Live from Occupied D.C. with Barack Obama

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Speaker 6 What's up, Washington?

Speaker 6 Welcome to Plaza Save America. I'm John Favreau.

Speaker 7 I'm Alex Wagner.

Speaker 1 I'm John Lovitt.

Speaker 1 I'm Tommy Vitor.

Speaker 5 I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

Speaker 8 I'm Barack Obama.

Speaker 6 thank you.

Speaker 6 I uh

Speaker 6 so

Speaker 8 so so so here here here's here's the thing

Speaker 6 we uh

Speaker 6 now

Speaker 8 I I I missed you too, which is why I came

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 8 we had a good night on Tuesday.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 8 this is a group of

Speaker 8 influencers and organizers and activists, people who are fighting the good fight even when things aren't going good.

Speaker 8 So my first job tonight was to say thank you to all of you because you're making a difference each and every day.

Speaker 8 My second task was to let you know,

Speaker 8 I cannot believe that these guys have actually

Speaker 8 somehow built an audience.

Speaker 8 Basically doing the same thing that they were doing in the hold room

Speaker 8 or in some dive bar in Iowa

Speaker 8 and that you guys are paying attention.

Speaker 6 Now,

Speaker 8 I think we've got a photo up here. Now look at these guys.

Speaker 6 Oh no.

Speaker 6 First of all,

Speaker 8 These are not the most embarrassing pictures.

Speaker 8 My staff, who are friends with these guys, were in charge of selecting the pictures.

Speaker 8 I wanted the most embarrassing ones, and they weren't willing to do it because they did not want to humiliate them in this audience, which I think is sweet.

Speaker 8 It speaks to a culture of loyalty among Obama alumni.

Speaker 8 But it's not half as fun as I wanted it to be.

Speaker 8 We could have had the picture of Tommy with no shirt on.

Speaker 8 Feel free to Google that if you're not familiar.

Speaker 8 Although this one of Levitt is indicative of Levitt,

Speaker 8 this is sort of how he was the entire administration.

Speaker 8 Sometimes he'd wander into the West Wing looking just like that.

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 8 the truth is, I couldn't be prouder of them because

Speaker 8 they have not just carried on

Speaker 1 the

Speaker 8 values and the struggles that we all engaged in way back when,

Speaker 1 but

Speaker 8 they're spreading the word to a new generation

Speaker 8 of what is possible in politics. And I said we had a good Tuesday.

Speaker 8 We got,

Speaker 8 it was good to see

Speaker 8 progressives get off the mat.

Speaker 8 It was a good reminder that

Speaker 8 it turns out that

Speaker 8 the American people are paying attention.

Speaker 6 They don't want cruelty.

Speaker 6 They're not looking for

Speaker 8 people on the top trying to entrench themselves in power.

Speaker 8 They believe in community. They believe in treating people with decency and respect.

Speaker 8 And what this election also taught us is that it turns out,

Speaker 8 it turns out out that if,

Speaker 8 number one, you have candidates with integrity who believe in something

Speaker 8 and are in it for the right reasons, they can win.

Speaker 8 And what we also learned is that when young people are engaged and involved, then

Speaker 8 we win.

Speaker 8 So,

Speaker 8 since all of you

Speaker 6 are

Speaker 8 directly engaged in

Speaker 8 speaking to young people and reminding them of what is possible. I just want to encourage you to keep doing what you're doing.
Because

Speaker 8 again, Tuesday was nice, but we've got a lot of work to do.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 8 your task is going to be not to

Speaker 8 impose, you know, litmus tests. We had Abigail Spanberger win, and we had Zohran Mandami win, and they are all part of a vision for the future.

Speaker 8 Our job is to say that

Speaker 8 we want everybody engaged, and we want to have a conversation about how to make sure that every person in this country is treated with dignity and respect, and there are ladders of opportunity,

Speaker 6 and that

Speaker 8 there's the possibility of community, and

Speaker 8 that we're getting along not in some cliche, phonied way, but in a genuine, deep way where we recognize, yeah, we have differences and yes,

Speaker 8 there are fights that are going to have to be fought, but that deep down there is something core in us that we have in common

Speaker 8 that is extraordinary. And that America at its best leans in to this notion of

Speaker 8 e pluribasunum, that out of many can come one.

Speaker 8 That's the conversation that you need to have. That's the conversation that these guys are all about.

Speaker 8 I love them. I love you.

Speaker 12 Keep up the good work.

Speaker 10 It's all downhill from here, people.

Speaker 6 Well,

Speaker 6 do we just go home now? Should we call it? Bye,

Speaker 6 it gets better than that.

Speaker 1 That was cool.

Speaker 6 That was nice.

Speaker 6 You happy with the photo selection?

Speaker 6 Could have been worse.

Speaker 1 Could have been worse. There was a couple hair transplants and GLP ones ago.

Speaker 1 We've never heard a crowd do that before.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 1 It was pretty cool.

Speaker 7 And you never will again.

Speaker 6 We have a great show for you tonight. Jasmine Crockett is here.

Speaker 6 And we're so lucky to have Alex with us tonight, the newest member of the Pod Save America family.

Speaker 6 Host of the newest Crooked Pod, Runaway Country, already a runaway hit.

Speaker 6 I don't know if anyone remembers.

Speaker 6 You were the first guest host on the very first first Pod Save America live show eight years ago in Brooklyn. Oh, man.
Special guest Bill de Blasio.

Speaker 6 Same response. We've come a little bit

Speaker 6 full circle.

Speaker 1 Same response from the crowd.

Speaker 6 Yeah. When Bill de Blasio came out.

Speaker 7 I'm happy that you invited me back and not Bill de Blasio.

Speaker 6 Sorry.

Speaker 6 All right, guys. We had an election this week, and it was good.

Speaker 6 Maybe the best off-year elections Democrats have had in our lifetimes.

Speaker 6 So good, in fact, that the results have caused a party filled with people who still say the 2020 election was rigged to actually acknowledge the reality of what happened on Tuesday night.

Speaker 1 Last night was a disaster.

Speaker 9 It was an electoral blowout.

Speaker 13 This is a big loss.

Speaker 8 We got our asses handed to us in New Jersey, Virginia, and New York City.

Speaker 1 And I'm not going to sugarcoat it, Dana.

Speaker 1 The Democrats had a great night.

Speaker 9 That is a warning that this thing is going to cut deeper. It is a disgrace.

Speaker 6 So even the White House seems to have gotten the message.

Speaker 6 A senior Trump advisor went on record to say that from here on out, we'll see the president laser focused on affordability and the cost of living.

Speaker 6 And here is an unusually humbled and reflective Trump already taking that advice to heart.

Speaker 13 We've done so much. You know, energy is way down.
Look at energy. We're going to have $2 gasoline.
I did that. Groceries are way down other than beef.
Now, beef is going to come down.

Speaker 13 You remember when I started, eggs were up by four times what they were? Two days in the office, and they told me about eggs.

Speaker 11 I solved that.

Speaker 13 And the country's doing very well, but as Republicans, you have to talk about it.

Speaker 11 This week, we're celebrating the one-year anniversary of the most important election victory in the history of our country.

Speaker 11 And no president has ever come even close to doing what we've done in nine months.

Speaker 6 My fellow Americans, our movement is far from over.

Speaker 11 In fact, our fight has only just begun.

Speaker 11 We will make America great again.

Speaker 6 It's so weird. In case you were wondering, that was Tom Homan as a rising sun.

Speaker 6 There was a whole video they posted. Truth Social was wild yesterday, guys.
It was wild.

Speaker 6 Let's start with the results themselves.

Speaker 6 We did a quick reaction show on Tuesday night, but Alex and Lovett, you guys haven't had a chance to weigh in yet.

Speaker 6 What did you think, Alex?

Speaker 7 I think, well, a lot of things. I think,

Speaker 7 number one, we finally have some of the exit polling data. I know Dan is probably eager to talk about it, but I just want to say

Speaker 7 the idea that Mikey Sheryl and Abigail Spanberger flipped in in literally 11 months

Speaker 7 a significant percentage of people who voted for Donald Trump into the Democratic ledger tells you a lot about the state of the Republican Party and the state of the Democratic Party.

Speaker 7 I think Mikey Sherrill got 18% of Trump's Latino voters. in the state of New Jersey.
Both of those women got 7% overall of Trump 2024 voters to vote for them in this election.

Speaker 7 That's not a trend line that you want to see if you're a Republican. That is absolutely heartening if you are a Democrat.
It's not just about turnout.

Speaker 7 It's about people rejecting Donald Trump and everything he stands for in less than a year. In less than a year.

Speaker 7 Those are numbers that I think everybody should hold on to and that really I think for people who care about our democracy surviving through the next century should hold on to as we go into the

Speaker 7 midterm election season that, by the way, Donald Trump is going to try and steal.

Speaker 7 And Zorah Mamdani,

Speaker 7 it's really nice.

Speaker 7 It's really nice to look at the future of Democratic politics and feel like it could be in good hands. So yeah, right on, dude.

Speaker 6 Love it.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I didn't even say anything.

Speaker 1 Nay Cohen pointed this out that we have consistently underestimated how well Democrats will do when Trump's name is not on the ballot and we underestimate how well Republicans will do when his name is on the ballot.

Speaker 1 And I feel like we did that again. We keep doing that.
Like, I went in very hopeful that we would win these three races.

Speaker 1 I am surprised by how well we did, and I'm surprised by how often I'm surprised.

Speaker 1 To Alex's point, like, no, 2024 wasn't some grand realignment, right? Trump won people, he hadn't won before, but that doesn't represent some

Speaker 1 inescapable future for us. That support was wide, but it was shallow, and those are people that can be persuaded and be brought back.

Speaker 1 And that's what our job is: to figure out how to bring those people back again in 2026,

Speaker 1 when hopefully the electorate would look more like it did in 2025, and then in 2028, when it would look probably a bit more like what it looked like in 2024.

Speaker 1 And then, you know, I was in New York last night for a live show, and the enthusiasm around Zoron was so

Speaker 1 palpable and infectious. And

Speaker 1 everybody's seen the clips of Schumer kind of avoiding taking a position on it.

Speaker 1 And I bring it up only because I want to.

Speaker 1 But this is the second time in two days I've been in front of hundreds of really enthusiastic and proud Democrats who have booed the leader of the Democratic Party in the Senate.

Speaker 1 And I think it's a real problem.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 1 that's not to say there aren't hard politics for him and some genuine concerns that a lot of people have.

Speaker 6 Fine.

Speaker 1 But it seems to me that there are some Democrats more worried about

Speaker 1 people thinking Zoron is on their side than worried about how to prove to all of those enthusiastic people that they're on the side of those volunteers and supporters.

Speaker 1 And it seems our job is to make the point that President Obama just made, which is we are part of one big team that represents a lot lot of different points of view and that we are a coalition and we're proudly part of a coalition.

Speaker 1 We're not afraid of it.

Speaker 6 And now I'd like to bring on our next surprise guest, Chuck Schumer.

