voters from the Democratic Party.

Speaker 1 So I hope that, I mean, it's really good that Biden came out in favor of the strikers. Obama did too, basically every Democrat, a bunch of Democrats on the picket line.

Speaker 1 But, you know, UAW's got 150,000 workers. Like, it's this could, this could swing swing states.

Speaker 1 I think Democrats should say about this like Republican attempt to drive a wedge between them on electric vehicles. These people are full of shit.

Speaker 1 They don't want the Inflation Reduction Act incentives to suddenly go to, they don't want these loans to go to union shops that are making electric vehicles. They just don't want electric vehicles.

Speaker 1 And, you know, J.D. Vance was saying that.
He said, oh, we're just importing parts from Tesla parts from China, and that leaves out U.S. workers.
They just don't want electric vehicles, right?

Speaker 1 But, and, you know, Congressman Slotkin brings this up in our interview, too. Like, the market is moving towards electric vehicles.
Like,

Speaker 1 people want electric vehicles, and it's going to be more and more cheaper and cheaper.

Speaker 1 So the question is, do we want to have them built in China overseas, or do we want to have them built in the United States? And Democrats want them built in the United States.

Speaker 1 Biden administration wants them built in the United States. The UAW wants them built in the United States.
And so does the big three automakers, right?

Speaker 1 And so the question is, can we make sure that incentives to build new battery plants and electric vehicles go to places where there are unions, where unions are allowed?

Speaker 1 Because part of the problem is some of these loans are going to like Georgia and the Carolinas where they're right to work states and they don't have to be unions.

Speaker 1 And that's not Joe Biden and the Democrats' fault. That's fucking Republicans' fault because they don't want to have union protections in those states.

Speaker 1 And I think Democrats just have to call out the like the bullshit that it is. Like Republicans have never been on the side of workers.
They've never been on the side of unions, especially unions.

Speaker 1 They've been trying to break up unions.

Speaker 1 So I think it is a real problem and it's a real challenge because some of these loans have gone to shops that aren't union shops and workers are worried about that.

Speaker 1 And they're also worried that it takes fewer parts to make electric vehicles. So it might not be as much, there might not be as much work for the auto workers.
That's the real structure for long term.

Speaker 1 And also these workers, you know, they have not benefited the way that the executives have at these companies since the Obama administration bailed out the big three automakers.

Speaker 1 Also, you know, the broader context is that Biden has done some incredibly important things for unions very recently. Like the NLRB under Biden has taken all sorts of really important pro-union steps.

Speaker 1 They're just complicated and hard to explain, and people may not know about them.

Speaker 4 But I do think it's,

Speaker 4 in the end,

Speaker 4 where the union and these companies are aligned is they together are in a competition with Rivian, with Tesla, with companies all around the world.

Speaker 4 And they want to prove that these union shops can compete and they can make the best cars, they can make

Speaker 4 the most beautiful and well-run and interesting and creative and innovative cars that people are excited to buy.

Speaker 4 They want to get to the other side of this negotiation so they can do that, but they have to do that together. And there's no, there's like, you know, we can

Speaker 4 talk about what the politics mean and what Democrats should be saying and all the rest, but underneath that is the substance. And that is the question that will determine whether or not the U.S.

Speaker 4 succeeds and has unionized auto plants making the next generation cars where they can make a deal and then actually move forward and make the cars that can beat Tesla, that can beat Riven, that can beat their international competitors.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And by the way, to the point about having more work, like also ensuring that these battery plants and these battery factories are unionized as well, because maybe there's fewer parts for cars, but like we're also building these batteries and that should be like all of this clean energy transition has to like put workers at the center of the transition.

Speaker 4 And it's not a coincidence that like, you know, Ford does a deal with like, I think it's Samsung and GM does a deal with another South Korean company so that those joint ventures aren't covered by the collective bargaining agreements.

Speaker 4 Like they're not, these things are not happening by accident. Right.

Speaker 1 All right, let's talk shutdown, which now seems even more likely than it did last week.

Speaker 1 A supposed deal between Kevin McCarthy and the House Freedom Caucus to pass just a short-term funding bill has apparently fallen apart.

Speaker 1 And a lot of Republican leaders seem to be in favor of a shutdown, including Ron DeSantis, Mike Pence, and Donald Trump.

Speaker 1 Conventional wisdom is that a shutdown will be bad politics for Republicans and good politics for Joe Biden. What do you guys think?

Speaker 1 I think it's probably right. I mean, every headline is about Republicans attacking Kevin McCarthy.
You know, like Biden is sort of absent from this.

Speaker 1 The Senate's kind of absent for this, at least for now.

Speaker 4 I think it's also helpful that Donald Trump says to Welker, like, if they don't get a good deal, shut the government down.

Speaker 1 You know,

Speaker 4 I don't think people won't know where to lay the blame for this.

Speaker 4 I do worry, yes, maybe that, you know, if you run a poll, it'll say that more people hold Republicans responsible than they do for Democrats.

Speaker 4 But in the end, the way press coverage is, the UAW strike gets laid at Biden's feet, a government shutdown gets laid at Biden's feet, inflation gets laid at Biden's feet.

Speaker 4 So it's, you know, a country in which people have insecurity and fears and concerns about the economy, even as the numbers improve, where there's all these sort of chaotic markers, I don't think ultimately redounds to Biden's benefit.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think everyone who is going to follow this story will know that it's the Republicans' fault. But most of the country won't follow the story.

