Can Newsom Stop Trump's Steal?

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Speaker 1 Welcome to Plot Save America. I'm John Favreau.
I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, we got vehicle checkpoints and street patrols in newly militarized DC.

Speaker 1 ICE is out of control and showing up at Democratic political events. Trump thinks Putin wants to make peace ahead of their Alaska meeting.

Speaker 1 Gavin Newsom talks to us about his big redistricting announcement today. And we'll end with a few minutes on the podcast guest everyone's talking about this week.

Speaker 3 How's that?

Speaker 1 But let's start with this week's big economic news.

Speaker 1 Wholesale prices, which are basically the prices that producers like farmers, factories, other businesses get paid for their goods and services, just rose at the fastest rate in three years.

Speaker 1 Economists say this is a sign that the cost of Trump's tariffs are starting to hit hard and will start affecting consumers in a bigger way, driving up inflation. So what does Donald Trump have to say?

Speaker 1 Here he is just hours after the report was released.

Speaker 6 We've ended Biden's inflation nightmare. So we had the worst inflation in the history of our country.
And now our inflation is down to a perfect number, a beautiful number, hardly any at all.

Speaker 1 Perfect number, beautiful number, hardly any at all. He didn't need to say that.
Like, he could have said nothing about inflation

Speaker 1 after

Speaker 1 a bad inflation report, but he chose to go in the other direction and say that it's completely solved. What do you think? Is he going to be able to lie his way through higher prices and inflation?

Speaker 3 I spend a lot of my time worrying about how Trump can sort of gaslight reality, how he can get either his right-wing media or to echo echo and amplify what he's saying how he can sort of cowl the media and other stakeholders into going along with what he says this is one place where i am not worried about it right it's just

Speaker 3 people

Speaker 3 know how much things cost and they notice when they go up you go to the grocery store one week and you buy milk and eggs and beef and vegetables and then you go back the next week you buy those same things they cost more people notice that uh it was the first week of school in our house this week but all across the country people are going back to school over the next month when you go school shopping you realize that school supplies and and school clothes cost more than they did last year.

Speaker 3 People will notice that. They'll notice when

Speaker 3 Suffer Thanksgiving costs more, when presidents over the holidays are going to cost more. But you can't miss it.
And it is not.

Speaker 3 We went through this whole debate in 2024 about how the media was covering the economy wrong and they weren't giving Biden credit for it.

Speaker 3 And what we then realized was the people who don't follow the media at all are the ones who have the worst opinion of the economy because they see the reality of what's happening.

Speaker 3 And so Trump can lie about this. He can pretend like it's not happening.
He can cheat. He can cook the books in these reports.
He can do whatever he wants.

Speaker 3 But if prices keep going up, people are going to notice it. And whether they directly attribute it to tariffs or not, they're going to blame him because he's the person in charge.

Speaker 3 So I have some measure of confidence on this one.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the people, including the Biden administration who were blaming the media coverage back in 2024 and three and two

Speaker 1 for the inflation, they were wrong then. And the Trump administration is wrong now.
And they're also both wrong that people aren't going to realize it themselves.

Speaker 1 I also think that because Trump is so insulated and just in his own reality,

Speaker 1 not only are people not going to believe him, but he's not going to understand

Speaker 1 the level of frustration and anger out in the country about inflation because no one is going to tell him about that. And anytime he hears any information about that, he's going to think it's fake.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 that's just another, it's also another opportunity for Democrats to go out there and make a huge deal about this.

Speaker 1 Because, you know, you're already starting to see in, and I think Axios did a set of focus groups with voters in Georgia, all of whom were Biden voters who switched over to Trump in 2024.

Speaker 1 And I've seen a few other focus groups. You're starting to hear from voters who voted for Trump maybe for the first time that

Speaker 1 costs haven't gone down. That was their main reason for voting for Trump.
And they're frustrated and things just keep getting worse.

Speaker 1 And it doesn't necessarily mean that they are suddenly enamored with the Democrats. The Democratic Party has some work to do.
In fact, they are not. But they are definitely souring on Donald Trump.

Speaker 1 And this is before the tariffs have really shown up in some of the economic data and higher prices that people are going to be facing starting this fall and probably into next year.

Speaker 3 Another interesting thing in the inflation report that came out was a huge historic increase in fresh vegetables, which is also related to labor shortages because of Trump's deportation rates.

Speaker 3 And so people are going to notice the price increases, and I think they will hold Trump accountable.

Speaker 3 The secret sauce for Democrats here is to make people understand that Trump has made the problem worse. Yeah.
Right. Through his tariffs.
And the tariffs are going to keep getting worse and worse.

Speaker 3 They are kicking in now. The reason why these costs are going up now is because the companies knew the tariffs were coming.

Speaker 3 They bought huge stockpiles of things to try to get them through the tariffs. Those stockpiles are now expended.

Speaker 3 And now they are passing the, they have have to buy, now they're actually paying the tariffs and they're passing those costs on to other people.

Speaker 3 And we know this from the last time we had supply chain shortages right after the pandemic.

Speaker 3 Even companies who are not affected by the tariffs will also raise their prices because they see an opportunity to make more money and price goug in this environment.

Speaker 3 So prices are going to go up everywhere. And it's because of Trump's policy decisions.
I think this is really the important point for us to get through to people.

Speaker 1 It's more mad king shit.

Speaker 1 The guy comes into office and unilaterally, illegally, slaps a giant tax on American consumers so he can try to cut off our trade with the rest of the world because he doesn't understand economics.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And because he wants to extort our allies in other countries into making fake promises to please Donald Trump that they're going to like invest in America, invest in a bunch of money in America that they'll never make good on, but they just needed to get out of whatever negotiations they were in with him.

Speaker 1 And so now he thinks he controls the rest of the world. He said today, do Canada and Mexico do what I tell them to do.
So he just wants more power.

Speaker 1 He just wants more control. And all of us are going to be paying as a consequence.

Speaker 1 And he could crash the economy or at least send us into a recession because we already weren't in a great place before the tariffs. And now he's just making it worse.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, we could be headed towards stagflation, which is the worst of all scenarios where you have high prices and low growth, which is sort of what the economy is modeling out to if these trends continue.

Speaker 3 You made an important point on his media diet, which I just want to hone in on for a second.

Speaker 3 Trump has been always very good at figuring out why people are mad at Democrats because he watches right-wing media and he sees what animates their audience. But

Speaker 3 watching right-wing media will never tell you why people are mad at Republicans, which is how

Speaker 3 he missed. reactions to the pandemic.
It's

Speaker 3 why he's missing the reactions to inflation here. And it's why he doesn't fully understand the consequences of his Epstein problems down the line.

Speaker 1 And he also, he understood around Liberation Day when the market started crashing, because he does care about the stock market and he watches the stock market.

Speaker 1 But now that the stock market has basically like, all right, these are the tariffs, and,

Speaker 1 you know, we just want to make sure we get a rate cut, and maybe we can get a rate cut. And,

Speaker 1 you know, we care about AI investment more than anything else. So he thinks the stock market's going well.
And so,

Speaker 1 again, he's going to be totally insulated from other economic news. And one way he's trying to hide the bad economic news is by hiding the bad economic numbers.

Speaker 1 Last week we talked about how he fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics because Trump didn't like the jobs numbers. And this week he nominated E.J.
Anthony as the replacement.

Speaker 1 Who is this guy? Well, 37, got his PhD five years ago from Northern Illinois University on an unrelated topic.

Speaker 1 Works at the Right Wing Heritage Foundation, writes for The Daily Caller, Breitbart, the Federalist, goes on the war room, which is why he was Steve Bannon's suggestion for the job.

Speaker 1 He's been criticized as utterly unqualified and extremely partisan by even conservative economists, including Trump's first term pick to head the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Speaker 1 A Trump guy, conservative, headed up the Bureau of Labor Statistics and is like, I liked Trump, but this guy, too much. Anthony has called the jobs numbers, quote, phony baloney.

Speaker 1 He's compared the Bureau of Labor Statistics to a random number generator, said that Trump should take a chainsaw to the agency and told Fox News last week after he was nominated that the government should stop putting out monthly jobs numbers until the system is fixed.

Speaker 1 Best of all, best of all, I know, it's hard to believe there's more.

Speaker 1 Anthony just happened to be in the crowd outside the Capitol on January 6th. But don't worry, the White House says he was just there for unrelated meetings.

Speaker 1 I hadn't realized there was also an economic roundtable happening at the Capitol on January 6th. Did you know that?

Speaker 3 I think you're being overly cynical here, John. What I think happened here is that it's clear that Mr.

Speaker 3 Antony has a deep reverence for America's government and democracy, and he simply just happened to be in Washington on January 6th to tour the Capitol.

Speaker 3 And while he was there, he also just happened to run into a large group of people, many of whom armed, carrying gallows with the vice president's name on them who all shared his political views and his views on the election and he just thought he would stay he found new friends and honestly he's kind of like he's he and then when he was there he was just observing he's sort of like uh tocqueville if you will right he's just just just reporting on what's happening in america i gotta say when i first read this i hadn't seen the picture and when i read it i was like okay maybe he really was in dc and maybe he was like at the like just you know across the street somewhere and then I saw the picture.

Speaker 1 He's like in the fucking crowd.

Speaker 3 Yeah, of course.