Speaker 6 Joe Biden!

Speaker 6 So Dan,

Speaker 6 You know, I've been wanting to ask you this because we got a couple days, we've got a lot of data.

Speaker 6 We got some granular analysis from multiple NAITs,

Speaker 6 good and bad, county by county results. What else jumped out at you from the data?

Speaker 5 Sure. So

Speaker 5 thank you for asking.

Speaker 5 There are two parts to electoral success, right? There's motivation and persuasion. Motivation is turnout, and turnout was very high in Virginia, New Jersey, and New York City.

Speaker 5 Even in California, which has no history of

Speaker 5 of off-cycle elections and there was nothing on the ballot other than this redistricting initiative, you had nearly 9 million people vote, right?

Speaker 5 And so Democrats had high turnout. That was good.
But what's more important is that, as Alex pointed out, there was real persuasion.

Speaker 5 And persuasion, you need motivation and persuasion, but mathematically persuasion matters more because you don't only just gain one voter, you take one from the other side.

Speaker 5 So that's a net gain of two votes. And there was very real persuasion here, right?

Speaker 5 Back in when Democrats were winning special elections in 23 and 24,

Speaker 5 you would hear people saying, ignore the polls. We win these special elections.
Elections are what matter.

Speaker 5 We would point out that winning special elections is good, but we were winning these special elections purely from turnout. That's not what happened on Tuesday at all.

Speaker 5 So, in the exit polls, right, you have in Virginia, New Jersey, 7% of people who pulled the letter for Trump one year ago voted for Spanberger and Sheryl.

Speaker 5 In New York City,

Speaker 5 9% of 2024 Trump voters voted for Zoran.

Speaker 5 And I find this one even more mind-boggling, which is in California, 12% of Trump voters voted for Gavin Newsom's redistricting initiative.

Speaker 6 That's wild.

Speaker 5 So,

Speaker 5 but

Speaker 5 as we've always said on this podcast, that

Speaker 5 exit polls are directionally correct, but imprecise measures of elections. But we normally have to wait a long time for voter data.

Speaker 5 But in New Jersey, we actually have specific voter data from half of New Jersey. And what it found is that Cheryl had about a two and a half point turnout advantage over Kamala Harris

Speaker 5 in the half that we have it for. But in those counties, Cheryl outperformed Kamala Harris by nine points.
And the only way to explain that is a pretty significant number of Trump voters flipping.

Speaker 5 And what's even more important and notable there is of the counties that we have data includes the counties like Bergen, Passaic, and Hudson, which have large pockets of Latino voters.

Speaker 5 When you look at the townships with large Latino electorates, huge shifts, some have double-digit shifts or more in Cheryl's favor over 2024.

Speaker 5 So this is an election where people who supported Donald Trump voted for a Democrat, and that's the thing that's to scare the shit out of every single Republican.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 6 The craziest stat I saw was in Virginia,

Speaker 6 the precinct. This is Chas Nuttycomb is an analyst in Virginia who does really good work.

Speaker 1 This crowd knows Chas Nuttycomb.

Speaker 6 Everyone, yeah, I was going to say, the real ones know.

Speaker 6 The precinct that flipped the most, 50 points, 50 point swing, was like the most heavily Latino precinct in Fairfax County, which is pretty big.

Speaker 6 So you do see, like, because people are wondering, like, is it just like differential turnout? Were some Latinos staying home or not?

Speaker 6 But like, we are, there's now evidence in New Jersey and Virginia that a lot of Latinos who might have pulled the lever for Trump switched over to Democrat this time.

Speaker 7 It turns out terrorizing black and brown communities doesn't really resonate that well with those black and brown communities.

Speaker 6 So Tommy,

Speaker 6 White House, everyone except for Trump seems to realize affordability is important now. People care about the cost of living.

Speaker 6 I do find it amusing that Trump is basically like rerunning Biden's actually everything is great message.

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 6 say Trump, say they convinced Trump to talk more about affordability and cost of living. What would that even look like next year? And

Speaker 6 do you think he's going to face some difficulties doing that? Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 So yeah, it is very funny that he is making the exact same mistake as Biden, which is just to decide that the real problem is that we're not getting enough credit for the shit we have already done.

Speaker 1 That is a mistake that every president makes.

Speaker 1 I think we have, it's very deeply triggering, I think, for all of us because we've all been in the meeting where the policy person is like, sir, everything you're doing is great and everyone is benefited.

Speaker 1 And look at all these statistics. But the message isn't getting out there.
And the comms people just get like destroyed. And it's very tempting to think it's a PR problem, but it's clearly not.

Speaker 1 I mean, people are pissed. Prices are going up.
They made their voices heard at the polls. And now Trump has to actually do something about it.
So the analysis is right. But I just have

Speaker 1 no confidence that he can change his approach because it would basically involve undoing his entire policy agenda, starting with tariffs, right?

Speaker 1 I mean, we tariff the Chinese, the tariffs go up, the tariffs come down, down, we give some AI chips, they buy some soybeans, it doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 1 The Canadians run one TV ad during a baseball game that features the Gipper. We're tariffing them.

Speaker 1 The Brazilians are prosecuting their former president who did a January 6th, and Trump is mad about that, so he tariffs them.

Speaker 1 And the net effect is it's just a tax on all of us, which makes prices go up. Then there's energy.

Speaker 1 Trump is killing off all renewable energy programs just because he wants to, even ones that are basically done.

Speaker 1 And this is happening as we're building massive AI data centers that are increasing the demand. So the price there is just going to keep going up.

Speaker 1 Even the ICE raids are going to have an economic impact because the construction industry has been constrained by a labor shortage.

Speaker 1 And once you have ICE and CBP goons raiding Home Depot parking lots and

Speaker 1 going to construction sites, that's going to make the cost of housing go up. So the final part that I don't see happening is like he would have to be disciplined.

Speaker 1 Donald Trump doesn't want to wake up every day and talk about affordability.

Speaker 1 He wants a president from a stand country to tell him that he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize or to like shake down a Raytheon CEO for money for the fucking ballroom. So

Speaker 1 the diagnosis is right, but like he's not going to do it.

Speaker 5 Well, he's also psychologically incapable of doing it.

Speaker 5 Because to truly have an affordability message where you feel people's pain, you have to admit you have not succeeded on the thing you said you would do. And Donald Trump's 79 years old.

Speaker 5 At no point in those 79 years, has he ever admitted fault on anything.

Speaker 6 No.

Speaker 5 So I don't think that's going to change now, right?

Speaker 1 On the same day he said we're focusing on affordability, he basically called Nancy Pelosi the C-word. Like, I don't think he's going to be disciplined.

Speaker 6 Well, I mean, he also announced today, you know, that they were going to lower the prices of some of weight loss drugs.

Speaker 6 But even when he's doing something like that, he's like, you know, and then all the prescription drugs, they're down 1,000%, 3,000%, 5,000%.

Speaker 6 And so even if he doesn't acknowledge that affordability is a problem, which obviously he's not going to do, he's just going to pretend that it's gone and that he solved everything.

Speaker 6 And again, you cannot tell people that what they are feeling about the economy and their lives is not true. It does not work.
It doesn't work.

Speaker 10 I'm sorry. Go ahead, Alex.

Speaker 7 I was just going to say, I don't even think he understands the concept of affordability.

Speaker 7 This is like a game the system billionaire who's trying to turn our democracy into a kleptocracy and has turned the White House into the inside of Aladdin's lamp.

Speaker 6 Do you know what I mean? Yeah, affordability is like, did I get a good deal on the marble slab for the

Speaker 7 affordability might as well be like Homerian,

Speaker 7 it could be like

Speaker 7 a PhD course on the Iliad. Like he doesn't know anything about that.
It's just complete, literally Greek to him.

Speaker 6 I do wonder if

Speaker 6 the Supreme Court could potentially save his ass by

Speaker 6 ruling against him on tariffs.

Speaker 5 But even then, they've said

Speaker 5 they have all these other extraordinary ways to impose tariffs.

Speaker 6 So just think about this.

Speaker 5 Affordability is his message, and he has lawyers in court right now trying to keep people's prices high. And if the court does him a favor and rules against him, he's going to have those same lawyers.

Speaker 6 Try harder.

Speaker 5 The only thing, he's tried hard at two things, right?

Speaker 5 Corruption and making your prices high. That's his full agenda.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 And stopping us from seeing the Epstein files.

Speaker 18 There you go.

Speaker 6 So, Alex, there is the matter of the fact that Trump's not going to be on the ballot in

Speaker 6 2026, but a whole bunch of Republicans in Congress are. So, they have to decide what they're going to do and what they're going to run on.
What do you think that campaign looks like?

Speaker 6 Do they try to break from the president on cost of living and affordability issues? Do they just try to shift the themes of the election to go back to

Speaker 6 crime and immigration? Do they just smile and go down with the ship? Like, what do they do?

Speaker 7 Do you remember when conservatives used to call liberals the beta cucks?

Speaker 6 Do I ever? Well, I would say we have a party full of them now,

Speaker 7 and that is the GOP. I mean, it's look, I think the shutdown is going to tell us a lot about the degree to which pressure will

Speaker 7 enough pressure will force them to break with Trump because everything that he's doing right now in terms of the shutdown is terrible politics for them.

Speaker 7 You know, we're talking about health insurance that's going to rise on 23 million Americans.

Speaker 7 We're talking about food stamps that keep 42 million people out of poverty, at least half of which live in Trump-supporting red states, right?

Speaker 7 We're talking about basic sort of infrastructure concerns, whether you can fly in an airplane or not and feel safe, that affect Americans across the country.

Speaker 7 And Republicans know they got to do something about this.

Speaker 7 And by the way, even if they don't want to do a deal with the Democrats, they're going to have to pay the piper when people in their own states say, hey, man,

Speaker 7 I can't go to the doctor anymore.

Speaker 7 That's like the reality that awaits them. So if they're smart, they'll do something and they'll break with him because he obviously would be happy to see, you know, the country starve and get sick.

Speaker 7 I really think this is real world statism, the likes of which we have not seen in this century.

Speaker 7 So I think that'll be a litmus test. But I mean, it's hard for me to imagine what exactly the Republican platform is beyond Trumpism.
It's completely ideologically incoherent.

Speaker 7 It's nativism, but it's also some kinds of expansionism. It's a populism that is informed by crypto bros and kleptocracy.
I mean,

Speaker 7 it's completely retrograde.

Speaker 7 There's a very strange and now semi-public streak of Nazism that runs through it, or at least dalliances with Hitler that I guess people text about regularly in Republican leadership circles.

Speaker 7 So, you know, I don't, I think that he's laid waste to one of the two parties in America, and it's utterly unclear to me what Phoenix rises from that ash heap.

Speaker 7 I'm not holding out a lot of hope.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 6 So then let's talk about Democratic strategy for the midterms.

Speaker 6 The mood has obviously grown a lot more bullish since Tuesday.

Speaker 6 Prop 50 passed in California.

