Latest / Pod Save America / Trump Plans to Shove What Where?

Transcript

Trump Plans to Shove What Where? · Pod Save America

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  Speaker 3: Why?
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  Speaker 2: What's so different about the United States?
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  Speaker 1: Acclaimed author Malcolm Gladwell, who recently appeared on Pod Save America,
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  Speaker 1: examined that question in his new book, The American Way
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  Speaker 1: of Killing. The Invention of an Epidemic. He speaks to
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  Speaker 1: doctors who work miracles on gunshot victims. He travels to
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  Speaker 1: a shooting range and he dives into the Constitution's Second
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  Speaker 1: Amendment with a linguist, all in an attempt to understand
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  Speaker 1: where this problem came from. It's not just a book
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  Speaker 1: about guns. It's about why a country has never quite
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  Speaker 1: understood its own problem and why you can't fix what
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  Speaker 1: you refuse to see clearly. Get The American Way of
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  Speaker 1: Killing at pushkin.fm or wherever audiobooks are sold.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 2:17
  Speaker 4: I'm Jon Lovett.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's show, we'll talk about the
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: slew of new polls.
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  Speaker 5: Showing Democrats making big gains in red states in both
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  Speaker 5: the Senate and governor's races. and why Democrats are expanding
• 2:27
  Speaker 5: the House map with just four weeks to go. We'll
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  Speaker 5: check in on some of the individual races, how Trump
• 2:32
  Speaker 5: is dealing with it all, not well, and that unbelievable
• 2:35
  Speaker 5: New York Times story about Kristi Noem buying luxury jets
• 2:38
  Speaker 5: from a political donor at huge markups with your money. Then,
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  Speaker 5: speaking of those governors' races, you'll hear Tommy's conversation with
• 2:45
  Speaker 5: Texas' Gina Hinojosa, who's opened up a lead on Greg
• 2:49
  Speaker 5: Abbott in the latest Times-Siena poll.
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  Speaker 2: She stopped by the office, so check that out.
• 2:54
  Speaker 5: All right, guys, there are less than 30 days until
• 2:56
  Speaker 5: the midterms, and the October surprise is already here. Just
• 3:01
  Speaker 5: when Democrats started letting themselves feel hope again, Republicans went
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  Speaker 5: ahead and unleashed their secret weapon.
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  Speaker 6: So, you know, all these fake polls, they don't account
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  Speaker 6: for one thing. They don't account for the fact that
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  Speaker 6: Trump is out campaigning. They never thought this was going
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  Speaker 6: to happen. And it's their fault. because they unleashed us.
• 3:23
  Speaker 6: We're going to win, and we're going to win big.
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  Speaker 6: And we're going to shove it.
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  Speaker 2: Up their ass, okay? Oh, sounds painful. Jeez. Don't want that.
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  Speaker 5: One challenge for Republicans is that their secret weapon also
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  Speaker 5: seems to be the Democrat secret weapon. The latest batch
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  Speaker 5: of New York Times Sienna polls show Trump's approval rating
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  Speaker 5: at 40%, and his disapproval at 56% in five red
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  Speaker 5: states that he won by 11 to 16 points in 2024. Texas, Alaska, Ohio, Iowa,
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  Speaker 5: and Kansas. One in five Trump voters in those states
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  Speaker 5: now disapprove of the president's job performance, which is the
• 4:02
  Speaker 5: main reason Democrats are now leading or effectively tied in
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  Speaker 5: every Senate race. We've got James Tallarico up 51-45 over
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  Speaker 5: Ken Paxton. Mary Peltola up 50-43 over Dan Sullivan. Sherrod
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  Speaker 5: Brown over John Husted, 49-46. In Kansas, Adam Hamilton is
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  Speaker 5: tied with Roger Marshall, 45-45. And in Iowa, Josh Turek
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  Speaker 5: is just one point behind Ashley Hinson, well within the
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  Speaker 5: poll's margin of error, as are most of these margins.
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  Speaker 5: I'll stop there and let you guys talk about your
• 4:34
  Speaker 5: overall reaction to the Senate polls and what specifically jumped
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  Speaker 5: out at you in the crosstabs.
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  Speaker 2: What's he shoving up our ass? Just himself? I guess
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  Speaker 2: the victory, the great victory. His Alabama rally that was
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  Speaker 2: half empty? Yeah. The Ohio one.
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  Speaker 5: Remember, he got really mad about any news report showing
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  Speaker 5: that the upper rafters of the Ohio rally were not
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  Speaker 5: completely full.
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  Speaker 2: And it wasn't the only one.
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  Speaker 7: And it would be worse, right? Because we shoved up
• 4:58
  Speaker 7: our asses and we wouldn't be ready for it. You
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  Speaker 7: know what I mean?
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  Speaker 2: You need to prepare for that.
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  Speaker 4: Right.
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  Speaker 2: That's what you're saying.
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  Speaker 7: But back to the poll, speaking of polling, just a
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  Speaker 7: couple of things that jumped out. Independence favored Dems by
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  Speaker 7: 24 points and by 30 on which party does better
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  Speaker 7: for ordinary people.
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  Speaker 2: I thought that was big.
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  Speaker 7: One thing that just wasn't in this poll, but it
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  Speaker 7: was in the last time's poll, I believe we have
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  Speaker 7: Alaska prefers Peltola, but still prefers a Republican Senate. We
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  Speaker 7: saw the opposite where Mainers preferred Susan Collins, but by
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  Speaker 7: big margins wanted a Democratic Senate.
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  Speaker 2: And How does that shake out?
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  Speaker 7: Does that resolve in both places, in one place but
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  Speaker 7: not the other, I think is interesting. And then the
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  Speaker 7: other was just that you have this preference for a
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  Speaker 7: Republican Senate in these, these are very Trump-heavy states, as
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  Speaker 7: you said, but there's always a, they lean towards preferring
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  Speaker 7: having Republicans in control, but also a big desire for
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  Speaker 7: a check on Trump, by huge margins. They want a
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  Speaker 7: Senate that they want, they want a candidate that'll check Trump,
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  Speaker 7: but they also want a Republican Senate. And I do
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  Speaker 7: think underneath this, this is Republicans paying for the required
• 6:01
  Speaker 7: loyalty test of being part of Trump's party, right? They
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  Speaker 7: can't break with him. They can't say they're going to
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  Speaker 7: hold him accountable. They can't say any of those things
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  Speaker 7: that you would see in a normal race like this.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, my reaction to those polls is that I wanted
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  Speaker 1: to roll up my newspaper and smoke it.
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  Speaker 2: Did you? It's just a... And you're reading the physical Times. Pure,
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  Speaker 2: uncut districts of Columbia. Roll up your phone. You're having
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  Speaker 2: to roll up my computer screen. Just opening the big
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  Speaker 2: old pages there. Yeah, just love it.
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  Speaker 7: Drinking your little coffee and a slice of cantaloupe or something.
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  Speaker 4: On my train.
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  Speaker 2: No, no, no.
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  Speaker 5: Honey, did you see these polls?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, honey.
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  Speaker 1: Donald's going to shove these up her. Ironically, the Texas
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  Speaker 1: number I think was the least surprising to me. I
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  Speaker 1: think Tallarico's a good candidate. Paxton's the worst in the
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  Speaker 1: Latino vote.
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  Speaker 2: The lead was a little surprising. The size of the
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  Speaker 2: lead was a little surprising. The size of the lead
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  Speaker 2: is like, again, it's over 50. It's hopium. It's a
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  Speaker 2: lot of hopium.
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  Speaker 1: For all the conversation about James Tallarico and black voters,
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  Speaker 1: he had a 90% margin in that poll, which would
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  Speaker 1: be the best margin statewide margin for a Texas candidate in, like,
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  Speaker 1: recent history.
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  Speaker 2: Better than Kamala Harris, better than Biden.
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  Speaker 1: The Alaska numbers are exciting. Paltola has a track record
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  Speaker 1: of overperforming, so hopefully, like, fingers crossed. Kansas makes me
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  Speaker 1: a little nervous. Adam Hamilton at 45. 45 is not
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  Speaker 1: really a win number.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. Got to get a little higher there. I feel
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  Speaker 2: like that race just started, though. It did just start.
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  Speaker 1: Like, I feel like I was barely paying attention to it.
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  Speaker 2: Same. If you want to understand... what's happening.
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  Speaker 7: Just, you can go watch, there's a clip of, uh,
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  Speaker 7: at the state fair, there's a debate at the state fair.
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  Speaker 2: Yes. So you're going to say, listen to the conversation
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  Speaker 2: that Dan had with Adam. And of course, and then
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  Speaker 2: follow that. You didn't let me finish.
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  Speaker 7: And then after you finish that, listen to Dan's conversation.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, Roger Marshall was like having, throwing women in
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  Speaker 1: prison for not paying bills, uh, for.
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  Speaker 2: Medical debt, medical debt, pretty small medical debt.
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  Speaker 1: Um, so like, I think I'd like to see Josh
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  Speaker 1: Turek had a in Iowa, but it's the margin of
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  Speaker 1: error race. So it's exciting. I'm worried about the potential
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  Speaker 1: response bias. I'm worried about Democrats answering polls. Ultimately, every
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  Speaker 1: pollster is really a model maker because they're all weighting
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  Speaker 1: the numbers they get in and trying to get it right.
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  Speaker 2: But we'll see.
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  Speaker 5: Just because I didn't want to be too hopeful, I
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  Speaker 5: went back and looked at the last set of New
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  Speaker 5: York Times Siena polls in 2024. One thing that stuck
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  Speaker 5: out is even, remember, so Kamala Harris was ahead in
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  Speaker 5: a few states, behind in a few states.
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  Speaker 2: In the red states, she was behind.
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  Speaker 5: In the blue wall states, she was like a point
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  Speaker 5: ahead in Michigan and Wisconsin. I think she was maybe
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  Speaker 5: tied in Pennsylvania. But she never hit 50 in any
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  Speaker 5: of those, even the last one. So it is notable
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  Speaker 5: that in New York Times, CNN polls, we have both Tallarico,
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  Speaker 5: Mary Paltola hitting 50 and 51 this far up. Now,
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  Speaker 5: that's also to say, if it's only the people who
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  Speaker 5: hit 50 to 51 who end up winning, we would
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  Speaker 5: miss the Senate by about a point.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: What about us, Dave?
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  Speaker 7: Yeah, the other thing that jumped out is obviously you
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  Speaker 7: have Tallarico as a huge, it was 23-point advantage on character.
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  Speaker 2: 23? That's crazy.
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  Speaker 5: Well, especially because if we all remember at the beginning
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  Speaker 5: of the race there, it was like Tallarico and the
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  Speaker 5: vegan and the six-gender Jimmy, and it's like he may
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  Speaker 5: not pull it out, but it's not going to be
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  Speaker 5: because like his character was somehow defective to voters, it
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  Speaker 5: will be because Republicans came home and decided to hold
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  Speaker 5: their nose and vote for Ken Paxton.
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  Speaker 7: But if you look at the other character numbers, Democrats
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  Speaker 7: in all of these states, which are very red states,
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  Speaker 7: are just seen as having better character than their Republican opponents.
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  Speaker 7: And so that was the positive view of it. The
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  Speaker 7: other was, look, Talrico is a great candidate. Ken Paxton
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  Speaker 7: is the worst person they could have chosen. Imagine Cornyn
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  Speaker 7: was in this race, right? What would those numbers look like?
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  Speaker 7: How many points does Paxton lose because he's Ken Paxton
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  Speaker 7: versus Tebric? We don't know, but it's a couple, right?
• 9:50
  Speaker 7: And so if this race looked a little bit more
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  Speaker 7: like what you were seeing across the state, which, candidates
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  Speaker 7: of varying quality, but none as bad as Ken Paxton,
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  Speaker 7: it would be closer.
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: And what would this look like overall?
