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BONUS: Could Trump Still Lose the Nomination? (Live from New Orleans!) · Pod Save America

0:00
Speaker 1: What's up, New Orleans? Welcome to.
0:19
Speaker 2: Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Tim Miller. I'm
0:29
Speaker 2: Tim Miller.
0:32
Speaker 1: I'm John Lovett.
0:33
Speaker 2: Tommy Vitor.
0:34
Speaker 1: I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
0:38
Speaker 2: We have an outstanding show for you tonight.
0:40
Speaker 3: Your state representative for right here in New Orleans, Mandy
0:43
Speaker 3: Landry is here. Louisiana Public Service Commissioner Devante Lewis is here.
0:51
Speaker 3: And we're so lucky to be joined by our pal, author,
0:57
Speaker 3: bulwark extraordinaire.
0:58
Speaker 2: Local. Local. Local Tim Miller. Yeah, good stuff. All right,
1:05
Speaker 2: let's get to the news. Fresh off a very good
1:08
Speaker 2: election day for Democrats this week. Yeah, talk to that.
1:13
Speaker 3: Joe Biden held a rally at a car plant with
1:15
Speaker 3: United Auto Workers after he became the first president to
1:19
Speaker 3: join a picket line for a strike that led to
1:21
Speaker 3: historic wage increases.
1:25
Speaker 2: I thought Biden had a little extra pep in his
1:27
Speaker 2: step at this rally.
1:29
Speaker 3: He made a few jokes about his age and then
1:31
Speaker 3: went directly after Donald Trump.
1:32
Speaker 2: Well, let's take a listen.
1:34
Speaker 4: I've never been more optimistic about America's future than I
1:36
Speaker 4: am today. And I know I only look like I'm 30,
1:39
Speaker 4: but I've been around a long time. That's not too
1:42
Speaker 4: much to ask.
1:45
Speaker 2: You okay?
1:48
Speaker 4: I want the press to know that wasn't me. But
1:53
Speaker 4: my predecessor, the distinguished... Anyway. But my predecessor was in office.
2:09
Speaker 4: Six factories closed across the country. Tens of thousands of
2:13
Speaker 4: auto jobs were lost nationwide. And on top of that,
2:16
Speaker 4: he was willing to cede the future of electric vehicles
2:18
Speaker 4: to China. He said if America invested in electric vehicles,
2:22
Speaker 4: it would drive down wages. It would destroy jobs. It
2:26
Speaker 4: would spell the end of the American automobile industry. Well,
2:30
Speaker 4: like almost everything else he said, he's wrong.
2:36
Speaker 2: Tim, what'd you think? Good way to handle the age thing?
2:38
Speaker 2: Right way to go after Trump? What do you think?
2:40
Speaker 2: I thought it was pretty good.
2:40
Speaker 5: I noticed you guys didn't show the dance that he
2:42
Speaker 5: tried to do.
2:44
Speaker 2: I didn't see the dance. What dance? It was a
2:46
Speaker 2: little stiff. It was a little stiff on the dance.
2:49
Speaker 5: I don't know about the dance.
2:50
Speaker 3: I was just happy when I saw that that was
2:51
Speaker 3: a UAW t-shirt because at first I was like, is
2:54
Speaker 3: that like a red Jimmy Carter sweater?
2:56
Speaker 2: Then I realized he was wearing a t-shirt. I was like,
2:59
Speaker 2: this is good.
3:00
Speaker 1: They got him on the primo adrenochrome now. That's the
3:03
Speaker 1: good stuff. It's working.
3:04
Speaker 2: Right in the veins, right in that eye vein. I
3:07
Speaker 2: thought it was pretty good.
3:07
Speaker 5: Look, I like all the manufacturing messaging. Here's the thing.
3:11
Speaker 5: This guy, the college-educated whites, hopefully Donald Trump's going to
3:15
Speaker 5: do the job for him on that demo, right? And
3:18
Speaker 5: so he's got to lean into this.
3:19
Speaker 2: That speech wasn't for them.
3:20
Speaker 5: Right, he's got to lean into this, right? And he
3:22
Speaker 5: has to try to.
3:25
Speaker 5: Minimize the gap with working class voters. He's struggling with
3:29
Speaker 5: that across races. He should do this. He needs to
3:32
Speaker 5: live in manufacturing plants. You know that picture of him
3:35
Speaker 5: with Ron DeSantis where he's hugging the biker and DeSantis
3:39
Speaker 5: is in the big boots and he looks sad? That's
3:42
Speaker 5: got to be the whole campaign. Just hang out with
3:44
Speaker 5: bikers and manufacturing dudes and that's the deal.
3:49
Speaker 3: Later he said, when you guys were in the fight,
3:52
Speaker 3: I was here Trump went to a non-union shop and
3:55
Speaker 3: attacked you. Like, I think it's, in addition to a
3:58
Speaker 3: good economic message, it's also him getting on the side
4:02
Speaker 3: of people. Like, I'm for you, Donald Trump doesn't give
4:04
Speaker 3: a shit about you, which I think is a good message,
4:07
Speaker 3: good contrast with Donald Trump, because I think one thing
4:09
Speaker 3: people do believe about Donald Trump is that he only
4:10
Speaker 3: cares about himself.
4:12
Speaker 7: The thing that I found most interesting about this was
4:14
Speaker 7: when he talked about the plants closing under Trump, there's
4:17
Speaker 7: been this big debate in our party, like, how do
4:19
Speaker 7: we narrow the historic gap on the economy that Biden
4:23
Speaker 7: and Democrats face with Trump? Is it highlighting Biden's accomplishments?
4:26
Speaker 7: Is it highlighting the Trump tax cuts for corporations? Is
4:29
Speaker 7: it talking about Republicans cutting Social Security and Medicare? And
4:31
Speaker 7: there was sort of a private Democratic poll circulating earlier
4:34
Speaker 7: this summer that showed that the most effective way to
4:37
Speaker 7: do it was to talk about the plant closings under Trump,
4:41
Speaker 7: and especially the ones where Trump said, I'm going to
4:43
Speaker 7: keep them open, like the Lordstown plant in Ohio, and
4:45
Speaker 7: then it closed anyway. And so it is very notable
4:48
Speaker 7: to me that that polling has clearly made it to
4:49
Speaker 7: the White House, and that Biden is saying that. Because
4:52
Speaker 7: that does sort of get at what people do have
4:55
Speaker 7: concerns about Trump, that he's kind of full of shit,
4:57
Speaker 7: that he was focused on all the wrong things while
5:00
Speaker 7: he was in there. And so that's where the plant
5:02
Speaker 7: closing works better, because you're really trying to navigate this
5:05
Speaker 7: sort of pseudo-businessman image he has, and this gets at
5:10
Speaker 7: what people have actual concerns about him about.
5:13
Speaker 2: Unfortunately for the president, his party's electoral.
5:17
Speaker 3: And policy successes haven't prevented a growing list of potential
5:21
Speaker 3: candidates from weighing primary or independent challenges against Biden. Dean
5:25
Speaker 3: Phillips just hired former advisers to Bernie Sanders and Andrew Yang.
5:30
Speaker 5: And Sarah Palin.
5:32
Speaker 2: And Sarah Palin. Oh, and Steve Schmidt, yeah, of course.
5:33
Speaker 2: Don't forget my buddy Steve. Forgot about that, yeah.
5:36
Speaker 3: The latest New York Times poll has RFK Jr. polling
5:39
Speaker 3: at 25% in the three-way race against Biden and Trump.
5:43
Speaker 3: Now that Cornel West is running as an independent, Jill
5:45
Speaker 3: Stein just announced that she's going to be running for
5:48
Speaker 3: the Green Party nomination.
5:49
Speaker 1: Who said her name three times? Shame on you.
5:56
Speaker 3: And Joe Manchin has now decided he won't be running
5:59
Speaker 3: for re-election to the Senate, but intends to travel the country, quote,
6:04
Speaker 3: to see if there's an interest in creating a movement
6:06
Speaker 3: to mobilize the middle and bring Americans together.
6:10
Speaker 8: Um.
6:12
Speaker 2: Tommy, what the hell does that mean? And will you
6:15
Speaker 2: be joining that movement?
6:18
Speaker 8: I watched that video. It was sort of like a
6:20
Speaker 8: folksy centrist Mad Libs. It was very, very hard to follow.
6:25
Speaker 8: Here's what I think about Joe Manchin. He definitely, he
6:29
Speaker 8: drove us all crazy for a year, a year and
6:32
Speaker 8: a half.
6:32
Speaker 2: Forever. When Joe Biden was trying to... Just speak for yourself, Tommy.
6:35
Speaker 8: We were trying to pass the infrastructure bill. He was
6:38
Speaker 8: trying to pass the Build Back Better bill. Joe Manchin
6:39
Speaker 8: made it very hard. I think that when you look
6:42
Speaker 8: back on that, his opposition to the child tax credit
6:46
Speaker 8: extension is indefensible and borderline unforgivable. That policy lifted three
6:52
Speaker 8: million kids out of poverty. And Joe Manchin somehow got
6:56
Speaker 8: it in his head that if the child tax credit
7:00
Speaker 8: funding would be used by the parents to buy drugs,
7:02
Speaker 8: which is based on nothing, and I'll leave it to
7:05
Speaker 8: you to interpret.
7:06
Speaker 2: That kind of comment. His vote did help deliver the IRA,
7:11
Speaker 2: the biggest.
7:11
Speaker 8: Investment in clean energy ever. I think if we're being
7:15
Speaker 8: honest in hindsight, some of his concerns about the most
7:18
Speaker 8: expansive versions of Build Back Better and the potential to
7:21
Speaker 8: cause inflation.
7:22
Speaker 1: You might have had a point.
7:23
Speaker 4: Ooh, Tommy.
7:24
Speaker 1: You might have had a point.
7:25
Speaker 2: I'm going a little bulwark for Tim here.
7:26
Speaker 1: You're getting Paul Reinfeld over there.
7:27
Speaker 7: I like that.
7:28
Speaker 1: Yeah.
7:29
Speaker 2: That's right.
7:30
Speaker 8: But at the end of the day, West Virginia is what,
7:34
Speaker 8: plus 39 Trump state?
7:35
Speaker 2: That seat's probably toast. So we're going to miss him.
7:38
Speaker 8: Um, now I, I don't know what he's going to
7:40
Speaker 8: do on his like centrist, no labels, rump Springer. I
7:43
Speaker 8: hope he has a good time. I hope, you know,
7:46
Speaker 8: I hope he meets some good people. My, my guess
7:49
Speaker 8: is that he ultimately realizes, Oh yeah, I prefer decrying
7:53
Speaker 8: partisanship in green rooms rather than actually, uh, party building
7:58
Speaker 8: and running for president and in a bunch of States. Also,
8:01
Speaker 8: it's worth remembering that, uh, no label says they want
8:04
Speaker 8: a Republican at.
8:05
Speaker 2: The top of the ticket. So he'd have to be
8:06
Speaker 2: the VP.
8:07
Speaker 8: Of, And also, he's 76 years old, which makes him
8:11
Speaker 8: young for this field.
8:13
Speaker 1: Youngest candidate in the field.
8:16
Speaker 8: Young generally, so I don't know. We'll miss him in
8:19
Speaker 8: the Senate, but not that much.
8:21
Speaker 7: I think only Joe Manchin can come up with a
8:22
Speaker 7: plan to simultaneously cost the Democrats the Senate and the
8:25
Speaker 7: White House.
8:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is true.
8:29
Speaker 3: Does anyone think that Joe Manchin is going to be
8:31
Speaker 3: polling well as a third-party candidate for no labels?
8:34
Speaker 2: Does anyone.
8:36
Speaker 1: I mean, we've seen, there's like the first poll, and
8:38
Speaker 1: they're showing them getting what, like, you know, he was
8:41
Speaker 1: getting 10%, 10%, which is enough to destroy the country,
8:46
Speaker 1: but probably not enough to make him happy. But if
8:50
Speaker 1: I knew how to make Joe Manchin happy.
8:53
Speaker 3: Love it.
8:53
Speaker 2: We should talk about that. You'd be on a houseboat.
8:55
Speaker 3: We should start with the Senate implications for the Democrats,
8:58
Speaker 3: because I do think that's a.
8:59
Speaker 1: Big deal with Manchin. So this is a stone cold bummer.
9:04
Speaker 1: We have a 51 seat majority. With Joe Manchin, there
9:08
Speaker 1: are seven competitive seats. We now need to keep all
9:12
Speaker 1: of them. So if Joe Manchin is out, we go
9:14
Speaker 1: from 51 seats to 50 with Kamala Harris breaking a
9:16
Speaker 1: lot of ties.
9:17
Speaker 5: I was told by the DSA that he'll be replaced
9:19
Speaker 5: by a far left, a real true progressive in West Virginia.
9:23
Speaker 5: Is that not going to happen?
9:24
Speaker 1: And no bad ideas in a brainstorm.
9:26
Speaker 2: I wrote them.
9:29
Speaker 1: So in order to now for Democrats to keep the
9:32
Speaker 1: Senate majority, John Tester has to win in Montana. Sherrod
9:35
Speaker 1: Brown has to hold his seat in Ohio. Ruben Gallego
9:38
Speaker 1: has to win in Arizona. And we need to win
9:41
Speaker 1: in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Michigan. Before this, we could
9:45
Speaker 1: have lost one. Now we need to win them all.
9:47
Speaker 1: If we do lose one and want to retain the Senate,
9:49
Speaker 1: that requires a pickup either by defeating Ted Cruz in
9:52
Speaker 1: Texas or Rick Scott in Florida, both of which are
9:55
Speaker 1: very difficult to do because they're both so charming and charismatic.
10:00
Speaker 1: The other piece of this that sucks is Joe Manchin
10:05
Speaker 1: was going to be someone Republicans were going to have
10:06
Speaker 1: to fight to beat, and now they don't have to
10:08
Speaker 1: do that anymore. They go from a place where they
10:10
Speaker 1: would have to spend money to a place where they
10:11
Speaker 1: probably don't. That's money that they can dump on John
10:13
Speaker 1: Tester or Sherrod or in Nevada or elsewhere. So it
10:17
Speaker 1: just made our job of retaining the Senate harder. That
10:20
Speaker 1: being said, these things are gonna move together. And if
10:24
Speaker 1: we were in a, you know, being in a position
10:26
Speaker 1: to win six and being in a position to win
10:27
Speaker 1: seven look a lot alike, it just, it's harder.
10:31
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think the way to think about it is
10:33
Speaker 3: if Democrats hold all the Senate seats now that we
10:38
Speaker 3: are defending, if Donald Trump wins, Republicans control the Senate.
10:43
Speaker 3: Because at best now, it's 50-50. And so then if
10:47
Speaker 3: Biden wins re-election, then great, Kamala Harris breaks the ties.
10:50
Speaker 3: But if Donald Trump wins re-election, the best we can
10:53
Speaker 3: do now is going to be a Donald Trump presidency
10:55
Speaker 3: and a Republican Senate.
10:56
Speaker 7: And Tucker Carlson breaks the ties.
10:58
Speaker 2: And Tucker Carlson breaks the ties.
11:00
Speaker 3: And that means that Republicans in the Senate will start
11:02
Speaker 3: getting to appoint judges. That means if there are Supreme
11:06
Speaker 3: Court vacancies, Donald Trump wins, there's a Republican Senate, Clarence
11:09
Speaker 3: Thomas retires, Alito retires, suddenly they.
