Hour 2: OH, SCREW YOU GUYS! (feat. Senator Cory Booker and Jessica Smetana)

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This is the Dan Levatar Show with the Stu Gats Podcast.

Senator Corey Booker is going to join us here later in the show.

Brooker.

Brooker, as Chris Cody called him yesterday, but we let you slide on it.

We didn't dine on you for an error of speech.

Dan, Dan, may I give you a recommendation?

This guy can talk.

Missing clips.

Give him a runway.

Okay, so we've got to make, let's do this correctly because

he did speak for 25 straight hours filibustering on the floor, and I don't want him to just take over our show and mop us all over the place because we can't shut him up.

But his New York sports stink, and I want to make fun of him for that because it's a misery right now.

The Yankees and Aaron Judge are saving grace on a miserable New York weekend.

If you think New York is bad now, wait till this mayoral race.

And when the military take over New York, too.

Well, that's in their hands.

Okay, thank you for nothing.

Jessica's going to join us in a second, but before we do that, let's do the useless sound montage.

I've just been given it, it's freshly baked.

Billy just ran it in off the presses.

Billy, did you handle the editing on this?

Yes.

All right, how are we doing?

Sorry, it took so long, guys.

I blame Eddie.

I am 100% showing up.

We thought that we, you know, were prepared for this, and clearly we weren't.

Definitely a lot of things happened.

When you talk about game of inches, it's a game of inches.

We can feel it.

We know what it looks like.

We know what it feels like.

And so now we gotta keep getting better.

This is what an NFL season is about.

You gotta keep getting better, and more opportunities will come ahead of us.

Look at the stats, the numbers don't lie.

Listen, I'm not throwing any one of these guys out.

The only thing that we can do is go back to work.

Yeah, I think we lost the game today.

Our sense of urgency and our connectedness is always there.

It It obviously needs to increase because time's ticking.

We believe we're going to be much better than this.

We are a much better team than letting a 17-0

lead eviscerate.

We got to figure this out.

And we got to figure this out now.

You know, like this feeling sucks.

It's not a good feeling.

We're doing everything we can do to, you know, find solutions, not assign blame.

Honestly, like, kind of zoned out.

I was just trying to drink Gatorade.

There's blood in the water, man.

Our guys are starting to feel it, man.

They want to be the next guy who gets the punch out or the strip or the interception.

And we're hunting it with the balls in the air.

We're going after it.

Our goal this entire week, and it's cliche and coach speak and all that, but it's how you have to work when you're in these situations: you're just trying to go one and no.

We were saving that blitz for a rainy day, and we brought it out.

Just guys executing, doing all the little things right.

Hard to win when you turn the ball over five times and it was five consecutive drives.

It was nice to look around and see everybody dancing and turning up.

We got to capitalize.

And when we don't, it's the NFL.

We feel like there's diminishing returns every week, man.

It's just a little never about one play, never about one phase.

All of us collectively have to do a better job.

I think we're already a tight group, but we got to get tighter as a group.

And guys have got to lock in.

I just thought it was a dogfight, and we were in the ring, and can't point anywhere but directly at preparation and how we execute stuff.

Not a winning formula right there.

We needed that last drive because the defense was tired, because we were really

to start the second half on offense, and that's my fault.

All the 49ers back here in the stadium and on a road game here in Los Angeles.

Yeah.

Yeah, they are here.

You can outstat them to death, but it doesn't matter.

It's a score that matters.

You never know which play is going to make a difference in the game through all four quarters.

Oh, much, you know, feels good, man.

Feels good to get that first win.

When Kyle talked to me before the game, I was like, it's time to go.

So the mentality has to be, man, more TV time for us on defense.

But we don't necessarily want to do that.

We'd like to have 90-yard touchdowns.

But until we do a better job, we're going to keep losing.

See how we can do next week.

We'll start all over again.

Once again, the best thing we did, we played complimentary football.

In the end, it was complimentary football to won us again.

Just not enough complimentary football.

He's just one of them guys.

He has the entire makeup and the entire pack.

You've got to watch the film, and the film will tell the truth.

These guys love playing football together.

They believe in one another.

We expect to play well.

We don't always.

Kyle came up to me and he was pissed about it.

He was pissed about it.

I was like, Yeah, I'm pissed too.

He's like, dude, I can't believe they moved us to underdogs again or whatever more.

And I'm like, I don't know what that means, really, but like, yeah, let's go kill him.

You know, I get my days messed up because we had a short week, but like, whatever our Wednesday was.

What a magical batch of useless Billy Mac Jones.