Speaker 6 And then

Speaker 6 soon after that, Kansas Republicans announced that they're sort of dropping their effort to redraw the maps in Kansas.

Speaker 6 On the other hand, Jared Golden, representative for Maine, Democrat for Maine, said he's not going to be running for re-election again, so it's going to be harder to keep that seat.

Speaker 6 Love it, where's your head at on the House right now and sort of the campaign to take back the House?

Speaker 10 So

Speaker 1 one thing that's been kind of bubbling up and has been a natural break against how far Republicans can go in gerrymandering is that in order to make a blue seat red, you have to find those red votes somewhere.

Speaker 6 Where do you find them?

Speaker 1 Deeper red seats. And so it's all a negotiation, and they do it behind the scenes.
They don't act like no Republican is going to go in public and say, no, no, don't do this. I want to keep my seat.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 Republican politicians, like Democratic politicians, are politicians. And they would much rather be in Congress in the minority than be lobbyists in the majority.
They would. They want their jobs.

Speaker 1 They care about their jobs more than they do about a lot of stuff. And all of a sudden, wait a second, these numbers are not just bad, they're very bad.

Speaker 1 And maybe we've drawn some maps in Texas where it's possible that we've accidentally shaved off just a few too many Republicans in a district here and a district there.

Speaker 1 Which is why I think you see Mike Johnson out there today saying like, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine, right?

Speaker 1 Because a lot of what their plan is to do all of these gerrymanders is to reassure Republicans that they're not going to lose because they got a little too greedy.

Speaker 1 And I think that's why you see some of these plans going away. So that to me is what I take away from this so far.

Speaker 1 It has sent a nervous signal that they're in trouble, which maybe will protect us from how much gerrymandering they were planning to do

Speaker 1 and puts us in a position to win so, to win big if we do everything right.

Speaker 1 And that's not a guarantee to make it much harder for them to do the kind of shenanigans that Trump is clearly interested in trying to drum up over the next year with intimidation, with threats of fraud, with schemes to grab voter machines, and all the rest.

Speaker 10 So,

Speaker 1 nothing is written, but I feel like we all woke up rightly more hopeful today than we did a week ago.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 6 So, Dan, the Bulwark had a piece today that said that Democrats have even started to get bullish about retaking the Senate.

Speaker 6 So everyone knows,

Speaker 6 it is a steep hill. We would have to keep seats in Georgia and Michigan.
We would have to flip Maine and North Carolina. And then we'd need two of the following four, Iowa, Ohio, Texas, and Alaska.

Speaker 1 And wait till you hear about their tattoos.

Speaker 5 There's a Senate race in Maine.

Speaker 5 What's that? There's a Senate race in Maine.

Speaker 6 There is a Senate race in Maine. I hadn't heard that.

Speaker 6 I finally remembered all the states on this one.

Speaker 6 So, Dan, what do you think?

Speaker 6 Are you hopeful about the Senate?

Speaker 5 Did you ask this question for me? Is it my job to rate on people's parade?

Speaker 2 Of course.

Speaker 5 Well, I'm not going to do that, John.

Speaker 6 Dan. Dan.

Speaker 5 Look, if we are being honest here, it is a tough path. But I feel much better about that path after Tuesday than it would otherwise.

Speaker 5 Because if Spamberger and Cheryl had just won by the same margins that Kamala Harris won Virginia New Jersey by,

Speaker 6 I would think that path was closed off to us.

Speaker 5 Right. And so as you pointed out, and it's not just those seats we have to win.
We also have to defend. open seats in Michigan, New Hampshire, Minnesota.
Defend John Ossoff.

Speaker 6 I forgot New Hampshire and Minnesota, too.

Speaker 6 I was giving us those, but all right.

Speaker 5 And so

Speaker 5 that is all doable, right? Not in the fact that Democrats just had their first non-federal statewide victories in Georgia in

Speaker 5 30 years is, I think, a positive sign for John Osoff.

Speaker 1 And we have

Speaker 5 a very good candidate in North Carolina in Roy Cooper. We have a very good candidate in Ohio in Sherrod Brown.

Speaker 6 We have

Speaker 5 an array of interesting candidates in Iowa, right? And then in Texas, we have several good candidates from James Tallarico to Colin R. Red and maybe our next guest, Jasmine Crockett.

Speaker 6 There we go.

Speaker 1 But here's the thing.

Speaker 5 Here's the argument for, I think Democrats, to the extent we can do it, have to push all of our chips into the table on the Senate because the 2028 Senate map is very bad.

Speaker 5 We have to defend seats in Pennsylvania.

Speaker 6 We say that now every two years. Well, it's all different.

Speaker 5 It's every,

Speaker 5 once every

Speaker 5 once once every six years. The map is good.

Speaker 5 But we have to defend all those seats we held on to in 2022, right? Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania. And there's very few pickup opportunities.
Maybe just North Carolina is probably the most likely one.

Speaker 5 And so if we want to have any chance of a governing trifecta for a Democratic president in 2029, we got to make up a lot of ground in the Senate this cycle, even if we don't take the majority.

Speaker 1 This is an only good vibes night, right? So we're all just bringing joy to to the table. No one's want to bum anybody up, but I do think we should remember the 2022 midterms

Speaker 1 because I think we took some of the wrong lessons from them as a party. Remember,

Speaker 1 I think President Biden and the people around him saw the 2022 midterms as an endorsement of him and his presidency and his political agenda. When

Speaker 1 in reality, it was far more likely that voters in Georgia and Pennsylvania were like, what the fuck?

Speaker 6 Herschel Walker?

Speaker 2 You guys want us to vote for Herschel Walker?

Speaker 6 Dr. Oz?

Speaker 1 You want us to vote for Blake Masters in Arizona, like the single most unappealing human being who's maybe ever run for office?

Speaker 16 And so

Speaker 1 I think what that did was it delayed a conversation about Joe Biden's age and his capacity to run again. And it delayed a conversation about our gerontocracy problem as a party.
And we just,

Speaker 1 we can't do that this time around.

Speaker 1 2025 can't prevent us from talking about concerns that we all have with leaders in the Democratic Party.

Speaker 1 It can't prevent us from talking about the need for term limits on congressional committees, which I knew you wrote about this week in MessageBox so that young members of Congress can actually accrue power and advance.

Speaker 1 And we just, we can't get too high on our own supply. We can get a little high.

Speaker 5 I think there's an important point here. Now I will return to my normal role as pessimist,

Speaker 5 which is even in Virginia, New Jersey, Republicans are more popular than Democrats. And so it's one way you could look at that is, well, I guess the party brand problem is not as big as we thought.

Speaker 5 That's a mistake because in New Jersey and Virginia, the candidates were statewide candidates who had millions of dollars to define themselves, in some cases, in opposition to the party brand.

Speaker 5 When it comes to winning the House, most congressional candidates, particularly challengers, are generic Democrats in the minds of voters.

Speaker 5 And so the work we have to do to improve the Democratic Party brand has to start now because we need a better party brand if we want to not just take the House, but have a real majority coming out of 2026.

Speaker 7 I mean, I just also want to sound a note of caution. I was talking to David Pluff last week for my podcast, Runaway Country.
I highly encourage you to subscribe to it.

Speaker 7 And we should assume he's going to try and steal the election, too.

Speaker 7 I mean, in addition to these sort of structural realities, there is the fact that he is announcing a plan to try and steal the election through redistricting.

Speaker 7 He sent election monitors in to New Jersey and California. He will surely send them into blue states or contested races in 2026.

Speaker 7 He has installed notorious election deniers at the Department of Homeland Security. And he's willing to militarize the National Guard and send it into blue cities on a whim.

Speaker 7 And I think we should all be prepared for Trump to pull all of those levers in 2026 because he is desperate not to have congressional oversight.

Speaker 7 And the trick is for Democrats and citizens of this country to laugh when he says there's been fraud. It is a farce and he will try and claim it, and Mike Johnson will try and claim it.

Speaker 7 And just like he's not seeding Adelito Grijalva, if there's a narrow Democratic majority in the House come 2026, I can bet you Mike Johnson is not going to want to seed it.

Speaker 7 So everybody needs to be prepared for that reality and dig in and make sure it doesn't come to fruition.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 one way to reduce the chances of that happening is to turn out in such large numbers

Speaker 6 that it's not close.

Speaker 6 I think Trump's line in 24 was too big to rig. Yeah.
Too big to rig for us.

Speaker 6 All right. We'll be back with more news in a bit, but first.

Speaker 1 Now it's time for a game.

Speaker 1 Donald Trump, Dr. Oz, in what sounded like either a filing cabinet filled with silver dollars that got sucked into a jet engine or Robert F.
Kennedy Jr.

Speaker 1 gathered in the Oval Office today for an historic announcement. They couldn't help but make it weird.
So it's time to play. Okay, stop.

Speaker 1 You know the rules, and if you don't, you'll catch on quick. We're going to watch these goons strut their snuff, and I'll call okay, stop.
We'll all descend like the keto-only vultures that we are.

Speaker 1 And then we'll roll the next clip. Are you guys ready?

Speaker 6 I'm ready. All right.

Speaker 9 We have an update, Secretary Kennedy. We thought it was 125 million pounds.
Mr. President, our estimate, based on the company numbers as well, is Americans will lose 135 billion pounds by the midterm.

Speaker 10 Okay, stop.

Speaker 1 They got their eyes on the prize. Americans voted to be made snatched.

Speaker 1 That's what 2024 was about. Who was going to tighten this shit up?

Speaker 1 We're talking about the British currency.

Speaker 5 What are we talking about here?

Speaker 6 People got to get going. Aggregate weight loss?

Speaker 1 Yeah, this is... This is about, he is adding up all the pounds that we are going to collectively lose.

Speaker 1 I will just note that for America to lose 135 billion pounds, collectively every person in this room is responsible for over 400 pounds of weight loss.

Speaker 1 So get on that stair master because we've got work to do to hit these tough goals from Dr. Roz.

Speaker 6 And you can like get eaten now, you know, just to get it up and then get done again.

Speaker 6 A little bit of time. Yeah.
Pad the stats. Yeah.
Yeah, that's right. That's right.

Speaker 7 I just, I

Speaker 7 like

Speaker 7 what is like, it's not like tonally off. It's It's just like people who literally have their heads up their asses when you host a Gatsby party then go off on how much

Speaker 7 How people are gonna lose all this weight at the same time that you're refusing to pay out snap benefits and starving 42 million people in this country like what in the actual fuck I mean part of the strategy is keep grocery prices high

Speaker 1 Right, yeah, I guess yeah, that's that's one way to think about it just so people understand they've announced today that they're gonna that they've they've done a deal where they're going to lower the price of drugs like Manjaro and We Govi and Zetbound, you know, Zempic.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 let's see what Trump had to say next about.

Speaker 1 They can't help but step on a Reagan in these moments.

Speaker 19 Bobby, you haven't changed your view on Tylenol for women that are pregnant.

Speaker 19 As I said, there were some false reports out about Tylenol, but Bobby changed his view. I don't think he's changing.