11:13
Speaker 2: Get two more Supreme Court justices.
11:14
Speaker 10: So.
11:15
Speaker 3: the importance of making sure that Joe Biden and a
11:18
Speaker 3: Democrat win the presidency and making sure that Donald Trump
11:21
Speaker 3: loses is even more important now that Joe Manchin has
11:24
Speaker 3: decided to retire.
11:24
Speaker 1: I want to make one.
11:25
Speaker 2: Yes.
11:26
Speaker 1: One more just note on Joe Manchin. I think it's
11:29
Speaker 1: worth noting that Joe Biden put out a statement, and
11:32
Speaker 1: his statement was extremely kind to Joe Manchin, and that's
11:35
Speaker 1: been his tack whenever Sir Joe Lieberman comes up. That's
11:38
Speaker 1: his tack when Joe Manchin comes up. He talks about
11:40
Speaker 1: how Manchin not only supported IRA, but also the... a
11:45
Speaker 1: veterans bill, a gun safety bill, a few other things,
11:49
Speaker 1: and voted for Ketanji Brown Jackson. And I think one
11:54
Speaker 1: lesson of the last couple years is that Joe Manchin,
11:57
Speaker 1: booing him is ineffective. He's clearly just extremely ego-motivated. And
12:02
Speaker 1: we've got to fucking figure out a way to praise
12:05
Speaker 1: this guy into getting out of this thing. It's just,
12:07
Speaker 1: we gotta hug Joe Manchin. Joe Manchin loves this fucking
12:11
Speaker 1: country and he will do anything to protect her. And
12:14
Speaker 1: we all know that. And that's why we know, ultimately,
12:18
Speaker 1: for the sake of the middle, he will do everything
12:21
Speaker 1: he can to help Joe Biden. And we all know that, right?
12:24
Speaker 1: Because booing him at his houseboat seems to radicalize him.
12:29
Speaker 2: Somebody clip that. Beautiful houseboat. It's a beautiful houseboat.
12:33
Speaker 3: I think the Wall Street Journal reported this, that there's
12:37
Speaker 3: now an effort. It's not an effort led by no labels,
12:41
Speaker 3: but it's a different group. They're leading a draft mansion
12:45
Speaker 3: Romney movement. I think Manchin will be president and Romney
12:50
Speaker 3: VP or vice versa?
12:51
Speaker 2: Romney. Vice versa, yeah. Yeah. Tim, are you leading that effort?
12:55
Speaker 2: Did you want to make that announcement tonight? Yeah, thank
12:57
Speaker 2: you for asking.
12:57
Speaker 5: I actually, just for the sake of the content, I
13:00
Speaker 5: have something prepared right now. Underneath this Beyonce shirt.
13:03
Speaker 2: Oh, no.
13:04
Speaker 5: It's Romney Manchin 2024, and I'm going to do it
13:08
Speaker 5: in the hopes that John Lovett gives me.
13:10
Speaker 2: A pile driver. No, no. I would love to.
13:14
Speaker 5: I mean, Joe Manchin actually is pretty good. I mean,
13:17
Speaker 5: he's been a West Virginia senator. He's been all right.
13:19
Speaker 2: I know.
13:20
Speaker 5: Not a lot of cheers for Joe Manchin being pretty good,
13:21
Speaker 5: but he has been pretty good. He's been better than
13:24
Speaker 5: the alternative. Cletus Van Ivermectin is going to replace him.
13:28
Speaker 2: Joe Manchin.
13:30
Speaker 3: Is a pain in the ass that I am sad
13:32
Speaker 3: is leaving the Senate. He did the gay marriage. That
13:34
Speaker 3: was pretty good. Because without Joe Manchin, we would not
13:37
Speaker 3: have saved the ACA. We would not have had that vote.
13:39
Speaker 3: We would not have had the Inflation Reduction Act, the
13:41
Speaker 3: largest government investment in climate in history. We wouldn't have
13:45
Speaker 3: had all these judges. He is a pain in the ass.
13:48
Speaker 3: He has infuriated us. I get that, but we needed him.
13:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, and here's the thing.
13:52
Speaker 11: If.
13:53
Speaker 5: These rich people that have these fucking delusions that Mitt
13:55
Speaker 5: Romney and Joe Manchin might be there. It's because they
13:58
Speaker 5: look at the race and they're like, people aren't happy.
14:00
Speaker 2: People don't like Trump and Biden.
14:01
Speaker 5: But the thing is, what they don't understand is that
14:04
Speaker 5: this election between Joe Biden, a normal central left Democrat,
14:09
Speaker 5: mainstream Democrat, and a racist lunatic who was a game
14:13
Speaker 5: show host who wants to end the country, like does
14:15
Speaker 5: not call for like somebody in the middle ground, right?
14:17
Speaker 5: Like if the election was between like two far ideologues,
14:21
Speaker 5: like if it was like Rashida Tlaib versus Mega Mike Johnson, right?
14:25
Speaker 5: Then maybe like Romney and Manchin could work if one
14:29
Speaker 5: of them had a personality transplant and then they could
14:32
Speaker 5: like bring together like bulwark Republicans with Biden Democrats with
14:37
Speaker 5: like independents who don't want, who like voted for Trump
14:39
Speaker 5: but don't like Mike Johnson's like bible salesman vibe that
14:43
Speaker 5: he gives off like like that could like work in
14:46
Speaker 5: like that alternate world like that's not the world we're
14:49
Speaker 5: in like so the only people that would that would
14:51
Speaker 5: go for like some normal alternative third party are people
14:54
Speaker 5: that already have a normal candidate joe biden and so
14:57
Speaker 5: it's a big fucking problem if joe mansion gets.
15:00
Speaker 3: In big big problem uh dan i think polling third
15:04
Speaker 3: party and independent candidates seems relatively useless until We know
15:09
Speaker 3: who's gonna be on the ballot in which state. From
15:12
Speaker 3: that perspective, which of these potential candidacies do you think
15:17
Speaker 3: poses the biggest threat to Biden?
15:19
Speaker 7: It is both the no-labels candidacy and the Green Party
15:22
Speaker 7: candidacy of most likely Jill Stein. No-labels is already on
15:26
Speaker 7: the ballot in 12 states. Most of those are states
15:28
Speaker 7: that are not consequential in a presidential election, but they
15:31
Speaker 7: are on the ballot in Arizona and Nevada. The Green Party,
15:35
Speaker 7: because Jill Stein, because the 2016 election never stops leaving us,
15:39
Speaker 7: did so well in 2016, they have guaranteed ballot access
15:42
Speaker 7: in a number of states, including the not-so-consequential states of
15:46
Speaker 7: Michigan and Wisconsin. And then they are both on the
15:48
Speaker 7: ballot in Oregon, which is a state which should not
15:50
Speaker 7: be competitive but has a very weird history with third-party
15:53
Speaker 7: candidates and could possibly become competitive if they're both there.
15:56
Speaker 1: RFK Jr.
15:58
Speaker 7: And Cornel West are on the ballot as of right now, nowhere.
16:01
Speaker 7: Getting on the ballot is quite expensive and arduous. Let's
16:04
Speaker 7: not cheer yet. It requires, in some states, getting valid
16:07
Speaker 7: signatures from up to 1% to 1.5% of the electorate.
16:11
Speaker 7: And in order to do that, you have to get
16:13
Speaker 7: sometimes like two to three times that number. Because valid
16:16
Speaker 7: signature means you have to have the correct signature, the
16:19
Speaker 7: correct name, the correct address that matches the voter file.
16:21
Speaker 7: It's very challenging. You would think that would be impossible
16:23
Speaker 7: for RFK Jr. But within hours of announcing his independent candidacy,
16:27
Speaker 7: his super PAC, which could do ballot access for him,
16:30
Speaker 7: raised $ 11 million, which is definitely not suspicious at all.
16:35
Speaker 7: And so we're going to have to keep watching this,
16:37
Speaker 7: but we already know that if there's a Green Party
16:38
Speaker 7: candidate and a No Labels candidate on the ballot, four
16:42
Speaker 7: of the six battleground states.
16:43
Speaker 2: Doesn't RFK kind of help us, though? Aren't we going
16:45
Speaker 2: for RFK? We hope.
16:47
Speaker 1: I think that that is an open.
16:48
Speaker 2: I'd rather not test the proposition. Yeah, I'd rather not know.
16:50
Speaker 1: And I just want to say to everyone here, you
16:52
Speaker 1: could have been at a strip club.
16:54
Speaker 3: But we're going to talk about ballot access.
16:58
Speaker 1: Ricks.
16:59
Speaker 2: I hear good things about Ricks.
17:00
Speaker 5: Not my cup of tea, but just something to think
17:03
Speaker 5: about for after the show.
17:06
Speaker 2: This is just for anyone. What's going on with Dean Phillips?
17:08
Speaker 3: He's now got former advisors to Sarah Palin, Bernie Sanders,
17:13
Speaker 3: and Andrew Yang on his team. Does everyone still think
17:16
Speaker 3: this is going nowhere?
17:17
Speaker 8: You either die a Bernie bro or you live long
17:20
Speaker 8: enough to work for Dean Phillips.
17:22
Speaker 2: That's the deal, right? It's this guy Jeff Weaver who
17:25
Speaker 2: worked for Bernie.
17:26
Speaker 8: He was pretty controversial at the time, so I don't
17:29
Speaker 8: know that I'm worried about it.
17:30
Speaker 2: I mean, hiring Andrew Yang's top guy... Andrew Yang's.
17:34
Speaker 8: Candidacy was kind of based around universal basic income, as
17:37
Speaker 8: Dean Phillips supported that.
17:38
Speaker 2: I don't know. Did any of these staffers matter? Do
17:41
Speaker 2: any of us matter?
17:43
Speaker 7: Let's not get at the premise of the entire podcast.
17:48
Speaker 1: I don't know.
17:49
Speaker 8: I'm like, Mean Dean didn't do much for me beforehand.
17:53
Speaker 2: It's not a.
17:54
Speaker 5: Good sign when your top advisor has a higher name
17:57
Speaker 5: ID than you do because of his fucking wheels-off YouTube
18:01
Speaker 5: rants that he gives. It's not a great idea, right?
18:04
Speaker 1: I feel like it's a lot of people who wish
18:07
Speaker 1: the world wasn't as it was for different reasons. I
18:09
Speaker 1: think there are a lot of people that, when push
18:12
Speaker 1: comes to shove, want Biden but younger, but that has
18:15
Speaker 1: not been on offer. And then there are people that
18:17
Speaker 1: want a Democrat, they want center-left Democratic policies, but from
18:21
Speaker 1: politicians who haven't been attacked and maligned for years by Republicans.
18:25
Speaker 1: They want someone who has not been rendered unappealing to
18:28
Speaker 1: a swath of the country, not because of anything they did,
18:30
Speaker 1: but because of a vast apparatus that makes those people
18:33
Speaker 1: seem unappealing. That's the Andrew Yang thing, right? Like basically,
18:36
Speaker 1: you look at what Andrew Yang wants, he wants a
18:38
Speaker 1: center-left figure, but not somebody that the Joe Rogan types
18:41
Speaker 1: don't like. Well, why don't the Joe Rogan.
18:42
Speaker 2: Types like them?
18:43
Speaker 1: It's not because of anything they did, it's because there's
18:44
Speaker 1: a whole machine that exists to destroy them. And that's
18:48
Speaker 1: not the world we live in. And so basically, we're
18:49
Speaker 1: fighting these kind of fantasies and narcissism and like ego trips.
18:54
Speaker 1: You know, Joe Manchin wants to fight for the middle.
18:56
Speaker 1: He's personally responsible for the most progressive thing Joe Biden
18:58
Speaker 1: ever did, as you said. So it's all just a
19:00
Speaker 1: bunch of people kind of, I think, like venting anxiety
19:04
Speaker 1: and spleen and egotism.
19:06
Speaker 7: And cashing checks.
19:07
Speaker 1: And cashing checks.
19:09
Speaker 3: I look at that group of people and I think
19:10
Speaker 3: it only matters if he starts, if Dean Phillips starts
19:14
Speaker 3: adopting policy positions that you can see from that group
19:17
Speaker 3: of people. Like, it's not really a left-right thing. It's
19:20
Speaker 3: like a top-bottom thing. And if Dean Phillips starts being like, okay,
19:24
Speaker 3: all right.
19:24
Speaker 5: I fucking challenge you to walk down Bourbon Street right
19:27
Speaker 5: now and find a single person who knows who the
19:29
Speaker 5: fuck Dean Phillips is.
19:30
Speaker 2: Oh, that's true.
19:31
Speaker 1: This is all ridiculous.
19:33
Speaker 2: That's all a preposterous farce.
19:35
Speaker 1: Tim and I are doing a podcast called Top Bottom Thing. Yeah,
19:37
Speaker 1: there it is.
19:38
Speaker 2: That's what I was thinking.
19:39
Speaker 3: When Tim said that, I was like, I'm thinking if
19:41
Speaker 3: he went anti-establishment, anti-war, populist, anti-DC.
19:50
Speaker 2: Dean Phillips has it in him to do that.
19:52
Speaker 1: Gelato magnate Dean Phillips?
19:54
Speaker 3: But it's also, you know, it's 2023. People reinvent themselves
19:57
Speaker 3: all the time. And if you see like Jeff Weaver
19:58
Speaker 3: there and an Andrew Yang person, you kind of think
20:01
Speaker 3: maybe that's where they're going.
20:02
Speaker 2: Sure. That's all I'm thinking.
20:03
Speaker 3: Tim, it's also possible that, just to close this out,
20:06
Speaker 3: a lot of voters just might stay home. They might
20:09
Speaker 3: not go for a third party candidate, independent candidate. They
20:12
Speaker 3: might just say, I'm not voting at all. Any thoughts
20:14
Speaker 3: on that?
20:15
Speaker 5: I have a concern about this. Young progressives don't listen
20:18
Speaker 5: to the bulwarks. I asked you if I could talk
20:19
Speaker 5: about this here in the hopes that I could reach
20:21
Speaker 5: some of them.
20:22
Speaker 2: Some.
20:22
Speaker 5: Because I was having trouble sleeping the other night and
20:24
Speaker 5: I was on TikTok and I had these several angry
20:28
Speaker 5: people in their dorm room talking about the moral obligation
20:30
Speaker 5: to vote for Cornel West. It was served to me
20:32
Speaker 5: by the Chinese and this was giving me some concerns.
20:36
Speaker 5: And I started like hyperventilating into a paper bag. And
20:39
Speaker 5: I was like, is this really happening? And so I just,
20:42
Speaker 5: do we have a camera I can look into?
20:44
Speaker 2: No. Hopefully not.
20:46
Speaker 1: You're getting pointed out.
20:48
Speaker 5: Hey, so I've been spending the week with Steve Bannon,
20:51
Speaker 5: young progressives who don't think that there's a difference between
20:53
Speaker 5: Joe Biden and Donald Trump. And here was his plan
20:55
Speaker 5: for the next term. He wants to release all of
20:59
Speaker 5: the January 6 prisoners and let every MAGA domestic terrorist
21:04
Speaker 5: know that they will get pardoned no matter what they do.