I mean, Mac Jones is a new star with his giggle, his laugh.

Mike, why did you whisper to me that you're a big fan of complimentary football?

I love complimentary football so much.

It makes sense.

You got, well, forget all three phases.

I love all three phases, too.

But complimentary football is like, I know it's a cliche, but you have an offense that complements the defense.

You keep the defense fresh.

That's how you get Ruben Bain playing 77 snaps.

I mean, complimentary football is the best.

I want to talk to Jessica about Miami.

I do want to talk about Mike McDaniel saying eviscerates a 17-0 lead.

That must bother Greg Cody as someone who just values words, right?

Your coach has to get the words right in the press conference.

I think so, yeah.

Eviscerate to me sounds like you're disemboweling something.

But evaporate is what he meant, right?

I think so.

Did it bother you or no?

Like, he can't make a mistake like that.

He can't make these little mistakes anymore, right?

We're not finding him cute anymore.

Well, he's not cute, and he's stammering.

He's stumbling.

His presentation has not been good.

I don't know what's going on, but I think he's really feeling the weight right now.

All right.

Let's get to Jess here.

Mike, did you, before we get started here, did you, you had very strong Arch Manning opinions before the show.

Yeah, actually, I want to run this by Jess.

So, Jess, I'm buying all the Arch Manning stock.

I heard a stat that against Florida and Ohio State, he's been pressured on about 38 of 75 drop backs.

And I know that he missed some throws primarily because of the pressure that Florida's amazing defensive line applied, but he also made incredible throws.

He evaded pressure in ways that certainly do not match that surname.

And I think we've come out on the other side here that maybe he's a little underrated at the moment.

And because of all the fanfare and hoopla that he got with the Heisman hype at the start of the season, people are incorrectly placing the blame on his shoulders.

It's that offensive line.

It's the fact that they don't,

they're the Texas Longhorns with unlimited resources and they're not top 50 in the nation in rushing.

This goes well beyond Arch Manning.

He's probably the least of their issues.

Well, I do think if he were really great, he would probably look better than he's looked.

But yes, I agree with your point.

He's not the only problem with Texas's offense.

I think the things you pointed out are definitely true, Mike.

But the problem is that they they haven't, like, he hasn't even looked amazing against like the bad defenses they've played.

This was the test, right?

The Florida defense was ranked, I think, top 25 before the season started

in like defensive FEI.

And so after the Ohio State game, I was like, okay, well, let's see how he does in these next three games because they're playing some truly like bottom tier defenses.

And like the offense still wasn't good.

And he still wasn't amazing.

He wasn't showing this kind of thing you would expect from someone who is as old as he is now.

I think like one thing Mike that no one's really wants to admit is that he's not a freshman.

He's not even a redshirt freshman.

Like he's he played a couple games last year.

He's been around the program long enough that like you kind of do expect better.

And I agree like the expectations were absurd and that comes with the territory of the last name.

But he's still like even if you take the expectations away just being a quarterback at Texas, it's not good enough.

Like he's not playing well enough right now.

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Don Lebatard.

Mr.

Mr.

Shirt, if I may say for a second, Miami, they were simulating the snap count the entire game and they were clapping at the line of scrimmage.

And the only thing I want to see clapping are them cheeks on Mrs.

Mett in my face, Mike Shirt.

All right, so that's one thing.

Stew gots.

They're a bunch of cheaters, Dan.

And you know who should be cheating?

Mrs.

Mett on Mr.

Mett.

And he can watch if he wants.

This is the Don Lebatar Show with the Stugats.

Greg, you had some Belichick opinions.

The Hulu series got canceled.

I guess this isn't surprising, right?

Both documentary projects that Belichick was going to do have collapsed for different reasons.

I think one can assume reasonably that the team is so bad that they wouldn't want any of this publicized.

Get inside this, it would require disinfectant.

That's how everyone's receiving this, I would imagine.

Yeah, yeah, I think so.

But Belichick involves himself so much in pettiness, and I don't want to blame his girlfriend, her influence, but the latest example is.

No, no.

The latest example is: Belichick did not want UNC to air a video in praise of alum Drake May because he's doing so well with the Patriots.

Belichick did not want that.

And that just strikes me.

He's got so much on his plate right now, including a really bad team.

Why are you involving yourself in ancillary stuff like that because you still have a feud with Robert Kraft?

It seems ridiculous.

Well, it's not even the only time that his Patriots feud has appeared this season, Greg.

He confirmed earlier this year that Patriots scouts weren't allowed at North Carolina because he's not allowed in Foxborough.

So the pettiness, I mean, it runs very deep.