Speaker 14 I'm not going to change until the science changes.

Speaker 1 Okay, stop.

Speaker 13 But now, what?

Speaker 6 Did he have a long day?

Speaker 6 He's like, oh, my God.

Speaker 6 Tylenol. Did I take the Tylenol? I took the wrong pill.
That's what happened. He took the Xenol.
I put in my Tylenol.

Speaker 1 He took the pill Biden took before that debate.

Speaker 1 Whatever.

Speaker 6 He wanted the Pro Vigil.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I got that.

Speaker 1 That's my genuine theory.

Speaker 6 That's my genuine theory.

Speaker 1 They gave him the downer instead of the upper. But back to this.

Speaker 1 So, just to be clear, what this is a moment of is Donald Trump interrupting what is ultimately a good announcement for them.

Speaker 1 Just say, now, Bobby, there are some reports out there that you're not as insane as everyone fucking thinks. That you're not out there telling people that they should, that Tylenol causes autism.

Speaker 1 And you still think that, right? You still think it's the Tylenol causing the autism, even though that's fucking nuts. He's like, absolutely, sir.

Speaker 6 Don't worry, sir.

Speaker 6 All right, let's keep going.

Speaker 20 At 1,000%, 1,200%.

Speaker 20 Nobody's ever said anything like this. Nobody else could have done it, but I say that modestly.

Speaker 1 That's good. That was good.
That's self-awareness. He knows that's a joke.
That's good. He got one.
He got one.

Speaker 1 He got one. So this was, John was referring to this earlier.
He's lowered prices by 1,000%.

Speaker 1 Novo Nordic is paying you now.

Speaker 6 Take it. Take the shot.

Speaker 6 Can I hand it him out?

Speaker 2 Is his chair too big?

Speaker 6 It looks too big, right? It does look too big.

Speaker 1 It is big, even when he leans.

Speaker 6 He looks like a baby.

Speaker 1 His posture is bad, right? Because even because when he's talking to RFK Jr., like he's back like this, it's a C curve. It's a C curve.
He doesn't have the core strength. This guy's not done.

Speaker 1 A couple things Donald Trump does not know how to do.

Speaker 1 Pay for gas.

Speaker 1 Use a self-checkout at CVS.

Speaker 1 Do any kind of obliques.

Speaker 6 A crunch.

Speaker 7 Generate a PDF.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Pass the ice course.

Speaker 1 All right, let's keep going.

Speaker 9 You know, leading U.S. company, leading European company.
We've dropped infertility drugs. We'll make lots of Trump babies.
I'm hoping by the midterms.

Speaker 1 Okay, stop.

Speaker 6 Don't drink the water.

Speaker 6 It's not Dylan all. It's in the water.
Don't boo. Fuck.

Speaker 5 And we're the ones that rig elections?

Speaker 1 We're hoping to have a lot of Trump babies

Speaker 1 by the midterms.

Speaker 6 Suddenly they believe in replacement theory there.

Speaker 6 They're bringing in all the Trump babies. Yeah.

Speaker 8 Are they Jewish?

Speaker 6 I don't know.

Speaker 1 And that's okay, stop.

Speaker 10 We'll be right back.

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Speaker 1 Wonder how I'll feel when I'm John's age.

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Speaker 7 They speak in the voices we love.

Speaker 1 They wear our faces.

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Speaker 6 All right, let's talk about the shutdown, which is now the longest in history.

Speaker 6 Yes, yes, boo.

Speaker 6 Depending on who you listen to and when, it's either about to end soon or going to go on forever,

Speaker 6 which I'm sure nobody here wants especially those of you who count on a paycheck from the federal government

Speaker 6 also also those of us who hope to someday get on a plane out of DC

Speaker 6 The Trump administration has decided that starting Friday, the FAA will be reducing air traffic by 10% across 40 different markets.

Speaker 6 A court is now forcing them to use emergency funds to pay out SNAP benefits, so that's good.

Speaker 6 Don't get too excited.

Speaker 6 Because now money for winter heating assistance programs is on hold, which could potentially leave 6 million households with no way to stay warm.

Speaker 6 So Senate Democrats have been negotiating with Republicans over a possible deal on Obamacare subsidies to end the shutdown, though Mike Johnson threw a bunch of cold water on that today when he said he will not promise a vote on Obamacare subsidy extensions in the House.

Speaker 6 but the best idea, shockingly, comes from none other than Donald Trump. Let's listen.

Speaker 11 Remember, Republicans, regardless of the Schumer shutdown, the Democrats will terminate the filibuster the first chance they get.

Speaker 6 Yeah, we will.

Speaker 11 Don't be stupid, Republicans. These deranged Democrat politicians will never again have the chance to destroy America.
They tried to destroy your country.

Speaker 11 Republicans, you will rue the day that you didn't terminate the filibuster.

Speaker 6 There we go. He's right, he's right.

Speaker 5 Donald Trump for a 2021 episode of Potsdam of America.

Speaker 1 Threatened us with a good time.

Speaker 6 Gonna send him and abolish the filibuster tea from the crooked merch store.

Speaker 6 So Republican senators have already said, absolutely not. The votes aren't there.
John Thien said the votes aren't there. People like Tom Tillis said, I will never vote for this.

Speaker 6 Get rid of the filibuster.

Speaker 6 Alex, what do you think the Democrats should be holding out for here? Because we're going to start getting more flight delays.

Speaker 6 There's the heating assistance, the SNAP benefits, even though the court ordered them to pay them out. The emergency funding is going to run out.
What do you think?

Speaker 7 Okay, let's just be clear that Donald Trump this summer showed that he is willing to unilaterally rescind congressional funding. Like,

Speaker 7 that is something that's not going to get tackled in all this, the rescission aspect of all this. Like, he'll do whatever the fuck he wants to do to some degree.

Speaker 7 And so Democrats, I think the people that are rightfully holding out right now are saying, how do we have any guarantee that the Americans we are talking to who are terrified that they're going to lose their medical care will have any recourse unless we get something done in Congress?

Speaker 7 And even then,

Speaker 7 how do we know that Trump's not just going to undo all of it, right? There's so much uncertainty. And I think we have to look at this in two ways.

Speaker 7 There is the immediate pain, which is very real, right? But make no mistake, Donald Trump is withholding the snap money. The money is there.
It is in the emergency reserves.

Speaker 7 It is why federal district court judges are saying, give the money up. American people need to eat.
We're not a country that starves its own. We have the money.
That is Donald Trump's doing.

Speaker 7 That is not congressional Democrats. And congressional Democrats are looking for a resolution to a very urgent problem.
I don't know how many people are doing. Open enrollment started November 1st.

Speaker 7 We talked to someone this week on the podcast whose medical care is going from $100 a month to $886 a month.

Speaker 6 Jesus.

Speaker 7 Like, and this is for care that she needs in order to be a functional person in the workplace and in life, right?

Speaker 7 This is not an abstract showdown in Congress. This is people really trying to find an answer that is so urgent and so pressing in the lives of people across this country.
So I get it.

Speaker 7 Like there's this sort of the narrative here of how long Democrats hold up. I think what they're trying to do is get some assurance from Republicans that they're going to fix this problem.

Speaker 7 People can't go without health. You can't, 23 million Americans can't go without health care.
That is catastrophic for our country, morally and economically. And like,

Speaker 7 I'm not going to fly out. I'm probably going to be here for three months or maybe get deported.
I don't even know what happens to me in Washington, D.C.

Speaker 7 because like my airport's closed and whatever else. Like this is not, what's happening in the airports is real.
All of these things are practical realities that I think need to be dealt with.

Speaker 7 But let us not put it all on Democrats' plate.

Speaker 7 The reason the worst of this is happening is because we have a recalcitrant sadist in the White House who does not want to take care of the American people.

Speaker 7 And I guess I don't blame the Democrats that this week, after all these gains, are saying, maybe we don't cave 48 hours after the country showed us they want us to fight. So I get it.

Speaker 7 I don't think it's going to go on forever, but I absolutely understand the strategy to push the Republican Party as far as they possibly can, especially because the President of the United States is saying this shutdown's a fucking disaster for us.

Speaker 7 Use the leverage, dudes. That's what I say.

Speaker 6 Tommy, what do you think? You think Democrats will stand strong? Yeah, I mean, look,

Speaker 1 I know he's going to keep ratcheting up the pain, but I don't know for sure. But I suspect that voters will continue to...

Speaker 1 blame the administration more than they blame Democrats, who they intuitively know have no power, especially when it comes to like the FAA or the you know, SNAP benefits or something like that.

Speaker 1 And my message, if I were in the Democratic leader, would be to continue talking about the reason for the shutdown, the fact that, as Alex just said, now healthcare prices are about to double, triple, quadruple for people.

Speaker 1 I would also make the point that Republicans are not serious about ending the shutdown. Like the Republicans in the House have been out of session this whole time.

Speaker 6 They're at home.

Speaker 1 dicking around in their districts. They're not here like trying to cut a deal.
And Trump has been even worse.

Speaker 6 He is just checked out.

Speaker 1 You know, like he should be negotiating every day.

Speaker 1 If I were the president of the United States and I wanted to end the shutdown, I would call the congressional leaders to the White House, lock them in the Roosevelt room, and say, you're not leaving until we have a fucking deal.

Speaker 1 We're going to red-wetting this thing.

Speaker 6 You know?

Speaker 6 I like that.

Speaker 6 You know,

Speaker 6 metaphorically red-wedding it.

Speaker 1 And so, you know.

Speaker 1 But like, instead, Trump is giving us a gift, which is throwing great Gatsby parties at Mar-a-Lago and rebuilding, you know, tearing down and then building the East Wing and shaking down corporations to pay for it.

Speaker 1 And so, like, none of this is to minimize the harm that is happening because of the shutdown. Like, I'm flying out on Saturday.
I'm not excited about it. The snap cuts are sadistic.

Speaker 1 That is the right word for them.

Speaker 1 There are all these families up in Maine that won't get a bucket of money called LIHEAP, which basically helps low-income people literally heat their homes when it's too cold.

Speaker 1 But my message to those people and Democrats who are worried about that is I think Donald Trump is coming for those programs anyway. You know?

Speaker 1 And I think we got to stand up and win this fight now if we want to defend those things later.

Speaker 6 Also, like

Speaker 6 I find it very odd that Donald Trump, the day after the election, basically admitted that they lost because of the shutdown and everyone's mad about the shutdown.

Speaker 6 And so then his next move was, let's make it even more painful by shutting down the airports. Right.
Cutting the energy assistance.

Speaker 6 Like, I don't know that that's the smartest political move, but you know.

Speaker 1 And also, making, I'm going to make it about the filibuster, which is ostensibly saying Democrats are lockstep and united, an implacable force we cannot defeat.

Speaker 1 The only hope is I get the Republicans to bend and break on this issue, which they are reluctant to do because for the same reason they are annoyed by Trump putting all the pressure on them.