21:06
Speaker 5: So that's a little concerning. He wants to deport 10
21:08
Speaker 5: million people and bring back the kids in cages. He
21:11
Speaker 5: wants to restart putting people back into Guantanamo. He wants
21:15
Speaker 5: to indict his political opponents. And he wants to do
21:18
Speaker 5: mass firings to the federal government. So that's not a
21:20
Speaker 5: great policy agenda.
21:22
Speaker 10: No.
21:22
Speaker 1: You know what he's calling it? What's that? The MAGA
21:25
Speaker 1: policy agenda.
21:26
Speaker 2: What's that?
21:26
Speaker 1: It's from the river to the CPAP machine.
21:29
Speaker 9: Jesus Christ.
21:34
Speaker 2: Oh, my God. So it should be something that.
21:37
Speaker 5: You should be alarmed about.
21:38
Speaker 4: Bye, everybody.
21:38
Speaker 2: Young progressive. I can't even. Welcome to the bulwark, John Lovett.
21:46
Speaker 5: So anyway, young TikTokers, if you want to protest Joe Biden,
21:50
Speaker 5: that's fine. If you want to vape, if you want
21:52
Speaker 5: to be pansexual, all that's great. But like, please, for
21:57
Speaker 5: the love of God, do not put these fucking lunatics
21:59
Speaker 5: back in there. I'm very concerned about it. I'm very concerned.
22:05
Speaker 5: It's not about sticking it to Joe Biden. He's not
22:08
Speaker 5: going to care. It's about hurting yourself. It's about hurting
22:11
Speaker 5: the country.
22:14
Speaker 3: Every one of us is going to have to live
22:16
Speaker 3: with the consequences of a second Trump.
22:18
Speaker 5: There's stated policies like we're going after trans people, we're
22:20
Speaker 5: going after immigrants, we're going after political opponents. I think
22:23
Speaker 5: the five of us would count despite us being cis
22:25
Speaker 5: white guys. Maybe not at the top of the list.
22:29
Speaker 5: Then we're going to let the mega domestic terrorists roam free.
22:32
Speaker 11: Yeah.
22:32
Speaker 5: That's a concerning kind of combination for me.
22:34
Speaker 2: That's a concerning combination.
22:35
Speaker 7: This is not the most important part, but far be
22:37
Speaker 7: it for me to give communications advice to the one-time...
22:40
Speaker 7: top message guy in the Republican Party.
22:42
Speaker 1: But I would offer.
22:43
Speaker 2: I'm sorry.
22:44
Speaker 5: So Donald Trump only beat us by 46 points.
22:48
Speaker 7: I just feel like I would have offered some context
22:50
Speaker 7: to I spent the week with Steve Bannon before telling
22:52
Speaker 7: that story.
22:53
Speaker 1: Was it Palm Springs or was it a cruise?
22:57
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, I was in the basement of the Breitbart
22:59
Speaker 5: Embassy and then going to Vegas together. Going to Vegas together. Yeah,
23:03
Speaker 5: it was interesting. There's a single mega Vegas hotel now.
23:06
Speaker 2: We'll talk about it backstage. The Trump Hotel? The Trump Hotel? No,
23:09
Speaker 2: not the Trump Hotel. I mean, Tommy's a big War
23:12
Speaker 2: Room listener. He was live. You didn't see me? No,
23:16
Speaker 2: I didn't see you.
23:16
Speaker 1: Sorry.
23:17
Speaker 2: Okay. Well, we don't want a second Trump turn. That's
23:20
Speaker 2: the moral of the story. When we come back, Devante Lewis.
23:24
Speaker 2: He's awesome.
23:32
Speaker 8: Joining us now is Louisiana Public Service Commissioner and a
23:35
Speaker 8: rising star in Louisiana politics, Devonte Lewis.
23:38
Speaker 9: Thank you for being here.
23:50
Speaker 2: Nice to meet you. We've been hanging out for about
23:51
Speaker 2: an hour backstage, so we actually know each other now.
23:53
Speaker 1: We're friends.
23:54
Speaker 12: We're best friends.
23:55
Speaker 8: So the thing about Devonte is he's a young elected official,
23:59
Speaker 8: very impressive person, to be doing this job at his age,
24:04
Speaker 8: but he got into politics like 20 years ago. He
24:09
Speaker 8: was organizing for Barack Obama in high school. You ran
24:12
Speaker 8: for school board at age 18. What got you at
24:18
Speaker 8: like 17 years old to think like, I got to
24:20
Speaker 8: get involved in politics?
24:21
Speaker 2: What started all this?
24:22
Speaker 13: Well, the craziest thing is my grandfather forced me when
24:27
Speaker 13: I was like 15 to.
24:29
Speaker 12: Watch one hour of the news every day.
24:32
Speaker 13: And so one day, it was 2004, with Barack's keynote
24:38
Speaker 13: address to the Democratic National Convention in Boston.
24:41
Speaker 12: And something after that, I was like, oh, I got
24:43
Speaker 12: to get involved.
24:44
Speaker 13: And so after that, I just felt like I needed
24:48
Speaker 13: to do something in my community.
24:49
Speaker 12: So I got involved, did a lot of stuff.
24:52
Speaker 13: And then running for office, a lot of people thought
24:56
Speaker 13: I would do, but it was something never I wanted
24:58
Speaker 13: to do. But Like when I ran for school board
25:02
Speaker 13: at 18, the school board president dared me to do it.
25:06
Speaker 13: He came to my AP government course and we were
25:08
Speaker 13: debating policy. And then he stopped me and he said, well, Devante,
25:11
Speaker 13: if you think you can do this job so well,
25:13
Speaker 13: why don't you run for office? So on graduation day,
25:16
Speaker 13: when I walked across the stage, got my high school diploma,
25:18
Speaker 13: I gave him an index card and I said, I'll
25:20
Speaker 13: see you on the campaign trail. And that's how I
25:25
Speaker 13: ran for office the first time.
25:26
Speaker 1: I love that.
25:27
Speaker 8: So I did not know that you, so you watched
25:29
Speaker 8: the O4 convention speech and that gave you.
25:32
Speaker 2: Like the bug.
25:32
Speaker 12: That gave me the bug. Everything was right there.
25:34
Speaker 8: We were all just in Chicago last weekend with sort
25:37
Speaker 8: of an Obama campaign reunion. And the way that that
25:39
Speaker 8: community is like rippled into politics is very inspiring and cool.
25:43
Speaker 8: So you are now a Louisiana public service commissioner. You're
25:46
Speaker 8: one of five elected officials tasked with overseeing all the
25:50
Speaker 8: utility companies in your state.
25:52
Speaker 2: What does that job entail?
25:53
Speaker 8: And then what kind of added responsibility do you feel
25:57
Speaker 8: serving in this role in a state that has such
26:01
Speaker 8: a terrible record on environmental justice to the point where
26:04
Speaker 8: there is a region called Cancer Alley?
26:07
Speaker 13: Yeah, so the Public Service Commission, we regulate all of
26:10
Speaker 13: the public utilities. So water, wastewater, electric, gas, sewage, pipeline,
26:18
Speaker 13: waste haulers, common carriers, We also have prison phone call raids,
26:23
Speaker 13: moving truck companies, tow truck companies. And so my district encompasses,
26:30
Speaker 13: of course, here in New Orleans, but all through the
26:33
Speaker 13: river parishes in Baton Rouge. So I have Cancer Alley
26:35
Speaker 13: as the district that I represent, 971,000 people here in
26:39
Speaker 13: the state of Louisiana. And when we talk about environmental injustice,
26:43
Speaker 13: this is.
26:44
Speaker 12: The area that you have to focus on in the country.
26:45
Speaker 2: Right, right.
26:46
Speaker 13: Black and brown people are 21 times more likely to
26:49
Speaker 13: be exposed to air pollution in my district. When you
26:51
Speaker 13: think about Shell, Shell is a multinational corporation. They only
26:57
Speaker 13: have four petrochemical refinery plants in the United States.
27:01
Speaker 12: Three of them are in my district.
27:02
Speaker 10: Wow.
27:03
Speaker 13: So when you think about environmental injustice, my district is
27:07
Speaker 13: one of the poorest in the nation, has the highest
27:11
Speaker 13: rate of industry users, but also... hurricane, natural disaster prone.
27:18
Speaker 13: And so the message that I said when I was
27:20
Speaker 13: running is that if we invest in climate justice here,
27:26
Speaker 13: not only in my district, we do it in the
27:28
Speaker 13: country because I strongly believe that we can turn America's
27:32
Speaker 13: cancer alley into America's climate answer alley if we do
27:36
Speaker 13: everything right.
27:37
Speaker 2: I like that. So you alluded to this.
27:42
Speaker 8: I mean, New Orleans is on the front lines when
27:44
Speaker 8: it comes to the impact from climate change. No one
27:47
Speaker 8: in this room needs to be reminded what a hurricane
27:50
Speaker 8: can do to a city. Your neighbors in Texas went
27:54
Speaker 8: through a terrible winter storm and a subsequent power outage
27:57
Speaker 8: that killed hundreds of people and tragically ruined Ted Cruz's vacation.
28:03
Speaker 2: Sorry, Ted.
28:04
Speaker 1: What do you think?
28:05
Speaker 2: I mean, you're an expert in this stuff.
28:06
Speaker 8: What do you think this city in this country needs
28:09
Speaker 8: to do to prepare our utilities, both to transition from
28:14
Speaker 8: where we are now to this green energy future we
28:16
Speaker 8: want to be at, but also to become more resilient
28:18
Speaker 8: in the near term, knowing that weather's getting more extreme,
28:21
Speaker 8: like hotter hots, colder colds, et cetera.
28:25
Speaker 13: I mean, I think the first thing we have to
28:26
Speaker 13: do is put people over profits. I mean, let's be
28:29
Speaker 13: very clear. IntraG has never cared about the people of Louisiana.
28:35
Speaker 12: So, I mean.
28:40
Speaker 12: But that's the important role about commissioners.
28:42
Speaker 13: I think when we talk about the decarbonization of the
28:45
Speaker 13: United States, oftentimes we have failed to look at utilities
28:49
Speaker 13: as on the front line. We've rewarded utilities by basically
28:53
Speaker 13: making investments that.
28:55
Speaker 12: Profited their shareholders, their dividend.
28:57
Speaker 13: Owners, but not actually making our system more resilient, sustainable, reliable,
29:02
Speaker 13: and affordable.
29:03
Speaker 12: And so I think in this moment.
29:06
Speaker 13: especially here in Louisiana, what we have to do is
29:09
Speaker 13: finally say that climate change, one, is real. So I
29:13
Speaker 13: hope Governor Landry hears that message and knows that, that
29:16
Speaker 13: I'm going to fight him every day to tell him
29:18
Speaker 13: climate change is real.
29:21
Speaker 12: But it's also actually good for business.
29:24
Speaker 13: I mean, when you think about this, the people that
29:27
Speaker 13: are screaming for renewable energy because they're trying to showcase
29:30
Speaker 13: is actually the industrial users. And so like in Louisiana,
29:34
Speaker 13: I think it's an unknown fact that 60% of all
29:38
Speaker 13: the energy consumed in the state of Louisiana comes from
29:41
Speaker 13: an industry user, not from a commercial user, not from
29:44
Speaker 13: a small business, not from a residential, but from these
29:47
Speaker 13: big refineries. And so if we're going to actually talk
29:51
Speaker 13: about the future of Louisiana, we have to talk about
29:55
Speaker 13: energy policy.
29:56
Speaker 12: And that's why I ran and that's what I'm.
29:58
Speaker 2: Trying to do. Right on.
30:03
Speaker 8: Another issue that I know you focus on a lot
30:06
Speaker 8: in your campaign is the price of phone calls for
30:09
Speaker 8: folks in jails and prisons. And maybe there's people listening
30:13
Speaker 8: to me right now saying, what are you talking about, Tommy?
30:16
Speaker 8: And why are you asking like the utility commissioner.
30:19
Speaker 2: Guy about this?
30:20
Speaker 8: But can you explain the problem here and why, how
30:23
Speaker 8: it falls under your purview and what you're doing to
30:24
Speaker 8: kind of address this?
30:26
Speaker 10: Yeah.
30:26
Speaker 13: So the Louisiana public service commission, we regulate the rates of,
30:30
Speaker 13: that it costs for an intrastate phone call between, for
30:35
Speaker 13: those who are calling people who are incarcerated. And so
30:38
Speaker 13: when we think about this question, I mean, like Louisiana
30:40
Speaker 13: used to be the incarceration capital of the world. We
30:42
Speaker 13: are now battling Oklahoma to be second.
30:47
Speaker 12: I don't know if that's a great task.
30:49
Speaker 13: I mean, I don't know if I want to follow
30:50
Speaker 13: Oklahoma in anything, but I guess if we're going to
30:54
Speaker 13: beat Oklahoma at something, at least we can beat them
30:56
Speaker 13: in prison phone call rates. But when we think about this,
31:00
Speaker 13: I just want to remind people that the average income
31:04
Speaker 13: of a person incarcerated prior to being incarcerated is around $ 20, 000
31:10
Speaker 13: a year. So when we talk about our average phone
31:13
Speaker 13: call rate for incarcerated families, the data showcases that a
31:18
Speaker 13: person incarcerated would spend over half of their yearly income
31:24
Speaker 13: just to communicate with.
31:25
Speaker 12: Their loved ones.
31:27
Speaker 2: Who's getting paid off that?
31:28
Speaker 13: Oh, these are the sheriffs and these are the telecommunication companies.
31:31
Speaker 2: So it's profitable for them to keep people in jail?
31:34
Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely.
31:34
Speaker 13: The sheriffs get a big kickback. And so the sheriffs
31:36
Speaker 13: have been the biggest opponents. I tried to just do
31:40
Speaker 13: a study review of our prison phone call rates about
31:44
Speaker 13: four months ago, and the sheriffs called every one of
31:47
Speaker 13: my opponents, excuse me, to talk about this issue. And
31:52
Speaker 13: so what we see is that the sheriffs get a
31:56
Speaker 13: kickback from ensuring that people cannot communicate with their loved
31:59
Speaker 13: ones but then they want to go and talk about
32:01
Speaker 13: recidivism and they want to talk about the rising effects
32:05
Speaker 13: of crime when we know the biggest reduction of crime
32:08
Speaker 13: is simply allowing people to talk. I think it's a
32:11
Speaker 13: human right to have human interaction. Why are we charging
32:16
Speaker 13: you to talk to your daughter or your son or
32:18
Speaker 13: your mother or your family when we incarcerate you. And
32:22
Speaker 13: so my goal and my quest is to make prison
32:26
Speaker 13: phone calls.
32:26
Speaker 1: Free, and we're going to keep doing that.
32:31
Speaker 8: I mean, I imagine when you're talking to folks about this,
32:33
Speaker 8: anyone who's had a loved one or a friend in
32:36
Speaker 8: prison gets it. But look, fighting for incarcerated people is
32:40
Speaker 8: not great politics, right? As we look around, there's a
32:43
Speaker 8: lot of people demagoguing crime and other issues. I mean,
32:45
Speaker 8: when you talk to folks about this goal and this plan,
32:48
Speaker 8: are they.
32:50
Speaker 2: Like, do you think they support what you're doing?
32:52
Speaker 12: I think some do.