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  Speaker 7: You step back, you'd say, all right, in the races
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  Speaker 7: where we have a better chance of winning, where Trump
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  Speaker 7: either won the state by a small margin or lost,
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  Speaker 7: it's very, very close. And in the states that we're
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  Speaker 7: reaching for, it's very, very close. And collectively, if there
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  Speaker 7: was a two or three or four point polling mistake
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  Speaker 7: you can imagine waking up in a huge Democratic wave
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  Speaker 7: in which we almost win the Senate. And that is
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  Speaker 7: my dark thought when I read these polls overall.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: I heard that Paxton shifted his ad traffic to 75%
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  Speaker 1: positive because his favorables are just so bad. But also bad,
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: his face. Also bad, the ads. You see the ad
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  Speaker 1: with his, I think, soon-to-be ex-wife?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, she didn't even say his name. She doesn't mention his.
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  Speaker 1: Name, but basically says polls. And she's a full Republican ticket.
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  Speaker 1: A successful politician in her own right.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, she's a state senator.
• 10:48
  Speaker 5: One thing that I think explains the polls or says
• 10:52
  Speaker 5: good things about the Democratic recruitment effort. So voters in
• 10:56
  Speaker 5: these polls still think the Democratic Party as a whole
• 10:58
  Speaker 5: is too far left. 52% think that the Democratic Party
• 11:02
  Speaker 5: is too far left in these polls, which is not
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  Speaker 5: entirely unsurprising because they're red states. Only 35% say their
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  Speaker 5: actual Democratic Senate candidate is too far left. And so
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  Speaker 5: the candidate brands are all running, outrunning the national party brand.
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  Speaker 7: It's true of the Republicans too, but not by as much.
• 11:19
  Speaker 7: Like Republicans aren't seen as extreme.
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  Speaker 2: But by the Democratic, by more. More, for sure, for sure.
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  Speaker 5: And so I do think, you know, for all that
• 11:26
  Speaker 5: we have maligned Chuck Schumer, for Maine, for some of
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  Speaker 5: the other ones, like you got to give, I mean,
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  Speaker 5: Mary Paltola, And Roy Cooper and, like— Sherrod Brown. Sherrod
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  Speaker 5: Brown and— like, these were all— These were great.
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  Speaker 2: These were good picks. These were good picks.
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  Speaker 5: And it also shows that, like, you know, it is
• 11:47
  Speaker 5: important to maybe get candidates that at least appear to
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  Speaker 5: voters not as far left as the National Party for
• 11:52
  Speaker 5: all the talk online otherwise.
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  Speaker 7: And the other side of it, too, is there's all
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  Speaker 7: this lamentation about, you know, a random— DSA member in
• 12:01
  Speaker 7: New York is fucking us in the Midwest or whatever.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: And that may be true there.
• 12:05
  Speaker 7: It is in these polls that people think the party
• 12:06
  Speaker 7: is too far to the left, but people respond by
• 12:08
  Speaker 7: doing politics and they make their own argument and they
• 12:10
  Speaker 7: make their case and they, and they.
• 12:11
  Speaker 5: Talk about idiots because they, they know they're voting for
• 12:14
  Speaker 5: the person on the ballot in their state, not the
• 12:16
  Speaker 5: random person they saw on Fox news in New York.
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: City, you know, or a, or a streamer they don't
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: like or streamer they don't like. Yeah.
• 12:22
  Speaker 5: Um, uh, also just the, it's, it jumped out at
• 12:25
  Speaker 5: me just how bad the, uh, voters, uh, view the
• 12:28
  Speaker 5: economy in all these States. Like, Nearly three quarters in
• 12:31
  Speaker 5: Alaska call conditions fair or poor. Two-thirds in Iowa, Kansas,
• 12:35
  Speaker 5: and Ohio. Even Texas, 56% say fair or poor. So
• 12:39
  Speaker 5: people are just fucking pissed.
• 12:40
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: He's bad on all the issues. All the ones that matter.
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: And just one other note.
• 12:44
  Speaker 7: It's also independents are furious by huge margins. Even if
• 12:47
  Speaker 7: these races are close, it's because these are Republican states.
• 12:50
  Speaker 7: Independents have really turned. And I think that's why you
• 12:52
  Speaker 7: see even in a place like Ohio, Trump going to Ohio.
• 12:56
  Speaker 7: because they just need to get their Republican-based voters to
• 12:58
  Speaker 7: turn out because they're having such trouble with either maybe
• 13:02
  Speaker 7: people that voted for Trump that weren't super fans or
• 13:05
  Speaker 7: for the Democrats.
• 13:05
  Speaker 5: I don't know if you guys heard Nate Cohn talk
• 13:07
  Speaker 5: about these polls on The Daily, but he pointed out
• 13:11
  Speaker 5: that all five of these states are states that did
• 13:14
  Speaker 5: not vote for Trump in the 2016 Republican primary.
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: Isn't that interesting?
• 13:20
  Speaker 5: And that maybe these are more traditional conservatives who did
• 13:23
  Speaker 5: not go full MAGA at the beginning. And that there's
• 13:26
  Speaker 5: something there about Trump that maybe they turned against them.
• 13:31
  Speaker 5: So those are the red states. Why do you guys
• 13:32
  Speaker 5: think the race is in the blue states, notably Maine
• 13:35
  Speaker 5: and Michigan are so much closer? At least they have
• 13:38
  Speaker 5: been in the Times polls, but I guess overall the
• 13:40
  Speaker 5: polling average too.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: I think it's demographics and then the candidates. I mean,
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: the demographics is a lot of the shift we're seeing
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: in Texas is Latino voters. Michigan has a far smaller
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: percentage of Latino voters than Texas.
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: So does Maine.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: Maine is old and white. and those voters are more
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: likely to be on the Trump train. Also in Maine,
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: Susan Collins is historically a strong candidate and an over-performer.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: Troy Jackson has struggled a lot since they made the
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: switch from Plattner. And then in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed's a
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: great speaker. He's a great communicator. We just watched him
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: on Fox. We'll play those clips later. But he's got
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: to overcome Islamophobia and then the lingering wounds from the
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: Democratic primary and all the spending against him.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: So it's just challenging.
• 14:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 14:18
  Speaker 5: The Troy Jackson thing is, the mystery of why Troy
• 14:23
  Speaker 5: Jackson's unfavorables are so high is, like, just bizarre.
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  Speaker 1: I bet the process, they probably, I mean, similar with Kamala, like,
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  Speaker 1: people hated the process through which she became the nominee.
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  Speaker 2: I bet they hate the process through which he became
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: the nominee in May.
• 14:36
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 14:37
  Speaker 5: I do think that their, his campaign, even in the
• 14:39
  Speaker 5: last couple weeks, I think even since that Times poll
• 14:41
  Speaker 5: came out, has really been sort of kicking it up
• 14:43
  Speaker 5: into high gear. And they're sort of going after Kamala
• 14:46
  Speaker 5: on the ProPublica story. The debates are this week, start
• 14:49
  Speaker 5: this week, so that should be pretty interesting.
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: Ooh.
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  Speaker 8: I know.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: A lot of campaigning.
• 14:55
  Speaker 5: On the governor's races, the poll has Rob Sand up
• 14:58
  Speaker 5: 11 in Iowa. Gina Hosa, who you'll hear from again
• 15:02
  Speaker 5: in a minute, up three in Texas over Greg Abbott.
• 15:06
  Speaker 5: Amy Acton up four in Ohio over Vivek Ramaswamy. But
• 15:12
  Speaker 5: I think it's fair to say that the Alaska governor's race,
• 15:14
  Speaker 5: where Jonathan Christ-Thomkins is up four. In Kansas, where Cindy
• 15:18
  Speaker 5: Holsher is in striking distance, we're not really on most
• 15:21
  Speaker 5: people's radars. Uh, how much do you guys think the
• 15:24
  Speaker 5: governor's races and Senate races in each state are distinct
• 15:27
  Speaker 5: from each other versus both being part of the same
• 15:30
  Speaker 5: broader political swing towards Dems that we're seeing in the
• 15:33
  Speaker 5: other polls?
• 15:35
  Speaker 7: I think traditionally there's, uh, there is a wave. The
• 15:38
  Speaker 7: wave will put races that would otherwise been out of
• 15:40
  Speaker 7: reach within reach. But, you know, look at Iowa, right?
• 15:44
  Speaker 7: You have uh, uh, Rob's hand has been elected statewide before.
• 15:48
  Speaker 7: And then you have a candidate like Zach Lane, who's, uh,
• 15:52
  Speaker 7: you know, lives in Kansas and is like pretty extreme.
• 15:55
  Speaker 7: And I said some crazy shit about vaccines and abortion.
• 15:57
  Speaker 7: All of a sudden, uh, you see a difference there where,
• 15:59
  Speaker 7: you know, Turek has a, an uphill battle with someone
• 16:02
  Speaker 7: that wasn't as well known to the States. I think
• 16:04
  Speaker 7: some of it's just the, the like, you know, unique
• 16:06
  Speaker 7: qualities of the candidates and the fact that people just
• 16:09
  Speaker 7: do view governor's races differently than they view Senate races, right?
• 16:11
  Speaker 7: There's a reason that there's a, Democratic senator in Kentucky,
• 16:14
  Speaker 7: a state that is completely out of reach on the
• 16:16
  Speaker 7: Senate side, right? People are willing to put aside some
• 16:18
  Speaker 7: of their ideological desires for the federal government when they're
• 16:23
  Speaker 7: voting for someone at the state level.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: I think like a red or blue wave will lift
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: all boats, but you see more split tickets with governors
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: than other places. Like Massachusetts, we had so many Republican governors.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: Right now, Phil Scott, a Republican, is governor of Vermont,
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: very blue state. I also think well, this cycle at least,
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: the governor's races are just like chronically underfunded on the
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: Democratic side. Jonathan Martin had a great piece about this
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: in Politico. Some of it is the benefits of incumbency.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: Greg Abbott in Texas can go to all the businesses
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: with interest before the state and very corruptly raise a
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: ton of money from them to them in like unlimited ways.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: But also there's like the broader funding ecosystem. Like I
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: think Democratic donors see the Senate and the House as
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: a check on Trump. They don't think that way about
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: governor's races, we probably should because of the role that
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: they will play in redistricting and in 2028. But the
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: spending advantage is like six to one in Florida, three
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: to one in Texas, two and a half to one
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: in Georgia, two to one in Wisconsin. So it's a
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: huge problem because these guys, they're going to have a
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: lot of power. They're going to have a lot of
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: impact on 2028. And I think it's something we need
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: to fix as a party.
• 17:27
  Speaker 5: I was kind of looking at the incumbency issue another way.
• 17:31
  Speaker 5: I take your point that if you're the incumbent, there's
• 17:33
  Speaker 5: all kinds of goodies you can sprinkle on the state.
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: But people are so pissed.
• 17:38
  Speaker 5: And there's such an anti-incumbent mood right now that is like,
• 17:42
  Speaker 5: I think when we look at this election, people are
• 17:44
  Speaker 5: obviously very pissed at Trump. They're pissed at the Republican Congress.
• 17:47
  Speaker 5: But even if you look at these governor's polls, the
• 17:50
  Speaker 5: one race where the Republican is clearly ahead is in Kansas.
• 17:55
  Speaker 5: And that is a state where, the only state where
• 17:58
  Speaker 5: there is a retiring Democratic governor who's currently the incumbent.
• 18:01
  Speaker 5: And then in the Senate side, you've got a tie
• 18:04
  Speaker 5: race in Kansas. And all these other ones, You have, like,
• 18:07
  Speaker 5: in Iowa, Kim Reynolds was governor, and so now you
• 18:09
  Speaker 5: have Rob, right, who's saying, like, we're going to– it's
• 18:13
  Speaker 5: like a shift in leadership from what we've had over
• 18:15
  Speaker 5: the last however many years. Gina's going to have that
• 18:17
  Speaker 5: argument in Texas, which is, you know, at least in
• 18:19
  Speaker 5: this poll, she's ahead by a couple. Same with Amy
• 18:22
  Speaker 5: Acton over Vivek, right? There's a Republican governor there. So
• 18:25
  Speaker 5: I think there's– in some ways, it's an easier argument
• 18:28
  Speaker 5: that's probably helping some of these Democratic challenges.