Speaker 1 Because the second the filibuster doesn't exist, four of the least conservative Republicans in the Senate are the bulwark against the dumbest shit that the House Republicans can come up with on a Tuesday, which is what they're like, no, thank you.

Speaker 1 We morally support the filibuster. Also, without it, our lives are fucking terrible.

Speaker 6 But also,

Speaker 6 by pushing them so publicly, he's also admitting that it's not Democrats keeping the government shut down.

Speaker 6 Republicans tomorrow could vote to change the rules in the Senate, get rid of the filibuster, and open the whole government.

Speaker 5 If you were trying to lose the shutdown fight, this is exactly how you do it.

Speaker 6 Totally.

Speaker 5 You would be the people who are most blamed for it, but then you would then make everyone's life worse, therefore making them matter at you because they blame you.

Speaker 5 And then you would take your, then you would basically affirm the other side's message that you're the ones who shut the government down in some sort of weird nationally televised address.

Speaker 6 And then you would show everyone how you renovated your bathroom. Right.

Speaker 6 And then go golfing.

Speaker 1 I mean, you have flapper parties at your country club in Florida with the worst dressed, worst work-faced people.

Speaker 6 You know what I mean.

Speaker 1 They're basically wearing masks.

Speaker 5 It's basically eyes wide shut for mega.

Speaker 6 One member of Congress with lots of thoughts on how her fellow Republicans have handled the shutdown and the election.

Speaker 2 We already know.

Speaker 6 It's not Jasmine Concerns, it's yours. It's Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Here she is.

Speaker 22 I believe the election yesterday was a referendum on not delivering what November 2024 was about.

Speaker 1 If you were to be able to talk to Mike Johnson right now, you would tell him what?

Speaker 22 Tell him the same thing I told him last week and I yelled at him on the phone on our GOP conference call. What'd you say? Is that where is our

Speaker 22 health care plan? It's non-existent.

Speaker 6 Don't really know what to do, do you?

Speaker 6 I like the jacket, too.

Speaker 6 Do we clap? Do we know?

Speaker 10 What do we do?

Speaker 6 Green also

Speaker 6 today went out of her way to say nice things about, of all people, Nancy Pelosi.

Speaker 6 When news of Pelosi's retirement broke, Marjorie Taylor Green told CNN that Pelosi, quote, had an incredible career for her party and that she's very impressed at her ability to get things done.

Speaker 6 Not wrong. Yeah.
What?

Speaker 6 Yes. Nancy Pelosi.

Speaker 6 You might be wondering about Marjorie Taylor Greene, like, what the fuck is going on?

Speaker 6 Well, notice reported on Wednesday that Marjorie Taylor Greene has been telling close friends that in 2028, she might run for president.

Speaker 1 Love it, you clap it up for content.

Speaker 6 Love it, you've been working on the exploratory committee. Yeah.

Speaker 1 The Marjorie Taylor-Greene situation is so interesting.

Speaker 1 Because she's saying things that we agree with, but we don't want to give her credit. And I think that that's pretty justified.

Speaker 1 Because when someone evolves dramatically, you would expect them to acknowledge it in some way and say, here's why, and here's the reason I'm changing. But she just showed up different.

Speaker 1 And so

Speaker 1 I don't know if we're living in a Dave situation and

Speaker 1 that there was a woman who looked like Marjorie Taylor Greene who had an employment operation, and suddenly there's a knock on the door, and she's needed for a daring escapade.

Speaker 1 At the same time, I think when someone who used to be much worse suddenly becomes much better, we shouldn't be upset about it.

Speaker 6 But I also don't want to go too far.

Speaker 1 And in some ways, it's like an old David Axelon thing, which is if you see a bear on a unicycle, you don't criticize the technique.

Speaker 6 You just think, wow.

Speaker 6 Look at him go.

Speaker 6 And so that's where I'm at now.

Speaker 1 I'm just like, wow.

Speaker 1 Look at her go.

Speaker 1 And that's where I reserve judgment. I'm curious what Jasmine Crockett thinks about it.
End of thought.

Speaker 6 If the bear rides that unicycle all the way to 2028,

Speaker 6 she will will have to face the current frontrunner for the 2028 nomination, who Donald Trump had some wonderful things to say about this week when he was comparing his own vice president to his quieter Chinese counterpart.

Speaker 14 They have

Speaker 11 the equivalent of a vice president.

Speaker 13 I said, are you going to answer my question? And he's like, he doesn't move. I said, what's wrong with this guy? Oh, I will answer all questions.

Speaker 6 Why don't you behave like that?

Speaker 14 JD doesn't behave like that.

Speaker 11 JD buds into conversations.

Speaker 11 I want to have that for at least a couple of days, okay, Jay?

Speaker 6 This fucking guy won't shut up.

Speaker 5 I would say Mike Pence only spoke when spoken to, and Trump tried to murder him.

Speaker 10 Reminds me of the Chappelle show skid.

Speaker 1 He's like, you sit when you pee, J.D.

Speaker 6 It's a prison joke. Never mind.

Speaker 6 I got it.

Speaker 6 Dan, how do you think Trump is going to start reacting to all of this 2028 chatter among Republicans that basically highlights his lame duck status?

Speaker 5 I think Donald Trump, as any man filled with self-confidence and dignity, will just step back and allow the process to play itself out.

Speaker 6 Yeah. No, no.
Right off into the sunset.

Speaker 5 Yes. I mean, it's going to be really interesting because there's a very good chance that Donald Trump becomes more unpopular over time, right?

Speaker 5 He really is a lame duck.

Speaker 5 Like, we keep thinking thinking that this is, because Donald Trump was just elected, this is like the equivalent of Donald Trump in 2017 or Bill Clinton in 1995 or Barack Obama after his 2009.

Speaker 5 No, this is the end of Trump's term, right? He is in lame duck status. Even he said he'd never be on the ballot again.
And lame duck presidents tend to fade into the background.

Speaker 5 But what's interesting is, as Donald Trump becomes unpopular, The Republican primary will remain about loyalty and fealty to Donald Trump because even as bad as they got their ass kicked on Tuesday, in Virginia, the people who voted for the Republican candidate gave Trump a 94% approval rating.

Speaker 5 92% in New Jersey. And so he

Speaker 5 remained incredibly popular with the people who decide the election. So J.D.

Speaker 5 Vance is going to have to massively kiss up to Trump to get his support to get the nomination and then be unable to run away from him, which is exactly what happened to Jack Chitterelli in New Jersey.

Speaker 5 Right. So it's going to be very interesting though, it is to our favor, probably.

Speaker 6 Yeah. Tommy,

Speaker 6 Marjorie Taylor Greene and Vance aside, the intra-maga battle for the future of the party has been raging this week.

Speaker 6 But unlike Democrats, instead of populism versus abundance,

Speaker 6 it's populism versus an abundance of Nazis. Yes.

Speaker 6 You want to explain what's been going on over at the Heritage Foundation? I would love to.

Speaker 1 Literally nothing I'd like more. So the inciting incident, as they say, was Tucker Carlson having on his show a guy named Nick Fuentes.

Speaker 6 Oh,

Speaker 1 you know his work. For those who don't know Fuentes, Nick Fuentes said

Speaker 6 Hitler was cool.

Speaker 1 He's a Holocaust denier. He wants to repeal the 19th Amendment.
And he said, Jim Crow was better for black people.

Speaker 1 And what's the big deal if they had to use separate water fountains and go to separate schools? He is a vile, racist, misogynist, incel, like genuinely awful person.

Speaker 1 And Tucker had him on this show and just didn't push him on any of these views for like, I think, literally two hours.

Speaker 1 And so this interview goes out. People are horrified.
And then out of nowhere, the president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, releases this video on Twitter where he like...

Speaker 1 defends his relationship with Tucker and Heritage's relationship with Tucker. And even worse, he refers to the people critical of Tucker having Fuentes on his show as globalists, which is code for.

Speaker 6 Hi.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 1 he said that they were part of a venomous coalition, which is, again,

Speaker 1 creepy, spidey senses.

Speaker 1 And this led to this massive rupture within the Heritage Foundation itself, and all these town hall meetings from the organization are leaking out.

Speaker 1 And also within the Republican Party, because there are... people that just think Nick Fuentes is vile and beyond the pale and should not be part of this group.

Speaker 16 And so, you know,

Speaker 1 this issue exploded this week, but the underlying fight has been boiling under the surface of the MAGA coalition for a very long time.

Speaker 1 Nick Fuentes was

Speaker 1 like Charlie Kirk's chief antagonist. And when Charlie Kirk was killed, Fuentes has tried to step into the fore and take over that leadership mantle.

Speaker 1 And a lot of times this gets discussed euphemistically, like it's a foreign policy issue, or like it's about U.S. support for Israel, or what does America first really mean.

Speaker 1 But really, it's like blood and soil nationalism versus kind of like civic nationalism or like a fidelity to the Constitution or ideas.

Speaker 1 And so

Speaker 1 Trump, I think, has kept a lid on this thing for a while. But the further he is out of the scene and the more he is viewed as a lame duck, I think the more it's going to come to the fore.

Speaker 1 And the other piece of this that is really important is that Nick Fuentes hates Shady Vance. hates him, calls him vile things that I will not repeat because it's just pretty ugly.

Speaker 1 And so this kind of,

Speaker 1 when you look closely, like this is a fight about the Heritage Foundation and Tucker Carlson and who can go on a podcast.

Speaker 1 But really, I think it's like a proxy battle for who is going to determine the future of the Republican Party and just how scary it could be if they go further to like the Fuentes right.

Speaker 2 I will just say too that

Speaker 6 Nick Fuentes hates J.D. Vance, which makes it all the more notable that J.D.
Vance has said nothing about this.

Speaker 6 And in fact, after the midterm, after the uh, after Tuesday, he had this long tweet where he was like, Enough of this infighting between Republicans.

Speaker 6 We're all on the same page about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So he actually sort of implicitly acknowledged that he knows about the fight because he is extremely online, like us,

Speaker 6 but yet has refused to condemn it, which tells you a lot about J.D. Vance's thoughts about 2028.
And Dick Fuentes attacks J.D.

Speaker 1 Vance's wife and kids,

Speaker 2 specifically.

Speaker 6 Can I ask you? Wait, why?

Speaker 1 Because of their race.

Speaker 7 What is it about them that's different?

Speaker 7 I don't know about you guys, but like, we talk a lot about the Manosphere. Why in the Manosphere on the right does Hitler keep coming up? Like, why?

Speaker 7 Is anybody wondering why the Third Reich is like catnip to so many Republicans and conservatives?

Speaker 7 I mean, this is, I feel like this is actually like a development that needs to be like over and over again.

Speaker 7 It's like, oh, on their text messages or maybe explicitly on their podcast or whatever, like they're texting about Hitler, they're talking about Nazis, they're talking about their sympathies with Nazis and Hitler.