32:53
Speaker 13: I mean, what I would like to remind people is
32:54
Speaker 13: that we actually need to put humanity back in the
32:57
Speaker 13: society and actually care about one another. So you cannot
33:02
Speaker 13: talk to me about the crime in New Orleans if
33:04
Speaker 13: you don't want to talk about the effects of what
33:09
Speaker 13: Louisiana does to incarcerated people or how often we try
33:13
Speaker 13: to incarcerate somebody. And so what I like to do
33:17
Speaker 13: and the way I talk about it is ensuring that
33:20
Speaker 13: we recognize that the same way that you want to
33:22
Speaker 13: call your mother when something happens, someone incarcerated wants to
33:25
Speaker 13: do the exact same thing. And so why should they
33:29
Speaker 13: not only be incarcerated but also suffer from the lack
33:33
Speaker 13: of seeing if their child got a great grade on
33:36
Speaker 13: their report card or if their mother had an issue
33:39
Speaker 13: or what's going on in their family. And we are
33:42
Speaker 13: literally pushing people into poverty simply to communicate with their
33:47
Speaker 13: loved ones on the outside world so when they are released,
33:50
Speaker 13: that they have that connection to their family. I find
33:53
Speaker 13: it baffling that we're fighting this, but oftentimes it's just
33:56
Speaker 13: that the Louisiana sheriffs think they have a lot of
33:58
Speaker 13: power and it's time to break it.
33:59
Speaker 8: Yeah, it seems like keeping people kind of connected and
34:04
Speaker 8: tethered to the outside world is a big part of rehabilitation.
34:07
Speaker 12: Oh, absolutely.
34:08
Speaker 13: I mean, I think it's extremely important, but the reason
34:10
Speaker 13: why we do it here in Louisiana is because we
34:13
Speaker 13: give our sheriffs a big pay cut for taking state prisoners.
34:18
Speaker 13: So anytime someone is incarcerated, we do not have enough
34:22
Speaker 13: beds in the state penitentiaries.
34:24
Speaker 12: So what do we do? We send them to local jails.
34:25
Speaker 12: They make profit off of it.
34:27
Speaker 13: So they want to keep people incarcerated because that's the
34:29
Speaker 13: way they make their money.
34:31
Speaker 2: Terrible system. Yeah, boo that. Boo it. All right, happier subject.
34:35
Speaker 8: So you are the first black LGBTQ person elected to
34:39
Speaker 8: any political office in Louisiana at any level. What was
34:49
Speaker 8: it like that night, breaking that barrier?
34:52
Speaker 2: What did it feel like? And what do you think
34:53
Speaker 2: it says about the future of Louisiana politics?
34:56
Speaker 13: Well, that night, I don't really remember because there was
34:58
Speaker 13: a lot of tequila. So if anybody was at my
35:01
Speaker 13: victory party, they know exactly what we did. But for me,
35:07
Speaker 13: it was a moment to showcase that when you center people, right,
35:13
Speaker 13: there's oftentimes in politics, everyone tells you what you should be.
35:17
Speaker 12: How you should run, what you should do.
35:19
Speaker 13: And the way that I ran my campaign was I
35:21
Speaker 13: was going to be Devonte 100%. You're going to like me,
35:24
Speaker 13: you're going to love me, you're going to vote for
35:25
Speaker 13: me or not. And what I think this moment showcases
35:29
Speaker 13: is when we actually speak to each other, when we
35:31
Speaker 13: speak to our common values, our common goals, our values,
35:36
Speaker 13: people will put aside their preconceived notions about you if
35:40
Speaker 13: they know you care about them. And that's what I did.
35:43
Speaker 13: And I think in this moment, it is showcasing that
35:46
Speaker 13: you do not have to.
35:49
Speaker 12: Bend to society's pressures.
35:51
Speaker 13: You can be who you want to be, live your life,
35:55
Speaker 13: and showcase that if you care about each other, we
35:57
Speaker 13: can make the world a better place.
35:59
Speaker 12: And that's what I'm trying to do.
36:06
Speaker 8: You can run as you is my takeaway there, which
36:08
Speaker 8: brings me to my next question. The Democratic Party in
36:10
Speaker 8: Louisiana had a tough time of weight.
36:13
Speaker 7: Yeah, very tough.
36:15
Speaker 8: Trump won the state by more than 18 points in 2020.
36:17
Speaker 8: The recent governor's race didn't go great. We thought we
36:22
Speaker 8: might be talking about a runoff tonight when we scheduled this.
36:25
Speaker 8: How do you think Democrats get back on their feet
36:27
Speaker 8: in Louisiana?
36:28
Speaker 13: Well, I think Democrats get back on their feet if
36:30
Speaker 13: they grow a backbone and stand up for what they
36:32
Speaker 13: believe in. I mean, too often times, Democrats in this
36:37
Speaker 13: state are afraid of Republican voters. Instead of speaking, when
36:42
Speaker 13: we look at the data analysis, right, A Governor Landry
36:46
Speaker 13: elect won with less votes than Bobby Jindal did in
36:51
Speaker 13: his reelection campaign running against a no-name teacher. So that
36:55
Speaker 13: tells you there is an apathetic view in the state
36:58
Speaker 13: of Louisiana. And I remind people all the time that
37:01
Speaker 13: the biggest voting bloc in Louisiana is not the Republican voter,
37:04
Speaker 13: it's the non-voter. So if Democrats actually talked about the
37:07
Speaker 13: issues that people cared about, instead of going and trying
37:12
Speaker 13: to be Republican light, we can win. So I think
37:14
Speaker 13: the message for Democrats is stand up for the poor,
37:18
Speaker 13: stand up for the working poor, stand up for black
37:20
Speaker 13: and brown people and women and LGBTQ people and our
37:25
Speaker 13: families and our children. And if we speak truth to power,
37:29
Speaker 13: instead of trying to chase power, we can actually get
37:32
Speaker 13: in power. And so I think that's our message to
37:34
Speaker 13: now is to be true to the values that we
37:37
Speaker 13: hold and fight for the people that we care about
37:40
Speaker 13: instead of trying to find every single way to showcase
37:44
Speaker 13: to the Republicans that we will be a good partner
37:46
Speaker 13: to them. Because let's be very clear, they've made it
37:49
Speaker 13: an assault. They are coming after black and brown people.
37:51
Speaker 13: They're coming after the city of New Orleans. They're coming
37:54
Speaker 13: after LGBTQIA plus people. They are coming after what we
37:59
Speaker 13: care about. And it's a question for the Democratic Party
38:02
Speaker 13: in the state of Louisiana. Will we stand up for
38:05
Speaker 13: the people or will we try to be Jeff Landry's friend?
38:08
Speaker 13: And I'm going to fight for the people of Louisiana.
38:16
Speaker 8: I feel like I might have been a little more
38:17
Speaker 8: cynical about the Democratic Party's chances of winning in Louisiana.
38:21
Speaker 8: before the last election day where we saw Ohio voted
38:25
Speaker 8: issue one that enshrined abortion rights into the Constitution. You've
38:29
Speaker 8: got Governor Beshear in Kentucky running strong, running on abortion
38:34
Speaker 8: access and winning that race. Were there takeaways for you
38:38
Speaker 8: guys or lessons learned about what you want to do next?
38:40
Speaker 13: I mean, I think the lessons learned is, one, we
38:43
Speaker 13: have to organize and mobilize people all the time.
38:46
Speaker 10: Right?
38:47
Speaker 13: I mean, we can't wait till two days before the
38:49
Speaker 13: election to start talking about democratic values, that we have
38:52
Speaker 13: to start that. I think the message that we saw
38:54
Speaker 13: across the country is that when you actually run on
38:56
Speaker 13: the platform that.
38:57
Speaker 12: We care about, the people that we care about, we
39:00
Speaker 12: can win.
39:01
Speaker 13: And so I think we got to get back to organizing,
39:03
Speaker 13: and organizing is why people care about an issue, what
39:06
Speaker 13: issues they care about, and then mobilization is reminding them
39:09
Speaker 13: about the issues that they care about. And so I
39:12
Speaker 13: think the takeaway for Louisiana is that now that we
39:15
Speaker 13: are pretty much at rock bottom, is, I mean, I
39:19
Speaker 13: don't know how lower we can go. I don't know
39:21
Speaker 13: what else the Republicans can take from us, is to
39:26
Speaker 13: finally say, like, what do we have to lose?
39:29
Speaker 12: I mean, I don't like.
39:29
Speaker 13: quoting 46 minus one, but I think he's right when
39:33
Speaker 13: he says, what the hell do we have to lose?
39:35
Speaker 12: Let's just fight.
39:36
Speaker 10: I like that.
39:37
Speaker 2: I like that.
39:40
Speaker 8: Demonte Lewis, thank you so much for being here.
39:42
Speaker 2: Clap it up.
39:43
Speaker 1: Thank you.
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41:06
Speaker 3: So we just had a third Republican primary debate in
41:09
Speaker 3: Miami this week.
41:11
Speaker 2: You almost missed it.
41:12
Speaker 1: I did.
41:12
Speaker 2: I listened to your podcast. You didn't even know it
41:14
Speaker 2: was happening.
41:16
Speaker 3: Seems like the early consensus among pundits and some polls
41:20
Speaker 3: is that Nikki Haley did well. Ron DeSantis still can't smile.
41:24
Speaker 3: Vivek Ramaswamy, still an insufferable asshole.
41:28
Speaker 2: So annoying. If you didn't catch the debate, don't worry.
41:32
Speaker 2: Neither did the front runner, Donald Trump.
41:34
Speaker 3: He was a few miles away at a rally where
41:36
Speaker 3: he promised to carry out the biggest deportation of immigrants
41:40
Speaker 3: in history on his first day in office. Then he
41:42
Speaker 3: did an interview with Univision where he defended his child
41:46
Speaker 3: separation policy and again threatened to indict people who've pissed
41:50
Speaker 3: him off.
41:51
Speaker 2: Let's listen.
41:51
Speaker 10: We have tremendous support from the, I call Hispanic, Latino,
41:56
Speaker 10: you have lots of different terms, but it all means
41:59
Speaker 10: the same thing as far as I'm concerned. They're just
42:02
Speaker 10: great people, incredible people. Right now you have coming through
42:05
Speaker 10: Mexico the largest group of people Call it caravans. That
42:10
Speaker 10: was the name that I came up with. I never
42:12
Speaker 10: get credit. I don't think I get credit for fake news.
42:14
Speaker 10: I don't think I get credit for any of these names.
42:16
Speaker 10: But I think I came up with most of them.
42:18
Speaker 10: It could certainly happen in reverse. What they've done is
42:21
Speaker 10: they've released the genie out of the box. You understand that.
42:25
Speaker 2: If I happen to be.
42:25
Speaker 10: President and I see somebody who's doing well and beating
42:28
Speaker 10: me very badly, I say, go down and indict them. Mostly,
42:33
Speaker 10: that would be, you know, they would be out of business.
42:36
Speaker 2: They'd be out.
42:37
Speaker 1: They'd be out of the election.
42:39
Speaker 2: Poor guy comes up with the best nicknames. No one
42:41
Speaker 2: gives him credit.
42:42
Speaker 1: Genies come out of a fucking lamp.
42:44
Speaker 2: Yes, thank you. Thank you.
42:45
Speaker 1: At least a bottle.
42:46
Speaker 2: Or a bottle.
42:47
Speaker 1: Pandora comes out of a box. No, it's her box.
42:51
Speaker 1: Evil comes out of the box.
42:54
Speaker 2: Trump's campaign. He's running again. There's a buried lead there.
42:58
Speaker 5: It's like if someone's going to come in and they're
42:59
Speaker 5: going to run against me, he can't run again, right?
43:02
Speaker 2: It's a good point. I was thinking about that. Or
43:04
Speaker 2: can he? Yeah, I was going to say.
43:06
Speaker 1: I also think he lives in a kind of permanent
43:08
Speaker 1: narcissism present. Like in his mind when he thinks about
43:12
Speaker 1: a grievance, it's happening again. Someone running against me. He's
43:15
Speaker 1: always living inside of it. It's a nightmare space. That's
43:18
Speaker 1: why he was so good on Twitter.
43:19
Speaker 3: LAUGHTER It is interesting they, of course, asked the campaign
43:24
Speaker 3: what about the fact that Donald Trump just said he
43:27
Speaker 3: was going to indict people who he doesn't like as president.
43:30
Speaker 3: And they said, oh, he's just throwing out a hypothetical.
43:33
Speaker 3: That's what the campaign said. But they didn't rule out
43:35
Speaker 3: that he would do that.
43:36
Speaker 2: Bad hypothetical.
43:37
Speaker 3: Despite Nikki Haley's blockbuster debate performance, the 538 polling average
43:42
Speaker 3: has Trump ahead by 42 points nationally.
43:46
Speaker 2: 42 points. And the national polls, they don't matter. 28
43:49
Speaker 2: points in Iowa.
43:49
Speaker 3: 30 points in New Hampshire, 30 points in South Carolina.
43:54
Speaker 2: Those are the averages right now. We are just about
43:57
Speaker 2: two months out from Iowa.
44:00
Speaker 3: Here is the question. Is the Republican primary already over?
44:04
Speaker 3: We are going to try something a little different and
44:06
Speaker 3: have our own debate about this question. We're going to
44:09
Speaker 3: split into two teams, make our best case, and hopefully
44:13
Speaker 3: leave the stage without a Nikki Vivek moment. LAUGHTER So,
44:18
Speaker 3: arguing that for all intents and purposes the Republican primary
44:22
Speaker 3: is over will be me and Tim.
44:24
Speaker 2: Boo.
44:26
Speaker 3: Arguing that polls don't vote, people do.
44:29
Speaker 2: Is going to be Dan and Tommy. What was that shit?
44:33
Speaker 2: And moderating this debate... I'm going to fucking moderate.
44:36
Speaker 1: So... So now before we begin, I want to poll
44:42
Speaker 1: the audience because we're going to poll again at the end.
44:47
Speaker 1: Let's understand where we're at as a team, what we're
44:49
Speaker 1: up against here. If you believe the Republican primary is
44:53
Speaker 1: for all intents and purposes over, please applaud. If you
45:01
Speaker 1: believe that this is America and anything can happen, applaud. Okay, okay.
45:09
Speaker 7: I'd say that was a lot of applause for Trump
45:10
Speaker 7: to start.
45:15
Speaker 1: All right, so that's where we're at to begin. To
45:18
Speaker 1: make the case that this primary is not yet over, Tommy,
45:22
Speaker 1: why don't you kick us off? Thanks, John.
45:26
Speaker 2: I'm a data-driven guy. You know what I mean?
45:28
Speaker 8: People at Crooked Media, they come to me, they're like, Tommy,
45:30
Speaker 8: can I get some facts? So I got some facts.
45:31
Speaker 8: Because facts, they don't care about your feelings, Tim. And
45:35
Speaker 8: so I want you to think about three numbers. The
45:39
Speaker 8: first is the number 17. That is the number of
45:42
Speaker 8: points that that Dukakis was ahead of George H.W. Bush
45:47
Speaker 8: in the summer of 1988. You know who won that race?
45:51
Speaker 8: Bush by eight.
45:53
Speaker 1: Fact number two, number number two.
45:54
Speaker 2: What's 17 plus eight? 16.