And Dan, the thing about the Hulu docuseries, from

what I'm guessing is that the Hard Knocks series was scrapped because Hulu, this production company, came in and was like, we'll give you more money or whatever it was.

So there must have been some sort of like bidding war.

I'm purely speculating.

Well, hold on a second.

Let me wait.

Hold on, hold on.

It's not important enough.

Time to throw away all journalistic credibility and get reckless.

Here is something we like to call reckless speculation.

You're good.

Who's kicking dogs?

What does that mean?

Jonathan Gannon in the previous season.

Yeah, I recklessly speculated.

Big dog kicker energy.

Oh, that's terrible.

I don't know.

I'm assuming, Dan, that the HBO thing didn't get scrapped for reasons other than like a lot of companies probably wanted to film this historic UNC season.

The problem is it's historic for all the wrong reasons.

That article that came out in WRAL

on Tuesday, I believe, was very insightful, very interesting.

There was a lot of takeaways from that.

Belichick apparently having preferential treatment towards players that he brought into the team, poor communication, dysfunctional environment,

a lot of criticism of the staff that they put together and the lack of experience.

And also, you know, the fact that there's several sons of Lombardy and Belichick on the staff.

work hard um the banning of the patriot scouts uh they also said that like michael lombardi this is from the article that he was no one likes him and that he's rude and nasty which was pretty strong words i thought um that the travel roster is not allowed to dress for home games which kind of bucks tradition and then there was more fallout after the fact uh the uh cornerbacks coach Armand Hawkins was suspended because of something that came up in the report involving like sideline passes for family members of teammates.

So, I mean, just a huge disaster.

And honestly, before the season, I thought

this could go two ways.

This could be like a competent football team with a relatively easy ACC schedule surprises people, or it could be a disaster.

It has been

such a disaster.

Like worse than anyone.

Holy cow.

Worse than anyone could have imagined, right?

You're reading.

Why is that story not getting more attention?

Obviously, the details here are fairly vigorously reported and we're getting a look inside.

They were going to do a docuseries on what they thought was going to be a success.

Instead, now they refuse to televise the public shaming of a legend unlike any we've ever seen in football

before.

So they're not going to get to rewrite the story, are they?

Like, they've befouled this program, and they thought with their champion patriot arrogance that him and Lombardi would know better than these other people.

And no, they don't.

Here's another quote, Dan, that came from Bruce Feldman and Ralph Russo in the athletic.

This is from a story that came out before the Clemson game this past weekend, I believe.

It says, quote, what I think they miscalculated is the way they were taking players in the portal and paying dudes, said one group of five head coach granted anonymity to discuss his encounters with the Tar Heels in the offseason player acquisition cycle.

Quote, it made me wonder, did they actually understand the landscape they were in?

Did they understand that they're in the ACC, not like Conference USA or the Sun Belt?

Like, we got beat by North Carolina on a bunch of kids.

I was like, why the F is North Carolina beating us on kids?

When I keep running up against the same P4s over and over again in recruiting, I'm like, all right, they're going to suck.

That's a crazy quote from the athletic.

That story's crazy, but I guess the insides, I mean, people aren't going to be, their season's over.

Is the experiment over?

Like, are we going to...

Yeah.

I mean, the experiment was over when Charlie Weiss got fired from Notre Dame.

Like,

that was when we realized, okay, like NFL coach comes in, thinks he can, like, recruit, which Charlie Weiss, to his credit, actually, very good recruiter, but wasn't a good college, couldn't run a college football program, clearly.

Got paid a jillion dollars on his buyout and left.

And then we did it again with the same, the same NFL franchise, the Patriots.

We just did it with a different Patriots coach.

Check out her weekly Notre Dame podcast, The Echoes with Mike Bolick Jr.

Unfortunately, the Fighting Irish are going to be good again, and they're going to.

We'll see.

I did make a grave error this weekend in my off-roading trip with Lucy.

You guys all know what Lucy's favorite movie is, right?

Yeah, totally.

But for those that don't know,

I don't remember.

I don't remember this.

We should know this.

We should know this.

Which one was Lucy?

We should know this.

She talks about it all the time.

Her favorite movie.

She's almost famous, right?

I don't remember.

Oh, my God.

Okay, it's Shrek.

It's Shrek.

And what I failed to mention to Lucy while we were at Notre Dame is that a bunch of Notre Dame people worked on the film Shrek, and there's a bunch of Notre Dame Easter eggs in Shrek.

And she would have really really enjoyed that I think and I forgot to tell her that and I didn't think about it until this morning somehow and I just feel like the world's biggest asshole for not remembering that Shrek Notre Dame connection with Lucy.