Speaker 7 I mean, I think we talk about, there's been, I think, an overlay of acceptability when it talks about the alienation of young men, but like the fact that one of our parties is, you know, giving quarter to the most violent, virulent strain of 20th century politics, the fucking Hitler and the Nazis, and that somehow is dovetailing with the agenda in and around masculinity should be alarming to everybody in this country.

Speaker 7 And like, I think needs to be addressed head on. Like, what is it about your version of yourself that

Speaker 7 finds such kinship with Adolf Hitler?

Speaker 7 Like, this is a fucking problem for this country that in the last three weeks, there have been multiple headlines about Republicans talking about and supporting the actions of Hitler and the Third Reich.

Speaker 7 Like, this is a problem in America.

Speaker 1 That was the part that was, I think,

Speaker 1 chilling in what happened after the Heritage, because

Speaker 1 Nick Fuentes is horrible.

Speaker 1 But then there's reporting about what happens inside of Heritage and some of the younger staffers being upset by Kevin Roberts walking back what he said, which was some version of we don't want to punch, I'm paraphrasing, but we don't want to cancel people, we don't want to punch to the right.

Speaker 1 And there was sympathy for that. And that makes me really, really nervous that there is a kind of cohort of younger activist right-wing people that are getting drawn in this way.

Speaker 1 It's a very old story. And there is something

Speaker 1 at the end of saying the establishment is terrible, everything you've been taught is terrible, the medical establishment is lying to you. the elites are lying to you.

Speaker 1 That is a path that you can follow. And at the end of it is the Jews.

Speaker 1 It's a well-worn path that people take. And it is very, like it is it is it should be alarming to us.
You know that

Speaker 1 people are like oh the kids today on the left with their pronouns

Speaker 1 and it's like look what the fuck is happening over there and I do think it starts ironically.

Speaker 1 It starts as like I'm gonna I'm gonna take down these sacred ideas of like oh, you can't say something good about Hitler and it starts out as being kind of fun and a little bit edgy, right?

Speaker 1 It's rebellious and it's hard to be rebellious on the right. You're defending ancient traditional patriarchal structures, so you got to dig deep.

Speaker 1 And so you find, and so you find, oh, like, wow, boy, I'm gonna really get the squares because I'm gonna make a joke about gas chambers.

Speaker 1 And ironic thoughts lead to suddenly like unalloyed versions of them. And we see that online all around us all the time.
And like, it is a very dangerous thing. It is one of the most dangerous.

Speaker 1 Anti-Semitism on the left, it exists. This is a threat to Jews in America.
It is.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 from the quotes that Tommy was reading, too, because I do think that it's like, it's all about Hitler and everyone's like, Hitler, the history. It's like, no, no, don't want women to vote.

Speaker 6 Like, are unbelievably misogynist.

Speaker 6 Black people, Latinos, like all of it. It is gays.
It is everyone, right? Like, and they are very open about it and they are very transparent about it and they do not care who knows.

Speaker 6 It is just very, it's like, something that stuck with me that you said, Tommy, is like, oh, and they're all having town halls at Heritage. Like, what the fuck is the town hall about?

Speaker 6 You know, it's like, let's have a a town hall, Nazis, yay or nay? What do we think?

Speaker 6 We're really struggling in the organization. What should we do? Should we condemn the Nazis or no? I'm not sure.
Well, there's a real debate, which is the scary part, right?

Speaker 1 One of the leak recordings that came out was Kevin Roberts' speechwriter was like, well, I saw that there was an opening for

Speaker 1 everyone to come to a Shabbat dinner if they wanted, but it's against my religion to go to one.

Speaker 9 Will they be mandated?

Speaker 1 It's like, dude, you're like triggered by getting invited to a fucking dinner.

Speaker 6 Relax, buddy.

Speaker 1 Relax, little heritage goon yeah well i eagerly await jd vance's statement on the whole me too um under doug emhoff the shabbats would have been mandatory

Speaker 6 sorry when we come back dan interviews representative jasmine crockett

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Speaker 17 See TotalWine.com for details. Spirits not sold in Virginia and North Carolina.
Drink responsibly. Be 21.

Speaker 5 She's been in Congress for only a short period of time, but she's become one of the most prominent voices in the Democratic Party. Please welcome to the stage Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett.

Speaker 15 I like the lights being up. I can see everybody.

Speaker 5 They're pretty excited to see you.

Speaker 6 Okay, Flexis.

Speaker 15 Oh, we're going to do that. We're going to get it out real quick.

Speaker 6 Real quick.

Speaker 5 Bleach

Speaker 6 Lawn.

Speaker 15 Bad

Speaker 6 Bill.

Speaker 5 Butch by.

Speaker 5 I'm glad we did that.

Speaker 20 Okay.

Speaker 5 So we've been talking about the great news from Tuesday, right? As you look at the results, what do you take from it? Do you think this is a referendum on Trump,

Speaker 5 affordability, something else?

Speaker 15 I think it's all of the above.

Speaker 15 First of all, I think that it's great that it's clear that Americans understand that Trump cannot do this by himself.

Speaker 15 There are all these feeble Republicans that are allowing him to break everything in America.

Speaker 15 And so we can't give a pass. You can't give a pass to the House Republicans, the Senate Republicans, or even those on the local and state levels who refuse to protect the people that elected them.

Speaker 15 Whether it means that you're going against this administration when it fails to send money that it was supposed to send to your state, you are always supposed to remember who it is that you represent.

Speaker 15 But when it came down to money that this administration and Elon Musk decided to play with, it was the Dem AGs that were going after this administration. No Republican AGs were stepping up.

Speaker 15 When you look at the governors and the mayors that are protecting their people from the disastrous raids that we see ICE making, again, it is those local elected.

Speaker 15 And so I am so proud of the American people understanding that it's not just Trump, it's everybody else who has decided that they are going to participate in the coup.

Speaker 5 So we are here in Washington, D.C., in the midst of the longest government shutdown in history. Yeah.

Speaker 5 As we, none of your Republican colleagues have been here for like six weeks now, I think.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I don't, I lost count.

Speaker 5 There is reporting that a group of Senate Democrats are open to a deal with Republicans to open the government in exchange for a vote on the Obamacare subsidies.

Speaker 5 What do you, what's your reaction to that deal, and what would it take to get your vote to reopen the government?

Speaker 15 So first of all, I'd have to see it.

Speaker 15 I almost need Trump to sign in blood.

Speaker 15 I mean, I say that very jokingly, but part of me like, yeah.

Speaker 15 Because here's the deal.

Speaker 15 What we have seen out of this administration, as soon as he came in, all the things that we voted for in a bipartisan way that were signed into law by Joe Biden, he single-handedly decided, you know what, I don't like these parts.

Speaker 15 So therefore, I'm just going to ignore it. Whether we're talking about USAID, which nobody is talking about anymore, but I still remember

Speaker 6 he,

Speaker 15 for instance, there is supposedly clarifying language on that every federal worker who's been furloughed is going to be paid. But, like, what if he decides he doesn't want to?

Speaker 15 Because he's already been flirting with that.

Speaker 15 So, when I say that he's going to have to like also sign in his blood, what I mean by that is that there has to be an enforcement mechanism there, one that says if for some reason

Speaker 15 the president signs this into law but then fails to abide by it, then it collapses or then there's an automatic trigger for more money going into things or something like that.

Speaker 15 We had to endure a situation like that before under Biden where we were on a timeline to get our appropriations done.

Speaker 15 And if we didn't get them done, then like more and more money ticked up to like what the Democrats wanted.

Speaker 15 So they've got to put a trigger in there of some sort to make sure that the American people and what the Democrats, I'm putting that together because Democrats are fighting harder for Republican constituents than the Republicans.

Speaker 5 I mean, that is the thing, right? These Obamacare subsidies that they so very much want to extend mostly impact people in red states. The states that didn't expand Medicaid.

Speaker 6 Exactly.

Speaker 15 Yeah, I mean, um, my state, obviously, yes, is is one that's in a very awful situation for a gazillion reasons. We could go down the list.

Speaker 15 But, you know, it's Florida. Florida has the highest number of persons that are enrolled in the Affordable Care Act.

Speaker 15 And so I want people to understand that this is kind of like in Texas, we have this thing called the Texas two-step that actually is multiple reasons. We have a two-step.
We have different two-steps.

Speaker 15 But anyway, it's almost like a two-step because it was the big, ugly bill that meant that people's insurance premiums were going to go up.

Speaker 15 And then basically, the Republicans have said, oh, while you're down, let's go ahead and kick you because those subsidies that normally would help out and make sure that if you are on the marketplace, you can then reduce your

Speaker 15 out-of-pocket.

Speaker 15 We're also going to let that expire at the same time that we gave permanent tax cuts to people that keep making more and more money, yet we're in a country that has not raised the minimum wage to a very minimum of $8.

Speaker 15 I mean, we at seven something, you know, so it's, it's insane that it is clear that this administration is all about making sure that they can widen that wealth gap. And it is so stark.

Speaker 15 I mean, you look at Amazon and how many people they have laid off. You look at UPS laying off.
We know that we've lost.

Speaker 15 approximately a million jobs in the job market and it ain't even been 12 months, y'all. Like this is super bad.

Speaker 15 And it's, you know, a combination of what the federal government has done to roll back monies that we give out.

Speaker 15 Because even if you're not an actual federal government worker, we are number one, the largest employer in this country.

Speaker 15 Number two,

Speaker 15 we give out money to so many other people that sustain them.

Speaker 15 So, for instance, there's so many people that are concerned about Head Start and what is happening to Head Start in the midst of the shutdown, right?

Speaker 15 And listen, I ain't got no kids, but I know some of y'all do. And from what I hear, it's expensive to raise these children.

Speaker 15 And so, you know, when you think about it, when people are saying, hey, I'm going to have to leave the workforce because taking care of my child is cost prohibitive.

Speaker 15 Like I can't, like, it's just better for me to stay at home. These are the decisions that people are having to make.
And to have someone who literally, I don't know if he just seen that. Okay.

Speaker 15 I do know he is senile, but also,

Speaker 15 I don't know if he's saying things like, oh, costs have gone down and everything's affordable because he's just clueless

Speaker 15 or that he's see now. Now he, I know,

Speaker 15 I feel like it's both. Yeah, I'm with y'all.
I feel like it's both.

Speaker 5 Speaking of the president, he likes to talk about you a lot, right? Even just recently, last week or so, he gave some bizarre answer about why he can remember third terms. He brought your name up.

Speaker 5 Sort of, how does it feel to live rent-free in his head?

Speaker 15 I will say that you never could have told me, number one, that I would be in Congress.

Speaker 15 This is definitely not what I grew up as a little girl wanting to be.

Speaker 6 And number two,

Speaker 15 you never could have convinced me that there would be a president of these United States that may not know anybody else's name besides AOC. He knows AOC too.

Speaker 15 I mean, everything's falling apart and somehow he finds time to worry about a very junior member in the house it is beyond me

Speaker 15 but I think that it I think that it goes to show you

Speaker 15 that Trump may even understand

Speaker 15 people better than my party apparatus

Speaker 15 to the extent that just just work with me for a second to the extent that he understands

Speaker 15 who it is that actually

Speaker 15 communicates with people.