Speaker 1 And when they wake up one day and just see headlines of the government shut down, they're going to be like, ooh, did Republicans do it? Did Democrats do it? Probably Republicans, but I don't know.

Speaker 1 Joe Biden fixed it.

Speaker 1 You know, so that, so, but I think it's a good opportunity for Biden to show that he is fighting for the vast majority of Americans who don't want to see cuts in education, health care, disaster relief, basic government services, just because Donald Trump and a few fucking goons in the House want to impeach Joe Biden over nothing.

Speaker 1 I think that's, you know, and I think, and if Biden ends up being the adult who gets the government back open and also is out there fighting on behalf of people who don't want to see these cuts, I think that's a good position for him to be in.

Speaker 1 Yeah, just there have been 15 government shutdowns since 1990.

Speaker 1 And like, I do wonder if people just, you just, like, I asked you guys before we started, hey, there was the longest government shutdown ever was in 2019. Why did it happen?

Speaker 1 None of us could remember why.

Speaker 1 First, you said, do you remember what the shutdown in 2019 was about? I'm like, and I said, I don't know. I think it was short.
And you go actually was the longest in history

Speaker 1 i was like wow i do not remember don't remember 35

Speaker 1 didn't retain it yeah so the question is like these 18 moderate republicans who represent districts that joe biden won none of them like the politics of this but i you know by election day do their voters remember i don't know anymore i mean it's just the only hope mccarthy had here was to do what he did in the debt ceiling, get something out of the house by telling everyone in the house, look, none of you agree on this, none of you are happy, but unless we send something over to the Senate, we can't do anything here and we're going to have to cut a deal with Democrats.

Speaker 1 And let's just send something over to the Senate or else we're going to get jammed by the Senate because they're going to pass a bill. That was his only hope.
And he thought that he had something.

Speaker 1 And now it does seem like, now this happened last time, of course, and then they cobbled something together.

Speaker 1 But this time, the way that your Matt Gates's and your Chip Roy's and all these people are talking, it sounds like they just want McCarthy to fail because they want to try to go for a motion to vacate it.

Speaker 4 It's a fool-me-once situation. Yeah, I don't, you know,

Speaker 4 that was the, that was the same deal with the debt ceiling, which was this idea that if McCarthy could just pass something out of the House with his majority, with anything, somehow that that would strengthen his hand.

Speaker 4 There's nothing that can pass the Republican House with just Republican votes that can pass the Senate. So we will ultimately...
And so, you know, maybe like maybe in answering.

Speaker 1 It seems like there's nothing that can pass the Republican House period.

Speaker 1 They're blocking your defense spending, though.

Speaker 1 As we speak.

Speaker 4 But like, we don't live in the, in part because of what McCarthy and his politics have done.

Speaker 4 We don't live in a world where the fact that a House Republican bill was able to pass gives him leverage in working with the Senate. No.

Speaker 4 If they want to keep the government open, it's going to be a bipartisan vote in the Senate. It's going to be a bipartisan vote in the House.

Speaker 4 And the only way that's going to happen is if it's with Democratic votes in the House. And the only way that's going to happen is if

Speaker 4 there is a negotiation which the House Freedom Caucus would never agree to.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, and just as an example,

Speaker 1 what this short-term funding bill that is probably never going to see the light of day, what it did is it had like a pretty hefty cut to spending way below the levels that Biden and McCarthy agreed on.

Speaker 1 A deal. 8%.

Speaker 1 8% across the board.

Speaker 4 A deal that already took place.

Speaker 4 We made a deal.

Speaker 1 We're living under the deal.

Speaker 1 Even if it was just the 8% cut and nothing else, it would have passed.

Speaker 1 They throw on their immigration bill, essentially, that the House Republicans wanted, which would rebuild the wall and sort of do all the, you know, the most stringent immigration thing, cut asylum, refugees, all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1 But they cobble this together without realizing that the 8% cut across the board would cut enforcement of immigration.

Speaker 1 Solid. It would just decimate enforcement at the border.
Genius. Because there's nowhere for him to go.
There's just nowhere for him to go.

Speaker 4 Bobert looks up in her playbook. What?

Speaker 1 And there was no money for Ukraine, no disaster relief funding, like none of the above-the-line thing that they know the Senate wants.

Speaker 1 Senate Republicans want to. Senator Republicans want to, yeah.
But, you know, listen, my guy, Congressman Dusty Johnson, has been working this past.

Speaker 4 That's the name he made up.

Speaker 1 That's Dusty Johnson, South Dakota, my favorite. Uh-huh.
What about him? Have hope. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Just work in the past. I'm just working on it.

Speaker 1 One Republican who is quite done with his party's antics is Willard Mitt Romney, whose announcement last week that he'll be retiring from the Senate was accompanied by quite an exit interview with McKay Coppins, who spent hours with Romney for a forthcoming biography.

Speaker 1 It should be out next month.

Speaker 1 The Atlantic ran an excerpt where Romney torches his Republican colleagues as phonies who privately share his disdain for Donald Trump, but refuse to do anything about it, specifically calling out Mitch McConnell, Mike Pence, Josh Hawley, and J.D.

Speaker 1 Vance, who he does not care for.

Speaker 1 He does not like J.D. Vance.

Speaker 1 I'm there with you, buddy.