You had fun.

It seemed like you were really, it seemed like you were enjoying, Lucy hadn't been before, right?

So she wouldn't actually understand how ridiculous the majesty of that place is when you've bought in on all of the Catholicism.

Yes, whatever that means, she definitely wouldn't understand that.

No, we had a great time, Dan.

My only complaint, it was like the hottest October football game in South Bend on record, which kind of alarming.

It was really, really, really hot.

But we, yeah, we had a good time.

I don't know.

I think Notre Dame's defense is playing a lot better, but I do think NC State's got a fun offense.

They play them on Saturday, kind of an awkward look-ahead spot, and then they play USC the following weekend.

USC, obviously, statistically, the best offense currently in college football and EPA per play.

So, big test for the defense coming up for the Irish.

I don't even know my own favorite movie.

Yeah,

I'm trying to think.

I guess you do.

I'm trying to think if I know anybody's favorite movie.

Is this supposed to cover for the fact that you don't know Lucy?

I'm embarrassed.

I don't know.

No one knows Lucy.

But I don't know anybody.

He just quizzed us on friendship and we all failed.

Yeah, but I really thought it was almost Lucy.

What's dad's favorite?

Because I've never heard her mention Shrek.

Oh my God, you've never heard her mention Shrek.

No, you haven't clearly ever

spoken to Lucy?

What an odd favorite movie?

Shrek.

Greg.

Odd favorite movie.

What's yours?

Who's your tune?

Who's your October Heisman?

I got three people on the watch list currently, Mike.

Number one, Ahmad Hardy, Missouri running back.

Great back.

He leads college football in rushing right now.

And he's playing against another nominee, Ty Simpson, who had a great game against Vanderbilt through an interception, but he had 340 yards on 74% completion for two touchdowns.

So they're playing against each other this weekend.

That's going to be a big SEC road game for Alabama going to Missouri.

Gonna have to deal with that run game, but also I think if Alabama can get out to an early lead, it's,

I think that's the recipe right there.

Like, I think it's going to be hard for Missouri to come back in that case.

And then Bear Bachmeier, the BYU quarterback, has also had a sneaky good fall so far and also had a great game Friday night against West Virginia, 350 yards, 72% completions, one touchdown, one interception.

BYU is like currently in first place in the Big 12.

They've only played two conference games so far.

Texas Tech also undefeated right now.

Lead the nation in stop rate on defense, which is huge.

There's a lot of crazy

stuff going on.

Yeah, Chris, I live in New York.

You're going to hear sirens.

I don't know what to tell you.

You can't say something every time.

Tanks rolling through town.

We record.

But anyways, I want to talk about two Big Ten games this weekend, Mike.

Indiana at Oregon.

Oh, put the kids in bed.

Huge, huge game.

I think it's an early kickoff, isn't it?

At 3:30?

Well, they should be in bed at 3:30.

It might be at 7:30.

And then Michigan at USC, which is the kind of perfect test for Lincoln Rock.

People wrote off USC after the Illinois loss.

I get it.

It was a really ugly, really ugly loss for USC.

But I do think if they can exercise some demons, if they're able to beat Michigan this weekend, because this is typically a game that they struggle with, and Michigan's got a good run game.

But it's a real game for Michigan.

And, of course,

long travel, we saw how that worked out for Penn State last weekend.

So I'm going to keep my eye on those two for sure.

What's your favorite movie, Greg?

I don't know.

I've been friends with you for years.

i don't know what your favorite movie everybody knows that is it absence of malice no the wizard of oz baby oh come on everyone knows what

everyone knows that yeah like the original yeah of course the original that's your favorite movie hell yes you ever watched it yeah oh my that was an historic movie that went from black and white to color in the middle of the movie technicolor revealed itself alive back in my day give him his back in my day music we're gonna get alive back in my day day.

Seriously.

I mean, what's

the Wizard of Oz?

Sure.

Do you guys know my favorite movie?

Judy Garland.

I mean, Rudy, Shrek, right?

You just told us.

God, you guys are so, like, you're just bad co-workers.

Like you're bad ones.

What's my favorite movie?

What's my favorite movie, Jess?

What, that stupid point break one?

No.

No, that's top three, but it's not number one.

No, that's top ten, but that's not a number one.

Okay, well, I named two of your top ten.

That's better than you could do for me.

I said Rudy.

That's got to be in your top ten.

Dark Knight Rises?

What is yours, Jess?