Speaker 15 And I don't think he cares about the titles. He cares about who he believes is an effective communicator who can take him down.

Speaker 15 And so

Speaker 15 I do have to give it to him.

Speaker 15 Now, granted, he doesn't understand. You don't say your opposition's name over and over.
It just elevates them more. He doesn't get that part yet.

Speaker 15 But I do think that he sees the fact that there's, you know, these huge crowds that show up for Alex wherever she travels to across this country. He sees how big of a following she has.

Speaker 15 And I think that there was one point in time when they really tried to minimize her and they tried to pretend as if she really was not a big deal. And now they can't hide from it.

Speaker 15 They know that she's kind of a big deal.

Speaker 5 I mean, like, to your point, right, Trump knows who you are because you're very good at getting and holding attention. You're on every platform.
You're omnipresent. You're on cable news.

Speaker 5 You're doing Kendrick Lamar memes on TikTok. doing, you're out there.
And since the 2024 election, there's been this big conversation among Democrats about how to get attention, right?

Speaker 5 Because we thought we accurately thought we lost the attention worse in 2024.

Speaker 5 Like, how do you think about what you do? And why don't more Democrats try to do what you and AOC and others are doing?

Speaker 15 Yeah, so Alex and I are different in how we, I mean, Alex came in. being viral, right? She had this viral campaign video.
And so people really wanted to know more.

Speaker 15 And And I think that she's spent a lot of time building a rapport with those online. I mean, she came in off of the support of those that were online.
She still dominates as the grassroots fundraiser.

Speaker 15 The highest fundraising member in the house is Alex.

Speaker 15 So, and

Speaker 15 these are small dollar donors, right? And so I think that she's been very effective at really holding kind of the trust and building that rapport with those that are online.

Speaker 15 With me, it's been a little bit crazier

Speaker 15 for sure.

Speaker 15 Alex hasn't necessarily had all the crazy moments that I have,

Speaker 15 but I do think the fact that I didn't sign up for this job, like in the sense that obviously I ran, so I signed up, but in the sense that

Speaker 15 I never felt entitled. to this seat.

Speaker 15 We have a lot of people on both sides of the aisle that, you know, their parents were in politics and it was always ordained they were gonna be this great politician, you know, all the things, right?

Speaker 15 That's not my story. And so I am very comfortable in my skin.
I'm okay with being my authentic self that may not be everyone's cup of tea.

Speaker 15 Because I think that it is important.

Speaker 15 for the people to feel like they have somebody that they can trust and not look at and think, oh, I'm getting your your representative. I'm not getting the real you.

Speaker 15 When I say that I am fighting for people's lives, I want them to believe me when I say it because it's true.

Speaker 15 And I think my experience in the courtroom, having practiced for, I think it was about 16, 17 years before I had to stop practicing once I got to Congress,

Speaker 15 but I typically represented people who usually felt voiceless as a court-appointed attorney, as a public defender, And

Speaker 15 yeah.

Speaker 15 And so I know the real struggles. I know the real causes of so much crime because I've had these conversations.
And I know how to see people that typically feel unseen.

Speaker 15 And I think it's just my experience, but I knew how to talk to them, whether we were sitting in the jail and I was in some jeans and J's,

Speaker 15 or if I had to go into court.

Speaker 15 and make sure that I was suited and booted and would represent very well and make sure that that the jury did not feel like I was separating them because I could talk to you no matter what part of the spectrum you came from when we were picking the jury.

Speaker 15 But by the time I've got to argue to the judge, I got to know what I'm talking about. Now, the jury may not know what I'm saying.

Speaker 15 They may not understand, but they're seeing if the judge is saying that I'm winning the arguments and things like that, and they're hearing me in that way.

Speaker 15 And so, I think that I just have a better idea of how to understand my audience and make sure that I am effectively communicating with with whomever it is that I'm trying to reach.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 you said earlier this month that you are thinking about running for Senate in Texas. Can you talk a little?

Speaker 5 I don't know how many Texans we got here, but they're excited.

Speaker 5 So can you talk a little bit about your decision-making, your thinking there and when you might make a decision?

Speaker 15 So I won't make a decision. Well, okay, I'll tell you this.
If I make a decision, it will be before December 8th, but it will not become public until December 8th. That is for sure.

Speaker 5 December 8th, the filing deadline.

Speaker 10 That's the filing deadline.

Speaker 15 Yeah, it'll be the last minute.

Speaker 15 Yes, yes, that part.

Speaker 15 So here's the deal.

Speaker 15 I only said this once as I was campaigning in California for Prop 50. I let the cat out the bag.
Yes, yes.

Speaker 15 Go, California.

Speaker 15 I let the cat out the bag that I have no intentions of of being in Congress for 30, 40 years.

Speaker 15 And so, yes, yes.

Speaker 15 Well, no, no, no, not that part, but yes, on the not being there forever. So, for me, I honestly had planned to go after Terra Cruz.
I was strategically planning to go after Terra Cruz.

Speaker 7 And so,

Speaker 15 I was like,

Speaker 15 I will do all things and I will prepare. And most people don't know that when I first got into elected office for the state house, I had been told that a state senator was going to retire.

Speaker 15 And so I was actually preparing for that race. And then my state representative ended up becoming the mayor and there was a special election.
And I wasn't ready. And I was like, but here we are.

Speaker 15 We're going. So I went.
When I went to the state house, I only did one term. I thought I would do a total of four terms.
That's when I would fully vest on the state house level. And

Speaker 15 my predecessor called me and said, I'm going to retire and you should be the one to replace me. Again, not ready.
And I jumped into that race only,

Speaker 15 it was, I announced the Wednesday that was the day before Thanksgiving. So it was the very end.
Again, filing was the beginning of December.

Speaker 15 And so even though I was the last one in, we came out on top and I was able to make it through the primary and get to Congress.

Speaker 15 In this scenario, I will tell you that I am so scared that I don't know where our country will be in four years,

Speaker 15 that I don't know that I can wait the four years. I truly believe in the fierce urgency of now.
When I say I am scared,

Speaker 15 I am scared.

Speaker 15 I also know that there are those that believe running for Senate in Texas or running statewide in Texas is just like a dummy mission.

Speaker 6 I get it.

Speaker 15 I mean, it's like every once in a while we get everybody jazzed up and the country is like, it's gonna happen.

Speaker 15 And then they tune into Texas and they like, Texas does what Texas does, right?

Speaker 15 And so,

Speaker 15 so, so

Speaker 15 here's my analysis.

Speaker 15 What I believe is, is number one,

Speaker 15 We've seen that the people are frustrated.

Speaker 15 And so that's number one. And we know that the last time Cruz ran, that was in a Trump back last year.
That was when Beto came within a little less than three points.

Speaker 15 So yeah, so I say the generic Democrat on this ballot should probably be within three,

Speaker 15 somewhere between three and five points. I truly believe that, just because it's such a bad time for people, right? But the question is,

Speaker 15 he does. He does.

Speaker 15 And so does Ken Paxton.

Speaker 15 So here's the deal. The Republicans,

Speaker 15 the NRSCC

Speaker 15 has decided that they don't want Ken Paxton because he's a uniquely vulnerable, terrible candidate.

Speaker 15 And so they have been investing in the primary to try to beat him because he's so bad. And now when I looked at the fundraising, it looks like they've dried up some of his donors as well.

Speaker 15 They're doing everything that they can to hopefully try to make it to where he's not the nominee. Now, if Texas isn't in play,

Speaker 15 why is it that they would be playing so hard, right?

Speaker 15 So, that's number one. But the question overall is: this: Is there a candidate that can get people that have never ever wanted to vote or never paid attention to politics to show up?

Speaker 15 I do believe I can. I do.

Speaker 15 But me believing versus me getting the data to support it is a whole other story. So,

Speaker 15 you know, there was polling that came out today that suggested that I am the strongest to win the general as well.

Speaker 15 But I got to do my own internal.

Speaker 15 So we are finalizing what that looks like because I don't know if you've ever participated in a poll, but normally what they do is they say, do you plan to vote in the next?

Speaker 15 I know, because everybody's like, who y'all poll? Cause you didn't poll me. Right, I know, I get it.

Speaker 15 But they always ask, do you plan to vote in the next election? And then if somebody says no, they terminate the poll.

Speaker 15 And what we need to do is we need to dig a little deeper and ask people, well, if this person was on the ballot or this person was on the ballot or this person was on the ballot, would that make a difference?

Speaker 15 And I think.

Speaker 15 I think the reason that we ended up with a surprise candidacy in a Barack Obama was a couple of things. He did something that no other candidate had done.
He inspired people and he made them believe.

Speaker 15 And so it was hard to poll for him because there were so many new people getting engaged. There's another candidate that has done that to us more than once.
It's the current president.

Speaker 15 The president is so difficult to poll for because he pulls people that would never engage in politics and he pulls them in. And so,

Speaker 15 you know,

Speaker 15 it's going to be a really tight deadline on finishing up on getting our data in.

Speaker 15 But once we get it, that's probably going to be my final kind of conversation. I've talked to some really high people, I'll say it that way,

Speaker 15 that are also trying to think and strategize with and for me about whether or not this makes sense.

Speaker 5 All right, so we'll check in with you on December 8th.

Speaker 6 Yes, December 8th.

Speaker 5 The Congresswoman has graciously agreed to stay and play a game with us. But before everyone else comes out, give it up for Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett.

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At Total Wine and Moore, you'll find just what you need for them all. Mixing up something spooky?

Speaker 17 Total Wine and Moore is your cocktail central for all your Halloween concoctions.

Speaker 17 With the lowest prices for over 30 years, you'll always find what you love and love what you find only at Total Wine and Moore. Curbside pickup and delivery available in most areas.

Speaker 17 See TotalWine.com for details. Spirits not sold in Virginia and North Carolina.
Drink responsibly. B21.

Speaker 1 Here I stand between two teams across a familiar divide.

Speaker 1 On one side, Jon Favreau, Tommy Vitor, and Dan Pfeiffer, three alpha males.

Speaker 1 testosterone, protein, and lead from that protein ripping through their veins.

Speaker 1 And as we can see just by looking at them, despite their brave faces, these are lonely men.

Speaker 1 These are the faces of the male loneliness epidemic.

Speaker 1 Laughing but on the verge of tears.

Speaker 1 On the other side.

Speaker 1 We have Alex Wagner and Jasmine Crockett. Here we have two women being asked to interact with men who are no match for their talents and abilities.

Speaker 1 What is a woman, the right asks? A person who has to do that.

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And so it's time for a game we call gender.

Speaker 6 I hardly know her.

Speaker 1 George Soros has tasked all of us with destroying the gender binary.

Speaker 1 But we're going to put a TV.

Speaker 1 We're going to put a pin in that tonight because it's time for little boys versus girls.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Will there be a lightning round that challenges the very foundations of this game and human society itself? Perhaps. Are you both ready?