Speaker 3 It's not he's not sure.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he was there for an unrelated meeting, I'm sure. Also, have you seen him in his office?

Speaker 1 There's like these

Speaker 1 videos of him in his office and the big picture behind him is the Bismarck, which is a famous Nazi warship from World War II.

Speaker 3 I had not seen that. That's this is the information I'm made.
Also, I'm sure.

Speaker 1 He's just a naval ship enthusiast.

Speaker 3 Yes, I'm sure he's when he is not standing in the periphery of a mob trying to murder the Republican vice president. He is just building ships in a bottle, maybe?

Speaker 1 He just loves ships. And his favorite ship just happened to be a Nazi ship from World War II, not all the other ships.

Speaker 3 Yeah, he's a maritime enthusiast. What can you do?

Speaker 1 Who among us doesn't have the Bismarck hung up in our house and office somewhere? All right. What are the chances we can stop this asshole's confirmation?

Speaker 1 And if not, what are the chances we can trust the government's economic data going forward?

Speaker 3 Let's start with the former.

Speaker 3 So I'd like to think that being at least on the periphery of the mob that tried to murder the people who are going to vote for his nomination would be disqualifying.

Speaker 3 However, these Republicans suck.

Speaker 3 They confirmed a pro-Russia kook as the head of U.S. intelligence.
They confirmed...

Speaker 3 a weekend cable anchor with a reported drinking problem and all sorts of other misconduct issues as the head of the Pentagon.

Speaker 3 And they

Speaker 3 confirmed a anti-vaccine enthusiast as the head of Health and Human Services.

Speaker 3 So I'm not going to place a large wager that this will be the moment in which they find courage to deny Donald Trump what Donald Trump wants.

Speaker 1 I can't wait for these fucking confirmation hearings because, you know, they're going to ask, I'm like, are you going to suspend the monthly jobs reports?

Speaker 1 Of course not. I think that

Speaker 1 I'm going to treat the job with the integrity it deserves and blah blah blah blah blah. And then, you know, he's just going to do whatever he wants.
Yeah, then they're going to confirm him.

Speaker 3 They're like, he told us what he needed to hear. He seemed like a serious guy.
And then he's going to suspend the reports or do whatever else. Now, the latter part of your question is, how

Speaker 3 worried should we be that he cooks the books? You have pointed out on multiple occasions because you're a realist that

Speaker 3 and you generally wage war both publicly and privately against anyone who is hyperbolic in their concerns about Trump,

Speaker 3 which which has really gone well for you, I think, over the years.

Speaker 3 I'm just kidding. But generally, when, here's what I, here's the, the, what I actually, the nice, truly nice way of saying that.
I'm the optimist.

Speaker 1 I'm the optimist.

Speaker 3 No, it's not that you're the optimist. It's that you read the details.
And then, so when everyone's like, he's cooking the books, you actually look and see.

Speaker 3 And so you understand and have pointed out on this podcast that there's a quite a process that goes through that involves a ton of civil servants that the number that actually the BLS director, by current practice, did not even see the numbers until they're basically finished.

Speaker 3 And you and I know from being in the White House that there is a very

Speaker 3 serious procedures for keeping those numbers secret because they are market-moving information, right?

Speaker 3 Like, no, we would, like, you and I would learn the numbers at 8:30 in the morning with the rest of the world when they came out.

Speaker 3 No, like, no, almost no one, only like the president's top economic aide would like get the numbers in advance, and no one else would.

Speaker 1 I know. And we, and because we, we couldn't know, we would like watch their expression all day, thinking like, are they happy? Are they not happy? Does that mean the jobs numbers are good?

Speaker 3 Does that mean they're bad?

Speaker 1 It seems so quaint right now.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I would sort of wander by their office to see if I could kind of get a sense of what was happening. So there are some checks in place that prevent the cooking of the books.
However,

Speaker 3 I do not come, once again, I'm not incredibly confident that something that if Trump doesn't want numbers, he's going to find a way to force something else.

Speaker 3 You can see them saying, oh, there is a bad data sample, right? We're not going to do it this month.

Speaker 3 You know, you just, there are things, like there are levers that we have not thought of that they can pull to try to either make the report, a bad report go away or change the numbers in some way, shape, or form.

Speaker 3 And they are coming up with, the other thing is they're coming up with a new method to do it.

Speaker 3 The odds are the new method. maybe not so statistically rigorous, but will get them the answer they want, right? And under the current process, it's hard for them to cook the books.

Speaker 3 They're coming up with a new process that could be very book cooking friendly, if you will.

Speaker 1 I mean, we have seen this play out now across many agencies with Doge and other actions by the White House, which is hack comes in who's unqualified, who's just a Trump loyalist, and a bunch of, you know, people with integrity who are civil servants and nonpartisan sound the alarm, talk to reporters, resign.

Speaker 1 There's an uproar. They sue.
It goes to the courts.

Speaker 1 And every, you know, for a day or two, everyone's like, oh no, the BLS people, like a top BLS official who'd been there forever, has resigned because Anthony is cooking the books or they're worried that

Speaker 1 he won't give the president the jobs numbers that they all calculated. And so everyone will freak out about it.
And then,

Speaker 1 you know, the lawsuit will work its way through the courts and we'll be on to the next thing. And meanwhile, Trump will be just, you know,

Speaker 1 talking about whatever numbers he wants to talk about. So like,

Speaker 1 I do think that there are these safeguards in place, but the ultimate safeguard is our attention, our public attention on the shit that they're doing. And that seems to be waning on a host of issues,

Speaker 1 which is what I worry about.

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Speaker 1 So, outside the White House, the Big Balls-inspired militarization of D.C. continues apace.

Speaker 1 There are now hundreds of National Guard troops, federal agents, and ICE agents patrolling the streets of Washington along with the D.C. police, all under the command of Donald Trump.

Speaker 1 Some are standing around next to big army trucks taking pictures with tourists. Others were protecting the Soul Cycle and Georgetown Cupcake on M Street.

Speaker 1 Very dangerous areas, for those who don't know. And then there are the armed masked ICE agents who set up a vehicle checkpoint in the middle of busy 14th Street Wednesday night.

Speaker 1 They stopped cars, they handed out citations, they arrested people for permit violations. They also drew a big crowd of protesters.
Here's some of the DC sights and sounds from that night.

Speaker 8 Just know, right, learn, teach, tell your boys, like, yo, everybody's out. From FBI to Pro Police.

Speaker 8 So do your thing. Let them know.
Don't be smoking outside. Don't be drinking outside.

Speaker 1 Because Donald Trump's tired of it.

Speaker 1 Just in case anyone still thinks this is all just about crime in D.C.,

Speaker 1 here's Trump. Deportations are Tom Homan and Republican Congressman James Comer talking about what they're really up to and what they got planned.

Speaker 9 Your federalization of the police has a 30-day limit unless Congress acts to extend it. Are you talking to Congress about extending it or do you believe 30 days is sufficient?

Speaker 6 Well, if it's a national emergency, we can do it without Congress.

Speaker 10 President Trump doesn't have a limitation on his authority to make this country safe again. There's no limitation on that.

Speaker 11 We're going to support doing this in other cities if it works out in Washington, D.C.

Speaker 11 Why don't you vote to allow President Trump to come into Chicago or New York City or Philadelphia and try to combat the

Speaker 11 criminal activity in their cities? So I think that this is an experiment that's probably needed in a lot of the Democrat-run cities in America.

Speaker 1 So let's start with, you know, we we both lived in dc for many many years you longer than me you went to college there what did you make of the the scenes from uh from dc

Speaker 3 i mean it's just so surreal

Speaker 3 because we know that crime is actually down in dc

Speaker 3 violent crime is down in dc there's still too much crime for sure but it is down significantly from where it was in 2023 We don't have a full picture of what's happening, but they seem to be the federal troops, the FBI agents, the IC IC agents, whatever else seem to be in the places where there's less crime, right?

Speaker 3 Where they are in

Speaker 3 the more well-to-do areas, the places where tourists are, and not all the, all parts of the city, particularly the parts where lots of longtime DC residents live.

Speaker 3 It's like almost like they're avoiding the crime. It's performative, not actual.
It's like the people they're trying to protect are big balls, right? People who were

Speaker 3 driving, like just who were like were driving a car jacket. I just,

Speaker 3 if you had told people in the election that seven and a half months or whatever just into Trump's term, there would be mass federal agents walking in the streets of D.C., harassing people, telling them that Mr.

Speaker 3 Trump wants them inside.

Speaker 3 I mean, we are so far beyond, like, I was joking with you before about hyperbolic concerns. Like, it, like, this is like, this is very real.
You go through all the things.

Speaker 3 You listen to what Tom Homan had to say there, that

Speaker 3 we are having, having, they're manufacturing a crisis that is completely made up in order to deploy federal agents and then assert unlimited authority for the president to control the population through those forces that he deployed under false pretenses.

Speaker 3 It's what happened in LA. It's happening here.

Speaker 3 Now they want to expand it to everywhere else. And we were just spent this time talking about the BLS numbers.

Speaker 3 What happens when they start rigging the crime numbers to make it seem like crime's gone up in certain places to justify sending these troops in?

Speaker 1 I mean, and they don't even need to. They're just saying, they're just asserting it, you know? And look, there's

Speaker 1 this debate about, you know, is crime really down?