What is your favorite movie?

movie the lord of the rings the two towers and also caddyshack and ladybird i would have taken any of those can't have a tie can't have a tie it's not a tie i'm saying i would have given you some grace anyways dan already left so this segment's over bye guys

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Don Lebatard.

Did we someone say conservative entity?

Whoa!

No!

Oh, see, this is what

Stugats.

Wait, hers is better than mine.

The fifth Zagaki.

How is the fifth Sagaki better than the third and the fourth Sagaki already?

This is the Don Lebatar Show with the Stugats.

He's the former mayor of Newark from 2006 to 2013.

He's now the senior senator from New Jersey, Corey Booker, with us.

He's coming from a vote.

There was a vote, and he's rushing in from a vote.

And his sports teams stink, all of them, up and down.

And the Yankees, the Yankees saved you from terrible shame today, right?

Like you weren't even, you weren't going to come out in public given what your sports teams did this weekend.

I, you know, I grew up in the golden era to be a Jersey boy, Northern Jersey boy with the Yankees.

These were the days of Thurman Munson, Chris Chambliss, with Reggie Jackson, Greg Nettles, and then the Giants.

I don't know why you didn't announce this in my bio, but you're talking to the 1986 Giants Football High School Football Player of the Year.

So the Giants

beat the Denver Broncos.

So I grew up in the heyday of New York sports, and now I'm in a constant state of depression.

And to make matters worse, my Stanford Cardinal,

Stanford football team, now in the ACC, which is ridiculous, they too are getting their

having a difficult rebuilding year, let's say.

Oh, say it stronger than that.

These are not polite times.

Like you said, come on, man.

Come on.

In 1990, you were at the center of upsetting number one Notre Dame.

You were the tight end on that.

You were the tight end on that team.

You had four catches for 40-something yards.

First of all, don't you, how could you slander me like that?

The older I get, the better I was.

Every five years, I add a catch.

So you got to put a, you got to stack a few more on there, man.

Come on, I'm an old man now.

Let me have some glory, baby.

Well, so answer me this, actually, in physical terms.

Which hurts the body more, those four catches in that game or 25-hour filibuster where you feel like you're fighting on behalf of democracy and you're just stalling.

Dear God, the average middle-aged man gets up like five times in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom.

I didn't go to the bathroom for 25 hours.

That was so much harder than anything I did on the Sanford football field.

So yeah, it was much more of a test for me out of shape in my middle-aged years.

Billy, why are you making faces you don't believe the senator?

I mean, Corey, if you're getting up five times a night, I feel like you got to see a doctor.

That's

okay.

A little exaggeration, but the truth of the matter is

my aura rang said I walked 2,000 steps, just sort of swaying back and forth.

My body was pretty sore.

But everybody on this show, and frankly, your listeners know that I may have stood 25 hours on the Senate floor, but a lot of Americans are out there

standing for three shifts in a row.

There are firefighters dropped into blazes that stand for 18, 20 hours facing the infernos of hell.

America stands up and for the fight that I was standing up for that.

Billy, why did you say here we go?

Why do you happy with yourself?

Way to speak truth to power.

Well, I mean, that's how we're going to hold the politicians accountable.

You don't go to the bathroom for a while.

If we're going to be honest here, you guys are tiptoeing around the senator here.

You guys may be afraid to ask him the hard-hitting questions.

I mean, he has been in power in one of the more, obviously, infamous epidemics in our time.

And I'm kind of wondering, what are you going to do about the turf at Met Life?

Yeah.

Again, I'm going to sound like the old man that used to play.

You know what the turf was like when I was playing?

I still remember going up to Oregon State to play them, and it was like they just painted the concrete concrete green.

And forget when I was hit, when I hit the,

when I was tackled, the hit didn't hurt.

Hitting the ground hurt.

I mean, your joints were aching afterwards.

So I understand this modern turf, when I get out on it, it is

far different than what we were playing back in the days that I wanted to

take the inventor of Astro Turf and slam him on his Astro turf.

But the reality is

our turf seems very unlucky at midnight uh

sorry i'm sorry uh but now we got you know we got saquan coming back to the turf that took him down and i'm hoping that uh thursday night you know we got two shots at the eagles and uh i believe in miracles i'm a prisoner of hope okay well then help us during these times because we've softened you up sufficiently sufficiently with the silly question who's the leader of the democratic party uh there is no singular leader of the democratic party and frankly, as I said during that 25 hours, I think the Democratic Party has to take a lot of responsibility right now for paving the road to the distorted present we're in right now.

Democratic Party has failed, not just in elections, but in communicating to voters.