Speaker 1 Romney sums up his feelings by telling McKay, quote, a very large portion of my party really doesn't believe in the constitution good for mitt uh what else did you guys find noteworthy about this piece so first of all i think it's just worth just

Speaker 4 This is a very sad story about a very sad man who is very lonely in his isolation from the Trump-supporting parts of the Senate.

Speaker 4 And his family. And his family.
Well, because he's stuck

Speaker 4 because he's here. But he talks about like McKay Coppin says at one point that his conversations often last for hours in part because he thought Romney liked the company.

Speaker 4 But it was really striking, right? Like there's one part where he says authoritarianism is like a gargoyle lurking over the cathedral. And it was just,

Speaker 4 we've seen Mitt Romney giving Josh Holly, Josh Hawley, the eyes from

Speaker 4 behind him during his speech after the insurrection. And we've seen him give these statements.
And it really was just.

Speaker 4 interesting to see what it was actually like to live behind the scenes with these people who are all telling him one after another that they don't believe any of the things they are saying and how much of a personal crisis it created for for Mitt Romney, who was, I think, genuinely trying to sort out how to how to work in this environment.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I thought it was interesting where he named names because there were a lot of like blind anecdotes about senators saying things to him that sort of told you something about how broken the institution was.

Speaker 1 But he destroys J.D. Vance, Josh Hawley, and Mitch McConnell.
And I thought that was interesting and telling.

Speaker 1 Like, for example, McConnell says to Romney, you're lucky you can say the things that we all think. It's like, buddy, you represent Kentucky.
You are the leader of your party.

Speaker 1 Why can't you say what you think? Just because you're pathetic.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think, I mean, I think McConnell believes that saying what he thinks would fracture the party and a divided party is always less successful, right?

Speaker 1 And so he can, and Romney says it, they keep saying like, well, it's just more, we can't let the Democrats take over, right?

Speaker 1 That's the whole, the underlying, the whole thing is the worst thing that could happen is not authoritarianism or Donald Trump or anything like that. It's Democrats running the government.

Speaker 4 That is, I think, the most,

Speaker 4 that was also striking, which is they don't believe a word of what they're saying about Donald Trump, but they believe every word they're saying about Democrats.

Speaker 4 I actually, I do think that they believe that because one of the points Mitch McConnell makes to Mitt Romney is like, they'll do the Green New Deal.

Speaker 4 Some other stuff that is just funny.

Speaker 1 They'll save us from planetary collapse.

Speaker 4 Could you imagine? There are 20 senators here who do all the work and there are 80 who are just along for the ride.

Speaker 1 welcome to the job buddy

Speaker 4 uh richard burr walks on the treadmill in his suit pants and loafers shared brown shared brown and dick durbin pedaled so slowly on their exercise bikes that romney couldn't help but peek at their resistance settings durbin was a one but brown was at an eight

Speaker 4 I love that. And one person you didn't mention that he goes after incredibly hard is Paul Ryan.
Oh, yeah. Paul Ryan, who's not in office, calls to whip votes against him on impeachment.

Speaker 4 What, just for fucking fun? You know what?

Speaker 1 I'm glad you brought that up. Because I wanted to yell at everyone.
I wanted to especially talk to dan about that who

Speaker 1 knew how he feels about paul ryan that was wild to me because i had to i looked at the date of when that was because i'm like oh was was ryan speaker at the time no he's out of office he's gone he's already doing his like

Speaker 1 i don't like trump i'm i'm standing up

Speaker 4 but then he's like call he's like oh you know mitt you can't you gotta you gotta acquit trump on impeachment you gotta do it he's whipping votes for him and then the other the other thing and that and paul ryan makes the kind of political argument coward it's it's worse than coward worse than coward because he had nothing to be afraid of

Speaker 4 He's not even, he's just being a terrible person.

Speaker 1 He's just being terrible.

Speaker 4 Like, no one's coming after us. A private phone call.

Speaker 1 He couldn't tell the truth on a private phone call.

Speaker 4 But, you know, the argument that Casey made to write, there's a moment where he's with his staff and he's telling his staff he's going to vote for impeachment.

Speaker 4 And some of the staff are like beside themselves because it's like their political careers are going to be affected.

Speaker 4 And then a senator, he's a senator, a member of leadership, and this is one of your one of your anonymized ones, says that he was leaning to vote to convict and the others urged him to reconsider.

Speaker 4 You can't do that. Romney recalled someone saying, Think of your personal safety, think of your children.
The senator eventually decided that they were right. That is children.

Speaker 1 And the fact that, you know, and that's a theme through the piece because when they talk about January 6th and Romney texts McConnell and is like, hey,

Speaker 1 I just talked to Angus King, and he said that there's like real concerns about security on January 6th, and I'm getting threats.

Speaker 1 And also, people are threatening to like go to your house, Mitch, and blah, blah, blah. And McConnell never responds.

Speaker 4 Yeah, he may not be, just may not be a good texter, but

Speaker 4 like Romney says, it was sitting there, it's a green bubble on his screen.

Speaker 1 Definitely a fucking green text.

Speaker 4 McConnell gets 100% green text. He's on T9, freezing 30 seconds at a time.
It's hard to type when you freeze fully for 30 seconds.

Speaker 1 Me and Schumer are like T9ing each other during the AI hearing.

Speaker 1 I can't believe we recognized regulated big tech.

Speaker 4 Chuck Schumer's on a flip flown.