Speaker 1 Is it down from pandemic level highs? And so now it's still at a higher level than it used to be before the pandemic. And it's like, yeah, too much crime for sure.
All in on crime fighting strategies.

Speaker 1 I'm all in. I mean, you know, there's, there's a whole, we talked about this earlier in the week, like, there's this whole menu of options that the president, the D.C.

Speaker 1 Police Department, Congress, which, you know, cut a billion dollars from the D.C. budget.
They were, remember they were going to restore all the money they cut from D.C.

Speaker 1 and the, in the bill way back when? Yeah, how's that going? They just never got around to that, even though everyone was like, oh, yeah, we'll fix that later.

Speaker 3 They've been very busy hiding from Epstein questions. So they've been unable to do that.
Right, yeah,

Speaker 1 could have used the money to put more cops on the street. Didn't do that.

Speaker 1 Instead, we have National Guard there standing at Union Station next to this huge army army truck just looking bored taking pictures with tourists and then I mean for people who don't know DC or don't live in DC M Street in Georgetown and 14th Street where the vehicle checkpoint was are the most like high trafficked touristy

Speaker 1 areas of DC some of the most and I you know I kind of think it's a show of force it's it's they want the libs who live in those areas to see what they're doing they want people to get angry they wanted those protesters to be there.

Speaker 1 And the vehicle checks, you know, the checkpoint, what the hell was that for? That was to make people pissed off. That was to scare people.
That was to show people we're in control and you're not.

Speaker 1 And we can do what we want and we can even do more. And what are you going to do about it?

Speaker 1 And, you know, you heard those protesters and thank goodness they were all peaceful protests, but like, how long does that last? Because, you know, it's human nature.

Speaker 1 Yeah, there was already

Speaker 1 the most violent protester we've seen so far was the

Speaker 1 man, the man who threw the sandwich. Have you heard about the

Speaker 1 subway sandwich? I believe that was right on, I think that was like right around in DuPont.

Speaker 1 That was like right near my old apartment.

Speaker 3 Oh, that subway over there? That subway still opened, I guess it's a great question.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I used to go there all the time. Anyway, it turns out he was a Justice Department employee who threw a subway sub at the officers.
They arrested him and charged charged him with a felony.

Speaker 1 Pam Bondi, the attorney general, and now I guess the chief of police of D.C. as well, tweeted about it.
And she said, oh, we also found out he was a Justice Department employee.

Speaker 1 And no tolerance, no tolerance for hurting law enforcement or threatening law enforcement here in the Justice Department, except for the guy who's a senior advisor in the Justice Department, who at January 6th, I don't know if he saw E.J.

Speaker 1 Anthony, the new Bureau of Labor Statistics guy there while he was there, but was screaming for people to kill cops.

Speaker 1 So, no tolerance, though, no tolerance for

Speaker 1 hurting police officers. What did you make of sort of the protest angle and how that could go?

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, it's understandable. It's the right thing to do.
Peaceful protest is important. We want to shine a light on this so people understand what's happening.

Speaker 3 It's important that it stays peaceful, not for the politics of it, but because you who knows how Trump and these officers would use that as a way to justify violence and even even more aggressive actions.

Speaker 3 It's, I mean, it's just, it's very,

Speaker 3 the goal here is to make people feel powerless. And one way to show that you're not powerless is to use your voice, right? To use your presence to send a signal that you are not afraid.

Speaker 3 And kudos to the people who are doing that. Good for them.

Speaker 1 Yeah. No, I totally agree.
And obviously, don't throw things. at law enforcement or federal agents.

Speaker 3 Not even sandwiches, especially nothing. Not even sandwiches.

Speaker 1 You know, don't be burning cars, doing, causing all. Don't give them an excuse, right?

Speaker 1 And but also, I mean, we noticed this in Los Angeles, too. Like a lot of these, these National Guard, especially the Guard, who are there, they don't want to be there either.

Speaker 1 And they're just there because that's their job and they were sent there. And

Speaker 1 so, look, there are people, plenty of people with bad intentions in ICE right now. There are sometimes police officers with bad intentions.

Speaker 1 But I do think everyone should keep in mind when you're out there protesting that, like, let's focus on Donald Trump and his administration because

Speaker 1 that's who we have to oppose. That's who we have to fight.
And, you know, it's scary that it's getting to this point. But authoritarian takeovers, like, and

Speaker 1 I talked to Erica Chenoweth about this a couple months ago in that episode about the 3.5% rule and protests.

Speaker 1 And you get to a point where you want the security forces of the authoritarian government to eventually defect. That is like one way authoritarian regimes fall.

Speaker 1 And so you want as many of these cops and federal agents and ICE agents and National Guard to at some point be like when Donald Trump or Pete Hagseth or Pam Bondi tells them to fucking fire on a crowd or something like that, God forbid, you want them to be like, no,

Speaker 1 of course I'm not going to do that. This is crazy.

Speaker 1 And so I'm not saying like you have to bend over backwards to be nice to them, but like just keep in mind who the real villains are here, which are the people in the White House who are giving these orders.

Speaker 1 So it certainly seems like Trump would need 60 votes in the Senate to maintain control of the DC police indefinitely, because every 30 days now, I guess he has to reauthorize

Speaker 1 his control of the police force. He won't get that.
We heard him talking about declaring a national emergency.

Speaker 1 We've already seen him deploy National Guard troops here in LA over the objection of our governor. Obviously, he can do it in DC because the president controls the Guard in D.C.

Speaker 1 Is there anything stopping him from doing this in cities across the country and just saying, screw Congress? I don't need their authorization for D.C.

Speaker 1 I'm just going to take the police force, do what I want, and I'm going to start sending in troops to Chicago and everywhere else.

Speaker 3 There's not that much to stop him. Right.
There are very few limits here. The one thing is he is resource constrained.
You can't do this everywhere all the time.

Speaker 3 For him,

Speaker 3 they'll do a vote because they want to make Democrats vote against this, which I have no problem for them voting against, but in their mind, they think, you know, Trump in this press conference thing he did earlier today in the Oval Office where we heard the sound from, he like, he's like, Democrats are against crime.

Speaker 3 Democrats want crime. We're trying to stop crime.
My Democrat friends are calling me to thanking me for this. He gives zero shits about the people of D.C.

Speaker 3 Maybe he cares about like his staffers who live in DC, but then probably not even that. He just wants to send a message to the rest of the country that he's tough on crime.

Speaker 3 He wants to try to make this a political issue. Crime is, I would say, nowhere near the top of people's issue list when you look at polling.

Speaker 3 It is like people are concerned about crime just generally in their lives, but as a political issue, it's not what Trump wants it to be yet.

Speaker 3 He's trying to raise the salience of it to make himself more powerful.

Speaker 3 The other thing about this that I think is just really notable about Trump's intentions and some of the potential consequences of this approach substantively is in the Oval Office media availability, Trump was asked, isn't by one of the rare real reporters who was allowed to be in this ass kissing fest that he he did with the press about, like, isn't this going to make us more vulnerable?

Speaker 3 Isn't it going to, they're taking away resources from their real jobs, including terrorism. And Trump says, no, the terrorism is there.
Right.

Speaker 3 He thinks about this in terms of an internal threat to the country.

Speaker 3 And by internal threat to the country means an internal threat to him and his power, not how do we stop a foreign terrorist organization from attacking us.

Speaker 3 It is liberal protesters in cities who are trying to take us down.

Speaker 1 I mean, enemy from within. He said it all through the campaign.
He's been saying it ever since.

Speaker 1 One more note on the politics of crime, because I saw on CNN, Harry Etten was going through some polls saying that, you know, people trust

Speaker 1 American people trust Republicans more on crime than they do Democrats. Donald Trump has good ratings on crime, right? And so it's like, oh, Democrats should be careful and all that.

Speaker 1 And, you know, the polling is all right, but

Speaker 1 I will just remind everyone at when Trump took office, everyone kept saying the same thing about immigration.

Speaker 1 Republicans and Trump have a huge advantage on immigration when they started sending people to El Salvador. Maybe we shouldn't make this an issue.
This is a distraction.

Speaker 1 This is his turf that he wants to play on. And it is true that people care about a secure border.
It is true that people would want to deport.

Speaker 1 or detain at least people who have criminal records who are in this country, undocumented for sure.

Speaker 1 People, it turns out, now that Democrats stood up and fought this, and we've all made a big deal of this, people do not like sending people to a gulag without due process.

Speaker 1 People do not like ICE agents masked and armed rounding up legal residents, American citizens, scaring the shit out of people, taking away people who've been here for decades, working hard, who are trying to become citizens.

Speaker 1 People don't like that. And now he's underwater on immigration.

Speaker 1 And so I do not think Democrats should look at this issue and say, okay, because people genuinely don't want to live in a place where there's crime and do want to make sure there is enough law enforcement to fight crime, which is true,

Speaker 1 that also means they want to live in a police state. And that also means that they're fine with vehicle checkpoints in their neighborhood and National Guard troops on the mall.

Speaker 1 Because I don't think that's true.

Speaker 3 This is a very important point because when Trump began his presidency, he had huge advantages on immigration and the economy. And now he's deeply underwater on both.

Speaker 3 It's just important for Democrats to look at this and not say, here's what voters think now. It's what do we want voters to think next November when they go vote?

Speaker 3 And how do we get them to understand that? And we know from his response to what happened in L.A. that all the polling shows, that was deeply underwater.