My grandfather, who was a UAW worker, worked on assembly lines during World War II, was born a Republican, as most blacks were at that time.

But he switched over to the Democratic Party because he knew that they were fighting for people, from farmers to union workers, for people's health care

to their labor rights.

He knew that the Democratic Party may not always agree with him.

They were fighting for them.

And right now, Americans don't believe either party is fighting for them.

To be honest with you, we had two presidential candidates in the last election that most Americans voted against.

Donald Trump got 49.7%.

Kamala Harris got 49.3%.

The Democratic Party needs a reboot.

and it needs to put forward a vision, not about what they're against, but we need to start talking about what we're for.

We're for workers.

We're for families that are struggling to raise their kids right now.

And we're for, frankly, an American dream that is under

its worst assault, where 60% of Americans just don't believe that they can make it through an economic emergency, hitting $500 to their budget.

We need a Democratic Party that can redeem the dream for America and be about Americans.

And this place that I'm in right now, from politicians who trade stocks, which is so corrupt in my opinion, to the corporate money that flows down here.

That's why I'm one of the few politicians, few senators that doesn't take corporate PACs.

There's a lot of things here that are eroding Americans' trust, and both parties

are losing it and need to earn it again.

Most embarrassing New York team this weekend.

This past weekend?

Yes.

You're getting

coming up.

I'm telling you right now.

The Yankees allowed 23 runs.

20 unanswered in a series.

And your Jets exist.

Yeah.

I respect the Jets, but I'm not a Jet fan.

And what happened with

the Giants game was

the turnovers, everything was just painful.

Ask him the tough follow-up.

What on earth have the Jets done to earn you?

Why do you respect the Jets?

Why would you respect them?

Come on.

Come on, Joe.

You're not the mayor of Newark anymore.

It's fine.

Say exactly what it is.

Jets suck.

The players are sucking.

You know why I respect the Jets?

Because I live in an area with a lot of Jet fans who are not fair weather fans.

That's the pylon.

they are jets jets jets jets i hear them freaking break listen there's no hope and change in the jets jets jets jets i'll say that right now you cannot respect the jets you're lying to our faces senator listen you can't be trusted oh screw you guys i live in new jersey both of those teams the jets and the giants are jersey teams they're my mishbucha they're my family i i stand with my people and you could you could diss them all you want look i was the mayor of newark new jersey the most disrespected city people also talked down to us we had a chip on our shoulder.

We had something to prove.

Same way with Jersey.

I mean, the freaking New Yorkers take all of our shine.

They're trying to, I'll give you an example.

The great song that they sang, New York, New York, that was the chairman of the board, Old Blue Eyes.

He's a Jersey boy.

He was born in Hobo.

Newark, Newark before.

It was, you know, Newark.

If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.

And I'm going to tell you right now, Jersey is the place.

Our patron saints like Bon Jovi and Bruce,

America loves them.

You don't respect them, Senator.

You're out here disrespecting me.

My face.

You're lying to my face as an American power broker telling me you respect the Jets.

You cannot.

They're 0-5.

13 missed tackles in the first half.

And the team that lost the Dolphins down here, that's one of the worst football games I've ever seen played by something that's allegedly professional.

You're a con artist.

So when your friend, when your friend

has a crappy time, makes mistakes, screws up, you give up on your, you lose respect.

The last three coaches are 0-3.

It's not my friend it and the friends aren't the problem it's the team senator you're lying to us i'm sorry brother they bring literally millions of dollars of economic activity to the state of new jersey i i am not going to disrespect the teams that play in my state that fight for my state from the devils uh to the giants we are we are that region's the the greater newark metropolitan area we are that region's powerhouse i respect my teams and you know what i don't respect is the nets oh the nets

The Nets need to come back to Jersey.

They snuck in.

While I was mayor, they snuck in and stole my team and took it into obscurity over in New York.

They need to come back to Jersey and be Jersey's team.

They'll do a lot better.

They'll perform a lot better being home.

I'm told you have a top five list for us.

This delights me.

Thank you for honoring us by putting together a list during these busy, difficult times.

Well,

I want to throw a couple curveballs your way.

So my top five is the top five successful

quarterbacks from stanford university and and the first one hold on hold on hold on but i you got to play it right we've got andrew luck

yes we've got andrew luck here with us but the top five has to go from fifth to number one so that we get the big payoff at the end

i'm i'm going to fifth to number one so number five quarterbacks from stanford is a guy that played for tampa bay his name is john lynch

he came to Stanford as a quarterback.

I caught passes from him before he was switched to defensive back to be the superstar he is.