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: I think it's a political event. I was just saying fundraising. Oh, no,
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: I know. Because you're like– Abbott is just so corrupt.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: He goes to all these businesses in Texas and just
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: has them cut him like a million dollar check.
• 18:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 18:39
  Speaker 5: But I do think, I think that there's something about
• 18:42
  Speaker 5: incumbency and people just being fucking pissed at the leadership
• 18:45
  Speaker 5: in their state and in Congress that's going to have
• 18:49
  Speaker 5: an effect.
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: But we'll see.
• 18:58
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  Speaker 5: So it's not just the public polling that's showing the
• 21:42
  Speaker 5: map getting worse for Republicans. Clearly the private polling on
• 21:45
  Speaker 5: both sides is similar because both parties are starting to
• 21:47
  Speaker 5: move money around accordingly. Biggest Republican super PAC has now
• 21:51
  Speaker 5: started pulling money out of North Carolina and moving it
• 21:54
  Speaker 5: to Kansas. Never thought we'd hear that at the beginning
• 21:56
  Speaker 5: of the cycle. I just saw that the Democratic Super
• 22:00
  Speaker 5: PAC is also starting to move money out of North Carolina,
• 22:02
  Speaker 5: probably to follow the Republican Super PAC's move. The pro-Paxton
• 22:06
  Speaker 5: Super PAC has canceled $ 3. 5 million worth of ads in
• 22:10
  Speaker 5: that race. They still have a lot more reserved, at
• 22:13
  Speaker 5: least through next week.
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: But that's just shifting. They have spent shifting to what?
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: Just shifting their buy around. They're going to spend like
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: $ 200 million.
• 22:21
  Speaker 5: Yeah, but I'm saying they did cancel $ 3.
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: 5 million.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but you cancel and you buy somewhere else and
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: just move money around.
• 22:27
  Speaker 5: And over on the House side, Democrats just added six
• 22:30
  Speaker 5: more Republican seats to their top tier red to blue program,
• 22:33
  Speaker 5: including Trump plus 15 districts in Florida and Arkansas and
• 22:37
  Speaker 5: Trump plus 20 districts in Tennessee and New York. What
• 22:40
  Speaker 5: do you guys read into those spending decisions? And do
• 22:43
  Speaker 5: you have any concern that considering Dems money troubles, they
• 22:47
  Speaker 5: may be spreading themselves too thin?
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: I don't see any. I mean, there's.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: People calling on like the DGA, for example, to spend
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: in more places, to spend in Florida, to spend in Texas.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: I don't see a lot of examples of us doing
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: that yet. I think a lot of donors are really
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: mad about 2024. They feel like their money was lit
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: on fire. They're staying away or they're worried that Trump
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: is going to go after them. My fear is that
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: people aren't viewing this as potentially a historic opportunity to
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: win a lot of races up and down the ballot.
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: And they're not giving enough.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: So hopefully like the New York Times polls will incentivize
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: people to want to give. But like, I think we
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: should all be, you know, pretty excited that Republicans are
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: basically giving up on North Carolina.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: That's crazy. Yeah.
• 23:31
  Speaker 7: North Carolina has been one of those races where the polling,
• 23:33
  Speaker 7: there was, there've been polls that have shown Cooper with
• 23:35
  Speaker 7: just like a massive lead that just wouldn't justify anyone
• 23:38
  Speaker 7: investing there. So I think there's been a little bit
• 23:41
  Speaker 7: of reluctance to accept that, like, or at least caution
• 23:44
  Speaker 7: about accepting that as being the reality for fear of
• 23:47
  Speaker 7: accidentally putting North Carolina at risk. It's a, it's tough, right?
• 23:53
  Speaker 7: For this, for the reason we were just talking about,
• 23:54
  Speaker 7: there's a lot of places in play. We don't totally
• 23:57
  Speaker 7: trust the polls, nor should we, uh, people there, there, the,
• 24:02
  Speaker 7: the reality of the votes in Trump states moving further
• 24:06
  Speaker 7: than the votes in the more, in the closer places
• 24:09
  Speaker 7: means there's a lot of places where you can make
• 24:12
  Speaker 7: an argument that they need the money more than the other.
• 24:14
  Speaker 7: I'm sure, I'm sure that, that the committees are hearing
• 24:17
  Speaker 7: from both sides about like, no, we need this money
• 24:19
  Speaker 7: more than they do.
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 24:20
  Speaker 7: Like we're going to talk about Florida, right? Like let's
• 24:22
  Speaker 7: say you were going to invest. We do invest in
• 24:23
  Speaker 7: South Carolina. Would you invest in Florida? There are good
• 24:25
  Speaker 7: arguments for both.
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 24:27
  Speaker 7: And we, nobody wants to wake up the day after
• 24:29
  Speaker 7: and realize that my God, if we had put another
• 24:31
  Speaker 7: $ 5 million into this state, maybe we could have eked
• 24:33
  Speaker 7: it out.
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 24:34
  Speaker 7: But inevitably when, when you're looking at a map this
• 24:36
  Speaker 7: big and this wide, like that's probably going to happen.
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 24:39
  Speaker 5: Well, there's, I mean, Not to confuse the different races, right?
• 24:42
  Speaker 5: There's the governor side, the Senate side, and the House side.
• 24:44
  Speaker 5: This is just the House side, right? And I guess
• 24:46
  Speaker 5: what I would guess is the DCCC is looking at
• 24:49
  Speaker 5: the map, and there's probably some races that they had
• 24:53
  Speaker 5: been spending money on that are just safe at this
• 24:55
  Speaker 5: point that they thought would not be safe or they
• 24:57
  Speaker 5: thought would be competitive at the beginning. And so they're
• 25:00
  Speaker 5: conservative enough, especially— with limited resources as they have, that
• 25:04
  Speaker 5: I don't think they would start throwing money at some
• 25:06
  Speaker 5: of these Trump plus 15, plus 20 seats if they
• 25:08
  Speaker 5: weren't A, seeing something in their internal polling and B,
• 25:11
  Speaker 5: confident that in some of the, you know, toss up
• 25:14
  Speaker 5: or lean D races that they are like fine now.
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: And they're just, they've spent enough money.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: And they're always going to have incumbents screaming at them
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: to spend more.
• 25:22
  Speaker 7: There's a little bit of a tax. There's always a
• 25:24
  Speaker 7: tax that you have to put some money behind the incumbents.
• 25:26
  Speaker 7: The other part of this too is the redistricting, right?
• 25:28
  Speaker 7: Like there are places where Republicans have drawn the map
• 25:31
  Speaker 7: in such a way as to eke out two or
• 25:33
  Speaker 7: three more Republican seats, but those decisions were predicated on, uh,
• 25:38
  Speaker 7: not having a sudden 20 point shift in Hispanic voters.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 25:41
  Speaker 7: And that, that means that there are places where all
• 25:43
  Speaker 7: of a sudden, like, wait, we should be competing there.
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: And those are new districts.
• 25:47
  Speaker 7: You're kind of cobbling together the best information you can
• 25:50
  Speaker 7: based on previous races and based on polling. It's a
• 25:52
  Speaker 7: little bit, um, more of a guessing game.
• 25:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 25:56
  Speaker 5: Um, of course, if, if you want to help flip
• 25:58
  Speaker 5: these districts and take back Congress, uh, Our friends at votesaveamerica.com
• 26:01
  Speaker 5: have plenty that you can do, especially if you or
• 26:05
  Speaker 5: someone you know lives in a targeted district or state.
• 26:08
  Speaker 5: I know we spend a lot of time here spitting takes,
• 26:10
  Speaker 5: but the entire reason we started Crooked was to get
• 26:13
  Speaker 5: more people participating in politics so that we have less
• 26:15
  Speaker 5: bad news to talk about every week.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: Wouldn't that be nice?
• 26:17
  Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, it'd make for a slightly more boring episode,
• 26:20
  Speaker 7: but we think that's okay.
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know what?
• 26:21
  Speaker 5: We'll take that trade. That is a trade we will make.
• 26:24
  Speaker 5: You guys have already raised millions of dollars and filled
• 26:28
  Speaker 5: thousands of volunteer shifts through Vote Save America just this year.
• 26:32
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• 26:34
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• 26:50
  Speaker 5: And thank you again for supporting our shows and activism here.
• 26:54
  Speaker 5: So Trump's campaigning in Nebraska as we record this, where
• 26:57
  Speaker 5: he's set to announce an executive order on diesel prices.
• 27:00
  Speaker 5: And of course, he spent some time over the weekend
• 27:03
  Speaker 5: recording those videos in the Oval Office, those endorsement videos,
• 27:06
  Speaker 5: which I'm sure the candidates love. I'm sure the candidates
• 27:09
  Speaker 5: love his endorsement videos. In one, he was attempting to
• 27:12
  Speaker 5: revive the $ 5, 000 checks thing. And another, he urged his
• 27:18
  Speaker 5: supporters to surprise, vote by mail. and vote early, which
• 27:22
  Speaker 5: is a pretty stunning reversal, if unsurprising, that he, of course,
• 27:26
  Speaker 5: had to defend as soon as he faced reporters on Monday.
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: Let's listen. Why are you telling.
• 27:31
  Speaker 9: Your supporters to vote by mail if you think it's fraud?
• 27:35
  Speaker 4: They'll vote by mail or vote in person. I'd rather
• 27:37
  Speaker 4: have them vote in person, but they can vote.
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: By mail if they want. There seems to be.
• 27:42
  Speaker 4: A lot of, not seems to be, there is a
• 27:44
  Speaker 4: lot of cheating in vote by mail.
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: A lot of cheating all over.
• 27:48
  Speaker 7: I'll tell you what, start.
• 27:51
  Speaker 4: Off by taking a look at California. Take a look at,
• 27:54
  Speaker 4: take a look at, no evidence? With millions and millions
• 27:58
  Speaker 4: of ballots, you are fake news.
• 28:02
  Speaker 7: It's just amazing that we're still doing this. It's sort
• 28:04
  Speaker 7: of like, where's the evidence? Where's the evidence? And then
• 28:07
  Speaker 7: he's like, yeah, shut the fuck up. And we just
• 28:09
  Speaker 7: do this again and again and again.
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: The pantomime. I know it's a right. I'm not denigrating
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: the question. It has to be asked, but it's like
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: he does. Oh, where's the evidence? There is no evidence.
• 28:16
  Speaker 7: He's making it up. You know that we know that
• 28:17
  Speaker 7: even the people that love him know that like, what
• 28:19
  Speaker 7: the fuck are we doing here?
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: And also like, they're just in full on bribe mode.
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: They're like, I'll give you five grand if you vote
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: for me.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: What are we doing here?
• 28:26
  Speaker 5: Trump also, it's, it's sort of just a came and
• 28:29
  Speaker 5: went because it was just one of many crazy things
• 28:31
  Speaker 5: he did. But, um, Trump doxed Republican Senator Tom Cotton
• 28:34
  Speaker 5: over the weekend.
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: Going back to the hits.
• 28:36
  Speaker 5: Posting his personal sell on Truth Social all because Cotton
• 28:40
  Speaker 5: is holding up a bill to end daylight saving time.
• 28:44
  Speaker 5: I saw this and then my first thought was, I forget,
• 28:47
  Speaker 5: love it, which side are you on on this fight?
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: Because it's very hard to keep.
• 28:51
  Speaker 7: I'm just going to do this quick because I don't
• 28:53
  Speaker 7: want to annoy my boys.
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: Look, here's the thing.