Speaker 3 Even Republicans did not like sending military troops to an American city. And so we like there is precedent here of us, of people rejecting Trump's approach here.
And I think it can happen again.

Speaker 3 We just have to not be afraid of the issue.

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Speaker 6 Are you ready to get spicy?

Speaker 3 These Doritos Golden Sriracha aren't that spicy.

Speaker 6 Sriracha sounds pretty spicy to me.

Speaker 13 Um, a little spicy, but also tangy and sweet.

Speaker 3 Maybe it's time to turn up the heat or turn it down.

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Speaker 1 Speaking of ICE, a big part of Trump's show force is about giving ICE free rein, freer rein, to intimidate, detain, arrest, and in some cases disappear whoever they want. Now that the D.C.

Speaker 1 police are under Trump's control, they announced Thursday that they'll be helping ICE find and transport immigrants. They arrested one delivery driver off the street in D.C.

Speaker 1 Thursday morning, wouldn't tell him or anyone why. The man just yelled to a local reporter, quote, they're taking me.

Speaker 1 This continues to happen all over over the country to people with no criminal record who are here legally, including U.S. citizens.

Speaker 1 A New Zealand woman who lives in Washington state and her six-year-old son, both with valid visas, were recently stopped by ICE at the Canadian border.

Speaker 1 They had dropped off her other two children at the Vancouver airport. They were going to fly home to New Zealand to see their grandparents.

Speaker 1 And the mother and her six-year-old son drove back, were stopped at the border. when they're coming back to their place where they live in Washington state.
And she's got two visas.

Speaker 1 She's got an employment visa and a visa to live there. And because one of the visas was just renewed, but the other one was still pending approval, but she thought they were both renewed.

Speaker 1 It's just like honest mistake. It was the same card.
So why would she think it wasn't renewed yet? Because of that,

Speaker 1 they detained her. And she's currently locked up in a detention center in South Texas with her six-year-old.
And she has been there for three weeks.

Speaker 1 And we only know about this because one of her friends called reporters and it was in the Guardian and they're trying to raise money for her legal fund to help her get out but like this woman she's got two sons who are in New Zealand she's got another six-year-old with her imagine the trauma that that kid's gonna go through because of a fucking visa wasn't renewed this is a this is someone from New Zealand

Speaker 1 here in LA a 15 year old student with severe disabilities was in a car with his mom outside school when a truck full of masked men surrounded them, pulled the boy boy out of the car, handcuffed him.

Speaker 1 The fucking liars at Homeland Security said, Oh, mistaken identity. They thought he was MS-13.
They were looking for an MS-13.

Speaker 1 You're looking for an MS-13 member who was actually a 50, you mistook a 15-year-old with severe disabilities sitting in a car with his mom outside of school for a fucking MS-13 member.

Speaker 1 That's all they could say. You don't get anything else from DHS.
You don't get anything else from the Trump administration. Someone asked Trump about it at the press conference today.

Speaker 1 He just didn't answer. He just said, oh, there's horrible people.
There's terrible people. That's what it's about.
These are good people. They're good, tough people.

Speaker 3 That's all.

Speaker 1 And just today, ICE agents showed up outside Gavin Newsom's redistricting event. You're going to talk to Newsom in a bit.
We're going to talk about the event. He holds this event here in LA.

Speaker 1 And suddenly, a bunch of ICE agents are right outside the event.

Speaker 1 Someone asked them, someone went up to them. recorded on their phone, said, why are you here?

Speaker 1 And one of the agents, federal agent, said, we're just here making Los Angeles a safer place since we don't have politicians who will do that. Yeah.
So they're just doing their jobs in ICE.

Speaker 1 They're not political. They're just straight shooters.
I don't know.

Speaker 1 I feel like it might be time for like Democratic leaders and anyone who doesn't want to live in a police state to get even louder about this and to become more focused on what ICE is doing.

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 1 What do you think? Any ideas here?

Speaker 1 It feels like it just keeps happening and we're just like, okay.

Speaker 3 Here's the thing that haunts me about this is that I think we have an iceberg problem here. That we are only seeing the tip of what's happening.

Speaker 3 Because it just happens to be that some of these most horrible cases are people like the family New Zealand who have friends who can get word to the Guardian or people happen to witness what happens and they had their phone and recorded.

Speaker 3 How many people who don't have a voice, who don't have friends, who know Guardian reporters are getting disappeared, who are in custody right now, who when they get released, even if they ever are fortunate to get released, don't even know how they would make their story known to the world.

Speaker 3 Yes. Right.
Like we're seeing a fraction of what's happening. Like this is the fight, right? This is like, this is, this is the moment, right?

Speaker 3 I was listening to your conversation with Pete Buttigieg from this past Sunday, and you asked him,

Speaker 3 quoting Rachel Maddow, like that we are now living in an authoritarian state. And you can, as Pete sort of did, you can argue, we're this close, we're not that close.

Speaker 3 Like we can argue where we are on the scale, but we are much fucking closer than we ever thought we would possibly be.

Speaker 3 And if you can't yell and scream about this, if you cannot make this

Speaker 3 a cause that you care about and are passionate about it, and you're a person in politics, and I am not sure why you're in politics.

Speaker 3 I understand all the polling. We just talked about tariffs and the economy and inflation, all of that, but I also think voters want to see us fight for something real.

Speaker 3 And you have to stand up for people. And we, and talk and raise, shining a light on this has worked.
It has driven Trump's numbers down.

Speaker 3 It has taken his greatest political strength, which is immigration, and made it into a liability. He is underwater on immigration.
And when you make it about deportations, he's even more underwater.

Speaker 3 When you ask specific questions, people do not like what's happening, including some Republicans.

Speaker 3 And specifically the voters that we need who are gettable for us. And so it's not just...

Speaker 3 I'm not asking anyone to go on some sort of political suicide mission for because of some sorkin-esque way in which we're going going to win this.

Speaker 3 It's the right thing to do, but it also can be good politics if we do it right.

Speaker 1 I totally agree. And I just, I want to, I mean, I don't, I wish I had better answers because it's like, yes, we should organize.
We should protest.

Speaker 1 You know, I do give a lot of Democratic politicians credit who were maybe a little nervous about taking on this issue at first. They've come around.

Speaker 1 Obviously, you know, Chris Van Hollen went to El Salvador. Like people are standing up on this, but it's a really tough information environment, media environment.

Speaker 1 It's hard to get the message through. It's hard to get people to pay attention.
And I just think we need to figure out new creative ways to get people to pay attention to this because this is

Speaker 1 like the National Guard, the DC takeover, all that kind of stuff. Like to me, ICE is the most dangerous development here.

Speaker 1 The transformation of ICE, which was always, you know, ICE was never a great organization in the first Trump term, but now it is, you know, I've been calling it secret police.

Speaker 1 And like, look, it's not much different. I don't think it's an exaggeration.
I don't think it's just something I'm saying. It's like

Speaker 1 they wear masks, they have guns, they jump out of trucks now at fucking home depots to start just grabbing anyone they can. And like, yes, are they picking up criminals?

Speaker 1 Are they picking up dangerous people who shouldn't be in this country? Are they picking up undocumented people who, even if they should be in this country, you know, well, they came here illegally.

Speaker 1 And so, yes, of course, but they're also just rounding up, detaining, and deporting people who absolutely do not deserve to be treated like this. No one deserves to be treated as inhumane as

Speaker 1 a lot of the people that they're rounding up are being treated right now. We even get to, we don't even have time to talk about fucking alligator Alcatraz.

Speaker 1 There's now reports out of there that the conditions are just fucking horrible, horrific conditions. People have been stuck there.
They haven't been.

Speaker 1 That's the other thing, too, is like, it's not, everyone's like, oh, well, they're deported. Go back to your country.
It's like, people aren't getting sent back to their country.

Speaker 1 That's even that would be better than this, right?

Speaker 1 People are getting just like stuck in these fucking squalor, in these detention centers that like they're not getting the food they need and they're just there and they're stuck there.

Speaker 1 And it's, it's so unbelievably fucked up. It is a stain on this country.
We're going to look back on it like

Speaker 1 Japanese internment, like all of this other, I mean, it's just, it's so bad. It's so bad.

Speaker 1 And if you're a Democratic politician and you have a platform, or anyone who has a platform, you should speak out about it.

Speaker 1 All right, when this episode drops on Friday morning, Trump will be en route to Alaska for his meet-cute with Putin. The

Speaker 1 White House has been tamping down expectations for the summit.

Speaker 1 Now they're saying, it's basically just a temp check. You're just going to see how he's doing.
Just fly to Alaska to check out how Putin's doing.

Speaker 1 Thankfully, Zelensky and European leaders were able to connect with Trump before the meeting so they could urge him not to hand over Ukraine to Putin and try to hammer out a negotiating strategy.

Speaker 1 That's what they said. The reports are they hammered out a negotiating strategy with Trump, who, you know, I'm sure he's going to stick with it because he is famously disciplined.

Speaker 1 Trump was asked about the meeting in the Oval on Thursday, and here's what he said.

Speaker 6 And I think President Putin will make peace. I think President Zelensky will make peace.
We'll see if they can get along. And if they can, it'll be great.

Speaker 6 You know, I've solved six wars in the last six months, a little more than six months now.