And then the next, number one draft pick way back in the 1950s, when you just were a sparkle in your mama's eye, was a guy named John Brody, extraordinary professional.

Oh, yeah, 49ers.

Number three, Heisman Trophy, Lombardi Trophy a winner.

This is one of the greatest of all time greats, Jim Plunkett.

Number, number the next these are two.

These are the two big ones right here.

Yeah, the big two, the big two, the number two is a person that you might have thought was number one, but number two is John Elwood.

Oh my God, blasphemous senator.

This blasphemous senator is going to say that you, Andrew Luck, are the greatest Stanford quarterback he's ever seen.

I'm going to tell you why.

I'm going to make my case here.

I said most successful.

Not in the NFL.

He was one of the top easily, unequivocally, unassailably.

Andrew Luck was one of the top quarterbacks of all time in his playing days.

But what Andrew Luck has just done is he brought luck back to Stanford.

He's still.

He is the guy.

He is the guy that comes back home.

He could have done a lot of things, but he came back home to serve the greatest university on the planet.

And with him, Stanford's going to get luck again.

And we got winning days ahead of us.

Beautiful list, Senator.

And by the way, congratulations on your betrothal.

I'm so happy.

beautiful, beautiful couple.

You are my favorite Stanford tight end.

Probably favorite tight end ever outside of Jack Doyle.

Thank you.

Well, there were two tight ends that got engaged in that summer season.

The other guy, you probably didn't heard about it, Travis,

but another tight end who, in his own mind, has similar tight end glory.

So I appreciate that.

Beautiful ring, family heirloom.

You know what's, this is probably too much information.

My fiancé is going to kill me.

The ring I got her was a sort of a place saver because I don't know anything about jewelry.

So I said, let me get you a beautiful ring that I like as a placeholder.

We are right now shopping for the actual permanent engagement ring.

I notice in your reflection, you have quite the library, including one of those ladders that Bell had in Beauty and the Beast.

Have you ever just tried to do the bell move and just go from one end to another with your arms extended?

I could never neither confirm or deny that.

Can you do that for us?

Everyone does that when they have the bell ladder from Beauty and the Beast.

I am telling you,

it's one of my favorite features in this office: my ladder.

So, yes, I have done things on that ladder that I do not want to make public.

Hell yeah.

Look at that.

Can you give us more seriously your thoughts on the alarms of the day when I say that Trump yesterday is commenting that he's essentially backing a White House memo that some furloughed federal employees aren't entitled to back pay?

Like,

where does that rank on the alarms of the day?

And what vote are you coming back from right now?

So, two things one is uh that's illegal he signed a bill that basically uh uh guaranteed made it the law that people government workers is the government worker protection act i think is the name of it is a government government workers uh

um uh my staff is just yelling at me it's the government workers fair treatment act they're saying uh but the reality is it's the law you have to give back pay so Donald Trump, I've never seen a guy that literally is telling us he wants to inflict maximum pain in this shutdown, not on Democrats, on American people.

He is coming after departments.

He's going to try to make as much pain happen to others in hopes that he can make us capitulate.

But the pain that we're fighting to prevent is a twin tsunami of the healthcare crisis he's bringing about because one, by giving millionaires billions of dollars worth of tax cuts, he gutted Medicaid.

So millions are going to lose health care there.

And then two, as he said in Project 2025, he wants to gut the Affordable Care Act.

So he's taking away the premium assistance and that's going to send another 10 to 20 million people off their health care.

And overall, Americans in general are going to see their premiums skyrocket at a time that they're seeing their grocery prices, the energy prices.

So that tsunami is coming.

It starts in 2006 in a couple months.

And Democrats are just saying, do not hurt people like this because it's not going to just hurt the people who are losing their health care.

It's not just going to hurt the millions of Americans who are going to have their premiums go up.

About 20 million Americans see them more than double.

It's going to hurt all of us because our healthcare institutions, our hospitals and our clinics are gonna see closures, gonna see longer wait times, more crowded emergency rooms.

This is the worst tsunami coming towards Americans' healthcare ever.

There's never been a point in American history where if we don't do something, this many millions of Americans will lose their health care.

So I'm sorry.

This is where I get really angry because I just talked to a New Jerseyan yesterday.

She's a mom who had a great job making six figures, but she had an autistic child that needed really expensive expensive care.

So she left her job, doing some consulting, making about $30,000 a year to take care of her special needs child.

And she told me there's just no way when these premiums skyrocket that she could afford health insurance and still pay rent.

Well, repeat that story tens of thousands of more times up and down my state.

I'm hearing them.