Speaker 6 Yes. Yes.

Speaker 10 And already a little mad at me? Yeah.

Speaker 6 Okay.

Speaker 1 Question one. For John, Tommy, and Dan, according to an NBC poll, 20% of adult men under 30 years old say they own or trade crypto.

Speaker 1 What is the share of women under 30 who say they do the same within 10 points?

Speaker 6 What's the percentage for men? It was

Speaker 1 20% of men. You have to guess the percentage for women under 30.

Speaker 1 If you're within 10 points, I'll give it to you. Five!

Speaker 1 That guy has a strong feeling at five.

Speaker 6 I was going to say five, actually.

Speaker 5 Five? Why aren't we saying 10?

Speaker 6 Because then we win either way. No, whatever.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah, that's good. Because I'm assuming someone's what I read.

Speaker 6 You're good.

Speaker 5 10.

Speaker 1 6%. You got it.

Speaker 6 Shouldn't have given us the...

Speaker 6 I know.

Speaker 1 I shouldn't have given you the... I'm trying to be generous.
Mistake won't happen again.

Speaker 1 All right, over to the ladies. According to research released in September, what percentage of American men 18 to 49 have an active sports betting account?

Speaker 1 You also have to guess the percentage within 10 points.

Speaker 15 I think it's high, like 60.

Speaker 15 I'm 2.5.

Speaker 15 60 to 70.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I'm going to say, let's do 60.

Speaker 15 66. 66.

Speaker 6 No.

Speaker 1 It's 48%. You're so close.
Sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Speaker 6 That's pretty high.

Speaker 6 Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. Next question.
Okay, okay. For the Congresswoman and Alex.

Speaker 1 Which tall drink of water, formerly of euphoria and saltburn, is currently starring in Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein?

Speaker 7 Jacob.

Speaker 7 Jacob Delore.

Speaker 7 Delori to Jacob Alorde. You got it.

Speaker 1 It is Jacob Alourty. You both got it.

Speaker 18 Oh, wow. Oh, look at that.

Speaker 1 Okay. Why do you cast a hot guy to look like that?

Speaker 1 I don't know. Why do they have Chris Pratt do Mario's voice? Doesn't make any fucking sense.

Speaker 1 Those used to go to voice actors. Now it goes to the...

Speaker 1 That's not what this game is about.

Speaker 1 All right, now over to the boys.

Speaker 1 Who wrote the novel Frankenstein?

Speaker 6 Mary.

Speaker 9 Mary Shelley?

Speaker 6 Fuck, yeah, they got it.

Speaker 1 Gonna try to stump them.

Speaker 1 All right, question for,

Speaker 1 we'll start with Alex and Jasmine. Corrockett Congresswoman, can I call you Jasmine for any of the game? Okay, I'm sorry.
I'm disrespectful. It just said I wrote the name just for myself.

Speaker 1 According to men surveyed by YouGov, this is the most beloved actor in America today. And I will give you hints.
This person starred in the Shawshank Redemption, Deep Impact, and Seven.

Speaker 7 Isn't that Morgan Freeman?

Speaker 7 Morgan Freeman. Morgan Freeman.

Speaker 6 You got it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Questions for John, Tommy, and Dan.

Speaker 1 According to women surveyed by YouGov, this is the most beloved actor in America. This person starred in Unforgiven, Outbreak, and Robin Hood Prince of Thieves.

Speaker 17 Come on, guys.

Speaker 6 Kevin Costner?

Speaker 6 Wrong.

Speaker 1 It's Morgan Freeman.

Speaker 1 He's beloved by all genders.

Speaker 6 He was in Robinhood Prince of Thieves. Of course he is.

Speaker 1 He helps them get out of there.

Speaker 6 Morgan Freeman. Morgan Freeman for president.
All right.

Speaker 1 According to NBC News polling, both Gen Z men and women who voted for Harris selected having a job or career you find fulfilling as their number one personal indicator of success.

Speaker 1 Gen Z VIT women who voted for Trump put achieving financial independence.

Speaker 1 What was the number one indicator of success to Gen Z men who voted for Trump?

Speaker 7 Having a girlfriend?

Speaker 6 Success.

Speaker 7 What was the Gen Z women in the city?

Speaker 1 So the Gen Z women who voted for Harris, it was, and for the men who voted for Harris, it was about career and financial independence. For the women who voted for Trump.

Speaker 6 Oh,

Speaker 6 no, that's not right.

Speaker 1 It was financial independence.

Speaker 6 Financial independence.

Speaker 1 But for what was for the men, Gen Z who voted for Trump.

Speaker 7 Don't you feel like they all just want to get laid?

Speaker 6 I

Speaker 6 do.

Speaker 15 I do believe that. I don't know that that's the answer.

Speaker 6 Family?

Speaker 15 I'm going to go with that. I mean, a bunch of, you know, who, okay, I'm not going to say that person's.
Yep, we're going with family.

Speaker 1 You got it. It was having children.

Speaker 6 Oh.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Look at that.

Speaker 1 It's actually interesting.

Speaker 6 Got a graphic.

Speaker 1 All right, John, Tommy, Dan. According to a Pew study released in January, 16% of men say they feel lonely most or all of the time.

Speaker 1 What percentage of women said they feel lonely most or all of the time?

Speaker 6 Let's go like eight.

Speaker 6 I just made that up. Eight.

Speaker 1 You got it. It's 15%.

Speaker 1 So the male loneliness and the female loneliness is basically the same. Wow.
So we're all lonely.

Speaker 1 So that's the lesson of the game.

Speaker 6 That is the lesson.

Speaker 11 Transgender insanity.

Speaker 1 And you know what that sound means?

Speaker 1 It's time for the genderless bathroom lightning round.

Speaker 6 Oh, gosh.

Speaker 1 In this, anyone can call out the answer.

Speaker 6 Okay. Okay.

Speaker 1 Anyone can call out the answer if they know it. We have a portrait of a child from 1884.
Who is this child?

Speaker 7 Hillary Clinton.

Speaker 6 Sorry, sorry, sorry. Sorry, sorry.

Speaker 1 1884.

Speaker 1 It is a photo of a child taken in 1884. Every person in this room knows their name.
Every person in this room knows their name by their initials.

Speaker 6 Eleanor Roosevelt.

Speaker 5 It's getting warmer.

Speaker 6 Oh.

Speaker 1 One at a time. President of the United States.

Speaker 6 Wait.

Speaker 17 What?

Speaker 6 Edith Wilson.

Speaker 1 I'm not Edith Wilson, but I see what you're trying for.

Speaker 7 This is a child.

Speaker 6 Everybody,

Speaker 6 FDR,

Speaker 1 Alex, Alex. You got it twice.
That is FDR.

Speaker 6 That's FCR?

Speaker 1 Because it used to be that the kids were dressed genderless, like in dresses, white dresses, until they were like seven.

Speaker 6 Yeah, read a book. Wow.

Speaker 6 That was a good poll.

Speaker 6 That's FDR.

Speaker 1 What a fruitcake.

Speaker 18 All right.

Speaker 1 Next up, I'm going to say each of the members of a band, okay, the first team to name the band wins. Again, we are in the genderless bathroom lightning round.

Speaker 1 Lucy Dakis.

Speaker 1 Julian Baker, shut up.

Speaker 1 Phoebe Bridgers.

Speaker 6 Oh.

Speaker 1 Audience, one, two, three.

Speaker 6 Huh?

Speaker 1 You ever heard Boy Genius?

Speaker 6 Oh, Boy Genius. Boy Genius? I couldn't hear what they said.
It's Boy Genius.

Speaker 1 It's Boy Genius.

Speaker 6 Oh, yeah. All right.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Next up,

Speaker 1 they get a little easier. Name the Netflix show starring Malin Ackerman and known for its terrible wigs and definitely.

Speaker 10 19 wives.

Speaker 6 I got it. There we go.

Speaker 6 Thanks.

Speaker 7 I love that show.

Speaker 6 All right.

Speaker 1 This is, no one's going to get this.

Speaker 1 And I'm sorry, but it's just been on my mind. Can you name the sitcom that had the first significant transgender character?

Speaker 6 Alf.

Speaker 1 It was, it was,

Speaker 1 no, it aired in 1977.

Speaker 7 Mark.

Speaker 1 Why is it not? And the hint would be they were moving on up.

Speaker 6 Taxi? Jeffersons? Yes.

Speaker 1 John Goddard. It was the Jeffersons.

Speaker 7 Good. Right on, Jefferson.

Speaker 1 The Jeffersons have

Speaker 1 an amazing storyline that's shocking. You're like, they did this in 1977.
We should have made more progress.

Speaker 1 All right, this is the final question.

Speaker 1 And why does it fit the category? Doesn't matter. At least 17 real housewives have been at some point in their lives arrested.

Speaker 1 But can you name the real housewives stars who have not just been arrested, but sentenced to prison time?

Speaker 5 Torita Judice.

Speaker 5 Teresa Judice. Yep.

Speaker 6 And I was like, one just went to prison.

Speaker 5 Salt Lake City.

Speaker 7 This is you, Jasmine.

Speaker 15 It's not.

Speaker 7 It's not.

Speaker 6 I don't have the prank for President. No.

Speaker 7 Jenna Lyons go to prison.

Speaker 5 Jen Shaw.

Speaker 1 You got it.

Speaker 10 Did anyone say Karen?

Speaker 5 There's one more.

Speaker 1 It's Karen Huger.

Speaker 6 Who? Karen Huger.

Speaker 7 He doesn't get it. He doesn't get the point.

Speaker 1 He doesn't get the point. He doesn't get the point.
He doesn't get the point. It's like another one.
And I learned, hold on, we're telling the results.

Speaker 1 No, Luanne was arrested and she went to jail,

Speaker 1 but she didn't serve prison time.

Speaker 15 She was convicted and did did prison time. I don't know.

Speaker 1 Luanne just didn't, right?

Speaker 1 Whatever.

Speaker 1 The women have won the game.

Speaker 8 And that has been

Speaker 1 gender. I hardly know her.

Speaker 23 That's our show for tonight. Thank you to Jasmine Crockett.
Thank you to Alex Wagner. Thank you to Barack Obama.

Speaker 6 Thanks to all of you.

Speaker 23 We'll see you at CricketCon tomorrow.

Speaker 6 you want to listen to Pod Save America ad-free and get access to exclusive podcasts, go to cricket.com slash friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube, or Apple Podcasts.

Speaker 6 Also, please consider leaving us a review. That helps boost this episode and everything we do here at Crooked.
Pod Save America is a crooked media production.

Speaker 6 Our producers are David Toledo, Emma Illick-Frank, and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farah Safari.
Austin Fisher is our senior producer. Reed Sherlin is our executive editor.

Speaker 6 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 6 Matt DeGroote is our head of production. Naomi Sengel is our executive assistant.

Speaker 6 Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Ben Hefcote, Mia Kelman, Carol Pelavieve, David Toles, and Ryan Young.

Speaker 6 Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

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