Speaker 12 Six wars? What the fuck is he talking about?

Speaker 3 I can name two. I mean, he didn't solve any wars, let's be very clear.

Speaker 3 He started a war or tried to finish a war between Iran and Israel, and he claims to have averted a war between India and Pakistan, although that's quite skeptical, but I don't know what the other four are.

Speaker 1 There's an Azerbaijan Armenia thing that was in the Oval last week that I think he's claiming he, you know, I don't know.

Speaker 1 Did you see that he cold called the Norwegian prime minister to ask for the peace prize?

Speaker 3 You just don't want a president who's that thirsty.

Speaker 1 So anyway, I mean, you know, maybe. He's going to get the prize, John.

Speaker 3 That's how it is.

Speaker 1 Do you think he's on his way to the prize if he gets the, is he going to, is, does, does Vladimir Putin want peace? Is Trump right? Does he want, do you think Vladimir Putin wants peace?

Speaker 1 He seems like a peaceful guy, right?

Speaker 3 He wants a peace of Ukraine? Seems like that's what he wants. I mean, I don't know why.

Speaker 3 Yeah, you should booby. Honestly, we should just edit that out.
I'm sorry. We just went through this very deep, serious, heartfelt discussion with immigration, and I had to make.

Speaker 1 Look, that's what we needed. needed.

Speaker 3 I had to be a jokester like Marco Rubio was

Speaker 3 obviously doesn't want peace. It is in his interest to keep this going, or at least

Speaker 3 he's not leaving without something that he can go back to the Russian people and say this, it was all worth it for this.

Speaker 3 I followed through on my post-Soviet expansionist goals.

Speaker 3 What I worry about in this meeting is that Trump's a fucking idiot and Putin is not. And Trump is easily swayed by Putin.

Speaker 3 Like, we, I mean, I know it's, it is like resistance fan fiction, but he did, last time they met in person, or at least one of the more recent times they met in person, uh, endorsed the FSB over his own intelligence agencies when it came to

Speaker 3 the Russian involvement in the election. Like, he's probably going to, I,

Speaker 3 the main deliverable will probably be some sort of statement about

Speaker 3 how it really is.

Speaker 1 John Brennan and James Clapper. Yes.

Speaker 1 yeah yeah it'll be the russia investigation yeah no i worry about that look the the best outcome for the world would be if you know putin pisses trump off somehow like you know we've seen now for the first time ever in the last couple months like a few flashes of anger from trump about putin because he says he talks to him on the phone he says with the one thing and then he gets out the phone and then he just bombs another ukrainian city and you know trump got a little angry about that so like you

Speaker 1 if if if Putin says something to piss Trump off, you can see Trump leave the meeting and be like, all right, now I'm going to be tough and whatever. But Putin's probably not that dumb.
And so,

Speaker 1 yeah, Putin knows how to flatter him. Putin's going to tell him what he wants to hear.
He's probably going to try to tell him in a pretty private way.

Speaker 1 I'm sure there's going to be a couple of them and interpreters and God knows who else. So we're not even going to know.
And

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 1 I'm not expecting much from it.

Speaker 1 And Trump keeps saying now, too, like, well, I'll get a temperature check and I'll see how Putin is in the first couple of minutes and I'll know if I can make a deal.

Speaker 1 And this will be the first of many meetings, first of many meetings. But I don't know.
I kind of think he's setting it up for,

Speaker 1 you know, coming out of the meeting, having some deal where then he goes to Zelensky with the deal and then Zelensky says no because it's a crazy deal that he can't accept.

Speaker 1 both because it's probably a bad idea and because his own constitution doesn't allow him to accept a deal that's bad like that and the Ukrainian people aren't going to want a bad deal either.

Speaker 1 And then Trump can say, well, Putin tried, tried, but, you know, Zelensky said no, and he's just getting greedy. So I'm washing my hands of this whole thing.

Speaker 3 That's a very likely outcome. He's going to leave that meeting more pro-Russia than when he goes in, because Putin will flatter him, talk about

Speaker 3 some property opportunities there. But the one thing is, I don't think Putin will give him a fake award.

Speaker 3 I think he is, unlike the rest of these fucking Yahoos, he's got enough pride to not show up with like a special letter from the king or an invitation to a special party or a gold-plated thing like Tim Cook did.

Speaker 3 But I think he knows how to play Trump because he's been playing Trump for years.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Or he walks in,

Speaker 3 drops a video cassette on the table.

Speaker 1 The P-tape.

Speaker 3 And he says, do you know what this is?

Speaker 3 Or even better, he just puts it there and never mentions it.

Speaker 1 Or he cooks up some emails that show that actually the 2020 election was rigged. Yeah.
And Trump actually did win the 2020 election. And then he'll be like waving that.

Speaker 3 I'll trade you these emails for the dumpus.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's that's fucking, oh my god. But like, I do.
Trump is a victim of the last person he talked to as well.

Speaker 1 Like, he's easily flattered, but the readout from the calls with Zelensky and the European leaders were like, oh, these were good calls with Trump. I think he sort of got it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because, again, he's easily fooled by Putin. He's probably easily manipulated by the Europeans and Zelensky as well.
So who knows?

Speaker 1 He could leave the meeting and be like pro-Russia, and then he could talk to Zelensky and the Europeans, and maybe they'll bring him back. It's ridiculous that

Speaker 1 the entire world has to do this with this fucking man.

Speaker 1 That we have to just cater to his crazy whims. All right, two quick things before we go to break.
Crooked's got some great news to share.

Speaker 1 The subscription content that we're always talking about, that we don't shut up about, is now available on Substack.

Speaker 1 It's oh, look, I guess they don't trust me with this. Dan, feel free to riff about the importance of Substack.
Okay, go ahead.

Speaker 3 You and I, I spend my time waiting for permission to riff.

Speaker 3 Just sitting here silently, biting my tongue, waiting for whatever faceless person writes that copy to say, Dan, you may riff now.

Speaker 3 Look,

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But the short version, my riff, my short riff would be in this modern media age, we have to be everywhere. We have to be on all the platforms.

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Speaker 3 You already have Pete Buttigieg, Chris Murphy, Jake Akenkloss, a whole bunch of politicians getting on there now more and more media personalities more progressive media is happening there so crooked needs to be there go subscribe

Speaker 1 and when you do subscribe you will unlock ad-free episodes of all your favorite crooked shows like this one plus uh love it or leave it plus pod save the world plus offline plus exclusive content like polar coaster uh with dan dan's got a whole secret show you guys don't even know about it's behind the paywall so subscribe and you can go on sub stack you can get the message box there because dan's been on sub stack he knows what's up and then you can also get uh Polar Coaster and learn all about what's the latest with the polls.

Speaker 1 And also, you can get a show Inside 2025 where there's a new episode out right now.

Speaker 1 And in honor of us joining Substack and our whole pitch about digital media, the two of us and Elijah did a whole episode about the future of digital media and where we are now and what's working and what's not and right-wing media, how it grows, how we can defeat it, how we can counter right-wing media, all the good stuff.

Speaker 1 It was a great episode. It's pretty fun.

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Speaker 1 Anyway, go to crooked.com slash friends to sign up, subscribe, get all the content your heart desires, and add free episodes, and it'll be great. Crooked.com slash friends.

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Speaker 1 All right, big news on Trump's attempt to rig the midterms.

Speaker 1 Gavin Newsom announced today that he will ask the California legislature to draw and voters to approve new congressional maps for the 2026, 2028, and 2030 elections.

Speaker 1 The plan is to put the measure on the ballot this November 4th, 2025.

Speaker 1 We expect to see the maps on Monday, but Newsom said Democrats are aiming to pick up five more House seats and protect four more swing districts currently held by Democrats.

Speaker 1 Right before we started taping, Newsom jumped on a call with Dan to talk more about the announcement. Here's that conversation.

Speaker 3 Governor Newsom, welcome to Pot Save America.

Speaker 6 Good to be with you.

Speaker 3 Let's start with the big announcement today. Can you walk our listeners through the process that California is going to go through to redraw their maps for the 2026 midterms?

Speaker 6 So on Monday, the legislature will introduce in both houses a constitutional amendment that includes new maps that will be done in a transparent way to request of the voters on a special election on November 4th to move forward with mid-decade redistricting that in essence will neutralize or neuter whatever happens in Texas.

Speaker 6 We won't move forward. It's a trigger unless Texas or other Republican states move forward.
It will be temporary. It will be done on an emergency basis.

Speaker 6 It will also be done in a way that reinforces our commitment to nationwide independent redistricting.

Speaker 3 How will the

Speaker 3 Reinforcement, the nationwide redistricting work?

Speaker 3 What part of the provision is that?

Speaker 6 Just it's a policy statement, a policy statement in support of that framework. It's also

Speaker 6 in the initiative itself,

Speaker 6 it also reinforces as policy our current statewide independent redistricting commission.

Speaker 6 It just calls for the change of the congressional maps, not the state maps or the statewide elected maps in California, just specific again to the congressional maps in 2026, 2028, and then reverts back the census in 2030.

Speaker 3 And then the commission will redraw the districts again post-census like they would do in any other

Speaker 6 exactly. So again, we've had for about 15 years, people may not know this in California about independent redistricting.

Speaker 6 And while it's true, and some of my Republican friends point this out, there are not that many Republicans. differences in California because of the independent redistricting commission.