45:58
Speaker 8: That's how many points John McCain, Tim's old boss, was
46:02
Speaker 8: behind Rudy Giuliani in 2007. He was also losing to
46:07
Speaker 8: Fred fucking Thompson. You know who was a Democratic nominee?
46:11
Speaker 2: John McCain.
46:13
Speaker 8: My last number for you guys. That's what I meant.
46:17
Speaker 8: He was the Republican nominee for president. The last number
46:21
Speaker 8: for you all, the number 303. That is the number
46:25
Speaker 8: of electoral votes that Harry Truman won in 1948 when
46:30
Speaker 8: people like Tim and John were saying, Dewey defeats Truman.
46:36
Speaker 2: They were putting it on the front. Of newspapers. And
46:39
Speaker 2: so here's what I'm trying to tell you guys.
46:41
Speaker 1: This race is.
46:42
Speaker 2: Consolidating before our very eyes.
46:44
Speaker 1: Did you watch the debate the other night?
46:46
Speaker 8: Tim Scott basically quit the campaign on stage.
46:50
Speaker 2: That is true. I'll give you that. He gave up
46:52
Speaker 2: to go be with his girlfriend. Oh, my God. We
46:55
Speaker 2: didn't talk about Tim Scott's girlfriend tonight.
46:57
Speaker 8: The fake Ramaswamy annoyed the 3% of voters he had left.
47:02
Speaker 1: Chris Christie is.
47:03
Speaker 8: Running out of gas. Ron DeSantis is a high-heeled joke.
47:06
Speaker 9: So.
47:07
Speaker 8: Here's what's going to happen. Nikki Haley is going to
47:10
Speaker 8: exceed expectations in Iowa. Then she's going to go to
47:14
Speaker 8: New Hampshire, get all the never Trump vote and get
47:16
Speaker 8: the unaffiliated voters because in New Hampshire, it's like a
47:18
Speaker 8: pseudo open primary and you can get folks from the
47:21
Speaker 8: other side. Then she goes to her home state and
47:24
Speaker 8: she's going to seal the deal and win South Carolina. Now,
47:29
Speaker 8: these guys are snarling at me because they, you know,
47:35
Speaker 8: Duke Favreau and Lord Miller over here, they love a coronation.
47:39
Speaker 2: You know what I mean? When Dan and I were
47:41
Speaker 2: watching Rocky and Miracle.
47:43
Speaker 8: We were watching The King's Speech.
47:46
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, but you're going to have to wrap it up.
47:48
Speaker 2: Downton Abbey.
47:49
Speaker 8: And so the last time I checked, we live in
47:52
Speaker 8: the United States of America.
47:53
Speaker 3: Oh, God.
47:54
Speaker 2: And anything is possible.
47:56
Speaker 1: And we can beat Donald Trump.
47:59
Speaker 2: All right.
48:00
Speaker 1: Audience, audience, audience, audience, we'd like to hear from the candidates. John,
48:08
Speaker 1: you want to go next? Tim's got his mic on
48:12
Speaker 1: like a trigger.
48:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, no.
48:13
Speaker 3: I'll just respond to my neocon friend, Tommy, who's a
48:18
Speaker 3: big Nikki Haley fan.
48:20
Speaker 5: Look.
48:22
Speaker 2: You're scum.
48:25
Speaker 1: Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.
48:28
Speaker 2: Get my name out of your voice. Tough. Want that
48:32
Speaker 2: one back.
48:33
Speaker 3: Majority of Republican primary voters like Donald Trump. They liked
48:36
Speaker 3: his presidency. They believe he won the last election. They
48:41
Speaker 3: don't care about his 91 felony counts. They think he
48:44
Speaker 3: can easily beat Joe Biden. Why would Republican voters choose
48:48
Speaker 3: someone else at this point? Millions of dollars have already
48:50
Speaker 3: been spent on advertisements. Millions of people have watched these
48:54
Speaker 3: boring fuckers across three debates now. Huge organizations have been
48:58
Speaker 3: set up in the early states by these campaigns. The
49:01
Speaker 3: race has barely moved. He is 40-something points ahead, 30
49:06
Speaker 3: points ahead in the early states. A few Republican candidates
49:09
Speaker 3: have made the case to voters that Donald Trump is
49:12
Speaker 3: a threat to democracy. Those candidates are polling in last place.
49:16
Speaker 3: Mike Pence has dropped out. The last candidate with the
49:20
Speaker 3: this big was George W.
49:22
Speaker 2: Bush in 2000.
49:23
Speaker 3: How did he do? He went on to win all
49:25
Speaker 3: but seven states. And at the time, George W. Bush
49:29
Speaker 3: hadn't been president already. Donald Trump has been president already.
49:32
Speaker 3: He is beloved by the Republican base. And they think
49:35
Speaker 3: he won the last election.
49:36
Speaker 2: He's still alive. It's over. It's over.
49:39
Speaker 1: Wow, powerful words.
49:43
Speaker 10: Dan?
49:44
Speaker 7: I'm going to make three points here. First, I don't
49:48
Speaker 7: really appreciate Jon Favreau's don't wet the bed 2016 type
49:51
Speaker 7: messaging here.
49:56
Speaker 1: Two, in the world that anything is possible.
50:01
Speaker 7: Donald Trump's a 77-year-old.
50:02
Speaker 5: Hold on, do you have video of John before the
50:04
Speaker 5: 2016 campaign and what he said? Because if so, if
50:07
Speaker 5: you put that up on screen, I'll switch.
50:08
Speaker 14: To it right now.
50:09
Speaker 2: That would have been good.
50:11
Speaker 1: That has been erased from the internet.
50:13
Speaker 2: Unfortunately not.
50:15
Speaker 7: Point number two, Donald Trump's a 77-year-old obese man with
50:18
Speaker 7: the diet of a college freshman at 2 a.m.? Anything
50:22
Speaker 7: is possible. Nothing is over with Donald Trump in this race.
50:25
Speaker 7: Death is a possibility. Point number three.
50:29
Speaker 11: No.
50:29
Speaker 9: No. No.
50:31
Speaker 1: Shame on.
50:32
Speaker 2: No.
50:33
Speaker 1: You're applauding possibilities.
50:36
Speaker 3: We're cheering for actuarial tables being accurate.
50:40
Speaker 2: That's it.
50:41
Speaker 7: Point number three, and I know this one is close
50:43
Speaker 7: to Tim Miller's heart, is that Donald Trump has been
50:46
Speaker 7: running for the Republican primary for a combined between 2016
50:50
Speaker 7: and 2020 for over two years. In that time, he
50:54
Speaker 7: has never once faced a sustained strategic attack. All of
51:00
Speaker 7: the candidates around him have been attacking each other and
51:03
Speaker 7: hopes to be second. So it is an untested proposition.
51:07
Speaker 7: And while I may not share Tommy's enthusiasm for Nikki Haley,
51:13
Speaker 7: I do think that there is a world where Nikki
51:16
Speaker 7: Haley surges, Ron DeSantis.
51:22
Speaker 12: What?
51:22
Speaker 1: They're anti-Trump, Dan.
51:26
Speaker 2: No one knows that they're true.
51:27
Speaker 1: I was like, what?
51:28
Speaker 2: You promoted that I was going to be here.
51:30
Speaker 5: There are going to be at least three neocons out
51:32
Speaker 5: there in the audience.
51:34
Speaker 1: See, originally the neocons only had one seat, and they
51:37
Speaker 1: took a second, and then they took a third.
51:41
Speaker 7: So we're Nikki Haley Sergis, Ron DeSantis Sergis, which takes
51:44
Speaker 7: some from Trump because most of Trump's second choice voters
51:47
Speaker 7: are Ron DeSantis. Nikki Haley, as Tommy said, beats expectations
51:52
Speaker 7: in Iowa.
51:53
Speaker 2: Sure did.
51:54
Speaker 7: Wins in New Hampshire, wins in South Carolina, and there
51:57
Speaker 7: we go.
51:58
Speaker 1: So, Tim, your name was mentioned. Care to respond?
52:05
Speaker 5: I mean, Tommy's first number was 17, and Donald Trump's
52:08
Speaker 5: winning by 42. So that's the first place I'd start.
52:12
Speaker 1: Devastating.
52:14
Speaker 2: I have two points.
52:15
Speaker 5: First is the name that Tommy mentioned, which I agree with,
52:18
Speaker 5: which would be the plausible person that could beat him,
52:20
Speaker 5: I guess, in a total fantasy world where we're all
52:24
Speaker 5: doing mushrooms together, would be Nikki Haley.
52:25
Speaker 2: Nikki Haley.
52:26
Speaker 5: And Tommy Vitor just endorsed her, officially ending her campaign.
52:30
Speaker 2: So that's kind of a big problem.
52:33
Speaker 5: The people in this room like Nikki Haley, let me
52:35
Speaker 5: tell you, I don't think that's a good sign for
52:36
Speaker 5: her in the Republican primary.
52:38
Speaker 1: That was Chris Christie's problem.
52:40
Speaker 2: Okay.
52:42
Speaker 1: All right.
52:43
Speaker 5: But I'd like to close with telling you about a
52:44
Speaker 5: town called Lafayette. Do we have anybody here from Lafayette?
52:48
Speaker 5: What are you, fucking Bill Clinton?
52:49
Speaker 2: What is this?
52:51
Speaker 5: I had to visit Lafayette.
52:53
Speaker 1: Oh, my God.
52:54
Speaker 5: I had to visit Lafayette a couple months ago.
52:56
Speaker 1: Get to the sentence about the fucking politics.
53:00
Speaker 2: Thank you, Tom Friedman.
53:01
Speaker 5: I was in the Cajun Dome, and there was a
53:05
Speaker 5: GOP meeting there. It was the day after the first debate,
53:08
Speaker 5: and a lady kind of with an accent comes on stage,
53:12
Speaker 5: and she was like, y'all, who do you think won
53:15
Speaker 5: the first debate? And two people in the crowd go, Trump.
53:19
Speaker 5: And then everybody goes, Trump!
53:21
Speaker 2: Trump! Trump!
53:23
Speaker 5: You guys might not recall, but Trump did not attend
53:26
Speaker 5: the first debate. And after this meeting, I went out
53:33
Speaker 5: into the lobby, and I started interviewing people, and I
53:35
Speaker 5: was like, who are you for in the primary?
53:37
Speaker 2: Trump.
53:37
Speaker 5: And I found a young person, looked like they went
53:39
Speaker 5: to college in Lafayette, and I was like, who are
53:41
Speaker 5: you for? And he looks around, and he goes, well,
53:43
Speaker 5: we're a Trump party. And I was like, yeah? He's like,
53:46
Speaker 5: so I'm for Trump. Then the girl next to him goes,
53:48
Speaker 5: Nikki Haley, and she whispers. And I was like, but
53:51
Speaker 5: who are you going to vote for? And she goes, well, Trump.
53:54
Speaker 5: And so in all of your fantasy plans where Nikki
53:56
Speaker 5: Haley overperforms and finishes fourth in Iowa and then second
53:59
Speaker 5: in New Hampshire and she wins South Carolina, then she
54:02
Speaker 5: has to come to Louisiana.
54:04
Speaker 2: And the vote will go to Lafayette.
54:06
Speaker 5: And the last Louisiana poll had Donald Trump 75, Ron
54:10
Speaker 5: DeSantis 8, Nikki Haley 2.
54:14
Speaker 1: Well, that's... I got a fourth number.
54:16
Speaker 2: It was a powerful number. Zero.
54:18
Speaker 8: The number of times you won Iowa, pal. It's getting dirty.
54:24
Speaker 2: Okay. We finished. Take control. We finished a gentleman six.
54:29
Speaker 1: I was trying to be one of those moderators that
54:31
Speaker 1: disappears and not make it about myself. But by the way,
54:34
Speaker 1: not my style. But you can't play that role that well.
54:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, not my style.
54:37
Speaker 1: Huge mistake. Back to me. Dan. If Trump is winning by.
54:46
Speaker 2: A lot of points.
54:46
Speaker 1: A lot of points. But he always tends to be
54:48
Speaker 1: around 50. Sometimes a little bit over, sometimes a little
54:50
Speaker 1: bit under. What is your argument that if, let's say
54:53
Speaker 1: we lived in a world where a bunch of people
54:54
Speaker 1: dropped out because they've been embarrassing themselves. Tim Scott goes
54:57
Speaker 1: off to just young love, picnics and walks in the park,
55:02
Speaker 1: merry-go-rounds and so forth. Ron DeSantis goes back into his
55:06
Speaker 1: sort of ooze cave or whatever he's. Whatever he does
55:10
Speaker 1: at night. But anyway, you end up with just Nikki Haley.
55:13
Speaker 1: Do you really believe that if the.
55:16
Speaker 2: Ron DeSantis' people like Trump. If Ron DeSantis leaves, they're
55:19
Speaker 2: for Trump. That's what I was going to say.
55:21
Speaker 1: I would like to ask the question to John. Because
55:25
Speaker 1: I know how you'll answer. But you don't believe that
55:30
Speaker 1: there could be an anti-Trump majority that could align behind
55:34
Speaker 1: one alternative?
55:34
Speaker 2: Because there is.
55:36
Speaker 3: All the data suggests there is no anti-Trump majority in
55:39
Speaker 3: the Republican Party. There's about 30% of Republican voters on
55:43
Speaker 3: a good day who do not like Donald Trump, who
55:46
Speaker 3: are ready to move on. Then there's another third who
55:50
Speaker 3: love Donald Trump but are willing to consider other options.
55:54
Speaker 3: And then there is the Trump base, right?
55:57
Speaker 5: It's one of the options that they're willing to consider,
55:59
Speaker 5: an Indian woman.
56:00
Speaker 2: That's right.
56:02
Speaker 3: Who they think is a neocon, even though she hasn't
56:08
Speaker 3: served in D.C., but served at the U.N., right?
56:10
Speaker 2: You can actually see this now. For Donald Trump. Right,
56:12
Speaker 2: you can actually see this.
56:13
Speaker 3: Now with Vivek, right, who is attacked during the debate
56:17
Speaker 3: and then after the debate started doing the whole.
56:19
Speaker 2: Like, she made a bunch of money on the board
56:21
Speaker 2: at Boeing.
56:22
Speaker 3: Like, they're going to now do to Haley, Vivek, Trump,
56:25
Speaker 3: the MAGA world, what they did to DeSantis, establishment.
56:28
Speaker 2: Shill, D.C. politician.
56:31
Speaker 3: Rhino, all this bullshit, Trump is the one true God.
56:35
Speaker 2: They'll just turn it on Nikki. And could she consolidate
56:39
Speaker 2: the bulwark crowd? Absolutely, for sure.
56:42
Speaker 3: But that's not enough to win a Republican primary at
56:45
Speaker 3: this point.
56:46
Speaker 2: If only. If only.
56:48
Speaker 1: Tim, isn't there some weakness in the fact that Donald Trump,
56:53
Speaker 1: despite his popularity among Republicans, never can seem to get
56:56
Speaker 1: that much higher than 50% exactly? That's sort of where
56:58
Speaker 1: his ceilings are. Does that tell you anything?
57:01
Speaker 11: No.
57:02
Speaker 7: Why not?
57:03
Speaker 5: I mean, it's still pretty good. I mean, he's winning
57:08
Speaker 5: by 42. That's kind of a lot.