• 28:56
  Speaker 7: Tom Cotton is right. We did try this before. People
• 28:58
  Speaker 7: did hate it. Trump is right. A lot of states
• 29:00
  Speaker 7: do want to go to permanent daylight saving time. The
• 29:02
  Speaker 7: problem is this bill, which I've talked about many times,
• 29:05
  Speaker 7: only allowed states to choose between permanent daylight savings time
• 29:07
  Speaker 7: and permanent standard time. There should be a third option
• 29:09
  Speaker 7: which states can be allowed to make the switch. If
• 29:12
  Speaker 7: Tom Cotton and Arkansas want to keep doing daylight saving time,
• 29:15
  Speaker 7: they should be allowed to do it. If other states
• 29:16
  Speaker 7: want to be on permanent daylight saving time, they should
• 29:18
  Speaker 7: be allowed to do it. If states want to be
• 29:19
  Speaker 7: on permanent standard time, they should be allowed to do it.
• 29:21
  Speaker 7: Just add the third option and this all gets resolved.
• 29:24
  Speaker 7: Now it looks like it's dead again. Just give people
• 29:27
  Speaker 7: the third option. Yes, it'll be a little bit strange
• 29:29
  Speaker 7: that some states switch, but right now we live under
• 29:31
  Speaker 7: a situation in which most states switch and a couple don't.
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: We're fine. We can handle it. Our phones know what
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: time it is.
• 29:36
  Speaker 5: And if you have thoughts about what Lovett just said,
• 29:39
  Speaker 5: you can call him.
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 29:42
  Speaker 4: So, wait.
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: On the cotton piece, did he, like, post? He was like,
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: here's his number. Give him a ring? Or was it
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: an accident? No, no, no. No, no. He posted a rant.
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: Like Graham in the back of the day? Yes, yes.
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: Like the old hits. Just, here's Tom Cotton's cell phone.
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: Here's Tom Cotton's cell phone number. That's so... Yeah.
• 29:58
  Speaker 5: Democrats are out there like, we're going to stand up
• 30:01
  Speaker 5: for affordability and cost of living, and we're going to
• 30:04
  Speaker 5: do all that. And then Trump's like, here's Tom Cotton's
• 30:06
  Speaker 5: cell phone number.
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: About daylight savings. Great.
• 30:09
  Speaker 8: Amazing.
• 30:11
  Speaker 5: Just on that diesel executive order that he's announcing in Nebraska,
• 30:15
  Speaker 5: Patrick DeHaan, aka the gas buddy, you know, gas buddy guy,
• 30:19
  Speaker 5: he noted Monday that average gas and diesel prices fell
• 30:22
  Speaker 5: in 48 states last week, and that most of the
• 30:24
  Speaker 5: decline happened because of Market manipulations, fuel tax suspensions, releasing
• 30:29
  Speaker 5: oil reserves. I think we're at the point now where
• 30:32
  Speaker 5: the polls are all so good that now we're going
• 30:34
  Speaker 5: to follow GasBuddy and start worrying about gas prices, you know,
• 30:37
  Speaker 5: what's going to happen with gas. Like, is it going
• 30:39
  Speaker 5: to have an effect on the next couple? Nate Silver,
• 30:42
  Speaker 5: did you aggregate GasBuddy this week?
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: No.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: Diesel prices are so– farmers know that diesel prices are
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: way up from a month ago and way, way, way
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: up from a year ago. And they feel like it's
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: stupid expensive. It doesn't matter if it dipped in the
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: last week. On top of that, they're pissed about the
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: price of fertilizer. They're pissed about the tariffs, the general
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: uncertainty in the market. And so none of this is
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: close to being resolved. Like Trump is crowing about crude
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: oil getting out of the straight over moves, but they're
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: still not getting refined petroleum products like jet fuel and diesel.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: That's down at like 20% of where it was pre-war.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: So no, things are not better. Refiners are damaged. Like
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: no farmer is happy about a tiny dip.
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: In diesel prices.
• 31:20
  Speaker 5: I also, I think you tweeted this, Tommy, and then
• 31:22
  Speaker 5: I also heard it somewhere that like insurance still on
• 31:25
  Speaker 5: some of these tankers, even though the, even the ones
• 31:27
  Speaker 5: that are like getting out of the Gulf, it's like
• 31:30
  Speaker 5: they've gone from $ 30, 000 to sometimes over a million dollars.
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 31:34
  Speaker 7: I'd say, yeah, that, that tracks pretty expensive to ensure
• 31:37
  Speaker 7: boats in the Strait of Hormuz right now.
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 31:40
  Speaker 5: Well, it seems like we're having some success, meaning the military,
• 31:45
  Speaker 5: like helping to escort more tankers through, but like, that's
• 31:48
  Speaker 5: still not a bet you want to make.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: No, what they're doing is the Emiratis and the Saudis
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: are filling their fleet of VLCCs, or these huge tankers,
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: with crude oil. And those are shuttling through the Strait
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: of Hormuz and taking on the risk. Then they load
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: ship-to-ship in the ocean to an international tanker. But refined
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: products like jet fuel or whatever, one, it's more flammable.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: So you really don't want to get with an Iranian
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: drone if you're on one of those things. Two, it's
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: usually taken back and forth in smaller vessels that are
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: privately or independently owned. So those guys are just not
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: ready to take on the risk of getting blown to hell.
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: Okay. All right.
• 32:23
  Speaker 5: So we're watching Gas Buddy. We're watching the polls.
• 32:26
  Speaker 7: These things, it's on its way to being double of
• 32:29
  Speaker 7: what it was a year ago. Everyone knows that gas
• 32:31
  Speaker 7: prices go up and go down. Diesel prices go up
• 32:33
  Speaker 7: and go down. A small decrease right now is not
• 32:36
  Speaker 7: providing anyone any sense of comfort or safety. It's still
• 32:39
  Speaker 7: way more than it used to be. And by the way,
• 32:41
  Speaker 7: even if there was genuinely a shift based on actual policies,
• 32:46
  Speaker 7: not sort of trying to just sort of cut the
• 32:48
  Speaker 7: taxes and kind of goose the numbers, right? Like these
• 32:50
  Speaker 7: kinds of things take time for people to accept and
• 32:53
  Speaker 7: put into the way they vote, right? Like there've been
• 32:55
  Speaker 7: many presidents and many candidates who have complained that they've
• 32:58
  Speaker 7: paid for economic conditions that had already been resolved, but
• 33:02
  Speaker 7: it took, takes time for people to appreciate and accept. Yeah.
• 33:04
  Speaker 5: So it's not harvest season is when you really got
• 33:06
  Speaker 5: to drive that tractor. Well, it's also the other thing
• 33:09
  Speaker 5: I forgot about Nebraska is he's there. He's like doing
• 33:12
  Speaker 5: the executive order on diesel Nebraska farmers are all fucking
• 33:16
  Speaker 5: rip shit at him because he's trying to do the
• 33:19
  Speaker 5: import beef, import Argentinian beef to try to bring down
• 33:23
  Speaker 5: the price of beef even though they're growing the beef.
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: Hey, America. That's what they do in Nebraska. Good news, leftovers.
• 33:31
  Speaker 5: How about some foreign meat? You want some foreign meat?
• 33:34
  Speaker 7: Got some very cold, very old beef coming your way.
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: Argentina. All right.
• 33:40
  Speaker 5: Let's talk about some updates from a few key races,
• 33:42
  Speaker 5: starting with Michigan. Abdul El-Sayed announced on Monday that Barack
• 33:46
  Speaker 5: Obama will be traveling to the state in a couple
• 33:48
  Speaker 5: of weeks to campaign with him and the candidate for governor,
• 33:50
  Speaker 5: Jocelyn Benson. That's the base vote play to try to
• 33:53
  Speaker 5: get those persuadable Republicans. Abdul continues to go into their
• 33:57
  Speaker 5: media spaces, most recently Fox News on Monday afternoon.
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: Let's take a look at how that went.
• 34:02
  Speaker 5: You go after billionaires a lot.
• 34:04
  Speaker 7: You say that you want to tax billionaire wealth and
• 34:07
  Speaker 7: disincentivize the accumulation of wealth.
• 34:11
  Speaker 5: But don't we all benefit from.
• 34:13
  Speaker 10: Being this incredible powerhouse in the United States from their ingenuity?
• 34:18
  Speaker 8: Well, the issue is not that some people have too
• 34:19
  Speaker 8: much money. It's that the engine that created their opportunity
• 34:23
  Speaker 8: to make money is being underfunded. I would rather live
• 34:25
  Speaker 8: in a society where rather than a billionaire making a
• 34:28
  Speaker 8: second billion, I'm invested in a public school so that
• 34:30
  Speaker 8: some kid out there gets a great education, gets to
• 34:33
  Speaker 8: participate in capitalism, builds an amazing business, and gets to
• 34:37
  Speaker 8: make money too.
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: I want to give Abdul credit there for.
• 34:41
  Speaker 5: not breaking out into a huge smile or even laughing
• 34:44
  Speaker 5: because you could tell when she was like, Abdul, what
• 34:47
  Speaker 5: about the billionaires? Won't anyone think of the billionaires? He's
• 34:51
  Speaker 5: like thinking to himself, did I really just get this question?
• 34:54
  Speaker 7: It was just like, oh my God, oh my God,
• 34:57
  Speaker 7: she has no idea where my battleship is. And I
• 35:00
  Speaker 7: know exactly where her battleship is.
• 35:02
  Speaker 5: This is after like 10 minutes where she defended the
• 35:04
  Speaker 5: Iran war.
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Martha McCollum.
• 35:07
  Speaker 7: That answer, I just, there've been a lot of like
• 35:09
  Speaker 7: kind of, I think, Answers that might get like some
• 35:12
  Speaker 7: cheers from like very engaged people on social media. Like
• 35:15
  Speaker 7: that was such a just great answer on like billionaire
• 35:19
  Speaker 7: rhetoric and like wanting people and opportunity and wanting.
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: People to have the chance to have success.
• 35:23
  Speaker 7: Like I just thought like we were watching it together
• 35:25
  Speaker 7: in the office and I missed the first part. I
• 35:28
  Speaker 7: came back in and we were watching and I just
• 35:29
  Speaker 7: like turned to you guys. We were all like, this
• 35:31
  Speaker 7: is he's doing fucking awesome in this interview. Yeah, it's
• 35:33
  Speaker 7: almost too good. He was too poised and calm.
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: There wasn't like an explosive moment that you can make
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: go viral like you did with Jesse Waters.
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: Martha McCallum, by the way, it's so funny.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: She's on the straight news side more so, I think,
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: of Fox News, but just sounds like a White House
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: spokesperson when she does interviews with the Democrats. And then
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: the segment after was fact-checking Abdul.
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: Which you don't really see for a lot of Trump interviews.
• 35:56
  Speaker 7: It was a spree de escalade. Here's the things that
• 36:01
  Speaker 7: we could have brought up during the interview.
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: Sorry to use French.
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: The Obama visit to Detroit is great.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: I mean, hopefully, obviously, a lot of it will be
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: turning out black voters in the Detroit metro area or
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: Flint or wherever. But also, I think Obama could talk
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: about Abdul and efforts to define Abdul as dangerous or
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: foreign in a way that Many other politicians can't because
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: they tried to do the same.
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: Thing to him. Because he was raised in Madrasa.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: So he's also the most popular president alive, so that'll
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: help too. But yeah, I'm very glad to see Obama's
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: going to Detroit. I think black voters is a big
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: deal too.
• 36:33
  Speaker 5: In that Times poll, where Abdul was leading by five,
• 36:38
  Speaker 5: he was 76-13 with black voters. In that same poll,
• 36:42
  Speaker 5: Jocelyn Benson was running for governor.
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: It was 92-1.
• 36:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 36:45
  Speaker 7: And there's some other polls, too, like before this one, too,
• 36:48
  Speaker 7: that had like the number of he was he still
• 36:49
  Speaker 7: has to do some consolidation among Haley Stevens voters.
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: And again, same thing.
• 36:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: So I think that the Obama visit is going to
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: be very, very helpful.
• 36:56
  Speaker 5: Oh, by the way, I should say before Trump also
• 36:59
  Speaker 5: said today he's going to Michigan in a couple of weeks.