Speaker 6 A lot of these seats are extraordinarily competitive, which is incredibly important. And it's sort of proof of the framework something I've long supported, independent redistricting.

Speaker 6 I actually opposed very publicly the repeal of the independent redistricting commission.

Speaker 6 So this is an emergency measure, again, temporary, transparent, and very democratic, since we're going to ask the people to ultimately decide.

Speaker 3 I know we'll see the maps on Monday, but can you give us a sense of

Speaker 3 how the maps could change the equation in terms of keeping the House? Is it a direct response to what Texas is doing? I don't know if you can speak to how the seats change.

Speaker 6 So here's the, I mean, so the maps are likely to come out as early as tomorrow, Friday, this weekend. Certainly are going to be out formally on Monday.

Speaker 6 And again, the legislature has to make ultimate determination of whether or not there's going to be a special election and this constitutional amendment will end on the ballot.

Speaker 6 That will be done over the course of next week. We hope they'll conclude that business by Thursday.
It will be done again with the maps being fully present and discussed.

Speaker 6 On that basis, though, I haven't reviewed personally the maps, quite literally.

Speaker 6 I have not seen the maps, but my understanding of the maps is when I say neutralizes or neuters what's happening in Texas, it means a pickup of five seats, fire with fire.

Speaker 6 I mean, we're just making no bones about it. We'll pick up five seats, likely pick up five seats with the right candidates to neutralize what's happened in Texas.

Speaker 6 And there is a likelihood on the basis of some of the new maps that some of the more competitive districts, there's a number of them, probably a minimum of four, that are quote unquote toss-up seats, there'll be some changes there as well.

Speaker 6 So we talk about punching a little bit above our weight. Again, Texas chose this fight.

Speaker 6 They made this decision. If they choose to have an exit ramp, we won't move forward.

Speaker 6 But if they do, we'll neutralize them and we'll also punch a little bit above our weight in those four additional seats.

Speaker 3 Outside of the press conference you held today, there were ICE agents showed up. I'm assuming that's not a coincidence.
Can you maybe react to that?

Speaker 6 It's pretty sick. I mean, what more evidence do you need? I don't think we needed to say a word at our press conference.
I mean, he sent the Border Patrol.

Speaker 6 He sent the regional head of the Border Patrol out here. And by the way, Dan, I want folks to know where we are.
I'm at the Democracy Center.

Speaker 6 I'm at the site where the Japanese were bused in the 1940s. Quite literally, it's not figurative.
And I hope people are listening.

Speaker 6 ICE or Border Patrol was out there at the exact same site that the Japanese were being picked up and bused

Speaker 6 decades ago. to intimidate.

Speaker 6 You think of all the places to be in this country, they they chose to be here at this exact time that's how weak and pathetic the trump administration is how desperate they are what more evidence do people need at what's at stake in this country and why california needs to do this

Speaker 6 this will be a special election is there anything else on the statewide ballot or will be is it will this measure be the only thing on the statewide ballot yeah what's nice about this special election it will coincide in a very um in a date that people are very familiar with, November 4th, because it will coincide with a lot of existing municipal elections.

Speaker 6 So people have reason to come out to vote for many different things. But look, I think at the end of the day, there's going to be a huge turnout in this.

Speaker 6 I think people are really tuning in and recognize what's at stake.

Speaker 6 I mean, what more evidence do you need down here in Southern California where they nationalized or rather federalized the National Guard?

Speaker 6 I'll remind everybody, because they need to be reminded, Donald Trump did not send the military overseas in his first term.

Speaker 6 He sent sent 700 active duty Marines within the United States of America to an American city here in Los Angeles.

Speaker 6 He just literally threatened to take $1 billion to extort $1 billion from one of the finest research institutions in the world, UCLA.

Speaker 6 And let me make this crystal clear to everyone watching and make it crystal clear to the folks at Harvard.

Speaker 6 If you, we will never, ever sell our soul to Donald Trump. Harvard, I pray you are listening.
How could you, of all institutions, on tens of billions of dollars?

Speaker 6 What the point is your damn endowment if you cannot stand on principle?

Speaker 6 This guy is coming after every institution of independent thinking, from the media going after people that disagree with him in institutions, large and small, higher education, obviously, and now, of course, intimidating people, threatening people, showing up.

Speaker 6 By the way, not just ICE and Border Patrol showing up for an event like this. That is a preview thing, Dan, of things to come.

Speaker 6 I assure you, just like the National Guard was a preview two months ago of what's going on in D.C.

Speaker 6 and will go on in other American cities, you will see the same kind of activity intimidating people around November 4th here in the state of California and around Election Day next year

Speaker 6 and in 2028. That's what Donald Trump will do.
He will send out ICE. He will send out Border Patrol to intimidate and chill free expression, free speech, and the right to access the polling booths.

Speaker 6 Mark my word.

Speaker 3 Are there things that you can do as governor to prevent that or provide protection or security or safety or comfort to people as they vote?

Speaker 6 Well, we're doing our best here. They were kicked out of the plaza here because they were on private property.
But look,

Speaker 6 they can assert their rights.

Speaker 6 We do not legally get in the way of federal law enforcement activities that are funded by the federal government, despite well-established policies, our sanctuary policy that is not inconsistent with many other jurisdictions all across this country.

Speaker 6 By the way, same sanctuary policies that Rudy Giuliani used to celebrate as mayor of New York City, just reminding people of what it's worth in that respect. So look, we'll do what we can,

Speaker 6 but there's limits ultimately on that.

Speaker 6 But there cannot be limits in mindset. People have to understand that what is occurring here is a preview of things to come.

Speaker 3 Let's talk a little about the politics of this initiative.

Speaker 3 It's a low, theoretically a low turnout election.

Speaker 3 I think there could be high turnout for low turnout elections, people engaged, but there's a pollout today from Politico, which I will stipulate does not test the actual measure that you got that you're hopefully putting on the ballot, but does show some like resistance to the idea of

Speaker 3 drawing the redrawing the districts. How are you like, what is your polling show? How are you thinking about how to sell this to

Speaker 3 a state that has supported independent redistricting on multiple occasions.

Speaker 6 Yeah, and this supports independent redistricting. We're not eliminating the independent redistricting of the commission, and I think that's consistent on that basis, what Politico is calling for.

Speaker 6 It's the pathway that we're trying to take here. This is temporary.
We keep the independent redistricting commission. We reinforce and affirm our desire to see it happen nationwide.

Speaker 6 I'll remind everyone listening, Democratic Party has overwhelmingly supported national independent redistricting. The Republican Party does not believe in it.
They want to continue the gerrymandering.

Speaker 6 They want to continue to pick their voters. They want to continue continue to rig elections.
This is not isolated to Texas. This is coming to Indiana, potentially Missouri.

Speaker 6 Obviously, Ohio is already on a fast track and places like Florida. These guys are not screwing around.
They do not play by any set of rules. It's not a different set of rules.

Speaker 6 They're going to try to rig the system. This provides power to the people to stop Trump, power to stand up against rigged elections, power to stand up for our democracy.

Speaker 6 And it's why it has profound impacts all across this country. But look, we have drafted this with a pathway to win.

Speaker 6 We're very sober about what we're up against and the myths and disinformation that will come from the RNC. We expect them to put tens of millions of dollars into this.

Speaker 6 We expect others to come out against it. And so

Speaker 6 we're not naive about that. Eyes wide open.
And we need people that are listening to support our cause. And we need folks, low dollar, to make contributions, to show up.

Speaker 6 This is about all 50 states, not just 58 counties in California.

Speaker 3 How could our listeners who either in California or around the country who want to help, is there a place they can go yet or is that still to come?

Speaker 6 Yeah, we have a website up for people to take a look at.

Speaker 6 And just, you know, and you can see right behind me, quite literally, Election Rigging Response Act is quite literally the name of the initiative that will have an actual numeric once the legislature moves forward as early as next Thursday when a number of pieces of legislation will land on my desk, the constitutional amendment, the special election moving directly forward on November 4th.

Speaker 6 But look, this is an opportunity to be for something, not just against someone.

Speaker 6 This is an opportunity to protect our democracy, the enduring values that many of us were taking for granted for the last 249 years, co-equal branches of government, popular sovereignty, rule of law, not rule of dawn.

Speaker 6 And it's an opportunity to participate. You have the power, your voice, choice, show up, contribute, and participate.

Speaker 6 This is a big damn deal because if the most untrumped state in America can't do this, we're in real peril as a nation.

Speaker 6 And our democracy, I really believe, may not recover if he rigs the midterms and gives him complete, unfettered power with no oversight into 2028.

Speaker 3 As you mentioned, this is not like you're directly responding to Texas, which is under their current version of the maps, trying to pick up five seats.

Speaker 3 But Ohio is moving forward, Indiana is moving forward, Missouri is moving forward, Ron DeSantis is making noise. Have you talked to your your fellow blue state governors

Speaker 3 about whether they can do similar things, whether it's New York or Illinois or Maryland? Do you know where that stands?

Speaker 6 Yeah, we've got to move. I mean, look, I really applaud.
I admire what JB did in hosting the Texas delegation, obviously Kathy Oakle as well. I really appreciate what they're saying on this topic.

Speaker 6 It's been wonderful. And of course, we're so proud of what Texas delegation did because they put a lot of wind in the sails of what we're doing.
They raised so much awareness.