57:09
Speaker 2: I don't know.
57:10
Speaker 1: But isn't some share of the people that are in
57:11
Speaker 1: that 50% people that would be open to an alternative?
57:13
Speaker 2: Well, sure.
57:14
Speaker 5: Yeah, but they like him. So it's not as if
57:17
Speaker 5: in his popularity rating... This is the thing. This is
57:19
Speaker 5: what everybody wishes, right? And I wish it. I would
57:22
Speaker 5: love for this to be the case. But it's like,
57:23
Speaker 5: if you ask Republican voters... Do you have a favorable
57:26
Speaker 5: opinion of Donald Trump? His number is well over 50.
57:29
Speaker 5: It's like 80 or 85.
57:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, right. So they like him.
57:32
Speaker 5: So there's a percentage of people that are like, I
57:34
Speaker 5: like him. I like the cut of his jib. I
57:38
Speaker 5: like the whole whale shtick that he does. But maybe
57:41
Speaker 5: I'd consider somebody else.
57:42
Speaker 1: But doesn't that tell you that there's the people that
57:44
Speaker 1: like him that aren't for him, that the people that
57:46
Speaker 1: love him that would bleed and die for him and have.
57:49
Speaker 1: And then.
57:50
Speaker 2: And then.
57:51
Speaker 1: There's a chunk of people that are worried about hostages,
57:55
Speaker 1: as you call them. But there is a chunk of
57:57
Speaker 1: his support, right, that are people who, like him, want
58:00
Speaker 1: to be president but might have electability concerns, might have
58:02
Speaker 1: chaos concerns, right?
58:03
Speaker 2: Is that wrong?
58:04
Speaker 1: Am I wrong about that?
58:05
Speaker 5: I think they had those concerns at one point, but
58:08
Speaker 5: at this point they're consolidating around him.
58:11
Speaker 2: You just have to look at the numbers. Can I
58:13
Speaker 2: have a rebuttal?
58:14
Speaker 9: Yes.
58:15
Speaker 7: Okay, first, do you know who's more popular among Republican
58:17
Speaker 7: voters than Donald Trump?
58:18
Speaker 2: No one.
58:18
Speaker 7: Ron DeSantis. Higher favorability rating in Ohio, in Iowa, and
58:22
Speaker 7: New Hampshire.
58:23
Speaker 10: Yes.
58:23
Speaker 2: Point number one. So why aren't they choosing him then?
58:24
Speaker 1: Can you please stop interrupting?
58:26
Speaker 2: Yes.
58:27
Speaker 1: The vague.
58:27
Speaker 7: It's over there. Two, no one has made an argument
58:31
Speaker 7: against Trump. Your hair needs to be way higher. There
58:34
Speaker 7: has not been negative ads run against Trump. Not in 2016.
58:38
Speaker 7: Not in 2020. So let's at least test.
58:41
Speaker 2: The negative ads backfire. These people are in a cult.
58:43
Speaker 1: I'm going to get control. I will turn off your microphone.
58:46
Speaker 1: Dan is speaking.
58:48
Speaker 8: This debate should have been moderated by Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk,
58:52
Speaker 8: and Joe Rogan. The last time I checked, we live
58:55
Speaker 8: in America, and you don't cut Dan off.
59:01
Speaker 1: What are you applauding? Shame on all of you for
59:07
Speaker 1: doing this in New Orleans. Do you even believe it?
59:10
Speaker 1: you all are going to vote.
59:11
Speaker 7: I'm going to say you have two choices. You can
59:14
Speaker 7: vote for Donald Trump or the American ideal of possibility.
59:19
Speaker 1: Donald Trump is spending a lot of his time not
59:21
Speaker 1: in Iowa, but in a courtroom. Can you make an
59:24
Speaker 1: argument that given that your belief that nothing is over
59:31
Speaker 1: till election day, do you think that there's a possibility
59:34
Speaker 1: that these indictments start to have an impact and start
59:37
Speaker 1: to shift people towards an alternative? Shut up, Tim. Shut
59:41
Speaker 1: the fuck up.
59:44
Speaker 2: All I see is possibility.
59:45
Speaker 8: And when you look at, because we live in America,
59:49
Speaker 8: and the Iowa electorate is a very intensely conservative Christian
59:55
Speaker 8: evangelical community. the very popular governor of Iowa, Kim Reynolds,
1:00:01
Speaker 8: just endorsed Ron DeSantis.
1:00:04
Speaker 1: So, yeah, there's a lot of room to run. Did
1:00:06
Speaker 1: anyone see that news?
1:00:07
Speaker 2: I didn't see that news.
1:00:08
Speaker 1: By the way, Tim is laughing at you like he's
1:00:10
Speaker 1: salt of the earth. Like he's not a gay libertarian
1:00:12
Speaker 1: from Oakland. But he gets what Iowa's all about. Shut up, Tim.
1:00:18
Speaker 1: Just look.
1:00:19
Speaker 2: In the realm of possibility. Look at what Cedar Falls, okay?
1:00:22
Speaker 7: Let's not forget that in 2016... Ted Cruz beat Donald
1:00:28
Speaker 7: Trump in Iowa.
1:00:29
Speaker 1: And if Ted Cruz can beat someone in Iowa, anyone.
1:00:31
Speaker 5: Can beat fucking Donald Trump in Iowa.
1:00:37
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, we're just about out of time. Before we go,
1:00:44
Speaker 1: let's see. Everybody feel good about their arguments? I don't want.
1:00:48
Speaker 2: To say that if Donald Trump did die, I don't
1:00:51
Speaker 2: think it would be... Please.
1:00:52
Speaker 3: I'm just saying, if that happened, I don't think it
1:00:53
Speaker 3: would be out of the question that the Republican Party
1:00:55
Speaker 3: would still nominate the corpse.
1:00:57
Speaker 2: Of Donald Trump. From the courts.
1:00:58
Speaker 9: Wow.
1:00:58
Speaker 2: And I think the voters would go to the polls.
1:01:00
Speaker 7: And they would say, I think we would call that
1:01:02
Speaker 7: a win-win, my friend.
1:01:04
Speaker 1: Hold on, hold on.
1:01:04
Speaker 2: No, no, no. If Don died.
1:01:06
Speaker 5: Junior, junior would clearly be the favorite.
1:01:10
Speaker 2: If he died. Clearly. Yeah.
1:01:13
Speaker 1: Well, on that note.
1:01:16
Speaker 1: Where we've landed at this debate is Donald Trump more
1:01:19
Speaker 1: powerful than death itself. Surprising to us as our final point, obviously.
1:01:25
Speaker 1: But Donald Trump moving sands up through the hourglass. Listen,
1:01:34
Speaker 1: it's time to vote. If you now believe the Republican
1:01:39
Speaker 1: primary is over and Trump will win, please applaud. If
1:01:44
Speaker 1: you believe that this is America and nothing is over
1:01:47
Speaker 1: till it's over, I'm prepared to tell you what happened tonight.
1:01:52
Speaker 5: This is why Donald Trump won in 2016. The people
1:01:55
Speaker 5: cannot be trusted.
1:01:57
Speaker 1: Because as Tim has clocked, this debate has been won
1:02:00
Speaker 1: by Dan and Tommy.
1:02:02
Speaker 9: Wow.
1:02:03
Speaker 1: Wasn't even close.
1:02:04
Speaker 2: I'm sorry.
1:02:05
Speaker 5: I've hired Sidney Powell. We are going to challenge this.
1:02:11
Speaker 1: Two things that aren't dead, Donald Trump and persuasion. We'll
1:02:15
Speaker 1: be right back.
1:02:17
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh.
1:02:32
Speaker 7: Please welcome to the stage your representative, Mandy Landry. First,
1:02:46
Speaker 7: I want to apologize for having you do this interview
1:02:48
Speaker 7: immediately after whatever that was. And also, this is what
1:02:53
Speaker 7: happens when you have a show on a Friday night
1:02:56
Speaker 7: in New Orleans. So I want to start, you're obviously
1:03:00
Speaker 7: very popular in this crowd.
1:03:02
Speaker 14: They literally just saw my face all over Uptown for
1:03:08
Speaker 14: six months.
1:03:10
Speaker 7: Whatever it was, it worked. You are a progressive in
1:03:16
Speaker 7: a very Republican state. What is that like and what
1:03:20
Speaker 7: keeps you going fighting for progressive values in this world?
1:03:25
Speaker 14: So first of all, I have a unicorn district. That's
1:03:27
Speaker 14: what I call it. They are fully supportive. We have
1:03:30
Speaker 14: the same views. And part of that reason is when
1:03:33
Speaker 14: I ran in 2019, I said, I'm going to run
1:03:35
Speaker 14: as myself. These are my views. If the district doesn't
1:03:38
Speaker 14: want it, I'm going to go on with my life.
1:03:40
Speaker 14: And before I did that, I pulled. I knew they
1:03:43
Speaker 14: were progressive. 90% pro-choice, 90% gun safety, 90% legalized weed,
1:03:45
Speaker 14: probably 99 by now.
1:03:46
Speaker 9: And....
1:03:52
Speaker 14: The more I do that and talk about that, people
1:03:54
Speaker 14: come out of the woodwork, especially in the rural areas.
1:03:58
Speaker 14: A lot of younger LGBT people. I hear from trans
1:04:02
Speaker 14: members now because of last year. And I know that
1:04:04
Speaker 14: there are people out there who look to Devante and
1:04:07
Speaker 14: me and they say, we need more of you.
1:04:08
Speaker 6: Keep talking.
1:04:10
Speaker 14: You're giving us some hope. And this last election, they
1:04:13
Speaker 14: came out in force for me. Half this audience, probably.
1:04:19
Speaker 7: Tommy asked Devante about this, but I'm going to ask
1:04:21
Speaker 7: you as well. 2023 was a great election year for
1:04:23
Speaker 7: Democrats all across the country. We reelected the governor of Kentucky.
1:04:27
Speaker 7: Abortion rights became part of the Constitution in Ohio, expanded
1:04:30
Speaker 7: the legislatures in Virginia and New Jersey. Louisiana was a
1:04:35
Speaker 7: very stark difference, right? With most of the statewide candidates
1:04:38
Speaker 7: not getting the 30%, as Tommy mentioned. We originally scheduled
1:04:41
Speaker 7: the show thinking it would be happening during a gubernatorial runoff.
1:04:45
Speaker 7: Maybe we were naive, but here we are. And what
1:04:48
Speaker 7: is your take on what happened in this state that
1:04:50
Speaker 7: makes it different from what's happening everywhere? Even in Mississippi,
1:04:53
Speaker 7: where we didn't win the gubernatorial race, Brandon Presley, the Democrat,
1:04:56
Speaker 7: outperformed expectations, came closer than previous Democrats had come. So
1:04:59
Speaker 7: what's happening here in Louisiana?
1:05:01
Speaker 14: So I think there are, I think, I was thinking
1:05:05
Speaker 14: about this since we talked about it. I think it's
1:05:06
Speaker 14: a combination of national and local issues. National being, from
1:05:09
Speaker 14: my point of view, being down here, the National Democratic
1:05:12
Speaker 14: Party just left red states for dead. Like, there's been
1:05:15
Speaker 14: no investment. They just kind of left us there. When
1:05:21
Speaker 14: I tried both times to get help from national pro-choice organizations,
1:05:24
Speaker 14: they were like, you're tier four. I said, well, I'm
1:05:27
Speaker 14: going to be tier seven if you don't help. So
1:05:30
Speaker 14: I think there's been no investment in Presley's near win
1:05:35
Speaker 14: might help us all.
1:05:36
Speaker 6: But from a.
1:05:36
Speaker 14: Local level, our state party is still run by old
1:05:39
Speaker 14: school people. It's a clique patronage system. You have to
1:05:44
Speaker 14: kiss the ring. You have to be part of the group.
1:05:47
Speaker 6: And they don't want... people who.
1:05:50
Speaker 14: Come in through the side door, like Devonte and me,
1:05:52
Speaker 14: they want to pick the people so they control you.
1:05:55
Speaker 14: And if you had told me that existed before I won,
1:05:58
Speaker 14: I would not have believed you. There's a deep state here,
1:06:01
Speaker 14: for sure. But they're getting worried. They're really getting worried,
1:06:05
Speaker 14: because they see people like this who are so mad
1:06:07
Speaker 14: about it, and we're growing.
1:06:13
Speaker 7: Abortion was the issue that drove Democratic success in 2022.
1:06:19
Speaker 7: which drove Democratic success in 2023. It's a little more
1:06:22
Speaker 7: complicated here for the Democratic Party. I know it's an
1:06:24
Speaker 7: issue you worked on before you got into politics. Can
1:06:27
Speaker 7: you talk a little bit about how maybe the party
1:06:30
Speaker 7: has mishandled the issue and what can be done here
1:06:33
Speaker 7: to sort of galvanize what we know to be a
1:06:35
Speaker 7: pro-choice majority, not just in blue states, but in red
1:06:38
Speaker 7: states like Louisiana?
1:06:40
Speaker 10: Yeah.
1:06:40
Speaker 14: So what you're describing is the larger argument in the
1:06:44
Speaker 14: state Democratic Party. that for a while now, they've said,
1:06:47
Speaker 14: we need to go for the moderate or the conservative whites.
1:06:51
Speaker 14: And then some of the rest of us in cities
1:06:52
Speaker 14: were like, no, your progressives are energized. They want to
1:06:55
Speaker 14: do stuff. Those conservative white voters are gone. They're Trump voters.
1:07:00
Speaker 14: The few of us or the few who remain are
1:07:02
Speaker 14: not going anywhere either.
1:07:04
Speaker 6: And it is difficult here.
1:07:06
Speaker 14: I mean, our new Speaker of the House was one
1:07:08
Speaker 14: of the architects of the abortion situation here. We were
1:07:12
Speaker 14: ground zero for abortion for 40 years. They tested everything here.
1:07:16
Speaker 14: But what we've seen since last year in polling down
1:07:19
Speaker 14: here is that has started to shift.
1:07:21
Speaker 6: Even in Louisiana, when it finally happened, people were like, oh, shit. Like,
1:07:25
Speaker 6: wait a minute.
1:07:26
Speaker 14: If my wife is dying, I can't bring her to
1:07:28
Speaker 14: the hospital. They're going to tell us to wait in
1:07:30
Speaker 14: the parking lot, which has happened. People were horrified that
1:07:34
Speaker 14: there was no rape and incest exception. So we're going
1:07:36
Speaker 14: to be behind on that. But it is happening everywhere.
1:07:40
Speaker 7: And what role did the outgoing Democratic governor's position on
1:07:47
Speaker 7: abortion have? Do you think that dampened enthusiasm among Democrats?
1:07:54
Speaker 7: Am I about to get you in trouble with this?
1:07:57
Speaker 14: He endorsed against me in this election, which pissed off
1:08:01
Speaker 14: everyone in this room.
1:08:01
Speaker 6: Okay, we're going to get to that.
1:08:03
Speaker 14: It was very frustrating because both times he ran against
1:08:07
Speaker 14: horrible Republicans. And it was very, very frustrating to go
1:08:12
Speaker 14: all out. I mean, I volunteered for him. Everyone in
1:08:14
Speaker 14: here probably helped him because he was a good person.
1:08:17
Speaker 6: He was smart.