• 37:02
  Speaker 5: And then someone asked him about Maine and he was like, yeah, yeah,
• 37:05
  Speaker 5: I think I'm going to Maine, too. He keeps saying
• 37:07
  Speaker 5: he's going to fingers crossed.
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: He said he was going to Iowa. He hasn't done that. Right.
• 37:11
  Speaker 5: Not yet, but he said it. He announced it with
• 37:14
  Speaker 5: her behind him. She was there. But it would be
• 37:17
  Speaker 5: interesting him going to Michigan, especially in a couple weeks.
• 37:19
  Speaker 5: I wonder if he's thinking like, oh, Obama's going. Now
• 37:21
  Speaker 5: I've got to go too.
• 37:30
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• 40:00
  Speaker 1: Trump's heading back to Texas this week.
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: We know that.
• 40:03
  Speaker 5: Also, Ken Paxton can't stop saying stupid shit at fundraisers.
• 40:06
  Speaker 5: Politico published another excerpt from that private event where Paxton
• 40:09
  Speaker 5: complained about Trump's midterm convention. In this one, he seems
• 40:12
  Speaker 5: to be saying that his campaign is in other people's hands.
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: Take a listen.
• 40:16
  Speaker 8: I've never been in a relationship where I felt less
• 40:17
  Speaker 8: control over the campaign and what issues are going to
• 40:21
  Speaker 8: matter because it's all coming from D.C.
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: And I don't control message or what we're doing.
• 40:27
  Speaker 8: I don't have the ability to change anything.
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: So I have to live with whatever I've got. So
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: it is a challenge.
• 40:33
  Speaker 5: Can you imagine saying, I don't control message about your
• 40:36
  Speaker 5: own campaign?
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: It's like the two things that leaked out are the
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: worst kind of meta messages I could imagine.
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: The first was like Trump sucks.
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: His midterm convention sucked and screwed me. So that creates
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: problems with Trump, with the White House, with donors who
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: are pissed at Paxton that they're dragging his ass over
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: the finish line with like $ 200 million. And now this
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: is actually I don't control my campaign. It's controlled by
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: Washington in the most anti-incumbent year like we've ever seen.
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: It's like designed in.
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: A lab to destroy him. It's awesome.
• 41:05
  Speaker 7: The other part about it, like forget even that he's
• 41:07
  Speaker 7: pointing to D.C., which is bad enough.
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: It's just such fucking loser talk. It's so like woe
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: is me, excuses. passive, like not in charge.
• 41:17
  Speaker 5: Like did those consultants in DC make you the most
• 41:20
  Speaker 5: fucking corrupt figure in the.
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: History of Texas? Right, like no sense. Make you cheat
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: on your wife? Well, that's what I was saying.
• 41:26
  Speaker 7: It's like, you know, like, man, this has got to
• 41:28
  Speaker 7: be the same attitude he brings to the reason his
• 41:30
  Speaker 7: marriage fell apart.
• 41:30
  Speaker 5: Were they in the room when you did all the bribes?
• 41:32
  Speaker 7: Right, like these terrible things just keep happening to me.
• 41:35
  Speaker 7: You know, like this, the idea that he's not responsible
• 41:38
  Speaker 7: for the campaign at all, no sense in which he
• 41:40
  Speaker 7: is even acknowledging the ways in which he is not
• 41:43
  Speaker 7: an ideal candidate, all that.
• 41:44
  Speaker 5: It is worth noting that the Republicans have spent nine
• 41:48
  Speaker 5: figures now trying to rehabilitate Ken Paxton's image. And James
• 41:54
  Speaker 5: Tallarico is more popular in the latest Time Sienna poll
• 41:58
  Speaker 5: and has a bigger lead than he did before. So,
• 42:01
  Speaker 5: you know, we're approaching $ 200 million in spending. Has it
• 42:05
  Speaker 5: made any difference at all for Ken Paxton?
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: I don't think it can.
• 42:08
  Speaker 5: And then the question is like, is there a strategy
• 42:11
  Speaker 5: that would have helped Ken Paxton? I guess the strategy
• 42:14
  Speaker 5: would have been Donald Trump not endorsing him and letting
• 42:16
  Speaker 5: John Cornyn win.
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: That may be the only strategy that would have worked, probably. Right.
• 42:20
  Speaker 7: We've talked about this before, and the assumption is that
• 42:22
  Speaker 7: the only hope Ken Paxton would have would be to
• 42:24
  Speaker 7: completely destroy Tallarico with endless, endless negative ads.
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: Which he's tried. Which he's tried. He had the money
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: for it, yeah.
• 42:31
  Speaker 7: But then, of course, that's not working. And so then
• 42:32
  Speaker 7: it reminds me of, oh, the problem is I just
• 42:35
  Speaker 7: don't know who Ken really is. So now let's get
• 42:37
  Speaker 7: the real story.
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: Out of the real Ken Paxton. The Ken Paxton they
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: always loved.
• 42:42
  Speaker 5: From back in the day. Who tells you that he's
• 42:44
  Speaker 5: not controlling anything and that it's all happening in DC.
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: He's just a puppet.
• 42:47
  Speaker 5: That's going to be a fun one. Imagine James Tallarico
• 42:49
  Speaker 5: going out the next time he goes out on the stump.
• 42:51
  Speaker 5: You got that, Topper, insert, talking about Ken Paxton and
• 42:54
  Speaker 5: the DC thing. I'm sure they've cut a few ads
• 42:56
  Speaker 5: about it, even if they're only like, you know, like
• 42:58
  Speaker 5: for social media or whatever.
• 43:00
  Speaker 7: I would also, I would appreciate an ad that just
• 43:02
  Speaker 7: has James Tallarico. starting from one end of a steak,
• 43:06
  Speaker 7: getting all the way to the other side of a steak,
• 43:07
  Speaker 7: while facts about Ken Paxton pop on the screen.
• 43:10
  Speaker 8: You know?
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: What do you think of that?
• 43:11
  Speaker 5: That's pretty good for a vegan, huh?
• 43:13
  Speaker 4: All right.
• 43:13
  Speaker 7: Vegan.
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for a vegan.
• 43:14
  Speaker 5: Trump keeps calling him a vegan. We haven't had the
• 43:16
  Speaker 5: chance to talk much about the Senate race in Florida, where.
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: Sorry, just vegans are the aliens from the movie Contact. Oh.
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: If there were aliens, or maybe an hallucination.
• 43:26
  Speaker 5: Fun fact, interlude. For anyone who has to go to
• 43:29
  Speaker 5: the bathroom.
• 43:30
  Speaker 7: We are.
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: It's over. It's fucking over. Also, it's a podcast. You
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: can bring it to the bathroom. That's true. You can.
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: I have.
• 43:39
  Speaker 5: We haven't had the chance to talk.
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: Not this one. Not this one.
• 43:42
  Speaker 5: We haven't had the chance to talk. I've never listened.
• 43:44
  Speaker 5: We haven't had the chance to talk much about the
• 43:45
  Speaker 5: Senate race in Florida, where state rep Angie Nixon pulled
• 43:48
  Speaker 5: off a stunning upset over Alex Bindman in the primary
• 43:51
  Speaker 5: in August. You're going to be hearing from Nixon on
• 43:53
  Speaker 5: the Friday show, but we want to play a clip
• 43:55
  Speaker 5: of her responding to J.D. Vance after the vice president
• 43:58
  Speaker 5: went to Florida, said Nixon's views, quote, don't belong in America.
• 44:02
  Speaker 5: and suggested people like her should leave the country.
• 44:05
  Speaker 10: My lived experiences are why I do what I do.
• 44:10
  Speaker 5: My dad.
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: Why do you get so emotional?
• 44:13
  Speaker 10: I get so emotional because I don't like to see
• 44:16
  Speaker 10: people struggling the way I struggled. I grew up in
• 44:20
  Speaker 10: a house filled with domestic violence. And I left my
• 44:24
  Speaker 10: mom at a very young age during a moment when
• 44:28
  Speaker 10: she was under attack by my dad. And because of that,
• 44:34
  Speaker 10: I run towards bullies. I will never leave people when
• 44:37
  Speaker 10: they are being attacked, facing oppression, being harmed. That's what
• 44:44
  Speaker 10: drives me. And look, Jim, you got me crying on TV.
• 44:49
  Speaker 10: I'm supposed to be the strong black woman, you know,
• 44:52
  Speaker 10: but like that's why I fight. That's why I fight.
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: That's great. Great answer. It stopped me in my track.
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: I saw that yesterday.
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: A great politician talks about who they are, where they
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: come from, and how their bio informs the things they
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: care about and fight for. And I'm like, at a
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: moment when everyone hates politics, they're furious about the cost
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: of living, they don't believe anyone gets it or gives
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: a shit, to see her that emotional talking about the why,
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: I thought was really powerful and hopefully can cut through
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: in a way that usually interviews own.
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Why do you guys think her.
• 45:27
  Speaker 5: Race hasn't gotten more attention so far. There have been
• 45:30
  Speaker 5: some calls from folks on the left, like why, you know,
• 45:34
  Speaker 5: they're going into Kansas, the Democrats. Why aren't they trying
• 45:37
  Speaker 5: to save Florida? Bernie Sanders did pledge $ 250, 000.
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: I mean, come on, Bernie. Like 250 grand is nothing.
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: But this is the problem. Florida is, first of all,
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: people think that Florida is gone given demographic shifts recently.
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: That's very likely wrong given the Latino vote shift we're seeing.
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: But like that's the conventional wisdom. They also had a
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: pretty late primary election. Um, Florida is crazy expensive. It's
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: just a really, really expensive state to run. And so like,
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: look good for Bernie for giving 250 grand. It's more
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: than I guess others have, but, um, it's going to
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: take a lot more than that.
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 46:09
  Speaker 7: So I feel like there's been this idea that, Oh, like, Oh,
• 46:11
  Speaker 7: people aren't getting behind Angie Nixon because she's the candidate
• 46:14
  Speaker 7: of the left.
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: And maybe that's part of it.
• 46:16
  Speaker 7: But I do think to Tommy's point, I think we
• 46:19
  Speaker 7: have maybe over-learned We used to hope that Florida would
• 46:25
  Speaker 7: go for a Democrat, and then we felt like it
• 46:27
  Speaker 7: became Lucy with the football, and maybe we've over-learned that lesson.
• 46:29
  Speaker 7: If you go back and look, like, you know, Bill Nelson,
• 46:32
  Speaker 7: the incumbent senator, he's winning by, like, huge, huge margins,
• 46:35
  Speaker 7: 20-point margins. And then he's winning by 10, and then
• 46:38
  Speaker 7: he's losing.
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: To Rick Scott.
• 46:40
  Speaker 7: We've just seen also the ways in which, like, Florida
• 46:42
  Speaker 7: just hasn't moved up and down in the same way
• 46:45
  Speaker 7: that other states have. It's been more static. And I
• 46:47
  Speaker 7: think there's a... whether it's based in actual data or
• 46:50
  Speaker 7: just historic experience, like data on this election, that Hispanics
• 46:55
  Speaker 7: in Florida being more Cuban and being more Republican may
• 46:58
  Speaker 7: mean they don't move the same way the others do.
• 47:00
  Speaker 7: And the polling, which is, you know, if you're going
• 47:03
  Speaker 7: to view Florida as a place where we should be
• 47:04
  Speaker 7: investing in, well, that would also apply to a state
• 47:07
  Speaker 7: like South Carolina. The polls coming out of Nebraska and
• 47:10
  Speaker 7: Kansas have actually been closer than some of the polls
• 47:12
  Speaker 7: in Florida, but.
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: Also Florida is not well polled.
• 47:15
  Speaker 7: And I think part of this is just Angie Nixon
• 47:17
  Speaker 7: is an extraordinary candidate doing something really interesting and is
• 47:19
  Speaker 7: super compelling.
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: And so maybe there is something that we're missing. Yeah.