And so this is a fight for New Jersey.

And here's the crazy thing.

Donald Trump controls the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives, who right now are on vacation.

The Speaker of the House hasn't even brought them back to sit at the table to negotiate.

He said himself years ago that it is the president's responsibility to bring parties together to get a budget passed.

But he doesn't want to negotiate.

He doesn't want to do something in a bipartisan way that addresses people's pain.

He right now is just doing nothing but threatening Americans, threatening to cause pain, threatening not to pay government workers who are in our military or or who are work in our veterans agencies.

This is ridiculous.

If there's anything that our leaders should do, screw the politics.

Just try to help people deal with the pain that they're experiencing in their lives.

That's illegal is a response that we often hear from Democrats, and yet the president keeps pushing on.

In fact, very recently, he just called for the arrest of the governor of Illinois and Chicago's mayor.

And

it's a scary time.

Most Americans would acknowledge, if you look at polling, that there is an abuse of power going on here.

What guarantees can you give to the American people that the American Republic will stand, that you can push back on some of these illegalities as people from the White House are talking about plenary power?

Yeah, so this isn't the first time in our history that demagogues and want to be dictators have risen up.

I mean, dear God, go back to the McCarthy era, go back to

George Wallace from that high office of the governor's mansion saying he was going to not obey the law.

We are a nation that has seen dark moments and dangerous demagogues rise up.

And the thing that has pulled them back every single time is Americans saying enough is enough.

I'm not going to allow this to happen.

It is a violation of our decency, of our value, of our shared ideals.

I'm sorry, what is going on in our country is outrageous and should outrage everyone, making law firms and businesses and TV networks heel to the president's will.

making Americans who enjoy due process rights have them stripped away, treating families, American children with one undocumented parent, having that parent dragged out of a school or a courthouse who's done nothing wrong but be here in an undocumented manner.

And yeah, the polls are going down.

Donald Trump is underwater on his immigration enforcement, underwater on his handling of the economy because he is craven, cruel, and corrupt.

But that is not, this is not about him.

When things like this are happening, it's a test of us.

How much will we tolerate?

How much will we endure?

The very idea of patriotism is not just love of country.

You can't love your country unless you love your fellow countrymen and women.

And love means sacrifice.

And so, yeah, you may not be losing your health insurance, but your neighbor is.

You may not be seeing your parent be dragged away and your American child being put in zip ties like they were doing in Chicago, but that's your neighbor.

Every one of our faiths says love your neighbor.

Well, how deep is your love?

How strong is your love?

What are you willing to do?

This is a time to stand up and say enough is enough.

And in his first term, where he wasn't doing things this extreme, but he was still trying to gut the health care of tens of millions of Americans, Washington, D.C.

was full of folk who understood it's not just congresspeople and senators that have to stand up.

I do too.

Little kids in wheelchairs

with disabilities were rolling up to senators in nonviolent ways, making them look them in the eye and say, why are you doing this to Americans?

And thank God John McCain.

and other Republicans like Susan Murkowski, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski didn't let Donald Trump take away health care from 20 plus million Americans.

Well,

this crop of Republicans did.

They let him attack Medicaid like that.

But now, what's the response of us?

This is an American test.

Will you stand up for your neighbor?

Will you stand up for our shared values?

Will you stand up as he's arresting his enemies and weaponizing the Justice Department, violating our values?

Will you stand?

Well, I...

will stand up and I'm hoping more and more people will stand with me and fight.

You don't respect the Jets.

I don't believe you.

Thank you.

We appreciate your time.

Thank you for the work that you do, sir.

I appreciate you all.

Thank you.

Hey, can I just say this?

I told you that my parents come from the civil rights tradition.

Well, sports was the one area that brought this country together.

And even folks, and I've talked to Bill Bradley about this.

It forces you.

In my Stanford locker room, I had black folks, white folks.

I had Republicans and Democrats.

But when you sweat together and bleed together, you realize that the lines that divide us are nowhere near as strong as the ties that bind us.

We are one team in this country.

And the division and the divide, I used to know when we were going to score a touchdown when I was in the offensive huddle.

It was when I heard the defensive huddle attacking each other, putting players down, jumping on each other.

When they started fighting amongst themselves, I knew we would score.

We need folks that are going to remind us that we're one team.

Sports is a venue that everybody listens.

More people listen to a podcast like this than a political podcast.

And I appreciate you guys.

That's a great platform where we can talk about uh our country and you reminding us that even though some of us respect the jets we're still one country one you don't respect the jets you know you're lying to my people thank you i appreciate your time senator all right thanks everybody

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