Speaker 6 And by the way, Dan, I don't think that. I know that.

Speaker 6 We've seen it numerically with polls we did just a few weeks ago and people not even understanding what redistricting is or what it isn't and now how overwhelming it is, universal almost, how people now understand what's at stake.

Speaker 6 But now it's time to put a stake in the ground. It's not just about rhetoric.
It's about moving that rhetoric to a different reality. And it's about doing whatever we

Speaker 6 can, not just in those two states, but in other states all across this country. I know Maryland's talking potentially about something in January.

Speaker 6 I know that Kathy in New York has something not totally dissimilar to what we have in California. There's a version of that in Michigan.
But look, at the end of the day, there is no do-over here, man.

Speaker 6 There's no do-over. If we fall short, if we see this guy roll up and go to all those other states, just like J.D.
Vance rolled up into Indiana just a week ago, I mean, we could lose this thing.

Speaker 6 It's not an exaggeration. It is not.
This guy's rewriting history. This guy is censoring historical facts.

Speaker 6 This guy is taking down independent thought, independent media, journalists, the rule of law, and lawyers. I mean, this is it, guys.

Speaker 6 And so I just, I pray that people dial things up in other states, not just here in the state of California.

Speaker 3 There has been a bit of a debate within the Democratic Party about just how to think about Trump, as to whether he's an existential threat to democracy as we know it or someone who is sort of a very, very bad, but sort of a passing problem and the goal, we just just have to survive the next three and a half years.

Speaker 3 I take it from how you're acting here

Speaker 3 that you certainly believe this to be an existential threat. How do we convince more people?

Speaker 3 And particularly, because I think one of the arguments you're going to have to make, and all of us will have to make in the course of trying to get this passed, is you're going to have a lot of well-meaning Democrats who do not like Trump, but worry about the idea that we're getting in the mud with them, that we're speeding up the end of democracy.

Speaker 3 So what's sort of the best argument to those people?

Speaker 6 He's going to roll it over.

Speaker 6 I mean, look, if we roll over, it's over. Over now.
There's no independent redistricting nationwide if he rigs the 2026 election before one vote is cast.

Speaker 6 There's no 250th anniversary of we the people in the enduring the best of Roman Republic and Greek democracy. We're not going to be out there celebrating that.
There's no rule of law.

Speaker 6 It's the rule of dawn. The extortion racket he's running, capitalism.
I mean,

Speaker 6 I'm old enough to remember my Republican friends supporting free enterprise. I think it was Churchill said, a healthy horse pulling a sturdy wagon.

Speaker 6 I'm a small business person and proud to have created a thousand jobs myself. This is crony capitalism, corruption at a level we've never seen in our life.
This is sick.

Speaker 6 I mean, this is real, guys. This is, he's an invasive species.
This is not about parties. This is about power.
I'll say it again. It's about the rule of dawn.

Speaker 6 He sent, they sent me a 2028 Trump hat. That wasn't just to own the lib.
It wasn't just to have fun. They mean it.
He means it. I sat there 90 minutes, Dan, 90 minutes.
I work with Donald Trump 1.0.

Speaker 6 No Democratic governor worked more closely with him. No one communicated more.
Just an objective fact during COVID. He's different.
I spent 90 minutes with him.

Speaker 6 I was the first Democratic governor to visit him in the White House after the fires in L.A. Try to have an open hand, not a closed fist.

Speaker 3 You can't work with him.

Speaker 6 Ask the mayor of D.C. No one worked harder to have a relationship with him, and she just had her police force federalized.
You only work for him. I'm not going to work for Donald Trump.

Speaker 6 UCLA is not going to sell their soul like Harvard or Brown or Penn or Columbia. Shame on all of them.
We're not.

Speaker 6 And we're going to fight like hell to protect our democracy, our liberties, our freedoms. I love Republicans.
I love Democrats. I don't care what your party affiliation is.
I honestly don't.

Speaker 6 I care about this country and our democracy. I care about the rule of law.
It's all on the line. This is not about redistricting.
It's not about the lines that are being drawn on maps.

Speaker 6 It's the line we have to hold to protect our democracy.

Speaker 3 Governor Newsome, that's a great place to leave it. Thank you so much for joining us and good luck with us.
We'll be watching closely.

Speaker 6 Thanks for having me, Dan.

Speaker 1 Okay, that was a very fired up Gavin Newsom. What did you think, Dan? What do you think of the plan?

Speaker 3 It's a very smart, well-done plan.

Speaker 3 I think from the perspective of putting this together to get the buy-in you need from all the people to get the buy-in, the broad coalition of people he had at his press conference, including some people associated with the redistricting commission.

Speaker 3 It's very smart. Putting the trigger in is very smart.

Speaker 3 So if Texas doesn't do it, then, or the other Republican states don't do it, then California doesn't feel need to proceed forward, only doing it till the next census is smart to revert back to redistricting.

Speaker 3 It's hard. I think the politics of this are challenging.

Speaker 3 Not that it can't be done.

Speaker 3 I certainly think it can be done, but it's not a slam dunk, I think, as you look at the ballot, you look at some of the initial polling, it's going to take work and the Republicans are going to dump money in here.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 3 I really do, we talk all the time about how Democrats are not fighting. Right.

Speaker 3 And there are many who are, but for the most part, the sense it's been within the base, we felt that

Speaker 3 people do not recognize the threat of Trump and are not responding as such. And you cannot say that about Gavin Newsom right now.
He did not have to do this.

Speaker 3 We believe, you know, he, I certainly didn't ask him this, but my suspicion is one day he's going to run for president.

Speaker 3 He's putting a lot of skin in the game here because if he does this and loses, it's going to be very damaging to him as governor for the final part of his last term and in a potential presidential campaign.

Speaker 3 And he's, he's stepping up. He's, and he put a bunch of money into this.
He's putting time into it. He, it's like, we need more of this.
I'll be honest.

Speaker 1 I feel a little less worried about the polling.

Speaker 3 Yeah, no.

Speaker 3 I just think

Speaker 3 I don't care about the polling. Oh, no, Def.

Speaker 1 Oh, not than you, just in general, because I saw the political poll, which, I mean, if you just go by that political poll, it's like, it seems awful, right? It's like 36%

Speaker 1 support it, and it's, you know, it's just two to one against. So,

Speaker 1 but first of all, the wording of the question is,

Speaker 1 of course, that's going to get 36%, right? It's like people are not tuned into the stakes of the fight yet. And by November, they will be.
Not everyone, but like not everyone's going to vote, right?

Speaker 1 It's going to be a high, it's not going to be a high turnout election. It's not like this is going to be a, you know, a presidential election or a midterm election even.

Speaker 1 Like this is, this is going to be a low turnout election. The people who are most interested in the issue are going to go turn out.

Speaker 1 Sure, Republicans can spend a lot of money to try to make sure Republicans can go and deny California the seats, right?

Speaker 1 But then you need a bunch of Republican voters who are like paying really close attention to politics and the news and turnout and low turnout elections, which Republican voters haven't been for the last several cycles.

Speaker 1 And California is a heavily Democratic state. And you get a lot of voters.
Do you get a lot of young voters? Do you get a lot of working class voters? Probably not, but you get college-educated libs.

Speaker 1 They bet they're going to the poll who pay attention to, who listen to Pod Save America and pay attention to politics and pay attention to news.

Speaker 1 And so like, I do, I feel better about that, but I think you're right. It's still going to, it takes work.
It's going to take a big campaign. It's going to take a lot of work.

Speaker 1 It's going to take a lot of money.

Speaker 1 But I feel, I feel okay about it.

Speaker 3 But in the course of listening to you and thinking about it, I've actually convinced myself even more to feel better about it because I was thinking about like these sorts of measures do fail, but they usually fail when people are going to vote for other reasons, like a presidential election or gubernatorial election, and they have to fill out their ballot in California and they've been inundated with tens of millions of dollars of TV ads.

Speaker 3 And all they know is

Speaker 3 whatever the spin of the people with more money on the side.

Speaker 3 Where this probably performs more like than a typical ballot initiative is the abortion constitutional amendments in places like Ohio and elsewhere, where the only reason you're turning out is this.

Speaker 3 And you're more likely to turn out for this to vote for than to turn out to vote against it, is my guess.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and I think the challenge with state and local ballot initiatives is we live in a nationalized media environment.

Speaker 1 And so someone's not going to know the local debate that's going on unless you like see a billboard or get a mailer.

Speaker 1 but everyone pays attention everyone who pays attention to the news pays attention to national news and if you pay attention to national news you know about this and so i think that's going to help all right it's been a heavy pod very heavy uh as most as most of them are these days so uh we're gonna end with something for everyone to hopefully laugh at one of the biggest stories of the week involved a podcast host leveraging their relationship to land a high-profile guest with a highly anticipated announcement.

Speaker 3 Not Gavin Newsome today.

Speaker 1 Here's a clip.

Speaker 15 So Mark Rubio is known as a funny jokester. What's the funniest joke he's told you?

Speaker 15 Or the funniest moment you've had with him.

Speaker 12 Okay, so you guys will have to determine whether we can actually put this in the final.

Speaker 3 We got it if not.

Speaker 12 So he, so this is, we were talking about something very serious related to the Middle East. And he starts this joke totally deadpan.
He's like, you know,

Speaker 12 I learned something interesting about the Middle East because I had a constituent call a few years ago when I I was in the Senate and a woman was visiting Israel and her husband died while they were in Israel.