• 47:23
  Speaker 5: The polling average has Ashley Moody ahead roughly five to
• 47:27
  Speaker 5: six points. The other thing, like we've watched over the years,
• 47:32
  Speaker 5: as you said, like Democrats, you know, winning by less
• 47:35
  Speaker 5: and then finally losing in Florida. Also, the registration advantage
• 47:39
  Speaker 5: has just now it's a the Republicans have a 1.5
• 47:42
  Speaker 5: million voter registration advantage in Florida. which is just enormous
• 47:47
  Speaker 5: right now. It's not insurmountable, but it's... And I think
• 47:49
  Speaker 5: you're right, Tommy. It's a late primary. Also, Ashley Moody,
• 47:53
  Speaker 5: people don't really know who she is. She's not like
• 47:55
  Speaker 5: a Ken Paxton character. And I think Angie Nixon's a
• 47:59
  Speaker 5: fantastic candidate, very inspiring. And she says she's not DSA anymore,
• 48:04
  Speaker 5: but just the fact that she was DSA at one point,
• 48:07
  Speaker 5: I think that's a harder thing in Florida than other places.
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, look, Obama won... Florida in 2008 won by a
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: little less in 2012. Then Clinton lost by like a
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: point and change in 2016. Biden lost by three points
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: and change in 2020. And then Harris lost by about
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: 13 points in 2024. So there is just the perception
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: that it's swinging away from us. And also, I think
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: COVID exacerbated the demographic changes That made it even more
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: MAGA and Ron DeSantis is doing everything he can to
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: suppress votes and strip people.
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: Off the rolls.
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: So it's just like, it's a tough, tough state. If
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: we had unlimited money, I would pour money into Florida.
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: I think that there's just, unfortunately, like resource allocation questions
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: are very tough and people are doing the best they can.
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: I do hope that some late money goes to her
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: because she's incredibly compelling.
• 48:53
  Speaker 5: I'm also interested to see what happens in some of
• 48:55
  Speaker 5: these house races in Florida because these are some of
• 48:56
  Speaker 5: the districts where I think at the beginning of the cycle,
• 48:59
  Speaker 5: people were like, I don't know if we can get this,
• 49:01
  Speaker 5: but now.
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: Um, their Republicans are pretty nervous about quite a few
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: of them.
• 49:06
  Speaker 8: Okay.
• 49:06
  Speaker 5: Quick update on how Republicans are using your tax dollars
• 49:08
  Speaker 5: to enrich their pals. Uh, you may remember that when
• 49:11
  Speaker 5: Kristi Noem was running Homeland Security, the department awarded a
• 49:14
  Speaker 5: $ 464 million no-bid contract to buy 10 used planes that
• 49:20
  Speaker 5: were supposedly urgently needed for deportation flights, but then spent
• 49:23
  Speaker 5: months parked in Louisiana.
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: So that was a good use of money.
• 49:26
  Speaker 5: Well, the New York Times just published a truly mind-boggling
• 49:29
  Speaker 5: report about how in Noem's final hours on the job,
• 49:33
  Speaker 5: she reportedly approved the purchase of two Gulfstreams for $ 106
• 49:38
  Speaker 5: million and three luxury jets for more than $ 200 million,
• 49:43
  Speaker 5: including the one the department had been leasing for her
• 49:46
  Speaker 5: that has a private bedroom in the back where Noam
• 49:49
  Speaker 5: and Corey Lewandowski could have meetings that did not involve sex.
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: DHS purchased the.
• 49:54
  Speaker 5: Five planes at a noticeable markup from a company whose
• 49:58
  Speaker 5: chairman happened to donate $ 10, 000 to a pro-Noam super PAC
• 50:01
  Speaker 5: in 2024 and received a total of around $ 900 million
• 50:08
  Speaker 5: worth of DHS contracts while known as secretary. First time
• 50:12
  Speaker 5: that company ever won a federal contract.
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: How about that, huh?
• 50:17
  Speaker 7: It's honestly, the staggering thing is 10,000 is not enough.
• 50:21
  Speaker 7: It just doesn't make sense.
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: It's such old school corruption that.
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: I felt like I was reading it through like an
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: Instagram filter, like a sepia or something, you know?
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: It's just like- News from the front.
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: DHS buys planes from its owner. And inflated prices literally
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: on Noam's last day in office. It's about as subtle
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: as her husband's brassiere.
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: Did she really think no one would notice this?
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: How much did she owe this donor that she would
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: do something this brazenly illegal? Also, even if they got
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: a deal on these planes, you're telling me we need
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: a Gulfstream to deport?
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: Migrants or like a 737 with a stand-up bar, two bedrooms?
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: It's all ludicrous.
• 51:03
  Speaker 7: It's a big purchase. You're leaving that day. You're like, hey,
• 51:07
  Speaker 7: by the way, I think we should sign this. But obviously,
• 51:09
  Speaker 7: given that I've been kicked out of this place unceremoniously
• 51:13
  Speaker 7: and you're about to be in charge, I'll leave the
• 51:15
  Speaker 7: decision up to you.
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: But I actually think it's a good deal.
• 51:17
  Speaker 7: It's ludicrous to imagine that kind of a discussion in
• 51:21
  Speaker 7: this environment.
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: But of course, it's absurd.
• 51:24
  Speaker 5: I was most surprised that she issued like this strenuous
• 51:29
  Speaker 5: objection in the story and like demanded a retraction and
• 51:32
  Speaker 5: is trying to say like, you know, it was a,
• 51:34
  Speaker 5: it didn't have anything that the super PAC wasn't really
• 51:36
  Speaker 5: connected to me and it wasn't for me. And I'll like,
• 51:39
  Speaker 5: it made me think I'm like, Oh, she thinks she
• 51:41
  Speaker 5: really thinks she has like a political career ahead of
• 51:43
  Speaker 5: her still.
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: Oh, she'd run for president.
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
• 51:45
  Speaker 7: I don't think anybody that I think that there's a,
• 51:47
  Speaker 7: there's a, you know, the delusion is about evident with
• 51:50
  Speaker 7: eyes for those with eyes to see.
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: It's just why after, after everything.
• 51:53
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 51:55
  Speaker 5: After all that we've seen from her since her ignominious departure.
• 51:59
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: It's just so brazen.
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: I mean, like, they bought one of the planes, they
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: bought it for $ 108 million. It had been purchased for
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: $ 90 million, like, a few months earlier. They bought a
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: couple planes for $ 45 million each. They had a bunch
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: of experts saying that each plane should be valued between
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: $ 15 and $ 30. Like, the markups were steep and obvious
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: and glaring. And it just really makes you wonder what
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: happened there.
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Oversights. The truth makes sense, and this still doesn't
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: make sense. Oversight hearings, people. Well, now her and Corey
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: can go find their own plane somewhere. Yeah, that's right. Southwest.
• 52:31
  Speaker 5: One last thing before Tommy's interview with Gina Hinojosa. Campaigning
• 52:35
  Speaker 5: with Donald Trump over the weekend, Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek
• 52:38
  Speaker 5: Ramaswamy showed that his athletic prowess extends beyond tennis and
• 52:42
  Speaker 5: baseball to weightlifting.
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: Big guy. I missed that part.
• 52:52
  Speaker 5: For those of you who are listening and not watching,
• 52:54
  Speaker 5: that was Vivek trying and failing to pick up a child,
• 52:57
  Speaker 5: almost dropping a child.
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: What do you think? Better or worse than the batting
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: cage thing? Oh, tough one.
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: Part of me had sympathy for him because if you've
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: ever picked up a kid and the kid kind of
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: goes like dead fish on you, it's really hard to
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: hold them because you don't want to squeeze too hard.
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: But the kid is 10.
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: Why are you picking up someone else's 10-year-old on stage?
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: That's weird. You don't need to do that. Yeah.
• 53:19
  Speaker 5: And just don't touch the kid don't touch the kid
• 53:21
  Speaker 5: don't drop him for sure dropping a kid on an
• 53:24
  Speaker 5: event is tough yeah that's a tough one no candidate
• 53:27
  Speaker 5: it's like you're kissing babies and it's like and don't
• 53:30
  Speaker 5: drop him though.
• 53:31
  Speaker 7: Remember when Bill de Blasio killed that Bill de Blasio
• 53:33
  Speaker 7: killed that hedgehog yes yeah was it a hedgehog groundhog
• 53:37
  Speaker 7: he dropped that groundhog from a great height because he
• 53:39
  Speaker 7: was a gargantuan and it fell and then a couple
• 53:41
  Speaker 7: days later no more groundhog that was the it was the.
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: Groundhog the final winter there's winter right yeah and then
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: dead Oops.
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: That's when the White Walkers came. Yeah, but yeah, the
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: lifting of the kids. You know, it's funny.
• 53:54
  Speaker 7: I do think, just to answer your question, I think
• 53:56
  Speaker 7: the baseball one was worse because that was self-inflicted in
• 53:59
  Speaker 7: a video they released and was about how much he
• 54:01
  Speaker 7: was going to do and how much of a guy
• 54:03
  Speaker 7: he was going to be. But then he was hitting
• 54:05
  Speaker 7: those balls the way that he was hitting those balls.
• 54:06
  Speaker 7: And I was like, there's something not right.
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: It's sweaty. The whole thing's sweaty.
• 54:11
  Speaker 5: I mean, so far, of course, things could be different
• 54:13
  Speaker 5: on the ground in Ohio. But so far, every clip,
• 54:16
  Speaker 5: that has come out from the Vivek Ramaswamy campaign since
• 54:19
  Speaker 5: he has been campaigning for governor has been embarrassing.
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he's an embarrassing person.
• 54:23
  Speaker 5: In like a way that sort of breaks beyond partisan
• 54:25
  Speaker 5: politics embarrassing, you know?
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, like I was on his campaign bus with
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: him in Iowa. He's a repellent person.
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: I don't know how else to say it. He's not
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: the person you want to spend time with.
• 54:37
  Speaker 7: It is the beautiful thing that as much as they
• 54:39
  Speaker 7: try to like undermine democracy and there's right-wing propaganda, like
• 54:42
  Speaker 7: politics still reveals people that can't help it. Like I
• 54:44
  Speaker 7: was like, we have like Vance, you know, Angie Nixon
• 54:48
  Speaker 7: going at Vance in this really kind of earnest way.
• 54:50
  Speaker 7: Like people have been calling Trump a bully forever.
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: He's a bully. He's a bully. He's a bully.
• 54:54
  Speaker 7: It never quite works because Trump in a weird way
• 54:55
  Speaker 7: is a bully you root for who knows why, but
• 54:57
  Speaker 7: that's why. And Vance is a bully you root against
• 55:00
  Speaker 7: like the vague, like Is it because he dropped the kid?
• 55:02
  Speaker 7: Is it because he's.
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: Bad at baseball? No, he just.
• 55:04
  Speaker 5: Can't even call him a bully.
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: He's just a fucking nerd. No, no, no.
• 55:07
  Speaker 7: He just doesn't feel like he's real. He feels like
• 55:10
  Speaker 7: he's doing... He's trying to figure out how to talk
• 55:13
  Speaker 7: to people. He feels out of place. Yeah, for sure.
• 55:16
  Speaker 7: Unsettled by the idea of engaging in these ways.
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, just like that poor kid. That kid's face is
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: so funny. He's like... Going up. Down I go. Has
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: anyone landed an interview with that kid?
• 55:25
  Speaker 5: What?
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: No, he's been deported. I heard 60 Minutes exclusive. I
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: got it. With Ross Dobbins. Are you the Antichrist?
• 55:35
  Speaker 4: All right.
• 55:36
  Speaker 5: When we come back, Gina Hinojosa. Right now, every Mint
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• 56:52
  Speaker 2: Speed and coverage vary. See mintmobile.com. My guest today is
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: running to be the next governor of Texas. Gina Hinojosa,
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: great to see you.
• 57:03
  Speaker 3: It's great to be with you.
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: Thank you for being in LA.
• 57:05
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: We were just down in Texas for the trip fest.