Speaker 4 The Republican minority leader is frozen solid.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 4 Romney's talking about being driven with security behind him, and he's worrying what's going to happen if someone takes a shot at him, but the car behind him won't really help. And

Speaker 4 we really kind of have gotten to the point where the former Republican nominee for president is saying that the threat of violence, that the fear that Republicans will do violence against Republican politicians is so great that it is changing the way people vote in Congress.

Speaker 1 Romney says he spends $5,000 a day on security. A day.
No one can afford that.

Speaker 1 And also, I was saying this to Tommy, but like every time I read another account of January 6th, I become radicalized all over again

Speaker 1 in my anger about that day. And like that image of when Josh Hawley is objecting to and trying to overturn the election.

Speaker 1 After January 6th happens, and then there's Mitt Romney in the background, like giving him the eyes, you realize how infuriated he must be because when he talks about what they all went through, how they were all scared for their lives, how like they were at the doors, there were weapons, they're all this kind of stuff.

Speaker 1 And then Romney's like, well, it's all done now. We're going to get back in there and they're going to drop their objections and we're going to, you know, make Joe Biden president.

Speaker 1 It's all going to be fine. And then they go up there and they all still fucking object.

Speaker 4 He couldn't believe he wrote a speech and he thought, well, I won't need this. Certainly I won't need this now.

Speaker 4 And the other, just to reading, again, another account of the, of like a first person account of the insurrection, you know, Trump to Welker made up something about how

Speaker 4 Nancy Pelosi rejected

Speaker 1 her. He blames her.

Speaker 4 And they, of course, there's been, you know, differing accounts about why there wasn't more security, but like you realize like how terrifying it was in part because nobody thought this was going to happen.

Speaker 4 Nobody expected it. There was a lot of ineptitude.
There's one moment where he's in the elevator and someone says, oh, the senators will know where to go.

Speaker 4 And they're like, we are the senators and we don't know where to go.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the security guards were like, I don't know where you go. Yeah.

Speaker 4 And yeah,

Speaker 4 this is also just like Mitt Romney. There's a part where he quotes Tennyson.
He says, you know, this madness has come on us for our sins. It's a beautiful sentiment, a beautiful quote.

Speaker 4 The days of senators from the Republican Party quoting Tennyson are at an end. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, he also, there's the.

Speaker 1 part where he had flirted with an independent run for president just so he could get on the debate stage with Trump and go after him, which I'm sure is the fantasy of a lot of politicians

Speaker 1 to do that.

Speaker 1 Some of them named Donald Trump

Speaker 4 pointing like this in the shower.

Speaker 1 But then he does say that he has talked to Joe Manchin about what a mistake it would be to run on the no labels ticket. So, you know, doing all the right things, Mitt Romney.

Speaker 1 Doing all the right things.

Speaker 4 He also talks about starting a, he said, don't run for president. Let's start a party, which is.

Speaker 1 Right that pushes one of the parties, yeah. I noticed that Joe Biden's former chief of staff, Ron Klain, tweeted like, you know, something.

Speaker 1 complimentary about Mitt Romney and this interview, but that said, there is one more thing you can do, which is get behind Joe Biden, and you haven't done anything.

Speaker 1 And Ron has a good point.

Speaker 1 And I get it. And I get that's hard for Mitt Romney because, like, you know, Barack Obama ran against Mitt Romney in 2012, and there was a big, an honest debate over the size and role of government.

Speaker 1 Mitt Romney believes in a very small government, and we do not, right? And I think that, like, that debate is real.

Speaker 1 And so I think for Mitt Romney, like, evolving to the point where he's like, all my policy considerations are secondary to this threat from authoritarianism that is coming within my own party.

Speaker 1 Like, I think that, you know, that takes a, that it takes some effort, that very few other Republican politicians, except for like Liz Cheney and a couple others, have made that journey.

Speaker 4 Well, you know, I will say this is, I really appreciate this version of Mitt Romney, but I do think that one of the things he's grappling with when he sees all these other politicians is the way he himself

Speaker 4 subsumed his own principles for the purpose of elective office.

Speaker 1 He did the event with Donald Trump.

Speaker 4 And if he can find a way to evolve from being pro-choice to pro-life, he can find a way to evolve from being a Republican member of the Senate to a person who is endorsing Joe Biden to save the country he clearly loves and believes is threatened by Donald Trump.

Speaker 1 He can do it. Yeah, and look, Ron's tweet is right, but also the smart thing to do if you're going to make that endorsement is to do it like in late October.
Yes, I agree. You know, big news.

Speaker 1 Okay, before we go to break, two quick housekeeping notes.

Speaker 1 The second Republican presidential debate is coming up on Wednesday, September 27th, which means it's time for another Friends of the Pod exclusive group thread.

Speaker 1 Join us on Discord for live reactions and commentary during the debate from your favorite crooked hosts and staff.

Speaker 1 Subscribe to Friends of the Pod to join our group thread at crooket.com slash friends.

Speaker 1 Also, if you live in the Midwest, get out your malort. Love it or Leave It is coming to Chicago this week on September 21st and Madison on September 22nd.

Speaker 1 With wonderful guests like Brandon Johnson, Peter Sagal, Alice Waterlin, Jillian Flynn, Ben Wickler, and more. Tickets are going fast.
Head to crooket.com slash events to get yours today.

Speaker 4 Yeah, well, just one thing I'll just say that the Madison and Chicago shows are almost sold out. Wow.
But Love or Leave is going to be across the country.