Speaker 12 And I was like, oh man, that's terrible. And she was trying to get help from us for how to get the body back to the United States.
And she said to me, you know, man, I don't know.

Speaker 12 Maybe I don't want it back.

Speaker 3 The last time somebody was

Speaker 12 sorry, the last time somebody died over here, they rose from the dead three days later.

Speaker 3 And I didn't know until the very end that it was a totally bullshit joke. I was like on the edge of my seat.
Like, what happened with this poor woman and her husband?

Speaker 12 He's got jokes.

Speaker 1 He's got jokes, Dan.

Speaker 3 Marker Rubio's jokes. I have so many thoughts here.
One.

Speaker 1 Market Rubio.

Speaker 1 We should say, because we didn't introduce it because I tried to make it seem like it was Taylor and Travis.

Speaker 1 So that was Katie Miller, wife of Stephen Miller, former White House employee, Mike Pence communications director, Elon Musk Doge spokesperson,

Speaker 1 left the White House to work in in the private sector for Elon Musk.

Speaker 1 Now she's got a podcast because there's no, because as she says in her intro video to intro the podcast, there's just no space online for conservative women to talk about politics.

Speaker 1 So that's, so anyway, so her first guest, J.D. Vance, I watched the whole thing.
You can all watch the thing. We have a great, Lovett and I did a great react on YouTube that is very funny.

Speaker 1 Check it out on the Pod Saving Maker YouTube channel. I watched all 44 minutes of it.
I don't know if you did, but

Speaker 1 all I can say is it's all like that. It's all like that.

Speaker 3 But can we break down this clip for a second?

Speaker 6 Yes, we can.

Speaker 3 I follow politics pretty closely. I follow Marco Rubio's presidential campaign pretty closely.
I've never once heard Marco Rubio described as a funny person.

Speaker 3 I can't think of a single moment in his public life where he has been anything other than dour.

Speaker 1 Yeah, what about when he, what was the dick joke he made about?

Speaker 3 It wasn't even a joke. It was an attack.
It wasn't even a talent. Yeah, it wasn't a funny joke.
It was just like lashing out.

Speaker 1 I often laugh at him in that big chair. Yeah, Marco in the big chair.
That's Tony's Twitter picture.

Speaker 3 That's not a joke he made. It wasn't a thing he did.
No, that's what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 He wasn't doing anything. He's someone I have laughed at before, but never someone I've laughed because of.
One.

Speaker 3 Two, JD Vance screwed up the joke.

Speaker 1 Whatever it is. The joke makes no sense.

Speaker 3 The last person who died in Israel did not rise three days later.

Speaker 1 Also,

Speaker 1 and then she decided maybe she doesn't want her husband back because the last guy who died there rose three.

Speaker 1 The sentence doesn't even make sense. Yeah.

Speaker 3 They use the term jokester.

Speaker 3 Okay, we got a lot of questions about that.

Speaker 3 Neither of them, neither Katie Miller nor JD Vance seem to have any. They discuss humor like I would discuss astrophysics.

Speaker 3 Like it's something I'm vaguely aware exists, but I have no familiarity with it.

Speaker 1 J.D. Vance goes on to butcher his his favorite dad joke, which is a joke from pulp fiction that is also bad.

Speaker 3 It's not a dad joke either.

Speaker 1 It's not a dad joke. So there's that.
Also about Marco Rubio, I don't know if you knew this, Dan, but

Speaker 1 this Marco Rubio jokester thing was in a series of,

Speaker 1 there was a round of this interview of, it's called Cabinet Confidential, and you had to pick which cabinet member you'd want for various activities.

Speaker 1 And for playing basketball, Marco Rubio was the pick, even though he's not a tall guy.

Speaker 3 I mean, you can be good at basketball and be short, but he doesn't straighten it.

Speaker 1 No, no, sorry. I only said that because that's what J.D.
Vance says. He like randomly throws out there that Marco's short when no one asks him.

Speaker 3 He's got to appease Trump. J.D.
Vance is someone who clearly has never had real friends.

Speaker 3 It's just like he just lacks that. He's like a facsimile of a human and a poor one at that.
Just like he

Speaker 3 just doesn't.

Speaker 1 I think he had a group of dorky friends.

Speaker 3 No, I don't even think that because, like, there's just sort of for men, women, anyone, just like he just doesn't seem to be able to relate to other people.

Speaker 3 Like, I think he played Magic the Gathering, which is something he said he was very into by himself.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and we're not allowed to make fun of that here because there's some Magic the Gathering fans.

Speaker 3 I mean, look, everyone, I'm not going.

Speaker 3 That's what he wants to do with this first time. It's probably the most human thing he's ever done.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, I don't. I don't, yeah, believe me, 44 minutes of this conversation, that is the, maybe the best thing, honestly.

Speaker 1 He was also asked by Katie Miller, which member of the cabinet would you want to sit next to for a transatlantic flight? You just talked to the whole time.

Speaker 1 And he said, probably your husband, although I guess he's not a member of the cabinet.

Speaker 1 What? Sitting next to Stephen Miller for a transatlantic flight?

Speaker 1 Well, A, that's...

Speaker 1 I'd fucking jump out of the plane.

Speaker 3 Well, obviously he doesn't really believe that. He's just saying.

Speaker 14 I think he really likes him.

Speaker 1 No, I think he really likes likes him. Either way.
I've heard him say, but this is my whole thought. He's talking about this.

Speaker 3 Even if he really believed it, if he had grown up around other humans, he would have known that that's the kind of thing you were to say.

Speaker 3 And your good friends who actually like you would make fun of you for it. And like you have this, you are trained in a Pavlovian way not to be a doofus like this.

Speaker 3 But he's incapable of that because he's just not, he's never been around people in a normal way in his whole life.

Speaker 1 I know. I know.
It was very unsettling. It was very unsettling.
I've been having this fear that J.D. Vance, like, we're underestimating J.D.
Vance in 2028. And I still do.

Speaker 1 I think he, I think he, because I think he code switches well and can be, like, he was good in the debate with Tim Walls, or at least he was more normal than he is.

Speaker 1 But I think that this kind of stuff, like, he can't do. Human.
He can't do the small talk.

Speaker 3 Well, that's the thing. That's human.

Speaker 3 He is a podium politician. He's good at a podium.
He's good at a debate. He is.
What he can't do is have normal conversations with people. And the problem for him is, as Trump is.

Speaker 1 He might not need to, though. He might not need to by then.

Speaker 3 Well, because the media's been taken over?

Speaker 1 Because the media's been taken over, retail politics goes away, and it's just like, you know, he's just looking into screens.

Speaker 3 The only media outlet in America is Lindell TV.

Speaker 3 See, that's what you do. John, you take it from the beginning, you wrap it at the end, now we're done.

Speaker 1 You know what, Dan? Here's the thing. People listening to this don't even know the Lindell TV thing because you and I did that as a YouTube response before this recording.

Speaker 3 This is how long we've been doing so much content.

Speaker 1 This is how long we've been talking today just because we're trying to fucking

Speaker 3 are we on YouTube? Are we on Substack Live? Are we on a podcast? Are we just in a WhatsApp group? I do not know. Who knows? Who knows? Does anyone listen to this? Okay, fine.
Whatever.

Speaker 1 Anyway,

Speaker 1 one of the reporters of the press conference was from Lindell TV, Mike Lindell, the pillow TV guy. But anyway, to know all of this, you should go subscribe to Pod Save America on YouTube.

Speaker 1 First of all, you can watch the rest of this hilarious JD Vance, Katie Miller react that Lovett and I did. You can also see what Dan and I did today as reacting to the press conference.

Speaker 1 And you can save Elijah's job because if we hit a million subscribers before the end of August, Elijah keeps his job.

Speaker 3 What happens if we reach 1,250,000 subscribers?

Speaker 1 Then Tommy owes Elijah $250,000

Speaker 1 and Tommy has to sit down with JD Vance for a video where they discuss their shared favorite television series, Emily and Paris, because also in that video, JD Vance goes on and on and he has a whole bunch of takes about Emily and Paris.

Speaker 3 I don't know.

Speaker 1 I don't know what else is happening here.

Speaker 1 That's our pod for today. Thank you to Gavin Newsom for joining the pod, giving it some energy.
And thanks to all of you. Everyone, have a fantastic weekend, and we'll be back next week.

Speaker 3 Bye, everyone.

Speaker 1 If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad-free or get access to our subscriber Discord and exclusive podcasts, consider joining our Friends of the Pod community at cricket.com slash friends or subscribe on Apple Podcasts directly from the Pod Save America feed.

Speaker 1 Also, please consider leaving us a review to help boost this episode and everything we do here at Crooked. Pod Save America is a crooked media production.

Speaker 1 Our producers are David Toledo, Emma Illich Frank, and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farah Safari.
Austin Fisher is our senior producer. Reed Sherlin is our executive editor.

Speaker 1 Adrian Hill is our head of news and politics. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.
Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglund and Charlotte Landis.

Speaker 1 Matt DeGroote is our head of production. Naomi Sengel is our executive assistant.

Speaker 1 Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Ben Hefcote, Mia Kelman, Carol Pelavieve, David Tolles, and Ryan Young.

Speaker 1 Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

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