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: The vibes on the ground were very good. People were
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: very excited about your race, about Tallarico. There's been a
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: bunch of great polls out of Texas lately for you,
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: for Tallarico, for congressional candidates, right? But a lot of
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: Democrats inside, we like to feel scared and sad. They
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: feel like their hearts have been broken by Texas before.
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: Why is this year different?
• 57:30
  Speaker 3: Because we're winning already.
• 57:32
  Speaker 9: We're winning all over the state where we haven't won
• 57:34
  Speaker 9: in a long time, sometimes ever. Tarrick County was the
• 57:37
  Speaker 9: race that caught people internationally by surprise, where we swung
• 57:42
  Speaker 9: a state Senate seat in the county that's supposed to
• 57:44
  Speaker 9: be the most Republican county in the country.
• 57:47
  Speaker 3: We swung it. 31 points to elect a Democrat.
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: 31 points?
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: 31.
• 57:51
  Speaker 6: Okay.
• 57:52
  Speaker 3: And that's Fort Worth? That's Fort Worth, yes. So it's
• 57:55
  Speaker 3: the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
• 57:57
  Speaker 9: This is the county where Steve Bannon said, as goes
• 57:59
  Speaker 9: Tarrant County, so goes Texas, so goes the nation, right?
• 58:02
  Speaker 9: He had embedded himself the month before that election, and
• 58:05
  Speaker 9: he said it. And it is the one thing I
• 58:08
  Speaker 9: agree with Steve Bannon on.
• 58:10
  Speaker 3: It happens to be a real bellwether for this election.
• 58:15
  Speaker 9: Taylor Ramet got 79% of the Latino vote. That's astounding
• 58:21
  Speaker 9: to me.
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: It's a massive, massive. Isn't that a massive? Yeah.
• 58:24
  Speaker 9: And look, people just want change. In 2026, people are
• 58:28
  Speaker 9: struggling in this high-cost economy in a way I haven't
• 58:30
  Speaker 9: seen ever. And I'm born and raised in Texas. And
• 58:34
  Speaker 9: they know who's been in charge. And they don't want
• 58:37
  Speaker 9: it anymore.
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: So folks are listening. They're smoking the hopium. They're reading
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: all the New York Times polls. Their fingers are above
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: the ActBlue, right? They're about to donate to click to you.
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: What's your path to victory? How do you stitch together
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: a coalition in Texas that wins?
• 58:52
  Speaker 2: What does that look like?
• 58:53
  Speaker 3: So first, do it.
• 58:55
  Speaker 9: Punch that ActBlue button because we're going to win. Listen,
• 58:59
  Speaker 9: what has happened is it is doing better everywhere. It
• 59:03
  Speaker 9: is not just one key group. It is all key groups, right?
• 59:07
  Speaker 9: So we can't be losing so bad in rural Texas.
• 59:10
  Speaker 9: And the data center issue has blown up in Texas.
• 59:14
  Speaker 9: And nobody is fighting back against data centers as hard
• 59:16
  Speaker 9: as MAGA, frankly, because the data centers have really descended
• 59:20
  Speaker 9: onto rural Texas because they were invited in by Greg
• 59:23
  Speaker 9: Abbott with the richest tax breaks in the country.
• 59:27
  Speaker 3: And they are hitting people at home, literally.
• 59:31
  Speaker 9: They're also the in-our-face example of a governor doing the
• 59:36
  Speaker 9: bidding of the moneyed interests and leaving Texans to fend
• 59:39
  Speaker 9: for themselves. So we create this distrust that the base
• 59:44
  Speaker 9: feels against Greg Abbott. So if you look at Republican
• 59:48
  Speaker 9: Texas Twitter, they're arguing amongst themselves about whether or not
• 59:54
  Speaker 9: to vote for Greg Abbott.
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: Interesting.
• 59:55
  Speaker 3: Isn't that interesting?
• 59:56
  Speaker 9: So We've got to do better in rural Texas because
• 59:58
  Speaker 9: of data centers and, by the way, because of public
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 9: schools because public schools are really struggling.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 3: Greg Abbott sold out.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: I want to ask you more about that because of
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: his donor's bidding, right?
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 3: Yes, that's right.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 9: He sold out public schools, and rural Texas loves public schools.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 3: Texans love public schools.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 9: So we have to not lose so bad in rural Texas.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 9: We have to do better with suburban women, and suburban
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 9: women are big mad about public schools as well because
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 9: our schools are in crisis in Texas. We have to
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 9: run up the score in urban areas, and people are voting.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 9: I will say young people especially are tuned in.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 3: They're back, thank God.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 9: A lot of people sat out last election cycle. They
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 9: did not like the whole thing happening at the top
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 9: of the ticket with Biden running, first of all, then
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 9: stepping out down at the last minute and Kamala running.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 9: It just didn't inspire confidence, and all Democrats got punished.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 9: And young people, I think especially, were turned off. But
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 9: what we saw in the primaries is young people are
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 9: back in a big way. And then Latinos. Trump won
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 9: Latinos in Texas. Trump won the Rio Grande Valley, where
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 9: I am from.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 3: That's the border. That's the southernmost tip of Texas. That's
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 3: where I launched. And we keep going back.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 9: And we're seeing the polling is showing what we're seeing
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 9: on the ground and feeling on the ground.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 3: And that's that we're winning Latinos by double digits. So
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 3: all of.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 9: It really is because This high-cost economy has people rejecting
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 9: status quo politics. And there is this anti-incumbency energy in Texas,
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 9: and there's no more entrenched incumbent than Greg Abbott. He's
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 9: been there 12 years. He's been in statewide office 30 years, right?
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 9: People know him. They know who's been in charge. They
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 9: lay the blame for this high-cost economy where it belongs
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 9: at his feet.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: There's really no one else to blame in Texas.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: I mean, who could you possibly blame.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: Besides the Republican Party if you're frustrated with governance of
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: the state in the last couple of decades.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 3: And this is true.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 9: And I think what is new about this campaign cycle
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 9: is that not only are we saying that, we are
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 9: saying the reason why is because they are bought and
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 9: paid for by the billionaires, by the billionaire CEOs who
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 9: run these multinational corporations. That is who is driving policy
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 9: in Texas. It is why it is harder to make
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 9: it in Texas than it was 12 years ago before
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 9: Greg Abbott. It is why we pay more and we
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 9: get less. And again, these data centers are like the
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 9: interface example of it.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: I want to ask you a little more about the
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: Latino vote.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: Because obviously, Latino voters don't vote as a bloc. It's
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: not monolithic.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: Like a Mexican-American living on the border in El Paso
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: probably has very different views and lived experience than a
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: Cuban-American living in Miami, right? But we've seen huge swings
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: in Latino voters from Republican to Democrat, or at least against,
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: away from Trump. NBC and Telemundo have a poll out
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: today with Trump's approval rating among Latino voters at 27%.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: That is like rock bottom.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: What do you think is driving that? And then I
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: guess more importantly, like how do we Democrats win them back?
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Because you have to earn those votes.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 3: Again, the high cost economy is driving that.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 9: I mean, Latinos are voting their pocketbook as much, if
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 9: not more than anyone else, right? It's probably the swingiest,
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 9: demographics politically. And so the economy really does impact their
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 9: turnout and who they're supporting. They thought Trump would be
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 9: good for that. Turns out he wasn't. And people are mad.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 9: It is also these ICE raids that are happening in Texas.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 9: And people, yes, support border security. I support border security.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 9: We all want a secure border. We want to be
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 9: safe in our neighborhoods, right? But What is happening is
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 9: making us less safe. We just had a man shot
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 9: in the back by ICE in Austin a couple weeks ago.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 9: He was a DoorDash delivery driver, right, or Uber Eats,
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 9: one of the two. He had a bullet lodged in
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 9: his back, spent the night on the floor of a
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 9: detention cell with no pain medication.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 3: I haven't even heard of.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 9: Charged murderers being treated like that in modern-day society, in
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 9: modern-day America.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 9: We had the case of a man who was killed
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 9: on his way to work in Houston a couple of
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 9: months ago, and it was a case of mistaken identity, right,
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 9: where they pulled him over in an unmarked car, shot first,
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 9: asked questions later, killed the man, and they got the
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 9: wrong guy. We had a case of two American boys,
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 9: 17 years old, on their way to enlist in the
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 9: Marines in South Texas in the Valley, only to be
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 9: stopped and beaten by ICE. In that environment, Nobody's safe, right?
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 9: Those are the feds run amok. That's ICE run amok.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 9: And Latinos especially feel targeted. And we know now we
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 9: can be racially profiled, right, because of the U.S. Supreme
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 9: Court's decision on that. So people are mad about that.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 9: They're afraid about it. It's impacting the economy too. And
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 9: I think what you're going to see is Latinos are
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 9: going to demonstrate their displeasure both with the economy and
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 9: also at being targeted by these ICE raids.
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: I was talking to somebody who had worked in Texas
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: in politics for a long time. I think what Democrats misread,
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: according to this person, was, again, this idea that Latino
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: voters are a monolith.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: They're like, a lot of Latino.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: Communities who live along the border, these are people that
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: are more likely to hunt and fish and have a
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: gun in the car or have family or friends who
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: work for Border Patrol and to have been frustrated and
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: to have felt the impact of the border issue getting
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: out of control during the Biden administration in their own communities, right?
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: The fact that there has been such a shift despite
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: the conservatism and despite the fact that the previous immigration
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: policies actually impacted their communities more than, say, someone in
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: Pennsylvania or whatever it is, is interesting. I think it
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: speaks to just how badly the ICE raids have blown
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: up in their faces.
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 3: It is scary. People are scared.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 9: People show up at my rallies afraid. Tell me, that
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 9: they're afraid. You know, they're afraid for their family members.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 9: They're afraid for themselves.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 3: And I do think it will be a motivating factor
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 3: in turnout this year.
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about education policy because Greg Abbott is
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: a big supporter of vouchers, right? I believe he has
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: some really big donors like Jeff Gass, one of the
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: money people behind TikTok who are supporters of voucher schools.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: It sounds like the, you know, it's really decimated public
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: schools in the state.
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: Like, Lots are closing.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: Lots of kids are going to school only four days
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: a week. Can you tell us about the impact of
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: those funding decisions by Abbott and how it has helped
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: you reach conservatives who probably don't agree with you on
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: a lot.
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 2: Of other stuff? Yeah.
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 9: Our schools are really just hanging on by a thread
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 9: in Texas right now. We have over 150 school districts
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 9: operating at four days a week because they can't afford
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 9: to operate at five days a week. We have had
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 9: a teacher exodus where Teachers have walked away.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 3: We have the teachers. They just don't want to work
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 3: in our public schools anymore. They're not respected. They're not paid.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 9: We have school closures happening all over the state. And
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 9: now we have this billion-dollar voucher program, the largest when
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 9: it was passed last year, largest in the country, that
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 9: is expected to double in size. And if the wait
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 9: list is funded the way Republican leadership is saying they
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 9: want it funded, it becomes $ 4 billion, right? There's no
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 9: surviving that. There's no surviving that for our neighborhood public schools.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 9: There's no surviving that for a teacher retirement system. You're
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 9: paying teachers who weren't paying into the system at that
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 9: point $ 4 billion. That's just not going to work. So yeah,
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 9: people are mad about that. And public schools have been
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 9: a space that has been bipartisan for For as long
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 9: as I can remember, it is Friday night lights. It
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 9: is enshrined in our Texas Constitution as being essential to
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 9: our liberties, right? It is foundational to who we are
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 9: as Texans. And so we hadn't had a governor in
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 9: modern history be pro-voucher, turn his back on public schools.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 9: Greg Abbott won't even step inside a public school in Texas.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 9: So anti-Texan, right? So people are mad about it. I
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 9: have Republican superintendents coming out publicly saying, I don't care
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 9: about the repercussions. I'm with you and I'll say it
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 9: to whoever will listen. I have football coaches coming out
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 9: working for me, right? Republicans, I've always voted Republican. I
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 9: have MAGA moms who are with me because they believe
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 9: this is our last chance to save Texas public schools.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 9: They don't believe and I don't believe our public schools
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 9: survive four more years of Greg Abbott. So those are
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 9: the stakes in this election.