Speaker 4 Potate America is going to be across the country. So go to crooked.com slash events.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you can't go wrong if you go to crooked.com slash events. You can't go wrong.
When we come back, I talk more about the UAW strike with Michigan Representative Alyssa Slotkin.

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Speaker 1 Last week, the United Auto Workers initiated a strike against all three major automakers in the United States here to discuss this historic strike, the political implications, and her race for the U.S.

Speaker 1 Senate. Representative Alyssa Slotkin, welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 7 Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 So you joined a UAW picket line at a Ford plant in Wayne, Michigan last week. What was the mood like? Did the workers you met seem like they are ready to strike for as long as it takes?

Speaker 1 Or did you get the sense that they're ready and willing to give a bit to get a deal?

Speaker 7 No, I think the energy was really good. I mean, morale was good.

Speaker 7 I was there on the very first day

Speaker 7 and people, you know, had been moving towards this. And I think the energy was positive.
Look, people were there signing up for strike benefits. So they are obviously watching their own pocketbooks.

Speaker 7 And I don't think anyone in Michigan wants a really long, prolonged strike, no matter who you are.

Speaker 7 But the energy was good. And it was interesting.
I met a couple of people who had had parents who were UAW workers at that same plant the last time it struck, that specific plant struck in the 80s.

Speaker 7 And, you know, just kind of talking about, you know, being ready to do what they needed to do do to make sure they got a good deal.

Speaker 1 So the Ford CEO said the union's demands for a 46% pay increase in a four-day work week would bankrupt the company.

Speaker 1 The basic automaker argument is, you know, labor costs are already higher than foreign automakers like Toyota and Tesla that don't have unions.

Speaker 1 And, you know, they offered a 21% pay increase, which the UAW has rejected. What's the best counter to the argument from Ford and other automakers, in your opinion?

Speaker 7 Well, I mean, I think the strongest statement about these negotiations is that the die was cast months ago, right? It's the context for these negotiations.

Speaker 7 The context is you have a bunch of people who gave up things in 2008, 2009, because we were in recession in Michigan, in a real recession,

Speaker 7 where we are now fast forward making record profits at those same companies. I mean, that's just fact.

Speaker 7 And these companies are also getting help in setting up new things like electric vehicle battery plants, right?

Speaker 7 So against that context, you have workers who are saying, hey, we gave up stuff before and now you're doing really, really well. We want to do better and we want more money in our pockets.

Speaker 7 And that to me is like the greatest statement about where we are in these negotiations. I'm not in the negotiations.
So I don't know the back and forth that's happening on an hour-to-hour basis.

Speaker 7 I know that

Speaker 7 they're looking for a better deal than what they have. And I don't think that's, I don't think that that's a crazy thing to ask for.

Speaker 1 Politico ran a story yesterday that said the GOP sees the UAW walkout as a potential lifeline in Michigan and talks about how Republicans are trying to win over rank and file union members and non-union working class voters by blaming the strike on the Democratic Party's climate policies.

Speaker 1 Donald Trump is reportedly planning a trip to the same Ford plant that you just visited and said that the union should prioritize the repeal of Biden policies that accelerate the transition to electric vehicles.

Speaker 1 You've gotten this attack yourself from Republicans. Does it worry you at all? Like, do you hear these concerns about electric vehicles from auto workers in your state?

Speaker 7 So, you know, I'll be honest, like, most of the people that I talk to, and I, of course, represented an electric vehicle plant. The Chevy Bolt was made in my district before it was redrawn.

Speaker 7 We have an electric vehicle battery factory coming to my current district in Delta Township, Lansing.

Speaker 7 The next generation of vehicles is going to be made, right? And right now, like places like China are ahead of us.

Speaker 7 So, if we're going to make those vehicles somewhere in the world, I would always rather make them like in Team America than Team China. And so, there's a second order question that comes after that.

Speaker 7 How do we make sure people in those facilities are making a living wage, only have to work, you know, one job in order to sustain themselves. They should be able to have a good middle-class life.

Speaker 7 But if the question is who should make those vehicles, Team America should make those. So every time they say that, I mean, I just say, would you rather it be China?

Speaker 7 Like, what is your alternative here? Now, there's a very good conversation to have about making sure we push the car companies to give people a fair shot at life in those facilities.

Speaker 7 I have a huge interest in that. We got to get that right.
And certainly for the bipartisan group of us that, you know,

Speaker 7 signed on to the CHIPS Act that cared about incentivizing American manufacturing, we have a huge incentive to making sure they get that right.

Speaker 7 But the first order of business is make it in America and not in China.

Speaker 1 So you don't think that this, and Republicans have been trying to do this for a long time to pit, you know, labor against climate activists.

Speaker 1 You don't think that's really going to work.

Speaker 7 Well, look, I mean, they're certainly

Speaker 7 trying, but I don't think you can, I think they have this fundamental conundrum that they're going to have to deal with on the Republican side, which is you got a lot of people, including a lot of senior folks in Michigan, Republicans, who have for 20 years voted against anything related to labor.

Speaker 7 But now because of Donald Trump, they're suddenly populists and now they care about the working man.

Speaker 7 When you've got a 20-year record of voting against right to work and prevailing wage and all of these things, it is pretty hard to turn around and be Mr. Union.

Speaker 7 And that is the needle they're trying to thread. And, you know, all I know is that when I was out on Friday, no one's talking about Trump.
No one's talking about Biden.