1:08:17
Speaker 14: He was going to do Medicaid expansion. But he loved
1:08:20
Speaker 14: guns and hated reproductive rights. So it was very hard.
1:08:25
Speaker 14: And we thought maybe he would soften over the time.
1:08:27
Speaker 14: He gave the impression that maybe it was going to
1:08:31
Speaker 14: be about a personal choice. And instead, he signed the
1:08:34
Speaker 14: trigger ban last year. He did not have to sign it.
1:08:36
Speaker 14: It still would have became law. And the letter he
1:08:38
Speaker 14: put out was full of lies. And yours truly responded
1:08:42
Speaker 14: to it publicly. And he didn't have to do that.
1:08:45
Speaker 14: He could have been more compassionate about it.
1:08:47
Speaker 7: And do you think that dampened enthusiasm among Democratic voters?
1:08:50
Speaker 14: I think it just made people more deflated, even like, oh,
1:08:54
Speaker 14: this is happening and he can't even throw us a
1:08:56
Speaker 14: bone by saying it's too far.
1:08:59
Speaker 6: And we knew it was happening.
1:09:00
Speaker 14: I still refused to believe it until the day it
1:09:03
Speaker 14: happened but it was a large part of the last
1:09:05
Speaker 14: session we had another member who wanted to charge women
1:09:11
Speaker 14: who had an abortion with murder and that finally woke
1:09:13
Speaker 14: up my colleagues and they said oh my god we're
1:09:15
Speaker 14: going to be so embarrassed if we do this that's
1:09:17
Speaker 14: what they cared about.
1:09:20
Speaker 7: And As you mentioned, the Democratic governor endorsed your opponent.
1:09:24
Speaker 7: You have left the Democratic party, become an independent, come back.
1:09:28
Speaker 1: What is that?
1:09:28
Speaker 7: A couple questions on that. One, do you think perhaps
1:09:32
Speaker 7: it was in an election where most Democrats did not
1:09:35
Speaker 7: get 30% of the vote, it was a good use
1:09:36
Speaker 7: of the Democratic governor's time to endorse your opponent? And
1:09:39
Speaker 7: what made you leave as an independent, become an independent,
1:09:41
Speaker 7: and then come back?
1:09:43
Speaker 6: I mean, those two questions are together, almost the same question.
1:09:49
Speaker 6: It was him. It was the congressman. It was the
1:09:51
Speaker 6: former senator.
1:09:52
Speaker 14: And they had this little girl who was in the
1:09:54
Speaker 14: clique and wanted to join and all this money. And
1:09:57
Speaker 14: I was a pain in the butt and getting popular
1:10:00
Speaker 14: and saying things publicly.
1:10:02
Speaker 6: I think part of the reason he did that is
1:10:04
Speaker 6: I'm mouthy.
1:10:05
Speaker 14: I've been responsive to him about abortion. I talked back
1:10:11
Speaker 14: to him publicly about abortion. He cut pandemic unemployment a
1:10:14
Speaker 14: month early. A quarter billion dollars he left on the table.
1:10:19
Speaker 14: And it was a month before Hurricane Ida, and I
1:10:20
Speaker 14: was part of the lawsuit that sued him.
1:10:22
Speaker 6: So a lot of things he did not like. And, yeah,
1:10:26
Speaker 6: they spent their time, all of them.
1:10:27
Speaker 14: I mean, the congressman was on Claiborne waving signs for
1:10:32
Speaker 14: the 27-year-old running against me because.
1:10:35
Speaker 6: They didn't care.
1:10:35
Speaker 14: They already knew Sean was not going to win. Now
1:10:38
Speaker 14: I look back on it. Did they know he wasn't
1:10:40
Speaker 14: even going to make a runoff? They just laughed at it.
1:10:42
Speaker 14: He's a good man, and they just laughed at him
1:10:45
Speaker 14: with no help, nothing.
1:10:47
Speaker 7: And talk a little bit about the decision to become
1:10:48
Speaker 7: an independent and then come back. What brought you back?
1:10:52
Speaker 14: My friends and House Democratic leadership, they said, we want
1:10:55
Speaker 14: you to come back. We're going to help you. And
1:10:57
Speaker 14: it's going to be extremely hard if you don't come back.
1:11:00
Speaker 14: And with House Democratic leadership, it was before session. And
1:11:03
Speaker 14: they said, you do a lot.
1:11:05
Speaker 6: Like, we need you back. I do a lot of policy.
1:11:07
Speaker 14: And they wanted me to come back. But leaving was
1:11:09
Speaker 14: similar to everything I've talked about. I mean, my party
1:11:11
Speaker 14: worked against me last year when I ran the state
1:11:14
Speaker 14: Democratic campaign.
1:11:15
Speaker 6: Chair did it she's a whole other story.
1:11:18
Speaker 1: Um will you tell that story here she's i've.
1:11:21
Speaker 14: Said it many times publicly she's incompetent um everyone in
1:11:28
Speaker 14: here is very familiar with what's been going on um
1:11:31
Speaker 14: negligent she early this year decided she might want to
1:11:34
Speaker 14: run for governor and she did this weird commercial she
1:11:37
Speaker 14: didn't even say she was a democrat and then she
1:11:39
Speaker 14: shot a clay pigeon it was weird um She hasn't
1:11:42
Speaker 14: raised any money. She didn't recruit any candidates, although apparently
1:11:45
Speaker 14: she helped recruit the person who ran against me. She
1:11:48
Speaker 14: helped recruit a candidate who ran against someone else she
1:11:51
Speaker 14: doesn't like. It's just provincial patronage politics. But that's kind
1:11:56
Speaker 14: of what happened last year. And I was like, well,
1:11:58
Speaker 14: I should, there was other things too. They did stuff
1:12:00
Speaker 14: to Devante. Gary Chambers got screwed. Everyone here loves Gary too.
1:12:06
Speaker 14: There was just a lot that happened. We love Gary.
1:12:10
Speaker 7: Is there an effort to try to retake the party apparatus?
1:12:14
Speaker 7: We've seen this happen in other states around the country
1:12:17
Speaker 7: where there's been sort of this atrophied establishment, ineffective party
1:12:21
Speaker 7: apparatus being taken over by the sort of younger activists
1:12:23
Speaker 7: that happen on Barack Obama's elected. A lot of people
1:12:26
Speaker 7: who work for Bernie Sanders did it in other states.
1:12:27
Speaker 7: What's happening here?
1:12:29
Speaker 14: Yes, it has started and we have a lot of
1:12:31
Speaker 14: faith in it. After what happened to Sean and then
1:12:35
Speaker 14: a lot of your liberals and progressives around the state
1:12:37
Speaker 14: were watching my race because there were hardly any races
1:12:40
Speaker 14: around the state and got mad about it and started saying,
1:12:43
Speaker 14: what can we do?
1:12:44
Speaker 6: What can we do?
1:12:44
Speaker 14: So our, um, democratic state central committee, which is the,
1:12:48
Speaker 14: I call it the legislature of the state committee of
1:12:51
Speaker 14: the state party. Those elections are up when our presidential
1:12:55
Speaker 14: primary is in March, I think. And so we'll be
1:12:57
Speaker 14: voting on those members. There's two 10 to two for
1:13:01
Speaker 14: every house district. And then they vote for the chair
1:13:04
Speaker 14: and the executive board. So there's been a lot of
1:13:05
Speaker 14: organizing and talking and, um, People who've been around for
1:13:09
Speaker 14: a while say, look, four of you don't run because
1:13:11
Speaker 14: if the bad guys run one and we run four,
1:13:14
Speaker 14: you won't win. And so it's people who are having
1:13:16
Speaker 14: to learn campaigns in the process. And I think we'll
1:13:19
Speaker 14: do pretty well because we came pretty close the last
1:13:22
Speaker 14: year election. But we need a lot more people organized
1:13:26
Speaker 14: and focused on it. And I think we can do that.
1:13:30
Speaker 14: But it's going to be a decade of growing.
1:13:34
Speaker 7: You know, as Devante said in his conversation with Tommy,
1:13:35
Speaker 7: like this is we've hit rock bottom here, right? That's
1:13:38
Speaker 7: what this election was. Talk a little bit about the
1:13:41
Speaker 7: path back, right? You say it's a decade, right? The
1:13:45
Speaker 7: demographics are not exactly the same, but we've seen progress
1:13:48
Speaker 7: in states like Georgia where there was a decade of
1:13:50
Speaker 7: organizing that brought the Democratic Party back, was able to
1:13:54
Speaker 7: win statewide elections. A lot's changed in politics, but it
1:13:56
Speaker 7: wasn't that long ago that Louisiana had two Democratic senators,
1:14:00
Speaker 7: Democratic governors for a long time. What do you see
1:14:02
Speaker 7: as the path back as long as it may be?
1:14:05
Speaker 7: What should the the obviously very enthusiastic progressives in this room,
1:14:10
Speaker 7: hold on to for hope as we move forward here?
1:14:12
Speaker 7: How do we get there?
1:14:14
Speaker 14: Basically what Republicans did for decades is go into some
1:14:17
Speaker 14: of these areas, drop $ 10, 000 on a school board race, $ 40, 000
1:14:22
Speaker 14: on parish president in the middle of nowhere. There's towns,
1:14:25
Speaker 14: little towns that the mayor is the mayor of 500 people.
1:14:28
Speaker 14: We saw Republicans build their bench for decades. And then
1:14:32
Speaker 14: those people became congressmen and governors and they went to
1:14:35
Speaker 14: the Senate and We can do that. Races are outside
1:14:37
Speaker 14: of mine. Races in Louisiana in the rural areas are
1:14:42
Speaker 14: totally cheap and affordable. And we can start doing that
1:14:45
Speaker 14: because there's been none so far. We have a lot
1:14:48
Speaker 14: of active people who want to do more. We just
1:14:51
Speaker 14: don't have any sort of structure on the ground. And
1:14:53
Speaker 14: that is not expensive, but it takes a while. And
1:14:57
Speaker 14: I think there's a lot more enthusiasm now after we saw.
1:14:59
Speaker 6: What happened here.
1:15:00
Speaker 14: And we were all looking at Mississippi very closely.
1:15:04
Speaker 2: And that was.
1:15:06
Speaker 6: amazing what he did.
1:15:08
Speaker 7: So you mentioned the National Party has abandoned Louisiana and
1:15:12
Speaker 7: a lot of red states, right? And even in Mississippi,
1:15:15
Speaker 7: Brandon Presley, because of the governor's race was quasi-competitive, at
1:15:18
Speaker 7: least for a while, got some assistance from the Democratic
1:15:21
Speaker 7: Governors Association. If the DNC folks here, the Democratic money
1:15:25
Speaker 7: folks were here, what would you say to them to
1:15:28
Speaker 7: get them to invest in Louisiana?
1:15:30
Speaker 14: Help us start on the ground with some of these
1:15:32
Speaker 14: small races. We need to start early for Recruiting, we
1:15:36
Speaker 14: need organizers, young people, retired people, union members, but we
1:15:42
Speaker 14: need to come up with a plan, and we need
1:15:44
Speaker 14: them to help us come up with a plan. We
1:15:45
Speaker 14: don't have that many people here, although we have Linda
1:15:48
Speaker 14: Woolard in the audience, who has mentored.
1:15:51
Speaker 6: So many of us, but we need 50 Lindas.
1:15:56
Speaker 14: To get on the ground and teach people, and I
1:15:59
Speaker 14: think they can provide that to us, because once they
1:16:02
Speaker 14: teach a few of us, we'll have a few more,
1:16:04
Speaker 14: and we really need to go in the far-flung areas
1:16:07
Speaker 14: and tell people we're here, and just tell them what
1:16:10
Speaker 14: the elected positions even are in those areas.
1:16:12
Speaker 7: And it's largely about motivating the people who do not.
1:16:16
Speaker 2: Vote, right?
1:16:17
Speaker 14: Yeah, and we have, what do we have in the state, 26,
1:16:20
Speaker 14: 27 percent who are no party. We still have some Democrats,
1:16:24
Speaker 14: the legacy ones that have basically vote Republican.
1:16:27
Speaker 6: But that's a lot of it. Our turnout is always low.
1:16:30
Speaker 14: We have the off-year state elections, which from what I
1:16:34
Speaker 14: understand are sort of made that way or designed that
1:16:39
Speaker 14: way on purpose.
1:16:41
Speaker 7: It's not an accident it's here in Mississippi.
1:16:43
Speaker 12: That's a choice.
1:16:45
Speaker 6: But Virginia too, which is interesting.
1:16:46
Speaker 7: Just final word for the folks here. What would you
1:16:49
Speaker 7: say to all the people here who are maybe stung
1:16:51
Speaker 7: by the elections here but want to keep fighting?
1:16:55
Speaker 6: Well, I have heard from half of you by now.
1:16:58
Speaker 14: A lot of you are interested in the DSCC, but
1:17:00
Speaker 14: there are other groups you can join.
1:17:03
Speaker 6: There's Vote.
1:17:03
Speaker 14: There's Step Up. There's Power Coalition. There's a lot of
1:17:07
Speaker 14: reproductive rights groups. Live Louisiana is here. There are groups
1:17:10
Speaker 14: out there that you... But you have to dig a little. Like,
1:17:15
Speaker 14: there's not just going to be a show up in
1:17:17
Speaker 14: Habitat for Humanity and build a house day.
1:17:19
Speaker 6: You have to.
1:17:21
Speaker 14: research and look around and contact people and to see
1:17:24
Speaker 14: like where you might fit and maybe be willing to
1:17:26
Speaker 14: go in outside areas this happens around the country though
1:17:30
Speaker 14: and it's similar here that California New York and the
1:17:33
Speaker 14: blue states are like why do you live down there
1:17:35
Speaker 14: and I said well why don't you move down here
1:17:37
Speaker 14: like we we need the help.
1:17:39
Speaker 1: And Tim literally did so yeah.
1:17:42
Speaker 14: I mean he can stay But that's similar here. And
1:17:46
Speaker 14: I understand that you have someone who doesn't quite fit
1:17:50
Speaker 14: in in Ruston or Monroe and they come down to
1:17:52
Speaker 14: Baton Rouge or New Orleans and it's hard to tell
1:17:54
Speaker 14: that person, please stay there and change your neighborhood.
1:17:59
Speaker 6: But that's important too.
1:18:01
Speaker 2: All right.
1:18:01
Speaker 1: Please give it up for Manny Landry. Thank you so
1:18:03
Speaker 1: much for everything you've been doing. New Orleans. You've given
1:18:11
Speaker 1: us so much.
1:18:12
Speaker 11: That is good.
1:18:13
Speaker 1: Jazz. beignets, the idea of getting drunk while also walking around. Unfortunately,
1:18:19
Speaker 1: the can-all-be-bangers in the Bayou State also spat out the
1:18:22
Speaker 1: house's new speaker and most boring-looking maniac, Mike Johnson. This week,
1:18:29
Speaker 1: all of us learned against our will that Johnson and
1:18:31
Speaker 1: his 17-year-old son are each other's so-called accountability partners. Using
1:18:35
Speaker 1: an app called Covenant Eyes to monitor each other's porn intake,
1:18:39
Speaker 1: to review what else we've learned about Louisiana's lousiest I've
1:18:42
Speaker 1: assigned each of my co-hosts their own accountability partner in
1:18:46
Speaker 1: a game we're calling Covenant Eyes Are Watching You.