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 3: We've launched.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 9: TeamTexasPublicSchools.com. It's an organizing effort to organize your own school community.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 9: It's not coded Democrat because, again, we have a lot
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 9: of Republican and independent supporters who love their public schools.
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 9: And these suburban moms, parents, people who move to the
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 9: suburbs for public schools are are really angry about what's
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 9: happened in particular.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: And then you mentioned the data centers too.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: I mean, again, I think Abbott was one of the
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: many politicians that were offering tax breaks to get these
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: massive data centers to come to their communities. The politics
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: have changed rapidly. Can you tell us about the break
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: ranks movement? And again, these like very conservative groups of
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: people that I think you've sat down with, you've- you know,
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: you've created like videos with and they've come out and
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: endorsed you because of data centers. Like tell us more
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: about how like challenging these data centers are for these
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: people in their communities.
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: So it's terrible.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 9: I mean, there are just no protections against the data
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 9: centers in rural Texas, really any part of Texas. So yes,
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 9: Greg Abbott invited them in with 20 year tax breaks.
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 9: So they don't pay any sales tax.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: No taxes for 20 years.
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 3: No, no sales.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 9: Tax on the electricity they consume and they consume a
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 9: ton of electricity, right?
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 2: Your grid is famously perfect in Texas. Right.
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 3: So people are real concerned about grid.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 9: Our electricity prices have skyrocketed under Greg Abbott because of
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 9: the winter storm in 21 when gas companies withheld the
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 9: gas that the grid needed until they could make billions
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 9: in record profits. And Abbott then got famously a million-dollar
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 9: check from one of those gas company CEOs after he
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 9: let that happen. And so now we're all paying for
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 9: those profits. So our– electricity prices have skyrocketed at least $ 40,
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 9: but probably more a month since then. And now with
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 9: data centers, even more because of all the infrastructure that's
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 9: needed for the data centers. But to give you an example,
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 9: I was in the Panhandle, and I met with some people,
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 9: and that's where the largest data center in the world
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 9: is being built. It's called Project Matador. I didn't even
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 9: know this until I got there. It is on state land.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 9: And The largest, one of the largest investors is Rick Perry,
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 9: our former governor, and his son.
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 2: Fun. Right.
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 9: So this is like in-your-face grift, right? It's one big grift.
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 9: When people from that community found out that the municipal
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 9: water authority had a contract with the world's largest data
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 9: center to provide the water in the panhandle where they
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 9: struggle with drought, when they asked the question, what happens
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 9: if there's not enough water for us and the data center?
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 9: They were told, they say they were told Well, because
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 9: we have a legal obligation to the data center through contract,
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 9: we will shut off the residents first.
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 2: So you just die of thirst, I guess, if you
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 2: live there?
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 3: Isn't that crazy?
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 2: You don't get to shower?
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 3: Isn't that crazy?
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 2: Also, why do they have code names? Why does it
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 2: say Project Matador?
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 9: They're trying to make it sound cool. They put big
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 9: money into marketing it, actually. They have ads. So they're
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 9: trying to.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 3: get people on their side, but people see these ads
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 3: and they're like, this is sus, right?
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 9: They don't like it. It was called at some point
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 9: like the Trump data center. I mean, they've tried all
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 9: sorts of things with this data center.
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 3: But it's not just that.
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 9: When I was in, yeah, I was in Granbury where
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 9: I showed up to talk to people fighting a data center.
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 9: I didn't even know they had done this, but they
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 9: were wearing these t-shirts that said break ranks. And I
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 9: was like, just curious, what's up with your t-shirt?
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 3: What does that mean? I really did not know.
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 9: And they said, oh, you didn't know? We're not voting
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 9: for Republicans. We're not voting for Greg Abbott. We're voting
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 9: for you. They had t-shirts. Like it was a movement started.
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 9: I was in Red Oak, Texas, outside of Dallas. They
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 9: have seven data centers moving into what is a rural neighborhood.
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 9: And I was sitting in a living room surrounded by MAGA.
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 9: And they were so mad at Greg Abbott because they
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 9: knew he had sold them out. And it caused them
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 9: to be what I call Gina curious. They were like, okay,
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 9: what are you about? What do you think about Sharia law?
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 9: They want to talk to me about culture wars. They
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 9: want to talk to me like, what do you think
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 9: about constitutional carry? I said, well, what you call constitutional carry,
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 9: I call permitless carry. And I voted against that bill.
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 9: And I believe we should have background checks. But also,
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 9: can we agree that as we've been fighting these culture wars,
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 9: these last 10 years, the only people who have won
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 9: are like 15 billionaire tech dudes who have amassed all
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 9: our power, political power, our money, all our data, and
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 9: are about to blow up the world if we don't
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 9: come together fast to save ourselves. And when you see that,
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 9: when you see that all these issues have been used
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 9: against us to divide us and that the only way
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 9: we're going to save ourselves is to come together, like
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 9: you can't unsee it. They stood with me in a
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 9: press conference yesterday. me supporting their fight against the data center.
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 9: They were supporting me in my run for governor. So
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 9: I think that is the opportunity. The opportunity is for
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 9: Democrats to call out the grift and to say the
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 9: reason you're struggling more, they're telling you it's this different subgroup,
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 9: this different category of Texan who is unlike you. The
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 9: real reason is because they have sold us out, all
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 9: of us out to billionaire CEOs.
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 3: And that is the truth.
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is truth.
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: And for those wondering, why did they bring up Sharia law?
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: I think Steve Bannon was behind a big ballot initiative.
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: I think outlawing Sharia law in Texas, because as far
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: as I can tell, that's something that's on the horizon.
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 9: Well, you know, I mean, I said, well, look, I
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 9: don't really know about that. And they're like, well, you
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 9: need to learn. I said, okay, I will learn. But
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 9: I'm not for that. I'm for Texas law and I'm
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 9: for American law, right? Like this is, we're in Texas.
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 3: This is America. This is the law we have. And then,
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 3: but I... I engaged with them in it. And I said, look,
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 3: this is what I'm afraid of.
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 9: I said, I'm not for Sharia law, but I'm afraid
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 9: that Muslims who are like contributing members of our society,
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 9: of our state, who are good people are being painted
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 9: with this Sharia law thing. They don't even know what
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 9: it is. And I don't want them to be discriminated against.
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 9: And when I said that, the response was, we don't
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 9: mean that. And so I thought it was interesting because
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 9: I did really feel like it was a privilege to
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 9: be engaged.
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 3: With as a Democrat on this issue.
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 9: It's not something that I had outside of school context
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 9: because I've had these same kind of interactions with Republican
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 9: MAGA moms who agree with me on public schools, back
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 9: to basics, good teacher in the classroom, right? And they
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 9: want to then explore the culture war space. I've had
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 9: that experience. But outside of the school sphere of policy,
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 9: I had not had that experience. And I do— feel
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 9: like it is a privilege and an honor to be
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 9: able to sit down and agree to disagree in that space.
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 3: It's okay.
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is okay. Interesting.
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's a story about the information
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: silos we all live in and how you can get
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: whipped up about Sharia law coming to Texas when obviously
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: that's not going to be a problem, but also how
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: pissed off people are about these data centers if that
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: has gotten to the point where they can build a
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: bridge and have a conversation with someone given what they probably.
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 2: Believe about other stuff. So last question for you.
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: A lot of friends of mine in the Democratic Party
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: operative or consulting campaign world are frustrated right now because
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: they feel like this is a historic opportunity, this election cycle.
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 2: But the results might be blunted because of the Republican
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 2: spending advantage.
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: Some of the Senate races are getting a lot of attention,
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: but governor's races, down-ballot races, are just not getting the
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: time or money or focus. I know there's been pressure
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: on the DGA, the Democratic Governors Association, to spend more
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: in your race. Do you feel that frustration? And like, again,
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: what's your message to like the mega donors or others listening?
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: We're wondering like, okay, I felt like my money was
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: lit on fire in 2024.
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 2: So I'm pissed.
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: Why would I give again? None of us can guarantee
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: a victory, right? Like how do you sell them on
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: some hope?
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 3: Well, look, it is the evidence before our eyes.
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 9: Greg Abbott had never had a poll showing him losing
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 9: ever when he had run for governor. He's got three
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 9: in three weeks by like the Marist, Siena poll, like,
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 9: And New York Times, like big name, reputable pollsters showing,
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 9: I am beating Greg Abbott. There's not been a poll
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 9: in 12 weeks, two months that shows this isn't within
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 9: the margin of error. This election cycle, everybody knows, is
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 9: going to be an opportunity of a generation. And yes,
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 9: to play in Texas is to play at the high
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 9: rollers table.
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 3: Absolutely.
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 9: There is a big, hefty price of admission to play.
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 9: But it's because the payout is so big. And we
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 9: have been dealt a phenomenal hand, by the way. And, like,
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 9: if we're not playing at the high rollers table in 2026,
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 9: what are we even doing as Democrats in this country? Like,
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 9: this is a chance, really, to make gains that will
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 9: have reverberations, protections for a generation, right? We know they're
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 9: going to try to redistrict next year. Mm-hmm. We know
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 9: they'll eliminate five Democrats from Congress when they do. We
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 9: know two years later, a census will say Texas gets
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 9: another four to five congressional seats. That's another four to
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 9: five seats. If they're in power, it's up to 10 Democratic.
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 3: Seats off the table.
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 9: There's no Democratic control of Congress when that happens.
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 3: This election cycle is an anomaly.
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 9: In a normal election cycle, 10 seats off the table
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 9: means no Democratic control, right? Texas becomes too big. The
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 9: math no longer works. A governor in Texas... who will
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 9: veto rigged maps, whether they're rigged for Republicans or Democrats,
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 9: is a governor who can save the union.
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 3: Those are the stakes in 2026.
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 9: I will be that governor. And Greg Abbott spent $ 80
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 9: million in paid communications in this campaign. I've spent $ 7
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 9: We have demonstrated we do not have to spend dollar
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 9: for dollar. We need to spend enough to tell people
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 9: who I am, what I'm about. The polling shows 20%
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 9: of the electorate still doesn't know who I am.
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 3: We're on broadcast TV. Yeah, it's expensive in Texas.
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 9: But again, the stakes are high and the payout is higher.
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 9: And so, yeah, the time is right to invest in Texas.
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: A lot of people I've talked to have said you
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: are running dollar for dollar the best campaign in all
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: of Texas.
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 2: We just got to make sure you have the dollars. Ginafortexas.com.
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 2: That's it. Go, donate, volunteer, get involved.
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 4: Please.
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 2: Thank you for coming by.
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 3: Thank you so much, Tommy.
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 2: Please win.
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 6: Yes.
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 2: We need you out there.
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 2: I don't want this Rita String thing. That sounds terrible.
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 3: It's a bad thing.
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 5: That's our show for today.
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 2: Thanks.
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 7: I want to apologize for my joke about the kid
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 7: being deported. For you, it was a break ago, but
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 7: for me, it just happened. I just immediately want to
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 7: say that I think we can leave it in.
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 2: He's not listening. I'm sorry.
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 7: I mean, yeah, the kid's not listening, but the people listening,
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 7: I know it was wrong, and I'm sorry.
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 5: That's our show for today. Thanks, Gina Hinojosa, for coming on.
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 5: Sorry to the kid that Lovett made fun of.
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 2: I didn't make fun of the kid. Okay, okay.
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: Sorry for the— Off-air, Mike, you were saying some— Yeah, yeah.
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sure.
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 5: You were talking about his outfit. Dan and I will
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 5: be back with a new show on Friday. Pod Save
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 5: America is a Crooked Media production. Our show is produced
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 5: by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Farrah Safari,
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 5: with Ree Churlin, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill. Our team
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 5: includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Hethcote, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis, David Tolles,
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• 1:20:27
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