Speaker 7 No one's talking about politics. They're talking about being able to have more money in their pockets so they can do well and their kids can do better.

Speaker 7 It's really not as, to me, as like desperately political as everyone would like it to be made out to be.

Speaker 1 So the New York Times interviewed a few dozen striking workers and found that many who voted for the president said, quote, inflation had so undercut their wages that they felt pushed out of the middle class, laying the blame with Mr.

Speaker 1 Biden. How do you persuade those workers to vote for Democrats like you and Joe Biden next year?

Speaker 7 So, you know, I think there's no doubt about it, right? People, because of inflation, this is the point. They have more, they have less money in their pockets and more of a desire to make more money.

Speaker 7 That is sort of a fact of life.

Speaker 7 And all we can do is try to demonstrate that we care about this core American value of the middle class.

Speaker 7 Like that to me is the sun and the moon of American, frankly, national security: how do you have a strong middle class and how dangerous it is in a multiracial, multi-ethnic experiment to have only rich and only poor.

Speaker 7 And I think that if you just put on merit the policies of one party over the other it is very clear which one supports a middle class life

Speaker 7 um and um all we can do is is demonstrate that and but we also can't shy away from the fact that inflation is a real thing and while we hope it's getting better um it's not better yet for many many people and if you try and shy away from that and say well but jobs are growing and all this that may be true but to the people i represent they have less money in their pockets that's oh there's a whole lot of reasons for that, but you can't shy away from that.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Biden's also, of course, dealing with concerns about his age.
Democratic pundits and strategists are in full freak out mode, but we're also seeing it from voters in poll after poll.

Speaker 1 What would you say to a Biden voter in Michigan who's worried about whether the president's too old to serve a second term?

Speaker 7 You know, look, I think I've said repeatedly that it's not just one person.

Speaker 7 You look at a lot of the candidates in, you know, looking for the White House, the senate the house it is definitely you know as someone who's kind of like a gen xer um it is definitely feels like we need a new generation across the board and you can feel that interest um uh the president is running for a second term there's nothing more natural than a president running for a second term that's typically how we do it in this country um and uh all i can say is that you know he's he is the president of the united states his policies have helped a place like Michigan.

Speaker 7 And so, you know, to me, it's only natural that he runs and I support that. But do I think we need a new generation across the board, right? Mr.
Trump as well, not a spring chicken.

Speaker 7 You know, folks in the Senate, oh, my Lord, right? In the House, oh, my Lord. So that's, I think I can feel that generational push across the board.

Speaker 1 Michigan's a place where Democrats have done quite well since Hillary Clinton barely lost the state in 2016, though people like you and Gretchen Whitmer and Debbie Stabenow, who you're running to replace in the Senate, have all won by much larger margins than national Democrats like Biden or how Hillary narrowly lost.

Speaker 1 What do you think Michigan Democrats can teach national Democrats about winning states like yours?

Speaker 7 Well, I mean, I think that in Michigan, I mean, I'm someone who likes math. And if you're going to be successful in the state of Michigan, you need to understand math.

Speaker 7 And math means that we are a state where independent and swing voters usually decide our elections, right? That's we're a swing state for a reason.

Speaker 7 So I think it's important to understand that while you always want to turn out the base and be in touch with the base, that it is about appealing to a broad group of people, which if you've been elected in Michigan, that typically, you know, you've demonstrated that.

Speaker 7 But I think it's also about,

Speaker 7 if I can be honest, getting into areas and going to places where Democrats have not shown up in 40 years, not writing off rural areas.

Speaker 7 I represent a rural district, not writing off those areas where, you know, people may not be able to be out marching in the streets, but they want a better

Speaker 1 world

Speaker 7 and they're willing to vote that way.

Speaker 7 You know, I always tell people that, frankly,

Speaker 7 you know, there are a lot of Democrats and progressively minded people in very conservative areas and they risk a hell of a lot more to be a Democrat than anyone in New York City or LA, right?

Speaker 7 And some of them don't tell their husbands how they vote. They don't tell their kids.
And I want them to be a part of the family. And in Michigan, that is part of the family, right?

Speaker 7 And I just think that that is a lesson that could be learned in other parts of the country. We want to be an open, welcoming party of reasonable people.

Speaker 7 And that usually works.

Speaker 1 What's What's the number one issue you're hearing about in the campaign trail? And what will be your number one priority if you get to the Senate?

Speaker 7 Number one issue I'm hearing about generally is like people either have no hope of getting in the middle class or they've fallen out of the middle class and they want back in.

Speaker 7 And so it's literally kitchen table economics. How do I have a one job, a good job with benefits that helps me save every month?

Speaker 7 And then how do I bring down the insane costs of health care, prescription drugs, housing, childcare, and post-secondary education? Somewhere in that zone is 90% of what people raise with me.

Speaker 7 And then there's

Speaker 7 the issues of making more things in America.

Speaker 7 There's the issue of like protecting our kids from the things that are truly harming them, like gun violence and, you know, the diseases of despair, mental health issues and opioid addiction.

Speaker 7 And then protecting our rights and our democracy.

Speaker 7 But first and foremost, is like, how do we as a nation grapple with the fact that after World War II, we did such a good job of building this strong middle class, and now people are falling out of it or have no hope of getting in.

Speaker 7 So that's what I want to work on. As a frankly, I'm a national security person.
You know that.