1:18:51
Speaker 7: Covenant Eyes, they're watching you.
1:18:58
Speaker 1: Perfect. Here's how it works. John and Dan are one
1:19:04
Speaker 1: cent of accountability partners. Tommy and Tim are another. Each
1:19:08
Speaker 1: teammate must guess the other's responses to facts about Mike Johnson,
1:19:11
Speaker 1: but here's the twist. No matter what, they must not
1:19:14
Speaker 1: jack off.
1:19:20
Speaker 2: Okay. Oh, wow.
1:19:28
Speaker 1: Dan should have the whiteboard to begin.
1:19:29
Speaker 2: Okay. All right.
1:19:31
Speaker 1: Here's how this works. It's basically a newlywed game. Deal
1:19:33
Speaker 1: with it.
1:19:36
Speaker 2: John.
1:19:37
Speaker 10: Yes.
1:19:38
Speaker 1: Which of Mike Johnson's claims about himself does Dan consider
1:19:42
Speaker 1: the least believable? Dan, I'm going to read you two claims.
1:19:46
Speaker 1: You write the one that you believe less, okay? Claim A,
1:19:50
Speaker 1: that he and his wife have no bank accounts with
1:19:54
Speaker 1: more than $ 5, 000 in it.
1:19:55
Speaker 10: What?
1:19:55
Speaker 1: Even though he makes $ 223, 000 a year and she works.
1:19:56
Speaker 1: And lives in Shreveport.
1:19:57
Speaker 2: Claim B.
1:20:05
Speaker 1: That he can't even remember his many comments about how
1:20:07
Speaker 1: homosexuality should be criminalized and that he genuinely loves all
1:20:10
Speaker 1: people regardless of their lifestyle choices. Which claim do you
1:20:14
Speaker 1: find less believable? Don't let me make sure John can't see.
1:20:19
Speaker 1: Dan is writing it down. All right, John, what do
1:20:23
Speaker 1: you think? What do you think Dan finds less plausible?
1:20:26
Speaker 2: The things he said about gay people.
1:20:29
Speaker 1: That is correct. Bigoted claims. Bigoted claims. One point to
1:20:33
Speaker 1: John and Dan. I know my accountability partner.
1:20:35
Speaker 2: Lovett, can we hear the song one more time?
1:20:38
Speaker 1: In a game we're calling, Covenant Eyes are watching you.
1:20:42
Speaker 1: Covenant Eyes, they're watching you.
1:20:46
Speaker 2: Can we explain the origin of that song?
1:20:49
Speaker 1: Here's what happened. Last night, I did what I always
1:20:52
Speaker 1: do when I have an important show the next day
1:20:54
Speaker 1: and I'm on an airplane. I had an edible and
1:20:56
Speaker 1: two drinks. And that's where my best ideas happen. And
1:21:01
Speaker 1: so I sent a note to this wonderful production team saying,
1:21:05
Speaker 1: we should make this game called Covenant Eyes Are Watching You.
1:21:08
Speaker 1: And people need to sing into their iPhone, Private Eyes
1:21:11
Speaker 1: Are Watching You by Hall & Oates, but replace the
1:21:13
Speaker 1: private with covenant. Then today I received a phone call.
1:21:17
Speaker 1: And the phone call was, we can't do that because
1:21:20
Speaker 1: of copyright law. And I said, fuck that. And then
1:21:26
Speaker 1: Olivia and Ben And Ari and Elijah went into a bathroom.
1:21:31
Speaker 2: And Phoebe.
1:21:31
Speaker 1: And Phoebe was there. Phoebe was in the mix. And
1:21:34
Speaker 1: they formed a chorus. And they got on key. And
1:21:38
Speaker 1: they got on pitch. And they got on beat. And
1:21:40
Speaker 1: they made this beautiful work.
1:21:42
Speaker 7: I would just say, as a legal strategy, saying that
1:21:45
Speaker 7: someone warned you about a legal violation and then announcing
1:21:48
Speaker 7: to a crowd, fuck that.
1:21:49
Speaker 2: It's not a good move. We'll cut that part. We'll
1:21:52
Speaker 2: cut that.
1:21:52
Speaker 10: Yeah.
1:21:54
Speaker 1: We'll be editing that out of the pod.
1:21:55
Speaker 2: No lawyers here, right?
1:21:56
Speaker 1: Oh no, Hall and Oates are sending me to cease
1:21:58
Speaker 1: and desist letters? What will I ever do if both
1:22:01
Speaker 1: Hall and Oates are mad at me? Will I get... Unbelievable.
1:22:09
Speaker 1: Tim and Tom.
1:22:09
Speaker 11: Yep.
1:22:14
Speaker 2: All right, Tommy.
1:22:15
Speaker 1: I have before me two... Tim should have the whiteboard
1:22:18
Speaker 1: to begin, sorry.
1:22:18
Speaker 11: Tommy.
1:22:20
Speaker 1: Tommy. I have before me two god-awful Mike Johnson quotes
1:22:24
Speaker 1: from 2004. Okay. Which one makes Tim want to make
1:22:28
Speaker 1: out with his husband right in front of him?
1:22:31
Speaker 2: All right.
1:22:32
Speaker 5: Right in front of Mike?
1:22:32
Speaker 1: Right in front of Mike.
1:22:33
Speaker 2: Okay. Which, right. Quote A. Did you write this question
1:22:39
Speaker 2: after the edible?
1:22:41
Speaker 1: This was written by a team. Quote A. Homosexual relationships
1:22:47
Speaker 1: are inherently unnatural and the studies clearly show are ultimately
1:22:50
Speaker 1: harmful and costly for everyone. Or quote B, experts project
1:22:54
Speaker 1: that homosexual marriage is the dark harbinger of chaos and
1:22:58
Speaker 1: sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest republic.
1:23:05
Speaker 2: Okay. Let me know when.
1:23:08
Speaker 5: You're done, Tim.
1:23:09
Speaker 2: I'm finished. I suspect Tyler might agree with B, so
1:23:13
Speaker 2: I'm going to go with A.
1:23:16
Speaker 5: See, this is why Tyler is actually my accountability partner.
1:23:21
Speaker 5: And if Tommy had my phone, it would shock the conscience. B,
1:23:26
Speaker 5: Dark Harbinger.
1:23:27
Speaker 2: Dark Harbinger, very sexy.
1:23:30
Speaker 1: Wow. Dan, which of the following real blog posts on
1:23:34
Speaker 1: the Covenant Eyes website would John be most eager to read?
1:23:39
Speaker 1: Post A, what does the Bible say about masturbation? Or
1:23:44
Speaker 1: post B, when Jesus used technology. Which is the, what's
1:23:49
Speaker 1: getting the click? I mean, to be.
1:23:51
Speaker 7: Honest, offline John would never read a blog post, but.
1:23:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right.
1:23:56
Speaker 1: He's still on his phone at the urinal. It's not
1:23:58
Speaker 1: cured quite yet.
1:24:00
Speaker 2: Once in a while, if there's a good tweet.
1:24:05
Speaker 1: Huh.
1:24:06
Speaker 7: I would say A, masturbation. A, masturbation.
1:24:11
Speaker 11: That's correct.
1:24:11
Speaker 1: That's correct. That's the one John wants to know more about.
1:24:17
Speaker 1: The fun fact, the technology referenced in the blog post
1:24:22
Speaker 1: is a towel and a basin full of water, which
1:24:25
Speaker 1: seems to go back to post A. Tim, which item
1:24:33
Speaker 1: on Mike Johnson's dog diaper of a resume does Tommy
1:24:37
Speaker 1: find most worrying? Which is more worrying? A, the time
1:24:41
Speaker 1: he played a leading role in efforts to overturn the
1:24:43
Speaker 1: 2020 election, or B, the time he tried to make
1:24:46
Speaker 1: Kentucky taxpayers pay for the Ark Encounter creationist theme park,
1:24:50
Speaker 1: including dinosaurs riding on a life-size Noah Ark.
1:24:55
Speaker 2: That's really hard.
1:24:56
Speaker 1: What does Tommy find more worrying?
1:25:00
Speaker 2: Okay.
1:25:01
Speaker 5: I know about what you find really hard. It's where
1:25:03
Speaker 5: your accountability part hurts.
1:25:05
Speaker 1: Because they're accountability partners.
1:25:07
Speaker 2: What's your answer, Tim?
1:25:08
Speaker 1: What's your answer, Tim?
1:25:09
Speaker 2: My answer is A.
1:25:10
Speaker 8: I went with B. Listen, if you think there's a
1:25:15
Speaker 8: fucking dinosaur on the ark, that's way worse.
1:25:18
Speaker 2: The end of democracy?
1:25:20
Speaker 11: Dinosaurs on the ark. The dinosaurs aren't in the Bible. Well,
1:25:27
Speaker 11: you know what that sound means. It's time for the
1:25:30
Speaker 11: lightning round.
1:25:31
Speaker 1: Oh, boy. I'm going to ask a question. The first
1:25:33
Speaker 1: team to answer correctly wins a point plus a string. Oh, no.
1:25:35
Speaker 1: We're not doing that. That's it. They win a point.
1:25:38
Speaker 1: There is still no masturbating.
1:25:42
Speaker 2: Here we go.
1:25:43
Speaker 1: Call it out if you know it. Johnson is the
1:25:45
Speaker 1: least experienced house speaker in 140 years because he's only
1:25:47
Speaker 1: served how many terms?
1:25:49
Speaker 2: Three. Incorrect.
1:25:51
Speaker 1: He's now in his fourth term.
1:25:52
Speaker 3: Shit.
1:25:54
Speaker 1: Does Mike Johnson blame abortion or the teaching of evolution
1:25:57
Speaker 1: for school shootings?
1:25:58
Speaker 2: Evolution. Abortion.
1:25:59
Speaker 1: You're both right.
1:25:59
Speaker 2: It's both.
1:26:03
Speaker 1: Points in both directions. We're calling that a tie. I
1:26:06
Speaker 1: have the quotes here, but who cares? What is the
1:26:09
Speaker 1: name of the podcast that Mike and Kelly Johnson co-host
1:26:12
Speaker 1: where they present thoughtful analysis of hot topics and current
1:26:14
Speaker 1: events from a Christian perspective?
1:26:16
Speaker 7: The Next Level.
1:26:19
Speaker 5: Not enough people clapped for that.
1:26:23
Speaker 1: To my point that you should change the name of
1:26:24
Speaker 1: that podcast.
1:26:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, we really do need to change the name.
1:26:25
Speaker 1: What the fuck does the next level mean? It doesn't
1:26:27
Speaker 1: mean a goddamn thing. Next level. I listen to it.
1:26:31
Speaker 1: I can never remember how to fucking find it on
1:26:33
Speaker 1: my own goddamn phone.
1:26:34
Speaker 2: Change the name. It's a crooked media podcast.
1:26:36
Speaker 1: It's a much better name. It's like a superhero podcast.
1:26:38
Speaker 2: It'd be singing Hall & Oates theme. It'd be much better.
1:26:41
Speaker 2: You're right. JBL canceled.
1:26:43
Speaker 1: The correct answer is Truth Be Told.
1:26:45
Speaker 2: Bonus point.
1:26:45
Speaker 1: How many episodes are there?
1:26:46
Speaker 2: There's like 14. Zero.
1:26:49
Speaker 1: They've all been erased.
1:26:50
Speaker 2: 69.
1:26:51
Speaker 1: 69. Nice.
1:26:55
Speaker 2: Is that right? That's not right. That can't be true.
1:27:01
Speaker 1: Mike Johnson, a man who disclosed no assets on his
1:27:03
Speaker 1: annual financial disclosure report required a federal lawmaker. He had
1:27:06
Speaker 1: no bank accounts with more than $ 1, 000 personally, and his
1:27:09
Speaker 1: wife had no bank accounts in total of more than $ 5, 000.
1:27:12
Speaker 1: How much does he make a year?
1:27:13
Speaker 2: $ 222, 000?
1:27:14
Speaker 1: You got it. Point to Tommy.
1:27:17
Speaker 2: He's been thinking about running for Congress.
1:27:19
Speaker 1: How much am I going to make?
1:27:21
Speaker 2: Four minutes ago. You got to listen.
1:27:22
Speaker 1: You got to listen. For the record, he used to
1:27:24
Speaker 1: make 174, I believe, but made.
1:27:24
Speaker 2: Another 30 doing what? No, no, no.
1:27:33
Speaker 5: He was giving people advice. It was like family advice.
1:27:38
Speaker 1: He was teaching online courses for Liberty fucking University.
1:27:42
Speaker 5: Also, his wife gives people Christian counseling. And that's another
1:27:47
Speaker 5: piece of income that they have.
1:27:49
Speaker 1: Mike Johnson's wife, Kelly, compared homosexuality to which two things
1:27:53
Speaker 1: on her now-removed website?
1:27:56
Speaker 2: Bestiality.
1:27:56
Speaker 1: Correct.
1:27:58
Speaker 2: One more. Oh, incest?
1:28:02
Speaker 1: No, incest. It's incest.
1:28:03
Speaker 2: Nailed it.
1:28:05
Speaker 1: Thanks, baby. A way to go from the crowd.
1:28:14
Speaker 2: Go fucking Tigers. Good pander.
1:28:19
Speaker 1: Last question. What did Johnson once suggest was to blame
1:28:22
Speaker 1: for the fall of Rome?
1:28:23
Speaker 2: Gay sex.
1:28:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was gay sex. It was gay sex. Some
1:28:28
Speaker 1: credit to the fall of Rome to not only the
1:28:30
Speaker 1: deprivation of society and the loss of morals, but also
1:28:32
Speaker 1: to the rampant homosexual behavior that was condoned by the society.
1:28:35
Speaker 2: Seems like he thinks a lot about the Roman Empire
1:28:37
Speaker 2: and gay sex.
1:28:39
Speaker 1: And who died? I know I do. And I gotta say, man,
1:28:46
Speaker 1: you know, you guys, Tommy did great on the debate.
1:28:48
Speaker 2: Thanks.
1:28:49
Speaker 1: As did Dan. John and Dan won this game.
1:28:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, we did.
1:28:54
Speaker 1: Tim, you're walking over the, you shot the moon on
1:28:56
Speaker 1: the games tonight.
1:28:57
Speaker 11: Yeah.
1:28:58
Speaker 1: And that's Covenant Eyes are watching you. Covenant Eyes, they're
1:29:03
Speaker 1: watching you. Wow.
1:29:05
Speaker 2: That's our show for tonight. Thank you, Devante Lewis. Thank you,
1:29:09
Speaker 2: Mandy Landry. Thanks, Tim Miller. Thanks, New Orleans.
1:29:18
Speaker 3: Hot Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our producers
1:29:21
Speaker 3: are Olivia Martinez and David Toledo. Our associate producer is
1:29:24
Speaker 3: Farrah Safari. Writing support from Hallie Kiefer. Reed Cherlin is
1:29:28
Speaker 3: our executive producer. The show is mixed and edited by
1:29:31
Speaker 3: Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer, with audio
1:29:34
Speaker 3: support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Madeline Herringer is
1:29:38
Speaker 3: our head of news and programming. Matt DeGroat is our
1:29:40
Speaker 3: head of production. Andy Taft is our executive assistant. Thanks
1:29:44
Speaker 3: to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Mia Kelman,
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