Speaker 7 But I think this is the national security issue of our era because if we don't get it right at home, what can we do abroad?

Speaker 1 Representative Alyssa Slotkin, thank you so much for coming on Pod Save America and good luck out on the trail.

Speaker 7 Thanks very much. Thanks for having me.

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Speaker 1 Okay, unfortunately, we cannot end the show without talking about Lauren Bobert.

Speaker 1 We covered the story last week on our subscription show, Terminally Online, which you can sign up for at crooked.com/slash friends.

Speaker 1 But there have been quite a few developments since then.

Speaker 1 To recap, Bobert and her boyfriend attended a performance of Betelgeuse the Musical at the Buell Theater in Denver, Colorado, where we once did a live taping of this very podcast. Lovely theater.

Speaker 1 The couple was asked to leave the show after complaints that they were being rowdy, taking pictures, and vaping, despite being asked not to vape by a pregnant woman in front of them.

Speaker 1 Bobert's campaign initially denied the vaping and dismissed the criticism.

Speaker 1 Then security camera footage of the incident showed the couple not only vaping, but groping each other, because there's nothing hornier than a musical production of Betelgeuse.

Speaker 1 This led to a full apology from Bobert for, quote, falling short of my values.

Speaker 1 And the vaping lie she apologized for, which she attributed to either the, quote, excitement of seeing a much anticipated production or the natural anxiety of being in a new environment.

Speaker 1 She then expanded on these thoughts during an interview with One American News as One Does.

Speaker 10 What's the top story? Lauren Bobert getting kicked out of the Beauty Theater in Denver, Colorado. That's what the media does.

Speaker 5 It's what the media does.

Speaker 10 I was a little too eccentric.

Speaker 10 I'm very known for having an animated personality, maybe overtly animated personality. I was laughing, I was singing, having a fantastic time.

Speaker 1 Yeah, she was.

Speaker 1 Fantastic time. Oh, boy.

Speaker 1 Guys, what's so bad about a little vaping, a little groping, a Beetlejuice?

Speaker 4 It's a musical, not a concert. I say it again.
You don't laugh. You can have a great time at a musical.
You sit still and quietly because there's human beings on the stage playing characters.

Speaker 4 There's somebody I follow on TikTok because he does an incredible impression of Patty Lapone. That's why I follow him.
He sings as Patty Lapone. I didn't know this, but he had actually been cast.

Speaker 4 It was his big break in the traveling production of Beetlejuice. And then he said, I remember that night.

Speaker 4 I didn't actually know someone got kicked out, but I remember that somebody was doing a lot of flash photography. He was disturbing the performer.
She was disturbing the performer.

Speaker 1 Flash photography. That's insane.

Speaker 4 It's too far from the stage. It won't work.

Speaker 1 Yeah, right. It's also useless.

Speaker 4 It's just going to get a bright shot of the people ahead of you.

Speaker 1 Does he say that the musical is as horny as

Speaker 4 we think it is? Nothing makes the performers of Beetlejuice the musical in and of itself something that exists as a testament to the fact that we are a nation in decline.

Speaker 4 Nothing makes them more excited as formers than to know that people have full-on fucking boners

Speaker 4 during their performance of the various songs that we all know and love and don't need to say what they are because we all, of course, love Beetlejuice the musical, a beautiful adaptation of an important piece of IP.

Speaker 4 But yeah, no, that's what he said.

Speaker 1 Has anyone else weirded out that the theater has like really good night vision cameras? Didn't know that when we did our show there, that's for sure. Yeah,

Speaker 1 no one at the Buell Theater told us there'd be night vision cameras there. Yeah.
Now, granted. We didn't do a lot of groping.

Speaker 1 Not nearly as much as I would have hoped.

Speaker 1 And you know what? No one in the audience did either, because they're at a public fucking event. Oh, they did it.

Speaker 4 They did it with discretion.

Speaker 1 But yeah, I definitely.

Speaker 1 Yeah, in between the flash photography and the vaping, they're groping. Yeah, just we're going to keep it quiet over here.
Is our flash photography singing, yelling, grabbing?

Speaker 4 I will say this. That is a lesson.
First of all, I think when Lauren Bobert says that she had the anxiety of a new plays, what she really means is, I didn't know there was tape.

Speaker 1 I didn't know I was on video.

Speaker 4 But I think as a rule, if you are going to go to a musical production that welcomes children 10 and up, you can either do flash photography or over-the-shirt groping.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 4 I prefer neither, but you can't do both because it draws attention to the over-the-shirt groping.

Speaker 1 Yeah, to me, the OTPHJ OTPHJ is not as bad as saying, do you know who I am when confronted? Oh, I just want to say the acts themselves, like, I don't, I don't give a shit.

Speaker 1 Oh, I'm just saying, saying, do you know who I am to someone else? Well, that's the worst. You're the worst person in the world.
Oh, I don't know. No, but don't be a prude.

Speaker 4 I do not believe you should be publicly getting it on

Speaker 4 at a theater during a musical where children are present. I think you should restrain yourselves.

Speaker 1 Someone found the public indecency law in Colorado. She potentially violated it because it does include groping in public as part of the public.
You're not supposed to do that.

Speaker 4 Well, it just is at the very least quite rude.

Speaker 1 I just think that the existence of the night vision camera is weird. It makes me uncomfortable.
Then there was like another discourse where people were like, why are we mocking this right now?

Speaker 1 And these people were surveilled against their will and blah, blah, blah. And then just leave them alone.
I'm like, oh, yeah, you deserve, you have every right to privacy.

Speaker 1 to grope in a public setting.

Speaker 1 No, you don't.

Speaker 4 I can't follow those people there.

Speaker 1 I will say this.

Speaker 4 If you ever are in a position, and it happens all the time, like someone, you know,

Speaker 4 a drunk state legislator will get pulled over. Somebody will get a problem at the airport.
If you ever say,

Speaker 4 you know, if you're slurring your words and you're ever shouting, do you know who I am?

Speaker 1 You lost. You're the villain.
Famously. It's a villain.

Speaker 1 Famously ineffective.

Speaker 4 No one.

Speaker 4 You know what it is?

Speaker 1 She did a couple more too. She doesn't say she's like, I know the mayor.

Speaker 1 I'm calling the mayor, which is, I don't know how that's going to help her. And then she also said, I'm on the board.
The board of what?

Speaker 1 I have a theater as a board.

Speaker 1 I do want to. And he's under the board of having a good time.
If she had just been like, hey, I'm sorry, you know, we acted inappropriately.

Speaker 1 I apologize to the theater and the other people I disrupted. You wonder if they would have released this footage.
Maybe they would have, just because it's kind of funny.

Speaker 1 But she's also just a giant hypocrite. She's the first person to attack gay people for grooming.
And she's like a total hack who's pretending she's going to protect our kids. She sucks.

Speaker 1 And her boyfriend, that was

Speaker 1 the man in question, question is a Democrat whose bar hosts drag shows.

Speaker 4 I mean, he seems like he's up for a good time.

Speaker 4 As far as we can tell so far, he's just teases along for the ride as well. But I will say, yeah, saying.

Speaker 1 He's like, oh, we're at Beetlejuice? Yeah. He's like, I love the finale.
When does the musical start?

Speaker 1 Oh, boy. But

Speaker 4 yelling, do you know who I am, is about as effective as yelling, relax at somebody.

Speaker 1 You know what I mean?

Speaker 4 It just gets the opposite. It gets your haunches.
It gets your haunches up.

Speaker 1 She's also, she's not like, she acts a little like MTG adjacent, but she's not in a Republican plus 40 seat the way Marjorie Taylor is.

Speaker 1 She won by like 500 votes last time. Adam Frisch, go to his

Speaker 1 campaign website. The best part, though.
He's not going to be doing that in that Beetlejuice. Not now.
No.

Speaker 1 There's a...

Speaker 1 He's groping out of victory.

Speaker 1 It's within his reach. Not going to be in that caucus with Dusty Johnson for long.

Speaker 4 Speaking of caucuses, Liz Kroken.

Speaker 1 He doesn't want a premature ejection.

Speaker 1 There's a bona fide lunatic on Twitter named Liz Krokin who has Pizzagate is Real in her bio who said,

Speaker 1 if I were a wagering enthusiast, I would bet that the date, Bobert's date, was paid to set her up.

Speaker 1 So this is the new conspiracy theory, that the deep state, the libs were coming for Bobert by getting her to go out with this guy. Her bio also says that she's a seasoned journalist for 20 plus years.

Speaker 1 In addition to Pizzagate is real. And her pronouns are I slash told slash you slash so.

Speaker 4 And there's no evidence that any liberals came anywhere.

Speaker 1 She said these types of tactics and traps are used all the time and I would know.

Speaker 1 What would you know, man?

Speaker 4 What would you know?

Speaker 4 What a sting operation. Step one, build trust.

Speaker 1 Step two, mention that in passing that at the Buell Theater in a couple of weeks, Beetle Drix is coming.

Speaker 1 Beatle Drinks is coming. Hey, Laurie.
Man, I got a crazy idea. Install a security guy.
Nature has that vision.

Speaker 1 It's going to be dark in here. is this is this a nathan for you i just thought it was like

Speaker 1 good question by the way by the way

Speaker 1 maybe he's a nathan for you plant i just think it's also like man

Speaker 4 let's say let's say everything is going according to the uh deep state's plan perfectly lauren's still up for a little hanky panky at the buell theater you know

Speaker 4 no one deep state didn't do that i watched the footage i hated it again it's beetlejuice it and it is and again beetle juice the musical so hot it's

Speaker 1 It's so hot.

Speaker 1 How do you not get horny?

Speaker 4 It's

Speaker 1 the sexiest musical production.

Speaker 4 Betelgeuse the musical.

Speaker 1 It should be NC17. They must have been so drunk.
She said, I didn't remember vaping.

Speaker 1 Okay. Yeah, that's not all she didn't remember.

Speaker 1 Unbelievable. Anyway, what a story.
What a fun story.

Speaker 1 Something for all of you to enjoy. Thank you to Alyssa Slockin for shooting.
And good luck in your race.

Speaker 1 Stay out of the theater. Stay out there.

Speaker 1 Much like Lincoln. Stay out of the theater.
Oh, all right, everyone. We'll see you Thursday.
Bye.

Speaker 4 That's funny. The second worst time politicians had in a theater in living memory.

Speaker 1 Other than that, Ms. Bobert, how was the play?

Speaker 1 Pot Save America is a crooked media production. Our producers are Olivia Martinez and David Toledo.
Our associate producer is Farrah Safari. Writing support from Hallie Kiefer.

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